Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  An analog clock hovered over the mirror, wired to the wall. Its ticktock filled the interrogation room, Spooky’s breathing regular as the marching seconds; a dull brick-red flush worked up her scrawny neck to her thin cheeks. The fingers of her right hand spasmed open once, flicking invisible water away.

  Peter Skelm, after five and a half minutes of Spooky’s steady gaze, began to shiver. The shivers increased, his head bobbling back and forth, his hands batting ineffectually at empty air. After another ninety seconds, he began to scream, hoarsely, and claw at his own face. The rankers on guard outside the door rushed in, which was not usual—they heard all sorts of things during interrogations.

  But Skelm’s howls were pure animal, echoing down the hall. One guard grabbed him, trying to contain the Butcher’s hysterical strength. The other yelled for an orderly before attempting to help. The IV ripped free of the Butcher’s hand, blood droplets hung in the air before spattering down; they lifted him bodily from the chair, the bandages on his leg jarred loose by his writhing. He kept screaming, those awful, chilling, grating cries, even when vessels in his throat burst and blood sprayed from his mouth.

  Spooky, still as a statue, watched the struggle. The orderlies arrived, and a military doctor with a syringe full of tranq. It didn’t matter; when it wore off, the result would be the same. Heavy iron warmth filled her nose, but she sniffed twice, deeply, and the blood slid down the back of her throat instead. In any case, the nosebleed didn’t last long.

  They carried Peter Skelm away. The door banged shut. Behind the glass, Zampana’s fingers dug into Swann’s left biceps, hard enough to bruise, as she exhaled a long, uncharacteristically soft obscenity. Swann, rigid, simply stared, his mouth a little open like he’d just had a good idea and was testing it inside his skull before letting it out to play.

  Spooky, still sprawled in the interrogator’s chair, smiled—a soft, pretty curve of thin lips, the flush dying and a faint sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead. She now had everything, willing or not, he could give during interrogation.

  It was getting easier.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Business from Gloria

  July 14, ’98

  “I need you,” Spooky said.

  Minneapolis Base, the complex of what had been the prewar Army and Air Force Reserve stations out on Federal Drive, had an actual enlisted bar set up, with cobbled-together pool tables and a flatscreen playing some wartime movie full of candy-colored girls dancing in a rosette. The Firsters had tried to make Florida into a new Hollywood, but the only movies McCoombs liked were Westerns. Hollywood, of course, kept right on keepin’ on, and musicals had turned out to be their biggest moneymaker. It was worth a stint in Re-Edukation to run pirated non-Firster DVDs in, or T-rent the movies over encryption.

  That was, if you were caught. Now both Hollywood and Florida were already making quickie movies about the surrender.

  For his money, though, Simmons preferred musicals. They were just easier to look at. You could let the colors and sounds wash over you, especially when you had a bellyful of bourbon burn.

  “What?” The Reaper blinked, blearily. “I’m on post, big man said.”

  That wasn’t all Swann had said, but Simmons had buttoned his mouth and taken it. If you were gonna follow a man into hell, the least you could do was sit still when he gave you a chewing out. Swann never went overboard with the toothing, which was partly why Sim had signed up with him. That, and the day at the ranch. The fire, and the screaming, and the choked sounds when their throats gave out or the smoke…

  When the raiders had melted out of the undergrowth, too late to help, it was Swann who said, We can make ’em hurt, big fella.

  But that was a fuck-all-no-thanks to think about, so it was bourbon for him, please and thank you. At least he didn’t have to suck down backwoods moonshine or engine cleaner anymore. No, if he wanted to blind himself, there was actual, real bourbon.

  The Army had benefits, now that the fucking surrender was done.

  Spooky, dead pale, ignored the noise from the wheezebox and the glances from male soldiers bellied up to the rankers’ bar. Some of the females gave her a going-over too, but her disinterest was palpable. Instead, she leaned closer to Simmons. “I need you,” she repeated.

