Reluctance, Part 5
by Martin H Slusser

Jim came to a small bridge that spanned a wide pile of rubble and trash. He leaned out of the door, whispered hard, and then drove over it into a wide space filled with brush and weeds.

A group came from the rubble, surrounding them.

Tossing aside the helmet, Jim let one man give him the embrazo, a hard, back pounding hug. None spoke as they moved away with Benny.

The group converged on the vehicle. The tires went first, then the body. When they came to the computer, a man rushed in with a battery to link it. The computer was handed to a man on a bicycle.

An older, lean man said, “Drowned in the River.”

The bicyclist shot away.

Benny muttered and tried to move, but the legs were numb. He choked, hacked up phlegm, and spat it out.

Kat grinned. “Hey, kid. Remember me?”

Sighing and trying to walk, Benny shook his head.

“How soon they forget.” She chuckled.

Under a slab of bricks and cement, a thin light glowed. They went on hands and knees, dragging Benny with them. Armed guards checked them with hand-held snoopers, then passed them through. The opening led into a narrow, crooked hallway.

A child led them to a wide room where several hundred people slept or talked in quiet tones.

Benny was lain on a clean pallet and stripped of the uniform. That disappeared into the hands of a tall man.

“Got uses for all an’ ever’thing,” he said, grinning. “May-haps not fit me, but Sis she can wear.”

“God help us.”

With a vigorous nod, the man said, “An’ amen. How the boy?”

Benny was staring at him. His mouth moved. Kat leaned close to listen. Her eyes widened, and her skin burned a hot red. She scowled and gave Benny a light smack on one cheek.

“He . . . ah, he said he is not a boy.”

The man snorted a laugh. “An’ much the more. I know. I was a young idjit my own self, a long time back and gone.”

With a slap on the back for Jim, he moved into the uncertain light and was gone.

“Um, where can I sleep?” Kat asked. “The pallet is too small –”

Grinning, Jim pulled a shelf out of the wall. On it slumped a worn mattress and one long pillow.

“You’re suite, ma’am. Would Madame care for a pre-sleep massage?”

Eyes wide, Kat said, “Why, Jim. I thought you’d never ask.”

“Lady,” he said, teasing and weary, “I have. A thousand million times in a hundred different ways. Even thought of begging once or twice.”

“Yeah, but you never asked with a gun on your hand, did you?”

He glanced down at the gun. Mouth opening in apology, he started to speak. Placing a hand over his mouth, Kat slid into his arms.

“I’m a nurse. We like an efficient man,” she said, her lips soft on his.

Benny lay with the soft sounds of love- making coming from the shelf over his head. He slid a hand beneath his back until he found a sharp pain and began to massage it, working at it till the swelling was reduced a little. He tried twitching his toes, and they moved. His foot came up off the pallet as he sweated.

Then the other.

Exhausted, he let himself rest and dozed off dreaming of a cheap shack of a house and a whore that was a sad, sweet beauty.

Sue was awake. She glanced up and smiled at her personal guardian ghost.

“Hey, man.”

The apartment block was emptied of people. The spec-ops Agent Creel gritted his teeth and called the hotline in Cindy VanTur’s office.

She was out, thank all the gods of the Party. The adam’s apple in a long, skinny neck bobbed a few times.

“Chief? A false alarm.” Creel winced and tried to force more words out. The line went dead. Shambling back to the car, he left a message for the police working under them and went to a hotel to wait.

It was just past dawn when someone tapped on the door of the room.

Inside, Creel rolled from this bed and came up with an older weapon, a .45, but it worked well enough.

“ID,” he shouted. The wall next to the door glowed showing a tall, blond younger man in a well-cut suit. The legend stated Mike’s rank, and Creel’s eyes widened. Special Operations Agent Mike Donnelly. Rank: Colonel. Special Adviser to Chief Agent VanTur, Cindy McAllen. Graduate cum laude University North Carolina. Pulled out of the ranks of special forced unit 505 with the rank of Captain. The list went on and on in pale green letters that burned the eyes.

Creel blinked. “Open,” he said, rising from the floor with the .45 hanging at his side.

The door slid to one side, and Mike stepped in. He glanced around and only then at the other agent.

“Get dressed,” he said, his voice soft and of the North Carolina tidewater district. “We have work to do.”

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