Tale of the Thunderbolt (40 page)

 

Four days later, Valentine and Post sat in the Academy Map Room. A pair of electric fans fought a losing battle with the lingering summer heat. Ahn-Kha stood behind and in between them. His bulk wouldn't allow him to do anything but demolish the antiques in the room, and the Grog had declined the offer by one of the Rangers at the meeting to go seek out a piano bench.

“We've accomplished part one,” the colonel said from the head of the library table, after hearing the reports from the various Rangers involved. “Now comes the hard part, getting those wagons up to the Ozarks. Zacharias, before my encounter with that piece of shrapnel, you used to be in charge of our northern areas. What's your suggestion?”

Zacharias's dark eyes studied the map, as if looking for something that would appear if he just stared long enough. “With the kind of men we'll need to guard the wagons, there's no question of slipping it through the San Antonio-Austin-Houston belt, though I bet we could get north of Corpus Christi. We're going to have to swing west of San Antonio. Not too far west, we can't be moving across the desert, either. The hill country could shield and water us.”

“That means crossing the Ranch.”

“The Ranch?” Valentine said. “What ranch?”

“You've never heard of the Ranch?”

Valentine began to shake his head, then stopped. “Wait, you mean what I think you mean? That's a legend in a lot of places. No one's ever proved it true.”

“What's this?” Post asked. “I've never even heard the story.”

“The Ranch,” the colonel said, “is a real place. Maybe elsewhere sometimes it is and sometimes it's not, but I'll tell you it's true in Central Texas. We've seen it. The Ranch, Mr. Post, is kind of an experimental farm the Kurians run. According to our sources, they use it to come up with new life-forms. Biological servants. Even something other than humans to squeeze the juice outta. Intelligent, but easier to handle.”

“There's a lot of strange sights to be seen in those hills,” Zacharias said. “The Kurian settlements give it a wide berth, there's a huge stretch of empty ringing it. The Ranch gives us our best chance of getting up to the Dallas area and past it. Then it's into the pinewoods of East Texas, and you'll be home. Getting back will be easier with no cargo to guard. We can either break up and get home in small groups the direct way or trace our route back.”

“It's your part of the country,” Valentine said. “If that's what you want to do, I'll support it. Whatever gives us our best chance of getting through without fighting.”

“Colonel, if we're going to try to get across the Ranch, I'd like to have Baltz along,” Zacharias said.

“I'll send word.”

“What's his specialty?” Valentine asked.

“Her specialty,” Zacharias corrected. “Back in the cattle-drive days, they used to have one or two old bulls to lead all the other cattle, especially for things like river crossings. Baltz is kind of like that, except she ain't a bull. Bullheaded, oh yeah. She grew up in the Ranch, worked there. Not in the secret buildings, on the outside. She knows the land. We'll need her and her staff, sure as a hot summer sunset.”

David Valentine scratched the bristle on his chin in thought, raking his memory. Only one animal on earth looked like that, and they were called . . . “Zebras, by God.”

“Yes, that's right, zebras,” Amelia Baltz said.

She was a square-built woman, a thick, tough-skinned German as solid as a Gothic cathedral. She rode with Valentine and her staff at the front of the wagon train when she wasn't driving her buckboard or conferring with the Ranger-scouts on the best path for the column to take. Her “staff” consisted of a towheaded thirteen-year-old girl named Eve, a walking suntan who was all scrawny limbs under a face that twitched like a rabbit when she thought. There was also an assortment of animals ranging from riding and packhorses to dogs, cats, and the only chickens Valentine had ever known to lay eggs while traveling.

“The zebras, David, come from an old — I guess you'd call it a zoo — near Kerrville. It was home to ostriches, too, and they're thriving in the hill country. The damn things'll kick your head clean off if you startle them, so don't wander into the brush to take a shit without looking for something with a feathery white ass. Funny thing is, you come up on 'em head-on, they turn and run. You sneak up behind . . .
swish-whack
.”

Baltz had a direct earthiness that came from better than forty years of life in the open. She wore bandannas over hair, mouth, and neck when the dust kicked up and settled on the broad brim of her hat, and an ancient pair of curving, head-wrapping sunglasses.

“Are we on the Ranch lands yet?”

“We're just skirting the edge. We've left the Grog-pickets behind. What they do if they cut our trail I don't know, they don't go into the Ranch proper, at least not anymore, even following an enemy. They ain't that dumb — no offense intended to your big-assed shadow there. The Ranch has its own security. One relief: the Hissers don't wander these hills, so we don't have to worry about lifesign.”

“No offense understood,” Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One walked alongside Valentine's horse, his long rifle protected from the dust by a soft leather sheath. “Perhaps the unusual animals are the reason people think this place is used by Kur for experiments.”

“We don't think, we know. I worked their lands, when I was nearer your age, David, or even younger. I was an electrician; I handled the lines running between the stations. Being a specialist means you see some things they don't want you to tell about, so they made me live on the Ranch, with some of the other people they couldn't do without. About twelve years ago, they decided to clean house and bring in some new people. They showed up, and I didn't like the way they were rounding us up for a ‘meeting.' I got Eve, jumped in a Hummer, and rode it till the oil ran out, then ran south on foot.

