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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.
