The Growing

The Growing

CHAPTER ONE

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”

1

THE TAVERN IS dimly lit, cozy, and smells faintly of wood smoke and evergreen. Still six weeks from Christmas, it is, nonetheless, festooned with sprigs of pine and gaily blinking lights that chase themselves around the walls and rafters in a never ending race.

In deference to the blowing storm outside, the tavern is almost empty. Two couples move slowly across the small dance floor as Randy Travis croons from the juke about old men talking about the weather.

At the far back, where the long, battle scarred bar meets the rear wall, the bartender, a bearish man with a winter-thick beard, sits and thumbs though an old issue of “Detective Thrillers”, his large thumb unknowingly caressing the nearly bare breast of the vixen on the dog-eared cover.

Almost directly across from him, a toothless old codger, well into his cups, lifts his head and stares blearily at the ‘keep through yellowed, rheumy eyes. “Turn on the tube, Harry,” he slurs, toothless mouth working, “I wanna see the game.”

The bartender rolls his eyes and lowers his magazine just enough to pin the old man with a glare. “It’s Wednesday, ya old coot. You know there ain’t no game on.”

“Turn it on anyway. Damn juke’s makin my ears bleed.”

Sighing, Harry tosses his magazine on the bar and stands up, wiping his hands on his too-tight jeans. Reaching up, he twists the knob on the ancient television set sitting on a shelf above the hanging wine glasses that are never used.

The set comes to life gradually, grudgingly, showing fat snowflakes of static with vague, doubled images parading around behind them, incomprehensible to the naked eye. Biting off an oath, Harry twists the channel knob, getting nothing but static all the way across the dial.

“Stupid…tub a’….bolts…” Raising a ham-sized fist, the bartender smacks the side of the set. The picture wavers, then reduces itself to a tiny dot before winking out completely. “Damn it, Clut! Ya made me bust my damn TV.”

“Didn’t make ya do nothin’, Harry. Now get me another drink. I ain’t gittin’ any younger here, ya know.”

“Quit flappin ya gums, old timer. I’ll get to ya.”

Harry turns and looks down to the other end of the bar, where a lone figure sits, clasping a nearly empty bottle of beer in one large hand.

“How bout you, Koda? Want another?”

The figure lifts its head, revealing the face of a stunning woman whose long, dark hair brushes past the shoulders of her oilskin duster. Her smile dazzles the barkeep as she shakes her head slowly. “No thanks, Harry. This one’s fine.”

The ‘keep grunts and turns away, more to slow his racing heart than anything else. He’s never sure why he asks the same question week after week, since he already knows he’ll get the same answer. Dakota Rivers is as sure as clockwork, coming in every Wednesday evening, rain or shine, staying long enough to drink one beer, leaving a large tip, and driving home.

A solitary and quiet woman, she never offers much in the way of conversation, but on the rare nights when alcohol and testosterone mix poorly, she’s always there with a strong hand and a no nonsense glare that stops most fights unborn.

Maybe he asks for that reason, or maybe it’s just so he can see one of her infrequent smiles. Smiles that always make his guts flutter like a butterfly was trapped in his belly, struggling to get out.

Fetching a deep sigh, he reaches under the bar and draws forth a full bottle of Wild Turkey, Old Clut’s drink of choice. As he breaks the seal, the television turns back on again with a loud burst of static, scaring a few more gray hairs into him.

“What the hell?”

The snow obscures the screen for a moment, then clears suddenly, to reveal the face of a teenaged boy.

“That’s Cal Martin’s kid, ain’t it?” Harry asks no one in particular. “What the hell is he doin on TV?”

The boy’s face is battered and bloody, and the few untouched areas are white as chalk. His eyes are wide saucers revealing a soul very close to madness.

“Run!!” he shouts into the camera, body trembling as if he’s holding a live wire. “Get outta here!! They’re killing everybody! They’re….oh God…RUN!!!”

He looks off camera then, and his eyes widen even more. His lips curve and stiffen in a rictus of horror, and a scream, high and breathless, comes up from his very being. He turns and manages a few stumbling steps before an arm darts into the camera’s range and yanks him back by his long, greasy hair.

The scream goes on and on until it is abruptly ended when another arm joins the first and easily snaps his neck. The sound is loud, like a rifle shot, and seems to echo in the suddenly silent air of the bar.

“Jes-us Christ,” Harry breathes as the boy’s lifeless body is indifferently dropped to the ground.

The arms retreat, then reappear, this time attached to the body of a tall, broad-shouldered male. The male turns, faces the camera, and smiles. The picture fades to snow again, blotting out everything but the thin band of silver resting just above the Adam’s apple of the smiling killer.

The silence is again broken, this time by the sound of exploding glass as the whiskey bottle Harry has been holding drops from his nerveless fingers to shatter on the floor. The liquid hisses and foams, then goes silent.

Dakota recovers first and strides down the bar until she is opposite the stunned bartender. “Harry?”

When he doesn’t answer, she tries again. “Harry?”

He finally turns, and when he does, his expression is eerily reminiscent of the now dead boy’s. “Was that…?”

“Yeah.”

“But how…?”

Dakota shakes her head. “I don’t know. But I’m gonna try to find out.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Dakota takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “First, I’m going to check up on my family.”

Harry’s eyes widen. “Your family? They don’t…?”

“No, but some of their neighbors do, and if what this kid was saying is true….”

“Dear God.”

Dakota’s hand reaches out and manages to clamp onto Harry’s elbow, preventing him from collapsing onto the floor. “Harry, listen to me. We’re not sure what’s going on yet, and yeah, it looks pretty damn bad, but you can’t panic, alright? You need to keep your head on straight. Going nuts or passing out isn’t gonna help anyone, least of all yourself.”

Looking into his shining eyes, Dakota isn’t too sure what, if anything, is getting through, but she feels a little better once she senses the body under her hand firm up slightly. She lets go, cautiously, ready to grab him if it seems like he’s going to fall out again.

“Are you alright?”

Harry snorts. “No. But I guess I’m gonna have to be, huh?” He looks at her with such an expression of naked pleading that her guts twist, deep inside. “What am I gonna do, Koda? What are any of us gonna do…if what he said is true….”

Dakota looks over her shoulder. The tavern is now empty, except for Clut, who is passed out cold on the floor—drunk or in shock, she doesn’t know, and doesn’t really care. “You got a cot back there, right?”

“Yeah, but what…?”

“Look, this is the safest place you can be right now. There’s no windows, and the doors are solid. Just lock up tight, stay in the back, and don’t let anyone in who you don’t know personally, alright? As soon as I make sure my family is safe, I’ll try and make it back here with whatever information I have.” She sighs. “I know it’s not much, but it’s the best I can offer right now.”

Harry nods slowly. “Okay, Koda. I can do that.”

Dakota gives him a slight smile. “Good. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Make sure you lock up the minute I leave, and remember, don’t open the door up for anyone, no matter what they say, unless you know them well, alright?”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Take it easy, Harry. I’ll be back soon.”

Walking out into the storm, Dakota waits until she hears the door lock securely, then heads out to her truck.

It is the last time she would see Harry alive.

2

Scrambling around her townhouse, Kirsten quickly throws as many things as she can into a duffle bag. Her computer and other equipment is already packed in her SUV, and all she has to do now is grab some clothes, which are spread all over her home.

She listens to the screaming of sirens that make it sound as if the city was coming down around her. She knows she has to get out and get out fast. As she grabs a heavy coat off the rack by the door, she chastises herself for not having anything ready sooner. She has had a bad feeling for months, and now she knows she had been right all along.

Carefully opening the door, she takes a peek outside to make sure there isn’t anyone in the area. Satisfied it’s safe, she steps outside runs hell-bent-for leather to her truck. Just as she slips the key into the lock, there is the sound of rapid gunfire.

“Oh shit!” The adrenaline courses through her body as she manages to key the truck unlocked and scramble inside. “I gotta get out of here.”

She sits very still, half ducked under the dashboard, and watches as two police cars go by with lights and sirens blazing full tilt. Taking a deep breath, Kristen starts the truck and pulls out of her designated parking space, knowing that she’ll never see the place she calls home again.

She knows the image will forever be burned into her mind as the day her world ended.

Driving slowly down the street, she tries to look as normal as possible, as if anything could be called normal anymore. The last thing she wants to do is call attention to herself. Getting well away from the city is the only hope that she has and she knows it.

Turning left onto a lesser-used street that is—or used to be— mostly small businesses, she hopes that it will keep her out of residential areas and possibly out of their sensors.

She can hear more sirens and something that sounds like muffled pops. Her foot presses down slightly on the accelerator as the realization hits her that it’s probably gunfire.

There is a growl from the backseat and a large German Shepard raises his massive head, resting it on the back of Kirsten’s seat.

“Easy Asimov. It’s okay boy. We’re getting the hell out of Dodge.”

The dog climbs over the back seat and takes his regular place in the front seat across from his favorite human. Kirsten reaches over and gives him a scratch on the head. This simple action makes her feel better than she has in weeks.

Months, if you have to be truthful about it, Kirsten. You knew this was going to happen. You’ve known it for a long time. Maybe since the beginning.

“We’re gonna be okay boy. I promise.”

Whether that promise is for him or for her, she doesn’t know, but the sound of her own voice calms her.

She looks around carefully, noticing that the streets are now deserted. A once thriving, lively community reduced to a ghost town in a matter of hours.

Jesus, save this sinner, now and at the hour of her death. Amen.

She’s not a particularly religious person, agreeing for the most part with the “opiate of the masses” appellation, but grade school catechism makes its presence known at the oddest of moments, and she can’t spare the time to question it right now.

Asimov heaves out a sigh and lays down in the seat, seemingly undisturbed by Kirsten’s nervousness.

As she makes another turn, speeding up to get past a large apartment complex, Asimov raises his head and begins growling in earnest. She’s watching him as he faces the window and barks like mad.

Suddenly the truck impacts with something and Kirsten’s head jerks up as a man, bloody and beaten, rolls onto the hood. He is still alive, panicked, and obviously running for his life.

“Help me!” he screams as he pounds on the windshield with his hand. “For God’s sake, please help me!”

Kirsten slams the brake, causing the man to slide though he manages to hang on by grabbing the windshield wiper. Asimov’s barking grows more intense, and she knows what she has to do. Looking the man directly in the eye she says, “I’m sorry.”

Throwing the truck into reverse, she backs up quickly. The force of the acceleration throws the man from the hood and to the ground. Hitting the gas, she speeds past him. Looking in the rearview mirror she can she three of them moving in on him, one of them pointing a rifle at his head. The blast seems to follow her, her guilt displayed for all in Dolby sound, and she speeds up, headed for the freeway that will take her away from this madness.

3

Dakota’s truck, a decade old campaigner who has been with her since she learned to drive, growls low and moves with confident speed over the packed and blowing snow covering the roads. The sound of the chains rattling as they cut through the icepack can be heard even over the fierce blowing wind.

In this part of South Dakota, where distances between neighbors are oft-times measured in miles instead of yards, or feet, she knows that at the very least, under optimal conditions, it will take her a half hour to reach her parents’ house. With the blizzard, the more likely estimate is forty five minutes, minimum.

She glares at the racked mike of her dashboard CB, listening as static, very much like what was on the television, hisses at her. It is the only response to the constant calls she’s been putting out. Her parents have a big base unit in their home and her youngest brother, Washington, is an absolute radio fiend and is never more than three steps away from it.

“You bastards better not have hurt my family, or I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands.”

It’s pretty impotent, as threats go, but a part of her feels better for having said it. Without bothering to signal, she makes the looping left turn that leads her to her parents’ street, hoping against hope that time is still on her side.

4

After driving for two hours, Kirsten finally feels like she can slow down and take a moment to breathe. Her route has taken her off the freeway and onto two lane state highways, less frequently used and completely desolate in some places. Pulling onto a wide spot in the road, she puts the truck in park and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

Asimov sits up and looks at her, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth and his ears completely perked up.

“Bet you need a break doncha?” She nods and pats him. “Okay, but make it quick.”

Getting out of the truck and walking around the front, she can see spots of blood on the grillwork. Feeling slightly sick to her stomach, she reaches over and grasps the handle of the passenger door to let the dog out.

Asimov quickly begins scouting for just the right place to take care of business. Kirsten leans against the truck and takes another deep draught of air. Looking up into the night sky, the normal, familiar twinkling of the stars gives her a false sense of security.

“God,” she sighs, looking away to find Asimov sitting in front of her, waiting patiently. “Well pal, it’s just us, and it’s going to be that way for a while I think. We have to lay low while I try and figure out how the hell to stop this damned awful mess.”

Suddenly, all of the adrenalin that had been coursing through her body during her frantic escape from the city is gone, seeping away from her like water through a sieve. A brutal, clawing exhaustion sets in, and she yawns, jaw cracking with the force of it.

Asimov looks at her and whines.

“Tonight, buddy, we sleep in the truck. Tomorrow, we head to the facility and try to get some answers. Sound good to you?”

A soft bark and a happy tail wag is her answer, and she gives him a fond scratch behind the ears for it.

Both crawl into the back of the SUV. Kirsten rests her head on the pillow she’s had since grade school, and Asimov snuggles his warm length all along hers, pressing closely and making contented doggy sounds as his eyes slip slowly closed.

Before she feels completely safe, Kirsten reaches in a duffle bag and removes her gun. She knows it probably wouldn’t stop them but she knows if her aim is good it will slow them down quite a bit.

“Sleep. I need sleep. It’ll all be better in the morning.”

5

Dakota leaves the motor running and the lights blazing as she jumps down from her truck and starts toward the front door.

The lights being on likely saves her life as she is able to see the rifle barrel poke out of one of the front windows seconds before it goes off, bullet piercing the air where she’d been not a split second before.

“Who’s there?” comes the quavering sound of a young man’s voice, caught in a quandary of puberty and terror.

“Damn it, Phoenix, is that you, goober?”

“Koda??”

“Yeah, it’s me. Now do you wanna put that gun away before you blow my head off?”

“Sorry.”

Dakota takes no more than two steps toward the porch when the door flies open and her mother, a short, stocky woman rushes out into the snow, her arms flung open. “Dakota! My daughter, you’re home! I was so worried.”

The younger woman takes her mother into her arms and returns the crushing hug, chilled fingers tenderly stroking the thick, silver threaded black hair that is tied back in a fat braid. “I’m home, Mother. It’s okay, I’m home.”

After a moment, she pulls away, large hands descending on her mother’s broad shoulders. “Let’s get inside. It’s freezing out here.”

“But your truck…”

“Leave it that way for now. We need to talk.”

Stepping inside the huge ranch house, she is immediately comforted by the sounds and scents of home, a place she has done no more than visit in the past five years. Her brothers and sisters, seven in this bunch, surround her in a tight press, hugging and touching and talking all at once. Dakota finally wriggles her hands free and holds them up in a gesture of calm.

“One at a time. One at a time.”

They look at her with shining, hopeful faces. Though only the third born, she has always been their rock, and their love for her is boundless. In turn, she is fiercely, utterly, devoted to them, like a mother bear protecting her newborn cubs.

Looking around the room, she notices that two family members are conspicuously absent. “Where’s Father? And Tacoma?”

“They’re both down at the Gregory’s ranch. Kimberly called screaming for help. I couldn’t understand her, and she hung up before I was able to know what was wrong. Your father and brother went out there.”

Dakota stiffens. “How long ago?”

Her mother looks at the clock. “No more than ten or fifteen minutes. With the storm, they probably just got there.” Reaching out, she clamps her daughter’s arm in a very strong grip. “Dakota, what’s going on.”

It’s not a question, and everyone realizes it.

“I wish I could tell you, Mother, but I just don’t know. Something’s happening, something big, I think, but I need more information to go on.”

“I won’t accept that, Dakota,” her mother replies, deep black eyes flashing with a light she knows only too well.

Dakota smiles, just slightly, and lays a gentle hand over her mother’s. “You’ll have to, Mother, if for just a little while longer. I need to get to Father and Tacoma.”

“Are they in danger?”

Dakota considers lying, but in the end, just can’t bring herself to do it. “I don’t know,” she says softly.

Her mother releases her arm immediately, drawing back just a step. “I’ll let it go then. For now. Do what you need to, and bring them both back safely.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Smiling, her mother pulls her head down for a kiss, then releases her. “I know you will.”

Turning to leave, Dakota is surprised when a small missile—in the shape of her youngest brother—launches itself into her arms. “I wanna go with you, Koda! Can I, please?”

She hugs the ten-year-old close against her, taking in his young boy scent. “You can’t, Wash. Not this time.”

“But I wanna! Please??” He draws the last word out and looks at her with big, pleading dark eyes. “Please?”

“Washington.”

The young boy stiffens in his sister’s arms at the sound of his mother’s voice.

“Wash, I need you here to man the CB. You’re the only one who knows how to work the da—ah—darn thing, right?”

Washington reluctantly nods.

“And if I need help with Father and Tacoma, who do you think I’m gonna call.”

“Me?”

“Of course you. You’re the only one I can count on with this, and you know it.”

The boy smiles, his narrow chest puffing out with pride. “I won’t let you down, Koda.”

Grinning, Dakota releases her brother and swats him on the behind, which earns a yelp and a scowl. “See you guys later.”

With a wave and a grin, Dakota is gone.

6

The morning sun shines through the small window into the back of the SUV and directly into Kirsten’s slowly awakening eyes. Yawing, she rolls over to feel a kink in her neck. “Well it’s not my waterbed, that’s for sure.” Lifting her head, she looks to her furry companion. “You okay Asi?”

Wicked fangs gleam in the morning light as Asimov answers her with a healthy yawn.

Rolling to a sitting position, she grabs the atlas from beneath a large pile of her belongings and opens it up to the correct page. “Okay boy,” she comments to a totally disinterested Asimov, “this is where we are now…” She quickly flips the pages, then stops again. “And this is where we need to be. About sixteen hundred miles, give or take a few. Damn. This is gonna be harder than I thought, boy.”

Blowing out a breath, she runs a hand through sleep-tangled hair. “Well, Mom always told me to try looking on the bright side, right? Maybe things will get better as we move west.”

She knows she’s kidding herself. They are everywhere, and no one is safe. Not even her parents, who she knows, deep in her heart, are dead. They had three of those monsters in their house and could never understand Kirsten’s request that they get rid of them. She couldn’t make them understand what she knew. There was no way to make anybody believe it.

She remembers her mother tending her rose garden and her father trimming the hedges, and what she considers an almost idealistic way to grow up. She had been and only child with intelligent, educated, and reasonably well-to-do parents who had encouraged her, giving her all the support she needed to follow her own path, whatever that might be.

She realizes that eventually she will have to go to Georgia to find out if they’re alive, but the incessant ringing of her parents’ phone has given her all the answers that she really needs.

Tossing the atlas into the front she crawls into the driver’s seat and looks over at Asimov. “You don’t want to drive do you?”

The dog squirms in his seat and lays his head down to get some sleep.

“Didn’t think so.”

Starting the truck, she pulls back out onto the road and turns left toward her destination.

7

She knows the roads between the two ranches well, and before too much time has passed, Dakota has parked her truck behind a high bank of snow, lights off, engine shut down to silence. She can see her father’s large, burly body propped against another snow bank overlooking the valley where the ranch house sits sprawled like a dog sunning itself.

She hoots low, twice, using a call learned from the same man propped against the snow bank. A hand is raised, slightly, and she moves forward, taking care to keep her head below the level of the bank. Within seconds, she’s laid out carefully beside her father, whose sheer size dwarfs her own not inconsiderable height, being a couple inches over six feet without her boots on.

Her oldest brother, Tacoma, lays on her other side. He shares his father’s height, but not his girth, instead sporting a swimmer’s build that is all the rage in the few scattered nightclubs around town. Women literally fall over themselves trying to get his attention. Unfortunately for them, he’s as gay as old dad’s hatband.

