After all, Gordon thought, she had more to lose in any escape attempt. It was a sign of her desperation that she was willing to throw herself in with two motley strangers from a nearly mythical north.
“Her name is Marcie,” the older woman told him. “We wasn’t sure you’d want to take us, so she brought some presents for you.”
With trembling hands, Marcie untied a black oilskin. “H-here’s your m-mail,” she said. The girl held the papers out delicately, as if afraid of defiling them with her touch.
Gordon nearly laughed out loud when he saw the sheaf of almost valueless letters. He stopped short, though, when he saw what else she held: a small, ragged, black-bound volume. Gordon could only blink then, thinking of the risks she must have taken to get it.
“All right,” he said, taking the packet and tying it up again. “Follow us, and keep quiet! When I wave like this, stay low and wait for us.”
Both women nodded solemnly. Gordon turned, intending to take point, but Johnny had already ducked ahead, leading the way down the trail to the river.
Don’t argue this time. He’s right, damn it.
Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.
Hating the fact that he was “important” once again, he crouched and followed Johnny, leading the women toward the canoes.
15
There was no choice of which way to go. Spring’s thaw had begun, and the Rogue was already a rushing torrent. The only thing to do was head downstream and pray.
Johnny still exulted over his successful kill. The sentry hadn’t turned until he was within two steps, and had gone down nearly silently as Johnny tackled him, ending his struggles with three quick knife thrusts. The young man from Cottage Grove was full of his own prowess as they loaded the women into the boat and set off, letting the current pull them into midstream.
Gordon hadn’t the heart to tell his young friend. But he had seen the guard’s face before they tumbled him into the river. Poor Roger Septien had looked surprised—hurt—hardly the image of a Holnist superman.
Gordon remembered his own first time, nearly two decades ago, firing at looters and arsonists while there still remained a chain of command, before the militia units dissolved into the riots they had been sent to put down. He did not recall being proud, then. He had cried at night, mourning the men he killed.
Still, these were different times, and a dead Holnist was a good thing, no matter how you cut it.
They had left a beach littered with crippled canoes. Every moment of delay had been an agony, but they had to make sure they weren’t followed too easily. Anyway, the chore gave the women something to do and they went at it with gusto. Afterward, both Marcie and Heather seemed a bit less cowed and skittish.
The women huddled down in the center of the canoe as Gordon and Johnny hefted paddles and struggled with the unfamiliar craft. The moon kept ducking in and out behind clouds as they dipped and pulled, trying to learn the proper rhythm as they went.
They had not gone far before reaching the first set of riffles. In moments the time for practice was over as they went crashing through foamy rapids, barely skimming past glistening, rocky crags, often seen only at the last moment.
The river was fierce, driven by snow melt. Her roar filled the air, and spray diffracted the intermittent moonlight. It was impossible to fight her, only to cajole, persuade, divert, and guide their frail vessel through hazards barely seen.
At the first calm stretch, Gordon guided them into an eddy. He and Johnny rested over their oars, looked at each other, and at the same moment burst out laughing. Marcie and Heather stared at the two men—giggling breathlessly from adrenaline and the roar of freedom in their blood and ears. Johnny whooped and slapped the water with his paddle.
“Come on, Gordon. That was fun! Let’s get on with it.”
Gordon caught his breath and wiped river spume out of his eyes. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “But carefully, okay?”
They stroked together and banked steeply as the current caught them again.
“Oh, shit,” Johnny cursed. “I thought the last one …”
His words were drowned out, but Gordon finished the thought.
And I thought the last one was bad!
Gaps between the rocks were narrow, deadly shoots. Their canoe scraped horribly through the first, then shot out, canting precipitously. “Lean hard!” Gordon shouted. He wasn’t laughing now, but fighting to survive.
We should have walked … we should have walked … we should have walked.…
The inevitable happened sooner, though, than even he expected … less than three miles downstream. A sunken tree—a hidden snag just beyond the hard rock face of a turn in the canyon wall—a streak of rolling water cloaked in darkness until it was too late for him to do more than curse and dig in his paddle to try to turn.
An aluminum canoe might have survived the collision, but there were none left after years of war. The homemade wood-and-bark model tore with an agonized shriek, harmonized by the women’s screams as they all spilled into the icy flood.
The sudden chill was stunning. Gordon gulped air and grabbed at the capsized canoe with one arm. His other hand darted out and seized a grip on Heather’s dark hair, barely in time to keep her from being swept away. He struggled to avoid her desperate clutching and to keep her head above water … all the while fighting for his own breath in the choppy foam.
At last he felt sand beneath his feet. It took every last effort to fight the river’s pull and the sucking mud until he was able at last to haul his gasping burden out and collapse onto the mat of rotting vegetation by the steep shore.
Heather coughed and sobbed next to him. He heard Johnny and Marcie spluttering not far away, and knew that they had made it, too. There wasn’t a flicker of energy to spare for celebration, though. He lay breathing hard, unable even to move for what felt like hours.
Johnny spoke at last. “We didn’t really have any gear to lose. I guess my ammo’s wet, though. Your rifle gone, Gordon?”
