The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  “Look, we don’t have all that much ourselves, but we do have guns. As long as our ammunition holds out, we should be able to keep getting game. And Eric and I know most of the edible berries and nuts. Those won’t be gone for a few more weeks. If you’d care to, you could stay with us, help out as you can, that sort of thing.”

  Reggie had to look away. As soon as the Brixes realized that they were actually going to be invited to stay, the expressions on all three faces changed. They suggested adulation to Reggie, and he wanted none of that.

  “Things won’t be easy, not after a while,” he said, “but we can give it a good go.”

  There was no chance that the Brix family would refuse.

  Most of the men of Company A, First Battalion, South York Rifles who had been captured with Captain Stanley were still with him sixteen days later. Only because they can’t think of anything better to do, he told himself. At first, they had gone back to their homes as their captors had ordered. But some of the men had found their homes already burned. The rest were chased out within the next two days. It had been, perhaps, logical for them to return to their rendezvous location. Surprisingly, the vehicles they had leftwere still there. Many still had supplies in them, and the buried caches were intact.

  The men had come with their families, those who had families. Mostly, they brought wives; almost none had minor children. The ones with children had not answered the initial mobilization call, and those were not the ones who thought to head to the rendezvous point when they were dispossessed. The poor turnout for mobilization still left a sour taste in Hubert Stanley’s mouth each time he thought about it.

  During the first few days after the group started to congregate again, they had remained at the rendezvous location. More people happened by, including—eventually—a few of the volunteers who had not shown up for mobilization. Those latter kept moving. Their erstwhile comrades made it clear that they were not welcome. Other refugees were allowed to remain with the group. After six days the total number—men, women, and children—was considerably over a hundred.

  That was when Stanley proposed that they move on to a better, or at least different, location. There was no game left nearby. Some of the volunteers had had extra weapons in the vehicles they had left at the rendezvous, or they had managed to bring them along when they were chased out of their homes. A few were experienced hunters. They had been able to bring in enough meat to make sure that no one in the group went completely hungry, but it was taking longer each day. And the nearby stock of wild fruits and domestic crops that had not been burned by the invaders was also becoming depleted. It was time to move farther away from South York, out to where game and other edibles might be more plentiful for a time.

  After that? It was difficult to think very far ahead.

  The group had moved only a few miles a day, looking for a place where they might stay longer, a place with water, materials to build shelters, and meat on the hoof. As much by default as choice, Captain Stanley became the leader of the entire group. He made decisions and people accepted them.

  They kept the vehicles that the volunteers had originally abandoned at the rendezvous location. The floaters converted water into hydrogen and oxygen. As long as there was sunlight to recharge the floater batteries, the only fuel needed was water, and that could always be found. The trucks and cars allowed the refugees to carry more, not only the few possessions they had salvaged when they were chased out of their homes but also some of what they had made or found along the way.

  After a week of moving from one camp to another, the group had finally found a place where they might be able to stay longer. There was plenty of game and the nearby stream had fish. Each day the new camp started to look a little more livable, and each day they stayed made it less likely that they would move on voluntarily—as long as they could still find food. Rough shacks were built. Routines were established. The adults, and this group remained overwhelmingly adult, had regular chores to help the community survive.

  Once the routines were established, Stanley found little work for himself. It was only the exceptions that required leadership decisions, and disputes between individuals. He had plenty of time to think, to remember, and his memories were not pleasant. He found it difficult to think of anything but what he saw as his personal failure, and about the men who had been killed because he had not been a smart enough leader.

  He tried diligently to get rid of the most visible reminder of that failure, the mark put on his forehead by the Feddies who had captured his company. That was work he shared with most of the others who bore the brand. Everyone wanted to remove the mark as quickly as they could, but Stanley had become fixated by the need to erase it. He had puzzled over its composition. Any foreign object should have been eradicated in short order by his body’s medical nanobots. Those would erase even tattoos. But not this. He had scrubbed at his forehead with abrasive cloths until he drew blood. The scrapes healed, but when they did, the Federation brand was still visible. After sixteen days, it hadfaded a little, but it might have been a neon light as far as Stanley was concerned. It seemed unnaturally bright, a beacon signaling his shame to anyone who came within a hundred yards.

  Day sixteen of my shame, Stanley thought. He was sitting in the lean-to that was the only shelter he permitted himself. It might have been easier if his wife were with him, but she had been away from home the night of the invasion, visiting their oldest son and his family near Coventry City. She had not been able to get home, had not even been able to call home.

  Stanley’s lean-to was situated so that the open side faced away from the rest of camp, looking back toward South York. He could hear the routine daytime sounds behind him, but they rarely registered. He stared off toward his lost home, his thoughts louder and more insistent than any noises the people with him might make.

  Sixteen days. He had been idly honing the blade of his hunting knife. The blade was razor-sharp all along its seven-inch length. Stanley had shaved with it a couple of times, before he had decided that there was no longer any point to shaving. All he used it for now was to cut meat. He did some of the butchering when the hunters brought game in. He also used it to cut meat when he ate.