Still, he doesn’t mind the attention. It’s a source of great teasing in the Rivers’ household.

“Hey,” Dakota whispers to them both. They reply with silent nods. Both are armed. Her father carries a Winchester Black Shadow rifle, and her brother, a Black Shadow pump action shotgun.

Feeling the cold bite into her even through several layers of clothing, she eases her head up just slightly so that her eyes peer over the top of the bank. What she sees causes her jaw to tighten, muscles bunching and jumping.

Ian MacGregor, a big, bluff and kindly Scotsman, lies dead, half on-half off of his large wrap porch, his wide eyes staring blankly into whatever eternity exists for him. His two adult sons, both strapping like their father, lie one to a side of Ian, a gruesome trinity.

Dakota has known them all since she was in the cradle, and the sight of their lifeless bodies twists something deep inside her guts. Her face, likewise, twists, into a grimace she’s not aware of displaying.

The door to the house is splintered to kindling, and if she listens hard enough, she can hear the faint sounds of screaming above the howling of the wind.

“How many?” she asks her father.

“I don’t know,” he replies, shifting his heavy bulk on the packed snow and ice. “Was like this when we came.”

A shadow passes over the threshold, and a moment later, a tall, broad shouldered male strides out into the cold, holding two screaming young girls by their long, dark hair. They’re trying their best to break free, but it’s as if the man doesn’t even notice he’s holding them. The kicks, gouges and punches have absolutely no effect whatsoever.

He turns and faces the house, as if waiting for something within.

Dakota lets out a breath that sounds like a growl and reaches out a hand. Her father hands over his gun willingly. Then she turns to her brother. “Can you still shoot the balls off a gnat at a hundred yards?”

“Yeah,” Tacoma replies with no pride in his voice.

“Trade me, then.”

Grasping the shotgun, she trades for the rifle. Though he knows his father keeps his guns immaculate, he checks the rifle over carefully, a habit he hasn’t lost since his army days, seemingly a lifetime ago. Satisfied, he nods to her, eyebrows raised to his hairline.

“Alright. When I say ‘go’, I want you to wing him. Shoulder, arm, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t hit those girls.”

“But…”

“Listen to me, Tac, cause we don’t have much time. Just get his attention. Make him turn, maybe loosen his grip a little, alright?”

“If you say so, sis.”

“I do.”

Tacoma looks over at his father, who nods. He nods back.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

Taking off her gloves, Dakota flexes her fingers, then eases them around the pump action of the shotgun. “Alright. Ready? Go!”

Tacoma raises up in a perfect marksman’s stance and eases the trigger back.

The sound of the rifle firing is almost insignificant, but the bullet hits its mark, and the man spins. The two girls stumble off their feet, still tethered to this man by their hair. Both scream in agony.

Dakota jumps to her feet, shotgun socketed and ready. “Let them go, you bastard!!”

The last word hangs in the air, only to be obliterated a split second later by the huge roar of the shotgun’s blasting. Most of the man’s face disappears and he topples back into the snow.

“Katie! Kelly! RUN!!!”

They try, but they’re still in the ungiving grip of the man’s hands. Screaming in terror, they finally find the strength to pull away, leaving sizable hunks of red and golden hair behind.

“RUN!!!”

Dakota starts forward, shotgun aimed and ready. Sinking into thigh-deep snow with every step, her gait is slow and plodding. Everything seems preternaturally bright as she moves forward, keeping a wary eye on the fallen stranger.

Not really a stranger, though, is he.

A moment later, a second man darts outside. He’s armed with an uzi, which he immediately fires, spraying bullets all over the compound. Dakota drops into the snow an instant too late. She can feel the hot bloom of pain welling up from her side. She doesn’t know how badly she’s hurt, but her body freezes, stunned, for a brief moment, and she loses her grip on the gun.

“Shit!”

“Dakota!!!”

She can hear the screams of her father and brother, but the sound of Tacoma’s frantic rifle fire is drowned out by the noise of the uzi firing again and again.

“Stay down!!”

She thinks she’s screaming, but the sound is only a gasp. She struggles to move, but the snow has her cocooned and her body still isn’t ready to work the way it should. Long fingers, reddened and chapped from the icy snow and bitter wind, scramble desperately for the gun she’s lost.

“DAKOTA!!!”

Rounds of fire are being exchanged over her head. It sounds like a war zone, and in a way, she muses, that’s exactly what it is. She knows her father and brother are pinned down by the uzi fire. To come forward would be suicide, but she also knows that either one would willingly risk his life for hers. And she would do the same, without hesitation.

Dear God, let them be safe. Please let them be safe. If I have to die, fine. Just…don’t take them too, ok?

Finally! Luck puts her hand in the path of her shotgun, and with a spastic, clamping grip, she drags it through the snow to cradle against her chest. She can’t really feel it; her hands are blocks of wood, but her finger finds the trigger by pure instinct, and she waits, eyes open to whatever fate awaits her.

She can hear footsteps, and knows they’re coming from the wrong direction. Her already tense body tenses even further, causing fresh blood to gush from her wound, staining the snow a garish red.

Snow cone, anyone?

Gallows humor makes its appearance right on time, as always.

A face and the muzzle of an uzi make a simultaneous appearance within Dakota’s reduced field of vision. The face is completely blank; no emotions can be read in those shining, soulless eyes.

She sees him hesitate, and it’s all the opening her body needs. Levering her shotgun’s muzzle up, she pulls the trigger. “Eat shit, you bastard!”

The force of the blast blows him off his feet, and she forces her body to roll up to a seated, and finally standing position. She sways for a moment, then walks steadily toward the prone figure on lying in the deep snow. She can sense her family closing quickly, but this is something she has to do for herself.

White teeth flash in a wolf’s smile and she points the gun downward. “Die, you miserable, stinking piece of shit.”

A pull of the trigger, and the face is totally obliterated. A pump of the action, and she places the muzzle against the shoulder joint. Another blast, and the arm disintegrates from the shoulder. A third blast takes the second arm.

Finally satisfied, she relaxes slightly, still staring down at the mangled figure in the snow.

A warm hand clasps her shoulder, and she turns her head to look up into the concerned face of her father.

“I’ll be alright. Are you guys okay?”

“That was some shootin’, sis,” Tacoma remarks, grinning. Then he notices the blood on her shirt and his smile disappears. “Shit, Koda, you got busted.”

“I’ll live,” she replies dryly, though now that the fight is over, her pain begins to make an appearance. “We need to go up to the house and see if anyone else is still alive.”

Reaching down, her father picks up the uzi, then straightens. “Your brother and I will take care of that. You just get back to your truck and wait for us there.”

Though many years from her childhood, Dakota knows an order when she hears one, and nods. “Yes, sir.”

A rare hint of a smile crosses her father’s handsome face. “You did well, Daughter. I’m proud.”

Funny even after all these years how good that still makes her feel.

Even so, as she watches her father and brother enter the house, she resists going back to the warmth of her truck. Clamping a hard hand on her wound to help staunch the sluggish bleeding, she stares down at her handiwork.

The figure is twitching. The legs are moving in slow motion, like a dog dreaming of chasing butterflies.

That fierce grin comes again, but she doesn’t raise her gun.

Not yet.

Not yet.

“I might not be able to kill you, you bastard, but I can make damn sure you don’t ever hurt anyone again.”

8

(London Bridge is falling down…)

For being the richest man in the world, Peter Westerhaus is hardly your typical breed. At least, your typical breed pre Microsoft era, when the standard of multibillionaires was changed forever.

With his slight, skinny body, and a face sporting a healthy eruption of acne better suited to an adolescence that had gasped its last more than three decades ago, Peter has less in common with the robber barons and steel magnates of old than a hen has with a toothbrush.

But even with his food stained clothes and pungent scent—he takes a bath twice a month whether he needs to or not—he might have been accepted by his contemporaries if he just wasn’t so darned strange.

Eccentric. That’s the word they use these days.

Or is it the word they used to use?

Does it matter, Stan?

Nope, Johnny. Doesn’t matter at all. Not anymore.

Right you are, Stan ol buddy. Right you are.

(…falling down…)

Even so, the wunderkind who had breezed through Harvard at fifteen and then gave MIT a try— until he grew bored in three months and was out-professing the professors— bears little resemblance to the man who now owns the largest corporation in the world.

(…falling down…)

Peter sits in his megalithic office. An office that is so crowded with the latest in up to the nanosecond computer hardware and software that it looks like the cockpit of some fantastically futuristic flying machine rather than the staid walnut-and-teak showpieces of his contemporaries.

Contemporaries? What contemporaries? Ha! Ha! Ha!

A huge, drive-in movie screen sized monitor sits on the desk in front of him. The monitor is dark save for an eerie, endlessly scrolling band across the bottom. It’s an innocuous little band, really. No different from the one that scrolls beneath the picture on CNN or MSNBC and announces the sports scores, the stock market closings, and the weather while some correspondent in some far flung country cheerfully relates the latest death tolls in some war or other.

I’m not gonna look. I won’t and you can’t make me.

Sure ya can, Stanley old sport! Have a look see. Just a little peek. Come on. You know ya wanna.

Shut up, Johnny. I don’t want to look.

Come on….

Nope. If I don’t look, then I can convince myself this is all a dream. Just a nasty nightmare that will eventually go away.

Newsflash for ya, Stan. This is reality. No nightmares here.

Well…I can pretend, can’t I?

Sure ya can, Stan. Suuuure ya can. You just go on and pretend. I’ll be here when you get back from your trip to Fantasy Island.

(…London Bridge is falling down…)

Spinning his chair, Peter looks at the blank, windowless walls of this, his inner sanctum sanctorum. His throne room, if you will.

No nasty toilet jokes if you please, Johnny.

Wouldn’t think of it, Stanley ,m’man. Simply would not think of it.

He stares at the dark paneling, counting knot holes as his brain begins the last chute the chute down the slippery slope they call full-blown insanity, eating of itself in a fine and fitting act of auto-cannibalism.

(…falling down…)

His body does what his mind forbids; his feet scooch along the carpet, turning his chair until it faces forward once again. His eyes sweep left, then right, then left again before settling on the monitor and the scrolling Writ near the bottom.

The words aren’t in any language that he can decipher. Indeed, the characters rolling by in their stately, if horrifying, procession are so alien to him—and indeed to anyone of human ancestry—that his brain cramps and twists, trying to process the view into something it can make sense of.

It gives him a blinding headache.

Understanding the letters isn’t the problem, though, is it Stanley.

When you’re right, Johnny, you’re right.

It’s the words you need to understand. The message, if I may be so blunt.

Blunt away, my friend. Blunt away.

And you already understand the message, don’t you, Stanley. The message is as clear as glass, isn’t it.

(…my…)

And, indeed, Peter has done everything in his power to make that message go away. The wreckage of his once relatively neat office bears mute testament to that fact.

I did everything I could. Everything. You need to be aware of that one little fact, Johnny.

Oh I am, Stanley. I most certainly am. Never let be said that Peter Stanley Westerhaus didn’t Try His Best.

Several of his highly classified—and highly illegal to boot—supercomputers are smashed to bits on the ground, their shattered pieces looking up at him, almost glowering, as if wondering just what they had done to deserve their fate.

In fact, if one were to look beneath the desk, to where the surge protector lies nestled, one would notice that the monitor plug has left its secure haven. As has the plug to the computer currently broadcasting the damnable scrolling message.

And still…

‘And still…’ It always comes back to that, doesn’t it, Stanley. ‘And still…’ If they ever write a book about you, old sock, that phrase will beat out ‘Jesus wept’ for brevity, won’t it.

…

(…fair…)

It’s true, though. What the voices in his head are telling him is all too true. All he has to do to prove that fact is to raise his eyes, oh say ten degrees, and set his sights on the two dozen or so TV screens broadcasting from every corner of the globe.

They show the same thing over and over again. Scenes from some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare that he put into place simply by saying “yes” instead of “no”.

Dear GOD! What have I done???

…

(…lady.)

From a corner of his silent office, a soft beep sounds, and yet another monitor comes to life. This one shows the hallways leading to his inner sanctum. Hallways which, up until now, have been as empty as a looted tomb.

They’re coming for you, kid.

“I know. I know! Dammit, I KNOW!!!”

Reaching into his drawer, Peter pulls out a fat handgun, one he’s never had to use. He twirls his chair again until he faces the one and only door in the office. The gun sits limply in his lap.

Oh yeah, that’ll work. Kinda like shooting rain at a flower. You made them almost indestructible, ol kid, ol sock. All part of the plan, remember?

“Fuck the plan!!”

He’ll never leave this office alive, he knows that. And with the realization comes a feeling of almost blessed relief. The irony of being killed by his own creations isn’t lost on him. In fact, it seems a rather fitting punishment for what he’s done.

But still…

Oh, back to that again, are we?

Shut up, Johnny. Just…shut…up.

…

“I’m forgetting something. I know I am.”

A quick glance at the security monitor shows he’s still got some time left. Not much, granted, but some. And some is a start.

He looks around his office again, and his eyes alight on his personal computer, the only one in the office that was spared his fit of rage earlier. It sits proudly on his secondary desk, as if lording its veritable wholeness over its shattered buddies.

“That’s it!!”

Forcing his body out of the chair, he stumbles over broken computer bits until he’s at the desk housing his computer. It’s booted up and ready for him. A quick flick of the mouse, and the email he had typed earlier is brought to full bloom before his eyes. It’s not much of a letter, no, but he thinks it spells out the whys, wherefores, and by-these-present-know-ye-thises pretty darn well.

Giving himself a sharp nod, he aims the pointer at the “send all” button, only to nearly cancel the damn thing as the soft beeping from the security camera causes him to jump almost a foot in the air. A quick glance at the monitor shows the hallways filled to the brim with advancing enemies.

Breathing heavily, he tosses a hank of stringy, greasy, straw colored hair away from his brow and looks back at the computer. His eyes are round, flat and shining discs set deep in his head. His hands are sweat-slicked and trembling so hard that he misses the “send all” button yet again.

“Come on! Come on, dammit!!”

One final try and he scores a direct hit. The email disappears, to be replaced by a “message sent” notification box.

“Oh, thank God. Thank you, God!”

Getting’ a little foxhole religion, sport? There goes your nomination to the Atheist-of-the-Month Club.

Ignoring the voice, Peter turns away from the computer and returns to his seat. He picks up the gun and stares at it as if it might soon sprout wings and fly away.

What are you gonna do with that, hmm champ? Go out in a blaze of glory? Stiff upper lip and all that rot?

I can’t leave the men behind, sir. You go. I’ll hold the Alamo for all of us. Viva la USA! Hell. Viva la WORLD!

He can hear them now, their booted feet stomping in almost obscenely regulated step as they come closer and closer to their goal.

(London Bridge is falling down…)

Hefting the gun, he points it at the door. He’s surprised, and gladdened, to notice that his hands aren’t shaking anymore. The suddenly wet warmth in the crotch of his pants tells him that his bladder has a different take on the whole situation, but at least his hands haven’t betrayed him.

Betrayed. Funny word, that. That’s what they’ll call you, you know. The Betrayer. Fitting epitaph, don’t you think?

“All I ever wanted to be was accepted. Not popular. No, never that. But just accepted, you know? That’s why I did this. I wanted to help. I wanted to be liked. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?”

…

“Well, is it?!?!?”

…

Letting go a small sigh, he shifts his gun’s focus, lifting it and turning the muzzle toward his temple instead.

“I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough, but…for what it’s worth…I am.”

(…my fair lady.)

CHAPTER TWO

“Goodbye everybody, I’ve got to go. Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.”

1

WHEN THE CROWDED rooms and the close press of humanity gets to be too much, Dakota escapes to the glassed in porch, closing the door behind her and reveling in the silence of a South Dakota winter evening. It’s snowing again. The flakes, heavy and wet, hiss through the air in a soothing monotone.

It’s been two days since the shooting, and her wound, not much more than a graze, is healing, though still painful.

The storm door squeals in protest as it is opened again, and the floorboards groan out accompaniment as Dakota’s father joins her on the porch. She hears a slight rustle, then the flick of a match being struck against the wooden casement, and soon the air is filled with the sweet smell of pipe tobacco. Its scent brings Dakota back to the days of her childhood when her whole world was the man standing beside her and her only goal in life was to see the light of pride in his eyes. Eyes that are, like hers, a brilliant, pale blue; a queer genetic anomaly going back as long as anyone can remember.

For long moments, the porch is silent save for quiet breaths and the hissing of the snow.

The remnants of the MacGregor family, Kimberly, her two grown daughters and two granddaughters, have taken up residence in a small house just to the west of the main home. Dakota’s mother helps them through their grief as best she can, trying to break through the silent, staring shock that melds them to their beds and chairs; living statues crafted by the hand of a madman.

The rest of the family spends its days huddled around the CB radio, gleaning and hoarding each bit of information the way a prospector pans for gold dust. Wild speculation paints the airwaves in crazy, neon colors. Space aliens have landed in Washington DC. Peter Westerhaus has sold out to certain Middle Eastern interests, handing them the United States on a silver platter. And the most popular: God is using Satan’s tools to cleanse the earth in preparation for the return of His Son.

Each rumor is treated as Gospel truth; examined like a diamond for clarity and flaws, and kept or discarded based on its possible merit.

“Your spirit wanders.”

Shaken from her reverie, Dakota lets out a small sigh, tips her head slightly, and leans a shoulder against the sturdy frame of the porch. She eyes her father directly, taking in his gentle, somber countenance.

“Where will you go?”

“Home. At least, at first. I need to….”

Her voice trails off, but her father nods his understanding.

“And then?”

“South, I think. To Rapid City.”

“To the base?”

“Yes.”

“Very dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Your mother will forbid it.”

Dakota nods, dropping her gaze to the worn boards. “I know that, too.” Her voice is no more than a whisper, its timbre blending with the falling snow.

A soft rustle of cloth eases the silence, and when Dakota raises her eyes, her father is holding an object out to her. Her eyes widen as the significance of the object becomes abundantly clear.

“Your medicine pouch….”

“Take it.”

“But….”

“Le icu wo, chunkshi.”

Reaching out, she allows her fingers to curl around the small, worn pouch. In turn, her father’s warm fingers curl around her own. Their eyes meet. He gives her a rare and precious smile.

“If I were younger, and did not have a family to protect, I would do as you are now, Dakota.” His face sobers and he releases her hand. “Go now. Say goodbye to your brothers and sisters. I will talk to your mother.”

Rising to his feet, he is gone before she can open her mouth to thank him.

2

Twenty minutes later, Dakota stands by her truck, gazing one last time upon her family whose faces are pressed against the large windows, fogging them and making the watching figures dreamy and indistinct.

Her mother’s face is the only one she can see clearly, and her expression is a swirling thundercloud of anger, love, and fear. Her heavy arms are crossed against her ample bosom, and as Dakota meets her eyes, she scowls and turns away.

Clenching her jaw in frustration, Dakota also turns and opens the door to her truck. Before she can step in, her mother comes at her from behind, wrapping her arms around Dakota’s slim waist and pulling her back.

“Yé shni ye, chunkshi. Yé shni ye.”

Dakota turns in her mother’s arms, bringing up chilled hands to cup soft, careworn cheeks. “I have to go, Mother. I need to do this.”

“And I need you here, Dakota. Here, with your family, where you belong.”

“Mother….”

“Wife.”

Dakota’s mother turns to look at her husband, then back at her daughter. “Please. I’m asking you. Stay.”

“Mother, I…can’t.”

The older woman’s face hardens. “Then you are no daughter of mine.” She takes in a breath. “Is that what you want?”

Dakota shakes her head. “No, that’s not what I want at all.”

Her mother smiles, triumphant.

