Harvey said nothing. He put the shotgun down and stared at the wall. They were right. He couldn’t catch the bike crew, not now, and he was very tired.
“They leave anything at all?” Mark demanded.
Harvey didn’t answer.
“We’ll do a search anyway,” Mark said. “Jo, you take the house. I’ll go the rounds outside, garage, everything. Only, we can’t leave the TravelAII by itself. Come on, Harv.” He took Harvey’s arm and pulled him to his feet. Mark was surprisingly strong. Harvey made no resistance. Mark led him to the TravelAII and put him in the passenger seat. He put the Olympic target pistol in Harvey’s lap. Then he locked all the doors, leaving Harvey sitting inside, still staring at the rain.
“He going to be all right?” Joanna asked.
“Don’t know. But he’s ours,” Mark said. “Come on, let’s see what we can find.”
Mark found Harvey’s Chlorox bottles of water in the garage. There were other things. Sleeping bags, wet, but serviceable; evidently the bikers had their own and didn’t bother. Stupid, Mark thought. Harv’s Army Arctic was better than any the bikers would have.
After awhile he brought his salvage to the TravelAII and opened the back. Then he got the small dirt bikes he and Joanna had ridden and brought them around. He started to ask Harvey to help, but instead found a heavy two-by-eight and used it as a ramp. With Joanna’s help he wrestled one of the bikes into the back, and piled stuff in on top of it.
“Harv, where’s Andy?” Mark said finally.
“Safe. Up in the mountains. With Gordie Vance… Marie!” Harvey shouted. He jumped out of the car and ran toward Gordie’s house. Then he stopped. The front door was open. Harvey stood there, afraid to go in. What if… what if they’d been in Gordie’s place while Harvey was mooning over Loretta? Jesus, what a goddam useless bastard I am…
Mark went into the Vance house. He came out a few minutes later. “Looted. But nobody home. No blood. Nothing.” He went to the garage and tried to open the door. It came open easily; the lock was broken. When it swung up, the garage was empty. “Harv, what kind of car did your buddy have?”
“Caddy,” Harvey said.
“Then she left, ’cause there’s no car here and no Caddy with the bikers. You get back and watch the TravelAll. There’s more of your stuff we’ll need. Or come help carry.”
“In a minute.” Harvey went back to the car and stood, thinking. Where would Marie Vance go? She was his responsibility; Gordie was taking care of Harvey’s boy, Gordie’s wife would be Harvey’s lookout. Only Harvey didn’t have a clue as to where Marie might be—
Yes he did. Los Angeles Country Club. Governor’s fundraising thingy. Crippled children. Marie was on the board. She’d have been there for Hammerfall.
And if she hadn’t got back here by now, she wasn’t coming back. Marie wasn’t Harvey’s responsibility anymore.
Mark came out of the house, and Harvey was finally startled. Mark was carrying something… OhmyGod. Carrying five thousand dollars’ worth of Steuben crystal whale, Loretta’s wedding present from her family. A couple of years ago Loretta had thrown Mark out of the house for picking it up.
Mark got the whale to the van without dropping it. He wrapped it in sheets and pillowcases and spare blankets.
“What’s all that for?” Harvey asked. He pointed to the whale, and the skin cream, and Kleenex, and the remains of Loretta’s survival kit. And other things.
“Trade goods,” Mark said. “Your paintings. Some luxury items. If we find something better, we dump the lot, but we might as well be carrying something. Jesus, Harv, I’m glad your head’s working again. We’re about loaded up. Want to get in, or do you want to take another look through the house?”
“I can’t go back in there—”
“Right. Okay.” He raised his voice. “Jo, let’s move it.”
“Right.” She appeared from out of a hedge, soaking wet, still holding the shotgun.
“You up to driving, Harv?” Mark demanded. “It’s a big car for Joanna to handle.”
“I can drive.”
“Fine. I’ll be outrider with the bike. Give me the pistol, and Jo keeps the shotgun. One thing, Harv. Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Harvey said. “North. I’ll think of something once we get started.”
“Right.”
The motorcycle could hardly be heard over the roar of the thunder. They drove out, north toward Mulholland, along the same route the bikers had taken, and Harvey kept hoping…
It rained. Dan Forrester saw his path in split-second flashes when the frenetic wipers disturbed the flood of water across his windshield. The rain ate the light of his headlamps before the light could reach the road. Continuous lightning gave more light, but the rain scattered it into flashing white murk.
Rivers ran across the twisting mountain road. The car plowed through them.
In the valleys it must be… well, he would learn soon enough. There were preparations he must make first.
Charlie Sharps would know sooner.
Dan worried for Charlie. Charlie’s chances weren’t poor, but he should not have been traveling with that loaded station wagon. It was too obviously worth stealing. But Masterson might have packed guns, too.
Even if they reached the ranch, would Senator Jellison let them in? Ranch country, high above the floods. If they accepted everyone who came, their food would be gone in a day, their livestock the next. They might let Charlie Sharps in, alone. They probably would not require the services of Dan Forrester, Ph.D., ax-astrophysicist. Who would?
Dan was surprised to find that he’d driven home. He zapped the garage door and it opened. Huh! He still had electricity. That wouldn’t last. He left the door open. Inside, he turned on some lights, then set out a great many candles. He lit two.
The house was small. There was one big room, and the walls of that room were bookshelves, floor to ceiling. Dan’s dining table was piled high with his equipment. He had bought his fair share of freeze-dried foods while they existed, but Dan had thought further than that. He had carried home far more than his share of Ziploc Bags and salad-size Baggies, insect spray and mothballs. The table was full. He set to work on the floor.
He whistled as he worked. Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. Presently he got up to put on some gloves. He came back with a fan and set it blowing past his ears from behind. That ought to keep the insecticide off his hands and out of his lungs.
When the pile on the floor got too big, he moved. And when the second pile was as high as the first, he stood up carefully. His joints were stiff. His feet hurt. He moved his legs to build circulation. He started coffee in the kitchen. The radio gave him nothing but static, so he started a stack of records going. There was now room at the kitchen table. He resumed work there.
The two piles merged into one.
The lights went out, the Beatles’ voices deepened and slowed and stopped. Dan was suddenly immersed in darkness and sounds he’d been ignoring: rolling thunder, the scream of wind and the roar of rain attacking the house. Water had begun to drip from a corner of the ceiling.
He got coffee in the kitchen, then moved around the library lighting candles. Hours had passed. The forgotten coffee had already been heated too long. Four-fifths of the shelves were still full, but most of the right books were in bags.
Dan walked along the bookshelves. Weariness reinforced his deep melancholy. He had lived in this house for twelve years, but it was twice that long since he’d read Alice in Wonderland and The Water Babies and Gulliver’s Travels. These books would rot in an abandoned house: Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat’s Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon’s Day; The Red Right Hand, The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife, Rosemary’s Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He’d packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization. Even Dole’s Habitable Planets for Man…