by neetha Napew
Joe glanced at his wristwatch. "I believe it's time that I was returning home again to Barstow. You must look me up—5498 Cuchillo Boulevard. There's a six-o'clock curfew in operation, and the men on the barrier enjoy their little, little power."
"Didn't hear the answer to my questions, Joe. That mean the answer was yes to all of them?"
"Affirmative."
"Tell us."
Sirak was beginning to perspire. "Don't press me, please, Jim."
"One at a time. Zelig?"
"Mentioned that name in the days when society was finally cracking up. Heard it since. That chopper that was shot down…"
"Yeah?" Jim touched the man on the arm. "Look, nothing'll happen to you. I'm like a guy playing blindfold chess on a board with no pieces. If you can help us…"
"Never saw myself as being in the same section of the field as the Good Samaritan," said Sirak, managing a worried smile.
"Aurora?"
"Some kind of center where a lot of military and some senators and folks have got together. Secret base is what it sounds like to me. Hear the name of Zelig linked to it."
"Where?" asked Kyle.
"North is all I know."
"Can you locate it more closely than just north?" asked Steve Romero.
"The car doctor's done good, hasn't he, Dad?" said Sly suddenly and loudly.
Joe Sirak smiled at the boy. "Neighbors of mine, years ago, had a lad like him. Such a sweet… No, I can't place it for you. Though…"
"What?" said Jim, picking up on Joe Sirak's hesitation.
"I wouldn't wish to place my life savings on this, but I get the feeling from direction and strength of some of the signals, that it could be Washington State or Northern California, or just across the border into Canada." He shook his head, fingers fumbling at the mother-of-pearl buttons on his vest. "Life savings! Listen to me. What's a dollar worth nowadays? Can't even wipe your backside on it. Light a fire with it. Life savings. Huh!"
"The Hunters?"
"Never heard that name. Not exactly. But Mr. Zelig… I mean General Zelig, and his men aren't the only sort of organized group. There are others. Cold and efficient. Never give time for a fix on them. Broadcast from every which place."
Jim began to feel uneasy.
Once when he'd been up on vacation with Lori and the girls, who'd have been only seven or eight at the time, they'd stayed at Many Glaciers Hotel in the national park.
He'd wanted to go backpacking for a couple of days, so he'd hiked off on his own. Lori and the twins had been perfectly happy to stay at the beautiful resort hotel, sunbathing and boating on Swiftcurrent Lake.
On the first evening he'd been readying himself for camping. Jim hadn't seen a single soul for the past five hours and was just beginning to find the majestic stillness of the woods oppressive, followed by a profoundly uneasy feeling.
As if he was being watched from somewhere. He knew what to do if he came across a grizzly, and the bell on his pack had been jingling merrily.
He took care to put anything edible in a pack and haul it high off the ground. Even as he'd lain down in the survivalist sleeping bag, Jim had made sure that his Ruger Blackhawk was in there with him.
Oddly he'd slept soundly and dreamlessly, waking in the refreshing cool of a Montana dawn, to find the deep paw marks of a very big grizzly all around him in the damp earth.
That unease was swelling within him now, making the hairs on the nape of his neck start to bristle and his lips grow dry.
"We'd better go," he said abruptly.
"I think that's best, too," agreed Joseph J. Sirak, Jr.
"Come along with us. We could use a man with your mechanical skills," suggested Kyle.
"I'm afraid that's not possible. I have commitments to my family." He touched his chest lightly. "And the old pump isn't quite as reliable as it once was." Shaking his head, he said regretfully, "No, I fear I have to decline. But I wish you all the best of luck."
"Thanks. We'll try to keep in touch with you on the radio."
"Steve, I hope you can. And if I should hear anything that might benefit you all, I'll do what I can to pass it along to you."
Everyone shook hands with the smartly dressed man, watching him as he climbed back into his unlikely vehicle.
"Listen to this," he called, beaming with delight from the driver's window.
