by E. E. Knight
“Whose side are you on, Lieutenant?” Martinez said, making the rank sound like an epitheth. “Sounds like you boys are getting set to do the Kurians’ work for them.”
“That’s so, General,” the largest of the Bears said. He had the smooth, rounded accent of the rolling Kentucky hills, rather than the trans-Mississippi twang of Nail. He pulled a knife from his belt, tossed it in the air and in the second before he caught it again drew a tomahawk with his left hand. “But only if you start it. My finishers are out. Any blood spills, they won’t go back in again without your guts strung on ’em.”
“He’s not a general, Rain,” another Bear said. “Not anymore.”
“Martinez is right,” Valentine said. “Let’s not do the Kurians’ work for them. What’ll it be, Martinez? A blood-bath?”
The Bears and Ahn-Kha must have made an impression. The crowd shrank away, perhaps not wanting to be the first to be tomahawked on Rain’s way to the General.
“Name your terms, Valentine,” Martinez said.
“First, nobody gets arrested for treason. Second, Styachowski and the judges walk out of camp with us. Somehow I think there’d be reprisals if any of us stayed. Third, you let anyone who wants to go with us leave. Peaceably.”
“This is mutiny, Valentine.”
“You have to have military organization to mutiny against. Your command is that of a warlord, maybe, but not armed service as Southern Command defines it.”
“Then it’s to the warlord to give his terms to those he’s defeated. You and your men can leave. You may take personal possessions only. No Southern Command weapons, food, or equipment. You walk out of here as civilians, and I’ll be sure to let my superiors know why that’s the case. We won’t be sorry to see you go; my men don’t want to breathe the same air as traitors.”
“He’s awful free with that word,” the Bear called Rain muttered.
“Try to get our guns. We’ll walk out over—” Nail began.
“Wait, Lieutenant,” Valentine said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Nobody gets killed, that’s good enough.”
“Is this a surrender, my David?” Ahn-Kha asked in his ear.
“A tactical retreat, old horse,” he said. Then louder: “You have it, Martinez. We walk out with just our possessions. Now let Captain Styachowski go. We’ll be gone in twenty-four hours.”
“This looks like a conference of war,” Finner said the next day, as Ahn-Kha opened the tent flap. Styachowski, Post, Nail and, strangely enough, Colonel Meadows all sat around a folding camp table spread with maps.
“An informal one. Jess, they tell me you know the mountains east of here better than anyone. What are our chances of getting seven hundred people to the Arkansas River without using any Kurian-patrolled roads?”
“I don’t see anyone smiling, so I guess this isn’t a practical joke. Seven hundred?”
“That’s what the numbers packing up look like,” Colonel Meadows said. “Some are good soldiers, sick of hiding in the hills. Some are afraid that the General’s gone loco.” Meadows tapped his chest with the hand missing the fingers for emphasis.
“Styachowski says the hills are our only hope for moving that many without being noticed,” Valentine added. “The Quislings stay out of the mountains because of those feral Reapers, except for big truck patrols. We’d hear those coming.”
Finner looked at the maps. One, covered with a sheet of clear plastic, had a cryptic mark over where Valentine’s refugees had been camping when the General added them to his command. “I was coming here to tell you that we’ve got two platoons of Wolves ready to go out with us. With them screening we might be able to do it. The lifesign will be horrendous. We’ll draw trouble like a nightlight does bugs.”
“And we’ll be short, very short, on weapons,” Post said. “It makes the route even more critical.”
“How are you going to feed everyone, sir?” Finner asked.
“Working on it,” Meadows said, with a glance at Styachowski. She looked tired.
“That’s been most of the conversation. We’ll take livestock. Like the myriads out of Egypt, we’ll go with our flocks,” Valentine said.
“What happens at the Arkansas? The river’s watched and patrolled. I’d have trouble getting across with a platoon.”
“Just get us there, Lieutenant,” Valentine said.
“Sergeant, sir.”
“You’re going to be in charge of two platoons of Wolves. That’s a lieutenant’s command,” Meadows said.
Finner looked nonplussed. “Any chance of turning down this promotion?”
“We get back to Southern Command, and I’ll fill out the rank reduction paperwork myself,” Valentine promised. “Let’s give Finner some time alone with the maps.”
“Don’t need ’em, sir,” the new lieutenant said.
“You’ll at least need to know where we’re starting. First waypoint is the old campsite where we dumped that load of lumber.”
“Captain Styachowski, a word,” Valentine said as they left the tent.
“Yes, Captain?”
“You still have friends on the old intelligence staff?”
“Staff? Friends? I had one nearsighted military analyst. She’s coming with us; she doesn’t like this moonshine brewery any more than I.”
“I need everything you have on enemy organization on the Arkansas River.”
“That’s a lot of data. The river’s their backbone running up the Ozarks.”
“You’ve got to find us a way across.”
“Short of stealing some flatboats or swimming the whole column, I don’t see how we do it. Only bridges up are in Little Rock, and that’s their new headquarters.”
“Think about it for me.”
Styachowski’s eyes narrowed, but she spoke with a cheerful bounce to her voice. “I can’t count on the waters parting, can I?”
