They cut trees and built a maze on the road: a system of fallen trees that a truck could get through, but only slowly, by stopping to back up and turn carefully. They made dynamite bombs and put them at convenient places to throw down onto the road, then Harvey sent half his troops out to the sides, the others down the hill. They cut trees partway through so that they would fall easily. The others ranged out to both sides, and Harvey could hear the growl of the chain saws, and sometimes the sharp whump of half a stick of dynamite.
The gray became a red smear behind the High Sierra when the work parties returned. “A couple more trees cut and one charge set off, and that road’s blocked for hours,” Bill reported. “This won’t be so hard.”
“I think we should do it now,” someone said.
Bill looked around, then back at Randall. “Shouldn’t we wait for Mr. Wilson’s truck?”
“Yes, wait,” Marie said. “It would be awful if we stopped our own people from getting through.”
“Sure,” Harvey said. “The maze will stop the Brotherhood if they get here first. Let’s take a break.”
“The shooting is getting closer,” one of the boys said.
Harvey nodded. “I think so. Hard to tell.”
“It’s officially dawn,” Marie said. “Muslim definition. When you can tell a white thread from a black one. It’s in the Koran.” She listened for a moment. “There’s something coming. I hear a truck.”
Harvey took out a whistle and sounded it. He shouted to the boys nearest him to spread out and get off the road. They waited while the truck noises got louder and louder. It came around the bend and there was a screech of brakes as it stopped just short of the first tree. It was a large truck, still only an indistinct object in the gray light. “Who’s there?” Harvey shouted.
“Who are you?”
“Get out of the truck. Show yourself.”
Someone leaped out of the truck bed and stood on the road. “We’re Deke Wilson’s people,” he shouted. “Who’s there?”
“We’re from the Stronghold.” Harvey started toward the truck. One of the boys was much closer. He stepped up to the cab and looked in. Then he backed up fast.
“It’s not—”
He never finished. There were pistol shots, and the boy was down. Something smashed Harvey in the left shoulder, a hard blow that knocked him backward. There was more shooting. People were jumping out of the truck.
Marie Vance fired first. Then there was more shooting from the sides of the road and the rocks above it. Harvey struggled to find his rifle. He’d dropped it, and he scrabbled around for it.
“Stay down!” someone yelled. A sputtering object landed just in front of the truck and rolled underneath. Nothing happened for an eternity, and there were more gunshots; then the dynamite exploded. The truck lifted slightly, and there was a gasoline smell; then it blew up in a column of fire. Fire danced in the air near Harvey’s face as the gasoline was flung around. He could see human shapes in the fire: Men and women screamed and moved in dancing flame. There were more shots.
“Stop. Stop shooting. You’re wasting ammunition.” Marie Vance ran down toward the burning truck. “Stop it!” The gunfire died and there were no sounds but the burning fire.
Harvey found his rifle at last. His left shoulder was throbbing and he was afraid to look, but he forced himself, expecting to see a bloody hole. There was nothing at all. He felt it, and it was sore, and when he opened his coat he found a large bruise. Ricochet, he thought. I must have been hit by a ricochet. The heavy coat stopped it. He got up and went down to the road.
The girl, Marylou, was trying to get closer to the fire, and two boys held her back. She wasn’t saying anything, just struggling with them, staring at the burning truck and the bodies near it.
“He was dead when he hit the ground,” one of the boys shouted. “Dead, dammit, you can’t do anything.” They seemed dazed now as they stared at the bodies and the fire.
“Who?” Harvey asked. He pointed at the dead boy near the track cab. The boy lay on his face. His back was on fire.
“Bill Dummery,” Tommy Tallifsen said. “Shouldn’t we…what do we do, Mr. Randall?”
“Do you know where Bill planted the charges downhill?”
“Yes.”
“Show me. Let’s go light them.” They moved down the hill. Visibility was increasing fast. A hundred yards, two hundred. They found a rock that overhung the road. Tommy pointed. As Harvey bent down to light the fuse, Tommy grabbed his shoulder.
