by Rick Shelley
"There's a car up ahead," Lesh called out after we had gone about three miles farther.
"I see it," I said. "Let's be careful about this. The people who burned that village may have run out of gas."
"You feel anything, sire?" Timon asked.
I hesitated long enough to take stock of my danger sense. "Nothing special," I said.
But we slowed down anyway. The car was intact, a rarity along this ride. As we got closer, Aaron said, "You want to see our disguises? Look in the rear window of this car when we get right up to it."
The four of us bunched up. I guess the others wanted to see what the magic had done too.
Until we saw it.
I looked down into the rear window and saw the reflections of four skeletons draped in ragged, bloody robes. 10 – The Camps
I didn't sleep well that night. I was haunted by the reflections I had seen in that car window. It was worse than the Congregation of Heroes dream, or vision, whatever that was. Lesh and Timon had both been hit hard by the reflection too, perhaps even harder than I was. They were more thoroughly Varayan, a land where myth and superstition lies much closer to reality than in the land I was raised in. We rode on in almost total silence after looking in that car window. The silence continued when we finally camped. There was only the most essential conversation. Aaron erected his nightly shield. We lit a fire and cooked our supper. And we kept a close watch on the sky.
Rain was threatening again, so we pitched tents, lightweight nylon jobs that had come from the sporting goods department at Marshall Field's in Chicago. As usual, I took the first watch of the night. When the rain came, I pulled down the bill of my Cubs cap and stood next to a large tree, leaning back against the trunk, trying to escape as much of the falling water as I could. It was a steady, heavy downpour that fell almost silently and blotted out any normal night sounds. There was no wind to drive the rain, no thunder and lightning to divert attention from the soaking.
It was a thoroughly miserable night. I missed Joy. I worried about the way she had carried on, forcing this expedition. I worried about the extra moons that I couldn't see because of all the clouds and rain, the Doomsday they were supposed to presage. Several times, I fancied that I saw the four skeletal faces staring at me out of the rain.
When the downpour seemed to slacken off, just a little, I woke Lesh. He replaced me next to the tree trunk and I crawled into my tent, trying to leave as much of the water outside as I could. That didn't work very well, but I went through the motions. I crouched at the end of the tent and stripped off my weapons, boots, and wet outer clothes before I got into my blanket. I had dry clothing in a saddlebag, but I didn't want to get into it until I had to-preferably after the rain stopped. If an alarm came in the night and I didn't have time to get dressed, I would just have to meet it in my underwear.
Even though I was exhausted-every day of riding and moping left me feeling more drained than the day before-sleep took its own time and some of mine before it arrived. Rain hit the tent. When I closed my eyes, I saw the four specters staring at me, mocking me, laughing at me.
But, eventually, I did sleep.
And sometime later, I saw the face of the Elflord of Xayber hovering over me.
His face was as clear, as sharply defined, as it was when we talked in Castle Basil, but only his head and shoulders appeared this time. He was speaking, but I couldn't hear a word he said. I had a long, suspended bout with panic, fearing that I would miss the most vital message in history. Only gradually did I realize that this was only a dream, not the message I was waiting for.
Only a dream. If only the whole mess would turn out to be no more than that! But even after my logical self decided that this visitation from the elflord was only a dream, my heart continued to flutter. I needed more convincing. The dream woke me. I lay awake for ages, nervous, keyed up, heart pounding, caught in the real adrenaline rush of my dream fear.
The rain had stopped, for a while at least. We had ridden through a lot of rain the last few days, off and on-dirty rain, heavy rain, as the atmosphere started to reject much of the dirt and debris forced on it by the nuclear explosions. The sky had even cleared now, for the most part, and we hadn't seen much of clear skies since we left Varay. I looked out through the tent flap. Aaron was on guard…
And there were four moons in the sky, lined up one after the other, barely separated by their own diameters.
I was more tired than I could remember ever being when I finally crawled out of my tent a few minutes after dawn-a red dawn, with the sky still hazy but mostly clear, the brightest dawn we had seen since stepping through to Louisville.
"I'm starting to pick something up," Aaron told me.
"Joy's family?" I asked.
"I think so. Off in that direction." He pointed roughly northwest, maybe closer to north-northwest.
"Unless I'm way off the way I remember the map, St. Louis should be about there," I said. "This magic would only find them if they're alive?"
Aaron nodded. "At least one of them must still be alive. I can't be more specific than that."
"Maybe we should give up on my idea of staying down here in the forest and just follow your magic magnet. I'd get worried if you lost the trace." Well, I was already worried, about a lot of things, but it got my meaning across.
"You saw the moons," Aaron said. There was no hint of an interrogatory in his voice, so he must have seen me looking out of my tent in the night.
"Four of them," I said. "And when the count reaches seven, that's the end, according to Xayber."
"We knew that time was going to be critical."
"Sometime today, we should hit Interstate 57," I said. "If we start heading northwest now, we should hit 57 north of the fork. It splits just south of Marion; 57 goes south to Cairo and Memphis, 24 goes to Paducah."
"Interstate means maybe a lot of people," Aaron said.
