Following Freeman
A story about invisible beings
Part One: You Play, I Pay.
He had once read in a book that dying people often have a vision, or hallucination, that they are traveling from a dark place to one of brilliant light. So when the thundercrash came, the earthquake shock that threw him from his bunk onto the floor, and the white flash that seemed to shine even through the walls, his first thought was that it heralded his end. Daniel Archer, soldier in the resistance against the Combine, born... died... Rest in Peace. But he could remember neither the date of his birth nor that of his capture. Damn... Frustrated, he searched his memory again, to come up with another pair of blanks. Doesn't matter, he told himself, eyes still squeezed tight shut in reflex against the unearthly glare, even though it had passed. There isn't going to be a funeral.
Why not? something asked inside him. Because I'm a prisoner, he replied, irritated. The voice of his intuition had served him well in the past, but it had betrayed him in the end, and was quite useless now. They don't bury prisoners. They throw them away. Or eat them. Or turn them into Stalkers. The last was his greatest terror, and he started up, touching his hands to reassure himself they were still there, reaching down to trace the contours of his legs. They were swollen and bruised from the beatings he had received since his capture, but they were still there. They haven't done it yet, he thought, eyes still shut. Slow. They're running way behind schedule.
He had no very pressing desire to actually open his eyes. He knew they would tell him the same depressing story they had told ever since his capture: he was in one of the deepest, dankest cells under a Combine police station – exactly which cell, or which station, he had no idea – and its door would open for only two things, "interrogation" (aka torture), and execution. But there was a smell of burning, and strange, expensive-sounding noises. And where had that light come from? Had he dreamed it? And why was the air getting hotter?
A shrieking jarred his eyes involuntarily open. It came from the passageway outside his barred door. Had they taken to torturing people there? Or had someone been seized for execution and lost his nerve, the only possible result to make the process more unpleasant for all concerned? The main illumination was out for some reason – not that that was an uncommon event – and the emergency lights glowed in clouds of mist and dust.
There was a crash and thump as something or someone fell down the stairs, the someone who was screaming, by the sound of it. But he was alone, with no escort, dressed in no prison garb. He was an ordinary member of the Metropolice, save for his cries, and the clouds of vapor that rose from the back and side of his armor. He stumbled down the hall outside the cell, still screaming in his tinny, machine-modulated voice, and collapsed a little beyond. There was a sickening stench of cooked meat, and dimly through the haze and the emergency lights, Archer could see that the cop's armor was torn and warped, and the flesh underneath it, what he could see of it anyway, had been terribly charred. A flickering red light became apparent, and grew steadily stronger.
Oh great, he thought. I'm stuck in a cell and the place is burning down.
More from reflex than from hope, he began to beat against the barred door of his cell, trying to attract someone's attention. But to his astonishment, at the first blow, the automatic lock clicked open. He was too stunned to turn the handle for a moment. Then he threw the door open in a panic, and rushed out into the passageway.
Once out of his cell, he stopped short and looked around. Everything was wrong. Had he been transferred somewhere else in his sleep? Light shone in through the smoke and dust to his right, where just beyond the stairway the entire building had been sheared off at ground level, leaving the basement open to the sky. He could now see that apart from the red of fires, the smoke was shot through by an eerie bluish-white glow, like an electrical arc. To the left, where the interrogation offices and control room for the cells had been, the ceiling had been partially driven in, and light was visible through its gaps, again fire-red and the strange blue-white.
He thought for a while, and then decided to try left first, since it seemed easier to climb through the remains of the ceiling and then up and out. The bluish light was less strong there as well. He didn't trust that light. It looked unhealthy. There's only one thing that could have done something this big, he thought to himself. The main Citadel reactors must have finally exploded. Or been set off. Yay, we win! So far, so good. Now the problem was to survive the victory.
Before Archer climbed up, he peered through the shattered windows of the control room. Something from above had plunged through its roof and forced the ceiling and the pipes that ran across it sharply down. There were usually at least two Metrocops on duty, but only one was there now, and he appeared dead, sitting in a pool of his own blood at the control panel. Bled out damn quickly, Archer reflected. Must have lost a leg or something. But the dead cop's legs were under the control panel, and he couldn't be sure.
The cop's right hand was on the switch that operated the cell door locks. He'd seen them flip it often enough, to open the doors to put him back into his cell, that is on his lucky days, the ones where he could still stand and see coming back from an interrogation. Archer suddenly realized that the very last thing that the cop had done before dying was to release the locks and let him out. Why?
If the Citadel's gone, they've lost, Archer mused. Maybe he just wanted a good word from me to get him out of hot water after victory. But he must have known how badly he was injured. Had his Combine circuitry failed when the Citadel exploded, throwing him back onto whatever residue of humanity his Combine surgery had left him? Or had he just scrabbled blindly at the panel in his agony and flipped the switch by accident?
Useless questions with no time to answer them, a bad combination. Archer began to scramble and twist his way through the mess of fallen supports and concrete at the end of the hall. He ended up on the far side of a pile of rubble, on a few meters of road as yet unblocked by debris. Every building on the street had been severely damaged, and most had collapsed. What do I do now? he wondered to himself. Escape, I suppose. Show Barney we don't need his damn train to get out of here. There would be the encircling wall to deal with once he was at the edge of the city, but they seemed a relatively trivial problem. He could always follow the wall until he reached one of the gates. It didn't seem likely that the Combine was in any shape to keep them secure.
Behind him, the center portion of the police station still stood, though it seemed ready to topple at any moment. It didn't look as if anyone else had managed to make it out alive. For a moment or two, he stood there puzzled at his lack of company. Surely there would be a face, a voice at a window, but there was nothing. On the far side of the station, the sky glowed electric blue and white. Archer shuddered. He didn't like that glow at all, and as he moved off, he tried his best to always keep something solid between himself and the remains of the Citadel.
Although he never found out, this prudence saved his life. The incandescent mess of isotopes and energy fields that was all that remained of the Citadel's main reactor was throwing off a deadly dose of radiation, even at this range, but the components of the wreck were decaying quickly. Those few who managed to stay out of line of sight with it in the first two or three days after the explosion lived; the careless and the curious died, more or less quickly, according to their level of exposure.
Archer worked his way slowly through the rubble in the street, going directly away from the center of the city, or as near as he could judge. The further he went, the less damaged the buildings were, but there was still no sign of human life. Did the Combine kill everyone in this whole neighborhood? he asked himself. The few corpses that he saw in the street or buried in rubble were usually burned, some beyond recognition.
The first sign of life he found came from the rubble of a collapsed building. Someone was calling from under the debris, weakly, but he happened to pass close enough to hear. Scrambling down to where the voice seemed to be coming from, he could see nothing but a forearm and hand protruding through a tangle of beams and pipes. The survivor was trapped under that huge, immovable mass, buried alive.
