Dead Zone

by Robison Wells

  There was one explosion, and then another. Fragmentation grenades. And then there was the fizzing sound of a smoke grenade being thrown back, obscuring everyone’s view. It didn’t stop the guns from firing, though. Fully automatic bursts from Russian AK-74s and 105s. And then there was the loud, buzzing fire of a machine gun—a PKP or a Kord. Jack had only seen pictures, and he didn’t know them by their sounds yet.

  Someone threw another grenade, which detonated close enough that Jack felt the blast wave.

  He pulled a grenade from his own vest, but didn’t dare throw it. He had no idea where Aubrey was hiding, and he didn’t trust his aim to get it in between all the trees and over to the Russians.

  “Fall back!” Jack heard the order, though he was certain he was the only one who had. It was Captain Gillett’s voice, barely audible over the noise of the battle.

  Jack hoped that Aubrey was down and safe. The only way she could retreat safely was to crawl back—that was the only thing Jack could do, too.

  “Fall back!” he heard again. Jack took a deep breath and began to push himself backward across the pine needles, wriggling on his belly under a hail of bullets. It was only as he was moving that he heard footsteps nearby and saw Josi running. He thought she was crazy, but if she was running, then he should, too. He said a silent prayer, then darted after her.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  AUBREY WATCHED CAPTAIN GILLETT DIE.

  He was crouched behind a tree, trying to get orders to his team, when someone spotted him. The tree exploded as bullets shattered the wood into splinters. At first she thought he was dropping down to get out of sight, but his rifle fell from his hand and he didn’t move again.

  Aubrey returned the Russians’ fire until she ran out of bullets. By the time that she fired her last round, her eyes were so bad that even through the telescopic sight the men just looked like blobs of camouflage green. If she was honest, she wasn’t even sure all of them were soldiers—she might have been shooting at bushes and trees.

  But she stayed invisible.

  When they came closer, when there were no more shots being fired from her side of the forest, she drew her sidearm—an M9 Beretta—and shot at the blurry shapes until she ran out of that ammo, too. The Russians continued to fire past her, into the forest, thinking they were being hit by snipers. Eventually, they all moved forward, passing her invisible body as she lay in the pine needles.

  Aubrey had killed the flyer, and as the blurry Russians discovered the body, they all started speaking rapidly and loudly, calling for their superiors and gathering around the body.

  And helping up the other lambda.

  Aubrey’s stomach fell. They had been so focused on the flyer that they hadn’t—she hadn’t—saved any bullets for the lambda she’d been carrying. The real threat. Aubrey had always assumed that she’d kill the flyer and that the captain would deal with the electronic-interference lambda.

  She struggled to put a foot underneath her, but she was so exhausted that it wouldn’t stay. They were lifting the boy out of his harness, trying to get him to stand, but the boy couldn’t walk any better than Aubrey could. She pulled herself along the ground, trying to get to Captain Gillett’s body, to take one of his guns and finish this job. This job that she’d bungled so completely.

  What had happened? Why had Gillett told her to engage the Russians, and then come charging after her, yelling at her to shoot the flyer instead? Had he changed his mind at the last minute?

  Aubrey had only made it halfway to the captain’s body before the Russians carried the boy into the barn and out of sight. Aubrey had failed.

  She had tried to do everything right this time. Tried to follow orders. Tried to be the kind of soldier that she’d promised Jack she was going to be. And she’d failed utterly.

  She called to Jack, but her words came out as a slurred grunt. She’d never been this exhausted before. Her body was screaming for sleep, but she knew that if she slept she’d reappear.

  Hand over hand, she pulled herself toward the captain’s body. It was excruciatingly slow, with Russians walking all around her, looking for the rest of her team. One man tripped over her, falling into the dirt and cursing. She got to the captain’s body just as a Russian did. Aubrey snatched the Beretta from its holster while the Russian picked up the M4 and began to drag Gillett’s body away.

  Aubrey had to go somewhere. She had to reappear or she would fall asleep.

