“And the Stranded didn’t sniff it out?”
“Another secure COG facility that we kept to ourselves.”
Ouch. Hoffman was still livid that Prescott had hung on to classified information right up to the final battle. Maybe he’d beaten the rest of it out of him. Good for you, Vic. Anya, now wearing sensible working rig and flat boots, gave her a quick flash of the eyebrows. Fights had been had, evidently.
“Will do, sir. Permission to barter some venison with the civvies?”
He leaned over the chart again, both hands flat on the table. “Go ahead. I’ll file it under public relations.”
“I found some cattle tracks, too—farm livestock got loose and bred, probably. Might be well worth a foray for steak and milk in the weeks to come. Oh, and signs of feral dog packs. If they come near the camp, it’s shoot on sight.”
Hoffman managed a smile. “You’re a damn useful woman, Mataki. See what you can do about the feral cats, too.”
Great. I’m catering and pest control. Still, nobody needs a sniper for much else now.
He didn’t ask if she’d save some venison for him. He probably knew she would.
When she walked back outside, the carcasses had a small audience, so it seemed a good time for a spot of skills transfer. They were mostly city boys who’d known nothing except hunting Locust. They probably hadn’t seen a deer this close, if at all.
“Right, you lot, gather around for training, or sod off and do something useful.” She pulled out her knife. “And someone fetch me a hacksaw.”
She put on her instructor’s voice and began indicating with the tip of her knife what needed cutting first and why. Anya wandered into her field of view and stood watching with her arms folded; without makeup, she looked so much like her mother that it was upsetting. Bernie almost lost her thread. She paused for a second to get back on track.
All these years, and it still isn’t over.
“Sorry, where did I get to?” Bernie said, not caring if she sounded like she’d plunged into senility.
“The balls, Granny,” Baird called.
“Oh, right.” Smart-arse. “Yes, testicles.” She couldn’t resist it. She sliced carefully, then lobbed them at Baird. “You’ll be wanting a pair.”
Everyone needed to have a laugh when they had to watch guts being removed. Inevitably, though, someone would throw up. Gears who had managed to chainsaw their way through any number of grubs would lose their lunch soon, she knew it. Sometimes it almost tipped her stomach over the edge, too.
“You don’t need to throw any of this away—well, not much.” The carcass still felt comfortingly warm, but her hands would stink for a week no matter how many times she scrubbed them. “Lungs, heart… chop those up, and you can make a nourishing filling for—”
Her voice was drowned out by the rumble of a vehicle coming through the entrance gates. A huge grindlift rig squeezed between the pillars. Dom turned around, stared, and then jogged over to it as if he’d never seen one before. It was only when the driver scrambled down from the cab and the backslapping started that she realized this was a reunion, and decided to call it a day on the lesson. She dropped the offal back in the deer’s body cavity for safekeeping and wiped her hands as best she could on its coat.
“Bernie, this is Dizzy Wallin,” Dom said. “He saved my ass, and Marcus’s. He took on that grub bastard Skorge so we could get clear in the grindlift.”
Bernie could smell stale alcohol. The man stuck out his hand and she shook it. “He’s buildin’ me up, Sergeant—Tai was the one who stopped that weird streak o’ piss, not me. He saved my ass. Where is he? I got some extra-smooth moonshine I want to share with him.”
Tai Kaliso’s name stopped the conversation dead. Dizzy looked into Dom’s face, read what was there, and screwed his eyes shut for a moment.
“Shit,” he said.
“Sorry, Dizzy. He didn’t make it.”
“What happened? Last I saw, he was givin’ that grub bastard hell with a chainsaw and yellin’ at me to get away.”
Dom caught Bernie’s eye, and she wondered if he was hesitating to spell out what had happened to Tai because of her or for Dizzy’s sake. Maybe he’d just had enough of reliving nightmares.
“The grubs took him,” he said. “He was … ah, shit, they just carved him up, man. They really made a mess of him.”
Dom looked down at the ground for a few moments. Dizzy looked at Bernie and she just shook her head. The detail could wait, if it had to be told at all. A movement caught her eye, and she looked up at the cab of the rig to see two teenage girls staring down at them.
