Universe 11 - [Anthology] Read online

  Keith led the way and, when Fletch crawled after, slammed the door shut with the heel of his palm. “I found a keg of tenpenny nails here when I was a kid,” he said. “Rusty, but I sold them for scrap. So probably nobody else has figured out how to get in.

  “Very clever,” Fletch said. “Now that we’re trapped in here, what do we do next?”

  “Look. I think I’ve done pretty good so far,” Keith said angrily. “At least I’ve bought some time to think.” He paced the shed—it wasn’t large, maybe eight by ten feet—his footing unsure on the rotting burlap sacks that littered the floor. “Why don’t you come up with something? You’re the one who got me into this mess, miss hotshot reporter.’’

  “So you know about that,” she said.

  “Bowles looked through your pockets. Jesus Christ!— what kind of monster story were you working on to get the Mummers so upset?” It was cold inside the workshed. Dim light seeped through vacant nailholes in the roof. He could see Fletch watching him steadily, a vague gray figure.

  “Could we sneak aboard one of the ships going to Boston?” she asked.

  “ ‘Could we sneak aboard one of the ships going to Boston?’ “ he mimicked her bitterly. “No, we could not. There’ll be Mummer agents at every—I can’t believe how you’ve messed up my life! You know, I was doing okay until you came along.’’

  “Keith,” Fletch said quietly.

  “At least I didn’t have half of Philadelphia trying to gun me down!”

  “Keith.”

  He stopped, looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “Stop ranting, and tell me how we’re going to get out of here alive.”

  He angrily thrust his hands in his pockets. There was a slight jangle of metal objects, a few copper coins, a salvageable nail or two—and his key ring.

  “God damn,” he whispered. He drew out the ring, triumphantly separated out the key to his tanker truck. “Hey, I may not be dead after all.”

  “Let me see.” Fletch snapped her fingers and extended her hand. He could tell by her expression that she had already deduced his plan.

  Keith shoved his keys back in his pocket. “Forget it. I don’t trust you, and I can’t think of a single reason to take you along. You’ve been deadweight so far, and I might be better off without you entirely.”

  There was a brief silence. “I see.” Something rustled in the gloom. “You want your quid pro quo.” With a faint slumping sound, Fletch’s kaftan fell to the floor.

  “I don’t—what do you mean?”

  Fletch advanced a step, her eyes steady, her voice preternaturally calm. “You can take what you want, can’t you? I can’t exactly yell for help.”

  “Hey, I-”

  “It’s understandable. You’re a man, and you’ve got me alone. Happens all the time.”

  She was quite close now. Keith flinched back. “You’re twisting what I said.”

  Her expression was scornful. “But you are a man, aren’t you? I mean . . . you can still perform?”

  Outraged, Keith seized her arms. Cloth bunched up under his angry, clutching fingers. For an instant the tableau held, then he released her, dropping his head in embarrassment. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, “I really didn’t mean to—”

  “Oh, come here.” She pulled him back to her.

  Their lovemaking was almost tender. Fletch spread out her kaftan to protect them from the icy-cold burlap sacks, and they undressed kneeling atop it. Some of what they did was new to Keith, but he assumed from her lack of criticism, indeed her passionate response, that she could not tell.

  When it was over, Fletch tugged and jerked the robe about the two of them like a thick, heavy blanket. It was warm within the robe, and tangled within it, Keith felt oddly secure and sure of himself. He felt a sudden, childish urge to shout or yodel or laugh with glee.

  “I would’ve taken you along anyway,” he said, not knowing whether it was true or not. “You really didn’t have to . . . you know.”

  Fletch laid a finger on his lips. “It’s better this way. Now we can operate as a team.”

  ~ * ~

  It was perhaps three in the morning before they made their move. They slipped through the streets cautiously, every sense bristling, avoiding the policed sections. It took an effort to walk slowly, to keep from hunching shoulders and scut-ding from shadow to shadow.

  Keith was drenched with sweat by the time they made it to the Company’s parking lot. Row upon row of trucks stretched into the darkness; all was still. He paced off the way to Slot 97.

  Laying a hand on the cold doorhandle, he grinned and whispered, “I’m beginning to think this might work.” He yanked the door open.

  “Stupid,” Jimmy Bowles said. “Very stupid, brother man.”

  Keith jerked back reflexively, froze. Bowles was sitting in the cab, a gun in one hand. It was pointed straight at Keith.

  “You’ve really blown it,” Bowles marveled. A corked bottle, half full of some dark fluid, lay in Bowles’ lap. Its label was nearly rubbed away from endless handlings and refillings.

  Behind Keith, Fletch shifted her weight ever so subtly. The gun flicked in her direction.

  “Don’t you move, bitch!” The veins in Bowles’ forehead stood out angrily. He passed his free hand over his brow, wiping away sweat. Keith realized that the man was deeply, dangerously drunk.

