by John Barnes
Right now the part of the upper “clam plate” behind the gun had two big openings, both created by gull-wing doors like the doors on a DeLorean, and there was a big crew of men climbing around on it, a couple of them poking around in the thing’s guts, and there were at least ten armed guards as well. Moreover, one of the men was looking straight at me, and he bellowed “look—over there” and pointed.
I turned and ran; I didn’t like the way all those submachine guns were coming out. At least back among the goods there might be something too valuable for them to use as a backstop for bullets.
These guys were in shape, too, they weren’t some stray garrison guard, gone to fat and sloth. I could hear them running out around and ahead, blocking the different ways. One popped into a corridor before me, and I gave him a round from the SHAKK; he fell dead and I leaped over him and kept going, hoping I had at least put myself on the outside of the net.
A burst of submachine gun fire chewed up the crate behind me and I dove to the floor, wriggling hard to back out of the corner I had run into. A moment later a head popped in, and I hit him with a SHAKK round; two down and god knew how many to go. There was a lot of shouting, and the occasional words I could hear (they seemed to be speaking English, which didn’t make much sense to me, but maybe my translator was able to cover German? But why would it be?).
“It’s English,” the translator said in my mind.
Thanks, I thought back at it.
Sorting out I realized that first of all there was one guy who was upset by the condition Sieg and Frieda were in; later I learned that the ammo for a SHAKK isn’t all that smart. It knows where to find the head on a human being, but on any other living creature it zings around everywhere, just staying inside the body. On a really big animal—an elephant, say—if you hit far enough away from a vital organ, the animal might even survive because the pathway through the body didn’t happen to pass close enough to a vital organ, and so much energy would be expended in just getting through hide and surface fat. But on something the size of a Doberman—a lot smaller than a man—it had plenty of room to run, and it turned the insides of those dogs into sort of a nasty red jam that dribbled out of them all over the floor, leaving them as drained skins in the middle of a huge blood slick.
I could see why the fellow was a bit upset.
Yet another guard burst in on me, and this guy was shooting as he came around the corner. I felt something hot tag my calf muscle, and then I SHAKKed him like the others. He fell over with his finger convulsing on the trigger, the recoil driving him backward, and consequently knocked out about half the light fixtures in the immediate area and started a bunch of stuff that had been stored up in the rafters to slide and fall around.
It was a nearly perfect diversion, and, despite the stinging pain in my calf, I was up and running. By now I’d figured a set of directions and had decided that the side of the building farthest from me was the one that had the best chance of having an exit to the outside, which meant I’d have to find a way across the area where the tank was parked. Well, I’d think of something.
More shots chewed into crates beside me, and I zagged down an aisle, took the first right I could, turned again—and burst into the wide-open area.
The unarmed workmen there turned and stared, and I ran right into their midst, hoping the guards behind me would have at least a little compunction about firing into a crowd that was mostly unarmed civilians.
I should have figured differently, but I didn’t know Closers or Nazis nearly as well then as I was to know them later. Think of a Nazi whose family has been rabid Nazis for twenty generations, think of a guy who would toss a woman’s baby on the fire because he likes the way she screams while he rapes her, think of children raised to execute their slave playmates so that they won’t become too “emotional,” and you’ve got Closers.
There was a Closer among these guys, and the way I could tell was that for one instant they refused to shoot into the crowd, and I got away into the racks of stuff on the other side, ducking rapidly to the left and jumping a low spot in the stored stuff, hitting in a roll and getting myself back under cover. God, I was glad they hadn’t laid this out in nice neat rows, or I’d have been dead—
The voice had an unpleasantly sibilant accent; no big surprise. Most Closers can’t quite manage sh’s or th’s.
“You incompetent s-s-slaves, I’ll have you s’ot! So you won’t s’oot because zair are s-slaves in ze way! S-s-s’oot zem all now! S-soot zem, or I’ll s’oot you!”
And to my amazement, I heard the chatter of submachine guns.
It made me sick and disgusted; I was alive because those innocent workmen had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. All thought of escape left my mind; I turned and crawled back toward them.
“Now form a ssssskirmis’ing line and move forward!” There was a whiny quality to the voice too; later I learned that Closers who are running operations of this kind are often young teenagers, getting extra training in ruthlessness.
I got a look at what they were doing, popped up with the SHAKK set on full auto, and sprayed down the line, the deep whoosh of SHAKK rounds going out into them, half the line falling over and the high-tech tank suddenly flashing from a dozen places and bursting into flames.
Half the line.
The SHAKK had stopped making a whoosh noise, and there were four of them left. I glanced down and saw the readout on the top was flashing “RELOAD BEFORE FIRING AGAIN,” or at least that was what the translator said it said.
I was out of ammo, and the only thing keeping me alive right now was that the four surviving guards and their Closer leader were too busy diving for the floor and trying to get their weapons pulled around to get a shot off at me.
8
At least I had the advantage that I knew something was wrong a split second before they did.
I grabbed for my .45, and time slowed down as I found the deep concentration I needed. Pistol shooting is like any other martial art—once you’re good at it, what you want is a clear, cool head.