I nodded. "Refugees from anywhere to anywhere. My guess is that any relief efforts would have to start along the major highways, where they're still usable."
"I sure wish we knew just how bad things are. Other than what we've seen for ourselves," Aaron said.
"You're not the only one."
There were so many unknowns yet. After the Coral Lady, people would have been nervous. The genie had been let out of the bottle. But had there been enough warning before the big war to start people migrating away from the cities? Had there been a chance to start any evacuations, make any preparations? I could remember Dad talking about how seriously people took Civil Defense in the fifties and early sixties-bomb shelters, air raid drills, Conelrad-and then nothing, because of indifference and budget restrictions. World War Three was the bogeyman who would never come. People were so indifferent to the danger that even the dramatic changes in the Communist world in the late eighties and early nineties couldn't decrease the level any further. If the United States came out of this much worse than the Russians or the people of western Europe, it would be because of that longtime ho-hum attitude. Forget Nostradamus. Aesop had us pegged in his fable about the ant and the grasshopper. And we were the grasshoppers.
"Maybe the elflord was right," I muttered.
"Right about what?" Aaron asked.
"That it's all for the best if this world passes away."
"Why the sudden funk?"
I told him.
"Then it's still going to be up to you to see that something better comes after, right?" He said it very seriously, which didn't help my mood.
Right, I thought. Fat chance.
"We'd better get cracking or we'll waste the whole morning," I said. That was easier than arguing. I could continue my funk while we rode.
"That what we saw yesterday, that really how folks will see us?" Lesh asked not long after we got into our saddles again.
"That's how they'll see us," Aaron said.
"What happens if they get so scared that they start shooting right off?" Lesh had a practical mind. He saw that possibility before I did.
"There was always the chance that people would shoot at us," Aaron said. "Those men at the railroad bridge were ready to start shooting and they saw us the way we are."
"I got me an itch at the back of my neck," Lesh said.
"You'd better be careful," I said softly. "I may give you the Hero job."
Lesh sputtered a little and didn't recover until I started laughing. "It's okay, Lesh," I said. "We're all nervous about this. Anyway, people who shoot at ghosts are usually too scared to hit them."
"And fear can be cultivated," Aaron said. Then he clucked at his horse a couple of times and moved out ahead of us to avoid answering any follow-up questions.
"Come on, Lesh. We'll worry about shooters when the time comes," I said.
Aaron led the way all day. Guessing from the position of the sun, we were heading just a little west of northwest, not quite the direction he had indicated that morning. A couple of times, we stopped and Aaron did a minute or two of chanting. Both times, we changed course-just a little.
"It gets a little stronger every mile we ride," Aaron said.
And later, "Your wife's parents turned Varay down once. You sure they'll want to go back? Even with all this war stuff, they may want to stay in a world they know."
"I can't see anyone choosing to stay here if they had a chance to go to a place that hadn't been touched by the war." Deep breath time. "Much as I hate to even think about this, we're going to have to take them to Varay whether they want to go or not, even if Lesh and I have to tie them up and carry them through."
Aaron didn't comment.
"The problem we may have is keeping other people from trying to crowd through the doorway," I said after a couple of minutes. "If folks are panicked enough, they'll even risk your Four Horsemen to escape."
"And?"
"If we can do it without a riot, we can take some people through. Varay can always use people, a few thousand anyway." As long as they didn't all get in and expect to find a quaint but familiar version of back-home-before-the-war. And maybe some of them would go through to Varay and then want to leave after they saw what it was like.
"We take people back, maybe we ought to look around for a head shrinker to take along to take care of them," I said. It lightened my mood a little anyway.
Several times that morning and into the early afternoon we heard helicopters. None passed directly overhead, and we were in a thicker stretch of forest, so we didn't stop, didn't worry quite as much about being spotted. The route the helicopters were taking seemed to pass a little north of us.
Then, about three o'clock, we came out of the woodlands, right by the interstate highway-and a large refugee camp.
Aaron and I halted our horses without comment. Lesh and Timon moved closer to us before they stopped.
"Must be several thousand people," Aaron said, looking out at the huddled rows of tents along the side of the highway.
"That's where the helicopters have been going." I pointed. One helicopter, a large military cargo carrier, was on the ground. People were unloading it. "There's Army here." And it was too late to turn around and melt back into the forest. Maybe they couldn't make out any details yet, but sentries had seen us.
The back of my neck was itching now. My danger sense got very active.
" 'Into the valley of death,' " I mumbled, and I started my horse forward. "I guess we're going to find out how good these disguises are now," I said.
We kept the horses at a slow walk. Ahead, someone had given an alarm of some kind. A squad of soldiers came forward at the double, their rifles held at the ready. Farther back, I saw activity behind two machine guns.
"Don't anybody reach for a weapon unless I do," I said in a stage whisper. "These guys are going to be trigger-happy."
The squad of soldiers came to a ragged halt about sixty yards in front of us… not on command. I guess that's when they were close enough to get a good look at the public faces Aaron had conjured up for us.
"Aaron, if things look iffy, you think you can make their weapons too hot for them to hold or something like that?"
"Yes, but that much heat might set off a few shots itself."
