“Times we nearly didn’t. I think that it was the children made the difference.” Angel smiled and patted Jeanne on the arm. “Paul and John were just amazing, weren’t they?” A brief pause. “And Pamela, as well.”

  Mac nodded. “Figured they’d come good. What about all the guns?”

  Jeanne shook her head. “First things first, honey. Start of it all was the news bulletins about Earthblood, making it like it wasn’t anything serious. But the first food shortages started almost immediately. Eggs and milk and meat.”

  Angel took up the story. “Phones worked then. Before the government cut them all off to stop rumors.” She laughed bitterly. “Rumors! Truths is what they were. I called Jeanne up and we had a kind of coded talk. Agreed that she’d run for it, out here, with her three kids. It was the time for action.”

  “Got the four-by and packed everything we could inside it. Every scrap of food and tools and clothes. Left Mount Vernon Street at three in the morning. Out of Boston in twenty minutes. Got here before dawn and never regretted it for a moment.”

  Mac put down the empty glass. “From everything I’ve seen I’d say you made the right move. The big cities are overloaded with the dead. Highways blocked for miles.”

  “Soon as they got here, we held a council of war. Because that’s what it is, Mac.”

  “I know it.”

  “Paul suggested we go down to Nevada and wait for you to land. But it was too far ahead. So John felt we should do what we could right there and then.” Jeanne grinned. “That was when we formed ourselves into the McGill gang.”

  “Hit both gun stores in town. Course, by then, things were getting antsy. Not a spot of green to be seen. Just the sickly pinkish red color. Lot of folks were talking moving and survival.”

  “We got there firstest with the mostest.” Angel laughed. “Should’ve seen the look on old Frank Clanton’s face when we all streamed in and took half his stock of weapons.”

  “What did you get?” Mac rubbed his still-numbed fingers together.

  “You name it we got it,” Jeanne said. “Rifles, scoped and night scoped. Shotguns. Twenty-five handguns and around ten thousand rounds of assorted ammunition for them. Knives and axes. Machine pistols. And one or two other specials.”

  Angel continued. “Then we hit the camping store in Hartford. Tents and sleeping bags. Armed to the teeth, we were. Desperadoes. Cooking stoves and every cylinder of gas in the place.”

  “Why did you raid the two gun stores so close to home?” Mac was puzzled. “Wasn’t that kind of dangerous to do?”

  Angel patted him on the arm. “You were snoring away in space, lover. Society was kind of crumbling, you might say. Neither Clanton nor the police nor nobody was coming up after the mad McGills. Not when they know that we got ourselves more guns than the whole National Guard. By then the law enforcement didn’t give too much of a damn.”

  “And Paul suggested it’d be good to let locals know just how prepared we were, so when the going got seriously tough they might leave us alone.”

  “That work?” he asked.

  The smiles vanished. It was Angel who eventually answered him. “There’s been a fair bit of killing, Mac. Mostly strangers. A few that… Shit, they were friends. Wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. We decided right at the onset that we couldn’t afford to make any exceptions.”

  “Not one,” agreed Jeanne. “Christ, but it was hard. Killing folks you’d known all your lives. But we did it.”

  “And you’re all alive. Good wood for the winter? Gasoline? Transport? Food?”

  John appeared in the doorway, a tall, powerful figure. “The McGill gang raided all over Connecticut. Biggest thing since the James and Younger boys. We worked hard, Dad, turning the house into a fortress. Steel doors and bars and shutters.”

  Mac stood and embraced his oldest son. “You’ve done… done fucking wonderful. All of you. I can’t believe you’re all alive.”

  “What now, Mac?” asked Angel.

  In the next hour or so, all of the children, with the exception of little Sukie, came into the warm room, attracted by the hum of conversation.

  Mac went again through all he knew about Operation Tempest, General Zelig and the meeting in Calico in four weeks’ time.

  “That’s all I know. I reckon there’s some sort of mystery project, conjured up as a contingency plan, to counter the holocaust after Earthblood. Could be that they need specialists like me and Jim and the others.”

