Chapter 29. The Invading Darkness
Aster had almost forgotten what she had to do, watching the climber and waiting in the silent darkness for him to either succeed or fail. The man holding the thick coil of rope, the only one Aster could bring herself to climb, made several coils of it, arranged them next to the padded grappling hook, swung it around several times, then flung it upwards! Aster watched as the loops of rope soared, then slowed, then there was a muffled thunk. The coils unwound, and a foot of the rope actually rested on the ground. The man pulled on the rope as hard as he could, but it stayed in place.
She bit her lip, checked that the straps of her backpack were tight one last time, and took the rope in one trembling hand. She was wearing dark , soft clothing. Her cloak and pin were in the pack, along with the seductive disguise, the clothing that would make her look like a Betty, that she would need to get close enough to the guards to kill them. Aster did not like going back to looking like a Betty, and intended to wear the outfit for as short a time as she could, before putting on her uniform from the Army of Darkness. She reached one arm back and squeezed a lower corner of the backpack for luck. Just having the Army uniform with her was comforting, though she could not wear it. A dangling cloak would just get in the way of climbing
"Quiet when you climb." The man who had thrown the rope whispered a warning to her. Aster was known for whimpering in fear when climbing the ropes, if she wasn't reminded not to.
Aster nodded. As bad as climbing the rope was, it would be far worse to get caught at it. Dying from falling would be better than what the Maestro would do to her, if he caught her alive.
She grabbed the rope, and pulled her feet onto the first knot. The first few feet were alright, then she was above her own body height, and felt her heart thumping as if it wanted to beat it's way out of her chest. She was gasping in fear, and that was not good. She needed to think of something besides the rope and how high she was. But what was there to think about?
She remembered when she had been afraid as a child, hiding in the basement with Thumb, while the Maestro fought the Hulk, who was actually himself. Thumb had been afraid, too. More afraid than Aster had been. Thumb had been the prettier one, but Aster had been healthier and stronger. She had sung a song, then, to try and cheer both herself and her sister up. Aster grabbed another knot, and pulled her feet upwards, humming inside her throat, so no-one could hear.
"The itsy bitsy spider, crawled up the water spout…"
Aster was a spider… crawling upwards, just like in the song… she pulled her legs up to the next knot.
"Down comes the rain, and it washed the spider out…"
But there was not much rain in Dystopia, and Aster could not go back down like the spider. Up another knot.
"Out comes the sun, and it dried up all the rain…"
But they were the Army of Darkness. They needed to win this war at night. Once the sun came up, it would be too late. Up another knot, then another.
"So the itsy-bitsy spider, crawled up the spout again."
Her song had run out, and Aster did not want to hum it to herself again. She kept crawling up, like the spider. She began mentally listing the reasons she had to hate the Maestro. Her rape. Her ruined parts. The children she would never have.
She pulled herself up another knot. There were many more reasons to hate that Green Bastard. Her sister… raped to death. Her father… driven to suicide.
Hate was warm. It was even more solid than the overly-thick rope Aster climbed.
What other reasons, to hate the Maestro? The animals in the zoo, that he had eaten into extinction. The zoo itself, gone. Just another graveyard in a world full of them. And now she would never be Zookeeper, would she? Not for real. Not ever - ever - ever.
Her hand reached the window. Aster was tempted to try and pull herself up, but she knew better. She was no-where near as strong as the free-climber who had disabled the radio antenna. Her arms could, with great difficulty, support her body weight.
When she was fresh.
Not tired from climbing as she was now.
She counted in her head, in order to concentrate on getting high enough to get through the window safely. One potato - slide her hands up, one onto the ledge, one holding the rope. Two potatoes. Get her feet up on the next knot. Three potatoes. Both hands on the ledge, holding tightly. Four potatoes…. up again with her feet. Five…She nearly fell forwards. Her waist was above the ledge of the open window. Aster leaned forwards, getting her body and center of gravity through the window. If she fell, at least she would fall inwards, and not down.
She wiggled, more than climbed, onto the floor. The tiles were cold and dusty, and there were bits of leaves scattered near the edges of the hallways, as if it hadn't been swept, or whoever had swept it had merely cleared a path by pushing the debris to either side, rather than actually doing a proper cleaning job and removing it. Aster regarded the floor. The tiles were fairly shiny near the center of the hallway. Probably someone was sweeping it, most likely they were too afraid not to sweep it when they were told, but was pushing a wide broom through this disused, unlit part of the palace as fast as they possibly could.
