“Ah!” the lady replied, rapidly blinking as she backed off. “But—did you call it a suggestion? Hardly that—no, never! It was nothing more than an ‘if’, that’s all.”
“Why yes, of course it was,” said the other. “And ‘if’ pigs could fly…?” But Doris was already making her way back to her own position in the convoy. Observing her retreat, Big Jon took a bite of apple, chewed meditatively for a moment, then spat it out. Too bitter for his liking, he felt it would give him wind. Anyway it was time to go, and he mounted his rauper’s rusty flank…
Some three hours later, having climbed a long slow rise through wild but flourishing countryside, the convoy looked down from a basin’s rim on a broad valley offering vastly dissimilar views. The now almost non-existent road—its surface reduced by time, weather and burgeoning scrub to tilting blocks of concrete and asphalt under dense layers of bramble and creeper—descended steeply to the valley’s floor, where it then proceeded more or less parallel with a wide river whose source lay somewhere beyond a hazy northern horizon. East of the defunct road, rising contours diverted the water toward far distant regions; but something a little less than two miles due north and ahead of this divergence, twin bridges a quarter-mile apart had long ago surrendered to the flow. Now their half-submerged skeleton sections formed gapped jetties against which the rushing water gathered speed and energy, spinning itself into gleaming whirlpools as it was sucked below, resurfacing on the southern side in spiralling eddies and gushing foam.
East of the river and almost directly ahead of the convoy, the remains of a medium-sized town lay clearly visible. Mainly in ruins, still a handful of squat, three- or four-story buildings on the river’s edge—possibly mills that once ran on hydroelectric power—had survived, barely. Most of them had lost their roofs, and the entire top floor of another had collapsed inward.
Away from the river across town, a railroad’s once-terminal remained mostly intact, with arrow-straight tracks running east through ruined suburbs. About halfway to the eastern limits of unaided vision, a train’s carriages lay scattered like cast aside toys across badly cratered tracks; while at a similar distance but a mile or so north of the wreck, a great crater almost a quarter-mile in diameter sat central in a scene of total devastation. In fact, nothing but this ashen moonscape remained to be seen: just this vast rayed bowl with its shallow lake, where despite the passing of so much time only a blue-green algae had found a way to survive and even flourish; and outside the crater’s raised rim, a star-burst effect of symmetrical white rays, laid down by the outfall over the blackened debris and desolation of what was once a small village…
“Well, and so much for lands east!” Big Jon Lamon muttered morosely to himself where he stood in the turret of his rauper and surveyed the valley’s expanse. “And whatever our journey’s ultimate destination…” he shook his head, and then continued determinedly, “it definitely won’t be in that direction!”
As for the countryside to the west:
Houses and other buildings when blown up, knocked or burned down, soon become rubble and ashes. But trees, foliage, all the green things in general—while they too suffer occasional disasters—they tend to return: they grow back again and quickly, often to the extent of shoving aside and burying the rubble and the ashes. Here in the westerly reaches of this valley, however—whether as the product of Doris Ainsworth’s theory of nuclear radiation and mutation, or simply the result of evolution in an environment radically transformed by the absence of Man and his poisonous works—here the green things tended to grow, and to grow…and to keep on growing!
Which would definitely appear to be the rule in the rising countryside to the west of the river, where the derelict road—or more properly its smothered and increasingly obscure outline—continued to parallel the water as far as the collapsed twin bridges…and then disappeared utterly beneath the outer canopy of an immense forest!
Big Jon’s bottom jaw fell open. Where earlier he had judged a stand of giant oaks and a rookery of fat glossy crows “astonishing,” now he found himself rethinking that previous evaluation. For what he saw down below, thrusting itself into being on the riverbank opposite the fallen bridges—then opening out to climb rising contours to a ridge some four or five miles west—at the same time spreading out and reaching across the valley’s floor all the way to the northern horizon…now that was truly astonishing! Indeed for long moments he could only stare, finding it hard to take in and accept the sheer enormity of it!