“Another truck coming,” he said.
“Aw, shit.” Harvey reached for the fuse again. Tommy said nothing. Finally Harvey stood. “It’ll be light before they get up here. You go on back up the hill and alert the troops. They can’t get past that burning truck anyway. Don’t get close to it until you know who it is.”
“All right.”
Harvey waited, cursing himself, Deke Wilson, the New Brotherhood. Bill Dummery, with a scholarship to Santa Cruz and a girl named Marylou. My fault.
The truck came on up the hill. It was loaded with people. No household goods at all. In a cartop carrier on top of the cab, two children in bulky raincoats hunkered down against the wind. As the truck got closer Harvey recognized the man standing in the bed next to the cab. He was one of the farmers who had come with Wilson to the Stronghold. Something Vinge?
The people in the truck were all women and children and men patched with bloody bandages. Some lay in the truck bed, not moving as the overloaded vehicle ground its gears and crawled uphill. Harvey let it pass him, then lit the fuse. He followed behind it. He could walk almost as fast as it could go. The dynamite went off behind him, but the boulder didn’t roll onto the road.
The truck stopped at the log maze. There was no question about who was in the truck. The boys came out of cover. Vinge jumped down. He looked exhausted, but showed no obvious wounds or bandages. “You weren’t supposed to block the goddam road until we got through!” he shouted.
“Fuck yourself!” Harvey screamed in rage. He fought for self-control. The truck was filled with wounded and with women and children, and all of them looked half dead from exhaustion. Harvey shook his head in pity and resentment, then called to Marie Vance. “Get the TravelAll! We’ll have to use the winch to clear a way for them.”
It took half an hour to saw through two logs and snake them out of the way so the truck could get through. While they worked, Harvey sent Tommy Tallifsen down to try again with the boulder. At the rate they were using the stuff, they’d run out of dynamite right here, with miles of road still to block. This time the boulder rolled. It formed a formidable obstacle, with no easy way around it. Others with chain saws dropped more trees on the road.
“All clear,” one of the boys called. “You can roll.”
Vinge went up to the truck cab. There were four people crammed into it. The driver was a teenage boy, fourteen or so, barely big enough to reach the controls. “Take care of your mother,” the farmer shouted.
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered.
“Get moving,” the farmer said. “And…” He shook his head. “Get moving.”
“Goodbye, Dad.” The truck crawled away.
The farmer came back to Harvey Randall. “Name’s Jacob Vinge,” he said. “Let’s get to work. There won’t be any more coming out of our area.”
The fighting sounded much closer. Harvey could see across the hills and out to the San Joaquin Sea. There were columns of smoke to mark the burning farmhouses, and a continuous popcorn crackle of small-arms fire. It was strange to know that men and women were fighting and dying not a mile away, and yet see nothing. Then one of the boys called, “There’s somebody running.”
They spilled over the hill half a mile off. They ran haltingly, not in any order, and few carried weapons or anything else. Running in terror, Harvey thought. Not a fighting withdrawal. Run away! They flowed down into the valley, and on toward the hill held by Task Force Randall.
A pickup truck came over th
e top of the next ridge. It stopped and men jumped out. Harvey was startled to see more men on foot to each side; they’d come over so carefully that he hadn’t noticed them. They gestured to the people in the pickup, and someone in the back of the track stood up and leaned on the cab. He held binoculars to his eyes. They swept over the men fleeing uphill toward Harvey, paused only a moment there, then swept up along the road, examining each of Harvey’s roadblocks with care. The enemy had a face now; and the enemy knew Harvey Randall’s face. So be it.
In less than five minutes the valley and ridge beyond swarmed with armed men. They walked carefully; they were spread out half a mile to each side. They advanced toward Harvey.
The fugitives staggered uphill, to Harvey’s men and trucks and past them. They breathed like terminal pneumonia cases. They held no weapons, and their eyes were blind with terror.
