Ariel (28 page)

* * *

I didn't leave, of course. Not after an offer of help. They demanded I tell them who I was and how I came to be there, which was only fair. It took a while, though, and there was a long silence when I finished. Then they all began at once. You say you've met the griffin rider? You've
fought
with him? They took you to the necromancer? You've been up there, in the Empire State Building? You've seen the layout, the deployment of manpower, the locations of the big shots? How did you get down? How did you get
up
? Why'd you leave in the first place if your friend—this unicorn—was still there? I tried my best to answer them, but the questions came too fast; they seemed desperate to know a lot of tactical information about the building itself that I just didn't know.

Mac quieted them down. "Look," he said to me, "we don't mean to give you the third degree like this. But you know some things that are important to us. We're a scouting party sent over to look at the situation here—a recon team, if you like."

My eyebrows knitted. "I don't like. I don't know what the hell's going on."

"You've come in on the ground floor of a war, Pete, and you're a gold mine we could use. We think we can help you rescue your unicorn, if you'll go back with us to Deecy and tell what you know." He paused. "Are you with us?"

"I don't even know who 'us' is!"

He walked to the support posts and unhitched a dark bay horse. He led it to me and offered me the reins. For some reason—don't ask me to explain it because I don't know why—that decided me. "All right," I said evenly. "I'm with you."

He nodded. "Good. Walt, you're going to have to double up with Esteban. Pete will use your horse. He and I will ride ahead of you as fast as we can; we've got to get him to Deecy soonest."

Walt nodded. "Be careful getting out of here."

"Right." He began unhitching another horse. "Mount up, Pete."

"Now? We're leaving now?"

"You said you were in a hurry. We are, too. We were due back some time ago."

I stood there stupidly for ten seconds, then bit my lip, put a foot in the stirrup, and swung onto the saddle.

Mac gave last-minute instructions. "Take your time. We're the ones hurrying, not you. We'll try to go out the same way we came in; you try to do the same. Remember the vantage point they have and try to keep out of sight. There are four of you and three horses, so you won't be able to go fast if you run into trouble. Give us ten minutes and then get out of here."

"Yes, mother," said Walt. "We'll be sure to wear our rubbers, and if we fall down we won't get dirty."

"And if we break our legs," added Esteban, "we won't come running to you."

Mac flushed. "All right, all right. But I don't like splitting up."

"Neither do I," said one man whose name I never did learn. "But all of us booking outta here at the same time would be asking for trouble."

"Let's go, Pete."

The reins were tight in my hands. The saddle had a sling at the side and I'd hung Fred there for easy draw. "Who's Deecy?"

"You mean where's Deecy."

I frowned, and then it hit me—I hadn't been listening right. I almost missed his next words: "Washington, D.C. That's where our army is."

Nineteen

If Murphy's Law is taken into account and plans are made accordingly, then things will run smoothly—and that will screw everything up.

—Tisdel's Constant

Too many things all at once. My mind reeled as I warily and joyfully accepted events and facts, hoping, wanting, desperate.

Events first. We rode our horses slowly along the sidewalks of New York City, speeding up little by little as we got farther away from the Empire State Building. Mac rode ahead of me. We didn't talk; the need for silence outweighed my need for information, or his. We headed south, then east. After half an hour we stopped and dismounted. Olive-drab and khaki-colored trash bags were piled high on a corner across the street. Most were split open, their contents splayed across the sidewalk, sometimes spilling over the curb and into the gutter. Dogs had been into them.

I looked uncertainly at Mac. He approached me, leading his horse by the reins.
"Qué pasa
?" I asked quietly.

"Nada
." That elusive smile widened his black beard. "We're just stopping a few minutes to get our bearings. I want to sketch out for you just what we're trying to do. Our first priority is getting out of Manhattan unseen. That's not quite as easy as it sounds; that skyscraper gives them one hell of a view. So far we've been sticking close to the sides of buildings and not rushing it, and that's good, but it's two hundred and thirty miles to Washington and we're going to have to take it easy—if we push the horses too hard they'll founder, and then where'll we be?"

