Denton stood, at a height of about five feet, eight inches, and Tanner stood and looked down at him and chuckled.

  "I'll make it," he said. "If that citizen from Boston made it through and died, I'll make it through and live. I've been as far as the Missus Hip."

  "You're lying."

  "No, I ain't, either, and if you ever find out that's Straight, remember I got this piece of paper in my pocket, 'every criminal action,' and like that. It wasn't easy, and I was lucky, too. But I made it that far, and nobody else you know can say that. So I figure that's about halfway, and I can make the other half if I can get that far."

  They moved toward the door.

  "I don't like to say it and mean it," said Denton, "but good luck. Not for your sake, though."

  "Yeah, I know."

  Denton opened the door, and, "Turn him loose," he said. "He's driving."

  The officer with the pistol handed it to the man who had given Tanner the cigarettes, and he fished in his pockets for the key. When he found it, he unlocked the cuffs, stepped back, and hung them at his belt; and, "I'll come with you," said Denton. "The motor pool is downstairs."

  They left the office, and Mrs. Fiske opened her purse and took a rosary into her hands and bowed her head. She prayed for Boston, and she prayed for the soul of its departed messenger. She even threw in a couple for Hell Tanner.

  The bell was ringing. Its one note, relentless, interminable, filled the square. In the distance, there were other bell notes, and together they formed a demon symphony that had been going on since the dawn of time, or at least seemed as if it had.

  Franklin Harbershire, President of Boston, swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee and relit his cigar. For the sixth time he picked up the fatality report, read the latest figures, threw it down agath.

  His desk was covered with papers covered with figures covered with ashes, and it was no good.

  After seventy-six hours without sleep, nothing seemed to make sense. Least of all the attempt to quantify the death rate.

  He leaned back in his leather chair, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. From the inside they had been like wounds, red, swimming red.

  He was aware that the figures were by now obsolete. They had also been inaccurate in the first place, for there bad to be many undiscovered dead, he knew.

  The bells told him that his nation was sinking slowly into the blackness that always lies a half-inch below life, waiting for the crust to weaken.

  "Why don't you go home, Mr. President? Or at least take a nap? We'll watch things for you...

  He blinked his eyes and stared at the small man whose necktie had long ago vanished, along with his dark suit coat, and whose angular face now bore several days' dark growth of beard. Peabody hadn't been standing there a second ago. Had he been dozing?

  He raised his cigar, to discover that it had gone out again.

  "Thank you, Peabody. I couldn't sleep if I tried, though. I'm just built that way. There's nothing for me to do but wait, here."

  "Well, then, would you like some fresh coffee?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  Peabody seemed gone for only a few seconds. Harbershire blinked his eyes, and a cup of fresh coffee was steaming beside his right hand.

  "Thank you, Peabody."

  "The latest figures have just come in, sir. It seems to be tapering off."

  "Probably a bad sign. Fewer people to do the reporting, and fewer to handle the figures... . The only way we'll really know will be to take a count of the living, if there are any living, when this thing is passed, and then subtract from what we had to begin with. I don't trust these figures worth a damn."

  "Neither do I, really, sir."

  Harbershire burned his tongue on the coffee and drew on his cigar.

  "The drivers may have made it by now, and help may be on the way."

  "Possibly," said Harbershire.

  "So why don't you let me get you a blanket and a pillow, and then you stretch out and get some sleep. There's nothing more to do."

  "I can't sleep."

  "I could find some whiskey. A couple shots might help you to relax."

  "Thanks. I've had a couple."

  "Even if the drivers don't make it, this thing may dry up on its own, you know."

  "Maybe."

  "Everybody's keeping to himself now. We've finally gotten across the idea that congregating is bad."

  "That's good."

  "Some people are leaving town."

  "Not a bad idea. Head for the hills. May save their necks, or some of ours, if they've got it."

  He took another sip of coffee, more gingerly this time. He studied the blue smoke ladders that bent above his ashtray.

  "What about the looting?" he asked.

  "It's still going on. The police have killed a dozen already this evening."

  "That's all we need, more deaths. Take a message to the Chief. Have the cops try to arrest them, or only wound them, if possible. Let the public think they're still shooting to kill, though."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I wish I could sleep. I really do, Peabody. I just can't take much more of it."

  "The deaths, sir?"

  "That, too."

  "You mean the waiting, sir? Everyone's been admiring the way you've borne up..."

