Valentine's Exile

Escapes: Nearly every part of the Kurian Zone is traced with "pipelines," or channels for escapees to reach safety. Other networks supply guerillas and underground information distributors, and a few do double, or even triple duties as criminal organizations involved in smuggling and black-market trading. In the better-run networks, each person at a pipeline junction only knows her links in the next stage of the operation, making it harder for a pipeline to be rolled up. Generally, the less that is known about a pipeline the safer it is to travel.



This has a drawback, however. Without careful preparation work, operatives who venture into unfamiliar territory will have no idea who to trust and who not to, as the man next door in the New Universal Church hostel might be the local pipeline operator or a Kurian informer.



A grim vocabulary exists among those who shuttle material, human or logistical, through the pipelines. Shutdowns and spills are bad, involving loss of a route, and a penetration is the worst of all, indicating that the Kurians successfully uncovered a line and cleaned it up after their "mole" crept its way through. A "rabbit" is an escapee that makes a try for freedom without any guidance whatsoever. Rabbits are useful in that "rabbit runs" divert resources that might otherwise be used to uncover a real pipeline.



Like a cottontail's dash for cover, most rabbit runs are fast, panicked, and quickly finished.



* * * *



Valentine switched places with Boothe as soon as they passed out of the light of the gates. It was a cloudy evening and the woods were black as a mine shaft. Only with wide-open Cat eyes could he distinguish a tree trunk or two. He relaxed a little once they passed where he had sensed the Reaper pickets on his reconnaissance and made it out of the hairpin-turn gully-if Valentine had chosen a spot to ambush the big-framed Lincoln, it would have been there.



The Reapers, if they were out there, hadn't caused the "Valentingle"-but with his blood loss, and nervous exhaustion after the strain of the past few days, his wiring might have loosened.



Boothe drove skillfully, just fast enough to choose the best way to negotiate the patched road without bouncing her passengers around too much. The rugged suspension on the truck helped. In the rear cargo area, Gail counted the bumps, but lost track at sixty-seven.



As they took the river road into town Valentine saw what looked like bonfires in the hills, on both sides of the river.



"What's all this?"



"Hell night," Boothe said.



"Meaning?"



"Kind of a tradition. Old, emptied houses get burned to the ground on Halloween night. Farther out it's grain silos and barns."



On this one night the town sounded lively. People crisscrossed the streets burning everything from road flares to candles in grimacing, fanged pumpkins. Valentine wondered at the pumpkins- Reapers had pale skin, not orange in the slightest, and a yellow squash might better reflect both skin tone and their long, narrow skulls.



They pulled up on the street leading to the NUC hostel. It, too, was burning. Firefighters and police fought the blaze with hoses.



"I thought you said only abandoned buildings?" Valentine asked.



Boothe stopped the four-wheeler well away from the conflagration and its attending crowd.



"Could be some drunk got carried away. I should see if anyone-"



"No," Valentine said. "Stay here."



He got out of the vehicle. A man in football padding sat on the curb, drinking from a bottle within a paper bag.



Valentine heard a high-pitched whistle from the other side of the street. Duvalier and a man in the shale-colored uniform of the Ordnance, old US M-model rifle over his shoulder and a duffel in his hand, ran across the street and to the Lincoln.



"You weren't kidding about transport," Duvalier said. "Tar, meet Corporal Scott Thatcher."



Valentine remembered him from the dance. Thatcher had a bony face, but everything was pleasantly enough arranged.



"You sure about this?" he asked. He meant the question for Duvalier but Thatcher spoke up.



"I want out, sir. Passage all the way if it can be arranged." He lowered his voice. "Free territory."



Valentine didn't like it. The boy could win a nice position in the Kurian Zone by turning them in. He was certainly armed heavily enough to take control of the escape, with a pistol at his hip, an assault rifle over his arm . . .



Is that what you really think? Or is it Alessa finding someone?



Valentine's first escape from the Kurian Zone, leading a few families of refugees with a platoon of Zulu Company's Wolves, had been betrayed to the Reapers. He wouldn't let it happen again.



On the other hand, an Ordnance uniform, stripes, and knowledge of the region-assuming Thatcher could be trusted--would come in handy.



"He's okay, Val," Duvalier said. For her to use his real name like that must mean something. "He knows the ground. I trust him. So can you."



"We'll see."



"Says the man who manages to come out the gates with three, count 'em, ladies and gentlemen, three women. New personal best?"



Valentine ignored the jibe. "You'll have to put your duffel up top," he said to Thatcher. "The rifle can go in back. Give me that pistol."



Thatcher passed him the weapons. Valentine handed the assault rifle back to Ahn-Kha in the cargo bay.



"Take shotgun," Valentine said. "And remember, another shotgun's in the seat right behind you."



Valentine wondered how they'd all fit. Duvalier crouched in between the driver and passenger seats, next to Thatcher, with Valentine and Pepsa in the seats behind.



"Fire your doing?" he asked Duvalier as they pulled away from the fire and the growing crowd.



"Yes. But it's just a diversion. In another half hour the police headquarters is going to lose their fodder-wagons and fuel depot."



