by neetha Napew
But that still hadn't stopped the dreams.
The Chief walked toward the stranded Chinook, pleasantly aware of the apprehension that her approach caused the men gathered around the open engine cowling.
"Well?" she said.
"Soon, Chief. But…"
The word hung in the cold, damp air like a broken promise. "But what?" she asked.
"But it could easily happen again. No point getting mad at me or anyone, Chief. Just that these machines need proper servicing, and all the facilities are fucked."
"I understand that. You know that I always seek the very best, but I am aware of the boundary between the difficult and the impossible."
The man nodded. "Sure, Chief. We'll be in the air in about twenty minutes from now. Any idea of the weather ahead?"
Margaret Tabor sighed. "Doesn't look good," she replied. "I'd say snow followed by some more snow with a lot more snow to come along after that. And then there's a risk of some snow."
THEY HAD AGREED to a rough signal code using the double headlights and brake lights of the tractors to communicate with each other. But there was no way that anyone in the horse trailers could speak to the drivers. Henderson McGill had come up with the idea of a length of baling cord attached to the belt of whoever happened to be at the wheel.
An hour or so after leaving the bloated butchery of the commune, Paul felt the cord pulled tight. He slowed down, flicking the light toggle to warn Jim in the front tractor, then pulled to a halt in the windswept center of the blacktop, throwing the vehicle out of gear.
He opened the flimsy plastic door, eyes squinting against the icy wind, and swung down into the road. He saw Jeanne's anxious face in the door of the trailer. "What is it, Ma?"
The first vehicle had stopped, and Nanci and Carrie both jumped out of the rear of the horse trailer.
"It's Sukie. She's really, really sick." And the woman started to weep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Twice during that snowy night, the little girl stopped breathing. In the early hours of the twenty-third of December, at a quarter after two and again at half-past four.
Paul and Jocelyn had both gone to sleep in the front wagon, while Carrie Princip had offered to spend the night with the remaining McGills, to do anything she could to help the struggling Sukie.
The fever seemed to be rising, and the child had been stricken with uncontrollable diarrhea that had a particularly foul smell. There had been nests of small red spots on her neck and chest, and her tongue was dried-up, crusted and black.
"It seems she's worse in the night and then not quite so bad every morning," said Jeanne.
Paul McGill had brought out a half-dozen small camping lamps from the silent commune, and two of them gave enough flickering light for Carrie to be able to examine the girl. Sukie's stomach was swollen and she was restless, sometimes suffering severe coughing fits.
"Can't we do anything?" asked Mac, sitting wrapped in blankets at the far end of the big horse trailer, looking like an elderly reservation Sioux, his breath misting out all around him in the chilly air.
"We can try to bring the fever down a little. We need some wet cold cloths," Carrie said. When they wrapped the small girl in the wet cloths, she moaned but seemed mostly unaware, sunk into a near-comatose state.
But it wasn't enough to forestall the life-threatening danger.
The first time, between two and two-thirty, they had been gathered around, watching the little chest rise and fall, beads of sweat standing out on the pallid brow. Then Sukie gave a juddering cry, her back arching.
And stopped breathing.
"Oh, my God, not my baby, too!" cried Mac, hands clawing at nothing.
Carrie reacted quickly.
She pinched the child's nose between finger and thumb, lowering her mouth and starting resuscitation, using her other hand to press firmly and rhythmically over Sukie's breastbone.
"You'll catch whatever—" started Jeanne McGill, then managed to check herself.
That first time, it was easy to get the battling heart to pump again.
The second time it took longer.
To Carrie it had seemed like hours before she felt the fluttering of the pulse, slower than she might have expected from the level of the temperature.
Nanci had appeared from nowhere, her silvery hair like a halo in the flaring glare of the lamps. Without a word she took over pumping on Sukie's chest, allowing Carrie to concentrate on restarting her breathing.
