“I don’t think I have. Not sufficiently.” Bayclock turned to the security police squad leader. “Lanarelli!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Neutralize the mayor.”

“Yes, sir.” It took the gaunt sergeant only a second to react. Lanarelli stepped forward and cocked his weapon, pointing the M 16 muzzle at the mayor’s head. “Get on the ground, sir.”

Reinski turned pale. “What?” He looked to Bayclock, who only stared back blandly.

Lanarelli growled, “Move it—now.”

Reinski slowly lowered himself to the concrete. Lanarelli pressed his weapon at the mayor’s head while Bayclock crouched next to the man. He spoke softly.

“There will be no ‘shared responsibility,’ Mr. Mayor, do you understand? I am following the direct orders of the President of the United States, and they don’t require me to ask permission from any local mayors.”

He stepped back. “This is just my way of showing you how ridiculously vulnerable you are. Where is your police escort that’s sworn to uphold the peace? Tell me, where’s the man at the bullhorn right now who’s supposed to be ordering me to leave his mayor the hell alone? We’re not in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood!”

Reinski answered only by moving his head back and forth.

Bayclock crouched on one knee and lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you where they are. Most of the people sworn to guard you are at home with their families, protecting them against the lawlessness all around us. Duty obviously doesn’t mean a hell of a lot to them. If they were under my command, I’d court martial them as traitors and deserters.”

Reinski squirmed on the ground. Bayclock motioned for Lanarelli to let him lift his head. “You don’t see my men running away, do you? Even if we didn’t have access to synthetic lubricants for our weapons at the base, you’d still see my people here. They would use night sticks, or swords, or their bare fists to protect me and any other officer. That’s their duty.”

Bayclock stood, brushing the knees of his uniform. “That’s the difference between civilians and military—we’re sworn to follow orders, no matter what else happens. You might manage to keep the water running, Mr. Mayor. You might keep the sewage under control. But anyone could step over the city line and tell you to go to hell.”

Bayclock disliked making his point in such a dramatic matter, but Reinski was still naively convinced this whole thing was going to blow over after a few days, that something miraculous would happen, that he could somehow compromise the orders issued from the President himself.

Bayclock reached down and grabbed the mayor by the arm, easing him back to his feet. “Thank you, Lanarelli. Return to your post.”

“Yes, sir.” The weapon disappeared as the sergeant stepped back in one fluid motion. Once more Bayclock and Reinski were left alone, surrounded by an unbroken ring of men. Reinski’s eyes were open wide, red and brimming with tears of shock and outrage.

Bayclock said gently, “The President instructed all military commanders to take whatever measures are necessary to enforce his order.” He paused. “I’m already responsible for the lives of thirty thousand people on Kirtland, Mr. Mayor. By Presidential directive, the city of Albuquerque als falls under my purview.

“You’re just not cut out for something this crucial. I am. It’s a responsibility that runs very deep, and I’m going to need the trust of your people to pull this off. If I have your support, it’s going to be a lot easier.”

Reinski nodded. He didn’t seem to have his voice back yet.

“My people are sworn to obey me,” Bayclock continued. “Don’t make me take the next step to demonstrate this to the people of Albuquerque.” He narrowed his eyes and watched Reinski closely.

Reinski finally spoke. His voice shook as he tried to keep his voice from cracking. “What—what are you asking me to do?”

Bayclock allowed himself to relax imperceptibly. “Publicly throw your support behind me when I announce martial law.”

“When will that be?”

“Immediately.”

“Do I have a choice?”

Bayclock shook his head. “No, we don’t.”

Chapter 48

The Visitor’s Center was closed, leaving only two abandoned cars in the parking lot. Heather tried to lead Connor to the spectacular overlook on the rim of the Grand Canyon, but he picked up a rust-colored rock and smashed a window of the deserted museum building. “We didn’t come all this way not to look at the exhibits,” he said.

No alarms rang, no park rangers came running. Heather didn’t think Connor had any real interest in the museum; he just seemed to enjoy breaking in. That was just like him. She shrugged and let him have his fun. What did it matter, anyway? Satisfied, Connor followed her to the overlook.

It had taken them a week on foot to reach the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. When Heather had come here before with her old boyfriend Derek, they drove up, stayed in one of the lodges, and paid little attention to the surrounding scenery. Hiking in with Connor, though, gave her a greater appreciation as anticipation built mile after mile. Now she had time to inspect outcroppings, time to absorb the vastness of the landscape.

The Grand Canyon looked so spectacular that she couldn’t comprehend the vastness. Her mind swelled with details—jagged mesas, bands of color ranging from ochre, tan, vermillion, and scarlet. Shadows carried orange tinges deep in the crevasses. The wind whipping up and over the rim enhanced the isolation.

Coming in, they had walked along the rim trail, stopping at every viewpoint, relaxing, taking their time. They had no agenda, no reservations, no jobs to get back to. Heather felt invigorated, a new person.

They heard no screaming children, no yelling parents, no arguing tourists, no sightseeing planes buzzing along the rim. The sky was as deep blue as a Christmas tree ornament. In front of her, the canyon dropped a mile like the gulf between the old ways and the new world that would eventually emerge in the aftermath of the petroplague. Heather Dixon was on the right side of that chasm.

After standing there for a moment, Connor grabbed her from behind, pulling her against him as he wrapped his arms around her waist. When he nuzzled his chin against her shoulder, Heather squirmed from his scratchy beard stubble, then giggled.

He fluttered his fingers against her pants pockets, then crept slowly down her hips and across her abdomen. A sudden, startling shiver traveled like a ricochet up her spine, and she wiggled her buttocks back against the hardness in his groin.

Connor rubbed his hand against her crotch, pushing his fingers against the denim. His touch sent a warm glow through her. He ran his fingernail in a quick tik-tik-tik up the length of her zipper, teasing her.

Heather squirmed away, blinking in the bright sun and looking at the guard rails in front of her. “If you get any hornier, we’ll fall off the edge.”

Connor shrugged, grinning at her with his disarming “good old boy” expression. “It’s a long fall. We’d still have time for a quickie before we hit bottom.”

“I’d rather find a place in the shade.”

“Good idea.”

The day Connor appeared on her doorstep, turmoil had seethed inside her. She knew what the stronger part of her wanted, but she was also afraid of being rejected, afraid of what might happen with this total stranger. Maybe that’s why she had banished him to the back yard.

He had his shirt off when she appeared at the door; water sprayed from the hose, soaking the ground. He held his shirt balled in one hand.

She motioned him in, trying to sound upset. “You’re wasting water. Turn that off and come inside.”

With the electricity out, Connor had no light in the bathroom. He left the door ajar as he shucked his pants. Heather went into the kitchen, but soon she found herself drawn back to the partially open bathroom door.

The gap looked wider, as if Connor had opened it a bit more. She could see only dim shapes, then a flash of bare skin as he slipped into the shower. He turned and seemed to look directly at her before ducking behind the cloth shower curtain.

Heather was sick and tired of being afraid. She had already begun working the buttons on her blouse. She undid her bra. She stepped out of her jeans, listening to him splashing water and gasping in the cold. She would never have done anything like this before—and that was exactly why she insisted on doing it now.

Heather stood naked in the doorway. She knew she had a good figure, and she probably looked best without any clothes on, since she had found no fashion that didn’t make her look cumbersome. Connor watched her through a gap in the shower curtain. He didn’t say anything.

Moving slowly, she left the door open behind her and walked to the shower, peeled the shower curtain back, and stared at him. She smiled. He looked lean and well-muscled—and erect.

She stepped into the tub. Goosebumps crawled over her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to block the cold water. Connor twisted the shower head to deflect the spray against the tiled wall, leaving only a misty splash in the air. “You’ll get used to it in a minute. If you stay in long enough, that is.” He was staring at her. “I think you will.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

Connor shrugged. He still hadn’t moved to touch her. “I thought you might do something like this. I could see it in your eyes.”

Heather looked up at him, trying not to shiver. “Is that why you asked for a shower?”

Connor shook his head. Water droplets fell from his shaggy blond hair. “No, but I can roll with the changes and think on my feet.”

The cornball line came out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “But can you think in bed?” Heather tried to make her voice sultry, but the cold water dripping off the tip of her nose ruined the effect.

“I won’t be too concerned about thinking when I get you in bed.” Before she could say anything, Connor bent down and took one of her nipples in his mouth and sucked hard. She gasped, partly in surprise and partly in pleasure, then moaned as he slid his fingers between her legs.

The shower water sprayed off the wall, splattering down their bodies, but Heather stopped noticing the temperature . . . .

Now, standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Heather turned and looked at the small village that had once lived off the tourist trade. The place was a ghost town. Most of the employees had probably tried to get back to “civilization.” None of them would want to be stranded with no way back to the cities.

Connor stroked her from behind. “Let’s forget about finding a spot in the shade,” he said. “I’m tired of sleeping on the ground. Let’s get a room instead.” He gestured to the imposing, posh Bright Angel Lodge farther up the rim trail. “We can get one of the penthouses!”

Heather had never done that before. Never anything nice. It always seemed too extravagant. “Yeah, they might have a room or two available.” She grinned at him. “All right, we’ll get something special.”

“About time, if you ask me.” Connor’s face became self-righteous. “All my life I’ve been watching everybody else get the things I deserve. I’m sick of it.”

Heather loaded the pistol at her hip. Connor shifted the long rifle on his back. “Let’s go,” he said.

Hand in hand, they walked toward the Bright Angel Lodge.

Chapter 49

Air Force security policemen spread up and down the street in a show of force. On horseback, an officer shouted orders like a cavalry commander. Uniformed men and women fanned out, securing the intersection. Two elite MPs used the butts of their rifles to knock in the glass door of an office building, then climbed three stories to position themselves on the roof. They sprawled out, covering the area with their rifles.

Forced into the streets by military teams pounding on doors, civilians gathered in the intersection. Some rubbed their eyes out in the open for the first time in days; some protested as they were herded to the center of the street. The crowd remained quiet except for a few small children crying and three teenagers protesting about being treated like animals. It took only fifteen minutes, but over 500 people filled the intersection.

Down the street, General Bayclock watched the assembly from atop his own horse. Five security policemen surrounded him, guarding against malcontents and assassination attempts. It was the fourth such gathering he had witnessed, and the twentieth conducted since the orders declaring martial law throughout the greater Albuquerque area.

In the center of the crowd a master sergeant stood on several overturned crates stenciled with the words “Hatch Green Chiles.” According to the schedule, down on Central Avenue another enlisted man would be making similar pronouncements.

The sergeant raised his arms for quiet, then recited the familiar speech. “Under martial law, absolutely no breach of security will be tolerated. Without radio or TV, we don’t have the means to broadcast this order to the public, so everyone needs to make darn sure their neighbors get the word. At the moment we are unable to print this information for wide distribution.

“Until such time as that becomes feasible, every day at—” The sergeant looked down at a sheet of paper listing intersections and times, “thirteen thirty, that’s one thirty in the afternoon, we will hold announcements right here in this intersection. We will also distribute food, water, and medical supplies for those in need. But listen carefully—because of the large number of people under our protection, we will have only one hour to accomplish these tasks.”

A low rumble ran through the crowd. The sergeant held up a hand. “Just a minute—I’m not finished!”

When the crowd did not immediately fall silent, one of the security officers fired his rifle up in the air. The sergeant looked around, then continued.

“Several new laws have been established. The most important is that a curfew will be in place from sundown to sunup. Because we have no electrical power in the city, it is difficult to provide protection for everyone at night. By order of President Mayeaux, Brigadier General Bayclock, the base commander of Kirtland, has assumed command during this interim period of martial law. Mayor Reinski fully endorses these measures and strongly encourages all citizens to cooperate.”

The master sergeant looked over the crowd. “We’re here to help you. Until things return to working order, we’re all in this together, and we have to do the best we can.”

Satisfied that the exchange was under control, General Bayclock pulled back on the reins of his horse. The gelding backed up a few paces, then wheeled around.

Bayclock faced Mayor Reinski, who quietly watched the exchange. “The next few days are going to be critical—we’ve got to use an iron hand.”

The young mayor seemed to have lost weight; his eyes were red, encircled by dark rings. Reinski did not respond.

Bayclock snorted, half inclined to ignore the mayor, but he realized the importance of appearances, even during times of martial law. “I’m heading back to the base, moving my headquarters to the more secure Manzano mountain complex, and I advise you to come with me. Not everyone agrees with what we’re doing, and I won’t be able to protect you unless you’re under my charge. I have doubled security at the base.”

Reinski spoke in a low voice. “Aren’t you going a bit overboard, General?”

Anger flashed through Bayclock’s body like a snapped rubber band. “Maybe you don’t remember your history, Mr. Mayor, but the most effective military bastions live as a symbol of threat, especially in times like these. Remember the Bastille.”

Reinski merely pressed his lips together. The sounds of the uneasy crowd caused Bayclock to twist around in his saddle. When the security policemen shoved several people to the ground, loud shouts erupted. One man reached up, flailing to protect himself. Above the shouting, the master sergeant waved his arms and tried to bring the crowd under control. Slowly the people at the edge of the crowd started to disperse, defusing a potential riot.

Bayclock turned back to Reinski. “This is going to have to continue until we make an example of someone. These people have to get it through their heads them just how serious we are.”

Chapter 50

Still filled with hellfire-and-damnation from the previous night’s rally and the march up the abandoned freeway, Jake Torgens and the mob arrived at the Oilstar refinery demanding vengeance—but the guards had already abandoned the front gate of the refinery complex.

Jake glared through the dusty glass of the empty guard shack. One of the windows had fallen in, and only a metal-springed skeleton of a chair waited to greet them. Jake was disappointed to meet no resistance.

Many times in the past, the Oilstar security officers had calmly met them at the fences, while Jake and his protesters engaged in “nonviolent civil disobedience”—all perfectly mannered, like a high tea.

But they had vowed not to stop at mere passive resistance this time. Civilized protests were for normal times—not when the country was falling apart. From now on there would be no armbands signalling which demonstrators wanted to be arrested, no waving placards in front of TV cameras. This wasn’t a show; it was survival.

“Inside!” Jake waved his arm forward like a commander ordering his troops. “This place is ours now!” He clutched the chain-link fence as others flowed past carrying sticks and crowbars. He had pulled most of the crowd from angry people on the streets, the ones who wanted to strike out because they had already lost their future. It would solve nothing, but at least the symbol of evil would be removed.

Jake raised his fist in the air. The gesture rippled through the crowd, a mark of solidarity. Jake Torgens could have stopped the entire petroplague disaster from happening if he had taken extreme measures in the first place. It was his greatest failure.

He had been at the Oilstar town meeting, one of the loudest voices opposed to the spraying of Prometheus. He had managed to get a temporary restraining order from Judge Steinberg—and with his network Jake could have filed appeal after appeal to stall the cursed spraying forever. He had held the court order in his own hands while his people stormed the Oilstar pier, waving it and demanding that the helicopter land and obey the law. The Law! But the helicopter had sprayed the deadly microbe anyway.

Now the whole planet was paying for it.

Curses erupted around him. Jake drew in a monumental breath and shouted, “Burn Oilstar to the ground!”

The refinery complex was a nightmare of fractionating towers, piping, valves, ladders, and catwalks. Small white Cushman carts sat abandoned next to enormous metal contraptions. The admin building and research facilities stood in the center of the complex, like an oasis surrounded by the industrial no-man’s-land.

Huge natural gas, crude oil, and gasoline storage tanks rested on the sides of the hills, great metal reservoirs closed off by metal caps. No doubt some of them still held viable fuel—it would have been a precious commodity if the petroplague continued to devour only octane, but with other long-chain polymers falling to pieces, no engine culd still function even if it did have uncontaminated fuel.

But the gas could still burn. Oh yes, Jake thought, it would still burn.

#

Inside the bioremediation wing of the Oilstar complex, Mitch Stone stared helplessly at the scrawled notes in front of him. He had used a metal bar to break open the locked drawers of Alex Kramer’s desk, ransacking the original lab books and notes the microbiologist had left behind. The official data and quarterly reports had already been copied and sent to the plague research centers around the country, but there had to be more. Mitch went straight to the source. There had to be more!

“Dammit, Alex! Are you doing this to me on purpose?”

Mitch stared at the handwritten comments. Kramer’s computer—nothing but warped circuit boards, wires, and glass CRT—sat on the desk. The diskettes lay dissolved in unrecognizable piles. But Mitch knew that the old-timer kept actual logbooks. Mitch had teased Alex about it before, but now he blessed the old man for his prehistoric ways.

As he flipped through the pages and stared at the data, despair poured through him. He held the lined paper up to the light from the window. The other pane in Alex’s office had fallen out, dropping three stories to shatter on the ground below. Wind whistled into the room.

Emma Branson paced in front of the desk, waiting for him to answer her. “Stone, are you even more incompetent than I thought? We’ve got to give them something! You were involved in this from square one, don’t you remember anything?”

Helpless, Mitch wanted to shrug and make some excuse, but Branson looked ready to claw his eyes out. She would see right through any patronizing explanations. “I was involved with it, but . . . but I worked mainly on the management end of things. I attended the meetings and took care of public relations. Alex was the one doing the work!” He swallowed, realizing how stupid he sounded. He ran a hand through his itchy hair; he hadn’t had a trim in over a month.

“That’s not the way you made it appear in your reports,” Branson said with ice in her voice.

Mitch averted his eyes and looked again at the scrawled data. It took a while, but once he recognized the pattern, he felt too sick and embarrassed even to point it out to Emma Branson.

“Well, what is it?” she demanded.

“Uh, it appears that Dr. Kramer faked his data. He wrote incorrect results in his notebooks.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

Mitch jabbed his finger at the columns of numbers. She could see it for herself. The figures were simply placeholders, taking up space; Kramer had jotted down the square root of two, pi, and others. Branson’s eyes widened, and Mitch wondered if she was going to fly into a rage or break down and cry.

Before she could react, the sound of an exploding natural gas tank shook the room. The thwump came first, loud enough to rattle the other window in Kramer’s office. Booms echoed around the refinery complex.

Branson dropped the notebook and pushed toward the window. “What the hell is going on out there?” she said.

Outside, a towering ball of blue-orange flames roiled to the sky. Flaming, molten shards of metal clattered to the ground. One of the fractionating towers buckled from the explosion.

A crowd roared below. Tiny forms, people, scrambled on the gasoline reservoirs and the crude oil storage tanks. Were they going to burn those, too?

“Son of a bitch! Peasants bearing torches, can you believe it?” Branson said. “Come on, we’ve got to get back to the Admin building. I’ve still got my own private guards there.”

Flustered, Mitch said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

He followed, leaving Alex’s doors open. Gunshots rang out as Branson’s guards responded to the assault, but their guns fired only a few times before the weapons seized up. The shouts grew louder.

Before he and Branson made it down the three flights of stairs, they heard breaking glass below. “Oh, shit!” Mitch’s voice wavered.

Branson looked ready to dive into the fray herself and start tearing the saboteurs limb from limb. “Up the stairwell. We’ll go to the second floor and down the back. Maybe we can get out the emergency exit.”

Mitch ran after her, pursued by the sounds of smashing and yelling. When they reached the other stairwell and hurried down, the bottom door burst open. Four people charged in.

Mitch froze, hoping the intruders wouldn’t look up. But his luck didn’t hold. One of the women glanced up the stairs, spotting both of them. Her face ignited with glee. “There they are! Two of them!”

Mitch whirled and scrambled up the stairs, leaving Branson behind. The old woman came panting after him.

Mitch’s mind whirled. He had seen plenty of those stupid suspense movies where the victims continued to run up the stairs while being chased. But what other choice did they have? The people were below, swarming up.

“Floor four,” he said. “There’s the vault! I think it’s open—I cracked it this morning to get at Alex’s records. If we get in there, they’ll never be able to reach us.”

Branson stumbled beside him. Below, the attackers had reached the second-floor landing.

By the time he got to the fourth floor, Mitch had gained a good lead on Branson. He ran down the corridors, ducked through an open typing-pool complex of dissolving cubicles, toward the document vault in back. The heavy steel door stood partway open.

He glanced behind him and saw Branson turning the corner, her arms outstretched, gasping. Her hair had come undone, and she had flung off both shoes as she stuttered forward. Fewer than ten steps behind her, came the roaring mob.

Mitch ducked into the vault; a dim, battery-powered emergency lamp flickered from the ceiling. If he waited for Branson, he would never get the heavy steel door closed before the others wrenched it out of his hands. He couldn’t hesitate. He tugged at the handle and hauled the door closed, digging his feet into the floor.

Emma Branson reached the vault just as it shut. She screamed at him through the tiny gap before the pursuers grabbed her shoulders. Mitch jerked the vault door closed with the last of his strength. The combination would reset itself automatically, and none of these people would ever get inside. He heard muffled screaming, but he could make out no words.

He didn’t want to know what was happening to Emma Branson.

Mitch slid down the back wall and sat in the corner, spilling confidential documents marked PROMETHEUS around him as he shivered uncontrollably. Finally, he began to laugh as he realized that he was safe. He had found the papers.

#

Jake Torgens’s face stung. His eyebrows and much of his hair had been singed in the monstrous natural gas explosion. At least fifteen people had died, their flaming rag-doll bodies flying through the air, spraying droplets of smoking blood.

But the strike force would do what had to be done, regardless of casualties. This fire was going to be an environmental catastrophe of its own, but at the moment Jake considered that concern secondary. Some of the environmentalists had even cheered the petroplague as a final solution to the worldwide problems of industrial pollution. Jake figured they might eventually be right, but for the moment they had their heads up their asses.

Several protestors came to Jake with metal buckets and glass bottles of contaminated gasoline they had poured out of the sealed storage tanks. They had opened the valves and let the trapped fuel spill down the hill. Once his people got clear, Jake would order the whole thing blown sky high.

Polly ran up to him. A fat woman who described herself as “pleasantly plump,” Polly had a mild manner; but when her anger got stoked, she was ready to kill. Grime streaked her face, and her eyes were bright.

“We found two of them inside the research building there. One locked himself inside a vault upstairs, and we can’t get to him, but we caught the old witch, Branson. She’s still alive. In a lot of pain. Should we bring her down?”

“No,” Jake said. “Leave her upstairs, and make sure she stays there. Tie her to the vault door and get everyone else out of the building.” He raised his eyebrows at Polly. “You know what to do with witches, don’t you?”

Polly grinned. She took one of the buckets of gasoline and ran toward the building.

#

Black smoke poured in through the air vents of the vault. Mitch Stone coughed, then scrambled across the floor. The carpet itself was smoldering. The pages turned brown on the documents lining the metal shelves.

The whole building would burn to the ground. Mitch would be trapped inside this vault like a roast in an oven. He had to get out. The thick smoke burned his eyes. He couldn’t breathe.

When he grabbed the release bar, the metal was so hot it sizzled the flesh on his palms. He shrieked. Mitch fumbled with a roll of papers to shield his skin and pushed down on the release bar again. He forced the door open.

