Mankind's Worst Fear

by David L Erickson

  “Like I says, don' matter. We be da better fer it. Hans gone. We be moreun fine.”

  “Thanks, just the same.”

  George cleared his throat. “We need to get our stuff and go. Daylight’s wasting.”

  Tasha eased Heather from George and led her back to the camp, arm in arm, Heather rested her head on the older woman's shoulder. Baider stared after them, then turned away, but not before George caught a moist glimmer in his eye. More for Heather than Wendell, he assumed. George shook his head and scowled. That was a jerky thing to think. He straightened.

  Baider squared up and faced him. “You know, made me sick, him queer and all, but he knew his stuff. A...a colleague, Cap. Got to give him credit for that.”

  "Yes, we should," George said somberly.

  Their return to the camp was grimly silent. Lonesome stood by the fire, their gear laid out beside him. A little girl played with the straps. He scurried the child away with a wave of his hand and a whispered command, then straightened. “Yeuns be leaven’ us, but yeuns be taken’ us in yeuns hearts. Safe walkin’." Lonesome pressed his open palm to his heart. "Sola be wid yeuns.”

  George looked up, hoping to snatch a witty and wise response from the sky. Discouraged by its dismal wintry cast, he covered his unease with a friendly smile. “Sola be with you as well, Lonesome. Perhaps we'll come by this way again.”

  “Yeuns be welcome...George the x’plorer.” Lonesome held out his hand.

  George pumped it twice, held it for a long breath, squeezed and let go. “Well, we’d best be going.” In the few days they lived with the hill people, George grudgingly admitted he had grown fond of their captors. In some ways, he envied them. If it weren't for the damnable cold and a lack of indoor plumbing. With a wry grin, he slung on a backpack and accepted a lasrifle from Lonesome.

  Baider secured their comset atop his backpack, to absorb what little solar energy wheedled through the cloud cover, and shouldered his pack. He scooped up another and held it out to Heather. Wet, red eyes stared, then with a start, she sniffled and turned while Baider slipped the straps over her shoulders and squared the pack. She averted her gaze when George handed her a lasrifle, and secured it without comment. Perhaps she blamed him, as she rightly should, but her demeanor spoke only of tremendous personal loss, not anger or recrimination.

  "Heather." Tasha held out her arms, cheeks flushed, eyes pleading. Villagers gathered quietly behind her.

  A choked whimper and Heather surged into her embrace. Tasha hugged and rocked her and whispered a fragmented prayer into her ear.

  George picked up a familiar phrase, but couldn't place it. He coughed into his glove in a not too subtle hint. Though he accepted Heather's need to mourn, the whole scene left him ill at ease and impatient to get going. At his feet on the trampled grass lay Wendell's backpack and lasrifle. What harm could it do, he decided.

  “Lonesome. You keep Wendell’s stuff. There're things in the pack you’ll find useful. Wendell’s PC...with a solar charger...it’s a gray folder...you’ll figure it out. Can teach you how to find and process useful ores and elements, make tools, weapons. The things we would need to know if we got stranded here...in this time.”

  “In this time?” Lonesome shook his head no and looked down. “Not fer me ta unnerstan.”

  Thankful their journey was back on track, yet saddened in a way that had nothing to do with Wendell, George gripped Lonesome’s shoulder.

  Lonesome met his gaze. In his eyes, George saw strength and fairness, and was reassured. He clapped the new patriarch's shoulder and stepped back. These were people he cared about. How could he explain to them that what he hoped to do would erase their existence? At the very least, he had to find his crew a reality they could live with. The city under the mountains held out such a promise.

  "Take care of your people. They need you more now than ever."

  Lonesome nodded. "We be jus fine. Safe journey to yuens."

  “We’re ready, Cap.” Baider’s goodbye was abrupt, mechanical, reflective of his normal demeanor.

  “Me too, Cap.” Heather offered a wan smile, but her eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, were cold, void of emotion.

  “We be goin’ with yews a short.” Piker came forward, his Remington pump at the ready. “Meuns an’ soma da boys.”

