by David Poyer
* * *
BY the time the aid station was ready for business it was almost dusk. The woods were tangled with vines, dark and deep. Huge flies and mosquitoes buzzed, crawled, and bit. The so-called stream was barely a trickle. Nan shuddered when Tracy casually dipped up a tin cupful and drank it down. “Running water, it’s good to go,” she said when she caught Nan’s horrified glance.
“No it isn’t. There’s all kinds of fecals and pathogens in surface water. Vibrios, salmonella, shigella—”
“Been drinking it since I was little. A stomachache now and then? So what.” The battle medic flirted the dregs out of her cup and yelled, “Not here, fuckhead! This is an aid station. At least two hundred yards away.”
Nan didn’t see who the woman was yelling at, until a heap of moss stirred. A human figure stood, shrouded in netting festooned with twigs and leaves. It moved silently off, blending back into the forest.
She walked downstream, looking for some privacy to pee in. The sky showed between the trees ahead. The wind was rising, shaking loose leaves and bits of mistletoe down from the treetops. The temperature was falling. Something bad was on its way. She shivered, hugging herself. Then halted.
A line of men and women were lying or sitting cross-legged, fiddling with reflective tarps, just within the tree line. Some had already spaded fighting holes; others were just starting to dig, grunting and cursing as they battled roots and rocks. Most were older men, but there were women, too, and teenagers. An older officer in baggy utilities walked from position to position, squatting for earnest discussions in low voices. The bearded guy she’d seen back at the hospital. The “major.” Hunting rifles and shotguns lay beside the rebels, with hearing protectors and boxes of what looked like hand-loaded ammo. Some wore bulky vests stitched with squares of bathroom tile. They wore a wild assortment of helmets: old Army lids, motorcycle helmets, those who wore headgear at all; many didn’t.
She edged forward a little more and peered out. An open field dropped away in front of them. A small farmstead lay a half mile distant. The fields were weedy and overgrown. The roof of one of the sheds had fallen in. A victim of the trade wars that had preceded the actual hostilities, she guessed. The sun was setting over her right shoulder. So they were facing south, or southeast. Waiting. For what, she didn’t know.
When she got back another tent was going up not far from theirs. Tracy stood watching, fists propped on hips, scowling. Her nipples showed through her beater tee. As Nan came up she turned her head and spat. “Fucking headquarters pogeys,” she muttered. “They gotta set up right here where we are. Which means we’re gonna get targeted too.”
Nan frowned. “Do you really think we’ll get—what—bombed?”
The medic shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”
A distant rumble turned both their heads; “Thunder,” Tracy concluded at last.
Nan wondered if there was any sausage left. She hesitated, but finally asked. Tracy lifted her eyebrows. “Jeez! That was a day’s ration you scarfed down. Now you want more?”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite lately. The radiation—”
“Well, good that it’s back, I guess. There’s some dried apples in my pack if your tum-tum’s burning a hole.” She waved a hand vaguely toward the tent. “Then, better get some sleep. You never know when you won’t be able to.”
* * *
SHE was headed back to the tent when a distant roaring penetrated her consciousness. It echoed among the trees, a rumbling so deep she couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. Not thunder. Not this time, although a distant flash of lightning flickered among the clouds now and then.
Excited voices rose at the command tent. A man came out with a small hand-launched aircraft. He powered it up and pitched it overhand. The drone climbed between the treetops and headed off. Another man squatted, studying a tablet that she guessed controlled it. Others, officers she guessed, gathered around.
She staggered back, blown nearly off her feet by the explosion. The missile, if that was what it was, had streaked downward too fast even to register on her retinas until the blast. When the smoke and airborne pine needles cleared, and clods of dirt stopped falling, Tracy charged out of the medics’ tent. The crater was still smoking, with a bitter, acrid stench. Nan staggered after her, dazed, ears ringing.
Only two of the five or six men who’d been gathered there were left alive, and both were missing legs or arms. Tracy tried to render first aid, but they bled out in minutes.
