Dead Zone

by Robison Wells

  The ditch was coming to an end, and the lambdas were climbing out onto the shore, then continuing in a line into the trees. Aubrey followed, grunting as she scrambled up.

  Everyone’s ACUs were brown and soaked from the chest down, and their tan boots were thick with mud. But they jogged, and Aubrey jogged with them—the half-defeated jog of soldiers who were too tired to disobey. At least she didn’t have to hold her rifle up anymore, and the muscles in her arms felt light when she let them down.

  Someone in front of her groaned, and Aubrey saw a wooden wall ahead. She had climbed one of these walls every single day for the last three weeks. She knew how to go at it, how to sling her weight over the top, even how to get a grip when the boards were wet—she’d done it in rain more than once.

  But not today. She couldn’t face it today.

  She disappeared and worked her way through the crowd to the other side. There was no trainer here watching. And even if there was, he wouldn’t notice her reappear—he’d just realize she was there, and his mind would assume that she had climbed.

  “Jack, forgive me,” she said with a halfhearted smile.

  She pushed her glasses up on her nose and reappeared in front of the wall as another lambda—Tabitha—landed next to her. Tabitha wasn’t Aubrey’s favorite person in the camp, but they had cots next to each other, so they had spent their fair share of time talking.

  “When is this going to end?” Tabitha said with a grimace.

  “Not soon enough.”

  As they jogged down the trail, Aubrey wondered again where Jack was. A few of the lambdas had been sent to specialized training, and even though she’d spent a few nights invisible, trying to find him in the dark, she hadn’t discovered anything more than his locked barracks. She talked to him incessantly, assuming he had to be listening at least some of the time, but she hadn’t seen him face-to-face in at least a week. She wondered if he’d graduate early, or get called away on a mission and not graduate at all.

  But that didn’t make sense. They were a perfect pair. Their powers complimented each other’s. The army had to keep the two of them together.

  “I don’t know where you are, Jack,” she said. “But stick around. I don’t want to be assigned somewhere without you. I’m serious. I want you with me.”

  The forest opened up into the base’s shooting range, and Aubrey breathed a sigh of relief. She could shoot. She could outshoot half the trainers. Even without her glasses.

  “Okay, team,” the trainer shouted. “Take a position.”

  Aubrey moved into one of the plywood frames that she was supposed to treat like cover—hiding behind the wall, peeking out only to take her shots. Targets would appear downrange at intervals between fifty and three hundred yards. Aubrey took a deep breath and raised her gun. She was still getting used to the M16A4. It was different from the guns she’d fired at home, and even different from the standard-issue rifles of the army—it was used more for special ops.

  A target—a plastic, human-shaped silhouette, painted with the outline of a man—flipped up at one hundred fifty yards. Through the scope she could see a couple dozen holes from previous bullet impacts. She let out her breath slowly, and squeezed the trigger. The board disappeared from sight.

  She’d been shooting deer every year since she was eight. Jack’s family had always invited her on their hunts. Venison had been an important part of her diet, since her dad never seemed to hold on to a job for more than a few days at a time. She’d taken to rabbit and pheasant hunting, too—anything she could legally go after, and sometimes not even legal stuff.

  That life seemed so far away. It didn’t even feel real anymore.

  Another silhouette appeared at three hundred yards and she knocked it back down.

  THREE

  “JACK, FORGIVE ME,” WAS THE last thing he heard from her. Jack guessed Aubrey was skipping the wall, or something near it. She was surrounded by the clunk of knees against wood, the scrape of rubber on logs, the grunting of lambdas fighting through pain.

  He wished she’d take training more seriously. She had the makings of a good soldier, but she also had the makings of a court-martial. He’d known when she’d snuck out of her barracks to find him at night, and he’d made sure he was hidden from view. Not that he didn’t want to see her—he wanted to see her every minute of the day. He didn’t want her to get into trouble. If she got in trouble, then she could be pulled from their team. They wouldn’t be together.

  But maybe a court-martial would be better. Maybe he should encourage Aubrey to get thrown in lockup. He heard everything that was said at the base—he could hear and see and smell it all. And he’d heard about the attack in the North Pacific. The three carriers that had sunk. The invasion force that was making its way toward Washington State. The Tomahawk missiles that blew up midflight, for no apparent reason. The squadrons of fighter jets that had simply fallen out of the sky.

  There were plenty of theories about the Russians’ secret weapon—something that acted like an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse. Weapons like that could fry every piece of electrical equipment for miles and miles.

  But it couldn’t be an EMP. Those were caused by exploding a nuke in the high atmosphere, and no one had reported a nuke. In fact, Jack heard the generals say that both sides in this war were doing everything they could to avoid nuclear strikes. The Russians wouldn’t use them freely—that would give the Americans an excuse to use their own, and then the world would be over.

  It had to be something else. Some kind of targeted EMP-like device, probably mounted on the prow of Russian ships—something to fire when they came close to the American fleet. Would they be able to use it on land, too? They must be able to—there was no way the Russians would attack the biggest superpower in the world without being supremely confident in their abilities.

