"Pilgrims heading for the promised land," he corrected.

Three buses sat in different states of decrepitude in the parking lot of the Holy Grace Baptist Church. Rusted cans and junk-food wrappers littered the chain-link fence against the red-brick church building. Two basketball hoops sat unused on either end of the lot; it had been years since a chain-net had graced either hoop, and the painted court lines had long since worn off the pavement. Despite the security fence, gang graffiti was spray-painted in black and bright blue on the sides of the buses.

The Reverend Timothy Rudge handed Daphne Harris the keys to the vehicles. He was a stocky man with strange spindly arms and legs, dressed in worn jeans and a maroon sweatshirt. He pursed his full lips. "I haven't gone anywhere for days. They might not work, you know."

"They probably won't," Daphne said, clutching the keys. "But one of them just might, and we only need one. That plague is spreading, but it can't eat everything at once. We might get lucky." She paused and looked at his face, weatherbeaten from years of preaching on the streets. "Sure you won't come along?"

He shook his head. "Somebody has to stay behind. Might as well be me. You and Jackson been working with these people on your wilderness experience programs. You know what they can do if they let themselves believe in it. They deserve a chance."

Reverend Rudge turned wearily and watched Jackson sweating as he pulled another load of blankets and supplies from the church shelter. Daphne rattled the keys in her hand. "What about you, Reverend? If things get bad-"

"When things get bad around here, we'll call the congregation to the church. Make a stand."

"You'll never be able to protect yourselves," Daphne said, a lump in her throat.

"We can try. We just may be able to keep an island of stability here downtown. Have faith."

"I hope so," she said, knowing as she spoke that her words were false. From the reverend's fatalistic expression, she knew he understood it too. She turned away, unable to look at him any longer.

She went to the newest of the three buses and climbed into the bucket seat. Daphne had driven this bus often when they took their volunteer groups. She tensed in a combination of hope and dread as she jingled through the key ring to find the proper key. Her fingers were slick with sweat as she jammed the key into the ignition and twisted hard, as if to show the vehicle who was boss.

But the engine refused to turn over. She tried four times, without success. Jackson stood in the parking lot, watching her. He shrugged and pointed to the next vehicle. Sighing, Daphne climbed out and went to the second bus, an older model with two broken windows.

Jackson continued to haul supplies for the trip. Volunteers from the Harris's recent crusades gathered in the church, people who were willing to work for a cause, people who didn't have anything else to lose in their daily lives. Of course, if none of the buses started, the whole expedition would never happen. Daphne couldn't allow herself to admit that possibility.

The second bus protested, but Daphne gritted her teeth and kept grinding the starter. The engine finally coughed to life and rumbled like a tiger with a stomach ache. Blue-black diesel exhaust, already smelling foul from the first attacks of the petroplague, spat out the rear. She raised her fist in the air, and Jackson set down his paper grocery bags on the pavement and mirrored the gesture.

"Okay, everybody! Get the stuff on board the bus," Jackson Harris shouted. "We got to drive out past Livermore, and we don't know if this bus is gonna last. I hope you're all wearing walking shoes."

"Yeah, right, Jackson!" said Lindie, a whip-thin single mother with five children. "We bought two hundred-dollar Nikes with the leftovers from my check this month!" Harris felt abashed, knowing she'd probably had enough trouble just finding shoelaces for all her kids.

A young couple walked to the bus: the large-eyed boy sixteen years old, the tired-looking girl no more than fifteen and very pregnant. They had been sticking together, trying to sc.r.a.pe together enough money to eat. The offer of leaving downtown Oakland to live out in the country seemed like paradise to them.

Denyse, a pouty thirteen-year-old girl, boarded alone, mastering a haughty expression. Harris had a high opinion of her; she was intelligent and headstrong-but her mother was a hooker, and Denyse would probably end up on the same dead-end path unless someone rescued her.

