A Creature of War, Book 4, CH10 (Patreon)

They were cautious as they approached the wooden wall of this city. They were cold, miserable, and in no mood to have to fight for what they needed. But the sense that came from the walls as they got closer wasn’t one of violence. People were pointing in their directions, but they couldn’t see any weapons, and as the sound reached them, it sounded a lot like cheering.

A group left the gate, moving toward them, and they readied themselves for a fight. The cheering wasn’t enough to get them to lower their guards anymore, not even in their own country.

The people approaching wore furs and cloaks against the bitter cold. They carried staffs and swords, but the weapons were sheathed, and used to help with their footing.

They stopped well out of reach, and the person in the lead pulled the hood of her cloak off. She was a badger and offered them a smile as the people behind her also pulled off her close, revealing a mix of humans and Anthros.

El was still staring at them when she spoke.

“I’m Alicia, Sergeant of the first Savannah Defense Group. I’d like to welcome you to our city, but you seem ready to launch an attack on us.”

“You’ll have to excuse our caution,” Vee replied. “We’ve encountered nothing but violence and hate since our return. I’m VeeDee, this is my second in command, El.”

She studied the bull, then the lynx. “VeeDee? El? You’re the Specialists?”

“You know about us?” El watched as the Anthros behind her whispered and seemed to explain to the humans.

“Are you kidding? Everyone knows about the First Specialist units. We were on our way to Vermont from the San Diego Army depot. Where are you coming from?”

Vee took his time replying, and when he did so it was with a question instead of answering hers. “How come it looks like you’ve settled here, if you were going to join the Lab?”

“The city needed a good defense force when we got here. The wall was barely started. We were only going to stay long enough to help them finish it, take the time to train the people here in the basics of fighting, but Governor Artell made a good case for how we’d be more useful here, rather the at a base where probably every other Anthro was heading for.”

“How many were with you?”

“About three hundred when we left San Diego. Half that when we got here. Like you, we encountered a lot of violence on the way. The country fell apart.”

“All of them Anthros?”

“We had a dozen humans, mainly sergeants and captains. The Brass got wind of something coming and ordered the humans to leave. Only the few who worked with us on a daily basis stayed. The others got in helicopters and flew off, only to drop from the sky as every technological item stopped working.” There was no glee or joy at that in her voice, but also no sadness. El wondered if it was because by then she’d grown not to care about the humans giving orders as he had, or if the hardship that had come afterward had inured her to what had happened.

The lizard at her shoulder, covered in twice the layers, had no trouble making his feeling heard. “Good riddance,” he spat.

She didn’t react to his vehemence. “Before the helicopters crashed, stuff exploded all around. Best we worked out is that as stuff failed, combustibles mixed, but our sniper, she had enhanced vision, also saw missiles falling from the sky.”

Vee nodded. “They stopped working when technology stopped.”

“But it’s more than that. You’ve noticed that you can’t boil water, right? Have you tried to work with electricity? That’s gone too. We tried to collect lighting, Marie-Anne is a historian, so she has a lot of physical books. Some of them cover really old experiments, from before we had technolog—”

“Sarg,” the lizard interrupted, “I know you guys aren’t feeling it, but it’s really cold out here. Is there any chance we can continue this so exciting discussion inside? Where there are fires going? I mean unless you prefer having to carry me back.”

Vee studied him. “You are?”

“Charlie, Sir. With the sixth Recon Division.”

“And you’re cold-blooded?”

“Yep. The scientist who made my group thought it would be great if we could beat heat sensors. Of course they didn’t think things through, we fall asleep at anything below five degree Celsius, and above thirty we start overheating.”

“And you came out here?” El asked.

“I go where the Sarg goes. I owe her that much.”

She rolled her eyes and El got the impression the two of them had had arguments about this, but there was affection in the expression. “Charlie’s right, we’ll be more comfortable inside, where it’s warm.” She looked them over. “I’m not going to ask that you hand over your weapons, Sir, but I have to request that you put them away.”

The bull looked at her, not putting his sword away.

“Sir, they’re good people here. I know you’ve had bad experiences, but the people here, they appreciate us.”

“Not all of them,” Charlie said, “But most. The governor makes sure we’re all equals here. None of the shit about us having to do everything humans say we have to deal with at the base.”

“Charlie,” Alicia warned.

The lizard smiled. “No one likes a perfect story, especially not after what they’ve gone through. It’s no paradise,” he told Vee, “but I don’t think you’ll get any closer to it while you’re alive.”

Vee nodded and sheathed his sword. El did the same. “Let’s go get warmed up then. I’ve had enough of the cold.”

With sighs of relief, the others followed their example, sheathing swords and unstringing bows. The badger led them through the gate, and El saw it wasn’t just a palisade, they’d built two walls and enclosed them, forming rooms inside the wall, and the one she took them to had racks of weapons, but more importantly, it was warm. Four pits had been dug in the ground and fires burned in them.

Charlie was at one before everyone was inside. He stepped through the people already around it and moved close enough the flames licked at his furs. By reflex El tried to push the fire away from the lizard, but while he felt it, it didn’t obey.

Charlie took the furs off and threw them at the people behind him, who seemed used to it as they caught them and hung them on pegs in the wall. When they were all off all he wore was an old pair of jeans. Vee and El joined him at the fire, not standing as close, while everyone else found a fire to stand close to.

