“Do you really think so?” Fletch asked innocently. Their eyes met and they both laughed in a warm and comfortable way. Their laughter died down, but they remained staring into one another’s eyes.
“Keith,” Fletch said. “Maybe you should run outside.”
“I—”
“That’s a good idea,” Bear said. He thrust Fletch’s binocular case into Keith’s hands. “Play with these for a while.” He winked in a friendly, conspiratorial fashion, gently pushed Keith toward the door.
Keith stumbled outside. Someone kicked the door shut behind him. He heard the beginning of an intimate chuckle, and hastened away.
It was cold outside. A wisp of smoke rose from the cabin’s flue and disappeared a few feet up into the gray sky. Keith wandered off to one side, and came up against a bramble-choked ravine. It was unpassable: he chunked a rock down it, but didn’t hear the splash of water.
He slammed a fist against a gnarled tree trunk. Wood crumbled away, leaving a bite-shaped gap in the tree. He felt sick and confused. Could he really be jealous of a man twice his age? He had only made love to Fletch once, and then under special conditions, with death nipping at their heels.
And that was it, he decided. They had only made love once; Fletch had shown no interest since. He had told himself repeatedly that she was too weary, or that she had a low sex drive and required the spice of immediate danger to arouse her. But the tryst with Bear disproved both theories.
Take away the excuses, and there was only one answer. Fletch had used him. He held no sexual interest for her; she’d needed a way out of Philadelphia, and she had bought it.
Well grow up, kid, he told himself. Welcome to the real world. But unbidden memories arose in his mind, of her flesh, of their vigorous coupling, images that were at once compelling and newly repulsive.
Keith moved away from the ravine, trying to control his thoughts. In an effort to distract himself, he raised the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the horizon. Beneath the amplified image of dead and winter-barren trees, something moved. A needle. Set inside the binoculars was a graduated scale, with a small red pointer that sprang up when the glasses were raised to the horizontal.
The needle pointed to a position barely on the scale. Keith shifted the binoculars and the reading held steady. Raise the glasses to the sky, or lower them to the ground, and the needle sank below the scale. Hold them steady and the position was constant, wherever they were pointed, at rocks or hillside, at darkness or light.
The view through the binoculars misted over and was replaced by an involuntary inner vision of Fletch and Bear pleasuring each other on the cabin floor. Keith blinked angrily, then snorted in self-derision. He shoved the glasses back into their case and stalked on down the slope a way. His feet were growing numb. He stamped them against the ground, wishing the two would hurry up and get done.
Some time later, Fletch appeared in the doorway and waved him in. He went straight to the woodstove and hunched over it, holding his hands to its warmth and rubbing them together. From the corner of his eye he could not avoid seeing Bear pulling his trousers up. The man’s pubic hair was stark black against his pale skin, and Keith had to admit ruefully that Bear was better endowed than himself. There was no moral he could draw from this.
For the rest of the afternoon and on through the evening, Bear and Fletch avidly discussed politics in the Greenstate Alliance up north, and goings-on within the Drift. Keith listened quietly, having nothing to contribute. He learned a little, but for the most part the dialogue relied on knowledge of previous events that he lacked, and was absolutely meaningless to him. He fell asleep to their bright, relaxed talk.
Something roared at the foot of the hill, a great gravelly noise that peaked and fell and slowly grew less as it became more distant. Keith’s eyes opened. It was late night, and the cabin was flooded with gray shadow. “Fletch?” he said. “Bear?” The cabin was empty.
Keith went to the door, stood shivering in the cold. Downslope there was no shadow where Bear’s buggy had been. The distant noise dwindled, faded away. He had been deserted.
Stunned, he went back inside, built up the fire, lit an alcohol lamp. What did he do now? He was somewhere within the Drift, with not the foggiest notion of what roads led out, and an unknown number of Mummer assassins scouring the countryside looking for him. His eye was suddenly caught by a square of something white.
