The top was hand-painted with a vintage nude. Marilyn Monroe knelt against a red satin background, her arms behind her head, back arched, milky breasts lifted, a go-for-broke smile on her face.
He swung toward Xray-Tango, turning his back on Marilyn. He shut his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets. “General, I'd likeâ” he said, and clapped his hands over Xray-Tango's ears.
Crack!
It wasn't a concussive explosionâmore like someone loosing both barrels of a twelve-gaugeâthough even outdoors it left unprotected ears ringing. In the confines of the underground room the noise hit like a hammer blow. Even worse was the flash. Through his screwed-shut eyes Valentine still saw orange. Valentine popped Xray-Tango between the eyes with a strong jab. As the general's head
thunked
against the wall like a tossed coconut he followed through with a body blow to the solar plexus. Xray-Tango let loose with an asthmatic gasp and folded. Valentine slipped on his fighting claws.
He waded into the stunned Quislings. They were staggering around in ululating confusion, a six-player game of blind-man's bluff held under the influence of bad LSD. The confusion turned to screaming when Valentine opened the first throat with his claws. The questioning officer had caught himself in a corner. Valentine dug his claws into each side of the man's neck and pulled. The blood of opened arteries went everywhere. He raked another across the kidneys. The man went spinning in shrieking pain into Smalls, knocking both to the floor. Mrs. Smalls could still see; she turned her face from her husband to see Valentine advancing on her.
“Youânotâno,” she cried, more or less able to see what was coming.
He caught her with an elbow in the temple, and she sagged. He stabbed her husband in the Adam's apple, driving the extra-long straight middle claw into his voice-box. Maybe the Reaper would be in a forgiving mood, and delay killing him until he could tell the story in a few weeks.
But he doubted it.
It was awful, and it took too long.
Valentine looked around the abattoir. The knocked-over desk lamp illuminated walls splattered with blood, a floor painted in black and red depending on the fall of the light. The man with the slashed kidneys still twitched, in too much pain to rise again.
“General,” Valentine said, lifting Xray-Tango to his feet. “General!”
“Spots. Alls I seeze spots,” he said, drunkenly.
Valentine shook him in frustration.
“Scottie! Scottie!” he barked.
“Huh? Le Sain, what the hellâ” The general's face fell into limp horror as he picked out a few details of the room with his damaged retinas.
“Everything the Smalls said is true. I'm a soldier with Southern Command. It's a rising, all over the TM,” Valentine said, exaggerating the last a little. “I want you to join us. Fight the Reapers, instead of feeding them.”
“God, the bloodâ”
“What'll it be, General? Fight or feed?”
“Ouch, you're hurting me, dammit.”
Valentine felt a Reaper coming. Coming in anger, coming in fury, coming in haste.
“No time, General.”
“Good God, they're all dead.”
Coming fast.
“With me, General. You back me up, or I'll kill you. Give me that!”
Valentine gripped the pistol being taken from the general's holster. It turned into a wrestling matchâwhich he had no time for. He raked his claws across the generals forearm, opening skin. The pistol came free. Valentine kicked it away, slipping off his claws.
He retrieved the gun, a standard KZ officer's revolver, rugged and reliable. He pulled back the hammer; the click sounded muted to his recovering ears.
“Out the door. I want you in front of me if anyone's shooting.”
He heard banging somewhere below. In the direction of the Reaper.
Locked in an underground chamber? “In case of emergency, wake the vampire”?
Xray-Tango poked his head into the hallway. Neither bullet nor Reaper claw removed it.
“It's clear. Don't get nervous, that thing triggers easy.”
“Hurry, there's a Reaper coming.”
“Jesus.”
“The stairs. The gun stays pointed up as long as you keep quiet.”
Valentine took a good two-handed grip on the gun. He heard a door give way and shoved the general with his shoulder. “It's coming. Upstairs! Upstairs!”
He pushed the general to the stairs and through the crash door at the bottom. As he slammed it behind them, he saw a shadow fly across the hallway and into the interrogation room. Mr. Smalls squealedâfor the last time. Valentine shut the pathetically tiny bolt on the door.
“A bodyguard went nuts! Fuckin' tore everyone apart,” Valentine shouted upstairs, pushing the general up in front of him. “That Hood's berserk.”