I looked at my horse. He twitched his ear at a fly. I patted his flank. I had thought it might remind me of the feel of Ariel, but no. The horse's shape and feel seemed a rough mockery of the unicorn, as if an eight-year-old had molded the image of a man with Play-Doh and considered it a perfect likeness. Still, even having the comparison to work with troubled me. Stay troubled, I told myself. Stay mad. You'll need that later.

I realized Mac was looking at me carefully. "What?" I asked, thinking he'd asked something and was waiting for a reply.

"I didn't say anything." He mounted up and gestured for me to do likewise. I swung onto the saddle and saw that he was still watching me. "I've seen that look before," he finally said. He shook his head. "I don't ever want to be that hooked on something."

I looked away from him. "How are we getting out of Manhattan?" I asked lamely.

"Holland Tunnel."

"You're kidding."

He shrugged. "Could be worse."

"Could be raining," I finished. His face fell and I laughed. "I saw
Young Frankenstein
at least four times."

"That's Fronkensteen."

"Yeah, well—let's get this over with, shall we?"

His smile returned. "Yes, let's. 'Onward, ever onward, into the jaws of death,' and all that."

I mirrored his grin. "Rode the two," I completed. "Never liked Coleridge anyway."

"That's Byron."

"That's what I meant."

* * *

Leading the horses we threaded our way through traffic in the Holland Tunnel without incident, unless you count my echoing yelp when a rat skittered across my foot. We emerged squinting into the light at the tunnel's end. Mac blinked for a while, then said, "Well, let's trip the light fantastic."

"What?"

"Let's skedaddle, vamoose, split. Let's go." He swung onto his horse.

I remained where I was.

"Come on, Pete, we've got to get a move on."

"You got any food?" I blurted.

He leaned forward in his saddle, looking at me as if he'd never seen me before. "Any idiot could see you were pretty beat up, but I didn't notice you were so thin. When was the last time you ate?"

"This morning. I can't remember when the last time was before that. It blurs."

He frowned. "There's food and water in your saddlebag. Go easy on both or you'll puke your guts out."

I nodded, not telling him I had found that out for myself just this morning. I began untying the saddlebags with greedy fingers. He said nothing as I drew forth a tin of Spam spread (!), a small jar of dried and salted meat, and a cellophane packet of hardbread slices. Bread! Oh, baby, it's been so long  .  .  .  .

"Canteen's slung right next to you," said Mac. "Eat and drink while we ride."

I wanted to argue, but he was right. I opened the tin of Spam, scooped out the contents with a finger, and spread it onto a slice of hardbread. Mac stopped me from discarding the empty tin on the road and made me fling it as far away as I could. I put another piece of bread on top, ate it, then made another sandwich of the dried meat and swung into the saddle, holding fast to my food and trying not to slobber all over myself.

We kicked our horses and trotted off. Hanging on and eating at the same time was tricky, and my stomach didn't like it much, but the food stayed down.

* * *

We followed the Jersey Turnpike toward D.C. The eerie stillness of the Newark Airport crept up on our right, drew abreast, and slid silently away. Quiet jets rested idly on runways, poked curious long noses into repair hangars. Along the end of one runway, and continuing for blocks past the neighborhood proper, was a great deal of wreckage. Gnarled, twisted metal, plastic melted shapeless, burned bits and pieces fanned out, scattered over an area of a few square miles. The only section recognizable as once having been an aircraft was the rear of the fuselage and the truncated wedge of tail, lying smoke-blackened three-fourths of the way from the end of the runway. Beyond that, thirty yards of airport barrier fence was missing, torn by hurtling metal. Parts of the wreck gleamed in the sun, winking to us as we hurried past.

It must have just left the ground, I thought. Point of no return, four-thirty in the afternoon, plane lifting off right on schedule—and the Change occurred. How did the pilot feel, I wondered, when he saw the horizon drop satisfyingly below him, then rush upward again, too fast, filling his windshield with the irrefutable knowledge that he was about to die.

