by neetha Napew
"I got them."
"And for a .22," called Carrie.
Sly had finished relieving himself and was standing with them, staring at the armored building.
"Twenty-two, lady? You aiming to shoot you some squirrels? Do better throwing stones."
"Come out here and say that," she shouted defiantly.
"Maybe not. What you got to trade?"
"Can we come closer?"
"Sure. But don't step any nearer than ten yards. Beyond that and you get dead."
They all walked away from the pickup, stopping at a cautionary shout from inside the store.
Kyle looked around, but the rest of the world seemed deserted. "You heard of Aurora, mister?"
As the silence stretched out, Kyle found his right hand reaching around for his Mondadori automatic. Sly had bent down and picked up a small pebble with a hole through its center, bringing it to his right eye and squinting through it.
"I asked—"
"I heard you."
"Well?"
"You got a name?"
"Sure I do. Why should I tell it to you?"
Carrie had drawn her .22. "How about you telling us your name, mister?"
"Ted Abbey."
Sly had been painfully spelling out the name on the roof, letter by letter. Triumphantly he announced that it spelled "Caff."
The invisible man heard him. "She was my daughter, son. Worked in prisons, doing theater stuff. She went off to England before Earthblood. Haven't heard from her since. Named the store after her. Guess I still hope she's…" The sentence trailed off into a flurry of fine snow blowing around the trio outside the store.
Kyle shook his head. "It's cold as charity out here, Mr. Abbey."
"Names?"
Carrie nodded. "Why not, Kyle?" she said quietly. "Tell him."
"I'm Kyle Lynch and this is Carrie Princip. The lad is Sly Romero."
There was another long pause. They could hear the humming of a generator from somewhere to the rear of the fortified building.
"Son of Steve?"
Surprised, Kyle said slowly, "Right. How d'you… ? Ah, I get it, Mr. Abbey."
"Do you, Kyle? Do you? A couple of questions, just to make absolutely sure you're really who you say you are."
"Go ahead."
"You were engaged to…"
"Leanne."
"But?"
"But what?" Anger suddenly started to ride in Kyle's voice.
"But your love was…"
"How the hell…?" Shrugging his shoulders, Kyle decided to go along. "All right. You got the aces, Abbey. It was a lady called Rosa."
"I didn't know that, Kyle," said Carrie.
"I didn't think anyone knew," he answered, loud enough for the man to hear him.
"Zelig knows everything there is to know, Kyle. And then some."
"So. We saw a message you had all the information about Aurora. Tell us."
"I don't know where it is. Zelig made sure only a tiny number of the people involved knew the actual location. That way Flagg and his gutter rats wouldn't be able to get there—not until it was strong enough to hold him off." A brief lull occurred, as if the man was gathering his thoughts. "Anyway, Flagg's dead. But his work lives on." After another, longer pause, he seemed to come to a decision. "You folks best come inside, before you all freeze."
They trudged around the back, and entered through a reinforced doorway.
Then they were face-to-face with the man possessing the voice. Ted Abbey had a neatly trimmed beard, flecked with white, and wore thick horn rimmed spectacles. His eyes were the palest, milkiest blue that Kyle or Carrie had ever seen.
The moment they were inside the store, he slammed the vanadium-steel security door, locking and bolting it. Immediately he went around to each of the observation slits in the walls to scan the outside once more. "Fine," he said. "Now we can talk."
Chapter Twenty
It was the first day of December.
The armed convoy that was the McGill family had finally rolled and fought its way through to California and was now only a few miles away from the ancient mining ghost town of Calico.
There were three vehicles, all showing signs of wear and tear. Two had bullet holes in their flanks, and the third was badly scorched where an attempt had been made to firebomb it an hour east of Fort Scott, Kansas.
Paul drove an ex-Army jeep towing a fuel tank. It had held twelve hundred gallons when they left New England and was now down to around the four-hundred mark—still more than enough to make them a target for any renegade group they encountered. The cab had been rebuilt using plate steel, and they'd managed to obtain some bulletproof tires from a military dump less than eighty miles from Mystic.
