" 'Morning."
They closed the door behind them as they left.
Tanner got up and moved to the mirror, studied himself. "Well, just this once," he muttered.
Then he washed his face and trimmed his beard and cut his hair.
Then, gritting his teeth, he lowered himself into the tub, soaped up and scrubbed. The water grew gray and scummy beneath the suds. He splashed out and toweled himself down and dressed.
He was starched and crinkly and smelled faintly of disinfectant. He smiled at his dark-eyed reflection and lit a cigarette. He combed his hair and studied the stranger. "Damn! I'm beautiful!" he chuckled, and then he opened the door and entered the kitchen.
Sam was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee, and his wife who was short and heavy and wore long gray skirts was facing in the other direction, leaning over the stove. She turned, and he saw that her face was large, with bulging red cheeks that dimpled and a little white scar in the middle of her forehead. Her hair was brown, shot through with gray, and pulled back into a knot. She bobbed her head and smiled a "Good morning" at him.
" 'Morning," he replied. "I'm afraid I left kind of a mess in the other room."
"Don't worry about that," said Sam. "Seat yourself. and we'll have you some breakfast in a minute. The boys told you about your friend?"
Tanner nodded.
As she placed a cup of coffee in front of Tanner, Sam said, "Wife's name's Susan."
"How do," she said.
"Hi."
"Now, then, I got your map here. Saw it sticking out of your jacket. That's your gun hanging aside the door,too. Anyhow, I've been figuring and I think the best way you could head would be up to Albany and then go along the old Route 9, which is in pretty good shape." He spread the map and pointed as he talked. "Now, it won't be all of a picnic," he said, "but it looks like the cleanest and fastest way in—"
"Breakfast," said his wife and pushed the map aside to set a plate full of eggs and bacon and sausages in front of Tanner and another one, holding four pieces of toast, next to it. There was marmalade, jam, jelly and butter on the table, and Tanner helped himself to it and sipped the coffee and filled the empty places inside while Sam talked.
He told him about the gangs that ran between Boston and Albany on bikes, hijacking anything they could, and that was the reason most cargo went in convoys with shotgun riders aboard. "But you don't have to worry, with that rig of yours, do you?" he asked.
Tanner said, "Hope not," and wolfed down more food. He wondered, though, if they were anything like his old pack, and he hoped not, again, for both their sakes.
Tanner raised his coffee cup, and he heard a sound outside.
The door opened, and a boy ran into the kitchen. Tanner figured him as between ten and twelve years of age. An older man followed him, carrying the traditional black bag.
"We're here! We're here!" cried the boy, and Sam stood and shook hands with the man, so Tanner figured he should, too. He wiped his mouth and gripped the man's hand and said, "My partner sort of went out of his head. He Jumped me, and we had a fight. I shoved him, and he banged his head on the dashboard."
The doctor, a dark-haired man, probably in his late forties, wore a dark suit. His face was heavily lined, and his eyes looked tired. He nodded.
Sam said, "I'll take you to him," and he led him out through the door at the other end of the kitchen.
Tanner reseated himself and picked up the last piece of toast. Susan refilled his coffee cup, and he nodded to her.
"My name's Jerry," said the boy, seating himself in his father's abandoned chair. "Is your name, mister, really Hell?"
"Hush, you!" said his mother." 'Fraid so," said Tanner.
"... And you drove all the way across the country? Through the Alley?"
"So far."
"What was it like?"
"Mean."
"What ali'd you see?"
"Bats as big as this kitchen—some of them even bigger —on the other side of the Missus Hip. Lot of them in Saint Louis."
"What'd you dor*
"Shot 'em. Burned 'em. Drove through *em."
"What else you see?"
"Gila monsters. Big, technicolor lizards—the size of a barn. Dust Devils—big circling winds that sucked up one car. Fire-topped mountains. Real big thorn bushes that we had to bum. Drove through some storms. Drove over places where the ground was like glass. Drove along where the ground was shaking. Drove around big craters, all radioactive."
"Wish I could do that some day."
"Maybe you will, some day."
Tanner finished the food and lit a cigarette and sipped the coffee, i.
"Real good breakfast," he called out. "Best I've eaten in days. Thanks."
Susan smiled, then said, "Jerry, don't go an* pester the man."
"No bother, missus. He's okay."
"What's that ring on your hand?" said Jerry. "It looks like a snake."
"That's what it is," said Tanner, pulling it off. "It is sterling silver with red glass eyes, and I got it in a place called Tijuana. Here. You keep it."
"I couldn't take that," said the boy, and he looked at his mother, his eyes asking if he could. She shook her head from left to right, and Tanner saw it and said, "Your folks were good enough to help me out and get a doc for my partner and feed me and give me a place to sleep. I'm sure they won't mind if I want to show my appreciation a little bit and give you this ring." Jerry looked back at his mother, and Tanner nodded and she nodded too.
Jerry whistled and jumped up and put it on his finger."It's too big," he said.
"Here, let me mash it a bit for you. These spiral kind'U fit anybody if you squeeze them a little."
He squeezed the ring and gave it back to the boy to try on. It was still too big, so he squeezed it again and then it fit.
