False Dawn (30 page)

“We can rig a sling,” Thea reminded him, and rummaged in the sledge for the two wide leather straps she had made for carrying the sledge over water. “All we need is enough rope to haul it up. It’ll be easy.”

“Yes. You’re right.” He looked up the stairs. “Well, you or me?”

“You take the rope up and I’ll get this thing ready for lifting. Then I’ll come up and give you a hand. You’ll need some help. This sledge’s heavy.”

“Don’t hold your breath until I get there,” he called as he started up the stairs. He listened to the sound of his steps, hypnotic as the ticking of a clock. Then several minutes later the rope dangled over the edge of the railing and Thea knotted it firmly on the leather straps. She swung her full weight on the knot, and then called up to Evan on the platform high above her. “I think it’ll hold.”

“It better.” His words floated down to her, remote as the call of birds.

There was an uncertain moment while she steadied the sledge, helping Evan to lift it into the air, taking the load on her shoulders. Then, when it hung overhead, she reached up for one last helpful shove. Sure that it was on its way, she sprinted up the steps and made the long climb as fast as she could. The sled inched its way upward as she raced.

“Here,” Evan said, nodding to the rope. “Grab hold here.”

“All right.” She braced her feet against the low rail that surrounded the platform and added her strength to his.

When they had the sledge over the railing at last, they secured it, making sure that it could not fall or be blown from its high perch. Thea nodded to the station. “I hope this place has its own water. I saw water spiders on the lake and that’s a bad sign. The water’s probably contaminated. We shouldn’t drink it.”

“There’s a cistern on top of the roof, and it’s full. Not that what’s coming down is much better. Between the volcano and all the other junk up here…” He gestured fatalistically at the sky. “It’s too late to change it.”

“Are you sure?” But the question had no meaning. She wanted only to banish the despair she suddenly read in his face.

They got into the station after prying two locks off the door. The room they entered was militarily neat, clean, and dull as a barracks. There were two stoves in the central room, and a third in the kitchen, and all were sternly functional, with spark arrestors and adjustable-draw flues. The kitchen stove had a water heater hooked onto it, a more advanced design than the one they had had in Squaw Valley. If there was water at all, it would he heated.

In the main room, three utilitarian sofas could be turned into equally utilitarian beds, all smelling faintly of mildew, a smell that Evan’s newly kindled fire routed.

The fire created its own question. “How much wood have we got?” Evan asked as he finished rigging one of the beds. Above it on the peagreen wall a once-colorful poster displayed the attractions of Australia, kangaroos bounding in front of three aborigines, a sailboat, the Sydney opera house, and a cowboy. Evan remembered being there, many years before, and he was suddenly aware that he never learned what happened to Australia.

“Maybe three or four days’ worth. I don’t know how hard this place is to heat, yet. Up in the air like this, with wind all around, it might be very hard to keep warm.” Thea knew he was not really listening, but she said it anyway.

He broke away from his thoughts. “You’re right. The wind is a problem.” He began peering into cupboards and found, to his surprise, five kerosene lamps with asbestos wicks.

“What is it?” Thea asked, hearing him call to her.

“Lamps. We can have light now, anyway.” He searched further and found a few ten-gallon drums of fuel. “And these ought to keep them going for a long time.” He felt a twinge of optimism. “We can last quite a while up here, and with the traps out, we might do fine.”

“If there’s anything to trap,” Thea said quietly.

Evan refused to be discouraged. “There will be. There’s got to be game in the mountains somewhere.”

It was four nights later that the dogs showed up. The ragged descendants of the pets kept by the summer residents of the lake, they had long since run wild, hunting whatever they could find, craftily avoiding traps and men in groups.

Thea scrambled out of bed at the first howl and stood at the observation window, squinting in an effort to see what had caused the sound. The sky was still dark, but it was beginning to pale in the east. The morning wind freshened and made weird singing in the struts that held the lookout station.

“What’s happening?” Evan asked, muzzy with sleep, willing himself awake by main force. He reached out for an extra blanket and got unsteadily out of bed.

“It’s dogs,” she said without any preamble. “Maybe a couple of dozen, maybe less than that. One or two of them are climbing the stairs.” If she felt fear, it did not color her voice. “I think a shotgun would do it,” she said judiciously, after giving the problem her consideration.

