EarthBlood Read online

  The pink-tinted bushes around her crackled in the breeze, and the moon suddenly broke through, darting silver lances into the pit just ahead of her.

  "Yes," she breathed, realizing many things in that moment of ghastly horror.

  Piles of stripped and mangled bones. Human bones. Flayed, eyeless skulls and splintered ribs, the flesh peeled off them. Sliced off the bones. Boiled off.

  Cooked off.

  Behind her, Nanci heard the sound of shouting.

  Chapter Three

  Jim Hilton froze there, halfway between the front entrance and the stairs.

  "Please don't try to do anything stupid," the voice repeated.

  "My mother didn't raise any children who did anything stupid," he replied.

  There was a quiet chuckle. "Sounds good to me. Nice to meet up with someone whose brains haven't gone into terminal meltdown as a result of Earthblood. Most folks let their guns or their knives do their talking for them."

  Jim didn't think it was the right moment to mention that if he'd had the sense to be carrying the power Ruger, the speaker would be down and dying.

  "We saw you coming in," continued the shadowy figure. "Two male adults. One female adult. Teenage girl and a boy our watchers thought was probably Down's syndrome."

  Jim Hilton could see no point in trying to be evasive. "Girl's my daughter, Heather. I'm Jim. Other man's Kyle. Other lady's name is Carrie. The teenage boy is Sly."

  "Good to meet up with you. I'm Diego Chimayo. Me and some friends are trying to run a hydroponic centre."

  "Getting greenery back after Earthblood?"

  "Yeah. Doing well. Got stuff germinating we thought might have been lost. But there's seed still doing well, despite the plant cancer having killed the mother strain."

  Jim nodded. "Look, if we're not going to kill each other, how about waking the others and we can talk properly."

  "Sure. But…"

  "What?"

  "One thing, Jim. Been hearing about some sort of crypto-fascist crowd."

  "Hunters of the Sun?"

  "Yeah. Right, Jim. You seen them?"

  "Some. They bothered you?"

  "Not really but…well, someone fucked up our water supply a day back. When we saw you we… But now we know it's not you. It's just talk locally about these Hunters."

  "It's more than talk," replied Jim.

  DIEGO CHIMAYO WAS in his midtwenties and had studied plant genetics at Tupelo. There were a dozen with him on the project, mostly in their early or midtwenties, working in ramshackle huts under glass or heavy-duty plastic. Most of them had associated degrees or a botanical or agricultural background.

  Their small complex was up a dirt road, with low hills around in a sheltering basin. Jim noticed as they drove in that the only token nod toward defense was a three-barred metal gate that dragged on broken hinges.

  Diego had told them that there was another route in, across a wooden bridge near a long-abandoned mission. Then down a crook-back trail that would lead them out onto a farm road and then eventually onto the highway.

  The place was incredibly low on transport, with only a flatbed that had a busted front axle and a little Nissan Donroy car with transmission problems.

  When Kyle commented on this as they sat around the trestle dining table, everyone laughed.

  "Doesn't much matter since we don't have any gas," explained a young blond woman named Harriet, who was breast-feeding an eight-week-old baby girl.

  The food was totally vegetarian. "And totally grown here on-site by our own labor," explained Diego.

  The meal was top-heavy on bean sprouts, which seemed to be the easiest to produce hydroponically, and was larded with legumes and some delicious mushrooms.

  "Got tomatoes and loads of squashes coming along," said a skinny black teenager. "Melons look good, and if you come by here around Easter, then there'll be more of all the small fruits. Strawberries and we reckon some decent dwarf apples and pears by then."

  Jim could hardly believe the good feeling that he got from being surrounded by such positive and eager young people—and to witness green again.

  Nothing had ever looked quite as good to his eyes as the growing shoots in their neat rows, under the steamy heat of the hothouses. A narrow stream that flowed down behind the living quarters powered a wheel that gave them a fairly regular supply of electricity.

  After the meal Diego took them on an extended tour of the project, proudly showing them their successes and their comparatively few failures.

