“Well,” he said mildly, “one thing at a time.”
Archie from Riverdale jumped up onto the running board. He had crossed the parking lot at a sprint to catch us before we got on the road. Teasdale opened the driver’s-side door, hard and fast, and clouted him off.
We drove on, picking up speed. We were doing almost thirty when Teasdale swerved into the road, catching a piece of the curb. Bungee cables popped. Bodies sailed off the flatbed and into the air, rolled across the sidewalk like flung logs.
“Were you going to let me out, or were you planning to take me on your mad dash to the Yukon?”
“You can jump anytime you like, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be convenient to slow down just yet.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I don’t suppose if we passed a hardware store you’d run in and grab me a hacksaw so I can cut myself loose of the cuffs? I’d drive you on to see this fella you’re looking for, even though it’d be going out of my way.”
“Considering what you last used a hacksaw for, you’ll have to find someone else to do your shopping.”
He nodded in an understanding way. “Fair enough. I appreciate I don’t have a great track record with household tools. I forgot to mention that I also took a hammer to my landlord’s wife. I didn’t kill her, though! She’s fine! I understand she recently recovered full use of her legs.”
I didn’t recover full use of my legs for fifteen minutes. He tore along without stopping, taking corners hard, throwing corpses off the trailer at every turn. I didn’t bother to tell him he was leaving a trail any fool could follow. A man who steals a ten-ton John Deere isn’t thinking about being inconspicuous.
Finally we reached an intersection blocked by a jackknifed tractor-trailer, and the only way around was to drive up over the curb and across a small green park in front of a credit union. To navigate this new terrain, it was necessary to slow almost to a crawl. Teasdale shot me a friendly look.
“How’s here?” he asked.
“Better than Canada,” I said, and opened the door. “Well, take care of yourself, and don’t murder anyone else.”
“I’ll try not to,” he said. He peered speculatively into the rearview mirror, at the line of stony peaks behind us. “Keep an eye on the skies. I do believe it’s clouding up.”
He was right. A cold, icy-looking range of clouds stood above the mountains themselves. They weren’t thunderheads but rather a great mass of vapor that promised a long, steady drizzle.
Teasdale chunked the tractor back into gear as soon as I was on the running board. I hopped down and watched him rumble away.
Once he was out of sight, I fumbled for my cell phone to call the police and report on what Teasdale was planning. I had to check the pockets of my jeans twice before I remembered I didn’t have a phone anymore. I didn’t have a clue where I might find the nearest cop, but I did know which way it was to Dr. Rusted’s house, and I set out once more.
As I tramped into downtown, the wind rose behind me, funneled through the deep trenches between high-rises. It smelled like rain.
AS I ENTERED CENTRAL DENVER, I was struck most by the hush. No traffic. No shops open. On Glenarm Place I could hear a woman sobbing from an open third-floor window. The sound carried for blocks. The nails were scattered all over the streets, flashing silver and rose in the late-afternoon light.
The storm had lashed the high, vertical sign in front of the Paramount, so it just read R OU T. The other letters had come loose and dropped in the street.
A girl wandered along wearing a wedding gown that didn’t fit and a homemade tiara fashioned from gold wire and crystal nails. She had on elbow-length silk gloves and carried a heavy-looking burlap sack. Close up it was possible to see that the gown was in tatters, and her cheeks were dribbled with smeared mascara. She walked beside me for a while. She told me she was the Queen of the Apocalypse and said if I’d kiss her and swear my fealty to her, she’d pay me ten thousand dollars. She opened the sack to prove she had the money. It was packed full with bundles of cash.
I told her I had to pass on the kiss—I informed her I was in love and didn’t play around. I said she ought to use some of that money to get off the street and into a hotel room. Rain was going to fall. She said she wasn’t afraid of bad weather. She said she could walk right between the raindrops. I said I couldn’t, and at the next corner we went our separate ways.
The whole town wasn’t a post-Rapture wasteland, and I don’t want to give you the idea it was. The National Guard had cleared East Colfax for most of a mile and installed first-aid stations in storefronts. They had established a thriving HQ and information center at the Fillmore. The marquee promised BOTTLED WATER FIRST AID SHELTER INFORMATION. Generators roared noisily, and several places had lights on. The wrought-iron fence outside was plastered over with photocopies showing people’s faces above their names and the words MISSING SINCE STORM PLEASE CONTACT.
But the soldiers I saw looked flushed and scared, barking at people to find shelter. A Humvee rolled up and down the avenue with PA loudspeakers on top, broadcasting information from the National Weather Service. A woman said an area of depression was building over the Boulder-Denver Metro Region and rain was expected within the hour. She didn’t say what kind of rain and didn’t need to.
I headed north to East Twenty-third Avenue and into City Park, the last stretch of my long hike. It was the quietest place I’d been yet, and the most mournful. I slowed as I neared the zoo.
An eighteen-wheeler had been parked in the road, and there was an adult giraffe spilled across the open flatbed trailer, legs sticking off the side and long neck curled up, so her head touched her breast. A guy in a hard hat motored a little crane over, crystal splinters snapping under its heavy tires. He pulled alongside the eighteen-wheeler. Hydraulics whined, and the crane operator lowered a net with a baby giraffe in it. He placed the calf daintily between its mother’s legs. They were both stained with blood and filth, and the sight of them broke my heart like nothing else I’d seen all day.
The air was rank, and on my left, in a broad green meadow, arranged neatly in pairs, were dead lions and dead walruses and dead gazelles. It was like some horrible parade leading toward a cruel parody of Noah’s ark, a ship for everything that was gone and never coming back, everything that would not be saved. There was a pile of penguins almost ten feet high. They stank like week-old fish.