Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2)

by Sandy Nathan

  “That’s what makes our mission imperative. And that’s why I contacted you. We must save the children. We are committed to it. Sam says they will die in just a few days. We’re running against time …”

  And then she gave a run-through of the futility of their plan. “We don’t know how to train horses. We aren’t in shape to carry arms. We need a backhoe and a tractor. The children are forty feet underground; the shelter is hundreds of feet down. We need people to drive the equipment. I don’t even know how to drive a car. I don’t think anyone does.

  “But, we are determined to save those babies. We’re leaving at dusk. We’ll probably all be killed. The odds are vastly against us. But we cannot let those children die.”

  “Hey, Mom, there’s a big thunderstorm over the village.” Jeremy shouted from off camera. “It just showed up. It’s a monster.”

  “Well that’s one problem down!” She beamed. “The Bigs are afraid of thunder. Ellie must have contacted the haunt somehow. She’s a real asset, though she is acting oddly. She’s been eating fish nonstop since she heard about the captive children. Is that a problem?”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. A problem? Oh, celestial spheres. Did they know what they were unleashing?

  “I hate to ask for anything more, but if we could have Bud Creeman and Wesley Silverhorse for a day or so, I think our problems could be solved. They know how to fight, apparently without weapons, and Wesley knows about farm equipment. They train horses. We could be ready to go in an hour if we had them. I don’t know how much trouble it would be to get them here, but we would have a real chance of saving the children and not getting killed, plus eliminating the monsters. They live in the year 2015. Hope that’s not too difficult for you.

  “Jeremy is here with me. He’s sending you more Wes Silverhorse movies; he’s an amazing actor. And some videos of the Horse Manager. Plus coordinates for where they are.

  “It would be so nice if you could help us again. We’d be so grateful. And—we’re going to film the action as it happens. We would be delighted to send you an exclusive copy of the images, with my commentary, if you help us.

  “Well, all the best from the planet Earth. You have my love and good wishes.

  “This is Lady Grace.”

  She blew kisses at the camera.

  The doctor could feel the planet swoon. Oh, she was divine. Marching to sure death. Sure death? She couldn’t die. If she died, they couldn’t watch her any more. They had to save her. And the children. And stop Ellie before …

  The elders reviewed the data as well as the millions of intuitive calls to action that were barraging their consciousnesses. After flashing through several Silverhorse films, they were horrified. “He’s violent. He’s a monster,” the elders said. And so sexual, they didn’t say.

  “He’s just in role,” said the tall doctor. “Look up Method Acting. Here,” he split their screen. “Lee Strasburg started it in New York before the Second Revolution. See, the actor steps into the role, becoming the character temporarily. See, there’s Strasburg on ‘Inside the Actors Studio.’” They watched for a while.

  “Wes is really a healer and holy man. He’s very gentle. Here’s his teacher,” The image of an elderly man with white braids and a blissful face covered the screen. He looked directly at the elders and his portion of the screen blanked out with a hint of a rebuke. “A very powerful teacher.”

  “And besides,” said the doctor, “they’ll be fighting monsters. What could be better?”

  “We’ll give her no help. We will not import the Indians.”

  The doctor crossed his arms over his chest and bided his time.

  In the first popular uprising in the history of the planet, the people massed in front of their screens and hummed. Someone was jostled in the hallway in front of the wall of the elders. He or she did not lose his or her footing, but did get an elbow in the ribs. The perpetrator apologized profusely. The violence was shocking.

  “Our society is at a breaking point,” the doctor said to the elders. “She’s a cult heroine. We’ll have trouble with the people if we don’t go along with this.”

  Then he sprang his idea of importing the two horse trainers to the cliff and seeing what happened as a test run before bringing them and some horses to the planet.

  “The hybrids,” as Ellie and Jeremy’s children were known, “are getting out of control. Those two humans could keep them in line, if they don’t prove too dangerous themselves.”

  The elders saw the wisdom in this, and injected some more. “Maybe we could do something about her in this military action they’re planning. An accident or something. Then we wouldn’t get any more calls from her.”

