Chapter 24. The Army of Darkness

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Winston Churchill

Joining the Army, Aster decided, had been a mistake.

Not that she decided it immediately. First, General Erick Monroe had had questions for her. Any information she had about the Maestro, his palace, his guards, his weapons, whatever procedures they had. He was a skilled interrogator, and Aster found that she knew things that she didn't even know she had known about the Maestro. She shuddered to think what sort of methods 'General' Monroe might have used on someone unwilling to give him the information he wanted.

It seemed that Aster had a better memory for detail than most people, because about five minutes into the questioning, General Monroe shook his head and turned to Wolfkiller. "You were right about one thing. She's a bloody walking encyclopedia. I don't understand half of what she's saying and can't remember a tenth of it. A lot of it isn't even relevant, but I haven't go the time to explain to her why, and from what you say, she probably can't understand why, and I don't dare miss anything that is important. Get Trask and Lucy. Tell them to bring a LOT of paper and pencils."

Aster did not much like hearing that things she said were not 'relevant'. Really, who was this 'General', that he thought he knew what was relevant or not? It seemed important to Aster that the Maestro was living out bits and pieces of the old Wizard of Oz stories, but the man in front of her dismissed it as 'fairytale nonsense'. He didn't even seem to understand what intestinal bacteria were, or why it was important that the Maestro, so far as Aster could tell, had the same sort as everyone else. But then she thought about the sort of methods that 'General' Monroe might be likely to use if he didn't like her answers or even just didn't like her face, and resolved not to argue the point with him. She remembered being frightened of Daniel Wolfkiller in much the same way, when she had been younger. Eventually she had gotten over that. But perhaps she shouldn't have. After all, Wolfkiller did work for Monroe, who was certainly a bandit and murderer, and probably worse.

She shifted uncomfortably. The chair she sat in was too low, made of hard, knotty wood, and didn't seem proportioned right. That, although Aster didn't realize it, was deliberate, and designed to encourage rapid telling of the truth. Or it should have been. Aster's version of 'truth' was far too complex and detailed to convey at all quickly, and General Monroe was regettting having put the girl in the chair. But he couldn't at this point offer her a different seat without showing weakness.

Aster frowned and reached a hand under her leg to rub the sore spots. General Monroe had asked her a lot of questions about what she thought was going on in Wisconsin, and why there was no radiation and lots of plants there, and what the 'genetically engineered sunflowers' (General Monroe pronounced this with a combination of caution and disdain) Helianthus Morbiusii had to do with fixing the damage and radiation caused by the War. He seemed to like (judging from his excitement) what Aster said about how many plants Betty … Patricia Miller had said grew there, and how much food and how many people lived in and near Milwaukee but did not seem to like at all what Aster had said about the Vampire, Morbius. He didn't care that Morbius had been the one who made (or at least helped to make) the sunflowers that somehow got rid of the radiation in Milwaukee. Since the radiation was gone, and there was plenty of food, it would make a nice place to live, but General Monroe was not inclined to show much gratitude to such a dangerous creature. The only possible use he saw to keeping the Vampire alive at all is that Aster convinced him that Morbius might know of some way to kill the Maestro. It made a certain amount of sense to use the Vampire for that. Then kill him afterwards.

"He drinks human blood and kills people." The man growled. "A cannibal, like the Maestro. I've talked to the people from Wisconsin about him already. He's been killing for a hundred years. There's no way to keep him around safely."

Aster disagreed, trying to explain that the Vampire had not chosen his condition and diet the way the Maestro had, and finally General Monroe shook his head in disgust at her stubbornness. "Well, if you get to Wisconsin - and that's a pretty big 'if' - go ahead and try what you want with him. I won't be around to stop you, anyways. I'll even tell Wolfkiller to help you. But once you fail… and you will fail… you won't be able to stop Wolfkiller and the rest of the army from dealing with this Vampire of yours. And with you as well, if you're fool enough to get in their way."

