by neetha Napew
"So, the only way is by boat?"
"Heard you could loop east, but it'd take you fucking days to do that."
The pain had melted from white agony to a raw, red throbbing. Nathan realized to his shame that he'd wet himself. It must have wet the woman's hand down there. He thought that maybe he ought to try to apologize to her.
She was nodding, her face close to his. "Good. That's all the questions I have."
"Sorry about—" he began.
But he never got to finish the apology.
Nanci used the heel of her left hand in a stabbing, snapping blow upward. It hit Nathan below the nose, driving his head back. He lost consciousness and fell to the ground as the woman let go of his genitals. She stooped at his side and pressed finger and thumb to the slowly throbbing artery beneath the left ear, holding it until all movement had ceased.
Before leaving the jetty, Nanci rolled the corpse into the harbor where it made only a small splash.
On the way out of town she stooped to rinse the urine from her strong, capable fingers.
IN LESS THAN AN HOUR she was back again, leading the six McGills and Jeff. Everyone was carrying blankets and food and water and weapons. Sukie wandered sleepily along, holding the hand of her brother, Paul. The other hand trailed her favorite doll, Mournful Megg.
Nanci hadn't explained to them what she'd been doing. She simply said that she'd found the roads were washed out to the north and they had to steal a boat.
Nobody asked her what she'd done to find that out.
They found no sentry on the jetty.
"What kind we taking?" whispered Jeff.
"No need to whisper, Jefferson," replied Nanci. "You heard the noise from their alehouse. They're having a wake for the dead, making enough din to rouse the dead."
"But what kind of boat, Nanci?"
"You keep pushing me with your damn fool questions, and you'll finish up with a Mexican necktie."
"What's that?" The question sounded casual, but fright at the sudden anger in the woman's voice colored his voice.
"Cut open the front of your throat and slice the tendon under your tongue. Pull the tongue down and out the slit in your neck. Understand me, Jefferson."
"Yeah, Nanci, I understand."
Mac was standing near the edge of the narrow pier, looking at the boats all around when he spotted the body of a young man, arms spread, floating belly up, white eyed, in among the barnacled timbers. He decided not to mention it to anyone and moved toward the boat Nanci was looking over.
"Seems big," said Paul McGill.
"We have two adult males. Three if you feel able to include Jefferson Lee Thomas. I have my own doubts. There is myself, Pamela and also Jeanne, who strikes me as being a capable person. The rowboats are obviously too small."
"Take two of them," insisted the bearded eighteen-year-old. "Room enough, then."
"Halve our speed." Nanci held up a hand to stop any further argument. "I'm sorry, Paul, my dear young man, but I'm afraid I don't have the time to continue this fascinating discussion of the metaphysical logistics of traveling. That one," she stated, pointing at the vessel with the muzzle of the Port Royale, which had somehow appeared in her fingers.
It was called the Eureka Belle and was forty feet long. There had once been an auxiliary engine, but that had rusted away. There was a tall mast that carried both a mainsail and a spinnaker, in dark green canvas.
Nanci went to the stern and took the wheel, ordering Mac to loose the bow cable. Without being told, Paul went to free the rear line from the frost-slick bollard.
Sukie and Jocelyn were taken below by their mother, who reappeared on deck to report there were eight bunks in two separate rooms.
"Fine. Jeff, get ready to haul that rope there. Jeanne, you help him. Pamela, can you go below decks and keep an eye on the little ones. No knowing what trouble they might get into. The bow line goes first, Mac. Push her off and jump. Don't leave it too late. We won't be coming back for anyone. Then drop your rope, Paul, and move fast to get on board. Everyone knows what's happening?" Nobody answered her. She sniffed. "Why do I bother, I wonder? Let's do it, people."
It was a perfect departure.
The ship ghosted gently away from her berth, and both Mac and his only surviving son managed to scramble on board without too much trouble.
Nanci gave the order to haul on the mainsheet, and the big sail began to inch its way up the mast.
