Dies the Fire (9 page)

In fact . . .

“Stop!” he said, as they reached Jefferson from Sixth.

“What for?” Andy said, looking around, but he followed his friend's lead.

“Andy, we've got to think a bit. This isn't going to get better unless . . . whatever changed changes back. And I've got this awful feeling it won't.”

They were in among tall buildings now, and it was dark—a blacker dark than either of them had ever known outdoors. Occasional candle-gleams showed from windows, or the ruddier hue of open flame where someone had lit a fire in a Dumpster or trash barrel. The sounds of the city were utterly different—no underlying thrum of motors, but plenty of human voices, a distant growling brabble, and the crackle of fire. The smell of smoke was getting stronger by the minute.

“Why shouldn't it change back?”

“Why should it? Apart from us wanting it to.”

Andy swallowed; even in the darkness, his face looked paler. “Goddess, Chuck, if it doesn't change back . . .”

Andy and Diana Trethar owned a restaurant that doubled as an organic food store and bakery.

“We get a delivery once a week—today, Wednesday. With no trucks—”

“—or trains, or airplanes, or motorbikes, even.”

“What will happen when everything's used up?”

“We die,” Chuck said. “If the food can't get to us, we die—unless we go to the food.”

“Just wander out of town?” Andy said skeptically. “Chuck, most farmers need modern machinery just as much—”

“I know. But at least there would be some chance. As long as we could take enough stuff with us.” Chuck nodded to himself and went on: “Which is why we're going to swing by the museum.”

“What?”

“Look,” he said. “Cars aren't working, right?” A nod. “Well, what's at the museum right now?”

Andy stared at him for a moment; then, for the first time since six fifteen, he began to smile.

“Blessed be. ‘Oregon's Pioneer Heritage: A Living Exhibit.' ”

 

 

 

The restaurant's window had the Closed sign in it, but the door opened at the clatter of hooves and the two men's shouts. Chuck smiled and felt his scabs pull as Judy came to the door, a candle in her hand—one thing you were
certainly
going to find at a coven gathering was plenty of candles. She gaped at the two big Conestoga wagons, but only for a moment: That was one of the things he loved about her, the way she always seemed to land on her mental feet.

“We need help,” he said. “We've got to get these things out back.”

His wife was short and Mediterranean-dark and full-figured to his medium-tall lankiness and sandy-blond coloring; she flung herself up onto the box of the wagon and kissed him. He winced, and she gave a sharp intake of breath as she turned his face to what light the moon gave.

“I'll get my bag,” she said; her daytime occupation was registered nurse and midwife.

“Looks worse than it is,” he said. “Just some superficial cuts—and a guy slugged me, which is why the lips are sore. Patch me later. How's Tamsin?”

“She's fine, just worried. Asleep, right now.”

Things had already changed; yesterday his injuries would have meant a doctor. Now everyone ignored them, as they helped him get the horses down the laneway. Putting down feed and pouring water into buckets took a few moments more. The horses were massive Suffolk Punch roans that weighed a ton each; placid and docile by nature, but the noises and scents they'd endured had them nervous, eyes rolling, sweating and tossing their heads. He was glad there was a big open lot behind the loading dock; the wagons took up a lot of room, and eight of the huge draught beasts took even more.

Andy and Diana had bought this place cheap, converting a disused warehouse into MoonDance, the latest of Eugene's innumerable organic-food-store-cum-café places. The extra space in the rear of the building meant that the Coven of the Singing Moon also had a convenient location for Esbats. At least when they couldn't take the time to go up to Juniper's place; it was beautiful there, but remote, which was why they generally only went for the Sabbats—the eight great festivals of the Year's Wheel.

The familiarity was almost painful as he ducked under one of the partially raised loading doors. The back section was still all bare concrete and structural members, unlike the homey-funky decor of the café area at the front; it was even candlelit, as it usually was for the rites. The carpet covering the Circle and the Quarter Signs was down, though. Shadows flickered on the high ceiling, over crates and cartons and shrink-wrapped flats with big stacks of bagged goods on them. The air was full of a mealy, dusty, appetizing smell—flour and dried fruit and the ghost of a box of jars of scented oil someone had let crash on the floor last year, all under the morning's baking.

He counted faces. Eight adults. Children mostly asleep, off in the office room they usually occupied during the ceremonies.

“Jack? Carmen? Muriel?” he said, naming the other members.

“They didn't show up,” Judy said. She was the coven's Maiden, and kept track of things. “We thought we shouldn't split up, the way things are out there.”

He nodded emphatically. The adults all gathered around. Chuck took a deep breath: “Rudy's dead.”

More shocked exclamations, murmured
blessed be's,
and gestures. He'd been well liked, as well as High Priest.

“All of you, it . . . His plane was only a hundred feet up. It just . . . fell. There were a dozen jets in the air, and all of them just . . . the engines quit. The whole airport went up in flames in about fifteen minutes. I was in the control tower, Wally lets me, you know? And I barely made it out. I did get a good view north—it's not just the city's blacked out,
everything
is out. As far as I could see, and you can see a good long way from there. Everything stopped at exactly the same moment.”

Everyone contributed their story; Dorothy Rose had seen a man trying to use a shotgun to stop looters. That sent Diana scurrying for the Trethar household-protection revolver, and then for the separately stored ammunition, which took a while because she'd forgotten where she put it. Everyone stared in stupefaction at the results when she fired it at a bank of boxed granola.

They talked on into the night, in the fine old tradition. At last Chuck held up a hand; sitting around hashing things out until consensus was wonderful, not to mention customary, but they had to act now or not at all.