The growling grew. It echoed off the trees. Tracy shepherded the others out of the aid tent and thrust med packs into their hands. She drew a gun on Logan when he didn’t move fast enough. Urged on by the muzzle of her revolver, they trotted through the darkening woods, which were ominous with a cold, searching wind. Toward the scattered flat cracks of gunshots.
When they reached the front line some of the rebels were firing desultorily, but Nan couldn’t see what they were aiming at. Just down toward the old farm, apparently. Faint lights flickered from that direction, separated by wide margins of darkness. Even fainter blue lights hovered a few hundred feet up, weaving complexly, as if intelligent fireflies were coordinating a spectral dance. Then, all at once, they winked out.
The growling grew closer. A few people got up from their foxholes and trenches and faded back into the woods. They were followed by catcalls and curses from those who stayed. The major shook out a banner, a coiled rattler on a field of red and white, and staked it in front of their positions. “Stand fast!” he yelled. “They’ll shoot rubber bullets, and we’ll shoot real ones. Not one step back!”
The yells and cheers were blotted out by ponderous, incredibly loud words from the dark: a crackling loudspeaker, from down by the farm. “PATRIOTS! WE ARE PATRIOTS TOO. WE DON’T WANT TO FIGHT OUR FELLOW AMERICANS. LEAVE YOUR WEAPONS ON THE GROUND. COME FORWARD WITH YOUR HANDS UP, AND WE WILL PROVIDE FOOD AND MEDICAL CARE.”
A scowling woman with a huge black automatic rifle walked the back of the line, shouting, “They’re lying! They shoot prisoners. Whoever leaves his hole, I shoot. Whoever leaves his hole, I fucking waste.” Some of the insurgents glanced around nervously, fingering their weapons; the older men calmly checked their sights and rearranged their ready ammunition. No one got up, and no one went forward to surrender. But no one else retreated, either.
The minute that passed felt very long.
On some unseen signal, the engines down by the farm gunned again, a renewed growl that swiftly deepened.
Lightning flashed in the gray-lined thunderheads. By the flash, silhouetted against the clouds, Nan caught small objects flitting toward them through the sky. She counted the beats: two thousand, three thousand—
A flash of heat seared her face, like a broiler grate suddenly pressed to her cheeks and forehead. At the same moment a high-pitched, incredibly sharp sound assaulted her ears. Pain stabbed her eyes. She ducked, unable to keep standing, rolling behind a tree and clapping hands over ears.
“Microwaves!” Tracy yelled. Along the line, sticks twanged into the air, snapping the reflective tarps into shape.
Someone yelled, “Fire at will!” and the riflemen opened up all along the line, though Nan still couldn’t see what they were aiming at. She huddled behind the tree, wanting to flee, to escape the heat and incredible drilling whine boring deep into her brain in spite of her firmly clamped hands. But the scowling woman was pointing her rifle directly at her. Nan screamed and held out a shaking hand; the woman shook her head in warning and moved on. Something buzzed through the air and smacked into a tree with a shockingly loud clap.
The pain ray moved on, though the piercing whine kept on. When she looked out again one of the older men was angling a tube. With a hollow thunk, actinic light ignited above the field.
The brilliance illuminated four hulking shadows rolling slowly up from the farm. They approached at a walking pace, deliberately, as if unsure of what they faced, or maybe too unafraid of it to hurry. Bet
ween the larger shadows human figures, or something like humans, but with smaller heads, paced along with strangely mechanical rigidity, spaced out so that the entire line was some two hundred yards across.
“Fucking tanks,” Tracy breathed, beside her in the dark. “We’re fucked. We only got one AT gun. From in front of an American Legion post, and hand-loaded the rounds. And what are those things in between them?”
Nan ducked as something new droned overhead. It didn’t sound like the bullets, but was a lower, slower, even more ominous buzzing. As if some winged predator hunted just above the treetops. She sank to a crouch, clutching her med pack to her chest. Wishing she had something to defend herself with. Even Tracy had a pistol.
Then thought: What good would it do?
From off to her right, a terrific crack and boom, a gush of fire. She glanced up to see sparks fly from the lead tank. The violently painful siren-noise cut off instantly. The tank slewed slightly, but steadied again. Lightning flashed, closer now, and a drop of rain plinked onto her cheek, shockingly cold after the heat of the day.
