then trembled again, remembering John’s hands on her once as they’d lain
by the lake, their bodies wet and mostly naked, the children splashing in
the water at its edge.
She turned to call out to Michael that everything was all right. Tildie
reared; Sarah was thrown back in the stock saddle, a gunshot punching into
the snow by the animal’s front hoofs.
Sarah glanced to her right. Out of the pines were coming men and women,
ragged, running, snow-covered, rifles and handguns in their hands, curses
coming from their lips—and threats.
“Shit!” she screamed, wheeling Tildie, fighting -tc control the animal,
and swinging the rifle up as she reined the horse under her. Her
stiff-with-the-cold righl thumb worked the selector to full auto position;
her first finger twitched against the trigger. A short burst fired across
her saddle; flowers of red blotched the ice-encrusted chest of the lead
man. The man lunged toward her and the horse, an ax in his hands. They
weren’t Brigands; they were starving men and women, people who—she fired
again, at another man starting to fire a shotgun. Sarah shot him in the
face and neck, then
screamed, “Michael—get Sam going. Get Annie out of here!”
Sarah dug her heels into the frightened horse she rode; Tildie leaped
ahead, back down the rise. A woman was lunging for her, out of the trees,
a knife in bony hands held like a stake that was to be driven into
someone’s heart. Sarah pumped the AR-‘s trigger again. The woman’s body
rocked back, spinning, then falling, a ragged line of red across the
threadbare clothes covering her body.
She knew what they wanted now—the horse for food, the weapons for defense,
her life and the children’s lives/ “Michael—get out of here,” she shouted
again, kneeing Tildie onward.
The pine boughs to her left shuddered, and in the darkness against the
whiteness of the snow, she could see a man coming out of the trees,
running toward her. She recognized what he had in his right hand—a
machete.
He threw himself toward Tildie, into the animal’s path. Tildie rearing
under her, Sarah reined up, as the machete sliced toward Tildie’s neck.
The reins came away in Sarah’s hands. She reeled back as the man sliced
his blade again. Her left hand, still clutching at the useless reins,
reached downward, snatching at Tildie’s bridle. Sarah kneed the animal.
“Come on, girl!”
Tildie leaped forward. The man hacked with his machete, but fell aside at
the impact of the animal. Then he was on his feet and running after her as
Sarah glanced back. She loosed the bridle, snatching at a generous handful
of flowing ice-encrusted mane, and digging her heels into the bay mare’s
sides, coaching her. “Up, Tildie—up, girl.’ The animal responded,
charging ahead
and down the rise.
Ahead of her now, she could see Michael’s horse, Michael and Annie aboard
it. The thought suddenly startled her—Michael’s horse. It was John’s
horse. Two figures wrestled against the front of the animal, reaching for
the reins. Michael edged the animal back from them. She saw something
flash against the snow, heard a scream; Michael had a knife. Where had he
gotten it?
One of the two figures fell away, the second dove toward the two children
in the saddle.
Sarah hauled back on Tildie’s mane, the animal slowing, skidding along the
snow on its haunches. Sarah’s right hand brought the rifle up to her
shoulder, her finger reached for the trigger. “Help my aim, God,” she
breathed, twitching the trigger as Tildie settled; the man, reaching for
Michael and Annie, spun, fell.
“Get going, Michael!” Sarah screamed. Sam spurred ahead as she saw Michael
kicking at him with his heels. Sarah dug in her knees, and Tildje started
after him.
There was a burst of gunfire from behind her now, and Tildie started to
slip on a patch of ice beneath her. Sarah felt the animal going down,
perhaps wounded; she threw herself free of the animal’s bulk, into the
snow. Her back ached as she impacted, the rifle skittering across the ice,
back toward Tildie.
Sarah rolled onto her belly and screamed, “No!” She pushed herself up to
her knees. The burly man with the machete who’d tried for her back in the
pines was coming.
