Gauntlet Run: Birth of a Superhero

  I've died and gone to Hell. Henty thought.

  She clung to the baby the woman, whose name was Anna, handed her just before the bomb dropped behind them and the old VW started its hop-skip-and-jump through the desert. Henty’s elbows and knees and head and the small of her back all took great blows but so far she had managed to shield the baby from contact with anything hard. She was flung half around in her seat by another sudden change in direction. Behind her, in the back, Anna held a baby in each arm and grimaced as her head crashed against the roof of the car but she didn’t let go. In that moment, as they both came down jarringly, but simultaneously, Anna smiled sweetly at Henty.

  Henty grinned back.

  Gene fought the wheel but to no avail as the wheels didn’t touch often or long enough for control. At last there was on almighty crash and then, for a moment, they were still.

  “Ouch,” said Henty.

  “Wow,” said Gene.

  “Hold tight,” said Anna.

  “But—” said Henty, taking firm hold of a grab handle all the same when she saw Anna kick her feet up against the rear of the front seats and brace her back against the seat. Not a moment too soon. Violent winds rocked the VW this way and that, tilting it so precipitously that Henty feared it would fall over and roll away like a marble on a polished floor. It lasted an eternity, though in real time it was probably only minutes. When at last it was over, Henty looked at the baby in her one arm — it was sleeping peacefully! — and then at the grab handle which was torn out of one end of its moorings.

  “Wow,” said Gene again.

  “Let’s move before we catch a lethal dose of radiation.”

  “Right,” said Gene. “But which road?”

  “That way, I think,” Henty pointed.

  They drove off across the desert and soon came to the road. When they were beetling along it, Gene said. “The US Government sure got it in for you if they send the Air Force to kill you with nuclear bombs.”

  Henty nodded thoughtfully. “I can’t understand it,” she said finally. “They — the Air Force — helped me get out of New York.”

  Gene gave her a sideways look but politely said nothing.

  “Henty, dear,” Anna said, “of course they helped you out of New York. They wanted the people to have their fun and games hunting you, to work off some of their frustrations on you rather than revolt against the government. But they don’t want you to reach the Mint and collect $10.000,000 and a Presidential Pardon and become a national hero.”

  “But that’s the whole point, to get there and get the money and the pardon! They can’t cheat me of that now!”

  “They’re trying very hard,” Gene said firmly.

  “That’s not fair,” Henty said equally firmly.

  “Only nice people like you expect the world to be fair,” Anna said kindly.

  “And it wasn’t fair blowing up all those babies,” Henty said. “That was a massacre of innocents.”

  “The government is committed to zero population growth,” Gene said. “They'd probably like to blow up all the other baby farms as well.”

  “You mean there are more places like that!” Henty just couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Yes, many. All in remote places like this.”

  “How did you discover that one?”

  “I’m a computer freak. By accident, I bust into The Caring Society’s computer and then, since Anna and I always wanted a baby but couldn’t afford to buy one, I made give me the list of the baby farms.”

  “When I finish with the Gauntlet Run and have settled Petey into his new hospital, will you give me that list?” Henty asked quietly.

  “Sure,” Gene said.

  “But first,” Anna said. “You have to reach ’Frisco. And you can’t, not with that Fist broadcasting that you aren’t dead back at— back there.”

  “I’ll just have to go around towns and avoid Watcheyes,” Henty said.

  “Maybe,” Anna said. “But from here to ’Frisco, you must cross many bridges and they all carry Watcheyes.”

  “Are you trying to tell me I can’t do it, I should give up altogether? I can’t do that, you know.”

  “No. But I know a way of stopping the Fist sending out signals.”

  “Oh boy! What’s that?”

  “You have to dip your arm in boiling lead.”

  Henty paled.

