Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  A rail-thin man with messy dark hair and his left leg gone below the knee leaned on a crutch, watching the soldiers pass by. The scruff of a fast-growing beard darkened his cheeks, and his sullen expression was familiar. Sal had seen it on hundreds of civilian faces when the Patriots did spot checks. Crowd everyone together, let them out one by one. Immies in one line, secondary citizens in another, Patriots waved through. Stare at their ident, shoot anyone who looked at you funny or whose ident card had a blur, or even anyone with a skin shade you didn’t like.

  It was a new thing, to have that fucking look directed at Sal himself.

  “We’ll end up at Shed Two for the morning food ration, you can question anyone you want there.” The rear guard’s rifle was oiled and clean, in apple-pie order. She probably liked it better than most humans.

  “How many generally show up?”

  “There’s three sheds, and by the time morning crowd clears out, the evening one’s starting. All the aid workers got the picture of your guy; if there’s a one-armed fella they’ll chute him aside for pat down.”

  “One-handed,” Simmons mumbled, but not very loudly. It wasn’t worth it.

  The patrol came out on a square of cleared ground, beaten into dust by refugee feet. In the middle, a spigot thrust up, just ten degrees off perpendicular. Women were already congregating there, filling buckets and talking in low sweet voices. One or two of them wore Christer bonnets and long dresses, despite being on the other side of the DMZ. Sal’s right hand tensed, but he shook it out. Freedom of religion, he reminded himself. That was real America, not the bullshit McCoombs and his crew had tried to force down everyone’s throat.

  But Jesus, did they have to give it to the fucking Firsters, too? Those motherfuckers had only one use for freedom: taking away everyone else’s.

  Sal froze. Simmons, next to him, did too, and followed his gaze.

  A body hung from a convenient fir branch. White man, with a hard little potbelly that wasn’t from the gut bacteria throwing a party after death. The face was plummy, and liquid shit crusted the back of the legs. Bare, horn-toed feet hung slack and lifeless, and around the neck was a sign made of scavenged cardboard, bearing a big, black, painted 19.

  Looked like they’d strung up two others before him, waited for them to stop kicking, then cut the bodies down and kept going. This fellow might have even seen the other two go before him. Sal, cold all over, squinted at the signs propped on them, like advertisements for cordwood.

  One read RAPIST. The other said JUNKIE.

  “Look at that,” the rear guard said. “Someone snuffed Billy.”

  The CO of the patrol glanced back. “Huh? Oh yeah. We’ll tell ’em to come in and pick up another load when we get back to the house.”

  “Who’s Billy?” Simmons wanted to know. He jostled Sal to get him moving again, halted. “Which one?”

  The Fed spat, a long stream of brown bacca juice steaming in the early-morning chill. “Junkie, there. Funny, he never touched the shit, just ran dope into the camp and out to the city. Pot’s still legal under martial law, but a lot of shit isn’t until the civil authorities get their say-so back.”

  “Huh.” Simmons stepped, cautious and tiptoe, over to the bodies. He bent slightly, peering at the ones on the ground.

  Sal knew that sound. “Whatchu thinkin’, Reaper?”

  “Billy ain’t got a rope burn. Looks like he was stabbed.”

  “Animals, man.” The rear guard shook her head.

  Sal realized something else. “Where are all the kids?” It was early for them to be up, but he didn’t even hear a baby crying, and none of the women at the spigot filling their buckets held a small bundle.

  “Twelve and unders are all at the hospital outbuildings. They get care, even if their parents are fucking nineteeners.” Madam Rearguard didn’t sound like she thought much of the notion. “Shoulda seen when we had to separate them all out, it was a fucking nightmare. Kids crying, mothers screaming, you’d think we were camping ’em instead of taking them for vaccinations and food. Stupid fucks.”

  Sal glanced at Simmons again. The big man straightened, cast another considering glance at the hanging corpse and his friends, then shook his blond head slightly. Either getting rid of an uncomfortable thought, or, worse, shrugging off a few more casualties.

  What were three more bodies, after Second Cheyenne or Gloria?

