Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

Mildred knew she had the young guard's attention as she continued working the buttons on her blouse.

 

Clove stared at her in rapt attention, his mouth hanging slightly open. His crotch tightened up immediately, visible through his patched homespun breeches.

 

She pitched her voice low, not going for sexy, just trying for elusive, teasing. "Like what you see, Clove?"

 

"You're a right handsome woman," the young man acknowledged in a strained voice.

 

Mildred didn't pull her blouse open any more. Totally revealing herself would answer too many questions, take away too much of the mystery.

 

"Why are you doing this?" Clove asked, face against the bars now and his eyes nowhere near meeting hers.

 

Mildred steeled herself. She didn't feel sexy, and she knew she was putting her ego on the line. But there was nothing else she had to use for bait. "Because I want you, Clove."

 

"You want me?"

 

"Yes."

 

Mildred stood, letting her blouse hang open to reveal the bra and the tops of her breasts. She showed him a mocking smile, full of challenge with just a hint of disdain. "Why do you want me?"

 

"Didn't say that I did."

 

As she approached the bars, Clove backed away. He tightened his grip on the bolt-action Enfield he carried. "I can tell by how tight your pants are getting," Mildred said, "that you want me."

 

Clove didn't answer, stopping just out of arm's reach.

 

"So I know you want me," Mildred said. She licked her lips. "Do you know how to tell if a woman wants you, Clove? I'm talking about a real woman, not one of them used-up girls you're used to."

 

"I suppose they up and just tell you," the boy said nervously.

 

"I'm telling you," Mildred said, "and you don't seem to believe me."

 

"Got no reason to. You could be trying to trick me into letting you out of that cell."

 

"Then what?" Mildred asked. "I'll wander around inside the Prince's fortress? I don't see that getting out of here really puts me any closer to escape. Do you?"

 

"No."

 

"I'm a stranger to these parts," Mildred said. "In case you hadn't noticed, we don't appear too welcome around here. This could be my last night alive. I've been thinking about that for hours. Dawn isn't too far away."

 

Clove looked at her eyes then, and there wasn't really compassion in them. But there was a gleam of sudden understanding of the possibilities.

 

"Maybe I wouldn't have picked you under normal circumstances," Mildred said in a quieter voice. "I don't usually pick boys when I got men around me. But there's you here, and dawn coming too soon."

 

Still, Clove didn't react.

 

Mildred walked back to the cot. "Guess it's your decision. You're the one got the key to this bird's cage." She stood there, letting him think about it for a couple minutes. Then she walked over to the pot she'd been given to relieve herself in.

 

Keeping her gaze on the burning eyes of the young guard, Mildred lowered her pants and squatted over the pot. She used her hands and the loose folds of her blouse to maintain her privacy.

 

"You know how to tell if a woman really wants you?" she asked Clove.

 

"No," he repeated, his voice breaking.

 

"She'll be wet inside," Mildred said. "Can't help herself. A woman gets around a man she wants, her body just naturally starts trying to open itself up to him. She gets wet enough, she can't hold herself together at all, like a flower reaching for the sun, all covered with dew." She lowered her voice and spoke slower. "Anything at all gets near that hole in the center of herselfanything, even a fingerit just naturally slides on in." She closed her eyes and smiled in satisfaction, moving her hand back and forth slightly.

 

Clove was back at the bars again, staring hard into shadows he couldn't see through.

 

Mildred opened her eyes and looked at him. "So what's it going to be, Clove? You just going to wonder about it? Or are you man enough to come find out?"

 

 

 

"CAWDOR AND HIS PEOPLE are going inside the root."

 

Sergeant Conte listened to Whittaker's report over the radio, hunkered down behind the windbreak he'd found amid the trees. "Any sign of engagement?"

 

"No. Looks like they're getting in clean. Got lights visible through the hole they made in the root system, but nobody's there."

 

Conte moved along the trees, getting to a better position to view the strange community below. On first glance it seemed the location in the valley would have been detrimental to the security of the area. But that had been before they'd discovered the plants ringing the valley. Only Whittaker's killer instinct and fast reflexes had saved him from certain death. Turley and Cruse were rigging flash-bangs they'd taken from the small redoubt they'd jumped to after leaving White Sands.

 

Thinking about the plants, watching how they'd reacted as the unit had lobbed stones and branches into the area, he'd realized they responded to sound. Then Henderson had managed to get one of the things with a machete, then drag it clear of the others. A brief examination had shown no eyes, nor anything that could pass as them. Visual targeting wasn't an option.

 

Conte had it figured that if enough sound got pumped into the area at one time, the noise would "blind" the plants, allowing them to run through. If they had to. That was one thing he still wasn't certain about.

 

From the way they were acting, Cawdor and his people had no welcome at the community. Conte had to believe they were there solely to rescue the black woman, since none of his men had seen her in New London, and a rescue attempt was the only explanation for the strangers' return to the community.

 

"Damn stupid of them going to all this trouble for that woman if you ask me," Whittaker said. "Me, I'd leave her. No sense in risking the unit just to get her back. They get inside that structure, there isn't going to be an easy way of getting back out."

 

Conte quietly agreed with the assessment. Unless the woman was particularly necessary to Cawdor's plans, rescuing her now was foolish. He understood it from a human side, though. But it was a side he'd long put distant in the aftermath of the destruction of the world and those long, lean years inside the White Sands redoubt. Compassion wasn't something easily afforded.

