Disclaimers: In chapter one.
“I hear that voice again. It sings me to sleep. A journey without distance to a goal that has never changed.”
1
Koda comes to full wakefulness quickly and silently. Her dream remains with her even as her body and mind awaken to reality. She smiles as she feels the compact body in her arms, melded against and atop her like a second skin. Reaching up, she strokes the thick, soft black hair, chuckling inwardly as the woman in her arms purrs very much like a cat while trying to burrow further into her embrace, still fast asleep.
After another moment, Dakota slips out from beneath the Air Force colonel and makes her way, still unclothed, to the small, polarized window. The night beyond is crisp, clear, and unremittingly cold. As she peers off to the north, now knowing her destination, she thinks back on the past two days.
As the remains of the military caravan limped toward the base like an injured snake, it was held up by a long line of soldiers armed to the teeth. Koda could hear, via the open mic, the orders of those soldiers, demanding that everyone step out of their vehicles to verify that they were human.
Up to her elbows in a downed airman’s chest cavity, Dakota, of course, refused. When the gun’s muzzle came into view, it was only Manny’s fast reflexes, which had been courted by colleges across the country, and a few Major League teams as well, that saved her from being splattered like an ink blot all over the truck’s interior.
Four heads poked immediately through the truck’s doors, military faces cut from the same cookie cutter mold, down to the deep cleft in their chins. Fortunately for everyone, they immediately relaxed when they realized that Allen was, in fact, telling the truth. Three of the men hopped aboard and began helping the beleaguered vet while the fourth ran back to his mates and ordered the gates opened so the caravan could proceed with all due haste.
Dakota saw very little of the compound itself, though she could smell the thick, acrid smoke that hung in the air like a pall. The base had, thankfully, a fairly modern hospital and several surviving doctors and medics to tend to the men in her care.
The electricity was running, thanks to a small hydroelectric plant on the grounds, and Koda spent the next thirty six hours helping the harried staff tend to the wounds of the injured soldiers.
When she was finally approached by a very insistent Allen, she didn’t fight the firm hand encircling her wrist, or the tug that forced her legs to move away from the patients she was watching over.
She stopped and stared, though, when her first sight of the compound settled over her. It looked like it had been deluged by bombs. Many of the buildings were nothing but still-smoking rubble, and almost all of the uniformed men and women who scuttled about like ants bore some mark of its passing, whether a bandaged appendage, or a shell-shocked expression and deep, hollow eyes.
Mounds of fresh snow covered the bodies of those who would never rise again. Twenty across and at least that many deep, the bodies were watched over by a full military color-guard, honored in the only way they knew.
“C’mon,” Maggie had said, gently tugging Dakota’s arm. “Let’s get you somewhere warm where you can get some food in your belly before you pass out.”
“I’m fine.” Koda’s voice was a distracted mumble as she eyed the hillocks of snow covering the bodies of the fallen.
“You’re as pale as the snow out here, Koda, and your pulse is racing to beat the band. I’ll make it an order if I have to.”
Allen bravely withstood the colorless eyes that came to rest on hers.
“Yeah, I know, you’re a civvie’, but I can be mighty persuasive when I want to be.”
That earned her a smile that, while small, cheered her considerably.
The mess was pretty much what Dakota expected a military mess to be, and she ate her food without really tasting it, just glad to have something warm and substantial in her belly after more than a day of existing on black coffee and nothing else.
The housing was, however, somewhat of a surprise, and when Maggie led her into the small, private cottage, she looked around approvingly, giving the arrangements her first real smile of the day.
A shower had been the first thing on her agenda, though it took almost an hour of scrubbing to get all of the encrusted blood and body fluids removed from her skin and hair.
Clad in a fresh T-shirt and soft sweatpants, she tumbled into the king-sized bed and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
Maggie had returned late that evening, and when Koda awoke, they fell into an embrace and a loving that was more needing than tender. Primal and passionate, it was the connection of two bodies trying to reaffirm life after having seen so much death.
They had fallen asleep soon after, completely drained of the last of their energy.
2
There is a body in the road. Young, female, bleeding. Unfortunately, despite the presence of half a dozen expectant ravens, it is also still alive. Even with snow falling, Kirsten can see the faint, warding flutter of a hand when one of the birds ventures too close.
Damn. Goddam. I. So. Do. Not. Need. This.
Risky. Way too risky.
Yet even as she begins to steer in an arc that will carry her past on the other side, Kirsten’s foot settles on the brake. Asimov, on the seat beside her, stands to attention, ears pricked forward, tail stiff at half-mast. He whines, low in his throat, and gives a short, sharp bark of alarm.
“Yeah, boy,” she mutters. “I see her.”
For several minutes, Kirsten does just that, examining the scene before her. The woman—no, a girl, slender and still almost flat-chested under the bulk of her jacket, with generic Midwestern features and light-brown hair spilling out from beneath the brim of a knitted cap—lies some ten feet from the verge of the road, in the westbound lane of the Interstate. A wavering line of footprints, now rapidly filling with the new snow, dots the empty field to the north of the road.
Halfway across there are slip marks and a hollow where someone has fallen, presumably the annoyance in front of her. Even at a distance, she can make out a pink tinge to patches of the snow. Closer too, crimson spatters the fresh cover, with a long streak where the girl has skidded and fallen again.