A second flare burst. In its light she saw the riflemen working the bolts on their guns, aiming, firing. Distant clangs showed they were finding their marks, but the tanks and the walking things continued their advance. Tracy was down on one knee, revolver propped on a tree branch, cocking and aiming with careful deliberation.
“THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING,” the loudspeaker intoned. “LEAVE YOUR WEAPONS AND RETREAT FROM YOUR POSITIONS. WE WILL TREAT ANY WHO REMAIN AS INSURGENTS AND TRAITORS.”
The firing slackened. Then, to renewed yelling from the officers and sergeants, resumed, building to a steady roar. Lightning flickered. In its glare one of the black stalking silhouettes faltered, staggered, and toppled heavily to the ground. The defenders cheered. Shrill rebel yells and insulting catcalls rolled along the line. At the same moment, a gust of icy rain descended, rattling the leaves and surrounding the fighters with a mist that glowed in the flarelight.
Suddenly, with a deafening growl, the tanks accelerated. They bounded forward, rocking slightly, long barrels of their guns remaining steady. The leftmost one rotated its turret and with a bluish flash fired. A beam of solid light projected to Nan’s left and was succeeded instantly with a deafening explosion, followed by terrified screams.
The tank itself neither slowed nor stopped. All four advanced rapidly now, rocking over the furrowed field. Through the gusts of cold wind and bursts of scattered icy rain the heavy machines rolled up into the woods. They knocked down trees with shattering cracks, rolling over the hastily dug pits and their occupants and crushing everything under spinning steel. Broken rifles and parts of bodies spewed from under the treads. As one, the machines pivoted—two left, two right—and bulldozed along the firing line, rolling over screaming men and women. Fiery tracers floated off into the woods, searching for fleeing shapes, pinning them, flinging them down like broken puppets. Above the trees something buzzed, and again, sharp reports snapped. Snipers fell from the trees like stunned squirrels, trailing camouflage netting, breaking branches on their way down.
Nan huddled behind the tree, watching a tank chew a flattened path away from her. Then heard a growl behind her, and turned.
The other tank loomed out of the rain, charging toward her. Men and women screamed as it rolled over them, then pivoted, grinding its tracks down into the shallow fighting holes. Trees toppled. Tarps whipped viciously, tangled and then ripped apart beneath the steel tread plates. The tank rolled over the rattlesnake flag and the old man stubbornly clinging to its pole, waving it in front of the oncoming machine until a machine-gun burst cut him down. A teenaged girl ran in from the side, carrying two bottles, each capped with a flaming rag. She hefted one to toss, and the rag fell out. The fluid spilled out and ignited on her arm. Still she ran burning and screaming toward the tank, and smashed the other bottle against its armor before she too disappeared under the treads.
Nan shook off paralyzing horror and bolted, sprinting for the deep woods. Crashes and buzzing echoed from above. The heat ray returned, scorching her back. She panted as she fled, stumbling through underbrush and wait-a-minute vines that snagged her clothes and raked her exposed skin and finally tripped her flat. Bullets stitched a ragged seam just past her.
“SURRENDER AND YOU WILL BE SPARED,” the enormous voice intoned.
When she rolled to her back a dark form stood over her. Huge, but with a small, misshapen head. When lightning flickered she saw it wasn’t human. It pointed a rifle at her. It said, “Where is your wea-pon?”
“I don’t have one. I’m medical. Medic. First aid.”
“Where is your wea-pon?”
“I don’t have one, I said. Don’t you understand? What are you? I’m a medic. Red Cross! A doctor!”
“You self-identify as noncombatant personnel?”
“I do. I do! Yes!”
“No wea-pon detected. Stand up and turn around. Hands behind your back.”
She stood, knees shaking. Something wet sprayed her lower back. When she tried to bring her hands around again they were stuck to her clothing, to each other; she couldn’t move them.
“Turn front,” the audio commanded. She closed her eyes as another spray coated her chest and face. When she opened them, her chest and upper body glowed ghostly green in the night woods. “Walk toward the sirens. Do not attempt escape,” the robot commanded, then wheeled and stalked off, rifle jerkily pointing from bush to bush as it crashed through them.