  The horrible thing was, Sal realized, that he was thinking the same thing himself. He put his head down and trooped on. Each time the rear guard spat, a spasm of something not raspy enough to be hate scraped down Sal’s back. It was just plain irritation, and it wasn’t a reason to turn around and empty his sidearm into the Fed’s round, self-satisfied face.

  But he thought about it.

  He thought about it each goddamn time.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Not High at All

  The sun crested the mountains, a furnace of gold, and the river glittered. The first fury of snowmelt was past, but the river still ran deep and cold, and the banks were mush in many places since the dog days hadn’t begun. Julia Davis Park was barricaded, but a few scattered groups of fugees got in anyway, and while the patrols were moving them along Swann and Henny eyeballed the shuffling, crusty-eyed rivulet of humanity. A couple amputees showed up, but not the one they were looking for.

  Ann Morrison Park, easier to get into despite being on the west side of the river, was a different story. The body count at 1000 hours was thirteen and rising, since someone at morning rations pushed someone else in line, accusations of cutting began, someone pulled a contraband shiv, and the riot started. It took tear gas, water cannons, crisscrossing sleds, and sicksticks to get it sorted out, which left Henny and Swann questioning the wounded and whatever refugee community leaders weren’t dealing with the mess. Finally, Wrickstett reappeared, and hustled them into a portable full of paperwork, arthritic coffee machines, and overworked volunteers.

  One of them, a lean rangy woman with deep-tanned skin cracking like old leather, eyed the mugshot they had and cocked her short-shaven head, shivering as she pulled a brown woolen shawl—hand knitted, from its uneven look—closer about her lean-muscled shoulders. “Huh.”

  “This is Eddie Brunner, Refugee Control Board,” Major Wrickstett said helpfully. “She’s a native, did some raiding in Montana.”

  “Not enough,” Eddie said softly, pulling the shawl even tighter. “Give me a second to look at this, it’s on the tip of my brain.”

  “I’ll leave you in her capable hands.” Wrickstett accepted their salutes and hurried away, probably relieved to be done with this unpleasantness. Swann suspected he had way more waiting for him back at the VA admin building.

  “You say he’s a needle-rider?” Brunner’s head snapped aside as a knot of Federals went by the door of her office, a screaming refugee man with his hands cuffed behind him. The fugee’s hair, a wild matted mess, bounced. “Shit. Hang on a second.” She hurried away, as the man’s cries increased in volume. “He’s a schizophrenic! Put him on the med transport!”

  “Jesus.” Henny shook his head. This morning he looked more rumpled than anyone who had seen his former Federal incarnation might believe. “This may take a while.”

  “You think?” Swann folded his arms, settling one hip against a listing but still sturdy file cabinet. His hat tipped back, a pale line of forehead that didn’t see much sun anymore glaring out from underneath. “You want some coffee?”

  “If I have any more I’ll take off like that goddamn sled.” Henny looked for a place to sit, found none, decided not to lean against the rickety plywood-and-sheet-metal desk filling most of this tiny space. “You’ve got something on your mind. Spit it out.”

  Another hurrying scuffle filled the portable’s minuscule hall. “No,” they heard Brunner yell sharply. “Take her to the med shed! She’s pregnant!”

  Swann rested one hand on his sidearm. It was a normal, habitual movement, but Henny tensed slightly.

/>   Just a bit.

  There was no way to get rid of that habit. Swann had it himself. “Been thinkin’.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “When we bag this fellow, that changes things.”

  Henny considered this, his dark eyes half lidding. “It could. If you let it.”

  “Spook’s one of us.”

  The Fed turned slightly, glanced down at the desk. “And me?”

  “That’s what I been thinkin’ about.” Swann’s mouth set against itself, a perhaps-bitter expression that would have brought Pana to stand just behind him, braced for action.

  “Have you, now.” Henny kept his own hands very carefully away from his own belt. “I’m all ears.”

  “Should be all mouth instead, Captain.” Swann watched the other man’s face. He figured that was enough to give Hendrickson the layout, so to speak. And he wouldn’t need much. A very sharp needle, was Henny boy.

  To his credit, Henny didn’t hesitate for long. “My mission brief is to render whatever aid I can, Captain. The classified brief is to keep an eye on her and see if she’s what they suspect.”

