"Well. . ." The sergeant rubbed his chin. "All right. Go on. I hope your mother gets better."
"Uh, thanks." Mr. Brooks hadn't said anything about that. In his shoes, Beckie wouldn't have, either. But he rallied fast— maybe he could have been an actor. "Yeah, thanks. Twonk's Disease is treatable if you catch it in time." He drove away before the sergeant could change his mind.
"Twonk's Disease?" Beckie said.
He cast off his usual air of gloom to grin at her. "First name that popped into my mind."
"Is there such a thing as Twonk's Disease?"
"There is now. If you don't think so, ask that soldier."
Beckie thought it over. Mr. Brooks had something, no doubt about it. What people believed to be true often ended up as important as what really was true. "What would you have done if he told you to turn around?" she asked.
"I don't know. Maybe I could have taken out the whole checkpoint." He didn't sound as if he was kidding. He sounded more like someone weighing the odds. Beckie didn't know what kind of weapons he had. She hadn't known he had any, though she would have guessed he did.
"More to you than meets the eye, isn't there?" she said.
"Me?" He shook his head. "Nah. I'm about as ordinary as—"
"Somebody who talks about taking out a checkpoint full of soldiers," Beckie finished for him. Had he tried, she suspected he could have done it. He might look ordinary, but he wasn't. Come to think of it, neither was Justin. An interesting family. An unusual family, Beckie thought. She wondered what Justin's mother was like.
Mr. Brooks looked faintly embarrassed. Embarrassed at talking that way, or embarrassed at showing too much of himself? Beckie wasn't sure. "Talk is cheap," he said. "I got mad at that guy, and so . . ."
"Sure," Beckie said. Yeah, sure, she thought.
"You know," Gran said, "I saw a TV show about Twonk's Disease once. I think I should go to the doctor and get looked at, because I may have it."
Beckie didn't say anything. There didn't seem to be anything to say. Mr. Brooks just kept driving. If his eyes twinkled a little, if his cheeks and even his ears turned pink, then they did, that was all. If he was laughing inside, nobody could prove it. And that was bound to be just as well.
Things weren't as simple as Justin wished they were. They weren't as simple as he'd expected them to be. That seemed to be how growing up worked. Once you got into the middle of something, it usually turned out to be more complicated than you figured it would when you started.
With most things, that was annoying, but you dealt with it and went on. When you were pretending to be a soldier, complications were liable to get you killed.
Justin hadn't thought he would have to go on pretending very long. He hadn't thought he would have to go into combat, either. He had thought he would be able to slip away from the real soldiers as soon as he got into Charleston. He turned out to be wrong, wrong, and wrong, respectively.
Gunfire started up again well before sunup. He didn't hear it, not at first. Even if he was sleeping on the ground, he was sleeping hard. He didn't want to wake up even when Smitty shook him. "Come on, man—move," Smitty said. "You want to get shot?"
"Huh?" All Justin wanted to do was close his eyes again.
"Come on." Smitty shook him some more. Then a bullet cracked by overhead. That got Justin moving. It got him moving faster than Smitty was, in fact. His lifelong buddy of not quite twenty-four hours laughed at him. "There you go," Smitty said. "See? I knew you could do it."
"Thanks a lot," Justin said as he dove into a hole a shell had torn in the ground.
Smitty went on laughing, but not for long. "Hey, man," he said, "you better pile some of that dirt in front of you. You'd rather have a bullet or a fragment get stopped there. That way, it won't tear you up."
"Uh, yeah." Justin pulled an entrenching tool—halfway between a big trowel and a small shovel—off his belt and started work. He dug some more dirt out of the hole and piled that in front of him, too. The deeper he dug, the thicker the rampart got, the safer he felt. Maybe some of that safety lay only in his mind, but he'd take it any which way.
Would he have thought to dig in if Smitty didn't suggest it? He hoped so, but he wasn't sure. Soldiering seemed like any other job—it came with tricks of the trade. Smitty knew them.
He'd probably learned them in basic training, or whatever they called it here. Justin . . . didn't.
