by Eric Flint
Buster had had a favored expression, when he wanted to describe someone in a really dark fury. "He's feeling Old Testament," he'd say.
Denise Beasley was feeling very Old Testament that day. Who cared whether Bryant Holloway had been directly responsible for her father's death? Had the God of the Old Testament cared about the fussy details when he slew all the firstborn of Egypt?
Not hardly. If it was good enough for God, it was good enough for Denise.
They found Holloway's truck, but there was no sign of Holloway himself. Denise took the carbine from Minnie and climbed into the truck bed. Then, stooped so she could get a better look at the papers he had in there.
" Look out!" Minnie shouted.
Two gunshots. They shouted like pistol shots. Nine millimeter, maybe.
Denise sprawled flat and then peeked over the side of the truck, in Minnie's direction. She could see Minnie's feet sticking out from behind a different tree, where she must have gone for shelter.
Movement to the left. She looked and saw Holloway, rising from behind a bush. He must have heard them coming and been waiting in ambush.
He saw her at the same time, aimed in her direction, and fired two more shots with his pistol.
Both of them went wild, as far as Denise could tell. But she wasn't paying much attention to that. She was getting up on one knee and the carbine was coming to her shoulder and she was a damn good shot and her soul was now well into Leviticus.
Bam! Bam! She didn't even feel the recoil.
Holloway was down, sprawled against another tree. There was blood all over his chest.
There were a lot of chapters in Leviticus, none of them kindly and forgiving. And there were fifteen rounds in the magazine of her M-1 carbine.
Which her Daddy had given her, for her twelfth birthday.
She went through the entire clip. Only the last two shots missed. By then, finally, Denise Beasley had started crying and her aim got a little wobbly.
She didn't cry for long, though. By the time Minnie came up, she was dry-eyed. In fact, she was starting to reload.
"You going to keep shooting him?" Minnie asked.
Denise thought about it. "I guess there's not much point, any longer."
Minnie shook her head. "No. He's dead. I don't think anybody in the history of the world has ever been deader."
Shots, in the distance. One, two. Then another two. Then another two. Then a whole fusillade.
They came around a curve. From this direction, it was easy enough to see where Bryant had driven the truck off the road. The spring growth of the plants along the way was still a little squashed.
Better to be cautious. They stopped and cut the engines. Nathan and Chandra got off. Missy and Ron pushed the cycles. When they reached the cutoff, each of them followed one set of the truck tracks.
Not just the truck. Another motorcycle.
A motorcycle, pretty obviously, whose rider had been more skilled than Ron and Missy. And who had a second rider on the pillion who had spotted the truck on the way into Frankfurt. Who had stopped to investigate.
Denise and Minnie were, quite calmly, putting Bryant Holloway's body into the cab of the truck, behind the steering wheel.
With Denise, in a most businesslike manner, advising Minnie to use a handkerchief to roll down the window. "Just in case they've heard of fingerprints or one of the Grantvillers in town tells them, we'd better not leave any. There's probably not a lot of crime detection going on. We can hope, anyway."
"What about his gun?" Minnie asked.
"Take it. No reason for anyone to know he dropped it here, and one more can always come in handy."
That was about the time they saw the others coming.
They didn't panic in the least. Just finished what they were doing and waited until the others came down toward the truck.
They gave a quick description of what had happened.
Ron looked into the truck. There wasn't as much blood as you'd expect in there. Probably because Holloway had already bled out before they muscled him into the cab, as many times as he'd been shot.
You could recognize him, but just barely. Two of Denise's shots had hit him in the face.
Ron and Missy looked at one another. It was perfectly clear that the girls were of the opinion that they had not done anything wrong. As they saw it, Bryant Holloway had helped bring into Grantville the demonstrators who killed Denise's dad, had helped the people who arranged the killing of Mayor Dreeson, who gave Minnie her eye.
Minnie was pretty Old Testament herself. She reached up into the socket, popped it out, and held it out for them to look at. None of the others had ever observed this phenomenon before. It did have the effect of taking their minds off Holloway's death for the time being. "I owed him," Minnie said.
"No different from killing a mad dog," was Denise's summary.
The four others stood there, wondering if there was any way to salvage the situation.
Minnie and Denise looked at one another. There was no telling how long the others were going to stand around. With the possibility that someone else could come along any minute and find them there. Shots tended to attract attention. Since they were of the opinion that the papers were now available to the people who had gone looking for them and that they had already taken care of the rest of situation quite adequately, they climbed back on Buster's cycle and started for home.
"See you later!" Denise called over her shoulder.
For one thing, they were cutting school. They saw more of the truant officer than they wanted to even without side trips to Frankfurt. Mrs. Dreeson and Mrs. Wiley would be pissed. Mrs. Dreeson and Mrs. Wiley had a tendency to compare their behavior at considerable length to the far more responsible and thus infinitely preferable manner in which Annalise Richter and Idelette Cavriani approached life.
Having a mentor could be a real pain.
"I don't believe it, quite," Missy was saying, "but he has Dumais' papers thrown in the back here. Just tied up in bundles with red tape around them. Without so much as a camper cover. What if it had started raining?"
