Fall with Honor (Vampire Earth #7) - Page 4
Highbeam Assembly Area, Arkansas, November: Just outside the city Jonesboro, now notable only for its hospital, which is the only one in the northeastern corner of the state, a new camp is going up.
Southern Command believes that the best people to build a camp are the soldiers who have to eat, sleep, and train in it. Cartload after cartload of lumber, tenting, plumbing, and wiring arrives as the assembly area swells, hauled from the rail terminus to the camp by ox wagons and mule teams.
A tricky autumn dumped rain and a freak snowstorm on the soldiers as they hammered and tacked and strung. Now, with canvas roofing above their heads at last and corduroy roads made of scrub timber and wood chips, the rain blows out northeast and a cool, dry fall sets in, though the chill in the midnight-to-dawn air hints at worse to come.
Valentines company arrived after the Wolf contingent and Bear teams but before most of the Guard forces of the expeditionary brigade. They got their own corner of the assembly area, a little blister near the camp's drainage.
As far as the men were concerned, they were preparing for a "long out." Lambert had planted rumors that their destination was New Orleans or a big raid on the river patrol base at Vicksburg. Consequently the men assumed that they'd be going in the opposite direction, perhaps to Omaha or another try at western Kansas. One Wolf swore that it would certainly be Omaha, as he knew for a fact that Major Valentine was familiar with the city, as his sister had served under him on Big Rock Hill and afterward on the drive into Texas. She knew all about him. Others bet him that it was Kansas, as Colonel Seng had buried a lot of soldiers there and was going back to reclaim old ground.
Each man both hopes for and fears the coming "long out." On the return from such a campaign, promotions and awards are handed out like Archangel Day candy. Quieter, dirtier stories of the women looking for an easy out of the Kurian Zone appeal to some; others talk of strange liquors and dishes. The best of them, writing letters home or making out the public paragraphs of their wills, refer to the gratification of liberating a town or county, the fear of the residents that slowly transforms to hope, and the hard work of making individuals out of cattle.
David Valentine, looking at his motley assortment of Camp Liberty volunteers (ninety-two former Quislings and twelve refugees, of which nine are women) drawn up on a freshly cleared field within their winter encampment for their first mornings exercises, readies himself for the strain of once again being responsible for men's lives-including, in the words of his old Wolf captain LeHavre, "burying your mistakes."
Patel was still the only NCO. Valentine's requests had disappeared into the maw of Southern Command's digestive process. What would emerge from the other end remained to be seen.
He was lined up with the other men, ahead of the massed ranks. Valentine wore his oldest militia fatigues and the men were still in their Liberty handouts. They'd divide the men into platoons later. For now they'd eat, sleep, and exercise in a big mass.
Even in the early days of their acquaintance he was already conditioning himself to the idea that some of them, even all of them, might die in the coming operation.
Valentine had made peace with his own death. He'd seen Kurian rule in all its fear and splatter. Faced with his experiences and the mixture of revulsion and hatred they inspired, he had only one option, the only option a man who wanted to call himself a man had: risking all in a fight that would end only with his death or the Kurian Order's destruction.
Why the men under him signed up wasn't strictly his concern. Whether they fought so they could look other soldiers in the eye, to take the place of a lost relative, to get an allotment, or because they thought of battle as the ultimate blood sport made no difference regarding the orders he would give: He'd do his duty the same whether a man signed for faith or money.
Speaking of duty, his first was creating a healthy environment for his men while they trained themselves into a fighting company.
The only improvement to their ground was a length of three-inch piping and some conduit extending out of the main camp. The rest of their materials were in the supply yard.
Patel stepped out of the little "command shack," the only structure standing in their blister at the end of the camp. His cane had disappeared and he looked as spry as ever.
He walked back and forth in front of the men once. He'd inked in a star on his old stripes and done a good job of it. Valentine could hardly tell the difference.
"My name is Sergeant Major Patel. You came here as a hundred and five individuals.
Southern Command's going to make an army of one out of you. One well-trained, sharp brain that's always alert. One tough Reaper-eating body. One heart that fears only God and Sergeant Major Patel. You read me, slackers?"
"Sir yes sir!" Valentine shouted. A few voices behind joined in.
Patel put his hands on his hips and faced them. "Rest of you haven't finished evolving?