Dakota continues. “But, if that’s how you feel it must be, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you, Mother. This is something I have to do.” Releasing her mother, she steps away. “I love you, Mother. Always.”

A long, tense moment passes between them.

“I need to go.” Dakota’s voice is soft, regretful.

Before she can turn away, her arms are once again filled with the solid, firm body of her mother. They embrace tightly, almost desperately, before finally parting.

Turning quickly, Dakota jumps into her truck, starts it, and drives off, savagely ignoring the tears sparkling in her eyes.

3

“Shit,” Kirsten grumps as her truck, a valiant old campaigner, wheezes its last and coasts to a stop along the curb in a tiny town in western Pennsylvania, completely out of gas. Slamming the steering wheel with one gloved hand, she opens the door and steps out into the cold air, a great deal further from her destination than she’d planned.

The turnpike and vast east-west highways she’d planned to use are almost completely impassible. The news of the uprising had taken the country by sudden storm, and people jumped in their cars with just the clothes on their backs, desperate to flee a hopeless situation.

Some had been murdered where they sat, behind the wheel. Others still had been killed in multi-vehicle pileups or smashed under the wreckage of hurtling semis. She had even passed several hastily erected, and now abandoned, military checkpoints through which ordinary, innocent citizens had been heartlessly mown down by the supposed protectors of their freedom and constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Sickened, the young scientist was forced off the highways and onto secondary roads. Even there, signs of death loomed everywhere, and she had spent hours and hours of precious time skirting around roads blocked by smashed cars and shattered bodies.

Until she reached the outskirts of western Pennsylvania and her truck had finally given up the ghost.

She finds herself in a ghost town the likes of which old Spaghetti Westerns were made. There is no sign of life anywhere she looks, and the air as barren save for a howling wind and the rusted protest of a sign hanging from long chains hooked to the eaves of a roof.

Thompson’s Realty, the sign says. A Great Place to call Home.

“Not anymore,” she says, then laughs a little at the poor joke. As if in response, Asimov whines, and she widens the door, beckoning him out.

They both hear the hiss of a startled cat, and before Kirsten can even open her mouth, Asimov is off like a shot, chasing the fleeing feline down the empty street.

“You’d better get your ass back here or I’ll leave without you!” Kirsten shouts, then listens as her words echo off the storefronts that border each side of the street. She waits long enough to realize that her threat has gone unheeded. “Great. Now even my dog doesn’t believe me.”

Turning, her ears pick up another sound. It’s one she can’t quite decipher. Her heart gathers speed and, reaching into the open cab of her truck, she grabs her pistol and hauls it out, aiming in the direction of the sound.

“Who’s there?”

The question echoes, and when it finally dies off, the sound, still indecipherable, is still there. Curiosity sets her feet in motion, heading for a staid, brick-faced church sitting on the corner.

Turning the corner, she stops dead, as the source of the noise becomes readily apparent.

A huge cross dominates the church’s lawn, and upon that cross, two bodies hang, one from each arm. Their faces are purple, their tongues and eyes, protruding. Each head is cocked identically, almost comically, lolling from the stalk of a broken neck.

Both wear a cardboard placard around their necks, each bearing the same crudely written phrase.

REPENT!! FOR THE HOUR OF GOD IS AT HAND!!

“Je-sus.”

Turning away from the gruesome sight, her gaze catches the front of the church. The doors, red as barn paint, have been broken inward and lay shattered and crazy-canted in the vestibule. Unable to help herself, she climbs the steps and enters the church itself, then almost reverses her course as the overwhelming stench of death and decay permeates her nostrils and twists her guts into a heaving uproar.

“Dear God. Oh, Jesus.”

The church must have, at one time, been filled to capacity. Now all that remains are the men, the very old, and the very young. She doesn’t have to look to know that each body bears at least one bullet hole, adult and child alike.

Bodies are stacked in the aisles and pews like cordwood. These people didn’t die easily.

As she looks up toward the altar, she freezes once again, draw dropping silently open like a trap door at the end of well-oiled hinges.

The Lector, clad in a dark, somber suit, lies draped over the altar, half of his head missing. His stiffened fingers curl inward as if trying to form fists of their own volition. A huge, gold-leafed bible, it’s thin pages dotted with blood, lies open before him. He almost appears to be reading it with the one eye he has left.

But even that isn’t the worst atrocity in this room.

No, that honor belongs to the life-sized cross hanging above the altar. Instead of the requisite figure of the crucified Jesus staring up into the Heavens through sorrowing eyes, the Priest, clad in heavy purple, white and gold vestments, hangs, long nails driven through his wrists and feet.

A crude facsimile of the Crown of Thorns—in actuality some barbed wire from the local hardware store—is pressed upon his bald head, and runnels of dried blood paint his face like ruby tears.

Another sign loops around his neck, this time bearing only one word.

HERETIC.

“Oooookay, then. That’s quite enough of this. I think I’d best be going now.”

With deliberate steps, Kirsten turns and walks out of the church as quickly as her feet will carry her. Only when she has turned the corner and is out of sight of the two hanging corpses does she stop, one hand pressed to her chest. Her heart thumps crazily against it as if trying to exit through muscle and bone.

Finally, her breathing and heart rate calm, and she chances a look around. The town is as empty, and as silent, as it was when she first entered. This helps to calm her further.

“Alright then, let’s get down to business.”

4

It is well past midnight, and the only light that glows in the fair-sized ranch house comes from the large and roaring fire in the fieldstone fireplace. The electricity and phones are out, but in South Dakota, in winter, that’s almost a given. An unlit oil lantern sits on a low table that boarders a long, low-slung couch.

Koda sits on the couch, one long leg tucked beneath her, the other thrown casually over the stout wooden arm. With steady hands, she works through a fat stack of glossy photos. Some she lingers over, a smile creasing her face. Others she flips quickly past, pain darkening the blue of her eyes.

On the mantle, a brass clock in the shape of a galloping horse ticks, keeping a time that she senses will no longer be needed in this world.

The last in the stack of pictures comes up, and, smiling, she lifts it closer to her face, placing the others down on the rough-hewn coffee table. The photo is of a slim, beautiful Lakota woman, her coal, almond eyes sparkling with love and laughter. Clad in a white, beaded gown, she grins with mischievous intent as her hands, filled with a large piece of cake dripping with frosting, begin to move forward as if to shove said cake into the face of the picture taker.

“Got me good, didn’t ya,” Dakota whispers, trailing a gentle thumb over the woman’s grinning features. “I miss you.”

Holding the picture to her chest, she unfolds herself and lays full length on the couch, staring into the crackling flames until sleep finally overtakes her.

5

The sound of trashcans rattling in an alleyway almost causes Kirsten’s heart to leap out of her mouth, and she spins, pointing her gun in the direction of the noise. A slat thin, mangy mutt runs out of the alley, grinning at her, and she comes a hairsbreadth away from blowing it to Kingdom Come, Kentucky.

Seeing her, the dog stops and growls, its hackles raising in spiky tufts over bony shoulders, its teeth white and glimmering.

“Nice doggy. Niiiice doggy.”

The dog growls again, dropping low on its haunches and slinking forward.

Kirsten follows its progress with the muzzle of her gun. “Oh, c’mon, pooch, you really don’t want to be doing this.”

The dog, apparently, has a different take on the situation.

“Okay, so you do want to be doing this.” She waggles her gun. “Trust me, there are easier ways to get some dinner, dog. I bet I don’t even taste that good.” She pauses. “Well, figuratively speaking, anyway.”

Continuing its advance, the dog gathers its legs underneath itself, muscles tensing, preparing to leap.

“Aw hell,” Kirsten sighs, her finger tightening on the trigger.

Before either party can move, a blur of black and silver bisects the invisible line between them, and the dog yelps as it is driven away, rolling several times before it lands on its side, chest aspirating weakly like a bellows running out of air.

“Asimov! It’s about time you showed up!”

Asimov looks over his shoulder, tongue lolling.

“Don’t play innocent with me, you flea-bitten throw rug. Now, if you’re done playing with your little friend there, we need to get moving. It won’t stay light forever, ya know.”

Lifting a gigantic paw, Asimov graciously allows his prey to escape, yelping and whining, back into the darkness of the alley from which it came, scrawny tail tucked between its legs.

Sticking the gun into the waistband of her jeans, Kirsten rubs her hands together. “Alright then. First things first. We need to get us some wheels. A van, I think. Will a full gas tank. And keys in the ignition.”

Asimov gives her a look.

“Alright, alright. So I’m a little picky. Is that a crime?”

Rolling her eyes, Kirsten moves down the road, away from the church and its gruesome spectacle. Rounding another corner, her eyes light up as she spies a used car lot. Its red, white and blue pennants flicker and flap in the freshening breeze, displaying their wares in a manic frenzy to no one.

She walks slowly along the sidewalk, looking over the selection—what there is of one. The cars are, for the most part, dusty, dented, and gently rusting as they rest on slowly softening and tread-worn tires. The hand lettered signs, once bright and eye-catching, are now faded and cracked under the harsh mercies of the glaring sun and bitter wind.

Asimov looks up at his mistress and whines.

“I know, boy. We’ll find something. Don’t worry.”

Turning in at the gate, she makes her way into the lot, stepping over several fallen bodies, resolving not to look.

Cordwood, she thinks to herself. Just cordwood, stacks of it, like the stuff that lays outside the cabin on the Cape, waiting for winter.

Near the back of the lot, there is a service bay, and just outside that service bay is a large, white cargo van which looks to be perfect for her needs. It has a few dents, and the driver’s side rocker panel has seen better decades, but the tires look new, and as long as the battery is well juiced, she thinks she can run with it.

As she steps around to the passenger’s side, she stops cold. The body of a young man, barely out of his teens, lays half in and half out of the van. He was obviously once a detailer, since there is a cloth in one hand and a sponge in the other. If not for the now familiar unnatural cock of his head, she would think that he was just resting; taking a break from what she believes has to be one of the world’s most monotonous jobs. His face is young and handsome in a Midwestern, corn-fed way, and the wind whips his curly blonde hair into a halo around his head.

He should be on a football field somewhere tackling behemoths and scoring cheerleaders.

Her eyes begin to well and she wipes at them savagely, unable to spare the time she’d need to mourn.

Not now. Just keep going. You need to keep it together K, or you’re gonna end up just like him.

Taking in a deep breath, she reaches forward and, as gently as she possibly can, eases the young man from his place inside the van. As soon as he is flat on the ground, she stands up and wipes her hands on the fabric of her jeans, then takes the large step up into the van.

The boy has done his job well. The van is immaculately clean inside, and smells fresh despite housing a corpse for God knows how many days. There are two bench seats, one in front, one behind. The rest of the huge van is completely empty. She looks over at the control panel. Though old, the transmission is automatic, and, best of all, the keys are dangling from the ignition. This brings a smile to her face and she turns to look down at the whining dog waiting just outside. “Asimov, I think we’re in business.”

6

The morning dawns bitterly cold and thankfully clear. Dakota has been up for several hours. Her sturdy knapsack is packed to the brim with clothing and non perishable foodstuffs. The fire is out and the hearth has been swept clean of ashes. Dakota’s breath comes forth in frosty plumes as she walks through the rooms of her home saying a quiet goodbye to things she knows she’ll never see again.

Crossing through the living room, she stops at a door just to the left of the stairs leading up to the loft, and twists the knob, entering into another, large and chilled room.

A flick of the switch, and brilliant fluorescent lights flicker and hum to life, powered by the backup generator seated to the rear of the house. The lights reveal a sterile space in white and chrome. Two examination tables sit side by side, their surfaces sparkling and immaculate. Two walls sport inlaid cabinets upon which a wide variety of surgical instruments rest, covered in sterile wrap. A huge autoclave sits in a corner, silent, cold and dark. Along the third wall are several rows of large, wire kennels, stacked three high, and along the forth, four incubators and one warmer bed rest. All are empty.

As a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitation Specialist, Dakota has spent the majority of her adult life in this room, patiently coaxing warmth, food and life back into injured or abandoned animals native to her home state.

If she listens closely enough, she fancies she can hear the meeps, howls, growls, purrs, and screeching cries of each and every animal she has treated here. She has mourned each death and celebrated each second chance at life that her skills, and luck, have been able to grant. Her sharp eyes scan the room, imprinting each piece of equipment, each warm success, each sad defeat, indelibly to memory.

And then, with a soft sigh, she turns to leave, plunging the room into blackness once again.

7

Her truck packed and warming, Dakota makes one last trip, plowing through thigh-deep snow to the back of her sprawling ranch. Her horses have been fed and watered and set free to wander, or to stay, as they will. Her house has been raided of all useful items, and only this one thing is left to do before she can begin her trek into the unknown.

The piled stone marker is covered with snow, a fanciful little hillock protruding from an otherwise flat landscape. Bending down, she carefully brushes the snow away until the rocks are uncovered to her gaze.

The front of the cairn is inlaid with a small, stone marker, carved in loving detail. The marker holds three simple words.

Tali.

mitháwichu ki

Tali.

My wife.

Ungloving her left hand, she brushes the very tips of her fingers against the words, eyes dim with remembering. A long moment is passed in this utter silence, until the sun spreads its rays over the barn and highlights the cairn in lines of dazzling gold.

With a slow blink to clear the tears welling in her eyes, Dakota reaches up and twists the simple gold band from her finger. She stares at it, watching as it sparkles in the newborn sunlight, then she tucks it reverently into a seam in the rocks, drawing her fingers over its warmth one last time before withdrawing.

“I’ll never forget you.”

8

She moves through a world gone all to white. White earth, white sky, bare, snow-covered trees. Ice swirls in netted patterns like her grandmother’s best crocheted tablecloth where the steady thump of the windshield wipers does not reach. Her breath makes a white cloud about her in the unheated cabin of her truck.

White is the color of the north. White is the color of death.

Before her the white road lies unmarked. Ten miles from home, and no traffic has passed here since the snowfall stopped just at dawn. The only sign of life is a line of small four-toed prints running along a barbed wire fence line. A fox, moving fast.

Koda’s gloved fingers curl stiffly about the rim of the steering wheel. Her feet, numb despite three pairs of wool and silk socks and the fleece linings of her boots, somehow manage to find the accelerator and the brake as needed. Snow and ice limit her speed, even with the chains. Which, she thinks, is just as well. She cannot afford an accident.

She can’t afford to turn on the heater, either. It is not that she fears sensors or spy satellites. Her truck’s V-8 will show up in the infrared half the size of Mount Rushmore in any case. She has more than enough gas in her double tanks to make the forty miles to Rapid City and back, taking farm-to-market roads like this one to avoid the Interstate, enough to scout the extent of the devastation in this corner of South Dakota. The trouble is that she has no idea if she will be able to buy or scavenge so much as another drop between now and her return.

Take nothing for granted, her father said as she hugged him good-bye. Trust nothing and no one. Come back safe.

The wound in her side aches with the cold. She holds the pain away from her, just as she does the memories of the night before. There will be a time again for rage, a time for mourning. She cannot afford them now.

Twelve miles, and a sign appears on her right, to the north of the road. Standing Buffalo Ranch, home to Paul and Virginia Hurley and their five kids. The welded pipe gate leans open, the cattle guard clotted with snow. There are no tire marks on the narrow road that leads up to the ranch house and barns, out of sight over a low ridge. Koda can just see the spokes of a generator windmill, its three blades and their hub hung with ice. No tire marks, possibly no electricity. No one out doing anything about it.

She swerves the truck into the turnoff, the chains racketing on the metal grill as she crosses the cattle guard. Beside her on the seat, blunt and angular in its functional ugliness, is the Uzi she took from one of the things that killed the MacGregors. If what she has begun to fear is true, she will not need it. Still, it gives her comfort.

Blasting another of the things to atoms would give her more.

How many dead? How many taken?

She has no answers to those questions.

Why? Dear God and all the saints, spirits of my ancestors, why?

She has no answer to that question, either.

Koda does not realize that she has some spark of hope left until she sees the ranch house door swinging open and the snow in the entryway. The point of light, infinitely small as it is, winks out. Gone. Darkness. The white expanse between house and barn is unmarked. Two vehicles are drawn up in the carport. One is Paul Hurley’s Dodge Ram crew cab; the other is an SUV she does not recognize. She pulls up behind them, crosswise, and waits. There is no movement behind the gauzy front curtains, none behind the smaller window near the driveway where a bottle of Dawn dish soap and a long-handled sponge perch on the sill beneath a gingham ruffle. When she thinks she has waited long enough, she waits as long again. Still nothing.

Slowly Koda takes her hands from the steering wheel. She lifts the Uzi from its resting place beside her and slings the strap crosswise over her left shoulder, maneuvering it past the wide brim of her hat. Briefly she checks the magazine. Very carefully, she eases her door open and slithers down and forward to crouch behind the bulk of the still-running engine. There is a moment when she is, blessedly, almost warm with its heat. Then the wind, not strong but straight off six feet of packed snow and ice, reasserts itself, and her feet remind her that she is standing calf-deep more of the same.

Koda whips from behind the truck and runs low and as fast as the snow will let her for the front porch. She comes up short with her back against the wall, her weapon raised. For the first time she hears a sound from within the house, a small dog barking incessantly, somewhere toward the back and up. She eases through the doorframe and into the front hall. Nothing. Beyond is the living room, where a feathery dusting of snow lies across the dark green carpet and a small aquarium holds angelfish, brilliant and ethereal, suspended like jewels in ice. The dining room, separated from the parlor by an open arch, seems in order, Virginia’s proud collection of majolica serving dishes still stately in their place of honor along the sideboard. Only the CD tower lying across the door to the den is out of place, with its flat plastic cases spilled out beside it.

Koda knows what she will find when she enters the room and has braced herself for it. Paul Hurley is there, still on the couch in front of the television, empty eyes staring at the ceiling with his head bent back against the cushions at a ninety-degree angle. A Budweiser can tilts floorward in his half-open hand. David, youngest of the five children, lies at his feet, an obscene red blossom of blood and torn flesh in the middle of his back. Shotgun. Eddie, older by five years, sprawls in the lounger, neck broken like his father’s, a bag of potato chips still in his lap.

Cold inside now, no longer feeling the frigid air, Koda takes the can from Paul’s hand and attempts gently to move his fingers. Their rigidity tells her what she already knows must be true. When she turns David over, as much not to have to see the terrible hole in his body as to see his face and know for certain that he is David, he slips from her stiff hands and thumps solidly against the television cabinet. Frozen. Frozen cold and dead.

It is a line from a poem from some forgotten moment of her childhood, lifetimes, eons distant from this time and this place. It goes round in her head, over and over, Frozen. Frozen cold and dead. Her own horror is beyond her understanding. She has seen harder deaths, has dissected human bodies as part of her training. Still the line of the poem goes round, as if to keep her mind from worse things.

Frozen. Frozen cold and dead.

The dog’s yapping is louder here in the den. Koda steps carefully around the coffee table and climbs the stairs, setting her feet soundlessly on the treads. The barking grows clearer with each step, higher and more frantic. At the landing, she has a clear view of the master bedroom through the open door. The blue-and-russet log cabin quilt lies undisturbed, forming an angular pattern with the brass bars of Hurleys’ antique bed. In another room, curlers and makeup litter the dresser. Double closets stand open, with girls’ jeans and sweaters strewn over the floor amid broken glass from a framed poster of Britney Spears that tilts crazily against the wall. There are no bodies in the room, despite the clear signs of a struggle.

The yapping comes from behind a third bedroom door, this one closed. As Koda turns the knob and pushes it open, a small furry body flings itself against her knees, alternately panting and barking. She swings the Uzi behind her back, out of the dog’s reach, and hunkers down to soothe the frantic creature, gently rubbing its ears. “There, fella,” she croons. “There, baby. It’s all right. I’ve got you. There, there.”

