EarthBlood

by neetha Napew

  "What about other folks, Nanci?" asked Jeff Thomas, still busily wiping his bloodied hands on the long skirt of one of the dead women.

  "Warn them, you mean, Jefferson?"

  "Sure."

  Nanci patted the younger man on the cheek, making him flinch instinctively away from her. Mac noticed the movement and wondered at it.

  "Bleeding-heart liberal Democrats, aren't we all." Nanci grinned. "Newtown's finished. They needed numerical strength to butcher strangers. They lost that, and the odds are they'll fragment and drift away from this unholy place."

  "Not our business," said Paul McGill, matter-of-factly. "Should move on ourselves."

  "Good lad." Nanci Simms favored the eighteen-year-old with a rare, warm smile. "Correct. That's what I was struggling, perhaps a little clumsily, to say to you, Jeanne. We must only look out for ourselves and each other in this group. To be alone is to be weak. To be weak is to die."

  As a small concession to the others, Nanci agreed that they should linger for an extra twenty minutes or so. Long enough to splash around some of the ten-gallon drums of cooking oil that Sukie discovered in the biggest hut.

  And fire the whole settlement.

  The flames were whipped up by the rising easterly, spreading rapidly through the makeshift huts. Billowing clouds of dancing ruby sparks quickly ignited the dry brush around, starting a blaze that swept toward the coast.

  It also started a backdraft that threatened their vehicles, leading to a hasty withdrawal away up the dirt road toward the highway.

  Jeff Thomas took the wheel of their four-by-four and led the way out, nervously watching the orange glow that filled the rear mirrors.

  "Slow down, Jefferson," warned Nanci. "Don't get too far ahead of the others."

  "Fire's big and getting bigger," he replied, leaning forward in his seat with the effort of concentration, jerking the vehicle to the left as a roe deer, spooked by the inferno, darted across under the front wheels.

  Nanci was leaning back, relaxed, wiping at a smoke smear on her cheek, showing not the least sign of having been instrumental in the brutal killings of twenty or more human beings less than an hour ago.

  "Remember that objects in the mirror may appear smaller and more distant than they really are," she said.

  "Why don't we leave the others, Nanci?"

  She patted him on the knee, allowing her hand to crab its slow way upward, over his thigh. Her hand settled comfortably in his groin, distracting him enough to make him drop back to less than twenty miles per hour.

  "Good old loyal Jefferson." She laughed, squeezing his swelling erection through the jeans. "Never change, do you? I said there was safety in numbers. The McGills got gas, got plenty of firepower and they all seem to know how to use it. We'll stick with them." She stopped, letting the silence grow into a long meaningful pause. "For the time being."

  Chapter Five

  General John Kennedy Zelig sat behind a large plain desk and leaned his chin in his hands. The calendar showed the date of December 15,2040. The battery-operated digital clock clicked over another minute, changing the time to 16:37. He wondered how much longer the battery would last and made a quick note on a scribble pad of yellow paper to ask someone to check their supplies for spares.

  The office was in one of dozens of almost identical Quonset huts that lay beneath camouflage netting in a remote valley away to the snow-shrouded north.

  It was a part of the ultrasecret complex that was known by its code name of Aurora.

  The space insignia hung on the opposite wall— with a maroon background, it carried a circle of tiny silver stars. Zelig looked at it, his mind hundreds of miles away. Then his gaze moved to the large map of the western half of what had been the continental United States of America.

  His powerful hands clasped each other like long-lost brothers as he looked at the dozens of tiny pins that dotted the map, some clustered in nests. Red and yellow and blue and green and orange and white.

  And black.

  The black gathering mainly in the vicinity of Las Vegas, Nevada.

  MARGARET DILDOW TABOR, the Chief of the Hunters of the Sun, was alone in her office, sitting at a similar desk, looking at a similar map.

  Only hers was computer controlled and was covered with hundreds of flickering lights. If you could have put the two maps side by side, you'd have observed uncanny similarities in the patterns of the lights and the pins.

