March in Country

by EE Knight

  Macon didn’t want to screw up his first real opportunity, so he went with serene competence. It had served him well with the Reapers, and weren’t they just extensions of the Kurians?

  This is good: I will dispense with the aphorisms. We are moving into Kentucky shortly. Our foolish cousins north of the Ohio River have thoroughly, what is your colorful expression, shit in their own front yard. They turned a minor incursion by the resistance into a full-scale rebellion thanks to the use of a heavy hand where a light stinging slap was required, then released a half-developed and virtually untested virus. They’ve killed half the population and made resolute enemies of the other half. We have an opportunity to pick up the pieces so carelessly broken, if we move quickly but carefully. There are to be three new Control Districts. I will have the westernmost, and you will be on my staff, if you so accept.

  Macon needed to think. Were they really moving against the rebels, or was this some kind of play against their rivals north of the Ohio? They were greedy when it came to engulfing new populations and their human servants were chips thrown on the table in long shot gambles. The Georgia Control was powerful, easily the most powerful south of the old Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi, but for all that they had only a small standing army. It stood as a safeguard against a rebellion from the more numerous police and paramilitary reserve forces and was overstretched.

  This is interesting: You’re wondering if we have enough trustworthy forces to operate in three entire new Control Districts. We do not. But we have enough to do a thorough job of taking over one, as we did in Alabama and Florida in the days of your fathers. For the others, mercenaries, police, and a certain amount of terror will allow us to maintain our position until control is consolidated.

  “There are guerillas in Kentucky, I’ve heard,” Macon said. He’d heard a lot of talk of one beleaguered Southern Command battalion. Evidently anyone could join up under a false name. They didn’t ask any questions and gave you a new identity, basically. He’d heard some mutterings that if this or that didn’t work out, the person in question would run off and join the rebels.

  This is true: the legworm ranchers have assembled a small army aided by a band of renegades, a smaller force from the hillbilly rabble across the Mississippi. They’re in our region, camped on the Ohio near Evansville. Your brethren on the Armed Operations Staff consider the Kentuckians the more dangerous force as they are armed and numerous and know the land. I am not convinced. Nor is Director Solon, who has some experience across the Mississippi. We must move as soon as weather allows. Once my avatars are in place we will be in a position to grind them down. So: Your first task will be to convey some of my avatars to the tower I am building in Kentucky. Speak not, I already know your answer is yes.

  Prince Green shifted his weight on his perch. The goop around his ankles relaxed its grip.

  Go, and we will speak again when I join my avatars in Kentucky.

  “Thank you for the opportunity, my lord,” Macon said, formalizing their new relationship.

  Prince Green showed no sign of having heard him. Some of the tentacles were rippling. Perhaps he was animating one of his Reapers, communicating the orders to his chief of staff.

  Macon left the oversized hornet’s nest of the hangar roof, feeling rather like a fly walking out of a spider’s web.

  “Looks like we have us a new ghoul-wrangler,” one of Prince Green’s human security staff said.

  They took him out for a celebratory meal. “Eat up. You won’t see civilization again for years,” Director Solon, Prince Green’s chief of staff, predicted.

  They plied him with good liquor and tantalizing promises, in that members-only restaurant that smelled like sizzling beef and cigars. When Kentucky was properly incorporated into the Control, there’d be plenty of new Director positions.

  Which led him, after briefings and paperwork bookended by the usual indoctrination lectures from the churchmen about what tests he’d encounter in his new duties among the unincorporated, to Wayside Number Two. Prince Green’s advance guard of Reapers needed feeding. The Reapers lived off the blood of its victim, while acting as a conduit for the vital auras all intelligent, emotionally resonant beings possessed.

  They’d offered him a driver, but he turned them down. One of the things his father taught him was that you always needed at least one person near you at all times whose “pay chit only gets deposited if you’re still breathing.” He hired Casp from a reliable firm in Charleston. They bred driver/bodyguards there the way the old Roman Empire used to produce gladiators. He’d added a little extra insurance by careful selection. Casp was two meters of solid muscle and had three brothers who were also DBs. If one gave the company name a black eye, the others would suffer.

