went insane. The refugees wove their various courses silently among the remains, reminding Clay Riddell more than a little of ants evacuating a hill that has been demolished by the careless passing boot-stride of some heedless human.
There was a green reflectorized sign reading malden salem st. exit 1/4 MI at the edge of a low pink building that had been broken into; it was fronted by a jagged skirting of broken glass, and a battery-powered burglar alarm was even now in the tired last stages of running down. A glance at the dead sign on the roof was all Clay needed to tell him what had made the place a target in the aftermath of the day's disaster: mister big's giant discount liquor.
He had one of the plump woman's arms. Tom had the other, and Alice supported the muttering woman's head as they eased her to a sitting position with her back against one of the exit sign's legs. Just as they got her down, the plump woman opened her eyes and looked at them dazedly.
Tom snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, twice, briskly. She blinked, then turned her eyes to Clay. 'You . . . hit me,' she said. Her fingers rose to touch the rapidly puffing spot on her jaw.
'Yes, I'm sor—' Clay began.
'He may be, but I'm not,' Tom said. He spoke with that same cold briskness. 'You were terrorizing our ward.'
The plump woman laughed softly, but tears were in her eyes.
'Shut up,' Tom said, 'or I'll hit you myself. And unlike my friend, who was I think lucky enough not to grow up among the holy Hannahs and thus does not recognize you for what you are, I won't pull my punch. Fair warning—one more word.' He held his fist before her eyes, and although Clay had already concluded that Tom was an educated man, civilized, and probably not much of a puncher under ordinary circumstances, he could not help feeling dismay at the sight of that small, tight fist, as if he were looking at an omen of the coming age.
The plump lady looked and said nothing. One large tear spilled down her rouged cheek.
'That's enough, Tom, I'm okay,' Alice said.
Tom dropped the plump lady's shopping bag of possessions into her lap. Clay hadn't even realized Tom had salvaged it. Then Tom took the Bible from Alice, picked up one of the plump lady's be-ringed hands, and smacked the Bible into it, spine first. He started away, then turned back.
'Tom, that's enough, let's go,' Clay said.
Tom ignored him. He bent toward the woman sitting with her back against the sign's leg. His hands were on his knees, and to Clay the two of them—the plump, spectacled woman looking up, the small, spectacled man bending over with his hands on his knees—looked like figures in some lunatic's parody of the early illustrations from the Charles Dickens novels.
'Some advice, sister,' Tom said. 'The police will no longer protect you as they did when you and your self- righteous, holy-rolling friends marched on the family planning centers or the Emily Cathcart Clinic in Waltham —'
'That abortion mill!' she spat, and then raised her Bible, as if to block a blow.
Tom didn't hit her, but he was smiling grimly. 'I don't know about the Vial of Insanity, but there's certainly
'Yes,' Clay said.
'Wow,' Alice said, once they were walking toward the Salem Street ramp again, Mister Big's Giant Discount Liquor falling behind them. 'You grew up with someone like that?'
'My mother and both of her sisters,' Tom said. 'First N.E. Church of Christ the Redeemer. They took Jesus as their personal savior, and the church took them as its personal pigeons.'
'Where is your mother now?' Clay asked.
Tom glanced at him briefly. 'Heaven. Unless they rooked her on that one, too. I'm pretty sure the bastards did.'
Near the stop sign at the foot of the ramp, two men were fighting over a keg of beer. If forced to guess, Clay would have said it had probably been liberated from Mister Big's Giant Discount Liquor. Now it lay forgotten against the guardrails, dented and leaking foam, while the two men—both brawny and both bleeding—battered each other with their fists. Alice shrank against him, and Clay put his arm around her, but there was something almost reassuring about these brawlers. They were angry– enraged—but not crazy. Not like the people back in the city.
One of them was bald and wearing a Celtics jacket. He hit the other a looping overhand blow that mashed his opponent's lips and knocked him flat. When the man in the Celtics jacket advanced on the downed man, the downed man scrambled away, then got up, still backing off. He spat blood. 'Take it, ya fuck!' he yelled in a thick, weepy Boston accent. 'Hope it chokes ya!'
The bald man in the Celtics jacket made as if to charge him, and the other went running up the ramp toward Route One. Celtics Jacket started to bend down for his prize, registered Clay, Alice, and Tom, and straightened up again. It was three to one, he had a black eye, and blood was trickling down the side of his face from a badly torn earlobe, but Clay saw no fear in that face, although he had only the diminishing light of the Revere fire to go by. He thought his grandfather would have said the guy's Irish was up, and certainly that went with the big green shamrock on the back of his jacket.
'The fuck you lookin at?' he asked.
'Nothing—just going by you, if that's all right,' Tom said mildly. 'I live on Salem Street.'
'You can go to Salem Street or hell, far as I'm concerned,' the bald man in the Celtics jacket said. 'Still a free country, isn't it?'
'Tonight?' Clay said. 'Too free.'
The bald man thought it over and then laughed, a humorless double ha-ha. 'The fuck happened? Any-a youse know?'
Alice said, 'It was the cell phones. They made people crazy.'
The bald man picked up the keg. He handled it easily, tipping it so the leak stopped. 'Fucking things,' he said. 'Never cared to own one. Rollover minutes. The fuck're those?'
Clay didn't know. Tom might've—he'd owned a cell phone, so it seemed possible—but Tom said nothing. Probably didn't want to get into a long discussion with the bald man, and probably a good idea. Clay thought the bald man had some of the characteristics of an unexploded grenade.
'City burning?' the bald man asked. 'Is, isn't it?'
'Yes,' Clay said. 'I don't think the Celtics will be playing at the Fleet this year.'
'They ain't shit, anyway,' the man said. 'Doc Rivers couldn't coach a PAL team.' He stood watching them, the keg on his shoulder, blood running down the side of his face. Yet now he seemed peaceable enough, almost serene. 'Go on,' he said. 'But I wouldn't stay this close to the city for long. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. There's gonna be a lot more fires, for one thing. You think everybody who hightailed it north remembered to turn off the gas stove? I fuckin doubt it.'
The three of them started walking, then Alice stopped. She pointed to the keg. 'Was that yours?'
The bald man looked at her reasonably. 'Ain't no was at times like this, sweetie pie. Ain't no was left. There's just now and maybe-tomorrow. It's mine now, and if there's any left it'll be mine maybe-tomorrow. Go on now. The fuck out.'
'Seeya,' Clay said, and raised one hand.
'Wouldn't want to be ya,' the bald man replied, unsmiling, but he raised his own hand in return. They had passed the stop sign and were crossing to the far side of what Clay assumed was Salem Street when the bald man called after them again: 'Hey, handsome!'
Both Clay and Tom turned to look, then glanced at each other, amused. The bald guy with the keg was now only a dark shape on the rising ramp; he could have been a caveman carrying a club.
'Where are the loonies now?' the bald guy asked. 'You're not gonna tell me they're all dead, are ya? Cause I don't fuckin believe it.'
