A Cold Day in Hell

203rd Cohort situation report – Feb 10, 2032

Cohort currently working with elements of 20th engineering cohort on reconstruction projects Reconstruction of rail transport deemed critical. Request commandants of refugee camps under Concordance management identify experienced construction workers available to assist with reconstruction efforts.  

Knutsford Refugee camp – February 10, 2032

Concetta awoke to the sound of her husband’s coughing. They weren’t gentle coughs, they were throat-ripping hacks. Surprisingly, he was still asleep. She slid her pillow under his head, trying to lift his head and shoulders so it would be easier for him to breathe. He had been ill for six days and seemed to be getting worse rather than better. She lay a hand on his forehead. He was burning up with fever.

A single dim red light bulb hanging above the Quonset hut’s main entrance provided the only illumination in the hut. It was enough for her to make out the hands on the clock positioned beside the door. The clock read 0545. The food distribution site would open at 0600, but unless she wanted to spend an hour in the cold, she needed to get in line now. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw some of the other bunks were already empty. She wouldn’t be the first one in line.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bunk and dropped to the floor, taking care not to hit the bunk below her. It felt like stepping into a refrigerator. The air was cold enough for her to see her breath. She padded stocking footed across the floor of the hut to the rack holding her coat and shoes. She didn’t need to worry about getting dressed. No one slept in pajamas anymore. They slept in the heaviest clothing they possessed.

It was even colder outside, with a frigid wind blowing into her face. Concetta put her hands under her armpits and bent her head in an attempt to keep the wind out of her face and strode off to the distribution site. With head bent, she couldn’t see directly ahead and almost ran into the Concordance soldier when she rounded the corner of one of the camp’s buildings. She came to a stop so abruptly she lost her balance and the soldier had to reach out a hand to steady her.

“Good morning, Lady Haversham. How are you this morning?”

The soldier looked vaguely familiar, but Concetta couldn’t place him. He also looked less bothered by the wind than she was, but he wore a helmet and metal cuirass that undoubtedly blocked the wind better than her coat. 

“Have we met? I don’t recall meeting you.”

He shook his head ‘no’ “Met, no. But your supervisor in the reception center is my shield. You may have seen me in the office talking to her. She’s mentioned you several times.”

“Positively I hope.” She didn’t quite understand the relationship between a shield and her sword. In some ways, it seemed to be the equivalent of a marriage, but a shield always accompanied her sword into combat. Even more confusingly, she occasionally overheard Concordance soldiers describe someone as his or her ‘primary.’

“Very much so.”

“That’s nice, but I’m not Lady Haversham, I’m Mrs Morrison. Lady Haversham is my mother. I won’t be Lady Haversham until she and my father are both deceased.”

“In that case, I hope it’s a long time before I need  to call you Lady Haversham.”

“Thank you. I hope so too. Now if you will excuse me, I want to get into the food line before it gets too long.”

“Of course.” He brought his fist to his chest as if in a salute, then turned away, leaving Concetta free to make her way to the distribution site.

A crowd had already formed at the distribution site. The site consisted of nothing more than a row of tables in the space between two of the Quonset hut-style prefabs Concordance engineers had set up by the dozens in the refugee camp. Behind the tables stood the building that served as the camp kitchen. Over a dozen soldiers, both British and Concordance stood guard in the area. The Quonset huts served as the camp’s food storage warehouses and, as such, were the most important buildings in the camp.

The tables bore signs indicating which letters of the alphabet they served. Concetta stepped into the line for people whose last names began with ‘M’ and moved closer to the man in front of her, stopping when she stood just inches away. She sensed someone behind her moving just as close. Before the invasion, she would have been uncomfortable being so close to strangers. Now it was simply a way of getting warm, or more accurately, to be less cold.

Once she reached the table, she presented her and her husband’s ration cards to the disbursing clerk. The clerk compared Concetta’s face to the image on Concetta’s card and verified the other card matched the cards Concetta was authorized to possess. Possession of an unauthorized card was nearly as serious a crime as murder. An individual caught with an unauthorized card would be expelled from the camp with nothing more than the clothes they had on their back.

