Siege Line

by Myke Cole

“Sheriff Plante . . .”

  “Mankiller, sir.”

  “Mankiller is a nickname. Her last name is Plante. Also, do not interrupt me.” Mark stiffened at the reproof, keeping her eyes forward.

  The Director paused to let his disapproval sink in, then began speaking again. “Sheriff Plante is an Afghanistan veteran, an Army sergeant. Not easily intimidated. She was, for many years, willing to don a flimsy blast suit and handle unexploded ordnance. Tell me, when faced with the presence of undead monsters, do you think she will balk? Or do you think she will be galvanized to fight?”

  Mark’s silence was answer enough.

  The Director nodded. “Well, I’ve always said, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.”

  “Sir?” Mark turned to him.

  “I’m going down there. I’ll do the negotiating personally.”

  “Sir, I can’t allow that,” Mark said quickly. “If anything were to happen to you—”

  “I’m sorry, the funniest thing just happened. I thought I heard you say that you couldn’t allow me to do something I intended to do. That is odd, isn’t it? That I would hear something like that? Surely, I’m mistaken.”

  Mark’s eyes were wild now. If she agreed with him, she was telling the Director he had made a mistake. If she disagreed, she was admitting that she believed she could forbid him to go. The Director could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. At last, she settled on her safest course. “Yes, sir. That is odd.”

  “Odd, indeed,” the Director mused. “Position two sniper teams to cover me, please.”

  “I’ll come with you, sir,” Mark offered.

  “I think it will be better,” the Director said, “if we don’t have such a soft target in range of the enemy, or a beating heart to distract the Golds, don’t you?” He gestured to Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl, who inclined their heads as one to consider Mark.

  She stammered, desperately searching for a counterargument. At last, she sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  “The snipers, please.”

  “At least let me get you in some armor, sir. Or give you a gun.”

  He turned back to her. Her concern was touching, or would have been if he were a weak, fragile human. Armor and weapons were for the living man he had once been. They hadn’t done that man a lot of good. They would only slow him down now.

  The Director said nothing, only stared at her as her resolve crumbled and she raised a hand to her commlink and began calling in the orders.

  “Excellent,” the Director said. “You’re in charge until I get back. I’ll keep the comms channel open.”

  Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl glided smoothly behind him, but the Director could feel the tension in them. They were wound like springs, unsettled by the nearness of so much life.

  The hamlet was tiny, little more than a trailer park nestled up against the frozen surface of the lake. The houses were barely more than ice-encrusted double-wides surrounded by beaten-up pickup trucks and snowmobiles. He could make out a few multi-level businesses, the spire of a chapel. Word of his coming must have spread. The streets were deserted, the only sounds the gusting wind and a distant hammering.

  He made his way toward the station. The part of him that remembered his warrior training was horrified by how exposed he was. Alone, in the open. Anyone behind any window could be sighting in on him. His augmented senses might detect them, but there was no guarantee of that, and even if he managed to avoid an attack, he couldn’t speak for Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl. They were meant to be a deterrent or, if need be, a last resort. He didn’t want to use them if he could avoid it, and he certainly didn’t want them damaged.

  He turned the corner past a run-down shack sporting a weathered sign showing a water bird, its single purple eye fixed on him. Its beak was drawn back in a grim-looking smile. THE LOON, it read above an unlit neon beer advertisement. The blinds were drawn, the door padlocked from the outside. Tracks showed that the owner had left in a hurry.

  The Director scanned the ground. It was sporadic permafrost out here, hard enough that it didn’t take impressions well, but wind kept the tops of the snowdrifts blowing, and he could make out a few crisscrossing tire tracks striped with footprints. People, all moving quickly toward a single point. The sheriff must have summoned everyone to the station. She was likely turning it into a blockhouse. Smart woman. Tough, too, but not tough enough. She was human, and no matter how strong a heart beat in a human breast, it was still just that, a heart. A thing of meat and blood. Delicate and easily stopped.

