REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

23

The woman whom Team 3 was brought to clearly had seen enough wrong in her long life to fill the Velk River. Hendle's face was mashed like a squash, bore the marks of a drinker and fighter and frowner and cusser. They were all gathered in the cleared-out hall of a large saloon. Hendle was the town's leader and de facto mayor. The Reapers found the settlement a strange one upon their arrival. The men of Catatonia were pale and listless. Spoke not at all. Only drooled and stared like the patients of an asylum pacified by sedatives of root and venom. Most of these men had been locked up inside homes and barns for their safety. Others milled about unfettered, perhaps in the hopes they would simply wander off and unburden the others. Only the women appeared to do anything of use here. Working the businesses, doing repairs, running the town's affairs, tending the fields and animals, caring for and teaching the children, patrolling with crossbows. Making up for the unproductivity of their 'worser halves.'

"That's how Catatonia got its name," Hendle explained in her gruff manner when Nail asked about the men that carried themselves with no more sign of sentience than rotters. "'Providence' or 'Windcross' or some other such nice and fluffy swineshit would be a much more suitable place to call home. But the bunch of do-nothin's round here couldn't get their act together to vote on and register a name so some mapmaker went ahead and made one up for us. 'Catatonia,' after these worthless dregs we gotta spend all day feedin' an' dressin' an' bathin' and wipin'. Well, it stuck. 'Catatonia.' Son of a snake."

"And how did the men get this way?" asked Nail. "And why just the men?"

"You harpies poison these poor souls' food?" asked Vulture. "Make slaves of 'em, your husbands and sons and fathers?"

"Some slaves! You see the men doin' any of the damn work around here?" Hendle's face was pinched with derision. "It was the goddamn mines, you cockgoblin." At this Thirteen cackled. "That hole was Catatonia's main trade," Hendle continued. "Pullin' ore from the earth day in and out. Makin' claimers rich. But there was some commotion down there one day and every damn man in town went down to take a look. Seemed compelled to, even. Well, they struck somethin' in that pit that changed 'em terrible. They all came out white as ghosts and dumber'n toadstools. They won't say what did this to 'em down there, what the hell it was they found. A couple muttered they found somethin' beautiful down there, a thing that called to anything with a pair of acorns twixt its thighs. Too beautiful to stand. Cost them their minds. We sealed up that evil hole and thus our livelihoods. Town dried up with nothing left to mine, and by then it was too late for the menfolk. They never was the same. So now it's just us women and kids runnin' things now. Breakin' our backs. Scrapin' off the parched earth."

"We can try to get you out of here," said Jasha. "Find you a new home."

"And go where?" said Hendle. "There ain't nowhere to travel that ain't already full of folks lookin' for work, or trouble, or fightin' in some war we want no part of. That's how we all ended out in these nowheres to begin with. Was the only course we had, weren't nowhere else to go. This is a land of final resort. The war comes to us... I suppose we make our stand and take what comes."

Nail got to the business he'd been sent here to commence. Catatonia's woes aside, he had his missing brothers to see to. "We were told you know where some Nation soldiers are being held captive. That they might even be Reapers. That true?"

"S'right," said Hendle. "Some ways off, at a piss-drinker post."

"And you can direct us to that place?" said Nail. "Draw a map? Provide details? Their defenses, number of hostages, things of that nature?"

"Sure can," she said.

"No use wasting time, then. Spit us your brains."

"There's one thing to first settle," said Hendle.