Pepsa took a startled breath. "I had a feeling you were more than just a boy heading home, Tar," Boothe said.



"You thought of everything," Thatcher said. "But it's not the police we have to worry about, it's the Ordnance."



"A girl has to keep busy," Duvalier said.



In the back, Ahn-Kha assembled his puddler.



"West on the river road," Valentine told Boothe.



"Where you planning to cross?" Thatcher asked, excitement bringing his words fast and hard.



"Route ten bridge," Valentine said. "Just a mile ahead here. Saw it when we were biking. It gets a lot of traffic."



"Yeah, 'cause it's open to civilians," Thatcher said. "You'll at least get a flashlight sweep. Go up five more miles and cross at Ironton Road. That's an Ordnance checkpoint. There's a Kentucky Roadside popular with all of us up a ways there. Better all around."



"Well?" Boothe asked.



"Ironton Road it is," Valentine said.



Duvalier gripped Thatcher's hand and nodded, but Valentine felt like it was a mistake. He handed her a party hat.



* * * *



The old, rusty trestle bridge had been blown up at some point. New girders and railroad ties had been cobbled together to close the gap.



"Don't worry, we've taken trucks over it," Thatcher said as Boothe slowed. Valentine checked the magazine of Thatcher's 9mm, then chambered a round.



They made it over the gap with no more than the sound of tires rumbling across the ties.



A lighted guardhouse at the other end had a couple of uniformed men in it. The Lincoln's headlights revealed two chains, running from either side of the bridge to a post in the center, more of a polite warning than a serious obstacle. Yellow reflective tape fluttered from the center of each length, looking like a dancing worm in the headlights' glare.



"I'm supposed to be asleep now," Gail announced, an angry tone in her voice.



"Oh great, we have a med-head," Duvalier said.



"Keep her quiet in back, there," Valentine said to Ahn-Kha. He heard a squeak.



Boothe rolled down her window as they approached the checkpoint. She swerved into the left-hand lane to pull up to it.



"Hey there, Cup," Thatcher called. He passed over an ID card. Valentine didn't know if it was Ordnance slang or a nickname, but the man's shirt read "Dorthistle." "Five and a lost Grog going to Beaudreaux's. Back by sunup."



The sentry looked at the card, then placed his flashlight beam on Thatcher.



Boothe began to glance around and Valentine stiffened. If he was on the ball, the sentry would notice the fight-or-flight tell. She was looking for a direction to run. Valentine yawned and returned his hand to the butt of the pistol next to his thigh.



Valentine heard the phone ring in the guardhouse.



"Line's up again," the man inside said. "That was quick."



Shit shit shit.



"You going to unhook or what, Private," Thatcher said. "It's Halloween and we need to raise some hell."



A soldier inside picked up the phone.



The private went around to the center post and placed his hand on the chain.



"Border closed, alert!" the soldier with the phone shouted from inside the guardhouse.



"Ram it," Valentine shouted. Boothe sat frozen, her hands locked on the steering wheel.



The guard by the chain stepped back, fumbling for his rifle as the butt hit the post.



"Christ, go!" Duvalier said.



Valentine opened his door and aimed his pistol through the gap at the white-faced guard, lit like a stage actor by the Lincoln's beams. A whistle blew from somewhere in the darkness.



Pop pop pop-the flash from the pistol was a little brighter than the headlights; the guard spun away, upended over the chain.



The noise unfroze the gears in Boothe's nervous system. She floored the accelerator.



The Lincoln hit the chain, bounced over something that might have been the post going down, or might have been the guard, and Valentine heard a metallic scream that was probably the front bumper tearing.



The Lincoln gained speed.



"Turn the lights off," Ahn-Kha boomed as he looked out the back windows. "Don't give them a mark to aim-"



Bullets ripped into the back of the Lincoln. Ahn-Kha threw himself against the back of the seats, wrapping Gail Foster in one great arm and Pepsa in the other.



"Agloo," Pepsa yelped. Gail screamed.



Valentine felt the Lincoln head up a slight rise, then turn, putting precious distance, brush, and trees between them and the checkpoint.



"Everyone okay?" Valentine asked.



"Some glass cuts," Ahn-Kha said. "Post's mate is hit in the foot. Let me get her shoe off."



Gail yelped again. "I want to go home," she wailed.



"I believe a toe is missing," Ahn-Kha said.



Pepsa nodded at Valentine.



"Pepsa, take my bag. See what you can do," Boothe said.



Ahn-Kha shifted to give her room to get in the back. Valentine heard his friend wheeze.



"Glass cuts?" Valentine said.



"I fear it may be more than that, my David," Ahn-Kha said.



"Who's David?" Boothe asked.



"Just drive, please."



"I could go faster if I turned on the lights."



"No," Valentine and Thatcher said in unison.



"Go left here," Thatcher said. "Good road."



Valentine, smelling blood, his stomach hurting as though he'd been mule-kicked, saw a distant patch of flame; a house burning over by the river. Somewhere there were people dancing in firelight. Somewhere Reapers were asking questions. Boothe made the turn, heading south.



The bumper ground as it scraped the road surface.