  He almost asked For what, and almost added I don’t fuck where I eat, the first because it was the thing to say and the second because he had a hazy idea—more like a wish, really—that maybe she wanted to ride. Through the fumes of five doubles, their glasses lined up neatly in front of him because he snarled when the ’tender came to take them away, he rethought both things, and ended up just staring fishmouth at her, candysmoke haze riding knee-high in the bar. The new cigarettes wouldn’t give you fucking cancer, but the vapor from them sank instead of rising.

  Which was, Simmons thought, pretty much the story for the whole goddamn country over the last decade or so.

  It was difficult to believe this was the same girl he’d found sitting on a camp brothel bed. Instead of that terrible blankness behind her hazel-to-dark eyes, someone was home, and that someone had a fierce, watchful, hungry stare. Almost one he recognized.

  The only thing worse than seeing that thousand-yard look on another soldier was watching it in the mirror.

  Simmons contemplated the next double, sitting squat and amber in its misshapen glass in front of him. Then he considered Spooky, who just stood there silently, waiting for him to make up his mind or already expecting him to say Fuck it and go along for whatever she had planned.

  “Where you goin’?” he asked finally.

  Now it was her turn to make him wait, the brittle ends of her hair frizzing. Humidity was going up, the land of a thousand fucking lakes beginning to breed its thousand million mosquitoes, and summer thunderstorms were on their way, too. “Business,” she said. “From Gloria.”

  Well, there was only one thing that could mean. Simmons lifted the glass, tossed the bourbon far back. It stopped working so well after you took down too much of it over too long. Resistance, the science-heads said. Even your own body could fight shit off. There wasn’t ever any rest. It was one long battle until finally you took a plazma burst in the gut and ticky-tocks of morphine dripped into your veins.

  The Firsters would’ve already pulled the plug on the kid. No drag on the system, they said. Then there was the old way of putting it: useless eaters. Oh, they’d dressed it up, and they called it different things, but those motherfuckers were just the same shit from different days.

  It was no use. He wasn’t getting drunk enough. And the goddamn new medic—easier to call her that, mostly, since Zampana was the medic—just stood there, her birdlike shoulders sharp-rubbing through her green-gray fatigue jacket, like she was cold even in July. She was thicker than she had been, but when you started so far down, it took a while to even get to the bottom of normal. They didn’t have much in her size, so she made do with a tight belt and rolled-up sleeves.

  For a couple seconds Simms tried to imagine being that small and having a hole instead of a dick.

  It didn’t work. He cracked the empty shot glass down on the bar and waved away the bartender’s anxious look, digging in his pocket for writs. Spooky, however, already had a handful, counting them out with her thin spidery fingers, knuckles too big and her fingernails chewed back to raw pink crescents. She also gave the ’tender a tight, apologetic smile, ducking her head a little. It was more a grimace than anything cheerful, an approximation of politeness.

  “Don’t need no woman buying me drinks.” Simmons considered sweeping the empty glasses off the top of the bar, but Spooky already had his elbow with those clever, capable little paws.

  “I’m not,” she said, coaxing him along, a bossy tug chivvying a much larger battleship into port. “You’re getting the next round, after we come back.”

  That was good enough. Simmons concentrated on one foot in front of the other, and thought hazily that if Swann found out, they were both going to be b
ollocked. Maybe Spooky had a plan for that, maybe not.

  Outside, a thick summer dusk, purple skied and wet, pressed against every inch of exposed skin and dragged down every wrinkle in his fatigue jacket. From above, if you could get up there, the lakes would be blue-jewel compound eyes. Out in the woods, the skeeters were hatching in every still puddle. They’d get big enough to kidnap a small child. “Better be good,” he mumbled at Spooky. “Skeeters carry you off.”

  She didn’t reply, just took them down the pavement, her bony fingers pressing into his upper arm. Not hard, she didn’t have the strength for it, but he could still feel them. Did she think he was gonna try to escape, or was he weaving? Fuck no, he wasn’t weaving. He was steady, right down the line, goddammit.

  Even when he didn’t want to be.