There are half a dozen ways it could be a trap. The girl could be microchipped or wearing a transponder. She might have a weapon under her jacket. There could be droids waiting behind a line of trees that runs along a ridge to the other side of the road. Almost as bad, there might be human predators who have left their latest victim as bait for the next.
As the possibilities sort through her mind, one of the ravens stalks up to the girl on the road, waddling a little on the still-soft surface. Cocking its head, it seems to study her face for a moment, then grasps a strand of her long hair in its bill and tugs. And tugs again, backing up in the snow. The girl thrashes and cries out weakly. “No! Oh, no! Jesus, help me!”
Kirsten has never placed much credence in the idea of a fate worse than death, but being eaten alive qualifies. In spades. She pauses only to check the magazine of her pistol, slides out of the seat and slogs toward the young woman who has suddenly become her unwelcome charge. Less inhibited, Asimov streaks past her and bounds over the girl’s body in a flying arc, landing splay-legged in the middle of the ravens and snapping at the air. The birds, not much impressed, step away from the dog with a haughty stare and ruffle of wing feathers. The girl, though, cries out in terror. “A wolf! Oh my God, noooooo!”
“No he isn’t. He just think he’s one,” Kirsten snaps. She whistles sharply, “Come, Asi!”
The girl turns to look at Kirsten, floundering in the snow. Closer to, Kirsten can see that the right leg of her jeans is ripped and soaked with red, fresh blood pooling and melting the snow where she lies. Her eyes are all pupil, so wide with pain and terror that Kirsten cannot tell what color they are. Scratches streak her face, though they seem superficial, perhaps the result of fleeing through the underbrush of the woods along the ridge. Her left arm lies at a strange angle, either broken or dislocated.
Oh, wonderful, Kirsten thinks. Multiple choice: (a)put her out of her misery; (b), take her with me; or (c) leave her for the ravens.
Leaving her for the birds is not an option. If it were, Kirsten would already be five miles further down the road, five supremely important miles further toward the end of her own journey. Euthanasia by 9mm round? She cannot quite bring herself to do it, at least not without knowing for certain that the life seeping out onto the road at her feet is unsalvageable. All right, then. That leaves (b).
With a sigh, she thumbs on her gun’s safety catch and tucks the weapon into her belt. No good deed ever goes unpunished, she reminds herself, wryly, and this one will probably have an exorbitant cost. Saving this girl’s life, if she can, will make her that much later getting to the manufacturing facility at Minot. And that will almost certainly be paid for in other lives, elsewhere. She has already killed innocent people to get as far as she has. She is not willing to do it again except under circumstances more extreme than this.
She kneels in the snow beside the wounded girl, whose huge black eyes have never left her own. Forcing her voice to the gentleness that always marked her mother’s, Kirsten takes the girl’s hand, lifting it from where it still scrabbles at the snow, fighting for purchase. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
The girl’s only answer is a whimper, deep in her throat. She shrinks away, trying to make herself small, when Kirsten reaches for the zip of her jacket.
“All right,” she says. “My name’s—my name’s Annie. I’m going to look at your leg, if you’ll let me. I’ll try really hard not to hurt you.”
Damn. It’s like talking to a half-feral dog.
You would do this for a dog. Pretend she is one if that’s what it takes. Patience.
“Easy,” she whispers. “Easy, now.”
Without waiting for a response, Kirsten folds the torn denim back from the girl’s thigh. There is a puncture wound, probably a from a large-caliber bullet. The good news, insofar as there is any, is that the blood slowly seeping from its depths is dark, almost black. Venous blood, which means it’s just possible that her new responsibility is not going to bleed to death on her. If the femoral artery had been hit, she would be dead by now. And we would not be having this charming conversation. Unfortunately, she cannot see the exit wound and has no idea how much of the flesh has been torn away in the projectile’s passage. There is no way at all she can deal with the arm until she gets the jacket off, and she cannot do that with her patient lying in the snow.
“Listen to me,” she says gently. “I can’t tend to you like this. I’m going to bring the van over here and lift you into it. I’ve got some medicines and other supplies that will help you. Do you understand?”
Silence. The eyes fixed on her remain huge and black. Kirsten begins to wonder if there’s a concussion along with the other injuries, or if the girl is deaf. But she can speak; that is certain. Damn. “Okay, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Can you raise your raise your hand if you understand me?”
Nothing. Then, very slowly, two fingers rise up out of the snow.
Kirsten lets out a long breath. “Good. I’ll only be gone a minute. This is Asimov.” She points to the dog, where he sits on the girl’s other side, tongue lolling and a happy-idiot expression on his face as he watches the ravens. “He’ll keep the birds away from you. He is not a wolf.” No matter what he might think.
It takes Kirsten more time than she would like to maneuver the truck to within a couple feet of her patient. Once alongside, she slides open the side door and clears out a spot on the floor. Her task is easier than it would have been a few days ago, and she frowns. Her supplies are getting low. She has enough gas in the jerry cans to get her across the rest of Minnesota and half of North Dakota, with maybe a tank and a half to spare. She cannot take this waif with her; neither can she spend much of her precious fuel looking for a safe haven.
In this sparsely populated country, there would have been fewer droids than in the cities. Somewhere she had read—National Geographic? Scientific American? —that there were still bands of Mennonites here on the northern plains who had refused to come out of the nineteenth century even so far as to use electricity, much less modern farm machinery. In the last hundred miles, Kirsten had seen the occasional tracks of a wheeled vehicle, even more occasionally a thin column of smoke from a chimney. Almost any group of survivors ought to be glad of another pair of hands, even if they come accompanied by a young and healthy appetite.
