Free Flesh and Blood by Jackie French

vampire and werewolf I’d sought before hadn’t done that. But I saw the whiteness of Neil’s face and said nothing.
    ‘There was something else,’ he said at last, as the floater veered around a dark stone bluff and onto an almost treeless plain.
    Something in his voice told me I didn’t want to know. But it also said I needed to know.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The body by the creek. It was holding something.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘It was a skull,’ said Neil. ‘It still had a hat on. It was the skull from the body in the tent.’

chapter 22
    T he grass was thin and pale below us. Even the trees were skinny. I recognised them vaguely from some long-past data retrieval. They were salt-resistant, bio-Engineered before the Declines to give life to the slowly spreading salt pans. I vaguely thought the grass was some salt-resistant species too.
    ‘Maybe one of them was delirious,’ I said, thinking of the horror of the Centaur’s death. ‘Maybe they killed the other in their delirium and then staggered down to find water …’ I bit my lip. ‘Was it plague?’ I asked. ‘Did you test the body by the creek?’
    ‘Yes. It was plague,’ said Neil.
    ‘I suppose the Centaur investigated their tent before the neuro fence went on. Checking his territory or something.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Neil.
    I tried to imagine what it had been like. Peaceful. Friendly. The two in their tent by the creek, a fire in the blackened stones to one side, the Centaur trotting by, lifting a hand in greeting perhaps, then cantering off.
    The imagined scene didn’t seem to fit the horror by the creek or the anguish of the Centaur’s final moments. But it had probably been like that.
    ‘We should have buried them,’ I said.
    ‘No spade,’ said Neil.
    After that we said nothing for a long time.

chapter 23
    G rass, trees, a sky that had forgotten clouds. I could almost feel the dryness on my skin, even here in the air-conditioned floater.
    Now I was Linked again I could have tuned into a City Reality, have called friends (‘Hi! Excuse my isolation suit. I may have contracted plague’), called up a ballet or a vid.
    Or we could have played ‘I spy’. But we did none of those. The outside was too barren, the task we were on too horrific for escapism to have had a chance.
    ‘Nearly there,’ said Neil at last. They were the first words either of us had spoken in over an hour. ‘Hungry?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Still, we’d better eat.’
    I nodded. The floater had a store of Basics, and an even larger store of sealpacked luxury Realfoods. If you could afford a floater you’d expect luxury. I supposed the Basics were there in case the floater broke down. Basics last indefinitely. I pulsed for the first thing I thought of: a cheese sandwich. Something clicked a few times inside the wall. The sandwich — plus plate and paper doily and a sprig of parsley — slid out of the slot.
    I bit it. The bread was reasonable, City bread. I had grown used to Elaine’s baking, loaves higher on one side than the other that tasted of friendship and love. The cheese was cheese.
    ‘You eating anything?’
    ‘I’m not pregnant.’
    ‘Still need to eat,’ I said.
    ‘Yes.’ There was a brief pause as he pulsed. Another sandwich slid out of the slot. ‘Sorry. I’m being a pig.’
    ‘No, you’re not.’
    ‘Yes, I am,’ he grinned faintly. ‘Don’t argue when I say I’m being a pig, woman.’
    ‘All right,’ I said mildly. ‘You’re being a pig. I’ll wait till you’re not being a pig to argue about it.’
    The grin faded, instead of growing wider as I’d hoped. ‘I feel guilty,’ he said quietly.
    ‘Guilty? Why?’
    ‘For not protecting you. And the baby.’
    I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting this. ‘You mean because we’ve been exposed to the plague? But that was my fault too.’
    ‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d have …’ he hesitated.
    ‘What? Gone back to the City when they revoked my banishment? Have a heart. They already had