by neetha Napew
"Sure. And this is now. I know which I prefer."
They rested in Muir Woods for two whole days, recharging their batteries physically and mentally.
When they eventually set off toward the north again, they left the four-by-four behind them. Mac drove the Phantasm with Jeanne and the two younger girls. Paul and Pamela shared the responsibility for the jeep and the gas tank between them.
It was a beautiful dawn, with the sun rising away across the land, sending its lances of bright silver far over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Chapter Thirty
Gas was becoming a serious problem for the Hilton two-vehicle convoy as it picked its slow and careful way along the winding blacktop that had been Highway 1.
Jim's guesstimate as they left the relative security of Muir Woods had been that they had enough between them to travel about ninety to a hundred miles up the coast.
"Means we need to find some to syphon," said Carrie Princip. "Either go right down to the sea, or up inland. This area was kind of low on population, so there might be some around."
Kyle Lynch shook his head in disagreement. "Think about the floods of desperate refugees that came pouring out from San Francisco. They'd have drained everything dry. We'd be lucky if we find enough to ignite a mouse fart."
At first it looked as if the black ex-navigator of the Aquila might have been right.
The road was very congested for the first thirty or forty miles. Dozens of stalled vehicles, many of
them still containing the withered corpses of their drivers, littered the way. It took them until well past noon to reach as far as Marshall, barely thirty miles north. Twice they had to take tortuous detours along dirt roads, even driving through the entrances to small farms and houses, cutting across the chewed-up remains of gardens and allotments.
Kyle was driving the second of the four-by-fours, with Carrie at his side. Sly Romero was sleeping contentedly in the back, snoring gently.
"This is like the moon, Carrie. Or some totally undiscovered planet out back of Alpha Centauri. Virtually no plant life left, except for a few patches of bright fresh moss among the dead crimson shrubs. Wish I had my camera with me. Next time we make a stop anywhere near a town, I might go look for one. Doubt that too many people looted cameras when the crunch came. I miss my photography as much as most things."
"Don't know what I miss most. I know that I missed my parents when that jackknifing son-of-a-bitch semi wiped them away up near Yellowstone. On their silver wedding anniversary yet. That was two years ago, but it seems like a whole lifetime away. I guess I miss simple things that are gone forever. Flopping out on a sofa with bare feet in front of a fire on a Sunday evening in winter, with a bag of sour cream-and-onion chips, watching the Saints beating the holy crap out of the Bears."
"I miss Daddy," came Sly's quiet voice from behind them, barely audible above the noise of the engine.
THEY'D JUST PASSED through Bodega Bay, where a skinny child had heaved a stone at Jim's truck, denting the side panel just below the window.
"Reckons that anyone driving has to be an enemy," said Heather, showing bland indifference to the brief attack.
"Guess so. Watch out. There's another one coming up, on your side."
"It's an old woman, Dad."
"So it is," he said, slowing down to a crawl, waving a hand out of the cab to warn Kyle.
It was bizarre. Here in the devastated wilderness of California was a neatly dressed elderly woman, apparently trying to hitch a ride.
Jim put on the brakes. "Stay here, Heather," he said. "I'll take a look."
The land on both sides of the road was clear of undergrowth and relatively flat. He didn't see how it could be an ambush. There had been plenty of better places for that within the past four or five miles.
The old lady was wearing a high-collared blouse with lace at the cuffs. A short quilted jacket was her only concession to the damp chill of the afternoon. A long skirt came down to midcalf, meeting the tops of her muddy black-buttoned boots. She had on what Jim could only think of as a bonnet with a cluster of multihued feathers stuck into its green ribbon. Her cheeks were a healthy pink, and she had on extremely thick glasses, making her watery blue eyes look gigantic.
"A good, good afternoon to you, young fellow. And the thanks of an old lady for your wonderful Christian charity in stopping. What a good Good Samaritan you are."
Her voice was light and trilling. Jim nodded. "Don't see many people trying to hitch a lift these days, ma'am."
