The road north of the walled section of Folly was not as well kept up as the road to the walled municipal beach, but it wasn’t as bad as one might have thought even after decades of official neglect and two decent-sized hurricanes. The more enterprising and independent Charlestonians who used the unwalled beach made a habit of collecting buckets of cleaned clam shells in the backs of their cars and bringing them along as an unofficial toll for beach use. The Citadel Cadets had picnics on the beach a couple of weekends a year at which it was an unofficial tradition to bring a couple of thick steel sheets and a few sledgehammers and have impromptu contests to see which company’s champion could pulverize the most shells (Golf Company being the current record-holder at twenty-three buckets), after which the cadets carefully filled in any significant cracks or potholes with the makeshift paving material. Over time the road had become perhaps more tabby than asphalt, but it remained essentially adequate for the mostly local traffic it served.
She pulled into the parking lot, checked her holster, and went around to the trunk, carrying two large buckets of cleaned shells to dump into the steel bins. Fortunately, even feral Posleen did not consider empty clam and oyster shells edible. She was a few minutes early, and, as was the case more often than not on a weekday, the beach was empty, so she went ahead and got started on the normal precautions of activating a couple of portable Postie alarms and running them up the flagpoles that had been set into the edge of the parking lot. They were okay on a wire stand or on top of a car or rock in a pinch, but to get the best warning time you really needed to give them a bit of elevation. She set her PDA up to listen on the sensors’ individually programmable alert frequencies and entered the sensor locations and orientations on the screen. Now if a feral showed up she’d have not only an alarm but a distance and a moving dot-on-a-plot.
“Please tell me you’ve got more than that dinky forty-five and aren’t planning to fight a horde of Posleen alone with it. Or a boat? If we’re far enough out, they can’t get us in a boat. We’ll be just fine until it capsizes and we get eaten by sharks.” The buckley always did get a bit agitated on sensor watch.
“Buckley, do you actually sense the presence of a single Posleen feral?”
“No, they’re doing a real good job of hiding this time. I can call in reinforcements if you want. Won’t do any good, but if you want…” It trailed off.
“Don’t call anyone, buckley,” she ordered.
“Good idea. No reason they should all die, too,” it said.
“Shut up, buckley.”
“Right.”
With the basics done she was free to get cooler and bag down onto the beach, jeans and shirt off, pop open a beer, and amuse herself throwing a couple of cheese curls to the seagulls until Shari, Wendy, and the kids pulled up and came down onto the beach, Wendy’s four kids at a run close behind Shari’s golden retriever. Well, okay, she was mostly golden retriever and all dog, running straight at the gulls and barking cheerfully.
Cally surrendered to a lapful of sand, fur, and dog drool, scratching Sandy’s ears vigorously while the other women maneuvered loads of food and gear down the stairs, and tried to variously call off the dog and the kids.
“Okay you hoodlums, get back here and help carry!” Wendy called, grinning, “Mike, you too!”
“Hang on, Mom! I’ve gotta reboot my shoes, again.” Her six-year-old was staring down at his feet, where a hologram of an ACS trooper was shooting at a hologram of a Posleen normal with a boma blade, the latter having frozen mid stride, interspersed with flickering bits of static. Muttering words a six-year-old probably shouldn’t know, he took the offending shoe off and stuck his hand inside, fumbling around for the reset switch. The hologram disappeared and reappeared later, the Posleen chewing red drippy bits of meat better left unidentified. With the shoe back on the child’s foot, it resumed swinging its boma blade at the ACS trooper every time one foot passed the other, finally erupting backwards in a slow-motion welter of yellow gore as a line of bullets cut its torso in half. When the pieces hit the “ground” they stayed for a second while the ACS trooper jumped up and down triumphantly, then both holograms flickered back to pristine health and began their battle anew.
“Hiya, Aunt Cally.” He made it back over to the others as his mother was spreading out the blanket next to Cally’s towel. “Daddy bought me some new shoes. Like ’em?”
“Hey, those are great! Great detail on the images.” She watched the Posleen normal explode again, this time having its head splattered apart by aimed fire. The victorious ACS trooper turned a backflip, before going into a classic prewar end-zone dance. “Does the Postie ever win?”
“Once in awhile,” he nodded solemnly, “but it’s okay, ’cause they don’t show the gooshy stuff for that.” He reassured her as if he was the one talking to a small child.
“Do you remember me, Annie?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear and craned her neck, trying to make eye contact with the little girl hiding behind Wendy’s leg.
“Sorry, she’s going through a shy phase.” Her mother absentmindedly stroked the wispy blond curls the little girl was shaking, her face buried in Mommy’s knee. “Oh, come on, Annie, you remember Aunt Cally, don’t you? Sandy remembers her.”
“That’s my doggy.” The four-year-old’s gray eyes met hers. “You’ve got sand all over yourself.”
“I know. Sandy shared.” For a minute her eyes looked as young as the rest of her, as she laughed and stood up, brushing the sand off of her belly and legs, and giving Sandy enthusiastic scratching at the back of her head. “You’re so good to share, you’re a good dog, aren’t you?”
As Sandy’s tail was sweeping back and forth as if to enthusiastically agree that she was a good dog, James and Duncan arrived with several folding chairs and one big beach umbrella.
“Hi, Aunt Cally. Gonna throw a few passes with us after lunch?”
“They would be football fanatics, wouldn’t they?” Shari pulled a ball from one of the towel bags and handed it to Duncan as the younger boy dumped his load unceremoniously on the sand and made a run for the water, spiking the ball enthusiastically as he hit the high-tide line.
“Hey!” James looked up from setting up a chair as his brother left him with the work. “Mom!”
“Oh, go on. I’ve got it.” Cally picked up a chair and waved him towards the beach.
Wendy caught Shari’s eye for a moment as the six-year-old followed his brothers and dog towards the water.
“The kids really like you, you know.” She began unloading plastic containers of food onto the blanket. “It seems to be mutual.”
“Oh, yeah, they’re great.” She opened another chair. “Glad you and Tommy decided to have another bunch, now that the first group’s flown the nest. Oh, congratulations by the way. I thought you guys were gonna wait until this bunch was up and out before having more though.”
“Yeah, well, even with GalTech you get the occasional pleasant surprise.” She blushed. “So when are we going to be congratulating you, sweetie?”
“Say what?” Cally spluttered, dropping the chair she had just picked up. She retrieved it and suddenly became very occupied with brushing every bit of the sand off of it.