A long, deep gorge, the rocky walls smothered in mosses and lichens. A long green cavern. Now he guessed that it would all be tainted with the Earthblood crimson, dead and barren under the covering of snow.
Quechee Gorge. Helen had been just six years old when the two families got together for one of their regular picnics. She’d misheard the name of the place and had insisted on calling it “Greasy George.” It was a saying that entered the annals of the McGill tribe.
Jocelyn and Jack were standing on either side of Angel, who was waving a mock-angry hand at being photographed. Little Sukie, still in diapers, was sitting on her lap, pudgy fist in her mouth, eyes rolled back as though the clouds were the most interesting things in the entire universe.
Mac slowly and carefully replaced the picture on top of the old rosewood piano. That had been in the long-gone days of 2037, immeasurably far away now. The only good thing about it was that they were all still alive, and together.
The big man moved again to look out at the side gardens of Melville Avenue, Mystic.
Paul and John had flattened the fence between their property and the Cordells’ on the left side. Jeanne had told him how their neighbors had vanished a day after the National Guard had closed the highways and never returned.
There was an empty lot on the opposite side. There had once been a small Unitarian chapel there, but it had burned down in the late 1990s and never been rebuilt.
In the sinking moonlight the ground sloped away toward a small brook. Beulah Creek, narrow in summer and frozen over in winter. Beyond that was the dark mass of Howell’s Coppice, the woods stretching for about fifteen acres, mainly overgrown spruce and a few oaks.
Now it was a maze of dead trees, the stark stumps standing jagged and clawed like tumbled monoliths in an ancient graveyard.
Mac turned away, wondering again about Jim Hilton and the others, getting solace from the security of the house.
BEHIND MAC, unseen among the coniferous cemetery, a cluster of dark shadows squatted. Eyes glinted in the moonlight, watching the fortress-home.
One of them, taller than the rest, made a beckoning gesture.
“God smiles on us, brethren.”
“Hallelujah, Preacher Casey,” came the ragged, pattered response.
“Jesus wishes us to go forth and slay the greedy unbelievers.”
“Amen, Preacher, amen to that.”
An ax blade, chipped and scored, shone silver among the dead trees. “They that have shall have not. They that take shall give, yea, to the last drop of their evil blood.”
“And we get the woman, Casey,” growled a deep voice.
“Sure we do, Brother Glass.”
“When shall the butchering begin, Preacher?”
The elongated, tattered figure turned and grinned. “What’s wrong with now, brethren?”
Chapter Three
Nanci Simms was at Jim Hilton’s shoulder, right hand shading her eyes against the moonlight that shimmered over the rocky desert to the far north of Calico.
“Chopper, coming in low and fast,” he said.
“Old Chinook. Half speed. Don’t know what kind of fuel they’re using, but it doesn’t sound like top-quality aviation spirit, does it?”
“You sure it’s a Chinook? Last time I saw one it was in a museum near Anaheim.”
“Yeah. Started building the old Vertol 114 about eighty years ago. Six hundred saw service in Nam. One of them brought out nearly two hundred refugees in a single hop.”
He looked at the blur of her face. “How come you know so much, Nanci?”
“Hobby. Like the War Between the States. Because I’m a woman, Jim, doesn’t mean that I have to spend all of my resting moments lying on a chaise lounge and embroidering roses and lilies on sanitary pads. Does it?”
He was glad that it was too dark for the acid-tongued woman to see him blushing. “Sorry, Nanci,” he mumbled.
“Old Chinook. Two free-turbine turboshafts. Sixty-foot rotors and fifty-foot fuselage. Well, fifty-one feet if you want to be pedantic, Jim. Maximum speed just under two hundred miles an hour. Want the rest of the specs?”
“No. No, thanks.”
“Who is it, Dad?” asked Heather, standing at his side in a cotton T-shirt and trainers.