"I know," said Denton slowly. "You're thinking it's a suicide job, and you're probably right. We're sending three cars, with two drivers in each. If any one just makes it close enough, its broadcast signals may serve to guide in a Boston driver. You don't have to go, though, you know."
"I know. I'm free to spend the rest of my life in prison."
"You killed three people. You could have gotten the death penalty."
"I didn't, so why talk about it? Look, mister, I don'twant to die and I don't want the other bit either."
"Drive or don't drive. Take your choice. But remember, if you drive and you make it, all will be forgiven and you can go your own way. The nation of California will even pay for that motorcycle you appropriated and smashed up, not to mention the damage to that police car."
"Thanks a lot." And the winds boomed on the other side of the wall, and the steady staccato from the window shields filled the room,
"You're a very good driver," said Denton, after a time. "You've driven just about every vehicle there is to drive. You've even raced. Back when you were smuggling, you used to make a monthly run to Salt Lake City. There are very few drivers who'll try that, even today." Hell Tanner smiled, remembering something. "... And in the only legitimate job you ever held, you were the only man who'd make the mail run to Albuquerque. There've only been a few others since you were fired."
"That wasn't my fault."
"You were the best man on the Seattle run, too," Denton continued. "Your supervisor said so. What I'm trying to say is that, of anybody we could pick, you've probably got the best chance of getting through. That's why we've been indulgent with you, but we can't afford to wait any longer. It's yes or no right now, and you'll leave within the hour if it's yes."
Tanner raised his cuffed hands and gestured toward the window.
"In all this crap?" he asked. "The cars can take this storm," said Denton.
"Man, you're crazy," "People are dying even while we're talking," said Denton.
"So a few more ain't about to make that much difference. Can't we wait till tomorrow?"
"No! A man gave his life to bring us the newsl And we've got to get across the continent as fast as possible now or it won't matter! Storm or no storm, the cars leave nowl Your feelings on the matter don't mean a good goddamn in the face of thtsl All I want out of you. Hell, is one word: Which one will it be?"
"I'd like something to eat. I haven't..."
"There's food in the car. What's your answer?"Hell stared at the dark window.
"Okay," he said, "I'll run Damnation Alley for you. I won't leave without a piece of paper with some writing on it, though."
"I've got it here."
Denton opened a drawer and withdrew a heavy cardboard envelope from which he extracted a piece of stationery bearing the Great Seal of the nation of California. He stood and rounded the desk and handed it to Hell Tanner.
Hell studied it for several minutes, then said, "This says that if I make it to Boston I receive a full pardon for every criminal action I've ever committed within the nation of California ..."
"That's right."
"Does that include ones you might not know about now, if someone should come up with them later?"
"That's what it says, Hell—'every criminal action.' "
"Okay, you're on, fat boy. Get these bracelets off me and show me my car."
The man called Denton moved back to his seat on the other side of his desk.
"Let me tell you something else. Hell," he said. "If you try to cop out anywhere along the route, the other drivers have their orders, and they've agreed to follow them. They will open fire on you and burn you into little bitty ashes. Get the picture?"
"I get the picture," said Hell. "I take it I'm supposed to do them the same favor?"
"That is correct."
"Good enough. That might be fun."
"I thought you'd like it."
"Now, if you'll unhook me, I'll make the scene for you."
"Not till I've told you what I think of you," Denton said.
"Okay, if you want to waste time calling me names, while people are dying—"
"Shut up! You don't care about them and you know it! I just want to tell you that I think you are the lowest, most reprehensible human being I have ever encountered. You have killed men and raped women. You once gouged out a man's eyes, just for fun. You've been indicted twice for pushing dope and three times as a pimp. You're -a drunk and a degenerate, and I don't think you'vehad a bath since the day you were born. You and your hoodlums terrorized decent people when they were trying to pull their lives together after the war. You stole from them and you assaulted them, and you extorted money and the necessaries of life with the threat of physical violence. I wish you had died in the Big Raid, that night, like all the rest of them. You are not a human being, except from a biological standpoint. You have a big dead spot somewhere inside you where other people have something that lets them live together in society and be neighbors. The only virtue that you possess—if you want to call it that—is that your reflexes may be a little faster, your muscles a little stronger, your eye a bit more wary than the rest of us, so that you can sit behind a wheel and drive through anything that has a way through it. It is for this that the nation of California is willing to pardon your inhumanity if you will use that one virtue to help rather than hurt. I don't approve. I don't want to depend on you, because you're not the type. I'd like to see you die in this thing, and while I hope that somebody makes it through, I hope that it will be somebody else. I hate your bloody guts. You've got your pardon now. The car's ready. Let's go."
Denton stood, at a height of about five feet eight inches, and Tanner stood and looked down at him and chuckled,
"I'll make it," he said. "If that citizen from Boston made it through and died, I'll make it through and live. I've been as far as the Missus Hip."
"You're lying."
"No, I ain't either, and if you ever find out that's straight, remember I got this piece of paper in my pocket —every criminal action* and like that. It wasn't easy, and I was lucky, too. But I made it that far and, nobody else you know can say that. So I figure that's about halfway. and I can make the other half if I can get that far."
