The Reaper Plague (25 page)

So flex, Jill. Think.

The obvious and safe thing to do was to
hammer the thin back hatch of the enemy LAV with 25mm fire until
the armor failed, but that would mean killing its whole crew. She
cursed the ironic strictures of her Eden conscience.
I’m like
one of those stupid superheroes in comic books, I can’t kill anyone
unless it’s very nearly an accident. The Eden giveth and the Eden
taketh away.

She stood up in the hatch and made a full
three-sixty sweep as her LAV rolled forward.
Only the one enemy
armored vehicle in sight.

Normally that would mean it was the rearmost
of a platoon of four, but it wasn’t behaving like the rearmost of
anything. It was sitting there on the right side of the Parkway
firing southeast, presumably at escaping friendlies, or possibly
just at phantoms. She could barely see the enemy commander in the
hatch silhouetted against the slight sky-glow, his back to her.

Abruptly a plan clicked in her head.

“
Lockerbie, creep up on
them at a steady twenty miles per hour or so, and hug the right
side of the road. Be careful, there’s a four-foot drainage ditch
just off the shoulder. Butler, when I give the word, open up on
their right side wheels. I want all those tires shredded to make
them sag to the right. Keep firing as long as you can hit that
side. Lockerbie, when I say so, swing to the far left of the road
then turn right and ram them hard enough to knock them into the
ditch. Don’t immobilize us. Got it?”

“
Roger.” The driver eased
the LAV over, and at one hundred yards, Repeth spoke
quietly.

“
Fire.”

Butler hammered a long burst into the bottom
of the right rear wheel, each 25mm round bouncing off the pavement
and continuing through all four right side tires, tearing enormous
holes out of the run-flats, spewing chunks of rubber. The enemy LAV
settled heavily to its right, and Lockerbie slewed left and
accelerated without being told. Repeth dropped down into the
interior and braced her back against a forward bulkhead, screaming
to Butler, “Hang on!”

Repeth felt the LAV actually slow down and
wondered what Lockerbie was doing.
Dropping the nose? Of course,
just like ramming a blockade with an armored SUV. Dip the nose with
the brakes, hit the gas at the moment of impact.

Right before the crash Lockerbie jammed the
accelerator forward and the front of the LAV lifted, catching the
left underside of the enemy LAV with twenty tons of upward force
multiplied by momentum. Since it was down by its right side
already, the enemy vehicle flipped over into the ditch and onto its
side like a child’s toy.

Lockerbie jammed on the brakes as her vehicle
climbed up the enemy hull with its fat forward tires. She broke
them loose by the simple expedient of flooring the LAV in reverse,
shaking the crew like mice in a coffee can as they jounced
free.

“
Fine job, Lockerbie,”
Repeth said. “If we live through this, you’ll all get medals if I
have anything to say. One down, several more to go. Turn onto
Tidewater south and keep a sharp lookout.” As the vehicle
stabilized, she climbed back into the command hatch so she could
survey the battlefield.

The road was empty in front of her as they
raced southward. A mile away she could see the faint line of the
outer defenses, the abatis and ditches and fences. Astride the
roadway she could see the piled up vehicles where she’d tried to
parlay less than two days ago. “Butler, put a couple single shots
into the barricade.” She put on her headphones and rose up out of
the commander’s hatch, bracing herself for the noise of the 25mm
gun firing.

She thought she saw figures here and there
running across the fields and sneaking near the treelines to her
left – east toward the river. The gun spoke three times then was
silent, and she realized Butler was awaiting orders. There were a
few answering small-arms discharges but obviously they had nothing
heavy there.

“
Lockerbie, turn us around.
We need to keep doing them damage.” The LAV swung around in a tight
circle and drove back on the road, headed north toward old
Fredericksburg, then west, retracing their route. They passed the
wrecked enemy LAV. A man crawled away from the wreckage and Repeth
put a shot into his leg and he lay still.
One more Eden, one
less Onesie
.

To the west, now on their left, loomed higher
ground, behind a few buildings. They raced northward toward the
confusion and scattered fires of the remains of Old Town.

