by E. E. Knight
"Sorry, sir," the corporal said. "It's these pointy heads. They'd run this place like a fruit stand. You'd think security was the enemy. Could you wait a moment?"
"Why the new security?"
"Kurian agent. Six men shot each other running him down."
Valentine looked around for a chair in the foyer, but the only two in evidence held up an improvised coffee station for the workmen set up on one of the missing glass door panes. He settled for sitting on a windowsill.
"I'll wait. I think it was signed O'Connor. David O'Connor," Valentine said, dredging the name from his memory.
"Doubt it," the corporal said, a rugged military phone to his ear. "He bought it when they dropped Reapers on the campus."
"My mistake," Valentine said.
"His. He tried to capture one." The corporal connected with someone and turned ninety degrees away from Valentine to speak.
Whatever he heard made the corporal look at Valentine again.
"Yes, Doc." He replaced the receiver. "You want some coffee or anything, Major Valentine?"
"I'm good."
"One of the senior fellows will be right down, Major."
"And he'll hear how polite you've been as you've done your duty," Valentine said.
"Thanks. I mean it."
The two guards looking down from the balcony on the second floor lost interest, and Valentine heard footsteps over more distant construction noises.
A limp-haired woman wearing shapeless scrubs that looked as though they belonged in a hospital emerged from a door behind the security station and came around the desk, giving a friendly nod to the corporal as she passed. She extended her hand and Valentine shook it. She had an easy, confident manner that made Valentine think of the midwife from his youth in the Boundary Waters.
"Gia Dozhinshka," she said. Valentine wondered if he'd been greeted in an Eastern European tongue. "Zhin's the shorthand around here," she continued.
"David Valentine, or just Val. I don't think we've met."
"No, but I summarized your debriefs. Nebraska and the Caribbean, and I read your Wisconsin and Great Lakes material. Call me a fan. Let's go to an interview room. We can sit."
"New digs," Valentine said as they passed through a different set of doors under the balcony at the back of the foyer.
"We hid our low-level archives here when we got the order to bug out. Seemed easier to move Mohammed to the mountain afterward. No one's complaining. Central air, if you can believe it."
"I thought that was a legend outside the hospitals and Mountain Home."
"We've been blessed. That's what it seemed like at first, anyway."
A young woman pushed a cart down the hall. "Interview A, Tess," Zhin called.
They turned a corner and she opened a door to a room that had been subdivided by half-glass walls. Valentine saw two people speaking to a hairy-faced man with the look of a frontiersman, though even with hard ears he couldn't make out any words through the glass. She led him to a warren of enclosed cubicles.
They circumvented most of them and went to a smaller office at the back, where she turned on a light.
"The chairs in this one are better. It's got its own sugar and such for coffee, too. Have to wait on Tess with your files. Anything to drink? Coffee? We have sage tea, courtesy of your Texas friends."
"Water would be good," Valentine said, spotting a cooler.
"Cups are up top. We don't have the kind that go in the little dispenser anymore."
Valentine got his drink and sat down at the bare table. Zhin settled herself opposite him.
"They decided you're worth guarding, it seems."
"We've come up in the world. Curse of being right."
"How's that?"
"A couple of our guys picked up on some strange dealmaking with the Texas-Kansas-Oklahoma Kurians. Solon hiring himself an army—but you know all about that. We figured we were going to get hit, and hard. Southern Command figured they were going to clean out the Grogs up and down the Missouri—Solon sent out a bunch of false intelligence indicating that. We ended up being right."
"But nobody listened," Valentine said.
"We were always outside the whole command structure. We'd give an opinion on this or that. What might work to pierce Reaper cloaks. Is there a way to disrupt the signal between a Kurian and his Reapers. What kind of ailments kill 'em. But since Solon's bid we've got to issue regular reports, assessments, and they're even starting to filter who we talk to and where we go so we don't lose 'assets.'"
"I met one of the filters at the security desk. Seems a reasonable precaution."
