by neetha Napew
Heather appeared, already dressed, her short blond hair brushed flat. She managed a small smile for her father as she squatted cross-legged on the ground by his side. Her eyes looked a little swollen.
Jim felt one of those inexplicable waves of overwhelming affection for his daughter and thanked the gods that he hadn't lost all of his loved ones. He reached out and took her small hand in his, getting a squeeze in return.
Kyle ladled out the soup into everyone's bowl, then helped himself.
There was silence in the circle as they spooned down their breakfast.
Jim was one of the first to finish, and he carefully took what seemed to be about one-eighth of what was left for his second helping.
"Decision time," he said.
Jeff jumped in first, wanting to know when they were going to get started on tracking down this mysterious Aurora place.
"Just head north, and we'll find it," he said, his right hand unconsciously stroking his badly broken nose. "Can't be that difficult."
"I was navigator on the old Aquila," said Kyle Lynch. "Means I know a little about maps. You should get that pea-size brain of yours into gear, Jeff, before you operate your mouth."
"What's that mean?"
"Means that 'north' isn't all that much of a peg to hang an expedition onto."
"If it's a sort of base, then it shouldn't be that difficult."
Kyle persisted, very gently. "How far north is north, Jeff?"
"Well, how the fuck should I know that? I don't know."
"Right. Fifty miles?"
"I said I don't know. But…"
"Hundred miles? Five hundred? Thousand miles north, Jeff?"
"Can't be that far! Where's a thousand miles going to put us?"
"Around about the Canadian border," said Jim. "That right, Kyle?"
"Yeah. Alaska is north, Jeff. That's another couple of thousand miles away from us. Be a good place for a secret base, after Earthblood, wouldn't it? Fancy trying Alaska."
"They didn't even say what 'north' really means, Jefferson, my dear boy." Nanci smiled at him as she spooned up the last of her soup.
"North means north. Come on, what the fuck else can it mean?"
"Hey, just tone the language down," warned Jim. "Got two young ones here."
Jeff's face was flushing with anger. His lips seemed to grow thicker and looser, and he'd begun to sweat. "Sure. Your precious little girl and that great dummy we got…"
Steve Romero was across and grabbing him by the neck before he could finish the sentence. "You want that nose broken again, Jeff?" he hissed.
"I didn't mean…"
Steve Romero was a good ten pounds lighter than the younger man, but he was about eight inches taller. He loomed over the journalist, face pressed close, his voice a threatening whisper.
"Sly isn't a dummy, you useless bastard! He's got Down's syndrome. Means he has some weaknesses. Also means that the boy's got some amazing strengths."
"All right, all right." Though Jeff Thomas's face was turning purple, nobody had stepped in to interfere.
Steve let him go and went and sat down, patting Sly reassuringly on the shoulder.
"You were talking about going north, Jeff," prompted Carrie.
Kyle interrupted. "Not likely they really meant absolutely hundred percent true north. North and west? North-northeast? We don't know. Chicago's north. Salt Lake City. New York. Vancouver. Bucksnort, Idaho."
Jeff was rubbing his throat. "Yeah, I get it. All right. You don't have to…" he mumbled, allowing the sentence to trail away.
Jim saw the look of hatred the ex-journalist darted at Steve Romero. And he wondered again what had really happened when Jed Herne had met his death in Jeff's company.
"Made your point, grease-ass." Jeff looked around at the others. "So, we don't know where we're going. So, what do we do?"
It seemed as if everyone started talking at once. Jim banged his spoon on the edge of his dish. "Hey, keep it down! One at a time, guys. Just one at a time, please."
Carrie raised a hand. He gave her a nod to carry on. "Thanks. Seems to me that we got a couple of choices. We can stay here, or someplace nearby, whatever suits us, and try and set up a commune."
"Like the peace-and-love hippies from last century." Jeff grinned. "Too much loving's far out of sight."
"That's really funny, Jeff," said Steve Romero. "I'm laughing so much it hurts."
