by E. E. Knight
Valentine took a good look at the train. It burned oil, judging from the blue fumes emerging from the engine. Behind the engine came the main guard car: a mountain of sandbags and a tripod-mounted machine gun. Behind the guards was a pair of passenger cars followed by the freight and tanker cars. A caboose, looking like it was modified from an old observatory car, brought up the rear. Most of its windows were missing.
Valentine and Duvalier ran for the little balcony welded onto the rear of the armored caboose. A bored-looking guard started to wave, then stared at them as they dashed to catch the train. They both leapt up onto the platform and grabbed railing.
"Help her over, dammit!" Valentine said to the paralyzed soldier, who complied.
Valentine swung his legs over the rail. "Good arrangement here," he said casually as a sergeant appeared with an infuriated look on his face. "If there's one thing I hate, it's riding on top of a boxcar. Can't even roll a cigarette, you know?" he said, carefully taking out a paper and a pouch of makings.
"Look, Trooper, I dunno what you two think you're ... Hey now, is that the real thing?" the sergeant asked, looking at the aromatic brown shreds going into the cigarette.
"Real Tennessee Valley Tobacco, or so they tell me."
"You wouldn't be able to spare a puff? Haven't had a real cig in a week, just chew that's half sawdust. Bastard Chicago clip-joints."
"The Zoo, eh?" Valentine said with a knowing wink. "Only thing I ever came home with from there I needed gunpowder to cure, you know? I'll do better than a puff or two—you can have the whole thing, how's that. Can never have too many friends in the New Federal Railways, you know?"
"This train is Consolidated Overland. Federal has the gray uniforms with the black epaulet. We've got patches."
Valentine looked over at Duvalier, who appeared to be making herself agreeable to the sentry who helped her over the rail.
"Stopping in Lincoln, right?"
"Of course, and then on west. End of the line is McCook."
"Passing near Grand Island?"
"Err, Grand Island ... I don't know the Plains that well, beyond our route. Let's see the map." They went inside the caboose. Only one more soldier was on duty there, looking forward from the observation platform. The sergeant checked at a map pinned to the wall. "Okay, yes. We stop in Hastings, that's just south of Grand Island. What's in Grand Island?"
"Our wedding. I'm bringing her back from meeting my folks. My unit and her family are up there."
"You two'are carrying a lot of iron for just visiting relatives," the sergeant observed.
"I have to have my piece, Sergeant. Regulations. But even if that weren't the case, you can't be too careful near Omaha, sir," Valentine said. "Ali got us a pheasant the other day, too. She shoots well for a civilian."
"You could get in a lot of trouble back east letting a civilian carry a gun, even if it is yours, West. But hell, this calls for a drink, celebrate you two taking the bonds," the sergeant said, but the guard chatting with Duvalier looked disappointed.
Valentine grinned. "Yes, it does, and I'm buying. If you'll bend regs for a shot."
"If we took duty that seriously, you wouldn't be here, Trooper."
Valentine took out a bottle of whiskey, and three glasses appeared as if conjured out of wind and dust. He poured everyone two fingers' worth and faked a swallow from the bottle himself.
"Be sure to save enough for the wedding toast, baby," Duvalier said. "Your dad went through some trouble to get that."
"Have pity, miss," one of the guards said. "Awfully hard for a man to walk around with quality likker like this without having a sip now and then."
The rest of the journey passed in a much more convivial atmosphere. They discussed various kinds of duties, comparing being in the Troopers in Nebraska with guarding trains. In the process, Valentine and Duvalier learned a good deal about railroad routine. A second round of drinks, with formal toasts for the would-be newlyweds, cemented the temporary friendship. Unfortunately for Valentine's sense of satisfaction with the day's events, they learned what two of the boxcars held.
"Food for them. You know what I mean," the sergeant confided. "Twenty in each car this run, but we've crammed in as many as sixty. Half getting off in Lincoln. Glad it ain't our job to clean the cars out afterwards. We're just making sure they don't break out. They're chained up in there like dogs in kennels, but you never can tell."
