The Lower Mississippi, July: The river has reverted to feral since the cataclysm of 2022, a continent-crossing monster unleashed. The carefully sculpted and controlled banks of the twentieth and early twenty-first century are gone, or survive as tree-lined islands surrounded by some combination of marsh, lake, and river.
Even on the best and sunniest days, the Mississippi can only manage a rather lackluster blue between banks lined with opportunistic shell-bark hickory, willow, and river birch. It is more frequently a dull navy, muddy brown at the edges, striped in the center by wind and broken by swirls or flats created by snags, shallows, and sandbars. Below the Missouri and Ohio joins, the flooded river is sometimes three miles wide, and moves at a steady four miles an hour toward the Gulf of Mexico, carrying with it rich loads of silt-some insignificant fraction of which will be dredged up and placed into the vast rice paddies around the partially flooded Crescent City. The rest accumulates here and there, gradually changing the course and shape of the Father of Waters.
The days of tugs churning up-or downriver with a quarter mile of linked barges are gone, along with many of the navigational aids. Barge traffic now looks more like a truck convoy, with various sizes of small craft and tugs pushing a few barges along the river in a long, thin column, led and flanked by small powerboats checking the navigability of the ever-changing river. The Memphis-New Orleans corridor is especially well guarded against quick strikes or artillery attacks by the roving forces of Southern Command, always on the lookout for a chance to seize a few bargeloads of grain, rice, or beans. If they are very lucky, sometimes they free a load of human currency from the Kurian trade system.
Of course the Kurians fight back, in a manner. Booby-trapped barges, or "Q-craft," loaded with mercenaries give the raiders an occasional unpleasant surprise.
There is one long stretch of river, flanked by a northward bend on one end and a southward hook downriver, that causes the barge captains to press close to the unfriendly western side. This is the "Tunica Sands," a stretch of river between Tunica and Memphis avoided by all the river rats as though it was cursed ground. Ten great, weed-choked casino barges on the eastern bank are now landlocked thanks to silt deposits all around their keels. Like a latter-day leper colony, the entire area is surrounded by fencing and watch posts.
Only the sick, under Reaper escort, go in. Only the Reapers come out again.
* * * *
The big Cat hadn't changed much in the eight years since Valentine had last seen him. A little less hair perhaps, a little more waistline certainly, but he was still the big, half-aquatic athlete of the Yazoo swamps with a satchel full of apples. Everready had taught Valentine how to lower lifesign and move without being noticed over the course of one impossibly hot summer, and the fact that he'd survived to return proved the effectiveness of his tutor's methods.
The New Orleans Saints ball cap was gone, though. Now he wore a black, broad-brimmed hat that made him look like a missionary. Strung Reaper teeth rattled at his neck, and layers of bullet-stopping Reaper robe hung off his body in an oversized tunic that no sane man dared call a dress.
Finding him had been surprisingly easy. While casting about for a way to get across the Mississippi they came upon a "summer out" Wolf patrol in charge of monitoring river traffic. The Wolf patrol relied on Everready for information on the opposite bank in the Yazoo Delta between Vicksburg and Memphis, and the trio crossed the river in a birch-bark canoe with a guide who rested and camped with them at the rendezvous until the legendary Cat appeared to trade supplies for data.
Everready had no young Wolves to train this year, further evidence of the still-echoing disruption of Solon's occupation, and the continuing absence of the Lifeweavers. "Good to have you back, David," he said, upon greeting them. "Even an old swamp-hound gets lonely now and then."
So he was willing, after concluding his exchange with their Wolf guide, to take Valentine and company into Memphis.
"Only four ways into that town, barring being brought in in handcuffs and bite-guard," Everready said in their first camp on the trip north.
They looked like four spirits around their Yazoo swamp campfire, the humans under individual shrouds of mosquito netting, while Ahn-Kha followed the Grog manner by pasting his sensitive face and ears under a layer of mud.
