“I’d take care of you, Cody,” Zoan said.
Cody nodded and left.
Through all of this the pilot had said not a word. Now he reached up and touched the rough bandage that covered his head. Zoan sat cross-legged on one side of him, and after a moment’s hesitation, Little Bird sat down on the other side.
His eyes moved to Zoan whom he studied carefully, and with some guarded gratefulness. Then he looked at the young woman beside him in a guarded way; she was much more of a cipher than Zoan’s open kindness. With some stiffness he said, “I am Oberleutnant Reinhart Angriff.”
“I’m Zoan. That’s Little Bird.”
“I—must thank you for your protection, and your care.”
“Who are you?” Little Bird asked, more sharply than she had intended.
“I am in the Luftwaffe.” He saw that the words meant nothing to the two and he amended it. “I’m a flyer for the German air force, the 77th Air Wing, based at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.” Tentatively he touched his head again, and moved restlessly, but it caused him pain, and he grimaced. “My side, too . . . Did you two do these stitches?”
“Zoan did,” Little Bird said with a careless air. “You would have died, I think, if he hadn’t gone out and gotten you and brought you back.”
Angriff nodded, and a lurking amusement lightened his pain-clouded brown eyes. “Yes, so I’ve heard. To some of your people it would seem that it would have been preferable if Herr Zoan had not saved me.”
“He is not as wicked as he sounds,” Zoan said seriously. “Or looks.”
Reinhart Angriff lay flat on his back studying the two. Ever since his plane had gone down he had been wandering in a fog of feverish pain and confusion, but now he was beginning to gather his senses. Captain Reinhart Angriff was a reserved man of twenty-eight, an outstanding and dedicated flier for the Luftwaffe. When he was not bruised and bandaged, he was the handsomest of men, the true Nordic male beauty that has always shone best in the men of his race. In contrast to the stereotypical Nordic traits, he was a reserved man, and was indeed as kind and gentle as his looks had suggested to Little Bird the night before.
“Still, it seems that I owe you for my life, Herr Zoan, not once, but twice. How did you get me away from the wreck? And where am I?”
Zoan stared at him, his eyes dark and fixed in his odd way, then he nodded to himself. “I will tell you everything, Mr. Pilot, but first you need to eat. You’re getting well, but you’re weak. You need food.”
“I suppose I do,” Angriff said wearily, for he did feel treacherously weak. “And once again, I must say thank you.”
“No need for that,” Zoan said. “The time will come when you can repay me.”
Reinhart lay quietly in his bed. The pain was lessening to some extent. He had, of course, ejected from his dead plane that had been heading nose-down to earth as fast as a bullet. Ejection from a sinking jet generally saved the pilot from serious injury—as it had Angriff—but always there were cuts and bruises and scrapes. Angriff felt as if he’d fallen to earth instead of parachuting down. But then, he had ejected at a dangerously low altitude, and he’d landed really hard. It was a miracle he hadn’t broken something. It did seem that Zoan and the girl had attended to his wounds effectively, even with their obviously primitive conditions.
The late afternoon sun was feeble and pale and now he turned his head to look at the man who sat patiently beside him. Reinhart had thought—as all people did when first encountering Zoan— that the simple young man was little better than a half-wit. Yet now, after listening to him and watching him, Reinhart could see that Zoan was not a half-wit, he was not even really “simple.” There was more, much more to him—something, perhaps, that might be superior to most men. Reinhart licked his lips and asked, “Can I have a drink of water?”
Zoan, without speaking, moved over to his ola, filled a cup, and brought it back. “Do you want to sit up?” he asked.
“Yes, I think it would be better if I tried to move some.” Reinhart, with Zoan’s help, struggled to a sitting position. Insisting on holding the cup himself, he gratefully drained it dry. “Danke,” he said.
Zoan did not reply. He simply took the cup, filled it again without being asked, and Reinhart again drank thirstily. The pilot really didn’t know what to say to Zoan, or how to talk to him. He was so different, and didn’t seem to follow the rules of normal conversation. Reinhart studied Zoan’s eyes that seemed to be all pupils. That was another thing; Zoan met people’s eyes directly, openly, and endured scrutiny patiently. He looked back at Reinhart Angriff, and suddenly the pilot knew he must try and help this man. Not the rest of them—even the girl was hostile to him—but he was obligated to Zoan for his life, forever.
