by neetha Napew
PROLOGUE
Captain James Hilton, lately the commander of the United States Space Vessel Aquila, started down the sunlit main street of the abandoned ghost town of Calico, California.
There was the dazzle of the chromed hood of the sleek silver Mercedes sports car parked near the open front of what had once been a popular gift shop. Mica wind chimes still tinkled in the light breeze, and he could just taste the faint, elusive flavor of piñon pine candles.
There were five bullet holes in the car, not counting the smashed windshield. The nearside fender was crumpled and smeared with brown, drying blood. One of the double headlights was gone, and Jim could still make out the macabre hank of blond-haired scalp that dangled from the socket.
The rough surface of the old picnic table in front of him felt warm to the touch. He glanced at the sky, seeing it was cloudless from east to west.
It was November 15, 2040, the date and the place that Zelig had warned them to attend.
He looked around, seeing what changes the past seven eventful weeks had wrought in his command. Mentally he ticked off the names of the crew, finding to his dismay that some of the faces had already blurred.
Dr. Bob Rogers from Topeka, dead in his cryo-capsule.
Mike Man, the best chess player that Jim had ever known, dead in the landing crash.
Marcey Cording, the Aquila's number two, decapitated.
Ryan O'Keefe, their psychiatrist, also dead at Stevenson Base.
Jed Herne, shot by a sniper not far from San Francisco, his death described to them all by Jeff Thomas that morning.
Pete Turner and Henderson "Mac" McGill, both missing, believed killed. Their planned trip up to New England had been the longest and the most dangerous. Mac's loss was about the hardest to bear of the seven dead or lost.
Then there were the survivors from the Aquila.
Himself.
Steve Romero and Kyle Lynch, who'd left together and returned together.
Jeff Thomas, beating the odds to return to Calico.
And Carrie Princip, who'd been such a vital support for Jim through the past seven weeks.
Down to seven from twelve.
But they also had some additions.
Hilton's own daughter, Heather, eleven years old. She was sitting on the porch of what used to be the house of the town's schoolteacher, playing a game with a handful of quartz pebbles along with ever-smiling Sly Romero. The boy was about eighteen, but he acted more like ten. His round, gentle face turned toward Jim, and the boy waved a soft hand.
Jim waved back, then turned his head to the north, where the ground rose steeply, close by the remains of an old mining railway. He felt the woman before he saw her, conscious of the intensity of her gaze.
The enigmatic Nanci Simms, immaculate in her khaki pantsuit and polished boots, stood on the ridge and stared at him.
There were some questions there. Jeff had come in with the sixty-year-old stranger, but he hadn't talked much about her. Jim Hilton reckoned the questions could wait awhile.
There was no sign of Zelig, no sign of anyone moving as far as the eye could see. Just the ocher expanse of the desert, stretching away, unchanged and eternal. But the dried shards of sagebrush and mesquite still showed in the distance, carrying the scarlet tint of the lethal plant cancer that had ravaged Earth while the Aquila was on its mission. It had caused the deaths of tens of millions of the planet's population, changing life forever. Jim sighed. "What now?" he said.
Chapter One
The pile of paper advertised the Barstow Film Festival: February 1st Thru 10th, 2040.
Jim Hilton browsed quickly through the list of vids and movies that were scheduled. A few names he recognized, and a few more he didn't. A retrospective season of Peckinpah's best, as well as a new print of the cult classic Repo Man, including six minutes of never-shown footage and a rare candid interview with the director, an eighty-five-year-old Englishman called Alex Cox. He was also the guest of honor at the festival.
The other side of the flyer was clear, except for a few lines about a special late addition: The Best There Ever Was—The Films of Harry Dean Stanton.
"Him I've heard of," muttered Jim.
It had occurred to him that some sort of a log or a journal might not be a bad idea, something to set down a record for anyone coming after. There was a pencil in the desk, and he took one of the sheets of dry, dusty paper and began to write.
