False Dawn (28 page)

She gathered up the ax and saw, going ahead of him down the hill, clearing a path for him and the load on the sled. Dusk was gathering by the time they got back to their house, and the sky overhead glowed with streamers of orange and yellow.

“Too bad,” she said over her shoulder to him. “Look at that. It’s beautiful and it’s killing us.”

He stopped before hauling the sled into the garage, taking a good look at the sky. “That’s not enough to have a lasting effect. It’ll make the next couple of years rough, hut we can handle that. What would be bad—” He thought about the chain of volcanoes stretching north and south along the Pacific Ocean, covered in snow in Alaska, lying in the drowsy heat of Guatemala, poking into the Andean sky. “It would be bad if one of the big ones really blew. Not just erupted, completely blew up.”

“Do they ever do that?” Thea held the door open and found that her hands were shaking.

“Rarely, but they do. It plays havoc with the weather around the world when that happens, too. Most of the big eruptions in the last two thousand years have taken place in the Philippines and Indonesia, but they could happen here, just as well. “ He could half remember reading as a child a volcano somewhere west of Java, east of Sumatra. It had blown itself right off the map, and had changed world-wide weather patterns for five years and more. Krakatoa, that was the name. It had those been an island one day, and then it was gone.

“Maybe there are some books on volcanoes around,” she said as she began to unload the wood. “Could you find one, Evan? I want to know what they do.”

He was already starting up the stairs to fix dinner, but he stopped, hearing the fright in her words. “If you want, Thea.”

“Please.” Then she turned her attention to the wood once more.

Late that night as she lay tucked in the curve of Evan’s body, Thea asked, “Evan, how long do you think we can stay here?”

“Getting bored?” he asked her in a rich chuckle.

“No, not bored,” she said impatiently while she adjusted the angle of his arm across her shoulder. “I’m worried. What if the Pirates find this place? We can’t hold out against them, can we?”

“We can hold out against anything,” he said reassuringly.

“Evan, listen to me. I don’t want to hear that. I wish it were true, but it isn’t and I want to know what we’ll have to do.” She turned a little, moving back from him, trying to see his face. It was a moment before her eyes adjusted enough, and in that time she gathered her thoughts. “We can’t stay here forever, Evan.”

“Why not?” But he knew that this was not the answer she wanted, and he stared at her for a short while. “Something’s bothering you—what is it?”

“I saw tire tracks near the landslide,” she said steadily. “Big tires. I think the Pirates are looking for this valley. If not the Pirates, then someone else with big-tired vehicles. Someone is going to find us, Evan,”

“I see.” He took a deep breath. “All right, it’s true enough we can’t stay here forever. Those tire-tracks are a warning that soon or late, we will have to decide if we want to take a chance on defending the valley. Maybe we can last out the summer, or all the way through next winter. Eventually Mackley or whoever is in charge of the Pirates now will get a scouting party in here and then there’ll be trouble. If not the Pirates, another group will try for this place. We’ll have to fight or move out fast. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

“I didn’t want you to say it, hut I have to know. Oh, Evan, don’t you see? If I have to give all this up, I’ve got to prepare myself. I feel like we belong here, I want to stay here. But we can’t, not really.” She reached out and touched his face, feeling the line of his beard and the soft texture of his hair. “It’s going to hurt so much to leave, hut we’ll leave, just the same. Won’t we?”

“You sound like you’ll go alone if you have to.” Anxiety made the words snap. He took her arm and held it tightly. “Is that what you meant?”

“No.” Her voice was very low. “No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that here I have you and I have a red bathtub with hot water, and books and a soft bed with clean sheets, and four fur jackets, and enough food that really tastes good, and time for you and me. I’ve never had that before, not all those things at once.” She moved closer to him, still somewhat awkward with their intimacy.

His arm closed over her, drawing her near to him. “What a shitty world this is, Thea. All right. If that’s what you want we’ll make plans to leave now—we’ll pack tomorrow and be gone the next day.”

