"Must've been beautiful here at Christmas," she commented idly.
Trennt slowed, yet he didn't answer as he came down, set to begin a search of the far side. But Geri wasn't about to be put off—or let him alone.
"What is it with you?" she demanded. "What exactly are you supposed to be? No one out for kicks, like your friend over there. He lights up every time he fingers a gun. But there's no cheap thrill like that for you. So why? What was it with that little tribegirl back there in the desert? Or in getting me 'back to my people'? In your mind, are you the great twenty-first-century crusader? Some rough and ready, new generation Don Quixote, rescuing damsels in the second millennium?"
Trennt hovered in an ill-at-ease stop. When he tried starting around her, the woman swayed with him.
"Well?"
So cornered, he told her, "You ask a lot of questions that are none of your concern."
A wicked smile crossed her face. "Humor me."
"Okay," came his even-tempered reply. "Why not me? Somebody's got to do it."
But Geri stood with eyes dull, already having passed other judgment.
"As long as it pays."
"Yeah." Trennt smirked. "That's right. Big money. I'm saving up for my new Corvette. Of course, I don't know that the factory will be taking orders any time this century."
His flippant answer didn't put her off.
"Crusader or not, down deep inside you're still no better than Baker. You're dried out and used up, Trennt. You've become some kind of sick monument to your own pain and that makes you even more dangerous than he is."
Trennt coolly regarded her, head to foot and back. His own gaze narrowed as he took the offensive.
"Lady, you don't know a thing about me or what I do. And I wouldn't get in line for a halo just yet, if I were you. But if you want to ask questions, ask yourself something. What was your sainted Doctor Keener thinking the whole time he was working on whatever dark project it was back there? It didn't seem they were exactly holding a gun to his head for results."
He'd touched a nerve. Geri straightened, yet she held her ground. "Maybe I deserve that. But he doesn't. You saw him. Was he the picture of a power hungry madman? Or just a simple, misused and innocent genius?
"You say I don't know you. Well, you didn't know him, either. But I did. And he was a good, gentle man. Giving Martin a task was no different than handing a jigsaw puzzle to a very bright child. No politics or practical reality entered into it. Just finding a solution. But you're not the type to—"
A thundering voice bellowed down from the choir loft.
"This place might be in ruins, but it still deserves respect for what it once was!"
Trennt shoved the woman away. His sidearm was out and on target with Top and Baker; all simultaneously trained on the darkened voice as it continued, unafraid.
"Any of us travelers who take shelter here should treat it with proper respect—by keeping our voices down and not defiling its altar with guns!"
Even at this distance, Trennt could sense Baker's trigger finger constricting and he raised a belaying hand.
He called beyond. "Who are you?"
"Someone spending the night. Like yourself."
"Step out so we can see you."
From the shadows a tall and haggard man of scarecrow proportions appeared. He said no more, but crunched down the grit-covered stairs of the other loft, walking fearlessly into their midst, and headed directly for Baker.
The stranger stopped at the altar. He gazed appalled at the obscene streaks of dirty gun oil glistening across its web of fine marble veins. When he did speak again his voice was restrained, as though addressing an imbecile, forever beyond understanding the profanity of his actions.
"Do you have any idea what this place is?"
Lowering his gun hand, Baker tossed his head nonchalantly about.
"Yeah. A mess."
"It never occurred to you that it might be a house of God?"
Baker shrugged, appraising the newcomer.
"Well, by the look o' things, Cuz, I'd say He done moved away."
The stranger lunged at the clutter of parts. But Baker was quicker, yanking the man's shirt across the dingy marble block and jamming the pistol squarely in his forehead.
From behind its cocked hammer the shooter's tone issued cool as the grave. "Don't ever try somethin' like that again, Cuz. Never."
Though frozen at mid-stride, the unarmed man didn't buckle.
"You've obviously never been in a church before."
"A time or two. But I found me a better religion. The one stuck to your head. Care for a hollow-point baptism?"
