“We saw the road sign,” Mouse pointed out. “The kidnappers had to have a destination.”
The interstate climbed a slight rise, arcing over the base of the glass mountain. Ahead lay what once was Salt Lake City.
“Oh my God.” Frank pulled over and stared.
The rising sun illuminated a panorama of destruction and devastation seen only in disaster movies and the minds of distraught writers. Instead of a pale bluish-white, the Great Salt Lake was tinted an angry yellow-orange. High concentrations of salt could not account for the sulfurous stain that marred the quiet waters. It might have been a lake on Io.
The city itself lay in ruins. Jagged stumps of tall buildings protruded like broken teeth from what had once been the center of town. A caved-in square marked the location of the great Mormon temple. Not a single structure remained intact. There were only echoes, shadows of what had once been thriving suburbs and commercial districts. Nothing moved on the roads leading in and out of the city. Whole blocks had been flattened, the ground scoured to the foundations as if by a giant abrasive. In places the earth itself had been ripped away in long gouges.
Where it entered the city, the interstate was broken and shattered. He took the first crumbling off ramp. As they descended, the concrete broke from beneath the rear right tires, but their momentum carried them safely the rest of the way to the surface of a city street.
It reminded Frank of the pictures he’d seen of Germany at the end of World War II. Only fragments of buildings still stood. The walls had been torn off apartment buildings, leaving the rooms exposed like broken honeycomb. Floors sagged like tired tongues. There was no smoke, no fire. Whatever calamity had struck the city was not of recent origin.
It had to have been more than a fire. No conflagration would crack stone or pulverize concrete or twist steel beams like pipe cleaners.
“This reality line is ill,” Mouse declared. “Very sick.”
“I know what line this must be,” said Burnfingers quietly. “This must be one where they dropped the Bomb. I suppose if you have an infinite number of reality lines, then every possible reality is borne out sooner or later.”
“No,” Mouse insisted. “The number of lines is finite. There are only as many as the Spinner can control. That doesn’t mean I dispute your analysis of what has happened here.”
“If that’s the case, then there oughta be a big crater somewheres downtown.” Frank didn’t realize how low his voice had dropped. “Couldn’t have been too big a bomb or there wouldn’t be this much standing.”
“Maybe an airburst, or several,” Burnfingers suggested. “In that case there might not be any craters.”
Mouse was grim. “This is a line where Evil has taken control, where its servants would be likely to flee. A place where the Anarchis is already all but in command.”
They drove through a crumpled intersection. “I can’t believe it,” Frank muttered. “I can’t believe people would be this stupid on any reality line.”
“The mind is the mirror of the Cosmos.” Mouse pointed at the sky. “Out there Chaos wars unceasingly with Order and Reason. The same battle is refought every day in the mind of each thinking person. Logic does not always win out. There are lines where stupidity triumphs.”
“It really happened here.” Frank swerved to avoid the beetlelike hulk of a burned-out automobile. “This isn’t a fake front, like on a movie set.” He turned sharply on her. “Hey, this isn’t my reality, is it?”
“When threads break and cross, nothing is certain—but it doesn’t feel like your line, Frank Sonderberg.”
“Thank Christ for small favors.” He turned back to his driving, following Burnfingers’s impressions and Mouse’s hunches, trying to stick to those streets where the paving was relatively intact.
They were traveling through the western part of the city. Not every building had been flattened. A few structures boasted flimsy new roofs. Most had not been touched, remained eviscerated hulks that gazed with vacant window-eyes at the empty streets.
“How can we be sure we’re not driving off onto another reality line?”
“We can’t,” Mouse told him.
“You know, you ain’t very reassuring sometimes.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not easy to predict how reality is going to behave under present circumstances.”
“Something moving.” Burnfingers pointed forward.
Tall, gangly figures were emerging from some of the ruins flanking the road. People, Frank thought. Or, rather, things that might once have been people. A few still resembled human beings. Most were shambling, stumbling nightmares plucked from some demented biologist’s fevered brain.
Some of the mutants scuttled about on all fours. Others had no legs and traveled on their turned-under knuckles, like amputee apes. The faces were worst of all because expression is the last refuge of humanity. They’d been gathered up and dumped in a genetic Mixmaster, beaten and pounded and jumbled together only to be poured out still alive. Many wore clothing, though they saw nothing that was not ragged or torn.
Neither attacking nor fleeing, they gathered to gape at the pristine, undamaged motor home. It must look like a figment from a dream to them, Frank knew. He wondered how long ago the cataclysm had taken place and how many, if any, of these poor creatures remembered it. Had they ever seen a functional piece of machinery, much less anything as elaborate as the motor home? Maybe in old books, if any had survived. If reading had survived.
He found himself slowing, not wanting to hit any of them. “What now?” There were dozens of the troglodytes packing tight around the Winnebago. The numbers made him nervous even though he saw nothing more threatening than an occasional club.
“Stop,” Burnfingers ordered him.
“Here?”
“We must find out where your family has been taken. We cannot continue simply to follow our feelings. That means we should ask possible witnesses. What is wrong? Does their appearance make you nervous?”
“Damn straight it does.”
“It shouldn’t.” Burnfingers rose and moved to the side door. “I have spent nighttime at Piccadilly Circus in London. In the tube tunnels beneath the square dwell humans stranger than these.”
Frank turned to Mouse. “Do as he says, Frank.”
“Can’t you still sense which way they’ve gone?”
“It is thin, very thin. Far better to have their presence here confirmed.”
“Have it your way. But I’m staying inside.”
He hit the brake. The instant the motor home halted, the crowd of pitiful humanoid shapes surged toward it.
Frank kept his foot on the brake and the transmission in gear, ready to burst forward at the first hint of trouble. He heard the door open, heard Burnfingers Begay talking and something cackle a reply. It didn’t sound like English, or any other language Frank could recognize. That didn’t slow Burnfingers, who kept chatting steadily with the crowd.
Those who hadn’t gathered by the open door surrounded the motor home. A dozen or more stood in front, running their fingers silently over the hood and headlights, caressing and marveling. A few tears dribbled from damaged eyes.
There was nothing to be afraid of here, he decided. Only things that had once been men and women, creatures more deserving of pity than disgust. He wondered what had precipitated the dropping of the Big One on this reality line, prayed the people on his own line could avoid it. The Anarchis’s influence, Mouse had hinted. For the first time he began to really understand what was at stake in all this.
Alicia and Steven and Wendy concerned him more than history. The sooner he got them back and away from this place, the better for their health and sanity. Already the children might have suffered serious psychological damage.
The door closed with a click and Burnfingers rejoined them.
“You were able to understand them?” Mouse asked him.
“All language is a variant of some other. You just have to learn to listen close and pick out the significant parts.” He bent to point through the windshield. “Your woman and children were taken that way. They were not hard for these people to spot. Operative vehicles are as scarce here as clean drinking water. A mutant named Prake and his gang took them.”
“The Anarchis has allies everywhere,” Mouse murmured grimly.
“According to the locals, this Prake is one pretty tough sumbitch. When I told them we had to go after him, they tried to talk me out of it. Civilization may be dead here, but courtesy and humanity survive. There is hope yet for this line.”
“Which way?” was all Frank said.
“Keep going north, then there’s an avenue that angles northwest. Funny how certain things never die. Like street names. Like the Appian Way.” He gestured a second time. “Three quarters of a mile that way, then we turn up Grand. Go all the way to the end of it.”
