The only trouble was that it wasn’t just Firsters dead under artillery but immie indentureds too, and the pets. Dogs were the worst, they wouldn’t leave the dead assholes. Cats knew when to get out, but dogs were loyal, and that loyalty got them fuckered up but good.
Once, before Lazy’d joined up, he’d seen a dog sitting patiently by the hanging mess of stripe-flayed meat that had probably been its owner. Not licking at the steak or flanks, not sniffing the blood, just…sitting there, a brown dog with its head cocked, hoping its master would stop playing dead and stumble away so it could follow. He remembered every hair on the dog’s head, its big liquid brown eyes, the paws surprisingly white and another pale patch on its chest like a target. Some of the Patriots on duty in the square had pointed their guns at it and laughed, making jokes, but the dog didn’t care. It ignored them, and waited by the dead body of its master. The placard hung at the corpse’s neck had read FAGGOT. Whether or not it was true, who knew? Homosexuality was fifty stripes for a male, and if you survived that they sent you to a Reklamation camp. Girls had it easier—you had to really try to get caught as a lesbo, and they sent you for Minor Re-Edukation for a couple months, figuring it was just a phase.
The worst thing about striping wasn’t the whip cutting the skin. It wasn’t the sound, or the pain during it, even though that was fucking bad enough. The worst was after, tied to the post and hearing flies buzz, whatever pants you had left soaked with urine—your own and God alone knew who else’s, since some stripers pissed on their work—and the pain a gnawing until it turned numb, damage creeping through nerve and muscle down to bone. Striping didn’t just fuck you up in the short term, oh no. It twisted your entire fucking body around and did funny neurological things. Like make half of your face dead and one of your eyes drop, twitch, or roll when you were least expecting it.
Or make everyone call you kid, even when you were halfway to your thirty dead Firster-fucks. One for every fucking stripe laid on a kid’s back, sure, but even more, it was a mystical fucking number. Holy Trinity, dialed up to ten. Ten threes, right? Lucky three, like lucky seven. After he had his thirty, well, maybe he’d shoot for forty-nine. Seven sevens.
Lazy checked the hand-drawn map one more time, then tucked it inside his jacket. If he brought this motherfucker in, Swann might quit calling him kid, and might let him actually question the sumbitches like Simmons did. The Reaper was all-fucking-right, and didn’t treat Lazy like a child. At least, not often.
He blew out between his teeth, running his fingertips over his face. Not a lot of twitching. He could see just fine, until things started jumping when the nerves on his bad side got confused. He was quick, and he was smart, and he did a lot more than Swann ever saw. Did the captain think it was easy, sweet-talking paperwork through one hoop after another? Lazy ate last and got up first, dammit, not because he was young but because he was committed.
The kid stepped out of the shade of the poplar, aiming for the front door of the house. Its upper story had been hit and was probably closed off, but the cracked and frost-heaved path leading up a few tiny concrete steps was swept. Electricity out in the suburbs was generally good, but closer to the city centers it was kind of problematic, so he decided to knock the way the asshole they’d dragged in had specified—three short raps, a pause, then two.
He made it up to the door, the screens on the porch full of gaping holes. Overgrown bushes pressed against the side of the house, shielding the front from prying eyes.
Rap-rap-rap. Pause. Thump-thump.
Man, Swann was gonna be so fuckin’ surprised when Lazy brought this fucker in. He even had his first line all prepped. I’m here to see a man about a dog, he’d say, just like in an old movie.
There on the overgrown porch, the kid smiled, hearing stealthy movement on the other side of the door and a grinding sound from down the street, where they were filling in a shell crater. Bringing this asshole in was gonna be the feather in his cap, all right. Even Zampana, with her pretty fingernails and long black hair, would have to admit he’d done something outstanding.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Get Out
Inside a ramshackle, vine-grown safehouse, painkillers thankfully blurring every edge, Gene Thomas blinked at the knocking. This room, its carpet stripped and a dentist’s chair dragged into the middle of a flood of greenish light through the overgrown windows, was none too clean, but the doctor used an excess of antiseptic on his hands and surgical tools to make up for it.