“Yeah.” He sat up groaning, touching a thin gash where the breaking canoe had stroked his forehead.
There did not seem to have been any serious injuries, though the coughing was now starting to shift over to general shivers. Marcie’s borrowed clothes stuck to the blond concubine in ways that Gordon might have found interesting had he not been so miserable.
“W-what do we do now?” she asked.
Gordon shrugged. “For starters we go back in and get rid of the wreck.”
They stared at him. He explained. “If they don’t find it, they’ll probably assume we went a whole lot farther than this, tonight. That could turn out to be our only advantage.
“Then, when that’s done, we head overland.”
“I’ve never been to California,” Johnny suggested, and Gordon had to smile. Since they had discovered that the Holnists had another enemy, the boy had spoken of little else.
The idea was tempting. South was one direction their pursuers wouldn’t expect them to go.
But that would mean crossing the river. And anyway, if Gordon remembered correctly, the Salmon River was a long way south of here. Even if it were practical to sneak through a couple of hundred miles of survivalist baronies, there just wasn’t time. With spring here, they were needed back home worse than ever.
“We’ll wait up in the hills until pursuit’s gone past,” he said. “Then we might as well try for the Coquille.”
Johnny, forever cheerful and willing, did not let their dim chances get him down. He shrugged. “Let’s go get the canoe then.” He jumped into the frigid, waist-deep water. Gordon picked up a sturdy piece of driftwood to use as a gaff, and followed a little more gingerly. The water wasn’t any less bitterly cold the second time. His toes were starting to go numb.
Together they had almost reached the belly-up canoe when Johnny cried out and pointed, “The mail!”
At the fringe of their eddy, a glistening oilskin packet c
ould be seen drifting outward, toward the swift center of the current.
“No!” Gordon cried. “Let it go!”
But Johnny had already leaped head first into the rushing waters. He swam hard toward the receding package, even as Gordon screamed after him. “Come back here. Johnny, you fool! It’s worthless!
“Johnny!”
He watched hopelessly as the bundle and the boy chasing it were swept around the next bend in the river. From just ahead there came the heavy, heartless growl of rapids.
Cursing, Gordon dove into the freezing current and swam with all his might to catch up. His pulse pounded and he inhaled icy water along with every desperate breath. He almost followed Johnny around the bend, but then, at the last moment, he grabbed an overhanging branch and held on tightly … just in time.
Through the curtain of foam he saw his young friend tumble after the black package into the worst cascade yet, a horrible jumbling of ebony teeth and spray.
“No,” Gordon whispered hoarsely. He watched as Johnny and the packet were swept together over a ledge and disappeared into a sinkhole.
He continued staring, through the hair plastered over his eyes and the blinding, stinging droplets, but minutes passed and nothing emerged from that terrible whirlpool.
At last, with his grip slipping, Gordon had to retreat. He drew himself hand over hand along the shaky branch until he reached the slow, shallow water at the river’s bank. Then, mechanically, he forced his feet to carry him upstream, slogging past the wide-eyed women to the ruined bark canoe.
He used a driftwood hook to draw it after him behind a jutting point in the canyon wall, and there he pounded the little boat to pieces, smashing it into unrecognizable flinders.
Sobbing, he kept striking and slashing the water long after the bits had sunk out of sight or drifted away.
16
They passed the day in the brambles and weeds under a tumbledown concrete bunker. Before the Doomwar, it must have been someone’s treasured survivalist hideaway, but now it was a ruin—broken, bullet-scarred, and looted.
Once, in prewar days, Gordon had read that there were places in the country riddled with hideouts like this—stockpiled by men whose hobby was thinking about the fall of society, and fantasizing what they would do after it happened. There had been classes, workshops, special-interest magazines … an industry catering to “needs” which went far beyond those of the average woodsman or camper.
Some simply liked to daydream, or enjoyed a relatively harmless passion for rifles. Few were ever followers of Nathan Holn, and most were probably horrified when their fantasies at last came true.
When that time finally arrived, most of the loner “survivalists” died in their bunkers, quite alone.
Battle and the rain forest had eroded the few scraps left by waves of scavengers. Cold rain pattered over the concrete blocks as the three fugitives took turns keeping watch and sleeping.
Once they heard shouts and the squish of horses’ hooves in the mud. Gordon made an effort to look confident for the women’s sake. He had taken care to leave as little trail as possible, but his two charges weren’t even as experienced as the Willamette Army scouts. He wasn’t at all sure they would be able to fool the best forest trackers who had lived since Cochise.
The riders moved on, and after a while the fugitives were able to relax just a little. Gordon dozed.
This time he did not dream. He was too exhausted to spare any energy for hauntings.
They had to wait for the moonrise before setting out that night. There were several trails, crisscrossing each other frequently, but Gordon somehow kept them going in the right direction, using the semipermanent ice on the north sides of the trees as a guide.
Three hours after sunset, they came upon the ruins of a little village.
“Illahee.” Heather identified the place.
“It’s been abandoned,” he observed. The moonlit ghost town was eerie. From the former Baron’s manor to the lowliest hovel, it seemed to have been picked clean.
