But all this was too much, getting worse every hour. She had seen the changes in Flagstaff just in the last couple of days, when the first breakdowns occurred. It reminded her of weather in the mountains, when a bright day could knot with ugly thunderheads within an hour. Maybe an even worse storm gathered right now, and she had come to work like an idiot instead of running for shelter.

Not concentrating, Heather let her fingers tangle on the Selectric's keys-it had been years since she had used a typewriter, and she found herself backs.p.a.cing and using the correction key every other word. The keys stuck repeatedly, and the machine made odd clunking clunking noises when she typed; Heather supposed there were just as many small plastic parts in an electric typewriter as there were in the computers. For the time being, the carbons would be screwed up, and she would have to use white-out. Then somebody would have to rekey everything into the database whenever the computers got up and running again. If they ever got running. noises when she typed; Heather supposed there were just as many small plastic parts in an electric typewriter as there were in the computers. For the time being, the carbons would be screwed up, and she would have to use white-out. Then somebody would have to rekey everything into the database whenever the computers got up and running again. If they ever got running.

"What are you doing, Heather?" Sysco said. "Don't bother with the typing now, for chrissake! You can stay late to catch up on that. Pick up the phone and get these people off my a.s.s! I think the lines are up now."

She stared at the typewriter. "You told told me to type these, Al." me to type these, Al."

He rolled his eyes and sighed at her. His face reminded her of a llama's. "You're doing it again, Heather: thinking. Just do what I tell you to do. You don't need to think."

She was thinking all right, thinking about jamming a metal wastebasket on Al Sysco's head and doing a tap dance on his temples.

Stacie finally staggered into the office a little after noon. She had ridden her bicycle on the rims of two flat tires. "Crazy people out in the streets. n.o.body knows what to do!" Heather took no consolation in listening to Al yell at Stacie.

When she pulled out her lunch sack to unwrap a tuna sandwich, the plastic bag had turned into goo, seeping into her bread. Heather stared at it. The plague was working its way through the office, floating through the air, attacking anything it could eat.

She looked at the fake wood-grain coating on her metal desk, at the plastic pens in her cup, at the plastic k.n.o.bs on her office chair, at the plastic b.u.t.tons on her clothes. What next What next? At any moment, some key support component in the Surety building itself might fall apart, causing the walls and ceiling to crash in.

She did not want to stay here another minute.

She picked up the phone in a reflex action as Sysco charged back to her desk. "Heather, take over my station. I have to meet with the crisis team. Might take me an hour."

Heather straightened in her seat, still clutching the phone. As her anger grew, her pastel-pink fingernails made deep indentations into the softening plastic of the telephone handset.

"Sorry, Al, but I'm not qualified to do that kind of work. I might botch it up. I don't dare touch it." She stood up, cold and calm inside. The eye of the storm.

"What did you say? I don't have time for this, Heather!" Sysco's eyes looked as if they might pop right out of their sockets. "This is important-"

Heather s.n.a.t.c.hed her lunch sack and handed it to him. The dissolving plastic had made a creeping stain on the brown paper bag. "Here, Al-have a tuna sandwich." She turned to Stacie. "I wouldn't put up with this creep any longer than you have to, Stacie. See ya."

She wanted to watch Sysco's expression turn splotched and livid as she strode to the stairwell, but she did not dare turn around. Her legs shook as she hurried down the echoing concrete steps. Her shoes felt strange, as if they no longer fit right. Great! Her heels would probably dissolve before long.

She left the Surety Insurance headquarters building, doubting she would ever set foot inside again.

Out in the parking lot, she marched onto the hot pavement, forcing herself not to run, ignoring the ache in her calves, giving no thought to the long walk facing her before she reached the safety of home. The world might be falling apart, all right, but she didn't feel any particular attachment to the old order of things. She could leave it behind with no regrets. Screw them all. It was time to take care of herself.

Sitting in the reserved parking s.p.a.ce, Al Sysco's silver Porsche gleamed in the sun. He had owned it less than three months, and he still washed and waxed it every weekend. He had bought it to celebrate stealing her promotion, and she knew it.

She stared at the Porsche. It looked like a snarling metallic insect. Insects were for squashing, weren't they?

Heather opened her canvas purse and pulled out the nearly full bottle of pastel-pink nail polish. She hated the color, hated nail polish in the first place; she wore it only as part of professional dress in the insurance company. Now she had a better use for it, if the plague didn't somehow dissolve the enamel first. She twisted off the softening cap and dribbled the enamel in swirls over the driver's side windshield. Once the nail polish baked a few hours in the hot Arizona sun, Albert "You can call me Al!" Sysco would need an ice pick to get it off.

