"This is how they died: when there was just one person out walking, or just two were out walking, it wasn't obvious when they took them away."
— Popul Vuh, Part Four
John had always felt a little on edge in the city; sure, he preferred modern amenities to camping in the rough, especially with supplies of things like Bics and toilet paper running low, but the press of boring people and lack of clear enemies to fight always left him restless and tangled up in other people's petty bullshit. On the road, hunting Skitters and fishheads — for the last couple years, that had been the absolute best place for him to be.
But the space at his side felt unexpectedly empty, three days down the road from Charleston. And it wasn't just that Tom wasn't there with him — which might not be that bad an idea while he was still processing the latest bombshell the Professor had dropped on him. It was that Mason wasn't there, strange as that thought felt. He hadn't realized just how much of his time and energy he'd spent fixated on the guy even before he'd admitted there was anything about him to admire. Baiting Hal and Maggie to cheer himself up just wasn't the same.
And that was even without taking into account other people's reactions to his private business. "I can feel you watching me, Tector," he drawled, shooting a glance to his left. "You got something to say?"
"Sorry. Don't mean to stare," the Berserkers' sniper replied, though he didn't sound sorry at all. "It's just ... we-all get that you and Mason had this big bonding experience, between the plane crash and the torture and everything else last month. Dramatic life-saving adventures and all that. A little weird that it's you, but hooking up after shit like that ain't all that unusual, if you believe the movies," He grinned back over his shoulder at the rest of the group, waggling his eyebrows. "But I just didn't expect the rest of it, I guess."
"The hell do you mean by that?" John narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"Oh, you know. Starin' off into the distance like you were doin' just now. Stakin' your claim before we set out. Talkin' about him all the damn time. I mighta suspected Mason of being a romantic at heart, but John Pope?" He clucked his tongue, still smirking. "Not hardly."
There'd been some debate before setting out on this trip whether to use horses or vehicles; ultimately, John had decided that the fact that the Espheni might have the resources to home in on engine heat again was a bigger threat than the length of time it took to get anywhere in a saddle. One factor he hadn't thought of, that might have tipped the scales the other way: the slower pace and lack of separation meant he could be fending off comments like this for potentially weeks before they got back to Charleston.
"What you know about romance could probably fit in a thimble, Tec," John said quellingly, rolling his eyes. "Maybe I'm just worried Mason's going to do something stupid and noble while I'm not there to pull his ass out of the fire. Go off with an Espheni again, or face down a coup, or who the hell knows what. Man's a trouble magnet, always has been, but he's got a lot more riding on his shoulders these days than just the Second Mass."
"Hate to burst your bubble, Pope, but I'm pretty sure worrying about your partner's covered somewhere under the definition of 'romance'," Maggie spoke up, looking more amused than she had any right to be.
"Ugh. 'Partner' is bad enough, but I'd prefer you didn't mention my dad's ass ever again," Hal drawled, riding at her side. "I really don't need that mental image. Walking in on you two last week was scarring enough."
Lyle's guffaw was just the icing on a particularly irksome cake; John cast his closest friend a scathing look before falling back to talk to the locals they'd folded in for this scout instead. One of the pair, a dainty-looking dark-haired chick with no sense of humor and a dead eye with a rifle, had been an accountant in Columbia; she'd helped them mark an anonymous-looking warehouse still half-full of dry goods for a follow-up salvage team that morning, and had had an idea where they might find shelter that night. That had meant taking the 321 north rather than the wider I-77; but given all the givens, that hadn't seemed like the worst idea.
"So — that organic farm you said was up this way. We talking grass-fed beef and free-range eggs, or mostly greenstuff?" he asked the woman: Isabel, who preferred to be called Bell, no second 'e', and had been known to punch first and ask questions later when addressed as Bella. "I only ask, 'cause any animals that might've been there are probably long gone down a Skitter gullet, but if the folks that ran it were the canning type ..."
"Beef and lamb — at least, according to their sales records," Bell confirmed. "But I visited there once or twice; they had a big kitchen garden, and I think they kept a supply of diesel. Might even be medical supplies; the owner wasn't young, and his wife had had a hip replacement. Their kids still helped out, but they lived in Columbia."
Which meant — ninety percent odds the kids had died in the initial bombardment; worse odds than that of the owners surviving the couple of years since without any medical treatment. "The place well-known?"
"Not really," she shook her head. "Other locals that dealt with them directly might've known, but they mostly kept to themselves from what I remember, and they didn't participate in the local farmer's markets or anything."
"Makes a man wonder how many places like this are still out there," Tector mused aloud, dropping back to join them, "just waiting for the scavengers to come through — and how many of 'em will never be found at all. Gotta figure there's what, a hundredth, maybe even less of the original population still alive; a few centuries from now, archaeologists are gonna find all kinds of strange shit just abandoned all across the country."
"Provided they're there to find anything at all," John reminded him, dryly. "Mason might not know the meaning of the word 'quit', but if he ever does run out of luck, ten to one he'll take us all with him. And then it's all over but the crying. The only way the caveman wins the contest between the caveman and the astronaut is if the astronaut doesn't have any weapons. And the Espheni just picked theirs back up."
"You're a joy and an inspiration to us all, Boss. But just so you know, that makes less than five minutes since the last time you mentioned Mason," Lyle cut into the conversation, grinning.
John snarled, prepared to tell the man just where he could stick his commentary — but the woman at his side perked up just then, pointing to a sign up ahead. "That's the turn; a mile and a half up ahead."
"Great. Lyle, why don't you take point? Since you're so eager to exercise your observational skills. And take Tector with you." There'd been no Skitter sign since the outskirts of Columbia, but that was no excuse for sloughing off, and it would get them both out of his hair. "We'll hang back at the turn-off for your signal. Don't dawdle; we only got an hour or so before the sun goes down, and I'd rather not still be out at dusk when the Beamer patrols start to pick back up."