Communication occurs when the transmitter broadcasts and the transmittee acknowledges.
Try again!"
"Sir yes sir!" they shouted.
"I don't want to hear harmony-you're not a fuckin' chorus. All at once, and louder."
"Sir yes sir!" they shouted loud enough to be heard in Jonesboro. Georgia, not Arkansas.
"After morning exercise, we're going to build you all shelters. Ladies get theirs first, because we're in Southern Command. We're blessed with natural gallantry."
Morning exercises lasted until lunch. Patel took them through his "twelve labors." Again and again, he managed to find fault with the rhythm of their jumping jacks or the height of someone's buttocks during a push-up. He sent Valentine and four exhausted "slackers" off to get the meal while he finished with the rest.
There wasn't a chuck wagon available so they piled bread and beans and trays into a wheelbarrow and ate with spoons. Dessert was flaky pastry smeared with "Grog guck."
Valentine got tap detail. He turned on the spigot and filled cups and a couple of beat-up old canteens and bladders from the flow of water so the recruits had something to drink with their food.
With everyone sprawled on the cold, damp ground eating and drinking, Valentine finally got his pan full of beans. The beans tasted as though they'd once shared a tin with some ham but divorced some time back, though the molasses in the sauce was sweet and welcome.
Patel gave them thirty minutes and then roused them to get to work on the frames for the tents. Valentine was the only one to notice that Patel's breath smelled like aspirin as he bellowed. But they did manage to finish the women's tent and get a start on the showers.
That night they slept around fifty-five-gallon drum stoves burning scrap from the lumber they'd measured and cut.
The first day was nothing to the second. Everyone ached and groaned as they did the twelve labors. Some fool asked when they were going to get their uniforms and Patel showed them why they weren't yet fit to wear Southern Command issue by running across, covering in, and crawling through the noisome field where the camp's sanitary waters drained off.
"Too slow," Patel said each and every time they fell into the mud. Or crawled. Or got up.
Or crossed the field. Or turned around to cross the field again.
They slept in a formidable stench that second night, thanks to the field and two (or more-the men had had a long trip on buses) days' worth of hard-sweat body odor. The next day, eating a breakfast of biscuits and greasy gravy out of wheelbarrows again, they learned all about democracy as they voted to finish the showers before the men's shelter.
Valentine liked the decision that they'd rather sleep rough and cold than dirty. Men who wanted to get clean had pride in themselves. He also liked being under Patel's orders. It got him out of Camp Highbeam meetings and working dinners that were more social than productive.
They had the floorboards laid, the sinks running, and the shower headings up when Patel stopped them and had them line up on the camp's main road to welcome three new companies of the Guards into camp.
They must have made a strange impression, hair spiky with mud, the odd multicolor dungarees of Camp Liberty filthy with a mixture of muck and sawdust.
"Better get back to wrangling them pigs, boys," one called.
"Whew! Someone's been on shit detail," another Guard soldier called as they walked in.
Catcalls and jibes were part of the Command's proud tradition. The men stared off blankly into space or looked down. They didn't have the spirit to answer back.
Yet.
That was his job. And Patel's. And the rest of his NCOs, if he ever got any. To make up for the jokes, after dinner that night he told them a little more about what they would be doing in the Kurian Zone- scouting and trading for food, scrounging up replacement gear, and interacting with the local resistance.
Unfortunately for his company, he learned the next day that the second name stuck. Maybe it was their odd bubo placement in the camp's layout, but Valentine's company became known as the "shit detail" in everything but formal correspondence.
He discussed the problem the next morning with Patel in the little command shack as the men slept-clean now, thanks to the functioning showers but still in tiny field tents or bags in the cold clew-as they planned the day's training.
"What do you think of promoting from within?" Patel asked. "There are several ex-sergeants. You've even got a busted-down captain in your ranks."
"I'd like to see talent rewarded," Valentine said. "It's more of a mind-set than technical and leadership skills that I'm worried about. In the Kurian Zone, it's enough to just issue an order.
Here the men like to know the whys and hows so they feel a part of something larger. I'd like to see initiative-intelligent initiative-from privates on up."
"I don't think that's possible in a few months. If you want some sergeants taught to be Southern Command sergeants, I may be able to help. Can you get me any money?"
"I can try. What are you talking about?"
