They stood again as strangers. For a ragged moment, the damp air between them was thick with disgrace. But hurriedly regrouping, Geri dismissed the matter, beaming her best, practiced smile.
"Don't worry about it. A working girl needs to stay in training. Thanks for the refresher course."
She started back, head high. Only the glimmer of distant firelight betrayed a lone tear bunched in the far corner of her eye.
Baker kicked out the fire's last coals with eager motions.
"Well, Cuz," he asked, "you done? It's sunup and we got miles to go."
Wayne shook his head, glumly regarding the curled pages.
"The best I could do are snippets here and there of what does seem a kind of diary."
"And?"
Trennt approached, listening as well.
"There are notes and personal thoughts on the progress made developing better food grains. But too much time away and the lack of a dictionary has put most of it beyond me without a longer study."
Baker snatched up the book. Unimpressed, he returned it to Trennt.
"Thanks, anyway. See y'all later."
Wayne smiled thinly. "Sorry. But like I said, I'd need time."
"Wish we had it to spare."
Trennt looked to Top, just returning from outside.
"Where to next?"
"Due north," said the old grunt. "Pit stop a couple days out. Then the Wilds—if we still got a reason to boogie."
Trennt gazed up through the shattered church roof.
"How's the sky?"
"Fog's burned off good enough to hear and see your bird—provided she's still up there."
"Don'cha worry none, Jimbo," said Baker. "She'll be by. Clouds been thick enough to muffle a tank column for the last few days. We'll see her today. You bet on it."
They shared a fraternal smile. Behind, Wayne cleared his throat.
"I do have a suggestion to offer. If you don't mind me riding along, a few days more might be time enough to make some real headway with the diary."
From his spot packing the Upland, Baker's grin deflated.
"Sorry," he declared. "Few more days'n we'll know what we need, with or without it. Thanks anyhow."
"Drop me wherever you'd want," continued Wayne. "I know my way back and I've got no place better to be. In the meantime I'd decipher what I could."
Still clenching a tiedown rope, Baker eyed the man suspiciously.
"What d'you care what that stuff means, anyway?"
The stranger shrugged, a little self-consciously.
"I don't get much intellectual stimulation these days. Write it off to a welcome challenge. You know, like a good crossword puzzle."
Baker only narrowed his gaze. "Always hated them things. You a teacher or somethin'?"
Wayne nodded. "I was, yes."
Trennt considered the offer.
"Okay, you're in. A couple days, anyway. I can't guarantee anything more."
Baker stomped behind the truck, scandalized and muttering. Yanking frustratedly at a cargo strap, he jerked up a length of excess cord. Beneath, a sliver of brilliant white was dislodged.
The gunman scuffed a boot toe at the color, then stooped to retrieve it. Bunched and jammed beneath a tire were several empty packets. Though dirty, their crumpled paper was new, with sharp, fresh-torn edges.
They were identical to the eight-ounce electrolyte packs found in the medkit. Straightened and upended, residual crystals trickled freely into his hand. Salt—or sugar.
Baker contemplated the packets a moment, then stepped to the truck's fuel door. A tiny spill of more crystals rested there, ones someone had tried to hastily sweep away. Baker did so with his own fingers as Geri's call split the morning chill.
"She's coming!"
He slipped the empty packs into a shirt pocket and hurried outside to where the rest gathered, looking skyward.
Though four days tardy, the nuke dutifully kept this morning's rendezvous. Now, however, she loomed huge and low. Lumbering and ungainly, she listed rakishly and smeared the treetops with her broad, crooked shadow.
Her lone engine moaned in a labored and cycling whine as she struggled past. No longer was there any effort at vertical flight maneuvers, just a tortured struggle to remain aloft.
Nobody spoke until her sound was completely gone. Then it was Baker who again gave voice to the obvious: "That ole mud hen won't last the day."
Trennt didn't reply. Instead, he looked hopefully at Top, who gazed up from working his solar compass.
"Same direction, Cap. Straight toward the Wilds."