The arm was waxy white, drained of color. Archer sat on a lump of broken concrete and took the survivor's hand. It was a woman's hand, with long, tapering fingers, the hand of a musician or an artist. The hand responded with a squeeze when he clasped it, but it had very little warmth or strength left.
He never saw the woman's face. She told him that she had worked in a nearby factory, assembling precision instruments, a place where the Combine treated the staff relatively well, for much the same pragmatic reasons a rancher or shepherd treats his flock well. But now she was buried under tons of rubble, hopelessly trapped, preserved for a short time by the chance cavity the falling concrete had made around her. She thought her feet must be gone, or crushed, she said, and she could feel her own blood pooling under her as she lay. She knew she was going to die.
She refused to tell Archer her name. "What does it matter now?" she said faintly. "You'll remember me only as a hand reaching out from a heap of junk. A hand doesn't need a name."
He asked her what had happened to her, though he could guess most of it. "I was sent home from work. Our supervisors had been rushing about in a blind panic ever since the first explosion in the Citadel. They told us the situation was under control, but we could see from their faces, the tone of their voices, that they didn't believe what they said. It was over. No one knew what would happen next."
She paused for a long time, struggling for breath and clutching at his hand as if it were a lifeline. "When I got home, nearly everyone had gone. I met a man on the street, a straggler. He was just wandering around. He told me that some of the people that had lived here had been evacuated by the resistance, and most of the rest had then been taken away by the Combine, he didn't know where. He was searching for his family, he said. But I could see that something had happened he didn't want to talk about, that he didn't have any place to go any more. I don't think he was quite sane. I offered to let him into my building, but he wouldn't come. I guess he's dead now."
Her voice faltered again, and she continued barely above a whisper, "I suppose I'm lucky. The building didn't catch fire. Bleeding to death is more comfortable than burning to death, I'm pretty sure."
Then she fell silent for a long time. Archer knew he should leave. Time was precious, and he could do nothing that would make any difference to this woman's fate. With or without him by her side, she would be dead very soon. Duty called. What good was sentiment?
She must have guessed what he was thinking, because after a while she resumed speaking. "You don't have to stay. Isn't there something you should be blowing up? I mean, a part of the city is still standing, isn't it?" The grip of her hand tightened on his, and Archer heard her begin to cry. "I should feel some gratitude, I know. Freedom and all that. We win. But what I really feel...I'm sorry but...fuck the resistance, fuck Freeman and the people who follow him. Maybe they did something grand for society, for humanity, the world, whatever. But they've killed me and destroyed my home. I'm going to die. That's all I know for sure that they did. The Combine never did that. They were shits, but at least you could live. And now I'm going to die. All for your glory. You play, I pay."
There was no way to console her. Archer couldn't even see her face, and he couldn't think of any reply that was adequate to the situation. For, after all, she was right. Her life had been sacrificed, and she would never see what good the sacrifice had brought, if indeed it brought anything good at all. He held her hand silently, and felt cold and small. To submit to the Combine meant death. To resist the Combine meant death. To fail to make a choice between those two alternatives meant... death. Everybody would die. Maybe the future would be better, but for the people caught in the struggle, at least for most of them, there would be nothing but exhaustion, heartbreak, injury and... death. And freedom, if they managed to live to see it. Cold comfort when you were sitting beside the only other person alive in the area and listening to her die, unable to do anything to help.
The outburst had exhausted most of her little remaining strength, and when she spoke again it was in a whisper that Archer could barely hear, even with his ear pressed against the fissures in the concrete.
"Why did you blow the Citadel up?"
"I don't know," Archer replied. "I don't even know whether we blew it up or the Combine. Or if it was an accident. I was a prisoner when it happened. I know we were supposed to capture it, but no one ever said anything about destroying it."
"Yeah," she whispered. "No one ever says anything. No one ever knows anything. Everyone was somewhere else. But people get killed anyway. That's always the way it happens." There was a long pause. Her hand grew colder, and Archer wondered if she had slipped into a coma. But she had one last thing to say.
"If you ever meet that Freeman guy," she whispered again. "Tell him to be more careful next time. About blowing things up and stuff."
Archer replied, "I will," though at the moment, his prospects of an interview with the eminent Dr. Gordon Freeman seemed just about nonexistent. "I'll tell him about you."
"Oh, and tell him one other thing..."
"What?"
"Tell him to go fuck himself."
Her hand went limp. She was unconscious, or dead. Archer lingered for a little while, but the hand became colder and colder, and he realized there was nothing left to keep company any more. He walked off, turning after a few meters for one last look at the hand. It stuck out pale and small and oddly out of place in the iron, brick, and concrete jumble. At least it won't be eaten by dogs, Archer thought. The Combine killed all the dogs in City 17 decades ago. Then he turned again and left it behind forever.
Part Two: When the Devil drives
There goes another one! an older man, so far as Archer could tell, but he disappeared behind a broken wall almost immediately he came into sight. It was the third or fourth time this had happened in the last couple of hours. He had passed from the residential areas to one of warehouses and light industry, closer to the walls, and though there still seemed to be some people here, they were shy as deer. He wondered why.
Probably because they've been hunted like deer, he thought. They don't even trust the resistance any longer.
In one or two places, he came across signs of fighting. Outside one warehouse, a collapsed, smoking ruin, there was a defensive position with the corpses of two Resistance fighters and half a dozen Combine soldiers scattered around it. It looked as though the Combine had been doing the defending. Archer took the opportunity to obtain a Resistance armband and a Combine machine pistol, but there was no sign of why there had been a battle here, or what had happened afterward. He began to feel like an archeologist wandering the ruins of a civilization a thousand years gone. Where was everybody?
At length, he found the railroad tracks. These must lead to a gate sooner or later, he thought. I'd better follow them. But carefully. They might still be guarded. He began to pick his way along the broken buildings along the tracks, keeping out of sight as much as possible. Now I'm doing it too, he realized. Hiding. From what?
A few hundred yards along the track, he came upon a squat, heavily-built warehouse with the symbol of the resistance, the circled lambda, painted in orange on its side. Lowering his weapon, Archer went up to the building and looked around. There seemed to be no one there. He went to the far corner and turned, to find himself face to face with three armed men carrying automatic rifles and wearing resistance insignia. They had their weapons raised.
"Stop. Drop your weapon. Raise your hands. Don't move."
The leader was an older man with gray hair. His voice was curt, nervous.
Archer complied. "Lieutenant Daniel Archer, Third District. I'm trying to get out of the city and up to White Forest. Those were our instructions if we lost touch with the main group."
The three didn't lower their guns. "Really? If you're from the Third District, you should be dead," the older man snapped. "There's nothing alive there now. It's next to the Citadel. It was completely flattened when the Citadel went up."
"I was taken prisoner," Archer explained. "I was in a cell somewhere, away from the Third District, exactly where I don't know. When the Citadel exploded, the police station I was held in was destroyed and I managed to escape."