"I don't think I'll fail." Aster said. She remembered enough of what she had read about the Vampire to be certain her plan was a good one. "But… since you think I'll fail, do me a favor. Tell the people from Milwaukee that you think I'll fail."

"Since I know you're going to fail, that's not really a problem. But… why do you want them to think you're going to fail, if you think you're going to succeed."

Aster frowned, not sure how to explain her thoughts. "There's something I don't trust about the people from Milwaukee. Something about the Vampire. I talked about him a few times to them on the trip here, and there's something not right about the way they look when they're talking about him. They act like they're ashamed of something about him. I don't understand what… but it's something… it's like if you have a dog, and you come into the house, and your dog looks ashamed. You know that your dog has done something wrong, but you don't know what. And I don't know what, and I don't like it, because it honestly doesn't make any sense to me. The Vampire is the one that's been killing people. So why should they be ashamed. I've thought it over and over in my head, and I can't work it out. And I don't like it, and I don't trust them. So I want them to think that I'll fail, because people don't feel guilty because everything is roses and peaches. They feel guilty because something bad is going on, and if they think I'll succeed in controlling the Vampire, they'll probably worry that I'll find out whatever it is they're ashamed of, and do something to prevent me from finding out."

"Hmm." General Monroe had noticed the same oddness when he had talked to the people from Milwaukee about the Vampire, but had attributed it to fear. It was because of the fear that he assumed they felt, that he assumed Aster would fail. But now that he thought about it, what had been on their faces had seemed more like guilt then fear. Or guilt mixed with the fear. And as Aster said, that didn't make any sense. "You may be right. And perhaps you will succeed. I didn't want you to before, but now I do. I was going to tell Wolfkiller just to keep you alive, if he could, probably by keeping you the hell away from this Vampire, but now I'm going to have to tell him to actually help you catch this bastard Vampire of yours, blast it to hell. Because you're right about the guilt. And whatever it is they feel guilty about… I won't be around to worry about it, but you and everyone else will be best off finding out about it sooner, rather than later."

Aster was about to ask what General Monroe meant by 'not being around' ,as he had used that phrase twice, when the two people he had sent for, 'Trask' and 'Lucy' came into the rocky chamber. The former was a man with receding, greasy black hair, and the latter an old woman with grey hair in a ponytail that nearly reached her waist. Trask was an artist, and Lucy knew something she proudly claimed was 'Pitman Shorthand'. Aster wasn't entirely sure what 'Pitman Shorthand' was. It seemed to be a secret language made of funny looking squiggles that could be written very quickly, and as Aster talked, Lucy made notes in it. Aster was impressed that anyone could write so much, so quickly, and resolved to learn more about 'Pitman Shorthand'. Someday. If she had time.

Trask's job was to draw pictures and maps of anything General Monroe asked Aster about, including the palace, the cruise ship 'The Green Fantasy', and drawings of the Maestro as he had looked in his human form. The latter was especially interesting to General Monroe, who kept asking Aster about it. "You say you saw him change back? Into a man?"

"He already was a man. When I saw him" Aster explained for the third time, getting annoyed. General Monroe seemed to have things backwards. She didn't realize that asking the same thing repeatedly and looking for contradictions in a statement was one way in which skilled interrogators discerned lies. "He was typing on a computer. From before the war. If he had been… well the way he usually is, just touching it would have broken it to bits, most likely. I didn't even know who he was at first. Just some ugly old man. Then when he was done typing, he changed back."

"I could do with a computer to type on." Lucy remarked. She looked down at calloused, slightly gnarled fingers, then made some more of her squiggles in the 'Pitman Shorthand'. General Monroe gave her a withering look and turned back to Aster.

"He changed back… how? Did he drink something? Give himself an injection? Attach himself to a machine?"

"No. No potion. Not like in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The first time Aster had mentioned Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, General Monroe had gotten excited and seemed to think that she was referring to people who had worked for the Maestro, until Aster explained that it had been a book she had once read, at which point he had dismissed the matter with a wave. That life often imitated fiction was inevitable, given the sheer number of books that had been written before the War. "He just … did it. He took off his robe first, it wouldn't have fit him once he got larger. I don't know how."