Satisfied Concetta was really Concetta and authorized to carry her husband’s card, the clerk gave her two ration boxes. Concetta peaked into one of the boxes. It contained three scones, what she estimated to be about 50 grams of some sort of meat, and half a dozen dates. It would have made a decent lunch. Instead, it would be all she got for the day.

The lights were on when she returned to the Quonset. Her husband was awake and sitting on the edge of the bunk, his feet hanging over the sides. More importantly, from Concetta’s viewpoint, he wasn’t coughing.

“Breakfast, sweetheart,” she said.

“And lunch and dinner. Please don’t tell me we’re having roast pheasant and caviar again.”

Concetta couldn’t help but laugh. This was why she loved the man. Their home had been destroyed, they were in a refugee camp living on starvation rations, and he could still make her laugh.

“Pate de foie gras and stuffed hummingbird tongue today,” she said as she handed over one of the ration boxes. She opened her box, removed a scone, then handed the box over to Charles.

“And what do you think you’re doing, my dear?” he asked.

“Ensuring you have enough to eat. You’re sick. You need all the help you can get to recover.”

“Starving yourself won’t help me recover.”

“What do you want me to do, Charles?”

“Stay healthy, Concetta. There’s nothing you can do for me.”

“I can take you to the infirmary.”

“It will be a cold day in Hell before I…”

A fit of coughing interrupted the rest of the sentence. . The coughing ceased when he hacked up a glob of phlegm. He spent a moment gasping for breath, then continued. “As I was saying, there’s nothing they can do for me, either. They would be wasting resources they could spend on someone they can help.”

“Please.”

Charles locked eyes with Concetta. In the end, it was Concetta who turned away.

“You have work in the reception center, Concetta. Go. There are always new arrivals and you can give them more help than you can give me. I promise you I’ll still be alive when you return this evening.”

The reception center was another Quonset hut. Almost all the buildings in the center were Quonset hut style. Concetta had come to the conclusion either someone had given the Concordance supply department an outstanding deal on the huts, or the head of the Concordance engineering department watched too many World War Two movies as a child.

Her supervisor, a Concordance woman soldier who went by the name Kara, was already in the office sitting at her desk with a cup of something steamy in her hand. She wore a Concordance uniform but had a blanket wrapped around her as well. Concetta suspected the blanket violated Concordance uniform regulations, but the office was as cold as her barracks. The only well-heated structures were the infirmary and the children’s creche. If Charles hadn’t been so ill, she would be wearing a blanket as well.

On paper, four people were assigned to the center, but the other two were too ill to work. Fortunately, the flow of new refugees had decreased as well. Lately, her work consisted mostly of logging the births and deaths that occurred the previous day and forwarding the information to the other refugee camps and the Concordance base in Southerby.

There was a stack of paper on her desk. She sat down, ignoring the rumblings of her empty stomach. Hunger was a normal part of her life now. It was part of everyone’s life.

“Good morning Kara, I met your husband this morning.”

“My hus… Oh, you mean Lee. He’s not my husband, he’s my sword.”

“What’s the difference? I know swords and shields accompany each other into battle, but other than that, from what I’ve seen the relationship is like a marriage.”

“I think we need to include this topic in our new arrival orientations. Remind me to ask my centurion to bring it up with your sergeant-major at the next staff meeting.

“Back to the relationship. It is and isn’t like a marriage. You need to understand some things about psionics to see the differences. You know Concordance soldiers and the invaders can battle using psionic abilities, right? We call it fighting on the psionic plane. But what you probably don’t know is that when a human psi is battling on the psionic plane, she’s completely oblivious to what’s happening around her on the material plane.”

 Conceta thumbed through the stack looking to see if anything was marked ‘URGENT.’  There wasn’t.  “‘That doesn’t sound good.”

“You’re right, it isn’t. However, if she can establish a mental link with another psi, they can form what I guess you would call a shared consciousness. The psi creating the link fights on the psionic plane while her partner, her sword, operates on the material plane. But since they’re sharing a consciousness, each is aware of what’s happening on the other plane. The link also allows them to create a psionic shield the psi can use to shield both of them from psionic attacks. For some reason, only women psis can establish the link. Male psis can be linked to and can add to the psionic shield, but they can’t create the initial link”

She paused, giving Concetta a moment to digest what she had told her before going on.

