Sixteen ticks. Twenty. Thirty. Chuck Dogg shifted uneasily on Spooky’s other side.
Spooky Lara’s lips moved, slightly. There was very little resemblance to the Gloria scarecrow in the thin soylon slip remaining, now that her face had filled out a bit. Swann, his peripheral vision trained as only a raider’s could be, almost turned his head as if he heard her. It was just a slight exhale, but the moment it finished, the bureaucrat wadded up the papers on his desk. He selected a couple more of the original flimsies, then held them up.
Swann stepped forward and accepted them. His palms were a little moist. He couldn’t quite pin down why, but he had the heebie-jeebies, as if a streetsweep was just about to start, Patriots and their guns herding a compliant crowd for ID checking.
Selection, they called it. The word had a darker meaning in the camps.
“See these get destroyed.” The bureaucrat’s tone had gone flat as a flimsy. “That will be all, my friend. Pleasure to speak to you.”
Swann nodded. He did an about-face, and Zampana was already moving for the door. So was Simmons, who didn’t look troubled in the least. Lazy Eye had a perplexed air, but thankfully kept his mouth shut; Sal and Prink exchanged significant glances. Minjae, expressionless, held the door.
Spooky kept staring at the bureaucrat, holding eye contact. The thin line between them snapped, and she glanced guiltily at Swann. He shook his head a little, making a shooing motion, and she preceded him meekly out into the old-style nylon-carpeted hall that smelled of dust, markers, and the chalky, dry-oily smell of kids cooped up for long periods of time. A few pictures of McCoombs’s black-haired, sneering smile had been ripped from the walls and trampled, but other than that, everything was in good order.
Swann stopped at the end of the hall. He glanced at the papers, and a strange rippling sensation went through the bottom of his stomach. The medic, her dark curly hair pulled back under her black kerchief and her cheeks dead white, stopped too. Simmons halted to their left, Zampana saying something to him in a low fierce tone, and Lazy bounced onto his toes, full of questions but not daring to spill a single one. The left-hand hall was full of uniforms and a bustle of soft activity; the right led past a trophy case and posters telling kids to look both ways before crossing the street, to be respectful and love America and to wash their hands, before finally ending at glass double doors, miraculously unshattered by the shelling.
The suburbs generally had it better than anywhere else, as usual. That was where most of McCoombs’s support had come from. Houses made of margarine, and margarine souls, too. Mass-produced, fake, and full of grease.
“That was weird,” Minjae said, a little louder than she had to.
Sal grunted. “Paperhead.” But he eyed Lara, and glanced quickly at Swann, gauging the other man’s reaction.
Swann held the wad of flimsies out. Some of them were a little thicker than standard, probably originals. His hand didn’t shake, and later, he wondered why. “Here.”
Wonder of wonders, he even sounded natural.
Spooky took them. A bright bead of blood had started under her left nostril; she wiped gingerly at it. “Thank you.” Two pale, almost whispered little words. “I…Thank you.”
“We stick together.” Swann pitched it just a little louder than he had to, just like Minjae. “Ain’t that right?”
She nodded. So did Prink. Minjae subsided, and Simmons shrugged. The big blond bastard wasn’t the one Swann was most concerned about, since he was not precisely untroubled by complex thoughts but profoundly uncaring if he judged they didn’t pose a threat to his cohort.
Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Swann thought the Reaper would have made a bang-up Patriot if the Firsters hadn’t done…what they did to his family.
“We gonna get supplied?” Chuck Dogg said, and Swann’s worries eased significantly. Chuck’s opinion carried more weight than his own, really.
“Let’s move out,” Swann replied, and didn’t move until Spooky did. Just to make sure she knew she was included in the damn order.
She put her head down, folding the papers with her thin, nail-bitten, capable hands, and meekly followed.
Chapter Nineteen
What Surrender Means
“I’ve been thinking.” Minjae laced her hands behind her head. “Haven’t you?”