  He stopped running the blade against the stone and held the knife close to his face. He stared at the blade, twisting it from side to side, watching light reflect off of it, and the tiny scratches near the edge. Other thoughts returned, routine thoughts of late. Mostly, they came in the night, when he could not sleep. Sometimes they also came during the day, like now, when he had too long to think without interruption.

  I’ll never be able to live down the shame. He let out his breath in a long sigh. “Why prolong the pain?” he asked softly, looking at his reflection in the knife blade.

  With his left hand, he touched the side of his neck, feeling for the pulse in his carotid artery. Suicide was not a simple matter. The nanobots designed to keep people healthy would work quickly to repair any damage. The wound had to be massive, something that his system could not mend in time. Destroying the heart or brain was the surest method, but Stanley did not have the means to do that. The next best way was to slice open a major artery, lose blood faster than it could be replaced, lose a critical volume before the cut could be stopped.

  There was never a moment of conscious decision. Stanley brought the knife around and plunged the blade deeply into his neck. His last conscious thought was an awareness of the hot fluid—blood—gushing out over his hands.

  12

  Noel Wittington had been away from camp, scouting in the direction of South York, starting back only after hearing military shuttles overhead. Military craft were the only ones flying since the invasion. Coventry’s cities and towns had long been linked by a shuttle service, but those aircraft had been destroyed by the Federation.

  The shuttles Noel heard this morning seemed to be aiming for the coast, possibly Coventry City, about two hundred miles away. Although Noel could not see them, the sound was (or se
emed to be) different from any he had heard before, civilian or military. Coventry’s civilian aircraft had been nearly silent, audible only during takeoff and landing. The Federation’s military landers had not been designed for silence. They had a distinct harsh sound even several thousand feet up. Noel could not have explained just how these latest shuttles sounded different, but he was certain that they were. His imagination made the immediate leap: Maybe the Commonwealth has come!

  Excitement had spurred him back toward camp as quickly as he could move, careless of what might be in his way, intent on reporting what he had heard, first to Captain Stanley, then to the rest of the people in camp. The trip out had taken two hours. He made the return in less than thirty minutes.

  Out of breath but buoyed by the prospect that, perhaps, help had arrived, Noel stopped for a moment at the edge of camp. He had to lean forward and support himself with hands on thighs as he dragged in breath. Excitement and exertion combined were nearly more than he could handle.

  He couldn’t very well talk until he could stop panting out of control.

  Preoccupied, Noel didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. There were a few people standing around. That was normal. But they did nothing but stare. It wasn’t until Noel brought his head up, his breathing beginning to return to normal, that any of the others moved closer. The first two hesitated to speak, fearing that Wittington was bringing more bad news. Good news crawls; bad news has wings was the Coventrian proverb.

  “What is it?” one of the men finally asked.

  Noel shook his head, then dragged in another deep breath. “Good news, maybe. I’ve got to tell the captain.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Noel stared at the man—he didn’t recall the name. “What?”

  “Captain Stanley killed himself. They found him an hour ago, in his shelter.”

  Noel ran toward the captain’s lean-to, thirty yards from where he had been standing. Captain Stanley’s body was no longer there, but Noel saw the blood soaking into the ground. The man who had given Noel the news, and several other people, came after him, more slowly, and stopped a short distance away.

  “He cut his own throat,” the same man said.

  Noel turned and stared at him. Noel frowned as he tried to recall the man’s name. It took a moment: Ned Asbury, a civilian, not one of the South York Rifles. “What happened, Ned?”

  “I don’t think anyone actually saw it,” Asbury said. He looked around. Several of the others shook their heads. “Becky Meares found him, the knife still in his hand—that big hunting knife of his. He just shoved it right in here.” Asbury put his hand to the side of his own neck. “We took the body out, away from camp, when we saw that he was really dead.”

  “Did you bury him properly?” Noel didn’t need to hear the negative. The way the people looked around at each other gave him the answer before Asbury confirmed it.

  “We just took him away from camp.” He pointed vaguely toward the east.

  “We can’t just leave him lying around for wild cats to eat,” Noel said. “We’ve got shovels. Let’s get a few. Show me where you took him.”

  It wasn’t until after they had buried the captain that Noel remembered the news he had run back to share. He told the few who had gone with him to dig the grave about the shuttles that sounded different and his guess about what it might mean. When they got back to camp, the news spread quickly. People started gathering, talking more than they had in a fortnight.

  “Can we go back to town now?” several asked. Captain Stanley was gone. Two of his sergeants remained with the group, but both had already made it clear that they did not consider themselves potential leaders. The South York Rifles were no more. They were no different from anyone else. But no one else seemed to want to make decisions either.

  “Can we go home now?” People started to direct the question to Noel. He had brought the news of the shuttle flight. He had directed them to bury Captain Stanley properly. No one seemed to think of his age, despite his being one of the youngest adults in camp.