"There's the river," Everready explained. "They check everybody at the river, and they're damn good at spotting fake documents, and most visitors are kept to the Riverfront anyway. Then there's the wall. There are gaps at the rock wall, of course, but the smugglers have gone to a lot of trouble to open them and watch 'em, and they won't let you through for free. Then there are the road gates, but it's the same problem, another document check. Most people who come to trade do it at Little City around Memphis, then the middlemen the Memphis authorities know and trust go through the gates with their goods."
"That's three ways in," Ahn-Kha said.
Everready shifted an apple stem to the other side of his mouth. "Yes, sir, Mister Grog, that's only three ways. The fourth is a bit tricky-it's up along the Tunica Run. Tunica's a dumping ground for those that got the ravies bug-Memphis buys 'em cheap off their fellow Kurians and dumps them in Tunica so there's always a feed on for their Reapers. Every now and then they release a batch on the west side of the river to give the Free Territory folks a little trouble, too."
Everready cracked his knuckles. "If you're careful, really careful, you can move north through the ravies colony. It's really just a big wall there, and one gate. They watch the gate and patrol the wall, but not too heavily. Ravies types aren't into engineering ways over or under the wall. Too busy chasing their own tails."
"So what's in Memphis that's worth all that security?" Duvalier asked. Valentine thought she looked like a silent-film starlet, with face glowing in the firelight behind the layer of netting.
"The banks," Everready said.
Her voice rose a notch. "Banks? There aren't banks any more."
"Yes, there are," Everready said. "Only kind of banks that matter to the Kurians. Big marshaling yards for the transhipment of humans."
"Tell her why," Valentine said.
"Logistics," Everready said. "Memphis is only a day's rail from every big city on the eastern seaboard, plus parts of the Midwest and Texas-the parts your boys haven't took yet, that is. It's why oP FedEx was headquartered there, too. Some Kurian in Kansas buys tractors from Michigan; he sends authorization to the bank in Memphis to ship up three hundred folk or whatever the price was. They're on the next train to Detroit. Those yards are a sight to see. Let me ask you the same question. What's so important in Memphis that you're willing to risk going in?"
"We're looking for someone," Valentine said.
"Unless he got a job in one of the camps-"
"She," Duvalier corrected.
Everready shrugged. "Unless she got a job in one of the camps-wait, is she a looker?"
"She's attractive enough, but there's more to it," Valentine said.
"What do you mean, more?"
Valentine tried to explain the mule list to Everready as concisely as possible. The old Cat thought it worth another apple; he carved off slices for the other three and then gnawed at the remaining wedge himself.
The fruit tasted like candy to Valentine.
"There's this big ol' boy named Moyo who runs all the girls inside the wall. Always has his men checking inbound shipments for beauty. He's got a regular harem; half the large-scale pimps south of the Ohio buy from him. He employs bounty hunters to comb the hills east of here to bring in folks to swap out when one of his men spots a pretty girl. Kurians don't really care-what's the difference between one dollar coin and another? Moyo does a lot of high-priority transshipping. He'd be the first place I'd look for more on this mule list of yours, if it really is all women."
After that he and Valentine spent a few minutes looking at maps-Everready chuckled that he hardly used the maps anymore, he knew the ground between Memphis and Vicksburg so well-and planning the hike north.
"We should jog east a bit at the Coldwater. I got a store of captured gear you three can draw from." Everready flicked his fingers at Valentine's disintegrating guard shoes, and Valentine wondered if he was going to get the old lecture about how there's no reissue on feet.
"How's Trudy?" Valentine asked, jerking a netting-shrouded chin at Everready's ancient carbine. The well-oiled stock glowed in the firelight.
"Still saving my life."
"And the Reaper-teeth collection?"
"Seventy-one and counting."
"All from fair fights, right?"
Everready made a move to box his ears. "Valentine, how you think I got this old? Only time I even get into a scrap with a Reaper is when they's so disadvantaged it's hardly a fight a'tall."
* * * *
Valentine woke to the smell of chickory coffee.
Everready and Duvalier were the only ones up. Ahn-Kha lay in a snoring heap, wrapped around his gun like a snake that had swallowed a bullock before retiring to a too-small tree.
