Valentine's Exile

by E. E. Knight

  Everready cracked his knuckles. "If you're careful, really careful, you can move north through the ravies colony. It's really just a big wall there, and one gate. They watch the gate and patrol the wall, but not too heavily. Ravies types aren't into engineering ways over or under the wall. Too busy chasing their own tails."

  "So what's in Memphis that's worth all that security?" Duvalier asked. Valentine thought she looked like a silent-film starlet, with face glowing in the firelight behind the layer of netting.

  "The banks," Everready said.

  Her voice rose a notch. "Banks? There aren't banks any more."

  "Yes, there are," Everready said. "Only kind of banks that matter to the Kurians. Big marshaling yards for the transhipment of humans."

  "Tell her why," Valentine said.

  "Logistics," Everready said. "Memphis is only a day's rail from every big city on the eastern seaboard, plus parts of the Midwest and Texas—the parts your boys haven't took yet, that is. It's why oP FedEx was headquartered there, too. Some Kurian in Kansas buys tractors from Michigan; he sends authorization to the bank in Memphis to ship up three hundred folk or whatever the price was. They're on the next train to Detroit. Those yards are a sight to see. Let me ask you the same question. What's so important in Memphis that you're willing to risk going in?"

  "We're looking for someone," Valentine said.

  "Unless he got a job in one of the camps—"

  "She," Duvalier corrected.

  Everready shrugged. "Unless she got a job in one of the camps—wait, is she a looker?"

  "She's attractive enough, but there's more to it," Valentine said.

  "What do you mean, more?"

  Valentine tried to explain the mule list to Everready as concisely as possible. The old Cat thought it worth another apple; he carved off slices for the other three and then gnawed at the remaining wedge himself.

  The fruit tasted like candy to Valentine.

  "There's this big ol’ boy named Moyo who runs all the girls inside the wall. Always has his men checking inbound shipments for beauty. He's got a regular harem; half the large-scale pimps south of the Ohio buy from him. He employs bounty hunters to comb the hills east of here to bring in folks to swap out when one of his men spots a pretty girl. Kurians don't really care—what's the difference between one dollar coin and another? Moyo does a lot of high-priority transshipping. He'd be the first place I'd look for more on this mule list of yours, if it really is all women."

  After that he and Valentine spent a few minutes looking at maps—Everready chuckled that he hardly used the maps anymore, he knew the ground between Memphis and Vicksburg so well—and planning the hike north.

  "We should jog east a bit at the Coldwater. I got a store of captured gear you three can draw from." Everready flicked his fingers at Valentine's disintegrating guard shoes, and Valentine wondered if he was going to get the old lecture about how there's no reissue on feet.

  "How's Trudy?" Valentine asked, jerking a netting-shrouded chin at Everready's ancient carbine. The well-oiled stock glowed in the firelight.

  "Still saving my life."

  "And the Reaper-teeth collection?"

  "Seventy-one and counting."

  "All from fair fights, right?"

  Everready made a move to box his ears. "Valentine, how you think I got this old? Only time I even get into a scrap with a Reaper is when they's so disadvantaged it's hardly a fight a'tall."

  * * * *

  Valentine woke to the smell of chickory coffee.

  Everready and Duvalier were the only ones up. Ahn-Kha lay in a snoring heap, wrapped around his gun like a snake that had swal­lowed a bullock before retiring to a too-small tree.

  He listened to the conversation as he shifted around, feeling for creepy-crawlies. He missed his old hammock.

  "I didn't know Cats got as old as you. I thought we were all done by thirty."

  "For a start, I stay in territory I know better than they do. I don't make a lot of trouble, I'd rather let my eyes and ears do the work."

  "Don't the Lifeweavers ever have you—"

  "I think they've forgotten about ol' Everready. But that's fine with me. I like to fight with my own set of priorities. I suppose that's how I ended up in this swamp."

  "Seems lonely. Do you go into Memphis often?" she asked.

  "No, they know my face there. Not that I wouldn't mind visit­ing the pros down at the Pyramid. Your pretty face makes me feel twenty years younger."

  "Wish I could help—but. . ."

  Valentine wondered what the silence portended.