"Apparently he can will the change then. Well, that's just fucking lovely." From the sound of his voice, General Monroe found the matter to be about as far from 'lovely' as was possible. He had Trask draw a picture of the old man, from Aster's description, and after a lot of erasing and redrawing of certain features, Trask had a fairly good likeness of him.

"So that's Dr. Bruce Banner. The man who made the bomb. Looks like a damn fucking pussy." General Monroe muttered. He turned to Daniel Wolfkiller. "Look familiar to you?"

"I've never seen him like that." The younger man shook his head. "I doubt he wants anyone to know that it's possible. Aster was… small at the time. Otherwise she would never have fit into the space where she was."

"Nice to know he's human enough to make mistakes."

Aster looked at the picture. "Can I have a copy of that?"

Monroe was always suspicious. "What for?"

"If I ever see him again… and he's like that… I don't want to forget what he looks like. I know he's weaker when he's like that, because he didn't break the computer he was typing on. So I think maybe he can be killed when he's like that. He wouldn't have locked himself away the way he did, for no reason. I wouldn't want to miss the chance."

General Monroe tapped his finger, thinking. It was doubtful that Aster was a traitor. She had more reason than most to hate the Maestro. But she was poor at keeping secrets, and it was more than likely that a traitor might go through her belongings. And there was always a traitor. "You can have your copy, but not now. Once we leave, then you can have it."

Aster shrugged. She wouldn't need the picture immediately anyways. She had no idea what General Monroe was afraid of. But it didn't matter. So long as she got what she wanted in the end.

Then there were more questions. General Monroe kept coming back to the Maestro's seasonal trips, during which he collected taxes, food, women, and anything else he wanted from the people who lived in and around Dystopia. He kept asking Aster if she was sure that he always collected taxes at the same time.

"Four times a year. At the start of the seasons." She told him for what seemed like the twentieth time. "At the beginning of January, April, July, and October." She frowned a bit. "I remember because that's always when I changed the straw in my mattress, back home."

"Screw your bloody mattress." General Monroe pounded his fist angrily on the table. He had often wished for more information from stupid or stubborn witnesses. Now he wished for less. "The only thing I care about is that he's a creature of habit. He's gone mad, so that might change. I hope to God it doesn't."

He glanced at Wolfkiller. "It'll have to be April, then. If he keeps to his old schedule."

Daniel Wolfkiller shrugged. "And if he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't, we're dead. So it doesn't really matter, now does it? We might as well plan for his keeping to his schedule."

Aster understood why the attack on the Maestro's palace, to steal food and other supplies had to be in April. Early spring was the only time they had any chance of escape. Most of the snow would be off the roads, and once they got to Wisconsin, they would have time to plant food, for the next year.

General Monroe got up, dusted off his hands, and pointed nastily at her. "YOU - keep your mouth shut! Wolfkiller says you're not very good at that. Well, you can bloody well learn. You talk to no-one here, except me and whoever I say you can, about the Maestro, the palace, or anything having to do with them. If you don't know if you should talk about something, then don't talk about it. If you don't keep your mouth shut, I'll give you an extra mouth across your throat. If someone bothers you about it, you tell me, and I might give THEM an extra mouth. Do I make myself clear?"

Aster nodded her head rapidly, afraid to say anything.

