Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Yessir, thank you sir. Any reply?”

  “Not a hand-carried one.” Swann tried not to sound ungrateful. It looked like this soldier was upset about missing the war and applying herself wholesale to any job that got in her way. Christ, had any of his crew ever been that young? Had he?

  No, just Lazy, and the kid had survived Second Cheyenne and running behind the lines only to get a bellyful of plazma from a goddamn harelipped Firster.

  “Okay, sir, going back, sir!”

  “Thanks, soldier.” Swann accepted the salute, and the girl hurried away at a dead run again.

  “Good Lord,” Henny said. “I’ll bet she enjoyed basic, too.”

  “Bite yo’ tongue.” Ngombe brushed dirt off her coverall knees. “What we got, huh?”

  “Shitfire and save matches,” Simmons breathed. “They pinged our one-handed friend. Somehow got himself certified under a fresh name. He was in a jail in Boise late as last night.”

  “Ngombe.” Swann crushed his hat more firmly on his head. His knees throbbed. He was getting too old for this shit. “How fast can you get us there?”

  “Had to fix the cracked cell, should be dry and socketed by now. Gotta do preflights and charging. Four, five hours? Maybe less.” Ngombe thought it over. “We can stop in Helena to get t’others, sir, it’ll take longer.”

  “Henny, get to the sled and bounce Pana, tell her and the rest to meet us on the strip down there. Ngombe, start the flight checks. Simms?”

  “Yessir?” Simmons handed the flimsy to Henny.

  “Get some booze, and get it on the fucking sled.” Swann patted at his pockets, hoping to come up with a pack of candies. “We’re probably gonna need it.”

  Part Five

  Salvus

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  The Greenbelt

  August 6, ’98

  Gene squinted against harsh early-afternoon light, scratching at his left forearm. The itching would only get worse. His shirt was clean, though—they’d washed all his clothes before turning him loose. It wasn’t a crime to overdose, but they’d taken all the vials. Assuming he was a freshly certified veteran hooked on painkillers, the hard-faced processing officer had given him a stern look and told him to check in for treatment. Even given him a slip for a methadone clinic.

  In the real Amerika, he probably would have been sent to ReEdukation. Here, though, the holding cells were stuffed to the gills with fugees, petty ration thieves, drunken soldiers, and other flotsam. It was enough to make a man’s skin and his guts crawl.

  He scratched, and scratched, and walked. Downtown Boise throbbed with life. Pierced-face kids lounging on corners, boutiques full of unrationed goods, fat hippies scuttling around, Federals on leave swelling the stores, shiny-faced businessmen moving their soft womanly hips and asses. If there were any real, true patriots, they were well hidden, probably in the rural areas. Northern Idaho had almost stayed faithful, and if the goddamn cities hadn’t been full of degenerates outvoting the real people, they might have had a chance.

  They even called the heroes up here “terrorists.” There were meme-posters lampooning McCoombs too, showing him in pearls and drag-queen makeup. Someone had hung an effigy of the real, true Amerikan President from a lamppost, and every time Gene passed it on that long syrupy afternoon, the rage rose.

  Pollen floated on the breeze. Summer was in full luxuriant riot, the lindens were in bloom, green covered every bush. Despite that, the temperature dropped sharply as the sun did, and when dusk came, shivers added themselves to the itching. The streets he had been wandering drained, lamps buzzing into life.

  The electrical grid hadn’t been bombed to shit here.

  Campfires began to glitter in the Boise Greenbelt. He worked his way downhill toward them, moth drawn to the flames, and discovered he should have been there all day. The refugees had moved in, close enough to strain the social services but far enough for the criminals to find soft shady spots.

  Little tar-black ant feet stabbed and prickled all over him. His spine ached, his head throbbed, his pants sagged because they’d taken his fucking belt at the jail. But not the travel belt. That had been returned to him, along with its slim cargo of cash—and the thumbdrive, still tucked in its secret little pocket. A useless bit of black plastic now, especially since he didn’t have the vials.

