Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  It was good to be back, even if the Navy was a shadow of itself and the Air Force was howling about being reined in. Padgett was fulminating about bombing Texas to take it back, and continuing the burn in the South even though they’d done a thorough job of the latter to begin with. Some might even suspect Padgett of giving the order to burn the heartland of McCoombs-ism, but of that the head of the Federal Air Force was innocent.

  Not that it mattered, now that the bodies were greasy ash and the skeletons heat-warped. Innocent, as always in wartime, was a relative term.

  Inside, CentCom was a hive of offices, paper rustling, tablets blinking, secure lines buzzing, and all the necessary chaos of military bureaucracy. What remained of DC was under martial law, and the progressive layers of security got tighter and tighter until you reached the nerve center and this small windowless office that served as a retreat from its throbbing and stinging for the two highest generals in the land. Everyone else was catching some sleep or catching up on their drinking, savoring the luxury of being conquerors in their own homeland.

  Rank, however, brought paperwork. And paperwork meant no fucking sleep for a long while.

  “Where did this come from?” General Osborne wanted to know. Lean and lanky, with a full head of iron-colored hair he kept ruthlessly short, the architect of the victory—if you could call it that—at Second Cheyenne glanced at his tablet. The InfoSec boys were going floor by floor at Langley, with the help of a couple true blues plus a few turncoats anxious for certification and keeping their jobs. All that can’t operate on domestic soil had gone out the window once McCoombs needed warm bodies to watch his serfs.

  This particular bright-faced corporal wasn’t one of that merry cleanup crew, however. He was an InfoSec boy in fatigues, rat-faced and poker-backed, clearing his throat. He had been signed in through all the layers of security, and was nervous for no good reason, but that was normal. His Adam’s apple bobbed, as if it had to dredge up his surprisingly light tenor from a deep well. “Blue Company, sir.”

  “Which one?” General Leavy, the hazel-eyed darling of the moment, sat up straight and pain-faced in his chair, his crinkle of graying hair shaved close and his broad nose shining mellowly in the light from the incandescent lamp on his metal desk. The shrapnel in his back was only part of the reason for his sourness or his posture; the other part was sheer stiffneck distaste for the amount of killing he’d seen done, or ordered. Or so one or two of his underlings suspected.

  It hadn’t stopped Leavy from ordering, when he had to. Nothing did.

  “Some outfit out of North Carolina. Or what used to be North Carolina.” It was a smear pocked with burner-blasted holes now. The corporal consulted said paperwork, swallowing several times. He couldn’t quite believe what he’d found. “Cohen, sir. Cohen’s Fireballs.”

  “Fancy names.” Osborne scrolled through a few more pages on the tablet, its blue glow lighting his mournful face from below. “Shit, he’s still alive?”

  “No, sir, Cohen died in the Uprising. But his band kept the name. They were involved in the—”

  “Yes, I remember.” North Carolina, what a shit show. Leavy blew out a long dissatisfied breath between thick, sculpted lips. “So, this all says Minnesota. Who’s up thataway north? Of the Blue Companies?”

  Osborne consulted a list. “Kellogg, Lancey, Swann—”

  “Swann.” Leavy nodded. “I know about him. Good fellow. Tough.” He glanced at Osborne, who was apparently absorbed in the tablet. “Thank you, Corporal. Dismissed, and send in Haney, will you?” Haney was Leavy’s adjutant, and the general had more than one task for the poor fellow now.

  Relief turned the boy’s ratty face into a child’s disbelieving grin. “Yessir.”

  “Oh, and Corporal?” Leavy had to remind himself, every once in a while, that you had to grease the wheels to make ’em run smooth. “Good work.”

  The corporal visibly flushed. “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Osborne waited until the corporal had left. “What are you thinking, Pat?”

  “I’m thinking we’d better jump quick, before the goddamn civilians get their mitts on any news of this fucker. It’ll be hearings and votes and bullshit, and he’ll get over the border. Or, God forbid, nabbed by the fucking Russians.”

  “They’re opening diplomatic relations.” Osborne managed not to sneer when he said it.

