The Reaper Plague (9 page)

Then she smiled and gave him a deliberate
opening.

He reacted as expected, throwing a straight
right that would have put an ordinary woman – or man – on the
ground.

She ducked into it so his massive fist hit
her in the top of her forehead, right at the widow’s peak.
Perfect
. Her head rang and her scalp split in an impressive
crimson spray. She stepped away for a moment, wiping the backs of
her hands across her face, smearing the blood, letting her head
clear. Then she put her guard back up and nodded.
Try again.
It’ll heal
.

Donovan went for the body as she kept her
arms high, kept wiping her bloody face, kept accepting the
hammering of his fists. Donovan hit her harder and harder as he
realized she wasn’t going down despite being outweighed by a
hundred pounds, despite feeling her ribs crack under his knuckles.
She saw the puzzlement come into his eyes, heard the cries of the
troops as if through an echo chamber, smelled and tasted her own
blood sucked into her nose and mouth as the bellows of her lungs
pumped in rhythm.

She hadn’t thrown one punch since the start
of the fight, and Donovan was finally slowing. Four or five minutes
of intense combat tired the fittest man.

Now to administer the lesson.

Left-right, left-right, Repeth slammed
triphammer blows to his ribs until he dropped his hands. She threw
sharp elbows to his shoulders and arms, stomped his insteps and
shins, kicked his thighs and buttocks and torso, punishing him,
inflicting hurts without striking to the head, without the risk of
knocking him out. Her skill and her exquisitely trained athleticism
and her Eden Plague-perfected health allowed her to concentrate her
energy into one incredible burst of effort. In nine seconds and
twenty-five blows she had him kneeling, cringing, helplessly
shielding broken ribs.

The impacts of her fists and feet became more
deliberate, but didn’t cease.

One part of her, the softer part, felt bad
about the beating she meted out. The harder part, the steel forged
by the fires of her instructors and her own adamant will, the part
that knew beyond doubt that this was a necessary thing, even a good
thing, powered her fists and feet as she demolished an undeserving
human body.

If only he’ll accept his reconstruction.

Her final blow was more of a push, almost
gentle, that curled him into a fetal position. She stood above him,
deliberately blood-drenched, waiting until he lifted a feeble hand
in surrender.

Of course I could have taken him down at
any time with a precise kick to snap the knee joint or a knife-hand
to the throat. But what would they have said? Okay, she’s quick,
and skilled, and
maybe she got lucky. Now they know I’m
unbreakable, and they’re not.

Now they know I’m the biggest, meanest
damned dog in this junkyard.

Repeth stepped back, momentarily raising her
crimson fists overhead. The copper-iron smell of blood surrounded
the tableau. Taking a calm breath, not straining at all as she
pitched her voice to carry beyond her own platoon, to the other
formations nearby, she called, “Anyone still think Edens can’t
fight?”

Silence reigned. Not one of the normals would
meet her eyes.

She went on. “No? But now we have a little
dilemma. Corporal Donovan is
messed up
. He has two choices,
only one of which is the right one. He can go to the hospital, lie
in bed for a week, and miss the mission. Or he can go get an Eden
virus shot in the readiness line and
tomorrow morning
he
will be good as new. Better than new, because you know what else?
Not only will he heal ungodly fast from any future injury, he’ll
live a thousand years, they say.”

A buzz swept the normals’ ranks, some
discussing immortality, some healing, all of them unsettled. She
went on louder, overriding them. “Officially you don’t have to take
the Eden shot unless you want to. Maybe you’re afraid it will turn
you into a Sunday-school-sucking wimp. Well I go to Sunday school.
Anyone think I’m a wimp?”

Build the image, feed the myth. Tell the
story, because people live and die for the story
. She swept the
ranks with her eyes. “Do you think maybe the Unies lied to
you?”