  Slipping and stumbling down a hill, he plunged into the Greenbelt and circled a few fires, looking for one with an empty space. It took a while, but eventually he ended up beside an elderly man stumbling back from a pissbreak. Gene caught at a sharp elbow with his good hand, righting the fellow reflexively. A heavy wash of body odor, sugary cheap alcohol, and indifferent asswiping wrapped around Gene, and he didn’t push the man into a ditch because the geezer peered up into his dusk-masked face and said, “Sonny, thanks. Y’all can come to the fire.”

  “Come on over.” The old man scooted sideways, a crab-like lurch, and made space on the rotting log. The campfire crackled, and the worn faces around its orange-and-yellow flicker barely glanced at Gene. It wasn’t until he’d settled himself that he realized why the man had invited him.

  All male. Two missing a leg below the knee; one with an eye patch and the last three fingers of his right hand gone; another slumped around a cave-in on the left side of his torso; one shaking, eyelids flickering every once in a while, a shaved patch on the side of his head growing back hair of a different shade.

  “Cripples gotta stick together.” The elderly man snort-laughed. He didn’t look visibly deformed, but he certainly stank. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Johnson,” Gene mumbled. It was good enough. He wanted to explain he wasn’t a cripple, that this had been done to him, that he was really an able worker. All the excuses he’d heard before the kampogs went into the bottles and the baths.

  A ripple of laughter went around the fire, quiet and comfortable.

  Why bother? It was useless. He cradled the stump of his left wrist, squeezing it slightly every now and again. When he squeezed, the pain in his invisible hand retreated a little.

  “Hurts, does it?” One of the legless assholes smirked. “Phantom pain, they told me. It’s a bitch.”

  They didn’t ask what battle he’d been injured in. Gene realized they were all soldiers, and to them, it didn’t matter where he’d gotten his fucking hand chopped off.

  The war was over.

  Smoke rose lazily. The wood snapped and crackled. The authorities were even handing out firewood every evening instead of letting those who couldn’t shift for themselves freeze. Typical, Gene thought. Make them weak and dependent. Well, he’d take the warmth.

  The geezer’s name was Fred, and he passed around a jug of cheap wine. It didn’t stop the itching, but after a few hits Gene began to feel much warmer, and a little more hopeful.

  Tomorrow he could start asking around. There was bound to be a way to get what he needed.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  We All Still There

  “Holy shit.” Zampana squinted at the printout. She’d just found Spooky hanging around the back door to the kitchen, basking in thick golden sunshine and wolfing a plate of overcooked, rubbery mac and cheese someone had been talked into providing her. Smart move on the Spook’s part, and Pana had been cautiously hopeful even when Chuck showed up with a sheaf of papers and a sour face. “When did this come in?”

  “Couple hours ago.” Chuck’s hands worked, opening and closing. He was all right to hobble without his crutch now, as long as there was no emergency. “Bastards didn’t come find us, for fucksake.”

  “Too busy looking for Spooky, maybe.” Pana thought it over. At least they’d had a chance to wash their clothes. Her bloomers hadn’t felt this fresh since before Missouri. “Captain gonna land here and load us come evening.”

  “Shiiiit.” Chuck, spruced up and with fresh norpirene on his calf, was looking bright and perky, too. “Not another sled ride.”

  Pana heartily concurred. “Unless there’s
a Boise-bound transport. There might be.”

  “What chances those IntSec motherfuckers’ll be watching it? And the airfield?”

  Spooky’s chin jerked up. She finished chewing, took a hasty gulp from a big ceramic coffee mug balanced precariously on the side of the Dumpster, and coughed a little. “I can get on without them seeing me.” She blinked sleepily. Her clothes were still too big, but her cheeks had filled out. Now it was only the hunched, felon-shovel way she ate that would give her away.

  “We can’t keep ’em off you forever.” Chuck sighed. “But we’ll damn well try—don’t worry,” he added hastily, scratching uncomfortably at the back of his neck. “What you think they want?”

  “X-Ray,” she said, and took another giant mouthful. It had been a while since Pana saw her eat with such relish.

  “Not even gonna ask,” Pana muttered. “One problem at a time.”

  Chuck, taking the hint, moved on to the next one. “I set Sal to rustling up supplies, quicker the better. ’F I know the Captain, they’re already halfway here.”

