Mountain Echoes wp-8

by C. E. Murphy

  My father, unable to believe we were making light of the situation and possibly a little afraid we weren’t, said, “The zombie apocalypse?”

  Right about then the CDC guys came pouring out of everywhere and surrounded my car.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A fully bio-suited man in orange threatened Petite’s window with a fist. I unrolled it slowly, trying to keep my hands visible as I did so. Morrison put his hands on the dashboard, and my father put his on the back of Morrison’s seat. The bio-suit man did not look reassured by any of that, and my brain, scared silly of what a bio-suit suggested, disengaged from smart and went straight to smart-ass.

  “Hello, officer,” I said in the most chipper voice I could come up with. “Was I speeding?”

  Morrison groaned and the bio-suit man didn’t look like he thought I was funny at all. “Who are you? How did you get in here? This whole county is quarantined.”

  “Holy crap, really? How are you controlling the bor—” That was not a helpful question. Neither was “You can’t possibly have managed to roust everybody out of the hills, have you?” which I also got halfway through before Morrison growled, “Walker,” as a suggestion that I shut up.

  I said, “I’m sorry,” after a few seconds of trying to get my mouth and my nerves under control. “We were camping. We had no idea anything was going on.”

  “We’ve been doing low flyovers for the pa wrhe nest three days, broadcasting messages to come to a center for inspection. How could you have missed those?”

  I glanced at Morrison, who had no helpful answers written on his forehead. I swallowed and looked back at the CDC guy. “…we were spelunking?”

  “Where’s your gear?”

  The only answer to that was “In the trunk,” and I really did not want paranoid government officials opening a trunk full of shotguns and other monster-hunting gear. I did have carry permits for all of it, but they were carry permits for Washington State. I wasn’t sure how well that would go over, two thousand miles from home. I tried for distraction instead. “Officer, what’s going on here?”

  “Lady, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I need you to drive down toward the van, very slowly. When you get there you’re going remove yourself from the vehicle. You will be isolated, tested for disease and disinfected. The car will undergo forensic scrutiny—”

  A tingle of outrage danced up my spine. “Excuse me? Undergo what?”

  “Forensic scrutiny, ma’am. It means the vehicle will be stripped—”

  “Like hell it will be.”

  “It’s necessary, ma’am. We need to inspect it for any foreign material that may be able to carry disease. You’ve been inside the epicenter of a plague. The vehicle has to be thoroughly examined, even if that means destroying it.”

  Morrison put his chin in his hand and his elbow in the passenger side window, looking the other way. I didn’t know if he was fighting laughter or despair, but he was ostentatiously not getting involved in this particular argument. I smiled at the CDC guy, who took it as a good sign and therefore didn’t quite understand when I said, “Over my dead body.”

  When he caught up to what I’d actually said, he got grim. “If necessary, yes, ma’am. I have military reserves on hand and at my command—”

  “Really.” My voice squeaked with interest. “You’ve got the U.S. military on the Qualla? On land that belongs to a foreign and sovereign nation state? How’s that playing on the news, Officer? How’s that going over with the Eastern Band of Cherokee, or the Navajo Nation? You making it nice and clear they’re next, after an already embittered history of governmental dismissal of Native rights? Are you—”

  Somewhere in the middle of my little rant, I started to recognize what I was describing as being exactly what the Master, his Executioner, and the wights were probably after. I broke off with a whispered, “Holy shit. It’s that easy, isn’t it. It’s really that easy.”

  “Walker?”

  “I’m sure the government has got a media blackout on this anyway, but holy shit, Morrison, it’s perfect. Whether there’s a real disease or whether Sara didn’t listen and burn the bodies—”

  My father said, “Burn whose bodies?” but I wasn’t going to stop and explain just then.

