by neetha Napew
Henderson McGill shook his head slowly. "No. They've tried twice. Taken hits. But they know we're weaker. Before the end of the snows, they'll get desperate and that could be it. We'll move out at dawn, day after tomorrow. Everyone agree?"
Nobody moved or spoke. He laughed quietly. "Well, nobody disagrees. Day after tomorrow, then. At dawn."
Chapter Seventeen
"North of Bakersfield."
"That Pine Mountain to the east?"
Jim Hilton squinted at the rising sun. "Yeah, guess so."
"What's that?" asked Sly, pointing north. "Like stars shining."
"Sun off glass," said his father. "A lot of it, too."
They were moving away from Bakersfield, toward Porterville, up on Highway 65, a deserted two-lane blacktop.
Carrie Princip appeared at the side of their pickup. They'd stopped near a narrow stream running between what would once have been banks of delicate feathery tamarisk and taller aspen. Now it was all ruby-stained husks. But among them Jim had noticed the first springing signs of a fresh, hopeful green.
The water had provided them all with drinking and washing. Carrie's long blond hair hung to her shoulders, glistening and damp. She smiled at Jim and he responded with a grin, the shared knowledge arching between them. The previous night they'd made love....
JIM HAD BEEN TRYING to raise Joe Sirak with the small radio, but he picked up only the ominous soft hissing of uninterrupted static.
Finally he switched the set off and laid it on his blanket.
"Think he's all right?" asked Steve. "Could be lots of reasons he's not answering."
"Sure." He paused. "Lots of reasons."
With their evening meal over and done with, they looked to bedding down for the night.
Sly and Heather slept in the bed of the truck, safe from any creeping or crawling things. It had been a long and heavy day, and the children both dropped off quickly.
Steve chose to lay out his bedroll underneath the pickup, wanting to remain close to his son. They'd already found out that Sly wasn't at his best if he woke suddenly and found himself a stranger in the strangest of lands.
Kyle elected to sleep along the front seat, pushing the steering wheel up out of his way. He coiled his slender length up in the cramped space, grinning at Jim as he closed the door.
"Grapefruit juice and the open-eye breakfast with eggs over easy and Canadian bacon with rye toast. A wake-up call at nine… and coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe. Thanks."
That left just Carrie and Jim, sitting together by the smoldering remains of their cooking fire as the stars wheeled overhead.
"Turning in, Captain?" she asked him, leaning across to touch him lightly on the arm.
"Yeah. Looks like a soft patch of sand there, just by those rocks."
"Out of sight of the pickup."
"Yes." He looked puzzled at her comment. "You reckon there's some sort of danger?"
Carrie laughed, shifting to sit closer to him, so he could catch the subtle scents of her body. "Depends on what you mean by danger, Jim."
Now he could suddenly read the subtext and knew what she meant.
"Not long since I lost Lori, you know."
"Yeah. But in some ways it's been around two years, hasn't it?"
"Suppose so."
"So?"
Jim looked at the pale blur of her face, then ran his fingers down her cheek. "I'd really like to, Carrie. But…"
She took his hand and moved it to the soft swell of her breast, letting him feel that she wore no bra, the nipple hardening against his palm.
"No 'buts,' Jim. And no…what would Zelig have called it? No 'emotional spillage' tomorrow, either. All right?"
The desert night was cold, but they zipped the two quilted sleeping bags together, snuggling close. Jim stripped naked, but she kept on her pale blue bikini pants.
He was quickly ready. Almost too quickly, and he had to force himself to remember the manual for field repairs on the Aquila's sewage disposal system to stop himself from ruining the moment.
His hand was between her thighs, fingers sliding under the elastic of her pants, finding her warm and ready for him. Carrie's breath was coming faster, and she cupped him in her right hand, her left hand touching his lips.
"Yes, Jim. Now…please."
He gasped as he entered her, the sweet familiarity flooding back to him, aware of her tightening around his body, her arms holding him to her. Her tongue was fluttering at the side of his neck, her breath hot against his skin.
