Republic of Infidels – The Remains – Chapter 14: The Cure

Vikram sat low in the passenger seat of the personnel truck, pulling his hood over his face. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being seen with Sergei. He’d been seen with Sergei before. It was more that he didn’t want his face associated with the cargo his Lammergeiers were now loading in the back of the truck. He’d spent the night at North Barracks. Sleeping under Sergei’s roof was something he tried to avoid doing, but he wasn’t yet ready to make his return, and the barracks had the only comfortable housing where his presence would raise little comment. 

Sergei himself did not participate in the activities, but stood aside, massive arms crossed. He and his team had all had their childhood vaccinations, but that didn’t mean he was going to join them in the heavy lifting, or get his hands dirty. He wasn’t generally precious about such things, just as ready to perform manual labour as any of his soldiers, but this he thought clearly beneath him. 

When they were done, Sergei rejoined him in the truck cab, swinging his broad frame into the driver’s seat. He looked into the wing mirror as he backed out. Vikram watched as before them, the remaining masked Lammergeiers poured gasoline over the pathetic board and scrap shacks, then set them alight. 

“How much longer?” Sergei wanted to know, not impatient or affronted, just bored. He turned on to the high road, which was never very busy. Very few Cradle dwellers had vehicles, and it wasn’t yet dawn. 

Vikram pulled off his hood, and pushed his hair away from his face. He shrugged. “Maybe a week, if I increase the water ration.”

“What about the academy?” 

“Same schedule,” Vikram murmured, raising a wall between his mind and the question. What they were doing was horrendous. He had no illusions about that. Horrendous, but necessary. 

And yet, his interest in the project was flagging. It had seemed so important to lay this groundwork a few months ago, but with the arrival of the Walsh, with his experience of the Neurocommand, Vikram’s own civic ambitions for the Cradle seemed less and less relevant. 

Sergei guided the steering wheel with one hand, his expression unusually contemplative. As children, Vikram had taught him how to pass as a person with a normal range of human emotions. This Sergei had been able to do with reasonable success, but it always surprised Vikram a little whenever he expressed any emotion of his own accord, or picked up on the mood around him. 

“It changes things,” he indicated with a nod of his pale blonde head towards the horizon. “The Americans.”

“Of course it does,” Vikram said impatiently. “But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll still find a way to do plenty of murder and violence.”

Now Sergei smiled. Violence, the opportunity to use his physical strength, the entropy of now-living, now-dead, was the thing he had made himself for. It was his favourite comedy. Vikram had speculated on his companion’s particular brand of psychopathy, had even shared his thoughts with Sergei about it to the extent that he thought it might help keep him in check. He’d suggested that an inborn evolutionary need for control was the reason Sergei found little but the act of bringing death to be so totally enervating, because that act represented the ultimate control. 

Sergei did unleash his less lethal, though often still violent appetites in other ways, as plenty of the brothels in the Cradle could attest, but Vikram and his family had so far gone unscathed. He believed it was a function of an established theory that a psychopath had a nepotistic evolutionary strategy, that he recognized kin, excluding them from the compulsive need to victimize, to harm. Instead, it was thought the psychopath gene had made its way down to them from those family members who embraced risks involved with hunting dangerous game, or front line defence of the tribe. 

Vikram had a long record of evidence that Sergei, on some level, was an example of that theory, and now evolution had come full circle. In this environment, it made no difference that the asocial genetic disposition had mutated into a cannibalistic extreme. Sergei, perhaps more than any of them, fit his niche perfectly.

Vikram glanced at him, but Sergei had fallen into his mindless silence. He didn’t have that far to go inside his mind when he did this, and the effect was to make his face go mugshot-slack. Vikram knew better than to rely on his antipathy. He had an implacable belief in his entitlement to Vikram’s sister, and unlike Rachel, Vikram actually believed in the sincerity of Sergei’s feelings for her. Vikram had remained casual but firm in interposing himself between the two of them. And he believed that Sergei would never hurt her, though by proximity, would enjoy killing for her. Whether on her behalf, or in contest for her, it hardly mattered.

“What do you know about Hudson Ford?” he asked abruptly, to Vikram’s unsurprised annoyance.

“Thirty-one years old, born in 2012 in Baton Rouge. Father, Army Corp of Engineers, mother a Marine Corps pilot and war hero. Commander rank, navy doctor, sometime naval intelligence officer, well above average intelligence. One older brother, Delaware. What else?”

Sergei’s mouth went thin. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“You’re not going to touch him,” Vikram said firmly. 

Sergei gave him that cockeyed grin. “Not yet.”

