Chapter 29

The party from Silicon Valley had come into the valley along much the same route Crystal and I had followed when we first headed for the desert, following the old I-580 over the Altamont pass before heading south. Going back, we headed west by northwest and hit old state route 198 just west of what was left of Coalinga.

We camped in the valley outside Coalinga and got an early start the next morning. The roads we were using, unlike the old freeways, didn't have many hulks of cars on them. Even though everyone was accustomed to seeing the rusting vehicles and their skeletal passengers, it made for faster travel if you could actually use the roadway. Granted, vegetation, including some saplings, was beginning to take root in the asphalt, widening small cracks into larger ones, but this was no real problem for the trucks as yet. In a few years, if left untended, the roads would be indistinguishable from the land around them unless you were standing on the remaining chunks of asphalt.

By the time we found the road we wanted, it was already headed up a canyon into the coastal range. There were signs of recent activity in the area, so I kept scouting parties out well ahead, up on the ridges to either side, and along our back trail.

The riders on point kept catching glimpses of movement, but couldn't see anything definitive. It was the scouting parties on the ridges that warned of the ambush. A group of thirty seven people who seemed at home in these hills had barricaded themselves behind tree trunks that they had placed across the road in a narrow defile. They also had people up the slopes on the sides of the canyon.

It was a good place for a ambush, but they hadn't counted on Phoenicians coming their way. According to the trails our scouts picked up, someone had scouted our camp the night before, then had gone off somewhere to the north on horseback. That same horse was now with the group that was waiting to ambush us.

Leaving their horses behind, my outriders took up positions further up slope from the ambushers, covering both those on the slopes and those behind the barrier. The point patrol fell back into the main body of our convoy. The six-by-six with the snowplow mounted on the front took the lead as we headed up the narrow canyon.

I wasn't too worried. According to the scouts, other than a sidearm or two, the other group seemed to be armed primarily with crossbows. Don't get me wrong, a crossbow can kill as quickly as a firearm, but its range and accuracy were nowhere near those of our M16s. That was probably why we were able to get people above them on the sides of the canyon. Their crossbowmen would have to stay close enough to the roadway to be reasonably sure of a decent shot...

As we approached the barricade, a single shot, that sounded like it was from a handgun, spanged off the blade of the snowplow and a male voice echoed through the canyon.

"That's far enough. If you get out of the trucks and walk back down the canyon, we'll let you live. We've got you surrounded and if you try to fight, you'll die."

"Well," I told him, keeping the roan I was riding dancing, as if the shot had made it nervous. "I can see that you've got us in a tough position here, but we've kinda grown fond of these trucks, and we're just not too keen on giving them up."

"No skin off my nose!" came the reply, "We can take 'em the hard way, or the easy way, but take 'em we will, so make up your mind. Do we just take the trucks or do we take your lives, too?"

"I have a counter offer for you," I shouted. "You move those logs and stand aside, and you'll live to ambush somebody else. Don't, and we'll move the logs and your bodies along with them."

I raised the mike to my walkie talkie and said, "Flankers, dust 'em a little with your M-16s, but don't kill anybody yet. Sweep those logs with the .50"

With short, three round bursts, the M16s in the hills stitched the road and the hillsides alongside the ambushers, showing them exactly how exposed and outgunned they were. Just for grins. the .50 caliber on the snowplow chewed splinters off the logs in the barricade.

"Now," I continued, as the firing stopped and the echoes ran away down the canyon, "you folks move those logs and stand aside, hands in the air, while we pass through, and you'll live."

There was no reply except for the sound of bodies moving quickly and furtively through the undergrowth.

"They're gone, Gav," one of the scouts told me over the walkie-talkie. "Disappeared like smoke in the brush."

"Okay, keep your eyes peeled. If you see any of them, don't wait for instructions. Shoot."

It didn't take long to push the logs aside and make our way through. The point patrol ranged out ahead again and the riders on the ridges continued their patrols all the way down the western slope of the mountains. Whoever had tried to ambush us was good in the brush and the hills. We could tell they were shadowing us, but never got a clear shot at them. Of necessity, they backed off when we got down into more open country, where it would be easier to spot and perhaps shoot them...

We camped again that night in Peachtree Valley, a little south of the Pinnacles. Our sentries heard furtive movement in the night, and some really bad imitations of wild bird calls, but no one attacked or showed enough of themselves for us to waste ammo on.