  The doctor sputtered, “But the people love her. If she dies, they’ll be heartbroken. The hybrids are much calmer when she’s on. Maybe we could give her an hour a day program, about life down there.”

  They thought that an interesting idea.

  “If we need to kill someone, we could kill her husband,” the doctor added. “Everyone thinks he’s an idiot.”

  The elders decided to send the horse trainers to the cliff, and hold on the other concepts until they saw some results. The doctor wanted to survey the populace about their feelings toward Sam. And the others. Maybe they could do a cleanup. Get rid of Jeremy. And Ellie. The humans obviously didn’t know what she was turning into.

  Lady Grace, he shoved his way in front of the transmitting device so he could be the one who sent the good news. He used his new skill, thinking to her in English. Next, he would master speaking out loud. I’m very pleased to tell you that the elders have granted your request regarding Wesley Silverhorse and Bud Creeman. They should be arriving momentarily. We advise you to take precautions with Wesley Silverhorse. We have data indicating that he can be volatile.

  You have our best wishes for the completion of your mission. We look forward to receiving your reports. He smiled as enticingly as he could into the transmission device.

  Lady Grace heard him speaking words into her mind. Silent words, but not the intuitions he’d used earlier. She responded right away, “Oh, you’re the doctor who treated Ellie. How good to see you again. I’m thrilled that you’ll be helping us with Bud and Wesley. We may have a chance with their help. And with you as our contact, we may have a more cordial relationship in the future. Many thanks,” she put her hands together in the prayer position of her people and bowed to him.

  “Oh, one thing,” she added. “What’s the matter with Ellie? She seems to be turning into …”

  He cut the transmission. They’d find out soon enough.

  33

  Sam looked over his shoulder as he walked away from the container where the lady was talking to the goldies. James had shaved off all of her hair. He put paint on her face around her eyes and on her cheeks. She wore a blue gown of soft stuff cut so low that he didn’t want any other man to see her.

  The others had said, “Oh, you look beautiful.”

  She did. Too beautiful. When he had been near the goldies when Ellie was sick, Sam didn’t like them. Part of it was that he had not been out of the underground very long. Part of it was them. He experienced them the way he did everything, from the inside. He knew all of them. Nuances and subtle shadings. They were too powerful. He couldn’t understand their thinking or the way their souls worked. He didn’t think it possible to make a good bargain with them, but his new family needed their help.

  He didn’t want to listen to what the lady said or see her shining in front of the cameras, so he walked to the end of the cliff. He stood, looking toward the underground shelter. The storm continued to rage. The Bigs hadn’t gotten the general’s weapons out. Yet.

  After a while, he sat down with his legs crossed, a safe distance from the ledge. It still felt dangerous to him. It was dangerous. Sam picked up pebbles and threw them over the edge, listening to them bounce when they hit the rock below.

  “Sam?”

  He jumped at the soft voice. Ellie co
uld walk even more quietly than he did.

  “Yeah, Ellie?”

  “Talk, Sam?”

  “Sure, Ellie. What about?” He knew Ellie from holding her when she was sick. Which was to say, he knew her as well as another person possibly could. She was good and kind and fine all the way through.

  “Tell about babies, Sam. What their names? How old? Any sick?” She came around and sat in front of him, her back so close to the edge that it made his stomach churn. She was unconcerned.

  “OK, Ellie, ah’ll tell ye.” He immediately went into the village dialect. Ellie was the only one who’d asked about the children specifically, as individuals. And she’d used the Voice to make sure that the others saved them. She cared about them most.

  “Bobby’s th’ oldest. He’s this many.” He held his fingers out once, and then held up just two.

  “Twelve.”

