Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) (23 page)

X.
 
The Valley—Sunday night Jerry Bonhill.

THE water, as cold as a mountain spring,
lashed over my body from the showerhead.
 
Clean water, good water:
 
we had
it in our valley, while the city below the mountain stank with poison and
death.
 

In the adjoining bedroom I heard static
from my portable radio, and suddenly the clear, quiet voice of George
Knight.
 
It was nearly
dusk
Sunday night, the third day of the war.
 
For twelve hours the Quaker had been broadcasting from the transmitter
in the frame building behind Canster’s appliance shop.
 

Cheryl banged on the bathroom door.
 
“They have it going again, Jerry!”

I grabbed a towel from the rack and went
into the bedroom, mopping off the cold water while I listened to the
broadcast.
 
The Quaker’s patient,
reasoned plea came in perfectly.
 
I hoped
to God the reception was as clear in Los Angeles.
 

Cheryl lay on the bed, her head close to
the radio.
 
She looked at my nakedness
and smiled like a vixen.
 

Suddenly her lips were on mine,
liquid
and yielding.
 
I felt the pulsing fire leap in my blood.
 
I saw the sensuous woman triumphant in her
eyes.
 

“You devil,” I laughed.
 
“When I want to talk seriously—”

“There’s a time for talking, my love,
and a time for—”

She gasped as I pulled her down on the
bed beside me.
 

Afterward, Cheryl lay pressed against my
side, her eyes
closed
and a smile on her lips.
 
I relaxed in the peace and the stillness of
our love.
 
I became aware again of George
Knight’s voice coming from the speaker of my portable.
 

The third day of the war, and we knew
that the collapse of civilization was complete.
 
Nothing could hold back the chaos.
 
The stench of death in Los Angeles was a
mirror held up to the face of a ruined planet.
 
Few people had died in the original bombings; the cities had been
organized to meet that emergency, but no organization could cope with what
followed—a network of continental rivers, steeped in radioactive poison and
carrying the sickness everywhere.
 

We had one way we could help—and only
one:
 
George Knight’s plea to the people
of Los Angeles.
 

Cheryl stirred and opened her eyes.
 
She leaned across my chest to turn down the
radio.
 

“What happens, Jerry, if they don’t
listen to him?”

“They’ll kill a good many of the
Russians, and the Russians will retaliate.”
 

“Our world shrinks to the size of a
mountain valley.”
 

“Enough—we have each other.”
 

“You and I, Jerry—we’re not twenty yet,
and the others look to us—
”
 
She
drew in her breath sharply.
 

“Why, Jerry?
 
Why you and me?
 
Couldn’t someone else—”

“We can’t dodge it.”
 

I pulled on my shirt.
 
Cheryl got up and put her arm around my
shoulder.
 
“I’m beginning to see you now,
Jerry, as Pat did.”
 

I cracked her rear with the palm of my
hand.
 

“A man, Jerry.
 
That’s all it takes—but suddenly I realize
how much courage it takes to be a human being.”
 

Through the window behind her I saw the
windmill lifts of a helicopter whirring against the red sky.
 

“The Soviets are back,” I said to
Cheryl, pointing toward the ship.
 
“Run
over to the lodge and tell the others to break out the guns.
 
I’m going down to the hospital after
Psorkarian.
 
The Cossack might just be
able to knock down the ‘copter with a submachine gun.”
 

“Be careful, Jerry.”
 

I left the cabin and ran toward the
hotel.
 
The ship was moving toward us
cautiously; the pilot wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks, and he didn’t know
how well armed we might be.
 
I assumed
they were still after Clapper; no other possibility occurred to me.
 

On the village street, half a block from
the hotel, I saw Boris Yorovich and Janice Gage, walking arm in arm.
 
Naturally, they hadn’t seen the Russian
ship.
 
They were too immersed in each
other.
 
I jerked them back to reality;
Yorovich said he would get Psorkarian.

“George Knight’s all right?” I
asked.
 

“The transmitter’s working fine; Janice
and I came up for dinner.
 
We were on our
way back—”

“Join him as soon as you can; I don’t
like to leave him alone.”
 

They ran toward the hotel.
 
I returned to the lodge beside the lake;
most of our weapons were there.
 
As I
sprinted over the hill, I saw a parachutist descending twenty feet above
me.
 
The paratrooper had a submachine gun
in his hand.
 

The man came down close to me.
 
I sprang as his feet touched the ground.
 
I had no time to reach the lodge and arm
myself.
 
The man was a giant, a human machine
of flesh and bone driven by the hypnotic opiate of hatred.
 

Screaming in animal fury, he swung his
submachine gun toward me.
 
I kicked
upward against the barrel.
 
The hail of
bullets spattered the trees above my head.
 
I kicked again and I saw his grip loosen; I jerked the gun from his
hands.
 
He lunged at me, swinging his
arms like bear claws.
 
I clipped his jaw
with my knuckles.
 