Lyle grumbled, but Tector gave a good-natured chuckle, nudging his horse into a trot. "Will do, Boss."
The rest of them followed at their usual unhurried but sustainable pace, then dismounted in the verge at the junction to stretch their legs and take a closer look at the road surface for signs of recent passage. They'd check in and do another sensor survey of the area when they were settled for the night; no matter how empty the landscape seemed, he'd rather not be distracted in an indefensible position.
Maybe fifteen minutes passed there before John checked the position of the sun again, swiftly sinking in the sky, and turned back to the accountant. "How far past this turn was the farm, again?" he asked, frowning.
"Not far. Half a mile, maybe?" she shrugged. "Two story white house, garage, huge barn just past them, and fields all around; there's no way they could have missed it."
"Probably still checking all the buildings," Hal commented. "Half a mile at a trot, is what, five minutes or so to get there? Yeah, five minutes there, five back, and close enough we would've heard it if one of 'em fired a gun. They gotta still be looking. Which probably means there is something to find."
"Mmm, green beans for dinner tonight. Or corn — or eggplant — or cherry tomatoes," Maggie observed hopefully, rubbing her hands together. "I really never thought I would miss fresh vegetables this much."
"Or pickles," Nico mused, expression distant and faintly rapturous. "I'd trade my last treat-size bag of M'n'M's for a jar of kosher dill pickles. Mmm, mmm, mmm."
"Or black-eyed peas — we are in the South, you know. Lima beans. I'd even take a jar of goddamn Brussels sprouts," Ox said, smacking his lips. "Anything but oatmeal, mystery meat, and pears in syrup. Those omelets just before we left were a real treat. There any truth to the rumors the President's started collecting a herd of cattle in a park somewhere, too? I'd just about kill for a hamburger."
"You're asking me?" John laughed, then jerked his chin at Hal. "Junior'd be a better target for that kind of question, don't you think?"
"Oh, I don't know about that," Hal replied with sour laugh. "I think if you look back, you'll find you've been in the loop about as much as I have for a while now — at least, since he found us after Fitchburg. Not that I could tell why, half the time. Or, well — I guess I do now." He made a face.
"Not everything's about that — though I know it might seem that way at your age," John smirked. "Hell, maybe I should be reassured he valued me for my mind, first. That's certainly been a new one on me."
"Or maybe he just lost his mind," Maggie snarked. "I know which option I'd place my bet on."
Bell stirred, looking back up the narrow, two-lane blacktop that led toward the farm, and eyed the position of the sun again. "They really should have been back by now, though," she interrupted. "The place isn't all that big, and you told them not to dawdle."
"Well, shit. Three days out, and we're already down two guys." John sighed, then whistled to make sure he had everyone's attention. "All right; mount up. We'll dismount just out of sight and storm the place. And if we find 'em in the pantry with their hands in a jar, I swear to God, they'll be on permanent latrine duty."
Honestly, he'd prefer that to any of the likelier options. Anyone that careless in the Second Mass had earned their Darwin award a long damn time ago. But he wouldn't bury 'em before he'd seen the proof.
The first sign they came across was a single horse, cropping the grass at an unhurried pace; it had been tethered off the road a short way back from the farm, sort of shielded from the property by a rusty truck that had been driven into the ditch, saddle scabbard empty and saddlebags long gone. But there was no blood, and no bodies; just Lyle's big placid beast, waiting patiently for its rider. There was no recent Skitter sign, and no hum or stomp of mech feet; the ground wasn't significantly disturbed, and the buildings, viewed from that distance, seemed intact. But Tector's horse wasn't there. And neither were Lyle or Tector.
Except ... John held up a hand to halt the others and squatted down to take a closer look at the ground, then eye the buildings again. The house wasn't only intact, there were signs of grooming around the place. The lawn out front was uniformly short — which, what the hell was the point of cutting your grass in the apocalypse — and there were definite paths through the leaf litter. The shiny bicycle propped up by the lean-to style garage was kind of a clue, too. But the hanging plants were crusty, and most of the windows were dirty; that made him sort of doubt the original residents had stuck around. They tended to have a bit more pride of place.
Someone had been living there; someone human. And given the lack of gunfire, someone clever, too. Someone that had probably bugged out before they'd even got close. But better to play it safe; they could've just moved one of the horses out of sight and planned to leave after dark, left the other to sow confusion.
"Looks like someone's been eating the porridge," he said, voice low and quiet. Then he gestured toward the house. "Hal and Ox, take the back; Nico, Dixon, with me. We'll be going in the front door. Maggie, Bell, check the garage. Jesse, Nate, hold back; watch the horses and the barn just in case."
No one asked any stupid questions, just nodded and moved smoothly and quietly as told, keeping behind cover or under line of sight from the windows wherever possible. Even the temporary members of John's band weren't half bad, though he'd have traded them for Zack and Crazy Lee in a heartbeat. When everyone was in place, he set an ear to the front door, listening; then he stepped back and signaled for entry.
About a minute later, seven Berserkers converged in the kitchen ... only to find no pressing target despite the flickering light of a lamp on the kitchen table. Just two slumped bodies, lit by the low-burning flame. At first glance Lyle and Tector looked dead, pitched over in their seats; John's lip pulled back in a snarl, and a knot of rage threatened to choke him. But then the ropes registered, and the half-empty beer bottles, and he heard the slight whistling undertone that Lyle's breathing picked up during allergy season. It had driven John up a wall too many evenings to mistake; relief washed through him, and he gestured Nico over to them with a jerk of his chin.
The room had obviously been the focal point for whoever had been living there; the half-open door of the pantry showed only a few jars left on expansive shelving, and several open cupboards had obviously been ransacked. There were dishes stacked on every flat surface, and he'd seen the blankets on the living room couch on his way through; there was even a half-full bucket of water by the sink. But whoever had been using it was long gone. Probably a woman; a reasonably attractive person on her own with a little guile and a smooth delivery could sucker a lot of guys into trusting her, or at least discounting her as a threat. And to take both Lyle and Tector down without a struggle? The carrot must have been a damn sight more appealing than the stick.
