Caity's World, Part 31

The humvee rumbled and bumped along the worn dirt road and ground to a halt in the blue-tinged darkness.  This road had once been real asphalt, paved and painted, but years of disuse by vanished humans and abuse by unnatural nature had left it as little more than a lumpy dirt two-track.  It was difficult to believe the surrounding dense foliage was a mere mile from what had once been a major city.  Nothing lived here now, or at least nothing that Caitlyn wanted to encounter.

The front doors of the humvee opened and the two Marines up front got out.  One fired several rounds at something dark in the forest, and then they came around behind the humvee and opened the doors.  “This way, ma’am,” said the Marine to her right.

She stood up, trying to avoid crushing her head on the ceiling, and squirmed out of the vehicle, landing in the dirt that had once been the road.  Steven followed not far behind.

“Gyah!” she cried, looking to her right.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, the house is harmless as long as you don’t go inside,” said the Marine.  “Her name is Lila.  And she’s friendly, ma’am.  She keeps a good eye on our rear flank for us.”

Caitlyn couldn’t help but stare.  The house was pink, neon-fluorescent horrible pink, the kind of color only an elementary-school girl could tolerate, and even then only in small doses, and here it was a full twenty feet tall.  It was bordered white with what was surely foot-wide dolloped lines of frosting, and there were two-foot-tall purple gumdrops in the large front windows.  The brown front doors — those couldn’t possibly be graham crackers, could they? — were wide open, and the inside shined a brilliantly-lit yellow-white.  But as weird as the whole thing was, it was even weirder when the eerie face of the front of the house grinned at her, smiling widely, its mouth wide open, the house jittering and dancing happily on its foundation.  “Hiya!” it cried in a squeaky little girl’s voice.

“Hi — hiya,” said Caitlyn, pressing close to Steven and wrapping her arm around him.

“You’re a horsie!” said the house.

“Um, yeah, I guess,” said Caitlyn.

The Marine turned to the candy house and grinned.  “Hello, Lila!  How are you today?”

“I ate a goat while you were gone!” she said.  “He came over and he was all sniffing at my step and I swallowed him in a whole bite!  Goats are yummy, but not as yummy as deer.  Can you bring me another deer?”

“Good for you!” he said.  “But no, sorry, Lila, we don’t have any deer for you right now.  We’re taking Caitlyn and Steven here over to the camp.  They’re friends.  We’ll be back in a little bit, okay?”

“Okay!” said the house cheerfully, and then it burped, and started laughing.

The Marine turned back to Caitlyn and spoke in a hushed voice.  “Near as we’ve been able to tell, ma’am, Miss Lila here was one or two years old at the Change, and she was mixed up with her house and a plate of cookies her mother had just made.  She’s a sweet little girl and has no idea what’s really going on, so we’d appreciate it if you’d be nice to her.  She’s — well, we’ve kinda made her our camp’s mascot, ma’am.”

“That’s so sad,” said Caitlyn, still holding Steven tightly.

“I’ve seen worse, ma’am,” he said.  “Come on; it’s this way.”  He pointed past the right side of the house, and led them down a peanut-brittle path decorated with tree-sized candy-canes toward the sound of gunfire in the distance.

*   *   *

The house had removed all the danger and debris in its vicinity, so their walk to the rearmost tent in the camp was eerily quiet.  No creature could breach the camp alive, and none dared approach the house.  So despite the ominous waving shapes of the deformed trees about them, and despite the rumbles of distant explosions and the worrisome orange glow in the distance, the walk was uneventful, past the peanut-brittle path, down the lane lined with neon-colored hard candies, weaving through the peppermint-stick “trees,” and at last through the hastily-erected barbed-wire perimeter and into the military camp.

