Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  Enemy! Lily scanned the woods with as much tension as the dog. Who? Where? She didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything, either, which didn’t mean much considering the dog’s sensitive nose was a more reliable early warning system. So what bothered him? Lion? Or Mags?

  In either case, at all costs she had to protect the horses. If they were lost, she was well and truly stuck.

  How close was the danger? Blizzard continued to test the wind currents, but didn’t signal further alarm. Still, the hair on his back didn’t flatten either. Urgency crowded her. She had to get the horses hitched and make tracks out of here—now—and trust the ground was firm enough the heavy wagon didn’t sink to the axles.

  Reaching into the camper, Lily grabbed the crossbow and quiver of arrows from a peg by the door. Feeling as if a target were nailed to her jacket, she forced unwilling legs into a trot, Blizzard bouncing alongside her.

  Chapter 27

  Expecting an ambush either by hoards of screaming mutants or a pride of hungry lions, Lily sped toward the band of trees, a quarrel nocked in the crossbow’s groove. Her abrupt appearance set the startled horses to shying as she and the pup interrupted their placid grazing. There was no sign of danger. Not yet. Releasing pent-up breath, Lily released the bow, slung it over her shoulder and went about collecting the team.

  “Whoa.” She used a no-nonsense tone when one shook his massive head and attempted to sidestep her. Blizzard stood guard as she linked a lead rope through the horse’s halters, found a downed log from which to mount the smallest, and tugged the others along behind as they lumbered toward the camper. The pup followed, turning often to stare off toward the west, testing the air with his nose. His ears twitched; once he whined.

  Lily jerked the lead rope, nearly going over backwards as a horse pulled the other way. “Hustle it up, you slugs.”

  Blizzard ran beside the little cavalcade, his growl a low, constant rumble.

  “Good boy, Blizzard. I hear them now.” She did, too, a strange, blood chilling ululation. Her heels thudded against the horse’s sides, urging more speed.

  Mags, then. Not lions. The high-pitched cries remained faint, but edged closer. Probably didn’t matter much if you got right down to it, one being as wild and dangerous as the other. If her luck was in, maybe they were far enough away she still had a chance of eluding them.

  Lily was gasping, the pain coursing through her already abused body taking a toll. They drew up beside the wagon, chunks of mud flying from the horses’ hooves. Dismounting and landing heavily on her healing leg, without pausing, Lily flung open the harness storage bin and hauled out gear. No time to lay the parts out. She had to get it right the first time. 1) Collar, 2) hame, 3) trace, 4) crupper.

  The horses would not be hurried, but at last, sweating, shaking, Lily got them hitched to the wagon. She climbed the steps to the seat. Granted, she could’ve driven from inside, but she had not the option of enclosing the rig, complete with horses, in a security bubble like Barnes had done. She had to prevent the Mags from attacking the team, and leave herself room to fight.

  ‘Hiyah,” she called softly. “Get-up.”

  The yodeling Mags were closer now. Individual shrieks and screams became clear. “Kill. Blood. Man.”

  Dreadful creatures. How did they manage to work together long enough to kill anybody but each other?

  “Hiyah.” Pulling the whip from the holder by the seat, Lily lashed out at the lead horse. Surprised by the sting, he pulled hard against the sucking mud. Blizzard, who’d evaded her when she tried to put him in the camper, chased alongside the team leader nipping at its heels, harrying them all into a shambling trot.

  But even the dog’s best efforts couldn’t force the heavy equipage over the ground fast enough to crest the hill before the first of the Mags broke into the meadow where the camper had sat for the last three days.

  Lily, looking over her shoulder at the sound of more blood-curdling ki-yiing, saw a tall, nearly naked beanstalk of a mutant gesturing several of his brethren on. “Kill,” he shouted. Then, “Woman. Blood.”

  Woman? How had he known from so long of a distance? And were those the only words they knew? Best not stick around and ask.

  As she watched, he beat a fist against his chest. The mutant gave chase, long, praying mantis-like legs covering ground as though he ran on a groomed lane instead of a muddy track. Outdistancing his companions, every stride brought him nearer.

