Valentine's Exile (20 page)

Valentine checked the customizable sling. “This is great. But you keep Trudy?”

“A man doesn't give up on the girl he loves for a hotter model. Even if she's sporting polycarbon rifling.

“Good gear means flash in the KZ. Don't have the full manual but there's a card in the case that you should be able to figure out.”

“Speaking of flashing, he could use a change of clothing, ” Duvalier said, already cleaning her Mossberg.

“Clothes will be a little harder, but I think I've got an old officer's trench coat in here. Very nice waterproofing and only one small, stain-free hole.”

“You ready for this, Valentine?” Everready asked. “All your shots up to date?”

They rested atop a stripped Kenworth parked outside Tunica, within heavy-duty fencing and mounds of rubble blocking the roads south of the city, out of the line of sight of the nearest sentry tower, spaced miles apart on this, the less-critical south side of Tunica.

“So we just have to move slowly?” Valentine asked, loading the U-gun.

“Not so much slow as smooth,” Everready said. “No sudden moves. I'm not saying a cough will set them off. Just that it could.”

“Ahn-Kha, you'll be okay here for a few days?” Valentine asked.

“There is food and water. I will stay in the cab of this fine vehicle at night, and under those trees in the day. Are they less active at night?”

“Depends,” Everready said. “If a few start prowling around, sometimes others join them. Then you get a mob mentality. They go off easier in groups.”

Duvalier climbed up and hung off one of the rearview mirror posts and looked north into town. The mirrors themselves were gone. “I see one,” Duvalier said. “By the traffic light that's touching the road.”

Valentine saw it too. A distant figure staggered back and forth across the street, leaning forward as though trying to tie his shoes as he walked.

“Poor souls,” Valentine said.

Everready slowly slid off the top of the truck. “Lots more, closer to the old casinos. That's where the missions organize themselves. That one's probably lost and hungry.

“Okay, kiddies, got your iodine?”

Valentine and Duvalier touched their breast pockets and nodded. Valentine had a big bottle, half full, courtesy of Everready's stockpile, and Duvalier had a stoppered hip flask holding the other half.

“You get bit, first thing you do is get clear and iodine it good. Even if you've had your shots the damn thing mutates sometimes, and who knows what strain is in there. Plus it'll save you an infection. Lots of these have hepatitis along with their other problems.”

They started down the old road. “And don't shoot unless it's life or death. It'll just get 'em screaming, and between the shots and the screams you'll have a hurtin' of psychos on you before you know it.”

Everready set an even pace, the old Cat rocking a little back and forth, like a ship rolling on the ocean. Valentine walked behind, U-gun across his chest in its hands-free sling. Behind him he heard the steady footsteps of Duvalier, pacing her feet to Everready's rhythm.

Valentine had only had one brief brush with ravies sufferers, on the Louisiana border. Southern Command generally shot those who succumbed to the disease once their minds went and they didn't understand what was happening anymore. He'd never seen the aftereffects before.

Seen? Smelled, more like.

Tunica had once been a pretty town, Valentine suspected, fragrant of the magnolias and dogwoods beloved by the residents. Now it smelled like a pig farm. Everready paused at the edge of what had been a park running through the center of town. The three of them stood opposite an old bronze statue of three weary-looking soldiers, the two on the ends supporting a wounded comrade in the center. Everready used the rifle of the one on the left to climb atop the bronze shoulders.

“The kudzu's been cut back from here,” Duvalier said. The growth choked most of the rest of the park.

“Probably the Mission people,” Everready said, covering his eyes as he looked around. Valentine heard cats spitting at each other somewhere in the park. “See those basins? Food and water. And there they are. Over by the pharmacy.”

Valentine saw two heads bobbing among the growth. Both men, with stringy-looking beards. They moved like sleepwalkers, the second following the first.

“Careful now,” Everready said. “If anyone hears an engine let me know; my ears aren't what they used to be. Memphis dumps off fresh cases in the center of town sometimes.”