And the blackened clawlike arm of Emma Branson fell inside. The skin on her skeletal body was charred to paperlike ash. Her mouth still open, she slumped into the gap.

Mitch staggered backward. The documents in the vault ignited with a flash all around him. The furnace flames blasted inside.

Chapter 51

When Lieutenant Bobby Carron’s eyes opened, he was fully awake but completely disoriented. Nothing familiar, just a big blank spot where he thought he should remember things. No longer in his Bachelor Officer’s Quarters at China Lake, he lay in bed in a strange, dim room. In pain.

Bobby saw stark featureless walls, smelled antiseptic-clean bedding, felt a cottony mass in his mouth as his tongue ran over his teeth. Bad, flat, rancid-tasting mouth. The window blinds were drawn, and the little sunshine that diffused through looked as if it had been washed and sterilized. Where the hell am I? Somewhere outside the room came a muted chanting, like the throbbing of machinery. He couldn’t figure out what it was.

His arms ached as he tried to move. He’d been taking a cross-country flight with Barfman Petronfi, on his way to the beach where he could bask in the sun and forget about the Navy. He’d climbed aboard his jet, taken off for Corpus Christi—

Bobby tried to raise his head. He felt bandages, constraints. And then it came rushing back to him: losing power, electrical systems crapping out, watching Barfman’s plane break apart and drop away into a bright explosion. His own aircraft failing, straining to reach the Albuquerque airport. He had ejected, watching his own A/F 18 plummet into the desert, as the rocky ground rushed up at him like a giant slapping hand . . . .

He had survived, but how badly was he hurt? His body shivered in waves of pain and numbness. Was he paralyzed? Where was Barfman? Where were the nurses? Why weren’t they watching him? How long had it been?

He struggled to raise himself on an elbow. They didn’t even have a monitor on him! If this was a real a hospital, then they should have diagnostics, air conditioning, not this damned silence. He grabbed the call button by his bed, but found only bare wires.

Bobby drew in several deep breaths. In all his years in the Navy, he’d never even been in a hospital except for the “turn your head and cough” routine. He forced himself to relax back on the pillow. Listening, Bobby couldn’t hear a cart creaking down a hallway or even a nurse going to check on a patient; he heard only muted crowd sounds outside the closed window.

His mind raced through the options. If he was in a hospital, something was definitely wrong. He should hear something.

Bobby pushed back the sheets. Moving like he was in a room covered with broken glass, he lowered himself to the floor. He discovered several sore muscles and bruises that he hadn’t had before. His right leg was wrapped with a cloth bandage, but he could put weight on it. Both ankles felt swollen. His head throbbed with the fuzziness of pain-killers and sedatives, and a ringing sound echoed in his ears.

His body struggled to remember how to walk. How many days had he been out? He grunted, trying to keep the pain away.

Bobby shuffled toward the window, one step at a time across the cold tile floor. A minute later he stood at the window, staring down at the crowd gathered below.

Outside, thousands of milling people filled a plaza, chanting: “String ‘im up, string ‘im up, string the bastard up!”

The crowd clustered around a platform like an angry river against an upthrust rock. Timbers had been erected in a crude gallows. Bobby blinked in shock. What the hell?

Five men dressed in sand-colored camouflage uniforms stepped on stage. A lanky boy, no older then sixteen, staggered up from the ground, fighting against the ropes on his legs. Thrusting arms helped him along.

The boy was roughly led to the gallows at center stage where a burly man in uniform met him. Some of the people continued to chant, others seemed oddly subdued.

The uniformed man held his hands above his head, and silence fell like a blanket on the plaza. The boy kept struggling, shouting in terror. The uniformed man gave another signal, and one of the guards stuffed a gag in the prisoner’s mouth.

Bobby leaned forward to hear the man’s shouted words. He rested his numb fingers on the grille of the window. Had the world gone crazy? Was he hallucinating?

“—a chain that depends on the strength of one link. And whenever a bad link threatens the good of the whole, it must be removed! I don’t like what circumstances have forced me to do, but now more than any other time in our history as a nation, we must adhere to the law without question. The president has given us explicit instructions. The rules are just. Our future depends on strict obedience.” The man looked grim as he surveyed the crowd. No one cried out, murmurs ran through the periphery.

One of the men in camouflage threw a long rope over the gallows arm. Another quickly stepped up and secured the noose over the neck of the young boy who whipped his head back and forth in panic; his hands were tied behind his back. The burly officer stepped back as the airman tested the noose.

“My sworn duty is to protect the people of this city. The odds are stacked against us, but I will not allow looters to make things worse. Any person who refuses to work with us is a threat to everyone.” He jerked a thumb behind him.

Immediately, three men stepped forward and grasped the rope. On the count of “Ready, ready, now!” they pulled the rope, jerking the young man off his feet.

The boy dangled in the air, kicking his feet and swaying back and forth as he struggled. His body arched, his elbows spread out to strain against the ropes binding his wrists. His chin jerked from side to side as he twisted his head. Within minutes, his face swelled into a dark, bruised purple. A dark wet stain spread from his crotch.

Bobby stumbled from the window. He felt his stomach tighten as he tried to vomit on the floor, but he heaved only sour saliva.

He shook his head to clear it. The entire scene seemed like a morality play in hell. He eased himself back onto the edge of the bed, stunned. With this brutal frontier-style justice, he must be in some Third World banana republic!

The door of his room swung open, and a grim-faced staff nurse stared at him. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re awake, Lieutenant. You had a terrible concussion, and we didn’t have our usual facilities to treat you. I hope you’re feeling better?”

“I—don’t know.” Bobby blinked his eyes in shock.

The nurse glanced at the window and strode over to close the blinds. “You’d think the damn kids would know by now that the curfew’s serious. Makes you wonder how many more times they have to set an example before it finally sinks in.” She came over and inspected the wrapping on Bobby’s legs. “It’s good you’re moving around. I need to contact the military liaison.”

“And he just happens to set up his gallows right outside the hospital?” Bobby couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why here?”

The nurse shook her head, scowling toward the window. “No, he’s get several stations all around the city. If the general’s going to make a good example of it, he has to make his punishments visible to a lot of people, and these days communication is very more difficult. Can’t just pick up a newspaper or turn on CNN anymore, you know. Getting word out about the curfew was tough enough.”

Things were moving too fast. Bobby swallowed, still tasting sour dryness in his throat. “But why is there a curfew at all? And why hang anybody who breaks it?”

“The general’s enforcing martial law against looters and rioters. No one likes it, but without those drastic measures, the VA hospital would of been taken apart for drugs and equipment. We got guards stationed at every entrance.”

“But why is there martial law? What’s happened?”

She smiled and patted his shoulder. “You got a lot to catch up on, don’t you? You’re lucky the general wants to meet you.”

Part III

AFTERMATH

Chapter 52

The Cabinet Room in the White House was filled for the morning staff meeting in a desperate attempt to pretend at normalcy, but few of those present actually held cabinet rank. It was too difficult to assemble the remaining high-level officials every morning. Instead, the White House staff served as conduits for the rest of the Executive Branch, relaying information to and from President Jeffrey Mayeaux by any means available—wireless, messengers, hand-written instructions. In an effort to ensure continuity, the new Vice President and his staff were being heavily guarded at his residence in the Naval Observatory.

In the Oval Office, Mayeaux stared out the window at the motionless tanks and armored personnel carriers on the south White House lawn. Military showoffs! The reinforced vehicles served more as a Maginot Line than as a practical mechanism to stop the rioting around Washington, D.C. After the petroplague had swept across the capital city, the tanks stood frozen in place. They could not move, could not operate the turrets, nor swing their heavy gun barrels around. But Mayeaux still thought they looked damned impressive—if he happened to be afraid of the commies marching down Pennsylvania Avenue! As it was, it made the White House lawn look like an old junk yard.

Mayeaux sipped a cup of weak chicory coffee, a completely inept attempt at cafe au lait. White House coffee had always been extravagant and rich, made with dark-roast gourmet beans. Now, the best the kitchen could manage was a muddy, boiled brew that tasted bitter no matter how much sugar he added. Mayeaux stirred it, staring down at the swirling dark liquid.

He hated getting up so damned early in the morning, but there just wasn’t time for enough rest. He had heavier responsibilities now that he held the Chief Executive job. He hadn’t even gotten laid in three days! His own plans for a bright future had swirled right down the toilet, gurgling loudly as they went. A million people supposedly dreamed about becoming president of the United States—how did he get to be so damned lucky? It was like reaching into a new box of Cracker Jacks and pulling out a brand-new, shiny bear trap as his prize!

Stuck inside the White House compound, Mayeaux had no opportunities to blow off steam. He knew about Kennedy sneaking in the babes . . . but JFK only had the Bay of Pigs, the Commies, and the Cuban Missile Crisis to worry about. Under the Mayeaux administration, the petroplague had messed up every little detail of daily life. He couldn’t even slip off to Camp David for a break from this damned place. He was being asked to cope with a turn-of-the-21st-century world, but given only the technology available to Thomas Jefferson!

“Mr. President, everybody’s here.” Franklin Weathersee stood at the door to the Cabinet Room. He seemed to be rubbing it in every time he said the words ‘Mr. President’—he wouldn’t put up with that attitude from anyone else, but Weathersee . . . well, he owed Weathersee a few favors. More than he could remember.

Mayeaux set down his cup. “So what’s on the agenda today, Frank? Visiting dignitaries? Trips to Acapulco? Business as usual?”

Weathersee answered bluntly without looking at the handwritten agenda. He never seemed to have any sense of humor. “The Joint Chiefs have an update on martial law enforcement. They’re being pretty tight-lipped until you get in there.”

Mayeaux turned from the view of the south lawn. “Let’s get this over with. These guys make my skin crawl, and if they aren’t going to support me, we’ll get someone in there who will.”

The halls were dim, lit by sunlight trickling through office windows. Metal sculptures, given as presents from foreign governments, sat on tables lining the hallway. Most of the carpet had deteriorated down to the bare wood floors, leaving only stains of residue.

Weathersee lowered his voice as they approached the Cabinet Room. “It’s not so easy to replace them, Mr. President—”

Mayeaux stopped outside the door and snorted. “What the hell are you talking about, Frank? I didn’t ask for this job—I should be back in New Orleans fishing right now. If I’m going to be anything more than a placeholder, I’ve got to have a team that works with me.”

Weathersee held Mayeaux back. Several people had already noticed them and stood. Two Secret Service agents waited at the end of the hall, studiously watching nothing.

“These people are military types, Mr. President—they’re not political hacks. They aren’t ‘yes’ men. They don’t have an agenda. Their allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution.”

Mayeaux scowled. “Don’t kid yourself, Frank. Everybody’s got an agenda, including these tin pots. They just have different buttons to push. They still serve at my pleasure, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then they’ll support me—or find another job, petroplague or not. I have enough to worry about.”

He stepped through the door, smiling his best media smile as the others stood to greet him. Mayeaux headed for his high-backed chair. He dispensed with shaking hands. “So, what do we have?” he asked. “Give me the slicked-down version.”

The four military officers sat directly across the table, next to the Secretary of Defense. Brass plates on the backs of the chairs identified each cabinet member. The chairs were arranged around the table in the order the office had been elevated to cabinet level.

General Wacon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a graying man who looked like an airline pilot in his Air Force uniform, pushed a briefing packet across the table. The papers were handwritten—the few rebuilt computers working in secured vaults were reserved for more important tasks than preparing briefing charts.

“We have managed to establish communications with seventy percent of the military bases, Mr. President. We don’t know why we’ve lost contact with the remaining thirty percent, but we don’t believe it’s because of a technical breakdown.”

“Tell me what that means.” Mayeaux shoved the papers back at the Chairman. “I don’t have time to read all this.”

“There’s enough redundancy in our emergency communications that we should still be in direct contact with every installation commander. The petroplague did not disable backup wireless communications.”

“So what the hell is the significance of that?” Mayeaux looked around the table. “I asked a simple question, now give me a simple answer. No doubletalk, no technojargon.”

The general continued smoothly, not quite managing to cover a frown. “Widespread riots, sir. The out-of-contact bases are located next to cities with large populations—Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia. With so many people in the neighboring communities, we suspect the civilians are not cooperating with the military’s enforcement of martial law.”

“So the people are disobeying emergency orders from the President of the United States? And the military commanders can’t back up our demands? Maybe we should all go hide in the closet and cry.”

“We don’t know for sure, Mr. President. The military bases still in contact report increasing unrest among the civilian populace. Every commander has lost personnel to mobs, even in southern states where the military is traditionally viewed with more respect.”

Mayeaux’s jaw clenched and relaxed as General Wacon spoke. He couldn’t get his military commanders to enforce a straightforward directive in a crisis situation. Against civilians, yet! Being the “most powerful man in the world” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Even with the communications breakdowns, the people would listen to a strong leader, not some limp dick too frightened to back up his own threats. Mayeaux knew that much. It was just like raising kids—you set the rules, and whenever the kid stepped over the line: wham! Behavior modification.

It worked in Louisiana, rewarding the parishes that toed the line, and it worked in Congress when he had been Speaker of the House. The congressmen who didn’t fall in line when Mayeaux made it clear he was calling in a personal favor, found themselves suddenly without any federal projects for their districts. As far as the American people were concerned, they didn’t know how far they could push Jeffrey Mayeaux him.

Not very damn far.

The chairmen of their respective services sat back in their seats and waited for the president to speak his words of wisdom. Mayeaux felt like a preacher under a revival tent. What the hell did they want from him?

“What’s the status of the rest of the military? What other national defense matters aren’t we ready for, gentlemen?”

The question seemed to throw the officers. They looked at each other. “Each stateside installation is utilizing its resources to enforce martial law, Mr. President. They are relying on the National Guard as well as local law-enforcement groups. None of our forces is poised to prevent an attack from an external threat, but frankly I don’t see how such an attack could be feasible without any fuel—”

Mayeaux dismissed the observation with a wave. “Not an attack from outside, from within. If civilian disobedience is affecting every installation, we’ve got to get those commanders firmly in control. We’ve got to let the people know we won’t take any crap. These are not normal times.”

The five officers remained stone-faced, keeping their thoughts to themselves. What a bunch of nippleheads! Mayeaux pushed back from the conference table, feeling his control slipping away. Didn’t anybody take this seriously? Well, if they weren’t going to come up with a solution, then he sure as hell would. He had the entire country to look after, whether he wanted to or not.

Mayeaux stood and started for the door of the Cabinet Room. “Gentlemen, get me a complete review of your forces—personnel, capabilities, whatever you’ve got. I want you all to be ready to answer questions whenever I need you. Camp out in the Old Executive Office Building. Get that information to me in one week. If things haven’t gotten better by then, I’ll make some decisions for you.” Franklin Weathersee followed Mayeaux out as he strode from the room.

In silence, everyone stood in the President’s wake.

Chapter 53

White gypsum sand glittered like an ocean of bone-dry sparkle dust. With nothing more than a small spade, Spencer Lockwood dug only a few feet before he reached moisture.

The water table around White Sands had always been near the surface, though it had steadily fallen for the past half century, drained by massive pumping stations along the Rio Grande corridor. But not any longer, not after the petroplague. The aquifer was exceptionally pure from natural filtration—and it was available, rapidly replenishing itself.

Adjusting his floppy hat, Spencer applied a handful of soft lard on either side of the ceramic washer and tightened the cap to the water pump. A long strand of cloth-wrapped electrical wire ran from the pump to a telephone pole, then to the power substation. Transformer parts lay strewn around the substation, prominent against the bright sand: open coils of copper windings, ceramic insulators, iron cores. The new substation looked like a Rube Goldberg collection of giant tinkertoys. A hundred yards away, three ranch hands stood around a pile of scrub wood, waiting for the order to light the signal fire.

Beside him, Rita Fellenstein tipped back her Australian hat and spat to the side, adding another blot to the scattered tobacco stains on the snowy gypsum. “You really think this is going to work, Spence?”

He used the fine sand to scrub smelly animal fat from his hands, then wiped the grit on his frayed pants. “If we can’t carry power from the microwave farm to the pump station, it’ll be impossible to get it to the outlying ranches.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

Heat shimmered from the ground like blurred fingers reaching to the sky. Spencer could see for miles all around. “There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. Basically, it’s a no-brainer. We hook it up and it starts pumping water.”

Rita worked up a mouthful of saliva and spat again. She seemed to enjoy the disgusted frown on his face. “If you say so. You weren’t the one trying to figure out how to fix it.”

Spencer grinned, keeping his doubts to himself. “That’s what engineers are for.”

Rita strode back to the ranch hands. Her gangly legs put a rolling swing into each step. Good-natured catcalls greeted her, but Rita told the men to shut up and light the signal fire.

Spencer took one last look at the pump—he always became obsessive before starting an experiment. Everything appeared ready, but he never believed it. The transmission line ran to the substation, all the pump parts had been inspected a dozen times.

He remembered how paranoid he had been about his antenna farm on the day of the first test. Now he’d be even more excited if he could just get a simple water pump working out in the desert.

One of the ranch hands squatted by the pile of wood, striking a flint and a piece of metal together. They still had some matches among their supplies, but the cowboys liked to show off their wilderness skills in front of Rita. Fine steel wool brought in from the microwave farm caught the spark and started smoking. Pieces of shaving, then larger pieces of mesquite began to burn, crackling and sending rich-smelling smoke into the air.

Rita stood back, shielding her face as one of the ranch hands tossed a handful of green pinon needles onto the growing fire. The smoke thickened and billowed. Rita said, “All we need now is a blanket to send smoke signals!”

“We don’t want to have a conversation with them,” Spencer said. “We just want them to turn on the juice.” He knew the radio man Juan Romero would be back at the microwave farm, waiting to see the smoke.

Spencer watched the water pump, not sure what to expect. Once Romero switched on the electricity from the farm, a motor would move a series of gears—what could be so tough about that? The substation would transform the oscillating voltage collected from the microwave antennas to power the pump. If this worked, it would be the first step to reestablishing a power-grid for the area, electricity that did not rely on petroleum or plastic components for distribution.

By erecting similar antenna farms, simple metal wires spread out on flat ground under the orbital path of the smallsats, and launching the remaining satellites in storage at JPL, Spencer could return electrical power to a broad band of the country—even the world. He liked crazy, optimistic plans, but, hey, it gave them something to work toward.

A high-pitched popping, sizzling noise jarred him out of his daydream. Acrid smoke spewed from the nearby utility pole. Spencer caught the sudden smell of creosote burning. “The substation’s going up!” he yelled.

The ranchers grabbed shovels and started throwing gypsum sand on the equipment to smother the fire. White sparks danced around the transformer units, accompanied by loud snaps and cracks. The signal fire continued to blaze, sending streamers of smoke into the windless air.

“Great!” Spencer ran to the bonfire. “Help me get this thing out!” He knew Romero would keep the juice flowing until the smoke signal stopped.

The dry mesquite burned hot and bright. He picked up a bucket of sand and threw it onto the blaze; the sand simmered on the coals. Smoke continued to boil into the air. Finally, a blanket thrown over the fire extinguished the flames.

Spencer stood back and waited as the smoke leaking from the blanket turned from black to gray-white. The substation continued to crackle like an electric heater dropped into a bathtub. As the smoke trailed away, the inferno at the substation subsided. Romero had shut down. The electrical equipment looked scorched.

A real no-brainer, Spencer had called the exercise. Right!

Rita wiped a hand over her sooty face. “So, we fix it up and try again?”

“Must be an engineering problem,” he said, scowling at the substation components.

Before the petroplague, the station had been a crossroads for power generated by the Public Service Company of New Mexico and the Rural Electric Network. Now, nothing remained but a smoldering pile of resistors, coiled windings, and insulators. At least the electric company wouldn’t come after him for damages.

“Let’s find out what went wrong,” he said. “That’s the only way we’ll learn anything. I want to get back to the microwave farm by sundown for the JPL contact.”

“You don’t seem too upset after just blowing the hell out of that substation,” Rita said.

“Job security,” Spencer said and faked a shocked expression to mask his disappointment. “You’ve been hanging around Nedermyer too much.”

#

Romero tugged on his drooping black mustache. “Caltech’s on the wireless, Spence. They’re ready for you.”

“Thanks.” Spencer took a seat. Now that the sun was down, their shortwave radio could eavesdrop on the world.

The blockhouse was illuminated by beeswax candles. They had a few battery-powered lights, but they tried not to use them much. Shadows cast by the flickering light danced on the trailer walls.

Static came from the radio speaker like ocean surf, distorting the voice that relayed news across the country for local dissemination. Romero repeated the news back to the emergency broadcast channel, verifying that he had correctly copied the contents.

Rita whispered, “You’re not going to tell them the test failed, are you? JPL might not send the satellites if they find out you can’t even get the power lines to work.”

“The experiment didn’t fail,” Spencer said. “It just pointed out some deficiencies in our assumptions.”

“Now who’s been talking to Nedermyer too much?” she snorted.

Romero handed him the makeshift microphone. “All set. You’ve got five minutes.”

Spencer fingered the button, clicking it twice. “Hello? This is Spencer Lockwood from White Sands.”

A moment passed. Nothing but static came over the speaker. He frowned and started to repeat himself when a voice broke through. “Dr. Lockwood?”

Spencer leaned forward. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Stand by, one. We’ve got someone here for you.”

The microphone rustled as it was handed over. “Spencer? Is this the same Doctor Lockwood I taught at Caltech?”

Spencer stopped. The voice sounded familiar, but it had been so many years . . . “Seth— Seth Mansfield? Is that you?”

Coughing. “Spencer, are you still playing with those smallsats? Dr. Soo at JPL tells me you’ve been pestering her to ship the remaining satellites cross-country to you. What’s this nonsense? Last time I checked, you were a physicist, not a rocket scientist. At least that’s what I wrote on your diploma.”

He rolled his eyes. It was nice to hear from his gruff mentor again. “Seth, what are you doing there? I thought you retired years ago.”

The Nobel laureate’s voice came back strong for a 74-year-old man. “Did you expect me to roll over and play dead? I returned here after the plague hit. The least I could do is wash bottles while the microbiologists try to figure this damn thing out.”

Romero leaned over and whispered, “You’ve only got four minutes, Spence.” Spencer waved him away.

“Seth, I’d love to talk, but I just don’t have the time.”

“Oh, all right! I hear you were going to transmit electricity today to power some damned water pump.”

“Well, Seth, it—”

“Good thinking, Spencer. You’ll need the infrastructure up and working before the smallsats can do any good. Doesn’t matter if you have all the microwave energy in the world if you don’t have any way to get it to people. How did you do? Did it work?”

Rita leaned over and scowled. Spencer saw his precious time slip away. The Caltech emergency network operators adhered to a ruthless reputation when it came to partitioning radio time. He sighed; it was a lost cause to argue with his old professor.