Jeanne wept as Sukie suddenly whimpered, her eyes opening and staring wildly all around her. Carrie sat back on her heels and managed a watery smile. "You're back with us, kid," she whispered. She turned to the older woman. "Thanks, Nanci."
"Was that the first time?"
Mac answered her. "Second. Last one was a couple of hours ago. Carrie brought her safely to us then."
Nanci looked at Carrie. "You look seriously bushed. If you would like a rest in the other trailer, I can spell you here for a while. Give you a call if there is another emergency." Looking down at Sukie, she added, "Though the wee one seems to be resting for the moment."
"All right. I could sleep on a rope."
"What is it?" said Jeanne, wiping away her tears. "It's killing the baby."
"Cholera?" Nanci suggested, glancing questioningly at Carrie, who was standing by the door.
"I don't know for sure. It's not exactly the kind of disease that you think you'll encounter in deep space. But I think you get agonizing cramps with cholera. Paler face. My guess, and it's only a guess, folks, is that it's more likely to be some kind of typhoid. Moving a whole lot quicker than usual, but it's got most of the classic symptoms."
"Prognosis?" Nanci leaned forward and gently wiped perspiration from Sukie's forehead.
Carrie hesitated, unable to avoid glancing first at Jeanne, then toward Mac.
"The truth," he said very quietly. "No point in anything else, Carrie."
"I don't know," she said, and added hastily, "and that's the truth, Mac. She's weak and young and hasn't been eating all that well for a while." She paused. "If you press me, then I think she might not make it. Another attack or two like this, and the reaper'll have her tight wrapped inside his cloak."
"Drugs?" said Nanci Simms. "Do you know what she might need if it's a typhoid-related illness? Some kind of antibiotics to fight the sickness?"
"Good old penicillin would be better than nothing. Sukie isn't allergic, is she?"
Jeanne and Mac looked at each other. He answered. "Angel would've known, Carrie. I don't. Anyway, if someone's burning to death, you don't stop to worry whether she might be allergic to fucking water!"
Nanci ignored his outburst, standing up and glancing out through one of the slits in the side of the trailer. "Snowing again," she said. "Incidentally I once worked for a sort of doctor. Learned some useful things. You know how it is. Typhoid. Chloramphenicol…Chloromycetin. Ampicillin for a carrier, not what we need here for Sukie."
"How come you know that kind of… ?" Carrie stopped and shook her head. "Forget it, Nanci. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. All we have to do now is find us some."
The rest of the night was comparatively uneventful, and they were on the move again before full dawn. Jim drove the first tractor and Mac was at the wheel of the second. Sukie was still asleep, exhausted by the attacks of the night. She lay in the middle of a pile of blankets, her head in Jeanne's lap. Carrie traveled with the McGills. The water supplies had been topped up from the fresh snowfall.
Nanci Simms tugged on the cord after a couple of miles. When they stopped, she climbed down from the trailer and squeezed herself into the cab next to Jim. Despite all the hardships, the sixty-year-old woman still contrived to look as smart and clean as though she'd just showered in her Nob Hill apartment and was off for a meal at Shang Yuen.
"I think the child will die in the next day or so. Probably slip away during the long hours of darkness, as she nearly did last night."
Jim was moving on, tryi
ng to pick his way between two rutted, frozen patches of deep snow, and he didn't answer for a couple of minutes. He checked the mirrors to make sure that Mac had also successfully navigated the obstacle.
"You heard me, Jim?"
"What are you saying, Nanci? I had a friend back in L.A. who'd majored in literary deconstructionism. Used to talk a whole lot about the pre-essential importance of the subtext. What's your subtext, Nanci?"
"Mac's near the breaking point. Too many deaths too close to him too quickly."
Jim nodded. "I see that."
"Normally I'd take the view that our progress to Aurora took priority over everything and everyone else. But the little girl is central to us all."
"What can we do?"
"I suspect that any pharmacy we happened on will have been ravaged by the great unwashed."
"So?"
