Aftermath

42

Auden Travis had been in a huge hurry. He stared at Art and Dana as though he had never seen them before in his life. Then he frowned and said: “Oh, yes. On the street south of the White House. Be there by eight forty-five. There’s a small change, but they’re expecting you. You’ll have to tell the driver where you want to be dropped off, I wasn’t sure.”

Art and Dana had been up since seven, but couldn’t find Auden or anyone else until it was past eight-thirty. They rushed away at once. By the time they passed the White House checkout points and were through the south gate, a far-off church bell had struck the quarter hour.

They surveyed the street. A dozen vehicles were parked there, but nothing remotely like a cement truck. Dana was saying, “Do you think it went without us?” when a frail, birdlike man in a dark green uniform and peaked cap came up behind her and said, “You the two for Harrisburg?”

He looked as though a random gust of wind would be enough to send him airborne. Dana turned. “Yes. Except that we want to be dropped off near Thurmont.”

He pointed his sharp nose at her and cupped a hand to his ear. “Eh? Damned implant don’t work no more.”

“We want to be dropped off near Thurmont.”

“Eh?”

“THURMONT. WE HAVE TO GET OFF AT THURMONT.”

“Ah. You are the ones, then. Let’s get moving. There was a change of plans, see, I’m supposed to be up in Harrisburg by midday. In a pig’s ear.”

He led them to a long, sleek limousine with tinted windows.

“This?” Art said.

“Eh? Oh, yes. I know it’s old, and it drives like a barge. But once we’re out on the open road you’ll see it goes just fine.”

“This is luxury,” Dana said. “We thought we’d be riding in with a load of cement.”

She and Art climbed into the back. The wall between the rear compartment and the driver had space for a bar and entertainment unit, now both long vanished. The seats were comfortable, but the brown fabric covers were old and worn.

So, it seemed, was the engine. They moved away in a cloud of blue smoke that a year ago would have made the pollution monitors of the city’s AVC system spring into action and turn off the offending vehicle’s engine. Today the limousine rolled on unimpeded. The only obstacles to progress were the traffic cops, unused to controlling with hand signals a flow of improvised methods of transportation that ranged from handcarts to bulldozers. Art noticed that every driver of a motor vehicle seemed to be eighty years old.

The weather had become bright and pleasant after the storm of the previous night, and the gusty wind had little effect on the heavy car. But the signs of recent devastation were everywhere: burned-out buildings, shattered storefronts, hulks of useless vehicles waiting to be towed away, ominous body-sized areas marked off on roads and sidewalks. In spite of everything, people were on the streets in increasing numbers. It was enough to suggest that, in this area at least, the worst effects of Supernova Alpha were over. Recovery was finally on the way.

Art and Dana sat, side by side and silent, all the way through the northern suburbs and up onto I-270. Finally she sighed and said, “All right, I know I talked too much last night. I shouldn’t have gone on and on that way, and I’m sorry.”

Art turned and stared. “Do you mean about your son? I didn’t mind at all. I knew how hard it was for you to tell me what he did, and why he’s hiding out down south under a false name. But it just made me feel closer to you. I liked that. It wouldn’t be fair if you had to listen to me, and I didn’t listen to you. And I did my own share of talking — more than I ever have to anyone.”

“But now you’re wishing you hadn’t.”

“I’m not.”

“I think you are. You haven’t said two words to me in over an hour. And your face says you’re upset.”

“I am. But it’s not with you. I thought last night was wonderful, all of it. I’m worried about today. What will happen when we get to Catoctin Mountain Park?”

“I’ve been relying on you to answer that. I’ve never been there, and it’s your home ground. You don’t think Seth and Oliver Guest will already be up there, do you?”

“I doubt it. They would have to have traveled awful fast. But even if they’re not there, we have to answer some questions. I guess I’m having second thoughts. When we were at the Treasure Inn, it seemed obvious. We had to wake Oliver Guest, so he could tell us how to continue our treatments. I hope he does that. But suppose he comes through, and we get what we want. What are we going to do with Oliver Guest afterward}”

“I don’t know.” Dana looked forward. The glass partition between the front and back of the car was intact, and the driver was unlikely to hear her even if she screamed. Even so, she lowered her voice. “We can’t just let him go. We’ll have to turn him in to the authorities.”

“I agree. But what will Oliver Guest have to say about that? He must have thought about it. He knows that whether he helps us or not, his only real hope is to escape and hide. We can’t protect him forever. He may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. I’m beginning to think we were crazy, waking him up.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“A couple of things. First of all, I don’t want you there when I go to my house. Suppose that Oliver Guest went there with Seth, then found some way to overpower him? He could be there now, waiting to dispose of us, too.”

