Winter Duty

by E. E. Knight

  Of course, in the city it was something else entirely. Urban Reapers were the trap-door spiders of many a ruined block, striking from a patch of overgrowth, a pile of garbage, or a crack in the ceiling. But he doubted these headhunters worked the cities. Too much law and order, even if the bad law and order of the KZ.

  He turned his senses to the camp, trying to get a sense of the rhythms of the headhunters.

  They were singing. Three of the men were passing a bottle, falling out and joining in the tune between swigs, taking turns improvising rhyming lyrics in old-style rap.

  The sentry sat in a tree overlooking the bowl-shaped field and soggy patch, within hallooing distance of the camp.

  The safety went back on the little .22, for now. Valentine guessed why they put the youth on watch. Young men had good eyesight, especially at twilight. He’d probably be relieved by a veteran for the late shift. The boy was alternately yawning and chewing on bits of long grass root, glancing back toward the camp for signs of his relief.

  Valentine balanced the chances of the young man doing something stupid against the possibility of using the kid to get into camp armed with some bargaining power. If Valentine just approached the poachers, they’d have him facedown in the dirt until they secured his weapons, at the very least.

  Valentine wormed his way up to the trunk from downwind, using a mixture of crawling and scuttling during the sentry’s frequent glances back to look for his relief.

  The relief sentry started his walk uphill to the lookout tree, holding a heavy, swaddled canteen by its strap.

  Valentine loosened his sword and pocketed the automatic, grateful that he hadn’t had to use it. He shifted to his submachine gun, double-checking the safety.

  The boy, anticipating his relief, clambered down from the scrub oak. Valentine slipped up behind.

  Valentine moved quickly, clapping a strong left hand over the kid’s mouth and elevating the kid’s wrist to his shoulder blade with the right.

  “Don’t crap yourself, kid. I’m not a Reaper. But I could have been. I want you to remember that when we get back to your campfire sing-along. I could have been. What’s your name?”

  “Trent. Sunday Trent,” the boy sqeaked.

  “Sunday? Like after Saturday?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Knock off the ‘sir,’ boy. I’m not some local trooper you have to polish. They call me the Last Chance.”

  Valentine couldn’t say why he picked the name. One of the Moondaggers had called himself that. An emissary sent to deliver threats and ultimatums, he hadn’t intimidated the Southern Command’s troops—the quickest way to get their backs up was to start making demands and informing them they were beat.

  Valentine thought of tying the kid’s hands—he had spare rawhide twine in a pocket, as it had lots of uses around camp—but settled for looping his legworm pick in the back of the boy’s pants and prodding him along with the haft. Less aggressive that way and it kept Valentine out of elbowing distance in case the boy made a gesture born more of desperation than inexperience.

  Being careful about others’ actions as much as your own was how you stayed alive on Vampire Earth.

  “Sunday, I need to talk to the boss of—What do you call yourselves, a gang?”

  “Easy Crew, sir. Blitty Easy’s Crew.”

  “Which one’s Blitty Easy?”

  “The one with the tall hat, sir.”

  Valentine thought of giving the kid a poke the next time he said sir.

  “Call me Chance, Sunday.”

  “The one with the hat, Chance bo—Chance.”

  The use of names was relaxing the kid a little.

  They met the relief sentry on the way, a man with no less than nine Old World jujus around his neck, a mixture of car manufacturer iconography and bandless watch faces. Valentine recognized a Rolex and Bulova dangling from gold chains. Valentine remembered some of the decorations as Gulf Coast Reaper wards.

  “Keep your mouth shut, Sunday,” Valentine said.

  “That watch post has blind spots right and left,” Valentine called. He kept Sunday Trent between himself and the sentry as they passed.

  The relief looked distinctly unrelieved at the news.

  “Hollup!” the relief called belatedly.

  The camp was contracting like a turtle tucking in its limbs for the night. One of the poachers guided a captive to a tent, his hand firmly on the back of her neck. She didn’t struggle—a pregnancy was a guarantee of life in the Kurian Zone, both as proof of fertility and for the sake of the new member of the human herd.