Jerry put it on and began to run from the room.
"Wait!" his mother said. "What do you say?"
He turned around and said, "Thank you, Hell.'*
"Mister Tanner," she said.
"Mister Tanner," the boy repeated, and the door banged behind him.
"That was good of you," she said.
Tanner shrugged.
"He liked it," he said. "Glad I could turn him on with it."
He finished his coffee and his cigarette, and she gave him another cup, and be lit another cigarette. After a time, Sam and the doctor came out of the other room, and Tanner began wondering where the family had slept the night before. Susan poured them both coffee, and they seated themselves at the table to drink it.
"Your friend's got a concussion," the doctor said. "I can't really tell how serious his condition is without getting X-rays, and there's no way of getting them here. I wouldn't recommend moving him, though."
Tanner said, "For how long?"
"Maybe a few days, maybe a couple weeks. I've left some medication and told Sam what to do for him. Sam says there's a plague in Boston and you've got to hurry. My advice is that you go on without him. Leave him here with the Potters. He'll be taken care of. He can go up to Albany with them for the Spring Fair and make his way to Boston from there on some commercial carrier. I think he'll be all right."
Tanner thought about it awhile, then nodded.
"Okay," he said, "if that's the way it's got to be."
"That's what I recommend."
They drank their coffee.
XIII Tanner regarded his freed vehicle, said, "I guess I'll be going then," and nodded to the Potters. "Thanks," hesaid, and he unlocked the cab, climbed into it and started the engine. He put it into gear, blew the horn twice and started to move.
In the screen, he saw the three men waving. He stamped the accelerator, and they were gone from sight.
He sped ahead, and the way was easy. The sky was salmon pink. The earth was brown, and there was much green grass. The bright sun caught the day in a silver net.
This part of the country seemed virtually untouched by the chaos that had produced the rest of the
Alley. Tanner played music, drove along. He passed two trucks on the road and honked his horn each time. Once, he received a reply.
He drove all that day, and it was well into the night when he pulled into Albany. The streets themselves were dark, and only a few lights shone from the buildings. He drew up in front of a flickering red sign that said "BAR & GRILL," parked and entered.
It was small, and there was jukebox music playing, tunes he'd never heard before, and the lighting was poor, and there was sawdust on the floor.
He sat down at the bar and pushed the Magnum way down behind his belt so that it didn't show. Then he took off his jacket, because of the heat in the place, and he threw it on the stool next to him. When the man in the white apron approached, he said, "Give me a shot and a beer and a ham sandwich."
The man nodded his bald head and threw a shot glass in front of Tanner which he then filled. He siphoned off a foam-capped mug and hollered over his right shoulder.
Tanner tossed off the shot and sipped the beer. After awhile, a white plate bearing a sandwich appeared on the sill across from him. After a longer while, the bartender passed, picked it up, and deposited it in front of him. He wrote something on a green chit and tucked it under the corner of the plate.
Tanner bit into the sandwich and washed it down with a mouthful of beer. He studied the people about him and decided they made the same noises as people in any other bar he'd ever been in. The old man to his left looked friendly, so he asked him, "Any news about Boston?"
The man's chin quivered between words, and it seemed a natural thing for him.
"No news at all. Looks like the merchants will close 'their shops at the end of the week."
"What day is today?"
"Tuesday."
Tanner finished his sandwich and smoked a cigarette while he drank the rest of his beer.
Then he looked at the check, and it said, ".85."
He tossed a dollar bill on top of it and turned to go.
He had taken two steps when the bartender called out, "Wait a minute, mister."
He turned around.
"Yeah?"
"What you trying to pull?*'
"What do you mean?"
"What do you call this crap?"
"What crap?"
The man waved Tanner's dollar at him, and he stepped forward and inspected it.
"Nothing wrong I can see. What's giving you a pain?"
"That ain't money."
"You trying to tell ma my money's no good?"
"That's what I said. I never seen no bill like that."
"Well, look at it real careful. Read that print down there at the bottom of it."
The room grew quiet. One man got off his stool and walked forward. He held out his hand and said, "Let me see it, Bill."
The bartender passed it to him, and the man's eyes widened.
"This is drawn on the Bank of the Nation of California."
"Well, that's where I'm from," said Tanner.
"I'm sorry, it's no good here," said the bartender.
"It's the best I got," said Tanner.
"Well, nobody'll make good on it around here. You got any Boston money on you?"
"Never been to Boston."
"Then how the heli'd you get here?"
"Drove."
"Don't hand me that line of crap, son. Where'd you steal this?" It was the older man who had spoken.
"You going to take my money or ain't you?" said Tanner."I'm not going to take it." said the bartender.
"Then screw you," said Tanner, and he turned and walked toward the door.
As always, under such circumstances, he was alert to sounds at his back.
When he heard the quick footfall, he turned. It was the man who had inspected the bill that stood before him, his right arm extended.
Tanner's right hand held his leather jacket, draped over his right shoulder. He swung it with all his strength forward and down.
It struck the man on the top of his head. and he fell.
There came up a murmuring,' and several people jumped to their feet and moved toward him.
