Here and there, people did still use telegraphs. Could a scout have strung wire out behind him so he could click away and pass on information like that? Dan supposed it wouldn't be impossible, but he didn't think it would be easy.
And how much did it matter? As they started to march, they moved uphill, toward the top of the pass. The Westsiders were already looking down into the Valley. If they didn't know King Zev 's army was moving toward them, they were even dumber than Dan thought. Could you be that dumb and live? He doubted it.
That set him looking toward the top of the pass. He already knew there was a wall across the 405. Was there one across Sepulveda, too? Squint as he would, he couldn't tell. Sepulveda was lower than the freeway, and didn't show up so well against the sky.
Something howled, up ahead in the distance. The noise seemed to echo from the brush-covered walls of the pass. The hair at the back of his neck stood up. “Is that a coyote?” he asked, trying not to sound scared.
“If it is, it's a coyote the size of the Coliseum,'' Sergeant Chuck answered. The saying reached back to Old Times. The Coliseum didn't exist anymore. One of the bombs that got L.A. and ended the good days came down not far from it.
“Does Cal really have a dog the size of a house?” Yes, Dan was nervous.
“ Idon't know. We'll see what comes out of the tunnel, that's all,” Chuck said. Old Sepulveda went through a cliff near the highest part of the pass. The Westside held both ends of the tunnel. Dan would have liked it better if the border went through the middle. Then either side could have blocked the other from using that way through. As things were, the Westside had the edge.
We've got to beat them, that's all, he thought. Then we'll hold both ends of the tunnel, and let's see how they like that.
A cannon boomed. He thought the sound came from near the barricade the Westsiders had built. It was a black-powder boom, not the sharper crack of Old Time explosives. If you were on the wrong end of a cannonball, though, you wouldn't care one way or the other.
“Come on! Step it up!” Captain Kevin shouted. “Our friends, our neighbors, are in action. We'll help them out! Hurrah for King Zev!”
“Hurrah for King Zev!” Dan yelled. Along with the rest of Kevin 's company, he trotted forward.
Another boom, this one from near the mouth of the tunnel. Dan could see this cannonball flying through the air. He ducked. He couldn't help himself. He felt ashamed till he realized the other Valley soldiers were ducking, too. The cannonball hissed over his head and smashed into an empty house with a noise like a thunderclap. Startled crows flew up, screeching.
“Spread out!” Kevin and Chuck yelled the same thing at the same time. “That way, they won't be able to get so many of you with one round,” Chuck added.
Oh, boy, Dan thought. It didn't mean they wouldn't be able to get him. It just meant they'd have to work a little harder, or he'd have to be a little less lucky. He wished he hadn't thought of that.
There wasn't a whole lot of room to spread out in, either. The cracked asphalt of Old Sepulveda and the wider expanse of the 405 were the only good routes through the pass. Wreckage and undergrowth clogged the rest.
That horrible howl came again. “Holy moley!” somebody shouted, pointing south. “There he is!”
The dog had to be enormous to be noticed from that far away. Was it really as big as a house? Dan wasn't sure. It was plenty big enough-he was sure of that. Some Westside soldiers ran forward with it, to guide it toward the Valley men. Then, as it saw them or smelled them or did whatever it did to know they were there, it ran on by itself. They just wore uniforms, while it had on armor like a cavalry charger's. It easily outdistanced them even so.
Dan reached back over his shoulder for an arrow. A heartbeat later, he started to laugh at himself. As if an arrow would do anything to a creature like that even if by some accident it hit! He wanted to run. The fearsome Westside dog could bite him in half with one chomp.
A couple of Valley soldiers did run. Their sergeants swore at them, which didn't make them stop. They'd get in trouble later on. They had to think that was better than getting eaten right now.
Then Dan heard a sharp, repeated hammering noise: bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! The reports were bigger and louder than any he'd ever heard from an Old Time rifle. He looked around. The machine-gun crew had got their weapon down from the pack horse. They were banging away at the Westside monster dog as if their lives depended on it-and they did.
The dog-monster's growls changed to yelps of agony. The beast's armor would have turned arrows, maybe even musket balls. Dan didn't know about ordinary Old Time rifle bullets. He did know the armor had zero chance against the enormous slugs the.50-caliber machine gun spat.
In spite of its wounds, the dog was brave. It kept coming up Sepulveda till it couldn't move any more. It didn't finally go down till it got within a couple of hundred yards of the Valley soldiers. By then, Dan could clearly see the holes the bullets had chewed in its armor, and the blood that poured from the holes in the animal's hide. His stomach wanted to turn over-it wasn't pretty.
That cannon up near the mouth of the tunnel boomed once more. The big iron ball it fired clanged off a boulder not far from the machine gun and crazily ricocheted away. One ol the men in the gun crew had some Old Time field glasses. He peered through them, then pointed. The machine gun started banging again.
Dan had no field glasses. Some of the machine-gun rounds were tracers, though. He could see where they went. The red flashes of fire led his eye straight to the cannon. The Old Time machine gun had at least as much range as the modern artillery piece. One after another, the men serving the cannon fell.
When the machine gun slopped shooting, some of the West-side artillerymen stood up. Replacements ran forward to help them fire the gun. The Valley machine gunner with the binoculars was waiting for that. As soon as the enemy gun crew was complete again, the machine gun roared back to life. More Westsiders went down. Dan didn't think they would rise till Judgment Day.
“Let's go!'“ Captain Kevin yelled. “They won't give us any trouble now!”
Cheering, the Valley men ran forward. Dan charged past the enormous dog's corpse. Blood puddled underneath it. Flies buzzed up in annoyance as the soldiers went past. They'd already started feeding on the body.
A few shots rang out from the Westsiders. They must have counted on the dog and the cannon to hold back the Valley troops. Now that that wasn't working, they didn't seem to have another plan. The pitiless machine gun picked off their men at a range from which they couldn't answer.
Some of the Valley soldiers started climbing up to the 405. Dan was one of them. What he saw when he got up there made him whoop and stomp his feet. The Valley men had outflanked the wall, which didn't stretch all the way across the pass. And the Westsiders were running as fast as they could.
Three
Sound really carried here. That was one of the first things Liz had noticed about this alternate. It had much less background noise than the home timeline did. No streets and freeways full of cars here. No TVs. No radios. Only a handful of windup record players. No factories, not really.
And so, when the fighting in the Sepulveda Pass got going, Liz and her family could try to figure out what was going on from what they heard. So could everybody else in Westwood.
One particular set of bangs made her father frown. “Somebody's got a heavy machine gun,” he said. “For a place like this. that's a very nasty weapon.”