Still, the man didn't flinch and even Baker yielded a respectful grunt.
"You don't rile easy. I'll give yah that."
More so, Trennt felt something refined and unthreatening in the stranger's bearing. He stepped up.
"What's your name, friend?"
"Wayne," came his reply. Nothing more.
"You alone?"
"Yes."
"What're you doing here?"
"What's it matter?"
" 'Cause Jimbo says so," chimed in Baker.
Top looked up from his stew tending. Also seeing no apparent danger in the man, he smiled and shook his head.
"Don't mind Slick. He's always quick to make friends."
"Screw you, Whiskers! I don't trust nobody I don't know!"
Trennt motioned Baker's gun away and obliged the stranger with a provisional nod.
"We can leave it as your business—provided we're not in for any surprises. Because then, my enthusiastic friend there would have my full permission to deal with you as he sees fit."
Baker settled in behind a broad smile.
"In the meantime, Wayne, you're welcome to share our fire and meal . . . if you don't mind it being made from some earlier members of tonight's congregation."
The stranger's initial antagonism flickered out.
"Thanks." He then looked to Top. "I happen to have wild onions and carrots found fresh today. Some dry seasonings too, if you'd like to add them to your pot."
Top swung a welcoming hand. "Outta sight, dude! Shake 'em in!"
The stranger knelt to pull at his knapsack. "In answer to your first question, my full name is Wayne Truax. As far as I know, I'm the only member left of this parish. I stay here every so often. Wild crops supply the little I need and I spend my time traveling alone, trying . . . to make some sense of things."
"Good luck," snorted Geri, punctuating her words with another armload of dropped branches.
"Pretty big place for just one person," said Trennt. "Nobody else from town weathers here?"
Wayne shook his head. "None left. The Quake took some. The Flu, others. The rest moved on."
The new man said no more as he began peeling and slicing up his meal contributions.
* * *
The stew rose to a delicious simmer. After dinner, the banked fire burned down to a cozy heap of pink and sapphire coals, guaranteed to warm the travelers until morning.
Again occupying his idle time in a pointless rehash of the satchel's contents, Trennt glanced toward a crunch of approaching boots. It was Top, returning from patrol.
"Anything going on outside?"
"Negative." Top unslung his carbine to squat by the fire. "Made a few laps around the perimeter. Even the owls are sitting tight in this soup."
"Bring in the guard, if you want. I think for once everybody can share in a decent night's sleep."
The old Marine nodded and went for his bedroll.
Baker casually trundled over as soon as Top had left. After a few moments spent superficially gauging the flames, he crowded beside Trennt, speaking in an odd, off center tone.
"You know, Jimbo. I been in for doin' this from the start. But what happens if'n we don't see the bird again? Ain't once since we got back from the desert—four days now. Or what if we see it crash out in the ocean? Then what good's all this been?"
It took Trennt
a moment to realize what he was hearing.
"Well? What if?" Baker asked.
Trennt leveled a condemning glance.
"I don't know what you're saying. But who got us into this? Quit now if you want and take everybody with you. But until I personally do see that plane go down in the ocean or find it plowed in somewhere, my part isn't done."
Baker nodded emphatically. "Yeah, I know. And you're right. The professional code and all that. But, shoot, Jimbo. Y'all heard ole Corealis hisself fire us. What's the sense in doin' him a job we ain't apt to finish?"
Trennt zipped his jacket with a perturbed swipe.
"I said it once, I'm not doing it for him. If anybody, it's for Kosinski. Finding the chemical samples or any data still aboard will be a bonus."
Yet, Baker dogged on. "Okay, even then. So we get the plane. What's the odds of him bein' alive or even aboard? He coulda jumped or fell out anywhere in a thousand square miles. Besides, he was just another bus driver runnin' his route. Prob'ly wouldn't even 'member, if you two met on the street. Who cares what happened to him?"
"I said, I care." Trennt paused, sensing an alien gulf spreading rapidly between them. "And why the different tune from you all of a sudden?"
