Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  "Holy Hannah," Luther said again. Then he exchanged a look with his wife. "I see your point, you three. But we've got relatives around here, and our kids and grandkids will need a place to stay. They know where we are. No, I think we'll be staying here. And you're welcome to if you want, as well."

  * * * *

  The floor of the Willamette Valley was mostly flat, but here towards the edge of the Cascade foothills the odd butte reared up out of the fields. Juniper Mackenzie lay on the crest of one such, training her binoculars west; the damp ground soaked into her shirt, but the temperature was heading up, finally getting springlike, and the earth had the yeasty smell of new growth. Crocus bloomed nearby, blue spears under a big Oregon oak whose leaves were a tender green.

  She swallowed, her hands trembling as she watched I-5, the main interstate that ran north-south from Portland to Eugene. The litter of motionless cars and trucks hadn't changed. The first thin scatter of trudging people on foot had; most of the stranded passengers had probably dispersed quickly, and for a day or two—the day her party had crossed—it had been nearly empty.

  Now it was thronged. Groups on foot—they probably included a lot from Salem and the first or the most determined from Portland; perhaps some walking north from Eugene in ironic counterpoint to the flood heading south away from the metropolis.

  Everyone looking for the place things are normal, and not finding it.

  A lot of the ones on bicycles were almost certainly from Portland; it was an easy three-day trip by pedal, and there were a lot of bicyclists there.

  From Albany, too, she thought.

  That city wasn't far away to the north; she could have seen it on a normal day. Today a thick plume of black smoke marked the location, and the faint bitter smell was an undertone to the earth scents. On the highway, a group was fighting around an eighteen-wheeler truck that had coasted into the rear of an SUV on the evening when everything Changed, carried along by momentum. Merciful distance hid the details, but there were certainly clubs and pieces of car-jack and tire-iron in use. Probably knives and shovels as well.

  Must be food inside. Oh, Goddess, there goes another bunch.

  Twenty or thirty cyclists traveling in a clump abruptly braked to a halt and drove into both groups fighting around the truck in a solid wedge. At this distance everything was doll-tiny even with the powerful binoculars, and she kept the point of aim moving so that she wouldn't catch more than an odd glimpse. There were already too many things in her head that kept coming back when she tried to sleep.

  The worst of it was that she couldn't even blame them for fighting over the food. If everyone shared fairly, that would simply mean that everyone died of starvation. There just wasn't enough to go around, and no authority to enforce rationing if there was. Too little anywhere except in the immediate vicinity of a warehouse or a grain elevator or a packing plant—and there, too much, and no way to move it any distance before it spoiled.

  Do not think of what New York or LA is like, she told herself. Do not. Do not.

  That was like telling yourself not to think about the color orange, or an elephant, but she had to try if she wasn't going to curl up into a little ball and wait to die. Cuchulain thrust his nose into her armpit and whined slightly as he scented her distress.

  Instead she cased the binoculars, picked up her crossbow and started to thread her way down through the tangle of trees and brush that covered the steep south face of the butte, sliding down on her butt and controlling her descent with her heels more often than not; it was better than five hundred feet of steepness. Cuchulain kept pace with her, wuffling happily as he stuck his nose, into holes and snapped at long-tailed butterflies.

  She felt a moment's bitter envy; as far as the dog was concerned this was a perfect spring day, out with his person in the country, and she'd even let him eat some very high carrion. The only thing wrong was that she smelled scared and sad.

  Then he went quiet, stiffened, and gave a low growl. Juniper reached out and grabbed his collar, whispering stay! in a low emphatic tone, and pushed her way forward the last few yards.

  The narrow graveled road ran along the base of the butte, with a filbert orchard on the other side. The hobbled horses were grazing there among the new spring grass and the flowers, and the barrel shape of her wagon was a little distance further from the road, mostly hidden from a casual view; Dennis had agreed that it was best to travel only at night, by the back ways, and that slowly.