In an ordinary job, knowing the tricks let you work better, work faster. Maybe it kept you from getting hurt if you worked with machinery. Here, knowing what was what helped keep you alive. Justin had seen a lot of dead bodies since he got to Charleston. He could smell more that he couldn't see. It was another hot, sticky day, and corpses went bad in a hurry. The sickly-sweet stink made him want to puke.
He could smell himself, too, and the other soldiers. He'd been in this uniform for more than a day, and done plenty of sweating. How long before he could shower or change clothes? He had no idea. Nobody'd told him anything about stuff like that. People told you what to do. They didn't bother with why. You were supposed to know, or else not to care. That didn't strike Justin as the best way to do things, but nobody cared what he thought. Getting ignored by the people set over you also seemed to be part of soldiering.
An officer came forward with a white flag on a stick. He stood out in the open and waited to be noticed. Justin wouldn't have wanted that job for anything in the world. Little by little, though, the firing petered out.
Along with the flag of truce, the Virginia officer carried a bullhorn. He raised it to his mouth. "You people!" wasn't quite what he shouted. Hearing the hateful word he did use made Justin grit his teeth. It wasn't as bad a word in this alternate. He understood that. But understanding it didn't take the sick feeling out of his belly. And that word was no endearment here, either. The officer used it again: "You people! You want to listen to me or what?"
"We'll listen. Say your say," a Negro called from the rubble ahead. He didn't show himself.
The Virginia officer didn't seem to expect him to. "Okay," he boomed. "You better pay attention, on account of this is your last chance. You surrender now, you come out of your holes with your hands high, we'll let y'all live. You keep fighting, we won't answer for what happens after that. You're whupped. No matter what the fancy talkers from Ohio told you, you are whupped. Give up now and keep breathing. Otherwise ..." He paused ominously. Looking at his watch, he went on, "You've got fifteen minutes to make up your minds. You make us come and get you, that's all she wrote."
"You'll get your answer," the black man shouted back. "Hang on."
No rebels showed themselves. They had to scurry back and forth somewhere out of sight, deciding what to do. Was the officer even telling the truth? Would Virginia authorities spare the Negroes' lives? Probably, Justin judged. If they didn't, and other bands found out, it would make them fight to the death. But would you want to go on living with what the authorities were likely to do to you? Justin wasn't so sure about that.
"Time's up!" the officer blared. "What's it gonna be?"
"Reckon we'd sooner die on our feet than on our knees," the rebel answered. "You want us, come an' get us."
"Your funeral," the officer said. "And it will be. You asked for it."
He turned and walked away. Some self-propelled guns like the ones west of Elizabeth—maybe they were the same ones— rumbled into place. Instead of hurling their shells twenty kilometers, they blasted away at point-blank range, smashing the buildings in which the Negro rebels were hiding.
After they finished wrecking one block, they ground forward to start on the next. The foot soldiers went with them. They got rid of the men the bombardment didn't kill or maim. They also kept the rebels from harming the guns. Justin wondered why they needed to do that—the guns seemed plenty able to take care of themselves.
Then a Negro jumped up on top of one. Justin didn't see where he came from. He yanked open a hatch and threw a burning bottle of gasoline into the f
ighting compartment. Somebody shot him before he could leap down again. But horrible black smoke poured from the hatch. Shells started cooking off in there. So did machine-gun ammo, which went pop! pop! pop! happy as you please.
Nobody got out of the self-propelled gun. One Molotov cocktail—not that they called them that in this alternate— took out an expensive machine and several highly trained soldiers. One Molotov cocktail and one brave man, Justin reminded himself.
Even Smitty said, "That took guts." Then he swore at the Negro who did it. Was he angry because the man hurt his comrades? Or was he angry because the black showed himself to be a man? Justin didn't know and couldn't ask without giving himself away. He wondered if Smitty knew.
Another Negro with a Molotov cocktail got gunned down before he could come close enough to a serf-propelled gun to use it. The flaming gasoline set him on fire. He screamed for much too long before he died.
