George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] (46 page)
Read George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] Online
Authors: Inside Straight
“We cannot hope to win this fight,” John Fortune told
them, when they stopped for a drink of cool water late that afternoon. “There are too many of them, and only three of us. All we can hope to do is confuse them, delay them, and buy some time for our own people. We need to dart in, sting them, then turn and fly away to sting again somewhere else, like Jonathan’s wasps.”
“Ja,”
said Klaus. “Sting and run. I understand.”
“Righto,” said Jonathan. “But you know, sometimes when you sting someone they swat at you. Just thought I’d mention that. Sometimes all the wasps don’t make it back.”
John Fortune nodded thoughtfully. “Jonathan, it was brave of you to stay, but—”
“I overslept,” said Bugsy. “That’s all it was. I missed the bloody boat, so what the hell. Missus Hive’s little bug is in. Fucker tried to cut my
head
off!” He scratched under his
keffiyeh.
“I’m thinking tanks. If I can find some way to get
inside
, twenty, thirty wasps could really mess up a crew. Sting their hands, their arms, their faces. Crawl inside their pants and sting their dicks. I’ll lose some bugs, but there’s more where they came from. You think if I fly down that big cannon on the turret, I’d pop out inside the motherfucker, or what?”
“Try it. Let us know.” John smiled. “Too bad Rustbelt isn’t with us. He’s the guy you really want for tanks.”
As the sun was sinking in the west, Jonathan reported that the advance units of the Third Army had left the river. “Where the road makes its big loop, they’re cutting straight across the desert. Armored cars, tanks, infantry. Apaches, too. Fuck it, I hate helicopers. The backwash blows my bugs to hell and gone.”
The three of them undressed in silence, and stowed their Bedouin garb in their saddle rolls. Klaus stripped down to shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. John and Jonathan got naked. By then they could see the dust of the advancing column with their own eyes. “This is really stupid,” said Hive. “Did I mention that? Fucking cell phone.” Then he vanished, and in his place a venomous green cloud uncoiled in the air like some huge, smoky python. John was gone as well. The horses whickered in fear when the lioness appeared, but she did not
linger long. Across the sands she ran, bounding toward the foe. The swarm followed.
Klaus was the last. Against the red of the setting sun, the white of his ghost steel shone as pure as hope. On his left arm a shield appeared, in his right hand a gleaming sword. Before the light was gone, he meant to carve up half a dozen tanks.
“Deus Volt,”
Lohengrin cried, as he strode into the red lands, following the lioness and the wasps. He was no hollow hero. None of them were hollow heroes. And this night, if God willed it, they would teach the foe that the shortcut was a mistake.
Jonathan Hive
Real People, Really Dying
Posted Today 11:42 pm
GENOCIDE, EGYPT | FREAKED | “OCCASIONAL GUNFIRE”
—THE EGYPTIAN ARMY
Good news, faithful reader. I’m not dead yet.
Okay, that was it. Good news now officially over.
I’ve seen some of the comments in the last few posts suggesting I might not be the least racist person you know. Let me take a moment to make something clear. I think there’s a lot of really great Muslim folks out there. Lots of them. There’s a guy here with the head of a crocodile who was pretty devout for a long time. He’s a nice fella. Cat Stevens? Love him. Rumi? That guy’s poetry got me laid in college, and I shall be grateful forever.
Okay, I suck. I don’t know any Muslims, okay? I didn’t know any Egyptians before I came here. But it’s not because I’ve got anything against them. Allah doesn’t seem any weirder to me than the version of Jesus that the Pentecostals are all fired up about. I don’t cross the street anytime I see a woman in a head scarf. I’ve never secretly toilet-papered a mosque. I’m a fucking liberal, okay? We love everyone but Newt Gingrich.
There’s only one kind of Muslim I really fucking hate—the kind that’s trying to kill me. And if they converted on the battlefield, became Episcopalians? I’d still fucking hate ’em.
The New Temple in Karnak fell a week ago. We put it off as long as we could, me and Fortune and Lohengrin. We even stopped the armored division for a while. We had some help at the end from a local ace
who could summon up scorpions. Battle of the Bugs, we called it.
She’s dead now.
They came in force. I don’t know how many. Hundreds, thousands. The Living Gods who’d stayed behind to defend their homes and their temple were slaughtered. Lohengrin would probably have died there, too, given the chance. A lot of people went when they lit the New Temple itself on fire. His armor is pretty kick-ass, but I don’t see it stopping him from crisping up. The way
they
did.
Horus. Nice guy. Wings, but can’t fly. In New York, he’d be just another schulb in Jokertown looking for work. In Egypt, he was a god. And now he’s dead. One of the last things I saw there before I pulled the last of my wasps in was his body being paraded around on a stick. Lohengrin still thinks we should have stayed. Fortune says it was better to move on. To live long enough to protect the people we still can.
