The Postman (10 page)

He felt a moment’s blind panic as the hand holding his revolver cramped. If he had broken his
arm …

Blood soaked the cuff of his U.S. Government Issue
tunic. Dread exaggerated the pain until he pulled back his sleeve and saw a long, shallow gash, with slivers of wood hanging from the laceration. It was the bow that had broken, stabbing him as he fell on it.

Gordon threw the fragments aside and scrambled on hands and knees up a narrow gully to the right, keeping low to take advantage of the creekbed and underbrush. Behind him whoops of gleeful chase carried over the tiny hillock.

The following minutes were a blur of whipping branches and sudden zigzags. When he splashed into a narrow rivulet, Gordon whirled, then hurried against the flow.

Hunted men often will run downstream, he remembered, racing upslope, hoping his enemies knew that bit of trivia. He hopped from stone to stone, trying not to dislodge mud into the water. Then he jumped off into the forest again.

There were shouts behind him. Gordon’s own footfalls seemed loud enough to wake sleeping bears. Twice, he caught his breath behind boulders or clumps of foliage, thinking as well as practicing silence.

Finally, the shouts diminished with distance. Gordon sighed as he settled back against a large oak and pulled out his belt-pouch aid kit. The wound would be all right. There was no reason to expect infection from the polished wood of the bow. It hurt like hell but the tear was far from vessels or tendons. He bound it in boiled cloth and simply ignored the pain as he got up and looked around.

To his surprise, he recognized two landmarks at once … the towering, shattered sign of the Oakridge Motel, seen over the treetops, and a cattle grate across a worn asphalt path just to the east.

Gordon moved quickly to the place where he had cached his goods. They were exactly as he had left them. Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn’t operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they
really
let you have it.

•  •  •

Now the stalked turned stalker. Cautiously, Gordon sought out the blackberry blind, with its irate resident mockingbird. As expected, it was empty now. He crept around behind to get the ambushers’ point of view, and sat there for a few minutes as the afternoon waned, looking and thinking.

They had had the drop on him, that was for certain. From this point of view it was hard to see how they had missed when the three men fired on him.

Were they
so
surprised by his sudden break for it? They must have had semi-automatic weapons, yet he only remembered six shots. Either they were being
very
stingy with ammo or …

He approached the grand fir across the clearing. Two fresh scars blemished the bark, ten feet up.

Ten feet. They couldn’t be such bad marksmen
.

So. It all fit. They had never meant to kill him at all. They had aimed high on purpose, to give him a scare and drive him off. No wonder his pursuers never really came close to catching him during his escape into the forest.

Gordon’s lip curled. Ironically, this made his assailants easier to hate. Unthinking malice he had come to accept, as one must accept foul weather and savage beasts. So many former Americans had become little better than barbarians.

But calculated
contempt
like this was something he had to take personally. These men had the concept of mercy; still they had robbed, injured, and terrorized him.

He remembered Roger Septien, taunting him from that bone-dry hillside. These bastards were no better at all.

Gordon picked up their trail a hundred yards to the west of the blind. The bootprints were clear and uncovered … almost arrogant in their openness.

He took his time, but he never even considered turning back.

It was approaching dusk before the palisade that surrounded New Oakridge was in sight. An open area that had once been a city park was enclosed by a high, wooden fence.
From within could be heard the lowing of cattle. A horse whinnied. Gordon smelled hay and the rich odors of livestock.

Nearby a still higher pallisade surrounded three blocks of what had once been the southwest corner of Oakridge town. A row of two-story buildings half a block long took up the center of the village. Gordon could see the tops of these over the wall, and a water tower with a crow’s nest atop it. A silhouetted figure stood watch, looking out over the dimming forest.

It looked like a prosperous community, perhaps the best-off he had encountered since leaving Idaho.

Trees had been cut to make a free-fire zone around the village wall, but that was some time ago. Undergrowth half as high as a man had encroached on the cleared field.

