Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Even Swann grinned, but that was of short duration, because Pana, in blithe disregard of procedure, leaned into the cockpit, her mouth near his ear, and began uploading at high speed in a fierce whisper.

  Henny wiped away tears; Simmons all but howled, clutching at his belly; Sal shook his head, doglike, and spattered rain and hair oil everywhere. Spooky’s mouth twitched, until she peered past Henny’s chair and saw his laptop screen.

  She bent forward and rested her forehead on her knees as if nauseous again.

  The picture on Henny’s screen was of a blondish, blue-eyed scarecrow with a prominent Adam’s apple, his shrunken shoulders crossed by yellowing undershirt straps. Glaze-eyed, his hair a scrub-brush mess, bruises up one cheek, he stared. The profile shot showed his neck almost too thin to hold his head up; the full-front’s eyes followed you at any angle like the best photographer’s trick. Below, the name glowed.

  EUGENE THOMAS ROBERTSON. Smart, to switch just a little bit of his name. But looking at the face gave her a funny floating feeling.

  It was different. Had her memory failed her? Was she beginning to slip and blur like one of the given-ups, the blankers, the walking dead who wandered the kamps slowly, turned so far inward they couldn’t find any way out?

  How sane was she? How sane was anyone, after all this?

  “Spook? You okay?”

  She cringed away from Henny’s hand, sensing more than seeing it. “Fine,” she choked. “Tired.”

  “Shit.” Chuck leaned way forward, peering around the console. “Pana? Spook’s looking pretty raw.”

  Don’t worry, her dead sister whispered inside her head. Around his ears, those little white lines? Plastic surgery. He doesn’t look the same, but it’s him.

  “Spooky?” Zampana, softly. A familiar pressure against her damp forehead—the older woman’s hand. “Your stomach bad?”

  The sled rattled and bumped as it rose. “Pana!” Swann barked. “Buckle your ass in!”

  “I’m fine,” Spooky whispered. Cleared her throat, said it louder. “Fine. It was just a second. I’m okay.” She even tried a smile, recoiling inwardly when she realized it wasn’t her expression; it was Lara’s. Or was it Hannah’s?

  She couldn’t tell. Whichever one she was, she was wearing the other’s face. For a few nasty, rattling, bumping, thunder-rumbling moments, the entire world stretched and smeared, Swann’s Riders friction-rubbed into alien caricatures, the sled’s interior full of sharp edges and blinking harsh lights, the storm outside a growling digestive tract swallowing a long sleek iron pill whole, not caring that inside the capsule were little fleshly blobs.

  “We’re medicine.” For the world, or the storm? She couldn’t decide. Her lips were numb. “Fine. I’m fine. Sit down.”

  Thankfully, Zampana took her hand away, and her worry no longer smudged and rubbed around inside Spooky’s tired, shivering skull. Pana hurried away to her jumpseat—it was funny how everyone went back to the same place, though they didn’t really have to. Slotted themselves into holders and returned to them, like birds seeking the comfort of their cages when freedom got too scary.

  Spooky put her dripping head back down, because even with Henny in his seat the picture on his screen was glaring at her. Ngombe read off headings and protocols softly, Swann replied, and the sled pierced the storm, sliding through curtains of rain and rattles of thunder like a razor through bunched silk.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Ain’t Sleepin’ Again

  August 8, ’98

  “If they had proof, they’d show up with MPs.” Past midnight, Swann rolled his head back, easing his aching neck. Below them, the forest tossed and wavered under the edge of the storm, but the sled was moving faster than the bad weather. The thunder’s feet got tangled in the mountains, and the sled had stopped vibrating on flirting, unsteady air.

  “Or Henny would get a nice little directive.” Zampana, leaning against the bulkhead behind the copilot’s chair, glanced back at the sled’s interior. The Fed was asleep, tilted sideways in his chair, a screensaver bathing his face with weird bluish light. Simmons was snoring gustily, his chin on his broad chest; Sal nodded, drowsing fitfully.

  Swann sighed. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Most of them started out that way; Christ knew even Simmons might have. “But what’s he gonna do if they give him a cuff-and-stuff order, huh? Got himself to think about.”

