“How you doing?” Justin asked her, maybe a little too casually.
“Fair to partly cloudy,” she answered, which made him blink till he figured it out. She went on, “You’ve got something on your mind—something pretty big, I think. Can you tell me what it is?”
He looked alarmed. “How did you know? Uh, I mean, I do?”
She laughed at him. “Yeah, you do. And I know ’cause it’s written all over your face. C’mon. Spill.”
If he tried to deny it, she intended to push him into the trench and then maybe bury him in it. You could lie some, but you couldn’t lie that much. He thought about it—she could tell. But then he must have decided it wouldn’t work. He spoke in a low voice, to make sure nobody inside could hear: “I think I know how to get back to Charleston and make sure my mom’s all right.”
“Oh, yeah? How?” Beckie asked. He told her. She stared at him in admiration mixed with horror. “You’re nuts!”
“I know,” he answered, not without pride. “But I’m gonna try it anyhow.”
Ten
Three minutes after four in the morning. That was what Justin’s watch said as he got out of bed and slid into a pair of jeans. In the other bed, Mr. Brooks went on breathing smoothly and evenly. Justin tiptoed toward the door. If Mr. Brooks woke up and heard him go, the older man would stop him.
Don’t let him hear you, then, Justin told himself. He opened the door and unlocked it so he could close it quietly. He slipped out. The latch bolt still clicked against the striker plate. Justin froze, waiting for Mr. Brooks to jump up and yell, What was that? But the coin and stamp dealer went right on sleeping.
The door to the room where the doctor had put Adrian and Millard stood open. Justin knew why: the doctor was sick, too, and couldn’t close it. Nobody else—certainly not the motel manager—wanted to come near enough to take care of it.
Justin’s thought was, I haven’t caught this thing yet, and I’ve had every chance in the world. He hoped his immunity shots from the home timeline really were good for something. Going in there was risky for him, but a lot less than it would have been for other people. And he couldn’t do what he wanted to do—what I need to do, was the way he put it to himself—without taking the risk.
Except for a distant barking dog and an even more distant whip-poor-will, everything was quiet. Quiet as the grave, Justin thought, and wished like anything he hadn’t. He slipped into the motel room. Millard and the doctor both lay unconscious, breathing harshly. Adrian wasn’t breathing at all—he’d died the day before.
If he weren’t more or less Justin’s size, this scheme would have been worthless. Since he was … Justin hadn’t thought he was squeamish, but stripping a dead body made his stomach twist. It also wasn’t as easy as he’d thought it would be, since Adrian had started to stiffen.
Pants and shirt and service cap fit well enough. Justin worried more when he started putting on Adrian’s socks and shoes. He had big feet, and he was still in trouble if the luckless soldier didn’t. But the socks went on fine, and the heavy combat boots were, if anything, too long and too wide. He laced them as tight as he could. His feet still felt a bit floppy in them, but he could put up with it.
One of the packs against the wall was Adrian’s. So was one of the assault rifles. When Justin slung on the pack with the longer straps, he gasped at how heavy it was. It had to weigh thirty kilos, easy. Were these Virginians soldiers or mules? The rifle added another four kilos or so. He’d thought he was in pretty good shape. Trying to lug all this stuff around made him wonder.
Dawn was painting the eastern sky pink when he tramped out of the motel room. From the outside, he was a Virginia soldier. On the inside, he felt half proud of his own cleverness, half nervous about what happened next. If things went the way they were supposed to, he’d be a hero. If they didn’t … He hadn’t thought much about that.
The extra weight he was carrying made the shoes start to rub. He trudged west anyway. If he got a blister on his heel, then he did, that was all. He remembered the blisters on Beckie’s palms. She’d kept on digging after she got them. He could go on, too.
When the sun came up, he rummaged in Adrian’s pack for something to eat. Canned ham and eggs wouldn’t put Jack in the Box out of business any time soon. He ate the ration anyway. By the time he finished it, his stomach stopped growling. Not seeing anything else to do with the can, he tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road. He didn’t like to litter, but sometimes you were just stuck.