  "No, not the waiting, damn it!"

  He gulped more coffee and puffed a great cloud of smoke into the air.

  "It's those goddamn bells," he said, gesturing at the night beyond the window. "They're driving me out of my mind!

  They descended to the basement, the subbasement and the sub-subbasement.

  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.

  He lit another cigarette and began to curse, slowly, softly, and without emotion.

  They threaded their way amid heaps of rubble: rock, metal, fragments of machinery, the prow of a boat. A snake, as big around as a garbage can and dark green in the cast light, slithered across Tanner's path, and he braked the vehicle as it continued and continued and continued. Perhaps a hundred-twenty feet of snake passed by before Tanner removed his foot from the brake and touched gently upon the gas pedal once again.

  Glancing at the left-hand screen, which held an infrared version of the view to the left, it seemed that he saw two eyes glowing within the shadow of a heap of girders and masonry. Tanner kept one hand near the firecontrol button and did not move it for a distance of several miles.

  There were no windows in the vehicle, only screens which reflected views in every direction, including straight up and the ground beneath the car. Tanner sat within an illuminated box which shielded him against radiation. The "car" that he drove had eight heavily treaded tires and was thirty-two feet in length. It mounted eight fifty-caliber automatic guns and four grenade-throwers. It carried thirty armor-piercing rockets which could be discharged straight ahead or at any elevation up to forty degrees from the plane. Each of the four sides, as well as the roof of the vehicle, housed a flamethrower. Razor-sharp "wings" of tempered steel, eighteen inches wide at their bases and tapering to points, an inch and a quarter thick where they ridged, could be moved through a complete hundred-eighty-degree arc along the sides of the car and parallel to the ground, at a height of two feet and eight inches. When standing at a right angle to the body of the vehicle, eight feet to the rear of the front bumper, they extended out to a distance of six feet on either side of the car. They could be couched like lances for a charge. They could be held but slightly out from the sides for purposes of slashing whatever was sideswiped. The car was bulletproof, air-conditioned, and had its own food locker and sanitation facilities. A long-barreled .357 Magnum was held by a clip on the door near the driver's left hand. A 30.06, a .45-caliber automatic, and six hand grenades occupied the rack immediately above the front seat.

  But Tanner kept his own counsel, in the form of a long, slim SS dagger inside his right boot.

  He removed his gloves and wiped his palms on the knees of his denims. The pierced heart that was tattooed on the back of his right hand was red in the light from the dashboard. The knife that went through it was dark blue, and his first name was tattooed in the same color beneath it, one letter on each knuckle, beginning with that at the base of his little finger.

  He opened and explored the two near compartments but could find no cigars. So he crushed out his cigarette on the floor and lit another.

  The forward screen showed vegetation, and he slowed. He tried using the radio but couldn't tell whether anyone heard him, receiving only static in reply.

  He stared ahead and up. He halted once again.

  He turned his forward lights up to full intensity and studied the situation.

  A heavy wall of thorn bushes stood before him, reaching to a height of perhaps twelve feet. It swept on to his right and off to his left, vanishing out of sight in both directions. How dense, how deep it might be, he could not tell. It had not been there a few years before.

  He moved forward slowly and activated the flamethrowers. In the rearview screen, he could see that the other vehicles had halted a hundred yards behind him and dimmed their lights.

  He drove till he could go no farther, then pressed the button for the forward flame.

  It shot forth, a tongue of fire, licking fifty feet into the bramble He held it for five seconds and withdrew it. Then he extended it a second time and backed away quickly as the flames caught.

  Beginning with a tiny glow they worked their way up. ward and spread slowly to the right and the left. Ther they grew in size and brightness.

  As Tanner backed away, he had to dim his screen, foi they'd spread fifty feet before he'd backed more than hundred, and they leaped thirty and forty feet into the air.

  The blaze widened, to a hundred feet, two, three... As Tanner backed away, he could see a river of fire flowing off into the distance, and the night was brighi about him.

  He watched it burn, until it seemed that he looked upon a molten sea. Then he searched the refrigerator, but there was no beer. He opened a soft drink and sipped it while he watched the burning. After about ten minutes the air-conditioner whined and shook itself to life. Hordes of dark, four-footed creatures, the size of rats or cats, fled from the inferno, their coats smoldering. They flowed by. At one point they covered his forward screen, and he could hear the scratching of their claws upon the fenders and the roof.