When the Devil Dances

by John Ringo

  The children followed wearily behind her. The trek had been long and extremely tiring, but they understood that they had to keep up. One of the adults, usually Wendy, would carry the youngest ones from time to time. And they slowed down for them when they felt they could. But the children had grown up with the war and the Posleen were the ultimate bogey-men; they would keep running until they dropped of exhaustion or were told to stop by an adult.

  Wendy had reached the intersection before the captain entered the room. When she got there she consulted her map, but the last "secure" area would, according to the map, be through the right-hand door. She considered it then walked over, palming the pad. From the inside, the door opened easily. Sticking her head through, she checked the far room. It was, as the map said, a storage room for the nutrient materials. She waved the rest to follow and waited for them to catch up.

  Elgars swept her rifle from side to side, turning to cover back and sides as she closed up the group. As she passed through the intersection something seemed to scream at her from the back of her mind. She had learned to listen to these little internal comments and she did now, looking around the room for whatever threat the voice was trying to tell her of.

  After a moment she leaned her rifle up against the console and considered it thoughtfully while rubbing the bridge of her nose.

  Wendy checked the far room again, but it was still clear. When she saw Elgars put her rifle down she swore.

  "Shari, get the kids through to the other side; I have to go find out what the captain is up to."

  "Got it," the older woman said wearily.

  "Take a break, but we won't be long." She paused and contemplated the captain again. "I hope."

  By the time Wendy had reached the center consoles there was a massive gurgling sound echoing through the room and Elgars had headed to the nearest tank.

  She walked over to the ladder on the side of the tank and started to climb up it, drawing her combat knife.

  "Hey, Captain America," Wendy said. "We're on our way out of here in case you'd forgotten."

  "I know, 'twon't take a minute," Elgars said in a strangely deep voice. "Could you possibly rummage me up a spot of wire, baling wire will do well, and a few scraps of duct tape and . . . oh . . . a can of spray paint? There's a good lass."

  "Hey!" Wendy said, catching Elgars' eye. "Hello! Anne! We have to make like a tree and leaf!"

  Elgars shook her head and looked down at her hands, which had started to strip out the wiring harness for the tank motor. She shook her head again and nodded. "I know," she said in a normal, if distant, voice. "But I think the Posties should have a something to remember us by, don't you?"

  "So you're mixing up a really nice batch of nutrients?" Wendy asked sarcastically.

  "Not exactly," Elgars said with a death's-head grin. "What's in nutrients, Wendy?"

  Wendy thought about it then said: "Oh."

  "Roight," Elgars said, her head going back down to her task. "Now go get me a spot of wire and some duct tape, there's a good lass."

  * * *

  "Wire and duct tape," Wendy muttered, shifting the MP-5 to a better grip. "Where in the hell am I going to find wire and duct tape?"

  There would be some in a maintenance section, but the nearest one on the map was further away than the elevators and in an area the Posleen were bound to have overrun. She walked to the far end of the room and thought about it. Something one of the long-time "pro" firefighters had told her floated up to the surface of memory and she smiled. She looked at her map and figured out which door an administrative puke would come in. All things considered, either the one they came in or the one they were going out. So, where was the furthest away from that you could get?

  She climbed down from the catwalk and began hunting along the walls of the room until she found what she was looking for. On the south wall, the furthest from the door they had come in, behind the last tank, carefully hidden from all but a determined search, was a chair.

  And a toolbox.

  And a pile of oily rags and roll of baling wire. And a can of gray spray paint, half full.

  And a pin-up calendar.

  "Well, at least he had some taste," she said sourly. "Although that chick has no idea how to carry a rifle. And I guarantee that's a dye job! If she's a natural blonde, I'm Pamela Anderson."

  She opened up the toolbox and, after extracting a hard candy from the bag in the top, found the roll of duct tape in the lower compartment.

  "Okay, all the comforts of home," she muttered, rolling the candy around in her mouth. She put the baling wire in the toolbox, closed it up and picked up the can of spray paint. "Now if I can just get it all up the ladder."

