“Well… yeah,” the sergeant admitted. He wasn't even slightly used to backing down. After a moment, he reached over and thumped Dan on the arm. “Anybody who'd sooner stay and fight than get out of it's okay in my book.”
“Mm.” All of a sudden, Dan wondered whether squawking had been such a good idea. But once you chose something, you didn't get to take it over. If you got to try again, to do things differently, wouldn't you have another world alter a while? Maybe better, maybe worse, but for sure not the same.
Sergeant Chuck went to talk to Captain Kevin. Maybe Kevin had to talk with higher-ups, too. Any which way, some of Kevin 's company and some of the reinforcements came down off the freeway line. Before long, Dan heard them hacking away with axes. He heard them cussing, too. They liked their new duty no more than he would have.
Like it or not, they got the job done. The.50-caliber machine gun laid down covering fire so they could move the wood out in front of the freeway line-out to the south. A couple of soldiers got wounded doing that, but only a couple. At sunset, the Valley men lit the bonfires.
The wind had been coming out of the west, off the ocean. It swung around after the sun went down, and started blowing from the mountains to the sea. If flying embers spread the fires toward bomb-ravaged Santa Monica… well, so what? Dan watched them burn that way with, if anything, a certain sense of relief. Anybody trying to sneak through the dead zone would be sorry.
El even
Once upon a time, in both this alternate and the home timeline, the section of Los Angeles called Venice had really had canals. They were long gone there, and they were long gone here, too. The Mendozas ” wagon rolled north through Venice toward the wasteland that was Santa Monica.
Liz tried not to think about the gunfire to the north-to the northeast, now. Not thinking about it wasn't easy, because it got louder and closer every minute. She wasn't calm, or anything close to calm. To keep from driving her parents crazy, she had to pretend she was.
After a while, she wondered if they were pretending, too, so they wouldn't drive her squirrely. If they were, they made better actors than she did.
The farther north she and her folks went, the stranger the looks people gave them. “'You fixing to go into the dead zone?” a cobbler called, looking up from the boot he was resoling.
“What if we are?” Dad said.
“Well, plenty of folks go in there,” the local answered. “Not so many come out again. You look like nice people. Wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you.”
A ferret-faced fellow corning out of the tavern next door leered at the Chevy wagon. “'Wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you while we ain't around to grab the leftovers,” he said.
“Oh, shut up. Stu,” the cobbler said, and then, to the Mendozas, “Don't pay him no mind. He's got as much in the way of brains as my cat, only I don't have a cat.”
“Er-right.” Dad said. “Any which way, I expect we can take care of ourselves.” He displayed a modern copy, made in the home timeline, of an Old Time Tommy gun.
“Well!” said the cobbler, who didn't seem to know quite what it was. “'Pretty fancy piece you got there, buddy.” He turned. “Ain't it. Stu?… Stu? Where the devil did he go?”
He'd turned green and ducked back into the tavern. Liz watched him do it. He knew exactly what Dad was showing off, and how many bullets it could spray. He clearly wasn't a predator-he had no taste for a fight. He was a scavenger. If somebody else did the Mendozas in. he'd scrounge what he could from the things the real robbers didn't want.
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Mom asked as the wagon rolled on. “One of those guns is worth a mint here. We may have people coming after us on account of it.”
“Anybody who tries will be sorry,” Dad said. “We don't just have one Tommy gun-we've got three.”
Liz was anything but thrilled about shooting people. But she wasn't thrilled about people shooting her, either. She supposed she could pull the trigger if she had to. If she did end up killing somebody, she'd probably heave her guts out right afterwards.
When she said so, Dad replied, “As long as it is afterwards. In the meantime, do what you've got to do. You can be sorry about it later.”
“You don't talk like a history professor,” Mom said.
“I hope not,” he told her. “I know enough history to know thinking like a history prof from the home timeline while we're here is liable to get us killed. I don't want that to happen. It's too permanent.”
