The Strange Season

FLASHBACK-1-1

FLASHBACK

I | Flight

“We know now there can be no justice,” the preacher’s soulful voice boomed over the pickup’s radio, and a chorus of devotees chanted “Amen” over the airwaves.

“And we know now there can be no compromise.” Shattered glass sounded in the background, as though raining down on a dais.

“Amen.”

“But let us not eat of our own limb, brothers and sisters! Let us not become like those outside our windows, throwing stones at their own temple. For I have seen a light in the sky, and we must ready our souls!”

“Amen!”

“The day of reckoning is come, brothers and sisters. The wicked among us shall be devoured—”

More glass shattered and it sounded as though a bottle rolled across the dais. A woman’s scream rang out. A skeleton chorus cried, “Amen!”

“We stand ready to be cleansed, oh Lord! Let flow the flood! Throw wide the gates of hell, and let loose the beasts of prey!”

And then there was an explosion which caused the pickup’s speakers to rattle, and people were screaming over the airwaves.

Static rose up like flames, filling the cab with noise, and Savanna Aldiss looked to her husband. Roger only shook his head. “Never know what’s gonna go the distance, do you?” he said.

She twisted the knob-less tuner with the vice grips, renewing her search for a weather report, and said nothing. There wasn’t much to say; they’d gotten out of town because they were contentedly poor people, and when there were riots such as those following the Harper verdict, it was the contented poor who always paid first.

That was part of the reason, anyway. But they were also going to see Savanna’s mother in Spokane, a four-hour drive Roger had hoped to enjoy very much. They’d notified their employers—a nursing home and a mall security agency, respectively—that their house had been mistaken for a pawn shop and put to the flaming torch of protest, and that they would be indisposed for an undetermined length of time. Like everyone else, they’d used the occasion to do something they’d wanted to do for a long time.

Roger stared out his open window, yawning. Not because the panorama rushing past was devoid of any interest; actually, it was quite refreshing after the flames and chaos of riot-torn Seattle. But it was all the same after crossing the Columbia River: mile after mile after mile of channeled scablands and various basalt formations—what had Savanna called it? The Lost Bonanza Backdrop. The sight would have put him to sleep at the wheel if not for the strange behavior of the weather.

The weather ...

Since leaving Seattle, he’d spurred the Toyota 4x4 through a mild rainstorm, a brief flurry of snow, a stretch of sunny nirvana, a burst of hailstones, another rainstorm ...

And now the sun was back again, and the sky was clear. He wasn’t sure what the hell to make of it.

Savanna gave up on the radio, detaching the vice grips and tossing them onto the dash. They were a handy tool, those vice grips. In addition to working the radio, they could be used to yank the long-stripped key from the ignition, or to roll the knob-less driver’s side window up and down.

“Nothing,” she said.

Roger tilted the can of Pepsi against his lips and emptied it, his dark hair dancing in the jetstream.

“No biggie, honey,” he said, and added, jokingly, “The President lost his patience and had Seattle nuked. That’s all.”

She switched off the radio. “Poor selection, anyway.”

He laughed and squeezed the pop can.

“Bombs away?” Savanna asked.

“Quite.”

She lifted the throw-pillow away from the floor and Roger glanced down at the asphalt rushing past below. He reached behind the stick shift and dropped the can through the hole. It hit the blurred pavement with a tinny clatter and was gone behind them.

“You do know littering is a $1,000 offense in Washington,” she said.

“They ought’ a write me in for governor,” he said. “Somebody’s got to pick it up—hell, I just created a job.”

Savanna slid the pillow beneath her bare feet. “And I’m very proud of you, sweetie.”

He kissed at the air between them twice and she returned the gesture. It was their own little thing. He grinned at her, then grasped the wheel with both hands and returned his attention to the landscape rushing past; they were passing a stretch of tall grass and gently rolling hills, like green dunes. He listened as the radials droned endlessly against the asphalt, and several moments passed in silence.

“What on earth,” Savanna nearly whispered. “Honey ...”

He nodded absently. He was drumming his fingers on the outside of his door contentedly.

“Roger!” Savanna cried, and he jerked his head forward in time to see a pale blur vanish beneath the water-beaded hood.

II | Roadkill

Ker-thunk! Something hit the bumper of the 4x4 and the truck jolted violently. An eyeblink later something thumped against the undercarriage. Roger grimaced. He saw a greasy differential and a splat of blood in his mind’s eye—and felt as though his neck were being sucked down between his shoulder blades.

“s**t ...!” he cursed helplessly. His pale fingers clutched at the wheel as if choking the life from some venomous snake.

Savanna’s cold hand settled over his own as he took the pickup out of gear and steered for the edge of the interstate. Wet gravel crunched beneath the tires as the silver Toyota coasted to a halt.

He pressed back in his chair and exhaled, still gripping the wheel. Vehicles whisked past through the previous storm’s residue, a legacy of shallow potholes filled with rain, and threw fans of gray water onto the glass. Savanna craned around to peer out the rear window.

Roger faced forward, staring off at the horizon blankly. “What was it?”

