Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  All of which meant Swann’s Riders sat on or leaned against a gray-and-green hybrid Umvee, watching Memphis burn at a safe distance. Lazy Eye chewed on a long stalk of hay grass he’d found somewhere, while Simmons stared unblinking at the spectacle. Zampana’s lips moved, silent prayers or a stream of invectives; you couldn’t be sure. Sal and Prink passed a bottle of found bourbon back and forth. Swann held his hat in both large hands and worked at its brim, his long face thoughtful; Chuck Dogg let out a soft tuneless whistle every once in a while, when the burners found a patch of congenial fuel and sent gouts of greasy blue-white skyward. Those flames ate everything, even the top layers of concrete, but it was the firestorm they created, stealing oxygen and roasting everything within radius, that accounted for most of the casualties.

  You could maybe escape—maybe—if you had a deep enough hole and a source of air while the firestorm lasted. Or if you were lucky enough to get to a body of water big enough not to evaporate, and prayed. Once the burners went down, there wasn’t a lot left.

  After the first two hours the flames turned orange and yellow, shading into a paleness at their bottoms. Billows of grease-black smoke lifted in an almost perfect column since the dawn breeze had died. Federal soldiers climbed whatever they could to get a good view from Highway 51, and when the planes circled back and dropped another payload the joking stopped, replaced by an awed silence. When the mess on the roads leading back cleared, the orders came down to move out again, north and east to Jackson, which had escaped burning only because the Federals needed somewhere to rest their troops.

  The historians called it the Battle of Memphis, as distinct from the raiders’ Memphis Uprising. The surrender was signed a little afterward, so the same historians called it the end of the war.

  Chapter Twelve

  History

  They lied.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fast and Cautious

  A thin trickle of blood smeared on Spooky’s top lip. She didn’t notice, staring out the truck’s window. Today she had shotgun, Swann was driving, and they crept along the freeway at a respectable idle, following a long line of similar trucks carrying infantry. Charging the kerros or fueling the hybrid engines wasn’t a problem—supplies had moved up, and the whole army was shifting off of petroleum. There was even going to be a field kitchen tonight, someone had said. The prospect of hot food, no matter what quality, cheered everyone immensely.

  “Horses, sometimes,” Swann said. His hat lay on the seat between them, a sodden, shapeless mass. The turkey feather was a little bedraggled now, dispirited at not seeing combat. “But you’ve got to feed those fuckers. You know the Second World War was fulla horses?”

  Spooky made a soft, noncommittal sound, chewing on yet another ration bar. They tasted like glued-together sawdust, but they were food. Zampana was monitoring her intake, and so far, Lara hadn’t come down with the runs or the bricks. It was a goddamn miracle, and she was past the most dangerous part. The human body was a downright phenomenon, as Sal often remarked.

  All the same, she wouldn’t have minded a chocolate bar. Or a grilled-cheese sandwich. Some kampogs dreamed of elaborate, table-groaning feasts, but all she wanted was grilled cheese and a glass of milk. Not skim, either. Full-fat. Cold from the fridge, and the cheese full of fat too, the butter—not margarine—crispy and soaking into the bread…

  “Had to use ’em to haul the artillery. Bunch of dead horses in the Second World War. And bicycles. You see the pictures of them on bicycles. The Russians in Berlin were stealin’ watches and bicycles.” Swann’s hazel eyes were narrowed. His window was rolled down precisely a quarter, and the cool air coming in was a blessing. This particular truck couldn’t shut the heating fan off or the lights would stop working.

  Raiders were used to crappy equipment. It was better than no equipment at all—most of the time, anyway.

  Spooky made another soft sound, just to show she was listening. Swann glanced at her. “You’re leakin’.”

  “Huh?” She blinked, rubbed at her lip. Blood smeared. “Oh shit.”

  “That a regular thing?” He dug in his coat, finally finding a scrap of black bandanna wrapped around a wad of something crusty. “This is all I got.”

  “It’s fine.” She took it, didn’t even make a face at what it probably contained, and pressed it under her nose. “Happens sometimes. Since Baylock.”

