Retribution

By Neil Crichton

The "One In A Million Club", they call themselves, a hundred and seven survivors of Retribution, the plague that ended civilization. Living in a city that once housed a million, their existence has been a mostly idyllic one, but storm clouds are gathering. A group of ex-military raiders is headed their way. Wild dogs, evolving to huge sizes, are a constant harassment, and internal conflicts over the group's leadership leaves them ill-prepared to defend themselves. Alan Steel, a former successful businessman, pilot, and politician, is the person most want as a leader. He and Geoffrey Caine, a former Royal Marine, are the only two with military experience. When the dangers facing them become obvious, they must make up for lost time, and take on an enemy almost as dangerous as Retribution itself.
Fascinating characters make up the story: Des Forbes, the charismatic former heavyweight champion of the world; Randy Wooling, irresistible to women; beautiful show girl Holly Platt, and her sister, Susan, who loves Alan Steel; Major Henry Willman, commanding officer of the remains of NORAD; and James Ambrose, a medical researcher with the morals of Josef Mengele, the Nazi "angel of death".
Ranging over western North America, "Retribution" features non-stop tension, realistic battle sequences, and thrilling aerial combat.
(106,900 words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Crichton
• Release date: May 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458094872

Neil Crichton

Neil Crichton"Retribution"Neil was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and at one time or another, he lived in Halifax, St. John, Toronto, Regina, and Edmonton. He now lives in Claresholm, Alberta about l30 km. south of Calgary, enjoying a quiet life in a small town.Trained as a photographer, Neil began writing many years ago. His first project was a science-fiction novel, "Rerun", published in both hardcover and paperback. Rerun sold well throughout Canada.His latest project is the scary sci-fi horror "Retribution", about a group of survivors hanging on against overwhelming odds.Neil has two sons, a daughter, and numerous grandchildren. Daughter Leah Crichton is also anauthor. (Must be something about the name Crichton).In addition to his writing, Neil enjoys photography, especially 3D photography, traveling around in his RV, reading, puttering with old cars, hanging out with family and friends, and his furry little pal, Bear.

Book preview

Chapter One

The big German Shepherd raced blindly through the tall grass, his snout pointed downward in a attempt to protect his face from the burrs and thistles that scraped along his sides, and stuck in his feet. His tongue hung from the side of his mouth, and he gulped huge quantities of air, trying to keep up his speed for a little longer. Behind him, his pack of ten followed mindlessly in his path of crushed grass, panting, snarling, and complaining.

The leader’s nostrils flared, taking in a kaleidoscope of scents, and he changed course to the left, heading for the source of the smell they’d been following all day. The pack was hungry. There hadn’t been any big game for days, and the few gophers, rabbits, and birds had done little more than whet their appetites. But now, the Shepherd knew they were close. The distinctive odor of beef was unmistakable. If they could keep up the fast pace, they’d be able to gorge themselves, and spend a day or so lying in the hot sun, getting some of their strength back.

A pointed leaf of russian thistle brushed his eye, and produced a yelp. The eye began to water, and the dog blinked it shut for just a moment. He chose the wrong moment. In the tall grass, nothing could be seen for more than three feet, and in the second it took to clear his eye, he ran headlong into a sturdy strand of barbed wire. A vicious point scraped the length of his snout, and drew blood. The dog twisted to the side and fell, and more of the rusted metal spurs clawed at his side.

A second later, his pack ran blindly into the same fate, and the grass was trampled flat as, one by one, they hit the fence and fell back, rolling on the ground, and howling in pain and frustration.

The leader pulled himself out from under his comrades, and stood up. He was exhausted, but he could still smell cattle, and the pain of his shredded hide was unimportant compared to the tightness in his stomach. He looked up at the fence. There were four strands of wire, and the top one was no higher than his head. An easy jump, normally, but the members of his pack were exhausted, and barely able to get back on their feet. The wires were too close together to squeeze through and too close to the ground to get under. The dog sniffed the air. Their prey was moving further away. With a sinking feeling, he limped to the fence, crouched down, and started digging.

* * *

The small, high-winged aircraft rose up twenty feet, and passed over the farmhouse. The plane was very light, and the stiff breeze carried it upward with little effort from the pilot. Alan Steel pushed the stick forward, and the Cessna 150 leveled out, only fifty feet above the ground.

Steel glanced out the empty doorframe and looked over the farmyard. It was overrun with weeds, and to the north, next to the barn, the blades of a windmill turned briskly in the wind, stalling once every revolution on a dry bearing.

