by John Varley
It was Rachel, voicing the thought they were all having.
It didn’t seem that morale could get any lower. When Dave returned with his news the group had decided to pitch camp beside the road and consider their options. Mark, always the planner, had spread out the map and enumerated their options.
“West is out, unless we want to swim to Japan. Dave tells us that south is out. To the north, we have a string of towns that have already turned us down. Our only choice is to head east.”
“How?” Bob asked.
“Backtracking is the only way I can see. All the way north to the 91 and the 71. Then east to Corona and the 15, when we can cut south again through Temecula. South of that there’s a lot of agricultural land.”
“How far back to the 91?”
“About forty miles. And remember, the farther north we go the worse the quake damage gets. Maybe fire damage, too. We don’t know how far east the fire spread.”
It didn’t look promising.
Marian was peering over Mark’s shoulder. She pointed to a line on the map.
“What about this?”
“Route 74. The Ortega Highway. Don’t even think about it.”
“It looks sort of twisty.”
“Twisty doesn’t even come close. It goes up into the mountains, two lanes wide, and most of it is cut into the mountainside. One landslide would be all it would take to stop us cold.”
Bob was looking at the map, too.
“I’ve driven it, and Mark is right. But we’re quite a ways from the epicenter. We’ve been seeing less and less damage. It’s not a populated area. Isolated ranches and getaway homes. We probably wouldn’t encounter much human resistance.”
“I tell you, it wouldn’t take much in the way of fallen rocks or collapsed roadway to stop us in our tracks.”
“I think it might be at least worth taking a look,” Emily said. “And as I recall, it’s well forested. Finding wood would not be a problem.”
“That’s true,” Mark conceded. “But the road…”
“What’s this at the end of the line?” Elyse asked.
“That’s Lake Elsinore,” Bob said. “Largest natural lake in Southern California.”
“So it’s a community with water.”
“Yes, it’s a pretty big lake.”
“How many people there?”
Bob thought it was twenty or thirty thousand, spread out over a fairly large area. To the north there wasn’t much between the lake and the city of Corona, and to the south and east there was a lot of rural and semirural land. To the west there were only mountains.
For once the group seemed almost evenly divided. Mark had his allies, and Bob had his. The debate was civil, everyone being too tired and discouraged to bring real passion to the arguments. But Bob and Emily were in favor of trying the mountain road, and so were Dave and Karen, and eventually Mark gave in.
The next morning they would set out for Lake Elsinore.
The first miles were not difficult.
They passed through rolling hills with scrub brush and copses of trees. Caspers Regional Park appeared on their left, nothing to write home about. Ahead of them bare rolling hills began to rise. They saw few signs of human habitation other than dirt roads branching off to the sides, some gated, some not. There were some cattle guards, so Dave assumed the roads led to ranches down in the hollows. As the road cut through the first of the hills there were some small slides of rock and dirt, but nothing they couldn’t drive around or bump cautiously across.
It was a nervous ride. Around every corner might be an impassable barrier, a length of road collapsed into a canyon below, or a boulder the size of a house blocking their way. There were plenty of boulders that size and much larger, waiting to fall.
They started coming to hairpin turns, making a full 180 degrees, as they wound their way up the hills. Twice they had to stop for fallen trees. These were both old and dead. It seemed the jolting this far south had not been enough to topple most living trees.
They did not see another human being all day.
Then they came around one bend and found the worst obstacle yet.
It was a rockslide much bigger than any they had seen before. Most of it was dirt and rocks that looked as if they could be moved, with some heavy lifting by several people. But there were twenty or thirty that could very well be immovable. They stopped, and everyone got out to look at what might very well be the end of the road.
“Well, now we know why we haven’t seen anyone coming up from the other side,” Mark said. Dave thought there might be a little I-told-you-so in his voice.
Nigel climbed up on the rock pile, followed quickly by Sandra and Olivia. Dave followed them, kicking tentatively at some of the larger rocks. None of them budged.
“So what do you think, people?” Bob asked. “Is this the turnaround point?”
“No way,” Nigel shouted. “No way. We can move this. Unless there’s a really big rock under this pile, we can move this, guys.”
Dave wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t feel much like turning around.
Mark sighed, then grinned.
“Okay. We have four shovels. We can take turns tossing dirt. Everybody else can grab rocks as heavy as they can lift, and toss ’em overboard. Sound good?”
It was hot and heavy work. Everyone who could handle a shovel—which was all of them except Jenna, Solomon, Emily, and Taylor—took fifteen-minute shifts attacking the pile. Even Teddy was feeling well enough to work.
At first it was just a matter of getting a scoop of dirt onto a shovel and tossing it over the side. But as the day wore on and the pile grew smaller, it was too far for most of them to throw. So one person would toss a load toward the edge, and others would pick up that dirt and toss it over the side.
Some of the rocks were small enough to handle with the shovels, but when they came to a larger one it had to be wrestled loose, and then either lifted or dragged to the edge and kicked over.
Both Solomon and Taylor ended up “helping out,” Solomon with rocks the size of baseballs, and Taylor with smaller ones. They both enjoyed tossing them as far as they could and seeing them roll down the hill.
