Cold Allies

by Patricia Anthony

  The dress hung on Mrs. Parisi, of course, because Mrs. Parisi, unlike her fat sow of a roommate, had been careful to keep her figure. Glancing in the dresser mirror, she saw that the grape Kool-Aid color didn’t flatter her, either.

  In her roommate’s purse she found a driver’s license made out to a Sally Glenndarning. A Discover, a Visa, and a MasterCard. And Sally had left one hundred and thirty-five dollars in her wallet, a dreadful temptation for the hospital help.

  Putting Sally’s thick wallet back in the purse, she slung the awful, clashing leatherette bag over her shoulder and tiptoed to the door.

  Mrs. Parisi had always been a meticulous planner. She’d wanted to make her move all evening, but knew she should hold out until four.

  By three in the morning the body processes started to creep. Eyelids became heavy, the heart slowed. Between three and four, most people who were going to die peacefully quit breathing. The live ones, though, were sleepy at three and comatose an hour later.

  Peering out, she saw one agent asleep in his chair a few feet down the hall. The other was nowhere to be seen.

  Scrunching up her feet to keep them from flopping out of the oversized sandals, Mrs. Parisi walked to the stairs. She limped down three flights and came out in the lobby. No one, not even the uniformed guard, watched her leave.

  She walked three long blocks before she found a pay phone. Using Sally’s AT&T card, she dialed Tad Ellis in Maryland.

  “Huh? What?” Tad said sleepily, catching the phone on the third ring.

  “Wake up and listen.”

  Mrs. Parisi heard a rustling on the other end of the line. Probably Tad’s bedcovers. “Linda?” he asked in a mumble.

  “Yes. Now listen carefully. I want you to go out and rent me a car. Better yet, a van.”

  Tad was awake enough now to cough. As with most heavy smokers, it was the thing he most wanted to do upon arising. In the middle of his hacking fit he managed to say, “But it’s four o’clock in the morning.”

  “Go to National Airport. They rent cars at all hours there. Bring money, Tad. At least a thousand. Go to as many ATMs as you have to.”

  “It’s not the ATM,” Tad said with a yawn. “It’s the card that determines the credit limit. I could go to one A TM and get as much as I wanted.”

  “Oh, Is that right, dear?” she asked with counterfeit admiration for the boy’s fiscal acumen. There was nothing Mrs. Parisi loathed more than being corrected; and so to teach Tad a memorable lesson in manners, she added, “Then perhaps you’d better make it two thousand. I’ll take a cab to—” She thought for a moment. “The Lincoln Memorial. You meet me there.”

  Yes, Mrs. Parisi decided. The Lincoln Memorial. That should suit Tad’s clichéd sense of adventure perfectly.

  “Are you listening, Tad?”

  “Jesus, Linda. Can’t this wait till nine?”

  “Tad,” she told him somberly. “Army Intelligence is after me. They want to take me to Spain. Do you hear what I’m saying, dear? To the war front. They’ll make me tell them all I know.”

  “Oh, my God,” he breathed, and Mrs. Parisi knew that not only was Tad fully awake at last but she had hit all the right paranoia buttons. “Drugs. Torture. They’ll get everything out of you.”

  ‘That’s right,” she agreed, feeling more than a bit foolish standing in Sally Glenndarning’s absurd tent dress and grossly wide sandals. “You must help me, Tad.” Then she added darkly, “Or the Eridanians won’t understand.”

  CENTRAL ARMY HOSPITAL, BADAJOZ, SPAIN

  Dr. Rita Beaudreaux lifted her head from the microscope and rubbed her blurred eyes. Beside her lay the slides from the hole in the sternum. The hole had parted the cells so neatly, they were stacked like boxes in a warehouse. Nothing-no laser, no scalpel, nothing—could have made such a neat incision.

