The day after: An apocalyptic morning (28 page)

              "No, not The Who, The Eagles," Skip said. "Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh."

              Jeff shrugged. "Maybe my parents did. Didn't they sing Hotel California?"

              "That's them," Skip agreed. "I remember the last line of one of their songs. The song was The Last Resort. The line was about paradise."

              "What was it?"

              "If you call some place paradise," Skip quoted, "kiss it goodbye."

              Jeff didn't get it. "What the fuck does that mean?" he asked.

              "It means that you people have something that everyone is going to want. You have paradise. It's apparent just by watching you from the outside but its even more apparent by watching it from the inside. Somebody's gonna try to take this place away eventually. It's human nature. And you, as members of paradise, will give it to them by your inaction."

              "Why are you telling me this?"

              Skip took another hit. "I'm a guest of yours right now," he said. "But pretty soon I won't be. Pretty soon, I'm going to be in charge of security here."

              "Yeah? So what?"

              "So enjoy your pot-smoking on guard duty while you have a chance, my friend. Once I'm in charge, you won't be doing it. Nor will you be fucking anybody on guard duty. I guarantee it."

              Jeff started to laugh. "Oh, dude," he said, pulling out an expensive looking roach clip and inserting the joint into it, "you don't know the people in this town very well."

              "Oh, I think I do," Skip replied with a smile. "They just don't know me very well."

              For most of the night Jack, and especially Christine, had lain awake, tossing and turning, their minds worried sick about the fate of Skip. Was he dead? Was he alive? Had he been taken prisoner in Garden Hill? Or had he fallen to his death from the bridge? They did not know, could not know and their minds, insisting upon dwelling on the worst possible things imaginable, refused to shut down and let sleep take over for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time.

              Finally, after what seemed like days, first light touched the sky, turning the blackness into indistinct shadows and shapes. Wearily, both of them with bags beneath their eyes from fatigue, pulled themselves from their sleeping bags and put on the same wet clothing that they had worn since that day at the trailer.

              They ate a breakfast of spaghetti-O's, washing it down with sips of water from their canteens. They talked little as they ate, neither wanting to vocalize the fear that was gripping them. When the can was empty and the rumbling in their bellies quieted, Christine felt a familiar fullness in her lower regions. Though their limited diet had certainly cut back on the frequency of bowel movements in this new life, the mail did still go through every few days or so. It seemed that this was going to be one of those days.

              "I gotta go around the corner for a few minutes," she told Jack, using the euphemism for "I have to drop a load" that had developed among the three team members.

              "Don't use the poison oak to wipe with," Jack warned, repeating an overused joke between them, formulated on their first day with Skip when he had given them an amusingly serious lecture on that very subject.

              "I'll try not to," she dutifully replied, picking up her rifle and slinging it over her shoulder. "Once I get back we'll climb the hill and start looking."

              "Right," Jack said, deliberately injecting a note of optimism into his tone. Skip had instructed them to climb the hill and keep an eye on the bridge starting at first light. If his plans had gone well, he would wave them over.

              Christine walked out of the lean-to and into the rain, feeling the first icy sting of water on her face and wincing a little, as she always did at the first contact of the morning. She put her head down a little and trudged around the rocky outcropping they had made camp at. It was in a wider section of the canyonside cut, about two hundred yards from the tall ridge overlooking the bridge. She worked her way out of the rocks and into the area where the trees and foliage grew, sliding in between a group of pines. She found a relatively clear area and then dropped her pants, squatting down over a small hole she'd dug with the toe of her boot. She set her rifle down on the ground next to her, within easy reach.

              It was just as she was finishing up, just as she was wiping with a handful of wet leaves, that she began to get a very uncomfortable feeling. It was like what Skip had described to her when he'd sensed the two gunmen that had attacked him on the ridges. Her neck began to tickle, the hairs on it standing on end. Her pulse was suddenly beating faster and she had the strong sensation that she was being watched. Skip had told her that she should never ignore such a sensation, that non-mentally ill people rarely had such feelings for no reason.

              She dropped the leaves onto the ground and quickly pulled her pants back up, buckling the belt just enough to keep it from unfastening. Her eyes were looking outward as she did this, tracking over every rock, bush, tree, and mound of dirt, searching for whatever was jigging her senses. She saw nothing that she consciously considered to be out of the ordinary but, for some reason, she kept coming back to a group of boulders that was sitting about thirty yards away. They were just ordinary boulders, no different than a thousand others that she had seen, grouped in no particular pattern, but, as she looked at them, she became convinced that someone or something was behind them. Her adrenaline began to flow faster, her pulse to hammer harder. Where was the nearest cover?

              Slowly, trying her best not to look as if she was alarmed by anything, she reached down to pick up her rifle, wanting it's comforting weight in her hands. Just as her hand touched the plastic of the grip, there was movement from behind the boulders and a man suddenly emerged. He was wearing filthy blue jeans and an equally dirty forest green down jacket. His face was heavily bearded but did not have the sunken, haunted look of starvation. Whoever he was, he had been eating regularly. He carried no rifle but his right hand was hidden in the pocket of his coat. His eyes were looking at her as he walked forward, his mouth formed into a broad, ain't-I-glad-to-see-you smile that Christine instantly did not trust.

              "Well hello there, young lady," he said with obviously forced friendliness, his eyes remaining locked on her as he continued forward. "Wherever in the world did you come from?"

