Supervolcano All Fall Down(102)
Miles. More miles. Still more miles. She couldn’t go as fast as she wanted to, because of the rain and because of the accidents people who went as fast as they pleased to in spite of the rain got into. She snarled at those blockheads as she crawled past the smashed vehicles they’d infested. Some of the blockheads stood glumly on the asphalt, staring at the havoc they’d wreaked.
When she finally inched past one horrendous pileup, she saw her snarls there were wasted. Some of the people who’d caused that wreck would never cause another one. She wasn’t sorry the rain kept her from getting a good look at the bodies. She had no trouble imagining what they’d look like. They’d look like the photos in her dad’s cop books, the ones Rob had used to gross her out when she was little. He’d got his butt warmed for that, which didn’t do squat to stop her nightmares.
And then, just when she started getting close to the I-10, things slowed down again. Vanessa said something that should have turned all the rain pouring down on the whole state to superheated steam. That improved her attitude, but not the traffic.
In due—no, in overdue—course, she discovered this slowdown didn’t spring from an accident. Instead, an electric signboard sat on the shoulder. It said I-10 CHECKPOINT AHEAD. PREPARE TO STOP. Then it blinked out. And then it said the same thing again. Blink. Message. Blink. Message . . .
Vanessa lost track of how many times she read it before she rolled past the signboard at last. What she said about stopping for a checkpoint—what she said about preparing to stop for a checkpoint—made what she’d said about the earlier wrecks seem an endearment by comparison.
Then she said some things about the idea of checkpoints, too. What did they need them for, whoever they were? Wasn’t this the United States? Wasn’t it a free country? If it was, what business did it have checking on who drove to California? You couldn’t hijack a state and fly it into a skyscraper or a government building.
She got her answer to that when she came up to the checkpoint. STATUS EVALUATION CONTROL—SUPERVOLCANO EMERGENCY AUTHORIZATION ACT, the sign there announced. As far as she knew, the supervolcano was unauthorized. The act authorized things like Camp Constitution and its many unpleasant siblings, the scavenger programs in the Midwest, and maybe this status evaluation control thingy, too. An unnatural act, is what it is, she thought.
Trucks breezed through. Their reasons for heading west were obvious enough even for government functionaries to grasp. People in cars, though . . . People in cars got the same friendly greetings Taliban terrorists toting AK-47s would have earned going through airport security.
A fellow in a uniform Vanessa didn’t recognize scowled at her expired Colorado license: not because it was expired but because it was from Colorado. “Why are you going to Los Angeles?” he demanded.
“Because I lived there my whole life till I went to Denver,” she answered, which was nothing but the truth.
Truth or not, it didn’t impress him. “Have you got any family there? Can they vouch for you?”
What if I say no? Vanessa was tempted to. Her attitude towards authority’s pushes had always been to push back as hard as she could. She was able to learn from experience, though. She didn’t always, but she could. This guy’s humorless face said any answer he didn’t like would keep her off the I-10.
And so, feigning meekness she didn’t feel, she answered, “My father is a police lieutenant in San Atanasio.” He’d never heard of her old stomping grounds; amazing how a face all slabs and angles could show such eloquent disbelief. Quickly, she explained, “It’s not far from LAX—a little south and a little east.”
“That’s what you say, anyhow,” he answered, his voice as stony as his eyes. He pulled out a cell phone. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a number where I can contact this individual?”
Vanessa could have taken the cop shop’s number off her own phone. She could have, but she didn’t need to. Dad’s work number had been ingrained in her head since she was a kid. She needed to add an area code to it now, and she did as she rattled it off. At the uniformed man’s annoyed glower, she repeated it more slowly.
He punched the number into his phone, turning his back and stepping away so she couldn’t follow his conversation. He didn’t look so sour—or rather, he looked sour in a different way—as he stuck the phone in his pocket and swung toward her again. “You appear to have been telling the truth,” he said, sounding quite humanly surprised.
“Of course I was!” Vanessa yipped. She was surprised herself, and furious, that he should doubt her. She prided herself on her honesty. She said what she meant even when keeping her mouth shut would do more good.