"What
are you doing under there, if I may ask?" Karen prodded Selk's
foot with her toe. His legs protruded from beneath the main
instrument console of Ridge's Control Room.
"Yow! Scare me, why don't you?"
"Should
you be out building the fire line, like everybody else? Hmm?"
"Aww, Karen, I did that last night. I'm off duty."
"I think I knew that; I'm probably just teasing."
Selk wriggled out and sat up, blinking in the light. His eyebrows
lifted behind his dusty glasses. "Teasing? You know what,
you've changed a lot."
"Maybe. Can
you help me get the big glasses onto their tripod?"
"Oh! Yeah, that thing's heavy."
"Not so much that, but it's awkward for one hand. Don't want to
risk breaking it. Might be the only one like it left, and we'll need
it for your satellite work."
"Right,
right, and right." Selk brought over the ancient air-raid
warden's glasses and set them up.
"Thank
you." Karen picked up a scrap of cloth and dabbed at her eyes.
The sweat was already getting into them, and she wasn't even at work
yet. "It's always hot up here in the afternoons."
"Yeah. Look, I've got a bandanna on and you're all shiny dome.
Trick is, cover your head with a wet cloth. That's what the bucket's
here for."
"Mmh. I miss my
hair."
"We all do. Too many people here now; the lice simply exploded."
Karen peered into the eyepieces and began a slow weep of the eastern
horizons through the thick windows. "What is it out there
now?"
Selk stepped over to the north
window and read the thermometer hung on the outside.
"Thirty-eight."
"Not as bad as
last week."
"And the week before.
Mary says there's a breeze from the ocean. If the wind changes back,
she doesn't give much for our chances."
Karen swung the glasses to the west window. Always check the big
valley, Avery had said. Five, six times an hour. That's where
they'll come from.
The child kicked,
hard. "Oof," said Karen involuntarily, and sat back against
the firefinder table.
"What, what?"
asked Selk, alarmed.
"Nothing. Kid's
awake." She returned to the scope.
"Oh.
Y'know, I haven't seen a lot of pregnant ladies."
"It's hard to make babies around here these days, says Dr.
Marcee. We're not sure why. And I got it on the first try, too."
"Oh! Uhh, need to know basis."
"Hmm?" Karen leaned back and looked at him. "Are you
blushing?"
"No," he lied. "I,
uh, I got wires to count."
"Huh."
Karen went back to the eyepieces.
Nothing out
that way but undulating mirages.
With
the heat, much of the foliage had dropped from the Valley trees; if
anyone were approaching from that direction they would not have the
advantage of such thick cover as the bandits had used last year. A
surprise was still possible, but less likely. The oblong shapes of
long-dead truck trailers showed where the Highway of Death passed
through, near the great river. She looked briefly at the blackened
top of the "Eagles Nest" cell tower, and thought of the
poor young woman who had died there, then swung round to the north.
Ball Butte's lookout was on duty; a figure, someone from Maggie's no
doubt, sat in the shade of the cement-slab roof that rested on four
boulders. Behind the mountain stood a magnificent pall of smoke,
alarming till one realized how far away it must be. Half the land
between here and Port Land must have burned in the last week; but
that fire seemed to be slowing down in the slightly improved
weather.
The elevator door opened.
Habitually, Karen reached down and touched the hilt of her dagger as
she checked to see who it was.
"At ease,
Karen, Ames," said Avery, as he rolled forward in the red
Quickie, smiling. "Though I'm glad to see you're alert. What's
new?"
"Not so much."
Avery, like everyone else, looked completely different without his beard and hair. His had always been close-cropped, but still!
We
look too much like the bandits now; that's what's bothering me. Karen
remembered, suddenly and intensely, the blue eyes of that last young
man she'd killed.
"Is anything
wrong?"
"No ... I'm hot."
"Sure you are. Let me get around this maniac's legs here..."
"Hey!" interjected a muffled voice.
"... and I'll tie a nice clean wet bandanna round your head ...
you like green? And you can go back to what you're doing."
