by Sandy Nathan
“We should be back to the cliff in no time,” Henry added. They clustered around him, crackling with excitement. “Wes says we’ll be able to go back right away.”
“You’ve got a complete setup for a ranch in that barn.” Wesley provided the most information. “You’ve got better machinery in there than I ever had. You should be able to grow food—if we can find seeds. You should at least get a crop of wild oats with it. You’ve got a backhoe loader, a couple of tractors. Some quads—4WD utility vehicles. Harrows, an auger. Even a big plow for breaking up sod. And a truck!
“There’s everything you need for a sawmill crated up. You’ll be able to make boards and posts—you can build a real ranch. There’s tons of tools and hardware. You should take it all.”
“The only problem is that it’s buried,” Bud added sardonically. “Some of it’s eighteen feet down. But Wes and I can dig it out the way we dug out the babies.”
“That is good news,” Sam said, trying to imitate Sam Baahuhd by ignoring the pain in his legs. “Dig it out. We will take it all home.”
They trooped off to watch Wesley and Bud work, but he caught Grace’s eye. She came over to him.
“I’ll take yer medicine, lady.” He smiled. “I reckon you don’t want to kill me.”
She put her hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up, Sam. You’re really sick.”
When they had him back in bed, she examined the white covers Ellie had put on him, sniffing under them and looking for streaks up his legs. “You seem fine, Sam.”
Bud remained after putting Sam on his mat. He squatted next to him and remained there silently for a few seconds, as though sensing something. He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and said. “I’ve done some healing in my time, Sam. Call me when you need me. I’ll come to you.” He left, looking troubled.
Sam drifted the rest of the day, hearing the others coming and going. He saw flashes of blue light coming from the direction where Bud and Wesley were working. The medicines made the pain less, but they made him sleepy. He kept dreaming, bad dreams.
Something was pulling him inside, into darkness shot with golden light. It captured him and held him. When it held him, he didn’t care that he was being weak. Who he was supposed to be faded and strands of a golden web held him fast.
He could see the doctor from Ellie’s world standing by Lady Grace. He could see the big hall covered with spider silk before the fire came.
54
The next day, Jeremy and Bud brought Sam out into the fresh air.
“You’ll be able to watch us dig out the equipment barn,” Wes said. He was in high spirits. “I think everything should start right up.”
The barn was invisible from ground level; Bud and Wes set about excavating, blue beams flying out of their hands. The others stood back. Seeing them work like that seemed almost commonplace. Mounds of earth grew on each side of the door to the barn. When they were finished, a driveway sloped down eighteen feet with the fill piled on each side. Bud and Wes were exhausted and filthy.
Everyone shouted when the barn doors were exposed.
“OK, open the doors,” Jeremy said. James and Mel knocked a few rocks and hunks of dirt back. Wesley sliced through the padlocks and the doors were thrown wide.
The barn contained a rancher’s dream. A tractor, backhoe, utility tractor, barrels of fuel, and every kind of tool. More vehicles.
Wesley examined the treasure trove. “If we’d had one tenth of this on our ranch, we could have … made some money. Maybe even survived. Look at that tractor.”
Bud didn’t have Wes’s mechanical skill, but he could see that the machines were wonderful and in fantastic shape.
‘It’s great, Wes. Only one problem, how the hell do we get it all back?”
“We drive it back, Bud. Straight shot home.”
“Yeah,” Bud agreed. He shook his head. “Thing is, you need a barn for it. Can’t have the equipment and tools out in the rain, assuming we get rain. And you can’t be running up and down the ladder every time you want a wrench. ”
Jeremy added his input. “I could blow a hole in the cliff face, maybe off to the side. We could make a rock grotto there for a barn.”
Bud looked cautious. “Jeremy, how do you know the whole overhang wouldn’t collapse?”
“Well, yeah. You’re right. I’m not so hot with explosives.” Jeremy acknowledged. “Can you blue-beam a cave big enough for a barn?”
