by Schow, Ryan
“Sir?” the pilot asked, awaiting orders.
“Line me up with the store fronts,” Zheng answered. “That’s where all these cowards are hiding.”
Smiling, Zheng fired a thousand rounds into the various buildings, chunks of wood, plaster shrapnel and glass flying everywhere. When they were out of ammo, Zheng said, “Take me up.”
He’d made a mess of the buildings, specifically the Sheriff’s station. This brought him an immense amount of joy. When they were well over the town, he laid eyes on the largest nearby structure, a school.
“Take me there,” Zheng said.
The pilot seemed to understand. He rose up, then dropped in as Zheng launched their HJ-10 anti-tank guided missiles into the structure. The first two missiles hit just in front of the school, while the others struck the facility itself, half the school disappearing under the explosive clouds of fire and smoke.
“That should give these parasites something to think about,” Zheng said into his headset. “Let’s go to Yale.”
“Will we have clearance to land in the community, sir?” the pilot asked, aware that Zheng was overseeing the operation to evacuate Yale of its residents and take over the area.
“They’re removing the last of the holdouts as we speak,” Zheng said. “So yes, I believe we will be clear to land by the time we arrive.”
“Sir, I have an incoming call for you,” the pilot said. “I believe it’s President Hu.”
“Patch me through.”
The second the call came through, Zheng felt himself perk up. “The generator is safely on its way to Washington now,” he reported.
“What about Five Falls?” President Hu asked.
“I saw evidence of two convoys, sir. Both were destroyed. They confiscated some of the vehicles, and some are missing.”
“What about Shao Xiao Chen?” he asked.
“We made contact with our mole, I’m told. He seems to think they killed him here, but we’re waiting on confirmation.”
“When we’re set up in Yale,” Hu said, “when you get actual confirmation on Chen, I want you to go back and level the entire town. I don’t care if it’s two weeks or six months. Just make sure it gets done.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shao Xiao Chen was a dear friend,” Hu said. “I can’t let that stand.”
“My deepest condolences, President Hu.”
“Nothing survives,” he said, ignoring Zheng’s last statement. “Nothing.”
Chapter Four
The instant Boone, Miranda and their infant son, Rowdy, met in the street, they heard the approaching chopper. Boone looked up, moving them closer to the Sheriff’s station where Clay was standing.
“Who is that?” Miranda asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, grabbing hold of the stroller.
Another larger chopper flew by while the Chicom assault chopper banked hard. He followed the bird, then looked around at the people in the street. The second the attack chopper came back, Boone screamed, “Run!”
His voice was drowned out by the sounds of gunfire. Bodies danced in the street as he turned and ran with Miranda, who was pushing Rowdy’s stroller into the Sheriff station. They’d only just pushed through the front door when the noise outside got infinitely louder, all kinds of shrapnel hitting his back, flying past him. Beside him, Miranda’s back arched forward, two massive cones of flesh blasting out of her chest. She dropped down to the ground, dead.
He stopped, stunned.
Looking down at the stroller his son was in, he saw two smoking holes in the fabric, heard nothing from inside.
All the screaming around him from people ducking, hiding, getting shot and killed…it just sort of faded away until there was nothing but a stark, ugly silence.
More ammo blew through the storefronts where people were hiding, but he just stood there, paralyzed, the look on his dead wife’s face destroying entire parts of him. Beneath the otherworldly silence, a low droning noise took shape. The gut wrenching sobs rose into perfect clarity.
Someone pulled him down.
Clay.
Another round of gunfire tore apart desks, dying or already dead bodies, the walls around him. He reached up for the baby stroller, but Clay pulled him back down, not realizing Rowdy was in the line of fire.
More rounds pierced the stroller, tearing apart the handle, making it jump.
By then everyone was screaming, the high pitched, piercing noise too much for his brain to handle. Boone felt his soul vacating his body as a terrible numbness spreading over him. He was rubbery and vacant, something else in his place, a backup soul perhaps, a relief pitcher to operate the body he’d left behind.
For a moment, he thought he’d died, but then his soul slammed back into his body and he realized this was not the case. Fully alive and trapped in that moment, he was forced to consider his dead wife, his dead child, all his dead friends. How was he supposed to deal with all this pain? He couldn’t even process it.
Moments after the gunfire stopped, he lay there on his belly, his head up enough to stare at his wife’s face, his child’s little coffin on wheels.
“Are you shot?” Clay asked.
“Miranda,” he croaked out. “Rowdy.”
“Oh, God,” Clay said, his voice tortured, the pain filtering in.
That’s when a series of blasts shook the ground, putting everyone back on their bellies and ducking for cover. What were the Chicoms blowing up now?
Were they next? In his frantic, demolished mind, he prayed they were. He prayed to God they would kill them all.
“The high school!” someone screamed.
“My daughter is in there!” a woman cried out, scrambling to her feet and walking through the dark haze of smoke and scattered debris. She tripped over a body, fell face first into a desk, knocked herself out.
Boone reached out, touched his wife’s head, started to cry.
