Sort of.
Hard to tell if time was passing or not. He swore, but it came out as a dry-throated moan. It seemed the first part of his brain that was willing to try to work his mouth had a vocabulary limited to profanity.
More words, but they didn't make sense.
Then he was awake, only now the fabric over his face was wet; so were his chest and shoulders.
"Up and at 'em, Valentine", the husky voice said, more intelligibly this time.
They know my name. This can't be good.
Husky voice again: "You reading me?"
Valentine needed time to think, but more water came.
"Anyone want to work him over with a bar of soap? He really needs it", a faraway female voice said. Hard to tell if it was the same one he'd heard before; the earlier conversation came back vague as a dream.
Another voice, female, nearer: "David S. Valentine, former major with Southern Command, we meet at last".
"Mutfurker", Valentine croaked.
"I suppose you know you've made a lot of powerful enemies. Someone gets to be too big a thorn, it gets pulled out and snapped". A throat clearing followed by a soft cough. This voice was the same as the one in the car.
"Death teams, man", the husky voice said. "You got death teams on your ass. Just like the one that got your folks. Just like the one that has you now".
"He's awake now, I saw his head jerk", the faraway female voice said.
So that's it, Valentine thought. / wonder if they'll leave me strung up like F. A. James in Iowa. No, some Kurian will get me.
Husky voice: "Big reward. All we have to do is take you north of the Missouri. We'll all be rich".
"Spend it right away, you pricks", Valentine said. The words were slurred but sounded intelligible enough to him. "There's some Bears and a Cat who'll get you in turn".
Valentine heard light footsteps and the bag came off his face - a little painfully, it took a scab on his chin with it.
Alessa Duvalier stood in front of him, holding the feed sack. Her freckles had faded with the season and she had a fresh bandage on her hand. A long, tattered coat hung off her thin shoulders. "If I'm s'posed to be the Cat, I wouldn't be so sure, Val", she said. "I still remember the tap you gave me in St. Louis. The cut inside my mouth took forever to heal".
Confused relief flooded Valentine. He tried to form words, but they wouldn't come. His eyes went wet.
"Get him some water, Roberts", a woman in uniform said from the other side of the room. The air smelled like mold and termites. She had her back to him, and was studying a series of wedding pictures on the wall. It had peeling paper and old, dust-covered fixtures that at one time had thrown light on the pictures. A few pieces of furniture with the cushions long removed had been pushed against the walls, and Valentine noted that he sat at one end of an oval dinner table, once a fine piece of work but now scratched and water warped. A single fat white candle leaned at the center of the table, providing the only illumination in the room.
A short, wiry man with horn-rimmed glasses in a Southern Command uniform offered the mouth of a canteen. Valentine noticed a
corporal's chevron on his arm. "Just water", he said, in a surprisingly deep voice for his slender frame. Valentine drank, marking another man in Wolf leathers snoring on the bare spring bed of a sofa, oblivious to the conversation.
"So I've been recaptured by Southern Command?" Valentine said.
"For the record: name, place of birth, most recent rank?" the female with her back to him said.
"David Stuart Valentine, unincorporated Minnesota, major", Valentine supplied.
"He's sensible enough", Duvalier said. "Hungry, Valentine?"
"I'll eat". Valentine was shocked to see Moira Styachowski step in from another room. His artillery officer from the fight for Big Rock Hill on the banks of the Arkansas had put on a little weight since last he saw her, but her face still looked pale and her eyes tired.
"Quite a reunion", Valentine said as Duvalier slid flatbread and a jar that smelled like fatted bean paste across the table.
"More than you know", the woman studying the photos said. She turned. A trim, neatly attired woman with a colonel's bird on her tightly buttoned collar regarded him with sparkling eyes.