J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection (12 page)

He shook his head firmly. "Can't do it. I have to go out of town."

She reacted angrily to that, and opened her mouth to argue, but he spoke quickly, forcefully, in a seriously determined tone he had never used with her before. "Just overnight. It's business. Char, I promise, I'll make it up to you when I get back. Goddamm it, it
is
an emergency and I don't have time to discuss it now."

He tried again to kiss her, but she pulled too far away; firmly, he took hold of her shoulders and brought her close enough to give her a light peck on the cheek.

"Try to understand," he said, then dashed back to the Bronco.

The Mercedes' tires squealed as Charlotte pulled out of the driveway, but Harrison forced himself not to look back.

A horn blared outside in the driveway.

Peering through the white sheers in the bedroom window, Mrs. Pennyworth said, "That would be your ride now."

"Are you sure you know where everything is?" Suzanne tucked a change of clothes into the hanging bag flung across her bed.

"I know," the older woman answered firmly. "And what I don't know, Deborah can show me."

Suzanne felt a twinge of guilt at that. Poor Deb . . . tonight when she came home, she'd find her mother gone, and a stranger waiting for her in this new, unfamiliar house. Thank God the stranger was this competent, pleasant-faced grandmother and not some seventeen-year-old kid. "I'm so sorry to do this on such short notice, Mrs. Pennyworth."

"Not one more time may you apologize for that," Mrs. Pennyworth scolded in her faint Dutch accent. "I live only two houses away. It could not be more convenient. And how grateful I am Deborah is an eleven-year-old girl and not some screaming two-year-old!"

Suzanne smiled weakly at her; a tall, strong-looking woman, Mrs. Pennyworth was near seventy, hair pulled back into a tight bun, but there were still a few golden brown strands mixed in among the silver. Suzanne had gotten her name from a list Dr. Jacobi had sent to her in Ohio; the list had also included a pediatrician, a dentist, and the name of the realtor Suzanne had purchased the house from.

"Ah." Mrs. Pennyworth looked out again at the driveway. "I see you work for Harrison Blackwood." She gave a knowing nod. "Now the short notice is understandable."

"You know Harrison?" Surprised, Suzanne glanced

up from her packing. "Did you use to work for the Institute?" In a secretarial or assistant capacity, she'd meant.

"Yes. I see Ephram told you nothing about me." Amused, the older woman turned her face from the window. "He is much like Harrison, always wanting to keep information to himself, making people guess things. I was director there of the Physics Department until I retired three years ago. My husband, William, also worked as a zoologist there before passing away."

"My goodness ... I should be calling you
Doctor
Pennyworth, then."

"No, then I was Dr. Templaar. I used my maiden name for my work. Now that I am just an old baby-sitter, I think Mrs. Pennyworth is better. Or just Gerda for the parents."

The horn beeped again; Suzanne would have sworn at him under her breath if Mrs. Pennyworth hadn't been there. She zipped up the bag and threw it over her shoulder. "I'll at least try to call you with my location and a phone number as soon as"—good Lord, this was all so absurd—"as soon as I get to wherever it is I'm going."

"I know you will," Mrs. Pennyworth soothed. "Try not to let Harrison upset you too much. He enjoys surprising people."

This is one surprise I can do without.
"Good-bye, Mrs. Pennyworth . . . Gerda . . . and thank you so much again."

"Good-bye, Suzanne. Try to relax and have a pleasant trip."

"I doubt it," she said under her breath.

She raced out of the house at top speed, trying to beat Harrison before he could press the horn again. Too late . .. another ear-piercing blast greeted her as she opened the front door.

Harrison was standing by the driver's side, about to bend down and press the horn again. He looked ready to jump on a boxcar . . . unshaven, wearing an old fedora, his tuxedo downgraded to the usual plaid flannel shirt and a rumpled pair of corduroys that obviously had never seen the hot side of an iron. As she approached, he reached for her bag without a word and tossed it carelessly into the back of the Bronco.

