Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  He was sitting that way, she realized, to make himself smaller. Less threatening. He wanted her to dive into Minjae’s deck and give him something.

  Spooky fidgeted once, twice, settling herself inside her skin. Examined him, from his floppy-topped short-on-the-sides black hair to his boots—not shiny anymore, full of dust. He’d been out to the wreckage of the sled. A faint odor of burning clung to his uniform. His dark eyes were bloodshot, but unlike Simmons, he didn’t reek of unstable alcohol and colorless agony.

  Still, Spooky decided, she preferred the Reaper.

  Hendrickson waited, his broad coppery face set. So did she. If she was silent long enough, he’d start. Most people didn’t know what to do with quiet; they had to break it. Like fresh-fallen snow, someone had to trudge across it just because it was there.

  She concentrated on her breath. If she did that, sank into her body, it muted the chaos outside. Focusing on one sensation made the others fall back. Lara would have been fascinated, full of ideas to test and verify.

  I’m Lara.

  She hunched even further. No. No. She was Spooky.

  It was getting easier to remember.

  When Hendrickson did finally speak, it wasn’t what she’d expected. “I’m not here to hurt you, Spooky. Or is it Anna? Which do you prefer?”

  She shrugged. It didn’t matter; both names were merely slips of ident paper attached to a ghost. Her arms tightened.

  “I’m here to help.” He leaned forward, elbows braced on knees, shoulders rounded even further. If it was uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. “Okay? I want to help you.”

  He was a Federal, which made it just one step above what usually happened when a Firster offered to “help.” Like a big-shouldered blond man staring at her in the quarry, and a small hateful tickle in her head.

  “You want X-Ray.” Whatever that was. It was always so confusing and piecemeal, the flashes, even when they were hypercolor saturated and sharp-edged. Pouring yourself into someone else’s skin took time. Distinguishing what was useful or true from what was self-image or just assumption took energy she didn’t have right now.

  He didn’t move. “Orders aren’t what a soldier wants, Spooky. You know that.”

  Maybe he was right. Orders were just what they followed, whether they thought it was a good idea or not. That was fine for the black-beetle Patriots, the Firsters, and even the Federals. Raiders, though…they were different.

  Weren’t they?

  It smelled of dust and sun-warmed plastic in here, with a faint edge of moss baking to death. They’d dragged this hut from somewhere rainy, and it remembered. Spooky pushed herself upright, her arms still wrapped tightly, digging her fingers in. “X-Ray’s your orders, then.” Her head began to ache, right in the middle of her brain. No nerve supply there, so was it psychosomatic? It wasn’t the only thing that hurt. Shoulders and knees, her neck—all from the sled’s whirling.

  He finally straightened, the I won’t hurt you posture sliding away. “Huh. Fine.” The chair scraped as he turned it, and he opened Minjae’s laptop carefully. “You gonna give me anything to go on in here, or—”

  Voices echoed outside, in the long hall running down the center of the Quonset. “…shady motherfucker,” Simmons finished, twisting the doorknob viciously and sweeping it open. “Shouldn’t leave him alone with—Hey, Spooky.” He limped through the door, his outline fuzzing with that same sullen, cold almost-hatred.

  Her relief might have shown if Baylock, then Gloria, hadn’t taught her to keep her expression neutral. Her face was a mask, and the watchful animal behind it curled up a little tighter.

  Zampana, working a hefty black bobby pin free to resettle one of her braids, bumped into Simmons to get him to speed up. “Spook, I need an extra finger or two. Move your ass, Reaper.”

  “Oh, the jokes just write themselves.” Chuck Dogg piled behind her, but his wan smile dropped completely away when he saw the table, the laptop—and Hendrickson. “What the fuck you doin’, man?”

  “Looking for—” Hendrickson started, but Chuck had already shoved Pana aside and was bearing down on him, the crutch jabbing the floor between long strides. He’d be all right—the norpirene would see to that—but still, he shouldn’t be up and moving.

  “Don’t fucking touch her stuff,” Chuck growled. He’d found red thread and attended to his afro, this time tying off a few hanks over his left temple. “You hear me, boy? You don’t fucking touch Min’s stuff!”