THE UNITED STATES Space Vessel Aquila, under his command, had been out on a two-year deep-dark mission. When the crew had been brought back out of cryosleep prior to landing, it had been to find a changed world, a world ravaged by the plant cancer known as "Earthblood," which had destroyed all plant life across the planet in a matter of months.
When the plants died, the animals and birds and fish died. And then the people.
Cities were boneyards where only ghouls now lived. Towns were abandoned to the flourishing scavengers like the coyotes and the vultures.
Small communities either vanished or became armed camps of gun-hungry vigilantes.
I went up to my old house in Hollywood with Carrie Princip. She was second navigator on the Aquila. Found my wife and one of my twin girls dead. Brought Heather back here to Calico.
Jim reached for a new piece of paper, wondering idly if the Barstow Film Festival had ever taken place, guessing that the ecodisaster would have struck too quickly.
Steve Romero and Kyle Lynch went off together, up to Colorado. Steve was the radio honcho. Kyle, the only black in the crew, was chief navigator. They came back safely with Steve's boy, Sly. Nice kid, with Down's syndrome.
That covered six of the eight.
Outside, through the shattered glass of a side window, Jim could see Jeff Thomas walking with Nanci Simms. The West American had paid millions of dollars to get their star journalist on board the mission. Now Jeff had the greatest scoop in history but no newspaper to write for. No newspapers anywhere, except for the ragged pages that were blowing in the wind.
Jeff had gone out toward San Francisco along with Jed Herne, the ship's electronics expert. Jed had also played free safety for the New York Giants before a bad knee injury finished his career.
Now he was dead, shot by a sniper.
That was what Jeff Thomas had told Jim Hilton when he arrived in the old ghost town.
Jim wrote, "Jed Herne, killed on the way to San Francisco. By rifleman." Then he drew a question mark and circled it.
Jefferson Lee Thomas. After the disastrous crash landing of the Aquila back in Nevada at Stevenson, he'd weighed a pudgy one-sixty-five. Now he'd slimmed down to around one-fifty.
Arrogant and argumentative, he'd not been the most popular crew member, but now there was something different about the twenty-four-year-old. Something at the corners of his eyes when he'd been telling Jim and the other survivors about the murder of Jed Herne.
"Heard the crack, then Jed went down. Clean through the head. Didn't say a word. Never saw the man who shot him. One moment he's walking along with me, then he's flat on his back, staring up at the sun with sightless eyes."
Only problem was, Jim had heard him telling Steve Romero that they'd both been on mountain bikes and that the killer had been a raggedy old man with white hair.
He thoughtfully circled the question mark again with the blunt stub of pencil.
The last name was Nanci Simms.
Though she was open and pleasant and obviously extremely tough and resilient, she had an oddly guarded, impenetrable quality.
She looked to be close to sixty, though her six-foot body was in terrific shape. Jim Hilton had shaken hands with her and he had felt steel and whipcord in the grip. Jeff had introduced her as a retired schoolteacher from San Francisco.
Jim hadn't met many ret
ired lady teachers who carried a 16-round, 9 mm Port Royale machine pistol across their shoulders and a pair of Heckler & Koch P-111 pistols on the hip. Greased and ready for action.
He shook his head.
The light was just beginning to fade away toward the west as the sun dipped behind the Sierras. Night came fast out in the desert. The fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the year was nearly over.
There'd been no sign of General John Kennedy Zelig. He'd been the senior officer in charge of the space mission. Now, with something mysterious called Operation Tempest, Zelig had left them a runic message to all meet together in the ghost town of Calico on November 15.
They were all there, the survivors, but nothing had happened.
Just the eight of them. He wondered what had happened to the other couple of crew members who'd survived the crash and the bloody attack on them back at Stevenson Base.
