Survival Tactics Page 10

  After all, you never know.

  Friends Like These

  “Who is he?”

  “I have no idea.”

  We looked down at the dead man. Brown suit, brown tie, brown hair. Altogether beige. A brown book tucked under one arm. I wondered if it was a bible.

  “How long has he been dead?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” Den always asked me questions like that, like I was a goddamned doctor. I knew there was something with bugs and rigor mortis, but temperature played into it as well, and I didn’t know how. It was cool for this time of year; maybe the bugs were confused.

  Rigor mortis was anyone’s guess. I hadn’t touched him. I wasn’t going to touch him while I was on my own. I got nightmares watching kiddie cartoons; touching a dead guy was going to keep me up for weeks.

  We stood in my yard, the floodlights on the front of the house spotlighting the body and a small patch of lawn beyond before the glow was swallowed by the woods. Twenty acres, all trees, house dead center. I could have lit the house on fire and nobody would have seen.

  Den crouched down next to the body, frowning at it. As if he knew a goddamned thing either. “No bruising,” he said. “And no blood.”

  “Maybe he was stabbed in the back.”

  “Let’s roll him over.”

  Which meant touching him. I began to regret having called Den at all. There were bears in the woods, and sometimes cougars. One day, maybe two, and the body would have been gone without our help. I crossed my arms and glared. Den glared back.

  “You think ignoring this is the way to go?” he asked.

  “How bad could it be?”

  “You get mail, don’t you?”

  Shit. The mailman. Always cheerful, friendly. Sometimes a little flirtatious. Or at least I thought that’s what it was; the previous Christmas he had left his business card, which was how I found out he painted houses on the side. My house needed painting. I never called him.

  I uncrossed my arms and stepped over the body to stand next to Den. My slippers were already soaked through from the nighttime dew; how much worse could it get? “Fine,” I grumbled, crouching next to him. “On three?”

  We rolled the man over. He had been losing some of the brown hair on the back of his head. He would never know the disappointment of going completely bald. Bald wasn’t so bad. I always told Den he would look less like a sleazy lounge singer if he was bald. He did not think that was funny.

  No blood on the man’s back, either. No wounds of any kind. But he was stiff and cold, which ruled out the rare eyes-wide-open coma I had been wondering about. “Heart attack, maybe,” I mused. “Or a brain thing.”

  “Aneurysm,” Den corrected automatically. He did not see me roll my eyes. “What do you want to do with him?”

  I didn’t want to do anything with him. I wanted to stop shivering in the yard in my flannel pajamas, go back in the house, and crawl back into bed. I stood and glanced around the small circle of light. Still no cougars. “The big rock, I guess,” I said, resigned.

  “That’s a thousand feet back.”

  “Along the septic trail. At least it’s relatively clear.”

  “Don’t you have anything closer?”

  “You think I live in front of the goddamn city cemetery?” I glowered at him. “It’s the big rock, or we go inside and google ‘how to bait a cougar.’ I don’t want this cluttering up my yard.”

  He stood up. “How come you only call me when you have some impossible problem?” I stared at him long enough for him to sigh. “Where’s your wheelbarrow?”

  “You know I don’t have a wheelbarrow.” Sometimes I thought Den asked me stupid questions just to annoy me.

  We would have to drag him. I picked up the book he had been carrying – not a bible, but a catalogue of gardening equipment, complete with perforated order forms. A door-to-door lawnmower salesman? He should have known, taking one look at my yard, that he was wasting his time; but perhaps he hadn’t been able to see in the dark.

  I set the book on the porch. We rolled the man onto his back again. Den took the left side, and I took the right, hooking my arm underneath his shoulder. Together, we began to pull. On my own, I began to swear.

  “He looks thin,” I complained. “How can he be this heavy when he looks thin?”

  “Do you think we should have brought a flashlight?”

  We had crossed the line between light and shadow. The woods before us were unlit. “Give it a minute,” I told him. “Your eyes will adjust.”