"Out pretty cold, but they seem OK," Nico pronounced. He reached over to the lamp and turned up the wick without making John ask, shedding a little more light on the subject.
"Drugged, I'd bet," Maggie added, pursing her mouth as she stooped to pick up a prescription bottle that had fallen to the floor beneath the cupboards. "Depending on what they were given, they might wake up in ten minutes — or ten hours. No way to tell."
"But they're not gonna die, right?" Hal asked, looking grim; he and Tector had struck up something of a friendship while both had been running errands for Weaver, if John remembered right.
Maggie gave them both a critical look, then nodded. "Their color's all right, and they're breathing just fine. Though I wouldn't doubt they'll both have pretty nasty headaches when they wake up."
"Guess I'm out of practice being suspicious of open beverages, but I doubt I'd have expected a roofie, either. It's the apocalypse; you'd think people would stop being pointlessly shitty to each other," Bell said, fingering her gun.
"Assholes are still assholes, even after the world ends," Maggie said darkly, tilting her chin up.
She didn't look at John as she said it, but he felt her attention on him just the same, the hatchet between them still only partially buried. Irritation chewed at the back of his mind again; he determinedly kept his mouth shut as he drifted over to open the defunct refrigerator, then whistled lowly at the sight of two and a half more six-packs of bottled beer on the dusty shelves inside. If that wasn't a reward for holding his temper this whole fucking evening, he didn't know what was.
"You know, some people believe what happened three years ago was the Biblical Rapture? And that we're living through the tribulations right now." he mused aloud, retrieving one of the six-packs. "Which would mean, by definition, that no one still alive on this Earth deserves a halo. Now, that's not to say they were asking for it, even if they were dumbasses; but it don't make whoever drugged Lyle and Tec the devil, either. We — all of us — do whatever we think's necessary to survive."
Hal blinked at that, and a suddenly thoughtful expression crossed his face as he glanced toward the front wall of the house. "They could have cut their throats, and didn't. Could've taken both horses, too."
"Fortunately for us, the horse they did take was Tector's, and that horse is just as ornery as Tec is. Here; have a brew, we'll gather up whatever supplies are left, bring the horses up, and camp in the barn, if it's as empty as it looks from outside. If the horse isn't back by moonrise, I'll be very surprised. Probably even money the rider comes back after it; depends on how far they get. And then we'll see what we'll see."
Hal raised a challenging eyebrow as he took one of the bottles. "Not gonna gripe at me about still being nineteen, like you did the last time I came by the Nest to talk to one of my guys?"
"That was in Charleston — and before your old man and I came to an understanding. I somehow doubt I have to worry about him yanking my liquor license anymore," John rolled his eyes. "Mags?"
Maggie shook her head, then jerked a thumb toward the door. "I'll just go get Jesse and Nate and the horses. I'll take any applesauce you find, though?"
"Yes ma'am," Ox half-saluted her, then took a bottle and headed for the remains of the pantry.
"I'll keep watch out back," Nico offered, taking a bottle as well. "I thought I saw a tool shed back there, anyway; might be worth tagging this place for salvage, too, even with most of the food gone."
John raised an eyebrow, then offered two of the remaining three bottles in the six-pack to their local guides. "One of you want to untie these geniuses and make sure they don't choke in their sleep?"
Bell and Dixon glanced at each other, then threw a quick game of tick, tick, boom — the Second Mass version of rock, paper, scissors. "Damn," Bell said, looking at the results. "All right, I'll do it."
"Dix, scan the ground floor. See if there's anything we can use? I'll be upstairs."
"Oh, and don't forget the garage," Bell added. "I checked on my way through; there's enough cans of diesel out there to fill a truck bed. We might should stack 'em out of sight, but there's enough to be worth the partial tank to fetch 'em from Charleston, for sure."
"That oughtta make Weaver happy," John agreed. Then he shook his head at Tector and Lyle again and headed for the stairs with the last of the six-pack. A quick search, then a call to Charleston; he wasn't looking forward to the report, but as mission disasters went, this one actually could've been a whole lot worse.
He could only hope the next few days to Charlotte were as quiet. He had a feeling tonight's little adventure would be nothing next to tackling one of those fences again.
The bedrooms upstairs were in about the same condition Mason's had been when he and Tom had crashed there on their way back from the Boston tower: at least twice picked over, with no attempt made to clean up afterward. The debris of a long life, well-lived, mingled with the frozen daydreams of teenagers long gone. John picked up a half-deflated pigskin from the floor of a room decorated with black and gold banners, and wondered if he should hand it to Hal to give his kid brother. Or, hell, maybe John should save it to give to the kid himself; Matt had been a little standoffish since John had stopped being the mentor his dad disapproved of and started sleeping with Tom instead. John had never done the sorta-stepkid thing before; he was more or less winging it, here.
...Or maybe it would just be better to leave well enough alone. He already had the alien one calling him Uncle John; the last thing he needed was Maggie realizing that that would make him her step-parent-adjacent-inlaw-type-whatever as well and raising hell about it with Hal and his dad.
John snorted at the thought, tossing the ball up and down in his hand, then threw it toward the small pile of blankets and such he'd folded up to put with the salvageable supplies. One of the linen cabinets had been properly mothballed, and it had reminded him of that empty house back in Charleston; call it doing his part for the public works committee. Not that he'd ever been, or ever would be, the picket fence type.
Christ, what was he doing, thinking about the Masonets in that context? He was barely managing to communicate with his own actual kid, and co-parenting the various offspring was one of those coupley romantic milestones he'd expected they'd mutually avoid. John shook his head, then picked the room farthest from the stairs and fired up the Volm communicator.
