Safe Haven

Chapter 1

Midmorning, late spring, and already the heat was making the distant hills shimmer. The small group of travelers walked beside the old highway, the hard-baked earth being easier than the boiling hot asphalt for their feet and their string of pack mules. They were tired from weeks of travel, and the ever-present dust made them thirsty, but they kept moving. Today, at last, they would reach their destination.

In the front of the caravan walked a short, square-shouldered woman, her brown skin tanned even darker, her straight black hair plaited in a long braid down her back. She was the smallest of the four adults, and yet she was unquestionably their leader. Her face was broad, her features too strong to be beautiful, her limbs strongly muscled, but she moved with a feral grace that suggested a dancer, or a mountain lion. She pulled off her broad-brimmed hat for a moment to fan her face, then put it back on.

She looked behind her at her companions. The man immediately behind her was squat and powerfully built, as dark-skinned as she was, and his bearded face bore an unmistakable resemblance to her own. He thought of himself as her brother, and she supposed he had a point; whoever she might be now, her body and his had come from the same mother.

Beside him was a tall, slender, black-skinned woman with tightly curled hair. Her expression was one of enduring weariness. This trip had been hard on her, and on the small form slung in a fold of cloth across her chest. The baby was sleeping, but would wake hungry, and they had been on short rations the past week. When she stumbled, the man beside her reached out to steady her.

A large man with short hair the color of straw brought up the rear, leading the mules. He was deeply tanned, but naturally fair of skin, a rarity these days. His deep blue eyes were in constant motion, missing nothing. A rifle, relic of the old days, was slung across his back.

Wordlessly they trudged along, following the highway up a long rising grade. For the past day, there had been increasing signs of human life, even if they had met nobody on the road. The crumbling asphalt was patched with tar in places, and had been rebuilt where a bridge had washed out over a streambed. And the trees beside the streams were clearly being harvested for wood, but not stripped bare, which argued for somebody living here long-term rather than nomads.

Finally they reached the crest of the hill, and they paused, looking down at the dusty green of the valley below them. "This is it," the small woman announced suddenly, in the Spanish-English hybrid that she and her companions usually used with each other. Her voice was low and hoarse. She reached down for her canteen and took a drink to wet her lips.

They saw a collection of small, weather-beaten buildings lining the highway half a mile ahead. Between them and the nearest building was a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A gate flanked by a tall cinderblock tower blocked the road.

"You think they will let us in, Lupe?" her brother asked. He insisted on calling her either that name or "Maria Guadeloupe", and she'd long since stopped arguing the point.

"Don't worry, Jorge," she answered. "I've been here before."

"No, you haven't," he contradicted her.

"A long time ago," she continued, "this was a town called Pleasant, Arizona. There was a temple up there in those hills," she said, pointing across the valley. "It was a place of refuge even then."

The blonde man snorted. "And now it's your Safe Haven?"

"Still you don't believe me, William," she said, shaking her head sadly.

"I'll believe it when I'm inside and I see how safe it really is."

"Let's get going, then," she said. "Are you holding up okay, Vonda?"

"Just get me there," the tall woman said in a barely audible whisper. "Just get me to a place I can rest."

There was motion around the gate tower; they'd been seen. The travelers advanced slowly, giving the people behind the fence plenty of time to look them over and decide that they meant no harm. When they reached the gate, a man stepped out of the tower through a door on the other side of the fence. "Halt right there," he ordered in English. Another man up in the tower pointed a rifle at them.

"Keep the rifle where it is, William," she told the blonde man. "Don't worry, they won't shoot first." Then she walked forward slowly, hands away from her sides. "We're peaceful," she called out.

"State your business," the man behind the gate said. He was very tall and heavily muscled, square-jawed and fair-skinned. Something about him seemed oddly familiar to the woman.

"I'm here to see DeWitt," she answered, "or whoever's running the place these days."

"And who might you be?" the man challenged.

"I'm Caroline," she told him.

"Caroline," the man repeated, skepticism clouding his voice.