Jeanne and Angel, whose burned hands were almost healed, took turns driving the second vehicle.
It was a black four-by-four that had started life as an underpowered import from Europe and could now manage one-thirty on a flat, open highway. Jocelyn and Sukie generally rode with the two women.
Pamela traveled with Mac, heading up the fast-moving convoy.
They spelled each other at the wheel of the massive Phantasm, keeping the RV moving along the side roads, trying to avoid any sections that were too steep or winding or narrow. Generally they'd been successful in the long and hazardous trip.
The previous evening, as they camped on top of a high ridge with good visibility for thirty miles around, it had occurred to Henderson McGill how bizarre life had become. That he should think their trip had been relatively uneventful.
Several times they'd driven over bloated corpses, not stopping for fear of a trap, hearing the sickening sound of the wet explosions as ripe, putrid bellies burst.
The convoy had been attacked on eight separate occasions, but each time the McGills had come through safely, beating off the raiders with their vastly superior firepower.
Mac had guessed that, on their way west, they'd probably passed a million wrecked cars and trucks and gone within a quarter mile of five million corpses. But he knew in his heart that this was probably a conservative estimate.
Yet they'd been lucky. Nobody had been killed. The only injury had been a sprained wrist for Jeanne while changing a tire.
"Think there'll be anyone up in this place, Dad?" Pamela leaned on his shoulders, her hair brushing against his cheek.
For the fiftieth time that morning Mac checked his mirror, making sure that Paul and the gas were behind, with the four-by-four riding his fender, and that nobody else was in sight.
"Doubt it. We're way late on the date we agreed. But if Jim Hilton or anyone else got there, they'll likely have left us some sort of message. That's what I'm hoping."
"Then off along the yellow brick road to this Aurora."
"Sure. Aurora means dawn, from the Latin, so I guess it fits."
" 'Yellow Brick Road' was Jack's favorite song from that old vid, you know."
Mac signaled a right turn and pulled it off 1-15 at the sign for Calico.
"Yeah, honey," he said. "I remember that."
At times he remembered too much.
Just before they reached Calico, all three vehicles stopped on the narrow road leading to the town. Mac and Paul stood side by side, looking at the tangled pile of torn and rusting metal, parts held together with what seemed to be baling wire.
"Reckon someone had gathered it after a crash or an explosion and was trying to transport it away. The road bends sharply here. Could be they decided to dump it."
Mac nodded. "Could be, Paul. Think it was an old Chinook. Wonder if it has some connection with the meeting here."
They moved on and found the ghost town totally abandoned. It was obvious that someone had made a hurried attempt to burn it down, but for some reason had abandoned the idea. Two-thirds of the buildings were intact, but there was no sign of any message from Jim or the others.
Once he was confident there was no threat, Mac allowed everyone, including Jocelyn and Sukie, to scout around, making sure every s
ingle remaining hut or store was checked.
"Only leaves the half dozen this side. I'll take the—"
"Saloon," called Angel, making everyone laugh. "If Jim Hilton's left you a message, it'll be in that saloon, Mac."
It was.
He found it tucked into a pint beer glass behind the scarred bar.
Jim unfolded it, half watching himself in the cracked and fly-blown mirror. He recognized the writing immediately, feeling a pang of mixed emotions. Part of him wished that he'd stayed with Jim instead of going off to New England to join his families. But thinking about the deaths they had sustained, part of him was also aware that those deaths would probably have been so much worse if he hadn't been there.
Hi, Mac. Hope it went well. Hope you got some of your own squids with you. The more the merrier. We had some trouble here. Way it looks is that Zelig runs Operation Tempest and they have a base code-named Aurora some place north. There are some black-hats called Hunters of the Sun who don't love Zelig and don't seem to love us. So watch your ass against them. We're going to split up and cover as much of the 'north' as we can. I've set a rendezvous for us all to meet at Muir Woods, near Corte Madera, north of San Francisco. December 5. Be there or be square, like they used to say. All good luck, Mac. Your friend, Jim Hilton. Ex-commander Aquila.
