The Reaper Plague (15 page)

As a special operator she hated the things.
They destroyed the quiet of the night and called attention to their
positions. And electricity brought lights, and lights killed night
vision. For a unit in the rear, they were necessary. But now they
were on the front lines and she really wished they could have done
without until the area was secured. Eventually they would be dug
in, with earth to muffle the sound somewhat.

They saw lights come on in the clubhouse
building and nowhere else, and blinds drop rapidly down.
Well,
at least the glare will be confined, once they black everything
out.
She closed her shooting eye as she nodded at the door
guard and led the team inside into the bright. She found Captain
LeBrun, who led them to the Battalion Commander.

She was about to withdraw when LeBrun told
her to stay. “Your people will be fine. Remember, you’re covering
for your nonexistent LT. That means it’s your job to listen to the
intel briefings.”

She grunted unwilling assent.

Inside a room crowded with officers and
senior NCOs, Swede made his report to LTC Muzik. “We’ve been in the
area three days. Do you have a map?” The Battalion intel officer
ran to get his easel. “As I understand it you want to work your way
northward, start to reestablish law and order, and see how bad DC
is. Right now you have two main problems.”

“
We.
We
have two
main problems, Gunnery Sergeant, since your orders are to attach
yourself to my battalion.” Muzik’s declaration was confident, his
manner easygoing.

“
Uh, yes, sir. We have two
main problems. First is the crazies. Packs of them, some of them
forty or fifty together. They look like people but they act like
apes or something. You can’t tell what they’ll do for sure. Some
just run away. Some scare with a few shots. And some attack. We had
to kill one group of ten or so that came after us with rocks and
sticks.”

Muzik nodded. “Those must be Twosies. The
ones with Demon Plague Two. We should be able to handle them. All
of our small arms fire Needleshock, and the Eden Virus should
pacify and cure most of them, supplant the Demon Plagues. It
remains to be seen what kind of minds they will retain. Oh, and
make sure you draw Needleshock for your weapons. You can have your
lethal rounds back when you leave my command.”

“
Aye aye, sir.” He looked
unhappy at that order. “The other problem is more serious.” Swede
stopped, looked around as if not knowing quite how to explain.
Finally he said, “It’s Fredericksburg. It’s…hostile.”

“
Explain please.” Muzik’s
tone was light but firm.

“
Well, sir…all we know for
sure is they have roadblocks and checkpoints, and picket lines and
fences, and no one except the crazies –”

“ –
Twosies – ”

“ –
Yes sir, no one except
the Twosies live outside of their defense lines. We approached a
checkpoint with weapons slung and our hands empty, but they fired
on us anyway. We E-and-E’d out of there as quick as we could. Then
we reconned most of their lines. We split up and went left and
right.”

“
Show us on the
map.”

Swede traced the edges of the Fredericksburg
defenses. They ran up the Rappahannock to the East, along Route 3
on the south, and along Interstate 95 to the west. “We didn’t get
all the way around, but if they follow the terrain the north end
should be about where the river meets the freeway.”

“
Roughly the northern half
of Lee’s position on December tenth, 1862,” Muzik mused. “Burnside
took a beating. The terrain is very defensible. Five miles between
us and them. We have no artillery, no armor, just some air if the
Navy can spare some. We’re not a maneuver unit anyway, we’re Civil
Affairs. We can’t intimidate them, so we have to find a way to
talk. A white flag?”

“
I’ll go, sir,” Repeth
volunteered. “They’re more likely to talk to a woman. And I’ll heal
in case of trouble.”

“
Ah, sir, my men –” Swede
began.

“
Are normals, right? Are
you even inoculated with the Plague vaccines?”

“
Yes, sir. They flew some
out to the LPD.”

Muzik grunted. “Then you can back her up. But
I mean
back
. Pick up Plague injectors ASAP, and tomorrow
we’ll have a medical team with Eden Plague standing by. This isn’t
a battle, Gunnery Sergeant, it’s a parley. We need to know who
these people are. What they’re afraid of, what they’re forted up
against. They’re our own citizens, people. They’re not the
enemy.”