  “—and if they rose and have created more wights, either way it’s a perfect excuse to bring the government into the reservations. And there’s still bad blood there, there’s always going to be, so once word gets out that the government is trampling Native rights and invading reservation territory again, it’s all over. Either the First Nation peoples are going to revolt and be killed, or they’re going to be taken away, spread out, and assimilated into imion territnonexistence. It’s putting a shiny red bow on the genocides. And I bet anything Aidan’s out there stirring up the will to fight instead of to sit back and take is all passively. Where is everybody?” I demanded of the CDC guy, and behind his glass plate mask I saw a hint of uncertainty flicker across his face.

  “You don’t have them, do you.” A smile started to stretch my mouth. “You people came in here like a load of bricks, threatening and angry and scared, and the People told you to fuck off, didn’t they. I mean, I’m sure some of them stayed. Lots, even, I mean, not everybody in this area has Native blood, never mind cares enough to stand up to the Feds, and somebody called you in, after all. But a whole lot of ’em just went to the hills and now you can’t find them, can you. You’re afraid there’s a whole disease center out there somewhere, and it’s completely out of your control. Tell me, who called you? Was it Sara Isaac from the FBI?”

  The guy’s whole face pinched up. “We have an FBI agent missing?”

  My grin went wild and broad for a couple seconds. “No. She’s not missing. She’s just chosen her side. Look, listen to me, buddy. If you come across bodies with an ash mark on their forehead, like a fingerprint burned in? Just burn them. Don’t do an autopsy, don’t try to figure out what killed them or if it’s infectious. It’s not infectious, except through a touch like the one on the bodies, and you will never understand what killed them, not really. If you want to help, burn the bodies to keep them from rising—”

  CDC Man turned white. I took that to mean he’d seen some of them rise, and I was fairly certain he’d lost some men to the newly risen.

  “—and otherwise, stay out of the way and let me do my job.”

  He rallied a little. “Who are you? What do you know about this? Disease control is our job, not yours. Who are you?”

  “My name,” I said, mostly under my breath, “is Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, and I’m the answer to all your prayers.”

  *

  It seemed appropriate to throw Petite into Drive and roar off down the road after a line like that, so that’s what I did. CDC guys flung themselves out of the way, I pulled a 180, and we tore back the way we’d come, hitting ninety miles an hour in about a quarter mile. I cackled the whole way. Morrison covered his eyes with one hand, then dropped it. “I can’t believe you told them your name.”

  “Oh, come on, Petite is unique. It would only take them about fifteen seconds to find out who I was anyway, and it was a great exit line. C’mon, Morrison, you gotta admit, that was an awesome exit.”

  “Walker, I’m a police captain. From the law’s perspective, that was not only incredibly dangerous—you could have killed someone!—but also unbelievably stupid. They’re only doing their jobs, and we should help them with that.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “From a personal perspective, though, yes, I’ve got to hand it to you, Walker. You do know how to make an exit.”

  My father said, “You should have seen the exit when she left the Qualla,” and right about then the military boys started giving chase.

  There was no chance they’d catch us in land vehicles. Unfortunately, they had a helicopter. I gunned Petite, sending her well over a hundred miles an hour, and we shot up a mountain road that wasn’t intended to be taken at fifty. I dowt fted givinshifted ahead of a s
harp corner that my reflexes remembered more than my eyes saw. Morrison hit a high note I didn’t think a man of his size could produce as we swung around a curve with nothing but hope keeping us on the road. Then he clamped his eyes and mouth shut and hunkered down while I proved to myself, my God, and anybody else within a six-mile radius that I was still the best damned driver in the Qualla. All my shakes and emotions disappeared into the adrenaline rush of dangerous speeds. It was as good as, better than, a drum circle: this was all me, skill and a love of the road tying together to make the best possible antidote for fear and exhaustion.

  Raven bounced around in my head, cawing and kloking and squealing with excitement that only encouraged me. Rattler swayed, hissing gleefully, and I tapped into the speed he’d been known to offer me, increasing my reflexes just that much more. The downshifts came half a heartbeat later, the upshifts that much sooner, eking extra yards out of each action. I didn’t care that a helicopter had the advantage. I was going to outrun it, and disappear us into the hills right under the military’s noses. I bellowed, “Renee, what can you give me?” and my newest companion animal, who didn’t seem naturally inclined to outrageous activity, stepped up.