A gust of wind blew, and the open window swung slightly, the glass rattling in the panes. The noise made Aster shudder, but she was glad of it. The more odd noises there were, the less likely any noises she made by accident would be noticed.
She took five deep breaths, deliberately relaxing and thinking. She looked at her shoes. Dry. Good. She didn't want to leave wet footprints coming from the window opening. She glanced around, getting her bearings, and remembering the layout of the palace. As she recalled, there was a small bathroom around two corners. She wanted to crouch and scurry along the shadows of the wall, like a rat sneaking through a dark house, but forced herself to walk. Someone walking might possibly be assumed to have valid business in the palace, but anyone sneaking would be known to be an enemy. It still made her nervous. Darkness and cover were her friends. Exposing herself was dangerous. That had been hammered into her dozens if not hundreds of times during the past few months.
The bathroom was probably only 300 feet or so from where Aster had entered, but the distance seemed more like a mile. Fortunately, nobody saw her, and she only saw one person, a guard scurrying, as she dared not, making his way through the intersection of a connecting hallway, and looking over his shoulder. Aster heard his footsteps, and flattened herself against the wall, holding still. Luckily the guard did not look her way, apparently more interested in whoever or whatever might be pursuing him, and two seconds later he had crossed the intersection and was gone.
Aster waited ten more seconds, then made her way to the intersection, and paused. If someone or something were after the guard, she did not want to encounter him, her, them or it. She waited and listened. She couldn't hear anything, but could all too easily imagine all sorts of horrors that made no sound at all. At least, not until it was too late.
Fortunately, she had thought of and planned for the possibility of having to look around corners, without being seen, or exposing herself. Slowly, making sure not to make any noise, Aster took off her backpack. She unbuttoned the flap on top, and felt around by hand, until she came across a particular cloth wrapped shape. It was a long, padded pouch. Aster took it out and opened it. Inside was a small Pre-War artificact. A dental mirror. The traveling dentist who had sometimes visited the Zoo to clean or fix her family's teeth had used one, and Aster had told General Monroe what she needed. General Monroe know what a dental mirror was, though very few other members of the Army did, and he had had to have Trask draw a picture of one and show it to the other members of the Army, until they found someone who had one. Which General Monroe had confiscated and given to Aster.
The mirror was a bit fuzzy from being in the cloth pouch, so Aster gave it a quick swipe, then crouched down as low as she could. It would actually have been better to lay down in some ways, the lower the mirror was, the less likely it would be seen, but she could not get up and start running as quickly from a prone position as she could from a crouch.
Carefully, slowly, she poked the mirror out into the hallway. She knew that the human eye was attracted to motion, and the faster the motion, the more likely it was to attract someone's eye. So she made herself take a full minute to get that mirror fully extended out into the hall, then looked at it, very slowly angling it slightly up, down, then to one side.
Nothing. Nothing that she could see. Unless whatever might be pursuing the guard might be invisible, which didn't seem likely, and if that were the case, there was nothing she could do about it, and she was completely screwed, so she might as well operate on the assumption that if she saw nothing, there was nothing.
Aster had been holding her breath without realizing it, and forced herself to take five slow breaths. Then, slowly, she turned the mirror over, so it was facing the other way, and she could look the other way in the hall, towards the direction the guard had gone.
Again, nothing.
Whoever or whatever the guard might have been fleeing from was not there. Perhaps they had given up, or the guard had eluded them. Or perhaps he was merely fleeing fears from his own demented imagination. Or perhaps not so demented. The situation in the palace and the Maestro's mindset being what they were, the sane reaction to a great deal that was undoubted going on probably would be to panic and flee. If not out of the palace entirely, then at least from a more dangerous part of the palace to a less dangerous part.
Still, it was bad. Back when Aster had been a child, when she had still been living at the Zoo, with her father and sister, she had had a taste for Pre-War horror fiction, of which there was quite a lot at the Library. She even remembered the authors, like it was yesterday. Stephen King. Dean Koontz. It seemed that the people who lived before the War, having rather little to fear for real in their own lives, liked to write stories about imaginary fears. Stories about horrible places, with frightened people, and awful demonic monsters. Much like Aster was living in now. The books had made it almost seem fun, there had always been Heroes that were brave, and knew exactly how to defeat the monster in a few days or weeks, by the end of the book. Sometimes they had even been helped by God.
But Aster was no Hero.
She was not brave, she wasn't even sure there was a God, and she had only a slight hope, a very poor chance at best, of someday, not days or weeks, but more likely decades in the future, of possibly defeating the monster.