  I didn’t need to see. I knew the trail to the big rock as well as I knew the layout of my house. Of course, that didn’t stop me from stubbing my toes on every stone and root along the way. I should have changed out of my slippers before I called Den.

  On my own, the walk to the rock took five minutes, maybe a little more if I stopped to look at the flowers. The woods was full of wildflowers, even some of the sun-loving ones. I had purple irises scattered throughout the woods. I’d transplanted a single blossom when I had moved in ten years ago, and thanks to the birds it had gone everywhere.

  No birds at night, though. Insects. Malevolent-sounding crickets buzzing like baby chainsaws in the darkness. I heard a coyote in the distance; slowly more and more joined in until there was a chorus of them, singing to the stars.

  “We should have left him,” I growled.

  “Those are babies,” Den pointed out. “Besides, coyotes aren’t going to eat a human, unless they’re starving, in which case you’re a better bet.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You’re smaller.”

  “I can also run away.”

  “They’re dogs. They live out here. You really think you can get away from them?”

  He had so little faith in me. “I’d throw them chunks of this guy,” I said.

  “By the time this guy is in chunks,” Den said, puffing a little as the undergrowth grew thicker, “they’ll want to roll in him, not eat him.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Says the woman hauling a dead guy by his armpit.”

  That was different. He was not in chunks yet. By the time he was in chunks, I would have forgotten about him. It occurred to me I had gotten over my squeamishness pretty quickly.

  But then, I always did.

  Without a moon the rock was nothing but a dark object blotting out the stars. The undergrowth around it was tangled and thorny; my pajamas were never going to survive it. But this close to getting rid of Slightly Bald Man, I did not care. When we were done, I could go back inside and have a hot bath before crawling into new pajamas and between my warm sheets.

  Den was slowing down. “Where is it?” he said.

  “Relax,” I told him. “It’s on the other side. Just follow me and it’ll be fine.”

  I walked as far as I dared, then stopped, extending one slipper forward. The brush gave way abruptly. “About eighteen inches in front of us,” I said.

  This time Den said “On three,” and I thought next time we ought to make it four, just to shake things up.

  Together we pitched the heavy body forward. It dragged some brush along as it slid over the edge.

  I heard the soft thud as it hit the others.

  We waited a moment, catching our breaths, the crickets humming around us. They sounded happier now, even friendly. I heard a soft hoot, and realized there were birds out after all. Owls hunted rodents, who always seemed to want to make a home in my basement bulkhead. I liked owls.

  “How many is that?” Den asked, still puffing.

  “Not sure,” I replied. “The first one was when, last July?”

  “June, I think.”

  “Let’s go back.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “You need to work out.”

  “I’m in fine shape,” he protested. “I just don’t spend all my spare time hauling dead guys.”

  I hadn’t used to, either, but I had to admit it was a good upper body workout. I
gave him another thirty seconds, then turned. “Now, Den, or I’m leaving you here.”

  He grumbled at me, but we fought our way out of the underbrush and found the septic trail again. Through the woods I could see the faint, friendly lights of the house.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Not wearing a watch. Why?”

  “Wondering if anybody delivers pizza at this hour.”

  Darkness or not, the eye roll came. “I live in the middle of nowhere. Nobody delivers pizza ever, remember?”

  “Why do you live here again?”

  I looked up at the sky. “I like the stars,” I told him, but he already knew. “I can make nachos.”

  His step picked up. “Nachos would be nice,” he said, and in the dark, I smiled.

  Govi

  A Central Corps Short

  The wind tore at Elena’s hair, lashing her face with rain and sea spray. Three hundred meters above the ocean’s roiling surface: still too high. She might survive the drop, but she would go too deep, and the stormy waters could too easily disorient her. Worse, she might hit the lifeboat itself, and upend the seven people clinging to each other in a craft made for four. Despite hating the water Elena was a decent enough swimmer, but she was not confident of her ability to fish seven frightened refugees out of a freezing, poisoned ocean.