Holding the note, Henderson McGill left the dusty building and walked out into the chilly morning, finding that the cold easterly was making his eyes water. He climbed to a point where he could see way out north toward the high peaks of the Sierras, shrouded with swirls of winter snow.
Everyone was bone weary from being on the road for so long, from the tension and the long hours and the concentration and the ever-present miasma of death. And from simple fear.
They had to rest a day, check the vehicles, and fieldstrip all the armaments, organize the remaining food and top up the water, maybe on the day after.
That would make it December 2.
Could they reasonably expect to get from east of Los Angeles up to north of San Francisco in three to four days?
"No," he said to himself.
After having survived nearly a quarter of a year since the landing of the Aquila, Mac knew certain truths about the blighted land. One of the greatest of these concerned traveling. Main highways were the most likely to be blocked, particularly around the major conurbations where the population had made last, despairing efforts to escape.
To get from Calico up to Muir Woods didn't offer them a lot of options. Mac went to discuss it with the others.
"There's 99 through Fresno. Or 5, but that'll be impossible."
Mac nodded. "Right, Paul. Maybe Barstow and then north up 395. All the main passes are likely snowed up now. We'd have to go a hell of a way beyond San Francisco, inland. And then cut back west and south. Go around Sacramento and—" his finger traced the various options on the Rand McNally. "—down the Napa Valley."
"How long's that going to take us, Mac?" asked Angel. "Long while?"
"Yeah."
"We probably got us enough gas, but when you start getting close to cities, the chance of finding any evaporates." Paul looked at the others. "What do you all think?"
Jeanne sighed. "If we leave tomorrow, Mac, roughly how many days?"
"Too many."
"We'll never make it for the fifth. In the old days I guess we'd have done it easily." Pamela bit her lip. "Come on, Dad. Do we go or stay?"
"We stay here and there's nothing. We should try and find somewhere we can winter over, preferably away from the worst of the weather."
"That means desert or coast." Paul looked again at the map. "Muir Woods isn't far from the sea."
Mac rubbed at the graying stubble on his chin. "Right. We go tomorrow, and with luck we can get there close to the fifth. With a good measure of luck."
Chapter Twenty-One
Jim Hilton tugged the hand brake on and switched off the engine, allowing the black van to fall silent.
"The big trees are alive, Dad! The first things I've seen that haven't been killed by the Earthblood thing."
Heather's father wiped condensation off the inside of the driver's window and peered out through the steady cold drizzle.
"Yeah, you're right. I suppose that the simple answer is that the redwoods are so damn massive that the virus wasn't able to survive long enough to wipe them out. Sure is good to see a real green tree. Just like old times."
The winding road toward Muir Woods had been deserted, free of the dumped and rusting wrecks that were a thousand-times-a-day sight on most of the blue highways of America.
THAT MORNING of December 5 saw Nanci Simms waiting to be taken by truck for a final session of examination. The Hunters of the Sun had failed to penetrate her disguise, though they'd pressed her about the names of Jim Hilton and the rest of the crew of the Aquila.
Several times she'd heard the name of Flagg as her interrogators bemoaned their ex-leader's death. But oddly she never heard them talk about the person who'd taken over.
There had been a couple of breaks in her questioning when a large camp of squatters and outlanders had been found about forty-eight miles east of the camp. Nanci learned that the security men had terminally wiped the place, hardly bothering to investigate any of the ragged band.
Her own success in concealing who she was, and what she had been, was all relative.
This afternoon, after a final round of desultory talk and some casual, half-hearted violence, she knew precisely what would happen. Because she'd seen it done to others.
A length of thin wire would be looped around her throat, then she would be hoisted onto one of a row of stout iron hooks in the wall of corridor and left to choke and kick out the last hideously agonized moments of her life.
But Nanci Simms didn't intend to go out like that.
No way.
