The Last Sunset (4 page)

“You see, there y’go again! I don’t even know
what that’s supposed to mean,” Sam laughed. “The day old Gustav Kramer sailed
past that lady with the torch he became an American. End of story. I’ll never
understand why you gotta have this… dual nationality.”

“There’s a lot you’ll never understand…” she
said quietly. She made her way to the rear of the old house, where an avenue of
Caledonian pines led down to the nearby burn, which snaked out of Glen
Laragain. Once, the stream would have overflowed with rainwater cascading from
the hills on either side of the glen. Now its bed of rounded stones lay
incongruously in a furrow of dust. On all sides the Highland hills stretched
into the distance. Nothing disturbed the silence but the singing of skylarks,
and the bumbling drone of an occasional insect.

“This is the spot my dad talked about,” Shawnee
said wistfully. “Way back in the nineteen nineties he vacationed in Europe.
Spent a week in Scotland. This was the place he loved to tell me about.”

She made a seat for herself on the bank of the
dried-up stream and Sam flopped down beside her. From this angle the old
cottage looked like a dried skull that was gaping in his direction.

“I don’t suppose the reality ever matches up,
huh?”

Shawnee’s eyes widened in surprise, her hazel
irises expanding in the rush of light. “Oh my God, no. It’s exactly how I
pictured it. Or at least how it used to be.” She threw a pebble into the dusty
bed of the stream. “What an idyllic spot this musta been before everything went
all to hell. I wonder what this place was like before.”

Sam tore his eyes away from the old house. “A
guy in the hotel was telling me the winters here have averaged twenty degrees
below zero since the North Atlantic Drift died. Hard to believe on a day like
this.”

She nodded sombrely. “
National Geographic
says there’s only two seasons in Northern Europe now: Summer and Winter. They
think it’s only a matter of time before the ice wins out.”

“Yet I read on the plane over that the rise in
sea level is accelerating a lot faster than they’d anticipated.”

“Have y’noticed how the news never carries
stories about famine anymore?”

“Whole godforsaken world’s finally gone biblical,”
said Sam. “There’s torrential rain where there used to be drought. Countries
that escape the floods are turning into dustbowls because there’s no freakin
rain! And as for China: hell, that’s gotta be the ultimate nightmare. Now the
army’s taken over, they’re spouting some paranoid shit about how the whole damn
thing is a global conspiracy controlled by Uncle Sam.”

He realised his voice had become a little too
loud, a little high pitched. He grinned awkwardly. “War, famine, pestilence,
death. Have I missed any of them out?”

“The four horsemen? No, y’got them all,” Shawnee
confirmed bleakly.

Sam grinned again. “And where are you and me
while the rest of the world is heading for Armageddon? Hey, we’re in the
high-lands of Scotland, looking for the ruins of Brigadoon!”

Her feet dangling in a burn that had died of
thirst a long time ago, Shawnee tried to smile at the absurdity of it all.

“Before my dad was killed he always said he was
gonna bring me here on the anniversary of the Glen Laragain massacre, so we
could climb to the head of the glen together.”

“How long has it been?”

“One year ago today.”

“That’s why you wanted to be here today of all
days.”

She nodded her head. “Dad was killed on the two
hundred and seventy-ninth anniversary.”

“That is one shitty coincidence.”

“The twenty-first of April has never been a good
day in my family,” she said ruefully as she rose to her feet. “It’s like some
kinda pilgrimage, I guess; making it up there to the top of the glen. It’s just
something I need to get out of my system, y’know?”

Sam glanced once again at the old ruin. “I sure
hope so,” he said quietly.

In a perfect desert sky, high above a
landscape carved by glaciers and scoured by rain, a lone buzzard made mournful
accusations at anything that would listen.

Sam and Shawnee had hiked little more than a
mile beyond Inverlaragain cottage, but already Sam’s legs were aching and his
body was bathed in sweat. Every flying insect in the area seemed to be buzzing
around his face. At first the sight of Shawnee’s fit and shapely rear end ahead
of him had helped anaesthetise the pain, but eventually even this lost its
appeal, and he was praying she would call a halt soon.

Unfortunately she was in her element. “Have you
ever seen anywhere as beautiful in all the world?” she enthused, as she bounced
along. “Wouldn’t it be totally awesome to live someplace like this?”

Sam grunted in reply. He was wondering if he’d
been a little charitable when he’d made up the backpacks earlier. He decided to
compare weights when they stopped for a rest.

She was talking about water now; explaining how
a running stream will re-oxygenate itself every twenty yards… or was it every
twenty feet? Well… In any event, this explained how one small stream running
through the glen could have supported scores of families in days gone by…

“Y’know,” said Shawnee, “of the two hundred
people who lived in Glen Laragain, nobody knows how many died in the massacre.
All the young men had gone off to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie, so nobody
was left to defend the glen. Within five years only one family remained here;
my great, great, great—”

“Hey! Maybe we could stop for a while, yeah?”
There was a touch of desperation in Sam’s voice. “Surely you could use a rest,
or something?”

Shawnee turned to see Sam twenty yards behind,
looking as if he’d trekked across the Serengeti. “Sure. Why not. I
was
getting kinda tired.” She helped him remove his sweat-stained backpack. “Maybe
you could use a little water?”

“Y’could say that. There should be plenty. I
packed three two-litre bottles.”

“Yes, I know,” she said sweetly, “I changed two
of them over to my pack before we left the cottage.”

After a little food and a lot of fluid Sam felt
a great deal more human.

“Didn’t realize how much you were into this
great-outdoors stuff.”

“My dad used to take me camping when I was a
kid.”

“Figures.”

Above them the buzzard had drifted beyond the
southern lip of the glen, leaving the cloudless skies empty of life. Shawnee
went off on her own to take in the view from the upper slopes. When she
returned ten minutes later, Sam was huddled over his cell phone.

