“Roger that. We’re on the church.” She let go of the transmit button. “Bag that necklace and let’s go.”
“What did you find in the church?” Rudy asked softly.
“He found us.” The lieutenant’s trembling had gotten worse. He was inclined to give her a sedative, but Mr. Church had been adamant they needed answers now.
“Who is he?”
Rudy waited for her to elaborate, but this interview was like pulling teeth. “Tell me about what happened in the church, Olivia.”
Abruptly her trembling stopped. The change in manner was so complete, so chilling, that it brought to mind patients he’d worked with suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. In the blink of an eye, there was a different person sitting across from him. Only this one was utterly calm.
“Are you okay, Olivia?”
Seemingly curious, Carver tilted her head to the side, a bit too far. “I like eyes. Your eyes are broken, Rudy. I can only see through one of them.”
The shift was so sudden, and the question so unexpected, that it put him off his game. “I was injured. I have a glass eye.”
Carver nodded slowly. “Your world is flat.”
“You mean I have no depth perception. Correct.”
She stared at him for a long time. “It makes me sad you’re broken.”
Despite being summer in Texas, Rudy felt a sudden chill. There was a knock on the other side of the glass. It made him jump.
He tried to hide his relief at having an interruption. “Excuse me a minute.” Rudy got up and went to the door. He had to wait for them to unlock it.
There were four MPs waiting in the hall. Mr. Church was by himself in the observation room. He was simply standing there in the dark, watching Lieutenant Carver through the one-way glass, inscrutable as ever.
“What do you think, Doctor?”
“It’s too early to tell. She’s a severely traumatized young woman who has been through a lot, but beyond that I’m going to need more time to reach her.”
“I’ve received a call from another agency. They are sending a specialist. He’ll be here soon.”
“What kind of specialist?” Rudy asked suspiciously. “From what agency?”
“The kind you don’t ask questions about. His name is Franks. I’ve worked with him before.” Considering how broad and mysterious Church’s background was, that was incredibly unhelpful. “Agent Franks is a thoroughly unpleasant individual, but very good at what he does. You’ll want to stay out of his way. He’s not big on conversation.”
“It’s unlike you to turn over DMS jurisdiction to someone else. Carver is one of us.”
“Is she?”
“What do you mean by that?”
Church glanced at the wall clock. “He should arrive in an hour.”
“Then let me keep talking to her until this specialist shows up.”
“I wouldn’t advise that . . . However, I will admit I’m curious to hear what she has to say. Carry on.”
“Okay then,” Rudy started walking away.
Church called after him, “By the way, Doctor, we got the preliminary results back on her dead teammates. No toxins, drugs, or biological agents were present in their systems. The causes of death were all straightforward—gunshot wounds, stabbings, strangulation, blunt force trauma, that sort of thing.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“It might be a sticky subject, but I would suggest asking her about the cannibalism.”
“What?”
“Human tissue was found in some of their stomachs. We have not had the time to get the DNA results yet, but considering some of the bite patterns on the survivors, it probably came from their teammates.”
Rudy blanched.
“Do you still want to continue?”
Like he’d told Carver, his small part was helping put the good people back together. Until proven otherwise, he was going to assume good whenever possible. “Yeah, I’ve got this.”
“Very well. Can I help you with anything else, Doctor?”
“Sure, tell the Army to turn down the air conditioner. It’s freezing in that little room.”
“Really? They were just apologizing to me for the accommodations. According to the thermometer it is over eighty degrees in here.”
“Shit.” Rudy put his head down, plowed through the hall, past the MPs, and back into the oddest psych eval he’d done in quite some time.
Carver had gone back to shaking and mumbling. It was sad, but that sign of human frailty made him far more comfortable than the creepy mood swing from a few minutes before. Rudy sat back down. She gave him a weak smile.
“Okay, Olivia. Tell me about what happened inside that church.”
Corvus kicked the door open and her men swept inside. They had trained so constantly that their movement was like clockwork. Each one covered a sector.
“Clear!”
A minute later the small Catholic church was secured. There was still no sign of the tangos, or any of the locals for that matter. There should have been something.
The church was old, and humble. The wooden walls had been painted white a long time ago, but they were faded and chipped now. Heavily lacquered wooden saints looked down on them. The pews were polished smooth from decades of use.
“Where is everybody?” Louie wondered aloud.
“Nailed to the telephone poles,” Sandbag muttered.
“No, this town held more people than that.” But that didn’t mean she had a clue where they’d gone. Carver had her men take up defensive positions on the doors and got on her radio to contact Captain Quinn. She got nothing but static. Weird. “This place is giving me a bad vibe.”
Carver turned around and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a little Mexican boy sitting on the altar. Sensing her reaction, her men spun around, lifting their weapons.
“Hold on!” she shouted before fingers could reach the triggers. “It’s just a kid.” He was probably only seven or eight years old, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and barefoot. “Whose section was that? Damn it, Corvus! Why didn’t you clear that?”
“I did, LT. He wasn’t there a second ago.”