It was a sheet of paper. Fletch had left her saddlebags behind, open and partially emptied, with a note atop them. The inner seam of one bag had been ripped open and something—it must have been thin and flat and slightly flexible to be hidden there—removed. The rifle was gone too. Keith picked up the note. It began without preamble.
Heading for coast—Bear thinks he can get me on a ship for Boston. Suggest you keep heading north. Am leaving you most of my supplies & a pistol, courtesy of Bear. Binocs contain ionization meter—don’t sleep anywhere that registers over halfway mark. I put a checkmark on map where Nameless is. If you can’t figure it out, Bear should be back in a day or two & can help.
Angrily, he crumpled the note and threw it to the floor. “Nice going, partner,” he said aloud. The words seemed foolish and childishly spiteful even as he said them. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.
To his surprise, it was not all that difficult. There was a certain grim satisfaction in knowing the worst: that he had been used, and then discarded, that Fletch felt no more than a passing affection for him at best, of the sort one might bestow on a stray dog without the least intention of bringing it home. In a way, the knowledge was easier to handle than the suspicion of it had been. He knelt to take inventory of the saddlebags.
He worked briskly, shoving back inside those items he might need and tossing aside those he saw no use for. He lacked a knife and plundered Bear’s possessions until he found one—an Arkansas toothpick with a leather sheath—and clipped it to his belt. The ionization counter would come in handy. He set the binoculars carefully beside the pistol, and began studying the map.
Keith had about decided he could make his way out of the Drift if only he could retrace his way back to Nameless, when he heard another noise. Dousing the lamp, he picked up the pistol and went outside.
There was a deep growling beyond the hills, a changing chord of four bass lines that rose and fell independent of each other, one growl significantly louder than the rest. Crouching in the cold, Keith tried to place its direction. East? West? It echoed and rebounded, rose and fell, so that there was no hope of getting a fix on it. A pale moon floated high in the sky, visible at rare intervals through gaps in the clouds. The noise grew.
Below and to his left a stretch of road was visible through a break in the trees. A shadow slid across it. Keith shifted position, moving behind an outcropping boulder, and waited.
A buggy careened to a halt below, and two figures leaped out. They ran up the slope, one with long graceful strides, and the other lumbering after.
Three gray shadows slipped across the distant roadway. The roar of engines peaked briefly, treble notes coming together in a high, angry whine.
Keith drew a bead on the leader of the two coming up the hill, and wondered whether he’d actually have the nerve to shoot, to kill a human being in cold blood.
“You’d better have some damn fine weapons up there,” the lead figure called over her shoulder. Fletch. Keith lowered his pistol.
“Weapons I got,” Bear shouted back. “Miracles I’m fresh out of.”
“We’ll make our own.”
They ran past him, Fletch sparing a single cool glance in passing, and into the cabin. Shoving the gun into his belt, Keith followed.
Bear was wrestling a large chest from one of the shelves. “I’m pretty sure I nailed that fink from back in town,” he grunted. “You can bet they wouldn’t’ve been waiting for us without his help. Bastard! If he got away, I’ll go back and finish him.”
Keith smiled sardonically. “Welcome back, partner.”
“Later. What’ve you got?”
Bear rummaged through the chest, yanking things out and tossing them across the floor. “Incendiary grenades. Bandoliers. One of those Israeli machine guns from—what was that war again?”
“Before my time.”
“It’s a museum piece for sure. But it’s in perfect working order, so maybe I’ll use it.”
“Got into a little trouble, did you?”
“Give me that.” Fletch reached for a new weapon Bear had uncovered. “I’m pretty good with those.”
Keith’s coolness faded as the others armed themselves, steadfastly paying him no attention. He was not at all sure that he was on Bear’s and Fletch’s side, but he knew that the Mummers would consider him so. He opened his mouth to volunteer to take a weapon.
At that instant the growl of approaching vehicles died. Bear grabbed his weaponry and bolted for the door.
“I’ll take the left,” he threw over his shoulder. “Tell the kid how to cover us, then you take the right.”