Evan made no argument, but went to the cupboard which he had transformed into a gun-rack. Carefully he loaded the shotgun and brought it to her. “Here. It’s ready. Unless you’d like me to do it.”

“Well, one of us has to. Would you like to do the hunting for a change?” She raised her brows, thinking of the three rabbits she had shot the day before. Evan had walked the trap line since he put it in, but there had not been any game to bring back.

“Fine. I’ll take care of it. Do you think we can use the meat?”

“You’re the cook. You decide.” She touched his hand affectionately.

“I’ll have a look at them. Open the door for me, Thea, will you?” He braced the stock and waited while she pulled back the bolt securing the door.

There was a scrabbling of claws on the lower steps, an anxious whine, mixed with pantings as the dogs worked their way upward. Below them, on the ground, other dogs ran round the pylon legs, keening.

The early morning air was cold, and Evan felt his skin tighten as he stepped out onto the platform. Looking down the stairs he could barely make out the shapes of the dogs climbing upward. He gave his eyes a moment to adjust, then, bracing himself, he fired.

The shot echoed through the mountains and was followed a millisecond after by a high yelp. The pack on the ground stopped their noise, waiting. The first dog on the steps snapped once or twice, then fell back, his body hitting those that climbed behind him. Now distressed sounds came from the pack, and after milling about the pylons, they withdrew, leaving their leader where he had fallen.

“I guess this is the end of your trap line,” Thea said when Evan had stepped back into the warmth of the observation station.

“I won’t be able to keep up with a pack that size, certainly,” he conceded. “We could try to trap the dogs, but I doubt we’ll get much usable meat, and we could end up attracting other predators. They’re hungry, these dogs.” He cracked the gun and began cleaning it, handing the spent cartridge to Thea.

“What’s this for?” she asked, turning the cartridge over in her hand.

“For luck. We need it.”

The next day Evan checked the trap line and found that his scant haul had been wiped out by the dogs. In one of the traps a dog had been caught and had become food for his fellows. Evan cursed softly, then took what was left of the carcass down to the lake and flung it in for the water spiders. As long as meat was about, as long as there had been a fresh kill, the smell would attract the dogs again.

Thea came in late that day with a small hump-shouldered deer. She had gutted it when she killed it and promptly set to skinning it when she had lugged it up the stairs. There was a grimness about her as she worked the deer over the sink, and at last Evan asked her the reason.

“Those damned dogs,” she said in subdued fury. “There just isn’t enough food to go around. And look at this”—she pointed her knife to the pitiful carcass hanging over the drainboard—”this thing is full grown. It isn’t a fawn. There’s nothing out there much over this size. I haven’t seen a bear or bear tracks anywhere. The one badger I’ve found was no bigger than a house cat. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it isn’t good.” Savagely she cut away the hindquarters. “Can you do something with that? I don’t even know if there’s enough meat to make it worthwhile.”

Evan took up a position alongside her, trimming the meat, cutting it into collops and dropping them into one of his cooking pots. We’ll have to scrub the kitchen later, he thought as he worked. Otherwise the dogs may smell the blood and come back. He didn’t want to have to begin each day fighting the dogs.

Except for an occasional trap raid, the dogs did not come back: they did not have a chance to. A week later Mackley and his division of Pirates returned for vengeance to Lake Tahoe, their vans fewer in number than before, showing that the story of the break-up of their group was real.

From their lookout on the mountain, Thea and Evan could watch the battles for the casinos. The fights were long and fierce, and no quarter was given by either side. It was obvious from the start that the Pirates had the advantage in mobility and training, but the defenders had a few skills and they held their own for far longer than Evan expected. One of the casinos, as the defenses broke down, went up in a rumbling explosion that rivaled the boom of the distant volcano. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, the walls crumbled to the ground, burying the defenders and a large number of the Pirates in the rubble.

“I didn’t think they’d have the guts,” Evan said as the smoke drifted over the wastes of Lake Tahoe.

Thea watched in stunned silence, her face blank and eyes wide. “Evan, I…” she began, then put her arms around him, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.