“
Unless they choose to be,
sir.” Swede stuck his jaw out. “They did shoot at us.”

Muzik’s Adonis smile broke out wintry.
“Understood. But let me say again, and very clearly, Gunny,” as his
eyes bore into Gunderson’s, “these are Americans, no matter how
misguided. We’re not looking for a fight.” He raised his voice.
“All right, everyone back to work. Make sure your people get some
sleep. We initiate the parley at 0700 tomorrow.”

Skull stared at the base again on the
viewscreen. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“
There isn’t much to see.
What you’d call the roof is just a solar collection surface,
everything else is underneath. But now you at least know I’m
telling you the truth about a base.”

“
It’s a base, yes. I still
want to see it. At least to get out of this ship for a while. See
something except these two rooms. I’ll be the only human ever to
have set foot on a comet.”

She looked at him with pain in her eyes.

He stared back. “What?”

She shook her head, mumbled something
again.

“
What did you
say?”

She pressed her lips together, looked down,
shook her head. Tears spattered with the motion.

“
Gah. Women.”

She raised her head, suddenly furious. “Which
is it? I’m a woman, or I’m an alien? One minute you’re screwing me
and then the next minute you’re declaring you’re the only human on
this ship.
Which is it?
” She picked up her empty bottle and
threw it at his head.

He caught it with casual speed. “Come on, I
didn’t mean it that way. I meant, the only full human…unchanged
human…huh. I’m not even that, am I?” he mused. “I guess you’re
right to be upset. Neither of us is human anymore.”

“
Yes we are! That’s what
I’ve been trying to tell you all this time. Being human isn’t about
your biology, it’s your mind and your soul that makes you
human.”

“
But what about your Meme
mind and soul?” he asked, half-serious.

“
That’s why they wipe the
minds of the species they blend with. Meme have very little
personality, and no soul. They have no art, no music, no
appreciation for beauty. Their emotions are weak compared to ours.
They are just big bags of knowledge and memories. And Raphael never
met any Meme except his siblings. He was terrified of the ones that
are coming, and fascinated by humanity.” She slapped her chest with
her palm. “My personality is mostly Sophia Ilona’s, even if my
memories include Raphael’s. My brain and body are human,
deliberately human. As much or more than yours. If you can’t get
past your gut revulsion to me, I understand. But if it’s just a
mental reservation, then for God’s sake
get over it
. And if
by chance you’re beating yourself up about what you…what we did,
then get over that too. I don’t blame you for it. It just…happened.
And,” she dropped her voice near to a whisper, “I really wouldn’t
mind it happening again.”

Skull turned away as if he had not heard,
ignoring the invitation, rejecting the complexity of this thing
between them, this relationship that was growing like crabgrass
despite his efforts to pull up the roots or mow it down.

After a moment he heard her weeping.
More
manipulation. Not giving in
. He clenched his teeth and said
harshly, “How long until we land?”

Between sniffles she said, “Six hours. You’ll
feel the G forces lessen and eventually almost disappear. When we
set down we’ll have microgravity. Treat it like zero G and you’ll
be fine.”

“
Swede. You sure you don’t
want me to bite you?” Repeth raised and lowered her eyebrows a
couple of times, mocking.

“
I’ve never answered ‘no’
to that question until now. Especially not coming from a beautiful
woman.” Swede turned his rock-jawed head and spat a stream of dip
juice, then looked back, eyes narrowed, at the checkpoint two
hundred meters away across the open field. They stood well within
the trees, unseen.

“
Oh,
suh
, You’ll
turn mah head. The spitting is especially attractive. But
seriously. Why not?”

“
I don’t really want my
balls cut off. So to speak.” He spat again.

“
Just wait till your lip
falls off from that stuff. You’ll beg for the Eden Plague. Besides,
I got enough balls for both of us.” Repeth took off her cap, folded
it carefully and slid it into her cargo pocket, then pulled the
pins out of her hair. She shook her shoulder-length mane loose, a
rich crown of brown matching her eyes and well-tanned skin. Then
she unbuttoned her tunic and rolled that up, tucking it into her
small field pack. She seated the straps on her shoulders, smoothing
out her t-shirt and jutting her small breasts well
forward.