Ahead, the flat expanse of Canadian prairie was rich with the light, bright green of late spring. The west wind sent waves rippling through the vast ocean of wild oats, thistle, and wheat. The mid-afternoon sky was a deep cobalt blue, undisturbed by a single cloud.

Steel turned the aircraft in a lazy quarter-circle to the southwest. He nudged the throttle forward and climbed a hundred feet. He could see for twenty miles in all directions, and except to the west, the scene was the same monotonous view of green earth and blue sky.

Steel had been flying for two hours, and he’d seen nothing of interest, and nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times before. He was bored, and that could be dangerous , especially flying so close to the ground. It was time to call it a day.

The sun, still high in the southwest, made him squint. He glanced around the cabin for his sunglasses, and found them hooked over the stock of the military issue C-7 rifle, jammed between the seat and the wall. He slid them on, and looked in the direction of the sun. Calgary was coming into view, its downtown spires looming up from the valley of the Bow River, and fifty miles beyond that, the horizon-scanning view of the Rocky Mountains stood out in remarkable clarity. Straight ahead, he saw the Trans-Canada Highway, a distant dark line at a right angle to his flight path.

To the west, toward the city, Steel could see another farm. It was also completely grown over, and like everything else, it looked green, fresh, and clean. Like the city. And the mountains. And the sky itself. Clean, fresh, and desolately empty.

Steel reached up to scratch an itch in his mostly-grey beard. He hadn’t shaved for days. He’d have to take care of that as soon as he got home, he thought. He didn’t like looking scruffy, and taking it off would remove years from his appearance.

Out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly spotted a movement, and he concentrated on a line in the grass, like a flaw in a smooth green table. He changed course, dropped down low once again, and flew along the path, looking for whatever had caught his attention.

As he reached the end of the path, he was startled by a sudden dark form lunging upward at him. A huge dog, a German Shepherd, he guessed, suddenly leaped upward out of the grass, fangs flashing, as if it really expected to grab the aircraft. Steel was past it in a moment, then he spotted another, a large mutt of some sort, racing after him through the jungle of grass. Then there were more of them, all huge, and all as aggressive as the first, leaping upward in twisting jumps. Steel shivered at the thought of his very slight margin of safety. To be on the ground with these creatures was an experience he would prefer to forego.

He was past them in a few seconds. He turned and climbed for another look, slower this time. He did a quick estimate of the size of the pack – a small one, he thought, just a dozen or so, probably very hungry, and very, very dangerous. They appeared to be headed for the highway.

Steel reached for his gun, and slowed down for the next pass. The dogs were hard to spot except from overhead because of the height of the grass, but he could see the wakes they left. He switched off the C-7’s safety, and pointed it out the opening.

The aircraft came alongside the path again, and suddenly, Steel noticed something very odd. The pack began to break up, the animals racing outward from the spot where he’d first seen them, the lines they formed spreading out like lengthening spokes of a wheel.

Steel had never before seen this kind of behavior in wild dogs. Usually, they were easy to shoot, bunched together in a vicious pack, where a burst from an automatic weapon could drop a dozen or more in a few seconds. But now, with the distance between them increasing by the second, he’d be lucky to get one or two. He watched the strange performance for a moment, as he fiddled indecisively with the safety. There wasn’t much point, he finally decided, and he returned the gun back to its spot beside the seat. He turned the aircraft away, and resumed his course for Calgary.

Minutes later, he was over the highway, and headed straight west. The city was closer now, and directly ahead. Steel looked along the road. The pavement was getting badly cracked, and in a few spots, chunks of asphalt protruded from the surface, lifted by winter frost, and the dense growth of tough little weeds. He flew past a service station. Two dusty cars and a big tractor-trailer were parked in front, unmoved for several years, and likely to stay that way forever.

A movement up ahead on the left grabbed his attention. It was a long way off, but he had a clear view of a cow and her calf as they struggled up the steep side of the ditch beside the highway. Was that what the dogs were after? The idea amazed him. The dogs were over five miles away. Was it possible they could smell prey from that distance?

The cattle froze at the buzz of the aircraft’s engine, and the cow looked up at him, more curious than fearful. It isn’t like it used to be, Steel thought. There used to be so many of them, like herds of buffalo, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. They were dying off so fast. Without the coddling they’d received from human caretakers for hundreds of generations, they couldn’t cope, and except for the herd in the city, they were quickly headed for extinction. When they were gone, the dog packs would probably starve, or be forced to move toward the mountains, where game was abundant. Or perhaps to the city.