Licking his dry and burned lips, he said, “Zoan, do you understand that your country is in trouble? Do you know what’s happened?”
Zoan was still staring at him in that patient way. “I know that the darkness has come.”
Reinhart’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been to a city?”
“No.”
“I mean—in the last two or three days.”
“No. I’ve never been to a city.”
Reinhart frowned. This was more difficult than he had anticipated. “I see that you don’t have—lights and Cyclops and electricity out here. What I’m trying to tell you, Zoan, is that the cities are dark now.”
Zoan simply watched him, and the German could not ascertain how much he understood. “We’re just trying to help,” he added, rather lamely. For some reason he could not meet Zoan’s gaze, and so he dropped his eyes. “I—I was on a reconnaissance patrol, you see. That’s all . . . just to observe. I flew over Albuquerque and Santa Fe. They’re cities just—uh—southeast of here, I think. They went dark. They—they don’t have power.” Projekt Schlußenheit . . . We all knew it had to do with the power grid, they at least told us that—but they couldn’t prepare us for what a—shock, a terrible shock it was to see the world go dark! And I wonder . . . how many of us went down? How many planes weren’t adequately protected?
WE did this, we must have! Otherwise, how could we have had the spray, the sealant to keep out . . . what? Some kind of virus? It’s a live thing? We’ve unleashed some doomsday bug on America? Or— or—perhaps it just came, and we found a weapon, a defensive weapon?
Will I ever know?
Interrupting Reinhart’s dark reveries, Zoan asked quietly, “You won’t tell about me and my friends being here?”
Bleakly Reinhart replied, “It’s against the law for you to be here, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“No. I won’t tell. And besides, I don’t think your commissars will be worrying about you and your friends, Zoan. They have other things to worry about.”
“Maybe,” Zoan said cautiously. “But I think they’ll be looking for us soon. So you won’t tell?”
“No, I won’t,” Angriff said with a touch of impatience.
Zoan suddenly smiled, which was a rare thing for him; and this time Reinhart could swear that there was pity in Zoan’s steady gaze. Suddenly a feeling of guilt swept over Angriff. “I swear I won’t tell anyone,” he added vehemently. “I swear to God.”
“It’s not a good idea to swear to God. It has a way of coming back on you.”
“I don’t know why I said that, I don’t even believe in God.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t come back on you. Anyway, I believe you.” For some reason this simple assurance made Reinhart feel better. With Zoan’s help he lay back down and immediately began to drop off into a sleep. He had not quite drifted into unconsciousness when Zoan, in an almost inaudible whisper, said, “He’s not here yet, is he?”
Startled, Reinhart opened his eyes with an effort. “Who’s not here?”
“Him—your countryman. The—the wolf. The wolf of the evening.”
Now Angriff was sure that Zoan was slightly retarded at least, and delusionary at worst. “The evening wolf? I d
on’t know what you mean.”
“He loves the dark. He can see at night. He’s the one who made this darkness. You know that.”
Suddenly Reinhart Angriff stiffened. “You mean Commandant Tor von Eisenhalt?”
“Yes . . . yes . . . that’s his name . . . at least this time, for now . . .”
Reinhart was baffled, but there was one small part of his mind that understood to some extent what Zoan spoke of. There was something mysterious—perhaps even inhuman—about Tor von Eisenhalt. Oberleutnant Reinhart Angriff had an overwhelming respect for Tor von Eisenhalt, for the man was a military genius, and understood the mind and heart of the German people—particularly the soldiers—far more than any man had for centuries. Of course, Angriff had never met von Eisenhalt, but he had seen him and heard him, and he was drawn to him. Still, Angriff had seen that Tor von Eisenhalt was a man greatly to be feared.
And his insignia was, after all, a wolf.
This, of course, must be purely coincidental to Zoan’s dark musings.
