Tales of Downfall and Rebirth

by S. M. Stirling

  Her lips clenched simultaneously with her stomach and she would have thrown up if there had been anything in it. As it was, she swallowed bile. She’d seen a lot of death after the Change, but had never killed anyone herself.

  Before.

  Not that he was dead yet, but the bolt had drilled him right through the throat and had obviously hit something important. There was blood all over him, a lot of blood, and it was slowly pulsing out of his mouth and out of the wound the barbed shaft of the head had torn in his neck. He looked at her, but couldn’t speak. She knew that he knew that he was dying. She fought down an irrational urge to apologize. The least she could do, she thought, was maintain eye contact while he still had something left, so she did. It didn’t take long.

  She turned to the other. “Eric’s not here anymore,” she said.

  The remaining Dalton blinked. “You . . . you killed him?”

  Doc licked her lips. “Seemingly so.” She could hardly believe it herself.

  “You bitch—”

  “Come up with a different insult already,” she said tiredly, stretching cautiously.

  She didn’t think any of her own bones were broken, which was a minor miracle, but her ass was sore as hell, her right thigh and knee were scraped, raw meat, bleeding more than she’d like, and her hip wasn’t doing too great, either. She’d landed on her right side, and she kept her pocket watch in her left front pocket, so it was probably all right. That was something, at least. She put her hand to her face, but it came away bloodless.

  All right then, she thought.

  In the meantime, the remaining Dalton was spewing an obscenity-laden invective in great and, Doc felt, somewhat repetitious detail as to what he would do to her when he got his hands on her.

  To be fair, she thought, he is in great pain and I just did kill his brother and he’s also making a difficult decision easier for me.

  She glanced at Eric’s bike, which was the only one that held out a shred of hope, but it too had been damaged beyond her limited possibility of repair. It did have saddlebags, though.

  “Hey—” Her tormentor interrupted his rant. “What are you doing?”

  “Looting the dead,” Doc said. “Now shut up.”

  The pickings were slim, but he did have a canteen. She raised it to her lips and chugged half of it. The water was hot and metallic tasting, but it went down great.

  “You! You—”

  “Yeah, I know. Bitch.”

  She went halfway across the road, bent down and picked up the crossbow she’d dropped. She pointed it at the remaining Dalton, who flinched. It wasn’t loaded, but he was too shaken to realize it.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

  He complied. She turned her back on him and started to walk up the road.

  “Hey! You can’t just leave me.” His voice shook with agonized fear. “You can’t!”

  She turned and looked at him. “Why not?”

  “That’d be cruel, just cruel, man.”

  Doc bit back a laugh. “What are you, stupid?”

  He stared at her silently. She looked back at him a long time, finally sighed, and walked back toward him. He watched her, beseechingly.

  “I can’t do a thing for you,” she finally said. “And even if I could . . .”

  She paused, cutting herself off. I’m not like him, she thought. Not like the rest of them. She tossed him the canteen. Surprised, he caught it.

  “Say hi to Manuelito for me when you see him.”

  She turned away and headed back up the road, thinking to herself, I should have my head examined. It was a hot day and only going to get hotter.

  * * *

  Bernie paddled back to the mooring, disembarked, and coaxed the story out of the messenger. He was young, frightened, and excited, a combination that didn’t allow for a coherent recitation of events. By the time Bernie learned that the sparsely settled area to the southeast had awoken to the smell of smoke on the air with wispy tendrils still reaching out to the sky, almost all the Jungleland staff had been attracted by the ruckus and were gathered around listening with intent concern.

  Scouts, the messenger continued, had stumbled upon what the kid called a horde of well-armed bikers camped out on the road—hundreds of them, with shackled prisoners. They were breaking camp and preparing to go on.

  Bernie looked around at his people. He could see the fear in their eyes, hear it on their voices. Panic was threatening to rise. He wet his lips. Don Carlos wasn’t here to stop it. Someone had to.

