Walk in Hell Read online

  “We licked the damnyankees in the War of Secession,” she said, as if someone had denied it. “We licked ’em again in the Second Mexican War, twenty years later. We can do it one more time.”

  She came up behind a truck rumbling along toward the north, its canvas-canopied bed packed with uniformed militiamen. Some wore butternut, some the old-fashioned gray that had been banished from frontline use because it was too much like Yankee green-gray. A lot of the militiamen wore beards or mustaches. All of those were gray—except the ones that were white. But the men carried bayoneted rifles, and looked to know what to do with them. Against a rabble of Negroes, what more would they need?

  They waved to her when she drove past. She waved back, glad to do anything to cheer them. Then she had to slow almost to a crawl behind a battery of half a dozen horse-drawn cannons. Those couldn’t have come close to matching her Vauxhall’s speed under the best of circumstances, and circumstances were anything but the best: the guns had to fight their way forward against the stream of refugees fleeing the revolt.

  Some of the southbound wagons and motorcars had Negroes in them: a scattering of black faces, among the white. Anne guessed they were servants and field hands who’d stayed loyal to their employers (masters wasn’t the right word, though some people persisted in using it more than a generation after manumission). She was glad to see those few black faces—they gave her hope for Marshlands—but she wished she’d spotted more.

  Truck farms abounded all around the little town of Holly Hill, about halfway between Charleston and St. Matthews. The farms seemed to have come through pretty well. Not much was left of the town. A lot of it had burned. Bullet holes pocked the surviving walls. Here and there, bodies white and black lay unburied. A faint stench of meat going bad hung in the air; buzzards wheeled optimistically, high overhead.

  Anne wished she could have got out of Holly Hill in a hurry, but rubble in the road made traffic pack together. A gang of Negro laborers was clearing the debris. That was nothing out of the ordinary. The uniformed whites covering them with Tredegar rifles, though…

  A couple of miles north of Holly Hill, a middle-aged white man whose belly was about to burst the bounds of his butternut uniform stepped out into the road, rifle in hand, and stopped her. “We ain’t lettin’ folks go any further north’n this, ma’am,” he said. “Ain’t safe. Ain’t nowhere near safe.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m Anne Colleton, of Marshlands,” she said, confident he would know who she was and what that meant.

  He did. Gulping a little, he said, “I’d like to help you, ma’am,” by which he undoubtedly meant, I don’t want to get into trouble with you, ma’am. But he went on, “I got my orders from Major Hotchkiss, though—no civilians goin’ up this road. Them niggers, they got a regular front set up. They been plannin’ this a long time, the sons of bitches. Uh, pardon my French.”

  She’d been saying a lot worse than that herself. “Where do I find this Major Hotchkiss, so I can talk some sense into him?” she demanded.

  The Confederate militiaman pointed west down a rutted dirt track less than half as wide as the Robert E. Lee Highway. “There’s a church up that way, maybe a quarter mile. Reckon he’ll be up in the steeple, trying to spot what the damn niggers is doin’.”

  She drove the Vauxhall down the road he’d shown her. If she didn’t find the church, she intended to try to make her way north by whatever back roads she could find. This Major Hotchkiss might have banned northbound civilian traffic from the highway, but maybe he hadn’t said anything about other ways of getting where she still aimed to go.

  But there stood the church, a white clapboard building with a tall steeple. White men in butternut uniforms and old gray ones milled around outside. They all looked her way as she drove up. “I’m looking for Major Hotchkiss,” she called.

  “I’m Jerome Hotchkiss,” one of the men in butternut said; sure enough, he wore a single gold star on each collar tab. He didn’t look too superannuated. Then Anne saw he had a hook in place of his left hand. That would have left him unfit for frontline duty, but not for an emergency like this. He nodded to her. “What is it you want?”

  “I’m Anne Colleton,” she said again, and caused another stir. She went on, “Your sentry back by the highway said you were the man who could give me permission to keep going north toward Marshlands, my plantation.”

