Time spike

by Eric Flint

  Boomer looked at the ceiling. "That blond kid that come in with you.

  Luff has a few debts, and the kid's paying 'em off. Whether he want to or not." Cook squinted at him. "You look good, not a mark on you." The black man shrugged. "It was your fight, not mine. They steered clear of me." James shook his head. He hadn't expected Boomer to intervene when Butch Wesson and his buddies came into the cell. He was just surprised that Luff hadn't ordered him taken down too. Of course, they'd have had to send a lot more than the three guys who came in for Cook. "Yeah, I understand that," he said. "I just can't figure out what Luff's doing. He's got no love for you, that's for sure. For that matter…" Now that his head was clearing and he could think straight, James was wondering whyhe was still alive. "This weren't ordered by Luff. Butch was on his own, settlin' a grudge." Sensing James' skepticism, Boomer chuckled. "Boy, the only reason you still alive is that Luff put a stop to it. He was pissed as all hell at Wesson. Butch mighta died anyway, after you stabbed him. But Luff shot him. Three times. Then shot one of Butch's buddies just before he could cut you." He chuckled again, with a lot more humor. "I will say I ain't seen too many sights as delightful as the look on Butch Wesson's face when you stuck six inches of steel in him. They never expected you'd have a shiv." He glanced admiringly at the cell window, one of whose bars was now missing. James looked at it also. That was the last clear memory he had. Seeing Butch and his two buddies piling into the cell, he'd known he was in a fight for his life. He hadn't expected to survive, but he'd been determined to take as many with him as he could. He'd jumped up, grabbed the bar he'd loosened and sharpened earlier, and things had gone from there. He remembered stabbing Wesson, but that was about it. "What happened to my clothes?"

  "Luff had 'em strip you down and beat you some. But he didn't let 'em go too far with it. He said he didn't want you too badly hurt. Just softened up some, was the way he put it." James started to shake his head, but stopped when he felt the pain that caused. "I don't get it.

  Softened up for what? And why would Luff stop Wesson at all? Much less shoot him? He's got no love lost for me." Boomer looked out of the cell, his heavy face pensive. "Luff a smart one, boy. Don' ever forget that. Real smart. Only way a guy like him coulda made it to the top in here. He thinkin' ahead. After he shoot Butch and one of his buddies, he was hollering at the top of his lungs. 'Bad enough the stupid fuck let all the nurses escape. Now he wants to kill the only EMT in the place!' That's what he was yelling." The Boom turned his head to look at Cook. "That be true? You an ambulance man?" "Fire department, not a hospital," James said. "But, yeah, it's true." Some fragment of an earlier life's pride drove him to add: "I was damn good at it, too."

  Boomer looked away again. "I believe that. I been watching you.

  Studying you. You be damn good at everything." He leveraged his massive body to an upright sitting position. "You got heart, too. And you be honest. So I decided you okay with me. I told the rest of the boys." James nodded. His kept his face impassive, though, letting no sign of his relief show. Before the Quiver, the Boom's pronouncement would have meant James was safe for the rest of his stay here. The Boomer's gang was the smallest and in some ways the oddest of any of them. But with the Boom as its head, nobody messed with them. Not the white supremacists, not the hardcore black gangs, not the Hispanics.

  Nobody. Now, he didn't know. If Luff hadn't pulled off his uprising, things would have been the same. But with Luff running things…

  Boomer seemed to be reading his mind. "We deal with Luff, we need to.

  But like I said, he thinkin' ahead. And you ain't the only con with skills. Lot of my boys got 'em. Not medical, though." That was probably true, now that James thought about it. For all the Boom's occasionally erratic and explosive temper, being a member of his gang was a relatively sane experience compared to some others. It even had two white members. For form's sake, they insisted they were actually part something else-Puerto Rican, in the case of one; Jamaican, in the case of the other-but James didn't think anybody really believed that, not even the Boom himself. James wasn't surprised that men who'd had a life before they got sent up wound up drifting toward Boomer's people.

  He'd done it, himself. He knew that John Boyne, for instance-he was more or less Boomer's top lieutenant-had been a machinist before he got sentenced. And his had been the sort of crime you might get from anybody, not that of a hardened criminal. He'd caught his wife cheating and killed her lover. Several of them were like that. Two were auto mechanics, another was a pipefitter. He thought the skinny Mexican kid they called Jalapeno had even been a computer programmer.

