canyon, that’s for sure. Maybe they’re trying to get into south Denver.”
“I could go down and talk to them,” Eric said, “and find out what they want.” But even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t. Something felt bad about the men. His urge was to run.
The soldier pointed to the boulder. The older man sagged. His head dropped, as if all the life had been taken from him. He turned and walked toward the rock. The younger man hung back until the soldier prodded him with his M-16.
“What are they doing?” repeated Dodge.
A swell of sickness rose in Eric. He could feel it pushing against his ribs. “Oh, god,” he said. Teach said, “They wouldn’t.”
Keeping his M-16 trained on the two men, the soldier directed them to stand with their faces to the boulder, their backs to the machine gun. One of the soldiers manning the gun put his shoulders into a yoke on the gun and aimed the barrel at the men.
Eric’s jaw dropped. Even as he watched, horror filling him up like ice water, he thought, I’m not going to see this. I can’t, and he reached out to cover Dodge’s eyes. In the distance, crows cawed loudly. Someone yelled, “No!” The soldier beside the gun buckled to the ground, his limbs loose. “No!” yelled the voice again. In the bushes at the base of the cliff, Rabbit stepped forward and threw a baseball-sized rock. It zinged off the barrel of the gun. The other soldier swung around his gun and let fly an angry rip of sound. A line of dirt jumped up in front of Rabbit, and he ducked into the bushes. Firing stopped. The soldier pounded on the clip of his gun, cursing. Rabbit burst from the bushes, running low away from the men. Eric could see the cleft he must have climbed down to get into the valley. Ponderously, the muzzle of the big gun swung around toward Rabbit.
“Run!” shouted Eric. He was standing. He didn’t remember getting up. A hand grabbed him and yanked him back.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Teach.
The big gun opened up, slamming explosions. Eric scrambled to the ridge and looked over. Dust hid the base of the cliff. He couldn’t see Rabbit.
The gun quit firing. Smoke obscured it for an instant, then cleared. The soldier Rabbit had hit still lay on the ground. Gesturing angrily, the soldier with the M-16 directed the two civilians back to the boulder. A minute later, the big gun fired again, briefly, a short burst. Eric watched the execution, dry-eyed. Then Rabbit joined him, a long scratch across the non-scarred side of his face, but otherwise unharmed. Ripple lay next to him. Long after the smoke had cleared and the blood had quit running off the deeply pocked boulder she said, “The Gone Time is gone, but it’s not forgiven.”
Chapter Fourteen
LOOTING
The four lanes of Hampden Avenue stretched before them, empty and still. To their left, a tall chain link fence separated them from a deserted cross-street lined by long rows of brick tract houses. A waft of smoke burned Eric’s eyes as he strained to see through the haze. He had this vision that at any moment a lone figure would resolve itself out of the distance. His father. Eric almost whistled with the relief of it. He wiped wetness from his cheeks with the back of his wrist. Like a pall of wispy ghosts, smoke drifted between the houses. On all sides, up and down Hampden, at each side road, gray swirls floated over the lawns, among the houses and above them.
We’re finding Dad, he thought. Leda’s wrong about him. I can feel it. He’s out there, just ahead, looking for me. I know I’ll find my dad.
Leda said, “Whoops. We’re in trouble.”
Before Eric could answer, he glimpsed a shadow rushing through the air above the street, then it slammed over them and was gone. He was sprawled on the pavement. “What was that!”
“Maybe he didn’t see us,” she said, voice steely calm, her face a foot from him. “It’s a gunship.” Eric could see it now, maybe a half-mile down the road and a hundred feet up, a beige and brown camouflage-painted helicopter. It turned nimbly and headed back.
“What does he want?” Roaring past, the copter’s prop wash kicked up dust. Eric tried to melt into the asphalt.
“I’d heard that some of the pilots went crazy in the last days— this was a couple of weeks ago—and that they were strafing people on the streets.” The copter turned again. Eric watched, amazed. It was so fast!
Leda continued, “A rumor said a copter pilot shot up St. Joseph hospital. Went back and forth pumping bullets into the building. Lots of people dead.”
This time the craft came slower, its blade a blur, a cloud of dust beneath it. Eric said, “He knows we’re here.”
They stood. The copter hovered just off the road, twenty yards away. Bits of sand stung Eric’s cheeks. The mirrored cockpit glass revealed nothing. He didn’t feel scared, really, but he stepped in front of Leda, putting himself between her and the ship. She moved beside him.
“What’s he going to do?” asked Eric.
“He’s doing it.” She pointed to a multi-barreled device that hung on a mechanized swivel arrangement below the cockpit. The barrels were whirling around and around. She said, “He’s shooting us.” After a minute, the copter howling on the road, the ineffectual guns spinning, Eric said, “Let’s keep going,” and he walked toward the copter. Leda stayed beside him. As they approached, the craft moved aside, and the guns swiveled so they were pointing at them the whole way. When they’d walked for a couple of minutes without looking back, the tenor of the engine changed and the copter rose and flew away.
“That was odd,” Eric said. He felt like he imagined an athlete would who had just done some amazing feat—a half-court shot that touched only net, or a grand slam homer that wins the game at the bottom of the ninth—then walks away like nothing had happened, the epitome of cool and calm. Just another day. It was too bizarre to comprehend.
She said, “Glad he didn’t have ammo.”
He said, “Yep.”
Later, as they passed a station wagon parked on the shoulder, Leda bent at the driver’s window, cupped her hand on the glass and peered in. It was the third car she’d checked.
His heart still racing from the close call, he noticed her torn shirt drop away from her side, flashing a long stretch of white skin from her belt to just below her bra. This time Eric didn’t glance away. She’s pretty fit, he thought. Good looking for a twenty-five-year-old. He remembered his ex-girl friend at the high school, a sallow-faced blonde plagued with a band of pimples at her hairline that she could never clear up despite her most dedicated efforts. Last winter she’d decided to attack them with heat and cold and Eric had watched her wash her face with snow, then rush into the house to steaming hot hand cloths that she’d drape across her forehead like an Indian head dress. Twice they’d made out on her living room couch. The second time, Eric had experimentally tried to French kiss, and she’d said, “Don’t. That’s gross.” They’d broken up a couple of weeks later. “I can’t get into this pimple thing,” Eric had said. It all seemed so childish now.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Keys.” She straightened and smiled, her face smudged and tired (but clear-skinned, he noticed). “We don’t need to walk to Littleton.”
Eric hooked his thumbs into his backpack straps and pulled them together in front of his chest. Despite the mid-day heat, he shivered. “I saw a cop shoot two looters yesterday. They were robbing bodies.”
“Really?” She banged the door shut; the echo came back off a distant surface. “The National Guard took over police duties a couple of weeks ago, and my guess is most of the Guard are dead or home with their families. You sure he was legit?”
Eric thought of the ghost cop methodically pulling zippers closed on body bags, the liquid speed he’d demonstrated gunning down Beetle-Eyes and his girlfriend. “I don’t know.” He imagined the cop sitting on the edge of the Golden High School Knight’s football field that was now a mass grave, his wife and daughter somewhere under the torn-up sod. “He believed he was. I haven’t seen a car yet today. We’d attract attention.”
“All right, we walk.” She started down the road again, sniffed, then waved her hand in the direction they
