Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (30 page)

“You
think the men will try to cross if we leave?” he asked.

“They
won’t have much of a choice.” Creedy said. “The CDF is behind us somewhere, and
the men have two trailers full of swag. They won’t just ride off and leave it.
They’re greedy. They’ll try.”

“We
can take the gold from the trailers, first, of course,” Hollis said. Creedy
chuckled.

“Let’s
do it.”

Hollis
sighed and looked relieved. She twisted her head to look back over her shoulder
at the darkness. Even the meteors were absent tonight.

“Who’s
out there?” she asked. She turned to study Creedy, who lowered his gaze to the
fire.

“It
feels personal,” Hollis said. “Old business.”

Creedy
sat silent. After a while, they went to bed.

As
the sun came up the rain started in, heavier now. Every time they left the
roads the ground was slippery, sucking clay and boggy loam that mired the
wagons and slowed the caravan’s speed to a crawl. The men cursed and dismounted
time and again to heave the trailers free of mudhole after mudhole, fighting to
reach the next ribbon of cracked asphalt. Exhaustion was written on every face
as the group finally rolled to a stop, staring down from a rocky plateau to the
Columbia far below, and the graceful arc of an old steel bridge. A few miles
distance to the west, the land was cut into neat green squares, where Chelan
farmers worked their fields and orchards. As the day faded the rain slowed, and
a scattering of lights burned here and there in the flatland of the
riverbottom, winking out as the inhabitants went to bed.

Gregor
told a sentry to take a rest; that he couldn’t sleep and would stand watch in
his place. The three were gone within an hour, the cases strapped behind their
saddles, their pockets filled with the most portable valuables from the
trailers; old jewelry, a satin bag of gold teeth, coins from fallen empires,
sticky brown balls of heroin in jelly jars, a child’s velvet marble bag filled
with precious stones. They stuck to the high tableland, to the rockiest paths,
and headed south through the humid night.

Grey
rode in as dawn was breaking. The rains had stopped, and rose-colored bands of
cloud dropped slowly out of sight over the eastern horizon. As the sun left the
last wraith of cloud a low rumble echoed from the west, an aerolite burning and
shedding sparks as it trailed out in a feathery line of fire. It flashed
brightly, disappearing as it dove into ever-denser atmosphere. A long count of
seconds later a final blast echoed and roared through the valley. Grey’s horse
continued stolidly on, no stranger to explosions.

Clay
and the others squatted around a tiny fire inside one of a series of old
corrugated steel warehouses, just off the rusting line of the train tracks.
Cottonwood trees twice the height of the warehouse sprouted through the
clinker, squeezing between ties, buckling some sections of rail with slow
patience. Downslope, a thick curtain of trees walled off the view of the bridge
and the river. On the far side of the tracks stood a trio of concrete grain
elevators streaked with rust and lime.

“You’re
wet,” Georgia said as Grey dismounted and stood dripping on the cement floor.

“She
never misses a thing,” Mal offered. His guns lay in pieces before him, an oily
rag on his knee. “You pay for that meteor personally to announce your return?”

“I
forded a few miles east of the bridge last night,” Grey said, disrobing and
wringing each piece of clothing as he did.  The river had been stronger than he
expected and his horse had been shaking with exhaustion when it reached the
north bank. In retrospect, the night crossing had been foolish. “They’re up on
the bluff on the south side. We should see them by noon. Maybe a little after.
The road down to the bridge is steepish and they have those trailers to worry
about.”

Georgia
watched Grey, who was now down to a no-color set of long underwear, his clothes
spread on the floor near the fire. He yawned, a paunchy, broad man with a beard
and hair that hung in lank, dirty ropes.

“You
don’t look like much without all that leather and wolf-pelt on,” she said,
dipping a cup of stew from the pot that crouched in the coals. She handed Grey
the cup. He used a dirty index finger to squeegee the drippings from its side
and stuck it in his mouth. Georgia rolled her eyes.

“I
may not look like much,” he said after extracting his finger, “but I am the
oldest and wisest man in his room.”

Mal
raised an eyebrow.

“What?”
Grey demanded. “You’re older?”

“By
a year, as I recall.”

“Shit.
Second oldest and wisest?” Mal conceded the point with a gracious wave of his
hand and began assembling his automatics.

Clay
chewed on a strip of jerky and adjusted his hat.

“You’re
in a good mood for someone getting shot at around lunchtime,” he said.

“I
am,” Grey admitted. “I’m too old for this shit, and I’m happy that we’re
getting nearer the end now.”

“You
used to love this stuff,” Mal said. “Don’t tell me you don’t crave the juice
anymore.”

Grey
sat down, serious now, but still smiling.

“I
don’t. I get more fun out of running my trapline.”

“Holy
hell, Grey, if you get domesticated, I may have to retire,” Mal said.

“Being
a loner trapper in a drafty cabin back in the bush is domesticated?”

“It
is for you,” Mal argued. “You’re creeping me out with this hale-good-fellow
stuff. Can’t you say something bleak?”

“Well,
odds are good one of us is getting shot. There is that,” Grey said.

“You
had to go and ask,” Georgia said, rising and walking to her rifle case.

Grey
watched the others getting ready, listening to their quips and their laughter.
He knew it was nerves. He felt it himself, a familiar hectic amusement that was
made of fear and adrenaline.

He
turned his clothes. They didn’t seem to be getting any drier.

Long
before noon, Grey settled in on the roof of a sagging three-story brick
building that overlooked the north end of what a faded blue-and-white sign
called the Beebe Bridge. Grey wondered who or what Beebe was.