  Swann, his eyes swollen and his nose a mess, trailed through the door. Even Sal was walking funny. A collection of bruises, pulled muscles, bodies crying out for rest and good food and maybe even some sleep unbroken by aches. The tighter the group got, the more Spooky could tell who hurt where.

  “Aw, shit,” Simmons began. “Chuck, man—”

  Hendrickson’s chair legs scraped the cheap vinyl flooring again, hard. He backed away from the table, and it might have gotten ugly if not for Chuck’s crutch slowing him down.

  Spooky took two steps. Her head only came up to Chuck’s chest, but he stopped on a dime, almost overbalancing.

  “You’re gonna have to work her deck, then,” she said quietly. “If we’re gonna get him. The scientist.” The doctor.

  “Shitfire.” Zampana’s lip lifted, her hands still working at her freshly trimmed and rebraided hair. “That your vote, Spookster? We keep running this fucker down?”

  Like there was a choice? Spooky didn’t reply, staring up into Chuck’s face. Traces of bruising lingered on his cheeks, and his stubble was as fierce as Swann’s bristling scalp. She didn’t push, or spill out of her skin and into his. She just watched him. When his mouth crumpled, hers did too, and slowly, Chuck leaned forward. Spooky held his gaze, and she stood very still as his forehead touched hers. Gently, so gently.

  Swann arrived softly at Chuck’s shoulder. “We ain’t got to decide anything just yet.”

  “Oh, I decided.” Chuck’s pupils had turned hot, blurry because he was so close. “Motherfucker flew us right over the riot—”

  “There wasn’t any other way to go.” Swann’s weight shifted. “They put him on that approach. Right, Sal?”

  “Heard it myself,” the Greek confirmed.

  “You seein’ the snakes, my friend,” Swann continued. “Okay? Settle down.”

  Chuck leaned on the crutch. “It ain’t right,” he said mutinously. “It ain’t right.”

  “No, it ain’t,” Simmons said, just like he had during Second Cheyenne. “It ain’t, and ain’t ever gonna be.”

  It was Zampana who moved close and put her arms around Chuck, then Spooky. Gingerly, Swann hugged the three of them as far as he could reach, and Simmons—sour-sweet alcohol fumes sliding off his skin—did too. Sal was last, resting his face against Swann’s biceps, his knee behind Zampana’s. Hendrickson, closed outside the breathing circle of body odor and pain, said nothing. He looked away, at the half-open Quonset door and the simmering sunlight outside.

  Ninety seconds of dead silence, then Chuck moved, and they became individual raindrops again, clear and tight inside their watery surface tension. Spooky was pale, and her throat worked. She edged for the door, Zampana heel-and-toeing after her, one of the older woman’s braids coming loose.

  “Come on, man.” Simmons beckoned Hendrickson. “Come on.”

  They left Chuck with Minjae’s deck. Swann was the last, and before he shut the door he glanced back.

  Chuck, his head in his hands, sat in Hendrickson’s chair, the laptop open and its blank, innocent screen bathing him in blue light that fought with the fall of sunshine. It made ticking sounds as it booted up.

  Swann closed the door gently, and settled down to wait.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Listen to Reason

  It was warm, and full of the scent of a dark-haired woman. Right at the nape, where you could brush the hair aside and move your lips gently over shivering, creamy skin. Even though she was skinny, once you pushed aside the harsh oran
ge of the camp uniforms she looked…soft. Like you could dip your finger into the curve of her hip and come away with something delicious—a serving of whipped cream. Soft except for the chapping on her hands from the quarry work. He’d brought her rationed, expensive coconut oil to smooth, working it between her fingers, pretending she actively liked the touch instead of suffering it, her chin turned away except for when he gave the command.

  Look at me. Smile.

  And she would. Each time, without exception.

  The warmth drained away, though. With it went the memory, and a fuzzy thought rose. Why, out of all the women he had access to, had he chosen a kampog? A scrap of dark, frizzing hair and hazel eyes, who barely spoke except for when he demanded it? Who never once put her hands around his neck unless he told her to?