Ahn-Kha let out a gentle cough. "My David. I saw headlights hit the clouds far back. I believe we are being followed."



How far would the Ordnance chase them into Kentucky?



"Stop the car. I'll drive," Valentine said. "Doc, check out Ahn-Kha. Do what you can for him."



Valentine slipped into the driver's seat, and got the sport-utility vehicle moving as soon as he heard the back door close. Boothe switched places with Pepsa in the cargo area. Ahn-Kha kicked out a bullet-starred window.



You can do this. Nothing to be afraid of. You've driven before. Badly, but you've driven.



He could see farther than Boothe, and pushed the engine up past forty miles an hour. They ate miles. Every now and then the Lincoln hit a pothole with a resounding thump.



A flash blinded him. "You need help," Boothe said.



"Watch the light back there," Valentine said. Boothe had been using a flashlight to look at Ahn-Kha. Sudden increases in light gave him an instant headache.



Valentine spotted a legworm trail, the distinctive rise and thick vegetation cutting across a field.



"I'm going to go off-road," he told Thatcher.



Thatcher pushed a button on the center console, engaging the four-wheel drive. "Slow down. They'll see tire marks otherwise."



Valentine applied the brake, felt the Lincoln change gears. Automatic transmission made a huge difference in driving effort.



He turned onto the legworm trail. Any tree big enough to stop the Lincoln was avoided by the creature. The ground looked easier to the east, so he followed another legworm trail leading that way. He listened to the car cutting through weeds and grasses.



"I've done all I can," Boothe said. "The external bleeding's stopped, for now."



Valentine found another road, got on it, and took it for a mile until it intersected with one in even worse condition, but at least he was heading south.



"We're still being followed," Duvalier said. "Looks like a motorcycle."



Valentine didn't need the confirmation. He felt them behind, a presence, the way you felt a thunderstorm long before its first rumble.



"Stop the car, my David," Ahn-Kha said. The Golden One hoisted his puddler, then waited until they could hear the faint blatt of the motorcycle engine.



"Cover your ears," Ahn-Kha said.



The gun boomed. Gail screamed. Valentine watched the motorcycle light shift, wink out.



"That'll learn 'em," Duvalier said.



Valentine put the car in gear again. He watched the colon blink on the dashboard clock. Had all this happened in only twenty minutes?



He pushed the Lincoln, daring himself to wreck it, locked on to a distance a hundred yards in front of the car as if watching for downed tree limbs was the be-all, and end-all of his life. Which it might be, if he struck a big enough object in the dark.



"They're still behind," Ahn-Kha observed ten minutes, or six hundred or so clock flashes, later. "Gaining, it would appear. Perhaps they have Hummers."



"Shouldn't have shot that poor Cup," Thatcher said. "They wouldn't be after us like this otherwise. I bet there's a locator in this rig."



"You people are crazy," Gail said. "They say I'm the one who causes problems. They must have never met you." Her voice sounded raw and tired.



Valentine crossed legworm trail after legworm trail, recent mounds with just the beginnings of growth on them.



Ahn-Kha coughed again. "My David, I have a suggestion."



"I don't want to hear it," Valentine shot back.



"They are going to catch up with this truck sooner or later. Would it not be better if we weren't all in it when they did?"



"Ahn-"



"Let him talk," Duvalier said.



"I cannot walk far. Let me lead them on a wild Grog hunt. When they catch up, I will grunt and pretend that I am simple. They will think a trick has been played, that a poor dumb Grog has been put at the wheel to lead them away."



"Lots of Grogs know how to drive. They're good at it," Thatcher said.



Valentine looked at Duvalier, but she wasn't listening, or was only half listening. Her lips were moving in steady rhythm.



"Four minutes behind," she said. "I marked that hilltop."



She began to fiddle with her explosive-packed Spam cans, a detonator, and a fuse. She threw one out on one side of the road, and then the other went into the opposite ditch.



"You'll have to get royal-flush lucky to take one of them out," Thatcher said.



"I'm not trying for that. I just want to fool them into thinking they've been ambushed."



Valentine drove past a burning barn, collapsed down to the foundation and mostly sending up smoke by now. The Lincoln plunged into a thicket and he had to slow down. He found another legworm track and cut off the road again, splashing through a stream. The wheels briefly spun as they came up the other side, then they were out into broken country again. Following the legworm trail, he found yet another farm service road running along a rounded, wooded hill. They were in real back country now. It would be dangerous to go off-road-not that the roads in this part of Kentucky were much better.



"They're still behind," Duvalier said.



Valentine wanted to wrench the steering wheel free of its mount, throw it out the window, turn around, and smash the Lincoln into their pursuers-



"Enough, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "Let me take the wheel."



"Val, it's the only way," Duvalier said.



"Alright. But I'm coming with you."



"No," Ahn-Kha said. "You've kept faith with me. You must still see Gail back. I may be able to fool them. With you, there will be too many questions."



Valentine stopped the Lincoln in the middle of the road. "We have to hurry. Everyone out. Thatcher, don't forget your gun and duffel."



