"Dies the Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M.)
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S. M. Stirling
Dies the Fire
(Dies the Fire – 1)
One
Boise Municipal Airport, Idaho
Tuesday, March 17th, 1998
6:15 p.m., MST
Change minus one hour
Michael Havel pulled his battered four-by-four into the employees' parking lot, locked up and swung his just-incase gear out of the back, the strap of the pack over one shoulder and the gun case on the other. It was a raw early-spring Idaho afternoon, with the temperature in the low fifties; the light had a cool, bleakly clear quality, as if you could cut yourself on the blue of the sky.
He walked quickly across to the door marked "Steelhead Air Taxi" and opened it with three fingers and an elbow, whistling a Kevin Welch tune under his breath. Inside he set the gear down on a couple of chairs-the all-up weight was nearly eighty pounds-and opened his heavy sheepskin jacket, stuffing his knit cap into one pocket.
That left his black hair ruffled the way it always did, and he smoothed it down with the palms of both hands. The air here smelled a bit of burned fuel and oil, which couldn't be helped around an airport.
"You said the bossman had something for me, Mellie?" he asked the secretary as he went to the pot on the table in the corner and poured himself a cup.
The coffee was Steelhead Air Taxi standard: oily, bitter and burnt, with iridescent patches of God-knew-what floating on the surface. He poured half-and-half in with a lavish hand until it looked pale brown. This was an informal outfit, family-run: Dan and Gerta Fogarty had flown themselves until a few years ago; there was Mellie Jones, who was Gerta's aunt; and six pilots, one Mike Havel being the youngest at twenty-eight, and the most recent hire.
"Yup," the white-haired woman behind the desk said. "Wants you to hop some passengers to a ranch field in the Bitterroot Valley, north of Victor. The Larssons, they're visiting their holiday place."
Havel's eyebrows went up; it was a damned odd time of year to be taking a vacation
"They've got landing lights?" he said.
Mellie snorted. "Would Dan be sending you if they didn't?"
He looked over her shoulder at the screen as he sipped the foul sour coffee, reading off the names: Kenneth Larsson, his wife, Mary, son and daughter Eric and Signe, both eighteen, and another named Astrid four years younger.
"Larsson… Larsson… from Portland, businessman?" he said. "Heard the bossman mention the name once, I think."
Mellie made an affirmative sound as she worked on her PC.
"Old money, timber and wheat-then Ken Larsson tripled it in high tech. Used to hire us regular, back before 'ninety-six, but not lately. Hasn't brought the family before."
Havel nodded again; he'd only been flying for Steelhead since the spring of '97. It was nice to know that Dan trusted him; but then, he was damned good if he said so himself, which he didn't. Not aloud, anyway.
He went through into the office. Dan Fogarty was sitting and chatting with the clients while Gerta worked behind piles of paper on the desk. There were wilderness posters and models of old bush planes and books on Idaho and the Northwest on shelves. And a faint meowing…
The Larssons' youngest had a cat carrier on her lap; the beast's bulging yellow eyes shone through the bars, radiating despair and outrage. It wasn't taking the trip well; cats seldom did, being little furry Republicans with an inbuilt aversion to change. Judging from an ammonia waft, it was-literally-pissed off.
The kid was unusual as well, all huge silver-blue eyes and long white-blond hair, dressed in some sort of medieval-looking suede leather outfit, her nose in a book-an illustrated Tolkien with a tooled-leather cover. She had an honest-to-God
She kept her face turned to the print, ignoring him. He'd been raised to consider that sort of behavior rude, but then, she was probably used to ignoring the chauffeur, and his family hadn't had many employees.
Havel grinned at the thought. His dad had worked the Iron Range mines from the day he got back from Vietnam and got over a case of shrapnel acne picked up at Khe Sanh;
Kenneth Larsson matched the grin and stood, extending a hand. It was soft but strong; the man behind it was in his fifties, which made him twice Mike Havel's age; graying blond ponytail, shoulders still massive but the beer gut straining at his expensive leather jacket, square ruddy face smiling.
"Ken Larsson," he said.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Larsson. Havel's the name- Mike Havel."
"Sorry to drag you out so late in the day; Dan tells me you were on vacation."
Havel shrugged. "It's no trouble. I wouldn't be bush-flying out of Boise for a living if I didn't like it."
That brought a chuckle. You can see he's the type who likes to smile, Havel thought. But he hasn't been doing a lot of it just lately, and that one's a fake.
"Midwest?" Larsson said shrewdly.That was a lot to pick up from a few words. "Minnesota? Got some Svenska in there? We're Swedes ourselves, on my side of the family."
He ran a hand over his jet-black hair. "Purebred American mongrel!"
"Havel's an odd name for a Finn," Larsson said. "Czech, isn't it?"
"Yeah. When my great-grandfather got to the Iron Range about a hundred years ago, the mine's Bohunk payclerk heard 'Myllyharju' and said right then and there: 'From now on, your name is Havel!'"
That got a real laugh; Signe Larsson looked charming when she smiled.
"My wife, Mary," Larsson went on, and did the introductions.
The son and eldest daughter were twins; both blue-eyed with yellow-blond hair, tall-the boy was already his father's six-two, which put him three inches up on Michael Havel, and built like a running back. Eighteen, the same age as Mike had been when he'd left the Upper Peninsula for the Corps, but looking younger, and vaguely discontented. His sister…
An inch or three below his own five-eleven, short straight nose, dusting of freckles, and…
"Mike's one of my best," Dan said.
"Glad to hear it," Larsson senior said.
Everyone bustled around, signing forms and collecting coats. Havel helped with the baggage-there wasn't all that much-buttoning his coat but glad to be out in the clean chill. Then he did a walk-around of the Piper Chieftain. The ground crew was good, but
Larsson's eyebrows went up when Mike loaded his own baggage; a waterproof oblong of high-impact synthetics with straps that made it a backpack too, and the unmistakable shape of a rifle case.
"Something I should know about?" he said.
"Nope, Mr. Larsson," Mike said. "Just routine; I'm a cautious man."
Larsson nodded. "What's the gun?"
"Remington 700," he said. That was a civilianized version of the Marine sniper rifle. "I used its first cousin in the Corps, and it makes a good deer rifle, too."
Signe Larsson sniffed and turned away ostentatiously; possibly because he was an ex-Marine, or a hunter.
Eric Larsson grinned at his sister with brotherly maliciousness. "Hey, maybe he could shoot you a tofu-lope, sis, now you're back on the vegetarian wagon. Nothing like a rare tofu-lope steak, charred outside and all white and bleeding goo on the inside-"
She snorted and climbed the rear-mounted stairs into the Chieftain.
Havel admired the view that presented, waited for everyone else to get in, and followed. He made discreetly sure that everyone was buckled up-it was amazing how many people thought money could buy them exemption from the laws of nature. Then he slid into his own position at the controls and put the headphones on, while he went through the checklist and cleared things with the tower and got his mind around the flight plan.
That had the bonus effect of keeping out the Larssons' bickering, which was quiet but had an undertone like knives. It died away a little as the two piston engines roared; he taxied out and hit the throttles. There was the usual heavy feeling at the first surge of acceleration, and the ground fell away below. His feet and hands moved on the pedals and yoke; Boise spread out below him, mostly on the north side of the river and mostly hidden in trees, except for the dome of the state capitol and the scattering of tall buildings downtown.
Suburbs stretched northwest for a ways, and there was farmland to the west and south, a checkerboard between irrigation canals and ditches that glinted in quick flashes of brilliance as they threw back the setting sun.
He turned the Chieftain's nose northeast. The ground humped itself up in billowing curves, rising a couple of thousand feet in a few minutes. Then it was as if they were flying over a mouth-a tiger's mouth, reaching for the sky with serrated fangs of saw-toothed granite. Steep ridges, one after another, rising to the great white peaks of the Bitterroots on the northeastern horizon, turned ruddy pink with sunset.
Some snow still lay on the crests below and under the shade of the dense forest that covered the slopes-Douglas fir, hemlock, western cedar-great trees two hundred feet tall and spiky green. Further north and they passed the Salmon River, then the Selway, tortuous shapes far below in graven clefts that rivaled the Grand Canyon. A thousand tributaries wound through steep gorges, the beginnings of snowmelt sending them brawling and tossing around boulders; a few quiet stretches were flat and glittering with ice. The updrafts kept the air rough, and he read the turbulence through hands and feet and body as it fed back through the controls.
Larsson stuck his head through into the pilot's area.
"Mind if I come up?"
The big man wormed his way forward and collapsed into the copilot's seat.
"Pretty country," he said, waving ahead and down.
He liked that; one of the perks of this job was that he got to go out in it himself, hunting or fishing or just backpacking… and you could get some of the hairiest hang gliding on earth here.