“Uh, it didn’t go exactly as planned, Seth. There are more problems than I suspected with the transformers. But it’s just an engineering problem.” Romero clapped a hand to his forehead and snickered; Spencer turned back to the radio. “We’ll fix it. I’ve already got a team working on design changes, using what we learned from the test.”

“Engineering problems! Those are the best kind,” Mansfield said. “You think your idea will still work?”

“Of course it’ll work! Look, we transmitted the power at least twenty miles, and that’s a lot farther than we thought would be possible with these primitive lines. It blew out a transformer at the substation, so we know the electricity got that far.”

Spencer threw a glance at Rita. She mouthed, ‘Less than one minute.’ Spencer thought he heard the hint of a laugh over the static-filled channel. “Plenty of people here at JPL thought you were just pipedreaming, son. There’s starvation and rioting going on out here, in case you haven’t heard.”

“We have the same reports coming out of El Paso and Albuquerque,” said Spencer. “All the more reason to give people some shining example of hope, something to show that we can get back on our feet again.”

“Okay, Spencer. The JPL folks wanted assurance of two things: that you weren’t lying, and their efforts wouldn’t be wasted. I think I’ve convinced the JPL acting director that you haven’t gone loony tunes. Of course, I don’t know how the hell you expect to get twenty 300-pound satellites from Caltech to White Sands. By a wheelbarrow? A refurbished Conestoga wagon?”

Spencer didn’t know what to say. “Uh, that’s the next question, but it’s really just another engineering problem. We can solve those.”

The old man laughed. “If you manage this one, Spencer, you deserve a Nobel Prize of your own!”

Chapter 54

Todd Severyn cocked back his cowboy hat and scanned the rolling vista of the Altamont range. His chocolate quarter horse snorted at the dry, unpalateable grass on the ridge. The sky above was as blue and smooth as a robin’s egg, cloudless; he didn’t expect to hear a discouraging word . . . at least not until he rode back to those wierdos at the commune.

Todd urged Stimpy down the slope, following a cattle trail toward the glistening aqueduct that directed fresh water from the mountains. Moving again, Stimpy crashed through the grass with an energetic gait that showed Todd how much the mare was enjoying her regular long-distance rides.

Gleaming white windmills, spinning in rampant breezes that gusted over the range, lined the crests of the rounded hills. Many of the wind turbines had burned-out rotors with gummed lubricants; Jackson Harris and his group of washed-up hippies spent much of their days trying to repair them.

Far below to his left Todd could see the empty interstate freeway dotted with wrecked and abandoned cars. With the traffic gone and the people scattered from the corpses of the cities, he found the world more palatable in a way. Like his beloved Wyoming, everything had slowed down, gone back to the ways of a century before when communities worked together to survive, and each small town was its own little world.

That was how Jackson Harris and the Altamont commune managed to succeed, but Todd didn’t fit in. Philosophically, they were poles apart, yet he did enjoy belonging to their settlement. As long as he didn’t have to sing along with their campfire concerts of oold Rock & Roll songs. And Iris Shikozu certainly seemed comfortable with the arrangement, even if he wasn’t . . . .

When he reached the aqueduct between the hills, Todd directed the horse to follow the concrete embankment. Two men and a teenager dangled their feet in the languid canal, fishing with bamboo poles and cotton fish line. As Todd pulled the horse to a stop, Stimpy stuck her nose in the water, blowing out her nostrils and drinking deeply. “Any fish in there?” Todd asked.

A man in a battered straw hat shrugged. “Carp.”

“Are they good eating?” Todd noticed a chain-link basket slung low in the water.

“Depends how hungry you are,” the teenager said.

When the fishermen didn’t offer to continue the conversation, Todd rode off along the Altamont Pass Road and back over the crest of the hills. He dreamed of eventually making his way across country, riding back to his parents’ ranch, maybe even with Iris. But not for a while yet, not until things were a bit more settled.

Jackson and Daphne Harris, Doog, and the rest of the wacked-out commune had welcomed him and Iris in, giving them an old trailer to stay in. Todd was still embarrassed to be living with Iris without being married, but neither Iris nor the hippies seemed to care; it just didn’t fit in with the other women Todd himself had known, who either jumped from bed to bed or were dying to get married. But he stuck to his guns, insisting he would move out as soon as another place became available. He’d promised to take her away from Stanford, which he’d done, but he had not demanded to sleep with her as some kind of reward.

Iris accepted his companionship at face value, and from the other bed in the trailer she talked to him far into the night when he just wanted to go to sleep. During the day, when he didn’t think she was looking, he admired her petite figure, her dark almond eyes, and her jet-black hair. Iris seemed to have the energy of two people coiled inside her wiry body. He’d learned not to underestimate her. He felt his attachment running deeper, so deep that it frightened him.

But he didn’t want to just stay here and settle down. Todd found himself growing restless, wanting to do something more than mundane chores. He still felt responsible for the whole mess they were in—if he hadn’t been so eager to spray Alex’s darned bugs. the petroplague would never have happened. To soothe his own restlessness, he took long rides on the horses, ranging far from the commune when the goofballs at the commune drove him crazy.

He had appointed himself liaison between the Altamont colony and the remnants of the Livermore Lab on the other side of the range, where the once-large government research laboratories still had a few programs cobbled-together and scraps of barely functional equipment. Following the road, Todd reached the crest of the hills and headed west toward the city of Livermore to see if the labs had come up with anything new.

#

Thanks to her small and agile body, Iris Shikozu got the assignment of climbing the windmill masts to replace rotors as they burned out. With her toolbox stuffed in a canvas backpack between her shoulders, Iris clambered up the metal rungs to reach the top where the three-bladed aluminum wind turbine hung frozen, rattling in the breezes.

The windmill rows looked like a giant field of metal cornstalks on the hills. The wind gusted, making the mast rattle. Iris had to hook her arm through the rung to steady herself.

“Hang tight up there,” Jackson Harris called from below. Iris glanced down to see him cup his hands around his mouth. He said something else, but the wind snatched away his words.

It didn’t matter; she knew what she was doing. Reaching the top, she secured herself and unslung the backpack to find a screwdriver so she could unfasten the metal housing covering the wind turbine’s rotors. She had done this a dozen times before.

On the hills below, Doog and a couple of the refugee city kids amused themselves by tossing rocks into a gully. Doog always seemed to find simple things to keep himself preoccupied. Work usually wasn’t one of them.

Iris succeeded in removing the bolts from the housing and lifted up the protective metal. The lightweight aluminum blades were shaped to catch the wind from any direction; a vane at the rear helped to align them in the proper direction. The blades spun, turning a rotor that generated electricity. But without petroleum lubricants, the rotors burned out; and Iris had to keep replacing them. Back at the commune, Daphne Harris and some of the Oakland kids spent hours tediously rewrapping copper wire along the rotors.

As Iris removed the repaired rotor from her backpack to exchange the burnt-out one, she paused a moment. She was engrossed in her work, finding happiness in the aftermath of the petroplague, content in a way she had never experienced before. She felt at home.

It was very different from the life her parents had pushed her to pursue—to be the front runner in the rat race, to work sixty hours a week, to focus her goals on being the best, on getting ahead. Iris was normally high-strung, always on the move—but she was learning that it was okay to be different. She liked these simple comforts.

And she liked being with Todd.

She caught Todd looking at her many times when he thought she wouldn’t notice. Even when they were together he still seemed to long for her like some unreachable object. He was so clean-cut and straightforward; it calmed her to believe he had no private agenda, that he wasn’t after her for any reason other than herself. In his puppy-dog way, Todd couldn’t hide anything; subtlety was not his strong point, but she found it kind of sweet.

“Hey, you gonna daydream up there all afternoon?” Jackson Harris shouted up at her.

Iris quickly stripped out the old rotor and placed it in her backpack, then installed the new one. Clambering down the metal rungs, she overheard Harris and Doog talking.

“I sure wish we had some music during all this. That’s what I miss the most. Who’d have thought the Grateful Dead would finally die?” Harris kicked a stone into the gully.

As she stepped down the last rungs from the windmill mast, Iris remembered all the CDs she’d loved to play. The hardest things to live without were coffee and rock ‘n roll. She dropped to the gravel pad around the mast and turned to Harris and Doog.

“I miss the music too,” she said. “So what are we going to do about it?”

#

Todd Severyn rode his horse through the gates of the Livermore branch of Sandia National Laboratory. Spirals of razor wire crowned the tall fences, but the guard station sat empty. Nobody bothered to impose security anymore. Most of the lab facilities were broken down and unoccupied, but some of the researchers still came in to work, while others camped out in RV trailers in the parking lots.

For a month or so the teams had banded together, frantically trying to find some way to eradicate the petroplague; but as equipment broke down, computers malfunctioned, and the entire complex collapsed, most of them had given up hope. A few still continued plugging away to come up with innovative solutions.

Todd tied Stimpy up front to the bicycle rack and went inside the admin building. The lobby area for welcoming visitors had been turned into a command center. The bright and cheery PR posters for America’s national labs had been replaced by a large map of the United States studded with colored push-pins.

One of the administrators, Moira Tibbett, stared at the map with a sheet of paper in hand. She wore a dressy cotton outfit. Tibbett glanced at a list of locations on the paper, fingering a push-pin. She squinted at the map like an entomologist about to spear a specimen, then jabbed in the push-pin.

“More stuff for the Atlantis Network?” Todd asked. He poured himself a glass of warm sun tea; it tasted good.

“Yeah. Three more stations came on-line this week. For a political dumping ground, FEMA is doing a pretty good job tracking these enclaves and linking us together.” She thrust another push-pin into a different location.

Todd lifted his eyebrows; her former disdain for the Federal Emergency Management Agency had come around a hundred and eighty degrees. “So what’s new this morning? Give me some news I can take back to the colony.”

“Well, locally the usual stuff is happening,” Tibbett said. “The Livermore city engineers are trying to make sure people have access to enough water. We have a whole lot of problems with just our sewage system. The fire patrols are more organized, but we’ve been lucky so far. And it’s same-old same-old on the food story.”

Todd nodded. At 50,000 people and somewhat isolated, the city of Livermore was probably the right size to weather the petroplague: not so big that it had no way of getting its own supplies, yet large enough to have an infrastructure with some chance of functioning.

“What’s new on the big board?” Todd asked, gesturing with his chin toward the wall map. Tibbett withdrew a push-pin and stabbed another set of coordinates, this one in Missouri.

“Kind of ironic actually. Spencer Lockwood at the solar antenna farm in White Sands, knows that the remaining smallsats he was supposed to put into orbit are sealed in launch canisters at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. He’s rigged up a way to launch the satellites out in New Mexico, but he can’t get his hands on them.”

Todd scratched his head where the cowboy hat had pushed his brown hair into strange twists. He didn’t know whether to be skeptical or amazed. “We can’t even get our sewer systems running, and this guy wants to get a satellite into orbit?”

Tibbett’s face looked carved out of stone. “Twenty satellites, actually. But if Lockwood says he can do it, believe him. I gave him a tour here not long ago. He’s a real hot-shot.”

Todd looked at the map, saw push-pins in New Mexico at the White Sands missile range, another one near Los Angeles in Pasadena. He began to imagine grand schemes, a great expedition across the Southwest hauling the satellites from Pasadena across Arizona into New Mexico. A regular wagon train to the stars!

But it would never come to pass. He said goodbye to Moira Tibbett and headed home to Iris.

Chapter 55

Outside of Albuquerque, concrete buildings and bunkers were set into the side of the hills—”Bayclock’s Empire,” as Navy Lieutenant Bobby Carron had come to think of it. Encircled by four metal fences, the 1000-acre Manzano complex had once served as a storage facility for nuclear weapons; now, Bayclock used the fortress-like bunkers as his headquarters.

The guards outside the chain-link gate popped to attention and threw him a salute as they waved him into the facility. He felt strange wearing an Air Force uniform.

Accompanied by escorts, Bobby hobbled up a series of stairs and entered a fortified building. Bobby gritted his teeth. His still-healing wounds sent tremors of pain through his body.

Concrete walls two feet thick, barred windows, and piles of useless electronic gear made the place seem like a twisted version of a medieval castle. Finally, he passed two more guards standing like moat dragons outside Bayclock’s office.

“Stand at ease, Captain.”

At first Bobby didn’t realize that Bayclock was speaking to him. In the sprawling office the general had commandeered, once-plush carpet edged up to dark wood paneling that had blistered as the glossy coatings had dissolved; military awards, lithographs of fighter aircraft, and school diplomas covered the wall.

“Please come in, Captain. Are you fully recovered from your injuries?” Bayclock waved Bobby into the secure office, then slumped in an overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. Narrow window slits barely lit the room.

Bobby stepped forward, stiff and formal as he remembered from his training at the Naval Academy. The memory of the curfew-breaking teenager dangling on the gallows still burned clear in his mind. “It’s lieutenant, sir. Not captain. You didn’t have any Navy uniforms I could wear.”

Bayclock narrowed his eyes, then laughed. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Calling you a captain is like promoting you three ranks! Never figured out why the military couldn’t standardize the whole damn rank structure.” He motioned toward one of the chairs. “Go ahead, have a seat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby had expected Bayclock to be some sort of ogre, hunched over his desk and ready to snap necks with his thumbs. Instead, the general had bright eyes, regulation-cropped dark hair, and an easy grace as he folded his hands in front of him. Bayclock held himself poised, continuously taking in his surroundings. It was obvious to Bobby that Bayclock had himself been a fighter pilot; but Bobby felt no rapport with the general. Bayclock inspected him closely. Bobby wondered how he would measure up.

Bayclock pulled a paper from the stack on his desk. He scanned it in the dim light and spoke without looking up. “I’ve kept up with your recovery, glad to see you’re doing better. You’ve been briefed on the situation here—martial law and all that, by the President’s order?”

“Yes, sir.” How could he not notice? After seeing how the general dealt with unrest in the city, Bobby felt extremely uneasy just to be in the same room with Bayclock.

“Some people are savages and want to steal everything in sight. My troops are stretched to the limit, Lieutenant. Every able-bodied person I have is trying to keep the peace in the city. I’m using military finance clerks as squad leaders, aircraft mechanics as forward observers. They serve according to their abilities, and they’re doing a super job, but I can’t ask them anything else.”

“Yes, sir.” Bobby sat straight in his chair, watching the general. So what’s the point? This isn’t a social call.

Bayclock continued. “In addition to upholding the law, I’ve got to care for these people, keep the place going in the long run. That means coordinating food expeditions, fixing waterlines, staying in contact with the President in case orders change.”

“So, are communication lines open?” Bobby must have sounded incredulous, because Bayclock snorted.

“The plague didn’t affect the electromagnetic spectrum, Lieutenant, just oil!” Bayclock rocked forward and pushed the paper to Bobby. Bobby caught it as the sheet spun off the edge of the metal surplus desk. “In fact, we’ve intercepted some messages from White Sands coming across the FEMA emergency network.”

Intercepted? thought Bobby, keeping a stone straight face. That was the most important thing he had learned in all his military training—how to smother his reactions. This guy sounded as if he was at war!

“Somehow they’ve reestablished full electrical power down there, using it to run their water pumps. Water pumps! Do you have any idea how many of my people it takes to pump water up from this damned aquifer we’re sitting on top of? That’s a major part of that manpower drain I was talking about. People are getting away with murder because good military personnel are pumping water instead of patrolling the city.

“Now, White Sands is technically under my jurisdiction, and the President has reconfirmed it. We’re all in this mess together, and if those wizards have managed to get back on their feet by producing electricity, then I need it.”

Bobby Carron sat in his chair like a statue, ignoring the pain in his leg and ribs. Shadows in the room highlighted the intensity in Bayclock’s face. He had seen a few squirrelly commanders before, but Bayclock seemed to think he was Napoleon of the Apocalypse!

“I can’t trust any of the damned civilians to head up this expedition—the scientists at Sandia Albuquerque turned tail and deserted their labs at the first sign of a riot; my Phillips Lab troops aren’t much better. I haven’t been able to reach the enclave of researchers up at Los Alamos, and I’ve never trusted those bomb designers anyway. But down in White Sands they’ve made a little Atlantis for themselves.”

The general cracked his knuckles one at a time. It sounded like someone snapping twigs—or neckbones.

“I need someone I can trust, Lieutenant Carron—an operator who’s used to working alone and can function when things get tough. In short, I need a fighter pilot.” Bayclock drew himself up, setting his mouth. “When I took this command, I saw it as an opportunity to instill some of the esprit that pilots have . . . you know, the sense of duty that comes from being in an operational fighter unit. These scientists and nonrated pukes have a warped sense of duty, more allegiance to their profession than to the overall mission.”

Bayclock looked suddenly tired, as if the effects of his orders wore at him. “I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, Lieutenant. I just met you, but I know you wouldn’t be flying fighters unless you had the right stuff, even if you did join the Navy instead of the Air Force.” He smiled wearily.

“A colleague of mine once said, ‘There’s two types of people in this world: fighter pilots and weenies.’ Well, I’m surrounded by weenies. What I need is a fighter pilot to head up an expedition to White Sands, then return here with a report.”

Bobby tried to keep the astonishment off his face. The events of the past few weeks swam through his mind—waking up in the ravaged hospital, the execution of looters, seeing the full effects of the petroplague . . . . The general probably thought Bobby would be apprehensive about leaving the “security” of a city under martial law.

Bobby saw it as an opportunity to get away from this insanity, but he knew it would be the worst thing in the world for him to show his eagerness. He stood and reached across Bayclock’s desk, extending his hand. “General, you’ve got your man. Where do I sign up?”

#

The horses kept to the side of Interstate 40 east out of Albuquerque, paralleling old Route 66 in the pass between the Sandia and Manzano mountains. The spongy asphalt highway was too soft to bear any weight, and the horses clopped along on the shoulder. Each rider carried several dozen liters of water along with their food rations.

Beside Bobby at the front of the five-person expedition, his assigned escort—a stout, gruff sergeant named Catilyn Morris—had not spoken in an hour. Three scientists trailed behind—two from Sandia’s Albuquerque Labs and one from the Air Force’s Phillips Lab—who would study the White Sands power generators and take back whatever components the general might need in Albuquerque.

The horses walked through the pass. Boulders littered the sides of the barren hill, sloping up on either side like a giant brown funnel that had been cut in half and laid on its side. Although he had lived at barren China Lake for the past two years, Bobby still missed to the thick trees in Virginia where he had grown up, the ocean, and humidity. This seemed like an alien landscape.

Bobby turned to the taciturn woman sergeant beside him. Catilyn Morris was a helicopter mechanic who had flown many times along the corridor to White Sands. Her blond hair was clipped short, accenting her stout frame and full hips. She stood no taller than five feet, but she rode high in the saddle, confident.

“Seems like we’re making good time,” Bobby said. “How long do you think it’ll take to get to White Sands?”

Sergeant Morris didn’t look at him as she answered; she kept scanning the road in front of them. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“Lots of things.”

Bobby felt a flash of annoyance. “Look, Sergeant, I don’t want to play Twenty Questions—”

She interrupted him by holding up a hand. “Wait up.” She slowed her horse and placed a hand against her revolver. It glistened from her cleaning, polishing, and refurbishing.

Bobby pulled back on the reins. He started to speak, then he glimpsed several figures scrambling down the sides of the hill. They were dressed in dusty jeans, threadbare shirts; some of them tried to take advantage of the brush cover, while others didn’t care if they were seen. They all carried sticks, crowbars, or unwieldy knives. It took them only a minute to spread out in a line, blocking the highway fifty yards ahead. Bobby counted fifteen men. Half were teenagers.

“Hey, what’s going on?” said Arnie, one of the scientists behind them. “What do they think they’re doing?”

Sergeant Morris turned in the saddle. “It’s your game, Lieutenant Carron. The rest of you keep quiet.”

“Thanks,” muttered Bobby. He left his rifle in the holster at the back of the saddle, not ready to pull it out yet.

One of the men stepped toward them. Bearded and balding, his patchy skin peeled from sunburn. The man stopped twenty yards away. He held a long iron bar like a swagger stick in his left hand. “Where you folks headed?”

Bobby wondered if the man was going to ask for a toll to use the road. He turned at the crunch of gravel and saw five more people come up behind them, blocking their return.

“White Sands. I’m Lieutenant Carron, representing General Bayclock at Kirtland.” Maybe the general’s bloodthirsty tactics would scare these people off.

“You’re going the wrong way. White Sands is due south.”

“So is Laguna Pueblo. We’re respecting Native American land. There’s been some trouble down there.”

The man grinned. “Good for you, Lieutenant. Still, a long way to carry your own food and water. I don’t think you’re going to make it. Your horses would fare better here, I’m sure.”

“We’ll resupply at Clines Corners before turning south. The general authorized us to exchange some supply chits, redeemable at Kirtland.”

“Redeemable at Kirtland?” The man roared as the rest of the group broke out in chuckles. “So Generalissimo Bayclock is going to let people walk into Albuquerque and pick up food? Well, then. You won’t mind donating some chits to make sure you get through the pass? For protection, you understand.”

Bobby drew himself up. This was weirdly medieval. “The chits aren’t for passage. We’re an official military expedition, operating under martial law. I’ll ask you gentlemen to allow us to pass, or face the consequences.”

The men laughed among themselves. The bearded man stepped closer. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Lieutenant. I was asking for a donation. If you can include a couple of these horses, and some of your supplies along with the chits, we’ll help you along.” He spoke softly and stared at Bobby.

As he approached, he seemed to notice Sergeant Morris for the first time. His eyes widened. “So what are you, missie, his protection? You’re probably worth more than a horse, aren’t you?”

Sergeant Morris pulled out her revolver. The man grinned. “You military types haven’t used those guns for a while, have you?” He puffed up as he walked, changing his path from Bobby to Catilyn. “What makes you so sure they’ll work?”

Bobby raised his voice. “This is your final warning.”

The man ignored him. He was within five yards when Sergeant Morris calmly brought the revolver up. She aimed at his crotch and glanced at Bobby; Bobby nodded, and she clicked off a round. The explosion of the gun echoed off the bare boulders.

The man grabbed at his groin and fell, screaming. The others in the mob stood in shock, uncertain what to do.

Bobby yanked out his rifle and moved it from side to side. The men took a hurried step back. Bobby raised his voice over the man’s screaming. “Anyone else?” He flipped off the safety.

The men murmured and made an opening for them. Bobby pointed his rifle at a teenage boy nearest the road. “Help your friend—Kirtland hospital will do what they can. The rest of you listen up! What goes on up here is your business, but down in the city, you’re under martial law. That law extends to any military personnel traveling through this pass.” He held up his rifle. “Our weapons still work just fine. Remember that next time.”

Bobby motioned with his head for Sergeant Morris and the three wide-eyed scientists to follow at a fast trot. “Move it.”

They rode the horses through the opening made by the bandits. Behind them, the scavengers muttered in indecision, the wounded man screamed on the ground. Bobby and Sergeant Morris kept their weapons leveled.

