Iron Mike

by Patricia Rose

  The room “hooah’d,” and Kasoniak then took several copies of a grainy photograph out of his folder and passed them around the table. Mike studied the alien invader carefully. Unlike the Feeders, this creature was squat and tri-pedal with three legs, three arm-like appendages and three antennae-like stalks protruding from a bulge that only slightly resembled a head. It had no eyes, that Mike could see, nor ears, nor a mouth. It was hairless, its skin a puckered, reddish gray.

  “These are the Trois,” Kasoniak said, and added drily, “and I’m sure you all know what they’re really called because these kinds of nicknames tend to stick. Don’t they, Ricochet?”

  “Hooah,” Ricochet answered, and Mike automatically echoed him with the rest of the room.

  Kasoniak passed around another photograph. This one showed a close-up of the three antennae. The skin beneath the antennae was flush, and Mike could see a network of thick gray veins threading through the surface of the thing’s “head.”

  “Like our friendly neighborhood Feeders, these creatures are almost – key word, there, gentlemen – almost invulnerable. Just as napalm is finally enough to kill a Feeder, any round of ammo, even a .22, can kill a Trois – as long as that round lands exactly here.” He used a red sharpie on his copy of the photo, marking out a three inch diameter in the center of the beast’s three antennae. “No one has tested the theory yet, but that area may also be vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat – it seems to be a soft spot in their skulls, if these sons-a-bitches have skulls.”

  He passed out the next handout. It was a map of the eastern half of what used to be the United States of America. Several military bases were circled with dotted lines of communication drawn from some of them to others. Surprisingly, New Fort Knox was in the center of the largest number of communications lines, making it appear to be the hub of Resistance activity.

  “Our greatest weakness, other than being outmanned and outgunned, is that we haven’t been able to organize any kind of cohesive attack. Everything we’ve managed up to this point has been reactive or defensive, and we've been limited to guerilla style combat. They kicked us in the balls when they took out our satellites, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s taken us this long, minus the month of bureaucratic ass-kissing, to come up with a viable communications workaround. Initial testing shows the enemy has not been able to intercept these signals and seems unaware we’re communicating again.”

  “Hooah for the nerds,” Mike commented, and was joined by several others.

  “The principle behind them is simple, according to the ‘nerd’ who passed them on. Each handheld unit acts as a mirror for the signals of other handheld units, reflecting and thereby enlarging signal range for all of them. For example, if ten handhelds stretched in a line from New York to San Francisco, people on either end could communicate. Destroy the handheld in Kansas City, and you suddenly have a break midway in the line of communications because that handheld can no longer reflect signal.”

  “So, it’s kind of like they rebuilt the internet,” Ricochet offered, nodding in understanding. “Cool. Very cool.”

  “Except there will be no net surfing or browsing for porn yet,” Kasoniak noted drily. “Apparently, that’s going to take the boys and girls at Google awhile longer to figure out.”

  Kasoniak waited for the hoots to die down before continuing. “It is now our primary objective to get these handheld units into the hands of Resistance leaders,” he said grimly. “And that means we’re going to need couriers to hand-deliver them. Gentlemen, the Razers and Trois are still out there, but worse than that, the whole damned planet is crawling with Feeders. You all know the dangers involved.” He used the sharpie as he spoke. “The furthest point to the west we’re responsible for is Fort Bliss. Pineda and Smith are taking the handhelds to Bliss and transferring to that unit. God speed, gentlemen.”

  There was a round of quiet “hooahs,” and then Kasoniak continued. “Kershaw has family near Fort Bragg, so she’ll be carrying handhelds there and reporting to Lieutenant Davidson. She’s also transferring. God speed, Sergeant.”

  Mike murmured “Hooah” with the others, a bit regretfully. He liked Kershaw. She was a good soldier and he'd miss her.

  “The rest of you will be making round trips which means, yes, you are coming back here,” Kasoniak deadpanned to the murmured jeers. “Sanderlin, you’re familiar with the Virginia Beach area, so you’re delivering handhelds to the Resistance unit led by Major Hardin in Norfolk. Fields, Fort Benning was your old stomping ground, so you get to play delivery boy to Colonel Acevedo. And Ricochet, you’re going to make nice with the flyboys at Scott Air Force Base. They’re a bit more scattered so we don’t have a contact for you yet.

