Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Dennis picked up the ax and hung it over one shoulder with the blade facing backward and the beard and helve holding it in place. Eilir was frightened but excited; she took a light hatchet and long knife to hang from her own belt.

  Her mother felt only a heavy dread.

  "It'll still look intimidating as hell, if we get into any more … trouble. God forbid! Anyway, I used to do some of this stuff," Dennis said. "And I've got friends who do it steady—you do too, don't you?"

  "Chuck Barstow," Juniper said. "You met him last Samhain, remember? His wife Judy's the Maiden of my coven."

  Dennis nodded. "Hope to hell he turns up. I may remember enough to give you a few pointers. And damn, but we're better off than those poor bastards on the 747!"

  "Amen," Juniper said.

  She winced for a second; if this whatever-it-was had happened all over the world, there would be tens of thousands in the air, or down in submarines, or … Her mind shied away from the thought; it was simply too big.

  "Focus on the moment," she muttered to herself as they went out into the front room of the tavern, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Ground and center, ground and center."

  Then: "Dennie, what the hell are you doing? I thought money wouldn't be worth anything?"

  The heavyset man had opened the till, scooping the bills into the pockets of his quilted jacket; then he ducked into the manager's office and returned with the cash box. He grinned at her.

  "Yeah, Juney—it won't be worth anything soon. I want to look up an old friend on our way out of town."

  "Friend?"

  "More of a business acquaintance. He runs a sporting-goods store, and sells grass on the side. Actually, he sells pretty much anything that comes his way and isn't too risky, which is why I'm betting he'll open up special when I wave some bills at him. If he were really a friend, I'd feel guilty about this, but as it is … "

  * * * *

  Chuck Barstow stopped his bicycle by the side of the road and touched his face lightly as he panted. The glass cuts weren't too bad, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped—he'd been able to dive behind the desk when the 727 plowed into the runway about a thousand yards away. Despite the chilly March night he was sweating, and it stung when it hit the cuts.

  He looked over his shoulder. Highway 99 ran arrow-straight southeast from Eugene Airport. It was nearly eight o'clock, and the fires behind him had gotten worse, if anything. The streetlights were all out, but the giant pyres where the jets had dropped towered into the sky, and were dwarfed in turn where one had plowed into the tank farm where the fuel was stored. He could see the thin pencil of the control tower silhouetted against the fire, and then it seemed to waver and fall.

  I was there. Right there in that tower. Twenty minutes ago, he thought, coughing at the heavy stink of burnt kerosene.

  The highway was full of cars and trucks, both ways. Many of them had crashed, still moving at speed when engines and lights and power steering died together, and a few were burning. There were bodies laid out on the pavement, and people trying to give first aid to the hurt. More were trudging towards Eugene, but there was nothing except fire-lit darkness towards the city, either.

  He could hear curses, screams, there two men slugging at each other, here two more helping an injured third along with his arms over their shoulders. A state trooper with blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead stood by his car with the microphone in his hand, doggedly pressing the send button and giving his call sign and asking for a response that never came.

  "Chuck," Andy Trethar said from behind him. "Chuck, we've got to keep going. They'll all be waiting for us at the store."

  Before he could reply, a stranger spoke: a tall dark heavyset man in an expensive business suit, looking to be two decades older than Chuck's twenty-seven.

  "How much for the bicycle?" he said, looking between them. "I have to get to the airport immediately."

  "Mister, it's not for sale," Chuck said shortly. "I need it to get back to my wife and daughter. And the airport's a giant barbeque, anyway."

  "I'm prepared to give you a check for a thousand, right now," the man said.

  "I said, not for sale," Chuck said, preparing to get going again. "Not at any price."

  "Two thousand."

  Chuck shook his head wordlessly and got ready to step on the pedal. Judy would be worried, and Tamsin could sense moods like a cat—the girl was psychic, even at three years old.

  Powerful God, Goddess strong and gentle, they should have been at the store long before six fifteen. They'll all be there and safe. Please!