  Macon judged the souls in the Wayside, and found all of them wanting in some manner or other.

  Three. He’d have to take three.

  Macon felt sorry for them, in a way. Or rather, he felt sorry for the person they might have been, had they not made a few bad decisions. Failure to join one of the youth movements, or to drop out of the organizations and the educational system took many down a dead end. Resentment over a relative caused a lot of bad blood. People put so much emotion into biological happenstance.

  Like that heavy driver in the corner, with his patty melt. A vanabon—Macon could tell from patches all over his mesh vest. Each patch represented a key business he carried for. He probably wandered northern Tennessee, doing everything from bringing eggs to market, delivering letters and parcels and subscriptions, to making spare parts runs—probably sneaking a passenger or two discreetly among the boxes.

  Macon wouldn’t take him, even if the man was stuffing his food to make a hasty exit before Macon asked to look over the contents of his van. Fat men rarely were rebels.

  The gal at the folding table was a possibility. He might have to talk to her to decide. Aging, weathered, still with beautiful long hair, she wore a dress of nice material in flowing patterns.

  Taking his cup, he walked up to her table and she offered a welcoming smile. Her portable table was covered with spices, medicines, candles, cut-glass vials, even a couple of beautifully restored plastic dolls. She evidently made her living selling sundries to the road traffic, something nice to bring home as a surprise to the wife.

  “Are the candles scented?” Macon asked.

  “Scented and unscented. Cinnamon is my most popular. I have beeswax as well, you can melt the stumps down and mix in a little linseed oil and use it as furniture polish. Not cheap wicks, either, they’re braided.”

  She was a little pushy. Macon warmed at the thought that he could snap his fingers and have her lifted out of existence. Just stick something under my nose, babe, and you’ll never see another cinnamonscented moonrise.

  The washroom door opened, and a youth with calf muscles like horse hooves exited. Still spotty, maybe seventeen or so. His distinctive black-and-white striped shirt had a name patch—Kurt, it read—and vertical lettering in one of the white stripes read ENCOMPASS in red letters.

  Encompass was one of the New Universal Church’s principal periodicals for the masses, a monthly with a beautiful glossy cover and smeared pages between. Families who wanted to stay in the good graces of their local clergy would be able to discuss the month’s lead article and lead editorial. The rest of it, printed on thin, soft, not very absorbent paper that almost begged to be used for sanitary purposes, made a decent sedative. Sinecured editorialists droned on and on about obscure reclarifications of a previous perceived error in Church doctrine, which, if you thought about it correctly, wasn’t really so much of a mistake as it was an example of poor word choice. At the back you usually had a useful how-to or two on how to get the most vitamin value out of sixteen hundred calories or the quickest method to check your kids for lice before and after school.

  Volunteers like this kid, now turning bright red for some reason as he checked his fly, sold subscriptions and delivered it. Each issue also c
ontained a bonus offer for some household item of dubious quality the kids had to attempt to upsell and then deliver, assuming the stock ever arrived.

  Tough job. Lots of miles, no pay, and plenty of headaches thanks to the summer heat.

  A woman exited the washroom after the kid, fixing the two remaining buttons on her blouse. She looked like a cowboy biker, all overcoat, chain belt, and tight jeans. Smeared lipstick and short red hair, possibly dyed. Haunted, hunted eyes. No wonder the kid turned red, she was so skinny he suspected she might be a tranny. Well, no Adam’s apple. Whatever her gender, the whore looked like she’d been on short commons for a while. Probably gave the kid a five-buck handjob while he felt her tits.

  She clutched a rolled up copy of Encompass in her strong-looking hands.

  Good job, kid. Never miss a chance to sell a loose copy.

  Well, this whore had turned her last trick. He was half tempted to add the counterman to the bag. What kind of establishment was he running? Macon wondered what his cut was.

  “Don’t leave just yet,” Macon told the kid, hurrying for the door and his bike.