  She was only seeing shapes now—white rectangles, brown rectangles, green splotches.

  White is the house, she told herself, and remembered the little alcove with the evergreen tree. She could make it there. She had to make it there.

  What would Jack think? That she was dead? She was getting close.

  Using only her arms—her legs were dead weight—she crawled toward the alcove. It reminded her of the crawls in basic training, scrambling under barbed wire, only now she felt like she was dragging someone else behind her, and her fingers were useless, though she managed to keep a grip on the pistol.

  There was a sudden flash off to the right and gunshots sounded for a moment. Then everything seemed to go quiet. She felt like her head was in a bubble, wrapped in cloth to muffle all sound.

  Her eyes started to droop. She shoved herself forward, willing her body to stay awake.

  The evergreen was close.

  THIRTY-NINE

  TABITHA AND KREZI RAN THROUGH the forest. Tabitha was getting out of this war, and back to her life. Krezi jogged beside her, a look of fear and excitement on her face.

  “We’re going to be in so much trouble,” Krezi said.

  “No one is going to find us,” Tabitha said. “We talked about this.”

  They were in a battle, and they’d been overrun by the enemy. So they’d run. So what? They shouldn’t have been in the war to begin with. They should have been at home with their families. Sure, Tabitha was a private, but she was a lambda private, and when this war was over and the government sorted everything out, a lambda going AWOL would never get court-martialed. Once the ACLU or any other civil-rights group got ahold of this case, the situation with the lambdas would go to the Supreme Court, and the military would be found to be in the wrong.

  That was obvious. Tabitha wasn’t afraid of any army court. All she had to do was get out of this war zone and lie low until the war was over.

  It was unfortunate that she had to get Aubrey involved in the middle of her escape attempt, but Aubrey could turn invisible. She’d be fine.

  Rich knew that they had run. Tabitha had invited him to come along. But instead he checked her rifle and headed toward the fight, not away from it. He wasn’t smart like Krezi. He didn’t know a good thing when it landed in his lap.

  Now they just had to find a house and steal some clothes. There were plenty of civilian refugees right now. Tabitha and Krezi would join their migration. Maybe they’d head south to Krezi’s family—they sounded nice, and Las Vegas was far from any battle—or maybe they’d head all the way to Oklahoma to Tabitha’s parents. They certainly wouldn’t turn her in. Never.

  Tabitha would lead the crusade. She’d be at the front of the fight, on the news, on the steps of the courthouse.

  She would even join the rebellion. She didn’t know how to find them, but there had to be a way. They were fighting the military, weren’t they? So they’d be on the news, or at least they’d be on the outskirts of the military bases. They might still be focused on quarantine centers or lambda training camps. Tabitha could find them. She had to find them.

  Maybe she could get Krezi to go with her. The two of them could be a good team. Tabitha could direct Krezi, mold her. Krezi was still so young and irrational. She needed Tabitha to help steer her right.

  Would that make it harder to defend themselves against a court case? No. They weren’t terrorists. They weren’t enemies of the state. They were kids who were fighting to free other kids. What law empowered the government to turn fifteen-year-old Krezi Torreon into a killer
? Even if there was a draft, this wouldn’t hold up in court.

  “This way,” Krezi said, and scrambled up a short rise. The road was in sight.

  “I told you it was easy,” Tabitha said. “I told you we’d be fine.”

  They darted the last dozen yards through the forest and out onto the road where their bikes lay.

  Tabitha raised her arms in triumph, and Krezi jumped to high-five her.

  Then Krezi’s face froze and Tabitha turned.

  For just a moment they stared at one another—Tabitha and Krezi and the patrol of Russians. Everything seemed to stop as Tabitha’s world silently fell apart.

  The Russians went for their rifles and Tabitha went for her Beretta.

  But it was Krezi who fired first, a blast of white-hot light slashing through the air. It hit the lead Russian in the chest and he flew backward.

  Then bullets filled the roadway.