  Leavy’s expression turned even more sucked-a-lemon, if that were possible. The New Soviets’ days of destabilizing America were done, but they didn’t give up easy. What they’d succeeded with once, they’d try again. He stretched his booted, aching feet under the desk, thankful they were at least dry. “Of course they are. While loading as many Firster allies on the boats as they can. Entire city’s like a kicked beehive.”

  “Be nice to get the Pentagon back.” Osborne’s laughter had a dry, unpleasant echo. “You think Kallbrunner’s gonna end up President?”

  “Probably.” Leavy picked up his own tablet, hit the thumb lock, and stared at the most disconcerting document of all: an after-experiment report. There was a fifth of vodka back in his quarters, and maybe he could organize something decent to put it in if he ever got back there for more than a quick shower. “But what I know is, we’ve got to get on this first. And collect as many of these poor Baylock assholes we can.”

  “Gonna be tough. Fugees everywhere, certification going on, the Blue Companies tearing around hunting—”

  “Which is why I want Swann. At least he’ll keep his crew from killing this Doctor Johnson bastard.” Leavy sighed, rubbing thoughtfully at the scar on his neck. “And martial law doesn’t end until Congress says it does.”

  Osborne’s teeth were strong and only mildly yellowed from bad coffee and old-school nicotine. “The Congress they’ll have to elect in. Which will take for-fucking-ever.”

  “That’s right.” Leavy nodded. His broad, dark brown face was impassive, but a gleam of satisfaction could be guessed at deep in his gaze. “That’s right, Joe. It’s our time now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A Historical Defense

  July 16, ’98

  In a ramshackle ranch-style house with a weedy front yard, the doctor, his gaze clear and steady, unwound the gauze around Gene’s head. As always, he only looked happy when he was performing some medical function, or one that could be conceivably called medical if you didn’t look too hard. “Where were you stationed?”

  This safehouse, on the shattered rim of Duluth, held only food, water, and first aid. There was no “conductor” to help a Patriot or two along the way, but at least the place hadn’t been looted, trapped, or broken.

  Gene, perched on an ancient, wobbling metal stool, thought of shrugging and decided not to. The incisions were healing; his face felt less like a stiff blank mask and more like skin and muscle over aching bone. “Kamp administration. Missouri. You?”

  The doctor’s V-shaped smile under his narrow nose turned genuine for a few warm, satisfied moments. “Assistant Director of Research. West Virginia.” He said it like Gene should be able to guess. His fedora, pushed back, revealed a slice of thinning fair hair. “You’re lucky, I wouldn’t have known what to do with you if I hadn’t witnessed some of the experiments. Mostly, my work was in the lab.”

  It was small consolation that Gene had heard…rumors, about West Virginia. Certain undesirables matching certain criteria were sent there, though not from Gloria. The Western drone-bombing campaign had scored a few hits on the kamp system in that area too, though the official newscasts said the damage was negligible. “Everyone does their share,” he muttered, trying to keep his cheeks still.

  The doctor’s mouth puckered, a bitter asshole transplanted onto a thin face. His sport jacket was far too heavy for the season, but he was probably glad of it at night. “Do you have a thought that’s not a slogan?”

  “Plenty.” Gene weighed showing him. First would be standing up, and second would be kicking the older man’s knee. It would give with a
sound like dry wood, and while the snotty motherfucker sucked in a breath to scream Gene could grab the wobbling metal stool and bludgeon him. Done quickly and correctly, there would be little noise except the hollow sound the stool would make when it hit.

  “Then try to express those.” The doctor smiled a little, a thin curve of startlingly pink lips. “I didn’t serve that grease-haired turd in the White House. I served science. Maybe you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I never liked him either.” Trying to talk while the other man peered and dabbed at the incisions with vile-smelling, stinging antiseptic was difficult. “It was just a job.” A good one, even if he was stuck in the deep end of beyond. There had been space enough to organize a few comforts at Gloria, and the pink room, his own glowing little secret.

  “Just following orders, were you?” A sardonic grin, the doctor taking back his superiority with visible relief. “A historical defense.”

  “So’s yours.”

