Collection vans: Valentine had seen all varieties of them over the months and years of his trips through the Kurian Zones. He'd seen buses with shuttered windows in Chicago and long yokes for captives to be linked together in Hispaniola. He'd averted his eyes from vans in Wisconsin and armored cars in Louisiana. The principle was always the same, whether they rode on battered old suspensions across snow-dusted old interstates in the Dakotas or were pulled by a team of cart horses along an Alabama backwoods path: Separate those to be taken to the Reapers from the rest of society, hike so much of the Kurian Order, it was a simple mix of deception from the New Order and willful blindness in their subjects. Hide the contents of the stock trucks bound for the slaughterhouse and allow those who might be unlucky enough to see one in operation the comfort of telling themselves a lie.
Valentine had seen more of them than he cared to remember. But that chill November night was the first time he'd been put in the back of one.
* * *
They made the switch at midnight on a small, battered bridge over a river. Three Bears, in spiffy uniforms the color of a typical overcast, pulled Valentine out of a concrete bunker and chained him to two other unfortunates, a man in the lead and a woman just in front of him. The man wore thick flannel and was barefoot; the woman stood shivering in militia pants and a T-shirt. Valentine passed a note to the Bear in charge, a brief farewell to Gide he'd been allowed to pencil, thanking her for their weekend at the Outlook, and asking him to pass his regrets to Colonel LeHavre and Captain Mofrey.
Passing the note was made a little more difficult by the thick leather belt around his waist, and the attachment for the handcuffs around his wrist.
The Bears brought him to the east end of the bridge. Valentine's night-sharp eyes saw a similar party on the other side.
A flashlight waved up and down. One of the Bears waved his horizontally right and left.
"They're ready", an NCO said. "Let's go, dead men".
"And women", the one in front of Valentine added, tiredly.
The man in front sort of lurched forward. "Ahhh! Ahhha!" Valentine heard his handcuff chain rattling against the front fitting at his belt.
"Move it", the Bear at his side ordered.
"My legs!"
"Now they're stopping", a young militia with a volunteer armband said, his eyes pressed to some binoculars.
"You just gotta walk to the other side of the bridge. Nothing's going to happen to you there, not with our guys around", the lead Bear said.
The man wouldn't move. "I will, I will... I can't, I can't. Can't!" the man stammered.
"Oh, balls", the Bear said. He and another each took an arm and they lifted him.
As they carried him he sputtered something about being really, honestly sorry. Why wouldn't anyone believe him that he was sorry?
At the midpoint of the bridge two prisoners were waiting, one in a bloodstained militia uniform; the other looked like a truck driver thanks to his ball cap with rolling cooperative emblazoned on it.
Quislings and Bears, exchanged sets of keys. Valentine noticed that the harnesses were identical. While this was going on, a bottle moved west, a thick roll of newsprint east.
"You shouldn't be doing that, Bongo", a Bear chided his mate.
"I like to read their funnies", the one evidently called Bongo replied. "Don't read nuttin' else".
"Don't or can't?" the chained militia woman asked.
"Shut down, you", the leader of the column warned.
The exchange done, the Bears accepted the two and immediately unlocked them. One of the Bears threw the harnesses' across his shoulder, presumably for the next midnight exchange. Valentine listened to the two Bears who'd carried the lead man talk quietly as they walked away.
"The one in the back, ain't he a Bear?"
"Think so. Seen him in the uniform at Fort Drizzle, anyway".
"Do they know that?"
"Like I care".
"Is it just me, or does this side of the river stink?" Valentine asked.
"It shakes in front, shitting himself", a female officer in charge of the Quislings said.
"Better you than me, pard", the man at the back of their file added.
The man at the front, who had perhaps feared a glowering Reaper at the other end of the bridge rather than a group of Quislings, was able to walk the rest of the way. Valentine suspected he had shit himself, as he was shaking something out of his trouser.
"Don't feel too bad", Valentine called to the front. "Those fellas back there do it all the time when they fight".
"Yeah, takes a lot of guts to gun down women and kids", the Quisling at the back said.
They were loaded into an old brown delivery van. Much of the front paneling was missing or cut away, along with the skirting. Whether this was for easier maintenance or a security precaution Valentine couldn't tell, though he knew collection vans were frequently wired with explosives. Duvalier had said something or other along those lines when they saw one in Kansas.
The Quislings rolled the door shut and locked it, leaving them in darkness. Valentine heard the engine start, half hoped for an explosion.
