Valentine's Rising (Vampire Earth #4) - Page 5

The Ruins of Little Rock, Arkansas, February: The city never recovered from the nuclear blast inflicted on it in the death throes of the Old World. Though the fires went out and the radiation dispersed, the only life to return permanently was nonhuman. Pine Bluff, closer to the breadbasket of southeastern Arkansas, replaced it as a transportation hub; Mountain Home and Fort Scott surpassed it as government and military centers. At the height of the Ozark Free Territory's progress, it could boast of little more than a dock and a ferry in a cleared-out patch of rubble, though even that was based on the north side of the river; the south-bank heart of the city was avoided as if it were cursed earth.

The new rulers have a grander vision of a rail, road, and river traffic hub built on the decayed remnants of the old. The Rocks, as the locals call them, buzz with activity. The new human constructs have an anthill quality to them; low buildings made out of the blasted components of pre-2022 architecture. Some are already smoothed over by fresh concrete and white paint, and a more traveled eye might think of a little Greek town between hill and Aegean. The pilings and ruined bridges prevent barges from going farther up the river -only small boat traffic goes west to Fort Scott-so Little Rock is an amphibian marshaling yard. Warehouses and tents under the New Order's supply officers support the final mopping up and reorganization of the Ozarks. The river hums with traffic, and trucks and horse wagons fill transport pools as Consul Solon builds his capital.

One building stands apart from the others, avoided by all but a few humans who work on its exterior and still-unfinished upper floors. It is a Kurian Tower, home of one of the new masters of what had been the Ozark Free Territory. Other towers like it are going up in Pine Bluff, Mountain Home, Hot Springs, and a dozen other, smaller towns. Only Consul Solon has seen them all.

Consul Solon. Little is known of him, save that he came from somewhere on the eastern seaboard. The name makes Quisling captains break a sweat. Children are hushed with warnings that Consul Solon will hear about misbehavior. An argument can be stopped with a threat to take the matter to him -a turn of events that might mean doom to both sides. Consul Solon is the man responsible for keeping human order in the various provinces of what was the Free Territory. He answers only to his Masters who have carved up the region: the dark princes of Fort Scott and Crowley's Ridge, the Springs, the Plateau, the Southern Marches, the Corridor … and other regions. Unlike much of the Kurian Zone, Solon is trusted to ensure the defense of all with a common force, rather than dozens of private armies in the hands of each overlord. Each Kurian has a Reaper representative at Solon's temporary headquarters at Fort Scott, the Consul's nerve center until the grander Consular Palace is built on the north bank of the Arkansas near Little Rock.

"Get out of the way of the trucks, like obedient little Quislings," Valentine ordered over his shoulder to Post, who signaled with an arm to pull the files off the paved road. Valentine leaned against the base of an old traffic signal pole on the outskirts of Little Rock and waved first to a motorcycle, then to the trucks as they passed on southward. Only ten feet of the pole remained; the rest of it lay in an overgrown ditch atop an engine block. But ample enough for leaning.

Valentine pulled off his helmet and rubbed his newly bald skull as he surveyed the column. The fuzzy-headed troops looked good enough in their Quisling uniforms, though they marched poorly. They were all shorn of their hair, and even the elaborate mustaches and beards-the pride and joy of many of the soldiers of Southern Command-had been left on the dead leaves in the woods near Bullfrog's station.

He had organized his footsore charges into three parts after leaving seventy-odd men and women tired of the trail or unwilling to face the risks of operating in the enemy's uniform. At the lead were Finner's Wolves, bereft of their beloved buckskins. They now wore the uniforms of the TMMP, an acronym for the Trans-Mississippi Mounted Patrol-the military police of Solon's newborn empire, entrusted with everything from guarding rail bridges to directing traffic. He, his officers, the Bears and the Jamaicans wore the simple, shapeless uniforms of recruits newly incorporated into me Quisling AOT-Army of the Trans-Mississippi.

At the center of the column, teams of four "recruits" each carried a Quickwood beam on their shoulders, faking exercises under the shouted direction of their NCOs. Mrs. Smalls rode in one of the wagons with the camp equipment; her husband and son led teams carrying the sick. The family had insisted on coming along, so that Mrs. Smalls could have her baby in the hospital reported to be in Little Rock. Valentine thought she stuck out like a cardinal in a coven.

