by neetha Napew
Nanci Simms was waiting on the landing and she shot him once with the Heckler & Koch automatic, precisely through the middle of his smile.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jim was first out onto the landing, wearing the shirt and pants that he'd been sleeping in. His Ruger was cocked in his hand, but he stopped when he saw Nanci Simms standing in front of him, holding her own automatic, the barrel pointing down to the long-faded runner at her feet.
"It's over, Jim," she said, sounding infinitely weary. "Should have done that weeks ago but… don't know why I didn't. Now this has happened."
"What? Who'd you shoot?" Then realization dawned. "Jeff? You've shot Jeff?"
"Too late, I fear, Jim. Look," she said, moving to her right, indicating the open door of the room.
Now the rest of the house was awake. Henderson McGill, rubbing sleep from his eyes, stood in the doorway of the room he'd shared with Jeff Thomas. "What's going on? Where's Jeff? Heard a shot."
Carrie was halfway up the stairs, holding her Smith & Wesson .22, her green eyes reflecting the golden light of the oil lamp that spilled across the landing. "What's going on? Everybody all right?"
Paul McGill appeared from behind his father, cradling a scattergun and saying nothing.
"Me heard a bang," came the worried voice from the room that Jim Hilton had just left.
"Get back, Sly," Jim ordered, then called down the stairs. "Jeanne. It's Jim here. Everything's under control. Keep Heather and the little ones with you."
He took the half-dozen steps along the corridor, hesitating a moment before stepping into the attic from where already drifted the unmistakable smell of death.
Jeff Thomas, blown back from the doorway by the powerful slug, lay sprawled in the far corner of the room, underneath the shuttered dormer window. His anonymous .38 was a couple of feet from his out-flung right hand. If it hadn't been for the clothes, Jim wouldn't have recognized the dead man. Nanci's bullet had blown most of his face away, stripping skin and flesh from raw bone like a carnival mask. His lower jaw had gone, revealing the pearls of teeth floating among the bright blood around the top half of his mouth. The back of his skull had vanished, and the wall behind him was patterned with blood and gobbets of brain tissue and matted hair.
Jim shook his head at the bodies of Dave Bradley and his wife, their clothes soaking up the ocean of spilled blood. He sighed, seeing the shattered radio set. "Poor souls, they survived so far, and we brought death to them."
He turned to Nanci. "Any idea who the Bradleys were in touch with?"
"Have to be on the side of right and light," said Nanci, reloading the gun and holstering it. "Otherwise, Jefferson wouldn't have taken them out. I heard a voice and I came out. My guess is that he's blown the whistle on us to the Hunters of the Sun. Shouted out to them over an open line who we all are and precisely where we are."
"You mean he was a traitor all along?" exclaimed Carrie. "How can that be?"
Nanci stood by Jim, looking in at the ruination of the neat attic room. "I doubt he was a traitor in the way you mean, Carrie. I don't believe that he was turned when he was a prisoner. I'd have known. But Jeff was always only interested in looking after himself. Pathologically self-centered. Classic psychotic mix of coward and bully. He must have worked out that the Bradleys had this shortwave transmitter and come after them." She punched her right fist hard into her left palm. "Of course, that's it. The big antenna. What a damn fool I've been over this."
"Can't the radio be used?" asked Paul McGill, joining them in the doorway.
"No. He has, to coin a phrase, fucked it." Nanci Simms bit her lip. "Tabor knows where we are, and how many. Zelig probably picked it up, as well. Jeff must have heard something to convince him that one or both groups are on the move. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that they're both seeking us. Now they know."
"Then we move," said Jim Hilton.
"Sooner rather than later," agreed Nanci.
"How about the bodies?" Carrie was looking between the rails of the banisters.
"We have to leave them," said Jim.
"Couldn't we burn them?" suggested Mac but immediately changed his mind. "No. It'd just bring trouble that much quicker, draw attention to us that we don't need. Fine. I'll go down and help Jeanne get the girls ready."