"None prettier," the pilot replied aloud.
He concealed any offensive stranger's sympathy, and switched the other set of headphones to a commercial station.
"Damnedest thing!" the big man said after a while, his face animated again.
"Yes?" Havel said.
"Odd news from back East," Larsson said. "Some sort of electrical storm off Cape Cod-not just lightning, a great big dome of lights over Nantucket, half a dozen different colors. The weather people say they've never seen anything like it."
Mary Larsson brightened up; she was Massachusetts-born herself.
"That
Mike Havel grinned to himself and filtered out her running reminiscences and Larsson's occasional attempts to get a bit in edgewise; instead he turned to the news channel himself. The story had gotten her out of her mood, which would make the trip a lot less tense. Behind her the three Larsson children were rolling their eyes but keeping silent, which was a relief.
The voice of the on-the-spot reporter cruising over Nantucket Sound started to range up from awestruck to hysterical.
White light flashed, stronger than lightning, lances of pain into his eyes, like red-hot spikes of ice. Havel tasted acid at the back of his throat as he jerked up his hands with a strangled shout. Vision vanished in a universe of shattered light, then returned. Returned without even afterimages, as if something had been switched off with a click. The pain was gone too, instantly.
Voices screamed behind him. He could hear them well…
That brought complete calm.
"Shut up!" he snapped, working the yoke and pedals, seizing control from the threatening dive and spin. "Keep quiet and let me work!"
Sound died to somebody's low whimper and the cat's muted yowls of terror. Over that he could hear the cloven air whistling by. They had six thousand feet above ground level, and the surface below was as unforgiving as any on earth. He gave a quick glance to either side, but the ridgetops nearby were impossible, far too steep and none of them bare of trees. It was a good thing he knew where all the controls were, because the cabin lights were dead, and the nav lights too; not a single circuit working.
He ran through the starting procedure, one step and another and
It could have been an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse; that would account for all the electrical systems being out. He sincerely hoped not, because about the only way to produce an EMP that powerful was to set off a nuke in the upper atmosphere.
The props were spinning as they feathered automatically. She still responded to the yoke-
With a full load, the Chieftain wasn't a very good glider. They could clear the ridge ahead comfortably, but probably not the one beyond-they got higher as you went northeast. Better to put her down in this valley, with a little reserve of height to play around with.
"All right," he said, loud but calm as the plane silently floated over rocks and spots where the long straw-brown stems of last year's grass poked out through the snow.
"Listen. The engines are out and I can't restart them. I'm taking us down. The only flat surface down there is water. I'm going to pancake her on the creek at the bottom of the valley. It'll be rough, so pull your straps tight and then duck and put your heads in your arms. You, kid"-Eric Larsson was in the last seat, near the rear exit-"when we stop, get that door open and get out. Make for the shore; it's a narrow stream. Everyone else follow him.
He banked the plane, sideslipping to lose altitude.
There was still a little light up higher, but below the crest line he had to strain his eyes to catch the course of the water. The looming walls on either side were at forty-five degrees or better, it would have been like flying inside a closet with the light out if the valley hadn't pointed east-west, and the creek was rushing water over rocks fringed with dirty ice.
He strained his eyes… yes, a slightly flatter, calmer section. It ended in a boulder about the size of the mobile home he lived in, water foaming white on both sides.
In. In. Sinking into night, shadow reaching up. Gliding, the valley walls rearing higher on either hand, trees reaching out like hands out of darkness to grasp the Piper and throw it into a burning wreck.
Then he was nearly down, moving with shocking speed over the churning riffled surface silvered by moonlight.
"Brace for impact!" he shouted, and pulled the nose up at the last instant, straining at the control yoke. They were past the white-water section; it should be deeper here.
"Come on, you bitch,
The tail struck, with a jolt that snapped his teeth together like the world's biggest mule giving him a kick in the ass. Then the belly of the Chieftain pancaked down on the water and they were sliding forward in a huge rooster tail of spray, scrubbing speed off in friction. And shaking like a car with no shocks on a
The boulder at the end of the flat stretch was rearing up ahead of him like God's flyswatter. He snarled at death as it rushed towards him and stamped on the left rudder pedal with all his strength and twisted at the yoke-the ailerons would be in the water and should work to turn the plane. If he could-
The plane swiveled, then struck something hard below the surface. That caught the airframe for an instant, and inertia punched them all forward before the aluminum skin tore free with a scream of rending metal.
Then they were pinwheeling, spinning across the water like a top in a fog of droplets and shaved ice as they slowed. Another groan from the frame, and he shouted as an impact wrenched at them again, brutally hard. Loose gear flew across the cabin like fists. Things battered him, sharp and gouging, and his body was rattled back and forth in the belt like a dried pea in a can, nothing to see, only a sense of confused rushing speed…
Then the plane was down by the nose and water was rilling in around his feet, shocking him with the cold. They were sinking
With a gurgling rush the ice water swept over the airplane's cockpit windows.
Two
Hopping Toad Tavern
Corvallis, Oregon
Tuesday, March 17th, 1998
6:14:30 p.m., PST
Change minus thirty seconds
Juniper Mackenzie dropped her guitar at the intolerable white spike of pain driving into her eyes, but she managed to get a foot underneath it before it hit the floor. Shouts of alarm gave way to groans of disappointment from the crowd in the Hopping Toad as the lights and amplifier stayed off.
But it was gone quickly too, just the memory and no lingering ache. There was a flashlight in her guitar case; she reached in and fumbled for it, searching by touch in complete blackness, with only a fading gray gloaming towards the front of the cafe-the sun was just down behind the Coast Range. The batteries were fresh, but nothing happened when she thumbed the switch except a click, more felt through her thumb than heard.
She could hear a tinkling crash, and shouts, faint with distance.
"Well, people, it must be a power failure," she said, her trained singer's voice carrying through the hubbub and helping quiet it. "And in a second, our good host, Dennis, will-"
The flick of a lighter and then candlelight broke through the darkness, looking almost painfully bright. The Toad was a long rectangle, with the musicians' dais at the rear, the bar along one side and a little anteroom at the front, where a plate-glass window gave on to Monroe Avenue. The evening outside was overcast, damp and mildly chilly; which in the Willamette Valley meant it could have been October, or Christmas.
With the streetlights out, the whole town of Corvallis, Oregon, must be dark as the proverbial porker's lower intestine. There were more crashes, a few more shouts, and more sounds of bending metal and tinkling glass, and the chorus of howls gave way to ragged barking.
Dennis at the bar was a friend of hers; he got her drinks for free, not to mention gigs like this now and then. Wearily she cursed her luck; it was a pretty good crowd for a weekday, too; mostly students from OSU, with some leftover hippies as well-most of the valley towns had some, though Corvallis wasn't swarming with them the way Eugene was-and they'd all.given a good hand to the first two tunes.
She'd been on a roll, hitting the songs the way they were meant.
More candles came out, and people put them in the wrought-iron holders along the scrubbed brick walls- ornamental usually, but perfectly functional, hand-made by Dennis's elder brother, John, who was a blacksmith, and even more of a leftover hippie than Dennis was. In a few minutes, the tavern was lit brightly enough that you could have read, if you didn't mind eyestrain.
The waxy scent of the candles cut through the usual patchouli-and-cooking odors of the Toad; the stoves were all gas, so food kept coming out. Juniper shrugged and grinned to herself.
"Well, you don't have to see all that well to listen," she called out. "It's the same with music as with drink:
That got a laugh; she switched to her fiddle and gave them a Kevin Burke tune in six-eight time, one of the ones that had enchanted her with this music back in her early days. The jig set feet tapping and the
Maybe being in a mild emergency together gave them more fellow-feeling. Some people were leaving, though and then most of them came back, looking baffled and frustrated.
"Hey, my car won't start!" one said, just as she'd finished her set. "There's a couple of cars stopped in the road, too."
Off in the distance came an enormous
"What the hell was
"Looks like a big fire just started downtown, but there aren't any sirens!"
The hubbub started again, people milling around; then two young men in fleece vests came in. They were helping along an older guy; he had an arm over each shoulder, and his face was streaming with blood.
By the time she got there Dennis had the kit out and the two students had the injured man sitting down in one of the use-polished wooden chairs. One of the waitresses brought a bowl of water and a towel, and she used it to mop away the blood.
It looked worse than it was; head wounds always bled badly, and this was a simple pressure-cut over the forehead, heading a ways back up into the scalp. The man was awake enough to wince and try to pull away as she dabbed disinfectant ointment on the cut and did what she could with bandages. Dennis put a candle in her hand; she held it in front of one of the man's eyes, and then the other.