Minutes earlier and several miles south, another camp was breaking. Major Dobruja sifted his fingers through the spoor of dried tire tracks. Rising from a crouch, his range-tough eyes chased wearily along the meandering truck path. After a week of trailing, he'd grown bored with the hunt; disinterested in the capture.
"Not far ahead," he said mechanically. "Their trail remains easy to follow. Still north. We could close and ambush them at our leisure. But their determination troubles me. What can such vagabonds be after? Certainly not meeting with radicals this far out."
Sergeant Karelian followed the officer's gaze.
"Whatever it is, another few days will put them—and us—in the tribelands."
Josef bowed to the logic.
"Yes. We are short on supplies as it is. Without more troops, it might not be prudent for us to follow. Maybe we've wasted time enough on the matter."
He flung down the mud clod and decided: "Let the fools be. We'll find easier game to sport. Gather our men for return to base."
The sergeant was circling a raised arm when the morning sun dimmed in the flash of a huge, screaming shadow.
"Son of a bitch!"
Top angrily yanked open the truck hood and scoured the broiling engine compartment. In the spotty shade where they'd coasted to a stop, he ran testing hands about the hot components. Yet, everything appeared intact.
Trennt slid from behind the steering wheel to join in the survey. "See anything?"
The old Marine straightened. "No loose injectors or ignition wires. But it shouldn't have just cut out like that."
From inside the trunk, Wayne spoke, "Does that rotten egg smell have anything to do with it?"
Trennt also caught a whiff. It was a swampy kind of decayed stench, though heavily sulfured. "What is that, raw fuel?"
Top didn't answer. He forgot all about the truck. His eyes flashed with quick and sober raptness at something both in the terrain and the air about them.
Baker dismissed the brief, faint stink. He wandered over and spoke with a casual tone of certainty. "Way she was surgin' at the end there, I'd lay money on a plugged fuel system."
Top frowned. "Don't know how. Been using strained G.I gas up to now. Won't have any old stuff until we fill up at the junkyard. Even then, it'd take a mondo load of crud to plug both the tank and engine filters in a multi-fueler hog like this."
Trennt eyed the silenced engine. "Do we have much choice but to check?"
"Guess not." The old-timer rolled up his sleeves. "At least they're cleanable mesh cartridges. I can drop and flush them without too much hassle. Trouble is all the daylight we'll waste before making the gas station and getting the still set up."
Trennt swatted at a line of perspiration from under his fatigue cap and readjusted his sun specs. Beyond their scrubwood shade, the heat-scorched horizon danced uninvitingly.
"How far is it?"
"Few miles. Why?"
"I know how to work a membrane still. Would it be worth the effort for me to hump the gear in and get things ready?"
Top followed Trennt's gaze across the distant, splintery terrain. Turning back, he cast another strange glance at the cut of ground immediately about them.
"Yeah. That might be best. Can't do it alone, though, Cap. You'll need rappelling line to start a path down the hillside and someone to lower gear. The still alone weighs a good thirty pounds empty."
Geri's eyes swept toward Trennt. "I'll go."
"Me too," added Wayne.
Baker spread his arms across the open engine compartment.
"You go ahead an' take 'em on, Whiskers. I kin handle these filters myse'f. Ketch up when I'm done. Ain't no big deal." Baker started wrenching at the fuel system.
Top glanced about the eager troops. He snuggled up his UV goggles and bowed toward the open.
"Straight north when you're done, Slick. About five klicks."
Baker didn't bother raising up from under the hood.
"I'll find yah."
"Okay then, dudes and dudette, let's book."
Neither time nor age had dulled the old-timer's up-country abilities. The Corps' best training flooded back, making Top's motions purposeful and exact. Fueled by a younger man's juices, he set an unrelenting cadence over the miles of scorched, powdered scrub, onward toward the distant wash of dull green.
The hillside rolled off deceptively easy at first. Then it fell away so steeply that the only thing holding Trennt back was the rope link itself. Hand over hand, his gloves cautiously paid out the tough, braided nylon line.
He made a secondary level. Sunlight filtered in dusky green rays through the tight weave of suckered trees above. A musty deep forest scent rose up from even further below. The sap and bark smells were refreshing after all the dry, open country of the last few days and Trennt paused a moment to draw in their vitality.
