False Dawn

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  With a sigh she went back to bed, moving carefully so as not to wake him. There would be time enough in the morning to talk about the lake, to see what had become of it, what contamination had driven off the Pirates. She knew that when she slept, she would dream of Squaw Valley, so she did not sleep.

  10

  Shortly after sunrise they went undisturbed to the shore of Lake Tahoe and looked out at the desolation there. Slime floated just below the ash-colored surface and occasionally nests of water spiders would drift by. These deadly creatures were enough by themselves to keep the Pirates away from the lake, but the poisoned water made a Pirate camp impossible.

  “Look at it,” Evan said in a hushed voice. The winds that blew across the lake were sour-smelling and scoured the lungs with chemicals. Where the thickened wavelets lapped sluggishly at the shore they left a scummy residue behind that burned the fingers of those foolish enough to touch it.

  “How did it get this way?” Thea stared, for as dreadful as the lake had looked by night, by day it was much worse. The miasmic veil that hung over the water had in daylight, instead of its glow, a kind of leprous silver haze that made her skin crawl. There would be no resurrection for Lake Tahoe.

  “Who knows? They used to dump garbage into it, then they dumped things in to kill the garbage. What did they expect? It’s a sewer.” He turned away, his mouth a thin line above his heard. He gave the sledge a savage jerk, pulling it away from the water, back to the pitted highway that threaded along the shore of the lake.

  “Aren’t we going back up the mountain? There’s nothing here.”

  “In a bit. There’s a junction at the south end of the lake. Before we do anything else, I want to find out what’s there. If the Pirates retreated but didn’t leave, they might have gone to the casinos, and that’s too close.”

  “Is that what you would have done?” Thea asked pointedly.

  “Yes, it is,” he said without apology.

  “Then let’s try the south.” She had already reached for her smaller crossbow and was strapping it to her wrist.

  At first they kept in the brush at the side of the road, where there was brush, as they had done so many times before; but soon it was obvious that this road was never traveled, so they walked down its center, still keeping careful watch on the trees and scrub around them.

  It took no more than three hours to get to the junction and there they found nothing but the ruins of five large motels amid the wreckage of burned buildings. There had been a city here at one time, but the contamination of the lake had taken its toll of the people as well as the buildings, and now the place stood burned and deserted, a few facades pitted and scarred as mute testimony to the terrible effects of the breeze off the lake.

  “Have you had enough?” Thea tugged anxiously at Evan’s arm, looking westward to the crown of the mountains they had left. “We can make the climb in a day, Evan. We don’t have to stay here any longer. You know the Pirates are gone. We can go, too. I don’t like it here.”

  “Neither do I. But there are still the casinos on the south shore. If they had people in them three months ago—and it’s a good bet that some of these places had occupants—they still might have some now. I want to know about it.” There was no fighting the set line of his jaw or the coldness in his blue eyes. Thea sensed that there was more than he had admitted in his desire to see the lake, to find out the full extent of its ruin, so she kept silent and followed him, her crossbow ready and her senses alert. What they were doing was dangerous, and she knew that she had to be doubly cautious, since Evan, for some reason, was being reckless.

  Late that afternoon they came to the state line, well-marked by six tall casinos and a rusted sign that had once welcomed the traveler to Nevada. Broken windows and crumbling walls made it clear that the big buildings had not been cared for, and Thea thought the places were abandoned.

  But around the buildings were fences, bizarre conglomerations of roulette wheels, craps tables, felt-covered pool tables, and other tokens of the fantasy world that the gambling empire of Nevada had been. One of the casinos had hedged itself with slot machines, and their shiny fronts were now patched with rust.

  As Evan led the way toward one of these phenomenal piles, there was a sudden shower of rocks, tiles, bricks, bottles, and pool balls, accompanied by angry shouts from behind the fence of litter.

  “Stop,” he said to Thea, never looking away from the surface of the barrier. “Who’s there!” he called, keeping his voice level and sure, as if talking to restive animals. “Who are you?”

  “Go away!” several voices chorused back. “We don’t want you here.” This last was followed by individual voices adding their own insults.

  “There’re only two of us. We can’t possibly hurt you.”

  The rain of missiles was renewed, accompanied by two blasts of a shotgun.

  Evan stepped back, motioning Thea to get out of range of everything but the shotgun. “Are you the only ones left around here? Have there been men in vans? Men with rifles?”

  The outraged shouts that accompanied the thrown things told Evan more than he wanted to know about the men in vans. One of the fragments of brick that had been thrown was lucky and glanced off Evan’s forehead, leaving a trail of blood over one eye. He did not give ground.

  “Where are those men now?” he persisted, raising his voice.

  “Gone!” they shouted at him, adding glasses to the other assorted paraphernalia that came over the wall. Another shotgun blast convinced Evan that in spite of the posturing, the defenders were running low on ammunition.

  A soft sound made Thea turn. Not four feet away was a pathetically thin man of uncertain age. His skin was scabbed over with phosphorescent patches that Thea had seen too many times before. His clothes were matted with filth, his hair was wild, and there was a look about him that told her this man was not sane. She lifted her crossbow.