The Maestro.
Right now, all she and the Army of Darkness could do (and the Heroes in the books always defeated the monsters by themselves, they did not need a whole Army to help them, which just proved to Aster that she was no Hero), was to steal stuff they needed from the monster, while he was far enough away that they would not have to fight a battle they would lose, and use the stuff to hopefully run away from the monster and survive.
For as long as they could, anyways.
Having decided that the hallway was clear, Aster put the backpack on again, and crossed the hall, walking as quickly as she dared, without looking suspicious. The bathroom was only 30 feet past the intersection. It was close, now, though it had seemed so far away only a few moments before.
There were no lights on in the bathroom, although there was a switch by the door. And something stunk. Badly. It smelled like the charnel pits. Something in the bathroom was dead, and rotting. Aster forced away the temptation to try the switch, even though not knowing what was dead in there or what might have killed it made her nervous. Light could be seen for a long distance. Darkness and stealth were her friends. Once the door closed, it was pitch black, far darker than it had been in the hallway. Aster frowned in the darkness. She had to have a little bit of light for what came next.
Taking off her backpack again, Aster opened it and felt around until she found a fat candle, and a book of matches. Slowly. She had to force herself to go slowly. She set the candle against her leg, where she could feel it, and struck a match.
Now, she could see. She lit the candle and set it up by the counter, next to the sink. Then she immediately blanched, and had to bite her lip.
There was a head in the sink. A drip of water from the faucets had made it rot with wetness, rather than mummifying. It was, undoubtedly, the source of the horrible stink in the bathroom. But perhaps that was good, if it were well known that there was a rotting head in this bathroom, most of the inhabitants of the palace would keep out of it.
Macabre though it was, Aster, always being interested in anatomy, couldn't help but analyze the head. It seemed smallish. Aster felt her own head. She didn't want to touch the dead thing in the sink, but the skull seemed far smaller than hers. A child, most likely, though it could maybe have been a woman. Most women were smaller than Aster. The teeth would have told her, but they were hidden on the underside of the head, and Aster didn't want to poke around with it. It was gross with slime and maggots, and she had better things to do.
Of course, having the sink occupied by a severed head was inconvenient. She was going to need water. Just in case. The stuff in her bottle was dangerous. And there was at least some water pressure. Otherwise there would have been no drip on the head.
Like all of the smaller bathrooms in the palace, there was supply closet. The door in this one had been torn off the hinges, and the more useful items like soap and paper towels were gone, but the bucket, used for mopping the floors was still there.
The wastebasket was also still there, although it smelled bad, and there were flies buzzing around it. Aster didn't care. There were numerous wadded paper towels in it, and she wrapped several of them around her hand, and moved the head out of the sink. Wrinkling her nose, she put it in the wastbasket and covered it with the paper towels. Good. Now she could slant the bucket under the faucet.
She turned the faucet only slightly, so the water trickled out. No noise. No chances. She couldn't take any chances. It took like what seemed forever, but was really only a few minutes for the bucket to get approximately half full, which is all Aster could manage with the awkward angle under the low faucet. It would have to be enough, if she needed it.
Now, she had to disguise herself. Aster set the candle near the mirror, and placed her backpack on the counter. She took out the Betty clothes, the small jar General Monroe had given her, and a bag of cosmetics, some from before the war, some made out of things such as powdered coal, reddish clay, and dark purplish ground up berries. She rummaged around some more and took out her weapons, the gun and knife. She set them on the counter as well.
Aster stripped, taking off her dark Army clothes, and even her underwear. However, before she made herself up, there was something she had to do. She reached again into her backpack, and took out two green, silk sheets. The sort used in the palace. Which apparently were being stolen and sold by one (or perhaps more than one) of the guards, as General Monroe had had several of them in the Underworld.
Aster spread one of the sheets out on the bathroom floor. The tiles were dirty, but that was fine. Dirty would help what she hoped to accomplish later. Then she stepped into the middle of the sheet, squatted down, and strained until she manage to relieve herself. Both defecating and urinating. It stunk of course, but that didn't matter. It actually smelled better than the rotting head in the wastebasket, and the smellier it was, the better. God, what a mess, though. There was a big puddle, but unlike the water, oil, and alcohol puddled around the Underworld, she sure as hell didn't want to walk in it. Fuck the Maestro for bringing her to the point where she had to do such things. Her crotch was wet, and she wiped herself with the underwear she had just removed. She tossed the underwear disgustedly in the middle of the messed sheet. She'd have to get a new pair, later. For now, she wasn't intending to wear any, anyways.