Well there can’t be many survivalists in the area, anymore
, Gordon thought,
or they’d be a whole lot less careless
.

Let’s see what the main entrance is like
.

He skirted around the open area toward the south side of the village. On hearing voices he drew up cautiously behind a curtain of undergrowth.

A large wooden gate swung open. Two armed men sauntered out, looked around, then waved to someone within. With a shout and a snap of reins, a wagon pulled by two draft horses sallied through then stopped. The driver turned to speak to the two guards.

“Tell the Mayor I appreciate the loan, Jeff. I know my stead is in the hole pretty deep. But we’ll pay him back out of next year’s harvest, for sure. He already owns a piece of the farm, so it ought to be a good investment for him.”

One of the guards nodded. “Sure thing, Sonny. Now you be careful on your way out, okay? Some of the boys spotted a loner down at the east end of old town, today. There was some shootin’.”

The farmer’s breath caught audibly. “Was anyone hurt? Are you sure it was just a loner?”

“Yeah, pretty sure. He ran like a rabbit according to Bob.”

Gordon’s pulse pounded faster. The insults had reached a point almost beyond bearing. He put his left hand inside his shirt and felt the whistle Abby had given him, hanging from its chain around his neck. He took some comfort from it, remembering decency.

“The feller did the Mayor a real favor, though,” the first guard went on. “Found a hidey hole full of drugs before Bob’s guys drove him off. Mayor’s going to pass some of them around to some of the Owners at a party tonight, to find out what they’ll do. I sure wish I moved in those circles.”

“Me too,” the younger watchman agreed. “Hey Sonny, you think the Mayor might pay you some of your bonus in drugs, if you make quota this year? You could have a real party!”

“Sonny” smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Then, for some reason, his head drooped. The older guard looked at him quizzically.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Sonny shook his head. Gordon could barely hear him when he spoke. “We don’t wish for very much anymore, do we, Gary?”

Gary frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean as long as we’re wishing to be like the Mayor’s cronies, why don’t we wish we had a Mayor without cronies at all!”

“I …”

“Sally and I had three girls and two boys before th’ Doom, Gary.”

“I remember, Sonny, but—”

“Hal an’ Peter died in th’ war, but I counted me an’ Sally blessed that all three girls grew up. Blessed!”

“Sonny, it’s not your fault. It was just bad luck.”

“Bad luck?”
The farmer snorted. “One raped to death when those reavers came through, Peggy dead in childbirth, and my little Susan … she’s got
gray hair
, Gary. She looks like Sally’s sister!”

There was a long stretch of silence. The older guard
put his hand on the farmer’s arm. “I’ll bring a jug around tomorrow, Sonny. I promise. We’ll talk about the old days, like we used to.”

The farmer nodded without looking up. He shouted “Yaah!” and snapped the reins.

For a long moment the guard looked after the creaking wagon, chewing on a grass stem. Finally, he turned to his younger companion. “Jimmy, did I ever tell you about Portland? Sonny and I used to go there, before the war. They had this mayor, back when I was a kid, who used to pose for …”

They passed through the gate, out of Gordon’s hearing.

Under other circumstances Gordon might have pondered hours over what that one small conversation had revealed about the social structure of Oakridge and its environs. The farmer’s crop indebtedness, for instance—it was a classic early stage of share-kind serfdom. He had read about things like this in sophomore history tutorial, long ago and in another world. They were features of feudalism.

But right now Gordon had no time for philosophy or sociology. His emotions churned. Outrage over what had happened today was nothing next to his anger over the proposed use of the drugs he had found. When he thought of what that doctor in Wyoming could do with such medicines … why most of the substances wouldn’t even make these ignorant savages high!

Gordon was fed up. His bandaged right arm throbbed.

I’ll
bet I could scale those walls without much trouble, find the storage hut, and reclaim what I found … along with some extra to make up for the insults, the pain, my broken bow
.

