The weight of a weapon on Nico’s back after so long without one was heavy, but not nearly as heavy as the knowledge that the military government was sending them armed to the teeth against civilians. His one consolation was that it didn’t appear to be an outright bid at genocide. Assuming things went the way the committee envisioned—which, of course, they wouldn’t, but the committee didn’t know that—the Jugs were commanded to apprehend anyone who resisted and ensure none of the insurgents returned to the uninfected population.
But accidents happened, and the appalling thing was that the committee clearly understood this, because the Jugs would be walking into the Clean Zone alongside security forces protected by hermetic suits. His own barely tamped outrage was reflected on the faces of the other Jugs. The callous disregard for the lives of the insurgents—and the risk to the public—cemented their determination to protect the people from the corruption of the Cheyenne Mountain Martial Law Committee.
The suburb enclosed by the Clean Zone perimeter was miles from Cheyenne Mountain. Nico supposed it said something that the military government had opted to set itself up somewhere that was virtually unreachable. No one knew who exactly was on the committee, or how decisions were being made, or what the command structure was inside the mountain. They were all being governed and commanded by an unseen, untouchable entity, and once the Jugs had secured the Clean Zone, changing that state of affairs would be the next order of business.
Even if it meant laying siege to the underground complex until they starved the military government out.
The streets were quiet and empty when the security patrols opened the checkpoint gates to let the combined ground forces through. No one was working in the yards or gardens. The Jugs had been expecting this, but the suited security forces had not. They all clutched their weapons nervously, too disconcerted by the silence and lack of resistance to pay much attention to the Jugs.
It was so subtle as to be unnoticeable, the way the Jugs slowly and steadily shifted their formation and placement so that they separated and surrounded each squadron of Clean Zone security forces. The numbers disparity was a fucking joke. There were nearly two thousand Jugs and only a few hundred Clean Zone troops. Nico watched the gradual rearranging of their forces until the Clean Zone perimeter gates closed behind them. That was their signal to take action. The Jugs moved with a speed and concert that Nico, even possessing the same abilities, marveled at. They each reached for the mask or hood of the suited guard nearest them and ripped it off.
It took seconds. Mere seconds for the noise of the hermetic suits being carelessly torn open to shift to startled shouts followed by the sound of safeties being released. Nico saw his own Sierra Company comrades pounce on the guards nearest them, and beyond that, Delta Company. The sun caught Schuyler’s titian hair and made it blaze like polished copper, and her face was pure, savage fury as she wrestled a hoodless guard to his knees.
Then came the frantic bellows.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Only one shot was fired, and it was—gratefully—discharged from an assault rifle that was knocked aside by a Jug so the round didn’t hit anyone. None of the guards realized that at first, however. They heard the shot and screamed in panic. Some began sobbing.
“Oh God. God, please, no!”
“Put down your weapons!” the Jugs yelled at the few security forces who had managed to escape the initial onslaught and who stood several feet off, their guns trained on the Jugs. They all quivered with hesitation, however, as they took inventory of their captured, defenseless comrades. When the Jugs barked, “Drop ’em!” the guards obeyed and put up their hands.
“Echo, go!” At the order, the one company of Jugs who had held back from the initial assault burst into action, sprinting along the street they’d originally marched up. The guards at the checkpoint were unsuited; their only job was to wave the patrols through the gate and close it behind them. It was no contest. They stood by helplessly as Echo Company ripped the gate down and herded them out of the booths to join their comrades kneeling on the pavement.
Unfortunately, there was no way the checkpoint guards hadn’t radioed the initial assault in to command inside Cheyenne Mountain. Which meant that by the time the Jugs got to the entrance of the underground facility, it would be sealed tight. Now they’d be dealing with a siege.
Nico’s attention was pulled from the spectacle by Valentino’s voice. “Nico! Go find Morris and check in with the resistance, then begin flushing out the gangs they told us about.”
Since Nico had a “personal contact” within the resistance, he’d been earmarked to act as the Jugs’ liaison, a job he was only too glad to embrace. Concerned that the civilians might be wary of the Jugs, each company had assigned one or two of their most charismatic and easygoing people as envoys to work with the civilians on hunting down the gangs. They would incarcerate the culprits—along with the guards who had aided and abetted them—pending trial once the civilian government was established.
Following that first bloodless attack in which the Jugs crippled the security forces, a strange lull took over the Clean Zone, at least with regards to the fighting. Companies of Jugs rotated a 24-7 watch outside the gates to the bunker under the mountain, while in the Clean Zone, a hastily pulled-together interim Congress started composing a constitution. Getting the Clean Zone back under civilian authority was priority one, even beyond the siege at the mountain.
In all other ways, the Clean Zone was more active than ever. The Jugs assumed responsibility for tending to the detainees in quarantine since there was no danger of them being infected. Seeing human faces instead of featureless masks went a long way toward pacifying the people in the pens. Food stores weren’t an issue yet, either, as the Jugs had brought their own provisions. Hopefully by the time they ran low, the harvest would be coming in. To supplement, they scavenged every grocery store, pantry, wild field, and orchard the military hadn’t yet managed to pick through all the way up to Denver.