This was it. The last ride. Valentine was a little surprised at how calm he was. It was over, no more worries, cares, regrets about Malia and Amalee. What would Blake turn into, a fallible human capable of empathy, or a cruel, instinct-driven automaton?
He'd had a good run. Duvalier always said Cats never lasted. He'd done more damage than most. If every human piled into a van could just take one enemy to the grave ...
The blank nothingness that yawned before him, a forever of oblivion, the world spinning along and he'd exist as a memory or a story or one of his many signed reports buried in some archive. He hoped his legs wouldn't fail him at the last - maybe he could stamp on the Reaper's instep - or would his bowels give way ?
The militia woman pressed up against Valentine.
"Hey, buddy, can you work your fly?" her voice breathed in the dark.
"Pardon?" he said.
"Let's do it, right now. I can slip out of these pants".
"You're kidding, right?"
"C'mon, hurry".
"No. Thanks, but... no", Valentine said.
The truck picked up speed, lurched into a higher gear.
She slid over next to the other man. Valentine tried not to listen as he took her up on the same offer. The bench they sat on squeaked, or maybe it was the wheezy breathing of the man. Valentine smelled her sweaty sex in the confines.
Two distinct thumps as they toppled over into the bed of the van. Now Valentine could hear their chains dragging on the floor. The man groaned and gasped.
Valentine felt her foot touch his. "Offer's still open if you want a turn", she said. He moved his foot away.
"Hey, let me enjoy a moment, huh", the man said.
They exchanged names in the darkness. He was Colin, she Mona.
Fifteen minutes later they arrived.
The van idled, and Valentine heard voices outside. "I'll confirm with Pound", a man's voice said. "Three going in, right?"
"Three, assuming we don't have another fuckin' suicide", the driver said. "They're trade goods, but you never know".
"I wish I had one of those hero pills", Colin said in the darkness.
A bright light blasted into the back of the collection van, giving Valentine one of those instant, diamond-shard headaches a sudden stimulus up his optic nerves seemed to cause. Valentine looked down, saw a name scratched on the wooden seat between his legs.
Bob Barquist Feb 15 68.
Valentine tried to remember where he'd been when Barquist was taking his ride. Probably back in the Ozarks with Ahn-Kha, showing a group of leaders from the Production Resource how to grow heartroot in cold weather, to be eaten or ground up into pig and chicken feed.
He wished there were some way he could have sent one more message to Narcisse - some bit of rhyme to teach Blake - or Malia. Ali even. Would she sigh and say that he hadn't been careful enough?
He felt hands hauling him out of the collection van and they turned the spotlight off.
"I might be pregnant!" Mona said, showing evidence Valentine could only guess at as she pulled up her pants. "You need to take me to a medical center. I might be pregnant!"
They stood at a brick wall. The collection van was parked at a gate. Old metal letters on a clear stretch of wall read,
ELL VUE B TANI AL GAR ENS
Someone had added an H before the ELL.
The gap in the wall, big enough for two buses to pass, was closed by a yellow line of police tape. Inside Valentine saw some old, overgrown buildings. The park looked to be in ruins, but he could still make out old lots and paths.
"You guys got lucky", one of the Quisling guards said. He had flaps on his hat to keep his ears warm, and a short beard. "Only three of yas. Pound-o'-flesh always lets one make it out the other end alive. The way I see it is you've all got a one-in-three chance. Don't clobber each other right off the bat, or we'll give you a dose of bird shot, and then you'll never make it up the other end of Long Trail".
"I want to see a doctor", Mona said.
The Quisling in the hunting hat ignored her. "We use you all because you got that good old mountain-crossing spirit. All you've got to do is get to where them lights are. See it, way over there?" He pointed between two stands of trees.
Valentine saw a pair of red lights on twin poles, like the goalposts on a football field, glowering eyes staring at them across the lush plant life. If they were in fact goalposts, they were a good half mile away, maybe three-quarters of a mile.
"Strip", the Quisling ordered.
Soldiers stepped forward, released their hands so they could pull their shirts off. Valentine felt his skin retreat at the cold night air.
"Please, I could be pregnant. You never do this when someone is pregnant", Mona said.
Colin rocked on his heels. "Shut up, you idiot". He was breathing deeply.
"There's a Reaper in there", Valentine said.
"Good guess", the Quisling said.
Valentine didn't guess. He knew.
"Look at the weird burns on the back of this one. What did they do to you?"
Three Quislings were fiddling with their harnesses while others covered them from an economy hatchback with a machine gun mounted on the hood.