The man blinked, but he seemed to be at least minimally aware of where he was. "Thanks," he said, his voice slurred. "I was driving fine, and then there was this flash and my car
"I think this guy needs to get to a hospital," she said. "He might have a concussion, and he probably ought to have a couple of stitches."
Dennis looked sad at the best of times; he was a decade and change older than her, in his late forties, and going bald on top with a ponytail behind. As if to compensate he had a bushy soup-strainer mustache and muttonchops in gray-streaked brown, and big, mournful, russet brown eyes.
He always reminded her of the Walrus in
"Phone's out," he said. "Shit, Juney,
Juniper swallowed. "Hey!" she called. "Has
That got her some yeses; it was a safe bet, right on the edge of a university campus. "Then would you get over to the clinic and get someone to come?"
Another student went out, a girl this time. Juniper looked around at a tug on her arm. It was Eilir, her daughter- she'd be fourteen next week, scrawny right now to her mother's slimness. She had the same long, straight-featured face and the same pale freckled skin, but the promise of more height, and hair black as a raven's wing. Her eyes were bright green, wide now as her fingers flew.
Juniper had been using Sign since the doctors in the maternity ward told her Eilir would never hear; by now it was as natural as English.
Dennis Martin knew Sign almost as well as Juniper did-mother and daughter had been through regularly for years, when Juniper could get a gig like this, and for the RenFaire and the Fall Festival. She knew he had a serious thing for her, but he'd never been anything but nice about its not being mutual; he was even polite to her boyfriend-cum-High Priest, Rudy, and he really liked Eilir.
Now their eyes met.
Juniper did, with a sinking feeling like the beginnings of nausea. If there was a fire raging in downtown Corvallis, where were the sirens? It wasn't a very big town, no more than fifty thousand or so.
The brick building that held the Hopping Toad was three stories, a restored Victorian like most of the little city's core, built more than a century ago when the town prospered on shipping produce down the Willamette to Portland.
They went up a series of narrow stairs until they were in the attic loft Dennis used for his hobbies, woodworking and tooling leather. Amid the smell of glue and hide and shavings they crowded over to the dormer window; that pointed south, and the other side of Montrose was Oregon State University campus, mostly grass and trees.
The two adults crowded into the narrow window seat; Dennis snatched up a pair of his binoculars that Eilir had left there. After a moment he began to swear; she took the glasses away from him and then began to swear too. There
She could see the distinctive nose of a 747 silhouetted against the flames, pointing skyward as if the plane had hit, broken its back, and then skidded into something that canted the front section into the air. She could even see the AA logo painted on its side.
The fire was getting worse, the light ruddy on her face. She knew she ought to be running out there and trying to help, but the sight paralyzed her. It didn't seem
"Looks like it came down on the other side of Central Park," he said, holding out a hand for the glasses.
"Sweet Goddess, it looks like it came down around Monroe and Fourth!" she replied, drawing a map in her head. They looked at each other, appalled: that was right in the middle of downtown.
"There must be hundreds hurt," she said.
Aloud she went on: "And where are the emergency people?"
"Trying to get their ambulances and fire trucks to work," Dennis said; there was a grim tone to his voice she'd seldom heard before. "Check your watch."
Juniper blinked, but did as he asked, pulling it out of her vest pocket where it waited at the end of a polished chain of fine gold links. She was wearing a sort of pseudo-Irish-cum-Highlander costume-billowy-sleeved peasant shirt and lace cravat and fawn-colored waistcoat with a long tartan skirt below and buckled shoes-what she thought of privately as her Gael-girl outfit. The watch was an old one, from her mother's father; she clicked the cover open.
"Working fine," Dennis said, as she tilted it to catch the firelight. "But mine ain't. It's digital."
He turned and switched to Sign.
"And stopped at just the same time as that one on the wall over there," he said, signing as he spoke. "Six fifteen."
"What's
"Damned if I know," Dennis said. "Only one thing I could think of."
At her look, he swallowed and went on: "Well, an EMP could take out all the electrical stuff, or most of it, I think- but that would take a fusion bomb going off."
Juniper gave an appalled hiss. Who could be nuking Oregon, of all places? Last time she looked the world had been profoundly at peace, at least as far as big countries with missiles went.
"But I don't think that's it. That white flash, I don't think it was really light-it didn't
"Well, what was it, then?" her mother said.
"I don't have fucking clue one about what it
He swallowed and hesitated. "I think it turned the juice off. The electricity. Nothing electrical is working. That for starters."
Dennis shuddered; she'd never seen an adult do that before, but she sympathized right now. A beefy arm waved out the window.
"Think about it. No cars-spark plugs and batteries. No lights, no computers,
She imagined what it must have been like at thirty thousand feet, and then her mind recoiled from it back to the here and now.
"We have to do something," she said, pushing aside the thought, and led them clattering down the stairs again.
Most of them followed her, Dennis swearing quietly, a bucket in one hand and a fire ax over the other shoulder; Juniper snatched up a kerosene lantern. Eilir carried the restaurant's first-aid kit in both arms, and others had snatched up towels and stacks of cloth napkins and bottles of booze for disinfectants.
She needed the lantern less and less as they got closer to the crash site. Buildings were burning across a swath of the town's riverside quarter, ending-she hadn't gotten her wish, and the fire covered the Squirrel's site. Heat beat at them, and towers of sparks were pouring upward from the old Victorians and warehouses.
If the plane was out of Portland, it would have been carrying a
The streets were clogged with people moving westward away from the fire, many of them hurt, and they were blocked with stopped autos and trucks and buses too. Ruddy firelight beat at her face, with heat and the sour-harsh smell of things not meant to burn.
"OK," she said, looking at the…
First aid could make the difference between life and death, stopping bleeding and stabilizing people until real doctors or at least paramedics got there.
"We're not going to do any good trying to stop
She looked around. There was a clear stretch of sidewalk in front of a hardware store where a delivery truck had rammed into the next building down; its body slanted people out into the road like a wedge.
"We'll set up here. Dennis, see if there's any bedding anywhere around here, and a pharmacy-and anyplace selling bottled water."
He lumbered off, followed by some of his customers. The others started shouting and waving to attract attention, and then guiding the injured towards her. Juniper's stomach clenched as she saw them: this was
"You," she said aloud; a young man had pushed a bicycle along as they came. "You ride over to the hospital, and tell them what we're doing. Get help if they can spare it. Hurry!"
He did, dashing off. The first-aid kit was empty within minutes; Dennis came back, with a file of helpers carrying mattresses, sheets, blankets, and cardboard boxes full of Ozonenal, painkillers and whatever else looked useful from the plunder of a fair-sized dispensary; a pharmacist in an old-fashioned white coat came with him.
"Let's get to work," Juniper said, giving Dennis a quick hug.
The best part of an hour later, she paused and looked up in the midst of ripping up volunteered shirts for bandages. The fireman approaching was incredibly reassuring in his rubbers and boots and helmet, an ax in his hand; half a dozen others were following him, two carrying someone else on a stretcher.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, pausing; the others filed on past him.
Juniper bristled a little and waved at the injured people lying in rows on the sidewalk. "Trying to help!" she snapped. "What are you doing, mister?"
"Fuck-all," he said, but nodded approval; his face was running with sweat and soot; he was a middle-aged man with a jowly face and a thick body.
"What's wrong?"
"Our trucks won't work, our portable pumps won't work, and the pressure is off in the mains! Died down to a trickle while we manhandled a hose down here and got it hitched. The pumping stations that lift from the Taylor treatment plant on the river are down and the reservoirs've all drained. We can't even blow fire lanes-our
Juniper looked up at the flames; they were nearer now, frighteningly so-she'd lost track in the endless work.
"We've got to get these people out of here!" she said. "A lot of them can't walk any farther."
"Yeah," the fireman said. "We'll have to carry them out-the hospital's got an emergency aid station set up on the campus. We're using runners and people on bicycles to coordinate. Hey,Tony!"
A policeman stood not far away, writing on a pad; he handed it to a boy standing astride a bike, and the teenager sped off, weaving between cars and clots of people.
"Ed?" the policeman said; he looked as tired and desperate as the firefighter.
"We've got to move these injured over to the aid station."
The policeman nodded twice, once to the fireman and once to her, touching a hand to his cap. Then he turned and started shouting for volunteers; dozens came forward. The walking wounded started off westward into the darkened streets, most of them with a helper on either side.
"These mattresses will do for stretchers," Dennis said; he'd gotten them out of nearby houses and inns. "Or better still, cut off the top covers and the handles and use them that way. Hey-you, you, you-four men to a mattress. Walk careful, walk in step!"
The firefighters helped organize, then carried off the last of the worst-wounded themselves. Juniper took a long shuddering breath through a mouth dry as mummy dust. Dennis handed her a plastic bottle with a little water left in it, and she forced herself not to gulp it all down. Instead she took a single mouthful and handed it on to Eilir; the girl looked haunted, but she was steady save for a quiver in the hands now and then.
