by neetha Napew
The wire bit in so deep, so quickly, that there was no hope of freeing themselves. In some cases the wire sliced through and burst the artery beneath the ear, sending a fountain of bright crimson to spatter across the walls and ceiling.
He'd never felt pity, just disgust at the stench and mess, and a stirring of panic for himself. But he wouldn't get there, certain that he had something to offer, could make a deal.
Now some old slut was going to get it. But it sounded as if Joe was going to get his pound of flesh first.
"Yes, please, please," she pleaded. "Let me…"
Jeff's forehead wrinkled. Something was vaguely familiar about that pleading voice…
But he was too busy listening.
"So you want it, old hag?"
"Will you let me go…?"
There was the resounding noise of a round-arm slap across the face, followed by a gasp of shock and pain.
"Just get on with it, and no tricks, mind."
The bleak lighting threw a muddled shadow along the filthy floor. Jeff, squinting sideways, could just make out the shape of a kneeling woman, hands lifting toward the towering shadow that was the guard.
"Watch out, belly, here it comes." Joe was laughing and laughing.
Then he stopped laughing.
Stopped laughing very suddenly.
Jeff Thomas wondered what could have happened out in the corridor.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sly Romero was kneeling down on a blanket, hands clasped together, eyes squeezed tight shut.
The fire was burning brightly, the flames reflecting off the windows of the four-wheel-drive jeep that stood among the trees. Snow had fallen in the past hour, leaving a thin covering over the dry, cold earth.
Kyle Lynch was sharpening a knife on the sole of his boot, and Carrie Princip, left wrist bandaged, sat at his side.
Sly opened his eyes and stared across at them. "Sure it's good me talking to Dad?"
"Sure. Last few days it's been real important we kept quiet. In case the bad men with the guns came up and caught us."
"Like with the fire and Mr. Abbey."
"Yeah," said Carrie. "Just like that. But you can tell Steve about it."
"Did he see it happen? Where he lives?"
Kyle shook his head, hesitating. "Yeah, he… But he really likes to hear you tell about what happened."
"Good, goody, goody good." He closed his eyes again. "You know me was at Caffs Groceries, with the food and all, Dad? Me drink milk stuff, all pink and sweet. Saw pix in dark…liked it, Dad. Things looked good then."
Carrie whispered to Kyle, "Boy's right. Things looked good then...."
THEY'D BEEN HEADING north on Highway 395, toward Carson City, intending to drive the wheezing old pickup westward toward the coast and the rendezvous at Muir Woods on December 5.
A little past Walker, close to Wrightsville, a partly garbled message had led them to Caff's Groceries. The message had indicated they might learn something there about Zelig and the location of Aurora.
Ted Abbey, once he'd been sure of their identities, had warned them that he didn't know where the secret base of Aurora was located, just that it was north. He'd also explained about the threat from the Hunters of the Sun and mentioned their dead leader, Flagg.
"They know about me, you see. Know I'm here. Probably know about all of you, as well. They got ears and eyes everywhere, looking and listening from every mountaintop and every valley. One day they'll come here. Sure I got some good defenses—but I have grave doubts it'll be strong enough. They come with a mob and they'll win. Eventually."
But he'd provided them with good hot soup and some drinking whiskey, thrilling Sly by popping some corn on an ancient iron stove called the Excelsior Dragon.
They'd stayed the night, able to relax for the first time in an age.
Ted Abbey, his white-flecked beard neatly trimmed, had slept in a bunk bed in a sort of open loft. Laying his thick horn-rimmed glasses carefully on a low table at his side, he smiled, the golden lamplight showing his extraordinarily milky blue eyes.
"Now we lay us down to sleep and pray the Lord our souls to keep." Carrie thought he looked like a kindly Old Testament prophet. "Good night, all."
He'd put Carrie and Kyle up for the night on two narrow beds that folded off the wall, and Sly had slept on a sleeping bag on the floor.
