Fallen Stars, Bitter Waters

by Gilbert, Morris

“Where’s that?” Zoan asked, mystified.

  “Uh—I mean he’s mentally unable to cope right now,” Slaughter said. “He’s—not really all there.”

  “Oh, I see. He’s like me,” Zoan said thoughtfully.

  Surprisingly a low, throaty chuckle sounded from Vashti. “Zoan, there is no one like you, my friend.”

  “Thank you,” he said politely. Vashti had been teaching him the finer points of polite conversation. It didn’t exactly apply here, but that hardly mattered.

  “Lemme get this straight, with your permission, Captain,” Rio said in his careful way. “You want us to arrange an escape for you, a woman, two kids, an old lady, and a crazy teenager?”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  Rio snorted. “I think we should just get the team together, get those crazy Indians, and attack the base. Kill all the Goths. I say that’ll solve everyone’s problems.”

  “Yeah? Whatcha gonna do, Rio, throw rocks at ’em?”

  “Don’t suggest it, Captain,” Vashti intoned. “He’d do it. He’s been wanting to attack the base ever since our first recon. Just me, him, and Zoan.”

  “Vintage Rio,” Slaughter agreed. “No, Sergeant Valdosta. Just no. We’ve got to get my people out of there. And I mean ASAP. That place is going from bad to really bad fast.”

  “I assume you’re saying there’s no way to walk them out, just like you’ve been doing every night,” Vashti said thoughtfully. “No, you’re right. It can’t be done by children or an older woman. It’s about thirty klicks to those hills, Captain Slaughter. It’d be tough for even you to make it in one night, with having to allow downtime for the patrols.”

  “I know, I know. You’ve been watching me out here mincin’ around on tiny feet, trying to see if a girl could make it. If I couldn’t do it tonight, I was going to give up on Plan A. And obviously I didn’t make it far enough,” Slaughter said impatiently. “But we’ve got to think of something, people. And I mean now, tonight.”

  “Captain, are they hurting people?” Zoan asked in his oddly colorless voice.

  Slaughter hesitated before answering in a rough voice.

  “They weren’t until today. I mean, that place is a pit. There’s rotten food and no water, and the sanitation is just a hole in the ground. It’s cold and we don’t have firewood. But at least they were feeding us, and they gave us pretty good clothes and blankets. But today . . . they trotted out a couple who they said had tried to escape the Isolation Facility and infiltrate the regular refugee camp in the city.”

  “What’s the Isolation Facility?” Vashti demanded.

  “It’s the place where our beloved commissars are guarding the bad guys—the ones responsible for all our problems. The Christians.

  You know, the right-wing fundamentalists, the extremists, the militant dunkheads.”

  “That’s not true,” Zoan said in a wounded tone.

  “We know, Zoan,” Slaughter said patiently. “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh.”

  “And they’re being persecuted?” Vashti asked.

  “You betcha,” Slaughter growled. “That couple . . . they branded them.”

  “What?” Vashti cried, then lowered her voice. “Branded them?

  You—you—mean—”

  “Yeah, with a red-hot branding iron, Colonel. A cross on the left cheek. Rumor was that they had three kids . . . and the kids turned them in.”

  “Oh, no,” Vashti moaned softly. “Oh, no, this is—this is—”

  “Bad. It’s real bad,” Slaughter supplied. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

  They were silent for a long time.

  Then Zoan’s quiet voice sounded in the darkness. “I’ve got an idea . . .”

  The slight bend in the trickle of the Rio Grande had come to be called Laundress’s Leg, for the women who came to wash their clothes, beating them against a wide, time-smoothed rock overhanging the muddy water. A woman, tired and drab looking, was just finishing up her wash. She’d been there all afternoon, pounding and rinsing and going through it all again on the pitifully few worn clothes she had. Behind her, a young girl—probably her daughter—waited listlessly. Both of them were gaunt and seemed to be unable to summon the energy to talk.

  One of the two commissar perimeter guards who had passed them several times on their rather sketchy patrols remarked, “She won’t be taking the trouble much longer.”

  “They never do,” the other sneered. “About two weeks in the camp, and washing clothes kinda goes down to the bottom of the list.”