  * * *

  "What took you so long?" Elgars asked.

  "Gee, sorry, Captain," Wendy snapped back. "I just found a toolbox I thought you could use and all the other shit you asked for. I guess I should have hurried carrying the heavy fucker up the ladder! And trying to breathe in here isn't helping!"

  The atmosphere, slightly ammoniacal and earthy before, now reeked of ammonia: it stung the eyes and clawed at the nostrils.

  Elgars tossed her a mask and donned one herself. "Sorry, but all I really needed was the baling wire, tape and spray paint," she said, her voice muffled by the respirator. "Thanks for the rest of it, though. What happened to your shirt?"

  Wendy's shirt had taken a beating with three of the buttons torn away.

  "I caught it on the damned ladder," she snapped, looking down at herself. "I thought about duct taping it together, but that was just too redneck."

  "Don't let Papa O'Neal hear you say that," Elgars said, chuckling.

  "You're sounding normal again," Wendy noted, opening up the toolbox and tossing her a hard candy. "You had me creeped out for a second there." She adjusted the mask and refit it carefully. Without careful fitting, masks tended to leak and she could smell a trace of ammonia still.

  "What did I sound like?" the captain asked. She had stripped out the primary power leads for one of the mixing tanks and brought it under the catwalk so that it reached the tank on the opposite side. Taking the spray paint can from Wendy she proceeded to tape the three-phase leads onto the can.

  "Sort of . . . British I think. All this 'there's a good lass' stuff."

  "I sort of remember it," Elgars admitted. "All this stuff is just sort of 'coming' to me as I go along. I think the shrinks were right; I think the Crabs implanted . . . more than just skills, but sort of 'memories' in me. When I dredge one up, the . . . personality associated with it comes up to the front too. Then when I use it for a while, when I get used to it, the personality fades. Sometimes I get real memories along with it. Sometimes I even seem to be the person for a while. I think they might have given me most of my day-to-day skills through a single entity and she's who comes to the fore most of the time."

  "So who is the real you?" Wendy asked.

  "I dunno," Elgars said softly. "But for the time being I'll take what I can get; better than getting eaten by the Posleen."

  Wendy nodded for a moment then grinned. "So, you're channeling the spirit of a British mad bomber? Does he know any good drinking songs? The Brits usually know all the good drinking songs. . . ."

  Elgars laughed and went back to the main control board. "Trust you to see the humor of it."

  "Nah, it's just a matter of looking on the bright side of any really fucked up situation," Wendy said with a muffled chuckle. "I didn't know how to do that at first; I really had a hard time understanding how Tommy could be so . . . comfortable in Fredericksburg. I mean, we were all getting ready to be either blown up or killed and eaten. It's because the rest of us had had our heads in the ground for years about the Posleen. But he had been thinking about what fighting them would be like, getting beaten by them would be like, for years. So when the time came, he just did it while I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, crying and worrying and half useless."

  "That I have a hard time believing,
" Elgars said. She cut the power to the tank that the leads had been run to and walked back. She carefully leapt to the mixer arm and waved at the wires. "Hand those to me, would you?"

  "Sure," Wendy answered, pushing the bundle across the gap. "But really, the difference now is that most of us have been thinking about what might happen down here for years. Oh, there were some that thought the Posleen would never come; just like there are some that planned on getting drunk enough not to notice. But most of us realized that they might, and thought about what we would do about it. Generally, that was 'head for a defense point and hold out until we're relieved,' but even that is wishful thinking; the Posleen will overrun those in an hour or two. There's no way that the Army is going to be back before we're all snacks."

  "Was this your plan from the beginning?" Elgars asked. She carefully leaned over the edge and lowered the wires into the ammoniated muck in the bottom, pressing the wires and spray can deep into it.