Ahn-Kha climbed out the back and came around to the driver's door, helping himself stand up by putting his long right arm on the side of the Lincoln, puddler cradled in his left. He was a mess, his back peppered with bandages and streaked in blood, a thick dressing on the back of his firepluglike thigh. Duvalier stopped before him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss one whiskered cheek. She looped her oversized canteen around the Golden One's neck. "I want this back, you hairy fuck. You hear me?"



Ahn-Kha murmured a few words into her ear.



"Oh, dream on," she laughed, wiping away tears.



Valentine could only stand, tired and fighting his headache, fiddling with his gun. Would it be better for their pursuit to come upon all their bodies, stretched out next to the flaming Lincoln? Perhaps with every dead hand posed with middle finger extended?



"We'll meet another dawn, my David," Ahn-Kha said as he reclined the driver's seat all the way so he could squeeze up front. He tossed the puddler onto the passenger seat.



"If we live to see another dawn," Valentine said.



"If not, we'll meet in a far better place," Ahn-Kha said. One ear rose a trifle.



"Good luck, old horse," Valentine said. He placed his forehead against Ahn-Kha's, hugged him, felt the rough skin and the strangely silky hair on his upper back.



Ahn-Kha squeezed the back of his neck and the Lincoln drove away.



"Off the road! Fast," Valentine said. Issuing orders in his old command voice, then picking a route up the hill, kept him from staring after the receding Lincoln. The best friend Valentine ever had, or would ever have, left only a little blood on the road. "Thatcher, lead them up that hillside."



Duvalier pulled the whining, pregnant Gail Foster into the bush, opening a gap in the bramble with her walking stick. Dr. Boothe and Pepsa followed her, Pepsa searching anxiously down the road for their pursuers. Valentine spotted one of Duvalier's Spam cans, unopened and unwired, left in the center of the road, and picked it up with a curse.



Valentine closed the gap in the brush behind them by forcing a few tree limbs down, and limped after his party, giving his tears their time.



Halfway up the hill they froze and counted the pursuit. A column rolled up the slight incline: another motorcycle, two Hummers, a pickup with dogs in it, and two five-ton trucks. A platoon of Wolves or a team of Bears could knock hell out of them, but he and Duvalier would waste themselves against it.



Without Ahn-Kha's reliable strength alongside him, he felt like a piece of his spine had been plucked out.



"He did it," Duvalier said as they saw the pursuit convoy crest another rise in the distance.



They crested the hill, and thanks to its commanding view Valentine went through Thatcher's inventory. He'd brought some good topographical maps of Kentucky, and between the two of them they made a good guess as to where they were. Several lights could be seen between the hill and the northern horizon, but they were so distant he couldn't tell if they were electric or burning homes.



"What do you suppose that is?" Duvalier asked, pointing southwest.



"I don't see anything," Boothe said, but she couldn't without Cat eyes.



A garbage pile, perhaps? It looked like a plate of spaghetti the size of a football field.



"That's a legworm dogpile," Valentine said. "Look at all the tracks."



"What, that hump down there?" Thatcher said, squinting to try to make out what they were talking about. "I saw three of them all tangled up once after a snowstorm."



"Let's get off this ridge," Valentine said. "Take a closer look. Maybe some of their tribe is around."



Valentine pointed out a tree at the bottom of the hill, and had Thatcher find a path toward it. Gail's breathing was labored and Duvalier gave her the walking stick. Valentine hung back to check the rest spot, and waved Duvalier over.



"You dropped this in the road," Valentine said, giving Duvalier back her can of explosive-filled meat.



She looked at it, puzzled, and whipped her bag off her back. The wing locks were still clicked shut. "Then it jumped out on its own."



"Someone left it?"



"Everyone was in a hurry to get out of the truck. Maybe it got kicked out in the confusion."



Valentine only remembered the sound of feet hitting the ground. "Let's not leave anything to luck, good or bad," he said.



They caught up to the others at the bottom of the hill, and walked out into the horseshoe-shaped flat with the legworm dogpile roughly in the center. What might have been utility poles at one time could be seen against the horizon, a few miles away. The peak of a funnel-topped silo and a barn roof showed.



Legworm trails crisscrossed the ground everywhere, but none looked or smelled fresh. Maybe their minders were on the other side of the valley.



Gail collapsed, crying. "Legs won't hold me up anymore."



Boothe listened to her heart and breathing with her stethoscope. "She's healthy, just out of condition."



"We can rest for a little," Valentine said.



Then need came, terrible need. Valentine felt them on the towering hill behind, moving like an angry swarm of bees.



Reapers.



They'd home in on the lifesign-he had a pregnant woman, and bitter experience told him that Kurians hungered for newborns like opiate addicts sought refined heroin; he might as well be running with a lit Roman candle-and that would be the end of them.



"We're in trouble," Valentine said.



"What-" Duvalier began.



"No time," he snapped. He handed her his rifle. "You and Thatcher head for those telephone poles. Doc, you and Pepsa go into those woods and find low ground. Lie flat, flat as you can." He tossed her Thatcher's 9mm.



"Reapers?" Duvalier asked.



