Choice of the Cat

by E. E. Knight

  "I was going to say you need someone to grow old with. I've had ... bad luck with friends."

  "It can't be better to be alone."

  He shook his head. "Of course not. But it's easier."

  Jocelyn was chipper as a robin in spring sunshine for the rest of his recovery. Valentine couldn't tell whether it was a mask or not. The three of them talked long across the firelight as the stars circled overhead, until the embers dimmed and they were only shadows and voices in me darkness.

  The next day Jocelyn and Danvers rode southeast with him for a few hours, before saying their good-byes. Danvers shook his hand, and Jocelyn hugged him when they rested their horses at the farewell. Jocelyn broke off the embrace and resaddled her horse; perhaps she was not as eager to leave her brand as she seemed.

  "Thank you," Danvers said, taking his reins. His gaze darted to Jocelyn and back again. "For everything."

  "Remember... us," Jocelyn said.

  "I will. Your people helped more than you know. The General's been given a bloody nose. Maybe he'll run home to his hole for a while. Then I can catch up to him."

  With the good-byes said and an annoying mist in his eyes, Valentine turned his horse's head to the road, and tried not to listen with his hard ears to the slow hoofbeats of friends leaving.

  This land was thick with stands of cedar, with small, irregular hills sheltering wetter country and woods. Wild-flowers and bees ruled this part of the Dunes. He saw no sign of cattle or the trails of the Trekkers. He was into the borderlands.

  He tried to remember what Kurian controlled this area, and thought it to be the one in Kearney. He doubted he would see any Kearney Marshals out this far yet, but there was a chance of a Reaper at night or Trooper patrols in the day. He walked his horse and rode with more caution, keeping to low ground farther from the road.

  He approached Broken Bow by throwing a wide loop around to the south. He had known some Quislings to be suspicious as hell of someone riding in from the no-man's-land, but let that same man just circle and come from me other direction, and they were nothing but smiles and "have a cup of Java."

  Night was falling by the time he approached the little cluster of pre-Overthrow gas stations and markets, houses and roadside stops.

  He came across an old railroad track and dismounted to inspect it. There was no question that it was both little used and had recently had a train pass over it. The rails and ties were in poor shape—even for Quisling-maintained lines—yet the overgrowth had been damaged by a passing train.

  He paralleled the tracks and the road, coming into town as the shadows disappeared and evening claimed the town. Only one building, a whitewashed cinder-block corner shop of some substance, had any light burning from windows covered by makeshift shutters. Only the wind moved through the streets.

  If there had been a train in town, it had passed on.

  Valentine saw the glow of a cigarette in the shadows of an alley, and a Trooper appeared, gun held ready in sentry duty. He pointed the barrel down the road at Valentine.

  "Hold it right there. Who are you?"

  Valentine halted his horse. "It looks like I'm too late. Did the General's men pull out? I was supposed to deliver a message."

  "I don't know you."

  "I wouldn't expect you to. I'm from Columbus, not Kearney. I'm going to turn right around, friend. He's obviously gone, and I just had a hard day's ride for nothing."

  "Why didn't they just radio it in?"

  "Not that it's any of your business, but the General likes to see certain things on paper, or so I'm told. Could be they didn't want everyone with a scanner picking up the transmission."

  "Well, go on inside if you want. You could at least have a bite before turning around. Leave the horse and gun out here, though. Better leave that oversize shiv, too. Where did you get a thing like that?"

  "A Grog in Omaha, two summers ago. It better still be here when I come back outside. I have a revolver, too—can I put that on the bench over here?"

  The gun didn't waver from Valentine, but he could see the soldier relax a little. "Sure. You're well armed."

  "You'd be well armed, too, if you were this far out, riding alone."

  The sentry went to the door. Its glass was badly scratched but intact. "Dispatch rider coming in. I got his horse and guns."

  Valentine strode into the little corner building. Four soldiers, two of whom were sleeping on cots, filled the post with sweat and smoke. Sandbags filled the windows, and a line of rifles hung on the wall. There were new sheets of paper lying here and there on the freshly swept floor; perhaps the building had recently been a headquarters.

  "Evening," one of the men said gruffly. He looked like a sergeant, even if he wasn't dressed like one.

