The day after: An apocalyptic morning (105 page)

              "I think we've reached that point," Paul said next. "Unless there are any stern objections," he gave Skip a sharp look, "then I'm going to bring it up tonight and call a vote."

              Skip sighed a little. "You'll get no objections from me," he said at last. "I don't agree that this is the time to do this but I will agree that its time to decide one way or the other."

              Dinner that night was of course very heavy on rice, chicken noodles, and fresh baked bread made from flour that had been ground from the wheat. The mechanics of eating were over and done with fairly quickly. The community meeting that followed went on for quite some time.

              Paul, to give him credit, explained fairly dispassionately and in a non-partisan Micker, just what it was that was being proposed. He explained the potential risks as well as the potential benefits of attempting to establish contact, covering every single point that had been brought up to him since the idea was first suggested.

              For the first time since the initiation of the decision by community vote concept, opinion was sharply divided on a subject. This division followed no clear lines and was almost completely even - with half the townspeople being strongly in favor of making the attempt and about half strongly opposed. The first hour of the discussion did not even touch the subject of whether or not they should do it but as to how the votes were going to counted. Representatives of both points of view pushed for a two-thirds majority being required - in opposition to their respective choices of course. Some of the arguments became quite inflamed and, for the first time since Jessica's ouster as chairwoman of the meeting, Paul found himself wishing that he had a gavel to bang.

              Finally Paul declared that, for the purposes of the decision-making, majority would rule. This then brought another extensive round of discussion as person after person asked to be recognized so they could speak their piece. Most of the statements made were impassioned cries to try to convert others to their side and the same points on both sides of the issue were brought up over and over again.

              "It's too dangerous to expose ourselves," cried the opposed group in thirty or forty different ways.

              "The benefits of establishing trade from a position of strength make the risk worthwhile," cried those in favor in just as many different manners.

              Eventually, at nearly 8:00 that night, everyone had had his or her say and Paul called the vote. It was very close, requiring that those people manning the guard positions (they had listened to the entire debate through a radio-link that Paul had set up) needed to be polled in order to make the final determination. The decision was made - by a margin of only two votes - to make the attempt to establish contact.

              Jessica was having a little trouble getting a deep breath. As she sat in the bleachers of the high school's football stadium that afternoon along with every last one of the other 2200 some-odd women in town, her nose was swollen shut and caked with blood and there was sharp pain in her right side whenever she inhaled or exhaled. Nor was she the only one. Every woman around her was sporting similar beating injuries of varying color and severity. Some, the women of Stu's clan, had had to be carried to the mandatory meeting by their companion wives.

              The beatings had occurred immediately after breakfast that morning. Colonel Barnes had ordered that every person return immediately to their assigned homes and that every man soundly beat his wives as punishment for the "AWOL status" of Anna and Jean Bracken. "This is your responsibility to do this correctly," Barnes told the men of the town just before dismissing them to take care of this. "If I see a bitch walking around in this town without bruises on her, I swear by God that I'm going have her husband hanged. You will beat them and beat them well for this! Every last one of them!"

              And the men of town had taken his words to heart. The rumor mill among the women was a weak one - there was too much fear and mistrust, too many informers trying to gain favor for there to be a truly free exchange of information and stories - but there was a rumor mill nonetheless. Jessica, who had been perhaps one of the all-time best at ferreting out gossip in her previous circles, was starting to become tuned in to this network. The word was that three women had actually been beaten to death. And now, with less than a half-hour until dinner, Barnes had ordered again that every person in town assemble. The women had been put on the bleachers and in front of it while the men were formed up at attention on the muddy field. Most of the women were tittering nervously as they waited to find out what this was all about. The only time the women were forced to gather like this was when one of them was to be hanged. Had they caught Jean and Anna? Was that what this was all about? The hanging scaffold was standing in its accustomed spot in the center of the field - a large wooden structure that had been constructed from scrap wood only days after the comet impact.

              Somehow Jessica didn't seem to think that the two fugitives had been captured. Though she had never witnessed one of the town's hangings before, she had heard that in every other case the women in question had been chained to the outside of the scaffold when the meeting convened.

              "I have a bad feeling about this," said Cathy, her co-wife, who was sitting next to her.

              "There's nothing to worry about," Linda, who was on the other side of Cathy, replied nervously. "He probably just wants to warn us again about trying to get away. Imagine the nerve of those two sluts, running away and subjecting us to all this."

              Jessica said nothing to them. Their relationship was still not the best, especially the relationship with Linda, who seemed to delight in reporting every word, every action that Jessica said or did to Stinson. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, there was no denying that Linda's personality was very much like her own. Would she - Jessica - have been like this if she had been in Auburn since the start, if she had not known how different things could be? She tried to tell herself that she wouldn't have been but she had had much time to do some soul searching since that shocking day she had first been beaten and raped, and she had a hard time convincing herself of the truth of this notion.

              "There's Barnes," Cathy said softly, a tinge of fear in her voice as he walked to the covered podium that had been set up for him.

              "Yes," Linda agreed, her eyes looking at him with adoration. "Isn't he just the most?"

              Nobody answered her. As one, the entire congregation of women stood up - as Auburn law demanded they do when their leader was addressing them. Barnes mounted the podium and clicked on a loudspeaker system. He tapped the microphone a few times and then began to speak.

