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“On that we are agreed,” I said.
“How does this sound: I will provide you with Maynes family security vehicles, uniforms, even identification. Weapons, ammunition, even explosives. In return, you will let the coal flow freely and limit your attacks to the Moondaggers and Tarheels.”
“Then we go back to killing each other once this is all over?”
“From the inside, the Kurian Order is anything but, buck. It’s a mess. The only truly successful ones are either so small a single Kurian runs it, or a place like the Georgia Control, where they’ve subcontracted running the show out to a few trusted humans. I believe they’re doomed. A few have fled your planet already, assuming this final effort to work an understanding out with the Lifeweavers comes to nothing.”
“You would switch sides that easily?”
“I don’t love them. I just didn’t see the point in dying, and they relieved me of that burden. Again, I didn’t have to like them.”
“Why don’t you think you’ll fall with the rest of the Kurian Order if it does go?”
“I know people. I used to be one, after all. Everything’s negotiable; you just need something of value to the face across the table.”
“I have one condition.”
“Name it.”
“This interface as you call it comes with us. A Reaper in the party might prove useful if our identity is ever questioned. I also might need to communicate with you. The phone service around here is terrible.”
He nodded in assent, and I found myself an ally of a vampire.
COAL COUNTRY CALLS FOR HELP
I requested, and received, Joshua Maynes Vee Three’s converted bus for the Dreadcoats. We also requested an SUV with a couple of light motorcycles attached (they rode on the back, roof, and fenders like saddlebags) and an armed pickup with a recoilless rifle for some extra firepower.
Mallow and Bilstrith were both against a truce with the Old Man. Mallow believed it to be a trap; Bilstrith thought that the Dreadcoats were just being used to carry out the dirty work the Coal Country couldn’t manage to do on its own.
We checked the vehicles for explosives, received our passwords and some identity papers—MacTierney was our liaison with the Maynes clan, so perhaps there was some communication between the hill people and the White Palace even before the massacre at Beckley and the Coal Revolt began.
“A curious fellow came through. Ex-churchman. He’s working with the resistance now. Said he sensed that the Kurians were worried about things here.”
“Sensed? Sounds worse than the snake handler from Old Leslie’s story,” Rod Neale said.
“He speaks and you believe him. You wouldn’t think a man as old as he could be traipsing around the backwoods on his own and still look neat as a pin, but he managed it. He must have incredible health.”
“Or he’s not who he says he is.”
“Occam’s razor: the
simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
• • •
“I sent out word. We need anything they can send us. Guns, men, even valuables we could trade.”
“We’ll get a few radio messages of support. If we’re real lucky, we’ll make the resistance shortwave news broadcast from those guys with the accents in the Baltic. First language of freedom . . . yeah, but it sure sounds like a second language when you use it.”
“Yeah. But we won’t see a bullet or hand grenade.”
“Crossing Kentucky isn’t the easiest thing, you know. Or running down the mountains across Pennsylvania. You ever done it?”
“I crossed Kentucky,” I said. “You are right. It would not be easy. The Kurians are very possessive of that railroad and the area around Lexington.”
Perhaps support from Southern Command or the Green Mountain Boys would appear. Perhaps even both, as a Lifeweaver-guided balance to the Moondaggers and the Tarheel Rangers.
“Well, the fact of the matter is that unless they show up right soon, it won’t matter. At the rate the Moondaggers are killing people or dragging off girls, the Coal Country is going to be a few mines and their workers guarded by the Tarheels, and a bunch of empty little towns.”