  "Good evening," Valentine answered. "I'm a day late and a dollar short, story of my life. I was supposed to deliver a packet to the General or his most immediate subordinate. Looks like he pulled out."

  "Yep, you're about eight hours late of a done deal. Don't know about a General, but that Twisted Cross bunch were here. I understand they burned out three whole brands in just two nights. There was some orders came through, and they left."

  "Hell. To where?"

  "How should we know? Those guys are damn close-mouthed. They gave me the shakes, I can tell you that."

  "I know the feeling," Valentine said, honestly enough.

  "They said they'd be back. Not that I'd recommend you waiting. Some snafu out west with the goat-ropers. Bank on this, though, when they do come back, it's going to be with enough guns to plant every last cowboy out there. Not that it's any blood outta my veins."

  "Mind if I help myself to some coffee? I have to be moving on back, then."

  "No, go ahead. It's old, but it's hot."

  Valentine poured himself some of the acorn-and-hazelnut swill. He missed Duvalier's stolen coffee.

  "Hey, son, if you want to take a real break, in the back room we have a nice little piece of runaway. If she's over seventeen, I'll eat my hat. They found her family by the river two days ago, and I sort of inherited her from a buddy of mine who drives a squad. Spooks got her parents. You're free to take a turn."

  Valentine took a step over to the doorway and peered in. The other soldier stepped over to his NCO and whispered, "Don't like the look of him, Bud." Not that a whisper mattered to Valentine's ears.

  Valentine tossed down the rest of the coffee. "No, but thanks for the offer. I'd just get all sleepy, and I have some riding to do." He walked up to the sergeant, putting his hands in his pockets. "Let's see, I've got a tin of Indian tobacco in here somewheres, and if you'd be willing to swap a—"

  He lashed out in an upward swipe, fighting claws on his fingertips reducing the sergeant's eyes to red jelly. With his left hand, Valentine raked the other Trooper across the face, opening four furrows to the bone from his ear to his nose. As the sergeant staggered backwards, palms to his bloody face, Valentine kicked over the cot holding one sleeping Trooper.

  The other rose in time to have Valentine almost sever his head from his shoulders.

  Valentine slipped off the claws and grabbed a rifle from the wall, aiming it at the soldier rising from the overturned bunk. The hammer came with an impotent click. Misfire or unloaded—he reversed his grip and laid the man out with a swing the Jack was too slow to duck. He struck the other Trooper solidly over the head, breaking the stock at the grip. The Trooper fell to the floor, dead or senseless.

  Valentine finished the grisly work, killing the wounded with his parang. He took a pump-action shotgun from the rack, made sure it was loaded, and crossed to the sandbagged window. There was no sign of the sentry; he had either run or was crouched somewhere, covering the door.

  Keeping below the windows, Valentine set the shotgun carefully next to the door, picked up one of the dead Troopers, and launched him through the window. Glass shattered, and he heard a shot. Valentine burst through the door, shotgun at the hip, and saw the sentry standing over the body, pointing
his gun at the prone figure. Valentine's first shot caught him in the shoulder, and the second load of buckshot tore off part of the man's head.

  The quarter horse was dancing in fear, pulling at the bench he had tied it to. Valentine calmed the animal, retrieved his gun and sword, and went inside.

  The girl, the object of all this death, was in the bare little back room. She huddled in a corner, wearing only her fear and a ratty blanket. Two large brown eyes stared out at him from under a tangle of almost-black hair. She screamed when she saw Valentine take a step into the room, but he lowered his gun and spread his hands, palms out.

  "My name is David. I'm not going to hurt you." He took another step toward her.

  "No!" she shrieked, closing her eyes and turning her chin to the wall.

  He stopped. "Sorry, this isn't much of a rescue. You're going to have to do all the work. Do you like horses? Do you know how to ride?"

  "Ride?" It was only a whisper, but it had hope in it.

  "Yes, ride. Ride away from here, on a horse that can run all night."

  "Away from here?" she said, a little more loudly.

  "Now you're getting the idea. Do you want something to eat, some water?"

  "No ... I'd like to be away from here. Like now."

  "Get dressed. Take some blankets."

