A Creature of War, Book 4, CH12 (Patreon)

El and Vee were escorted to the guest quarters Williams set aside for representatives from other towns. It was a luxurious room with a fireplace, desk, wardrobe and a large bed covered in thick quilts. With the chairs by the desk and fireplace, El thought an officer would be happy here.

The others were distributed among the available space throughout the mall. Some in the few unoccupied rooms, others taken in by families with a free bed, or space in their own bed, El suspected.

Vee looked at the bed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep on that.” He pushed down on the mattress. “It’s softer than our cot, back at the Lab, not to say the ground.”

El sat on the edge and pulled the bull to him. “I think we should give it a try.” Vee raised an eyebrow at him. “Not for that, well, not just for that. You noticed the drafts? Once the fireplace goes off, this room is going to become cold, and I don’t know if we want to let people in. Remember the last time?”

“To be fair to her, I did give her some reasons to be angry, but I get your point. The door has a lock, so we’ll use it. I don’t feel like finding out William’s friendly act is just that.”

El tightened his hug. “You did what you had to to keep us alive. I’d have done the same thing. You need to stop thinking about that.”

Vee nuzzled the lynx’s neck. “I guess I’m becoming paranoid.”

“Not without reasons. Who’d have thought we’d have to fight more of our own countrymen than on some of our missions. It’s like everyone forgot we’re one country, built on unity, on working together.”

Vee was silent. “Maybe it never was as united as we thought.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Vee sighed. “I don’t know, but how does a country fall apart so quickly if it’s united? I never bothered looking for history books outside those we were provided, did you? You commented a few times on how we never get the whole story about the countries we had missions in, just what we needed to know. I think it was the same thing for our country.”

“I have trouble believe they’d do that.”

“How many cities have welcomed us? I don’t mean let us pass, I mean made us feel welcome.”

El didn’t reply, he began undoing Vee’s armor. “Everything changed for them. We’re used to hard times, it’s part of how we were made. They aren’t. Once things settle down, they’ll go back to normal. I know they’ll start behaving more like who we’ve been told they are.”

“You’re giving them too much credit.” Vee worked on El’s armor. “I think this is what they really are. A minority of people who actually care, who are ‘good American citizens,’ and the rest just think about themselves.”

“Well, we’re here now.” El looked into Vee’s deep brown eyes. “I think it’s time we stopped talking and start enjoying the warmth, maybe add to it.”

Vee smiled, pulled him in a deep kiss and not long after they were naked and testing the limits of the bed’s endurance.

    *

They fell into an easy rhythm over the following weeks. Vee spent time at the hospital on the third floor of the north wing. El had gone with him that first time, and had found it an atrocious place, worse than any wartime medical tent.

The large rooms had been filled with people moaning in pain and despair. El had had to leave. He’d ended up on the roof, where the frigid air cleared the scent of death from his nose. He couldn’t imagine what Vee would be able to do for them. He’d pushed his abilities over the centuries, but even he had his limits.

Maybe hope would be enough.

Vee explained that the atmosphere was better now, but El still wouldn’t go there. Vee healed those he could, comforted the rest, and had come back to their room exhausted, and emotionally drained from those he hadn’t been able to save.

Governor William praised Vee at each meal. Dinner was a working meal for him, where he listened to reports from everyone in charge of running the mall. Moral was up because of Vee, not only due to those he’d saved at the hospital, but because anyone could go directly to him to be healed, instead of risking the hospital.

During one of the early dinner Raiders were mentioned, and El offered his help. William thanks him, but he already had plenty of soldiers dealing with that, and mentioned that if El needed something to do, the construction crew could use the help.

And it was how El had found himself working with one of the groups taking down walls between stores and reconfiguring them into smaller rooms for the ever-growing number of people who came to live here.

The team was twenty people, a mix of humans and Anthros, more humans, than the other, and were friendly, happy to talk when they could. So when El had expressed surprise that the mall hadn’t been completely converted yet, they’d explained that the Governor had them focus their energy on what was pressing.

