Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Who spread those stories? Were the jar kaptains told that, so it would filter out through the laundry, the generators, the road-repair details, the long wide fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes? No need for machines when there were prisoners to tend fields by hand, and no need to drag prisoners into the hospital when they showed up on their own.

  It was on the upper floors of the great glass beast that the horrors began.

  No, it wasn’t that the Baylock Kamp and Medical Center had been bombed. The problem was, of course, that it looked pretty much the same even after the explosions had ripped through: a wasteland of glass and suffering. Tender green crept through the fields on every side, getting ready for the swampy back half of summer to settle down over furrowed earth. From up here she could see the hop-skip marks of the bomb payloads as they’d come down. Most had been harmless, unless you counted whoever was in the goddamn fields at the time.

  It was almost a relief to see the bomb marks. But then, she’d never seen Baylock from the air before this, so how was she to know they hadn’t been there all along, waiting to be uncovered?

  She had only fuzzy, confused memories of that day. Staggering out into the hall, ripping the needle from her arm and the bandaging from her shaved head, the floor shifting and tilting, nurses and doctors peppered or ventilated with broken glass. Blood, screaming, and the fire…wait, was there fire? She remembered smoke, and the sick-sweet smell of burning flesh.

  At first she’d thought the shock treatments had started again, only instead of the white light filling her skull they had wired up the whole world and given it a jolt. It took a while afterward for everything outside her own skin to acquire any coherence.

  Landing. Whine of cells powering down. Her bladder hurt, a short sharp spike of pain. Hard to tell if it was hers or not. Hard to pull every scattered bit of herself back together, not even sure whose body she inhabited.

  “Open the door,” Simmons said, already unbuckled and uncurling. The rest of them began to move too, Zampana crossing herself and touching her lips. “I gotta piss.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Not a Kampog

  The “conference room” was simply one of the insulated barracks, its doors closed despite the stifling lack of windows. Nevertheless, there was air-conditioning, a gigantic luxury. A broad-chested InfoSec colonel, his uniform full of knife-sharp creases in all the regulation places, didn’t turn up his nose at Swann’s crew, but he didn’t speak directly to them either, addressing Hendrickson’s similarly well-creased uniform and regulation salute instead. “We know they had a plan for after the surrender.”

  “After we beat their asses,” Simmons muttered, leaning back in his chair, and Zampana elbowed him.

  The colonel didn’t crack a smile or wrinkle his nose. “They had safehouses and routes for the higher-ups. We’ve cracked most of them, enough to predict some of the others with worm algorithms. And of course, the Blue Companies are boots on the ground—your lot has the best record for closures. That’s why you’ve been brought in. What I’m about to tell you is top-level classified—”

  “Have anything to do with the mutants?” Prink drawled, cutting across the pontificating. “Like on the news? This is where they made ’em, right?”

  “Genetic experimentation was practiced here, yes.” The colonel blinked several times. “The administrative head of that experimentation division shot himself right before surrender, when a group of raiders happened by but didn’t have enough support to do much. We managed to get partial records, but the problem is—”

  “Someone who didn’t shoot himself,” Minjae supplied. “We get it, speed up.”

  The colonel—his name tag said FRYE—did not unbend enough to roll his eyes, nor did he bark at them. “One of his scientist assistants is in the pipeline, carrying a full copy of the data. All of it—prisoners, experiments, protocols, effects. I don’t have to tell you what that information is worth, or what will happen if the New Soviets get hold of it.”

  “Again with the goddamn Russians.” It was Sal’s turn to mutter.

  The colonel again didn’t roll his eyes, but it was close. “They were the ones who handed that fucker the presidency, soldier.”

  Spooky sat in a hard wooden chair, her hands down and clasping each side of the seat. Punishment for being caught in the guards’ barracks without authorization? Ten stripes. More if you were suspected of theft. It didn’t have to be proven, because why else would a kampog be in a guard barracks? The guards weren’t supposed to have pogs run errands or shine shoes, but they all did. Other things, as well. If you were lucky, there was food to be had when they finished with you.