Aster put her dark Army clothing, her shoes, her socks, and her brassiere into her backpack, where her cloak was. She threw it into the closet where she had gotten the bucket, and closed the door. If someone saw a Betty with such an odd item as that battered backpack, it would arouse suspicions. If the Army managed to take the palace, she would come back for it later. If they failed, it wouldn't matter.
Turning back to the sink, Aster picked up the small jar and opened it. It was full of some sort of clear, odorless grease. A wrinkled, torn label said 'Vaseline'. However, it no longer contained 'Vaseline'. It was full of the lye soap that they made at the mines, which had been deliberately cooked to remain soft and slimy rather than hard as it should be. And it was mixed with powdered limestome. She wasn't sure if the stuff would help, but she thought it might, and the whitish tone to the stuff would make her skin look paler, and aid in her disguise. Still, it was a thin barrier of protection against that stuff in the bottle. But it was all she had. And it might help. All the books Aster had read said it would, and she trusted the books to have their facts right. So she knew it would help. But as with the thin rope, knowing something and believing it were two different things. But whether she could believe it or not, it was all she had, there was no better protection the way there was a better rope. Not that she could use, anyways. So she had to use it, whether she completely trusted it or not.
She scooped some of greasy, whitish soap up with two fingers, and began rubbing it all over her whole body, from the bottom of her feet, and all the way up onto her face, and even her hair. It made her hair look disgusting, but that didn't matter. It was going to be covered with the wig. She smoothed the stuff out over her skin. The oily sheen actually looked rather sexy, which was good. Sexy would help seduce and distract the guards.
She slicked back her hair, and put on the wig, looking in the mirror as she slid clips into place to hold it firmly. The blond locks were tangled, and Aster carefully went through them with a comb. Watching herself in the mirror was eerie. With the poor candle light, the weight she had lost from the scanty food over the past several months, the blond wig and the white limestone in the soap making her face a few shades paler, she could have been Thumb's twin. Except for being far taller than Thumb had been, the last she had seen her. But Aster had been short when she was young, and gained her height at a fairly late age. Who knew how tall Thumb would have been?
If she had lived, that was.
Thinking about how Thumb had died, raped to death by the Maestro, made Aster angry and sad again. She thought about what would likely happen when she used the stuff in the bottle. It probably would not be pretty or pleasant. Good. Something ugly and painful was exactly what the raping guards in the palace deserved. Especially Paul Rasse.
Aster put on the Betty clothes, sheer green silks, without even underwear underneath. The more of her body that was semi-visible, the more distracted the guards would get. Who cared what they saw? They'd be dead soon enough, if things went according to plan, and would never get to brag about it. Not that she really cared that much, anyways.
Besides, everything they saw was bait.
Bait in a trap.
Aster's trap.
General Monroe and Daniel Wolfkiller had hammered that into her head. And she knew it was just brainwashing, but like so much else, knowing was not believing. Besides, the thoughts made good sense, and it was no more than what the Maestro's raping guards deserved. Aster had lived for five years in a trap. Now it was their turn. And it had been far longer than five years, really. She'd been born into a trap. Into a cage. Like everyone in Dystopia. It was only now that she had the chance to turn the tables, and hopefully to get out.
But how will you get out of the cage in your own head, Zookeeper?
Her thoughts sounded mockingly like the Maestro's voice, and she pushed them away. She would get out. Or if not out, maybe she could at least move the cage she was in somewhere else, where the Maestro could never find her, and maybe even make it bigger so that she wouldn't mind it so much. Then maybe she would finally have a little peace.
Aster put on the phony high-heeled shoes, which looked as if they ought to raise her height, but actually didn't. It was all part of the deception. Don't let the enemy see you, and if you must let him see you, make sure that what he sees is a lie. Then she took the cosmetics, and carefully put them on, the way Missy had taught her. She guessed it looked nice, and seductive, though Aster had never really been that interested in her looks other than being clean and neat.
It was just bait, anyways. Bait in a trap. If men were so stupid that they would turn down an opportunity for actual sex, in favor of getting to look at a few grams of color on someone's face, that was hardly Aster's fault. Had she been in charge of the world, she would have given men more brains.
