by Judd Vowell
The van then drove toward the barracks so that its headlights were shining directly on them. The pickup did the same. The Leftys from the van ran to the barrack doors and threw grenades inside, making sure no ANT was left alive. Once the buildings were cleared, the two Leftys in the pickup moved on to circle the base’s perimeter and kill any remaining fence-line guards.
ΔΔΔ
Archer and Jacob came out of the base’s control building after they heard the monstrous humvee explosion. They couldn’t see very well in the darkness, so they waited, hiding in the building’s recessed doorway with their guns drawn. Soon the Lefty van and pickup came roaring by, then the sound of .50-caliber gunshots as the surviving Omega XT were shot dead.
“What now?” Jacob asked nervously. The mission had been so intense that he had forgotten its final steps.
“We hold,” Archer answered. “Until Laz gets here. Remember, we can’t see shit out there with the lights down.”
“Right, right,” Jacob said, collecting himself.
The sound of running footsteps came into their ears soon after. Laz was due, and only Laz. But Archer could discern more than one set of feet making the approaching noise. Probably three, maybe four. Even Jacob thought it sounded odd. Archer raised his gun and cocked it, then looked at Jacob and shrugged.
The footsteps slowed their pace when they got to the opposite side of the control building. Archer could decipher three different gaits once they were walking. He readied himself for a close-quarters fight, figuring he would jump out from his hiding place as soon as they turned the building’s front corner. In the dark, he would have to shoot nearly blind. But they would be only twenty feet away by then, so he didn’t mind his chances.
He leaned his face close to Jacob’s so they could see each other. “Don’t move,” he mouthed.
The three sets of footsteps reached the front corner of the building. Archer bent his knees, ready to attack. The footsteps turned and came toward him. If he was going to take the offensive, the time had come to do it.
He leapt out from the building’s doorway, hearing something more than footsteps as he did. It was a young girl’s voice, familiar. But he had squeezed the trigger on his semi-automatic handgun by then. And there was no stopping the bullets that he had already fired.
17.
Jacob had followed Archer’s instruction dutifully. He had not moved a muscle inside the recessed doorway, even when he heard Archer’s gunshots and the commotion that followed them. He had crouched with his gun in hand, waiting for the moment when he would have to defend himself by killing another human being. But that never happened. He heard Archer’s voice instead, yelling for him with urgency.
“Marsh!” Archer screamed. “Turn on the lights! Do it now!”
Jacob hesitated, confused by the demand that seemed to veer from the mission’s plan. He wasn’t supposed to turn on the lights until the pickup had made its final sweep of the base.
“Did you hear me, Marsh?!?! The lights! NOW!”
“Yes, yes,” Jacob said. “I got it.”
He ran back inside the main control building and down the hallway that led to the base’s computer mainframe. It took only a few simple keystrokes to bring the base’s power back online. As soon as he had it restored, he returned to the front of the building, curious to know what had made Archer so frantic.
When he came out of the building’s door, he could see his surroundings clearly. The light, though dim like earlier, was still so much brighter than the utter darkness from a few minutes before. He turned his attention to Archer and two other people. They were on their knees, leaning over someone else.
As Jacob approached, the strangers’ faces became familiar. Kneeling with Jacob was Anna and Jessica. On the ground, Laz lay nearly motionless. There was a steady stream of blood coming from one side of his mouth. Archer held one of his friend’s hands tightly against his own body. Jacob understood what had happened, and what Archer’s mistake had meant. Laz was about to die.
“It’s ok, buddy,” Archer was telling him through clenched teeth. He was as angry with himself as he was sad. “You’re gonna be ok.”
But it didn’t look that way to Jacob. Laz wasn’t speaking or moving. He wasn’t even trying to do either. Jessica was crying. Anna, stoic as always, held Jessica’s head against her chest. Jacob got down on one knee and put a hand on Anna’s back. He didn’t know what else to do.