  The fist came from nowhere, and he toppled backward and hit the pavement with an ooff! Pain shot through him as the bicycle collapsed on top of him.

  Someone tried to pull it away from him, and he clung to it in reflex. He also blinked his eyes open, forcing himself to see. Andy was pulling the heavyset man back by the neck of his jacket; the man turned and punched again, knocking Chuck's slightly built friend backward.

  Some of Chuck Barstow's coreligionists were pacifists. He wasn't; in fact, he'd been a bouncer for a while, a couple of years ago when he was working his way through school. He was also a knight in the SCA, an organization that staged mock medieval combats as realistic as you could get without killing people. His daytime job as a gardener for Eugene Parks and Recreation demanded a lot of muscle too.

  His hand snaked out and got a grip on the ankle of the man in the suit. One sharp yank brought him down yelling, and Chuck lashed out with a foot. That connected with the back of the man's head, and his yells died away to a mumble.

  Sweating, aching, Chuck hauled himself to his feet; they pushed their bicycles back into motion and hopped on, feet pumping. The brief violence seemed to have cleared his head, though: He could watch the ghastly scenes that passed by without either blocking them out or going into a fugue.

  In fact …

  "Stop!" he said, as they reached Jefferson from Sixth.

  "What for?" Andy said, looking around, but he followed his friend's lead.

  "Andy, we've got to think a bit. This isn't going to get better unless … whatever changed changes back. And I've got this awful feeling it won't."

  They were in among tall buildings now, and it was dark—a blacker dark than either of them had ever known outdoors. Occasional candle-gleams showed from windows, or the ruddier hue of open flame where someone had lit a fire in a Dumpster or trash barrel. The sounds of the city were utterly different—no underlying thrum of motors, but plenty of human voices, a distant growling brabble, and the crackle of fire. The smell of smoke was getting stronger by the minute.

  "Why shouldn't it change back?".

  "Why should it? Apart from us wanting it to."

  Andy swallowed; even in the darkness, his face looked paler. "Goddess, Chuck, if it doesn't change back … "

  Andy and Diana Trethar owned a restaurant that doubled as an organic food store and bakery.

  "We get a delivery once a week—today, Wednesday. With no trucks—"

  "—or trains, or airplanes, or motorbikes, even."

  "What will happen when everything's used up?"

  "We die," Chuck said. "If the food can't get to us, we die—unless we go to the food."

  "Just wander out of town?" Andy said skeptically. "Chuck, most farmers need modern machinery just as much—"

  "I know. But at least there would be some chance. As long as we could take enough stuff with us." Chuck nodded to himself and went on: "Which is why we're going to swing by the museum."

  "What?"

  "Look," he said. "Cars aren't working, right?" A nod. "Well, what's at the museum right now?"

  Andy stared at him for a moment; then, for the first time since six fifteen, he began to smile.

  "Blessed be. 'Oregon's Pioneer Heritage: A Living Exhibit.' "

  * * * *

  The restaurant's window had the Closed sign in it, but the door opened at the clatter of hooves and the two men's
shouts. Chuck smiled and felt his scabs pull as Judy came to the door, a candle in her hand—one thing you were certainly going to find at a coven gathering was plenty of candles. She gaped at the two big Conestoga wagons, but only for a moment: That was one of the things he loved about her, the way she always seemed to land on her mental feet.

  "We need help," he said. "We've got to get these things out back."

  His wife was short and Mediterranean-dark and full-figured to his medium-tall lankiness and sandy-blond coloring; she flung herself up onto the box of the wagon and kissed him. He winced, and she gave a sharp intake of breath as she turned his face to what light the moon gave.

  "I'll get my bag," she said; her daytime occupation was registered nurse and midwife.

  "Looks worse than it is," he said. "Just some superficial cuts—and a guy slugged me, which is why the lips are sore. Patch me later. How's Tamsin?"

  "She's fine, just worried. Asleep, right now."