  Time slowed down. That happened a lot, when things were going badly, but for once it was just for the pure outrageous joy of pushing myself, my car, and my magic to the limit. I saw—Saw—the road unfold in front of me with astounding clarity. Saw patches of gravel, fine sprays of water, the smear of some unfortunate possum who’d played chicken with a car and lost. I twitched the wheel fractions of an inch, feeling Petite respond to the most minute requests, and over the roar of her engine I shouted, “Where we going, Dad?”

  He yelled, “We’re not going to make it!” back, but that wasn’t what I’d asked. “It’s an eight-mile drive, Jo! The chopper is going to catch up!”

  “Just tell me where we’re going!”

  “There’s a track off the road up there—” He pointed at a site about two mountains over, his fingertip bobbling with our speed.

  I remembered when he said it. It wasn’t much of a track, not something a car could go up. It was rocky for the first several hundred yards, rough enough terrain that it wouldn’t take footprints or other signs of passage to any meaningful degree. He was right, though: through the twists and curves of the mountain roads, it was about eight miles away, even if I could see the stretch of road it branched off from where we were. There were chunks of green valley and steep hollers between us, nothing a 4x4 could traverse, never mind my lowslung 1969 Mustang. We hit a straight stretch, a familiar straight stretch, the last one my grandmother had ever driven, and all sorts of crazy ideas came together in my mind.

  I remembered the Pontiac’s massive blue weight, the black soot wings of Raven Mocker making mockery of its attempt at flight. I thought of the helicopter coming up the mountain the short way, blades hauling awkward dragonfly shapes through the air, and I thought, hell. I thought of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner laying down road over empty sky, and I thought, well, hell, whispered, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and slammed Petite off the side of a mountain.

  We flew.

  *

  The Rainbow Connection came together beneath us, every ounce of my shielding magic slapping blocks of bright-colored roadway together under Petite’s wheels. It wasn’t going to laۙt flew.have to last. It just had to get us across half a mile of clear air, an impossible shortcut to the hidden path into the hills. I drew strength from the astonished earth, pulling it up as fast as it would let me to braid it into the air bridge. I felt like Indiana Jones crossing the invisible bridge, except moving at 110 miles per hour instead of creeping on hands and knees.

  Dad made apoplectic sounds in the backseat. Morrison clutched the dashboard and stared at treetops three hundred feet below us. I grinned so broadly my face hurt. I had never had so much fun in my life. I desperately wanted to turn around and see if the helicopter had caught up, if they could see what we were doing, and how they were taking it if they could. I didn’t dare, afraid if I looked away the path I was building would fall apart, but I could imagine their expressions.

  I did not imagine them firing missiles at us, which is what happened next. Dad gave a strangled warning shout at the same time I heard them, high whistles that sounded a lot like they did in movies. Morrison roared something incomprehensible, but I didn’t dare listen. I didn’t know how fast missiles traveled. I knew how fast we were going, Petite’s speedometer clocking well over 130 now, but I was pretty sure missiles flew faster than that. I wondered if they were heat-seeking or targeted or what, then remembered everybody’s favorite deep-sea maneuver and hit the brakes, spinning the second 180 of the afternoon.

  I wished to God I could see it all from the outside. The shields I drew from the earth rearranged so fast I heard them clattering, blocks of magic crashing together to keep a surface under Petite’s wheels. She fishtailed from turning at such high speeds, but bless her little steel soul, she leapt right forward again as I leaned on the gas. All of a sudden we were charging a helicopter, and I did get a chance to see the pilots’ faces after all. There were two of them, a man and a woman, and their faces showed a range of emotion from shock and bewilderment to outright fury and determination to take us down.

  The woman, however, also looked like her every prayer had been answered, that she was seeing living proof that the world was as awesome and amazing as she’d ever hoped. She looked like someone had just proven to her that magic was real, and nothing was ever going to take that away from her. I gave her a big cheesy grin and a thumbs-up.

