Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (41 page)

I went around the table, took the
second glass and followed. As I walked, I glanced at the guard on his stool
in the corner. He was watching me carefully.

Schleu laughed. “Don’t mind Goob,”
she said. “He’s harmless unless you try some funny business.”

I sat in one of the chairs facing
the couch. I was about six feet away from her. A little too far for a funny
business lunge without catching a bullet from Goob.

“Goob?” I asked.

“Short for Goober,” she said.
“That’s what we call him. He was wearing that cap and a gas station shirt
when he was picked up in Atlanta. Somebody said he looked like a character
from some old TV show named Goober. The name stuck.”

“What does he call
himself?”

“He doesn’t,” she said. “Goob
doesn’t speak. Never has. I don’t know if it’s a physical thing, or he just
doesn’t have anything to say.”

I looked at him again. He stared
back.

Schleu leaned back on the couch and
took a sip of her drink. I did the same. Scotch. I find it disgusting, but
I choked down a mouthful. Just to be sociable.

“You know, it’s funny but I only
feel comfortable relaxing and having a drink with outsiders. You. Lee.” She
paused, pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, and lit one. “I have
to be strong with the others. Even a little super-human in my dedication,
my focus. They expect that.” She paused again. “They deserve
that.”

“I guess it’s hard being the
commander sometimes,” I said with a smile.

“It can be,” she said. “But I don’t
have any complaints. Somebody has to do it.” She paused. “In the early days
in the Atlanta camp, there was nothing but fear and confusion. We’d been
beaten, and nobody knew what would happen next. There was no
hope.”

She took another sip from her
glass. “I believe that a life without hope is worse than death. So I made
the decision to step up to the plate and provide that hope.”

“I heard there was an uprising in
one of the Atlanta camps,” I said. “You involved with that?”

“It happened at the camp we were
in. Charlie-17.” She shook her head. “No, I deliberately kept our people
out of it. Right move, but wrong place, wrong time. They were never going
to convince enough scared, unarmed people to storm the fence. We kept our
heads down and let them do what they were going to do. A lot of people
died.” She paused. “Many thousands, in the attack and the reprisals.”
Another pause. “But none of my people.”

“And now it’s the right place and
right time?”

Schleu didn’t say anything, just
took another sip of her drink. Then her eyes met mine. “What would you
estimate our chances of success are, Charlie?”

I smiled. “I’m just a grunt,
commander,” I said. “Probably not the right person to ask.”

“True, but you’re one the smarter
grunts,” she said with a crooked grin. “Come on. Give me an honest
answer.”

I hesitated. I could be very
positive, but it might sound like I was telling her what I thought she
wanted to hear. Or I could be very negative, and maybe lose her trust. So I
split the difference. “I’d guess at least fifty-fifty.”

She smiled. “A true optimist.” She
was silent for a moment and took a long pull on her cigarette. “Personally,
I think we’ve got one chance in three to get through tomorrow successfully.
One chance in five Saturday.” She paused. “Best case.”

Schleu must have seen something in
my expression. “You’re surprised,” she said. “You shouldn’t be.” She took
another sip. “My public pronouncements to the recruits and my staff might
not reflect it, but I’m a realist. This is an ambitious operation. One that
could easily fall apart. I don’t dwell on the possibility of failure,
especially with those who are on the front lines of the fight. But I don’t
believe you should ever lie to yourself.”

“If the odds are that bad, why do
it?”

“Good question,” she said. She was
silent for a few seconds, then asked “Did they have death carts in the camp
you were in?”

“Death carts?”

“In Charlie-17, they had wheeled
carts, pushed by hand. Like something out of the Dark Ages. Every morning,
the death carts came around to each of the barracks, and those who had died
since the previous morning were loaded up and taken away to be
burned.”

I shook my head. “No, we didn’t
have anything like that here in Delta-5.”

“I watched the carts make their
rounds each morning,” she said. “A body from one building, three from
another. It was horrifying.” She paused. “But after a while, I realized
that I was the only one who seemed to understand how truly horrifying it
was. To everybody else...” She shrugged. “Life as usual. Watch them take
the corpses away, hope you’re not loaded on a cart tomorrow.”

“People cope with a bad situation
whatever way they can.”

She nodded. “Exactly. Humans cope.
It’s our nature. No matter how bad things are, we find a way to deal with
it, to survive for another day. Because as bad as it is, it could always be
worse, right?”

“What’s your point?”

“How are things different now?” she
asked. “Of course, we’re not in camps anymore. But what’s really changed?
Humans are still coping. Not with death carts, but with monsters living
among us.”

She dropped her cigarette on the
floor and ground it out with her heel. There were a lot of burned spots on
the carpet. “The average person looks at a skeeter, what do they
see?”

“A vampire,” I said.

“No,” she said. “They see the
person that skeeter once was. And in their minds, they tell themselves that
the skeeter is still that person. It’s much easier to think of a skeeter as
just a regular joe with sensitivity to sunlight and unusual eating habits.
Not a monster in human form.”

“I understand what you’re saying,
but I still don’t see your point.”

“Status quo,” she said. “The way we
live now, the situation in this city, this country, is becoming the norm.
Tolerable. Acceptable.” She paused. “If the skeeters were as monstrous on
the outside as they are on the inside, it might be different. But they’re
not. They look like us, though they are not us. People accept them and
accept life as it is now.”

“I agree with what you’re saying,
but you haven’t answered my original question,” I said. “If the odds are as
bad as you think, why do it?”

“We’ve been out of the camps for
three and a half years,” she said as she lit another cigarette. “Look
around. Skeeters everywhere. In the government. In the police department.
And not even separate anymore. Did you know that they’ve started
integrating the skeeters with the humans in the police department. Skeeters
working during the day. Humans working at night.”

