Valentine's Exile (35 page)

Hoffman Price led his mule into the circle of revelers. “I was scavenging for mule shoes. He found a mess of wild carrots, and they were fat and sweet so I pulled up a bushel.”

“You missed—” Zak began.

“I know. I saw it from a couple miles away. You Bulletproofs throw one hell of a party. Fireworks and everything. ”

Price looked at the bourbon-sloppy smiles all around. “What? Don't y'all like carrots?”

CHAPTER TEN

Valentine, Price, Bee, Ahn-Kha, and Duvalier stood at the Laurelton Station a week later in a blustery rain.

Zak and the other Bulletproofs departed after depositing them in the care of a man named McNulty, a River Rat trader and “labor agent” friendly to the tribe on the south bank of the Ohio.

They'd ridden into a shantytown right in the shadow of a grain-silo Kurian Tower—only the most desperate would resort to such real estate in broad daylight—with Price's mule happily munching hay in a flatbed cart being towed by the powerful legworm. After introductions at the River Rat's anchored barge-house and one last round of Bulletproof bourbon in farewell, Zak turned over six full legworm egg hides, cured and bound in twine. Valentine only parted with them after McNulty gave them Ohio ID cards, ration books, and an up-to-date map of the area. The map was annotated with riverbank areas that were hiring and cheap lodgings—all with the password “BMN.”

McNulty probably took a cut of any business he referred.

With a week's familiarity, Valentine could see why the legworm-egg leather was so valuable. It breathed well, and though it became heavy in the rain the wet didn't permeate to the inside.

They followed the riverside train tracks to the turn-in for Laurelton. Price told them what he could about the north side of the river. He had returned fugitives to the Ohio authorities once or twice, but had never been much beyond the river. Bee stuck close to him here under the somber sky—autumn had arrived.

The residents kept to their towns. Patrolmen on bicycles, most armed with nothing more than a sap, rode the towns and highways. The officers looked at Price's Kalashnikov as they passed—the rest of their longarms were wrapped in blankets on the mule—but made no move to question them. Valentine saw only one vehicle, a garbage truck full of coal.

The ground reminded Valentine of some of the hills near the Iron Range in Minnesota, low and jumbled and full of timber. But where the forests in the Northwoods had stood since before the Sioux hunted, the forests in Ohio had sprung up since 2022, breaking up and overrunning the little plots carved out by man.

So when they cautiously turned the bends nearing Laurelton, only to find more windowless houses and piles of weed-bearing brick, he couldn't help feeling deflated.

There was a station, if a single siding counted as a station. The track continued north, but the height of the weeds, trees, and bracken suggested that a train hadn't passed that way in years. Valentine even checked the rust on the rails to be sure. In his days as a Wolf he'd seen supply caves hidden by saplings and bushes specifically pulled up and replanted to discourage investigation.

Deep oxidation. He could scrape it off with a thumb-nail.

“Fool's hope,” Valentine said. “Rooster either lied or didn't have correct information from the Kurians. Maybe they divert the trains to keep the final destination secret.”

Price unloaded his mule to give the animal a breather. “The debt is settled. I feel for you, David. Long way to come to find nothing. It's happened to me.”

Post would know he'd tried his best. How many vanished a year in the Kurian Zone? A hundred thousand? A half million? But how do you laugh in a legless man's face and tell him the last rope he's clinging to isn't tied to anything but a wish?

The narrow road bordering the track was in pretty poor condition. It certainly wasn't frequently traveled.

Price filled the mule's nosebag and Bee rooted inside one of the abandoned houses for firewood. Duvalier stretched herself out next to a ditch and took off her boots.

The hills around Laurelton were close. A hundred men, properly posted, could make sure that whatever transpired here couldn't be seen by anything but aircraft or satellites.

Ahn-Kha poked around the road, examining potholes. “Strange sort of road, my David,” Ahn-Kha said.

Valentine joined him. Like the tracks, it ended in weeds to the north. The south part—

—had been patched.

Valentine trotted a few hundred yards south.

There was a filled gap in the road at a washout, recent enough for the asphalt to still be black-blueish, rather than gray-green. The Kurians weren't much on infrastructure maintenance even in their best-run principalities; they didn't like anything that traveled faster than a Reaper could run. . . .

Valentine examined the weeds and bracken bordering the station. Sure enough, there were three gaps, definite paths leading from the tracks to the road. Quick-growing grasses had sprung up, but no brambles or saplings, though they were thick on the west side of the tracks.

“A farewell feast,” Price said, revealing a sausage wrapped in wax paper and a loaf of bread. “Unless you want to come back with us.”

Valentine handed him Everready's Reaper teeth. “More than earned. If I had another set I'd give them to you, with my initials written on them.”

“If you see the old squatter again, let him know I appreciate being able to repay the debt. What are you going to do next?”

Valentine rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. “You said you'd brought in men to the Ordnance?”

Price consulted a scuffed leather notebook and extracted a card from a pocket. “Yup. I'm 31458 here in Ohio.” He passed it to Valentine.

The card had the number, and some kind of seal featuring a man in a toga holding one hand over his heart and the other outstretched, over a pyramid with an eye at the top. “Meaning what?”

Price shrugged. “Dunno. They always recorded my number when I brought a man in, though.”