Still, Angriff answered Zoan respectfully. “No, Zoan. My commandant is not here in America.”
A heavy, thick silence filled the room and Reinhart thought at first that Zoan had not heard him, and then the words came. “He’s coming, though. I can see in the dark too . . . And I can see him coming.” Zoan fell silent, then added in a small voice, “I hope he can’t see me.”
Reinhart lay silently, and he knew fear then; he wasn’t sure if he was just responding to Zoan’s fear or if somewhere, deep down inside him, he was feeling the first dark and cold fingers of dread himself. He had not been half so frightened when he knew that his plane was going down, when it simply stopped functioning. He recalled, then, that he had thought that not only was his plane going down but the whole world was going down. The sight of the lights of the cities going out had gone deep into his spirit and it was as if his spirit, too, were flickering out. Now he stared at Zoan, and he whispered, “I—I hope he can’t see you, either, Zoan. I truly do. And I swear, he’ll never learn of you from me.”
EIGHTEEN
FORT CARSON WAS DARK, silent, and dead. The 502d Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division called the southwest quadrant of the fort home. The area was the closest to the main landing strip, control tower, and communications center. It was no mistake that the most crack unit in the whole 101st had been assigned to this particular quadrant.
For a full five seconds after the blackout, the men of the 502d who were on duty outside could only stare at one another and send questioning, stony looks of disbelief at the giant grid to their north. The sudden consummate silence and obsidian blackness on a two-thousand-man fort was unthinkable; indeed, a few had a natural feeling of vertigo as their normal world of harsh sound and intricate lighting deadened to the effect, for them, of being inside a tightly closed crypt.
The silence disappeared when, seemingly as one, they all began scrambling, cursing, and shouting orders to one another. The infantrymen—“grunts”—dashed for their barracks, where they’d find their trusty weapons and shelter. Those who were assigned to Humvee V’s hopped into their vehicles, struggling to see the normally well-lit numerical keypad located on the console to enter the four-digit starting sequence. A few entered the wrong sequence because of the darkness, but the ones who managed to enter it correctly got the same result as the ones who didn’t: nothing. No vehicle snarled to life.
The artillerymen, known as “cannon cockers” since time out of mind, scrambled around and over their British-made M151 radar-guided “boomers,” the great guns, which now looked to them like dark hulks of junk metal without the glowing green lights of the Laser Imagery Display (LID) on the sightings panels. Many of the men cast wary, wide-eyed looks toward the starry sky, searching for the very intruders they were assigned to take down before reaching the base. To a man, they knew that if they made a visual sighting, it was way too late to do anything about it. They were trained on the boomers to eliminate any threat from up to twenty miles away with V-12 rockets, and any visual sightings were left up to the “duck hunters” with shoulder-launched surface-to-air weapons called “Scorpions.”
The duck hunters themselves were staring at their dead cylindrical weapons as if they’d never seen them before. One of them actually banged his Scorpion against the side of a boomer, as if that would somehow bring back his small-range display screen. The only result he got from this action was a flurry of curses from the boomer crew.
Division support maintenance teams ran for the FK-120s, CJ-33 supply choppers, and Apaches to check on their conditions and discovered the same ominous results. The teams responsible for the ultra-sleek, high-tech FK-120 stealth fighters were especially horrified. This was the Army’s best offensive plane. Now it was about as useless as a wet firecracker.
In Colonel J. P. Nix’s aviation squadron, Fire Team Eclipse was scattered all around the quadrant, very much as puzzled and uneasy as the rest of the 101st. Except for two of them—Vashti Nicanor and Ric Darmstedt. From inside Surplus Warehouse C-6, they stood in a freight elevator halfway to the ground from their little excursion to the third floor. The elevator was caged, fifteen by fifteen, and from their vantage point they could see only a slightly lighter sliver of gray from the outside door they’d left partly open.
Vashti couldn’t see Ric, but she could sense his presence close to her and heard his quickened breathing when the huge phosphorescent lights overhead blinked out. “What happened?” she asked, noticing for the first time how eerily their voices echoed in the cavernous warehouse.