  Valentine returned to the room and looked out on the intersection, if two unused roads sprouting sunflowers from the cracks could still be called an intersection.

  The girl had seen enough. He threw bedding and jackets over the dead eyes of the Troopers and returned to the back room.

  "Are they dead?" she asked.

  "Are who dead?"

  "The Authorities. They came in the night and took mem. Took them for-forever."

  "Who, your parents?"

  She nodded, tears reawakening in her eyes.

  "Yes, little sister, the Authorities are dead."

  She walked out of the room, the blanket draped over her skinny frame like a poncho, in a torn pair of pants and some thick military-issue socks. "Wow," she said with a sniffle, looking at the corpses.

  Valentine took her out to the horse. "I want you to ride on this road, straight as an arrow. I don't think you'll see any trucks, but if you do, hide. Find some people who have lots of cows and wagons—you got that?"

  "Cows and wagons, sure."

  "You know how to take care of horses, right? I've never seen a teenage girl who couldn't do it better than any man alive. Now that I think of it, I never did name this guy. I guess you'll have to do it."

  She patted the big horse on the neck, making friends. "Yes, sir. He sure is a big one. I think I'll call him Two Tall. He has two stockings, you see?"

  "When you reach the cows and wagons, find someone called a Wagonmaster. Tell the Wagonmaster that you need to get to the Eagles, and they'll help you. Are you okay with that?"

  "Wagonmaster. Eagles. Sure."

  "There's a woman with the Eagles who just lost a lot of people to the Authorities. She'll look after you. Now what road are you going to follow?" He asked, taking his pack down from the horse but leaving the food and water.

  "This one," she said.

  "Any questions, little sister?"

  She climbed onto the saddle with the agility of a monkey, a skinny young girl in the saddle of a very big horse. She pulled back on the bit and turned Two Tall. The excited horse sidestepped; she knew how to neck-rein.

  The girl's eyes followed the road into the night, confidence rather than fear on her face, and then turned down to Valentine. Her eyebrows furrowed. "Who are you?"

  Valentine wondered himself sometimes. He adjusted her stirrups as she looked at the dead Trooper lying in the street.

  "I'm the one who comes in the night for the Authorities."

  * * *

  The rail terminus turned out to be a treasure trove of equipment abandoned by the hastily departed Twisted Cross. Valentine found the Troopers' pickup truck, a heavy-framed conglomeration of dirty windows under wire grids, wooden cargo dividers in the bed of rusting bodywork over a double axle. But the mechanical heartbeat within the diesel cylinders was still strong. He examined the engine, added motor oil, and loaded the bed with food and fuel, all the while keeping his ears open for approaching patrols.

  The Jacks had either stolen from or been equipped by the Twisted Cross. There were stenciled crates everywhere. He read the labels using the light from Ryu's stone. It fit easily in his palm, allowing him to shine it this way and that. He found a case of grenades and another of thermite bombs. The aluminum-ferric oxide mix, when ignited, burned hot enough to weld metal, and was a favorite incendiary device of the more destructive-minded Quislings. He loaded up with maps, guns, and ammunition from the dead "garrison" and got behind the wheel—looking through a newly cleaned windscreen and the armored wire grid over it.

  As he drove—not very well at first, he was inexperienced with such contraptions—he tried to get to know the ancient truck as he would a horse.

  Valentine would never know it, but his slow drive through Northeast Nebraska became the stuff of local legend. He wanted to avoid any chance of encountering either patrols or hunting Reapers, so he stayed well clear of the Number One's territory north of Lincoln. He crawled along on the backest of back roads through an area claimed by Kurian, Grog, and Man. He stopped at the occasional lonely homestead, trading guns and boxes of ammunition for a meal and a night's rest.

  The residents at each stop asked no questions of him, but were eager to tell him about their problems. He cleared out a nest of Harpies that were plaguing a little bottomland settlement from the old college at Wayne by burning their roost, and ambushed some armed ex-Trooper thugs who prowled in a two-vehicle convoy as they camped at night.

  He killed one of the deserters as he went to relieve himself in a gully and returned in his hat and shot the others before they could rise.

  He finally gave away the truck from Broken Bow to a co-op of families in the picturesque country north of Blair. On his legs again, he proceeded afoot into the ruins of Omaha.

