V 14 - The Oregon Invasion

by Jayne Tannehill (UC) (epub)

  Hadad rapped on the door.

  And then he heard the hover craft. He dove past the window and off into the woods and laser fire slashed across the door and the front of the house, trailed him across the vegetable garden, and bit into the trees behind him. He ran as scattered a course as he could manage, breaking his stride, cutting first to the left, then to the right. There was a culvert about a mile behind the station, and he dove into it and ran its length before moving back into the trees again.

  The hover craft pursued him, dove past him, circled back, and tried to cut him off. He doubled back, and then began to climb as the craft cut his path again.

  And then he tripped the snare. It was a simple woodsman’s trap, set for deer or coyote. The rope closed around his ankle and lifted him twenty feet into the air. And to the hover craft it must have seemed that he disappeared. The firing continued along the path he had been running, and then it stopped. The craft circled, and then it stopped, and then it moved away beyond the mountain, east past the village.

  He had heard Ruth scream his name as he ran past the window. He had to get back to her.

  He doubled his body up to the rope and then climbed, hand over hand, until he reached the branch. Once he had his other leg over the limb, he could untie his bound ankle.

  He climbed down the tree so that he could pull the snare with him. And carefully he reset it, using the same rocks that had held it before.

  When the snare was set, he walked back down the mountain, cutting straight across the firebreaks and gardens to the ranger’s house.

  The house was silent.

  Hadad climbed the stairs and knocked again.

  A man opened the door and stared at him, twisting his cheek as he examined Hadad’s torn face.

  “What do you want?”

  “Is Ruth here?”

  “No such luck. She went for a walk.”

  “Where does she walk?”

  “Same place we all do around here.” The man gestured toward the road. “Try the park.”

  The man closed the door, and Hadad looked to see where he had pointed. There was a path between the trees that led down to the road. He followed it. From there he could see a driveway leading from the highway down to the lake shore. He crossed the road and cut through the trees, down past the campsites, where boxes delineated territory and tents provided protection, and furnishings from homes long ago abandoned shaped the space between trees into a memory of something called home.

  There was a road between the campsites, and markers numbering the sites. He walked, trying not to disturb the walls of air that defined the privacy of each family, seeking in a passing glance the whereabouts of Ruth. She was not in the campground.

  He walked back along the trees that edged the long stretch of sand reaching down to the water’s edge. He searched the sand and found the only Earth ones. There was a mother and her son, about four years old, who were playing along the water’s edge. He passed them, walking east, reached the end of the campgrounds without finding Ruth, and turned back, retracing his steps along the tree-lined edges of the camps.

  He spotted her down beyond the bay that marked the end of state park sites, walking back from the boat ramp at the far west end of the beach. He stopped and watched her walking, knowing she could not see him.

  He watched as she watched the sand, then looked out at the water, ahead at trees, up at the sky, back to the sand at her feet. He moved out from the trees, out onto the sand, walking deliberately, slowly, toward her, unsure of how she would greet him, aware of the argument that worried her, knowing she did not know he had heard it. Knowing she did not know whether he had lived or had died as he ran from the hovercraft fire. He watched her, unaware of him, and he saw the moment she recognized him coming toward her. And then he had no doubts. In the moment of recognition she began to run toward him, and so he, too, ran, toward her.

  There were still yards between them when he heard the hover craft returning. It was behind him, and so he turned and ran back toward the forest, and the shots intended for him dug a trench in the hard sand. The craft passed, and he ran back to the sand and saw Ruth lying facedown beyond him.

  “Ruth!” He wailed her name, certain that she had been shot by the craft as it strafed the ground.

  He saw her get to her feet and he wailed again, this time in relief.

  And then he saw the craft was not turning. Out beyond the boat ramp, down between the narrowing canyon walls it continued, and then it opened fire.

  He had not traveled that end of the lake. But he had seen the other fingers, where water fed in flowing torrents toward the still, green waters, tumbled freely over rocks in waterfalls, gushed from mountain streams down to bridgeworthy rivers to fill this great chasm in the mountains. The rivers were rapid, the lake still and deep. At the far end there had to be a dam holding all of this in check.

  To his left, perhaps a hundred yards away, the four-year-old played in the water, his mother encouraging him to paddle to her, to swim.

  Hadad turned from Ruth and ran to the water’s edge. Now he ran faster than he had from the hover craft, faster than he had when pursued by Jerry, faster than he had in the dream. As he ran he heard the explosions—one, two, three, four—and then the slow rush of water began.

  He passed the mother and knocked her back onto the sand, but the child was already being pulled away from the shore. He dove into the water and swam with the suction out into the lake.

  The child dropped beneath the surface, and for a moment Hadad did not know where he was, and then he came up farther away. He swam faster and finally caught the boy. But the child was frightened, as much of him as of the sucking water, and he struggled to be free of the clenching hand that held him.