“My girls,” Dizzy said. “I’m gonna be able to look after them now, like I oughta.” He gripped Dom’s shoulder. “Let’s all meet up later and sample that moonshine. For Tai.”
“We’ll do that,” Bernie said. “Nice to meet you, Dizzy.”
She walked away to get on with butchering the deer, but she’d only gone a few steps when the alarm sounded. Cole jogged past her to the gate with his hand pressed to his earpiece, followed by Baird.
“Grubs?” she asked. “I’m in the right mood for them.”
“Civvies shapin’ up for a riot,” Cole said. “Hey, Marcus? You down there already?”
One of the Ravens was now airborne, circling over the area, so whatever had triggered the incident, CIC was making a show of cracking down on it. Bernie collected her rifle and put in her earpiece. Human civilization was a fragile thing.
She knew that all too well, not only because she’d seen what replaced it in far too many places, but also because she straddled that line between reason and savagery herself. Her own grasp on civilization was as fragile as anyone’s.
Yeah, making that grub suffer would have been a dangerous release for her anger. She’d find another way to do right by Tai.
FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTER, PORT FARRALL.
So much for cold weather keeping trouble at home.
Dom could now see the crowd. He was about a hundred meters away when the scuffle spilled over into something uglier, but Marcus was already there.
A guy went down hard on the concrete; the screaming mob closed like a sea. Marcus waded into the center of about eighty men and women, Lancer held close to his body, and just shouldered his way through.
Dom felt his guts knot and started sprinting. Armor or not, Marcus was taking a big risk. Without a helmet, he’d get a serious kicking if he went down, and that was the kind of dumb thing that killed you when a shitload of grubs couldn’t.
Marcus vanished in the press of bodies for a moment. When Dom caught sight of him again, he was standing his ground and letting blows bounce off his plates. Then a space began opening around him.
“Hey, enough!” His yell was loud enough to cut right through the screaming. “I said enough—back off!”
The scuffle stopped, but the crowd was still yelling and cursing. Dom and whoever was behind him—he didn’t even look—slowed and spread out, rifles aimed.
The target of the mob’s anger lay on the ground, huddled in a ball, and Marcus stood over him like a dog guarding a bone. Dom almost expected to see him bare his teeth and snarl. And it wasn’t the men in the crowd who were gesticulating and swearing now; it was the women.
It wasn’t easy to get heavy with a bunch of women.
Shit, we’re not trained for this.
Dom remembered the food riots in Ephyra not long after the Hammer was fired, and he would rather have faced down grubs bare-handed than have to charge civvies again. He never felt right going after them. He didn’t know if he had what it took to shoot if he had to.
Marcus just stood there, immovable, and signaled to the approaching Gears to hold it without even looking in their direction. Dom braked. Cole caught up with him, and now it was a matter of seeing what happened next.
“I want you to step back, folks,” Marcus said firmly. “Now. Move it. I’m dealing. Okay?”
The shouting died down, and there was suddenly a little m
ore space around Marcus.
“That’s it.” He held out his left arm and made a calm-down gesture. But he still had his Lancer in his right hand, muzzle lowered, finger inside the trigger guard. “That’s better. Just go home. Okay?”
He was doing his it’ll-be-all-right voice. He could usually pitch it perfectly, quiet enough not to make anyone feel threatened but firm enough for them to know he meant business.
A woman started up again. “That animal shouldn’t be here.” She had that same well-bred tone as poor old Major Stroud. Her clothes were threadbare, but Dom could see they’d once cost a lot of money. “They’re parasites. We’re struggling to stay alive, and he just walks in to steal our food.”
“That’s my problem, ma’am. Not yours.” Marcus switched instantly to a voice Dom hadn’t heard in years—the wealthy, educated Marcus, one posh person talking to another in some sort of code they both understood. “Just go home.” He turned slowly, spotted Dom, and gestured discreetly. Stay back. “I’m not moving until this area is cleared.”