  Bowles’ eyes glared at Keith for an instant, then dropped. His face underwent a strange alteration of expression, becoming almost maudlin. “Listen, buddy, I didn’t know they would bang on you. I just passed the word about your lady friend’s papers up the line, the way I was supposed to.” He groped absently for the bottle, uncorked it one-handed. “And then a few hours later they called me up to the Hall—in a car, man, can you believe that?—to say it all over again to the big cats. And they decided to bang the both of you.” He took a long swig from the bottle, holding his head sideways and watching them from the corners of his eyes. “I did my best, man. Told them you didn’t know from nothin’, but the word was to bang you both.”

  As he talked, Bowles had let the gun sink slowly to rest on his knees. His eyes were unfocused, half lost in introspection. Keith mentally took a deep breath. It’s now or never, he thought. He dove for the gun.

  There was time enough to take in an incredible amount of detail. The clumsy way his body moved, not at all smoothly, not at all responsive to his will, so that he more fell than leaped upon Bowles. The way Bowles’ hand jerked up involuntarily, the gun’s muzzle wobbling in a jagged S through the air. The way his hands connected with Bowles’ wrist, pushing past cold steel, gripping aged sinew. Contact made, the hand flew up and to the side, and with a shattering roar, the gun went off.

  Keith found himself stomach down on the seat, gun clutched maniacally in both hands. He choked it by the barrel, by the back of the stock. There was a fierce ringing in his ears. His palms tingled.

  Jimmy Bowles stared stupidly at a hole in the cab’s roof. “Aw, man, you didn’t have to do that,” he mummbled.

  Fletch touched Keith’s shoulder, put a hand beneath the gun. He straightened his fingers slowly, letting the gun drop. She snapped it up, held it trained on Bowles.

  Bowles ignored it. “Didn’t think I could go through with it,” he said, almost to himself. Then, “Take the truck, man.”

  He opened the door, unsteadily climbed out. With a glance at Fletch, Keith straightened, slid behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition.

  As they eased out of the lot, Bowles was standing alone in Slot 97 crying drunkenly.

  ~ * ~

  They crashed the barrier at top speed, almost 70 kph, leaving splinters of wood flying behind them. The Mummer agents, caught unprepared, fired after them. Three bullets went through the body of the tanker, making hollow, gonging noises. Fortunately the tank was empty, and its last cargo apparently not flammable. Something ricocheted about the underside of the truck, as the guards tried to shoot out the tires. Keith kept going.

  Just beyo
nd the barrier some joker had put up a sign reading: RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION. DRIVE FAST. He proceeded to do just that.

  “I don’t like the idea of going through the Drift,” he said.

  “You can think of a better way to lose them? Take an old combat reporter’s advice, son. Move fast and don’t look back. Hey, isn’t this where you hit me?”

  “No, it’s a few miles on.” The truck crested a hill, and he pointed off to their left. “See that blue glow just below the horizon?”

  “Yeah.” It was a light, eerie smear in the distant black land. No trees obscured it, and it had a curious liquid quality.

  “Cherenkov radiation. When the Meltdown happened, there were five trucks loaded with fuel rods they tried to get out. The state police turned them back somewhere around here, so they drove them into the swamps. It makes a good landmark. Your bike’s somewhere beyond there.”

  “Well, keep a sharp eye out for the spot. I want my saddlebags back.

  ~ * ~

  Keith discovered the hole in the fuel tank when they stopped for the bags. A dribble of alcohol was leaking out, one slow, steady drop at a time. The bullet along the underside of the truck had apparently sent a sliver of something through the tank and, in the process, damaged the fuel gauge. Neither Keith nor Fletch could think of any way to fix it. “We should head east,” Keith suggested. “Get as far out of the Drift as we can before it dies.”

  “Will the Mummers follow us into the Drift?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then New Jersey’s not good enough. We go north.”

  The engine breathed its last at dawn. Following Fletch’s directions, he let the truck glide to a halt just off the road in a stand of stunted pines.

  Because of the bullet hole in the cab’s roof, they were both wearing their masks already. Fletch hopped out, slid her rifle from its sheath in the saddlebags, and snapped, “Let’s get moving. You take the bags and I’ll lead. Don’t step in any patches of snow. We can’t afford to leave a trail.”

  Keith shouldered the saddlebags and followed her down the road the way they had come for perhaps a quarter of a kilometer, and then up a slope on the opposite side from the abandoned truck. In places the ground crunched beneath his feet, and climbing the slope was hard work.

  “Hey, we’ve been running a long time,” Keith grumbled.

  “We’ll rest at the top of the hill. Right now we’re exposed.”

  The sun had risen slightly, and shone weakly through the clouds by the time they could rest. The sky was white and gray, almost colorless. The endless hills beneath were not much better. They huddled behind a tangle of thorny bushes, near to a cluster of spruce trees whose needles had a distinctly brownish tinge. A half hour passed.

  “Here they come,” Fletch said. “Following our trail.” She peered through her binoculars, careful to keep them in shadow.

  With a low growl, three four-wheel-drive vehicles swung into view. They sped down the roadway in formation, coming to a halt by the abandoned tanker. Six dark figures climbed out, swarmed over the site. They moved quickly, alertly, keeping each other covered at all times. After ten minutes, they returned to their vehicles and moved on down the road, at a much slower-pace.