“What is it, Thea?” he asked her, surprised at the intensity of her grief. He turned his attention from the battle on the lake to her, raising her face with one hand while his other arm held her tightly against him. “Your hair wants trimming, you know.”

She ignored the last. “Is it always going to be like this?” she asked, a hurt in her face that was deeper than tears. “Look what’s happening here, everywhere.” She shook her head, her eyes showing a fatigue that rest could not relieve. “We try and we try and it just gets worse and worse.”

His arm tightened, but he said nothing as he watched the sky beyond her where the smoke from the exploding casino had risen to join the volcanic cloud that covered the sky. “Yes,” he whispered. “Come away, Thea. There’s nothing out there for us.”

She was about to object, but her shoulders slumped and her body stopped resisting. Inside the station she fell onto their bed and looked up at him, desperation in every line of her body. “Love me, Evan. Love me or I die.”

The devastation in her eyes rid her plea from any trace of sentimentality and awakened his determination to protect her, for his sake as much as his own.

The next morning the Pirates found the lookout station.

Evan had spotted them at first light, moving cautiously up the mountain. They were no longer in their vans and the smoke from the ruined casinos had hidden them until they had come much closer than Evan thought they were. Quickly he woke Thea and set about the business of readying their guns. Boxes of ammunition were placed next to each weapon and the stoves were stocked with extra wood, since they might not have the chance to set the fire once the fight got under way—and Evan knew for certain that there would be a fight, a decisive one.

“Keep changing—your position and your weapons. Don’t use the rifle all the time, or the shotgun. We have to force them into the open. They’ll only do that if they’re guessing about how many are up here. And keep these with you…” He handed her some torn strips of blanket and a quart of kerosene. “If you get the chance, wad this up, soak it in kerosene, light it, and fire it with your crossbow. There’s enough here for about ten flaming quarrels.”

“The brush will burn, Evan,” she said, for although there had been no real summer, the scrub on the mountain was brittle and dry.

“It might,” he agreed. “But we have to worry about us first. If there’s a fire, we can’t let it concern us. We’ve got to think about our lives now.”

“If the brush goes, and we’re trapped up here…”

He rounded on her, his face set and his eyes sad. “Now listen to me. That’s Mackley’s gang out there. They’re here to kill us. Do I have to tell you what they’d do to you—or to me, for that matter—if they take us alive? I’ll burn down the mountain if that’s what’s needed to stop them.” “But burning…isn’t there another way?” “Remember what we’ve seen, Thea. Do you really want to know what choice we have? Do you?”

The violence of his outburst stopped her. “But isn’t there some way to…” She thought again of the impaled bodies, recalling one of them with the ooze on his face where the eyes had been, and the grotesque, froglike posture caused by the upward thrust of the stake, to be Evan, Her whole body shook, and then she mastered herself. She would not allow it to happen, and if the whole world burned because of it, she did not care, and it troubled her that she could feel that way.

“I know Mackley.” Evan’s voice cut into her contemplations ruthlessly. “I know what he’s capable of. Believe me, we can’t negotiate with him.” He stopped suddenly, put down his rifle and came across the room to her. “Oh, Thea, I could not bear it, the things they would do to you.”

She nodded, a fragment of her vision still with her; then she turned and went back to her preparation for the fight.

They did not have long to wait. The first rattle of guns started shortly after they had hacked away the stairs to their platform, Evan thanking heaven that the pylons that supported the station were concrete-wrapped steel and hard to climb, and harder to burn.

“Are they coming?”

“They’re coming,” Evan said grimly. “They’re coming.” He ordered her to wait until the Pirates were close enough to be hurt by their guns before opening fire. Saying that she understood, Thea put her attention on the guns and the dozen or so men coming up the mountains. She studied them, noting their precision, that they were well-trained and well-armed.

“There,” Evan said as he watched the men approach. “That one in the orange crash helmet—that’s Mackley. He’s the one we have to kill. It won’t be easy. He wears that helmet and he’s got one of those old bulletproof vests. God only knows where he found it. He’s not invulnerable, but he’s damn hard to hit.” He checked their defenses again, frowning at the sights on the Savage 300. He hefted it critically and handed it to Thea. “This has a longer range than the Winchester. If you can get him straight on with this, you can probably kill him. Try for the face.”