I nodded, reluctantly. Marc Schneider had been a persistent pain in the ass ever since the bombs had fallen, despite meeting near-total rejection by the remainder of the townspeople. He’d tried to dominate the Constitutional Convention, tried to have himself appointed to higher office than anyone felt he deserved, and protested the introduction of ‘communist’ ideas like having a communal kitchen and even sharing some of the chores of trying to build a new farming system for us all. He had even protested the use of his property for farming purposes, despite the fact that without it, we would all be dead, including him. He was the typical loner, the person who didn’t fit into the surrounding society…and his own society, the one that had given him wealth and status, no longer existed. A stronger man than Schneider would still have had problems coming to terms with his new status…and Schneider had the encouragement of a shrewish wife. It occurred to me, unpleasantly, that he and Daniel had a lot in common.
“He could have told them everything,” I agreed. Schneider might have been a gadfly, but he wasn’t actually stupid, just narrow-minded. He could have learned pretty much anything the Warriors wanted to know about the defences and gotten it out of Ingalls for them. It wasn't as if we had a system for monitoring what everyone was doing outside the town; hell, pretty much everyone had taken a turn at scavenging once or twice in a while. Schneider, I recalled now, had gone on prospecting missions every week. He’d even been lauded for some of the items he’d found while outside the town. “Fuck.”
And, I thought silently, if he is to blame for what happened to Summerville, even slightly, I won’t let him get away with it.
Mac was thinking ahead. “Do we arrest him or merely push him off a cliff or something?”
I winced. If we moved openly against Schneider, he would claim that his political enemies were trying to get rid of him, even though there was little reason for them to bother. Schneider might have put himself forward as a candidate, but unless I was much mistaken, he wasn't going to get many votes. The only way he’d win would be through the Martin Prince method, in which everyone was so convinced that the other guy would win that they all stayed home. That wasn't likely to happen in Ingalls, not with everyone watching the discussion like hawks. Still, it could turn into a political nightmare…
It got worse. The members of terrorist groups had been taught to claim that they were routinely tortured as soon as they were captured, regardless of the truth, just to cast doubt on the evidence. A full confession could be struck down just because of the merest suggestion of torture, even if the bastard had been treated with kid gloves all the way, and it was almost impossible to refute such claims. The media always loved it when the government looked bad and gleefully repeated the terrorist lies, but somehow the truth never got pushed forward. How could we convict Schneider based on Daniel’s confession? Any halfway competent lawyer could have cast doubt on it. Hell, Daniel himself might have been lied to by someone higher up in the Warrior hierarchy. He might have been primed with disinformation to confuse us.
But it rang true. If it had been disinformation, why not accuse someone more prominent, in a position to do much more harm than merely annoying a few people? What about accusing me, or Mac, or Walter, or…anyone? Why pick on the town outcast? I couldn’t see anyone disapproving of hanging him as quickly as possible, once we brought him to trial, and it certainly wouldn’t divide the community.
“We’ll go see him at first and see what he has to say for himself,” I said, grimly. It was possible that we could use Schneider for disinformation ourselves, but it would require some thinking and planning. If we could lure the Warriors into doing something stupid…
We went back through the prison and up to Richard’s office. “We’re going back to town,” I said, once we’d briefly discussed what had happened in the cell. Richard, oddly enough, had accepted the use of torture right from the start, although he had worked daily with even worse people. It reminded me how little compassion he’d shown for the prisoners we’d poisoned. “Keep Daniel secured and under guard, once Kit has finished with him. We’ll have to ask him more questions later.”
There was a new smell in the air as we drove back towards Ingalls, a hint of burning wood, perhaps from the Wood Gas stoves we’d set up. An engineer from Sweden had remembered the concept and, once we’d found it in a reference book, had constructed several of them to produce Wood Gas. It wasn't easy to use – it produced Carbon Monoxide at dangerous levels – but we had little choice. We’d also set up a Plasma Arc waste disposal system to produce power and other supplies. Wasn’t it amazing how much you could do without Washington peering over your shoulder all the time?
Brent passed us through the defences quickly, once the guards had searched the vehicles. The workers had expanded the level of defences enough – I hoped – that even a mass human wave attack would get hopelessly bogged down and torn to ribbons. We weren't interested in playing games either. The first sign of any vehicle and we’d hose it down with machine gun fire, just in case it was another truck bomb. If we were really lucky, we might even detonate it in front of their forces, instead of ours.
“Look, boss,” Mac said, pointing towards a shape hanging in the sky. “They’ve finally managed to get the balloon up in the air.”
I smiled. The hot air balloon design actually came from the Civil War, although it had been improved slightly by people with an extra hundred and fifty-odd years of experience with metals and plastics. It hung in the air, manned by three observers with binoculars, linked to the ground through a telephone cord. They could observe anyone approaching the town from a far distance – well, certainly any large groups of men or vehicles – and sound the alert. I just wished we had two of them. There would be an interruption in their observation when they were hauled down to change crews. After one embarrassing incident, no one even walked under the balloon.