"About thirty thousand dollars."
"I don't have a pension to borrow against anymore, Patel. I'll try Lambert. She might have access to a slush fund. Tell me what you have in mind."
They worked out the deal with Lambert, the general, and Southern Command in three days.
When Valentine pointed out that in the long run it would be cheaper than adding more men to the "long out" with bonuses and land grants and so forth, they agreed.
Plus it would be good for the "shit detail's" morale to be led by their own.
Naturally, there were staffing orders to cancel. As luck would have it, one position filled as the order was transmitted: a heavy weapons expert named Glass, rank of corporal and with a spotty record of wanting to do things his own way, showed up at camp and reported to the command shack as everyone was eating their lunches out of wheelbarrows again.
A small man with a big pack, he looked like some kind of beetle with an oversized carapace of pack and camp gear. He also sported the world's scraggliest beard. It looked like Spanish moss Valentine had seen in Louisiana.
Valentine stood up to welcome him and Patel trailed behind.
"Very glad to see you," Valentine said, shaking Glass' hand.
"Thank you, sir," he said rather sullenly.
"Don't want this assignment, Glass? You didn't get someone twisting your arm to volunteer, I hope."
"No. Nothing like that, Major. Tell the truth, I'm glad to be back under General Lehman.
Just tired from the trip."
Glass was one of those compact, wiry men in what looked to be his late twenties. Judging from his qualifications list on his Q-file, he didn't look to be the type to wear down. Valentine let it rest.
"You're early, so you get to pick the most comfortable corner in the NCO tent. It's just you and Sergeant Major Patel for now."
They sized each other up, Patel in his Wolf leathers, hand sewn and patched, Glass in his ordinary Guard cammies. Glass stared vacantly at Patel, not so much challenging his superior as transmitting indifference.
"What's the company's support weaponry?" he asked.
"It's not here yet," Valentine said. "As you can see, everything's late to arrive, even uniforms. You might as well learn early, we're the shit detail of this outfit. Eat up."
"Will that be all, sir?"
"For the moment," Valentine replied.
"I'll get myself squared away, then," Glass said. He turned for the tent with Patel's name painted on the old bit of traffic sign next to the door.
"Brittle," Patel commented. "Just hope he's not about to break."
"He's got outstanding references for his competency. Leadership's lacking. His last CO
called him 'prickly.' "
"Wonder how the guys who had to share a tent with him would have put it," Patel said.
"We're not going across the river to have a harvest bonfire and sing-along," Valentine replied. "I'm willing to wait and see."
Valentine's company first lieutenant finally arrived late at night as Valentine caught up on paperwork in the one-bulb shack. He tripped on the doorstep coming in, straightened, saluted, and handed Valentine his orders.
They told a curious tale in the dates and checkboxes and comments. Valentine spent sixty seconds reading through.
Lieutenant (militia) Rowan Rand was Kentucky-bred; his parents made the run for Free Territory when he was fifteen. His father disappeared one night while scouting what looked like a vacant farmhouse and he'd helped his mother and sisters the rest of the way to the Ozarks, crossing the Mississippi on barrels a la Bilbo Baggins.
"Stint in the militia, and then right into Logistics Commandos?" Valentine asked, looking up from the file.
Rand blinked back at him through glasses that the ungenerous might call Coke bottle. "Bad eyesight. Astigmatism. I'm bat-blind without my eyewear plus I don't see so well in the dark.
They never put it down on my record beyond 'needs glasses.' "
Southern Command's recruiters had the sense to weigh shortcomings against strengths, almost always in favor of giving a candidate a chance to prove their mettle. "You tore through the SC Intelligence and Aptitude tests. Your test scores make mine look like an illiterate's."
"Six years in a Church academy in Columbia District," Rand said.
"Church background? I'll introduce you to Brother Mark. How'd you like it?"
"The schoolwork was fun. And there were all the outings and marches and drives, singing the happy tunes as we worked. I'm embarrassed to think about it now."
"You were eleven. How could you know?" Valentine said.
"Same for you? You kind of choked up there, sir."
"I grew up in a different church, luckily."
"I would have run on my own during summer leave if my parents hadn't decided to try."
Valentine read over the file again. "Platoon leader and then a lieutenant in the militia. Five trips into Kentucky, three into Tennessee with the LCs. No combat?"
