March in Country (11 page)

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Authors: EE Knight

BOOK: March in Country
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“Except where Blake is concerned,” Brother Mark said.
Valentine took a breath. He’d seen a Reaper born alive into the world, carried by Post’s wife, who he’d brought out of an Ohio hatchery called Xanadu. Named him Blake, after the poet. At first he’d let the Miskatonic people examine him—they’d never watched a Reaper develop before—but when they started using noise and light to test tolerances he reclaimed him and took him to old Narcisse, who lived on the bluffs outside of Saint Louis. They’d first met on Hispaniola during his trip to find a special kind of wood that killed Reapers. The gentle old soul had a way with Blake. It had been over a year since he’d seen them last.
“Well, rarely then,” he admitted. “Usually all we do is swap stories. I’ve never tried to work with one in the field before.”
“You think these creatures will be useful? Then why do you scowl so when you look at them.”
“I was scowling? Well, they make me think about Texas. If I’d only been more careful.”
Valentine had been bringing a load of Quickwood back from Haiti, crossing Texas’s empty plains. Once back in Southern Command territory he’d let his guard down, only to discover the Ozarks had been overrun by Consul Solon’s Transmississippi forces. He’d lost almost all of his precious cargo.
“Is that all? I’ve never known you to dwell on the past. Talk about it, yes. Learn from it, yes. But not lose yourself in misery over it.”
You didn’t know me in the years following my court martial
, Valentine thought.
“I was with Ahn-Kha when we met them. He was with me on that trip. I’ve been wondering about him. Ever since that last radio transmission, when they said they were surrounded by the ravies in Virginia.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“You put it starkly, sir.” Valentine brightened. A weight had passed away. “You know, I don’t. I feel like he’s still alive. But I’m anxious about it, for some reason.”
Brother Mark stared levelly into his eyes in the manner of a doctor, as if evaluating the dilation of his pupils. Valentine wondered what he was looking for. “Is this your emotions, hoping against hope, or more of a realization?”
Valentine searched his features for expression, but the usual sad hound eyes revealed nothing beyond sorrow. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“In the Church, there were those who became sensitives of one sort or another. I’ve been told that it’s suddenly as though you’ve known something your whole life. Sister Gretchen is arriving this afternoon; you’ve always known Gretchen will arrive this afternoon.”
Valentine believed in telepathy. He’d had Lifeweavers and Kurians alike, along with their agents, put thoughts in his head. Was someone feeding him information now? An enemy trying to tempt him into rashness? Or was one of nature’s better angels planting suggestions, trying to move to come to the rescue of his old friend?
“Give the alert and practice coordinates, Corporal,” Valentine told the Wolf of Frat’s command he’d brought along to practice the artillery spotting.
The tanned young man studied the map one more time and started to read.
Fire control acknowledged, repeating back the coordinates.
“Communications are still up,” Valentine said.
The loaders ran the trenches to the ready magazines.
Valentine looked down and saw confusion at Igraine. A sergeant hurried to the magazine.
“Uh-oh,” Father Max said.
The spotter Wolf pushed his headset tighter against his ear.
“Major, Igraine is reporting someone stuck gum in the padlock on the magazine door,” the Wolf said.
“What was that you were saying about gum-chewing women?” Valentine asked.
After getting his arm pumped off again congratulating Pellwell, Valentine presented his plan to Colonel Lambert. The mental diversion with the ratbits had allowed the operation to crystallize.
He sat in her office, so neat that the orders and papers and pens all seemed to cower in their allotted places.
Lambert in person was as severe and clean as her desk. She didn’t reveal her thoughts, but instead started firing questions. He answered them as best he could, then she moved on to options if the operation failed, and if it succeeded. “Valentine, I could use experienced construction staff, but we’re having a hard enough time feeding the soldiers we have. How many more mouths are you planning to add?”
“Thirty or so,” Valentine said.
“I’m glad spring’s here. Fresh food’s starting to flow again.”
“I’m sure Evansville could use it,” Valentine said. “They can’t keep up with the refugees coming down the Ohio. Something awful must be happening in the Ordnance.”
“I hear purges,” Lambert said. “It might be nice to offer Evansville some tangible assistance. They’re going a little wobbly on us.”
“What do you mean?” Valentine asked.
“Do you want the good news, or the bad news?” Lambert asked, straightening a manila file on her desk that had somehow gone a couple of degrees out of alignment.
“Is there good news?” Valentine asked.
“Precious little.”
“So far, it’s still psychological warfare,” Lambert said. “But damn effective psychological warfare. The Ordnance is floating bodies down the Ohio.”
“Floating?”
“Rafting, sending them drifting. When there’s a big pile they put them on pallets supported by plastic water bottles, Ping-Pong balls mostly. It looks like the usual Reaper victims. The sick, crippled, and old. Dead a few days, as best as we can tell.”