  It was true. The people who had been in the camp for more than a couple of weeks were usually sick or malnourished or too weary for hygiene. Most of them were all of those things.

  The guards, two men, hesitated on their round, staring at the woman. She seemed not to know they were there. One of them, a dark, surly-looking man who hadn’t shaved in two days, squinted at the riotous indigo-and-coral horizon, the last moments of a glorious sunset. “Be dark soon. Think we ought to hustle ’em along?”

  “Nah,” the other, a sharp-looking young man, replied. “They aren’t going anywhere except to crawl back to whatever shanty or shack they’re holed up in.” They walked on.

  Neither the woman nor the girl appeared to notice their passing. The woman kept up her monotonous washing rhythm, even though, as always in the desert, the darkness was closing swiftly.

  Only a few moments after the commissars disappeared, an odd and beautiful thing happened. An entire herd of wild mustangs— an old gray stallion leading three dozen or so yearlings, mares, and foals—galloped up to the river and began to drink.

  The woman, suddenly filled with life and standing tall, her voice strong and urgent, hissed to the girl. Slender and elflike, the girl jumped up and ran to the nearest house, which was really a shell of an adobe cottage that had died of old age and neglect. It had no roof and only three standing walls. But out of the darkness inside she came running, holding a small child’s hand. Behind them, an old woman dressed in black from head to toe hobbled, and a blank-faced boy followed her.

  Suddenly on the other side of the river, soldiers in desert fatigues materialized as mere dappled shadows, blending in perfectly with the earth-tone variegations of the evening and the horses’ coats. If one looked very, very hard—or if one could see in the dark, as some could—he might see another fainter, even less substantial figure who moved so quietly and easily that he seemed to be woven of the very air.

  The tall woman was joined by a big sandy-haired man. As soon as the four reached the couple, they all crossed, wading so as not to splash too much. The big man carried the thin young girl.

  Somehow, by a trick of the eye or wizardry of the mind, within a few moments an onlooker might have seen only the herd of horses, calmly watering in the old river.

  The stallion, his coat the color of thin wood smoke, raised his head and made a knickering sound. As if they were bound together, all of the horses raised their heads alertly, then turned as one.

  By the time they’d traveled a few feet, only a small dusting of the fine desert sand could be seen in the desert twilight.

  EIGHT

  ALIA, WE ARE going to freeze to death in here.” .

  President Luca Therion’s voice sounded hollow and weak; the clanging echoes of his words sounded more alive. He seemed half-dead in appearance, too. His fine, sensitive features were cavernous; his black hair was dull, his eyes sunken. In startling contrast, his mistress, Minden Lauer, looked as lovely and serene as ever. She floated; she smiled; her skin was translucent and white, her hands soft, the nails polished, her body a study in perfection. In some ways, her apparent well-being was more jarring to observe than the wretched condition of her companions.

  Alia’s response to the president was slow and stuporous. Her mouth was numb from the cold, and her brain seemed to be slowly numbing, too. “I’m sorry, sir. But this is our best hope of getting out of here alive.”

  Minden, a ghostly pale shimmer huddled
in the corner, said softly, “We’re going to live, Luca. I know it. He has told me.”

  Luca made no reply, and of course, Alia didn’t. She was certain now that Minden was irretrievably insane, with this obsession about Tor von Eisenhalt and her powerful companion-spirits. But Minden had remained calm, so at least she wasn’t dangerous to herself or anyone else. At times Alia had thought that she had seen a look of terrible strain mar her perfect features for scant seconds. Once, when Minden was staring blankly into the fire, chanting softly under her breath, Alia had observed her face blanch into a ghastly expression of fright, and her graceful hands had clenched into gnarled knots. But almost immediately she was Minden, the serene Lady of Light, again, and Alia had scorned her perceptions again as mild delusions induced by lack of sleep and intense stress.

  They were huddled in a maintenance access tunnel, facing double four-inch-thick steel doors, the gray paint peeling in ragged strips. To their backs was a small electrical access room, long abandoned. A passage stretched out to their left, with copper conduit overlaid with a mucous-green patina and with pitted concrete water pipes tangled and snaky overhead. A continuous echo of water dripping slowly somewhere down the tunnel grated on their ears. It was dank and smelled of sour metal and mildew.

