by K. W. Jeter
Typical, thought Buck. Any time people wanted to get something done, they always wound up having to do it themselves. The only problem now was that his own plans hadn’t actually extended as far as what he was going to do when he got here. Now what? He didn’t know.
Something caught his eye, in the distance off to the side of the road. A cloud of dust, raised by some kind of vehicle tear-assing across the flat landscape. It didn’t look that big—maybe a Jeep or another small, four-wheel-drive. Wherever it was headed, it was going flat-out; the driver had the thing bouncing across dry gulleys and cutting off the tops of scrub-crested rises without a touch on the brake pedal.
The cloud of dust was more complicated than Buck had thought at first; he saw now that there were at least two or three other vehicles chasing the first one. He brought the motorcycle to a stop at the side of the road. As he watched, the high-speed caravan headed farther out into the desert.
He turned his gaze in the direction from which the vehicles had come, marked by the slowly settling dust. On the other side of the road, he could just make out the glistening points of a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. That must be the one, he figured, that the local back a the gas station’s store had told him marked the perimeter of the camp. A gate hung open in the center of the fence.
Something was going down; that much was obvious. The only thing valuable enough to inspire a pursuit like that would be the infant the Purists had stolen from the hospital down in L.A. Maybe somebody, whoever was in the Jeep in the lead, had just swiped the baby from them—that would explain why the other vehicles were chasing so hard after their moving target. But who would’ve done that? Somebody else must have figured out that this was where the HDL assault team had brought the kid, and gotten here before he had come rolling onto the scene.
The mysteries tumbled inside Buck’s head without answers. But he didn’t need to know who was in the Jeep, as long as he was sure that the person had Matt’s and Cathy’s stolen baby with them. That was reason enough to swing into action.
From inside his jacket, Buck fumbled out the creased map that he’d used to get himself from the Oregon border to this empty territory. The tiny dot marking the town of Vindoma was circled in pencil. Right now, he and the bike were parked on the thin line leading east from the town. The Jeep and its pursuers were cutting across the blank space to the south. Another line showed on the map, running on a diagonal from the town’s dot. That looked to be the Jeep’s destination. In the open country, it appeared to be gradually pulling away from the slower vehicles behind it. If the jeep had enough of a lead by the time it hit the road farther south, it would have a chance of outdistancing the others entirely, maybe reaching the next town farther down the line before they could catch it.
A chance, not a sure thing—Buck knew he couldn’t leave it at that. Whoever was driving the Jeep—if they had the baby with them—might need some help. The motorcycle he was riding wasn’t cut out for off-road travel. He’d be left behind in the dry brush and gravel if he joined the chase from here . . .
Buck wheeled the bike around and accelerated back toward Vindoma, and the other road branching off to the south.
“We made it!” Up ahead, he could see the black strip of asphalt, the road at the crest of a gravel-strewn rise. “Hold on!” Noah pressed the accelerator flat against the Jeep’s floorboard. As the wheels bit into the loose ground, he shoved the gearshift down a notch. Rocks spat out from beneath the tires as they bounced and jostled upward.
“I don’t see ’em,” announced Aalice, twisting herself around in the passenger side seat. The Jeep was still swaying on its suspension where Noah had stopped and swung about on the road bisecting the desert. Holding a hand above her eyes, Aalice scanned back the way they had come. Through the settling dust, the Jeep’s tracks could be seen, almost ruler straight except where he had swerved around clumps of dry brush or gulleys too deep to slam across. “You musta lost them.”
“Yeah, maybe . . .” Noah craned his neck, looking above the little girl’s head, his gaze searching the dry landscape for any sign or motion. The other road, that he had swung off from out by the HDL camp, was lost in the distance. He’d had one piece of luck during the chase: a few miles back, he had glanced at the mirror, just in time to see his two lead pursuers, the fastest of the off-road vehicles behind him, smash into each other. The side collision had been enough to send one vehicle spinning out of control on the sand, and the other rolling over and coming to rest upside down. Before he’d had to swing his attention back to the terrain in front of the Jeep, he had caught a glimpse of the third vehicle in the pack behind, a slower modified truck, putting on its brakes to avoid plowing into the others. “For now, at least.” The HDL members might still be back there, sorting things out, but eventually they would pick up the chase again—and he wasn’t going to sit around here waiting for them.