“Look, I really hope things will be normal tomorrow. Even though that means I'll be fired and maybe arrested, because I flashed my Parks and Recreation credentials and took all that Living History stuff from that poor custodian—he was the only one who hadn't bugged out in a panic. But if it isn't normal tomorrow, Judy and Tamsin”—he nodded towards the room where the children were sleeping—“and me, and Andy and Diana and their Greg are heading out. I'd love for you all to come with me. You mean a lot to us.”

“Out where?” someone asked. “Why?”

“Why? I told you; there are a quarter of a million people in the Eugene metro area. If this goes on, in about a month, maybe less, this city's going to be eating rats—do you want your kids in that? The ones who survive are going to be the ones who don't sit around waiting for someone to come and make things better—unless they do get back to normal, but I'm not going to bet my daughter's life on it. As to where . . .”

He leaned forward. “One thing's for sure. Juniper isn't driving in tonight from Corvallis for an Esbat. I'll bet you anything you want to name she's going to get the same idea as me: head for her place in the hills.”

“Oh, Goddess,” Diana Trethar said. “She won't know about Rudy!”

Chuck's voice was grim. “She'll be able to guess, I think.”

He pointed northeast. “We can wait things out there—live there a long time, if we have to. We'll leave a message for the people who didn't show; a hint at where we're going and what we think is happening. Look, these wagons can haul something like six tons each. . . .”

Emiliano knew the way to the Central Library on Tenth Street, although he wouldn't have wanted his
pandilleros
to know about it—bookworm wasn't a title a man in his position could afford. He'd still come here now and then to find out things he needed to know, though never before with his crew swaggering at his back.

Ruddy light blinked back from the spearheads of the men standing along the roadway. There was plenty—not only from the huge fires consuming the city eastward across the river and smaller ones nearby, but from wood burning in iron baskets hung from the streetlamps; the air was heavy with the acrid throat-hurting smell of both, enough to make him cough occasionally, and the flames reflected back from the heavy pall of smoke and cloud overhead.

The fighting men directing foot traffic and clumped before the library entrance got his
pandilleros
' respectful attention; his Lords were equipped with what they'd been able to cobble together since the Change, but these were a different story altogether. Half the guards had a uniform outfit of seven-foot spears, big kite-shaped shields painted black with a cat-pupiled eye in red, helmets and knee-length canvas tunics sewn with metal scales. The other half carried missile weapons, crossbows and hunting bows from sporting goods stores.

And hanging from the two big trees in front of the entrance were—

“Holy shit, man,” someone said behind him, awe in the tone.

There was enough light to recognize faces; a stocky middle-aged woman with flyaway black hair, and a big burly black male.

Enough light to recognize faces even with the distortion of the cargo hooks planted under their jaws; it was the mayor and the chief of police—Cat and the Moose, as they were known on the street.

Emiliano swallowed, and Dolores clutched at his arm; he shook her off impatiently, but still licked his lips. He'd killed more than once, and gotten away with it—his time inside had been for other things—but this left him feeling a little scared, like the ground was shifting under his feet. That was nothing new since the Change, but he could sense the same fears running through his men, sapping their courage, making them feel small.

And nobody makes the Lords feel small!
Aloud, he went on: “Hey, they got a
real
jones on for people who let their books get overdue here, chicos!”

The tension broke in laughter; even some of the guards smiled, briefly.

“And maybe now we know why nobody's heard much from that Provisional Government last couple of days.”

The bodies hadn't begun to smell much; Portland was fairly cool in March, and anyway the stink from the fires burning out of control across most of the city hid a lot. The raw sewage pouring into the river didn't help, either.

So, I'm impressed,
Emiliano thought.
But these
hijos
need us, or we wouldn't have been invited.

The guards at the entrance carried long ax-spike-hook things like some he'd seen on TV occasionally. All of the guards had long blades at their waists, machetes or actual swords. He blinked consideringly at those, as well. His first impulse was to laugh, but his own boys were carrying fire axes and baseball bats themselves, and possibly . . .

Yeah, I see the point,
he thought.
The points and the edges!

“You're the
jefe
of the Lords, right?” one of the guards asked.

“
Si,
” Emiliano said.

With two dozen armed men at his back, the gang chief could afford to be confident. But not too confident. The cooking smells from inside made his stomach rumble, even with the whiff from the corpses. They'd been eating, but not well, particularly just lately. Everything in the coolers and fridges had gone bad, and he hadn't had fresh meat since last Friday.

“Pass on up, then. You and three others. The staff will bring food out to the rest of your men there.”

He pointed his ax-thing . . .
halberd, that's the word . . .
towards trestle tables set out along the sidewalks. Emiliano made a brusque gesture over his shoulder, and the rest of his bangers went that way apart from Dolores and his three closest advisors; he figured that with the Cat and Moose swinging above them on hooks, nobody was going to get too macho.

He sauntered up the stairs; the light got brighter, big lanterns hanging from the entranceway arches, making up for the dead electric lights inside.

Where did I see that guy before?
he thought, running the gate guard's face through his memory.
Yeah, he's a Russian. One of Alexi's guys.

A blond chick met them inside the door; she was wearing bikini briefs under a long silk T-shirt effect and a dog collar, and carrying a clipboard.

Hey, not bad,
he thought, then remembered Dolores was there. Then:
Wait a minute. She's not a
puta
. That stuff's for real.

The greeter spoke, fright trembling under artificial cheerfulness; he recognized fear easily enough, and also the thin red lines across her back where the gauzy fabric stuck: “Lord Emiliano?”

It took him a moment to realize she was giving him a title rather than referring to the name of his gang; for a moment more he thought he was being dissed.