Carrie was whispering in his ear, half-heard words that he could hardly believe. Bedroom words that roused him to a diamond-cutting hardness and brought him rapidly to the brink. But he could feel the woman's stomach muscles butterflying as she raced inexorably toward her own climax.
It wasn't quite simultaneous, but twelve years of sexually active marriage had taught Jim Hilton that it rarely was.
The second time took far longer.
Carrie started by sliding down into the deeps of the double bag, lips and tongue brushing over Jim's chest and across the flat muscular wall of his stomach. Her soft mouth closed around him, and she quickly roused him to readiness.
"Thats…that…" he panted, hips thrusting up, fingers tangling in her long hair as he pulled her closer to him.
But before he could come, Carrie had eased herself away.
"No," she whispered, voice rasping with her own need.
"No?"
"Do it for me."
For a frozen moment Jim didn't move. Though the physically intimate side of his marriage with Lori had been largely successful, this was the one no-go area for them.
She would delight in taking him into her mouth, but she would resolutely refuse to allow him to do the same to her, saying that it wasn't right. That woman were "dirty down there." And nothing that Jim Hilton could do or say would make the least difference.
"Not if you don't…" began Carrie, sensing the momentary hesitation and unable to conceal her disappointment.
"No," he said. "It's not I don't want to, love. I want to do it for you that way more… more than I've ever wanted anything in my whole life."
And it had been all right, better than all right. For Jim it had been the sweetest experience of his life, her giving and taking so joyously, so freely.
NOW, standing by the pickup in the bright light of morning, Jim could still taste Carrie on his lips, could still remember the way her thighs had squeezed as she succumbed to the tidal wave of a powerful orgasm, her hands tangled in his hair as she tried to pull him even closer.
He looked away from her as he started to feel the renewed tightening of his body, and focused on Kyle.
"Certainly looks like a lot of glass. Some kind of office? Or a school?" Kyle turned again to Sly. "You make out any more?"
"Not like school. Looks like just glass. Me thinks lots of houses built in glass."
"Then we'd better be careful not to go throw any stones," said Heather.
"We'll go down and take a look," Jim said, glancing at the others. "Who wants to drive this time?"
"Me," replied Carrie immediately. "My turn to take control, Jim."
He caught her grin and was overwhelmed with embarrassment as he started to blush.
SLY LIKED THE WORD. He kept repeating it over and over until his father finally told him to keep quiet.
"Highdrypomix," he said one last time with his amiable, moonish smile. "Me like that, Dad."
"Sure, but just leave it out for a bit, Sly, will you?"
Jim had explained to his daughter what the establishment was. They'd parked the pickup a good mile off, in a narrow arroyo, and he and Steve Romero cautiously worked their way through the dead mesquite and sagebrush toward the distant glimmer of glass. Their caution had been merited, as they spotted a number of armed men patrolling a perimeter fence.
"Hydroponics is a special way of growing plants," he told Heather. "Instead of using soil and natural irrigation and sunlight, you put them
into containers of liquid that hold all of the chemicals and nutrients that they need."
"And they grow? Just like in fields?"
"Better, Heather. It's incredibly intensive and… You know what I mean by intensive?"
"Sure. We did it with Miss Kent in the first semester and we…" She hesitated a moment. "We were going to do a project on it in agricultural studies."
Kyle and Steve joined them, with Sly trailing behind, scuffing his feet in the dust, still quietly muttering "highdrypomix" to himself.
Carrie had been watching the establishment from the ridge above them and she came sliding down in a shower of orange dirt. She sat on a rounded boulder, wiping sweat from her eyes.
"That's the future, folks," she announced. "Guess the idea is to produce as much as they can and then gradually refertilize the world outside with the healthy plants. And goodbye to Earthblood."
"Until the next time," said Kyle. "If there's a way of screwing the planet, you can bet your last dollar that scientists'll find a way of doing it."
"Must be hundreds of acres there," said Steve. "Can't have got all that together since Earthblood. The place must've been running for ages."