It was difficult to see with the canopy and all. The sun bounced off the dark windshield of an approaching van and she squinted in the glare. “I don’t know, I only saw it for a second. It looked a little like one of those flightless birds. What are they called? Not an ostrich—an emu. But bigger, and without feathers.”

“What?” He turned to join her. “Can you see it?”

She shook her red locks and a few stray ends ripe with the scent of shampoo tickled his cheek. He squinted through the glass with her.

“No blood,” he whispered, and breathed a bit easier. He turned away and threw open his door. “Be right back.”

Savanna reached over and switched off the ignition, then got out of the truck and jogged to catch up with him. A convoy of motorcycles roared past dangerously close, hurling sludgy water at them like flying shrapnel. The blast of its passage furled their clothes and jostled their hair.

Roger leaned forward with his hands on his knees and scanned the tall grass. The wind blew all around him and the plains responded. A million tall blades of grass did The Wave.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Honey ...” Savanna’s whispering voice was but a pale sound beside him. “Look ...”

He looked up to find her staring off into the distance, and matched her gaze.

“Holy Jesus,” he murmured, and stood straight to join her.

Ahead of them, the horizon had gone to a sooty black in what must have been mere seconds. Storm clouds were rolling in like before—but faster—and Roger found himself laughing more than a little nervously.

“This isn’t very damn funny anymore, is it?” he said.

Savanna gazed forward as if in a dream. As far as she was concerned, it never really had been all that damn funny. Roger had a frightening way of laughing off the ominous. The more he smiled and laughed his nervous little laugh, the more Savanna had always suspected real trouble.

Neither of them spoke as they watched the massive anvil clouds roll forward, boiling and tumbling as if captured in a loop of time-lapse film. Roger’s blood ran cold at sight of lights amidst the soup; not lightning kind of lights, but airplane kind of lights. And then he recalled joking about the H-bomb going off, and suddenly felt as though a battalion of tarantulas were crawling up his spine in single file. He put his arm around Savanna.

“I think it’s time to go,” he said, and she nodded absently, as though in deep thought. Her eyes were riveted to the odd lights.

They walked back to the truck. Roger walked around to the front and checked the bumper. The chrome was mildly scratched, and bent inward a little at the center. But the bend may have been there before, he couldn’t be certain. At any rate, there were no traces of blood.

They got in. Roger started the engine and let it run, making sure it hadn’t been damaged. After a moment, Savanna said:

“It had arms.”

The motor idled. Roger stared at her. Then he pulled away from the shoulder to rejoin the wagon train east.

After several miles the freeway began to slope upward, and Roger pointed his finger southeast. “There,” he said. “Saved by the big ‘O.’”

She looked out her window and saw the glowing sign of an Ozark Gas-n-Go, turning slowly round against the rapidly darkening sky. Fossil-fuel Freddy winked at them thriftily from his home in the first oversized ‘O,’ making the okay sign with a scaly thumb and forefinger. Freddy was the saurian equivalent of Goofy; nobody really knew exactly what the hell breed he was.

“We can sit it out there, I guess,” Roger said. “Whatever it is.”

Savanna nodded, saying nothing, and turned her ghostly-eyed glare back to the boiling sky.

“Roger, look how fast it’s moving.”

He leaned forward and peered up, and found that the tremor in her voice had been well-justified.

It was almost upon them. The storm was thundering across the sky like a giant man o’ war: a harbinger of chaos trailing tendrils of rain—and now lightning—from beneath its dark umbrella. Its black shadow fell rumbling over the truck and Roger stepped on the gas.

An instant later the churning tempest seemed to roll right over the top of them, and the rain hit the windshield with such sudden fury that Roger was reminded of his trips through the auto-wash as a kid. He was reminded of that spinning, hissing, roaring tumbler that twirled wildly over the hood of his dad’s Buick and rumbled up the windshield in a red and black blur—like some great, shaggy caterpillar. Then the cold water slanted in through his window and began to patter wildly against the dash.

“Jesus Christ!”

He switched on the wipers and set them to their maximum speed, then groped along the wet dash for the vice grips. His hair was already dripping in his face and his clothes were nearly soaked. The blades only whipped back and forth impotently against the glass. If they made any difference at all, he was hard-pressed to tell. “Honey ...”

She reached over and grasped the wheel. He clamped the vice grips down on the rusty sprocket beside him and cranked the window up.

“Maybe we should pull over,” she said. “Wait it out here.”

He tossed the vice grips back onto the dash and took back the wheel, peering into the maelstrom between swipes. There was no longer a road. He was driving blindly at fifty miles per hour into what had become, in just seconds, a seamless gray void. Glancing southeast, he saw that the Ozark sign had completely vanished in the downpour. So had the taillights of the motorcycles somewhere ahead of them. “Yeah,” he mumbled at last. “I think you’re right ...”

He hit his blinker and craned his neck around to check behind them. Someone might as well have pulled a shade down over the rear window—there was virtually nothing there. No freeway, no headlights, no anything except the roaring, tumbling, monster-caterpillar of the auto-wash. He cursed beneath his breath and steered for the shoulder anyway. A moment later they rolled to a stop at the side of the road.

“This is too weird,” he mumbled gravely. And then he laughed a little nervously.

Savanna cranked on the heater. “It’s getting cold.”