  “Th-th-th-that’s t-t-t-three for you t-t-t-today, Red,” a greasy-haired Indian at the counter managed.

  The scarred-up Indian smelled like woodsmoke and swamp water. All the weathering made his age hard to guess, but there were a few flecks of gray in the otherwise shiny black hair.

  The stuttering Indian must have had it in for the whore. Maybe he couldn’t scrape together even the chump change to afford a throw. He’d all but painted a sign reading SHE’S A WHORE! TAKE HER, NOT ME.

  Not quite as lean as the whore, well-muscled about the shoulders, he wore a tattered mix of legworm leather—rare down in Georgia but more common up here—and polyester felt insulated vest. He’d picked up some utility worker’s canvas trousers, probably at a resale store. One of those hammer picks hung from a short chain at his belt. The legworm riders used them to peg down their mounts for the night with the hammer end, and the spike end had a slight hook to it, like a mountaineer’s climbing pick. They buried that end in the skin of their mounts to pull themselves up. Macon felt a momentary doubt—the stutterer might be a deserter from one of the armies lately rampaging across Kentucky. He put one of the scented candles under his nose, turned, and took a good look at the Indian’s boots.

  He wore moccasins. Sort of. They looked like they had soles made out of old truck tires, fixed with thick sandal straps.

  No self-respecting army would let its soldiers wear boots like that. Even the guerillas had better footgear.

  The Indian glanced at Macon with wary brown eyes. “M-maybe f-f-four.”

  Overplaying a really weak hand, Macon thought. He spoke into his radio, ordered the Transporter to pull up and Casp to cover the door.

  “Nobody leaves without my say-so,” Macon said, when Casp’s bulk filled the front door frame.

  The Indian looked scared. Macon wondered if he’d do something stupid with the hammer pick, if push came to shove.

  Everyone whispered about the Reapers, the suicides, the Resistance, and the rebels, but most of those bound for harvesting temporized and rationalized until the last few seconds, when death stared them in the face and effective resistance was impossible. Nine-tenths of the Georgia Control were inching toward harvesting, they just wouldn’t see it.

  Better give them a rationalization.

  “I’m here to do a labor draft,” he said, slowly and clearly. Some of these border types spoke English as though they’d learned it from a Scrabble scoreboard with a few letters missing. “You’re all recruited. Easy work for one day, fifty Control dollars plus a week’s ration draw.”

  “Easy how, boss?” the redhead asked. She had an odd twang to her speech, but she knew how to address Control authority.

  Macon smiled. “You have to stand holding a sign with an arrow on it and make sure the arrow always points the way I tell you. We have a convoy heading up into Kentucky, our maps are iffy and signage is gone. There will be military police at the major stops and intersections, but there are still a few turns around downed bridges and whatnot that I need managed.”

  Macon’s first job he’d supervised as a Youth Vanguard had been something very similar, near the Florida border. Only there you had to worry about hungry fauna lunging out of the Okefenokee.

  “Finish up your food and have a big drink of Royal Pep on the Control, you probably won’t get to eat again until midnight tomorrow morning, if our vehicles are delayed. I’m going to make a pit stop. I want you all ready to go and earn up by the time I’m finished.”

  He walked up to the redhead and took her by the upper arm. She cocked her head.

  “You, darlin’—I’ve been sleeping in a seat for nine hours. How about helping me work the knots out?”

  “I’d rather hold something warmer than a sign, boss,” she said. “The bathroom okay? It’s all I got.”

  Macon caught the eye of the Encompass distributor.

  “Hey, young man. You look ambitious. Why don’t you be foreman and organize some sandwiches to go.” They were like sheep. Once you got one moving, the rest would follow.

  The whore carefully pinched out her cigarette, held up four fingers to the Indian, and sauntered for the john. He gave her an odd salute in return, as though he were animating a shadow animal on the wall.

  “What an asshole,” she said. She led him into the washroom, which was cleaner than he’d expected. Apart from a few missing tiles and an overfull waste basket, the place was spotless.