Laz was dead not long after. They saw him suck in his last breath, then watched as his eyes turned gray.
Archer cried almost silently for a minute. After that, he stood and began kicking the earth beneath him, cursing himself as he did. He found the gun that had killed Laz on the ground next to his body, and he picked it up. Then he unloaded the rest of the gun’s clip into the air, screaming loudly as he did. The others remained still and let him do it. None of them knew what it felt like to accidently kill your best friend, so none of them judged Archer as he grieved his own way.
ΔΔΔ
Once Archer had regained his composure, they walked to the site of the humvee bomb. Houser and Simpson were there, gathered with the Leftys from the cargo van, all of them standing in the middle of more than a hundred dead ANTs. With the lights back on, the true magnitude of what they had done could be seen. Archer and Laz’s grand plan had worked. Thirteen Leftys had taken on two hundred Omega XT on their own ground and won. And yet it was a bittersweet victory. They were less than twenty-four hours removed from watching their friends and fellow rebels perish at Camp Forager. And they had just lost Laz. There was no celebration, only the grim and fleeting satisfaction that comes with revenge.
Before anyone spoke, the sound of the pickup truck returned. The driver parked close by, and the last two Leftys joined them.
“And that takes care of that,” the gunner said.
“Got ‘em all?” Anna asked.
“Every last one.”
“Good,” Archer said, still angry with himself over Laz.
“Nice work, everybody,” Anna said. “Now here’s the situation. We don’t have much time. You can bet your ass some ANT in some grid somewhere has already noticed that this base is offline. Who knows how quickly they can get here. But I don’t care to find out. So let’s stock up: vehicles, gas, food, camping equipment, weapons. And Houser and Simpson, I want every last drone destroyed. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the two Leftys said in unison.
“We need to be on the move in two hours,” Anna said. “Get to it.”
The group broke into their predetermined teams and went in different directions. Houser and Simpson jumped into the cargo van with the Lefty driver and drove south toward the base’s enormous drone hangar. Another group of Leftys went to the vehicle bay, where the base’s humvees and jeeps were stored. And yet another group took off for the mess hall to collect food.
Jessica walked to the remains of the infirmary’s front wall. Most of it had been blown inward by the humvee explosion. She could see the rows of beds and the medical equipment throughout the room, now littered with debris from the front wall and part of the roof that had caved in on top of it all. She climbed over the pile of rubble, making her way to a large section of undamaged white wall on the infirmary’s interior. She pulled a can of blue spray paint from her backpack and shook it. She took off its cap and pointed its nozzle to the wall, where she wrote “TRIUMPHS FOREVER” in letters two feet high. Then she painted the infinity symbol with a “T” in the middle of it, just like she had seen at Camp Overlord. She stepped back when she was done and admired her handiwork.
“Nice,” Archer said from behind her. “That comes from your father, right?”
Jessica stared at the fresh blue paint on the white wall in front of her. “Yeah,” she said. “From the greatest man I ever knew.” She looked up to the stars twinkling through the broken roof after she answered, a mixture of pride and longing filling her soul. A tear fell down her cheek, then she whispered to the sky, “Miss you, Daddy.
”
ΔΔΔ
By the time two hours had passed, the Leftys had two of the base’s humvees loaded down with supplies for the road ahead. Camp Alamo in Texas was the destination, though they had not wanted to discuss it until the mission was over. It was the closest Lefty camp, and with Forager gone, the largest. They set out from the base in the darkest hour of night, taking Laz’s body with them so that Archer could give him a proper burial when morning came.
A half-mile outside the base, they stopped. They got out of their vehicles and looked back at the site of their retaliation.
“Do it,” Anna said to Houser.
He held a homemade detonator in his hand, something he had fashioned from an archaic-looking walkie-talkie. He pulled a long antenna from the top of it, then pressed the device’s talk trigger. A long beeping tone sounded for a moment. Then, in the distance, the hangar that housed the base’s drones lit up in a dramatic fireball. A rumbling sound like thunder followed. Random explosions from the hangar continued for ten minutes or more, as each drone exploded violently from the extreme heat.