When they had risen next morning, it was to find coffee bubbling on the stove and eggs spitting merrily in the skillet. Ted Abbey had gotten Sly to help him by laying the table and keeping the beans stirred in the deep enamel pan.
The boy had been fascinated by the mirrored doors to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. They were set crooked, so that your reflection vanished as you moved from right to left, reappearing unexpectedly in the other door.
"Sly's gone and back and gone and back," he'd chanted, happily bobbing and weaving from side to side, his grin wide enough to swallow half of Nebraska.
They had sat down together, and Ted Abbey had pressed Carrie and Kyle about their adventures, shaking his head at various high and low spots.
"Why don't you join us?" Kyle Lynch had asked. "Said yourself that the Hunters'll track you down and wipe you out."
"One of these days."
"But that could be tomorrow."
Abbey had smiled, using a rag to pick up the hot coffee jug. "Could be today, son."
IT DID TURN OUT to be that very day. They all heard the jeep coming toward them off the dust-shrouded highway, its engine rumbling, driving a lone coyote scurrying toward the distant hills, belly down.
"Get ready," said Ted Abbey, reaching for a 12-gauge that hung on hooks behind the main door. "Best get the boy in the back room, just in case."
Kyle started to say something, then let the words drift away into the morning stillness as the sound of the powerful engine stopped.
Peering through one of the ob-slits in the heavy security shutters, Abbey reported, "Coupla men. Casual dress."
Kyle had his Model V Mannlicher rifle with the scope-sight, a .357-Magnum round already under the hammer. He was standing by the door, waiting to see how the dice rolled.
Carrie's gun was the six-shot Smith & Wesson 2050 revolver, firing .22-caliber rounds from the stubby four-inch barrel. It was a weapon that had already led to some teasing for her, but she'd proved more than once that it could be the right gun at the right time.
"Yo, inside!"
Kyle had caught Sly's eye and put a finger to his lips. The boy was standing hesitantly in the doorway to the back room of the store. At a jerk of the thumb from the tall, slender black, he went in and closed the door softly behind him.
"What can we do for you?" Abbey had his mouth pressed to the narrow hole cut in the steel.
"Need some food. Got us some good bolts of cloth in the back. Barter with them? Could use some gas, as well."
The sudden opening of the door to the back made everyone jump. Sly stood there, looking worried.
"What?" Carrie whispered.
"Me thought…"
"Can we come ahead?" asked the voice from outside. Neither of the men seemed to be carrying a gun.
"Wait a minute."
Abbey turned to Sly. "Just get the hell out there, will you, son?"
"But…"
"Do it," snapped Kyle.
The door nearly closed, then opened again, Sly's face appearing in the crack. "But me see men washing the wall and roof."
There was a long moment of stillness as everyone thought about that one.
"Fuck!" exclaimed Kyle Lynch, the fastest to react. "Burn us out!"
Abbey leveled the scattergun and fired both barrels at the two men standing halfway between the jeep and the store. One of them went down, but the other threw himself flat. Producing a machine pistol from his belt, he opened fire at the store.
Kyle pushed past Sly, Carrie at his heels, both of them catching the heavy smell of gasoline. There was already a small pool of the dark liquid near the back door, and
more was trickling around the shutters.
Carrie was frozen in the doorway, her analytical mind racing over the possibilities, coming inexorably to the only conclusion. "Too late," she said flatly.
"Stinky, stinky," said Sly, wrinkling his nose at the pungent fumes.
Abbey turned to face them, reloading his shotgun, eyes wide. "Best get outside. Only chance if they fire it. Out the front, now."
As he was fumbling with the iron bolts, they all heard the crashing of glass breaking, followed immediately by the sullen roar of flames.
Kyle swung round. "Sly. We're getting out. Run straight for our truck. Got it? Don't stop no matter what you see and hear. Understand me?"
"Sure." Sly was trembling, but he summoned up a brave attempt at a smile.
"Here we go," said Abbey, pulling the heavy door open and stepping out onto the front porch, shotgun at his hip.
Carrie was at his heels, Sly close behind her, Kyle ready to bring up the rear.