"And who are the guards?" Carrie looked at the others. "They got some kind of uniform on. Carrying automatic rifles."
"Zelig's men?" Kyle shook his head in answer to his own question. "Not far enough north for that. So I wonder who they are?"
So did the others. The hydroponics establishment fascinated all four of the grown-ups. They agreed that it had to be of sufficient interest for them to try and get close enough for a good look. When they eventually made a contact with General John Kennedy Zelig, they felt he might like to know about the square miles of glass-covered tanks.
"Don't get too near or take any chances on being seen," said Jim. "Heather and Sly can wait together by the truck."
"Let me come, Dad," begged the girl. "It's not dangerous."
"Might be."
"Could be safer to take the kids with us," said Steve. "Suppose they got wide-ranging patrols. Pick them up and nobody here to protect them. We stay quiet and careful, then there won't be any danger. I'll take Sly. You take Heather. Carrie and Kyle can come in from a third vector."
Jim was reluctant but agreed to investigate come nightfall.
There was a bright sliver of moonlight as they left in three pairs. Kyle and Carrie, in dark clothes, went to the right. Jim and Heather took a longer route to the left.
Steve, with the excited Sly in tow, picked the direct line over the ridge and along a wide draw, then into some dead brush. That should give them cover to within less than fifty yards of the nearest of the rows of long buildings.
THERE WAS the distant hum of a powerful generator with forty or so clusters of lights placed around the perimeter of the base. There were fewer guards, but Jim had counted at least five of them patrolling at a steady walk close to the lamp towers.
He was surprised that it was so relatively sparsely protected, assuming it was as important as he supposed it was.
Jim was walking slowly and carefully in the lead, his daughter tracking his steps a couple of paces behind, just as he'd told her.
"Stop, Dad!"
"Shit! You made—"
"Don't move forward."
"What the—I nearly decorated my underwear, Heather."
Her voice was a sibilant whisper. "Something ahead… Saw the moonlight off it. A wire."
Now Jim Hilton could see it, as well—a narrow strip of cable, around midthigh, with two thicker lengths beneath it. Farther along, to the left, almost hidden by a fallen jumper, was an upright post with three white discs on it.
"Electric," he breathed. "Better go back, Heather. Well spotted. Best warn the others in case…"
"We haven't found anything out."
"We already saw with the glasses by the truck that it was hydroponics. Could even read the sign by the main gates. All we're going to…"
Away to their right there was a sudden, startling flash of magnesium light and an audible hissing crack, like the lash of a giant whip.
Jim turned and ran toward it. After a few minutes he heard a sound, followed by Kyle's voice.
"It's me and Carrie. You heard the noise, Jim?"
"And saw the flash. There're high-voltage cables strung around the base, hidden in the brush. Heather saw it in time."
"We never saw that. Think it was…"
The question hung in the cool of the November evening as they stared at each other with fear.
Then from the guarded establishment a quarter mile off, they became aware of a siren, rising and falling like a wounded dinosaur in the last throes of agony.
"This place will be swarming with sentries in a few minutes," said Jim. "Carrie, you take Heather back to the pickup. Get it packed. All our gear. Be ready to move out at ten seconds' notice. Shoot anyone who isn't us."
They didn't argue, running away, feet crackling through the dried, dead branches.
Jim was leading Kyle toward where he'd seen the dazzling flash, when they bumped into the lumbering, puzzled figure of Sly Romero.
"What is it, son?"
"Where's Steve?" added Kyle, at Jim's heels. "Where's your dad, Sly?"
"Me worried, Jim. Me worried, Kyle."
"Where is he?" said Jim, managing with a great effort of self-control to take Sly very gently by the arm.
"Sleep."
"Asleep! He can't… Oh, no."
"Me was behind Dad, and Dad fell on a rope and me saw big light and bangbangbang. It was the highdrypomix. Dad sleeping and me couldn't make him wake. Shook him, Jim. Me shook Dad. But he stayed sleep."