  Tabitha squeezed off every round in her pistol, even while feeling the whisper of bullets flying past her body. Krezi fired again, her energy blasts completely melting through the soldiers’ armor.

  The gunfire ended as quickly as it began. Tabitha’s slide was locked back, empty.

  “Zakroitye ogon,” one of the soldiers said down the street.

  Tabitha was on her knees, but she didn’t remember dropping down. She felt all over for wetness, knowing that adrenaline could be masking the pain of a hit.

  She felt fine.

  She moved to Krezi, who was lying on her back, staring at the sky.

  “Are you still with me?” Tabitha inspected Krezi for blood.

  “I can’t breathe.” She barely got the words out.

  Her vest was a shredded mess, but it had saved her life. There were dozens of bullet impacts in the Kevlar. The problem with Kevlar, as they’d learned in basic training, was that it stopped a bullet from entering the body, but it didn’t stop those foot-pounds of pressure from smashing you to pieces. Every bullet—and there were dozens—was a potential broken rib, or, worse, a broken sternum.

  There’d be no way to ride their bikes out of this one.

  Again the fourth and final Russian cried out, and Tabitha walked over to him and shot him in the head.

  FORTY

  JACK HAD CHASED AFTER JOSI as they fell back. Instead of finding Tabitha, Krezi, and Rich, they only came upon Rich, kneeling in the pine needles firing shot after shot from Tabitha’s M16. He moved so quickly with it, just like he’d moved on the computer, like the gun was a part of his body.

  Together the three of them had formed a firing line, aiming through the trees, shooting at the few Russians who came into view.

  The Green Berets did not fall back with them. Jack could still hear the chatter of their M4s, a sound wholly different from that of the Russian Kalashnikovs. But there were so many more of the Russians, and so few of the Green Berets.

  In the end, Jack never knew whether they couldn’t hear the order, or they had simply dug in and refused to surrender. Either way, the sounds of the M4s eventually stopped, and Jack motioned Rich and Josi to stop firing.

  The rest of their team was dead, or captured. Tabitha and Krezi were gone. Jack prayed that Aubrey was still invisible. That she was hiding somewhere. But they had to get out of there.

  “Where do we go?” Rich asked, eying the forest that stood between them and the enemy.

  “We have to wait for Aubrey,” Jack said. “She’s going to come back.”

  “Agreed,” Josi said.

  “Then where?” Rich asked again, his voice more urgent. “The bikes?”

  Jack paused before he could form the words. “There was gunfire back by the bikes. Not our guns—Kalashnikovs.” Jack knew more—he’d heard the electric crackle of Krezi’s lightning blast. But it had stopped as the Russian guns continued.

  He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to be here, in the middle of any of this. He didn’t want to be a soldier. But he needed to stay strong.

  Jack turned to Josi. “You studied the maps. There’s a culvert somewhere. I could hear the water earlier.” He strained to hear it now, but his ears had been deadened to such delicate sounds by the constant gunfire.

  Josi nodded. “There’s a ditch.”

  “Can you get us to it?”

  “Can you make sure we’re not going to run into a bunch of Russians?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She bit her lip. “Then so will I.”

  Josi turned south and began to jog in a low crouch, holding her rifle in front of her. Rich followed, swapping out a magazine while he ran, tucking the empty into his vest ammo pouch. Jack checked his own gun. He still had half a mag left in place, and a full one in his vest.

  Josi left the road at no discernible trail and headed west, on a diagonal course past the soldiers at the farmhouse. Jack listened for them, hearing dozens of voices, but they were all on their right, not in front.

  Aubrey was somewhere by the farmhouse, in the middle of it all. He could still smell her perfume, carried on the wind. But she was being perfectly silent, perfectly motionless.

  He didn’t dare to wonder what that meant.

  Josi reached a short, steep hill, and she stumbled as she skidded down it, trying to keep her feet on the dry grass. Rich didn’t make it all the way without landing on his butt. Jack ran, letting the forward momentum keep him upright.