"Quiet already." The self-styled 'general' nodded approvingly. "Good. A second thing. Through a combination of luck, brains, and coincidence, you've managed to get a certain amount of power. Of people who look up to you. Wolfkiller tells me there's bloody graffitti about you back in Dystopia. Some of it actually from the Bible. Under normal circumstances, that could be useful. I'd give you a rank in my army, woman or not, to let you use it, because that would be useful to me. The problem is that there's something wrong with the way you think. You don't want power, and you don't seem to be able to use it when you have it. I don't know what's wrong with you, or how to fix it. As it is, power is about as useful to you as a lantern is to a blind man. It can only burn you. The only way for it to be of any use to you is to give it to someone who CAN use it. If you want to stay alive, I'd suggest you find a way give it to me. Do what I tell you, recognize me as your commanding officer in public, regardless of what you think privately in that twisted up brain of yours, and I can use what you give me to keep you alive. To get even with the bastards who hurt you and killed your family. Do you want that, or do you want to hold onto something that's no good to you just to piss me off?"

"I don't like you, but I hate the Maestro more than anyone. Paul Rasse, too." Aster added the sadistic, raping guard as an afterthought. "If 'recognizing you as my commanding officer' in front of other people keeps me alive and gets even with them, then I'll do it. It doesn't really make any difference to me one way or the other. So I'll do it."

"For now…" General Monroe added in a mocking tone, divining what was in Aster's mind. "I'm sure you're thinking that. Don't deny it, I don't give a fuck. 'Later' doesn't really matter to me. Now, get out of here. Lucy will show you where you can sleep. I suggest you try to sleep. You're going to need it."

The last bit, about 'going to need' sleep, sounded rather ominous to Aster, but she was afraid to ask what General Monroe meant by it. She just nodded obediently, and followed Lucy to a large chamber in the mine full of several dozen people sleeping on 'beds' made of piles of old sacks filled with rags and straw. They smelt bad, as if the rags were dirty and the straw had not been changed in a long time, but Aster was too afraid of General Monroe to complain. The fear was deliberate, and there would be many other unpleasant things in the near future that were deliberate, but for the present moment, Aster made her way to some unoccupied sacks, smoothed them out the best she could, and went to sleep.

It was the last decent sleep she got in a long time, and it was far earlier than she would have liked, when she (and everyone else in the room) were woken up by the sound of General Monroe beating on a pot with a large spoon that looked old and well made enough to be a pre-war artifact.

"UP! You stupid maggots! UP!" Barely a second went by, when he began screaming in an angry voice. "You all sleep like corpses! I could have killed six of you before you got to your feet! UP! I say!"

Aster got up, and was about to ask where breakfast was, when a boy, who looked to be barely twelve years old, asked that very question. General Monroe seemed furious at him.

"YOU will get no breakfast today!" He told the boy. "As for the rest of you, you will get breakfast when I say you get breakfast. Or perhaps you won't get any, either. We'll see how well you do! UP, I say!"

Aster was looking around for her boots, as were a few other people, which seemed to further infuriate General Monroe. "Did I say to look for your boots! You're all wasting time! OUT! OUT! OUT!"

He kicked several of the nearest people in she shins, and Aster was glad that she was against the far wall, out of his reach. Then he made them all run out of the sleeping area, down several tunnels, and out of the mines.

The sun was not even up, and Aster could barely see by the light of the setting moon.

"Start running!" the general ordered. Nobody was sure what this meant, some of them looked around in confusion, some of them began jogging in place, a few began running down road the wagons had come in by.

BANG!

The sudden noise of the gun 'General Monroe' had unexpectedly drawn out and shot into the air immediately transformed the confusion of the mob into cold fear. Not just of his shooting them for their failure to divine exactly how he wanted them to run, but even though Aster knew intellectually that no-one lived within miles of the mines, she could not help immediately thinking in her gut: What if someone heard?! What if they tell the Maestro?!

From the looks on the faces of most of the others, the same thought had occurred to them. Obviously, it wouldn't do to displease the 'General' of this 'Army' they were now in. Not if he was so mad that he would risk the Maestro hearing, in order to get their attention

"No, no, no!" General Monroe screamed angrily, putting the gun back inside his worn coat "Where do you fools think you're going? Nowhere, or back to Dystopia?! Morons! Follow me! Like this!"