  CHAPTER 66

  When Gene returned from Fallon, Henty helped Anna change and feed the babies and spread salve on their sunburn. By the time they finished, the cauldron of battery-lead Gene bought from the scrap yard bubbled away merrily over the gas fired barbecue he also bought. Henty sat quite still while he wrapped the Fist and a good part of her arm in fresh bandages and then covered everything, including a good part of her upper arm, with wet plaster of Paris.

  Henty stood doubtfully over the cauldron of boiling, bubbling, steaming lead.

  “You have to do it while the plaster’s still wet or the heat...” Gene said, letting the sentence trail away.

  Henty gritted her teeth. It was now or never. She drew a deep breath, then plunged her arm to the elbow in the boiling lead.

  CHAPTER 67

  I tell you, these are great times. Man has mounted science and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide. — Henry Adams before 1870

  You know you need it, because you are fashioned to fit it.

  If you take the wilderness away, the world is a cage. — David Brower

  “You have failed,” said Don Guilio in his almost-whisper. “We do not condone failure.”

  Jimmy Twoshoes had thought carefully on his answer. All the same, his voice trembled pitifully. “My Don, there is no proof that I failed. The Fist has not been found.”

  “It is not possible that a chicken farmer, a woman chicken farmer could escape the might of the United States Air Force,” Don Guilio said in the same implacable tone, made all the more frightening for its lack of insistence. “I am told they used rockets and an atomic bomb. How could such a thing be possible, for this woman to escape the wrath of the mightiest nation on earth?”

  Jimmy Twoshoes stuck to his prepared text. “My Don, the Fist is indestructible. We have flown several times over the site of the nuclear explosion within range of the transmitter in the Fist. Not once did we hear a beep.”

  “Then where is this woman?”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy Twoshoes admitted. “But it would be unfair to punish me without proof that she is dead.”

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Jimmy Twoshoes knew he had made a terrible mistake. The old man’s face remained impassive but his eyes glinted before the lids closed to cut off the light of hatred. Why, he wants to eliminate me, Jimmy Twoshoes thought. He wants me to fail so he can kill me!

  “The justice of the Society of Friends does not depend on proof,” Don Guilio said sternly. “I am the sole arbiter of our justice.”

  Jimmy Twoshoes trembled. His knees sagged until he was kneeling on the floor in supplication.

  “But,” Don Guilio went on, “Since there is so much money involved and since you ask so nicely, go, find her and kill her.”

  Jimmy Twoshoes tried and failed to unclasp his fingers from their death-prayer grip on each other. He was as yet too weak to rise to his feet, so he stayed on his knees. “I’ll kill her immediately I find her, my Don.” His voice wavered between the hysteria of fear and the hysteria of unbearable jubilation.

  “No, if she is alive, it will profit us most if you remain faithful to your original plan of doing it in front of the Mint in San Francisco. Go now, and do not fail me again.”

  The Don closed his eyes as if to rest but in truth to gloat over the abject thing to which he had reduced this tough guy.

  Jimmy Twoshoes still lacked the strength to rise to his feet. After he made several tries, two of th
e bodyguards unceremoniously dragged him out.

  CHAPTER 68

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff already knew that Henty was still alive. When their spotter plane didn’t find the Fist’s signal, they sent men dressed in cumbersome radiation suits to rake the hot ashes of the roadhouse and baby arena.

  The men found nothing.

  Hot on their heels came the bounty hunters, without radiation suits, cavalierly exposing themselves.

  They too found nothing.

  By nightfall there was a rumor in every big city that the Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb on Henty and she had walked nonchalantly through the holocaust, waving cheerfully at the pilots who dropped the bomb.

  When Gauntlet on all four networks showed the crashed Cadillac still on the bulldozer scoop and said Henty died in it but didn’t show the body, everyone knew there was something fishy going on. And when all four commentators turned immediately to a discussion of the merits of next week’s Runner, without mentioning the atomic bomb rumor — even as a joke, they knew there was a big cover-up in progress. Almost everyone had seen one of the slogans that appeared as if by magic on walls everywhere: HENTY LIVES. But not one of the networks referred to that either.

