Year's Best Scifi 2 Part 36

"I don't think so."

"I didn't think that you would." Somewhat gratified, he returned to her and the road. It was darker than ever now, and the tire tracks, obscured by advancing night as well as new-fallen snow, were impossible to follow. Pushing up his sleeve, he looked at his watch: it was almost six o'clock.

"I don't like them," Aileen said. "Those ladies."

"It would surprise me if you did."

"They took my clothes off. I said I'd do it, but they didn't pay any attention, and they didn't know how to do it. They just pulled and pulled till things came off."

"Out here? In the snow?" He was shocked.

"In the ziggurat, but it was pretty cold in there, too."

He found the point in a drift at which the Lincoln had bulldozed its way through, and led her to it. "What did you say? A ziggurat?"

"Uh-huh. Is it much farther?"

"No," he said.

"I could sit down here. You could come back for me in your jeep."

"No," he repeated. "Come on. If we walk faster, we'll keep warm."

"I'm really tired. They didn't give me hardly anything to eat, either. Just a piece of bread."

He nodded absently, concentrating on walking faster and pulling her along. He was tired too-nearly exhausted. What would he say when he wrote his journal? To take his mind off his weariness and the burning pain in his right side-off his fear, as he was forced to concede-he attempted to compose theentry in his mind.

"I got in the sleeper thing, but it was so cold. My feet got really cold, and I couldn't pull them up. I guess I slept a little."

He looked down at her, blinking away snow; it was too dark for him to gauge her expression. "Those women took you into a ziggurat-"

"Not really, Daddy. That was a kind of temple they had in Babylon. This one just looks like the picture in the book."

"They caught you," he continued doggedly, "and took you there, and undressed you?"

If she nodded, he failed to see the motion. "Did they or didn't they?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"And they fed you, and you slept a little, or anyway tried to sleep. Then you got dressed again and they brought you back here. Is that what you want me to believe?

"They showed me some pictures, too, but I didn't know what lots of the things were."

"Aileen, you can't possibly have been gone more than a couple of hours at the outside. I doubt it was that long."

He had thought her beyond tears, but she began to sob, not loudly, but with a concentrated wretchedness that tore at his heart. "Don't cry, honey." He picked her up, ignoring the fresh pain in his side.

The wind, which had been rising all afternoon, was blowing hard enough to whistle, an eerie moan among the spectral trees. "Don't cry," he repeated. He staggered forward, holding her over his left shoulder, desperately afraid that he would slip and fall again. Her plastic snow boots were stiff with ice, the insulated trousers above them stiff too.

He could not have said how far he had walked; it seemed miles before a lonely star gleamed through the darkness ahead. "Look," he said, and halted-then turned around so that his daughter, too, could see the golden light. "That's our cabin. Has to be. We're going to make it."

Then (almost at once, it seemed) Brook was running through the snow with the flashlight, he had set Aileen upon her feet, and they were all three stumbling into the warmth and light of the cabin, where Jan knelt and clasped Aileen to her and cried and laughed and cried again, and Alayna danced and jumped and demanded over and over, "Was she lost, Daddy? Was she lost in the woods?"

Brook put a plate of hot corned-beef hash in his lap and pushed a steaming mug of coffee at him.

"Thank you." Emery sighed. "Thank you very much, son." His face felt frozen; merely breathing the steam from the mug was heavenly.

"The car get stuck?"

He shook his head.

"I fixed stuff like you said. 'Layna helped, and Jan says she'll do the dishes. If she won't, I will." Brook had called her Mother for the length of the marriage; but it was over now, emotionally if not legally.

Emery's thoughts turned gratefully from the puzzle of Aileen's captivity to that."I could toast you some bread in the fireplace," Brook offered. "You want ketchup? I like ketchup on mine."

"A fork," Emery told him, and sipped his coffee.

"Oh. Yeah."

"Was she lost?" Alayna demanded. "I bet she was!"

"I'm not going to talk about that." Emery had come to a decision. "Aileen can tell you herself, as much or as little as she wants."

Jan looked up at him. "I called the sheriff. The number was on your phone."

Emery nodded.

"They said they couldn't do anything until she'd been gone for twenty-four hours. It's the law, apparently.

They-this woman I talked to-suggested we get our friends and neighbors to search. I told her that you were searching already. Maybe you ought to call and tell them you found her."

He shook his head, accepting a fork from Brook.

"You came back on foot? You walked?"

Aileen said, "From way down by the lake." She had taken off her bests, stockings, and snow pants; and was sitting on the floor rubbing her feet.

"Where's my car?"

"I traded it for Aileen."

Alayna stared at Aileen, wide-eyed. Aileen nodded.

"You traded it?"

He nodded too, his mouth full of corned-beef hash.

"Who to?"

He swallowed. "To whom, Jan."

