by E. E. Knight
They followed the Republican River east out of Colorado, traveling slowly and carefully. Avoiding contact with farm, camp, or town, they worked their way back up into Nebraska. Valentine changed back into his Private Rice attire when Duvalier judged it safe enough, and they worked out yet another cover story to explain their presence. But this corner of Nebraska, so close to the Colorado border, was empty enough to allow them to move without being noticed. And so they came to the river Platte and its adjoining roads and tracks. After looking for their faces on wanted posters at station offices and finding none, they traded the horses for travel warrants from a corrupt rail-yard chief. Soon they rode again on the railroad, this time working for their passage—riding in and cleaning out eastbound cattle cars.
They were inside an empty cattle car on a siding outside their original pseudo-destination of Grand Island, sharing a bag of corn bread, when a train approached from the west. It moved with a mile-eating speed as the powerful engines pulled it. When the train roared by, Valentine counted an extra guard-car, thirty nondescript freights, and another heavily armored guard-car before the steel-colored caboose passed by. Whipped by speed and wind, two flags fluttered next to each other on the caboose: black with a spiderish design centered on the standard.
It was the white swastika of the Twisted Cross.
Chapter Eight
The Sand Dunes, September: Stretching north from the Platte River is the rolling, empty expanse of Nebraska's dunes. Sitting above one of the great aquifers of the world, the coarse, dark brown soil is not suited for crops, but supports some of the world's best ranching country. It is the Sahara transformed into a grassy garden. The Dunes, a beautiful green ocean in the spring before being burnt into straw by the summer's heat, cover an area larger than the state of Connecticut. They start to the west, and like the ocean, the great rollers are found the farthest out, thousand-foot-high, wind-rounded ridges a mile across and ten miles long, almost all running east-west according to the prevailing winds. East from the great ridges are smaller hills of varying squiggled shapes but still mostly long and thin. These gradually fade off into tiny steep hillocks, as the great rollers of the Atlantic turn into the chop of the English Channel. So like little waves are these hills that the residents use a nautical term for them: choppers.
While much of the soil is too dry to easily grow crops, the area is anything but a desert. It is ideal ranching country and supports more than horses and cattle. The little valleys between the hills are thickly wooded: lakes and ponds, marshes and soggy meadow can be found among the teeming cottonwoods and box elms. Trout streams and lakes filled with pike are dotted with beaver homes and dams, and a newcomer is sometimes startled to see a pelican fishing after descending from one of the high, dry ridges as seagulls ride the breeze overhead. Game is plentiful, mule deer bound through the long grass like giant jackrabbits, and antelope herds graze while the younger males at the edges keep watch for coyotes. Bird hunters come home with everything from waterfowl to wild turkey, pheasant to sharp-tailed grouse. But the residents of the Dunes ride with rifles for reasons other than shooting game. They hunt the minions of Kur.
* * *
Valentine and Duvalier caught up to the Twisted Cross train at the fork where the North Platte and South Platte converged their sandy banks. The town of North Platte no longer existed on the spit between the rivers, having been burned in the chaos almost fifty years ago. A hand-lettered sign announced that they were pulling into Harvard Station.
Their train did not stop, even though they had been assured by the engineer—this being a cattle car, unguarded except for a few rifles in the hands of the railroad men— that it would pause at Harvard Station before moving on to Ogallala and Scottsbluff. As they passed through the station, they saw squads of Troopers milling all over the yard, crates being unloaded and organized, and sentries posted on either side of their track for the express purpose of making sure no one got off. A small, single-engine plane came in for a landing on the old airstrip southeast of town, adding to the panoply of war. He and Duvalier openly stared; in fact, had they not watched the plane, it would have been even more suspicious, flying machines being a rarity even in the Kurian Zone. Valentine looked at it through his binoculars: it was tiny bush hopper, white with red markings. He half expected to see a swastika on the tail, like in pictures in World War II books, but could identify no markings.
"I've been here before," Duvalier told him, "but I've only seen it from the other side."
Another Twisted Cross train was on a siding by a dock with some chutes and pens for livestock. They could see figures lounging in the sunlight, wearing what looked like black jumpsuits, but unlike the men at the other train, they seemed to be in no hurry to unload the contents of closed boxcars. Around the caboose, a team of the most formidable-looking Grogs Valentine had ever seen stood guard, taller than the slab-skinned gray ones he had fought at Little Timber and partially covered with fawn-colored fur.
A concrete blockhouse, surrounded by razor wire and gated, looked out over the ruins of the town and the river below. Men in a sandbagged platform smoked as they stood watch with machine guns. The black-and-white banner fluttered from the blockhouse's flagpole.
"They're setting up shop," Valentine said as their train pulled away westward. "Supplies, men, weapons, a plane. But what's the target? We haven't heard any news of a uprising in the local Gulag."
Duvalier gazed off northward into the rolling, grassy hills. She looked terribly, terribly sad. "If there were, it would be news they'd keep quiet. This isn't even a Kurian center—this is an outpost of the one down in McCook, right on the border."
"Border? Border with what?"