  In the quarry. That afternoon. Why, in God’s name, had he even bothered, instead of shooting her? Or letting her bolt for Suicide Alley and the electrified fence? There was a reward and furlough for catching a kampog attempting “escape.” It was even a game, to throw one of their headrags or a crust of dense WonderAmerika soybread and watch them try to resist obedience or hunger. Or both. Go get it, pog!

  Gene moved restlessly. A clanking noise, and his left arm was arrested halfway through the motion. So was his right. Light danced and dilated, and the heavy, strange feeling that something was not quite right poured through him and away. He vaguely remembered an iron bedstead, unfamiliar but necessary because…

  Fever. He’d had a fever, right?

  A shadow drifted over him, prairie light blocked. It wasn’t a cloud; it was a man.

  The doctor, with his long nose and funhouse smile, teeth and eyes both gleaming.

  “Oh, hello,” the doctor said. The words stretched out, long and deep, time and sound not behaving the way they should. “Don’t worry, my friend. You’re doing very well, all things considered. Very well indeed.”

  There was a tapping. That weird clanging noise didn’t stop when Gene tried to move. His arms kept getting jerked short of what he wanted. There was a sharp stink of urine, and the sensation that something was not very well, that it had gone pretty fucking bad, and he was too goddamn drugged to realize it.

  “Shhh, now.” The doctor leaned over him, another funhouse distortion turning him into an insect in a plaid sports jacket, claws clacking and compound eyes refracting. The gleam in his hairy black bug-hands was a syringe. “A little more rest will do you good.”

  Gene struggled, but it was no use. A sharp pinch, another wave of that clinging, cloying warmth, and the doctor turned into her, leaning over him in a soylon slip and smiling just a little.

  Don’t worry, she said, her full underlip moving with the words. Her mouth, it was so pretty. Everything’s going to be fine, Gene.

  Which she had never called him. Just sir. Because she was a kampog. Sometimes, though, he’d fantasized…

  Let me help you, Gene. Let me take the pain away.

  It wasn’t until he woke up six hours later that he realized why his left arm felt so funny.

  It was shorter. Just a little bit.

  Just a handspan.

  “You son of a bitch!” The subject raved, and tossed, but Johnson had him well strapped down, right arm at the wrist, left arm at the elbow. The bedstead rocked a little, but it was quality construction; they didn’t make beds like they used to. “What did you do to me? What did you do?”

  “Saved your life.” Johnson’s nose wrinkled. “The wound was already septic. Everything below it had to go.” Really, the idiot should have known better than to question a doctor, but he didn’t seem too overblessed in the decorum department. It was fascinating, even if depressing. Once they became subjects, they tended to lose all sense of decency. Johnson sometimes wondered at it, and concluded that Science, being a harsh mistress, liked to test her apostles. To retain one’s faith in the midst of spitting, cursing foulness took a certain intestinal fortitude. “You should be thanking me.”

  “My hand,” the young Patriot whimpered, his blue eyes like poached eggs rolling, rolling. “My fucking hand!”

  “You still have the right. Your dominant.” Johnson shook his head. The iron bedstead rattled again, but there was little chance of the subject getting loose. “Your dominant, and I should think, your masturbatory. There’s no reason to complain.” He should have kept the subject catheterized; the loss of bladder control was faintly disgusting.

  Fieldwork was always a little messy, though.

  Great drops of clear sweat plastered corn-gold hair to the soldier’s forehead, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot. Even a few days of bed rest had melted muscle from his frame. He thrashed again, and Johnson clicked his tongue. “You’ll only tire yourself out. We have a long way to go.”

  “You fucker!” was the only reply. Johnson sighed, eyed the restraints once more, and plodded away to check on the truck. Once he put the battery back in and let it run for a little bit, they should be in shape for the next leg of the journey.

  It was a long way to Boise. That was as close as his contacts could get, the situation being what it was. The situation wasn’t ideal, but he could test a fraction of the precious XR editing serum he had left on the subject. He hadn’t decided yet. There wasn’t enough for a full treatment, not if he wanted to retain some of it for insurance, and he had no access to anything but jury-rigged electroshock to start the gene cascades.

  Eggs in one basket was a shitty way to run anything, but especially an experiment.