He listened to the conversation as he shifted around, feeling for creepy-crawlies. He missed his old hammock.
"I didn't know Cats got as old as you. I thought we were all done by thirty."
"For a start, I stay in territory I know better than they do. I don't make a lot of trouble, I'd rather let my eyes and ears do the work."
"Don't the Lifeweavers ever have you-"
"I think they've forgotten about ol' Everready. But that's fine with me. I like to fight with my own set of priorities. I suppose that's how I ended up in this swamp."
"Seems lonely. Do you go into Memphis often?" she asked.
"No, they know my face there. Not that I wouldn't mind visiting the pros down at the Pyramid. Your pretty face makes me feel twenty years younger."
"Wish I could help-but. . ."
Valentine wondered what the silence portended.
"You're lucky. He's a good man. But be careful working with someone you got that kind of feeling for. The moment will come, maybe you'll have just a split second to move, and you'll move wrong 'cause of your feelings. You'll both wind up dead."
Valentine kept absolutely still.
Everready went on: "Don't look like that. Just one ol' hound's opinion. If I knew what I was talking about I'd have some hardware on my collar and be giving orders, right?"
"Let's see about breakfast."
"I'll check the crawfish traps. Better use the big pot. That Grog can eat."
Valentine waited to open his eyes until he felt the tip of Duvalier's boot. "You can wake up Ahn-Kha," she said. "When he stretches in the morning his gas drops the birds."
* * * *
Everready's cache showed his usual craftiness. He kept medical supplies, preserved food, and weapons in several spots between the Yazoo and the Mississippi; the problem was keeping the gear away from scavengers. Humans could use tools and animals could smell food through almost any obstacle. In the Coldwater Creek cache he had solved the problem by burying his supplies behind a house and then placing a wheelless, stripped pickup body over it.
Ahn-Kha stood watch in a high pine while they excavated the cache.
"The engine block's still in this so she's a heavy SOB," Everready explained, retrieving a wire-cored rope from the house's chimney. The rope he fixed to the trailer hitch. Then he tied his Reaper-robe top around the base of a tree, looped the rope around it, and fixed it.
"Here you go, young lady," he said, handing the line to Duvalier.
She hardly had to lean as she applied a transverse pull to the center of the rope. The truck pivoted a few feet, exposing some of the dirt and a few hardy creepers beneath the pickup bed. Everready tightened it again and she slid the pickup body another meter toward the tree.
"Why the material around the tree?" Valentine asked.
Everready checked under the dashboard on the passenger side and then pulled out a folding shovel with a gloved hand. "So the bark doesn't strip. You'd be surprised how clever some scavengers are."
The heavy-duty garbage bags within had further items wrapped up inside them: a few guns thick with protective grease, boxes of ammunition, a large box of red pepper-ideal for throwing off tracking dogs-and a pair of shin-top-high camouflage-pattern boots.
"You and I have about the same size foot, I think," Everready said as Valentine grabbed up the snakeproof boots like a miner spotting a golden nugget. "There are some good socks rolled up in that coffee tin. An extra pair should make up the difference." Valentine smiled when he looked in the tin. It also contained a half-dozen old "lifetime" batteries with a logo of a lightning-bolt-like cat jumping through a red circle. Everready liked to leave the twelve-volt calling cards in the mouths of his kills.
He brought up a cardboard box full of a dozen familiar blue tins.
"Spam?" Valentine asked.
"Naw. This was part of a larger shipment going to the resistance farther east. I took a small expeditor's fee for getting the pony train there. There's plastic explosive inside the cans, you just got to pop the lid-there's even a layer of pork at the top." He passed up another bag. "Three kinds of detonators. One looks like a wind-up alarm clock, one's in this watch but you have to hook it to the batteries in this flashlight, and the others are straight fuses made to look like shoelaces, while the detonators are made to look like nine-volt batteries. Your armorers are clever."