He knew before he finished speaking that he had made a mistake. Dana’s face changed from concerned to furious.

“What century do you think you’re in, Art Ferrand? You’ve got this poor helpless little female, so the big strong man has to make sure she stays out of danger. Is that it? Well, your way of thinking was old-fashioned before I was born — before you were born. You’re not Sir Galahad, and I’m not the Lady of Shalott.”

“Sir Lancelot. You’re mixing knights.”

“Fuck the knights. You know what I mean. I had as much to do with pulling Oliver Guest out of cold storage as you did. If there’s danger ahead, I helped make it.”

“All right.” Art held up his hands. “I surrender. It’s just that I care what happens to you. I’ve got a personal interest in seeing that parts of you don’t get damaged.”

“That’s fair. It works both ways. I’m not finished with you, either. But it doesn’t mean you protect me. It means we share dangers, and protect each other.”

“I think it means we try to avoid danger. When we can’t, you want to be in with me every step of the way. I accept that — even if I don’t really like it. But I still don’t want to head straight to my house. We might find out when it’s too late that Oliver Guest has killed and eaten Seth and has a booby trap waiting so we can be dessert.”

“So what’s the answer? Do you have one?”

She was much calmer. Art risked a hand (friendly, not protective) on her knee, and it wasn’t smacked away. “Funnily enough I do have an answer, though I didn’t two minutes ago. We don’t go straight to my house.”

“Where do we go?”

“Somewhere close by. And we enlist reinforcements.”

Joe Vanetti and Ed O’Donnell were surprisingly restrained in their reactions. Joe, at one point in Art’s description of his actions over the past two weeks, said, “You dumb shit.” Ed confined himself to shaking his head and staring at Dana’s calves. They were spattered with mud from the mile walk along a sticky dirt road, but Art didn’t think that the mud was the main object of interest.

He was almost done with his story — minimizing the dangerous and experimental nature of the telomod therapy itself — when Ed’s wife, Helen, appeared. She greeted Art, was introduced to Dana, and rounded on Ed. “They’ve been here an hour, and you’ve never offered them a bite to eat?”

“They’ve got a drink.”

“And you think that’s the same thing, you drunken Irish sot? Come on, dear” — to Dana — “we’ll be through to the back kitchen, and leave these daft devils to talk. They’re worse than animals. When there’s women around the men won’t feed themselves, and if we don’t feed them they turn on us.”

Ed waited until they were gone, then said, “That’s it. Your friend’s in for the third degree. By the time Helen’s done with her, Dana’s back teeth will be counted and numbered. She won’t have a secret mole or birthmark left.”

“He knows where those are already.” Joe nodded toward Art. “Look at the man. Did you ever see such a picture of mindless sexual satisfaction?”

“Ah, don’t be hard on him. It’s been a long time coming.”

Ed and Joe, not for the first time, spoke as though Art were not in the room.

“Only he’s trying to make up for it all at once,” Ed went on. “It’s a miracle he’s not gone blind.”

“She must be the blind one.”

“Not only that, you can see that it agrees with him. He looks healthier. How long’s it been since you had your leg over, Art?”

“What do you think of Dana?” Art, with mass murderers half a step behind or maybe ahead of him, interrupted with a more important question.

“She’s great,” Joe said. “Sweet and sexy and sensible. Just what you need — what you’ve needed for all these years. Though I can’t think what she’s doing hanging around with you.” Ed nodded agreement, and Joe went on, “And why you’d talk a nice, sane woman like that into the maddest scheme I’ve ever heard of, that’s beyond me. Oliver Guest, for God’s sake. And by the sound of it, your friend Seth Parsigian’s as bad or worse. Why didn’t you go the whole way and take Frankenstein along to wake up Dracula?”

No point in telling Joe and Ed that Dana had been as keen on the idea as he was — or that Seth had pushed both of them. No point in mentioning that nothing in the past couple of weeks had been normal, not even here. On the trek up to the house, Art had noticed three ominous crosses on top of piles of dirt, a few hundred yards off the main road. Catoctin Mountain Park seemed quiet, but Supernova Alpha had left its marks of violence everywhere, not just in the cities.

“All right, so I was an idiot.” Art refused the offer of another drink. “I can admit that, and it doesn’t help me. Here’s my problem: I don’t know if Seth and Oliver Guest are dead or alive. I don’t know where they are, and I don’t know what they’re doing. What I do know is that Seth has my address. He got that, and the location of my house, from one of the maps I had. I want to go to my place and find out if they’re already there. If they’re not, I’ll stay in my house—”

“Terrible idea,” Ed said, and Joe nodded agreement. “Suppose Oliver Guest has done away with friend Seth,” Ed continued, “and he arrives in the middle of the night. Don’t you think, to make sure you don’t cause trouble, he’d decide it’s simplest to blow you and your whole house away?”