The addition of the Jugs nearly doubled the Clean Zone population, but productivity increased exponentially. They demolished contaminated properties, raided lumberyards, and helped build new housing, moving in people who’d been in quarantine sometimes for months past their mandatory three-month stint.
As far as Nico was concerned, those assholes inside the mountain could never come out and he’d be perfectly happy. Because at the end of the day, after helping to get the Clean Zone’s shit straightened out, he got to go home to Zach. It was hard to remember, spending night after night wrapped up together, that all the reasons why he’d walked away from Zach in the first place still applied. They were the same reasons why the Jugs didn’t work side by side with the civilians. The Jugs set up their own district just outside the Clean Zone, and their own work crews, but their goal was the same.
At least until it came to drafting the Clean Zone Constitution.
“What the fuck is this?” Nico demanded as he sat in bed beside Zach, reading the latest draft the Congressional Committee had sent for him to take to the Jugs. “Mandatory segregation? Permits to enter unapproved areas? What, because we’re not already being careful to segregate ourselves? Special penalties for anyone using their abilities as a Jug to ‘intimidate, harass, or otherwise disrupt’ the rule of law within the Clean Zone?”
Zach groaned. “I know. I’m sure Chantal’s been trying to talk the rest of the committee down from those items. After all the Jugs have done to help us—”
“Help you? Like we’re not a part of this? What, it’s not our lives too? We’re not citizens unlawfully detained under an illegal military regime, same as everyone else in the Clean Zone? We’re different, right? Fucking typical.” He snorted and flung himself out of bed, beginning to pace.
“Nico, please.” Zach held out a hand. “You know I don’t feel that way, and Chantal wouldn’t, either. Their rationale is that they’re afraid that the Jugs’ physical superiority might cause them to resist arrest i
f they happen to break any laws, or to intimidate voters during elections.”
Nico covered his face with his hands, a short, humorless chuff of pitiful laughter escaping his lungs. “Right. Sure, they’re afraid of that. Same bullshit, different century.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You don’t see it, do you?” He dropped his hands, fixing Zach with a stare. “Of course you don’t. Zach, this whole fucking thing is going to spin into a referendum on race relations if someone doesn’t make those assholes see what they’re actually proposing.”
Nico watched Zach do a mental inventory of the civilians and the Jugs, and then he groaned. “Oh God, how did I not see that before? It makes way too much sense.”
“You’re damn right it does. The survivors who have been making their way to the Clean Zone are the people who had their own houses, who were well-off enough not to have to live packed together in apartments. They had enough money to have food supplies and fuel cells stashed away to hold them over until the first wave of the pandemic had passed.” Nico shook his head, resuming his pacing. “The people who died in the pandemic were the poor, the people crowded together in the cities, many of them brown or black or indigenous. Except for the Jugs, because the military was one of the best ways to avoid unemployment or the tenements. And now those white ‘survivors’ are afraid we’re going to break their laws and fuck up their elections. And we sure as hell can’t mingle in their neighborhoods. Jesus.”
Zach hung his head. “Do you honestly think they mean it that way?”
The question speared Nico with something that felt almost like betrayal. He couldn’t blame Zach for his upbringing and the resulting naïveté, but sometimes it was easy to forget that, as sweet and well-intentioned as Zach was, he had the luxury to be obtuse, and Nico didn’t.
“Do you honestly think they don’t?” He stared hard at the top of Zach’s head until Zach finally looked up again. “Not that a single one of them will admit to it. Hell, I’ll even be generous enough to concede that a lot of them don’t realize what they’re doing. But when it comes down to it, we’re dancing to a centuries-old tune here. The fact that we’re Jugs—and therefore, yes, there is a real reason to be afraid of us—just gives a veneer of legitimacy to prejudices that were in place long before the pandemic.”
“I’m sorry, Nico.” Zach began gathering the pages of the constitution Nico had flung aside. “I’ll take this back and tell them there’s no way the Jugs will ratify it.”
Nico caught the sheath of papers. “No. Leave it. I want the Jugs to know what we’re dealing with. And for my own part, I’m going to recommend we assign a delegate to the committee.”
Zach’s crestfallen face reflected just how much hope of success he thought that proposal would meet. He bowed his head again. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“You’re not the one who did it.” Nico sighed and set the papers on top of the dresser, returning to bed to crawl across the sheets and straddle Zach. “I need you and Chantal to remind these people that we’re Clean Zone citizens too. We’re making our homes here. This is going to be our constitution as much as theirs.”
“I won’t let them forget.” Zach moaned softly as Nico’s weight settled on top of him, his mouth parting. The taste of his yielding was heady, and not for the first time, Nico regretted the circumstances that prevented him from ever knowing what it would feel like to be buried within Zach. If they could trust condoms, it would be another story, but after several seasons on dusty shelves, exposed to the extremes of winter and summer without any climate control, they couldn’t risk it. Even though the Beta mutation didn’t occur in the course of sexual contact, Kaleo’s words of caution about whether or not he could infect Zach with the Alpha strain were always with him. Nico had offered to try to infect Zach with Alpha—if it was even possible, which most people seemed to think unlikely—after they’d reunited, but Zach had refused, and since he’d disposed of the ampule, that was the end of that.
