CHAPTER
24
STELLA WAS ABLE to maintain her forty miles per hour goal over the next several miles. The freezing rain had changed almost completely to regular rain, which pattered against the hood of the old truck with the comforting familiarity of rain on a tin roof. But with the smoke-darkened sky and dusk getting closer and closer, visibility was poor—though good enough to see that the land around them was sparsely populated. There were some homes near the highway, but the only movement around them was farm animals—mostly goats. Fires were visible, close to the highway and distant, though the rain had reduced the majority of them to smoking skeletons.
Throughout the entire area, they glimpsed pockets of green. It tended to rest close to the ground, but once it got rolling and the wind caught it, the fog lifted and curled and drifted—almost as if it was sentient. Twice it covered the road. Stella sped through it, and the fog scattered and billowed in their wake like they were a boat cutting through a river of green.
Gradually, from the rain-soaked, smoke-ravaged landscape, canyons and huge gulches began to appear, like oasis dreams in a desert. There was a stark, raw beauty to the land that intrigued Mercury. The brownness with scrub, sagebrush, and twisted juniper trees reminded her of parts of Oklahoma, which alternatively made her feel at home and made her heart ache.
They only saw one other living person. A woman sat on the porch of a rundown ranch-style home that had been built close to the road. A tin roof protected her from the rain. She was wrapped in a coat several sizes too big. Goats climbed the porch around her. She stood and held a rifle in her arms as she eyed their passing truck.
“I’m not stopping,” said Stella.
“You won’t get an argument from me,” said Mercury.
“Me either,” added Gemma. “Gotta figure if someone greets you with a gun—it’s not gonna be a friendly meeting.”
“Good point,” said Stella.
Gemma sighed as she stared out the window. “I hope we don’t have to camp out here tonight.”
“Us too, kid,” Stella said.
“I’ve been thinking about that Rutland guy,” said Gemma. “I wonder why he isn’t dead.”
“Huh?” Mercury turned to face the teenager.
“Yeah, uh, he had a nose bleed three days ago. It killed Bob in a day. I just wonder why it didn’t kill Rutland.”
“I hadn’t thought about that, but I did see blood below his nose, so he still has the nosebleed. Your spidey senses tell you anything about that?” Mercury asked her friend.
Stella paused before she sighed and shook her head. “Nope. Other than common sense—that we have no idea what the green fog actually is, so it’s tough to even hypothesize about what it does to us, or how fast.”
“I have a guess,” said Gemma.
“Let’s hear it, kid,” said Stella.
“I’ll bet it has something to do with how much green stuff they were exposed to—and might also be affected by other conditions they had. Like, Bob was a super sweet guy, but he also had diabetes.”
“Really?” Mercury said.
“Yep. He told me that while I was doctoring him. And, not to be mean because, like I said, Bob was a nice guy, but he was also pretty chubby. I remember Rutland. He looked like he was in super good shape, which doesn’t always mean anything, but…” She shrugged. “In AP chemistry, just before spring break we learned about viral loads. That’s, um, well, how much of the particles of a virus a person has to breathe in, or come in contact with if it’s not airborne, to make that person sick. Remember that big Winnebago that was crashed next to where you found mom and me?”
“Yeah, your mom said Rutland and his people hunkered down against it when the second blast hit,” said Mercury.
“So maybe Rutland and his men were shielded from enough of the green stuff that it’s kept him—and them—from dying,” said Gemma. “Todd and Jason—the guys in the Winnebago—weren’t so lucky. They were inside and passed out when the green stuff hit, but the green fog was inside with them. They definitely breathed in more of it than Rutland, which is why they died sooner.”
“That does make sense,” said Stella.
Mercury nodded. “Yeah, it does. Here’s hoping Rutland breathed in enough of it to eventually kill him. Our new world doesn’t need men like him. Our old one had enough of them.”
“Agreed” said Stella.
“Not possible now, of course, but I’d love to see a scientific study on it,” said Mercury.
Gemma nodded and then folded her hands in her lap. “Um, can I ask something?”
“Sure. Anything,” said Mercury.