“
I like the look,” Swede
said, eyeing her appreciatively.

“
Enjoy it while you can.
It’s not for you. I don’t want them thinking I have pects instead
of boobs.”

“
You do have pects. I saw
you doing those push-ups.” He whistled. “You’re one hell of an
athlete.”

“
Save it. And you’re never
getting in my pants, so stop wasting your energy with the
compliments.”

“
Why, you a
rug-muncher?”

“
Nope. But I am engaged.
And an Eden, remember?”

He sighed. “Damn. All the good ones are
taken. Or infected.”

“
Or maybe all the infected
ones are good. But don’t believe everything the Unies told you
about us. We’re not mindless drones or angels, just an itty lil’
bit new and improved. You could do worse.” She took a deep breath,
let it out. “Now you ready to do this?”

“
Yeah. But I still think
it’s a bad idea.” He scooped the dip out of his mouth and she
caught another whiff of wintergreen as he flicked it onto the
ground. He waved his team into prone positions and they low-crawled
up to the edge of the slight hill overlooking the field. In their
Ghillie suits they were just about invisible.

Repeth picked up the stick with the piece of
white cloth attached, a banner she’d prepared back at the airfield.
She looked back at the two Humvees that had brought them out, and
at the team of medics standing near them. Captain LeBrun, perched
on the hood of one of the vehicles, gave her the thumbs-up.

She turned to trudge down the road, a
two-lane strip already going to ruin. Tree branches and fallen
trunks, animal carcasses and bones, a wash of alluvial sand from a
flash flood – ten weeks of neglect and already the works of man
were blurring, fading. She held the white flag high.

Halfway there, a hundred yards from the
barricade made of a couple of dozen vehicles with an abatis of
salvaged materials, the sentries noticed her.
Pretty bad
security, to let me walk so far up to them without even seeing me
in the middle of the road.
She raised the white flag, swung it
back and forth. She felt exposed, and waited for a shot that didn’t
come.

As she trudged deliberately forward, a figure
– a man – stood up, holding a rifle. He didn’t point it, just
braced it on his hip and waited. As she got nearer she saw that he
was mostly hairless. Closer, and he seemed disfigured, scarred and
burned. Ten yards away he dropped the rifle barrel to point at
her.

“
That’s fur enough. Who are
you and what ya want?”

There was something funny about the way he
talked, she thought. He had something in his cheek, probably
tobacco, but it was more than that.
Radiation? Or Demon Plague
One?
“Did you get sick?” she asked loudly. “Right after the
bombs fell?”

“
Yeah. Ever’body got sick.
Radiation or sumpin. Though Doc Jones said it was a mutated flu. He
said you cain’t catch radiation.” The man smiled, revealing jagged
teeth she could count on one hand. His eyes were beady, feral. He
gestured with the rifle. “Now shut up and answer me.”

She nodded. “I’m Master Sergeant Jill Repeth,
United States Marine Corps. I’m part of a US military unit that has
reoccupied Fort AP Hill,” she said, stretching the truth a bit.
“The United States Government is back to help.”

“
Riiiillly.” He made
chewing motions, then spat black juice. “They ain’t no more US
gub’mint. I been up to the dead zone. Ain’t no more White House,
ain’t no more Congress. Ain’t no more Pentagon. Ain’t many of you
damnyankees left neither as far as I can tell. But what there is,”
he said, “is the Confederate Republic of Fredericksburg, and y’all
now a part of it. We could use a pretty white breeder like you.
Tommy-boy, open the small gate!” A man-sized gap appeared to the
left of the barrier as his men pulled a piece of fencing
backward.

Shit. Time to go.
Without preamble or
warning Repeth dropped the banner and bolted to her right, away
from the gate, to sprint serpentine across the open field. There
was a draw with some bushes that meandered back toward the Recon
team’s position. If she could make it there she could easily evade
to them.