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”.