Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (33 page)

“No,
Snake, it didn’t,” Grey offered, hands in his lap. “Looking back, I hadn’t
learned how to stop. But I did, eventually.”

Creedy
sat and continued to sneer, his eyes black holes.

“Where
are the cases? Upstairs, I assume?” Grey asked, glancing at the stairs.

Creedy
sat silently. Grey stood. The flickering light picked out the creases in his
face and neck in lines of black shadow.

“What’s
in them?” Grey asked.

“You
mean you don’t know?”

“I
wouldn’t have asked if I did,” Grey said. Creedy laughed without humor and
shook his head.

“You
got old, Grey,” Creedy said. “You quit trying and hid in the woods. What good
would a new world be to you?”

Grey
shook his head. “No, Snake, I was about your age when I finally realized I
hadn’t been trying. I hadn’t tried since I was fourteen and the world stopped
being what I wanted it to be.”

“So
you’re trying now?” Creedy sneered.

“Yes.”
He turned and studied Sam’s face, her thinned lips and the little crease of
concentration between her eyes. “Do we leave him for the cartel, or do you want
to shoot him?”

Creedy
smiled his empty smile. “You should kill me this time, Grey. You really
should.”

Sam
snugged the shotgun into her shoulder and took a step forward, the barrel
hovering a yard from Creedy’s temple. He turned his head, his stare meeting
that of the weapon’s bore.

Sam
reversed the gun as she half-turned, slamming the butt into the side of his
head with a brittle crack. His jaw jerked over beneath his right ear and his
eyes rolled over white under fluttering lids. He slid bonelessly from the
chair, his ruined head banging off the table’s edge and leaving a bloody smear.

“Leave
the suitcase?” Grey asked, bending to see if Creedy was still breathing. He
was, though he was making a strange snoring gurgle each time he exhaled.

“Yeah,”
Sam said. “Let him explain why he has it and Esteban is dead in an arroyo with
his two bodyguards.”

Grey
stood and walked behind the bar. He looked at the old man sitting there, hands
in his lap. His head was bent and all Grey could see was the smooth bronze dome
of his skull, dotted with a few stubborn hairs.

“You
didn’t hear any of that, yes?” Grey dropped a roughly milled gold coin into his
hands.

The
old man nodded and his fist closed around the coin.

“No
oigo nada,” he said.

“You
ought to get out of here for few days.”

The
old man said nothing. Grey went upstairs.

The
six cases were stacked neatly, each the size of a large suitcase and made of a
tough black synthetic with metal reinforced corners. Grey hefted one and
grunted at the weight. He set it on one of the two beds and flicked the latches
along its front open. Four long black canisters lay in the case, each perhaps
six inches across, each again hinged and held shut with steel latches. He
lifted one out and opened it. Grey stared at the segmented, glassy green
cylinder inside for a moment before realizing it was a rack of discs, hundreds
of them bedded side by side in slots fuzzed with green velvet. He ran a finger
along the length of the column, feeling the bite of each edge as it passed.

*          
*          *

They
took their time returning north, keeping to paths less travelled and bearing gradually
east toward the CDF base in Billings. Sam didn’t want to assume that Nakamura
had control of Washington and argued for the eastern route, toward areas
already garrisoned. The weather cooperated, though the heat made the horses
irritable and finding water was a major undertaking on some days.

Grey
thought about Josie a lot.

*          
*          *

“How
long have you been working for them?” Grey asked on the day they rode down a
series of switchbacks, blue gulfs opening below on the line of the Snake River.

“I
enlisted almost four years ago,” Sam responded. “Why?”

“Just
curious,” Grey said. “You have a feel for this new government of yours?”

“I
suppose I do. What’s bothering you?”

Grey
twisted to look back over his shoulder at Sam while his horse picked its way
along the narrow trail. Rocks disturbed by its hooves would occasionally roll
from the path and fall into the canyon, turning slowly as they fell through
hundreds of feet. She tried to keep her eyes on the tracker rather than the
drop.

“Well,
do you trust them to do right by folks?” He gestured to their mule and the
cases it carried. “You figure they’ll share that, or keep it?”

Sam’s
eyes narrowed.

“There
are idiots in any organization, Grey. But if you’re asking if we’re setting up
a military junta and planning on keeping the peasants ignorant and fearful,
then no, we’re not.”

“I
hope you’re right,” he said, turning back to face he trail. He said something
else but Sam’s horse picked that moment to decide to toss its head at a fly and
stumble. It regained its balance and continued placidly on, but it took her a
minute to begin breathing again.

“Sorry,
I didn’t hear,” she managed when her heart had slowed.

“I
was just saying that it would be nice if we could raise some kids on books
instead of guns,” he said over his shoulder.

*          
*          *

They
didn’t speak much about Chico, though they spoke a lot about what the discs
might mean, and what changes could come. Sam told stories about what had
happened at the Castle, and Grey revisited his own dark recollections around a
series of campfires. Neither shared those stories with anyone else, afterward.

*          
*          *

On
their last night before reaching Billings, Sam voiced a question Grey had been
thinking about for some time.

“Why
didn’t you kill him?” she asked, staring out into the darkness over a valley of
pines that soughed in the late summer wind. A single small meteorite trailed a
green thread across the northern sky.

“Creedy?
Because I didn’t have to,” Grey said, watching the bolide. “It’s always been
too easy for me to kill. It’s forgiving that’s been hard. Why didn’t you?”

It
took Sam a long time to answer. “I didn’t want to know if I could shoot an
unarmed man,” she said at last.

“What’ll
you do now?” Grey asked.

“I’ll
stay with the cases and help make sure they get to somewhere with a computer
that still works,” she said. “Then, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take a vacation.
What about you?”

“I’m
going home. I can do that now.” He laughed under his breath. “If you every want
to go fishing, swing by the Port in Kelowna. I know some spots.”

“Maybe
I will. I’d like to meet Josie.”

They
stood silently, listening to the trees in the warm wind.

Grey
cocked his head and his teeth gleamed as he smiled at the dark.

The
wind was from the east, and blowing down it, faint and far, came the cry of a
train whistle.

-End-