“Into solid rock?”
“OK. But we could take the doors off this barn and hang them on it. That would be cool.”
Bud and Wes looked at each other and shrugged.
“Maybe. I’ll feel better when I get all this equipment working,” Wes answered.
“I can’t get a damn thing to start,” Wesley said after a couple of hours of intense labor. “I remade the hoses and belts. I thought everything would turn over the minute I tried it.” He stood in front of the machine barn. “I guess I’ll have to drain all the fluids and clean out the tanks. Go over the entire engines. God, this drives me crazy.”
Sam watched and saw everything, despite his illness. He kept an eye on Wesley. Even though Wes worked very hard and had helped so much saving the babies and fighting in the battle, Sam had a bad feeling about him.
He’d never seen a man with a body like Wes’s. A body where every muscle stood out, defined by light and shadow. A body with no fat on it, all smooth brown skin like a piece of art. A moving, living sculpture like those he’d seen in the books before they closed the library. Such a body must be very exciting to a woman.
Sam wondered why Wesley’s shirt was always off whenever Grace was around. Grace took water to the machine barn, and Wes walked back with her, his shirt tied around his waist, muscles smooth and sleek, smile flashing.
If Lena was there, Wes’s shirt stayed on.
55
After watching Wes get nowhere with the engines, Bud took stock. “I’m going for Plan B. That’s the ‘horses only’ plan. I’ll start gentling enough horses to get what we can home without the vehicles. I’ll make a trip to the forest to get more travois poles right now.”
He turned to the group. “Henry, do you want to help me?” He would have asked Grace since she was the best rider of the bunch, but she was too worried about Sam to go anywhere. And Lena was busy with the babies. “I want to get the poles now so we have everything we need to get out of here. We’ll bring enough packhorses to get poles for every horse we’ve got. If we go right away, we won’t have to stay overnight.”
Henry agreed. They were heading out when Wesley shouted, “What’s a Duo/Duo?”
“Probably it’s a dual engine, electric and plastic fuel. Our fuels aren’t flammable, which explains the barrels not going up,” Mel replied. “All of our engines are Duos, or plain electric. Most of our vehicles hover instead of rolling on the ground, but some hover and have wheels, and even tracks, like a tank. You’d need wheels or tracks for farm work. They have more traction. That’s where you get the Duo/Duo.”
“What an idiot I am!” Wes hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “There’s this thing in the middle of the engine. I didn’t know what it was. It’s an auxiliary electric motor. They aren’t charged. That’s why nothing starts. And I don’t have anything to charge them with. Shit!”
Bud raised his brows and shrugged. He’d get the poles and start gentling horses anyway. Part of him had always expected the “Horses only” option to be the one they used. At least horses couldn’t go dead, unless they died.
“Henry, get your stuff. Before we go, I want to stop by Sam and make a couple of social calls. I’ll be fast.”
When he got to Sam’s tent, Bud looked in. Sam was asleep. Bud bent over him, listening and observing. Something was wrong with Sam, and it wasn’t his feet. He didn’t have a handle on what it was yet, but he knew what he had to do in the meantime.
“Sam, buddy,” he whispered, “call me when you need me.”
He left and
went to the babies’ tent. They’d set up all the tents they’d brought: one for the computer lab, one for Sam and Grace because Sam was sick. One for the babies and the last for the three new people. The babies and the new people were having a hard time.
“Hey, kids, how’re you doin’?”
“Bud,” they said, turning to him. Every one of them knew his name.
“You guys hangin’ out OK?” He went from child to child, touching them, talking to them. Using what Grandfather had taught him on them. “Bobby, my man, what do you say?” Bud had taught Bobby the high-five, and he had taught the other kids. Bobby could roll over and almost get up on his knees now. “You kids are gonna be racing around here soon, causing trouble.” He went down the rows. “I’m going to be gone a while, getting some wood with Henry. We’ll be back probably late tonight; you guys keep everybody in line.”
