Though christened by West Coast survivors, little was actually known of the Barrens. But on foot, the three refugees quickly gained a firsthand intimacy of the place and its cruel, callous beauty.
A post-storm sun was rekindled in the desert skies. Raking the brittle landscape with a vengeance, it ignited captured starfire in a trillion gleaming flecks of silvery mica and pink quartz; scalding the castaways' skin and vision alike with its brutal dawn-to-dusk majesty.
At night the same sky hung heavy as the blackest iron, awash in a smothering and frigid silence. Temperature swings between were furious. For the three travelers, daylight was spent hiding in meager shade like insects driven from the sweltering blast-furnace heat, while nighttime hours were endured shivering through a grating, rawboned chill.
No sounds of other life were carried in the low moan of an infrequent, roasting wind. Only occasional dust devils materialized to chaperon them. Gentle thermal mammoths spawned of midday heat, the little whirlwinds contentedly played out their brief lives in games of tag among themselves, passively vacuuming the oppressive desert floor before disappearing again.
Rations disappeared, too. The trio sipped three ways at a single daily pint of water and nibbled handfuls of survival granola. Throats were rasped sandpaper dry from sucking the thin, oven-parched air. Dust-caked mouths drooped in heavy rows of split and oozing heat blisters.
Travel itself was risky. The ankle-deep amalgam of flint and granite slashed razored daggers at their boots and worked to twist ankles with every step. Going lame out here was an all too real possibility.
Through it all, Trennt kept his pledge and their pace. Leading the way from first light to midmorning and again from early evening to nightfall, he dragged his people on. But his own determination was flagging to new forces loosed deep inside him; ones every bit as threatening as the terrain he crossed.
From the thickening whirlpool of instinct and logic, yellowed memories distilled and took form. A collage of transparent images gathered to play off the stark, empty sky ahead like a huge reel of silent movie footage. Dusty alluring phantoms, which drew him on, like a suicidal moth lured to the flame of its own demise.
Few believed it would work, Dena being a big city girl and all. The transformation from L.A. to Eureka was a trip across galaxies; two spots in the same state, light years apart. But the city gal who'd come to love the up-country seclusion through summer vacations with a rural aunt, came also to love one of its men.
Dena surrendered a college degree, city comforts, and big league career chances to raise her own children and vegetables in the big sky country. Designer denims to flannel work shirts was a leap she made with the grace of a gazelle. Never a word of regret. Never a look back.
Her only complaint ever had been in the absolute contempt she held for the government's neat little title hung on her and her children. The same name bolted to its new legions of transplanted Americans with the dog tag-like holograph necklaces they'd been forced to wear: Cee-Dee—Common Displaced.
"These are your ID badges," an unsympathetic processing clerk said to Trennt on that long ago night. "From now on, they have to be on you and your people in plain sight. Get caught without and it means jail—shit work. Burial details, sanitation stuff. Understand?"
Trennt's heart still ached remembering the faces of his wide-eyed, terrified children and disbelieving wife.
"Yes, we understand."
"Good. Now follow that yellow line. You'll all be given inoculations and deloused. Afterward, you'll go to a marshalling area for assignment to a housing sector."
Jennifer, who was deathly afraid of shots, began to whimper. Her fear aroused Dena's fierce maternal instincts.
"When will this be over?" she demanded, breaking free of her own stupor to confront the clerk. "When can we take our children and go home?"
The clerk stamped a paper and shoved it toward Trennt.
"Lady," he answered scornfully, "you are home."
Trennt lost his footing and stumbled. He snapped back to the present and stared ahead. Wrapped in a wavering heat haze, his weeklong destination seemed no closer. Sheathed in solemn purple hardness, unnamed peaks glittered like newly made arrowheads. They were not true mountains, but thick, jumbled slabs of shale, slate, and granite. Burst and buckled in dazzling mountainous heaps, tiers of shorn bedrock had been brought up from staggering depths by the quake. Piled on edge and toppled over like the back plates of a huge fallen dinosaur, they were every bit as dead.
