March in Country Read Free Page A

position to grind them down . So: Your first task will be to convey some of my avatars to the tower I am building in Kentucky . Speak not, I already know your answer is yes.
    Prince Green shifted his weight on his perch. The goop around his ankles relaxed its grip.
    Go, and we will speak again when I join my avatars in Kentucky .
    “Thank you for the opportunity, my lord,” Macon said, formalizing their new relationship.
    Prince Green showed no sign of having heard him. Some of the tentacles were rippling. Perhaps he was animating one of his Reapers, communicating the orders to his chief of staff.
    Macon left the oversized hornet’s nest of the hangar roof, feeling rather like a fly walking out of a spider’s web.
    “Looks like we have us a new ghoul-wrangler,” one of Prince Green’s human security staff said.
    They took him out for a celebratory meal. “Eat up. You won’t see civilization again for years,” Director Solon, Prince Green’s chief of staff, predicted.
    They plied him with good liquor and tantalizing promises, in that members-only restaurant that smelled like sizzling beef and cigars. When Kentucky was properly incorporated into the Control, there’d be plenty of new Director positions.
    Which led him, after briefings and paperwork bookended by the usual indoctrination lectures from the churchmen about what tests he’d encounter in his new duties among the unincorporated, to Wayside Number Two. Prince Green’s advance guard of Reapers needed feeding. The Reapers lived off the blood of its victim, while acting as a conduit for the vital auras all intelligent, emotionally resonant beings possessed.
    They’d offered him a driver, but he turned them down. One of the things his father taught him was that you always needed at least one person near you at all times whose “pay chit only gets deposited if you’re still breathing.” He hired Casp from a reliable firm in Charleston. They bred driver/bodyguards there the way the old Roman Empire used to produce gladiators. He’d added a little extra insurance by careful selection. Casp was two meters of solid muscle and had three brothers who were also DBs. If one gave the company name a black eye, the others would suffer.
    Macon judged the souls in the Wayside, and found all of them wanting in some manner or other.
    Three. He’d have to take three.
    Macon felt sorry for them, in a way. Or rather, he felt sorry for the person they might have been, had they not made a few bad decisions. Failure to join one of the youth movements, or to drop out of the organizations and the educational system took many down a dead end. Resentment over a relative caused a lot of bad blood. People put so much emotion into biological happenstance.
    Like that heavy driver in the corner, with his patty melt. A vanabon—Macon could tell from patches all over his mesh vest. Each patch represented a key business he carried for. He probably wandered northern Tennessee, doing everything from bringing eggs to market, delivering letters and parcels and subscriptions, to making spare parts runs—probably sneaking a passenger or two discreetly among the boxes.
    Macon wouldn’t take him, even if the man was stuffing his food to make a hasty exit before Macon asked to look over the contents of his van. Fat men rarely were rebels.
    The gal at the folding table was a possibility. He might have to talk to her to decide. Aging, weathered, still with beautiful long hair, she wore a dress of nice material in flowing patterns.
    Taking his cup, he walked up to her table and she offered a welcoming smile. Her portable table was covered with spices, medicines, candles, cut-glass vials, even a couple of beautifully restored plastic dolls. She evidently made her living selling sundries to the road traffic, something nice to bring home as a surprise to the wife.
    “Are the candles scented?” Macon asked.
    “Scented and unscented. Cinnamon is my most popular. I have beeswax as well, you can melt