“I can make it,” she said. Victorine could barely hear her.
The condominium was about a mile ahead. It took Dancy and Victorine two hours to reach it. Dancy vomited twice more and fell down three times. Victorine was almost despairing and thought that surely she’d have to carry her. But Dancy kept going somehow, and they reached the high-rise.
The lobby, which was elegantly and expensively furnished, and enclosed entirely in glass, had been broken into. The offal of the gangs’ parties was offensive to the eye and left a stench, even though the sea wind howled through the broken glass. Dancy was as pale as a wraith, but Victorine steeled herself and insisted that they go right up to the twelfth floor. Sure enough, they saw signs of gangs on the first and second floors, but none after that. It took another forty minutes. The penthouse wasn’t locked. In the world that had existed long ago, before the autumnal equinox, no one would have dared break into a Man and Biosphere Directorate Diversionary Facility.
But that world was long gone, and this one was much more dangerous, much crueler, and much colder.
The entire penthouse was glass-enclosed from floor to ceiling.
It was a little warmer than downstairs, and Victorine was very glad that she’d insisted they come all the way to the top floor. Dancy fell onto an enormous overstuffed sofa, and Victorine took a quick look out the north windows that faced the road.
Now she could see the torches, even though she couldn’t hear the gang and never would have. There were perhaps a hundred of them. They came into the condo and stayed on the first and second floors. Some hardier ones staggered up to the third floor, but that was as far as they got. They built an enormous bonfire on the beach and ran up and down in the night, screaming and fighting and coupling.
It never occurred to Victorine how very fortunate it was that Dancy had come down with a migraine just when she did.
The next day, the gang seemed to break up. Some stayed in the condos. Some wandered over to the cottages and town houses across the street. Others left and went back to the east. All day and all night, Victorine saw groups of three or four going here and there, always drinking, always quarreling, always staggering.
Dancy suffered but never cried or complained. The facility, which was likely one of the most expensive in the United States, had a mud room with a full rick of aged wood stored in it. Victorine kept a roaring fire going day and night. If anyone saw the smoke coming out of the chimney and took the time to cipher that it was from the penthouse, so be it. She cleaned her gun and kept it loaded and in a snug holster that fit on her belt in the small of her back.
On the second day Dancy was a little better. She told Victorine that she thought they could probably leave the next night if all of the gangs had cleared out. They hadn’t, not all of them; Victorine still saw them, furtive shadows, two or three or four at a time. The thought occurred to her that maybe they had annexed the Key and were settling in instead of wandering up and down the rich beach.
What if the bridges at both ends were held? She was standing at the window, staring down at the road below. A sound came to her ears, but it didn’t penetrate her brain.
Behind her Dancy, lying weakly on the sofa, asked, “Mama, do you hear that?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s a plane, Mama. An airplane. L-look!”
And so it was. A fat, full-bodied plane with lights and the loud roar of a low jet’s intake floated by, leaving a trail of white smoke.
The sight was so poignant that neither Dancy nor Victorine could speak until a long time after it was gone.
“Now listen to me, Dancy,” Victorine said, cradling Dancy’s face and tilting it upward. “We hike as fast as we can. No talking, okay? There’s nothing between here and White Dunes, so we’ll walk about halfway up the beach, by the dune line. That way, if we see anything, we can hide in the dunes. If you see anything, anything at all, or if you—you—hear something, or—or—”
“Know someone’s coming?” Dancy finished the odd sentence without a trace of self-consciousness.
“Yes,” Victorine said awkwardly. “If you feel that something’s about to happen, then don’t shout. Just pull on my sleeve and lie down flat in the sand. Okay?”
Dancy nodded, and Victorine released her. Dancy dropped her eyes and asked in a small voice, “What will you do, Mama? If— if—something happens?”
“I’ll kill anyone who comes close to us,” Victorine said calmly.
“And if anything happens to me, Dancy, you take the gun and run. All right? Run and get away if you can, but if you can’t— shoot them.”
