The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (17 page)

Denver put the uneaten morsel of coffeecake back in the box. "’Thing is’ what, Andrew?”

“Gonna need your help.”

Denver nodded. “Figured as much. I can give you a ride down the hill, if you want. No problem.”

Andrew shook his head. “Not going that way. Not first.”

Denver sat back in his chair and scratched at his beard. “What do you mean? What’s the plan?”

Squirrel smell. Coffee smell. Newsprint smell. New-fence smell. Andrew closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. When he opened them, Denver continued calmly watching him, waiting. He knew how it was. Andrew was grateful for that.

He pulled the words out of his head and out his mouth.

“You know how I…how I am. Need to…need help to be more…” He shook his head. “No. Not as
here
. Less…less…wild.”

Denver nodded slowly. “That’s been a challenge for you. I know. But…” He grimaced. “Look, is it…possible? Or did the augmentation regimen, well, go too deep?”

Andrew sighed heavily. “Gotta be possible. Right? Just need…the right help.”

Denver was quick. “You’re finally gonna take them up on their offer. The Sovereigns.”

Andrew nodded. “Gotta go to Montana.” He tapped his gray, tangled dreadlocks. “They got rid of the killer bugs Lester put in me that time. What else?”

Denver let out a sigh of his own. He turned his head, drew his upper lip back and sucked on his beard: habitual action Andrew had seen Denver do since he first grew facial hair in the late Sixties. He didn’t need the visual cue to tell his friend was conflicted; his scent made that clear.

“You really think this is the best time to pay them a call? You know what Friday is, right?”

Andrew had no idea. He shrugged.

“It’s the first anniversary. Declaration Day.”

“So?”

“So while you’ve been hiding out in the scrub, things have been happening in the real world. This last year, with Sovereigns coming out of the woodwork all over the place, William Donner in the news pretty much every damn day, this armed force they're putting together…not to mention the whole legal mess your boy’s involved in…” Denver stared at Andrew. “Things are pretty tense out there, buddy.”

Andrew thought hard.

“Gotta be now,” he said.

“I really, strongly recommend hanging out for a couple of weeks,” Denver said. “You can…” He surprised Andrew by exuding reluctance. “You can stay here.”

Denver drew himself up in his chair.

“But that’s all I can do for you, buddy. Down the hill to Abbeque Valley is one thing. Crossing state lines, all the way to Montana, and while this shit’s going down?” He shook his head gently. “I can’t do it, Andy. Sorry.”

Denver was saying no?

Andrew felt a rush of surprise and frustration that threatened to sour into anger, but the sound of a car pulling into the driveway threw him solidly into flight mode. He leapt backwards off the porch and landed in a crouch in the yard.

“Car!”

Denver raised a calming hand. “Easy, man. That’s Sandy.” He looked over his shoulder and back at Andrew. “She’s a friend.”

“Can’t be seen.” Andrew skulked toward the tree line. “Can’t be seen. Bad idea. Not good for you.”

“Aw, hell.” Denver rolled his chair down the deck ramp and onto the grass. “Just settle down. She knows about you. And she’s been bugging me to introduce you.” Almost under his breath, which was of course equally clear as anything to Andrew, Denver added, “Like I could just call you up and have you over for goddamn cocktails…”

Andrew heard doors opening and closing. A woman was in Denver’s house. She was coming toward them.

Stranger!

“Not good…”

“Just…” Denver kept his hand out, palm out. “Just…stay!”

The back screen door opened, and she was there. A woman, in late middle age, about five-foot-six inches tall, with shoulder-length, wavy, graying brown hair on her round head. She froze when she saw Andrew, one hand still on the frame of the door.

Andrew knew he was growling. He couldn’t help it.

“Jesus, Andy,” muttered Denver, one hand hiding his face.

The woman closed the door behind her and took a step onto the deck.

“You must be Andrew,” she said. “My name is Sandy. I’m a good friend of Denver’s.”

Andrew caught her scent, which included a hint of men’s deodorant (the kind they all thought was unscented) and absolutely no fear. On the contrary. She oozed curiosity.

Andrew swallowed his growl. Still on all fours, he shifted until he faced her.

Denver sounded resigned. “Say hi to my girlfriend, Andy.”

Andrew cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She smiled without showing her teeth, which Andrew appreciated, whether it was conscious choice on her part or not. People made him nervous when they showed their teeth.