  “People, your orders contain as much detailed information as we’ve been able to obtain, but we’re expecting you to add significantly to the data pool. Once you leave, you’re to maintain radio silence until your radio units are delivered, and once deliveries have been made, you're to check in on a routine basis. I don’t have to stress it is absolutely vital each of you completes his or her delivery of these radio units. Shortwave is unreliable in the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. If we’re going to start taking this war on the offensive, we must be able to effectively communicate with each other. You are the Alpha team, gentlemen. I pray to God we don’t need to send out a Beta team.” He turned to his whiteboard. “Now, if you'll notice here ...”

  The meeting continued for another hour. Mike paid attention and responded when he needed to, but his heart was already out in the field.

  He breathed a sigh of relief when Kasoniak finally wrapped up. Like the others, he stayed in the coolness of The Tomb to review his orders, his eyes scanning the words and quickly pulling out the relevant details. Fifteen minutes later, he was finally able to step outside of the depository and into the daylight. It was an unusually hot day for the middle of March, but snowmelt made the ground wet and the air smell crisp. Mike shaded his eyes against the sun and scanned the different supply tents until he saw Regina. He walked over to her, his gait casual, even nonchalant. She looked up from the crate she was loading, her eyes immediately wary.

  “Hey!” Mike raised his hands in preemptive protest. “I haven’t even asked for anything yet.”

  “‘Yet’, Iron Mike. I know you too well to be fooled by the pretty-boy charm, so you best just spit it out now, or be on your way. I got work to do.” The older woman’s words were harsh, but her tone was resigned. Reggie tucked a sweaty white curl up into her damp red bandana and turned back to the picnic table, which was now a converted assembly line and crate-packing center. She used a battery-operated drill to screw a crate closed, then moved it to one side and began loading a second. Mike peeked over the crate to check its contents.

  “Nice,” he said, grinning at the hand grenades, blocks of C4 and neatly-packaged detonators and blasting caps. “Looks like you have the WMD covered. Is this the batch going to Norfolk?”

  Regina stopped working and looked up at him with a sober nod. “If anything’s left of Norfolk,” she said quietly, her lips a tight, white line. “Last report, they were holding their position, but Razers took out Oceana and apparently half of Newport News.”

  Mike bit his upper lip, letting air whistle through his teeth. “If the Trois have them flanked on both sides long enough for the Feeders to move in, they’re done,” he said grimly. “We need to get those people moved over to the Eastern Shore and blow the bridge after them. Have to keep the Feeders from consolidating long enough to get it done.”

  Regina scowled at him. “Who’s to say the Eastern Shore’s doing any better than the rest of Virginia, boy?”

  Mike studied Regina for a long moment before answering. “It’s a good question,” he finally admitted. “Been a few days since we got shortwave, but last we heard that group was well-entrenched. They’re organized. They have food, decent sanitation, and room to spare. Mostly though, they haven’t seen Razer activity for two months, and th
ey’re desperate for people to help carry the load.”

  Regina snorted as she resumed filling a well-padded crate with explosives. “I’m just the hired help around here,” she said sardonically. “You know more about the situation than I do. But for what it’s worth, you’ll have a hell of a time getting that many people to walk across that long-assed bridge and through two tunnels to the shore, Mike, especially if they have a bunch of young kids like you and old farts like me. You need to talk to Colonel Kasoniak about it.”

  Mike set one muddy combat boot up on the bench of the picnic table, pulling a piece of crumpled paper out of the pocket of his camouflage fatigue pants. “Matter of fact, Reggie, I did just that,” he said, setting the paper down on the picnic table for Regina to read. “He doesn’t think it’s a good option, but it’s the only option the Norfolk resistance group has.” His lips turned up, barely, as he watched Regina read the requisition, a cranky scowl on her face.

  The older woman liked to play “hired help” but she knew as much about the situation in the rest of the United States as anyone else in the compound, and more than most.

