False Dawn (4 page)

“Don’t, Evan,” she called after him, not able to say what she felt. Compassion exposed too much: she could not reveal her sympathy.

“Well?” he said, irritated. He stopped, leaning heavily into one hip, hooking his thumb into the coil of rope. “Thea, if there were linemen up there, they had to have a place to stay. There aren’t any towns, and no resorts, so that means a house or a cabin. If they had a cabin, it would be near a tower because that was where they did most of their work, on the towers. If we don’t find something here, we’ll go to the next tower.” Then he waited for her answer, impatient and worn.

“Maybe you’re right about the branches. I guess we could make it safe enough for tonight. You’re right. We have to do something before—” Her eyes were desperate again. Darkness was gathering in the east and the roseate sunset pall that drifted over the Sacramento Valley was bright at their backs, the last of the daylight shining through it, lighting it like some luminous exotic metal.

“Though you’re right—a cabin would be safer.” But even as he said it, he came down the slope toward her.

The branches pulled down easily, the rotten wood powdering where they broke the limbs of the trees. A resiny smell pervaded the place, cloying and sickly, mingling with the dust that made them cough and brought tears to their eyes. But the work went quickly and soon they had made a heap of boughs at the foot of the tower.

“Save the rope,” Thea advised, and Evan nodded. He stirred the dirt with his foot. “There should be some of the cables left. They can’t all have corroded away. The wire will be useful, if we can find it.”

Thea dropped to her knees and began to push the dirt aside, fingers probing for the bite of wire. She moved blindly, putting all her senses gone into her hands. Cautiously she dug deeper and found a ridge of twisted cable. “Got it,” she said grimly as she began to pull the cable from the earth. Much of the outer casing was pitted, but the inner wires of copper remained fairly intact.

They sat together at the tower’s base, peeling the wires from the cable, straightening them carefully as each section was freed. “It’s copper, remember,” Evan warned Thea as she worked one strand free. “The more you use it, the harder it gets.”

“Too bad,” she said. “I thought there’d be enough to string a crossbow. But I guess I can’t use copper for that.”

Evan held the branches in place while Thea lashed them to the metal legs of the tower. Work was difficult in the fading light; the copper wire proved hard to handle, and there were problems with the branches which kept slipping and breaking if pulled too tightly against the legs of the tower. Their frustration mounted as night came on, and Evan snapped at Thea as she broke another wire while attempting to secure more branches.

“If you think you will do a better job…”

“I don’t want to spend the whole night digging up more wire.” He cursed as another branch snapped. “Why do we even try?” he asked of the air.

“If it’s so hopeless, why do you bother?” She felt her words catch in her throat. Against her fingers the copper wire seemed suddenly hot.

He was too exhausted to keep himself from a sharp response. “Do you think it isn’t hopeless? Do you know what the world was just twenty years ago? Do you have any idea how much we’ve lost?” He flung two of the branches away from him and glared up at the sky, his body rigid in his distress.

For a moment Thea stood still, and finally, quite softly, she said, “Then what do we do, Evan?”

He did not seem to hear her. Then, slowly the stress left his face and his shoulders drooped, He bent to pick up the branches. “Let’s get the job done,” he said, resigned.

“Are we going to have enough?” Thea wondered aloud later as she secured the last of the branches.

“Not for a roof,” Evan said ruefully. “We’re out of luck if it rains.” He spoke as he crawled into the enclosure and began to pull off intruding twigs and limbs, which he threw into one corner to make a kind of bedding.

“It won’t rain,” Thea said, sniffing the air. “Not today and not tomorrow.”

“Good. This stuff couldn’t keep the water out for a minute, even if we had a roof.” He looked across the gloom as Thea joined him inside the crude walls. “You’re tired,” he said.

“A little.”

“So am I.” he said, hoping to see her face so that he could read her thoughts. She had withdrawn from him as they worked, and in some quiet, imperceptible way she had put more distance between them than the space they shared.

“You can get some rest. 1 don’t mind.”

“What about you?”