It didn’t matter now. They’d found somebody. Carver swung her carbine around behind her back and let it dangle by the sling. She lifted both hands to show they were empty. “Hola.” She spoke three languages fluently, but Spanish wasn’t among them. Sandbag was fluent though. “Tell him we’re friends.”
Sandbag started talking. He was a big scary dude, but he kept his voice nice and soothing. Only the little boy kept staring at her instead. She found it odd that he was sitting cross-legged on the altar. She wasn’t religious, but that seemed really disrespectful. “Ask him what’s going on.”
Sandbag did. The boy smirked as he answered.
“He says he just got up from a long nap.”
“Huh? Where?”
“In the ground, I think. No. A tomb.” Sandbag shrugged. “He’s not making a lot of sense, LT.”
“Ask him where everybody is.”
The little boy finally looked at Sandbag and rattled off a dismissive answer. Sandbag seemed really confused by it.
“He says that he forced them to walk across the desert.”
“Who did?”
“Him.” Sandbag nodded at the kid. “He’s talking about himself. He said he did it.”
The little boy had an annoyed expression on his face. He said something else, like he was correcting the translator. He spoke for a long time. Sandbag’s eyes kept getting wide.
“He says he made them take their shoes off so their feet would bleed on the rocks and thorns, and to not stop until they fell. They’re probably dead from thirst by now.” Sandbag was distressed. He’d never struck Carver as the religious type, so when he unconsciously crossed himself, it unnerved her. “That was only for the ones who pray. The rest he nailed to the poles.”
“Little fucker would need a ladder,” Corvus muttered. “He’s gone mental.”
/> “He says they brought him here, but they didn’t understand what they dug up. He’s insulted they thought he was just some mere weapon.”
The kid smiled at them.
Then he began weeping blood.
That was when everything went horribly wrong.
Rudy realized he was gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles had turned white.
“What’s wrong, Rudy?” Lieutenant Carver asked him with unnerving calm. “You seem frightened.”
“I’m fine.”
“No. You are broken. You are an unworthy vessel.”
All the hair on his arms stood up. “You mean my eye?”
“Among other things.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It was more like something was wearing Carver’s face as a mask, and pulled the strings to make the face muscles perform the motions it assumed were appropriate. “I’ve been hidden away so long. The world above has changed. I do not understand it anymore. I was supposed to rest until the final days. Only the Canaanites opened my tomb. By the time I was fully away, they had brought me to the hot lands below.”
“Canaanites?”
“I don’t care what you name them now. I was weak, without purpose. I have found one again. I will seek out my old enemy, and begin our war anew.”
Rudy didn’t know where his next question came from. “Why did you come here?”
“I heard this one’s song. I had to come and see for myself if it was true. Is my enemy here?”
“Who?” It was now so cold his breath came out as steam.
She leaned close and whispered to him.
Rudy bolted upright and headed for the door. He pounded on it. Thankfully the MPs opened it right away. “Keep that locked. Nobody else goes in or out.” He didn’t have the authority to order them around, but it wasn’t a suggestion.
Church was waiting for him in the observation area. “She really seems to be opening up to you, Doctor.”
Rudy raised one hand to stop Church. He wasn’t in the mood. He was silent for a long time, breathing hard, staring through the glass at the woman on the other side. She’d gone back to trembling, knees nervously bouncing, just a poor, traumatized woman, who had seen her squad turn on each other and rip themselves to pieces.
“Clinically, on the record, I’d say she’s severely delusional.”
“And off the record?”
“I’m not going back in there without a priest.”
Then the lights went out.
“Stay calm.” Church’s voice was flat.
The logical part of his mind immediately rationalized the power outage. The overworked air conditioner had caused the building to blow a fuse. But the part of him that had just been laid bare and terrified by an alien presence that should not be, knew that wasn’t the case.
The lights came back on.
She had left two bloody red handprints on the other side of the glass for them.
“Carver’s gone.”
The interrogation room was empty. The handcuffs were on the table, still closed, like she just tore her hands right out of them. The door was closed.
Church moved to the hall. The MPs were still there, oblivious but unharmed. He threw open the door, and despite Rudy’s admonition to the contrary, they knew not to mess with Mr. Church. He came back out. “Sound the alarm. Find her, but do not engage.” The soldiers rushed off. Church returned a moment later, glowering. “She’s escaped.”
Nothing ever seemed to shake Church, but Rudy was sick to his stomach. “That specialist who’s on the way . . . He’s an exorcist, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know if Agent Franks puts that on his business cards, but I suppose that might be among his many qualifications,” Church replied. “This is important, Doctor. I couldn’t make it out over the speaker, but the last thing she said to you, when you asked her about this old enemy, about why she’d come here, what did she say to you?”
“The song said ‘God is an American.’”
MUSINGS OF A HERMIT
This story first appeared in the Forged in Blood anthology set in Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold universe, edited by Michael Z. Williamson, and published by Baen Books in 2017.
