Those balloon lips parted, croaking, 'Lulululululululu,' until her breath ran out. Then she wheezed and continued, 'Lululululululululu,' all the while fighting me for the door. She still had strength but no dexterity, and her grip on the handle kept slipping loose. The other two arrived beside her, crowding each other in their eagerness to worm through. Strings of black spittle fell on me, and I leaned as far away from the door as I could without losing my grip.
'Lock the door!' I screamed. 'Lock the door!'
Even as I said it, the locking bolts shot home with a deliriously gratifying ka-chunk.
'You don't have to wait for me, you know,' Cowper grumbled. Twisting around to face backward, one hand on the wheel, he said, 'Fasten your seat belt,' and gunned the big Ford in reverse. Like magic, the three ragged creatures were left rolling in the dust. The sight of them dropping away was so sweet it was agonizing-I wasn't ready for hope, and might never be. I was leaving my mother behind.
We kept going backward at a fast clip, swerving a little as if taking aim, until there was a jarring multiple thump, and the car bounced over something. We passed through the line of maniacs, half of them clutching hopelessly after us, the rest stretched out in the road. Once we were safely clear, Cowper stopped and turned the car around, proceeding away at a more leisurely pace.
'Do I have to tell you to close that window?' he griped. 'I got the heat on.'
'Sorry,' I said, finding the button. All of a sudden I started trembling so hard I was afraid Cowper might think there was something seriously wrong with me and put me out. But he wasn't paying attention. He was looking in the rearview mirror with grim intensity, nodding to himself.
'And that's why I drive an SUV,' he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
My mother didn't believe in cars. She owned a car as a 'matter of survival' but thought the world would be a better place without them. Cars figured prominently in her 'Penis Patrol' theory: that most men are not mature enough to handle any extra reach, and to give the average jerk a platform by which he can increase the radius of his stupidity is asking for trouble. I found this hilarious coming from her but couldn't argue with the logic. 'Civilization is so boring,' she liked to say, spying some example of male profligacy, from thudding car stereos and roadside litter to mad gunmen and rogue jet-liners, 'let's break stuff.' Anytime a new atrocity occurred that illustrated her case, all Mum and I had to do was look at each other and say, 'Penis Patrol,' and that explained it. Over the years, I even found myself doing it when I was alone.
As Cowper's giant vehicle enfolded me in cream-colored leather, I realized I was muttering, 'Penis Patrol' every couple of minutes, like a weird tic. I wasn't aware of it until he said something.
He said, 'You sound just like your mother.'
Shocked out of my passivity, I grunted. I didn't want to talk about her, didn't think I could without screaming. My placid demeanor was just the slag on a roiling cauldron-perhaps when cooled, it would crumble away, exposing tempered steel, but in the meantime, it threatened to spatter everything in sight.
'She and I didn't really see eye to eye on a lotta things,' he continued, 'but I gotta give her this: she was one tough lady. She didn't give up, nohow, not when she wanted something. You got that in you, too, little girl, and it's gonna get you through.'
He went on with the pep talk, but I couldn't listen. Much easier to skate the power lines and guardrails, bodiless and afloat, muffled, in a corridor of gray winter maples. But as we ventured up the coast, my detachment began to shred. There were blue people out there. There! By that farmhouse! That donut shop! The strip mall! Every time I saw them, I was so repulsed my stomach muscles spasmed, causing me to double over in pain. Cringing as we swerved to avoid one, I yelled, 'Don't stop!'
'I ain't about to stop,' he said dryly. 'Don't worry.'
His gas gauge showed less than a quarter tank. 'Where are we going?' I asked.
'Hopefully where there ain't gonna be no Exes.'
It was as if I'd been pricked by something sharp. Under my breath, I said, 'Exes.'
'Exes, yeah, as in Agent X. Ex-humans. That's the official term, if there is such a thing. I've also heard 'em called Xombies. With an X. Every damn thing's gotta have an X nowadays.'
'Is that because of the women? The X chromosome?'
'Hey, maybe so,' he said. 'Good thinking.'
Even in the midst of unbearable grief, his approval tickled a reaction out of my girlish pride. I stamped it down like a cockroach. 'Why don't I have it?' I asked. 'Agent X?'
He became very uncomfortable. 'Well, I, uh… from what I've heard, they think it's got something to do with that time of the month… I don't really know. They say little girls and, uh, older ladies don't catch it that way, spontaneously, the way… menstruatin' women do. And I know you have a… problem in that area.'
'You mean I'm immune because I don't have a period?'
He winced. 'Immune, no. You're immune the way I am, the way anybody is who didn't automatically go bad on Sadie Hawkins Day. That doesn't make us safe from catching it off 'em. Half the things running around now are men.'
'Sadie Hawkins Day?'
'That's what they were calling it when all the women turned, the first week of January.'
'Is that when this happened? God, we had no clue.'
'Oh yeah. They went off like they were synchronized. After that, everything went all to hell pretty quick-I'm not surprised you missed it. They say the original women carriers are different than the ones they infected, not so retahded, but I don't know. To me it's all the same if they're after your ass.'
'But… my mother just went through menopause…' My voice quavered; somehow I'd blundered into facing the Gor gon. Thickly, I said, 'How do those things infect you?'
'Now there's no use going into that. I gotta pay attention to the road. You just sit tight.'
'Fred, how did you know to find me?'
He didn't acknowledge the question for some time, giving jittery attention to his driving.
Grimly, I said, 'You were home, weren't you? You heard us.'
He scowled, nodded. He didn't look at me. 'You shouldn't have been out there,' he said gruffly.
'We didn't know.'
'Well, goddammit, you should have known!' Suddenly he was spitting with exasperation. 'Don't you think I'd've let you in if I hadn't known the bastids were out there? They were there the whole time, and you two standing on my porch like there's nothing funny!'
'I'm sorry.'
'Sorry!' His temper abruptly dwindled, and he shook his head, saying, 'I was gonna let her in. After you left, I was gonna take a chance and let her in.' The old man's face contracted as if squinting into a high wind. 'But they came first. They came running like a pack of hyenas, and she saw 'em before I did. Before I could do anything, she was gone-'
'Okay,' I said sharply, not ready to hear everything.
'That was when I got it in me to go. Take Sandoval up on his offer-why not?' His cactus-bristled cheek quivered. 'I figured maybe I could get to you before… uh…'
He was very upset. It scared me and took me out of my panic. Trying to sound strong, I said, 'And you did. You did it, Mr. Cowper. You saved me.' I started to cry.
'Don't thank me just yet,' he said.
Suburban sprawl gave way to industrial blight. Fenced-off tracts of land were posted, PROPERTY OF U.S. NAVY-KEEP OUT and WARNING-RESTRICTED AREA-USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED. It was reassuring in a way, though there was no sign of life. Any authority, however brutal, sounded pretty good. I craved the sight of men with guns the way a person lost in the desert craves a drink. For that matter, I was thirsty, too.
Coming to a dusty crossroads jammed with abandoned vehicles, Cowper was forced to slow down to a reluctant stop.