They didn’t speak until they left the group far behind. Soon, the rustling of their horses moving along the dusty roadside was the only sound. After another ten minutes, they rounded a curve to where the steep mountain pass opened up to show the eastern valley spreading out in front of them. Bobby could see mountains on the horizon, eighty miles away. Below them, the skeletal interstate highway wound through foothills. He saw a small town off in the distance.

Sergeant Morris turned and spoke her first unsolicited words to him. “You handled that nicely, Lieutenant.”

Bobby felt his shoulders sag with the release of tension. He gulped, feeling a sour taste claw his throat. “Nice shot yourself.” He yanked back on the reins, pulling the horse to a stop. Leaning over, he vomited.

Sergeant Morris came around. “You all right, sir?”

Bobby heaved once more, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He struggled to sit upright in the saddle. “Now I am. Just getting prepped for the exciting part of this trip.”

Chapter 56

The ranchhouse sat alone at the far end of a winding dirt driveway. Penned in by a barbed-wire fence, sheep grazed among the scrub around the house. Beside the house a 19th-century windmill stood motionless, waiting for a breeze so it could pump water from deep beneath the high desert.

Heather Dixon shifted the neon pink backpack on her shoulders. She brushed a hand across her forehead to wipe sweat and road dust away. The sun pounded down on them as she and Connor trudged up the long drive, leaving imprints from their hiking boots in the dirt.

Connor insisted that Heather take her own turn carrying the pack. He kept time on his watch, making sure that he didn’t do a minute more work than she did. Equality at its best, he called it. Heather wanted to carry her own weight, but he didn’t have to be so nit-picky about it. Instead of the pack, Connor carried the shotgun and the big hunting knife.

“We can get some water up there,” she said, “maybe some food.”

Connor’s face had been sunburned, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The ruddy change in his skin gave him a rugged appearance. He hadn’t shaved, but his beard was pale like his blond hair, making him look like a California beach bum. “I could use a shower too.” Connor winked at her. “Like to join me? I had fun the last time we took one.”

Heather answered him with a forced laugh, and turned away. Over the hard days of walking she had rapidly grown tired of Connor Brooks. She began to regret going with him at all, wandering on this aimless trek across the southwest, moving eastward with no destination in mind.

The sex had been good, one of the better parts of the whole experience. Lying under the stars, camping wherever they felt like, and totally free for the first time in her life—without a job to go back to, not caring about the social conventions that had tangled up her life. But lately even making love with Connor had become unpleasant, as if it was now expected of her, instead of being spontaneous.

Connor called them the “Bonnie and Clyde of the apocalypse,” and his goofy routine grated on her. The look in his eyes and the hidden focus of his thoughts scared her. She realized just how alone she was with him day after day.

Long before they reached the ranchhouse, Heather heard a dog start barking. She could see the big black mutt tied to the windmill frame by a long rope. The dog was shaggy, mostly sheepdog but with a dash of Labrador and German Shepherd. The dog barked and barked, but Heather detected no growling menace. After the petroplague, it probably saw few strangers.

Connor walked beside her carrying the shotgun as if he thought it made him invincible.

The front door opened, and a woman emerged; her open-mouthed smile was like a flower unfolding. She was in her late thirties with her hair tied in an unflattering ponytail. Her clothes had the worn broad-strokes appearance of homemade garments. The woman’s face lit up like a full moon, making her eyes seem small but bright. “Hello! Can we help you?”

Connor, playing his part of tough guy and asshole, stepped forward. He lowered his voice intentionally, like some kind of vigilante. “We came to take food and water.”

Heather shifted her pink backpack. She smiled at the woman. “Can you spare some?”

A second woman stepped out, looking wary. She had hovered just behind the other in the darkness of the house, watching and listening. This woman, perhaps a year or two older, wore similar clothes. Her face was gaunt, as if someone had nipped and tucked and tightened her expression over the years. She gave both Connor and Heather a wary look. “We’ve got a little.”

Connor craned his head, squinting to look through the shadows of the doorway. “So where’s the man of the house?”

The good-natured woman piped up, “He’s returning from temple in Salt Lake City.”

The gaunt woman answered simultaneously, “He’s out back.”

Connor snorted, ignoring the obvious lie. Turning to the good-natured woman, he said, “In Utah?” He pronounced it U-taw. “At temple? What are you, Aztecs or something?”

Heather glared at him and muttered, “They’re Mormons, stupid.”

“Mormons?” Connor straightened up and let out a guffaw. “So, these must be the guy’s two wives.” He laughed again.

The gaunt woman snapped, “Shelda’s my sister.”

“Hey,” Connor said looking to Heather with an expression of concentration on his face, “aren’t Mormons supposed to keep a year’s supply of everything? In case of emergencies. They must have plenty to share.”

The gaunt woman eased back toward the house, vanishing into the shadows. Heather knew she was going to go for a hidden weapon. Connor jerked up the shotgun in a frightening, smooth movement and pointed it toward the doorway.

The dog, its protective instincts suddenly ignited, went wild, barking and straining to the edge of its rope.

Connor pointed the shotgun at the animal as if extending a finger at a recalcitrant child and squeezed the trigger. The explosion echoed around the ranch yard and the dog flew backward into the air, its side ripped open by the scatter blast of the shotgun pellets. It tangled two legs into the rope as it somersaulted and lay in a bloodied heap in the dusty yard.

A smothering silence fell. Everyone stood transfixed. The old windmill, finally stirred by a breeze, creaked and turned twice then fell still.

Heather stared at Connor, not knowing what to say. The gun was so loud. This was the first time he had actually fired it, for all the threatening and blustering he had done over the past few days. It smelled foul and sulfurous.

Connor’s face took on a pinched, calculating look. “Maybe we should just stay, Heather. This place has everything we need, and I’m sick of hiking everywhere.” He laughed. “Go on ladies, get your tennis shoes on. You’ve got a lot of walking to do.”

Heather put her hands on her hips, refusing to let him see her fear. “Connor, cut it out!” She grabbed at the shotgun, but he snatched it away, glaring at her.

The moon-faced woman fell to her knees on the porch. She kept staring at the motionless dog bleeding into the dust.

The gaunt woman reappeared, her eyes as wide as coins. She gripped the door frame but she didn’t move a muscle.

Connor spoke to Heather while keeping the shotgun trained on the women. “What’s your problem? We’ve been trudging around this state like scavengers, and these bitches are sitting fat and cushy on a year’s worth of food. It’s our turn! We deserve a bit of convenience for a change. I thought you wanted to get back at the people who stepped all over you your whole life.”

Heather’s words came out quieter than she intended. “These people never did anything to me.”

“Well then let’s get that Al Sysco you keep complaining about.” He dropped the barrel of the shotgun and pointed toward the ladies’ feet. “I can make him dance like in an old cowboy movie. Pow, pow, pow!”

“Right, I want to hike all the way back to Flagstaff just so I can make a pathetic little man squirm. Cool it, Connor, we’ve got better things to do.” She turned to the gaunt woman, the only one capable of doing anything at the moment. “Would you get us some water and some packaged food?” She hesitated. “Please?”

Connor pointed the shotgun at her moon-faced sister. “And don’t try anything!” Heather didn’t like the predatory look in Connor’s eyes. More and more of his real personality was unfolding before her eyes. With a chill she wondered what he might have done to the women if she wasn’t there.

Connor snorted at Heather. “Man, what made you turn boring all of a sudden?”

Minutes later the gaunt woman returned with the supplies. Heather’s heart raced and she tried to slow her breathing. She was afraid the woman might have gone for a rifle of her own, and then things would have gotten messy. But she carried only water and some boxed food. “Here . . . now please, leave us alone.”

Connor was about to retort, but Heather grabbed his arm and forced him to turn around. “Let’s go,” she said, and they set off back down the dirt driveway.

As they departed, Heather glanced back. The gaunt woman took her sister’s hand and pulled her to her feet. The two of them moved slowly forward to stand in shock over their dead dog.

Chapter 57

“Hey, Spence—visitors!” The words echoed in the still air around the electromagnetic launcher on the slopes of Oscura Peak.

“Who is it?” Spencer asked with a sigh. Even with the isolation of the post-plague world, people still found ways to interrupt his work a dozen times a day. He swore that he would never be the person to bring back the telephone.

Gilbert Hertoya shrugged, his small, compact body silhouetted against the door of the tin-roofed accelerator. “Don’t know, but they’re riding down from the north.”

Spencer put down his wrench and wiped sweat from his forehead. His new beard itched like crazy in the stuffy heat. Pinholes of light punched through the metal siding, but no breeze came at all. Spencer could only stand to work inside the enclosure for half an hour at a time.

He left a jumble of wiring on the concrete floor. For the past few days it was the only work he could do that wouldn’t bring a squawk from his experimentalists. They kidded him and told him to keep away from the delicate refurbished equipment after the water-pump fiasco. Short no unskilled labor, Gilbert Hertoya had cheerfully put him to work laying down relay switches on the EM launcher facility. “If liberal arts students can handle it during the summer, I think you can manage,” Gilbert said.

Spencer emerged from the dim building into the brilliant desert sun; he held up a hand against the glare as he stared down the mountain slope. Gilbert stood on a pile of metal siding to get higher, pointing toward the north. “Looks like five of them.”

Spencer squinted. “All on horseback?”

“Yeah. And they’re not from Alamogordo unless they got lost coming back from Cloudcroft.”

“Too far south. Besides, they’d stick to the mountains if they were lost.” Spencer thought for a moment. “You know, Romero’s been getting some disturbing reports—martial law in Albuquerque, riots in El Paso, a lot of the Indian pueblos killing anyone who comes on their land. We’ve been lucky up here.”

Gilbert gingerly stepped down from the pile of rattling metal. “What should we do?”

“Send out the welcome wagon, what else?”

#

In the concrete blockhouse at the base of the railgun launcher, Spencer and Gilbert waited in the shade. The travelers arrowed straight for the facility—the five-mile launcher could be seen for miles around.

Spencer pushed back the drooping brim of his hat, arms folded as he watched the riders approach. The two in front wore Air Force uniforms, and he could see rifles packed behind their saddles. He had a sudden vision of the cavalry riding into town.

“What are they up to?” he muttered. Gilbert shaded his eyes and kept staring.

The broad-shouldered man in uniform looked young and big enough to be a football player. He called out when they were fifty yards away. “Yo! I’m Lieutenant Bobby Carron, looking for Dr. Lockwood. Can you tell me where to find him?”

Spencer squinted at the young man; the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Had they met before?

One of the three men in back leaned to the side and shouted, “Hey, Gilbert! That you, you old sand rat?”

Gilbert Hertoya broke into a grin. “Arnie!” He turned to Spencer and dropped his voice. “I used to work with him at Sandia. He’s okay.”

Arnie spread his arms. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Come on, let’s talk.” As the visitors kept approaching, Spencer saw a troubled look cross Arnie’s face. “You’re lucky you were down here when the plague hit, Gilbert. A lot of people died.”

Lieutenant Carron swung off his horse; Spencer racked his brain, trying to recall where he’d seen the man before. And then he remembered: the drive back from Livermore, the rental car breaking down out in the California desert. Spencer grinned and held out a hand. “I knew you looked familiar, Lieutenant. I’m Spencer Lockwood—you rescued me, just about a month ago, when I ran out of gas near Death Valley.”

Bobby held onto the horse’s reins and squinted at Spencer. A smile grew across his face. “You’re right. You know, I’d forgotten your name—and you didn’t have a beard then, did you?”

“No need to waste razors.”

Bobby laughed. “It didn’t occur to me that you’d be the same person I was supposed to find.” He introduced his group. Everyone seemed pleased except sour-faced Sergeant Morris. She stiffly shook Spencer’s hand without a trace of warmth.

Spencer said, “What can I do for you, now that you’ve come across half the state looking for me?”

“We heard you’ve been generating electricity down here,” Bobby said. “We came to get the full details.”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy. I was afraid this might happen.”

Bobby fumbled with the button on his uniform shirt. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper, smoothed it, then handed it to Spencer. He looked embarrassed. “We’re actually on an official mission, for what it’s worth. I’m representing General Bayclock from Kirtland.”

Spencer held onto the paper, but kept looking at Bobby. “I thought you said you were assigned to China Lake. What’s a Navy man doing in the middle of the desert?”

“That’s a long story. Here, this explains part of it.”

Spencer started to read the paper. The words ATTENTION TO ORDERS were stamped across the top. He lifted an eyebrow. “Bayclock is the head guy up at the base, isn’t he?”

“Base commander . . . and, uh, Marshall of Albuquerque, I guess with the martial law and all that.”

“Marshall, huh. Like Matt Dillon?” Spencer scanned the dense paragraphs, growing more uneasy. “So this general thinks that, since he was technically responsible for our logistics before the petroplague, we’re under his martial law authority now?” Spencer looked up. “He never once visited our facility, never so much as called me on the phone—and now we’re supposed to develop a plan to provide Albuquerque with electricity, just because he says so?” It might have been funny under other circumstances. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Bobby shrugged.

“The general is not kidding, Dr. Lockwood,” Sergeant Morris said stiffly.

Spencer folded the paper, resisting the impulse to rip it to shreds and scatter the pieces across the desert. He ignored Sergeant Morris. “So what do you think of this, Lieutenant?”

Bobby held up his hands. “Hey, I’m only the messenger . . .”

“Don’t worry, you saved my life once, and I won’t shoot you for bringing bad news. In fact, I don’t even have a gun.”

Spencer turned to the rest of the visitors. Gilbert Hertoya and Arnie stepped up beside them. Squat Sergeant Morris remained on her horse like a statue of an old war hero that belonged in some small-town square.

Spencer said, “Okay, so what’s going on? What do the rest of you know about this?”

Bobby Carron said slowly, “Can we get out of the sun?” He took Spencer’s arm. Stepping away from Sergeant Morris, he whispered, “I’ve got stuff to tell you about Bayclock that you won’t believe!”

#

Spencer, Bobby Carron, and Sergeant Morris sat on their mounts outside the fenced-off antenna farm. Rita Fellenstein and the three visiting scientists stood on the other side of Spencer. The expanse of whiplike microwave antennas spread out before them, like a field of gleaming silver stalks.

Spencer leaned on the saddle as Bobby spoke. The young officer seemed to have trouble verbalizing his thoughts.

“I’m not a scientist or anything like that,” said Bobby, “but I had enough engineering back at Annapolis to know the difference between what’s possible and what’s likely. I’d sure hate to go back and tell the general that although it might be possible to generate electricity this way, it isn’t likely to happen on the scale he envisions. This is really just a test bed! There’s not enough power for everyone in Albuquerque. So what should we do? Tell him it was a waste of our time?”

Spencer shifted his weight in his saddle. “I don’t think I’d want to supply Bayclock with electricity even if I could. And if I can believe what you told me, they should oust him!”

“Believe him, Dr. Lockwood,” Arnie broke in harshly. “My wife and children would still be alive if it wasn’t for Bayclock’s crackdowns.”

Spencer scratched his beard. “Helping Bayclock amounts to validating his position, agreeing with the atrocities he’s committed.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I can’t help you. We’ve got a fragile enough toehold out here, and taking on anything else right now would push us over the brink. Between you and me, if the general were running a different sort of operation, we might be able to take on some extra people, try and help him in the long term. I don’t want to seem like a jerk, but . . .” He shrugged.

Bobby’s horse lifted its head and snorted, as if to agree with what Spencer said. Bobby pulled back on the reins. “I can’t blame you.” He smiled weakly. “I’m not looking forward to going back and delivering the bad news.”

Rita Fellenstein pulled her horse over to join them. Her long legs dangled down to the horse’s knees, even in her stirrups. She spat a wad of chewing tobacco at the ground. “So why go back, Bobby? We could use some help getting the launcher running. A big guy like you would come in handy with the launcher.”

Bobby looked out across the desert. Spencer guessed he had been thinking the same thing himself.

“If nobody goes back, how’s the general going to know that something didn’t happen to you?” Rita continued. “He knows about the gangs outside the city, and he probably doesn’t have a clue what other crazies are out here. It took five of you two weeks to get here. So what’s he going to do, force an army to march down to rescue you? Sounds like he’s got enough trouble in his own back yard.”

Arnie placed a hand on Gilbert Hertoya’s shoulder. “No way am I going back there. I’m staying here.” The two other scientists quickly voiced their agreement.

Bobby stared out at the antenna farm. A warm breeze whipped around them, driving a miniature duststorm.

“The Lieutenant and I are not deserting,” Sergeant Morris said. “You can talk about him all you like, but General Bayclock does have the proper authority—and you are all obligated to follow his orders.”

Spencer turned his horse around, putting his back to the wind. Through the rising heat he caught a glimpse of the supply wagon from Alamogordo coming toward the blockhouse in the distance. “Let’s get out of this wind. We’ll unload the supply wagon and talk about this later.”

#

By the time the group reached the command trailers, the supplies were mostly unloaded. Spencer was surprised to see Lance Nedermyer standing on the flat back of the cart, helping roll a 50-gallon aluminum container of water off the side. Spencer pushed back his hat. “Hi Lance. Need help?”

“Sure.”

With the extra people, it took little time to unload the five drums of water. Rita went to check the supplies stored under the trailer, taking the three new scientists with her. Nedermyer leaned back against the wagon and wiped his face with the back of his hand; his mirrored sunglasses had fallen apart more than a month ago, casualties of the petroplague.

“So what brings you out here, Lance?”

The Washington bureaucrat took a long drink of tepid water before answering. Like the others, he had not shaved in nearly a month. His beard had shifted from looking scraggly to the verge of bushiness. Lance looked as if he missed his suits even more than his wife and daughters back in the D.C. area.

He sounded bitter. “They’ve changed their minds about heading up to Cloudcroft. You’ve got them excited about bringing electricity on-line, and they don’t want to think about wintering in the mountains. I guess too many people remember the old ways, and you’re giving them false hope to hang on.”

“How do you know it’s a false hope?”

A bemused smile came over Lance’s face. “You really don’t know, do you Spence?”

“What are you talking about? We need all the hope we can get.”

Lance shook his head. “They’re barely hanging on down there. It’s tough, Spencer, not a game. The majority of people might not make it through the first year.”

Spencer looked incredulous. “All the more reason to get things going here! What good does it do to herd them into the mountains?”

“There’s game, firewood . . . and water for God’s sake! At least they’ve got the basics to keep them alive. Down here, all you have is desert—and your dammed microwave farm that can’t even transmit power more than twenty miles. Hell, we’d be better off in Albuquerque—at least General Bayclock is doing the sensible thing, feeding the people, keeping the law. He’s a hell of a lot more realistic than anyone around here.”

Spencer bristled at the criticism. He really didn’t need this; maybe it was time to do what a leader was supposed to do, and toss the bugger out! He’d put up with Lance for too long, hoping he’d change his ways.

“We ought to feel pretty lucky, Lance. From what Lieutenant Carron here has been telling us, things are ten times as bad in Albuquerque. I can’t buy any of this ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ survival talk. I think it’s about time we start all pulling together.”

Spencer nodded to the three scientists who had accompanied Bobby Carron and Sergeant Morris down from Albuquerque. “Ask those three what it means to have hope, where somebody’s actually trying to make things better.”

Lance stared at Spencer. “What are you saying?”

Spencer felt lightheaded—in the past he had tried to avoid direct confrontation, but these were new times, new ways. “This job is tough enough without being second guessed on everything I do, Lance. It’s time for you to either pitch in or get out.”

“Second guessed? What, are you afraid to get a little valid criticism? Come on, Spencer—every science project in the book debates the issues.”

“That’s just it—this isn’t a science project anymore. It’s survival. We’ve debated things long enough. Either throw your hat in the ring or get out.” Spencer breathed heavily, his face flushed.

The smile on Lance’s face tightened. “So it’s put up or shut up? I didn’t think you had it in you, Spencer.”

“If you’re going to Cloudcroft, I want you on the wagon when it heads back. You can have your pick of supplies before you go and a horse.” Spencer paused. “Lieutenant Carron’s heading back to Albuquerque if you’d rather go there. It’s your choice.”

Lance’s mouth twisted up. He turned to Bobby Carron. “When are you heading back, Lieutenant? Mind if I come with you?”

Bobby turned away; his massive hand opened and closed.

Sergeant Morris looked to Bobby, but when he still didn’t answer, she said, “I’d like to get back as soon as possible, sir. The general was quite explicit in his orders.”

Bobby kept staring out in the distance. Lance turned to him. “Lieutenant? Is it okay if I ride along?”

“Do what you want.” It took Bobby an effort to speak. “I’m staying here.” He looked to Spencer. “That is, if Dr. Lockwood needs another hand getting this microwave farm to work.”

Spencer blinked. “Sure, uh, we can always use someone who wants to help. Same for you, Sergeant Morris.” He hesitated. “And that goes for you, too, Lance, if you change your mind.”

Lance Nedermyer shook his head; his entire gaunt body moved with the movement. “I’ve made up my mind. Sergeant . . . ?”

The woman’s mouth was drawn tight; she looked at Bobby as if he had become the lowest form of slime. Her deep voice sounded harsh. “The Lieutenant is old enough to know what he’s doing. . . and knows the consequences for disobeying an order, deserting during martial law. They hang people for less than that.”

Bobby nodded, still looking at the horizon. His hand continued to open and close. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve seen Bayclock do it.”

Chapter 58

With pillars of steam and dark smoke, the train announced its presence in the morning calm. The whistle, thin and tinny in the distance, was loud enough that the people in the Altamont commune dropped their work and ran to hilltops to see what was coming down the Central Valley.

“It’s a train,” Todd Severyn said in disbelief, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand and craning forward. “It’s a friggin’ train! Can you believe it?”

Jackson Harris stood next to him, his dark skin glistening with sweat. His beard and hair stuck out in all directions, as if he had wrestled with a hurricane. “An old steam train,” Harris said. “How did they ever get it running?”

“How do they keep it running!”

The distant locomotive hauled four cars behind it, a passenger car, dining car, and two box cars, as well as a car filled with wood mounded high behind the engineer’s cab.

“This is great news,” Todd said. “I’ll check it out. Looks like he’s heading toward Tracy.”

When Todd whistled, both horses trotted over, eager for a ride. He patted Stimpy on the neck. “Next time, girl. It’s Ren’s turn.”

Todd saddled Ren and made ready to swing himself up, then ran back toward the small house trailer. Though Todd got up at dawn, Iris was never an early riser. And although they shared the trailer for convenience, Todd was careful to respect her privacy. He banged on the side. “Hey, Iris—come on out!”

She stepped out the swinging door, bleary-eyed and blinking at the commotion.

“It’s a train, Iris! I’m going to check it out. I’ll be back as soon as I have some information.”

“A train? Impossible.” She folded her arms. “How does is it work? They couldn’t have found a way to neutralize the petroplague.”

“Do you want come with me?”

She ran a hand through her unkempt black hair and seemed to think about it. “No, go on. Just let me know what you find out.”

