Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (13 page)

Boots thudded behind him at a jog, and Cole caught up with him. “Dom, baby, how you doin’?”

I don’t
know
how I’m doing. I’m existing. That’s about it
. “So, how far did you have to drop-kick him?”

“Aww, I just advised him to stay out the way of crazy women. Shit, maybe we’re gonna
need
Stranded now.”

“Yeah, well, they know the membership rules. It’s up to them.”

They’re no use to us. How many times did I walk through their stinking slums looking for Maria? Ten years, all
their networks and bush telegraph and shit, and they didn’t know she was out there? Then some bastard finally
thinks he recognizes her when it’s too damn late? Fuck them
.

Dom knew—in a weird, distant way—that he’d split off the functioning parts of himself to get through the day. There was the terrified Dom who had nightmares, and struggled to face each morning when he woke. Then there was the Dom who kept his body moving and going through the motions of being a Gear. There was also the Dom who endlessly replayed those last few minutes with Maria, torturing himself with what he might have done differently, and—half ashamed, half enraged—even blaming others.

But I did it. It’s all down to me
.

“Dom, we been talking to Parry.” Cole jogged his elbow to get his attention. “His guys and the civvy builders are gettin’ some of the small rooms habitable. You want a cabin to yourself?”

“We’ve all got to put up with some discomfort.” Sleeping quarters were no more than rows of camp beds and bare mattresses in derelict classrooms. “Why would I want my own room?”

“So you got some privacy, man. You know?”

“No …”
Yes
. Dom knew what he meant.

“You wake up. Every time you wake up, you go,
Oh God
, and …”

Dom’s face burned. “Shit, I’m waking up the whole barracks when I have nightmares. Is that it? I’ve got to move out?”

“No, man. It ain’t that at all.
Everyone’s
got their nightmares. Nobody’s sore at you. Just offerin’. You want it, I’ll make it happen.”

In some ways, Dom would have found it easier if everyone had told him to snap out of it. Nobody did. They just got kinder and tried harder. There was nothing they could do, though.

“Thanks, Cole Train.”

Shit, I’m going to lose it…

Dom blinked and tried to clear his eyes. Bernie was a little way ahead of him, a bloody handprint on the backside of her pants. When they walked through the school entrance, she made for her precious deer carcasses and seemed to be searching for something.

“Bastards,” she snarled. “Where’s my frigging liver gone?”

Dom joined her, because it was something to do, anything to distract him. The deer’s innards were scattered. Small blood-tinted paw prints led into a culvert.

“Cats,” Dom said.

“That’s it. Time I got some fur gloves.” She checked her Lancer’s ammo clip, then her watch. “They need putting down. Vermin. I’ve got a couple of hours. Coming?”

Being Bernie, she just wanted to be kind. Dom wasn’t stupid; he knew the whole squad—his
social
squad, nothing defined by call signs—kept a constant watch on him.

Putting down. Euthanizing. Whatever fancy name you want. Oh God, Maria …

It tipped him over the edge.

“Just stop being
nice
to me, all right?” The shout was out of his mouth before he could think. Everything in his peripheral vision vanished. It was just rage and shame and pain erupting, uncontrolled.
“Just frigging stop it
, all of you. I couldn’t save my own fucking wife. I couldn’t find her in time. I couldn’t save her. I had to shoot my own fucking wife because
I couldn’t save her
. Okay? Are we done now? Are we done with crazy Dom? Fuck you all.”

Then he burst out sobbing. The next second—he could have punched someone out. He didn’t know what the next breath would bring. He heard Cole like he was miles away, telling someone to beat it, that there was nothing to see here, and Bernie just grabbed him as if he was going under for the third time. He sobbed on her shoulder. It didn’t matter what anyone thought, because his life wasn’t worth shit now.

“Come on, sweetheart, it’s okay … okay …” Bernie must have beckoned someone, because he felt her shoulders move. “Take it easy. It’s okay.”

Someone took his elbow. “Dom, it’s freezing. Get inside.”

Marcus had promised Carlos that he’d always look after Dom. And he
was
always there; he’d just show up, like he showed up now.