Instead of going all the way west to the Salinas Valley, we turned north on old State Highway 25 and traveled up the Peachtree Valley, skirting Hollister on the east before joining old US 101 just south of Gilroy. We picked up some of the wild garlic that still grew in the fields there as we passed through, thinking it would be a nice addition to our diet if we could get it to grow closer to home.

Our third camp was just north of the remains of Morgan Hill. Again, our followers scouted the camp, but apparently didn't find an opening they liked. Firearms, especially automatics, can be a tremendous deterrent to people whose primary weapons are crossbows. The alertness of our sentries, as well as the fact that they didn't expose themselves enough to be taken from the dark must have made the prospect of attacking us even more daunting.

We were up early the following morning and by making a hard push alongside US 101 got to Simmons' fortified enclosure in Sunnyvale, by late afternoon, in spite of the traffic jam frozen in time on the freeway.

The people who remained at Moffett were happy to see us, and Simmons was somewhat mollified by the praise he received for bringing us back and getting us to take them in. They were eager to show us what they had collected, but it had been a long trip and we decided to set up camp and get a good night's sleep before we took the tour.

We camped on the runway at Moffett for the night, and posted sentries. Theoretically, we were in friendly territory, but nothing was final yet, and I wasn't letting my guard down.

In the morning, we got down to business. We were up early, but for once, Simmons and his crowd were up before we were, like kids on Christmas morning.

"Okay, folks," I told Simmons and his entourage when they came to greet us, "let's see what you've got."

"Well, since it's closer, why don't we start over here?" he indicated the old dirigible hangar that had been built when Moffett was part of the Navy's Lighter Than Air program.

After dirigibles proved too slow and cumbersome, not to mention flammable, to be practical, the Navy had begun using Moffett for other purposes. Some years before the Sickness, it had been turned over to NASA for their NASA Ames Research Center. Simmons people had taken the base, the Lockheed facility next door, and Onizuka Air Force Station - a facility used by the Air Force for monitoring satellites. They had had no clear purpose in mind, other than to preserve the technology that they could collect within their guarded perimeter. Much of it didn't need collecting, since NASA and Lockheed, not to mention the Air Force, had their own share of technology already within the perimeter. I could also see a few tarp covered shapes on the apron that had to be aircraft of various sizes.

We entered the dirigible hangar by a pedestrian door, and I expected to see a vast hangar floor with perhaps a few pieces of equipment scattered about and rusting. What I actually saw was row after row of tarpaulin covered machinery - so much of it that, except for narrow aisles between blocks and stacks of machinery, the entire floor of the enormous hangar was covered. I walked down aisle after aisle, lifting the edges of tarps to see what was underneath. What was underneath was practically every machine ever used in the making of semiconductors, printed circuit boards, batteries, solar cells, and God knows what else. There was equipment for setting up clean rooms, including forced air systems, HEPA filters, and on and on, until my head was spinning with the possibilities.

We left that hangar and walked across the abandoned runways to another, where we found acres of computer equipment, some of it set up to run, the rest waiting on pallets and warehouse shelving. I could see where they had tried to keep some of the equipment going with gas-powered generators, but they had run out of the restorative compounds that kept the gasoline viable some years back, and their generators had eventually given out.

In a third hangar, they had collected enough machinery to reconstruct an automobile assembly line. This was taken from the plant in Fremont where GM conducted its grand cooperative venture with a Japanese auto manufacturer.

There was more in other buildings, and indeed, the few aircraft that were kept on the base had also been preserved, including the jet owned by the founders of Google, who had finagled permission to use the facility in exchange for allowing NASA to put weather monitoring equipment on their plane. The offices of the NASA Ames Research Center were still pretty much intact, though Simmons and his people had taken precautions toward the preservation of files and equipment. The Lockheed Missiles and Space Systems facility was a ghost town, but the equipment, in the light of our lanterns, looked as though it merely awaited the flip of a switch. Whatever else they had done or not done, these people had done what they set out to do - they had preserved the technology. I didn't need to discuss it with Amanda. Even without my knowledge of this stuff, she could tell that this equipment had been well preserved.

"Why don't we show these good people what we've brought for them, Gavin?" she asked, taking my arm and leading me aside.

I smiled, gave her a quick kiss, then held up a cautionary finger and turned back to our hosts.

