False Dawn (23 page)

She nodded, but said nothing. She, too, was hungry, and knew far better than he the risk they had taken. But it was better than dying in the monks’ fire, or at the hands of the Pirates. She set her teeth against the pain in her ankles and wrists and kept walking.

Nightfall found them above the snow line once more, with Sierraville far behind them, Thea pulled down pine boughs and wrapped them around Evan and herself for the night; the cold and the rustlings of animals in the brush kept them half awake as the long hours ran their course.

She found her thoughts straying, not back to the community at Camminsky Creek or her years of wandering, but to her first meeting with Evan, and for the first time she felt an odd, anguished regret that she could not bring herself to accept Evan’s body. The few times he had suggested sharing even so little a thing as a mattress she had recoiled as if she had been branded. Her loathing of Lastly grew, and she began to have contempt for herself. She knew she was maimed, disfigured, and she despised it.

Evan slept heavily, seeking the oblivion of dreams that were insubstantial fragments of the world he had lost.

They woke shortly after dawn to a distant muffled roar that seemed to come from the very bowels of the mountains, a sound that penetrated to their bones, that shattered the air, that made even the trees bow and tremble, to silence the few pitiful cries of little animals that had echoed forlornly across the morning.

“What was that?” Thea asked as she scrambled out of her pine nest. She was haggard and dirty and the mark that Brother Roccus had left on her face was sullen purple. The manacles on her wrists caught the morning light and flashed back at her, dazzling her eyes.

“It’s not gunfire,” Evan said after a bit, as the noise rumbled on. “I don’t think it’s dynamite.”

“It’s not thunder.”

“No, it’s not.” He got awkwardly to his feet, trailing his chain and the wood with the cleat. “It must be some kind of blast, but who would be blasting? And what?” He wondered if the Pirates were trying to break through the passes, but knew that this was a greater explosion than anything they could have achieved.

“Maybe there’s someone in the mountains back of Sierraville? Someone who saw the Pirates come to the monastery yesterday? It could be that, couldn’t it? They might want to close their passes. Seal themselves off from Pirates.”

“But why? The noise would only call attention to them.” He shook his head and draped his chain over his shoulder to make the carrying easier. He listened as the bellow of the explosion lost itself and the ground steadied.

“It’s over, whatever it was.” Thea pulled the crowbar out of the pine branches and handed it to him. “Find a stump or a rock. I’ll get you out of that thing. I can’t get rid of these yet”—she shook the manacles that she wore—”or yours, hut I can get the wood off and the chain broken, maybe.”

Absently Evan nodded, his mind divided between the strange sound that had wakened them and the job of putting his hunger out of his mind.

It was while they were breaking through his chain that the strange sound came again, the same bellowing roar, but this time longer, more sustained, a little more as if it were a cry of the earth itself. Shortly afterward another tremor shook the mountains, like a giant turning in its sleep, and a heavy pall of high smoke spread itself over the sky, drifting on the upper winds and giving the sun an evanescent halo. By midday the distant sound was fairly constant and the ground quivered continually underfoot, slowing their progress and turning the northern quarter of the sky a lurid shade of violet.

Thick, dark smoke extended all across the northern sky as Thea broke through Evan’s chain. Her determination had almost outlasted her strength, and she sagged when the task was done, only then permitting herself to ask, “Do you know what’s happening?”

He stared at the sky. “Maybe,” he said, his eyes narrowing. He took up the chain as a weapon and they headed along in the underbrush about a quarter of a mile from the old highway, keeping out of sight in the bushes, but staying near the road. He felt that it was their only hope now—to stay close to the road, but hidden.

The stream ran in front of them, an unexpected break in the scrub-covered slope. It was bright, shiny, living on the melting snow.

“We can drink now,” Thea said after sniffing the water carefully.

“Some water isn’t good even when it’s this fresh. And we still can’t eat snow. There’s too much risk of freezing.”

Evan had already knelt to drink when the sound burst through the mountains again, rolling down the spine of the Sierra in awful intensity. He stopped, his hands full of water. “Lassen,” he said quietly. “Or Shasta. Probably Shasta. But they’re both possible.” He found that his hands were shaking and he had to fill them with water again before he could drink. “Christ,” he said as he lifted the water to his mouth.