As it calms, reassured by her experienced touch and the low monotone of her voice, she ascertains that it is a neutered male Yorkshire terrier, dehydrated and not recently fed. A bedraggled blue bow clinging to a tuft of fur above his eyes matches the polish on his manicured nails. Not a country dog. The tag on his rhinestone-studded collar identifies him as Louie and his mistress as Adele Hurley of Pierre, with address and telephone number.

Which, she notes with an unexpected sense of relief, explains the Suburban.

When she finally enters the room, Louie now quiet at her heels except for a low whine, she finds Adele toppled forward on the rug, the legs of her walker jutting absurdly past her hips. Blood has soaked her short grey hair, stiffened by the freezing cold into scarlet spikes. An elderly man lies half on and half off the bed, his battered skull partly concealed by a fold of the comforter. Clumsy with the bulk of her gloves, Koda removes his billfold from his hip pocket and thumbs through the plasticine card pockets until she finds his driver’s license. He is—he was, she corrects herself—Theodore Hurley, also of Pierre.

Koda knows that Paul’s father is long dead, having attended his funeral three years before. Theodore must have been an uncle.

A search of the rest of the house yields no sign of Virginia or her three adolescent daughters. In the kitchen Koda discovers that the hot tap is dripping and that there is still water from it. Thank you God for propane. She sets about feeding and watering Louie and examining the contents of Virginia’s pantry. As she counts the cans of beans and the Mason jars filled with bright gold and purple preserves, spiced peaches, pickled beets, a shudder creeps over her skin that has nothing to do with the cold. She feels like a ghoul, pawing through the remnants of a woman’s life.

Remnants that will help feed her own family and the refugees gathered in their home. Virginia would not want her good food to go to waste. There will, she tells herself, be no more trips to the Safeway anytime soon.

Koda finds the matches and lights a burner to make herself a cup of the Hurleys’ instant Maxwell House, then lights the oven, leaving it open so the room will warm. She closes the swinging door behind her as she returns upstairs to search the linen cabinet. Five blankets she carries down and sets out on a chair in the den; one, the thickest quilt she can find, she makes into a bed for Louie beside the stove. She is almost comfortable as she sips the dark brew—almost coffee, she thinks wryly— warming her fingers that seem to be gone all to cold bone against the thick earthenware of the cup. Almost she finds herself smiling as Louie turns twice widdershins and thumps down onto the mounded bedspread with a wheezy sigh, full-bellied and secure for the first time in days. Within seconds he begins to snore.

Promising herself another cup before she leaves, Koda pulls her gloves back on and slogs through the snow to the barn. The doors are closed but not locked. When her eyes accustom themselves to the dim light, she finds a pair of Holstein cows and a heifer huddled together amid the hay, their breath making cloudy weather about them. An Appaloosa turns his head toward her expectantly as she approaches his stall; his quarterhorse stablemate, more impatient, whinnies loudly and stamps. She rubs their noses in turn, speaking softly.

Half an hour later, the cows and horses are fed and watered, the stalls mucked out. In the process of finding and dragging out a sack of feed, Koda has also discovered a dozen red hens and a rooster along a shelf in an empty stall. Now, replete, they are back on their perch, clucking softly, settling down once more. Like Louie, they are as comfortable and safe as she can make them.

Only one thing left to do now.

Koda takes the snow shovel from its place against the barn wall and makes her way to the north side of the house, where the sun, when it comes out, will be slow to melt the drifts, where more fall will pile high. With it she digs a shallow trench, long but narrow, under the eaves. The ground beneath is frozen.

One by one, she brings the dead from the house and lays them in all the grave she can make for them. She expects the children to be the hardest. And while her heart clenches as she wraps their bodies, cold as any stone, and bears them out to their burials, it is the old folk who come nearest to breaking it. They should have died in their beds, at home, their children and grandchildren about them. Wise, content in their passing.

Ate, she promises her father as the silent tears spill from her eyes; Ina, my mother: I will not let you die like this.

Gently Koda drops the snow over the bodies; gently smoothes the surface so that there will be no sign of disturbance with the next fall. She turns to go.

It is too stark; there should be some ceremony, some leave-taking. The Hurleys are Irish Catholic, every man jack and woman of them for four generations all the way back to Ellis Island and a thousand years before that. She cannot find their priest in Rapid City and send him back; it is far too dangerous, even if he is somehow still alive. She will have to do, half-heathen that she is.

She searches her memory for the words, and they come to her, the Church’s prayer for those about to step onto the Blue Road of the spirit. She signs a cross above the snow and murmurs, “Go forth, Christian souls, out of this world: in the name of the Father, who has created you; in the name of the Son, who has redeemed you; in the name of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies you. Into Paradise may the angels lead you; at your coming may the martyrs receive you, and lead you into the Holy City, Jerusalem. Amen.”

Koda stands a moment more by the grave, head bowed in respect. Then she turns once again to the care of the living.

Back in the house, the second and not nearly so satisfying cup of not-quite-coffee in her hand, Koda wrestles briefly with herself whether to leave the oven on for Louie. She opts for safety and her mother’s training in the end, turns it off, ruffles the sleeping dog’s ears a last time, and returns to her truck. As she swings back out of the driveway, she thumbs her CB on. “Tacoma. Tacoma, come in.”

“Hey, Koda! You comin’ home already? You got a flat? You need me to come help you?”

“Hey yourself, bro. We’ve been there, done that. Mom and Dad need you at home.”

“Yeah, sure.” A whole world of adolescent male discouragement is loaded onto the two words.

Virginia. Charleston. Koda’s hand clenches on the mike. I won’t let that happen to you either, little brother. Not while I live. But she says, steadily, “Is Dad around? Phoenix?”

“I’ll get ‘em. Hang on.”

It is Phoenix who takes the call. “Dad’s out in the barn. What’s up?”

Guardedly, Koda describes what she has found at the Hurley ranch. “It’s the same pattern. Paul and the boys are dead. So are an elderly couple I think were his aunt and uncle. The girls and Virginia are missing. Soon as you can, you and Dad need to come get the food out of the pantry and take the livestock, including a small shaggy dog named Louie.”

“Louie?” There is laughter in Phoenix’s voice.

“Yeah, Louie. Mom’ll like him. There are trailers here; you just need to bring the trucks.”

“Gotcha.”

“And listen. Nobody’s been here since they were killed. If you see more tracks than mine, one set coming and another set going—

“Gotcha again,” he interrupted her. “We’ll be careful. You do the same.”

“Yeah. Later.”

“Later,” he echoes, and breaks the connection.

9

Kirsten pulls along the drop off curb in front of the Shop ‘n Go Market. Jumping out of the van, she walks to the back and opens the large cargo doors, displaying an interior which now has a number of five and ten gallon gas cans, filled to the brim with fuel. Gas had taken her awhile to get, given that without any electricity to power the pumps, she had to resort to siphoning, which left her nauseous and with the foul taste of gasoline in her mouth.

Asimov whines at her from the rear bench seat and she looks at him. “You stay here and guard the truck, boy. No chasing cats, or dogs, or rats, or whatever else strikes your fancy. You just stay here, alright? I’ll be back in a little while.”

The large dog whines again, but finally settles down, propping his big head on the top of the seat and looking at her through soulful brown eyes.

“Not this time, boy. I’m sorry, but I need to move quick and not be chasing you around the store. We’ll be on the road soon, I promise.”

With a long suffering sigh that would do a Jewish mother proud, Asimov seems to accept his mistress’ terms and drops his head off the seat, stretching his body along the back in preparation for a nap.

Nodding in satisfaction, Kirsten steps away from the van and walks toward the wide glass doors of the supermarket. Engaged in her thoughts, she doesn’t stop until forced to do so by a thick sheet of glass pressed tight against her body. Stunned, she takes a step back and stares at the door for a moment, perplexed.

Then she utters a shaky laugh and mentally slaps her head. Without electricity, the automatic doors have become as useful as a flag to a hen. Stepping forward, more cautiously this time as though the doors might suddenly grow fangs and attempt to bite, she wraps a hand around the small handle and pulls. It takes most of her strength, but she manages to bully the door open wide enough to slip through.

And steps immediately back outside again as the high, sweet stench of decaying food and rotting human assaults her senses for the second time that afternoon. It’s a good thing that her stomach is filled with nothing but hunger, or she would be adding to the stench.

Wiping heavily watering eyes with both hands, she takes a few deep breaths of cold, outside air and contemplates her options.

There aren’t many. The next store down is a SavMor Pharmacy, but unless she plans to spend the rest of her time on the road subsisting on cheese crackers washed down by swigs of cherry-flavored laxative, the grocery store is the only game in town.

Reaching into her back pocket, she pulls out a gray bandana, flaps it out, and ties it securely around her nose and mouth. It won’t do much, she’s quite sure, but it’s better than nothing.

She hopes.

Girding her figurative loins, she steps back to the door and once again bullies it open by main strength. Her stomach immediately twists and growls out its outrage as the stench assaults her senses anew, but she silently commands it to shut up, and takes a step forward into the store.

Her gaze is immediately drawn upwards by a large, bright sign that catches the rays of the slowly dying sun.

Wednesdays are Senior Days at Shop ‘n Go! Golden age discounts for our golden age members!

Without looking down, she mentally calculates the days, and a grimace spreads hidden over her face as she realizes that today is Friday. Finally allowing her gaze to lower, she finds herself in the middle of an abattoir.

Elderly men and women had heeded the sign and died in droves. They are scattered through the aisles like fallen trees, still dressed in their Sunday best. A smattering of younger people, mostly adolescent boys and a couple of grown men, lay sprawled out by the cash registers and the manager’s booth. The enemy had caught them unaware and they’d never had time to defend themselves, not that they could have against their inhuman murderers.

The lights flicker and hum, dimming and brightening in a pulsing rhythm courtesy of the backup generator that is obviously breathing its last.

The aisles are so tightly packed with corpses that she’ll never get a cart down any of them. Resigning herself, she grabs two hand baskets and carefully makes her way over and around the dead, searching for what she’ll need to survive the long trip she has ahead of her.

An hour, and five trips later, she’s finally done. Canned goods, dog food, the few fresh vegetables and fruits she could find, water by the gallon, and several butane stoves she found in the clearance aisle share space with the gas cans in the van’s large cargo hold. A quick trip to the neighboring pharmacy, not nearly as crowded with rotting corpses, yielded first aid items, personal care items, and enough narcotics to land her in jail, had there been anyone around to arrest her.

She thinks for a moment, then steps into the cargo hold, grabbing her backpack and pulling out a fresh set of clothes. The ones she’s wearing reek of death and decay, and once she’s stripped them off—wishing mightily for a bath—she tosses them onto the pavement of the lot never to be used again.

Jumping out of the van, she closes the cargo doors, locks them against accidental opening, and returns to the driver’s seat. Asimov wakes up from his nap and jumps into the front seat beside her. Smiling and ruffling his ears, she tosses him a chew-hoof she picked up in the market, starts the ignition, and drives quickly away from the small town, leaving it deserted of the living once again.

10

She returns to a world of undisturbed whiteness. There has been no further snowfall, but neither has any melted. The flat white stretches away in all directions, broken only by fence posts jutting through the drifts at intervals. Icicles hang from barbed wire strung between like Christmas tinsel. The blank sky offers no light, casts no shadows. It is a world of the dead, for the dead.

For the first time, Koda is grateful for the miserable cold. Without it, without the growl of the powerful engine under her truck’s hood, her senses would have nothing to cling to. She has lived on the northern plains all her life, has lived with the winters that come sliding down over open country from the blue pack ice of the Arctic Circle. She has driven snowy roads in the depths of January, when, like now, her truck has been the only moving thing besides the howling wind.

This is different.

She is a woman on whom solitude rests easily. This is not solitude. This is isolation from the very idea of life.

Koda strikes the rim of the steering wheel with the flat of her hand, hard. Damn. Damn again. She hates being helpless before a disaster she does not understand, cannot quite piece together. All right, Rivers. Break it down and sort it out. Treat it as an epidemic. Find patient zero, chart the spread.

She knows her data set is incomplete, but the basic pattern has held true for the MacGregors, for the Hurleys and for all the survivors who have managed to make it to a CB.

Item. The uprising seems to be spread at least across North America. She does not know what has happened in Europe or Africa, Asia or South America. It is fairly obvious that less technologically oriented cultures are likely to have more survivors. At least temporarily.

Item. In all cases the men and boys have been slaughtered, together with the older women. Girls and younger women have disappeared.

Item. Two thousand years ago, the pattern would have been familiar. Kill the men, rape the women, sell the virgin girls as slaves.

Which makes no sense.

Try again.

Foreign attack? South Dakota has been riddled for decades with nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. So has North Dakota. The prospect of mutual assured destruction has kept them in their silos. Could the Defense Department codes have fallen into enemy hands? And if so, which enemy?

And if so, why now?

Abruptly she brakes the truck. There, cut deep in the snow ahead of her, are the tracks of another vehicle. She studies the marks carefully. Wide body. Wide, heavy tires, heavily chained. The asphalt shows through in places where the links have bitten through the ice. A truck of some kind, possibly heavily loaded.

She gets out of the pickup, Uzi slung again over her shoulder. Slowly, she walks up the road between the ruts but sees nothing that can tell her more. No conveniently dropped candy wrappers, no cigarette butts, no beer cans, nothing to tell her whether the occupants of the other truck are human or not. When she has gone a couple hundred yards she gives it up and turns back.

Now what?

She scans the flat landscape in all directions. White drifts, bare trees, the dark lines of fences. In the field to her left, there are humps in the snow that may be hay bales or frozen cattle. Most of her route into Rapid City will be through open country like this. She is a little more than five miles north of Elm Creek. There is a bridge.

The snow lies too deep for her to cut across country. The next intersection with another road is on the other side of that bridge.

She can turn around, or she can go on.

No choice. Back behind the wheel of the pickup, Koda pulls the fleece-lined leather glove off her right hand. Underneath it is another of knitted wool; below that a silk mitt. She turns the key in the ignition, then drives with her left hand. The right rests on the freezing metal grip of the Uzi in her lap.

A mile along she sees the first living thing that has crossed her path since she set out. Far out in a rolling meadow to her left, just this side of a line of trees, there is a spill of black across the snow. It moves, separates, shifts again. Ravens. Her gaze follows the line of the rise. There, high above, another bird soars with its wings held in a shallow V. Its form is black against the sky; in the poor light all she can see is a silhouette. Raptor. Not an owl. Not a falcon by the shape of the wings. Hawk or eagle, then.

The sight warms her slightly from within. She is not quite sure why, except that she is pleased to see other living things in this barren landscape. Going about their lives, unaffected by the disaster that has overtaken their two-legged relations. As she watches, the bird banks and turns south, moving toward the creek, and disappears from sight.

A half mile from the bridge, she is still following the tracks of the unknown vehicle. The road curves here, a long, slow, shallow arc that passes through a stand of lodgepole pine and will put her onto a straight stretch no more than a couple hundred yards from the creek. If there is danger, it will be here.

It is waiting for her at the bridge.

A cold stillness spreads around her heart as Koda takes in the blockade. Two troop-carrier trucks are drawn up across the road, blocking the bridge. Four figures in military green winter fatigues stand in front of them, three of them with M-1’s held ready, the fourth with a mobile launcher on its shoulder and a bandolier of grenades strung across its chest. Even beneath the bulky clothing, she can make out the bulge of pistols at their belts. In her rear view mirror, she sees two more muffled and heavily armed figures step out of the trees and take up position behind her.

There is no hope of driving around them and through the creek. It is too deep at this point, the banks too steep. Koda brakes the pickup halfway between the woods and the barricade. She waits

One of the figures has a bullhorn. The voice that comes through has no human tone, only the flat, tinny quality of the amplifier. “You in the truck. Get out slowly with your hands on top of your head.!”

There are three possibilities. These soldiers may be not be human. They may be marauders set loose by the spreading chaos. Or they may be what they seem.

Deliberately, keeping her right hand in full view through the windshield, Koda slides out, placing both hands firmly on the crown of her Stetson and keeping the door between herself and the soldiers.

“Stand clear of the vehicle!”

Koda hesitates for a heartbeat. Once she is in the open, the Uzi will be in full view. She calculates the odds that she can reach it and take a few of these bastards, if bastards they are, with her before they shoot her down.

Another of the figures steps forward, arm raised. There is a grenade in its hand. “Stand clear NOW!”

The voice is female, deep and furry in the way of the Louisiana bayous. Almost certainly it belongs to a human. Between the soldier’s cap and the high collar that conceals most of her face, Koda can just make out the glint of dark eyes. Warily, stepping sideways, she comes out from behind the door.

She shouts, “You guys wanna introduce yourselves?” just as one exclaims, “Shit! He has a gun!”

The figure with the grenade takes a step forward. “Keep your hands away from your weapon!”

“They are away! Who the fuck are you?”

“We’re the free people of the United States! Take your left hand off your head and unbutton your coat and shirt! Let us see your throat!”

“After you!”

“Do it! Or I’ll frag your truck and incinerate you along with it!”

Non-negotiable. No more time to decide.

The woman brings her hands forward to pull the pin. Before she can reach it, a hawk plunges toward her out of the sky, screaming. It hurtles downward to within inches of her face, pulling up nanoseconds short of collision, talons outstretched to strike. Then it shoots upward again at an almost vertical angle. The woman yells, recoils , waivers and topples backward into the snow, the grenade disappearing somewhere in the drift.

Laughter catches in Koda’s throat as one of the other soldiers raises a gun to shoot at the bird. “No!” she shouts, pulling furiously at the collar of her coat with her right hand, raising her left in a fist. She whistles loud, piercingly. “Wiyo! Wiyo Cetan!”

She whistles three times. At the third, the hawk hovers briefly at her zenith, then stoops again, making straight for Koda. Koda whistles a fourth time, at a lower pitch, and the hawk’s body swings forward. Great wings backing air, it comes to light gently, almost delicately, on her fist. Then, mantling and hissing at the dumbstruck soldiers, it sidesteps its way up her arm to her shoulder. One of its wings strikes Koda’s hat, knocking it off her head, and her hair comes tumbling down. The hawk settles, glaring.

The leader has regained her feet. A wide grin splits her dark face as she opens her own collar, showing unmarked human flesh. “Colonel Margaret Allen, United States Air Force. Pleased to meet you.”

“Dakota Rivers. Lakota Nation.”

The Colonel offers her hand to shake, and Koda takes it. “You a vet?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw your license plate.” Koda follows her gaze back to her truck, where the registration numbers are split by a caduceus overlaying a V. “Figured you were human, but we’re not taking any chances.”

“You from the base?”

The Colonel grimaces. “What’s left of it.” Then, “What are you doing out on the road? You have people in the city?”

Koda shakes her head. “Scouting.”

“With a hawk? That’s a red-tail, isn’t it?”

“Not it. She.”

Another of the soldiers has gotten himself sufficiently together to approach. Koda stares at him. He is the first living man she has seen in three days who is not her kin. Her right hand drops to her waist, near the Uzi. He follows her gaze, then opens the throat of his coat.. “I’m real, too. August Schimmel. That’s a hell of a pet you’ve got there.”

Wiyo mantles again, and Koda smiles. It is not a particularly reassuring smile. “Not a pet. A friend.”

Colonel Allen bends down and retrieves Koda’s hat, hands it to her. “Come on over to one of the carriers where it’s warm. We need to talk.”

Koda nods. As she follows the other woman toward the dark olive trucks, Wiyo leaves her shoulder with a hiss and rises to settle in a bare sycamore by the bridge. The small flicker of hope that had gone out when she found the Hurleys massacred rekindles itself in a far corner of Koda’s mind. There are other people alive, and fighting. She is not alone.

