A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 62 "You're not going."

-and then the horror closed back in again. The new pictures were the most monstrous of all. All the names just faded back into unreality. Meaningless. As if by naming things, we could somehow understand or control them. Or take away their power to hurt. How stupid we'd been.

It was like smashing headfirst into a wall of pain.

-I broke away from the wall of monitors and turned back to the video display table where Lieutenant Siegel and Sergeant Lopez waited silently and respectfully for me.

Siegel indicated the map of the distant mandala. Several places were highlighted. "Here," he said. "We've located five sites." lie looked twitchy. He didn't look like the same Kurt C. Siegel of two weeks ago, who was ready to jump out of the rescue pod to go after Corporal Kathryn Beth Willig. This Siegel was unnerved. He'd seen something-maybe something about the map, or something about the mission, or maybe just something about the responsibility of deciding who lives and who dies-I didn't know what it was, but it worried me. It wasn't good to have doubts about the job. I could testify to that.

He realized I was studying him, and he looked across at me intently. "Something wrong?"

I shook my head slowly. "I don't know." And then, to his quizzical look, I had to explain. "I mean, I don't know anything anymore. Everything just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?" He didn't understand. I sighed, I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I confessed, "I'm really losing it, aren't I?"

"We all are," said Lopez. "It's the mission. It's the worms. Everybody's crazy."

"I wish you were right." I reached across the corner of the table and clapped her roughly on the shoulder in a gesture of masculine camaraderie.

She returned the stroke, patting me on the shoulder with a gentle, almost feminine grace. "Hang in there, boss man. You got a good lady lookin' out for you. She needs you to stay sane enough to look out for her too."

"It's that obvious, huh?"

Lopez shook her head. "Let's go to work, huh?"

I nodded, gratefully. "What's on the plate?"

"Five sites," repeated Siegel.

"Assessment?" I asked.

"You first," Siegel said. He punched up pictures from all five locations. "Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon."

I trade places with Lopez. I move around to the same side of the table and look at the pictures. They blur. Little boys like bunnydogs, pink and furry. Shocking erections. Fat women. Swollen. Pregnant girls with thick legs and thick lips and bloated breasts. All naked. Bunnymen humping on them like desperate monsters. Imps and demons. Where are the older boys? Where are the men? More pictures. Women like apes-three hundred kilos-enormous and strong. Little brown men like withered gnomes, grinning and ferocious. Eating, chewing the flesh off a human leg bone. Little red people. They look almost human. I can't tell what they are anymore. They chatter at each other in Indian languages, and the LI runs translations underneath. I want to vomit.

I reached past him and clicked off four of the images. "Infected. Infected. Infected. Infected."

"Alpha?" he asked.

We studied the pictures together. People. Mostly children. Thin. Clean skins. In a corral. Prisoners? We can't tell. The mood is different. Whatever was happening in the other sites, it hasn't happened here. Not yet.

"Colombians?"

Siegel nodded. "They're new. This corral was empty two days ago."

I looked at the pictures for a while longer. There was a little brown girl in a pink dress. She was an echo of all the little girls I'd ever seen in the world. She had black hair and big eyes and the smile of an angel. She was too innocent to be here. She was holding a baby in her lap-her little brother? The baby was crying, and she was trying to rock him and calm him. There were other children. The corral was filled with children. All of them with black hair and brown skin and beautiful eyes. All children have beautiful eyes. I thought of Holly and Tommy and Alec and Loolie and… all the rest of them, and my throat hurt so hard, I didn't know if I was crying or raging. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair! Where is the end to this madness?

I looked at Lopez, I looked at Siegel. They saw the look on my face and they both nodded grimly. Agreement.

"We'll need authorization."

Siegel and Lopez exchanged a quick glance. Meaningful. You tell him? No, you tell him.

"Excuse me-?" I asked. I looked from one to the other.

"You're not going," said Siegel. He sounded embarrassed.

"Uh, there must be something wrong with my hearing. It sounded like you said-"

"I'm sorry, Captain. But you're really not needed. And… I think I'd prefer to handle this one by myself."

"Did General Tirelli tell you not to let me-?" They both shook their heads too quickly. "You're lousy liars."

Lopez leaned across the corner of the table and spoke to me, low and intensely. "She didn't have to speak to us. We already had this discussion among ourselves. You've done your share. And it's killing you. A bite at a time. You're more valuable up here."

"No," I said. "I have to go with you."

"Listen to me, Captain," Siegel was speaking like a lieutenant now. "It's time to let it go."

I turned slowly and stared into his eyes. He held my gaze. A lifetime of meaning. The command had passed. We both knew it. He was right.

The reactions flooded up in burning waves. I felt so angry, I wanted to kill him. He'd pushed me aside. Rejected. Old. Unneeded. Unwanted. All the emotions flashed like road signs.

But-he was right. We all knew it. It wasn't my job anymore. And there were all the other reactions too. Relief. Gratefulness. Gratitude that it was him and not me-gratitude that this time I wouldn't have to give the orders.

Finally, Siegel nodded in gentle confirmation and broke the moment.

I let out my breath. I leaned forward over the video table, looking at the display again, but not really seeing it, looking off, looking back. They waited politely beside me, waiting for me to speak. At last, I shrugged and scratched my head and said more easily than I'd expected to, "Well… you'll still need authorization."

"You'll talk to the general?"

I nodded. "She's already expecting me."

Siegel put one big hand on my shoulder and patted gently. Lopez put a smaller hand, but just as hard, on my other shoulder. It was a moment of farewell camaraderie, and I hated them both for it. I hated them almost as much as I loved them. We'd been through too much together. It wasn't fair that they should go on without me-and at the same time, it was. If I'd done my job right, teaching them, training them, coaching them, then this was the payoff. It still hurt.

I swallowed hard. "I guess… I'd better go see the general." I straightened up from the table, turned around, studied them both. "If you guys fuck up and get eaten by worms, I'll never speak to either one of you again."

"That's fer sure," grinned Siegel.

Lopez followed me to the door of the observation bay, catching up to me just inside the corridor. "Y'know, for a gringo, you're not half bad. Your general's a lucky lady." And then Lopez surprised me. She stood up on her tiptoes to give me a good-luck kiss that left us both blushing.