"You didn't have to honk so many times," she said coldly. Boss or not, he wasn't about to get away with treating her so thoughtlessly. "Maybe
you
can pack a bag in five minutes, but I have a daughter to think about. I had to get someone to take care of Debi. I hope you have a very good reason for this—"

"Damn
good reason," he said, and she fell silent because he clearly meant it. "Can you handle a manual transmission?" The words came out slurred.

She studied him closely. He was actually swaying a little . . . not drunk, which was her first thought, but totally exhausted. Her tone changed. "When I have to."

"Good. You have to. You're driving." He handed her the keys, went around to the passenger side, and climbed in.

She took a very deep breath and released it, trying to relax, but all she wanted to do was shake him and scream at the top of her lungs,
What the hell is going on?
The thought that Mrs. Pennyworth might still be peeking at them through the window held her back. She brushed crumbs and an empty granola bar wrapper off the driver's seat, then slid behind the wheel, pulled the seat forward a bit, and put the keys into the ignition. Harrison had already reclined the passenger seat back and pulled his hat brim down over his eyes.

"It would help," she said calmly, utilizing every ounce of self-control, "if I knew where we were going."

"Map's on the dash," Harrison yawned. "Route's outlined in red."

It was there all right... on top of an opened box of granola bars, several scholarly astronomy journals, yellowed newspapers, and what looked like his doctoral thesis. She looked back at him to ask another question:
why,
but his jaw had dropped slightly, causing his lips to part. For God's sake, he was already asleep!

She picked up the map and found the red markings. Their destination seemed to be out in the middle of the desert... a several-hour drive. What on earth would they be looking for out in the middle of nowhere?

Either the man was crazy, or . ..

Or what?
There is no "or". . . he's just plain crazy.

Sighing, she started the Bronco's engine.

The cobra gunship hovered over the Jericho Valley Disposal Site like a noisy insect. In the co-pilot's seat, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ironhorse leaned forward

and gestured at the pilot to move the chopper in for a better look. Whatever had happened, Ironhorse knew, was not good. All communications with the installation had been cut off for more than twenty-four hours; Jericho Valley was silent as a tomb, and both the inner and outer entrance gates lay wide open. Ironhorse was not surprised to find the sentries missing.

The cobra moved past the entrance and dipped lower.

"My God," Ironhorse said, but it was drowned out by the thumping copter blades. In front of him, the pilot's head jerked back as he made a silent observation of his own.

The barracks had been blown apart, reduced to a blackened skeleton of wood and rubble. Debris littered the yard for a hundred-foot radius. A surprise attack, then, with no intent of taking any hostages. There would be no survivors among the seventeen stationed here.

The question was, where had their killers gone? Perhaps they were still here, waiting for the cobra to move in just a little closer.

The copter flew past the remains of the barracks to the far corner of the yard where stacks of toxic waste barrels stood in neat aisles. Ironhorse frowned. Strange. The barrels were loaded onto double-tiered scaffolding, but only onto the upper tier. The bottom was empty, which made the structure dangerously topheavy. Rack one up to noncom inefficiency.

And then he noticed one of the barrels down on its side, oozing. Jesus, the place was hot! Good damn

thing they'd seen it in the cobra first before they sent anyone in on foot. The pilot didn't seem to react, probably hadn't even seen.

Along a farther aisle lay the bodies. The cobra lurched a bit; the pilot averted his head, sickened.

Ironhorse didn't flinch. It wasn't an easy thing to look at, but he'd seen worse in Beirut, in Kampuchea. He motioned the reluctant pilot a hair closer and tried to count. All seventeen were probably there, though the way they were stacked on top of each other, it was hard to be sure, plus the vultures were in the way. Four of them, feeding. One had a red strip of thigh muscle in its beak and was flapping its wings as it struggled to tear the meat from a corpse. What made it rough was the fact that even at this distance Ironhorse could see the vultures had already plucked out the tenderest delicacy—the eyes. They always got the eyes first.

