by E. E. Knight
The halls were wide for the accommodation of hospital gurneys. Now spare cots stood in the halls and the little social rooms used by the patients. A TV or two blared old digital recordings in all their sound and spectacle—pre-'22 titles were much sought after, as the message-riddled Kurian productions had all the artistry and interest of an appliance manufacturer's instruction manual. More children played in the halls, racing toys on the smooth flooring or hard at work with blocks, LEGOs, and Tinkertoys.
Valentine found Duvalier's room. Its door stood open.
He knocked at the bathroom just to be sure.
He heard a step in the hallway. A matronly woman in one of the cheery, embroidered staff aprons chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment as she looked him over. He noted the frame of a cart behind. "The young ladies in this room are either at the clothes swap or the"—she lowered her voice—"bar. There's gaming and music and storytelling for those who like wasting good daylight."
"Thank you."
"They said a tall man with straight black hair would be coming. You shining on one of those gals, or are you already married up?" She fiddled with a scissors in her apron and Valentine wondered if he were being measured up for a trim.
"Not exactly."
The honey in her voice turned sticky. "Then there's something wrong with you. Sweet things. They shouldn't be unprotected."
If the other "sweet thing" was Moira Styachowski, the pair needed as much protection as a pair of ornery wolverines.
"Thank you. Clothing swap—"
"The big green aluminum barn to the north," she supplied.
"Right. Or bar."
"It's not on Nancy's property. I never met a man who couldn't find a bar hissownself. The owner's name is Trumpet."
"Trumpet. Thank you, ma'am."
"You can thank me by handing me that water pitcher. The stuff from the tap is strictly wash water unless you're a local and used to it."
Valentine held it for her while she filled it from a set of big plastic jugs on her cart, and replaced it on its aluminum tray.
He wandered to the clothing swap first, and found the cavernous barn filled with odds and ends from darned socks to snappy but stained felt hats. A giant iron-bottomed laundry pot bubbled over charcoal and filled the whole barn with a faint smell of lye. More women and children sat on folding chairs or fruit boxes, talking and sewing.
"Offering, trading, or needing?" a bored teenage boy asked. He carried a plastic hamper.
"Looking," Valentine said.
He hadn't seen a bar coming into Nancy's, so he made for the other end of her property. Sure enough, some entrepreneur had taken an old buffet franchise resting just on the other side of the hill from the garbage pit and turned it into a sawdust-and-fat-lamp saloon. A tarnished trumpet hung from the sign outside. A few biodiesel pickups, several bicycles, and some wagon teams were arranged outside, with shade given to the animal transport and proximity to the door taken by the bikes. The pickup trucks were parked facing the road to give passersby a good look. One driver had even popped his hood to show off chrome exhaust pipes and a supercharger.
Valentine entered through the door cover, a carpet-remnant strip that acted as a windbreak.
Under the light of the front windows a guitar and banjo were keeping each other company, with bootheel syncopation as percussion.
Valentine smelled fryer oil and kidney-filtered beer. As soon as his eyes adjusted he picked out Duvalier in what would have been a crowd if everyone weren't spread out as though trying to keep out of one another's business. He walked past tables with cards and dominoes and guns being examined for trade or sale. A pair of women worked behind the bar, serving drinks and making sandwiches.
Lounging in a wooden, high-walled booth, Duvalier was in her usual earth-toned Free Territory clothing. Her knife-cut red hair dirty and disarranged, she'd put a good deal of effort into making herself look less attractive than she was, wrapped up in the duster that hid her body from the neck down. Valentine didn't recognize the young woman with her, noted only that she was blond with a longish face and nose. Duvalier pointed for the benefit of her companion, and Valentine took in the blonde's wide-set, steady eyes.
Then she blushed and dropped her gaze.
"Blackie, this is Jules. Be nice, she's like a sister to me."
Public code for another Cat. Valentine wondered what her real name was.
"Max Argent," Valentine said.
Duvalier waved over one of the bartenders and ordered three ciders.
