“Tell me more about this leader of yours.”
“He’ll tell you whatever he wants you to know. Down this way, please.” Jason led the way to a stone courthouse building set in a small square in the center of town.
There was a bronze statue in the yard, depicting a doughboy from World War I, and several smaller marble plinths, carrying messages of dedication to those who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars. Wolfe wondered if anyone would get around to adding one in honor of the servicemen and women who were in uniform for this latest war, also.
It occurred to him that he did not even know what this last war was being called. He wished he did.
“This way,” Jason said when they got inside.
The interior of the stone building was noticeably cooler. The walls were painted institutional green and their footsteps echoed hollowly on the hardwood floors.
Leon stopped at the entrance and took up a position there as if he were guarding it. To keep the newcomer from escaping? The question leaped rather uncharitably into Wolfe’s thoughts.
They passed a water cooler and Wolfe stopped beside it. “I don’t suppose this thing is working?” he asked, hopefully.
“Afraid not,” Jason said. “We haven’t figured out how to make those work on twelve volts and they don’t seem worth using one of the few plug-in converters that we have. Or is that inverters? I can never remember. Not that it matters.”
“No.”
“In here, please.”
There was a light spot on the door to show where a sign once had been, but the sign had been removed and not replaced with anything else. The sign almost certainly would have pointed out a courtroom—district court or circuit or whatever it used to be here. The layout inside the large, very high-ceilinged room was that of a typical courtroom, with the judge’s bench at the head of the room, jury box and witness boxes, and a polished wood bar separating that working part of the room from the spectator’s benches that occupied most of the floor.
The customary tables for opposing counsel had been removed along with the chairs that would have been there. The usual American and state flags were also missing. But, a pair of electric fans whirred and turned on either side of the judge’s high, handsome bench.
At the bench, seated there as if on a throne, sat the leader Jason so lovingly referred to. Wolfe wondered if he was expected to genuflect or kowtow or some such foolishness. But he did stop just inside the door and stared for a moment. He couldn’t help himself. The sight of the leader was…well, not what he expected.
Chapter Five
“You can put your things down over there, please.” Jason laid his own weapon on one of the spectator benches, and Wolfe quickly stripped off his rucksack and put it down with a clatter, then leaned his rifle against it.
He motioned for the dog to sit beside his things and guard them. The dog sat; it remained to be seen for how long he would stay that way. He was not exactly known for his diligence when it came to Wolfe’s personal security, after all.
Wolfe stood as straight as he could and unconsciously reached up with both hands to smooth his hair back. If he’d known what to expect here, he would have tied it back in a ponytail or… or something. For the first time in a very long while, he was concerned about his appearance. For the first time since the beginning of the war, he supposed. But, now…
“Mistress Alethia?” Jason said, “May I present this stranger who has come among us?” The young man bowed.
Wolfe was not sure how he was supposed to respond, or if he should do anything at all. He stood there feeling as awkward as a schoolboy with his hands pressed tight to his sides and his palms sweating. He tried, with very limited success, to swallow back a lump that had sprung up in his throat.
Jason remained bent over in the bow and backed away a couple steps before straightening again. Wolfe was left standing there alone. He was staring.
Mistress Alethia was—well, she was scarcely believable. No human being could be that radiantly beautiful. The woman could have been aged between twenty to forty—or beyond. She had a huge mane of softly curling hair the color of a fiery sunset. It surrounded a face that had truly patrician features: long slender column of pale neck; high cheekbones; exceptionally full lips; huge green eyes set amid delicate curly eyelashes; slim, straight nose. She looked like something one would see on a magazine cover or projected twenty times life-size onto a movie screen. Wolfe had never in his life seen any woman so beautiful as this. Just looking at her made it difficult for him to breathe.
Jason, who certainly was already familiar with her, looked like he wanted to drop to his knees and worship her. Of course, for all Wolfe knew, maybe this band of survivors did worship their Mistress Alethia. Certainly, they viewed her as something very special, someone far beyond the ordinary, far above the ordinary.
“Welcome,” she said in a husky voice that was just short of being a purr, but the purr of a lioness, not a housecat. “Do not give me the name you once carried. I do not want to know. You have the look of a wild thing from the dark forests. You look like a wolf, and that is what I shall call you. From now on, for as long as you remain among us, your name is Wolf.”
Wolfe wondered if someone, Leon, perhaps, had hurried ahead to tell her what his name was so that she could give herself an aura of mysticism. The truth, however, was that he doubted very much that any such thing happened, and he felt a shiver run along his spine.
Jason glanced up sharply and his mouth dropped open as if he wanted to speak—as if he wanted to tell this Mistress Alethia that the stranger’s name indeed was Wolfe. But the young man said nothing.
“What skills do you bring to us, Wolf?” the glorious leader asked.
“I have no particular skills,” Wolfe told her, feeling more comfortable with the situation now. After all, she was a woman. She was only mortal. “I’m passing through, that’s all.”
“You accept the name ‘Wolf’?”
“It is my name,” he said calmly. Although, his meaning when he said it and the meaning she was apt to put on the words were two entirely different things. His comment was literal. He was aware that Mistress Alethia would very likely take his words as an acceptance of her right to name him—and to claim him? No, not that. He was no man’s property. And no woman’s. He only wanted to pass by on his way back home.
