Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

And he discovered a late-blooming affection for the impractical old beast. It had taken his family though holocaust and riot, had performed faithfully and efficiently in spite of its many wounds.

  Maybe the thing to do would be to shoot it in the head, like an injured horse.

  But they did nothing. They pushed it to the side of the road so it wouldn’t block any other travelers. They hitched the horse trailer to the back of the U-Haul, but Ranger could easily walk to Lake Elsinore. It was all downhill. They moved on.

  It was getting dark when they rounded a last bend in the road and came to a lookout point. Far down below them was the lake, and the towns of Lake Elsinore and Lakeland Village, surrounding the lake on four sides. The lake itself was almost rectangular, and a lovely blue in the pale evening light.

  And there was something that already seemed amazing to them. There were lights. It was one-hundredth as bright as it would have been a few months ago, but the lights were clearly electrical, not lanterns.

  “San Onofre,” Dave said.

  “Must be,” Bob agreed. It seemed that some power was still coming over the lines from the nuclear plant on the coast.

  “Go down there now, or in the morning?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t think it’s wise to approach them in the dark,” Marian said, and everyone agreed. So they looked over the terrain and picked a spot slightly back from the overlook, as it looked easier to defend. The road was quite narrow there. They parked the bus sideways across the street, leaving only a narrow gap at each end, and kept the truck behind that. They pitched tents and made dinner. He didn’t know about the others, but Dave was exhausted. He fell asleep almost at once.

  They posted guards both ahead and behind. Dave had the second shift, and Karen woke him at midnight. He had slept through the alarm.

  “Want me to take your place?” she asked. “I wasn’t sleeping well.”

  “No, we’ll stick to the schedule. Just give me a minute.”

  He got into his clothes and for the first time since last winter felt the need of a jacket. He didn’t know whether it was the altitude or because it was later in the year, or both, but there was a chill in the air. Karen had brought him a thermos of hot coffee and he drank some of it at once. It cleared his head a little.

  “You sure? You don’t dare fall asleep.”

  “I won’t.” He was a veteran of night watches by now, and had taught himself a few tricks that kept him awake.

  “It’s me,” he said quietly, as he came close to the spot where he knew Teddy was concealed. They had chosen it carefully. It was on the cliff side of the road, the east side, where it had been blasted through a ridge about fifteen feet high. There were a few scrubby trees growing from the side and on top, several large boulders, and three or four cracks in the rock big enough for a man to hide in and obtain some protection from gunfire. The place where Teddy should be was also chosen to give him a field of fire if he needed it. Dave couldn’t see him.

  “I’m here,” Teddy said, and flashed his light on and off quickly. Only then was Dave able to pick him out. The young man was about six feet up, leaning down and offering his hand. Dave took it and climbed up beside him. There was barely room for the two of them.

  “See anything?”

  “Couple of rabbits, running fast. Maybe a coyote. Quiet night”

  Teddy handed him the walkie-talkie, and left. Dave settled himself into the niche in the rock. There were places he could have sat down, though none would have been really comfortable, but he knew that comfort was the enemy of alertness. The handmaiden of sleep, if he was allowed to wax poetic.

  He looked around. Because of the curve of the road, he could see just the front half of the bus, not quite a hundred yards away. He checked his pockets for spare shotgun shells. He had a few dozen, which he hoped were a lot more than he would ever need.

  Then he settled down to wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The man came up the road at around two in the morning. The moon had moved higher in the sky, but was still coming from over Dave’s shoulder; he was completely in shadow. The guy was wearing black. He had a gun in his hand. He was tall and skinny, almost skeletal. Maybe a tweaker, a meth addict. Or maybe just a hungry man looking for food. Dave clicked the radio signal for “intruder approaching.”

  The guy was moving quietly, staying close to the rock wall on the other side of the road. He got far enough around the curve to see the rear end of the school bus. He quickly pressed himself against the rock wall and looked carefully around. This man was a scout of some kind.

  Scouting ahead was an entirely reasonable thing to do if you were seeking a safe path for a peaceful party of refugees, like Dave and his group. Traveling at night, sneaking around, didn’t strike Dave as quite so reasonable. A night reconnaissance was more in keeping with a raiding party. Dave aimed his shotgun, and waited.

  After a minute or two, the man backed away, and when he was out of sight of the bus he turned around and walked rapidly back down the road.

  Dave made the signal for “all clear,” and relaxed a little. Almost at once he heard someone hurrying toward him from the bus. He quickly flashed his light. He saw that it was Marian, and she was carrying her military rifle. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but he knew it was serious firepower.

  “One man, dressed in black,” he whispered. Then he described the man’s actions.

  “Scout,” she said. “He’s going back to get reinforcements.”

  He gave her a hand up.

  “The plan is, I’m going to station myself here because I have a little experience in situations like this. You’re to go back and join the others.”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Your family needs you, Dave.”

  “And Gordon and Taylor need you. Your son is only four. He needs a mother. You’re the one who should go back.”

  She didn’t have any argument to go against that. She sent a series of signals.