They ought to be willing to take a good, well-trained dog, too.
The idea comes unbidden. It is something she has been trying very hard not to think about, though she has known from the beginning that she cannot take Asimov where she is going. Simply abandoning him is unthinkable, just as leaving him behind had been. Far in the back of her mind is the even harder choice she had known she might face. With a bit of luck, now, it will not come to that.
The thought is almost enough to make her feel kindly toward the Nameless One as she spreads out a sleeping bag, then tops it with a blanket-covered tarp as a makeshift treatment table. Kirsten also lays out a box of bandages; an ampoule of Penicillin, still a staple drug after three-quarters of a century; a 5 cc syringe and a precious vial of Demerol. Perhaps, she thinks, she can leave the drugs, too, with anyone willing to give Asimov a home. Even an aspirin should be worth its weight in diamonds, now.
Worth more. Worth lives to those fortunate enough to have it.
The world has changed irrevocably, and she knows it. Even if she succeeds in stopping the droids, even if there are enough surviving chemists, physicists, microbiologists, AI wonks like herself to rebuild the technology, the life she has known is gone. The social order likely to emerge from the ruins will be radically different, with few men and almost no elders. Nations are destroyed. What will rise in their stead she fears even to imagine. City-states? Tribes? The Empire of Miami?
She gives her head a shake to force herself back to the present. Whatever comes, she probably will not live to see it.
Carefully she lets herself down into the snow next to the Nameless One. “Listen to me,” she says softly. “I’m going to lift you up and back and into the truck. I need you to help me if you can. Do you understand?”
This time there is a nod. Progress.
Kirsten straddles the girl’s body, getting a firm grip under her arms. “Okay, on the count of three.”
Another nod.
At “Three!” Kirsten straightens and heaves, stepping forward in the same motion to sit the girl in the open door of the van. It is easier than she expected, with the Nameless One able to take some of her own weight on her good leg and support herself with her uninjured arm.
After that it is Emergency First Aid 101.
Kirsten cuts away the right half of the girl’s jeans and applies pressure compresses until the wound stops bleeding. The exit hole is larger than the entry, but not measurably worse; not a military round then, or a dum-dum. She pours it full of antiseptic and winds bandages around the leg. The arm is more difficult. An enormous purple bruise and swelling above the elbow indicate a fracture. Kirsten does not have the skill to set the bone, so she splints it with triple thicknesses of cardboard cut from a carton of dog food and straps it to the girl’s side to immobilize it. She replaces the stained blanket under her patient with a fresh one. Finally she pumps 500 units of Penicillin into her. The repairs have taken the better part of two hours. The light is fading as Kirsten reaches for the Demerol.
The girl has borne the pain in silence, all the while watching her with those great dark eyes. Kirsten uncaps another syringe with her teeth and inserts it into the ampoule of painkiller. “I’ll give you something that will make you sleep, now. I can’t promise you’ll feel better when you wake up, but at least you’ll have a fighting chance. We need to find someone I can leave you with, though.” Gently she slides the needle home. “I can’t take you where I’m going.”
“Where’s that?”
The girl’s voice is hardly more than a breath, but it startles Kirsten so that she straightens suddenly. “Well,” she says, after a moment. “So you are going to talk to me.”
“Sorry. I was scared.”
“Of course you were.” Kirsten gives the girl’s unbroken arm an awkward pat. “Can you tell me what happened to you? And what do I call you?”
“Lizzie. Lizzie Granger. My folks call me Elizabeth, but, . . ..” Lizzie chokes suddenly, turning her face away. “Oh God, they’re all dead. My mom, my dad, my baby brother. The Beast’s locusts killed them.”
“Beast? Locusts?”
“The Beast. You know, the Beast. 666.”
“You mean the one from the Bible? The Anti-Christ?” .
“No, no. The one that comes before the Anti-Christ. You’re not a Christian, are you?”
“I was raised Methodist. Does that count?”
“Christian. Gotta be a real Christian.” The girl’s voice is slurring with the action of the Percodan. “Not like me. Not good enough. The locusts came, the ones with faces like men but with lions’ teeth. Breastplates of iron. Stings. Killed them all.”
This is, Kirsten decides, the most bizarre conversation she has had in decades. Not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to the door when her dad was stationed in Corpus Christi, the ones who thought the United Nations was the Devil’s own bureaucracy and the flag was an idol, were quite this weird. Droids running out of control and the girl is worried about grasshoppers. Grasshoppers with human faces and metal bodies and . . . oh bloody hell, of course. “Droids,” she says. “You mean droids?”
“Droids,” Lizzie murmurs. “Good droids. Took my cousin and her kids. There was this. Bright, bright light. And the angels. Took them up. To meet. Jesus. In the. Air.” Her voice is fading. “Ran. Scared. Got left. Behind. Left. . . .”
Lizzie’s eyes slide closed and her breathing deepens. It is still faster than it should be, and shallower, but she is in no immediate danger. That will come later.
For all of them.
Kirsten drapes a blanket over the girl’s unconscious form and climbs back into the front seat. She whistles Asimov up beside her, puts the truck in gear and heads again into the west, into the settling darkness.
3
“Go back to sleep. It’s still the middle of the night.”
The soft, deep voice startles Maggie from her rapt, if a bit sleepy, moonlit contemplation of surely the most perfect body that God, in His infinite Wisdom, had ever created. Feeling warmth steal over her face, she’s glad of the darkness. “How did you--?”