“Cute. We get to dispose of their bodies.”
“It’s attracting the usual birds, rats, and flies. It’s depressing for the fishermen and boatmen too. Nobody likes hauling up bodies. They’ve been burning them east of the city. Want to take a look?”
“Not really,” Valentine said. He’d seen enough Reaper leftovers in the New Orleans bayou country, where the Kurian order left matters of corpse disposal to gars and crayfish.
“At least we’ve accumulated quite a supply of Ping-Pong balls. We can grind them up with some match heads and make smoke grenades. Have you met Major Grace yet? He’s here from GHQ, ‘estimating the situation.’ ”
Valentine leaned forward. “I think I saw him reading personnel files.”
“He’s on General Martinez’s staff. I think he’s here to decide whether to pull us out of Kentucky.”
“They wouldn’t,” Valentine said. “We’re the only success Southern Command has had since Archangel.” Archangel was the operation that reclaimed the Ozark Free Territory from Consul Solon. The collapse was so quick and far reaching that Texas and parts of Oklahoma were added to the freehold, turning it into the United Free Republics.
Lambert leaned back in her chair. “You and I might think it’s a success, but back across the Mississippi, it’s being played in the newspapers as another failure. Though now that the wheel turned in the elections and Martinez is running the show, they’ll be on the lookout for good news. Just a few successful small ops, written up and sent off by our friend Bolenitz and his magic pen, might win us a few more visits from the logistics commandos.”
“Then I have the perfect op for you, sir. My extraction.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Valentine. You get Major Grace out of my hair for a few days by taking him along. Do your best to keep him alive and impressed with us, and I’ll try and fit that Miskatonic egghead into the Fort’s TOE.”
“I can start working out the operational staff now, if you’ll give the order.”
She took a deep breath. “Very well, Valentine. If you want to put the future of matters in Kentucky on an operation to get a couple dozen hard hats away from the Georgia Control, I wish us all the luck in the world.”
“More good news: I’m going to put Frat Carlson in charge of the extraction.”
Lambert shifted in her chair. “You think he’s ready?” Valentine thought she might as well have said
you trust him?
“The whole camp is on eggshells about him,” Valentine said. Frat Carlson had been responsible for the Ravies outbreak during the winter. While only the senior officers, and Brother Mark, knew he was a Kurian agent, the men knew that he’d done something
disastrous
for the Cause. They’d tried to keep the full story secret, not even reporting it to Southern Command. If the Kentuckians found out the whole story, they’d string Frat up and kick the entire Southern Command operation back across the Mississippi.
And there’d go a burgeoning alliance.
Perhaps they’d be right to do it.
“No such thing as secrets,” Lambert said. “Well, if your op’s a disaster, it’ll be a well-rounded disaster. Maybe all the bad karma accumulated since last spring will get expunged in one bad night.”
“Or we’ll have a bit of luck and start to turn it around,” Valentine said.
“Got a name for your op?”
“I was thinking ‘Vendetta,’ ” Valentine said. He’d intentionally avoided anything that was evocative of destruction or a rescue. “Maybe it’ll make a couple of Quislings nervous, if word gets out.”
“Well, go make us some luck, Major,” she said. She signed the order for Vendetta to go live and handed it to him.
Valentine decided to eat dinner in his room that night. The generously sized bedroom always made him feel a little guilty as a place to only sleep and get dressed, so he usually did some work at the old vanity table there as well.
Duvalier was cutting her toenails. She had gnarled, beaten-up feet thanks to the countless miles she’d walked in her exploits.
“How do you like this?” she said, holding up the clippers. “I think they’re real gold.”
“Good to be the big boss,” Valentine said, removing his boots. He stuffed them with New Universal Church propaganda. Dry reading would absorb the sweat, and the odor would only be improved.
She heard a scratching above and looked up, her arm instinctively reaching to her side, grasping for a weapon.
A ratbit blinked down at her. It dropped a pack of gum onto Valentine’s pillow and crawled back across the beamed ceiling to the door.
He heard a thump as it startled Bee on its scramble out.
“I think that’s a thank-you,” Valentine said, picking up the gum.
Duvalier dropped the mass of paper she was about to fling at the ratbit. “God, those things give me the creeps.”
“What’s that rolled up in your hand?” Valentine asked.
“I found all these great old magazines in the attic. You hardly ever see them like this, usually they’re crinkled from being wet and dried.”
“For toilet paper?”
“No. Too slick, unless you Minnesota types are fans of skid marks up to your spine. I like looking at the women in the pictures. So beautiful.”
“Thinking of changing your hair?”
“I can read, you know,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him. “The articles are fascinating. Look at this!
Fifteen ways to update your jeans
.”
“Only fifteen?”
“I only knew one. When they wear out, turn them into shorts. Then when those wear out, you have some patching material and an oil rag. Oh, mechanical dryer lint in a bottle of gasoline makes for a better Molotov cocktail, so I suppose that’s two updates.”

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