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Only when the last survivor was dug out of the fallen buildings did Repeth face the unpleasant task she had been dreading. She walked out to the last tank sitting immobile in the field, the one that had made it the closest. The one that Swede had immobilized, had given his life to stop.
The behemoth squatted there in the tall grass. Already it felt deserted, like those old tanks on static display in front of public buildings, empty and dead. Two bodies lay nearby, far fewer than Repeth would have expected, until she remembered that most of the wounded would be Edens – either enemies newly infected by the Needleshock rounds, or the ones on their side. Only the dead – or the trapped – stayed in place.
Two minutes later she discovered another possibility. The fourth body she found still breathed. Unfortunately he was hamburger and bone splinters below the hips, and suffering from healing starvation. She cursed herself for the delay, hardly believing that even an Eden could be so badly wounded and still live.
She knelt down, keying her radio as she examined him. “Colonel, can you send out the doc with an aid bag and a stretcher team? I found Swede Gunderson, but he’s in a bad way.”
When Doc Horton got there she dropped the aid bag and knelt down next to Swede. The doctor’s jaw set as she saw the extent of the damage. “I’m surprised he’s still alive. It’s going to take a while before his legs and...”
“Yeah. And the rest of him.”
“God, what a mess.” The doctor deftly threaded an IV needle into the man’s arm and rigged a bag on the holder attached to the stretcher. “But if he survives today, he’ll eventually get it all back.”
“I’m sure he’ll be glad of that. Man’s not a man without a manhood.”
The doc chuckled grimly. “Better work on that sense of humor. It’s not dark enough.”
As the stretcher team arrived Jill swept her vision along the treeline to the north. She didn’t see anything but since she was halfway there... “Doc, if you’re okay here I’m going to do a deeper recon, see if I can clear out any watchers they might have left.” Once the doctor grunted assent, Jill took off, angling to the right at a crouch. She reported her intent on the radio.
Again she was crossing a large open space, and her skin crawled as she remembered the hot stab of the bullet in her spine. The sun burned bright overhead, heating the Virginia air to its usual humid swelter. She was glad of the heat, for it let her excuse herself for sweating. It’s just the temperature, she told herself, not fear. I don’t get scared. Right.
Paralysis had reminded her about fear. That some wounds the Eden Plague couldn’t just fix. She rubbed a phantom ache in her back.
Inside the cooler forest she worked her way leftward toward the north, searching for any sign of reconnaissance, but amazingly she didn’t find any. These people aren’t really military, she realized. They’re just a mob with weapons.
Turning to go back, she spotted a flickering movement deeper in, cloaked in the forest shade. Freezing in place, she opened her perceptions, defocusing, looking just for movement. A moment later she found it, a darker patch with white eyes in it.
The boy.
Immediately Jill sat down with her back to a tree, placing her weapon on the ground and her hands on her knees. Then she waved.
He came cautiously but confidently forward to place himself in front of her, on his knees as well, about five feet away. Just outside of grab range. He’s careful.
“Hello,” she said quietly. “Can you understand me?”
The boy shrugged, said nothing.
Jill smiled broadly, and the boy matched her expression. “Can’t you talk?”
He shrugged again, then shook his head no.
So he can understand, at least some. Wonder why he can’t talk. Not important right now. “That’s all right, I’ll talk for the both of us. Do you live alone? No? With people then. Good people? Okay. Can these other people talk? No? Interesting. Did you used to be able to talk? Yes. Did you all get sick and lose your voice? Aha.” Something a Plague did. Wouldn’t be DP1, the Fredericksburgers got that and they can talk just fine. Must be DP2 or some variant. The medical briefings said they thought it would make people stupid and animalistic but not this one or his people.
Jill picked up a twig and smoothed a patch of dirt. “Can you write? No. Used to before? Hmm. Can you read? No. Could you read before? Yes...so it took away your ability to read and speak, but not understand. Oh...were you Edens before? Do you know what that means?”
The boy shook his head no.
Damn. Maybe they were Edens and that’s why they ended up this way. “Did anyone die when everyone got sick? Yes? How many, a lot? Yes...about half? Yes.” That’s it, then. These people were Edens and got hit with DP2. Those that survived lost some part of their higher functions but not all of them. The kid seems bright enough.
“My name is Jill. Do you have a name?”
The boy thought for a minute, then shrugged. He didn’t seem distressed by the lack.
“I’ll call you Bobby, then. How’s that?”
He shrugged, smiled.
Jill thought to herself that she would very much like to meet Bobby’s people, but she had little time. Such a meeting was also fraught with danger and uncertainty – what if his – tribe, maybe – were not as friendly as he was? What if they tried to keep her prisoner or make her someone’s mate or ...who knows what kind of society these people might have built hiding in the forest?
But they might be able to help her. She couldn’t be sure they had all lost the ability to speak or write. Local knowledge of Fredericksburg could be invaluable. She made a decision, reached for her radio. “Colonel, this is Repeth. I’ve made contact with the boy we saw before. I’m going to see if I can liaise with his people, maybe find something out.”
Bobby stared at her with big eyes, as if trying to understand why she was speaking into the air.
“Roger,” Muzik replied. “But get out at the first sign of trouble. Remember all of our people who need your help. You’re vital.”
“Will do. Any luck with the Navy or the Homies?”
“Still can’t reach them. We’re trying to rig a better antenna, but these tactical radios aren’t made to go so far. Unfortunately the long-range ones are scrap.”
She signed off, then slowly stood up so as not to spook the boy. She held out her left hand, and Bobby immediately took it. Her right stayed on her PW10.
