Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

“Stop, Doctor!” Lamont said.

Salah kept walking, waiting for Lamont to seize him, or to order Berman to do so. Would she? Of course. Would the McGuires try to stop that? Probably not; their investment in this was minimal. They weren’t the kind of men who avoided danger, but neither did they look possessed of humanitarian impulses. If Berman or Lamont fought with Salah, there was no doubt whatsoever that Salah would lose.

The order didn’t come. It took a moment before Salah realized why. Lamont was protecting the second-expedition members, but only those he considered fully human. Despite his posturing, he really didn’t care what happened to Salah as long as they had Claire as doctor.

Towel-head. Dune coon. Camel fucker. Salah had heard them all.

Just as they reached the edge of the camp, Salah looked back at Lamont. He couldn’t see the lieutenant’s face under his helmet and behind his goggles. But his stance was completely different from the man who’d bristled with irritable exhaustion last night. Lamont stood with alert confidence, every line of him controlled and full of power.

Why?

The camp had not been told that the vaccine was coming today, to avoid any organized rush. Nor did the refugees know that only children would be receiving the limited supplies of vaccine. But as the nine people approached from the compound, tents opened and men rushed out, stared, ducked back in. Women starting their morning cook fires stopped, eyes even wider than evolution had provided. Noah began in loud Kindred, “I greet you! We bring a gift for your children, who carry the hopes of all our futures—”

It had begun.

The sun disappeared behind the looming clouds, and the wind smelled of rain.

Owen was different this morning.

Leo knew it as soon as he saw the lieutenant, and immediately he knew why. Shit. Well, not Leo’s call, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t done it himself. Only once, though. Once was enough.

His eyes met Zoe’s as they went through weapons check, and then cut sideways to Owen. Leo raised his eyebrows. Zoe, grim, gave a small nod and put on her helmet.

They crouched on top of the roof, Zoe with her SCAR and Leo with the long-range sniper rifle. The nine people in the vaccinating groups crossed the perimeter. Salah Bourgiba was among them, which surprised Leo, but Owen hadn’t stopped the doctor and that, too, was Owen’s call. A sudden fragment from last night’s conversation with Isabelle invaded his mind: Damn, Leo, you’re almost Kindred yourself in the way you accept authority! She’d been teasing, but somehow the remark stung a little anyway.

She was there, too, walking beside Bourgiba. Now Isabelle, Josh McGuire, and a Kindred scientist split off from the rest and headed slightly north, toward a group of tents where three women stood outside, little kids in their arms or clinging to their legs. Leo moved his scope slightly in that direction.

The camp started to boil. That’s how Leo pictured it—a big pot of water that usually simmered but now started to bubble faster, throwing off heat and steam. Some men and women went into tents; some came out of them. Groups formed, dissolved, reformed. Steve McGuire, bulky next to the slim Kindred, stood between Llaa^moh¡ and a woman who was screaming at her. Noah Jenner gestured as he talked with a group of men. Isabelle put her hand on a woman’s arm, probably trying to persuade her to let them vaccinate her child. The woman first waggled her chin, which meant no, and then moved her head side to side, which—it had taken Leo a while to adjust to this—meant yes. She held out the kid, who immediately opened its mouth to scream.

“Christ,” Zoe muttered, too low for the radio to pick up. “Chaos.”

Owen said, “Brodie, report.”

“No weapons visible, not yet. A group of men forming at eleven o’clock, they look angry. People rushing from tent to tent, probably spreading the news about vaccinating just kids.”

“Copy. Berman, see anything different?”

“Seems there are more people total than yesterday. Maybe snuck in at night.”

“Brodie?”

“Could be. Hard to be sure.”

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

But there was. Leo saw the Kindred cops he’d sort of recruited, Lu^kaj^ho and three others, moving through the crowd. They had on the cloaklike things they wore for rain, although it wasn’t raining. Did that mean they had weapons underneath? That wasn’t part of what Leo had, laboriously, instructed them to do, and not part of Kindred life as Isabelle described it. Although Kindred life was obviously changing as it—maybe—came to an end.

“Something going on now at ten o’clock, four hundred yards,” Leo said. “A group of men wearing cloaks, possible weapons underneath, moving toward Noah Jenner’s group—no, they went into a tent.”

Tension prickled Leo’s skin like lice. For ten minutes, nothing happened. The three groups from the compound explained, argued, stuck syringes into kids. Women without kids in tow moved from tent to tent. Were they just spreading news, or were carrying messages about an attack? If Lu^kaj^ho detected the latter, he would signal Leo.

Jenner’s and Bourgiba’s groups moved farther into the camp; Isabelle’s still worked the tents closer to the perimeter. The air filled with the cries of children, mingling with those of birds wheeling overhead.

No, not birds—these were closer to reptiles, Isabelle had told him, and were called… something that began with B or maybe P…

Then it all happened at once.

Lu^kaj^ho raised his arm in signal to Leo. Three different groups of men, boys, and a few women, all cloaked, emerged from three scattered tents and walked purposefully toward the perimeter. Two of them took a circuitous route, keeping groups of people or tents or vaccinators between themselves and the compound. The third, moving faster, came directly on.

“Here they come!” Zoe said.

Owen said, “The first motherfucker that sets one toe onto the perimeter, open fire.”

Get down, Isabelle! But she didn’t. She saw the men and began running toward them, leaving the Kindred scientist holding a child with Steve McGuire standing beside him. Did Isabelle think she could talk down this group? No chance…. Leo knew a full-out-fucking-serious attack when he saw it.

A man rushed into the open zone and Leo dropped him.

He hoped that would stop it. It didn’t. The others hit the dirt but they didn’t open fire. One of the men not in the group ran into the perimeter, pulled something from his cloak, and hurled it at the compound. Steve McGuire, closest, pulled a gun and fired, but someone else shot him in the back.

A bomb—the fucker had hurled a bomb. He would find out soon enough that a Molotov wasn’t going to stop anything. These people had no idea what ordnance was, they couldn’t make anything that could—

It wasn’t a Molotov. A huge explosion at the east door blew out the wall of the compound, knocking Leo off the roof. He fell eight feet and landed hard, but a second later was on his feet, still clutching his rifle. Smoke thick as cotton filled the air. Leo coughed and stumbled, unable to see anything. Gunfire from above—Zoe was still firing. Kandiss and Owen, they’d been right in front of the east door….

Figures rushed past him in the smoke and flying debris. The compound was breached and enemy flowed inside in search of more vaccine… was there any more? Incongruously, Leo realized he didn’t know.

All this took only a nanosecond. Then some of the smoke cleared and Leo was firing at the enemy still running toward the compound. When they either were dead or had turned tail, he turned toward the east door. Kandiss lay there, his huge body still, and an insurgent was raising a pipe gun to fire. Leo swung his weapon around. But before he could shoot, a crack! came from his right and the enemy fell. Leo spun around. Isabelle stood there, blackened from smoke and dirt, holding Steve McGuire’s gun.