Jason Frost - The Warlord

He'd bought the horses for his daughters, dark-haired beauties already. Both were expert riders, prancing along with as much straight-backed grace as any tight-assed skikse. During the last actors' strike, he'd sat in in his office at Universal and figured out that their riding lessons cost him eighty-three jokes a year. Not just eighty-three standup Comedy Store jokes, but eighty-three Prime Time, 40-share jokes. After that he thought of everything in terms of how many jokes it cost. Dinner: two jokes. Trip to Hawaii: thirty-five jokes. Braces: forget it, a whole new TV series.

But that was before Richter became more important than Nielsen.

Now the four of them were working their way toward San Bernadino to his Aunt Paula's home. He had at least a dozen relatives there and in times like these it was best to be with someone you could trust, family. Little Israel, Cynthia called it.

"Whoa, you goddamn four-legged ape!" he hollered, yanking on the reins so sharply the horse reared to a halt too suddenly for Cynthia Roth to remember how to stop her horse. Instead of pulling the reins, she gigged her pinto's flank and he lunged forward knocking into the rump of Leo's appaloosa.

"What the hell, Leo?" Cynthia said, struggling with the reins. "What the hell?"

"Pull the reins, Mother," Cheryl suggested, an edge of contempt in her voice.

"You heard her," Leo said, "pull the goddamn reins."

"I am pulling the goddamn reins!" The pinto skittered to one side, then the other, his neck snapping to the left and right as Cynthia Roth jerked the reins back and forth, kicking, pulling, and trying to keep from sliding out of the saddle.

Finally Sarah trotted her horse over, leaned in front of her panicking mother, grabbed the reins, and tugged firmly. The horse settled down with a snort of relief.

"My God," Cynthia Roth said, pressing one hand against her temple. "I could have been killed."

"Oh brother," Cheryl snickered.

"You okay, Mom?" Sarah asked, handing the reins back.

"Fine, dear. Fine. Thanks." She swallowed the stubborn lump in her throat and smiled bravely.

"Where's Mr. Ed when you need him?" Leo joked, hoping to defuse his wife's fear… and anger.

Cynthia glared angrily at him. "It's not the horse, Leo. It's you. Why'd you stop like that?"

"I thought I saw something up ahead." He pointed through the woods.

"Saw what? I don't see anything. What'd you see?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Something moving. I don't know."

"Something moving?" She shook her head. "We're out in the middle of the woods, for Chrissake. Naturally something would be moving."

"Probably a deer or something," Cheryl offered.

"Maybe," Leo said, straining in his saddle as he studied the woods ahead. "But it didn't move like a deer. It moved kinda, you know, sneaky."

"Oh, excuse us, Mr. Daniel Leo Crockett."

"That's Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett."

"Right!" Cynthia proclaimed triumphantly. "That's the kind of stuff you know. Information. Books. But what's a Reformed-Jew-turned-atheist from the Bronx know about the woods and deer, sneaky or otherwise?"

"No need to take any chances,"' Sarah suggested. "If Dad thinks he saw something, we can double back and sweep around this place. Better safe than sorry."

"Better safe than sorry," Cheryl mocked.

"Knock it off," Sarah said to Cheryl.

"Knock this off," Cheryl snapped back, flipping her middle finger.

"Shut up, both of you!" Leo said, his eyes still intent on the woods ahead. It was his responsibility to provide for his family, his job to protect them. He'd done all right so far, saving the horses after the last quake, hiding them out in the Laurel Canyon home of his agent, who'd been killed in the first quake, the one they called Atlas. But this was different. This was trees and animals and fucking Nature. Cement he understood; moss was a mystery.

"I don't like it, Leo," Cynthia said. "I don't like riding through the woods like this. Why couldn't we just take the freeway to San Bernadino? God knows there aren't any cars there."

"We've already discussed why. The highways are unsafe. How many stories have we heard in the past couple months about bandits killing and robbing travelers? We've got to stay off the beaten track. Avoid people."

"What do we do, Leo?" Her voice was contrite now, frightened. That other part of her, the whining, nagging part, only came out when she was scared. It was how her mother acted all the time, and she hated it as much as he did. Basically she was a good woman, a loving wife, a doting mother, and she was the best lay of any Jewish American Princess he'd ever gone out with. And he'd be lost without her.

"Okay," Leo said. "We go on. It's gonna be dark soon and I'd like to chew up a few more miles before we make camp. Let's go." He waved his hand the way Ward Bond used to in that old series, Wagon Train. "Wagons ho-oh!" Ward used to say, and for a moment Leo was back on University Avenue in the Bronx, his legs tucked under him, his algebra book open, the TV glaring like a window out into space. He felt a tear drip down his cheek and quickly brushed it away.

They rode single file, weaving around thick trees that Leo tried to name, but couldn't. He felt an anxious ticking in his stomach, tried to ignore it. Couldn't. He took a deep breath. The smell of charred wood was heavy in the air, not from any recent fire, but from the great fires that ravaged just about every town, city, and hillside after the last quake. The fires burned for weeks, day and night, the air constantly filled with smoke and a charcoal taste always on your tongue, at the back of your throat. With few fire engines available and many of the access roads unpassable, the fires burned until they ran out of fuel or just tired out. And whatever hadn't burned smelled as if it had. That tangy, bitter odor still clung to everything, stinging the nostrils with each breath.

And the sky. Since the quakes it was always a kind of hazy yellow-orange. Except at night, when it turned pinkish-gray. Pretty, but spooky.

Leo stared at every leaf, every twig as they rode by, searching the dense woods for any sign of what it had been that moved. A bear, maybe. Or a cougar. Did they have cougars in the woods?

He reached back into his saddlebags and removed the slingshot. It was a store-bought kind that fit over his wrist and fired metal ball bearings. He dropped a handful of the ball bearings into his shirt pocket.

"What's that for?" Cynthia asked.

"Nothing. In case I see a rabbit or something. I thought some fresh meat might be a nice change."

"Ha, David the Comedian versus Goliath the Bunny," she teased and they all laughed.

"Who's going to clean it?" Cheryl asked, appalled.

"We will," Cynthia said. "If your father can figure out how to actually hit something with that thing, the least we can do is figure out how to cook it."

"You can do it, Dad," Sarah said.

"You bet he can," Cynthia said.

Actually, Leo was a pretty fair shot, having practiced with the girls on tin cans in the backyard. Still, that was different than a moving target, and a living one to boot.

Cynthia was discussing ways to prepare rabbit when Leo thought he heard something rustle ahead.

"Hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what?" Cheryl said.

"Nope," Sarah said.

Cynthia was excited. "A rabbit?"

"I don't know." Leo frowned, bit his lower lip. "You guys wait here. I'm gonna check it out."

No one argued.

Leo squeezed the slingshot handle and rode forward. Alone.

Dirk Fallows snapped his fingers twice.

A young man in blood-splattered fatigues ran over, slapped a pair of binoculars in Fallows' open hand, and retreated back to the fire pit to finish skinning the damn dog. He was the only one besides Colonel Fallows who wasn't down the hill hidden in the woods, though he'd have given anything to be crouching behind a tree with the others where all the action was about to take place. Anything other than doing this crummy job which they gave him because he was the youngest one there. Personally, eating dog made him nauseous, and once or twice he'd even sneaked off to the woods after they'd feasted on one to throw up. But Colonel Fallows had gotten a taste for them while in Nam and would as soon eat a German Shepherd as a rabbit or deer. And it wouldn't do to argue with the colonel. Not unless you wanted to end up worse off than the dog.