Todd had already turned for Stimpy, too excited to reply.

#

The locomotive sat ticking and hissing, at a standstill in the Tracy railyards. Sleek like a giant black caterpillar, its wheels and cow-catcher were blazoned in bright scarlet. The ornate hand rail running along the boiler, the hinges, the bell and steam-whistle all shone bright gold. The sooty smokestack flared out in a wide black cone, and all its rivets glittered like brass buttons. In gold-painted letters under the two windows in the engineer’s cab was the name Steam Roller.

Todd led his horse in among the people crowding the tracks. Iris was right—what was the catch? If this one train works, then where are the rest of them?

Other people arrived, walking along the railroad tracks, stepping between the ties. They had seen the locomotive approaching for miles, and they had walked from their homes and their work out in the produce fields. Todd sensed a childish excitement, as if Santa Claus had appeared to them long after they had stopped believing in him.

The locomotive steam whistle blew with a screech that set them all jumping. Todd grabbed Ren’s bridle to keep the horse from rearing in panic. The crowd fell silent as someone stirred in the locomotive’s engine cab and stepped out, squinting in the bright sunlight and looking at his audience. Three other men stayed inside the cab, watching the crowd and allowing their spokesman to meet the spectators alone.

The man wasn’t tall, but his build was massive and bearlike. He had broad shoulders and a muscular chest stuffed inside a cotton engineer’s coveralls. His dark and splotchy complexion hinted at a mixed race; his skin glistened with sweat.

But the most striking feature was that his completely hairless head sat on his shoulders like a bowling ball: no beard, no mustache—even his eyebrows had been shaved away. As the bald man gripped the door frame with one hand, Todd noticed dark hair sprouting from his knuckles. What would make a man want to shave his entire head like that?

The engineer bellowed at them in a voice that seemed used to giving orders and shouting long distances. “Civilization isn’t dead if you don’t let it die! We can’t give up! With human perseverance, we can bring it all back.”

The man’s words seemed rehearsed, as if he had shouted the same thing at every stop along the track. Still, the speech reflected Todd’s own thoughts. “As more and more of us pitch in, we can make a miracle happen.”

The people standing on each side of the train murmured, as if they didn’t believe him. But at least they listened to the man—he had impressed them just by arriving in his train.

“What’s your name?” Todd shouted.

The dark man looked at him. “Call me . . . Casey Jones.”

Some of the people snickered, others didn’t get the joke. “Listen to me,” said the man claiming to be Casey Jones. “We got this train running again. Wood-burning locomotives were used long before we became dependent on plastics and fossil fuels. We had to refit some parts, but it was nothing that a little know-how and persistence couldn’t do.

“We’re traveling through central California to collect your extra food, the stuff that’ll decay in your fields. We intend to take this train down to Los Angeles and bring relief to the starving people there.”

“Boo!” someone shouted. “What about ourselves, man? LA deserves what they got—polluting the air, squandering water!”

Casey Jones glared at the audience from his high position on the Steam Roller’s steps and began to speak with the fervor of a revivalist preacher. “They’re cut off down there! They need the supplies. They’re starving. Starving. You’ve got too much here. You can’t use everything in your fields, and you know it.” He held his hands out, pleading, as if he needed this mission to succeed more than the people in Los Angeles did.

“Give me your surplus. We’ll take it down to feed the people. It’s the least we can do. Consider it the first step to reconnecting the United States. How can you argue against that?”

“Screw the U.S! What have they done for us?”

“What will they give in exchange?” the mayor of Tracy asked.

“Who knows?” Casey Jones said, as if angry at the suggestion. “What’s important is we’ll be helping them. On my trip back up, we can haul industrial supplies, things they can’t use. We’ll try to barter as best as we can. How would you like new pieces of sheet glass, or metal, clothes, ceramic parts,?”

“How do we know you’ll bring anything back?” the mayor said.

“You don’t! You’re missing the whole point.”

“I’ll give you some,” a tall, thin man said. Todd recognized him as Marvin Esteban, one of the local farmers. “I’ve got cabbages. I’m already sick of cabbages. We’re going to be eating sauerkraut all winter.” People chuckled.

As a few others chimed in with offers to donate bushels of almonds or tomatoes or fruit, Todd found his mind wandering. This train was making a bee-line down the Central Valley toward Los Angeles . . . toward Pasadena and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And the solar satellites.

Todd leaned over to pat Ren’s neck, his face burning with excitement. This just might be a chance to do something worthwhile, something that could really make a difference—besides acting as a technical liaison for Doog’s commune. He didn’t know if that crackpot solar-power scheme would work, but just having the chance made it worth the trip. And the fact that it seemed so impossible made it all the more desirable to do. Anything was better than sitting around and growing sprouts.

He grinned and yanked on Ren’s bridle as the horse began to sniff the ground. Todd wondered what he would have to do to talk Iris into going with him.

#

Back at the Altamont commune, Todd and Iris’s trailer sat on four wheel rims, leveled with concrete blocks. Todd had meant to move out as soon as he found another place, but he never seemed to get around to it.

The trailer had once been hauled around the country by a retired couple from Alexandria, Louisiana. Abandoned in the Altamont and scavenged by Doog, the trailer had begun falling apart long before the petroplague hit. Its sides were white aluminum, bent in places, stained with green traces of moss.

After Todd and Iris had patched the cracks and stuffed rags into the holes left by dissolving insulation, the trailer remained cozy even in the evening chill. Remembering that first night together by the campfire, Todd had suggested they sleep in separate beds. Iris had shrugged, not pushing the issue—and Todd kicked himself, too embarrassed to raise the issue again.

Now, snug inside their trailer with the door closed and the windows shut, Todd and Iris argued far into the night.

Iris talked, her words growing sharper. “Todd, you’re just excited. You’re like a little kid in a toy store and you’re going off half cocked. You can’t save the world by yourself. And all you’d be doing is running away when we need you here.”

“But we’re not doing anything here,” he said in exasperation. “We’re like a bunch of old soldiers who never saw battle, sitting around talking about the war. You worked so hard at Stanford, trying to stop the spread of the petroplague. And now that the world has changed, you just want to roll over and play dead. There’s still a lot more things we can do, and this is one of them! Casey Jones and his train are proof that it’s not as hopeless as we thought. Let’s at least try it.” He hesitated, and said almost as in afterthought, “We can always come back here if it doesn’t work.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Casey Jones!” She sat forward on the edge of the small bed. Anger vibrated from her. “Get a grip, Todd. Look at a map for once. We don’t have any real transportation. We can’t just think of ourselves as the jet-setting crowd like before. You don’t leave San Francisco, jaunt down to Los Angeles, pick up some satellites, hoof it over to New Mexico, and then trot back here if it doesn’t work.”

“Don’t you feel any responsibility for what happened? Remember spraying Promethus? Well, I do.”

“But there are so many important things we can do here. I agree that the world is going to have to pick itself up, but it has to be a grassroots movement, in small places like this. We have to build from the bottom up, not the top down. We don’t have a foundation anymore, that’s what we have to work on.”

Todd thought of the days he spent aimlessly riding around the hills, just talking to people, shooting the breeze, carrying news and gossip from one group to another. What point did that serve? He tried to keep from snorting. “Like what?”

“Like fine-tuning trade between the communities surrounding us. Like working on getting those electrical lines laid from the windmills out to Tracy, or back down into Livermore. You said yourself the Lab people there have come up with ways to refurbish substations and bring back limited electricity. Think of what that would mean in rebuilding the world.”

Todd didn’t see how that was different from using the solar-power satellites. Besides, once the smallsats were functioning they could serve a much wider area than just a limited island up in the hills. But that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to go.

“Everything that we do here sets an example. It has an impact, Todd. Just stick with it and you’ll see.”

“Yeah, like your music concert. Tell me how that’s more important than getting an entire solar-power farm working. Explain to me how finding a way to play rock-and-roll is going to help a lot of people.”

Iris looked stung. “You’ve got to have a dream, Todd.”

“Sounds more like a nightmare to me,” Todd muttered, his own anger growing . . . he couldn’t reign it in anymore. “Bringing back drugs and noise and juvenile delinquents—that’s one thing I’d rather leave behind with the old society. Iron Zeppelin and Visual Purple and Neon Kumquats or whatever those bands are called. You can keep them.”

Appalled, Iris actually giggled. “Todd, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

Todd knocked the wooden chair backward as he stood up. The chair would have tipped over, but the trailer was so cramped it merely bumped against the wall and righted itself again.

“Fine, Iris,” he said. “If trying to make the world a better place makes me stupid, I’ll just go on being an idiot. But at least I’ll be helping a heck of a lot more people then these wackos we’re living with.” He opened the door.

“Todd—where are you going?” Iris’s dark eyes widened.

“Out. Away from . . . from this.”

“Todd!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. That’s a promise,” he growled and stomped outside.

The door slammed by itself, and he heard Iris calling, “Wait!” But her words were cut off by the smack of the door, which sounded like a gunshot in the darkness. Todd walked off. He considered taking one of the horses to Tracy, where Casey Jones and his steam train waited. But he knew the commune would need Ren and Stimpy—and they’d be safe here, just like Alex Kramer would have wanted. He went off on foot into the moonlit night.

#

Inside the refurbished dining car of the steam train, Captain Miles Uma, formerly of the Oilstar Zoroaster, relaxed and pondered the night. Used for storage, the dining car now carried crates of ripening fruits and vegetables, nuts, and other produce. The odors mingled in the tight space.

Rex O’Keefe and the Gambotti brothers kept to themselves in the passenger car; Uma didn’t mind. Once Uma had gained their confidence, they did what they were told, as if they were happy that someone had finally stepped up and taken charge, accepted some responsibility. Like any good captain, Uma treated them with respect—and now that they had order back in their lives, they didn’t mind the work.

Uma cracked open two of the narrow windows to let the night breeze in. Outside, the sleeping city of Tracy was dark, save for the fires of a few late-night people; everyone else bedded down with the fall of darkness.

By the flickering light of a stubby beeswax candle, Uma dipped his fingers in a bowl of tepid water, took a bar of soap and lathered his face and head. He removed a long, sharp straight-razor, propped a small mirror up against the inner wall of the train where he could see his reflection, then began to shave by candlelight. First, to hone his attention, he shaved his eyebrows; then he worked at his beard stubble, and finally scraped his head, shaving the back by feel alone.

It made him feel clean, and renewed and different. He wished he could slice away the pounding guilt as easily.

Guiding a train along the abandoned tracks was very different from captaining an enormous supertanker like the Zoroaster. But it kept him moving and gave him some way to stop the clamoring depression; Rex O’Keefe and the others were swept along with his dream. Uma found that by focusing on a task, he could stop thinking about the wreck against the Golden Gate Bridge . . . .

As everything fell apart, Uma had wandered north from San Francisco, changing his name, fearing that someone might recognize him. Uma had been doing a good job of blaming himself. He worked odd jobs, trying to run from himself and watching with a growing anguish as things grew worse. Until he stumbled across the train station in Napa Valley.

Uma finished shaving and blew out the candle, feeling his way to an empty, comfortable seat in the refurbished dining car. He was exhausted, not from the work that he did to keep the wood piled in the furnace, but from being sociable tonight.

He didn’t enjoy social occasions, but the people had prepared a meal for them, wanting to talk for hours, until Uma and the others had finally gone back to the train. He had tried to answer most of their questions, but it got tiresome after a while.

In the morning at dawn, just as he was struggling to awaken from his cramped sleeping space on the dining car bench, Uma snapped his eyes open when he heard a rapping on one of the half-open windows.

“Hey, Casey Jones, you in there?” Uma wrenched his stocky body into a sitting position and blinked out at a tall cowboy. “I want to join your group,” the cowboy said. “I think you need another person.”

Uma went stiffly to the window of the dining car, not welcoming the man inside. The cowboy walked over with a large nervous grin on his face and stuck his hand through the open window.

“I’m Todd Severyn, pleased to meet you.” Uma shook his hand warily. The cowboy looked strong, but troubled circles surrounded his red-rimmed eyes. Grass stains splotched his pants. “I walked all night long just to get here.”

“We could maybe use some help, “ Uma said, “but it’s a backbreaking job. You sure it’s worth it to you?”

“It depends on your priorities.” Todd’s gruff answer seemed to speak to more than just the question Uma had asked. “I got my reasons.”

Uma stepped aside just enough to let the cowboy onto the train. “Don’t we all?”

Chapter 59

Five miles south of General Bayclock’s Manzano Mountain headquarters, a field of mirrors spread across three acres. Though gaps separated the three-foot mirrors, the reflected glare gave the impression of a seamless plain of molten silver.

The suggestion to use Sandia Albuquerque’s abandoned solar test project to generate electricity sounded like a good idea, but Bayclock wanted to see the apparatus himself.

The computer-controlled mirrors were designed to rotate, follow the sun and focus the blinding rays on a three-story concrete tower. The intense illumination heated a special vessel to generate steam that would turn turbines and produce power. Now the mirrors stood frozen in place, useless without hourly brute-force manual adjustment. It would take years to polish the mothballed mirrors back to the accuracy needed for optimal focus.

The scientific pinheads didn’t have the common sense to engineer anything practical, Bayclock thought as he scowled at the useless apparatus. No allowance for contingencies. They reveled in the nifty toys they built and patted each other on the back. The general held little hope that refurbishing this system would be anything more than a futile effort. He had seen enough. He strode through the field of mirrors, back to where his horse waited with the armed escort.

The woman who headed up Sandia’s energy research program—Bayclock had already forgotten her name—trailed after him. She looked as overbearing as the number of programs she had once managed. At just over six feet tall and weighing close to 200 pounds, she rivaled Bayclock in size; her big butt and flabby arms implied a contempt for her own physical health. Her ragtag group of scientists followed as she kept up with Bayclock, step by step.

“You want the electricity, we’ll deliver. It’s a simple matter of granting us access to the dry lubricants. I guarantee we can have part of the mirror field up and running at minimal levels within a week. Replacing the seals comes next. And after that, eighteen months to optimize the mirrors. No problem.”

Bayclock reached the edge of the mirror maze. His executive officer and three armed guards waited on their own horses. Bayclock said, “You told me this field was computer controlled. How are you going to synchronize the mirrors’ movements to the sun without computers?”

The woman waved her hands while she talked, as if pointing at an equation-strewn whiteboard. “We’d need less than a hundred people, each physically positioning ten mirrors apiece.”

Bayclock snorted. “A hundred people out in the sun everyday? While you’re polishing mirrors? That’s an awful lot of work to get a hundred kilowatts of power. Intelligence reports that’s ten times less than the White Sands group can deliver!”

The Sandia woman put her hands on her hips. “That’s a hundred kilowatts more than you have right now! And it’s a lot fewer people than you use to chase kids after curfew. What’s more important?”

Bayclock walked away, ignoring her. She grabbed him by the elbow. “Look, General, you wanted a way to generate electricity. We can do it. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

Bayclock shook his arm free. One of the guards unshouldered his firearm, but the exec put out an arm to stop him. The exec called, “Messenger approaching, General.”

Bayclock spotted a lone horseman traveling across the desert. He had left orders not to be bothered—unless it was important. He turned back to the scientists. “There’s not enough dry lubricant to go around. We need it for refurbishing our weapons, so you’ll have to come up with another way. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a slight problem obtaining supplies right now.”

“But without the lubricant, the mirrors won’t turn,” the woman said.

“Figure out a way! Your minimal electricity should be enough to power the Manzano complex. I want it before the end of the week. The rest of the city will have to wait.”

Dismissing the Sandia woman, Bayclock turned as the approaching horseman reached the field of mirrors. Wearing desert camouflage, the rider dismounted and popped to attention, snapping off a salute. “The White Sands expedition has returned, General.”

Bayclock said, “Thank God for that Navy pilot.” He swung up on his horse, leaving the scientists in the middle of a thousand reflected suns. The exec motioned for the guards to follow.

The Sandia woman raised her voice. “General, you’re asking the impossible!”

Bayclock dug his heels in the black gelding’s flank, turning the mount around. “Do you think you’re playing in some R&D sandbox? Just do it! You also better be ready to interface with White Sands. I’ve had it with people questioning my authority.”

As the general rode off with his escort, he felt a grim satisfaction that at least Lieutenant Carron had come through. Two types of people—fighter pilots and weenies. He knew who he could trust.

#

Bayclock took the point at a fast trot as his party rode through the high chain-link gates of the Manzano complex. Armed guards stood at attention in the shade, giving their commander a salute as he rode past.

Four razor-wire fences surrounded the complex, twenty feet apart with bare dirt in between, making the area look like a giant racetrack draped over the rugged hills. Several two-story buildings, made of wood and covered with chipped white paint, formed the central part of the installation. Dozens of concrete bunkers dotted the four hills.

Bayclock rode directly up to the largest bunker behind the old wooden buildings. Only two horses stood outside tied to a NO PARKING sign, nuzzling the dusty ground for something to eat.

Bayclock turned to his exec. “Get Mayor Reinski out here ASAP. Tell him Lieutenant Carron is back from White Sands. His luck just changed.”

Reaching his office, Bayclock found Sergeant Catilyn Morris and a gaunt bearded man he did not recognize. They both stood when the general entered. Covered with trail dust, the stocky blond sergeant looked as if she hadn’t had a shower in weeks. He would have to reprimand her for not making herself more presentable for her commanding officer.

“Afternoon, General.”

“Sergeant.” He nodded at the stranger, looking around for the Navy pilot. “Welcome back. Where’s Lieutenant Carron? I expect him to give me a full debriefing.”

Sergeant Morris drew her mouth tight. “Well, sir—”

The bearded man stepped forward and held out a dirty hand. “I’m Dr. Lance Nedermyer, General. We met a few months ago at a ceremony to turn over the adaptive optics facility to the University of New Mexico. Jeffrey Mayeaux was with us.”

Bayclock returned the handshake and squinted at Nedermyer’s face. He remembered the stranger as a heavier man with mirrored sunglasses and a brusque manner. Nedermyer looked as if he had lost thirty pounds, the beard offset the thinness of his face. Bayclock did not approve of beards. The Washington bureaucrat looked more like an old prospector than a DOE inspector.

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Bayclock asked, looking at Sergeant Morris. “And what are you doing here, Nedermyer?”

Sergeant Morris stiffened as Nedermyer spoke quickly. “I was stuck down at White Sands when the petroplague hit. I tried to help the people of Alamogordo move to safety in the mountains, but they elected to throw their hats in with Spencer Lockwood. He’s a loose cannon, General, does whatever he damned well feels like, without regard to the consequences.

“He’s got them convinced he can save the world with his solar satellites. Instead of trying to make themselves self-sufficient with the resources on hand, he’s got them working on a railgun launcher, running electrical wires out to substations in the middle of the desert.”

Bayclock sat behind his desk. “Does the solar farm work?”

“That depends.” Nedermyer fidgeted. “But—”

Bayclock raised his voice. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “I asked a simple question, Nedermyer. Does it work?”

“Well, yes sir, it does.”

“So, Lieutenant Carron and the Sandia scientists I sent down there are finalizing plans to bring the microwave technology up to Albuquerque? How soon can we get it working here?”

Nedermyer looked annoyed. “You don’t understand, General. Lockwood’s dangerous. He’s got his priorities all wrong. He’s having trouble even transmitting the power over twenty miles—”

Bayclock interrupted, tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death. “Do you damned scientists have to find a caveat in every argument? The microwave farm works, does it or doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes it does, but—”

“Then I don’t care if they transmit the power into the New Mexico utility grid or if they build us another microwave farm up here. It works—that’s all that matters. The orbiting satellites are immune to the petroplague, and it’s a resource we should use. I’ve got two laboratories full of people that can work out the details. Got it?”

Nedermyer opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it, frustrated. Sergeant Morris stepped forward. “General, I’m afraid you’re not going to get any support from White Sands.”

“What?” Bayclock looked up. “That’s ludicrous. The White Sands facility is under my command. Did Lieutenant Carron stay down there to iron out the details?”

Sergeant Morris looked hopelessly to Nedermyer, who shook his head. Nedermyer said, “Your boys have jumped ship, General. Not only is White Sands refusing to help you, but the scientists you sent and your Navy lieutenant have elected to work for Lockwood. They’re not coming back.”

“They deserted,” Sergeant Morris said, as if it was her fault.

A storm gathered inside Bayclock’s head. “Impossible! Carron wouldn’t even think of desertion. He’s a fighter pilot! He can’t.”

“I”m afraid it’s true, General,” said Sergeant Morris. Her voice sounded strained, as if each word might carry her over the edge of a cliff. “I . . . I warned him about what he was doing. He fully understands the consequences.”

Bayclock felt his face flush with anger and disbelief. He looked at his lithographs of fighter aircraft, his awards, his diplomas. Survival in the post-petroleum world was built on a foundation of eggshells, and cornerstones could not be allowed to crumble. He’d trusted the Navy lieutenant—fighter pilots were a special breed, too tightly taught, too highly focused and motivated to make frivolous decisions. Dammit, there had to be a mistake, some other reason why Carron would appear to bug out.

Bayclock looked narrowly at Nedermyer. “Could this Lockwood character have coerced Lieutenant Carron into staying, forced him in some way?”

Nedermyer shook his head. “No, General. It was pretty clear the lieutenant chose to stay. Dr. Lockwood vowed never to help you and practically dared you to come take over his site . . . .”

Bayclock’s breathing quickened. “Sergeant? Is that your assessment as well?”

Sergeant Morris held Bayclock’s gaze. This time her voice was firm. “That’s pretty much it, sir. Except that Dr. Lockwood said that the people of Albuquerque should revolt and oust you.”

The general simmered. When he was in a fighter plane and lost control, Bayclock relied on his training: keep a cool head, run through the procedures. Losing control of himself as well as the machine he commanded would kill him for sure. The same thing was happening now on a larger scale. He focused his anger into a small, laser-bright pinpoint.

He knew his priorities. Returning electrical power to Albuquerque was the next crucial step in pulling the city out of this mess. He intended his operation to be a model for President Mayeaux’s monumental efforts to keep the country together. The U.S. needed reliable electricity to bring access to water, food, transportation, communication.

And they needed law and order. With half a million people relying on Bayclock’s effort, he knew what he had to do.

His exec stepped through the office door. He tucked his blue cap under his arm and wiped a sheen of perspiration from his sunburned forehead. “Sir, Mayor Reinski is on his way over and will be here within the hour. Do you still want to see him?”

“Later.” Bayclock dismissed his exec with a wave. His jaw tightened. “Nedermyer, what do you know about Lockwood’s operation at White Sands?”

Nedermyer looked puzzled. “Most everything, I suppose. I approved all his designs back at DOE headquarters.”

“Could you get it fully functional?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask you that, doctor. Are you as good as Lockwood?”

Nedermyer lifted his chin. “If I’m given the authority and the manpower, I can do it.”

“All right. I want you to shave off that beard and make yourself presentable.” He turned to Sergeant Morris. “It took you a week to get down there?”

