Point Apocalypse (15 page)

The Information in my head ignored the question. I stood there musing until I remembered Grunt's words. Something about going to the loggers who could help me... For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the kaleidoscope of events, places, conversations, fights and chases. I staggered grabbing at the wall and remembered everything that had happened.

Another
whiff of campfire brought the smells of food and drink. A booming voice was answered by what sounded very much like Grunt's. Wladas spoke next. Plates clinked. Then the place fell silent.

Things were
getting better. There were people nearby, and that included Wladas. I sat down trying to control my breathing. The campfire had to be somewhere in the forest nearby... But of course! The rainforest. Where else would you find loggers?

But
why was I here and not with them? Why had Wong left me? He couldn't have done so because... because he...

I vaguely remembered
Grunt's story about the toxic carula plant. I'd asked him for a serum injection which they didn't have. I remembered I'd wanted to chop off my hand.

I stared at the tarpaulin. I'd been
as good as dead. Grunt had known it, and so had Georgie. They'd chosen not to tell me. They must have left me here for dead. So they'd covered me with this tarp planning on coming back to bury my body. In the meantime, they were having a wake?

Looked
like it.

But
I wasn't dead. I was alive and kicking!

I walked out of the hut and followed the smoke trail. A bird crowed and another replied.
Not necessarily a bird - it could have been a Pangean monkey for all I knew, warning its troop about the intruder.

What had they done to me? They had probably tried to save me and failed. O
r they'd thought they'd failed. No matter. I had to decide on my next step. Should I come out to the campfire or should I listen to their conversation first?

The night fell fast.
I stood still wondering if I should come out at all. What if Wladas had told everyone about who I really was? That could change everything. In that case, it wasn't a funeral party but a feast celebrating the successful liquidation of an FSA operative. Then Wong was dead, too: they must have killed him first realizing he didn't know much. As my cover man, he'd have tried to defend me, so it seemed logical to have killed him first. Then they would have tried to bring me back to life and force the FSA's plans out of me. But it hadn't worked because I'd kicked the bucket... or they'd thought I had, and that had been the end of it. Wasn't I right?

I
had to be.

I
nodded. The only solution it left me with was to try to get back to New Pang, find my contact and start everything all over again. Which I couldn't really do because I didn't know the city, had no money and risked bumping into McLean's men at every street corner, which was much worse than simply going solo. I still had to make it back to town in one piece. No, that wasn't the way to find Neumann and get us back to Earth.

I heard
Wladas' voice in the thicket: he was rambling on, barely coherent. A fast tirade in Chinese interrupted him, followed by a grim "yeah right" and a burst of hooting laughter.

"Leave him alone,
Wong," the booming voice said. "He's drunk as a skunk."

Wong
? I hurried along. So Wong was alive and with Wladas! Looked like I didn't have to go solo, after all.

I saw a
narrow passageway cut through the trees, their trunks scarred with fresh gashes. After a few more steps, I came out into an opening. My friends all sat around the campfire. Wladas faced me, swaying, trying to fill a mug from a flask. Jim sat by the fire stirring a pot of soup. Behind him on a log sat Grunt and Georgie, red-faced from either drink or the heat. Or it could have been be the twilight and the flames lending their hue to their expressions. Wong walked over to them and was about to sit down nearby when he saw me. He froze studying me intently.

Excellent
! All present and correct. Plus a stranger who sat on a block of wood sideways to me. A burly guy with a beard, wearing a dirty-gray shirt, a pair of leather pants and short wrinkled boots.

Wladas
noticed me. His face paled. He backed toward the fire, stumbled and fell flat on the ground. The others turned their heads toward me. Jim dropped his spoon into the pot. Georgie cleared his throat. Grunt stared at me, unblinking, while the bearded giant rose, his head reaching the clouds, and lay his hand on the hatchet behind his belt.

He was a good seven foot
tall, blond with a red beard on a freckled face. Slowly, his lips stretched into a smile. Who did he remind me of?

"Er,"
Grunt raised his hand, his fat finger pointing at me. He exchanged glances with Georgie who mentioned clones under his breath. Jim swallowed and tried to fish the spoon out of the boiling soup. Wong came to me and motioned me to another block of wood next to the stranger's.

"Hi there," I nodded to Jim as I sat down.
"Everything okay? Not too scared of me?"

The
boy gave me a weak smile, then looked at the stranger and went on stirring the soup as if it made him feel better. The others didn't speak.

"
Swenson," the giant boomed and sat down next to me. "Lars Swenson's the name. I'm the boss here."

He
held out his hand, wide and calloused.

"Mark Posner," I gave him a firm handshake and looked over my friends. "Cat's got your tongues?
Nothing to say about my resurrection?"

Lars slapped my shoulder
as if he'd known me for years and said with a grin,

"I imagined you different.
My nephew told me a bit about you..." he studied my face. "You
are
different. Definitely."

His voice was as strong as the rest of him.

"Your nephew?" I raised my eyebrows.

Lars took my injured hand
and turned it palm up to the light.

"Look, it's healed," he sounded surprised. "
And you seem to be alive, too. I would never have believed it myself. You're one lucky man!"

He looked up at me.

"Oh yeah," he waved his hand at the fire. "That Jim over there is my nephew."

I glanced at Jim. Now the
likeness was apparent. Both had the same-shaped eyes and faces, but their noses were different, and so was their hair color - the boy's was lighter - but both were covered with freckles. Grunt and Georgie stirred and helped Wladas still hugging his drink back onto his feet. Several bowls and mugs stood on a piece of tarp next to a couple of enormous flasks. Wong moved into the shadows and squatted.

