The Postman (36 page)

Amidst the otherwise total blackness, it was as if he stood in front of it. He seemed to take it in his hand, astonished by the light. The jewel grew. And in its facets he saw more than people, more than generations.

A
future
took shape around him, enveloping him, penetrating his heart.

When Gordon next opened his eyes, he was lying atop the beam, unable to recall how he had gotten there. Unbelievingly, he sat up blinking. A spectral light seemed to stream away from him in all directions, passing through the broken walls of the ruined building as if
they
were the dream stuff, and the brilliant rays the true reality. The radiance spread on and on, beyond limit. For a short time he felt as if he could see forever in that glow.

Then, as mysteriously as it had come, it passed. Energy appeared to flow back into whatever mysterious well he had tapped. In its wake, physical sensation returned, the reality of exhaustion and pain.

Trembling, Gordon fumbled with the knotted tourniquets around his ankles. His torn, bare feet were slippery with blood. When he finally got the ropes loosed, returning circulation felt like a million angry insects running riot inside his skin.

His ghosts were gone, at least; the cheering section seemed to have been taken up by that strange luminance, whatever it had been. Gordon wondered if they would ever return.

As the last loop fell away, he heard shots in the distance, the first since Macklin had left him alone here. Perhaps, he hoped, that meant Phil Bokuto wasn’t dead quite yet. Silently, he wished his friend luck.

He crouched down on the beam as footsteps approached the storeroom door. It opened slowly and Charles Bezoar stared at the empty room, at the limp, hanging rope. Panic filled the ex-lawyer’s eyes as he drew his automatic and stepped out.

Gordon would have preferred to wait until the man came directly underneath, but Bezoar was no idiot. An expression of dark suspicion came over his face, and he started to look up.…

Gordon leaped. The .45 swung up and fired at the same instant as they collided.

In the hormonal rush of combat Gordon had no idea where the bullet went, or whose bone had cracked so loud on impact. He grappled for the gun as they rolled together across the floor.

“… kill you!” the Holnist growled, the .45 tipping toward Gordon’s face. Gordon had to duck to one side as it roared again, stinging his neck with burning powder. “Hold still!” Bezoar growled, as if he were in the habit of being obeyed. “Just let me …”

Straining against his enemy with all his might, Gordon suddenly let go of the gun with one hand and struck out. As the automatic came down toward him his right fist smashed upward into the root of Bezoar’s jaw. The bald Holnist’s body convulsed as his head struck the floor hard. The .45 fired twice into the wall.

Then Bezoar was still.

This time the worst pain was in Gordon’s hand. He stood up slowly, gingerly, semiconsciously accounting for what had to be a cracked rib, in addition to his many other bodily insults.

“Never talk while you fight,” he told the unconscious man. “It’s a bad habit.”

Marcie and Heather spilled out of the storage room and drew Bezoar’s knives. When he saw what they were after, he almost told them to stop, to tie the man up, instead.

He didn’t, though. Instead he let them do what they would and turned to step through the back door into the storage room.

It was even darker inside, but as his eyes adapted, he made out a slender figure lying on a dirty blanket over in the corner. A hand reached up toward him and a thin voice called out.

“Gordon, I knew you’d come for me.… Is that silly? … It sounds … sounds like fairy tale talk, but … but somehow I just knew it.”

He sank to his knees beside the dying woman. There had been crude attempts to clean and bandage her wounds, but her matted hair and blood-streaked clothes covered more damage than he dared even look at.

“Oh Dena.” He turned his head and closed his eyes. Her hand took his.

“We stung them, darling,” she said in a reed-thin voice. “Me and the other Scouts.… In some places we really caught some of the bastards with their pants down! It—” Dena had to stop as a fit of coughing made her nearly double up, bringing forth a trickle of ocher fluid. The corners of her mouth were stained.

“Don’t talk,” Gordon told her. “We’ll find a way to get you out of here.”

Dena clutched Gordon’s tattered shirt.

“They found out about our plan, somehow … in more’n half the places they were warned before we could strike.…

“Maybe one of the girls fell in love with her rapist, like the legends say h-happened to H-Hypermnestra.…” Dena shook her head unbelievingly. “Tracy and I were worried about that possibility, ’cause Aunt Susan said it used to happen sometimes, in the old days.…”

Gordon had no idea what Dena was talking about. She was babbling. Inside he struggled to come up with some idea,
any
way to carry a desperately wounded and delirious woman away through miles and miles of enemy lines before Macklin and the other Holnists returned.

