Earthbound (22 page)
Authors: Joe Haldeman
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #General
There was a short line, five people, waiting outside the care center; six more on chairs inside. A nurse came out with a piece of paper taped to an otherwise useless notebook. She was a pretty girl in a white uniform, brightly clean, bisected by a thick belt holding up a heavy pistol in a low-slung holster.
She was not surprised that we didn’t have any California dollars, and accepted a box of dehydrated rice and Thai chicken as “symbolic down payment.” Roz signed a two-paragraph document that said, essentially, that she would pay after things settled down. There were dozens of signatures on the front and back of the sheet of paper.
I had a feeling that a blank sheet of paper was soon going to be worth more than one printed with a picture of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat.
Roz got into line, and we settled in for a leisurely lunch of crunchy chow mein. There was no way to boil water without breaking up furniture for a fire, and the food wouldn’t completely soften with cold water. But if you didn’t know where it came from, you might take it for some new exotic oriental dish.
There was a kind of flea market set up on the lawn outside the hospital, three folding tables covered with things of some or no value. An exquisite pearl-and-diamond necklace next to an almost-full box of .22 ammunition; the ammo worth more than the jewelry.
Elza traded a good Eterna writing stick for an odd kitchen implement—three small hourglasses mounted together, timing out three, four, and five minutes. A useful timepiece for standing guard watches.
After about an hour, the nurse came back and collected Elza; they were seeing patients in order of the severity of their problems. When she returned she was wearing a clear plastic cast and a dazed expression, still buzzing with painkillers. She claimed she was ready to move on, but agreed to rest in the shade until her eyes uncrossed.
They put on a stretchy sling that held Dustin’s left arm against his chest, and went under the other arm in a kind of figure eight. It reduced the pain from the broken collarbone but restricted his movements. Roz’s rib wasn’t broken, just a big bruise, and I was only worth a few dabs of antiseptic and plastiflesh. Felt funny on the inside of my lips.
If I’d been sitting two rows back, the tree that killed Stack would’ve hit me. Mother always said I was born lucky.
We still had a few hours of light, so chose not to spend the night in Holstock. There were plenty of empty houses, and no reason not to commandeer one, except that word would get around. Our weapons and ammunition were our only defense, but they were also a concentration of the only kind of wealth that had meaning in some circles.
We got all our gear together and started off going north on 2031, keeping an eye out for the gravel “fire road” that Mr. Lerner had described. It would only be a few miles, and Paul and Namir agreed that it would be better to spend the night on guard hidden out in the woods, as we had night before last, than be exposed on the side of the abandoned autoway.
I wasn’t so sure. Nobody could sneak up on us if we were out in the open. Of course, my judgment might have been affected by fatigue. I was tired of playing soldier and water boy. I wanted to find a piece of shade and collapse into it.
It was only about an hour, though, before we found the gravel road that plunged into the forest to the left. We followed it for a few hundred yards uphill and made camp before it started to go downhill again.
We settled in for the night in a little clearing that wasn’t visible from the fire road, leaving one person on guard by the road.
I had the fourth watch, roughly two till four. Staying awake was no trouble; some animal kept moving around somewhere out of sight.
Elza’s timer was easy to see in the moonglow. I counted out twenty-four five-minute turns and went to wake Dustin. The creature had stopped making noise, so I slept easily on my bed of fragrant branches, next to Paul but not touching. I could have used some contact, but he was sleeping soundly.
I woke to an unpleasant surprise: we had company. Spy, squatting at the base of a tree like an unholy white Buddha. His clothing was seamless, as if he had been dipped in plastic.
Elza had stood the last watch. She didn’t know when he had appeared; hadn’t said anything to him.
He stared at me with silent intensity. “So how long have you been here?”
“What makes you think I ever left?” He stood and brushed himself off. “The Others asked me to show myself.”
“Why?”
“They don’t explain why they do things. Maybe they wanted to introduce an irritant.”
Paul came up beside me. “Jesus. And no coffee.”
“Here.” Spy made a small motion with one hand, and two white china mugs appeared at our feet, steaming, aromatic.
Paul picked one up. “This isn’t real.”
“Try it.”
The mug was solid, hot. The coffee tasted good.
“I know it looks and feels real.”
A cup appeared in Spy’s hand and he sipped. “But you can’t make something out of nothing?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Do you know the story about the primitive savages who were shown their first movie? Twentieth century, film image projected on a screen.”
“Enlighten me.”
“They looked behind the screen, and there was nothing there. Subsequently, the image disappeared to them. Because it wasn’t real.”
“Is that true?” I said.
He smiled. “I read it in a book.”
I heard Roz come up behind me.
“Hello,” she said. “What the hell are you?”
“Hello, Roz. Think of me as a translator between you and the Others. We decided to call me Spy.”
“So what is your real name?”
“I don’t need a name. There’s only one of me.”
She sighed. “Is that coffee?”
Spy eventually conjured a cup of coffee for everyone who wanted it, and afterward sent all the cups back to wherever they’d come from. We had to come up with our own breakfast, though, adding water to boxes of scrambled eggs and refried beans. They heated up nicely but tasted a little plastic.
