The police cruiser slowed, stopping well behind the ruined barrier that marked the end of the road. Its siren faded to silence, a dying beast encapsulated in a steel box. The red lights still pulsated atop the roof as the two policemen emerged to walk cautiously to the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t a very high cliff: maybe a hundred fifty feet above the plain below. But there still should have been a smoking, twisted chunk of wreckage at its foot. They looked hard and saw nothing but a few pine trees, scrub brush, and bare rock.
A board that had been knocked loose from the road barrier finally fell from its persistent nail, making the older officer jump at the unexpected noise.
“Get the spot,” he growled to his partner.
“But there’s—”
“Just get it.”
The younger officer ran back to the car, returned with a six-inch-wide spotlight attached to a long cord. Flipping it on, he played the powerful beam over the rocks far below. It wasn’t really necessary. There was more than enough moonlight to see clearly by. Eventually he turned it off.
“Nothing down there. Nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing.”
“So where’d they go?”
The corporal raised his gaze from the base of the cliff. “I don’t know where they went, but we’re not going to ask anybody else, are we?”
“What about the report that old guy at the motel called in, about a dead man?”
“Can’t have a dead man without a body.” He glanced unwillingly back over the cliff. “Can’t have anyone without bodies. Maybe they’ll turn up somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
“Find out where that thirty-foot motor home went and you’ll have your answer. Me, I’m going to try real hard not to lose any sleep over it.” He pushed past the younger officer, who favored the cliff with a last uncertain look before hurrying to join the corporal in the car.
He slid in, shut the door. “It wasn’t a hallucination or something, was it?”
“I don’t know what it was. If it was an illusion, then the motel manager saw it, too. If we try real hard, maybe we can convince ourselves that’s what it was.”
The corporal turned the car around, headed back toward town. When they reached the place where the pavement started up again, the younger officer looked to his right. Pieces of wood and glass littered the side of the road.
“Illusions don’t smash highway department barriers.”
The corporal kept his gaze resolutely forward. “Shut up,” he said.
12
THE MOTOR HOME BOUNCED once, hard, but the axles held. The jolt opened Frank’s eyes wide. No cliff, no dirt road, no angry, anxious police car fading into the distance behind them. They were back on the interstate once more, cruising steadily northward.
Good thing he did open his eyes, because the pothole in the middle of the pavement that suddenly loomed in the headlights was big enough to swallow a Mercedes. Tires screeched in protest as he swerved around the crater. Then they were back on concrete.
He had no choice but to slow down, the road was in such bad shape. The crater had cousins, some so large there was barely enough room to squeeze past. What remained of the pavement was cracked and eroded.
Not potholes, he thought as they avoided another. Impact craters, the kind explosives would make. Though he let their speed fall to forty, the ride was still bumpy enough to jar the fillings out of your teeth.
“I’ve heard of infrequent maintenance, but this is ridiculous.” The landscape looked normal in the moonlight. High mountains off to the right, trees and bushes scattered behind the shoulder, and off to the left, in the distance, a vast sheet of water gleaming like aluminum foil. The Great Salt Lake.
Some shortcut we took, he told himself. “Where are we now?”
“On the right road to the Vanishing Point.” Mouse had relaxed back in her chair.
“I don’t give a shit about the Vanishing Point.”
“Gentle, Frank, gentle.” She smiled at him. “This is the way your family came, too.”
Burnfingers was staring out the windshield. “I do not like this. It feels all wrong, and I am not talking about the condition of the road. Do you want me to drive for a while, Frank?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be okay.”
They passed one road sign, but it was broken, knocked off its supporting posts as if by a high wind. Frank tried but couldn’t make out what it said.
If anything, the road became worse as they neared the city’s outskirts. They saw no other vehicles, a fact, which might’ve been acceptable outside a town like Cedar City, but which was full of ominous portents for a metropolis the size of Salt Lake.
“Ought to be some traffic.” Frank scanned the road ahead. “Couple of trucks at least.” He glanced to his right. “We’re on another reality line, right? Burnfingers’s ‘on ramp’ didn’t just put us back on the same highway.” Mouse just nodded. “Well, I don’t think I like this one as much as the last, even if the people hereabouts lie like normal.”
“It is not as bad as Hell.”
“That a fact? We don’t know that yet.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Where’s the chief?”
“In the back.”
Burnfingers rejoined them moments later, having altered his appearance. He’d exchanged his flannel shirt for one of black cotton and his red headband for another of equally dark material. White and red lines decorated his face.
“War paint,” he told Frank. “I had to improvise. I hope your woman will not mind my making use of her makeup kit. It was all I could find to work with.”
Frank nodded his approval. “Seems appropriate under the circumstances.”
“Mary Kay and Revlon.” Burnfingers tried but was unable to repress a grin. “Not very traditional, but it will have to do.”
“Getting ready for war?” Mouse inquired.
“I am always at war with something, little singer. This is serious business.” Frank saw that Burnfingers had strapped on a holster that contained an enormous stainless-steel handgun. He was leaning on Steven’s baseball bat. Burnfingers noticed his stare. “Somebody whacked me pretty good. I want to be ready to whack him back. Newton’s Law. ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Pretty smart dude, for a white man.”
Mouse pointed out an intact sign.
SALT LAKE CITY—20 Miles
Frank was flipping through his maps as he dodged potholes. “What happened to Provo? We should be in Provo right now.”
There was no sign of the college town. The highway curved around the sloping mass of a vast hill. Only when the sun finally put in a reluctant appearance over the mountains did they see that the ground had been turned to slag, as if the whole mountain had been melted and then crystallized out anew. Transparent lava covered the ground to east and north. There wasn’t a tree or building to be seen.
“Glass,” Burnfingers murmured. “Something has turned this whole section of country to glass.”
An endless expanse of waveless water stretched from the edge of the highway to the western horizon. At least the Great Salt Lake hadn’t changed. Or had it? Burnfingers frowned at the lake.
“I do not remember it being this big when I was here before. The lake has been rising for years, but not so fast as this. I wonder if the city is still here?”
