The Living Will Envy The Dead (48 page)

Part of my mind told me that I’d made a mistake getting involved with a subordinate, even though we no longer had any real contact with the rest of the United States at the time, but the rest of my mind told me that it had been a great idea.  That was, of course, the part of my mind connected to my groin.  Legally, it wasn't a crime – it would have been had we been in the Marines together – but it was definitely borderline.

“Ed,” Rose said.  She sounded oddly nervous.  I’d never heard her be nervous since her first year on the job.  Her confidence had built up rapidly after the first pair of arrests, although Ingalls wasn't anything like a bad as some of the inner cities.  “Do you remember what we’ve been doing for the last three months?”

“Of course,” I said.  My cock was stirring at the thought.  We’d both had bouts of sexual frustration and the outcome had been predicable.  We’d fucked in almost every way possible and some I had believed to be physically impossible.   “We were having fun, all the time.”

“Yes,” Rose said.  She hesitated long enough for me to guess what she was about to say.  “Ed, I’m pregnant.”

My heart skipped a beat.  “You’re sure?”  I asked, when I could breathe again.  “You’re not having a false pregnancy?”

Rose gave me a look she’d learned from Deborah, a ‘don’t try that with me son’ look.

“I’m sure,” she said.  “My…ah, period was late by about three weeks, so…”  She blushed.  “Pretty much every girl in Ingalls has had irregular periods since the war, so I didn’t think much of it at first, but three weeks was a little extreme and so I went to Kit and asked him to do a few tests.  He confirmed that I was pregnant, Ed, and that I was actually a month and a half along.”

I blinked.  “But wouldn’t you have missed two periods?”

“I guess that it happened just after the end of my last period,” Rose said.  She paused for a moment to think.  “That would have been the day when we managed to get the plasma arc system set up and everyone wanted to celebrate.  We got a little drunk, and then came back here and had our own celebration.  I would have liked it to be that day, although there’s no way to know for sure…”

I nodded.  The complete absence of contraception had ensured that pregnancy was a likely event for every sexually-active girl in Ingalls, or the remainder of the Principle Towns.  It was likely to happen for the girls the Warriors held captive as well, although their fate would be far worse.  Any girls they bore would wind up in sexual slavery, while any boys would end up being brainwashed into becoming Warriors.  If you started to teach a child nonsense early enough, that child would grow up believing that nonsense, unable to make the kind of mental leaps that would offer freedom to the rest of the world.  They would be locked, forever, into mental double-think.

“Ed, I’m pregnant,” Rose said, again.  “What are we going to do?”

“That’s wonderful news,” I said, finally.  The shock had numbed me, even though I had considered the possibility.  I had wanted to have kids of my own; hell,
my
kids would have a father who was always in their lives.  “Rose, that’s wonderful!”

She stared at me.  “And what if I give birth to a monster?”

I hesitated.  “Rose, there have only been seven monsters in all,” I said.  “A third of pregnancies have miscarried fairly early on, but the remaining pregnancies seem to be fine.  They should give birth to perfectly normal healthy children.”

“Kit didn’t know there was anything odd about the first monster until she gave birth,” Rose said.  “What if…”

I reached forward and placed my hand around her shoulders.  It was a warm room, but she was shaking uncontrollably.  “And even if I do give birth to a normal child, what happens to her if the Warriors win the war?”

It was, I decided, a logical fear, although I doubted that either of us would survive if the Warriors won the war.  Rose still commanded the female militia – the Monstrous Regiment, as some of us called it – and the Warriors wouldn’t suffer her to live. 

I didn’t say that to her.  I’m not always a cold-blooded bastard.

“Rose,” I said, slowly, “will you marry me?”

Rose stared at me.  “Everyone is going to say that we got married because you got me pregnant,” she said.  “I won’t have any respect left in the community.”

“Fuck them,” I said, angrily.  I could hardly care less about what Mrs Grundy thought.  Besides, there had been several other weddings under the same circumstances.  A handful of older women had objected to them, only to be faced down by the rest of the community.  “Rose, I love you.  Please marry me.”

“I will,” Rose said.  She pulled me to her.  “I think you’d better make it quick, though.  I’m not going to be a dishonest woman any longer.”

I laughed.

Outsiders often criticize the extreme commitment of group members. But what is really happening is that leader and followers are conspiring to realize a vision that is falsified daily. For the cult is not paradise, and the leader is not God. Hence the follower is embattled; to squarely confront the many failings of the leader and the group is to call into question one's own great work. Only by daily recommitting himself can the follower continue to work toward his ultimate goal. Each follower works out a secret compromise, acknowledging some things while denying or distorting others. Clearly this is a high-risk strategy that may go awry
.

-Dr. Len Oakes

“So, how does it feel to be married?”

“Shut up,” I said, not unkindly.  Mac laughed, utterly uncrushed.  The wedding had been a quick one, made quicker by the fact that neither of us had any family in Ingalls.  Mac had agreed to serve as the Best Man and had offered, mischievously, to give the bride away as well.  Rose had shaken her head and asked Jackson to serve as a stand-in for her father, who was presumed dead somewhere in the wilderness.  “It feels great, thank you.  You should give it a try sometime.”

“Once she gets pregnant, then I suppose I will have no choice,” Mac said, agreeably.  “Is there any sign of that bastard?”