  “Baylock?” He kept his eyes on the road. It was easier for people to talk about bad shit when you weren’t looking at them. If prewar road trips didn’t teach you that, everything after the West Coast Secession did.

  Spooky’s voice was muffled, quiet. “First kamp I was in.”

  “They had you somewheres else before that shithole?”

  “Yeah.” She shuddered, a quick, suppressed movement. “Transit kamps, mostly. People going through to different places. Was in the glassblock for a while.”

  “Huh.” A question lay just under that single word, but he wasn’t going to press it.

  “Hospital. Experiments.” She scrubbed angrily at the blood, tilting her head back a little, carefully holding the ration bar away on her right side, between her and the door. Like she was afraid someone would snatch it. “They went through and sorted us. Raiders, mostly—they had everyone with magtat or scar instead of chip go through selektions first off. First we thought it might not be so bad, because hospitals had to have better food, right? They told us they were quarantining us. Poking, prodding, taking blood, scraping.” She turned her head, not quite looking at him. From this angle her nose was a little too big, and her mouth a little too small. “Is it still going?”

  The blood had slowed, already clotting.

  “It’s stopped.” Swann went back to eyes-front, staring at the bumper of the transport in front of them. One of the Federals—a private with a bandage on his neck and close-cropped brown hair—was pissing off the tailgate, but politely, aiming the flow to the side instead of trying to hit the hood of the truck behind him. “Still some in your nose.”

  “Yeah.” She balled the cloth up in her fist, took another bite of the ration bar. “Turns out they just wanted us patched up before they started. All the Memphis casualties got care. Some civilians, but I never talked to any of them.”

  “So mostly just captured raiders?”

  “Uh-huh. They kept measuring us and poking and swabbing. They even weighed your shit, when they were feeding you enough to make any. Hooked a bunch of us up to EEGs, ECGs, everything. Gave us injections. All sorts of crazy shit. Electroshock.” Another bite, this one chewed hard and fast. “Then people started dying.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You wouldn’t…” She shook her head gingerly, as if expecting her nose to go again. “I was about to say you wouldn’t believe what they did. But I’m guessing you might.”

  “Rumors. Light me up a smoke?”

  “As a medical officer, I would be glad to.”

  His mouth curved upward, fleetingly, before settling back in its usual line. “Good girl.”

  “They did…things. Grafting. Spinal taps. One guy…I can’t even…” Her hand shook, but she got the smoke lit. Medics got half an officer’s ration of old-fashioned, but they were saying the candies were going to become standard and the nicotine fiends would have to be weaned. “Saw a guy try to peel his own face off, while they stood around taking notes.” She took a drag and passed him the cancer-stick, gingerly, doing her best not to touch his skin. “I don’t like thinking about it.”

  “Fair enough.” Swann took a long, long drag. It burned all the way down, and the familiar nicotine haze eased his nerves. Nonsmokers were goddamn rare in combat, and the little paper-wrapped sticks were currency, besides. “I got a question.”

  “Yeah?” Bracing herself, the medic shifted a little farther toward the door.

  “The admin building. In the burning camp. How’d you know?”

  A long, ticking silence. “I could say I guessed.” She made another tiny, restless mov
ement.

  Swann didn’t seem to notice. He just tapped his ash out the window, like a gentleman. “Yeah, well, war does that. You get to where you know. Like an animal.”

  “Yeah.” Lara didn’t relax, but she did bring the ration bar back up and take another nibble.

  No brake lights flashed ahead, but the column slowed. Commanders were getting sleds and kerros, but for the foot soldiers, it was old-style guzzlers and hybrids. At least the engines were mostly fitted for kerrogel now, and more kits were coming up all the time. Now that the goddamn war was winding down, every supply problem from the last six-seven years was getting solved in a hurry.

  “We had a runner—Franco. Slippery little piece of shit, but he could get through any terrain and always knew where north was. He said could smell the fucking Firsters.” Swann measured the steering wheel between his blunt fingers.

  “Did they catch him?” Runners generally didn’t last that long, even if they were fast and cautious. You couldn’t really be both all the time.

  “Nah. Gangrene. Last winter. Christmas ’97, now that was fucking grim.”