  The sound of the door opening behind her brought her head around in a snap and set her heart racing as though she was afraid she’d see something supernatural there. It was only Lieutenant Colonel Martinez. The short, swarthy officer had his hands stuck into the pockets of his camouflage jacket, and it didn’t look as though he was expecting a salute. “Hi, Rita,” he said. “It’s late.”

  She grunted in reply, her mind still on the slides. Martinez slumped down in one of the hard-backed, vinyl covered chairs. “You’ve found that the cellular structure of the hole in the chest is undamaged,” he said.

  She stared at the slides in idiotic disbelief. The hour was so late and she was so tired that she wondered for a moment if she had already told him. They might have had an entire conversation she’d forgotten.

  “There have been other injuries like that,” he explained.

  “We had another pathologist studying them, too.”

  “Other injuries?” she asked, bringing her head up so quickly that her vision swam. “What caused this?”

  Martinez’s Aztec features creased into an embarrassed half-smile. Hispanic, but he was at least three shades darker than she was. “Aliens,” he said.

  Had she not seen the seriousness in his eyes, she might have laughed.

  “Look,” he told her, “I know you’re not much of a soldier. None of our Reserve or Guard doctors are. You people don’t take orders well.” He laughed.

  “But aliens?” she asked, grinning. He was an affable sort, the lieutenant colonel. He’d had to adapt to a bunch of subordinates who habitually reminded him, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, that they were not only better educated than he but better paid. There were times Rita felt sorry for him.

  “Aliens. I’m sending you to Lerida to study them.”

  She blinked, thinking at first that she hadn’t understood him or that he was talking about some other Lerida, one in Portugal or northern France. “The Lerida near the Pyrenees?”

  “That’s right. General Lauterbach wants a pathologist to view the bodies in situ. I’ve assigned you a platoon and given you a veteran lieutenant, Helen Dix, Look, Rita, I know you’ll take this the right way: Don’t pull rank on her. If Dix gives you a suggestion, don’t stop and ask why. Don’t argue with her as you do with me. There won’t be time for that.” His broad-cheeked face was pulled down in sympathetic lines.

  “God almighty, colonel! They’re shooting people out there!” Fear made her tone harsher than she’d intended, and Martinez paled. She felt an immediate regret. Throughout her life the lash of her tongue had driven away those she cared for.

  “You’ll be under fire at times, yes,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm and soothing, the way doctors did when giving a patient bad news. “But Dix is a superb field lieutenant. Keep your head down, and she’ll get you out of trouble.”

  Rita took a calming breath to keep from offending the likable Martinez again. But she was angry, angrier at the Army bureaucracy than she had ever been at the enemy. “Surely you have somebody in the regulars to send.”

  He patted the air with his hand—a suggestion, not an order—to keep her protests in check. “It wasn’t my decision. It was General Lauterbach’s. He likes you. He has confidence in you.”

  She jerked her head away and glared at the microscope.

  “If he likes me so much,” she said, “why is he sending me out to die?”

  THE PYRENEES

  Gordon had driven the CRAV far. The Arab Hind searching for him was a couple of miles back. He could hear its motor noise, a distant grumble on the night wind. His rear engine compartment blanketed by mud to escape infrared, Gordon took a short break.

  He dozed with his eyes open, a trick that CRAV operators learned quickly. Close your eyes for more than thirty seconds, and the robot would shut itself off.

  Gordon was in a half-sleep now. The liquid sound of the stream was lulling. His night vision had automatically cut in as the sun set, and the boulders on the other side of the
stream were fuzzy greenish lumps.

  A bird roused him from sleep by its sharp, startling shriek. A few minutes later, a deer came down to drink, and Gordon moved his head to watch it. After the deer left, a misty rain began to fall.

  When he caught sight of the glow coming up the ravine, Gordon stiffened, believing at first that the Arab platoon had finally found him.

  It was Rover.

  The light floated happily toward him over the rocks like a dumb, friendly dog.

  “Go away,” he whispered.

  Rover stopped, hovered. The sound of the helicopter changed from an indistinct growl to a quiet flutter.