Mona began to cry. "Why can't I see a doctor?"
"Again, don't beat on each other", Hunting Cap said. "When the tape falls you're off to the races".
"No fair, they've got shoes", Colin said.
"No fair, they've got shoes", one of the Quisling soldiers mimicked in a school-yard voice.
"Get the rest of your stuff off. Shoes too".
They complied; what else could they do? Valentine put his arm around Mona, shared body warmth. "I hear it's not so bad. They hypnotize you, like a snake does a bird".
The tape fell and Valentine felt a sharp blow to the side of his knee. Colin had lashed out, and even now was running, the tape whipping free of his thighs as he headed across the overgrown parking lot.
Valentine felt a shove in the back, and he and Mona sprawled on the other side of the wall. Valentine came up to a crouch. The Quislings began to close the gate.
"I might be pregnant. You don't want to lose the baby!" Mona said, clinging to the bars.
A rifle butt came through and struck her in the stomach. She jack-knifed, gasping.
Valentine helped her to her feet. "Let's go".
He looked back at the wall. A pair of heads watched them from the other side.
Valentine picked up a rock and sent it whizzing at the heads, but missed.
"Your buddy's already a quarter of the way to them lights!" someone shouted helpfully.
Valentine pulled Mona down the path. It opened up on what he guessed was another parking lot. The grasses and brush had been cleared here, and Valentine saw buildings on the other side.
"Oh my God", Mona said flatly.
Four figures in a line greeted them, like odd, plasticized mannequins with their skin removed, feet fixed in concrete. Elaborate layers of muscle made their faces a hideous salmon-colored patchwork. Valentine stepped up to one, realized it was a real corpse, covered in some kind of thick, clear plastic. The first one pointed, Uncle Sam-style.
don't be choosy, read a sign cradled in his arm.
The next one was scratching her head. Her sign was on a sandwich board.
PICK A WAY.
GUESS WRONGLY, said the third, its hands on its hips like an exasperated parent.
The fourth pointed to a little empty cement platform next to the others, right here you'll stay.
The parking lot trailed away to a path to the left. In the middle were the buildings, and to the right was another path heading at a ninety-degree angle away from the twin lights, paralleling the wall.
The left path or the buildings both led more directly to the goalposts.
The buildings would be the most dangerous, but there might be something he could use as a weapon there. Valentine tried to sense the Reaper or Reapers, but he was cold and his knee hurt and Mona was pulling him back toward the gate. "I don't like this game. I'm going to throw rocks at them till they shoot me".
"C'mon", Valentine said, pulling her toward the buildings.
"Let go, you bastard!" she cried, falling to her knees. "You're just bringing me so you can throw me into its arms when you see it, so you can get away".
"Suit yourself", Valentine said, letting go. She ran back to the gate.
He smelted the air, searched the buildings with his ears, heard only a clattering wind-chime noise.
Valentine passed wide around a boarded-up building facing the parking lot and into a courtyard. Doors were welded shut or barred with heavy padlocks. Other closed-off buildings, one marked cafe, surrounded what had once been a nice little garden.
While passing through Wisconsin on his way to Lake Michigan, Valentine and his two fellow Wolves had skirted a big old still-occupied farmhouse where the owner liked to make decorations for his yard. Animals, gnomes, old ladies bending over and showing bright-painted polka-dot underwear,
geese with wings that spun in the wind, even old Packer football helmets bobbing on counterweights as the breeze pushed them ...
The courtyard between the buildings reminded him of that farmer's land.
Somewhere or other Valentine had heard the phrase "bone garden". If there was such a thing in reality rather than a metaphor for a cemetery, this was it.
The wind chimes Valentine heard rattling were human skulls, hollowed out with tibiae suspended within to add to the rattle. Wheels within wheels of plasticized human hands, some holding fans, others carefully cupped to catch the air, spun in the November breeze. Skeletons sat on benches admiring winter-dead flowers; at least here the gardens showed some signs of being maintained. Around a table outside the cafe, four skeletons held forks and spoons over fresh, reeking piles of entrails.
Part of Valentine was horrified, another taken by the intricacy of the wiring, another grimly followed a mental train of thought about what effect the Kurians were trying to achieve. He'd heard auras could be "flavored" by the emotional state of the victim. Prolonged terror might add some kind of seasoning to the psychic palate.
The tableau even showed a grim sense of humor. A skeleton stood in the classic Hamlet pose, wearing puffy breeches and a nailed-on feathered cap, holding a fresh-looking human head - it certainly stank like a three-day-old remnant.