Steel considered shooting the calf. He’d be able to land on the highway right beside it. The meat would help conserve the herd in the city, and he’d done it many times before. He flew past the animals, and started to turn back, then changed his mind. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because there used to be thousands of them, and now there weren’t. Or perhaps because it used to be fun, and now it wasn’t. He pressed the throttle forward and headed for home.

Chapter Two

As Alan Steel was landing his airplane in Calgary, a hunter of another sort was stalking his prey, over six hundred miles away, near Minot, North Dakota. He was very young, barely fifteen, but a scarred face and a stony stare made him look older. He was wearing coveralls of military camouflage, and his long hair was held back by a bandana, which he wore like an east European babushka. It kept his hair out of his eyes, and the wind out of his ears. It also made his head itch. It had been weeks since he’d washed, and he was sure his hair was crawling with lice.

He held up a pair of binoculars and looked down the gentle hillside once again, at the farm. The farmhouse was a big place, and was mostly obscured by a line of tall trees, which protected the yard from the constant wind. He could see no movement from the house, but there were two clean cars, and three horses were in sight, one of them saddled. Someone lived there.

The wind carried sounds of life, as well – the distant rumble of a generator engine, and tinny, indistinct notes of music. The music was coming from the barn, he decided. He shrugged off the hunting rifle he carried, placed it on the ground, then lay down on his stomach beside it.

He zoomed his binoculars to fifteen power, and concentrated on the entrance of the barn. The side facing him was in the shade, and although the door was wide open, the interior looked totally black.

He scanned the binoculars past the barn and house to the south, to a small, well-tended field of grain. Beyond it, the land was wild, but he could make out a series of large letters swathed into the grass and weeds. He sounded out the letters with difficulty: HELLO. It was a stupid idea he’d seen before, a message aimed at the sky, which would never be read by anyone who cared.

The boy reached to his belt, and pulled a walkie-talkie from its holder, and raised the antenna. Hey, Sarge, this is Pokey. Can ya hear me?

There was no reply. He was too far away for the short range of the radio. He grabbed the rifle, and scrambled backward until he couldn’t be seen from below, then stood up and started walking back along the narrow ridge of the hill. He looked around. Except for the rise he was on, the terrain was very flat, and he could see a long way. The view was the same in every direction – an endless vista of green, which would soon start to parch yellow in the summer heat. Pokey had hoped to spend the summer in more enjoyable surroundings.

He’d walked over a mile, mostly uphill, to get to his vantage point, and his leg was beginning to hurt. It was an old wound, suffered four years before, when a drunken comrade tried to amuse the rest of the troop by throwing knives around him, like a circus act. The wound had gotten infected, and Pokey would have lost the leg if the Sarge hadn’t taken pity on him and found some antibiotic.

Pokey liked the Sarge. He and a few of the others were the only family he had. The Sarge had found him, a confused, terrified eleven year old, wandering along a Texas road.

Pokey could still remember his real family. His father had been a doctor, and they’d lived in a nice house in Dallas. He remembered his mother as being very pretty, and he was their only child. His real name was Philip, but no one had called him that in years.

Pokey remembered his father watching the television, and talking to his mother about the plague. He called it Retribution. Pokey didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew it was horrible, and it frightened his father. When the first cases were confirmed in the States, Pokey’s father decided to act to protect his family.

Their house was very old, and during the early years of the Cold War, a previous owner had built a fallout shelter ten feet below the back yard. While millions of others watched on TV as Retribution swept around the world like deadly broom, Pokey’s father sealed them inside the shelter. They stayed there for over a year, eating freeze-dried food and breathing bleached air.

Pokey remembered the shelter with shivers of horror. His mother had died there, not of the plague, but of cancer, and there had been no way to dispose of the body. When he and his father finally dared to come out, they found his father’s worst fears had been exceeded a thousand-fold. The plague had been a well-named avenging angel, sparing no one. Dallas was a gigantic morgue.

They left Dallas in a big RV, and everywhere they went, they found the same thing –corpses everywhere, and not a sign of human life. Then one night, a month later, while they were sitting next to a campfire, a gunshot split the air, and his father died instantly. Pokey ran for his life all night, until the next day, walking along a dusty road, a shiny Mercedes came along, and the Sarge picked him up. They’d been together ever since.