An MP and another Quisling soldier stood at the top of the stairs, both pointing guns down at them.
“General?” Valentine asked, putting Xray-Tango between him and the rifles, just in case.
“Put up those guns, damn it. Run, run for it, boys. Or we're all dead!” Xray-Tango shouted, which was probably true enough.
Thank God!
Valentine got the general to the top of the stairs as the MP ran. Valentine heard another door downstairs torn off its hinges. He heard the scream of some other unfortunate pulled from a hiding spot. Probably the MP. That was enough for the TMCC grunt at the stairs. He put up his rifle and ran for the door, with a convincing “Get out of here!”
His example was one to be followed. The other officers and men made for the exits. One threw a chair out the window, and was about to follow it when a bullet whizzed by. One of the sentries outside, hearing shouts and confusion within, had shot in panic.
“What theâ?” the private said.
“Try the door,” Valentine suggested, grabbing his pistol belt and heading for the second story. “C'mon, General, let's call for help,” he said, waving the pistol to point upstairs. Valentine smashed a red case on the wall and extracted the fire ax from within.
Either he was moving fast or the general was slow; it seemed an eternity until they came through the door to the radio room on the second floor. The rest of the floor was a cavern of future construction. Two operators stood next to the radios, both armed and pointing their weapons at Valentine and Xray-Tango. A trio of message tubes stood up from the floor like unfinished plumbing fixtures.
“Fuck! FUCK! Hold it right there, mister,” the radioman with sergeant's stripes said, eyes bulging at the sight of the blood on Valentine.
“Holy shit,” the other added, shaking like he had a jack-hammer in his hand instead of a revolver.
“Watch those weapons there, soldiers,” Xray-Tango said.
“I'm the only one who made it out,” Valentine said. “If I were you two, I'd get gone. It's a bodyguard. It's going nuts.”
“Jesus, that happened to my cousin in Armarillo,” the shaking one said. “Like it got ravies. It killed thirty people before they stopped it.”
“If you've got a way out of here that doesn't involve the stairs, I'd use it,” Valentine said. “We'll call for help.”
“It's my responsibility,” Xray-Tango said, his eye twitching madly and the words barely getting out. “Run along, boys.”
The men heard a crash below and decided they knew a sensible order when they heard it. They scrambled out the window and dropped to the ground below.
Valentine offered Xray-Tango the ax handle. “You want the honors?”
“Sorry, Le Sain, or whoever you are. I was true to you, best as I could be. You weren't straight with me.”
“Could I have been?”
“That's a âwhat-if.' I don't like to waste time with âwhat-ifs. ' I'm no renegade. I can't let you smash the radio. The only other unit strong enough to send for help is at the quartermaster office at MacArthur Park, down by the warehouses, and if you smash that one too, no one will get here in time. Assuming you cut the field-phone lines north on the bridge, and south on the poles, that is.”
Valentine shared a smile with his former superior.
There was a scream from downstairs.
“Sorry, General,” Valentine said. He swung the ax handle, connecting solidly with Xray-Tango's temple. He reversed the grip and, with three precise blows, left the radio in pieces.
Valentine hid behind rolls of weatherproofing, ax across his lap, lowering his lifesign. He pulled inward, concentrating on a point six inches in front of his nose, taking it
down, down, down . . .
He became a prowling cat, a hiding mouse, a buzzing fly. A pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. The Reaper came up and took in the ruins of the radio room. It hissed and picked up the general like a distracted parent lifting a child's dropped doll.
“general! general! wake! wake and tell what has passed.”
Xray-Tango gave a moan as the creature shook him.
Valentine couldn't let the Reaper go to the window, see the men streaming out of his camp. He couldn't risk a single footstep behind him. It would mean a leap. He gathered himself, and readied the ax.
Even with its attention on Xray-Tango, it felt him coming. It was full night, when a Reaper's senses and reflexes become unholy. Valentine still buried the blade of the ax in its side, missing the great nerve trunks running up its spine. It dropped Xray-Tango.
“Melted butter,” Xray-Tango murmured. At least that's what it sounded like to Valentine.
“you!”
the Reaper spat.
