Afterwar

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Maybe we just got the only sane spookbunny.” Chuck took another drag. His ’fro, its top arc hanging out in sunshine, was a halo cut in half.

  Prink tapped on the sled’s side, testing the metal. “Sane?”

  “Well, I mean, compared to Simms.” Dogg took another very long drag, pulling the smoke all the way down. It wasn’t nicotine, but it would do.

  “You got a point.” Zampana laughed, a sharp bark of wry almost-amusement. It cut the odd silence drifting over the bones of Baylock, and brought Spooky’s chin up.

  “Pfft, pay no attention,” Sal said, lightly tapping the back of her head. “Just a few minutes and we’ll be done. Another trim or two and you’ll be a model.”

  “Skinny enough.” Simms rocked back on his heels. “Gnat bites and no hips. Got to eat more, woman.”

  Spooky didn’t reply. But some sense came back into her wide dark eyes, and she stared fixedly at Simmons, who took another hit off the bourbon and grinned, his cheeks flushing high and hot with alcohol burn.

  “Yes, yes,” Sal said, snipping and stepping back critically to evaluate his work. “Soon your hair will be like Pana’s. Warrior braids.”

  “Gonna take a while, Sal.” Simmons kept rocking. His eyes were bloodshot.

  Spooky focused past him, at the tall, spike-crowned glitter of broken glass and twisted metal. The damage was old; dandelions and vines forced their way between fallen girders and chunks of debris too big for even a full work gang to shift. To her right, an uninjured chunk of the building had been reroofed and a double door had been added. The glimpse she’d managed to get through it showed a guard hutch and a bank of elevator doors, also newly added. They gleamed mellow in the cool dark, but the strip lights overhead weren’t dead, just dialed down.

  Instead of rebuilding, they’d burrowed, while she was shuttled from one transit kamp to another, becoming not even a name or a number, just a blank space inside shivering skin. They hadn’t even magtatted her in the transits, just used indelible ink on her arm when they loaded the cattle cars. Then there was Gloria.

  “Through the cracks,” she murmured, her lips barely moving. Slipped through, vanished, a rabbit chewing its way out of the hat and searching for a dark, quiet corner to hyperventilate in.

  Simmons either didn’t hear or chose not to respond.

  “And voilà,” Sal said, ruffling her hair, vastly pleased with himself. “It will grow in with the layers, they will give it life. I was a hairdresser before the war, you know.”

  At least he wasn’t using one of the burring, buzzing razors; you had to plug those in. If she ever heard that nasty grinding sound again, she’d vomit.

  “Shit, Sal, you already said that. Like, twice.” Simmons unfolded, rising and rising. His shadow fell over her, and she sat very still as Sal brushed her shoulders, her nape, dusting away stray hairs. “And you, woman, are gonna itch all day. Don’t ever let him cut your hair in the field.” He offered his large, callused bear paw, and she took it. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to, and he pulled her to her feet. “Live and learn, Spookster. Live and learn.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Snail Safe

  “Whaddawe got?” Minjae stretched her fingers wide, balancing a slim Dell deck on her lap as Swann handed her a stack of file folders. The other box sat, taped and silent, prissily holding its secrets. With the seats up, the interior of the sled was roomy enough for all of them, and it was as good a base as any with the hatch closed and the kerro core humming to fuel some AC. Better than many, many spaces they’d worked in. “Ooh, look at this. Personal correspondence, how I love the personal correspondence. And thumbdrives too! It’s like Christmas.”

  “Feliz Navidad.” Zampana hefted the other box. She gave Swann a significant look, her eyebrows rising. “Scan ’em first.”

  “Teach your mama to make kimchi.” Minjae was at her happiest with intel to work. She flipped through a few more pages. “God damn, tell Lazy to…”

  A stung, sharp silence fell inside the sled. Min’s hand flew to her mouth, and Simmons’s shoulders jerked as if he’d just been gut-punched. Spooky, eyeing the second box from the very back corner of the sled, drew her knees up and hugged them.

  Sal cleared his throat, awkwardly. Swann opened his mouth, but Simmons beat him to it.

