Rise Again (8 page)

The BMW, meanwhile, was tearing down the broad sidewalk space between the old-fashioned wooden telephone poles and the doorsteps of the businesses on Main, leaving behind it a strew of upended trash barrels, the town’s lone post box, a cardboard display of Whiffleballs and bats, and a couple of knocked-over crafts booths—and there were several other cars coming after it. Almost at the end of Main Street, the Beemer hit an abandoned chili cart and slewed to a halt, the windshield covered in beans. The driver jumped out and started scraping the chili off the glass with his bare hands. An irrelevant voice flickered through Danny’s mind:
I hope that’s not Rosarita’s
. Danny considered for a split second making an example of the
driver, hauling him out and handcuffing him, but the real crisis wasn’t this one driver.

The entire town appeared to have gone insane.

From end to end, Main Street was jammed with vehicles, all heading south toward the flatlands. Before, it had been a mess, like getting out of the parking lot after a football game. Now it was impassable, and people were flipping out—there was a shouting match across the street that looked like it might escalate into a brawl. The crawling vehicles spanned both lanes of the road, incoming and outgoing, with more nosing out of lanes, daring to attempt the shortcut down what passed for a sidewalk in Forest Peak. Horns and engines and voices rose in an unholy din. Dogs were barking through back windows.

The same as she did in the Marines, Danny gathered what she knew and assembled a quick working hypothesis, subject to constant revision. Some kind of disaster had happened, as far as she could tell; what it was, nobody knew, but it seemed to be spreading fast. People were fleeing the major urban centers (or trying to return), and there were others running and dying, like the ones they’d seen here in Forest Peak, but in huge numbers. All over the place.
Out there in the wide world where Kelley is
, said the voice in her head.

It had been less than fifteen seconds since the mirror hit Danny’s thigh, and she could almost move the leg again. As she had learned when she threw away the cane after the town elections, you don’t heal an injury by treating it like a friend.

“You hurt, Sheriff?” Nick said.

Danny didn’t have anything useful to say—this was not the time to bark at the minions—so she drew her sidearm and gestured with the weapon:
Follow me
. Nick did so. Danny fed orders into her radio mic, summoning the remainder of her tiny peacekeeping force: Highway Patrolman Park would do what he could in town; Danny wanted Dave, Nick, and Ted to assemble down on Route 114. What they needed was a roadblock, something she knew a great deal about.

Patrick thought traffic was light enough so they could start moving. Weaver switched on the video screen that showed the view to the rear, as seen by an all-weather camera mounted on the roof. There was an overturned baby stroller behind them but the cars were cleared out, room enough to back up. Weaver switched the screen off again.

“All those cars are going to be stuck on Main Street for another hour,” Weaver said. “We’ll only be stuck behind them.”

“But Weaver!”

“Panic is panic. You think it’s gonna help?”

“When do I not panic?” Patrick said.

“Patrick?”

“Okay. I know. I’m shutting up.”

They waited as a few stray cars that had been parked up the hill on Sawyer Road drove past to join the fray, then they were almost alone except for the few locals who stood at the end of the parking lot to watch the pandemonium on Main Street. The locals weren’t freaking out because they were already where they belonged. Patrick knew dislocation was a powerful feeling and it drove as much mindless fear as did the threat of bodily harm. He watched through the tall windshield of the motor home, but Weaver was examining his Geological Survey map, one of those outdoorsy charts that were more geared to topographical details than useful features like restaurants and outlet malls. To Patrick, the map was a mass of meaningless wavy lines, like an Op-Art painting.

“Check it out,” Weaver said. “Everybody’s heading downhill, right? That’s here.” Weaver indicated the road with his finger. Then he tapped the other end of town, where they were now parked.

“But if you go the other way—”

Here he followed a line that twisted up deeper into the mountains—“You get up to Big Bear, and from there you can go down the other side to Scobie Tree and hook up with Route 66 again. It’s a bitch of a drive and it’s probably three hours extra, but I guess it will put us back in civilization before any of them even make it past the Forest Peak Chevron station.”

