The Big Bang (4 page)

Beaver crouched there, his eyes shut, like he'd been trained. If anyone was in there with him, their dark-adjusted eyes would have been dazzled by the influx of light. Beaver unsquinched his face, letting light slowly seep through his closed lids, and finally opened his eyes.

“Good job, Tom.” Whistler told him. The other kids called Tom “Beaver” because of the unfortunate teeth, but Whistler wouldn't address him by anything but his given name.

“How'd it go?” the boy asked, scrambling out of the two-by-four and canvas-covered blind. The canvas was painted the same dun and white of the surrounding rocks. The view slits were painted to resemble shadows and pits in the rock.

“Had some problems.” At the look on Beaver's face, Whistler added quickly, “No casualties. Just nothing in the trailer worth our time or ammo. Any action here?”

Beaver shrugged. “No, sir. Thought I heard some wolves, though.”

“Okay.” Whistler gave the boy the now-empty chili mugs. “Gordon has the next watch. You let him know.” They watched the boy head down the trail. He made a game of it, jumping from rock to rock.

Lightning gestured with her head. On his hands and knees, Whistler climbed inside the blind. Lightning followed him, tied the canvas shut behind her.

It smelled like a locker room laundry hamper inside the blind. Teen-aged boys shut up in here day after day, in the heat and lack of circulation. Out of habit, Whistler lifted the binoculars from their hook, scanned all the approaches. The blind sat on the highest point of rolling land for about ten miles. They'd have a little warning if the Caliban approached. Whether it would do them any good was a different issue entirely.

Lightning unrolled the cleaning kit, laid it on a slab of rock. “They're gonna find us someday.”

Whistler propped his fresh Baldwin against one two-by-four beam, laid the dirty one on the cleaning cloth. “Yep.”

“Won't be pretty if they do. We've notched a pack of those camel jockeys.”

“You mean those dune coons?” His voice was thoughtful.

She ignored him, eyes on her hands as she stripped the rifle. “Whatever you call them, we didn't invite them to come over here.”

Whistler said softly, “We can't call 'em names. Then they're not human. We'll make 'em into things, and then…then we'll start acting like them.” That's what Whistler feared. It was like a fear for his own soul. He killed men, he shot them from ambush, blew them up, left some to die in ditches. No matter what he did, he forced himself to remember they were men. Humans, with hurts and hopes, fears and dreams. He remembered all too clearly what happened when the Yemenis and Saudis who heard the call of jihad stopped seeing their opponents as human, but as a label. As “Zionists” or “Imperialists.” Detroit, he'd heard, was still burning from the second wave of attacks, even now. Motown was no mo', because Americans had ceased to be people in the eyes of their enemy.

“Yes, sir,” Lightning said. From Gordon's mouth, that would have been a provocation. The way she said it, he heard all kinds of things. An apology, agreement, and even a little teasing. She said it like a friend.

He was glad she was his friend. He wouldn't want her for an enemy. “Those kids we notched,” he said, musing. “They said you were a genie.”

At that, she snorted, and
almost
laughed. Whistler wasn't sure he'd ever heard her laugh. At least she could still be tickled by something. “Like ‘I Dream of Jeannie?'” She shook her head, slid the bolt into the Baldwin, and then snicked it back to check the action. A click of the trigger, the bolt slammed home smoothly. Out on the line, that would be one more dead Arab. Or Filipino. Or even one of the kids from Malaysia. “A genie. Must be because I'm so big and black and bad.”

She wasn't big, but she was black and she was very bad. “Maybe that's how they think of the angel of death,” Whistler offered, raising the binoculars for another scan. He thought he saw a wisp of something on the road, just at the limits of his vision.

“I'm done,” Lightning announced. “Switch with me.” Whistler duck-walked over to the cleaning cloth, while Lightning scooted around behind him.

“I thought I saw some dust out there at about two o'clock.”

Lightning popped a magazine into her Baldwin and leaned it carefully against the frame of the blind. She wiped off the lenses of the binoculars, held them up. With a sigh, she readjusted the focal lens. “Your eyes,” she said. “Getting as bad as my grandmother's.”

