Skeletons (43 page)

"Stay down, Claire "

My father crawled to the television and turned it on. The picture grew into a scene of a distant helicopter shot, a climbing mushroom cloud, a brilliantly illuminated landscape below in greenish light. The mushroom hung in the air lazily.

". . . and this third explosion"—a frantic voice spoke, over the sounds of the copter—"ten miles away, this one landing in the middle of Lee's third regiment, obliterating it. The earlier two, as we have said, fell short and long. The first destroyed the abandoned town of Harvard, Oregon, the second hit a mill and industrial park, empty for the evening. These are ten-megaton bombs, tactical nuclear weapons. Washington now estimates that the humans were able to get their hands on three, possibly four or even five of these devices. They were taken from the Rocky Flats facility near Omaha, two weeks ago. Up until this time it was not believed that the human army had the manpower, the know-how, or the will to use them. As we said, these nuclear bombs are ten—"

The copter view shook. The voice became even louder, more frantic. "There is . . . another explosion! Off to our right! Get the camera there, get
the
. . . my God, look at that!"

The camera swung wildly. It turned right into the light of the rising explosion. The copter veered away amid shouts from the cameraman, the reporter. "We believe—oh!"

The light brightened. Outside our motel the sky flashed, followed twenty seconds later by a rumble. The television picture cut away to a skeleton at a news desk.

"We have lost our picture from the site of the fourth nuclear explosion during this great battle." The skeleton put a hand to its ear, listening to the earphone there. "This in, let's switch to Fox
Madlin
, at the Pentagon."

The picture switched, a skeleton stared right, then turned to the camera.

"This is Fox
Madlin
, and I've just been told by General Winfield Scott, head of the joint chiefs of staff, that the fourth nuclear explosion came from within the enemy camp itself. That is, it is believed that the fourth nuclear explosion occurred within the human army, as it was firing the missile. I'm told that this was a distinct possibility, that if the warhead was armed incorrectly, or the missile fired incorrectly, the nuclear bomb could go off as the missile was fired. If this is so, then it would seem that most, if not all, of the so-called Army of Humanity has been . . . wait a moment . . ."

A skeleton appeared in the picture next to the newsman. His vague shroud showed an old cavernous face topped by a huge military hat of 1800s vintage.

Fox
Madlin
looked into the camera. "We have General Scott with us—"

"It's over," General Scott said bluntly. "I have informed the president. The Army of Humanity has been totally destroyed. There is one more operation in Alaska to be carried out, which I am unable to talk about at the moment, and then—"

The television picture switched suddenly. The original newscaster's voice returned.

"We now have pictures . . ."

On the screen, a shot from a helicopter, and the helicopter newsman's voice, less frantic, now.

"I do believe . . . yes, are we on? Hello, this is Ralph
Bagler
, in the air over the sight of the fourth explosion." He laughed. "I have to say we thought we were dust for a few moments there."

Below, a huge crater was surrounded by a familiar landscape: the shore of Malheur Lake. The crater lipped the lake itself. Water was making the crater a shallow lake of its own.

"I believe we have pictures on the ground."

The picture switched again. Now a bouncy camera showed a line of skeletons being helped up from the lip of a great hole. Again, Malheur Lake could be seen in the background, floating with debris and dust.

A microphone was thrust into the face of the nearest skeleton.

"How does it feel to be turned?" a newsman's voice said.

The skeleton looked stunned. "Huh? Oh, fine. After getting blown up by a nuke, anything at all is fine."

The newsman chuckled. "Pretty rough, eh?"

The skeleton shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. We took care of the bastards who got us into this."

"What do you mean?" The microphone was thrust in closer.

The skeleton grinned. "Some crazy woman and her bunch. I'm pretty sure we dusted 'em all. Kept raving about the new birth of humanity and all that." The skeleton shook his head. "No way, Jose."

"Are you afraid of the long-term effects of radiation?"

The skeleton laughed. "When you're already dead, what the hell's the difference?"

"All right, thank you."

The microphone moved to the next skeleton climbing out of the hole. "And what do you think, ma'am?"

My father switched off the television. "So that's it," he said sadly. "Get some sleep, Claire. We'll be heading north again in the morning."

He watched me go back to bed. "Good night," he said.

Later on I woke out of sleep again, to see him once more at the window, staring sadly out into the lengthening night.

In the morning, when I awoke, I thought the room was filled with smoke. I could not see. My eyes registered nothing but vague, indistinct light. When I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, the indistinctness gradually faded and I could see.

My father still sat in the chair by the window, with his head in his hands. I thought he was asleep. Instead, when I got out of bed, he lifted his head and said, "I'm blind, Claire. Last night, that first explosion did it. It happened about three hours ago. I've been waiting to see if my sight would come back, but it hasn't."

He stared at me, sightless.

I went and held him.

"Are your eyes all right?" he asked.

I squeezed his hand in answer.

"Good. You're going to have a big job now, Claire." We ate, drank water, and packed.

Outside, in the 4x4, my father tried to teach me how to drive. But I couldn't. The shifting was too difficult. "On foot, then," my father said.

We set out, walking in the service lane of the highway, and headed north.

At midday we were passed by a few vehicles manned by skeletons. My father heard them before I did. We easily hid off the side of the road.

"We're going to have to pray for luck, Claire," my father said.

Around noon another car moved toward us from the distance. My father once more warned that we should get off the road. But this one stopped up the road, pulled onto the far shoulder.

