Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Long Joanna continued about a small food riot in Arkansas, another larger one in Nebraska. Crews working overtime to get the rail and road systems repaired so goods could begin to flow again. A Firster patrol, taking a page out of the raider book, had been caught near Saint Paul. All six of its members were to be tried by a military court.

  That was when the first real, grainy footage of New York began coming out.

  The skyline was still there, but the bridges were wrecked. The fires were still going, roaming and ravening unchecked. Drones sent in to look for survivors found only…strange things, misshapen hulks of tissue that struck out blindly as they slouch-slumped through the smoke-choked streets. There were other glimpses—a man running, on fire but curiously unburned, screaming and whipping gobbets of orange flame off his wildly gesturing hands. Another one, ripping at his shirt while bony spikes tore outward through his back and legs. There was no audio, but you could almost hear the cries. A woman stood atop a burning building, her arms spread, and leaped, appendages on her back working furiously but not hard enough to keep her from meeting the pavement twelve stories below—and, amazingly, she staggered upright afterward, tacking off drunkenly down a garbage-choked Brooklyn avenue.

  “These images are not doctored,” Long Joanna said, heavily. “The last act of the Firster government was to release some type of biological weapon on New York, and these are the results. The mutations are quick, and those not immediately fatal are, from what we can see, excruciatingly painful. New York is gone, my friends.” Her bloodshot eyes narrowed, and her mouth firmed. “The entire metro area is being contained, and the victims inside quarantined until the nature and type of the biohazard can be determined. A joint Federal and Canadian task force has upstate New York under control at the present time.”

  “Wow,” someone breathed. “Look at that shit.”

  “I heard about this,” said someone else. “Mutants. They were making ’em. Farting around with genes.”

  “The weapon used in New York was, we are told, the result of human experimentation in the Reklamation and ReEdukation camps.” Long Joanna paused. When she continued, her husky, pleasant voice had lowered slightly, and she had to force the words out. “The footage we’re about to show is extremely disturbing, but Federal Forces News believes you should know just what we were fighting. I can only say, if you are a sensitive viewer, you might want to look away.”

  The Quonset hospital went still. Blue light from the flatscreen bathed nearby faces. Sheets and blankets shifted. One of the orderlies, a wide-shouldered kid with a scarred cheek, stood scratching at his left forearm, staring at the moving, flickering images. “Oh God,” he whispered. He had a snubbed nose and freckles, and for a few moments he looked very much like Lazy Eye.

  Only Zampana noticed that particular resemblance, her hands on either side of Hendrickson’s left elbow as she craned to see the flatscreen. The images were pitiless, filming adding depth and texture. Hendrickson pitched forward a little to see past her, and what he glimpsed made his gorge rise.

  Spooky, her pupils dilating, slithered off Sal’s bed with dream slowness and rose, staring at the flatscreen as well. It blocked the view of the bandaged soldier on the bed behind them, and he let out a sobbing, unconscious sound of relief. Her eyes round and her head cocked, she dropped a roll of ACE bandage she’d been winding. It hit the ground with a flutter.

  Shaky but crystal clear, the camera focused down a long hall, hospital beds on either side bearing shrouded, misshapen bodies. “—Camp Baylock,” Long Joanna said. “This footage was smuggled out in the last days of the war, and acquired at great personal danger by FFN reporters—”

  The camera shuddered, the screen went black. When it came back, the footage focused on a child. A girl of about eleven, with a solemn monkeyface bespeaking malnutrition, held her hands up. Rudimentary sixth fingers wiggled on both, and as the girl spread them, her starveling face contorted. The camera panned away, showing the object of her scrutiny—a glass beaker on a small, flimsy table. The girl’s profile twisted afresh, and a thin bead of blood—black because the screen’s color mix was off—slid from one nostril.

  The beaker shattered, and the girl’s mouth dropped wide in a soundless scream. A white-jacketed orderly with Patriot pips on his sleeve rushed in and was thrown back, an invisible fist socking him squarely in the gut. The camera spun away, showing a whole ward of emaciated children, watching apathetically. Most had bandaged heads, sterigauze glaring white.

  “I must warn sensitive viewers again,” Long Joanna said.