Hamlet didn't have his sword, but he had a femur.
The tattooed Cat who'd taught Valentine some basics of hand-to-hand combat always made Valentine recite the first rule of unarmed combat: Arm yourself.
Or in this case, leg yourself. He wrenched the leg loose, spun and spun and spun it on its wire until the link weakened, then pulled it free. He went to one of the cement benches and broke it off at the knee end, giving himself a sharpened spike.
Several paths led off the courtyard and the buildings. Valentine could see the lights peering at him from across a vast, brushy field,
bisected by cover. It was tempting to plunge into the bushes, but he suspected they thickened with what looked like Devil's Foot farther in. Even with a machete and thick clothing, he'd hesitate to hack through spiky Devil's Foot.
He chose one of the paths through the trees, and found it joined the path he'd discarded in order to get at the buildings.
To get to the trees he passed through a vaguely Oriental garden, at least judging from the architecture. The plants had mostly run wild, but there was still a bubbling, attractive-looking fountain.
The water smelled clean.
He reached forward.
A fortunate, foreshortened step saved him. He felt something brush his leg hairs, froze, looked down, saw a length of fishing line passing in front of the fountain. Valentine followed the wire to the trigger, then up to the overhanging trees, saw a big latticework like a spiky flyswatter ready to fall and cripple a hand dipped in the water. It looked flimsy; obviously it wasn't designed to kill, just to injure and cause pain.
Valentine decided to forgo the water, and stepped carefully onto the wooded path, every nerve alert. He willed his eyes into picking up every twig, every branch, every trap that might or might not be along the path.
There'd once been a sign, probably an explanatory map, at the beginning of the tree-flanked path. Now a human skin, face and hair still attached, was stretched between the posts.
DON'T RUN! YOU'LL JUST DIE TIRED
read the helpful tattooed warning.
The crotches of the trees held human skulls with glowing eyes. Valentine glanced at one as he passed; the "eyes" were golf balls painted with luminous paint. Valentine decided to parallel the path
after he found a shallow pit filled with sharpened wooden spikes smelling of fresh blood. Poor Co...
Reaper!
Valentine crouched, tried to lower his lifesign, tried to box up the cold and his sore knee. He gripped the splintered femur in both hands, left steadying it, his right on the ball joint, ready to drive it...
He heard panting and saw Colin running wildly down the path, feet muddy, favoring one leg, but fear driving him through the pain. A cloaked Reaper, its face white-painted with eyes and lips blackened to imitate a skull, thin chest similarly decorated to enhance the ribs, skipped along behind him, raising first one long arm and then the other in a sort of dance.
"and i run and you run and i run and you run ...", it sang as it hopped.
Could he catch it unaware?
The Reaper halted, pointed a long black-nailed finger at Valentine, "you! you wait your turn! gimpy's first!"
Colin sprawled, tripping on the same hole that had injured him earlier, "oh, you've tripped, get up, you're not finished yet. run run run little silly man".
They disappeared toward the buildings, the Reaper harrying its prey like a dog driving a lone sheep.
Valentine angled toward the western wall. Twelve feet of brick, with trees well cut back, was topped with electrified fence.
"Don't even think about it", a megaphoned voice from the trees called. Valentine searched the timber, saw a hunting blind. "He's busy with the others. If you hurry, you'll make the finish line easy".
Valentine trotted back into the woods.
He ran faster as he saw the two red lights, broke out of the trees and up a long meadowed path, thick with night dew. Valentine saw more lines of fencing, angling toward the finish line. A couple of New Universal Church robed types stood before a candlelit table with food and bottles and a trophy cup.
But there was a cold piece of evil lurking just on the other side of the victory tape.
Valentine sensed a Reaper under the table, alive and pulsing. A final shock for the winner?
He couldn't say why that one little detail bothered him more than the nests of sharpened pungi sticks on the path, or the humiliation of being stripped in front of joking guards. He turned and trotted back along the path toward the buildings.
* * *
He found them on the other side of a little wall-less Japanese building, between two gardens filled with stones. The Reaper loomed behind Colin, poking him in the kidneys with a long, black fingernail, urging him toward Mona, crying, holding out one hand as a plea to stop and covering her sex with the other. Valentine could hear the breathy, high-pitched voice.
"one two three four, I declare a food war. five six seven eight, the winner gets to make the gate".
The Reaper jumped and landed next to Mona, who tripped and fell.
