When they got there, Tanner saw three cars, ready to go; and he saw five men seated on benches along the wall.
One of them he recognized.
"Denny," he said, "come here," and he moved forward, and a slim, blond youth who held a crash helmet in his right hand stood and walked toward him.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked him.
"I'm second driver in car three."
"You've got your own garage, and you've kept your nose clean. What's the thought on this?"
"Denton offered me fifty grand," said Denny, and Hell turned away his face.
"Screw it! It's no good if you're dead!"
"I need the money."
"Why?"
"I want to get married, and I can use it."
"I thought you were making out okay."
"I am, but I'd like to buy a house."
"Does your girl know what you've got in mind?"
"No."
"I didn't think so. Listen, I've got to do it, it's the only way out for me. You don't have to."
"That's for me to say."
"... So I'm going to tell you something: You drive OUt to Pasadena to that place where we used to play when we were kids, with the rocks and the three big trees_you know where I mean?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"Go back of the big tree in the middle, on the side where I carved my initials. Step off seven steps and dig down around four feet. Got that?"
"Yeah. What's there?"
"That's my legacy, Denny. You'll find one of those old strongboxes, probably all rusted out by now. Bust it open. It'll be full of excelsior, and there'll be a six-inch joint of pipe inside. It's threaded, and there's caps on both ends. There's a little over five grand rolled up inside it, and all the bills are clean."
"Why you telling me this?"
"Because it's yours now," he said, and hit him in the jaw.
When Denny fell, he kicked him in the ribs, three times, before the cops grabbed him and dragged him away.
"You fool!" said Denton as they held him. "You crazy, damned fool!"
"Un-uh," said Tanner. "No brother of mine is going to run Damnation Alley while I'm around to stomp him and keep him out of the game. Better find another driver quick, because he's got cracked ribs. Or else let me drive alone."
"Then you'll drive alone," said Denton, "because we can't afford to wait around any longer. There's pills in the compartment to keep you awake, and you'd better use them, because if you fall back, they'll burn you up. Remember that."
"I won't forget you, mister, if I'm ever back in town. Don't fret about that."
"Then you'd better get into car number two and start heading up the ramp. The vehicles are all loaded. The cargo compartment is under the rear seat."
"Yeah, I know."
"... And if I ever see you again, it'll be too soon. Get out of my sight, scum!"
Tanner spat on the floor and turned his back on the Secretary of Traffic for the nation of California. Several cops were giving first aid to his brother, and one had dashed off in search of a doctor. Denton made two teams of the remaining four drivers and assigned them to cars one and three. Tanner climbed into the cab of his own, started the engine, and waited. He stared up the ramp and considered what lay ahead. He searched the compartments until he found cigarettes. He lit one and leaned back.
The other drivers moved forward and mounted their own heavily shielded vehicles. The radio crackled, crackled, hummed, crackled again, and then a voice came through as he heard the other engines come to life.
"Car one, ready!" came the voice.
There was a pause, then, "Car three, ready!" said a different voice.
Tanner lifted the microphone and mashed the button on its side.
"Car two ready," he said.
"Move out," came the order, and they headed up the ramp.
The door rolled upward before them, and they entered the storm.
It was a nightmare, getting out of L.A. and onto Route 91. The waters came down in sheets, and rocks the size of baseballs banged against the armor plating of his car. Tanner smoked and turned on the special lights. He wore infrared goggles, and the night and the storm stalked him.
The radio crackled many times, and it seemed that he heard the murmur of a distant voice, but he could never quite make out what it was trying to say.
They followed the road for as far as it went, and as their big tires sighed over the rugged terrain that began Where the road ended, Tanner took the lead, and the others were content to follow. He knew the way; they didn't.
He followed the old smugglers' route he'd used to run Candy to the Mormons. It was possible that he was the only one left alive that knew it. Possible; but, then, there was always someone looking for a fast buck. So, in all of L.A., there might be somebody else.
The lightning began to fall, not in bolts, but sheets. The car was insulated, but after a time his hair stood on end. He might have seen a giant Gila Monster once, but he couldn't be sure. He kept his fingers away from the fire-control board. He'd save his teeth till menaces were imminent. From the rearview scanners it seemed that one of the cars behind him had discharged a rocket, but he couldn't be sure, since he had lost all radio contact with them immediately upon leaving the building.
Waters rushed toward him, splashed about his car. The sky sounded like an artillery range. A boulder the size of a tombstone fell in front of him, and he swerved about it. Red lights flashed across the sky from north to south. In their passing, he detected many black bands going from west to east. It was not an encouraging spectacle. The storm could go on for days.
He continued to move forward, skirting a pocket of radiation that had not died in the four years since last he had come this way.
They came upon a place where the sands were fused into a glassy sea, and he slowed as he began its passage, peering ahead after the craters and chasms it contained.
Three more rockfalls assailed him before the heavens split themselves open and revealed a bright-blue light, edged with violet. The dark curtains rolled back toward the Poles, and the roaring and the gunfire reports diminished. A lavender glow remained in the north, and a green sun dipped toward the horizon at his back.
They had ridden it out, and he killed the infras, pushed back his goggles, and switched on the normal night lamps.
The desert would be bad enough, all by itself.
Something big and batlike swooped through the tunnel of his lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers, and it fell to the ground and did not return again.
To the squares, this was Damnation Alley. To Hell Tanner, this was still the parking lot. He'd been this way thirty-two times, and so far as he was concerned, the Alley started in the place that had once been called Colorado.
He led, and they followed, and the night wore on like an abrasive.
No airplane could make it. Not since the war. None could venture above a couple hundred feet, the place where the winds began. The winds: the mighty winds that circled the globe, tearing off the tops of mountains and sequoia trees, wrecked buildings, gathering up birds, bats, insects, and anything else that moved, up into the dead belt; the winds that swirled about the world, lacing the skies with dark lines of debris, occasionally meeting, merging, clashing, dropping tons of rubbish wherever they came together and formed too great a mass. Air transportation was definitely out, to anywhere in the world. For these winds circled, and they never ceased. Not in all the twenty-five years of Tanner's memory had they let up.
Tanner pushed ahead, cutting a diagonal by the green Sunset. Dust continued to fall about him, great clouds of it, and the sky was violet, then purple once more. Then the sun went down and the night came on, and the stars Were very faint points of light somewhere above it all. After a tinie the moon rose, and the half-face that it showed that night was the color of a glass of Chianti wine held before a candle.