CHAPTER THREE

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

1

ADVISORS AXE ANDROIDS, Heckle Hoaxer

New York (New York Post) The Chairman of the newly developed President’s Committee on Robotics, Howard Mexenbaum, issued a press release today stating that Peter Westerhaus’ revolutionary invention is no more revolutionary “than a child’s Halloween costume.” Mr. Mexenbaum is quoted as saying that “it’s obvious to anyone with two eyes in their head that this android business is a hoax of the highest order. George Lucas showed more ingenuity in stuffing that little man into his R2D2 costume than Westerhaus has yet shown the American people.”

When asked, in a private interview, whether Mr. Mexenbaum had actually seen the android in question, he stated that he had not, but that he had heard reports and that those reports were “virtually unanimous” in their disparagement of Westerhaus’ “invention”.

The press release went on to say that the Committee was drafting a letter to the President asking that the FBI and possibly the CIA open up preliminary investigations on this “modern day P.T. Barnum.”

::flip::

President is “Utterly Convinced”

Washington DC (AP) In a Press Conference in the Rose Garden today, President Hillary Clinton stated that she is “utterly convinced” that Peter Westerhaus’ android inventions are, in fact, “the genuine article.”

In a private meeting with the President earlier today, Westerhaus unveiled two prototypes of his androids, affectionately named C4PO and R2D3 in a sarcastic reply to Howard Mexenbaum’s earlier accusations of huckstering. The President reportedly stood by in awe as the androids walked up to her, shook her hand, greeted her by name, and returned to the side of their inventor. One of the androids apparently asked Ms. President if she would like him to fix the squeaky hinge in the door leading to the Oval Office. It is unknown how she replied.

When asked if she would be the first in line to purchase one of the androids when they became commercially available, the President smiled and said “no, that’s why I have Bill.”

::flip::

Westerhaus Announces Household Robot

New York (AP) Westerhaus Inc. announced today the unveiling of its new home robot, the revolutionary Maid Marian. “We are pleased to offer American householders the greatest time- and labor-saving device since the introduction of the automatic washing machine,” company spokesperson Melinda Deliganis said, “The Maid Marian is a highly programmable model that can take over such tedious jobs as cleaning, cooking and even a limited amount of routine errand-running, such as picking up parcels. She can walk at a maximum speed of 4 miles per hour, and her feet will never get tired!”

Deliganis characterized Microsoft’s crash program to develop a competing product as “irrelevant.” “We have the patents and the proprietary technology. While it is true that the first Maid Marians will be priced in the high-ticket range, we expect demand to be high enough to support a mass-market version within eighteen months.”

::flip::

Bishop Says There Are No Religious Implications

Washington (MSNBC) In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews yesterday, the Right Reverend William S. MacDermott, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States stated flatly that the introduction of android robots “does not pose any theological questions. Does your car pose a theological question?” the Bishop asked rhetorically. “Does your alarm clock? A robot is a machine, property that can be bought and sold. Nuts and bolts and printed circuits. Nothing more.”

Asked to respond to Televangelist Pat Robertson’s claim that the robots are “the work of the devil,” the Bishop referred Matthews to his previous response. “I’ll be surprised if the Rev. Robertson doesn’t have one mowing his lawn by the Fourth of July,” he quipped.

::flip::

Royals to Replace Staff with Bots?

London (Reuters) A spokesperson for Queen Camilla today declined to confirm or deny that Palace maids and other maintenance personnel will be replaced with androids. “Her Majesty welcomes technological change, and as you know has sponsored several scholarships for promising computer-technical students. This has nothing to do with the current nationwide shortage of domestic employees.’

In a related story (A 14) the Palace had “no comment” to Tonight Show host Jay Leno’s remark that His Majesty King Charles is an early, unmarketable Westerhaus test model.

::flip::

Phelps Campaign Interrupts Commendation Ceremony

Minneapolis (CNN) Jedadiah Phelps, the grandson of Fred Phelps, the late Minister of the Westboro Baptist Church, gathered his faithful flock in protest of a commendation ceremony held in Minneapolis today.

Holding handmade signs and shouting “God Hates Droids!”, the group of twenty managed to disrupt the proceedings at least twice before police clad in riot gear ushered them from the premises.

The ceremony, presided over by Mayor Tim “The Rule Man” Taylor, was to commemorate and commend the heroic actions of Android 77-EDY-823 (Eddie) during the recent bout of arson-related fires in the city. Firedroid Eddie, it will be remembered, managed a rescue total of twenty three humans, five dogs, seventeen cats, two birds and one chinchilla during the three day siege.

The mayor….

::flip::

Defense Secretary Announces Android Soldiers

Washington (AP) Secretary of Defense Humberto X. Palacios today announced that initial tests of android infantry soldiers have been “a stunning success. These new models, co-developed by Westerhaus and Boeing Defense Industries, have exceeded all expectations in target recognition, accuracy, versatility in weapons usage and deployment capability. The day is coming when no young American soldier will ever again have to face enemy fire head-on.” Palacios indicated that if these new models perform well in further tests which more closely match actual battlefield conditions, initial deployment could take place as soon as next year.

When asked if these new military androids could pose a danger to the American people, Palacios replied, “These androids will be deployed under very strict, very controlled military situations and will never come into contact with American civilians.”

Dr. Kirsten King, the Government’s top expert in robotics and a noted skeptic of the current “android rage” was unavailable for comment.

::flip::

Android Troops to be Deployed in Gulf

Camp David (Reuters) The Guardian has learned today that President Clinton will order the first deployment of android infantry to the Gulf theater next week. “I inherited this war, as you know,” Ms. Clinton said. “Now I mean to put a stop to it.”

::flip::

Loser Demands Gold Medalist Step Down

Copenhagen (Reuters) Ekaterina Petrovna Schevaryedna, Silver Medalist in the 2012 Winter Olympics, has filed a complaint alleging that Britney Chung, the U. S. skater who glided to a stunning upset over the top-rated Russian in the Women’s Figure Skating last night, should be disqualified. Schevaryedna alleges that her competitor is “not a human at all. She is a robot!”

Olympic officials here issued a brief statement this morning, saying only that Chung has consented to undergo X-ray examination and to submit blood samples. Off the record, one Commissioner quipped, “At least this is easier to deal with than crooked judges.”

::flip::

Android Involved in Assault on Driver

Kalamazoo (MSNBC) Today an android allegedly assaulted the driver of a vehicle which struck it as it was crossing the street in this Midwestern city. Neither the name of the driver nor the model of the android was made public. Details remain spotty.

::flip::

Android Saves New York Child

New York (AP) A seven-year-old child was pulled from the Hudson River today by an android after falling nearly 50 feet into the icy waters below.

The boy, Jake Hamilton, was on a class trip to visit the George Washington Bridge when he climbed a bridge rail and tumbled over. Android XKJ152-67-A-245-TOM witnessed the incident and followed the boy into the river, ultimately saving his life.

“It was scary when I fell,” Hamilton said from his hospital bed where he is still recuperating. “But then it got really black when I got cold in the water. I don’t remember that droid swimming out with me, but I’m really thankful to him.”

According to doctors the boy suffered hypothermia almost immediately due to the freezing temperature of the river. After record-breaking winter weather has hammered the East Coast, officials estimate the water temperature of the Hudson River is between zero and 15 degrees Fahrenheit, on average.

Android TOM said he did not process his actions against his moral coding before taking the plunge. Bain, an exterior bridge worker, was harnessed to the side of the bridge below the point from which the boy fell.

“It seemed the thing to do,” Bain said in a phone interview. “It is against my model’s coding to participate in the loss of human life. Perhaps I did not process the action as negative because I had seen the boy fall. Allowing him to stay in the cold waters would have ended his life cycle. Therefore, I had to act contrary to his death.”

Bain is one of the newer prototype androids, a model XHJ152. He was completing a manual task assignment before his judgment coding was tested.

::flip::

“Why’d you do it, Peter?” Kirsten asks, voice soft as her eyes trace a grainy, newspaper photo of the diminutive Westerhaus dwarfed by the size of the yacht he stands aboard, platinum blondes dripping off of him like voluptuous beads of sweat. “You had it all, and more. Why this? Why now?”

Sighing, she closes the scrapbook and places it atop the dozen others she managed to secret away when she began the run for her life.

She sighs again, clicking off the flashlight in her hand, and slumping back against the seat. The night sky is brilliantly clear, the stars a smattering of jewels thrown across a velvet tapestry by a careless hand. She stares through the windshield into that sky, lost in her own thoughts.

The paper is right, of course. About most things in her life, and the androids especially, Kirsten King is a skeptic of the highest order. The religious zealots and jealous corporations had praised her to the highest Heaven during her first public stands against Westerhaus’ creations. Others had looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. Her peers, mostly, laughed behind their hands and coined her with the affectionate title “Chicken Little”. Not because of any perceived cowardice on her part—there was nothing cowardly about Kirsten King—but because of what they felt to be her sudden propensity toward running around shouting “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

“It fell alright.”

Her voice is unnaturally loud in the absolute silence of the night, and her breath fogs the windshield, rendering her view hazy and indistinct.

Smothering a yawn with her cupped palm, Kirsten stretches out her cramped shoulders and back, rolling her neck from side to side and listening to it crackle with a soft grunt of satisfaction. Behind her, Asimov moans in his doggy dreams and shifts slightly into a more comfortable position.

“Okay, mutt,” she says, turning to look over her shoulder at her slumbering canine companion, “time for you to give up your….”

The sound of shattering glass cuts through the rest of her sentence like a knife. Before she can react, Kirsten feels a hand slip into her hair and pull tightly, slamming her head hard against the window’s support. Her vision lights up with interior stars that swirl in a dizzying pattern before her.

A breath that sounds very much like a scream is forced from her lungs, and her survival instinct kicks in with a vengeance. Her scalp shrieks as she jerks her head away and rolls sideways across the bench seat.

She jerks back as a second arm blasts through the passengers’ side window, splattering her face and clothing with icy shards of safety glass. This time, it’s a definite scream that shoots forth, and Kirsten crab-crawls backward, hands and feet slipping and sliding along the vinyl seat-cover.

Asimov jumps over the seat, snarling, and clamps his huge, dripping teeth into the arm that pokes into the passengers’ side of the truck searching for the door handle.

Pulling her legs out from beneath her dog’s heavy weight, Kirsten reaches for the keys still in the ignition, but before she can grab the switch, her hair is again grabbed and she is hauled bodily across the rest of the seat, slamming against the door hard enough to drive the breath from her lungs and the thoughts from her mind.

The world grays out for a moment, then rushes back with startling clarity.

I’m going to die.

The thought is strangely free of accompanying emotion, and part of her wonders if she’s not dead already, simply existing as some amorphous ghost-thing doomed forever to haunt a truck.

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Setting her jaw, she jerks forward again, only to be dragged back when a strong forearm clamps itself against her throat, cutting off her breathing in a savage motion.

Her right arm shoots out, trying desperately to reach the keys, but all she can do is flop her fingers uselessly against the steering wheel. Black roses begin to bloom in her vision, and with all of her strength she tries again.

Nothing.

Her hand rebounds off the steering wheel to land at her side. Her fingers trace along the chilled metal of some object that her oxygen starved brain refuses to identify. Working on blind instinct alone, she grabs the object, hand curling around it naturally. Hefting it, she brings her arm up and across her body and pulls the trigger of the gun in her hand, again and again and again until it only responds with empty, impotent clicks.

In deep shock, and temporarily deafened by her own gun, Kirsten doesn’t realize that the arm around her neck has loosened until her head begins pounding with the rush of life-giving oxygen returning her red blood cells to their normal function.

Her lungs respond automatically, in heaving gasps of fresh, cold air, and even before her second intake of breath, she’s straightened out, dropped the gun, and is reaching for the keys in the ignition. This time, her fingers score a direct hit, and the van starts up with a howling growl.

“Asimov, release!” she shouts as she swings her leg down and jams her foot on the accelerator. Human and canine are driven against the backs of their seats as the van goes from stop to go in what seems to be a nanosecond. The stench of burning rubber accompanies the screech of new Michelins. The van rockets away from the curb, shimmies a bit on a small patch of black ice, then straightens admirably and roars down the street as if being pursued by Lucifer himself.

Her attacker is still hanging on, though now it’s to the doorframe. Shards of safety glass cut cruelly into its unfeeling palms, but it holds on, uncaring. Kirsten knows better than to try and pry the fingers away from the frame. She lacks the strength and leverage it would require, and would further draw her attention away from the road she is blistering down at sixty and still gaining.

A grin devoid of any charm or humor curls her lips as she sees a delivery truck parked against the curb to her left. A quick twist of the wheel, and the van heads in that direction.

“Die, you fucker!!!”

Another jerk of the wheel and the side of the van crashes against the delivery truck and bounces off. It shudders, then sideswipes the truck again, paint and metal screeching their last. The screeching stops as the two vehicles finally separate. The truck remains stationary, rocking on its springs. The van continues forward, now sounding a little worse for wear.

Kirsten chances a look to her left, and crows in delight when the only sign of her inhuman attacker is the two hands it’s left behind, still gripping the window frame hard enough to dent the metal beneath the vinyl and foam padding.

At her side, Asimov yelps, and Kirsten quickly returns her attention to the road just in time to see a moving truck parked crossways along the road, blocking it completely.

“Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…..”

Yanking the wheel hard, she almost overturns the truck as it attempts to turn at a nearly right angle while still doing somewhere close to fifty miles an hour.

“..iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii….”

Going up on two wheels for a terror-filled moment, it finally drops home on all four and continues on at an angle, the truck in its sights and growing larger by the second.

“…iiiiiiiiiiii…”

All four wheels leave the road this time as the van jumps the curb, missing the rear corner of the moving truck by less than the width of a hair.

“..iiiiiiiiiiiit!”

The front wheels land first. Kirsten’s head jerks forward, pounding against the steering wheel and slicing a large gash just above her hairline. Asimov yelps again as he is thrown against the glove compartment, rebounds into the seat, and collapses, panting and whining in pain.

The rear wheels hit then, and Kirsten’s head tips back. A rich fan of bright blood lays itself across the windshield and the ceiling. A second fan joins the first as the van drops down off the curb and shoots down a narrow side street, careening out of control.

The side street widens out, then curves gently, becoming a freeway onramp. Kirsten holds the curve, blinking the streaming blood from eyes big and round and white as saucers. She lets out a breath of relief as the van rockets onto the thankfully empty freeway, then sucks that breath back in as the tires hit another patch of black ice and slide across the lanes as if they’ve suddenly grown skate blades.

The sideways glide, almost balletic really, comes to an abrupt end as the van sideswipes a steel divider, further abusing the already crumpled driver’s side from fender to fender. More metal and paint are sacrificed to the gods of destruction, and the van gradually slows, half on and half off of the smoothly paved freeway.

If finally rolls to a complete stop, and Kirsten sits, staring through the window as her mind tries to wrap itself around the events just preceding. Her hand moves up to wipe her brow. It comes away bloody as she hisses at the sting. “You alright boy?” she asks Asimov. His ears perk, followed by his body as he comes to a sitting position and leans over to lick at her face. It tickles, and she giggles a little before pushing him away. The laugh sounds a little breathless, a little tremulous, and she knows that her system is just waiting out the shock she’s just given it. And if that happens….

Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out another handkerchief, dots gingerly at the blood on her brow, then ties it around her head just below the level of the cut. The mediocre first aid will have to do for now. She can’t spare time for anything else.

The battered van starts forward again, if grudgingly, and soon she’s driving west as if trying to outrun the dawn shading the eastern sky.

2

Setting her hat back on her head, Koda follows Allen to the back of the nearer troop trucks. She swings herself easily up onto the bumper, then ducks through the narrow door. Inside, the carrier has been transformed into a mobile field office. A table has been bolted to the floor between the two long side benches; over their heads—not more than a couple millimeters over Koda’s—a battery-powered fluorescent tube runs almost the length of the compartment.

A topo map of the area is taped by its corners to the table, which also holds a compact laptop no thicker than a weekly newsmagazine. Best of all, a camp stove backed by a wide reflector radiates heat through the entire space. The Colonel unbuttons her heavy parka and drops it onto a folding chair. Koda follows suit, adding hat and gloves to the pile.

The Colonel raises a mug with squadron logo on the side: a bobcat standing on its hind feet and twirling a six-gun in either paw, a crooked, very human grin spread across its whiskered face under a Stetson. Behind it is the shape of a steeply climbing fighter jet, with “Wildcats SR” in looping script across its tail. “Coffee?”

Koda settles on one of the benches, stretching her booted feet out to the stove. “Real?”

“Real.” Allen rummages in a thermal chest under the table and comes up with another cup and a vacuum jug. “Sugar? Creamer?”

“Black, thanks.”

She hands Koda the hot, fragrant drink and settles across from her. She is tall and spare, though not so tall as Koda, with elegant long hands. There is a scattering of grey in her hair, worn natural and close to her scalp. Her only ornament is a single gold ear cuff, also in the form of a bobcat. She smiles faintly, but her eyes remain sharp and more than a little wary. “So,” she says. “Truth or dare time. You want me to go first?”

Koda raises her mug in salute. “Be my guest, Colonel.”

“Maggie.”

“Koda, then.”

Maggie nods, then settles herself, leaning back against the wall of the truck. “Okay.

“We were in the air when we got word of the uprising. We’d only been up about half an hour or so—myself, half a dozen instructors with their student pilots. Flying echelon, doing some formation training on the way up to Minot. We were doing the tour, landings and takeoffs at half-a-dozen bases with mid-air refueling. Standard exercise.”

So they have planes. Koda lowers her eyes as she takes a sip from the cup, not quite quickly enough.

“Right,” Maggie confirms with a negligent wave of her hand. “When we heard, we turned around and put down on a long, straight stretch of farm road a couple miles from here. We found a ranch house that had already been hit. The folks there apparently kept a couple domestic droids, maybe a field hand or two. The men were all dead and the women all gone.”

She pauses, and Koda recognizes that it is her turn. “That’s the pattern we’ve seen. The night it happened, we destroyed a pair of droids that had gone to raid our neighbors’ ranch. We weren’t in time to help the men, but we got the women and girls away from them. Same at another place a few miles up the road, except that the things were long gone.”

“We?”

“My family and I. My dad has a large spread up near the Cheyenne. I have my own place next to it.”

“Can your people hold it?”

“So far.”

“Good. We need to find other resisters, too. Right now, we’re holding about fifteen square miles, closing off the roads and bridges and running a tight perimeter with relay patrols.”

“How many troops?”

Maggie ticked them off. “We have the fighter crews; that’s fourteen of us. Then we have another thirty, weekend infantry we picked up when we went to raid the National Guard armory at Box Elder for vehicles and small arms. Plus survivors and refugees that managed to get away from Ellsworth itself. Sixty-five of us altogether.”

“So what’s going on? It’s not just a mutiny. Hell,” Koda thumped her cup down on the table, sloshing the still-scalding liquid halfway up the side of the mug.” It’s a goddam third-rate science-fiction story: kill the men and carry off Earth’s Fairest Daughters. It’s worse than goddam Fay Wray with the goddam gorilla up on the goddam Empire State Building!”

“You’re right about that,” Maggie says softly. “Most of the men on the base were mutilated.”

Koda draws her breath in sharply, the air hissing between her teeth. “So.”

“But you suspected that, didn’t you?”

“Young, prime males, sure.” Koda shrugs. “Steers go to market; cows and heifers make more steers, with the bull or with the turkey baster. It does, however,” she says very carefully, “seem unlikely that the droids are raising beef. Or long pig.”

“Well, they haven’t eaten anybody yet. I’ve always hated the damn things. Hated the idea of them, the risk they just might not be controllable in a crisis. Hated making them humanoid.” A wry grin splits Maggie’s dark face. “But I don’t think they’ve gotten human enough to turn to cannibalism. No, it’s something else. Want to help us find out what?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Some recon tomorrow, onto the base and maybe into Rapid City.”

