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As always, under such circumstances, he was alert to sounds at his back.
When he heard the quick footfall, he turned. It was the man who had inspected the bill that stood before him, his right arm extended.
Ta
It struck the man on the top of his head. and he fell.
There came up a murmuring,' and several people jumped to their feet and moved toward him.
Ta
"Now you probably ain't about to believe me," he said, "when I tell you that Boston's been hit by the plague, but it's true all right. Or maybe you will. I don't know. But I don't think you're going to believe that I drove here all the way from the nation of California with a car full of Haffikine antiserum. But that's just as right. You send that bill to the big bank in Boston, and they'll change it for you, all right, and you know it. Now I've got to be going, and don't anybody try to stop me. If you think I've been handing you a line, you take a look at what I drive away in. That's all I've got to say."
And he backed out the door and covered it while he mounted the cab. Inside, he gu
In the rearview screen he could see the knot of people on the walk before the bar, watching him depart.
He laughed, and the apple-blossom moon hung dead ahead.
XIV
Albany to Boston. A couple of hundred miles. He'd managed the worst of it. The terrors of Damnation Alley lay largely at his back now. Night. It flowed about him. The stars seemed brighter than usual. He'd make it, the night seemed to say.
He passed between hills. The road wasn't too bad. It wound between trees and high grasses. He passed a truckcoming in his direction and dimmed his lights as it approached. It did the same.
Il must have been around midnight that he came to the crossroads, and the lights suddenly nailed him from two directions.
He was bathed in perhaps thirty beams from the left and as many from the right.
He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and he heard engine after engine coming to life somewhere at his back. And he recognized the sounds.
Thev were all of them bikes.
They swung onto the road behind him.
He muld have opened fire. He could have braked and laid down a cloud of flame. It was obvious that they didn't know what they were chasing. He could have launched grenades He refrained, however.
It could have been him on the lead bike, he decided, all hot on hijack. He felt a certain sad kinship as his hand hovered above the fire-control.
Try to outrun them, first.
His engine was open wide and roaring, but he couldn't take the bikes.
When they began to fire, he knew that he'd have to retaliate. He couldn't risk their hitting a gas tank or blowing out his tires.
Their first few shots had been in the nature of a warning. He couldn't risk another barrage. If only they knew....
The speaker!
He cut in and mashed the button and spoke:
"Listen, cats," he said. "All I got's medicine for the sick citizens in Boston. Let me through or you'll hear the noise."
A shot followed immediately, so he opened fire with the fifty calibers to the rear.
He saw them fall, but they kept firing. So be launched grenades.
The firing lessened, but didn't cease.
So he hit the brakes, then the flame-throwers. He kept it up for fifteen seconds.
There was silence.
When the air cleared he studied the screens.
They lay all over the road, their bikes upset, theirbodies fuming. Several were still seated, and they held rifles and pointed them, and he shot them down.
A few still moved, spasmodically, and he was about to drive on, when he saw one rise and take a few staggering steps and fall again.
His hand hesitated on the gearshift.
It was a girl.
He thought about it for perhaps five seconds, then jumped down from the cab and ran toward her.
As he did, one man raised himself on an elbow and picked up a fallen rifle.
Ta
The girl was crawling toward a man whose face had been shot away. Other bodies twisted about Ta
When he got to the girl's side, she cursed him softly as he stopped.
None of the blood about her seemed to be her own.
He dragged her to her feet and her eyes began to fill with tears.
Everyone else was dead or dying, so Ta
Then he gu
She was a tall girl, with long, uncombed hair the color of dirt. She had a strong chin and a wide mouth and there were dark circles under her eyes. A single faint line crossed her forehead, and she had all of her teeth. The right side of her face was flushed, as if sunburned. Her left trouser leg was torn and dirty. He guessed that she'd caught the edge of his flame and fallen from her bike.
"You okay?" he asked, when her sobbing had diminished to a moist sniffing sound.
"What's it to you?" she said, raising a hand to her cheek.
Ta
"Just being friendly."
"You killed most of my gang."
"What would they have done to me?""They would have stomped you, mister, if it weren't for this fancy car of yours."
"It ain't really mine," he said. "It belongs to the nation of California."
"This thing don't come from California."
"The hell it don't. 1 drove it."
She sdl up straight then and began rubbing her leg.
Ta
"Give me a cigarette?" she said.
He passed her the one he had lighted, lit himself another. As he handed it to her, her eyes rested on his tattoo.
"What's that?"
"My name."
"Hell?"
"Hell."
"Where'd you get a name like that?"
"From my old man."
They smoked awhile, then she said, "Why'd you run the Alley?"
"Because it was the only way I could get them to turn me loose."
"From where?"
"The place with horizontal Venetian blinds. I was doing time."
"They let you go? Why?"
"Because of the big sick. I'm bringing in Hamkine antiserum."
"You're Hell Ta
"Huh?"
"Your last name's Ta
"That's right. Who told you?" /
"I heard about you. Everybody thought you died in the Big Raid."
"They were wrong.'*
"What was it like?"
*T du
"Why'd you pick me up?"
" 'Cause you're a chick, and 'cause I didn't want to see you croak."
"Thanks. You got anything to eat in here?"
"Yeah, there's food in there." He pointed to the refrigerator door. "Help yourself."She did, and as she ate Ta
"Corny," she said. "It's short for Cornelia."
"Okay, Corny," he said. "When you're finished eating, you start telling me about the road between here and the place."
She nodded, chewed and swallowed. "There's lots of other gangs," she said. "So you'd better be ready to blast them."
"I am."
"Those screens show you all directions, huh?"
"That's right."
"Good. The roads are pretty much okay from here on in. There's one big crater you'll come to soon and a couple little volcanos afterward."
"Check."
"Outside of them there's nothing to worry about but the Regents and the Devils and the Kings and the Lovers. That's about it."