The connection was a lot clearer than the radios, and more secure, too; Tom had confirmed with Cochise that the Espheni couldn't intercept the small device's transmissions. John took a few minutes to go over the route and read off the coordinates for the supplies they'd spotted that day, then passed on the news about the scavenger. Lyle had woken and confirmed it had been a blonde chick, maybe fortyish, who hadn't wanted to listen to anything they'd tried to tell her — though she'd seemed more desperate than cruel.
"Anyway, if she's been holed up here for months, not so much as visiting the barn, I somehow doubt she's an experienced horsewoman. Tector's demon on hooves ought to find its way back sometime tonight, and we'll be on our way in the morning. Couple more days to Charlotte, and we'll get a look at what's going on there."
"But other than your scavenger, it's been quiet?" Tom asked, a certain tension in his voice it took John a second to identify as worry.
"Yeah, don't worry; Hal and Maggie are doin' fine. Except for the perpetual argument on what they want to do after the war — but that's nothing new. How're things back in Charleston?"
"Oh, same old, same old. The engineers took one of those obelisks apart; they're pretty sure the things share power somehow when they're active, which is why they all went dead at once. Made more than a few of them start freaking out about sufficiently advanced technology again, and living in a scifi novel. It basically means that as long as one's plugged in, the whole fence is, which will make taking a whole one down a little harder. The next project's going to be bringing in any pieces they can find of the downed Beamers; maybe there'll be a way we can harness the technology they use to hover."
Tom paused there to clear his throat. "And on a more personal note — Lexie's fever broke."
"And how big is the princess now?" John asked, frowning; he'd have thought Tom would sound happier.
"Pretty close to Tanya's age, we think. Younger than Ben, older than Matt." Tom sighed, then continued, more subdued. "Rebecca always wanted four, you know; two pairs so they'd never be alone if they didn't want to be, and there'd always be someone on their side. But after Matt, when she found the lump — well, between the treatments and the risk, there weren't going to be any more. If Anne's idea works, and Lexie stays this age ..."
He trailed off there, which was just as well; most of John's successes at offering comfort tended to involve a lot more touch than talk. "Bet Tanya's pleased," he said, neutrally.
Tom took a deep breath, then let it out; John wondered if it was just his imagination that it sounded relieved. "Yeah; they're becoming pretty good friends. Tanya's been reading Watership Down to her and Matt; I found out a few nights ago. She's got this battered paperback she's been lugging around since Florida, and Matt saw it and got curious, so it's turned into sort of a reading circle."
"She's still got that old thing, huh?" John perked up at the thought. He hadn't had a chance to give Tanya many gifts after she'd reached the age where you could actually talk to a kid about something meaningful; besides which, she'd been the younger of his pair, and the girl, which meant he hadn't had much idea how to relate to her. It was good to know she still remembered some positive things from that age. "Hey, do you think, maybe ..."
Tom snorted. "We're never telling Dan I let you use sensitive military hardware like a cell phone, but ... since I happen to know she's off shift eating dinner with Lourdes right now ..." He trailed off, and John heard muffled, distant words. Then he was back. "I sent a sentry to get her; I'll show her how to work the comm."
John swallowed past the knot of emotion in his throat. "And then back to your lonely bed. You sure you don't want to really give these things a workout? You could always call me back in a while ..."
"John! I am not going to have phone sex on a Volm frequency; I wouldn't put it past some of Cochise's colleagues to be monitoring it just to make sure the indigenes aren't misusing their technology," Tom said, audible exasperation burning away the last of the melancholy undertone to his words.
"Cochise's dad, you mean. Might give him a thrill to listen in; God knows he seems to need one," John replied, unrepentant. "But maybe it's for the best. I gotta take watch in a couple of hours anyway; I'll let you know what happens with the scavenger."
"Yeah, and — hey, she's here," Tom said distractedly. "Love you. Hey, Tanya, it's your dad ..."
There wasn't time for a response; truthfully, John wasn't even sure Tom knew he'd said it, or that he'd meant to say it in the first place. But the jolt that went through him at those words stayed with him during the rest of the conversation with his daughter, and long into the witching hour, like a burr in the back of his mind.
As it happened, the horse did not, in fact, show up before sunrise. John started out the day short-tempered and annoyed from the inconvenience and the lack of sleep when Lyle shook him awake from a cold bed, and his mood didn't improve much over a breakfast of travel biscuits paired with pickled okra the scavenger hadn't had a use for while he unfolded the map and compared times and distances with what the Volm scout bugs had picked up. There was no help for it; they couldn't risk doubling anyone up if they had to move quickly, it would tax the horses. Someone would have to stay behind, either to wait for the salvage crew from Charleston or make their way back using the abandoned bicycle.
Bell volunteered; John would miss her sass, but they'd already mostly passed her area of guide expertise, and she was more than capable of taking care of herself, so he gave her the nod. Then the rest of them loaded up and headed out, skirting Winnsboro and taking Route 200 back toward the asphalt river of I-77 running north.
They'd just reached a crossing with another two-lane road the signs called the Mobley Highway that was marked with a 20 on the map, when the faint sounds of cursing and an annoyed, neighing horse improved John's day a little. Off to the west arm of the crossing, cleared fields led toward what looked like another family farm, marked by a couple of barn-sized buildings and a rusting graveyard of tractors. A couple hundred yards down that branch of the road, a slight, blonde-haired form stood in the weedy verge, wrestling with the reins of Tector's horse.
He assumed she'd been trying to get it to move in a farmlike direction, though by the looks of things she'd been at it for awhile. She was smeared with grass and dirt from ass to elbows from her initial slip from the saddle, and her knees were showing through holes in her jeans, but she was still trying; there was a lot of waving arms, alternately cajoling and threatening tones, and furious body posture going on. John smirked, slung his rifle across his lap, then gestured to the others to form up on him and head in her direction.
