Part 10 (1/2)
She shuddered when she realized what would have happened if they had chosen to ride out this storm at the house, mistaking home for security.
”I can't see him anymore,” Neil said. ”I think...he continued north, the way he was going.”
In the rearview mirror, Molly saw only falling rain and clouds of backspray from the tires.
With a successful plea of insanity skillfully supported by a clever attorney, Render had avoided prison. He had spent the last twenty years in a series of mental inst.i.tutions. The first had been a maximum-security facility, but with each transfer, he had moved to a less restrictive environment, and been allowed more amenities.
Therapy and medications had helped him take slow steady steps out of his mental darkness. So the psychiatrists said, though their reports were written in circ.u.mlocutions and obfuscatory jargon meant to conceal that their conclusions were mere opinions unsupported by facts.
They claimed that he'd come to regret his actions, which by their way of thinking merited more relaxed living conditions and more frequent therapy sessions. If eventually he progressed from regret to remorse, he might then be viewed as rehabilitated and, under certain circ.u.mstances, might even be judged to have been cured.
The previous summer, his case had come up for mandatory review. The evaluating psychiatrists differed in their a.n.a.lyses of Render's condition. One recommended that he be released under supervision, but two opposed that recommendation, and he was remanded to the care of mental-health authorities for an additional two years.
”What've the idiots done?” Molly wondered, and in her agitation, she accelerated too much.
She half believed that the rearview mirror would sooner rather than later reveal Render in the backspray, running after her with inhuman balance and agility, with superhuman speed.
”If they've let him loose,” she said, ”the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are as sick as he is.”
”We don't know what's happening beyond these mountains, out in the wider world,” Neil reminded her, ”except that everything seems to be falling apart, breaking down. Not every last crewman on every sinking s.h.i.+p stays at his post.”
”Every man for himself,” Molly said. ”We've come to that now-if we haven't always been there.”
The pavement was greasy with oil, water. She felt the tires skating, but could not find the courage to slow down. Then gnawing tread bit blacktop, found purchase, and the four-wheel drive staved off a slide.
Neil said, ”This latest inst.i.tution he was transferred to...It's not exactly a stone-cell, steel-door, straitjacket sort of place.”
A short bitter laugh escaped her. ”Television in every room. p.o.r.n on demand, for its therapeutic value. High tea every afternoon, croquet on the south lawn. Maid service for those who promise, under penalty of the most severe disapproval, not to rape and kill the maids.”
She was in a dark humor that was new to her and, she sensed, dangerous to indulge.
”If the staff skipped,” Neil said, ”and surely they did did skip, the inmates wouldn't let ordinary locked doors and wire-gla.s.s windows hold them in for long.” skip, the inmates wouldn't let ordinary locked doors and wire-gla.s.s windows hold them in for long.”
”'We don't call them inmates,'” Molly said, quoting one of the psychiatrists. ”'We call them patients.'”
”But the most recent place they were keeping him-it's far up north.”
”Two hundred fifty miles from here,” she confirmed.
”The storm, this nightmare-it didn't begin so long ago.”
Indeed, when Molly considered the swiftness with which the usual order seemed to have given way to chaos, a jittering terror crawled the darker hallways of her mind. Could human civilization crumble significantly, worldwide, in a matter of hours, in but a quarter of a day, as suddenly as the planet itself might convulse if struck by an asteroid the size of Texas? If their as yet unseen adversary, come down from the stars, could topple centuries-old kingdoms and overturn all of history so swiftly, without meaningful resistance, then surely it was easy to foresee-and impossible to prevent-the eradication of every human life, in every low habitation and high redoubt on Earth, in just twenty-four hours.
If the technology of a greatly advanced extraterrestrial race would seem like purest magic to any civilization a thousand years its inferior, then the masters of that technology would be as G.o.ds-but perhaps G.o.ds with enigmatic desires and strange needs, G.o.ds without compa.s.sion, without mercy, offering no redemption, no viatic.u.m, and utterly unresponsive to prayer.
Neil said, of Render, ”He couldn't have broken out and gotten here so quickly. Not even with a fast car and your address, not in these driving conditions, with plenty of roads washed out or flooded between here and there.”
”But there he was, and walking,” Molly said.
”Yes, there he was.”
”Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us.”
”If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.”
In a few miles, they came to the turnoff to Black Lake, both the body of water and the town. Molly turned right, leaving the ridge, and followed the descending road, into the steadily darkening rain, its luminosity nearly spent, between ma.s.sive trees that rose in black ramparts, toward the hope of fellows.h.i.+p and the disquieting expectation of new terrors.
PART THREE.
”Through the dark cold and the empty desolation...”
-T. S. Eliot, East c.o.ker East c.o.ker
17.
MOLLY EXPECTED THAT THE POWER GRID would have failed by now and that the town would stand in darkness. Instead, the glimmer of shop lights and streetlamps was amplified by the refracting rain, so Black Lake looked as if it were the site of a festival.
With a year-round population of fewer than two thousand, the town was much smaller than Arrowhead and Big Bear, the two most popular destinations in these mountains. Lacking ski slopes, Black Lake didn't enjoy a winter boom, but in summer, campers and boaters outnumbered locals two to one.
The lake was fed by an artesian well, by a few small streams, and now by the deluge. Instead of mixing with the existing lake and being diluted by it, the acc.u.mulating rain seemed to float atop the original body of water, as oil would, its luminosity compounded by its volume, s.h.i.+ning as if the moon had fallen here.
With inflow substantially exceeding the floodgate outflow, the lake already had risen beyond its banks. The marina was under water, the boats tethered to cleats on submerged docks, the belaying ropes stretched taut.
Silver fingers of water explored with blind patience among the sh.o.r.eline buildings, learning the lay of the unfamiliar land, probing for weaknesses. If the rain continued unabated, within hours the houses and the businesses on the lowest street would disappear under the rising tide.
Molly had no doubt that during the coming day, the people of Black Lake would face worse threats than flooding.
With most houses brightened by lamplight in every window, the citizens were clearly alert to the dangers at their doorstep and to the momentous events in the world beyond these mountains. They knew that darkness was coming, in every sense of the word, and they wanted to press it back as long as possible.
Black Lake's residents were different from the former flatlanders and the vacation-home crowd drawn to the more glamorous mountain communities. These folks were at least third-or fourth-generation highlanders, in love with alt.i.tude and forests, with the comparative peacefulness of the San Bernardinos high above the overpopulated hills and plains to the west.
They were tougher than most city people, more self-sufficient. They were more likely to own a collection of firearms than was the average family in a suburban neighborhood.
The town wasn't big enough to have a police force of its own. Because of inadequate manpower spread over too much territory, the county sheriff's response time to a call from Black Lake averaged thirty-two minutes.
If some hopped-up loser, desperate for drug money or violent s.e.x, broke into your house, you could be killed five times over in thirty-two minutes. Consequently, most of these people were prepared to defend themselves-and with enthusiasm.
Molly and Neil saw no faces at any windows, but they knew that they were being monitored.
Although they had friends throughout Black Lake, neither of them was keen to go door-knocking, partly because of all those guns and their anxious owners. They were also wary of walking into a situation as bizarre as that at the Corrigan place.