They exchanged grimaces. They'd both eaten their shares of WHAM rolls in the Coastal Marines. WHAM was a canned "meat product" produced in Alabama, filled out with bean paste, and sweetened with an uninspiring barbecue sauce to hide the tasteless, chewy nature of legworm flesh. Three tastes in one!, the cans proclaimed. The joke with WHAM is you got three chews before the flavor dissipated and you were left with a mouthful of something about as succulent and appealing as week-worn long johns. It went through the digestive system like a twenty-mule-team sled. Three chomps and run, the cook on the old Thunderbolt used to recommend.
It was a staple of Kurian work camps and military columns operating far from their usual supply hubs.
"There has to be some good news," Valentine said.
"Full list and details, or just bullet points?"
Valentine poured some more milk. "I need cheering up. Give me the full list," Valentine said.
"I won sixty bucks this week at poker," Post said. "It's a short list."
Valentine tossed back the rest of the glass of milk. "I think you're right about that ulcer."
Post's advice was absolutely correct. Javelin hadn't worked. It hadn't died; in a way it had won, dealing a deathblow to the vicious Moondaggers. But it hadn't worked out as planned. Give it up and move on, the way you folded when you drew into a promising poker hand and came up with nothing.
Except the pieces were scattered across Kentucky along with his bit of ear, and they included a big, hairy Golden One named Ahn-Kha; Tikka, brave and lusty and vital; and the former Quislings who'd put their lives and the lives of their families into jeopardy by switching sides. Southern Command had run up a big bar tab in blood.
The next day Valentine sat through a second series of debriefings with Southern Command personnel and civilians whose professional interests included the function and capabilities of the Kurian Order. He was questioned about political conditions of the legworm tribes and the organization and equipment of the Moondaggers. He even had to give a rough estimate of the population of Kentucky and the Appalachian towns and villages he'd seen.
He had to watch his words about the Kurian manipulation of Javelin's COs through a mutt they'd picked up named Red Dog, the strange doubt and lassitude that temporarily seized even as aggressive a woman as Colonel Bloom, who was back with what was left of Javelin in Kentucky just south of Evansville. It sounded too fantastic to be true, but he did his best to convince them.
Finally, a researcher from the Miskatonic queried him again about the flying Reaper he'd seen.
"You sure it wasn't a gargoyle?" she said as Valentine sorted through sketches and photographs. They had one sketch and one blurry, grainy night photo of something that resembled what he'd seen. She had the air of someone used to talking to soldiers who'd seen bogeymen on lonely watches.
It had been wearying, answering questions from people who weren't interested in his answers unless they fit in with the opinions they'd had when they sat down in the tube-steel office chairs. Valentine let loose. "I've seen gargoyles, alive and dead. They're strong and graceful, like a vulture. This was more spindly and awkward. It reminded me of a pelican or a crane taking off. And it wasn't a harpy either. I've seen plenty of those snaggletooths up close."
"Yes, I know." Valentine thought he recognized his thick Miskatonic file in front of her.
"So do you have a theory?" he demanded.
"The Kurians made Reapers by modifying human genetic code. They could have done the same with a gargoyle."
All very interesting, but he wanted to be back with his command.
His last stop on his tour of headquarters was Operations Support. General Lehman had come through with logistics: There was a barge on the Arkansas river being loaded with supplies for his new recruits and to replace the most vital materiel used up in the retreat across Kentucky. Valentine would accompany it back to Kentucky.
He picked up mail-presorted for the survivors of Javelin. Valentine wondered what happened to the sad little bundles of letters to dead men and women.
The mail had been vacuum-wrapped in plastic to protect it from the elements, but it still took up a lot of room, especially since the locals used all manner of paper for their correspondence. The mail office had a variety of bags and packs for the convenience of ad hoc couriers such as himself, and Valentine just grabbed the biggest shoulder bag he could find. Judging from the waterproof lining and compartments, it might have once been meant to hold diving or snorkel gear.
He made a trip to the PX and picked up some odds and ends: Duvalier's favorite talc, a bottle of extra-strength aspirin for Patel, and a couple of fifty-count boxes of inexpensive knit gloves. If there was one thing Valentine had learned over the years of commanding men in bad weather, it was that they lost their gloves, especially in action. He liked carrying spares to hand out.
Valentine needed peace, quiet, time to think. He caught an electric shuttle and wandered into Jonesboro and found a cafe by the train station-a family-owned grill with three gold stars in the window. He learned from photos and boxed decorations inside that they'd lost two sons and a daughter to the Cause.
He pleased the owners by ordering eggs accompanied by the biggest steak on the menu rather than the Southern Command subsidized "pan lunch." The steak was sizable and tough, but his appetite didn't mind, and the cook had worked wonders with the sauteed onions. The young waitress-very young waitress, make that; only a teenager would wait tables in heeled sandals-chatted with him expertly. Almost too expertly, because he didn't know any of the local militia outfits, and his equivocal answers made her wrinkle her trifle of a nose. How many single, lonely young uniformed men did she wait on in a month? He tried not to stare as she sashayed back and forth with iced tea in one hand and coffee in the other.
Whether she was family or no, it would be unseemly to ogle the help under the eye of the mother at the register clucking over her regulars like a hen and the muscular father behind the grill. He couldn't think with her friendly pats on the back of his shoulder as she refilled his iced tea, so he paid his bill-and left an overlarge tip.
The little park in front of the courthouse beckoned, and he was about to take a bench and read his mail when he heard faint singing. He followed the sound to a church where a children's choir was rehearsing and grabbed a pew at the back. Women and a few men sewed or knit while their kids screeched through the Christmas hymns.
Valentine watched the kids for a few minutes. Typical Free Territory youth, no two pairs of jeans matching in color or wear, rail thin and tanned from harvest work or a thousand and one odd jobs. You grew up fast here on the borderlands. So different from the smoothed, polished, uniformed children of the elite of the Kurian Zones, with their New Universal Church regulation haircuts and backpacks, or the wary ragamuffins of the "productives."
The boys were trying to throw one another off-tune by surreptitiously stomping one another's insteps or making farting noises with their armpits in time with the music; the girls were stifling giggles or throwing elbows in response to yanked ponytails.
The frazzled choral director finally issued a time-out to two boys.
Valentine thought better on his feet, so he remained standing at the back of the church, shifting weight from one foot to the other in time to the music like a tired metronome.