John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“On the way where?” Bonham asked.

“Our bunker.” Hard-Eyes was scanning the rooftops.

“Hey,” Rickenharp said, sounding like a kid at his aunt’s picnic basket, “you got any goodies in that pod? Like coffee? Freeze-drieds? Fresh water?”

“It’s all here in my pack,” Kurland said brightly. Trying to sound helpful.

“Put out the light.” Hard-Eyes said suddenly.

Claire switched the flashlight off. They looked to see what he was staring at.

Lights were approaching over the ravaged skyline. “Jumpjet.” Rickenharp said. “The trucks’ll be right behind.” He turned to Hard-Eyes. “Let’s make for the metro —”

Hard-Eyes hissed, “Run! The bastard’s moving in!”

The wedge shape of the jumpjet was approaching with jerky movements; like a dragonfly, darting ahead, pausing, darting ahead. Now and then it stopped in midair to shine its spots on the ground, moving on slowly now, tacking the light along the path—stopping to hover over the pod.

Hard-Eyes and Rickenharp, Claire and Bonham and Kurland ran through the shadows. They ran down a six-foot-deep erosion ravine toward the rue Botzaris. Across Botzaris, hot with exertion now, they made their way gasping through a maze of abandoned, rotting furniture spilled from the back of a deserted, wheel-less furniture truck, then down the rue de la Villette toward the metro station. Hard-Eyes heard Claire cursing between gasps. This was probably not what she expected to find on Earth.

When they got to the metro entrance, Claire switched on the flashlight, and they ran down the steps. They paused in the rubble at the bottom to catch their breath. It was an eerie, oppressive place in the glow of the flashlight. “We’ll have to crawl to get past the rubble here,” Rickenharp said. “But after a few feet it opens up, we can walk…”

Claire dropped the flashlight, and sobbed out of the darkness. Bonham picked up the light, and touched her face to comfort her. Hard-Eyes felt strange, seeing that. He didn’t like Bonham touching her.

Neither did she. She slapped his hand away. Her voice was cracked as she said, “I’m… it’s stupid to cry now.”

“Good a time as any,” Hard-Eyes said. “We can sit down for a few minutes, we’re under cover now.” He tugged her wrist, and she hunkered down to sit on a slab of broken concrete, atop the rubble heap.

The flashlight was pointed downward; he could just make out her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. “I don’t know…” she muttered. “But God… I wanted to come back so bad… But it’s so strange here, it’s like… it’s heavy and cold and exposed… and it’s worse than the Colony…”

“Not worse,” Rickenharp said. “We got a sky here. And there’s parts of the planet—big parts—the war hasn’t touched. You hang in there, you can go see ’em.”

Hard-Eyes said nothing. Let her believe it. But the chances were, none of them would get out of Paris alive. After a while, she said, “Okay. Let’s go.” Her voice was steady now. Hard-Eyes took the flashlight, and they went on.

Walking down the tunnel. Flashlight beam flaring the red eyes of rats, spotlighting fist-sized mutant roaches.

Rickenharp sighed, world-weary, when Claire fell in beside Hard-Eyes.

“What’s at your… headquarters?” Claire asked.

Hard-Eyes snorted. “Headquarters consists of a hundred raggedy guys and a few women sitting in the basement of a bombed-out apartment building. Cleaning guns, arguing politics, reading. Playing cards with a deck that’s wearing see-through. Guys from every nationality… Most of them speak English. It’s not cozy there, but we got some chemheaters, ersatz coffee, small store of canned food. Now and then we find somebody’s hoard in the ruins… We got to turn down this tunnel, we can’t go on that way ’cause the tunnel’s collapsed…”

“Your friend said something about the SA.”

“Fashes. Neofascists.”

“The Second Alliance.”

He looked at her. “That’s right.”

She laughed bitterly. “We have that particular species of cockroach on the Colony, too. They took over. A coup, really. They’re calling it an emergency police action. When we left they’d overrun everything. They’re in complete control there now. Martial law. Praeger’s little dictatorship. My father…”

“I was going to ask you if he was still… how he was.”

“I think he’s dead. He…” She shook her head, her eyes closed. After a moment she opened her eyes and said, “Bonham had a pass on to an outgoing ship, but we had to hijack the pod when we got to Station One. They had us scheduled to go down in the States, and I’m pretty sure the SA would have arrested me there. And Bonham thinks they wanted to brainwash him. So we had to steal an unscheduled pod, and we happened to be over Europe, and Bonham heard the NR was in Paris…” She shook her head. Her voice was dry, so dry it cracked. “We didn’t know it was like this.”

“It wasn’t this bad till they sealed off the town. No one goes in or out, unless they crawl the whole way maybe. Lot of people are starving. They got wind that Steinfeld is here…”

Rickenharp said sharply, “You’re talking a lot, man. If they got extracted…” He licked his lips, twitching from blue mesc.

“Fuck off,” Hard-Eyes growled. “SA already knows everything I’ve said.”

“Steinfeld is your leader?”

Hard-Eyes nodded. “They’re flattening the city looking for him. Methodically trying to dig him out… There’s no fuel left in that pod?”

She shook her head.

He shrugged. The fashes had it now anyway.

She said, “I can’t believe what they’ve done to Paris.”

“Most of it was done by the Russians and the Americans. Rickenharp there, and me, we were Americans. We fucking swore it off.”

“What kind of people are in the Second Alliance army? Around here I mean.”

“They’re a mix. A lot of them are Hispanic and Italian, but none of the Latins rise far in the ranks. Around here, mostly British, Afrikaner whites, Lebanese Phalangists.”

“So—what are you people going to do?”

He shook his head grimly. “You picked a bad LZ. You put your foot in a bear trap. We’re just hanging on, hoping some of our allies get through. They tried to run a chopper in for Steinfeld once—it was shot down. They’ll try again. Well, there’s something else…”

Rickenharp looked at him. “Hard-Eyes, man, she could be captured.”

Hard-Eyes nodded. “But I’m going to tell her anyway. Coming down in this shit, the woman’s got a right to know. We get captured, you think we could keep anything back, the equipment they got? They’d get it from us, too, Harpie.”

“Go on, blow it then. Shit,” Rickenharp muttered.

Hard-Eyes hesitated. Maybe Rickenharp was right. But he was tired. And it seemed important that she know. He glanced at Claire—and found it impossible not to trust her. “Our people are moving in from the other capitals, planning to drive through to get to Steinfeld. If it weren’t for the rest of us trapped in here, I think Steinfeld would tell ’em to forget it, write him off. Because it probably won’t work. The SA lines around the city are tight and well entrenched. And they got the Jægernauts.”

“What’s that?”

“A—killing machine. Big. Hard to describe. Anyway, we’ve changed our base op three times in three weeks. They’re crowding us in. Maybe we’ll just take our stand around the arch and let ’em know we’re there. Get it over with, take a few of them out with us. Free the rest of the NR to go on. We’d be martyrs. Good political strategy—if anyone ever hears of it.”

“You mean—take a stand and let them kill you?”