The high-velocity round struck Ted Abbey through the bridge of the nose, ripping into the center of his skull. It demolished the back of his left eye, shredding the frontal lobe of his brain. Sight and smell and hearing all disappeared into the darkness.
He dropped the scattergun as the signals went down, taking a halting, clumsy step to his right.
"Shit!" exclaimed Carrie, not sure what had happened, but realizing from Abbey's reaction that he'd been bit hard.
As the bearded man fell, he rolled onto his back. She saw blood seeping from mouth and nose and ears and sightless eyes.
Flames were licking across the polished boards of the floor, racing from the back to the front, making Sly Romero squeal in dismay, pulling at Kyle.
"Two men out front," yelled Carrie. "One near their jeep and one to the right. Too far for my gun."
Kyle jerked himself away from the boy's clutching fingers, bringing his rifle to his shoulder. He centered the cross hairs on the kneeling figure with the machine pistol and squeezed the trigger, then whistled in delight as he saw the man throw up his arms and slide forward on his face as though he was trying to crawl under an invisible fence.
Carrie pointed to the second of the attackers, even as another bullet sliced through the doorway, ricocheted off an oil lamp and buried itself in a sack of dried peas that began to fall to the floor in an endless whisper.
At a range of less than eighty yards, it was an easy shot at the exposed man with the Mannlicher, and Kyle chilled him with a single round through the middle of the chest.
Flames were pouring off the roof as the tar melted, splashing and setting fire to the porch. It wasn't a time for hesitating.
Kyle took the lead, while Carrie tagged at Sly's sleeve, encouraging the terrified teenager to run out into the open. "Come on!" she shouted.
None of them had any idea of what kind of force was attacking the store. The two at the front, both dead, had obviously been decoys while others crept to the rear to start the fire. One of those was also down and done for.
As he emerged into the open, Kyle was conscious of the intensity of the heat from the burning roof. He half turned, seeing out of the corner of his eye that the raiders had also fired their pickup truck, presumably to stop them chancing an escape.
"Kyle!"
Carrie's scream made him spin the other way. A tall man in dark glasses was rounding the corner of Caff's Groceries, holding a chromed handgun. Kyle noticed in that fraction of frozen time that the man wore a blue shirt with the familiar sun-and-arrow badge of the Hunters of the Sun pinned to it.
There was the snap of a small-caliber pistol from behind him, and the man stumbled, glasses falling from his eyes, showing a shocked and surprised expression. Carrie's .22 had hit him in the throat, cracking the cervical vertebrae.
"Gone wrong," he said, voice expressionless, then fell backward, out of sight, just his boots visible.
There was a second of stillness, broken only by the roaring of the inferno that had virtually destroyed the building behind them.
"Any more?" said Kyle.
"Don't know. Let's go for that jeep."
But it was only a roving patrol, not the major attack that Ted Abbey had been expecting.
Four men in two vehicles. There was a small pickup parked behind the blazing store, its roof showing above a rise in the ground.
Cautiously the three began to walk toward the jeep, guns ready, eyes scanning the empty wilderness that stretched out to the east.
It hadn't occurred to than to question the deaths of the shot men. They'd gone down and lay still, so that was that.
But the first of the attackers, tucked away by Ted Abbey's scattergun, was still alive. His machine pistol lay several yards away from his body, half buried in the sand.
But he rose from the ground, blood leaking from a number of wounds around the top of his right thigh and hip, looming at Carrie Princip like an avenging zombie, mouth open in a soundless scream of hatred.
She was taken by surprise and was knocked to the dirt without a chance to defend herself. Kyle started to turn, way too slow, the rifle dangling uselessly in his hand.
But Sly had been looking toward the jeep. The fire had frightened him, and he didn't want to stare at it any longer. So he saw the man burst into life before any of them.
His initial reaction wasn't quick enough to stop the attack on Carrie, but his mind worked sufficiently fast to swing a clumsy blow with his half-clenched right fist. Sly was very strong. The blow struck the wounded man on the side of the face, near the mouth, cracking his cheekbone and sending him staggering to his knees.
