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The Great Plains Gulag, March of the forty-fifth year of the Kurian Order: Only the bones of a civilization renaay the rest Derricks still stand in this corner of oil country, giant iron insects surveying the countryside Beneath therass like metal herbivores, snouts thrust into the earth The forenerations and returned to native forest or prairie, feed longhorns, deer, and canny wild pigs It is a land of receding horizons, a stopped watch, timeless
The soil under cultivation bears the turned over, tra The tools and methods used on the stretches of farmland would make a twentieth-century resident either stare in wonder or spit in disgust Horse-drawn plows, soes of the fields, where they were abandoned at quitting time, plots fertilized only by what comes out of the back end of an animal
The agricultural settle fields, always near a road or rail line, lookcamps than family farms Surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, the clapboard barracks that house the workers and their families cry out for a coat of paint and a new roof to replace the flapping plastic tarps covering assorted holes Trash heaps and pit toilets decorate the co as flirt with nudity, so worn away are their clothes
Near the gate of these ca usually stands at a respectful distance fro contact like a visitor to a leper colony Often a sturdy pre-22 brick construct; the s hold glass behind bars or shutters, and curtains behind the glass
A fewold State Route 60, one of these collective faryard, is nestled between gently rolling hills Ts of tall wire fencing encircle the camp Barracks laid out foursquare sit in the shadow of tatchtowers, dwarfed in turn by two cavernous garages like enores are patchworks of earthen wall, structural iron, and corrugated alu position near the gate, an L-shaped cinder-block building dating to the 1950s folds itself protectively around a set of gasoline pu frohtly askew above, adding a jaunty top hat to the guardhouse Behind the cinder-block building, a fine two-story house stands in splendid isolation at the farthest point upwind from the barracks, circled first by a porch and then a set of razor-wire fencing with padlocked gate
Each watchtower contains a single sentinel dressed in green-brown- cap The sentry to the south is the more alert; he occasionally crosses his little crow's nest to glance up and down the highway bordering the camp's southern fence The one to the north chews a series of toothpicks in appropriately beaverish front teeth He watches a trio of s in the community sink set between the barracks
Were the other guard equipped with an excellent pair of binoculars (unlikely, but possible), perfect eyesight (still less likely, as guarding farmers and mechanics is reserved for older ent initiative in carrying out his duty (the phrase "cold day in hell" springs toup the hill that shelters the Rigyard fro winds The wooded cut in the hill offers a viehether for sianized attack
A figure possessing all those qualities lies on that hill, surrounded by the white and yellow and red wildflowers of an Oklaho man with coppery skin and wary brown eyes Dressed not so differently from his ancestors on the Sioux side of his family, he wears a uniform of buckskin, save for a thicker cowhide equipment belt and boots Lustrous black hair is drawn back fro him the illusion of closely cropped hair froles to his shoulders He wears an intent expression as he exaht exhibit such wariness, unsure whether the vegetation contains game or a lion ready to pounce His eyes wander from point to point in the ca here and there while his forearuard in the southern tower, hison the tender end of a blade of seed-topped grass
His gaze returns to the wire-enclosed yard of the two-story house In the grassy back lawn of the house, two T-shapedthe clothesline that once joined the in the afternoon sun, three ibbet Their wrists are clasped behind theh to dislocate a shoulder if they slump in their bonds
He knows that death awaits the four-not fro quicker,sun
The senior lieutenant of Foxtrot Company set down his binoculars and focused his eyes a few feet in front of hi coral bean, its delicate red spindles inclining toward the sun The diversion failed; though they were a good kiloures in me yard His shoulders throbbed with sympathetic pain
After four years' service to the Cause, his sensitivity to suffering had grown more acute, rather than less
Lt David Valentine looked back down into the gully His platoon, nuainst leafing trees, using their packs to keep their backsides off the rain-soaked earth They had covered a lot of ground since skirting the northern edge of Lake Oologah thatrun Rifles rested ready in their laps They wore leather uniforated styles to taste Some still wore their winter beards, and no two hats matched The only accoutrement his three squads shared were their short, broad-bladed h some wore them on their belts, some across their chests, and some sheathed them in their moccasin-leather puttees
They didn't look like end and alien science, part of a elite caste known as the Hunters
Valentine signaled with two fingers to the eant Stafford climbed up the wash to join hieant, known as Gator off-duty because of his leathery skin and wide, toothy grin, worked slowly to Valentine's overlook Wordlessly, the lieutenant passed Stafford his binoculars Stafford exarass stalk clamped in his teeth