Carrie ignored the interruptions. "Set up a community, if that's a better word. But we've all seen the sickness and madness that exists out there," she said, pointing vaguely toward the charnel house that had once been Los Angeles.
Nanci Simms cleared her throat as though she was about to speak, then she caught Jim's eye and changed her mind.
He stood up. "Carrie's right. That's one option. Try and find us our own little secure spot. But there's only eight of us. I doubt that'll be enough—" he hesitated as he looked for the word he wanted. "—enough force, as things get tougher outside."
"You think we ought to try and find this place Aurora, Skipper?" Kyle Lynch shook his head. "I don't know. Means some blind traveling. Could be a hell of a lot more dangerous."
"Could be. But at least we know it's there. Zelig wants us, as well. Wanted us here. Sent us that doomed message in the chopper." Jim looked around. "We stay or we go? Which?"
Chapter Eight
Jim Hilton looked at the list he'd written in a notebook.
"Weapons are all right. I've written what everyone's got, including the ammo situation. We find any nine millimeter, it'd help a lot. But everyone's satisfied with what they've got. It would be good to find a small purse-size gun for Heather."
"How about Sly?"
"I'm not sure, Steve. You know better than we do about the lad. How would he get on with a blaster? Be able to cope?"
Steve rubbed his eyes. "I don't really know. I always wanted him to do what other boys did. It was very hard sometimes, but it mostly worked out. He knows he and Heather are the only ones without guns. But he said to me that she was a little girl. Sly sees himself as a man grown. Knows he's different. Knows he's not so clever. But he saved my life up in Colorado. Saved both me and Kyle."
Jim nodded. "Fine with me. It's your say-so in this, Steve. We manage to find us a couple of little .32s around someplace, then they can have one each."
Nanci Simms was sitting cross-legged opposite Jim in the circle. All the adults were there, with Sly and Heather Hilton walking together up and down the main street, talking animatedly in the bright morning sunlight.
"Enough talk, Jim," said the older woman. "We've agreed to split up. Best chance that way. Cover some options. Then we can meet up again where we agreed. Muir Woods on December fifth."
A lot of the extended argument—running for more than two hours—had been about what the word "north" might reasonably mean.
Kyle had drawn up as accurate a map of the old United States as he could, laying in the lines of latitude and longitude.
Everyone agreed that the message about Aurora must mean it was more north than any other direction. So, assuming it wasn't as far away as Canada—or Alaska, as a better-natured Jeff Thomas pointed out—then it was possible to establish some sensible limited parameters.
Northern California was a strong candidate. Carrie mentioned the potential range of the Chinook sent by Zelig, with fuel capability being a factor.
"Way it went up…like swallowing an implode gren…makes it likely they were carrying some extra fuel aboard with them. Which means that speculations on the location of their home base are… are precisely that. Merely theoretical speculation."
Nanci's words torpedoed the Northern-California faction.
Oregon and Washington moved in as the joint favorites.
Jim clapped his hands together at that point, where everyone was getting very enthusiastic. "Look, it's going to be tough. Much tougher than most of us reckon. There's Northern Nevada," he went on, looking at Kyle's neat map. "Northern Utah. Definite
ly Idaho. Wyoming and Montana are also possibilities. Not such favorites, but we can't foreclose on where we go to look. The stakes are too great to make what could be a terminal mistake for all of us."
Nanci Simms nodded slowly. "Can't argue with any of that. I have serious doubts about Wyoming and Montana, but I don't deny the feasibility of either of them. Now, I have the best transport."
There was a ripple of laughter.
Kyle punched the air. "Kind of an understatement," he said.
The Mercedes would have looked good down on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Out in the bloodied desert it was like a shimmering vision of the lost consumer society.
After the trauma of finding his wife dead and Heather's sister, Andrea, dying, Jim had made his way out toward Calico in a liberated Corvette that he knew one of his neighbors had put up on chocks in a rear garage. It had brought them within seven miles of their destination before the oil-warning light came on and the engine ground to a juddering and final halt on the hard shoulder.
