The Fifth Sacred Thing (52 page)

“How’d you like your first raid?” Lately asked, grinning at her.

“I like it now,” she said. “Now that it’s over.”

“It’s not over yet,” Littlejohn said. “Let’s get out of here.”

19

C
rossing the freeway, like so many other things in life, was easier the second time, Madrone reflected. She and Littlejohn and Begood had spent another two days in the raiders’ camp, while she fed Joan Dark anti-infectins and sent Littlejohn scouring the canyons for water. When they left, the woman’s injured leg no longer smelled of death. The red streak was gone, and the wound was beginning to heal.

They had hiked through the night. Madrone was feeling light-headed, still half in the bee world, still not quite grounded after the intensity of the night spent testing drugs. The food in the last few days was even scantier than usual, but what she felt was not hunger but lightness, as if she could launch herself on gauze wings and fly. Maybe the boundaries between the bee mind and her ordinary mind were permanently blurred. The route was a succession of plant smells, fragrance after fragrance, wafting down from the well-watered gardens above. She was intoxicated by carob and night-blooming jasmine and other sweet traces she could not name. Lights whirled in kaleidoscope patterns, as if prisms were fixed before her eyes.

The bee mind carried her lightly across the narrow scaffolding under the freeway. Suddenly heights were no threat; she could balance, surefooted, on a narrow stamen or velvet flower petal.

Once past the freeway, they decided to risk hiking during the day. True, they were visible there on the unsheltered crown of the hills, but anyone coming after them would also be visible from far away. The canyons would offer quick cover if they needed it. Begood set the pace, and they made good time. Madrone was grateful for the long walk, a chance to sink into her body’s rhythms and her own thoughts. She felt depleted; walking the hills always restored her vital energy.

Her eyes darted around with the insect alertness that had become second nature. As always, she was thirsty, but she had learned not to think about it, as she didn’t think about hunger or the dry, gritty texture of her skin. But she allowed herself to take pleasure in the smooth movements of her muscles, the strength of her body and its capacity to endure. Below them the hills rippled
away, cloaked in shreds of early-morning fog. Behind them the sun slowly rose, painting the land with a glowing, golden edge. To the south, the city lay at their feet. To the north, they could see, spread out across the flat valley, the straight lines of roads and barracks and the supply depots of the military lands. Already, there was activity, lights moving purposefully back and forth along the roads. A convoy of trucks crept north along the freeway.

They walked on. The sun got hotter and no shade protected them. After another hour or so, Madrone began to feel nauseated. She could hardly focus her eyes; everything changed and shifted and split into multiple images of itself. Her head was pounding, and her light pack weighed her down. She realized that she had reached the delicate edge where thirst triggered dehydration. There was still one swallow of water left in her bottle. She drained it, savoring each drop.

“How much farther?” she asked Littlejohn.

“About ten miles. We should be there by evening.”

“Is there water on the way?”

“Not unless we steal it.”

The cold realization crept over Madrone that she wasn’t going to make it. Strange, because she didn’t feel that badly, but she knew what the headache and the swimming black spots in her eyes portended. She couldn’t do it. Not with all the Witch’s will in the world; she couldn’t walk another ten miles in that sun without more to drink.

“I can’t make it,” she said. “I need to drink.”

Littlejohn looked at her sharply. I’ve never said that to them before, Madrone thought. I’ve never complained. So he must believe me.

“I’ve got a little bit of water,” Begood said. “You can have it.”

A wave of love washed over her. Her knees felt weak and she sat down abruptly. If her eyes had not been too dry for tears, she would have cried.

“Give her a swallow,” Littlejohn said. “I’m about out. But there’s no way around it, we’re going to have to raid.”

“I’m sorry,” Madrone said.

“It’s my fault. I haven’t done this route in a while—I forgot how long it was, and how hot during the day. Maybe we should have carried more water, but I wanted to leave them enough at the camp.”

“There’s just no way around it,” Begood said. “It’s a route that calls for a water stop.”

“There’s houses down in the canyon, not too far from here. We can hit one of them. Madrone, can you walk on at all?”

“Sure,” she said, struggling to rise from the dust. Littlejohn offered his hand, and she stood up, balancing herself precariously. Her head felt heavy, throbbing. She would try not to think about it.

They continued for another quarter mile, until the path snaked around
the head of a canyon. Below them, strung out along the road on the valley floor, were the last outposts of rich houses with high chain-link fences surrounding their lush green lawns. The most secluded house was white, a collection of sculpted stucco boxes and soaring glass domes that enclosed greenery, gleaming like a sugar cube in the center of grass so green it seemed unreal. In the midst of dense stands of foliage, ferns and hibiscus and flowering vines, something pulled Madrone’s eyes like a magnet.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

It was blue, bluer than the cloudless sky above their heads, and gleaming with reflected light and bands of light crossing and crisscrossing below its surface in moiré patterns.

“A big pool of water,” Begood said. “The rich people like to go in it with their whole bodies.”

“That’s what I thought it was,” Madrone said, “but I couldn’t believe it.” She could smell the water, though, and it filled her whole body with longing.

“Me neither,” Begood said. “You’d think it’d kill you, to get that wet.”

Madrone laughed. “No, Begood. It doesn’t kill you, unless you try to breathe it. Where I come from, people swim all the time.”

He looked at her and shrugged. It was just one more incomprehensible thing about her.

She clearly remembered swimming, in rivers and streams and mountain lakes, in the city pool down the street, but the memory was distant, like that of some unbelievable luxury.

“The fence is not too far from the pool,” Littlejohn said. “And there’s pretty good cover most of the way down. Could be electrified, but it doesn’t look it.”

“It’s not,” Madrone said. “I would smell it.”