She didn't run when she heard them coming, just made one last swipe for the horse's reins, then tipped her chin up and squared her shoulders in their direction, clutching a shotgun in her arms. "Back off!" she yelled. "You come any closer, and someone's gonna get shot! You really think you can take me before I hit one of you?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," John drawled in reply, though he held up a hand to bring the group to a halt just far enough away not to crowd her. "Tector, the guy whose horse you stole? He don't miss, and he can tag you from a lot further out than this. And he's just a little bit pissed at the performance you put on back at the farm."
The woman set her jaw, eyes sparking with trapped fury, but lowered the muzzle of the shotgun. "Yeah, well, you tell me what you'd have done in my place. One girl, two dangerous-looking guys who say there's another half-dozen of you back up the road, not enough food left in the cupboards to be worth fighting over, and two big beautiful horses just waiting for a feminine touch. In my book? That's finders, keepers."
Up close, the woman was more or less what John had been expecting: a tough, smart cookie who was doing her best to maximize her assets. She had long, dark blonde hair with a few threads of grey that she was still making the effort to keep brushed smooth, and wore a heavy brown suede jacket with a fur lining, a pair of fingerless gloves, a black shirt appliquéd with a silver skull, and fraying black jeans tucked into sturdy boots. The shirt was a v-neck, flirting close enough to her cleavage to make it interesting if she bent forward, and there was quite a bit of fire in her personality; yeah, he could see how she'd managed to take Lyle and Tector off guard.
"Adverse property laws only apply to properties deliberately abandoned by their owners — for at least a decade, at a minimum," John told her, amused by her pluck. "I don't think that argument's going to cut it, in this case. And I wouldn't advise trying for the nine-tenths argument, either; given that there's ten of us and only one of you, it should be pretty obvious this is one of those one-tenth situations."
"Are you kidding me with this?" she said, then glanced behind him, unerringly fixing her attention on Maggie, the lone woman among the scout troop with Bell left back at the farm. "Does this guy speak for all of you, or just the assholes? I'm not gonna let you guys just leave me out here for the aliens! Surely you can spare a horse for a woman in a jam? I don't see anyone here who needs one, anyway!"
"That would be because we had to leave one of our group behind this morning," Maggie replied, unimpressed. "Don't look to me for sympathy. I appreciate your concern for your personal safety — believe me, I do — but poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours."
"Yeah, we left our resident bleeding hearts behind in Charleston. If you head that way, they might even take you in," John allowed. They probably would, too; Mason might have turned out to be a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist underneath the surface optimism, but the heroic image persisted for a reason. Second chances were a big thing with him. "It's a town of several thousand now, I'm sure they could find some use for — whatever it is you do."
She gave a bitter laugh. "Graphic designer for a company that sold water-resistant cell phone cases? Yeah, I don't think so. Like I'd believe it anyway; I'd be surprised if there were several thousand human beings left in the whole country, never mind one town. You're the most people I've seen all at once in months."
"What, you haven't heard of the New United States?" Hal spoke up then, frowning. "I thought Manchester and Bressler sent scouts all through this area before we even got here, and Charleston's almost doubled in population since."
"Are those names supposed to mean something to me?" she shook her head, scoffing.
"Never mind him," John sighed, tired of the conversation. "His daddy's the President, so he's a little proud. Now, if you'll just step away from the horse, we'll leave you your personal possessions and a few days' worth of ... huh."
He trailed off there, suddenly on edge and not entirely certain why; maybe the silence that had fallen in a bubble all around them, maybe the sway of a branch, maybe a muffled metallic scrape, but he was abruptly certain they weren't alone anymore. Which had to be deliberate, because the drones hadn't caught any patrols for miles.
"Boss?" Tector said sharply, turning to the wooded side of the road with his handgun at the ready. The big Volm rifle they'd brought along was still attached to the saddle of his horse, but it hadn't impaired his instincts any. Lyle, Ox, and the others took their cue from him and came to alert as well, alarming the scavenger, who shied back closer to the horse.
"Whoa, whoa, what's going on here, guys?" she said, holding up her hands, the one empty and the other carefully pointing the shotgun toward the sky.
"What's going on is that you went stumbling around in the dark last night drawing attention, and might've led us straight into an ambush," John replied, tersely. "Tec, if there's mechs around ..."
"On it," Tector nodded, and swung out of the saddle, tossing the reins of Bell's horse to Nate.
"Wait, you aren't really going to just leave me?" the scavenger objected, eyes wide as she immediately shifted to put herself between Tector and the horse.
"Get out of my way, lady, I need that rifle if I'm gonna ... aw, shit!" Tector thrust her behind him as the kudzu veiling the wall of close-planted pines along that part of the highway suddenly tore like a curtain opening onto a battle scene: Intrant Skitters.
The next few minutes were pure chaos. Tector got to the horse in time to pull the rifle on the first mech to bowl over the rusting machinery it had been hiding behind and draw a bead on the group, then heaved the scavenger up to Lyle, who easily sheltered her against him with one arm while firing at Skitters with the other. John got the rest of them porcupined up and riding for a defensible position — any defensible position — post-haste, Maggie and Hal shoulder to shoulder with him in place of Tector and Lyle, while Ox, Dixon and Nico had their backs. Jesse and Nate, the least experienced, aimed from the center of the moving circle, guiding the empty-saddled horse.
If there'd been more than just a couple of the Mega-mechs, or if Tector hadn't been on the ball, John doubted they'd have been able to escape so easily. But no Espheni could have reasonably predicted who they'd catch in their improvised back-country cordon, and a whole mess of dead Skitters later the group finally broke contact somewhere in the woods to the east of Route 200.
John called them to a halt again to listen for a minute; then he gave permission to reload, check for wounds, and maybe wash off the worst of the mess in the little slow-moving creek they'd used to disguise their trail. Widely spaced trees marched along its banks, crowded with ankle-high greenery that the horses nipped at as they cooled down, and the brown water rippled listlessly around downed, rotting branches. For a miracle, only one of the Berserkers had an injury worth noting; Ox had taken a Skitter claw across the back that had torn through jacket and shirt down to dark skin and left a long, shallow, sluggishly bleeding gash across his spine. The rest, including the horses, mainly had a random assortment of scrapes, bruising, and a heated graze or two from mechfire.