A silver trombone came creakily out of the heart of the huge ice-cream cone, while a hidden speaker blew a tinny fanfare. And a trilling chorus opened up with: "Tinklabell, Tinklabell, the best for you and me, Tinklabell, Tinklabell, for all the fami-leeeee."
Sly clapped his hands. "Can me have a triple Rocky Road, please Dad?"
"It's not a real ice-cream van, son. Sorry. Not many places selling that sort of stuff nowadays, I'm afraid."
Joe Sirak waved a friendly hand and set off toward Barstow, moving, as before, at a very steady fifty-five miles per hour, never to be seen by any of them again.
Thanks to his help with the pickup, they were able to get well on their way without further incident, looping around Joe Sirak's hometown and heading on toward Bakersfield.
Night was falling and the weather was deteriorating when they came around a bend in the highway, straight into the roadblock.
Chapter Twelve
The stone was simple, carved by Henderson McGill himself, using one of the old paving slabs that had lined their backyard in Mystic.
The lettering wasn't that regular, and the spacing was shaky, but the message was all too clear and readable.
Helen McGill. February 14, 2031-November 19, 2040. Beloved daughter of Angel and Henderson. We miss her so much.
It had been pneumonia.
They had a good stock of assorted drugs, but the young girl had failed to respond to any of them. One of the antibiotics that they tried had produced a violently reactive side effect. Helen's lips and tongue became swollen, and the inside of her mouth had peeled so that shreds of skin hung like yellowed lace.
The fever consumed her, though they'd swaddled her in blankets doused with snow. Helen had lapsed into unconsciousness on the third day of her illness and slipped away from them at two in the morning on the fourth day.
Angel took it hardest. "We've come through so much," she said after the dismal funeral, dry-eyed, tight lipped. "So much and we still managed to stay together."
"There wasn't anything we could've done." Mac held her hand while all of the family sat around the shadowy living room.
"No. I know that. But our little girl's gone. My firstborn child, Mac. Sounds Biblical, doesn't it? Taken by the plague. Those cold-hearted scientists—no conscience, just damn stupid arrogance. Sitting around in their clean white coats and their sterilized laboratories. Playing their clever, clever games in glass tubes and microscopes. What they did killed Helen. Not the pneumonia. Two years ago we'd have taken her to the hospital, and they'd have saved her."
Then in silence they waited for the misery to fade, but acceptance and the lifting of the dreadful sense of loss would be a long time coming.
The weather changed, too, immediately after the burial, becoming unseasonably warm with ice and snow dripping off the dead, overhanging boughs of the trees in Howell's Coppice. Somehow their pain, tamped down by the demands of survival, would have been easier to bear in the cold grip of acute winter.
A moist southerly blew across New England, bringing the noon temperature up to fifteen degrees above freezing.
It made everyone moody and mean. Brother snapped at brother and wife at wife. Mac took Paul and John out hunting with him, going into the scrubland to the north of Mystic.
They came back with a deer, killed by the older boy with a single clean shot to the head.
It had been a successful expedition, apart from one unsettling factor.
John had been leading the way, rifle cradled under his arm, pushing through the muddy slush. Mac and Paul were following close behind him, carrying the deer between them.
They had been
less than a half mile from home when someone had called out to them. A hoarse man's voice, strained and high, as though the speaker was trying to conceal his identity from them.
"You jes' best look out for us. We know all 'bout you and we'll get you! You won't fucking know where or when."
John had brought the gun to his shoulder, but Mac warned him not to shoot.
"Waste of a good bullet. Just some crazy out there, feels like letting go."
"Yeah, but there was that broken window last week," Paul had said.
"And someone crapped in the front path a couple days ago." John had spat angrily in the dirt at his feet.
The shout wasn't repeated, though they'd heard crashing in the undergrowth as if someone was running hurriedly and clumsily away.
There were no more such incidents after that, and when they finally got back to Melville Street, coming in the back way, over Beulah Creek, it was closing in toward full dark. The narrow stream was still frozen over, but the ice had become a leaden gray.
