Authors: Walter Jon Williams
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic
The boat rolled from the broken forest into the bright sunlight. Jason faced aft, the telescope still held over his head. Nick felt a laugh rising like a bubble through his astonishment.
“Goodbye-o!” Jason howled over the stern as he waved the Astroscan over his head. “Goodbye-o!”
He turned to the others.
“Who’s the genius?”
he demanded.
“Who’s the genius? Who’s got his own atomic bomb?”
He gave a whoop.
And then Jason looked down at Nick, at the man’s trembling hands clenched on the wheel, and he felt the silent passage between them.
I
was
this
close,
he read in Nick’s face.
I know,
Jason answered silently.
I know how close we were.
*
The hunt lasted most of the morning. Frankland and his people, traveling across country in pickup trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles, in pursuit of Olson, who had his whole family piled onto one little beat-up ATV that wouldn’t go twenty miles an hour.
Olson first of all tried to make for the piney woods to the northwest of town. Frankland knew that once Olson got his family into that dense wreckage, they might well die of starvation or frustration, but would be perfectly safe as far as pursuit was concerned. So Frankland first sent a column of hunters under Sheriff Gorton zooming down the highway to get to the woods first. They succeeded, and when Olson’s ATV appeared, in a soy field south of the piney woods, he found Gorton’s people waiting, behind the cover of their vehicles with their weapons pointing across their hoods.
Olson should have known, Frankland thought, that you can’t fight the angels.
Olson slowed his vehicle, peered for a moment at the reception party ready for him, then turned the ATV around and buzzed away to the south. Gorton mounted his people and pursued cross country, careful to keep out of range of Olson’s scoped rifle. Frankland was in touch with Gorton by radio, and had another posse under Garb waiting for Olson when he came. So Olson turned again, heading in about the only direction left, to the northeast. There wasn’t much there for him, not unless he planned to descend the bluff and wade out into the flooded country below, but Frankland hadn’t left him much choice.
Frankland himself waited there, between Olson and the bluff, with six trucks spread out and twelve guards under good cover. And when Olson saw that, and looked over his shoulder at the patient vehicles slowly following him, he turned again and went to ground, in a partially collapsed farm building belonging to a family called the Swansons.
Angels sang their triumph in Frankland’s mind. The rebel Olson was in his power.
“Heaven-o!” Frankland called out, standing in the back of a truck and bellowing over the cab through cupped hands. He called for Olson to surrender, but there was no answer. So Frankland and Gorton sent in their posse. Frankland gave the advancing men cover, blasting away at the wrecked farmhouse with his Winchester from behind the cover of his truck. Angels cried their triumph at every shot.
The angels’ song turned to a lament. Olson blew up one of the advancing trucks with a shot that hit the gas tank, almost roasting the three men inside. Olson killed one man sheltering behind another vehicle, and wounded two others. After that Frankland’s people beat a retreat despite the reverend urging them on.
Then a siege began, with Frankland’s people lying under cover at what they hoped was a safe distance and firing into the Swanson house in hopes of hitting their invisible enemy. Occasionally Olson would fire a round back to tell everyone to keep their distance.
Wait till night,
thought Frankland.
At night I can get close enough to burn them out.
This went on for hours, as the sun mounted hot into the sky and the land baked beneath them. Frankland’s people hadn’t even had breakfast, so he called the camp and arranged for food and water to be brought.
“Honey bear,” Sheryl told him over the walkie-talkie, “I think you better get back here with some of those men of yours. Things here are going all to blazes.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t leave enough guards to keep order
here,”
Sheryl said. “People are wandering around outside the boundaries like they’re not supposed to. A lot of folks ran off during the incident this morning and haven’t come back. When you sent the dead and wounded back, that shot down the morale of the people who would have helped me. Some of the folks took some of our stored food and wandered away.”
“Tell those people that the angels guard them,” Frankland said.
“What was that, honey bear?” Sharply.
“If there is mutiny in the camp,” Frankland said, “you have my authority to enforce discipline.”