Everready unrolled a chamois and handed a 9mm Beretta up to Duvalier. "This is a nice little gun, young lady."
"I'll take that Mossberg twelve-gauge," she said, pointing at a cluster of long guns. "Folding stock. Dreamy."
"Don't you think you'll stand out a bit in Memphis?"
"Not after I rope it up inside my coat."
"Your duster's going to look strange in this heat," Valentine said.
"Not if I'm mostly naked under it."
"Hope you're not looking for trouble in Memphis. Hard to get into. Harder to get out of. Valentine, since you're going to be posing as a reel looking to add a few new faces to his line, you'll want something with a little flash. I took this off a wandering guitar man in a swap meet card game."
He picked up a sizeable clear plastic food-storage container and broke the seal. A long, silver-barreled automatic pistol rested inside with a shoulder holster and spare magazines. The gun was nickel-plated and would reflect light from miles away-no wonder Everready stuck it in a hole. "You don't mind .22, do you?"
"For this kind of job I'd prefer it. It's quiet."
"Only took you four years and some to add that word to your vocabulary," Duvalier observed.
"And what else?" Everready said in his old talking-with-milk-chinned-young-Wolves tone.
"It's light so you can carry a lot, and it's a nice varmint round for when you get hungry."
"Exacto! Now let's get you a longarm. Where did I put that sumbitch?" He rooted through the guns and found a zipped-up case. "Here we are."
He extracted a gleaming bullpup battle rifle. "This here is real US Army Issue," he said, as another man might speak of a Rothschild vintage or a Cuban cigar. "Took this off some half-assed commandos outta Jackson eight years back. Called a Tacsys U-gun, 'u' for universal. There's four interchangeable barrels and actions so she can shoot 9mm, 5.56, 7.62 with a sniper barrel, or you can open her up and feed her shotgun shells. Used to have a silencer, but I rigged it to a rifle I lost. Sorry. Nice little four-power scope up top. Wish I could give you the grenade launcher for it."
Valentine checked the customizable sling. "This is great. But you keep Trudy?"
"A man doesn't give up on the girl he loves for a hotter model. Even if she's sporting polycarbon rifling.
"Good gear means flash in the KZ. Don't have the full manual but there's a card in the case that you should be able to figure out."
"Speaking of flashing, he could use a change of clothing," Duvalier said, already cleaning her Mossberg.
"Clothes will be a little harder, but I think I've got an old officer's trench coat in here. Very nice waterproofing and only one small, stain-free hole."
* * * *
"You ready for this, Valentine?" Everready asked. "All your shots up to date ?"
They rested atop a stripped Kenworth parked outside Tunica, within heavy-duty fencing and mounds of rubble blocking the roads south of the city, out of the line of sight of the nearest sentry tower, spaced miles apart on this, the less-critical south side of Tunica.
"So we just have to move slowly?" Valentine asked, loading the U-gun.
"Not so much slow as smooth," Everready said. "No sudden moves. I'm not saying a cough will set them off. Just that it could."
"Ahn-Kha, you'll be okay here for a few days?" Valentine asked.
"There is food and water. I will stay in the cab of this fine vehicle at night, and under those trees in the day. Are they less active at night?"
"Depends," Everready said. "If a few start prowling around, sometimes others join them. Then you get a mob mentality. They go off easier in groups."
Duvalier climbed up and hung off one of the rearview mirror posts and looked north into town. The mirrors themselves were gone. "I see one," Duvalier said. "By the traffic light that's touching the road."
Valentine saw it too. A distant figure staggered back and forth across the street, leaning forward as though trying to tie his shoes as he walked.
"Poor souls," Valentine said.
Everready slowly slid off the top of the truck. "Lots more, closer to the old casinos. That's where the missions organize themselves. That one's probably lost and hungry.
"Okay, kiddies, got your iodine?"
Valentine and Duvalier touched their breast pockets and nodded. Valentine had a big bottle, half full, courtesy of Everready's stockpile, and Duvalier had a stoppered hip flask holding the other half.