  "You're lucky. He's a good man. But be careful working with someone you got that kind of feeling for. The moment will come, maybe you'll have just a split second to move, and you'll move wrong 'cause of your feelings. You'll both wind up dead."

  Valentine kept absolutely still.

  Everready went on: "Don't look like that. Just one ol' hound's opinion. If I knew what I was talking about I'd have some hard­ware on my collar and be giving orders, right?"

  "Let's see about breakfast."

  "I'll check the crawfish traps. Better use the big pot. That Grog can eat."

  Valentine waited to open his eyes until he felt the tip of Duvalier's boot. "You can wake up Ahn-Kha," she said. "When he stretches in the morning his gas drops the birds."

  * * * *

  Everready's cache showed his usual craftiness. He kept medical supplies, preserved food, and weapons in several spots between the Yazoo and the Mississippi; the problem was keeping the gear away from scavengers. Humans could use tools and animals could smell food through almost any obstacle. In the Coldwater Creek cache he had solved the problem by burying his supplies behind a house and then placing a wheelless, stripped pickup body over it.

  Ahn-Kha stood watch in a high pine while they excavated the cache.

  "The engine block's still in this so she's a heavy SOB," Everready explained, retrieving a wire-cored rope from the house's chimney. The rope he fixed to the trailer hitch. Then he tied his Reaper-robe top around the base of a tree, looped the rope around it, and fixed it.

  "Here you go, young lady," he said, handing the line to Duvalier.

  She hardly had to lean as she applied a transverse pull to the center of the rope. The truck pivoted a few feet, exposing some of the dirt and a few hardy creepers beneath the pickup bed. Ever-ready tightened it again and she slid the pickup body another meter toward the tree.

  "Why the material around the tree?" Valentine asked.

  Everready checked under the dashboard on the passenger side and then pulled out a folding shovel with a gloved hand. "So the bark doesn't strip. You'd be surprised how clever some scavengers are."

  The heavy-duty garbage bags within had further items wrapped up inside them: a few guns thick with protective grease, boxes of ammunition, a large box of red pepper—ideal for throwing off tracking dogs—and a pair of shin-top-high camouflage-pattern boots.

  "You and I have about the same size foot, I think," Everready said as Valentine grabbed up the snakeproof boots like a miner spotting a golden nugget. "There are some good socks rolled up in that coffee tin. An extra pair should make up the difference." Valentine smiled when he looked in the tin. It also contained a half-dozen old "lifetime" batteries with a logo of a lightning-bolt-like cat jumping through a red circle. Everready liked to leave the twelve-volt calling cards in the mouths of his kills.

  He brought up a cardboard box full of a dozen familiar blue tins.

  "Spam?" Valentine asked.

  "Naw. This was part of a larger shipment going to the resis­tance farther east. I took a small expeditor's fee for getting the pony train there. There's plastic explosive inside the cans, you just got to pop the lid—there's even a layer of pork at the top." He passed up another bag. "Three kinds of detonators. One looks like a wind-up alarm clock, one's in this watch but you have to hook it to the bat­teries in this flashlight, and the others are straight fuses made to look like shoelaces, whil
e the detonators are made to look like nine-volt batteries. Your armorers are clever."

  Everready unrolled a chamois and handed a 9mm Beretta up to Duvalier. "This is a nice little gun, young lady."

  "I'll take that Mossberg twelve-gauge," she said, pointing at a cluster of long guns. "Folding stock. Dreamy."

  "Don't you think you'll stand out a bit in Memphis?"

  "Not after I rope it up inside my coat."

  "Your duster's going to look strange in this heat," Valentine said.

  "Not if I'm mostly naked under it."

  "Hope you're not looking for trouble in Memphis. Hard to get into. Harder to get out of. Valentine, since you're going to be posing as a reel looking to add a few new faces to his line, you'll want something with a little flash. I took this off a wandering guitar man in a swap meet card game."

  He picked up a sizeable clear plastic food-storage container and broke the seal. A long, silver-barreled automatic pistol rested inside with a shoulder holster and spare magazines. The gun was nickel-plated and would reflect light from miles away—no wonder Ever-ready stuck it in a hole. "You don't mind .22, do you?"