  Now six people on bicycles faced him and Eilir where the gate from the road went through the orchard fence. They weren't openly hostile yet, but she could hear the raised voices, and she could see their desperation; they looked just as dirty and tired and ragged as she felt, and thinner. She'd been eating one small meal a day since the Change after that fried-chicken feast at Luther's; they looked as if they'd had nothing for quite some time.

  Four men, two women, and a child, she thought. They realized they'd do best off the Interstate. Looking for "normal" means dying; better to look for food.

  The child was young, no more than four or five. A boy, and with his own miniature cyclist's helmet; his mother's bicycle had a pillion seat for him. She was Oriental, and she was dangerously well armed. Two of the others carried baseball bats, one a golf club, one a spade with a thick straight-sided blade crudely sharpened; all of them had some sort of knife, if only the kitchen variety. But the Asian woman had an honest-to-goodness bow, and a quiver clipped to the side of it with four arrows; it was a fiberglass target weapon, not even meant for hunting, but potentially deadly for all that. An arrow was nocked to the string, but she hadn't drawn it.

  "Look," Dennis said, his voice tight with frustration. "Look … "

  He had the Danish ax held slantwise across his body, one hand on the end of the haft and one halfway up. Eilir stood beside him with her crossbow cocked and loaded but not quite leveled.

  "I'm sorry as can be, but there's nothing we can do for you. We don't want any trouble. You can pass on by, and nobody will be hurt."

  Just then one of Luther Finney's gifts—the rooster in the wire cage on the other side of the big barrel-shaped cart— chose an unfortunate moment to crow. It took the strangers a minute to understand what they were hearing; she could tell from the once-expensive sporty look of their clothes they were all deeply urban. But cock-a-doodle-doo! was familiar enough to sink in.

  "You've got chicken!" one of the bicyclists screamed; it was the sound of a beggar confronted with riches.

  "No, we don't," Juniper said firmly.

  Everyone jerked around to look at her as she came out of the brush at the base of the hill and onto the road.

  The stuff inside the wagon would be unimaginable wealth if you could see it, she thought grimly, as she advanced and stood on Dennis's other side. But it isn't. It's just barely enough to keep the three of us through until the seeds bear, if we're very lucky.

  "That's a rooster and some breeding hens and we're not parting with them to make all of you one meal," Juniper went on.

  She met their eyes one by one; she could feel her mother's accent getting a little stronger in her voice, as it did when she was angry or afraid: "They have to help feed my family from now until … things get better."

  She knew her own eyes were steady, and the green of them cold; more to the point, the three-bladed and very pointed head of the bolt in the groove of her cocked crossbow glittered bright and sharp in the cool spring sunshine.

  Several of the strangers were literally drooling at the thought of chicken. One shook his aluminum baseball bat.

  "You've got chicken, you've got horses, you've got stuff inside that funny wagon!" he shouted; his face was caked with dirt, and brown-and-gray stubble showed through it. "Nobody will give us anything!"

  He mastered himself with a visible effort. "Look, just give us what you can spare. We'll … look, is there any sort of work you need done? We're not thieves. We just haven't had anything to eat for a day and a half now, and that was som
e crackers and olives and some soup we tried to make out of grass."

  The child was hugging his mother's leg where she stood beside her bicycle; he had tear-tracks through the dust on his face.

  "Hungry, Mommy," he said. "I want something to eat."

  She looked at Juniper. "You don't know what it's like back there," she said. "Back in Portland. The whole city's burning, and nobody has anything, criminals are stealing and killing—Terry'll die if he doesn't get some food!"

  That set them all off; they crowded closer, leaving their cycles on the kickstands or dropping them and waving their arms and shouting.

  Help! Juniper thought, her head going back and forth, trying to keep everyone in view.

  These weren't bad people; probably none of them had so much as hit anyone since junior high. But they were desperate.

  And so am I, she thought, nerving herself. For Eilir. For Dennis. And yes, for my own sweet life which I'm not ready to give up yet, even to get out of this hell.