"I found myself a little lost. Stupid when you realize that I've lived in these parts for fifty years." She sighed. "Fifty years and the world spinning around. Then the last year of red-scented damnation for us all."
"We can give you a ride."
"Bless you, my dear." Her silver hair was pulled back under the bonnet into a tight roll. Heavy amber earrings swung from side to side as she talked. "I believe that this is the highway north and south, is it not?"
Jim nodded. "Yeah. Which way do you want to go? Only we're getting kind of low on gas and it…"
"It isn't easy to get nowadays, is it. But I'll tell you what, Mr....?"
"Hilton, ma'am. Captain James Hilton."
"My name is Mercy Oliphaunt, Captain. I have plenty of gasoline in my garage back home. And you would be welcome to help yourself to all of it. Must be fifty gallons or more. I confess that I have always been something of a hoarder, but my little Metro was stolen in the first days after Earthblood so I have no use for it. A small reward for your kindness." She twinkled merrily at him. "And I have the makings for a lamb casserole in my larder. And an apple cobbler. I once won prizes at the county fair for my apple cobbler, Captain Hilton."
"You convinced me, Miss Oliphaunt."
She laid a gloved hand on his arm, as though she were a Southern belle being led into a summer ball, allowing him to escort her to the waiting truck. She happily squeezed in beside Heather Hilton.
"You must be the captain's pretty little daughter," she said brightly. "Remember, my dear child, that beliefs can be altered but the truth is inflexible and much, much more dangerous." She turned to Jim as he put the vehicle into gear again. "I was the teacher of our small community, Captain. I cannot resist trying to educate the young whenever I see them."
"Which way, ma'am?"
"North. Then hang a right up a dirt road with a burned-out school bus just across the highway from it. Then it becomes a little more complex, and I will navigate for you. But we should be there in less than a half hour and eating before—" she rolled up the cuff of her dress to consult a tiny gold watch. "—before five of the evening star."
Heather Hilton caught a glimpse of a heavy scar around the wrist of the elderly woman, like a bracelet of wealed flesh. But it was gone so quickly that she couldn't really be sure she'd even seen it.
JIM STOOD BY THE VAN, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine. Dusk was creeping slowly toward them, bringing a light mist up from the direction of the sea. A westerly carried the scent of the ocean to him, though he was no longer sure quite how far away it was. Two or three times during the convoluted journey he'd begun to wonder if the delicate old lady weren't playing some kind of a trick on them as they wound up and down and left and right, along a trail that was often so narrow that the dead bushes scraped at both windows at once.
After they got to the spruce little cabin, Jim introduced Carrie, Kyle and Sly Romero to the old lady.
Carrie looked uncomfortable when Miss Oliphaunt looked her up and down.
Kyle shook the old lady's hand, which she extended as though she were bestowing some great favor on him.
Then Jim watched Miss Oliphaunt's face as she took a good look at Sly for the first time. She half turned toward him. "Oh, the poor child. Isn't he a…?"
"An orphan, ma'am," Jim completed swiftly. "Yeah, he is. Father got translated up into the realms eternal only a few days ago."
"Ah, yes," she said doubtfully. "He'll be all right insid
e the house, will he, Captain?"
"Be fine, will Sly. Won't you, son?"
"Me fine, Jim. Fine on line all mine."
At that Miss Oliphaunt nodded brightly, then went inside to get the meal ready for them and "to freshen up a little," explaining that she rarely had guests these days.
"LEAST SHE TOLD THE TRUTH about the gas. But she looked to be making a real effort not to wipe her fingers on her embroidered skirt after she shook hands with me. In case some of the black color had worn off on her ladylike skin." Kyle was rolling out one of the ten-gallon drums of fuel, while Sly and Jim were topping up the tanks of both the vehicles.
"Come on," said Carrie. "She's lonely and very old. Can't blame her if she still lives off politics that went out when Reagan finally handed in his boots and six-gun. Mind, she did make me feel like I was wearing dirty underwear."
A fluting voice from behind them made everyone turn around. "Food'll be on the table in five minutes. I assume you will all want to wash up."