“He has no way to do that.” But Art knew that was a poor assumption. He didn’t know what Guest might be able to do. Or Seth, for that matter.

“You check the place,” Ed went on, “and you keep it under observation. But you don’t leave yourself a sitting duck.”

“But I have to stay—”

“Here. You and Dana have to stay here.”

“No. I don’t want you involved. It could put you in danger.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come here at all.” Ed stood up. “Let’s go over to your place, see what’s happening there. Joe?”

“What do you think? Rifles?”

“I guess so. Shotguns have too much spread. Semiautomatics, I’d say.” Ed turned to Art. “See, we don’t want to spoil your need to look brave and manly to your girlfriend. You can go up to your house by yourself. But we’ll keep you covered.”

“What about Dana?”

“She’ll stay here, of course, safe with Helen.”

“You think so?” Art stood up also. “Fine. I’m going to let the two of you explain that to her.”

The approach to Art’s cabin revealed no sign of a wheeled vehicle and no footsteps. The ground was drying, but any car or a person of normal weight would have broken through the thin crust of dried mud.

That was only partial reassurance. You could get to the building a hundred different ways, straight across the fields and up the hill, or down from the mountain park. Art walked cautiously toward his own front door. He had left it just a couple of weeks ago, two weeks going on years.

Dana was not with him. To Art’s great irritation, when Ed and Joe suggested that she stay behind with Helen, she had meekly agreed. She had also stuck her tongue out at him.

The door looked exactly as it ought to, locked and with the little red tag on the left side in the I am out position. Art didn’t have his keys. They were in a toolbox on the tractor he had ridden south, which was now God-knows-where. He stooped down to retrieve the spare from under the foot-scraper, aware as he straightened up that two rifles were lined up on the house. He suspected that they were aimed at the door, which meant right at his back.

He breathed deep, inserted the key into the lock, and pushed the door open. Everything seemed exactly the way that he had left it — even the plate and dirty coffee cup on the table. He took a step inside.

All quiet.

He turned and waved. Joe walked slowly toward the house, his finger on the rifle’s trigger and the safety off. Ed came along thirty steps behind, covering him.

There were few places where anyone or anything could hide. Inside a minute, Art could nod and say with confidence, “I’m sure. They haven’t been here yet.”

“So what do we do now?” Ed asked. He held the gun easily, a man who often carried his rifle or shotgun hour after hour, ready to aim and shoot and kill game that might be gone and out of sight in a fraction of a second. Joe was outside again, standing watch.

“Well, I wish you’d done it before you came in.” Art looked at the trail of mud that the other two had carried in on their boots. “I’ll have to clean this mess up.

But one thing I’m not going to do is lock the place. I don’t want my door smashed in.”

“It’s nice to see you have your priorities in order. You don’t mind being turned into chopped chicken liver, so long as your house stays intact and the floor’s not dirty.”

“I think that you two should go back home, Ed. I’ll stay and keep an eye on this place.”

“Very rational. So you stay here how long. And you eat when? And you sleep when? And when it rains like mad or gets freezing cold, you do what? You sure as hell can’t stay inside this house and wait for Frank and Drac to arrive.”

“I don’t want you and Joe, or Dana or Helen or Anne-Marie, exposed to danger.”

“I see no reason why we should be. Seth Parsigian knows about this place, but he doesn’t know where me and Joe live. He doesn’t even know we exist. He’s not going to do a local home survey when he gets here, he has other things on his mind.”

Art hesitated. What Ed said seemed to make sense, even though he was, in his wife’s words, a drunken Irish sot, and in his best friend Joe’s words, as witless and confused as a freshly fucked owl.

“We can’t just ignore this house, Ed. Either Seth, or Oliver Guest, or both of them, will be here at some point.”

“We don’t ignore it. We come here every day — twice a day — and we do what we just did. You inspect it, with plenty of firepower as backup. Your friend and Dr. Guest may be tough customers, and they may get nasty; but I doubt they win many arguments with bullets.”

It was logical, and Art could suggest nothing better. But it felt wrong. Ed didn’t know Seth, and to all of them here at Catoctin Mountain, Oliver Guest was little more than a name and an unpleasant legend.

The sense of uneasiness lasted while he cleaned mud from the floor, carefully closed the front door, and walked with the other two back toward Ed’s house. The strong gusts of morning wind had ended. The afternoon had become hot and leaden, depressing Art’s spirits and dulling his mind.

He comforted himself with the knowledge that no matter what happened, Dana and his friends could not be harmed.