Slow Apocalypse (64 page)

Other ideas were tossed around, but none seemed promising. After a while Dave cleared his throat.

“Maybe we used the wrong vehicle,” he said.

It took another two hours to remove the blade from the U-Haul and mount it on the Escalade. It involved taking off the front bumpers, fenders, and hood. The Escalade was looking like it had driven through a war zone, with hardly one surface that wasn’t dented or scratched. And, of course, it was filthy. When they had the blade mounted it looked even more warlike.

“Sorcerer,”
Dave said, regarding it. Marian laughed, and they had to explain it.

“That movie about those trucks carrying dynamite over mountains and rope bridges. Good movie.”

“I wish I had some of their dynamite,” Mark said.

Dave’s reasoning had been simple, but persuasive. The SUV was four-wheel-drive and the U-Haul was not. It had a bigger engine. And as Mark admitted, the improvised wood-burning engine simply didn’t have the muscle of a sophisticated Detroit mill. But the remounting went smoothly, as something you do for the second time usually does.

When they were ready to go the sun had dipped behind the hills to the west, and there was not much daylight left. They had cleared everything out of the Escalade. It only remained for Dave to start it up and drive it toward the rock.

“Wish me luck,” he said, and Karen leaned in the window and kissed him. He dropped it into the lowest gear and eased it forward until the center of the plow blade touched the edge of the jagged rock. Then he slowly began to give it the gas. The big vehicle’s engine purred quietly at first. He watched the tachometer as the needle moved slowly up.

The rock moved. First it was only a few inches, and then it slid a foot or more. This time there was no cheering; everyone was holding the celebration until the rock was over the edge of the cliff.

The rock moved another foot, and then all four wheels on the Escalade began to spin. Smoke billowed from under it, and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.

Dave backed off on the accelerator, and the rock stopped moving.

“Easy does it,” Bob said. Dave nodded, and started to push again.

Two more times the tires lost traction. Each time Mark and Gordon swept loose dirt from the road in front of the tires, and each time they bit again.

Dave was hooting in triumph when Mark raised his fist in the air, indicating that the rock had moved enough for the vehicles to get by. But he wasn’t going to let the damn thing go that easily. He gunned the engine again, and the rock went to the edge, teetered, and rolled over. Everyone was standing on the edge cheering as the boulder crashed through the underbrush. Dave was the only one who couldn’t see it, but the sound was wonderful. He had grown to hate that damn rock.

“One more to go,” Mark shouted, and ran to the other boulder. He used a tape measure to figure out how much it needed to be moved so they could get by. It came to about ten feet. He made a mark in the dirt showing where it needed to be, and hurried back to Dave.

“That was great, but you probably shouldn’t do it again.”

“I probably shouldn’t have done it that time.”

“No, we needed something to cheer about. But be careful, okay?”

“I will be.”

He approached the second rock, which was about the same size, maybe slightly bigger. He felt sure he could move it. The only problem might be in the rock’s shape. The side where he had to push it was slanted a bit, and he was worried that the blade would just slip up and over it.

But Mark signaled thumbs-up as he watched the blade contact the rock. Dave signaled back, and started to push.

It seemed the bottom of the rock was smoother than the first one had been, as it was not gouging out ruts as deep as the first one had. The tires smoked once, but Dave backed off and they regained traction.

Mark was standing near the front of the truck, watching. As the rock got closer to the line he held his arms out wide, indicating how far it had to move. After a few seconds he moved his hands closer.

When there was only a foot to go the rock seemed to dig in and stop, so Dave pressed a little harder on the accelerator. The rock moved, and then there was a shriek of metal and suddenly the Escalade lurched up and forward. It was very quick, and the next thing he knew he was climbing the rock. The front wheels were in the air but the back wheels were still digging in, and suddenly meeting no resistance.

The Escalade leaped up, to the sound of tearing metal. Dave was jolted so hard that for a moment his hands came off the wheel and his head bumped the ceiling. He took his foot off the gas, but the car’s momentum was carrying it up and over the top of the rock. He hit the brakes, hoping it wasn’t too late. The front end slammed the ground hard enough to bang his head against the steering wheel, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything. But he knew he was still moving. He began to skid toward the edge of the cliff.

He probably would have gone over, but one of the front wheels had been broken from the axle and immediately dug into the dirt, providing a lot more resistance than just the brakes. The front of the Escalade dropped over the edge, hung there a moment…and then the movement stopped.

Dave held his breath, not daring to move.

He felt blood trickling into his eyes. Outside the car, and a little behind him, someone was shouting.

“David! Don’t move!” That was Karen. He was slowly getting his wits about him. He turned slowly in his seat and saw his wife. Standing beside and a little behind her was Addison. Karen was holding her hands out to prevent their daughter from moving forward, and he realized they were standing on the edge of the cliff.

“I won’t,” he said. He did move, though. He looked out his window and saw nothing. He looked down and saw that the front of the Escalade was over the precipice. The lip of the cliff was about even with the back edge of the door
beside him. He would be able to open the door and step out carefully, and be safe.

If the vehicle didn’t tip over the edge.

“Everybody!” That was Gordon’s voice. “Come to the rear of the car. We need to hold it down. Just in case. Dave, don’t move yet.”

“I won’t,” he said again.

While they organized that, he felt his face for any broken bones. His nose was bleeding, but it didn’t feel broken. There was more blood coming from his forehead, but the gash he felt wasn’t deep.

“Okay, Dave, we’re putting weight on the back. Can you open your door?”

He slowly opened the door and looked down. He would be able to swing out, holding on to the door frame, and reach safety with a bit of a stretch.

If he was very, very careful.