“Stop!” Harvey shouted. “Stand and fight! Help us!” They staggered on without seeming to hear. One of Harvey’s boys stood up, looked back at the grimly advancing skirmish line below, then ran to join the fugitives. Harvey screamed at him, but the boy kept running.
“Lucky the others stayed,” Jacob Vinge said. “I…hell, I’d like to run, too.”
“So would I.” This wasn’t going according to plan. The New Brotherhood wasn’t coming up the ridge to clear the road. Instead they were fanning out to each side, and Harvey didn’t have nearly enough troops to hold the ridgeline. He’d hoped to delay them longer, but there was no chance. If they didn’t get out fast they’d be cut off. “And we’re going to.” He lifted his whistle and blew loudly. The advance below broke into a run even as he did.
Harvey waved his command into their truck and the TravelAll. Jacob Vinge took Bill’s place. Harvey sent the truck out, then hesitated. “We ought to try. Come on, a few rounds…”
“It won’t do any good,” Marie Vance said. “There’s too much cover, and they aren’t showing themselves enough. We’d be trapped, and we wouldn’t have hurt any of them.”
“How do you know so much about strategy?” Harvey demanded.
“I watch war movies. Let’s get out of here!”
“All right.” Harvey turned the TravelAll and drove away, down off the ridge and into the next valley. The truck stopped and let the running men get aboard.
“Poor bastards,” Marie said.
“We fought them for a day,” Vinge said, “but we couldn’t hold them. Like the ridge back there. They spread out and get around you, behind you, and then you’re dead. So you have to keep running. After a while it can get to be a habit.”
“Sure.” Habit or not, Harvey thought, they had run like rabbits, not like men.
The road led down to a stream swollen with the rain of Hammerfall. The low parts of the valley were deep mud. Harvey stopped at the far side of the small bridge, and got out to light dynamite sticks already in place.
“There they are!” one of the boys shouted.
Harvey looked up on the ridge. A hundred and more armed enemies boiled over the top and came down the hill at a dead run.
There was a staccato chatter, and a rustle in the grass not far from Harvey.
“Get it done!” Jacob Vinge shouted. “They’re shooting at us!”
It was nearly a mile up to the ridge, but that sound was familiar from Vietnam: a heavy machine gun. It wouldn’t take long to walk its fire over to Harvey and the TravelAll, and then they’d be finished. He flicked his Zippo and blessed it when it caught the first time, even though it was filled with gasoline rather than regular lighter fluid. The fuse sputtered, and Harvey ran for the TravelAll. Marie had slid over into the driver’s seat and was already rolling. Harvey caught on and hands grabbed him and pulled him inside. There was more of the chatter, brup-brup-brup, and something roared past his ear.
“Holy shit!” he yelled.
“They shoot pretty good,” Vinge said.
The dynamite went off, and the bridge was in ruins. But not completely, Harvey saw. There was still a full span, wide enough to walk across. It wasn’t going to take long to repair, but he sure wasn’t going back. They drove up to the top of the next ridge, and got out, looking for more trees to drop, boulders to dynamite into the road, anything.
The New Brotherhood troops came on into the valley, some on foot, a dozen on motorcycles. They reached the ruined bridge and stopped, then a few swam and waded across and came on. Others spread along the banks and found new crossings. In five minutes a hundred had crossed and they walked on steadily toward Harvey’s work crews.
“Jesus, it’s like watching the tide come in,” Harvey said.
Jacob Vinge didn’t say anything. He kept on digging under a boulder to make a hole for the dynamite. Just above them a tree crashed across the road, and the boys moved to another.
There were motors in the valley ahead. Two motorcycles gingerly drove across the narrow remains of the bridge. Extra riders got on and the bikes gunned forward toward Harvey’s position.
Marie Vance unslung her rifle and worked the sling around her left arm. “Go on digging,” she called. She took a sitting position and rested the rifle on a large rock, then squinted through the telescopic sights. She waited until the bikes were about a quarter of a mile away before she fired. Nothing happened. She worked the bolt and aimed again, fired. At the third shot the lead motorcycle wobbled and swerved into the ditch at the side of the road. One of the riders got up. Marie aimed again, but the other bike moved off the road and the riders scrambled for cover. They waited for the advancing skirmish line. That came steadily closer, and Marie changed her aim point, firing to slow the advance.
