Derek took a few minutes to catch his breath from both the tension and the physical exertion of his approach, then moved around the side of the structure away from the road and slipped to the edge of the front porch. He ducked under the smooth, de-barked pine railing onto the worn planks of the porch, itself. Crouching so as to stay beneath the unblinking glare of the picture window, he shifted his weight slowly from one foot to the other as he pressed toward the door, mindful of the need for silence.
He stared at the door and at the porch immediately in front of it for a full minute. Somehow, something was wrong; his combat senses tingled with warning. But try as he might, he couldn’t discern the problem. The door was plain enough, rough-cut hardwood timbers banded by three black iron strips, with a simple latch to match. No tripwires or triggers were visible, at least not in the light that the night afforded him. The boards on the porch were worn in a gentle arc outside the door, the obvious result of ten thousand steps or more having trod in a familiar pattern over the years gone by. No, there was not even a peephole through which he might be being watched.
Suddenly, he realized what his eyes had registered earlier, but his mind had ignored. He looked up with a start to his left.
Where the hell was the fucking rocking chair?
“Nice evening for a sit along the lake, doncha’ think?” The raspy old voice came from a scrub of trees thirty-five feet away, even with the front of the cabin, but toward the lake. Derek turned rapidly toward the sound, cursing his incompetence; the whole time he had been circling around that side of the cabin, his senses had been focused inward, toward the structure itself, ignoring the full field of battle.
“Slowly there, fella. I’d just as sure blow you in half from this distance, but it would leave a heckuva stain on the porch and I’d have to clean it real good, so’n it wouldn’t attract any critters. Besides, a piece of shot might take out my nice, purty window and I reckon you ain’t worth a window.”
Derek instinctively slowed his movement and spread his arms away from his body, his right hand still clutching his automatic weapon. Never disagree with someone who has the drop on you, at least not until you can assess the situation and come up with a plan.
As he turned, he saw the old codger, leaning forward in his rocker, elbows on the arms of the chair as he casually waved the gun at Derek’s midsection. White hair spilled out beneath a John Deere Construction Equipment baseball cap, topping a wrinkled, weather-beaten face framed by an unruly white and gray beard. The old man sported a plaid, long-sleeved shirt with several dark stains; sturdy, but worn, jeans; and heavy hiking boots.
He was old, but neither feeble nor palsied. The gun was steady in his hands. Derek could probably take him in a fair fight—even with the bruises and stiffness that still assaulted his midsection—but he saw no way to get into such a situation. Rushing the gent would be sure to get him blown away. Even bringing his weapon and its rubber bullets to bear would take enough time for the codger to make a decision to fire, picture window be damned. Derek stalled for time.
“Uh, sorry. You startled me.” He made a show of slowly lowering his weapon to the planks of the porch. “Just for protection, you know. I was . . . I was about to knock and see if anybody was living here and, you know, maybe take refuge inside for the night.”
The old man snorted in disgust and derision. “Hellfire, boy. Don’t lie to me. Here I come all the way out here to live, so’n I don’t get lied to by the politicians and the salesmen and all the rest o’ what passes for civilization, then you have to go and come all the way up here just to lie to me straight off. Tain’t no way to start a respectable conversation.”
There was no reason to lie, but the instinct of a prisoner is always to do so, not so much to deprive the enemy of information, but as a way of attempting to assert some control over a situation where, in fact, none exists.
“Sorry, I . . . uh . . . just came over the pass . . .”
“Hell’s bells, you did,” interrupted his captor. “Ya came straight up the old scenic ridge road, stopped mid-afternoon, then snuck about for more’n an hour, huffin’ and puffin’ and gruntin’ your way uphill, then crashin’ and slippin’ your way back down the hill.” The coot squinted slightly and looked him up and down. “Stashed somethin’ uphill, too, by the looks of it.”
There was no use pretending anymore. Besides, Derek didn’t really want an enemy. He wanted food, shelter, and some transportation back to what passed for a life on this godforsaken world. He exhaled deeply and made a conscious decision to relax.