  Heart going like a trip-hammer, Lily whipped the horses again. Dammit. Dammit! Half-frozen ground sucked at the horse’s hooves, clutching at them like quicksand.

  Silence made no difference now. Finding her voice, Lily yelled encouragement to the team. Even so, as they started down the other side of the hill, she turned and saw the Mag gaining on her. He’d soon catch up.

  “Pointy-toothed bastards.” Gritting her own teeth, Lily gave the lines some slack and wound them around pegs at the front of the foot box. Wear showed where Barnes had done the same when without need for guidance. She didn’t know about the guidance thing, but definitely needed the use of both her hands.

  Dropping her gloves onto the seat, she loosened the big survival knife worn as a matter of course on her belt, and picked up the crossbow. Enough bolts? Every one had to find its mark.

  Glancing back, she saw the creature already only a dozen yards behind, his long legs pumping like steel pistons.

  Lily’s team, though steady goers, had no great turn of speed. Flicking the whip again, she shouted to them, wound the bow and set a bolt. The wagon swayed, skewing and slipping, as it rolled over a melting drift.

  Seconds later the brown-skinned mutant caught up with the wagon. Staring up at her and grinning, he grabbed the hand rail and easily swung himself onto the suddenly not-so-convenient stair.

  Lily loosed the arrow nearly point blank, just as the Mag slipped on the unaccustomed step and fell to one knee. The bolt flew over his head. She reached for another, never completing the motion. The creature’s stench made her gag as, recovering his balance, he lunged at her, a wickedly sharpened axe with a short handle raised to whack her head.

  Without conscious thought, fire zinged from her bare fingers. The Mag screeched and clawed frantically at the fiery pellets blinding him. Lily kicked out at him with her good leg, her foot sinking ankle deep into his belly and booting him from the wagon. The heavy vehicle bumped over his writhing body. His cries stopped.

  They sped on, if you could call the horse’s even trot speeding. To Lily, it felt more like wading through chest deep water. She readied the crossbow again, setting another quarrel and sliding across the rig’s seat at the next jolt. And even as she fixed her eyes on the next grade, willing the horses on, a Mag wearing moccasins, short pants, and a fur shawl type thing over its shoulders, dashed into the trail ahead of them, brandishing a straight, four-foot spear sharpened to a pencil point. The creature, female, judging by its piercing cries and semi-exposed breasts, drew back her throwing arm, prepared to drive the spear through the lead horse’s chest. The animal tossed his head, eyes rolling white, and tried to turn.

  “Hiyah,” Lily yelled. Fire would probably scare the horse as badly as the Mag. Instead, she grabbed the crossbow, took aim, released. No miss this time.

  The Mag had no chance of evasion, almost seeming unaware of the danger until the arrow stabbed through her middle. Then the creature plucked at the shaft, drawing it out with a cry, her guts spilling around thin fingers before she staggered out of the horse’s path and fell to the ground.

  The female was only the first. More of the hive swarmed the wagon, thumping the heavy wooden sides with clubs and spears, chopping at the wheels with their war axes. A cacophony of screaming, blurred words, and the whirl of weapons accompanied them.

  Lily screamed along with them, until her throat became sore and hoarse. She hollered at the horses, at the dog, at the clustering Mags. Caught a spear in a net of fire no more than six feet from her chest. Knocked a knife-wielding male slidi
ng over the camper’s top to the ground with a well-timed blow with her own, larger blade. Time after time, she drew fire to her fingertips, flinging it down onto the Mags in a blistering hail.

  The horses took a few glancing wounds, until their white hides were zebra striped with blood. Blizzard ran using only three legs, taking cover now beneath the wagon where his sharp teeth snapped at any Mag who too closely approached the stair.

  A blaze, ignited by a stray flicker of witch light, tore through a few straggling pines at Lily’s right, the conflagration chasing two Mags from cover into her rain of fire.

  And then, quite suddenly, there were no more cries, no more spears or knives or savage teeth to dodge. No more reeking Mags to kill. Only a litter of dead sprawled along the back trail, abandoned by the wounded who crawled away.

  After one look, she drove on without stopping.