Patrick nodded. Weaver was right. Then something else occurred to him.

“What if there’s trouble down there, too?”

Weaver gave him that slow cowboy smile.

“Light dawns on Marble Head. We got caviar, crackers, and beer. We got a queen-size bed and a flush toilet. While everybody is losing their minds, I suggest we wait things out right here in Forest Peak.”

Officer Park, responding to Danny’s urgent inquiry, thought he could hold things together on Main Street, although the sheriff told him not to hesitate to call down some of Greer’s firemen if things got out of hand—anybody
in a uniform would help, especially if they happened to be carrying fire axes.

Danny tried to put her priorities in order. What mattered the most: public order? Keeping the town safe? Getting everybody out? Preparing for whatever was coming from down below? There ought to be a huddle with Mayor Crocker, and anybody else in a position of authority, too. It seemed like she had to make all of it happen at once.

Danny had Dave take the Crown Victoria along the disused logging road down the hill, the one that came up on Route 144 about a half-mile outside Forest Peak, behind the Chevron station. He wouldn’t get there any faster than Danny and Nick could do on foot, because the road was dirt, and mostly washed out. Not ideal terrain for a sedan. It was the way the locals took to dump their trash in the woods below town, down where the first corpse had been discovered by those boys.

“There’s no hurry,” Ted said over the radio. He was at the gas station. “Things have gotten pretty hectic here. People going feral for a chance at the gas pumps, and there’s more of those screamers in the woods, too.”

Danny turned to the deputy at her side. “Nick, I think I want you here on Main Street,” Danny said. She had a feeling things were going to get worse before they got better, and if that happened, Danny was going to have to fall back—and town was the only place they could fall back
to
.

Dave at last reached the station in the Crown Vic and radioed back to Danny with a slightly better description of the situation than Ted could provide. Nobody was going anywhere, according to Dave: The road was jammed in
both
directions. The two lanes of southbound travelers were head-to-head with two lanes of northbound traffic coming up from the flatlands.

There was a fistfight winding down at the Chevron pumps, two angry fathers duking it out while their kids shrieked inside the cars. And there were people on foot coming up the mountain, exhausted by the steep grade, leaning forward as if into a high wind to ease their aching legs. A few SUVs were trying their luck along the steep verge above the road, pushing the limits of what gravity would allow. One of them had already overturned, cutting off the breakdown lane on the uphill side.

Ted almost wept with relief when Dave showed up. He got into the police car and Dave switched on the lights and the siren and used the nose of the vehicle to push a space through the traffic. Even in this extremity,
people still responded to the presence of the law. Ted jumped out in midroad and set up the collapsible sawhorses they kept in the trunk. Between them, the deputies were able to block the road completely, although people were shouting death threats before they were finished.

The line between law and anarchy was stretching thinner and thinner by the moment.

Danny went back into the station, ignoring the ongoing complaints from Wulf’s cell, and liberated some hardware from the gun cabinet. The dead man was a lumpy shape beneath the banner. Danny went out through the front room and locked the door behind her. Then she pressed her way up Main Street, making a presence out of her guns, uniform, and hard stare. She turned off between two buildings, reached the alley behind them, and found Amy’s white cube van with
Cutter Veterinary Ranch
on the side, parked at the back of the Junque Shoppe.

Danny had a Remington 1100 tactical shotgun in her hands and an old Ruger rifle slung over her shoulder. Amy was busy cramming the last of the pygmy goats into the back of the van. Her white veterinary coat was smeared with animal dung. Danny put her hand on Amy’s shoulder.

“I got a situation. You remember how to use the police radio?”

Amy nodded. Danny knew Amy had a similar unit in her veterinary barn; her work often involved angry bears, wounded deer, and rabid coyotes, animals that required the intervention of the law. A rabbit saw she was distracted, leaped out of the van, and zigzagged away down the alley. Amy started after it, but Danny grabbed her arm.

“Amy, this is more important. I know you prefer animals, but it’s people time. My deputies are all out there trying to keep the peace. I need somebody with a working brain to stick with the radio and figure out what the fuck is going on. Are you with me?”

