Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (25 page)

“The
Larson facility had a quiet second duty under its original charter. It was to
house fourteen underground cellblocks, where those deemed most dangerous could
be kept and interrogated, quietly, away from public scrutiny. Word of this
somehow got out, and despite the paranoia of the times, and the modifications
to Constitutional law, the backlash was so great that the project - the
underground portion - was brought to a halt and never completed. So the
government suddenly had a series of huge underground bunkers and a public
relations black eye. To make nice, they allowed the storage of the books at
Larson. And that’s why we’re going to go there and recover them.”

Nakamura
sat quietly for a moment before speaking.

“How
many books are there, Sir?”

“No
idea. The project to move them was still underway when the Fall happened. When
DC was hit, any distinct record of it was wiped out. There could be a few
thousand volumes. There could be a
lot
more. How many pages of other
documents, who knows?

“One
thing, Captain: No one but you and I know this. If word got out, it would be
easy enough for these squatters to destroy whatever is there, or – more likely
- hold it hostage. I wanted you to know, so if I suffer a sudden unintentional
retirement you can tell someone you trust in turn.”

Rastowich
showed Nakamura the radio set, gave him the frequencies and the cipher key.

“We
have to make sure that Larson is taken intact and garrisoned until we can
reinforce it. Use the set to inform headquarters, if I can’t.” The Colonel
stood, and Nakamura stood as well. “Anything or anyone that gets between us and
controlling the facility is to be removed, immediately and permanently. Clear?”

“Yes
sir. One question: What if the outlaws know what they have?” the Captain asked.

“They’re
animals. I don’t imagine books are of much interest to them. If they do, we’ll
deal with it.”

“Got
it, sir.”

“Good.
Get some sleep. We have a long ride ahead of us.”

The
wind had picked up. The grass lay nearly flat, jerking and twitching under the
gritty blast that carried bits of trash, dust and dirt in a stinging hail. The
horses tossed their heads and were prone to brief fits of bucking and
malingering.

Mal
led. He had wrapped his scarf around his face and wore an set of yellow ski
goggles over his eyes. Grey and Georgia followed a hundred yards behind, with
Clay riding drogue, another hundred yards back.

The
wind came out of the west, but veered about as it stumbled through the scabland
hillocks and canyons. Sometimes it rose behind them like a tide, pushing them
toward the Castle, and at others it slapped at their faces, pushing them away.
It was too windy to talk, and Grey spent the time remembering.

The
wind had been bad that day, too. It had been colder, though, with the wet
chlorine taste of promised snow in the air.

Grey’s
knuckles ached. He’d had to discipline one of his riders the evening before. The
kid had stolen a bottle of whiskey from the supply wagon, and had lied about it
when questioned. Stealing from the band was bad, but lying to Grey’s face made
him furious. It was so insulting, so
stupid
. The kid had
been seen, the whiskey found in his duffel bag, and he refused to admit the
theft. It made him furious. To deny it to Grey’s face was to assume Grey was an
idiot who could be fooled by childish lies. He’d blacked the kid’s eyes, and
probably broken his jaw, but it had cost him a set of sore knuckles. The cold
made the ache sink deep into the bone.

It
had been his whiskey, too. Maybe that’s why he had been so angry. He tried to
push the thought away, but it didn’t go very far.

The
column of men spread and stopped shoulder-to-shoulder in a long line on the
crest of a hill, looking down into the valley below, studying the line of a
distant river, the trailing smoke of a village on it banks and the fractured,
fading web of old roads. Grey turned away and studied his companions.

It
had been a hard year. Their faces were hollow-cheeked, with sunken eyes. They’d
been eating meat and little else for months, and sores on lips or gums were
common among the men. Grey clenched his jaw and felt his teeth move in their
sockets. They needed fruit or vegetables. They also needed a score.

Grey
took a long pull from the bottle he carried. The harsh alcohol made his
bleeding gums sing with pain.

The
band’s coffers were empty, the gold taken that summer from the gangs in Trail
was long gone. It had been old jewelry, not mined gold. Three families had
carved out a niche for themselves simply by discovering an old portable
acetylene welder and using it to burn into safety deposit boxes in banks.
They’d used some of the gold to hire guns, and had begun expanding. When Grey
heard about it, Kingsnake had helped convince him to ride north and clean them
out.

There
were only a dozen guns guarding the families, and it had been easy. They’d lost
just two men and ridden off with close to six pounds of gold jewelry, little
red felt bags of precious stones and the miscellaneous loot stripped from the
gold hunters’ homestead. They had lived high for a while. The money hadn’t
lasted, though. It never did.

He
looked again at his ragged band, seeing the filthy faces, the unsmiling stares
that held hunger and a certain trembling eagerness as they looked down into the
valley at the little township.

Grey
realized that he must look equally bad, equally mad and feral and hateful. He’d
known he was slipping, but now he could see himself from the outside in a
lightheaded way. He felt bile burn the back of his throat. He studied his
swollen hands, the knuckles raw and red; saw the crescents of dirt and blood
dried under his nails. The legs of his jeans were black with grease and dirt,
and his coat, roughly cured from the hide of a bear, stank of rancid fat and
sweat. Only the knife hilt in his boot-top, the pistol at his side, and the
rifle rested across the saddlebow were clean. His father’s rifle. He ran a
filthy finger along the satin smoothness of the barrel.

He’d
known, then, that he was done. He’d at least had the honesty not to lie to
himself. He knew what he was, but he was done with it. He had become one of the
men who’d killed his family.

He
could ride off now. Kingsnake would gladly take over the band. He’d run it for
most of the past year anyway.