There was a bottle of perfume in Aster's backpack. It was actually of modern-day manufacture, consisting of lemon oil dissolved in alcohol. It had a strong, sharpish-sweet smell, and Aster deliberately put just a little too much of it onto her silken Betty clothes, as the stuff would dissolve the thin layer of soap she had applied to her skin. Again, it was part of the deception. The stuff in the bottle had a nasty smell, and she wanted to partially deaden the noses of the guards. Every sense of theirs she could take away or fool, their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell, was one more advantage on her side.
Looking in the mirror, she looked like a proper Betty. Far more so than when she had actually been one. Other than wearing the scanty clothing, which she had had no choice in, she had never bothered to make up her face or wear perfume. Why would she have? Being physically pre-adolescent, she had had no interest in sex with the Maestro, or the guards, or anyone else. Though she was occasionally interested now, there was really no specific man she wanted to get involved in. Her drunken attraction towards Daniel Wolfkiller's muscles from the party the Army of Darkness had had a few nights ago did nothing but disgust her now that she was sober. And even if there had been someone she was interested in… what could she ever really offer him? The Maestro had ruined her for ever having sex. All she could ever be was empty bait.
Well, if she was bait, she would be the best damn bait the world had ever seen, until she got the bastards into the trap she was setting for them. She thought about some of the horror books she had read, at the Library. Female vampires were often basically bait in some of the books. They lured in human men into their trap by looking seductive, then killed them. Which was much what Aster intended. So be it.
She made a coy face in the mirror, imagining slender female vampire fangs nearly hidden by only slightly parted lips, or a slow tongue. Female vampires would never be afraid of merely human men like the guards. So she would pretend to be one, then she would be less afraid than weak little Aster was.
She was not going to need the cosmetics any more. She threw them into the wastebasket, where she had thrown the head. For a moment she wondered what was attracting the flies to the wastebasket, as they had been buzzing around it even before she had thrown the rotting head in there, then shrugged. She didn't really want to know and getting the smell of death on her would ruin the deception she had so carefully created.
The last part of the deception was to hide her weapons. Aster tucked her gun under the wide, metallic green sash at her waist and placed the curved knife under her garter, where it's shape was hidden by the sheer skirts. Then she took her bottle and a carefully wrapped, delicate Pre-War wineglass out of the backpack. She put them, along with the bottle of perfume in the bucket, under the water. She re-sealed the jar of soft soap, making sure the cap was tight, and put that into the water as well. Then she picked up the sheet she had messed, and making a disgusted face, wadded it up. She used the second sheet to wrap up the first one, and the bucket. She adjusted it, yanking at the corners of the sheets, until it looked like a random ball, and not a perfectly formed cylinder like the bucket inside.
If anyone should stop her in the hallway, she would tell them a cock and bull story about being forced to take a mess down to the laundry. And it was messy. She could smell the mess right through both sheets. Nobody smelling that would want to go poking through a pile of dirtied laundry to see exactly what might be in it.
Deception. Always deception. If you had to let the enemy see you, make sure that what they see is a lie, and if you have to let the enemy smell you, make sure that what they smell is a lie.
Besides. They thought shit was funny enough when they had raped her and smeared it in her hair and on her face. Let's see how funny they would think it was once she was through with them.
Aster blew out the candle, picked up the wadded, stinking mass of cloth, and left the bathroom. She quickly made her way to the lighted hallways in the part of the palace that was still inhabited. Betties were timid, and certainly did not like the darkness, the way Aster and other members of the Army of Darkness did. It was stupid when you though about it. Darkness couldn't hurt them, and would make it harder for the Maestro or Paul Rasse and his rape buddies to find them.
Stepping into the hallway, exposed to the dangerous light, Aster put on a face. She imagined she were a female vampire, looking for just the right place to ambush a weak, helpless human man, before ripping out his throat and drinking his rotten blood. And until that time, she would be bait. Seductive. She widened her eyes, trying to project both innocence and nervousness, and put on a slightly embarrassed looking face, at the stinking mess she carried. She pushed her chest forward and lowered the wadded up mess of sheets, so her breasts could be more easily seen. Deliberately, she wiggled her hips. Missy had shown her how high heels made your hips sway more, when you walked in them. Aster's shoes, being part of her disguise, looked, like high heels, but were actually flat. But she had to remember the deception and move as if they actually were real high heels.