  "What we've found most is that the man-made and genetically engineered plants, like hybrid roses, for instance, don't seem keen on returning. Same with some fruits. The more exotic they are, the less we've been able to breed them."

  "I thought broccoli was kind of exotic," said Kyle Lynch, grinning. "Least, I remember hating it when I was a squid back home. Used to try and smuggle up a big mouthful to the John to spit it away. Mom caught me and squeezed my cheeks, and it went all over my favorite Mutant Scum Legion T-shirt."

  "We got a small plantation out back, near the stream," said Diego. "We're trying trees there. Not much success with some of the deciduous varieties. Pines do better. But we've got some oaks that are three or four inches high and thriving."

  "How long will it take?" asked Heather Hilton. "Years, won't it? So what's the point of bothering?"

  The young man shook his head and patted her on the shoulder. "We aren't talking about tomorrow."

  "I know that," she replied abruptly.

  "Let him speak, kitten," said her father.

  "Don't call me… Sorry, but I guess it seems… The world's fucked, isn't it?"

  "Heather! Watch that language."

  But she was beyond that, eyes narrowed, mouth tight with anger. "It is, Dad! We all know it. Earthblood's chilled out the whole world and everything on it and in it and under it. It's all over, Dad, can't you see?"

  He shook his head, feeling his own short-fuse temper beginning to flare at his daughter. "It's not over until…"

  "It's totally over?" suggested Carrie.

  "Right. What's happened might have killed nearly all plant life throughout the world. Killed nearly all the people. Wiped out all the cities. Brought human life as we know it right to the brink of the abyss. Sure, all of that, Heather."

  "So?" The girl shrugged her shoulders. "So that's what I'm saying. What's the point, Dad?"

  Jim Hilton swallowed, feeling a vein pulsing across his temple. He took a slow, deep breath. "Right. I see why you think this. You're a young girl, and everything you knew and trusted in life has gone like it got chain-sawed off the planet. But remember I kept saying the word 'nearly' a lot, didn't I?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's what I mean, Heather. Look around you. Seems likely that Earthblood itself has died. New green grass and vegetables. Little trees that'll turn into mighty oaks and redwoods and sycamores and aspens. Fruit just like there used to be. It won't be like it was."

  "But how long will these trees take?" she asked, addressing the question to Diego Chimayo.

  "To grow to maturity?"

  "I don't… Yeah, I guess."

  "Depends. Some grow fast. Piñon could be a couple of feet high in less than ten years. Oaks are faster. Willows are quick. Most redwoods are slow starters. Fruit trees can be quick."

  She persisted. "But when will earth look like it did before the disease?"

  "Before Earthblood?" He shook his head, solemn faced. "Guess it'll never be the same."

  Heather almost snarled in her anger. "So… ?"

  "But it'll be different. I know you can't see this or maybe understand it, but we have to think way, way ahead. Planet's been here for millions of years. Last fifty years man's being harming it in a big way, Heather."

  "Ozone holes and sulphur layers and car emissions and nitrate leaching and shit like that. Sure, Diego."

  "If the work we do here can be sustained and carried on in other places by other people… then in a hundred years I reckon th
at we can have a fairly green Earth again. But who knows?"

  "Will they be doing this up at Aurora, Dad, growing new plants and all?" She caught the expression on her father's face. "Oh, sorry. Me an' my big mouth. Sorry, Dad."

  Diego had been offering Sly a tiny fresh carrot to taste, but he spun around at the mention of Aurora. "You know about that place. Where is it?"

  "We don't know the location. How come you heard about it, though, Diego?"

  The young man whistled between his teeth. "You sure that… When we heard about this Hunters of the Sun, it was partly from a stranger we picked up on the road. Gutshot. Said he'd been ambushed by these Hunters. Got delirious and died. But he talked some about a kind of haven called Aurora."

  "We think it's north," said Carrie. "But we have no specific idea where."

  Jim looked around the range of buildings, each with its own precious crop. "I think that you should consider seriously about all coming with us somehow."

  Diego laughed. "Nice joke, Jim. Get us a fleet of…say four hundred trucks, temp-controlled. And about six months' work getting a new site ready. Then we'll all be right there with you up in Aurora."