It was about time to get out themselves; the fires were burning westward despite a wind off the Coast Range- and thank the Goddess for that, because if it had been blowing from the east half the city would be gone by now, instead of just a quarter.
Shouts came from across the street, and a sound of shattering glass. The musician looked up sharply. Half a dozen young men-teens or early twenties-had thrown a trash container through a storefront window; they were scooping jewelry out of the trays within, reaching through the coarse mesh of the metal screen inside the glass.
The policeman cursed with savage weariness and drew his pistol; Juniper's stomach clenched, but they
Most of the looters scattered, laughing as they ran, but one of them threw something at the approaching policeman. Juniper could see the looter clearly, down to the acne scars and bristle-cut black hair and the glint of narrow blue eyes. He wore baggy black sweats and ankle-high trainers, and a broad belt that glittered-made from chain mesh. Gold hoops dangled from both ears.
"Clear out, goddamnit!" the cop shouted hoarsely, and raised the pistol to fire in the air. "I'm not kidding!"
Juniper blinked in surprise. A woman living alone with her daughter on the road was well advised to keep a pistol, and she'd taken a course to learn how to use it safely. Misfires were rare.
The policeman evidently thought it was odd too. He jacked the slide of the automatic back, ejecting the useless round, and fired into the air once more.
He worked the slide to eject the spent cartridge and tried a third time-and now he was aiming at the thin-faced youth, who was beginning to smile. Two of his fellow looters hadn't fled either. They all looked at each other, and their smiles grew into grins.
One of them pulled a pistol of his own from behind his back, and pointed it at the lawman; it was a snub-nosed revolver, light and cheap. He pulled the trigger.
He shrugged, tossed the gun aside, and pulled a tire iron from his belt instead. The youth with the chain belt unhooked it and swung it from his left hand. Something else came into his right, and he made a quick figure-eight motion of the wrist.
Metal clattered on metal and a blade shone in the firelight. She recognized the type, a Balisong folding gravity knife-if you hung around Society types like Chuck Barstow, you overheard endless talk about everything from broadswords to fighting knives, like it or not.
The banger wasn't a sporting historical reenactor like the Society knights. He walked forward, stepping light on the balls of his feet, rolling the knife over his knuckles and back into his palm with casual ease. The other man flanking him was a hulking giant with a bandana around his head; he picked up a baseball bat from the sidewalk and smacked the head into his left palm. The full-sized Louisville Slugger looked like a kid's toy in his hand.
The policeman was backing up and looking around as he drew his nightstick. He was twenty years older than any of the three men walking towards him, and nobody else was left this close to the fires; the roaring of their approach was loud, and it was chokingly hot.
"Oh,
He picked up the fire ax he'd brought from the Hopping Toad and walked out towards the policeman.
Juniper swallowed and looked around her, then at the storefront behind them. They'd broken it open for the tools they needed; she made a quick decision and dashed inside, taking the lantern with her. She hesitated at the axes and machetes and shovels… but she wasn't sure she could hit a human being with one, even if she had to. Instead she picked a bare ax helve out of a rack of them, giving thanks that redevelopment hadn't gotten this far yet and turned the place into a wine bar or an aromatherapy salon.
Then she turned and dashed out into the street; the firelight had gotten appreciably brighter in the few seconds it had taken. Dennis and the policeman were backed up against the pickup, and there was a turmoil of motion around them as the three street toughs feinted and lunged.
Especially not when all her potential opponents were stronger than she was, and would probably enjoy adding rape to theft and murder.
She ran forward, her steps soundless under the bellow of the fire that was only a block away now and both hands firmly clamped on the varnished wood. Dennis gave her away simply by the way his eyes went wide as he stared over his opponent's shoulder.
The man with the tire iron was turning when she hit him; instead of the back of his head, the hardwood cracked into the side of it, over the temple. Juniper Mackenzie wasn't a large woman-five-three, and slim-but she'd split a
Dennis had different reflexes, or perhaps he'd merely had enough adrenaline pumped into his system by the brief lethal fight. He punched the head of the ax into the gut of the giant with the baseball bat, and followed up with a roundhouse swing that would have taken an arm off at the shoulder if the big man hadn't thrown himself backward with a speed surprising in someone that size.
The blade scored his left arm instead of chopping it, and he fled clutching it and screaming curses; he sounded more angry than hurt. His smaller friend with the Balisong ran backward away from the suddenly long odds, the flickering menace of his knife discouraging thoughts of pursuit.
He halted a dozen paces away, his eyes coldly unafraid; they were an unexpected blue, slanted in a thin amber-colored face. Juniper met them for an instant, feeling a prickle down her neck and shoulders.
"Yo, bitch!" he called, shooting out his left hand with the middle finger pointing at her. "Chico there was a friend of mine. Maybe we'll meet again, get to know each other better. My name is Eddie Liu-remember that!"
Then he looked over Juniper's shoulder, shrugged, turned and followed his bigger friend in a light, bounding run.
She turned to see Eilir coming up with an ax handle of her own, and her gaze went back to her friend and the policeman.
"Either of you hurt?" she said.
Dennis leaned back against the wrecked truck, shaking his head and blowing like a walrus, his heavy face turned purple-red and running sweat beyond what the gathering heat would have accounted for. The policeman had a bleeding slash across the palm of his left hand where he'd fended off the Balisong.
Juniper tossed down her ax handle, suddenly disgusted with the feel of it, and helped him bandage his wound. Out of the corner of her eye she was conscious of Dennis recovering a little, and dragging off the body of the man she'd-
She was still thankful he moved it, and avoided looking at the damp track the bobbing head left on the pavement.
"You folks ought to get out of here," the policeman said. "I've got to get to the station and find out what's going on. Go home if you're far enough from the fire, or head up to campus if you're not."
He walked away, limping slightly and holding his injured left hand against his chest; the nightstick was ready in his right. Juniper pulled her daughter to her and held her, shivering. She looked into Dennis's eyes; her friend wasn't quite as purple now, but he looked worse somehow.
They started up Monroe, heading back towards the Hopping Toad in silence. Dennis stopped for an instant, picked up the revolver of the looter she'd… hit… and weighed it in one big beefy hand. Then he pointed the weapon towards a building and pulled the trigger five times.
"Remember what the fireman said?" Juniper asked quietly. "About the
"You know," he said in his mild voice, "I never really liked guns. Not dead set against 'em like John, but I never liked 'em. But… y'know, Juney, I've got this feeling we're going to miss them. Pretty bad."
Three
"Mom's hurt, Mom's hurt!" a voice shouted, almost screamed;
The interior of the plane was dark as a coffin, groaning and tilting, popping as bits of metal gave way. The gurgling inrush of water was cold enough to feel like burning when it touched skin.
A quick hand on the throat felt a pulse.
"Calm down and get the belts off her," he said as he unhitched the elder Larsson; the flexing weight slid into his arms, catching on things in the dark, and the water was up to his waist. A little more light-more of a lighter blackness-came through the rear hatch, which Eric Larsson had apparently gotten open. The cat was screeching in its box-
A thin sound cut through it, like a rabbit squealing in a trap. Havel's teeth skinned back unseen; he'd heard that sound before, from a man badly wounded.
Signe Larsson shouted: "Oh, God, Mom's hurt inside, something's broken, I can't move her-"
"Get her out now or you'll both fucking drown!" he snapped.
The floor of the plane was tilting ever steeper; probably only the buoyancy of the wing tanks was keeping it from going straight to the bottom.
"Out, out,
She must have obeyed; at least he didn't run into anyone when he scrambled into the passenger compartment himself and pulled the inert form of her father through behind him. Mary Larsson probably weighed a good bit less than her strapping tennis-and-field-hockey daughter. Kenneth Larsson's frame carried nearly a hundred pounds more than the pilot's one-seventy-five.
Contortions in the dark got Larsson's solid weight across his back, with an arm over his shoulder and clamped in his left hand to keep him from slipping back, and Havel began crawling forward with the rising water at his heels; it was more like climbing, with the plane going down by the nose.
Breath wheezed between his teeth; he'd pay for it later, but right now legs and right arm worked like pistons, pushing him up past the four seats-thank God it was a small plane.
When he got to the doorway a hand came back and felt around; he put it on Larsson's collar, and the man's son hauled away, dragging the infuriating weight off Havel's back and out into the night as Havel boosted from below. That was fortunate, because just then the inrushing water won its fight, and the Chieftain sank with its nose straight down.
He felt the jarring thud as the nose struck the tumbled rocks at the bottom of the mountain river.