"So you've been in Combine hands? That means you should be dead too. In fact, you should have been dead so many times that I think we ought to shoot you here and now, just to put you out of your misery."
This irritated Archer more than it frightened him. Caution was one thing; paranoia another. He replied slowly and precisely, as if talking to a child: "If I were a Combine infiltrator, would I say I had been a prisoner? I'd pretend to be a straggler instead. And one from a district that isn't a glowing ruin now. And how many infiltration attempts have there been anyway?" The last question was tossed out in a flat, assured tone. Archer knew that infiltration was almost unprecedented. It hadn't been part of the Combine's bag of tricks, at least so far as he had heard.
The woman standing to the right of the older man turned toward him. "Look at his gun. I don't think an infiltrator would risk carrying a Combine weapon. He's be in our stuff from top to toe. You know how thorough they are."
"I got the gun from a dead Combine soldier, a place where there'd been a battle," Archer explained, at the same time silently blessing his luck in taking that weapon rather than a resistance model. "There were resistance weapons there too, but the Combine one had more ammunition."
The older man seemed to relax a bit. He turned to the man on his left. The man on his left shrugged his shoulders but said nothing. Trust me, shoot me, Archer thought. He's cool with either one.
"All right, we'll take you in. Keep your hands in the air. Jen, blindfold him and pick up his gun. Let's go."
The local resistance headquarters was in a basement a short walk further on. There had been nothing in the warehouse with the resistance symbol on it. It was only bait to attract people like Archer.
They took his blindfold off in a windowless underground room, and two or three officers interrogated him for what seemed like hours. Except for the lack of beatings, it was conducted in almost the same spirit as his Combine interrogation. They interrupted him, called him a liar, and made him explain the same things over and over again, ten or twenty times, trying to catch him in inconsistencies. Finally, they gave up, and without losing face by admitting they had been wrong, took him to see the commander of the position.
The commander was a small, wiry young woman with brown skin and short black hair. She looked at Archer wearily, obviously considering him a bit of a nuisance. "So you want to move on?" she said, without wasting time in a greeting. "Good. At least we don't have to worry about you then. We can't give you much help. A day or two's food, maybe. If that."
"Are you in communication with White Forest?" Archer asked. "My orders may have changed since I last talked with them."
"No one is in communication with anyone any more," the commander replied curtly. "That shitstorm where the Citadel used to be has taken the radio right off the air. White Forest is nothing but white noise now. We haven't heard anything from them since the first explosion in the Citadel."
"What happened to the people north of here?" Archer asked. "I went through a largish residential district and only saw three or four people. One of them told me that there had been evacuations before the explosion."
"Yes, there were evacuations. They were a fucking disaster. Lots of people were still trying to get to the train stations even after the last train left. The ones nearer the center of the city died in the second explosion. The Combine killed most of the rest of them. I guess they judged that being on the streets at that time, or near a railway station, meant you were a resistance sympathizer. They just went on a rampage. There are stacks of dead bodies at the station just down the line. You'll see if you go anywhere near."
"I need to get out of the city. Where's the nearest gate? Is it open?"
"This railway line runs to Gate 4, but I have no idea what's at that end. We don't control it to the end, or anywhere near. Right now, we don't know much about the next sector, the one where the gate is. I don't think there are any organized resistance units there. At least we aren't in contact with any. Lots of pissed off Combine, though."
The commander laughed grimly. "Another thing to keep in mind. The wall came through all of this in excellent condition. The automatic turrets and mines and tripwires are still there and still operational. You'll have to leave through a gate if you leave at all. Good luck getting to one."
"Is there anything you want me to tell them in White Forest if I do manage to get there?" Archer asked.
The commander paused briefly, then began to speak in a lower voice, "Yes. Tell them we're starving. The Combine controlled the food supply in the city, and they've destroyed nearly all of the reserves. None of their stupid food dispensing machines works any longer. There isn't much water either, at least that anyone would be safe drinking. We have some food and water for ourselves, but there are civilians here as well, and more show up every hour. Tell them they have to get the wall down. Or break through one of the gates. We're trying, but the wall's too well designed. We don't have any heavy weapons. And the gate is too far away. If we push in that direction, we might lose control here. There aren't many of us left now."
They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Go or stay, the prospects seemed grim.
"This should have been better planned," the commander continued after a pause. "The attack on the Citadel was triggered early by Freeman breaking into the place, or so I've been told, and we were caught off guard. Then it blew up, twice. Kleiner warned us the first time, but we didn't know the second explosion was coming until we saw the pods fleeing from the Citadel. Not enough time to save anyone but ourselves."
"I'll leave tomorrow morning, if you don't mind, Commander," Archer said. "It's the evening of what's been a long day, and I don't think I'd get very far at night."
"Fine. Just get a move on as soon as you can, and try to tell anyone upstairs that we need help here. I hope they haven't forgotten us."
"I'm sure they haven't," Archer said, but inside he wasn't so sure. They seemed to forget a lot. Besides, they might have more urgent things to think about.
Archer was up early. It had been a restless night – he had kept waking up, convinced he was back in his cell, his heart pounding... only to slip back into sleep again, and again wake up. After picking up the meagre amount of food they could spare – it certainly wouldn't load him down, he reflected ruefully – he went to the watch officer's station to ask exactly when and how he should depart. The officer looked at his schedule.
"We have a group of prisoners being transferred in an hour and a half. You can go with their escort part of the way, and we'll tell the people up in the front line that you're coming. The escort will point you the way."
That sounded odd. Sending prisoners closer to the front?
"Where are they being transferred to?" Archer asked.
The watch officer hesitated a bit. "To somewhere they'll be less of a nuisance to us," he finally replied. "You needn't worry about that. The escort knows where they're going, and they've done these runs before."
It didn't look as if he was going to get any more information out of the watch officer, so Archer saluted and left. Might as well use the spare time to clean my gun, he thought. I'll be needing it again soon.
The prisoner transport was a motley crowd of Metropolice and ordinary Combine soldiers. They seemed weak and confused, their Combine circuitry well out of range of any controllers and probably not functioning properly anyway. There were about two dozen of them. They were handcuffed and leg-cuffed together in pairs, making it impossible for them to run away or even move very fast.
The escort was surprisingly small, only three soldiers. They were heavily armed, though; two had AR-2 and one, the senior officer, was lugging a light machine gun. The two with AR-2 stayed at either side of the prisoner column, and the officer brought up the rear, with Archer following him.
They set off. No one was in much of a mood to talk. The escort seemed morose, and the the officer's machine gun was obviously a strain to carry by hand for long distances. Archer himself was tired from his broken sleep, so he kept his questions to himself. They moved through the factory district, in parallel with the railway track, and then struck out over paths through the broad belt of less built-up country that lay between the city and the wall. Coming back to the railway track again, they stopped at a signal hut and the officer went inside. He soon came out again, frowning.