  At last, the station came into view. It was little more than a trailer, a Frankenstein structure that looked like several shacks cobbled together. Four pickup trucks had been drawn up to form an L-shaped barricade around the shattered remains of a short wooden staircase leading to the front door. Sandbags were piled haphazardly beneath them, packed with ice and snow to fill in the gaps. There was some evidence of a halfhearted attempt to add dirt to the construction, but it had been short-lived. If they were going to dig up this ground, they’d need a jackhammer. The Director didn’t doubt that, with time, they’d get one. This had to be ended quickly.

  He heard soft voices, the dull scrape of a shovel. Heartbeats, fast and hard. People working. Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl fanned out and moved up alongside him.

  He stopped a good distance from the truck barricade. Nothing to be gained by bringing the Golds that close. Anyone who cared to look could see them well enough for them to make their point. None challenged him. If the Sheriff had put out pickets, then they were looking in the wrong direction. That was good.

  “Hello,” he ventured. He smiled inwardly, realizing it was the same hoarse whisper he used every day. No one could hear him at this distance. When was the last time he had actually raised his voice?

  He gathered air into his dead lungs and pushed it up through his throat, working the muscles there to project the sound. Yelling was like riding a bike. You never really forgot how to do it, even after dying.

  “Hello!” he tried again. The higher volume made his voice into an angry bark. It sounded impressive, even to him.

  The voices and the scraping stopped. He heard the racking of a shotgun slide and the barrel appeared over one of the truck’s beds. The man behind it was older, his pinched face exhausted. His eyes were rheumy, but his aim seemed good, and the Director could tell from the solid thunk of the shotgun’s bolt that it was loaded with slugs.

  “Don’t shoot!” the Director called. “Well . . . I suppose you can if you like, but it won’t do you any good.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” the man asked.

  “Well, that’s not a very nice way to welcome visitors. You may call me the Director. I am the one who has placed your town under siege.” He could feel Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl tensing beside him, put out a hand to stay them.

  “Lemme see your face.” The man’s voice was frightened but determined. The Director didn’t bother trying to scent the chemical cocktail of his bloodstream. It would surely tell him the same thing.

  “What I look like isn’t important. I was wondering if I could speak to Wilma Plante. She’s the sheriff here, if I understand correctly.”

  “Why’d she wanna talk to you?”

  The Director gestured to the Golds beside him. “It’s my understanding that you fought one of these earlier today?”

  Silence, but the man’s look told the Director that he had at least seen it.

  “You know what they can do. You should also know that I am the only thing holding them back. I have dozens more just outside town. Now, I have put up with a lot of hostility from you when I’ve been nothing but civil, but if you don’t get the sheriff right now, I will release them.”

  “We did for the one you sent before.”

  “You did! It was very impressive. It was also very lucky. If you like, we can see how you handle these two. And if, by s
ome miracle, you manage to defeat them, we’ll up the ante to six. Now, are you going to get the sheriff for me, or am I going to unleash these fellows?”

  “Now, you listen to . . .”

  “That’s enough, Ollie.” A woman’s voice, gruff and commanding. She stood at the top of the broken staircase, almost entirely shrouded in her parka and snowsuit. Her hands wore only thin leather gloves that left the fingers free. They looked tiny in the midst of the winter swaddling. Her face was reduced to a small circle by the fur-lined hood, but what he could see was as hard as iron. Her eyes were dark slits, alert and calm. The Director had seen those eyes before, in the faces of the pipe hitters who shared the hard ground he trod in his days as a living warrior. The hardest of the hard, the elite of the elite. Seeing those eyes, he felt a brief spasm, not of fear, for he would never fear a human, but of acknowledgement of the task before him. That it would not be easy. That was fine. He remembered the mantra of his time as a living warrior: the only easy day was yesterday.

