Dies the Fire (14 page)

Luther nodded in his turn and sipped at his coffee. “So what do you three plan on doing about it?”

“Run like blazes and hide like hell,” Dennis said. “I've got no family in Corvallis.”

“We're going up to my great-uncle's old place in the foothills,” Juniper said, leaning her head eastward for an instant. “It's nicely out of the way, and I expect some of my friends to head that way.”

And Rudy,
she thought.

The farmer frowned. “If things are all messed up this way, folks'll need to pull together,” he said, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

Juniper felt herself flush—the curse of a redhead's complexion. “Luther, we've had some time to think about this. It's not just something like a barn on fire, or the river flooding.”

Dennis nodded. “There's fifty, sixty thousand people in Corvallis alone,” he said. “Every one of them gets their food from stores that get
theirs
from warehouses all over the country twice a week—I run a restaurant, so I should know. Mr. Finney, how many people do you think could live off the farms within a day's walk of Corvallis? Call it twenty miles, say forty on a bicycle.”

Luther Finney thought for an instant, and his face went gray under the weathered tan. “Not too many. Most of the land right around Corvallis is in grass for seed, or flowers or nursery stock or specialties like mint. More'n half the farms don't even have livestock. Some orchards and truck, but not much. Take a while to plant . . . with hand tools, and getting the seed . . .”

Juniper put her elbows on the table and lowered her face into her hands, the heels over her eyes to block out the visions in her mind.

“And that's just Corvallis,” she said. “The rest of the Willamette . . . there's a million plus in Portland alone, and there's Salem and Eugene and Albany . . . and no tractors or harvesters or—most
farmers
these days get their groceries from Albertsons or Smith's, just like everyone else. No trucks, no trains, no telephones—the government's
gone
—the cops and National Guard are just guys with sticks. Pretty soon, with no fresh water or working sewage plants there'll be sickness, too, really bad.”

“Holy Hannah,” Luther breathed. Sarah put a hand over her mouth.

“And
that's
why we're getting out,” Juniper said. “My first responsibility is to Eilir”—
though there's Rudy, and by the Cauldron I hope my coveners are all right
—“but we'd be glad to have you two along.”

Luther blinked at her. “Well, thank you kindly,” he said. “But surely we'd just be a burden to you? We're well fixed here if times are hard; there's the preserves, and the chickens, and the garden and the fruit trees. We're better off than we would have been back when I was doing real farming—I've had more time for puttering around putting in truck.”

Dennis jerked his chin towards the shotgun leaning beside the door. “Thing is, Mr. Finney, that pretty soon a
lot
of people are going to get
real
hungry. And they're going to think that the place to get something to eat is out in the country. Then they'll come looking for dinner.”

“Holy Hannah,” Luther said again. Then he exchanged a look with his wife. “I see your point, you three. But we've got relatives around here, and our kids and grandkids will need a place to stay. They know where we are. No, I think we'll be staying here. And you're welcome to if you want, as well.”

 

 

 

The floor of the Willamette Valley was mostly flat, but here towards the edge of the Cascade foothills the odd butte reared up out of the fields. Juniper Mackenzie lay on the crest of one such, training her binoculars west; the damp ground soaked into her shirt, but the temperature was heading up, finally getting springlike, and the earth had the yeasty smell of new growth. Crocus bloomed nearby, blue spears under a big Oregon oak whose leaves were a tender green.

She swallowed, her hands trembling as she watched I-5, the main interstate that ran north-south from Portland to Eugene. The litter of motionless cars and trucks hadn't changed. The first thin scatter of trudging people on foot had; most of the stranded passengers had probably dispersed quickly, and for a day or two—the day her party had crossed—it had been nearly empty.

Now it was
thronged.
Groups on foot—they probably included a lot from Salem and the first or the most determined from Portland; perhaps some walking north from Eugene in ironic counterpoint to the flood heading south away from the metropolis.

A lot of the ones on bicycles were almost certainly from Portland; it was an easy three-day trip by pedal, and there were a
lot
of bicyclists there.

From Albany, too,
she thought.

That city wasn't far away to the north; she could have seen it on a normal day. Today a thick plume of black smoke marked the location, and the faint bitter smell was an undertone to the earth scents. On the highway, a group was fighting around an eighteen-wheeler truck that had coasted into the rear of an SUV on the evening when everything Changed, carried along by momentum. Merciful distance hid the details, but there were certainly clubs and pieces of car-jack and tire-iron in use. Probably knives and shovels as well.

Twenty or thirty cyclists traveling in a clump abruptly braked to a halt and drove into both groups fighting around the truck in a solid wedge. At this distance everything was doll-tiny even with the powerful binoculars, and she kept the point of aim moving so that she wouldn't catch more than an odd glimpse. There were already too many things in her head that kept coming back when she tried to sleep.

The worst of it was that she couldn't even blame them for fighting over the food. If everyone shared fairly, that would simply mean that
everyone
died of starvation. There just wasn't enough to go around, and no authority to enforce rationing if there was. Too little anywhere except in the immediate vicinity of a warehouse or a grain elevator or a packing plant—and there, too much, and no way to move it any distance before it spoiled.

Do not think of what New York or LA is like,
she told herself.
Do not. Do not.

That was like telling yourself not to think about the color orange, or an elephant, but she had to try if she wasn't going to curl up into a little ball and wait to die. Cuchulain thrust his nose into her armpit and whined slightly as he scented her distress.

Instead she cased the binoculars, picked up her crossbow and started to thread her way down through the tangle of trees and brush that covered the steep south face of the butte, sliding down on her butt and controlling her descent with her heels more often than not; it was better than five hundred feet of steepness. Cuchulain kept pace with her, wuffling happily as he stuck his nose into holes and snapped at long-tailed butterflies.