Mac's face was grim as he trotted up the circular ramp and headed in a more southerly direction where the Jersey Turnpike and I-95 became one and the same. We thudded along the left side of the six-lane highway, a constant line of cars gliding past. It's been a long time since I've moved this fast, I thought.

* * *

I wearily hitched my horse to a guardrail for our first night's camp, regarding it with a mixture of appreciation and wanness—call it cautious respect. "Horses always made me nervous," I said. My ass and the insides of my thighs would never be the same.

"Good beasts. Need 'em, nowadays." The grayness of his eyes was striking, and I found myself surprised I hadn't noticed it before. I blinked. It seemed to me then that his face was old, much older than he probably was. Black beard aside, there was a grizzled, weathered look to him. His shaggy head belonged on a big man, yet he himself was of medium build.

"Tell me about Washington," I said as we tried to get a fire going. "What's there? Is there really an army? And why? Who's fighting for what?"

His dark eyebrows crept closer together. "All right, all right. They're going to pump you dry when we get there; it's only fair you know what you're walking into." He took a deep breath and let it out, considering. "Well. It was, shall we say, a bit of an overstatement to call us an army, exactly—"

"You were bragging."

"Exaggerating. Don't quibble." He ran fingers through his beard. "We began—they began, actually; I wasn't there at the start—as a sort of artist's colony, a group of people who wanted to pool together to use their creative talents and resources in the aftermath of the Change. They began with around a dozen people. The idea was to do whatever you wanted, they didn't care, as long as you contributed something to help the group survive."

"Sounds like a commune."

He pursed his lips. "Sort of. If you've got the stereotypical image of organic types 'finding themselves,' no, it wasn't. But if by 'commune' you mean a collection of individuals working for the group—a community—then yes. They eventually established themselves outside the city as a small farming community. It began to work. Word got around that there was this group who didn't have to worry about where the next meal was coming from, who had learned to get by without being parasites, and more and more people trickled in to join them." He paused. "You know, most people are like mushrooms now, living off the rotting remains of this big dead tree." He waved toward the buildings across the street. "Pretty soon they had seventy or eighty people, all trying to help one another out."

"You sound like a commercial."

He shrugged. "What can I say? They were idealists. The world had gone crazy and they wanted to pull good people together so they could make it. They had a good thing and it worked. But—ah, yes, the inevitable but—there was this
other
group, see? A large group of loners—I know that sounds contradictory, but that's what they were—began forming in New York. They started out, in principle, the way our group did—pool together to scavenge food, not to raise it. Pretty shortsighted of them."

"The city's running out of food."

"Yes. That's something we learned by scouting. Their main priority seems to be gathering food. Between them using it up but never replacing it and the other loners in the city bleeding off the rest, they couldn't have lasted long. But then they got the necromancer to get the trains running on time, so to speak."

"Who is he?" I asked. "What was he before the Change? Why has he organized an army?"

Mac turned his palms up. "I don't know. I'd lay odds he's somebody who was nobody before the Change, and now he's got his chance to get even. A little knowledge, you know? As to his 'army,' I'd say it was closer to the Mafia than the military. One of the things the necromancer did to 'improve' the organization was to do what any don would have done—he looked for strong-arms. He offered them bribes, spells, Familiars—"

"The griffin rider."

"Uh-huh. One day, not long after I'd joined up with our group, something happened. I was out in the field with friends and we were trying to figure out a way to build an efficient rainstill. Somebody pointed out something in the sky, a dark spot that looked like it had huge wings. It was headed our way."

"Let me guess."

