Reaper's Run - Plague Wars Series Book 1

by David VanDyke

  -8-

  Six weeks later

  Despite all best-laid plans, something went wrong. It always does, Jill thought as sirens wailed in the middle of the night, waking her and Python from a sound sleep. They rolled out of bed and dressed hurriedly. Most of the detainees streamed out of the barracks, but he and she climbed up the improvised ladder they kept ready, and out the ceiling hatch onto the sloping roof. From there, they could see a lot of the camp.

  SS guards poured out of their own living quarters on the other side of the main gate, toting weapons and jumping into every available vehicle. “It looks like they woke all three shifts up,” Jill remarked, craning her neck as she held onto a ventilation duct at the apex of the roof. “Something big.”

  It wasn’t long before they could see that the troops had spread out around the outside of the camp, driving Humvees and trucks through the empty cornfields with lights blazing. Eventually about half of the available manpower concentrated itself off to the northwest.

  Python got it first. “That’s near the tunnel block.”

  “Shit. You’re right. Do you think they went early? Nobody told us. Damn.” Jill spat a few more choice epithets. “And no way we can break out now, not with a Humvee every fifty yards and the lights on. Why didn’t they tell us?”

  “Maybe they thought we were informants.” He shrugged.

  We could have taken the lights down, we could have organized diversions, we have improvised wire cutters to cut through and slip away in the confusion…damn you, Cee, we could have made you successful, or at least, not the fiasco this will be. Jill kicked the ventilation duct in frustration. “Let’s go talk to our block. Nothing to see here.”

  Back inside, Jill coordinated with her building’s guardians, as she thought of them, telling them to keep the entrances secure and try to persuade people to come back and go to bed. Now was not the time to step out of line, not with the SS cocked and locked and jumpy as hell. Then she and Python settled back to wait, and eventually to sleep.

  When the sun came up, winter-late, she sent her people out with instructions to gather information about what had happened. Soon she had pieced together the story. “You called it,” she said to Python. “For whatever stupid reason, they went last night, and they all got caught. They should have told us, and they didn’t. They should have gone at nightfall to maximize their hours of darkness, but instead they went at two in the morning.”

  “Were the guards waiting for them?”

  “No, but they got alerted quick, so Cee was right about that. Someone ratted them out, just not us.”

  Python smacked a fist into his palm. “So much for your grand diversion.”

  “Yes, but now we have to worry about the crackdown.” Jill looked him in the eyes. “You know it’s coming.”

  “Always does. They let the camp run easy for a while, but now whoever’s in charge has to make a show of strength, and punishment.” He picked up an apple, stared at it, then bit. “Gonna get interesting,” he said around a mouthful.

  It didn’t get interesting until the next day, after an uneasy night. That morning the word spread after the usual pickup of food supplies for the dining halls: rations were being cut by one third; that is, one full meal a day. Additionally, the guards announced a curfew. Everyone would be confined to their barracks blocks between sundown and sunup.

  And one more thing she had more or less predicted. All infected internees would soon be implanted with birth control devices, among a range of choices, or they could opt for sterilization. She wondered how long before the choices would evaporate and the SS would choose the cheapest and most permanent final option.

  Jill expected – hoped even, that this would cause a surge of unrest, but if most people were sheep, then most Edens were lambs. Without a direct threat, their sense of outrage did not translate into action, and the virtue effect’s suppression of violent impulses rendered the critical mass needed to form a mob extremely unlikely.

  Insight flashed through Jill, then, about why the camp had been so easygoing until now. To a certain extent the SS must have believed their own propaganda – which was always a danger of having too much control. They had thought that Edens wouldn’t even try to escape or resist in any way, but making people less selfish and violent didn’t mean they were always passive.

  She herself didn’t feel any inhibitions on her own use of force, except if it was intended to kill: then, she experienced a physical revulsion. But compartmentalization was part of any warrior’s mentality, and so as long as she kept her goals, reasons – rationales, anyway – firmly in mind, she had no problem inflicting corrective action on those that deserved it.

  Her conscience remained clear, and that was all the Plague seemed to care about.

  Jill wondered about people who simply had no consciences – sociopaths, psychopaths. Would the Plague repair their brains? What if the abnormality was psychological and not physiological? What would people like that look like? Could they even be identified?

  She filed those thoughts for later.

  Immediately Jill did away with the contribution of food for the guardians. On two thirds of the former diet, every Eden would soon begin to waste away; in effect, starving. Normals – those few left in the camp, as infection naturally only went one direction – could get by on a lot less.

  But most of those normals were hard cases, and were not likely to give up anything.

  That would have been another benefit of organizing a mass tunnel escape. Leaving the ration cards behind in the hands of designated leaders could have provided a food surplus, at least for as long as it took the guards to sort it all out. That could have been stored against another contingency.

  Now everyone would just grow weaker and weaker.

  Jill turned to Python. “We have to act soon, on our own. Every day from now on, we’ll be less capable. And we can’t train hard anymore, because we won’t have the calories.”

  “Yeah. We can stretch that out with the camp scrip we got stashed,” – they had built up a savings account from contributions – “but food prices are gonna go up. A lot.”

  “Do you have any ideas on what we can do that won’t prey off people here?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at her speculatively. “If by ‘people’ you mean the sheep. That leaves the hard cases. Get control of them and their ration cards, and there’s more food for everyone. Might get ugly, though.” He finished his apple, core and all, discarding only the stem.

  “Too ugly,” Jill said, shaking her head. “We’re not equipped to keep them locked up, even if I could stomach starving them for our own benefit.”

  “Who says we let them live?” Python grinned an evil grin. “Just kidding, boss.”

  “No, but what you say has some merit. It’s given me an idea.”

  “What?”

  Jill grinned an evil grin of her own.