“Gotcha.” Fletch took her rifle and thrust it into Keith’s hands. It felt odd. He realized that he didn’t even know how to fire it. She flipped something on the side of the stock. “Okay, now the safety’s off. The rifle’s ready. I want you to lie down flat in the back of the cabin—they’re shooting uphill, so they’ll probably fire over you. Shoot at the sky, understand? Don’t try to take any of them out when I’m somewhere in front of you—just provide us with some distraction.”
“Don’t baby me, damn it! I can fight, too!”
“Like hell. Now this thing’s a compression launcher. It fires small rockets; they ignite about halfway up the barrel, so the thing has a hell of a kick, remember that. The projectiles hit at supersonic velocities, and the shock wave ruptures every internal organ in the body. So if you have to, don’t shoot fancy, aim at the middle of the body. Anywhere you hit is lethal. You’ve got a hundred shots, and don’t forget to save the last for yourself. You stick the muzzle in your mouth and aim up. Got all that?”
“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled.
“Sure you do.” She tousled his hair, ran for the door, paused just behind it.
A needle of red light, so brief it almost wasn’t there, lanced through the cabin, leaving a small charred hole in the front wall, and another at an angle to it in the back.
“Laser pistols,” Fletch snorted. “Kiddie weapons!” She was gone.
Three more needles of light laced the cabin. Keith threw himself to the floor at the rear, as directed. Whatever weird weapon Fletch was handling made high, almost whistling shrieks. There was a small explosion, followed by the chatter of Bear’s machine gun.
Keith suddenly remembered the rifle, lifted it, pointing its muzzle up through the window. He squeezed the trigger and the window exploded outward in a fountain of glass and casement splinters. There was a deafening boom as the projectile went supersonic, and the stock slammed into Keith’s shoulder, numbing it, half rolling him over. He fired again, sending a shot through the roof. Another world-splitting roar.
Plaster, earth, bits of wood showered down. There was a hole the size of a giant’s fist in the ceiling.
Four threads of laser light winked in and out of existence, one after the other. Keith crawfished back a foot, pushing his back against the rear wall. Bear and Fletch had been right to leave him behind, he realized. He was confused, almost panicked, of no use at all in a battle that required cool wits.
Somewhere both Fletch and Bear were running, shouting. Their weapons clattered high and low. An incendiary grenade went off, turning night to day for an instant, and there was a hideous, garbled scream.
Blindly Keith fired another shot, just barely remembering to aim high over the horizon. A laser burst struck the hanging alcohol lamp, exploding it, spilling a gout of alcohol over the woodstove.
With a whoomp, the alcohol was ignited by the hot iron stove. Flames reached up toward the ceiling, licked against the wall. A dribble of fuel running across the wooden floor went up and Keith futilely tried to beat it out with slaps of his jacketed arm. The flames grew and spread.
Time and again laser bursts pierced the walls but, as promised, they were always too high. The cabin was heating up now, and smoke gathering below the ceiling. Some of it slipped out the hole in the roof, but more was generated than dispersed. The cabin was filling with smoke. Keith gasped and choked. Assassins or no, he had to get out.
He crawled to the door, peeked out at floor level. He could see nothing. There was a short burst of weapons fire, then silence. He caught a glint of red that might have been a laser shot. Sweat beaded up on his forehead. He drew himself into a crouch, and prepared to run.
The front wall was burning now. As the heat scorched him, Keith was involuntarily reminded of the last time he had taken his kid brother ratting. A bunch of neighborhood kids had torched a house in the abandoned outskirts of Philadelphia. They’d ringed the building, standing with sticks and old baseball bats, waiting for the rats to come out. Then, when the rats were forced to flee, maddened with pain, their fur ablaze, they’d methodically clubbed the animals to death.
One rat, however, a piebald mutant, had run straight at Joey, and scrambled up his jacket. Squealing in frenzied terror it had clawed and bit, and Joey had fallen back shouting in fear. Keith had smashed the burning rat off his kid brother’s chest with a savage blow of his stick, and then mashed it to a pulpy smear. Not that that had done Joey any good.
