With Silvertongue on one side and Stepanicz on the other, Valentine marched back to the ship, exhausted.
"What was all that about, Valentine?" Silvertongue asked as they climbed back on board. "Why were you toadying up to that ring-carrying clown?"
"He's a powerful man where he comes from. Sometimes just knowing the name of someone with that kind of influence can come in handy."
Later that morning, the White Lightning landed Harper and Valentine on a deserted stretch of beach north of where they first rendezvoused.
"Sorry for the kick," Stepanicz said, shaking Valentine's hand. "No hard feelings?"
"No, 't don't think it'll be feeling, hard for a while," Valentine answered. "But thanks for asking."
The captain presented them each with a fifth of rum brought all the way from Jamaica. "And the Lakes Flotilla is always willing to help you out," she said, handing them each a card with her name written on it in elegant calligraphy. "You can always tell a Flotilla ship because the word white is in the name somehow. Or a foreign version of white: blanc, weiss, something like that. Just give them this card, and tell them I owe you a favor."
"Thanks, Captain Doss," Harper said.
"Your servant, ma'am," Valentine added.
Each Wolf shouldered a bag of dispatches addressed to Southern Command. As they hopped out of the dinghy, again wetting their feet in the waters of Lake Michigan, the weight of their rifles brought home the seriousness of the journey back.
"Should we tell Gonzo about all this?" Harper asked.
"Why?" Valentine said, responding with a twinkle in his eye. "He just missed a boring evening with some sailors. And what he doesn't know won't piss him off. But I'll make it up to him. He can have my Bunker souvenir T-shirt."
ukee, August of the forty-third year of the Kurian Order: The burned-out corpse of a city that once held nearly two million people rots across some eighty square miles on the shores of Lake Michigan. From the steep hills overlooking the great lake in the east to the Menominee and RootRivers in the west, the city is nothing but hollow shells of buildings, the upper stories now housing bats, hawks, pigeons, and seagulls. The lower levels shelter everything from rats and coyotes to vagrant humans. Green has covered pavement throughout much of the city. Crickets chirp and grasshoppers leap along Locust Avenue, and Greenfield Avenue is precisely that: a green field where cattle are moved along to graze.
The new center of the city is the railway station, where the more favored soldiers and technicians house themselves in a ring around the Grand Avenue Mall. A hobo jungle of casual labor lives around and under the spaghetti-strand warren of overpasses that make up the old Interstate 94/43 juncture. Two Kurian Lords run the city, one from the Grog-guarded 1950 bomb shelter under the FederalBuilding, and the other from Tory Hill on the grounds of MarquetteUniversity. The Miller Brewing Company is still in business, producing but a trickle of the pilsner torrent it once did. Under new management, of course.
Lake Michigan awed Valentine with its quiet majesty. It had nothing of the crashing drama of the ocean shoreline he knew from books. The expanse of water covering 180 degrees of the horizon in almost a north-south line impressed him nonetheless.
He and Randall Harper camped together north of White-fishBay. They had left Gonzalez in a secluded barn far outside the city limits with the horses after a cautious but uneventful crossing of southern Wisconsin. The only difficulty had been from a pack of guard dogs at a lonely farming settlement who chased them out of a field where they were stealing corn for the horses. The dogs contented themselves with barking rather than biting, and the Wolves had hurried back to their mounts without injury to anything but their dignity.
Now each night they stood behind a four-foot-tall, decorative stone wall in an overgrown park overlooking the lake, waiting for a boat from the White Banner Fleet to show three lights, one flickering, which they would answer with two.
"What exactly is this Flotilla?" Valentine asked his companion.
Harper, comfortably seated with his back to the stone wall, took a puff of one of the noxious cigarettes he smoked. "They're sympathetic to the Cause, even if they don't fight the Kurians tooth and nail. They're smugglers, gunrunners, traders. When they fight the Quislings, it's more because somebody got double-crossed, or they asked for too big a payoff. The Hoods hate going out into blue water, I'm told, so they leave it to the Quislings and some amphibian Grogs. Naturally the Quislings take bribes whenever they can get away with it. But the Flotilla always fights the Grogs whenever they get the chance. It's a real blood feud. I guess these Grogs are more partial to human flesh than most."
"Oh, I think I've heard of these. Big Mouths, Snappers, or whatever. They have jaws that open right to left, instead of up and down, right? Kind of fish-frog things?"
"Yep, slimy skin, like an eel. They're a problem in summer. They go dormant in winter. The real danger's in the spring, when they lay their eggs, you gotta keep away from the shores of the places they inhabit. They forage miles inland for food. They like the water a little shallower though, so they're not such a problem here. Up by Green Bay it's another story, though. And Lake Erie is stiff with them, they tell me."
Valentine thought of all the times that he had taken a boat out into the lakes of the Boundary Waters, collecting fish for dinner. Strange to think of fish emerging and hunting ashore. "So why does the Fleet carry our mail for us?"
"The Hunters in upstate New York give them guns and ammo, that's why. Rope, lumber, paint, turpentine, engines, gasoline-all sorts of stuff. We're lucky. We're just delivery boys; we don't have to worry about payoffs. But I got a little grease for the wheels in my bag; it's sort of expected."
Valentine shrugged. "Whatever it takes. You'd think they'd be on our side."
"They are, they are. In fact, I guarantee that you'll like 'em. Those sailors got a million stories. Of course, most of it's lies and brag, but it's still fun to listen to."
"I'll bet," Valentine said.
The next night the boat arrived. Valentine almost missed it, having wolf-trotted back to Gonzalez's barn to check on things at the main camp. Both the horses and his scout looked better for a few days' rest. Gonzalez had explored the area, finding some apple trees and rhubarb growing nearby. The scout had collected a basket of green apples and an armful of rhubarb, and was sharing his findings with the horses. "I saw some tomatoes near there, too. I'll get 'em tomorrow, sir," he reported.
"Just make sure you're not raiding somebody's field. We might end up dealing with something worse than dogs. I don't want any locals to suspect we're here."
"No tracks, no sign, and best of all, no Reapers," Gonzalez reassured him.
"I hope not. Sleep light. I'll take some apples back, if you have no objections, Mr. Bountiful," Valentine said, filling his pockets.