"That's right," she said. "Caroline Farrell, known once upon a time as Echo. Maybe you've heard of me."

The man walked to the side of the tower, opened up a small metal box on the side, and pulled out a telephone handset. He spun a dial a few times, waited, spoke a few words into the phone and then hung up.

"We'll see about that," the man said. "Someone's coming who can verify your claims."

"Tech," Jorge snarled, and spat on the ground.

The man behind the gate shook his head. "Superstitious yahoos," he muttered in English. And then, in Spanish, "It's safe. It's analog, not digital. No danger."

"So why the hell do you look so familiar?" Caroline asked him.

"You tell me," the man answered.

"What's your name?" she asked.

He stared at her for a long moment, and then said, "Ballard."

"Ballard?" Caroline said, incredulous. Then she looked him over carefully. "Not Paul Ballard. You look a lot like him, though. His son, I guess?"

The man nodded curtly. "Patrick Ballard," he said.

Caroline walked up to the gate. "So, Patrick Ballard, do you mind if I ask who your mother is?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah," Caroline said, looking intently into his dark brown eyes. "I think it does."

"She's dead," Ballard said flatly, and turned away. He raised a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes, and added, "And now let's find out if you're telling the truth."

A horse trotted up the road towards the gate, bearing a woman on its back. She was of medium height, Caroline observed, with coppery red hair and a spray of freckles across her cheeks and forehead. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, which, in Caroline's recent experience, meant that she was probably about ten years younger than that. And she was pregnant, about six months along.

"What do we have here?" the pregnant woman asked as she dismounted the horse.

"She claims," explained Ballard, "to be Caroline."

The woman nodded, and walked up to the gate, giving Caroline a curious stare. "So, you're Caroline, are you?" she asked.

"That's right," Caroline answered.

"So am I," the woman said.

"Sorry, but you don't exactly look like me," Caroline pointed out.

"Neither do you," the pregnant woman answered.

"That's a fair point," Caroline conceded. Then, with a note of challenge in her voice, "Who was the first boy you kissed?"

"Tony Locarni," the pregnant woman answered immediately. "Sixth grade, behind the cafeteria. First guy you had sex with?"

"Joe Tanner," Caroline said. "Junior year, in the girls' locker room after a football game. He sneaked up behind me while I was changing out of my cheerleader uniform."

The pregnant woman shook her head and smiled. "Joe Tanner," she said. "What the hell were we thinking?"

Caroline shrugged. "He was pretty hot," she said. "And we were young and stupid."

The pregnant woman turned to Ballard and nodded. "She's the real thing," she said. "Let them in."

While Ballard opened the gate, the pregnant woman said, "We're going to have to figure out what to call you. They call me Iris here."

"Why?" Caroline asked.

"Because once upon a time, there was a little girl who may or may not have been named Iris Miller," the woman told her. "Since 'Caroline' was already taken…"

"My God, you mean I'm still alive?" Caroline asked. "The original body, I mean."

Iris shook her head sadly. "No, not any more," she said. "But she was when I got here."

"You'll take them up to the House?" Ballard asked Iris.

Iris nodded, saying, "Yeah. Topher will need to check them out."

"Topher's still around, huh?" Caroline asked.

"In a manner of speaking," was Iris' cryptic reply.

"By the way, what year is it, exactly? My friends here don't seem to know."

"It's 2044," Iris said.

"God," Caroline said. "We're sixty-one years old."

Iris laughed. "I think we look pretty good for old crones, don't we?"

"I guess so," Caroline said. "Is the House still up in the old Sparrow compound?"

"It is," Iris said. "You might not recognize it, though. We've done a lot of work in the last thirty years."

Caroline nodded. Then she turned to her companions and said, "Let's go!"

"You sure about this, Lupe?" Jorge asked.

Caroline nodded. "I know these people," she assured him. "I brought them here. Just like I brought you. Don't worry, brother of mine, we're safe."

"Amen and hallelujah," Vonda said softly, as they walked through the gate.