Bud left the tent. Despite his cheerfulness when he was with the children, he feared that a couple of those kids weren’t going to make it. He could feel them drifting away. Bud could heal, but only if the Great One wanted it. Only where and when the time was right. Oh, let me heal those babies, please.
His eyes stung as he stood outside the tent for the adult newcomers. He couldn’t help the sadness he felt. He missed his own kids so much. And Bert. What were they doing without him? What did they think? He hoped that Bert didn’t think he’d run off with some other woman. There was no other woman for him. How long had they been gone? The days blurred together. It felt as if they’d been gone weeks.
Getting ahold of himself, Bud said, “Hey, you guys? Can I come in?”
“Yes, Bud.” That was Jim Bob, the little person.
“Yeah. Come in!” from Jack, the guy with no legs.
Martin welcomed him silently, an expectant smile on his face. Martin was the blind one and the one Bud had come to see. He was the strangest person Bud could imagine. Very small, five feet tall at most, and skinny and gray and gray-toothed, like the rest of them.
Bud didn’t realize how extraordinary Martin was until he had been around him for a couple days. The man was entrancing. He was a seer, a prophet, and infinitely valuable in this fragile community. Martin moved with a grace that Bud had only seen in Ellie, before she changed, and in Grandfather. He reminded him of Grandfather in a way that tugged at the hole inside Bud where Grandfather had been.
“I gotta make it brief today. I’m going off with Henry to get some more poles for the travois. You guys doin’ OK?”
They nodded and looked at him, knowing the real reason he had come.
“Good. Listen, Martin, keep an eye on Sam. Something’s got him. His legs are bad, but that isn’t it. I’m worried about him. Call me if you need me. I’m goin’ now before things get worse. I’ll be back before we need to make a move.”
Martin “looked” at him silently. He was in a rapture, Bud knew, like Grandfather. Living in a place that most people had no knowledge of and would scoff at if anyone tried to tell them about it.
Long hours later, he and Henry rode horses back into the camp. Each led a horse on both sides of his own, riding one and ponying two, as they would say on any ranch. All of the horses pulled as many poles to make travois as they could handle.
They’d had an adventure. Midway through cutting the trees, Bud’s blue beam quit, so they had to chop and trim the trees the old-fashioned way with axes and saws.
Bud had a feeling that he and Wes were on borrowed time with the beams and showier supernatural manifestations. When Grandfather used such tools at the Meeting or any of the “warriors only” events, they were the frosting, not the cake. Here, the Great One seemed to have given them more slack, probably because of the enormity of the task in front of them.
Bud felt edgy riding back. He kept hoping he and Wes would be allowed to go home “when they were finished.” But it was turning out that when they got one task done, more arose. “That’s the nature of life,” he said absentmindedly.
“What?” Henry responded.
“Oh, I’m just talking to myself. Seems like we do one thing, and more comes up.”
“That is the nature of life,” Henry replied. “Bud, what’s wrong with Sam?”
“His burns, for sure. But something else, too,” Bud said. “Lord, I wish I had Grandfather here. He always knew what to do. But, we’ll have to watch and see what happens.
“More than that,” Henry added. “I don’t like the feeling I’m getting around the camp, do you? Not between us, but with the place.”
“Yeah, I feel it, too,” Bud replied. “It’s like fallout, but I don’t think radioactive. Remember that explosion at the end of the battle? And the yellow cloud? I don’t know what caused those, but I think they’re part of this creeping crud that’s getting me down. And I don’t know about that cloud at all.”
“Me neither. But let’s not mention it around the camp. Let’s not make people nervous.”
56
“I think it was that doctor,” Lena said. “What do you think, Henry?”
“What are you talking about?” he said, straggling over to the campfire.
“What Jeremy found out this afternoon,” Lena explained. “He’s trying to charge up the batteries so the equipment will run. The solar power he’s got for the computer isn’t enough. He went over to the underground to see if any of the solar units could be used. They weren’t …”
“There’s this yellow powder all over everything,” Mel cut in. “I went over there with him. It’s toxic—both of us were nauseous in a few minutes. It’s not radioactive—he had his Geiger counter with him and checked it. But it’s harmful.”