THEY'D PASSED the entrance gates, through the Pacific mist, pulling into the deserted parking lot. Jim had smiled to himself at the way he'd still, from force of habit, made sure that he'd placed the van carefully between the yellow lines.
Heather pulled on her blue sweater and slipped into the fresh air. "Come on, Dad."
He joined her in front of a large notice board that showed a plan of Muir Woods and a little of the place's history.
"How do you say that?" she asked, pointing.
"Sequoia sempervirens. Fancy name for the giant redwoods." He turned around to orientate himself. "And that must be Mount Tamalpais," he added, wondering if he'd pronounced it right. "Want to walk a little bit? Stretch our legs."
"Sure. Dad?"
"What?"
"Looks like nobody else is here yet."
"Yeah, it does. Still, it's early in the day yet, isn't it?"
They picked their way along the quiet, overgrown pathways, with the steady, monotonous dripping of water the only noticeable sound.
Finally they reached Redwood Creek and leaned on the wooden rails of the bridge to stare into the white-flecked water.
"Fish, Dad!" Heather yelled excitedly. "Look, loads of them, all jumping."
"Salmon. And those are steelheads."
"Steelheads?"
"Steelhead trout. The way they're going up by those rocks means… Yeah, we could maybe fix us up some sort of net and trap one or two. They'd make great eating."
Jim shivered as the coastal wind blew through the cathedral of unthinkably massive trees around them. He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of solitude, as if he and Heather were the only two people left alive in the universe.
JEFF THOMAS had decided that he was probably the only survivor from the Aquila.
That was what he'd told the interrogators who'd kept at him ever since his capture. Maybe arrest was a better word, since there was the total feeling of military control in the way the Hunters of the Sun ran their base.
He'd told them a carefully edited version of the truth, finding out early on that they knew about the crash landing and about the meet up at Calico. So Jeff invented acci
dents and killings to account for the rest of the crew since that was what the stone-faced questioners seemed to want from him.
He hadn't mentioned Nanci Simms, and neither had his interrogators, which he regarded as probably being a good sign.
But it didn't stop him thinking about her when he was alone in his Spartan cell, lying on his back, hands feeling below the single gray blanket to heighten his own arousal.
It was always the thought of her that set his groin prickling with a hot, disgusted longing.
Part of him was revolted at the pitch of excitement he could reach, thinking about the sixty-year-old woman, imagining her in her gleaming boots, standing astride him....
Afterward Jeff would lie panting in the darkness, loathing himself. No, he certainly couldn't tell them about Nanci Simms. She was dead anyway.
Jeff had wondered about the man called Flagg, who seemed to have been the founder and once the leader of the Hunters. Nobody would talk about him, but it was obvious that the dude was dead.
Also nobody would talk about the man who'd taken over, referring only to "the Chief," with so much awe and fear that it made the short hairs curl at the nape of Jeff Thomas's neck.
He'd been losing track of time, but he thought it must be around December 5.
"WE CAME CLOSE," said Angel, picking shreds of rabbit from between her back teeth.
"Yeah, but close isn't good enough. Doesn't hit the target. Doesn't win the free vacation. Doesn't get us to Muir Woods today." Henderson McGill peered out from one of the windows of the big RV, shaking his head. "Snow's getting worse and worse. If it had just held off for another couple of days, then we might just have made it."
"How long do you reckon it'll be now?" asked Pamela, pulling her dark hair back into a ponytail, helped by Jocelyn.
"God knows. There's three feet on the ground and no ploughs coming through. Could make it in the other two vehicles but not in this. And we need this as a kind of movable home. I expect at least a week…maybe a while longer." He shook his head. "Still, least we all made it through and we're together. Probably nobody up there in Muir Woods anyway."
WAY NORTH OF THEM General John Kennedy Zelig sat alone at his leather-topped desk and looked at the heavily annotated map. There was a small number of special groups of people that Operation Tempest had been trying to locate ever since the violent crumbling of society. People with special talents and skills. The survivors of the crew of the Aquila were just such people.