The Future War

'Why?' he said simply.

'We found a kid. Boy of about eleven. He was sick, sir.' The sergeant gave Reese a direct look. 'Wasn't a thing we could do for him by the time we found him except make him comfortable.

Just before he died he kind of came to and told us how things were in the camp. How his mother had made him run for it. We had to come back and take a look, sir.'

The lieutenant nodded, then they both turned their attention to the trucks below. They could just hear the women's high-pitched voices and the crying of the younger children. Off in the men's compound the trucks were unloaded with less noise, but it was just as plain that the new arrivals were not happy to be there.

One man stepped forward and said something, waving his arm at the barracks. A soldier stepped up and smashed the butt of his rifle into the man's face. The man went down and no one moved. One of the soldiers came forward, and pulling off his gas mask began to speak. Reese looked at him through the glasses and saw a face he recognized. It was one of those men he'd marked out as odd, a cold, humorless man he wouldn't have wanted at his back in a firefight.

'I haven't seen Yanik,' Reese remarked.

'If the captain is down there, he's in the cemetery,' the sergeant said. 'No way he'd allow that kind of thing to go on.'

That was true. 'Gather your men and come with me,' Reese said, backing away. 'I've got some people I want you to meet and some things I've got to tell you.'

As they walked, Juarez signaled and his troop began to emerge from cover. By the time they'd reached the place where the lieu-tenant had left the resistance fighters, Reese wasn't surprised to see that they'd all disappeared. He didn't think he'd ever get used to their ability to completely and instantly vanish.

Maybe that was because some part of his mind persisted in thinking of them as civilians. Even if he had stopped thinking of them as survivalist nutcases.

Dennis sat on a boulder, tipping his helmet to the back of his head.

'You wanted us to meet someone?' the sergeant asked.

'Yep. But they've decided that maybe I'm your prisoner or something and they're checking us out. Since I don't have a signal to call them in, we'll just have to wait for them to join us.'

He grinned at Juarez. 'They're even more tight-assed than Marines.'

The sergeant laughed. 'But brighter, I hope.' He turned and signaled his troop to relax. 'Set pickets?' he asked of the lieutenant.

'Nope. The area's being guarded by my friends and I don't want any misunderstandings.' He glanced up at Juarez. 'If you know what I mean?'

The sergeant nodded. 'Okay, boys. Break out the rations, smoke 'em if you got 'em, that sort of shit. Lieutenant says we've got guardian angels watching over us, so we can all relax.'

From the uncertain looks the soldiers passed among themselves, relaxation was going to be hard to come by.

Juarez sat down beside the lieutenant. 'You here to deal with that?' he asked, jerking his head toward the camp.

Reese nodded, watching the men around them. A bird trilled a few liquid notes and Dennis waved his arm in a 'c'mon in'

gesture.

'That was them?' Juarez asked. 'I'm impressed. I thought it really was a cardinal.'

'Oh, they're very good,' Dennis said.

From all around them figures decked in grass and brush and paint began to stand, or to emerge from the undergrowth, guns at the ready.

'At ease,' Reese told them. Guns were lowered to a less threatening position, but their faces remained guarded. 'Susie, this is Sergeant Juarez. Sarge, this is my second-in-command.'

Juarez looked her over, visibly hesitated for a moment at her extreme youth, then nodded; she did the same.

'Everyone I've been able to identify down there is a creep,'

Juarez said, looking at Reese. 'I know that most of them have at the very least been put on report for unnecessary roughness to the civilians. They talked about the kids like they were some kind of vermin. And none of them had very convincing stories about what outfits they were with before they came here—somehow, they were all people who'd been on leave from units that took a nuke in the first day. Funny they're the ones who survived.'

The lieutenant shook his head and forced himself to meet the sergeant's eyes. 'Funny like a funeral. I doubt it's an accident,'

he said. 'Just before I was shipped out, some guys were overheard apparently gloating over the epidemic. There was some speculation that someone was spraying germs onto raw food. Fruits and vegetables.'

Juarez just looked at him, for so long that Reese assumed he was waiting for him to go on.

'Apparently they never got around to investigating it,' the lieutenant said.

'Apparently,' the sergeant agreed, hard-eyed.

'Sir, I hate to break into a reunion, but how are we going to handle this?' Susie's dark eyes were intense and Reese could almost feel her nervous energy flowing like an electrical field around her. This was her first mission under fire and Juarez was a complication she hadn't expected.

'From what I've seen'—he nodded at the sergeant—'and heard, we're unlikely to get any converts out of the military left in camp. My instinct here is to be careful only in regard to civilians and any prisoners they may have.'

'Today would seem to be a bad time to strike.' Susie glanced at the sergeant. 'They're expecting trouble.'

'But not from our direction,' Juarez pointed out. 'And not from armed opponents.'

'Has to be today,' Reese interjected before his fiery second could respond. 'By tonight those people will have been infected, and for all the good we can do 'em we might as well shoot them.'

Susie bit her lips. 'When do we go, sir?'

'After the trucks are gone,' the lieutenant said. No sense in giving the enemy heavy armor. 'Say twilight. It will make it harder for us to be seen. Meanwhile, get some rest. Come back…'

He quickly calculated the marching time and then doubled his original estimate of fifteen minutes to explain what he wanted done; these were civilians, or very recent ex-civilians, for the most part.

She nodded and moved off to talk to her people.

'They any good?' Juarez asked quietly.

'We'll know in a few hours,' Reese said, getting out his map.

'In any case, they're what we've got. Let's figure out how we're going to do this.'

THE CAMP

The women were all terrified, and trying not to show it for the children's sake. Bad enough that for the last few weeks they'd been living a life they were ill prepared for after experiencing the terror that had haunted their entire lives. Now, suddenly, their own armed forces were herding them into prison camps.

Children clung and cried, or moved silently, big-eyed by their mothers' sides into the barracks. The stench was overwhelming and most of the youngsters hung back. But the eyes of the soldiers, just visible behind their gas masks, offered no leniency.

They'd been told to go into the barracks and clean them up. So the women did, dragging their reluctant children with them.

One of the women started to retch upon entering.

'You sick?' a guard barked.

'It's the smell,' a woman snapped. She took the sick woman by the arm and pulled her across to a window, which she threw open. Just in time as the woman threw herself over the sill and was sick.

'You'll clean that up,' the same soldier said.

A little girl screamed and her mother exclaimed, 'Oh, my God! There's a body here!'

The other women clustered around the bed and stared in horror at the emaciated figure in it. The woman