Valentine watched the southbound trucks kick up gravel from the potholes with hungry eyes. In his days with the Wolves, a lightly armed convoy of six trucks falling into his lap would have been cause for celebration. He would have waited for signals from the observation scouts, then pitched into the convoy if his scouts flashed the all clear. The Quislings were sure of themselves if they were sending trucks with nothing more than a motorcycle and sidecar leading the way down the long road to Hot Springs. General Martinez must not have been too aggressive in the eastern Ouachitas over the winter, and Bullfrog only attacked the occasional Quisling target at night.

When the way cleared he got his column up and moving again. He stayed by his signal post, watching me men's faces as they walked toward Little Rock. A few looked excited, even eager to play the game, but others wore their fear like lead overcoats. They moved with the deliberative plod of men too tired and hungry to hope.

"Let's step out a little more, Calgary," Valentine called to a former Guard shuffling down the road with a hangdog expression. "We're having a hot meal tonight."

Calgary picked up the pace and smacked his lips, pleased for some reason to be recognized. Valentine felt better too. The weeks of starts and stops, double-backs, circling, hunger and cold in the hills, and soggy, tireless camps, keeping seven hundred men out of the way of Quisling patrols, were over. They were right where Valentine had placed his finger on the map at the conference the night they left Colonel Meadows and Bullfrog, and his column had all solemnly shaved their heads-starting with Ahn-Kha's destruction of Valentine's shoulder-length locks. At first it had been play, learning the AOT and TMPP ranks, working on their imaginary stories as mercenary recruits in Arkansas, or up from the swamps of Louisiana or the woods of East Texas, looking to seek their fortune in the new empire Solon was raising.

When they emerged from the hills and turned up the road for the old state capital, the men grew more and more anxious as the task became real, rather than just an imagined challenge in the future. At a rest halt, Valentine gathered the men and spoke to them as best as he could, relaying details of a plan he had kept from all save Ahn-Kha, though he suspected Styachowski had an inkling. When the time came to speak to them he had the men unharness the wagons and rest on a hillside, making a natural amphitheater.

"You all know I'm a Cat," he finished, booming the words out so all could hear. "As of today, you're all Cats too. We're going to pretend we're Quislings recruits. Lieutenant From has phoned in to headquarters here the happy news that he's finally met, indeed overfilled, his recruitment quota. We've got faked documents requisitioning us food, new clothing, shoes and weapons. You've all suffered because of shortages of those things. The Quislings in the Ruins have plenty, and we're going to trick them out of them, get across the river and rejoin Southern Command. Just keep your mouths shut. One loose tongue could do us all in."

So as they approached the Ruins, Valentine needed something to get their minds off their situation. Most of the men were worried they were walking right into a prison yard, the intermediate holding place leading to the inevitable Reaper embrace.

"How about a song, Jefferson. An old marching tune. "Yellow Rose of Texas," anyone?"

"Huh?" Jefferson said, looking down from his wagon.

"Narcisse, I've heard your singing. Give us a song," Valentine said.

"One everyone can sing?"

"If you can think of one."

Narcisse ran her tongue beneam her lips. "Lesseee …

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible, swift sword: His truth is marching on."

The men took up the march with a will. They began stepping out in time; some, used to singing hymns or just musically inclined, added harmonies. Even the Jamaicans knew the words.

While the song lasted Finner fell in beside him.

"Captain, you sure about what you're doing?"

Valentine considered telling him to shut his mouth and obey orders, but the man who'd brought him south from Minnesota deserved better. "Commanding one of the worst marches in Ozark history. I'll let Consul Solon take care of transport from now on."

"But from the Ruins? Why not grab some boats and just cross at some quiet bend upriver? From a distance we'll look like a training march."

"Styachowski says the AOT is scraping men from every border station. Little Rock is a supply depot. New formations are brought there now, to be equipped before being sent elsewhere."

"If I had a suspicious mind I might be worried that you were marching everyone into a prison yard. That'd rate a brass ring and an estate in Iowa. If I had a suspicious mind, that is."

"Would it make you feel better to know that I'm keeping your Wolves outside the wire?"

"It'd make me feel better. Don't know about the rest of these lunks. How far outside?"