  “It’s just up here,” Josi said, and she led them over a low rise to a deep ditch. The water was shallow—maybe a foot deep at the bottom. It was late November, not prime farming season, and the valve to this row of ditches was probably closed.

  The culvert was a broad pipe, probably five feet in diameter, that carried the irrigation water under a dirt road.

  “This is a death trap,” Rich said.

  “Only if someone looks inside,” Jack said, trying to be optimistic. “And who’s going to want to get their boots wet in this weather?”

  “Certainly not me,” Josi said, but she was already sliding down the side of the ditch and into the muddy bottom. She held her rifle out, like she might find someone else hiding in the culvert already, but Jack could tell that it was empty. There was no breathing. He watched Rich slide down the side, struggle for balance, but stay upright. Jack came down last.

  “We’re going to get hypothermia,” Josi said as she climbed inside. “There’s six inches of water down here.” She walked about twenty feet in, and Jack and Rich followed her. Because the pipe was round, they could sit on one side and prop themselves up with their feet on the other side to stay out of the water.

  “Thank God for small blessings,” Jack said.

  “I don’t know how long we can wait like this,” Josi said.

  “We’ve been overrun,” Jack said, and felt his throat begin to close up. “And our whole team is dead. What choice do we have?”

  Rich spoke. “I do not want to turn myself in.”

  “Neither do I,” Josi said quietly.

  Jack stood up and moved toward the far end of the culvert.

  “What are you doing?” Josi asked.

  “I’ll hear anyone before they see me,” he said. “And I have to be able to hear Aubrey when she comes back.”

  “If she comes back,” Rich said.

  Jack had always suspected that Rich liked Krezi. Now Krezi was gone. Not everything has a happy ending. Not for everyone. But Jack wasn’t about to let the Russians get away with this.

  FORTY-ONE

  IT HAD TAKEN ALL OF Alec’s effort to not get killed, and the best that he could do was wind up with an American infantry company in the invasion—trying to ram the same memories down the throats of everyone he met, trying to remind them of all the good times they’d had back at base, about that time when he’d thrown a perfect game of darts, about the hot girl that he’d bombed with at the bar, about anything else he could think of. It didn’t help that the name Waterslaw was stitched into the uniform he’d taken. And, wait a minute—there was another Waterslaw in the compa
ny, and he didn’t come back from the last mission. Alec literally spent every waking minute trying to dig himself out of his grave.

  But it had finally worked, and now Alec was in the compartment of a Bradley, heading into battle.

  It was because Alec was the very best at what he did. The thought made him smile.

  Above them, sooner than Alec expected, he heard the chatter of big chain gun on the roof. It was intensely loud, like being in the center of a thunderstorm.

  He held his rifle between his legs, pointing up. He’d never fired an American gun before, but he’d studied it back at the camp.

  “You look nervous,” another man said. His name badge read Tayler. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Another man leaned over, and though he had to shout to be heard above the noise, Alec heard every word. “His whole unit was killed.”

  “I know that,” Tayler said. “I was just saying that we’re the best company the army’s got.”

  Alec wanted to laugh at this man’s tactlessness, but he held it in and tried to look somber.

  “Okay, team,” the sergeant said. “Most of the fighting is settling down, but there are pockets of resistance, and we’re here to put them six feet under. They’ve got Ellensburg, and we want it back. We’re going to—”

  And the power went out.

  “That’s it,” the sergeant said. He stood and threw the latches for the giant back door to drop. “Spread out. Advance down this street.”

  Ellensburg looked like any small farming community Alec had ever seen. They were in the city center, where there were dozens of houses on pretty little streets. It was almost hard to tell a war had been taking place here, except for the odd blast crater in the asphalt, and the occasional charred tree or building.

  The small unit moved quickly, leapfrogging one another—one person would hide behind a brick wall, and then his partner would run forward and put his shoulder against a thick oak, ready so the first man could find cover behind a parked car.