And now Camp Humble was, too. Negroes who came in here got dealt with in jig time. All the improvements Jeff had designed into the new camp paid off. Camp Humble also had a Y-ranging station, massive antiaircraft batteries all around it, and a fighter wing assigned to help protect it. U.S. bombers could get here, even if they had to come a long way to do it. They wouldn’t meet a friendly reception if they tried.
So far, they hadn’t tried. Maybe they didn’t know where the new camp was. If they didn’t, they would soon enough; you couldn’t keep a place this size secret very long. But making air raids expensive might be enough to keep them away.
Jeff muttered under his breath. Over by Spencer, the CSA hadn’t been able to make Yankee air raids expensive enough. The USA battered down C.S. air defenses, and went right on battering till U.S. warplanes dominated the skies. That couldn’t happen here-not so far inside C.S. territory. Pinkard hoped like hell it couldn’t, anyhow. If U.S. airplanes started owning the sky over Houston and Humble, the Confederate States were in deep.
He muttered again. By the news filtering out of Georgia, the Confederate States were in deep anyhow. That there was news out of Georgia-no matter how the Party and the government tried to keep it quiet-told how very deep his country was in.
A train whistle blew, off in the distance. Jeff kept the window to his office open a little way so he could hear those three blasts whenever they came. He intended to go on doing that unless it was snowing outside or something. As usual, he wanted to know what would happen before it did. He still prowled through Camp Humble with a submachine gun, looking for trouble spots before they showed up. And when he heard those three toots from the train whistle, he still erupted from the office and headed for the unloading point like a jackbooted force of nature.
Guards in gray uniforms hustled to take their places where the spur from the line through Humble stopped at the camp. Some of them led big, mean, snarling dogs-coon hounds, they laughingly called them, though the German shepherds were nothing like the beasts that went after four-legged coons.
“Come on!” Jeff shouted. “Move your lazy asses!” Anybody who got in position after he did was in trouble, and everybody knew it. Some of the guards, the men from the Confederate Veterans’ Brigades, moved slower than their younger counterparts. He could put the old farts in the stockade or ship them home, but that was about it. He could send younger guards straight to the front if they fucked off. He’d done it, too, though only twice.
The train whistled again. Jeff Pinkard was anything but an imaginative man, but he couldn’t help thinking how mournful that sound was. And yet…Who would mourn the Negroes who went into the bathhouses and the trucks and the crematorium? Nobody white in the CSA, that was for damn sure.
Here it came, smoke puffing from the stack. Sparks flew as steel wheels ground against steel rails. The engineer knew just what he was doing. He stopped the locomotive alongside the flagpole that was his mark and waved to Jeff. As Pinkard waved back, the fellow in the tall cap inside the engine took a pint of whiskey out of his coat and swigged from it. Then he gave a throat-cutting gesture, and then a thumbs-up.
If he hadn’t added the thumbs-up, Jeff would have reported him for drinking on duty and for political unreliability. As things were, the camp commandant just grinned.
“Out! Out! Out!” the guards screamed as they unlocked the crowded cars. “Get moving, you stinking, rasty niggers! Form two lines! Men on the left! Women and brats on the right!” When the Negroes stumbled out of the cars, the guards reinforced the orders with cuffs and kicks. A dog leaped forward and bit a woman. Her shrill scream made the blacks move faster to keep the same thing from happening to them.
Into the camp they went, those who could move. Other Negroes-trusties-carried and dragged those who couldn’t move straight to the trucks. The story was that they were going to a clinic some distance from the camp. In fact, the trucks would go far enough to make sure they were dead, then bring them back to the crematorium. More trusties, these always under the watchful eyes of guards, would load the corpses into the fire, and that would be that.
Before long, the trusties would get it in the neck-in the nape of the neck, to be precise-and go up in smoke themselves. They didn’t know that yet; they thought they were saving their worthless black hides by going along with the guards. But Jeff and the others in gray uniforms had plenty of Negroes to choose from. Blacks were flooding into Camp Humble faster than even this magnificent facility could get rid of them.
Guards and trusties went through the train together, pulling out corpses and the live Negroes who were either too far gone to come out on their own or were playing dead. The bodies went straight to the crematorium. The shammers went straight to the trucks.
One of them saw the wreathed stars on Jeff’s collar and stretched out his hands in appeal. “I didn’t do nothin’, suh!” he said, plainly sensing that nothing good was likely to happen to him. Trusties holding him tight and guards aiming automatic weapons at him gave pretty fair hints.
“You broke a rule,” Jeff said stonily. “They said come out, and you damn well didn’t. There’s a punishment barracks next to the clinic.” By now, he brought out the soothing lies with the greatest of ease. “You spend some time in there, you’ll learn to behave yourself when you get back here.”
The Negro went on squawking, but these weren’t the bad kind of squawks. As long as he thought he would be coming back, he was willing to go where the trusties were taking him-not eager, maybe, but willing. He would have kicked up all kinds of trouble had he thought he was heading for his last truck ride.
Before long, the crematorium went to work. The trusties took jewelry and dental gold from the corpses and gave them to the guards. Keeping any of that stuff sent a trusty into the flames alive. So far, the guards hadn’t caught any of them sticking rings up their ass or anything. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. Some people would try to steal no matter what.
Smoke belched from the stacks. Jeff swore softly. The smoke smelled like greasy burnt meat. The outfit that ran up the crematorium had sworn on a stack of Bibles that the smoke would be clean, that you’d never know in a million years they were burning bodies. “Lying bastards,” Pinkard muttered. Yeah, some people tried to steal, all right, no matter what. They weren’t all black, either.
He wrinkled his nose against the stink. Sometimes half-charred bits of flesh came flying out of the stacks, sucked up along with the hot gases. There was a lot more soot than the manufacturers promised, too.
Pulling out a notebook, Jeff scribbled in it. Before long, he’d send Richmond a nasty letter. With luck, he could put the company’s ass in a sling. He did some more muttering. He hoped the people back in Richmond weren’t too busy with the war to come down on some not so petty grifters who’d grabbed a fat contract by promising more than they could deliver.
He wondered if he ought to see where he could put mass graves in case the crematorium just didn’t work out. That would be harder around here than it was around Snyder; this country was more thickly settled. And the ground here was a lot swampier than it was farther west. The stink from graves might be even worse than what the crematorium turned out. All those bodies might pollute the ground water and start epidemics, too. He supposed he’d have to talk to a doc about that.
So goddamn many things to worry about.
But Camp Humble was up and running, even if it had a few rough spots. Camp Determination was nothing but a memory. Jeff could go home to Edith and his stepsons every night proud of what he’d accomplished. And pretty soon he would have a baby of his own. Wouldn’t that be something?