No one argued with that. Vinge put two sticks of dynamite into the hole beneath the boulder and tamped mud in on top of it.
“Look!” Barbara Ann, Tommy Tallifsen’s partner, shouted in horror. She pointed at the opposite ridge, where they’d spent the dawn hours putting barriers on the road.
A truck appeared at the top of the ridge. It went over and came down the road, and another followed, then another. When the trucks reached the downed bridge, men jumped out with timbers and steel plates. More trucks came over the ridge.
Harvey looked at his watch. They had delayed the enemy trucks by precisely thirty-eight minutes.
Valley of Death
The pattern was always the same. No matter what obstructions Harvey’s group put into the road, the New Brotherhood Army was delayed for no longer than it took to put them up. If Task Force Randall could have actively defended its roadblocks, they might have stopped the advancing enemy for much longer, but there was no chance of that. The New Brotherhood used its trucks to bring troops as far forward as possible; their skirmishers then spread out to both flanks and advanced, threatening to cut Harvey off; and once again Harvey had to retreat.
The enemy developed a new tactic as welclass="underline" They mounted heavy machine guns in one of their trucks, and brought that forward to fire on Harvey’s workers from well out of rifle range. It kept Harvey from doing a proper job of ruining the road, and he couldn’t even shoot back. The enemy were faceless ghosts who couldn’t be harmed, and Harvey couldn’t stop them. Their infantry continued to advance, avoiding Harvey’s defenders, trying always to get around and behind. It was battle at long range, with few casualties; but the New Brotherhood’s advance was relentless. By midafternoon they had come a dozen miles toward the Stronghold.
Work and run; and running was becoming a habit. A dozen times Harvey wanted to keep going, to drive for the Stronghold, and the devil with the roadblocks. His mind found a dozen excuses for running.
“It’s like nothing can stop them,” Tommy Tallifsen screamed. They had halted at another ridgeline. The maps said the valley below — where the New Brotherhood was busily removing trees, filling in holes, repairing the road quicker than Harvey had been able to destroy it — was called “Hungry Hollow.” The name seemed appropriate.
“We’ve got to try,” said Harvey.
Tallifsen looked doubtful. Harvey knew what he was thinking. They were all exhausted, they’d lost five of Task Force Randalclass="underline" one shot dead as he worked with a chain saw, the other four vanished — run away, captured, wounded and Iying back in the hills, they didn’t know. They hadn’t got aboard when it was time to bug out, and the New Brotherhood had been too close to let them look for them; and running had become a habit. What could eight exhausted people do to stop a horde that flowed forward like the tide?
“It will be dark in a couple of hours,” Harvey said. “Then we can rest.”
“Can we?” Tallifsen asked. But he went back to work, digging out under another boulder above the road. Others stretched the cable from the TravelAll’s winch around the rock. There wasn’t enough dynamite to use on every rock they found.
An hour before dark they were forced out of Hungry Hollow and over the ridge beyond. They fled across Deer Creek, pausing only long enough to light the fuse on the dynamite they’d placed there. When they climbed onto the next ridge, they found men already there.
It took Harvey a moment to realize they were friends. Steve Cox and almost a hundred troops had been sent from the ranch to hold the ridge. The Stronghold forces were through running away; now they would stand and fight. Cox had spread his forces along the ridge and they’d dug in. Harvey and Task Force Randall — what was left of it — could rest. There was even cold supper and a Thermos of hot tea.
“We’re all dead on our feet,” Harvey told Steve Cox. “We won’t be much help.”
Cox shrugged. “That’s all right. Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll hold them.”
You’re a fool, Harvey wanted to say. There are a thousand of them and a hundred of you, and they come like death, like army ants, and nothing can stop them. “Have you brought… how is Forrester’s work? Have you got any of his superweapons?”
“Thermit grenades.” Cox showed Harvey a box of what looked like lumps of baked clay with fuses stuck out of the top. Each was about six inches in diameter, and each had two feet of parachute cord attached to it. “You light the fuse and whirl it around,” Cox said. “Then throw it.”
“Do they work?”
“They sure do.” Cox was enthusiastic. “Some explode like bombs. Others just break open, but even then they throw fire ten or twelve feet. They’ll scare the hell out of those cannibal bastards.”
“But what about the other weapons? Mustard gas?”
Cox shrugged. “They’re working on it. Hardy says it will take time. That’s why we’re out here.”
In the valley below, the lead elements of the New Brotherhood force had reached the ruined bridge. Deer Creek was high and swift, and the bridge was entirely gone; the few men who tried to wade it gave up quickly. The Brotherhood army stopped, then began to spread along the banks. Elements went upstream until they vanished. Others turned downstream toward the sea a few miles to the west.
“They’ll get around us,” Harvey said nervously.
“Nope.” Cox grinned. He pointed upstream, toward the towering Sierra. “We’ve got allies up there. About fifty Tule Indians, some of Christopher’s reinforcements. Tough bastards. Get some sleep, Randall. They won’t get through here, not tonight and not tomorrow. We’ve got a good position. We’ll hold them.”
“I think Cox is crazy,” Harvey told Marie. “I’ve… we’ve seen the New Brotherhood fight. He hasn’t.”
“They have our radio reports,” Marie said. She stretched in the back seat of the TravelAII. “Feels good to relax. I could sleep for a week.”
“So could I,” Harvey said; but he didn’t. The TravelAII was parked on the far side of the ridge from Deer Creek. He had sent the others back further, to a farmhouse where they could get proper rest, and he knew he should join them, but he was worried. Harvey had learned to respect whoever was in charge of the New Brotherhood. The enemy general hadn’t wasted a man, had never exposed his people recklessly, yet he had swept through eighteen miles and more in less than a day.
And he was using gasoline and ammunition recklessly. This was an all-out war; the New Brotherhood must have stripped their territory, must be gambling on taking the Stronghold for new supplies.
Dusk brought a chill wind, but no more sleet. A few stars showed through the overcast, blinking points of light too far apart to recognize as constellations. Harvey remembered a hot sauna followed by a cold swimming pool in hot sunlight; he remembered driving the TravelAII south through the blazing desert beauty of Baja California, finally to swim in an ocean warm as a bathtub; bellysurfing the bigger, more exciting waves of Hermosa Beach, and spreading a towel over sand too hot to walk on.
Down in the valley they could hear the sounds of Brotherhood trucks and men moving heavy objects. There was no way to know what the enemy was doing. Cox had patrols alert for infiltrators, but instead the enemy commander had his men fire weapons at irregular intervals, raise shouts, throw grenades and rocks across the creek, and often the ranchers responded, shooting wildly into the night, wasting ammunition, losing sleep.