Winter Duty

by E. E. Knight

  “Yes, yes: The good sons died, the bad one lived. God must have a plan; all we can know is that he gives burdens to those strong enough to handle them.”

  Rockaway turned to Valentine. “My mother probably left out a few details. Like that the ownership of the ranch was willed by my father to his sons, and Mother only would own it if we were all dead. What is it, Mother? Do you want to sell off some of the land, or riverfront, or water rights?”

  She extracted some surveys and a blueprint from her bush jacket. “I am building a home for the disabled in the Antelope Hills, on the Canadian River. I need to deed the necessary acreage to Southern Command.”

  Rockaway didn’t even look at the papers.

  “I’ll do you one better, Mother. I’ll sell you the whole ranch—lock, stock, and the old man’s cutest little whorehouse in Texas—for a grand total of one dollar. I’ll accept Southern Command scrip if you aren’t carrying your usual smuggler’s gold.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Keve, and I am happy to accept. The problem is that you’ll have to do this in a UFR courtroom, in front of a judge. My beloved husband’s will was most specific on points of ownership.”

  She turned toward Valentine and the others. “You probably think I’m a grasping, conniving woman. Nothing of the sort. It’s just extremely hard to run a business interest of this size when you can’t enter into contracts without the owner’s approval, and the owner is seven hundred miles away from a lawyer, a notary, and witnesses. My son, as you can see, is uninterested in a business that provides a quarter of all Southern Command’s meat and that employs a permanent staff of over a thousand and seasonal help three times that.”

  “I’m only sorry I didn’t sign it over to you two years ago,” Rockaway said. “But I was seeing Arbita and she didn’t want me to give it up, and for my sins I listened to her. But I’ll sign it over to you now, Mother.”

  “So you’ll return to the UFR with us?”

  “If that’s what it takes for me to be able to live my life in peace, do my job, and marry who and where I choose, I’ll take the trip.”

  So the happy reunion wasn’t quite so happy, at least as far as Mrs. O’Coombe and her son were concerned.

  Brother Mark needed a ride back to Fort Seng. A wounded Gunslinger named Thursday was also going that way, as he wanted to recover over the winter at home with his family in a town called Grand Junction on the road back. His brother-in-law was supposed to drive out to the Gunslingers and pick him up, but his brother-in-law had flaked. Again. O’Coombe and Valentine’s command had passed near it on the way up, and Thursday promised it was just over a ridge from their route home, on an old federal route in reasonably good condition.

  They packed up the four vehicles. Valentine made sure Bee had all her odds and ends. Traveling with a Grog was a little like taking a child or a pet on a journey: You needed to make sure you remembered favorite toys, snacks, and clothing.

  Thursday wasn’t much of a guide. He spent a lot of time examining map, compass, and map again before giving instructions that proved to be guesswork. Valentine could have done just as well with an old road atlas. Thursday’s wound was a piece of shrap nel to the buttock, or so he said, and he rode on a special pillow. Valentine wondered if he wasn’t really suffering from aggravated hemorrhoids.

  His instincts improved once they crossed a small river and he claimed to be in home territory.

  “Grand Junction’s not even an hour away, now. Three more big ridges and we’re there. We could use a garrison of you Southern Command boys, now. There’s a marketplace and even a bank that trades Karas’ old currency for the new government scrip. Some riders came in a while back and tried to rob the town, but we shooed them off.”

  Valentine said, “Most of Southern Command’s back across the river. All that’s left are some training and technical personnel.”

  “That’s Southern Command all over. They claim they swing the biggest dicks but always come up short when belts hit the floor.”

  A flake struck the windshield like a bug. A big piece of almost-sleet, it sledded down on its own melt.

  “I guess winter’s here,” Valentine said, by way of breaking the tense silence.

  In his winters south of central Missouri, Valentine had softened in his attitude toward cold weather. Winters weren’t a matter of life-or-death survival, with desperate, predawn to post-dusk fall efforts to stock up on enough fuel, food, and fodder to get yourself and the livestock through to spring—an almost unimaginable span of time away. Winter was a season of rest, refit, and relaxation.