  That had been the scariest thing Jack had heard: the commanders of this base were pinning a lot of hopes on the lambdas. Even though most of them weren’t much better than regular soldiers. Jack could do amazing things, but he wasn’t a weapon. He was a spy. Same with Aubrey: she was a spy who was being forced to learn the art of soldiering.

  Jack had been pulled from basic training to attend a mini air-assault school, learning to rappel from a helicopter with a group of other lambdas.

  “What do you hear?” Josi asked, as they sat at the bottom of the rappelling wall.

  Jack looked at her. She was one of the few lambdas he’d met in the Dugway testing facility who’d ended up at this training camp in Oregon. Krezi, a fifteen-year-old from Las Vegas, was another. The three of them, and a young kid named Rich, had spent a week together training.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked with a smile.

  “Whenever you get quiet,” Josi said, “I know you’re listening to something.”

  “You eavesdrop as much as I do,” he said.

  “Ugh.” She grimaced. “Imagine if I could hear everything you did.”

  Josi took photographic memory to a new level. She remembered everything she’d ever heard—every word, every cough, every gust of wind—and everything she’d ever seen, down to every single leaf on every single tree. It was a good thing she didn’t seem to have any physical debilitations accompanying her powers, because the mental stuff was already overwhelming.

  “I know what he was listening to,” Krezi taunted. “Au-brey.”

  “I was not,” he said, though he could feel his face flush. “If you must know, I was listening to them talk about this mission. They might be canceling it.”

  Rich leaned back and swore. “You’re kidding me. After all of this? After missing out on the real training?”

  Jack shrugged. “The Russians have something that can knock planes and missiles out of the sky. You really want to try to fly a helicopter behind enemy lines?”

  Josi let out a breath. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “Good,” Krezi said. “Maybe we’ll be somewhere safe. In case no one noticed, Rich and I
aren’t even old enough to be drafted, and yet here we are.”

  “You’re a girl,” Josi said. “You wouldn’t be signed up for selective service anyway. Jack is the only one who could get the call from Uncle Sam.”

  “I’m seventeen, Photographic Memory Girl. You’re the eighteen-year-old.”

  Josi rubbed her eyes and sighed. “Just because I know everything doesn’t mean I remember it.”

  “I’ll use that excuse the next time I’m taking a test.” Jack laughed and bumped her arm. He only had eyes for Aubrey, but he couldn’t help noticing how Josi could make even the battle-dress ACUs look good.

  “Can I ask a question?” Josi said through red, tired eyes. “Why the Russians? I mean, does this feel a little Red Dawn to you?”

  “I overheard General Penrod and Colonel Montgomery talking about that yesterday,” Jack said. “It sounds like the Russians’ goal isn’t to conquer us and make us bow before them. Their goal is to make America cry. It’s to make us not be a superpower anymore—to bring us down a few notches. They figure if we’re weak, then maybe Mexico will come over the borders in the South and claim land. Maybe Cuba will go after Florida. And we’ll be too dang busy stopping an invasion to plug the leaks everywhere.”

  “Okay, but back to the here and now. What are we doing instead of rappelling out of helicopters?” Rich asked. “My skills are kinda limited.”

  “They want you most of all,” Jack said, wondering how much of this he should be telling them. It probably didn’t hurt anything—their commanding officers had to know that Jack overheard everything. They’d never told him not to listen. “The Russians have some device that can disable planes and ships. You’re a mechanical genius. They want you to figure out what that is.”

  “Oh, perfect,” Rich said. “That doesn’t sound like I’ll be a target at all.”

  “Or on the front lines,” Krezi said.

  “Speaking of which,” Jack continued, “they want you involved, too, Krezi. This device can disable electronics, but there’s no reason to think it can disable you. You’ll be the best weapon we have.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Better than a gun? Those don’t have electronics.”

  “Depends on the gun,” Josi said, still rubbing her eyes.

  “You can cut through a tank,” Jack said. “That beats an M16.”

  “I can cut through a tank if I’m right next to it and focus on it, like a welding torch. How many tanks am I going to get close to?”

  “It’s still better than a gun.”

  “And don’t forget,” Rich said, with more than a twinge of disgust in his voice, “we don’t get guns. You and me, I mean.”

  Krezi and Rich were still considered too young to be trusted with rifles or sidearms. It was a decision that made the younger lambdas furious; they were being asked—forced, some said—to help the army, but they weren’t allowed to defend themselves.

  Not that Krezi needed a gun to defend herself. Jack had seen her blast a tree to splinters using just the power that came out of her hands. He’d seen her cut through half-inch steel plate, and blow a cement wall to pieces.

  And Rich could innately understand and use any machine, be it a calculator or a backhoe. Jack had to assume the same skill would apply to understanding and using a rifle, if Rich ever got his hands on one.

  “We should join the rebellion,” Krezi said.

  “Don’t even joke about that,” Josi replied.

  “Who said I was joking?”

  Jack leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’d better be joking. If the wrong person heard you talking about the rebellion, you’d be dealing with the military police pretty quick.”

  “They overran a base in South Dakota,” Rich said. “Someone said there were hundreds of them.”

  “And how many people died?” Josi asked sternly.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Rich said.