In agony, he knew it just couldn’t be done.

“I guess we botched it, Gordon … but we did try! We tried.…” Dena shook her head, tears welling as Gordon took her into his arms.

“Yes, I know, darling. I know you tried.”

His own eyes blurred. Beneath the filth and ruin, he knew her scent. And realized—much too late—what it meant to him. He held her tighter than he knew he ought to, not wanting to let her go.

“It’ll be all right. I love you. I’m here and I’ll take care of you.”

Dena sighed. “You are here. You are …” She held onto his arm. “You …”

Her body suddenly arched and she shivered. “Oh, Gordon!” she cried. “I see … Can you …?”

Her eyes met his for a moment. In them was a light he recognized.

Then it was over.

“Yes, I saw it,” he told her gently, still holding her body in his arms. “Not as clearly as you, perhaps. But I saw it, too.”

In the corner of the outer room, Heather and Marcie were busy with their backs turned as they worked on something Gordon did not want to look at.

Later, he would mourn. Right now though, there were things he had to do, like getting these women out of here. The chances were slim, but if he could see them to the Callahans, they would be safe.

That would be hard enough, but from there he had other obligations. He would get back to Corvallis, somehow, if it was humanly possible, and he would try to live up to Dena’s ridiculous, beautiful image of what a hero was supposed to do—die defending Cyclops, perhaps, or lead a last charge of “postmen” against the invincible enemy.

He wondered if Bezoar’s shoes would fit him, or if, with badly swollen ankles, he might not be better off barefoot. “Stop wasting time,” he snapped at the women. “We have to get out of here.”

But as Gordon bent to pick up Bezoar’s automatic from the floor, a low, gravelly voice spoke. “Very good advice, my young friend. And you know, I’d like to call a man like you
friend
.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t split you open if you try to pick up that weapon.”

Gordon left the gun lying where it was and stood up heavily. General Macklin occupied the open doorway, holding a dagger in throwing position.

“Kick it away,” he said calmly.

Gordon obeyed. The automatic went spinning into a dusty corner.

“That’s better.” Macklin resheathed his knife. He jerked his head at the women. “Get away,” he told them. “Run. Try to live, if you want to and are able.”

Wide-eyed, Marcie and Heather edged past Macklin. They fled out into the night. Gordon had no doubt they would run in the rain until they dropped.

“I don’t suppose the same applies to me?” he asked wearily.

Macklin smiled and shook his head. “I want you to come with me. I need your assistance out here.”

A hooded lantern illuminated part of the clearing across the road, aided from time to time by distant lightning and an occasional moonlit glint at the edge of the rain-clouds. The pelting drisk had Gordon soaked within minutes of limping outside after Macklin. His still-bleeding ankles left spreading pink fog in the puddles where he stepped.

“Your black man is better than I’d thought,” Macklin said, pulling Gordon to one side of the circular, lamp-lit area. “Either that or he had help, and the latter’s pretty unlikely. My boys patrolling the river would have seen more tracks than his, if he’d been accompanied.

“Either way though, Shawn and Bill deserve what they got for being careless.”

For the first time Gordon had an inkling of what was happening. “You mean—”

“Don’t gloat yet,” Macklin snapped. “My troops are less than a mile from here, and there’s a Very pistol in my saddlebags. But you don’t see me hollering for help, do you?”

He smiled again. “Now I’m going to show you what this war is all about. Both you and your scout are the sort of strong men who should have been Holnists. You’re not because of the propaganda of weakness you grew up in. I’m
going to take this opportunity to show you just how weak it makes you.”

With a vicelike grip on Gordon’s arm, Macklin shouted into the night.

“Black man! This is General Volsci Macklin. I have your commander here … your United States Postal Inspector!” he sneered.

“Care to earn his freedom? My men will be here by dawn, so you have very little time. Come on in! We’ll fight for him! Your choice of weapons!”

