“Listen!” Cliff commanded, peering through the glasses again. “No motor sounds. Nothing! We would’ve heard a regular car’s engine at least a mile away in these mountains. That means—” He leaned forward intently. “Look! Here comes another—no, it’s not a car, it’s a truck.”

The third bright orange vehicle moved out of the canyon, but without the glasses, all Eric could tell for sure was that it was much larger than the lead vehicles.

“It’s an open truck filled with men.” Once again Cliff lowered the glasses to stare at Eric. “In uniform. Blue and orange, like the cars.” He turned back, and Eric watched his lips moving as he counted silently. “There are close to thirty of them.”

Cliff didn’t speak again, and Eric stared at the scene below as one orange truck after another emerged from the trees. Finally Cliff stood up. He shoved the field glasses back into the battered case and shook his head. “Two cars and ten trucks, one of which is carrying a bulldozer. I count about a hundred men in the first three trucks—the others seem to be empty. I can’t see any weapons, but the men are all in uniform.” He picked up his rifle and stared down at the long column moving toward them. “A veritable army.”

“They can’t be just another group of Marauders.” It was not a question. The occasional bands of men roaming the countryside raping and pillaging the pockets of survivors were like packs of wolves—vicious, savage creatures of the wild scavenging from the weak, then, likely as not, turning on one another. Their only weapons were clubs, axes, any other crude tools they could steal or make. Trucks, bulldozers, uniforms? No, they weren’t just another band of Marauders.

Cliff shook his head and scratched at the thick, grizzled stubble that lined his cheeks. Eric watched him closely, amazed how little weariness showed through the deep creases that lined his face. He, like Eric, must have been up most of the night, but it showed hardly at all. He seemed like a weatherbeaten piece of granite, impervious to all external forces.

“But trucks! Cars!” Eric exclaimed. “That implies civilization, industry, technology.”

“High technology,” Cliff agreed, his eyes troubled. “No engine noise means either they’re electric—which seems unlikely for any long distances—or they’re nuclear powered.”

“Nuclear? Is that possible?”

The doctor shrugged. “Who knows? There certainly weren’t nuclear-powered automobiles before.” His face reflected a curious mixture of hope and longing and worry.

Eric had seen that same look on the faces of those in the village who were old enough to remember before. He had also sensed it in his father, though he usually refused to talk about the times before life in the valley. Dipping into the pitcher of the past, his father often said, can only sour the cup of the present.