That used up the rest of the morning, and went into the afternoon. As they worked they got a better idea of what they were facing in terms of larger rocks. It didn’t look good, but Mark insisted it was not impossible. Facing a logistical engineering job he thought he could tackle, he had become a convert to the idea of getting across the mountains one way or another. He enlisted Dave and Marian in converting the U-Haul truck into a bulldozer.
“My idea is to take out two of the armor panels from the truck,” he said. “Then I’ll weld them into a wedge shape and attach that to the front. Maybe I can shove the biggest ones aside.” He looked dubiously at the front of the truck. “And maybe not.”
The thing Mark fashioned was not elegant, but it looked sturdy. Whether it was sturdy enough to move the two largest rocks remained to be seen.
First he had stripped away all the front grillwork on the U-Haul, making an ugly beast that seemed to be snarling at them. He propped up the two pieces of armor and welded them together, then welded two steel braces between them to give the structure strength. When he was done he had a plow blade eight feet wide. It was designed to deliver brute force to rocks, and it only had to move them about ten feet.
By the time it was done, all the dirt and smaller rocks that had to be moved were out of the way. The labor force was exhausted, sweaty, and filthy. Dinner was served while Mark regarded his creation from all angles. They all stood to one side and Mark fired up his wood-burning engine and slowly eased the front of the truck into contact with the first rock. This was the smaller of the two, standing about three feet high and about six feet in its longest axis. The blade kissed the rock. Mark looked out at his audience.
“Here goes nothing,” he said.
Unfortunately, he was almost accurate. The truck’s engine revved up and whined at a higher pi
tch. Smoke belched from the vertical stack.
The rock moved, cutting a rut in the asphalt. Everyone cheered. In all, the rock moved about six inches. Then the truck stalled. Mark hit the starter and revved the engine again. The truck stalled. In all, Mark tried six times to move the rock. Each time the truck stalled.
Mark hunkered beside his truck, using a stick to draw things in the dirt and muttering to himself about torque, compression ratios, and other considerations. He was not a happy man.
“Can we break it up?” Marian asked. Mark sprang to his feet.
“Sure, if we had some dynamite. I didn’t think to pack any.”
“Nobody’s blaming you, son,” Bob said. Mark wasn’t buying it.
“I could probably cobble together some explosives from common household chemicals,” he said. “But I’m not sure I remember just how to do it. I’m not real happy messing with explosives when I’ve never—”
“I absolutely forbid it,” Emily said, reverting to protective-mother mode.
“I remember some stuff,” Marian said. “But I wouldn’t want to mess with it, either, without someone who knew more than I do.”
“Could we break it up any other way?” Nigel wanted to know.
Mark blew out a breath.
“It would be a lot harder than you imagine. That’s very hard rock. That’s a damn big rock. I only have one sledgehammer. I don’t know if it would last long enough for this job. But if it did…it might take days.”
Other ideas were tossed around, but none seemed promising. After a while Dave cleared his throat.
“Maybe we used the wrong vehicle,” he said.
It took another two hours to remove the blade from the U-Haul and mount it on the Escalade. It involved taking off the front bumpers, fenders, and hood. The Escalade was looking like it had driven through a war zone, with hardly one surface that wasn’t dented or scratched. And, of course, it was filthy. When they had the blade mounted it looked even more warlike.
“Sorcerer,” Dave said, regarding it. Marian laughed, and they had to explain it.
“That movie about those trucks carrying dynamite over mountains and rope bridges. Good movie.”
“I wish I had some of their dynamite,” Mark said.
Dave’s reasoning had been simple, but persuasive. The SUV was four-wheel-drive and the U-Haul was not. It had a bigger engine. And as Mark admitted, the improvised wood-burning engine simply didn’t have the muscle of a sophisticated Detroit mill. But the remounting went smoothly, as something you do for the second time usually does.
When they were ready to go the sun had dipped behind the hills to the west, and there was not much daylight left. They had cleared everything out of the Escalade. It only remained for Dave to start it up and drive it toward the rock.
“Wish me luck,” he said, and Karen leaned in the window and kissed him. He dropped it into the lowest gear and eased it forward until the center of the plow blade touched the edge of the jagged rock. Then he slowly began to give it the gas. The big vehicle’s engine purred quietly at first. He watched the tachometer as the needle moved slowly up.
The rock moved. First it was only a few inches, and then it slid a foot or more. This time there was no cheering; everyone was holding the celebration until the rock was over the edge of the cliff.
The rock moved another foot, and then all four wheels on the Escalade began to spin. Smoke billowed from under it, and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.
Dave backed off on the accelerator, and the rock stopped moving.
“Easy does it,” Bob said. Dave nodded, and started to push again.
Two more times the tires lost traction. Each time Mark and Gordon swept loose dirt from the road in front of the tires, and each time they bit again.
Dave was hooting in triumph when Mark raised his fist in the air, indicating that the rock had moved enough for the vehicles to get by. But he wasn’t going to let the damn thing go that easily. He gunned the engine again, and the rock went to the edge, teetered, and rolled over. Everyone was standing on the edge cheering as the boulder crashed through the underbrush. Dave was the only one who couldn’t see it, but the sound was wonderful. He had grown to hate that damn rock.
