The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (29 page)

“Stop right there,” Michael said, menacing him with the gun. His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt.

“Nobody...beats...me,” Anthony replied, gasping from the pain of speaking through a broken jaw. He squinted, peering at Michael through bloodshot eyes as he tensed to thrust.

“I did,” Michael said, tired of the man’s arrogance. “I walked into your camp last year, retrieved a couple of kids you’d stolen and killed one of your men. And that was after my wife kicked your ass when you raided the Freeholds.”

A puzzled look flitted across Anthony’s face, then his bloody eyes fixed on Michael’s, hard and glittering with naked hatred. This worm thought...worse, assumed, he was John. JOHN! It was too much to bear.

“KILL YOU!” he screamed and threw himself at Michael.

Michael pulled the trigger as fast as he could. Bullets punched through the Giant’s stomach and chest and out his back, buckling him to the ground. Michael reached over and took the knife from what was left of the man’s fingers, then rolled him onto his back where his pain-filled eyes could see the sky.

“Hate to see a good fighter die with his face in the dirt,” Michael said as he struggled to his feet.

The Giant took a final breath and spoke words that chilled Michael’s soul, sending goose bumps up his spine.

“Not...over...yet,” Anthony gasped and even as his eyes glazed over with death he tried to set one last trap. “Next time we meet...your turn to die.” John would surely kill him.

Michael turned away as the man died, not even wanting to think about what those strange words might mean.

He spent the remaining hours till dark tending to Lady Di, getting her down from the tree and bandaging her arm. He lifted her eyelids and noted the different-sized pupils: concussion. Remembering from somewhere that people with concussions weren’t supposed to be allowed to sleep or lose consciousness, he tried to rouse her without success. He trickled a little water into her mouth and she swallowed instinctively.

Michael recognized the futility of just sitting around feeling useless, so he left her laying there long enough to round up their horses. He set up camp and built a small fire, then checked her again, but she was still out. Time for the task he’d been dreading.

A lump formed in Michael’s throat as he approached Minowayuh’s body. Michael wasn’t familiar with Ute burial customs so he did the best he could, burying his friend beside the tree his blood had watered.

Michael talked to Minowayuh’s spirit as he laid his friend’s body in the grave and covered the mound of earth with stones. “I wish I could cart your body back to your family, Chief, but it’s summer so you know I can’t carry you around with me.” Michael’s throat caught. “Besides, I figure you’re about ready to explore the great mystery. Oh, I know your spirit is still around. And I guess you can probably hear me. I know you’d want to stay long enough to see if your sacrifice did any good. It did. I’d never have gotten close enough to kill the bastard if you hadn’t distracted him.”

Michael cleared his throat.

“You were a good and true friend and I will miss you. I guess you’ll visit your family and friends to say goodbye before you follow the light and I’d like to ask you for one last favor. Back when I was dying I had this vision. I saw Ellen and Steven, plain as day and Steven saw me. I know it’s weird, but I think it was real and...well, I’d surely appreciate it if you could find a way to let them know I’m all right. Thanks, Chief, for everything.”

He added a few more rocks to the grave, then went back to Lady Di where he wetted a bandanna with water from his canteen and washed her face. The thought occurred to him that if Di didn’t come to, he’d have a hard time just getting her back to their main camp without killing her.

Michael didn’t bury the Giant. He just used a rope and his horse to drag the oversized body away from camp, where he searched the dead man’s clothes for any intelligence and left him for the scavengers. Not out of hatred, but simply because he didn’t have enough strength left for such a chore.

That night, he heard animals fighting over the Giant’s corpse and in the morning the body was gone.

Toward morning, Di came to, wrenching herself erect and startling the bejeezus out of Michael. He told her what had happened while he built up the fire. Her eyes rained tears when Michael spoke of Minowayuh and for a while she sat and sobbed, seeming small and alone in spite of her size.

Michael placed a consoling arm around her, sharing a portion of her grief. Eventually, her shoulders stopped shaking. She wiped her eyes and turned toward him, asking, “Where is he?”

