The Colonel ran and then walked and finally crawled. He was crawling when a pair of servitors pried the bootknife from his hand and loaded him onto an air sled like the one that had brought him into the hills.
One of the voiceless creatures held the Colonel while the other flew. The Colonel’s arms and legs continued to move because instinct, all that remained, told them to.
* * *
The Suit debriefing the Colonel was the one who’d tasked him for the mission. He made another notation in the folder on his desk and said in a detached voice, “Well, these things happen. It doesn’t appear that the blame lies with you.”
He put down his pen and went on, “So. How would you rate your present physical condition, Colonel?”
All Suits were the same anyway. They stamped them out with cookie cutters in Ivy League colleges and sent them on to CIA and Hell.
The Colonel smiled.
“I’m fit,” he said. Pus leaked through his mittens of bandage. The damage wasn’t serious: he’d just scraped the thick skin of his palms down to the flesh while crawling. His knees were in similar shape, but the bandages there didn’t show beneath the loose trousers of his jungle fatigues.
His hands hurt remarkably, an enveloping throb every time his heart beat. For the first twenty-four hours after regaining consciousness the Colonel had eaten Percodans like candy.
He hadn’t taken any drugs in the past six hours, though. Pain was something you got used to.
The Suit sniffed. “Well, I’m not going to argue with you,” he said. “We’re getting rather shorthanded, as you can imagine.”
He glanced down at the folder, then closed it decisively. He looked at the Colonel with an expression as hard and detached as that of a falcon in a winter sky. “Very well,” the Suit said. “Return to your quarters. I can’t say precisely when you’ll be called for the next mission, but I’m afraid that your stand-down this time will be relatively brief. We’re approaching endgame.”
“Yes, all right,” the Colonel said. He stood with the care a lifetime of injuries made second nature to him.
Endgame. It was funny to think about it all being over, after a lifetime. . . .
The Colonel put his bandaged fingers on top of the desk and leaned forward slightly. The Suit looked up with the false smile that Suits always got when they thought their attack dogs might be about to slip their leashes. The Colonel had seen that look often enough before.
The Colonel smiled back. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me the truth. Do we really defeat Good?”
The Suit looked puzzled. “Excuse me?” he said. “I don’t understand your question.”
The Colonel blinked. He straightened, taking his hands away from the desk. He didn’t know what response he’d expected, but honest confusion on the Suit’s part certainly wasn’t it.
“You said the Bible was wrong,” the Colonel said. “You said that the armies of Good don’t defeat us.”
He felt the air-conditioned room pulse red with a sudden rage that wasn’t directed at this Suit or even every Suit: the Colonel hated the universe and he hated himself.
The door behind him opened. Servitors slipped in quickly, ready to wrestle the Colonel down and sedate him if necessary.
“Didn’t you say that?” the Colonel shouted.
“The Bible doesn’t say the armies of Good will defeat you,” the Suit said, giving the pronoun a slight emphasis. His expression had returned to its usual faint sneer. “What a concept!”
The Colonel began to shiver. He supposed it was the air conditioning.
“Good doesn’t have armies, Colonel,” the Suit said, tenting his fingers over the closed folder. “Everyone who’s fighting is on our side. You of all people should understand that.”
The Colonel turned around. The servitors stood to either side of the doorway. There were four of them.
“I suggest you get as much sleep as you can,” the Suit behind him said in a professional replica of concern. “There won’t be much time, you know.”
“Yes, all right,” the Colonel said. He walked out of the room, ignoring the smirks of the servitors.