"Yes, ma'am," replied Jim. Heather grinned. "Was that a suggestion or a blued-steel order? I would've hated being in her class. Bet she used to hit the kids across the knuckles with the edge of a big ruler. If we're late, we'll an get detention."
They weren't late.
Jim had tried to paste down his thinning blond hair with water from a black-painted iron pump in the backyard. He had to agree with the others. Mercy Oliphaunt made him feel as if it was his first day in school.
The six-legged Colonial oak table was covered in a lace-edged muslin cloth so spotlessly white that it seemed to fill the room with its radiance. There were three gleaming brass lamps, two on a sideboard and one on a round table by the door to the dining room.
The cutlery looked as if it had just come, mint new, from its box, and Miss Oliphaunt had found time to hand-letter place cards for them all in a sloping italic script. Jim was to her left, with Carrie opposite him. Then Kyle and Sly, and Heather at the foot of the table.
"Would any of you wish to say grace?" she asked.
There was a shuffling of feet. Nobody wanted to meet those oddly huge eyes.
"Very well. After all, this is my humble demesne and I the chatelaine. It is seemly that the duty falls upon my frail shoulders."
Jim led the way, clasping his hands and dropping his eyes to the tabletop, glancing under lowered lids to make sure the others were following suit. Sly was last, looking around at everyone else. Then his face brightened, and he put his hands together and clamped his eyes tight shut.
Mercy Oliphaunt spoke. It struck Jim that the grace was not so much that of a humble supplicant to her Lord and Master but more an equal having a discussion about life.
"We are here, Jesus, ready to eat a fine meal. No doubt you helped provide some of the necessities, but I've done all the preparation and cooking. And the big freezer out back is becoming woefully understocked, Jesus, so if you aim to assist me further, then it would be as well to get moving in that direction." She raised her voice to include those around her. "Thanks in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."
A ragged chorus of "Amens" followed, led by Heather.
"Amen, Jesus, and I love you," came from Sly Romero a few seconds later.
"Properly said, young man," said Mercy. "Now, I shall go and bring in the repast. I trust all of you have some fine and sturdy appetites?"
Not waiting for an answer, she swept out of the dining room, her heels clicking along the passage toward the kitchen.
Kyle grinned at the others. "Anyone who looks like an adman's ideal of the American granny has to cook like a dream. Lamb casserole and apple cobbler."
Carrie licked her lips. "Boy, oh boy. You realize that we haven't had a real old-fashioned meal since the Aquila came down at Stevenson?"
Jim nodded. "That's true. Hey, Heather, why not go see if Miss Oliphaunt needs a hand out there?"
"Sure."
Sly was looking worried, and Kyle leaned toward him, grinning. "Cheer up. What's wrong?"
"Well, Kyle, me think Dad is seeing and looking and watching me."
"Yeah?"
"So, if me eat lots of apple cobbler will Dad be real angry with Sly?"
"No, of course not. Chances to stoke up the engines are few and far between, Sly. Eat as much as you want." Kyle hesitated. "Just don't make yourself sick."
Heather reappeared and sat down. "Says she doesn't need help. Only be a minute."
"You see the food?" asked Carrie.
The girl bit her lip. "Yeah. Well, kind of."
Her father frowned. "Now what does…? Doesn't matter. I hear her coming."
Kyle rubbed his hands together. "I tell you, friends. This is going to be one meal to remember."
Chapter Thirty-One
Nanci Simms was very good indeed at inflicting pain.
Good at knowing precisely where the limits were between simply making a man weep and reducing him to the state where he would lose all control of his body and slip away into the dark wilderness of unconsciousness.
If that happened, then it was no fun.
No fun to flog a dead horse, as one of Nanci's CIA instructors had often told her, back around the year 2025, at one of those anonymous mansions that used to lie in the green valleys of West Virginia. Her reasons for keeping Jeff Thomas alive were purely selfish. In any other situation, the way he'd left her to die alone from the severed artery in her thigh would have merited death. As long and slow as time would allow.
