toward the gate. “None. Farther east you still get some. Up in Oklahoma, Third Battalion once found a whole goddamn town. But way out here? We’re not even looking.”
“Then what was the net for?”
“Sorry,” Greer said, “I thought you understood. That’s for the dracs. What you all call smokes.” He twirled a finger in the air. “That twisting motion messes with their heads. They’re like ducks in a barrel in that thing.”
Peter recalled something Caleb had told him, about why the virals stayed out of the turbine field. Zander always said the movement screwed them up. He related this to Greer.
“Makes sense,” the major agreed. “They don’t like spinning. I haven’t heard that about turbines, though.”
Michael was walking beside them. “So what were those things? Hanging in the trees, with the bad smell.”
“Garlic.” Greer gave a little laugh. “Oldest trick in the book. The fucking dracs love it.”
The conversation was cut short as they stepped through the gate, into a tunnel of waiting men. Greer’s squad had dispersed among the crowd. No one was talking. As Peter passed, he saw their eyes darting quickly over him. That was when he realized what the soldiers were all looking at: they were looking at the women.
“Ten-shun.”
Everyone snapped to. Peter saw a figure stepping briskly toward them from one of the tents. At first glance, he was not what Peter would have expected of a high-ranking military officer: an almost barrel-shaped man, a full head shorter than Greer, with a waddling, round-heeled gate. Under the dome of his shorn head, the features of his face seemed scrunched, as if they had been placed too close together. But as he approached, Peter felt the force of his authority, a mysterious energy, like a zone of static electricity that hovered in the air around him. His eyes, small and dark, possessed a frank, piercing intensity, even if, as it appeared, they had been incongruously set in the wrong face.
He regarded Peter a long moment, his hands on his hips, then looked past him toward the others, holding each briefly with the same evaluating gaze.
“I’ll be goddamned.”
His voice was surprisingly deep. He spoke with the same loose-jawed accent as Greer and his men.
“At ease, all of you.”
Everyone relaxed. Peter didn’t know what to say; best, he thought, to wait to hear from this man first.
“Men of the Second,” he declared, lifting his voice to the gathered men, “it has come to my attention that some of these strags are women. You are not to look at these women. You are not to speak to them, or come near them, or approach them, or in any way think you have anything to do with them, or they with you. They are not your girlfriends or your wives. They are not your mothers or your sisters. They are nothing, they do not exist, they are not here. Am I clear?”
“Sir yes sir!”
Peter glanced at Alicia, where she was standing with Amy, but couldn’t meet her eye. Hollis shot him a skeptical frown: clearly he had no idea what to make of this, either.
“You six, drop your packs and come with me. Major, you too.”
They followed him into the tent, a single room with an earthen floor beneath a sagging canvas ceiling. The only furnishings were a potbellied stove, a pair of plywood trestle tables covered with papers, and, along the far wall, a smaller table with a radio manned by a soldier with earphones clamped to the sides of his head. On the wall above him was a large, multicolored map, marked with dozens of beaded pins forming an irregular V As Peter moved closer, he saw that the base of the V was in central Texas, with one arm reaching north across Oklahoma and into southern Kansas, the other veering west, into New Mexico, before it, too, turned north, ending just across the Colorado border—the place where he now stood. At the top of the map, written in yellow on a dark stripe, were the words UNITED STATES INTERMEDIATE POLITICAL, and, beneath that, Fox and Sons Classroom Maps, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Greer came up beside him. “Welcome to the war,” he murmured.
The commander, who had entered behind them, directed his voice to the radio operator, who, as the men outside had, was staring frankly at the women. He seemed to have chosen Sara, but then his eyes moved to Alicia, then Amy, in a series of nervous jerks.
“Corporal, excuse us, please.”
With obvious effort, he broke his gaze away, pulling