"We're going to have to," Martin said. "If we can get over the San Gabriels we can reach Kern County by noon."

"If the roads aren't messed up that should be no problem," James added.

"We have a Thomas Brothers guide," Tracy piped in. She was sitting next to Emily. "I've never driven over to that side, but I'm sure we should be able to find a route."

"What kind of vehicle do you have?" Martin asked.

"We have an SUV," Tracy said. "I filled it up the day before yesterday."

"So it's got a full tank of gas?"

Tracy nodded.

"As long as the water is on we should shower, pack some essentials, get a route planned and get out of here," I said. I looked at Martin and James. "I don't know if any of my clothes will be a perfect fit for you guys, but I'll retrieve what I've got."

Tracy glanced at Lori. "I'll do the same for you."

"Thank you," Lori said.

"Where are we going?"

Heather had just entered the upper level of the house. She looked curious, but refreshed from sleep.

"Not sure yet," I said, gesturing toward the kitchen. "Help yourself to some coffee."

"Thanks." Heather shuffled into the kitchen and began serving herself.

Tracy and Lori were hunkered over their plates, ignoring Heather's presence, and I think Martin picked up on it. When he spoke it sounded like he was addressing Heather more than the rest of us. "We're thinking of leaving as soon as we can this morning. We're going to head into Kern County just to get away from the city. After that, we don't know yet."

"Wherever we go, it should be as far away from people as possible," Heather said. She poured herself the last of the coffee.

"I agree." Martin regarded the rest of us at the table. "Anybody have any suggestions?"

"Not yet," I said. "I say we take it one step at a time and try to make it over this mountain first."

"The sooner the better," James said.

Heather took her meal at the kitchen counter. I stood up, already finished. "Heather, sit down," I said, moving past her. To the others, I called out, "Anybody want more coffee?"

The answer to that was affirmative.

As I made a second pot of coffee we talked about a game plan. Most of the ideas came from Martin and me. The more I listened to Martin talk, the more I liked him. He had a take-charge att.i.tude that was a.s.sertive and calming. It was obvious he'd been very successful in the corporate world, and it was good to have somebody with his logical and a.n.a.lytical mind on our side. Lori was just as sharp, and several times she countered some of Martin's suggestions not with a reb.u.t.tal, but with a devil's advocate type question. "Say we make it as far as Edwards Air Force Base," she mused at one point. "What the h.e.l.l we gonna do out there in the middle of the d.a.m.n desert?"

"We can at least see if any military personnel have survived," Martin explained. "I'm betting most of them haven't. If they're primitives, they've scattered by now. If any remain, we kill them and we can get more weapons and provisions from the base."

"And if anybody's human and they're hostile?" Lori asked.

Martin's face clouded. "That's a possibility, but to think about that will only hinder us."

"I say anybody we meet from now on who's human will need to be treated with extreme caution," Tracy offered.

As we debated this I watched Heather. She wolfed down her food, occasionally glancing at the others with a sense of distrust in her eyes. Yep, that girl could sure hold a grudge. I noticed Tracy watching her occasionally. I could tell she and Lori weren't taking well to Heather's presence. As long as they remained civil about it, I didn't care if they weren't speaking to her. Still, I'd have to keep an eye on Heather myself.

With a second pot of coffee brewed and breakfast finished, Tracy swung into action as director of evacuation. "There's showers in both bathrooms," she said. "Lori and Martin, if you want to go first, go for it. Towels are in the linen closet downstairs. I'll get some clean clothes for both of you."

As everybody sprang into action, Heather remained at the table eating. Tracy got Emily up and headed downstairs with her while Martin and Lori retreated to the bathrooms to shower and change. I headed downstairs to keep stock of the weapons and a.s.sist Tracy.

I was in the master bedroom gathering clothes for the guys and myself when Tracy came in with Emily. She closed the door. "Stay right here, sweetie," she told Emily.

Emily nodded and sat down on the floor. She looked solemn.

Tracy approached me and when we talked it was in low, yet pa.s.sionate, tones. "I know Heather's just a kid, but I don't trust her," she said. "I'd like to get rid of her once we get on the other side of the mountain."

