Heather coughed and sobbed next to him. He heard Johnny and Marcie spluttering not far away, and knew that they had made it, too. There wasn’t a flicker of energy to spare for celebration, though. He lay breathing hard, unable even to move for what felt like hours.
Johnny spoke at last. “We didn’t really have any gear to lose. I guess my ammo’s wet, though. Your rifle gone, Gordon?”
“Yeah.” He sat up groaning, touching a thin gash where the breaking canoe had stroked his forehead.
There did not seem to have been any serious injuries, though the coughing was now starting to shift over to general shivers. Marcie’s borrowed clothes stuck to the blond concubine in ways that Gordon might have found interesting had he not been so miserable.
“W-what do we do now?” she asked.
Gordon shrugged. “For starters we go back in and get rid of the wreck.”
They stared at him. He explained. “If they don’t find it, they’ll probably assume we went a whole lot farther than this, tonight. That could turn out to be our only advantage.
“Then, when that’s done, we head overland.”
“I’ve never been to California,” Johnny suggested, and Gordon had to smile. Since they had discovered that the Holnists had another enemy, the boy had spoken of little else.
The idea was tempting. South was one direction their pursuers wouldn’t expect them to go.
But that would mean crossing the river. And anyway, if Gordon remembered correctly, the Salmon River was a long way south of here. Even if it were practical to sneak through a couple of hundred miles of survivalist baronies, there just wasn’t time. With spring here, they were needed back home worse than ever.
“We’ll wait up in the hills until pursuit’s gone past,” he said. “Then we might as well try for the Coquille.”
Johnny, forever cheerful and willing, did not let their dim chances get him down. He shrugged. “Let’s go get the canoe then.” He jumped into the frigid, waist-deep water. Gordon picked up a sturdy piece of driftwood to use as a gaff, and followed a little more gingerly. The water wasn’t any less bitterly cold the second time. His toes were starting to go numb.
Together they had almost reached the belly-up canoe when Johnny cried out and pointed, “The mail!”
At the fringe of their eddy, a glistening oilskin packet could be seen drifting outward, toward the swift center of the current.
“No!” Gordon cried. “Let it go!”
But Johnny had already leaped head first into the rushing waters. He swam hard toward the receding package, even as Gordon screamed after him. “Corne back here. Johnny, you fool! It’s worthless!
“Johnny!”
He watched hopelessly as the bundle and the boy chasing it were swept around the next bend in the river. From just ahead there came the heavy, heartless growl of rapids.
Cursing, Gordon dove into the freezing current and swam with all his might to catch up. His pulse pounded and he inhaled icy water along with every desperate breath. He almost followed Johnny around the bend, but then, at the last moment, he grabbed an overhanging branch and held on tightly… just in time.
Through the curtain of foam he saw his young friend tumble after the black package into the worst cascade yet, a horrible jumbling of ebony teeth and spray.
“No,” Gordon whispered hoarsely. He watched as Johnny and the packet were swept together over a ledge and disappeared into a sinkhole.
He continued staring, through the hair plastered over his eyes and the blinding, stinging droplets, but minutes passed and nothing emerged from that terrible whirlpool.
At last, with his grip slipping, Gordon had to retreat. He drew himself hand over hand along the shaky branch until he reached the slow, shallow water at the river’s bank. Then, mechanically, he forced his feet to carry him upstream, slogging past the wide-eyed women to the ruined bark canoe.
He used a driftwood hook to draw it after him behind a jutting point in the canyon wall, and there he pounded the little boat to pieces, smashing it into unrecognizable flinders.
Sobbing, he kept striking and slashing the water long after the bits had sunk out of sight or drifted away.
16
They passed the day in the brambles and weeds under a tumbledown concrete bunker. Before the Doomwar, it must have been someone’s treasured survivalist hideaway, but now it was a ruin — broken, bullet-scarred, and looted.
Once, in prewar days, Gordon had read that there were places in the country riddled with hideouts like this — stockpiled by men whose hobby was thinking about the fall of society, and fantasizing what they would do after it happened. There had been classes, workshops, special-interest magazines … an industry catering to “needs” which went far beyond those of the average woodsman or camper.
Some simply liked to daydream, or enjoyed a relatively harmless passion for rifles. Few were ever followers of Nathan Holn, and most were probably horrified when their fantasies at last came true.
When that time finally arrived, most of the loner “sur-vivalists” died in their bunkers, quite alone.
Battle and the rain forest had eroded the few scraps left by waves of scavengers. Cold rain pattered over the concrete blocks as the three fugitives took turns keeping watch and sleeping.
Once they heard shouts and the squish of horses’ hooves in the mud. Gordon made an effort to look confident for the women’s sake. He had taken care to leave as little trail as possible, but his two charges weren’t even as experienced as the Willamette Army scouts. He wasn’t at all sure they would be able to fool the best forest trackers who had lived since Cochise.
The riders moved on, and after a while the fugitives were able to relax just a little. Gordon dozed.
This time he did not dream. He was too exhausted to spare any energy for hauntings.
They had to wait for the moonrise before setting out that night. There were several trails, crisscrossing each other frequently, but Gordon somehow kept them going in the right direction, using the semipermanent ice on the north sides of the trees as a guide.
Three hours after sunset, they came upon the ruins of a little village.
“Illahee.” Heather identified the place.
“It’s been abandoned,” he observed. The moonlit ghost town was eerie. From the former Baron’s manor to the lowliest hovel, it seemed to have been picked clean.
“All the soldiers an’ their serfs were sent up north,” Marcie explained. “There’s been a lot of villages emptied that way, last few weeks.”
Gordon nodded. ‘They’re fighting on three fronts. Macklin wasn’t kidding when he said he would be in Corvallis by May. It’s take over-the Willamette or die.”
The countryside looked like a moonscape. There were saplings everywhere, but few tall trees. Gordon realized that this must have been one of the places where the Holnists had tried slash-and-burn agriculture. But this country was not fertile farmland, like the Willamette Valley. The experiment must have been a failure.
Heather and Marcie held hands as they walked, their eyes darting fearfully. Gordon couldn’t help comparing them to Dena and her proud, brave Amazons, or to happy, optimistic Abby back in Pine View. The true dark age would not be a happy time for women, he decided. Dena had been right about that much.
“Let’s go look around the big house,” he said. “There might be some food.”
That sparked their interest. They ran ahead of him to the abandoned manor with its stockade and abatis surrounding a solid, prewar house.
When he caught up they were huddled over a pair of dark forms just within the gate. Gordon flinched when he saw that they were skinning and flaying two large German shepherd dogs. Their master couldn’t take them on a sea voyage, he realized a little sickly. No doubt the Holnist Baron of Dlahee grieved more over his treasured animals than over the slaves who would die during the mass exodus to the promised lands up north.