Dom wasn’t sure how long he sat in the janitor’s room with his head in his hands. He could hear sawing and conversation outside as Bernie cut up the carcasses. Later, he heard single shots from a distance, shattering the still air.

“Waste of ammo,” Marcus muttered.

But that was all he said. He simply sat there and waited until Dom decided he could stand up again and face the rest of the day.

Despite his expectations, he did.

CIC CONTROL ROOM, 2200 HOURS.

It was way past dinnertime. Hoffman’s energy was flagging. He wanted to take a leak, and he wanted the steak that Bernie had surely put aside for him very badly indeed, but he also wanted commitments from the Chairman before he rostered off, or at least some acknowledgment that plans might have to
… adapt
.

“Look, I
agree
with you, Victor,” Prescott said. “We
haven’t
trained Gears for civil policing. But if it worked for fifteen years in Jacinto, we can still make it work now.”

“That was when we had grubs knocking on the door, sir.” Hoffman’s biggest fear had been that he would screw up the defense of Jacinto and humankind would be wiped out because he wasn’t up to the job. He’d dodged the bullet on that, and now another fear had taken its place: that he didn’t have the peacetime skills that this beleaguered society needed to pull itself together again. “The grubs have gone, so the lid’s finally off—plus we really
are
in deeper shit than we were a week ago.”

“I’m going to visit the local Stranded and offer them amnesty. Usual terms.”

You’re not listening to me
. “And if they tell you to ram it?”

“Then, because of the acute supply shortages, I authorize Gears to shoot Stranded as looters if they’re found inside the perimeter.”

“You tell them that.”

“I will. And I expect your men to follow that order.”

“What makes you think they won’t?”

“It’s very hard to shoot civilians, Victor. Any Gear will open fire if he feels his life’s threatened, but it’s another thing entirely to pull the trigger when the target is making off with a loaf of bread.”

Hoffman tried not to lean back in the rickety chair. Once his shoulders touched the backrest, he knew he’d slump, and then he’d find it hard to stay awake. The Stranded were just a fraction of the problem, one of a list of potential flash points. Most of the trouble, he suspected, would come from a simple question asked over and over by the people in this makeshift city: why did food, medicine, or any other resource go to another person and not to them? They were already griping about how much easier folks had it on the ships, and that they didn’t have enough ashore.

“The only thing we have on our side at the moment is a windfall of fuel,” Hoffman said. “And that was luck. Nobody expected Merrenat to have imulsion left where the Stranded couldn’t get at it. But we don’t have the hardware yet to make decent use of it. Heating systems. Buildings with roofs and doors and windows Plumbing. People can only take so much, Chairman. We took them out of their last familiar haven, squalid as it was, and dumped them in a freezing hole.”

“That’s Sharle’s problem to address. And he
is
dealing with it.”

“But he’s using my engineers. And the security situation is my problem, too. So I can’t ignore the root causes.”

“What are you asking, Victor?”

“When will we decide that Port Farrall isn’t viable ? Because this was a last-minute panic choice. It’s too far north, given the infrastructure we don’t have.”

“We don’t have that option. This was a last resort, after all. Every city we considered as an evacuation center is going to be like this, or worse.”

“But we’ve got another three or four months of this weather, plus serious shortages. Ask Hayman how many will be left alive then. We’ve already got rustlung and some kind of dysentery.”

Out of uniform, Prescott sometimes looked like an art teacher on a day off. It was the pullover and the beard. Without that tunic and medals, he looked pretty ordinary—until he moved or opened his mouth, and then everything about him exuded a certainty that he was in charge, and that it was the natural order of things. Hoffman couldn’t imagine him having a single moment of self-doubt. From the time he took over the COG and deployed the Hammer, the man knew exactly what he wanted done.

“We’re ultimately talking about restocking Sera with humans, Victor. If we lose vulnerable people, the older ones, we can still … oh, I hate to use the word
breed
, but that’s the reality.”

“Hayman says you can keep humankind going just fine on a gene pool of two thousand people, but do we want to run on empty if we have a choice? Otherwise we might as well be the Stranded.”