Physically the blow
rocked him back on his heels, but he seemed unaware of the pain.
 

He reached for my feet and dragged me
down.
 
His clawing hands found my
throat.
 
I fought to break the grip,
hammering my fists into his jaw.
 
The
face was a bleeding pulp before his fingers slid away and I was able to
breathe again.
 

I stood up.
 
A clanging echo sang in my ears.
 
I heard more gunfire, from another direction,
and after a moment I located it:
 
the
transmitter!
 
The objective of this raid
had not been Willie Clapper, but George Knight.
 

I snatched up the paratrooper’s
submachine gun, where it had fallen, and I ran toward the village.
 
I came toward the appliance shop from the
east.
 
West of the transmitter I saw
occasional spurts of gunfire in the shadows.

Two men were leaving the transmission
shack.
 
In the pale light inside the
building I saw George Knight lying back in his chair.
 
He was dead.
 
They had beaten the gentle Quaker to death with the butts of their
weapons.
 
The two men were stringing
wires from an explosive charge they had left in the building.
 

I raised my gun and fired.
 
They died screaming, as the bullets ripped
open their skulls.
 
Four other
paratroopers, who had been holding off Yorovich and Psorkarian, sprang up at
the sound of the shots.
 
I had no
shelter.
 
Bullets from their guns tore
the soft earth toward me.
 
I squeezed the
trigger of the submachine gun; simultaneously Yorovich and the Cossack moved
out of hiding.
 
The four men died in our
crossfire.

Blood soaked the sleeve of my left
arm.
 
My fingers felt numb, with a kind
of remote and impersonal pain.
 
Yorovich
and Psorkarian loomed out of the shadows.
 

We ran along the village street in the
darkness.
 
The sky above us was red with
the last light of the dying sun.
 

XI
.
 
The
Valley—Monday
afternoon Jerry Bonhill

AFTER we buried Knight, we made fifteen
graves at another part of the lakeshore for the nameless men who had died
during the Soviet air attack.
 
There were
no survivors.

The Soviet attack made it clear that the
broadcasts were having some effect in the city.
 
Otherwise, the Russians would not have traced the transmitter and tried
to destroy it.
 
Stewart Roswell warned me
not to read too much into that, however.
 
“General Zergoff has a bitter, personal conflict with Knight.
 
He would send his whole force up here, if he
thought he could find Knight.”
 

It was late in the morning before I had
an opportunity to examine the helicopter.
 

I asked Vasili Shostovar to go with
me.
 
He had been a mechanic in Moscow
and, better than any of us, he would be able to judge what repairs had to be
made.
 
The thin, swarthy man had begun to
modify his clothing and he looked less like a slum kid in uniform.
 
He made no more oblique references to party
discipline.
 
He had joined us in the
ambush of the second Soviet car; that made him one of us, and I accepted
it.
 
But there was no feeling of friendship
between
us,
none of the honest affection I felt for
the Cossack and Morrenski—yes, even Andrei Trenev, who had attempted to help
Willie Clapper escape.
 

The Russian looked over the motor
carefully.
 

“She’s as good as new, Bonhill.”
 
His words were vaguely slurred; on his breath
I caught the sour odor of liquor.
 

“What about the fuel?” I asked.
 

He glanced into the cabin.
 
“Better than half a tank.”
 

“Could we use gasoline from the village
service stations?”

“I doubt it.
 
But Psorkarian says there’s an airport in the
eastern part of the valley; you ought to find some aviation fuel there.”
 

“Do you know how to fly?”

“No.
 
Grennig, the Russian, does.”
 

Karl Grennig was twenty-four, as large
as I am and perhaps thirty pounds heavier—all of it hard muscle.
 
He had the blond, Nordic good looks, which
the Germans had once built into a maniac’s cult of war.
 

“You want to use the ‘copter?” Grennig
asked.
 

“Possibly.”
 

“The Doc says I’ll be up and around by
tomorrow.
 
Where do you want to go—
”
 
He
hesitated for a
moment before he added, with an n smile, “—Commander?”

“We’ve no use for titles.
 
My name is Bonhill.”
 

“Sorry, sir.
 
You’ll have to—”

“The ‘sir,’ too.
 
We’re not a military camp.”
 

“It’s a habit the Communists taught us.
 
Personally, I’ve always hated it.”
 
When Karl Grennig got the point, he jumped on
the bandwagon fast enough.
 
But the
transition was a nasty thing to watch.
 
Grennig was suddenly buddy-buddy with me.
 
“I’ve got news for you,
Bonhill,
you may not have picked it up, yet.
 
The
Red troop transports won’t be coming in any more; maybe they’ve already
stopped.”
 

“Roswell tells me they have landings
scheduled for a week.
 
What happened?”

“I picked up the gossip at headquarters.
 
They’re keeping this under wraps as long as
they can.
 
It’s a breakdown in the
distribution of supplies to the Siberian bases.
 
Primarily food and fuel.”