"About seven miles. I want you to camp around Mt. Summit. We won't be in Little Rock for more than three or four days, I expect. If this turns bad we'll make for you if we can. You've got a good view of the old Highway 10 from there. If I need to talk to you and I can't come myself, I'll send Ahn-Kha or Post. Just a nice ride in the country. We'll have one of these red bandannas tied on our heads."

"Red bandannas. Okay."

"One more thing." Valentine reached into his AOT officer's winter coat, a hanging mass of leather and canvas covered with bellows pockets. "Here's a report… well, several reports. Send a couple of good, and I mean real good, Wolves out to the Boston Mountains. They're to find whoever's in charge there and hand them over. A Lifeweaver would be ideal."

"I've got eight men who've run courier for Martinez up north. They know where to go."

"Keep those uniforms handy. You may need them again."

"Very well, sir."

"More responsibility than you wanted, I'm sure."

Finner rocked back and forth on his heels, keeping time to the music, fighting a smile. "I'm getting used to it. I think I'm better at this than I thought. Hope you didn't think I was accusing …" Finner let the sentence trail off.

"No. Stay suspicious, Finner. If I'd been more suspicious when we hit the Free Territory-oh, never mind. I want to pay this Consul Solon back with some of his own coin."

Finner and his Wolves left them while they were still in the hills. The road sloped down into the Ruins. It began to rain again. Valentine put an old green towel over his shaven head so the ends hung down like a bloodhound's ears and seated an old Kevlar helmet over it.

"This cover my scar?" he asked Post. "I'm worried I've made Solon's Most Wanted."

"Pretty much," Post said, tilting his head to see the thin white line descending Valentine's right cheek. "It's shaded off, anyway. You can still see the bit by your eye. It's the haircut that makes the real difference."

"That wasn't a haircut, that was clear-cutting."

"Your teeth could use some coffee stains to complete the disguise. I've never known anyone who spends so much time brushing his teeth in the field."

"Every meal, the way my momma taught me." That memory caused a brief stab: the last time he'd seen them in Minnesota he was eleven and she'd-stop it. "If you'd ever seen a nice, runny oral infection you'd join me," he finished, a little lamely.

The column passed shells of buildings. Empty gas stations, strip malls with their glass fronts blasted out, foundations of homes that had burned and died grew closer and closer together as they came into the city limits. Gutted two-story structures gave way to piles of rubble, though the highway they walked on had been cleared. The debris lined either side of the road like snowdrifts.

The column sighted a guard post.

"Okay, Post, I'm going to talk to them. They'll probably take me to the CO of this scrapheap. If I'm not back in two hours, or if you hear shooting, just fade into the hills. Split up if you have to."

"Told me that, sir."

"I'm repeating it. Nobody, not even Ahn-Kha, goes in after me. We want them confused; fighting will unconfuse them faster than anything."

A sergeant with a corporal trailing behind like a heeled dog stepped from a little shelter at the spectacle of a quarter mile of humanity waking down the road toward his post. They wore tiger-striped cammies, with AOT yellow insignia at the shoulder. Valentine kicked his horse on and trotted forward. Ahn-Kha stepped in front of his horse and took the reigns.

"I heard you speaking to Post. If this turns, we're not to go in after you?"

"Not even you, old horse."

"If I can't go in after you, my David, I'm coming in with you."

"Post will need you if-"

"You'll need me more."

Ahn-Kha's ears went flat and the Grog took a stance a little wider than a riverside oak, four hundred pounds of roadblock.

"You'll be my bodyguard then," Valentine said, knowing when he was beaten, and not wanting to look like there was a crisis in his command.

They approached the guard station. Valentine hailed the sergeant from horseback.

"We're a day late, I know. Bad weather," Valentine said.

"A day late for what?" the sergeant said. He looked more at Ahn-Kha than at either Valentine or the unarmed column far behind. Valentine was suddenly glad Ahn-Kha had insisted on accompanying him.

Valentine glared, and turned his chin so the three pips on his collar showed.

"Colonel," the sergeant added, saluting.

"For outfit and transport, Sergeant. Recruits up from Station 26, District Commander Frum's HQ."

The corporal checked a nearly blank clipboard. "You're Colonel Le Sain."