"Get rid of her?"

"Yes! Just dump her at the side of the road or something. Let her fend for herself."

"Tracy-"

"I. Don't. Trust her!" Tracy's features were grim. Determined. She had an icy sense of resolve in her eyes. Her decision was Final.

"I don't trust her completely myself, but we can't just drop her off in the middle of the desert and let her fend for herself!"

"What do you suggest we do then? We can't take everybody to the cabin?"

"No, we can't." I'm glad she brought the subject of the cabin up. We were on the same wavelength then. I'd been thinking of heading to the cabin ever since late yesterday when I realized things were no longer going to be safe for us in Los Angeles.

"I really like Lori," Tracy said. "And Martin and James seem like great guys. But I don't like Heather and after what happened last night, I don't know if I can trust her around Emily."

"I agree we need to be careful around her." I was choosing my words carefully, my brain on autopilot now. "And I think Martin is hip to what you're feeling." I gave Tracy a brief recap of my conversation with Martin last night.

"We still need to talk about the cabin," Tracy said.

I sighed. Tracy was right. The cabin would be empty now. n.o.body in my family had been scheduled to be there this week, which meant the power would be turned off and there'd be minimal food there. There was the possibility the cabin was stocked with dry and canned goods, however. Things like fresh juice or meats could be procured (again, depending if the power was still on and things weren't spoiled) from the local store once we arrived in town. The best thing about the cabin? Our closest neighbor was two miles away. The fewer people who were in the area when this. .h.i.t, the fewer primitives there would be.

"I agree," I said. "What do you think we should do?"

"I trust everybody except Heather. I say we tell her she has to leave when we get over the mountain."

"What about everybody else?" I countered. "I have a feeling James isn't going to be so wild about that." My general feeling was that James was not only the live-and-let live type of guy, but very liberal. I mean, h.e.l.l, he was a college professor.

Tracy didn't look happy. She glowered at me. "What if she does something to Emily?"

"She won't." I was serious about this. "There's enough of us now that if anything happens, Emily will be protected. And I hardly think you or I would let Heather be alone with Emily for even one second."

Tracy sighed. "You're right." She glanced at Emily, then back at me. "Okay. She stays."

"You and Emily are the most important people to me," I said. "I do not intend to let her out of our sight for even an instant. You got me?"

Tracy sighed, nodded, and we embraced quickly. "Come on," I whispered. "Let's get going."

Like a well-oiled machine, we showered and dressed in fresh clothes. Tracy gave Emily a bath. I found fresh clothes for James and Martin from my stock and packed two pairs of jeans and shorts and two pairs of T-shirts for me, along with socks and a pair of Doc Martens. I also scrounged up some heavy winter clothing-three sets-in the event we wound up in the mountains during the winter months. Martin commented to me that this was a good idea (I hadn't told him about the cabin yet. He simply surmised it was good I was thinking ahead).

When Heather was in the shower I packed up all the ammunition and magazines and stowed them in the back of the SUV. I placed ammo and magazines beneath the front seats. Our rule for keeping control of the guns still stood between Tracy and I. I had a hunting knife I'd picked up somewhere and I attached it to my holster, making sure it was in the sheath it came in. We also packed up toiletries, batteries, candles, matches, flashlights, food and essential cooking utensils, and fresh water. Tracy packed clothes for herself and Emily. She also packed up our two baby photo alb.u.ms of Eric and Emily, and I grabbed the CD ROMs of our photos to go along with my iBook (which also contained backup disks of all my work...not that I'd be doing anything with it, but old habits die hard).

All this stuff fit very neatly into the back of the SUV.