Noah put the Jeep back into gear, picking up speed as he headed east toward the Idaho state border. He had a vague memory from the map he had looked at back at the camp, of a couple of small towns along the Snake River—those would be closer than anything here in Oregon. With this much of a lead between them and their pursuers, there was at least a chance of holing up in one of the towns and calling for help. He pushed down on the accelerator pedal, the asphalt ribbon winding faster beneath the Jeep.
“How’s the baby doing?” Without loosening his grip on the steering wheel, Noah gave a nod of his head toward the space behind the seats. During the wild, bumpy ride through the desert, the infant had started wailing—Noah had taken that as a good sign—but had quieted down since they had gotten on to a paved road again. “Maybe you should take a look.”
“Okay.” Aalice undid her seat belt and scrambled onto her knees, peering over the back of the seat. “How ya doin’ down there?” She extended a forefinger as though to tickle the baby under the chin. “You having a good time? Huh? I am.” A gurgling coo came in reply, and Aalice flopped back around on the seat. “I don’t know—looks okay to me. Might be hungry, though.” She frowned, sniffing the air. “Or something else.”
“That’ll just have to wait.” He shook his head. “I’m not stopping out here to take care of the small stuff.” The sooner he reached some place where there were other people, Noah figured, the sooner somebody who knew what they were doing could take care of both kids. His job was just to get them there alive.
Hardly more than a mile had ticked by when Noah heard another sound, a faint, distant edge cutting through the barely mufflered roar of the Jeep’s engine. He leaned his chest close to the steering wheel, the corner of his brow touching the bug-splattered windshield as he peered up at the blank sky trying to see if there were a plane overhead. He saw nothing, not even a cloud, just the sun’s harsh, eye-stinging glare. Only when he dropped his gaze down to the mirror on the left front fender did he spot the black flyspeck growing slowly larger in the center of the road behind. It took him a moment to decipher the image as a motorcycle gradually gaining on them, the rider tucked low against the tank to cut wind resistance, face hidden by the gauges at the center of the bars.
“What the . . .” Noah lowered his head, trying to get a better view in the jittering mirror. A motorcycle—he wondered who the hell that could be. If it were a cop, the siren would have been switched on by now, and the blue or red lights, whichever they used up here in Oregon, would have been bouncing off the mirror into his face.
And if it wasn’t a cop—that left only a single possibility, and it wasn’t a good one. There hadn’t been a motorcycle among the vehicles at the HDL camp. Maybe there had been some other League member off-site, in one of the other little towns scattered down the highway, that the others hadn’t told him about. And when he had busted out of the camp with the baby and Aalice, maybe they had called the guy out, whoever he was, and set him racing down the road to intercept them.
It didn’t look good. Whatever the apparition on the motorcycle represented, Noah didn’t fe
el like taking any chances. He kept the accelerator stomped to the floorboard, pushing his sweating grip against the curve of the steering wheel and willing the Jeep to go even faster.
“Shit,” muttered Noah. He’d glanced at the mirror again; the motorcycle and its rider were closer, catching up faster than he’d expected. The bike obviously had some high-powered guts; the roar of the engine snarled even louder, revved to its maximum pitch. In the mirror, the motorcycle’s headlight shimmered in the sunlight like a rounded jewel. Noah felt his brow creasing as he studied the reflected image: he could just see now the rider, a face with eyes hidden behind the silvery lenses of aviator-style sunglasses. There was something about that face, as though he could almost recognize the person, somebody he had known from another life, another world. How could that be? He took one hand from the wheel and rubbed his own burning eyes. Even weirder, he had thought he could tell that the guy on the back of the motorcycle was a Newcomer, the pattern of head spots just detectable at the edge of the forehead above the sun-spattering glasses.