“Hard to stop.” Zampana bent over her boots, working the polish in with swift, sure circles. An unfinished Patriot Kommunity Kourt had been commandeered for the troops, and the big shiny gym was partitioned down the middle. Camp cots and footlockers stood in neat rows, and it was drafty but not cold. You didn’t have to sleep with your head wrapped in whatever blanket you could scrounge up, or huddle in a heap. After so long living rough, it was almost uncomfortable to be back inside. Even the hotel billet in Jackson hadn’t exactly made either of them feel easy. “Let me guess. San Francisco.”
“What, so I could swim to class? Nah, man. Portland.”
“Rains all the time. And riots.”
“Should be a nice change. You think they mean it?”
“Mean what?” Zampana could tell where this was heading, but she preferred things methodical. Which was partly why she and Minjae got along so well all the time. Well, most of the time.
While Min appreciated systematic thinking, she didn’t have much patience for deliberate obtuseness. “New GI bill.”
That was the rumor. “They better mean it.” Zampana kept polishing. These were fine, really, but she preferred her old boots, even if the tread on them had worn completely off. Better for forest work. “Could end up a doctor.”
“Huh. What does sniping get me?” Minjae’s eyes half closed, and the high hard small slopes of her breasts pointed up aggressively. She watched her own boot toes tick-tocking back and forth on an internal rhythm, and rubbed the back of her head against her hands, producing a sandpaper whisper from short, thick black stubble.
“Fifty before hanging.” Zampana scooped up more polish.
“Not funny.”
“Mh.” The rag had to be very wet, but not dripping. Another round of buffing and she’d have a respectable shine, but just once, she was going for a mirror gloss. Just because.
Just to see if she could.
“Where’s Spooky?” Minjae closed her eyes. Her shoulders loosened. “Man, that’s some goddamn weird shit, ennit.”
Zampana weighed the nickname one last time. It was pretty apposite, with the way the new girl stood around, quiet and bug-eyed. Not to mention this morning, and the incident in the burning camp. Her grandmother would call the girl bruja, and make the sign of the evil eye. Like jaguars, those with the touch were to be respected, propitiated, feared—and burned if they became malignant. “Prink taking her and Lazy to get ident. Swann got Crunche to cosign on an affidavit or something.”
“Huh. Maybe I should get one.” The way Minjae was lounging, you could barely tell there was a knife under her pillow. The boots were a dead giveaway, though. A raider learned to sleep in her footwear, along with where not to wash her goddamn Div-cup in the woods. Finding a place to dump old blood was harder than you’d think, and who wanted to cram a pollution-dirty cup up her hoo-haw?
Not Emiliana Inez Compaña del Torres, now Zampana for her grandmother, that was for damn sure.
The edge of Minjae’s T-shirt rode up. You could just see the top of the bar-like scar peeking over the edge of her uniform trousers, her belt loosened but not completely and her skivvies the dirty-gray army issue that were itchy as fuck to begin with, but wore like iron and eventually matted down and turned buttery.
There was the same horizontal scar on Zampana’s abdomen. Glimpsing it on Min made her exhale a bit, and she turned it into blowing across the shoe polish like she thought it would help it dry, or something.
Minjae settled her hips more comfortably. If she were really looking to nap, she would have already been asleep. Something was bothering her. “Pana?”
“Spit it out, chica.”
>
“You think he’s really gonna die?”
So that was it. “Who?”
“Him.”
Oh. She meant him. The Great Big Fucktard, the First among Firsters, the Caudillo of DC. “The ’cast said critical condition.” They said McCoombs had bitten a glass pill full of something, they didn’t know what. Acid, some rumors hinted, ate half his face off. Or poison, said some others, but it hadn’t worked on the malignant fuck. “Maybe he just too mean to die.”
“Then what? You really think the war’s over?”
“That’s what surrender means.”
“I dunno. I’ve been thinking.”
“I could tell.”
