Appalachian Overthrow

by E. E. Knight

The Reaper cloth, usually slick as oiled fishing line to the touch, felt rough in my hands, more burlap than silk. Taking a handful, I tested a piece, and it tore apart as easily as a workman’s dungaree material.

  Clearly it wasn’t the usual bullet-stopping weave, obtained from some unknown source (rumored to be in the Southwest or Mexico).* Perhaps the Kurian or Kurians actually running the Coal Country were poor in whatever constituted wealth that allowed them to trade for more Reapers and garments to protect them in their dangerous duties—which seemed strange, considering the importance of coal to the richer surrounding principalities and the efforts made to keep it flowing.

  Still, they looked like Reaper robes, sized for near to seven feet and with a heavy hood that could be pulled down to hide the face. On close inspection, however, my feet would give me away. Reapers, for all their size and strength were surprisingly light—designed that way, I imagine—and there would be no way my rowboat-sized tracks would be taken for a Reaper’s. Still, it might serve at a distance, and how many locals, seeing a Reaper head down a side road at night, would be inclined to follow to check out its boots?

  You learned very early in the Kurian Order to keep out of a Reaper’s business. Any interview or interaction could end badly.

  I surveyed myself as best as I could. My shoulders were perhaps a bit too broad, especially with my disproportionate—to human tailoring—arms. I tugged down the robe a bit, then decided to add a second underneath, wrapping the hood around my neck like a scarf. With the first pulled out and down, the hood came down across my eyes perhaps a bit too much—I could cut eye slits or try to fashion some sort of visor or sunglasses.

  “That was amazing,” a voice said from the darkness.

  I spun. It was Longliner, lately rescued from the van. He must have broken with the others shortly after I left them and followed me. It was an impressive feat in the dark, but then sometimes my fur does gleam in a little moonlight.

  “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  “I’m on their team.”

  “Why would you wish to go to work for the Ordnance?”

  “It’s better than here. Easy to get to Chicago or Ontario. I’m a good-time guy. If they can set someone like you up, why not me?”

  He looked at the bodies, so pale they almost shimmered in the dark.

  “How’d you get the better of them?”

  Easily, I thought. They’d had their bells seriously rung by the coal-dust explosion. If only we could arrange for every fight with the Reapers to start with the overpressure of a major explosion.

  Longliner looked at me in a sidelong fashion. “I bet it’s some brain voodoo that screws with their connection to the Old Man.”

  I had no idea how a real Kurian agent would reply, so I elided the confidence of one long used to wielding power—something I’d only seen—with the much more familiar caution of an operative in a hostile land.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. For your own safety, it would be wise not to imagine further.”

  “I’m clean; I’m clean with that. I’ll forget everything I saw here.”

  “For a price, I suppose,” I said.

  “One you can afford. Maybe I should say, one you can’t afford to turn down.”

  “I’m ready to listen,” I said. “But not here, now. Let’s put some clicks between Number Four and us, before they sort out what went wrong. They already know that at least I escaped.”

  “If the Old Man or whoever was properly plugged in. These mountains mess with them.

  “I’m ready to help. Which way?”

  “Downhill, toward civilization. You carry the torso.”

  “Shit, why do you want to bring that?”

  I grunted in answer. It took an effort on my part to turn my back on the opportunistic little toad and throw the larger corpse over my shoulders.

  We reached water and sheltered downwind from a highway bridge. The bridge was unguarded; a good sign. If the Order had information that we’d escaped the explosion, it would be reasonable to assume that a trooper car at least would be keeping an eye on the crossing.

  A riverbank at night is a raucous place. With the water falling to summer levels, the flow had been reduced to a good-sized creek and there were endless rocks for the water to splash against. Frogs were in good voice and the bats were out, with their barely perceptible yeeks.

  “Maynes Point is just across the river,” Longliner said.

  “Glad you know where it is. Go and get us some food. Something fresh for now, and dried or preserved for later.”