“Addison, get back,” Karen was saying, as she reached out to him. He saw that his daughter was crying, and he tried a smile. Then he realized he probably looked pretty ghastly, with his bloody face.

Karen grabbed his hand and pulled, and he swung out and put one foot on the dirt. Then the other, and then one step forward. He immediately fell to his knees. He thought of kissing the ground, but decided that would be too melodramatic. Instead, he found himself laughing as Addison and Karen knelt by his side.

“That was more excitement than I was expecting,” he said.

“Well, I never liked that car anyway.”

Dave had had a few minutes to recover. Mark had promptly attached a chain to part of the Escalade’s rear chassis and pulled it back from the brink, fearful that it might still fall over. As he did this, the broken front wheel came free and bounced down the hillside. The big SUV now sat there, grievously wounded.

“Can’t fix that,” Mark announced, to no one’s surprise. “You know, it actually might drive on three wheels, it has a lot of ground clearance. But I’d have to work on the brake system, and—”

“Forget about it,” Dave said. “I’d actually thought of proposing we leave it behind, anyway. It’s a big waste of gasoline which we could use in the scooters. The truck already has all our cargo, and there’s room for us on the bus. Besides,
we don’t figure to be traveling all that far. It’s sort of Lake Elsinore or bust, isn’t it?”

No one disagreed. If they were turned away from there, Dave supposed they would try to keep moving south on the 15, toward San Diego, but he held out little hope they would get there, or be accepted when they arrived. It wasn’t something he would say out loud, not wanting to worry Addison, but that was how he saw it.

They drained the Escalade’s gas tank into some of the empty gas cans. Dave thought the moment called for something dramatic, like pushing it over the cliff, but knew that was stupid. Just because the world had gone to hell didn’t mean they needed to further vandalize it.

And he discovered a late-blooming affection for the impractical old beast. It had taken his family though holocaust and riot, had performed faithfully and efficiently in spite of its many wounds.

Maybe the thing to do would be to shoot it in the head, like an injured horse.

But they did nothing. They pushed it to the side of the road so it wouldn’t block any other travelers. They hitched the horse trailer to the back of the U-Haul, but Ranger could easily walk to Lake Elsinore. It was all downhill. They moved on.

It was getting dark when they rounded a last bend in the road and came to a lookout point. Far down below them was the lake, and the towns of Lake Elsinore and Lakeland Village, surrounding the lake on four sides. The lake itself was almost rectangular, and a lovely blue in the pale evening light.

And there was something that already seemed amazing to them. There were lights. It was one-hundredth as bright as it would have been a few months ago, but the lights were clearly electrical, not lanterns.

“San Onofre,” Dave said.

“Must be,” Bob agreed. It seemed that some power was still coming over the lines from the nuclear plant on the coast.

“Go down there now, or in the morning?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t think it’s wise to approach them in the dark,” Marian said, and everyone agreed. So they looked over the terrain and picked a spot slightly back
from the overlook, as it looked easier to defend. The road was quite narrow there. They parked the bus sideways across the street, leaving only a narrow gap at each end, and kept the truck behind that. They pitched tents and made dinner. He didn’t know about the others, but Dave was exhausted. He fell asleep almost at once.

They posted guards both ahead and behind. Dave had the second shift, and Karen woke him at midnight. He had slept through the alarm.

“Want me to take your place?” she asked. “I wasn’t sleeping well.”

“No, we’ll stick to the schedule. Just give me a minute.”

He got into his clothes and for the first time since last winter felt the need of a jacket. He didn’t know whether it was the altitude or because it was later in the year, or both, but there was a chill in the air. Karen had brought him a thermos of hot coffee and he drank some of it at once. It cleared his head a little.

“You sure? You don’t dare fall asleep.”

“I won’t.” He was a veteran of night watches by now, and had taught himself a few tricks that kept him awake.

“It’s me,” he said quietly, as he came close to the spot where he knew Teddy was concealed. They had chosen it carefully. It was on the cliff side of the road, the east side, where it had been blasted through a ridge about fifteen feet high. There were a few scrubby trees growing from the side and on top, several large boulders, and three or four cracks in the rock big enough for a man to hide in and obtain some protection from gunfire. The place where Teddy should be was also chosen to give him a field of fire if he needed it. Dave couldn’t see him.

“I’m here,” Teddy said, and flashed his light on and off quickly. Only then was Dave able to pick him out. The young man was about six feet up, leaning down and offering his hand. Dave took it and climbed up beside him. There was barely room for the two of them.

“See anything?”

“Couple of rabbits, running fast. Maybe a coyote. Quiet night”

Teddy handed him the walkie-talkie, and left. Dave settled himself into the niche in the rock. There were places he could have sat down, though none would have been really comfortable, but he knew that comfort was the enemy of alertness. The handmaiden of sleep, if he was allowed to wax poetic.

He looked around. Because of the curve of the road, he could see just the front half of the bus, not quite a hundred yards away. He checked his pockets for spare shotgun shells. He had a few dozen, which he hoped were a lot more than he would ever need.

Then he settled down to wait.

The man came up the road at around two in the morning. The moon had moved higher in the sky, but was still coming from over Dave’s shoulder; he was completely in shadow. The guy was wearing black. He had a gun in his hand. He was tall and skinny, almost skeletal. Maybe a tweaker, a meth addict. Or maybe just a hungry man looking for food. Dave clicked the radio signal for “intruder approaching.”

The guy was moving quietly, staying close to the rock wall on the other side of the road. He got far enough around the curve to see the rear end of the school bus. He quickly pressed himself against the rock wall and looked carefully around. This man was a scout of some kind.