I also had the advantage of a lot of backlight. Some stray SHAKK rounds must have decided to go into the engine compartment (if that was what it was) of the tank, and had made hash of a lot of things. Smoke was pouring out of the tank, and there was a strong flickering backlight from sheets of white plasma that skittered and ran over the silvery surface. The bright flashes nicely silhouetted the men in front of me, though since they were on the floor, the angle was bad.
I bagged the Closer on the first shot—he was just getting down to the floor, maybe because he didn’t want to get his clothes dirty and, like most of them, wasn’t so much an officer as a slavemaster.
It had taken one shot to dispose of the Closer; I got two more off, and I think might have wounded one of the guards, before the guy on the far right let off a burst with the submachine gun. I hit the ground rolling and running, and behind me I could hear them getting up.
I just hoped there wasn’t another guy at the door.
There was a deafening roar, and the tank blew up. It flung me to the floor in a facefirst skid so hard that I barely kept from banging my head, and all around me the stacked crates, racks, and dividers were tipping over in all directions. I don’t know what happened to the last few guards, but I would guess they had their backs to it and weren’t quite among the stored goods yet. Probably they were just flung forward into the mess, and I would guess one or two of them were killed by what they hit.
Much of the stuff in the rafters had been stored on plywood sheets running rafter to rafter, and when the blast went off a lot of it went straight up, lifting those sheets and dumping their contents; all kinds of heavy junk rained down inside the warehouse, and if I hadn’t been busy running for the door for all I was worth, jumping fallen objects and climbing over collapsed piles of stuff, I’d have been terrified enough to keep my head down. All around me the building groaned as the loads shifted abruptly; in other parts of the storage area, things that wer
e supposed to be kept apart were apparently finding each other, for there were explosions and bursts of fire everywhere.
There was one confused-looking guard at the door, and when I burst out at him he went for his gun. I slammed my feet to a stop in the approved two-handed position and put a slug into his face; he fell backward. After all the exploding heads the SHAKK caused, it was almost a relief just to see a smear of blood, hair, and brains hit the back wall.
As I stepped over him I thought I saw an American-flag patch on his arm; oh, well, if he was working for these clowns, he wasn’t part of the America I was. Just because you’ve got the uniform doesn’t mean you play on the team …
At last—five minutes, ten or more deaths, and a lot of nervousness after getting out of the crate—I pushed through the door and out into the sunny deserted street, dashed across without checking for traffic, and ran down an alley. There was another alley at a cross angle and I took that route, then swung around one more corner, pressed myself into an inconspicuous corner of a doorway, and let my breath come down to calm and regular while I listened for signs of pursuit.
There was a thundering, ground-shaking roar. Given the variety of stuff that had been in that place, and how mixed together it was getting, I suppose it should have been no surprise. I saw a flicker of flame in the sky through the little opening of the alley above me; I suspected any need to get rid of witnesses or evidence had just been taken care of.
I drew a long, deep breath and took stock. I didn’t exactly know where I was, other than I was in a timeline where Hitler won, and a timeline the Closers felt secure enough about to use as a base. There were probably not more than two hundred or so Closers on the planet, of whom I figured I’d just eliminated one, but there were untold Nazis, and not just German ones either. I sure hadn’t felt like I could have turned to those guards and said, “See here, I’m an American, too.”
I was tired, hungry, without friends or money, two rounds left in the magazine and no reloads, and the SHAKK was useless. I wondered why I hadn’t taken along a few pocketfuls of that sand they were loaded with. And about ten extra magazines, two ham sandwiches, and a cold Pepsi.
Worse yet, the alley in which I sat seemed to back up on an Italian restaurant, because there was a wonderful smell of red sauce. Not an easy place to do your planning when you were hungry.
Chances that they would take the money in my billfold—zip. I doubted my credit cards would do much good either. Besides that I had … well, I suppose I could stick someplace up if I really had to. But totalitarian states are bad places to take up crime. They’re not awfully careful about the rights of the accused, and there aren’t a whole lot of situations in which you can just hide among people.
There were sirens wailing—fire crews headed for the warehouse, no doubt, and if there were any survivors there, I’d have cops after me within half an hour. Time to get it moving. I didn’t know which way to go or where I was, but “away from the warehouse” seemed like a good plan. I got the SHAKK tucked under my shirt (for all I knew there were reloads for it here) and the .45 to where it wasn’t completely conspicuous, in the big inside pocket of the jacket. I just hoped my clothes weren’t going to be screaming “arrest me” when I ran into people again.
I rounded two more corners in the tangle of alleys, popped across a street—well, the people on it didn’t look weird to me, maybe I didn’t look weird to them. I ducked into another block of alleys, and repeated the process. Wherever I was, there was some resemblance to Pittsburgh—I hadn’t seen a bit of level ground yet.
All right, I could see plenty of daylight up ahead, and sooner or later I’d have to stick my head out; I gritted my teeth for a moment, listened to the explosions still going off back at the warehouse, figured I hadn’t heard a siren close by in a while … time to take a walk down a real street and see what happened to me.