"You get bit, first thing you do is get clear and iodine it good. Even if you've had your shots the damn thing mutates sometimes, and who knows what strain is in there. Plus it'll save you an infection. Lots of these have hepatitis along with their other problems."
They started down the old road. "And don't shoot unless it's life or death. It'll just get 'em screaming, and between the shots and the screams you'll have a hurtin' of psychos on you before you know it."
Everready set an even pace, the old Cat rocking a little back and forth, like a ship rolling on the ocean. Valentine walked behind, U-gun across his chest in its hands-free sling. Behind him he heard the steady footsteps of Duvalier, pacing her feet to Everready's rhythm.
Valentine had only had one brief brush with ravies sufferers, on the Louisiana border. Southern Command generally shot those who succumbed to the disease once their minds went and they didn't understand what was happening anymore. He'd never seen the aftereffects before.
Seen? Smelled, more like.
Tunica had once been a pretty town, Valentine suspected, fragrant of the magnolias and dogwoods beloved by the residents. Now it smelled like a pig farm. Everready paused at the edge of what had been a park running through the center of town. The three of them stood opposite an old bronze statue of three weary-looking soldiers, the two on the ends supporting a wounded comrade in the center. Everready used the rifle of the one on the left to climb atop the bronze shoulders.
"The kudzu's been cut back from here," Duvalier said. The growth choked most of the rest of the park.
"Probably the Mission people," Everready said, covering his eyes as he looked around. Valentine heard cats spitting at each other somewhere in the park. "See those basins? Food and water. And there they are. Over by the pharmacy."
Valentine saw two heads bobbing among the growth. Both men, with stringy-looking beards. They moved like sleepwalkers, the second following the first.
"Careful now," Everready said. "If anyone hears an engine let me know; my ears aren't what they used to be. Memphis dumps off fresh cases in the center of town sometimes."
They crossed over to one of the main streets. Valentine saw that what he had thought were only two individuals were six; hollow-eyed, tight-cheeked, and knob-kneed. Some shorter women and even a child followed the first two.
Everready walked slowly and smoothly, like a man treading across a pool. Piles of feces lay scattered in the streets and alleys, drying in the summer sun. Valentine saw rats in the alleys, sniffing at the odious piles. Cats filled every shady windowsill and step, watching the rats. A pair of kittens watched them from beneath a wheeled Dumpster.
Valentine put his finger on the U-gun's trigger guard as the slow-moving train of people-or what had once been people- approached.
The two files passed each other, the ravies victims' faces spasming in a parody of vocalization, black-toothed mouths opening and shutting but no sound in their throats but dry wheezes. They looked sunburned and leathery. A few wore stained gray cotton smocks with URM stenciled on the chests and backs.
The little girl seemed a bit more animated than the rest; she pointed and waved.
Everready ignored her.
"URM?" Valentine asked when the group had passed.
"United Relief Missions. Old school Christians. Down at the riverfront. Memphis lets them operate sort of as independents because they keep these folks alive, or what passes for it."
"Looks like they feed themselves, too," Duvalier said, pointing at the corpse of a cat with her walking stick. The cat's midsection had been torn out.
"Wish it would rain," Everready said. "The town's a little better after a good rain."
They crossed a street, and Valentine saw a heap of bodies, mostly nude, on the steps of what looked like a neo-Georgian city hall. One kicked and another rolled over.
"Like hogs in a wallow. The cement gets cool at night," Everready said.
They passed through streets of homes, trees buzzing with cicadas, perhaps one house in three burned to the ground and the others crawling with cats and inhabited by crows. Valentine saw a larger flock gather and disperse around the crotch of a tree, and found the scavengers feeding on a corpse hanging in a backyard tree like a body draped over a saddle.
"That's Reaper work," Valentine said. "Last night, by the look of it."
"Uh-huh," Everready agreed. "When pickings are slim in Memphis they come down here to feed. Memphis buys ravies cases cheap from all across the country and dumps them here, sort of a walking aura reserve. I'm told they stay alive for years-till an infection gets them."