The woman must have been used to getting her own way. “We’re supposed to be under martial law. Unless he’s punished, they’ll all be in swarming in here before long. We’ll be overrun by Stranded.”
Marcus just looked at her for a few beats in absolute silence. Dom could hardly hear him now. “Martial law? Yes. I can arrest you all, or shoot you for unlawful assembly. But you’d rather walk away now and let me deal with him. Wouldn’t you?”
The King Raven was holding position at about two hundred meters, not directly overhead, but close enough for Dom to feel some downdraft. It was there to keep an eye on crowd movement. That was another police job that Gears weren’t trained for. It would either reinforce Marcus’s point or make things worse; in this mood, a mob needed only one trigger to kick the whole thing off again.
“Okay.” Marcus squatted slowly and grabbed the man by his collar, hauling him upright. “We’re done here.”
The guy looked like he’d had the shit kicked out of him, face covered in blood, clothes ripped. For a moment, Dom thought the whole crowd—silent now—was on that knife-edge of either breaking up or pitching in again, and Dom’s only focus was on getting Marcus out of there if it blew up. Marcus was effectively surrounded. He had to walk through a few men to get the guy out. And that was the likely flash point.
Dom got ready to fire a burst over their heads. Then Marcus took a couple of steps, setting his shoulders in that don’t-fuck-with-me way, and the men in his path just stepped aside. People usually did.
Dom took the cue to move in behind him with the others, forming an extended line to walk slowly toward the crowd until the civilians all decided to move away at the same time like a shoal of fish. It might have been the sobering effect of seeing Cole ambling toward them, too.
“We don’t take much pushin’ to go over the edge as a species, do we?” Cole said. He waited with Dom until the street emptied. “Shit, we all behaved ourselves when the grubs were around.”
“We’re too used to having an enemy.” Dom looked up to watch the Raven bank away. “Come on, let’s see what the bum has to say for himself.”
Marcus took the Stranded guy around the nearest corner and checked him over, while Dom and Cole watched. The man was scared shitless. He seemed to be expecting another good kicking.
“And I’m supposed to be the frigging animal?” Blood trickled from his scalp and nostrils in bright, shiny trails, and he kept wiping his split lip with the back of his hand. Despite the crap he was giving Marcus, he was still shaking. “Shit, you COG fascists never change.”
Marcus ignored him, tilting the guy’s head with both hands to look at his scalp. “The doc should check you out. Skull fractures. Delayed onset of symptoms.”
“What you gonna do with me?”
“Kick your ass out of here, if you don’t want the doc.”
“Why’d you save me, then? Why didn’t you let ’em kill me?”
Marcus leaned over him. “Because if I let them do it once, they’ll do it again. And again. And then we’ve got anarchy. It’s not for your sake. It’s for ours.”
“Gee, thanks, asshole.”
“You’re welcome. Come in, or stay outside. But inside—it’s our rules.”
The bum didn’t respond. Cole gestured to him to get up. “Come on, fella, let me escort you out the restaurant. You ain’t wearin’ a tie. We’re kinda formal.”
Cole strolled off with the bum, heading for the checkpoint, but Dom saw him reach into his belt and hand the guy a small ration pack. They disappeared around the corner.
“One week,” Dom said. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Better work out a way to stop them from getting in and upsetting the more sensitive citizens. Not exactly a secured perimeter.”
“That was pretty impressive crowd handling, by the way.”
“Yeah. I’m great with housewives.” Marcus shrugged and walked out into the main street again, looking uncomfortable. “Anyway, I didn’t like the odds. Let’s dump this on Hoffman and get the food supplies sorted.”
Without any discussion or briefing, every Gear who’d responded to the call was now patrolling a little differently. Dom could see the sudden change. They weren’t keeping an eye on buildings or potential emergence holes any longer. They were watching the civilians around them. It was weird how something could shift the balance so fast. Grubs were easy to see, obviously a threat, but any one of the folks in Port Farrall could suddenly become the disgruntled hothead with a grudge now. At least they weren’t armed, for the most part.
This is what gets to me. I need a clear line between who’s on my side and who isn’t.
