Beauty is that Medusa's head
Which men go armed to seek and sever.
It is most deadly when most dead,
And dead will stare and sting forever.
- Archibald MacLeish, "Beauty"
Chapter 33
Invasion
Tally turned from the window and saw nothing but empty beds. She was alone in the bunkhouse.
She shook her head, foggy from sleep and disbelief. The ground rumbled beneath her bare feet, and the bunkhouse shuddered around her. Suddenly, the plastic in one of the windows shattered, and the muffled cacophony from outside rushed in to batter her ears. The entire building shook as if it would collapse.
Where was everyone? Had they already fled the Smoke, leaving her there to face this invasion alone?
Tally ran for the door and threw it open. Before her, a hovercar was landing, blinding her for a moment with a face full of dust. She recognized the machine's cruel lines from the Special Circumstances car that had first taken her to see Dr. Cable. But this one was equipped with four shimmering blades - one each where the wheels of a groundcar would be - a cross between a normal hovercar and the rangers'
helicopter.
It could travel anywhere, Tally realized, inside a city or out in the wild. She remembered Dr. Cable's words:We'll be there in a few hours. Tally forced the thought from her head. This attack couldn't have anything to do with her.
The hovercar struck the dusty ground with a thud. This was no time to stand there wondering. She turned and ran.
The camp was a chaos of smoke and running figures. Cooking fires had been blown from their pits, and scattered embers burned everywhere. Two of the encampment's big buildings were ablaze. Chickens and rabbits scampered underfoot, dust and ashes coiled in rampant whirlwinds. Dozens of Smokies ran about, some trying to put out the fires, some trying to escape, some simply panicking.
Through everything else, the forms of cruel pretties moved. Their gray uniforms passed like fleeting shadows through the confusion. Graceful and unhurried, as if unaware of the chaos around them, they set about subduing the panicking Smokies. They moved in a blur, without any weapons that Tally could see, leaving everyone in their wake lying on the ground, bound and dazed.
They were superhumanly fast and strong. The Special operation had given them more than just terrible faces.
Near the mess hall, about two dozen Smokies were making a stand, holding off a handful of Specials with axes and makeshift clubs. Tally made her way toward the fight, and the incongruous smells of breakfast reached her through the choking haze of smoke. Her stomach growled.
Tally realized that she had slept through the breakfast call, too exhausted to wake up with everyone else.
The Specials must have waited until most of the Smokies were gathered in the mess hall before launching their invasion.
Of course. They wanted to capture as many Smokies as possible in a single stroke.
The Specials weren't attacking the large group at the mess hall. They waited patiently in a ring around the building while their numbers increased, more hovercars landing every minute. If anyone tried to get past the cordon, they reacted swiftly, disarming and incapacitating whoever dared to run. But most of the Smokies were too shocked to resist, paralyzed by the terrible faces of their opponents. Even here, most people had never seen a cruel pretty.
Tally pinned herself against a building, trying to disappear next to a stack of firewood. She shielded her eyes from the dust storm, searching for an escape route. There was no way to get into the center of the Smoke, where her hoverboard lay on the broad roof of the trading post, charging in the sun. The forest was the only way out.
A stretch of uncleared trees lay at the closest edge of town, only a twenty-second dash away. But a Special stood between her and the border of dense trees and brush, waiting to intercept any stray Smokies. The woman's eyes scanned the approach to the forest, her head moving from side to side in a weirdly regular motion, like someone watching a slow-motion tennis match without much interest.
Tally crept closer, staying pressed against the building. A hovercar passed overhead, blowing a maelstrom of dust and loose wood chips into her eyes.
When she could see again, Tally found an aging ugly crouching next to her, against the wall.
"Hey!" he hissed.
She recognized the sagging features, the bitter expression.
It was the Boss.
"Young lady, we have a problem." His harsh voice cut through the cacophony of the attack.
She glanced in the direction of the waiting Special. "Yeah, I know."
Another hovercar roared over them, and he pulled her around the corner of the building and down behind a drum that collected rainwater from the gutters.
"You noticed her too?" He grinned, showing a missing tooth. "Maybe if we both run at once, one of us might make it. If the other puts up a fight."
Tally swallowed. "I guess." She peered out at the Special, who stood as calmly as a crumbly waiting for a pleasure ferry. "But they're pretty fast."
"That depends." He dropped the duffel bag from his shoulder. "There're two things I keep ready for emergencies."
The Boss unzipped the bag and pulled out a plastic container big enough for a sandwich. "This is one."
He popped open one corner of the top, and a puff of dust rose up. A second later, a wave of fire rushed into Tally's head. She covered her face, eyes watering, and tried to cough up the finger of flame that had crawled down her throat.
"Not bad, eh?" the Boss chuckled. "That's pure habanero pepper, dried and ground down to dust. Not too bad in beans, but hell in your eyes."
Tally blinked away her tears and managed to speak. "Are you nuts?"
"The other thing is this bag, which contains a representative sample of two hundred years of Rusty-era visual culture. Priceless and irreplaceable artifacts. So which do you want?"
"Huh?"
"Do you want the habanero pepper or the bag of magazines? Do you want to get caught while taking out our Special friend? Or save a precious piece of human heritage from these barbarians?"
Tally coughed once more. "I guess...I want to escape."