Harvey tried to imagine it. Noise, incessant noise: the stutter of machine guns, a crackle of rifle fire, dynamite bombs, mortars; and through it all the screams of the wounded and dying. There wouldn’t be any helicopters and field hospitals here. In Vietnam the wounded were often in hospitals faster than they’d have been if they’d been civilians at home in an auto accident. Here they’d have to take their chances.
They? Not they. Me, Harvey thought. Who was it that said “A rational army would run away”? Somebody. But run to where?
The Sierra. Run to Gordie and Andy. Go find your son. A man’s duty is to his children… Stop it! Act like a man, he told himself.
Does acting like a man mean to sit calmly while they drive you where you’ll be killed?
Yes. Sometimes. This time. Think about something else. Maureen. Have I got a chance? That wasn’t a satisfying line of thought either. He wondered why he was so concerned about Maureen. He hardly knew her. They’d spent an afternoon together here, a lifetime ago, and then they’d made love; and three times since, furtively. Not much to build a life around. Was he interested in her because she was a promise of safety, power, influence? He didn’t think so, he was certain there was more, but objectively he couldn’t find reasons. Fidelity? Fidelity to the woman he’d had an adulterous relationship with; in a way a kind of fidelity to Loretta. That wasn’t getting him anywhere.
There were a few lights visible through the gloom; farmhouses in the battleground, places not abandoned yet. They weren’t Harvey’s concern. Their occupants were supposed to know already. They drove on in silence until they came to the south fork of the Tule River. They crossed it, and now there was no turning back. They were beyond the Stronghold’s defenses, beyond any help. Harvey felt the tension in the car, and felt strangely comforted by it. Everyone was afraid, but they weren’t saying it.
They turned south and went over a ridge to the valley beyond. The ground seemed even and smooth on both sides of the road. Harvey stopped and planted homemade mines: jars of nails and broken glass over dynamite and percussion caps; shotgun shells pointed upward and buried just above a board pierced by a nail.
Marie watched, puzzled. “How will you get them to walk out here?” she asked.
“That’s what the oil is for.” They wrestled the drum of crankcase oil to the side of the road. “We shoot holes in that when we get past. When the oil’s on the road, nobody can walk on it, drive on it, anything.”
The route beyond was ridge, valley, ridge, valley, with the road curving to cross low spots in the ridges. It was rippling landscape, a land with waves in it. Ten miles beyond the Stronghold they passed the first of Deke Wilson’s trucks. It was filled with women and children and wounded men, household possessions and supplies. There were baskets tied to the top and sides of the truck bed, filled with goods — pots and pans, useless furniture, precious food and fertilizer, priceless ammunition. The truck bed was covered by a tarpaulin, and more people were huddled under it, along with more goods. Bedding and blankets. A birdcage but no bird. Pathetic possessions, but everything these people had.
A few miles on there were more trucks, then two cars. The driver of the last didn’t know whether any others would get out. They crossed a broad stream and Harvey stopped and planted dynamite, leaving the fuses marked with rocks so that any of his party could find them to blow the bridge.
There was a faint tinge of gray-red in the east when they reached the top of the last ridge before the low rolling hills where Deke Wilson’s farm band lived. They approached it carefully, concerned that the New Brotherhood might have got past Deke’s people and come to secure the road, but no one challenged them. They stopped the TravelAII to listen. The infrequent popping of gunshots came from far away. “All right,” Harvey said. “Let’s get to work.”
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.