"It seems that our lines have pushed ahead some during the night," he said to Archer. "We planned to hand you over to the front-line troops here and then deliver our guests, but I guess you'll have to put up with us a bit longer."
Archer nodded in silence. He was curious about where the prisoners were going to be taken in any case, and the later he left them, the more he would know about what was going on.
The path they were taking dropped into a small trench or valley. It was narrow for a few minutes' walk, and then broadened out as it became deeper. At the end was a large, courtyard-like space, and the fronts of several buildings, one of which had a Red Cross sign on it.
As the Combine prisoners moved forward into the courtyard, the two soldiers flanking them drew further away and moved back, until all three of the escort formed a ragged line behind the prisoner column. The column began to waver, unsure of which building to go to, but still moving ahead slowly. Then, without warning or even a spoken order, as far as Archer could tell, all three of the escort leveled their weapons and opened fire. The prisoners seemed stunned: none of them tried to run away, though one began to scream and a couple of others made pathetic attempts to shield their heads with their arms. Or perhaps they were just trying to shut out the sound of gunfire, trying to pretend that they weren't being shot even when they were.
Archer stood back a little bit, watching grimly, his face expressionless. He had guessed what was going to happen as soon as he saw the escort beginning to drop back. He continued to watch as the officer checked each of the dead Combine, shooting two or three of them in the head with a pistol at close range to make absolutely sure they were no longer living. Then he holstered the pistol and came up to Archer.
"I thought we were supposed to be the good guys," Archer said, his tone neutral with just the faintest hint of irony.
The officer snorted in derision. "We can't feed them. It's them or us." He turned around and looked at the bodies, which were being dragged away by the two soldiers and several other workers who had appeared from behind the buildings. Turning to Archer again, he continued, "We're good enough to just shoot them, not chop off their hands and feet and enslave them the way the Combine would. It's better than they deserve. And we don't have any choice. We can't feed Combine prisoners while our own civilians are in danger of starving. And we have to pretend to take prisoners, otherwise they'll all fight to the end and more of our people will get hurt."
"I suppose you're right. Pretty grim, though." Archer shook his head to ward off an attack of sleepiness.
"The world's a grim place, Lieutenant," the officer replied. "Needs must when the devil drives, as the old saying goes. But now that they've been safely delivered to their destination, we'd better try to find the front line and get you over it without your being shot."
He paused, and grinned mirthlessly. "It's a better day than most, Lieutenant," he remarked. "I get to escort one person who stays alive, anyway. Try not to get killed before you're out of sight, or you'll spoil my day again."
"Don't worry. I'm not eager to be shot."
They began to move back along the path as the officer continued to talk, in a more casual tone now. "Neither were they, but look what just happened. That's life. You just never know..."
Part Three: Listen To The Big Head
Well, that didn't take long, Archer said to himself. He cautiously moved to a position nearer the broken remains of the parapet, where he could see without being seen. There was plenty of cover up there, anyway: the remains of air conditioners and vent ducts, a couple of antenna, the stair-head for the fire stairs, and even a broken satellite dish.
It was two or three hours since he had been passed through the resistance lines into no man's land. No man's land had lived up to its name: there had been no one there at all, though Archer had seen a few signs that the Combine had pulled out very recently. It was a mixture of patches of bush and clumps of small buildings, most one or two stories. The buildings were in poor condition – some of them not much more than shells – and Archer guessed that they must have been abandoned even before the Seven Hours War. He wondered why the Combine had bothered to push the walls out to take in such a dilapidated area. They might just as well have leveled it and saved themselves some work.
Some of the buildings showed signs of use, though none of these seemed fresh: trash, scattered blankets, makeshift stoves, rough tables and seats, fouled toilets, and graffiti. There were notes to and from people long gone, and crude cartoons mocking the Combine and Dr. Breen, whom one sketch depicted fellating the stun-stick of a grinning Metrocop.
Maybe they just let the misfits and drop-outs drift here, Archer thought. It would keep them harmless and out of the city, but still within the wall so they didn't go wandering. But that seemed a little subtle for the Combine. They didn't usually go in for anything more nuanced than a kick in the teeth. Sometimes, he mused, I wonder how they ever managed to cross interstellar space to come here. Often enough, they had done such blatantly stupid things that you wouldn't trust them to cross the street by themselves, never mind the stars.
Of course, the resistance had its share of dim bulbs too, and Archer feared he was dealing with a few of them now, in the form of a detachment of a dozen or so fighters camped out in the very building he was now perched on. Their watch-keeping had been so sloppy that he had found little difficulty in sneaking up to the side of the building, at three stories the tallest in the area, and then climbing an external fire escape. The Combine must have withdrawn completely, he thought. These people are such amateurs that it would be easy for a better organized force to take them out.
Archer had considered simply walking up to the front door and introducing himself, but the memory of the last time he had made contact kept him from being so casual. The people back there had nearly shot him, and they were in a much more secure position than this lot here. Better try to listen in a bit, he said to himself. If they seem OK, I can introduce myself. And if not, he could always slip back into the bush and broken buildings and move on.
The old ducts on the roof carried sound well, as did the stairwell of the fire stairs, whose door had long vanished. Archer moved quietly from one to another, listening and thinking. From what he could hear, the members of the group seemed level-headed. They all appeared to be in their early twenties, former factory workers, probably. A loosely organized collection of irregulars. Archer was on the verge of tiptoeing back down the fire escape and coming round the front way to introduce himself when he heard it creak. Someone else was coming up.
At once he dodged back to the opposite side of the roof, where he took cover behind a long, battered piece of ducting. There was a narrow opening underneath it through which he could observe most of the roof with little likelihood of being noticed.
Archer saw that the new arrivals were a man and a woman, like all the rest of those in the group very young, people who would have been infants when the Seven Hour War had been fought. They were carrying their weapons, and seemed to be trying to move quietly, but their appearance was not very martial. Their hands were all over each other's bodies, for one thing, and both were trying to stifle intermittent outbursts of laughter.
A couple, Archer thought sourly. How lovely! They're paying more attention to each other than to defending this place. Keep that up, kids, and you will be screwed. In more ways than one. In casual conversation the previous evening, his hosts had told him of the destruction of the Combine's reproductive suppression field, and the consequences it had had. The soldiers there had been forbidden to indulge in anything but smiles until the war was over. Still, they were having trouble keeping the refugee civilians in line. And it was looking as though this group found that sort of discipline overly restrictive. At least they had the sense to talk in low voices, though Archer suspected it was more to avoid attention from their fellow soldiers than from fear of alerting the enemy. But he could still hear every word they said.
"Over there. In the middle of the roof. We're out of sight of everyone there." A young man's voice.