"Coming down the hill." Boothe went as white as the cloud-hidden moon. "Hurry." He grabbed Gail's wrist. "I'll lead them off. Maybe I can lose them."



You won't. Too long until sunup.



"How?"



"Interference." Price's critter camouflage, writ in sixty-foot letters.



Valentine took Gail's wrist and pulled her to her feet.



"Hate this," she said. "I want to go to my room. Please? This endangers the baby."



He could feel them coming, but caution had slowed them, stalking lions reevaluating as the herd they'd been stalking scattered.



Gail's legs gave out. Valentine picked her up in a fireman's carry, hoping it was safe to carry an expectant woman this way.



"Those chain things sound like wind chimes. I like wind chimes," Gail said. "Are we going back to the Grands soon?"



"Very possible," Valentine said as he ran.



From a hundred feet away the legworm pile looked like a gigantic lemon pie with a lattice-top crust-baked by a cook who was stoned to the gills. The legworms had pushed banks of earth up into walls, forming the pie "tin," and had woven themselves at the top.



Valentine reached the bank and climbed up it, sending dirt spilling. He went down on one knee, set Gail on churned-up ground, and caught his breath.



They were coming again. After him. Fast.



"I don't want to run anymore," Gail said.



"Good. We need to crawl."



He pulled her beneath a smaller legworm's twisted body, back set to the elements, shaggy skin flapping in the wind like an old, torn poster. They descended into the dark tangle, and perceived a faint aqua glow from within.



Valentine felt like he was back in the ruins of Little Rock, negotiating one of the great concrete-and-steel wrecks of a building downtown. Legworms lay on top of each other everywhere, a sleeping pile of yellow-fleshed Pickup Sticks.



The air grew noticeably warmer as he pulled Gail deeper into the nest.



The legworms were not packed as tightly at the bottom. Valentine felt air move. He followed it, and the glow.



"Don't like this," Gail whispered.



"Don't blame you."



And came upon the eggs. The legworm bodies arched above and around, making a warm arena for their deposits.



About the size of a basketball, the eggs had translucent skin. The glow came from the growing legworm's underside; the soft "membrane" had blue filament-like etchings of light, transformed into aqua by the greenish liquid within the eggs.



"Smells like old laundry in here," Gail said.



"Shhh."



Valentine saw deep pock marks in the skins of the larger legworms at the center. The eggs must have dropped off. Black lumps, like unprocessed coal, lay scattered between the living eggs. Evidently only a few eggs made it to whatever stage of the metamorphosis they now enjoyed.



Stepping carefully, Valentine crossed the egg repository, hoping the baby legworms were giving off enough lifesign to confuse the Reapers' senses.



He heard-felt-sensed motion behind.



A string of Reapers entered the egg chamber, clad in their dark, almost bulletproof robes, the first staring about as if to make sense of the small glows and vast shadows.



Valentine shoved Gail toward an A-shaped arch in a legworm's midsection. She turned around to protest, and her big eyes grew even wider, until they seemed to fill her face.



Gail shrieked. She instinctively reached for him, putting his body in between herself and the others.



As one, six Reaper heads turned in their direction. Valentine drew his .22 target pistol.



The lead Reaper dismissed the threat with a wave, a grotesque wigwag of its double-jointed elbow. It had a burn-scarred face, making its visage that of a badly formed wax mask.



Valentine pointed the gun at Gail's head. She squeaked.



The Reapers spread out, but came no closer.



"keep calm, brother," the leader said in the breathy voice that always brought Valentine back to the terrors of the night Gabriella Cho died, "no one need die tonight, be warned: hurt her and we will peel off your skin and leave you raw and screaming."



He switched the sights of the pistol to the Reaper's yellow gimlet eye.



Valentine tried to still his hand.



"You believe you can stop me with that?"



"Not me," Valentine said.



And shot.



He aimed at an egg, shot, switched targets, and shot again, as quickly as he could pull the hair trigger. The gun felt like a cap pistol in his hand.



But the bullets had an effect.



They struck the eggs and tore through them, sending fluid flying, splattering the Reapers. The egg chamber suddenly smelled like old milk. He stifled a gag.



Evidently Reapers didn't get nauseated, or had poor noses- they just wiped at the fluid in disgust.



All around, legworm digits twitched like fluttering eyelashes.



Valentine dropped the empty gun as he ran, pulling Gail along behind. Tons of legworm righted itself and he threw her under it, dove, rolled, felt its legs on his back as he made it to the other side. Snapping noises like garden shears came from the egg area.



Valentine drew his legworm goad, buried it in the back of one as it began to roll, and pulled Gail tight to him as they ended up on its back.



The earthen bowl writhed with searching legworms.



Valentine anchored one of his cargo hooks in the loose skin atop the legworm, and looped a chain around Gail. Her white fingers gripped it while the legworm's back rose and fell as it negotiated the lip of the crater.



A Reaper flew through the air. Well, half of one. Its waist and legs were still on the ground.



Another jumped atop the back of a moving legworm and ran toward them like the hero of a Western on top of a train, arms out and reaching.



Two legworm muzzles rose from either side, one catching it by the head and arms, the other by its waist.