  Which was pretty much what Swann had figured out on his own. Still, Henny got points for clarification. “Which is?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Maybe.” Too late to change his mind, his tone plainly said.

  “The Firsters did a bunch of shit at Baylock. Nothing panned out the way they hoped, but they had a lot of…well, they pushed a lot of boundaries. There was a shining star—female subject, blew past all the barriers. They called her X-Ray. We’re talking some scary shit—electroshock, gene therapy, heavy-duty drugs, sensory deprivation. The basic idea was to make a serum, inject it, and stress the organism into developing certain…talents.” Henny shrugged. “You could figure that much out for yourself.”

  “X-Ray. They work through the entire alphabet to get there?”

  Henny’s face wrinkled with disgust. “Damn near.”

  “And that’s what Johnson was carrying.”

  “Data, and maybe the serum formulation. Even if it’s just the data, it’s too much.” Henny had turned pale. “You know eggheads. Once they know something’s possible, someone’ll keep pushing until they replicate it.”

  Swann’s stomach was a pile of acid. “Build a better soldier.”

  “Intelligence, actually. Can you imagine an IntSec company of Spookies?”

  “And what they’d do to get one.” Swann’s hands and feet had turned cold. His palms greased themselves with heavy sweat.

  “If they could verify X-Ray, they might be able to reverse-engineer it, too.” Patches of crimson stood out stark on Henny’s cheeks, under his stubble. He fuzzed up quick. “Get her in a research facility, piece things together.”

  “Jesus.” Swann’s throat was pinhole-size now. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Primary docs disappeared after the drone bombing at Baylock. Primary digitals are wormed; there were papers that seemed to point a way, but those vanished. Administrative fubars, the end of the war confusing everything. The Army doesn’t know, Swann, and what are the fucking chances that a Baylock internee would survive transit and extermination kamps and hook up with raiders? Your close rate was so fucking good, they figured either Spooky was X-Ray or you’d bring back Johnson’s serum particulars anyway. Either is fine by them.”

  “And if we don’t? The doctor’s spread all over a shitty Montana road, and this one-handed fuck, who knows?”

  “Well. Someone might have to take a fall for that one.” Henny sighed. “Unless I can pull something amazing out of my ass.”

  Nice of him to suggest it. “What are the chances of that?”

  “Not high, Captain Swann. Not high at all.”

  “Sorry about that.” Brunner reappeared in the door. Her shawl was askew and her cheeks flushed to match Henny’s. “It’s been a morning. Can you show me the mug shot again?”

  Swann let Henny unfold the glossy, high-quality paper with their quarry’s flat stare peering out at the world.

  There was a remedy, sure. With the entire city on the edge from the refugees, it would be easy for an accident to happen. Hell, he could even drop a quiet word to the Reaper, and keep his own hands clean.

  But that wasn’t what a raider captain did, at least not in Swann’s book. This was the kind of mess you cleaned up with your own hands, because one of your own was threatened.

  Swann listened to Brunner talk through maybe-recognizing-but-not-really. The coordinator was one of those who had to say it out loud to think it through, and they worked best with a neutral expression and some nonverbal prompting.

  Finally, though, she hit on it, and when her leathery face lit up, she turned from mournful into pretty. “Down by the river—I can show you on the aerials—there’s a spot where the nodders like to go. One of my informants said there was a guy with one hand asking about getting some horse, willing to pay for it. I’ll point out where the shooting gallery is, and if he’s been there, they’ll tell you.” She sighed, rubbing at her temple with one capable hand. “You may have to be…persuasive.”

  “We’ll do our best to be gentle,” Henny soothed.

  Brunner straightened, fixing him with a general’s paralyzing stare. “Don’t be. Each motherfucker who shoots up takes resources from the ones who can be helped.”

  That, Swann thought, was one way of looking at it. Hell, it was probably even the right way. But something about it stuck in his craw. “Heard and understood, ma’am. If you can give us directions, we’ll be out of your way.”

  Henny’s chin jerked up, and he regarded Swann for a bare moment before bending over the aerial maps and listening to Brunner’s clear, hurried directions.

  Down by the river, Swann told himself, would be a good place.