"I didn't know they still used it except to cause us trouble," Valentine said.
"I've heard of them dosing each other's populations when they feud. Or to put down revolts. See, nobody in the KZ gets inoculations except for Quislings."
"How much farther?" Duvalier asked. "This smell is getting to me. I'm getting sick. Seriously, Val . . ."
Everready pulled a little tin from his belt and set it on a stone-and-bar wall in front of one of the houses. He dabbed something from a green bottle on his finger. "Just camphor," he said, and wiped it under her nose. "Breathe through your mouth."
"Better," Duvalier said.
Another pair of rail-thin shamblers wandered near the corpse in the tree. Valentine could have counted their ribs. "I don't like how that one is looking around."
"Smells blood. Blood smell sets them off," Everready whispered, not taking his eyes from them as he mechanically repocketed his first-aid tin. "Best not to move, just stand here. Like those statues at the memorial."
Two crows held a tug-of-war over a piece of viscera.
"Oh God-" Duvalier said.
Valentine could never decide which sound hit his ears first after Duvalier's retch. The wet splash of vomit was certainly louder, heard with his right ear. The high-pitched wailing from the left startled him more, bringing back all the emotions of his first small-unit action as a junior Wolf lieutenant. Perhaps they arrived simultaneously.
Valentine clutched Duvalier's hand and pulled her to her feet. Her walking stick clattered to the ground and Everready grabbed it, unslinging Trudy and running with the carbine in one hand and the stick in the other.
"Follow me!" Everready called. "Don't shoot, you'll just draw more!"
Duvalier came off her feet again, wet-mouthed, unable to control her stomach. Valentine released his weapon and picked her up in a fireman's carry.
He followed Everready up a short slope to an intersection.
"Let me down, I'm okay," Duvalier said.
Valentine went to one knee. He looked back and saw a dozen or so figures running in a more or less arrow-shaped formation. At this distance their bare feet were so dirty that most looked as though they were wearing black shoes and socks.
Kudzu-covered, tree-filled service stations and fast-food restaurants lined the road leading toward the casinos, according to an ancient brown sign. Everready almost leaped across the highway toward a small doughnut shop. A shriek from the direction of the Mississippi let them know that trouble would soon be running in from a second direction.
"Why not the bank?" Valentine yelled. A little way up the road a stout-looking brick structure promised safety-for money or those fleeing psychotics-from behind a wall of scrub pine.
"Too big. Can't stop them from getting in."
Valentine heard footsteps just behind. So sick but able to run so fast. . .
He dropped behind Duvalier and turned, holding the U-gun by barrel and grip. A swift-running young screamer got the butt in his face as he reached for Valentine. He went down, rolling. Valentine shifted his grip and employed the gun in a credible backhand.
The screamer didn't get up again.
There was no glass in the door or the windows. Everready vaulted over the counter and entered the cooking line. The display cabinet held nothing but empty trays and an oversized wasp nest.
Valentine ran around a permanently parked car and entered the formerly white doughnut stop. Duvalier had tears in her eyes as she covered the front of the store with her pump-action.
"In here. Help me with this!" Everready called.
They fled into the cooking line, and Everready and Valentine moved a fryer to block the path to the narrow kitchen. The lighting seemed wrong-Valentine looked up and saw a hole in the roof. Weather or animal activity had enlarged it to the size of a picture window.
Everready emptied the damp mess resting within a plastic garbage can and wedged it above the fryer as Valentine heard screams from within the doughnut shop.
"Nice scouting," Valentine said, pointing to the hole in the roof.
"Hope they don't climb up there," Duvalier said, shifting her shotgun muzzle from the barricade to the roof hole.
Everready put his back to the fryer. Its rear was festooned with smeared warnings. "Planning nothing, never been in here to scavenge. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a hole in the roof of most of these places."
Pounding and screaming came through from the other side of the fryer, horribly loud, horribly near. Valentine fought the urge to run to the other end of the kitchen.
"Valentine, help me hold this-no, the plastic can, they're trying to crawl over! Girl, check the back, there might be a door!" Everready said.