"You can call me vindicated vindicated, Al," she said, then set off for home, on foot.

Al Sysco fled the Surety Insurance headquarters at seven o'clock that evening. Everyone else had left hours before, but he was in charge. He was the responsible man on the job. The entire day had been h.e.l.l. The California gasoline plague kept getting worse, showing up in all parts of the world, according to the reports. Industry was in a panic, big cities were in turmoil-and it seemed as if every human being on planet Earth wanted to take it out on him.

Dusk had fallen, and the streetlights stood dark and dead. The power had flickered on and off all afternoon, and Sysco wondered if dissolving electrical insulation would end up starting fires. One more thing for the insurance company to worry about!

Heather Dixon had walked out in the middle of the day, and Al vowed to see her fired as soon as all this was over with-but right now he prayed she would come back.

Stacie was a slow and plodding worker, and Candace was just a trainee. They couldn't do anything right, and Candace had spent half the day in tears. He had physically shaken her by the shoulders, yelling that they were in a crisis situation, dammit! It didn't do any good. He could not survive another day like this one. He wished somebody would start solving this plague problem.

He stopped in front of his Porsche, and his mouth dropped open. In the dim light, it looked like a gigantic glob of birds.h.i.t had splattered his windshield. He looked closer. "Nail polish! Sweet as an armpit! Gawd!" He tapped it with his nails, but the opaque pink coating could have been electroplated on.

Sick to his stomach, he climbed behind the steering wheel. He just wanted to go home and work his way through every beer in the refrigerator, then start on whatever else he could find in the liquor cabinet.

But when he turned the key in the ignition, his car refused to start.

Chapter 33.

Todd moved through Alex Kramer's empty house, not quite sure what he should do now. He had been here for days, fl.u.s.tered to be in a situation where the plan of action was not obvious, and the most sensible thing seemed to be just sitting tight. He wanted to get off his b.u.t.t and do something.

Bending down in front of the cold fireplace, Todd riffled through the ashes, pulling out the scorched chunks of Alex's Prometheus notes. A handful of pages were intact.

Todd paced the floor. It was deceptively calm and peaceful here, but he knew the chaos was growing in the cities, on the clogged freeways.

When he had called the ambulance to report Alex's suicide, it had taken them five hours to reach the home out in the Marin hills. Todd had yelled at the harried-looking blond man in grimy blue-and-white paramedic uniform, but the man snapped back that only one of their vehicles worked, and that they had answered dozens of calls. The paramedics covered Alex's body and carried it out to the ambulance, slamming the back doors. The driver pulled out, spraying gravel from the rear tires as Todd stood speechless on the porch.

With nothing else to wait for, Todd had left Alex's house, locking the front door behind him. But when he had tried to drive to Stanford to meet Iris, his Ford pickup broke down after only five miles. He had stared at the ticking, motionless hulk parked on the side of the road, tires wrenched in a sharp angle. He had shaken his head, turned his back, and started the hike back, angry, confused, and afraid. His cowboy boots crunched on the road's soft shoulder, and not many cars pa.s.sed him.

What a day!

Letting himself back in through the jimmied laundry-room window, Todd had gone to Alex's phone and called fifteen emergency road service numbers, finally getting one that told him to wait.

He paced through the house again. He found a set of keys on the dresser in Alex's bedroom, and with a bright but uncertain thread of hope, he jogged out to the front driveway and climbed into Alex's pickup. He fiddled with the keys until he found one that fit in the ignition. The starter cranked, but the engine just made grinding, chugging noises.

Todd scowled, but really wasn't surprised.

Unless he took the horses, he was stuck here, unable to get down to Stanford. Iris needed to see whatever was left in Alex's notes-but riding riding down to Stanford? Even he wasn't that crazy. down to Stanford? Even he wasn't that crazy.

He slept restlessly on Alex's sofa in the family room, stripping down to his underwear and wrapped in a blanket he found in one of the closets.

The next morning, when he picked up the phone to call Oilstar, to yell at the tow service, to talk to Iris, the line was dead. "What the heck?" He slammed the telephone down.

He had promised Iris he would come down to see her as soon as possible, and he always kept his promises. Besides, she had to have those notes. He stewed in the living room, muttering to himself, looking through the gla.s.s patio doors, still trying to figure out what to do.