  The biggest difference between the two opposing forces and their Intelligence was that she didn't know where Aurora was, though she was feeling increasingly confident that her far-flung recon patrols were getting closer all the time. Now it was narrowed down to an area close to what used to be the Canadian border, in Washington State. Their comp predictions had it hidden in the suburbs of Seattle, but the Chief's personal guess put it either in the Olympic Mountains or up in the Cascades.

  "Always a man for trying to take the fucking high ground, weren't you, General Zelig," she whispered to herself. The socio-psychology program that had occupied four years out at UCLA flooded back into her mind. "Make sure you get both the territorial and the moral imperative."

  The main keyboard linked to a sophisticated WP console was at her side, and Margaret Tabor turned to it. She keyed in the code to search for probable locations of the missing members of the crew of the crashed Aquila. She still found it difficult to believe that she'd had the old woman and the journalist actually snug in the palm of her hand and then, through the foolishness of others, allowed them to escape.

  Hilton and the others were far from being the only people whom the Hunters of the Sun wanted to contact. There were others, men and women with special skills.

  Men and women who might be enlisted to the cause of the Hunters of the Sun.

  Or men who might well prove of greater value to Zelig and his friends. Who would, therefore, be of grave potential harm to the Hunters of the Sun and needed to be removed. All of the existing evidence seemed to place Captain James Hilton and the others in the latter category.

  Her capable fingers moved confidently over the concave keys until the screen gave her the access that she wanted. The bulk of the lights on her map dimmed, drawing attention to those that were colored silver.

  The brightest was not all that far away from her base: Stevenson, where the USSV Aquila had crashed from the sky and flamed out on landing.

  They'd tapped into crew information, so that there were single lights at the homes of everyone. Margaret Tabor knew them all by heart.

  Hollywood for Hilton.

  Aspen, Colorado, for the radio expert, Steve Romero.

  Jeff Thomas, the journalist, had resided in San Francisco, though a pair of lights to the north and west of Vegas showed where he might be at present… with the woman.

  "The bitch… dangerous bitch."

  Henderson McGill, the astrophysicist, had lived in New England. With two wives and a brood of children. She frowned at where he might now be. They'd checked up in Mystic and found only a burned shell of a house and a couple of graves.

  There'd also been graves at the Hilton home.

  Other glittering silver points of light indicated New Orleans and Albuquerque. Carrie Princip and Kyle Lynch.

  Jed Herne had been the electronics whiz kid of the crew and had come from rural Vermont. And the last of them who were believed to be alive, Pete Turner from New York.

  Communication in the crumbled society was so much more difficult to sustain.

  "Where?" she asked. Her suspicions linked them to the old ghost town at Calico. There had been a gathering there. And the Hunters had searched for clues. "Hard enough?" the Chief wondered aloud. "Maybe not. Maybe not."

  She reached for the intercom to order a top team back into Calico. In her heart there was a growing suspicion that this might be a nodal point. If they could find something there, then that could open up some routes to pursue Hilton and his team. That part of the Hunters' plans was assuming disproportionate importance to her. S
he knew it, but it had become a compulsion.

  ZELIG STOOD UP and walked around the room, stopping in front of his pin-studded map. He was a well-built, muscular man who'd been a running back at West Point. Now into his forties, he was a little thicker around the midriff than he wanted to be, but he worked out every day in the gymnasium.

  The pins that interested him most were those that applied to the movements of the crew of the Aquila. The project wanted to pull in all manner of people with all sorts of skills. But Hilton and the others were his people.

  "Or what's left of them," he said aloud.

  For such a stocky, strong man, his voice was surprisingly thin and high.

  They'd only just picked up the message at Calico ghost town. On his instructions, his team had left it where it was in case others came along. They'd also checked out the wreckage of the Chinook, though they knew there were no survivors. Now they were trying to get through to Muir Woods, hoping for another clue there, despite its being already ten days past the original rendezvous. However, the results of some major quake activity in central California were proving a problem for his patrols.