"Jim is your nephew
," I repeated. "And what does that make you?"

Lars sized me up and
slapped my shoulder.

"
Do you always take the bull by the horns?" he reached to the tarp. "Wipe your face with this," he passed me a wet cloth. "Have a drink and a quick bite. We can speak as we eat. No hurry, but you need to understand a few things."

I ran the cloth
over my face and hands, sniffed it and cringed.

"Smells funny."

"It's cao juice," Lars said. "An organic insect repellant. Perfect to keep midges away. Come on, rub it in before they feast on you," he grew serious. "Tuck in."

Jim took the pot off the fire and filled a bowl for me. It smelled good. Lars produced a spoon from
the side of his boot.

"Do us the
honors, Private."

Private
. Oh well. I wiped my face with the cloth and reached for the spoon slowly, watching Wladas. Had he been discreet enough? More than likely. Wong wouldn't have let him speak out of turn. And in any case, I'd have gotten a very different kind of welcome then.

I began to eat. My new friend picked up one of the flasks
while Wladas held out two mugs. Lars handed one to me, filled to the brim.

"To your return from the dead."

The drink left me speechless. Warmth poured down into my stomach where the brew exploded in a ball of liquid fire clearing my head. McLean's bourbon couldn't hold a candle to it. A chocolate aftertaste clung to the sides of my mouth.

They must have
polished off the other flask while I'd been lying "dead" in the hut.

Lars squinted at me
smacking his lips. He tilted his head and poured the drink into his huge mouth.

"Well," he said wiping his beard, "looks like w
e need a change of plans. You being alive and all that."

"
We
need?" I asked dipping into my bowl.

"Exactly.
Now listen. Jim and this buddy of yours here," Lars nodded at the yawning Wladas, "they told me how you scorched McLean's digs."

"Shit happens," I attacked my food.

"That'll teach him," Lars nodded staring into the fire. "He's been going a bit too far just lately." He turned to me and added obscurely, "McLean and us, we're supposed to cooperate, but he seems to have put his eye on our little business. He wants us to dance to his tune. To which I say, fuck him!" He gave the finger to the twilight enveloping the woods.

For a Scandinavian, he had an excellent command of Russian.
Too good, even. He spoke like a native. I put the spoon down and glanced up at him.

"Sorry,
buddy, I forgot you didn't know us," he said. "We're loggers. I'm the foreman. We camp five miles away. Do a bit of logging, then drive the trunks down river to New Pang. We supply them with whatever edible fruit there is here, and send them fresh meat. Wind boar is plentiful around here. Hyena pelts, too...

Edible
fruit. Wild boar. What did it all mean?

Lars glanced down at his pants. He sat
down by the fire, licked his finger and rubbed at a dirty spot on his pant leg. "Everyone needs clothes, but there isn't much here to make them with," he shrugged. "The woods give us all we need, apart from oil, machinery and ammo."

I pushed the bowl away and took a large swig from the mug.

"And McLean, he controls all the Fort deliveries. Plus the fishing boats. Plus the port," Lars gave Georgie and Grunt an angry look, "And now he's the only one with a ferry boat. No problem, we can always build another one. But it'll take time..."

"
Listen, King," Grunt shrugged. "It wasn't our fault, really. No good crying over spilt milk..."

Lars spat and didn't finish. I was itching to
find out who he really was and why Grunt called him King. Instead, I asked,

"Why are you telling me all this?"

I was racking my brains for any scrap of information about Lars Swenson. But it didn't look as if the Feds had supplied me with any.

"I'll tell you in a minute. You eat," he shifted on the log stretching out his legs. "Where was I?"

"McLean," I said. "He wants a larger piece of the cake. Don't know why yet."

"Exactly," Lars
looked at Jim who was busy raking the coals to bake a large, tasty-looking fish packed in clay and ashes. "McLean is just a gangster who played his cards right. Has anyone told you about the pandemic?"

I
nodded.

"Thing was,"
Lars Swenson glanced into his empty mug, "with that pandemic, that's when it all started. A lot of people fled New Pang then. McLean did the right thing, I have to admit. He organized those still in town and made them believe they'd survive the pestilence. He ruled the city with an iron fist, though. No mercy for the infected. He burned them. Burned them alive, imagine. Locked them in their homes and..."

He fiddled with his empty mug.
"Naturally, we gave shelter to the fugitives. We stopped working and set up a quarantine camp. And once the pandemic was over, McLean declared himself the lord of New Pang. Never mind all those who'd built the city - loggers, farmers, oil riggers, free raiders... even clones had added their two cents' worth of labor. Lots of people had invested in it, so no wonder many wanted to go back. But once they did come back," he raised a warning finger, "McLean waited a bit and lay down the law. He charged them three times the old price for everything: their houses that weren't his to begin with, the right of passage, the jetties... This was when we founded the Confederation. All Continent settlers signed a friendly agreement. We had to meet McLean halfway in certain things so he demanded compensation for fire prevention and street cleaning. His men did shift shit from our streets, you have to give them that. Now he's building a water pipeline. Highly commendable."

He
paused. "You see, the thing is, McLean wants to bite off more than he can chew. Now he taxes everyone he can lay his hands on. He wants to control our estuary gate where we charge a toll for the riggers' oil tanks and farmers' food barges on their way to New Pang."

He must have misunderstood my stare because he added,
"What do you want? They won't transport it by land. Gas stocks won't last forever so everyone's trying to go easy on them."