"Make a wish," Valentine said. Gail shifted position so that she wasn't resting on her belly, and gasped at the scene behind her.



The Reaper parted messily.



More legworms carefully stabbed down with their muzzles, lifted them covered with black goo and shreds of black cloth, then stabbed down again.



"Help!" Gail screamed.



A bony, blue-veined Reaper hand gripped her leg, pulling her off the legworm.



She clutched at Valentine and the securing chain. He shifted his grip on his legworm goad. He brought down the crowbarlike shovel edge on the Reaper's head. Skin peeled back, revealing a black, goo-smeared skull.



The Reaper made a sideways climb, more like a spider than a man, still pulling at Gail so hard that Valentine feared both she and the baby would be divided between the antagonists in Solomonic fashion.



Valentine crossed the shimmying legworm back, jumping as the Reaper swung its free arm. He buried the goad in the forearm holding Gail, and the Reaper released its grip.



Stars-a ringing sound-pain.



The Reaper had struck him backhand across the jaw. Something felt horribly loose on the left side of his head; bone held only by skin sagged at the side of his face. Valentine blindly swung with the goad as he backpedaled, then lost his balance. This time Gail screamed as he clutched at her to keep from falling off.



Valentine's vision cleared and he saw, and worse, felt, the Reaper straddling him. The goad was gone, his pistol was gone. He put up a hand against the tongue already licking out of the Reaper's mouth. It pulled his shirt open.



Valentine groped at his belt. He had another cargo hook. . . .



Gail struck the Reaper across the back of its neck with her hands interlocked, but it ignored her the way it would a butterfly alighting.



Valentine brought up the cargo hook-feeling the pointed tongue probe at his collarbone-and buried the hook into the Reaper's jaw, returning pain for pain. He pulled, desperate, and the black-fanged mouth closed on its own tongue.



The Reaper's eyes widened in surprise and the tongue was severed. The cut-off end twitched on Valentine's bare chest. Valentine slid and gripped the Reaper by its waist with his legs. It brought up its bad arm to try to pull the hook out, fumbling with the chain.



Valentine pulled, hard, putting his back muscles into the effort, straining-God, how his jaw hurt as he gritted his teeth-the Reaper looking oddly like a hooked bass with eyes glazed and confused-hurt it bad enough and the Kurian shuts down the connection?-and the Reaper's jaw came free in a splatter of blood. The Reaper swung at his eyes but Valentine got a shoulder up. He punched, hard, into the open wound at the bottom of its head and groped with his hand wrist-deep in slimy flesh. He dug with fingers up the soft palate.



The Reaper's eyes rolled back into its skull as he squeezed the base of its brain like a sponge.



Gail whacked it again and it toppled off the back of the legworm. Valentine sucked in air and pain with each breath.



"You look funny," Gail said.



"I bet I do," Valentine said, though it hit his ears as "I et I oo." Valentine examined his chest. The tiny wound from the Reaper's tongue had a splattering of Reaper blood all around it. It itched. He tore up some of the fiberglass-like legworm skin and blotted the tarry substance away.



The legworm they rode waved its snout in the air as it hurried around the perimeter of the pushed-up earth. When it slowed to re-descend into the pit, Valentine removed his first cargo hook, used it to lower Gail, and dropped off himself. He retrieved his goad and the other cargo hook.



This time she clung to him as he carried her, running for the telephone poles.



* * * *



Valentine heard voices, and turned toward the sound.



"I can't believe you used me as bait," Thatcher said.



"I got it, didn't I?" Duvalier chided.



"A second later and it would have popped my head off."



"Uh-uh. I never leave less than a second and a half to chance, sweetie. Wait--"



The last was at the sound of Valentine setting Gail on her feet again.



"It's us," Valentine said, holding his jaw. He came into what might pass for a clearing-thick grasses rather than trees-around an old barn. The telephone poles lined a road like the Roman crucifixes on the Via Appia.



Duvalier knelt down, working.



Valentine stepped up and found what he expected, a headless Reaper.



"Hell, Val," Duvalier said.



"Uf igh," Valentine tried. "Rluff nigh."



Thatcher seemed lost in his own thoughts as he stared at the Reaper corpse. "You should have seen it-the Reaper was coming for me. I tried to fire but my gun was on safety, and before I could even flick off it reached, and there she was behind it."



"Big tactic," Duvalier said, examining the robe she had stripped off the Reaper for black-and poisonous-subcutaneous fluid. "Lying in the grass like a snake."



"You're one of those . . . one of those Hunter-things," Thatcher said.



"You have a problem with that?" Duvalier asked.



"Offerz," Valentine garbled. "Oturs."



"The others?" Duvalier said. "I dunno. I didn't hear any screams."



"Are there any more around?" Thatcher asked.



"Ope nog," Valentine said.



Thatcher took a better grip on his gun and looked warily around. "How do you know?"



"He knows," Duvalier said. "He just knows. Leave it at that." She gave him his rifle back, as though glad to give up an unpleasant burden.



"Can we sleep soon? How about in that barn?" Gail asked.



Valentine waved tiredly. "Attitude, Gail," Duvalier said.