They crossed over to one of the main streets. Valentine saw that what he had thought were only two individuals were six; hollow-eyed, tight-cheeked, and knob-kneed. Some shorter women and even a child followed the first two.

Everready walked slowly and smoothly, like a man treading across a pool. Piles of feces lay scattered in the streets and alleys, drying in the summer sun. Valentine saw rats in the alleys, sniffing at the odious piles. Cats filled every shady windowsill and step, watching the rats. A pair of kittens watched them from beneath a wheeled Dumpster.

Valentine put his finger on the U-gun's trigger guard as the slow-moving train of people—or what had once been people—approached.

The two files passed each other, the ravies victims' faces spasming in a parody of vocalization, black-toothed mouths opening and shutting but no sound in their throats but dry wheezes. They looked sunburned and leathery. A few wore stained gray cotton smocks with URM stenciled on the chests and backs.

The little girl seemed a bit more animated than the rest; she pointed and waved.

Everready ignored her.

“URM?” Valentine asked when the group had passed.

“United Relief Missions. Old school Christians. Down at the riverfront. Memphis lets them operate sort of as independents because they keep these folks alive, or what passes for it.”

“Looks like they feed themselves, too,” Duvalier said, pointing at the corpse of a cat with her walking stick. The cat's midsection had been torn out.

“Wish it would rain,” Everready said. “The town's a little better after a good rain.”

They crossed a street, and Valentine saw a heap of bodies, mostly nude, on the steps of what looked like a neo-Georgian city hall. One kicked and another rolled over.

“Like hogs in a wallow. The cement gets cool at night,” Everready said.

They passed through streets of homes, trees buzzing with cicadas, perhaps one house in three burned to the ground and the others crawling with cats and inhabited by crows. Valentine saw a larger flock gather and disperse around the crotch of a tree, and found the scavengers feeding on a corpse hanging in a backyard tree like a body draped over a saddle.

“That's Reaper work,” Valentine said. “Last night, by the look of it.”

“Uh-huh,” Everready agreed. “When pickings are slim in Memphis they come down here to feed. Memphis buys ravies cases cheap from all across the country and dumps them here, sort of a walking aura reserve. I'm told they stay alive for years—till an infection gets them.”

“I didn't know they still used it except to cause us trouble, ” Valentine said.

“I've heard of them dosing each other's populations when they feud. Or to put down revolts. See, nobody in the KZ gets inoculations except for Quislings.”

“How much farther?” Duvalier asked. “This smell is getting to me. I'm getting sick. Seriously, Val . . .”

Everready pulled a little tin from his belt and set it on a stone-and-bar wall in front of one of the houses. He dabbed something from a green bottle on his finger. “Just camphor,” he said, and wiped it under her nose. “Breathe through your mouth.”

“Better,” Duvalier said.

Another pair of rail-thin shamblers wandered near the corpse in the tree. Valentine could have counted their ribs. “I don't like how that one is looking around.”

“Smells blood. Blood smell sets them off,” Everready whispered, not taking his eyes from them as he mechanically repocketed his first-aid tin. “Best not to move, just stand here. Like those statues at the memorial.”

Two crows held a tug-of-war over a piece of viscera.

“Oh God—” Duvalier said.

Valentine could never decide which sound hit his ears first after Duvalier's retch. The wet splash of vomit was certainly louder, heard with his right ear. The high-pitched wailing from the left startled him more, bringing back all the emotions of his first small-unit action as a junior Wolf lieutenant. Perhaps they arrived simultaneously.

Valentine clutched Duvalier's hand and pulled her to her feet. Her walking stick clattered to the ground and Everready grabbed it, unslinging Trudy and running with the carbine in one hand and the stick in the other.

“Follow me!” Everready called. “Don't shoot, you'll just draw more!”

Duvalier came off her feet again, wet-mouthed, unable to control her stomach. Valentine released his weapon and picked her up in a fireman's carry.

