by Chuck Rogers
I stared as he set the tricorder back in the garbage barrel.
He circled his hand for his team to extract. They embarked the bird and joined their brethren in the sky. The flight of Blackhawks fell into formation and flew out of the valley the way they'd came.
I sat in my hide. I watched Agoura burn.
Very slowly a small, unsteady stream of surviving SOG began to stagger north for the freeway. I waited an hour until the last one disappeared up Cornell Road. I waited until high noon.
This was a very bad idea.
Going down into the Valley of Death again in broad daylight was absolutely not part of Plan B.
I went down into the valley. Full Recon mode. I ghosted my way down to the graveyard. I ghosted my way to Alice's house. I let myself in. I ate an apple. I observed the garbage can with my binoculars.
I tried to figure their angle.
Did they have a satellite watching it? Could they lance me from space? Was whatever had dropped the cluster-bombs orbiting Agoura from on high? For that matter the tricorder was big enough to house an explosive charge that could end me. Then again, if the device had a self-destruct setting why hadn't the Men-In-Black triggered it the moment they'd lost possession?
In the end I went down into camp.
The carnage was nothing short of horrendous. Bodies everywhere. Body parts everywhere. The ravens and the turkey vultures were arriving en mass.
Here and there coyotes began boldly coming out of the trees in broad daylight.
Flies swarmed in the heat of mid-day.
Scores of critically injured men and women moaned, crying out for their mothers, Ged, or water. I didn't have the ammo to put them out of their misery.
Several called out, begging me for help as I passed.
One badly burned guy's eyes popped out of his head.
"Frame! Oh fuck you! Fuck you, Frame!"
"Frame . . ."
I heard my name moaned from several directions. Then the dying and the damned began moaning my name in litany.
"Frame . . . Frame . . . Frame . . ."
This was a bad idea.
I jogged to the barrel, squatted on my heels ten meters away and watched it for a good ten minutes.
Not surprisingly, it didn't do anything.
Nothing for it.
I reached into the barrel and took out the tricorder.
It was powered on.
A chat window sat open in the top right hand corner of the screen.
Well played Sergeant Frame.
Jesus . . .
Fucking . . .
Christ.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Santa Muerte is just all right with me . . .
I TURNED THE TRICORDER OFF.
What had I expected?
They literally were the men in the Black Helicopters. The bread and butter of every conspiracy theorist worth their tin hat. They probably really did serve our Reptilian overlords, Cthulhu or Bigfoot.
Of course they knew who I was.
That didn't make it any less creepier than hell. The good news was that while I shook off the heebie-jeebies, Frame's battle-brain was still working. UH-60 Blackhawks. Ground attack load-out of rockets and guns. No refueling probes and not carrying external fuel tanks. Let's call that a combat radius of about 600 klicks. If my mental map app was correct that meant they could have come from as far north as the Bay Area, southern Nevada, western Arizona and probably even a little southwest corner of Utah.
That assumed they weren't operating off something large floating out in the Pacific or had a secret, underground UFO base on the Catalina Islands.
I just wasn't going to track them down today.
Speaking of tracking.
I looked long and hard at the tricorder. I sure as hell wasn't going to message them back but clearly they wanted me to have it. I'd conned the Men-In-Black into a full air-cavalry assault on the SOG. They knew who I was, and now I was a person of interest. Take it from a career criminal. Not a good thing to be.
I did a short search but there was no sign of Ged or Marrs. I made the mistake of walking past the rubble of the pool house and the smoking ruin of the Fuck Tent.
Semi-naked, burned and blasted men and women lay strew about, and others, dressed but not in SOG leather and denim.
I'd killed slaves.
Well, the Men-In-Black had killed them.
But I'd called in the airstrike.
Of course there were moaning and dying survivors.
Ted's voice echoed in my head.
"How many innocent people are you going to kill Frame?"
Well, Ted?
The SOG had an army.
You had Weapon Frame.
Thank the deity of your forefathers that this cup passed from you.
I had the Saint of the Holy Death on my side and last time I saw she was nodding in approval.
I still felt like throwing up.
And I still wasn't done.
I heard motorcycle noise to the north. A lot of it, and it was the snarl of cross-country bikes rather than the thunder of cruisers or hogs. The SOG was finally sending some people to get a SITREP.
It was time to go.
For good or ill, I put the tricorder in my backpack.
I Recon'ed my way back up and over the hill. As I crested I took a long scan of the park floor. I saw the SOG helicopter laying on its side with its cabin blackened and torn open. I'd wondered where it was. It looked like a missile hit rather than gunfire. The SOG would still have scouting elements in the valley. Though now Colin and his range riders could hunt them with impunity.
I made my way back to the truck.
The dosimeter told me she was still red hot with cosmic radiation. I wondered how much longer the suit would block it. Of all my dubious options the unknown seemed the best. I took a chance.
Wagons east young Frame.
I swung way wide through the park towards Los Angeles. I had no idea what I might be heading into the but the little town of Calabasas was up in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley and a whole hell of a lot of it was open space. I crossed the Ventura Freeway at night with NVG's but I was still scared shitless.