Rand shrugged. "Logistics Commandos think that if you get into a fight, you're a screwup."
The Logistics Commandos were odd units. They went into Kurian Zones to beg, borrow, or steal items Southern Command had difficulty manufacturing or maintaining. Mostly they were made up of veteran Hunter members, Wolves and Cats primarily, but Valentine had heard that with Hunter training slowed to a trickle, more and more regulars had been doing the hazardous duty.
Valentine read to the bottom of his assignment orders. Lambert herself had placed Rand with his company. If she believed in the man, there was no need to probe further.
"Welcome to Delta Company," Valentine said. "At the moment Sergeant Major Patel is running the show, turning the men into a team. When we're on the parade ground, he's in charge."
"Yes, sir," Rand said.
"I'll introduce you to the company. You'll stick close to me for a week or so until you find your feet, then you'll take over. I'm going north into Grog country. I'll be back in a few weeks, barring catastrophe."
Rand sank into his duties easily enough. To Valentine's delight, he soon swam lustily. He was all knees and elbows in the field and had a tendency to trip. After a sprawl he had a way of pushing his thick glasses back up his nose that disarmed the laughers and charmed the more sympathetic.
He accepted formal command of the company from Valentine with a nod and a yessir, then took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirttail.
Valentine had a final word with Patel as the groom from the brigade stables held his horse, a sturdy Morgan named Raccoon. A packhorse stood just behind. Valentine hung his baggage and the odds and ends he'd been collecting on the packhorse.
"Keep up the good work, Sergeant Major," he said as Patel helped fix a clip.
"Enjoy your leave, sir."
"It won't all be fun. I'm going to see if I can do a little more recruiting in Missouri."
"You don't mean . . ."
"Yes. Grogs."
The horse holder snorted. Valentine took the reins and Patel shot the groom a look and growled: "Thank you, Private."
Valentine and Patel walked toward the gate. Well, not so much a gate as a big chain with a Southern Command postal number hanging from it and blocking the camp's entrance.
"Since you got out of the Wolves, sir . . . any head injuries?"
"The Cowardly Lion says it wasn't so much a head injury as Bud ringing my wake-up bell."
"Bud? Ah, yes, my old friend who tried to climb up a tree to God. Your memory's still on target. I was going to ask who was the first governor of the Ozark Free Territory."
"Kird Q. Pelgram," Valentine said. "I think you'll have to do better."
"If a Quisling troop train pulls out of New Orleans at twelve thirty, going twenty miles an hour toward Baton Rouge, and eight hours later their support train pulls out, going forty miles an hour, when will-"
"It won't. We'll blow up the bridge at Red River so the Quislings have to fight without artillery."
"When are you going to change out of that milita rag?"
"Near the border, at one of those shifty inns that does business with the Grogs out of a basement armory."
"Speaking of uniforms," Patel said. "There's a Kentucky gal in second platoon who used to be on some big bug's staff Ediyak-Private Ediyak now. She knows Kurian auxiliary forces from the Gulf Coast to the Lakes. She's got a design for a uniform based on their priority labor.
Moleskin, they call it, almost as tough as leather, with denim shirts, both dyed down to a foggy gray."
"I've seen something like that in the KZ. Those the guys who run phone lines?"
"Yes. Flying specialists that work their communications and electrical. Always moving from place to place, so strange faces won't raise eyebrows."
"Denim's easy to get. Labor troops. I dunno about the moleskin."
"Popular with ranchers. Rand says he can find some with his old LC connections."
"If she can modify them so they're Southern Command but still look KZ, that would be ideal."
"I'll speak to her about it."
Valentine decided to jump in with both feet. "Put Rand to work getting denim and dye and sewing supplies. He might as well get his baptism of fire with Supply or put his LC
background to work in the UFR. Worst-case scenario is they'll be a fresh set of civvies for our guys."
"These leathers are getting a little gamey anyway."
"How are the knees holding up?"
"I'm now a confirmed aspirin addict, sir."
Valentine extended his hand and they shook. "Give yourself a break, Patel. Let Glass take them through the twelve labors. No one's going to think worse of you if you pick the cane back up after these last weeks."
With that he rode out of camp, turning north into a November wind.