  Minden had brought a white pillar candle and had lit it as soon as they’d hidden there, but roguish icy drafts kept putting it out. Without speaking Alia had turned on her flashlight—the last 1.5 volt batteries were already dying in it—and had upended it on the damp floor. The light was weak and jaundiced, but it was still much, much better than the dark. Vaguely Alia wondered how she would ever find the way out without even a flashlight, but she couldn’t face the total darkness yet. Not yet.

  “What are we doing here?” Luca burst out. It was quiet. No sounds of angry mobs above filtered down to them. “Why did we come down here now?”

  Alia sighed heavily. She had already explained this carefully to Luca and Minden, but then neither of them seemed to be processing correctly. “You know, sir, that I, my two commissars, and three of your Secret Service detail are the only security people left. We can’t keep four snipers on the roof and a guard on you anymore.

  None of us have slept more than two hours at a time for weeks now. So I decided to put Kev and Bennie as snipers on the roof tonight, and I have placed the three agents at the entrances to this basement.”

  “But why do you think the mob’s going to break through tonight?” Luca hissed. “Why now?”

  “Because, sir,” Alia went on through gritted teeth, “they’re going to see that there are only two snipers. That leaves two gates uncovered. And it won’t take them long to figure out that Kev and Bennie are no sharpshooters. They’ll break through, sir, and it’s going to be tonight.”

  “But—but surely you could have found a better hiding place?”

  With the last tattered remains of her patience, Alia explained, “This is not just a hiding place, sir. That tunnel is an exit. It’s a long and torturous route, but I can take us out when the time comes.”

  “Then let’s get out of here right now!” Luca blustered. He raised his voice, and the echoes were so mocking that he flinched.

  Alia replied, “No, sir. Mr. President, you’re going to need all of us to guard you and Minden, you know. I have orders for all to make the best defense they can, but to fall back in good order and join us here. Then I’ll lead us out of here. There’s a manhole access out past the fence, and we should be able to slip out.”

  Though the noise was actually very faint, it sounded obscenely loud to the three desperate people in their dismal hole. They heard thumps, shouts, and the faint thunder of people running. Alia’s mouth was suddenly so dry, she almost choked. Though it was ludicrous, all three of them stared upward with wide, frightened eyes.

  The distant babble became more distinct. They could distinguish between men’s gruff shouts and women’s high calls, and the reverberation of running grew more intense. Simultaneously they heard the distinctive chop of two M-60’s, one distant, one close.

  “Those are the agents,” Alia whispered. She took out her .38 service pistol and went down on one knee, pointing it at the door. To her surprise, her hands and arms were steady, though her ears were thrumming and the blood in her chest was pumping crazily.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” she grated.

  A woman screamed, loud and long and close. It was cut off eerily. More staccato thumps of machine-gun fire. A man’s voice raised hysterically, calling the same name or word over and over.

  The din of a furious mob raged all around them, echoing horribly, multiplying geometrically up and down the tunnel, until Alia thought she would go raving mad.

  In an instant, in an eye-blink, the tumult stopped.

  Dead silence.

  The flashlight went out.

  Dead dark.

  Minden, without a sound, fell to the floor, unconscious. She looked like a corpse that had been drained of all blood. Luca bent over her, picked her limp body up in his arms, and buried his face in her hair, shutting his eyes tightly. He, too, made not a single sound.

  Alia couldn’t swallow, and, as if she were observing someone else, she realized that she wasn’t breathing. Her hands were clutched around the pistol so tightly that the muscles in her fingers were going into knifelike spasms. But she couldn’t loosen her grip.

  She couldn’t move at all.

  Like a listless leaf floating down, down into a deep abyss, Alia had only a single forlorn thought: Am I dead?

  By some of the same infernal magic, both heavy doors swung open silently, smoothly. Count Tor von Eisenhalt walked in.

  Still Alia did not move. Still she thought she was dead. Frozen perhaps in some hell where she stayed cold and frozen and muscles screaming and Tor smiling . . .