  “All right,” he heard his voice say, though he thought it didn’t really sound like him. “Stay calm. No need to get too excited.”

  He stopped to think for a moment, surprised to see that all eyes had turned to him. “I’m going to go check things out. We have plenty of time before they can get here. I’ll probably be gone all afternoon, so don’t worry if I’m not back right away. Jose—give me your clipboard and pen.”

  Wordlessly, he handed them over. Bernie scribbled quickly on a blank piece of paper, folded it, gave it to the man. “Take this to Johnny Tiger down at the chikit—we’re having a Coalition meeting today, so the word can get out quickly from there.”

  Jose threw up a hand in a quick salute and hurried away, grabbed a canoe, and headed off down the canal.

  “Emily—you’re in charge until I get back. Get the place on lockdown, just in case.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Bernie nodded. “Look—we’ve been through this before. This won’t be our first rodeo and if we stick together, watch out for each, it won’t be our last, either.”

  To Bernie his words seemed inadequate, but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment and there were murmurs of agreement from his troops. What, he wondered, would Don Carlos have said? What would he do? Bernie kept up a stoic front, but he wondered if his people could see through the facade.

  * * *

  Doc was pissed, hot, hungry, thirsty, and worried. She’d loved her bike and now it was gone. It had been a fine piece of machinery and its loss diminished the world. When she’d left it behind she felt as if she’d had to shoot her broken-legged horse. Her concern for the remaining Dalton brother was somewhat less and she’d tried for the last several hours not to think about the other one with her crossbow bolt in his throat, but had failed miserably.

  The afternoon had progressed considerably and with only a floppy hat, half-shredded long-sleeved shirt, and a bloody, torn to hell pair of jeans to shield her, it was baking the hell out of her. The road was no picturesque avenue. The heat had liquefied the tar in the asphalt and it was bubbling up like bizarre mushrooms. The bubbles popped when she stepped on them, stinking and sticking to the soles of her beat-up Keds. Now that her bike was gone, she wasn’t limited to the road, but naked and ugly as it was, Doc felt no inclination to wander off into the countryside. The road was the only trace of civilization in this entire godforsaken area. She had to stick to it. She’d seen the maps and she knew that it led somewhere. Undoubtedly somewhere backward and insignificant, but maybe with people willing to help her. That, or willing to club her over the head and add her to their collection of slaves. She sighed deeply, grimly limping on.

  Her stomach rumbled and she had dreams of a nice club sandwich and—

  She paused, blinking. Up ahead a couple of hundred yards on her left was a clump of actual by-God shade trees, nodding leafily over the canal that still paralleled the road. The grass on the bank was tall, thick, lush, and comfortable-looking. She was also thirsty as hell. The sun hit like a hammer and sweat soaked her ripped jeans, wife-beater tee, and her long-sleeved cotton work shirt. She could feel it trickle down her face, neck, and arms, and runnel down her legs. At least, she hoped it was sweat and not blood. She was quite suspicious about the quality of water in the canal. It was full of slimy things and dangerous microbes and fish fucked in
it. But what choice did she have?

  She limped toward the blotch of welcoming shade, when to her surprise she realized that a canoe was tied by a rope to a stick protruding from the canal’s bank. She smiled, momentarily not believing her incredible good fortune.

  “Maybe this day won’t turn out to be so bad after all,” she said aloud.

  She limped as quickly as she could toward the canoe. Not only was it the first sign of civilization she’d stumbled across, it was her ticket to freedom. No way Manuelito could catch her if she took to the water—

  A great wild beast, a huge cat of some kind, suddenly reared out of the tall grass from where it’d been lurking not twenty yards away and glared at her, fanged jaws slavering and evil intent in its baleful eyes.

  “Holy c-c-crap!” Doc stuttered.

  It padded forward a step or two, growling dangerously, eyes boring into her, and Doc went into action. She unslung her crossbow with lightning speed, cocked it, popped an iron bolt into place, raised it to her shoulder . . .