For six gallons of root-beer syrup he got a Whitefang guide to take him up to St. Louis, the Grog clearing a path through the brush with a year-old legworm. His guide frequently stopped his mount to scout on foot, and at these rests Valentine would feed the horses and check their trail. The only thing that picked them up was a slight cold on their ride north. Both he and his guide took turns sneezing and blowing their noses, but it was better when they came into St.
Louis three days later.
He traded a captured revolver-he'd tinkered with it on the journey and modified the grip and trigger guard for Grog-sized fingers- for a foot pass and toted his bag full of toys to Blake's home.
Not that Blake lacked toys. The old Jesuit researcher, Cutcher, had been observing him constantly as he played with various puzzles, games, and toys, gauging the young Reaper's mental development.
They'd built another coop and chicken run in the side yard of the prairie-style house located high on the bluffs above the Missouri. The Owl-Eye Grogs had added a rock pile at either side of the driveway. According to the scratchings, this was a place of powerful good magic for the tribe.
He gave some bolts of cloth, seeds, and religious books to Narcisse. Along with her care of Blake, she'd started a little church for the human community in St. Louis. While the only holy spirit the human river traders took came in a square bottle, Narcisse had made it her specialty to invite human captives of the Grogs into her circle. She'd been traveling to a couple of different neighborhoods more or less strapped to a mule. Valentine would have to promote his pack-horse to the carriage trade and find her a little two-wheel cart. He could acquire the kind of thing high-ranking Grog chieftain wives used to visit relatives in the complicated tribal family structure, curtained to prevent lowlier Grogs from gazing on the high and mighty.
Valentine pulled the bell rope that told Blake that it was okay to come out of his comfortable basement room.
Blake, at just under four years, was as tall as a boy on the cusp of his teens, "papss," Blake hissed excitedly as he emerged. He wore an oversized jacket and jeans with the cuffs extended. Gloves dangled from his sleeves. When he'd go outside he'd add a scarf and a floppy old hat to disguise his appearance.
Wobble, Blake's little dog, picked up on the boy's excitement at having "paps" home and chased his tail in excitement.
"Night games tonight?" Blake asked.
"Anything you like," Valentine said. "Fishing, a deer run, or I can read you stories."
Blake put up with stories only when he was very tired. He didn't like to sit and just listen or read along.
"Night games!"
For night games Blake wore a football helmet with padding sewn in at the sides so it fit snugly on his rather narrow head.
The games took place in the old St. Louis children's museum, a warren of chutes and ladders and tunnels made out of assorted bits of industrial and artistic junk from the pre-2022
world. The Grogs used it to train young warriors. At night the Grogs loosed their young on each other, to chase and brawl.
Some of the tougher human children sometimes joined in, also suitably padded and helmeted. Blake's helmet had a mesh with eye-slits attached to the grill-Valentine once explained to another human parent that the Grogs sometimes gouged with their long fingers-and with leather gloves on it would be hard to distinguish him from any other skinny young boy.
He could even shriek like a prepubescent when the mood hit.
There were no human kids there the night he took Blake. Valentine relaxed a little. Blake sometimes liked to show off by executing a jump no human could make and sometimes when wrestling he reversed his arm joints.
The most common Grog game was for one of the less dominant males to run up and swat a tougher one and then try to get away. The Grog children clearly considered it something of a coup if they could get away from Blake; they would swing or dangle from climbing obstacles and hit him, or three would strike at once and run off in different directions. Blake took the punches and swats with good humor and pursued his attackers and threw and pinned them when he could.
The roughhousing resulted in surprisingly few injuries. Young Grogs bounced like basketballs.
Valentine had stiffened the mesh in front of Blake's chin. Blake had acquired a good deal of self-control, but no sense taking chances.
He sat, watching Blake play. When Blake disappeared into one of the ill-lit buildings filled with noise and shadow, he followed, carrying a mug of sweet tea hot from a thermos.
A second thermos waited in Valentine's pack for when Blake tired. It was filled with warm chicken blood.
They fished the next day, then crossed into the woods on the north side of the Missouri the night after that, going on a deer run in the early morning.
Blake didn't have his helmet this time, just a hat with earflaps.
Valentine and Blake had a unique manner of deer hunting. They'd cover their scent as best they could with deer droppings and then wait. The deer liked to forage at the edges of old roads and broken-up parking lots. When they decided a herd was close enough, Valentine tapped Blake and they took off after a deer.
