Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [207]
Sergeant Hooker watched the sky as he marched.
The wind acted like a horde of catnip-maddened kittens. It slashed playfully under helmet rims, plucked at sleeves and pant legs, died for an instant, then whipped dust in the eye from a wholly different direction. The clouds, black and pregnant in the underbelly, shifted uneasily, promising violence. It hadn't rained in hours. Even by post-Hammerfall standards, this weather could do anything.
The doctor marched in sullen silence, pushing himself to keep up. He didn't have strength left over to run. At least Hooker didn't have that worry. But he worried about the grumbling behind him. No words reached him, only the flavor of complaint and anger.
He thought: We wouldn't eat each other, of course. There are limits. We don't even eat our dead. Yet. Should I have pushed that? There were complaints. I may have to shoot Gillings.
He probably would have shot Gillings there at first, when he came back and found Captain Hora dead and Gillings in charge, but he hadn't had any ammunition then, and the way Gillings told it they'd set up in business for themselves, they'd be fucking kings now that the Hammer had finished civilization.
That was funny, but Sergeant Hooker wasn't laughing. In random anger he told the doctor, "If we have to stop again, they'll eat you." His own belly rumbled.
"I know. I told you why you get sick," said the doctor. He was short and harmless-looking, half chipmunk, the resemblance accented by a brush of mustache under his forward-thrusting nose. He was sticking close to Hooker, which was sensible.
"You eat steak rare," he said. "There aren't too many diseases you can catch from a steer. You eat pork well done, because pigs carry some diseases men catch too. Parasites and such." He paused for breath, and to see if Hooker would backhand him to shut up, but Hooker didn't. "But you can catch anything from a man, except maybe sickle-cell anemia. You've lost fifteen men since you turned cannibal—"
"Eight got shot. You saw it."
"They were too sick to run."
"Hell, they were the recruits. Didn't know what they were doing."
The doctor didn't say anything for awhile. They trudged on, no sound but panting as they climbed the damp hillside. Eight men shot, four of them recruits. But seven of the Army men had died too, and not from bullets. "We've all been sick," the doctor said. "We're sick now." His thoughts made him gag. "God, I wish I hadn't—"
"You was just as hungry as us. What if you was too weak to walk?" Hooker wondered why he bothered; the doctor's feelings were nothing to him. Vindictively he hugged his secret to him: When they found a place to settle, then they could lame the doctor, like the cavemen lamed their blacksmiths to keep them from running away. But the need hadn't come yet.
Somewhere. Somewhere there had to be a place, small enough to defend, big enough to support Hooker's company. A farm community, with enough people in it to work the land, and enough land to feed everybody. The company could set up there. Good troops had to be worth something. That goddam Gillings! The way he told it they could just walk in and take over. It hadn't worked out that way.
Too hungry. Too damn many miles coming out of the hills and all the stores looted, all the people run off or barricaded up so even the bazookas and the recoilless wouldn't make it sure …
Hooker wanted to think about something else. If they'd fought earlier it would have been all right; but no, he let himself get talked out of that, talked into moving on to look for a better place, and by the time they got to it …
"If you've got to eat human meat … " The doctor couldn't leave it alone. He had to talk about it. His face wrinkled and he fought nausea. Hooker hoped it was just in the doctor's head.
"If you've got to eat human meat, the ones you want are the healthy ones, the ones who run the fastest and shoot back the best. The ones you can catch are the sick ones. The meat makes you sick, too. Better you eat diseased cattle than sick