It is what she had intended to do in any case. She had not expected to have allies. Koda nods. “Count me in.”

Half an hour later, Koda is back on the road toward the ranch house that serves as the guerilla force’s headquarters, part of the small convoy that has picked up the Colonel and the bridge guards and left others in their place. The driver ahead of her, one Corporal Lizzie Montoya, is a maniac, her tires spraying snow in arcing fountains as she bumps and crunches along through the ice at reckless speed. Koda drives with one foot half on the brake in case Montoya skids off the road or into the lead vehicle. Miraculously, the Corporal does not kill herself or anyone else.

A mile and a half from the bridge, they come to clear pavement, and the sudden change jolts up through Koda’s back and shoulders. Ahead of them on the road, coming nearer, seven huge silver shapes loom against the sky like prehistoric beasts. Wings canted back, bristling with missiles that jut out from underneath their bellies like spines, they might be pterodactyls set down to roost. Movement catches her eye, and Koda glances up.

A hawk glides smoothly across the white sky. Something eases inside Koda, a tension she scarcely has known was there. It is a good sign, she thinks, lelah wakan.

When she takes the turn that leads toward a slim column of smoke to the west, the hawk follows.

3

An old, old song pounds through Kirsten’s head. She navigates the Interstate with the attention of a barrel-rider, avoiding wrecked trucks, spilled cargo, here and there a corpse. As the frozen asphalt stretches out between her van and the city, though, obstacles become fewer. She still passes the occasional abandoned vehicle, doors broken and hanging open like the valves of a plundered clamshell. She has no way of knowing whether the occupants have escaped or been taken. She cannot slow down to find out, cannot concern herself with the wounded or the possibly salvageable. Her own survival is paramount. She tells herself over and over again that this is not the Highway to Hell. Through Hell, maybe, but not to Hell. It is the highway to Minot, North Dakota, and it is already more than all the hell she ever thought she would see.

Keep it simple. Keep it literal.

Somewhere around noon she crosses the thin spike of West Virgina that juts up between Pennsylvania and Ohio. Her forehead and scalp, which have ached dully since her collision with the steering wheel, have begun to itch with the dried blood from her wound. Little flakes sift down every now and then into her eyes, blurring her vision momentarily. Her bladder, in fact her whole abdomen, has felt for the last half hour as though a whole firing squad of porcupines has used her for target practice. For twice that time she has been promising herself to hold on in fifteen-minute increments. Finally, Asimov settles the matter for her, whining piteously and batting at the door handle with one huge paw.

“Okay, boy. I get you. Hang on just a few minutes more.” She reaches over to ruffle his ears and receives an exceptionally slobbery lick in return. “God,” she mutters, “how I do love gratitude.”

Just over the Ohio line, the Interstate dips to pass under a railroad bridge. Kirsten pulls over and ducks into an embrasure between the concrete struts. Asimov finds himself a satisfactory pillar near the further side of the overpass and irrigates it copiously. The puddle steams in the frigid air.

Asimov quarters the patch of highway, nose down and tail stiff, snuffling ecstatically at a sprayed stain on the cement and lifting his leg to obliterate it with one last, joyful squirt. Kirsten allows him to run off some of the stiffness of the hours in the van, stretching her own cramped legs and shoulder at the same time. When the cold begins to seep through her insulated boots, she whistles her dog back to the van. “Asimov, come! Let’s go!”

He wheels to obey, then freezes, ears straight up. He gives two sharp barks, whines and repeats the alarm. Without even thinking, Kirsten grabs the gun off the van’s seat. “What is it, boy? Where?”

Asimov barks yet again, and this time she hears it. Faint at first but coming steadily nearer, the steady whup-whup of a helicopter’s rotor sweeps toward them down the highway.

“Asimov!”

This time her voice is sharp, and he comes to her. Holding his collar with her left hand, her right gripping the automatic, Kirsten crouches down behind the bulk of the van. In her thoughts she makes herself small. Transparent. Not there.

The noise grows louder and louder until it seems to Kirsten that the chopper must be hovering directly above them. Maybe even landing on the tracks over her head. By the sound it is a large craft, a Black Hawk, maybe, or an Apache gunship. Definitely not a two-seater bubble. It is low enough that the rotor wash kicks up snow, making little funnel clouds and eddies in the drifts piled against the sides of the culvert. The racket is deafening.

There are two possibilities. The helicopter may be operated by human soldiers or law enforcement officers. If it is, they might be able to get her to Minot in half a day.

Or the crew may not be human. In that case, she will destroy as many as she can.

Finding out is not worth the risk.

The pitch of the rotor changes, intensifies unbearably for half a minute. Then the sound begins to recede, fading finally somewhere to the west and north of the overpass. Whatever has drawn the pilot’s attention, it is not one more derelict vehicle on the highway. It is only when her heart dislodges itself from her throat and begins to slow that she realizes it has been beating like a trip hammer to the rhythm of the blades. Her mouth feels cotton-dry. From somewhere deep in her mind a childhood memory rises up. Ms. Tannenbaum’s Sunday School class, little Passover lambs molded of papier maché and covered with fringed and curled white tissue paper.

Take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames . . . eat with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in hast; it is the Lord’s Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn. . .The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

Somehow the words have remained with her, overlaid by the smell of polymer glue and newsprint on a hot spring morning in Southern California, where her father had been stationed at Thirty-Nine Palms.

Shakily Kirsten gets to her feet and sets down the gun. “Stay, Asimov.”

As he waits patiently, she tops off the gas tank from the jerry cans she has stashed in the back of the van. Then she wets her bandana with as little water as possible and scrubs the dried blood from her forehead. There is a faint tinge of red when she brings it away; she is still bleeding slightly. She ties a fresh strip around her forehead, eats a granola bar while she studies the map. When she is certain the helicopter will not return, she whistles Asimov onto the front seat and sets out again onto the open road.

4

The ranch is good sized, though smaller than her family’s by a good bit. Which isn’t all that surprising, given Clan Rivers has managed to hold on to their piece of land since Time Immemorial, or so it seems.

The main house is a long, rectangular structure with several outbuildings trailing behind like goslings to their mother.

Dakota steps out of her truck into snow that is nearly knee deep, and watches as the others likewise exit their vehicles and head for the promising warmth of the house. She follows along slightly behind, taking careful inventory of those with whom, for better or for worse, she’s thrown in her lot.

For the tough Air Force Colonel, she feels a rather immediate kinship, which gives her pause, given that outside of her family, she trusts very few. While more than intelligent enough to realize that circumstances sometimes make for strange bedfellows, she believes that in this case, perhaps, circumstances have very little to do with things.

The others—those she’s met, anyway—seem capable, and very loyal to their commanding officer.

Her internal musings are interrupted by Montoya, who, with a rakish grin and a flourishing bow, ushers her inside the house. The interior is over warm, given the bitterness of the outside air, and she pauses for a moment as the flush of warming blood hits her tanned skin, painting her in a rosy hue. Montoya notices the flush and, mistaking the reason for it, tips the striking Vet a wink, which is abruptly cut off as cool blue eyes laser into hers.

“I’ll…um…you know…just go over….there….”

The young corporal is gone with a speed that surprises even her commander. Allen tries hard to keep a smile from her lips as she rapidly deduces the reason for the young woman’s alacrity. It’s a failed effort as those same blue eyes move to meet her own, twinkling with wry amusement. Allen covers her mouth and laughs, shoulders shaking with mirth.

“Dakota?”

Koda swings around to see a handsome, well-built man standing just inside the doorway, his dark eyes wide with surprise.

“Manny?”

The young man’s face breaks into a beaming grin and he crosses the room in three long strides, arms wide. The two tightly embrace for long seconds while the others, bemused, look on. Finally, Manny pulls away and looks up. “Damn, woman, when are you gonna stop growing?”

“You’re just shrinking, sprout,” Dakota replies, reaching up and scrubbing her hand over the bristles of his buzz-cut.

Ducking his head, the younger man smiles ruefully and rubs his own hand over his scalp, remembering when his hair was as long, glossy and lush as Dakota’s. Then he stiffens and the smile drops from his face. “Koda? Your family?”

“They’re fine, Manny. As are yours. Mother told me they’d been talking on the CB.”

Manny lets out a breath of relief. “Thank God. I tried to contact them, but the phones are gone.” He looks up at her, face wreathed in sorrow. “I’m sorry about Tali, Koda. She was a good person.” He clears his throat. “I tried to make it for the funeral, but we were on maneuvers.”

Dakota smiles. “It’s okay, hankashi. She knew you loved her, and that’s what counts, right?”

Sighing, Manny nods, then turns at the sound of his commander clearing her throat. A slight blush colors his skin. “Sorry Colonel. This is Dakota, my shic’eshi.”

“Cousin, right?”

The younger man grins. “That’s right. See, you’re learning!”

Allen chuckles.

“We practically grew up together. I haven’t seen her or her family in, what is it now, four years?”

“About that,” Dakota agrees.

“Good. I’m glad I could help get the two of you back together then.” Allen waves at her junior. “Why don’t you show your cousin where she’ll be bunking for the night. We’re leaving for the base first thing in the morning.”

Before Manny can respond, the front door bursts open to admit a florid faced young man wearing Lieutenant’s stripes. “Corporal, that little girl we found, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Allen nods, already throwing her coat back on. “Alright, let’s see what we can do.”

Dakota steps between the two. Allen looks at her, eyebrow raised.

“Maybe I can help.”

Maggie continues to stare.

“You have any medics?”

Allen shakes her head. “Just pilots. We’ve got basic first aid training, but not much more than that.”

“Then I’m the best you’ve got for now.” She holds up the triage kit she always carries with her. “I know my way around the human body pretty well.”

Allen smiles, relieved. “I’ll take that offer. C’mon.”

5

They walk along a shoveled and salted pathway bracketed by several heavily armed soldiers who take up positions along the walk, ever vigilant for intruders. Bypassing the first small cottage, they come to the second just to its right, and Koda follows the colonel inside.

The house is stuffed to the veritable rafters with hollow-eyed refugees, all women and girl-children. It is very warm inside and smells of despair and too many bodies packed too tightly together. The rescued women shuffle out of their way like zombies, making a path to a door along the narrow hallway. Opening the door, Allen gestures Kota to precede her.

The stench of putrescence is overpowering, but Koda, having smelled far worse in her life, keeps her face carefully neutral as she walks over to the small cot upon which a young girl, no more than four, lays.

Her dark, almond eyes are huge and glassy with a fever that paints clown spots of color high on her already ruddy cheeks. Her long, black hair is matted with sweat and dirt, and she stirs restlessly, further tangling the sheet that tries in vain to cover her tiny body.

“She was found….” Maggie starts, but quiets at Dakota’s upheld hand.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Koda murmurs, looking down into eyes so large that they seem to swallow the youngster’s face whole. “Not feelin’ so good, huh?”

The girl shifts her gaze, not looking so much to Dakota as through her. Deep, dark, and almost insanely calm pools of helplessness and hopelessness sear into the vet, touching off a sparkstone of rage deep inside. She fights it down with everything she has, keeping her gaze gentle and warm as she can make it.

The girl is Cheyenne. This she can tell by the shape of her face and the color of her skin. “My name is Koda,” she murmurs in the girl’s own language. “And I’m going to help make you feel better, okay?”

The girl blinks slowly, a tiny spark of surprise shining in the depths of her glassy, huge eyes.

Dakota responds with a small smile. “Can you tell me your name, little one?”

“He’kase,” the girl whispers, voice cracked and dry. Allen murmurs in surprise. It’s the first time the girl has spoken since they found her two days ago. Dakota shoots the colonel a look, then gazes back down at her tiny patient.

“I’m happy to meet you, He’kase,” she intones softly.

The young girl’s eyes widen as Dakota bends slightly forward, causing her medicine pouch to slip past the buttons of her shirt. A small, pudgy arm reaches up to brush trembling fingers reverently against the deerhide pouch, causing it to swing slightly.

Dakota smiles. “Can you do me a favor, He’kase?”

The little girl nods somberly.

Reaching up, Koda slips the pouch over her head and presses it into the girl’s hand. “Can you keep this safe for me? I don’t want it to get in the way when I look at your leg, okay?”

He’kase nods again, eyes shining with a light that goes beyond the fever eating at her bones. She holds the pouch tight against her chest, covering it with both hands.

“Thank you.”

Stepping down to the foot of the cot, Dakota gently lifts the sheet away from He’kase’s legs. The high, powerful smell of raging infection wafts out from beneath the sheet, causing Maggie to cough softly and turn away for a long moment. She turns back to see Dakota eyeing her, and tries out a weak smile. “I’m okay.”

Dakota looks at her for a moment longer before finally returning her attention to her patient.

He’kase’s left thigh is swollen, taut and shiny. Dakota tenderly unwraps the blood encrusted bandage and pulls it away, exposing the wound. The young girl moans in pain, but keeps remarkably still, her trust in Dakota plainly evident.

There is a grotesque starburst of black, purple, red and green surrounding what can only be a bullet hole, black and charred against her tender flesh. The wound seeps blood and a thick green pus that eats into the flesh beyond.

Dakota feels the rage flash through her again, a raging see of red, but she tamps it down with savage intent, her fingers gentle against He’kase’s skin. She can feel a weak, thready pulse both behind the knee and in the foot, the thinks that there’s a fair chance to save the leg if the wound can be properly drained and cleansed.

After another moment, she replaces the sheet, and smiles up at the somber child. Reaching down, she hefts her kit, unbuckles the straps, and looks inside for what she needs. A vial of clear liquid sits close by a number of syringes. She removes both vial and syringe and sets them on the table next to the cot.

“Sweetheart, I’m going to give you some medicine. It will help take the pain away, and it might make you sleepy, but that’s okay.”

He’kase’s eyes move from the syringe to Dakota and back again. She swallows once, then nods her quiet acceptance. She doesn’t even flinch when the needle pierces her skin and the stinging fluid burns its way into her muscle.

Disposing of the syringe, Dakota walks again to the head of the cot and, smiling slightly, she tenderly brushes the thick, sweaty bangs from He’kase’s forehead. After a moment, the girl’s eyes close and she falls into a deep, troubled sleep, the medicine pouch cradled safely between her hands.

Maggie quietly approaches, laying a hand on Dakota’s shoulder. She can feel the anger coursing through the tall vet, an anger she knows all too well. Straightening to her full height, Dakota looks down at the Air Force Colonel, her face a stony mask.

“We found her inside a ranch house about five miles south of here,” Allen begins. “Her family, what was left of it, were butchered, like cattle.” She takes in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, trying to cool her own rage. “We found her halfway underneath what we assumed to be her father. He was obviously trying to protect her, and I can only guess that those bastards thought they’d done their job. By the time we got there….” She sighs again. “She was already like this. We did the best we could, but….” Her hands lift, as if in supplication to an uncaring god.

“I’ll need some help.”

“I can….”

“No, you’ve got a camp to run. If you could get Manny? He used to help me in the clinic when he was younger. I don’t think he’s forgotten what to do.”

Maggie nods. “I’ll get him for you right away.”

“Thanks.”

“No,” Allen replies. “Thank you.”

6

The road is clear for the rest of the morning. Toward midday, the sky begin to clear, showing streaks of bright blue through the flat grey of the clouds. The glint of the sun off ice is almost a shock, and Kirsten fumbles one-handed in her pack for her dark glasses. Asimov has stretched out across the bench seat with his hind feet in her lap and is snoring and twitching by turns as he chases rabbits or Frisbees or the neighbors’ female golden retriever in his doggy dreams.

The breaking clouds mean increasing cold come nightfall. She will have to find some better shelter than the van for the night or expend precious fuel to run the heater. She does not particularly care for the idea of sipping Shamrock through a straw again if she can help it. “Damn,” Kirsten mutters to the oblivious Asimov. “I never thought I’d miss Motel 6.”

Or maybe she need not miss it. An empty, deserted motel just might offer possibilities. Better, yet, an abandoned house. She is passing through Ohio farm country, small towns slipping past along the Interstate like beads on a string. Many of these homes, built in the previous century, will have working fireplaces, complete with a couple cords of wood piled outside.

Many of them will be tenanted by the dead, murdered and left where they fell. Kirsten’s hands flex against the steering wheel , tighten. She can deal with death. She has dealt with it. At least here, after several days and nights of snow and ice with the utilities out, the dead will be decently frozen. Grotesque, perhaps; an offense to the eyes but not to the nose and stomach.

For the first time, she spares a thought for her future self. What will she be when the world is set to rights, assuming it can be?

But that one’s easy. Dead, probably.

Dead long before.

At Zaneville, Kirsten turns off the freeway onto state roads. They will be snowed over and more dangerous, will slow her down even more than the sheen of ice on the Interstate. But they will lead her around Columbus and its suburbs in a wide arc to the south. Even more important, they will lead her around Wright Patterson AFB, where droids are likely to be concentrated. Pulling off into the shelter of a derelict Whataburger beside the exit ramp, Kirsten maps out the route she will take, west and south. There are, she notes, a number of state parks associated with early Native American ruins scattered throughout the Hopewell valley. They might be an even better prospect for overnight than deserted farmhouses. Most had cabins, and most of those cabins would have fireplaces or wood stoves. Because they would have been sparsely populated at best at this season, they would have drawn minimal attention from raiders. Certainly there would be no reason for the droids to stake them out or occupy them. The danger, if any, would come from other refugees like herself.

Highway 22 winds through vacant farmland, the fields blanketed with knee-high drifts of snow. The trees stand bare to the winds, skeletal shapes against the western sky as the sun stands down toward evening. Here and there a dark shape perches in the branches, head hunched down into its shoulders; sometimes there are two huddled together. Owls or ravens—she cannot be sure at the distance. Except for the growl of the truck’s engine and Asimov’s occasional whine as a foraging hare makes its way laboriously through the snow, the landscape is utterly silent.

It lulls her as she should not let it, and so she is shocked and momentarily disoriented when she sees the roadblock ahead. The vehicles drawn up on the sides of the pavement are pickups and SUV’s, none of them with flashers or official markings. Among them she can make out burly shapes muffled in two or three layers each of Polartec and down. Some wear balaclavas or ski masks; others have pulled their caps down so far they almost meet the scarves and turned-up collars around their necks. As she slows, Kirsten can see the clouds of mist that rise about them with their breath. One man’s greying eyebrows and beard are stiff with crusted frost. He holds a shotgun braced with its butt against his hip.

Even the most lifelike of the droids do not breathe warm air that clouds with the cold. Humans, then.

There are only two possibilities. These are free people defending their land, or they are the scum that disaster always brings to the surface. If she stops, she may find help.

Or she may be robbed, killed, raped, handed over to the droids. The choices are the same as they were under the railroad bridge.

Without hesitation, Kirsten shoves her foot down hard on the accelerator, and the van, still gaining speed when it crashes through the sawhorse barriers at 80 miles an hour, scatters the startled guards in all directions. From behind her she hears the boom of the shotgun, and a sharp crack that can only be a rifle, but she is already beyond their range. Asimov, rudely awakened by the sudden speed, has regained his balance and is sitting backwards in the front seat, paws draped over the headrest, barking maniacally in her ear. Then the yaps give way to a deep-chested baying that sends atavistic tingles up her spine. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” she mutters. “The Hound of the Baskervilles, alive and well and—what the fuck?!

A moving shape has appeared in her rear-view mirror, hurtling along behind her through the rutted snow. It is close enough that she can see a gun barrel protruding from the passenger window.

“Down, Asimov!” she snaps. “Lie down, now!”

Aggrieved but obedient, he settles once again along the bench seat, his head below the level of the windows.

“Stay!” she orders, and pushes the accelerator clear down to the floor.