Her head was still bowed, and a mulish look came over Dancy’s face. Though Victorine didn’t see, she knew it was so. She’d already tried to make Dancy carry a gun and learn how to use it. But Dancy flatly refused. She would give no reason, and no amount of cajoling or reasoning or insistence on Victorine’s part moved her.
Victorine sighed; she’d done all she could do. Now it was time to go again.
Like two shadows that were just a little blacker than the darkness, they crept down the stairs and out onto the beach. It was still freezing cold, but the wind and tide had died down somewhat. Victorine took Dancy’s hand, and they slipped up to the undulating dunes, walking just on the edge of them. The darkness was oppressive. Clouds covered all the stars and the dying half-moon. Victorine could barely see Dancy’s white face, even as she walked close to her.
They reached White Dunes much more quickly than Victorine had thought they would. In fact, they were right in front of the first unit before Victorine saw it in the murky blackness. These condos weren’t a columned high-rise like Summer Sea. They were twenty single units connected by only one wall, all of them up on pilings with parking pads underneath the terraced balconies. The pilings were partially screened by decorative wooden lattices, and Victorine hated walking by the dark and impenetrable spaces underneath. Something might jump out . . . or slither out . . . or reach out and grab her and Dancy. With a superhuman effort she shut out the imagined horrors, grasping Dancy’s hand like a vise.
Then she remembered Gerald Ainsley’s body, swaying and creaking in the wind, and her head shot back to try to see the roof. But they couldn’t see the front slope of the roofs from the beach side of the condos. She had never told Dancy about Gerald, but once Dancy said something sad about him that told Victorine that she knew he was dead. With an inward sigh Victorine thought, She knows too much, sees too much, hears too much . . . She’s just a child. It’s not right that she should be burdened like this— A coarse shout, almost lost in the high wind, sounded behind them.
Victorine jumped so fiercely that she might have been shot.
She whirled, shoving Dancy down to the ground.
Behind her, three shadows, down at the far end of the condos, were running. One of them was carrying a weak flashlight. The dirty yellow beam hopped crazily as the man ran with jerky steps through the soft sand.
Victorine was actually moving fast, but she seemed to be fumbling and slow as she reached behind her, pulling up her sweater, unsnapping her holster, grasping the .38. “Run, Dancy,” she shouted when she saw how far back the men were. “Get up and run! Hurry! Run!”
Dancy struggled, got up, and disappeared out of Victorine’s peripheral vision. Victorine didn’t know that she ran a few steps, panicky, then stopped and turned around. Victorine was busy aiming.
After that, Victorine had a hard time recalling the exact sequence of events. It was weeks afterward before she could replay the scene in her mind without the galling darkness of fear and the red haze of fury.
Another man, only a few feet from Victorine, suddenly materialized. He was a tall man with long legs, and he stepped out from the cavernous underside of the condos. A short, thick barrel pointed up by his right shoulder. His back was to Victorine, so she couldn’t see anything except his broad shoulders, and then the gun barrel disappeared from her vision as he lowered it.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot you down!
” he shouted, a hoarse, but powerful voice.
One of the men skidded to a stop, bent his knees in a ready stance, and pointed with both hands. A small explosion and a red flicker of flame came from his hands.
The two men, one with a flashlight, kept coming.
The man standing between Victorine and the three men moved. She heard a metallic chuk-chock sound, an enormous explosion sounded, and he was momentarily outlined in a red glare. Noxious smoke rose. One of the men was lifted up and thrown backward several feet.
Chuk-chock!
“Stop, you idiot!”
The idiot didn’t, there was another explosion, and he fell.
The third man had been shooting, but in the explosions of the 12-gauge, his little .32 caliber spits were lost. Now his gun was empty.
Shotgun’s 12-gauge was empty, too.
The gang member, evidently filled with rage and probably on one of the more violent recreational drugs, drew a knife and ran, yelling like a madman. Victorine stepped aside, then aimed.
“No, Mama!” Dancy screamed, knocking her arm down.
Shotgun had stepped right in front of Victorine’s line of fire to meet the madman running at him.