  "For this kind of job I'd prefer it. It's quiet."

  "Only took you four years and some to add that word to your vocabulary," Duvalier observed.

  "And what else?" Everready said in his old talking-with-milk-chinned-young-Wolves tone.

  "It's light so you can carry a lot, and it's a nice varmint round for when you get hungry."

  "Exacto! Now let's get you a longarm. Where did I put that sumbitch?" He rooted through the guns and found a zipped-up case. "Here we are."

  He extracted a gleaming bullpup battle rifle. "This here is real US Army Issue," he said, as another man might speak of a Rothschild vintage or a Cuban cigar. "Took this off some half-assed commandos outta Jackson eight years back. Called a Tacsys U-gun, 'u' for universal. There's four interchangeable barrels and actions so she can shoot 9mm, 5.56, 7.62 with a sniper barrel, or you can open her up and feed her shotgun shells. Used to have a silencer, but I rigged it to a rifle I lost. Sorry. Nice little four-power scope up top. Wish I could give you the grenade launcher for it."

  Valentine checked the customizable sling. "This is great. But you keep Trudy?"

  "A man doesn't give up on the girl he loves for a hotter model. Even if she's sporting polycarbon rifling.

  "Good gear means flash in the KZ. Don't have the full manual but there's a card in the case that you should be able to figure out."

  "Speaking of flashing, he could use a change of clothing," Duvalier said, already cleaning her Mossberg.

  "Clothes will be a little harder, but I think I've got an old offi­cer's trench coat in here. Very nice waterproofing and only one small, stain-free hole."

  * * * *

  "You ready for this, Valentine?" Everready asked. "All your shots up to date ?"

  They rested atop a stripped Kenworth parked outside Tunica, within heavy-duty fencing and mounds of rubble blocking the roads south of the city, out of the line of sight of the nearest sentry tower, spaced miles apart on this, the less-critical south side of Tunica.

  "So we just have to move slowly?" Valentine asked, loading the U-gun.

  "Not so much slow as smooth," Everready said. "No sudden moves. I'm not saying a cough will set them off. Just that it could."

  "Ahn-Kha, you'll be okay here for a few days?" Valentine asked.

  "There is food and water. I will stay in the cab of this fine vehicle at night, and under those trees in the day. Are they less active at night?"

  "Depends," Everready said. "If a few start prowling around, sometimes others join them. Then you get a mob mentality. They go off easier in groups."

  Duvalier climbed up and hung off one of the rearview mirror posts and looked north into town. The mirrors themselves were gone. "I see one," Duvalier said. "By the traffic light that's touching the road."

  Valentine saw it too. A distant figure staggered back and forth across the street, leaning forward as though trying to tie his shoes as he walked.

  "Poor souls," Valentine said.

  Everready slowly slid off the top of the truck. "Lots more, closer to the old casinos. That's where the missions organize themselves. That one's probably lost and hungry.

  "Okay, kiddies, got your iodine?"

  Valentine and Duvalier touched their breast pockets and nodded. Valentine had a big bottle, half full, courtesy of Everready's stockpile, and Duvalier had a stoppered hip flask holding the other half.

  "You get bit, first thing you do is get clear and iodine it good. Even if you've had your shots the damn thing mutates sometimes, and who knows what strain is in there. Plus it'll save you an infec­tion. Lots of these have hepatitis along with their other problems."

  They started down the old road. "And don't shoot unless it's life or death. It'll just get 'em screaming, and between the shots and the screams you'll have a hurtin' of psychos on you before you know it."

  Everready set an even pace, the old Cat rocking a little back and forth, like a ship rolling on the ocean. Valentine walked behind, U-gun across his chest in its hands-free sling. Behind him he heard the steady footsteps of Duvalier, pacing her feet to Everready's rhythm.

  Valentine had only had one brief brush with ravies sufferers, on the Louisiana border. Southern Command generally shot those who succumbed to the disease once their minds went and they didn't understand what was happening anymore. He'd never seen the aftereffects before.

  Seen? Smelled, more like.