“Welcome, Wolf. Welcome to Paradise.”
He smiled just a little. This was one thing Mistress Alethia was surely wrong about. Paradise was not here in the barrens of Utah. True paradise was far away from this place. Paradise was wherever Lurleen and Jojo were at this moment. With that thought, Mistress Alethia’s beauty lost its grip on him, and he was able to regard her as just another human being. Prettier than most, perhaps, but with no power to enthrall.
“Thanks.” The word was perfunctory, his voice indifferent. “Thanks.”
Chapter Six
“I’ll take you to your quarters now,” Jason said.
“Thanks, but I don’t intend to stay. I appreciate you bringing me this far, and I’d like to fill my canteens from one of your wells, but that’s all I need. I’ll be on my way.”
“The leader wishes you’d stay.”
“That leader won’t remember who I am by tomorrow evening. I’m sure she won’t miss me at all.”
Jason said nothing. He picked up his rifle from the bench seat close to the door. The dog wagged its tail and looked like it was smiling. Wolfe reached past the dog to take hold of his rucksack and rifle. They were gone, the bench empty where he had placed them minutes earlier.
He gave Jason a sharp look. Jason acted as if he had no idea what had caused Wolfe’s displeasure. Wolfe spun around to snap at Mistress Alethia, but the beautiful redhead was gone, the throne-like judge’s bench at the front of the room, empty, with not so much as a scrap of paper to be seen on it.
“Hey! Dammit!” Wolfe barked.
“Follow me, please. Will you go to your quarters?”
“I don’t know where those things are right now. You could see for yourself, I didn’t take them.”
“Fine. Who did?”
“We have more than a hundred souls here. I’m sure they acted properly, every one of them. Now, please, come with me.”
He could do no more than follow Jason and allow the young man to cage him in some sort of transient quarters, or whatever they were. Wolfe fully intended to reclaim his belongings—God knew there were few enough of them and of little value—and leave Mistress Alethia’s so-called ‘Paradise’ behind.
Chapter Seven
Jason led the way outdoors. There was no sign of Leon, although a number of other people, all of them quite young, were in view on the streets of Paradise. They all looked fit to the point of being downright athletic, and all carried rifles. A few also wore pistols on their belts.
“Can I ask you something?” Jason said as they went down the courthouse steps to the sidewalk.
“I don’t have anything to hide.”
“How come you keep putting those heavy goggles on and taking them off again?”
“My eyes are kind of sensitive to sunlight, that’s all,” Wolfe said, fully aware that he was indeed hiding something with that statement, but then he saw no reason why he should tell these people about his ability to see in the dark.
Jason accepted the explanation without apparent interest, and led the way to a tall, narrow building with a freshly-painted signboard reading, ‘Paradise Hotel’. It was set on a downtown street corner.
On the side street, there was a no-parking zone, and beside it, a metal sign saying, ‘Bus Stop.’
“New resident,” Jason announced as they entered.
A slender young man with prematurely thinning hair got up from an armchair where he’d been reading, and came over to rummage in a drawer behind the check-in counter. “Number thirty-two,” he said, handing over a key.
Wolfe could not see why keys would be necessary here. There would be duplicates at the desk for anyone who wanted into his room. Besides, it seemed that around here, people stole in broad daylight anyway. Otherwise, his rifle and bow and rucksack would not be missing.
“Your room is at the top of the stairs,” the desk clerk said. “Just don’t use the toilet. The water doesn’t work above the first floor. When you need the bathroom, there’s one in that room over there.” He pointed. “If it helps any, we hooked up one of those instant shower heater things out of a motor home. You can use all the hot water you want.”
“That sounds good.”
“You’ll be wanting clean clothes. I’ll bring some up to you later.” The fellow scrutinized him with a critical eye. “Extra large shirt, I’d say. Though, you don’t look it from a distance. Waist, about…what? Thirty-two?”
“Thirty,” Wolfe said.
“Shoe size?”
“Shoes too?”
“Why not? Those look pretty ragged.”
Wolfe hadn’t been paying all that much attention, but the miles and miles of walking he’d been doing since returning to the outside world had done nothing for his sneakers, but he’d traded those for FEDCOM boots less than a week prior. They were still in good shape and freshly broken in. “No need. It’s just dust on these, but I wear a ten and a half, just in case I have a blow out,” he replied.
“Are you hungry?” Jason asked.
“As a bear,” Wolfe told him.
“Think you can scare up a sandwich for him, Buddy?”
The clerk nodded. “Sure.”
“Sandwich?” Wolfe asked. “You have bread?”
“Don’t expect it to be soft, white Wonderbread, but, yes, we have bread. We have a good supply of flour, and bake our own in wood-burning ovens. Sweet rolls, too. Pies. Cakes. The apples’ll be coming ripe soon, and I’m looking forward to some fresh apple pie.” Buddy grinned. “In the meantime, we have to make do with dried apple pie.”
“You have it better here than people do back in the clear area. How do you manage that?”
