Jeff zigzagged through the city, following his compass. We were stopped several times by military and police road-blocks but didn’t have any trouble.
We got oil a “truck road” south of Gainesville, a straight smooth ribbon of concrete, and Jeff got the RV up to 150 kilometers per hour.
“If we dared to stay on these roads, we could be at the Cape in a couple of hours. But there’s bound to be trouble … ambushes, hijackers. Soon as we get out in the country well head straight southeast, toward the Ocala National Forest” We were going through an area of small factories and shabby lowrise apartment buildings.
The road curved and Jeff slowed down abruptly. “That’s trouble, for sure.” About a half-kilometer ahead, a truck was lying on its side. At least four people were milling around it, and at least one of them was armed. Jeff turned onto a gravel path marked “Service Road,” that led behind a concrete-block factory, evidently abandoned. There was no fence in back, just a tangle of brush, taller than the RV.
“Hang on,” Jeff said. He slowed down and did something with the levers mounted by the steering wheel. The motor’s pitch dropped to a loud growl and we crawled into the brush.
It wasn’t encouraging. There was nothing to see but green, in every direction. We’d go a few meters and fetch up against something immovable, back up and try a few meters in another direction. After a half-hour of this, we were suddenly in the clear: Jeff knocked over a wooden fence and we were speeding over a manicured pasture.
“Horse farm.” He pointed to a group of the animals staring at us from a safe distance. “Well be all right if we can keep away from buildings. One farmhouse per day is plenty.”
Every kilometer or so, we’d slow down to break through another fence and take a new compass reading. We had to detour around a large lake (the RV would function as a boat, but Jeff said it would be very slow and too tempting a target), but then shot straight south across farmland to the Ocala National Forest.
The forest was full of trees, no surprise. Jeff weaved around while I tried to make sense of the bobbing compass, telling him to bear right or left, averaging rather south of east and east of south. But it seemed safe; we encountered a few jackrabbits and armadillos, but none of them was armed.
We came upon a sand road that bore directly southeast, so decided to chance it. We were able to maintain a speed of thirty to forty kilometers per hour, slithering through the woods. Green shade and silence on both sides. I guess we got complacent.
Suddenly a metal cable jumped up from the sand in front of us. Jeff tried to stop but we slid and slammed into it. Out, he said, and kicked open his door and dived. But I was tangled up in the seat restraint again, and this time it almost killed me. Just as the buckle clicked free, a bullet smashed through the windshield and peppered my face with glass fragments. I felt a hot splash of involuntary urine and broke a fingernail getting the door open, fell to the ground and crawled behind a tree, blasting the riot gun in various directions.
46. What Happened Behind Their Backs (3)
Almost every nation on Earth denounced the United States for its cruel assault on the helpless Worlds. Every country in Common Europe withdrew its diplomats (though most of them were on their way home already), and even the Alexandrian Dominion asked for a formal explanation of the action.
The Supreme Socialist Union announced that a state of war existed between their countries and the United States, until such time as the legitimate revolutionary government was installed. Systems were unlocked and thumbs hovered over buttons.
More than a century before, the combined weapons systems of the United States and the Soviet Union (now one-third of the SSU) had grown to the point where they could completely exterminate a planet of eight billion souls. Since no planet in the Solar System had anything like that number of people, they did the logical thing. They signed papers agreeing to limit the rate of growth of their weapons systems. A few misguided idealists on both sides suggested that it might be wiser to stop the growth of the systems, or even dismantle a few weapons. But more practical men prevailed, citing the lessons of history, or at least current events. The “balance of terror” worked, first in the short run; then in the long run.
When South America blasted itself back to the nineteenth century in a nuclear round robin, the major powers made sage and pious remarks and quietly congratulated each other on their mutual sanity. When the Soviet Union was bloodily preoccupied with its Cultural Consolidation, the United States did not take advantage; neither did the resulting SSU attack the United States during the year of vulnerability that followed its Second Revolution.
For one and a half centuries after the primitive pyres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the systems and counter-systems grew in complexity and magnitude. More and more agreements were signed. Peace was guaranteed so long as the systems worked.
The systems broke down on the American side on 16 March 2085. The same madman who had tried to kill the Worlds sat at a console under a mountain in Colorado. He turned forty keys and played a magnificent arpeggio on the buttons beneath them.
47. Firefight
There were a few seconds of silence after my spree with the riot gun. Then two shots, pause, two more. They were on Jeff’s side, but he didn’t fire back. I hoped it was because he didn’t want the laser to give away his hiding place.
The silence stretched on. What if he were dead? Then so was I. I was pretty well hidden, behind a tree and a fallen log, but the man who was shooting (I assumed he was a man) must know about where I was. But then he also knew I had the riot gun. Maybe he would leave. Could I find my way to the Cape alone? I could take the compass out of the RV and walk southeast, maybe a week—
“Don’t move, bitch.”
He was hardly two meters away, crouched behind a tree. All I could see were his face and a hand gripping a large pistol. On the word “bitch” we both fired. He missed me. I thought I’d missed him, too, but then he stood up from behind the tree, gaping at the shredded remains of his hand, bright blood pulsing. He said “Oh” softly and started to run. A green laser pulse hit him at chest level and he fell to the ground, skidding.
I stood up trembling, trying to control sphincters. Jeff shouted, “There’s another—” and I felt a sting on my neck and heard a gunshot. I slumped down beside the RV and put my hand to my neck; blood streamed down my arm. I felt myself fainting, put my head between my knees, and fell over sideways. I was dimly aware of gunfire, and green laser light, and some orange light, too. I passed out.
I woke up with Jeff spraying something over my neck. He pressed a cotton pad against the wound, and took my hand.
“We have to move. Can you hold this in place?”
Half the forest was in flames. I nodded dumbly and let him put my hand over the bandage. He lifted me up and put me inside the RV, slammed the door shut and ran around to his side. It was getting hot.
We backed up away from the flames and took off through the woods. “It’s not a bad one,” Jeff said. “Flesh wound. We ought to have it stitched up, though.” When we were well away from the fire, he stopped long enough to tape the bandage in place.
“You feel up to navigating?” he asked. “I don’t think we ought to follow that path anymore.”
“Let me out first.”
“Need help?”
I got the door open. “No, I’ve been doing it for years.” I squatted behind the RV and relieved myself. All very rustic, with the sweet pine smoke and leaves to clean up with. Then I politely threw up for a while, on my hands and knees, everything in proper order, wouldn’t be nice to do everything at once. Jeff must have heard me being sick; he was holding me for the last of it, and had brought out a plastic jug of well water. I rinsed out my mouth and held on to him while the dizziness passed, not crying, his shirt front salty between my teeth. The taste of him calmed me.