Considering the terrain, Trennt guessed they'd averaged a steady eight miles a day. An extraordinary effort. Survival school trained, he'd taken Baker's and his own stamina for granted. But he grudgingly admitted a new respect for the woman, for through it all she maintained a stoic silence, keeping their pace without complaint. Head down and mouth shut, she trudged on, mirroring his own best effort.
Yet fifty miles pared from the hundreds undoubtedly waiting ahead was barely a sliver. And that hard truth was driven home just before dawn of the seventh day, when Trennt had a full-blown hallucination.
From far overhead, a faint throbbing rumble reached his ears. At first he smiled with the thought of a thirst-quenching rain. But the canopy was the same clear wash of brilliant, uncaring stars as each night prior . . . and neither of his companions reacted to the sound.
Trennt almost spoke, hoping his voice might give the mirage substance, make it real—or at least convince the others of its existence. But there were no flashes of distant lightning to offer him hope and he finally admitted the truth. There was no prospect of rescue, none of survival. And never had been. Pushing further was a fool's pointless quest.
The event also made Trennt finally admit to the fever he'd felt growing since yesterday. The routine was becoming textbook. Exhaustion and dehydration would soon fuel a mix of chills and delirium as the body's biorhythm fell out of synch. Then the deadly visions would set in—and mouth-foaming insanity.
Each in his own time would go mad. They'd wander aimlessly in the full sun. Brains would slowly shrivel to jerky; tongues swell to choking purple wads. Nature would so claim them, finally tanning their dead hides with excruciating disinterest.
Already a touch of fatal giddiness was tickling the edges of his mind.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the lesser mummy of James Trennt, Esquire. Please note the similar skin texture to Ramses the Second—or—an old pair of work boots."
He motioned a stop and they silently bedded down in the thinly shaded hollow of a crescent dune. It was there that Trennt invoked a rusty oath taken between Baker and himself in a long ago battle zone. Gazing across the pitiless horizon, he hoped himself finally worthy of the deed as he drew enough breath to speak.
"Tonight," he hissed through split and peeled lips, "you take the point, Baker. I'll close off the drag."
Cradling his weapon like a toddler ready to nap, the shootist swung heavy-lidded eyes over and gave his comrade a solemn nod. Between them the girl drowsed already, not understanding what decision had been made.
The commitment fell heavily on Trennt. Best for it to come now, in their sleep. He needed only to stay alert and keep his mind clear enough to make the hits quick and clean: the girl first, then Baker. Didn't matter how ragged a job he did on himself. Just a couple of minutes until they nodded off. He clicked the safety off his weapon and gazed skyward.
Royce Corealis shot up, nearly crying out in alarm. Jolted from his sleep aboard the cruising jet, the interim president clutched the arms of his seat, tensely swinging his head about the light-dimmed passenger cabin. But everyone around him slept on, and after a few seconds reassurance, he, too, settled back.
The man gazed out his window at the darkened landscape below. Nothing but empty desert blackness filled the horizon. Yet the sensation was as certain as if someone had impossibly reached out from all that distant shadow and pressed an icy accusing finger to his very skin.
Corealis shook off the thought. He glanced at his watch and contemplated the stop ahead. Another few hours and he'd be at his first shoreline California conference. Taking the deceased president's place on what had been changed to a perfunctory goodwill tour, he'd leave the jet seaplane to meet the various towns' elders along the coast. He'd make some public appearances before meeting up with the scout detachment leaders under camouflage of the upcoming Freeville rendezvous. With luck it might all soon be over.
Corealis settled back and rested his eyes.
The sensation faded in and out. Sound or vision? Trennt wasn't sure. Humming engines? Voices?
Blinking awake, he bolted. Dammit, dreaming! He'd fallen asleep, too! A chilling gauze dangled in his face and whirled with heavy eddies. Fog. Night fog. He'd been out all damn day! Beside him, the young woman and Baker also stirred. Now it was too late to mercifully conduct his business. They'd have to endure another day.
Trennt swiped angrily at the grainy veil. Then he heard the sound again. Voices. But unlike his prior hallucination, this time both his companions shared the sensation. The same electric thought flashed simultaneously through all their minds.
Rescue.
The woman dove to her feet, coughing as she struggled to rise above the dune.
