Damnation Alley (15 page)

"Don't cry," she said, "please . . ." and she wiped her eyes on a corner of the bedsheet.

"I can't help it. We're going to die."

"I'm afraid."

"So am I."

"What will it be like?"

"I don't know. Pretty bad, I guess. Don't think about it."

"I can't help it."

"I've got to lie down again. Excuse me. Do you have any other blankets?"

"I'll get some."

". . . And another glass of water, please."

"Yes."

She returned and unfolded two wool blankets above him.

"That should be better."

She brought him another glass of water.

"Why should this happen to us?"

"I don't know. We're unlucky, that's all."

"You were going to kill yourself. Weren't you?"

He nodded. "I still am, as soon as I feel a little better. Ha! That sounds funny, doesn't it?"

"No. Maybe you're right, and it'll get worse from here on in."

"Stop it!"

"I can't help it. We're going to die; we know that. We might as well go as easy as possible. What were you going to do?"

"I was going to walk out on the bridge and stay there till I felt so bad that it would be worth it to go over the side."

"That's hard," she said, looking at her shadow on the wall.

"You got any better ideas?"

"No," she said, turning, so that light filtered through the venetian blinds fell upon her face and breast. Her zebra expression was indecipherable. "No."

"You sure?"

"No. I mean, maybe. My mother has some sleeping pills."

"Oh."

He stretched eight inches of blanket taut between his hands and bit down on the fabric.

"Get them," he said, "please."

"Are you sure?"

"No. But get them."

She left the room, returned after a few heartbeats with a small, dark bottle in one hand. "I have them here."

He took the bottle and stared at it. He turned it in his hand. He opened it. He removed a pill and held it in his palm, studying its contours.

"So that's it, huh?"

She nodded, biting her lip.

"How many would I have to take?"

"I read about someone taking twenty once . . ."

"How many are there here?"

"I don't know."

Beads of perspiration appeared on his brow, and he cast the blankets aside. "Get me a glass of water," he said, bending forward and hugging his knees.

"All right."

She took the glass to the bathroom and refilled it. She placed it on the table beside the bed. She picked up the bottle, which had fallen among the blankets.

"Let's do it," he said.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure," he said. "It'll just be like going to sleep, won't it?"

"That's what they say."

"It seems like a better way out."

"Yes."

"Then count me out twenty pills."

She handed him the glass of water, and he held it in his right hand. Then he extended his left hand, palm upward.

She placed the pills within it.

He put two in his mouth and swallowed them with a gulp of water.

He made a face. "I always have a rough time swallowing pills," he said.

Then he took two more, and two more, and two more. "That's eight," he said.

He took them two at a time, five more times. "There were only eighteen," he said.

"I know."

"You said twenty."

"That's all there were, though."

"Christ! You mean I didn't leave any for you?"

"That's all right. I'll find another way. Don't worry."

"Oh, Evvie!" and he wrapped his arms about her waist, and she could feel his moist cheek against her belly. "I'm sorry, Evvie!" he said. "I didn't mean to! Honest!"

"I know. Don't worry. It'll be all right real soon. It should be real nice, just like going to sleep. I'm glad I had them for you. I love you, Fred!"

"I love you, Evvie! I'm sorry! Oh...”

"Why don't you just lie back and rest now?"

"I've got to go to the john first. All that water...” He climbed to his feet, one hand on the wall, and made his way out of the bedroom and into the hallway. He crossed into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

She heard the water running, and she heard the toilet flush. She held her hands out before her and stared at her fingernails. Her lower lip was moist and tasted salty.

The water kept running, from bellnote through bellnote, and she thought of her parents, but she was still afraid to go and see.

Albany to Boston. A couple hundred miles. He'd managed the worst of it. The terrors of Damnation Alley lay largely at his back now. Night. It flowed about him. The stars seemed brighter than usual. He'd make it, the night seemed to say.

He passed between hills. The road wasn't too bad. It wound between trees and high grasses. He passed a truck coming in his direction and dimmed his lights as it approached. It did the same.

It must have been around midnight that he came to the crossroads, and the lights suddenly nailed him from two directions.

He was bathed in perhaps thirty beams from the left and as many from the right.

He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and he heard engine after engine coming to life somewhere at his back. And he recognized the sounds.

They were all of them bikes.

They swung onto the road behind him.

He could have opened fire. He could have braked and laid down a cloud of flame. It was obvious that they didn't know what they were chasing. He could have launched grenades. He refrained, however.

It could have been him on the lead bike, he decided, all hot on hijack. He felt a certain sad kinship as his hand hovered above the fire control.

Try to outrun them, first.

His engine was open wide and roaring, but he couldn't take the bikes.

When they began to fire, he knew that he'd have to retaliate. He couldn't risk their hitting a gas tank or blowing out his tires.

Their first few shots had been in the nature of a warning. He couldn't risk another barrage. If only they knew . . ."

The speaker!

He cut it in and mashed the button and spoke: "Listen, cats," he said. "All I got's medicine for the sick citizens in Boston. Let me through or you'll hear the noise."