"Bad news, looks like," Duvalier said. "Your shipment's delayed. Em is still getting it together."
Valentine wondered at that. Lambert could take a plane for a rendezvous with a potential operative, but they couldn't get a footlocker of gear to the edge of what amounted to the Free Territory?
United Free Republic, he reminded himself.
Jules spoke. "I hope you weren't planning to meet a train." Valentine wondered at her voice; there was a bit of Eastern giddyup to it. She must not have operated in the KZ much or she would know to smother the accent; it attracted too much attention.
"No. I dropped word at Hobarth's that I'm looking to pass west."
"Not as driver, I hope," Duvalier said. Most of Valentine's efforts behind a wheel were ill-fated.
"Scout work, security, maintenance, whatever they need. There'll be westbound convoys for a month or two."
"I'll leave tonight to let Em know you've arrived," Duvalier said. "You can have my bed."
Valentine waited for a remark about staying in it; Duvalier treated his cocksmanship as something of a joke—which it was, considering the results.
"Traveling at night?" Valentine asked.
"It's almost as quiet as the Ozarks around here nowadays. Nearest organized Kurians are a hundred miles away west and north."
"Diddo-dish," Jules said, using Iowa slang for something easily accomplished.
In the last three years the Great Plains had been transformed into a bloody quilt of territories in revolt and those still under the Kurians. Grogs and mercenaries from as far away as inland China were holding on to North America's breadbasket.
The ciders came and Duvalier paid in cigarettes, one of the lower denominations in a ranking that went thus: gold, batteries, whiskey, ammunition, tobacco. Lesser necessities like darning thread, pens, gloves, and toothbrushes also served as unofficial currency in booze boxes from Kurian Zone to Freehold and back again, if someone was running short and could be talked into a swap.
Between songs, they made small talk about the weather and the food. When the guitar and banjo made enough noise to cover conversation, Valentine learned that Jules hailed from a privileged family in Iowa—her father owned an estate that sounded similar to the one he'd visited in search of F A. James. She'd spent her teenage years "out East" at school and returned to the usual privileged child's choice of military, church, or management career. She ran away just in time to get caught up in Consul Solon's bid to put the Trans-Mississippi under the Kurians.
"I tried to join the guerrillas, but since I wasn't anybody's cousin or sister-in-law I couldn't find out anything about where they were hiding. When the 'strike' speech came," she said, "I didn't get to hear it but saw it on a leaflet—I didn't know what else to do, so I started a fire in a tire pile outside a TMCC garage. Some janitors were executed for it."
"Don't put it like that," Valentine said. "The Kurian Order executed them, not you."
Valentine waited for her mind to leave memories of strung-up bodies and return to Oklahoma. "I did a bunch of other stuff," she continued. "Punctured tires at night. I learned how to cut a hot electrical wire. Stuff where I could do a little damage quietly and then run away."
"A girl after my own heart," Duvalier said.
"I take it she never went through our little ceremony." Valentine looked at the scar on his palm, barely distinguishable from legworm-hook-hardened skin.
"No," Duvalier said, and Jules looked down, hiding unde
r her hair. What did the girl have to be ashamed of? It wasn't her fault the Lifeweavers had disappeared.
For one awful second Valentine wondered if she was a Kurian agent, slowly digging her way into Southern Command. No, Duvalier was a good judge of character. You didn't walk up and apply to be a Cat; the Cats found you.
* * * *
After the evening meal Duvalier disappeared. In all the time he'd known her she'd rarely been an initiator of good-byes—like a careful extra in a stage play she liked to make unobtrusive appearances and disappearances.
Probably why she still had blood in her veins after all these years in and out of the Kurian Zone.
Valentine explored Nancy's. It still housed dozens of crippled Quislings, pitiful objects limited to bed and wheelchair. They'd taught him in his Southern Command lectures that the Kurians consumed cripples, even those wounded in defense of their Order, save for a few to be trotted out at rallies and blood drives. Whether the soldiers still lived because of some shell game of Nancy's, or the sudden turnover of territory spared them, or he'd even been given a spoonful or two of medicinal propaganda, he didn't attempt to determine.