  ***

  Come noon, Nate Quick dismounted in the lea of a gigantic basalt boulder, the hallmark of this traditional camping area. The spot had, he knew, been used in the same way even in the old time, a resting place for travelers. This is where he had expected to catch up with Lily, he and Jake having made better time than the big camper wagon could manage. The storm had delayed them some, but not as long as it would’ve her.

  “So where is she?” Jake asked, looking around and hunching his shoulders as a dollop of melting snow fell on him from a tree branch.

  Nate was asking himself that same question. “Don’t know.” He poked at an oddly shaped pile of stones, the base of which was held together by mortar. He believed it had once given a name to this place. “Get down. Let’s see if we can pick up her trail. That camper is heavy enough to leave traces even on frozen ground.”

  Swinging off his horse, Jake scanned the area. “There’s wood over by the fire-pit. Think we can make tea? I could stand something warm in my gizzard.”

  Scouting the five-acre patch would take a little time. Long enough to make the fire worthwhile. “Good idea,” Nate said, leading his horse over to a second, smaller ring of stones. The Screenmaster’s recovering draft horse, in use as a pack animal, followed his roan.

  He and Jake set about knocking snow off wood and digging into the pile to find dry stuff. Shouldn’t have been anything left to burn, he reflected uneasily, if Lily had made it this far. They knew she’d been only a few miles away and on the proper course, but then the storm had come in and wiped out any sign of her passage.

  The kid hunkered beside him while he searched for a match. “Too bad Lily ain’t here. She’d have this fire roaring in a flash.”

  Nate forced a grin. “I hope she’d be more cautious than to do that. There’s a Mag hive somewhere close around here. Smoke is apt to draw them like flies on fresh kill.” Which was why he was building his small fire under a tree where the smoke would be lost among the branches. Nothing he could do about the scent.

  While they waited for snow water to boil, Nate took one side of the rest area and Jacob the other, pacing out a grid searching for traces of her. To Nate’s chagrin, he found nothing.

  “Think she beat the storm out of here?” Jake had returned to the fire and was peeking into their small pot to see if the tea was hot. Finding it was, he poured them each a tin cup full, the fragrant steam rising in the cold air.

  A chill was settling in Nate’s innards that had nothing to do with the weather. “I told her to wait here until it was past, but I can’t see where she even made it this far.”

  “She can’t have got lost, can she? Not if she kept to the map you drew her.”

  Nate didn’t want to talk about the alternatives. Too restless to sit like a fireplace granny and drink tea strong with rose hips, he gulped down the steaming liquid even as Jacob warmed his hands around his own mug.

  “I’ll water the horses,” Nate said abruptly, setting his cup aside for Jake to pack in his saddlebags.

  The stream was where he discovered a possible reason for Lily’s absence.

  “Jake,” he yelled, “get your ass over here.”

  Dropping his cup, Jake got. “What’d you find, Nate?”

  Nate, hunkering beside his discovery, pointed. Tracks been made when the soil was thawed and damp, then frozen firm, and now, with the return of warmer temperatures, showed as indentations filled with water. The sign was clear enough to read, however.

  “Shit,” Jake said. “Lion. An old male and a couple females.” He pointed his nose and sniffed. “Not here now. Can’t smell’em.”

  Standing, Nate stared off toward the southeast, wishing for a glimpse of the round-topped camper. “She saw them and went on without stopping. They didn’t run wild before the Event, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard. Those big cats must’ve scared her plenty.”

  “Hell, yes. They scare me.” Nate fingered the sword hilt poking over his shoulder, the handiest, most comfortable way to carry it when riding. “Mount up.” he said.

  Towards evening they found where Lily had spent the storm. Discovered the chewed down grass by the creek where her horses had grazed, and wondered that the wagon tracks stopped in the clearing.

  “Squatted out here in the middle making sure Mags or those lions didn’t sneak up on her,” Nate said.

  “Smart.” Admiration showed in Jake’s nod. “You’d think she was one of us instead of a Cross-up. Most of those folks don’t know hardly anything practical.”

  “She was friends with our people,” Nate reminded the kid, “back in the old times.”