"Stick the attitude. My feet are killing me," she said hotly.



"I think she's getting better," Thatcher said.



* * * *



It took them a while to find the trail of Dr. Boothe and Pepsa. Valentine found their marks in the long grasses. They'd cut over to a legworm trail and followed it up the hillside.



"What are they going back in that direction for?" Thatcher asked.



Valentine shrugged, resolved to communicate with hand signals. Gail groaned as they started up the hill.



They caught up to the pair, Boothe hiking along behind Pepsa carrying the gun in one hand, her medical bag slung.



Valentine elbowed Duvalier, pointed, and made a T with his hands. She nodded and slipped into the bushes, gripping her walking stick like an alert samurai carrying his sword.



"What's the matter?" Thatcher asked, keeping his voice low.



Valentine found he could whisper coherently. He spoke into Duvalier's ear.



"Something's wrong," she said. "Somebody's been giving us away."



Back in the legworm valley, Valentine heard hoofbeats. Two legworms and perhaps a dozen men on horseback were investigating events in the pit. They looked like native Kentuckians intermingled with Grogs.



"Let's catch up," Duvalier said.



They went up the hill as quickly as Gail's weary, unsteady legs would allow.



The vets must have heard them coming. Both turned around. Pepsa looked frightened.



Boothe brought up the pistol and pointed it between them.



Shit. Guessed wrong. Why didn't I just shoot the pair of them?



Because they might not be in it together.



"Hey, Doc, it's us," Thatcher said.



"Guns! Drop them," Boothe said. The gun shook in her hands as she pointed. Tears streamed down her face.



Tears? Why would a Kurian agent cry?



"Epsah!" Valentine shouted, shouldering his rifle, sighting on the first Kurian agent he had ever looked upon.



The U-gun burned. Its stock burned him, the trigger guard; he felt the flesh on his hands cook; the agony of the steam in the Kurian Tower redoubled and poured through his nervous system. Drop it, all he could do was drop the gun.



Don't~think~so, a voice in his head said.



Thatcher brought up his rifle-what the hell?-the burning agony left, relief and wonder at freedom from pain but why was Thatcher shouldering his rifle with the barrel pressed to his collarbone and the butt pointed at Pepsa



Krrak!



Blood and bone flew from Thatcher's shoulder, the gun fell, the spent cartridge casing spun and before it completed its parabola Duvalier was out of the Kentucky grass, sword held up and ready



Stupid ~ bitch!



Duvalier screamed, dropped her sword, jumped back from it as though it were a snake striking-



Valentine grabbed his short legworm pick, lunged up the hill.



Boothe turned her gun at Pepsa, no, not at her, at a patch of dark shortleaf pine behind her, and fired.



Behind him Thatcher screamed. Valentine was still three strides away, the pain came, the legworm pick lightning in his hands . . . no, fire, hot blue flame that burned-



Lies. They fight with lies. Lies can't change steel to flame.



He raised the pick, screaming in agony, fighting the pain with sound.



You ~ dumbfuck ~ terrorists, Pepsa said between his ears.



And he threw, sent the pick spinning at her, watched it hit, saw the point bury itself in one fleshy breast, a gurgle, went to Boothe, took the hot gun from her shaking hand, pointed and fired



Where ~ are ~ you ~ lord?



Another shot, HEEELP ~ the ~ burn! the gun clicked empty, even as she toppled over he straddled her, hitting her with the pistol butt, silencing the screaming from between his ears by caving in her skull and the awful warble of her tongueless mouth, but nothingness yawned beneath him like a chasm, he felt himself tottering at the edge of an abyss.



Duvalier picked him up off her corpse, pulled him out of the darkness. Hoofbeats. The loom of riders in the darkness. Words, Boothe bending over Thatcher, applying pressure as Duvalier waved the riders over. Finally the strange emptiness in his head left, and he could distinguish faces again.



"Haloo, Bulletproof. You're far from home. What hospitality can fellow tribesmen offer?"



* * * *



They bartered the Reaper's robe for transport and found their way back to the Bulletproof. In a few days they again knew Kentucky hospitality in a chilly, Z-shaped valley fed by artesian springs, his jaw braced and bandaged with baling wire by Boothe. Valentine learned to appreciate smashed cubes of legworm flesh, slathered in barbecue sauce sucked through a straw. He also got mashed squash, pumpkin, and corn, eating out of the same pot as the resident babies.



A giggling nursing mother offered him a spare teat after feeding her daughter. It hurt to laugh.



Once his jaw knit he borrowed an old-fashioned horse, loaded up a second with grain and dried meat, and rode out to where he had last seen Ahn-Kha. He left a stoppered bottle of Bulletproof bourbon at Grog-eye level with a note to his friend, telling him where they were wintering until warmth allowed travel again. He tried to learn what had happened to Ahn-Kha and his pursuing column, but only found some shattered glass and debris that might have been from a motorcycle eight miles away.