Minutes grew out of sweating seconds, with Noah urging his strength into the wheel. A glance at the fender showed the motorcyclist’s image filling the mirror, the machine and its rider now only a few yards behind.
“What’re you gonna do?” Anxiety tinged Aalice’s voice.
He glanced at the little girl sitting beside him. “Don’t worry—I can take care of this.” He didn’t know whether he was lying or telling the truth.
Another glance showed the mirror empty. At almost the same moment, the howl of the motorcycle’s engine sounded right next to him. The noise jerked his gaze around, and he saw the motorcycle right next to the Jeep, the two vehicles matching speed. The rider peered into the jeep’s open side.
A dizzying puzzlement swept across Noah, as though the combined roar of the two engines had fallen away, the straight-line chase across the desert taking place on some strange kind of wrap-around movie screen. A tiny bit of the past now seemed more real to him. He recognized the face of the motorcycle’s rider, but couldn’t understand why it should be here.
“Pull over!” Through the noise of engines and the rushing wind, Buck Francisco’s voice shouted like that of a highway patrolman tagging some hot-foot freeway commuter. “Come on—you got to stop!”
“Shove it!” he yelled back. Anger pulsed through Noah. There wasn’t time to think, to figure out why Buck was here, what it meant. Maybe it wasn’t Buck on the motorcycle, maybe it was a hallucination, some scrap of memory that the adrenaline of the chase had sucked up out of his brain—right now, there was no way he could be sure. The only thought that remained in his head was to keep driving, the accelerator pressed flat. He was going to get his precious cargo to the next town up the road, or die trying.
The figure on the motorcycle, whether it was Buck Francisco or someone else, took a hand from the bars and reached into the Jeep, grabbing for the curve of the steering wheel; the bike’s footpegs were almost close enough to scrape paint from the Jeep’s metal. Noah took one hand off the wheel and used it to shove away the rider, giving him a straight shot into his leather-jacketed shoulder, hard enough to send the motorcycle wobbling and dropping several yards behind before the figure on its back managed to wrestle it into line.
“Noah—listen to me!” The motorcycle had caught up again; the rider’s face was only a few feet away from Noah’s. “I came here to help you!”
“Yeah, right! Like I’m gonna believe that!” He gave a quick twist to the steering wheel, aiming the left fender toward the bike. The rider didn’t swerve away, but instead leaned into the Jeep, hooking one arm around the steering wheel and ignoring the blows that Noah pummelled into the side of his face and neck. Noah couldn’t dislodge him; the rider held on, pulling himself farther into the Jeep, lifting himself from the motorcycle’s seat and letting the machine fall away from beneath him. The bike toppled and struck the asphalt in a pinwheeling flurry of sparks.
He could hear Aalice beside him, screaming something, perhaps just his name. There was no time or space for anything except his own panting breath and that of the rider clambering between him and the Jeep’s windshield. Noah’s forearm had shoved the sunglasses away from the other’s face—it was Buck, there could be no doubt of it now. Buck had managed to get one foot against the door’s open rim, boosting himself inside and getting another grip on the steering wheel. Desperate, without thinking, Noah balled one hand into a fist and launched a hard jab into the pit of the other’s abdomen. A grimace of pain clenched Buck’s face, breath expelled through his clenched teeth, but he didn’t let go of the steering wheel. The collapse of his weight pulled the wheel to one side, sending the Jeep lurching crazily onto one side’s screeching tires.
Noah grabbed the wheel with both hands, trying to pull it around against Buck’s grip upon it. Too much; he could feel the seat belt cutting into his own stomach as the Jeep went out of control, the tires breaking traction and lifting from the road’s surface.
As the Jeep toppled over, he saw Aalice’s terrified face, the chrome ends of her unfastened seat belt rising up like bright snake’s heads. Noah let go of the wheel and grabbed the little girl, holding her close against his chest as the Jeep’s inverted roll brought it crashing against the dust and gravel beyond the road’s edge.