I popped out of an alley, looked quietly around. Most of the people seemed to be dressed from a fifties movie, the men in blue or gray suits and the women in calf-length dresses. Everything looked a little cheap but whether that was the way the country was or the way the neighborhood was, who could say.
I decided to walk uphill because there was a slightly better chance of finding a landmark that way. As I walked I did a little more study of the people; some of them seemed not to like me. Clearly there was something about me …
Probably that all the men were crew-cut, and all the women in tight little perms. My hair was pretty short, by the standards of where I came from, but I had it. Most of these guys looked like they’d just come from delousing.
On the other hand they felt free to glare at a stranger on the street. This version of America was not that totalitarian, then.
I also realized the crowd wasn’t just men and women. It was just that anybody from puberty on up was either in a suit or in one of the three permitted dress styles. It occurred to me, too, that I had no necktie. Looked like everyone was wearing clip-ons. I wondered how they’d react if I asked to bum a spare tie from someone.
Well, the next thing to check out, then, was—
I came over the hill and one problem got solved right away. I saw the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance—or rather, about two-thirds of the Golden Gate Bridge. The center part of the span was torn out, and as I looked more closely I saw that there were many cables hanging loose from it; at this distance the reddish color on much of it suggested that it was rusting.
All right, so this was San Francisco.
“Hey, buddy, have a heart, will you, don’t walk around like that over here!”
The man approaching me was paunchy, shaveheaded, and dressed in something that looked more like a brown-shirt uniform than anything else, but it had American-flag patches on the shoulders and a big white strip over the pocket.
It didn’t look like this was a bust, and something about him didn’t give off the flavor of cop, so I peered at him for a long moment, reading “Good Neighbor Patrol” on the strip. It sounded like the kind of thing McGruff the Crime Dog would be involved in, but the closer look had also assured me that the American flag now had a white swastika instead of stars in the blue field.
“Come on, buddy, you’ve seen this uniform before, especially if you’ve been walking around like that. Let me at least put a tie on you, and if you need the price of a haircut …”
So I had been right.
He got closer, then said, “You don’t seem very, uh, connected to things, there, pal.”
If he started looking at me closer, instead of just hassling me like the street bum he thought I was, I was going to be in deep, quick. So I made myself focus and said, “Sorry—I—geez, where am I?”
“You wandered over from Berkeley somehow,” the guy said, shaking his head. “And if you just wander back quick, I won’t have to do anything about you, and you won’t have to have anything done about you. I know you all walk around like that over there all the time, but there ain’t no chick houses or thump clubs here, fella, and you’re sticking out like a sore thumb.” He leaned in close—it took me a moment to realize he was sniffing my breath. “Well, you’re not drunk, and I don’t smell any burning rope. So I don’t know what you’re on, but”—he shrugged—“it’s none off mine. I just happen to have a perfect record for these blocks, and I want to keep it. So—if you’ll do me the favor—”
He reached out, buttoned my top button, and clipped a shoddy little rayon tie to it. “And I got a barber right around the corner. Listen, if I get you trimmed, put you on a streetcar—” A thought seemed to hit him. “You got any dough? You didn’t come over here to panhandle?”
“Oh, no, not to panhandle,” I said, since obviously that would be the wrong answer. “I uh … this will sound stupid.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I put on the jacket and my good pants,” I said, thinking frantically, “to look a little more presentable because—you’re right, I don’t have any dough—but I, um, was over here hoping to find someplace I
could apply for work.”
His lips pursed, and he quietly whispered, “Vet, hunh?”
I wasn’t sure what the significance was, except that pretty obviously it was going to change things drastically, so I hesitated and then he whispered, “That’s right, don’t talk here. Come on.”
And he promptly led me around to a barbershop, but we went in by the back door and he plopped me down in a chair in the back. I could hear the barbers—there seemed to be two of them—cutting hair in the front, then a couple of low whispers near the cash register. I sat and waited.
About ten minutes went by. I was at least fairly safe here, and the guy had not acted like a cop about to make a bust. The trouble was, he’d assumed I was a veteran, and in this context I couldn’t even be sure that I knew what war it was going to be. Not to mention that I’d never actually served a day in my life, and if anyone started quizzing me about military slang, I was going to have to rely on old movies …
Well, time enough for that when it came up. Meanwhile I could enjoy breathing calmly and safely.
The “Good Neighbor Patrol” guy brought a barber back with him, who said, “Okay, pal, we’re gonna make you presentable on some of Bob’s discretionary cash. Some system for suppressing vagrants you’ve got, Bob—dress ’em up to be respectable vagrants.”
Bob, the Good Neighbor guy, grinned good-naturedly. “You know why I’m doing it, and it’s the same reason you are.” He looked at me closely and said, “You wouldn’t have been Home Defense—you must have been Regular Army. Wim and me, we got captured halfway across Kansas and spent a long time moving rocks out by New York City.” He punched the York pretty hard, and I realized there must be something different now. “Who’d you serve with?”
I didn’t have a clue, but I figured what I’d do is tell him the only thing I could remember offhand, what was in fact where my father had been. I just wished Dad had been more inclined to tell war stories … “I was …” I swallowed hard. “I was with General Patton. Third Army. Spent a while in a Stalag—”