“It’s not what I want. But what if the Pirates come in the winter? What if we have to spend more time in the snow? I didn’t know how much I could hate it until we came here and I didn’t have to sleep with every bone aching. If we leave now, maybe we can find another place before it snows again. We won’t have to bolt and run, and we might not be followed for quite a while, if we’re followed at all. There are other places. Maybe not like this, but, Evan—” With a curious little cry she went into his arms, holding him tightly until they lost themselves in sleep.

They made their plans and gathered their stores, watching for a sign that winter had at last given up its icy grip on the valley. But another two weeks went by and still there was frost and freezing nights. The flowers that had tried to appear withered and died incomplete. The grass was sere and no birds came there.

“Where can we go? Which way do we leave?” Thea asked when they had made their final plans to leave. The had scavenged large, light-weight back-packs from the other houses, and luggage that would hold those things they would not carry. Now that the time was so close she found, perversely, that she did not want to leave, that she would rather face the Pirates and he killed here, in a place she knew, than die out in strange country. Twice she decided they should set out, and twice she found an excuse that postponed their departure.

“We can take this route,” Evan explained, pointing to the ancient topographic maps he had found some weeks ago in the lodge. “We go west and south across this ridge here, and this trail brings us to Tahoe at Emerald Bay. We can see everything that’s going on down there long before we’re close enough to be spotted. Then, if things don’t look right, we can keep on the ridge trail and head south for Tuolumne and Yosemite. There’s places along the trail we can stay, if we have to.” Idly he wondered if there was going to be any trouble. They both had two crossbows apiece now, and a large variety of quarrels. They had rigged the sledge to be a kind of wagon, and it would carry most of their supplies, or could be taken apart and made into augmentation to their back packs. In an emergency, it could make part of a lean-to. He knew they were as prepared as they would ever be.

“What about here?” she asked, pointing to the peaks behind Fallen Leaf Lake. “One of these might be okay for the winter. You and I could stay there if we had to.” She was eager for him to agree, to see the possibilities, to promise her she would not regret leaving Squaw Valley. “There’s a lookout station here, see? At Cathedral Rock. We don’t have to go near Tahoe if we don’t want to. We’ve got enough things to last us most of the winter if we’re very careful, and can hunt and fish for some of our food. We’ll make it just fine.” She smiled too cheerfully.

“Yes. Of course we will.” He hoped it was true. There had been more tire tracks on the landslide that morning, and he knew they no longer had a choice about leaving.

It was almost warm the day they left, starting west, out of the valley and into the high country where the snow still lingered and the wind bit endlessly at the stern granite faces of the mountains. They went quickly away from their home—for now it was their home. They had locked it up carefully, laughing sadly at the gesture. The sled was well laden, having knives, traps, and their crossbows at one end, blankets, food, and a few books at the other. Thea had improvised new runners on the sledge, so that it moved easily, even over the rocks.

By nightfall they were far above the valley, sitting in the lee of a rocky outcropping. They munched the last of the meal of venison chili and canned artichoke hearts.

“Are you sad we left?” Evan asked, seeing the faraway look in Thea’s eyes. Since they had started sleeping together, he found he was becoming intensively sensitive to her moods.

“Oh. Yes.” She toyed with the last of her food, then, dutifully, she ate it. “I think of it as our place. It isn’t, but I want it to be?’

“We can go back, Thea. If you want.”

She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t bear to see it go up in flames when the Pirates find it. They will find it. By now they’re too close to miss it. And it would have been more than losing a house. They would kill you. And they would kill me.” She stretched out her hand to touch him, as if gaining strength from him. “We’ll find a place that isn’t so vulnerable. We’ll he safe there. We’ll make it right for us, won’t we?” There was more hope than conviction in her voice, and both of them were aware of it.

It took them four days to cross the high country: the snow was deep near the crest and it made passage difficult. This time hunger was not driving them, and they did not have to wear themselves into exhaustion. They did not know what to expect at Lake Tahoe, which they could see occasionally, lying lead-colored to the east. Sunset colors, reflected in its waters, took on acidic tints and gleamed evilly. Using the field glasses that Evan had taken from one of the houses, they watched the shores of the lake, but there was no sign of Pirate activity. No vans roared on patrol along the shore, no methane processor crouched over sewage ponds. No group of summer houses flew the Pirate flag.