  Something to do with computers, anyway. "You think you can make a deal with Luff?" Boomer nodded. "Think so. I not lookin' for trouble. And I don' think he is, neither." The pensive expression returned. " 'Course, in his own way, Luff be the craziest fucker in here. He get it in his head to do something, be hard to stop him." James finished putting on his coverall. When he was done, Boomer said: "Your old roomie, Paul Howard. He be dead." James forced himself not to show the shock. "Who did him?" "No one. He just up and jumped from the fifth tier." Suicide. The coward's way out. No. James didn't accept that.

  Paul Howard hadn't been a coward. But he had been marking the days until he could go home. He'd only had a few months left on his sentence, and his wife had stuck with him all the way through. He had kids who'd come to visit him also. Now there was no going home. He must have seen no reason to spend the rest of his life in this hellhole. "Terry Collins also dead. Somebody blew his head off during the takeover." "Who?" "They sayin' it was one of the women in the infirmary. That's where they found his body. But they don't seem to believe it much." He rubbed his shaved head with a hand the size of a baseball mitt. "Don' believe it myself, neither. Which one coulda done it? The old ones? The one just had a baby? The black girl with her belly cut open? And where would they have got a gun anyway? Nah. I figure it had to have been somebody else. But who? The guards was all locked up and accounted for. He gave James a sly little look. "They'd prob'bly think you done it, 'cept they know you was locked up too. You got 'em spooked a little, the way you don't look like much but took out Butch-hell, did it twice-and the way you don' never have no expression on your face. You wadn't an ambulance man, Luff prob'bly have a stake driven through your heart like they do in the movies to them vampires." James didn't say anything. And didn't let anything show on his face. "I hear you be a real Cherokee," the Boom said. Cook shrugged. "More like one-half. But I'm on the tribal rolls and the truth is there aren't too many full-blood Cherokees left any more.

  Hell, any kind of Indian. We're almost all at least part white. And in the case of Cherokees and some of the other southern tribes, a lot of us are part black too. I know I am. I've seen old photos of my great-grandmother." Boomer grinned. "Nah. She was prob'bly just sunburned real bad. Livin' out there on a wild Injun reservation."

  James grinned back. That made his face hurt, some, but it was worth it. Someday, that exchange of grins might save his life. Afterward, he realized that was probably the first expression he'd let onto his face since he'd come through the gates, and had to fight off the sadness.

  He could remember a time when he'd laughed a lot, and never though twice about smiling at people.

  Chapter 27 Adrian Luff sat behind the large desk that had once belonged to the warden, staring at the clock on the wall. The generator had died six hours ago. There was still fuel, so that wasn't the problem. But nobody Luff could find knew how to fix whatever was wrong with it. The second hand wasn't moving. The computer didn't work. Even the pencil sharpener sat dead and useless in front of him.

  Nothing electrical worked, unless it had a battery backup, and half the battery-operated equipment was down. The world was completely, totally, one hundred percent fucked up. He was out of his cell, but still couldn't go anywhere. And if he did decide to get the hell out of Dodge, then what? The dinosaurs outside the prison were carnivorous. They ate meat. He was meat. And since he wasn
't one of those great white hunters, he was going nowhere. Besides, there was nowhere to go. There were no towns. There was no reason to leave. Bad as it was, the prison was the safest place that existed in this crazy new world. At least the dinosaurs couldn't get through the walls. He hefted a small red ball he'd found in the bottom drawer of the desk.

  He'd spent some time earlier tossing the ball at the wall. It would hit the dark paneling with a satisfying thump, touch the floor halfway between the wall and the chair he sat in, and then bounce close enough for him to catch it without getting up. That had helped steady his nerves, which needed it. The takeover hadn't gone as planned. They hadn't hung on to any of the guards. Worse yet, none of the nurses.