  A man appeared at her side, nearly twice her size and so swaddled in cold-weather gear that he looked like a walrus walking upright. The Director heard the heartbeats of everyone slow as the woman appeared, her command presence calming them all.

  “What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was low, just loud enough to carry.

  “You’re Wilma Plante?” the Director asked.

  She didn’t answer, only held her .375 bolt action rifle at the low ready. It was made for hunting bear, and he didn’t doubt it would do some damage, even if it lacked the power to truly harm him.

  “I was hoping for the chance to speak to your grandfather, Sheriff. He’s a little tough to find, and I’m generally good at finding people.”

  “My grandpa’s dead,” the woman said.

  “Oh, come now,” the Director said. “We both know that’s not true. I’ll thank you not to lie to me, Sheriff. It’s impossible to have a productive discussion unless both parties negotiate in good faith.”

  “Nobody’s negotiatin’ nothin’,” she said. “More likely I’m gonna put a bullet in you, you don’ get movin’.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” the Director said, gesturing to the Golds. “We both know that’s not going to help against us.”

  The sheriff smiled, raised a hand. The walrus beside her put a jar into it.

  “Yeah, figured,” she said. “You seem to know a lot about me. You know what I did in the Army?”

  “Explosives ordnance disposal,” he said. “Sadly, I don’t have any bombs I need defused.”

  “Didn’t just defuse ’em,” she said.

  The Director listened to her heartbeat, not liking how slow it was beating. Her blood sugar smelled flat, normal. He couldn’t remember the last time a human had been so . . . unimpressed. Was she high? No, he would have smelled the chemicals on her. Alcohol stank worse than gasoline. Marijuana was even more pungent. She took the jar slowly, holding it gingerly out before her. “You know what this is?”

  The Director scented the air, caught the tarry smell of acetone, the burned rubber stink of peroxide. It was home-brewed triacetone triperoxide, TATP, the favored explosive of insurgents and criminals. The sheriff raised her arm to a throwing position, steady as a surgeon, taking elaborate care not to jostle the jar at all.

  “You’re not setting a very good example for the citizenry of Fort Resolution,” the Director said. “If their own sheriff is making homemade explosives, why shouldn’t everyone?”

  “Desperate times.” The Sheriff smiled. “Now fuck off back to wherever you came from or I’ll put this right between your feet.”

  The Director felt a wild thrill course up his spiritual spine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d faced a human so fearless, so intractable. “TATP is notoriously unstable. Odds are you’ll blow your arm off and the space between my feet will be just fine.”

  She shrugged. “Got another arm.”

  Would she actually do it? The Director felt the same rippling thrill as he realized that he truly believed she would. She stared at him, unblinking.

  Kill, Quetzalcoatl said. Neither of them could know what TATP would do, but they knew when they were being threatened.

  No, the Director said. Soon.

  Because she had him. If he was right, he would lose the best chance he had to locate her grandfather. If he was wrong, he would be blown to pieces, his soul returned to the storm, and everything he’d fought for lost in an instant. Either way, he had to back down.

  “You are only buying time,” he said. “We are not leaving, and we are not letting anyone go. All I want is a little information, and I promise no more harm will come to any of you.”

  “You never met Dene people before,” she said. “We pay debts, we never leave a friend out in the cold, and we never, ever, ever roll over on family.”

  Her obstinacy was as irritating as it was repetitious. He was tiring of this. “You have no idea what you’re up against,” he said. “You’ve seen what just one of us can do. I have an army.”

  “I fought armies before.” She shrugged. “Got a whole bathtub full of this stuff. Out here in the territories, everyone’s got a gun. Got bear traps and dynamite and ice hooks. Hell, we even got a flamethrower we use for tough ice. You send whatever you want. Jus’ don’ expect us to talk all nice like now. Next time you come, it’s on.”

  The Director stood in stunned silence, unable to think of how to have the last word, to end the conversation in a way that would not give a boost to the enemy’s morale. The sheriff spoke into the silence. “Unless, of course, you want to surrender now.”

