“Actually, given the fact that I’m a first lieutenant, and you’re a butter bar, you should call me ‘sir’ anyway,” Purvis responded loftily. “And I plan to keep my bars… So if you get caught roaming around the countryside, be sure to lie about how you got here.”
“You can count on it,” Hale assured him. “And you can consider that IOU paid in full. Where did you learn to play poker anyway? The Girl Scouts?”
“At UCLA,” Purvis answered with mock indignation. “But having lost to a lowlife like you, it looks like I need a refresher course.” Then he turned serious. “Remember, thirty-six hours, that’s all I can give you! And one more thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Watch your six… It’d be a shame if a Hybrid blew your ass off and ate it for lunch.”
Hale just grinned, gave a wave, and left the plane through the rear hatch. After a one-foot jump his boots sank four inches into the soft snow—a sure sign that snowshoes would be needed.
Hale knew Purvis had a mission to complete, so he hurried to clear the LZ quickly so the Party Girl could take off. Once he had waded out to a point where he could be seen from the cockpit he waved again, and saw the pilot give him a thumbs-up in return. There was a dark-skinned beauty painted on the VTOL’s nose, and Hale noticed that one of her eyes was closed in a sardonic wink. Then the engines roared, snow swirled, and the ship went straight up.
Hale watched it go, but it wasn’t until the plane had disappeared into the lead gray sky, and the drone of its engines died away, that he felt the full weight of his decision. Maybe he was crazy, but what else could he do?
If his family was dead, well, the reality of it would be hard to take. But not knowing was even worse. Frank and Mary Farley weren’t his real parents. They had been killed during the influenza epidemic of 1924. But the Farleys had raised Hale as if he was their biological son, and now it was his duty to do what any son would, which was to help his mom and dad if such a thing was possible.
So Hale found a spot where the wind had blown away most of the snow, sat down, strapped the snowshoes to his boots, and got back on his feet with help from a ski pole. Then, having checked his compass, he set off.
The surface of the snow was frozen, so each time Hale brought one of the snowshoes forward and shifted his weight to it, there was a soft crunch as the shoe broke through the top crust. Hale had used snowshoes throughout his childhood, but it had been a while. The key was to maintain the correct distance between his feet, because if he placed them too far apart he would consume more energy than was necessary. And if he brought them too close he would bark his shins.
It took a while to find the old rhythms again, but once he had, Hale made much better time. Good thing, too, because the Rocking F Ranch was still fifteen miles away.
It would have been nice if Purvis had been able to put him down in the front yard of the family home, of course, but that would have forced the pilot to enter prohibited airspace. “Prohibited,” meaning airspace that had been ceded to the Chimera. It was off-limits to any aircraft not on an authorized mission.
So he had to do it the old-fashioned way. Still, Hale was confident that he could make the round-trip with time to spare, so long as the weather held and he didn’t encounter any of the enemy. The low cloud cover would keep most of the Chimeran aircraft on the ground, and the steady snowfall would obliterate his tracks as well.
That was the theory anyway.
But as Hale topped a rise and made his way down the opposite slope he discovered that he was unexpectedly tired, and welcomed the opportunity to rest next to a group of trees. After less than an hour of walking his thigh and calf muscles were already sore. He knew they would hurt even more the following morning. The weight of his food, weapons, and ammo was a factor as well.
The break offered him an opportunity to eat a hard Hershey bar and scan the whiteness that lay ahead. He knew he would be easier to spot out in the open, and if forced to defend himself, he’d have no place to hide. With that in mind he panned the binoculars across the rolling prairie, looking for even the tiniest hint of movement, a color that shouldn’t be there, or a feature that wasn’t consistent with its surroundings.
Between the misty haze that hung like a backdrop across the land, a veil of thinly falling snow, and the dim winter light, visibility was poor. But Hale spotted some movement off to the right and felt a sudden surge of adrenaline, only to discover that he was looking at three gaunt horses. Left on their own by the war, they stood huddled next to the building where they had once been fed.
Satisfied that the way was clear, Hale left the relative protection offered by the trees and slip-slid out across the unmarked snow. Lung-warmed air jetted out in front of him, the snowshoes made a consistent swish-thump sound, and the Rossmore thumped against his chest. The alternative was to carry the weapon across his back, along with the Fareye, but that would open him up to a sudden attack by Leapers. The dog-sized creatures could jump six feet in the air and had a lethal bite. It required quick reflexes and a powerful weapon to bring them down, so having a shotgun at the ready increased one’s chances of survival.
So the shotgun remained where it was as he crossed the open area, passed the barn on his right, and spotted some snow-blurred tracks that ran down through a gully and up the other side. Some of the impressions had been made by various types of livestock, but there were others as well, including impressions left by splay-footed Hybrids.
As Hale sidestepped his way up the slope, he was careful not to pop up over the top, knowing that just about anything might lie in wait beyond. But his fears were groundless, and when he brought the binoculars up, all he saw was open prairie.
No, not all. Some of the tracks wandered off to the right and left, but the rest led to a point where a dark smudge could be seen, about a hundred yards in front of him. There were no sounds other than the measured rasp of his own breathing, the soft rustle of his parka, and the insistent sigh of the wind.
Hale’s tracks overlaid all the rest as he made his way out toward the dark thing—and he was momentarily startled when a flock of crows took to the air.
A moment later he realized he was looking at a dead Titan. Judging from the sizable cavity where its abdominal organs should have been, the carcass had been lying there for days. The variety of tracks in the blood-tinged snow indicated that scavengers of every possible description had been feeding off the carcass for some time. But what was responsible for the monster’s death?
Certainly it hadn’t been a band of civilians, even if any remained in the area. Titans were twenty feet tall, carried powerful cannons, and were notoriously difficult to kill. Hale knew firsthand, because he’d been forced to tackle the beasts in England, and had no desire to do so again.
So what brought the Titan down, Hale wondered, as he circled the body. A strafing attack by a Sabre Jet? Had a VTOL happened by on its way back from a mission? Hale figured it had been something of that sort, although he would never know for sure.
The next three hours were spent slogging across the gently rolling prairie. Hale was forced to cut his way through a barbed wire fence on one occasion, and came across others that, judging from the tracks in the snow, had been torn down by a Chimeran Stalker. A patrol perhaps? If so it was one more thing he had to worry about.
There were other signs of the enemy presence as well, including piles of frost-glazed Hybrid dung, a dead steer that had been riddled with projectiles from a Chimeran Bullseye, and the remains of an encampment littered with partially gnawed human bones. All of which forced Hale to slow down lest he inadvertently walk into a Chimeran emplacement.