Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [275]
Hardy looked at him, mildly disappointed, mildly disgusted. You're messing up my patterns. Or, Don't make waves. "They're what we've got. Look, they're farm kids. They know how to shoot, and most of them have worked with dynamite before. They know these hills pretty well, too. Don't put them down."
Harvey shook his head.
"And," said Hardy, "they'll die just as dead if the New Brotherhood breaks through. Marie too. You too. Me too. Hell, you're not going out to fight!"
"Not with just four guns, we're not."
"These are the guns we can spare. These are the people we can spare. Just get out there and work. You're wasting time."
Harvey nodded and turned away. Maybe farm kids were different. It would he nice to believe … because he had seen too many city boys, older than these, in Vietnam; kids just out of training camp, who didn't know how to fight, and they were scared all the time. Harvey had done a series on them, but it had never been cleared by the Army.
He told himself: We aren't going out to fight. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe.
They stopped in town and loaded supplies into the truck, and onto the carrier on top of the TravelAIl. Dynamite. Chain saws. Gasoline. Picks and shovels. Fifty gallons of used crankcase oil, a bitch to move. When it was all loaded, Harvey let Marie drive. He sat in the second seat to let one of the local boys sit up front with the map. They drove down the highway, out of the valley.
Harvey tried to get the boys talking, to get to know them, but they didn't volunteer much. They'd answer questions, politely, but they sat wrapped in their own thoughts. After a time Harvey leaned back in his seat and tried to rest. But that reminded him gruesomely of the last time Marie had driven the TravelAll, and he jerked upright.
They were leaving the valley. It made Harvey feel naked, vulnerable. He and Mark and Joanna and Marie had gone through too much getting there. He wondered what the boys thought. And the girl, Marylou, he couldn't remember her last name. Her father was the town pharmacist, but she'd never been interested in the store. She seemed interested in the boy she sat with. Harvey remembered his name was Bill, and Bill and Marylou had both managed some kind of state scholarship to UC Santa Cruz. The others thought them odd, that they'd want to go so far away to college.
Marie drove up the ridge that led out of the valley. Harvey had never been here before. Up on top of the ridge were moving lights: Chief Hartman's people digging in, still working at midnight despite the cold blowing wind. The roadblock below the ridge had only one guard huddled in the small shelter. They passed it and were out of the valley.
He saw it and felt it: They had entered the universal chaos left by Hammerfall. It was scary out here. Harvey held himself very still, so that he wouldn't shout at Marie to turn the TravelAll and break for safety. He wondered if the others felt the same way. Better not to ask. Let us all feel that nobody else is scared. and that way nobody will run. They drove on in unnatural silence.
The road was washed out in places, but vehicles had made paths around the broken pavement. Harvey noted places where the road could easily be blocked; he pointed them out to the others in the car. He couldn't see much through the intermittent sleet and the thick dark out there. The map showed they were in another valley, with a series of ridges to the south much lower than those surrounding the Stronghold.
This would be the battleground. Below lay a branch of the Tule River, the main line of defense for the Stronghold. Beyond was territory Hardy wouldn't even attempt to hold. In a few days, perhaps only hours, the valley they were now driving through would be a killing ground, a place of battle.
Harvey tried to imagine it. Noise, incessant noise: the stutter of machine guns, a crackle of rifle fire, dynamite bombs, mortars; and through it all the screams of the wounded and dying.