Henderson McGill and Pete Turner. Mac was the astrophysicist and, at forty-five, the oldest member of the Aquila's complement. He'd also been Jim Hilton's best friend. Pete had been second pilot, a thirty-six-year-old widower with no children. His wife had been murdered by muggers, years earlier, on the Lower East Side of New York. An expert in martial arts, Jim had reckoned Pete had a better chance than most at making it.
Mac and Pete had headed northeast, on much the longest odyssey of anyone. With no family, Pete Turner had been happy to travel with Mac, who had been married twice and had seven kids. One wife, Jeanne, lived up on Mount Vernon Street, in Boston. And Angel, the second Mrs. McGill, had a Victorian Gothic white frame house on Melville Avenue in Mystic, Connecticut. Jim knew the house, having visited it several times over the years.
But with winter closing in, there had always been a risk that the snows would catch them—if some other grinning death hadn't gotten to them first.
They hadn't come back.
Jim knew Mac. If he hadn't returned to Calico for the agreed date, then something serious had stopped him. Something like no longer being alive.
Jim laid down the pencil, looking at the neatly written notes.
Out of the window he could see Nanci Simms leaning against the wall of what had once been the ice cream parlor.
Jeff was in front of her, and it looked as if they were having an argument. The journalist, half a head shorter than the woman, was shaking his finger at her, pointing behind him toward the rest of the township. Jim realized that they had no idea that they were being watched.
He looked away from them, whistling tunelessly between his teeth, glancing again at his notes and deciding that it hadn't been a good idea after all. He scrunched up the brittle sheets of paper and dropped them to the splintered boards of the floor.
"What's the point?" he asked himself. He stood up, stretching, hardly aware now of the thirty-five ounces of revolver on his right hip.
It was a GPF-555 Ruger Blackhawk Hunter. Six-shot, .44 caliber, full-metal jacket. Blued steel with cushioned grips and walnut inserts.
Jim had already lost certain count of how many people he'd killed with the gun.
Out of the open door he saw his daughter, walking slowly and wearily toward him, dragging her feet through the red-gold dust.
Behind him he heard the sound of a squeal of shock or pain, quickly muffled.
Before he turned to look, Heather called out to him. "Hi, Daddy!"
"Hi, kitten." He grinned, instantly remembering. "Sorry. Forgot. Hi, Heather."
Behind him came another strange yelping sound. Jim still didn't glance around.
"I'm real tired, Dad."
"Me, too. Best wait until full dark in case Zelig delivers on his message."
The girl stood about fifteen yards away, scrawling with her toe in the rutted dirt. As the night came racing in, the temperature dropped like an iron bucket down a well. Jim could see the pale ghost of his daughter's breath, frosting around her pursed lips.
"Can I go to bed?"
"Sure. They got the fire going good?"
"Yeah."
"Be with you in a minute."
The girl waved a casual hand and turned, walking back rather more briskly through the gloaming. Jim Hilton could catch the aromatic smell of burning logs from down the street.
At last he looked behind him, through the broken window, and saw a strange tableau.
Though the light was diminished, he could make out Nanci Simms bending forward a little. One hand was locked in Jeff Thomas's bushy hair. His face, already badly scarred from the Aquila's crash, was distorted with pain. The woman was forcing him slowly to his knees, talking to him softly all the time and smiling at him.
Jim stood, silently watching. He saw the ex-journalist groveling in the dirt, head lowered, Nanci pressing him down until his mouth was against the polished black leather of her boots. Kissing and licking them.
It seemed to Jim that Jeff wasn't really struggling all that hard to get away.
NANCI HAD BROUGHT plenty of food, crammed into the trunk of the damaged Mercedes.
As they ate by the fire, she glanced over at Jim Hilton. "You know Jeff and I had that unfortunate tangle on the way here?"
"Sure."
"Cops," interrupted Jeff.
"Let me tell it," she said quickly. The man leaned back as though she'd slapped him. "Looked like cops. Might have been highway patrol—" she hesitated "—once. Not now. I was thinking they might get some friends and track us up here, Jim."
"You reckon?"