Sarah glanced toward Tildie; the mare was up, apparently unhurt. Sarah
started to her feet, running toward her rifle, then for the horse. She
slipped, falling
forward, the rifle still several feet from her. She rolled onto her side,
fumbling under the shaggy woolen coat she wore, under her sweater and her
T-shirt, for John’s Government Model .. She had it out, in her right
hand, her right thumb cocking the hammer as the man with the machete
shrieked and threw himself toward her.
Her first finger pumped the trigger. The . rocked in her right hand, and
the massive body rolled toward her.
Her mind flashed—why did all the others look half-starved when this man
was fat?
As his body rolled toward her, she knew why. Around his neck was a
necklace; the teeth were human. /
“You bastard!” she screamed as his head lolled toward her and he started
pushing himself off the ice, the left hand, blood dripping from the arm,
reaching for her. She fired the ., into his face, once, twice, then a
third time.
She edged back across the ice, the gun held out ahead of her, toward the
pulp of face, as if coming in contact with his flesh would disease her.
“Bastard,” she screamed.
She heard Tildie’s whinnie, then rolled onto her belly, reaching out for
the AR-, pulling it toward her, firing it out at the others as they
charged toward her. The rifle empty, she stopped firing and slung it
across her back, as she reached up for Tildie’s stirrup. Then she pulled
herself to her feet, snatched at the mane and the saddle horn, and swung
up, Tildie wheeling under her, rearing, then coming down. Sarah leveled
the ., firing once, twice, a third time, into her attackers; the slide
locked open, empty.
“Gyaagh!” she shouted. Tildie spurred ahead as Sarah tugged at her mane.
The animal reared again, wheeled, then streaked off. In the distance,
Sarah could see
Michael and Annie, Sam’s black mane swatting at Michael’s face as he
leaned low over the animal’s neck, Annie hanging on to his back.
Sarah leaned against Tildie. “Take me out of here,” she cooed, feeling
tears streaming down her face. “Take me out of here,” she said again.
This was not for the greater glory of mother Russia, he decided. As Major
Borozeni stepped inside the abandoned farmhouse, he thought he heard the
scurrying sounds of rats. He turned to his sergeant, saying, “Krasny, get
a detail in here to clean this place; I do not sleep with rats.”
“Yes, Comrade Major.” The sergeant saluted.
Borozeni merely nodded, then stepped back outside into the cold. His men
were retreating, ponsolidating their position. The eastern coastal regions
of the United States were being buffeted by freak storms. Rebellion was
starting everywhere along the southeast coast since the escape, in
Savannah, of the Resistance fighters, led by the woman who had bluffed her
way through, with him. He felt a smile cross his cracked lips as he dusted
snow from the front of his greatcoat; then he pulled away his gloves and
felt under the coat for his cigarettes.
“All is being prepared, Comrade Major,” Sergeant Krasny told him, saluting
as a squad of men with hand torches went past Borozeni into the farmhouse.
“She was quite a woman, Krasny.”
“Comrade Major?”
“The woman who effected that escape. I would like to meet her again, see
what she looks like without a submachine gun or a pistol in her hands. Or
when she isn’t all wet, for that matter.”
“Yes, Comrade Major.”
“Yes.” He nodded, walking to keep his feet from freezing. Despite the cold
he liked the prospects of the farmhouse even less than the storm. He was
to take his contingent of men to Knoxville, Tennessee. He wondered
precisely what was in Knoxville; there had been a . World’s Fair there
once, he seemed to recall. He had been on detached duty then, training
guerrilla fighters in the Middle East.
He decided he should have been somewhere else. He nad never like the
Middle East, though he could have used some of its heat now.
The other woman in the truck had used her name. “Sarah,” he said, roiling
the name on his tongue, tasting it. She was probably someone’s wife,
perhaps one of the prisoners, who had been released, but he didn’t think
so. Perhaps someone’s widow—one of the men who had been executed.
But then, he asked himself, inhaling deeply on the cigarette, wouldn’t she
have killed him—a Russian who was an officer, one of the ones responsible
for the war?
He threw the cigarette into the snow. She was probably safe in her