  "No," Wendy said with a sigh that could barely be heard over the grinding of the other motors; the material in the bottom was mostly anhydrous ammonia and the mixture was harder than cookie dough. The motors were designed to drive against liquid and although they were about thirty percent overrated for that, they were quickly reaching the point where failsafes were going to pop out. "My plan had been to be in the emergency crews; they would have been at the front lines, trying to hold the Posleen back for as long as possible. But that presumed that we got some warning; I don't know why we didn't."

  "So the longest that the defense points could hold out is . . . what?" Elgars asked, wiping her gloves off on a rag and jumping back to the catwalk. She walked back over to the central console and started shutting down the pumps.

  "Three to six hours," Wendy said. "That's the estimated time for a Posleen force to eliminate ninety percent of resistance and presence. Of course, nobody says that, but I've seen the estimates. That presumes this wasn't just a Lamprey, but if it was there wouldn't be Posleen down here already."

  She keyed the information terminal and dove into the database. She had to enter her password twice, but she finally found the appropriate file.

  "Two hours after reduction of primary defense—that's the security forces in A section—ninety percent of the population will have been removed," Wendy said, referring to the document. "Within six hours after reduction, ninety-eight percent will have been removed."

  "I guess we're in the two percent then," Elgars said.

  "I think it's a bit pessimistic," Wendy answered. "But there's one way to find out." She keyed up a schematic of the Sub-Urb then opened up the emergency services database. "I was wondering, earlier, how we could figure out where the Posleen are. I finally realized you could track them by emergency calls." She pulled up the call records and patched them into the schematic. "We've been on the run for four and a half hours. Penetration was about five hours ago, I'd guess." She scrolled the schematic back five hours. "See the red dots? Those are calls, both initiating calls and support calls. There's a bunch of them around the entrances and then they spread out." She scrolled the schematic forward in time and Elgars could see what she meant; the red dots spread out with a solid "outline" for a while then started to dissipate.

  "You can see that there's starting to be fewer people to put in calls," Wendy said emotionlessly. "This is by two hours after the entry; we were on our way down at that point. Cafeteria 3-B is already well inside the Posleen perimeter; Dave was gone by then or shortly afterwards." She scrolled it outward further and now there was a light scattering of red dots. "At this point, almost all the population areas have been overrun and the Posleen are scattering into the industrial sectors. And trying to track them is pointless because nobody is calling for help anymore."

  "So in four more hours?" Elgars asked, tapping at her console.

  "There will probably be three or four thousand people alive, trapped and hiding in various compartments," Wendy said coldly. "Out of two million to start."

  "And they're not getting out, right?" the officer said, looking at her sharply. "They're for all practical purposes dead."

  "As a doornail." Wendy nodded. "Ground Forces have not entered and have not responded and the Posleen are going to totally occupy this facility. There might be a Newt or two left, but for all practical purposes they're all dead men walking."

  Elgars nodded and hit enter. "Time to leave."

  "Six hours?" Wendy asked.

  "Yep," the captain said, looking around. "Assuming it works. But we shouldn't dawdle."

  "Are you guys done?" Shari asked, coming down the exit walkway. She had donned a mask as well and the voice was muffled and irritated.

  "We could do a backup," Wendy said. "I'm not sure that will get it going. What did you use for a fuel-oil substitute?"

  "Corn oil," Elgars answered distantly. "What I need is some bloody plastique," she added, rubbing her chin. "That would fix the bahstahds."

  "We need to leave," Shari asked. "What are you doing?"

  "Blowing up the Urb," Wendy answered.

  CHAPTER 32

  Near Cowee, NC, United States, Sol III

  2337 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad

  "The drive out of here is going to be interesting," Major Mitchell said.

  "No shit, sir," Pruitt said, scanning the independent sight around. "How do we get out of here?"

  The SheVa had headed down the Little Tennessee River to where it was joined by Cader Creek then headed up that valley to rendezvous with its reload group on Cader Fork. The reload teams were well into the process and the spare drivers that accompanied them were working with Warrant Indy to repair some of the damage done to the gun.

  "You mean other than going back to the Tennessee?" Mitchell asked.