***

Rachel couldn’t sleep. Her joints felt tight, and no matter how she tried to calm her mind, not one atom of her could settle. The hours passed, and the air thickened in her close, dark room. She was so angry. She was so hurt. She was so tired… she was… so… 

Darkness. 

She knocked once, then opened the door, not caring about the invasion or the lack of courtesy. He wasn’t asleep, but had adopted a posture of contemplation, seated at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, hands under his chin. He wore only boxer briefs, and his dark skin gleamed in the half light. Before him, all of the gear he’d brought spread out, as though he meant to inventory each item. Fatigues, shirts, medical equipment, bag, pistol, notebook. 

He looked up as she entered, his eyes red from lack of sleep, or from some expenditure of grief. He followed her with his eyes as she approached. She stared down at him uncertainly, but he just watched as she placed one hand and then the other on each of his hard shoulders. His arms were ready for her as she straddled him. She bent down, quivering as she pressed her face against his, inhaled the scent of him. He smelled like moss, like bitter orange, like old copper. 

She could feel his hands on her back, moving over her skin, his breath on her neck. When he pulled her down, kissed her, it was so good it almost hurt. 

“Don’t go,” she whispered. She could feel him smile against her skin.

Rachel woke, her own hand between her legs, blinking with confusion in the pre-dawn light. Then, as awareness hit her, she covered her mouth with her forearm and bit down, trying not to scream. That failing, she seized her pillow, put her face into it and did scream, lust and disappointment and rage alchemizing into one unendurable chemical reaction somewhere in the pit of her stomach.

She dressed quickly, passed by Hudson’s now empty room, and made her way down the narrow stairs to the common floor. She lingered at the bottom of the stairs, just out of sight, as her mother leaned against the kitchen counter. 

“Are you sure you want to do this, Dr. Ford? It’s a long walk, and it gets quite cold in the morning.”

From her viewpoint, Rachel could just see Hudson’s elbow, and the edge of his bag. “I am, if it’s all the same. I’m looking forward to the fresh air.”

“I’ll walk you to the gate,” Nadia said, and then coughed, a sound with a bit of wheeze in it that Rachel didn’t like. 

Hudson’s head turned, and she caught his expression, and could tell the sound had triggered his trained ears. “Are you quite well, Mrs. Kori?”

Nadia waved him away. “It’s nothing. Shall we? Or would you…”

“Don’t wake her,” Hudson said quickly. “Rachel… she knows where to find me.”

As they left together, Rachel walked out to the veranda, which commanded a view of the causeway, the dam, and much of the road. She watched as Hudson shook hands with her mother, and stood stiff in the chill wind as he cast a quick glance in her direction. As he turned, and walked away, she felt an insane urge to run down after him, to demand that he apologize and forgive her at the same time. Now he was walking out of her life just as abruptly as he’d entered it. 

Her mother lingered at the gate, standing under the blowing prayer flags with one hand on the rock face. Rachel followed her gaze, could see a truck approaching — a Lammergeier personnel truck. Throwing aside her sulky diffidence, she made her way down the steps to the causeway. Her brother disembarked from the passenger’s side. Sergei was behind the wheel, turning the truck about and heading along the utility road.

Rachel wanted to spit. She’d never wanted to see her brother less, and Sergei’s presence only made it worse. But it seemed, as she approached the gate, that her mother was already having some choice words with her son. 

“— bring him here, and did you even think about your sister?”

Vikram’s brow knit in confusion as he fought to keep his tone calm. “Mother — ”

“Don’t you “mother” me,” Nadia breathed. “That man… ”

She coughed, fighting for breath. As Rachel trotted up to them, Vikram’s expression turned into wide eyed realization. He reached for Nadia’s elbow, but she went down in a dead faint. Rachel scrambled down the short run of steps, shoved her brother out of the way and turned her mother on to her back. 

She was pale, breathing in shallow breaths. Rachel bent her ear over her chest, and could hear the wheezing, but her heart was still strong. Rachel laid her wrist over her mother’s forehead. 

She looked up at Vikram, who looked more afraid that she’d ever seen him. More afraid that he’d been when the world had crashed down around them. 

“Get him back,” he choked. “Go.”

“Get father, get her inside,” she told him. “Keep her warm and keep her hydrated.”

Then she took off, running full tilt down the steep track. She had just enough equilibrium to keep from falling. The blood thundering in her ears kept her focused as she bounded down the rough road. 

Hudson had very little distance ahead of her, apparently dawdling to take in the sights, so she nearly overtook him as she came skidding down beside him. Completely surprised, he caught her shoulders to help her arrest her momentum, but when he looked at her inquiringly, she couldn’t catch her breath to tell him.

