When they are with Pedro and Alejandro, wrapped in the fabric of cottonwood shadows threaded by moonlight, he takes the Medexpress container from Paloma and sends his people back to their motels.
Only Rupert Baldwin is given a task, which it is hoped he can complete before noon. Rupert is brilliant at tracking quarry through the millions of tearless, blinkless eyes that monitor the country’s buildings and streets, that observe from security cameras in reeking alleyways and from satellites in airless orbit. Furthermore, Rupert is reliably quick and vicious in the face of any threat.
They will find Ancel and Clare soon enough. And in time the Sabas, Juan and Maria, will be humbled and cruelly used.
And why not? Like everyone else, the Sabas are merely concepts that can’t be proven real. Symbols that can never be deciphered, figments, meaningless distortions of light.
13
CORNELL JASPERSON KNEW MANY THINGS. Such as, he knew thousands of books, because he had devoted his life to reading.
On his five-acre property stood a shabby little blue stucco house with a white metal roof shaded by unkempt queen palms. Set back from the house, a forbidding ramshackle barn seemed to tremble on the verge of collapse.
Cornell Jasperson knew, as few people did, that the barn was structurally sound and that within it, accessible only through steel doors with electronic locks, was a library for the end of the world.
As he walked through that library now, he knew it remained as precious as he had intended it to be when he had it built, but he also knew it was no longer as safe a refuge as it had seemed before.
The hidden, windowless forty-foot-square library was lined with thirteen hundred linear feet of bookshelves on three walls and part of the fourth. Four intricately figured Persian carpets warmed the polished-concrete floor. Many seating options: chairs and recliners, no two of the same style or period. He knew the layout so well that, when reading, he could move from one sitting place to another that better suited his mood, without taking his eyes from the page. Side tables and footstools. Lamps, lamps, lamps. Table lamps, floor lamps. Shades of stained glass by Tiffany, blown glass, etched glass, colored-and-cut crystal. Cornell loved light filtered and softened by color and texture, and this library lay bejeweled with light.
Cornell knew that civilization was a shaky construct, that many civilizations had collapsed throughout world history. He knew—or at least believed—that the current civilization would collapse. He was what they called a prepper, prepared for the end, ready to ride out thirty months of chaos and violence during which a new civilization might rise out of the ruins of the current one.
Within the six hundred thousand forbidding acres of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, little Borrego Springs was the only town. And at this southern end of Borrego Valley, the residences were few. When the distant cities lost power, water, and access to gasoline, when the food-distribution network collapsed, millions would perish. The desperate survivors might seek fertile, defendable land, but they would have no reason to trek all the way to the parched and barren wastes of the Anza-Borrego. Here, at least, there would be no need to stave off savage hordes.
Anyway, the library was not where he would hunker down during the days of blood and terror. This treasury of books served as his waiting place, hidden away from the world but not as grim as the underground bunker where, at the penultimate moment, he would take refuge via a well-concealed secret passageway, living under the world like the Phantom of the Opera or some troll.
Cornell knew that most people thought he was strange, even creepy. He’d been diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder and various forms of autism. Maybe all those diagnoses were correct or maybe none were. His IQ was very high, and he’d made a lot of money while sitting alone in a room, developing apps that had proved enormously popular. When he was rich, no less than when he’d been poor, people thought he was strange, even creepy.
Six foot nine, long-boned, knob-jointed, with large and ill-set shoulder blades that he thought were reminiscent of the plates on the backs of certain dinosaurs, with strong hands large enough to juggle honeydew melons—or human heads—Cornell knew that over the years he had frightened many people who entered his presence unexpectedly. A few had been unable to fully repress a startled cry of fear.
His cousin Gavin and Gavin’s wife, Jessica, insisted that he had a sweet, round face, like a milk-chocolate-brown baby Jesus, and a few other people told him similar things, but they were probably just being kind. When Cornell looked at himself in a mirror, he couldn’t tell if his reflection might be pleasant or fearsome. His face was his face, so he was too familiar with it to reach a final conclusion. Sometimes he thought he looked like that black actor Denzel Washington, but at other times he thought Frankenstein.
Cornell knew that women would never chase after him like they probably chased Denzel. He would forever be a target of snarky teenage boys and drunkards with something to prove. But that was okay. As part of his personality disorder, or whatever it was, he couldn’t tolerate being touched, anyway; he was happiest alone with a book.
As Mr. Paul Simon had sung, I am a rock, I am an island.
Anyway, Cornell knew all that and a great deal more, but he did not know what he should do about the boy.
He stopped beside the recliner where Travis was lying curled upon himself, sleeping in the golden light of a Tiffany lamp.
Five years old.
Cornell could hardly believe that he had ever been as small as this child. Travis was scarily little, like he could break apart if he just rolled off the recliner.
Now that Gavin and Jessica had gone away and not come back, the boy had no one to take care of him except a shambling, misassembled man who didn’t know how to take care of anyone except himself.
Gavin and Jessica’s dogs, big dangerous-looking dogs, German shepherds, had come with Travis. Now they padded through the library to stand on the farther side of the recliner, watching Cornell as Cornell watched the boy. As if they thought he might try to harm Travis.
Cornell said, “Don’t bite or claw me, please and thank you.”
The dogs said nothing, though their eyes seemed to speak volumes, mostly regarding their distrust for this big, strange man.
“I never had dogs,” he told them. “I never had a son. Can’t have a son if I can’t tolerate being touched, even a woman’s touch.”
The dogs cocked their heads as if considering this revelation.
“I like to be alone.”
The boy murmured in his sleep.
“Or I thought I did,” Cornell said.
14
EGON GOTTFREY BEHIND THE WHEEL of the huge Rhino GX, headlights cleaving the prairie dark ahead, infinite blackness to both sides of the county road, the soft glow of the instrument panel and the hum of tires on blacktop so convincing that he can almost believe the car and the road and the night are real …
In time, Worstead again, as barely sketched as some town in a low-budget Western, the buildings mere fa?ades, no citizens afoot after midnight, a lone and bold coyote slinking past the dark drugstore, eyes radiant in the headlights …
Gottfrey is neither angry nor even disappointed about the turn of events at Hawk Ranch. In this honeycomb of illusions that is his existence, nothing matters enough to warrant strong emotions.
Having passed his motel, Gottfrey doesn’t know where he is going. He is only along for the ride.
He is not surprised, however, when he passes Nashville West, pulls to the curb half a block from the roadhouse, switches off the lights, and kills the engine.
Although closing time must be approaching, several vehicles remain in the parking lot.
When he gets out of the Rhino GX, Gottfrey hears country music, a live band, not a jukebox.
EAT—DRINK—MUSIC.