Sitting cross-legged by the cleaning cloth, stripping the Baldwin, Whistler said mildly, “Were you always this much of a nag?”

When she didn't reply, he looked up.
Ah, hell
. She was stiff, hands tight around the binoculars. It was one of the hazards of talking to almost anyone who'd been in-country when the Big Bang hit. Sooner or later, you'd say something, anything, and it would find its way right through the carefully maintained armor. The armor came in all kinds of manifestations. Cynicism. Hopelessness. Near-lunatic anger. Dull-eyed depression. But everyone, everyone sane that is, had some kind of gap. Some soft place unseen and unknown, perhaps even by them, where an innocuous comment could lodge with the force of a sniper's bullet.

Whistler reached out a hand greasy from cleaning the rifle. “Hey. I'm sorry.”

She wouldn't look at him, kept the field glasses pressed against her face. “My daddy called me a fuss-budget.” Lightning swept the glasses from side to side.

“He probably meant it kindly,” Whistler suggested.

“Probably.”

She had just showed up one day. Thin, but tough and black as a hide left out in the sun. Whatever sun had burned that toughness into her was Lightning's own secret. She didn't talk about it. Whistler hadn't asked. Since she was an unknown, they'd kept watch on her until they trusted her. Trusted her with their lives.

Whistler looked down at the half-assembled Baldwin. He was never very good at these moments with anyone, worse with women. Those moments of completely unintended hurt. In his mind, he thumbed through some responses, trying to find a healing word or two.

He didn't have time to locate the right sentence. Lightning stiffened again.

“Visitors.”

Whistler slipped over beside her, stared in the direction of the field glasses. Now he could see the moving dust cloud with his naked eyes. “Caliban?”

“No.” She handed him the glasses, swung around behind him and quickly began to assemble the Baldwin that lay in parts on the cleaning cloth.

Through the glasses, Whistler could see what was creating the dust cloud: an old pickup, plowing along the dirt road, weaving in slow arcs from side to side. “Drunk?”

Lightning's hands moved rapidly. “Too controlled.”

“They wanted to be seen.”

“Trap.”

Her teeth flashed in a feral smile. “Maybe.” A final snap, twist, and the Baldwin was whole again. She slung it over her back. “Let's take a look.”

In less than five minutes, Lightning had run down to the bunkhouse, grabbed Paley as he was coming back from the still and dragged him up to the blind. Whistler handed him the field glasses and gave him a quick pass-down.

“This truck could be the decoy. If we're too busy paying attention to the truck, somebody could sneak up on us. I want you to check out all approaches. Watch the road, watch the sky.
Ignore the truck
. Me and Lightning will take care of it.” Paley nodded, rubbing tired eyes. Whistler gave him a stern look. “You've got our back, right?”

Paley straightened up, looking more awake. “Yes, sir!”

Whistler hurried down the path, pebbles and dirt skittering from beneath his feet. He didn't think it was a decoy, but it paid to be sure. After all, they'd just blown up some emir's load of swag, and that emir might be a touch unhappy about that. That pickup truck, it moved with purpose. It knew where it was going.

In the early morning light, Whistler broke into a trot. He wanted to catch the truck on the road, before it got to the bunkhouse. If there was shooting and other unpleasantness, the farther from the boys, the better. It would give them a chance to slip away. Of course, if Whistler got himself perforated or captured by a buttload of the Prophet's troops, that would mean the boys were going to be led by Gordon, which was its own death sentence, just slower. Well, a man can't be in two places at once, so Whistler jogged on, the Baldwin held loosely in front of him.

He didn't look around as he ran. He knew Lightning was out there somewhere, moving like a shadow, pacing him, flitting through the scrub and mesquite. Hell, she was probably ahead of him already.

When he saw the tall cloud of dust, puffed out and swaying from side to side like the tail of a scared cat, he slowed to a walk, a little winded. The sound of the truck's laboring engine told him little. The engine whined and strained. Which meant it wasn't running on gasoline, probably on poor-grade ethanol or methanol. That didn't guarantee it wasn't Caliban, but pointed in that direction.

He found a place he liked, at the bottom of a rise. The truck would have to come over the rise and into the morning sun. Whistler would be at the bottom, in a dim depression. They'd be sun-blind for a second, and it would give Whistler the time to decide whether they were going to live or not. He stood in the middle of the road, finger on the trigger, thumb flicking restlessly to the safety.