Grey
squinted. He could just see farmers at work in the fields far below, the white
and brown specks of cattle on the green squares of pastures.

He
could just ride off, but that wouldn’t stop anything. It would be the smart
thing to do. There were twenty of them, and one of him.

It
would be smart to just run, like he always did.

“Penny
for your thoughts,” Georgia said.

Grey
shook his head and blinked. The wind had dropped as evening approached and it
was quiet now. He could hear the crunch of their horses’ hooves on the gravel,
the whisk of their hocks through the grass.

“They’re
not worth that much,” Grey said. “Did I look sour?”

“You
looked sad.”

“Ah.
I’m just tired.” Grey stretched, feeling his spine crackle, before slouching in
the saddle once more.

“If
you’d learn to ride with proper posture you’d feel better,” Georgia said with a
smirk. “But, aside from your hideous riding skills, what’s bothering you?”

Grey
snorted.

“Nothing,
I just want it over and done.”

Georgia
huffed and rolled her eyes. “Fine, work the laconic wilderness trapper shtick.
See if I care.”

They
rode in silence for a while, and Grey watched the sky begin to darken to
cobalt. They followed Mal into a box canyon with basalt walls made of perfect
hexagonal pillars. Clay caught up to them as they dismounted on the sandy floor
between the walls.

“No
water for the horses here, so give them as much as you can from the canteens,”
Grey reminded them. He retrieved a crumpled guidebook from his pocket, peering
in the dim light at a beige map surrounded by ads for businesses dead for
thirty years. “We should hit the north end of the lake tomorrow morning. We can
water them there and fill up our canteens.”

“And
then?” Clay asked, stepping to stand beside Georgia. Grey saw her lean against
him.

“Then
we find a good lookout on the best route north, and we wait,” Grey said.

Mal
rubbed his rump and grimaced.

“It’ll
be nice to walk for a change. That saddle is slowly sawing me in half.” He
began gathering bleached bits of wood from the sand, brush washed down by the
spring rains, and tossed them into a pile. The seasoned wood rattled with a
half-musical sound.

“Do
we have a plan?” Clay asked, squatting to lay the fire, breaking the smallest
twigs into kindling.

“Not
a tight one,” Grey said. “Until we see how many and where there’s not much we
can say for sure.”

“In
general, then?” Clay opened an oilskin pouch and took out a pinch of cottony
lint, tucking it beneath the kindling. “I miss matches,” he muttered, readying
his flint and steel.

“In
general, we get ready, and we try to make sure Georgia has a shot at Creedy,
then we deal with whatever counterattack they make, then we pull back and let
them either break and run, or head north again,” Grey said. “If they break, we
go home. If they still try to head north, we get in front of them and do it
again.”

“Simple
as pie,” Mal said with a crooked smile as he deposited a final armful of wood
near Clay. “I do have a question, though.”

“Yes?”
Grey grunted, sitting down.

“What
if they do something else?”

“What
do you mean?”

“What
if they hunker down in their Castle thing - which I remind you we’ve never seen
- and try to discourage the CDF? Or bribe them?” Mal cocked his head. “Do you
plan on us going in to get your old friend if we have to?”

Clay
turned to stare at Grey, who could feel Georgia’s eyes on him as well.

“If
it comes to that, and I decide I need to, I’ll go in by myself,” the old
trapper said after a while. “At that point the only thing I have left to settle
is personal.”

The
four didn’t talk much over their sparse dinner. Grey took first watch, sitting
in the shadows at the canyon’s mouth, his rifle across his knees. He cocked his
head as soft footsteps approached from the direction of camp.

“Don’t
shoot me, boss,” Mal said as he wended his way through the maze of fallen rocks
that littered the canyon’s floor. He found a shadowed cleft between two large
chunks, wrapped his serape tightly around his shoulders, and settled down.

“Couldn’t
sleep?”

“I
can always sleep. There’s a lot of sex going on back there and it’s making me
feel horny and alone, which is a bad combination.”

“Ah.”

They
sat, watching the stars in their slow parade. Short pinprick streaks flicked
across the darkness as little meteors expended their energy in a last bright
celebration of friction.

“Grey?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t
get those two killed for a personal vendetta.”

“I
won’t.”

“If
it comes to it, I’ll go in with you, but those two need to go back north.”

Grey
turned to look at Mal, but his face was just a lighter smudge in the shadows.

“All
right, Mal.”

The
wait wasn’t long. With the third sunrise the watchers, behind their screen of
brush and boulders, saw the Castle begin to stir.

Through
his binoculars, Grey had studied the place until boredom had set in. It was an
unattractive, functional building, with three main wings and a lower entry hall
that enclosed an assumed court. The walls were concrete, streaked with the
white droppings of birds. Windows were plentiful in the upper floors, and
almost all still held sheets of greenly reflective glass. Aerials and other
metalwork devices crowded the roof in several areas. Around it the land was
barren and carefully cleared of other buildings. A few stumpy teeth of concrete
thrust through the sandy soil here and there, reminders of long vanished
outbuildings. The building’s ground floor entry faced the north and the
watchers had a good view of figures entering and leaving. Most took one of two
paths and were heavily laden; some to the trash-heap that nearly filled a low
swale to the east, and some down the road to the south, escorting a wagon
filled with old steel drums. Clay guessed they were for water, refilled at the
nearby lake.

Nothing
moved but the Castle garrison. There were no fields within five or six miles,
and trade seemed to come only via mule train or wagon from outlying areas. No
cabins clung to the walls for protection. At mealtimes, smoke would issue from
sooty steel ventilators on the building’s west side. There was little else to
see, until that third dawn.