ends well.”
Margaret didn’t answer. She threw up instead. Qwan led her employer off to get cleaned up, while John stripped both dead men of potentially useful items, and Benson fi?red up a chain saw. It made quick work of two trees and it wasn’t long before both were lying across the road. Not an impossible barrier by any means, but one calculated to slow pursuers down, and buy the group some additional time. Strangely enough, it was Margaret’s idea to drag the bodies over and prop them up against the fallen trees. A clear message if there ever was one!
Then, encouraged by the fact that there hadn’t been further signs of pursuit, Margaret and her companions reentered the truck and continued on their way. Having pored over all of their maps, the socialite had identifi?ed a hiking trail that cut across the road roughly two miles ahead. If they followed it toward the northeast, they would eventually connect with a second trail, which would take them to a point only a few miles from their ultimate destination. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before they saw the trail sign they were looking for, and Benson braked to a stop.
“Okay,” Benson said, as they prepared to get out. “The horses won’t be able to carry all the stuff we have—so let’s sort everything into two piles. The ‘gotta have it to stay alive pile’—and the ‘it would be nice to have pile.’ We’ll load the most important stuff fi?rst and add more if we have room. Any objections?”
There weren’t any objections, so they piled out, and work began. By unspoken agreement, it was Margaret’s job to coax the horses out of the twenty-eight-foot trailer, check the animals over, and prepare them for the trail, an activity that was likely to come as a shock to the pampered beasts since they were intended for riding and had never been used as pack animals.
The most spirited, and skittish, horse was the Arabian that belonged to Margaret’s daughter Christine. As the society matron worked to put one of Benson’s makeshift pack saddles on the mare, she took comfort from the fact that her daughter was with President Nankool and therefore safe from harm.
Meanwhile the other three sorted through everything they had, remembering that each horse would only be able to carry about one hundred thirty pounds of gear. That, plus the additional three hundred pounds of tools and supplies the humans and John could carry, added up to slightly over eight hundred pounds of freight.
So there were tough choices to make, and some arguments as a result, but there was general agreement where weapons, ammo, and medical supplies were concerned. The same was true of nonperishable food, although Qwan was forced to give up some of the canned items she was fond of, and the suitcase full of beauty products that Margaret wanted to take was voted down. Benson, by contrast, was allowed to keep almost all of his carefully selected hand tools and hardware, plus a quantity of liquor, for what he called “medicinal purposes.” The rest of the carefully packed loads consisted of tents, tarps, and kitchen equipment. Clothes were limited to three outfi?ts each. Except for John—who could go without if necessary.
It was evening by the time everything was ready, and rather than tackle the trail in the dark, the decision was made to stay where they were until morning. So a fi?re was built, and the humans gorged themselves on canned food, while John stood sentry duty. Something the android could do all night without experiencing fatigue.
Margaret thought it would be diffi?cult to sleep that night, but she surprised herself by dozing off almost immediately, in spite of the fact that she had killed a man earlier that day. And when she awoke, it was to the smell of canned hash frying over the fi?re, and coffee perking in a fi?re-blackened pot.
Margaret discovered that she was sore from sleeping on a thin backpacking mat, but otherwise fi?ne, as she set about caring for the horses. It was an endless task even under the best of circumstances, but was made even more demanding by the need to load and unload the Arabians every day, plus fi?nd something for the animals to graze on. As the three of them sat down to eat, Benson suggested they destroy the items they couldn’t take with them. But Margaret refused. “People are desperate,” she said soberly. “Who knows? The extra supplies could save a few lives. Let’s put them in the back of the truck and leave it unlocked. We’re all in this together.”
Benson knew that the supplies could just as easily fall into the hands of people who didn’t deserve any charity, but chose not to say anything. So everything they couldn’t carry went into the truck. And an hour later they were gone. More exposed in some ways, but safer in others, as the forest closed around them.
The succeeding days were hard, even harder than Margaret had expected. For even though she was in better shape than many her age, Margaret was sixty-one years old and used to a life of privilege. And it was hard work leading an often-recalcitrant horse all day, carrying a pack, and battling rugged terrain. But Margaret became tougher with each passing hour as her body grew stronger.
There were worse things than the rigors of the trail, however. Like the day when a loud thrumming noise was heard, and a Ramanthian shuttle passed directly above them before they could hide, but, inexplicably, continued on its way. And there were three encounters with other groups of refugees, one of which involved a party of twelve heavily armed men who could have easily taken everything they had. Fortunately, all of them were would-be resistance fi?ghters, on their way to join forces with a group called the Earth Liberation Brigade, which was determined to throw the bugs off the planet.
But the moments all of them dreaded most were when the trail passed remote homes, a large number of which were clearly occupied, or crossed highways, which was even worse. On one occasion it had been necessary to wait until nine in the evening for a seemingly endless Ramanthian convoy to pass. Then, like ghosts in the night, the foursome led their pack animals across the pavement and into the woods on the other side.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the group came up over the saddle between two hills and were able to look down into Deer Valley. Something they did with great care, having learned how important stealth could be over the last week or so. John took charge of the horses while the rest of them elbowed their way forward to look down from the cover of some sun-warmed rocks.
There had been a gold mine on the property hundreds of years earlier. After that played out, the valley had been used as a cattle ranch, a private estate, a bed-and-breakfast, a religious retreat, and a hunting preserve, before turning into a private estate once again when Charles and Margaret Vanderveen purchased it twenty-one years earlier. At that point the spread included a sprawling two-story ranch house, a guest cottage, an elevated water tank, an old barn, and the new stable Margaret had commissioned two years before. But as Margaret looked down into the valley, she saw little more than fi?re-blackened rubble where the house and barn had once stood. There was no way to know how the fi?re had been started or by whom. The obvious suspects were Ramanthians and/or looters. It was a terrible blow, especially after working so hard to get there, and Margaret felt a rising sense of despair as Qwan put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Margaret,” Benson said, as he eyed the valley through a pair of binoculars.
“It looks like the place was looted. Wait a minute. . . . What have we got here? Kids, that’s what, a couple dozen of them.”
Margaret wiped some of the tears away with the back of her hand. “Children? No adults?”
“Nope,” Benson replied. “Not so far as I can see. Here, take a look.”