Minjae’s peculiar chuffing sound of true amusement pulled her chiseled lips taut. Her shirt came up a little more, showing the smooth edges of the scar. Rectangular edges crisp, shiny thickened skin where they’d pressed the contact pad and held it for ninety excruciating seconds.
Zampana’s own abdomen twinged a little. It was the last time she’d cried, standing on the public zapbus back in the immie section, her hand flat against the raw, throbbing, deep burn from the targeted waves and the knowledge that her abuela had been right, she would never have children. The old woman had a touch of the touch herself, goddammit. It hadn’t saved her, or her grandchild.
If she kept thinking about it, she’d end up thinking about the fence, and that was something Pana saved for nightfall and nightmares.
There was no shortage of the latter.
Min began running down the list of what bothered her. As usual, it was logistics. “How are they gonna get all these people home? How are they gonna pick up all the fuckin’ shells, man? Everything burned down.”
“Means more for everyone left.” Zampana shook her head like a horse tossing its mane, her heavy braids securely pinned. Playing hide-and-seek with Firster patrols out in the Panhandle had been one thing; the woods had been a welcome change. Places to hide that weren’t RVs on empty roads, fewer rattlers, but more chance of stumbling across a patrol. Then it was time for knife work, for quick thinking and the sudden whisper of blood spurting, a hand clamped over the mouth.
The desert had its dangers, too. Once, she and Prink had found a trio of “militia” snoring in their camo sleeping bags around a sullen ember gleam of a sagebrush fire.
The three, with high-powered rifles, freeze-dried rations, and beer bellies, never knew what hit them. Served them right, too, out without a guard in the middle of the desert, thinking white skin made them immune in the wastelands where the coyotes, fourfoot or biped, prowled. Their patches—oh, the militias had all sorts of freelancers, all sorts of weekend warriors—were still tucked in Prink’s go-bag, bloodstained and stiff. The rations had been welcome, their rifles and ammo put to good use, but after that Prink had been sullen and gray lipped for a while.
They was fat, he said once. I don’t trust me no fat man.
“Yeah, well, more of what? Bombed-up shit?” Minjae’s upper lip curled a little. “No, my girl, we’re in for some fucked-up times.”
“You mean worse than Kansas? Bitch, I tell you, nothing worse than Kansas.”
Minjae’s shudder was adequate proof Zampana had carried her point. “Okay, fine. I just wanna go to school.”
“Good. You’re smart enough. And the West Coast didn’t get much boom-boom after ’95.” You learned not to fuck with someone’s dreams. The only raider Zampana thought had no plan for the future, even a hazy one, was Simmons, but the principle still held. “You kickin’ out?”
“Soon as they put that GI bill in writing, mothafucka.” Minjae found this funny, and laughed. So did Zampana, until their chuckles faded and Min’s breathing evened out. She dropped off in the middle of the clamor and bustle, trusting Zampana to keep an eye on the other soldiers even though they were girls—chatting, smoking candies, repairing uniforms or gear, reading, bullshitting, playing cards, sleeping, all the disorderly discipline that was human beings grouped up.
One human was a saint, two were friends, you got three and two of them would make a group to freeze the other one out. A cave in the woods was probably the better bet.
Zampana polished, and while she did, she thought. She wasn’t as quick as Minjae, she knew that, but she got there on her own. She had a sneaking suspicion the other woman was right. Fucked-up times were indeed ahead.
Whether or not they would be worse than the war was the bigger question, and one she suspected nobody had an answer for.
Chapter Twenty
Four Hands, Four Feet, Two Hearts
The new rectangular fluoro-magtat, set above the curved rectangle of scar tissue on her left wrist, itched a little. Spooky sat in a kommunity kourt’s bathroom cubicle, the door locked and her body wedged uncomfortably sideways. Soldiers came in, pissed or unloaded their bowels, ran the water, bitched, smoked in defiance of posted signs, ran the hand dryer. Everyone was quickly taking electricity for granted again, at least in this little slice of the army. Old-style fluorescent tubes buzzed, HVAC hummed, water ran. It was as noisy as the woods, but it didn’t smell nearly as fresh.