  “Thanks, Piker. We’d appreciate that.” George glanced around the camp one last time. The poignancy of the moment faded, at once an unforgettable memory. “Okay, let’s move out. Baider, take point.” He shared another look with Lonesome, received a nod of encouragement, turned and headed northeast out of the village at a fast walk. Past the turkey pens, rooting hogs, goats and chickens, and children playing a game with sticks and rocks. Piker took the lead beside Baider. Four sturdy young men fell in behind when George and Heather passed.

  Heather glanced back. A half dozen women gathered at the village edge, waved.

  "Safe journey an' good health." Tasha called out from among them. Several youngsters interrupted their play and men nearby looked up from their chores.

  Following Heather's backward glance, George glimpsed Tasha waving before the forest blocked her from view. She reminded him of Gilda Svenson, a neighbor when he was boy, so open and giving.

  When mom went with dad to a lecture or traveled to assist this research or that, aunt Gilda watched over George. It was she who convinced an often wayward, blustery youth that he would never be happy as an ordinary seaman, his prepubescent dream. Combine love of the sea with a career in the sciences, she counseled. They were in her studio atop the family home sipping raspberry tea. He, lounging in the airy comfort of a porch swing, she prim in her long linen dress and paint-spattered smock. A spring day, dogwoods in bloom, the loft fresh with the scent of lilacs. He watched with languid curiosity, the rippled shadow of a leaf dance on her throat. You have a will that craves adventure and physical trials, she admonished without actually sounding so, and a mind that needs the discipline of science. More was said, but the point was made. She knew of a college in Florida that taught seamanship and science. That evening, after dinner, aunt Gilda informed his parents of her decision, and with a manipulative flare he came to admire, obtained their permission. Along as he kept his grades up, she’d cover his expenses and a little more, so he could create his own adventures, learn something of life in a place unlike home.

  Two days after the trawler incident, he had wound up at her front door, unable to recall how he got there. Disheveled and stinking of stale beer and filth, he began to turn away, but the door opened. She welcomed him in with a great show of pleasure, listened intently as he poured out his soul, then held his head in her lap as he cried. Beside the captain, crewmen Donnely and Watson were swept away, their bodies not recovered until days later. A boilermen, Fredrickson – drowned plugging a split hull seam in the engine room – and Eddie, the radioman, battered to death in the radio cubicle from the rough seas. He knew them all by name, but with a memory blighted by coke, George remembered little else about them.

  If he’d been at his post on the bridge, he would have heard the weathercast, plotted the storm and avoided plunging them headlong into the worst of it. Five men dead and the trawler ransomed off for scrap. It was a tribute to the ship’s aging, yet steel-hard bosun, one Stone McAllister, that the floating wreck managed to limp into port. Docking completed, Stone gave still-wired George a disgusting look and debarked without a backward glance. George saw the crew off, weathered four hours at a preliminary inquest and promptly drowned himself in booze at a local dive known for violence. A lucky punch from a pissed off dockhand --

  They arrived at the northern edge of the rolling plateau in twenty minutes. From there, stands of spindly pines and gnarled, gaunt-leafed oaks thinned amid dense thickets and granite outcroppings that kept them to a winding path cut into the hillsides. Late morning, the sun broke through for a few minutes and George took the opportunity to call a twenty-minute halt.

  Midday they reached the summit of an austere granite a
nd rock-strewn yellow-grass slope. The long, roughly straight peak paralleled a deep and craggy gorge running south southeast. Down the slope three hundred yards to their left was the polycrete remains of a massive bridge. Overgrown with brown, leafy vines, its once mighty steel supports had decayed to jagged and rust-stained stumps. On the eastern slope, waist-high patches of prairie wheat fought for dominance with the stouter, needle-sharp field grasses blanketing much of the gorge's terrain.

  “Dat be 'kay fer yews ta cross.” Piker gestured toward the relic. “Been ‘cross maself.”

  “You’re leaving us?” George had hoped they would accompany them farther.

  “Uhuh. Yews be safe ‘nough. Jes keep yews eyes open an’ watch yews backs, yews be fine.”

  “Thanks...thanks for the escort, Piker.”