"How long is the stop in Lincoln?" Valentine asked, desperate to change the subject.
"Four hours. We'll get some sleep. But don't worry, West. Some nosy-new comes checking in here, you two can hide in the john. We'll get you back to your sergeant and your wedding on time."
"Four hours?" Duvalier said, unusually enthusiastic. "I can do me some shopping in Lincoln. You know they have a real shoe store in town, Sergeant?"
"Knock me over with a feather, miss," the sergeant said. He winked with the eye on the side of his face turned toward Valentine. "I was really hoping to pass the time with a deck of cards and your fiancé here, though."
"Oh, he doesn't have to come with. Shopping bores him to death. Honey, can I please have some of the money Uncle Max gave you?"
"Money?"
Duvalier glared at him. "You aren't playing tricks on me now, are you, Westin? Uncle Max, I saw him give it to you through the window of his patrol car. The one you said looked dumb, all jacked up."
Valentine reached into his pack. "I guess I can't fool you. Here, but don't spend all of it, okay? It's supposed to be saved for starting us off." He passed her the ring of money.
The three Overland guards exchanged half sneers. One made a tiny motion with his wrist that might imply a whip being cracked.
The train pulled into Lincoln Yard for unloading, and Valentine dived into the card game to avoid looking at the doomed souls being unloaded. As long as he didn't see the faces, he would be fine. He started a game of gin with the soldier who had to stay on duty in the caboose, while the sergeant and the other guard left to lend a hand at the offloading.
Duvalier gave him a peck on the cheek and disappeared into town, leaving her pack in Valentine's care and twirling the ring of coins as she went.
"Hooo . . . welcome to married life," said the sergeant, returning to the caboose as Duvalier left.
"You married, Sarge?" Valentine asked, trying his best to let the other sentry win a cigarette off him at gin.
"Is he married? You might just say that!" Valentine's partner said. "What are you up to now, Sarge, four?"
"Seattle, St. Paul, Chicago, and Atlanta," the sergeant said, leering at Valentine. "Each one waiting for the next run that will allow me to return to hearth and home. Travel has its advantages, Trooper."
"You don't say," Valentine said, picking up and laying down a card. "How do I get into this outfit?"
"I could put in a good word. You could write Capt. Caleb Mulroon, care of Overland Consolidated in Chicago. That is, if you think you could get out of your present post with no hard feelings."
"Gin!" said the sentry, laying down his cards and picking up the cigarette ante.
"I think I can make the Troopers happy to be rid of me," Valentine said, passing his cards across to be shuffled.
Four pairs of eyes widened when Duvalier returned later. Her appearance wrecked a perfectly good game of poker.
The transformation was nothing short of incredible. She had changed from slightly grubby scarecrow to head-, neck-, and shoulder-turner in the space of the afternoon. Her short red hair was now in carefully arranged, slightly curly disarray. She wore a midriff-revealing, sleeveless jeans jacket unbuttoned to a hint of lacy red bra and more than a hint of cleavage. Short shorts hugged assorted curves where they didn't reveal long, athletic legs ending in white canvas rubber-soled shoes. Her lips matched the fire in her hair, and her eyelashes seemed longer and thicker. Valentine was not used to makeup, especially not on Duvalier.
"Better, sweetie? Hardly spent any money at all."
"You
are a lucky son of a bitch, West," one of the Overland guards said.
Valentine got up and took her hands in his. "Much better. That's the Ali I dream about at night." He gave her a hug and experimentally patted her on her backside as he planted a kiss on her ear.
"Now, now, Westin, can't have these men thinking you're a pig," she said, locking her eyes on his. "Don't let's get carried away now—we still have a lot of traveling to do before we're home safe."
The miles rattled off pleasantly until Duvalier killed the Overland guards.
She had been napping in one of the little bunks set atop the caboose's wooden storage cabinets. It had tiny rails to keep her from rolling out.