  “I keep looking around for him, too,” the Reaper said quietly. He hunched near the sled hatch, absurdly broad shoulders straining at his uniform T-shirt. He hadn’t given up on his high-and-tight, and his scalp was pink with sunburn through the blond scruff. “Fuckin’ kid. Why’d he have to do that?”

  “Wanted to make us proud.” Prink blew out a long, unhappy sigh. “Fuck, man, hand me that bourbon.”

  “We ain’t holding a wake for him tonight.” Swann picked up the second cardboard box. “Make a hole.”

  The box thumped down in front of Spooky. Hendrickson, up in the pilot seat, wisely said nothing, but he had half turned, his knees uncomfortably bumping the center console. Zampana—short enough she could walk fully upright inside the cramped confines—stood with a brief, huffing sigh and leaned on the bulkhead, blocking his view.

  “When are we holding it, then?” Pana examined her nails. The cheap polish—bright but so terribly fragile—on her left middle finger was chipped. “Because we need to organize more than Simms’s daily stash of firewater to do it up right. I feel the need to get blinded.”

  Swann crouched, put both his hands on the sealed box, and looked at Spooky. She nodded slightly. He straightened, almost clocking himself a good one on a weapons rack. “God damn it. Well, I believe as soon as we catch this motherfucker, we’ll hold the wake proper.” He paused. “A raider wake.”

  “Too many of those.” Prink dug in the box ahead of Minjae. “I’ll get his deck out. You got his password?”

  “No,” Simmons piped up. “I got it. Pastorburg. With an o and a u.”

  “Pastorburg? No numbers, no symbols? Jeez.” Minjae’s cheeks had blotched with red, and her eyes were suspiciously bright.

  “That’s the name of the shithole he was born in.” Simmons hit the hatch release, and was gone into the late-afternoon glare outside. The hatch closed behind him, sealing itself with an uncomfortable hiss, and Prink swore, a low, vicious obscenity that had nothing to do with the zipper on his deck bag, already looking worn despite the fact that he’d picked it up near Jackson when supply restrictions started to ease. Minjae’s was already dotted with Zampana’s nail varnish, a sloppy red heart on the flap and some salvaged tinfoil turned into glitter beads tied to the straps and buckle.

  “A raider wake,” Swann repeated as he finished unfolding and half turned, looking for a seat.

  Spooky hugged her knees harder. The box crouched in front of her, patient and mute, its top trisected with regular Army sealtape. The bar code stamped onto a bed of waterproof was attached to an inventory number, and that number would call up a list of items in the box. This article was so long, that article weighed so much—dimensions neatly measured and described, and no doubt anyone with enough clearance could peek at the list and fool himself into thinking he knew something.

  There was more talk, but it fell away into a low humming inside her skull. Spooky watched the box. If she loosened her arms, her hands would be free. She’d have to dig out the pocketknife in her medic satchel and slit the tape. Then she would have to reach in, and see if weighing everything by fingertip and palm would give them something.

  She rested her chin on her knees. Curled up like this, she was a snail safe in its bony home. You could step on it, sure, but if the shell shattered it could throw shrapnel.

  Could she? Finding a way to test that hypothesis was a dilly, as Lara would say. Her sister out in the woods, carrying filched medical supplies and food to lean, fire-eyed raiders. Everyone in town called them traitors.

  To her, they were patients.

  Hannah. Lara. She exhaled softly, tensed every muscle. Even Anna was too close. No. Spooky.

 
The creaking of a rope, a blue-and-yellow skirt rustling. A face no longer like her own, but purpled and swollen, the neck at a grotesque angle.

  Spooky closed her eyes.

  Pretend to be me.

  But why?

  Because they might know.

  Know what?

  What I’ve been doing. Out in the woods.

  You shouldn’t. It’s dangerous.

  I know.

  The inside of the sled was dark and quiet, and somehow, while Spooky was lost in the past, they had lifted off. Minjae, buckled into a seat now, had her deck balanced across her knees again, and was chewing at a fingernail as its screen bathed her with blue light. Cables snaked across the floor, the sled batteries charging electronics as well as fueling internal processes.