  After two blocks, she pulled him to a stop next to a pea-vomit truck, the canvas on its back rent from shrapnel but its hood undamaged. The silver fangs of a kerro retrofit lurked on its grille, grinning their knowing little grin, and it had pads instead of wheels. “I’ve got a line on something.” She indicated the truck with a jerk of her head. “I’ve also got this. Maybe nothing; maybe a fucker there needs erasing.”

  “Shit, girl. Why else would you want me along?” It was only July, and it smelled like summer’s armpit. Fight and bleed halfway across the damn continent and end up in Minnesota. It was fucking insulting. The Great White Lutheran North, full of wax cheese binder and people who said Dontcha know and Uff da while they voted for McCoombs because he promised to keep the brown people in their place, cross his heart, hope they all die. The universities up here had died on the vine, too, after the student protests in ’93. Except the Firster ones.

  “Your charming personality?” A glimmer of her teeth.

  A kerro rumbled by, its pads flickering with static and its headlight beams slicing across a freshly repaired shell hole. Filled in, there was only a dip to show where explosive had torn through pavement, dirt, and anything else in its way. Were there atomized bits of human meat mixed in?

  Some of the mountain partisans had used horses. They could go places cars and kerros couldn’t, but when the shelling hit, the animals’ screams were enough to give a man nightmares.

  “Fuck that,” Simmons murmured. He checked his sidearm—of course, a raider didn’t go in unarmed, and they’d stopped trying to make the Blue Companies turn in their weapons. The knife was in his boot, right where it was supposed to be. “Anything good in there?”

  “Just us.” Spooky’s eyes narrowed as she peered up at him, maybe blinded by the splash of headlights, maybe not. “If you’re coming.”

  He shook his head, though that made the entire world reel for a few minutes before the cursed, awful sobriety came back, sour sweat prickling in his armpits and a hideous mineral taste of blood touching the back of his mouth. “If there’s killin’, I’m in.”

  “There might be nobody there.”

  Christ, he hoped it wouldn’t turn out that way. “Then you owe me another fucking drink.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Get Your Hands Dirty

  With the preliminaries over and the “Sorry for your soldier” dispensed with too, Buckley got right down to business. He was higher on the ladder than Crunche or Proustinek and knew it, a bullet-headed quasi-martinet who wore his uniform loose and his watch a little too tight, the edges of its scaled metal band digging into his brawny, hairy wrist. “How many is this?”

  For all that, Buckley was almost good folk. His office was spartan and rigidly organized, but he didn’t give Crunche—or the raiders, by extension—a hard time. This gave Swann some comfort, even though he suspected he was going to get a bollocking for Simmons and his goddamn temper.

  At the same time, there was nothing else the Reaper could have done and kept some self-respect. Refusing to stand by while Firsters and assorted other bigots shat on everyone around was how a raider got into this whole fuckhole in the first place. So Swann contented himself with a nod and a bare statement of fact. “Five, sir.”

  The shades and blinds were drawn tight against a heavy-breathing summer evening, the office door was half open, and another man sat in an armchair near an empty bookshelf—a youngish Italian-looking fellow with shoulders not as wide as Simmons’s. His stripes said captain, and the way he wore his fatigues said he’d earned them. His face was mostly nose, with a couple of raw dark eyes, the kind always looking weepy and pink rimmed even if the owner was a tough fucker. His hands lay discarded on his knees, left one cupped over his folded hat, bent fingers the only part of him not completely military. A line of scarring ran across his left knuckles. Looked like a burn; he was lucky to still have the digits.

  Swann had a couple ideas why this man was sitting there. Neither of them were exactly comforting.

  “Good work.” Buckley bobbed his bullet head, staring at the papers spread before him. Confirmed captures, four of them. The fifth, a confirmed kill.

  Swann shook his head slightly. “Too slow.” And how did Chuck feel? The man had slogged through hell fighting the Firsters, and he couldn’t even drink in peace. Too slow was only the beginning; they’d signed the surrender too goddamn early. Should have burned every fucking Firster city off the map, dumped every surviving fuckhat into their own killing bottles and bath bays, and started fresh.

  Except it was the kind of thinking, on the other side, that started this whole mess of shit and blood and mud and death.

