A Creature of War, Book 4, CH18

The message reached El as he was walking with a patrol. A fight among the construction crew. He ran there, and when he heard the sound, he knew the message had been wrong. This wasn’t a fight, it was too loud for one, this was a brawl.

El forced his way through the crowd and found the brawl. The handful of officers were keeping the crowd away, which was good, but they shouldn’t have stopped there. He looked, but Alicia wasn’t among them. Good. He’d begun trusting her with more authority, he would have hated if she’d been here and allowed this to progress this far.

He motioned to the three officers with him. “We’re going in to stop this. Only injure to incapacitate. So fist and stick. No edge, no claws.”

He didn’t wait for a response, El jumped in. He punched a man in the kidneys, kneed the next one in the balls. The next one, a woman, he punched in the throat. He caught sight of his officers trying to subdue the combatants, who, now that they’d noticed the authority was among them, decided they were a better target than each other.

It didn’t do them any good. El’s officers had either been soldiers before or police officers, unlike the workers they knew how to fight. Unfortunately, the numbers were in the brawler’s favor.

“What is the meaning of this!” With Vee’s voice carrying over that of the fight, every fighter except El and the officers fell down clutching their stomach.

El shook his head when Vee looked at him. He had no idea what this was about. He and his officers separated the injured from the sick, while Vee walked among them, healing those with serious injuries. The bull picked up a bloody knife from the ground and showed it to El.

The lynx let out a whistle and his officers looked in his direction. On seeing the bloody knife, they showed they still had theirs. So this had been one of the brawlers. There wouldn’t be any way to find out whose.

El was annoyed to find six Anthros among the brawlers. None of them had any injuries, so he had them put aside. If he found out they’d done more than try to stop the fighting, he would be pissed. Deciding to be a worker instead of a guard didn’t mean they were allowed to throw all their training and self-control out the door.

They had over thirty combatant.

Vee looked them over. “What is wrong with you people? Fighting for your life against the winter isn’t enough? You need to fight among yourselves?” No one could look up at him, they were still getting over the sickness Vee had given them. “What started it?”

“He stole my food.” A grimy man said, pointing to one still on the ground. It was the one who had been stabbed. El recognized him as one of the newer arrivals.

Vee held the bloody knife. “Is this yours?”

The man didn’t say anything.

The bull turned to one of the officers who had kept the crowd at bay. “You let this happen? Isn’t it—”

“Vee!” El yelled, he knew nothing else would get his attention.

The bull glared at him.

“They’re my people. I’ll deal with them. All this is a police issue. You should let me handle this.”

Vee didn’t reply. He turned to face the fighters. He raised the knife. “How is this fixing anything? You think that hurting each other is going to make everything else easier to deal with?”

“There’s more food for us if they’re dead!”

El tried to find who yelled that, but he’d been focused on the fighters and it had come from the crowd. No one there gave any indication who it had been.

Vee turned to the crowd. “You think that murder will increase the amount of food available? How many do you think you’ll have to kill before the rations can be increased? You think I would reward such actions? The rations levels are set! Unless the hunters we have looking for any animals return successful, the ration levels will not change.

The crowd grumbled. Someone yelled of unfairness and it was picked up by the others. Again, El couldn’t find who had said it.

“How am I unfair?” Vee yelled. “Do you think you deserve more than the person next to you? If you want my job, just tell me. I’ll be happy to step aside and watch you work, but I’ll be there to step in if you put this colony in danger.”

“Isn’t that what you did by bringing them in?” It was the same voice as the first time, El was sure of it, but he couldn’t locate it. His officer were looking the crowd over, but none of them pushed through them.

“You think that because Artell left them out there to die they aren’t part of this colony? They lived in this city, which some of you can’t claim. You were taken in. What makes you so special? You think they wouldn’t have worked any harder than you if Artell had given them a chance?”

The grumbling continued, but no one raised their voice.

“Now, all of you have things to do.”

The crowd didn’t move.

“I said go!”

This time, it dispersed.

El stepped next to the bull. “You need to go too.”

Vee glared at him. “I’m not done with them.”

“This is police business, Vee. You put me in charge of that. I admit we didn’t handle this as well as we should have. I will fix that. I’m happy you put an end to this, but now you need to let me handle the rest.”

El watched as the bull reined in his temper. “Alright,” he finally said. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. None of us saw it coming.”

El nodded. “I’ll take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Vee, are you willing to convert some of the planned rooms into cells?”

The bull shook his head. “I need them. Right now, half the infirmary as acting as barracks.”

“I figured as much. Then I need to borrow one team to make the cells Artell had set up livable.”