"you can take him. he's out of breath, wounded in the foot! go for his other leg!"
Colin jumped on her, got his fingers around her throat.
"now rape her! spread her legs, inside, inside, and i'll let you live". It hung over the couple, its cloak drawing a curtain around them...
Valentine flitted between trees, put the cement of the little pagoda between himself and the scene.
"No! No, please! Oh God!" Mona screamed.
Something at the base of his spine woke up and twitched. It ran hot up his back, perched between brain and skull atop his head like a spider.
Valentine hopped up on top of the pagoda, and made the jump with the thoughtless ease of a house cat leaping to a kitchen table. Dirt and clinging plants fell, displaced by his weight, but before they hit the ground he was a gargoyle shape half-hanging from the pagoda roof.
Below, the Reaper opened its jaw and shot its tongue toward Colin's back, teeth following. Colin screamed.
The greenery hit the ground next to the Reaper. It turned its head; eyes followed the trajectory up...
And met Valentine on the way down.
He landed atop the Reaper, driving the femur down toward the great beehivelike organ that sucked down the blood. It reached up, backward-hinging arms moving for him, but Valentine was off it, moving on white-hot instinct, hardly knowing what his body was going to do next.
He swung a stiff-fingered uppercut, felt fingers break through skin, grabbed the Reaper under its hyperextended jaw, fingers closing on bone, dragged it off Colin, who had a gaping, tongue-sized wound in his back. Valentine whipsawed and the Reaper sprawled.
He held its white-painted jaw in his hands.
The Reaper rose, confusion in its eyes as its tongue lolled. Valentine cast the jawbone aside and readied his femur for another strike.
The Reaper turned and ran, but Valentine was after it, a wild predator drawn by flight, got on its back and drove the sharpened femur up through the gap left by the jaw.
Crying, Mona pressed her hands against the wound in Colin's back. Blood came up under her fingers anyway.
As the Reaper collapsed there was another, running from the woodland path in the direction of the goalposts, its feet a blur, a strange oversized leering jack-o'-lantern mask atop its head. Valentine picked himself up, left the twitching, dying, genetically engineered corpse, and ran toward the new one, ink-smeared bone in his hands. The Reaper slowed, perhaps not used to a man running toward it.
A mindless feral howl sounded from Valentine's throat. His heart seemed to fill his entire chest cavity, its throb rattling his ribs and collarbones...
Some sane corner of his mind hammered out thoughts as fast as letters flew from a quick typist:
You don't know how to fight you great thirsty slug you've forgotten how, send all the puppets you want,
you can no more fight than fuck time to face me, product of a warrior race bred and tested in ten thousand years' battle, scarier than any costume, don't run you'll just die tired...
The Reaper turned and ran. Its mask slipped, and it blindly plowed into a tree, lurched onward, tearing the mask free to run.
Valentine angled through the trees, yipping like a hound on a hot scent, caught up to it just outside the glowing eyes of the goalposts. It turned at the last second, threw up its arms to ward him off, and Valentine caught it at the knees with a diving tackle, knocking it down, felt claws open wounds in his shoulders as he drove his femur up between its legs. The Reaper didn't have sexual organs, but its skeleton had a gap.
Kill it so they send me another. And another... no.
Valentine fought to form words.
"You", he said, straddling the Reaper, feeling stronger than he had ever felt in his life.
He twisted the femur. "You, at the other end. Talk, or I make your puppet into a corn dog".
"sssstop! pleasssse".
Valentine withdrew the femur, and the Reaper lashed out with its free arm. He caught it at the wrist and twisted it until he heard a snap.
"Stop it", Valentine said. It was like talking in a foreign tongue; he had to force himself to make words. "I'll take your toy apart a limb at a time. Then I'll hang your churchmen from the goalposts".
"what do you want? i give you your life, i give the female her life, i give the man his life, just let my servant go".
"Are you Seattle? The head honcho?"
"no, i am but a keeper of..."
"I want to talk to your chief. King. Grand and Exalted Overlord, whatever he calls himself. The one in the big tower".
"he does not deal with your kind directly".
"Then through you. I don't care. Tell him I have an offer".
"what could a human give such as he?"
"Adler. The leader of the resistance".
The Reaper's slit eyes widened, "impossible!"
Valentine reached up, got his hand around its windpipe, felt the thick muscles that drove the tongue.
"grraack..". Valentine released his grip, "yes, yes, cease and desist, i contacted, he assents, you shall have your meeting with his representative among the mortal".