He began leading them in circles, around the large flat area in front of the mines. Most of the people seemed confused, and tripped and stumbled, drawing further screaming from the 'General' but Aster saw that the trucks and other vehicles were parked in a rough circle, and their shapes provided a rough guide as to where to run.

It was unpleasant, though. Aster was running through slushy mud puddles with only socks to protect her feet, and after three steps, they were soaked through. Her feet hurt, the icy water cut like shards of glass, and her side hurt from the running, and she couldn't help sniffing in misery as she ran. General Monroe heard this, but she got no sympathy from him. Quite the opposite.

"Oh, do you hurt, princess?" He sneered. "Are you cold? Maybe I'll send you back to the Maestro to be raped, or roasted on a spit. Would you like that better? At least you'd be warm"

"Fuck you." Aster hissed.

"An interesting offer." General Monroe actually seemed to consider it. "But I prefer women who are a normal size and don't talk my head off. So I'm afraid you don't get out of running, that way."

He turned away from her, and began screaming at a group of men. "What are you doing, tripping like that! Princess here seems to be able to keep on her feet! What are you, a bunch of little girls?"

As she went through the shadow of one of the trucks, Aster paused long enough to pull her socks off. They weren't protecting her feet. Quite the opposite, they soaked up icy, gritty mud. At least without them, her feet got slightly warmer between mud puddles, and she could feel better with her toes where she was going. She didn't want to lose her socks, so stuck them in the pockets of her pants. Then she began running again, hoping General Monroe had not seen her pausing. As a matter of fact, he had, but he said nothing. Adapting to unpleasant conditions and cheating was something he wanted in his army, and which couldn't be overtly taught.

A girl, who looked about 14, tripped and split her lip. She got no sympathy from General Monroe, and had to keep running with a bloody face. "I want to stop." She sobbed.

"You'll stop when you're dead. And you ain't dead yet, and a cut like that won't kill you. Though I might, if you don't start moving."

The girl was more afraid of General Monroe than the pain and blood. She wiped her mouth with her shirt, leaving a blackish streak in the darkness, and kept running.

After about ten minutes, some of the older and younger people in the 'Army' literally couldn't run any more. General Monroe finally let them stop.

For five minutes.

It was when he forced them to start running again, that Aster decided that joining the Army had definitely been a mistake. She wished she were back home, young again, before the Maestro had taken her away, and helping her father care for the animals, or eating a crispy baked potato, or telling a story to Thumb.

But there was no home. No father. No Thumb. The Maestro had taken it all away from her. She thought about his horrible ugly face, his filthy, ugly green cock that he had nearly raped her to death with, and ran a little faster. She wished she could run across the Maestro's dead body and trample it into the cold, rust stinking mud.

She thought maybe when her feet got cold enough, they would stop hurting, but it didn't seem to be cold enough for that. It just hurt worse and worse. Aster was reminded of a story she had read, The Little Mermaid, who had fallen in love with the prince, and was given legs and feet instead of a fish tail, in order to be with him. Except every step she took on land hurt her feet, as badly as Aster's hurt now. She didn't get the prince in the end, either, Aster remembered. No more than Aster would get hers. The Maestro had nearly raped her to death, and ripped her up so badly inside that any attempt at sex would hurt her, and giving birth would kill her, according to Doctor Llewellyn. Aster had tested that a few times, putting a few fingers inside herself, but anything much thicker than one finger or a scrap of rag she used during her period caused her pain.

No, the only difference between her and the mermaid in the story was that the mermaid had lost her voice as well. Aster could still scream, and was doing so as she ran, though she couldn't even hear herself amidst the screaming and cursing of everyone else around her.

Eventually, 'General' Monroe seemed to be satisfied with the amount of running they had done. Or perhaps 'satisfied' was not the correct word, since he still seemed very angry, as if either the amount or quality of the running they had done was not nearly up to his expectations. The sun was up now, just peeking over the tops of the hills to their east. He looked them over, glaring angrily.

"You lot are a lousy, disorganized rabble!" He snarled in a voice that sounded like an dog about to attack. "You men are as weak as women. As for you women… you might as well be suckling babes."