  With the battery safely seated and the truck belching and burping to charge it, he went into the kitchen and looked through the rations they had left. You could drive to Boise in a day before the war, but now things were likely to be a bit more difficult. The Rockies were in the way, as well as the Stokes Border. Just because the Federals had won didn’t mean they would dismantle the checkpoints or the Demilitarized Zone. There was a safe route through Bozeman, but it was up to him to get there.

  Upstairs, the soldier yelled and thrashed. He’d tire out soon enough and begin to feel a few pangs. Johnson had plenty of opioids, knowing they would be worth a lot in trade. It had become habit to squirrel such things away for a rainy day, even in the first weeks of the war when he was just finishing his work for BernaDyne Pharma. And hadn’t that been exciting indeed.

  The drugs would also keep the soldier’s appetite down. He’d have to watch carefully for more signs of infection, but norpirene was indeed wonderful stuff. Out of the woods, the stump would heal well, and if the subject knew what was good for him, he would listen to reason.

  If he didn’t, Johnson thought, slowly unwrapping a raspberry protein bar as he gazed out the window over acres of prairie sod, pressure on the recent surgical site could be utilized to enforce compliance.

  So could withdrawal.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  What We Were Fighting

  July 28, ’98

  They propped the doors open to bring a warm breeze inside the hospital Quonset. A chorus of shuffling and low conversation filled it to the roof, but as 1700 approached, a couple of orderlies wheeled out a cart with a flatscreen lashed precariously to its thin metal top. Trailing power cords, it dragged and squeaked to a mostly central position; plugging it in produced a low hum and a prickle of expectation.

  When Long Joanna’s mournful face came on, her brunette bob shimmering under studio lights, a weak cheer rippled through the room. The face of the Federal Forces News was a little older now, a little more worn, and never possessed the high gloss of Firster talking heads on the propaganda whirl of ROXNEWS. Blonde, skinny, and big-eyed, the ROX girls had sagged visibly all through the war, as if the crap they spewed distorted them from the inside. They were replaced, one after another, and rumor had it McCoombs kept a harem of the leftovers just a few doors down Pennsylvania Avenue for days when the strain of governing grew too heavy.

  But good old Long Joanna was still going, and she gave them the same tired, louche-mouth smile. “Good evening, e
veryone. Welcome to the FFN’s Dinner Hour.”

  They’d tried to replace her once or twice, but each time a howl of protest had gone up from the troops and they had to put her back on the air. Even the faint Los Angeles flavor to her speech was much admired. Now that’s a real fine forty-eight, they told each other, for the section in the codes that gave a soldier furlough to get married. She wouldn’t go behind a man’s back. No Dear John letters from Long Joanna, no sir.

  As usual, she got right to it. There was an epidemic of whooping cough and diphtheria sweeping the South. Since the Firsters had been anti-vaccination, that was hardly a surprise. The northern borders of Tennessee and North Carolina were being held in force, and patrols along the Mississippi were shooting rafts full of fleeing people unless they were immie-colored. New Orleans, miraculously left unburned, was jammed full of former plantation workers who had first priority to be brought out by the truck- and gleeson-load. If you didn’t have a shade of black or brown, a star-shaped scar, or a plantation tag, you were out of luck. There were even some coastal refugees on makeshift boats trying to make it through the Cuba Embargo.

  Which showed history had a sense of humor, maybe. A bleak, black sense.

  “Leave the fuckin’ South rot for a few years,” one pale, walleyed soldier, his leg in a cast all the way to his hip and half his blond head shaved, muttered. “Let all the cracker Firsters die off.”

  A general murmur of assent went up, only slightly less audible from those viewers who had people over the border. Chuck Dogg, reclined with his own leg held up on a gantry-like thing so the norpirene wouldn’t smear off his calf, lit a candy. Minjae’s deck, balanced on the mini-table over his bed, was open, and he barely glanced at the news. Zampana, checking Hendrickson’s arm, peered over her shoulder. Spooky, cross-legged on Sal’s bed, watched as the Greek cleaned and sharpened his hairstyling shears, going over them and other tools with finicky precision. The repetitive movements were soothing, and so was his soft running commentary, but that petered out as the newscast got under way.