My luck held. It appeared the SOG's great eastern gate was not much past Agoura Hills proper. I kept swinging north through the rolling hills and up into the mountains. I travelled only at night, on back roads and slow. I'd never been up here before but I had Rand McNally on my phone and after only three days I was in Simi Valley.
Wearing the suit became increasingly unbearable.
The second air-supply failed.
I looked out from a peak of the Simi Hills.
Valhalla was lit up like Christmas on the hilltop across from me.
Until the beam, Simi Valley had gotten most of its water from the California State Water Project. The water was pumped from way up north out of the deltas of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. This is Southern California. We've been stealing Northern California's water for over a century.
People got killed over that back in the day. Guns, dynamite, water "range wars," the whole bit.
Long story short, water from the north comes through a series of aqueducts and reservoirs and flows through Simi Valley. At the edge of the valley the lines fill Bard Lake. Bard Lake keeps the taps flowing through Thousand Oaks and adjacent municipalities.
Depending where you were at, the California State Water Project had failed the first day or three after the beam. People who still had water pressure had private sources or their community's water towers still had something in them. Not surprisingly, the SOG had seized Bard Lake, Sinaloa Lake, and made several attempts on Malibou Lake.
In post-apocalyptic California, he who controls Adam's ale, controls life.
After all the flooding the reservoirs were full, but you had to come visit them with a bucket, and no one but God would be refilling them anytime soon.
However, I'd done my homework during my week of recuperation in Valhalla.
Simi Valley also got a small share of its water from a couple of local groundwater wells, and they had their own little pumping stations. The SOG had the wherewithal to keep those going for the moment.
That's how Valhalla got its water.
That's how they were going to be Plan-B fucked by Frame.
I was itching all over and my groin was starting to feel stirrings.
The suit had never been designed for such extended use. A couple hours in the hot zone and then thorough decontamination and maintenance.
The suit was failing.
I needed to get this done.
I drove east through Simi Valley's suburban streets. Most of it had burned. What hadn't had been looted long ago. I took Tapo Canyon Road up into Tapo Canyon and soon enough saw the lights of the little pumping station. A fire road presented itself so I pulled off, assembled the ramp and rolled the dirt bike down. I rolled the bike out of range and had to resist the urge to tear the suit off like wrapping paper. It stank. I stank, and I was starting to manifest every moon rock radiation symptom. Only not like the happy, punch-drunk and priapritic episode after rapey-bear.
I felt light-headed.
I felt sick.
Didn't matter. One-way mission, and I'd be good and God damned if I was going to burn and turn. I had an 'Old self-Yeller' bullet with my name on it for when the time came. I pulled on my Ged gear and rolled on the pumping station.
It wasn't much, just the machine shack and a concrete slab with some exposed pipes, valves and the well cap. The standard, government, ten-foot, chain-link fence with three strands of barbed wire at the top guarded the perimeter. A flatbed with three, 60-kilowatt mobile field generators and a pick-up sized, airport ground fuel truck kept the station going. Two hogs and a pretty beat-up Subaru Forrester sat parked outside the fence.
The door to the shack was open. Light spilled out.
I pulled up to the gate and cut the engine.
A big mutton-chopped member with a shotgun ran out.
It was Chop. "Dude!"
I got off my bike. I was all wide-brimmed hat and shadow beneath the sky show. I threw in shoulder hunch, a limp and put a croak in my voice. "Fucking Frame."
"How bad is it?"
"Bad. Marrs thinks he may be coming for the water supply next."
"Fucking fucker!" Chop took out a key for the gate. "Special place in hell!"
Chop froze. I could literally see the whites of his eyes as he suddenly knew.
I showed him the muzzle of the suppressed Ruger. "Open the gate, Chop. I'll let you live."
Chop took way to long deciding. He suddenly took in a deep breath. I shot him twice in the chest. He got out one word. "Lee--!"
I shot him twice in the face.
Leatha came running out of the shack. It was a goddamn reunion at the pumping station. She was wearing a vest. She was a member. I took the Ruger in both hands. "Freeze!"
Leatha went for her Glock.
She took three in the chest and spun back for the shack. She took three more in the back and my headshot sparked off the door jam. Leatha fell inside.
The Ruger clicked back on a smoking, empty chamber.
I slapped in my spare magazine and waited.
Crickets.
My hands were shaking. Shooting a lock with anything less than a twelve gauge is a good way to jam that lock shut forever. I waited five minutes. I threw my vest over the barbed wire and climbed. Then I don't know what happened. I've cleared more fences than you've had hot dinners.
I was sick.
I was weak.
I got dizzy.
I fell.
I didn't even have the wherewithal to fall on the other side of the fence. I did not fall correctly.
Flat on my back and every ounce of air blasted out of my lungs.
I lay gasping like a landed fish.
Shoes crunched in the gravel.
The Ruger was underneath me.
Falling on it had been a real bitch.
A flashlight beam hit me in the face.
I squinted into the light as someone decided my fate. I raised a limp right hand and waved. "Hi."
A man spoke. "You must be that Frame fella."
"You must be the station attendant."