Vee rubbed his face. “That’s going to put the rooms behind again.”

“I know, but as it is, I’m going to have to let this bunch go back into the population. I don’t think house arrest is going to do any good. There needs to be real consequences to fights.”

“And any kind of arrest is going to remove workers from the pool.” Vee cursed. “We don’t need this right now.”

“At least my guess about everyone who volunteered for the wall is coming true. The trickle back to the warmth has started. You’ll have people to take their place.”

“And then I’m going to have arguments about who gets to return to work when their sentences are over.”

“We can always leave.”

The bull glared at the lynx.

“Just joking. You need a rest, Vee. You’ve been on me to take it easy, but you’re forgetting to do the same.”

The bull motioned around him as he tried to form words.

“I know. End of the world and all that. But you can kill yourself. Remember that, Vee, what good is that going to do anyone?”

The bull looked at him and smiled. “I hate you. You know that, right?”

EL sighed. “Yeah, I do.” He kissed the bull. “Now you go handle them and let me deal with this.”

With a glare at the men El would have to deal with, the bull stormed away.

El watched him until he had disappeared around a corner. He turned to face his… what were they, prisoners? Not yet, since he didn’t have a place to put any of them.

“Any of you too injured to work, go to the infirmary. When they have the time, they’ll see to you. The rest of you—”

“Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t he going to heal us?” the man was thin, dirty, just like everyone else there.

“Doesn’t look that way. Feel free to run after him and ask him. Clearly he made sure none of you would die. If he’d wanted you fully healed, he would have done that.”

He waited for another outburst. “Good. The rest of you have a decision to make. You can willingly put yourself under house arrest or go back to work.”

“You’re letting us chose?”

“I don’t have enough officers to ensure each and every one of you stays in your rooms.” He pointed to the six Anthros, “Except you, we’re going to have a talk before I decide what to do about out, but for the rest, you’ll be happy to know I’m not going to throw anyone in those things Artell called a cell. You’d just die. So get moving.”

The people got moving, some of them having to help others.

El grabbed the two closest officers and indicated the man who’d been stabbed, no one had helped him. “Take him to the infirmary, and after that find Vee and remind him that of all of them, he’s an actual victim. He’ll know what to do.”

He motioned to four others. “Those six go to my office. Sit on them until I get there. If they cause problem feel free to knock them out and drag them.”

They nodded and went to do as instructed.

Of the people still left when the riffraff cleared out he recognized one woman and motioned for her to join him. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

“Anya,” she said. She looked like she’d been muscular when she could eat properly.

“I’m going to need your team to find a way to insulate the cells. You can check with Vee. He okayed it.”

“I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. Everything usable the scavengers have brought has been going to the rooms.”

“Do what you can. I don’t need the cell comfortable, I just need to be sure anyone I throw in them will survive their stay.”

El looked around. “This isn’t good.” He turned to leave as Malcolm hurried in his direction.

“Where’s Vee? I heard he was down here.”

“This has been handled. He’d gone back up to deal with whatever the next emergency is going to be.”

“Okay, come on, we need to find him.”

“Malcolm, I have things to handle here. I’m sure this can wait.”

The man leaned in and lowered his voice. “I think I solved the food problem.” El raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth, but Malcolm shook his head. “This isn’t the place, right? And Vee should hear it too.”

El nodded and led the man out of the construction area.

They found Vee in his office, settling in his chair. El closed the door and motioned for Malcolm to speak.

Vee looked at them expectantly.

Malcolm rubbed his face. “Okay, I may have found a way to increase the food supplies, but it’s going to have to be handled extremely carefully if we don’t want to make our situation worse.”

Vee leaned forward. “You think bringing in more food is going to cause more fights?”

“Probably, but that isn’t what I’m concerned about. It’s if they find out where the food is coming from that’s going to be the problem.”

Vee looked at El, who shrugged. “I’m confused. Unless you’re telling me we’ll be raiding one of the other cities, why would where the food comes from matter?”

“Because it’ll come from their own dead.”

Vee stared. “You want to feed them their dead?”

“Want to? Hell no. But what choice do we have at this point? We’re doing all we can and even with the rations as they are, I don’t know that we’ll survive. I heard about that brawl, do either one of you think it’s going to be the only one? People are desperate, and desperate people will do really stupid things.”

“Okay, I see your reasoning, but not that many people die each day. I don’t see how that’s going to help.”

“The moment we got the first snow, Artell stopped trying to have the dead buried. Too much trouble, he said. So they’ve been dumped at the back or the wall.”

“No one told us that,” El said.

