The Reaper Plague (26 page)

Then she was gone.

---

As soon as Margie was sure the scary
soldier-woman had left, she picked up the landline on her desk and
began to dial. Stopping midway through the number, she stared at
her bitten hand, now healed. She rubbed thoughtfully at it in
continuing amazement.

Maybe she’ll do it. Be brave, Margie. You
can’t live in fear forever.

Slowly she put down the handset. It might
have been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

---

Repeth clutched the cheap paper campus map,
orienting herself and identifying each building or hall as she went
from bush to bush, tree to tree. It was slow going as her brush
with the sentries had stirred up a hornets’ nest of activity. There
was less than she expected, though. She figured some of these
Associates must have been drawn away to the general confusion in
the town below, or were chasing her escaping comrades.

Her first goal was the Dormitory. It was
close, just the third large building away, but the grand scale of
the university campus turned a two-minute walk into a half-hour
ordeal of careful sneaking, punctuated by two more suppressed
shots. She stashed the unconscious men – always men – under the
bushes.

The Dormitory was better-lit than other
buildings, and garish with colored lights. Red predominated,
apropos to its purpose.
Except these aren’t Amsterdam
prostitutes, carefully protected, regulated and taxed, free to
leave at any time. These are sex slaves
. She ground her teeth
with revulsion and rage.

Eeling her way from bush to bench to dumpster
corral, she got as close as she could before being stymied by a
wall of concertina wire. Tripled tangled tubular coils circled the
Dormitory, likely to keep the women in as well as discourage
unauthorized liaisons. She knew from history that immoral license
would always cloak itself in regulation, as if having rules and a
system legitimized the abuse. The men would have a specific number
of visits allowed, perhaps based on rank or status, and would have
to sign in and sign out. Discipline among the troops would never be
maintained otherwise.

Blasting in via the front door was a recipe
for disaster. Her considerable skills depended on stealth and
precise application of force, not on Rambo-like grand gestures. As
she scanned the three-storey brick building she decided her route
in would be up the fire escape to the roof. Once there she would be
out of sight and could force a door or access hatch.

There were welded bars over all the windows
she could see, and she’d bet dollars to doughnuts they couldn’t be
opened from the inside. Her brain started chewing furiously on the
problem of escape. No ideas leaped to mind, but it didn’t matter
yet. The first thing she had to do was get inside and make contact,
gather information.

The building was heavily guarded. One man
walked the perimeter on the inside of the wire on each side of the
building – or at least, on the two sides she could see. Her best
chance to make it across was to aim for a corner and time her
entrance for when both guards were facing away from her, but there
was still the problem of the tall, man-high tangles of wire.

Drawing a multi-tool from her belt holder,
she rearranged it to form wire cutters. Not optimal; real snips
would speed up the process immensely. Then she thought some more
about how and where she was going to make it through, and how long
it was going to take, and discarded the notion.

She racked her brain for techniques. She
could try to crawl under the wire on her back, cutting as she went,
trusting to the darkness and her camouflage to hide her as the
guards came by. This was the way the Viet Cong had done, greasing
their bodies up and accepting the inevitable bloody gouges.

Had she been assaulting the building with a
team, one or two members could actually throw themselves onto the
wire, cramming it down and the rest running across their legs and
backs. She had no team, though. But maybe…

She examined the dumpster and the big plastic
lids, each of which covered half of the stinking container. The
multi-tool proved its usefulness after all as she worked the pins
loose from their hinges. Within minutes she had a
three-by-five-foot section of tough material which should easily
protect her from the wire, while remaining light enough to
handle.

After stashing the AT-4 antitank weapon
behind the dumpster, she hefted the awkward lid, testing her grip
and maneuvering it while still hidden inside the pierced-brick
dumpster corral. When she was fairly certain she knew how to handle
it, she slung her PW10 and carried it around to the darkness on the
side.

She took deep breaths, waiting long minutes
in the shadows until the guards were both turned away from the
corner and far enough – she hoped. She sprinted the short distance
to the wire and, like a body-surfer flopping onto a wave, threw
herself forward.