  He was hoping Henny would take the decision out of his hands.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Some Fine-Ass Meals

  “It’s like the war never happened.” Zampana took a huge bite of footlong, onions, sauerkraut, and chili sauce. Her eyes closed halfway, a blissful moan catching in her throat, and her knees loosened a little. “Oh maaaaaaan.”

  Spooky hunched her shoulders. The hot dog cart, with its bright yellow-and-red umbrella, was staffed by a sleepy, round woman with an electric smile and warm hazel eyes, keeping to the shade while she dished up a seemingly never-ending supply of don’t-ask-what’s-in-it tubes and homemade sauerkraut in the shadow of the Cathedral of the Rockies, bombed once by a Firster drone that later plunged into the Boise River trailing a long plume of grayish steam. Pana and Spooky were supposed to check with the needle exchange run out of the church’s basement, and they would.

  In a minute or two.

  “Is it good?” Spooky’s head swiveled, checking the street, an oddly birdlike motion.

  Pana swallowed a hastily chewed wad. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  “I’m all right.” A ghost of a childish smile crossed Spooky’s face, there and gone like a cloud wisp or a Patriot’s goodwill. The cathedral was Methodist, but Pana had still crossed herself before setting foot on the steps. That was before she saw the hot dog stand and decided all other considerations were secondary. Spook held a yellow bag of potato chips, and after a few moments opened it with a practiced movement. She peered inside like she couldn’t quite believe what it held. “My sister loved these.”

  “What did you like?” Pana sucked on the straw of her RC Cola, her dark eyes almost rolling back into her head. “Oh man, that’s good.”

  “I liked them too.” But Spooky’s eyebrows drew together, and she shook the bag a little, the rustle of its cargo lost in the sound of a midmorning crowd and the hurrying of civilian feet. A police gleeson went by, its cells whining, and Spooky ducked her head, a raider’s reflex. Dead giveaway in this crowd of soft faces and shiny ration-cloth clothes, but the war was over so it didn’t matter.

  Pana nodded. “It’s okay to change. You know? I loved okra when I was a kid.
Couldn’t get enough of it. Now I can’t stand the shit.”

  “Okra.” Spooky made a face, and Pana’s laugh was a bright scarf in the midmorning sunshine. “Do you think anything ever really changes, Pana?”

  The older woman considered this, her braids gleaming. It was a relief to see them freshly washed and securely pinned, and to see the face under them unmarked by blood, gunpowder, dirt, or the set look of a medic expecting the worst. “Some things. Maybe not enough, but some.” She took another huge bite of footlong. “I could swear, por ejemplo, this tastes better than I remember. But the chili sucks ass.”

  “We’re in Idaho. Not exactly the land of habanero.”

  “Amen. Potatoes and sovereigns.” Pana’s eyes hooded. I won’t pry, her eyelids said. But I’m curious, her cheeks replied. She took another gigantic, starving bite, but chewed this one much more slowly. “What I wouldn’t give for some queso fresco. Or some good sauce.”

  “All I want…” Spooky shook her head. She tweezed out a single golden potato chip, held it in the sunlight. Crunched it with relish, the sting of salt, the oil it was fried in. “Oh. Oh.”

  “I know, right?” Pana smiled. “Just when I think nothin’s left, there’s something.”

  Spooky pulled another one out. She watched as the cathedral doors, atop their high steps, creaked open. A thin trickle flowed up the stairs, mostly older women. Around the side, though, a line of thin-shouldered figures skulked in the shadow of a laurel hedge. The crunch of fried-crisp starch mixed with the salt, and she caught herself making a slow, satisfied noise deep in her throat.

  “You and me, chica,” Pana said. “We gonna eat some fine-ass meals together. But I’m full now, you want some?”

  “No thanks.” Spooky kept crunching potato chips while Zampana ditched the rest of the footlong. It took everything Spooky had not to run to the overflowing cement-sided trash can. Imagine, throwing food away.

  If there was a measure of “peacetime,” maybe that was it. Plenty enough to waste, and none of the civilians walking past stopped to fish something good out of the bin. Candy husks and filters ringed the bin’s round bottom, ground into the dirt, not harvested like tobacco butts would be in kamp.