“Yes, sir.”

On horseback, thought Bayclock. That meant about three weeks on a forced march. Could he afford it? With superior weaponry and training, an armed expedition to White Sands would require relatively few men, and the payoff would be enormous, both in the technology they would liberate and in reinforcing the general’s authority.

He spoke to his executive officer with a heavy voice. “Get Colonels David and Nachimya in here. White Sands doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that they’re still under martial law.”

He cracked his knuckles again. “They’re about to have their assets confiscated.”

Chapter 60

The train journey gave purpose to Todd’s life again.

Once the locomotive got up its full head of steam, Todd helped the Gambotti brothers and Rex O’Keefe toss split wood into the furnace. Dax and Roberto Gambotti hoarsely sang old songs while Rex sat behind them, supervising the stoking. Waving smoke from his eyes and sipping on a coffee cup filled with chardonnay, Rex expounded on the virtues of the wine they carried with them: merlot, cabernet, reisling. Todd had never been much of a wine drinker himself.

The big coffee-colored man who called himself Casey Jones didn’t move from the engineer’s cab, as if he had sworn to keep vigil over their journey. Covered with soot and sweating from both the work and the heat, Todd exhilarated in the constant physical effort, helping the Steam Roller chug ahead.

The tracks unreeled in front of them across California’s brown Central Valley. To their left, a low line of hills grew larger hour after hour as the valley widened, and the tracks swung east to flank the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Every ten or twenty miles they had to stop to clear debris from the track; they pushed wood, cars, and once the carcass of a Piper Cub aircraft off the metal rails. Even out in the unpopulated areas, people came running after the train. Once they heard gunshots. Casey Jones wanted to make it the rest of the way to Los Angeles, though, and pushed on without further delays.

The locomotive’s top speed was only 30 miles per hour. The monotonous landscape crawled along, but they made progress. It felt good to be moving. Todd stripped off his shirt and tied it to a post by the locomotive’s open window. Gusts of summer air felt cool on his skin.

He preferred to work with Casey Jones, as the others were too quick to make light of their situation. It was though they used their wit to deny what had happened to the world around them.

On the first night, Todd and Casey labored in silence, trying to outdo each other in their prowess for manual labor. Todd had to chuckle as he thought of how Iris would react to their posturing: “Figures,” she would have said with scorn, “the fall of civilization, and you macho men are still competing against each other!” Sometimes he imagined her standing next to him; in his daydream they journeyed across the worled, trying to make up for the devastation they had helped to unleash upon the world.

He felt a pang from missing her, and he felt guilty as he tried to ignore it . . . because he was enjoying himself.

His companion was reticent, preoccupied to the point of gloominess. He seemed to wear a shroud of his own guilt. Todd tried to draw him into conversation as they stood side by side in the crowded engineer cab.

“Who are you?” Todd said. He had to shout over the roar of the furnace and the clatter of the train.

“I already told you.”

“Right. What is your real name?”

“None of your damn business!”

Todd brought more wood.

The train chugged along, hour after hour. Todd and Casey changed to working in shifts with the Gambotti brothers and Rex O’Keefe. As he rested, Casey Jones refused to engage in conversation. Todd sat in the dining car munching tomatoes and peeling the outer leaves of cabbages. Damn rabbit food, he thought. He longed for a thick cut of juicy steak, or even a McDonald’s hamburger, but he didn’t have much choice.

The train tracks led to Fresno and then Bakersfield, cities surrounded by sufficient agriculture that the population could feed themselves, though they had no great amounts of food to spare. Casey stopped the train only briefly to exchange news with the gathered crowds. Todd stood back and watched as they flocked to see the Steam Roller puff into the city, a black-and-scarlet icon of lost technology.

On the second day, a spur of the Southern Pacific railroad hooked west from Bakersfield, taking them toward the Los Angeles metropolis. Casey slowed, allowing Todd and Roberto Gambotti to drop to the ground and run ahead to strain at the lever that switched the track. At first Todd was afraid the switch was frozen, but after laying into the mechanism, the two men slowly muscled the track section about.

Though the boxcars were piled high with fruits and vegetables, Todd didn’t know what that amount of food would do for LA. How many millions of people lived in the huge dying city? But Casey insisted they continue, fixated. Todd didn’t try to talk him out of it. He just wanted to get to JPL.

The men rotated duty during the night. The train moved through the darkness with a hypnotic, monotonous clacking. Twice they hit something on the track, but both times it was too small to even slow their pace.

In darkness, Todd stood by the closed door of the roaring boiler. He could feel waves of heat mixed with counterpoints of cool air gusting through the windows. The moon hung overhead, shining down like a milky spotlight illuminating the silvery tracks ahead.

Exhausted from the day’s labor, Todd wrapped his knuckles around the open window. He stared into the oncoming night, and thought of Iris.

#

Steam Roller chugged westward, belching steam as it approached the hills around Los Angeles.

From a distance, the city looked frozen into a snapshot. The clusters of buildings grew thicker on the sharp hillsides. Squinting through the locomotive’s soot-smeared front windows, Todd could see crowds emerging from houses to stand in the streets. They squinted toward the railroad tracks as the steam engine puffed clouds into the sky. Some people ran up to the tracks and threw rocks at them, others tried to follow.

Casey Jones, standing at the engineer’s station, reveled in their reception. He hung his dark, meaty arm out the window and waved. Some waved back; many just stared. A few stones ricocheted off the metal casing. Rex O’Keefe raised his wine-filled mug in a toast at the crowd.

Uncertainty gnawed at Todd. They had barely reached the fringes of the sprawling city, yet already they saw vastly more people than had arrived to greet the train in Bakersfield. What if the mob surrounded them and rocked the train off its rails?

The dining car was stuffed with crates of food and produce, but even that much wouldn’t last a day here. It wouldn’t feed a fraction of these people, and every face held a ghost of hunger behind the eyes. Did Casey really think they could just stop the train, distribute the food in an orderly manner, and wait for the grateful men and women to bring them items for trade?

“Okay, Casey Jones,” Todd shouted into the din of the pumping locomotive, “what’s your plan?”

But the engineer just grinned at him and continued looking out at the people. Rex O’Keefe and the Gambotti brothers sat on top of the passenger car and watched as they drank their wine.

In the stillness of a city without traffic, the sound of Steam Roller carried for miles. People lined up on the embankment to watch the train roll by, but Casey continued, pushing ahead until the outlying residential areas dwindled again, and they approached a dirtier industrial section of the city. Going still slower, the train pushed aside debris and wrecks of old cars piled up on the tracks.

Todd looked up. The sky was crystal blue and clear. He could see for miles. “I’ll bet the air of Los Angeles hasn’t been this clean in over a century!” he said. “I guess the petroplague can’t be all that bad.”

Near Pasadena they passed ugly abandoned gravel quarries with mounds of crushed rock and dirt eroding away. Tall metal chutes and rock conveyors stood like pieces from a giant erector set beside hulking dump trucks. The San Gabriel mountains rose sharp and monolithic behind them, grayish with summer.

Steam Roller approached a cluster of warehouses, sheet-metal factories, and industrial-park buildings about the size of airplane hangers—many of which stood black and gutted from recent fires. Delivery spurs split from the main railway line like spiderwebs between the large buildings.

Casey slowed the locomotive as they started into the warehouse complex. Todd saw tongues of brownish-black smoke curling into the air ahead. It make him uneasy; things seemed too quiet . . . .

They rounded a curve and saw three wrecked cars on the railroad tracks. Beneath the hulks blazed a bonfire of scrap wood.

“Whoa boy!” Todd screamed. He reached to pull the emergency brake but grabbed the pull cord for the steam whistle instead, which let out a shriek loud enough to rattle the empty buildings.

Casey Jones bellowed and hauled back on the emergency brake lever. The driving wheels of the locomotive locked. Sparks flew from the metal rails as the Steam Roller tried to swallow its momentum in only a few feet. Rex O’Keefe yelped from the rear.

Todd lost his balance and slammed into the hot front plate of the boiler. He felt his skin sizzle, and he scrambled backward, wincing with pain.

Casey squeezed his eyes shut as if in silent prayer as he threw his weight behind the brake. The wheels made a groaning sound. The boxcars behind the train crunched as they tried to stop, but the locomotive slammed like a cannonball into the wrecked automobiles.

One of the hulks, a red Volvo, was tossed into the air and fell back on its roof. The other two cars tangled in the Steam Roller’s cowcatcher. One rode up to smash the front window of the engineer’s cab. Chunks of burning wood scattered in all directions like embers caught in a draft.

The boiler hissed as Casey Jones swung down from the engineer’s cab and worked his way through the wreckage to see what damage the automobiles had done.

Todd hand throbbed from where he had burned it on the furnace door. He shook his hand, then sucked on the dirty ball of his left thumb where the burn was worst.

The large industrial park was silent, even more so than the rest of the world. A few seagulls spiraled over two of the largest warehouses—

An arrow clattered against the window of the engineer’s compartment right next to Todd’s head.

“What?” He turned and saw four men dressed in dark jackets and torn jeans. They emerged from the abandoned boxcars scattered around the railyard. One clambered to the top of a old Soo Line boxcar to get a better shot.

They fired with makeshift bows using steel-tipped arrows. Another arrow struck the side of the locomotive. For an instant Todd was too confused to move, unable to believe he was standing in a 19th century steam train being shot at by arrows . . . in downtown LA!

Casey Jones seemed unaware of the danger as he strode toward the train. Todd shouted, “Casey!” as one of the arrows struck Casey in the back, sticking into his shoulder blade. Casey reached behind him to swat the arrow away. The sharp tip had sliced his skin, but it didn’t sink deep. Blood began to flow down his back.

Other gang members sprinted from the warehouses on their left, all charging toward the trapped train. Todd looked at the controls. The steam was still up, simmering in the boiler.

In the engineer cab, Todd pulled back on the gear-shift lever, heaving with both arms to shift the locomotive into full reverse, his hands afire with pain. The four driving wheels spun as the connecting rod rammed back and forth to build momentum in the stopped four-car train.

The locomotive shuddered. Steam poured out of the stack, mixed with black smoke. The train jerked as it fell back a few inches along the tracks. The two auto hulks tangled in the cowcatcher groaned and scraped. Roberto Gambotti yelped as he fell from the train.

Roberto’s brother yelled angrily to Todd. “Hey, you asshole! See what you did?” He jumped out to help.

The gang members ran closer. The Steam Roller’s driving wheels spun slowly, laboriously. The train inched backward. Todd could see other attackers with knives, metal pipes, spears. He ignored his burned hand and yelled. “Casey, get your butt in here!”

The big man clambered back into the engineer’s compartment, but they could both see that the locomotive would never gain speed fast enough to take them to safety. “Quick—in the back.”

Todd gingerly opened the back of the engineer’s cab and slid through to the dining car. Gang members reached the train and began swarming over it, smashing windows with their clubs. Up front, others scrambled onto the moving locomotive. The gang members reached the rear cars.

Todd opened a window on the opposite side of the dining car. He looked at the bleeding wound on Casey’s back. “Is it bad?”

“I’m okay,” said Casey, but the words seemed to require an effort.

“Go!” said Todd. He pushed Casey toward the window. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

Casey clambered out and fell to his knees from the moving train; Todd landed beside him, but kept his balance. He spotted Rex O’Keefe running back along the tracks, coffee cup still dangling from his fingers. They started to follow Rex, but were cut off as three gang members jumped from the train.

Todd looked around and made a split-second decision. “Here, this way.” Todd and Casey turned and ran toward the nearest warehouse.

The warehouse stood like a barge made out of aluminum siding, scrawled with unintelligible graffiti. Todd reached the nearest door. It was locked, but rattled loosely in the frame. Todd hit it with his shoulder. Casey Jones joined him for a second blow, and the frame bent enough for the door to pop open. Casey left a splattered red smear of blood on the metal door.

They ducked inside. Todd shoved the door shut, looking around in the dimness for something to barricade it. They stood in a forest of metal shelves, crates of car parts, and pieces of equipment under scraps of canvas. Catwalks hung overhead, connecting the tops of the towering shelves. Three automobile engine blocks hung on chains suspended from high pulleys.

Near the door, Casey Jones found several round oil drums. “Here—help me out.” Some were filled with scummy water, others with a caked sludge. Casey wrestled one of the heavy drums in front of the door. Todd grimaced as he helped him move a second. Shaking his still-smarting hand, he heard the first gang member strike the barricaded door. The metal smacked into the oil drum, and he heard an “oomph!” from the other side.

Todd spun around to grab another barrel. The drum was lighter than he expected, and it toppled over, spilling its contents on the concrete floor with a sound like hard plastic cups. Todd gingerly picked one up, then dropped it.

It was a human skull. The barrel was full of them.

The next drum was stuffed with bones; all the meat had been sliced off.

“I don’t think the food on the train is going to distract them very long,” Todd said, forcing his words through a dry throat. “It doesn’t look like they’re vegetarians.”

Todd and Casey ran into the prison-like labyrinth of the warehouse. Light slid through the broken panes of skylights above, shining down in blunted spears. Dust drifted in tiny glowing speckles through the light.

A shaft of sunlight poured in as the gang members forced open the door. The attackers split up and stalked through the warehouse. They banged their steel pipes on the metal shelves. One laughed in the shadows.

“This doesn’t give me a darned good feeling,” Todd muttered.

Casey Jones looked around and grabbed one of the heavy engine blocks dangling from the chains. “Over here,” he whispered.

Todd joined him. They grasped the engine block and pulled backward, one step at a time as they lifted it up on its arc. They could hear one of the gang members approach as he rhythmically struck the metal shelves.

“Come out, you motherfuckers!” the gang member said. The banging got louder. He stepped around the corner of the metal shelves.

Todd and Casey shoved the engine block in unison.

The block crashed into the man, driving him back against the shelves. Crates fell off the upper levels and tumbled around him like an avalanche. He cried out, and the other attackers stopped their taunting and came running. The bank of shelves tipped over just enough to smash into the next line of shelves.

Todd and Casey ran. At the back corner of the warehouse they saw stairs leading to the network of catwalks overhead. They couldn’t see how many gang members had followed them inside.

“Go on,” Casey said, then pushed Todd up the stairs. The steps creaked, rattling as they bumped against supports on the wall. The gang members heard them and came running.

Todd reached the catwalk and started across the open space. The catwalk throbbed with other footsteps. Halfway across, Todd turned as a lean opponent strode across the metal grille toward them, holding a long switchblade. “Casey—behind you!”

Casey turned and waded toward the oncoming gang member as if he meant to take part in a barroom brawl. The attacker grinned and slashed with the switchblade.

With remarkable speed for his burly frame, Casey Jones grabbed the man’s forearm and slammed it onto the rail. Thin wrist bones snapped like balsa wood.

Even as the gang member screeched in pain, Casey grabbed him by the seat of the pants and lifted him over the edge, tossing him headfirst to the concrete floor. The attacker didn’t even cry out as he fell. The only sound he made was like a melon struck with a baseball bat when he hit the floor.

Todd reached the roof door before another gang member managed to reach the top of the stairs. Sunlight spilled in as he opened the door; Todd and Casey ran out onto the roof.

Another warehouse butted up against this one with only a six-foot gap between the two rooftops. Todd cleared the distance easily, jumping across and landing with an explosion of noise as his cowboy boots crashed into the corrugated metal roof. Casey Jones landed beside him, falling to his knees. He panted.

Todd looked behind them. “Once we get ahead of them, we can disappear into the city.”

Casey Jones didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to stare at his train, which had reached the far end of the industrial park before someone stopped its backward acceleration. The Steam Roller’s furnace burst. The entire engine compartment spat flames out the windows, curling up to lick the smokestack. He could see people swarming on the train, grabbing crates of food from the dining car, tearing the neat black-and-red sides to pieces.

“My train,” Casey Jones said dully. “My train.”

Todd gripped his arm. Blood still flowed from the wound on Casey’s shoulder; Todd’s own hands felt raw. “Come on, we can’t do anything to help it.”

“What are we going to do now?” Casey asked. “Where do we go?”

Todd secured the cowboy hat on his head as they started to run. “We make our way to Pasadena. Let’s find the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We’ve got a job to do there.”

Chapter 61

The curled paper sign said ALTAMONT RACEWAY with a black-and-white checkered racing stripe along the bottom. Someone had tacked it up at eye-level on a creosote-stained utility pole, but it had not survived the weather well.

As they tramped across the grassy hills, Iris wondered how long it had been since the speedway had actually hosted public races. The enclosed area was surrounded by loose, rusty barbed wire with occasional signs declaring, POSTED NO TRESPASSING.

Iris, Jackson Harris, and Doog stopped against the fence, looking down at the oval racetrack, the stacked bleachers on either side, the gray wood and peeling white paint of the announcer’s stand. Harley, the teenaged street kid from Oakland, clambered between the barbed wire; one of the prongs snagged his t-shirt, and he cursed.

The silent emptiness was disturbed only by the wind blowing across the dry grass. “This place is spooky,” Harley said.

“A racetrack isn’t much good after the petroplague,” Doog said in his slow voice.

At first Iris had thought Doog was just plain ponderous, or maybe even slow in the head, but his mannerisms came from a completely unhurried personality—not lazy, just not willing to rush. He chose his words before he spoke them, and then said exactly what he intended to say. Jackson’s wife Daphne kept insisting he was worthless, but Iris didn’t think so. Iris watched, and Doog did as much work as the rest of them. He just moved at his own speed.

Doog had a full beard streaked with premature gray, making it look like tufts of raw wool poking out from his chin. His face was saturnine, with crinkles around the eyelids; he wore full-moon spectacles like John Lennon. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his dirty shirt.

“Well, the racetrack is good for something now,” Jackson Harris said. “Let’s check it out, see how some music might sound.” He pulled the barbed-wire strands apart for Iris and Doog, then he swung his own legs over.

Harley sprinted ahead through the summer-dry grass over the rise to the edge of the stands. A couple of the heavy wooden bleachers had collapsed from age.

Iris pointed to them. “We’ll need to repair the seating.”

“Yeah.” Harris nodded. “But we’ll have time. It’ll take a while to get everybody here. It would have been nice to hold the concert on the Fourth of July, but’s that’s next week. Let’s be more realistic and shoot for Labor Day.”

“Good idea, man,” Doog said.

“Yeah,” Iris agreed. “That’ll give us time to bring in some musicians and try to patch together some instruments.”

Harley called from the top of the rickety bleachers. “Do you think there’s any stuff left in the refreshment stand?”

“Go ahead and look,” Harris called.

Harley delighted in smashing open the boarded-up windows. Around them, the sun pounded down on the speedway. Within view up in the hills they could see the empty lanes of the interstate highway, pointing aimlessly in the direction of LA.

Iris tried to picture what a concert would be like in this place. In the next couple of months she would throw herself entirely into the project . . . if only to keep her mind off Todd.

After walking out in anger, he still hadn’t come back after four days. She knew deep down that he had gone south with the steam train. Now, in a world with only harrowing alternatives for long-distance travel, she wondered if he might never come back.

Doog and Harris were both calling this event “the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll Concert.” Iris had tried, but there was nothing inside Todd Severyn that would make him understand how the concert was just as important to the heart of the people as laying electrical power lines or a heroic quest to deliver satellites that would probably never make it to space.

Todd didn’t care about her type of music. He didn’t dislike it, but rock ‘n roll just didn’t affect him the way it touched her and Harris and so many others. She supposed she would feel the same if Todd had an obsession to hold the last great Country & Western concert. But there was just something depressing about music that glorified old dogs, cows, and pickup trucks . . . .

“We can probably use the speedway’s PA system,” Harris said pointing to the metal horn speakers mounted on poles around the track. “Maybe we can get some of the closet geniuses at Livermore to rig up some amps. Then we’ll get power running out here from the windmills and pipe it through those big speakers.”

“It’s gonna sound like shit,” Doog said.

Harris slowly shook his head. “Man, it’s been so long since I’ve heard loud music, right now even Barry Manilow would sound good!”

Doog sat down roughly on one of the bleacher seats, which creaked beneath him. “Man, then it is the end of the world.”

Iris stifled a laugh and watched the two men.

Harris sat down next to Doog. They waited in silence for a few moments. Below them Harley rummaged around inside the refreshment stand. He didn’t seem to be finding anything, but it sounded like he was having fun.

Harris finally shook his head and set his scruffy chin in his hands. “It feels so right to be having this here. Kind of like redemption, you know. To make up for the last concert.”

They both stared at the opposite bank of bleachers as if watching crowds screaming and cheering for the band.

“Yeah. Remember? The Stones didn’t play until nightfall,” Doog said. “The show opened up at ten in the morning. Santana, I think, then it was Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.”

“No way!” Harris interrupted. “Creedence never played the Altamont! It was Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, then the Stones.”

“I thought the Dead were there.”

Harris put his head in his hands as if he could not believe the stupidity of his friend. “Jeez, you’re all mixed up! The Grateful Dead suggested to the Stones that they hire the Hell’s Angels for security. They didn’t come here themselves.”

Iris watched them, amazed. This appeared to be some sort of ritual. “Were you guys actually there?” she said, “at the Altamont concert?”

“Doog was,” Harris said.

“No I wasn’t.”

“You always talked like you were!”

Doog just shrugged.

Iris looked out at the empty stadium, trying to imagine how it must have been, listening to ghostly echoes of music and cheers and screams of pain echoing through the hills. That had been ten years before her time.

Doog said, “They paid the Hell’s Angels $500 worth of beer to work security, so the Angels went around bashing peoples’ heads in with sawed-off pool cue sticks.” Doog looked at Iris with an ironic grin. “Mick Jagger got punched by some fan as the Stones tried to make it to the stage.”

Harris said. “You should have seen how he whipped up the crowd singing ‘Satisfaction.’ They all wanted to go out and just rip people’s arms and legs off. Then when he was playing ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ some kid pulled out a gun and waved it at the stage—”

“It wasn’t ‘Sympathy for the Devil!’” Doog interrupted. “That’s an urban legend. It was ‘Under My Thumb.’”

“That’s not how I remember it,” Harris said, glaring at his friend.

“What happened to the guy with the gun?” Iris said. “Was he the one who got killed?”

“Yeah,” Harris answered. “Guy pulled out his gun, and before you know it the Hell’s Angels stabbed him and stomped him to death. Great security, huh?”

Doog shook his head. “Man, the Altamont concert was probably the darkest hour of the ‘60s. So much for all the love and peace and harmony crap the hippies kept talking about. Gave us all a bad image.”

Iris stood up from the bleachers and brushed off her backside. She felt her knees crack. “Well, then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again at the second great Altamont concert.”

Harley returned from the refreshment stand. Dirt streaked his clothes, and some splinters stuck in his nappy hair. “Found some,” he said excitedly. “Two cans of Budweiser and an Orange Crush. I get one of the beers.”

“No you don’t,” said Harris, “hand them over.”

“I found them!”

“You’re still too young.”