Gene’s leg ached, and so did his face. The shrapnel wound in his calf sometimes bothered him, but it was the head bandage that was the real irritant. Mild reconstructive surgery—probably the only benefit from his rank since Amerika had ended, but one he’d take—was unpleasant, but how else was he to achieve some kind of safety? He had new ID blanks with certification attached, yes, but now there were former partisans tracking down Patriots. All the traitors were looking to ingratiate themselves with the degenerates now, so better safe than sorry.
Not that there were many from Gloria who would recognize him. Except the jar kaptains, the midlevel guards, and whatever filth they hadn’t cleaned up before the degenerates arrived. Had she survived? Probably not, and that was one more thing to hate.
There was no shortage.
The safehouse owner, a nervous big-eyed jackrabbit with a long flop of hair and a yellowing wifebeater wrapped around his skinny chest, cursed and flung open the door to a broom closet in the dusty, trash-stacked hall. His jeans sagged, clinging low on his hips, and he was barefoot.
“Get out,” he snapped, and drew a long, familiar shape from the closet’s depths. He racked, and the whine of a live plazma shotgun spiraling into forty-watt range buzzed softly under the words. “Out the back door, turn east on Polk, double back. Get to the next stop.”
The doctor responsible for Gene’s new looks—a lean hatchet-faced man in a plaid sports jacket despite the heat, who’d given his name as Johnson—shrugged on a backpack from the leaning metal desk under the small dusty window, his long-fingered hands quitting their nervous washing of each other. “What about—”
Their host, who’d been a low-level functionary in the state Party structure, headed for the front door. Barefoot, his stained tank top stretching across chicken-bone ribs, he didn’t look like a warrior for truth, justice, and inviolate borders. “It’s the wrong knock,” he hissed over his shoulder. “Someone broke a node, but the asshole gave them the warning signal. Get out.”
“Where’s the next house?” Gene’s jaw ached, the words slurring. He stumbled after the doctor, who glanced sourly at him, perhaps gauging how far his oath to a patient extended. Or judging how likely he was to see the results of his work if he ditched said patient now.
“North,” was all Dr. Johnson would say, settling his backpack straps with quick, impatient jerks. “If it’s any consolation, they’re probably after me, Captain.”
Gene didn’t have the breath or the energy to point out that once they were caught, the question would be academic, since he was obviously getting his goddamn face altered. He followed the doctor’s bobbing fedora-clad head, and they slipped out into an overgrown, humid backyard full of the whine of mosquitoes and the stench of rotting greenery, still water, and bodies trapped in shattered buildings.
There were no sleds circling, no rumble-whine of kerros lurking; the doctor headed across the yard for a small wooden door choked by raspberry vines. Inside, stairs went down into what had once been a dry cellar, but gave out onto a shell crater with a good foot of oil-shimmering water stagnant at its bottom. Dappled sunlight sent headache darts through Gene’s head as he staggered in Johnson’s wake.
A plazma blast tore the afternoon behind them, a boom that crackled at the end. Hard on its heels came a short, agonized cry, and the crisp clatter of pistol fire.
Gene put his head down, splashing through the shallow, noisome water, and kept going.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Right to Be
The Reaper sprawled in a hard, uncomfortable chair, his face starred and speckled with drying blood. Handcuffed and sullen, his uniform shirt torn and bloodied as well, he lifted his lip and outright snarled. “She called him a nigger, Swann.”
On the other side of the table, Chuck Dogg stared at the wall. He wasn’t handcuffed. Of course, he hadn’t tried to beat the shit out of the MPs hastily called to bring in a couple of un-uniformed men who, in a brawl, certainly acted like enlisteds. Chuck was spattered too, but only with beer and a few ounces of eye-wateringly strong clear liquor from the bottle he’d broken over some asshole’s head as said asshole was attempting to blindside Simmons with a wobbling barstool.