  She made another sound of agreement. They went a quarter of a mile, and things were beginning to speed up a bit. Someone was probably up front untangling things, or the road had widened.

  “How’d you get out of that camp?” Swann finally asked. “Baylock.”

  “Drones bombed it. Don’t know why.” She shifted in the seat a little. Along with the diesel fumes and colorless reek of kerrogel, a fresh green scent of rain slid through the window. “Went through two transit kamps, got selected out each time.” The medic carefully folded the ration wrapper around the uneaten portion and stowed the bar in a pocket. “Then it was Gloria.”

  “Those sonsabitches.” Swann cleared his throat, preparing to spit, and rolled down his window.

  Spooky made another of those agreeing sounds and closed her eyes. She rested her head against the window, the engine’s vibration cradling her brain inside its bony home. Dried blood crackled inside her nostrils, but that didn’t matter. She clutched her medic satchel, even as her eyelids fluttered a little and her lips moved, and after a while Swann, craving another cigarette but unwilling to wake a tired soldier, settled both hands more firmly on the wheel and tried to avoid the potholes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Unconditional

  May 7, ’98

  Outside a miraculously still-intact hotel in downtown Jackson, Tennessee, cries rang through the smoky streets spattered by sporadic gunfire as night rose. Some of the suburbs had been shelled to pieces, but Firster resistance had pretty much collapsed all the way through the city, so the power, while weak, was still on. That meant hot water, and frontline troops grabbing the best billets they could find.

  “Hey! Hey guys!” Lazy Eye poked his head in the door, blinking through the fug of cigarette smoke, both old-fashioned and candy. As usual, when he was excited, his mouth pulled to the side and thickened his drawl past molasses into full-on gleeson dip. “Lissen up! They’s a nowcast!”

  “Shut the door,” Simmons snarled, glaring at the cards in his big chapped hands. A brand-new, buff-colored ten-gallon hat was clamped firmly on his gold-stubbled head, and his shirt was open all the way to the waist.

  Zampana, directly across from him, grinned around the monstrous Cuban cigar stuck in her mobile, red-painted mouth. A silk tie—real silk, and shaken free of glass from a Firster Party Selekt Store’s windows blown in by shells or simply shattered by other frontline troops—was knotted loosely around her freshly scrubbed throat. A strong scent of expensive hotel shampoo hung on her long, dripping black hair.

  The shower was running behind one door, and through another, Swann could be heard cursing at a pair of boots he’d snatched from a broken store window as well. They should have been the right size, and were good leather…but somehow, they didn’t fit, and several open bottles of champagne floating around probably didn’t help. Sal was already snoring on one almost-wrecked hotel bed, and Prink eyed his own cards, occasionally glancing at Chuck, whose luck at poker was rivaled only by his capacity to swear at someone else’s.

  “Naw, man, y’wanna listen!” Lazy banged the door shut on his way in, causing a brief interruption to Sal’s fruity, gassy snoring. “Surrendah!”

  “Oh, for heavensake, kid.” Zampana rolled her eyes. “You are too goddamn young to be this drunk.”

  “’M serious.” He banged across the room, tracking heavy red mud on the salmon-colored carpet, skidding to a halt in front of the flatscreen. “CentComm sennout a hotpaper. Crunche tol’ me come tell Swann.” He hopped from one foot to the other, jabbing at the flatscreen.

  “Don’t you dare turn that fucker on,” Simmons snarled. A bottle of amber Scotch—good stuff, imported, grabbed from a Firster supply dump on the edge of town before word came down the troops were offleash for at least thirty-six hours—sat at his elbow, half empty. He’d shown no inclination to leave the billet to get into trouble, but that could change in an instant. The whole city was breathless in the space between conquering army and martial law, Federals roaming in gleeful bands and civilians burrowing into whatever cellar they could find.

  In the bathroom, the shower turned off, and the curtain rattled on its plastic rings, clicking like dry little bones.

  Lazy Eye finally managed to punch the right button. The flatscreen woke, its blank blind eye turning luminescent; a blaring screech of oh beautiful for spacious skies jolted Sal up out of his slumber and halted Swann’s steady swearing. The bathroom door squeaked, and the new medic, her dark hair plastered to her head and a snow-white, fluffy towel clutched to her skinny chest, stared out with wide, terrified dark eyes.