“Yeah, Artell didn’t think people would approve, so he formed a small team to do it. The official story was they were taking them away from us to be buried in the spring. No one who knew wanted to mention it to you when you took over. They were afraid of how you’d react.”

“They didn’t have to be.” Vee leaned back in his chair. “They’re dead, if that’s the most practical way of dealing with it that’s fine, although how did Artell plan on dealing with them come spring?”

Malcolm snorted. “He hadn’t. Artell didn’t really plan that far ahead. But yeah. We have a pile of bodies back there. It would be easy to chip them out and add that to our meat supplies.”

El shook his head. “I don’t see anyone here taking kindly to eating someone’s arm to leg. As far as I know, cannibalism isn’t accepted anywhere but a few dark places in the— well what was the Eurasian empire. Even the Dutch wouldn’t have anything with that.”

“I agree, and trust me, I’m not keen on it myself, but what else can we do? Everyone’s hungry. The idea makes me sick, but if it’s that or die of hunger, I’d rather live.” Malcolm sighed. “And it isn’t like they have to know what they’re eating. Any animal meat the hunters would bring back would have to be salted and dried, before it got to them, right? We can do the same with that, or boil it in a stew and have them eat that.”

Vee thought about it. “If we do it, we’ll need to bring at least one hunting team in on it. Otherwise the could realize it isn’t coming from the hunts.”

Malcolm nodded. “It should probably be an all Anthro team. They’re better at following orders, and even if you could convince a human to go along with it, I’d be afraid he or she would end up talking. The same goes for whoever prepares the food.”

“Sydney’s team is the only one composed only of Anthros,” El said, “and some of our people are on that team. We know they can follow orders.”

Vee nodded. “I don’t like it, but yes, we’re at the point where we can’t be picky anymore, no matter how unappealing this is. Where are they now?”

“They left this morning. They should be back in four days.”

“When they’re back, I’ll have a talk with Sydney. Malcolm, how much meat do you think we can get?”

“I don’t know, we didn’t keep a tally of the dead, but a lot of people died when winter hit, and more since. And on top of that there’s all those people Artell left out to die.”

“There won’t be much meat from them, but anything will help.”

“Who’s in charge of disposing of the bodies?” El asked. “We’re going to have to bring them in too, they’ll notice what’s happening to the dead.”

Malcolm looked thoughtful. “Maybe we should relieve them of that duty? Let Anthros deal with it. They wouldn’t question it, no one likes doing it and they’ve been stuck doing it since the start of winter.”

Vee nodded. “And it lets us ensure control of the situation. I’ll have IGJ form a team, I might have to borrow some of your officers, El. I’d like to make sure only our people are in on that part of the plan.”

El nodded. “It won’t be a full-time job, so I don’t see it affecting the patrols. How do we bring the bodies in?”

“I know a way,” Malcolm said. “We haven't gotten to that side of the mall yet because it’s all storage, so not insulated. We thought about storing the bodies there, but then we’d have to deal with the smell of them rotting in the spring. So no one mentioned that to Artell. It’ll give us a discreet way to move the bodies and even a place to prepare them.”

Vee sighed. “Okay, see about setting that up. I’ll have people to do the job by the time we can get this going. Be careful. We can’t have anyone poking their nose in it.”

Malcolm nodded and left.

“Have you thought about what it’s going to be like come spring?” El asked. “They’re going to know something’s up when there’s no bodies to bury.”

Vee nodded. “But at least they’ll be alive to bitch. If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

El looked at the bull, he looked and sounded tired. “If I had one, I wouldn’t have gone along with this one.” He stepped behind Vee and massaged his shoulders. “Speaking of spring, what’s the plan for once we leave? They’re going to need someone to lead them.”

Vee moaned as El hit a knot in his muscles. “Are you suggesting we say?”

“No, we’re needed at the lab.”

Vee gasped and El lightened his touch. “I’m thinking of leaving Malcolm in charge. He’d competent and had a pragmatic view on things. They’re going to need that.”

“How about the other Anthros? Will they stay?”

The bull shrugged. “They’re part of this community, I’m not going to ask them to follow me.” He was silent as El kneaded his back. He sighed. “I think we might even lose some of ours. A few of them have been forming bonds here.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“So long as they’re happy. The Lab is our home, not theirs.”

El rested his head on the back of Vee’s head and they were silent.

Vee sighed again. “I wish we could have more time to ourselves, but this place needs someone to run it. Since no one volunteered to take my place when I offered it, I need to get back to work.”

El kissed the side of Vee’s muzzle. “You run your empire, I need to go see to some Anthros and have a talk with them about dereliction of duty.”