  "Okay, I hear you. But you're vulnerable here to any attack. You said your water was messed with already."

  "True enough. The Hunters?"

  "What we hear is that they want to stop this sort of project. Doesn't fit with their plans. You talk freedom, and they think control. You talk green and light, and they think crimson darkness, Diego."

  THE FRESH FRUIT and vegetables, after weeks of canned foodstuffs, had a disastrous effect on their digestive systems. Kyle was particularly hard hit, having to get up several times during the night to pay visits to the pair of malodorous wooden latrines that stood close to the waterwheel.

  It was on his fourth visit, just after 3:15 on a cool, clear morning, that he heard a dry branch break under a man's heel and the stifled curse that went with it.

  Kyle realized that they had company.

  Chapter Four

  A couple of the inhabitants of Newtown had been drinking heavily and were becoming more raucous by the minute. They made veiled jokes that the others seemed to understand, but passed by Henderson McGill and the rest of his party.

  Jokes about fresh meat on the hoof.

  Jokes that seemed to be going further and further, despite Jed Harman's efforts to shut them up. Without any warning, he stood up and pulled out a pump-action Smith & Wesson 12-gauge. "That'll about do it," he said, his voice carrying all around the fire.

  Immediately there was all sorts of chaos. Most of the Newtown folk seemed as surprised as Mac, Jeff and the McGill family. Everyone stood up and shouted, several drawing concealed automatics and waving them threateningly.

  "Mike and Saul, go get the old woman. Rest of you calm down and keep our guests covered." Seeing Paul McGill fumbling for a pistol from the back of his belt, Harman called out, "Don't do it, friend."

  Mac had been taken by surprise, despite Nanci's warning. He'd turned over in his mind what she said about there being no boats, although Harman had claimed they depended for much of their food supply on fish. So where were the pigs that had provided the meat for the stew? The fresh meat on the hoof that the jokes had referred to…

  The penny dropped, too slow and too late.

  "Holy Mary," he said just loud enough for Jeanne McGill to hear him as they sat close together under the barrels of half a dozen guns.

  "What's going on? They aiming to rob us, Mac?"

  "No."

  "What, then? For Christ's sake, Mac, what?"

  "Shut the fuck up, will you, and keep your hands out in front." The order came from a skinny woman in a raggedy dress with an open sore disfiguring her forehead.

  "What?" whispered Jeanne, one arm cuddling a crying Sukie to her.

  "Eat us," he said, hardly even believing the two small words himself.

  Jed Harman was restoring a resemblance of order, but the good folk of Newtown were over-the-top excited, whooping and slapping each other on the back. The drunk couple had linked arms and were dancing around the fire, faces flushed, pointing to their mouths and rubbing their bellies.

  Mike and Saul reappeared, shaking their heads. "No sign of the old bitch."

  "Must've heard the noise and run for it. Still, scrawny old slut like that wouldn't have made good— "

  Mac was staring at Jed Harman while he shouted, and he witnessed a bizarre sight.

  The sneering, triumphant face simply exploded, as though the inexorable hand of an invisible giant had reached into his skull from behind and pushed hard, forcing the features outward. Both eyes burst from their sockets in a mist of watery pink, and a hail of teeth erupted into the blazing fire. Bright blood fountained and hissed over the orange flames.

  The sound of the shot seemed oddly delayed, as if time itself had been hindered.

  The dead man hadn't even fallen forward into the pile of burning branches, his shotgun dropping to the trampled dirt, before more shots rang out.

  Illuminated by the fire, paralyzed by the hidden threat, the Newtown men and women were absurdly simple targets for someone as good with a handgun as Nanci Simms.

  Mac himself hadn't begun to react sensibly before there were six down and dying, the shots coming a heartbeat apart from the surrounding blackness.

  Paul was faster. So was Pamela. Both of them snatched at their handguns and opened up on the panic-stricken mob that was vanishing in front of them.

  Not a single bullet had yet been fired in retaliation.