  Things had already changed; yesterday his injuries would have meant a doctor. Now everyone ignored them, as they helped him get the horses down the laneway. Putting down feed and pouring water into buckets took a few moments more. The horses were massive Suffolk Punch roans that weighed a ton each; placid and docile by nature, but the noises and scents they'd endured had them nervous, eyes rolling, sweating and tossing their heads. He was glad there was a big open lot behind the loading dock; the wagons took up a lot of room, and eight of the huge draught beasts took even more.

  Andy and Diana had bought this place cheap, converting a disused warehouse into MoonDance, the latest of Eugene's innumerable organic food store cum café places. The extra space in the rear of the building meant that the Coven of the Singing Moon also had a convenient location for Esbats. At least when they couldn't take the time to go up to Juniper's place; it was beautiful there, but remote, which was why they generally only went for the Sabbats— the eight great festivals of the Year's Wheel.

  The familiarity was almost painful as he ducked under one of the partially raised loading doors. The back section was still all bare concrete and structural members, unlike the homey-funky decor of the cafe area at the front; it was even candlelit, as it usually was for the rites. The carpet covering the Circle and the Quarter Signs was down, though. Shadows flickered on the high ceiling, over crates and cartons and shrink-wrapped flats with big stacks of bagged goods on them. The air was full of a mealy, dusty, appetizing smell—flour and dried fruit and the ghost of a box of jars of scented oil someone had let crash on the floor last year, all under the morning's baking.

  He counted faces. Eight adults. Children mostly asleep, off in the office room they usually occupied during the ceremonies.

  "Jack? Carmen? Muriel?" he said, naming the other members.

  "They didn't show up," Judy said. She was the coven's Maiden, and kept track of things. "We thought we shouldn't split up, the way things are out there."

  He nodded emphatically. The adults all gathered around. Chuck took a deep breath: "Rudy's dead."

  More shocked exclamations, murmured blessed be's, and gestures. He'd been well liked, as well as High Priest.

  "All of you, it … His plane was only a hundred feet up. It just … fell. There were a dozen jets in the air, and all of them just … the engines quit. The whole airport went up in flames in about fifteen minutes. I was in the control tower, Wally lets me, you know? And I barely made it out. I did get a good view north—it's not just the city's blacked out, everything is out. As far as I could see, and you can see a good long way from there. Everything stopped at exactly the same moment."

  Everyone contributed their story; Dorothy Rose had seen a man trying to use a shotgun to stop looters. That sent Diana scurrying for the Trethar household-protection revolver, and then for the separately stored ammunition, which took a while because she'd forgotten where she put it. Everyone stared in stupefaction at the results when she fired it at a bank of boxed granola.

  They talked on into the night, in the fine old tradition. At last Chuck held up a hand; sitting around hashing things out until consensus was wonderful, not to mention customary, but they had to act now or not at all.

  I wish Juney was here. She was always better than anyone else at getting this herd of cats moving in the same direction; she could jolly them along and get them singing, or something.

  "Look, I really hope things will be normal tomorrow. Even though that means I'll be fired and maybe arrested, because I flashed my Parks and Recreation credentials and took all that Living History stuff from that poor custodian—he was the only one who hadn't bugged out in a panic. But if it isn't normal tomorrow, Judy and Tamsin"— he nodded towards the room where the children were sleeping—"and me, and Andy and Diana and their Greg are heading out. I'd love for you all to come with me. You mean a lot to us."

  "Out where?" someone asked. "Why?"

  "Why? I told you; there are a quarter of a million people in the Eugene metro area. If this goes on, in about a month, maybe less, this city's going to be eating rats—do you want your kids in that? The ones who survive are going to be the ones who don't sit around waiting for someone to come and make things better—unless they do get back to normal, but I'm not going to bet my daughter's life on it. As to where … "

  He leaned forward. "One thing's for sure. Juniper isn't driving in tonight from Corvallis for an Esbat. I'll bet you anything you want to name she's going to get the same idea as me: head for her place in the hills."

  "Oh, Goddess," Diana Trethar said. "She won't know about Rudy!"