  They had the methane outhouses, but no one knew how to operate and maintain them. Said they didn't, anyway. Adrian was pretty sure at least one of the Boom's boys would know how to make them work. But that would require a deal and Adrian wasn't sure he wanted to deal with Boomer. He hadn't decided on that yet. There was a greenhouse filled with dirt, but no one knew if it had been planted or if it was just sitting there, waiting for seeds. Chuck Reed was a farmer and he said he could figure it out. But Reed was half-crazy. He also said he owned a ten thousand acre cattle ranch in southern Texas and was descended from old Spanish hidalgos, when everybody knew he'd been born and raised near Mattoon and had had a hardscrabble farm that barely made him a living. There were pills and sprays and ointments, but no nurses who knew how to use them. Just that freaky new guy, Cook. He probably knew, but that was going to take more dealing. Right now, Luff was in no mood to deal. There were no women of any kind.

  That was what most the men were focused on right now. The women had slipped through their fingers. But Luff wasn't really worried about that. Soon enough, they'd accept the fact. A lot of them had been without a woman for so long they didn't even miss it anymore. They just liked the idea. It was a taste of normal. Whatever that was. In a day or two, though, they would start focusing on the other stuff, and when they did he was going to have trouble keeping them in line.

  Things weren't the way he had envisioned. The food shortage was going to produce a crisis soon. The amount of ammunition on hand was nowhere near enough. Hell, the only thing they had going for them was the well. And even that was primitive. The water had to be dipped with a bucket on a rope, one bucket at a time There was equipment and tools inside the machine shop that looked as though it had been separated out for some purpose. But he didn't know for what. None of the men he had could make sense of the stack. Some of it looked like it might be farm equipment, but Reed's only contribution had been to insist the guards had been putting together a time machine so that they could escape. Luff's only hope was that once the interview of the prisoners began he would strike gold and come up with a dozen or so who had the skills he and his men were going to need in order to survive in this new world. Then he wouldn't need to deal with the Boom at all. He swiveled his chair a little to face the three men on the other side of the desk. They were the three he'd decided would make the best lieutenants, although he wasn't sure about one of them. That was Danny Bostic. "How many we got?" he asked. Jimmy Walker looked at his list.

  "Twenty-two hundred and forty-six prisoners, in total. Three-hundred and eighty-four of them can be shot today. They're waterheads. Totally useless. There are another hundred and thirty-one men too old to work.

  Most of them have been here since they were in their twenties, anyway.

  They wouldn't know anything useful that any con doesn't know. They could also be gotten rid of." Luff did the math in his head. Five hundred and fifteen who could be eliminated as soon as possible, bringing the number of prisoners down to one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one. That would cull a lot of the dead weight right off the bat, and ease the pressure on everything. It would also set the tone.

  It was important to set the right tone, and do it at the start. That would prevent misunderstandings. Luff nodded. "Okay. Start making the arrangements." Walker started out the door. "Jimmy," Luff called. The man stopped. "I don't want them shot. We can't afford the ammo. Slit their throats, hang them, chop their fucking heads off with an axe, I don't care. Just don't waste any bullets." Walker nodded and left, closing the door behind him. "Why don't we just turn them out?" Danny Bostic asked. The third man nodded. That was Phil Haggerty. "Be the easiest way, Adrian. Without supplies or guns, they wouldn't last long and we wouldn't have to worry about them." "Can't," said Luff. "They aren't all stupid. Too many of them would run right to Blacklock. And some of the others might wind up with the Indians. We have enough enemies. I'm not going to provide any of them with recruits. Those we don't keep, die. If we have to, we'll just lock them in one of the cell houses, and close the door behind us. It's not that hard. Now, give me your status reports. You first, Danny." Bostic ran through the numbers. "We're looking at maybe a six weeks' food supply. As far as fuel goes, if we just use the fuel for cooking, we could go a little over three months. But, in the meantime, if winter comes, things are going to get chilly. Could be very chilly, we just don't know. We're going to have to use wood for heating, and that'll mean figuring out ways to make wood-burning stoves. We'll also need some pretty big wood-gathering crews." "Those estimates were based on what? Two thousand men?" "A little more, actually. My estimate was just about the same as what Jimmy came up with in his head count. But I figured twenty-four hundred men, just to be on the safe side." Adrian gave him a thin smile. "Always good to be on the safe side. Which I just made safer, didn't I?" He pointed at the pad in Bostic's hand. "So now recalculate everything, starting with seventeen hundred men instead of twenty-four hundred. I just increased our margin by almost fifty percent." Haggerty cleared his throat. "We're gonna have to figure out what to do with the bodies, Adrian. We can't just leave 'em lying around. Things stink bad enough already, just from the couple of dozen men we've got waiting to be buried. By the time Jimmy's finished, we'll have twenty times that many." Bostic scowled. "And most of the chamber pots aren't being emptied any more. Stupid fucks. That's their idea of liberty." "So use the backhoe. It works, doesn't it?" "That'll take fuel," Bostic said. "And even using a backhoe, five hundred bodies is a hell of lot to bury. You make the grave too shallow, that'll be a problem after a while." Luff was getting impatient.