  Fletch stood. “They go that way and we go this way,” she said with satisfaction. “Let’s go, kid. Miles to go before we sleep, you know.”

  ~ * ~

  They were trudging up an endless country road, detouring around the scattered patches of snow. The sun was failing. Keith stepped on a cancerous-looking growth, bent achingly to scoop it up and throw it into the lifeless woods at the side. “. . . snow,” Fletch said. Her voice was muffled by the nucleopore and Keith couldn’t make out her words.

  “What did you say?” he asked, annoyed.

  “I said it’s like snow!” Then, seeing his difficulty, she fell back a step. “The steam explosions were like a geyser. They sent particulate matter up where the winds could catch it, and it filtered down like snow. Even then, it still got blown about, so you’ll have bare spots and hots spots throughout the Drift. The concentrations are still too small to see, but you can gauge them by their effects.”

  She stopped near an old stone farmhouse nestled within an almost healthy-looking stand of trees, and did a quick scan of their limited horizons through her binoculars. Save for a collapsed front porch, the house was virtually intact. “Not bad,” she said. “We’ll stay here tonight.”

  They forced the lock on the kitchen door, and chocked it shut with an old dresser. The interior was untouched from the time of the evacuations. Cigars moldered in a humidor atop the refrigerator. A child’s drawing taped to a cupboard crumbled on being touched.

  There was a wood stove in the living room. They broke up furniture for firewood and heated tins of beef from Fletch’s saddlebags. They had to lift their nucleopores for each bite, replacing them immediately after.

  When they were done, Fletch scooped up the empty meat tins and took them outside. She paused on the stoop, cocked her head. “Listen,” she said.

  Keith joined her, strained his ears. After a moment he caught it—a long, almost musical howl. A pause, and there was another, equally faint howl in reply. “Some kind of mutated dogs,” Keith said. “I’ve seen them. Big, shaggy animals, like wolves.”

  “Actually, they’re a hybrid,” Fletch said. “A perfectly natural cross between a dog and a wolf. They migrated down from Maine a few years back, and now they’re expanding through the Drift.” She paused. “Good luck to them, say I.”

  Keith stared into the darkness. But trees blocked his vision, and there was no chance of his seeing the animal. “Hybrid, mutant, what’s the difference?” he asked.

  Fletch gawked at him. “They really do keep you poor sods ignorant, don’t they?” she marveled. She threw the tins away from the house. They fell with a clatter. “The only mutations you have to worry about coming out of the Drift are the new diseases that pop up every year.” She stood still, listening. “No animals. Usually there’ll be rats at least, in the safe spots.” She shrugged. “Oh well, I still say we’re okay. Beddy-bye time for me.”

  She led the way into the house, leaving him to slide the dresser back against the door. When Keith got to the living room, she had dropped her robe and was shedding her shirt. Her breasts were freckled, and they swayed gracefully as she moved. Keith watched them, fascinated, wondered did he really want to make love to this woman again? The passion of the previous night had a strong hold on him, and yet it was tinged with distaste, as if it had been something shameful and unclean.

  Fletch caught his glance, looked amused. “Not tonight, boyo. You’ll be stiff enough in the morning as it is.”

  ~ * ~

  Keith awoke feeling crippled. Fletch had him out on the road before he was awake enough to protest. They passed bleak hours on tedious roads that Fletch puzzled out from a pre-Meltdown Geodesic Survey map.

  Once they had to flee the road and hide when a distant growl warned them of an approaching four-wheeler. They watched it go past, two of the Mummer assassins in its seat. Still later they were attacked by a feral cat, a small orange-and-white animal whose ancestors had been domestic pets. It ran at them yowling when they had paused for lunch, and Fletch had to club it to death with the stock of her rifle.

  She turned over the small carcass with her boot. “See right there?” she asked. “That big sore on its side? It must’ve made its lair in a hot spot. It came down with radiation sickness, and the pain made it crazy enough to attack us.”

  “Fletch,” Keith said wearily, “when are we going to be out of this hellish place? I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  She gathered him into her arms, gave him a hug. “There, there. I’ve got friends not far from here. There’s a small community of Drifters I know of. They’re all outcasts and vagabonds, but reliable in their own way. When we get there we can rest—maybe tonight, if we’re lucky.”

  ~ * ~

  Two days passed. A noo
ntime sun was shining when they reached the mouth of a small, shallow valley. A handful of nineteenth-century buildings were clustered below, two or three from the mid-twentieth anomalously mingled in. “There it is,” Fletch said. She began loading needlelike projectiles into her rifle.

  “What’s its name?”

  “Nameless.”

  Keith couldn’t tell from her answer whether the community was called Nameless or simply lacked a name. But he was weary and short-tempered from three days of forced marches and sexless nights, and he was damned if he was going to ask. “Not much to look at.”

  Fletch grunted, flicked the safety on her rifle.

  It was a short thing, the rifle, about the length of a sawed-off shotgun. The stock was carved to fit her forearm, the trigger was far up along its length, and its barrel, though of normal thickness, had a surprisingly small muzzle. Keith thought, not for the first time, how handy it would have been back in Philadelphia.