"The gas tank might explode..."
"I don't want to leave," he said. "I'm not leaving." His knuckles were white, gripping the wheel. Ahead, Sarah saw a clearing in the forest. It was a large clearing, with high, yellow grass.
A lightning bolt smashed down with a fearsome crack, shattering the side mirror, which blew apart like a bomb. A moment later, they heard a softwhump. The car tilted to one side. "Oh shit," Evans said. "It blew a tire."
"So much for the insulation," she said.
The car was now grinding, the underside scraping over a dirt rut, metal squealing.
"Peter," she said.
"All right, all right, just let me get to the clearing."
"I don't think we can wait."
But the rut ended, the road flattened, and Evans drove forward, creaking on the rim, into the clearing. Raindrops spattered the windshield. Above the grass, Sarah saw the roofs of wooden buildings bleached by the sun. It took her a moment to realize that this was a ghost town. Or a mining town.
Directly ahead was a sign, auroraville, pop. 82. Another lightning bolt crashed down, and Evans hit the sign, knocking it over.
"Peter, I think we're here."
"Okay, yeah, let me get a little closer--"
"Now, Peter!"
He stopped the car, and they flung open their doors in unison. Sarah threw herself bodily onto the ground, and another bolt crashed so close to her that the blast of hot air knocked her sideways and sent her rolling on the ground. The roar of the lightning was deafening.
She got up on hands and knees, and scrambled around to the back of the vehicle. Evans was on the other side of the SUV, yelling something, but she couldn't hear him. She examined the rear bumper. There was no attachment, no device.
There was nothing there.
But she had no time to think, because another bolt struck the back of the SUV, rocking it, and the rear window shattered, sprinkling her with shards of glass. She fought panic and scrambled forward, staying low as she moved around the SUV and through the grass toward the nearest building.
Evans was somewhere ahead, yelling to her. But she couldn't hear him over the rumbling thunder. She just didn't want another bolt, not now, if she could just go a few more seconds...
Her hands touched wood. A board.
A step.
She crawled forward quickly, pushing aside the grass, and now she saw a porch, a dilapidated building, and swinging from the roof a sign bleached so gray she couldn't see what it said. Evans was inside, and she scrambled forward, ignoring the splinters in her hands, and he was yelling, yelling.
And she finally heard what he was saying:
"Look out for the scorpions!"
They were all over the wooden porch--tiny, pale yellow, with their stingers in the air. There must have been two dozen. They moved surprisingly fast, scampering sideways, like crabs.
"Stand up!"
She got to her feet, and ran, feeling the arachnids crunch under her feet. Another lightning bolt smashed into the building's roof, knocking down the sign, which fell in a cloud of dust onto the porch.
But then she was inside the building. And Evans was standing there, fists raised, yelling, "Yes! Yes! We did it!"
She was gasping for breath. "At least they weren't snakes," she said, chest heaving.
Evans said, "What?"
"There're always rattlers in these old buildings."
"Oh Jesus."
Outside, thunder rumbled.
And the lightning started again.
Through the shattered, grimy window Sarah was looking at the SUV, and thinking that now that they had left the car, there were no more lightning strikes on the SUV...thinking...nothing on the bumper...then why had the pickup nudged the SUV? What was the point? She turned to ask Evans if he had noticed--
And a lightning bolt blasted straight down through the roof, smashing it open to the dark sky, sending boards flying in all directions, and blasting into the ground right where she had been standing. The lightning left a blackened pattern of jagged streaks, like the shadow of a thorn bush on the floor. The ozone smell was strong. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the dry floorboards.
"This whole building could go," Evans said. He was already flinging a side door open, heading outside.
"Stay low," Sarah said, and followed him out.
The rain was coming down harder, big splattering drops that struck her back and shoulders as she ran to the next building. It had a brick chimney, and looked generally better built. But the windows were the same, broken and thickly coated with dust and grime.