When he saw a woman walking through the bodies, somewhere in the back of his disoriented, traumatized mind, he registered her as Dr. Quinn.
“She’s dead,” he heard himself say as the doctor bent down to feel his wife for a pulse.
Dr. Quinn stood and went to the stroller.
“Dead,” he said again, finally dropping his head and succumbing to his grief. When he finally looked up, Boone Nichols saw the good half of his wife’s face and jumped with a sob. Fortunately, the tears blurred out the bad side of her face. The side that had been obliterated by gunfire.
He couldn’t remember her like that, he warned himself. But that image of her was all he saw, and from there, the deep, wracking sobs overtook him.
Clay staggered to his feet, stumbling over to the stroller, nearly tripping on his brother. He bumped into a desk hidden in the haze, rolled his ankle on someone’s limb, caught himself on a chair. All he saw was the stroller. The baby. Rowdy. Then he saw Miranda, sprawled out on the floor, two massive holes in her back, a red stain on half the back of her pulped head. A fist grabbed hold of his heart, clutched it so tight he felt his body weaken.
“No,” he felt himself mutter.
His heart ached so badly it felt like the grief had finally awakened all those emotions he feared were lost when he was blown up. Folding forward, he grabbed his chest.
Desperate eyes found Dr. Quinn. She was a shadow among the light and smoke, a body looking into the mobile carrier.
Rowdy…
As the pain in his chest intensified, the smoky haze cleared some, allowing rods of light to shine upon the destruction.
The carnage besieged him, the sensations of it visceral, potent, heart rending.
As the wafting smoke continued to thin, the brutality before him collapsed his already frail sensibilities. Daylight cut through the haze, illuminating bullet holes in the stroller’s fabric. The plastic handle was broken in half, one side sharp and dangling.
The rush of raw sentiment boiling up in his chest was a tidal wave of grief, a force that was both momentous and crippli
ng. A breath escaped him, the sting of tears clobbering his eyes.
This was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was as if every single emotion he’d ever felt had gathered into a single, mighty surge, one that was now charging up through the center of him. He tried to turn away, but his eyes wouldn’t stop seeing those bullet holes.
When he was able to avert his gaze, it was not to look down at his brother, because whatever Clay felt in that moment, he knew Boone was feeling it a hundred fold.
He could hear him wailing. He felt him.
When the full force of this emotion hit, it slammed into him with the force of a wrecking ball. Dropping to his knees, hands clawing at his head, he sucked in a desperate, agonizing breath then let all that anguish roar forth in the most savage of screams.
His body buckled under the strain, but there was too much emotion, his body not big enough to contain the whole of it, so he continued screaming until his voice was lost in the shared grief of those around him.
Chapter Five
The fleet of the Chicom built B52 Stratofortresses made their runs over California, dropping bombs and leveling entire cities. Everyone on the ground knew this day would come, but they were certain they’d be given time to evacuate.
Alas, that was not so.
Zhong Xiao Weng Wei, the PLA equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel, radioed his CO and screamed, “There are still troops down here! Call off the bombers! I repeat, there are still troops down here!”
His Commanding Officer radioed back calmly, “The bombers are doing test runs over SAA forces, but they’re on their way to Arizona for refueling now.”
“Well right now we’re dug in with the SAA and taking heavy fire! I just want to make sure the pilots know we’re still here.”
“I already informed you of the situation, Zhong Xiao Weng Wei. Now clear the comms unless otherwise directed!”
The CO’s short temper was tolerable under normal circumstances. But with the constant rat-a-tat-tat of enemy fire, and the bullets slapping the sides of the building Weng Wei and his men were hiding in, he didn’t have the patience for his CO and the screw ups overhead.
Zhong Xiao Wang Wei abandoned comms and went for his binoculars. He studied the casing of a blown out, first floor window, and then he combed the details of the SAA stronghold. He saw movement, but only slightly.
Nothing he could put a bead on.
That’s when he saw the SAA commander across the street looking back at him. Slowly he flipped off the man. Just as slowly, the man flipped him off back.
One of his men fired a shot at the SAA commander’s middle finger, but caught the outside of the window casing instead, just missing.
“Smart ass,” he heard his man say as the sounds of bombing resonated from deeper within the city. The concussion burst shook and rumbled the buildings.
“This isn’t funny,” Wang Wei growled. “These assholes are still dropping ordnance!”
Wang Wei put the binos to his pocked face once more, searching the rubble across the street for signs of life.
“We’ve got movement!” one of his officers called out.
He swung the binos back around, saw movement in the building. Abandoning his binoculars for his rifle, Wang Wei traced the line of movement to predict their next position. He waited with bated breath. The second a man appeared, three of his men fired on the soldier and dropped him. The volley of gunfire resumed.
“Grenade!” someone screamed.
They all scrambled out the back, the explosion washing over them with heat and force. In the distance, sounding low in the sky, he heard the big B52 engines again.
They all heard it.
In the back of his mind, Wang Wei knew what was happening. He felt this in the base of his spine as well as in his heart.
Rather than moving away from the fight, running like a coward, he said, “We need to cross that street and take that building!”