I hope you realize, Archer thought, that those old ducts carry sound down as well as up. He'd just been using them to eavesdrop, and he'd found they made surprisingly sensitive speaking tubes.
A woman's low laugh. "It feels weird doing it right out in the open air."
"No one can see us but the birds and the bees. And besides, if anything happens, we can react just as quickly from here. It's not our watch shift anyway. We're supposed to be sleeping."
"We are," and another laugh. "Sleeping together." A short pause, and the voice continued, soft but eager, "Now shut up and let's fuck."
Archer stole a glance in their direction. Through the ducts and other objects cluttering the roof, he could see that the two were kneeling face to face removing each other's clothes and kissing passionately. I'd better keep an eye out, Archer thought, and turned his back on them to scan the surroundings for anything suspicious. He shook his head. If this were an old movie, he reflected to himself, there would be a surprise attack just as those two lovebirds got busy with one another, and they would be killed for their presumption. The students who are necking are always the first to get eaten by the zombies. Never fails.
They were trying to be quiet, Archer could tell, but the sounds were unmistakably those of enthusiastic carnal congress, and they seemed to go on forever. How many times is she going to climax anyway? he thought with a hint of irritation. And doesn't he need to, um, take a break sometimes? Oh, to be young again. But after a while, the muffled gasps and moans of pleasure from the other side of the roof triggered a surge of feeling in Archer, not erotic but triumphant. This was one of the things they had been fighting for. A symbol of freedom. The Combine's reproductive suppression field had not been the most fatal of their interferences with human life by far, though it boded ill for the future. But for those who had grown up before the Seven Hour War, it was one of the most personal and insulting. Like having Breen's hand stuck down your pants, one of his old squad mates had said. And now it was gone. Good for them, Archer said to himself. I wish they were doing it on Breen's goddamned office desk. Screw the Combine.
Eventually the incoherent murmuring and groans of pleasure died down. And since it was not a movie, but real life, the noonday surroundings continued peaceful: sleepy, warm for the season, and quiet. The Combine and the war might have been a thousand miles away.
Archer stole a brief glance at the middle of the roof. The couple were getting dressed again, slowly. The woman was standing with her legs apart, stretching, with her upper clothing back on but still naked below the waist. She bent and ran her fingers down the insides of her thighs.
"Damn. Look at this. I'm absolutely full of you," she said. "You're dripping out of me and running down my legs." She looked up at her lover. "Hope I don't get pregnant."
"Don't worry," the man replied in a confident tone, pulling on his pants. "I heard that you can only get pregnant in the three days after your period ends."
Uh-oh, Archer muttered to himself, and winced. Of course, no one had told them anything about that. There had been no need for birth control when doing it was neither interesting nor even possible, while the Citadel still stood. He sighed. On top of everything else, was he going to have to teach a sex education class?
After dressing, the couple went hand in hand across the rooftop and crept down the fire escape again. A moment or two later, Archer heard an ironic cheer and a round of applause from the floors below. Guess I wasn't the only one within hearing, he thought, and grinned. With any luck, that would cool their ardor until he could think of a tactful way to outline the facts of life for them. Or what the hell. Just win the war. She can pop as many kids out as she wants when we're at peace again. He moved over to the fire escape himself, to return to the bush unnoticed and work his way around to knock at their front door and introduce himself formally.
The group in the building turned out to be better organized than Archer had given them credit for. The route he had approached by had been unguarded because the sentries on that side had been pulled back when the Combine abandoned the area, and there had not yet been time to seed the area with booby traps. The rest of the perimeter was tight. So tight, in fact, that once again, first contact nearly cost Archer his life – he was alerted by a shouting, waving sentry only a few feet before he would have tripped a Claymore mine and blown himself in half.
The post turned out to be one of an informal network of resistance strongpoints that had been set up by local residents and refugees from City 17 as soon as the rebellion began. They had even tapped into underground wiring and connected most of their groups together without hindrance from the electromagnetic interference of the wrecked Citadel. Together, they dominated a loose arc around Gate 4, but the Combine were solidly dug in near the gate, and a frontal attack on them seemed impractical.
They were short on weapons and ammunition, having taken most of what they used from dead Combine soldiers, but they had an abundance of food. Remembering how lean the rations were in the other group, Archer inquired how they had supplied themselves, and was told that several freight trains headed for Gate 4 had suffered mechanical failure or gone off the rails when the Citadel exploded. Most had been loaded with food or water. "Not one damn gun, though," one soldier told Archer, "The only train that seemed to be carrying munitions was too close to the city center when everything went up, and it exploded as well. Nothing left but junk."
Archer filled them in on what he knew about the tactical situation, including details of the neighboring force, separated from them now by only a strip of wasteland devoid of organized Combine resistance. They were open to supplying the other force with food and water, Archer found, but they were more than a little cool at the prospect of uniting with it. Apparently the commander had a well-earned reputation as a martinet, and the loosely organized workers' groups were not looking forward to her attempts to "regularize" them. "We'll move on when they move in," one woman soldier declared to Archer. "Their commander means well, I suppose, but she's full of shit and a royal pain to deal with. She was like that even before the rebellion began. She's welcome to the food if she needs it, but she'd damn well better keep her hands off us." There was a murmur of assent from the group, and Archer hastened to assure them he was proposing no such thing. "How you organize yourself is your business," he stated. "I'm just trying to get over the wall and out of this city so that I can rejoin what's left of my group."
Exhausted by his trek and his broken sleep the previous night, Archer decided to stay the rest of the day with the group and move on the next morning. They promised to pass word of his coming to the resistance forces nearer to the gate, but they were doubtful that any of these groups were strong enough to break through to it. "It's their last stronghold, their last base, the wall and its gates," one woman remarked – the one he had seen on the roof, Archer noted with inward amusement. "The wall has its own power supply and defense systems, and the gates are well stocked with food and ammunition. They have nowhere else to go. They're cornered and they'll fight hard. It doesn't fit with your plans, I know, but we can't lose so many people so close to victory just to dig them out when we can just cut them off and let them die on the vine there if they insist."
"I'll figure out some way around it," Archer said. "I'm not asking any of you to go and get killed for me."
"I suppose that's part of being a soldier," the woman said thoughtfully, "The getting killed thing. But we've gotten so far, further than we ever dreamed. It would be maddening to die now, and not see final victory." She grinned at him impishly. "I've got big plans for the future, but we have to get rid of the Combine first."
"I know," Archer said, and smiled back. He noted that they were alone in the room now, and leaned forward. "A bit of personal advice, though, from someone older and probably wiser..." He whispered something in her ear, and her eyes widened.
"Shit! I'll castrate him if that's true, with a rusty pair of scissors, I swear..." she said in a shocked voice.