  The horizon closed in as the real snow started, following behind the big flakes like a wall of Napoleonic infantry advancing behind their pickets.

  Valentine didn’t like the look of the big, soft flakes. When they first appeared they fell idly, spinning and drifting in the wind, but minute by minute they thickened, aligning themselves in a single, southeasterly direction.

  “Better slow down,” he told the driver. “Turn on the running lights. I think we can quit worrying about aerial observation.”

  “Hope we don’t have to do too much off-roading in this,” the driver said. “Wish the locals took better care of the roads.”

  “Legworms make their own roads,” Thursday said. “We like it nice and run-down. The Ordnance doesn’t risk their axles bothering us.” He chuckled. “This is Kentucky. We just don’t get that hard weather. Even the sky takes it easy here. This’ll blow over in no time.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Storm, January, the fifty-sixth year of the Kurian Order: Though rare, heavy winter weather sometimes burdens Kentucky. Blizzards have been known to dump enough snow to form formidable, chin-high drifts where the snow is pushed and channeled by wind and terrain, and once in place, the snow is surprisingly tenacious when protected by hill or tree from the sun.

  The storm that winter of 2076 became a byword for bad conditions for generations after. To anyone who survived it, nothing that hit Kentucky in the future could compare to those wild weeks in January when the sky seemed determined to alternately freeze and bury the state.

  The Moondagger prophet from the houseboat on the Kentucky River might have smiled in satisfaction as white judgment fell. Some said the real reason for the bad weather was the Kurian desire to see Kentucky’s populace gathered together yet isolated, the better to be stationary targets for what bloomed like Christmas cactus in the thick of storm and gloom.

  The storm and the night dragged on.

  The snow waxed so heavy that night that they couldn’t see more than fifteen or twenty feet in front of Rover. The headlights reflected back so much light from the snow they did more harm than good, so they drove using the service red guide lights. The motorcycles were useless in this weather, so Stuck and Longshot stopped and hung them up on the side of the Bushmaster. Fortunately, Thursday had put them on the right road for once, and all the driver in the cramped Rover had to do was stay on it.

  With the storm raging outside, reaching Grand Junction became not just a matter of convenience but a necessity. If they pulled off and camped, everything would take three times as long thanks to the weather, and no one would have a comfortable night.

  “Still can’t believe about the Coonskins,” Thursday said. “They were good men. Had many a meal with them when we all rode for Karas. The Moondaggers must have threatened them with something awful.”

  “Haw,” Habanero said. “I’ll bet every head in my share that no one threatened them with anything more than having to come home to six wives.”

  “That’s how the Kurians get you,” Longshot said. “Giveaways. That’s how they took over in the first place, my old man always said. They showed up—and, sure, they offered food and fuel, but there was more than that. They offered structure and freedom from having to think for yourself.”

  “I’m sure that’s just what people in an earthquake-hit city wanted,” Thursday said. “What the hell you talking about, Habby?”

 
“It’s like that story about how to trap swamp pigs. Ever heard it?”

  “No,” Thursday said.

  Valentine had. Habanero had all of five parables, and the pig one wasn’t nearly as good as his story about the frog and the scorpion. Mostly because that one was shorter.

  Mrs. O’Coombe read her Bible by map light.

  “Well, seems that down in the Congaree swamp in South Carolina there was a whole passel of pigs running wild. Now, pigs are smart. Every now and then a hunter would go in and try to get one, but most came back empty-handed, the pigs were so wary and wild.

  “Well, a stranger feller came into town and said he was going to get them pigs. Of course all the locals about laughed him out of town, but he ignored them. Instead he went and bought himself a couple fifty-pound bags of corn.

  “Every day he went into the swamp and poured some corn on one of the pig trails in a nice woodsy spot. Well, of course the pigs came along and ate the corn. It was free, after all. Easier than rooting up grubs and tubers.