The scavenger woman came to a halt on the bank of the stream and just stood there for the first few minutes, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she stared around at the rest of them. She shook her head at offers of both damp rags and a bottle of water in favor of watching them work, tight-lipped and silent, but she wasn't pale or visibly bleeding, so John left her to herself for a minute in favor of wrapping up a scratched wrist. Then he helped Ox tear up his wrecked shirt for bandage material and ease a fresh Henley over his head.
She'd found her self-possession again by the time he was ready to deal with her, just as stubborn as before, but maybe a little less angry. She finally took water from Lyle, who stared her down with a challenging expression until she ducked her head and acquiesced, then finally picked her way along the bank to John.
"Uh, hi, by the way," she said, thrusting a hand in his direction. "My name's Sara."
One of those, then; whether from privacy or a desire to leave the past behind, a lot of people had defaulted to mononyms once civilization stopped keeping track of them. John had never quite seen the point.
"Well, hello, Sara," he replied, giving her hand a brief, polite shake. "John Pope. You can call me Pope."
She cleared her throat. "Nice to meet you, uh, Pope ... no, sorry, I can't call you that. It's just that the word makes me picture the robes, and the, the ..." She laughed a little, gesturing over her head in illustration of a miter. "Sorry! I hope you don't mind, but I think I'm gonna have to call you John."
John raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, wondering where this was going. "Call me whatever you like, as long as you don't attack any more of my people. Look, the thing is — by the time you could get back to the farmhouse, the team from Charleston will have probably already been and gone with the supplies that were left. The fishheads will probably pick up their patrols on these roads, too, after they lost those two mechs. That means we can't leave you here either, not if it might tip 'em off what direction we're going. So what you're gonna do is hand your weapons over to Lyle, ride with us a day or two on the spare until we do what we've come to do at Charlotte, and then we'll let you go, wherever you want, so long as it's on our route. Understood?"
She nodded, then looked down at the water bottle in her hands, fiddling with it. "I've never — I've never fought those things before, only run and hid from them. And it's been more than a year since I even had to do that much. Do you think you could maybe give me some pointers on what to do while I'm tagging along?"
The angle of her body toward his suggested she might have something other than fighting in mind when she mentioned pointers. John didn't fault her for the reaction; but her timing left a little to be desired.
"Tell you what, if you can talk Lyle or Tector into helping? You can ask 'em whatever you want," he shrugged. "I do want your word, though, that you're not going to try taking off again, for both our safety and yours."
"Yes sir, general sir," she said, wryly. Then she took a step or two closer, lowering her voice a little as her smile turned more coy. "You are the leader of this motley bunch, right? So, assuming this city you all come from is about as imaginary as it turns out your alien-fighting skills are — where do you fit into the hierarchy?"
Maggie had been crouched down by the stream bank rinsing Skitter blood from her knife; she looked up at Sara's oh-so-innocent question and snorted, saving him the effort of trying to find some even more discouraging response that wouldn't send her stomping off into the trees. "We'd all kind of like to know that ourselves," she said, dryly. "Neither 'proprietor of the Nest' nor 'President's boyfriend' show up on the official org charts, and the responsibilities attached to 'leader of the Berserkers' seem to vary by the day."
Sara blinked, then blinked again and took a breath, still smiling. "That sounds ... complicated," she said gamely, and John's respect for her sheer balls went up another notch. She might be inexperienced at fighting, but she sure had spirit; had he still been single and hard-up when he came across her, he might actually have been tempted. Women weren't impossible, just not usually to his taste.
"...Except for the 'proprietor' part," she continued, cocking her head to one side. "So what's this Nest, then? Restaurant? Bar? ...Bookstore?"
"Bar," he nodded, then jerked his head toward Lyle. "Lyle and I run the place; found a couple of guys that knew a thing or two about brewing. Figured people would need a place to blow off steam even more after the end of the world. Plus, it passes the time when we're not out here." He gestured vaguely at the surrounding woods.
"Sounds like my kind of place," Sara said, maintaining her smile as she backed off a step, then another, angling herself downstream. "I'll be sure to stop by sometime — assuming, you know, this whole Charleston thing turns out to be real. So, I think I'm just gonna see if I can get this blood off my jacket ..." She jerked her thumb behind her, then turned and walked away at a nonchalant, not-too-hurried pace.
Maggie snorted again, watching her go, and John gave her the evil eye. "What was that all about?"
She raised her eyebrows at him, and the expression on her face was what one might charitably call judgmental. "That woman was hitting on you, and you were letting her," she said. "So I enlightened her."
Ah, Mags. It wasn't the first time she'd stuck her nose into his relationship with Tom; he ought to have been expecting that. It wasn't just that Tom was her boyfriend's father, either; he'd been the catalyst for a world-shattering change in her life for the better, and that degree of deferential respect was not easy to shake.
"And just which part bugged you more?" he sneered, crossing his arms. "Sara for latching onto me as the most attractive option present? Or me for trying to find a way to let her down easy? The woman's upset enough already, I didn't want to push her into bolting again and blabbing to the first fishhead to crack her skull open."
Maggie's lip curled a little. "Oh, is that the reason. Sure you're not coming down with a case of wandering eye? I might not think much of her taste, but she and Tom both deserve better."
"As if deserving's got much to do with it," John scoffed at the notion. "It's the end of the world, Maggie May, and niceties like 'falling in love' or holding out for the perfect partner are a first world luxury. Hell, a twentieth century luxury; ask the Professor sometime, if you don't believe me. The dating pool's a damn sight smaller than it used to be, and the needs people bring into relationships have a lot more to do with survival than making the heart go pitter-pat. A vulnerable woman like Sara, with her looks? Of course she's going to latch on to the first guy she meets who she thinks is more likely to protect her than rape her."