  Hadad could not swim against the pull of the water, and so he rode across the current and aimed for the boat ramp at the far end of the beach. The child no longer struggled, but the water was strong and tried to pull him away from the shore, out farther into the trench of water headed for the dam. He pulled against the water. The shore raced past. He could not reach the boat ramp. It was still too far to the right. Now he aimed for the trees between the ramp and the turn of the shore. First the nearest, and then when that seemed out of reach, the one beside it.

  He grabbed for the root of an oak just as the shore threatened to recede on the other side of the point. It held. And so he gripped it, and held to it as the water dragged across his body, down his arm, pulling on the child he held with his other hand. The boy’s head bobbed beneath the surface. He had not resisted for so many yards, Hadad feared that he had drowned as he had pulled him through the water. He tried now to pull the child to him, but the water held them stretched from the shore.

  And then the water receded from the shallows and the two swimmers lay upon the wet sand.

  Hadad pulled the child to him and laid him across his leg, rhythmically he pressed the water from the boy’s stomach, and then he turned him to himself and put his mouth over the boy’s mouth and breathed into him. His hands felt the pressure points in the back of the boy’s neck and on his chest. There was energy there, weak but present, and so Hadad pressed on the vital points and drew the energy of Zon down into the life of the child.

  Chapter 16

  The boy opened his eyes as his mother and Ruth reached them on the sand.

  “Oh, Johnny, oh, how can I thank you, oh, thank God you’re all right, how can I thank you, oh, my God.” The words washed over them as the mother gathered up the child and held him to her. Her feet were bleeding where they had been cut on the stones she’d crossed running to them, but she didn’t notice.

  The craft had continued firing as Hadad had struggled for shore. He had heard the explosions. He did not know what they had meant. There had not been time to consider what they might have meant. Now, as the emergency drew away from his awareness, there was left the curiosity, the concern.

  He felt Ruth’s hands on his arm. He wanted now the greeting that he had missed sho
rt minutes before, but it was not there. She tugged at his arm and shouted though he was there beside her.

  “They will be back. We have to get off the beach. Get up. Don’t just sit there. Don’t you see; they will be back any minute. Get up. Please get up.”

  The words did not hold meaning. His body was tired. His being ached for solace. But the urgency in her voice drove him to his feet. She was there. They were together. And now, as on the road in Vida, he trusted without question.

  They ran across the widening sand. She urged him to run faster, but the weariness was pouring through his body and the trees seemed distant and unreachable.

  “Come back. You must let me thank you. You must let me do something. I don’t even know your name. How can I thank you?” the mother of the child shouted after them. Hadad turned back at her cry and saw her, holding the child, out behind the line of trees, out alone, a promontory against the rushing water.

  “Hadad, run.”

  “Ruth, I can’t.”

  “You must. Don’t talk. Just run.”

  And then he saw the source of her concern.

  The hover craft came back up the shore line. It flew low and slowly, giving the pilot plenty of time to search the edges of the forest for movement, for any sign of him.

  The woman was still shouting at him, still clutching her child and shouting for him to return. He could no longer hear her shouts, no longer hear anything but the drone of the craft. And movement, all movement, appeared to slow and distort into nightmare, for there was nothing he could do.

  He shouted.

  “No” wrenched from him, torn from the sinews of his back, from the tendons of his legs, from the marrow of his spine.

  He saw the light as the weapons on the ship fired.

  He saw the moment move toward him as if it were a tangible thing moving through space.

  He saw the woman’s face as death reached her, though she was too far behind them now for any clarity to be possible. He saw it clearly as the agony spread through her. He saw the despair engulf her. And then he realized that the child she carried was already dead. And he watched as she fell lifeless on the sand.

  He ran.

  Ruth was a few steps ahead of him. They crossed the boat ramp and ran into the trees. The craft traced

  with fire the path they had run.

  Again he was running. The scattered limbs from trees, the leaves of bushes, worn dirt paths, and hard black road surfaces seemed unreal to him. Again he was running. It would be so easy to stop, to give in to the death that pursued him.

  The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.

  It would serve The Leader for him to die. He could so easily just step out onto the sand and wait for death.

  “Run, Hadad.” Ruth’s voice pulled at him from the road ahead.

  The Leader’s is the cause for which I would die . . .

  “Hadad, come on.”

  The cause for which ... so passively. . . so passively.

  “Run, will you? Hadad, please!”

  Not the right words, no, what were the right words?

  “Over here, lady.”

  “We can’t stop.”

  “He’s in no shape to run. Get in the camper. They can’t see you through those trees. I’ll say you ran past. Get him in here. He’s about to drop.”

  There were rough hands on his left arm, soft ones on his right. Steps rose under his feet and there were metal strips that brushed his shoulders and then it was warmer yet than the air warmed by the sun and then there was softness on his cheek and then he no longer stood upon the world.

  Darkness. Red-brown darkness.

  A key turned in a lock.

  Not the right words.

  Pressure moved over his body like liquid. Orange consuming darkness.

  Say the words and I’ll make all the fire go away. Say the words. Say the words. Say the words. Say the words.

  “Oh, my God, they’re landing.”