  “I’m not going back, either. I’ve told them that I’ll buzz once if the guy comes back again. We’ll draw down on him, take him to the bus if he surrenders. Kill him if he shoots.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll buzz twice if more people come. Then I’ll buzz the number of people we see. We’ll let them get past us. Then we’ll play it as it goes. If they start shooting, we shoot them. If the people in the bus start firing, we shoot. If it’s my judgement that we should shoot first, we shoot first. You have a problem with that?”

  “Not at all.” Dave’s heart was pounding so strongly he hoped she couldn’t hear it.

  “You’re probably scared. No need to hide it. I’m scared, too. But I think I should be in command here. Any problem with that?”

  “Not even a tiny problem. You’re the boss.”

  She nodded, and he saw her teeth when she smiled.

  “We’ll get through this,” she promised him. He was glad she was so confident.

  It was half an hour before they came. Dave had settled down, but the adrenaline started pumping again the minute the first people came into sight from down the road. They were all dressed in dark clothes, but it was a motley crew. There were guys with big beer bellies, and others who were thin. There was a lot of black leather. Sleeveless vests were popular. Some hair was long, and some heads were shaved. Two of them were probably women, though it was hard to be sure. They were all armed. Some carried pistols and others had rifles and shotguns. Some carried a gun in each hand.

  Marian tapped Dave’s arm. When he looked at her, she opened her palm five times. Fifteen. He counted, and that was close enough. He nodded, and saw her depressing the alarm button.

  They were all sticking to the rock wall on the other side of the road, and they were led by the first man, the scout. He moved more slowly when he approached the spot where he had first spied the bus, and everyone bunched up close to him. They were no more than thirty feet away from Dave and Rachel. She whispered in his ear.

&nb
sp; “We’re not going to wait. These are killers. We shoot first. You with me?”

  Dave nodded. His throat was too dry to whisper.

  “Wait until I shoot,” she said. “Fire for no more than five seconds, then get down, take cover. Got it?”

  Dave nodded. Marian picked up a rock the size of a baseball, slowly stood up, holding her rifle in one hand and the rock in the other. Then she threw the rock. It hit the stone wall about ten feet above the group, and tumbled down the side of the hill along with a shower of smaller rocks.

  They all turned and started firing above them, where the rock had impacted. They were shouting and shooting. The noise was incredible. All of them had their backs to Dave and Marian.

  Then Marian started firing into them, about one shot every second. She seemed to be picking her targets. Dave fired one shotgun round into the crowd, then another, and then another. He thought he saw two or three flashes coming from the bus, but everything was happening too fast, so he couldn’t be sure of much.

  One thing he was sure of was that some of the intruders were down on the ground. Some were screaming, and some were still.

  “Get down!” Marian told him, and he did. He crouched behind a rock as bullets began to impact all around him. Rock chips flew and he felt some of them hit his skin, but there was no pain. He thought he was too pumped to feel it.

  The people on the road were shouting, and some were still screaming. Dave risked lifting his head a little as the incoming fire died down. He saw two men crouching low and running toward him. He swung his shotgun toward them and fired two rounds. One man went down hard, the other turned and ran, hobbling.

  “Shoot again!” Marian yelled, and he saw her standing and placing her shots again. He stood up. At least five people were down, and the others were fleeing up the road, away from them and toward the bus. A few snapped off shots behind them as they ran, but they were not aimed.

  When the survivors were about halfway to the bus, four lights came on and gunfire erupted from several of the bus windows. Dave saw the intruders in silhouette, pinned in the bright light, probably blinded, disorganized, shouting, not knowing which way to run. He saw three of them go down in rapid succession. One stumbled to the side of the road and dropped off.

  “Hold your fire,” Marian said. “We might hit the bus.”

  Dave had already figured that out. Besides that, he was out of ammunition. Hands trembling, he got a handful of shells from his pocket and reloaded. Even with all his caution, one of them slipped from his hands and vanished into a crack in the rock below him. When the magazine was full again, he turned and saw the remainder of the gang coming back toward them. One of them was walking rapidly backwards, firing as he went. On the back of his jacket were the colors of a motorcycle gang that featured a large wheel and a grinning skull. He couldn’t read the name of the gang.

  He fired a shot at the man, missed, and fired again. The lights ahead suddenly went out, and for a moment he couldn’t see much. He heard booted feet pounding the pavement below him, and then they were gone.

  He and Marian were surrounded by the smell of gunpowder. Below them one man was still screaming, and another moaned. His vision was coming back, and he counted six bodies below, only one of them moving, the screamer.

  Marian was saying something, and Dave had to lean closer to her to hear. His ears were ringing from all the noise.

  “We have to go down there, but we better wait a minute. What I mean, this cross-fire ambush probably won’t work a second time. They know where we were hiding, they might come up behind us.”

  “You think they’ll come back?”

  “Depends on how many didn’t come the first time. Most biker gangs have more than fifteen members.”

  They waited, and for a while the only sound was the man’s screaming. That faded away after a few more minutes. He was either dead, or in shock. Then, from down the road, they heard motorcycles start up. The engines were unmuffled, the way outlaw bikers liked them.