“How?” Sheryl demanded. “Nobody’s paying attention to me.”
“Shoot somebody,” Frankland said. “Shoot
ten
somebodies. The angels will acquit you.” And then he added, “When Satan rageth, surely he must be put down.”
“I’m not shooting anybody till you come back,” Sheryl said. “I want an army to back me up.”
“Just send food and water,” Frankland said.
“I’ll bring it myself.”
Sheryl brought supplies and somber warnings about what was happening in the camp. Before she left Frankland assured her that the angels were guarding them all.
All through the afternoon Frankland’s people continued to fire randomly into the ruin. It was nearing twilight when Frankland finally heard a shout from the Swanson place.
“Stop shooting!” Olson’s high-pitched screech. “You hit my girl!”
“Throw down your guns and come out!” Frankland said. “All of you!”
“Just take my girl!”
“No! All of you or none!”
“She’s hurt bad! Someone come and take her!”
Frankland shouted “Open fire!” leveled his Winchester over the hood of his truck, and let fly. A regular volley rang out. Frankland heard screaming from Olson’s wife, then shouts from Olson, then a shot from the farmhouse that cracked air right over Frankland’s head. The screaming stopped.
The firing went on for a while. And then Frankland heard a strange throbbing in the air, and looked up to see a helicopter banking into a lazy turn over the bluff to the north. The helicopter was a small one, dark in color, but it had clearly seen something of interest below, because it finished its turn and began a shallow dive toward Frankland and the Swanson cabin.
“No,” Frankland gasped. He could see it all too clearly. The Devil was coming to save his own. Flying through the air like the wicked angel he was.
“No!” he shouted, rising from his crouch behind his truck. “Shoot! Black helicopter! Government black helicopter! Shoot!”
“It’s
green,
Brother Frankland,” one of Frankland’s men pointed out, but Frankland raised his Winchester, aimed at the oncoming helicopter, and pulled the trigger. He cranked another round into the rifle, fired, then fired again. Then he thumbed on his walkie-talkie.
“Black helicopter!” he shouted. “It’s coming to rescue Olson! Shoot it down!”
More shots crackled out from the circle of trucks, along with a few cries of surprise or protest. Frankland fired twice more. The helicopter roared low over Frankland’s head, close enough so that Frankland could see the government markings and helmeted pilot peering out of the slablike cockpit window. Frankland’s rifle clicked on empty, and he frantically reached for fresh rounds in his vest and began to reload.
The helicopter passed over the area and began a steep climb. Shots dwindled away as the chopper passed out of range. “Brother Frankland!” someone called on the radio. “That was an Army helicopter! We can’t—”
Frankland finished reloading and snatched the walkie-talkie from the hood of his truck. Angels chanted their anger in his ears. “Smite them!” he cried. “Let their tears be as ashes and let cinders be their end!”
“Brother Frankland!” Another voice. “You don’t understand!”
“Heaven or Hell!” Frankland raged. Angels roared in his ears. “You go to Heaven or Hell!
Choose now!”
Frankland dropped the walkie-talkie back onto the hood of the truck, then readied his rifle. The chopper reached the top of its climb, then spun in a lazy turn, the setting sun gleaming red off its rotor.
Frankland shouldered his rifle, wiped sweat from the pit of his eye. He put his eye to the scope and lined up the copter in the crosshairs.
The helicopter began another dive. Frankland could hear the whine of its jet engines above the throb of rotors, above the chant of the angels in his ears. He tracked the helicopter through his scope, saw sunlight etch shadows of the crewmen behind the smoked cockpit glass.
“I choose Heaven,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
THIRTY
From what I had seen and heard I was deterred from proceeding further, and nearly gave away what property I had. On my return by land up the right side of the river, I found the surface of the earth for 10 or 12 miles cracked in numberless places, running in different directions
—
some of which were bridged and some filled with logs to make them passable
—
others were so wide that they were obliged to be surrounded. In some of these cracks the earth sank on one side from the level to the distance of five feet, and from one to three feet there was water in most of them. Above this the cracks were not so numerous nor so great
—
but the inhabitants have generally left their dwellings and gone to the higher grounds.