  “Problem is, we haven’t been able to make shortwave contact with Major Hardin for close to a week, so he doesn’t know the new orders.” Mike shot her an extra charming smile. “Since I’m the old man’s best rider and otherwise expendable, I get to play delivery boy, Reggie. I’m taking the new handheld radios to the major and blowing up a bridge. Good times, huh?” Mike grinned. “So those goodies you’re baking need to fit right into my saddlebags and sidecar, if you please, ma’am.”

  Regina glared, but she picked up the requisition. “Damn fool,” she muttered, as she began categorizing the requested munitions against her inventory.

  “Me or the Old Bear?” Mike asked.

  “Both of you!” Regina snapped. “You for volunteering, and him for letting a snot-nosed boy go that far out into the zone! Don’t he know we’re at war? Whole damned world’s going to hell in a hand-basket, letting children do the soldiering!”

  Mike laughed good-naturedly as Regina glared at him. “Yes, ma’am, you’re absolutely right. On the other hand, your population goes poof, they lower the draft requirements real fast.” Mike’s eyes darkened in memory, and he spoke more soberly. “I know you care, Regina, and I promise I’ll be careful,” he vowed. “I leave at 1300, so I’ll be back here in –” he glanced at his watch. “An hour. That’s more notice than usual, right?”

  Regina didn’t reply, just shook her head as the young man walked away. Seventeen years old and already a damned corporal. This war was being waged by babies.

  Mike

  Three months ago, in his father’s America, Mike Sanderlin had been a snot-nosed boy. All of the focus in his world was narrowed down to two life goals: getting a respectable set of wheels to replace the crappy Honda he’d inherited when Mom upgraded to the Suburban, and getting Kristie Williams to say yes.

  Now … well, things were different for him now. Mom was dead; he’d seen that himself. He also knew firsthand that Gran and Poppa were gone. He wasn’t sure about his father. Dad was in his office when the first wave hit, and all the landlines and cells went down, either flooded or jammed, in the first few minutes of the attack. Downtown Louisville took several devastating Razer hits and fell within minutes, Mike learned after arriving on Fort Knox, so it was possible but highly unlikely his father made it out. The AEGON building was flattened – Mike saw the footage of that in a screaming, hysterical live report just before the cable went down. The television and radio stations went crazy when it first happened, and the images couldn’t come fast enough. By the next morning, everything was down to spitting static. There was no way to find out what the authorities wanted people to do other than, “Don’t panic. Stay where you are until shelters are opened. Stay calm!” So Mike did what he could for himself and his little sister, moving on automatic pilot.

  Things went to hell, and they went fast. No one was prepared for the scope of the attacks, not that any degree of preparation would have mattered. They were overwhelmingly outgunned. The Razers came in hard and fast in tornado-like formations, slicing entire cities to pieces in seconds. Every major city fell, most within the first two hours of the war. The ugly black airships moved so silently most of the people killed in the first wave probably didn’t even have time to hear the “booms” of the sound barrier breaking when the EMP weapons were deployed.

  People – literally billions of them – simply dropped where they stood, most dead before they hit the ground. And that was just the first wave – there were three in all. Weeks later, Mike learned that a pulsar weapon was used, but it was so advanced … so alien … no one in the military command knew how to defend against it. The technology to counter the weapons used by the aliens simply didn't exist. Rough statistics estimated that six out of ten people died immediately, and well more than nine of ten were dead within minutes. When the survivors started regrouping, many more people died due to civil unrest and violence. Since then, hypothermia, thirst, lack of medical care, starvation … all took their toll.

  When Mike was “encouraged” to enlist, he’d undergone four weeks of modified basic training with a handful of other young men and women. The stakes were higher now, and every soldier was motivated by the new reality they lived in. Even though extraterrestrial invaders were the enemy, Mike saw more skirmishes with looters and desperate civilians than with the alien Feeders. Their victories against the Feeders were hard-fought and few, but morale improved significantly when the soldiers learned they could fight back. The drawback was that every single time they killed a Feeder, it came at the cost of one of their own. A mercy shot to the head was now SOP, standard operating procedure, for the person unlucky enough to be trapped. Afterward, the assigned soldier napalmed the shit out of the Feeder with a handheld flame thrower. They took out five of them; Mike was on patrol when one of them burned.

