Eric Flint: Time spike

Running as fast as he could. "Get down!" Andy half-shouted into the radio. "Everybody. Down!" The charge blew. Andy hissed in a breath.

Leffen, the arsonist, had designed a bomb that was mostly an incendiary. The building didn't come down. It shook a little, but that was all. If they could put the fire out, they'd still have a machine shop. If they could put it out soon enough, they might even still have all of the machine tools and equipment intact. But Luff was dead. He and Krouse and Ray were probably unrecognizable at all, any longer.

That incredible first bloom of fire had been hot enough to be felt reflected off the walls. Inside, it must have been like having a miniature atom bomb going off. He stood up and spoke into the radio.

"Get the firefighting gear. Quickly, people." He shifted channels.

"Marie, what's happening out there?" "Nothing. Haven't seen anybody in a while. I figure maybe thirty of them made it into the woods. Tops.

Probably not more than a couple of dozen." "All right. We'll deal with that problem later. Once you're sure there's no danger, check to see if there are any survivors among the ones you shot." After a brief hesitation, she said:"Yeah. Will do." Up on the roof, Rod smiled.

His girl, sure enough. And it was time for him to make good on the boast. He gave Scott a sidelong look. "Brad, you know what Andy's like. I figure he'll be having enough nightmares as it is, without adding another one." He used his rifle to indicate the five men in Luff's inner circle. "You with me, or do I handle it myself?" With a puzzled frown, Scott looked down at the five men below who'd made it out of the machine shop alive. They were sitting against a wall, under the watchful eyes of a guard. They'd stopped coughing by now, but they still looked teary-eyed, even from a distance. After a few seconds, the frown disappeared. "Oh. Yeah, sure." "Come on, then." Hulbert appeared, with Bradley Scott alongside. Andy only noticed him coming with part of his mind. He was preoccupied with getting the firefighting organized. The machine shop wasn't particularly flammable, as a building, nor was the equipment in it. But he was worried about the oils in there. They'd just be cutting oils and cooling solvents, not gasoline or anything like that. But, given enough heat, almost any kind of oil could ignite. Hulbert nodded toward the five men against the wall. "Since you're tied up, I figured I'd take care of this. We should get them into a cell. Keep the other prisoners from killing them, if nothing else." Andy gave the men in question a quick glance, then looked back at the burning machine shop.

"Yes, you're right. Use any cell you can find that'll suit the purpose. We'll deal with them later." Hulbert went over to the prisoners. "On your feet. Now. You boys are getting locked up again."

That seemed to relieve them more than anything else. Still bleary-eyed, they got up and starting walking in the direction Hulbert pointed to with his rifle. Rod and Scott followed, a few steps behind.

Andy went back to worrying about the fire. Not more than five seconds after Hulbert and his charges disappeared around a corner, he heard a short fusillade of shots. His rifle at the ready, and with two other guards following him with their own weapons, he raced to see what had happened. He found Hulbert and Scott, standing over five corpses. When he got closer, he saw that all of them had been shot in the back.

"What happened?" "Stupid bastards tried to make a run for it." Bradley Scott nodded solemnly. "Shot while trying to escape." Andy stared down at the bodies. They were still lined up in a row, the same way they'd been walking. He stared up at Hulbert. "Let it go, Andy," Rod said softly. "Just let it go. This part of our new world, you leave to me and Kevin Griffin, will you? I promise I won't meddle with the rest."

The sound of distant rifle shots came. Not a fusillade. Just one shot.

Then, a few seconds, another. Then, a few second later, another.

Hulbert smiled. "And Marie, sounds like." Andy sighed, and wiped his face. "No more, Rod. I'll look the other way, with Luff's men." His tone became very hard. "But not one inch more. If that's not understood, I will make it understood. Believe me, I will." "You got it, boss. Not one inch more." They got the fire under control, before the oils in the lockers got ignited. Any of the small open cans of cutting oil lying around had gone, of course. But those had probably been ignited during the explosion itself, and they hadn't contained enough to do any real added damage. Once the fire was out and the building had cooled down enough, Boyne accompanied Andy into the building. While Andy looked for the bodies, John inspected the damage to the machine tools and the other equipment. "We still got a machine shop," he pronounced, after a while. "A couple of the drill presses are scrap, but that's no big deal. The drill bits are okay, which is all that really matters. And we'll have some work to do, repairing the Bridgeport and the small lathe. But the other two lathes and the Cincinnati are fine." He looked down at the three objects Andy was studying. "Which one's Luff?" "I have no idea." Fortunately for the mythology of their new world, they were able to figure it out soon enough. They found Luff's dental records in the infirmary. There wouldn't be stories floating around for years about how Luff might have made it to Argentina on a submarine-or even into the woods. The monster was dead. So were one thousand, four hundred and six of the inmates who'd still been alive when Andy left the prison to look for the Cherokees. And at least another forty weren't going to be alive much longer, from the effects of Luff's rule.

Chapter 56 "Andy, you have to let this go," Jenny told him quietly, a week later. "The truth is, most of those men would have been dead anyway, within a year or two. Luff targeted all of the sickly, all of the old, anyone with an infectious disease, anyone with a heart condition, anyone with cancer, anyone with emphysema, anyone with a really serious blood pressure problem, anyone who was diabetic, anyone who was psychotic-anyone he thought was weak at all. You saw it. He had his office piled high with the medical records. He even had everyone on Death Row murdered, probably figuring they'd be more trouble than they were worth." "I know that. We also found his notebook where he made the calculations. So many dead, so much food saved-and then, so help me, he filled four pages calculating whether keeping a sick man alive instead of a healthy one would be cost-effective in terms of food, figuring that a healthy man needs to eat more. And came up with the conclusion that he'd always be ahead if he thinned the herd-that's the expression he used in his notes-by working from the bottom up. "I also know that, in his sick and twisted way and certainly not because he gave a damn about them, Luff probably saved as many lives of Indians out there as he took inside the prison.

Probably a lot more. Whatever else happens, we won't be spreading AIDS and hepatitis and half a dozen other diseases in this new world. Not now." He fell silent. In the hopes it might lighten his spirits, Jenny said: "And we won't be spreading smallpox, either. If I remember right, that was the big killer after the New World was discovered by Columbus. Not because of Luff, but because we'd pretty much eradicated it anyway. There hadn't been a case of smallpox anywhere in the world in years." Andy shook his head. "I know all that, Jenny. And it doesn't make any difference. Not to me. My job was to be a guard commander. I might have taken a man to be executed, but I didn't pass the sentence and I didn't carry it out. And until the sentence was carried out, by lawfully appointed persons, my job was to protect society from that man and protect him as well." He wiped his face with a big hand. He'd been doing that a lot, these past few days. "And there was one of those men on Death Row that most of us thought was probably going to be exonerated and released soon. Once the lab report on the DNA evidence came in. Leland Jefferson. Quiet, soft-spoken, spent fifteen years on Death Row waiting for one appeal after another.