The image wasn’t satisfying enough. Gordon embellished. He envisioned dropping in on the Mayor’s “party,” and
wasting
all the power-hungry bastards who were making a midget empire out of this corner of the dark age. He imagined acquiring power, power to do good … power to
force
these yokels to use the education of their younger days before
the learned generation disappeared forever from the world.

Why
, why
is nobody anywhere taking responsibility for putting things right again? I’d help. I’d dedicate my life to such a leader
.

But the big dreams all seem to be gone. All the good men—like Lieutenant Van and Drew Simms—died defending them. I must be the only one left who still believes in them
.

Leaving was out of the question, of course. A combination of pride, obstinacy, and simple gonadal fury rooted him in his tracks. Here he would do battle, and that was that.

Maybe there’s an idealists’ militia, in Heaven or in Hell. I guess I’ll find out soon
.

Fortunately, the war hormones left a little space for his forebrain to choose
tactics
. As the afternoon faded, he thought about what he was going to do.

Gordon stepped back into the shadows and a branch brushed by, dislodging his cap. He caught it before it fell to the ground, was about to put it back on, but then stopped abruptly and looked at it.

The burnished image of a horseman glinted back at him, a brass figure backed by a ribbon motto in Latin. Gordon watched shifting highlights in the shiny emblem, and slowly, he smiled.

It would be audacious—perhaps much more so than attempting the fence in the darkness. But the idea had a pleasing symmetry that appealed to Gordon. He was probably the last man alive who would choose a path of greater danger purely for aesthetic reasons, and he was glad. If the scheme failed, it would still be spectacular.

It required a brief foray into the ruins of old Oakridge—beyond the postwar village—to a structure certain to be among the least looted in town. He set the cap back on his head as he moved to take advantage of the remaining light.

An hour later, Gordon left the gutted buildings of the old town and stepped briskly along the pitted asphalt road,
retracing his steps in the gathering dusk. Taking a long detour through the forest, he came at last to the road “Sonny” had used, south of the village wall. Now he approached boldly, guided by a solitary lantern hanging over the broad gate.

The guard was criminally lax. Gordon came within thirty feet unchallenged. He saw a shadowy sentry, standing on a parapet over near the far end of the palisade, but the idiot was looking the other way.

Gordon took a deep breath, put Abby’s whistle to his lips, and blew three hard blasts. The shrill screams pealed through the buildings and forest like the shriek of a stooping raptor. Hurried footsteps pounded along the parapet. Three men carrying shotguns and oil lanterns appeared above the gate and stared down at him in the gathering twilight.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I must speak with someone in authority,” Gordon hailed. “This is official business, and I demand entry to the town of Oakridge!”

That
certainly put them off their routine. There was a long, stunned silence as the guards blinked, first at him and then at each other. Finally, one man hurried off while the first speaker cleared his throat. “Uh, come again? Are you feverish? Have you got the Sickness?”

Gordon shook his head. “I am not ill. I am tired and hungry. And angry over being shot at. But settling all that can wait until I have discharged my duty here.”

This time the chief guard’s voice cracked in blank perplexity. “Dis-discharged your … What the
hell
are you talking about, man?”

Hurried footsteps echoed on the parapet. Several more men arrived, followed by a number of children and women who began to string out to the left and right. Discipline, apparently, wasn’t well practiced in Oakridge. The local tyrant and his cronies had had things their way for a long time.

Gordon repeated himself. Slowly and firmly, giving it his best Polonius voice.

“I demand to speak with your superiors. You are trying my patience keeping me out here, and it will definitely go
into my report. Now get somebody here with authority to open this gate!”

The crowd thickened until an unbroken forest of silhouettes topped the palisade. They stared down at Gordon as a group of figures appeared on the parapet to the right, carrying lanterns. The onlookers on that side made way for the newcomers.

“Look, loner,” the chief guard said, “you’re just asking for a bullet. We got no ‘official business’ with
anyone
outside this valley, haven’t since we broke relations with that commie place down at Blakeville, years ago. You can bet your ass I’m not bothering the Mayor for some crazy …”