Keith ran. He dashed into a sudden madness of noise and flying bullets, flashes of light and screams of rage. He darted to the side and flung himself to the ground, panicked. Little circles swam before his eyes as he tried to spot the combatants, his pupils not yet adjusted to the night.
The darkness coalesced into discrete shadows. He thought he detected motion there and down there.
He snapped the rifle toward a sudden bulking of shadow downslope, and almost fired before he recognized Bear’s silhouette. Bear wheeled suddenly, and a sliver of light passed neatly through his chest. He fell.
At the same instant, an incendiary grenade went off, briefly illuminating the slope. Keith could see two of the assassins. The nearer one was running downslope, and he twisted in surprise at its sudden glare. Awkwardly he fell on his gun hand, the laser pistol skittering into the night.
Keith was charging toward the second assassin, midway down the slope and facing Bear’s body. He had no memory of getting to his feet, but he was running, squeezing off shot after shot that made a hell of a noise but probably hit nothing. The nearer Mummer was crawling on the ground, blindly groping for his weapon.
Running past the unarmed assassin, Keith fired several shots at the place he had last seen the other. When he arrived at the spot, it was empty. He stopped, unsure of what to do next.
There was a sudden, choking cry to his side. “Kid!”
He whirled, his finger tightening around the trigger. The moon broke free of the clouds, briefly flooding the hillside with dim light. He saw two dark figures locked in hand-to-hand combat, the larger slowly, inexorably forcing his laser pistol toward Fletch’s head. Keith’s rifle went off.
As soon as he squeezed the trigger, Keith knew that the gun was pointed at the wrong one of the pair. That it was pointed at Fletch. With a shattering crash, the projectile went supersonic.
Fletch’s mouth opened and her neck arched back, as if in the throes of sexual agony. Her blond hair flew forward, back, lashed her face. Her arms thrashed like a rag doll’s, impossibly fluid, broken in several places each one. She toppled over backward, dead before her body hit the ground.
Keith took a questioning step forward, and the Mummer assassin backed away, reminding Keith of his presence. The man’s arms seemed to be numbed by the shock transmitted from Fletch’s body. They hung uselessly at his sides.
Keith lifted his rifle and almost absently blew the man away. He knelt beside Fletch’s body.
Groping fingers touched her face. They came away war
m and slippery with blood. Fletch had had another—final—nosebleed. Keith squeezed his eyes shut, let them fall open again. He felt vacant, disbelieving—totally without emotion.
Fletch was dead.
One pocket of her caftan bulged, the corner of a leather case sticking out of it. For no reason at all he picked up the case, leaving bloody fingerprints across its surface, and opened it. Her binoculars. They affected him in a way that her corpse could not. They had been hers. She had touched them and used them, and left them briefly to his care. Her spirit was in them.
There was the faintest of noises nearby. Keith snapped out of his introspective daze, feeling a sudden twinge of fear. At least one, possibly several, of the Mummer assassins was still alive. Gingerly he edged toward the sound’s source.
Not twenty yards away he came across Bear, still alive. Dark blood covered his wide chest, and his skin was ghastly white. His eyes met Keith’s; they were fierce embers of light in a dying face.
“Son of a bitch Bringer. You—killed her.” The words were so faint that an instant after they were spoken Keith could not have sworn he’d heard them at all. Perhaps he’d made them up. The fire went out in Bear’s eyes, and he was finally, irrevocably dead.
Keith felt tears forming, great salty drops of warm fluid that ran down his cheeks and along the seal of his nucleopore. Whether it was the binoculars, or Bear’s accusation, he did not know, but Fletch’s death had finally reached him. The tears filled him, choked him, and he pushed down his mask to gulp in fresh air. He threw back his head and cried.
The tears came in an unstoppable gust, and when he fought them down he was empty again, cold and dry inside. You killed her, he told himself harshly. Out of spite. Because you felt rejected and jealous. You shot her down knowingly and deliberately. But he couldn’t gauge the emotional truth of the thought. It might have been pure reflex, nerves drawn to the breaking point, and no more than that. Honesty forced him to admit that he did not know.
In the Drift Page 6