“Now, here comes the important part. To establish a link, you need to open yourself to your partner and him to you. A link is a sharing of souls. You can’t read your partner’s thoughts, but you can read their feelings and share their memories, and they can do the same to you. It’s hard to open yourself that fully to someone. And even harder to create and maintain a link with someone who isn’t totally open to you.

“You need to trust your sword not just with your life, but with your soul. To know he will always be there for you and to ensure he knows you will always be there for him. Sex with your sword helps. It’s the time when you’re most able to open up, to become one not only in body but in mind and soul as well.”

Concetta nodded in understanding. “That makes sense, but it still sounds like a marriage.”

“True, but consider this. Suppose my squad goes into battle and I’m injured or killed? What happens to Lee?”

“He loses his protection from psionic attacks. Can’t another shield come to his aid? Link with him and with her own sword at the same time?”

“She could and would, but remember what I said about how difficult it is to link with someone who can’t open themselves up to you and you to them.”

“They wouldn’t be able to unless…” The proverbial light bulb lit up in Concetta’s mind as she realized where Kara was leading her. “A shield has to be intimate with all their potential partners, doesn’t she. Not just her own sword. But don’t you become jealous when some other woman wants to get intimate with your partner?”

“Not if she’s part of my squad. That intimacy might save Lee’s life if I’m injured on the battlefield. Not to mention I’ll be forming the same type of relationship with her partner. Lee is my primary. We chose each other during our initial psi training. I’m closer to him than you can imagine, but we can’t be exclusive. It would endanger the entire squad. Which is what I mean when I say the relationship between a shield and her sword isn’t exactly like a marriage.”

“It sounds to me as if a squad is a group marriage. What would you do if a psi from another squad attempted to become intimate with Lee?”

“We’d do the same thing you would if someone tried getting intimate with your husband. We’d scratch her eyes out. Now, why don’t you get to work on the other centers’ birth and death reports.” She pointed to the papers on Concetta’s desk. The communication center brought in the Somerset and Glamorgan reports that came in last night, and I know we have people with relatives in both centers. While you’re doing that, I want to look over bunk assignments. With luck, I’ll be able to move people around and reunite families that are currently bunking in separate buildings.”

The two women began dealing with the refugee camp’s administrative details. Kara tended to whistle songs that had been popular before the invasion when concentrating on her paperwork. Concetta might have enjoyed it if Kara whistled on key, but her whistling sounded more like fingernails scraping a chalkboard than anything melodic.

 After a few hours, Kara got up from her desk. “I need to use the loo. Be back in a bit.”

Concetta nodded her acknowledgment and went back to work. Kara’s visit to the loo began to stretch out. Forty-five minutes later, Concetta began to worry Kara might have taken ill. Which was when Kara re-entered the office.

The woman had a self-satisfied smile on her face and held something that looked like a rat, except it was the color of raw meat.

“Is that a rat?”

“Not anymore.”

“If it’s not a rat anymore, what is it?”

“Lunch. Want some?”

Concetta’s stomach roiled at the thought of eating a rat, especially an uncooked one. “You could have at least cooked it.”

“I would have needed help to get a fire going, and if I had help, I would have had to share. There’s barely enough here for the two of us, let alone three.”

“It’s going to be full of disease and worms.”

Kara gave Concetta a hard look. “Maybe, but consider the alternative. The docs can worm us if that becomes necessary, but they can’t help us if we die from malnutrition. When was the last time you looked at yourself in a mirror? I’m five-six and normally weigh just under ten stone. These days I weigh about eight stone. You’re about an inch taller than I am and can’t weigh any more than I do. Winter’s only about half over. A lot of us won’t make it till the end of winter. If influenza doesn’t kill us, starvation will. I can’t do anything about sickness. Our medical cohort used our supplies of vaccine on the children, but I can do something about food.” She lifted the rat to eye level. “This is food. I skinned and gutted it. Let me slice it up. After that we feast.”