Nanci caught Jim's eye. "Bad news," she said. "When I was at the Hunters' base I saw a couple of choppers. Big Chinooks. If they send those up here after us, we could find ourselves in some rather deep ordure."
THE HELICOPTERS were in the air, moving at well below their top speed of one hundred and ninety miles per hour, keeping at an altitude of less than two hundred feet.
Both of the Hunters' pilots were at the ragged edge of concentration, worried by the banks of low gray cloud that pressed down all around them, sometimes dropping the visibility well below one hundred yards.
The senior one had cautiously warned Margaret Tabor of the very real danger of running unexpectedly into electricity pylons or a tall church tower, or simply a sheer cliff looming up out of the dawn murk.
She'd nodded. "I hear you," she'd replied. "But I don't want to hear you anymore."
They kept flying, trying to follow the highways, many of which were lined with the rusted wrecks of abandoned cars. They plotted their hesitant way toward the black dot on their maps that was the little township of Rilkeville while their Chief sat with her eyes closed, humming contentedly along to the Carpenters' version of "Jambalaya."
"ARE YOU SURE?"
"Yes, General. Radio is deader than a stone. That Thomas guy must have wrecked it after he finished that message. Probably came close to blowing out their power source, he had it on such a high gain."
Zelig was in the navigator's seat of the leading vehicle. It had only taken a minute or so to locate Rilkeville on their maps, but getting through the melting snow on the twisting back roads toward it was going to be a different matter.
Particularly with the possibility of having two armed choppers roaring over the horizon at any moment.
"WHAT'S in the bag, Dad?"
"Blasting powder. Sort of a crude explosive. While Paul and Mac got the tractors started and warmed up, I had a quick look around the barn and found this on a shelf. Never know when it might come in useful."
"You didn't think about going into the cellar and bringing up some fresh food for us to take along?" Carrie tried a tentative smile.
"Snails and frogs...." Jim matched her halfhearted grin. "The little bastards will probably take over the whole building before anyone else turns up there."
"Won't the Hunters reach the house first?"
He shook his head at Carrie's question. "Nanci has a theory that Dave Bradley was reporting to Zelig. He couldn't reach the Cascades from here, if that's where home base is. So it's a real chance that the general's on the road, as well."
Sly was sitting with his back against the rear of the leading horse trailer, gently clapping his hands together and chanting in a quiet voice.
"Snail went sorting and he did ride, froggy went sorting and he did ride, as well. Frogs and snails and dogs and tails and logs and whales and…" He stopped singing. "Me not remember any more. Jim?"
"Yeah, Sly?"
"Where did Jeff go?"
"How d'you mean?"
Sly's eyes were puzzled as he wrestled with the problem. "Jeff went to bed and now he's not with us."
Heather shuffled across to sit by the disconsolate figure of the teenager. "Jeff decided that he was going off on his own. He told me to say goodbye to you for him. Said it specially. 'Tell that tough old Sly to look after himself and to keep a watch over Heather.' That was what he said."
"Really, really, really?" Sly beamed and gave Heather a great hug that made her gasp.
Soon they were heading northward, running roughly parallel with the coast of the Pacific. With the ominous threat of the Hunters of the Sun riding at their shoulders, Jim ordered the fastest possible speed, even if it meant taking some ch
ances. Nanci had suggested that they think about feinting south, in hope of throwing any pursuit off their track.
"No. The clouds are so low that I can't see them actually using choppers up here. But we don't know what the weather's like farther south. If they had Chinooks up in a clear sky, then we'd stand out like a Klansman at the Apollo in Harlem. They'd see us easily at ten or fifteen miles."
It had begun to get a little colder again, but every bridge they reached crossed over foaming streams and swollen rivers from the recent sudden thaw. There was little sign of life, and far fewer abandoned villages or wrecked cars. Jim thought the reason for that was that it had been a fairly sparsely populated region before Earthblood, and the coastal highways wouldn't have been much use to refugees heading either north or south.
"It looks real desolate," said Heather, standing on a pile of blankets and peeking out of the side window of the trailer. "Seems to be a sort of bracken on the hillsides."