"From Louisiana," Valentine said, opening a satchel. He passed down a wad of paperwork in an expandable waterproof envelope. "Route Orders are near the top. You'll see supply, transport, OI for each recruit and the roster's in the back, not that you need to concern yourself with the rest. Don't think you have to check off every name that passes; my officers are responsible for everyone getting on the barge. I take the heat if anyone deserts."

The sergeant took another look at the ID card dangling from Valentine's breast pocket. "Didn't they have transport for you on the road, uhhh, Colonel Le Sain?"

"Too cheap. Besides, it toughens 'em up."

"I'll let the general know you've arrived."

"When you do, mention that weather held us up. Hell, I'd better come along in case they have questions."

"Yes, sir. Corp, let the colonel and his stoop pass." The sergeant disappeared into his guardhouse.

Valentine dismounted and stepped over the chain hung between two concrete dragon's teeth blocking the road. "Up from Louisiana, sir? I used to serve in Texas, myself. Can't wait to get back." The corporal's face showed curiosity, not suspicion.

"I'm here permanently."

The guardhouse consisted of the remains of some concrete-and-steel professional building. Men in loose dungarees were rebuilding exterior walls from the rubble, fitting together more or less intact cinder blocks around electrical conduit already laid. Others worked on a superstructure to the building, building something that looked like a miniature aircraft control tower. The workers all had bright orange zipper pockets sewn on the breasts of their overalls.

"Forced labor?" Valentine asked the corporal.

"You know it, sir. At first it was lots of force and not much labor, but they've settled down."

"Good."

Valentine smelled the wet cement and waited while the sergeant passed responsibility up to lieutenant, and lieutenant to a radio. The lieutenant, a thirtyish man missing an earlobe, hung up the field phone and approached Valentine.

The Cat tried not to look relieved when he saluted. "Howdy, sir," he said, revealing a mouth full of black-rimmed teeth. "I apologize for taking so long. I'm sorry, but there's some confusion. They know about the men, but

Brigadier Xray-Tango doesn't know you, sir." Valentine felt a cold sweat emerge on his back.

"I got my orders a month ago. Only thing to happen since then was a last-minute change; they had me set out from Fort Scott instead of Hot Springs. That got countermanded the next day; turned out they wanted me at Station 26 to command these recruits."

"Looks like when you got switched back, someone didn't follow up, sir."

"Order, Counter-Order, Disorder. Hot Springs had some confusion, too."

The lieutenant shrugged. He looked as if he was going to say something to Ahn-Kha, and thought better of it. "Brigadier Xray-Tango wants to see you and your orders before your men get billeted, sir. I suppose your Grog can go with you."

"Excuse me, son. "Xray-Tango?" That an acronym you use up here?"

"No, it's a name. He's CO for this whole New Columbia area. He's new, too."

"I see. Wish they'd tell me these things."

"If you'll follow me, sir."

Valentine smiled. "I look forward to meeting the brigadier."

Little Rock's collection of warehouses and piers was Station 3, according to the sign over the entrance. Station 3 also had a motto: "Crossroads of the Future." Or so Valentine read as he stepped up the stairs and under a pre-2022 post and lintel in the neoclassical style. The rest of the headquarters building was a cobbled-together mix of wood floors, brick walls and beam roof. Communications passed from the radio room upstairs through old-fashioned air-pressure tubes. There was an audible shoomp as a new message arrived at the desk of an officer. Another wrote outgoing messages in block letters on square-lined paper and sent them shooting back upstairs.

"The general will see you now, sir; your assistant can wait outside," a corporal said. He had the self-assured look of a ranker who was used to having officers at his beck and call. Ahn-Kha waited for a nod from Valentine, then went back outside.

The brigadier general had a corner office with narrow windows filled with the first unbroken glass Valentine had seen in the Rujns. What wall space wasn't taken up by windows had maps and bulletin boards on it. A liquor sideboard held trophies of figures in various martial arts poses instead of bottles. The desk smelled of recently applied varnish.