The young woman with the cart knocked and entered, pushing a collapsed binder with Valentine's name and some sort of catalog number printed on the outside. Be interesting to take a look at the supplemental notes in that file, Valentine thought. Pens, notepaper, and storage bags and jars littered the cart.
"Tess Sooyan, David Valentine," Zhin said, by way of introduction.
The young woman hid behind her hair and glasses. She sat down in the corner with a pad, leaving the table to Valentine and her superior.
"Used to be if someone saw a weird track or bone they'd bring it to us, and we'd hand out little rewards and so on, even if it was just another Grog skull. But the, oh, what do you want to call them, shifty types—border trash—they avoid us now. All the barbed wire and uniforms scare them away."
"Speaking of shifty . . . I've got a confession. I'm here under false pretenses. I didn't need a follow-up to my last debrief."
Zhin leaned back in her chair. "Oh?"
Tacitly invited to explain, Valentine extracted Post's note. "A friend of mine got this . . . I'm guessing it's from one of your people. He's looking for his wife."
"Probably one of the kids," Zhin said, showing the note to her assistant. "Still in school or fresh out of it, they start here running down public queries. They shouldn't be sending out copies of documents, though. Or passing on opinions."
"That might be Peter Arnham's writing," Tess said at a level just loud enough for Valentine to hear it. "He's on the Missing/Displaced network."
"Can you look into it?" Valentine asked. "My friend's a good man. Badly wounded outside Dallas. He's going to have to put his life back together after all this. It would help if he knew one way or the other."
Zhin put the message in her leather folio. "I'll get a group going on it.
"I’ll owe—"
"No, we don't work that way. No favors, no bargains, and you needn't come back with a crate of brandy. If you want, we can put you up for a night or two on campus."
"I know the town. I'd rather not be behind wire. I'll look up the Copley, if it's still around. Maybe try for a bass in the reservoir lake."
She and Tess both made notes. "You might at that. No one was doing much fishing while Solon was running things."
* * * *
Few pursuits can compare with fishing for a man looking for peace and quiet.
Two days later, enjoying his leave more than he'd enjoyed anything since parting with Malia, Valentine brought in a nice three-pound bass. As he tied up his aluminum shell he mentally inventoried the seasonings he'd picked up at the market after catching that catfish yesterday but had saved at the last minute in the hope of a better future catch: some green peppers, garlic, cloves, and a tiny bottle of what the spice merchant swore up and down was olive oil.
This particular lunker would be worth it.
He'd grill it over charcoal and hickory within the hour, and enjoy it with a syrupy local concoction everyone in town called a coke.
"Hey, Valentine," he heard a voice call. He looked up. "Reservoir Dan," the man who'd rented him the boat and tackle—and who accepted money only for bait " 'cause that's an actual expense" after seeing his Southern Command ID, stood at the pier, stubbing out one of the ration cigarettes Valentine had insisted that he accept. "Got a message for you—hey, you did good."
Valentine held the fish a little higher. "Got it near the s
tumps on the north side."
"You try that spinner?"
"That's what got him. What was the message?" Dan would go all afternoon about local fishing with the tiniest prompt.
"Some girl on a bike from the Ark. Said they ran your paper down and that you could come by anytime."
"I hope anytime includes after lunch," Valentine said. "Join me?"
"I'll bring the sweet potato pie," Dan said, smacking his lips.
Half a bass and a thick wedge of pie heavier, Valentine caught a lift on a military shuttle horse cart to the SEARK campus. Everything went faster this time, from surrendering his weapon at the gate to admittance to the Miskatonic.
This time Zhin brought him back to her office. The researcher had a deft hand at indoor gardening; assorted spider plants shot out tiny versions of themselves from the top of every file cabinet and bookcase, taking advantage of the window's southern exposure.
A young man she introduced as Peter Arnham, who seemed to prefer rumpled clothes two sizes too big for him, stood up nervously when Valentine entered.