  There was a sudden noise, like a huge bolt of silk tearing, and a man in one of the huddled groups of Newtowners collapsed, spinning to the dirt, arms and legs flailing, his lifeblood spurting out, as if he'd just been possessed by the demonic beat of a different and deathly drummer.

  Nanci was just out of range of the firelight, crouching behind the stump of a big fallen yew tree, a Port Royale machine pistol on full-auto in her hands. Her H&K P-111 was back in its holster, ready for use as a backup weapon.

  Now all the firearms came into play. Mac leveled and fired, eyes screwed up against the pungent smoke from the blazing logs. Paul and Pamela were on either side of him, Jeanne just beyond them. And Jeff Thomas, standing spread-legged, blasted off with his captured .38.

  It ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  "Stop shooting!" Nanci Simms's voice was clear and penetrating as a cavalry bugle call, ringing through the night.

  Predictably Jeff Thomas was the only one of the group who ignored her order, firing twice more at one of the younger women, who was a vanishing blur, running screaming toward the rocks and the ocean.

  Mac's first quick guess was that over half of the community was either dead or dying. He could see and hear three or four more who were rolling around with gunshot wounds. The few survivors of the cannibalistic commune had disappeared into the surrounding scrub.

  The only sound was the moaning of the injured. And then the click of Nanci's boot heels on the pebbles as she stepped out of the shadows, as calm as if she'd come across the last moments of a Presbyterian Church July picnic.

  "Finish them, Jeff," she said, pointing with the muzzle of the machine pistol at the trio of wounded. "Don't waste bullets. Cut their throats."

  Both Sukie and Jocelyn stood up and walked with the ex-reporter, wanting to watch what he did. As he knelt down beside the first writhing victim and quickly drew the blade of the butcher's knife he'd taken from one of the corpses across his neck, Jeanne rushed up, horrified, to whisk the children away. One by one Jeff did away with the wounded, pulling away from the gushing fountains of blood that pattered black in the firelight.

  "That it?" asked Pamela McGill.

  Nanci nodded. "Doubt any of them'll come back. It was a real neat killing."

  Paul McGill was already working his way around the bodies, checking for weapons and ammo. He looked back over his shoulder. "More of a bloody massacre," he sang.

  "Were they really…
?" Jeanne found herself unable to even say the taboo word.

  "They were cannibals," said Nanci flatly. "Had some suspicions, and then I found their bone pit."

  Pamela dropped to her knees. "Then that stew they said was pork… ?"

  "Wasn't pork," replied her father.

  The young woman vomited copiously and noisily, followed by Jocelyn as she realized the abhorrent meal they'd eaten. Sukie was fortunately too young to appreciate it, but she also knelt down and imitated them, making violent puking sounds.

  "Shouldn't we go after them while they're running and wipe the sick-minded sons of bitches off the good earth?" asked Jeanne McGill. "I'll be real happy to be the one to throw the switch on them right now."

  Nanci was reloading the Port Royale. "No point. Thing you have to learn and live with, Jeanne, is that the world has changed. What went around came around. The good old rules aren't any good anymore. Just old. The times have been a'changing, and you can't just get away with blocking windows and then sitting hopefully out in your hall." She worked the bolt on the gun with a distant, practiced ease.

  "You must understand that if you're to be any use to your husband and your children. Do you see? Because seeing is the first step toward understanding."

  "No. Truth is, Miss Simms, Nanci, I don't actually understand a single fucking thing anymore. I see dead plants every moment of every waking day. I have already seen more bodies in the last months than the average mortician would see in an entire lifetime. Seen my children die. Pulled the trigger and blown living flesh into gray corpses."

  Her voice was rising higher, carrying the shrill, ragged note of hysteria. Mac holstered his own gun and went to his wife, putting his strong arms around her and giving her a great hug, holding her while she wept.

  Nanci sighed. "Tears are just salt water that gets in your eyes and stops you seeing clearly."

  "Fuck you, too, lady," sobbed Jeanne.

  "That's better. Anger is better than grief, Jeanne. Believe me. Not many people left on this planet know that better than I do. We aren't going after these mind-sick bastards because there's no profit in it for us."