  But time was racing by, and the weather was deteriorating. They had plows at Aurora, but if they worked too well in keeping highways open, it would point to their location as clearly as a giant scarlet arrow.

  Zelig shook his head and walked back to the desk. The word "batteries" stared at him from the pad. He took out his fountain pen and wrote in a firm, angular hand, with green ink, a memo to himself.

  "Send teams south to search for incomers." Then he added a "?" and underlined it.

  Chapter Six

  Hearing the noise of secret intruders creeping up toward the hydroponic-plant complex in the darkness, Kyle picked his way out of the waist-high brush as quickly and silently as he could. He slipped into the long, narrow hut where Jim Hilton, Heather, Carrie and Sly were sleeping on folding bunk beds.

  Easing the door shut behind him, he winced as the hinges squeaked.

  "Jim," he called softly, his hand on his friend's shoulder, ready to clamp it over his mouth if he made a noise.

  Jim was instantly alert. "Trouble, Kyle?"

  "Visitors."

  "Hunters?"

  "Can't tell."

  "How many?"

  "Didn't wait to find out."

  Their whispering woke Heather and then, almost simultaneously, Carrie. Snoring gently, only Sly Romero remained snugly asleep, hands folded across his chest, like the statue of a crusader on his marble tomb.

  "What is it, Dad?"

  "Kyle heard someone coining."

  "Hunters?" asked Carrie, already pulling on her pants and reaching for her boots.

  Kyle bit his lip. "Shit, I don't know. Heard a footfall. Someone swore. Trying to creep up on us. I didn't stop and ask him for his Social Security number." Tense anger underlined his words.

  "Hey, who rattled your cage, Kyle?"

  "Just cut it out," hissed Jim. "Heather. Wake up Sly. And for the Lord's sake, don't let him make any noise. Carrie, you and Kyle go out with the kids and wait by the vehicles."

  "We running?" The young black man couldn't conceal the surprise and doubt in his voice. "What about…?"

  "I'll warn Diego and the others."

  "And then?"

  Jim straightened up, drawing the Ruger, the blued steel gleaming in the pallid light that filtered in through the hut's dusty windows.

  "No time for a balanced debate. I'll warn them. Take a quick look around. Might be a loner or a couple of vagrants hanging around. If it's more, we get out the back door. No arguments. We come first. Right? You all agree?" Nobody spoke. "Fine. Least you don't disagree."

  He ghosted out of the wooden building, into the darkness. He checked his chron, finding that it was 3:29 in the morning. The air tasted flat and cold on his tongue, with the distinct flavor of salt from the Pacific, close by them to the west. One of the first things that he'd begun to notice after their return to the blighted Earth was how much cleaner the atmosphere was, making it easier to catch scents.

  Now he could smell the gasoline from their vehicles, and the rich odor of the plants beneath their transparent covers all around him.

  Jim thought for moment that he saw a brief flash of light on the far side of the mill, like a flashlight being switched quickly on and off. But he couldn't be sure.

  Whoever was coming after the place was coming in fast.

  He hesitated, his mind swamped with an overwhelming desire to get out quick to make sure that his daughter and Carrie, Kyle and Sly were safe.

  The GPF-555 Ruger Blackhawk Hunter in his right hand gave him a measure of confidence. An ounce shy of two pounds of metal, it was loaded with six rounds of .44-caliber full metal jackets.

  For ten beats of his heart, Jim Hilton stood very still, holding his breath, listening and waiting.

  There.

  The scrape of a boot against sandy dirt. And to the left, someone passing on a whispered instruction.

  On one of the survivalist weekends that Jim had enjoyed in the happy years before Earthblood, there'd been a special course on "urban self-saving," run by a tall, quiet-spoken Encino woman in her midtwenties.

  "Don't wait. That's rule one. Rule two is not to wait. Rules three through fifty are all the same. You wait and you're down on your back with the rain falling into your open eyes. Believe me, I know."

  Based on that advice, Jim considered blasting away into the damp blackness beyond the narrow stream. But bullets got you through times of no money a whole lot better than money got you through times of no bullets.