Tanner dragged the gun from his belt and said, "Sorry, folks,'* and he pointed it, and they stopped.
"Now you probably ain't about to believe me," he said, "when I tell you that Boston's been hit by the plague, but it's true all right. Or maybe you will. I don't know. But I don't think you're going to believe that I drove here all the way from the nation of California with a car full of Haffikine antiserum. But that's just as right. You send that bill to the big bank in Boston, and they'll change it for you, all right, and you know it. Now I've got to be going, and don't anybody try to stop me. If you think I've been handing you a line, you take a look at what I drive away in. That's all I've got to say."
And he backed out the door and covered it while he mounted the cab. Inside, he gunned the engine to life, turned, and roared away.
In the rearview screen he could see the knot of people on the walk before the bar, watching him depart.
He laughed, and the apple-blossom moon hung dead ahead.
XIV
Albany to Boston. A couple of hundred miles. He'd managed the worst of it. The terrors of Damnation Alley lay largely at his back now. Night. It flowed about him. The stars seemed brighter than usual. He'd make it, the night seemed to say.
He passed between hills. The road wasn't too bad. It wound between trees and high grasses. He passed a truckcoming in his direction and dimmed his lights as it approached. It did the same.
Il must have been around midnight that he came to the crossroads, and the lights suddenly nailed him from two directions.
He was bathed in perhaps thirty beams from the left and as many from the right.
He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and he heard engine after engine coming to life somewhere at his back. And he recognized the sounds.
Thev were all of them bikes.
They swung onto the road behind him.
He muld have opened fire. He could have braked and laid down a cloud of flame. It was obvious that they didn't know what they were chasing. He could have launched grenades He refrained, however.
It could have been him on the lead bike, he decided, all hot on hijack. He felt a certain sad kinship as his hand hovered above the fire-control.
Try to outrun them, first.
His engine was open wide and roaring, but he couldn't take the bikes.
When they began to fire, he knew that he'd have to retaliate. He couldn't risk their hitting a gas tank or blowing out his tires.
Their first few shots had been in the nature of a warning. He couldn't risk another barrage. If only they knew....
The speaker!
He cut in and mashed the button and spoke:
"Listen, cats," he said. "All I got's medicine for the sick citizens in Boston. Let me through or you'll hear the noise."
A shot followed immediately, so he opened fire with the fifty calibers to the rear.
He saw them fall, but they kept firing. So be launched grenades.
The firing lessened, but didn't cease.
So he hit the brakes, then the flame-throwers. He kept it up for fifteen seconds.
There was silence.
When the air cleared he studied the screens.
They lay all over the road, their bikes upset, theirbodies fuming. Several were still seated, and they held rifles and pointed them, and he shot them down.
A few still moved, spasmodically, and he was about to drive on, when he saw one rise and take a few staggering steps and fall again.
His hand hesitated on the gearshift.
It was a girl.
He thought about it for perhaps five seconds, then jumped down from the cab and ran toward her.
As he did, one man raised himself on an elbow and picked up a fallen rifle.
Tanner shot him twice and kept running, pistol in hand.
The girl was crawling toward a man whose face had been shot away. Other bodies twisted about Tann
er now, there on the road, in the glare of the tail beacons. Blood and black leather, the sounds of moaning and the stench of burned flesh were all about him.
When he got to the girl's side, she cursed him softly as he stopped.
None of the blood about her seemed to be her own.
He dragged her to her feet and her eyes began to fill with tears.
Everyone else was dead or dying, so Tanner picked her up in his arms and carried hen. back to the car. He reclined the passenger seat and put her into it, moving the weapons into the rear seat, out of her reach.
Then he gunned the engine and moved forward. In the rearview screen he saw two figures rise to their feet, then fall again.
She was a tall girl, with long, uncombed hair the color of dirt. She had a strong chin and a wide mouth and there were dark circles under her eyes. A single faint line crossed her forehead, and she had all of her teeth. The right side of her face was flushed, as if sunburned. Her left trouser leg was torn and dirty. He guessed that she'd caught the edge of his flame and fallen from her bike.
"You okay?" he asked, when her sobbing had diminished to a moist sniffing sound.
"What's it to you?" she said, raising a hand to her cheek.
Tanner shrugged.
"Just being friendly."
"You killed most of my gang."
"What would they have done to me?""They would have stomped you, mister, if it weren't for this fancy car of yours."
"It ain't really mine," he said. "It belongs to the nation of California."
"This thing don't come from California."
"The hell it don't. 1 drove it."
She sdl up straight then and began rubbing her leg.
Tanner lit a cigarette.
"Give me a cigarette?" she said.
He passed her the one he had lighted, lit himself another. As he handed it to her, her eyes rested on his tattoo.
"What's that?"
"My name."
"Hell?"
"Hell."
"Where'd you get a name like that?"
"From my old man."
They smoked awhile, then she said, "Why'd you run the Alley?"
"Because it was the only way I could get them to turn me loose."
"From where?"
"The place with horizontal Venetian blinds. I was doing time."
"They let you go? Why?"
"Because of the big sick. I'm bringing in Hamkine antiserum."
The Last Defender Of Camelot Page 20