  “Let the man talk,” Swann said, and the raiders subsided. Simmons uncapped the bourbon bottle and lifted it to his lips, glancing at Spooky. After a healthy draft, his throat bobbing, he peeled it away from his lips, leaned over, and offered it to her.

  She had to work to unclench her fingers from the chair seat. Not a kampog, she kept reminding herself. She wasn’t a prisoner anymore. She was a raider, she was one of Swann’s crew, and the war was over.

  It just didn’t feel like it. The burn of liquor in her nose as she sniffed the bottle helped, but only a little.

  “Thank you.” Colonel Frye managed to avoid a supercilious snort. He still addressed Hendrickson, who sat straight in his own chair, knees together and uniform cap resting on one, looking mildly interested and freshly shaven all at once. “About all we know is that the assistant’s heading west.”

  “Sir? How do we know that?” Hendrickson’s left hand twitched, like he’d just restrained himself from raising it. “Or should I not ask?”

  “We have…well, some of the experimental subjects were kept here. The drones only got the top of the glass block; they moved the subjects down into the basements once they cleaned up a bit. The 101st got here a week after the surrender, and what prisoners survived Sam Johnson—that’s our target—were glad to talk. One of the subjects let us know where he’s going and what he’s carrying.”

  Hendrickson glanced at Swann, whose eyebrows had shot up. Swann waited, though, and finally Hendrickson asked the question. “Uh, you questioned a prisoner, and…?”

  “The intel is solid.” Colonel Frye’s expression bore more than a passing resemblance to a brick wall. “We need this fellow and what he’s carrying. It is absolutely vital that we catch him. We need him brought back intact for questioning, which is why your group was chosen.” His chin pointed in Swann’s direction, magnanimously taking notice of the man who might have been, to him, just another civilian contractor.

  “What a compliment.” Minjae didn’t bother to say it quietly.

  Bourbon stung Spooky’s throat, made her eyes water. She handed the bottle back, nailed firmly in her own body again. Her shoulders relaxed a little, and she studied Frye critically, her heart hammering thinly in wrists, ankles, throat. An acrid whiff of her own sweat reached her, and that jolted her just as the booze did.

  It had been a while since she’d had the extra energy to sweat simply from fear. She couldn’t decide if that was comforting or not.

  “West.” Swann reached up as if to touch his retired hat, let his hand drop. “All right. Last known location and everything you know about the feller, any personal items he left behind, give us that sled we rode in on and clearance to get us through any hassles, and get out of the way.”

  Now Frye almost goggled, his mouth dropping open a little. Minjae grinned, and Prink popped a stick of black-market peppermint gum in his own mouth.

  Captain Hendrickson stood, settling his uniform cap firmly on his head. “Do you need a flimsy of our authorization, sir?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” Frye cleared his throat, glanced over the papers scattered across the raw-lumber table. He’d expected to go over them with the raiders—not for the irregulars, in their shabby clothes, to requisition every-damn-thing and show him the door.

  Swann’s expression was best described as blan
d, but his left cheek twitched once, almost dimpling with amusement, and Zampana softly let out a pent breath.

  Spooky leapt to her feet, headed for the door. The walls were shifting, pushing in on her, and the release of Swann’s tension freed her arms and legs. She hit the door at almost a run and staggered out into a bright, hot July afternoon full of a soft wind coming over turned earth and ruffled, emerald plants.

  Only the fact that liquor was precious calories kept her from retching it back up onto the familiar packed gravel of Baylock’s pathways, fraying at the edges because there were no pogs to rake it back.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Good Morale

  This room had once been the kamp administrator’s office, and there was a spot of unfaded paint on the wall where the obligatory picture of McCoombs had glowered. It smelled like it had been closed up for months, which might have been the case, since it was in pristine order except for the safe crouching in one corner, its door neatly cored by a plazma cutter. The darkness inside was a watchful pupil.

  The office’s window was inadequate. It was stifling in here, because the AC was only on in a few of the cushier barracks.