"Would you like to see more?" Simmons asked hopefully.

"That won't be necessary," I answered, and before his doubts could overtake him, I continued. "You folks have done an excellent job of preserving the machinery that was used to produce our former level of technology, and I'm ready to proceed with our arrangement. Before we finalize the agreement however, I want to be sure all of you understand just what we'll be asking of you, and what we'll be providing as our part of the bargain."

"That won't be necessary," Simmons said, "I mean, everybody knows about Phoenicians, right?"

"Maybe not everything. We will hand out a set of rules. These are, until we can come up with a more permanent form of government, our laws. Each of you must agree to abide by those rules. If a majority of you agree, as I think you will, then we will continue. Those who don't feel that they can agree, must then leave. I know that sounds harsh but punishment for disobeying the rules is harsher, as you will see."

There were now four pages to our rules, thanks to having to cover such things as property ownership, salaries, etc., and it took a while to pass them out and give everyone a chance to read them.

"Fifteen?" someone asked. "You expect my daughter to start having babies at fifteen?"

"Yes," I told her. "We will not force partners on her, but we are still trying to re-populate the Earth, so, at the age of fifteen, if she so chooses, she may marry and have children."

"I won't allow it!" the woman cried.

Rather than argue with her, I walked over and took the papers from her hand. "That is your choice to make, ma'am. Since I'm not hearing other objections to these rules, that puts you in the minority. You may wait and see if this agreement becomes official, but when it does, I will expect you to leave with only what you can carry for your survival."

"What? But this is my home! What will we do out there?"

"That, too, is up to you, ma'am. Your choice is simple: Agree to abide by our rules and become one of us, or leave." I took the sheet of rules and turned my back.

I had not gone two steps before Amanda plucked the papers from my hand and said, "Let me talk with her for a moment, dear."

She walked back to the woman and took her aside. The conversation got a little heated at times, at least on the part of the woman, but in the end, Amanda returned without the rules and the woman smiled as they parted.

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

"I mostly gave her a chance to vent," Amanda replied. "She felt like she was losing control and I thought it might be worth letting her talk it out. We've grown accustomed to these rules, and we understand the reasons for them. These people are being exposed to them for the first time. Let's let them get used to the idea before we start discarding them, okay, sweetheart?"

In the end, partly through Amanda's diplomacy, all of them agreed to stay. With that out of the way, to the delight of the new Phoenicians, we unloaded the trucks. We had guessed, from the way they ordered at the cafe in Phoenix, that they had not had fresh meat or dairy in a very long time, so we packed three trucks with things we thought they might need, including a refrigerated truck for the meat and dairy.

I suppose we could have used it as a bribe to make the transition smoother, but it seemed to me that they should decide a bit more objectively. That way, there would be less room for reneging on their commitments later.

The food was an even bigger hit than we anticipated, and suddenly, any doubts that anyone might have harbored, including Simmons, were dispelled, especially when we agreed to leave the reefer truck for their use until we could restore electricity to the area. If the power lines were still intact, that shouldn't take more than a couple of days. If we had to repair the grid, it could take longer.

We were saviors and heroes to them after they saw what was in the trucks. While they were in a festive mood, I took Simmons aside and told him to pick the community leaders who would accompany him to the Citadel for training, and select one or two to act as liason with the Phoenicians I would leave behind.

"Now?" he asked. "But there's so much to do here! I need to..."

"You need to get yourself trained and set an example for the rest of your people, Scott," I cut him off. "I'm going to depend on you to integrate your people here into Phoenicia and to do that, you need to understand what it means to be Phoenician. I will leave some of my people here to help with the transition, but you and those you're going to depend on to help lead this group need to get started on training."

"Well, if you think that's best..."

I did.

We set out the next morning, leaving about half of the Phoenicians who had come with us behind. I didn't want to run into the bunch we had pissed off by foiling their ambush if I could help it, especially with fewer trained fighters in our group, so we plowed east along highway 237 and followed the I-680 corridor north, then cut across State Highway 84 to catch I-580 in Livermore. I say we took those routes, but they were still so jammed with cars that most of the time we only followed the semi-cleared rights-of-way of the roads, traveling primarily along the shoulders where the vegetation was younger and not so hard to push through. I made a mental note to send some of our recovery teams this way to start clearing cars off the roads so that we could use the actual roadways. As a bonus, we would reclaim and re-use most of the metal as well as some of the other materials from the cars.