“Lassen?” she asked.

“Lassen and Shasta. They’re both volcanoes. Lassen is closer and it was still in business. Even fifty years ago they would occasionally close down the park around it because it was belching smoke and ashes, and its last eruption was about a century ago. Shasta’s acted up, sometimes. There was a real scare in the late seventies. I remember reading about it. They thought Shasta was going to blow then.”

She scowled, looking back over her shoulder to the obscured sky. “I think Jack Thompson said something about that. There’s a whole chain of them, isn’t there? Right along the Pacific Coast?”

Evan had busied himself with the water, washing the dirt from his face at last, and so did not answer her immediately. He could feel the grime peel away like a mask and it heartened him. “Yeah,” he said at last. “All the way from Alaska through South America. You wash up, too, Thea. You’ll feel better.”

She did as he bade her, but refused to put aside the question of the two volcanoes. “What’s the nearest one? Are we too close?”

“Lassen’s the nearest, probably, and it’s still a long way off. If there’s a lava flow, we won’t see any of it.” A frown pulled at his brows and mouth. “I’m trying to remember: with all the pollutants in the upper atmosphere, will this make the weather warmer or cooler? And how much of an eruption is it?” Suddenly he pulled his beard. “The first place we find scissors, this gets trimmed. And my hair. And your hair.” The last place he had been efficiently barbered had been Quincy. Since then he had hacked with scissors and shears, but he knew that the effect was ragged, making him even more shaggy.

“What about the volcanoes?” she persisted.

He made an impatient gesture and started away from the stream. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I remember.”

“Will it make things worse?” she asked gently.

“It sure as hell won’t make them any better.” He turned abruptly and faced south once more, motioning her to come with him. He held the crowbar awkwardly, as if it were a scepter, or a bludgeon.

“You could sharpen one end,” she suggested when they had walked a few miles farther.

He made no answer.

The sunset that night displayed itself spectacularly through the smoke, lighting the whole sky with glowing radiance that turned even the dying, desolate mountains into a place of rare beauty. From the edge of the meadow Thea and Evan stopped in their cutting of pine boughs to watch, each admitting that it was a wonderful sight. The sun’s rays flaunted like banners across the sky, and the intensity of color made it almost unreal.

But in spite of the gaudy splendor above them, there was no food that night, nor the next morning. Instead, there was a bear, snuffling around the pine nests, curious and hungry.

Thea lay in her branches, her body wet with fear. The bear was pulling at the boughs, still not sure that it was worth his while, but scenting the sharp sweat. His stinking breath bore down on her neck and she could feel the movements of the branches above her. She wanted to call Evan to help her, but the sounds died in her throat, and she knew that any additional noise might be enough to make the bear come after her in deadly earnest. So she lay still, alone with the bear and her fright.

Then there was a movement, a sound, and the bear rose and turned away from her. Evan, brandishing his chain, whirling it around his head like a single lethal propeller, came toward her, yelling for her to get away. “I need some room to slap him with the chain.”

The bear rounded on Evan, teeth bared and a growl in his throat. With a vicious underhand swing, Evan brought his chain upward, full force against the bear’s jaw. There was a snapping sound, a yelp of pain, and the bear moved back, but only for a moment as rage and fright brought him onto his hind legs, curving claws ready to disembowel, to mutilate. Evan retreated a few steps.

“Thea! Thea! Get up!”

In a rush the bear charged Evan: he stepped back hastily, bringing the chain around again to crash against the bear’s head. This time the impact was harder as the force of the chain cracked bone, and the bear faltered before pressing the attack, giving Thea just enough time to struggle free of the pine branches and to bring the crowbar into play. Following Evan’s lead she aimed for the head, using the crowbar for a club. Her first swing went wild and she came within inches of the long, yellowed claws as the bear reached out for her. Evan shouted, and the bear, confused, swung back his way as the chain whistled through the air again, wrapping itself around the bear’s neck.