"The Dunes. They must be after the Dunes." She sighed, as she had done one day in Kansas, when they saw a police truck lumbering down the road with human fodder for the Reapers chained in back.
Valentine followed her gaze, not exactly doubting her, but waiting to hear more. "Who or what are the Dunes?" he finally asked. Duvalier liked to make him ask questions for some reason, perhaps as revenge for his occasional corrections to her English.
"It's more of a where, Val. The Dunes are that," she said, pointing. "It runs from here up to the Dakotas. Kurians never really controlled any of it, and every time they've tried, they got their ears pinned back. It's a huge area, maybe half the size of the Ozark Free Territory. I don't even think the Reapers dare hunt there."
"Why is that?"
"The Trekkers. Wanderers. The only way to describe it is big moving ranches that go with their cattle and horses. Everything in their life is packed onto their wagons, they move from winter to summer pasturage and back again, but not always the same spot. Their whole world is their cattle; the herds feed them and buy what they can't make."
"Buy from whom?"
"There are a few outfits that trade with the Quislings, no doubt about it. Oh, they call Quislings 'Jacks' out here. I've asked six different people and got six different stories. Some say its short for 'jackals,' but I'm not even sure what those are."
"They're a sort of scavenger dog—in Africa, I think," Valentine explained.
She ignored the zoology. "Others say it's because they used to be led by a man named Jack. Some more say it's because they run like jackrabbits if someone starts shooting at them. I forget the others. Doesn't matter. They're Jacks to folks out here;"
"You know the people in the Dunes?"
"I do. Good people, damn good people. I got friendly with one of the larger clans, a group of families under the Eagle brand. They identify themselves with the marks they put on their cattle, you see. The brand looks kind of like an old set of air force wings, or an American Indian thunder-bird. I guess it got its start from some Strategy Air Controller people who helped them fight off the Kurians in the worst years."
Valentine wondered if she meant "Strategic Air Command."
"They don't care for strangers too much, but I got to know them when they were running stock to Denver. I ended u
p riding scout for two cattle drives. Good days. Learned a lot about the land between here and the Rockies. The area between the two Platte branches is real anything-goes country. A couple Kur ranching settlements, bands of Jacks riding for the Kur, Crow Indians trying to live on the Pawnee, and a few little villages just trying to keep out of everything."
"So you've been to Denver?"
"No, the Denver Outriders would meet us outside the city. I always wanted to go, though. See a city. Of course, they tell me it's pretty empty, just like everywhere else. A fair amount of damage, but it's still free soil, and that always feels good."
Valentine watched Harvard Station disappear into the distance behind them.
"So you think they're going to clear out these Trekkers?"
She nodded. "It kind of fits the pattern. That other Lifeweaver, Ura, she mentioned that a couple of small Freeholds got torched by these guys. Maybe they're training before taking on bigger game, like us or Denver."
"If Denver depends on these people for food," Valentine theorized, "could be this is a step in a campaign against them. That might go a long way to explaining the attack on Fort Rowling. It was a probe."
"This will be a chance to see how they operate," Duva-lier said. "We can see how they organize, scout, prepare for a battle. Find out about these Reapers with guns. Do they have artillery? It looks like the Twisted Cross has an air force, even if it's just one plane. Southern Command will need to know what's coming."
Valentine felt another, more important battle coming on. His duty and his humanity, his conscience and his code silently warred within. It wasn't much of a fight this time. Too many lives at stake.
The wind at the top of a rise pulled at his hair. He pulled it back into place, and as he did so came to a decision. As if a yoke had been lifted from his shoulders, he straightened.
"Ali, that's exactly what we should do. But first we've got to warn those people."
They jumped from the train as it slowed to climb a hill east of Ogallala. Rather than leaping immediately into the bushes, they waved at the railroad men watching from the caboose. The railroaders waved back, smiling.
"That's always fun," Valentine said, pulling a teasel weed's prickly head out of his hair and picking up his pack. "You okay?"
"Did it knock some sense into you?" she said as she changed back into her stained traveling clothes. At least she was speaking to him again. They had argued briefly, until she quit talking to him after he asked her if she could just watch her friends from the Denver cattle drives die.
"Not yet. Ali, I didn't say that you had to come. I didn't even suggest it. One pair of eyes can see as much as two. You can keep an eye on the Twisted Cross, and I'll try and get the word out to the people in the Dunes."
"You did suggest it. You said, 'We've got to warn those people.' We is plural, Mr. Professor."
"Okay, I hoped you'd want to come with me. After all, you're already known to them."
"Irresponsible. What we're doing—recon—is really important. As far as Southern Command is concerned, the Twisted Cross is just another gang of Quislings. I wanted to take you on because after reading your reports, it seemed like you were just as worried about them as I was. But you want us to go up into the Dunes, where all that's going to happen is we'll be on the receiving end of their attack, instead of evaluating it and learning about their numbers and methods."
Tears trickled down her face. "I liked those people, Val. They're good people, as good as I've met anywhere. There are families in those wagons, Valentine. They're going to be dead in a little while, and there's not a thing we can do about it—and it's killing me. Now you just want to throw our lives away, too.