"Come on, Sly," said Kyle. "Let's go join Heather and Carrie. Your Dad'll be along a bit later."
Jim walked on, steeling himself for what he knew he was going to find.
Chapter Eighteen
"Blessed Lord Jesus!"
"May his angels, seraphim and cherubim and all the celestial hosts gather in their brazen armor to protect us."
Nanci's breathing was fast and shallow. Twice in the early hours of darkness she'd slithered away into unconsciousness. But her honed combat reflexes saved her, waking her within scant seconds to staunch the flow of blood from the deep knife wound in her femoral artery.
Now she blinked into the velvet blackness around her, straining to see where the bizarre voices were coming from.
"I believe it is a poor wayfarer, sister, cast away on the drift rock of life."
"Indeed, brother, I concede that you are correct in your assumption."
"Perhaps we should seek to put the traveler away from all suffering, into that bourn from which no man returneth."
Nanci Simms sat up, trying to moisten her cracked lips with a tongue that had swollen and blackened in the desert heat. She gripped the 9 mm automatic in her right hand.
And waited.
THIRTY MILES AWAY, Jefferson Lee Thomas was in better shape.
He was walking steadily toward the south, intent on making some quality distance in the coolness before fatigue forced him to stop and rest for the remainder of the night.
Flagging energy had already made him drink a large part of the gallon of water that he'd taken from the expired Mercedes. Two thirds of his dried meat had also been nibbled away as he trudged along the shoulder of the highway.
There had only been a couple of signs of life on the road.
Once a small roe deer had picked its delicate way across the blacktop immediately in front of him, its hooves pecking at the pavement. By the time Jeff had registered what it was, the moment for shooting it had passed.
The second time it was a pair of coyotes, tails slung between their legs, padding alongside him for a quarter mile, muzzles turning toward him as though they were weighing the lone man up as a
potential meal. When he finally stopped and unholstered the big Smith & Wesson .45, they both disappeared silently into the wilderness, leaving him on his own again.
THE BRACKISH
WATER had tasted to Nanci like the finest of chilled Zinfandels, served in a crystal goblet.
Then Brother Edward had held the flickering candle while his sister, Sister Stephanie, had managed to sew up the small but deep wound in Nanci's leg.
"You have been most brave, dear lady," he said to her.
Edward was in his early fifties, tall and stooped, with rimless glasses and a long beard heavily flecked with silver. His sister was a little younger, with a prominent Adam's apple and a nervous habit of swallowing two or three times in every sentence.
They both wore gray jeans, shirts and parkas, with backpacks. As far as Nanci could make out, neither of them was carrying any sort of weapon.
"We spread the word of the Lord throughout these blighted lands," explained the brother as Stephanie finished binding the stitched wound. Nanci had noticed that he had carefully averted his eyes from her thighs and the pale V of her panties during the operation.
"Now that we have saved your life, Sister Nanci, you are obligated to aid us in our mission." Stephanie rubbed her long-fingered hands together as though something vaguely sticky had come into contact with them.
"What?"
The woman smiled with a wonderfully forgiving Christian charity that Nanci thought made her look like a simpering idiot.
"Yes, of course. Jesus has saved you, so you now become His handmaiden, ready to serve joyfully in apostolic work."
Nanci shifted, aware of the butt of the handgun tucked safely out of sight in the small of her back. "I'm not certain that I wish to devote myself to the Lord. Though I'm awfully grateful to you for your assistance. It was really most Christian of you to help me."
The brother and sister looked at each other. A segment of moon had broken through the banks of heavy cloud, and Nanci could now see them more clearly.
She noted the peculiarly goatlike shape of both heads, with tapering foreheads and prominent chins, and deep-set eyes that seemed to ooze a fervent spiritual love.
"If you refuse," said Brother Edward, "then we shall be forced, with sadness and compassion and
extreme reluctance, to blow your fucking head clean off the top of your blaspheming spine."
"With what? The word of God comes in .38-caliber, does it, now?"