They moved toward the door.
"I don't like to say it and mean it," said Denton, "but good luck. Not for your sake, though."
"Yeah, I know."
Denton opened the door. "Turn him loose," he said. "He's driving."
The officer with the shotgun handed it to the man who had given Tanner the cigarettes, and he fished in his pockets for the key. When he found it, he unlockedthe cuffs, stepped back, and hung them at his belt "I'll come with you," said Denton. "The motor pool is downstairs."
They left the office, and Mrs. Fiske opened her purse and took a rosary into her hands and bowed her head. She prayed for Boston and she prayed for the soul of its departed messenger. She even threw in a couple for Hell Tanner.
Ill They descended to the basement, the sub-basement and the sub-sub-basement.
When they got there. Tanner saw three cars, ready to go; and he saw five men seated on benches along the wall. One of them he recognized.
"Denny," he said, "come here," and he moved forward, and a slim, blond youth who held a crash helmet in his right hand stood and walked toward him.
"What the bell are you doing?" he asked him.
"I'm second driver in car three."
"You've got your own garage and you've kept your nose clean. What's the thought on this?"
"Denton offered me fifty grand," said Denny, and Hell turned away his face.
"Forget iti It's no good if you're deadi"
"I need the money."
"Why?"
"I want to get married and I can use it."
"I thought you were making out okay."
"I am, but I'd like to buy a house."
"Does your girl know what you've got in mind?"
"No."
"I didn't thi
nk so. Listen, I've got to do it—it's the only way out for me. You don't have to—"
"That's for me to say."
"—so I'm going to tell you something: You drive out to Pasadena to that place where we used to play when we were kids—with the rocks and the three big trees—you know where I mean?"
"Yeah, I sure do remember."
"Go back of the big tree in the middle, on the side where I carved my initials. Step off seven steps and dig down around four feet. Got that?""Yeah. What's there?"
"That's my legacy, Denny. You'll find one of those old strong boxes, probably all rusted out by now. Bust it open. It'll be full of excelsior, and there'll be a six-inch joint of pipe inside. It's threaded, and there's caps on both ends. There's a little over five grand rolled up inside it, and all the bills are clean."
"Why you telling me this?"
"Because it's yours now," he said, and he hit him in the jaw. When Denny fell, he kicked him in the ribs, three times, before the cops grabbed him and dragged him away.
"You fool!" said Denton as they held him. "You crazy, damned fool!"
"Uh-uh," said Tanner. "No brother of mine is going to run Damnation Alley while I'm around to stomp him and keep him out of the game. Better find another driver quick, because he's got cracked ribs. Or else let me drive alone."
"Then you'll drive alone," said Denton, "because we can't afford to wait around any longer. There's pills in the compartment, to keep you awake, and you'd better use them, because if you fall back they'll burn you up. Remember that."
"I won't forget you, mister, if I'm ever back in town. Don't fret about that."
"Then you'd better get into car number two and start heading up the ramp. The vehicles are all loaded. The cargo compartment is under the rear seat."
"Yeah, I know."
"... And if I ever see you again, it'll be too soon. Get out of my sight, scum!"
Tanner spat on the floor and turned his back on the Secretary of Traffic. Several cops were giving first aid to his brother, and one had dashed off in search of a doctor. Denton made two teams of the remaining four drivers and assigned them to cars one and three. Tanner climbed into the cab of his own, started the engine and waited. He stared up the ram, and considered what lay ahead. He searched the compartments until he found cigarettes. He lit one and leaned back- The other drivers moved forward and mounted their own heavily shielded vehicles. The radio crackled, crackled,hummed, crackled again, and then a voice came through as he heard the other engines come to life.
"Car one—readyl" came the voice.
There was a pause, then, "Car three—ready!" said a different voice.
Tanner lifted the microphone and mashed the button on its side.
"Car two ready," he said.
"Move out," came the order, and they headed up the ramp.
The door rolled upward before them, and they entered the storm.
IV
It was a nightmare, getting out of L.A. and onto Route 91. The waters came down in sheets and rocks the size of baseballs banged against the armor plating of his car. Tanner smoked and turned on the special lights. He wore infrared goggles, and the night and the storm stalked him.
The radio crackled many times, and it seemed that he heard the murmur of a distant voice, but he could never quite make out what it was trying to say.
They followed the road for a& far as it went, and as their big tires sighed over the rugged terrain that began where the road ended, Tanner took the lead and the others were content to follow. He knew the way; they didn't.
He followed the old smugglers' route he'd used to run candy to the Mormons. It was possible that he was the only one left alive that knew it. Possible, but then there was always someone looking for a fast buck. So, in all of L.A., there might be somebody else.
The lightning began to fall, not in bolts, but sheets. The car was insulated, but after a time his hair stood on end. He might have seen a giant Gila Monster once, but he couldn't be sure. He kept his fingers away from the fire-control board. He'd save his teeth tai menaces were imminent. From the rearview scanners it seemed that one of the cars behind him had discharged a rocket, but he couldn't be sure, since he had lost all radio contact with them immediately upon leaving the building.