  “After a few days, with the pigs showing up regular for their feed, he put a few beams down in front of the corn, and he watched them eat from a distance. Just wood on the ground, easy for a pig to hop over, and none of them minded making that jump to get at that corn. Then he started building a fence for a stockyard. He always made sure there were plenty of ways in and out for the pigs. They were a little nervous of the construction—one or two hightailed it right back into the swamp—but the rest were getting really used to that corn, so they went in.

  “Now gradually he shut off the entrances and exits, kept watching them from nearer and nearer, and made it tougher and tougher for the pigs to go in and get the corn, till all they had was a little gap to squeeze through. But darned if they didn’t squeeze through and gobble till every last bit of the corn was eaten.

  “Only one time, when they were done, the pigs saw that there was no way back out of the pen. He’d blocked it up.

  “They got their free grain still. ’Nother day or two, anyway, before a big ol’ livestock trailer pulled up, and they used sticks and dogs to herd them pigs right into the trailer. Didn’t cost him much: a few big bags of corn to convince them pigs there was such a thing as a free lunch.”

  “So that’s what they’re doing to us Kentuckians, you think?” Thursday asked.

  “I don’t know if the Kurians are smart as that man down Congaree way. But the Kurians are big on advertising their wares as free, aren’t they? Sometimes I think the scariest words in the American idiom are ‘no obligation.’ Of course, sometimes they stick in an ‘absolutely’ ’cause that one more lie just pushes people right over the edge into stupid.”

  They only knew they entered Grand Junction once buildings appeared on either side of the road.

  “I know just where you should park, Habby,” Thursday said to the wagon master at the wheel. “There’s a grain mill just the other side of town. Not one of those claptrap corrugated iron things—real stonework. Abandoned now because of the lack of juice. We grind grain with a couple oxen these days, the old-fashioned way.”

  Valentine looked out the window. He was used to seeing gutted storefronts, but one of the buildings that had a hole in the front looked like it had received recent damaged—the splinters in the door were white and fresh.

  “I wonder how long we’ll be snowed in here,” Duvalier said from the bench she had to herself at the very back of Rover. “Charmingly dead.”

  “What’s that?” Habanero said suddenly into his mike.

  Valentine plugged his own headset in, uneasy. “What happened?” Mrs. O’Coombe said.

  “Ma in Chuckwagon says she just hit a person.”

  “Good God,” Mrs. O’Coombe said.

  Valentine’s earphone crackled: “—maybe it was just a big dog. But he came leaping, trying to get on the back of Bushmaster, and slipped. Under my wheels before I knew it. We bumped over him.”

  “We should stop,” Mrs. O’Coombe said.

  “What kind of fool runs into a line of trucks in this weather?” Thursday said, his face unholy in the dim light of the console.

  “Must have been a dog,” Habanero said. “Shadows are weird with all the reflections.”

  “Here’s the mill,” Thursday said. “I’ll get it open for you, and then I’ll check in with our sheriff and let him know you’ve arrived. As long as that wasn’t him Ma ran over.”

  He laughed at his own joke, but no one else did.

  The mill looked like a staggered tower, in levels going back from the street rising to a sloped roof on the top floor like an old ski jump.

  “Always thought this building would be great to live in if you could gut and rebuild like they used to. Left just here, Habby,” Thursday said. “Don’t think you can get more than the first two vehicles parked inside. The loading dock’s only made for one truck, really. There’s plenty of space around the side with the train tracks.”

  Habanero turned on Rover’s lights. A metal gate broke the pattern in the stone sides of the mill. Thursday climbed out and met his dancing shadow at a crank handle.

  Turning the handle, he raised what had probably once been an electric door.

  Thursday lost his footing. Mrs. O’Coombe took a sudden breath at his fall.

  Or not a fall. Thursday disappeared under the half-raised gate with a scream.

  “What the hell!” Habanero said.

  “Wagon master, get ready to reverse and get out of here,” Valentine said.

  Habanero began to speak into his microphone.

  Valentine grabbed his rifle out of its seat-back clip and stepped outside.