The bear lunged forward now, and Evan knew his danger. He tried to jerk the chain free, to get beyond range of the huge, angry animal, but the blow had been good and the chain held. The bear came on toward Evan, ready to kill. His powerful jaws gaped, showing blood where Evan’s first strike had broken teeth and battered skin. Thea screamed as she as wielded her crowbar with both hands. Pressing in close behind the furious hear, she swung the crowbar up, pounding the bear on the back as of the neck so that the metal thrummed.

Now the bear hesitated, wanting Evan as his ready victim but plagued by Thea’s drubbing, faltered in his attack. He paused, swaying on his hind legs, pawing at the air and making a coughing growl. Evan saw his chance and leaped for the chain; as he pulled on it, Thea’s crowbar connected for the last time. There was a thick, liquid crack and then the bear waddled one or two uncertain steps before he fell forward, twitching as he died, paws reaching for something he could never catch.

“I thought he had you,” Thea panted as she felt her knees turn to water. The surge of adrenalin that had carried her left her and weakness took its place, making her feel quite sick. She sat down abruptly.

“I was afraid he’d get you,” Evan said almost at the same moment, his hands now shaking terribly.

“It was a close fight,” said Thea, trying unsuccessfully to sound calm and reasonable.

“We knew bears could be trouble,” Evan said remotely.

“Well, maybe we can eat it,” Thea said in what she hoped was an optimistic tone. “It would be good to have something to eat.”

“It’ll have to be raw,” Evan said as he touched the bear with his foot; the rags binding it were fast disintegrating and there was a patch of blood near his heel.

“Unless we can find a way to make a fire without smoke.

“We could use the hide,” said Thea, pointing to the wrappings on their feet.

“We don’t have any way to cure it,” Evan said.

“Still.”

Seen dead on the ground before them, the bear was thin and mangy; one fang had broken some time ago and rotted away to a dark stump; the grizzled muzzle showed his age.

“We don’t have a knife,” Thea reminded him, lifting her crowbar. “Can we do something with this? It’d be a shame to waste it.”

In the end they had to settle for strips of meat torn from the uneven lacerations the crowbar had made on the neck and shoulders of the bear. The meat was strong, gamy, and the fibers tough, even when cooked, but it gave them an energy they had not had for days. They ate determinedly and fought down revulsion as they drank some of the blood before it congealed. When they had finished their meal, they pulled a few more strips from the carcass and regretfully left the rest: they had no way to carry or store more than a little of the meat.

That day they passed through the wild scrubby mountains where once there had been a National Forest. Forty years before Congress had voted to increase logging in the hitherto protected woods. Now the ruined land bristled with scrub stretching away for miles. There reptiles and a few insects lived, but the chemicals that were supposed to speed the forest regeneration had made the place uninhabitable for all but the smallest and most voracious animals. Of the pine and fir which had been planted in the wake of the logging there was no sign.

When night came there were no boughs to wrap in, nor any need for them. Thea and Evan found a hollow near a contaminated stream littered around its banks with small bones. And there they slept, close to the snow, serenaded by the poisoned water.

By the middle of the next day they found what had been a town—a few huddled buildings and the remains of a sawmill. The road cut through the cluster of structures, as if casting them aside in its hurry to be somewhere else.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Thea asked Evan. She was looking critically at the chafing on her wrists where the metal of her manacles had left deep welts of infection, and she knew that Evan must have the same trouble. “We have to get some rest. And some shoes. And these off.”

Evan thought for a moment. “It doesn’t seem right, an empty, open little town on a road like this…You’d think…” But there was no sign of habitation, no indication that the Pirates had come through. The snow that melted around the buildings was undisturbed, showing nothing but small tracks of animals.

“It’s in the middle of nothing,” Thea said unhappily, casting a glance around the snowy, scrub-filled waste.

“Yes.” He lapsed into silence. “We’ll have to try, though.”

She grabbed her crowbar, shouldering it with a shrug. “Anything you say.”

They circled the town through the patches of snow and underbrush, occasionally sinking into the shallow drifts when the spindly branches underneath gave away. They came in from the west, having gone halfway around the hunkered settlement, carefully avoiding the road or the snow that lined it, knowing that footprints there would advertise their presence. There was no sign of life, even when they came closer to the houses. At last they stood on a snowy, overgrown dirt road a few hundred feet from the nearest house.