The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories

By Edward W. Robertson

A collection of six of Edward W. Robertson's sci-fi and horror stories:

In "Death Among the Grasseaters," a biologist is sent to a western backwater to track down the source of a new plague.

"The Inspiration of Philocrates," a steampunk-hued work of alternative history, follows a motley team of Greek soldiers and philosophers on a mission to kidnap a key scientist from the rival Egyptians.

And in "The Battle for Moscow, Idaho," a small crew of American guerrillas tries to hold their town together against an army of alien-aided rebels.

Other stories include "The Mayor of Mars," the flash story "There's No Home for You Here," and "The Magic Taco Wagon," a work of microfiction. Approximately 24,000 words, The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories collects four of the author's previously published stories and two new ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward W. Robertson
• Release date: Oct 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466175877

Book preview

The Battle for

Moscow, Idaho

& Other Stories

© 2011 Edward W. Robertson

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Death Among the Grasseaters

The Inspiration of Philocrates

There's No Home for You Here

The Mayor of Mars

The Magic Taco Wagon

The Battle for Moscow, Idaho

About the Author

Death Among the Grasseaters

Ground zero was a foothill of the Blue Mountains of eastern Washington state, a cold dry slope outside the farm town of Dayton. It was the damnedest thing, Kurt Wilson repeatedly explained before he died, the buck had pranced right up to him like it wanted to get shot. Then he got sick and his family got sick and then all Dayton got sick. Related cases sprung up in Walla Walla, Spokane, Lewiston, and Boise, but miraculously, despite its malignant virulence, stopped there.

Why was I, of all people, sent to Dayton? Because as deer season bloomed across America—indeed, across much of the Northern Hemisphere—Dayton merely proved to be the first. By then fresh cases had consumed most of the CDC's top talent, and so I was dispatched to take over the meager surviving samples: thirty pounds of venison, various cuts; fifteen pounds of deer jerky; ten of sausage; and, of course, the rack, a magnificent 5x5 so broad-branched it could double as a Christmas tree. As for the interesting parts—the guts, in other words, and the brain—Wilson had abandoned them somewhere on that lonely hillside, offering them up to the magpies and the bright bleak sun. Search efforts had failed. The human samples had been flown back to Atlanta by their teams, and as Kimball drove us past the roadblock into the lit but silent streets of the quarantined town, past gas stations and feed stores and a quaint A-frame diner, I understood we were wholly on our own, expected, if not to fail, then at least to produce nothing worth hearing about.

At least they left the lights on, Kimball said as we entered the lab, a commandeered section of Dayton General which smelled so scrubbed and sanitized I could hardly believe there was any paint left on the walls.

First thing we're doing is cutting new slides. I frowned over the scattered notebooks and photographs and memos. I know for a fact Corderman couldn't slice a potato.

Though I could have done it faster on my own, I let Kimball help me. He had to learn somewhere and it may as well be from me. We suited up and took slices from the venison jerky like germophobic butchers. The army radioed in twice as we worked, as if my job were as tedious as theirs. Incredulous, I checked the slides, then checked them again, then made Kimball check them while I compared them to the old slides, then checked them again, then called Bill Wetstock in Atlanta.

Have you seen the slides? I said. A long silence. Well?

They're unusual, Bill allowed.

I defy you to even tell me which organelle is which.

We have some theories.

Which are?

We believe, Bill said in his best library voice, the virus may have acted on its DNA. It's not unprecedented.

To this degree? I glared at Kimball yutzing with a keyboard across the room. I would like to suggest this was never Odocoileus hemionus in the first place.

Tim, why don't you call me back when you've had more time to digest this. We've got almost two weeks' head start on you. You've got a lot to catch up on.

He hung up then, the prick. Kimball turned his pudgy face halfway past his shoulder.

What did Mr. Wetstock say?

Nothing useful. I want you to get on the CDC network and download everything we've got access to.

What do you think it is?

None of your business, I answered, which wasn't strictly true. I read Kimball's printouts until my head began to gently nod and woke some hours later with a hospital blanket draped over my shoulders. It smelled of disinfectant.

Their notes were overheavy with chemical analysis, as if knowing the precise angle of an oxygen bond would unlock the mysteries of its effects on a living sack of biomass. I instructed Kimball to repeat the first team's tests and read on. Based on reports of the deer's oversocial nature, I had already surmised its infection might be a rabies variant (though quite obviously one which had overcome the common lyssavirus' inefficient vectors) and was gratified to discover the chemists hadn't made a similar suggestion until three days into their work. Over lunch, I caught up on email. Another outbreak outside Cascade, Montana. I would have been baffled—we'd been broadcasting warnings days after the first incidence, and deer hunting had been banned outright nearly a week ago—but after fifteen years of exposure to the charming belief medical expert was a synonym for conspiratist stooge, I was no longer surprised at the prideful ignorance of the American public.

For three days we read, sampled, tested. My findings turned out little that had not already been established. My calls to Atlanta went mostly unreturned. The Cascade outbreak found a foothold and Great Falls was placed under temporary martial law. The desertion of the Dayton site, so unbelievable to me when Kimball and I had first been called in, began to make frustrating sense as we fiddled with dried meat from a long-dead and already-worked sample. We were already two weeks behind the cutting edge and, isolated as we were, falling further back by the moment.

What do you think we're doing here? I said that night. Kimball's head jerked up from his monitor.

Research?

We're staring at deli samples and parroting facts they knew weeks ago. I'm an evolutionary biologist doing undergrad work. Either they're desperate for fresh eyes or they've grossly misappropriated our resources.

My God, Kimball said, the government?

They have dozens of specialists doing the exact same thing we are. With actual equipment. And, I might add, who know what they're doing.

Kimball's face tightened around the eyes and sagged around the mouth. I'm doing my best.

It's not that, I said, momentarily annoyed with his propensity to let his tantrums outweigh his insights. Imagine using a stick of dynamite to light a candle. As intelligent tools, we should reassign ourselves to a more appropriate task.

A half-smile lifted one of his pudgy cheeks. You want to get some fresh air.

Maps. Food. Binoculars. The usual. I'll handle the army.

Aware of their respect for the traditions of bluster and jargon, I deployed both on the grunts I spoke to the next morning. Securing a jeep was no problem; getting one that didn't come with a military chaperone proved exponentially more difficult. By the time I quoted all the relevant protocols, not all of which were real, it was well after ten before we hit the road.

This isn't our car, I told Kimball as he eased along a juddering dirt