Matthias M. Speed (Jefferson County, March 2,1812)
Jessica jumped as a bullet splashed off the windscreen of the Kiowa. She could see armed men down below, crouched behind vehicles. Some of them were shooting. And some of
those
were shooting at
her.
Bullets rattled off the helicopter’s semi-monocoque hull as the Kiowa roared over the scene at a hundred knots. “Hell of a lot of firepower, General,” her pilot remarked.
Jessica winced as a round panged off the cheek window below her feet. “Who
are
these people?” she muttered.
The Kiowa zoomed over the field and climbed up over the Delta, out of range. Jessica’s heart thrashed against her rib cage.
A hot landing zone in Arkansas? This was deranged.
“Damage?” Jessica said, her eyes flickering over the cockpit displays.
“I hear air through some holes in the fuselage,” the pilot said. “Oil pressure’s steady. No unusual vibration.”
“Alert HQ to the situation,” Jessica said. “Tell them to prep a dustoff in case we have to bail over the Delta.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t suppose that twenty-millimeter gun you’ve got has any ammunition in it.”
“Sorry, General. We left the ammunition loads in Kentucky.”
Oh well. That was just the adrenaline talking, anyway. Although the helicopter’s cannon— if loaded— was perfectly capable of wiping out everything in sight on the field below, she could only imagine the penalties for any military officer who used such a weapon on civilian targets, whether they’d fired on her or not.
Jessica was already busy with the controls for the MMS, a kind of periscope unit inside the craft’s rotor hub that carried video, infrared, and laser-sighting systems.
She turned on the video recorder, so there would be a record for later, and panned the area of the battle with the camera cranked up to maximum magnification. Saw the vehicles laid out around the half-fallen farmhouse, the rifles banging away. Presumably they wouldn’t be firing at the farmhouse unless there was someone inside firing back.
Two of the vehicles, she saw, had racks of lights on top, maybe sheriff’s department. Maybe there was a perfectly legitimate police action going on.
In which case, why had she been shot at?
While Jessica peered into the MMS display, the pilot gently tested his controls and control surfaces, shifting the Kiowa gently around the sky. “Are we going to have to dust off that farmhouse, General?” he asked.
“Negative. I’m not going to take us into a hot LZ without knowing what’s going on, or who’s shooting at us.”
“HQ says they are warming up a Cayuse in case we need a dustoff. It’s the only aircraft they’ve got available.”
“Very good.” Another light scout helicopter, damn it. If they had a Blackhawk or Sea Stallion available, a big ship with a reasonable chance of not being shot to pieces, she might have risked trying to rescue whoever was in the farmhouse.
“And ma’am—” The pilot shifted his chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other. “I don’t mean to bring you down or anything, but our fuel situation will become critical in about five minutes and night is coming on fast.”
“Let me know when we have to leave. Is there any way we can talk to those cops down there, or whatever they are?”
“We’ve got the secure UHF and SINCGARS only, General. Just military channels.”
“Damn it.” Eyes still on the display, she began searching for the map case she’d placed between the pilot’s seat and her own. “Where the hell is this place?” she asked.
It was pure coincidence Jessica was there at all. She’d flown to Bald Knob to deliver instruction to a National Guard unit concerning the appropriate way to repair a levee, and on her return journey had flown over the Delta, as per her own standing orders to search for refugees whenever possible. The flashing lights of the police vehicle had attracted her attention, and the next thing she knew people were shooting at her.
She looked at the data from the AHRS display, which provided her position within a hundred yards or so, then down at the plastic-encased maps, gloved fingers tracking the coordinates. They were 4.3 kilometers northwest of Rails Bluff, Arkansas. Wherever
that
was.
She looked back at the MMS display and saw a half-dozen of the besiegers pile into a pickup truck and leave the scene. A grin tugged at the corners of her lips. “I’d say they have a morale problem down there,” she said.