One of the women spoke up at this. "It isn't fair for you to force my son to be here. He's just a boy. He's only 14!"

"Only 14?!" The general spoke in a falsetto tone. He looked around for a moment, then pointed a finger straight at Aster. "You! Zookeeping Princess. Get up here!"

Aster was too afraid that General Monroe might shoot his gun off again, and possibly be heard this time, not to obey. She hunched over slightly, wishing that she weren't so easy to pick out of the crowd of malnourished people where even the men were mostly shorter than her.

General Monroe pointed at her. "Princess, how old were you when you got raped by the Maestro for the first time?"

Aster gaped. This was not a question she expected, and she really didn't like thinking about it, much less talking about it in public. Her failure to answer immediately seemed to further infuriate General Monroe. He raised one hand, and Aster was sure he intended to slap her or punch her in the face, but at the last minute he seemed to restrain himself and and instead took her by the shoulder and shook her.

"Am I your commanding officer?"

Aster remembered what he had said last night, about giving him the power she couldn't use herself. She nodded, then spoke. "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes…" For a moment Aster was going to add 'My Lord', as that was the term of respect she had been taught to address the Maestro by, but it didn't seem wise to make General Monroe seem too much like the Maestro in front of people who hated the green monstrosity. Aster thought about a few army stories she had read, and said instead: "Yes, sir!"

"Good. Then answer me. How old?!" He demanded.

"F…f… fourteen." Tears trickled down her face.

"Fourteen." This seemed to prove something to the 'General', though Aster had no idea what. Rather than let her leave her humiliation, though, the General asked her another question. "Why don't you tell me what you told me last night? What the Maestro was doing, the night before he threw you out of his palace?"

"What he was doing?" The Maestro had done a lot of horrible things, those last few, awful months, and Aster didn't like to think about any of them. She wished she weren't here, having to think and talk about them. She wished she were curled up in a warm bed, and could think about eating a warm piece of pie, or about her old books of stories she had once read.

There was no such escape. "What he was eating!" General Monroe specified.

"He… he had a boy. A little boy, maybe six years old. On a spit like a pig or goat. He was eating the boy." Aster closed her eyes, wishing away the image of what she had seen, the saliva that had been trickling down the Maestro's green face and into his greasy, grey beard as he ate. Human beings had a lot of fat, just like pigs. The bit of anatomical knowledge was unwanted, and Aster wished she hadn't thought of it. Or didn't know it. She talked, to distract herself from the memory. "He ate him. Because his father didn't have any meat to give the Maestro. So he took the boy and ate him instead."

The people around them gasped. Aster was sure that it must be common knowledge by now that the Maestro was a cannibal, but to know something was one thing. To actually hear it said was quite another. It made it harder to pretend it wasn't going on.

"Well, there you have it." General Monroe looked over the group of people as though they were some sort of worthless ants he had found under a log, then focused his gaze on the woman who had complained about her son being in the army. "You don't like your son in my army, we can always send the both of you back. What do you think, at his age, will that green bastard eat him or bugger him?"

The 'General actually appeared to be mulling the matter over. "I'd have to say, the Maestro'd probably have him on a spit, just because he's not really that into buggery. He prefers women… or girls." He pointed at Aster. "I'm sure some of you saw the Zookeeper here when she was being dragged off in a cage. She was 14 then, but the way I hear it, she looked more like ten. Not a hair on her, and believe it or not, actually short for her age, back then."

The 'General' let the crowd look Aster over for a moment, then pointed her back into the crowd, leaving him alone in front of everyone, before he began pacing. "I'm not an angel, and don't pretend to be. You all know what I am. I don't apologize for it. You don't like it, leave. But before you do, you just think about your children or grandchildren - or those of your relatives or neighbors if you don't have any, in the hands of that green bastard. Because's he's worse than I am. Even if he doesn't kill them or rape them to death, the way things are going, he's eating his way through every bit of food he can get his hands on, and leaving the people who grew it to starve on crumbs!"