He
It was still hard to pull his face out of the illusory safety of the bubble. He did, and then jerked himself through the hatch, pushing upward with all the wiry strength of his legs. The cold gnawed inward; water like this would kill you in ten minutes or less, and his sodden coat pulled at him. His head broke the surface with a gasp, and the moonlight was like a flare after the darkness of the sunken plane.
"Over here!" he heard; Astrid Larsson's voice, and then her sister, Signe, joining her. "Over here! Dad, Eric, over here!"
They were calling from the north bank about twenty feet away; he couldn't make much of it out, except a looming shadow, but he struck out in that direction, forcing limbs to move. The current was pulling at him too; he fought it doggedly. When he got close enough the girls held out sticks to him; he ignored them, clamped a hand on the trunk of a providential fallen pine, and levered himself up.
"Eric, Eric!" one of the Larsson girls called.
He turned his head; Eric Larsson was right behind him, sculling on his back with his father floating alongside on his back, held in an efficient-looking one-armed clamp. Havel turned to help him haul the dead weight out of the water, grunting through the chattering of his teeth.
"Good work, kid," he said, as they pulled the older man up the slope and onto a ledge a little above the water, laying him down beside his wife.
"Senior year swim team," the boy stuttered. "Signe too. God, God, what's wrong with Mom?"
"Death from hypothermia, unless we get a fire started," Havel said; his fingers had gone numb and clumsy, and it was getting hard to make them work.
The temperature wasn't all that low, a couple of degrees below freezing, but they'd all been soaked to the skin by water as cold as water could get and not turn into solid ice; and a wet body lost heat twenty-five times faster than a dry one. Plus it was going to get a lot colder before sunrise.
He had a firestarter kit in one pocket of the jacket-it was the main reason he hadn't shed it. The place they'd landed was good as anything likely to be close by, fairly dry and with a steep rise right behind it, even a bit of an overhang about twelve feet up. He gathered fir needles and leaves and twigs with hands that felt like flippers belonging to a seal a long way away, heaped them up and applied the lighter. Flames crackled, stuttered through the damp tinder, then caught solidly.
"Careful!" he said, as Signe Larsson came up with an armful of fallen branches. "One at a time. Check that they're not too damp first. Get more and stack it near the fire to dry out."
The fire grew, ruddy and infinitely comforting; he moved the two older Larssons to lie between it and the wall, where reflected heat would help a bit. As the light grew he tried to examine them as best he could; their children crowded around. The youngsters didn't have anything but scrapes and bruises, but the parents…
"Your dad's had a bad knock on the head," he said. "He'll be all right."
Mrs. Larsson was a different story; semiconscious, and shivering uncontrollably. He turned her head to the light. No concussion there, thank God for small mercies.
"Her right thighbone's broken," he said; despite the lightness of his touch on the swollen, discolored flesh she started with a squeal of pain.
"And her shoulder's dislocated. You two hold her."
They did; he grabbed shoulder and arm, and gave a quick strong jerk. The shoulder joint went
"No, don't build the fire any bigger," he said, looking up as Astrid came into sight doggedly dragging a small log. For a wonder, her cat was with her-out of his box, his orange fur slicked to his body, and looking extremely unhappy.
"You get more heat out of a couple of small fires than a big one," he explained; you couldn't get close enough to a bonfire to get the full benefit. "Start another one, there. Let's get going-"
He showed them what to do; build three medium-sized fires, and heap rocks close by on the river side of each blaze-when the stones had absorbed some heat they could be put around the injured couple, and in the meantime the rock would reflect some of the fire's warmth back towards them. For a wonder, there was plenty of fallen wood of about the right size to pile up in reserve; the only tool they had with them was his folding knife, and it wasn't much use as a woodchopper.
"Get the wet clothes off and prop them up on sticks to dry near the fires, like this," he said. "OK, cover up with these dry leaves and cuddle up close to your folks. The body heat will help. Got to get their core temperatures up or they'll go into shock."
By the time that everything was as close to finished as he could get it the numbness had faded, and he was just miserably cold. He looked at his watch-stopped at precisely 7:15-and then up at the stars, and the moon just clearing the heights to the south; maybe two hours since they'd hit. No point in delaying any further.
"Right, kid, let me have your jacket," he said with a sigh.
Eric Larsson had recovered a bit too, enough for physical misery to bring out irritation; his glare was sullen. "My name's not kid, and why do you want it?" he said.
Havel fought back an impulse to snap; it wouldn't help right now. "Because my sheepskin's too heavy," he said. "Eric. Yours is nylon and it won't get soaked, but I need it to hold some water next to my skin when I dive, I'll lose a little less body heat that way. It isn't a wetsuit but it's the best we've got."
The three youngsters stared at him.
"Yeah, dive," he said, giving her a crooked smile, and jerked his head towards the black water that gurgled behind them. "The current could push the ship downstream overnight, and there's stuff in there we really need-the first-aid kit, and some emergency rations. We're a
By dawn Mary Larsson was awake enough to drink some of the hot sweet chocolate. Her husband held her head up, bringing the tin cup to her lips with infinite tenderness until she turned her head away and slid back into semi-consciousness.
The morphine had taken effect, and an inflatable pressure-bandage immobilized her thigh; they'd put one of the high-tech thin-sheet insulating waterproofs under her, over a bed of pine boughs, and slipped her into the sleeping bag of the same material. The rest of the Larssons were taking turns with the two remaining sheets, using them as cloaks while they huddled by the hearths.
Mike Havel squatted by one of the fires, concentrating on getting the last of the MRE out of the plastic pouch; then he wolfed down another chocolate bar and finished his cup of cocoa. That meant he'd put away about five thousand calories, and he'd need every one of them. It was barely forty degrees with the sun well up; the south-facing riverside cliff caught a welcome amount of the light, but it was still damned uncomfortable in their damp clothes.
Signe was finishing her pouch, too, with no more than a muttered
Her father started slightly as the pilot touched him on the arm. He'd been murmuring something. It sounded like:
"Yeah," Larsson said. His face firmed a little as they walked a dozen paces upstream. "What the hell happened, Havel?"
"The engines cut out," he said. "So did every damn electrical system in the plane. I tried to restart her, but-" He shrugged.
Larsson sighed. "Water under the bridge," he said, then realized what he'd said, half chuckled, and stopped with a wince. "Signe and Eric told me how you got me out, by the way, Mike. Thanks."
He held out his hand. Havel shook it briefly, embarrassed. "Part of the job, Mr. Larsson-"
"Ken."
"Ken. Couldn't leave you there, could I?"
Larsson managed a smile. "The hell you couldn't," he said. "All right, let's get down to business. I remember a white flash… "
"Me too, and your kids. That's not all, though." He showed his watch; it was a rugged Sportsman's Special quartz model.
"This stopped. That might be an accident, but all your watches stopped at exactly the same time, just
Larsson's heavy face went tight. "EMP?" he said.
"I don't think so," Havel said. "I don't know what the hell it was, though, but we're in deep shit. I know pretty well where we are-"
He brought out the map of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness; it was printed on waterproof synthetic silk, colorfast and wrinkle-resistant.
"Hereabouts." His finger touched down. "Here, just east of Wounded Doe Ridge, near as I can figure, and north of West Moose Creek."
They knelt, putting rocks to hold down the corners of the map.
"So we're not far from the State Centennial Trail, maybe twenty miles south as the crow flies. A lot longer on foot, of course, and most of it up and down."
Larsson nodded; he was a part-time outdoorsman too. "Goddamn, but my head feels thick… what do you think we should do?"
"Well… " Havel hesitated. "Normally-if there's such a thing as a
Larsson frowned and rubbed a hand over his face, the skin of his palm rasping on the silvery-gray stubble that coated his jowls. "You don't want to do that?"
"Mr.-Ken-I checked that plane myself, and Steelhead has
"Ouch."
Havel nodded: "That means sixty miles on foot out to U.S. 12,
He pushed down a whisper of cold apprehension.
"Mary could die in a week here," Larsson said flatly. "But she could die if we try to move her. Over country like this, carrying her-"
Havel shrugged slightly. "And it'll be a lot more than three days to the ranger cabin, with a stretcher. Call it six. It could go bad either way. That fracture is ugly. I've got antibiotics in the kit, but it needs a doctor to go in and fix things. The swelling looks bad, too. Moving will hurt, and it'll be dangerous. But staying here for a week, cold and hungry-" He spread his hands. "Your family-your call."
Larsson held out a hand. "Let me see your watch."
The older man turned it over and over; it had a thick tempered-glass casing set in stainless steel, and a set of tumblers in a row to show the day of the month.
"I know these. Good model." He sighed and handed it back. "Christ, there's no right decision here, but we can't sit around with our thumbs up our ass, either." He looked up at the streaked gray clouds. "We'll carry Mary out."
