The Rackham Files (36 page)

We began to hope that "soon" might mean the bridges would be navigable within a few days. At worst, said Ern, we could clamber around stalled cars and cross the Benicia bridge to the north. That sounded reasonable to me, because neither of us realized how the Corps of Engineers intended to clear those bridges.

On Doomsday plus six we uncelebrated a week of underground exile and Ern volunteered to give us sunlight in the basement. Among the things Cammie had lugged from my garage was my so-called surface plate. A surface plate is just a slab, usually of granite, polished so perfectly flat that you can use it to measure the exact amount of warp on a race car's cylinder head. But I'm cheap. I bought an old jet fighter's front windshield at a surplus shop, knowing that it had to be optically flat, a surface plate of glass.

The thing was two feet long, a foot wide, and two inches thick; heavy as guilt and solid as virtue. Ern surmised that it might stop gamma rays while letting light through.

His scheme was simple. He toted the glass slab outside, galumphing in my protective outfit though it swallowed him whole. Then he shoveled dirt away from the top of my basement window, waving as he heard us cheer the light that burst into the basement. Finally he dropped the glass plate against the window and replaced some of the dirt so that the only light reaching us was through that thick windshield.

While he took another sponge bath, we learned that his scheme was flawed, since the radiation reading jumped a bit near the window. We took more readings and found that my stone divider wall made a big difference. Near my office area the reading, and the light, were highest. In my lounge area behind the stone wall, the radiation level was "normal," less than a rem, and enough light reflected from my walls to make us happy.

That little oblong of light had a beneficial side effect. We no longer needed to pedal the bike as much, and pedaling had released a lot of water vapor and carbon dioxide, which were still a problem.

On D + 7—we had coined enough jargon terms to confuse a linguist by them—we ran out of horsemeat. I used the last pinch of it to hide a half-tab of comealong for Spot, who must've wondered if he was becoming a manic-depressive.

We still had enough food for another two days, and my water heater's drain spigot was still yielding drinkable water. Shar had already started her second batch of alfalfa sprouts in a stainless steel bowl and served up that first batch to the music of general applause. She harvested three pints of sprouts in a few days, from a half-cupful of seed and without direct sunlight. That was our nearest approach to a green salad, very popular with soy sauce.

The same day was marked by the remainder of the McKay family saga. I record it at this point because I didn't hear it until eight days after it happened. The kids were bored by my hunting stories, and the playing cards were so badly creased that they might as well have had faces on both sides. We were sharing raisins and onion soup when I thought to ask Shar how they had got from their wrecked vanwagon to my place.

Their first decision, said my sis, was to travel light. They took maps, cheese, and tinned meat, and wore jackets. Ern locked the vehicle in the vain hope that he might return to it, then mounted his bike and tried towing Lance. He found it rough going uphill and let Lance fend for himself as soon as they passed the overturned truck. The truck, of course, blocked off other cars, so that bikes and pedestrians didn't need to dodge speeders.

Lance, like many kids, often went to and from school on his skateboard. The fat urethane wheels ran amazingly well over macadam, and on the first downslope, Ern found Lance spurting ahead with a few kicks. The skateboard was more maneuverable than an expert's bike, but after a near-collision with a motorcyclist, my nephew went to the rear of the McKay procession to avoid becoming what he termed a "street pizza."

After two hours they neared exhaustion, but their path led chiefly downhill then and they finally reached the road that doubled back toward my place. They were on the safe side of Mount Diablo at last, and Shar coasted to rest at the foot of a short, tree-lined uphill stretch. Panting, they rested and watched a collegiate youth who sat at the roadside with a wheel dismantled from his expensive lightweight bike.

"What's the trouble?" Cammie asked.

"Picked up a nail," said the young man. "Can you believe I didn't think to bring a cold-patch kit?"

Ern had placed one of the tiny cold-patch packages in each bike bag. He saw the tubular pump clipped to the youngster's bike frame and dug the cold-patch kit from the vinyl bag on his bike. "What am I bid for this?"

Big eyed: "A box of chocolate bars?"

Ern: "We'll settle for one apiece." He was making the trade when the first great flash backlit his skyline.