She stared at the magtat. According to it, she wasn’t Lara Nelson anymore. She was Anna Gray, born miles away from her actual self, on a day two days removed from her actual birthday, in Memphis.
Anna was easy to remember. It rhymed with…
Spooky shuddered. Her shoulder, hard against the partition between this cubicle and the next, ground into thin metal. It would bruise. Her head felt strange, stuffed with clouds. The dried blood in one of her nostrils was a minor irritant.
It was getting easier.
Many of the flimsies had probably been copied, but a lot of the papers were originals. She’d scanned them before tearing each into tiny pieces, flushing every once in a while when a wad accumulated in the toilet bowl. There was only one she bothered to keep, and it was a partial, not even her file, nothing to do with her paper or digital ghost in the Firsters’ kamp system.
No, instead of any bread crumbs that could lead to her, this flimsy was a partial officer list from Gloria. The names were familiar, each followed by a number and a registered address for citizen voting. Not that casting a vote changed anything, since after the second-to-last election in ’90 there was McCoombs and only McCoombs on the only Firster ballot they made a show of counting. Everything else was appointments, all the way down to school boards.
Those addresses, though, showed where the bastards would likely return. Who wouldn’t want to crawl back to whatever they’d had, after all the mud and the blood and the hunger? Home, that fantastical place. Soldiers talked about it, and so did the Firsters.
His name was on the list. Eugene Thomas. She shuddered again.
Swann didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t have to. There were probably plenty of raiders who didn’t want to keep their names, who had named themselves for the dead, or who were dead as she was.
No. Not me. Her. The body on the gallows, swaying gently. That yellow-and-blue floral dress, the one she knew so well because it was hers. The legs, so like her own. Bare feet with the second and third toes the same length as the first, just like hers. Dark curly hair hanging matted as the head lolled, and her neck ached because it was stretched so savagely.
Had she suffered? Had the cervicals fractured cleanly?
Go to the crossroads, she’d said, nose to nose in their shared bed. Lara’s face, identical in every respect, down to the striations in their irises and the delicate shape under the middle of the bottom lip. Lara and Hannah, Hannah and Lara, their own private language shared from the womb, Larahannah and Hannahlara.
There’ll be a man there. Pretend you’re me. You have to.
She hadn’t asked a single question. The man—one of his eyelids drooping—hadn’t said a word either, just motioned her into the back of a pickup. By the time she knew what was happening she was miles from home, in the company of a band of raiders who seemed to know her sister, and who expected her to help them with Lara?
??s medical knowledge.
Be me, Lara had whispered.
Well, now she was. She was Hannah-now-Lara now pretending to be Anna Gray, and her head felt strange.
They shared everything, from the walnut tree in back of the big white house to the secret language, from the love of fresh tomatoes to outright hatred of cilantro. Their plates had to be exactly the same; they would trade spoonfuls of peas until it was all equal. Their clothes were the same size, the same colors, and in school they had often switched classes.
It was no use. She couldn’t find the right angle to put her head at. If she could, maybe Lara would step into her body and they could share again.
The only way to get that angle was with a ligature and a swift drop. But then, Lara wouldn’t be able to come back, and she didn’t know if she could go to whatever soft, dark place her sister, her self, rested. The uncertainty kept her heart squeezing away like the dumb beast it was, missing its paired transmitter. Just blinking a signal from the middle of her body, in a wavelength there used to be a constant reply on.
The big white house was a charred mess now; no doubt the kudzu had claimed it, and the walnut tree was most likely chopped down. Their mother had died giving birth; their father, a benign gruff stranger, died in their first year of college. Had Lara started helping the raiders then? Had she been part of the campus revolts?
Now she couldn’t even remember Hannah’s major. What had she been studying? Did it matter?