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“Quiet,” says the captain. “I’m not here to correct your grammar or manners. This is an inspection. I want one of you to escort me to the new arrivals.”
A scrawny recruit with a crooked nose sitting at a table by himself says, “Who’s your friend?”
“Again, I didn’t hear ‘sir’ at the end of the sentence when addressing me.”
Crooked Nose sits up straighter but not because he’s obeying the rules. It’s sheer tension. This is how barroom brawls start.
“Who the fuck is that with you, sir? He doesn’t look like any officer I’ve seen. Sir.”
“Don’t worry about him. I’m the one who can assign you to even worse duty than this.”
“Worse than this?” says the guy by the oven.
“Do you enjoy the smell of rotten and congealed blood, soldier? Would you like to spend a few years patrolling the Styx?”
Crooked Nose raises his hand like he’s in first grade. He’s having a good time with us.
“Excuse me, sir. What general do you serve under?”
“Are you interrogating me, soldier?”
“It’s a simple question, sir. Under whose authority are you here? Who the fuck would send an officer out here to the middle of nowhere in dress shoes and no heavy coat? Sir.”
I can see where this is going. I lean in and whisper to the captain.
“Keep them talking,” I say, and go outside.
I find a good shadow behind the closer of the snowcats and slip back inside.
I come out by the stove, so I slit that Hellion’s throat before he can throw the hot cup of sludge on the captain. Let his body fall. Then step back into the same shadow. Outside, I can hear shouting over the sound of the wind. I go back in through another shadow and arrive with the SIG in my hand. I put bullets into the heads of the two guards closest to the captain. Crooked Nose stands and watches me disappear.
This time when I come in, I do it under the table where he was sitting. I spring up from underneath, using the table as a battering ram and cracking his head against the wall. One of the other two guards gets off a lucky shot and knocks the SIG from my hand. I grab Candy’s knife and throw it, hitting him square in the left eye. He falls into the last guard still on his feet. The stunned guard steps back, letting the dead one slide to the floor. I pick up the SIG and aim it at him. Retrieve the knife from his dead friend’s eye and wipe the black muck off on the soldier’s leg. When I look around for the captain, I notice the door is open and he’s gone, daddy, gone. Have fun trotting home for days through a blizzard.
I put my gun to the soldier’s head.
“Guess it’s just you and me, sweetheart. That okay with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not an officer, so don’t sir me. But you are going to obey that other officer’s order, aren’t you?”
His eyes scan the room, lingering on his dead and dying pals.
“Sure. Whatever you want. The new arrivals are easy to find.”
He takes a set of keys from the wall and picks up a heavy coat. He points to the soldier I got in the eye.
“It’s cold outside. You might want a coat.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just go.”
Twenty yards down a road rutted with snowcat tread marks there are heavy iron double gates. Like something you might see outside of an asylum in an old B movie. Icicles hang from the fence, as thick as a man’s leg and twice as long. The old lock on the gate is as big as a pumpkin. The guard has to bang it against the metal a few times to break the ice off before he can insert the key.
“The new ones always stay by the gate. High up here on the hill. The wind isn’t as bad in the valley, but they always stay up here at first. Some ice over and never make it down.”
I see what he means. Down in the valley, millions of dots mill around. Damned souls. Some huddle together in the waste like penguins in a snowstorm, guarding their brood. Down the nearby hillside are the frozen souls of the ones who never made it as far as the valley floor. Among those pathetic forms are men and women, some in suits, some in jeans and T-shirts, others in rags or stark naked, standing or sitting on the hill. The wind picks up. The temperature drops and it’s hard to see anything. I’m sorry now that I didn’t take the dead soldier’s coat.
“Traven. Father Traven,” I shout. But the wind is loud enough that I’m not sure how far my voice carries.
