Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart s-3 Read online

  Mayor McCann rapped loudly for order. The secretary—a real secretary, a gray-haired woman who actually knew shorthand—poised pen over paper to take the minutes. People paid close attention when the mayor read the typed transcript of last week’s minutes. The church was packed. For people who couldn’t amuse themselves with one electronic gadget or another, town meetings and screwing were your basic choices for fun. And hey, you could screw any old time.

  No one moved to change the minutes, so they were approved as read. The arguments would come later. And they did, over hunting and over cutting wood. Without shooting lots of moose and deer, Guilford—like any other small Maine town north and west of the Interstate—would have starved. Rob had an ugly scar on his leg where an overeager hunter had shot him instead of a moose.

  And, like any other small Maine town north and west of the Interstate, Guilford would have frozen if people hadn’t chopped down acres and acres of the second-growth forest that had sprung up on great swaths of abandoned cropland. Rob didn’t like denuding the countryside. He liked freezing even less, though. He’d swung an axe. He’d pulled on a two-man saw that came out of somebody’s barn, too.

  By now, though, not so many unshot moose were left. And there wasn’t a whole lot of forest close to Guilford or any other town, either. The argument about what to cut now and what to leave for later was louder and more heated than the air inside the church.

  “If we all turn into blocks of ice now, we won’t have to worry about later, will we?” Dick Barber asked in loud, sardonic tones. Barber wasn’t always loud, but sardonic seemed his default setting. Before the eruption, he and his family had run the Trebor Mansion Inn, a towered hostelry dating from the 1830s. These days, Maine got no summer, which meant it also got no summer people. Barber and his clan still lived at the Inn. The bank might have taken it away from him, but the bank also seemed to have forgotten about lands where electricity no longer reached. There were certain advantages to falling off the edge of civilization.

  When Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles found themselves snowed in in Guilford, they’d lived at the Trebor Mansion Inn, too. Charlie still did, in the tower room that had once been Rob’s. Like Rob, Biff and Justin had found companions of the female persuasion with more spacious living quarters.

  “If we cut down everything in sight now, what will we do next winter?” someone else countered. Those were the two sides of it, boiled down to a nub.

  “If we aren’t here next winter, what difference does it make?” Barber said. “Jim Farrell’s basic rule is, you do what you have to do now, and you worry about later, later.” Farrell’s was a name to conjure with. Barber had helped run the retired history prof’s Congressional campaign before the eruption. The winner, a blow-dried lawyer type, hadn’t been back in his district since the supervolcano blew. Farrell hadn’t left. And he knew all kinds of useful things—medieval things—that helped folks get by. He might not be the law west of the Pecos, but he was the biggest cheese north and west of the Interstate.

  “He isn’t God, you know. You don’t quote him like you’d quote the Bible,” the other man said.

  “As. As you’d quote the Bible,” Barber said helpfully.

  Bang! went the gavel. “You’re out of order, Dick,” the mayor said.

  “No, his grammar is,” Barber replied.

  The two sides wrangled a while longer. The meeting didn’t decide anything. As far as Rob could see, town meetings never decided anything till they absolutely had to. Watching the fur fly was at least half the fun.

  Some of the rest came after formal adjournment. People started clapping as the guys from the band ambled up to take their places. They played “Losing My Tail” from their first CD: an inevitable song for a band with their name and quirks. They did “Came Along Too Late,” which could be taken here as a tribute to Jim Farrell, though it hadn’t been conceived as one. They sang “Pleasures,” the closest approach to straight-ahead rock in their eccentric orbit. They did “Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” which was just bizarre. They did… a set.

  They got a hell of a hand for it, too. That high was better than dope, even if it didn’t last as long. As things wound down, a pretty brunette came over to Rob and squeezed his hands. “Good job!” she said.

  “Thanks, gorgeous,” he answered. “Can I take you home?”

  “You’d better, since we’re married,” Lindsey said pointedly. And, in due course, he did.

  IV

  “No,” Colin Ferguson said.