On the other side of the barbed wire, they’d entered a different reality of high-tech weaponry, covered trucks for barracks and stores, piles of sandbags, foxholes, and green and beige camouflage as far as the eye could see.  Gone were the sweet sugary smells and warm forest smells, replaced now with stench of men in close quarters, of gunpowder and blood and sweat, of anger and stress.  Caitlyn had never been this close to the military before, and she did not relish the experience:  It was fine if they had to do their duty; she just wished their duty was far away from her.

The guards led them through the trucks and tents and machine-gun emplacements to a well-lit yellow-green tent in the middle of the camp.  Several men nearby were wheeling the dead body of a giant deformed person with gray horns and red eyes and black skin — not a dark brown but an unearthly charcoal gray-black — on a large cart.  To where Caitlyn didn’t want to guess.  One of his — its? — hands dragged beside the cart, its long, clawed fingers carving sharp lines in the dirt.  It was a nightmarish monster, and in that moment she realized how different a true monster was from all the Changed people she’d met over the years.  Even the dark creatures like the werewolves and vampires and minotaurs and wraiths were, in fact, nice, decent, average people, just trying to muddle through life like anyone else, with disabilities that made life difficult but not impossible.  A vampire could get by very well on pigs’ blood, and a werewolf could spend his evenings indoors a few nights each month.  That banshee Caitlyn had met last year had had to give up her weekly trips to the karaoke bar, but even she had admitted that wasn’t a real loss — she’d saved so much money now that she wasn’t partying!  Those creatures could be her neighbors, her friends.  But that — that black thing that reeked of death and bled black blood, that thing that was so obviously warped and bent and twisted, that thing whose misshapen arms dragged in the dirt, that was a real monster.  Not Steven.  Not Kat.  Not even the driders.  Not even a drider with an ugly black machine-gun.

And not herself, either.  It was a little sobering, but compared to that thing being wheeled away over there, Caitlyn knew she wasn’t a monster.  That thing was an aberration, a freakish twisting of the human form.  She was elegant and pretty, an accident, but still one of God’s beautiful creations; but that thing was a disaster, a ruined form wrought by an evil mind.  She was —

“Wait here,” said the guard, snapping her out of her reverie.  He disappeared into the tent for a moment, and then came back.  “Go ahead.”  He nodded to the two of them, and they ducked through the tent flaps.

“ — won’t hear of such things!” said a round man in an ill-fitting business suit at the far end of the tent.  He was fuming at a tall, slender, heavily-decorated military man sitting comfortably in a metal folding chair along the side of the tent.

“File a complaint then, if you wish,” said the man in the chair, idly toying with a cigar.  “Sergeant Crick here will be happy to provide you the paperwork.”

“Goddamnit, Silver, you know what I mean!  You can’t just blow up any goddamn thing you want!  That’s Philly out there, and maybe it’s not as vibrant as it used to be, but there are still a few people living there!  Still voters living there!”

“Governor, you know as well as I do what the priorities are here.  We can’t have a repeat of five years ago.  Or of two years ago on Long Island.  We most certainly can’t allow some terrorist to actually use the machine.  We’re rather short on bargaining chips, so little priorities like the safety of your civilians are somewhat low on the totem pole.”

The Governor whirled around to face away from the seated man.  He was fuming.  “I know damn well what your priorities are here:  Get ahold of that machine and get it working, no matter the cost.  Power, power, power, same old story.  You haven’t changed in forty years.”

“Why, I’m slighted,” said the seated man, standing up.  “Max, you know I’m doing this on the President’s own orders.  I’ve brought in everything and the kitchen sink, on his orders.  I think I’ve done my job quite well.”

The round man fumed silently for a moment, then nodded to his security detail.  “George, I’m not so stupid as to believe you have anyone’s interests at heart except your own.  And I’d appreciate it if you’d leave at least part of my Commonwealth intact.  But I know damn well better than to argue with you.  So while you’re mowing down what’s left of Philly, I have a vital fact-finding trip in Outer Mongolia I must attend.  Try not to blow up the entire world while I’m in a bunker on the other side of it, would you?”

And with that, he stormed past Caitlyn and Steven and out of the tent.