  “I forget she’s old, except for when Neila and Selkirk hound her about it.”

  Lily had obviously survived the storm just fine, Nate figured, packing up and heading out when the weather cleared.

  They camped by the creek that night, sure they’d come up with her the next day, but feeling no particular pressure to hurry. That came the next morning when, having crested the hill beyond the meadow, Jake noticed a strange thing.

  He’d been eyeing the evidence of Lily’s passage with a furrowed brow, and finally broke his silence. “Does it look to you like these horses are being pushed?”

  Nate’s gaze sharpened. “Pushed?”

  “Yeah. See where the horses’ stride changed? Looks like she was trying to make ’em run. Why would she do that?”

  “Guess we’ll find out. Keep your eyes peeled.” A sour spot was forming in Nate’s belly. Lily was hardly an expert teamster. She wouldn’t be asking those big horses to do any more than walk steadily if she had her druthers.

  In the end, it was his sharp eyes that first caught a glimmer of the trouble that’d hit Lily. A glove, one of the few items brought through in her resurrection and precious to her for that reason. It lay a few feet beyond the track left by the wagon. She would’ve come back for it if it’d gone missing by accident.

  But the glove in itself wasn’t the only thing that gave him the collywobbles. That took the narrow, elongated print of a man’s foot on top, grinding it into the mud.

  “Mags.” Jake’s voice was hushed.

  Nate swung down from Pigeon and retrieved the glove, shaking the blue leather and Gore-Tex free of dirt before tucking it into his belt. His face grim, he remounted without saying a word, heeling his horse into a trot. They rode on.

  “Birds on the wing,” Jake said soberly, pointing ahead. “Circling and diving. Something dead.” An apt student of Bannion’s lessons, he noticed things like that.

  Nate grunted, having seen them as well.

  They went down the other side of the hill and back up another. From there they could see the trail ahead. There was no trace of the camper, but there were a couple of lumps in the road.

  “Dead Mags,” Jake announced on a note of pride as they stopped to examine the first, a scarred mutant cut nearly in half by the camper’s steel-bound wheels.

  They found more, three, four, seven, on the road as it unwound in front of them. Jake pumped his fist as though responsible for each one, but Nate felt none of his young friend’s ebullience. He wouldn�
��t be satisfied until they caught up with the big camper wagon and he saw Lily alive and well for himself.

  Gonna kiss her again. As many times as she’d let him. Those were the promises he made himself. ‘And then, by God, I’m gonna try to get laid. She’s gonna be my woman.’ He blinked, erasing the vision.

  “You plan on standing here all day?” he growled to Jake. “No more talk. Move it.”

  Chapter 28

  Lily guided the three-horse team along what once had been Highway 95, reins slack, letting the animals set their own pace. From time to time she called encouragement to them, mostly just to hear the sound of her own voice. She thought it comforted the horses, too, in some way. The animals had been severely tried during her running fight with the Mags a few days ago. Superficial—thankfully only superficial—cuts were healing on their hides.

  The sun beat down on her bare head. Hard to think a week ago a blizzard had piled snow high. Now, only small heaps remained on the north side of the rolling hills. Blizzard the pup, his left hind foot almost healed from the injury the day of the Mags attack, sat beside her on the bench seat. Every now and then, he barked at low flying birds.

  Bless Jake for giving her the dog, she thought, for about the thousandth time. The little Karelian Bear dog gave her someone to talk to.

  These last few days of the trip had been peaceful, almost boring, considering what had gone on before. Except that she was having a hard time reconciling herself to the emptiness of a landscape once taken up with towns, homes, farms, highways filled with people. Here and there she passed through areas still bleak and blackened from that hideous night her world ended. Even so there were signs of the land recovering. Give it another hundred years.

  Would she still be here to see it? The question worried her. Were Cross-ups immortal, unless deliberately killed, like Philip Barnes?

  The one caravan she met eyed her with suspicion only slightly mollified by her lone status. Their group, consisting of two camper wagons much like the one taken from Screenmaster, only smaller, and six outriders harrying a small herd of cattle, had no doubt feared a trap.