I shook my head, peering off into the distance.  Schneider had taken the falsified papers I’d given him and headed off towards where his Warrior contacts were waiting for him.  I knew that they were close by.  Their entire army had finally pushed its way through the skirmishers and taken up position barely five kilometres away.  Biggles had tried to bomb their camp with napalm, only to be driven away by machine gun fire from the ground.  He’d been very lucky; they’d also expended a Stinger missile – or something – on his aircraft, which he had narrowly managed to evade.  It was proof that the Warriors had built up a formidable stockpile of weapons before the war, or that they’d raided an armoury somewhere.  It was probably the latter.  Daniel had been delighted to boast of how many weapons the Warriors of the Lord possessed and how little chance we had against them.

“Fuck all,” I said, reluctantly.  The odds were very good that Schneider had simply defected to them completely, or that they’d killed him and dumped his body somewhere.  I would have bet on the latter.  The Warriors of the Lord probably wouldn’t have any further use for him.  We’d lost a few scavengers before, mainly to bandits or rabid dogs, and under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t think much of losing Schneider.  He hadn’t been the most popular of people even before we’d discovered that he’d been betraying us.  “As long as they believed the plans…”

“We’d better hope that they just killed him,” Mac agreed, grimly.  A defecting Schneider could have told them that the plans were faked.  I was hoping that the Warriors would attack, relying on the plans, but I did have contingency plans to handle an attack from other directions as well.  “Did you get Richard briefed on his side of the operation?”

I nodded.  “Yep,” I said.  “It was something I kept from Schneider, just to make sure that he couldn’t betray that to the Warriors, even under torture.  What he doesn’t know he can’t tell, but we should have at least one ace up our sleeves.  Let’s just hope that the Prophet isn’t a poker player.”

“It’s a sinful game anyway,” Mac said, deadpan.  I rolled my eyes in his direction before checking out the horizon again.  The Warriors might be on the verge of invading now and, therefore, had decided that Schneider was suddenly expendable.  I couldn’t fault their logic.  If he came back to Ingalls, aware that the assault was about to begin, he might have betrayed them to us.  “He probably only plays holy games like Trivial Pursuit and Pin the Angel on the Pin.”

“You’re not helping,” I said, shaking my head slowly.  “There’s nothing in view.”

I stood up and started to walk back towards the CP, now heavily protected beneath a mixture of earth, concrete and sheet metal, intended to protect it from a direct hit from enemy mortars, or even light artillery.  Daniel had claimed that the Warriors had heavy weapons, although his ignorance of basic weapons had been so great that it was impossible to know if
he was telling the truth or not.  He
thought
that he was telling the truth, but he had no basis for knowing if he actually was.  There was little point in torturing him further without feedback.

“I’ve given orders that Schneider is to be let back through the defence line when he arrives – if he arrives,” I said, feeling tension echoing down my back.  I could
feel
the presence of the Warrior Army so close to Ingalls, a sense that hostile forces were far too close for comfort, even if I couldn’t see or hear them.  I’d heard some commanders talk about their ability to get a feel for the battlefield, but it was the first time I had developed anything of the sort myself.  “I think, however, that we are on the verge of being attacked.”

The workers had built up the defence lines to truly awesome levels.  The first defence line was a simple wall, surrounding the entire town, seemingly easy to break.  Anyone who broke through, however, would find themselves snared in the midst of other defences, while we poured fire down on them in pre-registered firing patterns.  If they got through that, they'd hit the first inner defence wall…and the minefields covering it, along with buried IEDs and other nasty tricks.  I allowed my gaze to drift over the walls, watching the soldiers and militia as they struggled to perfect the defences, knowing that many of them would die in the coming engagement.

“I made sure that all of them have masks,” Mac said, grimly.  “If they throw gas at us, we’ll be ready for it.”

“Not completely,” I said, remembering the dreaded MOPP - Mission Oriented Protective Posture – suits we’d worn back when we’d been sure that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.  They had provided comprehensive protection, at a cost of being hot, sweaty and uncomfortable, but I would have sold my soul for more than a handful of them in Ingalls.  There are some kinds of nerve gas that can be fatal even when touching bare skin; they don’t have to be breathed in by the victim.  I hoped – prayed – that the Warriors wouldn’t have invented anything like that; they weren't easy to produce.  If they had, however, they could kill thousands of us before we had time to react.

“I know,” Mac said.  Like most weapons of mass destruction, gas isn’t as bad as the media makes it sound…if you have time to prepare.  We had prepared as best as we could, but the only MOPP suits in our armoury had been part of Sergeant Isaac Chang’s squad.  The dangers of an industrial accident, to all intents and purposes, had been why I was unwilling to risk using gas ourselves.  It was very much a weapon of last resort.  “Do you think that the kids will be safe?”

I’d gambled when I had sent them to Stonewall, gambled that the Warriors would see the town as their main target, not the prison.  It wasn't as risky as it sounded – Ingalls would reward them richly for taking it, while the prison was useless as anything other than a fortress – but the Warriors might not be rational about it.  The second danger was that the Warriors would simply lay siege to the prison, rather than trying to take it in a direct offensive.  Stonewall didn’t have the food supplies to hold out forever.

“Yes,” I said, as confidently as I could.  Stonewall featured prominently in my plans for the future, after all.  If Richard had a chance, he could turn it into the key stage for defeating the Warriors, once and for all.  Judging from Biggles’ reports, the entire Warrior Army was on the move towards us; hell, if we were lucky, they’d even have a rebellion in their rear.  “I’m certain of it.”

My radio buzzed on my hip.  “Sir, this is Danny in the observation balloon,” it said, through a haze of static.  The electromagnetic distortion caused by the nukes had been fading for weeks now, although radio communication wasn't what it had been before the war.  It would be a long time before we could fully trust the system, although we had had no choice, but to rely on our most powerful sets to talk to Stonewall and the other Principle Towns.  “They’re on the move.”