"You are the most irritating man in the world!" If Jan had been standing, she would have stamped.

"He did, Mama. He said they could have the car if they'd give me to him, but they shot him anyway, and he fell down."

"That's right," Emery said. "We ought to have a look at that. It's pretty much stopped bleeding, and I think it's just a flesh wound." Setting his plate and mug on the hearth, he unb.u.t.toned his mackinaw. "If it got the intestine, I suppose I'll have hash all over in there, and it will probably kill me. But there would have been food in my gut anyway. I had pork and beans for lunch."

"They shot you?" Jan stared at his blood-stiffened shirt.

He nodded, savoring the moment. It's nothing, sir. I set the bone myself. Danny Kaye in some old movie. He cleared his throat, careful to keep his face impa.s.sive. "I'm going to have to take this off, and my undershirt and pants, too. Probably my shorts. Maybe you could have the girls look the other way."Both twins giggled.

"Look at the fire," she told them. "He's hurt. You don't want to embarra.s.s him, do you?"

Brook had gotten the first-aid kit. "This is stuck." He pulled gingerly at the waistband of Emery's trousers.

"I ought to cut it off."

"Pull it off," Emery told him. "I'm going to wash those pants and wear them again. I need them." He had unbuckled his belt, unb.u.t.toned his trousers, and unzipped his fly.

"Just above the belt," Brook told him. "An inch, inch and a half lower, and it would have hit your belt."

Jan snapped her fingers. "Oil! Oil will soften the dried blood. Wesson Oil. Have you got any?"

Brook pointed at the cabinet above the sink. Emery said, "There's a bottle of olive oil up there, or there should be."

"Leen's peeking," Brook told Jan, who told Aileen, "Do that again, young lady, and I'll smack your face!

"Emery, you really ought to make two rooms out of this. This is ridiculous."

"It was designed for four men," he explained, "a hunting party, or a fishing party. You women always insist on being included, then complain about what you find when you are."

She poured olive oil on his caked blood and rubbed it with her fingertips. "I had to get you to sign."

"You could have sent your d.a.m.ned paper to my box in town. I'd have picked it up on Sat.u.r.day and sent it back to you."

"She couldn't mail me," Brook said. "Are we going to get the car back? My junk was in the trunk."

Emery shrugged. "They're stripping it, I think. We may be able to take back what's left. Maybe they won't look in the trunk."

"They're bound to."

Jan asked, "How are we supposed to get home?"

"I'll drive you to town in the jeep. There's bus service to the city. If the buses aren't running because of the storm, you can stay in a motel. There are two motels, I think. There could be three." He rubbed his chin. "You'll have to anyway, unless you want to reconsider and stay here. I think the last bus was at five."

Brook was scrutinizing Emery's wound. "That bullet sort of plowed through your skin. It might've got some muscles at your waist, but I don't think it hit any organs."

Emery made himself look down. "Plowed through the fat, you mean. I ought to lose twenty pounds, and if I had, she would have missed."

"A girl?"

Emery nodded.

Jan said, "No wonder you hate us so much," and pulled his bloodstained trousers free.

"I don't hate you. Not even now, when I ought to. Brook, would you give me my coffee? That's goodcoffee you made, and there's no reason I shouldn't drink it while you bandage that."

Brook handed it to him. "I scrubbed out the pot."

"Good for you. I'd been meaning to."

Alayna interposed, "I make better coffee than Brook does, Daddy, but Mama says I put in too much."

"You should have st.i.tches, Emery. Is there a hospital in town?"

"Just a clinic, and it'll be closed. I've been hurt worse and not had st.i.tches."

Brook filled a pan with water. "Why'd they shoot you, Dad?"

Emery started to speak, thought better of it, and shook his head.

Jan said, "If you're going to drive us into town in the jeep, you could drive us into the city just as easily."

Setting his water on the stove, Brook hooted.

"You've got money, and you and Brook could stay at a hotel and come back tomorrow."

Emery said, "We're not going to, however."

"Why won't you?"

"I don't have to explain, and I won't."

She glared. "Well, you should!"

"That won't do any good." Privately he wondered which was worse, a woman who had never learned how to get what she wanted or a woman who had.

"You actually proposed that we patch it up. Then you act like this?"

"I'm trying to keep things pleasant."

"Then do it!"

"You mean you want to be courted while you're divorcing me. That's what's usually meant by a friendly divorce, from what I've been able to gather." When she said nothing, Emery added, "Isn't that water hot enough yet, Brook?"

"Not even close."

"I shouldn't explain," Emery continued, "but I will. In the first place, Brook and the twins are going to have about as much elbow room as live bait in the back of the jeep. It will be miserable for even a short drive. If we so much as try to make it into the city in this weather, they'll be tearing each other to bits before we stop."