  Say the words . . . not the right words . . . say the words . . . not the right words ... the right words . . . the right words.

  A helmet fit down over his head. It was soft and clung to his temples. His body was tossed into the void and fell down, down, down to the yellow pit of darkness.

  You are to be a king ... a king ... a king . . . and Jeffrey will always be at your right hand . . . hand . . . hand.

  Something pulled his left arm away from his body and stretched it out into space. It floated from him, never leaving him, extending out into swirls of space, of water, of space, of water, clutching the child bobbing beneath the water.

  “No, open your hand, put it through here.” Clutching the child.

  “Hadad, open your hand. Please do as I say.”

  Do as I say the words . . . not the right words ... as I say ... as I say.

  Something opened his hand and the child slipped away in the water, and his arm moved through a silky tunnel into space and the tunnel folded down around him, covering his shoulders so that his arm and body were no longer there in space. Only his hand was there in space, in the yellow space. Only his hand and his head in the tight, soft helmet floated in the yellow pit of space.

  “Spread out. They have to be here somewhere. Search the campsites. You. Is this your camper?” “There’s no one in there but my wife. She’s ill.” “Open the door.”

  “She’s a sick woman.”

  “Open the door.”

  “I can’t let you disturb her.”

  Explosion ripped the yellow space and triangular chips of yellow cut into the tunnel that covered his body. Man-scream ripped the darkness and he fell forward through the seam of space into clutching, binding, mottled greenness.

  He moaned.

  “Shhhhhhhh.”

  Steam filled the green darkness.

  Gears ground as the steam surrounded him and the fabric of space shook.

  “It’s locked.”

  “Shoot the lock.”

  Lightning flashed across the mottled green canopy of space and became a net of lace that closed around him, moving toward him to cover him, his head, his hands, his face, with green-white lace.

  “What a stench in there.”

  “Check it out.”

  “Just his wife there in the bed, like he said.”

  “I said check it out.”

  Hammers pounded on the crystallized lace around his head and broke it into shards.

  “I’ve had enough of human stink. There’s nobody here.”

  “Try the next one.”

  The gap in space closed with a click. And air escaped from a valve beside him and the green balloon of space closed around him, covering him in tight, binding green rubber. Something pulled the rubber away from his face, stripped it back from his body, pulled the helmet from his head, took the tunnel from his arm and torso, stripped away all that held him, and lifted his body up into the light-blue darkness.

  “Hadad?”

  Explosions became small stars in the light-blue firmament. And as they streaked across the sky they

  wailed, falling through to nothingness, evaporating in the blue.

  “Oh, my God, they’re shooting up the camp. They are killing everyone. Oh, Hadad.”

  You will be a king. And your name will be Hadad. For you will rebuild the city of Pau and the people of Earth will follow you as they did the great king of the desert. And you will teach them the truths of The Leader. The Leader teaches surrender. The Leader teaches acceptance of his ways. The Leader teaches obedience to his plan. You will witness to the people of Earth that all life comes from The Leader. The hand of The Leader is everywhere. Now, Gclixtchp, say the words of the covenant: The Leader’s in the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill. Say the words.

  “No.” The word reverberated through the blue universe and echoed in the cells of his body.

  Something descended through the blue, closer, closer. It pressed down upon hi
s chest, moved down toward his face, and then touched only his lips. Space itself kissed him and yielded up itself to him in its resplendent cobalt-blue, star-studded wonder.

  “I love you, Hadad.”

  “Zon teaches compassion. ” The voice came from the fullness of the cosmos. ‘‘Speak the words of the covenant, my son. ” The voice permeated all that was; and the voice within him responded slowly, deliberately, confidently: Zon is the cause for which I would die, but there is no cause for which I would kill.

  He floated then among the stars. There were explosions around him as stars were born and died. Sirens wailed as comets swung through solar rings, and shots crackled as starchildren went supernova—the cosmic celebration of the Lords of Light.

  Hadad opened his eyes. Ruth sat beside him, looking at him. He was not certain where he was. There were brown metal walls around him; he lay in a bed; clothes were scattered around the room, clothes he had never seen before. Beyond the metal walls men ran through the forests. He could hear them as they passed. There were shots and shouts.

  “Behind you!” Another shot.

  “Okay, cover me!” A barrage of rifle fire.

  “Over here.” The whistle of approaching death. The choke of pain, of injury.

  “They got me, Ron. You take over. Drive them back to that ship of theirs.”

  “Ail right, men. Push ’em back.”

  Heavy fire. Running.

  More.

  And then the whine of the hover craft.

  And then the silence.

  Boots thudded on the ground as the rangers moved back from the beach into the campground.

  “We’re gonna need the bulldozer to clean up this mess. Bob, take Jack back to the station. See to his leg, then get the dozer and bring it down here. We might as well bury this place; there’s bodies all over. Shit. Okay, men. Let’s see if we’ve got any survivors.” “Ruth, what has happened?” Hadad spoke very quietly.

  “The Visitors attacked the camp.”

  “They were looking for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Earth ones?”

  “The campers are dead.”