  The White Room. Spooky’s lips shaped the words, but nobody was looking. Instead, spellbound, they stared at the flatscreen, even Chuck pulled out of his concentration.

  It was replayed over and over again in the weeks afterward, the FFN chyron reading ORIGINAL IMAGES—NOT ALTERED scrolling across the bottom. Everywhere it was shown to civilians no few people vomited, and at least one passed out. Plenty of the soldiers turned green, and the young floppy-haired orderly ran for the door, almost not making it before he blew chunks.

  Growths all over helpless, naked, skeletal bodies. Eyes bulging and bleeding, scalpels wielded. Seizures coursing through a woman’s body as she was held down and a syringe was plunged into either arm, a thick liquid forced into her veins. Blood, bile, a pile of still-twitching corpses, one or two in scraps of papery hospital johnnies, all of them disfigured and deformed. A grafting surgery, masked doctors sewing a blackened hand onto the stump of a man’s arm while his eyes rolled and he screamed, obviously not anesthetized.

  “Turn it off,” someone said, thickly. “For God’s sake, turn it off.”

  Nobody moved. Long Joanna’s face came back. “I regret to say there is even more disturbing footage from the Baylock camp. Captured along with it were several drives of badly wormed data, which are now publicly available on the FFN website and mirrored on the DOR network so the world can see the crimes committed by former dictator McCoombs and his so-called Patriots.” Her gaze swung away from the camera, and scuffling sounds came from offscreen, as well as voices. “We were asked not to air this, but after so many years of bearing your public trust, I felt we could not remain silent. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We’re being forced off the air now. Thank you, goodni—”

  The ’cast cut off, the screen went dark. Outside, the orderly could be heard retching.

  “Holy shit.” A sergeant with thick, sturdy plaster on her arm and dreads just beginning to come in since they had relaxed the buzz restrictions shook her head. “Holy fucking shit.”

  Spooky was already heading for the door. Her shadow in the sunshine wavered, and she pushed past the vomiting orderly into thick sunshine. Her own retches echoed, but she didn’t slow down.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  An Upgrade

  July 29, ’98

  Swann, a dark crumpled shape in his left hand, palmed the hospital Quonset door open, lengthening his stride. “Riders!” he bellowed, and no few of the soldiers in the hospital jerked out of a doze or outright sleep, reaching for a missing weapon. “Saddle up!”

  Zampana, stretched out flat on her back, slammed into wakefulness, the jolt wringing a groan out of her. She’d stiffened up. Chuck Dogg thrashed, the gantry thing holding his leg wobbling, before Sal, who had been sitting reading a funnybook, got him free and found his crutch. Simmons was already out of bed, tightening and tying his loose-laced boots with quick jerks. “Where’s the Spook?” the Reaper barked.

  “Johnny Fed’s got her,” Swann replied. “We’re leaving in five. Get everything you need.”

  “What is it?” Zampana, wrapping her braids around her head, dug in a pocket for the long black bobby pins that had seen her through the war. “Swann?”

  “Got a flimsy—they’ve pinged that motherfucker. Get scrambled, we’re due at the landing pad.”

  “Oh Christ,” Chuck moaned. “Not another sled.” He hopped to the end of his bed, scooping up Minjae’s deck case; Sal grabbed Chuck
’s duffel and his own.

  One of the orderlies, a rangy blonde sergeant, bustled up. “People are trying to sleep!” she hissed.

  “Sorry.” Swann sounded not very sorry at all. “We’ve got a Firster motherfucker to catch.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be out of your hair in a hot minute, chica.” Zampana grabbed her bags—duffel in one hand, medic’s hip sling in the other. “Sim! Help Chuck.”

  “I got his bag.” Sal all but hopped from foot to foot. “Flimsy? The doctor?”

  “Not here, asshole.” Swann, his scalp glowing through his gray buzz cut, squinted at the door. “Get moving, let’s go.”

  A warm, breathing just-past-midnight enfolded them, Simmons all but carrying Chuck and his crutch. Sal swore as he moved, a familiar song from other hurried exits, patrols breathing on their necks, someone’s nerves twitching, uneasy.

  Swann shook out what he was carrying. “He’s in the Dakotas. Got some sort of ping. We ain’t the only ones after him.”