Far away in the deeps of the diamond-starred night, they all heard a lone coyote howling at the sliver of moon that showed itself behind a wrack of thin, high cloud.
"I think it's not beyond the realm of possibility," she said.
Jim thought that she surely sounded like a schoolteacher. Then he thought about Jeff Thomas crawling in the dirt. And about the heavy weaponry she carried.
"Post guards?"
"You're the man in charge, Jim," Nanci replied with what he felt was a touch of barely contained sarcasm.
"Then we will."
The rest of them stayed silent, their attention on the food.
After the meal Kyle Lynch walked over to join him. "Thinking about Mac and Pete?" he asked.
"Yeah. Figure they both must have taken that last train to the coast. Still, guess you never know. Maybe…"
He stopped as both of them heard the unmistakable sound coming toward them from the north and west. Toward Bakersfield or maybe where Fresno had once been.
The unmistakable sound of a helicopter.
Chapter Two
The battery-powered clock on the table by the barred window was showing three minutes to midnight, on November 15.
Henderson McGill had got up to go to the washroom, pausing on his way back to bed to stand in the living room and stare out across the white expanse of the rear garden. Part of the fortification of his second wife's home, in Mystic, had involved the radical cutting back of the Earthblood-blighted trees and bushes, creating an open area down to the stone wall at the bottom of the large plot.
Three-quarter-inch iron bars had been cemented into the frames of all of the windows on the first floor, preventing any would-be intruder from forcing an entry.
Mac gripped the cold metal, setting his jaw. It was almost impossible for him to come to terms with what had happened… what was happening.
Seven weeks ago he'd still been shrouded in a deep cryosleep, plunging dizzily through the whispering abyss of black space, locked away into the dreamless darkness.
From that first waking moment, it had been like living through an endless nightmare. A barren wilderness road where the markers were corpses.
His knuckles whitened, and he rested his forehead against the cool iron. Closing his eyes, he found himself sinking into a stupid and pointless prayer that all of this would really be only a chimera of the night, that he would open his eyes again and all would be well.
"Can't sleep, lover?"
Mac sighed, aware of the bitter cold that made his breath fo
g the glass near his mouth. "Yeah, Angel. Just thinking how well you all did to stay alive in the middle of…" He let go the bars and gestured toward the snow-covered garden. "The middle of all this madness. This death."
She came up behind him, putting her arms around him, her breasts pressing insistently into his back. "Look on the bright side, Mac. We got guns and supplies. Folks around here… those still living… know we're the McGill fortress. Not likely they'll make a play against us. We sit out the winter here."
"Then?"
"What you said about Zelig and the messages. Could mean that there's some sort of place set up somewhere. We could go find them."
"Today was the day for the meet at Calico." He took another long slow breath, laying his hands on top of his wife's. "Wonder how it went, how many got there, what they found?"
Angel laid her head against his back, squeezing him more tightly. "No way we'll find that out, not for some time. Snow always closed in hard over New England, and there are no ploughs out on the freeways tonight, lover."
Her hands moved a little lower, from around the muscular walls of his stomach, then lower still.
"Hey," he whispered.
"Jeanne doesn't mind it. She and me talked about this."
Mac could feel himself responding to her touch. He felt a moment of shock at the realization that it had been over two years since he'd last had any sort of sexual relief.
"Better go into the bedroom before I go off half-cocked."
"Feels like more than half to me, lover. Lot more."
IT WAS eleven minutes after two o'clock in the morning.
McGill rolled silently from his bed, managing not to disturb his wife, who was sleeping contentedly on her back. Her mouth was half-open, and she was snoring gently.
He washed quickly in the blue-and-white porcelain bowl that had come from England nearly two hundred years ago, wincing at the touch of icy water. The bowl had been carried by his great-great-great grandmother as they fled the oppression of the Highland Clearances to seek their fortunes in a new land across the gray waters of the Atlantic.
On its soft, rounded shape were faded pictures of old flowers with forgotten names.