Grudgingly, Harley handed the warm cans over.

They had sent out notices with their runners to the people in Tracy and the other towns in the Central Valley, as well as to the enclave around Livermore. They would broadcast it across the Atlantis network to anyone listening in on the short-wave radio. Word would spread, summoning the audience and the musicians for the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll concert.

They sat in silence sipping their warm beer and passing the two cans back and forth. By Labor Day the unnatural quiet would at last be replaced by human sounds, music rising to the sky.

Chapter 62

The woman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory narrowed her eyes at them. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Todd and Casey Jones looked at each other and both shrugged. Todd removed his cowboy hat. “No, Ma’am, we’re serious. We’ve come to take those solar power satellites and haul them off to New Mexico.”

The woman gestured them inside the concrete research building, still looking at them with a mixture of amazement and disbelief. “Come and get washed up, you two. I think you’re suffering from heat stroke.”

She was a tough Asian woman, about 50, with wide hips and heavy arms. She looked like the type who’d move heavy equipment by herself just because she didn’t have the patience to wait for help. She pinned her gray-white hair back with elaborate pins. Her name, she said, was Henrietta Soo.

The dim facility looked like a 1960s version of a “high tech” building, an eight-story-tall cube with dark windows and light cement. The aluminum mini blinds had been taken down to allow the maximum amount of light to pour through the windows. Inside, the petroplague had dissolved most of the carpets and linoleum, leaving only concrete and plywood base boards.

Henrietta Soo took Todd and Casey past empty offices and a conference room where a half a dozen people stood brainstorming, scribbling things on a pad of paper propped on an easel.

In a kitchen area, Henrietta twisted on a faucet. Water trickled out with low pressure, but it was enough for them to drink and wash. Droplets sprayed from side to side in the gasketless faucet nozzle. She disappeared, leaving them to take turns at the sink, splashing their faces and pulling brown paper towels to wipe themselves off.

“Boy, this feels good!” Todd said as water dripped from the stubble on his chin. Casey Jones doused his bald head, kneading his dark skin with his fingertips.

After the train wreck, they had hiked for two days northwest of Pasadena. They passed through the sprawling, confused metropolis of Burbank and Glendale, asking directions from people on the street. They must have painted an absurd picture: both of them streaked with grime, the back of Casey’s shirt stiffened with drying blood, asking for somebody to point the way to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In Pasadena, the Rose Bowl sat empty, but a flea market had sprung up by itself, though the vendors sold a new selection of post-plague items. The lush and well-manicured country club golf course was ragged and overgrown.

By now Todd and Casey were hungry and exhausted, but they had reached their destination. The bright flowers and arching willows made JPL look like a campus, 175 acres jammed up against the sheer green-brown mountains. Once they passed into the JPL complex, they tracked down the headquarters of the satellite division. The Jet Propulsion Lab normally held over five thousand workers, but now the site was quiet and lethargic.

Henrietta Soo returned with a metal first-aid kit and opened it up, poking around to find cloth bandages. “Let me look at your back,” she said to Casey, and he dutifully removed his shirt. With a cotton swab, she dabbed and poked at the infected arrow wound. In her other hand she held a brown bottle. “I got a glass bottle of alcohol from one of the labs. All of our plastic tubes of first-aid cream are . . . no longer with us. I’ve got a few antibiotics, but we’re saving them.” She smiled apologetically, then said to Todd, “How about you?”

Todd flexed his hands; he was lucky they hadn’t formed any large blisters from the burn. “I’m okay.”

Casey Jones stared at the wall as she prodded crusted blood, cleaned the wound, and bandaged his shoulder. Finished, Henrietta clicked the first-aid kit shut and turned to face them.

“Now then. I’ve got some of Dr. Lockwood’s smallsats sealed up and ready for launch, but there’s no way you’ll be able to take all of them. When he asked for help getting them shipped to his railgun launching system, I never thought anyone would take the challenge. The satellites have been sitting in one of our clean rooms for months—but what I want to know is just how you two propose to get them to White Sands?”

She waited. Todd looked down at his dirty boots and shuffled his feet. Casey didn’t offer any ideas.

Todd refused to meet Henrietta Soo’s eyes. “Um, I was hoping you might have a suggestion, Ma’am.”

#

Todd sat in front of JPL’s short-wave radio, looking befuddled. He stared at the microphone. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes,” Henrietta said, leaning over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Todd touched the microphone again. “You’re sure it’s at the right frequency and everything?”

“Yes!” Henrietta said again, a bit more impatiently.

“And I just hold down the microphone button?”

Henrietta scowled. “You’re new at this aren’t you? We’re all connected to the Atlantis network. We’ve cleared our own node here and knocked off the Feds so we can get some decent radio time. FEMA is pissed off at us, but they’ll pick up the signal on this frequency and reroute it up to the Livermore receiving station. It’ll probably also be picked up by other substations and broadcast around the country.”

Todd felt a knot in his throat at the thought of thousands of people listening in on his personal message, but before he could lose his nerve he gripped the microphone.

“This is Todd Severyn calling for Moira Tibbett at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, California.” He hoped Tibbett was there listening. From what he could tell, she never went home, she never left her map with its colored pushpins marking the growing number of stations on the emergency short-wave network.

“Sandia, can you read me?” he repeated. “This is Todd Severyn transmitting from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.”

Tibbett’s gruff voice came out of the shortwave speaker. “Todd, we read you! I take it you made it down to Los Angeles? Over.” A squeaky background hum accompanied her transmission.

“I arrived just fine. Our locomotive was destroyed by a gang down here, but Casey Jones and I are safe and unharmed.”

“That’s good news Todd,” Tibbett replied. “Over.”

“Could you . . .” Todd said, then paused. “Uh, could you make sure that message gets passed along to Iris Shikozu at the Altamont settlement?”

“We’ll send it with the next courier that comes down. Over.”

“And tell her . . .” The words clogged in Todd’s throat. He made a silent excuse to himself that he just had stage fright, but deep inside he knew that wasn’t really what stopped him. “Just tell her I’m OK. We’ll be taking the satellites and setting out for New Mexico. Wish us luck.”

“Good luck, Todd,” Tibbett answered. “We’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed for you. Over.”

“Over and out.” He signed off.

Henrietta Soo stood behind him with arms crossed over her chest like a stern grandmother. “Sounds like you should have rehearsed your words a bit, Mr. Severyn.” She smiled. “Come on. Let me show you the smallsats. Maybe that’ll give you an idea how to transport them, if your friend doesn’t find anything today.”

Casey Jones had gone out by himself that morning to see if he could find any solution to hauling the satellites. The wide-faced man had used the water trickle and a little bit of soap to shave his entire head so clean that it glistened even after he toweled it dry. Obsessed again, Casey set out to see what he could find in the chaos of Pasadena.

Todd could not talk openly with his partner, though they had come hundreds of miles together and narrowly escaped death. The man who called himself Casey Jones had some sort of parasite of guilt inside him, chewing away.

Casey had been all right when he was moving, bringing supplies down to Los Angeles, taking direct action to alleviate his conscience. The moment they stopped and ran up against a problem, though, he became restless as a lion in a cage. Todd guessed he would have done the same thing. In some ways, he and Casey were a lot alike.

Henrietta Soo led Todd deeper into the laboratory complex, away from the offices and conference rooms. The partially dissolved linoleum on the floor left hard cheese-like remains in strange patterns on top of the plywood underfloor.

At the end of the corridor an emergency exit sign marked a red-painted door. Banks of gun-metal gray lockers lined the left side of the hall, like a high-school corridor. On the other side, dark windows gazed in on a warehouse-sized clean room.

“This is where we assembled the smallsats,” Soo said. “It’s a Class 1000 clean room. The air inside was filtered and refiltered so that it had a thousand times fewer particles than outside air. Even that couldn’t stop the spread of the petroplague, of course, but twenty of the solar smallsats were already finished, packaged and sealed, ready for launch. The original plan called for constructing nearly a hundred of them, but Lockwood’s project was on a shoestring budget and we had to go one step at a time. We probably have the components and spare parts to complete another twenty smallsats, though. In addition to these.”

Through the glowing lights of luminous power sources inside the clean room, Todd could make out the hulks of the twenty packaged solar satellites like meter-long pods on the tables.

“Have you spoken to Dr. Seth Mansfield?” Henrietta asked. “He got interested in this work after speaking with Spencer Lockwood over the wireless—Seth has a lot of admiration for that young man. Seth still comes in here, helps us brainstorm last-ditch solutions. Did he put you up to this?”

Todd shook his head. “No, Ma’am. I just heard on the radio that the White Sands folks needed someone to transport these sats and that it could be a big payoff to the country’s recovery. I was tired of sitting on my butt.” He refrained from saying anything about his part in the Promethus spraying.

Henrietta leaned closer to the glass, jabbing her stubby fingers at something Todd couldn’t see.

“Each smallsat is about the size of a large scuba tank, weighing nearly a hundred kilograms. It uses solar electric propulsion for attitude control and has a supercomputer brain the size of a deck of cards. It’s got a microthin array of solar power panels accordioned into a layer a few centimeters thick, but once extended the panels cover several hundred square meters of collection area.”

Todd put the edge of his hand against the glass and tried to peer inside, but he saw no further details. “Sounds delicate,” he said. “Are we going to ruin these things by carrying them a thousand miles cross country?”

She shook her head. “Everything’s been hardened to withstand over ten thousand gees of acceleration during launch, standard stuff for this type of equipment. If Dr. Lockwood hadn’t specified using silcon sealants, the petroplague would have done them in.”

As they walked back toward Henrietta’s office, he looked around; the other rooms were empty. “We saw a big meeting yesterday when we came in. Where is everybody? How many people still work at JPL?”

Henrietta Soo shrugged. “Quite a few, actually, but most of our people have thrown themselves into practical problems, trying to develop technological band-aids for crucial city services. The big one is the Emergency Broadcast Network. It’s linking more and more as people build short-wave radios.”

As she stepped into her dim office, Henrietta flicked the light switch out of habit. She frowned at herself when nothing happened. “It’s really not as bad out there as we thought at first. PVC seems to be unaffected, the hard plastic pipe that most of our underground conduits are made out of. Same with natural rubber, though synthetic rubber gets all spongy and doesn’t function well. Bakelite, that old amber-colored plastic you find in antique stores, resists the petroplague. It’s brittle, but it still holds up pretty well. Some nylon even managed to survive.”

He knew that was good news, but he could not get too excited about it. “Yeah, but if we don’t have the industry to keep making this stuff . . .” Todd let his voice trail off.

“Ah, but that means we can find substitutions—given time—but it’s going to be hell to survive the transition.”

#

Later, when Henrietta convinced Todd that he should contact the group at White Sands, he grabbed the microphone with much less trepidation and waited for Spencer Lockwood to acknowledge his transmission. “Lockwood here,” said the man’s voice. “Who am I talking to?”

“You’re talking to the guy who’s going to deliver your solar power satellites from JPL.”

“What!” Spencer’s voice was suddenly high-pitched with childish excitement. “Hot damn!” Then he dropped off again. “I hope we’re still ready to receive them when you get here. We might be having a few minor problems with the military. Some big bully wants to take all our toys. We hope we can hold out.”

“We’ll get there as soon as we can,” Todd said.

“Good luck. We’ll be waiting,” Spencer said.

After they exchanged a few more details, Todd signed off. He felt the sense of urgency bubble through him again. They had made it all the way to Pasadena, but practical matters had brought them to a screeching halt.

Todd was still pacing the floor when Casey Jones returned from his day’s search. The grin on the burly man’s face made Todd stop in his tracks. “You find something?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Casey answered. He held out a battered old book. “I got a map of all the main lines and spurs of railroad tracks in the southwestern United States. From here, we can hook onto the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line, which will take us east to Barstow, Flagstaff, and straight to Albuquerque. From there, another spur heads south, right into White Sands.”

“Rail lines?” Todd said. “Where did you get that book?”

“At the library.” Casey set the book down and dropped himself heavily into a folding metal chair. “It was a zoo down there! You should have seen the people. They were grabbing all sorts of books on do-it-yourself stuff. How to make your own clothes, build your own furniture, gardening books, that sort of thing. The library is kind of messed up, but I got the book I needed. Can you believe a lady even asked me if I had a library card?”

“That’s a sign some parts of civilization are still working,” Todd said, then he scowled. “But what do you want with railway maps? Your train is wrecked!”

“Ah, but I’ve come up with something else,” he said. “In an old railyard I found two handcars. They’re rusty, but nothing a little lard and sandpaper won’t fix; and we can link them together, ride the rails, pump ourselves across country. I figure we can get a wheelbarrow to haul the smallsats down to the rail line. From there, we’ll . . . just head off. Simple.” He grinned with deep satisfaction.

Todd looked skeptical. “You realize there’s twenty satellites here? These things are heavy.”

“So we only take half of them. After we prove we can do it, we can come back for the rest of them. Or somebody else can.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I know.” Casey shrugged, but he kept smiling.

#

They left at dusk, hauling the ten packed smallsats in wheelbarrows as well as all the bottled water and food supplies they could carry, and three metallized survival blankets to shield them from the desert heat and night cold. Even with help from some of the other JPL workers, it still took five trips to get everything to the hidden handcars.

Henrietta Soo surprised them both by insisting on coming along on the rigorous journey. “The smallsats are my babies,” she said. “How do I know I can trust you two? I have to watch them.” She stood firm.

Todd argued with her, but Casey Jones just wanted to leave. Finally, as Henrietta trudged along hauling a loaded wheelbarrow of her own and keeping pace, Todd believed her when she said she could do her share of the work. It reminded him of Iris—she insisted on pulling her own weight.

According to Casey’s railroad map, they had about a thousand miles of track to cover. He guessed they could make 10 to 15 miles per hour pumping the hand car, once they got it going. With three of them, they could take shifts and keep going maybe ten hours a day. By traveling at night, they hoped to avoid gangs like the one that had blown up Casey’s locomotive. If they started at dusk, and pumped straight through the night, they could be far from Los Angeles by dawn.

Casey linked the two handcars with a pin and slid them along the track to show how easily the old vehicles moved. “We could be there in a week,” he said.

“Is that an optimistic estimate?” Henrietta asked.

“It’s just the one I’m counting on,” Casey answered.

They loaded up the handcars, tying down the carefully wrapped smallsats and their supplies for the trip. Once everything was secure, they climbed onboard the lead car.

“This really is crazy,” Todd said again. “Dr. Soo said we’re carrying a metric ton of satellites!”

“So what?” Casey said. “Let’s shove off before somebody sees us.” He stood with his back to the wind, facing east. He gripped the metal push bar. “How are your hands?”

Todd faced him, taking the opposite end of the seesaw bar. “Don’t worry about it. How’s your back?”

“Are we going to talk or go?”

Todd grasped the bar. “On three: one . . . two . . . three!” Together, they began to push.

Up and down, slowly at first as the linked cars moved forward, picking up speed. Up . . . down . . . up . . . down. . . Finally, as they gained momentum, they could feel the movement, see the rails slide by beneath them.

“We’re heading out,” Casey shouted.

Todd said, “I’ve got this sudden urge to sing ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.’”

Simultaneously, Henrietta Soo and Casey Jones shushed him. Todd threw his back into the pumping.

The two handcars moved on into the night bearing the solar smallsats and three passengers. Todd could hear only the sound of the steel wheels humming along the track.

Chapter 63

“The NSA team is here, Mr. President,” Franklin Weathersee said, rapping on the door to the oppressive, lonely room.

Jeffrey Mayeaux grumbled to himself as he sipped then put down his drink. Let’s pass a good time! Two shots of old bourbon, neat. His wife would be sleeping by herself in a different suite down the hall, so at least Mayeaux had that much peace. Now that her social life had fallen to pieces, she had started wanting to spend time with him again, and he didn’t like the change of pace. One more mess to cope with. He’d just gotten undressed, ready for bed, when Weathersee came in to announce the meeting. What good did it do to be in charge of the goddamn country if he had to cater to everyone else’s schedules?

Weathersee’s face was outlined with deep shadows thrown from the single low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling. Mayeaux could see two Secret Service agents standing just outside the bedroom door.

“Thanks, Frank. I was getting sick of relaxing after a whole five minutes or so. You wouldn’t want to spoil me.”

“No I wouldn’t, sir,” Weathersee said without so much as cracking a smile.

Before communications had been disrupted with the military bases, Mayeaux would have postponed the meeting until morning. Teach them all some respect. Lordy, he hated working by the dim light almost as much as he hated getting up early in the morning. But he grabbed his bathrobe and headed for the door. If they expected him to show up in a formal suit, they had their heads up their asses.

The staff engineers had wired the elevators to work—but after what happened to that idiot Vice President in Chicago, Mayeaux never wanted to use an elevator again. He headed down the long two flights of stairs from the third-floor living quarters to the Oval Office.

Because of the enormous effort required to generate electricity with the old steam-engine equipment hauled out of the Smithsonian, there weren’t many functional lights in the White House. Over three thousand military troops were devoted to collecting wood, stoking the fires, and running the converted steam-generators around the capitol city. Generously, Mayeaux signed an executive order directing most of the electricity to go to local hospitals, but the marginal remaining supply kept the main communication lines open.

Mayeaux almost tripped on a rug in the dark. He cursed; if things got any worse, he’d have to cut a hole in the floors and install a fireman’s pole so he could whiz down to important meetings. Now wouldn’t that look presidential?

The team from the National Security Agency met him outside the Oval Office. He noticed two women in the group, but was not impressed; they both looked hardened to their duties, not the least bit attractive. The job must be getting to me, Mayeaux thought bitterly. He ushered them into the office and got right to business.

“I called you here to give me another perspective, cher. I’m not sure I can trust the bullshit my Joint Chiefs are feeding me. Don’t mince words—tell me what’s going on out there.”

The team leader, a middle-aged woman who wore no makeup at all and let her hair fall loose to her shoulders, pushed a large sheet of cardboard across his desk. She had fastened white sheets of paper to the stiff backing, drawings of the downtown Washington area. The woman pointed at the Mall extending two miles from the Washington Monument to the Capitol building.

“We’ve finished installing the underground Extreme Low Frequency antennas, Mr. President. In addition, there are five shortwave antennas around the White House.” She pointed to various locations on the drawing.

One of her aides handed her a sheaf of papers. “The ELF antenna has already raised communication with six Trident-class submarines, still underwater and still unaffected by the plague, as far as we know. That leaves ten subs unaccounted for, and three confirmed missing after the plague. We assume they have been destroyed, probably because their watertight seals were breached, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, sir. They either surfaced and the petroplague infiltrated their systems, or they were so close to the mix layer, the petroplague got to them that way.”

Mayeaux glanced over the material. Page after page of handwritten code appeared on the pages, with elaborate decoding inked in by hand after each line. Even the decoded material seemed a jumble of nonsense.

“So, can we still communicate with the surviving nuclear submarines? Can I issue them new orders?”

She nodded. “That’s right, sir. At least to a fair fraction of them. We’re still attempting to raise those assigned to ocean areas in electromagnetic voids, but we should have confirmation in a week.”

Mayeaux pushed the papers back. “What does the Navy think about this?”

The team chief spoke slowly. “We haven’t seen their complete analysis, Mr. President. Our instructions were only to collect unbiased communications traffic.”

Mayeaux thought it over for a moment. So far none of this new information conflicted with what his military chiefs had told him, but he still wasn’t convinced he had the whole story. He made a mental note to have Weathersee scare up a new list of advisors he could trust. “Okay—next topic. What’s the status of those out-of-touch military bases? Are you doing any better than the Joint Chiefs in raising them?”

The NSA staff exchanged glances. The team chief cleared her throat. “No, sir, we have not. We’re working closely with our military counterparts out in the field, and we have not yet been able to reestablish communication.”

Mayeaux shook his head. He knew he should have gulped down the rest of that damned drink before coming downstairs. “What about the communities outside the bases? Are they responding at all?”

“Well, sir, about the only thing we have are reports of looting and out-of-control fires in the larger cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, and Denver.”

Mayeaux looked up from his desk. “What happened to LA? That was a hot spot before.”

“That’s a problem, sir.” She shuffled through her papers again, but he could tell she was just avoiding his gaze. “We think perhaps another organization should handle this—”

“I’m sick of doubletalk,” Mayeaux growled, flicking his glance to skewer every person in the room. “I asked a question—give me the fucking answer!”

The NSA team chief continued. “Los Angeles refused to establish martial law, sir. We have word from the city’s mayor that they are considering seceding from the nation. They do not want to participate in conscription activities or food taxation. The mayor has ordered breaking open all military stockpiles of food to the populace at large. From what we can tell, the military in the Los Angeles area is cooperating with this action, directly countermanding your orders.”

She stacked her papers neatly. “The last we heard was a call for action to help some sort of expedition going to New Mexico from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It wasn’t clear what was going on, but the New Mexico connection may be a symptom of breakdown in martial law across the country. JPL has commandeered Caltech’s Emergency Network Radio node and they also refuse to cooperate with FEMA or any other emergency agencies. They are apparently behind this expedition.”

Deep resentment ran through Mayeaux. He had to push with a crowbar to get anyone to tell him bad news. Did they really fear him that much, or were they crawfishin’ around the issue?

“Mais, let me tell you something. This crap has gone too far. It’s going to stop, right now. I didn’t ask for this damned responsibility, but I will not be remembered as the man who allowed the United States to fall apart.” He turned to Frank Weathersee. “Pull the Joint Chiefs in here, right now. I want more information, and if they give you any grief in return, throw their asses out. Period.”

Weathersee stiffened. “Very well, Mr. President.”

Mayeaux was on a roll now. Sometimes it felt damned good to kick some butt. He hunched over the table, talking rapidly. On reflection, he thought he sounded very presidential. “That expedition to New Mexico. Are they spreading this call for secession? Did they instigate this damned mess in LA? Who was that general I met at Kirtland a few months ago, on my way to Acapulco—” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember.

“Bayclock, sir.”

“That’s right. Have the Chiefs warn General Bayclock there’s some sort of traitor movement heading his way. He seemed like a down-to-earth man. Make sure the general understands that everyone must support him, nip this thing in the bud, all that rah rah stuff. This might be the test for keeping anarchy in check.”

Weathersee looked unconvinced. “Yes, sir, traitor movement. Any other items the Joint Chiefs should work on?”

“So far we’re nothing but a voice over a radio to these people. We don’t have any way to back up our threats.” He set his mouth. “Make sure the Vice President has this information at the Naval Observatory. And have the Chiefs draw up a plan to make an example of . . . something—if LA is going to try to secede, maybe they need a knock on the head to set them right.”

He steepled his fingers. “Take a lesson from history. Abraham Lincoln took that step. He threw most of the Baltimore businessmen and newspaper editors in jail when they wouldn’t support him. Sure taught them a lesson!”

“What do you propose, Mr. President?” Weathersee said.

He glared at his Chief of Staff. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe take out Catalina Island with a nuke. We’re in touch with the subs again, after all.”