  “What happens in Calico, Dad?” asked Pamela.

  “No idea.”

  “You noticed that there seems to be the first signs of growth coming through?” said Paul. “Winter’s closing in, but by the spring…”

  “Planet’s healing itself after what we’ve done to it. Bit like an old dog shrugging off fleas. Feel fresher and better. Could be that Earth’ll be like that after this winter.” Mac looked around at his extended family. “By God, but I’m so proud of all of you.”

  Once he’d started crying, he found that he couldn’t stop. He was reacting to the accumulated shocks, the fears, the grim things he’d seen and the relief.

  By midnight the smaller children had been shooed off to their beds. Mac had recovered his self-control after the catharsis of weeping. He lay on the Navaho rug in front of the dying fire, while Jeanne and Angel sat on either side of the hearth.

  It was his first wife who broke the comfortable silence. “So, when are you leaving for Calico?”

  Mac looked around the room, pausing before he answered. “I’m not. Least, not until after the snows. April? This is where I belong. Here, with my family.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ramon Hernandez hung on tenaciously to life. His spirit wanted to let go and find release, but his wiry frame clung on, the vital spark still smoldering in the shrunken, starved body.

  The moment his lost daughter Heather had appeared out of the morning mists, Jim Hilton had decided to remain in his old home on Tahoe Drive, overlooking what used to be Los Angeles, until Ramon finally let go. Carrie Princip was perfectly happy to go along with his decision.

  “Still plenty of time to get down to Calico, if we’re still going there.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re still going there. All three of us.”

  It seemed gruesome, marking time and waiting for Ramon to die, but at least Jim was getting reacquainted with his daughter.

  Relations between them were edgy at first. A gap of over two years lay between them, as did the deaths of Lori and Andrea.

  The girl wouldn’t talk about the cholera or about the time of Earthblood. She’d sit in the room she’d shared with her twin, until fading light forced her out into the room with the fire.

  Jim noticed that she’d reverted to the books she’d read as a little girl, the old, old books by Scarry and Seuss.

  Several times he’d tapped on the door and walked in, finding Heather stretched out on her bed, hands behind her head, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  It was only the morning after Ramon’s eventual quiet passing, when the old man had been buried alongside the other two mounds of earth, that Heather finally came out of her shell.

  She joined Jim Hilton as he sat near the boundary fence, gazing out over the dull mirror of the reservoir. The light breeze was ruffling his thinning blond hair, tugging at the short sleeves of his faded maroon sports shirt.

  “Can I talk, Daddy?”

  “Of course. Sure you want to?”

  “Think so.”

  Jim saw Carrie appear out of the house and start toward them. He waved a warning hand, unseen by his daughter, and the second navigator turned silently on her heel and vanished back into the shadows of the living room.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, kitten.”

  She was dry-eyed, looking past him toward the rectangular blocks of the Hollywood sign. “Not your fault, Daddy.”

  “I was here at the end, for Andrea.”

  “I know, Carrie told me.”

  “You like her?”

  The girl considered the question for a moment. “You her lover?”

  “No!” he exclaimed, shocked.

  For the first time since her return, Heather smiled. “Guess you’re too old for her, Daddy.”

  “I’m not too old for… That’s not the damn point, young lady, and…”

  She laughed, turning her head to look into his face. “I know you aren’t too old, Daddy. Only seven years older than Carrie is. That’s not very much, is it? But I think she really likes you. And I mean really likes you.”

  “Heather!”

  “Sorry, Daddy. Only teasing.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve lost some weight. Guess everyone has since Earthblood came.”

  “Weighed myself in the bathroom. Down to about one-seventy. Amazing what time away from chocolate fudge does.”

  Her hand eased out and touched his, and his fingers tightened around hers.

  “Don’t look at me while I tell you, Daddy. Please. Promise?”

  “Sure, kitten. I promise. And you really, truly, don’t have to tell me a thing. I know what life’s been like.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s the point. You don’t know at all....”