“For somebody in the middle of nowhere, you keep a pretty good eye out for intruders.”
The old guy snorted again, but relaxed sufficiently to actually rock slightly in his chair.
“You get dropped on your head a lot when you were young?” He paused momentarily, but didn’t really wait for a response to his question. “‘Cause, you sure ain’t that bright, boy. Look over your right shoulder, back south and west. Whaddya see?”
Derek strained his neck back and to the right, his tense muscles creaking with the unaccustomed stretching. South and west, an orange glow still glimmered behind the dark profiles of intervening mountains and ridgelines.
“Started up a few days ago,” noted his captor. “Kinda hard to miss, especially before the wind shifted.”
Derek felt stupid, but he again felt he was on top of the situation. He had come from where the fire was, so its lingering presence was natural to him. No doubt it had scared this old mountain man. He turned back, with a knowing smile. “So, you were watching the fire, in case you had to . . .” He almost said “head for the hills” before he thought better of it, “. . . uh . . . evacuate.”
The old man stopped rocking and shook his head. “Tarnation, boy. You apparently got dropped on the head up until you was full-growed.” He stood up. “Fire’s a good piece away and the breeze has been away from here more’n a day now, so it ain’t headed hereabouts. ‘Sides, there’s a good stretch of burnt timber between it and here, even if’n the wind were to shift back. Things are quiet here, but not so quiet that watching a dull orange glow darn near thirty miles away passes for entertainment.” The hermit shifted his hips left and right and shrugged his shoulders to work out the stiffness and kinks from having sat motionless for such a long time.
Derek waited for him to explain.
“Y’see, there weren’t no weather the day the fire started. It weren’t no lightning strike. These days, a fire startin’ where there ain’t been lightning means one of two things. The most likely is people—either stupid people not mindin’ their campfire or stupider ones yet, tossin’ their lit cancer-sticks into the brush, less’n, o’ course, they just be pyromaniacs startin’ fires for jollies or some sick gratification or somesuch. And people, well people almost always mean trouble. That’s why I moved out here.”
Derek was right. The old coot was a hermit. No telling how long he had been out here.
“What’s the second?” Derek asked politely.
“Huh?”
“You said fire without a storm meant one of two things. What’s the second?”
“Not too bright, but you do pay attention. Coal seams.”
Now it was Derek’s turn to say, “Huh?”
“Sometimes you get fires in the mountains, underground fires in the seams of coal. They burn away slow and quiet like, cause there ain’t much oxygen under the ground. Every once in a while, they reach the surface or the rocks shift and the fire gets exposed to the air and they flare up.”
Derek had never heard of, had never imagined, such a thing.
“What starts them in the first place?”
“Hell, if I know. Some of ‘em, they be goin’ fer thirty, forty, a hunnert years or more. Back when the rich folk all took to buildin’ places in the mountains, you know, down at the lower elevations, they’d just build whole developments right on top of some coal seam fire, then act all surprised and outraged when sudden-like there would be this big fir
e all around ‘em. People are stupid.”
“That’s the truth,” agreed Derek.
“Stupid and mean,” continued the old man. He gestured with his shotgun, bringing the wandering aim back on target as a way of getting back on subject. “Time to prove you’re smart and nice. No more fibs. I’m an old guy and I don’t take too kindly to wastin’ any time I got, even if I don’t get much by the way of conversation lately.”
Derek collected his thoughts for a moment. Aside from the macho bullshit banter and insults of the squad, Derek hadn’t really had a conversation himself—not a real conversation—for a long, long time. Not only that, but he was still on a mission. He did still have a duty and maybe, just maybe, he would get a chance to perform it without interference from A. K.’s brutality and Manning’s delight in terror. And if he was going to be stuck in this world and finish out his service in the Conversion Forces, he’d best be thinking about what he was supposed to be doing here.
So Derek began at the very beginning, with an introduction. “My name is Derek, Derek Williger.”