"Thank you; that helps."
"Not
enough ventilation up here; never was."
"Why not?"
"NBC. This
facility was expected to stand up to nuclear, biological, or chemical
warfare; at least, anything that wasn't a direct hit. So it's fairly
tight."
"Oh. My father called that
ABC; must be the same thing?" She resumed her sweep around to
her right.
"Yes. An older term which he
might have found in books. How many smoke teams do we have out?"
"Four. One is up the Creek; the other three are working south of
here."
"Who's farthest away?"
"Wilsons; they're almost halfway to the Coburg Hills, I
think."
Avery rolled up to the table.
"How many smokes over there?"
"Six,
that we have seen from here. If you will take these and look in the
same direction as the alidade sight on the table ... "
Avery did so.
"There's a rock face on
the north face, third valley over. Right above there ... that would
be the first smoke's position as recorded."
"Well, whaddya know."
"What?"
"I can see them. Just barely, through the murk. They're on that
one now."
"Oh! Well, then, they
have five to go, and should be home in seven days from now. Maybe
six."
"It's slow going."
"Yes."
"Well, carry on, as they used to say."
He re-mounted the heavy field glasses on their tripod, then backed
away. As Karen resumed her post, he noticed the automotive AM-FM
radio on the side table, wires running from it to a transformer
plugged into the wall. "Selk?"
"Sir?" Selk was tucked out of sight in the works, but his
voice sounded clearly enough in the round room.
"Do we still do radio sweeps?"
"Oh,
yes, sir. Not much out there, sir."
"What's 'not much'?"
"Most of
the bands now are just 'cosmic hiss.' Nothing from Old Mexico.
Nothing from the old U.S. Some Canadian stuff. We think they took
over Alaska. It's all advice, mostly; how to do things with fruit
trees and gardens, how to fix windmills, broken legs, whatever. None
of it seems like two-way traffic. Some music."
"Music? They have time to broadcast music?"
Selk crawled out and sat up, screwdriver in hand.
"Sir, they're not hot there for as many months as we are here. Some of their
forests -- such as haven't burned -- don't even have the bark beetles yet. It's what's left of
civilization."
"I think I knew
that. It's where all the Pilgrims were going."
"Yes, sir; some of the advice used to be about how to dispose
of Pilgrims, sir."
"Not enough
room in the lifeboat. They do to us what we were doing to the
Mexicans."
"They were; but we don't
hear so much about the Pilgrims now."
"Couldn't we talk to them?" asked Karen. "Make a
transmitter?"
Avery looked at her. "That
was voted down some time ago. Don't want to broadcast our presence to
any warlords nearby. And nothing the Canucks can do for us so far
away, and we with nothing to offer them."
Selk added, "Not as if they don't have troubles of their own.
Like I said, how to set a broken leg. Doesn't sound like there's much
more to eat there than there is here, either."
Avery poked at the radio with an index finger. "How about
Roseburg?"
"They went off the air
two weeks ago."
"They did?
That's significant, maybe. I don't remember hearing about it."
"I'm sorry. I meant to say something to Dr. Mary but I was
preoccupied." He waved apologetically at the mass of wiring
behind him.
"It doesn't matter, I
suppose, because I can't think of anything different we'd be doing
for knowing it. But it's a lapse. Leave that stuff alone today and go
get your sleep like you're supposed to be doing, and then tonight run
surveys with this thing your entire shift and report to me the
results tomorrow."
Selk looked down at
his screwdriver, then set it aside and stood up. "Yes, sir."
He closed the cabinet door, dusted himself and made for the
doorway.
Karen continued her sweep.
Avery sat beside her in his wheelchair, fingers tapping on the arms.
She became aware he was watching her.
Suddenly he spoke. "Think I was too hard on him?"
She kept up her sweep. "No, sir. It was a change and we are to
report changes."