She let those questions sink in before she
continued, putting sarcasm and contempt into her voice. “And here’s
the clincher, people. The vaccines will probably –
probably
– protect you from the Demon Plagues. But none of
us
are
getting the super-soldier nano treatment you might have heard
about. And this assignment will be dangerous. Everyone has a much
better chance of living through it if they have the Eden virus and
the nano-vaccine that goes with it. So frankly, you’re an idiot if
you don’t get the shot. And I don’t want idiots in my platoon. So
it’s your decision, but if you haven’t got it by the end of the
week, I’ll do my best to get you transferred out. You can go be a
burden to someone else.”

When Skull awoke again his mind was rainbow
clear where before there had been only blacks and whites. He felt
young again, but his hands still showed their age. That proved the
EP hadn’t gotten him. Getting up, he went into the waste closet -
what passed for a bathroom, but there was no mirror.
I’ll ask
Raphaela later
.

Never had he felt so dependent on someone
else, so out of control of his own destiny.
Seemed like a good
idea at the time. Kill some aliens, be a hero. Stupid and
short-sighted. I always prepared thoroughly until now. Not like me.
Must have been the nano. Here I am trashing the others, but the
power-high got me too.

The rancor and self-loathing he was
accustomed to circled at bay, unable to break through his new and
better mood. For the first time since Linde died, he didn’t want to
kill something for breakfast, but thinking of his dead love threw
him back to the day that gutted his life.

---

Linde was beautiful, viewed as only a young
man does, perfect beyond perfection. She was everything to him, and
his world had been complete that day as a thousand cubic
centimeters screamed between their knees, her body pressed against
his as they took the turns at twice the limit. They’d raced up and
down the California coast, Mount Tamalpais gazing down on them, a
benevolent god. She’d laughed squealing, delighted, until the blind
curve at the top of the hill.

He’d slowed the big Kawasaki, but not enough
to miss the bicycle that appeared out of nowhere, rider boy
pedaling joy madly within his own cocoon of speed, a mirror of
Skull’s. Only Skull wasn’t Skull back then, just plain Alan. But
his crotch rocket had taken the kid’s leg off and the crash had
thrown Linde high, a freak flight of physics ended with her chest
spitted on a bent old signless post.

He’d tumbled clear into soft earth and grass,
had rushed to her in time to watch the light fade from her eyes.
Clamping down on his grief to save the boy, he’d ignored his
fiancé’s corpse impaled there, an offering to some twisted and
vengeful spirit.

His belt was a tourniquet for the boy's
severed leg and he held the kid’s shaking body in his arms by the
side of the road, jacket wrapped around both of them. He despaired
of help until an antique Mustang convertible piloted by a
ruthlessly cheerful young Special Forces lieutenant drove up,
picked them up and hauled them in to Marin General in a mad
screaming rush.

The boy had lived, but Linde’s death robbed
all humanity from Alan’s heart. He and Lieutenant Ezekiel Johnstone
had returned with an ambulance to pull her lifeless corpse off of
the rusty pole, shoving the paramedics away to place her gently on
the gurney and lift it onto the truck themselves, premature
pallbearers.

He’d sat stoic through his abortive court
martial for negligent homicide, deadlocked by Zeke Johnstone’s
testimony and eventually pleaded down to loss of a stripe and
Alan’s motorcycle license. The only good thing to come out of the
whole crippling circumstance was the unwavering friendship between
the two men, a bond that lasted almost thirty years.

---

For the first time since, he replayed the day
in his head without descending into a cold killing rage. A black
bird flew free, the death-crow carrying its carrion stench away.
Skull watched it go with fearful regret but he found himself unable
to hold on to it in the face of his new sanity.

And he realized what that must mean. He could
think of no other explanation.

Angrily barging through the iris into the
control room he leaned down over her seated form. “I don’t know
how, but I’m a God-damned Eden now.”

She put a hand up to his chest, but didn’t
push. “You shouldn’t swear. It’s uncouth.” Raphaela’s tone was
light but her eyes weighed him down. “I’d say ‘thank God’ if it’s
true.”

He seized her hand, bringing a wince. He
shoved it away then and rolled his eyes, trying to hold on to the
edge of his of anger and failing. “Not you too. To hell with God.”
His voice held little conviction. “Do you even believe in God?”