“Yep,” I said, my mind elsewhere. “We’ll get far more warning this time.”
Marc Schneider’s house was on the north side of town, larger than he and his family actually needed, or had ever needed. It had been built by a merchant who’d lived in the town and been part of the community, but he'd lost it to the banks when he became overdrawn and it had been put up for sale. The townspeople had resented, fiercely, not being allowed to bid for it themselves, but there’d been no point in complaining. The banks could have outspent all of Ingalls if they so chose. It had been bought by a man who’d no background in country life and no desire to learn. He had thought that his position in the city gave him status and had been surprised to learn otherwise, and bitterly resented it. That, more than money or safety, might have been what had led him to betray us all.
“Ed,” he said, when he opened the door. He looked surprised to see us, but unafraid; he might well have jumped to the conclusion that I had arrived to beg him to join the new government. He’d probably got a ‘reluctant acceptance’ speech plotted out already. “What can I do for you?”
I suppose I should have handled it gently, but I was in a murderous mood. “In,” I said, and pushed him into his hallway. Mac followed and closed the door behind us. Somehow, I was unsurprised to see evidence of good living everywhere. “The game is up, traitor!”
Schneider paled. “How did you know?”
I carefully didn’t smile. If Schneider had tried to bluff it out, I would have found it hard to prove anything. Hearsay isn’t really enough these days, nor should it be. His confession, witnessed by myself and Mac, would be enough to convict him.
“The Warriors betrayed you and ratted you out,” I said, watching him carefully. It was just possible that he didn’t know who he was working for, although I couldn’t imagine who else he could think he was working for. Salem or another of the Principle Towns, perhaps? “They were quite happy to abandon you when they decided they didn’t need you anymore. Perhaps you thought they’d make you a priest, right? They’ve dropped you in the shit and you’re not going to get out of it!”
He w
ilted. I took him by the arm, dragged him into the sitting room, and thrust him into an armchair that looked as if it was a hundred years old. I would quite happily have reduced it to firewood. I wasn’t particularly impressed at all. It was just a good thing that his wife wasn't around. Chances were, she’d be unaware of his double life. I wouldn’t have trusted her with such knowledge…
“All right, now listen to me,” I said, firmly. “I can drag you out of here and put you on trial before the Town Meeting. They’ll listen to me and learn what you have done to them. When they’re finished, you’ll be lucky if you only get beaten to death by the crowd. Do you want that to happen?”
“…No,” he said, finally.
“Good,” I said. “Now, bearing in mind that I know most of the story already, tell me everything and I won’t hand you over to the mob. If you lie to me once, the deal’s off and you’re going to die. Talk.”
Schneider shook as he talked. “You kept rejecting me,” he said. “None of you would listen to me. You always thought that you knew best and never listened to me and…”
“Enough with the excuses,” I said, angrily. A man like Schneider would never blame himself for anything. Never mind the fact he knew little of use, never mind the fact that he expected to be amply rewarded for his time and effort, never mind the fact that he didn’t have a good history with the town, he was incapable of realising why he was being punished. Heinlein had once said that a man had to know why he was being punished before he was punished, but personally I was much less liberal. A man’s guilty; punish him, if only to ensure that justice was done. It’s not just about healing the guilty – something I tended to regard as impossible - but deterring further offenders in the future. “Stick to the facts. How did they make contact?”
“One of their representatives visited me after the Convention entered its third day,” Schneider said, slowly. I sighed in relief. At least the man hadn’t been a spy from Day One, even though that would have required pre-planning on a truly diabolical scale. “He’d seen how the Convention rejected me and offered me a position in a new government instead, telling me that I would be the Priest of Ingalls and all would bow down before me. He proved that he worked for the Prophet and told me that if I obeyed, I wouldn’t have to fear.”
I shuddered. “And you believed him?”
“What other choice did I have?” Schneider asked. “Would you have believed me if I had brought it to you?”
“Maybe,” I said. I would have believed him, wouldn’t? Or perhaps he was right and I would have regarded it as merely Schneider trying to gain more status in the community. It was just another road not taken. “What did they want from you?”
“Everything,” Schneider said, bitterly. Listening to him, it was all I could do not to jump on him and tear him apart. “They wanted everything from the number of guns in the town to maps of the defences. After the first contact, they demanded more and more and…I couldn’t stop giving it to them. I used to go out hunting for stuff and make contact with their people. Ed – Sheriff – I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” I said, feeling cold chills running down my spine. If the Warriors knew us that well…how long would it be before they attempted to crush us directly? They couldn’t leave us here for long; we might change all of the defences, or even uncover one of their other spies. “When were you meant to make the next contact with them?”
“In two days,” Schneider said. “They wanted an update on the defences and on the teams you’d been deploying to slow their advance.”