“All the soldiers an’ their serfs were sent up north,” Marcie explained. “There’s been a lot of villages emptied that way, last few weeks.”
Gordon nodded. “They’re fighting on three fronts. Macklin wasn’t kidding when he said he would be in Corvallis by May. It’s take over the Willamette or die.”
The countryside looked like a moonscape. There were saplings everywhere, but few tall trees. Gordon realized that this must have been one of the places where the Holnists had tried slash-and-burn agriculture. But this country was not fertile farmland, like the Willamette Valley. The experiment must have been a failure.
Heather and Marcie held hands as they walked, their eyes darting fearfully. Gordon couldn’t help comparing them to Dena and her proud, brave Amazons, or to happy, optimistic Abby back in Pine View. The true dark age would not be a happy time for women, he decided. Dena had been right about that much.
“Let’s go look around the big house,” he said. “There might be some food.”
That sparked their interest. They ran ahead of him to the abandoned manor with its stockade and abatis surrounding a solid, prewar house.
When he caught up they were huddled over a pair of dark forms just within the gate. Gordon flinched when he saw that they were skinning and flaying two large German shepherd dogs. Their master couldn’t take them on a sea voyage, he realized a little sickly. No doubt the Holnist Baron of Illahee grieved more over his treasured animals than over the slaves who would die during the mass exodus to the promised lands up north.
The meat smelled pretty ripe. Gordon decided he would wait a while, in hopes of something better. The women, though, weren’t quite so finicky.
So far they had been lucky. At least the search seemed to have swept westward, away from the direction the fugitives were headed. Perhaps General Macklin’s men had found Johnny’s body by now, falsely confirming the trail toward the sea.
Only time would tell how far their luck would last though.
A narrow, swift stream swept north from near abandoned Illahee. Gordon decided it could be nothing other than the south fork of the Coquille. Of course there were no convenient canoes lying about. The torrent looked unnavigable anyway. They would have to walk.
An old road ran along the east bank, in the direction they wanted to go. There was no choice but to use it, whatever the obvious dangers. Mountains crowded in just ahead, hulking against the moonlit clouds, blocking every other conceivable path.
At least the going would be quicker than on the muddy trails. Or so Gordon hoped. He coaxed the stoic women, keeping them moving at a slow, steady pace. Never once did Marcie or Heather complain or balk, nor were their eyes reproachful. Gordon could not decide whether it was courage or resignation that kept them plodding on, mile after mile.
For that matter, he wasn’t sure why he persevered. To what point? To live in the dark world that seemed certain to come? At the rate he was accumulating ghosts, “crossing over” would probably feel like Homecoming Week anyway.
Why? he wondered. Am I the only Twentieth-Century idealist left alive?
Perhaps, he pondered. Perhaps idealism really was the disease, the scam, that Charles Bezoar had said it was.
George Powhatan had been right, too. It did you no good to fight for the Big Things … for civilization, for instance. All you accomplished was getting young girls and boys to believe in you—to throw their lives away in worthless gestures, accomplishing nothing.
Bezoar had been right. Powhatan had been right. Even Nathan Holn, monster that he was, had told the essential truth about Ben Franklin and his constitutionalist cronies—how they had hoodwinked a people into believing such things. They had been propagandists to make Himmler and Trotsky blush as amateurs.
… We hold these truths to be self evident …
Hah!
Then there had been the Order of the Cincinnati, made up of George Washington’s officers who—halfway embarked one night upon a mutinous
coup—were shamed by their stern commander into giving their tearful, solemn vow … to remain farmers and citizens first, and soldiers only at their country’s need and call.
Whose idea had it been, that unprecedented oath? The promise was kept for a generation, long enough for the ideal to set. In essence, it lasted into the era of professional armies and technological war.
Until the end of the Twentieth Century, that is, when certain powers decided that soldiers should be made into something more than mere men. The thought of Macklin and his augmented veterans, loosed on the unsuspecting Willametters, made Gordon heartsick. But there wasn’t anything he or anyone else could do to prevent it.
Not a whit can be done about it, he thought wryly. But that won’t keep the damn ghosts from pestering me.
The South Coquille grew more swollen with every mile they slogged, as streamlets joined in from the enclosing hills. A gloomy drizzle began to fall, and thunder rumbled in counterpoint to the roaring torrent to their left. As they rounded a bend in the road, the northern sky brightened with distant flashes of lightning.
Looking up at the glowering clouds, Gordon almost stumbled into Marcie’s back as she came to a sudden halt. He put out his hand to give her a gentle push, as he had been forced to do more and more often the last few miles. But this time her feet were planted.
She turned to face him, and in her eyes there was a bleakness that went beyond anything Gordon had seen in seventeen years of war. Chilled with a dark foreboding, he pushed past her and looked down the road.
Thirty yards or so ahead lay the ruins of an old roadside trading post. A faded sign advertised myrtlewood carvings for sale at fabulous prices. Two rusted automobile hulks lay half settled into the mud in front.
Four horses and a two-wheeled cart were tethered to the slump-sided shack. From under the canted porch roof, General Macklin stood with his arms folded, and smiled at Gordon.