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here. In fact, there were scores of
them. They were scattered across all six lanes, spaced out as far
as he could see in both directions. Some stood alone, while others
had clustered in groups. They were smashed into the lane divider,
the noise barrier, the lampposts. Ravaged scraps of metal and
rubber lay everywhere. Half of the ruined vehicles had flipped
over, some on their sides, creating the largest, most chaotic
display of mechanical wreckage Greg had ever seen.
    A few smoldering fires lingered here
and there among the ruins, but the few vehicles that had gone up in
a blaze were now nothing more than blackened, burned-out
hulks.
    He thought of the poor unsuspecting
motorists, all cruising along at seventy miles an hour, off to the
mall, or church, or coming home from a weekend getaway. How many of
them had had plastic bags in the back seat, or the trunk, or the
glove compartment, unknowingly traveling with a killer waiting to
strike?
    Greg let his eyes move from the river
of twisted metal to a billboard along the roadside. It was a huge
picture of a giant hand cupping a small and fragile sapling pine
tree. The caption read:
     
    The Future Must Grow; Recycle
Today!
     
    The bags are the ones doing
the recycling now , he thought. They’re recycling us .
    And suddenly, something clicked in his
head.
    Astonished, he looked up at the
recycle billboard again then glanced around to the nearest wreck.
Two cars down, he found a Chevy Avalanche half imbedded in the rear
of a fourteen-foot U-Haul truck. Strewn around the open passenger
door were three brown paper bags of fresh groceries that had split
open on the pavement.
    Greg rushed over and searched through
the items. He picked up an empty box of Reynolds Plastic Wrap,
finding the familiar triple-arrow triangle on the back.
    “ Son of a bitch,” he
gasped. “That’s how they’re doing it!”
    Dropping the box, he turned a slow 360
degree circle, his eyes darting around the wrecks, searching the
rumble. He started jogging west, excited, afraid, still looking for
what he wanted.
    A quarter mile down he found it: a
scraped and dented red Yamaha motorcycle, possibly the only type of
vehicle that could maneuver through this obstacle course of
destruction and still give him speed when the conditions allowed.
It was on its side, having slid halfway under a pickup truck, and
it took Greg a full ten minutes and a gallon of sweat to work it
free. As he’d hoped, the key still sat in the ignition, and when he
settled himself onto the seat and tried it, the engine revved to
life.
    Then he was off, weaving his way
west.
     
     
    10.
     
    Greg saw the smoke from four blocks
away.
    It coiled skyward like an unearthly
black serpent, rising over the rooftops of Mia’s apartment
complex.
    He gunned the motorcycle’s engine,
cutting between car wrecks at suicidal speeds and weaving on and
off of the sidewalk before skidding to a halt at the entry of the
building.
    Three stories overhead, a window
exploded, showering him with glass.
    He dodged the lethal rain without
losing any skin and slipped through the broken glass of the main
security door, which someone had apparently shattered using a
potted plant from the lobby. He took the stairs in great bounds,
pushing through the ache that echoed in his thighs after his
earlier sprint up the hill. Mia’s apartment waited on the second
floor, on the far side of the building—
    Through a tunnel of fire.
    Greg emerged from the stairwell to
find the main hallway leaping with flames.
    He flinched backward as the intense
heat touched his skin. At the same time, he drew in a sharp breath
of smoke that seared the back of his throat and overpowered his
olfactory senses with its toxic aroma.
    He managed to retreat three steps
before stumbling over a scorched bundle of plastic similar to one
of the cocoons he’d seen at the Jacobsons’. No sooner had he laid
eyes on it when a dripping tentacle of half-melted plastic reached
out toward him.
    He