She shrugged, massaging her fingers. “Not
really. But I believe in being thankful for what I have, and in
getting along with people. If it takes a plague to do that…is that
so bad?”

“
Yes, it’s bad. It takes
away your free will. If you can’t choose evil, is it a
choice?”

“
Edens can choose evil. We
still have cops and courts and jails. Just a lot fewer of
them.”

Skull snorted skeptically. “Same difference.
I didn’t want this. Now I’m useless.”

“
Useless how?” she
asked.

He thought for a moment, trying to frame his
arguments. “Look, I’m a killer – and now I can’t kill.”

“
You sure?” Her tone held
no trace of sarcasm or taunting, for which he was thankful. His
walls, his emotional armor so recently cracking, now seemed to have
disappeared entirely.

She went on, “How do you feel about all the
people you killed?”

He thought about it for a moment, then
shrugged. “Not terrible. No burden of guilt. Is that what you
mean?”

“
Then you’re not really an
Eden.”

“
How can you be so
sure?”

“
Because I talked to them.
Edens. And I am one. And when I Blended I took on the memories and
experiences of a four-thousand-year-old alien that has killed
countless beings starting with over a hundred of his Meme siblings,
and I still feel it; I still feel every one of them. I have to lock
those memories away from myself, because Memes have perfect recall.
Every piece of knowledge, every experience, is physically encoded
in an RNA-like molecule, like a video recording. If I brought them
to mind my Eden brain would never function. But you…”

“…
Aren’t affected that
way!” He raised his fists overhead as if in triumph, to bump the
ceiling. “Then what the hell happened?”

“
There’s no way to tell for
sure. This ship doesn’t have a laboratory sophisticated enough to
find out.”

“
What about your
base?”

She shook her head. “The base is crumbling.
Perhaps a quarter of the biomachines are still alive.”

Skull put his head into his hands, rubbing
his eyes. “So overnight my brain gets rewired but I’m still me.” He
turned over, did a one-handed stand. “I’m just as strong,” he said
as he sprang back to his feet, “and fast. Maybe it was my nanos?
Maybe they got into my brain?”

“
I don’t know, and there’s
no way to tell. More practically…here’s a test. Imagine killing
someone. See how it affects you.”

“
Huh. Right.” He did as she
suggested, visualizing the frantic minutes when he wiped out the
missile team in Geneva. “Nothing. No problem.”

“
So you’re not an Eden. You
just…got better. Maybe…” She bit her lip.

“
What?”

“
Nothing.”

He grabbed the sides of her command chair,
face close to hers. “What? Come on.”

She crossed her arms beneath his looming
presence as her eyes smoked. “Nothing. Don’t push me.”

He stared at her for a long moment, nose to
nose.
Before I’d have been angry. Now…it’s no big deal.
He
shrugged, backed off. “Okay. Let me know when you want to talk
about it.”

Her jaw dropped. She whispered something
under her breath that he didn’t catch.

He wished the nanos could heal his hearing
but apparently they couldn’t do such fine work. He was still
somewhat deaf from all the gunshots he’d fired in his lifetime, so
he put a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” he said, banality
to fend off the dark.

She touched his hand, not looking at him,
staring instead at the view screen. They stayed that way a long
time. Neither wanted to move or ruin the moment, nor make more of
it than it was.

Whatever it was.

Marquez and Banson stood warily in the
holding cell as Karl Rogett and his team came in. Their handcuffs
and shackles clinked and rattled, but the men didn’t move, except
to shrink slightly at the weapons pointed their way.

“
Gentlemen,” Cassandra
began, “we’re sending you home.”

They stood there confused for a moment, until
Marquez asked, “Why?”

“
Shut up,” interjected
Banson. “The lady says we can go home, let’s go home.”

Marquez cleared his throat. “I still want to
know why. Or at least how. Did General Tyler make some kind of
deal?”

“
No deal.” Cassandra smiled
pleasantly. “You’re just more trouble than you’re worth. Besides,
we have all we need from you.”