Last time they'd gone on a deer run, Valentine had been able to sprint ahead of Blake, even with his stiff leg. This time Blake beat him early in their dash after the bouncing white tails.
Valentine had that moment most fathers had, much earlier in the quick-developing Blake's case, when the son outdoes the father physically. He pulled up and sheathed his knife, relegated to the role of watcher.
Sometimes the deer crisscrossed and Blake got confused. But this time he bounded onto a big young buck at the fringe. Valentine had a moment's doubt, wondering if Blake would be taken for a brief ride before he lost his grip, but he brought it down like a cougar, clawing his way onto its neck and biting.
By the time he trotted up to Blake, the deer's eyes had gone dead and sightless. Blake raised a blood-smeared smile to him.
"Clean kill, Blake. Let's dress it. Sissy will have venison for the whole winter now, or deer sausage to go with her eggs."
At noon-Blake liked to sleep through the days-Valentine settled him down for a nap.
They'd return with the deer carried on a pole between them that night. He read to Blake a little from Charlotte's Web, but Blake seemed unimpressed by Wilbur's predicament.
"Pigs don't talk," Blake said, "story is not real"
"It's a story. In stories pigs can talk. So can spiders and rats."
Blake didn't understand why, if the pig could talk to Templeton or Charlotte A. Cavatica, it couldn't talk to Fern.
Blake would rather watch the bugs moving in the grasses and find out what they were doing. Maybe he was just scientifically minded. Valentine still found it disturbing that he couldn't summon his imagination to aid him in understanding the story.
Or empathy.
Blake helped him with various repairs to the house. Valentine went into St. Louis and got kerosene and tallow for light, a big bag of rice, chicken feed, and tar for a couple of weak spots in the roof and drainspouts.
Valentine watched Blake with Narcisse. She touched Blake fre-quently, patting him on the head or shoulder or arm, and he smiled, but he rarely touched or returned hugs with much enthusiasm.
But then he loved to nap with his head pillowed on her lap or breast.
Once, while Blake was sleeping away the morning, Valentine asked Narcisse if she was ever afraid.
"Daveed, don't be silly. I am safer with the boy here than with a whole pack of guard dogs.
He tells me when the Grogs come ten minutes before I hear them."
"No, I mean of Blake."
"He cares, in his way. He is like-he is like the cat who just takes affection on his terms.
One time I fell from my wheel-stool and before I knew it he was beside me and righted it.
After, I had a scrape on my arm and he got a cloth with vinegar for it."
Valentine gave voice to his doubts. "Maybe he just thought he was repairing you, the way he did the chicken wire."
"One night in August it was hot and I did not kiss him good night. He asked me why I didn't as I left, and I told him I was worried that he was getting too big for a kiss good night. He said he liked it because it made him feel warm and sleepy. He has love and caring. Do not worry for me."
Valentine let the matter rest.
They said their good-byes in the driveway. The garage now had a two-wheeled rig for Valentine's packhorse. Wobble sniffed at the new feed trough Valentine had built.
Narcisse had shown herself adept at driving the trap and Blake found the challenge of driving a horse fascinating. Blake approved of simple action-result loops much more than E. B.
White.
Valentine had acquired the rig by pledging to a loan of trade goods at the old church office in the city. He'd pay it back through the river rats.
"No sneaking blood out of that horse, now," Valentine said to Blake.
"No, papss," Blake said. Neither of the horses were happy about Blake's presence. They sidestepped and danced every time he moved. The carthorse would get used to him eventually.
"Help Sissy all you can. I may be gone for a while, so you've got to look out for her."
"No trouble for sissy" Blake said. Narcisse stroked his odd tufts of hair. It looked as though someone had glued old toothbrush heads in odd patterns on his scalp. It just grew in that way.
He remembered one of the Miskatonic researchers saying something about it possibly being an identifying mark.
"Go with the magic of the right hand, Daveed," Narcisse said.
He plucked her out of her wheelchair and hugged her. She'd put on a little weight since he'd met her in Haiti.
"Can't thank you enough, Sissy," Valentine said.
"I go where the most need is. Blake needs someone to teach him. My whole life, I never fit in anywhere," she said. "That is something I can t