It took us two days to top the Altamont Pass, and it was early on the morning of the third day that we finally started down into the valley. I was on edge because our scouts had picked up signs that the bunch we had run into before was still following us.

Once in the valley, we followed pretty much the same route that Crystal and I had followed when we first came into the valley so long ago, except that we went cross-country just south of Tracy to pick up State Route 33 further north, instead of following I-580 to the junction of I-5. This got us on a relatively clear roadway much more quickly, and we picked up speed.

Since I had left so many in Silicon Valley to start restoring some infrastructure for the people there, our patrols were down to two and three members each, but we still had flankers, a point patrol and a rear guard. They had to range pretty far and wide to keep us covered, though.

We were very cautious when we came to the I-5 overcrossing on 33, but breathed a sigh of relief when it passed without incident. When I had first passed through here some thirteen years ago, the land was fairly open, mostly grazing land for cattle and well-groomed orchards. Now it was a tangle of weeds and brush that made it difficult to see what was around you for any distance.

The point patrol reported signs of activity south of Vernalis, so we were on edge coming up to the State Highway 132 overcrossing, too. Flankers had surveyed the top of the overpass and its embankments, but other than dead cars and tangled brush, had seen nothing. I went under the overpass with the first trucks, every sense alert. My horse, too, was nervous, but nothing happened. It seemed that our fears were groundless there, as they had been crossing under I-5, and I had just turned to watch the trucks pass, after going through myself.

One of the flankers on the other side of the convoy saw movement first.

"Ambush!" he shouted, throwing his M-16 up and raking the underbrush on the embankment next to him.

"Ambush!" I shouted unnecessarily as I spurred the roan up the embankment. Crossbows rained bolts into the riders and trucks below and at least one handgun added to the attack. The drivers knew what to do. They accelerated down the road while the riders followed my example, going up the embankments on both sides.

A bolt caught me in the thigh as I shot the bowman, but I barely noticed. The .50 caliber opened up and began chewing up the railing of the overpass as my horse and I followed our adrenalin up the road weaving in and out of automobile carcasses, firing at anything that moved. Despite their experience with us in the hills to the south, I don't think our attackers had counted on a disciplined response.

It was supposed to be a three pronged attack, but by the time those who were hidden in the brush on the south side of the embankments got moving toward the trucks, the shooters on the overpass were dead and we had clear fields of fire down into them. Thirty seven men died under our fire, and I sent patrols out to find out where they came from. Their horses were found stashed in an old warehouse half a mile south of the overcrossing in Vernalis, and from there it was easy to follow their trail into the hills to the west. I sent a party out along that trail to find out where they came from and make sure no one else would be coming after us from there.

Yes, it was the same bunch that tried to ambush us above Coalinga. I guess they held a grudge. After taking care of the details of ensuring our safety, I rode back to the trucks to see what kind of damage they had inflicted on us.

The trainees from Silicon Valley had been riding in one of the trucks because I didn't know how they would react in a firefight and didn't want them getting into our fields of fire if we had to fight. Our attackers must have thought them the main body of our force, and therefore the biggest threat, because that truck was where they concentrated their fire. Two of the new people caught bolts, one to the chest, but the corpsman who was with us said he would recover. It was the other wound that tore me apart.

Only one pistol bullet had found its mark, but to my horror, that one bullet had lodged deep in the chest of my Amanda. She had ridden with the newbies to try to answer their questions and prepare them for what they would face in training, and the one bullet that had hit anyone had entered the top of her shoulder and torn a jagged path through her lungs.

By the time I reached her, the corpsman had done all he could for her, and despite my threats and pleas, there was nothing else that could be done. I knew it, but did not want to believe it, so I screamed at him to do something, anything!

One small, fragile hand found mine, gently cutting through the red fog of my panic, and even on the edge of death, Amanda stopped me from making a fool of myself. She could not find air to speak, but her eyes told me to shut up and leave the corpsman alone. They also told me of her love for me. Even through my tears, I could see it shining through.

Her lips moved, and though no sound came out, I could read what she was saying, maybe because I had been expecting her to say it...

"Take care of Sophie and..."

"I will," I sobbed, holding her to me, knowing that if she had had the strength, that last word would have been 'Gav.' "I will."

Amanda died in my arms, and a part of me died with her.