They stood before a battered red-and-green mailbox and a tilted sign said that the track led to the Mannheim spread. A triple strand of barbed wire had been coiled across the narrow, rutted trail, and there was another sign just beyond it.
It was hand-lettered on what looked like a panel from the side of a truck: We Dont Want To See You And You Dont Want to See Us So Lets Keep It That Way.
Someone had added, in a different hand: Above Mean We Shoot On Sight.
“Earthblood’s certainly brought out the finest in people, hasn’t it?” Heather glanced around at her father. “We still going calling?”
“Sure are.”
“We’re going to steal their tractors, if they’ve got any, are we, Dad?”
“That’s the idea.”
“What if they fight?” The girl’s face was lined with concern, making her look older than her eleven years. Jim realized that his daughter had lost a lot of weight in the past months, as he had. As they all had.
“If they fight against us, child, then they will probably find to their cost that they’ve bitten off more than they are capable of chewing.”
“You’ll kill them, Nanci? To get a tractor?”
The older woman favored Heather Hilton with a thin smile. “Wrong personal pronoun. We will all combine to kill them, but only if it becomes necessary. And we are not stealing just a tractor. We are seeking to avail ourselves of the only feasible form of transport that might eventually carry us to the mythic Aurora and save all of our lives.”
“And murder innocent people? That makes us about the same as the Hunters of the Sun.”
“I won’t argue with you, Heather.” Nanci’s face was set like an obsidian knife. “But I would ask you to consider whether the concept of ‘innocent people’ is not outdated nowadays. Now there is simply ‘us’ who are few and ‘them’ who are many. And if you cannot see the distinction between our morality and that of Margaret Tabor and her coldhearts… then I am truly sorry and you are not the person I thought you were.”
THE TRACK WOUND UP across the flank of a hill, dropped into a valley, then rose once more and crested a ridge. Even a mile or so inland from the Pacific, the fallen snow was crisp and clean and untouched.
Nanci Simms had been leading the way, and she stopped at the top of the slope and looked back at the others. “By God, but you look a pathetic crew, like a collection of ragged beasts, slouching toward Jerusalem.”
Jim Hilton wiped melting flakes of cold whiteness from his eyes and mouth and laughed. “You do have a way with words, Nanci. And here I was thinking we looked more like Napoleon’s army retreating from Moscow after their defeat at the merciless hands of the good General Winter.”
“More like the Patriots’ fans leaving Meadowlands,” offered Jeanne McGill.
“More like a bunch of niggers on our way to a necktie party,” suggested Jeff Thomas, laughing at his own merry humor.
Nobody else laughed. Or even smiled.
The snow had almost stopped falling, and the visibility was clearing from the east. There was even a tiny hint of brightness through the lowering clouds.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been along here for a while,” said Jim.
Nanci disagreed. “Snow like what’s been falling in the last few hours could cover up the trail of a platoon of cavalry in fifteen minutes.” She pulled a face. “God! My use—or, rather, my abuse—of the English language gets worse with every waking hour. ‘Snow like what’s been falling.’ Wouldn’t think I was a schoolteacher, would you?”
“No,” said Jim quickly. “I wouldn’t.”
Their eyes met for a second, and Nanci just shrugged. They all went on, and it was Paul McGill who spotted the farm buildings first. “There’s the Mannheim house,” he said, pointing to a single-story, rectangular building that nestled a half mile off among the stumps of what must once have been a pretty orchard.
“Not too big,” said Jeff Thomas. “Maybe what we want is in that big barn.”
Nanci was studying the layout of the spread below them with total concentration. “Generator,” she said, sounding slightly puzzled. “LMG emplacements in the corners. Lines of fire cleared all around the building. Dead trees cut down and burned. What looks like steel sheet across doors and windows. With ports cut in them. Someone down there knows what they’re doing.”