  The Director heard a snort of laughter from somewhere behind the barricade of trucks.

  Humans, laughing at him.

  Kill, Xolotl said. Kill now.

  No! The Director raised a fist. Soon. Soon, soon!

  He turned back to the humans and stammered out his next words. “By the time I am done with this place, no one will be able to tell anyone ever lived here.”

  The sheriff’s smile slowly withered. “Fuck off back home, son. Last chance before we see jus’ how unstable this stuff is.”

  The Director spun, waving the Golds back. They went reluctantly, and he could feel their sullen stares boring into his back as they returned the way they came.

  He was well past the Loon before he was able to process what had happened. She would dig in and fight. She was willing to die and, by her example, inspire her people to do the same. The precariousness of his position sent a tremor through him. If he couldn’t locate the Summoner, if he couldn’t bring this woman to heel, then what were his options? How long could he keep his presence here concealed before the Canadian government found him? How long before the Americans followed suit? He pushed the thought away. The only easy day was yesterday. He had fought against longer odds before death had given him power beyond imagining. He had always won. He had triumphed over death itself. He would find the Summoner. He would take him. The Summoner would transfer the Director’s soul into a living body. And once he did, nothing in the world, and nothing beyond it, could stop him.

  He moved faster, the Golds hurrying to keep up as they moved up the rising ground back to the bivouac. He thought of the sheriff’s slow heartbeat, her very blood smelling unimpressed. It didn’t matter; she was human. Even if she were the strongest human who ever lived, she was still bound by the network of nerves and chemicals that the Director had known when he still drew breath. Even as one of the most elite warriors the world had ever known, he had still felt fear, still felt despair. Death was the only thing that could put someone beyond that, and the sheriff was not dead. Not yet.

  He could break her. He just had to ratchet up the pressure. He would find her limit and push past it. Then he would cradle her head gently in his hands and she would tell him what he wanted to know.

  He had promised her that no one would
be able to tell that anyone had ever lived here. Idle threats were the end of credibility. He had to make good on it.

  Best get started.

  He heard the crunching of packed snow and realized with a start that his sniper cover had fallen in beside him, were escorting him back to the camp. They had gotten right up next to him, close enough to put a knife in his back. He hadn’t noticed. Situational awareness returned to him in an instant, and he cycled quickly through all of his senses. Full range of hearing, from the worms in the earth below him to the birds above. He could see the heat signatures of the people in the camp as clearly as if they were aflame. He could filter the smell of the spruce sap from the lichen on the rocks beneath the frost. All of his senses were as sharp as ever.

  He had been distracted, so rattled that he had lost the bubble. It was an unforgivable lapse of focus, the kind he had scarcely made even before his death.

  For a moment, rage nearly blotted out his senses. TATP or no TATP, he would go back there now. Right fucking now. He would lock his hands around her fat throat and squeeze until the hard look in her eyes widened into terror, until he saw that she knew her death was coming, knew that it was by his hand that it was delivered.

  He stopped walking, the snipers and the Golds stopping with him, guns at the low ready. He took a spiritual breath, steadied himself. He stayed still for a full minute, until he was certain he had regained his focus, sure that he was thinking straight again. Blind rage would not serve him here. A show of force was needed, but a controlled show of force. Something more than the single Gold Mark had so ill-advisedly sent.

  He began moving again, picking out Mark’s shape from her heat signature, the broad span of her shoulders, the slight twist in her leg where a broken knee had healed off-center.

  “Who would you say are our most effective assets in the Gold Teams?” he asked before she had finished drawing breath to welcome him. Mark’s knowledge of the program’s logistics and operational assets were encyclopedic. One of the many reasons she was of so much use to him alive.

  “Twenty-two is in the best repair, sir. Seventeen has effected some interesting bone plates that could provide limited protection from small-arms fire.”