He saw Nancy herself, behind a wide nurses' counter, speaking to what looked like doctors. Her face drooped like a bulldog's. Hair that could be mistaken for a hawk's pole-top nest gave her a bit of a madwoman's air, but even the medical men listened to her speak.
As night fell people filtered back into the connected buildings and gathered around the tiny charcoal stoves on the grounds that provided heat for cooking and boiling laundry.
The talkative in the refuge discussed either Tulsa—when it would finally be cleared so people could return to see what was left of their lives—or the possibilities of finding work far from the fighting in Texas or Arkansas.
Then there were the doomsayers: "They'll be back," one man said, shirtless and with Kurian service pins on his suspenders. "No such thing as 'safe.' 'Scorched earth,' the order said, and just because the flame ain't touched you yet, doesn't mean it's not burning."
Even in the facility's new role as improvised refugee squat, Valentine had to admire the cleanliness of the rooms, painted in an institutional color he called "muted lime." The medicine cabinet in the shared bathroom held a couple of tonics for Duvalier's on-again, off-again stomach problems, antiseptic ointments, and a thermometer. The only disappointment was the ashy-tasting toothpaste.
They went to their individual beds with lights out—Nancy's had its own generators, but fuel for them had to be conserved. Valentine hid under a sheet, a little ashamed of the state of his underclothes. Maybe a visit to the swap is in order after all. Jules produced a bottle of Kurian rum and they passed it back and forth. Valentine refused more than two swigs.
"You need to be careful with alcohol in the KZ," Valentine said. "They say a little helps cut lifesign by relaxing you. Whether it's true or no, I'd rather be alert."
"This isn't the Kurian Zone. Not anymore."
Though she asked, he didn't want to talk about the rising in Little Rock. Instead he shifted the conversation to their childhoods. He told her a little about growing up in Minnesota—to an Iowan, nothing but hairy, thick-blooded barbarians lived north of Rochester—and in between swallows she painted a picture of the privileged life of a Ringwinner's daughter.
"I was supposed to go into the church," came the voice from the darkness. If anything, her diction became more precise as she drank. "I was a youth-vanguard leader, of course. Then it was army, church, or industry. Since Ving Junior went army, and Kirbee got her master's in production, we had that dried-up old prune of an priest sitting me down for improvement, effort, humility, care, and acceptance." Valentine's ears picked up movement in the darkness as she listed the church's virtues. You were supposed to touch forehead, right shoulder, right hip, left hip, and finally left shoulder as you said them. Her words faded as she spoke. "Man in his unnatural state. Spiritual recycle. Can't believe how much of that crap I remember. Didn't even try to learn it, but I can still recite the Truths word for word."
Valentine listened to her breathing until he too drifted away.
He woke, a little, when she got up to use the bathroom. He woke further when she returned and slipped into his bed. She nuzzled his ear.
"Object?" she asked.
Her clean-smelling skin enticed, and her hand knew what it was doing. He felt an erect nipple against his tricep. "Ask a silly question ...," he said.
She tested him with her grip. "Nice answer. Not a bit silly. Drop in.
He recognized another Iowaism, but one Valentine had never heard breathed in his ear, only secondhand from guy talk over beers.
"Not so fast," Valentine said, beginning a series of kisses down her neck. He hadn't touched a woman in over a year. Might as well enjoy the opportunity.
* * * *
Spent, aroused, and spent again, he slept deep and hard in the sweat and slickness of their lovemaking after she retreated to her bed.
Gunfire and screams woke him. For three terrible seconds he was back on Big Rock Hill the night the Reapers dropped from the sky. Waking from a dream, or waking into another nightmare?
Jules sat up in her bed, the flush of lovemaking replaced by an awful pallor.
"Reapers!" came a shout from the hallway.
Her eyes, searchlights of fear, turned to him.
Valentine felt them. His old comrades in the Wolves called it the "Valentingle" and trusted it more than Valentine did. Sometimes he could detect a Reaper with pinpoint accuracy; other times he could walk right over one without sensing it. Now they seemed to fill his whole mental horizon, could be a dozen or more.