The group of refugees included two vacant-eyed homeless men, Clint and Albert, who had given up on a system that had no interest in giving them another chance; now they looked on Jackson Harris as if he just might be as good as his word.

A short fourteen-year-old boy hung on the other side of the chainlink fence and snickered, as if trying to look bigger. "Hey, f.u.c.k this boyscout trip!"

Harris crossed his arms over his chest and walked up against the fence, staring the kid down. Harley acted as if he'd always wanted to be in a gang, but had never actually joined. Instead, he tried to look tough, making loudmouthed comments but backing off whenever he was challenged. Harris had seen it happen a dozen times before.

"Suits me fine, Harley. We don't want chicken-s.h.i.ts along. We need real tough dudes, not hot air and stuffed jackets."

Harley bristled. "Who you talking about? I'm guarding my turf!"

"Look at yourself, man. There ain't gonna be any of your turf left in a month, and we're going to be sitting warm and happy out by the windmills." He made a gesture of dismissal at the young man and turned away. "Anybody too stupid to see the change coming is bound to get stomped on."

Harris had managed to get the kid to come help them on Angel Island, putting him to work on the charcoal grills cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. Before that, Harley had complained about a "stupid road trip" to Yosemite National Park, which Harris and Daphne and the Reverend Rudge had also staged-but the kid had spent most of the day staring slack-jawed at the towering granite rock walls and the gushing waterfalls.

Now their eyes met, and Harris smiled at him. He knew Harley wouldn't survive another week as the turmoil exploded in Oakland and all around the Bay Area.

"And what would I want with you boyscouts, huh?" Harley sneered. "Go out and mow some cracker's lawn?"

"No," Harris shook his head, grinning. "They got cows for that. Think you wanna be a cowboy?"

"Bulls.h.i.t!"

"Yeah, and cow s.h.i.t. Probably horse s.h.i.t, too. We got it all. But it's gonna be hard work, not for dumb f.u.c.ks. You better stay here, Harley." He walked back to the bus. "Go ahead and guard your turf."

The young man postured and scowled at Harris. "I know what you're trying to do, man! You're crazy!"

Harris shrugged. "I been called crazy by white people before-but I usually pull it off anyway. Just remember that."

He brought the last box of supplies, a grease-stained, ragged cardboard box, and climbed aboard the bus. Daphne gave him a quick kiss, then yanked the bus door shut, as if this would be another one of their day-trips to a state park. Harris looked out the broken side window to see Harley standing by the chain-link fence, a troubled expression on his face.

Then the bus shuddered and died.

The people on the bus gave a simultaneous groan, and Daphne struck the horn with her fist in frustration. It peeped weakly. Reverend Rudge stood at the door of his church, hanging his head. He kneaded his thin hands in front of his waist. Lindie, the woman with five kids, said, "We can't walk all that way!"

Harris stood up. "Hey, let's try the last bus before we all start b.i.t.c.hing! And if it starts, you need to haul a.s.s and get the supplies transferred. We could have gone five miles in the last few minutes we sat here in the parking lot."

Daphne opened the bus door and swung down, keys in hand. She did not look optimistic about the third vehicle, which sagged on weak suspension. Bullet holes scarred its olive-painted sides, and a great spiderweb crack blazed across the windshield. It had only one wiper blade-in front of the driver's seat, luckily-but the other had been snapped off.

b.u.mping each other, the pa.s.sengers piled out, kids laughing or crying or punching each other. The grown-ups carried grocery bags, boxes, blankets, pillows. Harris grabbed a second load, setting up a fire-brigade line from one bus to the other. He looked up and paused. Harley had left his heckler's spot at the fence and began to help.

"Holy s.h.i.t, look who's got a brain after all," Harris said.

"f.u.c.k you, man."