Justin was pretty sure he shot somebody else. The black man popped up from behind a bus bench, just like a target in a video game. Justin aimed and squeezed the trigger. The rebel went down, and didn't do anything else after that. It bothered Justin much less than shooting the first kid had. That it bothered him much less bothered him much more. He didn't want to get hardened to killing people.
He didn't want to do any of what he was doing. The people he was doing it with were no prizes, either. They didn't bother taking many prisoners. The rebels didn't try to surrender. They fought till they couldn't fight any more, and then, grimly, they died.
"They've risen up before. They've got squashed every time," he said to Smitty as they both crouched in a doorway. "They must have known they couldn't win this time, too. So why try?"
"Some folks are natural-born fools," Smitty answered. "And the Ohioans sent 'em guns and filled their heads with moonshine." He spat. "Look what it got 'em."
"Maybe if we'd treated them better beforehand, they wouldn't have wanted to rebel no matter what the Ohioans did," Justin said.
Smitty looked at him as if he were nuts. "Don't let an officer catch you talking that way," the real soldier warned. "You'll get in more trouble than you know what to do with." He wouldn't say any more than that. Plainly, though, Justin had disappointed him. You couldn't even talk about racial equality here. If you so much as opened your mouth, they thought you came from some other world.
And Justin did.
By the time evening came, there weren't many rebels left to kill. There wasn't much still standing in the part of Charleston they'd held, either. They make a desert and call it peace. Some Roman historian said that. It was just as true now as it had been back in the days of the Empire. The Romans had actually got peace—for a while—by winning their wars like that. Maybe the Virginians would, too ... for a while.
And will I ever find any? Justin wondered. The chances didn't look good.
No Virginia soldiers arrested Beckie and her grandmother and Mr. Brooks. No suspicious military doctor asked him about how to treat Twonk's Disease. All that made getting to Charleston a little easier, but not much. The real problem was the road itself. It kept disappearing, usually at spots where going around involved something interesting—falling off a cliff, for instance.
"Cruise missiles. Terrain-mapping technology." Mr. Brooks sounded as if he admired the fancy technology that was causing him endless delays. Maybe he did. It wouldn't have surprised Beckie. He seemed a man who admired competence wherever he found it, because he didn't think he'd find it very often.
As Mr. Brooks admired the Ohioans who'd wrecked the road, so he also admired the Virginian military engineers who repaired it and let him go forward again. Beckie also couldn't help admiring them. They were busy with hard, dangerous work. They had no guarantee more cruise missiles wouldn't fly in and wreck everything they were doing—and maybe blow them up, too. But they kept at it.
Gran admired nothing and nobody. She complained whenever the road was blocked. And she complained that the military engineers weren't fixing it fast enough. When Mr. Brooks drove over one of the newly repaired stretches, she complained it was bumpy. When it wasn't bumpy, and saying it was would only make her look silly, she complained he was driving too fast instead.
Mr. Brooks took it all in stride. At one point, when Gran was going even better than usual, he looked over at Beckie and said, "This is fun, isn't it?"
She started to laugh. She couldn't help herself. Then Gran complained she wasn't taking things seriously enough. She only laughed harder.
Whenever the military engineers did finish a stretch, they waved the civilian car through. After about the third time it happened, Mr. Brooks said, "Maybe it's just as well you two came along after all."
"What do you mean?" Beckie asked.
"They see a car with a guy in it, they're going to wonder what he's doing here. They see a car with a guy and his 'mother'"—Mr. Brooks made a face—"and his 'daughter' in it, they don't worry so much. Probably doesn't hurt that his 'daughter' is a pretty girl, either."
Beckie didn't think she was anything special. But he didn't sound as if he were praising her just to butter her up. And she'd seen the way the soldiers looked at her. Of course, how fussy were soldiers likely to be?
"Did Justin come this way?" Beckie asked, not least so she wouldn't have to think about things like that. "If he did, was the road smashed up for him, too?"
Mr. Brooks only shrugged. "Maybe this happened after he went through. Or maybe the convoy he's with is five miles ahead of us, waiting for the military engineers to fix another hole in the highway. But if he went to Charleston, he either went this way or the other way we couldn't get through, because there aren't any more."
