“The red zone was extended fifteen miles last I checked.”
She nodded. “Maybe twenty now. Emergency Services keeps updating it.”
Kit had to be thinking what he was. They were well within that deadly distance and moving deeper into the explosion zone with every mile. The town of Grandlake where they were headed was settled squarely in the foothills of the angry monster, as was his cabin. Was there another way? Find the nearest cleared road and try to get off the mountain?
“In the articles I’ve read, scientists are predicting total devastation within the evac area.” She spoke calmly, as if she were delivering a weather report.
“I’m not sure I want to know all that.” In his peripheral vision he caught her puzzled head cock.
“Why wouldn’t you? It’s all relevant information.” The baby’s cries had settled to low whimpers.
“Facts aside, I prefer to leave room for the ‘what if.’”
“The ‘what if’?”
He edged them around an endless series of fallen trees. “Sure. We’re being chased by killers and we have this unidentified baby and a volcano threatening to go bananas, but what if we get out of this unscathed?”
He heard her dismissive sniff.
“There’s practically zero chance of that happening, Cullen.”
“Yeah, but what if we succeed in spite of everything?”
“Rose-colored glasses aren’t going to keep us from dying.”
“I prefer to attribute it to experience. I’ve seen God do plenty of miracles, so why not another one here and now?”
She didn’t quite roll her eyes but almost. “We’re on our own. God’s not interested in three insignificant people.”
“You’re not insignificant,” he said quietly. “And neither is Tot.”
She rested her cheek on Tot’s head, her shoulders softening for a moment before she spoke again. “We’re probably not going to get out alive, but if the ‘what if’ gives you comfort...”
It did. This moment, these days, his life, would be over when God said so. Not a moment before. He’d learned that when the truck door had come flying off its hinges, missing him by inches.
But not missing his partner, Daniela. There’d been moments, plenty of them, when he’d wished he’d taken that impact instead of her. He realized with a jolt that if God had answered that prayer, Kit and Tot would likely be dead. There was a reason Cullen had been climbing down from the roof of his cabin at the very moment Kit’s truck hurtled off the road. That was too massive a coincidence, and he didn’t believe in those. He swallowed, gripped the wheel tighter.
Let’s see what you’re up to here,God.
Eventually they reached the far end of the pasture where he let them out through another gate and locked it behind him. He’d never secured his fields before, until he heard reports of animals being stolen a few months back. Painful to put locks on, he’d thought at the time. Now he was grateful.
“Another mile, but it’s steep.”
She nodded, braced her bare feet against the floor. The meager moonlight had succumbed under a thick haze. The tires kicked up a coating of muck that the wipers smeared instead of cleared as they headed away from his land.
“It’s like driving through a bowl of chowder,” he muttered.
The river would be swollen, both with the aftermath of a recent storm series and the deposited debris from the continuous earthquakes. Once they were over, it would be a fairly straight shot to Archie’s place. Another thirty minutes, tops.
He prayed they would find something to help. A working phone, a search and rescue safety patrol, heck, even an old CB radio they could use to contact the outside world. He felt acutely the loss of his rifle, dropped when the drainpipe had given way. He hadn’t had a moment to reveal that setback to Kit. The woman had enough on her plate, didn’t she? They were down to one handgun.
The air was choked with a cloud of fine dust. Reluctantly, he rolled the window down just far enough for him to stick his head out. “Sorry. I gotta see where I’m going. Hold your breath if you can. Keep Tot covered.”
It was the odor that warned him first, a fragrance of freshly moved earth that swelled above the acrid tang, as if a backhoe had recently plowed up the compacted ground.
Stop!His brain shouted the command. After a hard brake, he put the truck in park and got out. He blinked, shone his flashlight across the soil as he tried to absorb what he was seeing. Great chunks of the riverbank weregone, along with the bridge supports.Not six feet from myfront tire...
His boots sank a few inches into the loose debris as he tiptoed closer.