  “Uh-oh,” Marian said. “We may have to run for it. Don’t assume anybody down there is dead. If we have to run—”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Marian was silent, and they listened to the sound of the motorcycles moving away from them. Soon they could barely be heard.

  “They’re running away,” he said.

  “Time to move, then. They may be going for reinforcements. I’m going to need a little help.”

  That was the first time Dave realized she had been wounded. She was holding her hand to her side, and blood was oozing out between her fingers.

  “It’s not bleeding badly,” she said. “I think it was just a graze. It might even have been a piece of rock. You’re bleeding from the ear and shoulder, you know.”

  He had been aware on some level of a nagging pain, but nothing serious. Then he touched his ear and it all came to throbbing, pulsing life, both the ear and the shoulder. The ear was on fire, and he felt like he had been hit in the shoulder with a baseball bat.

  “It hurts like hell,” she said. “I can’t put any weight on my right leg.”

  “Okay. Should I lower you down?”

  “I think that’s the best idea.”

  He managed it, though it hurt his shoulder. She gasped a few times, but never cried out. If she could do it, so could he, he vowed, though he wanted to curse and holler and just generally complain about his pains.

  The screamer had gone silent. Marian had one arm over Dave’s shoulder, and a pistol in the other. Dave used his free hand to keep his shotgun trained on the screamer as they approached him.

  It wasn’t necessary. The man’s left leg was hanging by a thin strip of flesh, and his intestines were spilling from his belly. Dave fought back nausea.

  “I did that,” he said.

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist. He was coming at us, shooting at us.”

  “Yeah, I know. I guess you have more experience in this than I do.”

  “Actually, this is the first time I’ve killed someone.”

  Dave felt like laughing, but was afraid he couldn’t stop once he got going. Marian was their veteran, the ex-soldier. Her tactical training was the best they had, but he wouldn’t have felt quite so safe in the gun battle if he’d known she had never killed.

  “Actually, I have killed someone,” he said. He didn’t know why, it just seemed the right moment.

  “Really? You’ll have to tell me about it someday.”

  “Maybe.”

  He was hurrying as fast as he could, but they were carefully watching each body for movement. The ones in front of their hideout were all clearly dead, except for the screamer, who was still bleeding but clearly would not survive.

  They began to pass more bodies. One was feebly trying to crawl away. He was leaving a bloody trail behind him.

  “Watch his hands,” Marian said. The man wasn’t holding anything, but there was a Glock semiautomatic with an extended magazine near his feet. Dave picked it up while Marian lifted the man’s shirt to see if he had any weapons squirreled away. The man rolled onto his back. He was gasping for air and blood was leaking from his mouth.

  “My impulse is to finish him off,” Marian said. “But I don’t think I can.”

  “I think he’s going to die, anyway. It looks like a bullet went through his lung.”

  “These guys were killed by firing from the bus,” she said. “Unlikely we hit any of them at this distance.”

  Dave was wondering if she was feeling shock or remorse for all the killing they had done. He himself was feeling nothing for them. But he agreed with her. He wouldn’t shoot this unarmed man in the head or the heart.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Marian said.

  When they were approaching the bus one of the headlights mounted on the side came on briefly, then switched off. At once Lisa and Elyse and Nigel—the medical team—came hurrying around the back of the bus, followed closely by Karen and Addison and Gordon.

  “She’s i
njured,” Dave told them.

  “Just a flesh wound, I think.”

  “Both of you, come on around behind the bus.” Gordon took over supporting Marian and Karen rushed to Dave’s side. After a quick hug from her and his daughter, they all got off the battlefield. Dave was glad that the nearest corpse was at least thirty feet away. The dead were just shapeless lumps lying in the road.

  Marian was taken into the bus, while Elyse worked on Dave’s injuries by the light of a Coleman lantern.

  “I think you lost a little bit of ear here,” she said. “This is going to sting.”

  Dave talked to take his mind off what Elyse was doing.

  “Anyone hurt here?”

  “No,” Karen said. “By the time we switched the lights on they were so disorganized and panicky they didn’t get many shots off. I heard some bullets hitting the side of the bus.”

  Addison was holding back tears.

  “I was so scared I didn’t even shoot, Daddy. I just ducked down behind the wall there and I couldn’t stop shaking.”

  “I was shaking, too,” Dave said. “Ouch! That…Okay, okay, you warned me. How much is gone?”

  “Just a little piece. You’ll never miss it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “But you did shoot, didn’t you, Daddy?”

  “Yes, honey, both of us shot. They were coming at us, and…and we’ll talk about all this some other day.”

  Marian’s wound turned out to be a ricochet. Lisa extracted a mangled bullet, what she said was probably a .45, from her hip. It had hit the edge of the bone and gone downward, but it wasn’t deep.

  They sent Gordon down the road and up on the crest of the hill, not to lie in ambush this time, but to come running back if he saw anyone approaching. From his position he could see almost half a mile downhill. Dave suspected they would hear any counterattack before Gordon saw anything. He expected they would come on their bikes, but it was possible they might try to sneak up on foot.

  Then there was a dirty chore to take care of. They intended to continue on down the hill in the morning, if that was possible. But there was the matter of the bodies.