  As always, he cut a stunning figure. His black uniform was perfect, his presence commanding, his careless masculine grace accentuated by a long black wool overcoat draped over his wide shoulders. One raven’s-wing eyebrow rose sardonically as he removed his black leather gloves, finger by finger. “It’s been a difficult time for you, I see,” he remarked casually. “But is that any reason to snub your old friend?”

  Behind her, Alia heard the most horrible sounds of low moaning, a mindless keening. Then something hit her with such force and quickness that she was knocked over sideways. Minden was crawling by her like a pale rodent, scrabbling and clawing. Luca had risen, his legs visibly trembling, pressed against the wall. Somehow Alia rose, too, dropping her pistol from lifeless fingers.

  “Tor, Tor, my lord, my lord, help me, save me,” Minden was gibbering, curled up on her knees and pressing her face against his dully gleaming boot.

  He glanced down at her, pleased. “I have. Now control yourself, Minden.”

  With a quickly cut-off choking noise, Minden stopped ranting and grew still, though she didn’t move from her fetal position.

  Like a wooden marionette, Luca danced shakily over to Tor. For a moment he looked as if he were extending his hand for a bizarre handshake, then he dropped his arm. His eyes were locked with Tor’s, and he shuffled and jiggled forward until he was even with him. Then he toppled over, a terrible stiff-legged, unguarded fall onto his face.

  Alia’s eyes felt as if they were starting out of the sockets as she looked at Luca. He was still breathing, but a dull ribbon of blood seeped slowly from his face.

  “Alia . . .”

  The sound was as cold as the winter wind in the most desolate barren plain and as haunting as far-off music in a minor key.

  “Alia, come here.” He smiled; he seemed happy. Somehow, one corner of Alia’s mind gnawed that this was worse than deadly threats.

  Yet she walked to him. Her steps were steady, though her heartbeat and breath were not.

  He held out his hand.

  Eventually . . . inevitably . . . she kissed it.

  NINE

  SERGEANT RIO VALDOSTA verbally expressed exactly what Con Slaughter w
as thinking at the moment: “Man, it’s great to have the team back together again.” He said it with a certain awed reverence that wasn’t lost on Con. Suddenly Val-dosta looked at the fire team gathered around the huge bonfire. “Except for Mitchell, of course.” His gaze went deep into the blaze in front of him, and he whispered, “And Deac.”

  Con’s gut wrenched at the sadness in Valdosta’s tone. He was moodily trying to figure out how to dispel the gloom when Ric Darmstedt changed the subject for him.

  “I sure hope Mitchell’s all right, Cap’n.”

  “I’m sure Mitchell’s fine. He’s Fire Team Eclipse; he can take care of himself.”

  Darmstedt grinned, his white teeth gleaming. “Knowing Mitchell, he’s probably taking care of half of Arkansas by now.”

  “All of Arkansas,” Vashti Nicanor added. She was seated on a large rock beside Darmstedt. She usually kept a careful physical distance from the man. The evening was turning bitterly cold, but somehow she could sense his body heat distinctly separate from the fire’s heat. Inexplicably she shivered.

  Her trembling wasn’t lost on Darmstedt. “You all right, Colonel? Warm enough?”

  “I’m fine,” she returned curtly.

  “All right, people,” Slaughter announced, “down to the business at hand. Colonel Ben-ammi, we know the story at the Isolation Facility in Albuquerque. It’s too bad you and Darmstedt couldn’t make any contact in Santa Fe, but I’d bet my nine the same thing’s going on there.”

  Ben-ammi nodded somberly. “Sadly I agree.” Suddenly his tough features hardened, and with force he threw the prairie chicken thighbone he’d been gnawing on into the fire. “This is unthinkable! Unbearable! What can we do?”

  “What should we do?” Slaughter countered. “I look around; I see people here who need help. I see kids, I see old people, and they’re all going to be hungry and cold this winter. I see hundreds, maybe even thousands more like ’em to the east. Do we stay here and tend to these we know and care about? Do we rescue more? And do what with them?” A frustrated growl escaped his throat as he rose to his feet and began to pace around the fire.