Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“Gotta keep us close to the source of supply,” McDougald said.

“The source of supply,” O’Doull echoed. “Right.” That was cynical, too, which didn’t mean it was wrong.

Snyder, Texas, was a long way north of Baroyeca, Sonora. It could get just as hot, though. Hipolito Rodriguez didn’t know how or why that was so, but he knew it was. He’d seen as much in the summertime in Texas during the Great War.

It wasn’t summer yet, but the hot weather had arrived ahead of the season. Down in Baroyeca, he’d have worn a broad-brimmed straw sombrero, a loose-fitting cotton shirt, baggy trousers, and sandals. He would have been a lot more comfortable than he was in his gray guard uniform, too. The cap he had on didn’t keep the sun off him nearly well enough. And he especially hated his shiny black boots. He didn’t think he would ever get used to them. They pinched his feet at every step he took.

Nothing he could do about it, though. Guards had to stay in uniform. That was one of the rules, and nobody who didn’t stick to the rules had any business being a guard. Along with the rest of his squad, he stood by the train tracks that ran between Camp Determination and the new women’s camp alongside it.

Officially, the women’s camp was part of Camp Determination. Brigade Leader Pinkard-Rodriguez’s old war buddy-was in charge of it, too. Unofficially, the guards called the women’s half Camp Undecided. Despite being married to a thoroughly decisive woman, Rodriguez thought that was pretty funny.

All the guards carried submachine guns. Tower-mounted machine guns also bore on the disembarking point. Prisoners who tried anything cute ended up dead in a hurry. The overwhelming firepower on display helped persuade incoming Negroes that acting up wasn’t smart.

A big, swag-bellied Alabaman named Jerry pointed east down the track. “Look at the smoke,” he said. “Another load of niggers coming in.”

The sergeant in charge of the squad said, “Well, what the hell would we be cookin’ our brains for out here if there wasn’t another goddamn train comin’ in?” Tom Porter, like the men he led, was a Freedom Party guard, so his formal rank was troop leader, not sergeant, but he wore three stripes on the sleeve of his gray tunic, and he acted like every senior noncom Rodriguez had ever known.

Up in the towers, the machine guns swung toward the train when it was still a good half a mile off. A couple of the men in Rodriguez’s squad hefted their weapons. Other guards along the track also grew alert. Dog handlers patted their coon hounds. The dogs were called that because they were most often used to hunt raccoons. The men who used them here had a different sort of fun with the name.

Wheezing and groaning, the train slowed and then stopped. The locomotive had to date back to the turn of the century, if not further. Even in sleepy Sonora, it would have been an antique. More modern machines served closer to the front. This one would do for hauling mallates.

The passenger cars and freight cars it pulled had also seen better decades. Again, they were good enough for this. The passengers cars had shutters hastily nailed up outside their windows. That kept the blacks inside from looking out and people outside from looking in.

All the cars were locked from the outside. Tom Porter pointed to the two closest to his squad. “We’ll take ’em one at a time,” he said, “the front one first.” As he set his beefy hands on the latch, he added, “Be ready for anything. Niggers comin’ out, they’re liable to be a little crazy, or more than a little.”

When he opened the door, the first thing that rolled out was a ripe, rich stench: shit and piss and puke and stale, sour sweat. Rodriguez wrinkled his nose. Far too many people had been packed inside that passenger car for much too long. They came spilling out now, a jumble of misery, blinking and shading their eyes against the sudden harsh sunlight.

If you got the jump on them early, they usually didn’t get it back. “Move!” Porter screamed, and the other guards echoed him. “Men to the left! Women and pickaninnies to the right! Move, God damn you!”

They moved-the ones who could. Some just collapsed by the railroad car. Kicks and punches drove most of those to their feet. The rest were too far gone for even brutality to rouse. “Water!” one of them croaked in a dust-choked voice. “I gots to have water. Ain’t had no water since I dunno when.”

Rodriguez kicked him-not hard enough to cripple, just hard enough to make sure the mallate knew who was boss. “Get up!” he yelled. “No water here. Water inside the camp.” Slowly, the Negro struggled upright and stood swaying.

A plump black woman said, “Dey’s dead folks inside de car dere, poor souls.”

There usually were casualties on a journey like this. The cars carried six or seven times as many people as they were designed to hold. Food was whatever the Negroes managed to smuggle aboard the train. The windows wouldn’t open, and the shutters would have kept out most of the air if they had.

And, all things considered, this carload of blacks had it easy. They could have come to Camp Determination in a cattle car, the way a lot of Negroes in this train had. Nobody bothered cleaning cattle cars very well before loading people into them. They had no windows, shuttered or otherwise. They had no toilets, either, only a honey bucket or two. And they were so jammed with men, women, and children that getting to a honey bucket would have taken a small miracle.

A striking young woman with a dancer’s walk and high cheekbones that argued for an Indian grandparent sidled up to Rodriguez. “You keep me safe in here, I do anything you want,” she purred in a bedroom voice. “Anything at all. My name’s Thais. You look for me. I’m real friendly.”

“Go on. Get moving,” he said stonily, and her face fell. Like most of the guards, he heard something like what she’d said at least once whenever a train came in. Women thought it would help. Sometimes they were even right. Not here. Not now.

“Form lines! Bring your luggage! Form lines! Bring your luggage!” Like every squad leader, Tom Porter yelled the same thing over and over. “You gotta be searched! You gotta be deloused! You gotta be searched! You gotta be deloused!”

The searchers would take away all the weapons and all the valuables they found. That stuff was supposed to go back into the war effort. Some of it, maybe even most of it, did. The rest stuck to the searchers’ fingers. Searchers were senior men. They’d paid their dues, and now they were getting their reward. Some of them were getting to be wealthy men.

Slowly the lines formed. Even more slowly, they moved forward. Men and women too weak to rise in spite of calculated brutality lay by the railroad cars. “Get the stretcher parties out!” an officer shouted. “We’ll move them to the transfer facility!”

None of the guards laughed or winked or nudged one another. They’d got lessons about that. Never do anything to spook the spooks, one trainer had put it. The transfer facility was a killing truck. The only place they’d be transferred was the mass grave not far away. All the prisoners in Camp Determination were heading that way. The ones too weak to rise got an express ticket-that was the only difference.

Black men carried away the weaklings. The story the bearers got was that the trucks would take them to an infirmary a couple of miles away. The infirmary existed. Every once in a while, a Negro came back from it. That kept the inmates from flabbling about what happened to the ones who didn’t. More guards with submachine guns kept an eye on the stretcher bearers. But guards kept an eye on everybody all the time, so that didn’t seem out of the ordinary.