He led them northeastward for perhaps two miles, staying to the woods, avoiding open fields, crossing small roads quickly, furtively. He seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he was doing, and she speculated on the qualities of a six-year-old that roamed so far from his home. Fearless, self-reliant – but then, an Eden would have even less fear of injury than a normal boy, and after the bombs fell, more reason to search, scout and scavenge.
They finally broke out of the intermittent wooded hills to see a stretch of neat old brick homes surrounded by yards gone to ruin. Doors and windows were broken open, as if they had been carelessly looted. She expected Bobby to go to a house or building, but instead he crossed to a place by the woods where a drain emptied onto a wild slope, obviously an outflow for the built-up area. He led her into the four-foot pipe.
She stopped at the entrance, fished a tiny light out of her pocket. She shone it down the dark tunnel but could see nothing past about twenty feet. “All right, Bobby, lead on. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
He tugged on her hand impatiently.
Five minutes and several tunnels later she found herself in the mouth of an opening looking out upon a village. That was the only thing she could think of to call it – something primitive, like out of National Geographic.
The tiny town was built around the inner rim of a hundred-yard-diameter bowl, with three other four-foot pipes leading into it. She surmised it must be some kind of drainage sink, where water from heavy rains would run and be absorbed into the ground. They had converted it into a dwelling place, with a well in the center, crude huts made of pallets and pieces of salvaged materials, and the pipes as gates. When winter came it might flood, but until then it was defensible for the tribe.
For a tribe it was, and right now they were all staring at Jill in absolute silence. She stepped out of the pipe and into the sunlight, still holding Bobby’s hand, and she marveled. Twosies. Sort of. Twosies plus Eden Plague maybe. Eden Twosies. Probably no language, no names. This is what the aliens want us to become, so they can Blend with us...be us.
Only we won’t be us anymore.
She keyed her radio and quietly reported what she had found. Muzik wanted her to come back and prepare for the attempt to rescue their lost troops. She replied. “Colonel, I have an idea, if I can establish communication with these people. Give me a couple of hours.”
Muzik sighed wearily, “Okay, but you watch yourself and get back here as soon as you can.”
An hour later she was crouching inside another pipe. Bobby and a warrior she had dubbed Ug had led her through dense woods and storm drains near the Rappahannock River to a point inside the Fredericksburg perimeter. Easing forward, she got a view of an open field of new rich soil. A tractor dragged some kind of attachment across the dirt, and hundreds of bedraggled people worked with hand tools and wheelbarrows, pulling out rocks, stumps and bushes. More than half of them were black or Hispanic. All of the guards were white.
Many of the workers were her people. She could see Grusky and LeBrun among them, but try as she might she could not pick out Rick. And something else was odd...it took her a minute to figure it out, but then she realized.
No women.
No females at all, though there were boys as young as six or seven it seemed, and older men as well. She didn’t like to think of what that might mean.
“Okay,” she addressed her Twosie guides. “I’ve got to sneak in close to talk to one of my people. Wait for me here, all right?” They both nodded, Bobby’s eyes solemn, Ug’s wary.
She slipped a piece of camouflage stretch-netting across her face and head, slung her weapon on her back so it would stay clean, and crawled forward along the brush lining the new field.
Men with guns drifted here and there around the edges of the working party, but not as many as she would have expected. A concerted breakout attempt would probably free almost everyone. But where would they go? The whole rump town was surrounded by walls, berms, abatis, barbed wire, gun jeeps and armored vehicles – and the river on one long side. Many would die if they made a daylight breakout.
The field sloped slightly downward to the river, and there were only a few guards with rifles nearby. They probably figured any of the prisoners that tried to swim the river could be easily shot by riflemen. Her eyes traced a way along the edge of the beach. That’s my opportunity. If I have to I can hold my breath long enough to escape under the water.
Jill wormed her way through the bushes until she reached the river, then crawled along its sunken bank, barely out of sight. Reaching the point across from a large oak tree she had set as a landmark, she cautiously raised her camouflaged head.
“Grusky,” she called in a low voice. “Don’t look around, just work your way over here.” She watched through the blades of long grass as the bored-looking guard waved a buzzing fly away.
Sergeant Grusky glanced up with a slight jerk at her voice, but she could see him forcibly relax and begin meandering in her direction. Soon they were near enough to talk in low tones.
“Glad to see you, Master Sergeant.”
“Can’t say the same about your situation, Staff. Where are the women?”
Grusky grimaced. “They separated them out when they brought us back. Talked about doing women’s work, but they also took the prettiest handful off separate. Said they were for the Professor’s brothel. Johnson got himself killed trying to prevent them from taking his girlfriend.”
“Not good. You have to tell everyone we’re going to stage a rescue tonight, sometime after one a.m. No more pointless resistance, everyone needs to stay alive until the breakout attempt. Take this.” She tossed her PW5 pistol into the grass within his reach when the guard’s back was turned. “Tell everyone that when the shooting starts they need to make a break for it and meet right here by the bank. That oak tree is your marker. We have local guides and a way through their lines. Also, everyone needs to pass the Eden Plague to everyone they can, friendly or not. Bite, scratch, bleed on them, whatever you can do without getting killed. A lot of the enemy must have been hit with Needleshock and they are already Edens. That’s going to undermine their power structure and cause confusion. Some might even help you.”
Grusky nodded and had barely concealed the pistol in his pocket when the guard came over and yelled at him to get back to work. Jill shrank back under the bank, burying her face in the fetid mud beneath the grass overhang. A moment later she heard the sound of water falling, a stream of urine that arched over her and struck the tiny beach at water’s edge. As she hid, she cursed herself for forgetting to ask about Rick. She waited for a full five minutes before carefully prying herself out of her hidey-hole and slipping away.
