by David Brin
Again, the voice of the bandit leader could be heard, muffled by the foliage. Again there were giggles. With a pained expression, the ex-stockbroker sighed. “My leader asks what you offer in trade. Of course I know you have nothing. Still, I must inquire.”
As a matter of fact, Gordon had a few things they might want—his belt compass for instance, and a Swiss army knife.
But what were his chances of arranging an exchange and getting out alive? It didn’t take telepathy to tell that these bastards were only toying with their victim.
A fuming anger filled him, especially over Septien’s false show of compassion. He had witnessed this combination of cruel contempt and civilized manners in other once-educated people, over the years since the Collapse. By his lights, people like this were far more contemptible than those who had simply succumbed to the barbaric times.
“Look,” he shouted. “You don’t need those damn boots! You’ve no real need for my jacket or my toothbrush or my notebook, either. This area’s clean, so what do you need my Geiger counter for?
“I’m not stupid enough to think I can have my shotgun back, but without some of those other things I’ll die, damn you!”
The echo of his curse seemed to pour down the long slope of the mountainside, leaving a hanging silence in its wake. Then the bushes rustled and the big bandit leader stood up. Spitting contemptuously upslope, he snapped his fingers at the others. “Now I know he’s got no gun,” he told them. His thick eyebrows narrowed and he gestured in Gordon’s general direction.
“Run away, little rabbit. Run, or we’ll skin you and have you for supper!” He hefted Gordon’s shotgun, turned his back, and sauntered casually down the trail. The others fell in behind, laughing.
Roger Septien gave the mountainside an ironic shrug and a smile, then gathered up his share of the loot and followed his compatriots. They disappeared around a bend in the narrow forest path, but for minutes afterward Gordon heard the softly diminishing sound of someone happily whistling.
You imbecile! Weak as his chances had been, he had spoiled them completely by appealing to reason and charity. In an era of tooth and claw, nobody ever did that except out of impotence. The bandits’ uncertainty had evaporated just as soon as he foolishly asked for fair play.
Of course he could have fired his .38, wasting a precious bullet to prove he wasn’t completely harmless. That would have forced them to take him seriously again.…
Then why didn’t I do that? Was I too afraid?
Probably, he admitted. I’ll very likely die of exposure tonight, but that’s still hours away, far enough to remain only an abstract threat, less frightening and immediate than five ruthless men with guns.
He punched his left palm with his fist.
Oh stuff it, Gordon. You can psychoanalyze yourself this evening, while you’re freezing to death. What it all comes down to, though, is that you are one prize fool, and this is probably the end.
He got up stiffly and began edging cautiously down the slope. Although he wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet, Gordon felt a growing certainty that there could only be one solution, only one even faintly possible way out of this disaster.
As soon as he was free of the thicket, Gordon limped to the trickling stream to wash his face and the worst of his cuts. He wiped sweat-soaked strands of brown hair out of his eyes. His scrapes hurt like hell, but none of them looked bad enough to persuade him to use the thin tube of the precious iodine in his belt pouch.
He refilled his canteen and thought.
Besides his pistol and half-shredded clothes, a pocket knife, and compass, his pouch held a miniature fishing kit that might prove useful, if he ever made it over the mountains to a decent watershed.
And of course ten spare rounds for his .38, small, blessed relics of industrial civilization.
Back at the beginning, during the riots and the great starvation, it had seemed that the one thing in inexhaustible supply was ammunition. If only turn-of-the-century America had stockpiled and distributed food half so well as its citizens had cached mountains of bullets …
Rough stones jabbed his throbbing left foot as Gordon gingerly hurried toward his former campsite. Clearly these half-shredded moccasins would get him nowhere. His torn clothes would be about as effective against freezing mountain autumn nights as his pleas had been against the bandits’ hard hearts.
The small clearing where he had made camp only an hour or so ago was deserted now, but his worst fears were surpassed by the havoc he found there.
His tent had been converted into a pile of nylon shreds, his sleeping bag a small blizzard of scattered goose down. All Gordon found intact was the slim longbow he had been carving from a cut sapling, and a line of experimental venison-gut strings.
Probably thought it was a walking stick. Sixteen years after the last factory had burned, Gordon’s robbers had completely overlooked the potential value of the bow and strings, when the ammo finally ran out.
He used the bow to poke through the wreckage, looking for anything else to salvage.
I can’t believe it. They took my journal! That prig Septien probably looks forward to poring over it during the snow-time, chuckling over my adventures and my naivete while my bones are being picked clean by cougars and buzzards.
Of course the food was all gone: the jerky; the bag of split grains that a small Idaho village had let him have in exchange for a few songs and stories; the tiny hoard of rock candy he had found in the mechanical bowels of a looted vending machine.
It’s just as well about the candy, Gordon thought as he plucked his trampled, ruined toothbrush out of the dust.
Now why the hell did they have to do that?
Late in the Three-Year Winter—while the remnants of his militia platoon still struggled to guard the soy silos of Wayne, Minnesota, for a government nobody had heard from in months—five of his comrades had died of raging oral infections. They were awful, unglorious deaths, and no one had even been sure if one of the war bugs was responsible, or the cold and hunger and near total lack of modem hygiene. All Gordon knew was that the specter of his teeth rotting in his head was his own personal phobia.