  “I’m not leaving you until we have some kind of understanding,” Longliner said.

  “I’ll make you this deal. Do what I say for the next three days and I’ll give you the general outline of my mission. If you help me with it, I will get you out of the Old Man’s reach. You may go to the Ordnance, if you like. As for your employment there, I can promise you nothing, though there are many who will be grateful if you help this mission to succeed.”

  “Deal. Back with the groceries in an hour. You want me to steal them?”

  “I want you to get them without attracting attention. If they could not be missed for a few days, that would be ideal.”

  It occurred to me, watching Longliner pick his way across the river rocks and slapping mosquitoes (they bothered me, too, at the ears and around the eyes) that it would be easy for him to betray me to the authorities. I don’t pretend to have any great perspicuity in reading humans, but it seemed most of the younger Quislings in this principality were looking for a way up and out. Maybe the shabbiness of this baling twine and the whitewashed towns and coal-dusted rail stations beneath the silent, uncaring mountains drove the ambitious toward cleaner fields. Or it could be that if your name—or your spouse’s—wasn’t Maynes, it was a foregone conclusion that you weren’t going that high.

  LONGLINER ON A SHORT LEASH

  He returned with a cook’s apron knotted into a bundle around some pieces of fried chicken, some still-warm biscuits, an entire platter of Jell-O molded into an elegantly scalloped shape, and “coffee” in a plastic Thermos.

  “I raided a church basement kitchen. It’s pregnant-teen support night.”

  “What is your story?” I asked. “Why this, why now?”

  “I’ve heard stories about the agents. We have an ex-agent churchman here, Apolio. Colonel Apolio. He lives at the White Palace. Political executive counselor for the Militia Officer Union and honorary fire marshall. He’s a bit goofy; every now and then he gets a brain-backfire and comes out with a real landslide of cussing. They don’t let him go to the Maynes family services. There the priest is, talking on about hopes for mankind and the new world of designed thought, and someone starts yapping shitfeast cocksnake and all that. That’s the story the district fire captain told, anyway.”

  I toasted the flesh on a long flat-head screwdriver from my tool belt, wishing I had some chunks of sweet heartroot to add to the kebab.

  “He talked about being an agent?”

  “Not directly, just said that the Kurians can take a good man and make him a ‘veritable demigod.’ At first I thought he’d started into cussing, but then he told me what demigod meant. This was right after I got a commendation for turning in Robert Kenzie for selling a television. He gave the award and took me to lunch after.

  “Anyway, I asked him about the Powers and he said he couldn’t talk about that. He wouldn’t do anything—boy did I beg him, I’m telling you straight. Finally he said that you had to live it to understand. I asked him to train me or whatever, and he said if they thought I’d be a good one, they’d get in touch with me.

  “They never did. I did become a Youth Vanguard leader and they gave me some counterintelligence training, me and a few others for a summer at a place near Baltimore. Really great, but there were these coastal types with their New York and Boston accents and three-turn ties. Still, they didn’t ruin it for me, and the Church gave me an assignment at Number Four, just reporting o
n the usual conversations and whatnot. I had to do evaluations on everyone every year, even the director, which I liked, knowing something the director didn’t.”

  “I’m surprised you’re telling me all this. What if I were part of the Resistance?”

  “A Grog in the Resistance. Yeah! As if those backwoods swampies would breathe the same air as a stoop, beg pardon.”

  We ate for a while. He hardly touched the chicken, leaving it for me.

  “What’s your opinion of your fellow men?” I asked.

  “Most of ’em aren’t fit for chicken feed. Church has it about right. The cream rises to the top; then you use that to make sweeter cream. Repeat, generation after generation.”

  “Have you produced your own cream?”

  “Was that a dirty joke? You are full of surprises, friend.”

  His use of the word “friend” both pleased and frustrated me. I was pleased that he considered me such, but frustrated at the deception. I prefer to be open and honest with both friends and enemies.

