The Last Gasp, page 64
‘In the next stage their temperature shoots up to 40° C and the lymph glands in the child’s neck swell to the size of golf balls. The lips and tongue turn bright scarlet and red blotches appear on the chest, back and buttocks. After about a week, during which the high fever persists, the blood vessels in the eyes become congested and burst, rashes break out all over the body and the skin starts to peel from the fingers and toes.
‘The damage isn’t only external. They develop aneurysms – that’s an irregular thickening of the coronary arteries, which weakens them – which leads to abnormalities in the heart rhythm and the rupture of the coronary artery itself. When that happens it’s invariably fatal.’
‘Is there no treatment?’
‘We can lower the fever, which reduces inflammation and prevents the blood from clotting, but there’s no real cure. The death rate is between fifty and sixty per cent, most of them under five.’
‘And the cause is pollution in one form or another?’
Ruth nodded, watching the blur of road through the windshield. ‘We still don’t know precisely how or why. It could be a hereditary factor, some weakness or deficiency that’s triggered by the deterioration in the environment. It’s probable that these kids were genetically damaged to begin with and lacked the normal defence mechanisms to withstand pollutants in the air and water. We know from studies as far back as the eighties that environmental factors can cause abnormalities – the white blood cells contain broken fragments of chromosomes that jumble up the genetic message. This can cause cancer, spontaneous abortions, miscarriages and birth defects. The miscarriage rate over the past fifteen years has jumped up from a national average of 8.5 per cent to more than thirty per cent. The women who don’t abort or miscarry produce offspring who are ripe candidates for pollution sickness. The poor little bastards can’t win,’ Ruth added without emotion. ‘They’re either aborted or born damaged.’
‘What about anoxia?’ Chase asked, thinking of Cheryl. ‘Is it as common as pollution sickness?’
‘Less so in people below the age of twenty-five.’ Ruth propped the rifle between her knees and eased back in the bucket seat. ‘It tends to affect the older age groups, presumably because they’ve been exposed to oxygen deficiency over a longer period and their tissues aren’t as flexible and can’t cope with the additional strain. It’s a far more complex problem than pollution sickness and the medical background is sketchy. For one thing, we don’t have any reliable figures on the number of people affected, or how many survive.’ Her mouth twisted sourly. ‘That’s what I’ve devoted the last seven years of my life to finding out. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say wasted the last seven years.’
‘You did all you could. You’re not to blame.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t blame myself,’ Ruth corrected him. ‘I just feel so fucking angry. How could we do this to ourselves? How could we have been so stupid and shortsighted?’ She shook her head, gripped by a kind of impotent amazement. ‘You know, it was all in your book, every last damn word of it – not just the stuff about environmental war, as if that weren’t bad enough, but how we’ve crapped in our own nest, polluted the air we breathe with chemicals and turned the oceans into toxic soup. And Christ, we’ve known for nearly a century what we were doing and we kept right on doing it! What kind of species are we, for God’s sake? Are we crazy or just plain stupid?’
‘There are no votes in sewage,’ Chase muttered.
‘What?’
‘Something Theo Detrick once said. He meant you can’t blame the politicians, because they’d never get elected to office on an ecology ticket. Cleaning up the environment, much less protecting it, doesn’t have the instant easy appeal the public demands. More production, more growth, more cash in the pocket, more goodies – those are what people vote for, certainly not for some earnest do-gooder preaching the doctrine that consumption is bad and will lead to ruin.’
‘So who is to blame? Is it us, each one of us individually? Is that what you’re going to say?’
Chase looked across at her grim pale face. He smiled and shrugged. ‘Hey, don’t get angry with me, Ruth. I’ve done my share of preaching – and consuming, if it comes to that. If I knew the answer I’d have spat it out long ago.’
Wheeler Peak was behind them now, the road curling down in a series of spirals to Connors Pass. Forest stretched on either side, lush, thick and green. At certain points along the road there were shaded recreation areas with wooden tables and benches set in concrete.