Twenty minutes later, they were back in the Black Monastery, in her parents’ bedroom. Nadia lay in bed, pale and sweating, her breathing now having adopted a more crackling quality. Radhesh sat by her bedside, holding her hand, a helplessness in his expression that was painful to witness. 

Rachel did as Hudson bid her, setting up a makeshift IV, listening to Nadia’s breathing, applying morphine to help ease the pain. Meanwhile, Vikram hovered in the corner, evidently at a loss for words. 

Hudson listened to Nadia’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope, then rose, folded them and put them in his pocket. He did not smile, or attempt to soften his remarks. 

“Double pneumonia,” he said, directing his comments to Radhesh. “Though how it’s spread this quickly, I have no idea.”

“She wasn’t sick three days ago,” Radhesh said, then sniffed as he looked down at his wife. 

“She needs medicine that we don’t have,” Vikram said quietly, casting an expectant look at Hudson. 

“I’ll do my best,” Hudson said. 

Rachel could see something in her brother’s expression harden as Hudson turned and left for the transmission tower. 

“Will he?” Vikram demanded, looking at her. 

Rachel wanted to speak, but her voice had deserted her. Wordlessly, she followed after him. She found him sitting in the chair before the radio console, elbows on knees, shoulders hunched. He unfolded himself as she approached, his brow clouded as he looked up at her.

“Well?” she asked, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice.

“My brother has had some time to assess the military situation here. In the event that antibiotics would have any effect — ”

“You think she’s going to die and your brother doesn’t want to risk sending a helicopter,” she said flatly. “Of course not. Why hazard his pilots on that risk.”

“You don’t deny there is risk,” Hudson said, frowning.

“But there is a chance,” she almost sobbed. “You know that.”

“I don’t make that decision,” he snapped. “Neither do you. Besides, we’re all just meat, right? Or is it only different when it’s someone you love?”

Rachel felt like he’d slapped her. She was minded to slap him in reality, but the pain of his words paralyzed her. Slowly, she took a step backwards, about to turn, when he reached for her, took her shoulders and turned her to face him.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?” she demanded, shoving his hands away, acid rage eating at her self control. “It’s true.”

“I don’t believe that. You don’t believe it either.”

She pushed her hair away from her face, paced across the small round room, searching for the words, the explanation beneath the lie she had told herself and the world for so long.

“First, I played with cars. I wanted to be an engineer like father. I took our Land Rover apart and put it back together five times before I was ten. Then I got bored. I thought I wanted to be a vet, do animal surgery. I used to repair our aging cats, the same way I repaired our cars, and our appliances. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t challenging enough. The risk wasn’t high enough. There wasn’t a machine or a domestic animal complex enough for me. Becoming a surgeon wasn’t about helping people. I just wanted better toys.”

He stared at her, but not in judgement. His understanding was maddening, and now she really did want to slap him. To make him show something more than this patient physician’s mask. 

“I performed my first surgery on a child,” he said abruptly, but his tone wasn’t placating. “A little girl, twelve years old. It wasn’t especially complex or traumatic, and she recovered fine. But I threw my guts up afterwards. Not because I felt bad about cutting up a human being, but because it felt… you know how it felt. Like meditation. Solving a puzzle.”

She just looked helplessly at him, feeling her own acute uselessness, feeling the undercurrent of the void that had been with her all of her life, that threatened to take her more and more every day. That seemed to say you belong down here with me and always have.

“Listen to me,” Hudson said, again taking her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “You are not a psychopath. You are very good at your job. You still have so much to contribute.”

Now he was too close. Green eyes, so clear, the scent of him, moss, bitter orange, musk of male sweat. Without thinking she gave into the impulse and pressed her lips to his, felt him quake as he stood there, his lips in an uncertain line.

He tilted his head, and she could tell he wanted to deepen the kiss, wanted to put his hands on her. Wanted her under him. She hated him for his restraint as he pulled away, drawing shaky breaths in the gap now between them.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” she demanded, not caring now about the tears stinging her eyes.

“Because,” he said, his pain evident in his voice. “You are terribly vulnerable. I am a stranger here. There are… there must be other men, younger, closer at hand.”

She looked at him, and then laughed, an unrestrained wild sound of despair and irony. “Like Sergei?”

Hudson’s eyebrows compressed. “All right, maybe not Sergei — ”

“One of his men, then,” she said bitterly. “That’s where all the young people go these days. One of Sergei’s chief officers tried to overthrow him last year, so he drowned her in a pool of motor oil behind a tavern with his own hands, and promoted her son instead. They all act like that now.”