Waters rushed toward him, splashed about his car. The sky sounded like an artillery range. A boulder the size ofa tombstone fell in front of him, and he swerved about it. Red lights flashing across the sky from north to south. In their passing, he detected many black bands going from west to east. It was not an encouraging spectacle. The storm could go on for days.
He continued to move forward, skirting a pocket of radiation that had not died in the four years since last he had come this way.
They came upon a place where the sands were fused into a glassy sea, and he slowed as he began its passage peering ahead after the craters and chasms it contained.
Three more rockfalls assailed him before the heavens split themselves open and revealed a bright blue light edged with violet. The dark curtains rolled back toward the Poles, and the roaring and the gunfire reports diminished. A lavender glow remained in the north, and a green sun dipped toward the horizon.
They had ridden it out. He killed the infras, pushed back his goggles and switched on the normal night lamps.
The desert would be bad enough, all by itself.
Something big and bat-like swooped through the tunnel of his lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers and it fell to the ground and did not return again.
To the squares, this was Damnation Alley. To Hell Tanner, this was still the parking lot. He'd been this way .thirty-two times, and so far as he was concerned the Alley started in the place that was once called Colorado.
He led, and they followed, and the night wore on like an abrasive.
No airplane could make it. Not since the war. None could venture above a couple hundred feet, the place where the winds began. The winds. The mighty winds that circled the globe, tearing off the tops of mountains, Sequoia trees, wrecked buildings, gathering up birds, bats, insects and anything else that moved up into the dead belt; the winds that swirled about the world, lacing the skies with dark lines of debris, occasionally meeting, merging, clashing, dropping tons of carnage wherever they came together and formed too great a mass. Air transportation was definitely out, to anywhere in the world. Forthese winds circled, and they never ceased. Not in all the twenty-five years of Tanner's memory had they let up.
Tanner pushed ahead, cutting a diagonal by the green sunset. Dust continued to fall about him, great clouds of it, and the sky was violet, then purple once more. Then the sun went down and the night came on, and the stars were very faint points of light somewhere above it all. After a time, the moon rose, and the half-face that it showed that night was the color of a glass of Chianti wine held before a candle.
He let another cigarette and began to curse, slowly, softly and without emotion.
They threaded their way amid heaps of rubble: rock, metal, fragments of machinery, the prow of a boat. A snake, as big around as a garbage can and dark green m the cast light, slithered across Tanner's path, and he braked the vehicle as it continued and continued and continued. Perhaps a hundred and twenty feet of snake passed by before Tanner removed his foot from the brake and touched gently upon the gas pedal once again.
Glancing at the left-hand screen, which held an infrared version of the view to the left, it seemed that he saw two eyes glowing within the shadow of a heap of girders and masonry. Tanner kept one hand near the fire-control button and did not move it for a distance of several miles.
There were no windows in the vehicle, only screens which reflected views in every direction including straight up and the ground beneath the car. Tanner sat within an illuminated box which shielded him again
st radiation. The "car" that he drove had eight heavily treaded tires and was thirty-two feet in length. It mounted eight fifty-caliber automatic guns and four grenade throwers. It carried thirty armor-piercing rockets which could be discharged straight ahead or at any elevation up to forty degrees from the plane. Each of the four sides, as well as the roof of the vehicle, housed a flame thrower. Razor-sharp "wings" of tempered steel—eighteen inches wide at their bases and tapering to points, an inch and a quarter thick where they ridged—could be moved through a complete hundred-eighty-degree arc along the sides of the car and parallel to the ground, at a height of two feet and eight inches. When standing at a right angle to the body of the vehicle—eight feet to the rear of the front bumper—they extended out to a distance of six feet on either side of thecar. They could be couched like lances for a charge. They could be held but slightly out from the sides for purposes of slashing whatever was sideswiped. The car was bulletproof, air-conditioned and had its own food locker and sanitation facilities. A long-barreled .357 Magnum was held by a clip on the door near the driver's left hand. A 30-06, a .45 caliber automatic and six hand grenades occupied the rack immediately above the front seat.
But Tanner kept his own counsel, in the form of a long, slim SS dagger inside his right boot.
He removed his gloves and wiped his palms on the knees of his denims. The pierced heart that was tattooed on the back of his right hand was red in the light from the dashboard. The knife that went through it was dark blue, and his first name was tattooed in the same color beneath it, one letter on each knuckle, beginning with that at the base of his litt!e finger.
He opened and explored the two near compartments but could find no cigars. So he crushed out his cigarette butt on the floor and lit another.
The forward screen showed vegetation, and he slowed. He tried using the radio but couldn't tell whether anyone heard him, receiving only static in reply.
He slowed, staring ahead and up. He halted once again.
He turned his forward lights up to full intensity and studied the situation.
A heavy wall of thorn bushes stood before him, reaching to a height of perhaps twelve feet. It swept on to his right and off to his left, vanishing out of sight in both directions. How dense, how deep a pit might be, he could not tell. It had not been there a few years before.
The Last Defender Of Camelot Page 15