  “Lower, Arin!” she commed.

  His voice in her ear was barely audible above the noise of the wind and the surf. ”Elena, we’ve got waves coming in! I can’t—”

  “Fuck ‘can’t’!” Damn. Waves coming in might take the shuttle down, and then she’d be fishing Arin out of the water as well, never mind Budapest’s second-largest cargo transport. ”Fifty meters,” she compromised. She would make it work.

  She heard Arin curse in a language she didn’t know, and felt herself drop abruptly before the cable she was attached to snapped taut again. She blinked into the rain; she was closer, the clump of sodden sailors staring up at her through the storm. She couldn’t read their expressions. It was possible they thought she was out of her mind.

  Hell.

  She released the cable and dove.

  Her hoodless environmental suit warmed automatically when she hit the water, but the cold on her face and scalp was stinging and numbing all at once. She pivoted and surfaced as quickly as she could, and immediately a wave washed over her head and into her mouth. She choked and spat, gasping for air; she couldn’t risk incapacitation in this climate. Shoving her blue-streaked dark hair out of her eyes she spun around, searching for the lifeboat; it was not until a wave lifted her that she spotted it, ten meters away, tossing and pitching in the chaos. The occupants were wrapped around each other, their faces turned inward against the driving rain. They were not looking for her at all, and she wondered if they had lost hope already.

  Fighting the currents, she kicked toward them, the cable containing the safety netting still secured to her waist. Easy enough, in concept: get the netting underneath them, expand it, lock the cable, and Arin would be able to lift the boat high enough to carry them into the landing bay on Budapest, waiting for them in the upper atmosphere. A three-minute operation at the worst.

  Another wave crashed over her head, and she found herself underwater again. Taking advantage of the relative calm, she pushed toward the shadow of the lifeboat, and when she surfaced again she was close enough to grab the side. Immediately she felt hands on her arm, desperate clawing; she was not sure if they were trying to pull her in, or just trying to keep her close.

  “Listen!” She did her best to meet every set of eyes, but rain made their faces indistinct. “Once the netting is around you, just hang on. We’ve got a rescue ship five thousand meters up.”

  “What about the others?”

  Elena looked up at the woman who’d spoken: dark, anxious eyes, a deep frown that aged her. Terror, and she was still asking about the others.

  “We’re getting out everyone we find,” she shouted back, trying to sound confident. “You’ll see them on the transport.”

  “What about you?”

  Bless you, dear, Elena thought, but could you shut up so we can do this? “I’ll come after. Just keep your hands inside and hold on!”

  Using her free hand, Elena pulled the cable out of the water to check the readings. The visuals, so clear in the artificial light of the shuttle, were nearly impossible to make out down here. She swiped at the readings half-heartedly, then commed back to Arin. “What have you got on the cable?”

  “You’re reading green,” he told her. “Lanie—waves, remember? Step on it.”

  Bossy kid, she thought, and grinned. “Just wait for the thing to catch, okay? I’m going in.”

  She maneuvered the cable until her hand closed over the trigger, then let go of the raft. With a single deep breath, she ducked under the water.

  She kicked against the current, the meager light from her suit doing more to illuminate the sediment in the water than give her any kind of visibility. After a moment she shut off the light and looked up, keeping her eyes on the lifeboat’s faint silhouette. Even under the surface, the water was too turbulent for her to properly feel the planet’s gravity. It was, she thought briefly, the antithesis of her zero-grav training, but the solution was the same: rely on your eyes, not kinesthetics. She aimed for the dim light on the other side of the shadow, and swam as hard as she could.

  She surfaced and hauled the cable up, hitting the trigger to unfurl the net under the boat. With one quick twist her end of the cable became rigid, and she fired it up to attach itself to the segment dropping down from the shuttle. She saw an orange flash as it was locking, and then it went green.