“I bet it’s from the yellow cloud,” Henry said.
“That’s what we think,” Mel said. “Jeremy doesn’t know what it is, but we think that doctor did it.”
“Or is it,” Jeremy walked up and sat down. “Mom, didn’t you say that he seemed to melt after he died?”
“I don’t remember, Jeremy. All I remember is the fire coming out of his hand and Ellie stinging him. I’m going to check Sam.”
Grace left, but the discussion started up immediately afterward.
“What do you mean, is the doctor, Jeremy?” Henry asked.
“I think the explosion was him, maybe the reaction of an alien chemistry with our atmosphere, or maybe it was just what they do when they die.”
Bud joined them and sat down. He’d finished with the horses. He was staggering slightly with exhaustion. “Thought is very powerful, and will is more powerful. Grandfather used to say that. Whether it would make you melt and explode after dying and leave a poisonous mess, I don’t know.
“I do know that I’m more bushed than I’ve been in a long time and I have to start gentling horses for the travois tomorrow. I need help. My blue beam went dead while I was cutting trees. I need help in stripping the poles and everything else.”
“Well, I almost got my battery going this afternoon,” Jeremy said. “Tomorrow we’ll have to christen it.”
“What battery are you making, Jeremy?” Bud asked.
“It’s a urine-powered battery. They’ve been around for ages. I’ve got copper piping. Magnesium is in the fertilizer. I should be able to work something out tomorrow. Piss on it, bingo! Electricity.”
“A pee-powered battery?” Bud laughed.
“Sure. All you need for electricity is the interaction of acid and base. We’ve got ‘em. I’ll figure a way to harness the power,” Jeremy said. “Though it would be a lot easier if we could find where the extra solar panels were stored.
“The equipment barn we dug out isn’t the only one. The place was a village—a hundred people lived here. They had the stables, sheds, and warehouses. Houses. When I built the underground, I ordered extra solar panels. We were going to make the main house solar, too. But that didn’t happen …”
“I tried to find other barns, Jeremy,” Wesley said. He looked as bushed as everyone else. “I dug everywhere you said. I couldn’t find any other buildings
. And I think my blue beam’s about to quit, too.”
“Well, we should go to bed. We’re just depressing ourselves,” Lena said. “I want to take a look at the babies and then pass out.” She got up. “You know, at my grandparents’ farm, the big barn had storage sheds on each side. Did you think of that?”
Jeremy looked thunderstruck. “Of course! We’ll check tomorrow morning. But the pee battery will work though, I’m sure.”
57
First thing in the morning, Bud and Wes hopped on horses and rode over to the place where the battle had been. All that was left of the shelter was a flat crater; the whole thing had sunk into the earth. A stinking, yellow powder covered everything. It seemed to be heading directly toward their camp: An arm protruded from it as though the doctor was clawing his way over.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on this,” Bud said.
“It’s moving. Look!” Wes nodded his head in the direction of the arm. They could see it move. Wes shot his blue beams at the powder until he came up empty. “My blue beam just died.”
He had succeeded in blasting the arm’s edge back a couple of feet. It started moving again as they watched. Soon, it was farther than where it had started. It was only a twenty-minute walk from the underground to where they were camped. The crud was moving slowly, but inevitably. It was as though it had their scent.
Bud felt ill sitting on his horse. He could see that it targeted the people from the underground, Sam first and hardest, and then the others, babies first. It made everyone sick. Nauseated. Weak. Shaky. They needed to stop it.
But how? Wes’s blue beams had just slowed it down—and neither of them had that kind of Power any more.
That was what he’d been working on in his head all day. He had a plan that needed to be followed to the letter. And it would, he hoped.
“Let’s get back to the others,” Bud said, wheeling his mount.