  “So you weren’t educated in the usual manner, to know as much.” He dabbed behind Gene’s ear, and it stung afresh.

  As if anyone with half a brain would have trouble figuring out how to get past the Big Firewall. The only thing stopping you was the danger, but if you were a Patriot officer with a good record and enough organizing skill to pay off a few superiors, you were all right. “Not stupid, Dr. Johnson. Just cautious.”

  “Would that more were so.” A few more cold, repellant dabs at the incisions. “We’ll let that breathe a bit. The norpirene is wonderful stuff. Does it hurt?”

  It felt like being painted with fire ants. “Not much.”

  “Good, good.” Johnson stepped back, examining Gene critically. “Well, Kaptain. I must confess, I wouldn’t recognize you. There’s a mirror in the bathroom, see what you think.”

  “Thanks.” He eased off the stool, shuffling like an old man himself. Killing the supercilious fuck would be stupid; the doctor was the one who knew where the next stop was, and the secret signs. The existence of a network for after the surrender didn’t surprise Gene much, really; the brass took care of their own. Nobody close to the top could have been astonished at the eventual outcome, not after the bloody draw that was Second Cheyenne, or after Mexico started grabbing whole chunks of Texas with help from the Federals.

  The arrests had sped up then, and so had the work at Gloria. Fingers in the dam, like that story about the little Dutch girl on the cleanser canisters.

  The bathroom was a dank little hole, but the last place had given them flashlights with good batteries. Gene switched his on, playing the beam over the mildewed ceiling, and glimpsed himself in the spiderweb-cracked glass.

  There was some puffing and bruising around his eyes, and the scars along his jaw were livid instead of pale like they would be when healing was complete. Behind his ears the major incisions glared, his hair prickling from presurgical shaving.

  Not bad. He’d barely recognize himself, either.

  Would she? Christ. He should’ve gone back for her; nobody would suspect a couple. Or would they? At least he’d have her here, breathing and quiet, turning to him for protection. There would be a way to pass the time that wasn’t listening to the goddamn doctor go on and on about how fucking smart he was.

  “Well?” the old man called, waiting for his pride to be stroked.

  “It’s good work,” Gene said, watching the stranger in the fractured glass move his mouth. “You’re a genius.”

  “I know, I know. Help me pack; it’s a long way to the next station.”

  “Where’s that?” Not that the old fuck would tell him more than absolutely necessary. Johnson was smart enough for that, even if he wasn’t half the genius he thought he was.

  “West.” The doctor’s sneering little laugh bounced off the floor, fell flat in the corners. “The last thing they’d expect. Right into the dragon’s mouth.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Much the Same

  July 17, ’98

  From above, a refugee camp is a city in miniature. Instead of skyscrapers, low medical and administrative buildings were the tallest structures. Packed-dirt avenues rayed into straggled ends; tents and ramshackle temporary huts hunched under a pall of yellow dust. Movement was swift and furtive, more a seething herd than a group of individuals. Spooky rested her forehead against the thick, gritted glass of the porthole, watching the camp fall away as the sled wheeled. The new guy—Hendrickson, thick dark hair and a vicious five-o’clock shadow—was at the controls, keeping up a soft running commentary as Minjae, copiloting and with her eye on the main seat, asked questions. It would be good to know how to drive one of these, Spooky decided, but she didn’t want to learn from him.

  It wasn’t just that he was new, and Army, and therefore a question mark at best. It was more that he was tall and uniformed and unknown; glimpsing him in her peripheral was enough to make her heart drop into her guts with a splash and the bitter metal of adrenaline fill her mouth. Simmons, for some reason, was not nearly as dangerous.

  Swann, his legs splayed into the aisle and his face slack, had fallen asleep as soon as the sled began to whine. Prink was in the jumpseat behind Minjae, his ears all but lengthening as he listened. Simmons and Sal were dozing too, Simmons with a still-sealed bottle of bourbon tucked in his lap, his hands wrapped around the neck. His right hand was bruised and puffy, and when he moved, his hangover sent out a pulse of sick-sweet post-alcohol fume. Sal had his fingers laced over his belly, his legs drawn up, and his eyes gleamed a little under mostly lowered lids. His hair was a tangle of darkness, lovingly combed whenever he had a spare moment. Soap just stripped the natural oils, he said. He’d offered to trim her hair.