"We're a sloppy
crew these days. He's a little off, I'm a little off, everybody's a
little off. Short rations, itchy bugs, bad air, hot, little
prospect of a full harvest, your thing with the Bledsoes not resolved,
Roundhouse hasn't shown up with that Cat. You, though, you still seem
pretty focused. You and Marcee."
"Sir,
your mom, she's really tired all the time now, but she's pretty
focused, isn't she?"
He smiled. "Barking
orders at me from Hall over the phone, day and night. Yes, she is.
And Mrs. Perkins, she spells her, and she's the same way."
"Well, that would be it, sir. Mrs. Molinero, too, the way she's
running the kitchens now."
"Your
point?"
Karen turned away from the
glasses momentarily. She gave a slight shrug with her armless
shoulder. "We're mothers."
:::
"So,
is it dead yet?" Vernie, sweating profusely, sat down on a
convenient rock in the shade.
Wilson leaned
on the McLeod and took in the scene. They had plowed up the ground
for a good twenty feet in all directions. "As good as. Best we
can do, anyway. Mr. Errol, could you whistle up Bee and have her lead
out to th' top of th' ridge? We should look on the other side before
heading out."
The sun had by now moved
well to the west, and hung, low and sullen, in a citrus sky.
Billee answered Errol's short blast with two of her own and came
toiling up through the ferns.
"How is it
out there?" asked Wilson.
She glared.
"Still quiet; down to one buzzard."
Errol and Vernie looked amused. Wilson wasn't quite sure how to
respond, and ended up rattling the map. He tapped it.
"Got another spot marked on the west end of this spur, only half
a mile away. We could look at it, then bed down for th' night. But we
should peek over th' top before traveling along th' ridgeline."
"Sure." Billee headed off past the blasted fir.
"'K, smoke jumpers," said Wilson. "Another sip, packs
on, tools up,
sidehill till we get the all clear."
Instead, there was a long blast on Billee's whistle. They dropped
gear, picked out their weapons, and raced up to the ridgeline.
Billee was not under cover at all, but standing in a saddle of the
mountain, in a small opening full of dried-up bear grass, facing
south. As they came up on either side of her, each understood
immediately what had prompted her signal.
On
the far side of the valley a bright orange glow backlit the underside
of a cloud bank of smoke that seemed much closer than they would have
guessed, earlier in the day. Even as they watched, a tongue of red
flame reached up from beneath a tall tree on the opposite side and
spread to its upper branches. The wind from the heat set all the firs
on that ridgeline dancing, then one and another of them seemed to
explode into flame. Showers of sparks cascaded down into the shadows
on the north slope before them, and hot spots flared and grew in
contrast to the surrounding darkness. The sound of pitch pockets
bursting, like cannon fire, came to them across the wide air, and a
small river, a few pools of which had not yet run dry, began
reflecting the inferno up to them from the valley below.
A deer ran up into the clearing, making directly for them. Billee and
Vernie jumped left; Wilson and Errol to the right. The doe made for
the gap, leaped through, and was gone.
"Eff!"
said Vernie.
"That's it, folks,"
said Wilson, matter-of-factly. "We're very done here;
let's run for home."
:::
"Mullins."
Lockerby offered a sardonic salute, touching the brim of his slouch
hat with his forefinger.
"Lockerby."
"We've got that Cat running and are good to go."
"Fine; we'll line out, as the Boss says and take it as it goes."
Mullins waved the crawler forward. The rest of the column would wait
and move up whenever the Cat was in danger of rolling too far ahead.
Eastsiders, almost ghostly on their horses in the gray dawn, filtered
into the forest on either flank.
The D-8
rumbled across the clearing and reached the point where the Pilgrim
Trail disappeared into the undergrowth, between a burned-out Chevy
Volt and a Mercedes delivery truck lying on its side, with a tree
emerging from the driver-side window. The wide blade settled on the
ground and the Cat inched ahead, ripping small trees out of broken
pavement or shearing them off at ground level. The ancient dead
vehicles groaned as the blade nudged them aside. Bones, which had
been hidden beneath the truck, shattered as the blade came to
them.