  “Yews welcome. Safe journey, George the x’plorer.” Piker offered him a crooked grin, then turned abruptly and headed down-slope, towards home. With hesitant backward glances, his men followed and were soon lost to sight amid the rocky outcroppings. Baider, lasrifle cradled across his chest, loped along the grassy slope angling towards the bridge.

  “After you,” George waved expansively, ending the swing with a bow and a nod.

  “I’m flattered.” Heather flashed him a hesitant smile. “Thank you.”

  "You're welcome." That glimmer of her winsome self pleased him. He grinned and blatantly ogled her when she slipped past. She flashed him a pie-eyed look and headed down slope at a fast walk.

  A silly bonding thing, Heather called it. When they were still barely friends, he walked in on her once stepping from his office shower. Stunned, yet appreciative, he crossed his arms, leaned against the doorframe, and ogled her. She had cupped her face in her hands and given him that pie-eyed look before languidly drawing his thick white towel from the rack and wrapping herself in it. The locker room showers were being repaired, she explained, and tried to push past him. He resisted, teasing, then relented. Weeks later, he found her on hands and knees in the galley, her thin yellow shorts bottom up. Remembering the shower incident, he assumed the pose and leered. Without getting up, she flashed him that pie-eyed look and now, whenever he caught her in a suggestive position, they would play the game.

  Heather was yards ahead of him before he came back to the present. He took a hesitant step, stopped, and squinted at the eastern horizon. A metallic glint flickered above the tree tops. He retrieved a small black eyespy from his waist pouch and triggered the seek mode. Nothing. A downward glance showed Baider nearing the bridge, Heather halfway, knee deep in gently waving yellow grass.

  Uneasy, George continued the scan. To the north lay a broken ribbon of polyphalt that transected the ridge through a narrow gulch and ended at the foot of the bridge. The overgrown road was visible to the west through breaks in the tree line. Beyond the bridge, the road continued east a thousand feet before disappearing between a rocky pinnacle and a forested knoll. The twin peaks formed natural sentinels at the entrance to a rocky and sparsely treed plateau. Beyond, cloud-shrouded mountains lined the horizon. Farrell had identified these as the Cascades.

  George’s pulse quickened. There! Four peaks in a row, just as the old man in the holoimager had described. The third from the left was a fifth taller than the rest. George calculated the distance. Seven miles to the northeast. A three-hour trek.

  The map, implanted in his head by the holoimager, led them up the plateau to a passage between two smaller mounts, where they would divert north for a time, then due east. He scrambled back up to the ridgeline, eyespied in every direction, then repeated the circle. About to join the others, he glimpsed motion. Five clicks to the northwest, along the tattered road leading to the bridge, a glint, then a yellow spark and a red pinprick. The flick of a lighter and the tip of a cigarette? Tobacco? None of the hill people smoked. He focused the eyespy. Several dark figures passed in and out of the cover of trees. They were in combat patrol formation with a point man half a click out. Nine...no eleven, two bringing up the rear two hundred feet back.

  A final scan revealed movement above the treetops to the east. He auto-zoomed. It was a craft, an overgrown canoe, with light, burnished skin. It was coming right at them. Fast! Pocketing the eyespy, George snatched up his lasrifle and dashed down the slope, risking injury from dips, gouges and loose stones. "Take cover!"

  Heather looked back, slowed, waved and turned away.

  Stumbling and sliding, he quickly overtook her and lurched to a stop. Doubled over, he sucked in deep, ragged breaths until he thought he might hyperventilate.

  Heather waited, arms crossed.

  George pointed to the bridge. “Something airborne, coming our way, and a foot patrol to the west.”

  "Huh?" She scrutinized the ridge while George straightened, then looked east. “I don't see anything.”

  “Trust me.” The straps of his backpack dug cruelly into his shoulders. He shrugged them into place, and the pain eased. “Come on.” He brushed past, giving her shoulder strap a tug.

  "Sure, Cap."

  They loped through the frosted grass leaving a trail of flattened and broken blades, clear evidence of their hasty passage. Would the patrol follow, or was it already aware of their presence? Made aware of their presence...by Hanover? Learning the hill people's allies and enemies should have been a priority. Why hadn't he questioned them in that regard? Too late to matter. And that aircraft? In league with the patrol? According to Hanover, the only advanced technology the locals had, was found. Did he know of the holoimager? Could the flyers have come from the technocity to rescue them, or to stop them? Regardless, their path was set, their goal within reach.