“Ma’am? The fuel...”
“Let me pan across this one last time,” Jessica said, “and then we can get out of here.”
She swept the video across the battlefield one more time, then took her hands off the controls. “Take us back by way of Rails Bluff,” she said. “I want to see what’s there.”
Rails Bluff was a wreck, with no sign of life, though apparently efforts had been made to clear some of the rubble. Jessica took more video images for the record, though she suspected that twilight was degrading the image significantly. The surprise came a few miles outside of town, when a refugee camp floated into sight, a long line of tents and awnings stretched out along the broken highway.
“Is that one of
ours?”
Jessica wondered aloud. She couldn’t remember anyone airlifting supplies to a place called Rails Bluff.
“Want me to get closer, General?”
“Negative. We’ve already been shot at once. Just let me get some pictures.”
It was dark enough that the video unit wouldn’t provide a suitable image, so Jessica used the FLIR, the Forward-Looking Infra-Red detector set into the MMS. She recorded the little burning lights that were stoves, generators, and human beings. And amid the camp, she saw a long tripod-shaped object standing into the night.
“Is that a radio mast?”
“Looks like it, General.”
“Well.” She panned the camp one more time, then folded the MMS back into the rotor hub. “Let’s get back to HQ.”
While the Kiowa was en route, Jessica spoke to headquarters and told them to check the FCC’s web page to find out as much as they could about whatever radio station was licensed in Rails Bluff. And then to find out everything
else
available about Rails Bluff, including whether or not the state of Arkansas, the military, or anyone else had set up a refugee camp nearby.
Pat waited for her in the spill of the Kiowa’s landing lights as the chopper came down onto the Vicksburg improvised helipad. He raised a hand to protect his eyes against dust kicked up by the rotor, and she saw a boom box in his hand.
On leaving the helicopter, Jessica suppressed the urge to jump onto Pat and wrap her arms and legs around his lanky body, and instead gave him a peck on the cheek.
He put an arm around her as his eyes surveyed the bullet splashes on her transportation. “You okay?” he said.
“All in a day’s work,” she said, a little too casually. “What have you got for me?”
He drew her away from the noise of the helicopter. “I’ve got something to play for you,” he said. “We listen to this sometimes in the clerks’ tent. It’s kind of entertaining, in its own surrealistic way.”
The Kiowa’s turbines shut down, and Pat raised the antenna on the boom box and punched the power button. He held the speaker close to Jessica’s ear. A crashing sound began to thunder from the speakers, a horribly distorted noise that suggested metal shelves being hit repeatedly with a baseball bat. A high-pitched male voice howled over the noise, distorted even more than the crashing sound in the background. Jessica wanted to cover her ears.
“Is this the day?”
the voice cried.
“Is this the day? Is this the day of the Lord?”
“Fifteen thousand watts AM,” Pat said. “The Voice of Rails Bluff.”
*
The Arkansas was slow and wide and choked with debris. Jason and Arlette worked on the bass boat’s foredeck, each with one of Captain Joe’s oars, fending off the trees, the chunks of lumber, the pieces of paneling or shingled gables that had once been a part of someone’s home. It was slow and tiring work. Nick fretted aloud about the fuel they were using idling down the river this way. Jason was dreadfully aware of Arlette’s presence, of the tantalizing warmth of the girl’s bare legs as they moved next to his. It was as if his nerves were reaching out toward her, straining in her direction like new green shoots reaching for the light. He wondered if Arlette shared this awareness, or if this pleasant torture was for him alone.
He heard Nick and Manon in a whispered conversation in the cockpit, and then Jason heard Nick say, “Well, I hope you don’t expect me to find a service station,” and Jason felt a grin tug at his lips, a grin that he was careful to turn away from the cockpit. There were more whispers between Manon and Nick, and then Nick cleared his throat.
“Manon needs to pee,” he said. “Jason, I’d be obliged if you’d keep your eyes to the front.”