Duvalier hurried to the other end of the kitchen and disappeared around a corner. Two shotgun blasts followed immediately.
"Oh shit," Everready swore.
Duvalier flew back into the kitchen, her coat billowing and bringing the smell of cordite as she turned and braced herself against a tall refrigerator. "There's a door. Or there isn't-that's the problem."
"How many?" Valentine asked.
"How many are there?" she shot back.
"Thousands," Everready said.
"Sounds about right," Duvalier said.
They came, more like a single organism comprised of screaming heads and waving arms than a series of individuals, filling the kitchen with noise. Valentine brought his U-gun to bear, feeling the pounding on the other side of the fryer against his back.
"The roof!" Valentine shouted, firing. "Go, Ali!"
"I can jump better than either of you. I'll cover you."
More appeared and Valentine didn't wait to argue. He stood on a prep table and tossed his weapon up through the hole, hoping he didn't overthrow and land it in the parking lot. He grabbed an electrical conduit pipe and pulled himself up, got his foot into a light fixture, and climbed. The roof was thick with growth, and disturbed butterflies hurried into the sky.
Everready passed up his gun to Valentine, and Valentine heard Duvalier's Mossberg.
"Forget the packs!" she shouted.
Everready made it to the roof with less difficulty than Valentine.
Duvalier crouched to spring up through the hole in a single leap and they were on her. She spun like a dynamo, slamming one against the fryer, even now moving from the pressure at the other side, screaming as another sank its teeth into her shoulder.
"Goddamn!" Everready swore as yet another grabbed her.
Though mad, though they felt no pain, her attackers weren't Reapers. She pushed one off, kicked another, punched a third, pale limbs and coat a whirling blur of motion. Everready shot a fourth with his carbine.
Valentine dropped back through the hole.
"No!" Everready shouted.
Valentine picked up her sword cane and used it as a club, swinging at the heads and arms coming around the fryer.
"Jump!" Valentine yelled as Everready shot another one down. Valentine struck a ravie on the floor as it clawed at her ankle; his kick broke its jaw.
Duvalier crouched and jumped, and went up through the hole like a missile.
Valentine drew the blade from Duvalier's sword stick. Using the wooden tube in his other hand, he battered his way back toward the office. He felt hands clutch at his canvas boots and broke the grip-if they were snakeproof they'd probably be ravies-resistant- then cracked one across the jaw.
"Val, where are you going?" Duvalier shouted.
"Lemme at that bite, girl!" he heard Everready say.
"Diversion!" he shouted.
Screaming his own head off, Valentine rushed into the office. The back wall had bloody splatters and buckshot holes. A staggered ravie, holding himself up on the desk, received Valentine's boot to his chest, throwing him back onto one coming through the door. Valentine pinned the fresher one like a bug on a piece of Styrofoam with the sword point and vaulted through the door, running.
"Oily oily oxen free!" Valentine shouted, banging a Dumpster with the wooden half of Duvaliers sword cane. "Come out, come out, wherever you are. London Bridge is falling down!" He hurried around into the next parking lot, banging on empty car hoods.
Ravies turned and began to run toward him, screaming. Fine, better the oxygen flowing out of their pipes than into their bloodstreams.
"Meet me by the casinos tonight!" Valentine shouted to the pair on the roof. He saw Everready applying a dressing and the iodine bottle to Duvalier's shoulder.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Valentine called again. "Hey diddle diddle, the freak and the fiddle-"
The doughnut shop began to empty, and other ravies hurried up from the direction of the riverfront.
Just about. Just about!
"Ring around the rosy!"
The last few around the doughnut shop turned toward him.
"Warriors, come out to play-yay!" Valentine didn't know what childhood game the last one signified, but an old Wolf in Foxtrot Company used to employ the taunt on hidden Grogs, clinking a pair of whiskey bottles together.
He ran.
The ravies followed, screaming.
* * * *
Ten minutes later and a mile away . . .