The group before him seemed angry at this. They probably wanted baked potatoes, pies, and other decent food as badly as Aster did, and none of them had even had any breakfast at all that day.

"That bastard has taken everything from us!" Everyone nodded in agreement. "He built the bomb and took the world that used to exist - you've all seen it in pictures and heard stories about that! Then that wasn't enough for him - oh no! He's been taking our food! Our children! Our lives! Hell, as if even that weren't enough, the Zookeeper here says he took the last zoo animals, not that I care about that, but they were helpless animals and some of them may have been the last of their kind. And it's a piece of our world gone that our children will never have. HE took all that! So I say - we take it back from him! We can't fight him, but we can escape from him! We have a place to go! A land with food! With no radiation! The zookeeper - the only bitch the Maestro ever kneeled to - told me about it. And there's people who have come from there. It's not a perfect place - there is no perfect place, and there's a monster - a Vampire - there, but he's nowhere near as bad as the Maestro. He may even know how to kill the Maestro! It's worth finding out! And if the Vampire gives us any trouble, or doesn't do what we want, well, he's nowhere near as strong as the Maestro. If we don't like him, we'll just toss him in a hole and dump stones on him and piss on the top! I say - we take back what we need from that Green Bastard to make it there!"

The crowd roared in approval at that.

"Here's a start of what we took from him, a caravan full of tribute he'll never get, the greedy bastard!" The 'General' strode over to a sack that was sitting partly hidden by a heap of scrap a few feet away from him, opened it, and pulled out a loaf of slightly moldy bread. "Food for US now - not HIM or HIS army. For OUR ARMY!"

He threw the loaf into the crowd, and it was quickly seized and devoured by the lucky few people nearest to where it landed. Before the disappointment of the others could turn into anger, General Monroe threw several more loaves in, until the strongest and fastest of his army had had enough to eat that they grew generous enough to share with others. Unlike with the wagons, Aster's peculiar proportions were an advantage, her arms were as long as a man's, but thinner, and could reach past others to grab a handful of muddy bread to stuff into her mouth. The muddy, moldy stuff tasted better than crispy baked potatoes with butter and sour cream and chives. Better than a hot pie with sugar crumbling around the edges.

"I'm not a good man." General Monroe told them once the food was gone. "There are no good men in times like these. It's bad men that survive. But if you're going to take back from that bastard what he took from us, you need someone like me to lead you. Someone to teach you to be as tough and ruthless as him and HIS army. Someone to give OUR ARMY every advantage!"

There was nodding. Invading the Maestro's palace to steal back what they needed would be hard. They needed to be hard and trained to do it.

"Every time you think that what I do hurts you - that the cold and mud and stones hurt - think of what the Maestro has done to you! Think of what he WILL do to you - and your children if you fail! You all know he's been burning people alive! You'd all be better off dead right now than so weak that you let him catch you alive!"

"So, we need every advantage we can get for our army. I heard some of you complaining about running in the dark - what are you complaining about? The dark isn't alive! It can't hurt you! Only the enemy can hurt you! So - you can't see. Poor you. So what? There's nothing there in the dark that isn't there in the light! Learn to get around in the dark! The Maestro - strong as he is - can't see in the dark! If he can't see you - he can't catch you! If he can't catch you - he can't hurt you! And his guards - they are all afraid of the dark, too. They all have lights. Well - lights can be put out! The hell with the light! The bloody bomb that blew up the world - that was one big bloody light. The fire he's burning people in is one big light! The old heroes - the ones who tried to kill the Maestro and failed and died- they were all heroes of the light. The only one that lived - the Vampire I told you about- was a creature of darkness. Well - we don't need it! Not any of it! We don't need the light, or the bomb, or the green bastard burning people in the fire! Not this army! We're going to survive like the Vampire! We're here to destroy all their lights! We'll fight in the dark, because that's what we do - what we are. The Army of Darkness!"