  Zampana laid her cards facedown, puffing the cigar once, decisively. “This better be good, Lazy, or I’m letting Reaper kick yo’ ass.”

  “God damn it.” Simmons surged up, bumping the table, and Minjae let out an exasperated bark as her ashtray danced.

  Crackling silence. Spooky pulled the towel tighter, and they all stared at the flatscreen. Lazy’s mouth was slightly open and he looked pleased; Simmons dropped back down in his chair with a thud; Minjae stood slowly, as if her muscles ached. Swann appeared in the connecting door, his eyes narrowed, and the Greek blinked away congealed sleep, pushing himself up on his elbows.

  “…a special bulletin.” The screen wavered, a rippling American flag—the Federal flag, the Stars and Stripes, not the star-bar rag the Firsters had forced everyone to fly—filling its immensity. “Citizens, prepare for a special bulletin.”

  The flag faded, and a burst of static cleared to show something extraordinary. A thin, nervous-looking old man in a moth-eaten blue uniform, his white hat laid at his elbow and his gray hair neatly buzz-cut, sat at a makeshift desk under glaring lights. He read from a sheaf of papers, and the news filtered slowly into the room like a heavy, colorless gas. Surrender. That magical word. Unconditional, another magical word.

  The scratchy, thin voice reading out the document was familiar to Swann, who breathed, “Holy fuck, it’s Kallbrunner.”

  “Who?” Lazy wanted to know, too young to remember the Parris Island Plot, but nobody answered.

  A cease-fire was declared. Civilians were to remain in their homes, and all Firster forces were to lay down their arms. The ’cast droned on, and Lara went back into the bathroom to get dressed. When she opened the door again, in a medic’s uniform two sizes too big, tightly belted and rolled up, the black bandanna knotted around her upper arm again, Kallbrunner was just coming to the end of the legalese.

  A long, scratchy pause. Simmons tipped his head back, his throat working convulsively. Swann leaned in the doorway, his jaw working too, his head down, his shoulders bowed. Zampana’s lips moved soundlessly around the cigar; she crossed herself repeatedly, quickly, her hands almost blurring. Minjae grabbed her own upper arms, hugging herself, the holster under her left armpit well-worn and visible. Prink had his eyes closed, but his hands worked at each other, the
stump of his left pinkie twitching spasmodically.

  “To those who have destroyed the peace of our nation, I have only one thing to add.” Kallbrunner took a breath, and Swann inhaled with him. So did Spooky, and Zampana’s lips stilled. “You will be found, wherever you hide. And you will be brought to justice.” A soft sound of paper shuffling, a slight cough. “God bless America!”

  The flag came back, its ripple pausing before continuing on loop, and the music started up again. Sal the Greek swung his legs off the bed, sat up rubbing at his crusted eyes like a kid on Christmas morning, not quite sure he was really awake. Minjae’s cheeks were wet, and so were Swann’s.

  Simmons picked up his bourbon, set it back down untasted.

  Then, the big blond bastard let out a whoop, throwing his cards in the air. Zampana sagged in her chair, her hand twitching for a sidearm before pulling back quick as a snake. She shook her wet hair, and her expression—a contortion of the lips, a roll of her dark eyes, her nose wrinkling—was similar to that of a woman in labor just after the head was free and the crisis mostly past. Prink tossed his cards down too, before throwing his fists in the air, a soccer fan’s salute.

  Spooky simply stood, straight and pale, staring at the flatscreen. A muscle in her cheek twitched once, twice. That was all.

  Chuck Dogg, still sitting with his cards in hand, stared at the table’s surface, now frosted with cigarette ash and spotted with damp patches from Zampana’s hair or Prink’s nervous fingertip jabbing. He didn’t move until Simmons clapped him on the shoulder and demanded, in no uncertain terms, that Chuck go along for some celebrating.

  The rest of that night and the following day were a blur to most of Swann’s Riders, but everyone agreed it was full of broken glass. Mirrors, windows, anything that could shatter did.