“Rachel — ”

“But according to you,” she spat. “After my mother dies, I should find a nice local boy to settle down with.”

“Listen to me.” He took both her hands and held them tight in his.“I thought I’d grow old and die before meeting a woman like you, in this life or the one before. But this can’t happen now.”

She stared down at him, torn between grief, affection and desire, unable to contain or restrain any one of them. She pulled away, and turned to leave. She could feel him staring after her as she paused at the door, then allowed her grief to carry her out, and down.

***

Hudson sat down in the stone window sill and folded his leg up to his chest, growling as he pressed his forehead against his knee. It was a trial as he attempt to suppress lust, anger and pathos, feelings he hadn’t been required to contend with for two years. These combined with the anxiety for Rachel threatened to completely unseat his reason. In lieu of running after her and confessing his helplessness, he drew in thin breaths, letting his eyes wander out over the darkening blue.

There was weather up here, more pronounced than it ever was down below, but it wasn’t enough to precipitate. The fog that rose rolled up the dam, burned off, and then rose again almost like clockwork, but for the moment it was clear. Clear enough that he could see the service road down below, where it ran like a ribbon past the lip of the dam.

Then he saw the personnel truck. A sudden bolt hit him, like a dart to the back of the neck. There was something to understand, and while he didn’t yet know what it was, he knew he had to move fast. He grabbed his jacket and headed down the spiral stairs.

No one was around when he made it down to the road, so he jogged after the truck, keeping pace even as it became more and more evident that there was no other place it could go. Indeed, it had come to rest in front of a chain link gate topped with razor wire, set into the rock. Hudson knew he had only a split second. 

There was just enough cover among the jagged rock face for him to slip in, just behind the truck. A foul smell wafted from its cargo trailer that made his eyes water — like dead meat left to spoil in the sun. 

He waited as the automatic gate opened, and just as it was about to close, slid around it and threw himself against the rock face. He waited until the truck was nearly out of sight, and then followed, spying out cover for himself as he moved. The appearance of mines, set on either side of the road, forced him to follow the middle track. Then he was stopped by a second chain link barrier. It didn’t matter. He could see well enough from here. 

The road followed a cement canal, which flowed down towards what looked like a reservoir. Stretched across the water main at the far end was a net. The reservoir itself was dark with debris, or that was how it looked from his vantage point. Then, as he watched Sergei’s men unload the cargo from the back of the truck, Hudson found the understanding he’d been looking for. 

He had to stop himself from being sick as the disgusting aroma hit him with full force. Covering his face with his shirt, he moved closer to the gate, knowing he’d only get one chance to conceal himself before they got too close. Then, he noticed, in the dense minefield set up to his right, a protruding rock had prevented the setting of a mine. Behind it, a narrow wobble in the rock would provide him with just enough cover if he could get over the gate. He looked down at the proceedings. The Lammergeiers were fully engaged with their task. He decided to risk it.

He took one deep breath and scaled the gate. The razor wire sliced at him, and it was a hard ten foot fall to the ground, but by the time he’d squished himself into the gap, he was reasonably sure no one had seen him. He was able to get some height as he wedged himself between behind the outcrop. 

The sky darkened as he waited. It took about twenty minutes before the rumbling of the truck met his ears as the ignition started. It crawled to a stop at the gate, the cab almost level with his hiding place. If he leaned slightly forward, he could see directly into the open window. 

Sergei sat in the passenger’s side, closest to Hudson. He was unreal to look at even now, his body builder’s proportions belonging to a completely different time. He was evidently bored, tapping his fingers against the window frame. Then, he glanced over at his driver.

“What are you waiting for?”

The driver, apparently a dim one, shrugged. “Vikram said — ”

“Why do you care what Vikram said?” Sergei said in a dangerously soft voice.

He wasn’t quick enough to answer before Sergei seized him around the throat with one hand. As Hudson watched, the Lammergeier commander lifted the hapless driver up, pinning him by the throat to the roof of the truck cab with no apparent effort at all. Sergei’s bicep, as big around as a Virginia ham, bulged as his victim struggled with absolutely no effect. 

“Maybe you want to go for a swim,” Sergei said with a grin, clearly enjoying himself. 

“No, sir,” the man choked, clawing at the iron grip around his throat. Reaching over, Sergei opened the door, and tossed the man out.

“Then open the fucking gate.”

The driver landed with a thud, and scrambled clumsily to his feet, clearly disoriented. Hudson drew back to avoid being seen as the man punched in the code, so he wasn’t able to catch it, but it didn’t matter. 

He knew his way back, if he knew nothing else.