The population wasn’t growing fast enough to warrant converting the entire mall, so they only built enough room to stay ahead of the population growth. One of the workers mentioned that the entirety of Savannah now lived in the mall.

El hadn’t believed it, a city like Savannah had to have had a population in the millions, without including the surrounding cities, but everyone he asked confirmed what he’d been told. So he brought it up during that dinner.

The silence that fell was uncomfortable.

“It was hard,” William said. “And as much as I’d like to blame the military, I can’t. I and everyone here holds part of the blame. We weren’t organized. We thought we were ready for the cold, but we’d never experienced cold like that. I’d never seen snow here before that winter. I don’t think there ever had been snow here before then. Like I said, we weren’t ready. The panic took a lot of lives, and then the food shortage hit.”

He drained his glass. “When the thaw came, there were bodies everywhere. It took months to clear the streets, to bury them. The stench that summer was almost more than any of us could bear.” The others nodded in agreement. “This place was the largest building, I was confident would remain standing. I don’t trust the high-rises. The kind of maintenance needed to keep them standing would take too many of us.”

He smiled. “We started converting this place, and here we are. Working together, rebuilding. Once the weather goes back to normal, we’ll be able to go back to our houses, rebuild this city, our lives.” William became pensive.

El looked around the table. Everyone focused on their food and drink, clearly uncomfortable. He’d brought back horrible memories. “I’m sorry for bringing all that back up.”

William forced a smile. “It’s alright, you couldn’t know. And you have gone through your own hardship to make it here.”

El nodded, but it wasn’t the same. He and the people who had traveled with him were soldiers. They had been made for hardship, expected it, expected to die by it. These people were civilians, they weren’t supposed to have to endure them. It made him sad and angry that they had been forced to.

After that dinner, El threw himself into not only the building of more rooms, but in helping anywhere he could. He played with the children, amusing the younger ones by moving water puddles around, or making small dust devils dance. He assisted the older folks, helping them move about, or gathering things for them.

Helping felt good and kept him from thinking about how he hadn’t been able to prevent this catastrophe. It had been his job to keep them safe, and if this had been caused by one of their enemies, the responsibility fell on his shoulder.

After the second week people had gotten used to him; enough that he no longer attracted crowds everywhere he went. It was how he was able to notice the small group of people following him. Six in total, never together as a whole, in ones and twos, but always there.

They’d show up seemingly at random, when he was entertaining children he’d notice one of them among the crowd of adults also watching. When he walked through the mall, he’d catch sight of one of them out the corner of his eye. When he was working, one of them would show up to help, but leave after a few minutes. Always one of the six.

He tried to chuck it up to paranoia, after centuries of war being on his guard was second nature, heightened by what he’d gone through since coming back from Peru, but his paranoia would tell him they had malicious intent toward him. That wasn’t what he saw in their eyes when he was able to lock eyes with them.

No, in the instant before they looked away, they saw need, hope, expectation.

He didn’t tell Vee. Other than the dinners and their nights together, the bull kept as busy as El did. If he wasn’t at the hospital, the bull was with the Governor, or one of his right-hand people.

Once he knew if these people were a threat he’d tell Vee. Until then he would handle it himself.

A month had passed since their arrival. A three-day storm had put El on edge by the constant sense of wrongness in the elements. He was getting used to it, but storms made it worse, as if the storm itself was a concentration of that wrongness.

It had cleared and El was finally starting to relax again, going for a walk, wandering away from the people to be alone with the elements. It was early morning, so he’d gone to the level where the construction was happening. He’d known no one would be there, and he’d be close by when the work began.

When he heard the steps ahead of him, he thought it was some of the workers, starting early, but then he counted them. Six people in the darkness.

He didn’t visibly react to their presence but prepared himself. This was it. Whatever they had planned for him would happen here.

As they became visible, a human woman detached herself from the group. El stopped and let her come to him. He couldn’t tell how old she was. Her skin was pale, stretched and cracked, and her hair was pale, almost white, but she moved with a vigor that belied her aged look. She wasn’t armed, so he’d do what he could not to hurt her, but he wouldn’t let her —

“There’s something you need to see.”

