Time Spike by Eric Flint; Marilyn Kosmatka

Author:Eric Flint; Marilyn Kosmatka
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-29T14:52:35+00:00

Chapter 29

Marie shook her head forcefully.

"No, Barbara. Absolutely not."

If the cave had been tall enough and hadn't been so crammed with people, her anxiety would have had her on her feet and pacing around. "I agree that someone has to go for help. I know we can't move Joe. Or Lylah, or some others. And if the rest of us leave them behind, we might as well just shoot them now."

She shook her head again. "But there's no way both Frank and I go. Except for me, he's the only one here with any real outdoor skills. One of us has to stay behind or the rest of you don't have a chance of surviving until we bring back help."

"I've done some fishing..."

Barbara broke off, grimacing. "Okay, I always needed somebody else to bait the hook. But I'm sure there are enough of us who know enough, pooled together, that we can make it without the two of you."

It would be tempting to let that argument sway her, but Marie knew it was wrong. A number of the men and a few of the women in the group thought of themselves as outdoorsmen. But their experience with "roughing it" was a commercial campground with all their gear, up to and usually including either a trailer or a camper shell on a pickup. At a minimum, they'd had a tent and sleeping bags.

Hunting deer and fishing was as far as their experience went—either in a public forest or someone's private land. In the twenty-first century, in the middle of long-settled and secure North America. That bore about as much relationship to what they faced now as one of those stupid video games did to a real gunfight or a real battle.

The one and only really useful skill they had was that all of the C.O.s could shoot. Some of them were even good at it.

Swell. They had exactly two pistols among them, with a handful of rounds left. And one shotgun with no rounds left. They'd already used the three rounds it had once had to bring down some game and provide desperately needed food.

No, the only way they were going to survive was if someone went out there and found Hulbert and Blacklock. Or maybe the Cherokees, if they turned out to be friendly.

"Someone" meant either her or Nickerson. Frank probably didn't have her level of skills in the outdoors—he certainly didn't have Hulbert's—but he'd been in a military unit that had gotten a lot of training along those lines.

She rubbed her ankle and tried to think things through. The Spaniards were out there too, somewhere, and they were definitely not friendly. She had seen for herself what they did to prisoners. The Cherokee, Stephen McQuade, had been in bad shape when she found him.

De Soto would think the small band of guards was easy pickings, and he would be right. They weren't armed except for the pistols. They couldn't possibly protect themselves against a small army of conquistadores.

Or the prisoners, if they showed up.

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