"My feeling is that we should look for any isolated dwelling. Anyone shrewd enough to be still alive and flourishing in this general carnage might be clever enough to have laid in a stock of useful drugs. That's what I'd have done myself. Keep a good look out for any side trail that seems as if it might have been in use the last day or so. Probability is that the sort of place we're after won't even be visible from the highway here."
"I'll keep my eyes open, then," Jim said. From then on he paid special attention to side trails for any signs of recent passage.
It was eleven minutes before nine in the morning when he tapped lightly on the brake pedal three times, warning Mac that he was about to stop.
The miniature convoy halted and everyone got out, except Jeanne and Sukie.
Jim remained in the high cab, allowing the engine to idle, its exhaust barely visible in the freezing drizzle that had begun to fall.
"I spotted a path," he called. "Bit like you said earlier, Nanci. Off to the right, kind of hidden behind a drift. I can make out what looks like a single set of prints along it. Goes up and over the brow of the hill there."
Nanci swung up next to him again, looking where he pointed. "Yeah," she said.
"Should we go up there in the tractors?"
She considered the question. "Anybody there will hear us coming miles away. Then again, in daylight, approaching over snow, I guess we'd have trouble sneaking in. Used to be good in the old days when there were trees for camouflage."
Mac wiped the cold rain from his face. "Can we make a decision, Jim?" he said.
"Sure. Everyone back in the trailers and get your guns primed and ready. We'll go in. Save splitting the force or risking leaving the tractors for someone to come along and steal." He looked at Nanci questioningly, but she simply smiled and held out her hands, palms up.
"Fine, Jim," she said. "Fine."
The slope was steep, and the snow was dangerously patchy. In parts it was frozen, with a crust of ice over it. In others the wind had wiped the trail clear, and the wheels slithered in furrows of rich, deep mud.
Once they were over the top of the hill, they were faced with undulating farming land that had once carried a cereal crop. Now nothing living showed above the thin layer of white.
Jim watched the hollows where someone had walked along the track in the same direction that they were going.
Over the third hill, he glimpsed the roof of a building, with a narrow column of smoke snaking out of the red chimney. He touched on the brakes before he stopped and opened the side window of the cab, looking back to see that once again Nanci was the first out of the horse trailer.
"I make it," she said before he had a chance to speak. "We can stop here and go in on foot. Leave two with the little girl. Couple of guns, in case." She caught Jim's eye. "If that's what you think is a good idea?"
"Sure. It's what I was going to do."
He led the way, with Nanci at his heels. Then came Mac and Paul, with Jeff Thomas bringing up the rear. Jeanne, Carrie and Heather remained behind with Jocelyn and Sukie. The little girl seemed fretful and had suffered another fearsome bout of diarrhea that had them throwing out soiled bedding and opening the rear doors of the trailer to air it.
"See where there was an orchard," Jim said over his shoulder to the others.
"Still just the one set of tracks going in." Paul McGill had the Krieghoff Ulm-Primus rifle, carrying it at the high port, ready for action.
Jim had his Ruger Blackhawk Hunter, Nanci the Port Royale machine pistol, Mac his Brazzi 16-gauge. Jeff was holding the nameless .38, the only firearm that Nanci would allow him to carry, refusing him either the Heckler & Koch or one of the SIG-Sauer automatics that the McGills had brought with them.
It occurred to Jim that if he were inside the house and saw this scruffy, ferocious, armed band of renegades coming down the hill, he'd immediately open up on them with everything he'd got.
"I feel sort of vulnerable," said Henderson McGill, pausing to run a finger inside the collar of his anorak. The drizzling rain had turned to very fine snow, cutting down the visibility. They were less than two hundred yards from the house.
"Typical of a man," snorted Nanci.
"How's that?"
"Feel like you're walking into a patch of poison ivy with your dick in your hand?"
Mac laughed. It was almost the first time that Jim had heard him do that since they met up again. "You could say that, Nanci. Just that I have the feeling someone's going to open up on us from the house, and there isn't an awful lot of cover around."