  “Well?” Frye lit a candy, his fingers none too steady. His hair was a limp animal, plastering the top of his skull. Damp patches bloomed under his armpits. He was really just a glorified doorman, meant to keep order and make sure the site wasn’t looted to the bones.

  “Not much, sir.” Hendrickson stood at ease. His left knuckles ached a little, the old burn remembering what this smell—floor wax, despair, pain, regimented cruelty—meant. They trained you for escape and evasion, but they couldn’t make you forget. “They’re a tight group. Good morale.”

  “What about the—the girl?” Frye’s forehead glistened with sweat. It could have been the simmering outside, but it was more likely a result of the classified footage.

  Hendrickson almost pitied the poor bastard. Getting suddenly saddled with something this hush-hush was bound to be bad luck, one way or another. “Hard to say. Haven’t seen any signs. They call her Spooky.”

  “Spooky?” For some reason, the colonel found it funny. At least, he laughed, a short, hideously high-pitched giggle, and took another long sucking drag on his candy.

  Hendrickson’s hands itched, the old familiar feeling. It wasn’t this asshole’s fault, he told himself. He didn’t know. “Well, she’s strange. You could say the same about any kampog, though, and it’s clear she was in at least one kamp no matter what her paperwork says.”

  “Is that what they call themselves?” Frye’s nerves were not steady, no sir, not at all. He was a timeclock puncher, and this was not in his rules-and-regulations book.

  “The kamps had their own language, sir. It’d be a miracle if survivors—or just plain raiders—didn’t display some trauma.” And I should know. The thick, pink scar tissue on his fingers twitched. Or maybe it didn’t—maybe he just felt it again, the red-hot crackle, smelling his own flesh charring before the red haze descended and he came back to himself covered in blood and brain; hearing a knock at the door, and the sure knowledge that he’d be executed filling him with the raw unsteady faux-courage of desperation.

  It wasn’t bravery if you were just doing what you had to. And it was only luck when the guards were drunk and there was a hole in the electrified fence.

  Frye swabbed at his shiny forehead again. “Well, you keep an eye on her. If she really is X-Ray, the higher-ups want her nice and whole. Not even a scratch, you hear?”

  How long would that last, Hendrickson wondered? “That was made clear to me, sir. Yes.” For all they knew, Spooky could have been in another kamp, then broken out with the raiders before Wyoming or even earlier, even though Crunche hadn’t seen her. Things got…fluid, out in combat.

  “I’d’ve cashiered the lot of them,” the colonel said, inhaling a deep draft of candy smoke. “No discipline.”

  Funny, since Swann’s crew had been called in because they were regarded as the most likely to bring their quarry in alive. “Raiders, sir.” Hendrickson concentrated on relaxing his fingers. If she was X-Ray, or even just one of the Baylock escapees, God alone knew what she’d do if she somehow guessed his primary mission. Even a fellow kampog was a threat. Hunger and brutalization made everyone a question mark at best. “Should I take this and the authorization to them?”

  “Go ahead. Good work, Captain.”

  “Sir? One question.” Not that he suspected the man knew, but he might as well ask.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What exactly is X-Ray? Do we know?”

  “Oh, they might, upstream. All I know is what I saw when we pulled the lid off this shithole.” Frye shook his head, a galvanic, tossing movement. “Christ. They did things, Captain. The goddamn fucks did things you wouldn’t believe.” He inhaled again. The candy smoke didn’t seem to be doing much to calm him down, despite the fact that the docs swore it was a mild sedative. “You’d better get on back to them. Take whatever you want. Good luck.”

  “Yes, sir.” That answered that, then. The man hadn’t just seen the footage. He’d seen the actual subjects, the ones lucky enough to survive to the end.

  Hendrickson paused outside in the hall to settle his cap. If the girl was X-Ray, and he pulled this off, his career was probably made. Either that or they’d put him in a hole, depending. How she’d gotten involved with the raiders was probably a long story, and one he’d have to piece together just as if he’d wriggled out through the fence again and found himself in the middle of nowhere, the kamp behind him, his hand a bloody, roasted mess, and his entire hide prickling like a hunted animal’s. Ears open, face blank, letting the world think he was stupid while the meat inside his head went into overdrive.