  It became an article of faith that Henty not only lived, but would appear at the Mint to collect her $10.000.000 and her free Presidential Pardon. There were riots against government interference in the Gauntlet Run in Cleveland, New York, New Orleans, Memphis and Oakland. Of course there were still people who were not rooting for Henty: they would rather have the ten million for themselves.

  CHAPTER 69

  A group of cars came out of the night and stopped beside their camp. Men carrying shotguns and rifles — and one with grenades hung on his belt — climbed out and questioned Gene and Anna closely, while one of them turned around 360° twice with a portable radio direction finder sporting a long antenna. Henty happened to be behind the VW in darkness at the time, burying the contents of baby diapers. Fortunately she instinctively stayed out of sight.

  After the men left, Gene heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Well, now we know the lead works. That RDF of theirs was tuned to the Fist’s broadcast frequency. They couldn’t have missed you if just the tiniest beep came through the lead. C'mon, cheer up!”

  “They still carried my picture,” Henty said, very subdued, not her usual sparkling self. “Everybody now knows what I look like. Tsch! Why won’t they just believe I’m dead like the government tells them?”

  “Because sensible people believe exactly the opposite of what the government tells them,” Anna said with finality.

  The next day they cruised through California on US-50 while Henty dozed on-and-off. She hadn’t slept well at all, waking up repeatedly through the night to worry about Petey: What would he think when he heard she was dead? Would the Syndicate let Petey and Chris go, or would they kill them? Or would they wait until there was evidence — the indestructible Fist coming to light — that she was dead?

  In the morning, she discussed it with Gene and Anna but they couldn’t help her either.

  “You’ll just have to go to the Mint and get the money and the pardon and then go looking for Petey,” Anna said.

  Gene added, “If you somehow tell Petey you’re alive, the Syndicate will be waiting for you at the Mint. Then you and Petey will both be dead. You don’t have any choice. It’s only till tonight. Petey will just have to last out.”

  Every time Henty woke uneasily as they cruised down US-50 and then back onto Interstate-80 beyond Sacramento, there was something weird and wonderful to see. California was like a foreign land, she thought, and didn’t know how right she was: California by itself could be the ninth richest nation in the world. She was too dazed by fatigue and events and worry about Petey to take in California except as a series of unrelated vignettes:

  They stopped at a light and through an open window she saw a man and a woman glued to their vidi. The filth on the vidi made Henty blush. “Boobtoobers,” Anna told her. “They watch live pornography on cable television twenty­ four hours a day.”

  A building with twin horns and an upstanding arrow­ headed tail. “That’s the cathedral of Satan,” Gene said disinterestedly. “They’re one of the established religions. You wanna see the buildings the really weird kooks put up.

  When Henty commented that Californian children play rough, because almost every one she saw wore a least a black eye and more often an arm or a leg in splints, Anna said sadly, “Child-bashing is the biggest indoor sport here.” Henty was too horrified to ask any more.

  A highway patrol stopped them. Henty’s heart beat in her mouth but Gene and Anna were perfectly calm. The patrolman took down the registration details and Gene’s name and address on what he called a “stop card”. When they were driving on again, Henty asked why they had been stopped and Anna told her. “They do it routinely. The information on the stop cards goes into the computer. If this car is used in a crime, they find out from the computer where we were seen.”

  Henty shivered, “That’s an invasion of your privacy, before you've committed any crime.”

  But neither of her new friends were impressed. “It’s just an older version of the Watcheyes,” Gene said. “The Watcheyes are a continual invasion of your privacy.”

  With that Henty couldn’t argue, so she went back to her fitful dozing.

  Late in the afternoon. Henty was woken from a dream of endless orange groves with flat butch haircuts by the shattering klaxon of one of the Southern Pacific’s goods trains.

  “Stop! Stop everything!” she said urgently.