  THE SHORTAGE OF FOOD.

  The government control over the television and phone systems.

  Starvation riots and the trekkers coming out into the Hollywood Hills. Armed bands of hired guns patrolling the canyons, ready to mercilessly shoot down anyone attempting to get at the houses of the rich and privileged.

  Power going down. And the total lack of any communication.

  Driving to the reservoir to carry up water. Trying to fill their swimming pool but finding that it wouldn’t stay fresh.

  “Mom got sick. We’d heard about sickness from neighbors along the road. Cholera and typhoid. Ramon came around but then Maria died. We had a couple of handguns ready in case there were street thugs coming out into the hills.”

  “You have to use them?”

  “Ramon fired once at three men in camouflage jackets. Didn’t hit any of them. You killed anyone since you landed, Daddy?”

  Jim Hilton shook his head. “Not something I want to talk about, kitten.”

  Heather still wouldn’t look at her father as she sat cross-legged on the dead grass, voice flat and unemotional.

  “Mom got worse. Then… sissy got it.”

  That had been the twins’ nickname for each other when they’d been smaller.

  Lori Hilton had died from cholera, a dreadful sickness when there are no doctors and no kind of medication. Not even clean water.

  It had been Andrea’s rapid decline that had proved the final straw for Heather.

  “The way Mommy went was…and I knew that Andrea would be the same. I kind of starred out in my head. Just ran. I was away for three or four days. Lost count. Slept rough. Came back to see if she was still alive. And found you… burying her. Couldn’t believe it, that you’d come back.”

  He hugged her tightly. “Take more than the end of life on the planet as we know it to keep me away from you, kitten.”

  JIM HAD BEEN pleasantly surprised at how his daughter was coping. It gave him an insight into the horrors of life under Earthblood, the strength growing out of such extreme circumstances enabling a child of eleven to witness deaths, including her own mother, and still be able to function.

  Carrie spoke to him that evening about it.

  “Kids are resilient, Jim. In the old days I suppose that Heather would have been rushed off to a fashionable shrink, for some infinitely tiny problem. I’m not saying it’s easy for the kid. But she can take it.” She hesitated. “You think you can, Jim?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “We going to take her back to this ghost town with us?”

  “Course. Why not?”

  “Wondered if you might want to stay here and try and…you know, make some sort of life together. Just wondered.”

  “No, Carrie. City’s no place now. Probably never will be again. Life has to be radically different. It’s almost like going back to the Middle Ages. Little villages. If the plants and trees really start to grow again, next year, then there’s a chance.”

  “And Zelig?”

  He smiled. “Zelig! Who knows. Just got to go and find out. We’ll take it easy. Weather’s getting worse, so we can’t go into the hills too much. Get back to Calico and see who else turns up there.”

  IN HOLLYWOOD, even the early days of November are mild and clement. Jim went out in the evenings among the budding shoots of grass and killed rabbits with the big .44, its boom contrasting with the snap of Carrie’s Smith & Wesson six-shot .22 revolver.

  Eventually it was time to set off for Calico.

  They all stood together in the front garden of the house on Tahoe Drive in the cool morning air.

  “Ready, kitten?” said Jim.

  His daughter half turned to Carrie, eyebrows raised, chin tilted in a way that reminded him of Lori.

  “I wish Daddy wouldn’t call me ‘kitten,’ “ she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was a standoff.

  Kyle stood in the doorway, the Model V Mannlicher rifle braced against his right hip, finger on the trigger. He was trying to remember whether he’d taken off the safety, mentally cursing himself for his stupidity.

  The woman standing near the fireplace in the living room didn’t look stupid, and she was holding a blue-steel automatic as if she knew the safety was off.

  Kyle figured that this must be Alison, Steve Romero’s wife.

  There was a huge man, with a crew cut so severe that his skull burst out through it. He was wearing stained blue chinos and a faded sweatshirt that gaped over his belly.

  That had to be Randy.