On a day such as this, not many years ago, Chase reflected, cars would have been parked between the diagonal yellow lines and families would have been eating at the tables and kids pitching baseballs and chasing one another on the neat smooth grass. No families today. No kids. No baseball. The scene was eerily empty, like a vast, lavishly expensive sound stage complete with cyclorama of mountains, forests and sky waiting for shooting to begin. But Equity was on strike. There were no actors. All this beautiful setting had been built for no purpose, a complete and utter waste.
Was this how the future would be? Empty? A deserted planet?
In dreams he’d had visions of what the end would be like (it was how he imagined New York had become: steel and glass towers poking out of shit-coloured murk), but this was worse, infinitely worse, because the beauty remained like a mocking taunt.
Yes, the planet had been entrusted to mankind, given into its care, and in just a few thousand years out of a 4.5 billion-year history the species had succeeded brilliantly in transforming a paradise into a cesspool.
5
They were on Highway 50 in the heart of the Humboldt Forest. Up ahead was a white-lettered sign, and Chase pointed it out with a grin. The town was called Ruth.
After studying the route, Chase had provisionally picked out a spot to camp overnight between Austin and Frenchman, somewhere along Railroad Pass. If possible, he wanted to keep clear of towns, in fact, any place of habitation. With the continuing exodus northwards he guessed that the locals would be suspicious and perhaps hostile to strangers. Neither could he rule out the possibility that there’d be shanty settlements of immigrants from the southern states.
But most of all he wanted to avoid Reno, the only place of any size between them and Goose Lake. Apart from its reputation as a vacation resort and one-time divorce capital, he knew nothing about the city, but he mistrusted all cities now, suspecting that that was where the frayed edges of civilisation began to show first. In the backwoods there was only nature in the raw to contend with, whereas cities compressed the madness and hysteria into a volatile mixture that could explode at any moment, with unpredictable results.
Thus far on the journey they had seen only a few other vehicles, so presumably the main interstate highways running due north were carrying the bulk of the traffic.
A couple of miles past Eureka, they ran into the first real sign of trouble. It was mid-afternoon and Chase was silently congratulating himself on their unhindered progress when they came down a long sweeping curve out of the shadow of Pinto Summit into bright sunshine to find a truck, farm tractor and two patched-up cars with smeared windshields strung across the road.
Ruth got a grip on the rifle and was about to hoist it when Chase motioned with the palm of his hand, warning her not to make any sudden moves that might be misinterpreted.
He shifted down into second and brought the Jeep to a halt about ten yards away. There were five men lounging about, all clad in farmers’ dungarees, two of them cradling shotguns in their brawny arms, another holding a carbine. One of the others was gripping a thick pine stave, which he thwacked menacingly into his open palm.
As casually as he could Chase unzipped the pocket of his windbreaker. The butt of the automatic was hidden, but within easy reach.
The men were rough-looking, unshaven, their eyes slitted against the sunlight. Hard to tell whether they were God-fearing, public-spirited citizens or mean sons of bitches with something nasty in mind. The two men with shotguns ambled to either side of the road to cover the Jeep while the man with the stave came forward, a grimy Stetson tipped forward so that the curled brim almost rested on his sunburned nose.
‘Real pleasant day fer a ride.’ The man had stopped a few feet away, his scratched red boots spread in an indolent stance on the blacktop. The greeting might have been innocuous enough, though Chase was uneasily aware of the double meaning it contained. ‘What ya got back yonder?’ The soiled hat brim nodded towards the back of the Jeep.
‘Camping gear.’ Chase hesitated and then said, ‘We’re driving up to Oregon. This lady is a doctor. We’re on our way to treat a sick friend.’
The man tapped his palm with the stave jerkily, as if to the beat of a metronome that only he could hear. ‘What kind of speech d’ya call that?’
‘Speech?’
‘That – what ya call it? – ack-cent of your’n. Where ya from, mister?’
‘I’m English.’
‘An’ you’re goin’ up to Oregon,’ the man said in a mocking tone, ‘to help a sick friend.’
