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Of course, a picturesque notch between the two great old national forests was a poor place to set off from, if I intended to go west. The entirety of the Coal Country would have to be crossed before I approached Kentucky and the western slopes of the Appalachians.
I rested my pack on the doorjamb to the barn basement and looked out at the well-tended grounds of the White Palace.
I looked back on the elegant white mass, all its floors of rooms, some with lights still burning, with its murmur of activity even in the earliest predawn hours—this was no pit of evil. There were many good men and women just trying to keep their poor little corner of the world intact and out of more grasping hands.
A party started to cut across the lawn, heading for some parked electric carts. There were firemen, a couple of men in the navy blue of the Maynes family security service, and two Reapers, one at the very front, one bringing up the rear.
“I said mistake,” a woman said, kicking at her escort. “Talk to my brothers. There must be a way—”
One of the firemen chuckled. “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll be buried in the family cemetery just under your pa.”
“We own this whole goddamn valley. You can’t do this!”
“Guess you were too young to remember your folks being taken away. You remember the night your aunt Sinthee was taken away? You bet it can happen to you.”
“The Old Man’s mad about how things went down in Beckley.”
“Then get the fire chief in handcuffs. I’ve got nothing to do with security.”
“Your production and disposition people screwed up on the cookware. That was what started the riot.”
The Kurians were taking a gamble with this purge. The Maynes clan had weapons, command of its own security forces, a communications network; if, somehow, the revolt could spread with its assistance, the world might be astonished at what this flinty patch of earth might mean to the future.
The Kurians were being careful in their culling, however. Had they removed the Maynes clan in its entirety, the plan might have worked. But the Kurians wanted the management network that was represented by the White Palace. In my opinion they thought they would be crushing two snakes with one heel—they would cull so heavily from the Maynes family that the rump portion left would be shocked into meek obedience, and the Coal Country population would see their aristocracy pay heavily for the bloodshed that started at Beckley.
Now they were bringing lines of people, handcuffed or tied together in a sort of daisy chain, and marching them into the hills. I wondered if I should follow. It would be an escape route few would choose, and perhaps the world would need a witness someday to what went on up there.
I saw my employer stagger out of one of the back entrances of the White Palace, wearing pajama bottoms and a sport coat thrown over his bare torso. He had blood splashed on him.
“Aunt Pen escaped you, you numbnuts. Slashed her wrists, soon as she saw the motorcade coming. Poor old Aunt Pen,” Maynes said to an officer brandishing a pistol.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” a woman cried, tied to a teenage girl in front and an elderly man behind. The youngster was clinging closer to her than any knot could achieve.
“‘For days of auld lang syne, my dears,’” Maynes sang. Perhaps he didn’t care. He seemed drunk enough.
A man whom I knew only as one of the senior sergeants in the White Palace security office approached me. “You’d better look after your man,” he said, pointing at Maynes. “Quick-quick. Take him into his room or the barn—anywhere but the back door—and sit on him for a couple of hours.”
I put my heels together and gave a knuckle-to-forehead salute. “Yes, sir.”
Maynes had sat down to watch the people being dragged out. The first soldiers were already returning from the ridgeline with empty handcuffs and cordage. I recognized Georgia Control insignia. Evidently the principal customer of the Coal Country’s product was behind this purge.
I picked him up. “Pickers. My whole family. Bunch of pickers. You stoops keep family? What happens when you get mad—you eat ’em?”
“No family,” I said, able to tell the truth for once.
“Telling me how to run this country. Why the hell should they care, as long as the coal keeps moving and we toss ’em a StR* once in a while? I bet the old man went along with this. I’m on the road all the time. I log more hours than the rest of the family put together.”
“We work now?” I asked, seeing a glimmer of a chance. I was ready to risk anything rather than endure the sound of one more family extracted from the White Palace. Why didn’t the Order tell them they were being relocated and put them on a bus? Everyone would know it was a lie, but the trappings of normalcy made the transition easier.
Maynes shrugged. “Yeah, why the hell not? See what’s on the trouble sheet.”
I supported him in a walk through the crunchy late-summer grass and back into the White Palace.
He had an office in what used to be the catering sales center when the White Palace had been a resort hotel. A few shots showing the history of the resort featuring polished-looking brides and relaxed golfers always seemed like something out of another world. Especially tonight. A single gunshot echoed from a floor or two above.
“That’s the ticket,” Maynes yelled at the roof. “Don’t give ’em the satisfaction!”
Finding anything in Maynes’s office at this time could be compared to digging a buckle out of the Augean stables. He had a beautiful desk and hutch combination, bird’s-eye maple with burls in the delicate strokes of a Chinese watercolor. Such a pity it lay under a layer of greasy paper plates, empty bottles, and an orgy of copulating binders filled with dog-eared, yellowing paper.