  Instead, he moved as quietly as he could toward the largest building on the site, which was the sleeping and living quarters for the young enthusiasts.

  The door handle was moist under the fingers of his left hand as he turned it, easing his way inside.

  "Who's that?" The voice sounded to Jim like Harriet's, the young woman with the baby.

  "Me. Jim Hilton."

  "What is it?" another voice called from the opposite side of the low-ceilinged hut.

  "Trouble," he replied.

  That was all it took.

  In less than forty-five seconds everyone was awake and dressed, all done in complete silence. Diego Chimayo came over to stand by Jim at the center of the room.

  "The Hunters? Or whatever they are called?"

  "Don't know. Kyle heard a noise. I've seen a light over near the mill."

  "You know how many, Jim?"

  "No idea. Mob-handed is my guess."

  "We'll try and stop them."

  "What sort of armory you got, Diego?"

  The silence was so intense that it seemed to grip Jim Hilton by the throat.

  At the far end of the room, the little baby whimpered, and its mother picked it up and held it to her breast. It was still and quiet outside and inside.

  "Diego? Guns? What you got?"

  There was a flash of white teeth in the gloom as the young man smiled and shrugged. "Guess we don't have what we should have here, Jim. Not really. There didn't seem any need to get ourselves protected. Growing the plants was what counted."

  "Not really!" Jim grabbed him by the shirt. "Just what does that mean, you ignorant bastard!"

  "Hey, stay free, Jim."

  "Stay fucking free yourself, kid! If that's the Hunters of the Sun creepy-crawling out there and… and it looks like it might be…"

  "What?"

  "Oh, Jesus, son." The bright rage suddenly trickled away, leaving him feeling tired and defeated. "Then it means you probably get to be dead."

  "Why would they do that?" asked a new voice.

  "Why not?"

  "We got a pair of shotguns, but there's only a couple of rounds for the 10-gauge. And there's a .32 someplace around here. Little Saturday night special kind of gun. Got four or five bullets in it."

  Jim closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think. "They'll massacre you, Diego. All of you."

  "I asked you why they'd do tha
t, Jim?" asked the same worried voice.

  "You got something good and positive here. Kind of project that the planet needs to replenish itself and offer the hope of a greening again. Hunters of the Sun don't want that. Not unless they control it."

  "Help us," Diego blurted out as he reached for Jim, fingers brushing his jacket. "You've got some good guns and you can use them. Save us, Jim."

  "Can't."

  The stillness outside was shattered by the noise of breaking glass and the dull crump of implode grenades. Flashes of golden fire burst in a dazzling display through the dusty windows, illuminating the shocked faces of the group.

  Jim spun on his heel and ran to the door. He opened it a crack and peered out. There was a rumbling noise coming up the main track toward him, and be glimpsed a half-track personnel carrier. Some of the hydroponic greenhouses were already well ablaze, giving enough light for him to make out the arrow-and-sun insignia painted neatly on the front of the oncoming vehicle.

  He eased the door a little wider, heard a yell, and then a chunk of wood splintered away a couple of feet above his head. The crack of the combat rifle followed closely behind the impact of the high-velocity bullet.

  "Don't go...." Diego's voice, ragged with fear, came from behind him. "Jim?"

  He didn't waste time on any more talk. He slid through the partly open door like a gray rat up a drainpipe and ducked away to his left, running in a crouch. Bullets tore great furrows in the sand around his feet as he scampered toward the waiting vehicles, praying under his breath that the attackers wouldn't be aware of the back-trail.

  The personnel carrier had an LMG on its turret, and it opened up. A burst of lead ripped past his head, close enough for him to feel the exploding heat as the bullets sliced through the darkness. Behind him there was screaming and the noise of breaking glass. Someone to Jim's right was shouting out orders at the top of his voice.

  A spotlight bloomed from the blackness, questing backward and forward like a hunting dog, trying to pick out the dodging man. A gun cracked once from ahead of Jim Hilton, and the light went out in a tinkle of glass.