“You idiot! You could’ve goddamn killed us!”
He could hear the voice shouting at him, but didn’t know from where it came. Buck crawled out from beneath the overturned Jeep, shaking his head to clear his vision.
The roll bar had taken most of the impact, preventing major injury to everyone who had been inside. Or at least he hoped so—his spine and ribs ached, but nothing felt as if it were broken. He slowly managed to get to his feet.
Noah stood nearby, one arm wrapped protectively around the shoulders of the little girl next to him. She watched Buck stand up, her eyes round with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
“Way to go, Buck—” The anger in Noah’s voice had lowered to disgust. “Where’d you learn your circus tricks?”
“Yeah, well, it’s great to see you, too.” Buck wiped gritty dust from his brow. “Who’s this?” He pointed a thumb toward the little girl.
“My name’s Aalice.” Her voice piped up in the desert’s silence. “With two A’s.” She smiled, taking a step forward and laying a fingertip against the side of her head. “Look, I’m like you. See?”
“What—” Buck saw now the Tenctonese-like head spots beneath the girl’s pale hair. The ears as well; those were also like a Newcomer’s.
“Jeez, get with it.” Noah’s words were like some memory flash from when he and Buck had been in high school together. “The kid’s a hybrid, half human species and half Tenctonese. Like the baby—” He stopped, his expression changing to one of sudden alarm. “The baby!” Noah sprinted past Buck and toward the Jeep.
“It’s in there?” Buck turned and ran up beside him. At the overturned Jeep, Noah had already reached inside, quickly tugging at the straps securing a swaddled bundle behind the empty driver’s seat. A moment later, he stepped back as Noah cradled the squirming infant in his arms.
“Looks okay . . .” Bending his face close toward the baby, Noah cautiously stroked its brow. A tiny, piping wail came from the toothless mouth.
“How would you know?” Buck reached out and tugged aside the corner of the blanket, so he could see the baby. “What’re you, a doctor or something? The only time you were in a hospital was when you came running in with your happy little band of kidnappers.” He reached to take the infant out of Noah’s arms. “Here, give it to me.”
“No—” Noah twisted away, holding the bundle closer to himself. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here. And you’re the jerk who just about got us all scraped across the friggin’ highway! If it hadn’t been for you, we would’ve been practically to the next town with this baby. Instead of bouncing it around on its head—”
“Look, I came here to help—all ri
ght?” His anger rose along with the volume of the infant’s cry. “I’m the one who caught the phone call that you made. That’s why I’m here.”
“You? I wanted to get hold of your father—he would’ve been of some use, at least—”
“Let’s not get into what’s going on with my dad, all right—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” The little girl Aalice had marched up, pushing her way in between Buck and Noah. “What are you two clowns arguing about? Gimme that.” She stood on tiptoe and lifted the baby from Noah’s arms. “There, there . . .” She cradled the infant, bringing her face down close. An annoyed glance shot toward Buck and Noah. “It’s hungry. It needs to be fed.”
“Okay, okay—” Noah held his palms out in a placating gesture. “There’s formula and stuff in the Jeep; I’ll go get it.”
Buck looked down at the girl. “What do you know about taking care of a baby?”
She looked offended as she hoisted the infant higher in her grasp. “I watched the nurse—the one they had back at the camp.” She tilted her face away from one of the small hands waving from the bundle. “And I’m a very fast learner.”
“I guess so.” He figured it must be the Tenctonese in the little girl’s genetics. “Hey, Noah—hurry it up, will ya? I don’t want to hang around here all day.” Buck laid a hand on Aalice’s shoulder. “Maybe we should go over there to the shade.” He nodded toward the Jeep. “You want me to carry the baby?”
Aalice shook her head. “I got him.”
Over by the Jeep, Noah had straightened up, a can of infant formula in one hand. He didn’t turn around as Buck and Aalice approached, but continued shading his eyes with one hand, gazing across the vehicle’s underside and toward the road beyond.
“What’s wrong?” Apprehension moved along Buck’s spine.