Andrew stood up.

Sandy walked right up to him and stuck out her hand.

Andrew looked at it. What was that for…?

“Put ‘er there,” Sandy looked him in the eye, but just for a moment. Not long enough to be threatening. Another nice touch.

He looked at his own hand. It was black with grime. “Sorry…”

She took it in her own, which made him jump, just a little. She gave his hand a firm pump and let go.

“Nice to meet you, Andrew,” she said. “What brings you around? Have you had lunch?”

Denver had a small smile on his face that didn’t quite reach the reservations in his eyes. “Sandy—and no offense, Andy, but you know this—he’s not so good with being indoors.”

“No,” Andrew said to Sandy. “I can come inside.” He looked at Denver. “Gonna have to start. Have to.”

Denver gave him a long look. “Well.”

“Well.” Sandy nodded once. “Three for lunch.” She smiled at Andrew. “You and I can get better acquainted.”

With that, she turned and went back up to the porch and opened the screen door. She looked at Denver.

“Make sure he rinses his feet off, first, hon, okay?”

Marc Teslowski – Eight

After breakfast and a shower, Marc found Ray in his office, behind a desk crowded with file folders stacked around an electric typewriter. He wore narrow reading glasses on the end of his nose.

“Hey, there.” Ray closed the folder he’d been reading and stood up. “Sorry this place is such a mess. A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind, right?” He laughed and put his hands on the small of his back to stretch. “I told you I run a little newsletter, right?”

“I think so.”

“This is where I put it all together.
The Good Human
, it’s called.” He pointed to a yellowed magazine cover, framed behind glass, hanging on the wall behind his desk. The cover depicted a figure in a white robe and hood ringing the Liberty Bell while the ghost of George Washington looked on. “Kind of a tribute.”

Marc stared at the old magazine. “Is that…” He laughed automatically. “Is that a Klu Klux Klan guy?”

Ray stepped around the desk. “A patriot. Yes, sir.” His eyes were bright and intense. “You feel like taking a little stroll?”

Marc had never seen anything like that in his life. He pulled his gaze away from the wall. “Sure.”

“Great!” Ray strode out of the office and down the hall. “I love that morning air!”

They talked while they walked across the grounds. “Sixty-six acres,” Ray declared. “It’s like living on a chunk of the Garden of Eden, dropped right in the middle of the United States of America. The house is…well, it’s way more than Patsy and I every really needed, but as you can see, these days there’s lots of company around.”

“Your family?”

“Heh. Not by blood.” He laughed. “Except in the sense that we’re all family by blood—by our genes, you know what I mean?”

Marc shrugged. “I’m not up on that stuff.”

“No? I figured you would have to be, given what they’ve put you through in the last year.”

“I leave it to the lawyers,” Marc grumbled.

“Lawyers.” Ray hawked and spat. "’Nuff said.”

Marc smiled. “Shit, yeah.”

“Anyway. Belial, Abe, Carrie, all them…they’re not related to me, but we share a common cause, and we—like you and me, and all but six thousand or so folks on the planet—share common blood. So that makes ‘em family to me.”

Marc thought about the weird racist magazine on Ray’s office wall. He was quiet as they came to the barbed-wire-fenced perimeter of the grounds.

Pine forest carpeted the slopes beyond. He felt a long way away from everything, and even though Byron was probably less than five miles away as the crow flew, he felt like they might as well be on different planets.

“Great view,” he said, to fill the air.

“Let’s be straight with each other, Marc,” Ray said. “You’re a little uncomfortable. Am I right?”

Marc kept his focus on the panorama. “I don’t think of myself as a racist. No offense.”

Ray’s laughter echoed off the distant hillsides. “A racist? Oh, hell’s bells, Marc. I’m no racist. No, sir.”

Marc looked at him. “You’ve got a cartoon of the Klu Klux Klan on your wall. You’ve got all these people living in your house, talking about all that stuff. I thought…”

“Hell, look here.” Ray’s laughter subsided, but his tone was still light. “I’ll give you this much: I used to be what some folks would call a racist. But that was way before, Marc. Before.”

“You mean before Four Eighteen Eighty-Five.”

“Pretty much. I’d heard a little bit, before then, even. I’m lucky in the sense that I know a lot of people all over this country of ours. Some of those people are senators. They knew it was coming.”