  “Get the fuck away!” Gordon hissed.

  Reaching out, Gordon grabbed a nearby tree limb and pulled it over the front of his unit. A few yards from him Rover was bobbing up and down in place, a balloon at the end of a tether.

  Whop-whop. WHOP-WHOP. The Hind was just above Gordon, coming in low over the trees. Suddenly the north side of the stream lit up in sickly shades of night-vision green.

  Above Gordon’s head came a sound as if something heavy and soft had fallen from a height, the noise of an ATGM leaving its tube. Instinctively, Gordon shut his eyes. A second later the missile hit with a comic book KA-BLAM that set Gordon’s ears ringing. Mud and small stones pattered on the CRAV’s exposed hull.

  When Gordon opened his eyes, he saw that both lights were gone. The clear stream was making a waterfall into a newly dug crater.

  THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The rising sun turned the Reflecting Pool what Mrs. Parisi might have decided was a charming color had she not been waiting so impatiently.

  The morning had turned from peach to gold by the time the publisher pulled up in an electric-powered Chevy van and stopped.

  Tad was chain-smoking. His little effeminate face was pinched. “Oh my God, Linda,” he blurted. “Are you all right?”

  “Did you bring the money?” she asked.

  He handed her a thick envelope. She opened it and peered inside: the tractable boy had brought all two thousand. The bills, she saw at a glance, were newish but not stridently so.

  “What are you going to do?” Tad wailed.

  Glancing up at his disheveled blond hair, she twisted her mouth in disgust. The least the man could have done was make himself presentable. She wondered if he had rented the van with his hair all stuck up like that. “Well, I’m leaving, dear.”

  “For where?”

  “I think it’s best you don’t know. You might inadvertently tell them.”

  Tad’s pale-blue eyes darted toward the traffic on Constitution Avenue. “Oh, God,” he said under his breath. “They’ll get me, too, won’t they. No telling what I’ll say under torture.”

  ‘That’s right.” She handed him the purse. “Now listen,” she told him. “I want you to take this back to Fairfax Hospital and give it to a Sally Glenndarning. Tell her I am so appreciative of the loan of her dress, and that I hope she won’t file charges.”

  Tad’s blue eyes widened. For an instant he actually seemed intelligent and awake. “File charges? Oh, God. What about the van?”

  “You should probably pay for it, dear. That’s what the Eridanians have told me.”

  “Okay,” he said glumly. “I rented the nicest they had.

  It’ll be expensive,” he added.

  “Tad, if you’ll remember, the Eridanians have no concept of money. And you mustn’t complain. They can sense that, you know.”

  Still morose, Tad nodded.

  “But, just to show I love and trust you, I’m leaving you my dog.”

  She jerked open the door pointedly. After some hesitation, he clambered out.

  “Can you drop me off at National?” he asked so pitifully that she was almost inclined to take him. But it was best, she knew, to get on the road early, before the heavy traffic began.

  Climbing into the seat, she slammed the door and looked out at him. Really, the boy needed a comb and a few hours more sleep. “Why don’t you take a cab,” she suggested, keying the ignition.

  The van started with a soft hum. The dash readouts came on, the charge light reading FULL. She drove off, leaving Tad standing in the parking lot, staring forlornly after her.

  As Mrs. Parisi sped over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, she rolled down the window to blow some of the cigarette stench out of the car.

  Tad was so silly. If he had a brain in his head, which he didn’t, he would know she was headed west. There was a network of fans out west. Wealthy fans. Someone would certainly be kind enough to rent her a condo. There would be plenty of spending money. And maybe, if it ever bothered to snow decently again, she could even go skiing. She’d heard there were good slopes around Colorado Springs.

  NEAR CALHAN, COLORADO

  Jerry Casey sorted through the blankets and clothes in the back of the pickup. When he was finished, he went through everything carefully again, a knot of horror tightening in his belly.

  His food and water were gone.