Suddenly her plan didn’t seem so sensible
anymore. She saw Humvees racing around and it wouldn’t be long
before the enemy figured out that her LAV wasn’t one of theirs. She
had no intelligence about where the enemy headquarters might be, or
where Rick might be, or where the rest of the missing women might
be. In fact, for a rescue attempt she’d be better off on foot, just
one figure in the dark. Her duty to command warred with her
personal desires. Finally she made a decision.

Maybe the wrong one.

“
Butler, I’ve changed my
mind. You and Lockerbie here take this thing and haul ass back
south. Shoot your way through the roadblock if you have to and link
up with the Colonel. The Battalion can use the armored vehicle. I
have to stay here and try to find the rest of our
people.”

Butler’s protest died in his throat as he saw
her determined expression. “All right, Master Sergeant. Good
hunting.”

“
Don’t worry, Butler. I’ve
been in far tighter spots. Remind me to tell you about them
sometime.”

“
All right, but you’re
buying,” the Midwesterner joked.

“
No problem, on my generous
paycheck.” She dropped the headphones through the hatch, grabbed
the AT-4 and levered herself out the top and down the side. “Get
moving!” she ordered. The vehicle, grown enormous now that she was
outside it, roared off into the night.

Now what to do?
She jogged northward,
waving at vehicles and silently shooting the odd straggler. In the
dark no one could see who was who and anyone heading deeper into
Fredericksburg territory, alone and unafraid, they must think
friendly.

She picked up a boonie hat from a fallen
Fredericksburger and jammed it onto her head. Her braided and
pinned hair stayed well hidden. There were apparently no female
combatants among the Fredericksburgers so she had to masquerade as
a man.

She spotted some lights on a hill off to the
northwest. It was as likely a place as any to try to find the nerve
center of this dysfunctional bandit kingdom, so she worked her way
up the streets toward the heights. Eventually she came to the edge
of the campus of the University of Mary Washington, proudly
proclaimed by signs here and there. She could hear the hum of
generators in the distance and could see some electric lights in
the still-intact windows of campus buildings.

Must be a separate system. This is where
I’d put my headquarters if I was a warlord – the heights command
the town and give a view to all sides, and they probably can fall
back to the better defenses of the hill.
And lots of nice
well-built buildings, not these wooden things of Old Town.
She
vaguely recalled Colonel Muzik pointing to this hill on the map and
telling her that the Confederates under Longstreet had held it
against all comers in the eponymous battle, inflicting horrendous
casualties on the assaulting Union troops.

Climbing over an old stone wall alongside a
sunken road, she ghosted through the trees up the slope
northwestward toward the buildings and lights. Ahead of her she saw
a faint glow spring to life, then fade.

Cigarette. Stupid. Good for me.
She
watched the silhouette until it turned away, then slipped forward
and shot the sentry in the buttocks. A shout came from her right
and she whirled, stitching his partner across the abdomen with her
silenced Needleshock. Then she bolted away in the direction of the
buildings, sticking to the shadows.

Feet pounded behind her and she ducked into a
low mass of decorative juniper. Guards, already jumpy from the
night’s events in the town below, ran hither and thither, calling
to one another in excited tones. They grouped up when they found
their fallen comrades, and she took the opportunity to sneak into
the nearest darkened building.

The women’s restroom beckoned her and she
made a quick pit stop, sucking down as much water as she could hold
from the sink tap. She had not realized how dehydrated she had
become. Downing a ration bar, she reconnoitered through darkened
hallways festooned with incongruous campus pride posters and
announcements of student activities from before the
Demon-Plaguefall. Soldiers looked in the outer doors but didn’t
search deeper. She couldn’t blame them – given the quality of
troops she had seen so far, these probably didn’t
really
want to risk finding her.

One interior office was lit. Sidling up, she
put an eye to the window inset into the door. A woman with glasses,
obese and in her sixties, sat tapping on a computer.

Perfect.

Repeth turned the handle and slid smoothly
into the room. “Quiet,” she hissed at the surprised woman. “I won’t
hurt you if you don’t cause trouble.”

The woman froze and her mouth worked
silently, then she nodded.