“Know you were awake? I have my ways.”
“Mm,” Maggie all-but-purrs. “I’ll testify to that.”
When the expected chuckle doesn’t follow, the Colonel scoots up in the bed until her back is resting against the headboard and the blanket is comfortably wrapped around her chest. There she returns to her inspection, though this time with a more professional eye. She notices the new lines of tension stretched across the broad shoulders and along the column of Koda’s elegant spine. “Is something wrong?” she hazards, knowing it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not she’ll get an answer.
After a long moment of silence, Dakota releases a small sigh, fogging slightly the polarized window. “What are your plans?”
The question pulls the Colonel up short. There are several shades of meaning behind the all too forthright words. “You mean…with my troops?”
Koda nods, still looking out the window. “Yes.”
It’s Maggie’s turn to sigh. “Much as I don’t like it, I think I’m going to have to split them into smaller squads.”
“Why?”
“Well, while you were busy patching and sewing, I was talking to the acting base Commander, Major General Hart. There’s been a small, but steady line of survivors coming in since the ‘incident’, as he calls it. Mostly men and children. Some older women. One or two younger women, but that’s all.” Maggie pauses for a moment, ordering her thoughts. “Word is that the droids are taking the young women, all of child-bearing age, like we guessed, and housing them in the local jails. Nobody knows why, or what they’re doing to them in there. But it can’t be pretty, whatever it is.”
“So you’re going after them. Try to break them out.”
Maggie nods. “That’s the plan, yes.” She looks down at her hands. “Most of the jails down in this part of the state are, as you know, pretty damn small. And it’s a damn sure bet that the droids are armed to their beady glass eyeballs with whatever weapons they can get their hands on. Which means that if we send out huge squads, they’ll likely shoot the prisoners before we can even break through the front door. With fewer people, we just might be able to do it.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Maggie’s mouth drops open in shock. Koda turns from the window, giving a little smirk that tells the Colonel that she’s not entirely joking. Maggie can’t help but grin back, that part of her that’s been a soldier since she was a little girl suddenly warming to the challenge. “Well, I’m not exactly used to being this up close and personal with the enemy, but…yeah, it could be fun at that.” With a sexy little smile, she draws the blanket down so that just the tops of her full breasts show. “Care to join me?”
Another question with a variety of meanings.
Koda, regretfully, declines all of the offers. “I need to go north.”
Maggie hides her disappointment. “Worried about your family?”
Shaking her head, Dakota smiles a little. “My family can take care of themselves.”
“Then why north?”
Dakota looks at her so long and so penetratingly that she’s afraid she’s crossed an invisible line. She finds herself holding her breath as she waits for an answer, all the while praising God that this intent, intense woman is on her side.
“I had a dream.” Koda’s voice is only a whisper, but in the otherwise tomb-silent room, Maggie has no trouble hearing the words. The phrase is so incongruous to her that she finds herself flipping back to the age of seven, sitting in the front row of Mrs. Dobbin’s Country Day class and watching the monitor as an ancient, grainy image of a dark-skinned man mouths those same words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Looks like your dream finally came true, Rev. King, Maggie thinks. Thank God you’re not around to see the result.
Pushing the maudlin thought away, she comes back into herself and realizes that Koda is still pinning her with those too-brilliant gemcut eyes. The aura of tension has returned, strumming around the Vet’s body like an electrical charge.
“And in this dream, you’re headed north?”
Koda nods, the tension still swirling around her body. Maggie swears she can feel the fine hairs on her arms prick up.
“It must be very important to you, then.”
Like the breaking of a vacuum seal, the tension immediately dissipates from the room. Maggie knows she’s answered correctly.
Dakota nods. “It is.”
“How far will you go?”
“Very far.”
Maggie stiffens as the answer seeps into her brain, as if by osmosis. “Not Minot.”
Koda nods again.
“Dakota, that’s….”
“Crazy?” The Vet gives a half smile, but her eyes are twin glaciers.
“You know damn well it is,” Maggie replies, letting her anger show. Taking in a deliberate breath, she reins in her legendary temper. “Koda,” she begins again, softly, “this is in no way meant to demean your dream, but you don’t need to go up there. I’m already planning to take a couple of my fighters and blast that damn factory into a mega-mall parking lot. And you know I’ve got the payload to do it.”
“And the humans inside that factory?”
“You actually think they’ve left any alive in there?” Maggie is incredulous. “What would be the point? That whole factory is completely self run. The droids do everything!”
“I can’t take that chance, Colonel,” Koda replies, turning back to the window. “Every human life is precious. Especially now.”
“And what about yours?!” Maggie demands, hands fisted in the blanket.
The Colonel’s answer is a sad smile reflected in the window’s glass.
4
It is a repeating nightmare. Stretched across the road a hundred meters ahead is a line of pickups strung nose to bumper, a steel wall she can neither drive through nor veer around. To the left of the barricade is a six-foot deep concrete-lined drainage ditch. Something metallic and vaguely human-shaped at its bottom glints in the late sunlight, light that also runs along the barrels of the half dozen long guns swinging up to aim at Kirsten and her vehicle. As she begins to brake, she runs through a quick assessment of her options.
The list is very brief. Zero to zero, in fact.
The drainage ditch on one side, with a possibly demolished droid in it—a possibly good sign. A wide gate of welded pipe on the other, topped by a wrought iron sign announcing Shiloh Farm. A bad sign, given that it is closed.