The engine noise on the other side of the rise got fainter and then grew stronger. They were almost upon him. The front of the old Chevy poked over the crest of the rise. As Whistler expected, it was a beater from the late sixties. They were easier to convert, and their ignition systems were impervious to the EMP weapons that the Chinese had exploded over the West Coast in the first couple of weeks of the war. The white paint on the truck was scraped and faded. Flaking Bondo along the left front fender. Whistler recognized the truck, but didn't relax his grip on the Baldwin.

He lifted a hand. It could have been a command to stop, or a friendly hello. Whistler let the driver decide what it was. The truck slowed, skidded a little in the powdery dirt. When it stopped, the plume of dust swept forward and covered Whistler. He squeezed his eyes shut against the cloud, the Baldwin centered on the cab of the truck.

Whistler opened his eyes a slit. The dust was past, but he was coated in the reddish-brown stuff. He'd need a bath, damn it. Irritably, he gestured with his rifle. “Out.”

The driver's side window rolled down. A hand reached through and pressed the outside door latch. The door opened with a protesting creak. “Hey, Whistler,” the man said, stepping out.

“What's up, Gunny?” Whistler moved over at an angle, checking the cab. There was another man in the cab, his hands studiously in plain sight on the cracked dashboard. “Is that Red with you?”

“Yep.”

“You don't usually get out this way, Gunny.”

Gundersen grinned. He had been a good-looking kid in high school, smart, but kind of lazy. The years since hadn't been kind and the war didn't help. Now he was paunchy, but had retained a good-looking face and full head of hair. That made up for his other decline, a little. He had been a dentist, of all things, and still did some teeth work. Whistler never used his services, remembering Gundersen's jackassed self-assurance from back in the day. He'd been cruel to the homely girls who liked him, and for some reason, Whistler held a grudge against Gunny on their behalf.

“Brought you fellas a present,” Gundersen said, walking toward the rear of the truck. Whistler cut his eyes over at Red, gave a quick jerk of the head. Red climbed out silently. He was Gundersen's running buddy, tall, with no chin and a face that tended to acne. Along with the rapidly thinning hair, he was thoroughly unlovely.

Keeping Red in front of him, Whistler walked around to the back of the truck. Lighting was already there, like she'd risen out of the ground. Like so many others before had been, some fatally, Gunny was startled to see her. She ignored him and was staring at the ground in disgust.

A length of chain about ten feet long was shackled to the bumper. Something else was shackled to the other end of the chain. It had probably been a human being. With the skin and major muscles shredded off and the body now caked with dirt from the jeep trail, it was hard to be sure. That one leg was missing below the knee made identification harder.

Lightning spoke. “Who is it?”

“Lopez,” Gunny said easily.

“Which one?” Lightning asked.

“Does it matter?” Red interjected.

Lightning lifted her eyes to him. It was as if she'd poked stiff fingers into his throat. He stepped back, blinking.

“Anselmo,” Gunny said defensively. “He was trading with the Caliban.”

Whistler sighed. “You saw this yourself?”

Gunny didn't exactly answer the question. “Everybody knew it. A Mexican, trading with the 'Ban. He was probably working for them, too.”

“Did anybody talk to him?” Whistler lowered the Baldwin, flicked the safety on.

Red recovered the power of speech. “We did.” Something in Lightning's face made him add, “And so did Gordon.”

That was answer enough. Whistler felt Lightning's eyes on him. He turned heavily to face the two men. “You put him in the back of your truck and take him back to his people. They'll want to bury him.” Red, never the more insightful of the two, started to open his mouth. Lightning lifted her Baldwin. It was ugly and homemade, but anyone who'd seen them in action knew how destructively fatal they could be at short range. Red shut his mouth. Whistler went on, his voice growing quieter. Somehow, the lower the volume, the more dangerous he sounded. “Now, I don't want to see you two out to the ranch anymore,
ever
. You forget you ever knew anybody is out here. And this,” he pointed at the remains of the dead man on the ground, “this doesn't happen again. There's rules. You understand?”