Bastards, he thought as he flung the little brush aside.
He kicked the rubbish one last time. There was nothing here to change his mind.
You’re procrastinating. Go. Do it.
Gordon started off a little stiffly. But soon he was moving downtrail as quickly and silently as he could, making time through the bone-dry forest.
The burly outlaw leader had promised to eat him if they met again. Cannibalism had been common in the early days, and these mountain men might have acquired a taste for the “long pork.” Still, he had to persuade them that a man with nothing to lose must be reckoned with.
Within half a mile or so, their tracks were familiar to him: two traces with the soft outlines of deer hide and three with prewar Vibram soles. They were moving at a leisurely pace, and it would be no trouble simply to catch up with his enemies.
That was not his plan, however. Gordon tried to remember this morning’s climb up this same trail.
The path drops in altitude as it winds north, along the east face of the mountain, before switching back south and east into the desert valley below.
But what if I were to cut above the main trail, and traverse the slope higher up? I might be able to come down on them while it’s still light … while they’re still gloating and expecting nothing.
If the shortcut is there.…
The trail wove gradually downhill toward the northeast, in the direction of the lengthening shadows, toward the deserts of eastern Oregon and Idaho. Gordon must have passed below the robbers’ sentinels yesterday or this morning, and they had taken their time following him until he was settled into camp. Their lair had to be somewhere off this same trail.
Even limping, Gordon was able to move silently and quickly, the only advantage of camp moccasins over boots. Soon he heard faint sounds below and ahead.
&
nbsp; The raiding party. The men were laughing, joking together. It was painful to hear.
It wasn’t so much that they were laughing over him. Callous cruelty was a part of life today, and if Gordon couldn’t reconcile himself to it, he at least recognized he was the Twentieth-Century oddball in today’s savage world.
But the sounds reminded him of other laughter, the rough jokes of men who shared danger together.
Drew Simms—freckle-faced pre-med with a floppy grin and deadly skill at chess or poker—the Holnists got him when they overran Wayne and burned the silos.…
Tiny Kielre—saved my life twice, and all he wanted when he was on his deathbed, the War Mumps tearing him apart, was for me to read him stories.…
Then there had been Lieutenant Van—their half-Vietnamese platoon leader. Gordon had never known until it was too late that the Lieutenant was cutting his own rations and giving them to his men. He asked, at the end, to be buried in an American flag.
Gordon had been alone for so long. He missed the company of such men almost as much as the friendship of women.
Watching the brush on his left, he came to an opening that seemed to promise a sloping track—a shortcut perhaps—to the north across the mountain face. The rust-dry scrub crackled as he left the path and broke his own trail. Gordon thought he remembered the perfect site for a bushwhack, a switchback that passed under a high, stony horseshoe. A sniper might find a place a little way above that rocky outcrop, within point-blank range of anyone hiking along the hairpin.
If I can just get there first …
He might pin them down by surprise and force them to negotiate. That was the advantage in being the one with nothing to lose. Any sane bandit would prefer to live and rob another day. He had to believe they would part with boots, a jacket, and some food, against the risk of losing one or two of their band.
Gordon hoped he would not have to kill anybody.
Oh grow up, please! His worst enemy, over the next few hours, could be his archaic scruples. Just this once, be ruthless.
The voices on the trail faded as he cut across the slope of the mountain. Several times he had to detour around jagged gullies or scabrous patches of ugly bramble. Gordon concentrated on finding the quickest way toward his rocky ambuscade.
Have I gone far enough?
Grimly, he kept on. According to imperfect memory, the switchback he had in mind came only after a long sweep northward along the east face of the mountain.
A narrow animal track let him hurry through the pine thickets, pausing frequently to check his compass. He faced a quandary. To stand a chance of catching his adversaries, he had to stay above them. Yet if he kept too high, he might go right past his target without knowing it.
And twilight was not long away.
A flock of wild turkeys scattered as he jogged into a small clearing. Of course the thinned human population probably had something to do with the return of wildlife, but it was also one more sign that he had come into better-watered country than the arid lands of Idaho. His bow might someday prove useful, should he live long enough to learn to use it.
He angled downslope, beginning to get worried. Surely by now the main trail was quite a bit below him, if it hadn’t already switched back a few times. It was possible he had already gone too far north.
At last Gordon realized the game path was turning inexorably westward. It appeared to be rising again as well, toward what looked like another gap in the mountains, shrouded in late afternoon mist.
He stopped a moment to catch his breath and his bearings. Perhaps this was yet another pass through the cold, semi-arid Cascade Range, leading eventually into the Willamette River Valley and thence the Pacific Ocean. His map was gone but he knew that at most a couple weeks’ walk in that direction ought to bring him to water, shelter, fishing streams, game to hunt, and maybe …
And maybe some people trying to put something right in the world again. The sunlight through that high fringe of clouds was like a luminous halo, akin to the dimly remembered skyglow of city lights, a promise that had led him ever onward from the midwest, searching. The dream—hopeless as he knew it was—simply would not go away.