"Might mean nothing," he lied. "Every time there's confusion in the dark, someone shouts 'Reapers.' You have a weapon?"
"Beretta. Bag on the chair."
"Get it." She moved for her pants. "No, get it first, then get dressed."
Valentine retrieved his .45 ACP, the weight a calming comfort in his hand. Two more shots, this time from the front of the building where he'd passed the tin stars. "Drop lifesign and—"
"I don't know how!" she said, her words half-strangled with fear.
Jesus, Duvalier—
Reapers hunted using lifesign, an energy created by the vital aura their masters desired. Humans produced more than livestock; livestock produced more than crops. ...
He checked the window, saw a family hightailing it across the fields, each holding a child over a shoulder as they ran, a dog keeping worried circles.
Over by the barn, a woman ran in the same direction. A shadow, moving so fast it seemed a trick of the eye, followed her across the field and engulfed her.
Or did it?
"Crouch, both hands on the floor," he told her, shutting and locking the doors to the hallway and shared bathroom. She complied quickly enough. He'd been told contact with the earth acted like the ground on a lightning rod, but he suspected it was bullshit. But it was a relaxing pose, you didn't feel as vulnerable as you would lying down, and there's the tendency to shift nervously when standing.
"Picture your whole life folding up, into a box," he said, hard ears searching the building. Still no destructive noises, but a lot of consternation in the halls, a confused babble.
"They'll locate. They sense pregnant women best!"
A beeping racket from a few crackly loudspeakers made her jump. "Emergency Alert Code Black Multiple. Code Black Multiple."
That doesn't sound good.
"What's that?" Jules said.
"Never mind. Fold up pictures of your family, friends, memories, whatever, and put it in a mental box," Valentine said.
The loudspeakers shrieked one final "Stop!" and went dead.
“I don't see—”
"Keep your eyes shut! What kind of flower do you like?"
"Flower?"
"Picture your favorite flower."
"Daisy," she said.
"Great, a daisy. There's just a daisy, nothing else, blackness and a daisy. It's a
big one. You're keeping your eyes on the yellow center."
"Yes," she said, sounding a little better.
"Now it starts to spin slowly, like a windmill. Oh so slowly."
"Yes," she said.
Screams and a crash from the center of the building.
"Never mind that." Valentine lowered his own lifesign and tried to open the window. It had been painted recently and was sticky.
"Speed the daisy up. It's spinning faster now."
She didn't respond.
"Slow it down now. Slower and slower and slower." He lowered his voice. "Slower than that windmill, slower than a second hand on a watch, slow it so it's moving like a minute hand. You can barely see it, it's moving so slowly." More screams, this time female. The deep blast of a shotgun and running feet in the hall.
He unwrapped a souvenir from his time with the Kentucky worm riders. It was a short, stout hand ax, blade tapering into a legworm hook. He pulled on his pants and laced his boots.
For Valentine, lowering lifesign meant taking a big, bright blue ball that represented his consciousness and slowly shrinking it to a point like a star, which he watched with all the concentration of an astronomer at a telescope eyepiece.
"Keep watching the petals turn," he whispered. He reached up and gripped a chamois-wrapped handle from beneath his pillow and drew it close beside.
A heavy tread in the hall and she groped for his hand.
"Turning," he whispered.
A door torn open with a sharp metallic cry. Another scream.
"Turning," he repeated. He tried a fearful whining sound in his throat, trying to imitate a whimpering dog.
Something jiggled the doorknob.
More shots from the hall, and heavy, pounding footsteps as the Reaper ran toward the door ...
"Turning," Valentine whispered.
Five minutes later the noises faded into a last distant scream.
"Safe?" Jules asked.
"We are. They're not..."
* * * *
The old Cat Everready got to be an old Cat by hunting Reapers only in the daylight, when their connection to their master was weakest, or after they fed, when they, or more accurately the master Kurian animating them, got dopey from the aura feed.