 

"Henderson," Conte called over the radio.

 

"Go," Henderson called back.

 

"The activity of the force from New London?"

 

"They seem content to stand pat, Sarge."

 

Conte had been aware of the pursuit from the town as soon as it had begun. They'd had to work their way through the forests and the harsh terrain back to the jeep. A number of the people who'd been chasing Cawdor's band had died in the explosion when the gate had blown up. It had taken only minutes to regroup and mount another effort, though. Conte didn't know whom Cawdor had angered in New London, but the man had done a good job of it.

 

The sergeant shifted his night glasses toward the Celt village. All he could see were shadows.

 

"Local militia's starting to turn out in force," Whittaker commented.

 

Conte scanned the terrain, overlooking the writhing, twisted shadows of the hunting plants. Turley and Cruse were close enough to aggravate them without setting them into a frenzy.

 

Beyond them he spotted the sec guards spilling out of the doors of the underground fortress. A number were on horseback, carrying torches.

 

"Not content to go quiet anymore," Whittaker stated. "They want to make an impression."

 

Conte watched, wondering if the show of force was for the army camped just outside the reach of the plant barrier or if it was because of Cawdor's actions.

 

One thing Conte was certain ofjudging from the DNA experimentation evident among the guardian plants, the way the gardens were laid out to effectively use every square inch of land and the few glimpses they'd had of the interior of the giant rootsthere had to be a treasure load of high-tech apparatus in there. The small redoubt they'd arrived in had to have been a staging area, a stronghold to retreat to for secret meetings between whoever had set up this enclave and the man who'd sold out the White Sands projects.

 

Besides terminating Cawdor and his people, Conte knew one of his objectives was to destroy as much of the underground fortress as he could. It posed a threat to their beachhead.

 

And hopefully it held another mat-trans unit.

 

Conte keyed up the radio. "Cruse."

 

"Go."

 

"Tell me those explosives are ready."

 

"Done," the man replied. "On yur go."

 

As he watched, the horsemen deployed, kicking their horses into gallops. They streaked for thatched homes that were evidently part of a preselected target group. In seconds the first of the houses was aflame. Only a few heartbeats after that, villagers rushed out into the narrow roads between the buildings, obviously not believing what they were seeing.

 

However, some of the villagers hadn't been caught so flat-footed. Fully a dozen and more came charging out of their homes and out of rabbit holes that had been dug along the roadsides. Evidently the rebellion by the people in the community had gone well past preparation stages.

 

A small war had started in the village.

 

Glancing back toward the New Londoners, Conte saw their ranks shifting and reforming. The pursuit group hadn't missed the outbreak of hostilities, either. Vehicles broke away from their hiding spots, taking up new positions.

 

"They're not going to miss the party," Whittaker said.

 

"Neither are we," Conte replied. "Cruse, blow those explosives." He covered his ears and peered through slitted eyes, not looking toward the path they'd chosen.

 

Turley and Cruse had linked the flash-bangs together along a length of cord, then threw them out at prescribed distances, farther and farther. Most of them had stayed in a straight line. An instant after Conte issued the order, the flash-bangs went off in quick succession.

 

The sergeant bolted through the forest, heading on an interception course with the jeep. Aames was behind the wheel, rolling over everything that got in his way, staying away from the things too large to roll over. The high bumper plowed over small trees and brush.

 

Conte reached out and swung into the front passenger seat. Turley swarmed out of the shadows and stepped up onto the running board, holding his machine pistol loose but at the ready. His face, like all of the unit's, was tiger-striped in combat cosmetics, barely allowed the moon's light caresses.

 

The other three members of the unit piled into the rear deck.

 

Gazing toward the impact area, Conte saw the flash-bangs had done their jobs for the most part. Flames still hugged the ground and burned in patches in the branches above. Some of the plants were on fire, or blown free of the ground. Many others were writhing in pain, trying to pull away from their rooted stand.

 

"Go," Conte told Aames.

 

The man gave him a short nod, then directed the jeep at the narrow corridor they'd made through the deadly plants. Branches and the bones of small animals, earlier victims of the carnivorous plants, splintered under the tires like pistol shots.

 

Conte held on as the vehicle dug into the hillside, all four wheels gripping the earth and propelling it forward. Cold sweat clung to the back of the sergeant's neck as he raked the forest around them with his peripheral vision. Without warning, one of the plants whipped out of the darkness and smashed against the jeep's windshield. If the glass hadn't been there, it would have sunk its barbed talon through his skull.

 

Then they were through the danger area, cresting the hill and beginning the incline leading down to the Celtic community.

 

"Being followed," Whittaker grunted.

 

"The people from the city?" Conte turned in the seat, glancing back at the armed force that had been encamped beyond the reach of the plants.

 

"Yeah. We lit up the top of that hillside, and they got it figured they can just pop on through the door we opened."

 

Conte glanced at the uneven terrain before the jeep as Aames struggled with the wheel, guiding them toward the area where Cawdor and his group had chopped their way through the root. Some of the Celtic horsemen were already wheeling in their direction, yelling warnings to other sec men.

 

"Let them come," the sergeant yelled above the whine of the jeep's engine. "It'll pull some of the heat off us, give us a better shot at Cawdor and his followers."

 

Getting out would be another problem, but only one that would have to be faced if a mat-trans unit didn't exist in the underground fortress. For the moment Sergeant Conte had only the last orders he'd been issued by his commanding officer, and that was enough.