  ... and literally out of the sky a whirling lasso fell over her head, slid past her shoulders, and jerked tight, pinning both her arms to her side, causing her to drop the crossbow. A powerful tug yanked her upward and left her dangling and kicking two feet off the ground. The big cat approached relentlessly as she twisted helplessly like a side of beef strung up in a butcher’s shop.

  It didn’t make her feel any better as she revolved around to see a tall, hard-muscled naked guy with flowing black hair and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen glaring at her. She had no idea where he’d come from. Veins stood out in his neck, beating time in accord with another in his forehead. His face was clenched in an expression of fury and murder was in his eyes.

  * * *

  “You were going to shoot my cat!” Bernie shouted, glaring up at the woman twisting in the loop of his lasso.

  And then, he realized that he was looking at a woman and she had an expression of utter terror on her face. But that expression was gone in a moment, as if a shutter had slid down over her features.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in an utterly controlled voice. “I didn’t know that it was your cat.”

  “He,” Bernie automatically corrected.

  “He,” she agreed.

  Bagheera reached his side and sat down next to him. He automatically put his hand on the cat’s head, scratching behind his ears. Bagheera purred like a distant motorboat. Bernie watched the woman’s eyes flicker with something. He wasn’t sure what. They were blue.

  The rest of her was tall and slim. Her hat had fallen off, exposing tousled blond hair cut much shorter than his own. Her features were finely chiseled with a snub nose, high cheekbones, and expressive mouth. It twitched, Bernie saw, and he realized that she was probably hurting. All the anger drained out of him. He reached out and grabbed her around the waist. She flinched, but remained steady in his arms.

  “Sorry,” he said, trying not to sound contrite.

  Something else moved in her eyes and across her face. Bernie looked away from her, back over his shoulder.

  “Let go of the rope!” he yelled, and her entire weight suddenly pressed against him.

  He relaxed his grip a bit and she slid down his body. She felt like a feather rippling across his chest. He set her down on the ground and saw that he was only a couple of inches taller than her, and he was six two. She moved her eyes from him to Bagheera, who was already looking bored.

  “Is he really your cat?” she asked.

  “Oh, sure,” Bernie said. “I raised him from a cub. His name’s Bagheera.”

  She looked like she might say any number of things, but finally settled on, “Who were you talking to?”

  “Oh”—he gestured over his shoulder, pointing briefly to the tree—“just Cheetah.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “My ape,” he explained.

  Cheetah stuck his head out from the tree’s leafy branches and chittered. She looked blank for a few more moments and then it was like a light dawned. Her expression turned guarded.

  “You know—” Bernie said, beginning to explain, then noticed the stains on her jeans and the flesh beneath. “Hey, you’re bleeding.”

  He turned back to Cheetah. “Get the first aid kit from the canoe!” he shouted and Cheetah went down the tree quick as a monkey.

  “Oh.” She seemed to rouse herself from a daze. “I’m all right. I just scraped my leg when I fell from my bike—”

  “We should take a look at it,” Bernie said. “Wounds turn septic out here, fast.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “I’m Bernie, by the way.”

  “Bernie?” She seemed surprised. “I thought it’d be—”

  He frowned, slightly. “I’m not delusional,” he said.

  She nodded. “No, of course not.” She thought it over for a moment. “I’m Doc.”

  Bernie nodded stiffly. He didn’t want to give the game away immediately.

  “Well,” he said. “Fine. I’ll get you bandaged up and then you can just go on your way. Doc.”

  He said the name doubtfully and looked around, almost suspiciously. No one else was on the road. She was probably one of their scouts.

  “Wherever that may be.”

  Doc grinned weakly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re being . . . most kind. I’m afraid that we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. It was my fault. About the cat and all.”

  She looked at Bagheera lying at Bernie’s feet, his big black-tipped tail flipping about impatiently. He yawned hugely and the girl flinched again at the size and nearness of his teeth.