"More of this warm weather, and it'll be thawed through," said Mac.
"Reckon it'll change, Dad?"
"Could be, John. See if the wind starts veering back northerly. It carries snow from Canada in its teeth when it does."
"Look."
Paul stopped dead, pointing at the side wall of their small, shingled barn. It was normally painted dark brown, but the snow was still piled three or four feet high against it.
Someone had come in while they were away on the hunt and daubed a message on the wall in what looked like yellow highway paint.
Think you got the guns so you think you got power well you got a leson to lern abouot real fucking power your all dead.
Chapter Thirteen
Somebody was calling his name, but his attention was on the road that wound out ahead of him, lined with abandoned churches.
"Jeff, come on now, Jeff."
Each of them had a magnificent stained-glass window overlooking the highway, but in every case the color had leached out, leaving behind weird images of crucified saints that looked like a series of photographic negatives.
"Jefferson!"
It was odd that all of the tortured figures looked like Jed Herne. Jed was dead.
"Dead," whispered Jeff Thomas.
Of course he was dead. He wasn't going to rise on the third day and come to judge…judge anyone. Not on the third day. Nor the fourth. Not on any fucking day. Nobody knew that better than Jeff did. Warm blood on his hand as the knife slid into the flesh. Red blood. The blood in the church windows was like the finest rubies.
"Jeff! For God's sake, Jeff!"
He could smell incense and hear the distant tinkling of a tiny silver bell. "Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou and blessed… Forgive me, for I've sinned. I've taken life and lied and fornicated… the fruit of thy womb."
Something hit him on the side of his leg, stinging like a thrown pebble.
But he still wouldn't open his eyes. That would be bad news, bringing the pain flooding in like searchlights.
Jeff Thomas didn't want that, so he snuggled down again into the darkness like a child seeking a few more moments before getting up to trudge to a hated school.
Another jab of discomfort, this time on his shoulder. "Come on, Jeff. Snap on out of it, will you? Please, Jefferson."
The voice was familiar, though it somehow didn't seem to sound quite right.
The incense was stronger, streaming from the open doors of the ruined churches like thick smoke. It was blinding him and circling around him as though he were at the heart of a Kansas whirlwind. There was a small dog at his feet, cowering, and a crazed, cackling old woman, pedaling an antique bicycle through the stormy sky.
"Dorothy?" Why should Dorothy be throwing stones at him?
Finally, very slowly Jeff Thomas opened his eyes. Nothing was in focus, and his whole head and body rocked with spasms of agony. He'd known it was going to be a mistake, so he closed his eyes again. But the pain didn't go away.
"Hell… oh, goddamn hell."
The other voice was drifting toward him from the semidarkness. "That's better, Jeff. More like what I want to hear. Stick with that. Screw your courage to the sticking place, Jefferson."
"Screw your courage, Nanci!" That was who it was. Nanci Simms. The Mercedes. Calico ghost town. Earthblood.
Now the memory was inching back reluctantly.
There was a vague impression of being torn from sleep by something heavy crashing into the side of his head. He'd tried to shout, but his mouth had filled with the iron taste of his own blood, and another savage blow knocked him back into swirling blackness.
He'd heard the sound of gunfire, as if from a great distance, but it merged with the noises inside his own skull, to be swallowed by nothingness.
"You all right, Nanci? What the hell happened? Feel dead."
"I'll take those in reverse order. You aren't dead, though I imagine your head must feel as if it was under a buffalo stampede. What happened was that four of the country's great unwashed and thoroughly unlovable came up on us in the dark and did us some grievous harm. And am I all right? I fear the answer is that I'm not particularly all right."
But Jeff wasn't really paying much attention. "What happened to the four men? I thought I heard shooting as I got to be unconscious."
"They got to be dead."
"Terrific! Serve the bastards right! Great, Nanci!"
"Jeff, can you come over here?"
Now he knew what it was about her voice that seemed odd and unfamiliar.