  The gunmen stood up at Valentine’s approach, swapping eating utensils for guns and clubs.

  “Easy now, Easy Crew,” Valentine muttered. “Just relax, Sunday. All I want to do is talk a bit.”

  Sunday led him into camp and people gathered, naturally curious about the stranger. Weapons were readied but not pointed.

  Sunday pointed out the leader of the headhunters.

  Valentine had to admire the big man’s sartorial taste. From the dirt pattern on his extremities, Valentine surmised he drove the ATV. Valentine hadn’t seen a beaver hat since New Orleans at least, if not Oklahoma, and this one had a lush shine to it that spoke of either recent purchase or tender care.

  “Careful, tha, with that gun, stranger,” Blitty Easy said. Everything on him looked bright and expensive, from the silver tips on his shoes to the diamonds fixed to the skin in the place of one shaved eyebrow.

  “I’m here to talk, not shoot,” Valentine said.

  “Even shooting off your mouth can be dangerous around me, Injun Man,” Blitty Easy said. “What’s the matter, we grab somebody’s heir? You the big tough man they sent to get him back. No, her back.”

  “I think bigger than that. I want the whole bunch. Leave the bonds. I want to present them wrapped up like a big bouquet.”

  Blitty Easy laughed. “You talk pretty big for a man with nothing but a dumb kid in his sights. You can shoot him if you like. Serves him right for letting himself get snuck up on tha in that tree.”

  “What direction you going, Sunday?” Valentine asked, poking the kid in the lumbar with the barrel of his gun.

  “South. Mem—”

  “Shuddup, Sunday,” Blitty Easy said.

  “South,” Valentine said. “Good. You won’t have to circle around to avoid us; you can just keep on track.”

  Blitty Easy stood up, thick legs holding up a stomach that jutted out like a portable stove. Not flab, exactly, but the heavy center of a powerful man.

  Valentine walked Sunday around the circle of onlookers. Each took a step back as he approached and held his right fist cocked so his brass ring was at eye level. The circle of men and guns around him widened and spread and thinned as though he were rolling dough.

  They eyed the submachine gun at his hip. Carrying a quality firearm like that openly marked one as either a tool of the Kurian Order or someone operating outside it. Easy’s Crew maintained their well-armed independence by living on the fringes of the masquerade of a civilization beneath the towers.

  Deadly as his weapon was, some would say the brass ring on his finger was the deadlier weapon. It was the mark of Kurian favor. A wearer was owed respect, for the fear and favor of the Kurians hung about the ring’s owner like a king’s mantle.

  “Who do you think you are, threatening my crew?” Blitty Easy barked.

  Valentine held his brass ring high. “Who am I? A man tested by the only law that lasts—that of the jungle. I speak three Grog dialects and have a foot pass for half the tribes west of the Tennessee and Ohio. I’ve watched Twisted Cross tubs open, ridden the cannonball St. Louis to LA, and flown with Pyp’s Circus. I’ve sailed the Caribbean and the Great Lakes and Puget Sound, humped hills in Virginia and Baja, tickled lip from Albuquerque to Xanadu. I’ve won a brass ring and the power to put you all in unmarked graves. I’m your last chance, Blitty Easy.”

  Easy had a good poker face. “Why you bothering with us, then, Mr.
Big Shot?”

  “The Old Folks are interested in Kentucky right now. They don’t want to see another state fall to the guerrillas. We’re on our way to talk some sense into the more friendly locals. I thought my goons would have to forage for heartbeats, but you went out rounding up strays and did the job for us.”

  “We get paid for them?”

  Valentine would have happily bought the lives, had he or his column had anything the brigands would accept.

  “Payment is you just hand over your collection without going in the bag with them. My Old Man likes keeping brimful on aura when traveling, and they’re not particular.”

  “He’s bluffin’ , ” someone called from behind Valentine.

  Valentine whirled. “Kiss my ring and check it out. I don’t mind.”