While at this elevation and distance it served little purpose to even hazard a guess at the actual height or girth of the larger members of this vast evergreen forest, still Big Jon arrived at a mental assessment. Those mighty firs had to be all of one hundred and fifty—or even one hundred and seventy—feet tall! And in their higher canopies they appeared packed so very close that only a few gaps showed, none of them large enough to indicate clearings of any appreciable size.
As he continued to gaze down on that gigantic forest, one undeniable truth quickly made itself apparent to Big Jon: that unless there was plenty of free space beneath that vast canopy—between those huge boles and below the lower branches, where the sunlight must surely be shut out and undergrowth mainly absent—no power on Earth was ever going to force a way through; which of course included the convoy’s trundles and every other vehicle that had found the going hard even on what was left of the old roads, let alone through a trackless green fastness!
But on the other hand, who could say? At this distance appearances might well be misleading, deceptive even through powerful lenses…. Oh really? Yet despite having serious misgivings about that last, still as Big Jon lowered his binoculars he was telling himself there was always hope…
For all that the column had remained stationary for only a minute or so while its leader surveyed the way ahead, a handful of men had come forward from their places several vehicles back to see what was the difficulty. One of these was the chief mech Ian Clement, and following the line of Big Jon’s worried, fixed gaze, he too looked down into the valley at what he had to assume was the prospective route ahead. In that same moment it was as if he read his leader’s mind, and:
“Big Jon!” The chief mech groaned and shook his head. “Even a quick glance down there tells me we’re in really bad trouble, and that’s a fact! The vehicles are just about done in as it is—but now, with that great green barrier down there? I mean—”
“I know what you mean!” the leader growled, at once silencing the other. “So please be quiet, Ian, and let me think…”
By which time Zach Slattery had come hobbling up front; and as the small group of ominously silent senior clan members made way for him, he leaned against the rauper’s jutting prow, joining his peers where, as a man, they stared helplessly down into the valley.
Momentarily lost in thought, finally Big Jon saw Zach, gave himself a shake and said: “Well then, old friend, how about it? Your mind is ever sharp, so do you see any choices we can make? Do you have any suggestions?”
“There are always choices,” Zach answered, his voice a grim rasp. “Unfortunately, I can’t see one that will do us any good! As for suggestions: while I don’t know about anyone else, right now my own mind feels like a huge dark vacuum: horribly empty!”
Nodding his understanding—and speaking quietly, almost to himself, but knowing he must decide one way or the other—Big Jon then said: “Maybe if we stay up here and leave the road, it might just be possible to follow the high ground west, and—”
At which point:
“Not a hope in hell!” the chief mech barked, forsaking the customary niceties. “What, we should leave the road—potholed, creeper-ridden relic that it is—and drive cross-country? That was bad enough when there were so-called badlands, but at least we could see where we were going! I mean, these shrubs and this greenery and what all, it may be pretty to look at, but if anything it makes the going just as rough as driving through scrub and rubble, and at the same time hide
s the many pitfalls! Let’s have one thing understood: even if we stay on this ruined road, we can only cover a few more miles before the wheels, axles and engines give up the ghost. But to leave the road, to go off it? Well, I don’t know…” Finally beaten, defeated, the chief mech shook his head. “I just don’t know…” And as his words petered out he could only offer an impotent, almost apologetic shrug.
Then for a long moment silence reigned, until: “And so much for that choice!” said Zach. “But Ian is right, of course.”
“Yes, I know he is.” Big Jon nodded tiredly.
“Which leaves us with the valley,” said Zach. “But at least it’s downhill!”
“That’s right,” said Ian Clement, resigned to the fact that his work was at an end, that he’d done his best but could do no more. “And if the gears should burn out,” he continued, “or the engines decide to quit, I suppose we can always freewheel—at least to the bottom and as long as the brakes hold out!” And he offered a derisive, humourless snort.