“Feast?”

“I thought feast sounded better than eat diseased rodent.” She stepped over to Concetta’s desk and reached for some of the paperwork Concetta had been dealing with. “Done with these?”

At Concetta’s nod she removed a few sheets of paper, walked over to her desk, laid the paper on the desk, the rat on the paper and after removing a knife from its sheath on her boot, began slicing and dicing the dead rodent. After a few moments, she brought the paper, now loaded with a pile of raw meat, over to Concetta’s desk.

“Close your eyes and imagine you’re eating steak tartare,” she said.

“Wait a second,” said Concetta. She reached into her coat pocket and removed the scone she had saved. “Give me your knife.” Kara handed over the knife. Concetta cut the scone in half, laid the rat meat on the two halves, and handed a slice to Kara. “Behold my culinary magic. I have changed rat tartare into an open face sandwich.”

Kara smiled and held up her hand in a wait gesture. “I have something else.” She walked over to her desk, rummaged through a drawer, and returned with a tin of peaches. “Loot from one of our foraging expeditions. It was going to be my lunch. Now it’s dessert.”

Concetta took a bite of her rat sandwich. It wasn’t as bad as she expected. Trying not to think about intestinal parasites, she ate the rest of the sandwich, reminding herself with each bite that she needed the food.

They ate the meal in companionable silence. “It was better than the cockroaches I ate during my survival training,” said Kara when she finished the meal. “Which sort of brings me around to what I wanted to talk to you about. One of our psionics trainers will arrive at the camp next week. I’d like you to meet with her so she can test you.”

Concetta shook her head in disbelief. “You think I’m one of you? Impossible. I’m an ordinary human.”

“I thought that about myself, too. Until I tested as psionic. I’m not saying you are psionic, but you might be. Psis give off a sort of mental buzz other psionics can detect. You give off that buzz. The problem is a lot of non-psionics give off the same sort of buzz too. And even if you are psionic, you might only be marginally so. As Lee says, ‘It’s like cricket. Anyone can deliver a ball but very few people can do it well enough to become a bowler on a cricket team.’”

“Suppose I take the test and I’m psionic, then what?”

“We’ll offer you and your husband the opportunity to join the Concordance.”

“And if we refuse?”

Kara shrugged. “You’ll be left alone to live out your life as however it turns out. But right now we have work to do.”

Concetta nodded in agreement. “Right. One crisis at a time.”

Lunch over, the two women turned back to work. Concetta went back to the birth and death reports. The death rate was increasing daily. Malnutrition, cold, and crowded living conditions provided a perfect environment for the spread of the influenza virus ravaging all the British refugee camps. She had finished up the birth and death reports and sent copies to the other refugee camps and her camp’s food distribution team when a Concordance trooper entered the office, had a brief conversation with Kara, then departed.

“You have customers coming, Concetta.”

“Refugees? How many?”

“Six. Husband, wife, three children, and a grandmother. One of our foraging teams was returning to camp when they met up with them. They’re probably pretty shaken up. The team was checking a couple of convenience stores they passed on the way out when they encountered a pack of dogs and a grey. It was a nasty little firefight.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Ripper. The grey mind lashed him. And Mystic. She was his shield. They were tight linked when the grey broke their shield.” She shuddered visibly. “Losing your sword is bad enough, but if you’re tight linked to him and lose him that way. She may never recover. It would have been a mercy if her squad leader put a round through her head.”

The arrival of the refugees interrupted anything else she planned to say. The man held a length of metal pipe Concetta assumed he had picked up for use as a weapon. A woman about the man’s age was carrying an infant, while the older woman held the hands of two children Concetta guessed to be somewhere between six and eight years old. They were better dressed than most newcomers Concetta had seen but had the same look of confusion and hope she had seen on all the other refugees. They introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Hughes’ mother.

“You take them, Concetta,” said Kara. “I want to check on Mystic.”

Concetta waved the family over and told them to take seats at her desk.

“Are you one of them?” asked Mr. Hughes as soon as he took a seat. He turned his head in Kara’s direction, who was walking out the office door.