  Look at this, he said, pointing at her head. It could be pretty. A little curl, and va-voom!

  Zampana’s hands were palm to palm, her eyes closed, and her lips moved soundlessly. Her earrings gleamed, and whenever the sled jolted, her fingers pressed together a little tighter. She was the only one who didn’t want a window seat, so Chuck Dogg sat to her left, looking out thoughtfully, his profile an Egyptian prince’s, unblurred by time or desert sand.

  It was hard to say which Spooky preferred, Chuck’s blessed quiet or Zampana’s well-disguised, bitter determination. Both of them were accustomed to thinking, and didn’t shy away from it with distraction. Not like Simmons, who actively loathed the sensation of his own brain working, and Prink, who was not dim—quite the opposite—but was used to simply coasting along.

  There was a hole in the tight, cohesive unit. It was the size of a lanky young man with a twitching face and paddlefish hands. He should have been sitting there, nervous with excitement and pestering Simmons, or bouncing slightly in his seat and bursting with barely concealed satisfaction at another sled ride.

  Or maybe he would be in one of his rare quiet moods, sitting and blankly staring, his skull full of an expectant hum. It was every teenager’s trick, still available to a kid of twenty-one or twenty-two, letting the mental engines idle while a healthy young body trembled with trammeled energy.

  All wasted now. Spent. Slipped away quietly in a hospital bed, morphine trickling in until the flood gently, sweetly eased him into the beyond. Nothing to be done when three-quarters of your guts and a chunk of your lumbar spine were gone. It was a miracle the shock hadn’t killed him, but the kid was tough.

  Had been tough. Lasted four days. At least the end had been painless.

  Spooky drifted, just like the sled. High up, the buffeting of the underside cells passing over rough air smoothed out. A six-and-a-half-hour glide, enough time to catch up on last night’s sleep. Still, she didn’t relax all the way. How could she, when underneath the sled’s cells, the ground was maybe slices she’d traveled once, the thock-thock of the wheels on the rails jolting her bones, the inside of the cattle car packed so tight nobody could sit or lie down? Crammed in with the mass of humanity, her skull aching, the surf roar of hungerthirst misery wringing her out and making her just a rag of skin and bone with no
thought other than survival. Yelling was no use—everyone else was asphyxiated or screaming as well—and reaching the transit kamp had almost been a relief.

  A shit-smeared, staggering-from-weakness, just-as-cacophonous relief. Which meant no relief at all; just trading one sort of hell for another.

  Her eyelids fluttered, pupils shrinking.

  It was ice she saw, gigantic shards and splinters falling from the sky, piercing a metal skull frozen into a winter wasteland. The skull leered upward, its shattered cervical spine pointing north, and in the distance its ribs rose full of flapping, rotting meat. Her nose twitched slightly, and the smell was the kamps again.

  No, not any kamp. It was Gloria, the deep silty mud and a fug of wet cotton dungarees decaying on scrawny flesh-rag bodies, the thin “soup” with its scraps of vegetable protein at the bottom, the salt-sickly fumes from the bottles and bays vented through tarnished portholes in the sides of the squat buildings. The faded, dusty warmth of the sorting sheds, where clothing was searched and baled; the alcoholic smear of the joyhouse with the whirlybird jukebox. The faded fustiness of the pink room, and the sourness of a man’s hot breath against shrinking skin drawn tight over her own bones.

  When the sled jolted and began sliding downward, she thought she was still dreaming. Everything underneath glittered, and her bladder was suddenly two sizes too small. There it was.

  It had shattered, the big glass building looming over the rest of Baylock’s marching barracks. Unlike later camps, every prisoner at the Big B had a cot instead of a bunk, and the work, while brutal, was clearly meant to keep the place running. There was always the chance of light duty in the hospital, too. Rumor was the upper floors were soft living and blood tests before you were released with a Retraining instead of Re-Edukation stamp on your ident, which meant a bad job at the low end, but you wouldn’t starve.