Somewhere up ahead was the Virginia artillery unit that had been shooting at Parkersburg. He really was limping before he’d gone even a kilometer, though. He wouldn’t get to them as fast as he’d hoped to.
Then he heard a rumble up ahead. A string of trucks and armored fighting vehicles was heading his way. He got off the road and onto the shoulder to let them by. Or maybe they wouldn’t go by. Maybe they would …
One of the trucks stopped. The driver, a sergeant not far from Mr. Brooks’ age, shouted to Justin: “What the devil you doin’ there, son?”
“I was supposed to go out with the rest of the soldiers in Elizabeth,” Justin answered, “but I was on patrol in the woods and I twisted my ankle. They went and left without me.” He put his limp to good use.
“Some people just use their heads to hang their hats on,” the sergeant observed. “Maybe you were lucky you were off in the woods. They’ve had people die from that disease.” He used ten or fifteen seconds describing the plague in profane detail.
“Tell me about it,” Justin said, “Millard’s a buddy of mine. I think Doc has it, too.” He figured he could earn points by knowing what was going on in Elizabeth.
“If Doc makes it, there isn’t a medal fancy enough to pin on his chest,” the noncom said. “Anyway, pile on in. We can sort out all this stuff”—he used a word something like stuff, anyway—“when we get back to Charleston.”
“Will do!” Justin said joyously. They were heading just where he wanted to go. He’d hoped they would be. He limped around to the back of the truck. One of the men inside held out a hand to help him up and in. “Thanks,” he told the local, who nodded.
Everybody already in the truck kind of squeezed together to give him just enough room to perch his behind on one of the benches against the side of the rear compartment. It was a hard, cramped seat, but he couldn’t complain. He was in the same boat as all the other soldiers there. All the other soldiers, he told himself.
With a growl from its diesel engine, the truck rolled forward again. It ran right through the exhaust fumes of the vehicles in front of it. Justin coughed. A couple of soldiers lit cigarettes. He coughed some more. But nobody else grumbled about it, so he kept quiet. Lots more people smoked in this alternate than in the home timeline. Virginia raised tobacco. He tried to tell himself this one brief exposure to secondhand smoke wouldn’t do him in. He hoped he was right.
And the truck was heading for Charleston! Once he got there, all he had to do was ditch his uniform, put on the regular clothes he’d stashed in his pack, and find Mr. Brooks’ coin and stamp shop. Mom would be there, and everything would be fine. He nodded happily. He had it all figured out.
Somebody knocked—pounded, really—on the door to Mr. Snodgrass’ house. “I’ll get it,” Beckie called.
“Thank you kindly,” Mr. Snodgrass said from his bedroom.
In Los Angeles, the door would have had a little gizmo that let her look out and see who was there. No one in Elizabeth bothered with such things. Living in a small town did have a few advantages. She opened the door. “Hello, Mr. Brooks,” she said, and then, after taking a second look at him, “Are you okay?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know.” He was usually a calm, quiet, self-possessed man. He seemed anything but self-possessed now. “Have you seen Justin? Is he with you?”
“No, he’s not here,” Beckie said. “I haven’t seen him since the last time the two of you came over.”
“Then I’m not okay.�
�� Mr. Brooks’ voice went hard and flat. “He’s gone and done something dumb. I wondered if the two of you had gone and done something dumb together.” A beat too late, he realized how that had to sound and added, “No offense.”
“But of course,” Beckie murmured, and the coin and stamp dealer winced. She went on, “Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing without me, thank you very much.” And then she realized she had a better notion of what Justin was up to than his uncle did.
Her face must have given her away, because Mr. Brooks said, “You know something.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I do.” What am I supposed to say? Beckie wondered. Justin had told her, but he plainly hadn’t told Mr. Brooks. But shouldn’t Mr. Brooks know what he was doing? He was Justin’s uncle, and as close to a parent as Justin had here.