  Bernie sighed inwardly. “No, I understand. My lifestyle is not . . . usual. Most people don’t get it.”

  Cheetah arrived, brandishing the first aid kit, a white, medium-sized plastic box adorned with a red cross. Don Carlos had been something of a survivalist. He’d stockpiled all sorts of useful equipment and supplies. Ironically, the space he’d dedicated to guns and ammo had turned out to be totally wasted.

  Cheetah handed the kit to Bernie, and then grinned hugely at Doc.

  “This is Doc, Cheetah. Doc.” The chimp nodded energetically.

  “You may feel more comfortable doing this yourself,” Bernie added, and gave her the kit.

  “Thanks,” she took it and sank to the ground, wincing.

  She tore the jeans away from the thigh wound, the worn denim parting easily, and frowned at the sight of it. Suddenly she looked up, glancing at Bagheera.

  “The smell of blood won’t, um, affect him, will it?”

  Bernie sighed, again. “No. He’s really not used to eating people,” Bernie explained.

  Doc nodded. “Yes, of course not.”

  The skin of her leanly muscled thigh was pale, Bernie noticed. Apparently she didn’t get out in the sun much. The sight of it might not be affecting Bagheera, Bernie thought, but he wasn’t too sure about himself.

  “So, uh, what,” he asked, “are you doing out here, anyway?”

  She didn’t look up as she swabbed her scraped thigh with antiseptic and flicked away bits of gravel and dirt.

  “Running away from a biker gang,” she said.

  * * *

  He wasn’t, Doc thought as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, naked after all. Quite. He wore a pair of really nice moccasins with some great beadwork and fringe and a plain loincloth with front and back flaps. Nothing else was left to her imagination.

  In her three years in Florida she’d seen a lot of near-naked male bodies and even a few naked ones in her day—

  Though that day seems like quite a while ago, she mused—

  And she had to admit that Bernie’s was pretty much near the top of the list. His skin had been turned a deep bronze by the Floridian sun and his face was rather pleasant, too, as he stu
diously looked anywhere and everywhere except right at her, except when he was looking right at her. Not like when she’d first seen him, burning with raw emotion, veins standing out in his neck like cords, visible even in his forehead, throbbing in time with his pounding heart, pressing her against his hard body . . .

  She lost track for a second, then caught herself, finished bandaging her thigh and repacked the supplies. She held the box out to Bernie, but the monkey snatched it away with a curiously human-looking expression of suspicion on his face.

  “That’s all right, Cheetah,” Bernie said smoothly. “Doc is a friend.”

  Bernie, standing behind the animal, gestured discreetly at her with his chin.

  “Oh,” Doc said, smiling rather more widely than normal. “Yes. Me—I mean, I, I’m your friend, Cheetah.”

  Bernie nodded encouragingly and made an encircling gesture with his arms.

  Her smile faltered, but she caught it before it could entirely slip away and she opened her arms. The monkey waddled forward and put his rather long and ungainly arms around her and pulled her to him. Doc could feel the ungodly strength in those limbs and had the sudden uncomfortable realization that Cheetah could tear off her arms and beat her to death with them without really exerting himself. His big, white, strong-looking teeth were damn close to her throat. The hair on his thickly furred body was coarse against her skin. He smelled a little less terrible than she thought he would.

  “See, he likes you,” Bernie said. Cheetah pulled back and grinned widely, too close to her face. Doc looked up to see him smiling smugly down at her. “Okay, Cheetah, let’s go.”

  Cheetah released her and waddled over and put an arm around Bagheera’s neck. The big cat came lithely to his feet and they walked off together. Bernie extended his hand toward her and automatically she took it. He lifted her, utterly, she was sure, unconscious of his strength. It felt almost as if she were being pulled toward him by some completely previously unknown variety of gravitic force. They stood closer together than she normally liked to be, especially to a stranger, and then Bagheera made a strange huffing sound. Bernie looked away at him.