Ric answered in his lazy drawl, “Guess some clown fell asleep at the power grid.”
“And this happens often in America?” Vashti muttered.
“I was only joking, Colonel. All power stations and lines are tied in to Cyclops. I don’t even know if they man the grids at the plants anymore.” Vashti heard his clothes rustle, then he said in a slightly uneven tone, “The GL’s out. That’s new.”
The GL was the Grid Locator, a handheld device that was programmed to recall the exact position of every member of Fire Team Eclipse who was carrying one. Hating to admit it to herself, Vashti felt a current of dread run through her; never had she heard Ric Darmstedt sound unsure of himself. Trying to make light of the situation, she said tentatively, “At least my feet aren’t hurting.”
A distracted grunt was his only reply.
Earlier that evening, the fire team had been eating supper with the grunts, a habit the whole fire team had fallen into, except for Captain Con Slaughter. Suddenly Ric had turned to Vashti and asked about her feet.
“My feet? What about them?”
“Which one hurts?”
“How do you know one of my feet hurts?”
Hiding a smile while spooning an alarmingly yellow pudding into his mouth, Ric had replied, “It’s called simple observation, Colonel. You’re limping like a three-legged mule. If you’ll pardon the comparison.”
Vashti had been having trouble with her right foot ever since she and Colonel Ben-ammi had been issued the boots worn by the fire team members. Their daily runs of five miles—and then their punishment runs of an additional two miles—had turned into tests of Vashti’s ability to hide excruciating pain, as well as exhibit endurance. For some reason she just couldn’t make the boot settle into the contour of her foot. Two weeks before, Vashti would have undergone torture on a rack to keep from revealing a weakness or a sign of pain to another soldier. Now, after working closely with Lieutenant Darmstedt and learning—a little reluctantly—to respect and even admire him, she admitted the problem to him.
Ric had thrown a Proto-Syn green bean at a tech-head (it bounced) across the table and asked where the surplus boots were stashed. After getting his answer, Ric asked if there was anything else interesting in there.
The tech-head rolled his eyes. “You know the army. They’ve changed the official snaplight color to blue again. For real, for good.
Uh-huh. ’Til for
real, for good next time.”
Ric had taken her to the warehouse and, of course, had found her a perfect fit. Again she’d marveled at his ability to help a female soldier—even one that outranked him—without showing any signs of condescension or inappropriate intimacy.
Now, in the frozen elevator, she was becoming more disturbed the longer his silence lasted. “Lieutenant? What’s wrong?” He didn’t answer for a long time, and she used his Christian name for the first time since they’d met: “Ric?” The name felt alien on her tongue, yet comforting at the same time. Something was wrong. She wasn’t frightened, exactly, but she was glad, just now, in this situation, to be with Ric Darmstedt.
Slowly Ric said, “I was just thinking about the time in airborne training when I graduated from maggot to worm.”
“What? What?” Vashti asked, bewildered.
“We were training, I was on Defense Team Blue, I remember. There were two other offensive teams, Red and Green . . . anyway, they blacked out our command center. I was training on satellite solo imagery, and when the room went dark as the inside of a tomb, no one even breathed. We were completely defenseless against the commando teams. I got this weird panicky feeling even though it wasn’t for real. Everyone started hollering and running around and pushing dead buttons that they couldn’t even see—just general chaos really. Then the backup power generators booted up and everything came back on like nothing had happened, and it hit me—that was the first time I’d ever experienced a real and total blackout, even for just a few seconds.”
Vashti heard a ripping sound, then saw his face suddenly illuminated by a green light, and she gasped before she realized that it was only the sound of Velcro cover separating and the glow from his watch as he checked the time. He looked alien in the green glow. She asked, “But are you saying this is a total blackout? I mean—I thought that maybe it was just the warehouse, a—a— what do you call them? Breaks?”
The green light disappeared and Ric answered with uncharacteristic shortness, “Breakers. But it’s been almost five minutes. Why hasn’t the backup generator kicked in? Every building the army owns is on a separate generator.”
The Beginning of Sorrows Page 27