  Gene turned the VW through the thundering heavy trucks and stopped it beside the road.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake the babies,” Anna said reproachfully.

  “What’s up?” Gene wanted to know.

  “I can’t go to the Mint and claim the ten million dollars and my free pardon,” Henty said. “That would be genuinely stupid.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, if I do, the Syndicate will know I’m alive and have double-crossed them. Then they’ll kill Petey and Chris, the surgeon they kidnapped to look after him.”

  “But they’re planning to double-cross you anyway and kill all of you. What else can you do except double-cross them but do it first?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t do it until I take Petey back. Look, you don’t want to risk your babies—”

  “Sorry but you’re right,” Anna said quickly before Gene could be a hero.

  “—so you’d better just leave me here.” Henty swung the door open. “Where are we?”

  “Almost in Berkeley. That’s San Francisco over there.”

  Henty sighed. “I almost made a terrible mistake. Thanks for your help.”

  “It’s we who must thank you,” Anna insisted. “Good luck!”

  Henty stood beside the road, forlornly watching them drive away, wondering what she would do now.

  CHAPTER 70

  Around noon, citizens with nothing better to do — and many with better things to do — started turning up at the Old US Mint to share in the historic occasion when the first Gauntlet Runner made it all the way to the Mint. Their reasoning was quite simple: the Fist had not put in an appearance, therefore Henty was alive. And the place where The Caring Society claimed she had been killed was only a day’s journey from the Mint. She would come today.

  Other citizens argued the same but they would not rejoice if Henty made it. Instead of waiting in front of the Mint — though some of the lazier bounty hunters did exactly that, they went singly or in groups with their armament to the bridges that no-one with business in San Francisco can avoid crossing. Henty avoided those who manned the bridge over the Bay from Vallejo to Berkeley-Oakland because she had been asleep, with the baby she was hugging obscuring her face. But those on the Golden Gate and on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridges were, despite the efforts of the police to stop them (so that they could do it themselves and collect the ten millio
n), stopping and searching thoroughly all cars and trucks crossing into the city.

  Other bounty hunters decided not a mouse could enter the city past the vigilantes; they flew above the Mint in helicopters and planes. High above them all circled a monstrous Air Force Communicator to which low-flying helicopters would relay the slightest beep out of the Fist. There were also jets of various strike capabilities, a division of Green Berets, and several tankers to refuel all these planes in the air. It was no longer any secret that the US Air Force and Army were all set — were desperate — to wipe Henty out; anyone with eyes could look up and see that for themselves. A few sensible ones wondered who the Air Force would wipe out with Henty; they slid quietly away.

  CHAPTER 71

  Jimmy Twoshoes groaned. He'd just come from the Golden Gate, where the bounty hunters were standing virtually shoulder to shoulder. He hoped that the Bay Bridge...

  “Goddammit, this bridge is eight bloody miles long,” he raged. “They can’t guard it all.” But he knew it was futile: they needed only to guard the ends. There the bounty hunters were standing shoulder to shoulder, three deep, and parting only to pass vehicles that were already searched thoroughly. All along the bridge stood the bounty hunters who couldn’t find employment at the ends.

  Nor could Henty enter by air: even from here, on the Oakland side, he could see the sky black over the San Francisco skyline with the planes of bounty hunters.

  He waved at the pretty girl with the large sunglasses and her hair up under her cap; then his mind caught up, his reflexes and he made a rude sign in reply to her gesture for him to come on down. He didn’t have time for women, not if he wanted to live. And if he wanted to live, he needed to kill that damn woman and kill her only one place: Right in front of the Mint. The Syndicate had, since last night, taken billions in bets she would be the first Runner to collect the ten million and the free Presidential Pardon…

  The woman was still waving persistently at him.

  “Get lost. I’m working,” he shouted down to her. He was no more than twenty feet above her, his chopper hovering over a line of trucks waiting their turn to be searched.