Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

She rested there for a couple minutes, having a well-earned cry, before bothering to check the damage. Her face was kind of red, which you’d expect from just having been slapped with a heavy-metal purse. She pushed the airbag down, looked around and didn’t see any interior damage save for one food bag in the back having fallen over. She flexed her arms, shoulders, knees and ankles, rocked her hips a little – she was a bit achy, also understandable, but otherwise felt physically fine, just frustrated by it all.

She got out, opened the door to the extended cab and refilled that one bag before walking around the front. The Ram had bounced slightly off the tow truck so she could see a little, but didn’t spot a lot of damage – a dent in the passenger-side door, some chipped paint. She got back into the cab, restarted the vehicle and pulled away to an empty spot in the road for a more detailed inspection. Nah, just superficial damage – no windows broken or cracked, the tailgate opened and closed perfectly well, no tires deflating, the passenger door …

… handle broke right off in her hand.

She stood there looking at it, not sure even how to react. For a minute or two she just shook her head, half-smiling. “Of all the …” It was like a reminder that God was protecting her and that He had a slapstick sense of humor. Lately, though, her feelings had been yanked in too many directions too many too times in too short a space. She needed to either go numb or go crazy – and right now she just didn’t have the time to go crazy. She had someplace she needed to go, and flipping out wouldn’t get her there.

She climbed back in the Ram, tossed the door handle in the bag with the ammo and binoculars and her meds, turned the pickup around and proceeded south once more. There were no more road blockages, and in a couple of minutes she was on the San Francisco side, surrounded by the still-green hills and evergreens of the Presidio, the former Spanish, then Mexican, then American military compound.

Without thinking, she pulled over under a spreading pine and shut down the engine. She got out and took another look around the vehicle. But no, the only real damage was that stupid door handle snapping off. Could she open the door from the outside? Not as far as she could tell. Maybe if she stuck a finger into the hole, she could trigger – “Ow!” She put her finger in her mouth, then looked at it. Oh – no blood, just a poke. Silly her. Well, she’d only need to open it from the outside if she had a passenger.

And if she had a passenger, that would mean she had far more important things to deal with than a door handle.

Kelly leaned back against the door and smelled the pine in the air, along with crude oil, engine exhaust, her own sweat and … wood smoke? It wasn’t quite wood smoke, but it was definitely smoke. Was someone cooking nearby? Could her drive to find other people end up being shorter than she planned?

“Let’s find out!” Newly energized, she jumped into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine over and headed down 101 again, eager to see where the fire was.

23

CITY

Kelly decided later that she shouldn’t have been so eager, but she had an answer to the question soon enough. The fires – plural – were all over the place. San Francisco was burning.

She pulled over where 101 went over Girard Road near the east end of the Presidio, grabbed the binoculars and climbed into the truck bed for a better look. Plumes of smoke were rising everywhere she could see – from the piers, from the business district, Chinatown, Japantown, Market Street, Mount Sutro. The Ferry Building had collapsed in a heap of ash and rubble. She could see flames sprouting from where once had been windows in the Transamerica building.

“Gosh, what a mess.” She recalled reading about the big 1906 earthquake, and how the fire from broken gas mains had caused more damage than the quake itself. Something must have happened to do the same recently. There hadn’t been a big quake, or she probably would’ve felt it up in Marin – even after all this morning’s struggle, she was only twenty miles from home at most. But with all the firefighters presumably gone, it could have been anything. Someone might have left the stove on.

Regardless, she needed to find a way through it. She returned to the Ram and got on her way, deciding to keep following 101 until she couldn’t or she came up with a better idea.

Pretty quickly, she needed a better idea. The post office on Lombard was one huge bonfire, with burning mail blowing onto the street, so she turned right onto Fillmore. But that only bought her a few blocks before another fire blocked her way, this one an auto accident aided and abetted by a paint store. A left on Filbert, and several blocks later she reconnected with 101 at Van Ness. She kept the windows up, switched the air conditioning to recirculate, and used the windshield wipers to scrape ash out of her view.

She barely managed to get around the wreckage of the CPMC Van Ness Campus, only to hit another blockage near City Hall. She took a left onto Golden Gate Avenue, feeling more lost by the minute. There was a little insert of San Francisco on the state map, but it wasn’t nearly as detailed as she needed. She needed to get to that 101/280 interchange – she could find her way easily from there. “Provided the highway hasn’t burned to the ground.” She crossed Market Street to 6th