  Three months later, Mike was a couple weeks shy of eighteen. He already had the eyes of a hardened combat veteran as he stood in the New Fort Knox compound, the U.S. Bullion Depository, more commonly known as the U.S. Mint, a distinctive shape behind him. The resistance had been slow to form; Americans had had it too easy for far too long. They truly believed this crazy kind of shit could never happen here – it happened over in Iraq or Afghanistan, or on The Walking Dead, for god’s sake! Not in Kentucky!

  Mike shook his head, hard. He was doing it again, he realized. He walked halfway across the compound and was standing outside the tent he’d been seeking, but was too wrapped up in his own thoughts of the past to complete his task. How long was he standing there, outside the flap, not knocking on the canvas or support frame to announce his presence?

  “It’s open,” Kari called when he did slap the canvas a few times. He stepped into the tent, not sure if the shade compensated for the heat inside or just made it worse. He glanced around briefly – Kari and her tent-mate had made several changes and girlied the place up pretty well, for a sand drab tent. He moved a stuffed teddy bear off a canvas director’s chair near the main support pole and took its place, waiting for Kari to look up. She was lying on her belly on the cot, writing a report … or at least, chewing on the tip of an eraser. After a moment, she did look up, her chocolate brown eyes flicking back to the document once more before leaving it and settling her gaze on Mike.

  “Nice buzz cut,” she commented, then held up a finger, thinking of one last thing to write and adding it to her document before giving Mike her full attention. “What’s up?” she asked, her bland expression showing she already knew, or at least suspected.

  “I got the Norfolk assignment,” Mike said, his words measured and matter-of-fact. “It’s medium to high risk, and it means I’ll be gone about ten days, maybe longer.” He hesitated, choosing his words a bit more carefully. “I figured I should tell you, since … well. Yeah.”

  “Since last time you left without so much as a kiss-my-ass and when you got back I ripped your head off and t
ore into you like Sunday chicken dinner?”

  Mike grinned, his clear blue eyes twinkling even as his face pinked slightly at the memory. “Yeah, that,” he agreed. “So I’m telling you this time. So … other than making me really hungry for home-cooked food, we’re good, right?”

  Kari smiled, and Mike felt his own lips turning up in response, until he noticed the predatory look in her eyes. “Oh, we’re good, Iron Mike,” she said, her voice a gentle purr. "We're good if you told the kids. You did tell the kids, didn’t you? Not planning on leaving that difficult little task up to me, were you?”

  Mike winced, glancing meaningfully at his watch. “Well, see, I’m leaving in just under an hour, and they’re in school now ...”

  Kari grabbed a small backpack and stood up from the cot so quickly that her papers went flying. Mike did the gentlemanly thing, since it also involved ducking, and began gathering them up.

  “Ryan Michael Sanderlin, if you think for one second you’re going to sneak off this base without telling those children goodbye and leave me with all of their questions again, you have got another think coming to you! Leave the goddamned papers, I’ll get them later!”

  Mike set the half-gathered stack of paperwork down on Kari’s cot and quickly assumed a posture of attention. He considered throwing off a salute, but that would get him punched, and he knew from experience Kari didn’t punch like a girl. With a sheepish grin, he followed her through the flap of the tent, toward the large mess building which also served as the temporary daycare/schoolroom for the refugee children who came in with the small groups of survivors each week. New Fort Knox accommodated over seven hundred people now and new housing construction went on behind the razor wire every day.

  Mike and Kari stepped into the back of the mess hall together, both taking a moment to let their eyes adjust to the comparative darkness inside the wooden building. Linda Hairston and Rachel Posey were volunteer teachers for the growing number of children at NFK, and Hunter Kennedy came in each day to provide group therapy and private counseling, as needed. Mike was disappointed the pastoral counselor wasn’t there now; it would have made saying goodbye much easier, because Hunter would have smoothed the way. Taken the load, his inner voice accused. Yeah, whatever. Still would’ve been easier.