  Simmons slumped in the jumpseat closest to Spooky, dozing. On his other side, Swann, buckled in tightly, stretched out his legs, his hair showing little streaks of gray. Hendrickson was at the sled controls again, this time taking Prink through procedures; Zampana sat cross-legged on the uncomfortable metal floor, humming a little and biting her lower lip as she poked at a torn pair of uniform pants with a curved flesh-stitching needle. Seen from this angle, in the low light, Pana’s profile was serene and stern, a goddess concentrating on a mortal task for no other reason than the pleasure of seeing how her worshippers lived.

  Sal, stretched sideways across two of the seats, snored lightly. Spooky’s back itched, and her legs were numb. Her fatigue knees held a damp spot, either drool or condensation. Had she slept or just checked out, become what the kampogs called a blanker? You saw them, walking around with their jaws slack and their eyes useless and dull, withdrawn into their own little worlds.

  They didn’t long. Once they completed that inward revolution, they stopped even trying to keep clean or eat, and if they didn’t die of starvation they were swept into the killing bottles during the next roll call.

  It felt different in here, she decided. Less like there was a Lazy-size gap, and more like the shaky, sickened half hour in whatever aid station a medic could organize after the casualties stopped coming in and the triage was done. Sooner or later the flood of wounded ceased, and there was a moment where the internal balance shifted. You couldn’t stop, but you could take a deep breath in the middle of a task, and some hair-fine inner thread would relax just a little.

  Spooky uncurled just a little, too. The box was still there, but someone had cut it open. Probably Simmons. Whoever it was hadn’t raised the lid at all; the top with its bar code and the slashed tape was a sly cartoon smile.

  Her hands shook a little. She poked at the flap, glanced at the front. Hendrickson’s attention was all out the front bubble, attending to the business of flying. The radio crackled, and Prink gave the call sign and heading in a bored monotone.

  Spooky wormed her aching, almost-numb fingers into the dark interior, and set to work.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Miracle

  July 18, ’98

  They landed near what used to be the Kansas border, settling on a pad in the middle of a bivouac base, and as the sled powered down Minjae was still tapping at her deck. “Big old goddamn heap of nothin’,” she told Swann. “Lemme alone for a bit.”

  “I’ll stay,” Zampana offered. Prink was already shoving his way through the hatch, desperate to get out and find a patch to piss on.

  Hendrickson eased himself out of the pilot’s seat. He was looking a little worse for wear, his black hair slicked down and his eyes bloodshot. He tried to stretch, almost braining himself on a bulkhead, and let out a jolted curse that brought Spooky’s head up, her eyes glittering feverishly under half-lowered lids. A smear-trickle of darkness on her upper lip gleamed wetly. Both her hands were in the box of personal effects, and her expression, half hidden, was somewhere between a dreaming woman’s and the uncomprehending stare of a tired animal.

  “Hey.” Captain Hendrickson pushed forward, despite Zampana’s broad hip suddenly in his way. “Shit, she’s bleeding!”

  “Nosebleed,” Swann said. “Happens. Probably the cabin pressure.”

  “But—” The captain swung forward, around Zampana, who slid a foot back but not in time to trip him. It was Simmons, stretching his legs out, who fixed him with a baleful look, bringing him to a halt right in the middle of the sled. Sal snorted, surfacing from his doze, probably sensing a feral current sliding through the cramped space.

  “Oh hey.” Minjae glanced up. “You. Dogboy. Bring me some coffee. And a bacon sandwich.”

  Hendrickson chose to ignore her, and pointed at Spooky. “There’s a med station here. Should get that looked at.”

  “She’s fine.” Zampana sniffed. “Side effect of temporary malnutrition. Gets a little self-conscious when people point and stare, though.”

  “Yeah,” Prink piped up. “Don’t be rude, asshole.”

  The glimmers of Spooky’s eyes faded as she blinked, reappeared. Her mouth, slack and slightly open, was a dark downward curve, full underlip trembling a little.

  “Fine.” Hendrickson pushed past Simmons’s legs, heading for the hatch. A damp, burning breath of warm summer night flooded in, and he filled the doorway for a moment before hopping outside, his boots heavy on the stair grating.