  “Stop right there,” she said clearly, the quarrel lined on the middle of his chest. “I’ve put this weight of bolt through three bales of hay: you aren’t anywhere near that thick.”

  The man stopped, his eyes on the sled. “Food?” he croaked. “Have you got any food?” He pointed, grinning, to the sledge. “Food?” he repeated as if speaking a foreign language.

  “Not for you,” she said calmly, but her eyes flickered nervously. If there was one man, there could be more. She made her voice louder so that it would carry to Evan. “We have company, Evan. He wants food.”

  “What?” Evan turned, his eyes widening faintly. With sudden compassion, he reached into the packages on the sledge, handing the strange man one of their day’s rations. “Here,” he said gently. “You can have this. But will you tell me about the men in vans? Have they been here?”

  With straining eyes fixed on the package Evan had handed him, the man said, “They were here, Yes. Now they’re gone. Try Carson City. Over the mountain. East. Go east.”

  “Carson City?” Evan repeated. “Out on the desert?”

  “That’s what the leader said to them.” The ragged stranger looked around nervously as if he expected the Pirates to materialize in front of him.

  “What head man? Did you hear a name?” Evan seemed far more disinterested than he was.

  “The head man, called Mackley, ordered them over the mountain. He said it was better there. Safer. He said it would be hot. He said they’d grow food there. No one would bother them up in the mountains.”

  “Mackley.” Damnable Joel Mackley: tall, gaunt, his face belonging to some ruthless medieval ruler. “I thought he did in Cox. It must have been Mackley. He’s the only one left.”

  “There’s others,” the man said, almost lucid. “More Pirates up north. Mackley has the south bunch now. They had a fight here last spring. A big one. Lots of them got killed. A guy called Lui took most of the men and headed north.” He could stand it no more and clutched the package to him, turned and scuttled back toward the barricade of slot machines.

  Evan sto
od for a moment looking after the pathetic little man. “Mackley is probably still around here. I wonder.” He peered at the casino, musing aloud, “Lui’s got the northern group now? That’s a lot of territory. Where are they?”

  “Is it bad do you think?” Thea asked gently.

  Evan nodded, considering Mackley and Cox. “It’s bad. Cox was after Mutes and Mackley’s after everyone else. Lui’s clever, and the men admire him for it. With Cox dead, the rest would have to fight. I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier. Gorren might have the sided with Liu, or Spaulding.” He wiped the blood from his face, not letting her see the damage. “Come on. We’ll get out of here. I’ve learned what I want to know.”

  “If you find Lui, would he take you back?” Thea asked as if she were half-asleep.

  “I doubt it,” he said with a sarcastic laugh. “He liked my skill at organizing. That’s how I became the Pirates’ leader. But Lui is good at organization, too, and he isn’t burdened with scruples. He wouldn’t be glad to see me.”

  Thea nodded. “It’s getting late,” she warned him.

  “We’ll find a place to sleep. We’ve always found places before.” He dragged the sledge after him as he turned away from the casinos.

  That night they slept in a tumble-down service station which had long since outlived its usefulness, having run out of gasoline many years ago. They chose the area beyond the service counter where they ate quickly and set up watch rotation so that they would have one or the other of them awake all through the night. As Thea took the first watch she remarked, “My father used to have watchdogs, shepherds and stag hounds. They took care of all this.”

  Evan finished packing the dishes and the pots before saying, “I don’t think I’d want to have a dog now. Most of them have run wild, and they aren’t feeling all that friendly toward people anymore.” He adjusted his sleeping bag on the broken concrete. “I’ve been more comfortable,” he said as he rolled into the bag, putting his shoes next to his head. “Wake me in four hours.”

  For all their precautions the night passed easily enough. Once or twice there were rustlings in the bushes that had sprung up around the station. On Evan’s watch he was sure he had heard words just beyond the station that hissed and whispered as lie patrolled the limits of their area. These, he knew, could have been the workings of his mind, and so he waited as the hours stretched on into morning, ending the uncertainties of the night.

  Thea rolled out of her sleeping bag at dawn, an unfriendly frown on her face. “I wonder what’s buried down there?” She glared at the jumbled concrete.

  “Probably old filling station tanks, or maybe one of the hydraulic lifts they used to have for raising cars.” His affectionate smile disarmed her.

  “Then why’s the concrete all broken up, and why is it shoved together? I tell you, there’s something down there. I know it. There’s no reason for breaking up the stuff like this otherwise.”

  To humor her, he said, “All right. After breakfast we’ll pull up the slabs and see what’s there. But we can’t waste much time here. If we don’t find anything in a couple of hours, we’ve got to move on.”

  There were five slabs to be pulled up and they ranged in size from a foot square to a monster that was almost two by four feet. It took more than two hours to drag the concrete aside so that they could dig into the ground underneath. They had dug for less than ten minutes when Thea’s shovel hit something solid with a decided thunk.