The light in the hallway seemed brighter, and bluer than Aster remembered. She squinted at it, not sure if the color was actually off, or if she was too used to moonlight and fire as the main sources of light. There was an odd, occasional flickering, as if the voltage or something in the electricity made by the palace generators was slightly off. Or perhaps the bulbs were going bad. Like everything else in the palace. Like everything else in the world, she supposed. Even the green marble hallways, although they had been well cleaned here, were missing tiles here and there. Back when she had been a Betty, they would have been quickly replaced; Aster knew there was a whole store room full of thousands of them. But now either nobody cared, or nobody knew how to replace them, or everyone was too afraid to replace them.
Aster shook her head at the dark holes where tiles ought to be. She remembered as a child, blowing soap bubbles, and looking closely at them in the light. The process the bubbles went through reminded her of what was happening to the hallway. They got thinner and thinner, and tiny holes, smaller than pinheads, began appearing in the surface of the soapy liquid. There were more and more holes… and then suddenly the bubble would pop!
God help us! She thought. Don't let that happen! Not to the little animals! Not to the world! Let SOMETHING be left! Otherwise I don't think I could stand it!
The fact that she herself would not be around to have to 'stand it' if the world were simply to fade and vanish like a soap bubble didn't occur to her. Besides, she wasn't even sure if there were a God or not. Aster shuddered, putting her deceptive, seductive face back on. Even if there were a God, he never seemed to help or care about her. If the world were not to vanish, it would be up to her to do something about it. She went down two hallways, and saw three guards coming towards her. Her heart beat, and she wanted to run, but she forced herself to smile, and shrug slightly instead. She moved more carefully, so as not to slosh the water in the bucket, and make a noise that could be heard. One of the guards sniffed, getting a noseful of the mess she carried.
"Phew, girl! What you got there?"
"Oy, geez." Aster deliberately used an accent from a particular part of the Wastelands that she had practiced for the past several weeks. One of General Monroe's 'Lieutenants' (which meant that he was part of his original gang of bandits) had been from that area and coached Aster. It was all part of the deception. If you had to let the enemy hear you, make sure that what he heard was a lie. "Wooldz yooz b'lieve thart heez toohk onlies fifteern secoonds toor feeneesh, thehnz heez toohk ar doomp rooht onz ther behdz! Thehnz heez tillz MEEZ toor teekz eetz toor thar loondreez foor meekingz heemz feeneesh toor fahstz!"
It was a well thought out story. Messing the sheets after sex was a fairly common practice among some of the nastier guards. Such as Paul Rasse and his friends. Sometimes they even urinated or defecated right on the Betty, if they were in a particularly nasty mood. Although it had never happened to Aster (Rasse and his friends generally raped her on the floor of store rooms, not in a bed), she had heard the other Betties often talking about the matter in disgusted tones. Aster shrugged again, and gave the blond hair of her wig a slight toss, in the manner that Missy had taught her.
The deception worked. The guards laughed.
"Rasse!" One of them snorted and slapped his leg.
"Thought he was …" The guard shrugged. He looked Aster up and down. "I'd finish too fast, too! This one's fresh. Barely touched, by the sound of her. Hasn't lost her country accent yet. Hell, maybe hasn't even lost her cherry. Or if she has, maybe at least has some cherry juice left."
All three guards thought this hilarious, and laughed. One of them snorted "Nice tits, by the way." He reached out as if to pinch one of them, but changed his mind after taking another glance at the smelly bundle Aster was carrying. He stepped back and shook his head.
"Get yourself down to the laundry, girl. And get a bath. You're stinking up the place. You need to be appetizing, if you know what I mean. Or you might just find yourself on the menu."
Aster nodded and moved past them. She heard them snickering, and one of them said: "She looked wet. Think he peed on her, too?"
The guards laughed louder, but by this time Aster was well past them. So the oily sheen of the soap had been noticed, but fortunately they had come to a completely wrong conclusion about it. Deception. Always deception, when dealing with the enemy. The enemy did not deserve truth. Not an ounce of it. Truth was a privilege reserved for one's friends.
She thought of the joke the guard had made, a few moments before. So that's what it had come to, here. They had gotten so used to the Maestro's cannibalism that they now thought it funny. Probably they thought of him as some sort of evil god, like the Aztecs used to worship. How a god with habits like that could be thought worthy of worship was unfathomable to Aster, but apparently enough people could wrap their minds around it that the Aztecs had based a whole culture on it. Screw them. She had done bad things and eaten bad things while she was in the Army. She had gotten into scraps with her fellow soldiers more than she should have, and eaten bugs and rats. But she didn't eat little six year old kids and laugh about it. So screw them. The enemy was nothing but scum. They didn't deserve the truth, and they did deserve what she was going to do to them. Every bit of it. Even what was in her bottle. Maybe even especially what was in the bottle.
