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“Get in the damn car.”
He pushed her away, fumbled with the door handle, pushed Benny inside. No time for car seats. Let them give him a ticket. A ticket would be nice.
“Sherrie, come on!”
She looked at him as if he was speaking a language composed of nonsense words. Vertical frown lines appeared between her brows.
“What is it?” she asked.
The people were coming now.
Many more of them.
Most of them strangers now. People from other parts of the town. Coming through yards and across lawns.
Coming.
Coming.
“Jesus, Sherrie, get in the damn car!”
She stepped back from him, shaking her head, almost smiling the way people do when they think you just don’t get it.
“Sherrie—no!”
She backed one step too far.
Tom made a grab for her.
Ten hands grabbed her too. Her arms, her clothes, her hair.
“What is it, Tom?” she asked once more. Then she was gone.
Gone.
Sickened, horrified, Tom spun away and staggered toward the car. He thrust his sword into the passenger foot well and slid behind the wheel. Pulled the door shut as hands reached for him. Clawed at the door, at the glass.
It took forever to find the ignition slot, even though it was where it always was.
Behind him, Benny kept screaming.
The moans of the people outside were impossibly loud.
He turned the key.
He put the car in drive.
He broke his headlights and smashed his grille and crushed both fenders getting down the street. The bodies flew away from him. They rolled over his hood, cracked the windows with slack elbows and cheeks and chins. They lay like broken dolls in the lurid glow of his taillights.
7
Tom and Benny headed for L.A.
They were still eighty miles out when the guy on the emergency broadcast network said that the city was gone.
Gone.
Far in the west, way over the mountains, even at that distance, Tom could see the glow. The big, ugly, orange cloud bank that rose high into the air and spread itself out to ignite the roots of heaven.