Michael pointed to the nearby tree, helping Di to her feet and letting her lean on him as they approached it. She stood over Minowayuh’s grave, silent tears running down her cheeks. She pulled a small pouch from her shirt pocket. “Last night he came to me in a dream. He was dressed in eagle feathers, riding a fine white horse. He held his arms out to me, then waved and rode along a rainbow into the sky.”

She showed the pouch to Michael. “The night of the ambush he gave me his medicine bag. He said..., there was an ache in her heart and a lump in her throat. Michael remained silent, listening, knowing she had to get this out. “He said it would keep me alive.”

Her voice was very low, almost as if she was talking to herself. “I gave him my body...and my heart.” She knelt gracefully, touched her fingers to her lips and laid the kiss on the stone-covered grave. When she looked back up her eyes were dry and full of fire.

“He didn’t get away, did he?” she said, referring to the Giant.

“No,” Michael said. “He didn’t get away.”

Chapter 28: The Relief Army

Jim Cantrell caught the thrown rope in both hands just as the current sucked him under. His fists clenched in a death grip as the water tried to tear him from the line, snatching at him with a million fluid fingers, hammering him into large rocks and forcing its way up his nose and down his throat. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could barely hang on. He came up spluttering, gasping for air.

He tried to kick to stay afloat but the force of the water pulled his pants down around his legs, tangling them. His arms and hands were heavy. The rope burned his palms as his grip slackened, then tightened in panic. The taut line acted in concert with the swift current and swung him closer to shore. Lifesaving hands gripped his shoulders and hauled him from the water. He spewed liquid from his lungs and stomach.

When he finished coughing and retching he asked, “How many?” Meaning, how many men had they lost?

“Too early to tell, Major,” said Chad Bailey, the radioman, who’d been among those manning the rope. “Five rafts went over before anybody could give a warning.”

Jim grimaced. He’d already lost almost forty men to river accidents and rock slides. That, out of a force of almost seven thousand. “What I want to know,” he snapped, “is where the hell that thirty-foot waterfall came from. It wasn’t there when we scouted this stretch of river last week.”

Raymond Stormcloud said, “Maybe that small ‘quake we felt a couple days ago wasn’t so small down here.”

“Goddamn! That means we’ll have to scout the whole river again.” More delays, more damned delays. Making good time was impossible. Roads were blocked by abandoned cars, rock falls and downed trees. Bridges were out and quakes had created cliffs and canyons where none existed before. Road conditions had made him decide on a water route. But these falls and rapids...he was beginning to think he’d made a mistake. Too late now to reconsider. His shoulders slumped. “Scout it again.”

“I’ll take two men and get on it,” Stormcloud answered. “It won’t take but a couple of days, Major. We’re almost out of the rim rock country and into Zion Lake.”

Zion Lake, the huge post-Havoc lake that now covered everything from Strawberry Reservoir on the south to Deer Creek reservoir on the north. It was a long, deep lake, narrow in proportion to its length, though that still made it more than two miles wide at its narrowest point. Once they reached the lake, they would trade the dangers of white water for those of being seen crossing open water.

“About the lake...,” Jim began.

“We’ll have to cross it at night, Major,” Raymond interrupted. “Otherwise we’re sure to be spotted.” And the sooner they crossed the lake, the sooner he would see Susan Redfeather again. She’d been spending too much time with that Walt Beeman to suit him. Time to remind her she was Cheyenne.

Jim nodded agreement. He caught Doc Merriman watching him and waved to the man, then flashed a grin at Sara when she poked her head out of the surgery wagon, where she was tending wounded. She smiled and waved back, warming his heart.

Jim had sent Earl Baker and his special unit all the way to Utah on their own, two weeks before the Allied army even left the Freeholds. That way, if there was a spy in the relief army, he wouldn’t notice them splitting away from the main force.

Sara was hard at work setting a broken arm when Merriman passed by, patting her shoulder as he did so. She suppressed a shudder. The man was a good doctor, but he never missed an opportunity to lay hands on her. And it wasn’t just that he was pudgy, unusual enough in these times, or that his fingers were moist and squishy. It was...she shrugged and gave up. He made her skin crawl.