  Swann glanced up at her. “What am I not getting here?”

  “Was waiting in the enlisted club for y’all to get here, so Sal could drink up.” Pana’s generous mouth turned down, and there was an old wary gleam in her dark eyes, one he knew well. “There was a ’cast on the screen. They’re picking up all the poor assholes the Firsters experimented on. Quarantine.”

  “Quarantine.” Swann repeated, heavily.

  Zampana’s face was an icon, bathed in soft glow from the controls. “For their own protection, Kallbrunner said.”

  Gather them up. How many were Spookies? “Sounds awful familiar.”

  “Don’t it just?” Zampana’s scowl deepened. “Beginning to think signing up for this was a mistake, Cap’n.”

  “The whole thing, or just this part?”

  Zampana shrugged. “I’m in it, no worries. But I gotta tell you, I got a bad feeling. Spook needs fucking therapy. Maybe we should let ’em take care of her.”

  “Stick her in another camp?”

  “I’m a field medic, Phillip. Not a fuckin’ therapist.”

  Ngombe, silent and watchful in the pilot’s chair, corrected course a fraction. She ignored them so pointedly even her eyelids were at half-mast.

  Swann was silent for a long moment, watching the instruments glow and oscillate. Everything just fine, just as it should be. When they landed, the real scramble would begin.

  “I don’t want to lose anyone else,” he said finally, half to himself.

  Pana thought it over, shifting to her left foot to take some of the pressure off her hip. This was worse than sleeping on the goddamn ground. Finally, after a long pause, she spoke again.

  “Yeah.”

  And that was that, apparently, because she turned around and went back to her jumpseat to strap herself in. Swann stared at the night, spatters of rain touching the front window and streaking away. When he was a kid, he used to count raindrops on his bedroom window. Watch them streak and meld, wonder where all the water came from. It really wasn’t all that different. Except nowadays he could think about acid rain, about crouching in the woods in a downpour, shivering and hunted, or slogging through the mud and hearing the screams of the wounded, the pop of cannos, the heavy booming of artillery.

  Growing up fucking sucked.

  Ngombe adjusted heading slightly, recited the change in a warm, soft half whisper. Swann rubbed at his tired, grainy eyes, and went back to thinking about who would do what when they got to Boise.

  “Let me get this straight.” Major Wrickstett, liaison with the Sawtooth South Federal Army Reserve, ran his hands back through short, wire-stiff reddish hair. His office in the VA admin building was crammed with paperwork, an ancient coffee machine cooking down its current cargo into glue, and a heavy scent of Old Spice. “All this authorization and override, and you’re looking for a one-armed dope fiend?”

  “One-handed,” Sal corrected, which made Simmons snort. Swann glared at both of them, a sobering look from under his shelflike gray eyebrows.

  “I know it’s a shitter,” Henny soothed. The man was a born bureaucrat charmer. “He was in detox and holding; then they cut him loose. Don’t worry, we’re not here to add to your headaches—”

  “Well, that’s good, because I have a fuckton of them, with all the goddamn fugees the DMZ’s letting through.”

  Henny rolled right on past the roadbump. “—but we do need some information. And a free hand to go look for this bastard.”

  Simmons snorted again. Sal’s mouth twitched.

  A quick gleam of curiosity sp
arked from the redheaded major. “What’d he do?”

  “He was a high mucky-muck in the kamp system.” Henny had decided that would get Swann’s crew all the cooperation they needed, and he wasn’t wrong. “Did a lot of shit.”

  “Huh.” Wrickstett flipped the file of paperwork closed. “I saw the footage. Fucking Firsters.”

  “Amen,” Swann added quietly. “There’s already an APB out on this guy with the civvie police. We just need to know where a one-handed dope fiend passing himself off as a Federal vet would likely wash up here. Or if he’s trying to get out of town and head Alaska-way, how he’d likely do that.”

