“The next hour’s going to be unrelieved suffering, Jefferson, while you pay me my blood price. Then… then I’ll decide on what to do with you. Decide if I can maybe trust you one more time. Can I?”
There was a desperate, choking mumble that she took to be assent.
“Cord a little tight around your neck, Jefferson? Never mind. Least I haven’t gagged you. Reason is that you enjoy that part. That isn’t what this is about, dear boy. Now, let’s carry on with this lesson a while longer.”
Finally, with the first fingers of rosy light peering over the distant hills to the east, Nanci Simms relented. Gave him life instead of death.
Gave herself the pleasure that she’d kept under simmering control and even allowed Jeff Thomas the relief that his tortured body had been seeking.
ODDLY the betrayal and subsequent punishment seemed to bind them closer together.
As they headed north and west, moving at the fastest speed they could manage, Jeff was like a new puppy fawning on his adored new owner.
But deep inside his soul there burned a tiny flickering ruby of irredeemable hatred for the older woman. For what she had done to him out in the darkness. Something that he would never quite forget. Never quite forgive.
It didn’t show, Jeff knew, not on his face, not in his voice. But when he’d catch her shrewd eyes once in a while, he felt deep down that without a doubt she knew.
Their drive toward the late rendezvous at Muir Woods was relatively uneventful, except for the roadblock they encountered around noon on the first day. Four men and a woman, well dressed and well armed, flagged them down from behind a couple of flatbed trucks. The fields around were barren, covered in a thin blanket of soiled, melting snow.
Nanci had slowed the four-by-four, smiling at the group through the muddied windshield but talking to Jeff out of the corner of her mouth.
“Keep your .38 in your lap. Don’t even try and move until I open fire. Then come out the door as fast as you can and try and take out anyone that I miss.”
There wasn’t time to argue with her, not even a moment to ask why couldn’t they turn around and drive quickly away in the opposite direction.
But Nanci answered the unspoken question as she eased on the brakes around thirty yards from the armed band. “They got gas and food and we don’t, Jeff.”
The folks behind the block hadn’t seen anyone trying to pass through their community in several days. There had been the first rush after the full horror of Earthblood was revealed, followed by the brief period when the authorities attempted to prevent travel in order to minimize and localize the catastrophe. Then the torrent of refugees streamed from the towns and cities.
The fighting and killing had been desperate, and a number of their friends and relations had died defending their inalienable right to bear arms and use them to keep all outlanders from their doors.
Nowadays the torrent had fallen below a trickle. The four-by-four was only of minimal interest. They had the guns and they could see there were only a couple of strangers in the cab.
It wasn’t likely to be a problem.
Nanci deliberately didn’t try to hide the Port Royale machine pistol as she climbed slowly and painfully down. She held it loose, dangling down in her left hand, trying to make it appear no sort of threat.
“Hi, there. Name’s Veronica Poole. Retired teacher from Fort Worth. This is my brother’s boy, Jeff. We had hard times coming, friends.”
They saw a stooped, frail, retired schoolmarm walking toward them and hardly noticed the powerful gun that dropped from her hand. Before any of them had really registered what she was doing, Nanci was less than five yards from them, smiling hesitantly.
“Wonder if we might beg a cup of water,” she said.
Henry Harrison was in charge of the roadblock. A retired accountant, he had been one of the leading voices for withdrawing their patrols. He’d relied on critical-path analysis and flow charts to explain that the statistics showed they were no longer needed and that their isolated hamlet could now be protected in far more efficient ways, utilizing less time and manpower.