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"The old man sent me to bed hungry if I missed with my bullet", she said. "One shot, meat and all that".
Valentine examined the road. It had been used recently, light trucks by the look of the tread. Someone was taking care of the primary roads out here. He unrolled and studied his map of Washington State.
This could be one of the highways that communicated between the forces in the Cascades and Mount Omega - which wasn't really a mountain, of course. Strange that over all these years the Kurians had never located it. His contact with Southern Command was there. He hoped he'd have reason to visit.
Valentine cleaned and stowed the gun and they climbed into the autogyro. Valentine had flown it tandem before while learning, but never with his food, weapons and accoutrements, blankets and bamboo sleeping mat, and spare clothes aboard.
He worked the throttle and opened the engine all the way up. The autogyro ate highway as it sped up, and finally jumped into the air. Gide let out a gasp.
Valentine brought it up to about a thousand feet.
Flying in an autogyro is noisy and busy. The lift from the rotors makes it sway and bob like a cork in a choppy water.
"Oh shit. Land again. Land again", Gide gasped.
"Are you..".
A loud retching sound from above and behind answered his question. The smell filled the cabin, half-digested bologna-and-cheese sandwiches giving off a beery odor. Valentine fought his own gorge, rising in sympathy.
Gide cracked a little panel window, letting in even more of the engine's roar. "You can set it down, Max. I think I'd rather walk".
"Give it an hour", Valentine said, watching the falling sun and wondering if he could stand an hour with the vomit smell. "Fix your eyes on the mountains. That's where we're heading".
Twenty minutes of groaning later Valentine spotted a strange bare patch of earth below, a short hike away from a treelined pond. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. He passed low over the cleared oval of ground and sent small, chickenlike birds on short hop-flights.
He landed with a bad bounce.
"Thank Christ", Gide said as they halted.
"Let's clean out the ship", Valentine said. He extracted a collapsed plastic jug and passed it to Gide. "Your spew. You can carry the water".
She looked at the cleared ground, frowning. "What did this? Helicopters?"
"Don't think so. With luck, you'll see tomorrow morning".
* * *
Woodpeckers, always up and hard at work even before the roosters cry or the larks rise, woke them. As the sun came up Gide got to see a prairie chicken dance.
The birds, mating in the late northern spring, gathered together at the tramped-down earth and began to jump up and down in front of one another, in wild displays of feathery athleticism.
"Looks like the dance floor at the old Mezcal on a Saturday night", Gide said. "Except no music".
"They're resourceful little birds", Valentine said. "When the snow comes they dive right into a drift and wiggle down deep, making a little igloo. Coyotes and foxes can't smell them under the snow".
"What's an igloo?" Gide asked.
Valentine explained the principle.
"I wonder what the winters are like up here", Valentine said.
"We've got some time to get acclimated. But you don't talk like an Aztlan. Or a Texican, or a Cali, or a Yute. You're hard to place".
"I was born in Minnesota. At least I think I was. I spent my childhood there, anyway".
"That's like Canada, right?"
"Next to it".