Repeth turned off the light, leaving the
office in darkness lit only by the glow of the old desktop computer
screen. “Who are you and what do you do here,” she asked
quietly.

“
I’m Margie Finley. I’m…I
was a professor here. English Literature. They have me keep track
of salvage in the warehouses now.”

“
All alone?”

“
I refused to move out of
my office, and I’m too old and ugly to be interesting to the
Professor and his
Associates
.” She spat this last word and
her hands trembled. “Who are you?”

“
Not your enemy, that’s
who. Master Sergeant Jill Repeth, United States Marine
Corps.”

“
Oh, thank God. Are you
taking over?”

Jill’s mouth twisted. “Actually it’s just me
right now, until my Colonel can rebuild the battalion and come
back. They hit us pretty hard yesterday. I need to find our women.
Will you help?”

Margie licked her lips and her eyes widened
with fear. “Just you? Oh, they’ll catch you and put you in the
Dormitory. With the others. And you don’t want to be in there.”

Jill sympathized with the terror Margie put
into that word “Dormitory” but there was no time for sentiment.
“Look, Margie, I need information. I need it from you. We already
broke the men out of the work camp below, that’s what all the
shooting was. Please tell me where the women are. Are they in this
Dormitory place? There should be almost a hundred of them
somewhere.”

The large woman quivered and began to cry.
“If I tell you they’ll do things to me. They don’t use me in the
Dormitory because I’m old and fat but that doesn’t mean they won’t
hurt me…”

She’s broken
, thought Jill. “Look,
Margie, I’m sorry but there’s no time for this.” Repeth reached
over and grabbed the woman’s pudgy hand, drawing it to her mouth
and biting it suddenly. She clapped her other hand over the woman’s
inevitable howl until she quieted down.

“
Listen,” Repeth hissed, “I
am an Eden Plague carrier. Now you are too. I just passed you the
virus. You will live to be a thousand, you will heal any wound, and
you will slim down like magic over the next few weeks. Soon you’ll
look like you’re twenty-five, better than you ever did. So now you
owe me – and if you don’t help me, soon you
will
be young
and pretty and they will want to take you for their Dormitory. So
now you have no choice. Help me and I’ll help you get
away.”

Margie sucked on her wounded hand, sobbing
softly, but soon enough she took it out of her mouth. “Hey…it
doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“
You’ll soon say that about
everything else – your fallen arches, your sore back – but like I
said, right now I need information.”

“
All right.” Margie took a
deep breath. “Most of women are held in the Dormitory – one of the
old residence halls. They have to rotate through the brothel
downtown, but up here they are reserved for…services. It’s a
benefit of being an
Associate
.” Loathing dripped from that
word. “That’s what the Professor calls his bullies.”

“
This Professor, he’s the
boss? Did he teach here?”

“
Yes. He has a doctorate in
Phys Ed, if you can believe that. Physical fitness nut, martial
artist, pro wrestler…the TV kind, not the real kind, but he’s big
and dangerous all the same. He was some kind of local bigwig in the
National Guard, too. His real name is Stone, Scott
Stone.”

“
I’ll try to keep out of
his way. Or maybe I’ll just shoot him.” Jill put on her best
shark-smile, then softened it.
Not the best ploy to try to
out-terrify Margie’s terrifier
. “Then you’ll have to show me
where the women are, and I have to try to bust them out. One more
question – there’s a man named Rick Johnstone. He wasn’t with the
men in the work camp. Do you have any idea of where he was
taken?”

Margie shook her head. “No, but sometimes if
a prisoner has a special skill, like a doctor, they put him to work
somewhere else.”

“
He’s a computer
expert.”

“
Then he might be in the
Professor’s headquarters. They are always having trouble keeping
their computers running.”

“
Okay…do you have a campus
map? Show me where the Dormitory is, and the headquarters. I’ll go
break them out and then I’ll come back for you. If I don’t, you’ll
have to try to sneak away southward to the golf course on Route
Two. That’s where my people are. I know that seems beyond your
ability right now but your body will start getting stronger right
away. Pretty soon you’ll be able to run ten miles without stopping.
You’re an Eden now.” Jill stepped back, put her hand on the
doorknob. “Welcome back to the human race.”