Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 31

Cold water in the face was always made for a rude awakening.  Big drops fell from the tree's new spring leaves.  Nothing obstructed the cold wind as it blew across the open field of newly planted barley.  Judging by the bright patch in the irregular cumulonimbus clouds, it was late morning.

Blion sat up and began eating some of the walnuts he carried in his sack and drank some of the water.  He needed the drink but it made him even colder.  It had been a much worse place to spend the night than he thought.  He was very exposed here and no doubt the farmer would not be pleased by having his tender shoots trampled under a stranger's careless feet.  The ground around the tree was a pile of rocks and concrete.  The farmer, if he wanted a clean field that was easy to plow and till, would need to take all the debris out.  And that debris had to go somewhere, hence the trash heap.

Thunder roared in the distance.  Blion got down from the tree and spied the bright red farm house a good distance away, mostly obstructed by trees and shrubs.  Today was the day that Mac Spencer was coming.  He hoped that his father's shortcut was working and that his parents had made it to the rendezvous point, but there was no way, even if he had known the most expedient route, that he could make a three day journey in twelve hours.

He had to get rid of the core in some other way.  He didn't have the equipment and materials necessary to react the plutonium into inert elements or even to ones that would be unsuitable for a bomb.  The alternative was finding some other place that would put it out of reach of these primitives.  Get away from the Capitol and find a place for the core.

Staying where under the tree meant getting wetter and wetter with the raindrops.  If he was going to get anyway, he might as well get wet walking, he turned to head toward the road.  Much to his horror, a uniformed man on horseback was headed towards him rapidly.  There was no where to run.  The horse was much faster than he was on open ground like this.  He began walking backwards across the rocks but it was a pointless instinctual reaction, probably incriminating.

The horse walked across the rocky ground.  Mounted on the great beast was a soldier, an old one with a gnarled leathery face.  "Gotcha, Northern scum." He smirked as he pulled out his weapon.  "Watcha got in the sack?" He used his gun as a pointer, indicating the spheroidal load on the end of Blion's staff

Blion stood silently, not knowing quite what to do.  "Sir," he said.  He stopped.  The little hairs on his arms began to rise up, just a little.  The hairs on the horse's tail also began to rise away from each other, in a much more spectacular way, as did the hairs on the soldier's head.  Blion knew something of the phenomenon.  Electrons were being lured by a positive charge in the clouds above them, gathering themselves from the surrounding ground and collecting in their bodies, in the rocks, and most importantly in the tree.  "Sir, you need to get down on the ground now!"

"Who do you think you are?  A little pipsqueak with a stick is gonna threaten me?" the soldier said, defiantly, "I'll just kill you right..." he began raising his gun towards Blion even as he spoke.

But there wasn't time for pulling the trigger.  It was the brightest light Blion had have ever seen, brighter than staring at the sun.  Time slowed down, a sense of weightlessness, and a deafening explosion.  He couldn't even see the horse as it jumped like it had never jumped before.  Neither could he hear as the truculent soldier, having been bucked off the horse, fell backwards onto the rocks below.