The Dogg didn’t look mildly inconvenienced, like he would have if that had been the whole story.
“Chuck?” Swann studied the man and decided that was definitely not the whole story.
Because Chuck Dogg looked downright irritated. “Bar ho. Told her I wasn’t paying for no pussy. She up and called me nigger, like a goddamn Firster. Said I wouldn’t get no white woman anyway.”
Swann rubbed at the back of his neck. The MPs had run their ID chits and popped Swann a Come get your asshole soldiers flimsy, and he had no idea if the local commander was going to get sticky. Martial law was still the order of the day in previously Firster cities, and Minneapolis, white bread and Lutheran butter, had been prewar-tolerant only until the first round of McCoombs’s registration legislation passed. Not like, say, Vermont, which had always been restless. More like Maine, where the nail that stuck out was to be hammered down, and sooner rather than later.
“I just tapped her,” Simmons added, somewhat helpfully.
Swann reached for his hat, found out—again—that he wasn’t wearing it, and took another whack at figuring this out. “And somehow that turned into a full-scale engagement? You carved one asshole’s eye with the end of a bottle, Simmons. Might need an implant.”
The Reaper shrugged. Swann glanced imploringly at Chuck, who spread his hands and shook his head. “They jumped us as soon as Simms slapped the bitch, Captain. Fucking bar full of nineteeners. We just wanted a drink.”
“Uh-huh.” The headache arrived, throbbing right between Swann’s temples.
“I ent going in stockade.” Simmons’s entire face set, stubborn as frozen prairie sod. “She called him that, Swann. Shoulda cut her.”
The woman he was referring to—a blowsy brunette, still loudly drunk and full of fuming imprecations—was being held in a cell, her cheek swelling up and turning purplish. She didn’t seem to grasp how goddamn lucky she was. Unshaved, so she probably wasn’t a campog or a scarlet. The Firsters had first publicly flogged, but later shorn and branded “scarlet women,” like unwed mothers or the ones caught trying for a back-alley abortion. After liberation, it was the “collaborators” who got shaved, but Swann had an idea they were just the girls nobody liked, or who were unlucky when it came to choosing a protector.
Men didn’t get shaved, and didn’t have WHORE painted on their faces. They were just striped if they were Party members, or shot if they were proven nineteeners. Or if they tried to jump a soldier. Or if ock troops—for occupation—didn’t like the look of them. Just as in any war, the Federal front liners had been too busy—and too goddamn tired—for any bullshit, but second and third waves coming through conquered territory were just fresh enough to want a little of their own back.
Casualties hadn’t stopped just because the surrender was signed and everyone was waiting to go home, either. Partly because of shit like this.
Swann gathered whatever patience he had left after a long day, and nodded thoughtfully. “So she called Chuck…what she called him, and you pimpslapped her?”
“Yeah.” The Reaper set his jaw in the familiar mutinous line and let his bloodshot blue eyes bore into his captain.
“And then?” Swann glanced at Chuck.
“Then the whole damn bar went for us.” What you gonna do? Chuck’s dark eyes asked. You gonna let this stand?
It was the same question, just a different goddamn day. The war should have answered it once and for all, but there were still assholes who decided to test. “Well, six of ’em needed a medic, and the girl’s locked up. Fine her for hate speech, prolly. Just…two hours, Sim.” At least he’d finished the processing paperwork for Eberhardt yesterday. The rest of the Riders had RV’d into town just two hours ago; Sal was still asleep, Prink looking for funnybooks, Minjae getting supplies, Pana and Spooky looking for hot food, and who the fuck knew where Lazy had gotten himself to?
The Reaper couldn’t have looked less repentant if he’d tried. “You sayin’ I shouldn’t’ve—”
“No. Not saying that at all. Just remarking on the timeframe.” Swann reached for his hat, remembered—again—that he wasn’t wearing it, and turned the movement into a spreading-his-hands gesture of resignation. “Okay. Sit tight, I’ll get someone in here to take those off. Be nice, Simmons.”