  “I don’t know.” Noel looked around. At least half, perhaps two thirds, of the camp had gathered around, all looking to him for an answer. How did I get to be a leader? he wondered. I don’t know what the hell to do.

  “Give me time to think.” He pushed through the circle of people and walked out of camp, toward South York. A few of the others followed him, but none went more than a few yards past the edge of the encampment. Noel kept going until he couldn’t hear or see anyone behind him.

  Let me think. But thinking was hard, and painful. Noel had difficulty getting past the fact of Captain Stanley’s death. Noel had seen the deep gash in the captain’s throat, the exposed muscle and flesh inside the wound, the sightless gaze of the captain’s eyes. The men who had carried him out of camp had removed the captain’s belongings beforedumping his body in a crevice, but no one had tried to keep those few things. They had been delivered to Noel as soon as the group came back from burying Stanley. Tokens of leadership, it seemed.

  I heard something. I thought it was a different sound than Feddie shuttles make. I assumed that it must be Commonwealth shuttles. One by one, he went through the steps. He could almost replay the sounds he had heard in his memory.

  “It’s not enough to go on,” he whispered after a few minutes. “I could have been hearing things. I could have been mistaken. We need to know for sure.”

  The next idea came easily enough. They would have to send scouts back toward the city, hope that they would be able to find out, one way or another, and get back with the news without being intercepted by Feddies.

  We need to stay where we are for now. Get the hunters busy stocking up extra food. Even if the Commonwealth has come, that doesn’t mean that things will get better right away, and they certainly won’t get back to normal anytime soon. When the scouts get back, then we can make our decision.

  He let out his breath. Maybe the rest of the people would not accept that, but as long as they wanted his opinion, he would give it. Waiting might be difficult, but the alternative could prove much worse. He turned and headed back toward camp.

  Noel was almost finished with his explanation of what he thought they should do when Michael Polyard came running into camp, as out of breath as Noel had been earlier. Both had left on their scouting missions at the same time that morning. Polyard had obviously gone farther. The circle of people around Noel opened up between the two men. Wittington moved toward Polyard, wondering what he had seen or heard to send him running back. Michael sank to the ground and leaned forward, head between his knees, arms clutching his stomach.

  “What is it?” Noel asked, kneeling next to Michael. “Did you hear the shuttles too? Or see them?”

  Polyard had difficulty raising his head. “What shuttles?” came out as a gasp.

  “Then what is it?”

  Michael shook his head. He needed a moment longer before he could speak coherently. “Federation soldiers, hundreds of them, moving this way. They’re no more than a mile and a half off, coming straight toward us.” The speech exhausted his resources. He let his head droop forward again, still fighting to suck in air, oblivious to the panic that his words had launched.

  Dozens of people started talking at once, some in private conversation, others trying to make everyone hear what they had to say. After about twenty seconds of that, Noel raised his voice.

  “Shut up! Quiet!” It took time to restore some semblance of quiet. “We don’t have time for chin wagging. Keep it calm, but gather everything you can, quickly. We’ll load the floaters and move. There’s not time for much. If we’re not out of here in five minutes, it could be too late.”

  “Where will we go?” someone asked.

  “Does it matter? Away from the Feddies. We’ll worry about where when we can quit worrying about them. Move! There’s no time for argument.”

  The floaters were loaded with whatever came to hand first. People gathered as much of their belongings as th
ey could carry. Noel scattered the two fires that were burning, doing what he could to extinguish the flames and cover the embers. Even in a hurry, he didn’t want to leave a fire that might get out of hand. The Federation troopers were doing more than enough burning. Noel needed little time to gather his own few belongings. Most of what he had was already in his floater.

  “We’ll head due east,” Noel said, no more than three minutes after he had first said that they should leave. He stood on the rear deck of his floater, taking items from people, trying to wedge them in among the things already tied on. “Those of you who are ready to move, start now. The rest of us will be right behind you. Move as fast as you can. Hurry!”

  Few needed Noel’s injunction to hurry. Some had already left, grabbing what they could on the run. Later, when there was time to think, some refugees might regret racing heedless into the wilderness, but there was an edge of panic to the exodus.

  Michael Polyard finally recovered enough to gather his possessions. He went to Noel’s floater.

  “Do you think this will do any good?” he asked.

  “Give me that bag. I’ll find room for it up here.” Michael passed the canvas carryall up. “Do any good? I don’t know. You heard that Captain Stanley killed himself?”

  “Three different people told me while you were getting folks organized.”

  “We either do whatever we can to save ourselves, and keep clear of the Feddies, or we might as well take the same out the captain did. And I’m not ready to cut my own throat.”

  “If those Feddies want to catch us, they will. You think maybe a few of us should stay behind and try to slow them down?”

  Noel snorted. “Have that turn out like our last encounter? Just make yourself room and climb aboard here. Let’s move.”

  Noel sent the other floaters ahead of the people on foot, with as much of their goods and people as they could carry. He stayed with the rest, though, despite his itch to get as far from the Feddies as fast as possible.