  Then there was a sharp sound, a snapping tunnnggg of vibrating cord. Juniper's head whipped around; it was Eilir's weapon that had fired, and the Oriental woman was down on the ground screaming and writhing, clutching at a crossbow bolt through the outer part of her thigh. An arrow wobbled off from her bow and landed in the orchard not far from one of the horses, standing in the ground with the feathers up. The others' shouts turned to screams as well; Dennis took the moment to leap forward, roaring and flourishing the great ax overhead.

  Eilir dropped the end of the crossbow to the ground, put her foot through the metal stirrup, and dropped the claw of the spanning device at her belt over the string. Then she hooked the other end over the butt of her weapon and whirled the crank-handle around half a dozen times. The mechanism clicked, and she put another quarrel in the groove with fumbling haste.

  "Be off!" Juniper shouted at the same time, her weapon scanning back and forth.

  She could shoot only one—but nobody wanted to be that one, or so she hoped from the bottom of her peaceful soul.

  "Go! Now, while you can!"

  They ran; not quite panicked enough to leave their bicycles, but several nearly falling in their haste as they sprang aboard them and pedaled madly westward, back towards I-5. Back towards despair and death in a ditch, most likely.

  Eilir kept her crossbow to her shoulder until the last of them was out of sight. Then she dropped it and burst into clumsy racking sobs. Juniper tried to put an arm around her shoulder.

  She was going to shoot you! Eilir cried in Sign; then the girl tore away and raced into the orchard, sitting down with her back against a tree and wrapping her arms around her knees, face pressed into the faded denim of her jeans.

  Dennis leaned on his ax, taking deep whooping breaths for an instant. "Oh, fuck, that was too close," he said. "Oh, hell"

  Something small and hard rammed Juniper in the stomach. After an instant she realized it was the child's head, and he was trying to punch her as well.

  "You don't hurt my mom!" he cried; he was sobbing too, but striking out with blind determination. "You don't hurt my mom!"

  "I'm not going to hurt her!" Juniper said helplessly.

  She wrapped her arms around the boy in self-defense, lifting him and handing the writhing, kicking bundle to Dennis.

  "Or you either; be still, for the Goddess' sake!"

  The Oriental woman was silent where she lay in the roadway, wide-eyed, clutching at her injured leg. The bolt Eilir had used had a smooth target head, and the blood trickled freely but did not have the fatal spurting flow that would mean a severed artery.

  "He's just a little boy," the woman said as Juniper approached. "Please, whoever you are, he's just a little boy. He didn't hurt anyone. You've got to help him."

  "And I'm not going to hurt him," the musician replied.

  And she's thinking of nothing but her child, with that through her flesh. Damn it!

  It would be so much easier just to go away and leave them if the injured woman were a ravening bandit spitting curses, or thinking of nothing but her own hurt.

  "Will you let me see to the leg?" she went on aloud. A nod replied. "Toss your knife away, then. I have a daughter depending on me, and I'm not taking any chances."

  Juniper used her own dagger to slit the tight cycling shorts up around where the shaft pierced the flesh, wincing as she looked at it. Dennis came up; he had their medicine box, and readied a bandage; the boy was standing behind him, darting looks around his legs and then turning away.

  Juniper took a deep breath, gripped the bolt and pulled; it came free easily, and they occupied themselves with salve and tape for a moment.

  "I'm Sally Quinn," the wounded woman said when she'd stopped panting and recovered herself somewhat. "My son's Terence, Terry."

  She spoke good General American, with a very faint trace of an accent, and looked to be half a decade older than Juniper, though that might be the dirt and desperation and not having eaten much the past week.

  Dennis surprised his friend by breaking into another language, fast-paced and with a nasal twang; she didn't think it was Chinese, which she could at least recognize. Sally started in surprise, smiled hesitantly through her pain and replied haltingly in the same tongue. After a moment she relapsed into English:

  "But my parents came over in 'seventy-five, when I was very young," she said. "I don't remember all that much."

