Part 31 (1/2)
”I doubt that,” Sam said. ”More like molten lava.”
”Well, good luck to you, then,” Dodge said.
”I never said I was interested,” Sam said.
”I know,” Dodge replied. ”But you also never said you weren't.”
Sam started to reply when a flash of light caught his eye from far out in the desert. A s.h.i.+ny stone? A broken bottle?
”Slow down,” he said, fiddling with the controls on the binoculars. A white mound came into focus, at least a hundred yards from the road. ”Go left-I want to check something out.”
Dodge steered the big wheels of the pickup off the highway and onto the hard dirt of the desert. The scrub made a whoos.h.i.+ng, sc.r.a.ping noise against the underbelly of the vehicle as they traveled.
”A little to the right,” Sam said, but by now Dodge had seen it too.
A few more yards and it became clear that the shapeless white patch of desert was in fact Tyler, and from the slight movement of his chest, he was still alive.
Dodge skidded the pickup to a halt beside him and grabbed a bottle of water off the seat as he jumped out.
Sam was already taking readings with the Geiger counter, but the level of radiation this far from the blast was no higher than normal background readings.
”Tyler,” Dodge yelled out, and there was a slight stirring from the mound.
Tyler's mask was off, lying beside him, and it was the sun reflecting off it that Sam had first seen, he realized. Out here, the radioactive dust was not so much of a problem; the danger lay in the heat.
Tyler's lips were dry and deeply cracked. His face was red and blotchy. His eyes were shut and did not open, even when Sam shook his arm and poured a little water into his mouth.
Dodge was grim-faced as he shouldered Tyler's body and eased him onto the backseat of the pickup.
46
RECOVERY
They took turns sitting with him, but it was Sam who was at Tyler's side when his eyes finally opened, wincing against the light from the window.
”Sam,” he said in a voice that sounded like dry skin rubbing deep in his throat.
”Don't talk,” Sam said, but Tyler took no notice.
He took a sip of water from a gla.s.s by his bed, then another, wincing each time he had to swallow. ”I spent the first day trying to find a car that worked, but their computers were all fried from the blast. Then I figured that the cars in Indian Springs might have escaped the EMP, so I tried to walk there.”
”You nearly died,” Sam said.
”When I was lying in the desert, after my legs gave out,” Tyler said, ”there were all these mad dreams chasing around inside my head.”
”Delirious with the heat, I expect,” said Sam.
”Seemed real at the time,” Tyler said. ”Which got me thinking about that memory of you and Dodge running out of the swamp. Vienna was right-I should have felt angry or shocked, but I didn't. It's just like a movie clip inside my head.”
”It never happened that way,” Sam said.
”And there were some other memories too,” Tyler said. ”Memories about stuff that Dodge had done in the past. Stuff that should have made me dislike him or at least distrust him. But I don't. I've always liked Dodge. Why would I feel that way if he had done bad things in the past?”
”She did that to you,” Sam said.
”Who? This Ursula creature that you keep talking about?”
”Yeah,” Sam said.
Tyler closed his eyes and laid his head back weakly on the pillow. ”She's been poking around inside my head. That ain't right.”
”She's gotta be stopped,” Sam agreed.
47
MEMORIES
The neuro-headset sat on a cradle beside the computer screen. Jaggard stared at it without enthusiasm.
He knew things he shouldn't know. He had seen things he could not possibly have seen, and he could not understand how this could be so.
He had images in his head of a Ford pickup truck. An F-150 crew cab with off-road suspension. It was missing, stolen, from a north city car dealers.h.i.+p. But how did he know that?
He clearly remembered seeing the same vehicle cruise past him in Fremont, although he had been nowhere near Fremont in the last few weeks. It was dark, but not so dark that he could not recognize Vienna at the wheel of the truck.
Even stranger was his recollection of the vehicle nearly colliding with him in Jean. He was driving a car, a small Honda.
It was dark, and he had forgotten to switch on his lights.
Suddenly, lights from another car were bearing down on him, and he had slammed on the brakes to see the big Ford pickup truck whistle past just in front of his nose.
The memory was vivid, yet he had never been to Jean and did not drive a small Honda.
He remembered seeing the pickup truck turn onto the old Boulevard in Las Vegas, which was the next strange thing to happen. n.o.body went out along the Boulevard anymore. There was nothing there. Not anymore.
Just the contamination zone.
These memories were not his. That was clear to him. They were memories of other people, somehow filtering through to him as those people reconnected to the neuro-network.