The land was totally bare, the snow only marked along the trail that led directly to the front door of the isolated farm.
Jim held up a hand. "Fine. It's far enough for us all. I'm going in on my own."
Nobody argued with him.
He considered what Nanci had said and decided that he felt more like a man sticking his dick into a guillotine. That thought carried him along for over half the distance to the building. The smoke continued to rise into the pewter clouds. He noticed some kind of shutters over most of the windows, but nothing like the serious fortifications he'd seen elsewhere.
Jim bolstered the big revolver and stopped, hands down at his sides. "Yo, the house!" he called, his voice vanishing into the vast nothingness around him.
He caught a flicker of movement from the attic window and saw the barrel of a rifle slowly emerge. "Come to get killed, have yer?" cackled a voice.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Time stopped for Jim Hilton.
He could see the barrel of the gun, about eighty yards away, pointing straight into his face. It seemed as if he could almost see past the rifling to the tapering point of the full-metal-jacket round ready to blow his skull into shards of bone and brains and blood, turning out the lights forever.
"There's eleven of us out here," he said, licking his dry lips. "We don't mean any harm."
Again came a cackle of laughter. "Sure, you don't. I just squeeze down on the trigger of Maria here, and they'll be pickin' up bits of your head in the next county. That sure as shit means you won't harm me."
"Then do it."
"What?"
Jim felt a sudden surge of bitter anger. "Bloody well do it! Then the rest of them come down and there's shooting and killing and you get burned out. You and everyone in there. I'm fucking tired of being—"
"Hold on, hold on, stranger. You sure got an ornery temper on you."
"I don't give a shit about it. Just pull that damn trigger, you hick asshole, and get on with it."
"You got a name, stranger?"
"Captain James Hilton, late of the United States space exploration vessel the Aquila, now back on this blighted Earth and mad as hell!"
The mad, cackling laughter came again as the barrel of the rifle wobbled from side to side. "I heard about you. Went up not long before the pink flowers bloomed. Must've been a shock, finding what Earthblood had done."
"It was. Anyway, what the fuck is your name, mister? I told you mine."
"You did, you did, indeed you did. And I sort of believe you. One more question, friend. You got a badge about you anywheres? Kind o
f arrow and the sun?"
Jim hesitated, his natural caution seeping back, quenching the white-hot flare of his rage. "Would a badge like that make me welcome here?"
The laughter was gone, and the muzzle of the long gun was drilling right between Jim's eyes again. The voice grew colder, less wild. "Best you open up that fine parka, Captain Hilton."
Jim did, pulling it back. "The way you come at this," he said, "makes me think you might not be a big supporter of the Hunters of the Sun."
"Could be."
There was a long silence. Jim glanced behind him and saw that the others were still standing where he'd left them. At the top of the snowy slope he could just make out the two tractors and their trailers.
"Do we come in or not, mister? And I'm still waiting for you to throw me a name. You and your friends and relations tucked away in that house?"
"Cole Dalton. This is my land you're driving across, Captain Hilton. And I live here alone since my wife and daughter passed away."
"We have a seriously ill child, Mr. Dalton. She needs drugs or she'll be dead by dawn."
"What's wrong with the kid?"
"Typhoid, we think."
"You throwing out anything she shits on? And keeping your hands clean?"
"Best we can. Got rid of the soiled blankets." Nobody had mentioned washing hands. Once society crumbled, hygiene was one of the first casualties.
"I can maybe find something."
"Could barter. A good gun for the right drugs."
There was a long pause. "Captain, if you're telling me the truth, then I could get mighty insulted by the suggestion I'd want to trade to help a sickly child. Bring her down and let me see. But the rest stay where they are."
"Sure thing." Jim turned away, then back to the threatening gun. "Grateful, Cole."
"Get to it."
Jim went back to the others, and they made their arrangements. Jeanne McGill carried Sukie, with Carrie at her side to help her over the steeper, slippier parts of the track. The little girl had faded away into a coma, not even opening her eyes as she was jolted around.