There were a dozen men in the Sarge’s troop then, and over the years it had grown to about thirty. They devoted their lives to survival. It was brutal sometimes, but often it was fun. They took what they wanted in deserted cities, and they lacked nothing. Even women weren’t hard to find. There were five of them with the troop at the moment. They were frequently found in places like this farm, and Pokey hoped they’d find one a bit closer to his age. Pretty, with long blonde hair.

Pokey reached the east end of the hill. He looked down to the road and saw his comrades sitting on the ground in the shade of the bus, or drinking beside the modified motorhomes. He looked through his binoculars and saw Bigboy sitting in a deck chair, right in the middle of the road, holding a woman on his lap, while he poured the contents of a bottle into her mouth. Pokey envied Bigboy. He had a way with the women. Pokey never got the women, only the crap jobs. He lifted his walkie-talkie again. Hey, Sarge, can ya hear me now? This is Pokey.

He could see the Sarge stir from his spot in the shade, and a moment later the reply came.

I hear you, Kid. Is that you up on the hill?

Yeah, it’s me, Sarge, Pokey replied, and he waved at the distant figure.

So, what did you find? the Sarge asked.

It looks good. They got horses, and a couple’a nice cars.

See any kinda defenses? the Sarge asked.

Nope. Nothin’. I mean, they probably got guns, but nothin’ like that last place. Two weeks before, they had attempted to attack a farm and found it defended by heavy duty military hardware, including a tank. They’d lost two men before they leveled the place.

Okay, Kid. Good work, the Sarge said. You head back and keep an eye on ‘em, while we move up the road a piece.

Come on, Sarge, Pokey protested. You tol’ me I could…

I told you to do as you’re told! the Sarge replied. Now git! And don’t take no pot-shots ’til we get there. Hear?

Pokey acknowledged the message and turned around, grumbling out loud.

The uphill walk hurt his leg badly enough to make him limp. He began to wish, as he often did, that he could just leave, and head out on his own. He could go to a city somewhere, and make out just fine, for the rest of his life if he had to. He let his mind slip into a recurring fantasy, wherein he returns to Dallas, discovers a beautiful girl with long blonde hair, who falls in love with him at first sight, and they spend their lazy days reenacting all the fascinating things he’d seen in the pornographic videos the troop watched constantly.

He very much wanted to give the fantasy a chance to come true, to go back to Dallas, but he didn’t know where Dallas was. He knew the names of the states they’d been through, and he knew they were up north, and Dallas was down south, but he didn’t read much any more, and he couldn’t make sense of maps. He was a survivor, and the Sarge had said that survivors didn’t have to be rocket scientists – whatever that was supposed to mean.

It took him ten minutes to get back to his vantage point on the hill. He took a quick look at the farm and saw that nothing had changed. He turned his binoculars to the road. In a minute, he spotted the troop, well blended into the wild growth along the roadside. He saw Billy, moving quickly despite the weight of a box of rifle-launched grenades, and Bigboy was right behind him, looking like an ancient pirate, with his red headband. He carried a megaphone in one hand, and his gun in the other. There were a dozen others as well, leaving the rest to move up the motorhomes and the bus when the action started.

Billy and two of the others reached the entrance to the farm, and raced across the road to take positions behind the trees of the windbreak. They waited until everyone else was in place. Pokey saw Billy prepare his rifle, slip a grenade over the barrel, then raise it, aiming high. Pokey turned the binoculars toward the barn.

He heard the whump of the rifle, and caught a glimpse of the conical projectile soaring in a curving arc toward its target. It flew into the open doors and exploded. The concussion shook the air, and a wall of fire blew out of the barn, followed instantly by a horizontal rain of debris. Tongues of flame appeared in every opening of the building. Pokey dropped the binoculars and grabbed his rifle, as below, his comrades rained the house with a deadly crossfire from their automatic weapons. Beside the house, the three horses reared and kicked, then turned and raced away, leaping the fence into the field.

The troop stopped shooting after a few seconds. Pokey kept his eyes on the barn, and in a moment, his diligence paid off. A man suddenly appeared, racing from the flaming interior, staggering and dodging from side to side. He was on fire from the waist up, a twisting, dancing tower of flame. Pokey could hear his screams, even over the roar of the fire. Pokey took careful aim. The man stopped for a moment, spinning in a circle, his arms flailing around in a hopeless attempt to pat out the fire. Pokey pulled the trigger, and the man dropped in his tracks. Pokey watched as the fire spread along his legs, the flames reaching six feet into the air.

