Tracy examined her pulpy hip, made a sour face. 'What if we don't land near any of the plants you need?'
'Then I find something else.'
'What?'
'You really want to know?'
'Yes, damn it.'
Eric hesitated. 'Maggots.'
'Oh Christ, Eric. I'm serious.'
'So am I. Maggots ingest dead tissue. A common treatment of infected battle wounds during World War I. We just expose the wound to flies and pretty soon we'll have our maggots.'
Tracy swallowed the thickness in her throat. 'I've changed my mind about wanting to know everything.'
Eric smiled. 'Don't worry. I'll have you on your knees paddling this thing in no time.'
'Some incentive.'
Eric guided the canoe toward the nearest building. Only two and a half stories stuck out of the water, but that would be more than enough. At least a third of the reflective glass plating that encased the building like armor was shattered. Huge gaping holes stared out where floating debris had rammed through. As they neared the building, they could see that the tail of a small Piper plane stuck out of the building. The rest of the plane was lodged in the top floor where it had crashed.
'Rhino and your former playmate are hauling their butts out of here,' Tracy said, pointing at The Centurion, sails full as it sped away. The Home Run still sat quietly in the middle of the ocean, flames engulfing the whole ship, hissing as falling boards touched water. 'Did you really sleep with her one night and try to kill her in the morning?'
'Yes. It was the quickest way to get past her guards.'
'But she knew who you were all the time.'
'Thanks to Fallows. I should've known he'd find a way to turn some profit out of the war.' He traced his finger along his scar, the scar that Fallows had given him back in Vietnam.
'Eric, they're coming toward us.'
'What?'
'That ship. The one that picked up the passengers. They're sailing right at us.'
Eric watched the sails being hauled up, the last of the survivors being pulled aboard, as the ship turned its bow toward them. He could see four or five armed archers standing at the railing, arrows already nocked into the strings.
He dug the paddle into the water, churning at the ocean until the canoe was closing in on the building. His wounded chest throbbed as if the ribs were poking through the skin, tearing at the muscles, but he had no other choice.
'As soon as we land, we search the place for anything we can turn into weapons.'
'Fine, as long as it doesn't involve maggots.'
'Check the plane first. See if there's any fuel left. Maybe we can mix a couple Molotov cocktails.'
'Okay. But maybe they don't want to harm us. After all, they did try to destroy Rhino and that bunch.'
'That doesn't necessarily make them our friends. It could have been a business dispute.'
'Business dispute?'
'Look at the flag?'
Tracy shaded her eyes with her hand and peered across the water at the approaching ship. High atop the mast was a fluttering black flag-with a skull and crossbones.
'They've got to be kidding,' she said. 'It's too corny to be real. Pirates?'
Eric backwatered the paddle, easing the canoe up to one of the large holes in the glass. Tracy dragged herself through the hole, cutting her hand on a jagged piece of glass. Eric followed, hopping into the dark dusty room and hauling the canoe in after them.
They turned to face the room they'd entered. A steel filing cabinet stood against the wall, but otherwise the room was empty. The floor was wet and sticky with clumps of seaweed that the ocean washed in every few seconds as another wave lapped through the hole.
Eric anchored the canoe, wedging it behind the filing cabinet. Then he slipped an arm around Tracy's waist and helped her toward the room's only door, which was closed. 'We'll find the stairs and climb to the next floor. That'll give us the upper ground advantage. We might even be able to block off the stairs after us.'
Tracy reached for the doorknob, turned, and pulled it open.
The three men stood with weapons ready. There was an ax poised over one man's shoulder, another man thrust his makeshift spear against Tracy's stomach, a third man pressed a.22 automatic against Eric's temple. Behind them stood a tall woman with a red bandana tied around her forehead giving orders.
'Kill them now?' the brutish man with the ax asked her hopefully.
Book Two: ON THE SHIPS
Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.
10.
Eric Ravensmith scraped the steel blade against his dry cheek. Though the room was too dark to see anything, he felt the slivers of brown whiskers sprinkled lightly on his chin like tiny leaves. For a moment he thought of himself as a giant sequoia tree, witnessing hundreds of years of human turmoil, but at the end still standing, calm and indifferent in the dark forest. He brushed the whiskers with his hand. He knew without looking that there were dozens of gray ones mixed in with the brown, more than last month. At this rate he'd be all gray by Christmas. He tilted his head back and carefully scraped his neck.
'God, that's an ugly sound,' Tracy said. 'Like you're munching on a mouthful of beetles. Yech.'
Eric smiled, nudging the sharp blade gently over his jugular, decapitating two-day-old whiskers like a hooded headsman.
'Some people, Eric, might think this was a strange time to shave. Not me, you understand, just some people who didn't know you.' Her voice echoed in the cold, dark room. 'I mean, we've been huddled in this drafty office with the wind whipping off the ocean and nipping at our toes and giving me crow's feet from squinting. We're prisoners again, unarmed again, when you come up with this brilliant way to make a couple knives. So far, so good. But now you sit there shaving, for Christ's sake. Do I think that's weird? Hey, no problem.'
Eric reached his hand over to where he knew she was lying, grazed her shoulder, then traced the length of her arm until he felt her cold hand. He squeezed it and she squeezed back. Something as invisible as electricity and as thick as blood passed between them in that contact. They just held tight for a few minutes, feeling the building sway and groan with the shifting ocean current.
'How's the hip?'
'We'll have to cut the triple somersault out of our sexual repertoire, but otherwise okay.' She coughed, a racking spasm which sent a flare of pain through her hip. 'You don't happen to have a couple hungry maggots handy, do you?'
'Hold on, Trace,' Eric said, wishing he had something more encouraging to tell her. Hell, he wished he had more to say about a lot of things. He'd never been the shy quiet type, rather a fairly animated conversationalist,