  “Go!” she commed to Arin, but he was already lifting. As the boat came free of the viscous water, she swam underneath, snaking one arm through the netting. She felt her own bulk weigh her down as she was lifted out of the water with them.

  As they swung in the air on their way back to the freighter, Elena’s suit shorted out completely. Intended only for lightweight atmospheric use, it had not been designed for submersion; even its meager water resistance was an afterthought. Immediately the soaked fabric began to freeze, and she curled her legs toward her body for warmth. Her face was completely numb now, and she was feeling the wind seep into her bones. Dammit, they hadn’t had the right equipment for this rescue. She would have to have a word with Bear about being better prepared.

  By the time they reached Budapest, she couldn’t feel her arms anymore. Arin flew them into the massive main cargo bay, and she looked down: Naina was there, waving up at her, gesturing for her to drop. Elena was briefly puzzled—Naina was their accountant; what was she doing wandering through the cargo bay during a rescue mission?—but she realized, given the volume of refugees, they would need everyone helping out. This wasn’t a starship, where they’d have a full staff prepared for this kind of thing. Budapest was a short-range freighter; she didn’t even have an infirmary.

  She nodded to Nai, waited a moment until Arin got her closer to the deck, and then let go.

  Her frozen arms did not cooperate. She got hung up in the netting for several seconds, and by the time she shook her limbs loose, she was past the drop point. She tried to land on her feet and roll, but she hit squarely on her right hip, and through her numbness the sharp pain woke her up. She rolled up onto her knees, clenching her teeth, waiting for the circulation to come back into her arms. After all this, she couldn’t become one more thing for the crew to worry about.

  The sensation of pins and needles in her legs eased, and she climbed to her feet, putting careful weight on her right leg. She took a hesitant step, and decided the hip was no worse than bruised. She would worry about it tomorrow, when the airlift was done and they had offloaded the refugees to one of the Corps starships heading their way.

  She crossed the bay floor toward Arin, who had climbed out of the cargo shuttle and was helping the refugees out of their lifeboat. They were all a combination of shaky and crying, an
d Chiedza and Yuri, temporary medics, wrapped them in blankets and spirited them away. Elena waited until they were out of sight and walked up to Arin. When he saw her, his face opened into a grin.

  “That,” he said to her, “was amazing.”

  She laughed. “That was a nice bit of flying you did.”

  “It was easy,” he said. “Like you said, it was just a little storm.”

  Before she could answer him, her comm chimed: Bear. She felt a twist of apprehension; surely the freighter’s captain was too busy to talk to her right now, unless something had happened. “Sir?” she said as she connected.

  “I need to see you in my office, Shaw.”

  “I—of course, sir.” She had to ask. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Hell, yes, there’s something wrong,” he snapped. “Get your ass down here right now, or I will drop you back in that soup and leave without you.”

  Arin was watching her, looking anxious. For his benefit, she shrugged and rolled her eyes, and he relaxed. “On my way, sir,” she said, and disconnected. “He’s going to yell at me for not linking the cable when I dropped,” she told him. And then, hesitantly, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “That was good work today, Arin. You saved their lives.” And she left him looking proud of himself, and vaguely embarrassed.

  * * *

  “What in the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Elena stood at attention across from Bear’s desk, staring straight ahead, mind working furiously. He was angry, and she still wasn’t sure why.

  “Sir,” she began, “it was an ordinary airlift. We—”

  “Ordinary my ass!” He came around his desk. Bear lived up to his epithet, a tall, broad man of more than sixty, everything about him twice as large as it was on everyone else. She had met him when she was fifteen, introduced by her uncle Mike, who occasionally did shipping runs with Bear. The freighter captain had treated her like a professional, like an adult, and she had been swoonily infatuated with him for months. He had never intimidated her, despite his size; but she was remembering that disappointing him was a deeply unpleasant experience.