He wondered if Iris was worried about him. Her personality made him think of an injured bobcat, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was testing him, toying with him. Todd knew he was hardheaded, too, so he might be attracted to her because of her s.p.u.n.k-a challenge?

There were two types of women in the world-those that stood steadfast, and those that jumped from bed to bed. Iris seemed the steadfast type, but if something ever did happen between them, he wasn't sure if he could put up with the rest of her ways. He sighed. He must be awfully bored to let his mind wander like that!

By midmorning, the power flickered and went out, leaving the house dark, cool, and stuffy. He caught a whiff of stale beer and cheese he had missed before, probably left over from the party. He stepped into the family room and scanned the carpet, but he saw no sign where Iris had spilled her wine.

He looked at a stack of plastic wine gla.s.ses on the corner of the bar, saw them sagging under their own weight. Todd touched them with his fingertip, saw his nail make a crescent-shaped indentation. When he lifted his elbow from the padded edge of the bar, the indentation remained smashed, stretched out of shape. The air carried a volatile, oily smell of dissolving plastic.

He stepped away from the bar and turned to go down the hall, stopping in front of the closed door of the "memorial" bedroom where Alex had died. Braving the chill inside himself, Todd opened the door and stepped in. Daylight slanted through the half-opened blinds, glinting on the framed photos of Alex's family. One of the frames had fallen apart as some sort of plastic binder gave way, and an army photo of Jay lay on the floor among large pieces of broken gla.s.s.

Todd scanned the memorabilia again. After the suicide, all the faces seemed more intense now, more sharply defined. A certificate and medal bearing the name Jay Kramer. A snapshot of the young girl, Erin, standing by a pony. Todd had fed her horse Stimpy, ridden the trail that she had loved to explore. He felt he had gotten to know her somehow.

Alex had left the ranch, his life's work with Prometheus, and now there were only pictures, ribbons, and cold medals-artifacts meaningless to anyone who did not know Alex Kramer.

Todd backed out of the room.

Alex had been a family man, something Todd himself didn't relate to. Consulting in the oil business, Todd couldn't afford to put down roots. The women he met expressed no desire to follow him around, to pick up everything on a moment's notice and move across the world . . . not that he was ready for that baggage yet.

Todd remained close to his parents, and he visited their ranch as often as possible. Ranch hands came and went, but the family would always be there. He wondered how his mom and dad were doing with the spread of the petroplague, but they were basically self-sufficient out on the Wyoming plains.

In the dark refrigerator Todd found leftover party hors d'oeuvres, cheese, stale rabbit-food vegetables, beer, and some open bottles of wine. Some of the plastic wrappers looked wet and runny. He didn't touch them.

He grabbed some cheese and sc.r.a.ped the rest of the old food into the garbage. He took a can of Coors and drank it down fast, then selected another one for sipping.

Okay. What the heck was he supposed to do now? What was he even doing here?

Part of him wanted to get roaring drunk, to sit on the sofa and listen to some C&W songs on the stereo. But the power was out, and Alex's music library didn't have much besides cla.s.sical stuff anyway. Several radio stations had already dropped off the air, including the one that allegedly played country-western music but spent most of the time yakking instead.

Wiping his hands on his jeans and taking the beer with him, Todd stepped through the sliding patio door and surveyed the backyard. The horses wandered around the corral. Ren whinnied and stepped up to the fence.

Todd didn't like impossible situations, never had, never would. He'd discovered early on that the quicker he figured out a plan of action, the less he'd worry. He ran over his options, and he kept coming up with the same answer "Time to get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge," he muttered.

He tried the phone one last time, and to his astonishment found a static-filled dial tone. He dialed Iris's number, praying for the phone service to last long enough for her to answer. The phone rang, then rang again. He suddenly realized he didn't know what to say to her. When Iris answered on the fourth ring, the connection was scratchy, intermittent. Her voice had a strange echoing quality.

"Tex! Where are you? I didn't know the phones were still working. Have you seen what's happening all around the city?"

"Iris!" he shouted into the phone. "Are you all right?"

"Me?" She seemed shocked that he would ask. "When I go outside I can see smoke in most directions, like fires burning out of control. It's hard to tell what's going on. I thought I could just hole up at home, but things are getting worse by the hour. I . . . I need to get out of here. Head east toward the central valley, I think, where there's a better chance to survive."

Todd felt another gush of urgency. He had been cut off here at Alex's, relatively safe, while Iris was in the middle of a potential bonfire. "Can you stay safe for another day?" he interrupted. "I'm at Alex's house now, but I'm going to ride out on his horses. I'll come get you. We can travel cross-country together."