  “Valen—” Duvalier began, but he slammed the door.

  He ducked down, looking into the dark of the old grain elevator. Rover’s lights cast beams through that were cut off by the half-closed door. A pair of hands, Thursday’s, were reaching out of the darkness and clawing in an effort to crawl back to Rover—but something was holding him back.

  And hurting him. Thursday was screaming like a man being slowly dismembered.

  Valentine wished he had a light clipped to the barrel of the gun. He looked around at the column but could see nothing but the whirling flakes and the columns lights.

  The Type Three pointed from his hip at the gate, he went to the crank for the door gate. He extended his arm and gripped the freezing-cold metal. Tendons tight, he managed to turn the wheel with one hand while he kept the barrel of his rifle pointed at the growing gap between tracked door and ground.

  Thursday’s hands were twitching spasmodically now, and as more and more light bled into the mill, the rest of him was revealed.

  A piercing shriek in his ear. Ali was out of the car, a pistol in hand and a sword stick under her arm. Valentine had never heard her shriek like that—the noise must be coming from another.

  Ragged two-legged forms appeared in the white bath of the headlights. Gore-smeared mouths testified to a recent, messy feast.

  Ravies!

  Valentine had encountered the disease on his first independent command in the Kurian Zone.

  Ravies was a disease of multiple strains, first used in 2022 to help break down the old order, and used here and there since whenever the Kurians needed to stir up a little chaos. On his trip into Louisiana as junior lieutenant of Zulu Company in the Wolves, the Kurians reacted by gathering up some of the indigenous swamp folk and infecting them with the latest strain.

  Valentine took them down with four quick shots. Red carnations blossomed on their chests and they staggered in confusion before crashing to the ground, dead.

  As a member of Southern Command, he’d been inoculated against the disease, but you never knew how current your booster was. Valentine had a theory that they were sometimes injected with nothing but some colored saline solution to give them confidence before going into the Kurian Zone, so they wouldn’t panic if faced with the disease, spread by bite and gouge and gush of arterial blood.

  It didn’t take a special shot t
o the brain or anything like that to kill a ravies sufferer, as some people thought—though if you wanted to live to go home and kiss your sweetheart again, you made damn sure you put some lead into center mass, for a ravies sufferer felt no pain. Indeed, he or she felt nothing but a desire to rend and tear.

  Valentine realized Duvalier’s scream had been answered, in a muffled and echoed manner, from farther up the street in town.

  Hopefully those who shrieked the responsorial were confused by the muffling effects of the snow as to where exactly Valentine’s column was.

  Valentine fiddled with his Type Three, took out the bayonet, and fixed it at the front of the rifle. He worked the slide in the hilt, extending the blade to its full length.

  He pounded on Habanero’s window. “Alert everyone: There’s ravies in this town and God knows where else,” Valentine said. “Get Rover and the Chuckwagon inside. We can block the main door with the Boneyard and stuff the Bushmaster in the truck entryway. Toss me a flashlight.”

  Valentine took a green plastic tube handed to him and clicked on the prism of long-lasting LED light. A beam one-tenth as powerful as Rover’s, but much more flexible, played around the inside of the grain mill. Nothing else was drawn out of the shadows by the bouncing light, so Valentine satisfied himself that the grain elevator was empty of everything but corpses.

  For now.

  Judging from the smell, the locals used part of the old grain tower as a smokehouse.

  Grain mills always reminded Valentine a little of churches. They had the same shadowy, steeplelike towers, tiny staircases up to balconies and antechambers, and of course the important platform at one end. In mills, that was where grain could be ground into feed or flour.

  With blood and pieces of Thursday scattered on the floor, the phrase “dark Satanic Mills” from Blake’s Jerusalem floated through Valentine’s mind. Valentine pulled the corpses out of the path of the vehicles and waved the Rover in.

  Thursday had done them one favor before his untimely death. He had guided them to a well-built structure. Limestone gave decent insulation, and it was as strong or stronger than brick.