His men looked at him like he was insane, but the drone of the big engine began to fill the sky. As a unit, they moved past the building they were holed up in, sticking close to the outside walls, rifles at the ready.
Overhead, the bomber’s incessant droning was distracting.
When they reached the street, Wang Wei saw the SAA men had emerged from hiding as well. They were all looking up. The man he’d seen in the binos, the one who flipped him off, lifted his hand in some sort of emergency cease fire agreement.
“Hold your fire,” Wang Wei said, nodding to the SAA officer.
The Chicoms and the SAA were now together in the street, two mortal enemies sharing asphalt in a truce, both more fearful of the enemy in the sky than of each other.
When the massive bomber appeared overhead, its chalky grey body moved through the air like a shark searching out its prey. Every single eye was upon it. Both forces saw the bombs dropping from its belly overhead.
This is the end, Wang Wei thought to himself.
When they saw the bombs headed their way, the SAA field commander looked at the Chicoms and slowly shook his head. He knew what this meant. It meant the Chicom government and Da Xiao Zheng cared so little for their own people that they’d lump them in with the SAA. Shaking their heads, knowing the score, the SAA lowered their guns in defeat.
To his men, Wang Wei quietly said, “Resume fire.”
With only moments to spare before the bombs hit, the Chicom forces emptied their mags into the men across the street, taking that little bit of pride in knowing each of them had won the battle but were about to lose the war.
Seconds later, the bomb hit, rocking the street they stood on.
The earth-shattering noise of a massive explosion, followed by fire as bright as a second sun, roared through the downtown streets, leveling everything, eating the world in a rush of bright, boiling flames.
As he stood before his impending death, Wang Wei dropped his gun and his binos and simply stared into the abyss, not mad, not scared, just feeling betrayed by the Chicom government.
“So typical,” he said seconds before the fire devoured everything but his soul.
Overhead, the pilot circled around, watching the city burn. Entire buildings crumbled in their footprints or toppled over. Some that sustained a direct hit blew outward in all directions. Still, looking down and knowing what he’d just done, the pilot felt that familiar sickness.
They weren’t hitting the enemy and all their innocents. They were killing their own people.
He radioed over to the nearest plane. “Are you seeing this?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the somber voice returned.
He shook his head, felt his emotions welling. “This is terrible.”
“I feel like I see them in my head,” the other pilot said, both men friends, both of them talking on a private channel. “Thousands of them were looking up when the bombs hit. I didn’t see this. I felt it.”
For awhile they didn’t say anything. Then one of them said, “I’m not going back.”
“No, we’re redirecting for refueling,” his friend said.
“Negative.”
“What are you doing?”
“If the plane can’t fly, it can’t refuel, rearm or kill,” the despondent pilot said.
“What are you doing?”
“These are our people,” he said. “I’m not killing them for that treacherous rat, Hu.”
“We have families back home, people counting on us.”
“I will sacrifice them to save the lives of thousands, my friend. So I’m saving as many lives as I can.”
And with that, the pilot watched from a distance as his friend’s plane dropped altitude, going into a slow nose dive. He knew that to do this, his friend would have had to kill the crew, or somehow keep them off the controls. He prayed this wouldn’t be the case, that his friend would somehow change his mind, or be stopped by his crew…
“Don’t do this,” he said, making one final plea.
His friend said nothing.
Instead, the pi
lot watched the B52 nosedive into the edge of the San Francisco Bay where it was shallow enough to explode on impact, but not so close to shore that it would obliterate the masses.
Instead of joining his friend in a suicide pact, the surviving pilot stiffened his upper lip, gathered up his resolve and adjusted course, cutting the distance between his and his former friend’s routes in two. There was no way one bomber could do the work for two, but hopefully he could drop enough ordnance to justify his tactics to his CO without suffering the consequences of failure.
As he and his crew passed over the city and its warring parties, he mumbled to himself, “This city was dead long before I got here.” And then he dropped the remainder of the bombs and headed farther south for refueling.
He’d make the long flight back to China, rearm, get a few hours sleep, then do it over and over again, until President Hu said they were done, or every last square mile of California was turned to a hot, ashen wasteland.
Chapter Six
Three months later… Quan’s satellite phone rarely went off. This wasn’t anything he got from Five Falls, or his own personal stash. This was Chicom issued. When he picked up, it was to speak with the only person he’d ever spoken to on that line.
The call was coming from Yale, Washington.
The new Chicom headquarters.
“I have the name of your traitor,” the informant said. When he was young, Quan and his contact pledged their loyalties to the PLA together, both forced to do so under similar circumstances. Their shared hatred of the Chicoms, and the brutality that befell them, was their bond. That bond was now stronger than ever.
“Go ahead,” Quan said, short and to the point.
“Bronx McLaren.”
Quan felt himself deflate. McLaren was part of the inner circle. They’d put him in charge of security for the north end of town, but more important, Noah trusted him.
“Thank you,” Quan said, solemn.
“We’re making headway here,” his contact said. “Might be time for you to come up.”