*

Royal City, California

Clarissa Benton swept her honey blonde hair behind her ears, grabbed a pot holder, plucked the steaming tea pot from the electric hot plate and poured chamomile tea into a mug. She added a few drops of honey and stirred, inhaling the clean, apple scent. Sunlight poured in between the bright yellow curtains that framed the window and a motorcycle messenger wearing the purple sash of the Royal Service whipped his bike into the parking lot of the building next door and ran for the entry.

“Trish, want some tea?” she yelled. Chamomile, in addition to being an anti-inflammatory, helped relieve menstrual cramps and her daughter was having her period. Clarissa was developing a reputation as an herbalist-healer and her small business was showing promise.

“Sure thing, Mom,” Patricia Benton replied from the single bathroom of their small apartment.

She checked her reflection in the mirror, then grabbed a makeup brush and applied a dab of pus colored cream to the large, diseased scab on her left cheek. The puckered three-inch scar across her forehead was perfect. Today was market day and a pretty girl in her twenties couldn’t be too careful, not when the King’s men were always on the lookout for comfort girls.

She thanked God daily for the make-up artist skills her father taught her, practiced the droopy, wall-eyed look she wore in public and broke character by cracking a sly grin. She actually enjoyed pulling the wool over “her public’s” eyes. The too real danger added spice to her otherwise boring existence.

As a final touch, she pulled on the grungy, padded wrap that hid her curves and made her look stout, then shambled into the kitchen. The faint whiff of skunk hung about her like an evil ward.

Her mother handed her a mug of tea with extra honey, sniffed, raised one eyebrow and said, “Don’t over do it, dear.”

Trish nodded, sipped and asked, “Dad already at work?” Her father’s make-up artistry landed him a position in the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Information, prettying up the talking heads before they made their propaganda pronouncements.

“A messenger dragged him out of bed before dawn,” Clarissa said. “Kathy Quantrel ran into a door again. Black eye, this time. And Will needs to fix it before she appears in public.”

Trish pursed her lips and said, “Ooh, I thought that wife beating scum she’s married to wasn’t allowed to touch her face.”

“He isn’t,” Clarissa said with a grin. “Will says his head will be decorating the wall by noon.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Trish said, adding, “Well, it could,” thinking about King Joseph and his sons, “but that isn’t likely.”

Clarissa’s mouth tightened into a thin line and she pointed to the hidden microphone in the wall. All the new living quarters for the Empire’s employees came with electricity and spyware.

“Oh,” Clarissa said, “K.I.N.G radio just announced those small refrigerators we’re supposed to have are in stock. Your father says he’ll bring one home tonight, so go ahead and pick up milk and butter if you can find any.”

“I’ll do my best,” Trish said.

Clarissa handed her the shopping list and said, “Be careful.”

Trish just nodded and slipped the list as well as a handful of King notes, the Empire’s currency, into her pocket before she stepped out the door.

They were a mile from the ocean but she could smell the salty sea spray with its hint of rotting seaweed and hear the clamor of gulls. As she trudged along the gravel streets toward the market she saw a horse drawn Hansom cab bearing two well-dressed courtesans edge to the side to avoid a long chain gang of slave laborers. A large, cedar-sided wagon, also pulled by a team of drudge horses rolled from building to building along the street. The three man crew, one driving, two working picked up garbage cans and dumped the contents into the wagon. Trash collection.

Honestly, Trish thought, electricity, radio, a refrigerator, a decent place to live and now garbage collectors. If the King wasn’t such a perverted tyrant she’d swear he was doing good work.

*

Irene stood with her back to the wall, head bowed, listening for all she was worth.

King Joseph paced back and forth, those enormous strides eating up the width of the oversized throne room like it was a walk-in closet. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass window that depicted the day of The Impact, or the day of Divine Revelation, as Joseph called it. In it, Joseph stood with his eyes cast up to the heavens. In his left hand he held a dead mob boss by the throat. In his right a jeweled crown. Golden sunbeams lit the crown and Joseph’s blonde curls. Done mostly in the deep reds and orange tones of a Mohave Desert sunset, the window was set directly above and behind the throne.

When seated, sunlight often glowed on Joseph’s crowned head and partially blinded anyone seeking audience with him. As a psychological effect it was both obvious and effective.

But Joseph wasn’t seated now and his stalking around the room like a lion after prey did not bode well for the civil servant being berated.