The idea behind Forged in Blood is really interesting. Every story features the same sword, as it is handed down to different users, starting in ancient Japan, through WWII, through modern times, into the future and out into space (where it eventually belonged to the main character in the novel Freehold).
Sometimes the author picks the setting, and other times the author gets picked because he can write a particular setting. In this case I already had a rep for writing samurai drama, and Mike approached me because he needed some stories set in that era.
If you are familiar with this series, it has a very strong theme about freedom and liberty running through it, so I wanted to write about one of the sword’s wielders who could never really have those things, yet yearned for them. I wanted to write about a man who had been born in the wrong time.
WHEN YOU HIT A MAN with a sword, it can go clean or ugly. A clean hit and you barely even feel the impact. Oh, your opponent feels it. Trust me. But for the swordsman, your blade travels through skin and muscle as if it is parting water. Arms can come right off. Legs are tougher, but a good strike will cut clear to the bone and leave them crippled. A katana will shear a rib like paper, and their guts will fall out like a butchered pig. Then, with a snap of the wrist, the blade has returned and the swordsman is prepared to strike again. Simple. Effective. Clean. I’ll spare you all the flowery talk the perfumed sensei spout about rhythm and footwork that inevitably make killing sound like a formal court dance, but when you do everything just right, I swear to you that I’ve killed men so smoothly that their heads have remained sitting upon their necks long enough to blink twice before falling off.
However, an ugly hit means you pulled it wrong, or he moved unexpectedly. The littlest things, a slight change in angle, a tiny bit of hesitation, upon impact you feel that pop in your wrists, and then your sword is stuck in their bone, they’re screaming in your face, flinging blood everywhere, and you have to practically wrestle your steel out of them. Whatever bone you struck is a splintered mess. Usually the meat is dangling off in ghastly strips. Some men will take that as a sign to lie down and die, but a dedicated samurai will take that ugly hit and still try to take you with him, just because, in principle, if a samurai is dying then, damn it, he shouldn’t have to do it alone. It can be a very nasty affair.
The tax collector died very ugly.
I only wanted to be left alone.
Kanemori was sitting by the stove, absorbing the warmth, debating over whether it was too early in the afternoon to get drunk, when there was a great commotion in his yard. Someone was calling his name. It wouldn’t be the first time in his long life that someone with a grudge had turned up looking for him, but this sounded like a girl. He rose and peeked out one of the gaps in the wall that he’d been meaning to repair, to see that it was the village headman’s daughter trudging through the snow with determination.
“Go away!” he shouted.
“Kanemori! The village needs your help.”
The headman always wanted his help with something, the lazy bastard. A tree fell on old lady Haru’s hut. Or Den’s ox is stuck in the river. Or please save us from these bandits, Kanemori-sama! And then he’d have to go saw wood, or pull on a stupid ox, or cut down some pathetic bandit rabble. He knew it was usually just the headman trying to be social, but it was a waste of his time. He didn’t belong to the village. He’d simply had the misfortune of building his shack near it.
“What now?” he bellowed through the wall.
“The new Kura-Bugyo is going to execute my father!”
“What did your imbecile father do to make the tax collector angry this time?”
“The last official was honest, but the officials this year are corrupt. They take more than they’re supposed to. They take the lord’s share, and then they t
ake more to sell for themselves! Father refused to give up the last of our stores. If we do we’ll perish during the winter.”
Of course the officials were corrupt. That’s what officials were for.
The girl was about ten, but already bossy enough to be a magistrate. When she reached the shack, she began pounding on his door. “Let me in, Kanemori!”
“Go away.”
“No! I will stay out here and cry until I freeze to death! Your lack of mercy will cause my angry ghost to haunt you forever. And then you will feel very sorry!”
Kanemori sighed. Peasants were stupid and stubborn. He opened the door. “What do you expect me to do about it?”
“You are samurai! Make them stop.”
“Oh?” He looked around his humble shack theatrically. “Do I look like Oda Nobunaga to you? I am without clan, status, or even basic dignity. Officials aren’t going to listen to me. Do you think I moved to the frozen north because I am so popular?”
“You are the worst samurai ever!”
In defense of the clumsy butchery that passed for a battle against the corrupt tax collector and his men, my soldiering days were over. It had been many seasons since I’d last hit a man with a sword, so I was rusty. When your joints ache every morning, the last thing you want to do is practice your forms, so my daily training consisted of the minimum a retired swordsman must do in order to avoid feeling guilty. Why do more? I had no lord to command me, no general to bark orders at me—the only person who’d done so recently was my second wife, and I’d buried her two winters ago—and if I spent all my energy swinging a sword, who was going to feed all these damnable chickens?
It isn’t that peasants can’t fight. It is that they’re too tired from working all day to learn to fight. A long time ago some clever sort figured that out, traded his hoe for a sword, started bossing around the local farmers, said, you give me food and in exchange I’ll protect you from assholes who will kill you, but if you don’t, I’ll kill you myself, and the samurai class was born. From then on, by accident of one’s birth, it determined if you’d be well fed until you got stabbed to death, or hungry and laboring until you starved . . . or got stabbed to death.
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