He, Heather and Carrie had hiked the rest of the way, carrying all their camping gear and provisions on their backs.
Kyle, Steve and Sly hadn't arrived in the ghost town in much better shape.
The open-back pickup truck had started life about fifteen years ago as a Park Mescalero. But it had changed a lot in those years, acquiring bits of Fords and part of a Subaru and a chunk of a Volvo. They'd found it by sheer luck, not far from Kayenta, abandoned, with a half tank of fuel in it. The registration documents, tucked away behind the front seat, showed that it had been registered eleven months earlier, down in Chinle, in the name Hillerman.
The stripped, leathery corpses of two Navaho women had been lying alongside it. The scene of death had been a mystery with no explanation that made sense to Steve and Kyle. But they had managed to find some gas, and the truck had gotten them all the way down to Calico.
Now it squatted behind the tumbled remains of a store that had sold crystals. One tire was softer than soft, and the passenger door was tied on with baling wire. Much of the bodywork was a muted rust red color.
"You going cruising the valleys with the warm wind in your hair?" asked Steve Romero. "If you are, then you should dump that whining dwarf and take a real man along with you."
Jeff threw him the finger. "And fuck you, too, brother," he said.
"We split up." Jim got that in, recognizing that was where things were moving. He wanted to make it appear as if it was his idea, since he was the theoretical leader of the group.
"How?" Jeff looked around. "Don't think you're going to get your hands on the Mercedes, just because you were captain of a crashed spaceship, Hilton. You hear me?"
Jim stood up, hand on the butt of the Ruger. "If I wanted to take the car, Thomas, then I'd take it. You wouldn't stop me." Catching Nanci's cool blue gaze, he added, "Nobody would." He hoped to God that she didn't choose to challenge him.
She didn't, merely smiling gently at him. "But don't you think it might be better if I took it? I'm used to it, and it only seats two. May be better if I carry on with Jefferson here. I'll take the easterly route, sort of scurry around, and then we can make that December fifth deadline."
He nodded. "I'll stick with Kyle, Steve, Carrie and the two kids in the pickup. We'll try and go more directly north. How's that sound?" He looked around the small group for reactions.
"Yeah," said Jeff Thomas, who was watching Nanci Simms fixedly with the odd fascination of a rabbit in front of a cobra.
Steve Romero grinned. "Why not? I'll go tell Sly we're moving."
"We'll get away within the hour," Jim said. "Make the most of the daylight. Tell Heather, as well, will you, Steve?"
"Sure."
"Carrie?"
"I don't know about this, Jim. Aren't we stronger together?"
"In some ways. But we've got so much ground to cover."
Kyle Lynch was juggling with four small rounded pebbles. He let them fall and brushed his hands clean. "I agree, Jim. But I wish one of us had thought to pick up some decent radios. Transceivers. Talk and listen. That way we could all keep in touch, even over a good distance."
"Got a couple in the trunk," said the older woman casually. "Maybe Steve ought to come look at them. We can agree on frequencies."
She got up and walked slowly toward the parked sports car, Jeff tagging along on her heels like a little puppy.
Kyle Lynch whistled tunelessly between his teeth. "Not healthy the way he trails around after her. Nanci's old enough to be his mother. Strike that. Make it grandmother. I know he has it coming, but he's looking to get hurt."
Carrie laughed cynically. "Ever occur to you, Kyle, that getting hurt might be just what Jeff wants? Think about it."
"I don't get it, Carrie."
"I do," said Jim Hilton. "I've seen them a couple of times when they didn't know anyone was watching. Kind of sick."
The tall black navigator leaned forward. "Come on, I'm fascinated."
Carrie shook her head. "What they used to call playing Sadie-Maisie, Kyle."
"How's that?"
"Domination. That's the name of the game. Him slave, her mistress."
"Oh, you mean like… Surprises me that an arrogant bastard like Jeff would be subservient to anyone. 'Specially an old woman like Nanci. Though she's in… Oh, forget it. I really don't think I want to think about this."