Houses and shops with people in them got thinner and thinner on the ground. Piles of rubble and obviously empty buildings grew more and more common. But just because a building was obviously empty, that didn't mean it really and truly was empty. Maybe-probably-bandits lurked in some of the sorry structures that looked about ready to collapse under their own weight.
Dad handed Mom and Liz their submachine guns. That put a lot of firepower on display. Were the bandits on vacation? Or did they figure they didn't want to tackle a wagon defended by three Tommy guns? Liz had no way to know. She did know she was glad things stayed quiet.
And then they got into the dead zone. Where the bomb hit, there mostly wasn't enough of anything left to make rebuilding worthwhile. Everything looked charred and melted, even after 130 years. The scrubby weeds pushing up through (-racks in the glassy crust didn't do much to hide that. Nothing could. It was like looking at a dead body in a threadbare suit.
Liz thought about Santa Monica in the home timeline. She thought about the beach and the malls. She thought about all the people, especially on weekends. And she thought about the RAND Corporation. The Russians had likely used a bomb here to make sure they knocked it out.
Well, they did. Along with the United States, they knocked almost everything out. Liz started to cry.
“What's the matter?” Mom asked.
“It's all ruined.” Liz sniffed. “No matter what we do, we can't fix it. It'd be like unscrambling an egg.”
“I wish I could say you were wrong, sweetheart,” Dad told her. “But you're not. All we can do is help a little and try to find out what went wrong.”
“It's not enough!”
He nodded. “I know. It's what we can do, though. And it's more than most of the bombed-out alternates ever see. Easier and cheaper just to leave them alone. We don't have the people or the resources to do anything else.'“
“We don't want to bother.” Liz made it into an accusation. “We don't care.”
Dad only nodded again. “Mostly we don't,” he agreed. “We're spread too thin the way things are. Anil Crosstime Traffic needs to show a profit, not a loss. And so…”
“So we make like a bunch of vultures and watch things die,” Liz said.
“We do pass on antibiotics when we can.” Did Dad sound defensive'.'' If he didn't, why not? “And we showed them how to make the anthrax vaccine. More of their cows and sheep live, so more of them live, too.”
“Oh, boy.”
Liz 's sarcasm was largely wasted, because the gunfire from the Santa Monica Freeway line changed note. Dad paid more attention to that than he did to his own daughter. His head came up like a wolf's when it took a scent. “The Valley soldiers are using that heavy machine gun again,” he said.
“Heaven help anybody coming at them, then,” Mom said.
“Yeah.” Dad nodded one more time. “Only thing I worry about now is whether Cal 's boys will try an end-around through the dead zone. If they do, we've got problems.”
But they didn't, not while the light held. Liz wondered why not. Scavengers and scroungers did come in here sometimes. Most people in this alternate stayed away from places where H-bombs had fallen, though. They had to know the fallout wasn't poisonous any more, or the scavengers wouldn't go in. Still, lingering fear or superstition kept almost everybody away.
The sun went down. The stars started coming out. Dad stopped the horses and gave them their feed bags. They chomped happily on oats and hay. The Mendozas, not so happily, ate bread and smoked pork
and sauerkraut and raisins. They drank rough red wine that would have got any vintner in the home timeline fired. It was safer than the local water, which was guaranteed to give you the runs.
“Isn't this fun?'' Dad said as they got ready to sleep in the cramped wagon. “Isn't this cozy?”
“Fun?” Liz said. “As a matter of fact, no.”
“Too blasted cozy, if anybody wants to know what I think,” Mom added.
“Everybody's a critic,” Dad said. Liz gave him a dirty look. He could fall asleep in thirty seconds and keep sleeping through anything this side of the crack of doom. Trouble was, he thought everybody else could do the same thing. Most normal human beings couldn't, and he didn't get it.
“Warmer tomorrow,” Mom said. “Breeze isn't off the ocean anymore.”
“That's true.” Dad sniffed. “You can smell the smoke from all the fires.”