  A brass ring on its rightful wearer accumulated enough bio-electric charge to tingle when you touched your lips to it. Valentine found the sensation similar to licking a battery. His brass ring, fairly won in Seattle, was legitimate enough, and he usually kept it with some odds and ends in a little velvet bag along with a few favorite hand-painted mahjong pieces. Though he’d lost his taste for the game long ago, they still made useful tokens for sending messages to people who knew him. The only tarnish about the ring was the mark it had left on his conscience.

  Valentine could tell the crew was impressed, even if Blitty Easy still looked suspicious.

  “Or you want to test me some other way?” Valentine said, drawing his blade.

  “Regular Sammy Rye, with that blade,” Blitty Easy said.

  “Steel without the talent to back it up’s just so much butter knife,” a man who smelled like cheap gin said, two younger versions of himself flanking him.

  Valentine inflated his lungs and let out an unearthly wail. An imitation of a Reaper scream had worked once before, a dozen years ago, several hundred miles north in the hills of western Illinois. It might work here.

  Movement and a bullet crack.

  Valentine’s reflexes moved ahead of his regrets.

  The camp exploded into noise and motion, like a tray of ice cubes dumped into a fryer.

  He knocked Sunday flat.

  No rhyme or reason to the rest. The fat was in the fire and he had to move or burn. A hand near him reached for a chest holster to his right and he swung his sword and struck down in a sweeping blow. A shotgun came up and he jumped as it went off, spraying buckshot into the men behind him, turning one’s cheek into red mist and white bone. A poacher put a banana-clipped assault rifle to his shoulder, and then his hair lifted as though an invisible brush had passed through it, and he went down, a thoughtful look on his face as he toppled.

  Valentine rolled free, dropping his sword and reaching for the little submachine gun he’d carried across Kentucky twice as he ran out of the firelight. With a shake, the wire-frame folding stock snapped into place and he put it to his shoulder.

  A bullet whizzed past, beating him into the night.

  The poachers had pitched their tents in a little cluster, and he moved through them. A shaggy back with a bandolier—he planted a triangle of bullets in it between the shoulder blades, moving all the while, zigzagging like a man practicing the fox-trot in triple time.

  Tent canvas erupted and Valentine felt hot buckshot pass just ahead.

  Move—shoot, stop, and reload. Move—shoot, shoot; move—shoot, stop, and reload.

  Blitty Easy’s Crew was shooting at anything that moved, and Valentine was only one of several figures running through the night.

  Turned out the twelve and then some could be taken without too much of a risk.

  These weren’t soldiers; they were brigands, used to preying on the weak. They popped their heads up like startled turkeys to see where the reports of the sniper fire came from and received a bullet from Dorian’s rifle. Pairs of men moved together instead of covering each other—Valentine cut two down as they ran together toward the machine gun pointed impotently at the sky.

  Valentine saw a figure with long hair running, dragging a child. Please, Dorian, don’t get carried away.

  There was only one headhunter Valentine wanted to be sure of. He wasn’t that hard to find; he made noise like an elephant as he ran through the Kentucky briars and brambles.

  Thick legs pumping like pistons, Easy made wide-spaced tracks for timber.

  A brown-coated figure rose from the brush as he swept past. She executed a neat thrust under his shoulder blades.

  The fleeing figure didn’t seem to notice the quick poke. Blitty Easy pounded out three more steps and then pitched forward with a crash.

  Duvalier kicked the corpse and then waded through the brush to Valentine, sniffing the beaver hat suspiciously as she passed.

  “That was a good piece of killing,” Duvalier said, wearing that old fierce grin that made Valentine wonder about her sanity. She lifted a coattail on one of the bodies and wiped off her sword.

  An engine gunned to life and another shot rang out. The engine puttered on, but he didn’t hear a transmission grind into gear.

  “This might be nice for winter.” She tried the hat on. The size made the rest of her look all that much more waifish, a little girl playing dress-up. “Smells like garage gunpowder and hair oil, though.”

  They covered each other as they inspected the camp. The only one left alive was Sunday. He looked around at the bodies, shaking like a leaf.