As evening fell, the card game had died off, and Valentine put some clothing in to soak in a soapy basin, getting in a badly needed laundry between stops. One Overland guard kept watch from what the sergeant called the "catbird seat," a cupola high at the train-side end of the caboose, and the sergeant retired to the bunk opposite Duvalier.
The other guard, suspenders dangling and in a sweat-yellowed tank top, kept up a pretext of conversation with the man on top as he eyed the sleeping Cat from an angle that allowed the best view down her décolletage. Valentine heard her stir as he wrung out a pair of socks, and she looked up in alarm at the presence looming over her.
"Ever think about trading up?" the guard asked, touching her hair before sending his fingers walking down her shoulder and across the exposed top half of her freckled breast.
Duvalier locked on the guard's eyes and wrist at the same time. Valentine felt a horrid trill of danger from some inner alarm as she pulled the exploratory hand down under the sheet and between her thighs. "I thought so ...," the guard said, giving Valentine a wink across the rocking caboose interior.
She clamped his hand there.
The knife came up fast—so fast, the guard never saw it. He let out a surprised cough, gaping at the handle sprouting from his armpit. Duvalier rolled out of the bunk, walking stick ready.
Valentine smelled blood. His pack and weapons were in a locker at the other side of the room. He grabbed the washbowl. He needed something—anything—in his hand.
Duvalier thrust with her stick just as her would-be lover opened his mouth. She caught him solidly below the breastbone; the yell for help died into a gasp of a contracting diaphragm. He grabbed at the weapon, and Duvalier left him holding the empty scabbard as she drew twenty inches of naked blade.
She became a blur. To Valentine, it was like trying to watch a hummingbird.
"Hol-huh?" the waking sergeant asked just before she stabbed him up and under the chin. The guard in the catbird seat brought down his rifle. Not knowing what else to do, Valentine .threw his bucketful of water and laundry in his direction.
The splash of water brought the man with the blade in his armpit out of his shock. He dropped Duvalier's scabbard and pulled the bloody-handled blade out of his armpit. Duvalier danced out of the way of the arterial spray and spun to slash up at the legs of the seated guard. At one time or another, Valentine had heard the expression "cut off at the knees." Now he saw it in practice.
Blood pouring from under his arm, the guard made one half-swipe at Duvalier with her knife before he sank to the floor, face calm and beatific as though relaxing into sleep.
Tchick-BANG went the guard's rifle and splinters flew and Duvalier stabbed up and up through the seat and the blood came down as though from a broken pipe and the rifle fell on the man bleeding to death on the floor. BANG—Valentine ducked as the rifle fired again as it landed and Duvalier pulled the mutilated guard out of his seat and threw him to the floor and jumped on his back and pounded his face again and again into the bloody floorboards until broken teeth lay like dropped candy and clear fluid ran out and the screams ended.
Valentine pulled her off the guard.
"Damn them all," she said, leaving a bloody smear as she wiped her nose with a trembling hand.
"What was that?" Valentine asked.
"A helluva killing." She moved some of the spilled laundry out of the way of the blood. The thirsty wood could absorb only so much. She smiled and planted a bloody kiss on his lips. "Good work with the water."
"Are you insane?"
"Maybe. We have to beat the heat. Let's jump off."
"Just a minute." Valentine couldn't leave it at that. If they set the caboose on fire and fled, there'd be a pursuit as soon as the engineers radioed for help. They had to make the deaths look plausible, sow a few doubts for when the train pulled in at the next stop to drop off people and take on corn and cattle.
As Duvalier gathered their gear, plus wet laundry, and rooted for supplies, Valentine put the sergeant and the half-dressed guard among spilled cards and whiskey on the floor, bloody utility knives in their hands. The guard who had been on duty they set out on the open rear galley for the moment, until they were ready to jump off. As the train slowed at the top of a gentle slope, they threw dead man, their packs, and themselves off. After the train disappeared into the night, Valentine concentrated on making it look like the wounded guard had somehow got caught under the train and succumbed to blood loss at the side of the tracks.
Duvalier removed traces of their presence from around the body. He watched her, greenish gray to his night-widened eyes.