  “If any man could do that, I would be the one,” Major Hotchkiss agreed. “I have to tell you, though, it’s impossible. You must understand, we are not trying to put down a riot up ahead. It is a war, nothing less. The enemy has rifles. He has machine guns. He has men who will use them. And he has a fanatical willingness to die for his cause, however vile it is.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Anne said. “I have to get back to the plantation. My brother is an invalid: the damnyankees gassed him this past spring. Do you know if Marshlands is safe? I tried to telephone from Charleston, but—”

  “Specifically, no,” Hotchkiss answered. “And most telephone lines are down, as you will have found. I can tell you this, though: it’s not safe to be white—unless you’re also a Red, and there are a few like that, the swine—between here and Columbia. Like I say, ma’am, we have ourselves a war here. In fact—” He stopped looking at her and started looking at the Vauxhall. “I’m going to ask you to step out of that motorcar, if you don’t mind.”

  “What? I certainly do mind.”

  “Ma’am, I am confiscating your motorcar in the name of the Confederate States of America,” Hotchkiss said. “This is a military area; I have that right. The vehicle will be returned to you at the end of this emergency. If for any reason it cannot be returned, you will be compensated as required by law.” When Anne, not believing what she was hearing, made no move to get out, the major snapped, “Potter! Harris!” Two of his men trained rifles on her.

  “This is an outrage!” she exclaimed. The soldiers’ faces were implacable. If she didn’t get out, they would shoot her. That was quite plain. Quivering with fury, she descended to the ground.

  Major Hotchkiss pointed farther up the road. “There’s a crossroads general store up there. We’ve got a fair number of folks in tents already. It’s about half a mile. You go on, Miss Colleton. They’ll take care of you best they can. We smash this Colored Socialist Republic or whatever the niggers are calling it, then we can get on with the fight against the damnyankees.”

  “Give me a rifle,” Anne said suddenly. “I’m a good shot, and I’m a lot less likely to fall over dead than half your so-called soldiers here.”

  But the Confederate major shook his head without a word. She knew she was right, but what good did that do her if he wouldn’t listen? The answer tolled in her mind: none. Dully, she began walking up the road. When war reached out its hand, what did wealth and power matter? A fool with a gun could take them away. A fool with a gun had just taken them away.

  Major Irving Morrell and Captain John Abell took off their caps when they went into Independence Hall to see the Liberty Bell. Philadelphia, being the headquarters of the War Department, was full of U.S. military men of all ranks and branches of service. Only someone very observant would have noted the twisted black-and-gold cords on the caps that marked these two as General Staff officers.

  Abell, who had a bookish look to him, fit the common preconception for the appearance of a General Staff man. Morrell, though, was more weathered, his face lined and tanned, though he was only in his mid-twenties. He wore his sandy hair cropped close to his head, as field officers commonly did. He felt like a field officer. He’d been a field officer: he’d almost lost a leg in the U.S. invasion of Confederate Sonora, and then, after a long recuperation, he’d led a battalion in eastern Kentucky. What he’d done there had impressed his division commander enough to get him sent to Philadelphia.

  Intellectually, he knew what a plum this was. It didn’t altogether fill him with joy, though. He wanted to be out in the forest or the mountains or tramping th
rough the desert—somewhere away from the city and close to the foe.

  “Come on, let’s get moving,” he said now, and hurried ahead of Abell to get a good look at the Liberty Bell. His thigh pained him when he sped up like that, and would probably go on paining him the rest of his life. He ignored it. You could let something like that rule you, or you could rule it. Morrell did not aim to let anything keep him from doing what he wanted to do.

  “It’s been here a long time, Major,” Abell said. “It’s going to be here for a long time yet.”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to be here for a long time,” Morrell answered. When he’d learned enough, or so the promise had gone, they’d promote him and send him back to the field to command a unit bigger than a battalion. “I want to fight with guns, not with maps and dividers and a telegraph clicker.”

  He looked back over his shoulder as he said that, just in time to catch the sidelong glance Abell gave him. The captain, like most General Staff officers, preferred fighting the war at a distance and in the abstract to the reality of mud and bad food and wounds and terror. Battle always seemed so much cleaner, so much neater, when it was red and blue lines on a chart.