"He landed right in front of us. He said he was from New York and he wanted food." He snorted. "Hell, we told him he was welcome to share some. We'd even feed his griffin, if we had anything it could eat." Mac put his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and balled them up. "He stayed on his griffin and shook his head. 'You don't understand,' he told us. 'I want all the food you have, and I want it by tomorrow.' We tried telling him we needed what food we had, that we had just about enough to feed all of us plus a little extra that he was welcome to." Mac looked at the ground, talking more to himself, it seemed, than to me. "He just laughed at us. Told us we had to give him all the food we had, once a month, and that it had better be enough. And then he said something to the griffin and it stepped forward and slashed with one of its claws." He shook his head. "It cut a man into three pieces. He fell apart—there was blood everywhere—and we just stood there. It slashed again and I barely jumped out of the way. It got the woman beside me." He broke off and raised his head suddenly. His gray eyes were bright. "He told us to have the food ready by tomorrow, and then he flew off. We held a conference and decided to pack up and move first thing next morning. Some people didn't want anything to do with the whole mess and left the group entirely, heading off in small groups, pairs, going loner, whatever. Most of us stayed, though, and we moved to D.C."

"Why Washington? You couldn't farm—you'd have to scavenge.

"We aren't interested in being agricultural at the moment." He pulled his hands from his pockets and held them at his sides. "We've only been there a few months. We don't plan on being there much longer. We're going to have it out with Our Gang in New York."

"That's why you were sent to scout?"

He nodded. "A bit Tolkien-ish, isn't it? Washington going to war with New York. A lot of us wanted to just move on, either south or west. We could be farmers anywhere. But we decided against it—principles, and all that. Who knows how big their outfit would be in another year, two years, if they were left alone? Maybe we'd be farming in Grand Shebongle, Kansas, or someplace, and one day we'd end up with this griffin guy again, demanding food, selling protection, who knows? So we've been banging strategies about for a few months, getting our shit together, and we were a scouting team for last-minute developments. We're about as ready as we'll ever be in D.C."

"Yes, but are you ready?"

He shrugged. "Only one way to find out. I was worried while we were scouting that they were onto us, somehow. Over the past few weeks they've increased their activities. We thought they might be readying an assault on us—one of the reasons our team was sent. We'd been in New York a week when we came across you, Pete. Until then we didn't know what to make of it. They were sending out armed scouting parties and the rider was on the wing, but the organization around the Empire State Building was as lax as ever. They definitely weren't preparing for a full-scale assault."

"That was something I noticed," I said. "Hardly any door guards, not a lot of discipline. I'd hesitate to call them an army, exactly; I never should have made it out of there."

His smile was wry. "That's one of the points in our favor. Because of the necromancer, the rider and the griffin, the fact that they occupy the Empire State Building—big deal—they're convinced they're the most powerful group around. Whether or not it's true, it's made them careless. I don't think it's that they think they can withstand an assault; I don't think they've considered the possibility that they might be assaulted. They seem convinced they're the only organized group around."

"Then why the increased activity?"

The wry smile remained. "Haven't you guessed? It's you. They were after you—you and your unicorn."

"Oh." I felt stupid. (Later, Ariel, I promise you. I need these people's help.) "How are you going to deal with the necromancer?"

The smile disappeared. "We're sort of going to have to ad lib in that department," he said lamely. "There's too much we don't know about him—which is why you're being carted to D.C. You've seen him, talked with him, been in his castle, so to speak. No one in Washington has ever seen him. At least," he added thoughtfully, "no one who ever returned to tell us about it. Some of our scouts didn't come back. So I think you'll be able to help us out quite a bit."

I shrugged, one corner of my mouth drawing in. "I'll tell you what I saw. I don't know how helpful it'll be."

"You're a gold mine, Pete, believe me. We didn't even know where in the Empire State Building he was until you told us." He bent over, touched his toes with knees straight, straightened up, bent backward a little, and righted himself. "We'd better get some sleep. We start early tomorrow."

"One question," I said.

His eyebrows lifted.

"How many of you are there in D.C.?"

"Counting men, women, and children, about four hundred. The kids won't do any fighting, of course, and some of us will have to stay behind with them. Subtract ten or twenty sick, injured, or elderly, and we'll have a little over three hundred people in the assault."