Bigboy turned on the megaphone, and a loud, amplified voice filled the farmyard. Hey, inside! Like what we did to the barn? We’ll do it to the house in a minute. But if you folks’d like to come out and watch, we’ll hold off a minute. Pokey snickered. What a sense of humor that Bigboy had!

There was no movement or reply for a full minute, so Bigboy tried again. Now, listen here, folks. My boss’ll be here in a minute, and he ain’t nice like us. You folks best come out of there now, and show some hospitality. Otherwise, you gonna cook in that place.

A movement behind the house caught Pokey’s eye, and he spotted a figure running close to the ground, headed across the hundred feet of yard toward the field. Pokey glanced at his comrades. They couldn’t see the man from their positions. He smiled and swung his big Winchester around. He had the man in his sights in a second, but he held off. The man reached the fence separating yard from field. It was barbed wire, and rather than roll under, the man rose briefly to climb over. Pokey waited until he’d stretched the top strand down and was halfway over. He fired.

The man pitched forward, head down, then his clothes tangled in the wire, and he stopped, suspended upside down on the far side of the fence. Pokey looked back at the house, hoping someone else would try the same thing. This was fun!

A few more seconds passed, then the front door opened, and a moment later an old man emerged, hands held straight up. Pokey saw Bigboy come out from behind his tree, and the other followed, surrounding the old man in a semicircle.

A discussion ensued that Pokey couldn’t hear, but in a moment, the old man turned and waved at the house. Two more people appeared. Both were dressed more or less like the old man, in jeans and work shirts, but Pokey’s heart began to pound as he saw them emerge from the shadow of the house. One was a woman. Her hair was long and blonde. Pokey’s imagination started to race. The Sarge had never let him have a woman, but this time… after all, he’d done a good job. He’d scouted the place out. He’d fired only two shots, and he’d scored both times.

Pokey saw the line of vehicles arrive, turning slowly into the farmyard. He stood up and started down the hill, slipping the rifle over his shoulder. He saw Sarge’s motorhome stop, and Sarge emerge. Sarge was smiling.

Pokey hoped the woman was young and pretty, like the one in Dallas.

Chapter Three

It was sunny and warm at six PM, so today’s car was an old Mustang convertible. Alan Steel had about a dozen vehicles he used regularly, and changed frequently. Someone had estimated that all the usable cars in this city would last over a century if everyone drove a new one every week, and many did. An embarrassment of certain riches was one of the advantages enjoyed by a hundred and seven people occupying a city intended for well over a million.

Sometimes it was difficult not to think about the events which had brought about this high lifestyle. Retribution was rarely discussed, and when it was, arguments often flared up. There was so little known about it that any opinions were nothing more than speculation, much of it highly emotional. Retribution had come and gone in less than a year. It had utterly destroyed civilization, and along with it, all of those who might have understood it.

It had started in Africa, apparently, in Chad. Initially, it had been diagnosed as an influenza, because of its symptoms, but its virulence was unprecedented. The World Health Organization had taken steps to isolate it, but the battle had been lost before it began. Retribution had a long incubation period, and before its threat was fully known, it had already been carried to every part of the earth. When the symptoms first appeared, entire populations quickly succumbed.

It began like a bad cold, but soon escalated to a high fever and an inability to keep any food down. The stomach emptied its contents almost immediately, leaving its victims helplessly weak. Eventually, comatose, they died of dehydration, or starvation, or drowned in the fluid which filled their lungs.

All medical attempts to combat the plague failed because the researchers themselves died of it. There was no escape from the disease, and those who tried were often victims of atrocities committed in useless attempts to enforce official and unofficial quarantines. Only in the final month or so, when the toll was in the billions, did the last people accept the inevitability of death, and a few at least, were able to die with dignity.

Alan Steel had lost his wife, his parents, and a brother, a thriving business and all of its employees, and everyone he knew. He’d lost a comfortable lifestyle, and the security of living in a normal, ordered world. Retribution had claimed everyone in Spokane, except him and his daughter, and when they left, they found no one anywhere else, either. Months later, they came to Calgary, one of a half dozen places in North America which had become the gathering points for survivors.