Despite his self-serving cowardice, resembling a trapped sewer rat, Nanci was experienced enough in survivalism to know that the chances of living in post-Earthblood America were considerably enhanced if you had someone there to watch your back every now and again.
Granted, you might also need to watch your back against that very person some of the time. But it was still a reasonable trade-off. And she had done what she could to discourage Jeff Thomas from ever betraying her again.
An extra consideration in her careful, clinical punishment was that she knew well enough that she was dealing with a man who was a serious sexual masochist. Someone who would relish abasing himself by licking her boots while she whipped him. Who would grovel in the dirt, begging for greater and greater humiliations at the hands of his dominant mistress. At the hands, and other parts of her lean, tanned body.
Nanci knew the feeling, knew it from the other edge of the same sword. For her there was overwhelming sexual fulfillment in having someone like Jeff helpless beneath her. The fact that it was all a kind of morbid game didn't diminish the flooding delight that surged through her as she dragged him down into ever-deeper levels of perverse degradation.
But this time, while they waited together in the darkness to complete their escape, had been different. The lesson had to be forced home into Jeff's mind. A lesson that made clear the distinction between pain and pleasure.
Once, as the searching helicopter from the Hunters of the Sun flooded the barren hillside ten miles away with its futile searchlight, Nanci recalled the oldest of all jokes about the sadomasochistic relationship.
"Hit me, hit me," begged the masochist.
"No," smiled the sadist.
It had been like that. His pale bruised body, naked on the harsh pebbles, his ankles tied together, hands bound in the small of his back. A cord from his wrists around his neck, tight enough to make his breathing difficult, but not quite tight enough to throttle him.
Nanci had begun by making Jeff relax, cleverly allowing him the space to enjoy the start of the familiar games. It was all very gentle.
Then she changed the rules.
Upped the ante.
Using every splinter of her considerable sexual skills to bring him to the brink of a rushing satisfaction, then withholding that delight. Gradually working in a little more serious pain.
"Now the good times stop, Jefferson," she whispered. "Out here in the desert you can scream and scream until your throat turns bleeding raw. And there isn't anyone to hear you. Chopper's gone
back to base. Hours to dawn. You and me. Think what you might be like by then. Think on what you did to me, Jefferson.
"The next hour's going to be unrelieved suffering, Jefferson, while you pay me my blood price. Then… then I'll decide on what to do with you. Decide if I can maybe trust you one more time. Can I?"
There was a desperate, choking mumble that she took to be assent.
"Cord a little tight around your neck, Jefferson? Never mind. Least I haven't gagged you. Reason is that you enjoy that part. That isn't what this is about, dear boy. Now, let's carry on with this lesson a while longer."
Finally, with the first fingers of rosy light peering over the distant hills to the east, Nanci Simms relented. Gave him life instead of death.
Gave herself the pleasure that she'd kept under simmering control and even allowed Jeff Thomas the relief that his tortured body had been seeking.
ODDLY the betrayal and subsequent punishment seemed to bind them closer together.
As they headed north and west, moving at the fastest speed they could manage, Jeff was like a new puppy fawning on his adored new owner.
But deep inside his soul there burned a tiny flickering ruby of irredeemable hatred for the older woman. For what she had done to him out in the darkness. Something that he would never quite forget. Never quite forgive.
It didn't show, Jeff knew, not on his face, not in his voice. But when he'd catch her shrewd eyes once in a while, he felt deep down that without a doubt she knew.
Their drive toward the late rendezvous at Muir Woods was relatively uneventful, except for the roadblock they encountered around noon on the first day. Four men and a woman, well dressed and well armed, flagged them down from behind a couple of flatbed trucks. The fields around were barren, covered in a thin blanket of soiled, melting snow.
Nanci had slowed the four-by-four, smiling at the group through the muddied windshield but talking to Jeff out of the corner of her mouth.
"Keep your .38 in your lap. Don't even try and move until I open fire. Then come out the door as fast as you can and try and take out anyone that I miss."