"Well, save it until that looks like a better alternative than whatever else looks ready to happen."
"Gotcha."
We kept riding forward, closing the gap to forty yards, then we stopped. I sat very still, the way I had when we were faced with the toll trolls at the Ohio River. I didn't want the same kind of conclusion to this face-off. These men wore U.S. Army uniforms, and from the look of things, they wore the uniforms legitimately.
"My name is Gil Tyner. We've ridden from Louisville, going on toward St. Louis," I announced. Then I started Electrum moving forward again, still very slowly.
"That's close enough," one of the soldiers said when we were no more than twenty yards apart. "All of you, just stay where you are. Don't make a move."
He took a couple of steps forward. I noted the single bar on his collar-a lieutenant. "What the hell are you?" he asked.
Behind him, one of his men whispered, "The Four Horsemen."
"We're no threat to anyone here," I said. "Our business is beyond. Lieutenant, I hope that your men are disciplined enough not to start shooting without orders. I would hate to see this turn unpleasant.".
"You're free to pass," the lieutenant said, "but not until you've turned in your weapons. Only the military is permitted to carry weapons now."
"Don't try to force the issue, Lieutenant," I said. "You can't kill death." I stood in my stirrups, stretching to my full height. I looked down at the arc of twelve men backing up the lieutenant. A few of them cringed back a little.
Come on, big-shot Hero, I told myself. It's time for a little theater.
"Who dares challenge me?" I shouted. I guess Aaron played games with my voice, because not only did the men in the lieutenant's squad jump, but people turned to look off in the camp, quite a distance off.
I sat back in my saddle again.
"I don't want to make a big deal over this, Lieutenant. I'm tired and I just want to get on with what I have to do. We would appreciate any news. All we've heard was that there was an exchange of nuclear weapons, and we hardly needed the radio to tell us that. We're looking for a few people, family, and we have reason to believe that they got out of St. Louis before the war. I'm assuming St. Louis was hit."
The lieutenant nodded.
"Aaron, which way do we need to go?" I glanced his way and he pointed, straight through the middle of the camp. We could have detoured around it easily enough, but I decided to carry on with the show-no matter how much my smarter self, and the danger sense of the Hero, complained about the idiocy of the gesture.
"Shall we go, Lieutenant?" I scarcely gave him time to respond but started riding forward again, still slowly. The lieutenant took a few steps to the side to give us room to pass. His men split apart in the center. They stared at us as if they were afraid to look away. I glanced around the arc. Most of the men looked to be older than me, many in their thirties and forties, reservists or guardsmen, I guessed. Only the lieutenant looked really young.
I reined in Electrum and turned to look at the lieutenant.
"You and your men had better all stay even with us," I said. "That way, we can keep our eyes on each other." I grinned and I thought that the lieutenant was going to pass out. His eyes got wide, his face paled, and it looked as if his knees were trying to buckle.
I didn't try to rush the soldiers. Electrum was a little boisterous about being held to such a slow walk, but I wanted to make sure that the men on foot had absolutely no trouble keeping pace with us. Soldiers on the flanks, us on the inside, almost as though they held us in custody-except that we were mounted and they were on foot, and we still had our weapons. Lesh and Timon moved up until they were only half a length behind Aaron and me.
"Lieutenant, just how badly did the war go?" I asked once we were all moving along together smoothly. He was about six feet to my right.
"Bad enough, I guess," he said, glancing nervously at me with every step he took. "They don't tell us a lot, but I think all our cities were hit. But I guess we hit the Russians just as bad. Not that it makes any difference now," he added.
"It was the Russians, not the Chinese or somebody else?"
"Far as I know," he said.
"We saw Louisville and Fort Knox," I said. "There's nothing at all left there. Where are you from?"
"Carbondale. I was home on leave when it happened. I was stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I had a telegram to report back immediately, before, but I didn't even have time to start for St. Louis to catch a flight before it all happened."
"And now you're part of the relief effort?"
"Little enough anyone can do. We bring in food, try to keep people from killing each other. We watch while people die of radiation sickness. There aren't enough doctors or hospitals to treat one percent of the casualties."
"You have a lot of those here?" Aaron asked.
"Maybe two hundred left," the lieutenant said. "We've had more than that die already. It's almost impossible to dig graves fast enough. We don't have any heavy equipment."
"Ah, Lieutenant, we may be able to help some of the sick-if they're not too far gone already," Aaron said. He looked to me, and I nodded.
"You're a doctor?" The lieutenant's voice couldn't have expressed his skepticism any more clearly.
Aaron grinned and laughed. "No, I'm not a doctor. I'm a wizard." I felt a light tingling, and guessed that he had just removed our disguises. The way the lieutenant stopped and let his mouth fall open was a pretty good clue as well. One of his soldiers finally broke and started running away from us at a pretty fair clip.
"We do have a way to help, but we'll need a little assistance," I said.
"I'm not in command here," the lieutenant said. "Major Abrams is the CO."
"Then let's go see Major Abrams," I said. "Where is the command post?"
The lieutenant pointed. We had been headed more or less toward it anyway. "By the way, Lieutenant, what's your name?"