"He wasn't thinking straight when he left Grantville," Ron answered. "That's pretty obvious. Reach over the edge of the truck bed and lift them out. Try not to snag your sleeves or anything. Pack them into the sidecars. I hope there's not more than will fit."
"There's more than will fit into one. I think that we can put the rest into the bottom of the other one and then the full gas cans on top. But we can't leave the empty gas cans here."
"Give the empty cans to Nathan to carry," Chandra said. "He might as well be of some use, for a change."
"That's it, then. Let's get out of here before someone shows up to investigate those shots. Prickett, we're going back to your place." Ron started his cycle. On the way out, he was once more careful to follow one of the tracks that the truck tires had made on the way in. Missy followed the other one.
Nathan Prickett was sulking, insofar as an adult could be said to sulk. That kid Ron had started giving him directions. Notify the Frankfurt authorities where he found the vehicle; say that he found Bryant dead in it; had no idea who'd killed him; say that he had gone looking because he knew that his brother-in-law was coming and he was getting worried because of the delay; remind them that Bryant had been here before on that firefighting detail.
Ron ran through it again. "Tell them that you were expecting him again and were getting worried because of the delay. Tell them you saw tracks where the truck ran off the road. Before you notify them, hide the empty gas cans-and make sure that you send them back to Denise and Minnie when you get a chance, because they are practically irreplaceable. Let the authorities worry about what to do with the truck next. It has a fire department sticker on it, so that will back up your reminder that Bryant was here in connection with that the last time."
"At least," Missy said, "I'm Chandra's cousin. It may make some minimal sense that I would have come to give her a ride back home. If anyone asks you why we
were here. If nobody asks, don't bring it up."
Then she glared at Nathan.
"Which reminds me, Prickett you prick. Exactly what did you think you were doing leaving Chandra to sit there shivering in front of the Post Office, waiting for some way to get back home, not having the slightest idea when a ride would come along? What were you expecting her to do if none came along today? Sit there all night?"
"I told her not to come," Nathan said sullenly. "I've told her that all along."
"He doesn't want us to live together any more," Chandra said. "He doesn't want any more children. It's not in his plans."
Ron turned around and stared. "You know," he said. "That is really stupid. You could always take a couple of weeks off. Go back to Grantville for a few days. Go to Dr. Shipley and get a vasectomy if you really want to go back home. Or if you want to have Chandra and the kids come here. Unless you're so attached to keeping the family jewels as an option, even though you already have more kids than you want, that you're willing to ruin all of your lives."
"Look, Stone," Nathan said. "None of this is any of your business at all."
"Chandra is Missy's cousin."
Nathan blinked. "What does that have to do with it?" He had a strange feeling of being out of the loop. Why should it make any difference to the Stone kid that Chandra was Missy's cousin?
Missy interrupted. "And, now that the possibility of doing something about it has been pointed out, if you tell her to go have her tubes tied instead so you can keep the jewels, I personally will tell the whole world that you're willing to risk her life unnecessarily. That's abdominal surgery. Something they can do these days, if they have to. But no joke. Way too high risk, compared with your option. You're not worth it to her. Believe me, you are not. She doesn't have to put up with you. She has people around who love her."
Ron kept going. "Face, it, Prickett. It's one thing for couples who want kids, but not yet. Or still want more kids, but not right now. They have to deal with the whole spacing thing. Timing thing. Inconvenient timing thing. But where are you getting off on this? The whole point is that you don't want any more at all. If you don't intend to do anything sensible, you at least ought to have the common decency to ask your wife for a divorce and let her get on with her life. Talk about being a dog in the manger."
Chandra looked from one to another. She had not wanted to come quite as far as that word. Divorce. At least not yet. She'd thought around it, of course. Back last fall. Talking to Paige Modi. Talking to Aunt Debbie at Thanksgiving. Skipped around it. Skirted around it. Never quite looked it in the face. She hadn't quite wanted to think that it was something that could happen to her.
Divorce. Now Ron had said it for her. With Nathan in the room. She couldn't pretend that it didn't exist. Not any more. Maybe she was as bad as Nathan, in her own way. It wasn't something she had planned on.
Nathan's reaction to Ron's unsolicited advice was far from favorable.
Particularly when Ron expressed the opinion that in all probability he was just using this as an excuse-that if he didn't have it, he would be finding some other reason to skip out on his responsibilities.
"What in hell do you know about it?"
"If someone wants to dump his kids-or hers-he will. Or she will. He'll find a reason. Or she will. What did you want? Not real sons, apparently. A couple of little wind-up toys to pat on the head at the end of the day?"
***
Missy flinched. This wasn't just about Nathan and Chandra. For Ron, this was about him and his brothers. About abandonment. About children left without a father. Or a mother. Even if Ron wasn't conscious of it himself.
Missy decided that she couldn't calm the situation down. She had no idea how to do that. But she could bring it to an end.
"Stop it," she said. "Both of you. We've got to get going. If we don't leave now, we won't make any decent time today at all. We don't want to get stuck out on the road somewhere."
Nathan Prickett stood outside his house, looking at the vanishing motorcycles.