"Here! Over here! Help!"
Trennt grabbed at her belt. But she twisted away, calling hoarsely, again and again. Baker pitched in, finally jerking her back and to her rump.
She squealed, slapping in disbelief at their hands.
"What's the matter with you? They've found us! Help has come!"
"Shut up and stay down!" Trennt ordered. "We don't know that!"
She glared incredulously, shouting all the louder.
"HELP! HELP! OVER HERE!"
Trennt snapped out a backhand and cuffed her mouth. She grabbed her face in stunned silence and sat back. Then, stiffly gathering his own feet, he cautiously peeked over the dune.
In the thick fog beyond, rectangular blotches outlined several all-terrain trucks. Interspersed among them moved the shapes of a dozen or so people.
A form suddenly appeared to his side. Swathed in desert BDUs and heat-imaging goggles, it thrust an automatic weapon at Trennt's face and slowly circled closer. The soldier jerked his gun barrel upward, signaling them all to raise their hands while approaching cautiously.
"
¡Mira!
" he called to those behind the dune. "
¡Aqui!
"
The prisoners flinched at a burst of sudden shots. But the slugs weren't for them. Heavy calibers were barking from several directions behind the dune.
Rifle grenades and light rockets tore at the air. Quick yellow-white ripples of high explosive cut stark blossoms in the viscous fog. Their captor forgot his prisoners and scampered back toward his own people, never to return.
In minutes the gunfire was over. Then sounds of different machines neared, the rushing wind and spraying sand of small turbines. Ground-effect vehicles coasted to stops and cautious new footsteps crunched about. There was rustling and the sounds of inspections being made.
Sentences were exchanged. New and syrupy, rapid-fire consonants replaced the Spanish. Slavic—maybe Polish or Russian.
Eventually the GEV engines stirred back to life and moved away. In their wake, a few groans lingered. Then the cold night returned to a foggy silence.
Next morning the mist was still thick. Ordering the woman to stay put, Baker and Trennt circled outward from opposite directions of their dune, starting toward the night's action.
What awaited was the product of a classic ambush: quick and intense, brutally launched from point-blank range. The victims' four-wheel-drive trucks lay knocked over, tires were blown and shredded, jagged fender chunks peeled back and strewn about. Even now parts of wreckage still smoldered.
Then came the bodies. Most were whole; some though, like the vehicles, in pieces. The look of mass murder never changed.
Baker drew up beside Trennt and joined in a grim, if fleeting, appraisal.
"Bastards never had much chance, did they? Sure hope some water is left."
The dead wore common issue fatigues. All had thick black hair, high cheekbones, and square, even teeth—Indian heritage and Spanish blood mix.
Their skin had gone blue-purple since night. In this early hour, the blood painting their wounds was commingled to a burnt gravy and chocolate syrup appearance. A lucky few had died outright and lay closed-eyed where they'd fallen, almost orderly and at peace. But the majority rested in splayed, rag doll heaps. Dead eyes wide in a snapshot of fright and horror.
Facing the reality of his own thirst, Trennt absently reached down to liberate a dead man's canteen. He knocked back several deep gulps of the stale, lukewarm fluid and swiped at the gratitude watering his eyes.
Trennt saw the victors had spared time enough to hunt souvenirs among their victims. Side arms, holsters, and personal items were gone. He spied the out-turned pockets of a particular corpse and winced at the indignity, remembering.
Once, in the Amazon, he'd done it himself. Robbed an enemy lieutenant he'd killed in a firefight, taking the man's pocket watch as a battle memento. Later, he'd had the inscription translated, to find it a present from the dead man's parents, a gift commemorating his commission date in the service.
Trennt had stalled a dozen offers to buy the keepsake, at the same time, feeling its dead weight grow to tombstone size in his pocket. He finally dropped the watch in a hole scooped out along a shallow river while on patrol, giving the morbid trophy an ironic burial not afforded its discarded owner.
The woman's voice interrupted.
"I suppose you'd like an apology from me for calling out last night like I did."
Trennt glanced over. Too tired to lecture, he recapped and handed her the canteen, offering a simple caution before walking away.