"Right," Havel said.
Ten minutes later the pilot stared at the weapon in amazed disgust. "Now, this is just-" He cut himself off, aware of the audience.
"Maybe the bullets got wet," Signe Larsson said helpfully.
Michael Havel thought there was the hint of a smile around her lips for the first time since the accident; normally, he'd have enjoyed that, even if the humor was directed at him. Now he was too sheerly disgusted.
"They're waterproof," he said tightly. "And the case was sealed and dry when I opened it.
Kenneth Larsson held out a hand. "Let me have a round," he said. "And do you have a multitool with you?"
There was an authority in his voice that reminded Havel that the older Larsson was more than a middle-aged fat man with plenty of money and bad family problems; he was also an engineer, and he'd managed a large business successfully for two decades.
Havel worked the bolt, caught the 7.62mm round as the ejector flicked it out, and flipped it to Larsson off thumb and forefinger like a tossed coin.
"This is a Leatherman," he added, handing over the multi-tool from his survival kit-something like a Swiss army knife on steroids, with a dozen blades and gadgets folding into the twin handles.
"Good make," Larsson replied. "I prefer the Gerber, though."
He took out his own, configured them both as pliers, and gripped one on the bullet and the other near the base of the cartridge case. Then he began to twist and pull, hands moving with precisely calculated force. When he'd finished he tossed the bullet aside and poured the propellant out on the dry surface of the rock.
"Looks OK," he said, wetting a finger and touching it to the small pile of off-white grains to taste it. "If I remember my chemistry courses… yeah, dry and sharp. OK, let me have a splinter from the fire."
They all stood back a little. Larsson watched in fascination as the nitro powder flamed up with a sullen reddish fizzle.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said. "Did you see that, Mike?"
Havel caught himself before he answered
"Yes," Larsson said. "Whatever's happened, the stuff is slower-burning now. Not really explosive propagation at all, even if the primer had gone off, which it didn't. Hand me another, would you? One of the ones you tried to fire."
He repeated the process and returned Havel's Leather-man with an abstracted frown. "If I didn't know better, I'd
Havel felt his mouth go dry. "So's what happens inside a battery, or an electric circuit," he said.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the guns everywhere have stopped working?" Signe Larsson said softly.
Michael Havel stared at her for a moment, his face carefully blank; but he was thinking so hard he could hear his own mental voice in his ears:
Something of the thought must have shown despite his effort at diplomatic calm; she turned a shoulder towards him and busied herself with wrapping her share of the group's load in a spare shirt before tying that across her back with the sleeves. Havel shook himself; once they got back to civilization, her opinions would mean even less than they did now. He removed the telescopic sight from the rifle and dropped it into a pocket of his sheepskin coat; it might come in useful. Then he recased the Remington and tucked it into a hollow in the rock face before covering it with stones.
He wouldn't have admitted it aloud, but he just didn't like discarding a fine tool that had given him good service. His freezer back in Boise still had a fair bit of last fall's venison in it.
Making the stretcher wasn't too hard, now that he had the
A cable saw was damned useful out in the woods and much lighter than a real saw or a hatchet, but if he had to choose he'd have taken the knife. The
His was a copy of the one his great-grandfather had brought from Karelia a hundred years ago; eight inches in the blade, thick on the back, with a murderous point and a gently curving cutting edge on the other side; a solid tang ran through the rock-maple hilt to a brass butt-cap. There were no quillions or guard; those were for sissies.
Havel always thought of his father when he used it; one of his first toddler memories was watching him carve a toy out of white birchwood, the steel an extension of his big battered-looking hands.
He trimmed and barked the poles with the knife, and cut notches at either end for smaller sticks lashed across to keep the poles open-he had a big spool of heavy fishing line in his crash kit, light and strong. One of the ground-sheets tied in made a tolerable base.
Mary Larsson woke while they were lifting her in the bag, conscious enough to whimper a little and then bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut.
"Take a couple of these," he said, holding up her head so that she could wash down the industrial-strength painkillers. Even then, she managed to murmur thanks.
He looked thoughtfully at the bottle when she sighed and relaxed; he wasn't looking forward to running out of them… and Mary Larsson was likely to hurt worse as the days wore on. He'd had a broken leg once, and it was no joke, even when you were young and full of beans. At least she was doing her best, which was turning out to be considerable- the group's shaky morale would have been cut to ribbons by screaming and sobbing.
Then Havel sacrificed her coat to rig padded yokes at the front and rear of the stretcher, and to wrap the rough wood where the carriers' hands would go; he had good steerhide gloves with him, but the others didn't, and their palms were softer to start with. She wouldn't need the coat; the thin-film sleeping bag was excellent insulation, particularly with the hood pulled up.
Astrid's soft-sided boots had perfectly practical rough-country soles; he'd checked.
The four hale Larssons were standing in an awkward group, looking at him. He nodded to the youngest. Astrid swallowed and hugged her cat a little closer; the beast dug its claws into her leather jacket and climbed to her shoulder. He hoped the stuff was well tanned; wet leather was about the most uncomfortable-wearing substance known to humankind, and if it dried stiff it was even worse.
"How did that bow of yours come through? Mind if I have a look at it?"
"It's fine," she said. "Sure, here."
He examined it; he'd never taken up archery himself, but he'd flown enough bowhunters around Idaho to pick up a little knowledge of the art. The weapon was a recurve, the Cupid's-bow type with the forward-curling tips, and he could tell it had set her dad back a fair bit of change.
The centerpiece handle, the riser, had its grip shaped to the hand and an arrow-rest through the center; it was carved from some exotic striped hardwood he didn't recognize and polished to a glossy sheen. The whole weapon was about four feet long unstrung, and it had a look he recognized from other contexts-the sleek beauty of functionality.
"Nice piece of work," he said. "The limbs are fiberglass on a wood core?"
"Horn on the belly, steer-horn, hot-worked," she said, with a hint of a sneer. "And sinew on the back, with a yew core; fish-bladder glue. Cocobolo wood for the riser, leather covering for the arrow shelf and the strike plate, antelope horn for the tips. Lacquered birchbark covering."
His left eyebrow went up; that
"It was made by Saluki Bows. I helped… well, I watched a lot."
"What's the draw?"
"Twenty-five pounds."
The eyebrow stayed up. Astrid was tall for fourteen; five-three, and headed higher from the look of her hands and feet-the whole family were beanpoles-but she was slender. That was a fairly heavy draw for a girl her size.
It occurred to him that she might just carry the bow for effect. She
"Can you use it?" he asked, and tossed it back.
He could see her flush. Instead of answering she braced the lower tip against the outer side of her left foot and pushed the back of her right knee against the riser, sliding the string up as the weapon bent until the loop on top settled into the grooves. Then she opened the cover of the quiver slung over her shoulder, nocked a shaft, and drew to the ear as she turned.
"That lodgepole pine leaning from the bank," she said. "Head-height."
The flat snap of the bowstring against the leather bracer on her left forearm sounded, echoing a little in the narrow confines of the canyon. Half a second later the arrow went
"Not bad, kid," he said.
He walked over to the tree with his boots scrunching in the streamside gravel and rotted ice. When he pulled the arrow free it was with a grunt of effort; it
"Ever done any actual hunting with it?"
"I shot a coney once," she said proudly. "A rabbit, that is."
Her brother grinned. "Hey, sprout, aren't you going to tell him what you did afterward?"
She flushed more darkly, and glared. Eric went on to Havel: "Princess Legolamb here puked up her guts and cried for hours, and then she buried poor Peter Rabbit. I guess they don't eat bunnies among the Faeries of the Dirt-wood Realm."
"That's
"But she can shoot the hell out of a tree stump, and every spare pie-plate on Larsdalen rolls downhill for its life when she comes by in a shooting mood… "
Havel cleared his throat. "Eric, you and your dad start with the stretcher. He and Signe can change off after twenty minutes. I'll spell you after forty, but I'd better lead the way to begin with, until we get our direction set and find a game trail."
As they lifted the injured woman he motioned Astrid aside for an instant.
"Kid, I'm glad you've got some experience shooting moving targets with that thing," he said softly.
She looked up at him, startled out of the walking reverie that seemed to take up most of her time.
"You are?" she said.
"Yeah. Look, we're going to need three days minimum to get your mother to the Centennial Trail, and then another day to make the ranger cabin, and another plus for me and your brother to get to the highway. We don't have much food. It's going to get cold every damn night and it may get wet, and carrying your mother over this country's going to be brutal. Shoot anything that moves unless it's a bear or a mountain lion. We
He watched the girl's face firm up, and she made a decisive nod. He kept his own face grave as he returned the gesture, then looked at his compass once more and started off on a slanting line across the hillside he'd picked out earlier.