Maggie's expression darkened at that; John held up a hand. "Yeah, exactly. I might've fallen down on the job on the protection front before, but the impulse wasn't wrong. It's human nature to find someone who seems good enough and settle, especially with threat of death or worse always hanging over your shoulder."
She seemed to read something more into that than he'd intended, because a little of the curdled anger seeped out of her scowl, replaced by something more speculative. "You think Tom's settling. What need could you possibly meet for him that would make him throw Anne over in your favor, if not love?"
"He thinks it's love, probably because he never really had the chance to grieve for his wife, and anything less would be an insult to her memory." He'd put some thought into it since the comm transmission the night before. "And none of your damn business. But ask yourself this: what need is Hal looking to meet with you now that he's out of the wheelchair his last girlfriend put him in? Spoiler alert: judging by the arguments I've been overhearing, it may involve baby Masons and white picket fences."
"And that is none of your business," she spat back, a muscle jumping in her jaw. Then she turned and stalked abruptly away in the direction Sara had gone, undoubtedly to congratulate her on her narrow escape.
John just shook his head. In his opinion, the fact that Tom had consistently clung harder every time John gave him proof he wasn't going away, said a lot about which stage of the self-actualization pyramid Rebecca's death, several near-death experiences with his children, and Anne's defection — however temporary — had stranded the Professor on, and it wasn't the halfway-up 'love and belonging' strata. If he wanted to delude himself about it, though, John had no intention of bringing it to his attention; it just so happened that Tom was meeting a few rather foundational needs of John's own.
John blew out a breath, then started the process of herding everyone back together again. The sooner they put this particular patch of Espheni-controlled territory behind them, the better.
They skulked in the woods just out of sight of the interstate for the remainder of the day; it slowed them down further, but also kept them out of sight of any pursuit, so John considered it a fair trade. Beamers couldn't sense them, mechs couldn't reach them, and Skitters wouldn't know where to look. They stopped for the night in an abandoned, half-fallen-down church just off one of the freeway's exits, and headed out toward Charlotte again early the next morning.
Sara, John was unsurprised to note, had first apologized to and then needled Lyle to see if he'd retaliate for the drugging incident; she obviously had a keen sense of human hierarchy. He wished her luck; Lyle hadn't taken anyone on since Crazy Lee's death, as far as he could tell. Maggie, on the other hand, was a perfect little gloomcloud, even around Hal. Neither situation threatened the mission, though, so he chose to leave well enough alone.
They passed two more Skitter and mech patrols that last day, one on I-77 and one on the ringroad, the I-485 loop. Finding a way around the massive dual-highway interchange and crossing the creek on the other side took more than a little time and ingenuity to accomplish; John was muddy to the thigh and the sun was low again by the time they were finally past those obstacles and hunkered down in an old business park paralleling the northbound freeway. He'd decided to send the drones out one more time before proceeding; they only had a couple, but it shouldn't take more to find the fences and check out the setup. He'd caught sight of a green glow the night before, but hadn't wanted to press at that distance.
According to Mason, who'd looked it up in one of Manchester's books, the city had held at least three quarters of a million people before the Espheni arrived; John had no idea how many might've survived until the fence went up, but there had definitely been enough to make it worth their while to site a prison there, as Mason had guessed. He couldn't get a good look from beyond the green hatchwork of the fence, but he could see enough to extrapolate based on the size of the area inside; there had to be several hundred people in there, minimum. No kids among 'em, except a few babes in arms, which tallied with Cochise's report, but not many senior citizens, either. Just the healthy, the lucky ... and those who knew how best to take advantage, like John.
"What is that," Sara said, staring at the miniaturized holographic images displayed by the Volm interface.
"Prison fence," Tector told her, tersely. "Espheni tried to put one up around Charleston, too, but we chased 'em off before they could finish. Lost some damn good men doin' it. That's why we're out here — to try and find out what they're doin' in there before they come for us, again. Free these people, if we can swing it; but we'll probably have to make another trip. Got a mission to run up in Virginia, too."
"You aren't actually going to go there, are you?" she said, rather faintly.
"Can't see what we need to see from all the way out here," John shrugged at her. "Don't worry, we'll stop a little short and leave someone with the horses; you can hang back there, too. Wouldn't want you there anyway; you barely know which end of the shotgun to point at the enemy."
The calculated insult put her back up immediately. "Hey! I may not have killed any of those things, but I kept myself safe for over two years — your guys weren't the first to find me and think they had a right to something of mine," she said, tipping her chin up. "Maybe it's about time I started sticking it to the real enemy."
John chuckled to himself and lifted an eyebrow at Lyle. "You willing to keep an eye on her?"
The big man shrugged, but he didn't look displeased. "Whatever you say, Boss."
"All right then, sweetheart; a nighttime stroll it is. We're about nine miles back from the fence; looks like they dropped it around most of Uptown. Not a hell of a lot of greenery in that part of town, but there are a few neighborhood parks, according to the map." He unfolded the paper accordion with the little blown-up city inset someone had looted from an abandoned convenience store, and spread it out for everyone to take a look, tracing a callused fingertip around the loop of the city center. "We'll stop there, sneak in on foot, make contact with someone on the inside if we can. Goal is to find whatever the hell it is that's powering the fence."
Hal frowned thoughtfully down at the road grid, eyes scanning over the yellow lines of freeway, the little patches of green, and the notations for the Charlotte Hornets and the convention center. "Why did they put it there, do you think? Can't be because that many people actually lived there — the downtown grid was mostly bombed to hell in the bigger cities. The few skyscrapers that aren't rubble in the streets are probably unsound as hell, and the biggest green patches in there are in the cemeteries. Why not a residential district, the golf course maybe, somewhere people could grow their own food? They've got to be feeding them; no way they aren't starving otherwise, and they have to want them for something if they're going to all this trouble."
