Stephen Baxter - Flood

“That’s dykes for you. Women without men, eh, buddy?” This was the soldier who had driven them. He was a strong-looking man, stocky. He wore a sergeant’s stripes, and his face was hidden under a helmet and behind big dusty sunglasses. “Gary Boyle, right? You don’t remember me.” He took off his helmet, rubbed a grizzle of gray stubble on the scalp of his head, and plucked the glasses off the bridge of his nose. He was older than the others-sixty, maybe, Gary thought. He had striking bright blue eyes in a suntanned face, but the eyes were bloodshot, and his fleshy nose was marked by crimson blood vessels. “The Trieste, remember?”

“Gordo,” Gary said, remembering. “Gordon James Alonzo.”

“That’s me.” He tapped the stripes on his arm.“Sergeant Alonzo now. I joined up again when the Mormons started kicking up shit. I’m too old, but hell, they aren’t going to turn away an astronaut.” He glanced around at the linear encampment, the people scratching in the dirt.“And I guess there are no spaceships to fly around here, right?”

“No,” Thandie said.“But soon there’s going to be a harbor for ocean-going ships at Lincoln. A harbor in Nebraska! Makes you boggle. Gary, it’s thanks to Gordo that we made it out here to find you. I’m not sure you’re going to reach Lincoln anytime soon.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s a war a-brewing,” Gordo said. “So you going to invite us in? Some hospitality you’re showing here, fella. You got anything to drink?”

Gordo walked into Gary’s little camp, glancing around at Thurley and Grace and their bits of gear. Grace sat by Thurley, uncertain; she was always wary of strangers, and Gary saw she had the hilt of her knife showing at her belt. To Gary’s relief Gordo didn’t show much interest in Grace. Perhaps older women like Elena were more to his taste.

Gary fussed about, spreading more of their blankets on the dusty ground, setting rolled-up sleeping mats for the guests to sit on. He showed them his solar stove. “Hot drinks we can do. Tea, if you like it stewed. Otherwise it’s water. We filter it well enough.” He looked at Gordo. “Alcohol, no.”

Gordo grunted. He dug out a hip flask, unscrewed its cap, took a slug. He held it out to Gary. “You want?”

Gary stared at it longingly; he could smell the whiskey. But he shook his head. “I guess not. When we started walking it took me a while to kick a habit I didn’t know I had. Probably isn’t a good idea to go back to it now, right?”

Thandie and Elena came into the camp area and sat down, side by side, cross-legged. “We’re not going to impose,” Thandie said. “We can see how you’re fixed. But we’ll stay the night, if that suits you. Look, we brought gear of our own in Gordo’s jeep. A tent, other stuff. I’ll take a tea, Gary, but you can be our guests later.”

“Courtesy of me,” Gordo said, lifting the flask again. “Me and Uncle Sam.”

Thandie turned to Grace.“I don’t know if you remember me, honey. You would have been about ten when we last met.”

Grace looked away, studiously unconcerned. Gary knew the look. She was always uncomfortable whenever relics of the past showed up. She preferred to dwell in the present, this dusty world of camps and walking and latrine ditches and bandits-the only world she had known, save for those strange early years when she had been a hostage of a Saudi royal family.

Elena got up and looked more closely at Thurley, where he slept under his blanket. “This man-”

“He’s Michael Thurley,” Gary said. “Once a UK government guy who tried to help Helen and Grace.”

“He is injured,” Elena said. She lifted the blanket cautiously to inspect Michael’s wound.

“We ran into bandits,” Gary said. “A couple of days and a few dozen kilometers back. We’ve been walking down from the prairie, the Nebraska Sandhills.”

“They must have wanted something pretty bad,” Gordo said.

Gary forced a smile. “His boots. That’s all. But he fought back.”

“And he won,” Grace said.

“That he did. But he took an injury.”

The bandit’s knife hadn’t gone deep into Michael’s belly; it had been a swiping slice rather than a stabbing, which might have been fatal. The wound was clean, but it was long and had spilled more blood than Michael could afford in his weakened state.

Gary hadn’t been able to get hold of a doctor, so he and Grace had had to handle it themselves. Gary had pushed the flaps of sliced flesh together, while Grace had sewn it up with a length of their fishing line, precious stuff liberated from a broken-open sports store hundreds of kilometers back. With her finer fingers and clearer eyesight, she made a much better fist of jobs like that than Gary ever did; it was always Grace who patched their clothes. They had had no anesthetic, no disinfectant save the heat of water boiled by their mirror stove. But they had got it done.

Elena nodded gravely. “Well, it was necessary. Good work. But now we live in a world in which it is commonplace for a sixteen-year-old girl to perform life-saving surgery on a wounded man.”

“We do the best we can,” Gary said sternly, feeling as if he was being criticized.

Grace stood up sharply. “Gary, I’ll go find my friends.”

“Sure, honey, if you like,” Gary said. “But you don’t have to go-”

“Yes, I do. Then you can all talk about me to your heart’s content. I can see that’s what you want.” And she stalked off, heading down the line of the column away from the roadblock.

Gary said, “Sorry about that. I have a feeling she did the same thing last time you visited us.”

“Don’t apologize,” Thandie said. “She’s got spirit. Why the hell shouldn’t she ditch us old stiffs? Hey, Gordo, couldn’t you get one of the Army medics to come out and see Michael?”

“Nah-ah.” Gordo shook his head. “Strictly against regulation to treat refugee injured or sick.”

Elena sighed. “The Army gets the best medical treatment. It is just as it was in Roman times. And the best food.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Oh, come on, big man,” Thandie pressed. “What’s the use of being an astronaut if you can’t pull a few strings? Get it done.”

Gordo looked irritated. But he got up, walked back to his jeep and spoke into its radio.

Thandie winked at Gary. “Still thinks he’s a hotshot.”

“Yes,” said Elena,“and he seems to think every woman on Earth finds him irresistible. Once he even made a pass at me. A ‘bull dyke,’ he called me. It took a fist in the testicles to get him off me.”

“You just have to know how to manage him,” Thandie said.“You’ve got to admit he’s useful.”

The pot boiled. Gary threw in some leaves, swilled the potion around, and poured the drink into tin cups. He took rabbit jerky from his pack, and set it on their thin plastic plates.

Gordo came back. He stood for a moment, sipping at his flask, and he surveyed the long roadside camp, his free hand curled into a fist on his hip. “Jesus,” he said. “I can’t believe you people live like this. Just hobos tramping in the dirt. Is it true there are women who’ve had kids on the move? Got knocked up, gone to term and pupped, all on the road?”

“Nicely put, bozo,” Thandie said.

Gary said, “Look, we might be on the road, but we still have to live. And for most people life means having kids. Anyhow we aren’t just wandering around. We’re organized. You can see that. We’re a city on the move. We have a mayor, who we elect, although it has to be a show of hands. We have cops and medical facilities, and we barter with other communities. When we stop we get organized, we dig latrines, we post guards. We have chaplains in every denomination, and imams and rabbis. We help each other; we bury our dead; we care for our children. And we stay out of trouble. The first mayor was a man called Lone Elk, a Seminole Indian-”