  Steve Romero was backed against the wall, holding the smoking sawed-down 12 gauge. A pitted hole on the far wall, close by the window, showed where his shot had gone wide. Kyle noticed that his friend had a darkening bruise on his cheekbone and a thread of blood creeping down his chin from the corner of his mouth.

  A lamp had been knocked over, spilling pungent oil across the wooden floor. Another stood near the door, its golden glow leaving the room in pools of light and shadow.

  Kyle noticed a fourth person standing behind the woman, but he was mainly in darkness. He figured that this must be Sly, Steve’s eighteen-year-old son. The boy completely motionless, hands clenched at his sides.

  “This the nigger cavalry?” said Randy slowly, grinning at Kyle.

  “Who you going to shoot with that deer rifle, boy?” sneered the woman. “Bolt action like that, you’ll only get off one shot. Then either I shoot you in the guts or Randy rips off your balls and stuffs them down you throat.”

  “I’ll wipe you away, bitch,” growled Steve, gesturing with the shotgun.

  “Not unless you put another shell into that little shotgun,” said Randy.

  Kyle found that his brain had turned to frozen Jell-O, There were so many permutations that he couldn’t make any sort of decision. It seemed that he had to try to shoot someone, but the woman was the most likely target. It didn’t seem easy to pull the trigger.

  The barrel of the Mannlicher wavered indecisively between Alison and the hulking Randy.

  “You boys just walk outside and keep walking and never come back,” suggested the woman. She had the faded prettiness of a once-good-looking woman who now enjoyed her liquor.

  “Yeah. Get the fuck out,” echoed Randy.

  “I’ve come for Sly. Come for my son. I want to take him with me to somewhere better than this.” Steve’s voice was surprisingly steady.

  “No fucking way. Sly’s real useful here.”

  “Sure. Useful. But you don’t love him. You never have.”

  Alison laughed, a hard sound like brittle steel. “Course. I don’t think anyone could love that.” she said, gesturing behind her with the small pistol.

  “I love him and I want him. Won’t leave without him.”

  “Then there’ll be blood on the floor. The nigger with the rifle first, and then you.”

  “Shoot her, Kyle,” said Steve. “Come on, man, just do it.”

  “I’m going to… going…” But his heart told him he wasn’t.

  It was the large figure of the boy in the shadows that broke the moment of paralysis.

  He loomed up behind his mother and clubbed her clumsily across the back of the head with the flat of his hand.

  “You won’t hurt Dad,” he shouted.

  Alison went down like a heifer under the poleax, the gun dropping to the parquet.

  Randy was quick off the mark for a big man, but he wasn’t quick enough to beat the .357 Magnum round from the rifle.

  It hit him in the chest, just to the right of the sternum, spinning him around and dumping him in a yelping tangle of arms and legs by the fire.

  Kyle brought the Mannlicher to his shoulder, all the hesitation and fear gone. Ignoring the scope sight, he centered the barrel on Randy as he struggled to his feet, blood already staining his shirt.

  The second bullet smashed through the open mouth, taking out several teeth, most of the tongue, the soft palate and a fair part of the lower brain before it exited, distorted and mangled, into the blazing logs in the hearth.

  “You bastard,” breathed Kyle quietly.

  They dragged the heavy body outside into the blizzard and left it beyond the shelter of the rear porch.

  Steve had tied up his hysterical ex-wife, bound her wrists behind her with another strong cord around her neck, knotted to the frame of the double bed in the end room.

  He’d attempted to gag her, trying to stop the flood of foul and abusive language. But Steve’s skill wasn’t up to it, and he’d given up. He simply closed the door on her, partially muffling the screams.

  Kyle was sitting by the fire, head down, trying to overcome his shakiness. He’d managed to reload the rifle.

  Steve had picked up the fallen automatic, finding it was an ancient German Beholla Pocket Auto, a seven-shot, .32 caliber handgun with a stubby three-inch barrel and ribbed rubber stock.

  He’d also found a couple of boxes of ammunition in a kitchen drawer and given half to Kyle to load up the empty Mondadori automatic.