Archer raised his hand and interrupted her. "He probably believed what he said. How would either of you know? Besides, neither of you have much practice in self-control. It must be a pretty rough ride getting your sex drive suddenly turned on at full power when you haven't had years to get used to the weird things it does to your brain. We used to have a saying: don't listen to the little head, listen to the big head. But even back then, a lot of people got careless. Given your lack of experience, and the strength of the drives you're dealing with, I'm a little surprised that you aren't all permanently off in the bushes with your pants down."
"But what if I'm pregnant?"
"Then you'll have a baby." Archer grinned. "Babies are cute. Take my word for it. I'm old enough to remember."
"A baby? But what about the war?" She looked as if she were going to cry.
"Trust me. The war will be over by that time," Archer said, with more assurance than he really felt. "The Citadel is down, and I'm sure Dr. Freeman has the situation well in hand. We just need to go on another month or two, and then we can get down to rebuilding." He smiled at her again. "And repopulating. Babies are going to be in demand."
Archer's words calmed her, and she sat for a while in silence. Then she spoke again, a touch of disappointment in her voice. "I guess that means no more fun until we win, then. And I was just getting good at it, too."
"Oh, I don't know. You might try..." Archer leaned forward again to whisper in her ear. She giggled.
"Sounds naughty! But I'll give it a go. Better than cutting his thing off, anyway, and that's probably the only other way we could stop..."
Archer got up and turned to go. He gave her a last smile. "There's always something you can do. Use your ingenuity, soldier." And then he was gone. She never saw him again.
Part Four: At the Barrier of Fuha
At the Barrier of Fuha / grasslands, brush / and the autumn wind. (Basho)
Rain. Endless, torrential, cold rain. Rain with strong winds, rain with light winds, and rain with no wind at all. Rain during the day, and during the night, in fog, in mist, and even through the sunshine, briefly at the end of the day, when the sun was able to peek sideways under the layers of cloud just before it set. Archer watched the drops fall steadily off the top rim of the slit in the makeshift observation bunker, flicked sideways by gusts of wind. At least that's solved the water problem, he thought ruefully. Even if it's made us all miserable in the process.
He was on the far side of Gate 4 now, but no closer to exiting the city than he had been three weeks ago, when he had left the camp of the first group of irregulars he had happened upon and began to work his way around the perimeter of the gate, going from group to group, looking for a weak point, some way out. So far, he hadn't found any. He'd thought of moving further on, towards Gate 5, but he'd been told that the defenses were even heavier there.
The forces of the resistance were dug in and dripping wet, waiting for someone else to make a move. Not the Combine, of course. They weren't going anywhere. The remaining Combine troops were tied to the gates and wall, without their heavy equipment helpless if they ventured too far from its protective works. What they were waiting for was word from their high command, from Freeman, from anyone, and while they waited, rumors flew thick and fast. No one knew for sure what was going on, but everyone had their own opinion and their own plans for what to do next.
There was one other person in the bunker with Archer, a young, skinny, nervy Asian man, Corporal Takahashi. Ken Takahashi, a Japanese name; both of his parents were from Japan originally, he had said. He and Archer had gotten to know each other quite well over the last few weeks. His mother had been in early pregnancy at the time of the Seven Hour War, making him about as young as anyone could be these days. When the Combine had activated the reproductive suppression field, most pregnant women had miscarried, but Ken's mother had been lucky. Little good it had done her, though. Both she and his father had been killed before he was a year old, and he'd been raised by an aunt who had lied about his age, said he was older than he really was. He'd spent most of his life on the lam, dodging and hiding, which accounted for a lot of his nerviness. Even now, he was less a survivor than an escapee, perpetually on the run.
Takahashi was the official lookout in this post; Archer was merely a visitor. He was at the other end of the observation slit, a couple of meters from Archer, sweeping a big pair of binoculars across the horizon in the direction of the wall. He lowered them for a moment, and Archer stretched out a hand. "Borrow those for a bit?" he said, and Takahashi handed them over with a nod. He didn't sit down to rest, though. He just stayed there, looking out over the grass and the brush as the rain came down and the wind rippled over the taller tufts of grass.
Using the binoculars, the wall could just be seen from the bunker. Archer examined it as carefully as he could, paying particular attention to where a rivulet ran down and then passed through an iron-barred arch into the outside world. With all the rain, the stream was swollen and foam-flecked by the time it dove under the wall. I can't follow the water out, Archer thought. But perhaps I can use it some other way. He followed the stream back as far as he could from his vantage point. It had made a narrow valley for itself, running back towards City 17. What about blocking it? Archer mused. Water behind a dam is energy. Enough energy? To do what? An idea was taking shape in his mind.
"This used to be a community, a suburb," Takahashi said, breaking the silence. "People called it Fuhashi, Fuha City. I don't know why. Lots of people from away, Asian people mostly, lived here, down the slope almost to where the wall is now."
"I saw traces of roads and buildings," Archer replied. "Didn't know what to make of them. I don't remember what used to be here."
"My parents lived here. I guess I must have been born somewhere out there. Two years after the Seven Hour War, someone attacked a Combine patrol here, and they leveled the entire area. Killed nearly all the people there."
"Was that when your parents died?" Archer asked, and immediately regretted the question, or at least the blunt way he had put it.
"They were already dead," Takahashi replied, and fell silent. He turned to look out over the slope again. Archer put the binoculars on the table behind them, but Takahashi didn't move to pick them up. He just kept on staring out at the ripples of wind sweeping over the long grass. The rain had slackened, and almost stopped, but the sky had become no brighter. Archer realized it must be nearly evening.
"The autumn wind..." Takahashi said, almost a whisper, more to the scene outside than to Archer.
"At the Barrier of Fuha / grassland, brush / and the autumn wind." Archer completed the quotation, almost automatically. Takahashi started violently.
"How did you know that?"
Archer shrugged. "I had to do a report on Basho and his haiku for my high school final year world literature class. The name of this place, and the weather today, brought it back, I guess."
From outside came the sound of boots sloshing along the communication trench. Takahashi smiled at Archer and stretched. "Time to leave. Coming along?" Archer shook his head. With darkness falling, there wasn't much more to see, but Takahashi had been trailing him around a lot lately, and he didn't want either to encourage it or to hurt his feelings by telling him to keep his distance. Archer's gaydar had been silent for twenty years, but it was giving a pretty clear signal now.
"I'm still thinking what to do here. I'll be a while yet."
A flicker of disappointment passed over Takahashi's face, but he smiled again and nodded, and then moved off behind the fence. Archer remained, looking out into the gathering dusk, thinking about rain, dams, walls, human feelings, and the possible combinations thereof.
Archer's Takahashi conundrum solved itself fairly quickly, much to his relief. A few days later, in his unofficial capacity of romantic/relationship adviser, he was approached by another soldier in Takahashi's unit, Geraud Duplisse. Geraud, who was a year or two older than Takahashi, was looking for advice. "I'm rather fond of one of the other guys...Ken..." he began shyly. "What should I do about it?"