“To make it worth leaving here,” Prescott said, “it would have to be more than hardship. I would need to be convinced that staying here would endanger the majority of survivors.”

“I’ll monitor that situation. Sharle or no Sharle.”

“Where else would we go? Where
is
the proverbial
better hole?”

“Islands,” Hoffman said. “There have to be plenty out there that never had a visit from the Locust. Somewhere warmer.”

“Would any of them be large enough, though?”

“We lost a lot of people on evacuation. I think it’s going to reach fifty percent losses.”

Prescott just looked past him in slight defocus, stroking his beard.

“Let’s consider it,” he said eventually. “Talk to Sharle. And it’s going to put the naval contingent on a different footing.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ve let the navy decline.”

“It was always peripheral, even in the Pendulum Wars.”
And they didn’t like that much
. Hoffman had probably spent more time with amphibious ops than any other COG commander. “You only have to look in the dockyard now to see that.”

“Well, if we ever decide to reestablish the COG offshore, then we need more than a trawler navy, and not just for transport. When you’re ready, let’s assess their officers. I admit I’ve neglected the service badly.” Someone knocked at the door, and Prescott looked around. “Any other business before I turn in?”

“Any other classified information you haven’t shared with me, sir?”

Prescott gave him that look—the I-hate-apologizing-to-the-hired-help look. “I’m sorry about that, Victor. Yes, I’ve told you about every facility in COG territory now. The trouble with politics is that
not
volunteering information becomes a default in the best of us. It’s a mechanism we learn to stop ourselves from blurting out things at inopportune moments.”

That’s not an answer. But you’ve told me what I need to know anyway. Asshole
.

“Thank you, sir,” Hoffman said. “Sleep well.” He raised his voice. “Come in.”

Prescott reached the door just as Bernie Mataki walked in. She held something balanced on a large sheet of metal, covered in a piece of camo fabric, and managed to salute the Chairman without dropping it. Hoffman waited for Prescott’s footsteps to fade. The man had a lair overlooking the sports field, with one of his priceless rugs on the floor, and for a man born to rule he seemed oddly happy with that.

“Asshole,” Hoffman said. It felt better to say it out loud.

“That’s no way to talk to room service, Colonel.”

He smiled. “One day you’re going to have to peel me off his throat.”

“Well, better keep your strength up, then, sir.” She laid the metal sheet on his desk and whipped off the cover like a waitress to reveal a mess tin cradling a lump of brown meat and a few pale root vegetables that could have been anything. She’d even found some decent cutlery. “It’s as tough as old boots, but we didn’t have time to hang it. Cole hammered it with a mallet for a while, though.”

“Steak?”

“Venison steak. You could have had liver pâté, too, but some bastard cat got it. But I got the cat, so we’re even.”

Bernie could always make him smile. He looked down at the tabby-fur boot liners that had instantly cemented her reputation with Delta Squad. Anyone who could skin and eat cats earned a certain cautious respect.

“You’re
primal
, Sergeant Mataki.”

“Go on. Eat.”

“Don’t go. I need company.”

Hoffman hadn’t had a steak in nine, ten years—maybe longer. He certainly couldn’t remember having game at all. He chewed, eyes closed, overwhelmed by the intensity of the flavor, and suddenly found tears running down his face.

She sounded as if she’d sighed. “Are
you
okay?”

Maybe it was just fatigue, or the lid finally coming off after years of keeping it clipped down, or just vague memories of a vanished world that had restaurants. Either way, he was embarrassed.

“Yes,” he said, wiping his face with his palm. “Hell … I don’t know. Things you forgot existed.”

“A few nights’ sleep would do you the world of good, sir.”

“It’s Vic. Remember? Let’s pretend it’s still the NCOs’ mess and all this tinsel on my collar never happened.”

He opened the bag he kept under the desk—everything he owned—and took out the flask of brandy he’d been keeping for something special. He’d always imagined it would be one last toast to absent friends before he took a final stand, or used that one last round any sensible man saved for himself. “Here, rinse that cup out. Drink with me, will you?”