  Omaha was a burnt-out husk. The outskirts of the city were falling apart, the inner regions a charred and collapsed wreck, and everything south of the city between Council Bluffs and Papillion flattened by the nuclear air and ground bursts designed to knock out the old Strategic Air Command base at Bellevue. He planned to move around the edge of the ruins, perhaps along the old I-680 line, when Fate decided to lay down one of the face cards that She sometimes used to change his life.

  Chapter Nine

  Omaha, September: The Old World transportation hub set in the wide, wooded valley of the Missouri is a sad shadow if its former self. The skeleton of the Woodman building looks out over smashed walls and collapsed roofs, where people and commerce once thrived. Like its sister St. Louis, farther down the wide Missouri, Omaha proper is now the breeding ground for assorted Grogs and human scoundrels. The city and its surrounding lands were deeded to the Grog tribes in exchange for their help during the Overthrow, and the Grogs have shaped it to their taste. Control over the vital communications lines passed to the Quislings in Council Bluffs, who oversee the railroad bridges and the river traffic. On the western shores, the nineteenth-century brick buildings of the Old Market are now home to an assortment of human smugglers, traders, and plug-uglies plying perhaps the second-oldest profession—that of getting goods into the hands of those with the ability to pay. But even that nest of vipers just south of what's left of Heartland Park now thinks about relocating to a new city; there have been stories of fighting throughout the city between the Grogs and tall, well-armed men. The city is being cleared of its Grogs.

  Which would be fine with the smugglers. But the recent destruction of a barge full of contraband and the death of its entire crew have the Old Market gangs worried. The Quislings always winked at the trade that supplies them with a few luxuries from other parts of the country, the Grogs in the ruins depend on them for weapons, and since the Freeholders are too far
away to go to such lengths just to burn a few barrels of rum and brandy, they are forced to wonder if they have also been selected for destruction.

  * * *

  Someone with a plan is making a power play for the city, and playing for keeps.

  He was on the northwest side of the city, near one of those multilevel, indoor shopping centers of the Old World. Now the cement structure was black and green and hollow as a diseased tooth. It reeked of Harpies from a half mile off, so he avoided it.

  Valentine wanted to make time, so he walked well out in the open, intimidating-looking gun over his shoulder, sweating freely under the heat of the September sun. He pushed through the green chaos of what had been either a golf course or a park and moved out onto a series of parking lots in the midst of being reclaimed by forest, with the overgrowth-dripped roof of the mall in the western distance.

  He came upon an east-west road, no more or no less clear than any of the others he had crossed, littered with the rusting ruins of weather-beaten cars, many with small ter-rariums growing in the sheltered detritus within, like a series of rust-colored planters. But he picked up a battlefield odor—flesh rotting in the sun.

  He followed the smell and saw stains, recent but faded to brown, splashed on a car, and his nose located the fresh, overripe smell of bodies in the afternoon heat. A little farther down, Harpies, the snaggletoothed, ugly, bowlegged, and bat-armed Grogs that Valentine despised from his earliest days in the Free Territory, lay dead on the road and tossed atop cars.

  Among their broken forms he found a huge fallen backpack—far too large to be carried by a Harpy, even on its feet, in the road. It was fashioned out of wood and skins, grafted on a core of what looked like a tube-steel frame of a kitchen chair, clearly homemade but showing a great deal of delicate craftsmanship in the numerous leather laces and braces. Obviously some Harpies had survived the encounter with the backpack-wearer, for it was empty.

  Curious for some reason, Valentine tried to read the story of the battle from the placement of the bodies. The Harpies first attacked their victim in the middle of the road, judging from the two that lay dead to the east with bullet holes. His restless mind welcomed the challenge; he got on his hands and knees to find discarded shell casings. Their victim tried to make it to the trees Valentine had just emerged from, killing one on the way by tearing a leathery wing, breaking its neck, and throwing it into a car. He was strong, whoever he was. And tall—the Harpy had been thrown through the sedan's sunroof. Around the fallen pack, there was more dried blood, an increasingly heavy trail that became a torrent as it reached the broken windows of an old McDonald's. Valentine saw a final dead flier, but nothing else, in the stripped-out lobby of the restaurant.