As we gathered the last of our things to stow into the SUV I felt a slight sting at the back of my throat. Everybody had finished showering and was in fresh clothing (I'd found two shirts that fit Martin and he was wearing the jeans he was wearing yesterday; I didn't have any that fit him). I had the keys, and Tracy had the Thomas Brothers Guide in hand. I was looking at the living room, ignoring the broken windows and the bloodstain on the floor, and I felt a sudden pang of loss. I took a breath and looked at Tracy. I think she was feeling the same thing because I saw a tear roll down her cheek. We were leaving our home, our sanctuary. We were leaving memories. We brought Emily home from the hospital as an infant to this house. We grew as a family here. I reached the height of my career in this home when I wrote the screenplay that went on to be a major box office hit two years ago and put a lot of money in our portfolio. Likewise, Tracy spread her wings in this house and left the corporate nine-to-five grind for the uncertainty of freelancing.

And now we were leaving it.

"Come on," I said. I grabbed Tracy's hand, gave it a squeeze. "Let's go."

Tracy stifled back a sob and allowed me to pull her away. Emily was standing by her side and I think the fact that we were leaving the only home she'd ever known was affecting her, too. She looked sad, reflective.

The others were gathered at the doorway to the garage. Martin nodded to me. "I checked the front. We're clear."

I closed the door that led into the house. We were huddled around the front of the SUV. "Okay," I said. "There's six adults, one child. Emily will sit in Tracy's lap in the front seat. I've placed the luggage and supplies on the rear seats and in the back compartment, so even though we're pretty full with luggage we should still be able to seat all four of you, but it'll be tight."

"No problem," Martin said.

We piled in the SUV. Previously, I'd handed the Kimber to Tracy, so she was armed with it and two extra magazines. I'd unloaded the rifle and placed it on the floor of the front seat. Fully loaded magazines were within easy reach. Even though I trusted Martin and Lori, who were sitting directly behind us in the back seat, I felt uneasy about letting them have a loaded rifle within easy reach of Heather. Tracy's paranoia over Heather was making me nervous about her.

"Here goes," I said. I opened the garage door with the remote.

The garage door whirred open. I put the SUV in reverse and backed out into our street.

The neighborhood was laden with smoke that was growing thicker. There were no signs of people or primitives anywhere. As I pulled the car down the street I pa.s.sed my first body-it was my neighbor, Stan Ellwood, dressed in his suit. Something had been at him and torn his left arm from his body and gouged his eyeb.a.l.l.s out of his head. His head was one raw ma.s.s of flesh and splintered bone. Something that looked like red, curdled cheese leaked out of his skull.

Tracy held Emily close to her, keeping her face averted from the body.

With a sinking sense of loss, we made our way out of our neighborhood.

We made it over the San Gabriel Mountains with no trouble at all. The main highway that wound its way through the rocky pa.s.ses was mostly empty. A few vehicles had crashed into the sides of rock walls, their pa.s.sengers either dead from the impact or scampered off...in what state, I don't know. The farther away we got from Los Angeles, the more the smoke began to thin out, but that took a good while. Los Angeles County is pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n big, and it took sixty miles and almost three hours to put us away from much of the smoke and smog that still enveloped the city like a blanket.

During the three-hour ride we didn't speak much. We also didn't see any living human beings.

But we saw plenty of primitives.

We saw our first one just as we reached the bottom of the San Gabriel Mountains, on the other side of the valley. A group of them were huddled around a crashed vehicle and as we sped by they yelled, waved their arms, and started chasing us. They gave up the pursuit after a short distance.

"There's gonna be more," Martin said from the back seat.

"Don't worry," I said, gripping the steering wheel. "We're not stopping for anything."

By one o'clock we were in Kern County heading north. This section of California is barren desert. Death Valley is close by, and in the summer the temperature can climb to one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. We had our route well mapped, though. We'd skirt Bakersfield on the north, cut through Edwards Air Force base to the south and head north toward the Sierra Nevada mountain range. With any luck, we'd get to our cabin tomorrow.

I thought about what we should do during our drive through the San Gabriels. We couldn't just dump Heather in Kern County, and we couldn't turn James, Martin, and Lori away from our cabin. It would be wrong. I was determined to talk to Tracy about this in private when we pulled over for a rest and a bite to eat. I was hoping she'd settled down on her feelings toward Heather. If not, I didn't know what we were going to do. The Heather problem hung over me, an unnecessary burden.