The old man looked at him for a moment before responding without lowering his weapon. “Kyle Patterson.”
“You’re not going to believe this, I expect, Mr. Patterson, but I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
* * * * *
If he’d been alone when she found him, it would have been easy to kill him. Aside from his one abrupt change in direction, there had been nothing to indicate that he was concerned about being followed, about being tracked like they had tracked and hunted her. It probably would have been easy to sweep down on him unawares, even perhaps while he slept, with her weapon blazing and cries of victory and vengeance for Joshua, for Sanctuary, frothing on her lips.
Maria gazed through the night-scope on her weapon up at the vignette taking place in front of the mountainside hideaway. Given the dim light, the distance, and the fact that the dusty lens was old and scratched from use by others less careful with equipment than she, the scene was difficult to make out with precision. Her ConFoe prey was on the porch, apparently without a weapon, talking to a man on the ground, off toward the small lake to the right of the cabin. The other man had a cap on, but was largely obscured by an intervening bush. She could not tell if the two were friends or foes, only that there was nothing in their gestures—no arm-waving or clenched fists—to indicate that they were arguing.
The ambiguity was problematic. For all she knew, this was a ConFoe safe-house or supply station; the cabin was in a remote area too far away from Sanctuary for her to have any knowledge of it—they focused their patrols on the area nearby and along the main routes to the plains from there. Maybe the ConFoes had secured the lesser-used passes as a way to close off an area they were sweeping. For all she knew, her target could be about to communicate his squad’s activities to ConFoe HQ via a transmitter hidden away out of her sight in the cabin. Perhaps he already had.
The thought of such possibilities caused her adrenaline to surge and bile to rise to her throat. She wanted nothing more than to firebomb the place and sort through the ashes for clues later, like she had on the highway.
On the other hand, it troubled her somewhat that her bloodlust was so strong and so quick to stir. That was what the leaders back at Sanctuary always accused the ConFoes of—an animalistic desire for destruction. Then, too, the other man could be a mal, maybe even a Believer. Even though the mals were made up of wildly divergent, even belligerent and contradictory, groups and factions, she could not kill someone who was not a ConFoe out of hand. It would be wrong; it would be a sin. If he were a Believer, living alone in freedom in this world, he would be safe in the next world, but it was not her choice to send him there. If he were a mal, but not a Believer, her duty was to offer him the opportunity to choose to believe, the one choice never offered by the ConFoes.
Maria wasn’t naïve. She lived in the real world, the only real world. She couldn’t merely walk up defenseless and inquire. That was a good way to die.
No, the choice was not what Jesus would do. Jesus would get blown away in a hail of gunfire.
These days, Believers were not so trusting, not so pure. The contradiction between her ideals and her situation was troubling, but every religious organization with a military or security force had long-since been faced with the same quandary. She chose not to try to answer questions that had puzzled mankind for millennia. She was not so egotistical to believe that she would find the solution, the perfect answer that they had missed. She had learned to merely forge ahead and let God’s will manifest itself.
She needed more information before she could do anything.
She left the easily watched roadway and headed overland to circle toward the cabin from behind the small lake. She reckoned she could be within earshot in an hour, maybe two.
She forced her adrenaline down. She put aside her vengeance. She swore to her God, to the God, that she would let their words determine their fate.
Chapter 8
“Don’t have to pay no taxes if’n I don’t make any money,” grumbled the old man, an edge to his voice. The mention of government had apparently riled Kyle, not that Derek had really expected anything different. “Done my service for my country, too. Besides, don’t put no stock in all those damn foolish wars they was always gettin’ into back b’fore Henrietta and I came up here.”
Derek glanced around, trying to determine where Henrietta stood silently in the darkness, with yet another weapon trained on him.
“Don’t you fret none about her. She ain’t . . . here no more, may she rest in peace.” Kyle suddenly looked even older in the dim light.
“How long?”
“Henrietta, she’s been gone six years now, seven come October. Died peaceful-like, in her sleep. I think she just didn’t have another winter in her—winters are a might tough up here.”