“What happened?” Evan asked the day before they began their descent to the lake. “The place should he crawling with them. Cox wanted to use this lake for a command post, so he could move on Highway 50 and Interstate 80 with minimal difficulties. They can’t have thrown the base away with Cox. They aren’t that stupid.”

“Maybe the people who live here chased them off?” Thea suggested, not believing it herself. She had seen Chico, Sierraville, and Truckee; years ago she had heard about Hollister and King City, and Bakersfield. There should have been a row of impaled reminders along the road, not this strange stillness.

“We’ll have to be careful when we go down there,” Evan said, Whatever was wrong, it had kept the Pirates away, so it must be something deadly. Nothing else had discouraged the Pirates so far.

Coming down the mountain took time, and at last they decided to stop for the night some two miles short of the shore where they could survey the roads and buildings without revealing their presence. “We don’t know what we’re up against,” Evan reminded Thea, as much for his own benefit as hers. “We’ll he more alert after a good sleep.”

Thea needed no coaxing. The feeling that raised her hackles had been with her all day. She moved warily, as if expecting to spring a trap with every step. She watched the lake as they drew nearer, and she liked it less. She resolved to investigate for herself later that night.

So it was that she crawled out of her sleeping bag some time after midnight. Below her, at the end of the ravine, lay Lake Tahoe, a pale haze of phosphorescence hanging over it—the same haze that hung over the Sacramento Valley, that cast its pall over Chico, clinging to bodies buried in nameless towns, “It’s poisoned,” she said quietly, turning her face away from it, She looked back at Evan, soundly sleeping in the tangle of his bag, and she considered waking him to tell him. But even as she did, she knew he would want to see for himself.

With a sigh she went back to bed, moving carefully so as not to wake him. There would be time enough in the morning to talk about the lake, to see what had become of it, what contamination had driven off the Pirates. She knew that when she slept, she would dream of Squaw Valley, so she did not sleep.

10

Shortly after sunrise they went undisturbed to the shore of Lake Tahoe and looked out at the desolation there. Slime floated just below the ash-colored surface and occasionally nests of water spiders would drift by. These deadly creatures were enough by themselves to keep the Pirates away from the lake, but the poisoned water made a Pirate camp impossible.

“Look at it,” Evan said in a hushed voice. The winds that blew across the lake were sour-smelling and scoured the lungs with chemicals. Where the thickened wavelets lapped sluggishly at the shore they left a scummy residue behind that burned the fingers of those foolish enough to touch it.

“How did it get this way?” Thea stared, for as dreadful as the lake had looked by night, by day it was much worse. The miasmic veil that hung over the water had in daylight, instead of its glow, a kind of leprous silver haze that made her skin crawl. There would be no resurrection for Lake Tahoe.

“Who knows? They used to dump garbage into it, then they dumped things in to kill the garbage. What did they expect? It’s a sewer.” He turned away, his mouth a thin line above his heard. He gave the sledge a savage jerk, pulling it away from the water, back to the pitted highway that threaded along the shore of the lake.

“Aren’t we going back up the mountain? There’s nothing here.”

“In a bit. There’s a junction at the south end of the lake. Before we do anything else, I want to find out what’s there. If the Pirates retreated but didn’t leave, they might have gone to the casinos, and that’s too close.”

“Is that what you would have done?” Thea asked pointedly.

“Yes, it is,” he said without apology.

“Then let’s try the south.” She had already reached for her smaller crossbow and was strapping it to her wrist.

At first they kept in the brush at the side of the road, where there was brush, as they had done so many times before; but soon it was obvious that this road was never traveled, so they walked down its center, still keeping careful watch on the trees and scrub around them.

It took no more than three hours to get to the junction and there they found nothing but the ruins of five large motels amid the wreckage of burned buildings. There had been a city here at one time, but the contamination of the lake had taken its toll of the people as well as the buildings, and now the place stood burned and deserted, a few facades pitted and scarred as mute testimony to the terrible effects of the breeze off the lake.