When Daphne turned the key in the ignition, the engine chugged, then miraculously caught; it sounded as if it had a few more miles left in it. "Come on!" Daphne shouted. She hauled back on the lever that swung the door shut even before Harris had climbed the steps. She jammed her foot on the clutch and fought with the stick, ramming it into first gear. The bus lurched forward.

Harris held onto the bar, expecting to hear the bus stall out, but the engine kept up its chugging, indigestion sound. Harris and Daphne both waved at the Reverend Rudge through the cracked windshield.

The bus crawled out onto the city streets, avoiding stalled cars and walking people. Two dark-skinned businessmen thumped on the side of the bus as it rolled by. A Volkswagen beetle putted across an intersection ahead of them. Traffic was sporadic enough that Daphne ignored the streetlights, afraid to risk idling the bus's engine.

Throwing her arms and shoulder into the effort, Daphne wrestled with the steering wheel, fluttering her foot on the gas pedal, trying to keep the vehicle moving by sheer willpower. They crawled out of downtown Oakland and onto the freeway network, easing through intersections and not daring to stop at corners. Occasionally a stalled car blocked one of the lanes. The shoulder looked like a parking lot with abandoned automobiles.

She turned her head to watch them as the bus moved by; she wished she could offer them a hand, but it would be impossible to help all the crowds, all the lives affected by the spreading disaster. She and Jackson couldn't do everything.

The bus engine popped, as if it had begun missing on one or more cylinders, but Daphne kept driving eastward, away from the city. She squeezed the gip of the steering wheel, adding her own willpower to the engine. Every mile brought them closer.

In a weak attempt to dilute the anxiety and tension, Jackson and the other pa.s.sengers broke into a few verses of "99 Bottles of Beer," which degenerated into silliness and nervous laughter. But even the songs faded into a subdued quiet.

Daphne looked up in the bus mirror, seeing two dozen glistening or averted eyes, pa.s.sengers biting their lips, making fists in their laps, gripping the seat backs. They could not pretend this would be another exhilarating day trip. They were leaving their lives and everything they knew behind.

About forty miles and two hours later, the battered church bus pa.s.sed Livermore and exited the freeway onto a narrow road that led into the rural Altamont hills. Daphne expected the bus to die at any moment, but they had escaped from the city. Before long, Oakland would probably burn to the ground in an unchecked firestorm much worse than the fire that had leveled the hilly, rich part of the city a few years earlier.

Their group would be safe out among the windmills.

Daphne coaxed the bus past ugly, out-of-the-way auto wrecking yards and gravel supply lots alongside railroad tracks, which reminded her of the more desolate sections of downtown Oakland. She also saw a sign for the Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, government research centers that sat quietly near the foothills. With all the funding they stole from human works projects, Daphne hoped they could come up with a solution to this petroplague crisis.

By now, the engine gasped and burbled, as if every minute would be its last. The pa.s.sengers had started talking to each other again with relief and excitement. Some of the kids kept their faces plastered to the windows, though the gra.s.sy, hilly landscape offered nothing particularly exciting to look at.

Jackson sat up front next to her, staring out the windshield. "It's gonna be okay, Daph," he said. It sounded like a mantra. He rubbed her shoulder. "We can walk from here if we got to."

"I know it."

The bus toiled up the narrow, winding road, filling most of the width of the pavement. Steep dropoffs fell away to her right; the road had no guard rail, only a line of drooping barbed wire partway down the slope to fence grazing cattle. They saw few houses.

Daphne turned her entire body at the steering wheel to wrench the bus around a sharp curve. The engine belched and stalled out, but she was able to flutter her foot on the gas pedal, coaxing it back to life for just a few feet more.

Up ahead, a sign said ROAD NARROWS. "Great," she muttered.

At the crest of the hills, the engine died for good. Momentum carried them forward a few feet more, and Daphne jammed the gear shift into neutral. The bus kept rolling until finally gravity helped them along.

"We can coast downhill for a while," she said.

Jackson was grinning. He squeezed her shoulder. "We've only got another mile or so anyway. We made it!" He shouted, and the others joined him in the cheer.