“Sorry.”
“Ah, well. When a Saint came marching into camp, I had hope—”
Valentine laughed. “What’s the crossbar for?
“Hunter staff. I’m a Bear. Never made it on a combat team, though. Always some excuse.”
“What did they invoke you for, then?”
“Didn’t. I was sort of born into it. Only action I’ve seen was Hazlett, and that was in a mortar team.”
“I was up that way. Didn’t see the fighting, just the cleanup,” Valentine said.
“Lucky. But it was a picnic compared to the last few months.”
“One more thing. You had a rough time, at the trial and after. Are you okay?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t look well. Have you been sleeping enough?”
She ran her hand through her hair and rubbed the back of her neck at the end of the gesture. “I always look like a slice of fresh death. Don’t worry.”
“I mean the fight at the trial. Hell of a thing to go through.”
“I’m a bit numb still. I’m glad we have a lot to do . . . I’ll just work till I drop tonight. Be better tomorrow.”
“Don’t short yourself sleep. Just makes everything worse.” Valentine spoke from experience. “Sometimes a drink helps.”
“I’ve had three drinks my whole life, Captain. Two of them were last night, after all that. Didn’t help. Thanks for hearing me out about the Bear stuff. Lieutenant Nail just laughed. Our good General said I had too good a brain for fighting, and too tight an ass for uniform pants. I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove myself.”
“You proved yourself when you stepping in at the Grog shooting.”
“I should have taken action before then. Been watching and waiting too long, should have followed my gut a long time ago. When he started letting the gargoyles overfly us without so much as a shot . . .”
She left the last to hang for a moment, and Valentine wondered at her absent stare into the distance. Then she swallowed and threw her muscular shoulders back. “Okay, time to round up some livestock and then sit down with
a map. If you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do.”
Colonel Meadows put himself between Valentine and Martinez as the column made ready to leave.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me, Meadows,” Martinez said. He glanced up to Randolph, perched on a rock above. Randolph had decided to stay, and sat atop the rock, rifle in his lap, looking out at the assembled “mutineers.”
“That whole farce was my fault,” Meadows said. “You should have been tried from your cell in the guardhouse. You’re a disgrace, but I’m the bigger disgrace for letting it happen.”
Valentine looked out on the road, filled with files of people in their assortment of Southern Command uniforms, rain ponchos, coats and hats. Perhaps six hundred soldiers were interspersed with a handful of tagalong civilian specialists. Packhorses and mules, leashed pigs, chickens and geese in baskets, and a total of four wagons added to the noise and smell. Squads of Guard soldiers were relieving the men of Southern Command rifles, while others poked in the pack-horse loads. A cold wind coursed through the hollow.
“None of the animals have a Southern Command brand,” Valentine said, continuing the argument Meadows had interrupted. Ahn-Kha wandered up the file, cradling his long Grog rifle.
Out of Martinez’s hearing, Valentine heard Ahn-Kha make an aside to Post.
“How’d you get a captured gun?” Ahn-Kha asked, touching Post’s holstered .45. It was a duplicate of Valentine’s; Post had given him one while they served together on the Thunderbolt.
“It’s not Southern Command issue.”
“Letter of the law,” Ahn-Kha said. “A few dozen guns between all of us.”
“For a column a half mile long.”
Valentine turned his attention back to Martinez, still arguing with Meadows. “You think you can move this many through the hills? You’re throwing away the lives of everyone here. I’ll offer an amnesty. We can bring the command back together.”
Meadows unhooked his pistol belt and handed it over to Martinez. “That 9mm is Southern Command issue. Wouldn’t want to set a bad example.” He looked at the men holding the horse teams. “Five minutes!” he shouted. “We get going in five minutes!”
“Don’t be a fool, Colonel,” Martinez said. “We need you. And these good men.” His beady eyes glanced up and down the files of men. It seemed that those who still shaved and cleaned their uniforms were all lined up with Valentine.
“Martinez,” Valentine said, “you don’t have a command. You have a mob. They way things are going in this camp, you won’t even have a mob much longer.”
Martinez sneered. “Think so? I’ll give you a prediction in return. We’ll outlast you.”
Chapter Four
The Eastern Ouachitas, Arkansas, February: In the decade before the Overthrow, the interstate between Little Rock and Hot Springs enjoyed a high-tech growth spurt. With key computer networks in prominent cities worldwide challenged by everything from terrorism to extended power outages, backup locations became the focus of a substantial slice of investment. In America’s heartland, in the basements of nondescript office parks, fiberoptic lines connected servers waiting to cut into action should the need arise without the slightest interruption in data flow; “transparent redundancy,” in the phrase of the times.
Southwest of the blasted ruins of Little Rock, off of one of the feeder highways to the old interstate, a chocolate-colored three-story with bands of black windows once housed claim and policy-holder records for one of the world’s top ten insurance companies. In 2022 the building nestled in the Ouachita foothills looked a little like a giant slice of devil’s food cake amidst its landscaping and parking lots. Now the lots are meadows, and saplings grow on its roof as birds fly in and out of paneless top-story windows; just another unraveled piece of the commercial fabric of a rich nation. The lowest floor shows some sign of recent renovation. Plywood has been nailed up over broken windows and horses graze behind the building in a paddock made from downed power-line towers. A few camouflage-painted pickups sit parked outside a barbed-wire festooned gas station between the highway and the office building. The battered office building looks peaceful behind a sign reading STATION 26.