  Chuck's voice was grim. "She'll be able to guess, I think." He pointed northeast. "We can wait things out there— live there a long time, if we have to. We'll leave a message for the people who didn't show; a hint at where we're going and what we think is happening. Look, these wagons can haul something like six tons each … "

  * * * *

  Interlude I:

  The Change

  Portland, Oregon

  March 31st, 1998

  Emiliano knew the way to the Central Library on Tenth Street, although he wouldn't have wanted his pandilleros to know about it—bookworm wasn't a title a man in his position could afford. He'd still come here now and then to find out things he needed to know, though never before with his crew swaggering at his back.

  Ruddy light blinked back from the spearheads of the men standing along the roadway. There was plenty—not only from the huge fires consuming the city eastward across the river and smaller ones nearby, but from wood burning in iron baskets hung from the streetlamps; the air was heavy with the acrid throat-hurting smell of both, enough to make him cough occasionally, and the flames reflected back from the heavy pall of smoke and cloud overhead.

  The fighting men directing foot traffic and clumped before the library entrance got his pandilleros' respectful attention; his Lords were equipped with what they'd been able to cobble together since the Change, but these were a different story altogether. Half the guards had a uniform outfit of seven-foot spears, big kite-shaped shields painted black with a cat-pupiled eye in red, helmets and knee-length canvas tunics sewn with metal scales. The other half carried missile weapons, crossbows and hunting bows from sporting goods stores.

  And hanging from the two big trees in front of the entrance were—

  "Holy shit, man," someone said behind him, awe in the tone.

  There was enough light to recognize faces; a stocky middle-aged woman with flyaway black hair, and a big burly black male.

  Enough light to recognize faces even with the distortion of the cargo hooks planted under their jaws; it was the mayor and the chief of police—Cat and the Moose, as they were known on the street.

  Emiliano swallowed, and Dolores clutched at his arm; he shook her off impatiently, but still licked his lips. He'd killed more than once, and gotten away with it—his time inside had been for other things—but this left him feeling a little scared, like the ground was shifting under his feet. That was nothing new since the Change
, but he could sense the same fears running through his men, sapping their courage, making them feel small.

  And nobody makes the Lords feel small! Aloud, he went on: "Hey, they got a real jones on for people who let their books get overdue here, chicos!"

  The tension broke in laughter; even some of the guards smiled, briefly.

  "And maybe now we know why nobody's heard much from that Provisional Government last couple of days."

  The bodies hadn't begun to smell much; Portland was fairly cool in March, and anyway the stink from the fires burning out of control across most of the city hid a lot. The raw sewage pouring into the river didn't help, either.

  So, I'm impressed, Emiliano thought. But these hijos need us, or we wouldn't have been invited.

  The guards at the entrance carried long ax-spike-hook things like some he'd seen on TV occasionally. All of the guards had long blades at their waists, machetes or actual swords. He blinked consideringly at those, as well. His first impulse was to laugh, but his own boys were carrying fire axes and baseball bats themselves, and possibly …

  Yeah, I see the point, he thought. The points and the edges!

  "You're the jefe of the Lords, right?" one of the guards asked.

  "Si," Emiliano said.

  With two dozen armed men at his back, the gang chief could afford to be confident. But not too confident. The cooking smells from inside made his stomach rumble, even with the whiff from the corpses. They'd been eating, but not well, particularly just lately. Everything in the coolers and fridges had gone bad, and he hadn't had fresh meat since last Friday.

  "Pass on up, then. You and three others. The staff will bring food out to the rest of your men there."

  He pointed his ax-thing … halberd, that's the word … towards trestle tables set out along the sidewalks. Emiliano made a brusque gesture over his shoulder, and the rest of his bangers went that way apart from Dolores and his three closest advisors; he figured that with Cat and the Moose swinging above them on hooks, nobody was going to get too macho.

  He sauntered up the stairs; the light got brighter, big lanterns hanging from the entranceway arches, making up for the dead electric lights inside.