“It would be a friendly gesture,” Namir said to Spy, “if you agreed not to travel with us.”
“Wouldn’t it?” Spy agreed. “But I have my orders, so to speak.”
Paul pointed the riot gun in his direction. “I could blow you to pieces, and then chop up the pieces with the machete. But I guess that would be a waste of ammunition.”
“I don’t know. You’re welcome to try.”
He looked like he was considering it. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”
It was a storybook-beautiful morning, walking through the waking forest, but the gravel was starting to bother my feet. Get some sturdy walking shoes the next time we came to a store.
Spy walked in front with Paul, who didn’t say anything to him. I went up the line to ask Paul a question, but forgot it instantly. Three men stepped out of hiding with guns leveled. “Drop it!” one said to Namir, and then pointed his gun at me.
Paul carefully set down his weapon, and I did the same. I remembered him clipping a holster with one of the pistols under his shirt at the small of his back, but didn’t know whether it was still there. Everybody else put their guns down.
Two of the men were stocky and one slim, all of them white and shirtless, with identical Toyota tattoos on their chests. Their weapons were civilian, obviously expensive, more wood than metal, elaborately carved.
“Saw you on the cube, asshole,” the bigger one said. I braced myself, but he was talking to Spy. “You’re the mouthpiece for the aliens.”
“I am their avatar,” he said neutrally.
“I’ll give you a message.” He aimed the rifle at Spy’s chest and fired a burst of three or four shots at him.
He rocked back at the impact. But there was no blood, not a mark on him where the bullets had struck. “You missed,” he said.
He hadn’t, of course, but he stepped closer and fired four measured shots point-blank. Spy simply absorbed them.
“Hold it, Number One,” the slender one said. He shrugged out of the pack he was carrying and unsnapped a wicked-looking axe from it. “Let’s see you disappear
this
.” He hefted it with one hand and stepped forward to swing.
this
.” He hefted it with one hand and stepped forward to swing.
“Could work,” Spy said, and pointed a finger at him. There was a pop noise like a toy gun, and the top part of the man’s head, above the eyebrows, blew off. His determined expression didn’t change as he fell dead.
“Shit,” the leader said, and stepped back. Spy pointed the finger at him, and said “bang.” A stream of bullets chewed a hole out of the center of his chest. Daylight showed through before he fell.
The third one threw down his gun and ran back into the woods.
Namir picked up one of the weapons and inspected it, avoiding the bloody stock. It hinged open in the middle.
“Sportsmen,” he said, and shook one cartridge out. “One powder bullet, but if you miss, you can fry the beast with a laser.”
“One shot would be plenty,” Paul said, looking at the huge cartridge. “I don’t guess we need it, though.”
“Carry them a while and throw them away,” Namir said. “Throw the bullets away someplace else.” He slung the man’s assault rifle over his shoulder and looked around the bloody scene. “I suggest we not waste time burying this . . . human waste.”
“In the old days,” Roz said, “they’d hang them from the trees as a warning.”
“This will do,” Paul said. “Let’s move on.”
“I’ll search them first,” Namir said. He and Dustin started going through pockets. I gave the spray of blood and brains a wide berth, but did look through the skinny one’s pack. Half a loaf of hard bread and four tins of sardines. A plastic bag had three rounds for the big-game rifle and a handful of smaller cartridges.
There was an envelope with three detailed maps, one of them the whole state of California. A wallet full of useless money and a roll of California hundred-dollar bills, held together with a rubber band. A metal flask full of liquor.
One side pocket had a small silver pistol, and another held two boxes of ammunition for it, .25 caliber. Paul suggested I keep them, though they wouldn’t be much use in a “real” fight. I might get into an unreal one, I supposed.
He offered me a hand grenade with only a little blood on it. I demurred, and Roz stuck it in her purse.
The pack had plenty of room for the encyclopedia volumes and food I was carrying in the cloth bag. It only had two specks of blood, but did give me an uncomfortable, unclean feeling as I hoisted it onto my back and tightened the straps. A dead man’s chest, complete with a bottle of rum. But it was easier than carrying the heavy cloth bag. Paul snapped the small axe onto the side.
In case the noise of the encounter might have attracted unwelcome attention, Namir set us up hiding along the bluff that overlooked the road, to watch and wait for an hour. So I took the pack off again after wearing it for a few seconds.
Some kind of birds clattered down behind us to feed on the dead. They didn’t caw or cackle; there was no noise but the thud of their beaks and the tearing of cloth and flesh.
They were still playing with their food when Namir finally declared an hour had passed, and we set off into the still-cool morning.
We used the same pattern as the previous day, with an added precaution: whenever we stopped to rest, Dustin would sneak back to make sure we weren’t being followed.
People who would follow after what we left behind would be made of sturdy stuff. I got a glimpse of the buzzards’ banquet hall, ribs glistening out of two piles of red guts. The ripped remains of a face.
Though I supposed scenes like that would become common as sunsets in most the world. How many billion were left today? Five? With how many months of food? Four?
It was high noon by the time we reached the autoway. There was a tall fence topped with barbed wire, but the bottom of it had been burned open with a laser, the edges of the hole rounded beads of melt.
We went back to the shade of the forest to eat and have an hour of rest.
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