“What good does it do me to have a Minister of Education if you can’t get schools built and staffed?”

“Your Highness,” Benjamin Quarles said. “Most of the construction crews you had building schools were kidnapped to Utah by your sons. We are training their replacements as quickly as we can.” To his credit Benjamin did not cower before Joseph’s icy stare. In his life before The Dying Time he’d been principal of a high school in South Central LA, a job that inured him to intimidation.

“So, you’d shift the blame to my sons?”

“I call them like I see them, Your Highness.”

“I could decorate the main gate with your head, Benjamin.”

“Of course you could, Sire and I’m sure that’ll get your schools built faster.”

Joseph paused and really looked at Benjamin Quarles for the first time in months. A medium height black man with frizzy white hair and upright posture, the man’s experience in real world education had elevated him to his current position. Joseph just now recalled he liked the man’s uncompromising attitude. He was also beginning to suspect Quarles was calling him Your Highness because he was tall and not as a gesture of respect to the nobility.

“You don’t bend much do you?” Joseph asked, wondering why this man had thrown in with him. “I bet you don’t eat The Meat at my celebrations.”

Benjamin raised his bushy white eyebrows and said, “Don’t place money on that bet, Your Highness. Whether it comes from a human or a pig, it’s just meat.”

Ah, Joseph thought, the man is a pragmatist. That’s why he joined up.

“But you don’t much approve of my rule, do you, Benjamin?”

“Your Highness, I do my best to do my job and I keep my nose clean. What does it matter if I approve or not?”

A pragmatist with courage, Joseph thought and decided he would keep Benjamin Quarles around. Rarely did anyone speak freely with him and he rather liked it.

“I’ll get you more crews,” Joseph said. “But get my schools opened. Morons are...” he hesitated, searching for the right word, “over-represented in my Empire. I need subjects educated in medicine and science.”

“I can get the elementary and high schools finished, Your Highness, but the problem with Stanford Medical is staff not buildings. Finding doctors who can teach is harder than finding an honest man in prison.”

“Then use medics and nurses,” Joseph said.

As the Minister of Education left, Irene made a mental note that he wasn’t a good candidate for recruitment into her spy ring until the tables had definitely shifted against the King.

*

Carl Borzowski’s small campfire was barely large enough to cook the noisy squirrel he’d bagged with his slingshot. Often at night Carl would stare into the flames and play with the puzzle in his head. Who was he? Why did he need to get the hope disks to the President? Who was the raven-haired woman in the photo with him? Why didn’t the memories in his memory box fit together?

But tonight he couldn’t tear his gaze from the view across the valley. Electric lights dotted the valley floor and the hillsides to the west. Out on the ocean anchored ships with navigation lights stretched as far as he could see. This had to be it--the city he’d heard about. No other place he’d seen had so many lights.

For as long as he could remember he had avoided cities. Soldiers and other bad people lived there. But he had to get the hope disks to the President and where else would the President live?

Dawn found Carl at the beach, digging for clams he could boil for breakfast under cover of a heavy marine layer. The advantage to being judged mental in Joseph Scarlatti’s Empire was not being drafted into the slave gangs. The disadvantage was mentals tended to vanish on feast days. The salty taste of sea spray and the scent of rotting seaweed combined to make his stomach growl. He plunked a couple more clams into his cooking pot, rinsed them off in the roaring surf and moved off toward a pile of driftwood to cook his meal. He hadn’t eaten so well in a very long time and was beginning to think he liked it here.

After eating he moved into the outskirts of the city, pleased to see other people avoiding him. Even soldiers downwind of him moved farther away. He moved farther into the city, where the scent of eucalyptus trees helped mask his odor. Nothing short of a bath, a case of soap and a completely new wardrobe could mask his appearance however and he found it difficult to get close enough to anyone to ask his question.

He paused near a school and watched children playing at recess, a site so disturbingly normal it threatened to split his head in two. Two young girls rocked on a teeter totter, their soft hair moving with a gentle breeze. A group of boys played tag while others climbed on monkey bars or pumped as high as they could go on swings. They were smiling and laughing and having fun and suddenly tears rolled down Carl’s face.