  Juniper looked at Dennis. Well, he's the right age, but he never said a word!

  "You were in Vietnam?" she said curiously.

  "In the rear with the gear," he said, shrugging. "Supply corporal. But I did pick up some of the language, yeah, dealing with the local economy. And we better didi mao, you bet."

  She recalled vaguely from books and movies that that meant get out, and it was true. She looked down at the injured woman; her son had crept close, and now he lay in the dusty grass beside the roadway with his head pillowed on her shoulder, looking at Juniper with enormous silent eyes. He had some of his mother's fine-boned comeliness, but his hair was dark brown and the features sharper.

  "Was your husband with the . others here?" Juniper asked.

  There was a wedding band on Sally's left hand, she certainly hadn't been born with the surname Quinn, and she had suburban respectability stamped all over her under the layer the days since the Change had left.

  "No," Sally replied; her voice was tired and flat, and her face sagged with lack of sleep and food and hope. "Peter was working late at the office at HP . that night, you know what I mean."

  They both nodded. "When things Changed," Juniper said, hearing the capital in her own voice.

  "He didn't come back. I couldn't go looking for him because of Terry, and it was four days. And then there was nothing left in the apartment, and nothing worked … the water, the toilets … there was fighting in the streets! And some people I knew a little said they were going to go south to where there was food; I think they wanted me to come because I had the bow, I'm in an archery club, we meet every second Saturday … "

  The words trailed off. Juniper stood abruptly and paced, then turned. She left the words unsaid; Dennis was about to speak too. They met each other's eyes and Juniper shrugged angrily.

  "Oh, we should not be doing this, Dennie, we really shouldn't. We shouldn't."

  A hand tapped her on the shoulder. Yes, we should, Mom, Eilir signed. Yes, we should. She held out a piece of cold biscuit to the boy, and he grabbed it and jammed it into his mouth.

  "All right … Sally," Juniper said. "We can't help everyone … which doesn't mean we can't help anyone. You wait here, and we'll get you into the wagon when the horses are hitched." She looked at Dennis. "We'd best get a move on, before we pick up so many strays we're out of food even before we reach the cabin."

  Chapter

  Seven

  Well, shit," Havel said with profound disgust. "I was really hoping this wouldn't happen."

  There were cars on Highway 12. The problem was that they were al
l stationary; he could see half a dozen, before the road curved out of sight along the steep canyon of the Lochsa. Several of them had been left with the doors open; not one was moving.

  Eric halted beside him, gawking up and down the roadway. "Wait a minute," he said. "Do you mean that all the cars are stopped the way our plane's engines were?"

  "And my GPS unit and the radio at the cabin," Havel said grimly.

  He spat into the dirt by the side of the roadway. It seemed to be the only way to really express his feelings. Unless I get down on the ground and sob and cry and scream and beat my fists on the pavement, he thought wryly.

  "But … " Eric's slightly battered-looking face went fluid with shock. "How are we going to get help for my mother?"

  "You tell me," Havel said, throwing down his pack. "Shit!" He sighed. "All right, let's check the cars."

  They did; nothing remained but a few empty plastic wrappers. Hmmm, Havel thought, looking through another trunk, and then casting back and forth along the road for a hundred yards either way.

  "No blankets," he said.

  Eric looked at him; probably big-city families as rich as his didn't think about that sort of thing.

  "A lot of people out here keep spare blankets or a sleeping bag in their trunks on a long trip," Havel said. "Or emergency supplies. None of these cars have anything like that. Five gets you ten everyone's car stopped at the same moment, then they hung around for a while and eventually started walking out when they realized nobody was coming to rescue them."

  He swept a hand along the road. "They were crapping by the side of the road for a couple of days too."

  Eric tried a shaky smile. "I'm not much of an expert at roadside dumps," he said.

  "Spoor is spoor."

  Havel felt his mind struggling to refuse the implications of what he saw.

  How far does this stretch? he thought. How far can it stretch? All the way from coast to coast, or 'round the world?