  “Duh.” Zampana, breathless, ducked through her medic-bag strap. “Other raiders?”

  “Nope. The fucking Russians. And God knows who else.” Swann stuck a candy in his mouth, chomping the filter viciously.

  “What?” Both Simms and Chuck said it, a harmony that would have been funny in another situation.

  “Fucking New Soviet fucks.” Swann chewed on the candy filter. “It was all over the flimsy. Johnson’s been selling to them for years, I guess. He’s supposed to strike west. We’re gonna pick up the trail and slide one step ahead.”

  “West? Why…Oh.” Zampana exhaled sharply, her boots crunching gravel. “Seattle?”

  “Maybe. Got to get through the DMZ first.”

  Simmons hauled Chuck along with a grunt. “Why not north? Canada, Alaska.”

  “Might be able to get into Canada, but good luck shoving into Alaska.” Swann would’ve sounded outright happy to have a direction to run if his entire body wasn’t aching so badly. “Border there’s locked up tighter than a whore’s cashbox.”

  “Russians.” Sal almost spat, visibly thought better of it.“Ain’t they done enough?”

  Zampana’s dry fox-laugh echoed through the wet darkness. “Well, you know, it could be worse. Could be the Chinese.”

  “They’re fighting the Russians, though.” Chuck sucked in a breath as his leg was jostled. “Ain’t they?”

  Swann’s boots ground into gravel. The candy was a shredded mass against his teeth; he spat it and grabbed another, remembering to light this one. “Not our problem, and doesn’t mean they don’t want to fuck with us for extra credit. Anyway, that’s what’s up.”

  “Christ. Can I at least pee before we go?” Zampana didn’t think much of this.

  Swann jammed the dark blot in his hand onto his head. It was a new hat, a felted slouch number. No feather. It was, no use denying it, kind of a relief to them all to see his head covered. The adrenaline and high singing awareness of danger, time to move, take only weapons and what you can carry, zing-popped through each raider.

  “You can pee aboard, Pana.” Now, and for the first time in a long while, Swann sounded grimly amused. “Johnny Fed got us an upgrade.”

  Long and sleek, with raked-back lines and active cells glowing along its underside, the new sled was much bigger—and much quieter—than anything they’d seen before. “What the fuck?” Sim pulled up short, which meant Chuck had to as well.

  A skinny Federal pilot in a mottled greenish flight suit poked her sleek black head out the side hatch, over a set of folding iron stairs that looked too delicate for real use. “That you, Captain, sir?” A high, sweet, very young voice, piercing the evening. The whites of her eyes were startling, and so were her small perfect teeth, except the missing canine.

  Pana halted, too. “No. No thank you.” She shook her head. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Driver.” Swann didn’t bark at them to hurry. “Came with the package.”

  “Don’t even look old enough to jill off,” Chuck weighed in, the red-tied hanks at his temple bouncing as he shook his head. “She gonna drive us over a goddamn riot, too?”

  Swann didn’t bother repeating that had been a mistake, so stop fucking mentioning it. “Advanced prototype. Feds been workin’ on this down in New Mexico for the entire war. Hendrickson pulled a few strings; someone’s ass is gonna get busted for giving us an old sled when this was available. It was supposed to meet us two bases ago.”

  “And it has a shitter aboard?” The way Sal said it, that was the overriding consideration. Maybe it was.

  Swann headed for the hatch, his boots crunching on gravel before he hopped onto the concrete landing pad. “It’s us, Ngombe. Hendrickson in there with you?”

  “Yessir, and the medic, sir. She’s, uh, sir, she’s throwing up, sir.”

  “Spooky?” Zampana shoved past Swann. “Shit. Still?”

  “Sir?” Ngombe, now visible in the backwash glow of the cells, had a small, squished-in face on a head too large for it. Her dark woolly buzz cut, plastered down with heavy sheencream, only added to the smushed factor. Her smile was electric, and her eyes danced. “Is that everyone, sir?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Simms glanced at Chuck. Sweat stood out on his pale forehead, and his blue eyes were bloodshot. “They just get this kid out of basic?”

  “Not our problem,” Swann reminded them, not bothering to explain. “You comin’?”