When the words finally registered, he raised an eyebrow. “See?”

“Yes, see.” The tone was sharp, determined. “The Governor hasn’t told you the truth about this place.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

El studied her, wishing, not for the first time, that Peek was still with them so he could tell him her true intent. But it was only six of them, six human civilians. If this was a trap, it would take more than that to take him on.

He nodded.

Two of them lit lanterns and led them into the darkened hall. The air became colder as they walked until their breath became visible.

She stopped them by a pile of debris and revealed a box under it. Out of it she took out winter gear; jackets and furs. She handed him some and then put the rest on herself.

El indicated the five others. “What about them?”

She shook her head. “There isn’t enough. Only the guards are allowed cold weather clothing. Taking more would have been noticed.”

El hadn’t known that. “So only the guards go outside?”

She nodded, “Not like anyone sane wants to, right? Not in winter anyway.”

When she began walking, only El followed her. The temperature kept dropping, ice formed on the walls and ceiling.

“What’s this place?” he asked.

“This tunnel links the mall to an apartment tower across the street. The wealthy didn’t like having to endure the hot weather, so they used it when they needed to shop.” She moved the lantern closer to the wall and through the frost El saw what looked like a field of flowers painted on the wall.

“Of course they wouldn’t tolerate bare concrete walls. When money talks, others listen. That’s how it was.” She began walking. “And how it is still.”

He noticed the light before they reached the stairs. As they went up them, the air became even colder. If he stopped walking, he was afraid he’d freeze in place.

She continued as if the cold wasn’t affecting her. “The tower came down the day after technology stopped. Must have been over a thousand dead, but I doubt anyone noticed.”

There was enough of a ceiling that there was only a dusting of snow on the floor, but there were enough holes he could see exposed beams twenty meters above them.

She led him to a glass wall that had somehow survived. Through it he could see a meter tall wall of snow, beyond it mounds and valleys sparkling in the frozen sunlight.

She pulled the glass door. “Can you do anything about that?”

El shook his head.

“Snow’s just water. I’ve seen you move that.”

“You’ve seen me move puddles,” he replied, barely keeping the bitterness from his voice. “That’s the extent of what I can do. That’s a lot more than a puddle.” Thinking about it, he realized he could blow the snow away. He had enough control over the air for that, but he wanted to keep that to himself until he knew more about what she intended.

She motioned for him to proceed. “Then we get to trudge in it for a full block. Make a left and follow the building. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“Won’t the guard see us? If we’re not supposed to be outside, I expect they won’t let us walk around freely.” He pushed his way through the snow, calling on the earth for the little strength it could grant him.

“After the storm the first thing the guards need to do is clear the wall. They have to be able to walk it to see whoever might be approaching.”

The sarcasm in her tome made El stop and turn. She motioned for him to move.

“Not until you’ve explained what you mean.”

She sighed. “You think there’s anyone left out there to come hurt us? You walked here. Where’s the closest occupied town?”

“There are plenty of desperate people out there. We’ve had to deal with some of them.”

“And there was desperate people in here. Get moving.”

He could press her. Threaten to head back unless she explained further, but her expression made it clear she wouldn’t add anything willingly. If he wanted answers, he had to go where she wanted him to. He turned and went back to trudging through the snow.

When she told him to stop it came as a surprise. He was so cold he could barely feel his body anymore. She moved around him to a building he hadn’t even noticed. She went to double doors, and a sign caught his attention above them. ‘Kicklighter High School’

He followed her inside, and the little insulation the walls provided was enough to make it feel like the air was warm. That’s what he thought it was, until he felt the fire, deeper inside the building. What was a fire doing in here?

Curiosity, more than the need for heat drive him forward. The fire was small, and as he got closer, he could get more information about what was around it. He sensed water in the form of people.

He pushed another set of double doors and the heat hit him like a wall, but he didn’t pay attention to it. People littered the floor of a gymnasium, thin, emaciated. So skeletal that if he wasn’t seeing them move, he’d thought they were dead.

And there were children.

“Take a good look at the Lie the Governor’s been feeding you.”