"Don't look! Hide your eyes," Shar screamed, ignoring her own advice as she grabbed for Lance, who stared at the sky in rapt fascination. A biker and several hikers went full-length onto the shoulder, perhaps expecting a heavy concussion.

The second flash seemed nearer, coming as it did from a direction with lower hilltops and less masking of the initial dazzle. The third and fourth flashes were also distinct and they felt the jolts, the sudden bucking of the earth itself, conducting shock for many miles beyond ground zero. Leaves showered around them.

Cammie was first to seize her bike, pedaling past a gas station and grocery store well in advance of her family. The first airborne rumble didn't seem loud. But scarcely had Ern turned onto the road toward my place when he, like the others, felt the solid slap on his back from the second blast, the errant shock wave that crossed the bay to macerate Concord before funneling up the narrow valley to blow my windows out.

By great luck they were headed away from it in a declivity of Marsh Creek Valley and felt only a peppering of grit and twigs. But Ern saw the multipaned front window of the gas station disintegrate as if sucked into the little building, a polychrome implosion more deadly than a high-velocity shower of razor blades.

"You should've seen what it did to Concord," Devon spoke up. "No, I take it back." Shake of the blond tasseled head.

Everyone likes to think he's seen the worst. "Didn't hurt you any," Lance sniffed.

"It killed Concord. I was in a downstairs apartment," said Devon, "and don't ask me why all our windows got sucked out, 'stead of blown in. But later I saw what happened to people who got caught in the open." He glanced guiltily at us, cleared his throat, shrugged. "A glove, with a hand still in it. People with branches sticking out of them. Slabs of marble knocked off a building, one with a little kid's legs poking from under it. Like that," he trailed off in embarrassment.

I think Cammie already had a special soft spot for Devon by this time. To ward off further memories of that sort she said, "I'm convinced, Devon. We were lucky. After that shock wave all we did was go like crazy for Uncle Harve's place."

"And we were luckier still that we didn't get hit by the cars that passed us," Ern injected. "You could hear an engine winding up from around the bends behind us, and I made Lance ride double with Shar since he couldn't make good time on the shoulder, and those people were driving like maniacs.

"One guy especially, driving a county jail-farm bus full of inmates. I could see a guard in the rear seat, holding a riot gun and staring back at us, looking scareder than I was. I couldn't decide whether he was more afraid of the bombs or the way his driver was smoking his tires."

The Contra Costa County jail farm was only a few miles from my place. I had helped put a couple of scufflers on that work farm. Inmates ranged from hapless schlemiels and harmless dopers to hard-eyed repeaters who, in my opinion, should've been across the bay in Quentin. I empathized with the guard on that bus; if that vehicle turned over, he'd have a score of two-legged bombs to worry about.

"I don't envy him, or the inmates," I said. "The county farm must've taken the same radiation dose we did. But some of the buildings could be pretty good protection. I gather you were pretty near here by then, eh?"

"Half-hour or so. We got here soon after you left, Harve. Thanks for trying to find us. We owe you a lot."

"
Owe
me? Good God, Ern," I fumed, then pointed at the fallout meter. "Think of yourself as an investment that's paid off a thousand percent. Fallout meter, air pump, filters, even a rechargeable light plant! Nobody owes me. You've done too much for me to owe me."

"We've still got a lot to do for each other," said Kate, perhaps for Devon's benefit. "I can't afford to worry about how much I owe, but I'll pay off as well as I can."

"Strange you should mention that," I said, grinning at her. "Because we've been wondering when you'd extend us an invitation."

Blank look from Kate. "For what?"

Ern, softly: "For the use of your summer place in, uh, where is it again?"

"Yountville," she replied. "There's always a chance that my folks got there. If they did, I can't swear they'd take me in, much less the rest of us." After a moment's thought: "And if it's all the same with you guys, I'll stick with you regardless."

Shar smiled indulgently. "We wouldn't hold you to that."

A snort from Kate: "I'm not saying that to be nice! I just don't think my chances would be as good with anybody else. And by the way, I suspect you've been talking it over when I wasn't listening. Isn't it time you let me in on the plans? After all"—she smiled with disarming shyness—"I might be the landlady."