Nico shook his head. "Every time your dad sends out a scavenging party, he tells us 'Bullets before food before fuel before entertainment'. Prisoners don't get weapons. The next most basic need they can control is food."
"Exactly," John pointed at him. "They want people uncomfortable and constantly hungry, fighting each other for whatever does get dropped in. That way their prisoners aren't banding together and fighting back. Nobody ever said the Espheni were stupid."
"Nah, just kind of like Voldemort on a mass scale," Hal snorted. "Vulnerable only to the power he knows not. Never thought Dad's nighttime reading with Ben would ever actually be relevant to my life."
"It still isn't," John scoffed, remembering taking Brandon to one of the movies; he'd been treated to an impromptu lecture afterward on everything his son thought was silly in the series. "Unless you think it's a valid life choice to defend the bad guy to death after he's already on the verge of winning it all. I'd kinda prefer to kick the Espheni off the planet before things get that far."
"Are you ... seriously drawing a comparison to Harry Potter, here?" Sara blinked at both of them, astonished.
"Yeah, he's not up to his dad's level of historical analogies quite yet, I'm afraid," John grinned at Hal, earning another highly annoyed look from the teenage warrior. "Keep practicing, though, Junior."
"All right, enough talk; are we gonna get out there, or what?" Maggie braced the heels of her hands against the pearl handles of her revolvers, tucked securely in their underarm holsters. "Time's a'wasting."
"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," John drawled, earning another eyeroll from her as he folded up the map. "As soon as your boyfriend calls the drones back in, we'll go. Pack it up, boys and girls!"
Wet and muddy and tired they might be; but it was finally time to rock and roll.
It turned out to be a very good thing they had snuck up in person. One thing the drone's eye view hadn't shown him was that the duplicate of the big Espheni ship they'd seen on the horizon back in Charleston was tethered to the ground here in Charlotte, behaving more like a blimp than a spaceship as it slowly circled over the fenced area ... and that the tether came down in very close proximity to one of the obelisks.
"I think we done found the power source," Tector said grimly, scanning the ship and its connection to the ground with the scope of his rifle. "Don't know where the ship's getting its power, but it's definitely usin' what it's got to run the fence. And there don't seem to be much in the way of patrols looking outward, apart from a few watchtowers — those alien assholes are too busy makin' the prisoners' lives hell, instead."
"More of an internment camp, then, than a regular prison," Hal wrinkled his nose, following Tector's gaze with a pair of field glasses. "Getting a little too World War II up in here for comfort — though I guess that's probably the point. Dad said when he was up in that ship with the Espheni before, they talked about setting aside protected areas for any humans who surrendered — made it sound all idyllic and shit. This must be what that concept looks like when it's at home."
"No flies on Tom Mason, no sir," John drawled.
"Something else they overlooked this time; the rail line goes right under the fence, next to the tether. Look. Even if we don't get tracks for the BFG this trip, we can probably still use it to take this motherfucker down. Shoot the ship, which conveniently can't get away; short out the tether; take down the fence," Tector pointed out.
John took the field glasses Hal handed him and followed Tec's gestures, easily noting the same features, even on a dark night with only a thumbnail crescent of moon visible in the sky. The fence made its own eerie floodlamp zone, rendering the area by the fence a no-man's-land that they wouldn't be crossing without a lot more scouting to map out the alien patrols. But it did make it easier to pick out the relevant details. Like how the only Skitters he'd seen since the last patrol they'd ducked out on the I-485 were the ones inside the fence with the prisoners.
"Gonna get ugly when we do," Maggie agreed, hovering behind Hal. "But yeah, it's doable."
"You folks are all fucking crazy," Sara murmured lowly, shaking her head at them all. "You seriously think you could take that thing down?"
"You ain't seen the grid gun yet," Lyle told her. "We were there when they fired it the last time. Taking it down's gonna be easy. Saving the people's gonna be the hard part."
"It always is," John sighed. "Okay then, boys and girls. Hal, Mags, Ox, Tector, follow the line of the I-77; we'll go right around the loop, check for weak points or anything else our esteemed President might want to know. It doesn't look like we'll get a chance to talk to anyone on the inside this time, so make note of everything you see. We'll camp for the night somewhere on the other side; Jesse, Dix and Nate will meet us with the horses."
Everyone murmured agreement, even Sara, and they moved out with determined faces and quiet feet, in macro echo of the assault on the farmhouse two evenings before. Too bad everyone in Charleston wasn't up to Berserker standards, or there'd be no stopping them; as it was, they'd yet to come up against an obstacle they couldn't eventually overcome. It was a good feeling; almost enough to make him believe Mason was right.
About the war, that is; not about Tom being a part-alien threat to Charleston. And even if he was — John was a selfish son-of-a-bitch, and they had Volm stun technology now.
John shook his head as that prickly issue finally settled itself in the back of his mind, and moved out, trailing Lyle, Nico, and Sara in his wake like a band of deadly ducklings in the dark.
The next morning, they set out for the next potential fence site, Greensboro, after reporting in — and after, to no one's surprise, Sara announced her intention to keep tagging along after all. It was a wrench to leave without doing anything else, but even Pope's Berserkers weren't crazy enough to kick over that massive of an anthill without a flamethrower backing them up. Or even a bomb; but they were all out of TNT.
The surprise came maybe an hour down the road to the north. John was pretty damn familiar with it between the original trek down from Boston and his and Mason's weary journey after the plane crash. It hadn't quite occurred to him, though, until the moment he caught sight of another group headed their way, that Keystone, West Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, were roughly equidistant from Charlotte, North Carolina.
The strangers were moving in a mix of surplus military vehicles and bicycle-powered transports, and about three quarters of the group wore military uniforms. But the two officers at the head of the group were blonde, fresh-faced, and female — and one of them was more than a little familiar. Lieutenant Fisher.
They'd set out partially to find the other President, but Hathaway's coterie had come to them.
Whatever that portended ... John didn't flatter himself that it was anything good.
-(4/10)-