  “This ain’t gonna end well,” Swann said softly, in the charged silence that followed.

  Spooky’s pale tongue flicked out, licked at the smear on her upper lip. She blinked again, slowly, her hands moving inside the box with little rustles.

  “Lots of accidents can happen, hunting Firsters.” Simmons leaned his head back against the sled wall. It could have been a joke, except for the flat shine on his blue bloodshot eyes.

  “That’s your answer to everything.” Zampana rolled her shoulders back, holding up the T-shirt she’d just finished repairing. She could probably draw a new one—the Federals had no supply shortage—but working behind the lines meant you learned to fix everything you possibly could. “Why don’t you go get us some coffee, and something to chew on? I’m hungry.”

  A soft, hissing exhalation was Spooky, as she drew her hands out of the box, clutching a knotted length of material. It was a uniform tie, black polyester with the red embroidered eagle of Firster service peeking out from the tangle. “This is his,” she murmured. “Look for Project Carpet.” She shook her head, banging it against the sled wall behind her, a solid, painful sound. “No. Flying Carpet. Look for that.” Another hiss, a labored breath, sweat pasting strands of dark hair to her forehead. Her shadowed face contorted.

  “Oh.” Minjae nodded, staring at her screen. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Fuck,” Prink breathed. “Man, oh man.”

  “Remember Franco?” Swann kneed Simmons’s legs, and the Reaper pulled them up again. “And that redheaded Firster bastard?”

  Apparently Sal was now awake, because he pushed himself upright, stretching luxuriously. “The one with the glasses?” He rubbed at his oily hair, tumbling it just so. “Yeah. Scary fucker, cracked Cowboy Bill, and leapfrogged his whole band. And Franco, with his sniffing out patrols. Swear he could smell ’em, just like he said.”

  “Weird shit in the world.” Swann headed for the hatch. “We’ve all seen it.”

  “I’m a problem,” Spooky said suddenly, her chin jerking up and her tone shifting from dreamy to flat and uninterested. She rubbed the back of her head against the wall, her hair sliding against slick metal. “Right?”

  “You’re a raider.” Three little words, loaded with significance, as Swann’s gaze rested on her. “One of our crew.”

  “Well, technically speaking, you’re both.” Minjae stretched her arms. Little crunching noises echoed as she stretched her neck too, popping it and sighing. “But to be fair, most of us are. Right, Simms?”

  “Fuck your mother,” was the Reaper’s equable reply.

  “See?” Minjae’s short, bitter laugh was echoed by Zampana’s fox snort and Sal’s rich, fruity chuckle. “Don’t worry about Johnny Fed, Spook.”
>
  Swann continued out the hatch, into darkness full of damp heat and cricket singing. Spooky’s face tipped back down, but it was impossible to tell if she was comforted or simply exhausted. “Flying Carpet,” she mumbled again. “Look for that.”

  “Thanks.” Min bent back over the keyboard. “Simms, you gonna get me some coffee?”

  “Yes ma’am.” He unfolded, and on his way out he paused for just a second in front of Spooky.

  She didn’t look up, and he didn’t say anything. Still, the humming tension hunching her shoulders and keeping her knees rigid relaxed a little, then a little more.

  “And bingo,” Minjae whispered. “Oh, Spooky, you are a miracle. Any ideas on the decrypt key?”

  Spooky wound the tie around her right fist, licking again at the blood on her upper lip. “Not yet,” she said softly. “But soon, I will.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chemical Lie

  Swann held his peace until they were past the sentry at the edge of the concrete pad, ident shown and directions to the depot listened to. He further held it until they were inside the depot foyer, poking the sleepy, lanky, cornrowed first sergeant on evening watch behind the desk into yawning action. While the console booted up, though, he had to say something, and he settled for the obvious. “You’re not makin’ any friends.”

  “Never been one of my strengths.” Hendrickson passed his chipped wrist over the reader and was rewarded with a green light, a soft modulated tone, and the touch screen on its pedestal filling with a dizzying menu of options. “Coffee, right? Be nice to have it in the sled. What other supplies do you need?”