  Tunica had once been a pretty town, Valentine suspected, fra­grant of the magnolias and dogwoods beloved by the residents. Now it smelled like a pig farm. Everready paused at the edge of what had been a park running through the center of town. The three of them stood opposite an old bronze statue of three weary-looking soldiers, the two on the ends supporting a wounded comrade in the center. Everready used the rifle of the one on the left to climb atop the bronze shoulders.

  "The kudzu's been cut back from here," Duvalier said. The growth choked most of the rest of the park.

  "Probably the Mission people," Everready said, covering his eyes as he looked around. Valentine heard cats spitting at each other somewhere in the park. "See those basins? Food and water. And there they are. Over by the pharmacy."

  Valentine saw two heads bobbing among the growth. Both men, with stringy-looking beards. They moved like sleepwalkers, the second following the first.

  "Careful now," Everready said. "If anyone hears an engine let me know; my ears aren't what they used to be. Memphis dumps off fresh cases in the center of town sometimes."

  They crossed over to one of the main streets. Valentine saw that what he had thought were only two individuals were six; hollow-eyed, tight-cheeked, and knob-kneed. Some shorter women and even a child followed the first two.

  Everready walked slowly and smoothly, like a man treading across a pool. Piles of feces lay scattered in the streets and alleys, drying in the summer sun. Valentine saw rats in the alleys, sniffing at the odious piles. Cats filled every shady windowsill and step, watching the rats. A pair of kittens watched them from beneath a wheeled Dumpster.

  Valentine put his finger on the U-gun's trigger guard as the slow-moving train of people—or what had once been people— approached.

  The two files passed each other, the ravies victims' faces spasm­ing in a parody of vocalization, black-toothed mouths opening and shutting but no sound in their throats but dry wheezes. They looked sunburned and leathery. A few wore stained gray cotton smocks with URM stenciled on the chests and backs.

  The little girl seemed a bit more animated than the rest; she pointed and waved.

  Everready ignored her.

  "URM?" Valentine asked when the group had passed.

  "United Relief Missions. Old school Christians. Down at the riverfront. Memphis lets them operate sort of as independents be­cause they keep these folks alive, or what passes for it."

  "Looks like they feed themselve
s, too," Duvalier said, pointing at the corpse of a cat with her walking stick. The cat's midsection had been torn out.

  "Wish it would rain," Everready said. "The town's a little better after a good rain."

  They crossed a street, and Valentine saw a heap of bodies, mostly nude, on the steps of what looked like a neo-Georgian city hall. One kicked and another rolled over.

  "Like hogs in a wallow. The cement gets cool at night," Ever-ready said.

  They passed through streets of homes, trees buzzing with ci­cadas, perhaps one house in three burned to the ground and the oth­ers crawling with cats and inhabited by crows. Valentine saw a larger flock gather and disperse around the crotch of a tree, and found the scavengers feeding on a corpse hanging in a backyard tree like a body draped over a saddle.

  "That's Reaper work," Valentine said. "Last night, by the look of it."

  "Uh-huh," Everready agreed. "When pickings are slim in Memphis they come down here to feed. Memphis buys ravies cases cheap from all across the country and dumps them here, sort of a walking aura reserve. I'm told they stay alive for years—till an in­fection gets them."

  "I didn't know they still used it except to cause us trouble," Valentine said.

  "I've heard of them dosing each other's populations when they feud. Or to put down revolts. See, nobody in the KZ gets inocula­tions except for Quislings."

  "How much farther?" Duvalier asked. "This smell is getting to me. I'm getting sick. Seriously, Val . . ."

  Everready pulled a little tin from his belt and set it on a stone-and-bar wall in front of one of the houses. He dabbed something from a green bottle on his finger. "Just camphor," he said, and wiped it under her nose. "Breathe through your mouth."

  "Better," Duvalier said.

  Another pair of rail-thin shamblers wandered near the corpse in the tree. Valentine could have counted their ribs. "I don't like how that one is looking around."

  "Smells blood. Blood smell sets them off," Everready whis­pered, not taking his eyes from them as he mechanically repocketed his first-aid tin. "Best not to move, just stand here. Like those statues at the memorial."