  Eugene Cervus sent him a look full of something between reproach and shock. The mayor of San Atanasio wasn’t used to hearing that word from someone he reckoned an underling. He especially wasn’t used to hearing it in tones that brooked no argument. He argued anyhow: “But you have to assume the chief’s position, at least on a temporary basis. The political situation in the city cries out for it.”

  “No. I told you that before,” Colin repeated. “Now I’ll say it again. Hell no, as a matter of fact. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it since… well, since all this stuff happened. And I just don’t want the job. I don’t want it, and I wouldn’t take it on a silver platter.”

  “Be reasonable, Lieutenant Ferguson,” the mayor said, by which he meant Do what I tell you, Lieutenant Ferguson. Take some heat off of San Atanasio, Lieutenant Ferguson. “Why don’t you want the position at this point in time? You applied for it. You competed for it when, ah, the previous holder was selected. When we talked at the recent press conference, you didn’t seem to find the idea hateful.”

  He was right about that much. And Colin didn’t blame him for not wanting to speak Mike Pitcavage’s name. Colin did blame him for saying things like on a temporary basis and at this point in time when he meant things like for a little while and now. You couldn’t trust people who talked like that, because people who talked like that thought like that—which is to say, not too well.

  He couldn’t even explain that to Cervus, not so it made sense to him. People who didn’t think too well didn’t take kindly to having that pointed out. So Colin said what he could: “Back when I applied, I didn’t know what all was involved. Mike was good at making nice. He made a fine chief, or he would have if he didn’t get his jollies killing old ladies. Me, I’m not so good at it. I’d be a disaster in that chair. You’d want to throw me out inside a week. I’d want to tell you where to head in, and I bet I would. And all the cops would start hating me. Find somebody else.”

  Cervus studied him like a herpetologist examining a previously undescribed and very strange toad. “Doesn’t the difference in remuneration between lieutenant and chief interest you?”

  “It wouldn’t make up for the headaches,” Colin answered.

  The mayor’s gaze hardened. “If you feel that way, are you sure you should remain in the department under any capacity?” Do what I tell you or I’ll squeeze you out. Yes, Colin understood Politico.

  He went on being blunt himself: “The worst thing you can do is can me. If you do, I’ll go home and play with my little girl. But I promise you one other thing—if you can me for the Pitcavage thing, you and the city won’t have enough nickels to use a pay toilet by the time my lawyers get done working out on you. And nobody from here to Miami will be able to say San Atanasio without holding his nose when he does.”

  Cervus let out a pained hiss. “I assure you, Lieutenant, any such unfortunate course of events was the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Colin said, in lieu of My ass. Even as a lieutenant who’d stopped caring about being anything more than a lieutenant, he needed a certain minimal amount of diplomacy. And the mayor was no dope, even if he was also no genius. He would hear the words behind Colin’s words, the same way Colin heard the ones behind his.

  His Honor tried again, asking, “Will you please take the position on an interim basis, until we can fill it permanently?”

  “Thanks, but no.” Colin shook his head. “Give it to, oh, Captain Miyoshi
. He’s back from his surgery now, and he’s doing pretty well. It’ll be a feather in his cap. If you promote me over his head, he won’t like it. I sure wouldn’t if I were in his shoes. And dropping back to lieutenant after I’d been running the department wouldn’t be comfortable for me or anybody else.”

  “You are a difficult man,” the mayor said with a sigh.

  “Sorry about that,” Colin answered: one of the bigger whoppers he’d told lately. “Can I go now, sir?”

  “Yes, go on.” By the expression on Cervus’ face, he understood exactly why they’d passed over Colin when they chose the last chief. Well, so did Colin himself—now. He sure hadn’t at the time, and losing out to Mike Pitcavage hurt worse than anything that had ever happened to him… till Louise walked out, anyway.

  Both the city hall and the nearby police station were low-slung, blocky, modern stucco buildings—modern when they’d gone up, of course. Those had been good times for all the booming L.A. suburbs. Now the buildings were showing their age. So was San Atanasio. The city had no money to fix them up. Even if it had had the money, it probably wouldn’t have had the will. People just didn’t care.