"Our duty is to Southern Command. What about warning them? Didn't you take an oath when you became an officer, or a Wolf or whatever they put you through when you joined up?"
"Maybe if I can warn them they can hide the kids. We, or I—whatever—I just have to let them know about what's coming." He tightened his pack. "I'm going in there. Unless you want to try to stop me."
The stare-down was brief.
It ended when Duvalier looked at the dirt beneath her hiking boots, poked the loose soil with her walking stick. Then she gripped it firmly by the middle, and for a second Valentine thought she was planning to knock him out with it. But the tears disappeared.
She even looked a little relieved.
"Okay, David. We warn them. But that's all."
* * *
The Cats decided to risk crossing the North Platte River during daylight, starting as early as possible in their race against time and death.
It wasn't hard; at this time of year, the brown-streaked river was at its lowest point. They crossed into the Sands at the wreckage of the Kingsley Dam, passing a sign that read
UNSECURED TERRITORY. TRESPASSERS SUBJECT TO SUMMARY JUSTICE.
Although the road had been destroyed, a drift of sorts existed, allowing them to make the treacherous crossing without wetting anything below their knees. A few anglers, perhaps out of Ogallala, plied their rods from the banks. If hidden border sentries also watched the pair, Valentine's Trooper vest perhaps confused the guards enough to keep them from shooting.
Rather than disappear into the Dunes right away, which would look more suspicious to a stillwatch, Valentine decided instead to walk up the banks of the Platte among the birches and poplars of the floodplain.
After a rest, they found enough wooded cover to cut up into the Dunes, running parallel to the old State Route 61 north into Dune Country.
Valentine pushed the pace. He carried Duvalier's pack across his chest, so Duvalier, who hadn't spent years running from point to point in the Wolves, was light enough to keep up with his trot.
They jogged carefully along the hills, making sure they did not skyline themselves. At sunset they stopped to rest and watch the daylight go out in a blaze of glory. Valentine had been in some wide-open spaces before, but something about this rolling sea of straw and grainy soil felt endless.
"It's funny," Duvalier said. "What we're trying to do is just... nuts. Hopeless. I feel liberated, though. Like I'm about to go shoot some rapids in a barrel and it's too late to worry."
Valentine looked at her as he massaged his aching legs. The fading sun tinted her skin the color of beaten copper. "No, it's not that. You're doing the right thing. When I was a kid, the man who raised me after my family died, he was a teacher. He used to have the older students read about the Holocaust. The Holocaust was when—"
"I know what the Holocaust was," she said, but without her usual vexation. "Kind of a dress rehearsal for all this."
"He made us study it for a couple reasons. One was to learn that there were people who went through times as bad as these and survived, although it wasn't that bad in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. I think the other reason we read about it was to learn that evil, even if it seems all-powerful for a while, always collapses eventually. He used to say evil was like a rabid animal: it was very dangerous and should be destroyed as soon as possible, but even if it couldn't be attacked from the outside, the sickness within would put an end to it.
"But back to this one book I read about the Holocaust. It started with this diary kept by a little Jewish girl in hiding. She was killed, but her diary survived, and the rest of it went on about people who helped the Jews and others hide from or escape the Nazis. People would ask them afterwards how they found the courage to do it, when the Nazis killed people who helped the Jews. They said it took no courage at all; it was the easier choice to make. By doing the right thing, they kept their humanity. I think being able to keep their self-respect gave them strength. There's a power in doing right."
Valentine opened an old tobacco pouch and took out his little pyramid-shaped stone so it could absorb the remaining sunlight and charge.
Duvalier looked at the tiny crystal pyramid. "Do you ever think the Lifeweavers are angels?"
"What? Err... no, I heard you. What do you mean, I should say."
<
br /> "When I first got to the Free Territory, and that Cat Rourke began to sort of be a father to me, he took me to see Ryu. It was a sunny day, and he was wearing that white loincloth he goes around in, only he had another white thing he was sort of wrapped up in, too. I remember I was looking at him, and something about the sun must have warmed him—he turned to it and spread out his arms. Suddenly I saw this man with a halo, and these big white wings billowing out from his back. Of course, it was the white shawl or whatever he was wearing and the sun in his hair."
"Be a funny kind of angel, making killers. The Lifeweaver who turned me into a Wolf, he said the only kind of people who were going to be able to beat the Kur were ones filled with hate and fury, not so much soldiers as berserks. At least that's how I remember it. The whole thing is a little hazy."
"I never heard anything like that out of Ryu. He always seems"—she sought for a word—"lonely. Lonely and sad."
Val shrugged. "You want to get a little rest before we push on?"
"I think maybe you should get some. You always carry most of the load, plus that god-awful gun and ammo."
Back in the Regiment we should have been called mules rather than Wolves. They selected us for a sterile life of endurance. He stretched out on the grass with his coat as a pillow. "I can handle it."
"You still carry too much," she said, and suddenly leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
He opened an eye. "It's a good thing you didn't do that while you were still wearing that bra-and-shorts combination. Otherwise I would have performed a very convincing newlywed act on you."
"Dream on, Valentine," she said, sending a peanut shell his way. They had picked up a bagful somewhere during a trade.