Ironhorse had learned that as a kid on the reservation. He'd seen birds on lots of animals, once even on a man who'd gotten himself caught in a bear trap. They'd pecked his eyes out too. It was in the forests of the Blackfoot reservation in northwestern Montana, just shy of the Rockies to the west and Alberta to the north. Rugged, mountainous land, and merciless: It had taught him a lot. One survived by one's wits and accepted harshness, or one perished. The land took no excuses; it was cruel and unfair, and those who failed to learn its lessons died.

His people still lived on that land, where they had struggled vainly against the encroachment of the white man with his train—the "iron horse." Paul's

family had fought against the train and lost, yet they kept the name, "one-who-shoots-the-iron horse." oven though now the train and the white men owned their souls.

But not Paul Ironhorse's. He had seen too many men and women, including his own father and brother, destroy themselves on the reservation because they had forgotten the first lesson of the land: discipline, survival. If the only way for Paul to survive was to take advantage of the white man's system, the white man's discipline, then he would do it and take pride in it. He left the reservation for West Point; his first year after graduating he went to the Olympics as a decathlete and returned with a Bronze Medal.

His brother accused him of "turning white" and no longer spoke to him. His mother still wrote him but remained on the reservation in spite of his offers to take care of her elsewhere.

Ironhorse told himself it didn't matter: what mattered was that he, Paul, had survived; in his own way he had overcome his people's defeat. He had no patience with those like his brother, who whined when things were not easy, cried because life was unfair.

Of course it's unfair,
Paul had shouted.
Life is always unfair, and the best anyone can do is try to even up the odds through hard work.

That attitude had earned him a reputation in the army as hard-nosed, an ass-kicker, labels he was proud to wear.

He watched the vultures work for a while, the sight filling him with hatred. Hatred, he learned long ago, could be a good thing if you used it to motivate yourself and didn't bury it inside, where it ate at you like a cancer.

He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and motioned upward with his thumb. The grisly tableau receded as the cobra flew up and away. They landed back outside the gate, not far from the parked personnel carrier. As soon as the thumping blades slowed, Ironhorse half yelled over the noise to the pilot: "Whoever did this is long gone."

The pilot, a skinny freckle-faced kid who was still shaken by what he'd seen, blinked innocently at Ironhorse. "How can we be sure, Colonel? I mean, other than the fact no one fired on us? It could be an ambush, sir."

Ironhorse shook his head. "I'm sure. The vultures," he said enigmatically. It was true, to an extent. Vultures usually liked to wait until everything living was dead or gone. If they weren't
too
hungry.

"Wow." The kid looked so round-eyed and gullible, Ironhorse was hard-pressed to keep his own expression grim. He enjoyed cultivating what he called his "Indian mystique." The kid would probably buy it if Ironhorse pressed his ear to the ground and proclaimed that the attackers were exactly seventy-five kilometers due east. No point in mentioning the obvious clues such as the overturned barrels, which would clear anyone with an ounce of brains out of there, or the wide-open gates.

Ironhorse climbed from the cobra to call his superiors and relay the bad news.

Suzanne had been driving an hour and a half—not even enough time to leave civilization behind—when Harrison stirred and pushed back the brim of his hat with a finger.

"Feeling better?" she asked not unpleasantly. The monotony of driving in silence had worn the edge off her anger.

He brought the seat upright and rubbed his face, yawning. "Much, thanks."

"You didn't sleep very long—only ninety minutes or so."

"Ninety minutes?" His eyebrows flew up. "Jeez, I overslept. Usually I nap only one hour for every five I'm awake."

She frowned, skeptical. "You're joking."

"No, really, you should try it sometime." He meshed his fingers, turned his hands palms outward, and stretched. "Someone as dedicated as you .. . I'm surprised you're not already doing it. Makes it easier to give that hundred and fifty percent." He shot her a mischievous glance, which she ignored. "Why don't you pull over? I'll drive."