Chase moved his hands from the wheel and placed them, fingers spread, on his thighs. Ruth was sitting tensely in the seat beside him, her fingers wrapped around the burnished blue gun barrel.
‘Would you mind telling us why you’ve blocked the road?’ Chase said.
‘Jest passin’ the time of day.’ The man smiled without opening his lips. ‘Never know who’ll happen along.’
‘Are you from around here?’
The man grinned, revealing a sliver of red gums. ‘I really dig that ack-cent. It’s right dandy. Ain’t that what you English say?’
‘No, it’s what you Americans say. Listen, we have to move on. What I’m telling you is the—’
But the man ignored him and walked around to Ruth’s side of the Jeep and stood looking at her from underneath the brim of his hat. It was difficult to see his eyes properly, but they could tell that he was taking everything in: her dark windblown hair and thickly lashed eyes, the wrinkled open vee of her shirt exposing her white throat and the slopes of her breasts, swelling and falling as she tried to control her breathing, the blue denims moulded to hips and thighs.
After his inspection he moved his eyes lazily up to her face again. ‘So you’re a lady doctor, huh?’
‘That’s right. And my friend has just asked you why you’re blocking the road. Would you mind telling us why? This isn’t some kind of game. Please move those vehicles so that we can drive on.’
The man settled himself more firmly on the blacktop, legs wide apart. ‘Well, since you ask so polite, lady, I’ll tell ya,’ he said conversationally. ‘We stop all kinds along this here stretch. Weirdos, acid-heads, crazies, mutes, the halt, the lame, and the blind. An’ what we do is this: we take what we find an’ have a little fun at the same time – harmless fun, that is, nuthin’ to it. But as you can see we’re simple folks and we like to enjoy ourselves once in a while with all the human dung that passes by. All them that’s used up their own sweet air and fresh water. We reckon as how we’ve a right to do that, seein’ as how they’ve muddied their own drinkin’ hole and want to do the same to our’n. You dig me, lady?’
‘You have no right,’ Ruth said coldly. ‘This is a public highway and everyone is free to use it without hindrance. You’re breaking the law.’
To put it at its tamest, Chase felt that Ruth’s reading of the situation wasn’t the most incisive; this band of roughnecks weren’t going to be pushed into an accommodating frame of mind by accusations and threats.
The man cocked his head to one side and squinted at her. ‘Where you bin livin’ these past five years, lady? Backside of the moon? If you don’t already know it – and it sure sounds like you don’t – this ball of mud is comin’ apart at the seams.’ He leaned forward from the waist and held up the stave between his fingertips. ‘You talk about rights? Law? This thing I’m a-holding is the law and rights is what every man can get for hisself by usin’ it. Next you’ll be tellin’ me that the fine huntin’ piece between your knees is jest to get you an’ yer friend a rabbit supper.’
Chase said, ‘We’ve only got camping gear with us, nothing of any real value. Nothing that would be of any use to you.’
‘Well now,’ said the man craftily, ‘wouldn’t be too sure ’bout that. Not at all sure.’ His eyes under the brim glinted with amusement.
The knuckles of Ruth’s hands were white. Chase rested his right elbow on the back of the seat, his hand hanging slackly.
Grinning, exposing his red gums, the man reached out with the stave and parted the vee of Ruth’s shirt. Her jaw went rigid as the jagged end of the stave snagged her flesh and drew a red line, droplets strung along it like ruby beads.
‘Not at all sure,’ repeated the man softly.
Chase slipped his hand into his pocket.
‘You’re the best piece of ass I’ve seen in a long while,’ the man remarked, pressing the stave against her breast through the plaid shirt. ‘I do reckon Oregon’s gonna have ta wait till we’ve done what has to be done. I guess you can take five of us, lady doctor, an’ as you’re in such a hurry, we’ll make it right quick.’
He lowered the stave and with his other hand rummaged about his baggy groin and pulled out his erect cock, slug-like against his soiled dungarees. He grasped it and began to slowly masturbate, his eyes never leaving Ruth’s face. ‘Two at a time, how’s that?’ The grin widened on red gums and black stumps of teeth.