A human man got out, humming to himself, looking from side to side. He walked quickly to the far shoulder to relieve himself.

I squeezed my father's hand.

"What is it?" he asked. "Squeeze my hand again if it's a human."

I squeezed his hand.

"Stay close to me."

We climbed out of the hole. I maneuvered my father across the highway toward the man, who was just zipping up his pants.

The man stopped humming, spun around, holding a gun.

"Well, I'll be—" he said.

"Hello," my father said. "We're—"

"I know what the hell you are," the man said. He grinned. "You're the first damned humans I've seen in ten days." He looked hard at me. "And I've seen you in my dreams."

He crossed the road and put his hand out. "Glad to —"

When my father didn't hold his hand out, he stopped, frowning. "What's the matter with him?" he said to me.

I looked at him.

My father said, "I can't see."

"And what's the matter with her?" the man asked.

"She doesn't speak."

The man turned, headed back toward his car. My father said, "Wait!"

The man got into the car, started it up. My father ran forward a few steps, reached out blindly.

"Sorry, I can't—" the man said.

He pulled the car onto the road, sped ahead. Then suddenly he screeched to a halt.

He got out, stood for a moment looking back at us, grinning. "What's the matter, can't you take a joke?" he shouted at last.

My father and I walked to his car and climbed into the back seat, moving aside piles of black cardboard cartons and sample cases. The front seat next to the driver was covered with boxes, too. Cases covered a car phone mounted between the front seats.

The man drove off, fast, and said, "Sorry about the joke. Not very funny." He looked in the rearview mirror, grinned. "You didn't think I'd just leave you there, did you?"

"Yes," my father said.

The man laughed. "It worked! Really, I'm sorry, though. It was a rotten trick to pull. But I just couldn't help it. I've been doing nothing but running for months. Used to be a salesman. Costume-jewelry, trinkets, novelties, that sort of crap. Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, parts of Nevada, and northern California. I know every novelty shop and gewgaw joint in a fifth of the USA. One of the best joke shops is up in Seattle, down by the water in the underground market. Great stuff. Always bought a lot from me, too. Open one of those cases back there if you want. Help yourself."

I lifted a slim cardboard carton, started to open it. "Uh-oh," the driver said. "Hold on."

He looked fiercely in the rearview mirror, swerved suddenly off the road, down to the service-road ditch.

"Just be real quiet for the next minute or so. I'd be grateful if you ducked down a little, too."

He lowered himself in the front seat. We did the same.

Above, I heard a roar and saw the tops of three vehicles fly past.

"Another few seconds, if you please," the salesman said. He counted to ten, then said, "All right! All clear!"

He turned on the engine, pulled the car back onto the highway.

I finished lifting the lid off the box. Inside were sections separated by cardboard fences, wells containing cellophane bags with red clown noses inside, others with blue-and-black noses. The noses were made of foam and had a slit to put them on.

"Go on, keep digging!" the salesman said from the front seat.

Another box contained jokes and tricks, squirting flowers, hand buzzers, snapping gum. Another was filled with plastic children's jewelry, tiny horse and flower charms; another was a box of gumballs.

"Fun stuff, eh?" the salesman said.

Once again he said, "Uh-oh," and darted down into the ditch. We ducked low in our seats.

When the salesman had pulled back onto the road, my father said, "Why are you taking the highways?"

The salesman looked in the rearview mirror. 'That's easy to answer. At first I thought to myself, the back roads will be safer. But they're not. First of all only an idiot would drive at this point on a main road. So nobody's got time to look for an idiot. There's army skeletons combing the back roads looking for people like us. First few weeks of this I saw hundreds of them get caught that way. Second of all it doesn't matter much now, because there are hardly any humans left anymore, anyway. And third I know every hidey-hole between here and Vancouver, every cop speed trap, every road that gets traveled and by who. It's my job."

"Where are you planning on going?"

The salesman looked in the mirror. "Mind if we have names?" he said, jovially. "I'm Benny Sullivan. You're . . . ?"

"My name is
Coine
, and this is Claire," my father said.

The salesman nodded. "Pleased to meet you. To answer your question, I'm going to Coos Bay, where there's a steamer waiting to take me up to northern Canada. Then I'm going to live in the wildest part of the north I can find, and never look at a human or skeleton again."

"You can trust this steamer?" my father asked.

Sullivan guffawed. "Are you kidding? This boat's skippered by my oldest friend. This one's been running junk goods since day one from Taiwan, from the Philippines, from Japan in the old days when they were digging themselves out of World War Two and making great novelties and radios, cheap. We go back forty years. Hell, before this boat
steamered
trinkets, it ran tobacco from Cameroon, tea from Ceylon, skins from Vancouver. Knows every port from Turkey to Tijuana. Knows how to outrun any coast guard in the world, the ones that haven't been paid off. Skipper's a great character. You'll fall in love."

"How do you know this person isn't a skeleton?"

 
Sullivan said, with conviction, "I know."

"How?"

"You're a pushy one, for a hitchhiker, you know?" He sighed. "It's easy." He reached over, dug under the cardboard cartons between the seats, held up a car phone receiver.

"When you talk to skeletons, they're different than we are. They sound the same at first. But certain things piss them off. When you tell them you're human, they hit the goddamned ceiling, start foaming at the mouth. It's like they'd like to reach through the line, tear your head off where you sit."

He drove with one hand, hit some buttons on the phone. "Watch."

It buzzed a ring. Then an even voice said, "Hello.”