Unity through order. Shit, I used to think that was just a slogan.
Boots thudded behind him at a jog, and Cole caught up with him. “Dom, baby, how you doin’?”
I don’t know how I’m doing. I’m existing. That’s about it. “So, how far did you have to drop-kick him?”
“Aww, I just advised him to stay out the way of crazy women. Shit, maybe we’re gonna need Stranded now.”
“Yeah, well, they know the membership rules. It’s up to them.”
They’re no use to us. How many times did I walk through their stinking slums looking for Maria? Ten years, all their networks and bush telegraph and shit, and they didn’t know she was out there? Then some bastard finally thinks he recognizes her when it’s too damn late? Fuck them.
Dom knew—in a weird, distant way—that he’d split off the functioning parts of himself to get through the day. There was the terrified Dom who had nightmares, and struggled to face each morning when he woke. Then there was the Dom who kept his body moving and going through the motions of being a Gear. There was also the Dom who endlessly replayed those last few minutes with Maria, torturing himself with what he might have done differently, and—half ashamed, half enraged—even blaming others.
But I did it. It’s all down to me.
“Dom, we been talking to Parry.” Cole jogged his elbow to get his attention. “His guys and the civvy builders are gettin’ some of the small rooms habitable. You want a cabin to yourself?”
“We’ve all got to put up with some discomfort.” Sleeping quarters were no more than rows of camp beds and bare mattresses in derelict classrooms. “Why would I want my own room?”
“So you got some privacy, man. You know?”
“No …” Yes. Dom knew what he meant.
“You wake up. Every time you wake up, you go, Oh God, and …”
Dom’s face burned. “Shit, I’m waking up the whole barracks when I have nightmares. Is that it? I’ve got to move out?”
“No, man. It ain’t that at all. Everyone’s got their nightmares. Nobody’s sore at you. Just offerin’. You want it, I’ll make it happen.”
In some ways, Dom would have found it easier if everyone had told him to snap out of it. Nobody did. They just got kinder and tried harder. There was nothing they could do, though.
“Tha
nks, Cole Train.”
Shit, I’m going to lose it…
Dom blinked and tried to clear his eyes. Bernie was a little way ahead of him, a bloody handprint on the backside of her pants. When they walked through the school entrance, she made for her precious deer carcasses and seemed to be searching for something.
“Bastards,” she snarled. “Where’s my frigging liver gone?”
Dom joined her, because it was something to do, anything to distract him. The deer’s innards were scattered. Small blood-tinted paw prints led into a culvert.
“Cats,” Dom said.
“That’s it. Time I got some fur gloves.” She checked her Lancer’s ammo clip, then her watch. “They need putting down. Vermin. I’ve got a couple of hours. Coming?”
Being Bernie, she just wanted to be kind. Dom wasn’t stupid; he knew the whole squad—his social squad, nothing defined by call signs—kept a constant watch on him.
Putting down. Euthanizing. Whatever fancy name you want. Oh God, Maria …
It tipped him over the edge.
“Just stop being nice to me, all right?” The shout was out of his mouth before he could think. Everything in his peripheral vision vanished. It was just rage and shame and pain erupting, uncontrolled. “Just frigging stop it, all of you. I couldn’t save my own fucking wife. I couldn’t find her in time. I couldn’t save her. I had to shoot my own fucking wife because I couldn’t save her. Okay? Are we done now? Are we done with crazy Dom? Fuck you all.”
Then he burst out sobbing. The next second—he could have punched someone out. He didn’t know what the next breath would bring. He heard Cole like he was miles away, telling someone to beat it, that there was nothing to see here, and Bernie just grabbed him as if he was going under for the third time. He sobbed on her shoulder. It didn’t matter what anyone thought, because his life wasn’t worth shit now.
“Come on, sweetheart, it’s okay … okay …” Bernie must have beckoned someone, because he felt her shoulders move. “Take it easy. It’s okay.”
Someone took his elbow. “Dom, it’s freezing. Get inside.”
Marcus had promised Carlos that he’d always look after Dom. And he was always there; he’d just show up, like he showed up now.