She could throw the truck into reverse at 80 mph and turn around again a half mile up the road. The scopes on several of the rifles make it unlikely, though, that she would get that far without a blown-out tire or punctured gas tank If these are real people, she may be able to talk her way through. Or buy her way out with the supplies and drugs she will not need much longer.
On the other hand, they may well kill her and take them anyway. And that would be a shame.
Kirsten rolls to a stop half a dozen meters from the blockade. Carefully she slides her pistol into her lap. A glance behind the seat tells her that her patient is again sleeping soundly under the effects of the Morphine Kirsten gave her when she changed the dressing on the gunshot wound. Asimov raises his head just high enough to peer over the dashboard, then settles again beside her.
Which is either reassuring or terrifying, depending upon what happens next.
Three of the guards step away from the barricade, stopping halfway to the van. One, a woman by the long, copper-colored braid that shines even against the hunter’s orange of her jacket, shouts, “Unlock your doors! Then put your hands on the steering wheel where we can see them!”
Kirsten pauses only to slip the 9mm into her waistband, where it will remain hidden, however briefly, under the bulk of her down vest. Then she presses the button to pop the locks and places her hands in plain view, clasped on the rim of the wheel.
As they approach again, one of the men pauses to spit out a long stream of caramel-colored liquid, and Kirsten allows herself an infinitesimal measure of relaxation. Droids don’t chew tobacco. Brigands would have shot her already. Unlike the other two, the third member of the group carries no weapon. Shorter than his companions and slightly built, he sports thin white hair combed optimistically over a scalp flushed bright pink with the cold and a week’s genuine human stubble above a Roman collar. Kirsten glances at the perfectly calm Asimov, now sitting straight up in the seat. “Stay, boy,” she mutters. Probably unnecessary; he looks as if he has taken root. Some guard dog.
The priest opens the driver’s door of the van and looks up at her with the clearest grey eyes Kirsten has ever seen. They are like glass, almost, or spring water running over flint pebbles, worn smooth with the stream’s passing. “Good afternoon,” he says pleasantly. His voice is unexpectedly deep and resonant. “I’m Dan Griffin, and my friends here are Toussaint Marchand”—he nods toward the tall man with the shotgun, whose mahogany face barely shows between his muffler and a Navy watchcap pulled down to his eyebrows—“and Caitlin Drummond.” The redhead, obviously.
There is a moment’s pause, and Kirsten realizes she is expected to return the courtesy. The alias comes to her tongue without hesitation. “Annie Hutchinson. Pleased to meet you.”
Her voice is a bit dryer than she intends, and Griffin’s eyes glint in amusement. “I do hope so. Do you have any weapons with you, Annie?” When she does not answer immediately, he adds, “You can tell me about them, or Toussaint and Caitlin can search your van. Let’s do this the easy way, shall we?”
She nods. “In the back. There’s an injured girl, too.”
“Keep your hands on the wheel, please,” he says, and steps back to slide open the side door. There is the sound of his sharply indrawn breath behind her, and a rustle of cloth as he lays back the blanket tucked about the unconscious Lizzie. “What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. She’s been shot in the leg. The arm’s broken.”
“Yes, I see. How long has she been unconscious like this?”
She can tell the truth or be caught in the lie. “Since I gave her a shot of painkiller. It’s the only thing I could do for the fracture.”
“You’re a medic?”
“My grandmother had diabetes. She couldn’t take the pills.” Kirsten knows that she has answered only half his real question—where did she get the drug?—but he lets it pass.
“All right.” With that, he appears again at the driver’s door. “Now then, Annie, if you and your dog will step down for a bit and let my friends check out what you’re carrying, we can take the young lady here up to the farm and see to her injuries.” As she starts to slide off the seat, he adds, “Oh. And give me your handgun, please.”
Very carefully opening her vest so that he can see her movements, she snaps the safety on and hands the pistol to him, grip first. “How did you know?”
He smiles and nods to the two others, who lower their guns and come to inspect the truck. At her side, Asimov is actually wagging his tail at the stranger. Griffin reaches forward to ruffle the fur of his neck. “Because you’d be foolish not to have a hidden weapon. And you’re not foolish. Come over to the line and have a cup of coffee. And welcome to Shiloh Farm.”
5
“For the last time, Manny, no.”
Manny Rivers’ face, already ruddy, goes a deeper shade of red, becoming nearly plum as his hands fist at his sides and his chest expands enough to put a serious strain on the zipper of his jumpsuit. The other members of the small group fidget nervously. Manny is usually the most placid of men, but when his anger sparks, the results aren’t always pretty.
Taking a quick look at the crowd they were drawing, Dakota signals to her cousin, and the two walk downwind to a relatively empty section of the bombed-out base.
“I’m not the little boy you can boss around anymore, shic’eshi.”
“I know you aren’t, Manny, and I apologize if I’m making you feel that way.”
Manny relaxes a little, but the tension is still plain in the lines on his youthful face. “At least tell me why.”
“Because I need you here.”
“For what? That’s the part you’re not explaining, Koda.”
Mustering what’s left of her patience, Koda pulls a military map out of the generous pocket of her coat. Laying it across some overturned cans, she trails a long finger north along a micro-thin line.
“That’s pretty out of the way,” Manny observes, cocking his head to get a better look.