The Leftys watched until the bursts of flame finally ceased and the fire became steady, burning like a giant pyre into the heavens. Then they got back into their vehicles and turned their sights to Texas, where they hoped to find their rebellion still strong.
18.
S alvador had called Quinn over half a dozen times with no answer. His friend was obviously avoiding him. He called down to the Omega XT guard desk on the bottom floor of his building.
“Send a man to room 562,” he said to the guard who answered. “Tell him to hold until I get there.” Then he hung up.
He finished his drink before he went down two floors to Quinn’s temporary corner apartment. He tried to calm himself, fighting the urge to assume the worst from his old friend. Jacob’s betrayal had been painful. But it would be nothing compared to the same from Quinn.
The Omega XT soldier was waiting for him in the hallway. Quinn’s was the same apartment where Jacob had lived during his time in Philadelphia. “How fitting,” Salvador said under his breath, making the connection for the first time.
“What’s that, sir?” the Omega XT asked.
“Nothing, soldier,” Salvador said.
He knocked hard three times on the door. There was no answer, just like the phone. Salvador turned his ear to the door and listened, trying to hear any movement behind it. But there was none.
“Kick it in,” he instructed the Omega XT.
The soldier didn’t hesitate. He took a step backward, then turned his body so that his weight was on his right hip. With one powerful kick, the door burst off its hinges and fell awkwardly onto the floor of the apartment’s foyer.
“You’re looking for one man,” Salvador said.
The Omega XT nodded and went through the doorway. Salvador followed him inside.
While the soldier moved methodically from room to room, Salvador slowly surveyed the living area of the apartment. Quinn had been there only a few days, but the apartment looked like he hadn’t been there at all. The furniture was undisturbed, the tables clear of decoration, the couch’s cushions firm and untouched. He went to the bedroom’s door and saw a single unpacked suitcase on the floor. The bed was made, appearing as pristine as the furniture he had just seen. Quinn had been restless for the last three days in Philadelphia. Salvador was certain of it.
The Omega XT soldier finished his search of the large apartment and declared it empty.
“The man staying here,” Salvador told him, “the man I must find, is someone you know. His name is Quinn Connors.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier answered. The Omega XT knew exactly who Quinn was. Every Omega XT did.
“I want you to find him,” Salvador continued. “Tonight. Gather other soldiers. Whatever means necessary. He’s in this city. Bring him to me.”
The soldier turned and left the apartment. Salvador’s instructions had been clear.
ΔΔΔ
The ambulance had arrived within minutes to the sidewalk outside Salvador’s building where Quinn had fallen earlier that day. The paramedics had checked his vitals and determined that he was stable enough for standard transport to the hospital. They stemmed the bleeding from the gash in his forehead, loaded him onto a gurney, and drove him there without much urgency.
The nurse who checked him into the emergency room searched the pockets of his clothes for identification after they had been removed, but she found nothing. No wallet or cell phone anywhere. She filled out the paperwork with the name “John Doe” and the information below that as “Unknown.” Then she wrote “Probable Concussion” and “Sutures applied; continue monitoring” after the doctor had attended to him. He was moved to a general room, where he was hooked up to machines that would detect any abnormalities in his breathing or heartrate.
It didn’t take the Omega XT long to find him later that night. The hospital was one of the first places they looked, a rule of thumb when searching for a missing person. There was no “Quinn Connors” in the hospital log, and only one “John Doe.” When they went to John Doe’s room and saw him, they knew their hunt was over.
Salvador arrived at the hospital not long after he received word of Quinn’s location. He spoke with the head doctor, discussing Quinn’s prognosis.
“There’s no way to know,” the doctor told him. “It could be a day, it could be a week. He took a significant blow to his head. He’ll wake up, but I can’t tell you when.”