  She prattled about how she used to “entertain” in one of the best establishments on the Memphis waterfront and that he reminded her of a better class of men who tipped well.

  The jukebox in the diner came on, some song about a long drive ahead before being reunited with absent love. Crap, he really was in the weeds. Well, he’d made his choice.

  He wouldn’t take any chances. He reached for her, eliciting a moan, and then patted her down, eliciting a what gives, looking for weapons. He found a small knife, a short blade with a nice sheep’s-foot handle, with a fork and spoon wrapped up in a damp wash-cloth that smelled like bleach. He dumped them in the overflowing wastebasket.

  “Hey, I eat with those,” she protested.

  “Wash ’em,” Macon said. “Take off that chain belt, too. Put it in the trash with the rest.”

  “Who you know ever got killed with a dog chain?” she said.

  Macon patted the trigger guard on his gun with his index finger. “I don’t take chances in the sticks.”

  The whore took off her shirt so slowly you might think she was paid by the hour. Then, rubbing her nipples in absentminded eroticism, she began to talk price.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll give me one just to stay in the good graces,” Macon said. He should really be enjoying this more, his chances of getting a woman in the near future weren’t great.

  “C’mon, boss,” she said. “Five bucks. For anything and everything. That’s what you tip a doorman in Atlanta.”

  So began a tiresome argument, her arms crossed on her chest, holding up her small, undernourished breasts. Decent muscle on her shoulders but she could use a few weeks on Georgia ham. Amazing how so many of these people who tried to scratch an existence away from the Kurians wound up thin, sick, and haggard, like wild mutts compared to the sleek German Shepherds of the Control.

  Whatever she did, even if she blew him like an eight-hundred dollar private dancer at the Velvet Cloud in Limotown, he’d bag and deliver her. Macon rather liked the idea that the very last skeet dispersing in her body would be his.

  After what seemed like endless negotiations, he gave her a dollar. The price of a breath mint. Plus his personal guarantee that she wouldn’t have to be out all night holding up a sign.

  She unzipped his fly and released his growing erection.

  “This’ll be the best damn dollar you ever spent,” she promised, dropping her knees to the clean white tiles.

&
nbsp; Relaxed, sweaty, and tired, he exited the washroom a half hour later, counted heads. The jukebox was still wailing. He shut the door to the sound of the whore fishing in the trash can for her utensils.

  A fly buzzed his ear. “Wait a cyc, where did the Indian guy go?”

  As if in response, the jukebox went silent.

  “I think he left,” the kid said.

  Macon glared at Casp. He shook his head. “No one’s been through this door, boss.”

  “Left?” Macon looked at the counterman. “Did he go out the kitchen?”

  “No, boss.”

  “Then—”

  Macon heard plastic flapping. He followed the sound to the music player. Behind a shelving unit filled with stacked boxes of dry supplies a hole in the wall, plastic-covered, flapped. He suspected there’d once been a wall-unit air conditioner, probably long since sold off, the hole then filled with a couple of layers of roofing sheet.

  Well, you’d have to expect a few rats to dodge a trap. Maybe Stutters-with-Gimp wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

  The whore came out of the washroom.

  “Anyone who doesn’t want to be dead, follow me,” Macon said, looking pointedly at her. “You too, Red. Casp, bring up the rear, I don’t want any more stragglers.”

  He strode out the door. The Transporter waited in the lot near the exit. They probably wouldn’t be able to see into the windowless back compartment until they were inside. He just needed them to follow him to the back doors. Half of your Authority was in how you presented yourself, walked, talked, confidence bred—

  Hands swung down out of the daylight like a mousetrap snapping shut. Before Macon processed that a man—a very strong one—must be up on the Wayside roof, somehow he was in the air, swung aloft by the straps on his Model 18 and his own field harness. He sagged as his gun hitched around some invisible projection, he could just see the shoulder brace of the folding stock ...

  “Casp!”

  A shadow dropped, the steel hammer pick in its hand. The Indian—