A shot followed immediately, so he opened fire with the fifty-calibers to the rear.

He saw them fall, but they kept firing. So he launched grenades.

The firing lessened but didn't cease.

So he hit the brakes, then the flamethrowers. He kept it up for fifteen seconds.

There was silence.

When the air cleared, he studied the screens.

They lay all over the road, their bikes upset, their bodies fuming. Several were still seated, and they held rifles and pointed them, and he shot them down.

A few still moved, spasmodically, and he was about to drive on, when he saw one rise and take a few staggering steps and fall again.

His hand hesitated on the gearshift.

It was a girl.

He thought about it for perhaps five seconds, then jumped down from the cab and ran toward her.

As he did, one man raised himself on an elbow and picked up a fallen rifle.

Tanner shot him twice and kept running, pistol in hand.

The girl was crawling toward a man whose face had been shot away. Other bodies twisted about Tanner now, there on the road, in the glare of the tail beacons. Blood and black leather, the sounds of moaning, and the stench of burned flesh were all about him.

When he got to the girl's side, she cursed him softly as he stopped.

None of the blood about her seemed to be her own.

He dragged her to her feet, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

Everyone else was dead or dying, so Tanner picked her up in his arms and carried her back to the car. He reclined the passenger seat and put her into it, moving the weapons into the rear seat, out of her reach.

Then he gunned the engine and moved forward. In the rearview screen he saw two figures rise to their feet, then fall again.

She was a tall girl, with long, uncombed hair the color of dirt. She had a strong chin and a wide mouth, and there were dark circles under her eyes. A single faint line crossed her forehead, and she had all of her teeth. The right side of her face was flushed, as if sunburned. Her left trouser leg was torn and dirty. He guessed that she'd caught the edge of his flame and fallen from her bike.

"You okay?" he asked when her sobbing had diminished to a moist sniffing sound.

"What's it to you?" she said, raising a hand to her cheek.

Tanner shrugged. "Just being friendly."

"You killed most of my gang."

"What would they have done to me?"

"They would have stomped you, mister, if it weren't for this fancy car of yours."

"It ain't really mine," he said. "It belongs to the nation of California."

"This thing don't come from California."

"The hell it don't. I drove it."

She sat up straight then and began rubbing her leg.

Tanner lit a cigarette.

"Give me a cigarette?" she said.

He passed her the one he had lighted, lit himself another. As he handed it to her, her eyes rested on his tattoo.

"What's that?"

"My name."

"Hell?"

"Hell."

"Where'd you get a name like that?"

"From my old man."

They smoked awhile, then she said, "Why'd you run the Alley?"

"Because it was the only way I could get them to turn me loose."

"From where?"

"The place with horizontal venetian blinds. I was doing time."

"They let you go? Why?"

"Because of the big sick. I'm bringing in Haffikine antiserum."

"You're Hell Tanner."

"Huh?"

"Your last name's Tanner, ain't it?"

"That's right. Who told you?"

"I heard about you. Everybody thought you died in the Big Raid."

"They were wrong."

"What was it like?"

"I dunno. I was already wearing a zebra suit. That's why I'm still around."

"Why'd you pick me up?"

"Cause you're a chick, and cause I didn't want to see you croak."

"Thanks. You got anything to eat in here?"

"Yeah, there's food in there." He pointed to the refrig erator door. "Help yourself."

She did, and as she ate, Tanner asked her, "What do they call you?"

"Corny," she said. "It's short for Cornelia."

"Okay, Corny," he said. "When you're finished eating, you start telling me about the road between here and the place."

She nodded, chewed, and swallowed. Then, "There's lots of other gangs," she said. "So you'd better be ready to blast them."

"I am."

"Those screens show you all directions, huh?"

"That's right."

"Good. The roads are pretty much okay from here on in. There's one big crater you'll come to soon, and a coupie little volcanoes afterward."

"Check."

"Outside of them there's nothing to worry about but the Regents and the Devils and the Kings and the Lovers. That's about it."

Tanner nodded. "How big are those clubs?"

"I don't know for sure, but the Kings are the biggest. They've got a coupla hundred."

"What was your club?"

"The Studs."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Whatever you tell me."

"Okay, Corny. I'll let you off anywhere along the way that you want me to. If you don't want, you can come on into the city with me."

"You call it, Hell. Anywhere you want to go, I'll go along."

Her voice was deep. and her words came slowly, and her tone sandpapered his eardrums just a bit. She had long legs and heavy thighs beneath the tight denim. Tanner licked his lips and studied the screens. Did he want to keep her around for a while?

The road was suddenly wet. It was covered with hundreds of fishes, and more were falling from the sky. There followed several loud reports from overhead. The blue light began in the north.

Tanner raced on, and suddenly there was water all about him. It fell upon his car, it dimmed his screens. The sky had grown black again, and the banshee wail sounded above him.

He skidded around a sharp curve in the road. He turned up his lights.