  "Fine. Burn 'em. We can use wood for that." He waved his hand at the window. "There's wood out there. Lots of it." "That'll work," said Haggerty. "Kill two birds with one stone, too. Put the marginal ones on wood-cutting detail. If they squawk, shoot 'em. I think we could get some of those big ass trees down and chopped up in a just a few days. That would give us what we needed to burn the bodies without eating into our fuel or food supply. The men could be worked without feeding 'em much, too. If we called it a test, a tryout, promising that the best workers would be fed better, they'd work their asses off." Luff nodded. Haggerty was sharp. He understood the logic of the situation right off, where Bostic was still dragging his ass. He considered Haggerty's proposal, liking it the more he thought about it. Timbering was hard work; everybody knew that. Adrian had read once that a man doing hard labor needed at least four thousand calories a day. If they fed them starvation rations, they'd drop like flies, all except the best. "Push the motherfuckers hard," he said. "Whichever die from hunger and overwork, that's all the better. Seventeen hundred is still way too many." He sat up straight in the chair. "Phil, you make up the list. Put anyone questionable on it. Anyone you think might be trouble. Double-check with Jimmy. Anyone that Jimmy decided to let pass but it was a close call, put him on the wood-cutting detail. However many we have tools for, we'll put 'em to work. If they can get two or three trees down before dropping dead, that'll help.

  And if you get a half dozen guys who are actually good at bringing them down, fine. We'll keep those and feed them better. We don't know anything about this place. Winter could get long and cold." Bostic was staring out the window. "Who burns the bodies? We can't use our own guys, Adrian. We're going to need them
-all of them, each and every one, with a gun in his hands-to keep control over the situation. Once the guys figure out you're planning to get rid of one out of four of them-" "One out of two," Luff interrupted forcefully. "By the time I'm done." Bostic made a face. "That just reinforces my point." "He's right, Adrian," said Haggerty. "We gotta keep our own guys with their hands free of anything except a weapon. We only got maybe two hundred we can really count on." Walker had figured three hundred reliables, but Luff thought Phil's estimate was probably closer to the truth.

  Some of "our guys" wouldn't cut it, when push came to shove. He thought about the problem. When the solution came to him, he smiled.

  "Use Boomer's rugheads. You handle it, Danny. Put them in charge of the whole thing. Designing and building the pyres, furnaces, whatever works. Running them. Dumping the ashes. The whole nine yards." Bostic looked dubious. So did Haggerty. "The Boomer's crazy," Haggerty protested. "He might go ballistic at the idea." "I didn't say Boomer himself." Luff's grin widened. "Tell him we want Cook in charge.

  Boomer can stay in his cell, keeping his hands clean. I want that fucking Indian running the show. Let the son of a bitch spend some time handling corpses. I figure he'll be a lot more cooperative in a week or two when I offer him a job running our new medical department." He leaned back, shrugging. "Boomer'll go for it. He's not actually crazy. A lot of that's just a reputation he built up, and did it on purpose. He knows he and his guys are on thin ice. As long as we don't shove his own face in it, he'll accept the situation. Cook's new, anyway. It's not like he and Boomer are old buddies." Bostic looked back at his pad. "What about hunting parties? By the looks of the freezer, that's what the guards were doing. They butchered something." Luff shook his head. "Which of these motherfuckers would you be willing to give guns and ammo to, and apretty please, come back and share with us?" Bostic shrugged. "Want to or not, sooner or later, that's exactly what we're going to have to do. We'll have to use our own guys, of course." "I know. But not now. Right now we need every man we've got and every damn bit of ammunition to keep the lid on. And don't forget that Blacklock and his guards will be back, sooner or later." Bostic scooted his chair closer to the desk and dropped his voice. "That's what I'm worried about, Adrian. If I were in Blacklock's shoes, I wouldn't attack us. This place is a fortress.