would a layer of volcanic ash three feet deep on a roof weigh? How much would it weigh after absorbing as much rainwater as it could hold? How much weight would a roof be designed to take? Some, sure, because roofs here had to hold up against snow. But that much?
Every time she heard a creak overhead, she was gonna freak out. She could see that coming like a rash. You weren’t supposed to go outside into the ash. They’d made that abundantly clear. But what if the ash decided to come to you instead? It was a good question. Vanessa wished she, or somebody, could come up with a good answer.
After commercials-this didn’t seem to be an urgent enough emergency to dispense with selling the product-a newsman whose boyish charm had worn thin by this hour said, “No one is sure yet whether mandatory evacuation of Denver and the surrounding areas will become necessary. The Governor, who was in Lamar at the time of the eruption, has ordered out the National Guard to assist in protecting Colorado lives and property.”
A newcomer to the state, Vanessa didn’t know where the hell Lamar was. A road atlas showed her: out in the southeast, in cow country near the Kansas border. The governor was one lucky stiff. That put him a couple of hundred miles farther away from the eruption. Things might not be so bad out there.
Since the nighttime sports guy was still in the studio, he came on the air. The end of the Rockies’ season and the early part of the Broncos’ season had gone on indefinite hold. Vanessa despised baseball and football impartially. The only thing she wondered was which wasted more time.
Then the worn-looking newsman came back and said, “Snowplows are doing their best to keep the Interstates open south and east of the city to facilitate evacuation in the event that the authorities decide to implement it. No one knows how long the big machines’ air filters can continue to protect them from the grit in the air. By the same token, no one knows how long the volcanic ash will keep on raining down from the sky, either.” He added something he might not have been reading off his teleprompter: “Right now, nobody seems to know much of anything, folks.”
Vanessa loathed facilitate and implement almost as much as she hated impact. They were stupid and pretentious. People used them to sound important and knowledgeable, and ended up sounding like pompous assholes instead.
But if I-25 and I-70 were open, at least partway… Shouldn’t she get the hell out while the getting was possible even if not exactly good? If they were already thinking about evacuation, Denver was really and truly screwed. In the way of bureaucrats, the authorities were nerving themselves before doing what they plainly needed to do.
She looked out the window again. That car was still stuck there, with others easing around it and kicking up more dust and ash as they went. How long would her own elderly Corolla last? Wouldn’t she be worse off if she got stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere-which, to her, defined all of Colorado outside Denver-than if she sat tight?
Not necessarily. If the plows couldn’t keep the highways open, how long would the town still have food? How would anybody bring it in? What would happen if-no, when-the waterworks stopped working? Or when the roofs started buckling and people discovered they couldn’t breath indoors, either?
She was a cop’s kid. Spinning out disaster scenarios came easy. So did knowing that most people would sit tight till it was too late, then start running around like chickens that had just met the chopper. That was what most people did. She’d seen it for herself; she didn’t need to remember her father’s scorn for the common run of civilian.
And since that was what the common run of civilian did, it behooved her not to do likewise. Her mind made up, she threw some clothes and pills and tampons and a couple of books into an overnight bag. She added bottles of water, granola bars, and anything else edible she could grab that wouldn’t go bad right away. She also threw in kibbles and treats for the cat. If she slung the bag over her shoulder and carried the cat carrier in one hand, she’d be able to keep the other one free, and she needed that.
Pickles hated going into his carrier any old time. He knew going outside meant trouble-the vet and other notorious cat-torturers. And he particularly hated it when he was all jumpy anyhow. He scratched her but good before she finally stuffed him in there. “You’d better be worth it, you stupid fuzzhead,” she snapped before she sprayed the wounds with Bactine. That little bottle went into the overnight, too.
Then she soaked a towel in the kitchen sink and draped it over the cat carrier. She soaked another one for herself.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she said aloud in a voice whose calm surprised her. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t remotely sure. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t was another old phrase that fit much too well. She might be worse off bailing out; she might be worse off staying. The swirling gray-brown grit outside warned that she might be in over her head no matter what she did.
You could die out there. Or right here. That was what it boiled down to. Vanessa had always been the kind who did something when she had a choice between that and sitting tight. She wouldn’t have given Bryce the heave-ho if she weren’t. She wouldn’t have followed Hagop to Denver, either.
Yeah, and look how well that turned out, her mind jeered. L.A. wouldn’t be catching it like this.
But she wasn’t in L.A. She had to do what looked best where she was. “Fuck,” she said one more time, and lugged her chattels to the apartment door. Pickles yowled mournfully. “Shut up,” she suggested. He yowled some more. Ignoring him, she shouldered the overnight bag and draped her own wet towel over her eyes and nose and mouth. It didn’t want to stay, so she secured it with a rubber band.
The next little while would have to be in Braille. She opened the door, got the cat carrier out, and closed it behind her. She groped till she grabbed the iron railing that would take her to the stairs and followed it till she found them. Left turn, eminded herself. Sixteen stairs down to the courtyard, right? Take ’em slow. You can’t watch what you’re doing.
At what she thought was the bottom, she felt around with her foot. Concrete, sure enough-concrete with a bunch of new grit on top. The stucco wall that led to the parking garage would be over to the right. To her vast relief, her hand brushed rough plaster. Okay. She knew where she was again.
Anyone who could see her was probably laughing his ass off. Too damn bad. Anyone who could see her was inside an apartment, which meant the sorry son of a bitch had his own problems. She patted the wall every step or two to guide herself along. She didn’t want the stucco ripping up her fingers, especially after the number the cat had done on the back of her hand.
She patted again-and felt nothing. “Ha! Found it!” she exclaimed in triumph. Here was the opening for the stairway down to her car. Some more groping got her to the rail attached to the stairway wall.
Down she went. How many stairs till she got to the bottom? Sixteen from her place to the courtyard, but how many going below? She couldn’t remember. She guessed it would be sixteen again, and slammed her foot against flat concrete flooring, hard, when that proved one too many. Taking a stair that wasn’t there was almost as bad as missing one that was. But she didn’t fall.
After a couple of steps away from the stairwell, she adjusted the rubber band and let the towel drop away from her eyes, though not from her nose and mouth. She had to see to get to her car, and she had to see to drive. Things weren’t so bad here as they were up top. The air was still dusty, and there was grit with footprints going through it on top of the smooth concrete. It wasn’t already hideously thick, though, the way it was in the courtyard.
She chucked her bag into the car, then stuck Pickles on the passenger seat. She draped a blanket on the overnight bag so nobody peering in could see it was there. At another time, she would have stashed it in the trunk. Not today. The less she got in and out, the better. She was just glad the tank was almost full.
As soon as she started the motor, she turned on the lights. You wouldn’t normally need them during the day in Denver, but what did normally mean now? Nada, that was what. She backed out of her space. “Good-bye, God. I’m going… someplace,” she said. Kansas? New Mexico? Some place where things like this didn’t happen, like the frogs in Cannery Row.
She didn’t have to open the window to use a card to open the gate. A beam sensed the car coming up. The gate slid back. Was it her imagination, or did the thing sound creakier, squeakier, than usual? What was all that volcanic grit doing to its mechanism? How long would it keep working? That wasn’t her worry. As long as the thing had opened this time…
Vanessa drove slowly and carefully. A good thing, too. Somebody’d already rear-ended the car that crapped out down the street from her building. She skirted the fender-bender and went on. When she tried the radio, all