Damn Ron Stone's multiple last-minute instructions. Most of which, Nathan granted rather grudgingly, made sense. All of which Nathan distinctly resented having to take from a kid. Much less one of that hippie Tom Stone's kids. As if he wouldn't have been able to manage things himself.
But he had taken them. Because, probably, it would turn out to the best way to handle it all from the don's point of view. If it wasn't, at least it would give him a little maneuvering room. But the don would need to know exactly what had come off here.
He'd done the best he could, under the circumstances. He couldn't very well have said, "I'm one of Francisco Nasi's agents in Frankfurt, so you can leave the stuff with me."
One of the agents, he was sure. He was certain that Don Francisco had others here. If he didn't have a couple of down-timers in place, at least, he wouldn't be competent enough to have the job he did.
Dear Don Francisco.
He concentrated on the report. Better to think about that than to think about how he felt when he saw Chandra leaving, riding pillion behind Missy.
A lot better to think about what Don Francisco needed to know than about the other things Ron Stone had said. The things that Missy had said.
Chandra had not been in his plans. He'd done his best to fit her into his plans. He really had. For a long time now, he had done his best to fit Chandra into his plans.
PART TEN
May 1635
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven
Chapter 61
Grantville, May 1635
"Made it," Ron said, as they rolled onto Route 250.
It was very late dusk, almost dark. Even with headlights, they didn't want to be riding these hogs on anything but asphalt after dark. Too many chances of unexpected ruts leading to untimely death.
"Grantville, here we come."
They couldn't find Ed Piazza. He wasn't in his office. It was after regular office hours. They couldn't find Preston Richards. He wasn't at the police station. And, they were told by the people who were in those places, the phones were down. All the phones. The whole phone system, as far as anyone knew.
They couldn't find Piazza or Richards at home, either. They were at a meeting. Somewhere.
They couldn't very well do a room-by-room search of the SoTF administration building and the Grantville city hall.
"What next?" Missy asked.
Neither one of them was on the best of terms with Tino Nobili. The city council had picked him to serve as interim mayor until the special election in June. Actually, they weren't on any terms with him at all and it was a given that Liz Carstairs would beat him next month, so it was hardly worth bothering to try.
Ron was prepared to brave Arnold Bellamy in a good cause, even though he didn't have a sense of humor, but he was at the same meeting. Somewhere.
"You can take the stuff to Dad," Chandra suggested. "At home."
That struck them as reasonable. That would work. Wes had been in on the conversations that sent them off on the expedition to Frankfurt in the first place.
Inez Wiley arrived at Benny Pierce's house by wheelchair, pushed by Veronica Dreeson, who was muttering under her breath. Something about where was a healthy young archduchess when you could use her?
"Open up the door, Minnie!" Veronica yelled as she pounded on the screen. "We know that you are in there!"
Minnie opened it. "How's Mrs. Wiley going to get up the steps?" she asked. "Do you need help? If so, Mr. Pallavicino is here. And the Reverends Jones."
Joe Pallavicino and Simon Jones hauled the wheelchair, with Inez in it, up the steps. Inez realized once more that Grantville was not a handicapped-accessible town in general. There was an occasional ramp, here and there, but generally it was a problem.
Once Inez was settled, Denise looked at her. "We're in trouble," she said. "But how did you find out?"
Inez looked back. "Generically, you have not been in school since Tuesday. Specifically, several
people saw Ron Stone, Missy Jenkins, and Chandra Prickett coming back into town along Route 250. On your motorcycles."
Christin George crossed her arms over her chest. "I can't do anything for Minnie," she said. "But I can and I will write an excuse for Denise. I can and I will say that she had permission to loan her cycle to Missy Jenkins. I can and I will say that she had permission from me to take Buster's cycle."
Joe Pallavicino frowned at her. Her stance was reducing the meeting to something of a standoff.
"Take Buster's cycle where?" Inez asked.
Christin looked at her. "Just to take it."
"Looks like they went somewhere," Benny Pierce said. "So the better question might be where they went and why they went there."
"Where did you go, Minnie?" Veronica asked. "Why did you let Ron Stone borrow your hog?"
Minnie shook her head. "I can't tell you. I really can't. Not either one. We're all back safe now."
Veronica started to say something.
"I can't tell you," Minnie repeated. "But it was important. I promise you that. If you ask me to, I'll swear upon the eye that Mayor Dreeson gave me that it was important."
The time that Minnie Hugelmair spent at First Methodist did not appear to be making much impression on her overall world view.
A flash of light reflected on the ceiling. Inez looked out Benny's front window. It was Gina Goodman, the headlights of a power plant truck shining at the house, sticking her head out and yelling, "If you're still trying to find Ron and Missy, they're at Wes Jenkins' house! Chandra's with them."
She paused. "Christin, there's someone up at the storage lot who needs you ASAP to get something out."
Gina took off. So did Christin.
Breaking off the recriminations, the mentors and mentees refocused on the immediate concern. Getting the girls' motorcycles back. They headed for Wes' place, Denise and Minnie running ahead while Veronica pushed Inez' wheel chair.