Chase’s sweating thumb slipped over the safety catch. He had to keep the gun in his pocket, hidden from the others. The faint click as the catch moved sounded to Chase like a hammer striking an anvil. He curled his finger through the trigger guard.
‘If you’ll jest give that to me,’ the man said, releasing his cock and taking hold of the rifle barrel. Ruth hung on and the man half-raised the stave. ‘You heard what I said. Jes’ do it and nobody’ll get hurt.’
‘Let go of the rifle,’ Chase said, ‘and listen to me very carefully.’ The sweat through his shirt made his back stick to the seat. ‘I’m pointing a gun straight at you and if you don’t do what I tell you right now I’m going to blow a hole in your chest. At this range it’ll take your backbone with it. Understand? My English ack-cent clear enough for you?’
The man was standing perfectly still, the stave arrested in midair. He was staring at the outline of the gun in Chase’s windbreaker.
‘Step up on the running board and tell your friends to move the truck. If you don’t do as I say – or if they don’t – I’ll kill you first. Whatever happens, you’ve run out of future.’
The creased, grimy face, burned dark by the sun, was an immobile mask under the sweat-marked Stetson. The man released his hold on Ruth’s rifle and tucked his cock away as if it didn’t belong to him.
‘Step up now. Tell them to move the truck,’ Chase ordered, hardly moving his lips. ‘If you feel inclined, say that if they try anything, you won’t be around to see it.’
The man got on to the running board, still holding the stave in his right hand. ‘Move the truck!’ he shouted, turning his head, but keeping his eyes on Chase. ‘He’s got a gun on me, better do as he says. I reckon he means it.’
‘I mean it all right. Drop the weapon.’
The man tossed the stave aside and it clattered on the black asphalt. A small dilemma occurred to Chase. As soon as the vehicle started to move, and while he was occupied with steering it, the others had only to raise their own shotguns and pick him off. He was trying to figure out an answer, and damn quick, when Ruth solved it by thrusting the barrel of the hunting rifle into the man’s stomach.
‘I mean it too, believe me.’ She pulled the bolt back and curled her finger around the trigger. ‘As you pointed out, this is the law – and I happen to be holding it.’
There was a billowing of blue smoke as the truck roared into life, followed by a hideous grating of gears as it backed off the road, the rear wheels sinking into the dry red soil, the tailboard pushing through the brush.
Chase laid the Browning on the seat between his legs, revved the engine and pulled sharply away, the man holding the metal edge of the windshield for support. The business end of the rifle made an indentation in his dungarees, right between the slanting double-stitched pockets.
Any second now, Chase thought, crouching forward in the seat. His shoulders expected a bullet, or several. Any second now. He steered for the gap left by the truck and had a blurred impression of a murderous face in the cab, fleshy lips drawn back in an expression of pure venomous hate. In the rearview mirror he glimpsed the driver scrambling down from the cab and the others running forward to cluster around him. Chase kept his eye on this receding image, distorted by the shimmering waves of heat rising from the blacktop, a tableau which vanished as a bend cut it off from view.
6
Chase drove steadily so that Ruth could keep the rifle pressed in the redneck’s gut. But what would happen next? While they held the man hostage they were safe, but at some point soon they’d have to dump him. The others would probably follow at a distance, waiting for him to be released – and once he was free, the pack of them would come after the Jeep, their killer instincts fanned to white heat.
Neither he nor Ruth, Chase acknowledged, could kill the guy in cold blood and dump his body off the road, and in any event, it wouldn’t stop the others coming after them with redoubled fury and murderous intent. Ruth, for all her pent-up anger, was incapable of such an act. She was preoccupied with the same problem.
‘What are we going to do? The minute we get rid of him—’
‘I know,’ Chase snapped, irked by the knowledge that they had escaped and yet were still trapped.
The redneck was sure they wouldn’t kill him, even with the rifle barrel poking into his belly. He even wore a grin, lips spread wide across his gums. ‘I guess you’re ’tween the devil and the deep blue sea – you got me sure enough, but they got you. Ha!’