“And you, too, Nick Ruford,” Manon added.
Jason strove to control his amusement. This had not been much of an issue when he and Nick had been alone on the bass boat.
The boat took on a list to port, indicating that Manon was hanging her butt out the cockpit. Jason moved a little to starboard to help keep the boat balanced, crowding against Arlette. She gave him a glance over her shoulder— their eyes met for a moment, and she looked away. Their arms touched, and Jason felt the hair prickle on his arm at the touch of Arlette’s skin.
There was a pause. Then a wail from Manon.
“I can’t, Nick! Not here in the middle of the river!”
“Nobody’s around to see you.”
“I just can’t!”
“There’s no place else to have a pit stop out here,” Nick said. “Not unless you want to hold it till we get to Vicksburg.”
“Just take us over into the trees,” Manon said. “Please, Nick, I can’t pee out here.”
Nick nudged the throttle forward and turned the wheel. The boat stabilized as Manon came inboard. Jason stepped back from Arlette, took a grip on his oar, fended off the garbage until they were in the shade of the trees.
Manon hung herself outboard again and managed to overcome her mortification. After she was finished, Nick said, “Anyone else? Because I’m not taking this detour again.”
“I’ll go, Daddy,” Arlette said.
“There’s not much toilet paper,” Manon remarked.
“Plenty of leaves and cattails,” Nick said cheerfully. Manon made a noise of disgust.
Jason stood on the foredeck, eyes rigidly forward like a soldier, his oar grounded like a spear.
They sure sound married,
he thought.
It was slow going on the river. They passed a broken highway bridge, its span completely fallen, and shortly thereafter a shattered lock and dam, now abandoned. A towboat and a small fleet of barges were sunk in the lock, apparently having been caught there by the first big quake.
At nightfall they kept moving. Nick decided they were safer in the channel than anywhere else— if they moored beneath the trees, an aftershock could drop the trees right on them.
Eventually they grew tired and decided to drift. They had used two-thirds of their fuel and could no longer see any landmarks. Nick shared out the food he’d taken from the two guards— there wasn’t much, and it didn’t last long.
”This is the last,” he said, “till we find civilization.”
There was a roaring overhead, the sound of rotors flogging the sky. Navigation lights flashed against the blackness. A whole squadron of helicopters tearing away on some urgent errand.
If it were only daytime, they could have waved.
After the helicopters passed, Jason lay on the foredeck and looked up at the sky. He could spot M31 easily, and M13 and M3. Funny how easy it was when you knew how.
His eye searched for the Ring Nebula, but couldn’t find it. He thought he could detect a smudge where Captain Joe had showed him the Veil Nebula.
A supernova. The Veil wasn’t a veil but a shroud, draped over the corpse of its once-mighty star.
Jason gazed at the sky and felt on his mind the subtle pressure of its millions of stars. He wondered what his life meant in regard to that brilliant, diamond-hard, uncaring immensity. Compared to those stars, his life, his thoughts, his very existence was the merest nothing— no,
a fragment
of nothing, a spark that flared briefly and then was gone, unnoticed in the vast darkness.
His mother, Jason thought, had believed that she mattered, that the universe cared what became of her, that she and the universe were of equal importance. Frankland believed, as far as the universe was concerned, that he was a person of consequence, that he was chosen to carry out a monumentally important plan on behalf of the being who had created all this immensity.
If they had only looked up, if they had seen those millions of stars, perhaps they would have come to a different understanding. That life was not of consequence to anyone but the living, that there was no plan but what life made for itself.
Jason acutely felt his own fragility, his own lack of significance in the cosmos. But that consciousness, in some strange, paradoxical way, seemed a kind of liberation. Life mattered only to life. Life could choose its own meaning, give itself significance, attempt to preserve itself against the violence and destruction of the universe. Life could value
itself.
Nothing else would, that was certain.
And life could treasure other life, as Jason treasured the lives of the others adrift on the little boat. They could guard each other’s fragile spark, preserve themselves and each other.