“I can’t leave all these little guys stuck in the van—they’ll roast.”

Danny did a slow burn. This was Amy’s thing. When it got too crazy in human world, she retreated into sacred animal world where nothing could get between her and her fuzzy little charges. Danny, who used to enjoy hunting deer before she went overseas to hunt men, found this self-indulgence unspeakably irritating.

“Then open the van,” Danny clipped.

Amy shook her head
no
like a child.

Danny tried one more time: “They’ll get hungry later and come back.”

Amy stared at Danny. This was too much to ask. But someone on the Main Street side of the Junque Shoppe chose this exact moment to smash into another vehicle: Plastic crumpled and horns blared, then hysterical voices rose up over the rooftops.

“Amy,” Danny said, “something is happening. Something big. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t handle it alone.”

Danny didn’t normally admit any obstacle was too big for her to handle. Amy started to protest, but there wasn’t any meaning in it. She opened and closed her mouth. A chorus of horns blared over the rooftops.
I can’t handle it
.

“You owe me,” Amy said.

She opened the rear doors of the van, and all the animals inside stood where they were, watching her. So far, so good. Danny told Amy which radio frequencies to call in on, and how to identify the Forest Peak transmitter so other police units would know she was the real thing. She wondered how much she should tell Amy, how much would be overwhelming, or would sound plain crazy. What about this Eisenmann Plan? Was that why there were so many people coming up the hill? Or was this mass hysteria, animals scrambling to high ground before a flood?

Danny’s thoughts were tumbling too fast for her to catch them and put them in order. She found she was concluding her instructions to Amy, but couldn’t remember the last ten things she’d said.

“So listen,” Danny continued, winding down, “keep out of Main Street. Stay inside the station until I come back. Door locked. I wish I could tell you more—”

Amy held up her hand.

“Nobody knows anything. I heard something from some woman who thought I was a doctor. She told me her sister called and people were dying. Dying, okay? Then a bunch of people were asking me what to do. Which is why I’m back here with the goats, because I have no idea. I told them I was a podiatrist. What about the Mountain Rescue or something?”

Danny realized she was squeezing Amy’s arm. She relaxed her grip and patted the arm instead, in the least reassuring way possible. But she tried.

“They don’t exist anymore, remember? Budget cuts. See if you can raise the highway patrol or Fire and Rescue to send us a chopper. We might need an airlift. There was an ambulance on its way at least an hour ago, but there’s no way it can get here. And…and keep your head down. That’s all I can tell you.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be okay,” Danny said, and felt like more was required. “I got a fancy police hat.”

With that, Danny started back down the alley. She considered covering the distance to the roadblock on foot, but her thigh was stiffening up. So she slung herself up into the Explorer behind the Sheriff’s Station and turned it down the alley toward Pine Street, from which the logging road extended. Thank God it wasn’t on the tourist maps or that would be clogged with cars, too.

It was now three in the afternoon, but it felt like ten days later as Danny reached the roadblock manned by her deputies. They were scared nearly witless; there were now at least two hundred people shouting at them from across the hoods of the foremost cars in both directions and some hot-bloods were racing their engines as if to charge. Beyond this locus of the standstill, the traffic stretched out of sight, uphill and down. A cloud of exhaust fumes was boiling up out of the legion of vehicles.

Danny couldn’t hear the distant screams in the woods anymore, but she didn’t know if it was because they were drowned out by the revving motors and horns and angry voices, or because the scattering of wild people had passed this location by. She hoped they were gone. Or they might all be dead now. Once the rest of this was dealt with, they might still be finding corpses in the woods for the next ten years.

More and more of the refugees from the flatlands were abandoning their rides and walking up the slopes past the barricade, and now a few of the cars that had been heading downhill were trying to reverse course and head back up to Forest Peak. But anything with an engine, including the motorcycles, was stuck in gridlock.

Danny whistled under her breath. Time to come up with a new plan, even if it was meaningless. Otherwise there would be violence.