He followed Everready up a short slope to an intersection.

“Let me down, I'm okay,” Duvalier said.

Valentine went to one knee. He looked back and saw a dozen or so figures running in a more or less arrow-shaped formation. At this distance their bare feet were so dirty that most looked as though they were wearing black shoes and socks.

Kudzu-covered, tree-filled service stations and fast-food restaurants lined the road leading toward the casinos, according to an ancient brown sign. Everready almost leaped across the highway toward a small doughnut shop. A shriek from the direction of the Mississippi let them know that trouble would soon be running in from a second direction.

“Why not the bank?” Valentine yelled. A little way up the road a stout-looking brick structure promised safety— for money or those fleeing psychotics—from behind a wall of scrub pine.

“Too big. Can't stop them from getting in.”

Valentine heard footsteps just behind. So sick but able to run so fast ...

He dropped behind Duvalier and turned, holding the U-gun by barrel and grip. A swift-running young screamer got the butt in his face as he reached for Valentine. He went down, rolling. Valentine shifted his grip and employed the gun in a credible backhand.

The screamer didn't get up again.

There was no glass in the door or the windows. Everready vaulted over the counter and entered the cooking line. The display cabinet held nothing but empty trays and an oversized wasp nest.

Valentine ran around a permanently parked car and entered the formerly white doughnut stop. Duvalier had tears in her eyes as she covered the front of the store with her pump-action.

“In here. Help me with this!” Everready called.

They fled into the cooking line, and Everready and Valentine moved a fryer to block the path to the narrow kitchen. The lighting seemed wrong—Valentine looked up and saw a hole in the roof. Weather or animal activity had enlarged it to the size of a picture window.

Everready emptied the damp mess resting within a plastic garbage can and wedged it above the fryer as Valentine heard screams from within the doughnut shop.

“Nice scouting,” Valentine said, pointing to the hole in the roof.

“Hope they don't climb up there,” Duvalier said, shifting her shotgun muzzle from the barricade to the roof hole.

Everready put his back to the fryer. Its rear was festooned with smeared warnings. “Planning nothing, never been in here to scavenge. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a hole in the roof of most of these places.”

Pounding and screaming came through from the other side of the fryer, horribly loud, horribly near. Valentine fought the urge to run to the other end of the kitchen.

“Valentine, help me hold this—no, the plastic can, they're trying to crawl over! Girl, check the back, there might be a door!” Everready said.

Duvalier hurried to the other end of the kitchen and disappeared around a corner. Two shotgun blasts followed immediately.

“Oh shit,” Everready swore.

Duvalier flew back into the kitchen, her coat billowing and bringing the smell of cordite as she turned and braced herself against a tall refrigerator. “There's a door. Or there isn't—that's the problem.”

“How many?” Valentine asked.

“How many are there?” she shot back.

“Thousands,” Everready said.

“Sounds about right,” Duvalier said.

They came, more like a single organism comprised of screaming heads and waving arms than a series of individuals, filling the kitchen with noise. Valentine brought his U-gun to bear, feeling the pounding on the other side of the fryer against his back.

“The roof!” Valentine shouted, firing. “Go, Ali!”

“I can jump better than either of you. I'll cover you.”

More appeared and Valentine didn't wait to argue. He stood on a prep table and tossed his weapon up through the hole, hoping he didn't overthrow and land it in the parking lot. He grabbed an electrical conduit pipe and pulled himself up, got his foot into a light fixture, and climbed. The roof was thick with growth, and disturbed butterflies hurried into the sky.

Everready passed up his gun to Valentine, and Valentine heard Duvalier's Mossberg.

“Forget the packs!” she shouted.

Everready made it to the roof with less difficulty than Valentine.

Duvalier crouched to spring up through the hole in a single leap and they were on her. She spun like a dynamo, slamming one against the fryer, even now moving from the pressure at the other side, screaming as another sank its teeth into her shoulder.