کتاب 09-14

14

A couple of miles north of Biddeford, the Fireman took his foot off the gas, and the truck began to slow.

“To be fair,” he said, “we had almost forty miles of smooth sailing, which was more than I ever expected to get.”

An eighteen-wheeler was parked across the northbound lanes. Like everything they had seen for the last hour, it looked as if a bomb had gone off near it. The cab was a baked shell, burnt down to the frame. The container on back was blacked with soot, but through the filth, Harper could dimly see the word WALMART.

Above the corporate logo, someone had wiped away the grit and spray-painted a message in dull red letters:

PORTLAND GONE

ROAD WIPED OUT NO THRUWAY

HEALTHY? REPORT TO DEKE HAWKINS IN PROUTS NECK

INFECTED WILL BE SHOT ON SITE

GOD FORGIVE US, GOD SAVE YOU

The Fireman opened the door and stepped onto the running board. “I have a tow chain. I may be able to tug that lorry aside. Doesn’t look like we’d need much room to get around it. Maybe we should feed the pail, while we’re stopped.”

Nick followed Harper around to the rear of the fire truck, to check on Allie and Renée. Allie was in the road, reaching up to help Renée down over the bumper. Renée looked almost as gray as the landscape. She clutched her cat to her breast with one arm.

“How are you holding up, old woman?” Harper asked.

“You won’t hear me complain,” she said.

“No shit,” Allie said. “Who could hear anything over that cat yowling?”

“Our little hitchhiker has decided he doesn’t like riding in coach,” Renée said.

“He can sit up front, then,” Harper said. “And you can sit with him.”

Renée looked battered and fatigued, but she smiled at this. “Not on your life.”

“You aren’t riding in back, Ms. Willowes,” Allie said. “We hit one of those deep potholes, your baby will probably come flying out. Projectile delivery.”

Renée blanched. “That’s delicious imagery.”

“Isn’t it? Who wants to eat?” Allie said, reaching into one of the back compartments for the bag of groceries.

Harper carried a can of peaches and a plastic spoon around to the front of the truck, thinking John would want to share with her. She found him standing on the hood of the big eighteen-wheeler, shading his eyes with one hand and gazing up the highway.

“How does it look up ahead?” she asked.

He sat and slid off the hood. “Not good. Big chunks of the road are missing and I see an absolutely massive tree across it half a mile away. Also, things are still smoking.”

“That’s crazy. This fire is—what? Eight months old? Nine?”

“It won’t die out as long as there’s anything still to burn. All that ash is a protective blanket for the coals beneath.” He had slipped out of his turnout jacket and stood in a stained undershirt. It was midday and heat wobbled off the blacktop. “We’ll drive until we can’t drive anymore. Then we leave the truck and go on foot.” He looked at her belly for a moment. “I won’t pretty it up for you. It’s going to be hot, and we could be limping along for days.”

She had tried not to allow herself fantasies of reaching Martha Quinn’s island that night—had tried not to imagine a bed made up with fresh sheets or a hot shower or the smell of soap—but hadn’t entirely been able to help herself. It dispirited her, to hear it was going to be longer and harder to get there than she had hoped, than they had all hoped. But no sooner had she registered her own disappointment than she decided to set it aside. They were on their way and they were out of New Hampshire. That was good enough for today.

“What?” she said. “You think I’m the first pregnant lady who had to do some walking? Here. Eat a peach. It’ll give you something to do with that mouth of yours besides make dour speeches and grim predictions. Do you know you are drop-dead sexy until the minute you start to talk? Then you turn into a colossal ass.”

He opened his mouth for a plastic spoonful of peach. She followed it with a long kiss that tasted of golden syrup. When she broke away from him he was smiling.

Nick, Renée, and Allie began to clap, standing in a line behind them. Harper showed them her middle finger and kissed him again.