  It was hot, and already his mouth felt cottony. To the east the sun was peeking over the flats, making a dull, glinting mirror of the sand.

  Yards away in the camp, cook fires had already started, and the heady smell of coffee mingled with the stench of old urine and shit. Grabbing his cup, he walked to the nearest tent. Just outside the flap, he saw, a hollow-eyed woman was sewing a child into a shroud. The body’s small legs were covered, but the face was still exposed. The corpse’s skin was a sickly gray, the same color as the tattered sheet she would be burying him in.

  The woman glanced up. Her eyes were like glinting seepage at the bottom of a shadowy well. “Something to drink?” she said.

  Her question confused him. Then he realized she saw his cup. “Yes, ma’ am,” he told her. “Somebody done stole my water.”

  Her face was all dry cliffs and arroyos, the flesh so thin he could see the bones underneath. A hard, desert floor of a face. “Got to watch what you drink around here. My kid didn’t,” she said furiously.

  See what happens? she might have shouted at her son if he could somehow still hear her. See what happens when you don’t do what you’re fold?

  The dry wind teased at the sheet, flapping it back and forth over the corpse’s neatly folded hands. The fluttering disturbed Jerry more than anything, because he knew the tickle of it was something only a dead person could stand. An almost overwhelming urge came over him to reach over and tuck the sheet in. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Get into everything, them kids,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

  “You come a long ways?” She was staring out over the desert now, rocking a little.

  “From Texas.”

  “We come from Oklahoma, but to them damned Colorado troopers we’re all Texas trash.”

  Jerry wanted to get away from the woman with the skull face. He couldn’t leave without saying something else, though. He didn’t remember his own Ma real clear, but he remembered the manners she had taught him. The only problem was, he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “You’re alone, I noticed. Young boy like you. Don’t seem right.”

  “My Pa died back on the road.”

  She looked down at her son and the winding sheet with mild surprise, as though she had forgotten he was dead. “Well, you’ll be wanting some water, most likely. Get you some of mine,” she offered, nodding her head toward the tent. “It’s boiled.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I sure do thank you.” Jerry turned away from the boy’s corpse and pulled open the tent flap. Two other children were sleeping inside. One little girl’s face was bone-dry, her cheeks high-colored, as though she had a fever.

  Quietly he made his way to a wash pan, di
pped his cup in the water and took a drink. The water tasted flat, the way all boiled water did. Without disturbing the children’s sleep, he made his way outside.

  The woman was still sewing.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jerry said again.

  The boy’s folded hands were disappearing into the sheet.

  Another few moments the face would be covered; and Jerry thought that when it was, it would be a good thing.

  She didn’t look up from her work. “You’re a good boy,” she said.

  THE PYRENEES, ABOVE BAGNERES-DE-LUCHON

  Colonel Wasef stared down into the streambed at the destruction his men had wrought. The action of the water, he noticed, had already smoothed the sharp edges of the crater, so that the mistake seemed to have been made years before, and the earth had nearly forgotten.

  “Qasim,” his captain and childhood friend began in apology. “My brother—”

  Wasef waved the apology away tiredly. “I’ll assure General Sabry that there was no way for you to know. Are you sure you hit it?”

  “The helicopter pilot is positive. He saw nothing get away.”

  Wasef looked at the small tread marks leading downstream. “Something did,” he grunted.

  He turned and saw Yussif pressing his lips together in chagrin. Yussif was such a pudgy-cheeked man that the gesture made him look like a scolded child. “Don’t do that,” Wasef told him.

  The captain’s expression altered to one of bewilderment, and Wasef laughingly explained, “Don’t make such a face. It is like when you were in school and the teacher called on you for the lesson.”

  Captain Mustafa grinned. A positive sign. It was hard, Wasef knew, to keep up the men’s morale. In Egypt, women and children were dying. Wasef had lost his own wife, Zahra, on the dusty march from the plagues in Sinnüris. But Yussif’s family had been in Cairo, he remembered. Surely they were safe.