"I recall some poem about going to the sea again," she said as she tested the feel of the wheel. "With laughing fellow rovers. But let it pass."
The water bubbled away behind the Eureka Belle as Nanci set a course due west, chasing the long-gone sunset. There was no alarm, no attempt at a chase, no shooting.
It was the perfect getaway.
Jeanne joined Pamela and the girls below decks to sleep, followed by Paul. And, within the hour, Jeff Thomas.
Mac remained on the deck, leaning on the rail, watching the casually competent way that the older woman handled the ship.
"Reckon you could do this on your own, couldn't you, Nanci?" he said.
"If I had to, Mac."
"Big boat like this."
"Not too difficult. She's been set up so that one person can sail her in calm weather. If the wind rose or the sea got rough, then it would take two. Probably three."
"You've done this sort of thing before?"
She smiled at him, her even teeth gleaming in the fading moonlight. "I've done most things before, Mac. And been most places. Sailed as a little sprat with my father, off Poughtucket Sound up in New England."
The wake was straight as an ebony ruler, leading back toward the invisible bulk of the land. Mac breathed in, savoring the clean taste of the sea.
"Good," he said.
"Beats most pleasures." She glanced up at the leading edge of the mainsail and made a slight adjustment to the helm. "Wind's freshening and veering a couple of points southerly. Help us on our way."
"To catch Jim and the others?"
"Strength in numbers, Mac. 'Specially when you're all strangers in this strange new land."
"I read that."
Nanci looked sideways at him. "Then you know where the quote comes from?"
"Course. I used to read all the science fiction going. It's Robert Heinlein."
"Sure, Mac. But he got it out of the Bible. From the Book of Exodus. The twenty-second verse of the second chapter."
"You know the good book real well."
The sail fluttered, and he was conscious that they'd picked up a little more speed.
"The Bible. I was once in a prison cell in Colombia, under sentence of death, for three months. Tidal water flooded it up to six inches from the ceiling, morning and evening. Then the crabs came in. Big as dinner plates. All there was to read was the Bible."
"My God, Nanci! That's unbelievable." Mac was shocked, shaking his head.
She laughed. "Yeah, Mac, it is. I just made it up. Truth is that I was a good scholar at the Sunday school when I was a little one. I happen to remember a lot of it. Remember most things. Call it an eidetic memory." She turned away from him, concentrating on the wheel. "Remember more things than I want sometimes."
They sailed on together in silence for twenty minutes or so.
"Going to bring her around, slow and easy, onto a northerly course. I don't know how much progress the others'll make during the night. We don't want to pass them. And I didn't want to risk running us onto a shoal in the dark."
"There were some maps in the cabin."
"I know, Mac. But if you have earthquakes powerful enough to totally alter the coastline of California, then it's a fair bet the shallows and reefs might have shifted around some."
Mac nodded, feeling vaguely foolish for not having thought of that. "Of course."
She sensed his feelings. "Mac, you're an astrophysicist. Three months ago all of this would have seemed like some drug-induced nightmare. Profoundly impossible. The world you knew, totally destroyed and reshaped. You'r
e doing well enough, believe me."
His hand had dropped to clutch the steel hilt of the hunting knife on his hip. "Well enough! By Christ, Nanci… A dead wife. Two dead sons and a dead daughter. Boy, have I done fucking well!"
"You got a live wife and four live children, Mac. Batting better than fifty percent, and that's a damn sight better than you should expect."
"You reckon?"
"Yeah, I reckon." A cold anger filtered into her voice. "And I know, Mac. Believe me, on this, I know."
"You want to talk to me, Nanci?"
"About who I am and where do I come from and what makes me tick?"
The warning note couldn't have been clearer if the woman had shoved the muzzle of the Heckler & Koch P-111 in his mouth and cocked it.
Mac shrugged, hands off. "Hey, come on, Nanci. You can't blame any of us for being curious. Just that it seems you know so much about the Hunters of the Sun and Zelig and all that shit."