Thea shook her head wearily. “It doesn’t matter.” Now that she was safe her body was remembering. Once, many years ago she had been beaten by a farmer whose chicken coop she had robbed. There was still a knot in her collarbone where it had not healed properly. But at the end of the beating her body had still been her own, not like now, when her very self had been invaded, violated. “I never understood that,” she said quietly, more to herself than to Evan.

“Understood what?” He was making a last round, tightening the lashings as best he could with one hand. He had not been listening.

“About what happened. About violation,” she said, finding that the word itself bothered her. Violation was too vulnerable, too personal. There had to be some other word, one that did not hurt so much, one that did not reduce her to a thing. She turned her thoughts away and set her face in rigid calm. Only her eyes were troubled, and they shone with the glassy light of a frightened animal.

Evan had stopped his work as she spoke. He had felt a twisting in himself, as if some other private anguish had slipped from her and touched him. He stood as near her as he dared, unmoving. As he watched, her face changed and he was thankful to turn their minds to other things. “There might be Untouchables up here. We’ll have to stand watch tonight.”

“Watch? Yes, I guess so.” She said this slowly, and did not look at him.

“Do you want the first watch or the second?”

She shook her head. “I don’t care,” she said in a different tone. She had shut part of herself away.

“Why don’t you take the first watch, then? Wake me about midnight, or sooner, if you get too tired.”

“At midnight.” Her placid face was remote.

“You can tell the time by the stars.” It wasn’t a question. These days everyone read night time by the stars.

“Sure. Midnight.”

He indicated a break in the branches. “This is about the best view you can get. The north is all trees and the south is too steep; nothing is going to come that way. This side”—he tapped the west wall of bound branches—”is where trouble will come from, if there is trouble.” He moved aside so that she could get a look. “See, the way we came. The swath is clear enough and it’s an easy climb. If the Pirates come after us, they’ll come from down there.”

“Do you think they will?” The words came too quickly.

He shared her fear. “I don’t think Cox is that kind of an idiot.” It was true enough, but he remembered the men Cox had used when he had taken over, and there was no way to be sure of them. Gorren, Mackley, Lui, Spaulding, they were fanatics, and capable of things even Cox would abhor. “There is a chance they might try to come into the mountains too, and that could mean they’ll follow us. There’s always that chance.”

“I see,” she said.

“Thea,” he said firmly, “if you think something is wrong, anything at all, wake me.”

She looked at him uneasily. “You are expecting trouble, then.”

“I’m always expecting trouble.” He scratched his short beard roughly, using his thumb. “It’s a habit I got into.”

“I know.” After a moment she said softly, “There’s too much trouble, isn’t there?”

He nodded.

She moved a little farther from him. “Get some sleep, then. I’ll wake you later.” She looked up at the darkened sky. “Midnight.”

He accepted her dismissal. “Thanks,” he said as he sank onto the ground where he set about expertly with the loose branches, making a nest where he settled at last, pulling his jacket across himself for a blanket.

Thea watched him, a slight frown clouding her features. She saw the harsh lines of his face soften with sleep, changing him from the severe man she had run with to the man who had released her from Lastly’s bonds. She felt regret that he had been Montague who led the Pirates. There was too much destruction attached to that name.

She turned her attention to the outside. Her head felt stuffy from the rotting pine-wood and dried sap she had breathed earlier; her body ached and she bit her lip to keep from crying out as her mind brought Lastly back to her once more. Refusing to think of him, she stared out into the distance. As the night grew colder she pulled on the jacket that was tied around her waist, but the rough denim rubbed the scab from her breast and her hot, sticky blood matted the raw hurt to the cloth.

Overhead the stars wheeled slowly, marking out the night. Thea watched them, wishing they could move faster. Fatigue pulled at her like sorrow as the hours went on. There was no movement on the mountain but the lorn wind that mourned in the dying trees.

Then, far down the mountain she heard a sound that rose with the wind, singing a weird harmony. Another voice joined, and another. The dogs were following their trail.

She listened intently now, straining to pick out each sound on the wind. For a little time she was sure she had imagined it, that the trees had made that keening sigh and not hunting dogs. But now the sound was louder and sharper, coming faster and more eagerly than the susurrus of the trees.