  Near spent, George reached the bridge a step ahead of Heather, his footfalls lost in the muffled roar of white water. He knelt on one knee and studied the structure with growing dismay. Broken bits of polycrete and fluorescent-green strands of new-age polymer protruded from huge gaps in the polyphalt. Slabs of polycrete, stitched with titanium rebar, and remnants of the fiberbond superstructure, appeared to be all that held the spans together. The stumps of girders, eaten through and dangerously thin, stabbed upward at geometrically patterned angles. Vines and wild growth claimed much of the roadbed, but bare, mold-blackened patches extended across entire spans. Beneath, the gorge ran deep, white water churning over tumbled boulders and massive, rotting tree trunks.

  Having reached the far landing, Baider jogged back and arrived breathing hard. “What gives?”

  “There’s a patrol a few minutes northwest of us," George said, "I make out eleven...armed. And to the east I saw an aircraft, maybe a couple minutes out, if I gauge their airspeed.”

  “We’re wide open here. What do you suggest?”

  “Get off the bridge. Go to cover on high ground.”

  Baider rubbed his chin and studied the terrain east of the bridge. “That first knoll.” He pointed. “Good tree cover and a bald cap.”

  "How's the bridge?"

  "Little spongy in the middle, so stay to the sides."

  “Lets get there.”

  Baider nodded and headed off at a jog, staying close on the remnants of the left side rail. Heather followed a few steps behind. George took up the rear, looking over his shoulder frequently, even though he knew the patrol was still distant. On the far side of the gorge, frosted yellow grass stood waist high, making their passage more difficult, yet they were soon scrambling through thick brambles and vines blanketing the slopes of the bald top knoll. George, sorely winded long before they made the summit, refused to allow the gap between him and Baider to grow. The seaman proved to be as agile as George was not. Prickles stabbed through layers of clothing and intricately woven vines snatched at George's boots and equipment.

  With some satisfaction, he noted Baider was sucking wind when he reached the grassy circle atop the knoll, dropped his pack and sprawled, chest heaving.

  Wheezing and crimson faced, Heather eased out of her backpack and let it slip to the ground, then laid her lasrifle beside it. T
he only ex-Boston Marathon runner in the crew, she put her hands on her knees and doubled over.

  Close behind, George jerked a boot free of an entangling vine, staggered the few remaining steps, and collapsed beside them. Sucking wind as hard as they, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to regain control of his tortured lungs, quiet his pounding heart.

  “Geez, this cross-country stuff...gonna kill me,” Baider gasped at the sky.

  "Told you before..." Heather breathed, "running --"

  "Destroys the knees," Baider finished. He jerked back when she took a swipe at his head with a balled fist, glared threateningly, then softened.

  "It wouldn't hurt you to join me once in a while. The base park is beautiful in the morning."

  “And crowded.”

  Heather kneeled, stretched her arms out and rolled her torso. “With the skimpy things girls wear jogging these days, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

  “Ogling, sure. Jogging, no.”

  “Oh, forget it. You’d trip all over yourself and probably trip me up besides every time a pair of boobs bounced past. ”

  “Me?” Baider pointed to himself, but the hungry look on his face said it all. “With my jailer beside me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t get in your way.”

  Baider snorted.

  Preoccupied with the strange aircraft, George only half listened, but the manner of their banter intrigued him. Baider and Heather? Nah. Maybe. Their actions were consistent with good friends, nothing more. He conjured up a vision of the silver craft. The hill people used three hundred year old rifles and drank ancient wine, but used lite-poles and thermopads.

  "I wonder just how much advanced technology exists here," he thought out loud.

  "Some, obviously." Heather shrugged. “But nothing that requires maintenance.”

  “We shouldn’t assume that.”

  Heather rocked forward, back and surged to her feet. The flush of her cheeks had faded to a tepid pink.

  “Why? You seen something that says otherwise?” A curious look crossed her face as she glanced around, then strolled to the center of the bald top.