The voice was vaguely offended. "That kinda has a can I check your oil feel to it?
I played a hunch. "I've come to set you free."
"I've heard you called a lot of things. Abraham Lincoln ain't one of them."
"Honestly? I have fifty gallons of radioactive moon dust down the road. I was gonna pour it in the well and watch what happens."
"Holy shit."
"I know. Ain't I a stinker?"
"Holy shit."
"Can I get up?"
"Okay."
Getting up was way too difficult. I had to grab chain-link to do it.
"What's your name?"
"Mortie."
Mortie found Chop's keys. My eyes adjusted. Mortie appeared to be a middle-aged, Asian guy wearing civvies that hung on him like he'd recently lost weight.
"What's your claim to fame?"
"Well, when the SOG finds a bunch of survivors, they cull out the ones they think might make member, the attractive women, and the ones they're going to put to work as field hands. The rest they put on their knees and ask 'What can you do?'
"What can you do?"
"Civil engineer."
"You arranged the water supply for Valhalla."
"My family gets two meals a day and a cabin nearby."
Mortie opened the gate and I followed him into the shack.
Leatha lay face down. Other than leaking copiously she wasn't moving. I felt kind of bad about that. The pump station wasn't much. Just a table, a couple of chairs and a cooler. The rest of the shack was a green metal box the size of an SUV with control panels.
Mortie stared at me in the light. "Jesus."
"I know. I look like shit."
"No, you look bad. You're pale as a ghost. You're sweating buckets." Mortie looked at me askance. "Your nose is bleeding."
I scraped my wrist across my upper lip. Bright red and not just a smear. It dripped down my arm. It was dripping down my face. I suddenly tasted the copper in mouth and the back of my throat. It took a supreme effort not to vomit.
"Yeah, but how's my hair?"
"I'm Japanese, and even I would kill for a head of black hair like that."
"Listen, I think I'm dying of cosmic radiation poisoning. You don't want to be anywhere near those buckets. I think you should probably limit your exposure to me, and if I don't die you sure as hell don't want to be around when I turn. So, in your expert opinion. How do I do this?"
Mortie explained it to me.
In short, this was a well in the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains. The water came from the earth. Save for some healthful minerals it was about as pure as it got. You could have minted money bottling the stuff but this was Southern California and the environmentally concerned citizens of Simi Valley had rejected the idea.
The upshot?
The water didn't require much filtration. I had ten buckets of dust. Mortie thought most of it would go straight through into the tank up in Valhalla. What didn't would accumulate and permanently poison the well.
I told Mortie to take the Subaru, take his family and head for Malibu.
Alice could use a guy like him.
"I'll open the well cap for you."
"Mighty kind of you."
I road back to the truck and geared up. The act of climbing back into the cold, slimy suit nearly ended me. At the truck I was too weak to mess with the ramp. I dropped the bike and left it. Getting in the cab set my whole body to shaking as the cosmic-rads hit me. The Subaru was gone as I pulled into the station. The well cap was open.
Thanks Mortie.
Five gallon buckets full of dirt are very heavy when you're dying.
I poured in six and I was staggering. My vision swam and my nose would not stop bleeding. I w
as swallowing blood, I couldn't breath and things were getting dim. I looked down to find my third and last air-supply had failed.
I threw up in my mask.
Fuck me.
Game over.
I tore off my mask and hood.
Glorious freedom.
Except the itching intensified like a needle swinging over to red and the needle was my dick as it went into raging hard-on mode. I got the last four buckets down the well cap. I was probably breathing the dust.
I stumbled away from the well and tore off the suit.
I tore off the under armor beneath it.
This was what it was like to burn and turn.
The only question was this dose lethal or was it shrimp-salad Frame time.
I kind of didn't care.
It was like I had developed a reverse case of rabies hydrophobia. Water was all I cared about. The map said Tapo Canyon Road had creek nearby. I staggered away from the station and tottered, crashing through the trees and bushes. My dick was literally a divining rod and I followed it. I heard the creek burbling. I came to the embankment and saw the star-show above reflected on the surface of the black water below and plunged in face first. The cold water closed over me in delicious shock. Relief beyond measure. I rolled over and lay half-submerged staring up into the liquid, kaleidoscope sky. My dick was so hard it literally did not lay on my stomach.
Cosmic submarine Frame at periscope depth.
Save for the hard-on all my symptoms fell away. I'd been close to dying before. I wasn't in any pain. Neither was I numb. Things weren't getting dark anymore. In fact the lurid sky-murals were crystal clear and more beautiful than ever. I felt very light. It was just me, the creek and the cosmos.
If this was dying it wasn't a bad way to go.
And there she was. Right on time.
All seven feet of her. Exactly as I had visualized her during my gay, naked, bomb-shelter meditation retreat. Black robes and a black mantilla, her brow crowned with a wreath of blood-red roses. Despite being silhouetted by the sky show above, she seemed to be lit by her own light source. The creek swirled the hem of her robes as she stood over me. The evening breeze ruffled her mantilla and the petals of the roses.
In her skeletal hand she held the great big scythe.
Death had come.
Coming for to carry me home.