  He made sure the papers were neatly stacked, set his shoulders, and headed back for the sled.

  Chapter Forty

  Live and Learn

  “I don’t like it.” Zampana crossed her arms over her ample bosom. Her fine, poreless cheeks tightened as her mouth pursed. “Smells setup-y.”

  “These are Federals, not Firsters.” Minjae tapped up a candy, considered it, shoved it back down in the crumpled pack. Her ink-black hair gleamed, standing up in a short ruff since she’d stopped shaving, and her round face was set, thoughtful, and distant.

  Chuck Dogg held his hand out. His fingertips, pinkish and callused, curved upward a little. “Yeah, well, rank is rank. Remember that bastard before Leavy?”

  “Oh, how could anyone forget.” The casualties had been almost as bad as Second Cheyenne. Minjae handed Dogg a candy and dug for her lighter. “Looks like Sal has a new customer.”

  Sal had Spooky settled on a knocked-over kerro drum, and the scissors flashed as he combed and snipped. “Can’t take it anymore,” he repeated, every once in a while tossing his own shining black curls. “Been bothering the fuck out of me.” The frayed ends of her hair drifted on the breeze, and every so often he touched her shoulder or adjusted her head with gentle fingers.

  Spooky, her eyes glazed and her mouth slightly open, submitted patiently. Simmons crouched in front of her, watching her face. He rocked back and forth a little every so often, occasionally taking a jolt from the bottle and offering it politely.

  She didn’t move. Barely even blinked. Only her hands twitched every once in a while, an arrested shiver.

  Minjae considered this tableau, scuffing her left foot back and forth meditatively. “You think she was here?”

  Her hip bumped Chuck’s gently, and his eyelids slid down to half-mast while he took a drag. “Huh?”

  “The Spook.” Minjae didn’t sound impatient, like she would with anyone other than Pana or Dogg not following her leaps. Too much mental horsepower made her uncharitable with lesser mortals sometimes. “You think she was here?”

  Zampana, her arms still crossed, had a line between her crow-feather eyebrows. “Looks pretty goddamn likely.” The gleam of a gold chain at her neck was new, but nobody remarked on it. “On the other
hand, all the fuckin’ camps look the same, right? Could just be that.”

  “This one don’t look the same.” Chuck tipped his head lazily at the giant, shattered glass glitter. “Musta made a helluva noise. What you think they did in there?”

  “Christ only knows.” Minjae shuddered, though the day bordered on hot when the breeze fell off. “Experiments, right? Mutants. That’s what the news said.”

  “Genetics,” Zampana murmured, but softly. Then, louder, “Who cares what? Firsters. Bound to be bad.”

  “Better question.” Prink slunk around the front of the sled, his hair a slicked-down copper flame. He scrubbed his hands together, the sharp sudden smell of rubbing alcohol stinging the breeze. “How many Spookies out there?”

  Minjae looked to Zampana, who drew back into the shade a little. Chuck did too, his free arm snaking down and around Min’s shoulders. She didn’t shake him off, and Prink’s expression turned sour before he swung back toward the sled’s nose, exhaling hard. He kept rubbing, as if his finger stump pained him. It probably did, phantom limbs being what they were.

  Pana finally finished whatever long train of thought had boarded at her station. “Pretty sure we got the only one.” She cleared her throat, working up a good wad, and spat. The gobbet glittered in midair, splashing onto weedy gravel. “Why else they ask for us? And give us that Johnny Quickstep.”

  A chorus of scoffing noises rose at the mention of Hendrickson. He wasn’t an active irritant, true, but he wasn’t a raider. When the Federals slipped one of their own in, the best you could hope for was that they didn’t think they were gonna take over and do something stupid, like provoke the fucking Firsters when there was no call. Command and control, they called it, but the raiders knew what it was: bullshit plain and simple. More precisely, bullshit that could get an entire raider band wiped out in a heartbeat.