  “I meant the next generation. You’re old enough to have started a family.”

  “Physically, yes. But I’d like to be a little more established. Sure, the Church can always hook me up with some homemaker, but it would mean different work and I want to make my mark. Not that I don’t enjoy a night’s churning.”

  I wondered, but I was no judge of human desirability any more than this fellow would know that most of the males of my kind looked for long, delicate fingers, silky arm hair, and eye size as measures of classical attraction. In the more earthy terms of a pure rut, a nice wishbone shape to the small of the back and legs will catch my eye, and that in turn brings up memories of my mate and family, so I will return to my camp-side meal with Longliner.

  “Did you get the usual set of enhancements?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark, but I’d often heard that the Kurians change their agents just as the Lifeweavers helping the resistance “tune up” their Wolves, Cats, and Bears.

  “I’ve only had the first course. There were six of us, lined up in long white shirts, with the Archon himself giving us a sermon and then performing the ritual. He gave me something that looked like a marble. Rougher surface on the tongue. He said it would taste like candy, but it reminded me of pine-tar soap.

  “I swallowed it. It gave me a headache. A headache I couldn’t have thought possible. If I’d had a gun, I might have shot myself.”

  I wondered if he’d just received a sugar pill. When I was on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in the sixties, the Gray One details I’d led had sometimes gone turtle hunting for our human officers’ soup pot. I’d watched a few hatchings of sea turtles and seen the mad scramble of the little green turtles for the safety of the surf, harried the whole way by birds, crabs, and even dogs. The Kurian Order sometimes reminded me of that process—they released masses of fresh-faced recruits into the wild, and then sifted the best of what survived for advancement.

  “So what’s next?” Longliner asked.

  “I need a better weapon,” I said. “I’ve an idea of where to get one.”

  GETTING MY GUN

  The church at the Youth Vanguard academy was much as I remembered it, save that it was dark, with a ceiling that vanished in shadow, taking much of the hanging banners with it.

  Longliner and I crept in through the open front door. A pile of blankets, each with some kind of alarm tag on it that would sound if one tried to remove it from the church, lay neatly folded in a basket, and there were a few travellers slumbering in the pews.

  The rifle was still in its locked glass case, roughly at the height of a coffin on display. I should have just smashed the glass, grabbed it, and run. But the glass of the case was so perfect, not a sign of a ripple or a bubble, glass the quality of which you rarely see in anything post-2022 . . . I couldn’t bring myself to destroy such perfection. Besides, I did not want to awaken those slumbering in the pews.

  So I settled down on my back and worked the underside of the case with the heaviest screwdriver I had.

  Creeeek! and a lance of light divided the church. “Who’s there?”

  The old drill sergeant followed the muzzle of his pistol through the door leading to the church school with a quick step so as not to frame himself in the light of the hallway.

  Ahh, the old fellow would be prowling the halls.

  I attracted Longliner’s attention and pointed him toward the old fellow. “Pull rank if you must,” I muttered. “Just don’t make any threats we can’t carry out.”

  Longliner approached him with hands up and they were soon engaged in an animated conversation. The young man had talent. I could see why the Church chose him.

  Now that I held it in my hands, I could truly appreciate the care that had gone into its creation. At the core of the rifle was an old .50 caliber sniper weapon. A small amount of metal had been filed away and a substantial amount of wood added, along with an elaborately braided leather sling. I could still see a few hairs knotted into the sling—whoever had used this in action had collected human scalps.

  Wood had been added to the stock to make it better fit a Grog-sized frame. The sling had the short strap/long strap arrangement with an extra ring in the middle so it could be used as an aiming aid as well as a carry.

  The original optics had been removed and replaced by a forward-mounted “scout sight.” It was about the size of a pocket monocular. It allowed you to scan with your eyes, or use the rifle’s iron sights for quick firing. If you chose to use the 4x magnification, you simply looked down the side of the barrel. The lens was big enough that you didn’t have to press your eye to it.