The evening passed with argument and explanation. Of our younger members, only Kate had ever missed two meals in a row. The kids couldn't believe they'd begin to weaken after a day or so without food and thought we could just buy whatever we needed. I was adamant; we'd be crazy to set out for Yountville on bellies that had been empty for two days. And I didn't think a twenty-dollar bill would buy a meal anywhere in California.

Shar's notebook put our exodus on a no-nonsense footing, with figures to support the notion of northerly escape. We knew the fallout extended to Vallejo from radio broadcasts, and the same source said it did not extend as far north as Napa.

Yet we couldn't figure a way to get us from my place to the Napa County line in less than five hours without taking indefensible chances. I meant "indefensible" in more ways than one. We didn't want to make more than one trip in the Lotus, because I'd already seen how readily some folks would knock you over for the shoes on your feet. Leaving two or three of us near the bridge and retracing nearly thirty miles to my place was a clear case of dividing forces. Like Custer. No thanks. I couldn't defend an arrangement that left any of us more vulnerable than necessary.

It was possible that I was exaggerating the lawlessness we'd be dealing with. But whatever the state of the union, it didn't seem healthy enough in our locale for us to count on anything like business as usual. If we found a place to buy fuel and food, fine. I had a stock of pennies—coppers, at that—and quarters for just such a contingency. But another contingency forced itself on us, heralded as Ern outlined some of the preparations we would have to make. He stopped in midsentence to listen.

In the distance we heard a car pass, the unmistakable
thrumm
of a husky V-eight prowling the creek road. The event took twelve seconds or so, and we strained at the echoes like music lovers catching the faint final overtones of a lute. Such a familiar, homey racket; and now such an anomaly that we fantasized about it. We agreed at last that it must've been some official vehicle checking the road, its driver marvelously tricked out in some kind of space suit, invulnerable to the silent, invisible hail of gamma rays that sought his soft tissues.

A half-hour later Devon interrupted Shar to comment on the backfires he heard far away. Even government cars, he joked, got out of tune.

I laughed because I didn't want to break his mood. I'd heard that brief rattle too. From such a distance, muffled by earth, I might've chosen to think of it as backfires. But it had been a sudden, steady series of sharp reports; perhaps on one of the dairy farms nearby. I hoped it was a farmer killing moribund livestock. Sure as hell it was no backfire.

Shar must have caught the pensive look on my face and she continued outlining the proposed trip with a brief aside. We would have to travel at the pace of the slowest, all together, and we mustn't expect any help—in fact, must be ready for trouble without asking for it, she said.

She figured the bike group could get to the bridge in three hours, Kate and Devon riding with me, and Spot (she sighed) loping alongside the bikes. Then we'd need a half-hour to cross the bridge, strapping the bikes on my Lotus so I could ferry them across the water if necessary. Another hour or two getting around the mess we expected in Vallejo. The best we could hope for was a full five hours in gamma country.

Kate saw the crucial variable immediately. "What does that amount to in rems?"

"If we go tomorrow morning, about sixty. If we spend tomorrow in the tunnel and go the next day, maybe fifty. The day after that, forty-two or so. Of course we absorb a few rems daily in the tunnel. There's a point of diminishing returns, but it's after we run out of food and water."

"I just want to do the safest thing," Cammie wailed. She had taken her lumps with few complaints, but my niece was distraught to find her decision makers unsure on a vital decision.

"I say we eat our last meal three mornings from now and run for it on full stomachs," Kate said. I agreed with her.

Ern wanted to go in two days, taking our last tins of juice and beef.

Lance wanted to go now, now, now. He was fed up with toeing a tight line in a hole with no chewing gum.

Shar sided with Ern; Cammie didn't know what she wanted; and Devon just looked at us, blinking, fighting a resurgence of stomach cramps. Of course we ended by taking another secret ballot. I figured Cammie would do what she thought her parents wanted.

We counted one vote for leaving the next day, two for leaving in three days, and four for leaving in two days. So it was settled: we'd spend the following day getting the bikes fixed up with their generators and any other maintenance they needed, and I would replace the battery in the Lotus, taking a half-dozen rems while getting it fueled and ready.