It took a moment, but she answered slowly, with an uncertain humor, "Are you asking me out, Tex?"

"Pick you up at eight," he said, then paused, "or as soon as I get there."

Her voice grew more serious. "I'll believe that when I see it. Security is getting pretty grim about who they let on campus. People are starting to realize how tight the food situation is. Just stay where you are, Todd."

"People have called me bone-headed before and just plain stubborn. I'll make my way to Stanford. I promise."

"Are you crazy?"

"Probably. Just wait for me."

"Todd!"

He hung up before she could say anything else. Even if he could get Iris to come along with him, he didn't have a clue where they might go. But he knew it was insane to remain in the city.

Moving with a new sense of determination, glad to have a goal again at last, he rummaged through the house, gathering supplies: first-aid kit, dusty sleeping bags, camping utensils, and dry food from Alex's cupboard. The last item he packed was the old Smith & Wesson he had found on Alex's nightstand. In a drawer he found four boxes of ammunition.

He considered waiting until morning and getting off to a fresh start. But that didn't feel right-he could travel through the afternoon, into the night, keep away from people or traffic.

Besides, he had always wanted to ride off into the sunset.

Chapter 34.

Jackson Harris sat across from his wife Daphne at an old Formica dinette table in the kitchen, trying to digest the phone conversation he'd just had. Sure, it would be easy to just pack up a few things and run out to Altamont and stay with Doog-but then what would they do? Harris and his wife had obligations to their group of people, the kids they had taken to state parks, the volunteer army that had worked so hard on Angel Island, Daphne's church group, his own inner-city cleanup work. He couldn't just abandon all that.

Running away didn't seem feasible. He looked at Daphne. She had pulled her frizzy hair back with a blue hairband, and her strain-tightened face looked more angular in the uncertain light.

He could still taste the onions and spices from the quick meal of canned vegetarian chili he had warmed in an old pan on the gas stove. They had about a week's worth of canned soup, beans, and vegetables in the pantry. Many of the grocery stores had already been looted.

"We can't stay here, Daph," he mumbled. "No way." Overhead, the lights flickered, then stayed on.

"All right," said Daphne, straightening up and managing the no-nonsense expression she did so well. "But how we gonna keep ourselves afloat and help as many folks as we can?"

All afternoon, he and Daphne had taken turns attempting to make calls from the phone hanging on the kitchen wall, begging favors, trying to borrow supplies, but panic and confusion had spread faster than the plague. Phone service was intermittent, and it probably wouldn't last much longer. The city of Oakland had started to break down, not just automobiles, but random items made of plastic. Though the plastic-eating phase had not yet struck their home, the Harris's own battered Pinto had not coughed to life for days, and their neighbors were similarly trapped.

It could only get worse.

The BART trains had stopped running, and the bus system ground to a halt. Traffic on the streets was less than a third of what he was used to seeingl; a few vehicles still managed to chug along, but they would probably succ.u.mb to the petroplague before long. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks couldn't respond to emergency calls.

Harris rapped an old pencil on the side of the table in a nervous, sporadic drumbeat. "We can round up some people and head out to the Altamont commune. Doog won't mind so long as we work."

Daphne snorted. "Doog and work don't belong in the same sentence!" She had no quarrel with Doog's politics, but Daphne resented him for not sticking with the battle in the inner city.

Doog and a group of aging hippies had fled into the isolated hills between Livermore and Tracy years ago when they saw their John-Lennon world fading into yuppie-dom. When "liberal" became a dirty word, Doog had just shaken his head at Harris. "Man," he said, "has the world gone off the deep end, or what?"

Harris flipped the pencil down on the table and met Daphne's gaze. "Doog is doing just fine out there, Daph. He's only 40 miles away. He's got the aqueduct for water and windmills for power. They grow most of their own food. They've been living off the land for years. You got a better place in mind?"

Daphne shrugged. Sweat glistened on her cheeks. She had not put on makeup that morning, but Harris didn't think she had ever looked more beautiful. "Okay, it's a good enough spot to hide out for a while. I got no desire to be here to defend our home when the mob comes through."

Harris grabbed her hand and squeezed. "This is going to be a h.e.l.l of a lot worse than the Rodney King riots. It's not just a public temper tantrum. People are going to be starving before long, and they won't have soup kitchens. Come winter, they'll chop up anything that burns just to stay warm. If we want to save any of our people, we got to go someplace else, and soon."

"Rats leaving a sinking ship," Daphne muttered.