Dies the Fire

"Sure, the railroad's working," the ex-Seabee said to Eric. "It's the locomotives aren't working, bro. You can pull a hell of a lot more on welded rail than you can on a road, with a horse or with men. Fifteen, twenty times as much. So you get some work gangs out levering the dead locos off to clear the tracks. Use a hand-cranked windlass for that, off a boat, maybe… "

"Even this time of year, you'd have a couple of big lines of grain hopper-cars between here and Portland," Havel put in. "Probably they hauled those in, then got the idea of using the rails long-term."

Josh nodded. "From the look of the dirt, that berm's just finished. Last couple of days. I'd put topsoil on and then turf, to keep it from melting away in the winter rains."

"Yeah," Havel said, then pointed as the wind fluttered a ba

"That tells us something too," Havel said. "The folks back at Hood River weren't shitting us; this Protector guy really is a maniac. Loopy. He's not for real; he's playing games."

"Why?" Eric asked curiously, shifting in a creak of leather and chime of ringmail. "Astrid's always using stuff out of those books. So, I grant you she's a flake- a big-time, fresh- from- the- flake- box flake- but not a maniac."

"She uses the good-guy stuff, Eric," Havel said. "If I were ru

"Why not?" Eric said curiously. "If you're a bad guy, that is."

"'Cause most people don't think that way, even if they are rotten. How many are going to stick with you when things go wrong, if you advertise you're a shit?"

"Hey, it's cool to be baaaad."

"Not the same thing." Havel gri

Probably the only reason he got any traction at all was that Portland was a complete madhouse right after the Change."

"He's a fruitloop with a lot of troops, right now," Josh said. "That makes me nervous, Mike. You see the heads over the gateway? Those look too fucking real for this ol' boy's taste."

"Well, we are here to find things out. If Mr. Me So Bad has a lock on the Willamette, our people need to know so we can pick another destination. And they did say he didn't usually molest travelers who toed his line. Let's go. And mouths shut, ears open. This isn't risk-free, either."

Havel rode in at an easy fast walk; there wasn't much traffic, mostly improvised wagons drawn by men, or people on foot-thin and frightened-looking and mostly very, very dirty. He wrinkled his nose; the three Bearkillers were fairly ripe in their armor and gambesons, but they tried to keep the bodies underneath as clean as possible.

The guards were another story; all equipped in scale-mail, and all looking reasonably well fed. The heads spiked to the timber of the gate above their spearheads were all fairly fresh too. Above them, some sort of machine moved to cover them behind a slit in a sheet-metal shield; he'd have bet that was some sort of giant crossbow or dart-caster… or possibly a flamethrower.

"Hi," Havel said to their leader. "I'm here to see your Protector."

"Not just nails-twelve-inch spikes!" Alex Barstow crowed from inside the truck. "Crates of nice big bolts. And half-inch cable, by God, a whole hundred-yard spool. Fan-fucking-tastic!"

Outside his brother Chuck quirked a smile. "That's Alex. Do you know, even when we were little kids he could build the most fantastic castles out of matchsticks?"

A deep breath: "Do you really have to do this, Judy?"

"Chuck, I need to know what's going on out there epidemic-wise if I'm going to do my job helping keep this bunch healthy. We've been over this. I love you."

"I love you too," he said; they embraced. "Merry meet, and merry part."

"And merry meet again," Judy said; they both had tears in their eyes. "See you before Beltane."

Juniper had made her good-byes back at the Hall; she looked away, swallowing, as her friends made theirs, letting her fingers busy themselves checking her gear.

Then she waved and put her foot to the bicycle's pedal as Judy broke free. They were well past the Carson place, due west of Mackenzie territory; everyone around here knew them by now, and more to the point was familiar with their wagons and the way they sent them out to scavenge supplies from stranded trucks and abandoned stores.

Plus farms that looked to Sutterdown for guidance tended to shun the Mackenzies-Reverend Dixon's influence, she supposed. The Carsons and a few other cowan friends passed on news from there. Nobody would notice four Mackenzies on bicycles heading out from the wagon.

Steve scooted ahead of her, taking point as Sam Aylward called it; Vince dropped behind, and Judy pedaled beside her. The spring sun beat down on a world of green around them as their wheels scrunched, and on the quiet dirt country lane it might almost have been before the Change… save for the occasional car or tractor they passed, frozen since that evening; save for a farmhouse abandoned, or crowded with refugees.

And save for the ever-present faint acrid tang of smoke from cities burning.

"Keep your eyes open," she told herself.

They were going to loop up north, then cross the river and see what was going on near Corvallis.

"Time to come out of the cocoon and learn."

"You do yourself nicely here," Havel said.

He sipped at the single malt, savoring the smoky, peaty taste as he looked around the big high-ceilinged room and the glowing Oriental rugs on the floor; evidently if you had unlimited labor, it didn't take long to turn a library built in 1903 into a fair approximation of a palace. The wall that cut off this corner of the former Government Documents Room looked like professional work; the faint smell of fresh plaster confirmed it. Shelves had vanished, replaced by hangings and pictures that had the indefinable something that screamed money even to an art-infidel like Havel, or at least hinted at foraging parties with handcarts and sledgehammers backed up by swords and spearheads.

Di

Portland might be just getting by, uncounted millions were starving to death around the world, but the Protector and his friends certainly weren't on a ration book. There wasn't any point in not enjoying the di

The smell of the kerosene lamps was a little incongruous- but the light was welcome. You missed electricity after dark.

Norman Arminger and his wife lounged on a black-leather sofa; Havel was surprised she was with him. The scantily clad servants had given him the impression of a man with serious harem fantasies. The Protector leaned back with a shot of the whiskey in his hand; his dark-haired wife had a glass of white wine.