Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Four heads poked immediately through the truck’s doors, military faces cut from the same cookie cutter mold, down to the deep cleft in their chins. Fortunately for everyone, they immediately relaxed when they realized that Allen was, in fact, telling the truth. Three of the men hopped aboard and began helping the beleaguered vet while the fourth ran back to his mates and ordered the gates opened so the caravan could proceed with all due haste.

Dakota saw very little of the compound itself, though she could smell the thick, acrid smoke that hung in the air like a pall. The base had, thankfully, a fairly modern hospital and several surviving doctors and medics to tend to the men in her care.

The electricity was running, thanks to a small hydroelectric plant on the grounds, and Koda spent the next thirty six hours helping the harried staff tend to the wounds of the injured soldiers.

When she was finally approached by a very insistent Allen, she didn’t fight the firm hand encircling her wrist, or the tug that forced her legs to move away from the patients she was watching over.

She stopped and stared, though, when her first sight of the compound settled over her. It looked like it had been deluged by bombs. Many of the buildings were nothing but still-smoking rubble, and almost all of the uniformed men and women who scuttled about like ants bore some mark of its passing, whether a bandaged appendage, or a shell-shocked expression and deep, hollow eyes.

Mounds of fresh snow covered the bodies of those who would never rise again. Twenty across and at least that many deep, the bodies were watched over by a full military color-guard, honored in the only way they knew.

“C’mon,” Maggie had said, gently tugging Dakota’s arm. “Let’s get you somewhere warm where you can get some food in your belly before you pass out.”

“I’m fine.” Koda’s voice was a distracted mumble as she eyed the hillocks of snow covering the bodies of the fallen.

“You’re as pale as the snow out here, Koda, and your pulse is racing to beat the band. I’ll make it an order if I have to.”

Allen bravely withstood the colorless eyes that came to rest on hers.

“Yeah, I know, you’re a civvie’, but I can be mighty persuasive when I want to be.”

That earned her a smile that, while small, cheered her considerably.

The mess was pretty much what Dakota expected a military mess to be, and she ate her food without really tasting it, just glad to have something warm and substantial in her belly after more than a day of existing on black coffee and nothing else.

The housing was, however, somewhat of a surprise, and when Maggie led her into the small, private cottage, she looked around approvingly, giving the arrangements her first real smile of the day.

A shower had been the first thing on her agenda, though it took almost an hour of scrubbing to get all of the encrusted blood and body fluids removed from her skin and hair.

Clad in a fresh T-shirt and soft sweatpants, she tumbled into the king-sized bed and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Maggie had returned late that evening, and when Koda awoke, they fell into an embrace and a loving that was more needing than tender. Primal and passionate, it was the connection of two bodies trying to reaffirm life after having seen so much death.

They had fallen asleep soon after, completely drained of the last of their energy.

2

There is a body in the road. Young, female, bleeding. Unfortunately, despite the presence of half a dozen expectant ravens, it is also still alive. Even with snow falling, Kirsten can see the faint, warding flutter of a hand when one of the birds ventures too close.

Damn. Goddam. I. So. Do. Not. Need. This.

Risky. Way too risky.

Yet even as she begins to steer in an arc that will carry her past on the other side, Kirsten’s foot settles on the brake. Asimov, on the seat beside her, stands to attention, ears pricked forward, tail stiff at half-mast. He whines, low in his throat, and gives a short, sharp bark of alarm.

“Yeah, boy,” she mutters. “I see her.”

For several minutes, Kirsten does just that, examining the scene before her. The woman—no, a girl, slender and still almost flat-chested under the bulk of her jacket, with generic Midwestern features and light-brown hair spilling out from beneath the brim of a knitted cap—lies some ten feet from the verge of the road, in the westbound lane of the Interstate. A wavering line of footprints, now rapidly filling with the new snow, dots the empty field to the north of the road.

Halfway across there are slip marks and a hollow where someone has fallen, presumably the annoyance in front of her. Even at a distance, she can make out a pink tinge to patches of the snow. Closer too, crimson spatters the fresh cover, with a long streak where the girl has skidded and fallen again.

There are half a dozen ways it could be a trap. The girl could be microchipped or wearing a transponder. She might have a weapon under her jacket. There could be droids waiting behind a line of trees that runs along a ridge to the other side of the road. Almost as bad, there might be human predators who have left their latest victim as bait for the next.

As the possibilities sort through her mind, one of the ravens stalks up to the girl on the road, waddling a little on the still-soft surface. Cocking its head, it seems to study her face for a moment, then grasps a strand of her long hair in its bill and tugs. And tugs again, backing up in the snow. The girl thrashes and cries out weakly. “No! Oh, no! Jesus, help me!”

Kirsten has never placed much credence in the idea of a fate worse than death, but being eaten alive qualifies. In spades. She pauses only to check the magazine of her pistol, slides out of the seat and slogs toward the young woman who has suddenly become her unwelcome charge. Less inhibited, Asimov streaks past her and bounds over the girl’s body in a flying arc, landing splay-legged in the middle of the ravens and snapping at the air. The birds, not much impressed, step away from the dog with a haughty stare and ruffle of wing feathers. The girl, though, cries out in terror. “A wolf! Oh my God, noooooo!”

“No he isn’t. He just think he’s one,” Kirsten snaps. She whistles sharply, “Come, Asi!”

The girl turns to look at Kirsten, floundering in the snow. Closer to, Kirsten can see that the right leg of her jeans is ripped and soaked with red, fresh blood pooling and melting the snow where she lies. Her eyes are all pupil, so wide with pain and terror that Kirsten cannot tell what color they are. Scratches streak her face, though they seem superficial, perhaps the result of fleeing through the underbrush of the woods along the ridge. Her left arm lies at a strange angle, either broken or dislocated.

Oh, wonderful, Kirsten thinks. Multiple choice: (a)put her out of her misery; (b), take her with me; or © leave her for the ravens.

Leaving her for the birds is not an option. If it were, Kirsten would already be five miles further down the road, five supremely important miles further toward the end of her own journey. Euthanasia by 9mm round? She cannot quite bring herself to do it, at least not without knowing for certain that the life seeping out onto the road at her feet is unsalvageable. All right, then. That leaves (b).

With a sigh, she thumbs on her gun’s safety catch and tucks the weapon into her belt. No good deed ever goes unpunished, she reminds herself, wryly, and this one will probably have an exorbitant cost. Saving this girl’s life, if she can, will make her that much later getting to the manufacturing facility at Minot. And that will almost certainly be paid for in other lives, elsewhere. She has already killed innocent people to get as far as she has. She is not willing to do it again except under circumstances more extreme than this.