The fruitless search left him moody and depressed. His tender mouth troubled him every time he spoke and ate, and a fragment of mirror showed that his jawline now had an uneven balance to it thanks to the break. The only bright spot was Gail Foster's transformation into a convivial, charming woman, though she remained a little pallid, even on the hearty Bulletproof cooking. She looked as though she were about to have twins. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a woman with such a wide belly after the baby dropped.



The baby came on December 22.



Duvalier woke Valentine and passed him a hot cup of grassy-tasting tea. "Gail's water broke. Our vet is attending. Suki's there too."



She brought him to a modest, pellet-stove-heated home that served as a sickroom for the local Bulletproof.



Suki was a Bulletproof midwife. She was young, perhaps a year or two older than Valentine, but had a calming effect on Gail brought about by nothing more than her quiet voice and cups of the honey-filled silvery cinqefoil tea she brewed. Gail had given birth once before, but remembered nothing of the event but gauzy business on the other side of her screened lap.



Valentine went in and saw Gail lying on her side with her knees drawn up and buttocks at the edge of the hammocklike "birthing bed." He gripped her hand through a contraction, sponging the sweat from her forehead when it was over. She'd soaked through her shirt even in the winter cool.



"I wish Will was here," she gasped. "He always ..." The words trailed off.



Valentine wrung out the sponge. "Will never forgot about you for a moment. Your husband wasn't the man you thought. Or he was. You'll understand when you see him again."



She smiled and nodded.



"First we have to get your baby into the world. Can do?"



"Can do," she agreed.



But you can't be there to see it. This trip, the risks. You'll never see a payoff. You could just as well have driven away with Ahn-Kha. You can never walk down an Ozark highway again. You're condemned by your own actions, an exile.



"She's quit dilating," Boothe said, bringing Valentine out of his thoughts with a flash of guilt over what Gail must be experiencing. She had a short flashlight attached to her forehead: a medical unicorn. "I'm going to C-section. Pe-Suki, get me the tray I laid out in the kitchen."



Valentine got out of the way as the midwife came in with the tray.



"Suki, keep her chin up."



Boothe poured a shot glass full of Bulletproof, then added a couple of drops of ether to it. She tipped it into a fist-sized wad of cotton.



"Have her breathe this," she said, handing the mask to Suki. Gail inhaled the mixture.



"Christmas baby. You were almost a Christmas baby," Gail said as the ether took effect.



"Enough," Dr. Boothe told Suki. "Gail, keep looking at the ceiling. Over before you know it." Valentine watched her focus on Gail's belly, steadying the scalpel.



Valentine watched, relieved and fascinated at the same time, as the scalpel opened Gail just above the pelvis.



"Coming now. Your baby's doing fine," Boothe said.



Valentine couldn't help but think about Malia. What had Amalee's birth been like? The sweet, burning scent of ether in the air, along with blood, sweat, and amniotic fluid?



God, do they all look like that?



Boothe pulled out a froglike creature, narrow, legs drawn up tight, arms folded like a dead insect's, brachycephalic skull all the more unreal as the doctor held it upside down. "Oh, Christ."



A baleful yellow eye, slit-pupiled, peered at him from a face pinched by internal agony. It hissed, fought for breath.



Gail Foster Post had given birth to a Reaper.



Suki backed away, hand over her mouth.



"Boy or a girl?" Gail said, then, when there was no reply, "What? What?"



Boothe showed her.



"Get it away from me!" Gail screamed. "Bastards! Lying bastards!" Her words trailed off into sobs.



"Stay still," Boothe ordered. "Suki, put three more drops in another shot glass."



"Give it to me," Valentine said, extending a towel. He took the struggling infant-cleaned its sexless body.



"What a mess. Tearing everywhere in the uterus," Boothe said. "I hope I can fix this." She turned her light on Valentine. "Just pinch its nose and mouth shut. Bury it outside."



Valentine took the infant out into the December air, instinctively holding it close against the chill. He looked at the blood-smeared face, purple and green and blue, crisscrossed with veins, horror in miniature. Black nails, impossibly tiny, gleamed wetly as it moved its hand.



The future death machine coughed.



Did yellow eyes make you evil? A pointed tongue?



"Do you have a soul?" someone asked, using his larynx, tongue, and mouth.



Valentine wondered if he'd directed the question to the newborn or to himself. Tiny nostrils, long little jaw; he could smother it one-handed.



My DNA is 98% identical to a chimpanzee. How much code do I share with you?



However much, a tiny amount of it was Kurian. Evil.



Or Lifeweaver. The Dau'weem and Dau'wa shared however many gene pairs they possessed, thirty thousand or three million. They differed only in their opposition over vampirism.



Could he say a creature fresh from the womb deserved to die, thanks to its appearance?



Not appearance, design.



A newborn, innocence embodied in what felt like ten pounds of sugar. Harmless. But experience told him otherwise.



Songs of Innocence and Experience. William Blake.



Did he who made the Lamb make thee?



Valentine closed up the towel, protecting the newborn tiger against the chill. The Reaper's head turned, sensing something it liked in Valentine's wrist.



Valentine pushed his pulse point a little closer, offering.



Its mouth opened, latched on, and Valentine felt the prick of the sharp tongue. The penetration only hurt a little.



Softly, the Reaper fed.