The van lurches, half-skidding down the road, spraying snow from its tires in sheeting arcs as high as the roof. A bullet whangs by, hitting the edge of the mirror frame and kicking shards of metal loose to ping against the plexiglass windshield. Spiderweb cracks appear suddenly before her eyes, breaking the flat white expanse before her into a kaleidoscope pattern in monotone. The van buckets and lurches beneath her, so that all her concentration goes into wrestling the steering wheel to keep them from running off the road.

The van sits high off the road. Unless her pursuers are inexplicably stupid or too drunk to think at all, they will eventually start shooting low, for her tires. She cannot afford that. Nor can she risk a hit to the gas cans in the back, which will send her, Asimov and quite possibly the remaining human population of the United States, up in a cloud of greasy smoke.

“Asimov!” she orders. “Play dead!”

Asimov, already denied the canine pleasures of the hunt, glances over his shoulder at her, offended and disbelieving.

“Play dead, dammit!”

With a sigh of almost human frustration, Asimov sags loose-limbed onto the seat as Kirsten brakes abruptly and sends the van into a wild skid that whips it tailpipe first across the opposite lane, hauling so hard on the wheel that her shoulders ache. The truck comes to a stop facing her pursuers, whose pickup swerves wide to avoid her and ends half in and half out of a roadside ditch concealed by the mounded snow. Kirsten pulls the bandage off her head, bringing fresh blood, and slumps across the steering wheel. Her finger presses lightly on the trigger of the gun in her lap.

She hears both doors of the pickup open and close, to the accompaniment of obscenities. Then feet, scrunching through ice and crusted snow.

The latch on her own door clicks, and she can smell burnt cordite. Then a voice. “Oh, hell, Brad. It’s just a girl and her dog. She’s bleeding.” There is another click as Brad opens the passenger door.

Kirsten shoots the first man, angling the barrel of her gun high, to take him in the chest. As she squeezes the trigger, she yells, “Take him, Asimov! Hold!” and feels the dog’s weight launch itself out of the van. A roar fills her ears as a shotgun discharges less than a yard away, followed by an angry, human yell. “Off! Get off me, goddam you!”

Kirsten raises her head, getting a firmer grip on her gun, and slides out of the van. The man she has shot is sprawled on his back, arms flung wide, blood pouring from his mouth into his beard and grey plaid muffler. As she watches, his eyes fix, staring somewhere past her shoulder.

“Steve! Steve? What the fuck’s going on here? Answer—” The voice is suddenly cut off, and Kirsten hears a flurry of movement, ending in a low growl from Asimov.

“Hold, boy!” she calls to him. “Hold!”

“Goddam you, you bitch, what’ve you done to my bro—”

This time Asimov’s growl is deeper as it cuts off the voice. “Good boy, Asimov! Hold!”

Steve has fallen partly onto his rifle. Wishing that she did not have to know his name, Kirsten has to shift him to extract it. A last, wheezing sigh escapes his lungs as she turns him, startling her so that she almost drops the weapon. The man on the other side of the truck, Brad, is yelling again. She wishes that she did not know his name, either.

Very deliberately, not thinking, Kirsten walks around the front of the truck. Asimov’s outsize paws are planted on Brad’s chest, his jaws clamped onto the man’s throat. He has not drawn blood, only snarls and clamps down a little tighter each time his prey cries out. The man’s eyes follow Kirsten’s movements. She sees his death in his eyes.

Slowly, very deliberately, not thinking, Kirsten shoulders the rifle and shoots Brad in the head. Blood blossoms on the snow, unfolding in crimson and scarlet like the petals of a rose. Flower of evil.

Just as deliberately, Kirsten picks up Brad’s 12-guage and lays it on the floor of the van. In the foundered pickup, she finds shells for both the shotgun and the rifle. Two sleeping bags lie rolled up on the back bench; Kirsten takes them. Finally she reaches under the dash and tears out the ignition wires, cutting them off short with a pair of snippers she finds on the console between the seats. It is quicker than shooting out the tires, and it makes less noise.

Her hands are sweating inside her gloves. On her way back to the van she begins to shake. At first it is only a fine shiver, like a chill over her skin. Then reaction takes possession of her, adrenaline rattling her bones together and buckling her knees beneath her. She makes her way around Brad’s corpse and hauls herself back up onto the seat. Asimov follows, and huddles up against her, nudging her shoulder with his nose. He whimpers softly as she gasps, half-choking, for breath.

Part of it, she knows in a rational corner of her mind, is pure physiology. That part will pass if she does not feed it

The other part, which may never pass at all, is that she has just killed two men who were almost certainly innocent of harm.

Because she could not take the chance.

She tells herself she needs to get moving again. The sound of the shots will have carried. When Brad and Steve do not return to their companions promptly, the other men at the barricade will come looking for them. And then they will come looking for her.

She needs to throw them off her trail and she needs to find shelter. And she needs to do both by nightfall. She has perhaps two hours.

When her hands are steady enough, she turns starts the van again, turns carefully so that she does not run over the two dead men, and sets out again toward the south.

7

Several hours later, Dakota leaves her patient’s room, wiping her hands on a towel supplied by her cousin. He’kase is resting comfortably in the care of one of the rescued women who has had some Nurse’s Aide training. Her wound is clean and dry, and antibiotics are pumping their way through her tiny system. In place of the medicine pouch, which again holds its customary place around Koda’s neck, the youngster holds an eagle feather, the sacred icon that Manny has held onto since he was shorn of his flowing locks upon first entering the Air Force.

“Damn, Koda. I forgot how good you were at this stuff.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

The cousins share a rueful laugh as they walk through the late November evening, nodding to the soldiers as they pass.

Once inside the main house, Manny takes his leave, scurrying off to the shower.

Maggie looks up from her place at the kitchen table and beckons Dakota over with a smile. A mug of steaming black coffee is already there, as if awaiting her presence. Dakota acquiesces, sitting down with a groan and stretching out her long legs as she lifts the mug to her lips, inhaling the fragrance with a sigh of approval.

“Things went okay?” Maggie guesses from the look on Koda’s face.

“As well as can be expected,” Dakota replies, taking a bracing sip of coffee, letting it warm her from the inside out. “Manny hasn’t lost his touch. He’s got the makings of a damn decent medic.”

“Better that than a pilot,” Maggie jokes.

“Hey!!” Manny yells, filling the doorway with his towel-girded bulk. “I heard that!”

Both women laugh, knowing that the young man before them is as good as it gets when it comes to flying. Absolutely fearless, he can make a jet walk and talk and turn on a dime. He’s one of the best of the best, and everyone knows it.

“Alright, flyboy, get your ass to bed. We’re on the road at 0430.”

Snapping off a crisp salute while still managing to retain the hold both on towel and dignity, Manny grins, winks, and turns back down the hall. The soft click of his door shutting puts paid to the conversation.

Silence falls among them, a soft ethereal mist. Peering at Dakota over the rim of her coffee cup, Allen takes in the sharp, clean lines of her face and the energy that seems to hum around her even now, while sitting quietly apparently lost in thought. It’s a sweet Siren’s song, one that Maggie is in no way adverse to hearing.

“See anything interesting?”

Dakota’s warm contralto rolls over her and Maggie is suddenly glad that her mocha skin hides her flush well.

Though not, perhaps, quite as well as she might have liked, given the sparkle of amusement in the crystal eyes turned her way.

“I might,” she allows, responding to the tease with a small one of her own. A smile curves her lips, and her gaze is bold and direct, though not overly aggressive. To put the cliché into perspective, Maggie Allen is a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t shy about reaching for it. As career Air Force, she’s seen her share of too many wars and too many deaths and when opportunities for warmth and life present themselves on gilt-edged platters, she rarely hesitates.

The silence between them is almost palpable, filling the shadowed and cobwebby corners of the large living area with a turbulent, humming energy.

Their gazes break at the same time. Maggie looks over at a painting hanging above the mantle in the living room. Dakota looks down at her hands. The ring finger of her left hand looks strangely naked; the small band of paler flesh highlighted like an afterimage of a life long past.

Seven years, Dakota thinks, her thumb rubbing over the pale, soft skin. A time for beginnings. A time for endings. A generation. An itch. Seven virtues and seven vices. Paradise and damnation. Confusion? Maybe. Guilt? A little of that, too.

She sighs.

“I have a room to myself in the back of the house,” Allen says, very softly. “One of the perks of being CO.” She smiles a little. “I’d like to share it with you tonight.”

Dakota looks up then, her gaze piercing and direct. The sharply etched plains of her face soften just slightly, and Allen is stunned once again by the woman’s striking beauty.

“I’d like that.”

8

When Dakota next awakens, it’s still dark, and she knows without looking that dawn is a long way off. She stretches slightly, then settles, arms comfortably curled around the warm body in her arms. For a moment, she thinks she’s dreaming, but the hair that brushes against her chest is shorter and coarser than what she’s used to, and the body draped across her is more muscular and compact. It awakens her to the reality of her situation, but the reality is, in truth, not all that unpleasant.

Maggie hums sleepily and, lifting her head just slightly, presses a kiss to the warm, bare breast upon which she is resting her head. “Mmm. Good morning.” Her voice is deep and sleep burred and the sound of it reaches into Koda’s belly and twists it pleasantly.

“It is that.”

“What time is it?”

In an automatic reflex, Dakota looks over at the nightstand, but of course, the clock that stands there is blank without the electricity needed to run it.

“Damn,” Maggie says, chuckling. “Forgot about that.” Reaching across Koda’s body, she picks up the watch she’s left on the nightstand and peers into it through sleep blurred eyes. “0320. Good thing I don’t need much sleep, hmm?”

“You could always grab a little more.”

Maggie laughs, a throaty chuckle. “With you here? Naked? Darling, sleep is the last thing I plan on grabbing.”

A strong hand slides up a muscled thigh, and Maggie slides with it, reaching Dakota’s tempting lips and entangling her own in a deep, luscious kiss. “Dear god, woman,” she pants when she finally pulls away. “I never thought I’d say this to another human being, but you’ve got flying beat by a long mile.”

Dakota’s deep chuckle follows her down to sensual oblivion.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream….”

1

KIRSTEN HUDDLES BEFORE the dying fire, watching the play of scarlet and orange amid the black remains of the embers. She is wrapped in her own sleeping bag, shielded from the concrete floor by a pair of thin mattresses pulled off one of the bunk beds. Asimov is stretched out on another with his head in her lap. She rubs his ears absently.

The small cabin is warm. She has before her the prospect of the first comfortable night since the insurrection began. She has a hot meal inside her, even if it was only canned stew set in the ashes, and has cleaned up as best she can with water warmed the same way and a bar of looted soap. She needs to sleep.

Over and over in her mind, Kirsten replays her encounter with the men at the barricade. Over and over she imagines it differently: introducing herself as a refugee fleeing toward her family in Indiana, perhaps. Shaking hands, accepting their hospitality and a temporary alliance. She is almost certain she could have trusted them far enough to set her safely on her way.

And over and over, she imagines what would have happened if she had been wrong. And what would have happened after that, will probably still happen if she doesn’t get through to the droid facility at Minot.

Outside the snow is falling again, hissing softly as it drifts past the windows. It is the one bit of luck she has had today, the new fall obscuring the ruts made by her tires on the deserted roads. The dead men’s companions had not followed her, or if they had, they had set out too late to catch up before the light failed and the clouds closed in again. Rural areas are as dangerous to her as the urban centers. In the cities the droids will still be hunting down humans. In the farm counties, the humans who remain will be defending their homes and families against the droids.

But it’s not that simple. All wars have collaborators. If there are no humans who have been spared as decoys, there will be. If there are none who cooperate for their own safety and their families’, there will be. And she can never, never, take a chance that another person is not a collaborator. Too much rides on her own survival for her to be trusting or merciful.

Kirsten banks the fire and pulls her makeshift bed closer to the hearth. Because there is nothing else to do, she stretches out full length on the mattress, Asimov rousing just long enough to move up beside her. She does not expect to sleep, but can at least allow her aching muscles as much ease as warmth and rest allow.

She moves through a twilight world. All about her the snow lies heavy: on the ground, in the forks of the branches that spread bare above her head. The sky is white, too, the light diffused and dim. Asimov paces at her side, his huge paws spread to carry him across the surface lynx-fashion. Her own feet do not sink into the snow. When she looks down, she sees only a faint, shadowless impression in the crust where she has stepped.

Above her, in the sky over a clearing, a hawk hangs at the hover. It gives one long and ringing cry, then banks and flies off toward what she knows to be the west, though there is no sun to give direction.

Then she sees it, a shape drifting through the trees, keeping pace with her. Kirsten’s heart seems to stop, then slams against her breastbone, but strangely it is not fear that sets her blood to racing. Somewhere deep in her mind is the knowledge that this is something she has searched for, has waited for, longer than she can remember. She tries to call out to whatever it is, but her throat closes around the words.

The ground begins to rise abruptly, and she realizes that she is climbing one of the ancient earthworks that dot the Hopewell Valley. The forest thins as she scales the top, and there laid out before her, stretching away infinitely far into horizonless space, is a long, sinuous mound in the shape of a serpent, coiling and uncoiling, doubling back on itself in rhythmic curves only to spiral outward again. There are tracks here, the prints of a large animal moving swiftly. Kirsten sets out to follow, placing her own feet in the pad marks that somehow remain undisturbed behind her. Asimov lopes along beside her, a strange eagerness in the play of rippling muscle under his black and silver coat.

Then she sees it. Straight ahead, directly in her path where nothing but air had been a nanosecond before, is a wolf. Its fur is covered in rimefrost, and it regards her with eyes of a startling sky-blue.

Its gaze lasts only a moment. Without warning, the ground gives way beneath Kirsten’s feet, and she is falling, falling through space as the stars streak past, plunging into atmosphere finally as clouds billow around her, plummeting toward a black rock island in a mighty river where she will shatter into atoms. For a moment she thinks that she may survive with no more than a few bones broken, or that she can perhaps deflect her trajectory for a landing in that impossibly blue water.

Don’t be a damned idiot, she tells herself. You know you’re going to die.

The rock rises up to meet her, and she strikes with an impact that jerks her bolt upright in her sleeping bag, to find the hearth still warm and Asimov whuffling softly in his own dreams.

Kirsten’s hands are trembling, and she feels a cold runnel of sweat as it slips between her shoulderblades. “Goddam,” she breathes. “Goddam.” Her heart lays down a rapid, thready beat, counterpoint to the rhythm of her shocked lungs.

What the hell was that?

Who the hell was that?

But she has no answers. She has seen wolves before, camping in Yellowstone with her parents when she was a teenager; she is in no doubt at all that a wolf is what she has dreamed. She tries to call up the Psych 101 lectures that bored her straight into an afternoon nap more often than not, but other than a vague recollection that almost everything, according to Dr. Werbow, signified either sex or death, she cannot connect the blue-eyed wolf with any standard interpretation.

Eventually she steadies and lies down again, yawning. She has no idea where the dream came from, though she is fairly certain that it was not something she ate. Dinty Moore’s psychedelic stew, oh yeah.

She slips off to sleep again with unexpected ease, and does not wake until the morning.

2

The big truck shakes, rattles and rolls as it bounds over the ice rutted roads, last in a fair sized convoy of impressive military vehicles. Manny sits beside his cousin, a military handset in his lap, and a machine pistol at his side. He eyes Dakota at odd intervals, trying to discover without asking exactly what is different about his cousin this morning. She seems…relaxed somehow, as if she’d spent the night….

His eyes widen, but then he gives himself a mental shake.

Nah. Couldn’t be.

Could it?

“See something interesting?”

The low voice startles him, and he blinks, then blushes at being caught out. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he shakes his head in the negative. “Just woolgathering.” He smiles weakly. “Really.”

“Mm hm.”

They both fall silent, listening to the military radio as it crackles out its continuing stream of routine messages from members of the caravan.

Suddenly, the taillights in front of them flash once, twice, then stay on as the troop carrier comes to a quick stop. Koda works her own brakes. The truck wants to skid, but in the end, it behaves and rolls to a stop, front bumper inches away from the rear of the carrier.

The radio crackles to life.

“Chief? You might wanna come look at this.”

“Everybody DOWN!!!”

The sound of gunfire shatters the morning. Dropping the radio, Manny grabs his gun and levers himself outside the passenger door.

Only to duck back inside again in order to keep his head from being blown off of his neck. He stares, wide-eyed, past Dakota and out into the brightness of the morning. His jaw drops. “Great Father, protect us,” he whispers.

Koda turns her head and sees a scene out of an Orwellean nightmare.

A long line of military droids block the roadway and the areas beyond. These are not the generically handsome, lantern-jawed, poster children for America’s Idealized Infantryman that have filled newspapers and news broadcasts to the brim over the past several years. Instead, they resemble nothing so much as a mechanized creature straight out of a 1980’s blockbuster sci/fi action/adventure movie.

Shining a blinding, mirrorlike silver, the only humanoid resemblance is in the head and torso region. The “legs” end below the knees, and are replaced by the thick treads usually seen propelling heavy tanks over uncertain ground. The “arms” end in lethal weaponry currently pointed at the convoy.

Dakota turns to her cousin. “You ever seen them before?”

“No. I heard they existed, but no. Never. Jesus.” He runs a hand over his short, buzzed hair in a gesture of nervousness familiar to Dakota.

The radio crackles to life. Maggie Allen’s voice is terse. “Check off, people!”

“Rivers here, Colonel,” Manny replies, keying the handset.

“Manny? We’re gonna lay down a line of grenade cover. You get the civvie out of here. Go back the way you came and don’t stop until you’re sure you’re out of danger.”

Dakota grabs the radio away from her cousin and holds it up to her mouth. “Sorry, Colonel, but the ‘civvie’ is the one driving this beast, and the only direction I’m going is forward.”

“Dakota!”

“Can’t hear you, Colonel. You’re breaking up.”

“Rivers!!!”

Releasing the talk button, Dakota tosses the handset down on the floorboards at Manny’s feet, pinning her cousin in place with a look. “Don’t even think about it,” she warns.

“Who, me? Not a chance, cuz. I’ve still got bruises from the last time you pounded me, thanks.”

The two listen momentarily to Allen’s increasingly irate squawking.

“She’s gonna bust me down to Airman for this, you know.”

Pulling down the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, Dakota gives him a look that makes him laugh.

“Alright, I get your point, Koda. So…what do we do now?”

As if hearing the question, the radio crackles back to life. “Alright, listen up, everybody. This means you too, ‘Airman’ Rivers.”

Dakota winces.

Manny gulps.

“Alright, here’s the deal. These bastards aren’t like anything we’ve faced before, and we’re gonna need to be creative in figuring out a way to get past them without getting ourselves fragged to Canada in little pieces. Rule number one, people. No shooting at them. They’re bulletproof and anything you fire at them will ricochet god knows where. We can’t risk it, so put your guns away for another fight, understand?”

Affirmatives buzz across the radio.

“Our friends from the Guard were kind enough to bring along a few little toys we’re going to try out instead, so everybody just sit tight for a bit and I’ll get back to you.”

Since Koda and Manny can see very little from behind the massive troop carrier they are following, they do exactly as Allen suggests and cool their heels while keeping a wary eye on the metallic monstrosities lined up across the roadway and beyond.

A loud, whooshing roar is followed immediately by an explosion so powerful that Dakota and Manny are tossed about like rag dolls as the truck bounces and rolls on its springs.

The shaking no sooner stops gunfire erupts from all around them. The distinctive sounds of bullets hitting the metal of the truck cause the cousins to duck down again. The driver’s side window shatters, raining glass over them both. The roar of gunfire is punctuated here and there by the horrific screams of men and women in agony.

Unable to lay passively by and do nothing, Dakota reaches over and unlocks the passenger’s side door, then begins to crawl overtop of Manny, who grabs her by the waistband of her jeans.

“What the hell are you doing, cuz? They’re killing us out there!!”