"I know some." A little of the ice had melted from her voice. "But not all. I truly don't know where Aurora is. I figure it for somewhere close by the Cascades, but that covers a lot of miles."
For another few minutes they remained silent while the Belle sailed on across the painted ocean.
Nanci spoke first. "If we can make it to Aurora, you know that it's not going to be heaven on earth."
"Sure. But I guess I sort of see it as…as a kind of refuge. Where some decent people have gotten themselves together to try and hit a lick for what's right." He laughed self-consciously. "I sound like John Wayne at the Alamo. But you know what I mean, Nanci. Someplace better."
She nodded, looking behind, then up at the sky, "Wind's still getting stronger. Could do with a reef in the sail. Better get below and wake up Jeff and Paul."
"All right."
"Then we'll swing around northerly and start moving back toward land. Someone can spell me at the wheel for a couple of hours. Best be you, Mac."
Mac nodded. "Good plan, Nanci."
Chapter Fourteen
In her desert base, Margaret Tabor's office had a large clock on the wall, with a sweep second hand. It was old-fashioned, compared with the rest of the flickering digital timekeepers around the place, but the leader of the Hunters of the Sun liked it. Somehow it gave a better feeling for the way seconds and minutes and hours were racing by. Like fine sand tumbling out of a huge hourglass. You could watch it go.
She turned and pressed the keys on her computer console, watching as the illuminated map on the far wall changed. Colored dots vanished and shifted, until all that remained were a number of silver lights.
Some of them were speculative. Some of them were much more certain.
She was wearing her own version of the Hunters' uniform. Flagg had originally designed it and chosen the logo of the golden arrow piercing a silver sun.
Her tight-fitting pants were tucked into highly polished black boots. A thin red stripe ran down each leg. There was a similar stripe down each arm of the black jacket. Beneath that was a white silk blouse, high at the throat.
She licked her full lips, considering the map, knowing that the conglomerate of politicians and industrialists and senior officers from the old armed forces were all desperate to try to locate Zelig and his secret base. Life after the eco-holocaust was polarizing. Left and right. Good and bad.
Dark and light.
Margaret Tabor had not the least doubt in her sharp, ferretlike mind that the Hunters of the Sun were the only force for the light.
Silver dots, gleaming like shards of diamond, spilled onto a velvet cloth.
"Power," she whispered.
If only she had access to more power. Staggering amounts of irreplaceable gasoline were being expended to keep the base functioning. There were already one or two small, improvised plants working out in the desert at refining gas from crude. But it was a complex procedure and devoured much more power to get it running. Zelig had already attracted several of the leading scientists who'd managed to survive beyond Earthblood. The Hunters were far less successful in that area, though they had plenty of weapons men and survivalists.
And lawyers.
But Margaret had personally taken charge of a murderous purge of some of the spineless and useless hangers-on at the base. Mouths were food.
Food was power.
Just to put one of their only two choppers into the air for an hour was a desperate decision.
If only the right-thinking men and women who were the core of the Hunters had been able to read the future and taken precautions as soon as the first red tendrils of the plant cancer had appeared. Then they could have taken over huge stocks of gas.
Zelig would have been long dead, his scrawny throat crushed beneath the heel of her boot if that had happened.
But it hadn't.
With more power, they would have tracked down the base in the Northwest weeks ago.
"Aurora, indeed," she said aloud to vent her anger.
Gradually their patrols were closing in, narrowing it down to a radius of a hundred and fifty miles from the ruined city of Seattle. As soon as the circle tightened further, it would be possible to mount a major operation with all their forces.
The silver dots seemed to mock her.
The landing of the space vessel Aquila, down at Stevenson Base, had been a total shambles for the Hunters of the Sun. Prime targets for enlistment had been allowed to escape.
Now where were they all?
Some dead.
She knew that, but she also knew that some of them were still very much alive. The dots showed the survivors clustering together on the West Coast.
There was a faint knock on the door of her office.
"Enter."