“Don’t do it, Philip! He’s an aug—”

Gordon’s warning collapsed into a groan as Macklin yanked his arm, nearly tearing his shoulder out of its socket. The force threw him crashing to his knees. His throbbing ribs sent shock waves rolling through his body.

“Tsk tsk. Come now. If your man hadn’t already known about Shawn, it means he got my bodyguard with a lucky shot. If so, he certainly doesn’t deserve any special consideration now, does he?”

It took a powerful effort of will, but Gordon lifted his head, hissing through gritted teeth. Overcoming wave after wave of nausea, he somehow managed to wobble up to his feet. Although the world wavered all around him, he refused to be seen on his knees next to Macklin.

Macklin awarded him a low grunt, as if to say he only expected this from a real man. The augment’s body was aquiver like a cat’s—twitching in anticipation. They waited together, just outside the circle of lamplight. Minutes passed with the rain coming and going in intermittent, blustery sheets.

“Last chance, black man!” In a blur, Macklin’s knife was at Gordon’s throat. A grip like an anaconda’s twisted his left arm up behind his back. “Your Inspector dies in thirty seconds, unless you show! Starting now!”

The half minute passed slower than any Gordon had ever known. Oddly enough, he felt detached, almost resigned.

At last Macklin shook his head, sounding disappointed.
“Well, too bad, Krantz.” The knife moved under his left ear. “I guess he’s smarter than I—”

Gordon gasped. He had heard nothing, but suddenly he realized that there was
another
pair of moccasins down there at the edge of the light, not fifteen feet away.

“I
am afraid your men killed that brave soldier you were shouting for.”
The soft voice of the newcomer spoke even as Macklin spun around, putting Gordon between them.

“Philip Bokuto was a good man,” the mysterious voice went on. “I have come in his stead, to answer your challenge as he would have.”

A beaded headband glittered in the lamplight as a broad-shouldered man stepped forward into the circle. His gray hair was tied back into a ponytail. The craggy features of his face expressed a sad serenity.

Gordon could almost feel Macklin’s joy, transmitted through that powerful grip. “Well, well. From the descriptions I’ve heard, this could only be the
Squire
of
Sugarloaf Lodge
, come down alone out of his mountain and valley at last! I’m gratified more than you might know, sir. You’re welcome, indeed.”

“Powhatan,” Gordon gritted, unable to even imagine how or
why
the man was here. “Get the hell away, you fool! You haven’t a chance! He’s an augment!”

Phil Bokuto had been one of the best fighters Gordon had ever known. If
he
had barely managed to ambush the lesser of these devils, and had died in the process, what chance did this old man have?

Powhatan listened to Gordon’s revelation and frowned.

“So? You mean from those experiments in the early nineties? I had thought they were all normalized or killed off by the time the Slavic-Turkic War broke out. Fascinating. This does explain a lot about the last two decades.”

“You’d heard of us then,” Macklin grinned.

Powhatan nodded somberly. “I had heard, before the war. I also know why that particular experiment was discontinued—mostly because the worst kinds of men had been recruited as subjects.”

“So said the weak,” Macklin agreed. “For they made the error of accepting volunteers from among the strong.”

Powhatan shook his head. For all the world it seemed as if he were engaged in a polite argument over semantics. Only his heavy breathing seemed to give away any sign of emotion.

“They accepted
warriors
 …” he emphasized, “… that divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not. The lesson was learned hard, back in the nineties. They had a lot of trouble with augments who came home still loving war.”

“Trouble
is the word,” Macklin laughed. “Let me introduce you to Trouble, Powhatan.” He threw Gordon aside as if on an afterthought, and sheathed his knife before stepping toward his longtime foe.

Splashing into a ditch for the second time, Gordon could only lie in the muck and groan. His entire left side felt torn and burning—as if it were loaded with glowing coals. Consciousness flickered, and remained only because he absolutely refused to let go of it. When, at last, he was able to look up again through a pain-squinted tunnel, he saw the other two men circling each other just inside the lamp’s small oasis of light.

Of course Macklin was just toying with his adversary. Powhatan was impressive, for a man his age, but the monstrous things that bulged from Macklin’s neck, arms, and thighs made a normal man’s muscles look pathetic by comparison. Gordon remembered Macklin’s fireplace poker, tearing apart like shredding taffy.