She felt a moment's bitter envy; as far as the dog was concerned this was a perfect spring day, out with his person in the country, and she'd even let him eat some very high carrion. The only thing wrong was that she smelled scared and sad.

Then he went quiet, stiffened, and gave a low growl. Juniper reached out and grabbed his collar, whispering
stay!
in a low emphatic tone, and pushed her way forward the last few yards.

The narrow graveled road ran along the base of the butte, with a filbert orchard on the other side. The hobbled horses were grazing there among the new spring grass and the flowers, and the barrel shape of her wagon was a little distance further from the road, mostly hidden from a casual view; Dennis had agreed that it was best to travel only at night, by the back ways, and that slowly.

Now six people on bicycles faced him and Eilir where the gate from the road went through the orchard fence. They weren't openly hostile yet, but she could hear the raised voices, and she could
see
their desperation; they looked just as dirty and tired and ragged as she felt, and thinner. She'd been eating one small meal a day since the Change after that fried-chicken feast at Luther's; they looked as if they'd had nothing for quite some time.

Four men, two women, and a child,
she thought.
They realized they'd do best off the Interstate. Looking for “normal” means dying; better to look for food.

The child was young, no more than four or five. A boy, and with his own miniature cyclist's helmet; his mother's bicycle had a pillion seat for him. She was Oriental, and she was dangerously well armed. Two of the others carried baseball bats, one a golf club, one a spade with a thick straight-sided blade crudely sharpened; all of them had some sort of knife, if only the kitchen variety. But the Asian woman had an honest-to-goodness bow, and a quiver clipped to the side of it with four arrows; it was a fiberglass target weapon, not even meant for hunting, but potentially deadly for all that. An arrow was nocked to the string, but she hadn't drawn it.

“Look,” Dennis said, his voice tight with frustration. “Look . . .”

He had the Danish ax held slantwise across his body, one hand on the end of the haft and one halfway up. Eilir stood beside him with her crossbow cocked and loaded but not quite leveled.

“I'm sorry as can be, but there's nothing we can do for you. We don't want any trouble. You can pass on by, and nobody will be hurt.”

Just then one of Luther Finney's gifts—the rooster in the wire cage on the other side of the big barrel-shaped cart—chose an unfortunate moment to crow. It took the strangers a minute to understand what they were hearing; she could tell from the once-expensive sporty look of their clothes they were all deeply urban. But
cock-a-doodle-doo!
was familiar enough to sink in.

“You've got
chicken!
” one of the bicyclists screamed; it was the sound of a beggar confronted with riches.

“No, we don't,” Juniper said firmly.

Everyone jerked around to look at her as she came out of the brush at the base of the hill and onto the road.

The stuff inside the wagon would be unimaginable wealth if you could see it,
she thought grimly, as she advanced and stood on Dennis's other side.
But it isn't. It's just barely enough to keep the three of us through until the seeds bear, if we're very lucky.

“That's a rooster and some breeding hens and we're not parting with them to make all of you one meal,” Juniper went on.

She met their eyes one by one; she could feel her mother's accent getting a little stronger in her voice, as it did when she was angry or afraid: “They have to help feed my family from now until . . . things get better.”

She knew her own eyes were steady, and the green of them cold; more to the point, the three-bladed and very pointed head of the bolt in the groove of her cocked crossbow glittered bright and sharp in the cool spring sunshine.

Several of the strangers were
literally
drooling at the thought of chicken. One shook his aluminum baseball bat.

“You've got chicken, you've got
horses,
you've got stuff inside that funny wagon!” he shouted; his face was caked with dirt, and brown-and-gray stubble showed through it. “Nobody will give us
anything!
”

He mastered himself with a visible effort. “Look, just give us what you can spare. We'll . . . look, is there any sort of work you need done? We're not thieves. We just haven't had anything to eat for a day and a half now, and that was some crackers and olives and some soup we tried to make out of grass.”

The child was hugging his mother's leg where she stood beside her bicycle; he had tear-tracks through the dust on his face.

“Hungry, Mommy,” he said. “I want something to
eat.
”

She looked at Juniper. “You don't know what it's like back there,” she said. “Back in Portland. The whole city's burning, and nobody has anything, criminals are stealing and killing—Terry'll
die
if he doesn't get some food!”

That set them all off; they crowded closer, leaving their cycles on the kickstands or dropping them and waving their arms and shouting.

Help!
Juniper thought, her head going back and forth, trying to keep everyone in view.

These weren't bad people; probably none of them had so much as hit anyone since junior high. But they were desperate.

And so am I,
she thought, nerving herself.
For Eilir. For Dennis. And yes, for my own sweet life which I'm not ready to give up yet, even to get out of this hell.

Then there was a sharp sound, a snapping
tunnnggg
of vibrating cord. Juniper's head whipped around; it was Eilir's weapon that had fired, and the Oriental woman was down on the ground screaming and writhing, clutching at a crossbow bolt through the outer part of her thigh. An arrow wobbled off from her bow and landed in the orchard not far from one of the horses, standing in the ground with the feathers up. The others' shouts turned to screams as well; Dennis took the moment to leap forward, roaring and flourishing the great ax overhead.

Eilir dropped the end of the crossbow to the ground, put her foot through the metal stirrup, and dropped the claw of the spanning device at her belt over the string. Then she hooked the other end over the butt of her weapon and whirled the crank-handle around half a dozen times. The mechanism clicked, and she put another quarrel in the groove with fumbling haste.

“Be off!” Juniper shouted at the same time, her weapon scanning back and forth.