“No, how long have you been up here?”
“Oh, hell, we moved up here damn near thirty-five years ago. Didn’t like the crowdin’ y’know. All them yuppies movin’ into the hills and puttin’ Pizza Huts and athletic clubs and all sorts of other damn fool nonsense everywhere. Told the nice, young feller at the real estate place we wanted some place secluded, with a nice view, and he did all right by us. Never did come pick up his sign afterwards, though. Guess it was a bit of a drive.”
“You mean, you’ve been alone up here for thirty-five years?”
“Not even close. Zack, he used to deliver supplies now and then up until, I dunno, about ten years ago. We ordered less and less. Guess it stopped being worth his while finally, ‘specially since we only paid with meat.”
The mere word caused Derek to salivate. “Meat?”
“Elk, mostly. Big old herd moves through the pass every spring and fall. I take a few, no more than I can use, that’s fer sure. You should see those big ol’ boys when they’s bugling for mates during ruttin’ season. Fine, strappin’ elk, there, and the honeys, they come a runnin’ for a good bugler.”
The old man paused, then seemed to push his mind back to the subject at hand. “Anyhow, ain’t seen nobody since b’fore Henrietta passed.”
“A lot’s happened in the world since you’ve been up here, Kyle. A lot. I’m here to give you a choice as to what to do about it, but first I have to explain it all to you.”
“Then you’re not here to collect taxes or throw me outta my place?”
“I’m here to give you something, if you choose to take it,” replied Derek smoothly, as he had been trained. He immediately, however, felt a pang of guilt for his lie by omission.
“Well then, bucko, let’s not stand out here in the dark. If’n you promise to behave, we’ll go in and I’ll rustle up some stew and you can tell me all about whatever damn foolishness the government is pushin’ on unsuspectin’ folk these days.”
Derek smiled at the thought of the stew and began to bend to retrieve his weapon. A motion from Kyle halted the effort.
“Leave it be there fer
now. Ain’t nobody gonna take it, but it ain’t never too wise to trust the government too much and, right now, that’s you.”
Derek didn’t really mind. The old fellow seemed friendly enough. Besides, Derek gladly would have traded his weapon—heck, he would have traded his left testicle (which still ached like a son-of-a-bitch)—for a bowl of Kyle’s elk stew.
Kyle casually snatched up Derek’s weapon as he went by and the two men went inside. Not friends, not yet. But not still enemies. Derek was happy to leave it at that for now. There was time yet to be enemies after they had become friends, after he had explained everything, after Kyle made his choice.
But, most importantly, after they ate.
* * * * *
Maria could not always keep the cabin in view as she moved in a wide arc toward the lake beside it, but that was probably best. She did not wish to be seen. At some point, however, she glimpsed the cabin again and noted that the two men were no longer in sight, but that smoke was rising vigorously from the chimney, plainly visible against the clear sky, its haze joining the shimmering swath of the Milky Way in the dark firmament above her.
The door remained open, she noted. It would assist the draw of air by the fire and help alleviate the heat produced by the flames. She hoped they were cooking.
She feared that they were sending a signal to the ConFoe satellites that hide among the points of light heavenward . . . no . . . in the night sky. Not heavenward, never heavenward. For all their promises, nothing produced by the ConFoes had anything to do with heaven.
She quickened her pace.
* * * * *
The cabin was one large room, with planked wooden flooring, like the porch, and rough-hewn pine walls, unfinished, just like the outside. On the left a Franklin-style stove sat off to the one side of the fireplace, its round exhaust piping disappearing into the maw of the massive fireplace at that end of the cabin. Near the front of the cabin on that side was a stainless steel sink and some cupboards. A massive pine bed was in the back-left corner, along with a matching dresser. A wooden table with two chairs sat in the midst of the cabin, while a rectangle of a trapdoor suggested a root cellar below. A slipcovered couch sat facing the large picture window on the right side of the cabin. Stores and equipment of various types lay scattered behind it in the back-right of the cabin.
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