Jim looked where she pointed. "Seen a few green shoots breaking through all over. It really is beginning to seem as if the effects of the plant virus have burned themselves out. Maybe the Earth will come around again. Some people reckon there's a sort of a life force in the planet itself. I heard it called 'Gaia.' They believe that it doesn't matter what man tries to do, but that the planet is like a single organism and it shakes itself like a dog ridding itself of ticks. And starts all over again."
THE YOUNG SERGEANT loped up to the vehicle General Zelig rode in. "Road's blocked, General."
"Rockslide?"
"More of an earthslide. Looks like about a million tons come down off the hill farther up. Can't see if there's any more waiting to drop. Clouds are too low."
"Another obstacle. Give me the possibilities, soldier, once you look around. By hook or by crook, even if a foot at a time, we must move on."
THE SECOND big helicopter settled gently to earth with just the faintest bump of the suspension taking up the weight. The engine was switched off, but the main rotor continued to revolve for several long seconds.
Everyone unbelted and started to stretch, ready to disembark, making sure they had tents and weapons and all the other equipment of the traveling strike force.
Margaret Tabor's voice rose over the noise, bringing instant silence.
"Quick and efficient, please. I want the usual guards placed and I want lights out an hour after sunset. It's my intention, if the weather cooperates with us, to be back in the air again before first light."
"We got far to go, Chief?" called a voice from the dark belly of the Chinook.
"Answer is that we got to go all the way." She smiled as she received a satisfying burst of sycophantic laughter. "Navigator tells me that we're only an hour or so flying time from where we need to be. With luck, we'll have the flies swatted and be on our way home shortly after dawn."
Her gung ho words were greeted with a ragged cheer.
"SEEMS LIKE the weather changes every five minutes." Nanci had pulled off onto what had once been a picnic area overlooking a maze of shallow canyons. The warning light had come on to indicate the threat of overheating, and she had felt it safer to take a break.
The sun had broken through less than a quarter of an hour earlier, but now it had become colder and a brisk easterly wind was driving flurries of fresh snow across the scarred land.
Jim walked with Carrie and Heather to the damp-stained concrete building that had housed a small visitors' center, as well as rest rooms.
The girl went inside, through the door with the small silhouette of a woman on the outside. She came out again with startling speed. "There's two bodies there," she said, face pale, eyes wide with the shock.
"Old or new?" asked her father.
"Old. Like Egyptian mummies. I didn't stop too long, but I think it was a suicide pact. One, the woman, looked like she'd been shot through the forehead. Other one, sitting by her, had a gun in his hand."
"Strange place to pick to do it." Carrie stared around her at the damp, dark mausoleum. "Think I'll go and take a leak in the cold outdoors."
Heather followed her. Jim paused at a peeling notice pinned to the main public information notice board.
Owing to the present incidence of the plant virus, known by the popular name of Earthblood, in this region, the hourly nature walks and lectures have been temporarily canceled. They will be resumed as soon as possible.
"Yeah," said Jim, allowing the glass doors to swing silently closed behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In the fading light of evening, Jim Hilton stated despondently at the vanished blacktop a hundred yards ahead of them. "Probably a quake brought it down. We'll have to backtrack and then cut farther inland." He bit his lip. "Could've done without this sort of delay."
ZELIG'S lead driver called him forward just as dusk was beginning to fall around the convoy.
"Something like a stream has been paralleling our left for some time, General," he said.
"I see it. Looks like it's getting bigger. Overflowing. Think it might be a storm drain. I suppose it hasn't been cleared out since Earthblood and it's not coping."
"That's my worry." The driver broke off the conversation, tugging at the controls as the front end slithered briefly away from him on a steep-cambered bend. "Bastard! That's why I think we should stop now, General."
"I concur with that. Find a good place to pull off as soon as you can. We'll move on again toward the settlement of Rilkeville first thing." He paused. "Though I don't have too great an expectation as to what we might find there."