"Coffee?" Brigadier Xray-Tango asked. He had a neat uniform, with the same yellow star on the shoulder, and a hearty manner, under a haircut so close it resembled peach fuzz. Friendly but harassed eyes looked out from under bushy brows. There was something wrong with the face, though, and it took Valentine a moment to see it. Xray-Tango's left eye was open wider than the right; it wasn't that the right was squinting, it was more that the left lid stayed a little farther open. Valentine liked to look at a man's hands after his face, and as he poured the coffee Valentine looked at the work-roughened fingers. The nails were rimmed with a stain that matched that on the new desk, which was topped by a stenciled desk plate that read bgdr general's. xray-tango.

"Thank you, sir." Valentine sniffed the aroma from the thermos. "The real thing?"

"Privileges of rank."

"What's all the hardware for? Boxing?"

"Some. Ever heard of Tae Kwon Do?"

"That's like kickboxing, right?"

"A little. It's a martial art. I fought for my old brigade out west. Retired undefeated." He held out his left hand; on the finger next to a wedding ring Valentine saw a ruby red championship ring with "S X T" engraved beneath the "Single Combat Champion" tide. "Can I see your orders, Colonel?"

Valentine sorted them and placed them in three piles on his desk. "Marching orders. Supply requisitions. Organization Inventory for the recruits. Y'all like your paperwork up here."

"That's a weak-looking OI," Xray-Tango said, glancing through the pages.

"Farm kids and men in from the borderland boonies. But they're good woodsmen. They know about moving through country and shooting."

"That territory organized?"

"Not as well as it should be. Most of them are the usual assortment of malcontents who chose carrying a gun over using a shovel in a labor camp."

General Xray-Tango's left eye twitched; a quick three-blink spasm, the third slower than the first two.

"You're moving kind of stiff, Colonel. Injury?"

"I came off a horse a couple weeks ago and broke a rib. I just got the cast off."

The eye twitched again and Xray-Tango took in Ahn-Kha's formidable frame.

"Why the bodyguard?" he asked Valentine.

"The Grog? SOP down there for anyone above captain, sir. Bodyguard. Master-at-arms. I don't know what you'd call it up here. He shakes up soldier and civilian alike."

"Kind of like your own personal Hood, eh? Not sure if I like that. A good leader shouldn't have to dole out summary justice. How often you use it?"

"I lost one on the way. I had to shoot a deserter. Just a homesick kid. I didn't know what kind of paperwork I had to fill out so I just made a report, countersigned by my second in command and the dead man's sergeant. We don't have dog tags but his work card's attached. That's how we did things in Natchez."

"That's the least of my worries, Le Sain."

"Why's that, sir?"

"To be honest, we've no record of you coming here. By Kur, I need you, that's for sure. All this rain with the spring thaw; I've got a command and a bunch of warehouses that might be underwater in a day or two. Consul Solon has zero, and I mean zero, tolerance for wheeling and dealing. So I'm going to have to do some checking. No offense to how they do things in Louisiana." The eye twitched again; blink-blink- bliiink.

"Don't follow your meaning, sir."

"I started out in the Oklahoma High Plains, Colonel. Not the most exciting place for duty. We had a captain out there, got bored with his duties and got himself a transfer to Lake Meredith. And when I say got himself a transfer, I mean he wrote one up, signed it and moved his troops a hundred miles just for a change of scenery. He figured he'd earned it after a lot of dusty years watching railways and cattle wallows. So happens he was a good officer and the Higher Ups let him get away with it. We've been after Frum at Post 26 for months to meet his recruitment quota for the year-and all of the sudden he's not just met it, he's overfilled it, with a Louisiana colonel to boot."

Valentine sipped his coffee, straining to keep his hand steady. The story was so close to his own that he listened for men moving in behind to put him under arrest, but all he heard from outside the office was typing.

"Now, could be you heard, down in your Louisiana boonies, that with the Ozarks getting pacified there'd be opportunity under the Consul's new system. Could be you decided that the way to a general's star would be to make yourself useful up here. Could be you knew there were fifty-seven brass rings given out over the last year, since we went in once and for all. Not just to generals either, but we got our share."

Xray-Tango opened his shirt, and there, hung from a golden chain, was a brass ring. Blink-blink- bliiink.

Valentine thought it odd. The brass ring-types he'd met usually displayed them on their right ring finger. The token indicated special favor in the Kurian Order. A wearer and his family would never be at risk of being sent to the Reapers.