They moved off to gather up their belongings and check out their vehicle. It didn't take them long to get ready to leave the ghost town.
"How about Mac?" asked Carrie Princip. "Only a day past the fifteenth, Jim."
"I know it."
"Anything could've happened to him and Pete Turner to delay them a little."
"Yes, I thought about that. I'm going to leave them a message."
"Where?"
"I've written a short report, detailing what happened. It'll also be useful in case Zelig sends anyone else down here after us."
"Where are you going to hide it?"
"Where would you put it, Carrie? You know Henderson McGill."
"Not as well as you, Jim. Still… I guess I'd put it in the saloon." She was grinning broadly as she saw from his expression that she'd guessed right.
"Yeah. Behind the bar, under a pint glass. Tell him about Muir Woods on the fifth. Maybe he'll find it. Maybe."
Chapter Nine
Jeff Thomas sang along with the tape that Nanci had slipped into the car's sophisticated player. It was a collection of the best girlie rock groups of the past five years and included some of his special favorites.
She'd stolen it for him in an unusually tender moment while they were living up in his Jackson Street apartment.
The thought of San Francisco reminded him of Nanci's warning to Hilton while they'd been finalizing routes.
She'd told him that the beautiful city on the bay was now a death trap where shadows clung to your shoulder and the juvenile wolf packs hunted along the urban canyons.
"An abundance of rotted corpses, Jim," she'd said in that old-fashioned, pompous way she had. There were times that he wanted to creep up behind Nanci and smash something heavy into that neat head. Pulp the bones and mash the brains and curdled blood.
But fear stopped him, fear that he might not make it without her. Fear of losing the most wonderfully exciting relationship he'd ever had in his life, the sickening thrill of ritual humiliation at her hands.
As soon as they'd left Calico, turning onto the wide, deserted swell of Interstate 15, Nanci had made him unzip his jeans so that she could fondle him as she drove, occasionally making him whimper as she dug her nails into him.
After a quarter hour she'd become bored and made him zip himself up again, ignoring his whimpered request for some kind of relief.
"Later, Jefferson," she'd said not unkindly. "When you've earned it."
But that was forgotten. The late afternoon was beautiful, and the engine purred along. They passed an occasional wrecked car, rusting away, sometimes with a jumble of whitene
d bones close by.
They didn't see another living soul.
The wind raced through Jeff's long hair, and he leaned his right arm over the sleek side of the Mercedes, feeling the welcome coolness.
The tape rolled on.
The night's getting light,
And the day's got so dark,
We're never goin't' stop
To find some place to park.
Heading for tomorrow,
'Cause the dead have got today.
We're running close to empty
With the price we got to pay.
Yeah, the price we gotta pay.
His fists were drumming on the dash, and he was yelling out the lyrics as they drove on north and east, toward the Nevada state line.
THERE WAS a croaking, grinding noise from the overheated engine, and a spurt of noxious brown smoke from the exhaust.
"Again," called Kyle.
Steve was in the cab, head out of the window. "Trying to get this mother into gear's like stirring a basin of cold grits."
The pickup had sounded brash and confident as they gunned their way down the sandy main street of Calico, following the glittering chimera that was Nanci and Jeff in the silver Mercedes.
Kyle had been driving, with Sly next to him and Steve completing the front-seat lineup. Heather had been huddled on the sleeping bags, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled over her head to try to protect her from the billowing clouds of orange dust. Jim had his arm around her, fighting to compensate for the bucking of the rig over the rutted trail. Carrie was hanging on in the rear corner, braced against the rolling and rocking.
They'd barely reached the freeway when the truck started to play up. It began to cough and miss, making their motion even more jerky.
"Malfunction, Captain!" shouted Carrie, trying to lighten the moment.
But they were only a mile and a half toward Barstow when the pickup came to a silent, gentle halt. Everyone got out, their feet scuffing on the sunbaked, oily pavement.
They'd tried to analyze the fault and get her going again. Nearly two hours later they were still there, still trying.
"Cleaned the plugs," said Kyle. "It's not that."