In at the Death by Harry Turtledove

soldiers up toward the front.
    All that gave Spartacus’ band and the other black guerrillas still operating chances they’d never had before. If they mined a road and delayed a column of trucks, if they sprayed machine-gun bullets at a tent city in the middle of the night, they really hurt the Confederate war effort. From everything Jonathan Moss gathered from the news and rumors he picked up, the Confederate States couldn’t afford even fleabites on their backside. They already had too much trouble right in front of them.
    The enemy seemed to feel the same way. When Spartacus’ guerrillas did strike, the men in butternut went after them with a ferocity they hadn’t seen before. If Spartacus hadn’t been fighting in country he knew better than the enemy did, the Confederates would have wiped out his band in short order. As things were, his men scrambled from woods to swamp, half a jump ahead of their pursuers.
    Moss developed a new appreciation for possum and squirrel and turtle. The Negroes called one kind of long-necked terrapin, chicken turtles, presumably because of how they tasted. Moss couldn’t see the resemblance. He didn’t spend much time bitching, though; any meat in his belly was better than none.
    Looking down at what was left of himself one weary evening, he said, “Back before the war, I had a potbelly. One of these days, I’d like to get another one.”
    “Some of the shit we eat makes Army rations look good,” Nick Cantarella agreed. “Don’t know that I could say anything worse about it.”
    Amusement glinted in Spartacus’ eyes as he looked from one white man to the other. “I’s mighty sorry to inconvenience you gents—
mighty
sorry,” he said. “If ’n you knows where we kin git us some ribs and beefsteaks, sing out.”
    “Steak! Jesus!” Cantarella started to laugh. “I even stopped thinking about steak. What the hell’s the point?”
    “How about Confederate rations?” Spartacus asked, the mockery gone from his voice.
    Hearing the change in tone, Moss grew alert. “What do you have in mind, boss?” he asked.
    Spartacus smiled; he liked hearing the white men in his band acknowledge that he outranked them. “They got that new depot over by Americus,” he said.
    “Think we can hit it?” Cantarella asked.
    “Hope so, anyways,” Spartacus answered. “I got me a pretty good notion where they keeps the ration tins, too. See, here’s what I got in mind…”
    He sketched on the muddy ground with a stick. He wouldn’t have done so much explaining for the other Negroes, but he thought of the escaped U.S. soldiers as military professionals, and valued their opinion. With Nick Cantarella, that was justified. Moss knew it was a lot less so for him.
    He listened to Spartacus and tried to look wise. Cantarella, sure as hell, had a couple of suggestions that made the guerrilla leader nod in admiration. “Yeah, we do dat,” Spartacus said. “We sure ’nough do dat. Featherston’s fuckers, dey don’t know which way dey should oughta run.”
    “That’s the idea,” Cantarella said. “If they go in a bunch of wrong directions, the right one gets easier for us.”
    The guerrillas struck at night. They stayed under cover while the sun was in the sky. Doing anything else would have asked to get slaughtered. A Negro threw a grenade into the depot from the north, while another black banged away with a Tredegar—trying to stir up the anthill.
    They did it, too. Whistles shrilled. Men shouted. Soldiers boiled out after the Negroes. Moss hoped the guerrillas had splendid hidey-holes or quick legs.
    As soon as the Confederates were well and truly stirred, the guerrillas’ machine gun opened up from the west. Nick Cantarella had finally persuaded the gunner to fire short bursts and not squeeze off a belt of ammo at a time. It made the weapon much more effective and much more accurate.
    Somebody inside the supply dump yelled, “Let’s
get
those coons, goddammit! They come around