General Spike Stevens sloshed through cold salt water past the elevator shaft from which the water was welling more strongly every moment, making the metal door groan. A flashlamp strapped to his chest shone on the thigh-deep water and on a wall papered with historic battle scenes. Three more flashlamps came up behind him “…like we were a bunch of damn musical comedy burglars,” Colonel Griswold had put it.
The general felt around the wall, dug his fingers through the paper, and jerked open — the paper tearing — a light, two-foot-square door, revealing a shallow recess with nothing but a big black lever-handle in it.
He faced the others. “Understand,” he said rapidly, “I only know the entrance to the escape shaft. I don’t know where it comes out any more than you do, because I’m not supposed to know where we are — and I don’t. We’ll hope it leads up into some sort of tower, because we know we’re about two hundred feet below ground and that somehow there’s some salt water up there. Understand? Okay, I’m going to open it.”
He turned and dragged down on the lever. Colonel Mabel Wallingford was standing just behind him, Colonel Griswold and Captain Kidley a few feet back.
The lever budged a quarter inch and stuck. He dragged down on it with both hands until he was only knee-deep in the water. Colonel Mab reached up and put her hands beside his and chinned herself.
Griswold called: “Wait! If it’s jammed, it means—”
The lever dropped eight inches. Three feet away, wallpaper tore along a right angle as a door two feet wide and five feet high opened, and a black bolster of water came out and bowled over Captain Kidley and Colonel Griswold — Colonel Mab saw the tatter’s lamp pushed deeper and deeper.
The solid water kept coming, a great thick ridge of it. It grabbed at the feet of Colonel Mab and the general. They clung to the lever.
Chapter Twenty-three
Margo and Clarence Dodd were leaning their elbows on the upper rail of the concrete bridge, looking at the hills and speculating about the ceiling of diluted smoke that was moving up from the south and turning the sun red, giving its light an ominous brassy cast. She’d come here chiefly to get away from Ross Hunter.
“It could be only brush fires in the canyons and mountains,” the Little Man said. “But I’m afraid it’s more than that, Miss Gelhorn. You live in Los Angeles?”
“I rent a cottage in Santa Monica. Same thing.”
“Any family there?”
“No, just myself.”
“That’s good, at least. I’m afraid, unless we get rain—”
“Look,” she said, glancing down. “There’s water in the wash now! Doesn’t that mean there’s rain inland?”
But just then, with a triumphant tooting of horns, Hixon’s truck came rolling back from a reconnoiter down the coast, followed by a short, blocky yellow school bus. The two vehicles stopped on the bridge. Wojtowicz climbed down from the bus. He was carrying one of the army rifles. Doc came after him, but stopped on the step-down platform, which made a convenient rostrum.
“I am pleased to announce that I’ve found us transportation,” he called out loudly and jovially. “I insisted on looking into Monica Mountainway, and there, in a little vale not one hundred yards off the highway, I discovered this charming bus waiting to begin its morning chore, which today will be carrying us! It’s all gassed up and plentifully stocked with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and irradiated, fluoridated milk. Prepare for departure in five minutes, everyone!” He stepped down and came swinging around the yellow hood. “Doddsy, that’s not rainwater in that wash there, that’s salt tide — just look over the other side of the bridge and you’ll see it stretching out in one gleaming sheet to China. Times like this, things creep up on people. You’ve got the other gun, Doddsy — you ride with the Hixons. Ida will be with you to nurse Ray Hanks. I’ll command the bus.”
“Mr. Brecht,” Margo said. “Are you planning to take us over Monica Mountainway to the Valley?”
“Part way at any rate. To the two-thousand-foot heights, if I can. After that…” He shrugged.
“Mr. Brecht,” she went on, “Vandenberg Three is just the other end of the Mountainway. On the slopes, in fact. Morton Opperly’s there, in charge of the pure science end of the Moon Project. I think we should try to contact him.”
“Say, that’s not a bad idea,” Doc told her. “He ought to be showing more sense than the V-2 brass, and he might welcome some sane recruits. It’s a sound idea that we cluster around the top scientists in this para-reality situation. However, God knows if we’ll ever get to V-3, or if Opperly will still be there if we do,” he added, shrugging again.
“Never mind that,” Margo said. “All I ask is that if there’s a chance to contact him, you help me. I’ve a special reason which is extremely important but which I can’t explain now.”
Doc looked at her shrewdly, then grinned. “Sure thing,” he promised, as Hunter and some of the others closed in on him with other questions and suggestions.
Margo boarded the bus at once and took the seat behind the driver. He was a scowly old man with a jaw so shallow she wondered if he had teeth.
“It’s very good of you to help us out this way,” she remarked.
“You’re telling me?” he retorted, looking around at her incredulously and flashing some yellowed, stumpy incisors and scattered, black, amalgam-roofed molars. “He told me,” he went on, jerking a thumb at Doc just outside the door, “about this five-hundred-and-sixty-foot tide that would drown me if I didn’t get up in the hills fast. He made it mighty vivid. And then he told me I needn’t strain myself making up my mind whether to take you folks too, because he had a guy with a gun. Good o’ me? I just had no choice. Besides,” he added, “there was a big slide blocking off my regular route south. Might as well throw in with you crazy folks.”
Margo laughed self-consciously. “You’ll get used to us,” she said. At that moment the Ramrod came shouldering into the bus, calling back to Doc: “Very well, Wanda and I will ride in this conveyance, but I categorically refuse to drink milk with fallout rays and rat poison in it!”
The driver looked at Margo. “Maybe,” he said sourly.
The rest came crowding aboard. Hunter had sat down beside Margo while the driver was talking to her. She ostentatiously made extra room, but he didn’t look at her. Doc stood in the door and counted noses. “All here,” he announced. He leaned out and shouted to the truck, “O.K., off we go! Reverse course and follow in line astern!”
The school bus turned around on the bridge, and the truck behind it. Margo noticed that the water in the wash was now a yard higher. A tiny roller came up it, foaming along the sides. The beach onto which she’d shot the boulder was under water, too. Last night the road here had been over half a mile from the ocean, but now only a hundred yards separated it from the surf.
Doc settled down in the strategic spot he’d reserved for himself, opposite Hunter and behind the door. He sprawled a leg over the extra seat beside him.
“On to Monica Mountainway,” he told the driver. “Keep her at an easy thirty and watch for rocks. We’ve hardly four miles to go along the highway — ample time to dodge Mrs. Pacific as she fattens up. Remember, everybody, the Pacific Coast tides are the mixed kind. Fortunately for us, this morning’s the low high. — McHeath,” he called over his shoulder, “you’re our liaison officer. Keep an eye on the truck. Rest of you, don’t crowd the sea-side. I want this bus balanced when we start uphill. We’re well ahead of the tide — there’s no danger.”
“Unless we get some more—” Margo began, but checked herself. She’d been going to say “earthquake waves” or “tsunami.”