"Oh." Beckie thought about that, then nodded. "What if he didn't go to Charleston?"
"In that case, we're up the well-known creek without a paddle," Mr. Brooks answered. "And so is he."
"Which creek?" It wasn't well-known to Gran. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm just being metaphorical, Mrs. Bentley," Mr. Brooks said.
"Well, cut it out and talk so a person can understand you."
He sighed. "If all writers did that, chances are it would improve ninety percent of them. But it would ruin the rest—and those are the ones we need most."
Gran only sniffed. After a few seconds, Beckie said, "You say interesting things."
"Who, me?" Mr. Brooks shrugged. "The only thing I want to say is, 'And they all lived happily ever after.' But I don't know if I'll be able to manage that. Looks like the sun's about to go down, and we aren't there yet."
"Well? Turn on your lights and keep going," Gran said.
"I would do that, Mrs. Bentley, but I'm not sure it's a good idea," Mr. Brooks said. "Missiles may home on our lights. Or the Virginians may shoot us because they think we're trying to make missiles home on us. Which would you rather?"
"What? I don't want either one! Are you crazy?" Gran sounded sure he was.
"He's trying to tell you he doesn't want to keep driving after dark, Gran," Beckie said, working hard not to laugh.
"See? I told you he should just talk sense." Nothing got through to Gran, even the things that should have.
They stopped for the night in a town called Clendenin, which was even smaller than Elizabeth. Once upon a time, it had been an oil town. Now the derricks stood silent and rusting. The town did have a motel. It looked shabbier than the one in Elizabeth, and was full of soldiers. Clendenin also had a gas station. The travelers used the restrooms there. They also bought snacks—no diner there.
Then they went out and slept in the car, or tried to. Beckie couldn't remember a more uncomfortable night. Gran had the back seat to herself. She soon started snoring. Even with her front seat reclined, Beckie couldn't doze off. She usually slept on her stomach. She leaned back and did her best to keep quiet—Mr. Brooks was breathing deeply and steadily, too.
She tried counting sheep. She tried counting boulders— plenty of them all around the road they'd been traveling. She felt he
rself getting sleepy . . . till a mosquito started buzzing. She was so tired, she could hardly see straight. But her eyes wouldn't stay closed no matter what.
And then gray predawn light streamed through the windshield, and she had no idea how it had got there. She looked around in surprise. Mr. Brooks nodded to her. "Your grandmother is still out," he whispered.
She sure was. She was snoring louder than ever. "I guess I did sleep," Beckie said. "I didn't think I could."
"You get tired enough, you can do almost anything." Mr. Brooks sounded like a man who knew what he was talking about.
"How long have you been awake?" Beckie asked.
"A while now." He looked at what they'd bought the night before. "We've got some warm fizzes, and some chocolate Super-snax cakes, and some pork rinds. Sounds like a great breakfast, doesn't it?"
"Makes my mouth water," Beckie said solemnly. He laughed softly. She ate one of the cakes and drank a fizz. Then she hoped the fellow who ran the gas station would come back and open up, because she needed to make a pit stop.
He did, so she didn't have to go into the bushes behind the station. At least there were bushes to go back to. In Los Angeles, there wouldn't have been.
Gran crunched pork rinds as if she ate them for breakfast every morning. Beckie didn't want to think about what that meant. Had there been a time when Gran . . . ? Beckie shook her head. She didn't want to think about it.
She heard booms off in the distance. Before she came to Virginia, she would have thought they were thunder. Now she knew better—more knowledge she wished she didn't have. But she did, and so she said, "That's artillery."
"Sure is," Mr. Brooks agreed. "Sounds like it's coming from Charleston. They're blowing the place up to save it." That went right by Gran. The cynicism made Beckie wince.
"Will there be anywhere to stay?" Beckie asked.
"I expect there will," Mr. Brooks answered. "Charleston's a good-sized city. To wreck it all, you'd need a nuke or two great big armies fighting a no-holds-barred battle there—like, uh, Tsaritsyn in the War of the Three Emperors a hundred and fifty years ago. An uprising? An uprising's just a nuisance."
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