  “They said it was good money,” Sunday said. “Easy work. Easy work, that’s what they said. Easy crew. Easy work. Get rich, bringing in rabbits.”

  Duvalier put her hand on her sword hilt, but Valentine took her elbow.

  “He’s just shaken up. We can let him go.”

  Valentine turned on the boy. “You load up a couple of those llamas and go home to mother, boy. Kentucky’s harder than it looks.”

  They circled around away from the bodies and checked the trailers and the prisoner pen.

  “We’re turning you loose,” Valentine said to the captives. “We’re heading west, all the way across the Mississippi. Any of you want to go that way is welcome to file along behind under Southern Command protection.”

  A few gasped. One young girl, no more than six, lifted one chained-together leg as though asking for assistance with a fouled shoelace.

  “There’s got to be a bolt cutter in one of those trucks,” Valentine said to Duvalier. “See if you can find it, Smoke.”

  He turned away and flipped the maplight switch on one of the running trucks, a high clearance pickup with the cab top removed and replaced by an empty turret ring. One of Easy’s Crew leaned back behind the wheel. If you looked at the side of his head that wasn’t sprayed all over the hood of the open-topped truck, it appeared as though he was sleeping.

  “You want us bringin’ our supplies, Cap’n?” one of the captives asked.

  Valentine looked at the captives’ rations. Blitty Easy’s Crew fed their captives on the cheap, as you’d expect. Hard ration bread. Sticks of dried legworm segment divider—interesting only as chewing exercise—and sour lard, with a half-full jar of a cheap orange mix that tasted like reconstituted paint chips to drink. Though it did sanitize water. They’d be better off cooking the poachers for food, but of course Valentine couldn’t suggest that.

  It took a while to get them organized, to distribute loads on pack animals. He’d send a patrol back for the vehicles.

  As he walked back toward Dorian’s sniper perch with Duvalier, he refilled his submachine gun’s magazine from a heavy box of 9mm rounds he’d found in one of the locked glove compartments. It had yielded easily enough to a screwdriver.

  “What was that?” he demanded of Duvalier once they were out of earshot.

  “A darn good killing,” Duvalier said, showing her teeth.

  “I said I’d make the first move,” Valentine said. Was he more angry at the killing, or orders being disobeyed?

  “You screamed, Val,” Duvalier said. “I thought you were calling for help. I gave the order to fi
re. What’s your malfunction, David? They were just border trash.”

  “Major, if you please.”

  Duvalier rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “Just doing my duty,” Duvalier said. “You even remember what yours is? We’re supposed to fight them in as many places as possible, the ‘fire of a thousand angry torches’ or however that speech by the former Old World president went.”

  The mood passed, as it always did. Valentine was more vexed at himself than Duvalier. At least she had the guts to admit she liked killing.

  Valentine took his mood out on the food snatcher wearing the stolen gloves as earmuffs. He got to arrange the bodies and see that each one’s face was faceup but covered by a shroud of some kind.

  Valentine felt better as they gathered Easy Crew’s collection of aura-fodder and vehicles and brought them into camp. A sergeant gave the usual recruiting speech as they broke camp the next morning. Anyone who wanted to join the fight would head back west to the new Southern Command fort on the banks of the Ohio guarding Evansville from the Kentucky side. They’d have an important job right off, getting the vehicles back with the guidance of a detail from the sick-train.

  They ended up with two. A fifteen-year-old boy with a lazy eye and a widow of forty-one who’d learned to use a rifle as a teen in the Kurian Youth Vanguard.

  “I quit when my mom got sick in her uterus and they stuck her in a van,” the volunteer explained. “Mom was right smart, could have been useful a hundred ways if they’d let her get operated on and recover.”

  Of course Sergeant Patel, the senior NCO back at Javelin, could make soldiers out of odds and ends of human material. There was always more work than there were hands.

  More aura for the trip home. A prowling Reaper would spot their psychic signatures from miles away, even in the lush hills of Kentucky. He and Duvalier would have to team up every night and sleep in their saddles.