Yeah, and Gran is as close to a parent as I’ve got here. Beckie knew that wasn’t fair. Unlike Gran, Mr. Brooks had a clue. Even so …
“What’s he gone and done?” the coin and stamp dealer asked, sounding like somebody braced for the worst.
“Well, I’m not exactly sure.” Beckie was stalling for time, but she wasn’t quite lying. Justin hadn’t known exactly what he would do, because he didn’t know how things would break. I’ll just have to play it by ear, he’d said.
“He’s figured out some kind of scheme to get back to Charleston, hasn’t he?” Mr. Brooks said. “I told him that wasn’t a good idea, but I could see he didn’t want to listen. Is that what’s going on?”
Beckie didn’t say yes. But she didn’t have to. Once Mr. Brooks got hold of the ball, he didn’t have any trouble running with it.
He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, for the love of … Mike. Does he think he can con the soldiers into giving him a lift? They won’t do that, not unless …” He hit himself in the head again, harder this time—so hard, in fact, it was a wonder he didn’t knock himself flat. He’d done his best not to cuss before. What he said now almost peeled the paint off the walls in the front hall. “I’m sorry,” he told Beckie when he ran down, though he obviously didn’t mean it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I want to remember some of that for later, though.”
Mr. Brooks smiled a crooked smile. “Hope you never get mad enough to need it, that’s all I’ve got to say. One of the soldiers who got sick was about his size. Did he tell you that?”
Again, Beckie didn’t say yes. Again, she didn’t need to.
“Okay, the good news is, he didn’t go off somewhere and then come down with the disease. The gypsies didn’t steal him, either—though right now they’re welcome to him.” Mr. Brooks didn’t sound as if he was joking. “The bad news is, he doesn’t know thing one about what being a soldier means.”
“And you do?” Beckie asked.
She regretted the question as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The ordinary-seeming bald man looked at her—looked through her, really. All of a sudden, she had no trouble at all imagining him much younger, and very tired, and scared to death. “Oh, yeah,” he said softly, his eyes still a million kilometers—or maybe twenty or twenty-five years—away. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she wondered what she was sorry for. That she’d doubted him? Or that, a long time ago, he’d seen and done some things he’d likely tried to forget ever since? Both, maybe.
He shook himself, almost like a dog coming out of cold water. “Well, as a matter of fact, so am I,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m not half as sorry as Justin’s going to be. The question is, will he be sorry because he did something dumb and got caught, or will he be sorry ’cause he did something dumb and got killed?”
“K-Killed?” Beckie had trouble getting the word out.
“Killed,” Mr. Brooks repeated. “If he’s going back to Charleston … Well, there’s still fighting there. Those soldiers weren’t doing much up here. The powers that be might have decided to get some use out of them after all. You learn to fight same as you learn anything else: you practice, and then you do it for real. Justin’s never had any training. He knows how to load a gun, and that’s about it. If he doesn’t give himself away, he’s liable to stop a bullet because he doesn’t know how not to.”
“What can you do?” Beckie asked.
“Good question. If I had a good answer, I’d give it to you, I promise,” Mr. Brooks said bleakly. “He’s been gone since some time in the night. I don’t know when—I was asleep. He could be in Charleston already. Or he could be in the stockade already, if they figure out he’s no more a soldier than the man in the moon. I hope he is. If he’s in the stockade, I have time to figure out what happens next. If they just throw him into a firefight … Nobody can do anything about that.”
“Why would they even think he was only pretending to be a soldier?” Beckie asked. “Nobody would look for anyone to try something like that. Most people don’t want to be soldiers, and the ones who do join their state’s army for real.”
“Right the first time. Right the second time, too. You’re a smart kid, Beckie. Only thing is, I wish you weren’t,” Mr. Brooks said. “Because if you are right—and I’m afraid you are—Justin’s in a lot more trouble than if you’re wrong.”
“We’ve got to be able to do … something.” Beckie wished she hadn’t faltered there at the end. It showed she didn’t know what that something might be.