“Evan,” she said, reaching out for him. “Evan; dogs.”

He moved in his sleep, his face contorted. He did not waken.

“Evan!” She pulled at him, shaking him urgently.

With a shout he woke, his eyes wide. He flailed his one arm, striking out at her, pushing her away with bits of angry, fragmentary words.

“Dogs! Dogs!” she yelled at him.

He broke off. “Dogs?” Puzzled, he stared at her.

“They followed us, Evan. They’re coming.”

He rubbed his face as if to wipe his dream from it. Awkwardly he pulled on his jacket and stumbled to his feet. “Where?” he asked.

“Down there. They aren’t in sight yet.” She pointed away into the night as she motioned him to silence. The sound of the pack floated up to them.

“Moving fast,” Evan said. He listened again.

“We’ll have to get away,” she said.

“Yes.”

“They’ll follow us wherever we go now that they’ve found us,” she said, certain of it.

“Maybe.” He frowned deeply. “Do you have any matches?”

“No. Do you?”

He patted his pockets. “I did have…” At last he retrieved a greasy, battered scrap of cardboard with four tattered matches clinging to it. “They got wet, so I don’t know if they’ll light.”

“What are you going to do?” Thea was alarmed now.

“Start a fire,” he said. “The wind is north-east; it’ll blow the fire right down the hill at them. They can’t follow through a fire.”

“But what about us?”

His laughter was unpleasant. “I don’t want to die for them; let them starve if they will only survive by eating us,” he admitted with a glance down the hill. “Fire will stop them.”

“I don’t want to burn, either,” she said sharply.

“We won’t. The wind will take care of that. Give me some help.” He held up the matches. “I can’t do this with one hand.”

She hesitated. “Where will we go?”

“We’ll follow this cut into the mountains. Most of the danger will be on the roads. Up here, we stand a chance. We’ll be harder to spot and so we’ll be able to move where the Pirates can’t go.”

“And food?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “What about food?”

He shrugged as he handed over the matches. “We’ll worry about it later.”

“I’m hungry now.”

“So are those dogs.’

With a nod of concession, she pulled one of the matches out of the book and scraped it over the worn abrasive strip. It left a red smear behind but nothing more.

“Try the other side.”

Again the scrape and another track of red. “No good,” she breathed.

Down the slope the sound was growing louder; the individual howls and snarls coming clearly through the night promised a large pack.

“There’s at least ten of them, maybe more,” Thea said as she listened.

“Try the next match.”

The wind whistled by them, “Be careful,” Evan said, bringing his hand up to shield the match.

“Get some branches. We have to have kindling.”

He nodded and broke of a small branch, then held it close to the remaining matches in her hands.

The second match sputtered, flared, then winked out.

“Shit.”

“What if none of them light?” Thea asked as she tried the third match.

“I guess we’ll run for it.” Evan held the branch nearer.

The third match lit, then died as the wind touched it.

“It’s got to work,” Thea muttered. “Put that branch closer.”

He obeyed and held his breath; the branch brushed his face and her arms.

The first scrape left only same red track the others had, and Thea felt defeat and fear wash through her. “No.”

“Try the other side,” Evan said. “Quickly.”

She nodded, her teeth clenched. Carefully she pulled the match over the trails of the others. It did not light.

“Again,” Evan urged.

Thea shrugged, thinking they would have to bolt very soon. She scraped it again and was rewarded with a tiny stain of blue as the match caught. Making a small cry she cupped her hands around it, sheltering the promise of fire. “Give it the branch,” she whispered, almost afraid that sound would kill it.

“Here.” Evan thrust the branch into her hands. The needles blackened and peeled back from the tiny flame.

“There’s almost no match left,” Thea said angrily.

“It’ll catch,” Evan insisted and held the branch steady. The needles continued to shrivel, only a minuscule, mocking wink of red to show any promise of fire.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, all the time fearing that the rotten forest could not burn, that the branch would smolder and die.

Now the branch was charring, blackened for half its length, and it burned Evan’s fingers. He slipped his hand back.