Again the center of the line slowed, while more attackers spread to each side, fanning out well beyond any point Harvey could defend. “Get finished,” Harvey shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
No one argued with that. Vinge put two sticks of dynamite into the hole beneath the boulder and tamped mud in on top of it.
“Look!” Barbara Ann, Tommy Tallifsen’s partner, shouted in horror. She pointed at the opposite ridge, where they’d spent the dawn hours putting barriers on the road.
A truck appeared at the top of the ridge. It went over and came down the road, and another followed, then another. When the trucks reached the downed bridge, men jumped out with timbers and steel plates. More trucks came over the ridge.
Harvey looked at his watch. They had delayed the enemy trucks by precisely thirty-eight minutes.
Valley of Death
Lordy, Lordy, won’t you listen to me,
The Colonel said “Stand!”
But it ain’t gonna be,
’Cause we’re buggin’ out,
Yes, we’re moving on…
“The Bugout Boogie,”
a forbidden ballad of
the United States Army
The pattern was always the same. No matter what obstructions Harvey’s group put into the road, the New Brotherhood Army was delayed for no longer than it took to put them up. If Task Force Randall could have actively defended its roadblocks, they might have stopped the advancing enemy for much longer, but there was no chance of that. The New Brotherhood used its trucks to bring troops as far forward as possible; their skirmishers then spread out to both flanks and advanced, threatening to cut Harvey off; and once again Harvey had to retreat.
The enemy developed a new tactic as well: They mounted heavy machine guns in one of their trucks, and brought that forward to fire on Harvey’s workers from well out of rifle range. It kept Harvey from doing a proper job of ruining the road, and he couldn’t even shoot back. The enemy were faceless ghosts who couldn’t be harmed, and Harvey couldn’t stop them. Their infantry continued to advance, avoiding Harvey’s defenders, trying always to get around and behind. It was battle at long range, with few casualties; but the New Brotherhood’s advance was relentless. By midafternoon they had come a dozen miles toward the Stronghold.
Work and run; and running was becoming a habit. A dozen times Harvey wanted to keep g
oing, to drive for the Stronghold, and the devil with the roadblocks. His mind found a dozen excuses for running.
“It’s like nothing can stop them,” Tommy Tallifsen screamed. They had halted at another ridgeline. The maps said the valley below—where the New Brotherhood was busily removing trees, filling in holes, repairing the road quicker than Harvey had been able to destroy it—was called “Hungry Hollow.” The name seemed appropriate.
“We’ve got to try,” said Harvey.
Tallifsen looked doubtful. Harvey knew what he was thinking. They were all exhausted; they’d lost five of Task Force Randall: one shot dead as he worked with a chain saw, the other four vanished—run away, captured, wounded and lying back in the hills, they didn’t know. They hadn’t got aboard when it was time to bug out, and the New Brotherhood had been too close to let them look for them; and running had become a habit. What could eight exhausted people do to stop a horde that flowed forward like the tide?
“It will be dark in a couple of hours,” Harvey said. “Then we can rest.”
“Can we?” Tallifsen asked. But he went back to work, digging out under another boulder above the road. Others stretched the cable from the TravelAll’s winch around the rock. There wasn’t enough dynamite to use on every rock they found.
An hour before dark they were forced out of Hungry Hollow and over the ridge beyond. They fled across Deer Creek, pausing only long enough to light the fuse on the dynamite they’d placed there. When they climbed onto the next ridge, they found men already there.
It took Harvey a moment to realize they were friends. Steve Cox and almost a hundred troops had been sent from the ranch to hold the ridge. The Stronghold forces were through running away; now they would stand and fight. Cox had spread his forces along the ridge, and they’d dug in. Harvey and Task Force Randall—what was left of it—could rest. There was even cold supper and a Thermos of hot tea.
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