He had no choice but to slow down, the road was in such bad shape. The crater had cousins, some so large there was barely enough room to squeeze past. What remained of the pavement was cracked and eroded.
Not potholes, he thought as they avoided another. Impact craters, the kind explosives would make. Though he let their speed fall to forty, the ride was still bumpy enough to jar the fillings out of your teeth.
"I’ve heard of infrequent maintenance, but this is ridiculous." The landscape looked normal in the moonlight. High mountains off to the right, trees and bushes scattered behind the shoulder, and off to the left, in the distance, a vast sheet of water gleaming like aluminum foil. The Great Salt Lake.
Some shortcut we took, he told himself. "Where are we now?"
"On the right road to the Vanishing Point." Mouse had relaxed back in her chair.
"I don’t give a shit about the Vanishing Point."
"Gentle, Frank, gentle." She smiled at him. "This is the way your family came, too."
Burnfingers was staring out the windshield. "I do not like this. It feels all wrong, and I am not talking about the condition of the road. Do you want me to drive for a while, Frank?"
"No, thanks. I’ll be okay."
They passed one road sign, but it was broken, knocked off its supporting posts as if by a high wind. Frank tried but couldn’t make out what it said.
If anything, the road became worse as they neared the city’s outskirts. They saw no other vehicles, a fact, which might’ve been acceptable outside a town like Cedar City, but which was full of ominous portents for a metropolis the size of Salt Lake.
"Ought to be some traffic." Frank scanned the road ahead. "Couple of trucks at least." He glanced to his right. "We’re on another reality line, right? Burnfingers’s on ramp didn’t just put us back on the same highway." Mouse just nodded. "Well, I don’t think I like this one as much as the last, even if the people hereabouts lie like normal."
"It is not as bad as Hell."
"That a fact? We don’t know that yet." He looked back over his shoulder. "Where’s the chief?"
"In the back."
Burnfingers rejoined them moments later, having altered his appearance. He’d exchanged his flannel shirt for one of black cotton and his red headband for another of equally dark material. White and red lines decorated his face.
"War paint," he told Frank. "I had to improvise. I hope your woman will not mind my making use of her makeup kit. It was all I could find to work with."
Frank nodded his approval. "Seems appropriate under the circumstances."
"Mary Kay and Revlon." Burnfingers tried but was unable to repress a grin. "Not very traditional, but it will have to do."
"Getting ready for war?" Mouse inquired.
"I am always at war with something, little singer. This is serious business." Frank saw that Burnfingers had strapped on a holster that contained an enormous stainless-steel handgun. He was leaning on Steven’s baseball bat. Burnfingers noticed his stare. "Somebody whacked me pretty good. I want to be ready to whack him back. Newton’s Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Pretty smart dude, for a white man."
Mouse pointed out an intact sign.
SALT LAKE CITY — 20 Miles
Frank was flipping through his maps as he dodged potholes. "What happened to Provo? We should be in Provo right now."
There was no sign of the college town. The highway curved around the sloping mass of a vast hill. Only when the sun finally put in a reluctant appearance over the mountains did they see that the ground had been turned to slag, as if the whole mountain had been melted and then crystallized out anew. Transparent lava covered the ground to east and north. There wasn’t a tree or building to be seen.
"Glass," Burnfingers murmured. "Something has turned this whole section of country to glass."
An endless expanse of waveless water stretched from the edge of the highway to the western horizon. At least the Great Salt Lake hadn’t changed. Or had it? Burnfingers frowned at the lake.
"I do not remember it being this big when I was here before. The lake has been rising for years, but not so fast as this. I wonder if the city is still here?"
"We saw the road sign," Mouse pointed out. "The kidnappers had to have a destination."
The interstate climbed a slight rise, arcing over the base of the glass mountain. Ahead lay what once was Salt Lake City.
"Oh my God." Frank pulled over and stared.
The rising sun illuminated a panorama of destruction and devastation seen only in disaster movies and the minds of distraught writers. Instead of a pale bluish-white, the Great Salt Lake was tinted an angry yellow-orange. High concentrations of salt could not account for the sulfurous stain that marred the quiet waters. It might have been a lake on Io.
The city itself lay in ruins. Jagged stumps of tall buildings protruded like broken teeth from what had once been the center of town. A caved-in square marked the location of the great Mormon temple. Not a single structure remained intact. There were only echoes, shadows of what had once been thriving suburbs and commercial districts. Nothing moved on the roads leading in and out of the city. Whole blocks had been flattened, the ground scoured to the foundations as if by a giant abrasive. In places the earth itself had been ripped away in long gouges.
Where it entered the city, the interstate was broken and shattered. He took the first crumbling off ramp. As they descended, the concrete broke from beneath the rear right tires, but their momentum carried them safely the rest of the way to the surface of a city street.
It reminded Frank of the pictures he’d seen of Germany at the end of World War II. Only fragments of buildings still stood. The walls had been torn off apartment buildings, leaving the rooms exposed like broken honeycomb. Floors sagged like tired tongues. There was no smoke, no fire. Whatever calamity had struck the city was not of recent origin.
It had to have been more than a fire. No conflagration would crack stone or pulverize concrete or twist steel beams like pipe cleaners.
"This reality line is ill," Mouse declared. "Very sick."
"I know what line this must be," said Burnfingers quietly. "This must be one where they dropped the Bomb. I suppose if you have an infinite number of reality lines, then every possible reality is borne out sooner or later."
"No," Mouse insisted. "The number of lines is finite. There are only as many as the Spinner can control. That doesn’t mean I dispute your analysis of what has happened here."
"If that’s the case, then there oughta be a big crater somewheres downtown." Frank didn’t realize how low his voice had dropped. "Couldn’t have been too big a bomb or there wouldn’t be this much standing."
"Maybe an airburst, or several," Burnfingers suggested. "In that case there might not be any craters."
Mouse was grim. "This is a line where Evil has taken control, where its servants would be likely to flee. A place where the Anarchis is already all but in command."
They drove through a crumpled intersection. "I can’t believe it," Frank muttered. "I can’t believe people would be this stupid on any reality line."
"The mind is the mirror of the Cosmos." Mouse pointed at the sky. "Out there Chaos wars unceasingly with Order and Reason. The same battle is refought every day in the mind of each thinking person. Logic does not always win out. There are lines where stupidity triumphs."
"It really happened here." Frank swerved to avoid the beetlelike hulk of a burned-out automobile. "This isn’t a fake front, like on a movie set." He turned sharply on her. "Hey, this isn’t my reality, is it?"
"When threads break and cross, nothing is certain — but it doesn’t feel like your line, Frank Sonderberg."