  “I did,” Jack said. Sometimes he wished he had Josi’s perfect memory. He’d recite the conversation word for word. “The rebels killed eighteen soldiers, plus three lambdas.”

  “The rebels are traitors.” Josi tugged idly at a tuft of grass. “They’re American teens—just like us—killing other Americans.”

  “I don’t know,” Krezi said, irritation in her voice. “It wasn’t a military base they attacked—it was one of those concentration camps they sent us to.”

  “They’re not concentration camps,” Jack said. “They’re quarantine centers for teenagers who have the virus. Do you really think that someone should have broken into Dugway and killed soldiers to get us out of there?”

  “Maybe,” Krezi said.

  “Of course not,” Josi said.

  “But they forced us to go to war,” Krezi protested.

  “Wrong again,” Josi said. “I remember you standing up and saying that you’d join the fight. I remember the Utah Jazz T-shirt you were wearing when you said it, and the skinny jeans with a hole in the knee. Thank you, photographic memory.”

  Krezi shook her head. “It was agree to join the army or get left in the camp forever.”

  “Not forever,” Jack said. “Just until all of the infected were found.”

  “Yeah, right,” Krezi snapped, and pointed her finger at the dry autumn grass in front of her. A moment later it burst into flame. Krezi watched it for a few seconds and then patted the fire out with her hand. “Do you really think they’d let me go home? Or would they send me to a lab somewhere to get tested?”

  “I think we’re all going to get tested before this is through,” Rich said. “The army just needs us right now.”

  “I hate to get all chest-thumping and patriotic,” Josi said, “but the US is being invaded. We can’t pretend like that isn’t happening. I’m glad I joined.”

  “Me too,” Rich said.

  “Ugh.” Krezi sighed. “I don’t hate America either. And yes, I think it was a bad thing that the rebels killed soldiers. I just wish none of this had happened in the first place.”

  FOUR

  FROM A THOUSAND FEET UP, Zasha could see both shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which was the pathway to both Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, two of the biggest port cities on the Pacific. This would be the landing area for the invasion force, and Zasha was flying ahead of an enormous convoy of hastily repurposed cargo ships, each one loaded with tanks, equipment, and soldiers.

  The Russian fleet wasn’t what it used to be—it didn’t have the strength of the Soviet Union during the height of the arms race—but it wasn’t flat-footed or impotent either. And if anyone on the shore got ideas about defending the strait, Zasha and Fyodor would be there to render them useless.

  “How much can you see?” she asked Fyodor, who was dangling in his harness.

  “I can see you,” he said weakly. “I can see the sky.”

  “This is America,” she said. “And Canada’s over there. We’re finally here.”

  “What day is it?”

  She didn’t know. She’d spent too many days in the hold of a boat without the sun, and too many nights flying with Fyodor strapped to her, to keep track of the calendar.

  “It’s Invasion Day,” she said. “The day America crumbles before us.”

  Fyodor forced a pained laugh. “You’re always very grandiose.”

  “Don’t you feel it?” she asked, looking down at him. His face was so gaunt now; this wasn’t the Fyodor she’d grown up with. “Don’t you feel the energy of today?”

  “I feel tired,” he said. “And nauseated.”

  “You should see what I see,” she said, gazing out at the forested shores. There were towns there—American towns.

  “You should see what I see,” Fyodor replied, and then chuckled.

  Zasha blushed, though she knew it didn’t mean anything. Fyodor was always making comments like that. Even if he did have a crush on her, it would never go anywhere. Not with what faced them. Not with the drugs that ravaged him.

  “There are American homes,”
she said, changing his subject. “They will soon be Russian homes.”

  “We’re not going to settle here,” he said.

  “We will eventually.”

  “They won’t leave peacefully,” he said. “Americans love their guns.”

  “That’s why we won’t let them stay. We’re not going to be an occupying force. We’ve learned from our occupation of Afghanistan—and their occupation of Afghanistan. They will all have to leave and eventually our people will claim these cities.”

  He nodded tiredly. He knew the plan. Right now, Russian diplomats were delivering simple ultimatums: We are taking these territories and your people must leave. Do that or face annihilation.

  “They’re not going to like it,” he said.

  “It’s war.” She shook her head and looked down at him. “They’re not supposed to like it. But it’s not as if we’re trying to take their country from them. We’re just taking a few pieces.”

  “Do you know what I was reading?” Fyodor’s voice was scratchy. “When the Americans took Alaska from us, they bought it for two cents an acre.”

  “If you can call that buying,” Zasha said, getting angry. “That’s why we’ve come to take it back.”

  This wasn’t a landgrab, though. The Russian Federation hardly needed more land. This was about damaging the United States. The Russian terrorists had already done a fine job of bringing the so-called last superpower to its knees. This invasion would make that damage more permanent.

  And really, most of the attack was focused on Canada. Yes, they were attacking into Washington and Oregon, but the Canadian oil reserves were the real target. Once the Russians were sitting right on top of the Americans, and were controlling oil reserves as large as those of Saudi Arabia, the United States would know fear. They’d know what it meant to have your enemies at your front door.