“I never saw much of what was going on inside the stations — I just worked the lines outside. When I had to work a box indoors, they blindfolded me until I got to the utility room. But even outside you saw things. Once I heard some kind of muttering in the underbrush and I looked down and these two pigs were nosing through some scrub. They weren't grunting, they were forming something like words, I just didn't understand.

“They've had a lot of trouble with breakouts. Keeping a pig in a pen and keeping a pig that thinks like you do is something else entire.”

“I can imagine,” Valentine said. He could imagine, too much. The hills felt as if they were waiting for him to turn his back. He would have almost preferred to hear that they were stiff with Reapers.

“Can you, boy? I wonder. There was a rumor that once something got out; they blasted a whole quarter of the place with nerve agents. Hold 'em up here a minute, me and the dogs are going to scout that tree line.”

 

The wagon train always got under way before dawn. Each move was a two-segment effort. The mounted screen of ranger scouts moved a day ahead of the column under Zacharias's lieutenant, charting the course for the wagons and choosing the best spots for stream-crossings, resting places, and the next night's campsight. The convoy of fifteen wagons and the rest of the escort made up the second segment. The convoy spent only about six hours a day in motion. The oxen pulled better with frequent rest stops and out-spans, and those always meant at least a couple of hours of delay while teams were unhitched and then reorganized.

Valentine left much of the management of the column to the Texans, and he and Post worked at getting their men to patrol effectively alongside the rangers. With their baggage in the wagons, the mix of former marines and sailors had to carry only their arms and ready ammunition, and perhaps a canteen or walking stick. There was some grumbling about marching while all the Texans got to ride, and there was some comment by the Texans about having to guard and support “foreign mouths” — though there was no complaint about the quality of Narcisse's chuckwagon cooking. Ahn-Kha and his surviving Grogs stuck close to Valentine as he moved about, like children keeping close to their parent among strangers.

“If we run into anything, our men will be glad the horsemen gave them warning, and the Texans will be grateful for all our rifles,” Valentine said to Post, when they talked over the men's adaption to the trail and their new allies. They both agreed that even after days in the wagons, sweeping wide around San Antonio, the column was still moving like a balky horse.

Steak on the hoof followed the wagon train, driven so as to muddle the wagon tracks and footprints. Regular barbecues in the evening gradually brought the two camps together, until Texans were teaching Jamaicans to play horseshoes and guitars, and the mariners were enthralling their hosts with stories and music, and dances and songs from the other side of the Gulf.

By the time they entered the lands Baltz identified as being on the Ranch proper, the column was as cohesive and cooperative as Valentine could have hoped, due to habit more than leadership or training. At rest halts, Valentine's soldiers took over the picket duty, fanning out to gather some of the seasonal crops growing wild: plentiful apples, squash, and pumpkins. Their foraging made a difference to the barbecues, and with the nights growing longer as October waned, the evening meals became more leisurely. Narcisse contributed her own ideas about cooking to the drive. Some of the Texans began to anticipate the nights when she cooked Creole dishes — the variety was welcome with night after night of slaughtered beef and preserved food.

It was at one peaceful camp, as Valentine walked the picket line with Post to make sure the sentries were under cover with good fields of vision, that a pair of the
Thunderbolt
's sailors, one Jamaican and one former Coastal Patrolman, came running down from a grass-covered hill.

“Captain, there's some kinda big animals the other side of this hill. They're making a hell of a noise,” the old New Orleans hand reported, moving from one foot to the other like a schoolkid asking for a trip to the toilet.

The Cat hardened his ears. It sounded like construction work, or logging. He thought he heard a tree being pushed over.

“Post,” Valentine said, “find Baltz, please. Tell her to meet me on top of that hill. Let the camp know we've seen something, but I doubt there's immediate danger. They wouldn't be making so much noise if they meant to cause trouble. Take my horse back, would you?” Valentine dismounted and placed a drum in his submachine gun, and shouldered the weapon.

“Let's have a look,” Valentine said to the men.

“Sir, that gun ain't gonna do much against what's on the other side of this hill.”

“We can always outrun it.”

“Two of us get away, then. The two fastest,” the Jamaican predicted.

They filed back up the hill and began to crawl through the grass and brush when they reached the crest. Valentine looked back toward the camp and saw Baltz and Eve trotting toward their observation point.

“Losey, go back down a ways and show 'em where we are,” Valentine said to the Jamaican, who nodded and crawled backwards out of sight.

Valentine heard the sound of another tree tipping and looked into the valley.

They were huge quadrapeds. More strange wildlife of Central Texas, he really couldn't —

“You've got to be kidding,” Valentine said. “Those are elephants, but with two trunks. Or is it one trunk cut in two?”

“Can't see too well, sir. My eyes have been fadin' since I turned thirty. See how they're using tools?”

Valentine did see. The gray giants were using picks and shovels to dig in a clearing they had enlarged in a patch of woods. Other elephants used their foreheads to knock trees over, facing outward from the clearing.

“What did I tell you, boy?” Baltz said, creeping up on her haunches. The girl watched silently from behind. “Don't that beat all? Them 'fants, looks like three or four families down there, they're getting set for winter. They're making a windbreak, some of the trees they're leaving up will be pushed together to make sort of a roof. They don't like the cold. Don't use fire, though. They talk, and you can hear them a long way away, the dogs pick up stuff below our hearing frequency. I knew we'd run into some 'fants in the next day or two — the dogs signaled it.”