Littlejohn looked at her a little oddly, but he continued. “This is how we do it. Begood, you stay up here, take the rifle, and cover our backs while Madrone and I go down.”

“Why don’t you let me go down with you?” Begood asked. “She’s already shaky.”

“I want her to drink her fill. And she’s no good with the gun. You are. I’ll cut us through the fence. Fill the water containers first, then drink. Any trouble, everybody scatters. Madrone, you know the way home? Could you find it on your own?”

“I think so.” Hijohn had given her a thorough geography lesson before she left on the raid. She thought back to what he had told her. “I’d just follow the ridge, right? The fire road runs along it all the way to the oak grove, and from there I know how to go.”

“Right. Go at night,” Littlejohn said.

Madrone nodded. Please, Goddess, don’t let it come to that. She followed Littlejohn down the hillside, keeping low under cover of the brush, sliding carefully down the steep places. They waited, hearts pounding, for the sound of a shout or an electronic alarm. All was quiet. About twenty feet up from the pool, a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire enclosed the last sloping section of ground. Littlejohn pointed. Between one section of posts, the dirt had eroded away so they could slide under the bottom of the fence. He wouldn’t have to cut it.

Madrone nodded, slid down close to the fence, undid her pack, and pushed it through. No sound, no motion. Quickly, she followed, pressing herself flat into the dust to slide past the prongs of wire. Littlejohn followed her.

When they reached the bottom, she removed her two water bottles from her pack. They peered out at the yard. All seemed quiet. The curtains were closed at the back of the house; not even a breath of air moved.

“Now,” Littlejohn said.

They ran to the edge of the pool, dipped their water bottles in, and filled them. The water felt cool on Madrone’s dry hands. The smell surrounded her, cool and sweet, like the odor of love. She filled a second bottle, and Littlejohn went to work on their gallon jug. It had been so long since she’d felt water on her hands. Her skin ached for moisture.

The bottles were full, and danger or no, she had to drink. She bent down and scooped water into her mouth from her hands. Funny, she’d gotten so used to the slow, prolonged savoring of each mouthful that it was hard to make herself drink quickly, but that was what was called for here: take in as much as she could of this unbelievable abundance of clear, cool water. There was so much of it. It had a slight chemical tang, chlorine, maybe, but not enough to disturb her ecstasy. She could feel each mouthful, restoring her life, and she lay at the edge and plunged her whole head in.
Diosa
, it was so cool, it eased her throbbing temples and the grainy dust behind her eyes. Oh Goddess. She wanted to plunge her whole body in, just for a moment, to be cool and wet and clean. It was crazy. It was dangerous. Littlejohn was still drinking beside her, and suddenly she gave in, pulling off her shirt and pants and slipping over the side into the welcoming water.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” She heard Littlejohn behind her, but she was weightless, careless, caressed by water, drinking it in through her pores and her shrunken cells, feeling the pressure of it sliding past her limbs and streaming through her fingers, feeling it press against her with its weight as she plunged down, down. Her ears rang with muffled sounds. She touched the bottom, twisted, and struck out for the surface again.

When her head broke the surface of the water, Littlejohn was gone. So
were her water bottles. Above her head, she heard an owl call in the daylight—the signal for danger. Up on the fire road, she heard shouts, the sound of an engine. A shot rang out.

Oh shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit. I’ve done it now.

She needed to run, but she didn’t know where to go. The sounds were directly above her, in line with the hole under the fence. If she took that route, she’d land right in their arms. But was there another way out? She couldn’t make herself leave the pool; she was paralyzed, trapped.

The voices were coming closer. Now she could hear crashing in the bushes above her. But she couldn’t decide what to do; she couldn’t move. The coldness of the water seemed to drain away her life. She could duck under the surface, shut her eyes—but there was nowhere there to hide. She pictured a bullet sinking into her flesh, and the red seeping through to stain the clarity of the blue.

“Girl!”

A woman’s voice hit her like a slap. She turned her head toward the house.

“Get your ass in here, girl!”

For a moment, she thought Johanna was calling her, the woman in the doorway looked so much like her. Automatically, she did what the voice said, vaulting out of the pool, grabbing her clothes and pack, and running over the grass so as not to leave wet footprints on the patio coping. The shouts and noises above were getting closer, but she ducked in the door and it closed behind her.

“Give me those things,” the woman said, grabbing Madrone’s clothes and directing her into a small anteroom off the kitchen. She looked to be in her fifties, and while her stance and voice and her dark molasses skin were like Johanna’s, her features were different, her nose sharper and her wide lips tightly compressed. She wore a white uniform.

“You put those things on.” She jerked her chin toward a uniform and apron hanging on a hook. “Wrap that head scarf so it covers your wet hair. Then you join me in the kitchen, through that door, and keep your mouth shut.”

Madrone did as she was told, slipping a starched white dress over her head, pulling black slippers onto her feet, and wrapping the white headcloth low to cover the scar on her forehead, tucking in her hair so no damp strands showed. She emerged from the anteroom and entered the kitchen, a square white room gleaming with marble and white tile. It smelled of scouring powder and green things and her own fear.

Beside a white porcelain sink stood a cutting board laden with vegetables. The woman pushed her over there, stuck a knife in her hands, and said one word.

“Chop.”

Madrone began slicing carrots. She moved automatically, slowly. The fragrance of the vegetables almost overpowered her. Each cut released more and more of the sweet fresh smell.

I’ve got to stay out of the bee mind, she thought, fighting for control. Surreptitiously, she touched her bee spot, murmuring her own human name under her breath.

Behind her she heard the woman’s steps as she moved, and her voice as she hummed to herself. Outside, she heard yells, a loud crash, and a man’s deep voice.