She staggered back through the woods, which were on fire now here and there, the flames flickering low to the ground, struggling to survive against the pelting rain. Past bodies and chunks of bodies, exposed gristle and tendon and bone, splayed corpses burst like bags of blood where treads had run over them, the shot, the burned, the maimed. Floral Puckett lay facedown, still gripping her shotgun. Nan bent, but with hands bound behind her she couldn’t help, couldn’t even check for a pulse. She didn’t see Tracy or Logan anywhere. She left Puckett behind and staggered out of the trees, out into the furrowed, smoking field. Past more tanks, immobile and hulking, ominous in the rain and lit only by lightning.
To join a line of bedraggled women and teens and old men waiting in front of a tent. Some were sobbing. Others stared blankly ahead, obviously in shock.
Here LED lanterns dangled garish light. Three officers sat at a folding table of white plastic under a dripping tent fly. Two male, one female. They wore black uniforms with silver insignia. Black-uniformed troops in tactical gear stood behind them, rifles at the ready. The line moved slowly, people shuffling forward reluctantly. After a few words, some were led off to the right. Others, to the left, where shots cracked from the darkness.
Finally it was her turn. She faced the judges, but one of the troopers turned her roughly around, grabbed her pinioned hand, and shone a violet light on it.
“Do you speak English?” one of the seated officers said, the youngest one, on the right.
“Of course I speak English,” she blurted, and instantly regretted her tone.
The leftmost officer, the woman, said, “You are a detainee of the Special Action Forces, Department of Homeland Security. What is your name?”
“Nan Lenson, Archipelago. I was taken prisoner by these—”
“Ms. Archipelago. Do you have any identification?”
“No, it was taken from me. And my last name’s Lenson. I worked for Archipelago before I was taken—”
“State your allegiance.”
“United States of America. My father’s a Navy admiral.”
The man in the middle, with graying hair, looked up for the first time. “How did you end up with these people?”
“I told you, I was taken prisoner. They wanted me as a medic. I worked for Archipelago until the nuclear attack. I escaped from Seattle with medications and was distributing them. Trying to fight the Chinese flu. Which is becoming epidemic north of here.”
The younger man said, “Yet we find you down he
re, fighting in the rebel ranks.”
“No, not fighting. They drafted me as a medic. As I said. See the armband? Red Cross. And we have wounded in the woods. A lot of wounded. Are you going to—”
“Green slime means captured without weapons,” the woman said, cutting her short. “And GSR shows she wasn’t firing.”
“Remanded for further processing,” the older man said, and the others nodded. The woman pointed her to the right.
Slogging through inches of greasy mud toward waiting cattle trucks, Nan struggled with whatever was pinioning her arms, and finally tore them loose. Maybe rain dissolved it. The goo dripped from her sleeves in rubbery strings. At least her hands were free. But the black-uniformed troops lining her path did not look away. Seeing no chance to run, she climbed at last up into the truck.
The rain blasted down harder now, cold and violent, suddenly unrestrained, a freezing deluge pelting the prisoners as they huddled in the bed, which still smelled of cattle and shit and blood, and now fear and ozone. And she huddled there, shivering, hugging herself, looking back toward the woods. Which stood dark, deserted, and now, except for the occasional muffled pop of a distant shot, completely silent.
19
The Pentagon, Washington, DC
LIGHTS flashed in her brain. Her hip flamed. Blair winced, then sighed and sat back, rubbing her eyes.
Her office was in the E ring, but it wasn’t one of the most prestigious. Those faced outward, with views of the river, Arlington Cemetery, the 9/11 Memorial. Hers faced in, yielding a bleak, restricted vista of nondescript concrete walls and the blank-eyed windows of the next ring in. And above that, a gray sky that threatened more rain.
“You need a break, Blair,” her aide said. But at the same time slid another folder in front of her.
She sighed and flipped it open. Plans for the postwar garrisons of Itbayat, Pratas, and Hainan. The strips and repair facilities would be maintained as Allied bases. Never again, or at least for the foreseeable future, would the South China Sea be a Chinese lake.