“And then, when we’re down there,” said Big Jon, “depending on how things look close up, there’ll be other choices to make. Whether or not we try to push on through—but of course that’s if any of the vehicles are still functioning—” and he glanced at the chief mech. “Or—”
“Or abandon the vehicles to the trees and go on foot,” said a new, younger voice: Garth’s voice, from where he’d joined his father at the front. “Of course, we’ll still have the bikes and no lack of fuel. The outriders—as they were—should still be able to scout ahead, finding us the easiest routes. And if just one of the smaller trundles is still working and able to squeeze through, maybe we could use it to carry fuel, arms and ammunition. As for the animals: all their lives they’ve known only us; we’d have to carry the birds in their cages, I suppose, but the beasts, what’s left of them, will need to go on foot along with us. Which I’m sure they will, just as long as we’re leading and feeding them…”
Done with speaking, Garth looked in turn at each of the men and found all of them staring back at him—some slightly disapprovingly, perhaps—but none of them offering any opposition or argument against the logic of what he’d said. And as for Big Jon:
Looking down at Garth from the rauper’s turret, the leader blinked twice and said, “The voice of youth: a calm voice, with nothing of panic in it. The voice of reason, which admits of no insurmountable difficulty but looks to the future—any future—because there has to be one! And people, I like that sort of voice!”
“And why not?” said Zach. “For there’s a lot of commonsense in what it says and a good deal of hope even in what it doesn’t say! Let’s face it, we can’t be far from journey’s end, not now…just a few more miles at most. Are we suddenly grown incapable of walking? No, not at all! Myself, I’ve only one good leg but I’ll give it a go. And anyway, what with the convoy’s mileage recently: why, for all the time it’s taken we might just as well have walked the last twenty or thirty miles!”
“That’s very true,” said Big Jon, scanning the faces of the elders—some of whom still seemed dubious—as they turned to look up at him. “But at least before walking we can coast, well, for the next few downhill miles at any rate! So then, does anyone have any better ideas? No? Then you’d best get back to your places, for time’s wasting and the future’s damned impatient!”
And a few minutes later the convoy was underway again…
Chief mech Ian Clement’s predictions were proving all too accurate: one of the larger tractors and the water bowser failed to make it down into the valley. The latter’s driver jumped for it, saving his life when his cumbersome vehicle toppled on a crumbling surface, burst open and lost its load. As for the tractor: worn-out, its engine coughing and sputtering, it simply gave up the ghost, coming to a grinding halt where its front wheels ran into a deep rut and refused to come out—which meant that the trundle it towed was also stuck there. Wear and tear, bad fuel, harsh conditions: all of these things had taken, and were still taking, their toll. For even as the column crossed the valley’s floor toward the mighty forest, yet another vehicle quit; which left many travellers hanging on like grim death to groaning and heavily overloaded trundles, trying to keep up as best possible by running alongside, and disappointed to be on their feet even sooner than they had anticipated.
Then, on the final approaches to the looming green barrier, Big Jon’s rauper lost a track, spun out of control and broke an axle on a tilting slab of concrete. At which, cursing his luck and anything else he could think of, the leader tossed his belongings down, dismounted, patted his sorry beast once on its red-rusted flank, and without looking back walked the last hundred yards into the resin-scented verdure of the massive trees.
And there, beneath those huge branches, a surprise awaited Big Jon; and not only him but the clan in its entirety. For indeed the forest had spaced itself out! The boles of the giants were not so close together that they denied entry to the smaller trundles; the lower branches were off the ground to a height where they would cause no real hindrance; and while needles and leaf-mould were thick on the ground, there was little by way of undergrowth. Moreover, the greater the penetration—and as the canopy thickened high overhead—there, apart from the deepening, dusty gloom, conditions in general even appeared to be improving.