Victorine grabbed Dancy’s arm, then yanked her around and started running. She had to drag Dancy because Dancy kept looking back and crying out, “No, no, Mom, we can’t leave him. We have to help him!”
“No!” Victorine shouted. “He’s probably one of them, Dancy! You know they kill each other off for—no, Dancy! Come on!”
Dancy dug in her heels, then torqued her arm out of her mother’s grip and skidded to a stop. Tears were running down her pale face, and her eyes were stark, staring. Still, her voice was reasonable and calm. “Mama, he’s not a Pike. He’s a soldier. He was helping us, Mama. And we have to help him.”
Gritting her teeth, Victorine turned to look back.
They had run far enough that they could barely see anything. They couldn’t see either of the two men who had been left alive only moments before.
Dancy started back, but Victorine again grabbed her roughly. “You stay behind me, and I mean it, Dancy,” she warned. Holding the gun at the ready, she took slow, careful steps.
They saw a big, untidy lump on the ground.
It was the two men. The Pike, a small and wiry man with tangled and filthy black hair and a beard, was dead, his head lolling at an odd angle, his eyes staring blankly up at the empty sky.
The soldier was still alive. But he was bleeding a lot. They couldn’t see the extent of his injuries, but they could see black smudges all over his clothes and hands and face.
Victorine’s jaw worked, and her eyes narrowed. “We have to leave him.”
Dancy’s voice was soft. “I’m sorry, Mama, but I can’t do that.
And I don’t think you can, either.”
“Sure I could,” Victorine said in a hard voice. But then, after a few silent moments, she said, “We’ll never get him up the stairs.
He’s huge. He must weigh two tons.”
“Not quite, ma’am,” a weak voice sounded. Victorine started, but Dancy laid her hand on his chest and bent down close to him.
“Shh, don’t try to talk.”
He coughed, then said, “Why not? Looks like I gotta try to walk. I think—if you two ladies would get this scumbucket off me—I could get up.”
But he couldn’t, not by himself. Dancy and Victorine had to help him and then support him. Dancy didn’t even reach up to his shoulder, so she wasn’t much help at all. Grunting, Victorine gasped, “Okay, Dancy, you happy? Now what are we going to do with him?”
“Help him,” Dancy said. She sounded embarrassed.
“I’d—appreciate—it, ma’am,” the soldier breathed weakly, “if you’d at least get me inside one of these condos. Then if y’all need to move on, well, I understand.”
There were only ten steps up to the first floor of the units.
When they got him inside, the soldier, like a fallen redwood, crashed to the floor. Dancy and Victorine, trying to support him, fell with him.
Breathless, Victorine muttered, “Dancy, this man is not a sick puppy you can nurse. He—he might be badly hurt. And I don’t know the first thing about taking care of wounds.”
“I do,” Dancy said evenly. “I know how to take care of him. His name is Captain Slaughter, and he’s hurt, but he won’t die.”
“Wha—how do you know?” Victorine demanded.
Dancy shrugged. “It’s on his name patch.”
“But how do you know he won’t die? And—you can’t see his name patch! You can’t see the end of your nose in this darkness!”
“I must have seen it,” Dancy said reasonably. “Anyway, Mom, he’s here, and we’re here. The Lord sent him to save us. Now we have to save him.”
Something in Victorine rebelled against this logic, but she merely sighed. “All right, Dancy, we’ll see what we can do. But I can’t save him. I can’t save anyone or anything—but you. That’s all I care about. So if I decide that we need to leave him to keep you safe, then we’ll leave him. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother,” Dancy said docilely. “I understand.”
But in the darkness, unseen, she smiled.
He thought that he was swimming in icy cold water, far under the surface, the heavy burden of hundreds of feet of water above him fighting him, smothering him. He was drowning.
Jerking, he came awake.
“It’s all right,” a woman said. “You just had a bad dream.” She had a nice voice, not soft or babying, just soothing in some way.
