The Company of the Dead by David Kowalski

Author:David Kowalski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery, Alternative Histories (Fiction), Titanic (Steamship), Fantasy, Alternative History, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, Historical, General, Time travel, Confederate States of America - Officers
ISBN: 9780857686664
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2012-03-13T15:20:44+00:00

XI

April 26, 2012

Nashville, Tennessee

Cramped between Reid and the cold curved buttress of the Raptor’s passenger cabin, Malcolm managed to snatch two hours of fitful sleep. The tac agent and a medic played cards while the prisoner moaned through his own dark dreams.

There was a turbulent descent through dense cloud, followed by a brisk run across the rain-spattered tarmac, a brush with local airport security, and a cab ride through Hades.

Nashville field office, 2 a.m. Triple shifts. A map-covered wall. Red pins marked the skeletal remains of burnt-out city blocks. Blue for the various roadblocks and military depots. A trail of black pins made their way along First Avenue, trailed the Cumberland River and doubled back onto Sixth. It broke off westwards, towards the city limits.

The phones rang and the doors swung back and forth as police, agents and soldiers filed in and out of the command post. A cloud of cigarette smoke dodged the air-conditioning. Malcolm found herself a vacant room. There was a lounge chair, a coffee table, a sink, a phone and a television. She had the shakes. Too little sleep and too much caffeine. She missed her sister, she missed her apartment, she missed her cat. An advertisement on the television caught her eye. Someone calling someone long distance, a dog bounding through fields of long grass, homewards bound. She missed her life.

She felt her eyelids tearing up and bit her lip. She laughed quietly at herself.

Too little sleep.

They had the prisoner locked up in the infirmary. When she’d last checked, he was still sleeping. His bandages had been changed, a fresh spool of white cotton for his head and legs, but a rucksack served for his pillow, a coat for his blanket.

They had the ambulance downstairs. Prints had been sent to the lab, panels to ballistics, seeking to confirm the paramedic’s wild account. Other witnesses, an assortment of police, medics, soldiers, gangsters and hotel guests—nearly forty in total—were sequestered amongst the cubicles of the office’s top floor. Reid and the local outfit were going over their stories.

Preliminaries: five downtown hotels are attacked over the course of an hour. The Baymont, Embassy Suites, Vanderbilt, Wyndham and Bismarck. Joseph Kennedy, John Lightholler and an unnamed Japanese associate—recent occupants of the Bismarck—rescue a hotel floor of terrified civilians. They are seen exchanging gunfire with a number of Asian men by at least four witnesses.

The Japanese embassy is fire-bombed in what appears to be one of many reciprocal actions. Meanwhile, Kennedy bluffs his way past two lines of security: police and military. He steals an ambulance. Two paramedics attached to said ambulance state that they transferred his wounded accomplice to a private residence on Sixth Avenue. They don’t know the address. They state they were left trussed and blindfolded in their vehicle while Kennedy and Lightholler set out on foot.

From there the story became sketchier; a haze. Reports of break and entries, stolen vehicles—possibly rioters, possibly Kennedy’s crew.

Had there been a falling out amongst Joseph’s men? Were the gangsters in

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