The noncom had used exactly that we're-all-depending-on-you technique to get the best out of every guy in his squad.
Four
"Dennis, what's everyone going to
Her friend's smile was normally engaging. This time it was more like a snarl. "Juney, how do you know that there
They glanced at each other in appalled silence, and then their eyes flicked to Eilir; the girl was looking out the window through the binoculars, squirming between them to get a better view. The fire was coming closer, but slowly, and the southern rim of flame had stopped at the edge of the open campus of Oregon State.
She'd been poor-still
"You still have that wagon out at Finney's place?" Dennis said.
"Yes," she replied. "He stores it for me so I can use it at the RenFaire and the festivals and meets over the summer, and he boards Cagney and Lacey for me. My pickup's out behind his barn right now. I was supposed to drive down to Eugene to meet my coven after I finished up here."
She'd have liked nothing better than to live out of the wagon the whole summertime, ambling along behind the two Percheron mares; it was a real old-style tinker-traveler-gypsy house-on-wheels shaped like a giant barrel. Not practical, of course.
"I think we should get moving. Get out of town, find someplace real remote, and hide like hell," Dennis said. Then he hesitated: "If you want my help."
"Oh,
To herself:
She went on: "The cabin up in the Cascade foothills would be perfect and I'll be glad to have you along. We'll have to cross the valley… "
"You think this is going to last long enough for that?" Dennis said, his voice neutral.
Her brows knotted. "You were right; we've got to act like this was all over the world, and for keeps. If we do and we're wrong, we just look stupid and scared. If we don't and it
Her impish smile came back for an instant: "As if I wasn't weird enough at any time!"
"Right," her friend said, nodding vigorously. "That's
They clattered down the stairs again. Nobody was left but a couple of the staff, talking together in low tones.
"Boss," the cook said, coming out of the kitchen and drying his hands on his apron. "I stay and help, but my kids-"
"No, Manuel, you get home where you're needed," Dennis said. He hesitated, then went on: "You could think of getting out of town, too. And take some of the canned stuff, whatever you can carry. I think things could get, uh, hairy for a while, with this power failure and all."
He spoke a little louder: "That goes for everyone here. Take what you can carry."
The stocky Mexican gave him an odd look, then handed the three of them a platter of sandwiches and went, grunting a little at the weight of the cardboard box of food in his arms and the sack of dried beans on top of it. The rest of the staff trailed out in his wake, similarly burdened.
Juniper looked at the pastrami sandwich he'd made.
Her stomach contracted like a ball of crumpled lead sheet; she made herself eat anyway, and wash it down with a Dr Pepper.
Juniper kept her mind carefully blank as she and Dennis worked. She changed back into jeans and flannel shirt and denim jacket, then helped the manager-
"No canned goods?" Dennis said, as she chose and sorted.
Juniper shook her head. "We'd be lugging stuff that's mostly water and container. This dried food gives you a lot more calories for the weight, when it's cooked. And throw in those spice packets, all of them. They don't weigh much, and I think they're going to be worth a lot more than gold in a while."
The garage out back held a little two-wheeled load carrier of the type that could be towed behind a bicycle; Dennis used that for some of his tools before piling more food on top, and she didn't object. They stowed as much as they could in the storage area of the basement; that had a stout steel door and a padlock. When that was full, they stacked boxes of cleaning supplies and old files in front of it, hiding it from a casual search at least.
"Wait here a second," Dennis said.
When he returned he had the shotgun from under the bar. He turned it on a stack of cardboard boxes and pulled the trigger.
It was his hopefully nonlethal backup for an emergency that had never happened-the Hopping Toad wasn't the sort of place where a barkeep needed to flourish a piece every other week.
He worked the slide twice and the second time he caught the ejected shell; then he cut off the portion that held the shot and set the base down on the concrete floor.
"Stand back," he said, and dropped a lit match into it.
There
"What's
"Juney… Juney, if I didn't know better, I'd say someone, or some One, just changed the laws of nature on us. As far as I can tell, explosives don't explode anymore. They just burn, sorta slow." He ran a hand over his head. "Shit, you're the one who believes in magic! But this… it's like some sort of spell."
Juniper raised her brows. She'd always thought Dennis was a stolid sort, a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist. She started to cross herself in a deep-buried reflex from a Catholic childhood, and changed it to the sign of the Horns. The idea was preposterous… but it had a horrible plausibility, after this day of damnation.
"Well, the sun didn't go out," Dennis said, scrubbing a palm across his face. "And humans are powered by oxidizing food, and our nerves are electrical impulses… Maybe some quantum effect that only hits current in metallic wires, and
Juniper snorted. "Does that mean that the dilithium crystals are fucked, Scotty?"
Dennis was startled into a brief choked-off grunt of laughter. "Yeah, that's bafflegabic bullshit, I'm no scientist- I just read
He went over to another corner of the basement and dragged out a heavy metal footlocker. "I was keeping this stuff for John, he had it left over from what he sold at the last RenFaire and Westercon, and it was less trouble than taking it back home or all the way out east."
"East?" she said.
She'd met John Martin now and then and liked him, although Dennis's elder brother was also a stoner whose musical world had stopped moving about the time Janis Joplin OD'd; besides that he was a back-to-the-lander and a blacksmith. Mostly he lived in a woodsy cabin in northern California, and made the circuit of West Coast dos and conventions and collectors' get-togethers. Of course, he and Dennis worked together a fair bit, with Dennis doing the leatherwork.
"Yeah, John's in Nantucket, of all places. He's got a girlfriend there, and there are a lot of the summer home crowd who can afford his ironwork and replicas. I hope to God everything's all right in Santa Fe East. John's a gentle sort."
He unfastened the locker and threw back the lid. Reaching inside, he took out a belt wrapped around a pair of scabbards and tossed it to her.
"Put it on," he said. "Jesus, I wish John
What she was holding was a palm-wide leather belt with brass studs and a heavy buckle in the form of an eagle. It carried a long Scottish dirk with a hilt of black bone carved in swirling Celtic knotwork and a broad-bladed short-sword about two feet long. She put her hand on the rawhide-wrapped hilt and drew it; the damascene patterns in the steel rippled like frozen waves in the lamplight. It was a
Juniper took an awkward swing; the sword was knife sharp, not as heavy as she'd expected, and beautifully balanced. It was beautiful in itself, for the same reason a cat was-perfectly designed to do exactly one thing.
"Why not?" Dennis said.
He reached into the locker and drew out an ax-nothing like the firefighting tool he'd used in the brief street fight. It was a replica of a Viking-era Danish bearded war-ax, and made with the same care that the sword had been; the haft was four feet of polished hickory.
"Why not?" he repeated. "'Cause it'll look
She swallowed and unwrapped the belt, settling the broad weight of it around her waist and cinching it tight- they had to cut an extra hole through the leather for that, but Dennis had the tools and skill to do a good quick job. The down vest she pulled on over it hid the hilts and most of the blades, at least, if she wore it open.
"I don't have the faintest idea how to use swords," she complained as the three of them spent a grunting ten minutes moving a heavy metal-topped counter-table over the trapdoor to the basement.
"I just
Dennis picked up the ax and hung it over one shoulder with the blade facing backward and the beard and helve holding it in place. Eilir was frightened but excited; she took a light hatchet and long knife to hang from her own belt.
Her mother felt only a heavy dread.
"It'll still
"Chuck Barstow," Juniper said. "You met him last Samhain, remember? His wife Judy's the Maiden of my coven."
Dennis nodded. "Hope to hell he turns up. I may remember enough to give you a few pointers. And damn, but we're better off than those poor bastards on the 747!"
"Amen," Juniper said.
She winced for a second; if this whatever-it-was
"Focus on the moment," she muttered to herself as they went out into the front room of the tavern, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Ground and center, ground and center."
Then: "Dennie, what the hell are you doing? I thought money wouldn't be worth anything?"
The heavyset man had opened the till, scooping the bills into the pockets of his quilted jacket; then he ducked into the manager's office and returned with the cash box. He grinned at her.
"Yeah, Juney-it won't be worth anything
"Friend?"
"More of a business acquaintance. He runs a sporting-goods store, and sells grass on the side. Actually, he sells pretty much anything that comes his way and isn't too risky, which is why I'm betting he'll open up special when I wave some bills at him. If he were really a friend, I'd feel guilty about this, but as it is… "
Chuck Barstow stopped his bicycle by the side of the road and touched his face lightly as he panted. The glass cuts weren't too bad, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped-he'd been able to dive behind the desk when the 727 plowed into the runway about a thousand yards away. Despite the chilly March night he was sweating, and it stung when it hit the cuts.