A stern- and crisp-looking military man standing at attention beside General Silver looked down at him.  “Sir!?”

“No, Sergeant, let him go.  I’ll owe him one after this, but his type can be readily repaid if you’ve sufficient resources.  But come!  I see our guest of honor has arrived.  Welcome, Miss Camberley!”

He stood up, and strode smartly over to her to shake her hand.  “I’m General George Silver, and this is my right-hand man, Staff Sergeant Thomas Crick.  I’ve heard quite a bit about you from your friend,” he said, nodding at a cot lying in the shadows on the far side of the tent.

A tired voice grinned out of the shadows.  “Yo, girl, long time no see.”

“Kim-na!?”  Caitlyn startled and raced over to her, skidding on the dirt.

“Indeed,” said Silver.  “Sergeant Crick, please return our esteemed enemy’s call and notify him that we wish to discuss terms.”

“Your enemy —?” began Steven.

“Mr. van der Wals is our present opponent,” he replied.  He turned again to Crick.  “Let’s not draw this out.  Get him back on the line now.”

Crick nodded, his eyes narrowing.  “Sir!”  He pushed Steven aside and strode out of the tent.

*   *   *

Caitlyn and Steven stood in hushed silence beside the resting figure of Kim-na.  The tent was eerily quiet save for Silver humming to himself as he slowly turned a piece of straw from one end to the other and back again.  He’d been sitting in that same chair, coolly toying with the piece of straw as he waited for Crick to return, and the three centaurs really didn’t know what to say to him.  He seemed to be thinking as he played with it, and then at once he broke it in half, tossed it aside, and stood up.

“I trust that you were treated well at Drycom,” he said, strolling over to them.

“Well enough,” said Steven.

“Good, good.  I may be old-school military but I can appreciate the creature comforts as well as anyone.  There are times when the only thing you really want out of life is to get the hell out of a dirty trench and go home, but there are also times when that glass of old brandy is the icing on the cake of your velvet-lined sitting room.  If you see what I’m saying.”

“I suppose,” said Steven.

Crick strode back into the tent as quickly as he’d left, this time returning with a satellite phone.

Silver smiled.  “Ah, good, good, you have him on the line then, I take it?”

“Sir!”

“Alright, then, if you’d be so kind, let’s get this show on the road.  Put him on speaker.”

Crick set the phone down on a nearby table and plugged it into a cable.  He nodded to Silver.

“Mr. van der Wals?” said Silver tentatively.

A voice cheerfully replied over the speakers hanging from the roof of the tent.  It was him, of that there could be little doubt, and a shiver went down Caitlyn’s spine when she heard his voice.  “General Silver!  Good to hear from you again.”

“Yes, well, I believe we have important things to discuss, so let’s skip the small talk, shall we?”

“If you’d like,” said van der Wals.  “But a little initial small talk makes these kinds of discussions go so much more easily.”

“Alright then, how’s your brother?”

The speaker was silent.  Several seconds ticked by on the old white-faced analog clock hanging on the far end of the tent.  It looked as if it had been ripped out of an old school building, and for all Caitlyn knew, perhaps it had been.

“Then I take it you’d rather get down to business?”

“Fuck you.”

“I doubt you’d enjoy that,” said Silver coolly.  “I prefer being on top.”

“Fine, business it is,” said van der Wals.  “Let’s keep this simple.  We want Caitlyn Camberley.”

Silver looked at Caitlyn, raising an eyebrow.  “Your boyfriend seems to want your company,” he said.

“He’s not my boyfriend.  And if he wants company, tell him to capture somebody else and keep her in his dungeon.”

Silver grinned at the phone.  “As you can see, we’ve brought Miss Camberley here.”

“Indeed,” said van der Wals.  “How are you, Caity?  I hear you’re enjoying being a military brat?”

“Go die in boiling acid,” said Caitlyn.

“She’s frisky,” said van der Wals.  “What have you been doing to her, General?”