Her pace slowed, as she replayed her encounter with the guards, inside her mind. Despite their snickering and lewd behavior and horrible joke, hadn't there been a hint of guilt, a shadow over their faces? The ghost, perhaps, of the odd, guilty expression she had seen on the faces of the people from Wisconsin, the numerous times they had become evasive and refused to answer her questions about the Vampire, Morbius. The deliberate, wide-eyed mask of innocence combined with seductiveness slipped from her face. Her eyelids squinted slightly and her focus glazed, as thoughts seemed to click into place in her mind. Then she shook her head. She couldn't think through complex problems. Not here. Not now. She had to concentrate on her disguise. Her deception. She had to be strong and vicious. The hunting, female Vampire. Bait for her prey. Not weak little Aster Aversa.
She continued down the hallways, a few times encountering areas where several lights had burned out, making holes of blackness, much like the missing tiles did. Once, she saw a rat. She ignored it. There had been plenty of rats back in the Underworld, at least before most of them had been eaten. Once, she saw what looked like part of the skeleton of a small hand, resting on an ornate wooden table, almost as if it were an art display of some kind. For some reason, Aster found this to be highly disturbing. She looked away and moved on.
Eventually, Aster drew close to the room where she knew the fuses and breakers in the palace were. She did not look around the corner. Either it was still guarded by two guards, in which case peering around the corner and pulling her head back would simply draw suspicion. Or there were no guards, in which case she was far luckier than she hoped to be. Or there were more than two guards in which case she would have to give up on her plan. She doubted she could take on more than two men, and she wouldn't risk herself on pointless heroics doomed to failure. She was no Hero. Not like the dead ones in the Hall of Fallen Heroes.
Nervousness threatened to make Aster move more quickly than she should, and make mistakes. That would not do. General Monroe had had everyone in the Army go through (in shifts) an exercise he had devised, taking apart some car doors that someone had scavenged from somewhere, removing a plastic panel, then foam, then taking out the window mechanism. Then putting it all back together. He gave them booklets with instructions, describing what to do with every screw and cable. He let them read the booklets, then took them away and told them they had two hours to do the job.
Two hours was actually a very generous amount of time, but the fact that there was a time limit at all had caused Aster and most of the other members of the Army to make mistakes. They forgot to reconnect wires, or arranged the cables in the door the wrong way, or dropped screws and had to hunt for them. Most of the mistakes resulted in their having to re-disassemble a door that they already partly put together, then put it together again. The result was that they all went over their time limit. Had they gone more slowly and thought about what they were doing, rather than hurrying because of fear of the time limit, they actually would have finished with plenty of time to spare.
So it was with her mission. She actually had until two hours before sunrise to get the lights out, before the Army attacked anyways. Forever, really. And she'd been in the palace for only an hour. A few more minutes would not matter, but making mistakes by rushing would. Aster breathed slowly through her nose. She thought through everything she needed to do.
First, she went to a nearby store-room, where there were piled up bed sheets. She went inside, and closed the door behind her.
Carefully, she unwrapped the stinking sheets she had around the bucket, making sure not to get any of the mess on herself. She wrapped the dirty sheets in several clean ones, to block the smell, and hid the entire mess behind a stack of sheets near the back of the room.
Aster smelled herself. She didn't think she had gotten any of the mess on her, but she couldn't be entirely sure. She reached into the bucket and took out her large bottle, the far smaller bottle of perfume, and the wineglass. She set them down carefully, and dried them with one of the clean sheets. It wouldn't do to drop any of them because of the slippery wetness.
Aster sprayed herself with more perfume, especially the inside of her arms and the lower part of her body that had been closest to the smelly sheets. She had thought the parts of the sheets she actually touched were dry and clean, but there could not be any mistakes. If there were stink on her, the perfume would help mask it.
She no longer needed the perfume. She hid the bottle under some sheets.
She would likely need the bucket of water. And the jar of soap that was still in it. She put it next to the door, where it would be immediately accessible. If she wound up needing it, she would need it as quickly as possible.
Then she picked up the large bottle and the wineglass. She held the bottle in her right hand, and the wineglass in her left. Putting on a slightly despondent face, she slumped (the better to hide her height, my dear), opened the door of the linen room, and went into the hallway. She turned the corner, and saw the guards in front of the room where the fuses were.