“Less chance of being detected,” Koda replies. Her finger stops close to the border. “This is the only jail we’ll pass. It’s small, no more than twenty cells, max.”
“You’ve gotta take me, Koda! I’m the best fighter you’ve got. The rest of these guys couldn’t shoot fish in a barrel.”
“Niiice. And you picked them out for me all by yourself, hmm?”
He scowls. “You know what I mean.”
“Once we break those women out, we’re gonna need some temporary place to put them. It’s pretty barren up this way, but I think I know of a good spot or two.”
Manny gives a grudging smile, remembering when he was young, praying for a visit from his older cousin, who would sweep him away in her truck, taking him places where their ancestors had once made a home. They were his favorite times as a boy, and he remembers them fondly still.
Koda looks at him as he remembers, a faint hint of a smile on her face. When he comes back to the present, she nods. “I’ll need to communicate their position to the base somehow so they can be picked up.”
Manny shrugs his shoulders. “So? You’ve got the world’s most powerful satellite phone in your hand there. Where’s the problem?”
“And let every droid east and west of the Mississippi know their position? Think, Manny.”
“So what are you gonna do? Make like in’juns in a John Wayne movie and blow smoke signals from the top of the Black Hills?”
Koda rolls her eyes. “Listen to me, Manny, because I’m only gonna say this once, okay?”
Manny gives a reluctant nod.
“There’s a way I can use this phone and keep the droids from knowing where the women are.”
“How?”
“Uniyapi Lakota.”
Understanding draws over his face like the wakening dawn. His brow is a squiggle of conflicting emotion; part wanting to lift in an admiring grin, part wanting to lower in a defeated scowl.
“I spoke to the base commander this morning. As far as he knows, the droids have never been programmed with the Lakota language. It’ll give us an advantage that we sorely need right now, and before you say anything, I checked. We’re the only Lakota here.” She looks at her cousin for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is soft. “Now do you see why I need you here?”
The scowl wins. “I see it. I don’t like it, but I see it.”
“Good.”
“I’m giving you ten days,” he warns, pointing a finger at her. “Ten days, and then I’m getting in my Tomcat and coming after your ass, hear me?”
Folding her map and storing it in her pocket, she nods. He takes a step closer and flings his arms around her, no longer the soldier, the crack pilot, the man, but rather the boy she remembers so long ago clinging desperately to her in a silent plea not to leave. Her own arms gentle themselves around his trim, hard body. She breathes in the warm, familiar scent of him as a guard against the demons of the unknown she will soon face.
All too soon, the moment ends, and by mutual consent, they both step back, neither acknowledging, except in their hearts, the sheen of tears in the other’s eyes.
6
An hour and a half later, Lizzie is sleeping peacefully in the Shiloh infirmary, her arm set and immobilized in cast and sling. She has other refugees for company, one or two with far worse injuries. Kirsten’s handgun, returned to her, rides uneasily at her belt while she spoons up the last of the best vegetable soup she has eaten in her life. For the second time since she began her flight, she feels something close to safe.
Asimov snores on the flagstones of the farm’s common room floor, a paw over his badly scratched nose. Above him, firmly ensconced in the middle of the trestle table, a white-muzzled calico purrs as Father Griffin absently strokes her fur. The two-story tall window of the refectory looks out on a meadow white with new snowfall and a small pond whose ice shimmers with gold, blue and lilac in the late sun.
Dan smiles at her across the table. “More? Or will that hold you till supper?”
Kirsten laughs, pushing the bowl away from her. “Thanks, that will do for the moment. You have no idea how good that tastes after a dozen cans or so of Dinty Moore and Ranch Style Beans.”
Dan says nothing, merely waits. Confession time, huh? Kirsten observes wryly to herself. Not yet. Maybe never. No matter how warm and fuzzy the atmosphere, she cannot forget that she is a danger to every other human she encounters. So is the knowledge she carries. Instead she trails her fingers across the surface of the white pine table in front of her, its knots and whorls so carefully matched that they form a pattern like flowing water. “This is beautiful,” she says. “Do you make furniture here?”
“One of our members is a carpenter and cabinetmaker. Our resident Kabbalist—you’ll meet him at supper.”
“Kabbalist? I thought—I’m sorry, I thought this was a monastery or something.”
“Monks with shotguns?” Dan’s brows rise in mock surprise. “Not that there isn’t a precedent, mind. Go back to the ‘or something,’ though. Shiloh is an intentional community, made up of the lost sheep and farseekers of a dozen traditions. We have pacifists, mystic warriors, celibates, couples and families, Native American shamen and followers of Kali. We look for the things that are common in all our ways and attempt to live as lightly as possible upon our Mother Earth.”
“That’s why you didn’t have any droids.”
“That’s why we didn’t have any droids, and why we’ve survived. Fortunately, we did have excellent communications before the uprising. We can still get what’s left of the Net on satellite and listen in on CB. We don’t broadcast, though.”
“There’s not much left, Dan. Lizzie’s only the third living human I’ve seen between here and Pennsylvania.”
“I know.” Dan’s fingers curl around his mug of tea as if seeking warmth, and Kirsten finds herself mimicking the gesture. “It may be that we won’t be able to recover at all, Annie. We humans may be where the Spotted Owl the Siberian Tiger were twenty years ago. Nobody’s got a breeding program for us, though.”
“It won’t come to that.’ The passion in her voice surprises Kirsten. “It can’t. I won’t—“
“YO! I’M HOME!”
