Dies the Fire

"Well, I think we can assume he's i

The man lying in a cage of barbed wire stank; he was also skeletally thin, and his left foot was missing, crudely bandaged with the remnants of a T-shirt. Enormous brown eyes looked out of a stubbled hawk-nosed face. Havel mentally subtracted twenty years and put him in his thirties.

"I should hope so," the prisoner croaked. "Do I look like I've been eating well?" He waved the stump. "I've been contributing to the pot. Aaron Rothman's the name."

"Mike Havel," Havel said. Then: "Get him out of there."

Two of the Bearkillers went in with a stretcher. Pam knelt beside it and soaked the bandage with her canteen, edging up one end of it. When she saw what lay beneath she swore and reached into her bag for a hypodermic.

"You're a doctor too?" Rothman said. "As well as the Amazon thing?"

"Vet, actually," Pam replied. "Too? You are a doctor? Medical variety?"

"GP," he confirmed and weakly held up a hand. "That's the only reason they didn't kill me, dearie, when I wouldn't… join up."

"Thank goodness," she said. "I've got to pull you through, then. We really need a doc."

The wounded man looked around at the mail-and-leather clad Bearkillers, and at Howie Reines and Ru

"Oh, I was so hoping this was all over," he sighed. "If only you'd come in helicopters!"

"It isn't over," Havel said grimly, as Pamela cleaned and rebandaged the gruesome wound. Red streaks went from it up the wasted calf. "In fact, it's probably just starting."

Rothman sighed. "It could be worse. I used to live in New York."

Havel looked around; there were half a dozen living captives, huddled under the Bearkiller blades. And about the same number of liberated prisoners getting help, counting Rothman and the girl who'd been screaming when he arrived-she huddled in a patch of shade, a blanket clutched around her shoulders and her eyes squeezed shut. A couple of young children, too-as far as he was concerned they were all prisoners, no questions asked.

"So, any of these i

The weight was featherlight. Rothman fumbled at his breast pocket-he was in the remains of slacks and shirt with pocket protector-and brought out a pair of glasses. He peered through them, and smiled with cracked and bleeding lips. It wasn't a particularly pleasant expression, and Havel didn't blame him one bit.

"Not a one, barring the children," he said. "And I'll testify to that in court."

"That won't be necessary, Dr. Rothman," Havel said, lowering him gently back to the stretcher. "Things have gotten a little more… informal, since the Change."

He looked up. There was a cottonwood growing out of the cliffside, dead and bleached but still strong; a convenient limb stretched out about ten feet up.

"Will!" he called. The Texan looked up; Havel jerked a thumb at the limb. "Get some ropes ready, would you? Three at a time ought to do."

"I can't! I'm sorry, so sorry!"

They were on a low hillside above the camp, which was the only way you could get any privacy. Havel drew his hands backward as Signe fumbled to refasten her clothes. His long fingers knotted on his knees in the cool sage-smelling darkness; herbs and long grass crackled under the blanket, adding a bruised spicy smell to the night.

"OK!" Havel said, turning his back a bit while zippers and snaps fastened. "Look, it's OK!"

No it isn't, he thought, and his voice probably gave his words the lie.

"I'm sorry. I thought I could-look, let's try-"

Havel made his gesture gentle. "No, we just tried to rush it, Signe," he said. "I know it isn't easy to get over the sort of thing you went through. Head on back to camp and tell them I'll be down in a while, why don't you?"

"Mike-"

"Signe, I said head on down."

He waited until her footsteps had faded in the darkness before he drew his sword and looked at the twisted stump at the foot of the-rock that blocked off the view to the west.

"Is it worth the risk to the blade?" he murmured. "Yes." A pause for thought. "Hell yes."

Then he spent twenty minutes of methodical ferocity hacking the hard sun-dried wood into matchstick splinters.

"You sure this is a good idea, Eddie?" Mack said, as they walked into the built-up area of Portland from the west.

"Look, who does the thinking here?" Eddie Liu replied.

"You do, Eddie," Mack said. "But this place gives me the creeps-all those stiffs. We've been eating pretty good out of town since things Changed. A lot of places are growing stuff, too, so we can get that when it's ready. Or maybe we could go east, I hear there are plenty of cows there and not many people. So I was just asking, are you sure about this?"

Eddie Liu shrugged at the question. "No, I'm not sure. But I am sure wandering around the boonies looking for food isn't a good idea anymore. People are getting too organized for the two of us to just take what we need."

Too many of the little towns had gotten their shit together, with committees and local strongmen and those goddamned Witches, of all crazy things. He could see the thoughts slowly grinding through behind Mack's heavy-featured olive face, and then he nodded.

"We have to hook up with somebody," Eddie finished. And Portland is where the organization is, he thought-or at least, that was what the rumors said.

He was betting that in a big city, or what was left of it, there would be less of the no-strangers-wanted thing they'd been ru

They trudged through endless suburbs; mostly smoldering burnt-out wreckage smelling of wet ash, wholly abandoned to an eerie silence broken only by the fat, insolent rats and packs of abandoned dogs that skulked off at the edge of sight. In the unburned patches there were spots where tendrils of green vine had already grown halfway across the street, climbing over the tops of the abandoned cars.

On the roof of one SUV a coyote raised its head and watched as he went by, alert but unafraid. Half a mile later they both yelled as a great tawny-bodied cat flashed by, too fast to see details-except that it was bigger than a cougar, nearly the size of a bear.

The beast was across the street and into an empty window in three huge bounds.

"Mother of God, I don't like the idea of going to sleep with something like that ru

Farther east they began to reach flatter stretches where the burnt-out rubble was only patches; this road in the area north of Burnside was flanked with old warehouses and brick buildings. Some of them looked grimy and run-down, others fancied up into loft apartments and stores and coffee shops and offices, with medium-height buildings on either side, but still there was no sign of human life.

There was one encouraging sign. Someone had pushed all the cars and trucks to the sides, so that there was a clear path down the street. That had to have been done since the Change.

No, make that two encouraging signs, Eddie thought.