  Then such thoughts left Morrell’s mind as, with a good many other soldiers, he crowded round the emblem of freedom for the United States. The surface of the bell was surprisingly rough, testimony to the imperfect skill of the founders who had cast it. Around the crown ran the words from Leviticus that had given the bell its name: Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

  He wondered whether Robert E. Lee had seen the Liberty Bell when he occupied Philadelphia in 1862. Lee’s victories had given the Confederate States a liberty the USA had not wanted to grant them, but he hadn’t taken the bell back south with him. That was something, albeit not much.

  Morrell reached out and touched the cool metal. “We’re still free,” he murmured. “Still free, by God.”

  “That’s right,” John Abell said beside him. “The freest nation on the face of the earth.” Normally cold-blooded as a lizard in a blizzard, he sounded genuinely moved by the Liberty Bell. Then, almost gloating, he added, “And we’re going to pay the Rebs back for all they’ve done to us these past fifty years, and the English, and the French, and the Canadians, too.”

  “You’d best believe it,” Morrell said, and took his hand away. The metal of the bell had grown warm under his fingers. He smiled, enjoying the idea that he had had a connection with history. No sooner had he stepped back from the bell than a fresh-faced lieutenant came up and caressed its smooth curves with almost a lover’s touch.

  Independence Hall also boasted a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. Facsimiles, though, meant little to Morrell. What was real counted. If you wanted to be theoretical…you belonged on the General Staff. He snorted, amused by the conceit.

  “What’s funny, sir?” Captain Abell asked. Morrell just smiled and shook his head, not wanting to insult his companion.

  They walked up Chestnut, back toward the War Department offices that had swallowed so much of Franklin Square. Philadelphia buzzed with all sorts of Federal activity; especially after the Confederate bombardment of Washington during the Second Mexican War, the Pennsylvania city had become the de facto capital of the USA. That was as well, for Washington now lay under the bootheels of the Rebels.

  The opening Confederate attack in the war had been aimed at Philadelphia, too, but was stopped at the Susquehanna, one river short of the Delaware. Here and there, buildings bore scars from Confederate bombing raids. These days, with the Rebels pushed back into Maryland, bombing aeroplanes came over more rarely. Even so, antiaircraft cannon poked watchful snouts into the air in parks and at street corners.

  Abell bought a couple of cinnamon rolls, a Philadelphia specialty, from a street vendor. He offered one to Morrell, who shook his head. “I don’t want anything that sweet,” he said. Half a block later, he came upon a Greek selling grape leaves stuffed with spicy meat and rice. To make them easier to handle, the fellow had skewered them on sticks. Morrell bought three. “Here’s a proper lunch,” he declared.

  He and Abell both slowed down to eat as they walked. They hadn’t gone far when someone behind them shouted, “Get the hell out of here, you stinking wog! This is a white man’s town.”

  Morrell turned on his heel, Abell imitating him. A beefy, middle-aged civilian was shaking his finger in the Greek foodseller’s face. Ignoring the twinge in his bad leg, Morrell walked rapidly back toward them. As he drew near, he saw the beefy man wore a pin in his lapel: a silver circle, with a sword set slantwise across it. Soldiers’ Circle members made up a sort of informal militia of men who had served out their terms of conscription. They were perhaps the leading patriotic organization in the country, especially to hear them talk.

  A lot of them, of course, the younger ones, had been reconscripted since the war broke out. Others had proved useful in other ways: serving as additions to the New York City police, for instance, after the Mormons and Socialists had touched off the Remembrance Day riots this past spring. And some of them, like this chap, liked to throw their weight around.

  “Sir, why don’t you just leave this man alone?” Morrell said. The words were polite. The tone was anything but. At his side, Captain Abell nodded.

  “He’s a damned foreigner,” the Soldiers’ Circle man exclaimed. “He’s almost certainly not a citizen. He doesn’t look like he ought to be a citizen, the stinking wog. Are you a citizen?” he demanded of the Greek.

  “Not your gamemeno business what I am,” the foodseller answered, bolder than he had been before he had anyone on his side.