Not that the leader intended to penetrate the forest to any great depth; the afternoon was already lengthening towards evening, and the sky beginning to darken, growing heavy with rainclouds. No, the night’s camp must be made right here and now on the forest’s edge…and then made safe! Nor would Big Jon try to bring the entire column in; it was obvious that the majority of the vehicles wouldn’t make it, and to try would simply be to clutter the entire area. Wherefore all the larger vehicles must be abandoned in the open, while the clan and their few precious possessions and beasts would be brought in beneath the trees to enjoy whatever small measure of comfort the forest would afford them. And tomorrow morning? Time enough then to move on, facing the problems that the new day would doubtless bring…
Garth was with Layla, putting up their rude shelter against the bole and between the spreading roots of a forest giant, when he was called to attend Big Jon at the small vehicle he had commandeered and positioned at the hub of the encampment. The battered old open-sided bus was one of just four transports which so far had shown their maneuverability over the forest’s floor and between its great trees. From this time on—in darkness or whenever else the clan made camp—it would serve as the leader’s command post; on the move it would carry sick or incapacitated passengers, such as Zach Slattery by reason of his troublesome leg. Thus the vehicle would be in use at all times, with everyone’s best interests in mind.
On arriving at Big Jon’s vehicle, Garth saw that the other night-watch bosses were already there; and so was Garry Maxwell and his “sniffers.” Appearing less than enthusiastic, Maxwell’s charges whined and fidgeted on their leashes, huddling as close as possible to his skinny legs and almost tripping him.
“What’s wrong with your animals?” Big Jon frowned and waved Maxwell back a pace or two. “Other than their smell, I mean…”
“Can’t wash dogs without water!” Maxwell protested. “‘Least ways not for some time now, not while it’s been hard to come by and we kept it for drinkin’. But for a fact they do stink some. Maybe I’ll give ’em a treat and take ’em back down to the river for a swim on the end of a rope—not that they’ll thank me for it! We came in that way, me and the sniffers, so’s I could stop and fill some bottles from the river—just for drinkin’, mind. And didn’t they kick up a fuss around that fallen bridge? You bet your life they did! Which is why I’m here reportin’: ’cause they don’t like it here, neither by that bridge nor here under the trees. Too gloomy for ’em, and damp with moisture risin’ up off the river. And then there’s the sharpish smell of these big trees and their gooey gum and what all, gettin’ up their noses, makin’ ’em sneeze and gen’rally confusin’ ’em. What I’
m sayin’: they don’t much like not knowin’ what they’s sniffin’, and they can’t sniff any too good anyways, not with all these new smells gettin’ in the way and irritatin’ the hell out of ’em!”
“Huh!” Donald Myers issued a derisory snort. “Well, I don’t know about confused or irritated, Gangling Garry, but sometimes I fancy your dogs have a lot more sense than you! Should I tell you why they’re so nervous, so jumpy?”
“Oh, by all means!” Maxwell answered, trying to appear offended and failing. For with his thin or at best wiry frame, his shambling gait, unkempt hair and long nose, he looked almost as much a hound as his dogs! “Do tell, since it appears you knows so damned much about my business and my sniffers!”
“Then listen!” Myers growled. “Once I’d got myself settled in, I found I had a little time on my hands. So as not to waste any, I took a couple of lads from my crew and a pot of luminous paint out in the forest to mark up some trees in a circle round the camp: a perimeter maybe sixty or so yards in diameter, with pretty much clear line of sight from tree to tree. I was making myself useful, that’s all, and saving my good friends here some time and effort before nightfall—”
“—Which won’t be long in the offing now,” Big Jon prompted him, “so save us a little more time and effort by getting on with it! Then I’ll want to speak to all of you.”
Myers nodded. “Away from the forest’s fringe and the deeper we went, and with the sky outside clouding over, it was getting very gloomy; so I was pleased to note that the paint was beginning to glow, however faintly, but still enough to pick out the perimeter from tree to tree. Then one of my men noticed a different glow just a short distance deeper into the forest outside the perimeter. It was the sort of glow that some toadstools and rotting timbers make.