  The missiles behind us swung around and smashed into each other, creating a smoking fireball in the sky. I threw Petite into Reverse, not risking the time to turn around again, and flung my arm over the passenger seat so I could turn and drive backward through the airborne wreckage. I was starting to see stars, nothing to do with the missiles and everything to do with blatantly ignoring the laws of physics. I chanted, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it,” between my teeth and clenched my stomach muscles, like the tension there could translate to magic beneath my sweet old girl’s wheels.

  Twenty feet from the mountain road, I spun Petite around again and slammed us back toward solid ground. The bridge fell apart beneath her back wheels and they whirled, trying to gain purchase. Dad and Morrison both threw themselves forward, adding another few hundred pounds of forward momentum, and gravel caught beneath her wheels. She surged onto the road and I twitched a light-bending invisibility shield up around us while I slowed down enough to stop safely.

  I killed the engine and it rumbled to a slow stop. We all sat there in the silence, my vision winking in and out. There was something I wanted to tell Dad. Something important. Something about keeping ad itg us hidden. I opened my mouth, said, “Ablbhlg,” and passed out.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I awakened to Morrison’s patient repetition of, “Wake up, Joanie. Wake up. Wake up, Walker. Wake up. Walker, I need you to—” and then a rough quiet gasp when I rolled my eyes open. “There you are. Drink this.”

  I was willing to drink anything, especially if it had a high alcoholic content. What he fed me didn’t: it was bottled water, warm, brackish, and probably good for me. I coughed a couple of times and tried sitting up. That was when I noticed I was lying down. Mostly, anyway. Petite’s front seat had been laid as flat as it went, and I was no longer buckled in. Morrison knelt beside the door, strain deepening the lines around his eyes. “Stay down awhile, Walker. It took Joe twenty minutes to stabilize you. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Prolly not.” My voice was weirdly hoarse. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Did it work?” Obviously it had worked. We were still with Petite instead of arrested by military mooks. That was good. I wondered where Dad was. I wondered if we’d found the missing Cherokee, except clearly we hadn’t because we were still with Petite, who couldn’t possibly make it up the ravine.

  “It worked. That was the…” Mor
rison cleared his throat in turn. “I don’t even know what that was, Walker. That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Better than time travel, huh?” I felt like I’d been drinking sand. I fumbled for the water and Morrison poured a little more down my throat.

  “Time travel,” my staid, sensible boss-former boss said, “is almost comprehensible, Walker. I pay some attention to science. I get the idea that time is how we perceive it. I can just about understand that if we can alter our perceptions enough, we might not have to be so linear.”

  “You’re amazing,” I told him solemnly. “Best ever. Best Morrison ever. I love you. Can’t believe you’re okay with time travel. That’s amazing. You’re the best.” Now I sounded like I’d been on a three-day bender and was equal parts hammered and hung over.

  Morrison crooked a smile. “I love you, too. But yeah, Walker, I can almost wrap my head around time travel. Flying Mustangs, not so much.”

  “I shoulda named her Pegasus.” The thought was inordinately funny, and I giggled until I coughed. When I finished coughing I was weak as water. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Your father said you drained yourself dry.”

  I mooshed my lips into a duck face. “Nah. Not me. I’m Supershaman.”

  “Not even supershamans are supposed to make three-thousand-pound cars fly through the air, Walker. Apparently you pushed the laws of physics too far that time.”

  “Bah. Do it all the time. Invisililliby, bility…in…vis…i…bil…ity. Shields, time travel, healing. It all defies physics. That’s why it’s magic.” I was not getting any less punchy, but the litany of powers I usually worked with did seem to have something in common. Invisibility shields were just bent light, and almost anything, including water, the most common element on the planet, could bend light. Morrison had just deconstructed why time travel might not be quite outside the laws of physics. Healing was incredible stuff, but what I did essentially sped up the normal process rather than redefining it g ad almentirely. My physical shields were, in fact, perhaps the most physics-defying thing I did, since as far as I knew nobody’d figured out how to turn air solid. So it was possible Morrison was right. It was possible I’d pushed that one juuuuust a little too far.