“Help me,” he rasped, a wraith of a man, all dark-swathed against glittering white snowbanks.
“Aaaaah!” I screamed. In my defense, I grew up on my mother’s ghost stories, and Asian ghost stories are the most terrifying ghost stories there are.
“Please stop that,” begged the wraith.
“Aaaaah!” I fished a stray apple from the snow, and pelted it at my would-be assailant. “Aaaaah!”
The apple, bouncing off his head, knocked his hat slightly askew. “Ouch!” cried the ghost.
Probably not really a ghost, then. Probably just a common mugger. I picked up a banana and threw that too. “Aaaah!” In films, heroines are always so witty when confronted with menacing strangers. Evidently, I was not cut out to be a film heroine.
The ghost-slash-mugger ducked my fruit barrage, though not without stumbling. That was when I saw the gleam of blood under his scarf, seeping lazily through the half-gloved fingers he’d clutched against his chest. “Please,” he whispered.
I stopped lobbing produce at him. “What are you?” I demanded instead. I still had one hand curved on a second apple, in case he tried any funny business.
He huffed a laugh. “I’m a soldier. Or trying to be,” he amended. “Right now, I’m just in trouble.”
I understood at once. “You’re fighting against the Incorporated!” Turning the half-frozen apple over between my hands, I considered what that implied. “Wow are you terrible at picking the good side of a war.” Insofar as a good side existed.
The second laugh that bubbled out of him, louder than the first, made his hand spasm against the chest wound. Sympathy pangs twinged under my own chest. “I’m terrible at picking the winning side of a war,” said the soldier, who really made a sorry sack of a revolutionary, tattered and bleeding as he was. “That doesn’t make mine a bad side.” He lowered his head, as if confiding a great secret. Above the red wool of his scarf, I thought I saw him wink. “It’s not always bad, for people to have their differences. Life would be awfully dull, otherwise.”
Before he could say much else, a familiar whistle pierced the night, straight through my eardrums. The revolutionary and I flinched as one. I saw the line of his shoulders tense, and grabbed his forearm. Before I could think better of it, I pressed my apple between his palms, and blurted out, “There’s a bodega two blocks down. The owners sell bandages cheap, and hide rebel soldiers in the basement if you ask nicely.” I closed his fingers around the apple. “Go. And for god’s sake, eat something.”
I let go, and gave him a little shove. He stumbled, blinking at me in the dark, over the muted red of the apple. Its color matched his scarf. I wondered what his face must look like, beneath all that wool.
Then came the second whistle, closer than the first. “Thank you,” he whispered, tucking my apple into his coat, and ran.
The Incorporated troops showed up a couple minutes later. This far from a city proper, you could see starlight winking off their epaulets. The leader, lithe and blond as a propaganda picture, spotted me, and strode forward. I looked down at my grocery rations, half-buried in snow at my feet, and swallowed the lump in my throat. So much for avoiding crossfire.
“You, girl,” he snapped. “It’s almost past curfew for civilians.”
I looked up at him. He was young, probably not much older than I was, but held himself like he had years aplenty under that fancy uniform belt of his. “I know. I was waylaid by a rebel.”
Blaming trouble on the rebels, you see, was an excellent excuse for ordinary civilians to get out of trouble back in the days of the war. We always looked so well-behaved in comparison.
“A rebel!” The young Incorporated officer’s pale eyes widened. “In a red scarf, by any chance?”
“The very same,” I confirmed, trying to look suitably traumatized. “He looked like a wraith!”
The officer snorted. “I’m sure.”
“He practically flew toward me, he ran so fast,” I invented wildly. Surely, the revolutionary had reached the bodega by now, but it didn’t hurt to buy a little more time. “Terrifying, in that great black coat and hat of his. I’ve never seen a man move so quickly.”
Skepticism crossed the officer’s face. “The man we’re looking for is injured.”
“Oh, this one was bloody, all right,” I confirmed cheerfully. “But he shrugged off the flesh wound like he was superhuman!”
“Superhuman,” repeated the officer dully.
“Did you fight him?” I asked, trying to sound both fearful and bloodthirsty. “I’m amazed you survived the encounter. He seemed so strong! And dangerous.”
“Of course we survived!” snapped the officer. “He’s one stupid insurgent, and we are men of the Incorporated!”
“Gosh,” I said, opening my eyes very wide. “Incorporated soldiers are terribly brave.”
The officer rolled his eyes at this display of girlish hero worship. “And which way did your superhuman wraith . . . fly?”
I pointed over their heads. “Round about that way, doubled back the way you came. I bet he meant to sneak attack you! Oh, do be careful, sir.” I twisted my hands together, looking anxious. “The Incorporated do so much for the common folk who support you.”
“We will,” muttered the officer. Now he just sounded embarrassed, like I might infect him with my dumb commoner girl cooties. “Now, if you’ll please, your contact coordinates, in case we need to pass your testimony on.”
I gave them to him, giggling and worrying the whole time. The officer continued rolling his eyes, but he made a couple of his men help me regather my grocery rations. “You be careful now, girl,” he said, rounding off into the night, the troops at his back. “Don’t break more rules!”
“Oh, don’t you worry, sir.” I clutched an armful of fruit against my chest. With the other arm, I waved the soldiers off with back-straining enthusiasm. “I’ll be good!”
I watched in satisfaction as they disappeared into the dark, marching in the opposite direction from the bodega. I thought that would put an end to my involvement in wartime business, and for a little while, it did.
Until, three days later, I received a summons to the Office of the Propagandist.
Everyone in the Propagandist’s office calls me Scheherazade. Maybe nicknames stick, around here. Or maybe they refuse my real name because the Propagandist’s men know my employment here hinges more on bribery and sufferance than true, hand-to-heart love for the Incorporated. No one likes a sellout, not even the people we sell to.