“How hard is it to get one of those?”

“I didn't even know I had to have one. They gave it to me when I brought my first man in. I was going to stop at one of the cop stations and look at what kind of warrants are out. Long as I'm up this way, maybe someone's hiding out in Kentucky I can bring in. Make the trip profitable in more than a spiritual sense.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“Not at all.”

“Let's walk along the road on the way back to the river.”

After lunch they walked single file down the side of the road. Valentine stayed in the center of the road, crisscrossing it, checking blown debris, the patchwork repairs, anything for some kind of sign. He found a few old ruts that he suspected were made by heavy trucks, but they were so weathered that he could only guess at the type of vehicle.

“So we did all this for nothing?” Duvalier asked when they took a rest halt. “We're just going back?”

There was a welcome tenderness to her voice; she'd been cold since Valentine had turned the mutual slaughter she'd tried to start into a victory for the Bulletproof.

“Wherever they take the women, it has to be pretty close. I want to start searching. Seems to me it's got to be within a few miles. Otherwise they'd bring the train somewhere else, or right to where they want them. We'll just start searching, using a grid with the station as a base point.”

“Why are we still with Stinky, then?”

“To set us up as bounty hunters. It's not far from what we're really doing, and it would explain us poking around in the woods.”

“I don't like it here. These hills and trees, all wet and black. It's like they're closing off the sky. I haven't liked this job; just one misery after another.”

Valentine looked up from yet another worthless mark that wasn't a track. “I'm glad you're here. I'd have been hung months ago if it wasn't for you and Ahn-Kha, most likely.”

“The Lifeweavers were watching over us all back there. But they don't know about us being here. How can they know we need their help?”

Duvalier's worshipful naivete when it came to humanity's allies took strange forms sometimes. “Not sure how they could help us now,” Valentine said.

“Something would turn up. A piece of luck. Like the general's train showing up in Nebraska.”

“After we crisscrossed three states looking for him. Would have been better if the Lifeweavers had arranged our luck to hit when we passed a dozen miles from his headquarters without knowing it.”

She planted her walking stick. “You think everything's chance.”

“No. If it were, I wouldn't still be alive.”

After Price flagged down a patrolman on the riverside highway, they stopped in the little Ohio-side town of Caspian. An Ordnance Station, part police house, part customs post, and part post office had the latest warrant flyers posted in a three-ring binder. Valentine and Price went inside while the rest visited a market to buy food.

“Look what the river washed up,” an Ohioan with a package said to his friend as they passed in on their way to the postal clerk.

Price helped Valentine select a handbill. Valentine wanted a female, thirtyish. “Not much to choose from. Guess Ohio women are law-abiding. Except for Gina Stottard, here.”

“Stealing power and unauthorized wiring,” Valentine read. “A desperado electrician.”

“She's all there is.”

“What do I do next?”

“Follow me.”

Price took three handbills of his own—the top man had killed a woman while trying to perform an illegal abortion—and went over to a blue-uniformed officer behind a thick window. She blinked at them from behind thick corrective glasses.

“Copies of these, please,” Price said, sliding the handbills under the glass along with his warrant card. “And—”

“Gimme a moment,” she said, and went to a cabinet. She got a key and disappeared into another room. Ten minutes later—perhaps she'd worked in a coffee break— she returned with the copies. They were poor-quality photocopies, but still readable. “Six dollars,” she said.

“My associate needs a bounty card.”

“That makes it sixteen dollars. You could have said so. Have to make another trip to get one.”

“I tr—I'm sorry.”

Fifteen minutes later she returned with the form. It had a numbered card on it similar to Price's. Valentine filled it out using his Ohio ration-card name—Tarquin Ayoob, not a name Valentine would have chosen on his own; it came off his tongue like a horse getting wire-tripped—and passed it back under the partition. She counted the money, stamped both the document and the bounty card, then took out scissors and cut the card free.

“What's the number for?” Valentine asked.

“If you got a prisoner in tow you can get free food and lodging at any NUC door, they just need the number. Counts as good works for the Ordnance Lottery. Bring in a man or even a useful report and your number goes in that week. You can buy tickets, too. This week's pot is half a million. Care to enter?”

“Doubt we'll be in the Ordnance long enough to collect, ” Price said. “I thank you, officer.”

They left the station and reunited with Duvalier and the Grogs at the riverbank, sharing a final meal. Apples were growing plentiful, making Valentine think of Everready. Price pulled up the mule's feet and inspected them one by one as Bee held the animal.

“This is really good-bye,” Valentine said.

“Watch your curfew around here, son,” Price said. “Folks button up really tight. If you're solid-silver lucky, the police pick you up and throw you in the clink for breaking.

“I'm going to be poking around in Lexington for a bit. Ohio fugitives head there, more often than not. There's jobs at the processing plants, and the West Kentucky Legion isn't too choosy about who it takes on. I'll check in at the depots.”

“Can I come back with you that far?” Duvalier asked.

Valentine almost dropped his apple. “You want to give up?”

“This led nowhere, David. I don't want to stumble around ground I don't know. I feel like we stick out here. Everyone talks different, wears different clothes.”

“Give me three more days,” Valentine said.

“How far away will you be in three days?” Duvalier asked Price.