  Wrickstett sucked in his cheeks, thinking about it. “Well, getting out of town any way but east is gonna cost him a pretty penny. We’ve sealed every road west, north, south—even the shitty dirt ones—as tight as we can. No further travel west, that’s the word, unless it’s by military convoy. We had some sovereign-citizen jerkwads during the war trying to blow up the Anne Frank memorial and IED the roads, so we’ve got checkpoints every five minutes. There’s coyotes, sure, but they charge an arm and a leg, and there’s no guarantee you won’t end up raped to death somewhere in the mountains or in bumfuck Malheur. So this guy, if he’s got any money—”

  “Not a lot,” Henny supplied. “And the cops took his stash.”

  “Huh.” Wrickstett nodded, scratching at his clean-shaven face as if he felt stubble. Even at this hour he looked sharp, his pants creased just right and his shirt pressed. “Okay, well, I’ll show you where to look. Come on over.” He dug in the papers snowdrifting his desk for a pen, and had to jam himself against a filing cabinet to point at the situation map on the only bare patch of wall. “There’s Hulls Gulch, and the Hollows.” He pointed to the north and northeast. “But those aren’t the real problem—they’re just overflow. The real problem is the Military Reserve here on the east side, stuffed full of certifieds or nineteeners and wounded fugees now that the VA hospital’s turned into a crisis medical. They’ve got fires and tents and everything, a real shantytown; the conservationists are beside themselves. Then there’s the Greenbelt and Julie’s Park and Ann Morrison, here in the middle of the city. That’s where a lot of the druggies tend to congregate. There’s even reports of motherfuckers shooting up over here, over on Morris Hill. A fucking cemetery—I ask you, who does that?” He shook his head, obviously not expecting an answer. “Military Reserve’s pretty safe, but if you go into any of these, go armed. I can get you on with regular patrols, if you want.”

  “Simmons, Sal…you take the Military Reserve. I’ll take this chunk—the Greenbelt, yeah? I’ll take that with Henny.”

  “Which leaves the graveyard for me and Spook.” Pana snorted. Spooky was still on the sled, staying out of sight until they got the lay of the land. She didn’t seem to mind. “Unless you want us to head for this gulch-and-hollows bullshit.”

  “Figured you two would work downtown and social services first. If this asshole lost his stash he’s gonna be looking to buy, and downtown’s the best place for that, unless I’m wrong?”

  Wrickstett nodded, glad he didn’t have to spell it out. “Not really wrong, Captain. Ann Morrison’s a hotbed for that shit too, though.” The pen jabbed at another green space, and the Major was looking more relieved by the minute. “Shit, I can send you out with patrols, and comm support—”

  “Can you plug in our sled? Ngombe can keep it warmed up and Chuck can run comms for us from inside, as long as we can get some of those little bouncer-popper things.”

  “I can go one better. We’ve got actual cells and the network up and running inside the city limits. Preloaded, GPS, the works. They’ll use our towers, and we can get your sled talking to the towers too if it has C-Comm?”

  “Pretty sure it does, sir,” Ngombe said. “Got everything else.”

  “All right.” Swann smacked his hat into his free hand. “That’s a plan, then.”

  Now that he’d decided to be helpful, Wrickstett was swinging for the bleachers. “You guys want some sleep? Some chow?”

  “Chow would be good. And coffee.”

  “We been chasin’ this fucker since Minneapolis.” Simmons showed his teeth, and Swann knew he was thinking of Minjae and Prink. “I ain’t sleepin’ again until we have him tied down.”

  “I believe you,” the good major said, and hurried away to make arrangements.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Mabel Mouse Patrol

  The night was getting old, gray false dawn rising behind the low dark blur of mountains. Sal sneezed twice, lightly, into his elbow, and followed Simmons along a winding dirt path. The patrol were regular Federals, mostly rear-echelon fish ready for a chance to prove they could have won the war, if they’d had to. The presence of a pair of hard-bitten raiders added to their swagger, and the rearguard, a squat woman with pockmarked cheeks and a red bandanna around her forehead that had never seen the real grease of fearsweat, kept up a low running commentary.

