“I can’t take much more of this, Bob. It’s getting way too heavy.”
“Name a better place, kid, and I’ll take you there.”
“God damn you, I know there isn’t any place else.”
“Kid, you can’t do mad scenes. Sit down. Listen.” Grudgingly, she obeyed. “Sure, it’s a shitty time. I didn’t exactly get off on killing her. It had to be done or she would have gone on suffering. There’s no other way to cope with this, kid — just, you know, do what has to be done. Because if we don’t, we’re finished.”
He was relieved when her beautiful face loosened into weeping: “I just want it to end. I just want everything okay again. Ohh, Bob, why is everything so fucked up?”
Late that evening, Allison and Mercer drove back from Fort Ord. Ted Loeffler and Bert D’Annunzio were waiting in Allison’s study with Lamb and Ray Wilder.
“It’s official,” Allison smiled. “We get Lieutenant Mercer and the two platoons assigned to the valley. It’ll be tough, because we’ll have to support them, but I think we can manage with the Brotherhood’s help. We’ll use Burk’s empty cabins as their main base, with smaller groups at your place and ours, and down near the mouth of the canyon. Once we’ve nailed Burk and his two friends, things ought to settle down.”
Ray Wilder looked doubtful. “I wonder, sir, if it’s wise to put soldiers so close to civilians. There could be problems.”
Mercer shook his head slightly. “My men were civilians just a few weeks ago. Lots of ‘em have sisters. Some of ‘em are even born-again Christians.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Lamb said.
“Even if they weren’t,” Mercer went on, ignoring him, “they’d watch their step because I’m watchin’ over ‘em. You will have no problems with my men.”
Three days later, not long after sunset, three men on bicycles came through the canyon from the Carmel Valley. They were stopped at Checkpoint Alpha, where the road climbed out of the canyon into the upper valley. After radioing the ranch, the soldiers on duty allowed the men through.
Allison met them in the living room. Another lightning storm was breaking over the hills. The men introduced themselves: all were ranchers in the Carmel Valley. Their spokesman was a powerful old man named Olson.
“We heard about the soldiers you got here and how they cleaned out those survivalists,” Olson said. “We got the same kind of problem. People holed up here’n’ there, come out at night, steal cattle and anything else they can find. My oldest boy got shot in the foot a couple weeks by somebody tryin’ to swipe hay.”
“Can’t you do something yourself?”
“We’re law-abiding people, Mr. Allison. I know everything’s gone to hell, and some people are taking advantage and running wild. But that’s not for us. We couldn’t just go up to some fellow’s house and shoot him dead. And we don’t have jail or anything. Even if we did, we couldn’t spare anybody to guard it, or feed prisoners, or any of that. We’re having a hell of a time just looking after our families.”
Jesus, thought Allison, it was like something out of Seven Samurai. He rubbed his beard solemnly. “Can you help support Lieutenant Mercer and his men? Food, shelter, that kind of thing?”
“I guess. Give us an idea what it’ll cost—”
They dickered and argued for some time. At last all agreed on terms: Mercer’s two platoons would patrol the part of the Carmel Valley occupied by the ranchers and their neighbours. Allison had been appointed Designated Administrator of Escondido Valley by General Miles; the appointment was vague enough to permit him to operate in neighbouring areas as well, enforcing martial law and trying offenders. In exchange the ranchers would provide two-fifths of the soldiers’ food and supply adequate quarters for up to three squads at a time. Food, tools and weapons would also be contributed to a central store in the ranch compound.
When the ranchers left, Olson gripped Allison’s hand. “We’re glad to have you folks for neighbours,” he said. “You’re good people.”
Later that night, as lightning flashed through the skylights and hail rattled down, Allison looked in on Sarah, sleeping in what had been his dressing room. She was small and pale, her dark hair tousled on the pillow. He thought she was the most beautiful child he had ever seen.
Shauna came out of the bathroom on the far side of the bedroom. She wore her ratty bathrobe; Allison wondered irritably if she ever wore anything else these days. She was taking a long time to snap out of her current depression.
“So you got to borrow an army after all,” she said, dropping the robe and sliding into bed.
“Huh?”
“Remember? The day of the waves you were going to ask Ernie Miles to lend you some soldiers. For the movie.”
“My God. That seems so long ago. Maybe we ought to make Longrangers after all.” He sat heavily on his side of the bed and began to undress.
“You’re having too much fun being a real soldier.”
“Fun, my aching ass. Most of the time I’m scared out of my mind. Now at least I’m only anxious. If Mercer makes us a few more friends, I might even relax a little.”
“Friends.” Shauna turned off the Coleman lamp. “Those aren’t friends, they’re vassals.”
He laughed in the darkness, surprised that she knew the word and pleased at its aptness. “Better to have ‘em than be ‘em, kid.”
She made love to him with uncommon passion, and he responded fiercely and hungrily. Later, when she lay snoring in his arms and the storm grew into a blue-flashing roar, he kept seeing Helen Burk’s face at the instant of her death. Not until the storm passed, and grey dawn filled the skylights, did he fall asleep. As he did, he thought: This is what it’s like to be haunted.
Chapter 10
The car, a three-year-old Pontiac, arrived at the Kennards’ house promptly at 2:30 in the morning. Don and Kirstie put their luggage — a single duffle bag — on the seat beside the driver, and settled down in the back seat.
“What luxury,” Kirstie sighed. “Actually going somewhere without walking.”
“No kidding,” the driver agreed. He was a young Chicano, part of the Berkeley local council’s full-time work force. “We got fourteen, fifteen cars converted to propane or natural gas. Wish we had more. I don’t care what anybody says, it ain’t natural to have to walk all the time, you know?”
“A lot of people are converting, aren’t they?” Don asked. “We’ve been seeing more trucks and cars on the streets lately.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Trouble is finding the equipment and then finding the propane or gas. But a lotta guys are using their heads to beat the shortages.”
That was true enough, Don reflected. Berkeley was even beginning to look different as people began to experiment with different kinds of energy resources. Some had made solar panels and were heating their homes with them. But that was only a piecemeal solution, he knew. Perhaps one household in twenty had self-generated hot water and space heating; one in fifty had its own electric light, usually from a bicycle-powered generator. Berkeley as a whole was down to ninety minutes of electricity, every other day.
The streets at night were busy, almost crowded in some places. Hundreds of bicycles were out, and a few trucks. Here and there a building glowed with electric lights: hospitals, a few local-run clinics, the food-distribution centres. Otherwise candles burned everywhere. People had begun to adjust to staying up all night and sleeping most of the day.
Down near the wreckage zone, the driver turned into a side street along a park, and found his way blocked by a truck. “What now?” he growled.