  “Your close rate’s good. Pretty phenomenal.” The West Point ring on Buckley’s left hand—married only to the service, it looked like—gleamed dully. At least he didn’t rap the fucker against the desktop. “About your team…”

  Swann waited. Christ, he hated this petty back-and-forth. It didn’t help that he was good at it, and as much of a free agent as could be expected in this shit-sucking world. Finally, though, he bit. “What about ’em?”

  “Well, you know, a close rate like this…higher up is wondering about inside information.” Buckley dipped his chin slightly, twice, still shuffling through the papers, not looking up.

  Swann gazed at him for a few moments, mildly, deciding whether or not to consider that offensive. It was a close call. “We raiders got our methods, sir.” What would this spit and polish say if he’d seen what Swann had—a skinny woman in a too-big uniform, just staring at the Butcher of Pilgrim until the skeletal, twitching son of a bitch started to howl like a lunatic?

  “Sure.” Buckley nodded, spreading his hands as if to apologize. “But we’d like to embed a fellow with you to study your methods. Some of our other teams, they could use a little help.”

  “A watchdog.” Swann had to work to say it flatly, calmly. Now he was glad he hadn’t acted insulted before, because the time to do so was now.

  “A liaison, Swann. Captain Hendrickson here is highly decorated.” He indicated the young fellow in the armchair, who popped to his feet like he was on springs.

  Swann barely glanced at him. “We don’t take to outsiders.” Outsiders, because he was too polite to say spies. Anyone who knew their ass from a hole in the ground should have grasped that right away. When you operated behind enemy lines, strangers were worse than a liability.

  “Sir? If I may?” Hendrickson was a bright-eyed boy. Straight-backed, clean-shaven, and far too young for this kind of work. “Captain Swann, sir, I worked with raiders. Kellogg’s group, in Missouri.”

  Oh, yeah, Swann knew about her. “Kicker Kellogg. You know she crucified Firsters? Right up on telephone poles.”

  “Yessir.” Even though they were technically the same rank, Hendrickson had the sense to use his manners. The youth now held his folded hat at the regulation angle, in that scarred left hand. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I…I don’t blame her.”

  Now that was interesting. “Why not?” Swann turned a little, planting his feet and regarding the young fellow closely for the first time. Someone coughed in the hallway outside—Zampana, from the way the sound caught in the middle; she
hated giving her position away. It was probably hard for her to stand out there, wondering how Swann was doing in the lion’s den. Let me in there, she’d said. Can be the bad cop this time.

  But Swann was where the buck stopped, and if there was a shoutdown, he would be the one to take it.

  Hendrickson met his gaze squarely. “I know what they did to her wife, sir.”

  Swann nodded thoughtfully. “Lotta rumors about that.”

  “Not rumor. I was there when she found her.” Another convulsive movement in his throat. “There, ah, wasn’t a lot left. We ID’d her from her dress. And her wedding ring.”

  That wasn’t the whole story, not as far as Swann had heard, but it was close, and about all that could be said about that kind of business. “You ever get your hands dirty, son?”

  “Dirty enough.” The way his eyelids flickered and that left hand tensed, it might even be true.

  Swann wished he had his own hat. Something to throttle would be mighty welcome. “You come in, you be lower than a private. Any of my crew tell you to jump you don’t even ask how high, you just bust your ass doin’ as high as you can. You all right with that?”

  “Yessir.” Hendrickson didn’t glance at Buckley. That was interesting. Dollars to doughnuts the boy had been briefed beforehand. “I’m no watchdog, sir. Unless it’s to watch how you do it so I can show some of our teams how to catch ’em quicker.”

  Our teams. It could have meant the Army’s teams, leaving the raiders out. Or it could have been a sign that he lumped himself in with the raiders. Really fraternizing of him.

  Swann’s hands itched to close into fists. He didn’t let them, just nodded and looked at Buckley. “Anything else, sir?” There was a way to make the honorific as dead and disrespectful as possible, and Swann came close. He didn’t like this one goddamn bit.