  Shacks cobbled out of scavenged plywood, heavy evergreen branches, sog-sagging cardboard still damp from spring runoff and summer thunderstorm arranged themselves in dots along approximations of lanes and roads. There was stirring even at this hour—thin, frizzle-haired women in faded odds and ends hunching protectively near the embers in front of whatever small patch of land they’d managed to claim. The few men stirring were either poking dispiritedly at cold fires or lolling drunkenly in a rude doorway, clutching at gnarled sticks. No weapons allowed in fugee hands, but they made do, and no few of the skinny men wore faded Federal caps and military-grade scowls. It was anyone’s guess whether any of them were actual veterans, but the authorities had erred on the side of mercy this once.

  To hear the grunts on patrol tell it, though, they’d done so just to piss said grunts off and make their lives miserable.

  “Fuckin’ animals,” the rear guard muttered. “Yesterday they had a baby born right in the middle of the street. Just squatted down and squirt, out it comes.”

  Sal refrained from pointing out that it was sort of like the runs—when you had to squeeze out a pup, it wasn’t a call from Ma Nature you could put on hold, even for a few minutes. He did, however, look at Simmons, and understood from the Reaper’s set, thin mouth and narrowed eyes that the other man agreed.

  “What happened?” Simmons had his best aw-shucks corn-fed-stupid tone on.

  “Whatcha mean?” The rear guard looked from one raider to the other, visibly perplexed.

  “To the baby.” The Reaper placed his big feet in their worn-down boots carefully, avoiding trash or any disturbed dirt, stepping where he’d seen another patroller set foot. Sal found out he was doing that too—habit from the woods. If it hadn’t blown someone else up, chances are it wouldn’t detonate underfoot. Though they’d started using time delays and counters on mines, too, near the end. He’d heard of raiders biting it that way—a few of Schornach’s gang before Second Cheyenne, back in the dark days when the Firsters were winning.

  Schorn was a cut-corners type anyway, no discipline. He hadn’t lasted long.

  “Oh, it was one of those muties. Born with flippers. Mama was a campog.” The Fed grinned, strong teeth jutting out, her cheeks almost swallowing her eyes. She rolled around a wad of cherry-flavored chewing tobacco, tucked it into her other cheek. “Took it to the VA. Don’t know what happened, but she’s back at work.”

  “Work?” Sal had a sinking feeling he knew.

  “Sure. She was one of those good-time fishgirls. Sells it for candies. I’m tellin’ you, man. Animals.” The Fed shook her head and freed one hand from her low-and-ready rifle, hurrying them along. “Keep up, fellas. Don’t wanna lose you in here.”

  Simmons opened his mouth, but Sal elbowed him midstep. That was usually Chuck’s job, or Pana’s; Sal had the strange sliding feeling that soon it might become his, and he didn’t like it. The Reaper was part of the team, he was trustworthy, but still.

  Mist cotton-wreathed the treetops, mixing with smoke. A
few lone songbirds began to practice for the dawn chorus. “Missed that sound,” Sal found himself saying, in a low confidential tone.

  “Yeah,” Simmons agreed. “Reminds me of when I was a kid.”

  Sal had been thinking of the pine barrens right before they found the first Reklamation camp, before the big push to end the whole pile of shit, and all the bullshit since. “Barrens” was a misnomer, since it teemed with tangled, overgrown life. Since the humans didn’t want that slice of ground, birds and other small critters moved in and set up house.

  There hadn’t been any time for nature walks, though. You didn’t really have time to think, either, while they were shooting at you or while you were a hunted animal. Or while you were in a hostile town, passing messages, carrying forged ident, and staying one step ahead of the patrols.

  Sitting in the sled, or stepping along the tail end of this Mabel Mouse patrol, gave you too much time to throw things around inside your skull and feel your toes turn into icicles. I’m in, he’d told Swann. Nowhere left to go was more like it. With a healthy helping of Who am I when I’m not around these bastards who saved my life so many times?

  Maybe if Minjae and Prink hadn’t eaten the big burrito…it would’ve been nice to open a bar back in San Fran, have Prink dream up crazy cocktails and Minjae do the books. Customers could come in, get their hair done, drink a little. Great tips from tipsy hipsters and sailors. Maybe find a nice husband and settle down. Cake and wine and someone just for him, waking up in the morning to the salt fog and that wonderful smell of a living, breathing city that hadn’t been bombed to shit. Living without the looming threat of electroshock therapy to “cure” him if he got a boner for another man.