  “Well, whatever it is, we’ll have it out in a bit,” Evan said, his face shining with sweat in the cool morning. He stepped into the hole they had dug and began clearing the dirt away with his hands.

  “Do you need help?” Thea asked as she put the shovel back on the sledge.

  “No. I can manage.” He bent to his work again. What he found made him whistle. There, under the slabs and the earth, were a dozen rifles, seven shotguns, nineteen boxes of ammunition for the rifles, and twenty-four boxes of shells for the shotguns. He rubbed his head slowly, calling to Thea. “You win. There was something under us,” he said quietly as he showed her the find. “These go with us. Two shotguns and three rifles apiece and all the ammunition.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Where do you suppose they came from?” She knelt on the edge of the hole, reaching down to touch the guns. “Who left these? Do you know?”

  “I’ll bet you anything that these belong to my old friend Joel Mackley. This is exactly the sort of thing he’d do. The guns are wrapped in oilcloth and canvas and the ammunition and shells are in waterproof boxes. He always wanted to leave caches of weapons when we were spreading out. He wanted to be sure we could defend ourselves quickly, if we had to retreat.” He sighed. “I used to tell him that if we did, someone else might dig them up, and we’d really be in trouble. Turns out I’m right.”

  “Then he’ll be back?”

  Evan climbed out of the hole, four of the oilcloth and canvas packages under his arm. “Who knows? He might or he might not. There’s no way of being sure of Mackley. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

  Thea took the packages from him and loaded them onto the sledge. For a moment she was busy arranging the things there, and then she turned back to Evan. “Do you think he’d know you if he saw you? Mackley, I mean.”

  At this Evan laughed. “Oh, he’d know me all right. He was the one who held the power saw that took off my arm. This” he waggled his right arm —”might surprise him, but he’d recognize me. No fear.”

  “Then he’d fight when he saw you? He’d want to finish the job?”

  He cupped her chin in his hand. “Look, Thea, Mackley isn’t going to get us. I got away from him before, and even though he seems to be everywhere we go, he doesn’t know I’m alive, let alone where I am. He doesn’t know a thing about you. I tell you, we’re safe, at least where Mackley’s concerned.”

  “Let’s get the sledge packed.”

  “Okay, But don’t worry about Mackley. He’s the last thing to bother you. We’ll avoid him. That’s all.”

  They made sure the guns and ammunition were loaded carefully and lashed down before they started away from the service station. Evan looked back as they left. “You know, that’s the sort of thing Mackley does, tearing up the floor of service stations? He thinks he can change the world back to the way it used to be. There’s nothing anyone can say that will change his mind, either. He knows beyond doubt that service stations will be back in business one day, and so he makes sure he keeps them in use. He won’t listen to any contradiction about it. I know. I tried.”

  “And he wouldn’t change his mind now, would he?”

  “No,” Evan said tersely, and began the long trudge up the mountain.

  They spent that night at Fallen Leaf Lake, keeping well back from the shore and the nests of water spiders. The venom-filled mandibles killed quickly but far from painlessly. Of all the creatures which had adapted themselves to the new and deadly world, these were the most feared, the most dangerous.

  The morning was gray, volcanic soot mixing with the clouds, obscuring the sun and coloring the world with a ruddy wash. Evan hurried their breakfast while Thea checked out the runners of the sledge. The climb would be steep and would wind its way through the brushy remnants of the Tahoe National Forest. Dead trees and dying ones would fill their paths, and she knew that the sledge could not stand much of that kind of beating without new braces and runners to take the impact.

  She found two lengths of wood which a long time ago had been skis. These she lashed to the runners, securing them with heavy-test leader she had found in the sporting goods shop in Squaw Valley. As she tied the knots, she thought about the valley, the days there, and the nights. She wondered if the Pirates had found it yet, if they had used her house, or burned it. She could see it again, that practical, brave octagon resisting cold and neglect. It would he terrible, she decided, if the Pirates used it. She hoped they would burn it. She tied the last of the knots and stepped back.

  “Thea.” This time Evan�
��s voice was sharp enough to break through her reverie.

  “What?” She pulled her mind back to the present and gave him and their breakfast her attention.

  “I think we can get to Cathedral Lake by nightfall if we keep the climb steady and stick to the trails,” she said as they finished eating.

  “Good,” Evan nodded.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, seeing that he was not pleased.

  “I was trying to figure out what month this is. It should be June. It’s almost summer, and look at it. It’s like April or October. That isn’t very promising.”

  “No. Unless you think bad weather is promising.” She stood up, brushed her trousers, and tried to help Evan clean off the plates with handfuls of dried grass. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse.”

  The lookout station on the south edge of Cathedral Lake facing the bulk of Cathedral Rock had been built fairly recently. “It must have been one of the last projects before they closed off the lake to the general public,” Evan said as they walked around its thirty-foot legs. The ladder to the platform and station door zigzagged through the center of the structure like laces up a shoe. “We’re going to have a job getting the sled up there,” he said, mentally calculating the number of steps.

  “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.”