8.
 Hearing a sound, she ducked out of sight in a ditch, hoping there were no snakes. She waved her knife behind her, ready to cut at any wildlife. The noise grew louder, and she listened in puzzlement. It grew much louder, and presently she stared in amazement at a group of men, twelve or so, in antique blue and white military uniforms with tall beaver hats. She placed the uniforms at mid-1800’s, but the assault rifles were probably more like saddam-era. She’d heard their marching footsteps. They were headed in the direction she’d come from, no doubt to secure the perimeter. They looked antique, with their beards and leathery skin. Several were melancholy-eyed Abe Lincoln clones. Taxi knew who Abe Lincoln had been — he’d been a president of the old government, and you could still buy an egg for one of those penny coins with his picture on it. If you had coins, you didn’t need to barter. Nobody cared much what denomination coin it was, so long as it was real. People said there had been paper money at one time.
After waiting a new minutes, Taxi cautiously rose. The sound of marching steps was far away now. She hoped Sam had the sense to find good cover; but if she knew him, he was probably near the hummer, armed to the teeth, and daring anyone to raid it.
She jogged lightly toward the inner compound. Within an hour, she lay hidden in the shrubs on a low hill, overlooking the buildings. Sam had the glasses, so she made her hands into a tube like a telescope. Somehow it seemed to bring things into focus.
There were several large wooden buildings in a horseshoe facing plowed fields. In the center of the horseshoe was a picnic area or something. She saw a dozen wood tables and benches and several brick barbecues; smoke roiled up from several, tinging the air with a kind of nice smell of ash.
The precious cars stood parked in a small parking lot behind the horseshoe, and had probably stood there in the sun for at least 50 years. They were totally surrounded by weeds, and vines snaked up their radio antennas. A few appeared to have their wheels missing, and to sit on concrete blocks. She counted five sedans, three vans, and one small truck. The paint on all of them had burned in the sun until it was an almost uniform pinkish-gray. Some of the windows were cracked, some very badly, but she didn’t see any missing windows. That told her this place had remained very orderly after the post-milennium disasters, and that meant a good chance some of the vehicles might have usable helium drive bottles.
She sipped sparingly at her water and waited. Around noon, the soldiers came marching back. She studied them from a distance. None appeared to have so much as loosened his collar, so she surmised they were cyborgs — part machine, part human. She wondered, therefore, who guided them. The state of A.I. had not been such in 2010, when the known world came to an end, that such creatures could move or act entirely on their own accord. They marched toward a barn-like building, and she guessed that was where they were maintained. Wow, life might be weird, but this was the weirdest place she’d ever been.
She noted a group of workers walking in from the fields. Smelling something really, really beefy and good, that made her mouth run and her stomach growl, she knew intrinsically those had to be real people.
In a matter of fifteen minutes, about a hundred people milled in the center of the horseshoe. Half appeared to be men, the other half women. Most were young and healthy, a lot of them downright handsome. They wore clothing that suggested previous centuries, though Taxi couldn’t place any specific time. The men wore either dungaree trousers, or khakis, but a few had leather knee breeches. Most wore a kind of loose-fitting cloth shirt, white or khaki or denim, with long sleeves and open collar. Most had their long sleeves rolled up, exposing brawny arms. They had nice looking cowboy hats and boots, too, Taxi thought.
The women wore long dark skirts ranging from dark gray to black, with a few moss greens and burgundies thrown in. All wore broad straw hats; which didn’t surprise Taxi, since any fool knew you should block out the sun. A few women had nicely ironed white blouses.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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