He looked over his shoulder. Highway 99 ran arrow-straight southeast from Eugene Airport. It was nearly eight o'clock, and the fires behind him had gotten worse, if anything. The streetlights were all out, but the giant pyres where the jets had dropped towered into the sky, and were dwarfed in turn where one had plowed into the tank farm where the fuel was stored. He could see the thin pencil of the control tower silhouetted against the fire, and then it seemed to waver and fall.
The highway was full of cars and trucks, both ways. Many of them had crashed, still moving at speed when engines and lights and power steering died together, and a few were burning. There were bodies laid out on the pavement, and people trying to give first aid to the hurt. More were trudging towards Eugene, but there was nothing except fire-lit darkness towards the city, either.
He could hear curses, screams, there two men slugging at each other, here two more helping an injured third along with his arms over their shoulders. A state trooper with blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead stood by his car with the microphone in his hand, doggedly pressing the send button and giving his call sign and asking for a response that never came.
"Chuck," Andy Trethar said from behind him. "Chuck, we've got to keep going. They'll all be waiting for us at the store."
Before he could reply, a stranger spoke: a tall dark heavyset man in an expensive business suit, looking to be two decades older than Chuck's twenty-seven.
"How much for the bicycle?" he said, looking between them. "I have to get to the airport
"Mister, it's not for sale," Chuck said shortly. "I need it to get back to my wife and daughter. And the airport's a giant barbeque, anyway."
"I'm prepared to give you a check for a thousand, right now," the man said.
"I said,
Chuck shook his head wordlessly and got ready to step on the pedal. Judy would be worried, and Tamsin could sense moods like a cat-the girl was psychic, even at three years old.
The fist came from nowhere, and he toppled backward and hit the pavement with an
Someone tried to pull it away from him, and he clung to it in reflex. He also blinked his eyes open, forcing himself to see. Andy was pulling the heavyset man back by the neck of his jacket; the man turned and punched again, knocking Chuck's slightly built friend backward.
Some of Chuck Barstow's coreligionists were pacifists. He wasn't; in fact, he'd been a bouncer for a while, a couple of years ago when he was working his way through school. He was also a knight in the SCA, an organization that staged mock medieval combats as realistic as you could get without killing people. His daytime job as a gardener for Eugene Parks and Recreation demanded a lot of muscle too.
His hand snaked out and got a grip on the ankle of the man in the suit. One sharp yank brought him down yelling, and Chuck lashed out with a foot. That connected with the back of the man's head, and his yells died away to a mumble.
Sweating, aching, Chuck hauled himself to his feet; they pushed their bicycles back into motion and hopped on, feet pumping. The brief violence seemed to have cleared his head, though: He could watch the ghastly scenes that passed by without either blocking them out or going into a fugue.
In fact…
"Stop!" he said, as they reached Jefferson from Sixth.
"What for?" Andy said, looking around, but he followed his friend's lead.
"Andy, we've got to think a bit. This isn't going to get better unless… whatever changed changes back. And I've got this awful feeling it won't."
They were in among tall buildings now, and it was dark-a blacker dark than either of them had ever known outdoors. Occasional candle-gleams showed from windows, or the ruddier hue of open flame where someone had lit a fire in a Dumpster or trash barrel. The sounds of the city were utterly different-no underlying thrum of motors, but plenty of human voices, a distant growling brabble, and the crackle of fire. The smell of smoke was getting stronger by the minute.
"Why shouldn't it change back?".
"Why should it? Apart from us wanting it to."
Andy swallowed; even in the darkness, his face looked paler. "Goddess, Chuck, if it doesn't change back… "
Andy and Diana Trethar owned a restaurant that doubled as an organic food store and bakery.
"We get a delivery once a week-today, Wednesday. With no trucks-"
"- or trains, or airplanes, or motorbikes, even."
"What will happen when everything's used up?"
"We die," Chuck said. "If the food can't get to us, we die-unless we go to the food."
"Just wander out of town?" Andy said skeptically. "Chuck, most farmers need modern machinery just as much-"
"I know. But at least there would be some chance. As long as we could take enough stuff with us." Chuck nodded to himself and went on: "Which is why we're going to swing by the museum."
"What?"
"Look," he said. "Cars aren't working, right?" A nod. "Well, what's at the museum right now?"
Andy stared at him for a moment; then, for the first time since six fifteen, he began to smile.
"Blessed be. 'Oregon's Pioneer Heritage: A Living Exhibit.' "
The restaurant's window had the Closed sign in it, but the door opened at the clatter of hooves and the two men's shouts. Chuck smiled and felt his scabs pull as Judy came to the door, a candle in her hand-one thing you were
"We need help," he said. "We've got to get these things out back."
His wife was short and Mediterranean-dark and full-figured to his medium-tall lankiness and sandy-blond coloring; she flung herself up onto the box of the wagon and kissed him. He winced, and she gave a sharp intake of breath as she turned his face to what light the moon gave.
"I'll get my bag," she said; her daytime occupation was registered nurse and midwife.
"Looks worse than it is," he said. "Just some superficial cuts-and a guy slugged me, which is why the lips are sore. Patch me later. How's Tamsin?"
"She's fine, just worried. Asleep, right now."
Things had already changed; yesterday his injuries would have meant a doctor. Now everyone ignored them, as they helped him get the horses down the laneway. Putting down feed and pouring water into buckets took a few moments more. The horses were massive Suffolk Punch roans that weighed a ton each; placid and docile by nature, but the noises and scents they'd endured had them nervous, eyes rolling, sweating and tossing their heads. He was glad there was a big open lot behind the loading dock; the wagons took up a lot of room, and eight of the huge draught beasts took even more.
Andy and Diana had bought this place cheap, converting a disused warehouse into MoonDance, the latest of Eugene's innumerable
The familiarity was almost painful as he ducked under one of the partially raised loading doors. The back section was still all bare concrete and structural members, unlike the homey-funky decor of the cafe area at the front; it was even candlelit, as it usually was for the rites. The carpet covering the Circle and the Quarter Signs was down, though. Shadows flickered on the high ceiling, over crates and cartons and shrink-wrapped flats with big stacks of bagged goods on them. The air was full of a mealy, dusty, appetizing smell-flour and dried fruit and the ghost of a box of jars of scented oil someone had let crash on the floor last year, all under the morning's baking.
He counted faces. Eight adults. Children mostly asleep, off in the office room they usually occupied during the ceremonies.
"Jack? Carmen? Muriel?" he said, naming the other members.
"They didn't show up," Judy said. She was the coven's Maiden, and kept track of things. "We thought we shouldn't split up, the way things are out there."
He nodded emphatically. The adults all gathered around. Chuck took a deep breath: "Rudy's dead."
More shocked exclamations, murmured
"All of you, it… His plane was only a hundred feet up. It just… fell. There were a dozen jets in the air, and all of them just… the engines quit. The whole airport went up in flames in about fifteen minutes. I was in the control tower, Wally lets me, you know? And I barely made it out. I did get a good view north-it's not just the city's blacked out,
Everyone contributed their story; Dorothy Rose had seen a man trying to use a shotgun to stop looters. That sent Diana scurrying for the Trethar household-protection revolver, and then for the separately stored ammunition, which took a while because she'd forgotten where she put it. Everyone stared in stupefaction at the results when she fired it at a bank of boxed granola.
They talked on into the night, in the fine old tradition. At last Chuck held up a hand; sitting around hashing things out until consensus was wonderful, not to mention customary, but they had to act now or not at all.
"Look, I really hope things will be normal tomorrow. Even though that means I'll be fired and maybe arrested, because I flashed my Parks and Recreation credentials and took all that Living History stuff from that poor custodian-he was the only one who hadn't bugged out in a panic. But if it isn't normal tomorrow, Judy and Tamsin"- he nodded towards the room where the children were sleeping-"and me, and Andy and Diana and their Greg are heading out. I'd love for you all to come with me. You mean a lot to us."
"Out where?" someone asked. "Why?"
"Why? I told you; there are a quarter of a million people in the Eugene metro area. If this goes on, in about a month, maybe less, this city's going to be eating rats-do you want your kids in that? The ones who survive are going to be the ones who don't sit around waiting for someone to come and make things better-unless they do get back to normal, but I'm not going to bet my daughter's life on it. As to where… "
He leaned forward. "One thing's for sure. Juniper isn't driving in tonight from Corvallis for an Esbat. I'll bet you anything you want to name she's going to get the same idea as me: head for her place in the hills."
"Oh, Goddess," Diana Trethar said. "She won't know about Rudy!"
Chuck's voice was grim. "She'll be able to guess, I think." He pointed northeast. "We can wait things out there- live there a long time, if we have to. We'll leave a message for the people who didn't show; a hint at where we're going and what we think is happening. Look, these wagons can haul something like six tons each… "
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