“One more to go,” Mark shouted, and ran to the other boulder. He used a tape measure to figure out how much it needed to be moved so they could get by. It came to about ten feet. He made a mark in the dirt showing where it needed to be, and hurried back to Dave.
“That was great, but you probably shouldn’t do it again.”
“I probably shouldn’t have done it that time.”
“No, we needed something to cheer about. But be careful, okay?”
“I will be.”
He approached the second rock, which was about the same size, maybe slightly bigger. He felt sure he could move it. The only problem might be in the rock’s shape. The side where he had to push it was slanted a bit, and he was worried that the blade would just slip up and over it.
But Mark signaled thumbs-up as he watched the blade contact the rock. Dave signaled back, and started to push.
It seemed the bottom of the rock was smoother than the first one had been, as it was not gouging out ruts as deep as the first one had. The tires smoked once, but Dave backed off and they regained traction.
Mark was standing near the front of the truck, watching. As the rock got closer to the line he held his arms out wide, indicating how far it had to move. After a few seconds he moved his hands closer.
When there was only a foot to go the rock seemed to dig in and stop, so Dave pressed a little harder on the accelerator. The rock moved, and then there was a shriek of metal and suddenly the Escalade lurched up and forward. It was very quick, and the next thing he knew he was climbing the rock. The front wheels were in the air but the back wheels were still digging in, and suddenly meeting no resistance.
The Escalade leaped up, to the sound of tearing metal. Dave was jolted so hard that for a moment his hands came off the wheel and his head bumped the ceiling. He took his foot off the gas, but the car’s momentum was carrying it up and over the top of the rock. He hit the brakes, hoping it wasn’t too late. The front end slammed the ground hard enough to bang his head against the steering wheel, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything. But he knew he was still moving. He began to skid toward the edge of the cliff.
He probably would have gone over, but one of the front wheels had been broken from the axle and immediately dug into the dirt, providing a lot more resistance than just the brakes. The front of the Escalade dropped over the edge, hung there a moment…and then the movement stopped.
Dave held his breath, not daring to move.
He felt blood trickling into his eyes. Outside the car, and a little behind him, someone was shouting.
“David! Don’t move!” That was Karen. He was slowly getting his wits about him. He turned slowly in his seat and saw his wife. Standing beside and a little behind her was Addison. Karen was holding her hands out to prevent their daughter from moving forward, and he realized they were standing on the edge of the cliff.
“I won’t,” he said. He did move, though. He looked out his window and saw nothing. He looked down and saw that the front of the Escalade was over the precipice. The lip of the cliff was about even with the back edge of the door beside him. He would be able to open the door and step out carefully, and be safe.
If the vehicle didn’t tip over the edge.
“Everybody!” That was Gordon’s voice. “Come to the rear of the car. We need to hold it down. Just in case. Dave, don’t move yet.”
“I won’t,” he said again.
While they organized that, he felt his face for any broken bones. His nose was bleeding, but it didn’t feel broken. There was more blood coming from his forehead, but the gash he felt wasn’t deep.
“Okay, Dave, we’re putting weight on the back. Can you open your door?”
He slowly opened the door and looked down. He would be able to
swing out, holding on to the door frame, and reach safety with a bit of a stretch.
If he was very, very careful.
“Addison, get back,” Karen was saying, as she reached out to him. He saw that his daughter was crying, and he tried a smile. Then he realized he probably looked pretty ghastly, with his bloody face.
Karen grabbed his hand and pulled, and he swung out and put one foot on the dirt. Then the other, and then one step forward. He immediately fell to his knees. He thought of kissing the ground, but decided that would be too melodramatic. Instead, he found himself laughing as Addison and Karen knelt by his side.
“That was more excitement than I was expecting,” he said.
“Well, I never liked that car anyway.”
Dave had had a few minutes to recover. Mark had promptly attached a chain to part of the Escalade’s rear chassis and pulled it back from the brink, fearful that it might still fall over. As he did this, the broken front wheel came free and bounced down the hillside. The big SUV now sat there, grievously wounded.
“Can’t fix that,” Mark announced, to no one’s surprise. “You know, it actually might drive on three wheels, it has a lot of ground clearance. But I’d have to work on the brake system, and—”
“Forget about it,” Dave said. “I’d actually thought of proposing we leave it behind, anyway. It’s a big waste of gasoline which we could use in the scooters. The truck already has all our cargo, and there’s room for us on the bus. Besides, we don’t figure to be traveling all that far. It’s sort of Lake Elsinore or bust, isn’t it?”
No one disagreed. If they were turned away from there, Dave supposed they would try to keep moving south on the 15, toward San Diego, but he held out little hope they would get there, or be accepted when they arrived. It wasn’t something he would say out loud, not wanting to worry Addison, but that was how he saw it.
They drained the Escalade’s gas tank into some of the empty gas cans. Dave thought the moment called for something dramatic, like pushing it over the cliff, but knew that was stupid. Just because the world had gone to hell didn’t mean they needed to further vandalize it.