He squinted, for even the dim flickering glow of the single candle hurt his eyes. Everything, in fact, hurt him. The heavy blankets burned his wounds; the cold on his face and hands stung him; the pillowcase beneath him seemed to rub his throbbing head raw.
Licking dry lips, he rasped, “I’m thirsty.”
The dim form of the slender woman dressed in solid black drew near to him. With difficulty he focused, and then only for a few moments, but long enough to see that she was probably about thirty, with pleasing but not pretty features, sharp hazel eyes, and lovely long dark hair.
He could smell her; she smelled like the tang of salt air and the slightly musty smell of damp wool. Then she leaned over him, holding a glass of water, and he smelled the scent of her thick, luxuriant hair, a freshly washed, clean scent. He inhaled deeply as he sipped. He didn’t know which refreshed him more, the cool water or the scent of her hair.
“Your hair smells so good . . . ,” he murmured, falling back against the pillow again. She looked at him, astonished, but his eyes were closed. Settling back down in the armchair by his bed, she picked up her book and began reading again.
He spoke again. “My name is Captain Con Slaughter, ma’am, of the 101st Airborne, Fire Team Eclipse.” His voice was weak but clear.
She looked up. “I’m Victorine Flynn Thayer, Captain Slaughter. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” The mindless niceties were reassuring to both of them.
“Thank you for helping me,” he said, finally opening his eyes.
She studied him. “I think you know that I would not have done it if not for my daughter’s insistence.”
He nodded wearily. His craggy face seemed too sharp and sunken for the strong, muscular body and the thick, youthful brown hair. “Doesn’t matter. I owe you both, and I hope to have the honor of repaying you someday.”
Victorine leaned back and spoke in a gentler tone. “No, Captain Slaughter, I must be honest. You saved us both, probably our lives. Let’s call it even.”
They were quiet awhile. Slaughter shifted restlessly, and Vic-torine asked, “Are you in pain?”
“Yeah, feels like I got stung by hornets after the cattle stampede ran me down. Am I stabbed?”
“No, just cut up pretty badly,” she answered, a little taken aback by the tinge of fear in his voice. She hadn’t realized how frightened he was, but then he cou
ldn’t possibly judge how severely he was injured, could he? “You’re not—mortally wounded, Captain Slaughter. You have a long cut across your chest, a small nick on your cheekbone, but your left arm and hand are the worst. I think your arm needs stitches, but I’m afraid I don’t know how to do that. We bandaged it up as securely as we could. It did stop the bleeding,” she said calmly. “But I don’t know about your hand.”
He looked down at the thick white bandages that completely covered his hand and fingers up to the fingertips. “I had to grab the blade . . . ,” he muttered. “Funny how scary that was, and hard to do. Seemed kinda worse, in a way, than being stabbed.”
Victorine shuddered a little. “I know what you mean.”
He looked at her curiously. “You do? You mean I’m not just talking crazy because of delirium?”
She didn’t smile, but he could see the merest flicker of amusement in her eyes. “No, you’re not talking crazy, and you’re not delirious. You went into light shock because of blood loss, I think. But you’re lucid . . .” She looked around the room and finished in an almost inaudible tone, “. . . unfortunately.”
“Yeah. Does seem like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, doesn’t it?”
“Worse. You do wake up. It’s still there.”
He felt very sorry for her. In a gentle tone he asked, “May I ask where you and—I don’t know your daughter’s name—my guardian angel.” She almost smiled at that, he saw. At that moment, Con Slaughter thought—hoped—he might be spending some time making this sorrowful woman smile.
“Her name is Dancy Flynn Thayer. We’re going to Pensacola Naval Air Station. We’ve been here, on the Key, since the blackout.
But—my mother—she—we—” She stopped, cleared her throat, and continued, “She was killed by one of the gangs. So I thought it would be best if I could get Dancy onto a military base.”
Con frowned so fiercely that for a moment Victorine thought he was in terrible pain. Which, she realized after a moment, he was.
“Yeah, you’d think that would be best. But I’m here to tell you, Ms.
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