El rejoiced at the heat, feeling for the first time in weeks like there was a reason to keep going. When they were warm enough, they had to shed their extra layers, Alicia brought them to a barrack.

“It’s yours for the night. No one is going to bother you. I expect you need the rest after being in this cold. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the Governor, and he’ll make sure you have better accommodations.” 

Once she left, Vee set up a guard rotation. El dropped on the same cot as Vee and was out before he’d managed to snuggle up to the bull.

* * * * *

The governor lived in what had been a mall, before the world changed, as did everyone else, by the looks of things. El saw insulations on all the outside walls they encountered, and there were a lot of partitions build to make rooms. El figured they’d had to raid every hardware stores in the city and other cities to build all of this.

“How many people live here?” Vee asked as the people, humans and Anthros, stopped what they were doing to watch them.

“In the mansion? Five thousand or so. Most of the houses can’t handle the winters, so they move in here. The Governor set up a few other centers like this, but this is the largest one.”

“How many people in the city in total?”

“I don’t know,” Alicia answered, “I know there were close to half a million humans before everything changed, but that first winter was harsh. It’s never been this cold this far south. They weren’t ready for it.”

As they walked El noticed something, he did a quick count and confirmed it. “You said you had a hundred and fifty soldiers with you when you got here. I’m seeing a lot more Anthros than that.”

“We weren’t the first ones to get here. The city had six bases in the surrounding area. Governor Artell sent runners there as soon as the weather turned cold that first time, letting them know they could find shelter here.”

“The leadership?”

She pursed her lips. “They came here too, and it caused problems. They tried to take over, but the Governor wouldn’t let them turn the city into a military post. As far as he’s concerned, all this is the army’s fault.”

“And he still took you in?” El asked.

“We’re just soldiers. He doesn’t blame us for following orders. In fact, he hates the way the army treated us, how we were sent out to die without having any say in it. He offered us a place to live, not just another posting. It’s why most of the Anthros chose to stay when the Brass was kicked out.”

“But he has you guarding the gate,” DHC commented, “Seems to me he’s using you just the same, and the Brass did.”

She shook her head. “I chose to guard the gate. I’m infantry, I don’t know anything else. But he let us pick what we want to do.” She motioned around them. “A lot of them work in here. The Governor doesn’t assign us jobs, he lets us pick them. Most of them farm in the summer, or help collect materials from unused buildings so we can expand the mansion. The Governor decides what jobs need to get done, but we decide which ones we’ll do. No one here has to obey orders they didn’t agree to.”

El couldn’t stop looking around as they walked, peeking inside rooms when the doors were open. They’d have chairs, tables, and doors, leading to other rooms, everything looked in good condition. He even saw decorations on some walls. Much better than the barracks that had been his home all his life.

“What’s that?” Sydney asked. El looked where he was pointing. A wolf was cradling a bundle in her arms, rocking slowly. She smiled as she noticed them and turned so they could see the small lupine face in the bundle.

“This is Frederic,” she whispered.

Vee had to interpose himself to keep everyone from crowding her. “What is it?”

She beamed. “My son.” At the bull’s confused expression, she added. “I made him.”

“How?” Vee leaned in to get a better look at the bundle. “None of the machines should work anymore.”

“Why did you make him so small?” Sydney asked.

El watched, too confused to even think of questions to ask.

Alicia whispered, “She made him the same way humans make their children.”

Vee was the first of them to work out what that meant. “That’s impossible,” he said, sounding awed. “We’re made sterile.”

“No one knows how, but there are twenty-two Anthro babies. The Governor gave those families larger rooms, so there’s been a lot of sex happening, but there haven’t been any other pregnancies yet.”

“Vee, you know our bodies, can you sense what happened?” El asked.

The bull shook his head. “I never studied any of it. I just know what something is supposed to feel like. If it’s wrong, I fix it.”

“Is it something about this place?” Maria asked, “or is it something we can do to?”

“I don’t know,” Vee answered, “I can’t feel any difference between you and her that would explain it. But maybe it’s something minor that has a major effect. I’m not a scientist, I just don’t know.”

“Don’t feel bad, the doctors here don’t know either.” Alicia motioned for them to start moving. “Without scanners and DNA reader, all they can do is look at them and shrug. There are over a thousand Anthros in the city, and only twenty-two babies, so their best guess is that it’s a random mutation that got introduced.”

El’s breath caught, and he stopped moving. “We’re not going to die out. Vee, do you realize what this means?”

“El, we already knew that.”

“No, not us, them. I mean every other Anthros.” In his excitement El spoke faster. “With the machines no longer working, there weren’t going to be new ones, so in twenty years at most they would have been all gone, but now….”

“If we can make babies,” a collie said, picking up on what El meant, “We’re going to keep going.”

Alicia smiled. “That’s what the Governor figured. It’s why it’s encouraging us to have sex.”

“Have you?” El asked.

She chuckled. “I haven’t been able to work up an interest in men, and I spend my days on the wall. I don’t think carrying a bulge in my stomach would be useful. I’m going to leave that work to those who want to, and I’m going to focus on keeping them safe so they can do it.” Her voice filled with pride as she spoke.