The
building made him nervous. It was isolated and too near the end of the bridge.
Mal had argued against it. It would be the first point anyone crossing the
bridge would make for, but the other still-standing buildings were too far
away, or screened by foliage.  It would have to do. The odds of Creedy’s men
charging pell-mell into the face of concentrated fire were, he reflected, very
low. They’d pull back, losing another tithe of their strength, and making the
next time that much easier.

Chelan
was close by, no more than a couple of miles to the northwest, and as he waited
Grey distracted himself by using his rifle’s scope to scan the distant fields
and orchards where they peeked through the trees. It was too far to pick out
people, but he could see the occasional horse and cart. Below him on the
building’s ground level, Mal walked through the maze of interconnected rooms,
hands in his jacket pockets, studying the floor plan. Grey could hear him as he
whistled something complex and baroque.

Georgia
lay prone behind the V formed by two huge willow trunks, farther from the
bridge and far down the river bank. The river angled sharply under the bridge
and the structure’s entire length was within her range as it lay almost
perpendicular to her. Clay sat in the brush at her side, his back against
another willow.

The
ranch hand watched her, his eyes unreadable. Georgia felt his gaze and turned
her head to him, cheek resting on the rifle’s stock.

“What
is it, Clay?”

He
picked a stem of grass and chewed it for a moment before answering.

“I’m
love with you. When this is over, assuming we aren’t dead, will you come home
with me?”

A
redwing blackbird’s metallic two-tone call belled in the silence that followed.

“Clay,”
she said. She looked across the river for a long minute before turning back.
“You really go straight ahead, don’t you? You don’t want me, Clay. I’m not very
nice. I live on my own ranch, have a face that looks like someone used a cheese
grater on it, raise horses that cost more than they sell for, only get invited
to go out when there are people to shoot and avoid polite conversation like
poison.” She sighed. “Why would you want someone like me?”

Clay
switched the grass to the other corner of his mouth.

“Who
I want is really up to me, don’t you think?” She started to speak, but he
raised a hand and cut her off.

“Everything
you said sounded like old excuses you’re used to giving. Just take a while and
think about why you’re saying them. Then let me know what you decide.” He
turned and looked across the river. Georgia opened her mouth, then closed it
and rubbed her eyes. The blackbird called again.

“They’re
here,” Clay said.

The
wagons waited at the far end of the bridge, as before. The Castle guardsmen
that had escorted them slowly down the long hill clustered about the battered
beige boxes. There didn’t seem to be as many as there had been. Georgia had
tried to count them as they descended, but the wagons and the way the guards
circled them made it impossible.

“They
look confused,” Clay said. Georgia had made him remove his Stetson, afraid that
its off-white glare would mark him. His hair had reddish tints in the sun, she
saw. She shook her head and nestled behind her scope.

“Can
you hit them from here?” Clay asked. To him the riders looked a mile away.

“Oh
yes,” Georgia said. She scanned from face to face. At three hundred yards she
could make out features clearly. She couldn’t find Creedy, just one young man’s
face after another. About half were heavily bearded, but the remainder mostly
sported scruffs of whiskers that made her think they were no more than teens.
One smooth-faced boy couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen.

The
beardless boy turned his horse and gestured at another rider. He had a shotgun
slung across his back, and Georgia thought the three or four round, tasseled
things than flapped from its stock might be scalps.

She
went back to scanning faces as the riders milled and gestured, looking for
Creedy’s khaki suit. “Maybe he’s been smart enough to change clothes,” she
muttered.

“Shit,”
Clay hissed. “Look, on the ridgeline.”

Georgia
swiveled her weapon. Along the jagged edge of the ridge behind the bridge’s
south foot, high above the Castle guns, a dozen horsemen were silhouetted
briefly as they dismounted and began to clamber down into the quarter-mile of
brush and rocks that separated them from the wagons. They were too far away for
Georgia to glean much detail, other than all but one wore the same blotchy
green-grey uniform of jacket, pants and helmet, a black vest, and all seemed to
carry identical black rifles.

“Well
if that isn’t perfect. I think it’s the army,” Georgia said. She laughed but it
sounded forced to Clay. “Fuck me if Grey can manage a simple ambush without
someone uninvited showing up.

Nakamura
led the CDF squad as quickly as possible, trying to get within range before the
men with the trailers spotted him. From his position on the slope a swelling
bench between his troops and the Castle’s men obstructed their view shortly
after the CDF troops began the descent. The way was steep, broken with sheer
drops of ten or fifteen feet in spots, and detours were needed here and there.
Despite the terrain they made good time and reached the shallower talus slope
below the rocky outcrop undetected. He gestured to his left and right and his
men spread in a line across a hundred yards, readying their weapons. He glanced
at Sam, who still wore the ragged leather and denim she’d arrived in. She did
not glance at the Captain, but snugged the stock of a rifle into her shoulder
and flicked the safety off. Nakamura raised his hand and gestured sharply
forward.

From
the river’s far side Georgia and Grey watched through their scopes as the
newcomers started down the final slope. The first of the Castle men fell, and
the crack of gunfire came across the water a second later.

Grey
was looking almost straight down the length of the bridge from his perch, and
as a frightened teamster whipped the first wagon into motion his view was
reduced to a narrow gap down the side of the white and tan camp trailer. He
shifted the crosshairs to the man who sat on the makeshift coachman’s platform,
whipping the reins, and waited.

“I
hear a lot of shooting over there, Grey. What the hell?” Mal called from below.

“The
army got here. They’re driving them to us,” he called down.

“Oh
goody,” Mal called back. In the shadows of the building’s foyer he drew his
automatics and thumbed the safeties off.

The
Castle troops returned the initial fire in a brief fusillade that kicked up
dust across the hillside where the CDF soldiers crouched in what cover they
could find. People in Chelan raised their heads at the distant drumroll of
gunfire and dropped their tools where they stood. They gathered children and
livestock and disappeared into their homes. Those who had weapons readied them.