Marc found the thought offensive. “We knew? About Donner?”

“I reckon so,” Ray said. “Doesn’t Donner make the same claim, after all?”

Marc scowled. “I don’t listen to anything that asshole says.”

Ray nodded. “You’re angry. I get it.” He started walking, and Marc kept pace. “Me, I
have
to listen. I have to know what’s going on, best as I can, so I can report it to my readers and keep the rogues’ gallery around here in the loop. And seriously, Marc, you’d do well to pay attention, too.”

He grunted. “Makes me sick to give them any more thought than I have to.”

“But they have your son,” Ray said gently. “And the lies they tell…”

“It’ll come out.” Marc squinted at Ray. “So what’s with the Klansman picture, if you don’t believe that stuff anymore?”

“That’s the cover of
The Good Citizen
, from the twenties,” Ray said. “I keep that—and I named my newsletter after it—because the publisher was a woman of principle and strength. You know she was the first female bishop in the United States? A real trailblazer, full of the strength of her convictions.” He took a breath and looked at Marc. “Not too different from my Patsy, God rest her soul. Hell of a woman. Hell of a woman.”

“I bet she was,” Marc said. “Your wife, I mean.”

Ray nodded, his eyes far away for a moment. He looked down at his feet as they walked and said, “When Donner came on the scene and all the abominations crawled out of the shadows where they’d been hiding, I guess you could say I came out of the shadows myself. Figured out pretty damn quick that having different-colored skin or slanty eyes or kinky hair, what have you…those things didn’t make a damn bit of difference compared to how different Donner’s tribe is from us.”

Ray grimaced. “I woke up fast. The way I figure it, the Sovereigns are the biggest threat to the purity of the human race since the time of the Nephilim.”

“Purity? You’re worried about the Sovereigns having kids with regular humans?” Marc had no idea what the Nephilim was, but he figured there wasn’t much point mentioning that.

“Shit, I’m worried about the Sovereigns having kids with each other. How much time we got before a new generation of abominations are born?” Ray shook his head. “Fact is, it’s probably already happened. Scares the crap out of me.”

“I never thought about that.”

“I think about it all the time,” Ray said. He stopped and turned toward Marc. “Look at it this way, Marc. You see any Neanderthals walking around?”

“Nope.”

“Damn right. We’re tough, and we’re mean, and we are God’s blessed chosen. The Sovereigns’re going to find out. Mess with us, you get war. And we have God on our side.”

Marc wasn’t religious, but he didn’t comment on that. He was a guest, after all.

“I just want my kid back,” he said.

“You’ll get him,” Ray said. “I’ll help however I can.”

They walked along the paved driveway that linked various outbuildings with the main house. Ahead of them to the right was what looked to Marc like an old barn. The big doors were closed. A whole lot of big noisy crows perched along the peaked roof in a thick black line.

A tall, young guy, bare-chested but wearing blue jeans and work boots, hoed stray weeds from the cleared dirt in front of the barn. A Walkman cassette player was clipped to his belt. He was intent on his work and lost in whatever was playing in his earphones.

Marc noticed the kid had the Stars and Stripes tattooed on the back of his hand. Where’d he seen that before?

Ray stopped and called out. “Drake! Hey, Drake!”

The kid straightened up from his work and pulled his earphones out. “Morning, Mister Greene.”

“Drake.” Ray was smiling, but Marc recognized his tone. He’d used the same tone on Byron more than once. “You know better, boy. Wear some gloves when you’re doing yard work, all right?”

Marc saw the kid’s face fall. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry sir.” He covered the splash of blue and red with his other hand. “I’ll go get ‘em.” He glanced over his shoulder at the barn. “Gotta go inside…”

“All right, then.” Ray raised his own hand in a casual wave. “See you for dinner. I’m going on a drive with my friend here; we probably won’t be around for lunch.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marc remembered.

This kid with the flag tattoo was one of the rednecks he’d seen hassling the Sovereign from the airplane. Schmidt, or whatever the freak’s name was.

What the hell was he supposed to make of that? Who the fuck were these people, anyway?

Ray was shaking his head. “I tell you what, if that well-meaning dumbass was my blood kid, he’d know to wear his gloves. But one boy’s been enough of a challenge to raise.” He laughed. “Hell, you know what I’m talking about.”