  “Yeah. He’s the biggest. He’s an Arthur and has some …” He recited Bobby’s genealogy, as would be proper in any discussion of children among those underground, or in the village in the old days. Sam went through all the other kids, describing them and giving their names and lineages. “Th’ youngest is Winnie. She’s …” He held up one finger. “One.” He smiled. He knew that number. “She’s a bonny thing, and smart. She looks small, Ellie. They’re all wha’ ye’d call sick, Ellie. Ev’ry one of ‘em. But it’s na’ sumthin’ to stew over. They need this,” he waved his arm, indicating the outdoors and air. “They need food and a place to play. They’ll be fine. Fair an’ fine.”

  She laid her hand on his knee. “No is problem, Sam. Babies can be sick, no care. Want babies. They want mother?”

  “They want a mother more ‘n anythin’, Ellie. Tha’s wha’ they need. Bein’ held and loved. They need you.”

  Strangely, Ellie’s eyes filled with tears. They weren’t tears of happiness. Something was going on with her. She looked different; her eyes were larger. She seemed sharper, too, as though she might attack.

  “You good man, Sam. You take care babies.” She was silent for a while. “You want to know me like Sam Baahuhd? Hold hands and know?”

  “All right,” he replied cautiously. She had known his ancestor and touched him. What would she think when she knew that Sam Baahuhd was alive in him, along with 105 generations of Baahuhds? He was the keeper of the ancestors.

  Ellie stretched her hands out and took Sam’s.

  He touched her and they joined. She was different than the Ellie he had held when she was sick. Foreign. Getting more foreign. Losing the vestiges of humanity she bore. Becoming something else. But still totally good.

  And then he knew. Ellie was saying good-bye.

  Sam Baahuhd reared up inside him and grasped Ellie’s hands. “Yer a fair an’ fine lass,” he said. “As fine as a butterfly or a humming bee. Ye’ll be remembered, lass. For generations, they’ll sing yer name. Ah’m so glad ah knew ye.”

  The rest was beyond words. He knew Ellie and Ellie knew him, more than the lady did, maybe.

  He sat in a trance.

  “Good-bye, good Sam. I go now. You take care babies. Take care Jeremy. Use Voice, Sam. No be afraid.”

  When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

  34

  “OK, Wes. We’ll do the shot as rehearsed,” Kim Rogers, the director, sat beside the camera, an umbrella shading her command chair, bullhorn in hand. The rest of the crew stood where their jobs put them. “The crane with the camera is on the hill. It will catch you from above. The copters are in place. The logging truck is rolling in this direction.”

  The shot took place in a particularly scenic area of Will Duane’s ranch. A hill sloped down from Wes’s right. Out of sight, the logging road curved around it and sloped downward. The knoll was thick with timber, which broke into meadowlands below the road. Sunlight illuminated the scene.

  “You’re going to do exactly as we discussed, Wes. You’ll hit the curve at fifty, no more, and pull to your right out of sight. We’ll do the rest with a computer. No adding thrills or speed. You are too valuable to risk. This is a tough shot, as you know.”

  Wes knew the scene. His character rode around the corner with the bad guy in hot pursuit. A logging truck was coming up the other way. In the film, he was supposed to swerve, throw the bike sideways, slide under the truck, and escape. The bad guy got creamed by the truck. Bad guy number one. There were dozens of them in the film. The actual shot simply required him to ride the bike around the curve. The stunt would be completed in the computer lab.

  “I promise, strictly to contract, no changes,” Wes said to Kim. No fun. The director’s assistant yelled, “Action.” Wes put on his helmet. He was in a form-fitting black biker’s suit with a black racing helmet. He was riding a hot bike. Hell of a hot bike. This shot was a total waste of a bike like that.

  Wes gunned it. OK, he had an attitude problem. The speedometer said seventy, and he was still putting on speed. He knew they were filming, because Kim wouldn’t waste the shot. She’d scream at him afterward. So what?

  He shot over the hill. There was the logging truck. He was exactly where he was supposed to be. He swerved to the left, swinging the cycle’s rear tire toward the truck. Gravel spun from under its wheels. He leaned to the right, gunning it.