After about eighty feet, the mound of
detritus piling up in front of the blade began to tower over it,
spilling splintered wood and dirt between the hydraulic arms. The
driver reversed levers, walking the machine back while also raising
the blade slightly, then lowered it again and shoved the left lever
forward, easing the huge machine a quarter turn to the right,
and pushing aside the pile so as to be able to make a fresh
assault.
"S'gonna be a long day, Mull."
Lockerby leaned back against the bow of the LAV-35.
"You know it, Lockie. Hot, too." Mullins squatted next to
him, cradling a short-barreled Mossberg pump shotgun in his hands. "I
give it about three hours after th' sun comes up, they'll be howling
to park that thing in th' shade."
"How
far is it to the first objective?"
"Th'
ghost town? 'Bout sixty miles."
"Eff,
at this pace we'll be a week gettin' there."
"More than a week. Even though some of th' terrain is not this
radical. The stuff they made this road out of has slowed the woods
down some. But, yah, s'still a long slog and, y'know, we've only got
so many replacement parts for that museum piece up there. If we get
it over Rice Hill we'll be on our way."
They
looked up at the smoke cloud to the northeast. The day before, like a
malevolent storm, it had towered to seemingly stratospheric heights,
in appearance a cross between a nuclear blast cloud and a
cumulonimbus, gray and white with a burnt-sienna halo. This morning,
it mostly covered the horizon like a pall of heavy smog.
"Not comin' our way, is it?" asked Lockerby.
No, if anythin', I think it's goin' the same way we are. With any
luck it'll clear th' way a bit for th' column."
Lockerby leaned around the right front tire of the LAV and looked
over their infantry. Sitting on the ground, men wearing a motley
collection of camo and fatigue ex-Army wear and assorted other gear –
a few had armor, even fewer wore MOLLEs – most had assorted old
backpacks, including one that was covered with cartoons of a duck in
a sailor suit – they
sat along the edge of the clearing, bows and crossbows in hand, most
of them.
"Y'know, Mullins, I could wish
th' morale was a little higher here at th' outset. We're a glum
bunch."
"Know it. There's a few
things we c'n do to perk 'em up, but not much, short of lucking into
a crew of women Pilgrims. It bugs 'em that the Eastsiders have stuff
they don't. Tell ya what, who's th' glummest?"
"I worry about Kinnet; I think he grouses too much to th' others
when he thinks I can't hear 'im."
"Call
him over."
"Sir." Lockerby
stood away from the tire. "Kinnet!"
A man about sixty feet away grabbed his crossbow, stood up from among
his fellows, and trotted up to the head of the motorized column. He
touched his hat. "Lockerby."
"See
Mullins here."
"Lockerby."
"Kinnet."
Kinnet stepped round to
the front. "Mullins, sir."
"Kinnet,
my man."
"Sir."
"Life treatin' you alright?"
"Sir?
Uh, yes, sir, it is, sir."
Lockerby
could see the man was in a swivet; was he about to be made an example
of?
Mullins stood up and patted the
armored bow of the LAV. "How would you
like to learn to drive this honey?"
:::
Vernie felt almost as if he were drowning; practically running all
night long was one thing; but the day had dawned warm and was now hot
already, and their water was gone. His side troubled him more and
more; he ran, holding it as if he were afraid it would burst, and,
with both hands occupied, found that sweat was pouring into his eyes
faster than he could blink it away. He collided with a tree trunk
that lay at right angles to the ground, four feet up in the air.
"Vernie, you got to go under those." Wilson's voice, but
Vernie could not tell from where. He crawled under the log, but met
another, lower one, and stood up, struggling to climb over it.
"Wilson, he's done in. We all are, really; I've seen you fall
down a couple of times yourself," Errol panted.
"Yeah, know it. Dammit, we must have gone left of the creek. Now
we're in a blowdown. Everybody take five. Bee, you seem to recover
quickest, when you're up to it, scout around t'th' right? For a way
t'th' water?"