JIM HAD RULED OUT lighting a fire. "Use one of the little camping stoves inside the horse trailer to heat up some cans, and keep the rear doors partly open for ventilation. I know it's gotten colder again, but we can't take any chances now. I guess things are getting closer to an ending."
He sat with Heather, Carrie, Sly and Nanci, picking away at some sliced peaches in a thick syrup. The pan that held the crusted remains of the beef stew was by the open door, ready to be cleaned out. A few flakes of fresh snow occasionally drifted inside the trailer.
"We'd best get to bed early," said Jim, rubbing at the back of his neck. A slit in the side panel of the tractor's cab meant a ferocious, cutting draft slicing in, and it had caught him on the muscle across the shoulders. "I think we should hit the road early. Still got miles to go."
"Before we rest, Dad?"
"Yeah. Before we rest."
"What was…was that noise?" Sly Romero leaned forward apprehensively, looking out into the swirling darkness. "Sounded nasty."
"Dogs," said Carrie Princip. "We've seen packs of them, banded together to hunt. Nothing to worry about, Sly."
"Apart from the unfortunate fact that they aren't dogs, Carrie." Nanci stood up and quickly pulled the door shut. "They were wolves."
"You don't get wolves in Oregon, Nanci," said Jim disbelievingly.
"Didn't used to, Jim. Remember you've been away from the planet for a while. For a strange old while. When food dried up, a lot of animals from zoos were slaughtered. But the animal libbers set a whole lot more free. Particularly up in the high-plains country and out west."
"Wolves?" said Heather. "Are they dangerous?"
"Of course they are, child! But there were also bears, tigers and all manner of snakes let loose. Even some elephants from San Diego. Naturally most of them were totally unsuited to survive in this ravaged landscape and were dead within a few days. But not all. Oh, goodness, not all."
ONE OF THE BIZARRE talents that Flagg had communicated to Margaret Tabor was the ability to wake up at any time she'd decided the night before.
At nineteen minutes past four on the morning of December 27, 2040, her eyes, dark as an Aztec sacrificial knife, flicked open. And she sat up.
"Today," she whispered.
THE RIVER VALLEY was wide at the top, becoming narrow toward its bottom, where it doglegged sharply to the south. A rickety wooden bridge crossed it there, with a flat area at its side that had once b
een a tennis court for a large house that had stood higher up the slope. The house was now a burned-out ruin. Around the sharp bend, the stream became a little wider and divided into a number of steep-sided ravines.
The fast-flowing water would normally have been so narrow and placid that a healthy man or woman could easily have leapt across it.
But now, swollen with melting snow from higher up the hillside, it was twenty feet wide, brown and frothing around the sharp-toothed boulders. At the head of the valley stood a massive dam of earth and stone, nearly a hundred feet wide and forty feet deep. Before Earthblood culled the population, there would have been a number of officials responsible for monitoring the condition of the dam, opening and closing the floodgates and overflow systems when necessary.
Now there was a thin rope of water trickling over the top of the dam, which was showing signs of deterioration. Fine cracks appeared across some of the concrete supports on the downstream side.
Behind it were confined hundreds of thousands of tons of icy meltwater.
Two roads passed close by, one from the west and one, wider, from the northeast.
Nanci Simms was at the wheel of the first tractor, leading Paul McGill, who was driving the second machine. The road had been winding upward for some time, with the wipers going across the screens every now and again as there were further flurries of wet snow. But the weather was generally reasonable, still very much warmer than it had been.
She touched the brakes, warning the last of Henderson McGill's sons that she was stopping. Jim Hilton swung out of the back of the trailer, picking his way through the mud.
"What's up, Nanci?"
"Road goes back south again, down this valley. Old house across there, burned-out. There's a wooden bridge, but it's only for pedestrians. Doesn't look too safe from up here."
"That stream's fast," he shouted above the roaring of the engine. "And the dam looks ready to go at any moment."
Nanci was leaning out of the side of the cab. "Which way, Jim? If that dam does give, it'll take everything out of the valley for miles—including us if we're on the highway. If we go back, then we waste time."