              "This gathering," he said, "is for the bitches of town. By now, your husbands have beaten all of you as part of a group punishment for the elopement of Anna and Jean Bracken. These beatings were not something I ordered lightly - as I've told you time and time again, I am firmly opposed to needless violence against the fairer sex - but they are something that I thought necessary to prevent further elopements by others. I want you all to know that you are all going to be responsible for the actions of each other and that your actions will impact what happens to everyone. The beatings are only the first step in this punishment process. Now, we will address part two of this punishment."

              There was a low murmur from the women, almost inaudible over the sound of the rain and the hissing of the public address system. Part two of the punishment? A bad feeling began to infect everyone, becoming almost palatable.

              "I have put the names of every bitch in town into a box," Barnes told them next, holding up a small, wooden container about the size of a toaster. "This includes even my own bitches, as they are no better than any of you others. I will now draw three names from this box and those women will come up and stand before the town where they will then be hanged for the offense committed by Anna and Jean Bracken."

              This time the gasp was clearly heard as his words sank into everyone.

              "Silence!" Barnes barked angrily. "If I hear another peep out of anyone, if I have any sort of problems with this group, I will order another round of beatings tonight and add one more woman to the hanging list! Now if you're name is called, you will proceed immediately down here! If I have to send someone up to get you, I will change the punishment from a simple, painless hanging to being burned at a fucking stake!"

              He began to draw the names a moment later. Jessica watched and listened numbly as three women, none of whom she knew or had heard of, wordlessly marched from their places in the bleachers and down to the scaffold. Members of Bracken's company, assisted by Bracken himself, handcuffed their arms behind their backs and then led them, one by one, up the rickety steps to the platform. A noose was put around their necks and a lever was pulled, dropping them five feet downward. The snapping of their necks could be heard plainly each time.

              "Now remember what you've seen here today," Barnes told the remaining women after the last one fell. "Remember that your actions affect more than just yourself. For this elopement I ordered one beating and three hangings. For the next one, I will order two days of beatings and six hangings. Remember and learn. You are now dismissed."

              Slowly, most expressions shocked and haunted, the women stood and began filing down the nearest set of steps. Jessica maintained her position next to her two co-bitches. "He's mad," she said softly to them, unable to help herself, unable to keep from articulating that any longer. "We're being ruled by a madman."

              "You'd better watch what you say about our leader," Linda warned her, though her words seemed to be reflexive instead of having any real menace to them.

              "He's absolutely insane," Jessica repeated. "How can you not see that?"

              Linda opened her mouth to say further but Cathy beat her to the punch. "She's right," she said. "He's not just harsh, he's not just a sadist, he's insane."

              At 10:00 the next morning, Skip, Paul, Mick, and Jack climbed into the helicopter. With them, in addition to the usual assortment of weapons and packs that they carried, was a very special package that had been constructed the night before. Skip went through the pre-flight check and then got the rotor turning. He applied power and the machine left the ground.

              Twenty minutes of flight time brought them to the familiar landmark of Cameron Park, the former home of the helicopter. Using Highway 50 as a reference, Skip turned to a heading that was nearly due west. As the land became lower in altitude below him, Skip did not drop down with it. Instead, he kept his altimeter at a steady 5500 feet, which would put them a little more than 4200 feet above ground level when they finally reached their desSaration.

              "You're sure that this is out of gun range?" Paul asked nervously from his spot in the cargo compartment.

              "Unless they have heavy caliber weapons," Skip told him, "they won't be able to scratch us even if they do somehow manage to get a shot on target. Four thousand feet straight up will eat up all the velocity."

              "And if they do have heavy caliber weapons?"

              "Then that would be one on us, wouldn't it?"

              It was only a five-minute flight time from Cameron Park before the roofs and streets of El Dorado Hills came into sight ahead of them.

              "Two minutes," Skip said, his eyes straining to spot any sort of movement in the town. How fast would their lookouts spot the helicopter? How fast could the people get under cover after that?

              Apparently it was pretty fast. When they flew over the hills that guarded the east side of town, Jack was able to spot a faint hint of the guards on duty with the FLIR. In the township itself, there was nothing visible, either with the naked eye or in infrared. Just as it had the first time they'd spotted it, El Dorado Hills looked just like an abandoned, dead town.

              Skip slowed up and brought the helicopter into a high hover directly over the center of the town. "We're ready for the drop," he said. "Jack, Mick, keep your eyes peeled for any ground fire."

              Paul picked up the package he had and removed a large rubber band from around it. The package was a shoebox wrapped tightly in a heavy-duty plastic garbage bag. Attached to it was an improvised parachute that had been made out of another garbage bag and some string. "Let's hope this parachute works," he said, opening the door. "It would seem kind of strange to them if we just hovered and dropped a shoebox to shatter on the ground, wouldn't it?"

              "It worked in the test from the community center," Mick said. "It'll work now. Drop it out."

              "Right," Paul replied, pushing the door open a little further. "Here goes nothing."

              He pushed the package out the door and watched as it fell. The chute had been deliberately twisted up into a tight ball to keep it from opening too soon and being torn to shreds by the downdraft from the rotor. It was a plan that worked well. Nearly five seconds passed, during which the package dropped more than three hundred feet, before it popped open in a flash of industrial green and began to drift slowly downward.