His bad leg ached, but he had to ignore it. Ignore everything but the staggered line of ravies running behind him. Valentine turned another corner, his third right through the suburban streets in a row. The pursuers were screaming less, growing weaker-which was just as well; he didn't know how long he could hold out.
Two more blocks, one more. He summoned the energy for one final sprint to the last turn, running with the sword cane like a baton in a relay race. His speed came at the cost of a deep, deep burn in his legs and lungs-
And there they were, a few stumbling ravies in a line, following the ones ahead of them, emitting an occasional strangled yelp. The very end of the long file of pursuers, formed into a wagon-train-like circle around six square blocks of Tunica suburbs.
Valentine marked the crash scene he'd seen the first time he ran down this street, impossibly compact cars piled into each other in a rear-end collision, looking like the skeletons of two mating turtles. He staggered behind the cars and sank to his knees, desperately trying to control his panting.
He peered between the cars, looking for his pursuers.
They followed his path onto the tree-limb-littered street, caught sight of their fellows, and ran to catch up to them.
Valentine was too tired to smile.
He crept through the underbrush of a lawn, counted twenty of the pack chasing their own tails. Already some were giving up, dropping to their knees and scratching at the accumulated leaves and pine needles in frustration.
Then he noticed the bite-or was it a cut? Must have happened in the doughnut shop; none of them had been close to him since- but something had made his elbow bleed. He applied his iodine and prayed. Under stress, some men's mouths spewed obscenity, others Sunday-morning verse. In this case, the latter felt more appropriate as the sting of the iodine took hold.
* * * *
The cut had some angry red swelling around it by the time night fell and he walked, slowly and gently, down to the riverfront.
Two of the defunct casinos had electric light. Several had gigantic red crosses painted on their bargelike hulls, the universal symbol of help to whoever asks. Fire-gutted hotels lined the riverfront road. Valentine could picture the brilliant lighting above and around the multistory parking lots, the banners along the streets, the florid wealth of a gambling haven opening at the side of the Mississippi, beckoning like a Venus flytrap.
He kept out of the masses of somnambulists wandering under the lights, scooping handfuls of meal out of great troughs lining the streets.
Naturally, more food meant more piles of feces. And more rats eating the feces. And cats eating the rats.
He found an empty trough and passed a wet finger through it, sniffed the result. It smelled and felt like ground corn-hog-feed-grade corn, at that. Some rice and millet, too.
Valentine would rather eat the ants disposing of the leftovers.
"Val," he heard a hiss.
It came from the second floor of one of the hotels. He saw Duvalier's face in a window.
He floated into the shell of the fire-gutted building, a concrete skeleton.
She met him at the staircase with a hug, and they looked at each other's iodine-smeared wounds.
"Let's hope the vaccinations weren't just water," Valentine said. Rumor had it that ravies vaccine commanded a fantastic price in the Kurian Zone, and Southern Command had its share of the unscrupulous.
They crept upstairs. Cats (of the feline variety) scattered in either direction at their approach.
Duvalier and Everready had his pack and gun. Everready extended a piece of greasy waxed paper. "Cold chicken and a biscuit. From the Missions."
"What's next?" Valentine asked.
Everready threw a bone down the hall. A catfight started almost the second it landed. "I passed word to my contact in the Missions. He's going to get in touch with a trading man in Memphis, one of my sets of eyes in the city. Cotswald. Vic Cotswald. He'll take you in. Not the nicest man in the world, but reliable. He thinks I'm working for the Kurians down south, keeping tabs on things in Memphis. He knows me by the handle Octopus. Can you remember that? Octopus?"
"Great. What's my cover?" Valentine asked.
"I took care of that, Val," Duvalier said. "You're Stu Jacksonville, a new pimp on the Gulf Coast. We know the area from our time as husband and wife, so there'll only be a minimal amount of bullshitting."
"You sure you want to play a whore?" Valentine asked.
"Not whore. Bodyguard. Comrade in arms."
"Gay caballero?" Valentine asked.
"Lesbian, if you want to get technical."