Monsters of Men

“Captain Tate?” the Mayor says. “Will you send a team of engineers to accompany Mr Shaw and see if we can keep the people we’re protecting from freezing to death?”

I look at the Mayor in amazement as Mr Tate leads Mr Shaw away.

“How can you give ’em heating when all we’ve got is campfires?” I ask. “How can you spare the men?”

“Because, Todd,” he says. “There’s more than one battle being fought here.” He looks down the road as Mr Shaw returns to the other townsfolk with the good news. “And I intend to win them all.”

{VIOLA}

“Right,” Mistress Lawson says, bandaging my arm again. “We know the band is meant to grow into the skin of the animal wearing it and bind it permanently, and that if we take it off, the chemicals in it will prevent us from being able to stop the bleeding. But if you leave the band alone, it’s also supposed to heal and that’s not what’s happening to you.”

I’m on the bed in the healing room of the scout ship, a place where I’ve spent way more time than I’d like since getting back from seeing Todd. Mistress Lawson’s remedies are keeping the infection from getting worse, but that’s all they’re doing. I’m still feverish, and the band on my arm still burns, burns enough to keep me coming back to this bed.

As if it hadn’t been a hard enough couple of days as it was.

My welcome back to the hilltop surprised me. It was getting dark when I rode in, but lights from the campfires let people from the Answer see me coming.

And they cheered.

People I know like Magnus and Mistress Nadari and Ivan came over to pat Acorn’s flanks and say things like, “That’ll show ’em!” and “Well done!” They thought firing the missile was the best possible choice we could have made. Even Simone told me to try not to worry.

Lee did, too.

“They’ll just keep coming if we don’t show them we can fight back,” he said that night, sitting next to me on a tree stump as we ate our di

I looked over at him, his shaggy blond hair touching the collar of his coat, his big blue eyes reflected in the moons-light, the softness of the skin at the base of his neck–

Anyway.

“They might keep coming worse now, though,” I said, a bit too loud.

“You had to do it. You had to do it for your Todd.”

And in his Noise, I could see that he wanted to put his arm around me.

But he didn’t.

Bradley, on the other hand, wouldn’t even speak to me. He didn’t have to. Selfish girl and the lives of thousands and let a child drag us into war and all kinds of even ruder things in his Noise lashed at me every time I got near him.

“I’m just angry,” he said. “I’m sorry you have to hear it.”

But he didn’t say he was sorry for thinking it and then he spent the entire next day briefing the convoy on what happened. And avoiding me.

I was in bed more of that day than I wanted to be anyway, so much that I wasn’t able to talk to Mistress Coyle at all. Simone went out to try and catch her and ended up spending the day helping her arrange search parties for sources of water, sorting out inventories of food, and setting up a place for that many people to use the toilet, which involved a set of chemical incinerators from the scout ship that were supposed to be used for the first settlers.

That’s Mistress Coyle for you. Taking whatever advantage she can get.

And then that night the fever got worse yet again, and so here I am still this morning, when there’s so much work to be done, so much I have to do to try and set the world right.

“You shouldn’t be wasting all this time on me, Mistress Lawson,” I say. “I chose to have this band put on. I knew it was a risk and if–”

“If it’s happening to you,” she says, “what about all the women out there still hiding who didn’t have a choice?”

I blink. “You don’t think–?”

VIOLA, I hear, out in the corridor. Viola MISSILE Viola SIMONE stupid Noise–

Bradley pokes his head into the room. “I think you’d better come out here,” he says. “Both of you.”

I sit up in the bed, feeling so dizzy I have to wait before I stand. By the time I’m able to get up, Bradley’s already leading Mistress Lawson out of the room.

“They started coming up the hill about an hour ago,” he’s saying to her. “Twos and threes at first, but now . . .”

“Who did?” I ask, following them outside and down the ramp, joining Lee, Simone and Mistress Coyle at the bottom. I look out across the hilltop.

Which now has three times as many people as it did yesterday. Ragged-looking groups of all ages, some still wearing the night clothes they were in when the Spackle first attacked.

“Do any of them need medical attention?” Mistress Lawson asks, not waiting for a reply before she heads off towards the largest batch of newcomers.

“Why are they coming here?” I ask.

“I’ve been talking to some of them,” Lee says. “People don’t know whether it’s safer to have the scout ship protect them or stay in town and have the army do it.” He looks over at Mistress Coyle. “When they heard the Answer was here, that made up some of their minds.”

“Which way?” I say, frowning.

“There’s got to be five hundred people here,” Simone says. “We don’t have anything like that kind of supply of food or water.”

“The Answer does in the short term,” Mistress Coyle says, “but you can bet there’ll be more coming.” She turns to Bradley and Simone. “I’m going to need your help.”

As if you’d have to ask, Bradley’s Noise rattles. “The convoy agrees that our primary mission is humanitarian,” he says. He looks over at me and Simone, and his Noise rattles some more.

Mistress Coyle nods. “We should probably have a talk about the best way to do that. I’ll get the mistresses together and–”

“And we’ll include it with a talk about how to sign a new truce with the Spackle,” I say.

“That’s a thorny issue, my girl. You can’t just wander in and ask for peace.”

“And you can’t just sit back and wait for more war either.” I can tell from Bradley’s Noise he’s listening to me. “We have to find a way to make this world work together.”

“Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.”

“But if you don’t at least try to live them,” Bradley says, “then there’s no point in living at all.”

Mistress Coyle looks at him slyly. “Which is another ideal in itself.”

“Excuse me,” a woman says, approaching the ship. She looks nervously over all of us before settling her eyes on Mistress Coyle. “You’re the healer, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Mistress Coyle replies.

“She’s a healer,” I say. “One of many.”

“Can you help me?” the woman says.

And she pulls up her sleeve to reveal a band so infected it’s clear even to me that she’s already lost her arm.

[TODD]

“They kept coming through the night,” Viola says to me thru the comm. “There’s three times as many here now.”

“Same here,” I say.

It’s just before dawn, the day after Mr Shaw spoke to the Mayor, the day after townsfolk started showing up on Viola’s hill, too, and more keep popping up everywhere. Tho it’s mostly men in town and mostly women up on the hill. Not all, but mostly.

“So the Mayor gets what he wants,” Viola sighs, and even on the small screen I can see how pale she still looks. “Men and women separated.”

“You all right?” I ask.

“I’m okay,” she says a bit too quick. “I’ll call you later, Todd. Busy day ahead.”

We hang up and I come outta my tent and find the Mayor already waiting for me with two cups of coffee. He holds one out. After a second, I take it. We both stand there drinking, trying to get some warmth inside of us as the sky gets pinker. Even at this hour, there are some lights on where the Mayor’s men got power ru