“I think she didn’t like her stay at your house, Mr. van der Wals.  We’ve treated her rather well.”

The speaker crackled.  “Ah, well, women are often hard to please.  Now as for our side, we happen to have her daddy visiting us.”

“That I doubt, but I’ll play along,” said Silver.

“You didn’t doubt me when I worked for you,” said a voice over the speakers, and even though it crackled, it was that voice, the one from Caitlyn’s memories, the rich tones of her father’s tenor, and her heart leaped for joy; but she stayed silent, biting her lip until it barely began to bleed.

“My golly, Kevin, is that really you?” said Silver.

“You know damn well who it is,” said Camberley.  “And if I’d known what a psychopath you were, I’d — ”

“I know, I know, you’d never have worked for me, you’d have canceled the project, and you’d have taken up gardening instead,” said Silver.  “Incredible.  How did you survive?”

“I didn’t,” said Camberley.  “I’m mostly gone as it is.”

“I assure you,” said van der Wals’s voice, “that he does exist, although he’s getting faint.  But I trust he’ll fill your needs.”

“Undoubtedly.  He’s arguably better than that crackpot we hired for that Long Island disaster.”

“I’m not building anything for you ever again!” said Camberley.  “I’ve paid for my sins a thousand times over, I’ve repented, and by God, I’m never doing it again.  I learned my lesson.  This whole world learned my lesson.”

“I’m sure that’s negotiable,” said Silver.  “Next time you touch government property, you’ll follow the orders you’re given, soldier.”

“I’m not your soldier and I never was.  I didn’t enlist, I didn’t go through boot camp, and I sure as hell am not your property to be ordered around.”

“That’s negotiable as well,” said Silver.  “But yes, Mr. van der Wals, that is indeed Mr. Kevin Camberley.  I think we can end this little scuffle sooner rather than later.  Now, you had hinted that you wanted the pleasure of Miss Caitlyn Camberley’s company?”

“Goddamn it,” said Camberley, “van der Wals, I already told you!  You had me look at that thing you reassembled.  You can’t activate it.  It’s broken beyond repair.  The gravitational inductors are collapsed, and you’re not replacing them without a few tons of refined yttrium silicate.  Having Caitlyn won’t do a damn thing for you.  Leave her alo — ”

He suddenly cried out as a loud electrical zap issued over the speakers.

No-one spoke for a moment.  Caitlyn’s heart beat rapidly, and she felt light-headed.

“General, the terms are this,” said van der Wals, “cease-fire right now.  In one hour, you’ll send Caitlyn out across the field, with an escort, of course.  We will send her father out as well.  No surprises, no tricks.  We trade, and in twenty-four hours, you let us go home peacefully.”

“No tricks, huh?” said Silver.

“I’m a man of my word, General,” said van der Wals.  “Give me Caitlyn, wait twenty-four hours, and let us go home peacefully, and in exchange, you get her daddy and the stadium.  Otherwise, we’ll kill everyone you send at us, and if we start losing, I’ll blow the place up.”

“I suppose you have an ulterior motive?” said Silver.

“Of course,” said van der Wals.  “Don’t you?  But ulterior motives or not, I think we can play the surface game to our mutual advantage.”

“Indeed,” said Silver.  “Alright.  No tricks.  I want Kevin and you want Caitlyn; we’ll trade.  But if you try to pull anything, I’ll unleash holy hell on you.”

“And I on you,” said van der Wals.  “It’s agreed then.  Prisoner exchange in one hour.”

Suddenly Kevin Camberley’s weak voice came through the speakers.  “Caity, run away!  Just get away from th — ” he cried, but the speaker crackled and fizzled and went silent.

There was a click beside Caitlyn’s head.  Crick stood beside her, holding a cold, black, menacing revolver an inch from her temples.  Steven leaped aside, unsure what else to do.

Silver turned off the phone, scowling at her.  “Daddy doesn’t always know what’s best,” he said.