We pa.s.sed plenty of primitives. Some were far off in barren fields and we heard them hoot and holler as we pa.s.sed. Others were spotted at rest stops, near cars and buildings. There was no way they could catch us, and as we drove my hopes began to dwindle. If the primitives stayed close to where they'd been most familiar with when they were human, that would mean we'd come across quite a few of them on our trek to the mountains. I was hoping they would have scattered, sought more developed areas. Apparently that didn't seem to be the case as we pa.s.sed pockets of primitives on our trek through Kern County. It was a little like driving through the San Diego Wild Animal Park, except the animals were human.

We stopped along a barren stretch of road to rest and grab a quick bite to eat and quench our thirst. We piled out of the SUV, hot and sweaty and alert for anything. The last primitives we'd pa.s.sed were ten miles back. I kept my eyes peeled for anything weird as Lori got the rear of the SUV open. Tracy kept Emily close to her side as we all made our way to the back of the vehicle.

We sat on the side of the road and ate a quick lunch of fruit, and peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwiches that Tracy and Heather made. We'd pa.s.sed a rest area fifteen miles back that appeared deserted, which consisted of a pair of gas stations and a couple of fast food restaurants. Before that was farmland. There were no signs of dwellings or business establishments to be seen in the last fifty miles. I always wondered about rest stops like the one we'd pa.s.sed. Where did they get the people who worked them? With no housing nearby, I found it hard to believe fast food workers would drive all that way to work a minimum wage job.

I was thinking about this little diversion that, in the old days, would have been the basis for a short story. It would probably be something about alien pod people sprouting out of the ground at the crack of dawn to work at these gas stations and fast food facilities. I grew suddenly sad. There would be no more short stories. No more novels, no more essays or columns in magazines and web publications. No more screenplays. No more movies, for that matter. Civilization as we knew it was gone, and if it had been any other time I would have had a crying fit.

Instead what interrupted my little reverie was the howl.

I was up in a flash. The others stopped eating-most of us were already finished-and looked around. I looked north and saw two things: several people running toward us from about five hundred yards away to the north, and a vehicle heading down a secondary road in the same direction toward the highway we were parked on.

"Get in the car," I said.

Everybody scrambled. Food was picked up, supplies thrown in the back of the SUV, the door slammed shut. I nodded at Martin and he dashed toward the front of the SUV and grabbed the Ruger and magazines. I made my way toward the driver's side of the SUV and drew my handgun, keeping watch on the vehicle and the primitives. The vehicle reached the road we were on and started heading toward us.

I checked out the primitives. They were running fast. If we left now, did a U Turn and started heading in the direction we came from we could out-distance them easily.

But there was that other vehicle to consider.

How many people were in it? And were they friend or foe?

Everybody got into the SUV and I could hear Emily start to cry. My heart was racing as I caught Martin's gaze. His features were set in grim determination. He jacked a round in the chamber and I realized that the vehicle was coming at us too fast. It would be on us at any minute and I did the only thing I could do. I yelled at everybody in the SUV. "Get down!" Then I joined Martin at the front of the SUV, pulled my gun and waited.

The vehicle drew up across the road from us and I saw it was a Jeep. There was a man behind the wheel-he was white, that much I was sure of in the few seconds that followed.

As the Jeep pulled up the man shouted, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! They're coming!"

I saw that the people running toward us were primitives and they were yelling in a mad war whoop, gaining rapidly. There were about half a dozen of them and were now about fifty yards away. I aimed, and squeezed off three shots.

More gunshots followed. I heard Martin shooting at them with the Ruger and I heard a third firearm that at first I could not immediately place. The primitives were shot and dropped. I looked toward the Jeep and saw the driver was cradling some kind of rifle. He'd opened fire through the open pa.s.senger side window at the primitives. He turned toward us, his rifle still aimed out the pa.s.senger side of his vehicle. "Are there any coming from the east?"

"No," Martin shouted.

I saw the man look down the road toward where we'd just come from. I heard Martin say, "Nothing coming from the north, either."

And that's how we met Wesley Smitts.

Six.