The plastic crushed the tangled wire downward
and she let herself skim across it. She gripped the forward edge
and somersaulted in a gymnast’s move, vaulting forward over the
wire to roll onto the unmowed grass and weeds that surrounded the
building. Barbs from the wire dug painfully into the backs of her
hands but she was ready for that and she clamped her mouth shut
against the pain. As she rolled she dragged the flat shield off the
wire with her momentum and let it fall flat on the ground.

She froze in the tall vegetation and waited
for any reaction from the guards. They might have heard the noise,
or when they came back they might notice the piece of plastic,
though there was enough debris and detritus scattered around that
she hoped it might blend in, might be ignored as just another piece
of junk.

Raising her carefully she saw the nearer
guard, the one along the shorter side of the building, returning
without apparent haste. He walked past the plastic without seeming
to notice it, then turned around at the corner.

As soon as his back was turned she leaped for
the fire escape, an old painted steel ladder barely useful for its
purpose. Swarming up the rungs, she ignored the urge to watch the
guard so close below her and concentrated on climbing silently, but
as fast as she could. Fortunately the rumble of the generator
covered the noise. Rust and old paint scraped and cut her palms
until she reached the top and stepped down onto the roof.

Her right foot came down inside some kind of
hole, but her weight was already committed to the step so she just
got her other foot down on the roof as quickly as she could and
held onto the parapet. But when she tried to move, she found her
right leg immobile and her right foot wedged fast. It was inside
some kind of exhaust vent pipe, curled back upon itself and
impossible to withdraw.

Grumbling quietly, she fought with it for
several minutes until she gave up and carefully sliced the boot
with her knife. Eventually she was able to draw her foot out and
she caught the shredded footgear before it could fall down the
shaft.
Great, diddle diddle dumpling, Jill
. Fishing a roll
of ninety-mile-an-hour tape from her lumbar pouch – so called
originally because the duct-tape-like material was “
soooo
high-speed
” – she wrapped the damaged boot around her foot and
swathed the whole thing in sticky OD-green tape.

Once she was mobile again she searched for a
way in. She found a trap door. Locked, but the hinges were on the
outside, where she could reach them, made for keeping people inside
from coming up, not for keeping people out. Five minutes with her
multitool had them off, and she levered the steel cover out of the
way, bending the locking mechanism hopelessly out of true. It would
be hard to seal again.

The ladder bolted to the wall beneath led
into a darkened room, so black that the faint glow of her watch,
deliberately freed of its cover for that purpose, showed her its
contents. Sanitary and cleaning supplies – mops, buckets, toilet
paper, paper towels, rags, bottles of bleach and cleaners – and
boxes of women’s hygiene products in abundance.
That confirms
it. I wonder what they do about pregnancies? Not sure I want to
know. Almost any answer seems horrible.

Readying her weapon, she tried the door
handle slowly, very slowly. Easing it open a crack, she looked out
into the corridor beyond. It was dimly lit, and she watched a
ragged-robed woman walk by, her shoulders slumped with despair.
Waiting several minutes, the floor remained quiet, with no
movement.
Of course, this is the third floor. Perhaps “visits”
happen on the first floor in special rooms, or perhaps the men
check the women out like library books. Well, here goes
nothing.

She opened the door wide and looked quickly
both ways. With no one in sight she had to just gamble that any
slave here would welcome her. Or else a Needleshock round would put
her out and convert her to Edenhood. So she went to the closest
door, almost across the way, and opened it, stepping in
suddenly.

“
Who is it?” came a sleepy
voice.

“
A friend,” Jill replied.
She felt her way to the single bed and sat down. “My name is
Jill.”

“
You don’t sound like Jill.
Are you a new one? And why are you in my room?” The woman’s waking
voice sounded dull and only slightly curious rather than
outraged.

“
Yes, I’m new, very new.
Please talk with me. What’s your name?” Jill’s finger hovered over
the trigger to her weapon.