  “You see? He doesn’t hardly speak English,” the Soldiers’ Circle man said. “Ought to put him in a leaky boat and ship him back to where he came from.”

  “I got son in Army.” The Greek shook his finger at the fellow who was harassing him. “In Army to do fighting, not to play games like you was. Paul is sergeant—I bet you never got no stripes.”

  The Soldiers’ Circle man went bright red. Morrell would have bet that meant the Greek had scored a bull’s-eye. “Why don’t you take yourself somewhere else?” Morrell told the dedicated patriot. Muttering under his breath, the corpulent fellow did depart, looking angrily back over his shoulder.

  Morrell and Abell waved off the foodseller’s thanks and headed up Chestnut again, toward the War Department. “Those Soldiers’ Circle men can be arrogant bastards,” Abell said. “He was treating that fellow like he was a nigger, not just a dago or whatever the hell he is.”

  “Yeah,” Morrell said, “and a Confederate nigger at that.” He checked himself. “The other side to that coin is, the niggers down in the CSA are giving the white folks there a surprise or two.”

  “You’re right,” Abell said. “Now what we have to do is see how we can best take advantage of it.”

  Morrell nodded. Taking advantage of the enemy didn’t come easy, not when machine guns knocked down advances before they could get moving—assuming artillery hadn’t already done that before soldiers ever came out of the trenches.

  He sighed. An awful lot of U.S. officers—including, as far as he was concerned, too many on the General Staff—didn’t, maybe couldn’t, think past slamming straight at the Rebs and overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers. The USA had the numbers. Using them effectively was proving to be a horse of another color.

  You went into General Staff headquarters through what looked like, and once had been, a millionaire’s mansion. Morrell had always doubted that that fooled the Confederate spies surely haunting Philadelphia, but nobody’d asked his opinion. Inside, a sober-faced sergeant checked his identification and Abell’s with meticulous care, comparing photographs to faces. Bureaucracy in action, Morrell thought: the noncom saw them every day.

  After gaining permission to enter the sanctum, they went into the map room. Abell pointed to the map of Utah, where U.S. forces had finally pushed the Mormon rebels out of Salt Lake Cit
y and back toward Ogden. “That was your doing, more than anyone else,” he said to Morrell, half admiring, half suspicious.

  “TR listened to me,” Morrell said with a shrug. Instead of straight-ahead slugging, he urged attacks through the Wasatch Mountains and from the north, to make the Mormons have to do several things at the same time with inadequate resources. He’d proposed that to the brass on arriving here. They’d ignored him. A chanced meeting with the president had revived the plan. Unlike a lowly major, TR could make the General Staff listen instead of trying without any luck to persuade it.

  Except for the soldiers actually fighting there (and perhaps except for the resentment higher-ups in the General Staff might show against him for being right), Utah was old news now, anyhow. Morrell looked at a new map, one that had gone up only a few days before. On it, the Confederacy, especially from South Carolina through Louisiana, seemed to have broken out in a bad case of the measles, or maybe even smallpox.

  He pointed to the indications of insurrection. “The Rebs will have a jolly time fighting their own Negroes and us, too,” he said.

  “That’s the idea,” John Abell said. Both men smiled, well pleased with the world.

  Scipio was not used to wearing the coarse, colorless homespun shirt and trousers of a Negro laborer. As butler at the Marshlands mansion, he’d put on formal wear suitable for a Confederate senator in Richmond, save only that his vest was striped and his buttons made of brass. He wasn’t used to sleeping in a blanket on the ground, either, or to eating whatever happened to come into his hands, or to going hungry a lot of the time.

  But he would never be butler at Marshlands again. The mansion had gone up in flames at the start of the Marxist revolt—the mostly black revolt—against the Confederate States. If the Congaree Socialist Republic failed, Scipio would never be anything again, except a stinking corpse and then whitening bones hanging from a tree branch.

  The headquarters of the Congaree Socialist Republic kept moving, as the Confederates brought pressure to bear against now one, now another of its fluid borders. At the moment, the red flags with the broken chains in black flew over a nameless crossroads not far north of Holly Hill, South Carolina.