  By contrast, the grass and shrubbery between the two buildings were lush and green, even if they weren’t well tended. San Atanasio got so much more rain now than it had before the eruption that everything seemed green, green, green to people who remembered hills brown eight months a year and rationed water.

  Well, almost everything. A couple of hibiscuses against the yellow-beige wall of the police station stood dead and leafless. The gardeners hadn’t bothered to cut them down yet. God only knew when—or if—they would. Hard frosts had done in the hibiscuses. It snowed here every winter now. A lot of plants that had felt at home in warmer days couldn’t take the revised weather.

  A few, though, thrived where they hadn’t before. Apples and pears had grown in and around Los Angeles before the supervolcano blew. They’d grown, yes, but they hadn’t given fruit. They needed frost for that. They had it now, and they responded to it.

  Colin remembered a story he’d seen in the Times a few days earlier. One of those newly fruiting apple trees had turned out to be a long-lost variety from New England. Horticulturalists were creaming their jeans over it, while local historians were trying to figure out how the tree had got here to begin with.

  Also standing by the police-station wall was Gabe Sanchez. He couldn’t smoke indoors. When he needed his nicotine fix, he had to come out here. At least it wasn’t raining. Clouds scudded across the pale, bluish-green sky. While the sun wasn’t hiding behind one of them, it shone wanly.

  “Hey, Colin,” Gabe said between puffs. “Can I kiss your ring now?”

  “You can kiss my ass, is what you can kiss,” Colin answered. “I told you I wouldn’t take it.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “People tell me all kinds of shit,” he said—he’d been a cop a long time. “Some of it, I believe. But I’ve heard too much bull. I wait and see most of the time.”

  “Can’t hardly beef about that,” Colin allowed. “I didn’t take it, though. I’m not right for the job. I know that now, even if I didn’t when I tried to grab the brass ring. And…” His voice trailed away. He looked around to see if anyone besides his friend was in earshot.

  “And?” Gabe prompted.

  Not spotting anybody who might overhear, Colin answered with what he’d been about to say: “And there are still a good many cops who’re pissed at me on account of Pitcavage is dead. Yeah, there was stuff about him they didn’t know, but that was stuff I didn’t know, either. It’s not why I took down darling Darren. They figure I had no business going after the chief’s pride and joy. Running a department where half the people look at you sideways… That wouldn’t have been a whole lot of joy.”

  “Not half the people,” Sanchez said judiciously. “Maybe a quarter—a third at most.”

  “Okay, fine.” Colin accepted the correction. “Still wouldn’t have been much fun. And you know what else?”

  “Tell me,” Gabe urged.

  “I don’t get off on telling people what to do. Yeah, I know my kids’d laugh their asses off to hear me say that, but honest to God I don’t. And you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to like doing it, if you’re gonna be chief.”

  Gabe Sanchez aimed a shrewd look at him. “You don’t much get off on other people telling you what to do, either.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Colin said, deadpan. They both laughed because they both knew what bullshit that was.

  Gabe smoked the cigarette all the way down to the filter before he ground it out under his shoe. He pulled the pack from his pocket, contemplating another. With a sigh, he put it back again. “Christ, I’d be rich if I didn’t get hooked on these fuckers. Especially with prices the way they are now—Jesus! Only thing that costs more than smokes is gasoline.”

  “You got that right,” Colin said.

  “So what is the mayor gonna do about the big office since you won’t sit there?” Gabe might not want—or be able to afford—another cigarette right now, but he didn’t feel like going inside and getting back to work, either.

  “He can get somebody from outside or appoint a captain. I figure Miyoshi’s the best bet. Or he can appoint a captain and then get somebody from outside. That’s what I told him, anyhow. I didn’t tell him he could go pound sand, but I wouldn’t mind that, either.”

  “Heh,” Sanchez said. “I got me a picture of Eugene Cervus pounding sand—and then turning over on his stomach and building a bunch of cruddy condos on top of it.”