As they came out of the shadow of the hills around a corner, the panorama of the Altamont range spread out. The pa.s.sengers leaned to the left side of the bus, talking among themselves.

The rolling, gra.s.s-covered hills seemed to go on forever. Covering the range were thousands and thousands of windmills like a mechanical army, their blades turning in the clean breeze.

Chapter 35.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT.

FROM:a.s.sISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT.

FOR SCIENCE, s.p.a.cE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY.

SUBJECT:MATERIAL AFFECTED BY "PETROPLAGUE"

The following list of items has been compiled to help a.s.sess the scope of the spreading "petroplague." Because of the uncertain nature of the microorganism and the varying compositions of many plastic formulations, all or some of these items may be compromised by an attack from the plague.

For a complete discussion of the suspected chemistry and decomposition a.n.a.lysis for 72 representative petroleum-based polymers, please see Appendix F (attached).

Styrofoam cups and packing materials Food packaging Vinyl car seats Shampoo and toiletry bottles Electrical wire insulation (NOTE: natural rubber seems to be excluded) Shoe components/soles Shoelace tips Automobile gaskets Plastic plants Soda straws Balloons Pens Acrylic display cases Linoleum Carpet fibers Polyester clothing Acrylic coatings Weather stripping Magnetic tape substrates Compact disc substrates Circuit boards Some paints and sealants Computer monitors Certain components of furniture Telephone handsets Medical hypodermic syringes Eyegla.s.s frames Soft contact lenses

Chapter 36.

Up in the mountains, the house trailer's old kerosene heater had stopped working. Fumbling in the dimness, d.i.c.k Morgret tried a fourth time to light it, without success. He kicked the piece of junk with a rattling metallic clatter, then tossed the wooden match stub on the floor. Groggy with sleep, Morgret stumbled around the cramped trailer, trying to remember where he kept the extra blankets.

An early-summer rainstorm swept over the California mountains, drenching the Last Chance gas station out in the middle of nowhere. Morgret had awakened shivering on his cot. He listened to raindrops hammering on the metal roof; trickles of water leaked inside, soaking his possessions. He grumbled, but didn't waste breath on any of his really good obscenities, since no one else was there to hear him.

He yanked one of the ratty quilts from the storage cubicle under the dinette table. The heavy cloth smelled of mildew, but the rest of the trailer had plenty of strong odors to mask it.

As he lay back on the cot, waiting for his body heat to warm the blankets, water dripped through new leaks in the walls. Every inch of insulation had turned to toothpaste, letting water seep in from all corners. Earlier that evening he had tried stuffing rags into the cracks, but then gave up and just draped canvas tarps over the furniture. The whole friggin trailer was falling apart, just like his life. What else was new?

His bed remained cold, as if his body couldn't spare any heat for the blankets. He'd slept alone for close to sixteen years now. He had buried three wives already and had no interest in making it four. All of them had been beefy and bossy-but sometimes he missed the simple pleasure of someone else making noise in the house, or keeping the bed warm. Now, the only sound he heard as he finally drifted off to sleep was the patter of rain leaking through the widening cracks in his home.

By morning the air had cleared. Morgret glanced out the window. The creek winding down from the mountains had swelled from the rainstorm. In the distance, he could see a few wild horses trotting around in the meadows.

He got up, stepped in a puddle of cold water, and sat down on a card-table chair to peel off his soggy, threadbare socks. After using the c.r.a.pper out back, he shuffled to the two gasoline pumps under the rickety aluminum awning. He had nothing better to do than spend the day waiting for customers who would never come.

Highway 178 wound through the mountains, descending into the great desert basin of dry lake beds, military testing ranges, and Death Valley. Morgret hadn't seen any traffic on the road for two days, and the last car had not stopped by. No traffic, no customers. No customers, no income. No income, nothing to pay off the creditors.