"It happens that I like a man with ambition. I like an officer with initiative. I also like to hear the truth. I've got a way of knowing when someone's spoon-feeding me horseshit and telling me it's applesauce. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So fess up. The orders for you to come up here didn't go through Fort Scott, or Hot Springs, did they?"

Valentine's bowels had turned to liquid as he sat in the chair, as if Narcisse had spiked the coffee with her emetic, and he decided to admit to as much as possible. "You're close to the truth, sir, but I don't want to say much more. I had some help along the way and I don't want people who've covered for me to get into trouble. Least of all anyone under me. My men, except for some of the new ones, trust me. I'm responsible for them, and if someone has to go to a Hood because of this, it should be me. It's my idea." Valentine felt strangely relieved with his confession-but would a partial truth set him partially free?

"No reason for it to go that far. I've just had over five hundred strong backs fall into my lap; I should be shaking your hand and buying you a bottle of Old Kentucky MM. You're in Little Rock-err, New Columbia, now, and I'm the lead longhorn in these parts. If your friends in Louisiana start asking about you, we'll play dumb. But I expect you to fit into the system here, or you'll wish you'd stayed in the swamp. Here's my command."

Xray-Tango stepped over to a map on the wall. It was a copy of an old Free Territory map, redrawn to take into account the realities of the new world. "This rockheap used to be the center of Arkansas. It will be again. We're at the crossroads of the river traffic and the road artery running the eastern side of the mountains, here. Makes an 'X," as you can see. Within a year we'll have two new rail lines, one running down from Memphis over to Tulsa, the other down from St. Louis to Dallas. So there's a new 'X' going to be laid over the first. A line branching down from Kansas City to Fort Scott, and Fort Scott connecting Tulsa and points south and west is already running; Consul Solon had us working three shifts till that was done. But Fort Scott was promised to the Higher Ups in Oklahoma in return for their help with this. The new capital will be right here, at the intersection of all those Xs. This'll be the nerve center of the Trans-Mississippi Confederation."

"How many smaller states are there? I see a lot of borders."

"Twenty-six in all. Each one has its Higher Ups. Most just have one running the show. In this system Consul Solon's got rigged, we're supposed to call them 'governors." But as you know, it's really Solon's land. Who's obeying who remains to be seen. He's keeping the peace between them, Kur knows how. He's even planning to set up some kind of court to work out disputes between them. You ever heard the like?"

"No. Natchez was-"

"I've heard it's a snake pit."

"I wouldn't say. But there were feuds all the time with the New Orleans Kur. They could use a court down there, too."

"Out on the High Plains I spent more time fighting with the boys out of Santa Fe than guerillas and saboteurs."

"I've been bushwhacked myself for scavenging in the wrong place at the wronger time," Valentine said.

"Can't say how you'll figure into this just yet, Le Sain. Right now I need disciplined labor more than anything, with the river rising. These hillbillies who used to be here weren't much on civil engineering; they didn't care if a bunch of ruins flooded. I've got two regiments of infantry and a fair amount of artillery, but it's on the other side of the river; there's still fighting in the Boston Mountains, and that's Solon's reserve. I don't dare use them. Over on this side I've got a few companies of reserves, my engineers, hospital and headquarters, and I'm hip-deep in quartermasters getting the river traffic where it's supposed to go. There are military police for the prisoners working on the river banks, and I'm trying my damnedest to get more."

"I'll put my men to work right away. I have a few with engineering experience. Sooner the job's done, the sooner we get activated."

"You want a combat command?"

"You bet."

Xray-Tango's droopy eye narrowed. "We'll see, Colonel. I'll have a lieutenant show you to a clear spot. You'll be in tents for a while, but I can get you running water and some gas stoves. If your men want better quarters, you'll be building them. You'll have more water than you can imagine, shortly. Now you get to spend the rest of your day filling out paperwork. This time it'll get stamped by me."

"Any chance of getting north of the river and seeing some action, sir?"

Xray-Tango smiled, triggering his eye again. "You are eager, aren't you?"

"Want one of those rings. You could give another brigade a break, sir. If they've been in the mountains all winter they'd appreciate time to refit."

Blink-blink- bliiink . "Let me run my command, Le Sain. You'll get your chance."

"Of course, sir."

"What kind of action have you seen?"

"Small-scale stuff, General. Skirmishes here and there. I've done a lot of ambushes and guerilla