  “Long as she don’t smash us,” Chuck said. He was sweating too, but whether it was from effort or the idea of getting back on a piece of flying iron was debatable. “Simms?”

  “Fine.” The Reaper hauled him forward. “You crash us, you little fuck, and Imma cut you’ arms off.”

  “Sir?” the driver squeaked, and Sal’s thin laugh was lost in the quiet, powerful humming of the Z-Stat 32 prototype.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Human Rockets

  Spooky heaved again into the galvanized bucket Hendrickson held. She was producing nothing but bile, and her stomach wouldn’t quit trying to turn her inside out. She barely knew she was on another sled, weightlessness as it rose setting off another round of retching.

  Then Zampana was next to her, the older woman’s hand on her back, and the heaving stopped all at once. “Easy, chica.” Pana peeled up the closest of Spooky’s eyelids, then used her thumb to scrape back sweat-slick hair.

  “Found her halfway to the fugee camp,” Hendrickson said. “Almost had to tackle her. Got her cleaned up, but she can’t stop yarking.”

  “Electrolytes.” Pana dug in her bag. The gold crucifix at her neck glittered, not tucked below her shirt. “Shit. I need—”

  “There’s pouches in the med cabinet. I’m on it.” The dark-haired Fed rose in one swift smooth motion, and Pana’s sudden, ruthlessly quelled realization that they were in a sled again, and furthermore unbuckled, spilled through Spooky’s aching, wide-open skull, threatening to bring up another round of retching.

  She had to keep her self inside herself, but it was hard. So hard, and she was tired. Finally, Spooky sagged in the jumpseat, head hanging, shivering like a tired horse. Her clothes were damp—she hadn’t even used a towel after the shower Hendrickson dumped her into. “S-s-s-sorry…” she began.

  “Shhhhh,” Zampana soothed. Stray strands of black hair floated around her face, worked free of her hasty braids. “It was the newscast, wasn’t it.”

  “Baylock,” Spooky moaned. “Baaaaaaaaylock.”

  Hendrickson’s boots clanged. His hair was wet too; he’d held her under the shower like she was a kid who hated bathing, rinsing away vomit splatters. Now he had a whole armful of electrolyte pouches, their foil shining in the pitiless glare from gleeson-fed overhead lights. “What flavor? Cherry, grape—”

  “Unflavored.” Pana snatched one from the selection, popped its bubble, and thumbed the straw out, all with one dexterous brown hand. The sled leveled, Swann talking to the young pilot in a monotone—bearing, speed, altitude double-checked. “Here, Spo
ok. Just a sip, no more.”

  “Baylock,” she moaned again. “The kids. White room. Little kids.” Experimental Ward D was right next to the White Room, and the screams came through the wall each afternoon when testing time rolled around. Strapped to a gurney and rolled past the room toward the electroshock bays, you could hear some of the kids sobbing, or—even worse—the deathly silence when the doctors, marked by their pristine white lab coats and their ubiquitous cotton breathing masks, came through.

  Spooky could smell it again. Disinfectant, shit, pain, and the sick-sweet exhalation of the killing bottles. Which was where you were bound after they finished experimenting on you, and the fumes soaked into every part of the camp except the fields of growing tobacco or sweet potato. Maybe she was strapped down, and this was a hallucination after the electroshock.

  Don’t worry. Lara’s face over hers. I’ll take the pain.

  Sal groaned, too. “Shit,” he whispered, uneasy with the clutch of gravity and the sled’s slipping upward.

  “It’s okay. You’re here, Spook. You’re here.” Pana offered the straw. “A little sip, okay? We got to get you back on track.”

  Finally it quieted down, and Spooky sagged in the jumpseat, sucking at the pouch of electrolyte, her eyes still showing their whites like a troubled horse’s. Pana pushed herself upright and made it across the sled to Chuck, who was harnessed unhappily in, his bum leg stretched out as far as it could reach. “Should’ve stayed in bed,” she grumbled at him.

  A tight laugh, Chuck smoothing his slick forehead. His hair, dreaded up nicely, bounced a little as the sled jolted. “Not gonna stay with a buncha Feds when you running around havin’ fun.” Minjae’s deck bag, clutched to his chest, sparkled a little.