The common room’s door thumps back against the wall and a giant thuds across the floor, shedding muffler, cap, gloves and a double thickness of down jacket as he comes. Kirsten blinks twice, taking in the half-halo of salt-and-pepper curls, still luxuriant around an encroaching bald patch, the snub nose in a wind-burned round face and the whisky-barrel chest connected to it by an Aran-knit collar. It is as though a two-hundred-year-old oak has sprouted feet and invaded the house.
The walking tree makes straight for Dan and bends to brush a light kiss on the other man’s lips. “Hiya, babe. Back with a cuppa.”
Kirsten, bemused, watches the man’s retreating back. “Who’s that? Fangorn?”
“Not quite. Our electrical engineer, Alan Stephanos. My partner.”
“Black sheep?”
“My Bishop thought so, yes.”
Kirsten feels the heat rise in her face. She glances down at the table in embarrassment. A long moment stretches out, becomes painful. Finally she says, “I’m sorry. That was rude. He just didn’t seem to fit—well, the other category.”
“Spirituality? Think worker saint. I met him at a peace march back in ’02.”
“The Iraq war? My father went into Baghdad with the first ground assault.”
Dan nods. “We got busted together. The LA police put us in a ‘free speech pen,’ and Alan just walked up to the fence and kicked it down. Then he flattened the cop that was trying to Mace me and a couple nuns.”
“Assault on an officer?”
“They couldn’t make it stick. He just stepped up to the guy and fell on him. Like a tree, actually.”
“Talking about me, are you?” Alan settles at the table, folding up one beefy joint at a time until he comes to rest on the bench. Absently he scratches the calico’s ears. “Met God while knocking ice off a generator twenty years ago. Talked to him again today, doing the same thing.” His eyes sparkle, meeting Dan’s across the board. Then, “In case he hasn’t already introduced me in absentia, I’m—God damn. God. Damn.”
Alan’s hand remains suspended in midair, halfway across the table toward Kirsten. He is looking at her, though, as if he has just found something unexpected in his boot. Something unpleasant. A snake, perhaps.
“It’s all right.” Dan’s voice is soft. “Your middle name is Anne, isn’t it, Kirsten?”
Shit. Oh, shit shitshitshit.
Tell the truth and shame the devil. Her grandmother had been fond of the saying. Just as a practical matter, Kirsten cannot see how it could make matters worse at this point.
“All right,” she says. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Your face has been all over the news at one time or another, you know. Alan, are you going to shake Dr. King’s hand or not?”
“You’re headed for Minot, aren’t you?”
The question hangs in the air above the table, much as Alan’s gesture had done. Duly shaken, the engineer’s hand now engulfs the mug of cooling tea before him. His question, however, shows no sign of withdrawing to a more comfortable distance. Kirsten’s options are limited. Lie, and be caught lying. Tell the truth and bring the good men who have offered her hospitality and at least fleeting respite into even greater danger.
“Kirsten, it’s fairly obvious. There’s nothing else in the region that would be of interest to a cyber-expert like yourself. If you were simply trying to get as far away from Washington as you could, you’d have taken the easier route south.”
Kirsten smiles wryly. “You’re so damn reasonable about it all, Dan. Keep it up and I’ll be confessing all my sins back to hacking the Orange County Republican Party’s bank account when I was in third grade.”
“So young, so gifted, so wicked,” Dan observes piously. “And what did you do with the liberated funds?”
“Gave them to the Sierra Club and the SPCA.”
Alan, who has unwisely taken a mouthful of his tea, snorts and spews. “Jesus, woman. Give a man some warning.” He fishes in his pocket, produces a faded blue bandana and mops his chin. “So getting into a super-restricted top-security shoot-intruders-on-sight droid-manned military facility ought to be a freaking breeze, right?”
Kirsten’s heart slams against her ribs in something close to panic. “Look. It’s obvious; you’re right. I think I ought to go. Now.”
As she begins to push away from the table, Dan says, “Toussaint and Caitlin have already seen you. You can’t protect the community from knowing you’re here, or from guessing where you’re going. We can at least help you get there.”
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
“Kirsten, it’s more dangerous if you go alone. Perhaps none of us here has the knowledge to get onto the base or to know what to do once there, but we can give you an escort. If you’re worried about endangering us—don’t. Increasing your chances of success increases our chances of survival.”
“And just how would you keep us from following you down the road, anyway?” Alan’s level stare is a challenge. “You can make it harder or easier, for all of us. Your choice.”
Kirsten glances from one man to the other. Logically and pragmatically, they are right.
Despite herself, Kirsten feels nothing but relief. She ought to thank them. But she blurts out instead, “Will you take care of Asimov? He can’t go with me.”
“Of course he can stay with us.” Somewhere above them, a bell begins to ring, and Dan sets down his cup. “We’ll put the matter of a convoy to the community after supper. Meanwhile, let’s help set the tables.”
7
She finds herself again in a world of white. Monotonous, perhaps, but expected.
The effect is magnified by the all-white machine humming between her legs. The soldiers call them “stink bugs”, and it’s a more or less apt term, given the military snowmobiles’ reliance on methane as a method of propulsion, together with the wasp-like drone that marks their passing.
Adding to the monotony is the group’s mode of dress. Cammo-white is the call of the day, and Koda can’t help but flash back to a movie she’d once seen as a child. Willie….Somebody, she remembers. Something about a chocolate factory and a young boy who, dressed almost exactly as she is now, gets reduced to his component atoms and flies across the room to materialize inside of a television, a shadow of his former self.