Kyle shot him through the side of the head before he could recover his senses.
Close to the fire, Sly finished telling the story, convinced deep in his heart that his father heard him.
"So me was a big help, Dad. Carrie and Kyle was real pleased. Now when it's light we all get to got going to find Jim and Heather. She's pretty, Heather. Likes me, as well." He opened his eyes, his communication finished. "There," he said, smiling at the two watchers. "Now me go sleep good."
"Yeah, the sleep of the innocent," said Carrie.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The sound drifted out over the snow-covered land.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior,
Was born on Christmas Day.
To save us all from Satan's power
When we had gone astray.
The voices of the rest of the survivors of the McGill family joined Mac on the chorus of the old, old song.
"Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Yes, tidings of comfort and joy."
"Bit early for carols, isn't it, Dad?" said Paul, now the oldest of the children. "Yeah, I guess so. Nearly three weeks, isn't it?"
Mac's first wife, Jeanne, was clutching a pink plastic tumbler of whiskey, reaching up to brush a stray coil of errant brown hair from her dark eyes. "Think we might make it to Muir Woods before the others leave it?"
Angel McGill, hands still showing the pink scars of the bad burns she'd received trying to save the life of her youngest boy, Jack, smiled. "Maybe nobody's there. This snow's probably come down all across California and the West Coast. That's what triggered off the carols and this sudden feeling for Christmas. Like being home in New England, all together."
The Phantasm, the huge RV, occupied most of a turnoff on a narrow side road about sixty miles north of San Francisco. With five adults and two children, the camper was a little crowded.
The other two vehicles were hemmed in by the massive Phantasm, closer to a ring of dead aspens, so that nobody could steal them away in the night. Not that Mac figured there'd be many people around in such snowy and bleak weather.
But they couldn't afford to risk losing the fuel tank, attached to an old jeep. The twelve hundred gallons it had held when they'd fled the far northeast was down to something under four hundred gallons. The third vehicle in t
heir convoy was an elderly European four-by-four that Paul and his dead brother John had worked on for weeks, souping it up until it was capable of nearly one-thirty on a flat highway.
Pamela turned in her seat and pulled back the strip of orange curtain. "Still snowing," she said.
There was a good eighteen inches lying everywhere, and they all knew there weren't going to be any lifesaving plows coming out of the darkness to sweep the way clear for them.
Mac wasn't that worried, though he wished they'd been able to get a little closer to the coast, where the salt air would keep snowfall to a minimum.
He'd found that he was suffering from mood shifts over the past few weeks, something that had never happened before in his life. Since the landing of the Aquila and the appalling shock of finding that the United States of America that he'd left was no longer in existence, Mac had realized that he was no longer the man he'd once been.
He never used to doubt himself or find it tough to make decisions in moments of crises. And anyone who suffered from depression had needed, in his simplistic view, a good kick in the ass.
Not now.
Since the space vessel's crash, particularly after he'd completed the odyssey to New England that had resulted in the death of his friend Pete Turner, Mac had become aware that he'd slowed down.
At forty-six he'd been used to working with his brain as a top astrophysicist. And with his body as a relaxation, concentrating on keeping superfit.
After Earthblood it was hard to come to terms with the fact that his mental skills were utterly obsolete and that he had already lost the top edge of his fitness.
And in moments of mortal danger he'd frozen, leaving the saving of his family to his wives and his children.
"Mac." A hand touched his sleeve.
"Sorry," he said, struggling to retrieve a smile for Angel, who was sitting next to him.
"You drifted away from us," she said. "Looked like you'd stared into your own grave."
"Yeah. Something like that. Guess I got a touch of the sads." He shook his head. "Don't worry. Gone now." Looking around at the faces of his wives and his four children, he said, "We got skis with us on the roof here. If it stops snowing tomorrow morning, why don't we go out and get us some pre-Christmas winter sporting?"