F Wilson: Deep as the Marrow

Lightning flashed as he dug his feet into the sand and leaned everything he had against the Roadmaster’s rear fender. The tire spun, kicking up sand that was picked up by the rising wind and swirled into his face. Damn rearwheel drives, anyway! Why the hell was anyone still making them?

He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed harder. The car rocked forward, the tire rising halfway out of the hole it had dug for itself.

“Keep going!” he shouted to Decker over the thunder and the whine of the engine. “We’re almost there!

We’re—“ But then the car began to slip backward, and nothing he could do could keep it from sinking back into the sand.

John leaned against the bumper and pounded his fist on the trunk. He wanted to scream.

They’d been doing so well, making good time following the helicopter along the pair of sandy ruts that passed for a road out here when suddenly they’d rounded a corner and found a deer standing in their path. Decker’d slammed on the brakes, the deer bolted into the brush, and they hadn’t moved an inch since.

And now it began to rain—huge drops splattering the car and his head and back. John looked at the gray, lowering sky and wondered how things could get worse. A slashing bolt of lightning gave him an answer of sorts, so he stumbled to the passenger door and dropped into the seat.

Decker was on the hand-held transceiver. “All right, Special One. Safe home. And thanks.” John knew who he was talking to: the helicopter.

“They’ve leaving?”

Decker nodded. “Heading back to base. This weather’s getting too heavy for them.” John nodded silently. He’d been expecting that.

“Hey,” Decker said, “they hung on as long as they could—maybe longer than they should have. I hope they don’t have trouble getting back to Lakehurst.”

“I know. It’s just—”

The sky opened up then and the rain dropped in sheets.

“Hang in there,” Decker said. “We’re close. The rain ought to thicken up the sand and help us get out of this hole. As soon as it stops, we’ll get moving again.”

“But where? We’ll have to wait for the copter to—”

“No. They gave me directions. There’s a smaller road that cuts off to the right about half a mile ahead of us here. We take that for about a mile or so and look for another trail off to the right. The truck’s in there.”

The rain increased, bringing visibility down to zero. The pines disappeared. With the deafening tattoo on the car roof and the incessant roar of the thunder, they could have been sitting under Niagara Falls.

The world constricted to John and Decker and the car.

14

Snake smiled as he clicked off his transceiver—he wouldn’t need that any more. He continued to inch through the rain. He wasn’t making much progress, but he was doing a thousand percent better than Vanduyne and his fed buddies. Mired in sand and no flyboys to lead them even if they got out. What a shame.

Snake realized he might be in the exact same spot as those two if not for his Jeep’s four-wheel drive. He checked his laptop again and saw that he was closer than ever. The GPS program told him that the blinking star of his destination was somewhere about a klick and a half to his left.

He shook his head in wonder at the irony of using all this high-tech equipment to search what had to be one of the low-tech capitals of the country. He peered through the rain. Had to go slow here, look for a road, a path, a deer trail, anything that led off to the left. Damn near dark as night outside. Hard enough to see under these conditions with both eyes, but when you had only one…

And then he spotted something out his near side window and slammed on the brakes. He wiped away the condensation and peered through the downpour.

Two ruts in the sand, leading leftward. Good thing his wrecked eye was on the right and the lightning had flashed at the right moment, otherwise he’d have gone right past it.

Grinning, he backed up, then turned onto the path. Almost there. Poppy-bitch. Hope you’re enjoying your last hours on Earth.

15

“I’m scared,” Katie said, clinging to Poppy as the thunder shook the ground and the wind rattled the walls.

“It’s okay, honey bunch,” Poppy said, sitting on the bedroll and rocking Katie back and forth. “The storm’ll be over soon.”

“Scared o‘ storms, is she?” Lester Appleton said, licking his lips as he positioned a tin can under a leak. That made twelve containers scattered around his floor. “So’s most of the wimmins and kids. All probably hiding under their beds right now. Do it every time the thunder starts. That little girl’ll do well to get used to’em if she’s a-gonna stay. We get some real doozies out here.”

She ain’t staying. Poppy wanted to say, but didn’t want to be rude. All the Appletons had been kind to them today. Some of them said they remembered her stopping by with her daddy when she was a kid, but maybe they were just imagining it. The main thing was the way they’d welcomed her and Katie, sharing their home and their food… even their dolls, so to speak. The Appleton ideas of what was clean and what was cooked, of what was edible and what tasted good were light-years from Poppy’s, but they meant well. What they had was hers.

After all, she was kin…

Lester had said they could sleep in his place for now. His place: a ten-by-fourteen space lit by two kerosene lamps—one on a crate that served as his dresser and the other hanging from the six-foot ceiling. The walls creaked and shuddered under the wind’s attack, which set the hanging lamp to swaying. And the moving light did funny tricks with Lester Appleton’s nose-gazing eye.

Another crash of thunder and Katie tightened her grip on Poppy.

“Hope them stills is all right,” he said, swigging from a ceramic jug. “Wish my back was better—I should be out there helpin‘.” He shook his head. “First that heeliocopter, now the storm. Bad omens. I feel it in my bones— somethin’ bad’s gonna happen.”

The sight of the “heeliocopter” earlier had spurred her to run down to the clearing and pull the panel truck under some trees. That might have been like closing the barn door after the proverbial horse was gone, but she did it anyway.

And then the storm had hit and all the able-bodied men—the overly attentive Levon among them, thank you very much—and some of the women had run off to make sure the stills didn’t get damaged and the fires didn’t get too wet. Applejack was their major asset. They sold it for cash and bartered it for goods.

Poppy wondered how her Uncle Luke was faring with the feds. He’d said he was going to try and make a deal for her. What was taking him so long?

16

Carlos Salinas took the photo of Nixon from the wall and tossed it into his valise, then looked around the room. Nothing remained that he couldn’t part with, nothing that couldn’t be replaced with a simple telephone call.

As for records, Alien Gold kept all sensitive information on the office computer—verbally coded and digitally encrypted. He’d copied the pertinent data onto a Zip Drive disk and erased the hard drive. That done, Carlos had Llosa fire a few 9mm rounds into the drive—just to be sure.

“All set?” Gold asked, popping into the room for the third time in as many minutes.

Carlos nodded. Too bad, he thought. Leaving the United States and this wonderful setup. But if decriminalization went through, he’d be out of business soon, anyway. He regretted leaving Maria behind, but that was only temporary. He’d send for her later.

Llosa was waiting by the back door. Carlos nodded to him as he approached. Llosa stepped outside, then jumped back in.

Carlos skidded to a halt. “What is it?”