Gordon shook his head. For certain there would be snow in that range, and cougars, and starvation. There could be no turning away from his plan. Not if he wanted to live.
He tried hard to cut downslope, but the narrow game paths kept forcing him north and westward. The switchback had to be behind him, by now. But the thick, dry undergrowth diverted him farther into the new pass.
In his frustration Gordon almost missed the sound. But then he stopped suddenly, listening.
Were those voices?
A steep ravine opened up the forest just ahead. He hurried toward it until he could see the outlines of this mountain and others in the chain, wrapped in a thick haze, amber high on their westward flanks and darkening purple where the sun no longer shone.
The sounds seemed to be coming from below, to the east. And yes, they were voices. Gordon searched and made out the snakelike line of a trail on the mountain’s flank. Far off, he caught a brief flash of color moving slowly upward through the woods.
The bandits! But why were they moving uphill again? They couldn’t be, unless …
Unless Gordon was already far north of the trail he had taken the day before. He must have missed the ambush site altogether and come out above a side path. The bandits were climbing a fork he had failed to notice yesterday, one leading up into this pass rather than the one he had been caught in.
This must be the way to their base!
Gordon looked up the mountain. Yes, he could see how a small hollow could fit over to the west, on a shoulder near the lesser-used pass. It would be defensible and very hard to discover by chance.
Gordon smiled grimly and turned west as well. The ambush was a lost opportunity, but if he hurried he could beat the bandits home, perhaps get a few minutes to steal what he needed—food, clothes, something to carry them in.
And if the hideout wasn’t deserted?
Well, maybe he could take their women hostage and try to cut a deal.
Yeah, that’s lots better. Like holding a ticking bomb beats jogging with nitroglycerin.
Frankly, he hated all of his alternatives.
He started to run, ducking under branches and dodging withered stumps as he charged along the narrow game path. Soon Gordon felt a strange exuberance. He was committed, and none of his typical self-doubt would get in the way now. Battle adrenaline nearly made him high as his stride opened and small shrubs swept by in a blur. He stretched to leap over a toppled, decayed tree trunk, cleared it easily.…
Landing sent sharp pain lancing up his left leg as something stabbed him through the flimsy moccasins. He sprawled, face first, into the gravel of a dry stream bed.
Gordon rolled over clutching his injury. Through wet, pain-diffracted eyes, he saw that he had tripped over a thick strand of looped, rusted steel cable, no doubt left over from some ancient, prewar logging operation. Again, while his leg throbbed agonizingly, his surface thoughts were absurdly rational.
Eighteen years since my last tetanus shot. Lovely.
But no, it hadn’t cut him, only tripped him. That was bad enough, though. He held onto his thigh and clamped his mouth shut, trying to ride out a savage cramp.
At last the tremors subsided and he dragged himself over to the toppled tree, gingerly hoisting himself into sitting position. He hissed through clenched teeth as the waves of agony slowly faded.
Meanwhile he could hear the bandit party passing not far below, taking away the head start that had been his only advantage.
So much for all those great plans to beat them to their hideout. He listened until their voices faded up the trail.
At last Gordon used his bow as a staff and tried standing up. Letting weight settle slowly on his left leg, he found it would support him, though it still quivered tenderly.
Ten years ago I could’ve taken a fall like that and been
up and running without another thought. Face it. You’re obsolete, Gordon. Worn out. These days, thirty-four and alone is the same as being ready to die.
There would be no ambush now. He couldn’t even chase the bandits, not all the way up to that notch in the mountain. It would be useless to try to track them on a moonless night.
He took a few steps as the throbbing slowly subsided. Soon he was able to walk without leaning too hard on his makeshift staff.
Fine, but where to? Perhaps he should spend the remaining daylight looking for a cave, a pile of pine needles, anything to give him a chance to live through the night.
In the growing chill Gordon watched shadows climb higher above the desert valley floor, merging and darkening the flanks of the nearby mountains. The reddening sun probed through chinks in the range of snowy peaks to his left.
He was facing north, unable quite yet to summon the energy to move, when his eye was caught by a sudden flash of light, a sharp glinting against the rolling forest green on the opposite flank of this narrow pass. Still favoring his tender foot, Gordon took a few steps forward. His brow furrowed.
The forest fires that had seared so much of the dry Cascades had spared the thick forests on that part of the mountainside. And yes, something across the way was catching the sunlight like a mirror. From the folds in the hillsides, he guessed that the reflection could only be seen from this very spot, and only in the late afternoon.
So he had guessed wrong. The bandits’ roost wasn’t in that hollow higher up in the pass to the west after all, but much closer. Only a stroke of luck had given it away.
So you’re giving me clues, now? Now? he accused the world. I don’t have enough troubles as it is, without being offered straws to grasp at?
Hope was an addiction. It had driven him westward for half his life. Moments after all but giving up, Gordon found himself piecing together the outlines of a new plan.
Could he try to rob a cabin filled with armed men? He pictured himself, kicking in the door to their wide-eyed astonishment, holding them all at bay with the pistol in one hand, while he tied them all up with the other!