  “Okay.” Pana sucked her cheeks in, thinking.

  “It’s fine,” Spooky said suddenly, her spoon paused in midair. “I’ll talk to them after Boise. It won’t matter then.”

  “Talk to IntSec, or…?” Chuck’s eyebrows arched. His dreads bobbed gently.

  She shrugged and bent back down to her plate, balanced on one capable, deft paw while she shoveled with the other.

  Chuck eyed her afresh. “Shit, girl, you tellin’ me you know what’s gonna happen?”

  A slight, vicious shake of her head. “Not any more than you do.”

  “Knew enough to get Prink out of that house.” A shiver ran through Chuck despite the baking heat bouncing off the side of the kitchen wall. “But not enough to keep Lazy from getting his ass shot up.”

  Spooky dropped her plate, and the spoon. Violently yellow elbow macaroni gooshed out onto baking dirt, splattering a few drought-corkscrewed dandelions. “Wish I had.” She hopped over the mess and took off, not quite running but hurrying, her head down and shoulders turtled up.

  “Good one, Chuck.” Zampana rolled the printouts into a tight cylinder. “Just when she was eating.”

  The Dogg folded himself down, sore leg and all, and began to scrape up dirt, overcooked pasta, and waxy yellow glorp. Government cheese, familiar from before the war. He was sweating by the time he was done, wincing every time his weight shifted, but Pana didn’t help. Instead, she dumped the coffee mug’s contents into the Dumpster and stood, staring across a patch of Montana grass, mountains looming in the near distance, the sky overhead a thick bright canopy pressing every breath until it was too goddamn hard to fight and you broke down.

  Just like everything else. Big Sky Country, they called it. A whole bunch of gringos and weeds was all she could see, with bonus shitty-ass Federals crawling over everything and complicating what could be simple. “Chuck?” It slipped out, surprising her.

  “Huh?” He settled his leg with a heavy sigh.

  She might as well ask. “You ever wanna go home?”

  “What the fuck kind of question is that?” He craned to look up at her, his dreads moving a little as his head shifted.

  “I mean, you ever wish the war hadn’t happened? You ever wish that?”

  “Don’t waste time on that. You go crazy as the Reaper, or shit, crazy as the Spook, you start thinking like that.” He took his time, scraping until every last bit of yellow goo was spooned onto the heavy white plate. “There ain’t nothing to go back to. Ever. Sooner you get over that, the easier it gets.”

  “But when you started out—”

  “That was then.” Chuck began the slow painful process of levering himself back up. Pana, deciding she’d made her displeasure clear enough, gave him a hand, then bent to collect the loaded plate.

  And this is now. She didn’t say it. “You know what? I bet Spooky would eat it if it was like this.”

  “You think she got a taste for dirt?”

  “No.” Pana searched for words to explain. “We got her out of Gloria, right? But in her head, you know. She’s still there.”

  He considered this, one hand spread against the Dumpster’s blue-painted metal. Some joker had spray-painted a yellow happy face onto the fucker, with the eyes big Xs, a dribble of rust from one corner of the smiling mouth turning the expression into a leer. “Or that other one she was at.”

  “Baylock.” The name sent a shiver through them both. The newscast pictures were bad enough. Seeing it in real life, up close…Dios.

  “Yeah.” Chuck turned his head, a beaky profile as he stared at the mountains. Did the sky seem heavy to him, too? “We all still there, Pana.”

  “At a camp?” She scraped the mess into the Dumpster. Flies were already at work. Maybe Spooky had been sure nobody would bother her, eating here.

  Or maybe, like a dog beaten too many times to ever trust a kind word, she’d thought to go through the Dumpster herself.

  “No.” Chuck shook his head, sadly. “The goddamn war, Pana. We ain’t ever gettin’ out.”

  “We will. Someday.” She tried to sound certain. If Chuck got into a philosophical mood, Simmons wasn’t around to jar him out of it.

  “You think so?” Half a question, half sarcastic disbelief, even he probably couldn’t figure out which one was going to win.