Except for the three bodies rotting in the noonday sun.
All male, all naked and all covered in a black mixture of rotting flesh and pitch, visited only by crows, they swing from a pylon that once held four lights above the parking lot next to the gas station. An uprooted stop sign stands in the parking-lot meadow between the bodies and the entrance road, redone in whitewash and black lettering—the two colors have run together in the hasty paint job—reading SABOTER’S REWARD.
“Bullfrog’s been at it again,” Finner said. “Sumbitch never could spell.” He and Valentine crouched in the thick bush bordering the improvised horse pasture, examining the bodies from a stand of wintering lilac bushes, the western wind blowing the stench the other way. The rest of the column sheltered in the deeper woods a kilometer away, eating the midday meal out of their packs. The screening Wolves had been exploring the more open ground around the old office park and came across what looked like an inhabited office building. When they found the bodies they had summoned Valentine.
“Bullfrog?” Valentine asked.
“Sergeant Bill Frum. Top sergeant in the Guards, or so the men in his old unit say.”
“A guerilla?”
“In a manner. He and his men joined up with Solon’s crew in Little Rock and they gave him a commission. Only he’s playing double agent or whatever you want to call it. He’s got twenty or thirty diehards, twice that in part-time guerillas in the farms east of here, and about two hundred men scattered around who are supposed to be hunting guerillas. What they mostly do is look the other way.”
Valentine reread the block letters on the sign. “So what about the bodies?”
“Camouflage.”
“What’s that mean?”
“His guerillas aren’t really going up against the KZ forces. More like sneaking around and hitting the folks who cooperate. That burned-out farm we passed yesterday; I bet that was his work.”
The scouts had reported bodies in the ruins, Valentine remembered.
“He’s a good source of intelligence about the roads between the Rock and Hot Springs, for all that. Sometimes he sends a messenger, trades information or supplies he’s been issued. In the last swap he told us they’d open the rail line south from the Rock again.”
“He went to some effort to preserve the bodies. I wonder why?” Valentine asked.
“Shows any inspection groups that he’s killing guerillas. I know he shoots deserters trying to get back home to Texas or Oklahoma. Picks off an occasional wildcatter come in from Illinois or Tenesseee to set up shop, and then burns down an empty house or two in fake ‘reprisals.’ Bullfrog likes a good bonfire. He burns anything used to trade with the enemy—from a cart to a farm, and buries locals who join up and are carrying arms.”
“Buries?”
“Buries alive, in a coffin with an airhole of old pipe, so they have time to think about what they did. Then claims the guerillas did it. That’s what Major Rojo used to say, anyway.”
Valentine found himself feeling less contemptuous toward General Martinez and his moonshine-sotted camp. He’d rather have his men drunk and disorderly than burying people alive. Valentine squatted and crept away from the bodies through the new grass. Finner and his patrol rested among the newly mature trees that had sprung up in old landscaping.
“You said this is was pretty quiet area, Jess.”
“Quiet’s relative, Val,” Finner said.
“Let’s visit this setup,” Valentine said.
“What, everyone?”
“No. Keep the column hidden in the hills. I want to visit this Bullfrog’s lily pad and find out for sure which side he’s hopped on.”
Valentine crouched alongside a wrecked pickup covered in kudzu, and moved his hand as though he were throwing a dart three times. He could hear Styachowski’s quick breaths
behind. She’d vouched for the authenticity of Bullfrog’s intelligence; as far as she knew his information had never led to the capture or destruction of Southern Command forces. Nail, looking back at him from twenty meters ahead, whipped his wiry arm in a wheeling motion forward and his Bears rose out of the ditch in front of the chocolate-colored office building—Valentine guessed it had once held a decorative pond—and entered, two remaining behind to cover. At another wave from Nail in the doorway, they ran in after him.
His old Wolf senses took over and he listened to the footsteps, the low calls, the crash of something heavy overturning.
“Blue Tick! Blue Tick! Blue Tick!” Nail called. The Bears had reached the door of the office building. Some boarded-over windows had STATION 26 stencilled on them.
“Running! They’re running,” Nail shouted.
Valentine rose and another thirty men rose with him. They trotted inside the swept-up but still water-damaged reception foyer; it stretched up through the building’s three stories to paneless skylights, and dispersed to cover all sides of the building. Years’ worth of plant life had established itself on the floors above so that roots and old extension cords and recent phone lines shared space on the wall. Valentine and Styachowski followed a pointing Bear named Ritter down a flight of stairs. Finner waited for them at the bottom. The landing was cluttered with suspiciously fresh blown leaves.
They stepped down an electric-lit corridor just in time to see Nail fling himself at a vaultlike door that was being closed.
“Open up, Sergeant Frum,” Nail called. “Southern Command. Operations verification Squeak-Three.”
“That’s out of date,” Styachowski said, coughing after the run.