Buddy only grinned again and led Wolfe to the hotel dining room, where he found an insulated carafe of actual, honest to Pete, for real coffee. Brewed coffee, too. Not that instant junk.
“Help yourself,” Buddy said. “Can’t offer you fresh milk, but we have powdered creamer and all the sugar you’d care for.”
“Good Lord!” Wolfe blurted.
“Oh, we manage to scrape along,” Buddy said.
Wolfe intended to ask Jason again about his rucksack and things, but when he turned to speak to the young man, Jason was nowhere in sight. People did seem to come and go around here according to a plan that Wolfe wasn’t part of. For the moment, that did not seem all that important. Real coffee? With creamer? And real sugar? It wouldn’t hurt a thing, he decided, to layover here for a few days while he rested and tried to put the ugliness with the Alstons and Thelma White behind him. No, sir! That would not hurt a darned thing.
“You said something about sandwiches?” he reminded Buddy. “And coffee.”
“Right over here,” Buddy said, taking him across the room to a long table, where plates and platters and bowls of pre-war delights bulged. At that particular moment, Wolfe was not sure this was, in fact, not paradise.
Chapter Eight
With his belly full to the point of groaning, Wolfe made his way up a set of old creaking wooden stairs to the third floor, the dog at his side. The dog seemed to have enjoyed the lunch downstairs as much as Wolfe did. He took another step and winced at how much noise the dried-out treads made. No one was going to sneak up or down this staircase without announcing his presence. He wondered how old the building was. It could be more than a hundred years, he guessed. Well, maybe.
Room thirty-two was to the right of the third-floor landing. There was one more floor above his—four floors. Could they build buildings that tall a hundred years ago? He didn’t know. Not that it mattered.
The room was about as old-fashioned as everything else in the hotel. It had a narrow bed with an iron headboard. The bed had sheets on it and a rather thin wool blanket. The pillow was grey with age and nearly flat. There was a plain oak wardrobe, a straight-backed chair, and a small stand that held a basin and pitcher. Beneath the bed was an actual thunder mug. Wolfe had seen those before, but only in museums and movies.
This place, he thought, would not be out of place in a western film. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood—what was the name of that other guy he used to see so much? George Kennedy. That was it. The room looked like a movie set for one of those guys.
“I’ll take the bed,” he said to the dog, which wagged its tail at the sound of his voice. “You can have the rug, okay?”
He lifted the lid on the thunder mug. It was clean and shiny, but did not look substantial enough for its purpose. There was water in the pitcher. He dipped a finger into it. It was tepid, of course—room temperature. Wolfe idly wondered if these people had figured out how to make ice these days. What wouldn’t he give for a big paper cup of Pepsi just loaded with tiny ice cubes?
“Well, well, well,” he muttered aloud when he opened the doors of the wardrobe, and heard the dog’s tail thump on the floor in response. His rucksack was propped inside the wardrobe with the bow and aluminum blowgun still lashed to its sides. There was no sign of the rifle. Apparently, whoever did the stealing around here did not think a blowgun or a bow were dangerous enough to be worth bothering with.
Out of curiosity, he pulled the ruck out, and opened it so he could root around inside. The magazines of 223 ammunition for his M16 were missing. Even so, he was glad to have most of his things back, and the supply of foods he had taken from Thelma White’s place was there. If worst came to worst, he could always abandon the rifle and take off again with just what he had right now. He had been in far worse shape than this when he first set out, and he’d made it this far. He could get along again without a firearm if he had to.
> It would soon be completely dark outside, and the only light he could see in the room was an overhead electric fixture left over from the days when there was real electricity and a real world for it to power, not this crazy movie set place.
Wolfe changed his opinion, though. The Paradise Hotel was not something out of a western, he decided. Instead, it was suitable for one of those futuristic horror shows. He kicked his shoes off and pulled the dark goggles down so they hung at his throat. This was his time of day now. But he did not necessarily want Mistress Alethia’s subjects, or whatever the heck they were, to know that. He lay back on the bed—the springs creaked almost as badly as the stair steps had—and cleared his throat.
“All right. You can get up here, too. But, no snoring, you hear?”
He patted the mattress by his side, and the dog jumped up without waiting for a second invitation.
Chapter Nine
When Wolfe got up in the morning and started downstairs to the bathroom, he found a stack of clothing outside his door. Apparently, Buddy, or perhaps one of the others who lived and worked here, delivered them during the night but hadn’t wanted to intrude while Wolfe was sleeping. He had half a dozen undershorts—jockey-style, not boxers—two pairs of brand-new Levis, four athletic grey sweatshirts, and six pairs of socks. Of greatest interest to him was a pair of new walking shoes with heavily-cushioned soles, and Velcro instead of laces. There were also two white towels and a pair of washcloths. Plus, a personal grooming set of the kind that hotels and airlines used to hand out with the tiny tubes of toothpaste, half-sized toothbrush, paper-wrapped wafer of Ivory soap and a disposable razor. Not that Wolfe needed to shave. His beard no longer grew, although he did not know why.
“Looks like we’re all set,” he said to the dog. “Except for some flea shampoo. You’d think they would have thought of that, wouldn’t you?”
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