"This isn't a trial, son," Valentine said. "I'm just doing legwork for a man who's missing his."
"I didn't know Hunter Staff Cats-—Cats with the rank of major, anyway—did their own legwork," Arnham said.
"I'm not staff yet," Valentine said.
The Miskatonic researchers looked at each other and shrugged. He knew as little about their world as they did his.
"Everyone just sit," Zhin suggested. "This isn't a formal briefing, nothing like it."
They did so.
"Val, you're free to ask Peter here whatever you like. We don't know much about this; we're holding nothing back."
Valentine sensed an edge to her voice that hadn't been there before.
"You think I'm on an assignment?" Valentine asked.
"We know you work with cover stories and so on."
Valentine leaned forward. "No. It's really what I told you. I'm inquiring for a friend, a fellow officer, William Post. This isn't prep for an operation, not by a long shot."
"It's just that the mule list is a bit of a mystery to us too," Zhin said. "We thought maybe someone was finally looking into it."
"Mule list?"
"Just a shorthand we use," Zhin said. "Solon's departure left behind a real treasure trove of documentation—we've never gotten this complete a picture of human resource processing in the Kurian Zone before. We've had to add and train dozens of people just to sift through it all."
Arnham added: " 'Mule list' is a term we use because all these women appear to carry something the Kurians are interested in. We know it's not blood type or anything obvious, like Down's. About all we know is that only women are tested, and that if they come up positive for it they're immediately packed up and shipped off."
"How do you know it's a positive? List I saw just had an X under 'Result.' "
"Intellectual shorthand," Zhin said. "We just call it a positive. That's the kind of optimists we got here." Zhin and Arnham both chuckled.
"Why the 'she's gone for good' note?"
"I thought he deserved to know." Arnham stared levelly at Zhin. "I don't think that sort of thing should be kept a secret. Like I said, all the security shit is hurting us more—"
"Let's keep this on point, Peter," Zhin said.
Zhin turned in her chair to Valentine. "This Gail, your officer's wife, is most likely dead. Everything we know about the mule list says that they're put on priority trains with extra security and shipped out. Handling is similar to what happens when your Wolves or Bears are captured. We know Hunters are interrogated and killed at a special medical facility; that's been established. Doctors working for the Kurians do a lot of pathology on the bodies."
Valentine had heard rumors along those lines before.
"Have you looked into the family background of your mule list? Do they come from Hunter parents?"
"A few," Arnham said. "Not enough for a real correlation."
"What is the test?"
"Don't know. They take a small amount of blood. Like an iron check when you donate."
Valentine had given enough blood in Southern Command's medical units to know what that meant. A drop or two squeezed from a finger cut. "And then?"
"They drop it in a test tube. We know the negatives stay clear."
"How many show up as positives?"
"Less than one percent," Arnham answered.
"About one out of a hundred and fifty or so, looks like," Zhin said, checking another paper.
Valentine wondered if any of his known unknowns were filled in, or if this just represented a new unknown popping up. "But these women present a danger to the Kurians?"
Arnham's lips tightened. "I didn't say that. I said they were treated that way. Look, we're in the dark about as much as you. We're laying it all out there."
He rooted around in his folios and passed a binder to Valentine. Inside were six tabs. Each had a list from a testing station similar to the one he sent Post.
"Your girl's in the yellow-tabbed one," Arnham said.
Valentine nodded and flipped to the list. The sheets were the same as the others, a bare list of negatives. Female names, no particular ethnic background to them
Valentine's heart thudded before his brain knew why.
Melissa Carlson.
The rest of the room faded away for a second as the name held his attention. Melissa . . . Molly . . . the woman whose family had helped him in his trip across Wisconsin, who he'd gone to the Zoo in Chicago to save when she caught the eye of a sexually avaricious Quisling nomenklatura and murdered him. . . .
"You okay there, Val?" Zhin asked.
No result next to Molly's name. She hadn't been put on a train. Molly's sister Mary was just below her on the list; she'd been tested too, also no X in the result column.