“And here I am, off to rescue the natives of Oompa Loompa Land.”
Her wry thoughts are whipped away by the wind. As she rides on, she smiles, remembering Maggie’s goodbye to her. A quick, if heartfelt hug, a quiet “Be safe.” and it was over. It was as if the woman had read her mind and had given her exactly what she needed.
A shadow crosses over her and, looking up, her smile broadens. Wiyo rides the winds above her, sleek elegance personified.
ANGEL or demon! thou, -- whether of light
The minister, or darkness -- still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stry
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day.
The past stares at her through a curtain not quite opaque.
She can smell chalk dust, hear the quiet hum of the clock as it limps its way toward the final bell, and feel the filtered, somnolent sun resting on her shoulder. She can even see Mr. Hancock’s pinched face and the bald pate that shines in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the tiny classroom. He wants her to slip up. She can feel it, just as she can feel the ancient prejudice that runs through his veins like tainted, bilious blood. It is not a new feeling for her, living as she does in a country that proclaims freedom for all but those it has conquered.
She won’t slip, though. She never slips. The hunger of her intellect far outstrips his paltry teaching skills, and he knows it. The anger sharpens the gray of his eyes to flinty chips, and his permanently sour expression becomes more so. Had she been raised any differently, she might feel a spark of bitter pride in his anger. Instead, she feels only sadness.
A piercing cry from high above draws closed the curtain to the past, and Dakota once again looks up, eyes narrowing as Wiyo banks left, flutters, then swings around and low in warning.
“Ho’ up,” she murmurs into the mic at her throat.
Though she wears no stripes on her arm, nor brass on her collar, the soldiers listen as if she does. They split formation, half the group pulling to a smooth stop against the left side of the road, the other half doing the same on the right. As a unit, they unsling their weapons while still astride their snowmobiles, ready and waiting for anything.
Koda lifts an arm, and Wiyo settles on it, folding her wings comfortably as her eyes stare directly forward at a danger only she can see.
“Damn good watchdog you got there, Ma’am,” the young lieutenant on her left comments, voice quiet with awe.
Wiyo, surprisingly, takes no exception to the comment, and Koda smiles a secret grin as the hawk settles more comfortably against her.
A moment later, they all can hear the loud, blatting roar of a truck running out the last of its life as it heads toward them. As the vehicle barrels drunkenly into view, Wiyo lifts easily away, strong wings lifting her once again into the cutting air.
Weapons are immediately raised to high port, zeroing in on the oncoming truck with deadly purpose. Koda raises her arm again. “Steady. Let’s find out who it is, first.”
Not a droid, surely. Dakota can easily see the blood painted across the inside remains of a shattered windshield. And the man, or woman, inside leans like a potato sack against the steering wheel, head bobbing violently with each rut the truck’s bounding wheels hit.
“He’s gonna hit us,” the young lieutenant—Andrews, Koda remembers—softly warns, his hands tightening their grip on his weapon.
“Steady….”
“Ma’am?”
“Steady….”
Then the man, for it is a man, sees them, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. He yanks the steering wheel sharply to the right, but it’s too late. The front tire catches a patch of black ice, and, sliding, the front bumper plows into the snowbank on the left side of the road. The truck flips, end over end. The weakened, shattered windshield gives way and the man is ejected out into the winter air, a flightless bird with his own peculiar, dying elegance.
The truck ends its own flight smashed against a tree. There isn’t enough gasoline left for an explosion. Instead it shudders, and dies.
Dakota moves first, bounding over the snowbank and racing to the downed man as fast as she can plow through the two feet of snow under her boots. He lies in a bloody heap in the snow, limbs bent in ways human appendages weren’t meant to bend. There are two ragged holes in his heavy parka, each tinged with soot and coated in dark, viscuous blood. His eyes are, surprisingly, open. One is crazy-canted, filled with blood, and staring off to the side. The other, however, is very much aware, and filled with terror.
Discerning the reason for the terror, Koda immediately reaches up and loosens her collar, displaying her bare neck to the man. At her side yet again, Andrews does the same.
The man relaxes slightly. The fear leaches from his eyes, but horror remains. One hand, at the end of a terribly mangled arm, reaches up and grabs the leg of Koda’s pants, spasming into a shaking fist. “D-Daughter,” he rasps, coughing on the blood pooling around his lips. “My daughter. Help—Help my daughter.”
“Where is your daughter?” Andrews asks.
“P-Prison. They—they took her aw—away from me…sh—sh—shot me—tw—twice, couldn’t hold…on….help her….please.”
“We will. We will,” Andrews hastens to reassure. “We’ll help her, buddy. But we gotta help you too. You’re….”
The young lieutenant’s voice trails off as the light and awareness from the man’s good eye slowly fades to a blank, glassy stare.
“Damn. Goddamn.” He looks up as a hand descends on his shoulder, squeezes briefly, and lets go. “This blows, Ma’am.”
“You’re right. It does.” Koda looks down at the corpse lying at her feet. “Let’s cover him with snow. We’ll relay his position back to the base once we’ve gotten the women out, alright?”
After a moment, Andrews nods, his shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat and resignation. “He deserves better. Hell, we all do. But I guess you’re right. It’s the best we can do for now.”
*******
And once again we arrive at the end of our episode. For those of you still hanging in there, we hope you’re enjoying the ride!!
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