Billee's eyes thanked him
for the rest. She needed it as much as the others, but would give her
last ounce of strength not to admit it. She sat down hard, then
rolled over onto her side, trying to get control of her ragged
breath. It hurt to breathe; her throat and lungs screamed for water,
and she knew her lips were cracked and swollen. Not very
attractive like this, now, are we? she asked herself, mockingly.
But at least we'll be first up. Maybe ... but she was too dry
to complete any thought about affairs of the heart.
They might have rested longer, but Errol's sharp ears picked up the
change in tone of the fire's voice. It had roared up the back of the
ridge in front of them, the day before, cooking resins in the timber
and exploding trees left and right. In the night it had moved more
slowly, working its way down to the riverbed by fits and starts,
showers of sparks among dry grasses leading the way. Now it was
growling and booming again, climbing a dessicated south slope through
the treetops. From the sound, it should cross yet another ridge
within the hour. Their lacerated skins, their scratched faces, their
leaden arms and legs and frightened beating hearts would not long
abide the arrival of such an adversary.
"Wilson?"
Errol raised his head.
"Yah."
Wilson swung round. "Bee, how are ya?"
"On it." She slipped out of her gear, left her bow and
precious little
rifle resting against it, rolled up, staggered against a
conk-encrusted grand fir, then trotted off.
"Vernie, how are ya?"
Vernie
wheezed a couple of times before replying. "Not great. Help me
up in a little bit?"
"You bet."
Billee was back before they were up. Giving up on speech, she simply
pointed and nodded. This way.
Helping
Billee into her things first, the little group staggered up and made
off sidehill behind her, catching their feet on every root and
trailing blackberry in their way, till the terrain dropped off
precipitously and they all caught at ocean-spray, hazel, and mountain
alder saplings as they descended. At last they came to the one thing
in the world they hoped to see: Blue Creek.
Or what was left of it. The drought had stopped the flow of the
stream, but by following the dry wash downstream to the north, they
came to a pool in deep shade, with fern-lined rock faces to either
side. The coolness, as much as the prospect of water, revived
them.
"Don't anybody jump in yet; it'd
mess up the drinkin' water," Wilson croaked, then produced an
old cup, of bright yellow plastic. He dipped it through the layer of
algae on the surface, then brought it up half full, tipped so as not
to catch much
of the green stuff, then handed it to Billee. "Slowly. Not too
much."
She nodded, took the cup and
dipped her cracked lips first, then sipped at it. She handed the cup
on to Vernie, who, thirsty as he was, looked at the swirling green
and black flecks dubiously.
"It might
kill ya, Vernie. But think of th' alternative." Wilson might
have grinned but it would have hurt too much.
Billee poked at the algae in the pool with her bow, clearing a view
into the shallows. "See?" she asked Vernie. Something red
flashed on the bottom, backing away from the bow.
Vernie finished the cup and handed it to Errol, who knelt by the
creek and dipped the cup again. "See what?"
"Snails. S'a sign of clean water."
"I was thinking if some of that is blue-green algae..."
Wilson shrugged. "We all are. We got no choice. But it's early
in th' season for bee-gee. Hopefully we won't get anythin' worse than
th' runs; giardia. Let's fill all th' canteens, take a quick dip. Two
more mountains to cross."
Billee looked at
Vernie, who sat now with his feet in the water, mechanically dipping
handfuls of wet green slime onto his head and shoulders. She returned
her gaze to Wilson. "Can we even do it?"
Wilson, surprised, felt the full impact of that gaze. He'd known
Billee as a toddler. When the hell did she grow up? I had
no idea. "Not really. What we can do, like old Mary says, is
go sideways. We'll hit the river at Lawson's and run round to Bridge.
It's twice as far, but flat, with a trail."
A tree explosion behind them, far up the mountain, heralded the arrival
of the fire. Echoes from the burst rolled around the valley and came
back to them from the far hills.