"Um, tell him, maybe?" Archer hated beating around the bush, especially when someone came not with a genuine dilemma but merely to have his or her own inclinations validated. "That's what you'd end up doing anyway, isn't it? Unless you just can't resist the unknown admirer role."
As Archer had suspected, that advise was what Geraud had come to hear. Soon, Archer noticed that Takahashi was no longer trailing him around as much. He had a word with the duty officer, asking him to post Ken and Geraud together as much as practical, and soon noticed that they had become all but inseparable off-duty. Problem solved, Archer thought. The world's net amount of happiness increased. By a little bit, anyway.
Archer was cheerful for another reason: his plans for the wall had been approved, and would soon be put into action. He had proposed that the culvert in the wall be blocked up with debris sent downstream, to force the water to pool on the near side. As the water level rose, it would either flood or collapse the wall by itself, or short-circuit its electrical systems. At the very least, it would make it possible to float explosives down and weaken the wall until it eventually collapsed.
Implementation took a few days; success about a week more, aided by steadily more torrential rainstorms. First, rafts of debris were sent down the stream, with baskets of rocks, old mattresses, and any other junk that came to hand. Combine soldiers cleared the first few loads away and kept the culvert open, but to do this they had to expose themselves to fire. Archer had acquired a beautiful old sniper rifle from a resistance fighter who had not known how to use it, heavy-caliber with an elaborate scope. This made it easy to thin out the repair crews until finally they fell so far behind that the culvert was completely blocked.
After that, it was only a matter of time. One evening, the lights on the wall flickered twice and went out forever. The next day, Archer and a small party floated down to the edge of the wall and climbed onto the walkway on the top, with no interference from the now-silent turret guns. The Combine forces had fled in the night, leaving nothing and no one behind. Archer and his party planted charges on the top of the wall and along its far side, withdrew, and blasted a new gap for the water to escape through, taking more of the structure with it in its rush. The encirclement of City 17 was broken at last.
After the charges were fired, Archer watched the water pouring through the breach from the observation bunker on the hill. Time to be about my business, he thought. Was it that urgent? Might as well see about my unit, even though the fight might be more or less over. It was rumored that a force from White Forest was approaching on the far side of the city, and Archer decided to try to make contact with them. Now that the wall was open, he just needed to work his way around it, skirting any parts that might still have active defenses. It shouldn't be that difficult, he thought. Not after everything else he'd been through.
Two days after the wall was breached, Archer took his leave of the local commander. "Colonel" Smithers (all ranks were more or less imaginary, but modesty was at a premium: calling oneself "General" was usually a sign of trouble, at least for the people you commanded) thanked Archer for his help, especially for thinking of a way to get through the wall without resistance casualties. "So pointless, now, to lose more people. Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait with us until full contact with White Forest is restored? Radio reception is still pretty spotty, but we are getting some word from them, off and on. It can't be all that long now."
"Well, we don't know about that, do we?" Archer replied. "We've hardly been one of their priorities to this point. They must have a lot else on their minds. I'd rather keep on the move, anyway. Stay active and you'll never grow old, as my mother used to say."
Both men laughed, then the Colonel continued, "Why be so determined to rejoin your unit anyway? Do you know if any of them even survived? You're the only person we've seen so far who managed to escape the center of the city, and that was mostly chance, you admit. What if you get to White Forest and find no-one else is left?"
Archer thought for a moment. "I hope someone else did get out. Those were my friends. I don't like to think they're all gone. But if they are, they are, and I've done what I can."
"All right, then," Colonel Smithers said. "You can pass through the lines any time, though I suppose it would be better to do it during daylight. Most of the people up there know who you are, so we don't need to make any special arrangements. Tomorrow morning, perhaps?"
Archer nodded. "Tomorrow morning. Thanks for your help." They shook hands, and then Archer went to turn in for one last night.
Outside the city was heavier going than Archer had anticipated. With all the rain that had fallen, it was sloppy going at times. He made the best way he could through thick brush with few paths and even fewer roads. It seemed prudent to keep off the roads in any case.
Late in the afternoon, Archer found himself working his way down a ravine which was the closest thing to a trail he could find in the area. It was periodically blocked with fallen trees and branches, forming piles that had to be clambered over one after another. As he reached the top of one tangled mess of shafts and trunks, he spotted movement in the bush ahead. Slipping down, he readied the rifle and turned on the powered scope. Binoculars with a bit of sting to them, he thought. Let's see who that is up there. He crept up the woodpile again and swept the area in front of him with the scope. Nothing. He raised his head and took a wider look. Still nothing. He must be hearing things. No one else was out here at all.
There was a movement in the bush ahead, and Archer swung the scope in its direction, crouching down again. Good! Resistance soldiers, at least two, probably scouts. Now, how could he get their attention without spooking them or starting a firefight? He raised his eye from the scope, wondering what exactly to do next.
Archer didn't hear the shot, or sense any pain. All he felt was a dull, heavy blow on his neck, followed by his own collapse as his limbs lost their strength. He tumbled down the side of the heap of dead trees he had been climbing, until his body, limp as a half-filled sack, came to rest at the bottom between two thick trunks.
He couldn't move anything but his eyelids. Must have damaged my spinal cord, he thought dispassionately, staring blankly up into the forest canopy with a view he could no longer adjust. End of game. You lose. What was I doing out here again? Oh, yes. Keep active, and you'll never grow old. Mother was right.
He was bleeding heavily from the wound in his neck, and could feel the blood running down his body, warm and slippery. So that's how she felt, he reflected. The woman in the collapsed building. At least the bleeding to death part. She was right. It doesn't seem to hurt. Strange. As a matter of fact, I am warm and very comfortable. I think I will rest now.
He suddenly remembered reading a novel as a teenager by an author with a strange foreign name, a name he had long forgotten. It began with the protagonist being arrested in his home for a crime that was never specified and never explained, and ended when the police came back to his home and dragged him out into the street to be executed. The man never found out why he had been arrested or why he was to be executed, and his last thought had been, Like a dog. A futile protest against the stupidity of the whole thing, the pointlessness. Like a dog, Archer echoed. He was going to die now because someone on his own side had been careless or hasty and had shot too fast, and had happened to hit him in just the wrong place. Like a dog.
The two soldiers whom Archer had been observing, a man and a woman, scrambled over the pile of fallen trunks to a point where they could see his body below them. They looked down for a moment in silence. "What a lot of blood. You've killed him," the man said, a bit reproachfully. "And he doesn't even look Combine, does he? I don't know."
"That's a weird rifle he has, though, and I'm sure he was drawing a bead on us. I've never seen one of ours with something like that. Could be an assassin or a spy. They're supposed to have people out to try to kill Dr. Freeman," the woman replied, her tone defensive. She shook her head, and continued. "He's dead anyway. We just have to keep quiet about it, and perhaps no one will notice he's missing. I don't think he can be from White Forest, so he's not from any of our units. No one else needs to know about this."