The horses could smell it, too, and they didn't like it. They snorted and shifted their feet, as if to say they would rather be somewhere else. Liz would rather have been somewhere else, too. Then she noticed a red-gold glow on the eastern horizon. She watched it for a little while, and decided she wasn't imagining things.
Pointing, she said, “That fire's getting closer.”
“Don't be silly. It's-” Dad broke off. He started watching the fire, too. After a few seconds, he said something incendiary himself. Then he said something even worse: “You're right.''
He jumped out of the wagon. “What are you doing?” Liz asked.
“Harnessing the horses,” he answered. “No fire departments around here worth the paper they're printed on. We've got to get away, because nobody will put that out before it gets here. And horses are faster than people.”
That all made good sense, however much Liz wished it didn't. She also wished he could hitch up the horses faster. The job looked easy, but it wasn't, not if you wanted to do it right.
While he worked, of course, the flames didn't stop. Mom said, “You want to hurry that along there?” She sounded much calmer than she could possibly have felt.
“I am hurrying,” Dad snapped.
“Well, hurry faster,” Mom told him.
The breeze blew harder. It sent a puff of smoke that made Liz cough. Stop that, she thought, but it didn't. After what seemed forever, Dad jumped back into the wagon. He flicked the reins. The horses went off at a trot without so much as a giddyap. They'd probably wondered what was taking so long, too.
From everything Liz had heard, fire made horses stupid.
From everything she'd seen, horses were no big threat to get fives on their AP tests anyway. But, this once, panic worked for the Mendozas. not against them. The horses wanted to get away from the fires, and so did the people they were pulling.
It was going to be closer than it had any business being. In the home timeline, Dad would have been on his cell phone yelling his head off. A water-dropping plane or helicopter would have splatted the leading edge of the flames. That would have slowed them down enough to let endangered people get away. And, of course, in the home timeline, they wouldn't have been stuck in a horse-drawn wagon to begin with.
No cell phones here. No water-dropping airplanes or copters, either. And the wagon was the fastest way to escape they had. The only other choice was getting out and running. If the horses freaked and stood still, they would have to try that. Liz didn't think it seemed like a whole lot of fun.
Things ran past them in the night. Coyotes and raccoons and feral cats hated the fire, and feared it, too. So did rats and mice and hamsters and squirrels and… everything, really.
When she looked back on that night, none of it stuck in her mind as a whole lot of fun. The fire got closer and closer and hotter and hotter. The smoke got thicker and nastier, till she felt as if she were smoking about ten packs of cigarettes every time she breathed in. Mom gave her a hanky soaked in water to put over her nose and mouth. It helped some-till it dried out. That didn't take nearly long enough. She soaked it herself the next time. Mom splashed the fabric of the wagon to keep embers from catching.
Mom also rigged makeshift breathing masks for herself and Dad. “Shall I make some for the horses, too?” she asked.
“I don't think they'd put up with it,” Dad answered. “Besides, do you want to stop and find out?”
Mom automatically looked back over her right shoulder. So did Liz. and wished she hadn't. The Harries were much too close, much too big, and much, much too hot. Dad's question kind of answered itself. In case it didn't, Mom took care of things: “Now that you mention it, no.”
“About what I figured.” Dad snapped the whip above the horses' backs. They were already doing all they could, but he wanted to make sure they kept on paying attention.
“'What happens if the smoke gets them?” Liz asked through the bit of cloth that wasn't keeping as much smoke out of her lungs as she wished it would.
'“We jump down and we hold on to each other and we hustle,” Dad said. “Next question?”
Liz decided she didn't have a next question. The answer to the one she'd just asked gave her plenty to chew on all by itself.
Mom looked over her shoulder again. Liz admired her nerve. She didn't want to know exactly how close those leaping, crackling flames were. If things were going to turn out badly, couldn't it be a surprise? If you knew you were about to get roasted… Well, what could you do? Scream, maybe, and then stick an apple in your mouth.
Except she didn't have an apple. She didn't think the flames would stop when she was just done to a turn, either-not that it would matter to her one way or the other at that stage of things.