Baker swung a fretful hand about. "Well, lookit us, Pard. We been at this for what—three, four weeks now? Doin' it from our own pocket. Livin' like bums on whatever nuts and berries we find. Sweatin' to death one day, freezin' the next. Always thirsty and turnin' into a traveler's aid club for any charity case we find along the way.
"All's I'm sayin' is it just might be time we call in the dogs and piss on the campfire. Cut our losses on this goose chase and get to worryin' 'bout ourselves.
'Member, from here on out, we're independent contractors. We need to get back to Freeville and make contacts to start payin' for groceries."
A passing shadow paused. It was Wayne. He seemed to linger, listening to their exchange, and after a few seconds Trennt glanced over his shoulder: "Problem?"
Wayne answered as if shrugging off a trance. "Sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It's just that I haven't seen Latin script in quite a while."
Trennt straightened, pointing to the frayed booklet sitting forgotten in his lap.
"You recognize this stuff?"
"Only as far as a language requirement of higher education. Not a personal favorite. But something I muddled through." He motioned to the folder. "May I?"
Trennt gladly handed it up. "You bet. What's it say?"
Wayne leafed through the coarse and faded pages.
"It's a diary of sorts, I'd guess."
With a last look at Trennt, Baker dropped the other matter and departed, but Wayne remained, studying the sheets. Something distressing suddenly clouded his gaunt face, then passed away. His eyes swept cautiously down.
"Mind if I ask whose this is?"
"A man who died being rescued. Why?"
"Besides me being more than a little rusty, its author was a lot better at the language than I could ever hope. A little background might help me understand his intentions better. But even so, this could take a while."
"Whatever you decipher tonight would help," said Trennt. "We're on a tight schedule."
Obligingly taking possession of the booklet, Wayne settled in yoga-style, directly across the fire. Watching him for a time in its orange wash, Trennt dozed off noting how the moment and man combined, to project the fitting likeness of a scholar extracting lost knowledge.
CHAPTER 21
Trennt bolted upright in the dark. He drew quick, shallow breaths as the ragged tatters of his nightmare swirled and thinned.
The same. Always the same. Buried alive. Unable to free anyone from the strange quicksand, but himself. Him rising; them sinking, being pulled away, slipping through his grasp. The faces of Dena, Andy, and Jennifer, glowing with incandescent anguish as they cried out to him in terror.
But in the thick molasses of that horrible dreamscape there never was any release, except his own. No way to turn. Or hug. Or even say good-bye. Just feel the clawing pain of his own survival as he was drawn away; left to endure the ghastly echo of their dimming cries.
Trennt strained for breath, amazed even in his terror. It had been such a long spell since his last haunting that he foolishly believed he might have finally been freed of it for good. But, fresh as ever, the old wound was still there. Lurking in the shadows like some untiring demon, it was simply deferred to just the right moment in which to strike out and harvest its greatest pain.
Riding out his slowing chugs of breath, Trennt stayed glued in place, erect and mute; still as a trapped rabbit, until he was certain of his surroundings. Through fading beats of a thundering heart, he dared slide his eyes about the still-sleeping forms. There was no motion illuminated in the firelight. With luck, he'd been quiet enough.
Damn.
Yards away, a shadow separated from that of the truck. Of all people, it was the woman, gazing over at him like some unwitting voyeur.
Trennt shifted about. He hoped his feigned nonchalance would conceal him, but, as soon as she spoke, he knew otherwise.
"You okay?"
He sucked in a quick, self-conscious breath. "Yeah."
"No one awake but me," she added in an odd, reassuring tone.
They faced each other for a brittle moment. Then Trennt snatched up his weapon and climbed to his feet. Shouldering the cold shotgun, he started off through the dark.
He stopped in the crumbling church vestibule, staring out at the dense fogbank as tentative footsteps trailed up behind.
"You loved them a lot," Geri declared without preamble.
He answered in the first civil tone he'd found for the woman.
"Not enough to keep them alive."
