She let out a choking sound, meant to be a laugh, but coming out as a sob. It’d been a small blast, a homemade bomb designed to do nothing more than shoot shrapnel, but all that shrapnel had slammed into Gareth’s chest. If he hadn’t been Infected, he’d have been dead before he hit the ground.
She waved the medic over, but one look at his face told her all she needed to know. They could recover from most injuries, but if the damage was too great, too extensive…
Oh God. Not Gareth. Please not Gareth.
She stayed beside him as the medic took a closer look. The soldiers ringed around them, solemn-faced, a few shaking, arms around each other.
When the medic looked up to give his report, Gareth waved the soldiers back out of earshot. They hesitated, but obeyed at a growl from him.
“I can make him comfortable,” the medic murmured. “Get him back to the fort…”
“Waste of time,” Gareth said. “Someone’s bound to have heard that blast. Get them moving before-”
“No,” Monica said. “You’re coming if I need to carry you myself.”
She expected him to argue, but he gave a slow nod. “You’re right. They don’t need this. Not now. Take me back, tell them I’ll pull through.”
That wasn’t what she meant at all, but he had a point. Their best warrior-a man who’d single-handedly annihilated mobs of Others-killed by a simple tripwire bomb? That was a blow to morale they could ill afford.
The medic bound Gareth’s chest while the soldiers fashioned a makeshift stretcher from branches and clothes, and they took Gareth back to the fort.
Monica stood on the guard’s balcony overlooking the stockade crammed with Others. Prisoners of war. That had been her policy from the start. Leave as many of the enemy alive as possible. Bring them here. Keep them alive and comfortable. Use them as bargaining chips and as proof to the Others that they weren’t monsters.
It hadn’t mattered. Her missives to the government had gone unanswered, as they always had.
For years, she’d tried to reason with the Others. First to negotiate, then, as their numbers dwindled, to beg for mercy. She understood that they posed a threat. So they’d go away, far from the living.
The Others might as well have been getting letters from a colony of diseased rats. Eventually, she’d realized that was exactly how they saw the Infected-diseased rats that somehow had the power of communication, but rats nonetheless. Subhuman. Dangerous. A threat requiring swift and thorough extermination.
She looked out at the Others and thought of what Gareth had said. The final option. Back when she’d first started arguing for the taking of prisoners, the other commanders had seen the possibilities. Horrified, she’d fought until the option was off the table. Only it wasn’t really. It never had been.
She left the guardroom and walked through the fort. She passed the rooms of soldiers playing card games, of civilians mending clothing and preparing meals, of children listening to stories at the feet of the old ones. Everywhere she looked, people were carrying on, hiding their fear, laughing and talking, just trying to live.
Just trying to live. That’s all they’d ever asked for, and that was all she ever wanted for them. So how far was she willing to go? Not to save them-she wasn’t sure that was even possible anymore-but to give them every possible chance for survival.
How far would she go? As far as she could.
Three days later, she was back on the balcony overlooking the stockade. Gareth was beside her.
“I need to be there,” he’d said. “They need to see me standing there.”
So the doctors had done what they could, binding him up, and she’d done what she could, washing away the worst of the stink of rot that had set in. They’d cleared the hall and carried him on a stretcher to the stockade door. He’d taken it from there, finding the strength to walk up to the guard post. He stood in front of a pillar and she knew he leaned against it, but to those below, their champion was back on his feet. And, now, with this new hope she’d given them, so were they.
Once again, she looked out over the men and women packed into the room below. Only this time, they looked back at her. More than one hundred and fifty trained soldiers on their feet, watching her.
In those faces, she saw fear and uncertainty. She saw hate, too, but less of that, surprisingly less.
Guards ringed the room. Civilians walked up and down the aisles with trays of meat. Cooked meat because, for now, that would make them comfortable. They gave the hostages as much as they wanted. That would help. So, too, would the doctors slipping along, silent as wraiths, watching for signs of trouble, others in the back room, dosing the meat with mild sedatives.
The transition had gone smoother than she’d expected. The doctors assured her it would, but she’d seen one too many hellish deaths and rebirths to truly believe them. They were right, though. After all these years, the virus had mutated, ensuring its own survival by making the process faster, less traumatic. One shot of the virus. Then a death-inducing dose of sedative. Within a day… rebirth. And now, two days later, an army to command.
She started her speech with a history lesson. How the Others had driven them to this place. How they’d fought the sporadic incursions, killing only those they could not capture. How they’d treated the prisoners of war humanely. Every man and woman there could attest to that. But now, with the wolves at their door, refusing to negotiate, they’d been forced to do the unthinkable.
“We need soldiers to fight,” she said, her voice ringing through the stockade. “Right now, I’m sure you don’t feel much like helping us. But you won’t be fighting for us, you’ll be fighting for yourselves. You are us now. You are Infected. Every one of you is now free to walk out our front gates. But you won’t. Because you know they won’t let you. Your brothers-in-arms, your friends, your families-every one of them would lop off your head if you walked into that camp because you are no longer human. You are Infected.”
She paused to let her words sink in. Behind her, Gareth shifted, struggling to stay on his feet. She glanced at him. He smiled and whispered that she was doing fine.
She turned back to the troops. “To everyone you left behind, you are now dead. Do you feel dead?”
They shuffled, the sound crossing the stockade in a wave.
“To everyone you left behind, you are now a monster. Do you feel like a monster?”
More shuffling, sporadic grunts.
“To everyone you left behind, you have no right to live.”
Another glance at Gareth. He stood straighter, chin lifting. He was dying. They all were and this was how they had to face it: stand tall and refuse to let Death win so easily. They’d cheated it before. Now they had to cheat it again.
She turned back to the crowd below. “Do you want to live?” She paused. “Are you willing to fight to live?”
The answer came softly at first, her own troops calling back. Gradually, more voices joined them, the new soldiers joining in, their shouts boosting the confidence of the others until the cry ran through the fort.
Gareth moved up behind her, his fingers sliding around her waist, his touch ice-cold now.
“You gave them hope,” he said. “You gave them a chance.”
She nodded. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.
The Thought War by Paul McAuley
Paul McAuley is a winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Sidewise Award. His most recent novels are Gardens of the Sun and The Quiet War. Earlier work includes the award-winning novel Fairyland, White Devils, Four Hundred Billion Stars, Mind’s Eye, and The Secret of Life, to name a few. His short fiction has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Postscripts, and has been reprinted on numerous occasions in best-of-the-year annuals.