"Oh, all right," the man said with a shrug. "Accidents happen. What's one more corpse in this mess? Let's get out of here." He grinned. "Whoever you hit, it was a damned good shot. Pity we can't boast about it when we get back."
"Want to climb down and snag his rifle? It looks a bit of a prize."
"And get plugged by the next scout we run into?" The man snorted. "Let it lie."
Like a dog, Archer thought again. Rescue was not going to come. He was getting cold now, and very dizzy. He wished that someone would hold his hand. There should be someone, shouldn't there? It wasn't fair. The woman had been right, nothing was fair. But at least she had had him to stay beside her and hold her hand until she died, a thousand years ago. He had no one, no one at all. I deserve better than this, he thought dully as the darkness gathered around him. It's not fair. I tried to help everyone. I did my best. It's just not fair.
The soft sounds of the two White Forest soldiers working their way through the brush faded as they slowly moved away. There was no one else alive to hear them in any case.
Part Five: And They All Lived Happily Ever After
Ken Takahashi brushed a bit of dirt from the sleeves of his work shirt and surveyed the garden with a good deal of satisfaction. They ought to have enough potatoes and plenty to spare for the winter, and the daikon radish he was trying to grow for the first time seemed to have survived its transplanting. A friend had found a few plants wild at the edge of the forest, survivors of those planted by the people who had lived here before the Combine came. It was the first time he'd seen them since he was a small child.
He wondered if he should try to pickle some. He remembered them best that way, bright yellow, but it had been so long ago. He had only the vaguest idea of how they should taste, and none at all of how they had been made. Yellow. They had been yellow. Where did that come from? Mustard? Someone would know.
"Hey, D2! We found something!"
The voice came from the road that ran along the opposite side of the garden. It was Philip, one of the two boys Ken and his partner Geraud had adopted from a neighboring family when the wife there had unexpectedly added quadruplets to a family of five earlier children. The harried woman and her grateful family had been more than happy to share the blessings and burdens of parenthood, and the boys themselves had negotiated the terminological inexactitude by dubbing them Dad1 and Dad2, which had shortened over time to D1 and D2. They were a bit older than eighteen now.
"What? Another Strider cannon?" Ken said, as he walked slowly toward the young man at the gate, "The guys in Salvage will love you." Some things were still easier to adapt than to manufacture, and working Combine hardware was in great demand. Philip and Peter, Ken's other son, had made something of a name for themselves by nosing out several pieces of now-rare Combine equipment in useable condition.
"No. It's smaller, kind of weird. Some sort of rifle. Peter's got it, he's coming along soon." Philip had been running, and was a bit out of breath. "There was a body, too, just bones of course now. Looks like it might have been one of ours. No Combine chips in the skull, anyway."
"Where was it?" Ken asked, a bit distracted. Something was nagging at his mind, something nearly forgotten.
"Outside the wall some. Down in a gully under a pile of logs, among some trees. A tree had fallen over it, covered it. We were clearing the fallen tree out for the wood when we saw it."
Ken glanced over Philip's shoulder, and saw Peter approaching carrying something long wrapped in an old piece of cloth. It didn't seem to be very heavy. "Hi, D2. I guess he's filled you in on all the details by now. I've never seen a gun like this before. It isn't in working order any more, but I guess we can scrounge some parts and scrap from it all the same, maybe some lenses."
Peter knelt, laying the gun on the ground and unwrapping it as the other two watched. It was a long sniping rifle with an elaborate powered scope fitted, weathered and rusty, and Ken recognized it even before it was entirely revealed. One more small mystery resolved, he thought, and sighed. Though not the way I wanted it to be. But he had to be dead. He wouldn't just have walked off and vanished into the sunset.
Ken raised his eyes to see the two boys looking at him. It wasn't hard for them to guess. He'd always been crap at disguising his feelings.
"You've seen it before," Peter said, more a statement than a question.
"Yes," Ken said. "I think I know whose remains you found, too. That gun is hard to forget. I never saw another one like it."
"Someone you knew?" Peter asked.
"Not in my unit," Ken said. "He was just passing through. An older guy, nice fellow. He would have been in his sixties now. I'd always hoped he'd made it through the wall and back to his unit, the way he planned. But I asked around after the fighting stopped and he never showed up anywhere."
He paused, thinking. "Damn. I've forgotten his name. All I can remember is that he knew some Japanese poetry."
"Well, I hope you remember it before tomorrow," Philip, orderly-minded as ever, said. "They're burying him then up in the veterans' cemetery, and they'll want something for the grave marker."
"Geraud will remember," Ken said. "He'll be back from work this evening. He knew him as well. I always forget names and things like that."
Peter knelt and wrapped the gun up again. He picked it up, and then the three of them went back to the house in silence and disappeared inside.
There was always a little bit of ceremony over remembrance and burials, even so long after the end of the fighting. It was one of the few formalities the new government maintained, from the annual commemoration of Eli Vance's death to affairs like today's, with a couple of routine functionaries from the town council and the local military command.
Geraud and Ken held hands and watched as the remains were put into the ground, the grave dug and then filled again by Philip and Peter. The cemetery was a grassy field, disheveled and yellowing now in the growing heat. The'd trim it later in the summer, maybe, if anyone had time.
Geraud hadn't been able to provide the dead man's name after all. He reminded Ken wryly that it had been just at the time they had begun thinking of each other, and that tended to push a lot of the other memories into the background. Geraud remembered him, of course, as a kind and helpful man, but not what he had been called or exactly what he had been doing there. This left it up to Ken to arrange a grave marker, if there was to be any marker at all, and to decide what should be on it.
Just put it all down, I suppose, Ken had thought to himself. It's all that anyone will ever know now. So the small wooden plaque had on it simply "Unknown resistance officer. A gentleman and a lover of literature." Underneath Ken added a second haiku by Basho, a capping verse, twenty years late,
The summer grass. / Of warriors' splendid dreams, / the aftermath.
But I don't know what his dreams were, Ken thought after he placed the marker at the head of the grave. He would have liked the poem. That will have to do.
Then they all went home and went on with their lives.
Ken meant to replace the wooden marker with a stone one, but before he could arrange anything, it was the turn of him and Geraud to spend a few months at recovery work on contaminated ground – reserved for older citizens, with no plans to bear children in the future, less likely to be affected by the radioactive waste they would have to handle. They turned the garden over to Peter and Philip, and departed. By the time they returned, "absolutely glowing with health" as Geraud sarcastically put it, the autumn storms had washed the marker away. The snow was unusually heavy that winter. The spring thaw brought floods, so by the time Ken was able to visit the graveyard again, the exact site of the grave had become as obscure as were the name and the hopes and the dreams of its occupant.