She shook her head. “How is it
going to be in another three and a half years, Charlie? How much more
skeeter integration will there be? And more important, once they are so
thoroughly a part of our daily lives, how will we ever get rid of them?”
She paused. “I told you, humans look at skeeters as people. Skeeters look
at us as food. Nothing more. What is it they call us, bloodsacs? That
should tell you everything you need to know about them. They’re only
willing to live among their cattle because they want easy access to their
food source. And like good little cows, we let them have it. It’s the ideal
life. For skeeters.”

"But if you try and fail, what
happens to those people?” I asked. “When the skeeters retaliate. When they
decide that they can’t live among their cattle anymore. When they herd the
cattle back into the pen and leave them there. Forever.”

Schleu took a long pull on her
cigarette. “We’re giving them the opportunity to stand up and fight back,”
she said. A long pause. “If they choose to remain cattle, they deserve
whatever happens to them.”

“Harsh,” I said.

“But true,” she replied. “Even the
rest of the world is starting to fall in line. You remember that visit by
the German ambassador last summer?”

I nodded. I remembered it well. I’d
been hired by the Area Governor’s Office to provide security for the
visit.

“We never should have let the
ambassador leave the city alive,” she said. “At the time, we were working
with other Resistance groups, and I wanted to take him out, put an end to
any chance of normal diplomatic relations between this corrupted version of
the United States and other countries. But I was overruled.” She was silent
for a moment. “I’ll never let that happen again.”

Schleu looked at me, and I would
almost swear there were tears in her eyes. “It’s gone too far,” she said.
“Maybe beyond the point where the situation can be reversed. Or just maybe
there’s still hope.” She drained the last bit of her drink. “This may be
our only chance to stop what’s happening, our last chance to get our
country back. The odds may not be good. We will probably fail. But if we
don’t try, like the cattle, we deserve whatever happens to us.”

She stood, a little unsteadily.
“Sorry to have been such a wet blanket.” she said. “I’m sure this was the
last thing you wanted to hear on the eve of battle.”

I stood too. “It’s all right,” I
said. “Everybody needs to unload now and then.”

“Get some sleep,” she said. “Big
day tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”

“Count on it,” I said.

I put my glass on the table and
started for the door. As I reached it, I heard her say, “And thank you,
Charlie.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six

Five a.m.

Knock at the door.

I’d dozed for maybe an hour total
since I got back to the apartment. Why sleep through my last few hours of
life?

Lee smiled when I opened the door.
“Ready?” he asked.

“Let me get my coat,” I
said.

He came inside. “You
sleep?”

“No.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Guess that
means we’ll sleep good tonight.”

“Yeah.” Or sooner. And forever.
“Let’s go.”

I could almost feel the emptiness
of the Floresta as we made our way down to the lobby. It wasn’t just the
silence. Some of the apartment doors hung open and the halls were littered
with candy bar wrappers, left by those who wouldn’t get their breakfast
this morning.

Through the open door of the
leasing office, I saw Schleu behind the tables, speaking to a couple of her
guys. Nobody I’d seen before.

“Kat should be finished up in a
minute or two,” Lee said. “Then we’ll get going.”

“She’s coming with us to
uptown?”

He nodded. “Yeah, she wants to be
there when things kick off.” He paused. “She’s been working on this for
almost three years. It means everything to her.”

“To all of us,” I said.

The front door opened and a couple
of guys came in, rubbing their hands. I recognized the one on the
left.

“Hey, Zach,” I said.

He looked over at me and smiled.
“Why hey, Charlie. Good to see you again. Big day, huh?”

“The biggest,” I said. “Listen, I’m
really sorry about what happened.”

“Don’t give it no mind,” he said.
“I shoulda been payin’ more attention to what I was supposed to be doin’
and less to messin’ around with Gus.” He paused. “Poor ol’ Gus.”

“I don’t know what Johnny was
thinking.”

“Well, between you, me, and the
woodpile, ain’t nobody gonna miss Konrad. Nazi bastard. Shame about Johnny,
though. He seemed like a pretty good fella overall.”

I nodded. “So you doing
okay?”

“Yeah, I’m right as rain,” Zach
said. “I mean, sentry duty is cold and borin’, but I ain’t complainin’.
Least my partner, Caleb here, has a good supply of jokes and keeps me
laughin’. Hell, if it weren’t for the snow, it’d almost be fun.”

Beside him, Caleb grinned through a
full black beard.

“Snow?”

He nodded. “Yeah, started snowin’
about midnight, got two or three good inches all told.” He smiled. “White
Christmas.”

 He paused and the smile
faded. “Only thing I regret is havin’ to stay here when all the action is
goin’ on out there. I really wanted to be part of it.” He shrugged. “But
hell, I figure there will be plenty for everybody in the next couple of
days.”

“No doubt.”

“So how ‘bout you?” he asked.
“Looks like you done pretty good for yourself.”

“Yeah, things worked out. I guess I
have something the commander needs.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that definitely
helps.” He looked past me. “Speak of the devil.” He glanced at Caleb.
“Let’s get goin’.”

Schleu stopped next to me.
“Zachariah,” she said with a brisk nod.

“Cap’n,” he said. “Just comin’ off
duty, goin’ to grab some shut-eye.”

“You best get to it, then,” she
said.

“Seeya later, Charlie,” he said.
“Good huntin’.”

As Zach and Caleb started up the
stairs, Schleu said, “You know, I like Zachariah. He’s been with me from
the beginning. Good man. Too bad he fucked up.” She turned to me and Lee.
“Ready?”