Cameron said, “You’re welcome. Headed up to the lake for some fishing?”
By now his hand was in Salazar’s hand, and as they shook, without moving his lips, Salazar asked, “Anything to tell our mutual friend?” In a normal conversational tone he said, “Yeah, well, it’s protein. They’re biting. I have a smokehouse by the fishing cabin, too, so I’m laying in tons for the winter. You wait till January and you’ll wish you’d gone with me.”
“I already do,” Cameron said, adding softly, “the Red Queen is in,” before letting his volume come up for, “and I don’t even fish, but it must be great to be out in the quiet.”
“It is, and you don’t have to fish, sir. I’ve got a spare bed and you’re welcome anytime.” And softly, “I’ll communicate that. Are you taking advice?”
Murmuring at his shoes, as if too socially awkward to accept a friendly invitation (not a hard thing for him to fake), Cam said, “I already know it’s dangerous, if it fails everything will unravel, and the longer I delay the worse it’ll get.”
“That’s all the advice I had. I’ll be on the line to our friend early tomorrow,” Salazar said quietly. “Really. I wish you’d reconsider, and I’m inviting you because I like your company. Though if it means you’ll come, I promise to do some career-booster upsuckage too.”
Cam shook his head. “Not this time.”
“Well, have a good weekend in town then, sir.”
Walking away, Salazar noted that they’d managed to hit the center of a big open space, more than enough protection because the other side didn’t have any surviving long-range directional mikes.
As he saddled up, he thought, I could set up and transmit tonight, then sleep in tomorrow. I haven’t seen any reports that anyone has even noticed a sporadic beep-radio transmission from outside town yet, let alone put direction finding on it. But this would be a hell of a time for a first. Stay on the path, even when no one is watching.
5 DAYS LATER. SYLVAN BEACH, ON ONE IDA LAKE, NEW YORK. 10 AM EST. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2025.
The big cache of canned goods came to them at the end of a real run of good luck. They had paddled and poled for a few days, then spent three tiring days walking along the bank, two men each towing a canoe, the third man keeping the lines clear, pushing the canoes out from the bank with a pole, doing much of the observing, and staying alert against attack. They had not expected to be able to keep the canoes all the way to Oneida Lake; once they reached the western lake port of Brewerton, though, a makeshift sail on each canoe had been enough to carry them all the way across the lake to Sylvan Beach before 3 p.m., traveling farther in half a day than they had just done in three.
A big cache of canned goods in an empty, clean house with a woodstove was an opportunity to enjoy warmth and food, and a chance to mend, clean, and thoroughly dry everything; they decided to lay over for at least a day.
When they rose, at least half a foot of fresh snow covered the ground. More was still coming down—big, wet, soft flakes that stuck to everything and turned to slush at a breath. They had stashed the canoes under a pier and carried everything up into the house, and the previous occupants had left behind a large pile of firewood, some oil candles, and three big cans of olive oil that burned in a smudgy and dirty way in oil candles with cloth wicks.
Everything was clean and fixed up by early afternoon. They decided to eat another couple of big meals here and sleep warm for one more night, especially since the coming descent of the Mohawk was likely to be rough.
Larry had reports to write, Chris had his diary and his articles, but for Jason, the shelves held no paper books or magazines, no musical instruments, not even a Parcheesi set. One large cabinet drooled a brown jelly that had probably once contained millions of songs, movies, books, games, and so forth, but now it was too gooey even to make decent modeling clay.
Jason pulled on his coat and went to look for a bookstore or library somewhere. Snow was falling thick and fast; the gray half-light swallowed up the house behind him in less than two blocks. He turned right as he came into the business district, five blocks from the house by his careful count. Four blocks later, he found a senior center, and broke in at the back door.
The building was lighted only by high windows, but he could make out the mummified remains in chairs around the big tables, on cots along the walls, or on rotted blankets. Massive-dose radiation sickness is horrible but quick. Lumpy fans of crusted gunk lay by the mouths and anuses of most of the mummies. No animals had survived to come in here, and the windows were unbroken, so the dead lay where they had died; only the first few had been lined up in a storage room, covered with sheets.
Two mummies in a corner were holding hands with a cup beside them; the sitting one must have been bringing water for the lying one. He hoped they’d both lost consciousness at the same time.
A back room with immense windows and the remains of several couches and armchairs contained shelves of military history; the old-fashioned kind of chick books, where it was always just the turn of the century, everybody hooked up constantly, and everyone was always about to have a great career; bios of forgotten actors, singers, and athletes; and some of the classics. Jason pocketed half a dozen paperbacks, figuring Chris and Larry might want to read and the added weight wouldn’t be much if they did manage to keep the canoes all the way down the Mohawk.
Shadows passed by the window. Silently Jason took one long step backwards into the arched doorway of an open bathroom, letting the darkness hide him. Huddled human forms, hugging themselves and stumbling, wrapped in blankets over multiple sweaters and hoodies, passed by the window in rows six abreast, with an armed guard every eighth row; the guards wore heavy red wool coats and earflap hats, and carried steel yardsticks, which they sometimes swung full force against the backs of the stumbling slaves. For more than twenty minutes, he watched an army of wraiths in rags go by, herded by these frightening parodies of hunters.
You come to me as hunters, but I will make you hunters of men, he misquoted to himself. It did not seem funny.
Counting rows, Jason guessed that about three thousand blanket-wrapped slaves and just over a hundred guards passed by, southward, along the edge of the lake, with no sound except when a guard cursed or hit a slave. After the slaves, a loose formation of about three hundred tribal soldiers passed by, followed by twenty rulers or chiefs or whatever they called themselves, another group of a hundred soldiers, and ten minutes later, a rearguard of about fifty soldiers, weapons at ready, moving as if they expected trouble.
Jason timed off an hour by his watch before emerging to look at their tracks.
Their trail bent around the lake, away from the house where Chris and Larry were; no one had turned off where Jason’s faint tracks came in. Didn’t see them or didn’t care, I guess, and the fire probably wasn’t putting out any smoke you could see through the falling snow. Taking a roundabout way, wading briefly along the icy canal, he finally reached the little house just as the sun was setting. The snow was still falling.
They banked the fire and spread his clothes and moccasins before it. When Larry awakened Jason for his watch, his clothes were dry but no longer warm.
THE NEXT DAY. SYLVAN BEACH, ON ONE IDA LAKE, NEW YORK. 7 AM EST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025.
It was still snowing heavily. They’d found kids’ sleds hanging in the attic space, and each of them pulled a sled-load of canned goods. Their muscles were already aching by the time they had tossed the sleds in and loaded and launched the canoes, paddling along the lakeshore to the canal entrance; slush an inch thick floated on the lake’s surface, and on the canal.