Margaret Tabor knew from the hesitancy and volume of the knock who was standing there. She also knew that he would knock again to be sure.
"Come in, Owen," she called, preempting him.
Owen John was the latest in a surprisingly long line of older male assistants. Patience and tolerance weren't her strong points, and the lives of his predecessors had tended to be short and not at all merry.
But he hadn't been a volunteer. None of them had been volunteers.
Margaret's policy was to keep her eyes open around the compound for any men who reminded her of her own father. Then she would order them to become personal assistants to her. It wasn't an offer that you could possibly refuse, because refusal meant instant, painful death.
Acceptance also tended, in the long or short time, to lead to termination.
Margaret Tabor hadn't much liked her own father, for reasons that remained locked away in the back rooms of memory.
"What is it, Owen?" she asked, smiling sweetly at the white-haired man, who was hesitating in the doorway to her office. "Come on, out with it."
"Word from our contact on the coast of California."
"Yes?"
"Looks like it could possibly be the Aquila's people."
"Go on, Owen."
"Two boats stolen from Eureka. Well, to be accurate, one of them was more like a ship, though I'm not sure quite when a boat becomes a ship, only one—"
She cut across his nervous blathering. "Eureka? Where is that?"
"Ah, yes. Two hundred and eighty-two miles north of San Francisco."
"Good, Owen, that's good."
There was a sheen of perspiration on the man's forehead, and he nodded and smiled at Margaret Tabor's words, looking like a dysfunctional puppet.
The woman realized that nerves had overcome him, and her sudden praise had made him forget that he hadn't yet given the whole message. She smiled encouragingly, wondering whether Owen would soon be making the trip to the narrow, bleak corridor with the meat hooks on the walls.
"Go on," she said very quietly, pressing keys, watching the jerky movements of some of the silver lights on her large map. "You said that two vessels were taken?"
"Yes, yes, yes. Two. A rowboat. Witnesses there spoke of a man…and a girl about twelve and a youth wh
o seemed clumsy and a grown woman or a skinny man. They didn't seem too sure of all the details there."
"Never mind, Owen."
"There was killing."
"Of course there was."
"Three shot by a powerful handgun. Our contact says it was done with extreme prejudice at close range. And a boy was found drowned with a broken nose. That was later. When the sailing ship was stolen."
"Who took that?"
Owen swallowed hard, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing up and down like an egg in a freezer bag. "Nobody saw them."
"Except, perhaps, the drowned boy," she said, managing a thin smile.
"Eureka Belle… the name of the ship. Two sails. One at the front and a big one at the back, painted green."
"The ship or the sails?"
"What?"
"Painted green. Vessel or sails, Owen?"
"Sails. Forty feet long."
"The sails are forty feet long?"
"Oh." Owen hastily consulted a scribbled note that was already crumpled in his sweaty fingers. "The Eureka Belle is forty feet long. No engine."
Margaret Tabor steepled her fingers on the desk in front of her and stared at them for several long seconds. "I think we might safely begin to assume that it is indeed the survivors of the Aquila, making for the north and for Aurora and the little shit-for-brains, Zelig."
She looked again at the map, her concentration drawing the eyes of Owen. It made sense. The other sightings. The stupidity of her sec people in allowing the journalist and this mysterious old bitch to escape.
"Is that all, Miss Tabor?"
"Yes, I believe it is, Owen. I think it's time I left this desk and set off north myself with some support. Time is passing. The game's afoot." She waved a dismissive hand at the elderly man, watching him vanish. Her obsidian eyes didn't alter as she called through to her head of security. "Owen," she said flatly. "As soon as you like. And make sure you vid it for me."
When she hung up the black phone, she was smiling again
.
TWELVE HUNDRED MILES AWAY to the north, General John Kennedy Zelig also had his own agents scattered through the ravaged land.
His office was considerably more low tech than that of his most bitter enemy, and was set in one of the circle of Quonset huts that ranged around the sides of the hidden valley in the Pacific Cascade Mountains.