They were a mixed group, the One In A Million Society, as they called themselves. Exactly one hundred and seven of them, from all over the continent, and including all the variety of experience and backgrounds one would expect in a random group of that size, but they also had much in common. All had suffered enormous personal loss, and all had horrifying memories of the plague. A few were related to each other, but only by blood, like Steel and his daughter. Most had been alone, with nothing more than a will to survive, and the one characteristic which united them all. Like Alan Steel and his daughter Rebecca, none of them had ever been sick a day in their lives.

Steel glanced across the car at Rebecca. Both of them had dressed up for their dinner with Holly Platt. Steel was wearing a camel hair jacket over black dress pants, and shoes he’d found in a store with a four hundred dollar price tag on them.

Rebecca wore a full-length dress of blue satin. It was sleeveless, and she had matching blue shoes. Her long yellow hair was held back in a pony tail by a band of gold mesh. A silk scarf protected it from the breeze in the open car. She looked quite lovely, more than ever like her mother. Diana had been tall, blonde, fine-featured, and the prettiest teacher in the school when Steel had met her. They’d worked together less than three months before getting married, but it was five years before they produced Rebecca.

Steel quit teaching, and bought out a badly-managed car dealership, which he nursed back to health. Then he turned his attention to politics. He had served a term on the school board, then another as a Spokane city counselor. Any higher ambitions he held were eradicated by Retribution. Rebecca had only been nine then, and Steel wondered how well she remembered her mother. She was thirteen now, and looking… too mature.

Are you wearing make-up? he asked her.

Of course I’m wearing make-up, Dad. That’s a dumb question.

It’s not a dumb question. Isn’t thirteen a little young to be…

Rebecca interrupted. Dad, I’m nearly fourteen, and I’ve been wearing make-up for over a year. Haven’t you noticed?

Steel shook his head. No, I haven’t, he said. He glanced down at her. Wearing a bra, too?

Oh, Father, do we have to discuss this? She glanced down at her recently-blossomed upper development, and smiled secretly. Obviously, she said, quietly.

The Mustang crashed over a deep pot-hole, nearly pulling the wheel from Steel’s hand. The job of road maintenance was growing more difficult because of the annual frost heaves and sinkholes, which formed faster than they could be repaired. Lately, four-wheel-drives were needed to get through the more neglected parts of the city.

Holly Platt lived in a luxurious condo development, the home of nearly a third of the members of the One In A Million Society. The condos, and the crescent of houses behind were well maintained, unlike the wild growth which had overtaken the rest of the area. Half a block away, a building the size of a small garage sat in the middle of the street, sheltering the electrical generator for the area. On the boulevard outside Holly’s front door was one of three wells which supplied the development with water. The generator was powered by natural gas, the only utility which still worked, and a dozen or so more were located at other living and work sites around the city.

Steel parked the car at the curb, then held the door open for Rebecca. She stepped out and took his arm. They walked toward the condo and saw Holly Platt watching them from the window. Many of the older members referred to this place as Single City, because it was mostly occupied by the younger, single members. Once, these places had sold for nearly a million dollars, and it seemed quite natural, after enough people had arrived, to take them over, along with the row of houses behind, for residences. It had been relatively easy to service the place, and everyone who lived here liked the sumptuous surroundings. Out back were a pool and tennis courts, and each unit had a hot tub, a sauna, and underground parking.

Steel and Rebecca reached the top of the stairs when the door opened, and Holly stepped out to greet them. To Steel’s mind, Holly Platt was one of the most fascinating people he had ever met. She certainly had the most unusual background of anyone in the Society, having spent her pre-Retribution days as a genuine Las Vegas showgirl. She was twenty-seven years old now, and there was not much doubt in anyone’s mind that she was probably the most beautiful woman in the world. She had soft, delicate features, and a dazzling smile, a bushel of long, light brown hair, and widely-spaced, expressive eyes of a startling light blue. She was only an inch or so shorter than Steel’s six feet, and she still had the stunning figure required by her former trade. Steel frequently wondered how a girl who used to strut naked on a Las Vegas stage could possibly be the same woman he had gotten to know. She had an aristocratic flair and style, but was open and friendly to nearly everyone.

Holly had no particular technical skills, but she made herself useful as a scrounger, meaning that she searched the city for anything which could be of use to the Society, and gave the information to her sister, who put it into a huge computer database of supplies and locations. In addition, Holly was a member of the small local militia. A former boyfriend, a Las Vegas sheriff’s deputy, had taught her to handle firearms.

The horrors