Sunrise Lands

"Yes, we have agreements on who can claim what here, as well," Juniper said encouragingly. "And there's more than enough steel and brass and aluminum and so forth, and will be for many an age. So as you say, it's cheap in most places."

Ingolf went on, his voice growing a bit more animated as he relived his great idea:

"What we went after was really valuable things-gold and silver, jewels, artwork that was famous before the Change, watches, machine tools that can be rerigged to run off water power, telescopes and binoculars… the sort of thing that's been worked out of places near to areas that still have people. Well, out east where I come from, that means going farther east, if you want to get somewhere unclaimed. East and south, down into the dead lands, past Chicago. I hear there are villages and farms up in parts of the Appalachians, but in the low lands from the old Illinois line to the Atlantic it's… it's still real bad."

Rudi and his mother nodded. They'd heard the same from California, where a few explorers had gone lately, and similar things about Europe from Nigel and others. Nearly everywhere in thick settled lands the streams of refugees from the great cities had overlapped one an other; they'd eaten the land bare and then died. Except those who took to living off man's flesh, but that was a losing game in the long run, with the fate of the Kilke

Some of those little groups of grisly predators barely had speech or fire, since they'd started with feral children run wild during the chaos. They were primitive in a way no human savages had ever been before, without the great store of knowledge and skill real wilderness dwellers had. And they still ate men, when they could.

"So… we'd gotten a few good hauls, better as we went farther east, but the problem was that money… well, you can rent a room and buy your beer with cash, but if you want to make a life, you need to have a place where you're welcome to settle as something more than a laborer, and that's not so easy. Most places aren't too open to outsiders buying land, and without you're pro tected by law all you've got is what you can carry in your saddlebags while you fight off all comers, and a man has to sleep sometime."

True enough, Rudi thought.

The Mackenzies took in anyone honest, peaceable and willing to work, and they had little in the way of internal division of rank or wealth, but that was very much an exception.

"After a couple of years, all the people left in my bunch, they were those who didn't have a home they could go to and use what they'd got. Even young as we were, we were getting tired of knocking around, risk ing our lives and then blowing it all on a bender before some big shot could tax it off us. Then we got this offer from a bunch of sheriffs near Des Moines, and the new bossman too; he'd just succeeded his father and wanted to make a splash…"

An aside: "Iowa's the biggest place going out east; the land's good, and they carried a lot of people through the dying time; there are more than two million there now."

Rudi whistled slightly, and Juniper nodded as well; that was as much as the whole Pacific Northwest, according to the best estimates they'd been able to get, and on only one fifth the area. Ingolf continued:

"So you can go for days and days, and it's all tilled land and settlements, or at least pasture, and big towns now and then, cities even, hardly any real wilderness except right along the Mississippi and in the northwestern border counties. The Iowa farmers-ranchers, they say farther west; I don't know what you call them here-and the sheriffs, they're rich as rich."

Both the Mackenzies followed the tale easily enough; being familiar with what went on east of the Cascades they mentally translated farmer/rancher and sheriff as landed knights and barons. Usually deputy or cowboy did duty for what most in the Willamette would call a man-at arms. The descendants of starving townsmen were generally on the bottom of the social heap, sometimes bound to the soil, outright slaves in a few of the worst places.

"We don't have lords here," Rudi said pridefully. "But I know what you mean."

"We were lucky, too, with it," his mother whispered in his ear, and then pinched it in mild reproof.

Rudi jumped a little. Vogeler plodded on, his big wasted hands knotted together, his voice and mind in a different time and place. But trapped there, knowing what was to happen and unable to warn his earlier self, watching it unfold again:

"So they made a deal with us. I had a reputation for getting the goods, and they offered to let us settle, give us land and rank, if we'd go where nobody had gone before-all the way east to the sea, and the museums and art galleries and such. They still care for such stuff in Iowa, you see, more than most places. And the new bossman of Des Moines… they call him the governor when they're being formal.. . sent along this little rat of a guy to check it all. And that would be the price of our new homes. We could all be deputies at least. I don't much like the way they treat ordinary people there, but beggars can't be choosers."

Vogeler smiled grimly. "There was even talk of a sheriff's daughter for me, and plenty of talk about how I was a sheriff by blood

… not that they really think any cheesehead's anything but a bear from the backwoods, that bunch. I thought they'd keep the deal, though, or at least most of it, so we signed up."

The hesitation left Ingolf's voice as he went on. "Well, it was a good deal, and like I said, we were all young. For a prize like that, we'd go to hellmouth and back, we thought. What I didn't know was who the little ratty guy, Joseph Kuttner his name was, was really working for. Neither did the bossman who paid his wages. So we crossed the Mississippi south of Clinton, all my bunch-we called ourselves Vogeler's Villains, same as my troop back in the Sioux War-"

Chapter Five

Cape Cod,

Near I

August 14, CY21/2019 A.D.

Ingolf cursed as sweat ran down into his eyes from the lining of his helmet-it was made from old kitchen sponges-and soaked the padding under his mail shirt. It was fiercely hot, with only a slight high haze, and wet as a soaked blanket with it, and the air buzzed with mosquitoes even a little past noon. If you went into the shade they ate you alive. At least he wore what they called a kettle helmet, with a wide sloping brim like a droopy canvas hat. He'd always preferred that to a close helm; the extra visibility and better hearing more than made up for any lesser protection, and it kept the sun off your face and neck. Plus in weather like this it let you breathe.

All he could smell right now was his own sweat and Boy's, and forest green from the scrubby sandy woods of oak and pine around, but his nose still tingled with trouble coming. Birds sang and insects buzzed; a swath of monarch butterflies swirled up from a patch of milk-weed growing in cracks in the pavement. They passed another dead car, a heap of rust and shattered glass, amid a scorch mark that showed where it had burned.

There were bones in the ditches, under rampant weed and brush. Every time he rode Boy off into the endless woods they crumbled beneath the shod hooves; leached by twenty years of rains and frost, by acid soil and scav engers, but still so many to start with they were everywhere, the skulls popping like eggshells.

The woods were also full of wet stagnant pits where basements had been; the houses had all been wooden frame, and they'd all burnt at one time or another. There must have been tens of thousands of them once all through this wasteland, and the thought made his skin crawl a little even now. All those little houses, in this place where no crops grew and you couldn't even find any decent water without digging and pumping, nothing but short twisty pines…