Valentine fired Xray-Tango's gun into it, but he might as well have been throwing spitballs. It sprang.
He ducked, so fast that the air whistled as he cut through it. The Reaper sailed head-first into the framework of a wall, crashing through two-by-fours into the next room. Valentine ran, throwing himself out the window like a swimmer off the block. He jackknifed in midair, landing lightly, but his bad leg betrayed him and he sprawled into the dirt.
It flew out the window after him, ax-pinioned cape flapping like some hideous bat as it descended in a long parabola to the ground. It landed between him and the Ruins.
They faced each other. Valentine drew his .45.
“C'mon, you bastard,” Valentine said, sighting on its yellow eyes.
It turned, looking over its shoulder. Valentine saw a hint of movement among the ruins and flung himself sideways.
A blast from the PPD illuminated Ahn-Kha's gargoyle features; the gun's rattle was music to his ears. The bullets caught the Reaper as it spun, knocking it to the ground. It tried to rise, but Ahn-Kha flattened it with another burst as the Grog took a step forward. Valentine rose, hand on the hilt of General Hamm's knife. Ahn-Kha stood, ten feet away from the crawling monstrosity, drum-magazined gun to his shoulder. He loosed another long burst, emptying the weapon. He lowered it, smoke pouring from the barrel filling the air with the peppery smell of cordite.
But the Reaper still lived. Valentine came up with the knife, pressed its head to the ground with his foot, and swung for all he was worth. The blade went in deep, severing its spine. The Reaper's limbs gave one jumping-frog spasm and went limp. Valentine pulled the blade out before the black tar clogging the wound could glue it in place like the ax head in its side.
Valentine kicked over the body as Ahn-Kha put a new drum on the gun. The Reaper's eyes were still alive with malice.
“Mu-Kur-Ri,” Valentine said into the still-functioning eyes, for the Reaper's head still lived and could still pass on what it sensed to the Master Kurian at the other end. “The
Dau'weem
sent me to kill you. My name is David Valentine. I come for you now.”
The Reaper tried to say something but Valentine swung again. The blade bit deep; the head separated. He picked it up by the wispy hair and sent it flying off into the darkness. He pitied the rat that might taste the flesh.
“Neither of us remembered to bring a spear,” Valentine said. “We're a pair of idiots.”
Valentine's eyes picked up a Quisling soldier or two, watching them from hiding spots. “The headquarters is clear,” Valentine shouted at one. “The general's hurt. Call the medics. There might still be someone alive in the basement.” He clapped his hands. “Hustle, hustle!”
The soldier scampered off.
“Let's go,” he said to Ahn-Kha.
They trotted into the Ruins and circled around to the road paralleling the communications lines. Valentine surveyed the line of wires until he found the utility pole he wanted.
“Those are the field-phone lines south. Gimme that sling. I'll cut these; you'll need to do the ones at the railroad bridge. Flare gun, please.”
“I can guess which one you want in it,” Ahn-Kha said, slipping the flare inside and handing it to him. “I agree. It will be glorious, even if it fails.”
Valentine attached the PPD strap to his waist after wrapping it around the pole. Using his claws, he shimmied up the pole easily enough. There was a crossbar for him to sit on at the top. There, four communications lines and one power line shared space on the pole. Careful to avoid the last, he took out General Hamm's light infantry machete and shoved the first phone line into the notch. He used the utility crossbeam as a leaver.
Twang
âit parted with a push. Valentine looked again at the knife, smiling wryly.
“Nice work, Hamm.”
The other lines were easily severed. Ahn-Kha watched the road, ears twitching.
Valentine looked around at New Columbia from his pole-top perch. Here and there he picked out his companies, the red tape hung across their bodies muted in the dark but identifiable, moving silently toward their objectives. They'd been told to say their orders were to reinforce the guards at the vital spots: warehouses, dock, bridge, rail yard, prison camp. With all the confusion in the night, Valentine felt they would have a good chance of being believed. Searchlights were lit at the Kurian Tower, probing the darkness around the Tower as guards deployed to hardpoints and Mu-Kur-Ri braced for his coming. At the prison camp, a hand-cranked siren wailed as the guards turned out. He saw truck headlights descending the winding road from Pulaski Heights. The Kurian had already sent for help.