“Back to the Twins,” Bertha said again. She shuddered.
Hickok placed an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Black Beauty. We’re not staying there long. Am I right, Blade?”
“You’re right.” Blade nodded. “I want to get in and out as fast as we can.”
“You see?” Hickok said to Bertha. “In and out. Easy as that.”
“Bet me, sucker!”
Chapter Seven
The SEAL stopped at the crest of a long, sloping grade. Below them, a quarter mile distant, loomed huge black monoliths, towering over an obscured jumble of lesser buildings, the entire scene shrouded in darkness, conveying an eerie, sinister air.
“Lordy!” Bertha exclaimed in a whisper. “I’m back at the Twins.”
“The Twin Cities,” Blade said as quietly as Bertha. “We’ve made it.”
“Why the blazes are you whispering?” Hickok asked in his usual tone of voice.
“Why is it so dark down there?” Joshua inquired, before they could respond to Hickok.
“What’d you expect, sugar?” Bertha glanced at Joshua. “We ain’t got any electricity down there. Only fire. And we only keep fires on our own turf, hidden from view, under guard. You start a fire out in the open, and the first thing you know, you’ve attracted all kinds of trouble! We go down there tonight, we go down in the dark.”
“Are we going in tonight?” Geronimo asked Blade.
Blade leaned back in his seat, deliberating.
The SEAL was stopped, the engine off, on Highway 47, just north of the Twin Cities. They had reached their destination! Finally! Blade’s mind raced, recalling their progress since dawn.
They had risen early that morning, everyone excited at the prospect of reaching the Twin Cities before the day was done. As he had done every morning of their trip. Blade had remembered to throw the red lever under the dash to the right. An hour later, after the SEAL was fully energized, he would position the lever in the center. They had eaten hastily, eager to begin their travel. Bertha had become strangely subdued, reluctant to talk, preoccupied with thoughts of returning to the dreaded Twins. Hickok had attempted to cheer her up, to no avail. Her sullen, apprehensive attitude had begun to affect the others, except for Hickok.
While Bertha withdrew into herself, Hickok had opened up, loquacious, enthusiastic about the adventures ahead. His sense of excitement had served as an effective counterbalance to Bertha’s somber demeanor. Each of them had carefully checked their weapons, insuring their firearms were cleaned and loaded.
Blade had pushed the SEAL that day, frequently reaching speeds of over sixty miles an hour on straight stretches. They had left Perham an hour after sunrise. In rapid succession, they had passed through more abandoned towns: New York Mills, Bluffton. Wadena, Verndale, Aldrich, Staples, and Motley. At Lincoln, they had made a temporary detour, driving to Crookneck Lake for a food break and a bath. The men had bathed in one secluded cove, Bertha in another. Blade and Hickok had shaved Family style by scraping the sharp edge of a knife across their skin.
Joshua, sporting a full beard, never bothered with shaving. Geronimo, too, never worried about facial hair. Years ago, when his beard and moustache first began to grow in, he had plucked the hairs, one by one, Indian fashion, from his skin. Now his face was completely devoid of hair, except for his brows.
Their ablutions completed, they had rejoined U.S. Highway 10, heading south. They had circled around Little Falls, wary it might be a Watcher station, and had passed through Royalton and Rice. Again, exercising caution, they had wasted more time bypassing St. Cloud. Bertha, visibly upset by the memories, had informed them that she had been captured by the Watchers near St. Cloud and held there for almost a week before being passed on to another Watcher station.
“I won’t tell you what them bastards did to me,” she had said, her voice low and strained.
“No need,” Hickok had assured her. “And don’t you worry! We’ll pay them back for what they did to you.”
“How are we gonna make ’em pay?” she had asked. “There’s too many for us to kill every Watcher.”
“Leave it to me,” Hickok had stated confidently. “We’ll think of something.”
Bertha had grinned half-heartedly. “I bet you will, White Meat. I just bet you will.”
Additional small towns had faded into the distance behind them. Cable, Clear Lake, Clearwater, Becker, and Big Lake. Elk River, the last distinct town, had now been left behind.
Blade’s thoughts came back to the present. He started the SEAL. They entered the suburbs of Minneapolis as the sun was vanishing beyond the horizon.
“This is Anoka,” Bertha announced as row after row of single-family residences flashed by. “It’s on the outskirts of Nomad turf. It’s ours, but we don’t keep any people in it. Just patrol it from time to time. It’s a good place for huntin’. So’s Coon Rapids.”
Coon Rapids was the next area they slowly crossed.
“I expected to see more people,” Hickok commented.
“What people?” Bertha rejoined. “There ain’t that many left in the Twins as it is. Maybe a couple of thousand, if that many.”
“Where did the population go?” Joshua inquired.
“Don’t rightly know, sugar,” Bertha replied.
“They were probably evacuated after the Big Blast,” Blade mentioned.
“Just like all the other towns we’ve seen.”
“Then how come there are still some folks left here?” Hickok asked. “We know from our records the Government ordered them out.”
“They might have been in a rush,” Blade offered. “Besides, you couldn’t expect them to round up every person in a city of this size. Maybe some people hid out, maybe they didn’t want to be evacuated from their homes.
Who knows?”
“What I’d like to know,” Geronimo said, joining in their speculation, “is where everyone was evacuated to. That’s the big question.”
“Maybe we’ll find the answer to that some day,” Blade said. “Right now, we’ve got more important issues to decide. For instance, what’s this intersection coming up?”
Geronimo brought the map close to his eyes, squinting to read in the fading light. “The map says U.S. Highway 10 intersects with State Highway 47.”
“And where does this State Highway 47 go?”
Geronimo smiled. “Directly into the center of the Twin Cities,” he answered. “At least, into the heart of Minneapolis. St Paul is further east.”
“Then it sounds like 47 is just what we need,” Blade said. He wheeled the SEAL onto State Highway 47.
Bertha was staring out the side of the SEAL. “I know where I am,” she told them. “I know the landmarks!”
“Do you want us to let you out?” Blade asked her. He was having difficulty distinguishing the road because of the gathering darkness. “If this is Nomad territory, it’s your home. Would you rather return to your friends?”
“I told you before,” Bertha snapped, “I ain’t never going back to the Nomads! I didn’t even want to come back here!”
“Just asking.”
The SEAL was moving through Fridley.
“I can’t see a thing,” Joshua commented.
“Shouldn’t we stop?” Geronimo asked Blade.
“We keep going.”
Geronimo twisted in his seat, scanning their surroundings. He was sitting in the bucket seat across from Blade. Hickok, Bertha, and Joshua were in the back seat. After their break at Crookneck Lake, they had piled all the supplies in the rear section again.