“Long as they don’t call my man Chuck no names, I’ll be a model fuckin’ citizen.” Simmons showed his teeth.
Chuck put his hands on the table between them, leaned forward to rest his head, too. He looked tired.
Well, he had a right to be, goddammit.
“Chuck? You all right?”
The Dogg didn’t reply. It was stupid even to ask, Swann decided, and just as he turned to the door, there was a knock and it swept open to reveal a pale Zampana, her hair hastily braided and her uniform jacket thrown over a T-shirt and a pair of culottes that showed her strong, medium-brown calves. “Captain?” She barely glanced at Simmons, and Swann began to get a very bad feeling. “There’s, uh, a problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wrong Knock
“Look at this.” Zampana peered into a stainless steel cabinet. “Sterigauze, opfoam…norpirene, opioids…”
Leaf-rippling greenish light filtered through boarded-over windows webbed with raspberries, ropy stems and thorns thick with summer. Spooky stared at the dentist’s chair the fucker had obviously used as an operating table. “And we were making do with bandannas and whiskey.”
“Waste of whiskey.” Zampana’s nose wrinkled. “How did he get all this stuff?”
“Firster.” It was all that needed to be said. They got the best, inside their own borders. If you were white and your membership number was low enough, or if you were good at “organizing,” you could be the first stop on the distribution pipeline. If you were a Firster, the Selekt Shops were chock-full of things to buy.
It was only the immies, the non–Party members, and the raiders behind the lines who had to make do with soylon instead of cotton, carob instead of chocolate, chicory instead of coffee, sand instead of blood. Spooky’s fingers ached; she shook her hands out. The lamp over the dentist’s chair was a high-intensity glare, and there was a tray of bloodied instruments on a trolley. Used gauze, surgical thread. Something had been interrupted. “Huh.”
“What you think?” Zampana’s eyebrows were up, and she pushed at her hair, settling the braids more securely. “Since you got the degree and all.”
What would Lara say to that? Spooky didn’t have to think very hard. “No residency, though.”
“Unless you count stitching up raiders with pine needles and spit.” Zampana’s hip brushed the edge of a slumped-sideways, rusted metal desk as she looked out the dust-coated, vine-choked window. The entire house was covered in greenery, a cave full of liquid shadows and a chronic reek of disinfectant just barely big enough to stretch over the smell of blood and cheap canned food cooked over jellied gasoline. “What’s this assh
ole doing?”
Well, it was obvious, really. “Plastic surgery.” If your records were wormed, all they had was ident photos and biometrics to go off, or not even that. Eyewitness testimony was unreliable, and what better way to make it even more so than by changing your entire face? Even just a few millimeters could mean your certification was safe. “Motherfuckers.”
“No shit?” Zampana studied the room, the green-lit window at her back shadowing her face. “Oh yeah, I see. Can’t do real work on a chair like that.”
Spooky pointed at the floor, where a congealed mass of something that looked like cat litter was soaking up blood and op disinfectant. No wonder the disinfectant didn’t cover up the smell. How had the fucker gotten his hands on litter, for God’s sake?
They hadn’t used litter at Baylock. They hadn’t had to—the surgical suites were fully equipped. Cracking open the thoracic cavity? Sure. Trepanning? You bet. Endoscopic neurosurgery? No problem. Administering syringe after syringe of gene-edit serum? Of course! Shock treatments after hair-fine intrusions through the dura, arachnoid, and pia mater? Child’s play.
And afterward, the tests with patterned cards, dice, oscilloscopes. Make the dial move.
Oh, she had. The dial was spinning now, motherfuckers.
“Hey. You okay?” Zampana was suddenly there, right next to her, and Spooky flinched away, her knee barking on the chair with a heavy thocking sound. “Oh, shit, sorry.”
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