"I'm sorry," she offered. "We've all lost people we've loved, all of us powerless in one way or another to prevent it. The best we can do is keep them alive in our hearts."
With those few words he felt a quick and obscure need to uncover his grief and, for the only time he could remember, Trennt spoke of himself.
"We were logging people, from right here, upstate. My family got dragged to Chicago with the census because I'd been born there when my folks passed through one time. So, like in the Bible, it was where we all had to go when the government decided on that national head count and 'skills redistribution,' after the plague.
"What a nightmare. Buses arriving from all over the country with us outsiders. Not wanted by the locals, not liked by arrivals from different states—and blamed by everyone for starting the N.A. Flu. Might as well've blamed us for causing the Quake.
"All us West Coasters were packed into one downtown reservation like the worst kind of outcasts. Little sanitation or clean water; everybody catching everyone else's germs and, with the ozone inversions, coughing and hacking all the time. Those really sick barely stayed alive on public medicine and rations illegally reduced, just because of who they were.
"Then one day a rich kid wandered into our sector, a stupid-ass, punk, rich kid out for kicks or a dare from his buddies. Maybe looking for cheap sex from one of the widows desperate to make ends meet. A pigeon served up on a silver platter. And right in front of me."
Trennt's eyes brimmed with tears. He continued slowly.
"So easy. He was lost and scared. I wouldn't've even needed to hurt him, just shake him down and turn him loose. But a fool like me let him go. Even then, with my whole family sick as dogs, I couldn't even steal from someone who had more than he deserved. I dragged the dumb ass out of there and didn't let anybody touch him. And my reward was to have everyone turn on my family because of it.
"Better if they'd killed us. But they didn't. They shunned us, instead—and that was worse. In the middle of all that city we were locked away by a wall of silence like we were the only ones there."
Trennt let out a long, deliberate sigh.
"Probably nothing could really have been done for my wife and kids, anyway. I don't know. But knowing no one would
lift a finger to help me tend them made it worse than you can imagine.
"They all died on the same night, burning up with fever and choking on their own phlegm. Next day the sanitation department bagged them for that week's cremation at Soldier Field. Everything I loved was mixed with old tires and cooked away in that black greasy smoke drifting out over Lake Michigan."
He chuckled mirthlessly. "Funny thing. Through it all I never got so much as a sniffle. Afterward, I begged God to kill me. When He didn't answer, I asked the devil. Finally, I gave up on them both and everything in between.
"I thought hard about different ways of doing myself in. But they all seemed too easy, compared to what my family was dealt. So, I came to this work, somehow hoping it'd offer me a way to hurt slow and long in payment for failing them."
Trennt drew a wretched breath.
"The worst thing a man can do is outlive his children."
Another silence sprouted between them, one as heavy and labored as any of the hateful, intolerant moments they'd shared since meeting. But this time, it was different. Here was a new silence, one underscored with patience, one punctuated by a hand that stretched through the cold darkness and came to settle, warm on his arm.
Trennt wheeled slowly toward it—to thank her, maybe to apologize for everything prior. But she was suddenly too close for any of it. Wanting to speak, he could only focus on the rubied highlights of her auburn hair. And even now, after so many hard days on the move, he was starkly aware of how fresh and sweet she seemed.
From nowhere Trennt felt a bloom of desire spark and smolder deep inside him. He shuddered before its unsettling, abrupt heat. It was preposterous. And wrong—all wrong. Wrong for the time and place. Wrong for the memory of what he'd had with Dena. Yet those very facts only made his need more urgent.
Trennt fell back on his trusted defenses, but the fabric of logic and restraint which had so long sustained him began to quickly unravel. A critical glue was giving way inside that was both frightening and wonderful. Like a suicidal moth, he dove headlong into the flames.
Trennt grabbed Geri by the shoulders and reeled her back to him. He layered the woman in fierce, greedy kisses; desperate to smother and absorb every spare inch of her warm, soft flesh.
Skylock Page 20