  Next, I had to acquire some .50 shells. I had a fairly good idea of where to do that.

  It was a cool summer night, cloudy, and I suspected it would rain lightly. The air had that wet smell.

  The fire station was about three-quarters garage. The rest was a two-story building with a little observation and training tower supporting the radio mast.

  The fire stations buttoned up tight at night, especially this one. I had heard someone had thrown a bunch of dynamite through an open second-story window—one of the firemen had been able to pop the detonating caps off the fuse before it exploded.

  For my weapons I chose my old short-handled shovel. I tied a backup knife around my neck with a leather thong.

  I drained some motor oil out of one of the ambulances parked outside the fire station into a garbage can lid. It stank like turned cooking oil. Who knows how many times it had been filtered and recycled?

  Nevertheless I stripped and spread it thickly all across my body. In a close fight like the one I hoped to start, I didn’t want someone getting a hold of my forearm hair. The motor oil had the added benefit of darkening my fur, not that the moon was giving much away tonight. Then I cleaned my palms on some convenient bark.

  I inspected the building’s security. No cameras, but then again this was a small-town fire station, not the Atlanta Gunworks. I inspected the utility conduits and decided that they would serve as access to the roof.

  I swarmed up the electric lines. The rain had slackened into something only a little heavier than a mist, easily blown by the wind so that the millions of delicate reflections in the security lights of the firehouse looked like dust.

  The tower seemed unoccupied, but just in case I checked. There was a locked cabinet up there. I ripped the padlock clasp out of the wood, muffling the sound with my hands, and found a small radio and a lever-action carbine familiar to viewers of old Westerns. I checked the caliber. It was just a .22, useful for rabbits or intimidation.

  Unfortunately, using the same technique wouldn’t work on the roof access door, which was well locked on the inside with only a bare handle in the wind and weather. There was a greasy outlet for the kitchen ventilator—far too small—and an old and long-defunct air-conditioning unit covered with roof-patching material.

  The last, and noisiest option, was the skylight over the garage area. Inspecting it, I was ple
ased to see that the glass was in disrepair—two panels were missing and had been replaced by boards and tarp. The points of the nails that secured them had been driven through the window frame. It would be a pleasure to destroy such shoddy work.

  I looked into the garage. An ambulance, fire truck, and armored bus rested inside, ready to go at a moment’s notice. There was room for another large truck, but judging from the stains on the floor and placement of equipment, there was one ambulance out or on loan to another station. A light burned in the reception office at the main door, which had a window looking out on the minimally lit garage.

  It would be a fair drop to the top of the bus parked under the skylight, perhaps two body lengths if I hung from my fingers before dropping. Some think that because of our arms, we have an apelike ability to swing from tree to tree and perform acrobatics. To tell the truth, I don’t like heights.

  I tore out the wood covering the missing panes. It was easily done as there were nails in only one edge.

  As I nerved myself for the drop, I shifted the knife and shovel to my teeth. Theatrical, I know, but had they remained shoved into my belt, I might have stabbed myself. I swung over the ledge, hung from the fullest extent of my arms, and dropped.

  I landed on the bus like the proverbial ton of bricks. The metallic thump was like a mortar going off beneath me. Sure that everyone for blocks around had heard it, I rolled off the bus opposite the office.

  A fireman sitting by a dispatcher’s phone slumbered in a comfortable chair that tilted back. I quietly wrung his neck as if it were a chicken’s and hid the body in a janitorial closet.

  I explored a set of stairs leading to the dormitory and private rooms. All seemed quiet, though a toilet flush caused me to press myself into an alcove in the main hall that had an industrial-sized washer and dryer. I saw a mild presoak for delicates that I could probably use to get the oil off my skin and fur.

  Judging by the sizes of the rooms, there were perhaps as few as eight or as many as twenty firemen in the Beckley station on this overnight.