“No. I’m just another refugee.”

The man still had his eyes on Kara. “They said we would be safe here. But what are they? They look like us, but I saw one of the women who rescued us stare at one of those dog things, and it dropped dead. Humans can’t do anything like that.”

“They call themselves the Concordance. They’re fighting the aliens, too. That’s all I care about anymore.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Mrs. Hughes. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend these days.”

“I am right. Now I need some information from you. Names, birthdays, where you used to live, any relatives you had, and where they were living before the bombings. I’ll send the information to the other camps, and if it matches with any of your relatives in the other camps, we’ll put you in touch with them. I’ll take pictures of you and send them along with the personal information.”

Concetta took the information, then checked her listing of available bunks. “I’m going to assign you to barracks 42. They have three available bunks there.”

“But there are six of us,” protested the man.

“You can double up. Or take turns sleeping in the bunks. This is the best I can do and still keep you together. You’re going to want to double up, anyway. Sharing your bunk gives you a warm body beside you and an extra blanket on top of you.”

She made some additional entries into her computer. Then printed out ration cards for each member of the family.

“Present these when you’re picking up your daily rations. You’re going to hear this in the new arrivals orientation, but I’m going to tell you now. An influenza epidemic is going through this camp. People are dying of it. If God forbid one of you dies, turn in their ration card. Don’t present it hoping to get extra rations. You’ll be discovered and the penalties are severe.”

“What sort of penalties?” asked Mr. Hughes.

“You’ll be taken to the edge of the camp and told to start walking.”

“That’s barbaric. What sort of madman would come up with that sort of punishment for stealing food?”

“You’ll have your chance to ask that question tomorrow. Sergeant Major Atkinson always gives newcomers a camp indoctrination briefing. He’s the senior officer of the camp and the one who made the rule.

“We’re shorthanded in the office right now, so make yourself comfortable. As soon as Kara comes back, I’ll walk you over to your barracks. There are a pair of Concordance troopers bunking there. They can make sure you’re settled in, given bedding, and shown where to get your daily rations. In the morning, they’ll escort you to the Sergeant Major.”

The family settled into an uneasy silence. Even the children were quiet.

Concetta turned her attention to the paperwork, more to ignore the people before her than to accomplish anything useful. The silence stretched on for about fifteen minutes until Kara burst into the office.

“Concetta, you need to go to the infirmary right now. Your husband had some sort of seizure and was taken there. The doctors say…”

Concetta was out the door before Kara could complete her sentence. She entered the infirmary at a dead run, nearly bowling over the Concordance soldier standing in the doorway.

“I’m Mrs. Morrison,” she told the man at the reception desk between gasps for breath. “My husband, Charles, was just brought in. How is he? Can I see him?”

“Just a minute Mrs. Morrison. I’ll find your husband’s doctor and he can talk to you.” 

The receptionist left the desk and returned a few minutes later accompanied by a man wearing a Concordance uniform but with a stethoscope around his neck.

“Mrs. Morrison? I’m Doctor Casey. Your husband went into a seizure in your barracks. Some of your mates in the barracks brought him in. He was running a temperature of 40.5 and was having difficulty breathing. He’s under sedation and on oxygen at the moment.”

“How long until he can leave?” She had to ask but had a horrible feeling it was going to be bad news.

The look the doctor gave her was enough. She didn’t need to hear the words.

“It’s unlikely he will make it through the night. I’ll take you to the sick ward if you want to sit with him.”

“Yes. Please.”

The doctor led her to another Quonset. The building was filled with double-decker sick beds. She counted four rows of 25 beds each. Two hundred beds and almost all of them with an occupant.

Charles was in a lower bunk. There was a step-stool, probably used by the doctors and their assistants when checking patients in the upper bunks, in the next aisle. Concetta brought it over to Charles’ bed to use as a chair. She grasped his hand and Charles’ hand tightened around hers.

The tears started to flow. Even as he lay dying, Charles still tried to comfort her. It occurred to Concetta that Charles had been right when he said it would be a cold day in Hell before he would go to the infirmary.

It was cold, and they were in Hell.