“
Zyra. What are you
wearing?” The woman’s voice rose. “Oh, my God, do you have a
gun
!”

Jill reached up to put her hand over Zyra’s
mouth. “Quiet. I’m from the outside. I’m here to rescue you, but
you have to be calm. I need to know how this all works.”

Zyra breathed harshly around Jill’s hand,
panicked. “Noooooo –” she whined, getting louder all the time.

Crap.
Jill shoved her back, pointed
the PW10 at the woman’s thigh and pulled the trigger. The weapon
coughed and Zyra jerked hard from the electric shock, to slump back
onto her bunk.
Dammit, why couldn’t I have lucked onto one with
a spine. All right, to be fair, one less beaten down
anyway.

She heard a stealthy noise in the corridor
and wondered if one of the other women had heard something. There
had been no alarm so she didn’t think it was some kind of reaction
force. Jill padded over to the door and listened. She heard what
might have been a footstep, and a feminine whimper.
Great,
another lost soul. Have to take control of this one too.

She opened the door and light blazed into her
eyes. “Freeze!” came a powerful voice, and several gun barrels
shoved forward, covering her from all angles.

She froze.

“
Weapon down!
Now!”

Cursing herself inwardly for her
overconfidence, she lifted her finger off the trigger.
Unfortunately her weapon had been pointed off to the side, or she
might have risked a full-auto blast into the enclosed hallway. Now
even if she had wanted to go down in a blaze of gunfire, she
couldn’t – her mission was too important. Grinding her teeth, she
unslung and lowered the PW10 to the ground, immediately raising her
hands to interlace behind her head.

Armed men poured into the room, pushing her
back. They roughly stripped her of her gear and she did not resist.
Best to let them underestimate me for now. Until I have a
chance.

The men she saw were all rough-looking, fit
and competent, though most were pockmarked and scarred. Some were
missing teeth and hair or other non-vital pieces such as ears and a
few fingers. They all had body armor, weapons, and were dressed
more or less uniformly in something resembling black police field
uniforms, such as SWAT wore.

“
Sir, she shot Zyra,” one
reported.

“
Take her to the doctor,”
an enormous voice rumbled from the corridor. “We can’t let such
pretty flesh go to waste, right boys?” The body attached to the
voice stepped in and Jill caught her breath. Perfectly
proportioned, nearly seven feet tall, showing bodybuilder’s muscles
and sporting long cornsilk hair, he looked like a cross between a
blonde Rambo and the male lead on the cover of a bodice-ripping
romance novel.

The Professor. Has to be.

The man stepped in as two henchmen held
Jill’s arms clamped behind her. Again, she refrained from
resisting. She did look up boldly at him though. She sorted through
possibilities before deciding on a course of action.

He opened his mouth but she deliberately
interrupted him. “So you’re the scary Professor, eh? I heard you’re
a tough guy. I’d be tough too with a bunch of thugs to rape my
women for me.”

Intelligence and cruelty gleamed in his eyes,
and amusement, too. He replied, “So you like raping women? Most
chicks don’t but I suppose there are always exceptions, and you
military bitches are all dykes anyway.” He reached down to grope
briefly at her crotch, jerking out of reach at her attempt to bite
him. “Temper, temper. I don’t feel anything down there, so you’re
out of luck, you stupid bull. We’re the pitchers now, and you’ll be
a catcher for my Associates.” He rubbed his jaw. “Still, it was a
brave thing to break in here. You lose a girlfriend?”

Playing along with his banter, she replied,
“Naw, I just wanted to re-enact ‘Prison Women in Leather Heat’. Or
maybe I wanted to join your Associates.”

He snorted, reaching out to fondle her
breast. His nails were perfectly manicured, and she realized the
man was wearing cologne – and
makeup
. “I suppose you think
they call me ‘The Professor’ because I’m stupid?” He reached up to
rub her ear between thumb and forefinger, then squeezed and pulled
with all the strength of his huge hand and arm.