Nanci Simms sounded weak and feeble.
"You hurt?"
"Some."
"Bad?"
"Just come over here, will you?" This time there was in her voice a touch of the old arrogance and power that frightened Jeff so much.
"Sure. Jesus, my head!" Cautiously he reached to touch the throbbing center of the pain. "There's blood all over my hair, my neck. Some of it's dried, Nanci. How long since—"
"About an hour. Been trying to wake you. I could hear your breathing, rattling away there like a rutting moose, so I knew you must still be in the land of the living."
"Dead?"
"All four."
"I heard the shooting."
"So you said. Can you try and come over to me, Jeff? I need some help."
"You shot them all?"
"Managed to reach the Port Royale and stitched them up like pretty maids all in a row. But…" There was a gasp of pain. "Yes, I was just a little slow on the extermination front. Getting careless in my old age."
"They shoot you?"
"No."
"Then…"
"Oh, Joshua, Judges, Ruth! Will you get over here right now."
He stood, swaying unsteadily. Suddenly he propped to hands and knees and threw up. Throat straining, mouth filled with the bitterness of bile. He coughed and spluttered, feeling as though he was likely to choke on his own vomit.
"Don't play the rock star with me," said Nanci in an odd singsong voice.
"What?"
"Filling your air passages with puke, like some of the old-time rock and rollers did. Buying your one-way ticket to oblivion and a sort of lousy second-rate immortality."
"I feel god-awful."
"Sure you do. They say that life is a bitch and then you die, Jefferson."
"Feel like death now."
"They also instructed us to live fast and die young and make a beautiful corpse. I fear that I qualify on some of those conditions."
With a struggle, he made it back to his feet again, blinking in the semidarkness. Now he could see the dead men, lying between him and the silvery ghost of the Mercedes-Benz, sprawled so artistically it looked as if they'd been placed there by a stage designer.
"They got on uniforms, Nanci," he shouted, his voice dropping quickly as he realized how loud it sounded in the stillness.
"Badges?"
Jeff stooped over the nearest corpse, when a hand shot out, clutching his ankle
with feverish strength.
Jeff let out a panicked squeal, kicking in shocked horror and very nearly losing his balance again. A lance of white pain burned behind his right eye from the jerking movement.
"Kill him, Jeff," she called out, a note of panicky desperation in her voice, revealing a terrified weakness in Nanci that unsettled him even more than the sudden attack.
As the dying man on the ground muttered a string of curses, Jeff's right cheek was twitching down at the corner of his mouth, making it look as if he was trying to placate the man with a sickly, jerking smile.
With a surprising ease, the Smith & Wesson .45 was in his hand, his index finger on the trigger.
He put three of the eight rounds into the skull of the figure at his feet. For a second the lethal grip on his leg tightened with an awesome ferocity, then relaxed.
"Finished?"
"Yeah, Nanci, finished. Bastard's head must be in at least three hundred pieces."
"You were checking for badges."
This time he was more careful, but the other three were undeniably dead.
"A golden arrow through a silver sun. Least, that's what it looks like."
"Uniforms?"
"Right. Like the ones back at Calico. Kind of semimilitary. Dark blue pants and camouflage tops."
"Sounds like the way Flagg's security men used to look. But he can't…"
"Who's Flagg, Nanci?"
"A dead man."
"Then he can't hurt us."
"Dead have long nails."
"Where'd he live?"
"Vegas."
"Not all that far away."
"True."
"When?"
"Not now, Jeff. Come here. You have to help me. Just do what I tell you."
He bolstered his gun and picked his way across the uneven ground to where he could see her. She was lying in a peculiarly hunched way, her hands jammed between her thighs.
On the way Jeff stepped over the pair of matched Heckler & Koch P-111s, resting right by the torn remains of her sleeping bag.
There was enough light for him to see that Nanci was bleeding. A pool of glistening blackness oozed from between her fingers. The wound was high in her leg, close to her groin.