Salvador remembered a similar conversation with another doctor months before. He had been told the same thing about the young girl named Jessica. The memory was fleeting.
“The second he’s awake,” Salvador told the doctor, “I want to be informed. Understand?”
“Of course,” the doctor answered.
Salvador stormed out of the hospital room. As he made his way from the hospital and back through the grid, he tried with all his might to keep his exasperation from overcoming him.
19.
T he victorious Leftys drove south from the Kansas army base through the black night. The drivers, utilizing the ANTI- night-vision goggles, guided their vehicles without headlights. They knew the damage they had inflicted meant that no one would be tracking them, but there was no sense in taking the risk. They would travel until dawn, rest during the day, then finish their journey to Camp Alamo the following night. It was the safest strategy, albeit unnecessary.
They had reached the Oklahoma border when the sun began to rise. They found a clump of trees standing in the flat grassy terrain a few hundred yards off the interstate. Archer, in the lead humvee, pointed them out to the driver. “There,” he said. They drove to the cover from possible overhead eyes, and there they camped for the day.
Before the morning had passed and after he had eaten a filling breakfast, Archer enlisted three of the Leftys to help him bury Laz. They carried his body out from the trees, further away from the road. Archer stopped when he noticed a small growth of purple asters sitting randomly among the bright green grass. “Here,” he said simply.
Archer and the three Leftys began to dig with shovels they had brought with them from the base. After an hour, they had a rectangular hole dug, five feet deep. They lowered Laz’s body into it with rope, then filled the dirt in on top of him. “Thank you,” Archer said to the others when they finished. Then he stayed there at his dead friend’s grave while the three Leftys walked back to the clump of trees. After a half-hour had passed, Archer returned to the others. He sat down against the trunk of a giant oak, where he stayed in silence for the rest of the day.
The afternoon moved by slowly. Most of the Leftys slept, battle-worn and sleep-deprived. Anna sat with Jacob on the eastern edge of the trees, watching an autumn thunderstorm form over the late-day plains a hundred miles away. They didn’t say much to each other. They just watched as the flashes of lightning lit up the insides of the dark gray clouds until the storm was out of sight, pushing its way east towa
rd Arkansas and then Tennessee.
“Mother Nature lives on,” Anna said.
“She always has,” Jacob answered. “And she always will.”
ΔΔΔ
As the sun began to set, the Leftys prepared themselves for another night of travel. Before they left, Jessica ran out to Laz’s fresh gravesite. She knelt next to the rectangle of piled dirt and bowed her head. “Thanks, Laz,” she said to the earth at her feet.
She came back to the trees quickly, jumping into the backseat of the lead humvee. Archer turned from his seat in front of her.
“You good, Jess?” he asked in his simple military way.
“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. Then she flipped the question on him. “Are you?”
He turned his head back around and looked out the window toward Laz’s grave. “I’ll be good when we get our world back from those bastards,” he said. He hit his fist on the dash of the humvee and instructed the driver, “Let’s go.”
The convoy eased out from the cover of the trees as full darkness set in over them. In a few more hours, they would be in Texas, then Camp Alamo.
20.
F rom her Sector 5 video feed in Texas, Salvador could see that Simone was incensed. She threw a glass of water that she was holding, then he heard the sound of it crashing into a wall that was out of the camera’s view.
“What the fuck?!?!” she yelled.
“I know, I know. I’m as upset about it as you are.”
“Well, you’re sure as hell not acting like it.”
The day after the Leftys’ surprise attack in Kansas, Salvador had sent an excursion team of Omega XT from their training base in South Dakota to investigate. Their report was worse than Salvador had expected. A group of Leftys had managed to kill everyone in the base and destroy all of the drones housed there. Based on the evidence they had gathered, the attack had been well-executed in its ambush strategy. And it told Salvador that a group of strong-willed Leftys had survived his drone strike on Camp Forager.