  Wesley found himself flying through the air, bent forward in the same position he’d had on the racing bike, hands out in front like they were on the handlebars. But the bike was gone. He tipped forward and skidded on the top of his helmet, then his helmet and the backs of his gloved wrists. The smell of burning plastic and leather filled the air. He stopped when he hit a stone wall, upside down. He didn’t move.

  Bud Creeman walked into the men’s room of the main barn at Will’s Montana ranch. He hated being filmed. Wes gloried in it, but Bud knew he’d spend a half-hour sitting on the can afterward, until his guts settled down. He loved the bathroom in the barn. Like everything on Will’s estate, it was oversized and over the top. He could live in this bathroom very happily. He pulled out the latest issue of Reined Horse Journal and lightened up.

  Moments later and much refreshed, he opened the door and stepped into brilliant sunlight. He looked around. He was standing on a rock ledge, with no barn in sight. No ranch anywhere. Just rock.

  “Bud,” Wesley ran up to him and whispered, “where are we?”

  He looked around and saw a bald woman in a black commando outfit advancing on them with an automatic machine gun.

  He raised a hand. “Hi, there. We’re just … standing here.”

  “Certainly, no problem. I’m packing the ordnance. Jeremy, can you get Bud a saddle?” She called toward a storage container sitting a short distance from them. “He’ll be out in a minute. I’ll leave you with my son, Mr. Creeman.” She walked away.

  “How did she know your name?” Wes whispered.

  “I don’t know. Where are we?” Bud asked.

  “I don’t know. I was on a motorcycle doing a shot at Will’s. Look at my wrists.” Wes held them out. They were badly abraded. “Good thing I had gloves on. Shit.”

  Bud put his hands on Wes’s wrists, healing them. “There, is that better? Good thing you got me around.”

  “Yeah, but where is this?” They were huddled at one end of a massive rock shelf. More rock formed a vast dome overhead. Two huge cargo containers sat a few yards away. A gigantic pile of pieces of metal and other junk sat in the middle. The hunks looked like they came off a space station.

  “This cave could be the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde in Colorado,” Wes continued. “Or the Gila Cliff Dwellings. And that valley out there looks like Santa Ynez Valley in California. I just bought a weekend place there. That over there, where that thunderstorm is … I don’t know where that is. I’ve never seen a thunderstorm centered on a particular spot. And there’s a herd of wild horses beneath us.”

  Bud looked over the cliff edge. “Sure is. Who is that?”

  A bad-ass little girl, who looked about half wasp, sat on the edge of the cliff,
glaring at them. A pile of raw fish was next to her.

  “Hi, there! We’re just stopping by.”

  She jumped off the edge and buzzed away. She could fly.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Yes. Why does that woman have a machine gun?” He turned around and watched the woman who had met them.

  She handed some guns to a couple of guys and then walked over to them, “I’m Lady Grace. Welcome to our home.”

  “Howdy. I’m Elmer Fudd and this is Hopalong Cassidy.” Wesley looked at her through narrowed eyes. “What is this? Why are we here? What are you doing? And put down that gun.”

  Bud also stared. “That goes for me, too. I think it’s time for us to go home. My wife’s making pot roast tonight.”

  “Yes, we definitely need to go,” she said. “We’re behind schedule. Would you mind breaking those horses for us? We have several beginners, so we need them to be very gentle.”

  “I don’t break horses,” Bud said.

  “I know, you put them under saddle. We’ll explain the whole thing as we travel. Come now, go down the ladder and get to work.”

  “Look, I’m under contract. I can’t work for anyone but Will Duane. That’s it.”

  She leveled the gun at them. “Get down the ladder and start with the horses. We need to leave before dark.”

  “How many do you want trained?”

  “All of them. We have to bring supplies and may have wounded to care for and take home. We need to load all of that.” She pointed to an enormous pile of stuff at the bottom of the cliff.

  “Are you crazy? We can’t possibly load all that on green-broke horses. That’s like a whole movie set you’ve got out there,” Wes squawked.

  She came closer. “I don’t need to get this close. I can render you null and void a hundred yards away. Not to mention your contract with Will Duane.”