But that pang of regret was short-lived as Zach’s hand slid between Nico’s straddling thighs, cupping and stroking his increasingly heavy cock through his fatigues. When Zach’s fingers did that—oh God, yes, and that—he could forget all about the constitution. And the endless wait for the remaining personnel in Cheyenne Mountain to surrender. And his worries for his own future and that of the other Jugs here in the Clean Zone. He had Zach, and they had a home, and everything else was negotiable as long as they could keep touching each other, coming together at the end of the day.
Now that they no longer had to worry about the gangs, Zach happily returned to working in the clinic. He was updating files from some scribbled notes when Chantal trudged through the door, her mouth pulled into a grimace.
“What happened?” She didn’t make that face without damn good reason.
She shook her head. “Just got back from watching the civilian police interview that man who they detained trying to grab that girl last week. He says he wanted to force her to be his common-law wife. He’s a rapist, all right, but he doesn’t match the description we’ve gotten from the serial rapist victims. We’re still not any closer to finding the guy.”
“Did you seriously expect it to be him?” Zach’s eyebrows shot up. From the moment they’d heard of the case out of the south quadrant, he’d doubted it had anything to do with the young men—and occasionally women—who had been brutalized in all the quadrants.
“Not really, but that’s not what’s bothering me.” She hopped up onto the edge of the desk, facing him with her legs swinging restlessly. “There haven’t been any more attacks by the serial rapist since the Jugs came.”
“Yeah?” Zach almost tacked on the question, What about it? when her meaning dawned on him. “You think it’s someone inside the mountain.”
Chantal nodded. “I do. The only other explanation is that it’s one of the military guards the Jugs detained on accusations of corruption, but the description we’ve got is of someone closer to middle age than any of them are. And none of the victims indicated that the guy acted like a soldier.”
“So it’s someone fairly highly placed.” He shuddered. “That’s a grim thought.”
“I could be wrong.” Chantal ran a fingertip along the edge of the desk. “It could be that whoever it was just went to ground when security in the Clean Zone became less corrupt.”
“Not sure if that’s more or less encouraging. If that’s the case, we may never flush him out.”
“Not until he attacks again.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Chantal made a face. “I’m not an expert, but don’t these guys always go back for more, sooner or later?”
Zach tossed his pencil on the desk in disgust. “So now we’re left hoping he’ll victimize another person. Great.”
“Not hoping.” She slid off the desk and squeezed his shoulder. “Go on home. I’ll finish the paperwork. And let the Jugs know the committee will have another draft for them by the end of the week.”
“Any progress on getting them to accept a Jug delegate to the committee?”
Her eyes slid away from his, and her mouth tightened again. “It’s being considered.”
“This is bullshit!” Schuyler threw the papers down on the table of the apartment she and Kaleo shared in the Delta Company housing, glaring at Nico as though this were all his fault. Admittedly, he had been the one to drag her into it. He nominated Schuyler—who came from a long line of politicians and, as such, had studied political science before a falling-out with her family had driven her to enlist in the Army on a rash, rebellious impulse—to be the Jugs’ delegate to the Congressional Committee. Which was why he was bringing her the latest drafts of the constitution while they debated whether or not to allow her in.
“I know it is,” Nico said, his hands up in a mean-no-harm gesture. “Zach says Morris has resigned from the committee in protest. He says he’s surprised Chantal hasn’t done the same.”
“So not only am I not
allowed to act as our delegate to the committee—” she flipped the papers over again and skimmed them as if she might have missed something “—but they’ve added tighter restrictions on which parts of the Clean Zone Jugs with uteri are allowed access to? Are they fucking serious? Is this the Middle Ages? We already know we have to stay away from the civvies when we’re menstruating!”
“Chantal told Zach it’s because they’re afraid you might start bleeding unexpectedly due to irregular cycles.”
“I will fucking give them something to be afraid of and it won’t have a goddamn thing to do with my period!” Her face was redder than her hair, her eyes snapping with fury. “Because I haven’t lost enough to this motherfucking virus, now I’m going to be treated like a leper?”
Even good-natured Kaleo looked pissed off. “That takes some gall. We’re eighty percent of the Clean Zone’s productivity. We’re good enough to help build their houses and dig their perimeter trench and hunt down the revs in a hundred-mile radius, but we can’t have a say in the constitution?”
“I’m sorry,” Nico murmured. “I don’t know what to do. I wish I did. Zach’s afraid they’re going to start putting restrictions on fraternizing between the Jugs and the uninfected population. He’s worried that if he speaks up any more, it’s going to draw their attention to the fact that he’s around us every day.”
“You think they don’t already know that? The moment they don’t need you two as a conduit for communications anymore, they will shut that shit down.” Kaleo sneered and began pacing. “I’m starting to think Charlie Company is right. We need to just get the fuck out of here, go start our own settlement. These assholes can just deal with being under military rule.”
Juggernaut Page 29