              Christine moved fast. If Skip had been there to see it, he would have been quite proud of her. In one swift motion she picked up her rifle and sidestepped to her left, throwing herself behind a tree. Once the trunk was between her and the mysterious man she swung towards him, bringing the butt of the rifle to her shoulder, her eye peering out over the sights. "Stop where you are!" she yelled, loudly enough for Jack to hear back at camp. "Don't come a step closer to me!"

              "Whoa," said the man, holding his left hand up in a gesture of appeasement. His right hand however, stayed in the jacket. His pace slowed a little but did not stop. "Nothing to get excited about. You don't need to go pointing a gun at me. I'm harmless."

              "I said stop!" she said. "Take your hand out of your pocket!"

              He slowed a little more but continued to move forward. He was now fifteen yards away. "Where did you find that gun anyway, sweetheart?" he asked. "It's awfully big for such a young girl. You really should put it down before you hurt yourself with it."

              "Stop, motherfucker!" she yelled. "I mean it! I'll shoot you!"

              "You don't want shoot anyone, do you?" he said, continuing his slow advance. "Really now. I'm here to help you. I'm a good guy. Why don't you..."

              "Don't take another step!" she warned, her finger tightening on the trigger.

              "Sweetheart," he said, "you need to put that gun down. I know you don't want anything bad to happen here, right?" He took another step forward. He would never take another.

              Christine squeezed the trigger twice causing the rifle to thump against her shoulder and sending the crack of two shots echoing off the rocks. Two holes appeared in the man's jacket, right in the center of his chest, sending a small puff of goose feathers out into the wind. He screeched as the wind was driven from his lungs and there was a flash from his right pocket as the gun he had hidden in there was fired. The bullet ripped a hole in the jacket and ricocheted off the ground about ten feet in front of her. The man then fell to his face on the ground, his hand still pinned beneath him.

              " Christine!" came Jack's voice from behind her. "What's going on? What's happening?"

              Before she could answer him, before he was even really done speaking, three more shots suddenly rang out from the boulders where the first man had come from. They were pistol shots - by now she was able to tell the difference - and she caught a brief glimpse of another bearded face in the gap between two of the rocks. Two of the bullets that had been fired whizzed by on her left. The last one struck the tree she was hiding behind.

              Before she even realized she was doing it, her finger was squeezing the trigger again, sending a hail of rifle bullets right back at him. The pinged and sparked as they hit the rocks. She fired five times and then stopped, her sight trained on the spot where she had last seen him.

              " Christine!" yelled Jack again, frantically this time.

              "Jack," she shouted back, "stay down. Take cover. There's one down and at least one behind some rocks over here."

              "Are you all right?"

              "So far," she yelled. "I'm behind cover."

              She continued to watch the rocks, her body tense, her eyes dilated, her heart going nearly one hundred and eighty beats per minute. She saw nothing but the rocks, heard nothing but the rain and the canyon. Had she hit the gunman back there? While it was possible, it would not be a good idea to assume that, or even to assume that there was only one more of them back there. What now? she wondered. Why the hell wasn't Skip here? Skip would know what to do.

              On the other side of the rise, near the lean-to, Jack was even tenser. He lay on his stomach behind a rock, his rifle trained outward towards where Christine had gone, but he couldn't see anything of the area where the shooting had come from. He did not know exactly where his sister was or where the gunmen were. He was useless. He needed to change that. Slowly, moving rock to rock, crawling on his belly, he inched forward until he was against the mound of rocks and sparse shrubs that stood between he and where he figured Christine had gone. He began to climb up it, step by step, foot by foot, picking his footholds carefully and making sure that his head stayed below the crest. When he reached the top he peered over, keeping his face behind a rock. He was able to see a body lying on the ground, face down. After a moment's searching he was able to see his sister. He could not, however, tell which rocks their enemy might be behind. There were simply too many rocks down there. Now what?

              Meanwhile, Christine had an idea. "You, with the gun," she yelled from her position behind the tree. "There are two of us out here with rifles. Come out now with your hands up and we won't kill you." As to what she might do if her offer was accepted, she did not quite know, but it was a mute point. The gunman or gunmen did not come out or give any indication that she had been heard.

              "Goddamn it," she muttered to herself, not even realizing she had spoken aloud.

              " Christine," hissed a voice from behind and to the right. It was Jack. "Don't look up here. Just nod if you can hear me."

              Though she was desperately afraid that her brother was exposing himself and though every big sister instinct that she had was commanding her to at least take a look, she kept her eyes forward. She nodded twice.

              "Where are they at?" he asked her next.

              "The group of rocks at my two o'clock," she said back, talking only as loudly as she thought necessary for him to hear her. Hopefully the gunman wouldn't hear as well.

              "The tall group with the big egg-shaped rock in the middle?" Jack asked.

              "That's right," she said. "There's at least one back there with a pistol. I don't think I hit him when I shot. Can you see anything back there?"

              "Nothing," Jack whispered after searching the formation with his eyes for a few moments. "What do we do now?"

              Christine looked around her for a moment, checking the terrain. There was not much to the right of her as far as cover or concealment. Trying to move that way would be a mistake unless she could verify that her assailants were down. But the left however, that led deeper into the trees. A person could find lots of things to hide behind back there. And even better was the fact that the tree line extended forward. "Hmmm," she hummed to herself, her mind spinning a thousand miles an hour. She risked a look over her shoulders, up to where her brother's voice had come from. She did not see him, but she gave him a series of hand signals. "Cover me," her gestures said, "I'm going to flank him to the left."