"Should be near the drop-off," warned Top, invisible above him. "Take her real easy, Cap."
"Roger."
Trennt shook the last coils of brilliant orange rope out behind him. A half dozen more rough bounces and he broke through a tangle of willow saplings and lush fern, ten feet over the sandy canyon floor. A sudden, tremendous heat warmed his back. Brilliant spears of white light cut raw slashes at the foliage about him.
A final bounce and he was on level ground. Undoing his harness, Trennt came about and froze. Nestled in the valley basin, a blaze of fractured light erupted from acres of compressed glass and chrome. Before him, rank after rank of cars and trucks sat tucked fender to fender, running on forever. Some on the edges were upended or piggybacked, but most of the sun-faded assemblage tracked in orderly rows—like a moment of rush hour traffic quick-frozen on the freeway.
High above, Top read his silence.
"Blows your mind, huh, Cap?"
"What is it?"
"Not sure. Interstate ran through here once upon a time. Might've washed out or fell away during one of the early tsunami evacuations."
The still was up and running by the time Baker rejoined the group. Cans were distributed and every car, truck, and bus holding the barest promise of fuel was siphoned off for cleaning. By dusk ten gallons had slowly been strained free of moisture and contaminants. But forty more would require the same tedious treatment through all night babysitting.
Geri ran a cleaning twig under her fingernails. She'd spent a hard afternoon, lugging dirty fuel the one-hundred-plus yards to their portable strainer. Now, she raised her face to the welcome coolness sifting gently down the canyon walls.
"I'm going for a walk," she announced.
Her eyes met Trennt's as she passed, but he quickly shifted his gaze back to the slow trickle of clean fuel. From his spot quietly cleaning guns, however, Baker followed her departure with a singular interest.
Yards away, Wayne stood alone, packing up a bounty of wild onions and potatoes he'd harvested from a nearby hillside. Some had been baked in mud wraps for the night's supper; the rest would supplement whatever might be foraged tomorrow.
Finished with his task, he was engaged in a leisurely study of the broad night sky as Geri happened along.
"Make any more progress with the notebook?"
He gave her a discerning glance. "Some. You were with those people for a long time?"
"They were my friends."
Wayne studied her further.
"In a couple more days we should find time to talk."
Geri caught something grave in his tone, but didn't press the issue. Instead, she joined his overhead search.
"Watching for paratroopers?"
He smiled. "Kind of a hobby. Looking for old satellites."
"You serious?"
"Takes the place of television," he mused. "A lot of old stuff is still orbiting up there. Some from before we were even born. All junk now, of course."
She squinted through the wash of distant white embers. "How do you find one?"
"They look like dull stars—except they move. Kind of an off-white or yellow color from reflected sunlight. The one I'm waiting for is pretty good-sized and due . . . there!"
Geri focused on a tiny ivory-colored pearl passing through the star field.
"I see it!" she said eagerly. "Which one is it?"
"That one's no satellite. That's the Phoenix II."
"The space station?"
"Yes."
She recalled the headlines. Eleven men and women astronauts died onboard, fried by the first heavy rush of solar wind almost fifteen years earlier. They sacrificed their lives remaining to measure radiation and send back manual updates, rather than bail out on the failing automatic systems. Their reward was to parade by nightly, the corpses of America's last heroes.
"Circles every ninety minutes, like clockwork," said Wayne.
"How long will they stay up there?"
"At a one-thousand-mile orbit, maybe forever."
The evening air took on a new chill as Geri watched the stellar tomb move away. She left Wayne and slowly proceeded deeper into both private thoughts and the night shrouded valley.
Beside the fuel still, Trennt rapped an impatient knuckle at the condensing trickle of precious sepia-colored fluid.
Propped against a nearby stump, Top chuckled.
"Watched pot never boils," he offered. "Always starts out slow with a new batch, Cap. Don't worry, she'll speed up. Come morning we should be real close."
Trennt cracked a dim smile. Snickering softly at himself, he started to rise.
"Maybe I should go check on the truck."
Holstering his cleaned pistol, Baker cut him off with an eager tone.