Only after they were well off the rail line and moving south in Nebraska incognita did he vent. They cut across ancient fields, now returned to the prairie plants and insects.
"I thought we were 'all about the mission'?"
She let out an exasperated breath. "I don't like being pawed."
"You could have said something."
"You ever been attacked? You know ... for sex?"
"You led him on."
"I woke up, and there's a soldier with a hand on my boob. Maybe they had a gun on you. I didn't think, I reacted. Panic."
"So you just lost it?"
"Something like that."
"And when a posse comes?"
"Posse? Val, we killed some Overland rail guards. It's Overland's problem. You think the local Kurian is going to round up a bunch of men to search deserted silos? Hell no—he's got better things to do. At most, Overland will bitch to whoever's running the show here, and something will get negotiated. Meanwhile that sergeant's wives are going to be in for a surprise when they try to claim pension."
"This negotiation—it'll probably involve some aura changing hands, you think? It's the only thing Kur values."
She reached up and slapped a fly out of the air. "Not necessarily. Could be just corn."
"Hope it was worth it."
They took another twenty paces in silence.
He thought he heard a sniffle. "You want to talk abou—?"
"No!"
They caught a road at dawn, and Valentine stopped and unrolled a map. As they tried to guess their whereabouts, she was as calm as though they'd spent the last few hours berry-picking. Valentine couldn't help thinking that she'd killed the three Overland men for touching an old wound. A woman like Duvalier might attract male attention anywhere they went. A reaction like that in the wrong place—
His mind went back to when he had first met her. The shapeless old coat, the dirt, the half-starved flesh. Was she at war with her own looks, as well as Kur? He wondered if he was chasing the Twisted Cross under the guidance of a woman who was, to use Bone Lombard's phrase, of "disordered mind."
He couldn't think that. He'd lose hope. She'd just reacted. She wasn't disordered. Disordered wouldn't find the General and then get them home again safe.
Duvalier found them a little town the next day, and they walked in with a tale of stolen horses. They didn't get so much as a suspicious glance when they said they had business south. There was a truck loading for a southbound trip to Manhattan, Kansas; the driver was making notes as townspeople listed their needs. The Cats needed a quick ride, so they entered Kansas in the back of a diesel truck baby-sitting a load of eggs.
The driver was glad to have them. If
there was anything besides eggs in the back—for instance, black market clothing or jewelry, the driver hinted—it might be a good idea to have a uniformed Trooper visible riding shotgun.
Duvalier had a contact near the truck's destination.
"Who?" Valentine asked as Duvalier did everything but lick her lips in anticipation.
"A friend."
She described her contact as they rattled south in the back of the carbon-spewing truck, which due to some idiosyncrasy in its suspension shimmied side to side like a duck shaking its tail feathers.
"Roland Victor is an odd sort of black marketeer. Lots of contacts in the Militia; Roland's so well connected, he might as well be part of their logistics support."
Valentine didn't hear her refer to other men by their first names.
"He deals in items appealing to Kansas Society's women, but ninety percent of his clientele is men. He's also something of a loan shark. I think every Militia officer above the rank of lieutenant owes him money or a favor. He gets clothes, jewelry, wines, chocolates, teas, and almost any kind of luxury you can think of, little favorites that powerful men like to give to their whores after giving the wife a new apron for her birthday. He's not the sort of man you invite to your daughter's wedding, but when you and your brother officers are planning a binge, he's the one to see for a case of Canadian whiskey. You wouldn't think wealth meant anything anymore, but it does to Roland."
"Know him well, do you?"
"He has very good manners, and he has a lot of—what's the word, style?—no, call it class. He plays he's a baron and looks the part. You're going to have to see him to believe it."
"I suppose he knows better than to paw at you."
Her eyes pleaded with him as much as her voice. "Drop it, Val. Please? I'm sorry about back there in the train, okay. Cross my heart."
"We got away. I'm ready to forget it."
"Start trusting me again. You've been all stiff and watchful lately."