Then Mom said, “We're gaining.”
“What?” Liz wasn't sure she'd heard right. Nobody ever talked about how loud a really big fire was up close. The people who knew things like that were mostly either firefighters or dead.
“We're gaining,” Mom said again. Liz could hear her better this time. Maybe Mom talked louder. Maybe they were a little farther from the flames. If they were…
“We're gaining!” Liz said joyfully.
She looked over her shoulder then. The flames were still too close, but they weren't way too close any more. That looked like progress, all right.
“Just hope sparks and embers don't set the wagon roof on fire,” Dad said. Liz gave him a reproachful stare, not because that wasn't possible but because it was. They couldn't stop it if it did happen, so she didn't want to hear about it.
Heart pounding as loud as the flames were roaring, she looked over her shoulder once more. The fire was definitely farther away now. She approved of that. She would have approved even more if it were a mile beyond the moon.
A few minutes later, Dad let the horses slow down. “I'm pretty sure we're good,” he said. “It's burning straight west, pretty much, and we've got north of it.”
“What do we do now?” Mom asked.
“How about we sleep for a week?” Dad said.
“Works for me,” Liz said. “And you know what else? I bet we've got so much soot on our faces, nobody can recognize us.”
“That works, too,” Mom said. “I was going to say we should wash in the morning, but maybe not. In the meantime…”
In the meantime, Liz had no trouble at all falling asleep in the wagon.
Back in the Valley, Dan hadn't thought about sleeping on asphalt wrapped in no more than a blanket. That didn't mean he couldn't do it. If you got tired enough, you could sleep anywhere. He proved that: Sergeant Chuck had to shake him awake when the sun came up the next morning.
Yawning, Dan started to sit up straight. Then he didn't. You never could tell whether Westside snipers were waiting for somebody to do something that dumb. Chuck was on his hands and knees. He'd been ready to push Dan down if Dan forgot where he was. Since Dan didn't, Chuck relaxed.
Relaxed or not, he didn't look so good. He needed a shave, and smoke from last night's watchfires streaked his cheeks and forehead. “Boy, Sarge, you ought to clean up,” Dan said.
“What do we do today?” Dan asked.
“Wait and see what our loving neighbors to the south try,” Chuck said-or something like that, anyhow. “If they want more trouble, we can give it to them. If they sit tight, we're not going to go after them or anything. What would the King of the Valley do with land south of the Santa Monica Freeway?”
Rule it? Dan thought. As soon as he did, he wondered, But how'? It would take a long time to get messages and orders back and forth between Zev's palace up in Mortriridge and these lands way down here. Back in the Old Time, people said, you could talk to anybody right away, no matter how far apart the two of you were. Radio, TV, telephones… Dan believed in them, but they weren't around anymore. The telegraph survived-where people didn't steal wires for their copper, anyway-but who really wanted to pay attention to orders in Morse code? Dan knew he wouldn't.
“Have they started shooting yet?” he asked.
“No. but it's still early,” Sergeant Chuck answered. “I don't know that they won't, and neither does anybody else.”
Dan 's stomach growled. It had ideas of its own, and wasn't shy about letting the rest of him know about them. '“Will anyone bring us breakfast?” he asked.
“I heard they were supposed to be making sandwiches, but I sure haven't seen any.” Chuck looked around. “Wait-speak of the devil.”
Kitchen helpers with big cloth sacks crawled up and down the freeway dealing out sandwiches and Old Time soda bottles full of watered wine. Dan 's sandwich was smoked pork and pickled tomato on a hard roll: something that wouldn't go bad in a hurry. He made it disappear in a hurry, so how long it would keep didn't matter. Chuck 's breakfast was the same, and vanished even faster.
“It's not bacon and eggs and hash browns, but it'll do,” the sergeant said.
“Yeah, Sarge, but think what army cooks'd do to bacon and eggs and hash browns,” Dan said. Chances were the cooks would do fine by them. He didn't let that bother him. Complaining about army cooks probably went all the way back to the Old Time.
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