I nodded. That made a certain kind of sense. The leaders of the Warriors weren't idiots, after all, and given the terrain in West Virginia, a small number of teams could slow their advance significantly. Get in, land a heavy punch, and get out again. A handful of IEDs in the right places could make them very – very – paranoid about advancing up perfectly safe roads, let alone the interstate. A few cars pulled into a barrier would make them suspect the presence of ambushers…and, of course, the ever-present snipers. They’d hopefully be shitting themselves as they advanced towards Ingalls, fearful of every broken twig and ruined house. It was almost a pity that we’d done such a good job of clearing out the bandits.
My lips twitched wryly. No good deed goes unpunished…
“Right,” I said, thoughtfully. “This is what you are going to do for me. You will take the plans I will provide you with to them and ensure that they believe that they’re the real plans. You will take their instructions and return here, whereupon you will inform us at once of the nature of the instructions. Do you understand?”
He nodded, slowly. I believed that he would do his best to carry them out, if only because he was shit-scared of me, but it would be wise to offer the carrot along with the stick. A man like Schneider needed constant threats to keep him afraid, or his natural self-centred nature would reassert itself and push him into doing something stupid, like attempting to get back at me by warning the Warriors. It would be suicidal – the Warriors wouldn’t need him any longer – but somehow I doubt he was concerned about that. He'd have his mind consumed with thoughts of revenge. I had to offer him something he wanted desperately.
“If you succeed in this mission, and if you carry it out perfectly, I won't tell the people about your treason,” I offered. “You won’t be able to run for political office, or try to gain wealth and power dishonestly, but at least you’ll have your life and your wife. Try to betray me and believe me, you won’t last long enough to run to the Warriors. Do you understand?”
I reached forward, grasped him by the collar, and pulled him upwards. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, shaking. “I understand. I’ll do as you say. I won’t tell them anything. I won’t…”
“Good,” I said, pushing menace into my voice. Judging from the weakness in his legs, he was on the verge of fainting. I wouldn’t have cared, but it would have been hard to explain. “I’ll be watching you, Schneider. Do not let me down.”
I handcuffed him to the chair and we spent thirty minutes searching the house. I wasn't surprised to discover that Schneider had been keeping some items from his scavenging expeditions in his house, rather than showing them to the rest of the town, as we had all agreed upon right back at the start. It was an odd mixture of camping equipment, including some tiny stoves that would come in handy, preserved food and a surprising amount of artworks, all of which were effectively worthless at the moment. It was a mark of an unstable mind, I decided, to attach value to the worthless.
“Idiot,” I said, as I came downstairs. One of his hands was darkening as the handcuff cut off the circulation. He looked as if he was desperate to escape, but didn’t even dare speak. It was wise of him. I was in no mood to play games. “You could have gained all the status you wanted by showing off what you’d found. You could have been a big man though honest work…”
I shook my head. There was no point. “You have your orders, Marc,” I said, as I released him. “Fail me on this and you’ll be torn apart. Remember that. You’ll be torn apart by the mob.”
We left him there, whimpering to himself, and went to see to the defences. The attack could come at any moment, but I had an idea, from what the Warriors had asked their spy, of their timetable. Two days…
It was more than long enough to prepare a few surprises.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
No military force can be on alert 24/7.
-Ed’s Iron Law #45
“He betrayed us, then?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said, later that evening. It felt like bedtime, which was weird. I must be getting old. Either that, or I was getting used to sharing a bed with someone who was more than just a casual acquaintance. “He could have told them pretty much anything they wanted to know, everything about us and the defences. He must have warned them in advance that we were going to move down south to reinforce Summerville…”
Walter shook his head, one hand wiping his glasses on the side of his shirt. He looked
more like a schoolteacher than before, at least to my eyes; the task of governing an entire town was wearing heavily on him. He also looked older, but that was nothing new. We all looked older than we had been before the war. None of us had ever had to work so hard in our lives, even the veterans. I reminded myself, once again, that I had volunteered to join the Marines. No one had volunteered to survive the Final War.
“I can’t believe it,” Walter said, replacing his glasses on the end of his nose. “What was he thinking?”
I said nothing, remembering the attempts Schneider had made to justify himself. All of them, in my view, stemmed from his own inability to realise that the world had changed. His past occupation was no longer useful, so he had no choice, but to abandon everything he’d learned and move on to a new speciality. He’d resented that bitterly; ironically, he’d probably been one of the best scavengers we’d had. If he had developed that instead of making contact with the Warriors of the Lord…
But there was always someone who saw themselves as an outcast from society, or as a lone voice crying in the wilderness, or as someone who had been constantly shit on during their lives. Their insecurities might have had no basis on fact – I remembered how many of Moe’s victims had simply taken it and hated him silently – but they existed and a skilful spy could take advantage of them. Schneider had been groomed to serve as the perfect spy, promised control of Ingalls after the Warriors occupied it, and his own desire to be a Big Man had done the rest. I suspected that the Warriors had lied to him – Schneider was hardly a religious person – but he had believed otherwise. He probably hadn’t even thought that it might be a deception.
The Living Will Envy The Dead Page 34
