Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

Buzz drove about halfway to the car and stopped. He got out of his truck and crouched behind the front fender for a long time, his rifle poised over the vehicle. Jake finished reloading the gun.

At last Buzz called out. “Glenda?” He obviously thought they were still in the car.

Jake’s hand tightened around the gun. Glenda reached over and rested her hand on his arm. Hanna continued her muffled coughing.

“Kids?” said Buzz.

Buzz waited another minute before he finally ran crouched over to the creek and took a position on his stomach ten yards upstream from her car. He crawled into a small hollow and disappeared from view for the next minute.

Hanna continued to cough, muffling it well. Still, could Buzz hear that? And just where the hell was he?

She couldn’t see him anywhere.

But then he sprang up on one knee, reminding her of a gopher coming out of its hole, and shot at her car, expertly pulling the bolt back after each round, expelling the spent cartridge, loading another one into the chamber, and squeezing the trigger so that he got off a shot every second or so—seven in all, emptying his magazine into the vehicle. He shot with vengeful intensity, his heated emotion guiding his actions. Each muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame. The reports echoed in the hills, and the sound of bullets clanking into her poor old car dried up Glenda’s tears immediately.

Her fear was now as cold and numbing as an anesthetic. Six simple words drifted through her mind: This guy wants to kill us. They were obvious words, and framed a fact she already knew, but until now they had been something only her mind had acknowledged, not her body. Now they filled her every blood vessel, every sinew, every bone with fear. Her physiological terror made her break into a sweat. She wanted to run, but checked the urge because to run now would only alert Buzz to their location. She swallowed and swallowed, but there seemed to be a hard clot of dryness in her throat that stopped her from swallowing with any degree of success. Hanna ceased coughing, as if the coughs had been scared right out of her. Jake was still on his knees with the gun poised over the pile of old logs.

Buzz meanwhile went back to the ground, and in the peripheral glow of his truck’s headlights, Glenda saw him reloading, thumbing one cartridge after another into his magazine.

At last he got back up.

“Glenda?” he called.

He stared at the car a moment more, then scanned the surrounding countryside. Now even Buzz looked scared.

“Glenda, why don’t you just give up? You know I’m going to get you sooner or later. I know you’re on your way to Marblehill. If you come out now, I’ll spare your children.”

Hanna started coughing again, but she once more muffled it with Jake’s T-shirt, forcing herself to halt the loud, barking explosions and making do with smaller, less percussive ones.

Buzz bolted for the car, dropping to his knees as he reached the driver’s door, then looked all around the countryside again. After another minute, he stood up and looked inside the car. He shone his flashlight in through the windows, first in the front, then in the back. At last he got to his feet and kicked the car as if he were angry at it, then kicked it again, and finally swore.

He opened the back door and started going through their stuff.

“Mom, I think I can get him,” whispered Jake.

“Jake, not from this distance. Not with a handgun. And what’s he wearing? Looks like some kind of…flak jacket.”

It was hard to tell from this distance, in the dark and from behind all these bushes, but the more she looked, the more she grew convinced that he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. It would make sense, his brother being a cop and all.

Buzz rummaged through the back, dimly illuminated by his truck’s headlights, pulled out Hanna’s clothes bag, and tossed it into the creek. He found the map, folded it, and tucked it into one of his vest pockets.

Then he stood up and looked over the roof. He seemed to stare right at them.

Jake squirmed. “Mom?”

“No, Jake,” she whispered.

Hanna coughed and coughed, and it built and built, and finally she had one of her loud, racking coughs.

Buzz immediately lifted his rifle and fired in the direction of the cough. The three Thorndikes sank right to

the ground. Hanna continued to cough, struggling and struggling, but she simply couldn’t keep them down.

“I hear you,” called Buzz. “Why don’t you just come out and get it over with? You got to pay for what you did, Glenda. So why prolong the agony? Why make your kids suffer like this?”

“Mom, I’m going to kill him.”

And before she could stop him, Jake was standing up and blasting away with the handgun. She grabbed his pant leg and tugged him, but he continued to blast away, and she hoped—God, how she hoped—that he would get Buzz with a good head shot that would take him down once and for all.

She gripped the top log and pulled herself up. Buzz ran wildly back to his vehicle, so spooked by Jake’s fusillade of bullets that he didn’t have the good sense to take cover behind her own car, but bolted toward his junky old truck like a deer in hunting season instead. Jake fired and fired, but he was just wasting bullets. At last the gun was empty, and he ducked back down and fumbled in his pocket for more rounds.

“We’re going this way,” said Glenda, and grabbed them both by their sleeves.

They headed away from the logs and felt their way over the rough, uneven land. She kept glancing behind to see if Buzz would follow them, or fire at them, but all she saw was his truck now, with its headlights piercing the gloom. She had the flashlight, but she didn’t dare turn it on. The land rose through trees that were no more than a few feet taller than she was, Christmas trees, only all the needles had fallen off. A ridge curved upward to the right. She glanced over her shoulder again and saw Buzz emerge from behind his truck. He leveled his rifle across the front of his truck and shot in the direction of the logs.

“Just keep going,” she said. “Climb the ridge. We’ll circle back to the road in a little while.”

“Mom… we’ve got to figure out some way to ambush him,” said Jake.

“Let’s just make for Marblehill. Once we get to Marblehill, we’ll be safe.”

This was her credo now. Get to Marblehill. Only she wasn’t sure she believed it anymore. Was anywhere safe? Could she and her family trust the airmen there? And what about the Tarsalans?

Wouldn’t some of them be landing in Chattahoochee once the TMS was destroyed? Maybe the TMS

was already destroyed. We’ll be safe, we’ll be safe, we’ll be safe. But was that possible? Tears came back to her eyes.

As she finally reached the top of the ridge, she looked down at her car. Buzz now poured gasoline into its interior. In a moment, there was light. Lots of it. Her whole car was engulfed. She stared at the light, even as her feet trudged forward. It was indeed the second Stone Age, she decided. Because, like a cavewoman, she found any fire, even the one that was taking her car away from her, mesmerizing.

Gerry called a meeting in Section A of the H. G. Wells Ballroom two days later.

He had Ian and Stephanie at the door checking everybody who came in. Nectarians filed in by ones and twos, and they all had special invitations in their hands—not just anybody could come. Many had donated to Hulke’s campaign for reelection. Some were union leaders. Others had highly placed

managerial positions at the various hotels and casinos. Some owned cannabis bars. A large contingent of showgirls came. In short, invited to the meeting was a broad cross-section of Lunarian society, representative of Hulke’s core constituency; people whose mere presence would put pressure on the mayor.