But she had been tested. She'd been tested at the same location as Gail Foster. Why was she listed as Molly Carson? She'd married her Guard lieutenant . . . What was his name . . . Stockton, no, Stockard. Graf Stockard.
"Fine. You keep the big directories here, right? The Southern Command Military Census?"
"Yes, of course."
"Can I have a browse?"
"Sure. A name ring a bell?" Zhin guessed.
Not just a bell. A gong and clattering cymbals.
Chapter
Four
Crowley's Ridge, Arkansas: Running southwest-northeast through the eastern part of the state, straight as though drawn on the map with a ruler, Crowley's Ridge varies from about two hundred to five hundred feet high, up to a dozen miles wide, and several hundred miles long. Once the next thing to terra incognita in Southern Command, with only a few precariously placed settlements hugging the Saint Francis, it is now considered the "civilized" eastern border for the defenders of the freehold.
The northeastern part of the state suffered literally earth-shattering devastation in the New Madrid quake and never recovered. Now the expanse between the Ridge and Memphis is a tangled floodplain for the newly feral Mississippi and its tributaries, like the Saint Francis, briefly bridged by a few pieces of road and a railroad line during Solon's tenure in the Ozarks.
Solon intended for Crowley's Ridge to be his eastern border and set up the outposts, along with a road and rail network to serve them. Southern Command's Guards were only too happy to assume their upkeep when Valentine's Rising and Archangel put Solon's incorporations into receivership. Now this series of Guard Outposts holds the line here, supplying smaller Hunter formations that explore the flat lands extending to the Mississippi and beyond.
Perhaps no area is more patrolled and contested than the corridor that runs along the old interstate that once linked Memphis and Little Rock. A few Kurians maintain their towers on the west side of the river within sight of Memphis, sending their Reapers into the wilderness to hunt refugees, smugglers, or out-and-out brigands, while Southern Command sends Cats and Wolves into the corridor to hunt the Reapers.
* * *
*
You're not doing this in order to see her, David Valentine told himself for the umpteenth time. She's smart, a good observer. Perhaps Molly even knew Gail.
No, her letters trickled off and you want to know why, a more honest part of Valentine said.
Shut up the both of you, someone whose name might be Superego interjected.
Valentine got the feeling he was being watched as he walked up the road running along the western side of Crowley's Ridge. Molly Carlson Stockard's name had turned up as residing at a military camp called Quapaw Post, and a quick message to the CO—Valentine justified it as a joint inquiry with the Miskatonic—revealed that she lived at the Post as a "Class A" dependant, which meant she didn't just live on post, but worked there as well.
A forty-mile train ride, ten-mile wagon hitch, and a two-mile hike brought him to this quiet corner of Southern Command, well north of the corridor.
He bore a full set of arms, as any serving officer in Southern Command did, even on leave. The Atlanta Gunworks assault rifle formerly shouldered by the Razors bumped against his back inside an oiled leather sheath to keep the wet and dirt off. The freehold had learned long ago that the more people trained to carry guns there were traipsing around the rear areas, the less likely they were to have to use them, whether threatened by the lawless or by the emissaries of the awful law that was the Kurian Zone.
He had to stop himself from jogging or falling into his old Wolf lope. He wanted to arrive more or less composed, not sweaty and bedraggled. He regretted that he didn't already have his staff crossbar, or he'd probably have been able to requisition a trap or even a motorcycle.
Quapaw Post didn't look like much; one thick concrete shell that probably enclosed a generator, armory, and fuel supply. A pair of identical, cavernous barns and a few wooden barracks, with a tower at the center for fresh water and sentries, rounded out the station. Miles of fencing stood along either side of the road and extended up into the oak-and-hickory-thick hills of the ridge and west into the alluvial flats, where the fields were subdivided into pasture and hay fields. Horses grazed and swished each other in the gauzy sun, and nearer to the road insects harvested the nectar of butterfly weed and wild bellflowers.