  “He’d make money if he did.” Colin had no doubts on that score. The mayor made money at everything he did. He had the knack. That didn’t make Colin like him or admire him or trust him.

  When they did walk into the cop shop, no one there asked Colin whether he was going to be chief. Everybody seemed to know already. Colin’s cell was dead. He assumed other people’s were, too. But landlines often worked even when other power was out. Only one call would have needed to get through.

  The venetian blinds were open. That didn’t make the big central office well lit, but it was lit. People could work here, at least from sunup to sundown. Some secretaries’ desks sported typewriters as well as computer monitors and keyboards: portable typewriters, 1950s office jobs, even a few angular uprights from the 1920s. Getting them had been an adventure. Keeping them in ribbons was another one.

  One of the secretaries typing away was Josefina Linares, who worked for Colin. She raised a questioning eyebrow as he walked past her desk on the way to his own. “You didn’t, did you?” she said. It was as if she’d got the word but didn’t want to believe it.

  “Nope,” he said.

  She clucked in disapproval. “You should have. Whoever they end up getting instead of you is bound to be worse.”

  A dubious compliment, but Colin would take what he could get. He sighed. “Josie, I told my wife I wouldn’t take it. I told you. I told Gabe. I even told the mayor. I told anybody who would listen. The mayor turned out to be one of the people who wouldn’t listen. So I had to tell him all over again just now. I don’t usually say stuff I don’t mean.”

  “I know that. I ought to, after all these years.” Josie still sounded mad at him. “But you should have anyway. Our Lord said, ‘May this cup pass from me.’ When it didn’t, though, He went out and did what He had to do.” She crossed herself.

  “I’m not Him,” Colin said, “and you can sing that in church.”

  “Well, who is? Nobody, not even Saint Francis.” His secretary crossed herself again. “I still think the city needs you there.”

  She’d never been shy about telling him what she thought. She treated him as an equal and a friend. He always tried to treat her the same way; her friendship was worth having. “The city needs me there for its own PR,” he said. “That’s the only reason. C’mon—you know I’m a crappy administrator. And besides, putting me in Mike’s office would just tear up t
he department worse than it is already.”

  “You’d manage. And I would make sure the administrative stuff didn’t get too bad.” She meant it. There was a pretty decent chance she could do it, too.

  He wagged a finger at her. “You want me to be chief so you get to be the boss secretary.”

  “I’d like that.” Josie nodded. “But I’d want you to be chief even if somebody else took care of the other things for you.”

  “Thanks.” Colin meant it. “The only thing is, I really and truly don’t want to do it. It’d drive me nuts.”

  She grinned crookedly. “And who’d know the difference?” He laughed. He wouldn’t have kept laughing if she’d gone on with it. But she didn’t. She’d said her piece. He’d said his. Now it was over… as much as something like this could ever be over. He sat down at his desk, started going through the latest robbery and homicide reports, and did his best to pretend he was nothing but an ordinary police lieutenant on an ordinary kind of day.

  His best, he feared, wasn’t close to good enough. He wondered if it ever would be.

  • • •

  The calendar swore it was spring. Rob Ferguson was more inclined to swear at the calendar, or else to burst into hysterical laughter. The only double-digit temperatures Guilford had seen since the beginning of the year were the ones in negative numbers. When your lows were below zero, that was one thing. When your highs couldn’t jump the hurdle, you were talking about a whole ’nother ballgame.

  He moved on snowshoes as easily as he would have in socks across a bare floor. He remembered how, when he first came to Guilford, the splay-legged, shuffling gait had left his thigh muscles sore, and how he’d had to think about every step before he took it. No more. As with Shakespeare’s grave diggers, familiarity lent a quality of easiness.

  He tramped through a barer, more open landscape than the one he’d known just after he got here. The pines and broad-leaved trees that had grown this close to Guilford were long gone now—literally gone up in smoke. You could chop and burn or you could freeze. Not a pretty choice, but a real one.