Weathersee stood tall, his arms at his sides, as he looked at Mayeaux. “If you’re going to take a lesson from history, sir, perhaps you should remember what happened to President Lincoln. I just thought I should remind you of that.”

Chapter 64

“Hey, Lieutenant,” Spencer asked, “what do you know about military intelligence?”

“Military intelligence? That’s how I remember the definition of the word ‘oxymoron.’” Bobby Carron looked up from untying the tentlike sun-screen at the blockhouse corner. The sun had set over the Organ Mountains, and already the high desert air took on a chill. “Me, I just flew fighters—you know, grapefruit and peas.”

“Grapefruit and peas?” Spencer made a disgusted grimace. “Is that what they feed you guys?”

Bobby laughed. “No, sir. It’s just what they say about us fighter pilots. Balls the size of grapefruits, brains the size of peas.”

“I see.” Spencer chuckled. “Come on inside the trailer. You’re the only military type around here. You might be able to figure this out.”

“Right.” Bobby left the cords dangle from the sprawling sun-screen tent made of parachute silk. To keep the bunkers cooler during the hottest part of the day, Spencer’s group had obtained some surplus fabric in Alamogordo. Stenciled on the parachutes were the words HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, taken from the closing of the base a few years earlier. After high evening winds had torn away the last sun-screen, taking down the parachute had become Bobby’s nightly ritual.

Bobby followed Spencer inside the trailer, where Juan Romero listened to the voices coming over the static-filled speaker, pursing his lips in a confused frown that made his black moustache stick out at the sides. Electronic equipment lay on the tabletops, cannibalized for parts used in the makeshift radio. Romero rolled his eyes at the signal. “Everything’s encrypted.”

“. . . Niner niner rog. Turtle mound advised of bandit watch.” Other nonsensical phrases jabbered over the channel.

Spencer watched Bobby Carron as the Navy pilot digested the cryptic information. “Any idea what they’re saying, Lieutenant?”

“I recognize some code words,” Bobby said, frowning as he concentrated. “Maybe they can’t get their regular encryption gear working.” He stared at the makeshift equipment as if in a trance. Spencer said nothing.

Three electric lanterns lit the control room against the darkness outside; they used solar power stored in batteries during the day’s transit of the smallsat cluster. A cool breeze swept through the door, bringing a sweet hint of yucca.

Romero glanced at Bobby. “How can he understand what they’re saying when the static is this bad? Must be sunspots.”

“Ever heard a pilot talk on the radio?” Spencer said. “You can’t understand a thing they’re saying until you do it yourself.”

Bobby held up a hand. He spoke as if he were reciting a passage: “They’re saying something like: events have gotten out of hand. Take all actions necessary to ensure the continuity of—” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Damn,” he muttered, “Some of the stuff just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Go on,” said Spencer. He motioned for Romero to sit back down. Rita Fellenstein joined them from the back room. She had been making eyes at Bobby ever since he had arrived, much to the dismay of the other ranch hands.

Three minutes passed before the mixed-up transmission stopped. Bobby scribbled in pencil on a small notepad. His forehead held a sheen of sweat.

“As far as I can tell, General Bayclock has been ordered to occupy your installation at White Sands. He’s to show an iron hand. All assets of something—the California expedition?—are to be confiscated and turned over to the United States.”

Spencer exchanged glances with Rita. “I hope that doesn’t mean the mission from JPL.”

Bobby continued, “The general is authorized to use whatever force necessary to preserve the integrity of the United States.”

“What the hell does that mean?” muttered Rita.

“It means we’ve been declared open game, and this Bayclock clown can come and blow us away, man!” Romero stood up, knocking back his chair and flinging his long black hair out of his eyes like a dangerous bandit.

“He’s crazy enough to do it, too,” Bobby said. “Your wagon train carrying the smallsats got out of the Los Angeles area just in time. The mayor of LA has taken over the national guard and is declaring southern California a free state. Bayclock wants to stop the JPL people from getting to you.”

Spencer shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Does he think the expedition from JPL is some kind of armed force? How paranoid can he get?”

Bobby said, “I know the general has been monitoring radio transmissions from White Sands—that’s how he discovered you have a working power station.”

“Yeah, for all of twenty minutes a day,” said Spencer, “and a bunch of leftover battery power.”

“That was enough for him to send me down here after you.” Bobby’s face tightened. “He’s serious about enforcing his martial law, and he must have gone nonlinear when you guys didn’t roll over and cooperate. He probably thinks the group from JPL is part of a conspiracy to subvert his authority. With the White House backing him, I bet he’s decided to make an example of us.”

Romero laughed, but Bobby spoke in a level tone. “In Albuquerque, he was hanging teenagers for stealing cans of tuna or staying out after dark.”

The trailer fell quiet. Bobby looked from person to person. Spencer placed a hand on his shoulder. “Look, why don’t you finish taking down the sunscreens outside. I’ll have Romero run through the FEMA frequencies and see if we can find any other information that confirms what we’ve heard.”

Bobby stopped at the door. “You know, I’d feel a lot better if we could just see what that bastard Bayclock is going to do. I’d hate to have a few thousand fanatics sneak up on us without warning. No telling when he’ll make his move.”

Spencer pictured the state of New Mexico in his head. “It’ll take him at least a week to get down here, even if he started today. I’ll notify Alamogordo. Maybe some of the ranchers can help us out. Give us quarter, if nothing else. We can get away.”

“But that means abandoning the antenna farm, man!” Romero cried. “Spencer, you can’t do that!”

“Maybe we can station lookouts on Oscura Peak, use smoke signals to warn us like we did for the substation test,” Rita suggested.

“It would be more effective to have lookouts nearby,” said Bobby. “What would happen if the peak got socked in with clouds? Of if Bayclock decided to attack at night? What you need is a thousand-foot-high tower, or an airplane.” He grinned half-heartedly, his mind obviously elsewhere, as if knowing he would never fly again. “Nevermind. I’ve got to finish packing the parachutes.”

Spencer had a sudden thought. “That’s not such a crazy idea.”

“What?” Bobby turned around.

“The parachutes,” said Spencer. “I bet if we sewed some of them together, we could make a hot-air balloon, just like something out of a Jules Verne novel. Fill it with hot air, and up it goes.”

“The fuel, Spence,” Rita reminded him with an elbow to the side. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no propane around for the central heater.”

“The Montgolfier brothers didn’t have propane,” Spencer said, “but they did have wood, and even better, we can make charcoal. Hot air is hot air, right? You take along some charcoal and burn it in a big metal hibachi—presto!” He put a finger to his lips and started muttering. “In fact, we can loft a series of balloons, even equip them with weapons . . . .”

Rita sighed and got a faraway look in her eyes. “I can just see it now—the first Aeroballoon Squadron of the White Sands Regiment. Risking their lives, tethered a thousand feet up, keeping watch over the advancing barbarian hordes.” She motioned for Bobby to stand back. “Better stand back, Lieutenant.”

Bobby looked from Spencer to Rita. “What? What’s the matter?”

“He’s thinking so hard you might get splattered when his brain explodes.”

#

Gilbert Hertoya rode in from the electromagnetic launcher, looking even smaller on the back of a big horse. The group frequently got together to coordinate technical directions, but this time they had more serious matters to discuss.

“Okay,” said Spencer, “the first question is if we should even try and fight these guys.”

Bobby Carron snorted. He folded his arms and looked around. “If we don’t do something against Bayclock, he’ll institute the same type of bloody martial law down here.”

Spencer looked around, but no one spoke. “I think we all agree about that, so we don’t surrender. But what’s the consensus? Fight or run?”

“Bobby’s right. If we run, we’ll never get this facility back,” said Rita. “No telling what Bayclock would do here.”

“That’s the crazy part,” said Bobby. “What is he going to do when he gets here? I mean, I’m a one-each, Navy-issue, real-live aviator and even I know you can’t just pack this place up and take it back to Albuquerque!”

“But how do we stop him?” asked Romero. “Our guns will only fire a few times, if they haven’t seized up already.”

“The ranch hands will help,” said Rita. “They aren’t going to let the general waltz down here and take this place.”

“Romero’s got a point,” said Spencer. He looked around the group. “Even with the ranchers helping, we’ll be fighting military troops, not a bunch of scientists. Anyone here besides Bobby know anything about the military? I mean, we aren’t even weapons scientists.”

Gilbert Hertoya cleared his throat. “That’s not entirely true.” The small man ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I haven’t been working on the EM launcher all my career, you know. Sandia lab is a pretty big place, and I’ve been involved in a lot of different areas, including weapons.”

“Do you have any ideas? Will they enable us to win?”

Gilbert grinned and shrugged. “Sure, I’ve got ideas. Ask me in three weeks if they’ll let us win.”

“Okay, let’s hear what you got.”

“Well, first idea. It won’t take much to build a homopolar generator—”

“A what?” said Bobby.

“Homopolar generator,” said Rita, batting her eyes mischievously. “Don’t you know nuthin’?”

“We can cannibalize some rails, capacitors, and batteries at the launch site and build a railgun,” Gilbert said.

“Railguns haven’t been too successful even under normal circumstances, have they?” said Spencer.

Gilbert looked hurt and slouched down in the chair. “We were able to build our satellite launcher, based on the same principle. We won’t try to get orbital velocities this time, though, just enough to make a crude weapon.”

“Okay,” said Spencer. “That’s one then. Anything else?”

“Well, we can produce explosives, or at least gunpowder. You know the old formula: one part charcoal, two parts saltpeter, and four parts sulphur.”

“Where are we going to find that?” said Rita.

“Muck, piss and beer,” recited Bobby. “They used to feed saltpeter to us all the time at Annapolis. Dampens the sex drive.”

“Great,” Rita sounded disappointed.

“I agree that might be a bit problematic,” Gilbert said, “but we can try other explosives. Seems that in World War II they ground up citrus fruit rinds and extracted the oil for explosives.” His eyes widened at the skeptical looks he was getting. “No kidding! It’s actually pretty easy to make: one gallon of orange rind oil to a hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, kind of a distant cousin to the explosive ANFO, used all the time.”

“Ammonium nitrate? Where do we get that?”

“Simple,” Gilbert said with a grin. “Otherwise known as fertilizer. Southern New Mexico has plenty of orange and lemon groves. It won’t take much to extract what oil we need. And I know there’s plenty of fertilizer around. All we have to do is use a little TNT to detonate the stuff, and kablooie!, we’ve got homemade bombs.”

Bobby shook his head and groaned, “Maybe we should reconsider fighting the general.”

Rita stood up, looking like a lamppost next to Bobby’s massive frame. “You trusted the scientists who designed your fighter, didn’t you?”

Bobby snorted. “I don’t fly fruit crates.”

“But you will fly balloons burning charcoal?” said Gilbert.

Romero cleared his throat. “As long as we’re trying out crazy ideas, does anyone mind if I set up a telegraph link between the microwave farm and the EM launcher?”

Gilbert frowned. “The wireless is working just fine, Juan.”

“Ah, but Bayclock could never monitor a dedicated telegraph line. And there’s plenty of telephone wire I’m sure Southwest Bell won’t miss anymore.”

Bobby chuckled. “Maybe we should hang a wire from the balloon, too.”

Gilbert said slowly, “You’re not going to believe this, but I remember reading that somebody did that during the Civil War.”

Bobby groaned. Spencer stood. “Okay—three weeks. Let’s give it a go. All of it.”

#

“Hold it right there. Steady, steady—now keep it open!” Spencer pushed the rolled cylinder of aluminum siding into the roaring fire. Smoke spewed from the top into the stitched-together parachutes.

“Ouch! Hurry up, Spence. Not so much smoke!” Rita shouted.

“One more minute!” Spencer held the cylinder with gloved hands, but he could still feel the heat burning through the insulation. Bobby Carron waved at the fire, directing more hot air into the two-foot-thick cylinder. Like water pushing up through a straw, the hot air raced down the aluminum tube and spilled into the deflated balloon sack on the ground.

Parachute material billowed out as Romero raced around the periphery, keeping the silk from catching. Gilbert Hertoya directed a squad of ranch hands to hold lines tied to the top of the inflating balloon.

Slowly, ponderously, the colorful sack swelled as hot air and smoke tumbled inside the cavity. The balloon pushed against the sand, unfolding dozens of yards of fabric as it struggled to rise. Within another minute, Spencer pushed the aluminum piping upright into the fire and secured it in the middle of the gondola; the balloon groaned as it weaved back and forth, flexing to all three stories of its height.

“Don’t let it get off the ground yet!” yelled Gilbert. His eyes were wide and soot covered his face; sweat gushed off his forehead. The ranch hands held their ground, hauling on the long lines anchoring the balloon in place.

The hot-air balloon looked like an crazy-quilt of psychedelic material: multi-colored patching of parachutes sewed together, a gondola made of an aluminum shell, at the bottom of which stood an oversized Weber grill burning a stack of wood.

Bobby joined Spencer. Both men were covered in black grime and dust. Bobby rubbed at his red eyes, looking up . “How much of a daredevil do you think I am? This thing could blaze up in a second if the fire gets out of control. I’d rather be flying experimental aircraft out on China Lake.”

“Once you’re up, you won’t need to keep a big flame going. Just keep feeding the fire to maintain the hot air in the cavity.”

“How long can I stay aloft?” Bobby stared upward. The balloon strained against the ropes. Part of him longed to be up in the air again.

“Probably an hour with the load of charcoal you’re taking,” Spencer said. “That’s enough for a good look around.”

It had taken nearly ten people from the microwave farm to ready the single balloon for flight. “I hope this is worth the effort. It doesn’t seem too efficient to keep using this many people just to mount a lookout.”

“You should provide us with at least a day’s notice of Bayclock’s army, so it’s well worth the trouble. Besides, once we get this up in the air the first time, the rest is easy. We’ll just bring it down, add more charcoal, and send it back up again. As long as we keep it tethered, we can send it up every morning.”

“And pray for no wind,” said Bobby.

“We’ve sent word down to Alamogordo and Cloudcroft, and they should be mobilizing to help us,” Spencer said. “They think of us as their friends, and they don’t want any Napoleon taking over their chance at having electricity again.

“Okay, Doc. Let’s hope this plan of yours works.”

“My plan?” said Spencer, astonished. “You’re the one with the grapefruits and peas, remember?”

#

Spencer craned his neck and held a hand to his forehead to cut the glare. Bobby’s balloon was no more than thirty feet off the ground on its third flight, and it looked like it would tip over at any minute.

Romero and the technicians were back attempting to optimize the antenna farm power conversion; Gilbert had returned to the EM launch facility up on the peak. Within the next few days, the ranchers from Alamogordo would start arriving to set up defenses.

Bobby Carron kept the piñon charcoal in the big hibachi to a minimum. The ranch hands released their guide ropes, letting the strands dangle from the top of the balloon. A tether, tied to a massive concrete anchor, ran down from the bottom of the gondola. Bobby had borrowed Rita’s old bush hat. He stood at the side of the gondola peering into the distance, but he raised no alarm.

Spencer doubted Bayclock could muster his troops within the next few days; if he didn’t have enough horses for his men, it might take weeks before anyone showed up.

But Bobby insisted they get “operational testing time” for the balloon. That way, when the general finally did appear, the lookout procedure would be second nature. And they could concentrate on the hardest part—stopping Bayclock’s army.

Chapter 65

By the fifth day of the forced march, Lance Nedermyer wasn’t sure he liked the idea of taking over the White Sands solar facility—even if General Bayclock had promised to put him in charge.

The cross-country expedition force consisted of 100 soldiers, all armed and walking in a loose formation, plus supply carriers, followers, and message-runners. The soldiers wore leather hiking boots and desert camouflage, led by a vanguard of ten horses—all that Bayclock would spare from his Albuquerque forces. The general himself rode at the point on black gelding from the Kirtland stables, flanked by Colonel David from the Phillip’s Lab and Colonel Nichimya, the Personnel Group commander; the general’s elite security police guard rode directly behind them.

The expedition force had set out eastward, following the shoulders of Interstate 40, next to the old Route 66 that had once sparked America’s wanderlust. When they reached the town of Moriarty, they hooked south, passing through the tiny settlement of Estancia where a few people came out to stare at the military contingent. On his impressive black horse, Bayclock kept his chin up as if he were heading a proud cavalry outfit. The townsfolk looked at them as if they were bandits.

Lance stumbled along with the footsoldiers, trying to keep in formation, but frequently falling out of line, stopping to gasp for breath. He hadn’t gone through the training the rest of the Air Force troops had; in fact, he had never exercised much in his life. Some of the other officers, and occasionally Bayclock himself, admonished him to keep up. Lance couldn’t understand why walking in formation was so important out in the middle of the desert, but he didn’t argue with the general.

Sergeant Catilyn Morris led the group, once again making the trek to the bottom of the state. No expression marred her stone-like face. Haughty litte bitch. She hadn’t even talked to him during the return trip from White Sands.

In the late-morning heat Lance was already sweaty and exhausted. His clothes dragged on him. Back at the Air Force Base, they had outfitted him with a uniform the right size, void of rank insignia. The uniform fit well at first, but now it felt as if every thread and every seam found a way to chafe his skin. He was thirsty, he was hungry, and he was afraid to complain.

Lance fell into a routine of just walking. Every fifty-five minutes the call would come down the ranks to “Take Five!”, and Lance would slump against his backpack. He tried to conserve energy, but how could he recharge an hour’s worth of walking in only five minutes? It reminded him of the time he had tried to hike Old Ragtop mountain in the Appalachians, not far from Washington, D.C. He had been forced to turn back after only an hour. But there was no turning back, here.

Sergeant Morris came back and chided him. “Keep standing during your break. Otherwise you’ll tighten up.” He ignored her advice and sat panting.

Distances were deceptive out in the desert. The troops seemed to hike forever, yet they made no progress. Mountains on the horizon shimmered like a milestone to reach by nightfall, yet after a day of hiking the haze-blue mounds looked no closer. Lance tried setting near-term goals instead, looking at a scraggly mesquite or a cluster of rocks not too far away.

In the first hard day, Lance again made the mistake of thinking about his wife and two daughters, stranded back east. In his job at the Department of Energy, Lance had always spent too much time traveling. He rarely spent more than two-thirds of a month with his family, and he hadn’t thought anything when he left home to visit Lockwood’s smallsat demonstration or to attend the tech-transfer ceremony at Kirtland.

He hadn’t seen his wife or daughters since. In fact, with the phone lines breaking down early in the crisis, he had only managed to speak to them twice. And all they had talked about were how bad things were getting . . . little Lisa had cried, and it made things even worse.

Since that time, Bayclock had carved himself a position as military dictator in New Mexico; Jeffrey Mayeaux was acting president of the United States. And Lance was in the middle of an endless trek across a godforsaken parched wilderness.

He smiled with cracked lips; he couldn’t wait to get the White Sands antenna farm up and running under his control—so they could start restoring modern conveniences, like a humidifier.

#

By afternoon on the sixth day, they approached a small Native American pueblo. A cluster of rickety house trailers, cabins, and a general store stood like a careless pile of refuse at the intersection of a narrow pot-holed road and a winding gravel path that led into the mountains.

General Bayclock raised his hand for attention and swiveled around on his gelding so he could shout back at his troops. “We’ll re-provision here,” he said. “It’ll count as a rest break. Take no more than half an hour.”

The pueblo seemed to have more buildings than inhabitants. Behind each cluttered shack, children and old women came from small gardens of beans, chiles, and corn to watch the soldiers. Lance saw no adult men. Were they out hunting? Chickens clucked by, pecking at weeds and insects. A dog barked and scattered the chickens.

Two small black-haired children, naked and covered with dust, played in the street. Even before the petroplague, this place must have seen little traffic. Pickup trucks and gutted cars were scattered randomly between house trailers. Lance had no idea if these vehicles were also victims of the plague, or if they had fallen into decay long before.

Everyone in the pueblo stood motionless as the contingent approached. A stocky, matronly woman stepped out of the general store and held onto one of the support beams on the wooden porch.

Bayclock rode directly up to her. “We need food and water, Ma’am. Enough for a hundred men.”

The woman stared at the general. She looked hard and weathered, like a schoolteacher Lance once had. Even in the summer heat she wore a red flannel shirt and didn’t seem to be sweating at all. “You’re welcome to water at the well,” she said, gesturing to a community pump near one of the empty house trailers. “But we have no food to spare.”

Bayclock’s face darkened, as if a sudden winter storm crossed his features. “Nevertheless, you’ll provide what we need.”

Other people from the pueblo began approaching. The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “And if we refuse?”

Bayclock scowled down at her from his tall black horse. He shifted as if in a conscious effort to make his general’s stars glitter in the sun. “I’m invoking eminent domain, requisitioning supplies. My authority comes directly from the President of the United States. It’s against the law to refuse.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. She stepped off the porch of the general store into the full sunlight. “Is there a United States anymore?”

Lance cringed. Bayclock glared. The general gestured to the front row of footsoldiers. “You men, take sufficient supplies to carry on our march. Do it now.”

Several pueblo women left their gardens and stepped onto the porch of the general store. A young teenaged boy with his left arm wrapped in a filthy cast joined them. They stood in front of the door, blocking the way.

The general’s men hesitated. “You people clear a path,” Bayclock said, watching from astride his gelding. “Or we’ll have to use force.”

The men unshouldered their weapons, looking uncomfortably at each other. Some faced forward, entirely focused on their targets.

The storekeeper looked at them without blinking, facing down the rifle barrels. She jutted her prominent chin forward. “Are you sure those weapons work? Our own shotguns fired once or twice, and then they’re no good. You going to risk a backfire that’ll kill your own men?”

Bayclock’s voice was grim. “I assure you these weapons will work.”

“So what are you going to do?” she continued. “Shoot women and children?” She looked to the others standing on either side of her. Most of them did not look nearly as confident as she did.

Bayclock said, “Clear a path. This is your final warning.” In that moment, Lance could see that Bayclock believed his own threat.

The stern woman must have believed it herself. Her shoulders slumped as she stepped to one side. “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me.” With a nod, she signaled the others to stand down.

Bayclock did not gloat. “We’ll take only what we need.”

The woman shook her head. “You’re taking what we need.”

Later, as the troops moved out, the horsemen took the point, riding ahead as the footsoldiers marched behind them. Lance could not stop himself from looking back at the angry, betrayed glares of the people in the pueblo.

#

The expedition made another five miles before stopping for the evening. The troops built fires, while camp personnel set up tents and prepared a meal with fresh supplies from the pueblo.

Lance wanted to collapse. His muscles felt like tangled piano wires; his body was a mass of aching blisters, dried sweat, and stinging sunburn. But he was deeply troubled by the events of the afternoon, and he went to speak with Bayclock—partly as an excuse to avoid doing more back-breaking setup work, but also because he wanted answers.

“General, why did we have to bully those people at the pueblo? It could have escalated into a hostile situation, and we already had enough rations to last us for the whole journey.”