I’m not sure anymore who those are supposed to be. We’re on the road south to Aswan. The local folks are under the impression we might be safe there, but every day that hope looks more and more like a pipe dream. The attacks are coming daily now. Not full-on, we’retaking-you-out
Götterdämmerung
, but skirmishes. At a guess, we lost about a hundred people yesterday. We’ll lose that many more today. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Think I’m making this up? Bug boy sounding a little histrionic? Well, I’ve still got my cell phone, and it’s still good for shooting video. It took all night to upload this—a 28.8 line from an abandoned trading post or convenience store or whatever that was—and now you can watch it
here
and
here.
Make your kids leave the room first. Seriously. Do it now.
These are real people, folks. Children, dads, moms, husbands, wives. They’re the wrong shape, they think the wrong things, and they’re really dying. Some of them have guns. A few of them are aces. Lohengrin is doing what he can. Fortune and his new girlfriend Sekhmet are doing what they can. I help out. But we’re up against tanks and helicopters and guys who know how to use AK-47s. We’re fucking amateurs here.
And here’s the other thing. Schistosomiasis. Ever heard of it? The Nile is so polluted, it’s become a breeding ground for something called
bilharzia. I
looked it up on-line. Liver flukes, or something. The upshot is, if you drink this water it will kill you, just not right away. Explain to an eight-year-old who’s burning from thirst that she can’t have a drink. The part where you tell her it’ll kill her really doesn’t have the same oomph you’d expect when she’s just watched her brothers get shot. Funny how that works.
We’re low on food. We’re low on water. I can count the number of Westerners here trying to help out on one hand when I’m missing two fingers. And when you turn on your TV sets, are you seeing this? Are you thinking about it when you order your delivery pizza? Honest to God, people, are the things going on here really
less
important than the latest challenge on
American Hero?
Fuck.
I gotta go. They’re coming.
Back now. It’s about eight hours later. I forgot to hit the post button, so let me give you a little update. The army flew a helicopter over a bunch of refugees who were walking south at about three this afternoon, when I was
writing that last part. The alleged human beings up in the copter dropped a couple dozen grenades on them and strafed the survivors when they ran. We lost twenty. Another ten will probably be dead by morning, and about that many are going to be too injured to travel. Which means leaving them here. Which is pretty much the same thing as dead.
It’s still maybe a week before the first of us reach Aswan. Maybe another two days before the stragglers get in. Everyone’s looking to it like it’s the Promised Land or Oz or something. Me, I keep getting the feeling that the army’s herding us there. There was about twenty minutes when I was sure they were going to wait until we were all on Sehel Island and then blow the High Dam and kill us all. Fortune or maybe Sekhmet pointed out that blowing the Aswan High Dam would also kill everyone else in the country and wash Cairo into the sea, so I might be getting a little paranoid.
Any way you cut it though, we’re in trouble here. I need to sleep. I’m afraid to sleep.
If anyone out there knows someone in the Egyptian army or if you’re one of the folks in Ikhlas al-Din, listen for a minute, okay? This is the part where I beg.
I know someone killed the Caliph, and I know that’s a very big, very bad thing. I know that someone attacked you, and you’re pissed. But please—
please
—stop this. Because I’m here on the road with the people you’re killing. I’ve talked to them. I’ve eaten with them. And here’s the thing. Killing the Caliph?
They didn’t do it.
2934 COMMENTS | POST COMMENT
Ian Tregillis…
THEY DIDN’T DO IT.
What’s worse than being hated for what people
think
you did?
Wally Gunderson, aka Rustbelt, aka Toolbelt, aka You Stupid Tool, aka Hey You, aka Racist, sat in the darkness of his bedroom in the Discard Pile, scrolling through Bugsy’s blog. It chronicled cruel people doing senseless things to others. Harmless and undeserving others who hadn’t said or done anything wrong.
The monitor cast a sickly hue across his cast-iron skin, tinting the midnight blue-black with green, like he was a nat mottled with half-healed bruises. It fit the ooky feelings that he’d carried in his gut since he got kicked off
American Hero.
Sadness. Confusion. Shame. Anger.
The blog didn’t help matters any. As confusing as this Egypt thing was—Wally didn’t really understand the details—it was depressing, too. Innocent people were dying for no good reason; he got that much.
But reading still beat venturing outside. The place was awful crowded; all but five of the
American Hero
contestants had joined the Discard Pile. (Twenty-three aces. Four bathrooms.) Of those not living in the overcrowded mansion, two had up and left the show: Bugsy was in Egypt, and Drummer Boy had decided he’d rather be a rock star than a discard. The other three—Curveball, Rosa Loteria, and, of course, Stuntman—were still competing.