Two of them. So she hadn't gotten lucky, but her plan would work. She hoped. She sniffled loudly, wiping near her face, but not actually touching it, with her left hand. She didn't want to disturb her carefully applied layer of soap. She sniffed again, as she approached the guards. The snaps that held their pistols in place were actually closed. Good. It would take the better part of a second to unsnap them, then another good part of a second to draw the gun, and yet another good part of a second to aim and fire. Two seconds at least. Maybe even four. Wolfkiller and General Monroe had hammered it into her head that she would either kill (or severely injure) both the men in less than five seconds, or not at all.
They looked at her, and one of them glanced down at the pistol he wore in his belt, but saw no threat in a single, barely dressed Betty, who was apparently after nothing more than to drown her female sorrows in wine.
Aster sighed, and pushed her breasts forward slightly as she got closer to the guards. It had the desired effect. One of them looked her up and down. Especially down. Now that she wasn't carrying the laundry, the curve of her shaven pubic mound could be easily seen through the clothes. Aster hadn't liked having to shave there, but there was little choice. There had been no way to bleach it, and brown pubic hair simply did not match the blond wig. They could not let the enemy see even one bit of the truth. It would have ruined the deception.
"Mmm." The guard apparently liked what he saw. Both of them did.
"Where you going, girl?" One of them said. He looked at the bottle. "You steal that from the kitchen? Maybe we should report her." He turned to his partner, winking. "You think we should report her."
"Not sure." The guard said. Aster moved her shoulder slightly, letting the strap of her sheer dress fall a bare inch down her arm, and formed her lips into a slightly round shape. "What will you give us, if we don't report you, hmm?"
"P..please." Aster stuttered deliberately. "Please d…don't report me. It's not even the most expensive wine. Not the Maestro's private stock. It's the cheap stuff. And I… I was just sad. I wanted a drink or two, to cheer me up a bit before I went to bed."
She held the bottle up to her lips and licked her tongue upward, along the long neck of the bottle, letting it rest for a bare moment on the tip. "I was sad… and lonely. I had someone who… liked me… but now he doesn't any more." She sniffed again, looking at them innocently over the top of the bottle. "I could do with maybe some company. Not being alone. Maybe we could drink together, have some fun. Just a drink or two won't make strong men like you too drunk to guard this door, will it?"
She lowered the bottle so it was between her breasts, and slanted it, before pushing it slightly inwards, between her cleavage. God, men were stupid. But maybe thank God that they were stupid. A smart person like herself never would have fallen for the nonsense she was pulling.
"Yeah… it really only needs one to watch this door anyway. One at a time." The guard glanced at his partner. "What do you say?"
"Hell, the Maestro's out in the Wastelands sucking the bastards dry. He ain't going to know. And he don't share hardly at all when he's here, except with his special buddies like Rasse."
"Yeah, okay." He nodded enthusiastically, as if he could scarcely contain his feelings at his luck.
Aster gave him a slight smile, and glanced at the crotch of his uniform. "I'll pour myself just a small glass. Then you two can … share the bottle. But maybe leave a little for another glass for me, hmm?"
The guard leered at the barely disguised suggestion. Aster took the bottle in her left hand, and pulled out the cork (which of course was not actually made out of cork or anything like it) with her teeth. The smell hit her immediately. Hopefully her lemon perfume would cover it, but this had to be quick.
She poured clear liquid into the purple tinted wineglass in her right hand, raised it to her slightly parted lips… she hesitated for the briefest moment.
Her mind flashed back to when she was five, and her father was teaching her how to sterilize the operating room at the zoo, and hand him instruments when he was doing surgery. She was horrified at the thought of surgery, of cutting on the animals with sharp blades, and told her father in a gasping voice: "But it will hurt!"
Her father had had to spend some time showing her how the opium kept the animals unconscious, and that the surgery was painless. What he never understood, and what a five year old Aster couldn't explain to him was that part of what she meant was: "But it will hurt ME!".
Eventually, she had learned that the surgery did not hurt the animals OR her, but never lost what was, perhaps, far too great a degree of empathy for the sort of world she lived in. So Aster hesitated, only for a moment. A child's voice in her insisting: "But it will hurt!"
But like surgery, hurt or not, it had to be done. And as bad as it might hurt, the results of not doing it would be far worse. Having to see the world destroyed or vanished in front of her would drive her screaming mad. She was sure of it.
Aster lifted the glass higher. One of the guards sniffed, noticing the smell from the bottle. She could wait no longer. She took the glass from her lips -
AND THREW IT IN THE FACE OF THE NEAREST GUARD!