“There’s something wrong with this piece of
junk. They talk about putting men on Mars, but they can’t even put a little
circuit board together.”

“Why d’you have to be such a news junkie?”

Sam obstinately searched for a live frequency.
The crackle of static suddenly gave way to the strangely distant tones of a
local newsreader. “
…Official sources in the Pentagon stated that the amount
of food aid demanded by the Chinese is totally unrealistic, taking into account
the poor harvests reported throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere…
”

“Same old same old.” she said dismissively.

“Wait… This could be important.”

“
…There has been no communication with Beijing
or Washington since eight o’ clock this morning; three hours after the deadline
to General Chuo En Lee’s ultimatum had passed. As you know, contact has also
been lost with London and…
” Abruptly the transmission degenerated into a
static hiss.

“Aw, hell.” Sam twisted the cell phone this way
and that, but the signal had gone. “These hills must be screwing up the
reception.”

“That sounds ominous,” said Shawnee. “Everybody
knows things are bad in China. Maybe it’s worse than we thought. You don’t
think they’re gonna do something stupid…?”

“Nah. It’s all sabre-rattling and brinkmanship.
There’ll be the usual last-minute deal. Anyhow,” Sam continued, with a burst of
enthusiasm, “I can’t stand around here yakking all day. If you’ve had a good
enough rest maybe we can hit the trail again. And this time,
try
to keep
up. Huh?”

She aimed a playful swipe at him, which he
fended off with his backpack. Like two children playing tag they set off
westwards. The game soon petered out, and before long Sam had fallen several
yards behind. This time, however, he found it less of a struggle to keep up.
There was no doubt the gradient had eased, but he also suspected Shawnee had
slackened her pace.

He made a mental note to register with a gym
when he got back to L.A.

The terrain around them began to change. The dry
bracken, which had crunched satisfyingly under their feet, gave way to an
expanse of grass, interspersed with patches of brown, lifeless ferns. Before
long they encountered the first of the ruined houses. Shawnee paused to caress
the cold stone slabs.

“After Inverlaragain cottage this woulda been
the next house they hit. I know what happened here is nothing to the butchery
that’s gone on all around the world since. But what happened that day; it’s
more than just a piece of history. It’s… I guess to me this place is what
‘Wounded Knee’ would be to the Native Americans. Y’know?”

 “Uh huh, sure. Native Americans,” mumbled Sam,
turning his cell phone this way and that. “Freakin hills…”

~*~

As the afternoon wore on they made their way farther
and farther into the upper reaches of the glen. En route they passed
innumerable ruins, each like an ancient wreck sinking into a verdant sea. At
last Shawnee calculated they’d arrived at the western end of the glen. The
topmost ruin appeared less decayed than most of the remains they’d encountered.
Nearby, a single mountain ash sprung from a patch of greenery, like a defiant
symbol of life. A slight breeze had arisen from the west, gently ruffling the
branches.

As soon as they’d taken off their backpacks
Sam’s attention returned to his cell phone. He switched wavebands, trying to
find a way beyond the hiss of static.

Shawnee made a seat for herself beside him. “How
can you even think of the outside world in a place like this?”

Sam gave up in disgust and threw the phone to
one side. “Yeah. I guess.”

Shawnee caught sight of a mound of stones lying
close to the ash tree, and ran towards it like an excited child. “Oh my God,
look at this! It’s an old cairn. This musta been erected to commemorate the
massacre.”

Sam made his way over to the monument. “A
cairn?”

“They were erected in the old days to mark
important sites. Dad said that before a battle each clansman would lay a stone
on a mound just like this. When the battle was over the survivors would remove
a stone from the pile…”

“…Oh, I get it; the stones that were left would
represent the guys that died in the battle. Right?”

Shawnee nodded. “It’s such a beautiful idea,
don’t you think?”

Sam idly lifted one of the stones from the
little cairn, then with great care returned it to its position in the monument.

“This must be the site of the graveyard,” she
went on, apparently thinking aloud. “I wonder if any of the hauntings have
taken place around here? More likely at the houses, I guess, where most of them
were killed.”

“Hauntings?” Sam echoed. “You never mentioned
hauntings before.”

“Didn’t I?” Shawnee replied offhandedly. “Yeah,
well, y’know what these kinda places are like. You always get stories… I know
what most people nowadays think about that sorta thing.”

Sam could see she was cautiously gauging his
reaction.

“Don’t think I ever told you about the time I
camped out near the battlefield at Gettysburg,” he said. “There was me, Tommy
Phillips and Ralphie Schuster. We made a point of being there during the
anniversary of the battle. I dunno where we camped exactly; somewhere to the
south of the town. Anyhow, it was during the second night; I’ll never forget
it. It was as hot and humid as hell. Tommy said we just gotta have a campfire;
it didn’t matter that it was about ninety in the shade. He said you couldn’t
camp out without a campfire. Well, we had a few beers, and one thing and
another, and in no time Tommy was asleep; out for the count. Ralphie and I, we
just sat there, in this little clearing in the woods, not talking or anything,
just sorta watching Tommy’s campfire burn down.”

Sam made a seat for himself beneath the tree.
Shawnee sat down beside him.

“Anyhow,” he went on, “it was way into the
evening, but it wasn’t so dark that we couldn’t see around us, y’know? And,
well, one moment Ralphie and I were just sitting there, staring into the glow
of the fire, and the next moment we weren’t the only ones sitting at that
campfire.”

“What d’you mean?” asked Shawnee warily.

“I don’t know any other way of putting it. One
moment there was two guys there, the next there was four.”

“Don’t you be making fun of me now. If this is
some kinda stupid joke…”