  "Yes, sir," the gunner said patiently as the gun shuddered to another round being loaded. The word had already reached them that the Posleen had bounded forward to Oak Grove; indeed, the landers would have been cold meat as they passed the valley opening. But what it meant was that there were now Posleen on both sides of the valley entrance. For that matter, there could be Posleen pushing up the valley by now. However, Major Mitchell had detailed the Meemies to screen in that direction so they shouldn't be caught reloading. "I think by the time we get back there there we'll be way too popular if you know what I mean."

  "Major!" Indy called. "We've got company."

  "Shit!" Pruitt said, sweeping the sight around. "Not when we're loading! Where? Bearing!"

  "No, I mean we have company," Indy said with a nervous laugh, climbing up out of the hatch. "Get your finger off the trigger before you give our position away."

  Following her was a short, muscular female captain. Mitchell smiled when he saw the ADA insignia on her uniform.

  "Whisky Three-Five I presume," he said, offering his hand.

  "Captain Vickie Chan, sir," the captain said, taking it.

  "Thanks for your assistance, Captain," the SheVa commander said. "I thought we were goners."

  "Captain, I want one of y'all's guns," Pruitt said, spinning his seat around to face her. "They are bad. Not as bad as Bun-Bun, mind you. But pretty damned tough."

  "You can have it," the captain laughed. "You have no idea what it's like to fire."

  "Bad?" Mitchell asked.

  "That's an understatement, sir," the captain replied with a smile. "Let's just say we tend to wait until we have to fire. So what is the plan?"

  "Unfortunately, I think it's to go up there," Mitchell said, panning an external monitor up into the mountains. "I've been looking at a map. And it's even worse than it looks on the screen."

  "That's nearly vertical, sir," the Meemie commander said hesitantly. "I think that Meemies can handle the slope, but it's also covered in trees, which we can't handle. And isn't a SheVa a little top-heavy for those slopes? Not to mention . . . wide?"

  "I think we're about to find out," Mitchell answered. "I think I've plotted out a course that we can take; up through Chestnut and Betty Gap an
d down Betty Creek. It's not going to be fun or easy—the slope in particular around the back side of Panther Knob is going to be a special nightmare—but it's all wide enough for us to fit, according to the map, and with nothing worse than a thirty-degree slope. With all our rounds loaded, we actually have a fairly low center of gravity, despite the look. I think we can make it."

  "And if you can't?" Captain Chan asked.

  "Well, if we go back, we're going to run into the Posleen," Mitchell answered. "At least, that's a very good chance. And if we go . . . up, there are a series of possible bad outcomes. For one thing, we don't know that the Posleen aren't on Betty Creek in force. But it's also the only path that doesn't involve getting immediately overrun. If the Posleen are there, but not in force, well . . ." He grinned ferally.

  "What about your resupply units?" she asked, thumbing over her shoulder. "And us, for that matter."

  "I've updated a map," he said, handing her a flash card. "Do you have a . . ."

  "I've got a map module," she said with a smile, pulling out her map reader and popping the chip in. "We've got all the modern refinements."

  "You'll go up by Mica City and over Brushy Fork Gap; there are some roads. On the map the path is usable by my trucks, your tanks . . ."

  "Are pretty damned heavy."

  "Yes," he said. "There are some hairpins I'm not sure about you being able to make. I'll be honest about that. If you get permanently stuck, I suggest you get out and board our trucks. But I hope you're able to meet us on the far side. God knows we can use the help."

  "We might take a different route," Chan said scrolling around the map. "I really don't think this road will take us."

  "I agree," Mitchell said with a sigh. "But I don't see another way out of the valley."

  "I do," Chan said with another smile. "We'll follow you."

  "Uh," the major paused. "We . . ."

  "Make a hell of a mess," Chan said. "I know, we followed you here, remember? But you smash stuff more or less flat; heck, sir, you smash tree stumps into sawdust. It's bumpy, nearly impossible, for most vehicles. But an Abrams doesn't have a problem with it at all. So we'll just tag along behind you."