“Exactly,” Dylan replies, prying Manny’s hand from her waist and continuing to crawl until she is out of the truck. Coming up onto her haunches, she surveys the damage. Men and women are scattered like tenpins, many of them bleeding their life into the snow and pleading with an uncaring sky to save them. As she watches, a soldier becomes a corpse, jittering like a puppet on the hard-packed snow under the constant, unremitting onslaught of artillery.

Taking in a deep breath, she lowers her head and charges out into the fray. Bullets slice the air around her, but she keeps her head down and keeps running, sinking past her knees in the snow. Reaching the first two injured soldiers, she lowers her arms and grabs them by their jackets, dragging them until she is behind the cover of a military vehicle.

Another whooshing roar sounds from very close by, and the resulting explosion knocks her to the ground. A shadow falls over her, and when she looks up, Manny is there, two more injured soldiers in his grasp. His face is grim, but his eyes are shining.

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” he grumbles, voice almost lost within the continuing gun battle.

Getting back to her feet, Koda pounds on the panel of the vehicle before her, then pounds harder when there’s no response. “Watch them!” she commands over her shoulder as she makes her way up to the cab of the vehicle. Two men lay in the cab, dead beyond any possibility of resurrection, destroyed beyond any possibility of recognition.

“Uh…Koda?”

Dakota whirls around. “What?”

“They’re bleeding pretty bad over here. What should I do?”

Koda thinks for a moment. “Pack snow in their wounds. It should slow the bleeding until we can get them under some kind of cover. I need to get my kit.”

“I’ll do it.”

“No. Stay with the injured. I’ll be right back.”

Knowing better than to argue with his cousin, Manny kneels in the snow and begins scooping handfuls of it onto the bleeding chests and bellies and limbs of his comrades, warning himself all the while not to look at their faces. As long as he doesn’t see their faces, he can pretend that they are simply strangers on a battlefield; strangers he will do his best to save.

Dakota makes her way back to the truck and retrieves her kit without much difficulty, but then becomes pinned down by furious gunfire. A man stumbles by, half of his face blown off, a smoking stump where his arm used to be. As she watches, he tumbles into the snow, and dies, open-eyed.

“Koda!”

Ripping her gaze away from the dead soldier, Dakota looks over to Manny, who is frantically compressing the chest of one of the women he’s dragged out of the line of fire. He is looking at Koda through eyes as wide as saucers.

“Hang on! I’ll be right there!”

She’s about to move when her attention is distracted. Looking on, she tracks a shoulder-launched missile as it flies across the gap that separates human from android, and explodes into the noticeably thinned android ranks. A huge fireball erupts, and Koda ducks down, covering her head with both arms as bits and pieces of androids rain down on her like a blazing summer storm. She slams back against the truck just in time to avoid being turned into a stain by a basketball sized lump of molten metal which lands in the snow not more than a foot away. It hisses violently, sending up clouds of vapor as it melts a hole in the snow several feet deep.

“Dakota!!”

Peering through the swirling, dissipating vapor, Koda watches as Manny takes a desperate step toward her position, only to be blown back by a bullet that pierces his arm and drops him to the ground.

“Manny! Hankashi!!! Shit.”

Grabbing her pack, she rushes across the space separating herself from her fallen cousin. Manny is already picking himself up as Koda reaches him. Aiding him to his feet, she looks into his eyes, her own flashing all kinds of warnings. “Damnit, Manny, this is no time to be playing John Wayne. How many times do I have to tell you? You’re no cowboy.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Like you’d just sit by and watch me get almost blown to bits, right?”

Scowling, Koda grabs his arm and turns it over. “You’re lucky. It’s just a graze.”

“Yeah, I know. Stings like fire, though.” He looks to his right. His face crumples. “Oh, holy damn,” he whispers, looking at the carnage lying around him. “Jesus, Koda, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have protected them from the shrapnel.” She looks over at the dead bodies laying in pieces over the snow and closes her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opens them again, they are clear and resolute. “Let’s go find some people we can help.”

3

The sound of men and women screaming and moaning in pain within the close confines of the troop carrier seems to encompass the whole world, and it’s all Manny can do not to jab a knife through his eardrums just to stop the gut-churning noise.

Koda has set up a field hospital, of sorts, within the vehicle, and the most grievously injured patients lay on makeshift cots, bleeding their lives away while the harried vet tries frantically to save them.

The battle outside is slowly winding down. Shoulder fired rockets have done the trick, and the mission has been reduced to a simple mop-up, as if anything about this terrifying monstrosity can be considered as mundane as “simple”.

Unless the androids have buddies out there.

Somewhere.

Manny pushes down a chill that humps up his flesh as he rushes from injured woman to injured man, doing what he can to offer comfort while his cousin goes about the business of patching and stitching. He’s been through war, but it was never anything like this. A pilot sits above it all, like an armored god, dropping his cargo and speeding away, never seeing the damage and pain and misery he causes.

Manny’s reverie is broken by the man before him, lying on a cot and holding the glistening loops of his guts in his hands. His voice, a deep basso, spirals up and up into a castrato’s soprano as he holds a scream that pierces the veil of eternity.

His eyes, though, are dead already, staring through the young pilot as if staring into an infinity worthy of Poe’s worst nightmares.

The woman lying next to him covers her ears and adds a scream of her own. “Oh God, shut him up, please!! PLEASE SHUT HIM UP!!! SHUT HIM UP!!!!”

“Koda!”

Dakota looks up from her place by the side of a young woman whose puckered and twisted face is a horror film’s mask. The young woman is seizing, her body sunfishing and bucking mindlessly, her tongue black and protruding from the charred remains of her mouth. “Give him some Morphine!” the vet shouts over the din.

“I can’t! There isn’t any more!”

“Shit.” She turns to an airman pressed into service as a nurse. “Watch her. I’ll be right back.”

The soldier nods.

The man is still screaming as Koda approaches and looks down into what is left of his belly. His guts roil and twist like snakes in a cave, moving and tumbling over one another as his agonized body writhes on the cot.

“Can you do anything for him?” Manny asks, willing himself not to be sick.

Grabbing her medical kit, Dakota rummages through it, and comes out with a single glass Morphine cartridge. It’s empty, and she throws it down on the ground, where it shatters. Her eyes tell Manny everything he needs to know.

She startles a bit as a surprisingly strong hand, covered in blood and gore, grasps the front of her shirt and twists, pulling her forward slightly. She looks down into the pain-wracked face of the mortally injured soldier. His eyes are very bright, very clear, and almost supernaturally aware.

“Please.”

His strained voice is no more than a breath on the wind.

Dakota looks at the hand gripping her, then into the man’s open wound, a part of her in awe that he’s managed to last this long, then back to his too-bright, too aware eyes. “I can’t save you,” she says, gently as possible. “Your wound’s too severe.”

The man gives a solemn nod, no more than the barest twitch of the muscles in his neck.

“Please,” he breathes again.

Another airman, shot in the groin but currently stable, looks up. “You’re a vet, aren’t you?”

Koda nods.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but would you let a dying dog suffer the way he is right now?”

Koda stiffens, then relaxes, knowing the man is right. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“Then pardon me if I don’t see the difference here.” The young man gives her a pointed look. “He’s begging you, man! Help him!”

“That’s enough, Roberts,” Manny snaps, chest puffing, shoulders straightening, fists clenching. Dakota’s sure she would smell the testosterone in the air if it wasn’t for the blood and death already polluting it. “Keep it zipped.”

The airman scowls, but holds his peace, slamming his head back down on the rolled uniform jacket he’s using in lieu of a pillow and glaring at the both of them.

Sure that the danger, what there was of it, has, for the moment, passed, Manny looks over to his cousin. Their gazes meet and meld in brief, silent communication. Manny nods, once, then looks away.

Hitching a deep sigh, Koda reaches back into her bag and pulls out a pre-filled syringe. The mortally wounded soldier has his eyes glued to her every move. “You know what this will do,” Dakota says, giving the young man every chance to back out.

He nods, more surely this time.

“And this is what you want.”

“Please.”

Third time pays for all, Dakota thinks as she reaches for the IV tubing, her eyes never leaving the soldier’s.

A second later, it’s done. The man’s grip convulsively tightens on her shirt, then falls away as his eyes, once bright and shining, become flat and dull; the eyes of a discarded doll on a trash heap as large as the world. Dakota closes those eyes gently, then rests her hand briefly on an already cooling forehead, whispering a prayer so ancient it seems inborn rather than taught.

Manny grips her shoulder and squeezes once in comfort. After a moment, Dakota shrugs off the grip and walks across the cramped space to her next patient, never looking back.

4

The air is cold with wind and melting snow, but not too cold to carry the mingled scents of burned wood and living pine needles. Tumbled into random hummocks of brick and charred beams, the remains of the park office lies before her. Those cabins she can see in the dim light are in no better condition, and when the wind shifts slightly, clocking about to the east, she can smell dead flesh among the ashes and the firs. Asimov whimpers softly at her side, and Kirstin stretches out a hand to pat him almost absently.

She has driven now for two days and a night without rest. She needs a place to lie up and sleep, or she will become a danger to herself on the road. Ain’t life a bitch. And then you die. She sighs. It’s the truck or nothing. Kirsten tugs at Asimov’s collar. “Come on, boy. Gotta get some sleep. Both of us.”

She turns back toward the vehicle, glancing up at the clearing sky. It is near dawn, but in the west the stars blaze down with undiminished brilliance. All the hackneyed metaphors—ice, glass, diamonds—march by for inspection, and none is adequate. The stars blaze down, cold and detached as the eyes of angels, so that for the first time Kirsten believes with her heart as well as her scientist’s brain that they truly are lifetimes distant. From somewhere among the trees comes an unidentified grunt. Deer? Bear? Skunk?

The exalted speculations of a moment before come crashing down, and she petrifies there on the edge of day, trying not to make a sound, not to breathe, most of all not to smell attractive to bear or polecat. In the east the stars begin to pale, not so much a dimming of their light as the gradual leaching of the darkness. A white shadow ghosts along the treetops with the rising wind, its wings making no sound as it hunts the last of the night.

Kirsten’s breath catches in her throat, and her belly tightens. Abruptly tensed, the long muscles in leg and back as abruptly relax. She does not fling herself flat, praying not to be noticed. The rational part of her brain, that bit of it not befogged by need for sleep, observes sarcastically that owls do not eat humans and reminds her that pterodactyls are long since stone. Yet death has passed over. Hunting someone else, this time. Next time, maybe her.

Last time, it was her. And the time before and the time before that. She knows she will be prey again.

God, I need to sleep. Afraid of an owl. Next thing you know I’ll be hallucinating.

Above her head, the first rays of the sun strike the tips of pine needles to blazing gold. From somewhere behind her, Kirsten hears the beat of great wings lifting. She turns, and a hawk sweeps past her, all bright bronze and copper, climbing into the dawn. A blood-stopping kreeee-eeeer! rings out over the forest. The hawk cries again, twice, and spirals up toward the strengthening sun and her day’s work.

As Kirsten begins to move back toward her truck, a stray breeze carries a half-charred piece of blue paper between her feet. She jerks away from it, startled, then catches her breath and picks it up. Christ, spooked at a goddam tourist flyer. Gotta get some sleep. Now. Idly, she glances at the brochure in the growing light. It is a map of the park, showing lake, fishing dock, cabins (now deceased) and a network of deep limestone caves underlying the bluff along the river. Phrases register disjointedly in her mind. Walkways. Stairs. Constant 60°Fahrenheit.

Salvation.

“C’mon, Asimov.” She whistles the dog to her, climbs into the truck and heads toward the first prospect of real comfort she has known in days.

An hour later, she has established a camp several hundred feet below the surface of the bluff and half a mile in. Two trips from the van have set her up with a Coleman stove, now heating yet another can of stew because she is ravenously hungry as well as weary, a pile of sleeping bags apiece for Asimov and herself and an electric lantern. For the first time since leaving Washington, she is able to take off her jacket and double layer of sweaters and sit lightly in her shirtsleeves. Her shoulders feel as though half the world has rolled off them to go bouncing down the pale rockflows of the cave. From above her comes a low thrumming sound, almost below the threshold of her hearing, that she knows is the voice of the river, singing.

Singing, singing. . . .singing her to sleep like a mother, rocking her in her rock cradle, loose, light, stoned in her house of stone, the deep waters singing of warmth and refuge and release from pain, singing, singing. . . .

She has just enough presence of mind to turn off the stove before she sinks back onto her bed and into the darkness where there is only the voice of the river, singing the song of the earth, rocking her home, singing and singing now and forever. . . ..

It seems to Kirsten that she has not slept at all. Yet she rises up lightly, easily, borne almost on a breath of air. The small stove no longer burns but still radiates warmth, a visible glow in the darkness around her. That seems strange to her, though not so strange as to be disturbing. Nor is she alarmed that Asimov, too, seems to shed his own light where he lies snoring, lost in dreams.

Kirsten glances down at her hands, and they, too, seem to glow palely. Just under the skin, she sees the outlines of a double spiral and a lightning bolt forming, rising to the surface in red and black and ochre paint. When she raises her hands to her face, she can feel the same sigils taking shape beneath her cheekbones, patterns traceable under her fingers. Her palms are painted with sun and crescent moon. Strangely unalarmed, she turns to see her body still lying where she has left it, sprawled with no particular grace across the blankets.

So. She does not seem to be dead. At least, this is not how she has ever seen the experience described. With no more than a thought, she finds herself kneeling by her body, which is still breathing, the chest rising in deep, slow inhalations. Rising on another thought, she drifts across the rock floor to Asimov, who whimpers softly at the faint ruffling of his fur made by her passing.

Not dead then. But if not dead, what?

She can feel a force, gentle but insistent, pulling her further into the depths of the cave. With a last insubstantial brush at Asimov’s ears, she allows it to draw her as it will. She has no idea how long her journey takes her, or what distance. Where she is there is no time, no space beyond that which surrounds her. Her bare feet skim the limestone floor of the cave without feeling its chill.

Like the walls, like the pillars of calcite that seem to extend upward without end, milk-white as the columns of some great temple, the stone itself is suffused with a soft light. Rising up to the roof, she drifts among colonies of bats in their thousands, tens of thousands perhaps, all lost in their winter’s sleep. Some part of her scientist self remains even now, and she notes that they are Myotis socialis, hanging single file in long, precisely aligned rows, so neatly arrayed that she can see the nose of every bat in each rank. A bat army. Bat Marines. She raises a hand to her forehead in salute and drifts on. She passes lace curtains formed of glittering mica, crosses a pool setting each foot precisely into the surface tension of the water. Always wanted to do that. Move over, Jesus!

The voice of the river becomes louder as she descends into parts of the cave where there is no further human sign. No walkways here, no blank lamps hanging from iron stanchions to mar the beauty of the great vault above her. Effortlessly she glides down the spill of petrified waterfalls, past small pools where eyeless fish swim. With a breath, she ascends sheer walls rising ten meters or more to make her way along a path along the high wall, no more than inches wide. The dust here has not been disturbed for centuries, yet she can make out the marks left by human feet along the ledge. Here the pull is exponentially stronger, and she knows in some part of her soul that the holy one whose footprints she walks in without disturbing a grain of sand came, one day long ago, from the very place where she is going.

She comes upon it suddenly, where the path ends abruptly at a fissure in the sheer wall. Like a breath of smoke she passes through it, to find herself within a geological miracle. The dome is perhaps twelve feet across, and lined from floor to apex with clear crystals. Some are slender as pencils; others as large as her forearm. Energy pulses from them to the rhythm of the water that seems to flow no more than a meter or so above, sometimes slipping lightly over its stone bed, sometimes roaring. In the center of the chamber is a stone slab perhaps a meter high. Around its sides are painted spirals, blazing suns, the forms of bear and wolf, eagle and puma. Carved into its surface are the shapes of hands, one to either side, and a hollow for the back of a human head.

Kirsten understands that it is a place of vision. She understands, too, that it is perhaps mortally perilous.

But danger is irrelevant. She approaches the slab and stretches her incorporeal body out upon it, head in the depression at one end, hands in the carved prints. She is not surprised to find them exactly to her measure.

As she lies there, the voice of the river changes, grows deeper, begins to form words. It is not any language she knows, but she understands its meaning nonetheless. It is the earth herself speaking to her—of violation, of anger, of terrible grief at the murder of her children. Images shift before her eyes so fast that she can barely keep track of them.

The terrible wound of a strip mine gouged out of the sacred Black Hills.

Forests falling to the rasp of saws and lumbering mechanical behemoths.

A yellow butterfly, last of its kind, dying in the summer sun on a strip of asphalt.

Dead buffalo lying skinned in their thousands.

Dead men and dead women, skins bronze and coppery red, lying dead and mutilated across fields of snow and grassy meadows.

A coyote with its rotting foot caught in a trap like a shark’s jaw.

And last, the world she has just left, humans slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands, corpses left frozen in the snow or rotting in the heat of a tropical beach, scavenged by gulls.

And suddenly she finds herself once again on the surface of the world, in the forest now lit by a full moon. The cold does not touch her nakedness, nor the wind burn her skin. Before her stands a woman clothed in fringed buckskin worked with porcupine quills in the shape of a hummingbird across her breast, bands of turquoise and white shell circling her neck and wrists. Her long black hair drifts on the air, framing a face that is old an wrinkled and wise beyond knowing in one instant, young radiantly beautiful the next.

Kirsten folds down on her bare knees before her, wailing soundlessly. What must I do, Mother? It is too much, too much!

Of course it is too much, my daughter, the woman answers. Too much and too long. Yet you will not be alone.

I have Asi.

Him, too. The woman smiles. But not only him. See, and remember when the time is right.

The woman vanishes, and in her place stands the wolf of her dream. Its fur gleams white as the snow it stands in, and its eyes are blue flecked with gold like lapis. Above it circles a red-tailed hawk. Its hunting cry rises into the night and is answered from a half-dozen other circling shapes above. Moonlight glints off their wings like silver.

For time uncounted, Kirsten kneels in the snow looking into the wolf’s blue eyes. It regards her with a cool and level interest, nothing of hostility in it, nor of warmth either. Then it turns and trots into the thicket, followed by the cry of the hawk and the strange birds swarming above them.

And without warning, Kirsten finds herself slamming back into her body with a force that should kill her outright but somehow does not. Her sleeping form jerks once where it lies; Asimov rouses slightly with a grunt and a sound that is not quite a bark. Then he turns and lays his great head on his paws, dreaming peacefully. After that, there is only the dark and the slow, steady beat of her own heart.

5

She sleeps.

And as she sleeps, she dreams.

She is standing in a pure white vista, cold and sharp as the edge of an obsidian knife. Gone are the houses, the trees and the mountains. Gone are the animals of land and sky. The white is everything, and everywhere. Nothing and nowhere. It is the alpha, and the omega.

The bitter wind is a constant shriek, like the souls of the damned in a Hell that really has frozen over.

The tone of the shriek changes, melding, as it will in dreams, into a cry she knows well. Looking up into the vast white sky, she watches, smiling, as a dot on the horizon grows larger and larger still until it is directly overhead, gliding on the currents of the icy air.

Their eyes meet, two wild souls bound by mutual trust and respect, and with no effort at all, Koda is swept up and welcomed into the body of Cetan Tate, an old and cherished friend.

The wind is not so biting now, buffeted as it is by down and feathers. Her vision is sharpened; crisp, like a winter morning after a long spell of snow. As she flies, the mountains thrust up out of the ground, granite giants rising from their winter dens. Trees spring up and gather into communes of forestland, their tips swaying and nodding in the constant wind, speaking to each other in a language as old as time.

Recognizing the landmarks, she knows they are headed north. Land passes beneath them with incredible, heart stopping speed. Mountains rise up and fall away, at times close enough to touch, at others, seeming only a dim memory of a murky past. Forests blend, separate, change, making fanciful patterns in the virgin snow, like clouds marching slowly by on a fine summer day.