“Yeah,” Mr. Brooks said. “Something.” His tone of voice and the worried look on his face said he didn’t know what, either.
The convoy of trucks and armored fighting vehicles from around Elizabeth was getting close to Charleston. They’d already been waved through two checkpoints outside of town. The sergeant in charge of this—squad?—was listening on an earpiece and talking into a throat mike. He wore three chevrons on his sleeve, the way a U.S. Army sergeant would have. So what if they were upside down? Justin still knew what they meant. Virginia officers’ rank badges were a different story. But if an officer told him what to do, he knew he had to do it.
“Okay, guys—here’s what’s going on,” the noncom said. Everybody leaned toward him. “Those miserable people are still making trouble in Charleston. We’re going to help make sure they stop.”
He didn’t really say people. The word he used was one nobody in the U.S.A. in the home timeline could say without proving he was a disgusting racist. People in the home timeline cussed a lot more casually than they did here. But words that showed you were a racist or a religious bigot or a homophobe … Nobody in the home timeline, not even people who really were racists or fanatics or homophobes, used those words in public. The taboos were different, but they were still taboos.
That thought was interesting enough to make Justin stop paying attention to the sergeant for a few seconds. If he were a real soldier, he didn’t suppose he would have done that. Then I can’t do it now, he told himself.
“We’re going down to Florida,” the sergeant said. That confused Justin till he remembered it was the name of a street in Charleston. The Virginian went on, “Stinking people have a barricade there.” Again, people wasn’t the word he used. “We’ll be part of the infantry force that flanks ’em out, and the guns with us’ll help blow ’em to kingdom come. Any questions?”
Justin had about a million, but nobody else said anything, so he didn’t see how he could. The real soldiers probably knew the answers to most of them. One of those real soldiers, a guy named Eddie, tapped Justin on the leg and said, “Stick close to Smitty and me. I know you’re out of your unit and everything. We’ll watch your back, and you watch ours. Deal?”
“Deal.” Justin didn’t know exactly what kind of deal it was, but he’d find out. Any kind of deal seemed better than getting ignored.
Was he supposed to be excited now or scared? The other guys in the truck just seemed to be doing a job. Were they hiding nerves? How could they help having them?
They got into Charleston a few minutes later. The town, as Justin remembered from his brief ac
quaintance with it, had a funny shape. It stretched for several miles along the northern bank of the Kanawha River, but it never got very far from the stream. It didn’t seem as big as the Charleston of the home timeline. It probably wasn’t. That Charleston was a state capital, and the center of all the bureaucracy that went with being one. This Charleston was just a back-country town.
And it was, right this minute, a back-country town in trouble. Automatic weapons sounded cheerful. Pop! Pop! Pop! That brisk crackle might have been firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It might have been, but it wasn’t. The occasional boom of cannon fire had no counterpart in the civilian world.
Whump! Justin wondered what that was, but not for long. A hole appeared, as if by magic, in the canvas cover over his truck’s rear compartment. No, two holes—one on each side, less than a meter above soldiers’ heads. Those were—couldn’t be anything but—bullet holes.
He wanted to yelp, but nobody else did, so he kept quiet, too. How much of courage was being afraid to embarrass yourself in front of your buddies? A lot, unless he missed his guess.
“Hope one of the bad guys fired that,” Smitty said. Justin stared at him, wondering if he’d heard straight. Smitty went on, “You feel like such a jerk if you get hit by a round from your own side.”
“Hurts just as much either way,” somebody else said. The soldiers’ helmeted heads bobbed up and down.
The sergeant had the earpiece in one ear again, and a finger jammed in the other to keep out background noise. “Listen up,” he said when he heard whatever he needed to hear. “When we get out, we go right two blocks. Then we turn left and go down five or six blocks—something like that, depending on what things look like. Then we turn left again, and we come in behind the people’s position. Got it?”
“Right, left, left,” Eddie said. “We got it, Sarge.”
The Disunited States of America Page 18