  All of a sudden, Pana was tired of lying. Or of not knowing if she was lying because a medic had to stay steady. You started showing any cracks, and your patients would scent the fear. “I don’t know.” She tapped the plate gently against metal. The spoon scratched like fingernails on a chalkboard. “But I gotta think as much, at least some of the time. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “Yeah.” Chuck wiped at his forehead with the back of one hand. A long pause, Zampana standing with the plate dangling from one hand and the spoon tucked into the coffee mug in the other, Chuck gazing into the distance like he was going to find an answer he liked better there. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I ain’t sure there is one, Pana. I ain’t sure at all.”

  She didn’t have an answer for that, even a lying one. So she stacked the plate, spoon, and mug on the shaky wooden step in front of the propped-open door. The kitchen boiled with the sound of KP duty—scrubbing, clinking, swearing both good-natured and not. She half turned and slid her arm around Chuck’s narrow waist, resting her braided head against his stringy, scrawny, very strong biceps. They stood there in the sun for a few minutes, breathing in the reek of cooking and garbage on a hot day, hearing the distant rumble of afternoon thunder.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Funhouse Mirror

  Ngombe feathered the prototype down, warm quarter-size raindrops smacking the canopy over and over. Lightning flashed, and the entire sled rattled. Simmons mumbled a curse, holding onto his chair arms with desperate strength, white knuckles, and sweating fingertips.

  “Christ, relax,” Henny kept telling him, and each time, Simmons came up with a new, breathtakingly obscene anatomical term in response. Sooner or later they’d get tired of the game.

  “They’re on Pad Four,” Swann repeated, even though Ngombe had it and was clearly heading the right way. She verified, banked slightly, and fifteen minutes later had the sled touching ground as softly as a kitten landing in a basket of yarn. The hatch dilated, steps unfolding, and first aboard was Sal, spitting and sneezing, wet clear through and loaded down with supplies that should have gone into the cargo bay if they hadn’t been in such a gawdawful hurry. Next came Chuck, all but hefted through the door with Pana putting her shoulder in his ass, and Pana herself, her braids soaked and rivulets running down her face. Last was Spooky, shivering and snuffling, hitting the hatch-close button and giving the all-clear. Spook helped Pana get Chuck settled, almost getting whapped in the face with his crutch, and dropped into the chair behind Henny’s laptop station again like she’d never been away.

  “Buncha drowned rats in here!” Simmons crowed. “Chuck, my man,
you lost out on some interrogation action. Henny there had to play good cop.”

  “How’d he do?” Chuck mopped at his hair with both hands, ineffectually.

  Simmons seesawed his hand, So-so. “You shoulda seen him when I cut that skinny fuck’s finger off.”

  “We were gonna do some grave robbing too, but decided it could wait.” Henny’s dark eyes danced. “How the hell are you, Spook?”

  “Cold.” She snuffled up a wad of snot, her face contorting. “Wet.”

  “Grave robbing?” Pana crossed herself. “Where we goin’? Still Boise?”

  “Yeah, Boise,” Swann tossed over his shoulder. “Henny, dial ’em in.”

  “We got a ping.” The Fed jostled his laptop, rubbing his hands together as Ngombe pulled up, the prototype humming happily and the heaters beginning to tick into steam-cabin territory. The dehumidifier was going to be working overtime if it wasn’t already. “Our one-handed guy showed up in Boise in the bus station crapper, OD’d on highgrade he probably got from the dear dead doctor. They detoxed him and kept him in holding, let him go because they’re full to the gills with fugees and displaced. CentCom’s got their panties in several twists. Boise just put out an APB on him, we’ve got facials and everything else. No half-wormed shit, now we’re cooking with napalm.”

  Sal wanted to get it completely clear. “So now we’re looking for a one-armed man in Idaho?”

  “One-handed,” Simmons corrected prissily, and it was a dead-on imitation of Henny.

  “Man, you can’t make this shit up.” Sal began to laugh, and after a thunderstruck moment—literally, a flash of lightning painted the front bubble and Ngombe squinted, her touch on the sled controls sure and soft as she rode the turbulence—the entire prototype was awash with chuckles.