Defenders

by Will McIntosh

  Dominique leaned forward in her chair, examining the cities with the yellow circles over them. New York, Los Angeles, London, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, Mumbai, São Paulo, Mexico City. The Alliance couldn’t possibly be planning what she thought they were planning.

  “All told, the Alliance has seventeen cruise missile submarines on the open waters, doing their best to evade defender naval patrols.” President Wood II rested his hand on a table and took a deep, sighing breath, as if he didn’t want to say what he needed to say. Surely everyone in the room knew what he was going to say. “We’re going to target the defenders’ centers of gravity with nuclear strikes while we still can.”

  No one stated the obvious. There were still millions of people living in those cities under defender occupation. Bombing them meant bombing human civilians.

  “The defenders will not be expecting this,” the president said.

  No, they wouldn’t. Neither would the people living there. Dominique listened carefully as Peter Smythe, Wood’s secretary of defense, filled in the details. The strikes would kill an estimated 20 percent of the defenders’ forces and a quarter of their weapons capability. It would cripple their communications for a short time, during which Alliance ground forces would launch an all-or-nothing assault on their remaining assets.

  A woman Dominique didn’t know raised her hand. “I’m assuming Premier Santos made this call?”

  “The premier is against this action,” Wood said. “We’re acting in concert with China, Russia, India, and half a dozen other countries.”

  There was stunned silence. The Alliance had split? This was worse than Dominique thought.

  “Ms. Wiewall,” the president said. Dominique raised her head. “How will the surviving defenders react to this action?” he asked.

  “I can’t answer that question,” Dominique said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Dominique shrugged. “I’m not a military strategist. Their reaction will be whatever gives them the best chance of defeating us. Your military people will have to advise you on what that would be.”

  57

  Kai Zhou

  July 11, 2045. Mapleton, Utah.

  “There they are.” Luis pointed at the horizon, where tufts of white smoke rose toward the sky. Kai had been expecting mushroom clouds, like the ones he’d seen in pictures of Hiroshima, but these were thinner, maybe because they were tactical nukes rather than big bombs.

  No one said anything as they cruised along Route 89, elbow to elbow in the back of the open troop transport. Even if Kai felt like cheering the deaths of tens of thousands of defenders despite all the human lives that were being snuffed out at the same time, someone within earshot might have loved ones living in Los Angeles.

  Kai wondered what he would have done if, when they were informed yesterday about the nuclear strikes, Atlanta had been one of the targets. Would he still be here, willing to fight? No. Not a chance. There would have been nothing he could do to save Errol, but he wouldn’t be carrying a rifle now.

  He understood that it was necessary. It was still a terrible thing to do.

  Kai fingered the plastic sack holding the radiation shield he’d been issued. They’ll help, Sergeant Schiller had said as they lined up to get one, but there’s no guarantee you won’t get sick. I’m not going to lie to you: You probably will get sick. But with the shields, you’ll live. How comforting. In an ideal situation, they would have twenty thousand big, expensive radiation hazmat suits to hand out, but this was not an ideal situation.

  The convoy pulled off the highway at the next exit. They passed a shopping center with a Target, an Applebee’s, CVS, Golden Dragon Chinese. A little farther along they passed a strip mall. Just beyond it, they turned into a neighborhood, past a big sign that read WINDMILL PLANTATION.

  It was one of those endless suburban neighborhoods. The expansive lawns, now nothing but neck-high weeds, must have needed constant watering during the hot summers. Most of the residents had probably worked in Salt Lake City, commuting an hour to work every day. It was long deserted. Everyone had fled during the Luyten War (either that, or the Luyten had killed them), and afterward none of the survivors of the war had reason to return and claim a free house in neighborhoods like this one. There was nothing here, no point in living here. There were plenty of free, fully furnished houses closer to the cities.

  “Four to a house,” Sergeant Schiller called as the transport ground to a stop.

  Kai followed Luis, Shoelace, and Tina toward a big beige house sitting on what must have been two acres. Tina reached the door first, pushed it open, and jumped back with a shriek.

  “It’s a nest.”

  Kai joined Luis and Shoelace at the door to take a look. Sure enough, some Luyten had made itself at home. Fabric stretched all over, cutting the room into weird semi-enclosed chambers. He’d seen videos of Luyten nests, but he’d never seen one for real. He stepped past the others and went inside.

  “You’re sick,” Shoelace said. “Seriously ill.”

  “What?” Kai glanced back at Shoelace. “You afraid a few starfish stayed behind? Maybe one’s still hiding out in here?” He ran his fingers over the fabric. It was tight as a drum, and softer than it looked.

  “Let’s just find a place to sleep,” Shoelace said.

  Sleep. That was the magic word. Kai followed Shoelace and the others down the driveway, toward the next house. He was so tired. When was the last time he’d gotten even five hours’ sleep at once? During basic training? Had they gotten five hours a night during basic? He couldn’t remember. And in the morning they were going into a city that had just been nuked. Yes, he needed some sleep.

  The next house was fine. Without a word they split up, located bedrooms, and dragged mattresses—still in dusty sixteen-year-old bedding—into the living room.

  As Kai lay down, his thoughts immediately turned to Errol and Lila, as they always did, and he felt the now-familiar stab of pain and panic. Were they all right? Kai knew Lila’s aunt Ina would protect Errol with her life, but the defenders had overrun Atlanta. Bombs and bullets had flown. Kai had no way to know if they’d survived, and what was happening to them if they had. He was tortured over his decision to report for military service.

  Lots of his comrades had young kids, though; that’s why they were here, to fight for those kids, for their future.

  “Do you ever wonder what would happen if the defenders won?” Tina asked from the mattress to Kai’s left.

  “Come on, shut up. That’s the last thing we need to think about,” Luis said. He was sitting on the couch, thumbing through a tattered book of comic strips he’d found in one of the rooms.

  “I’m just asking. I’m not saying they’re gonna. But if they did, what would they do? Would they just be in charge? Like, they get to be the presidents of all the countries, and we don’t get to vote?” Tina sounded almost relaxed. All of these people, his friends, seemed to be taking it in stride. Kai could barely stand it; each moment of being here, in this strange house in a strange town, missing his family, filthy, tired beyond anything he’d ever imagined, was torture. The defenders didn’t sleep, but people needed sleep or they’d just break down.

  Kai was breaking down. He wiped a tear as it rolled to the bridge of his nose. He’d always thought of himself as tough, like steel, forged in the streets of D.C. during the Luyten War. He didn’t feel tough now. He felt like that twelve-year-old kid hiding in a bathroom, lost, cold, scared, ready to accept help from anyone, even a starfish.

  “I just want to understand what we’re fighting for,” Tina went on. “They can’t put us all in prison camps like we did with the Luyten. There are too many of us. How would they feed us if we were all in prison camps?”

  “Would you shut up?” Luis said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, they’re going to build a prison camp the size of Texas and put us all in it.”

  “Then what are they gonna do? That’s what I’m asking?”

 
; “I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Luis spit on the carpet, studied the glob of spit for a moment before rubbing his boot over it. He stabbed at his temple with one finger. “They’re crazy. They’re psycho. There’s no telling what they’d do.”

  The front door swung open. Sergeant Noonan stuck his head inside. “Everybody outside. One minute. Let’s go.” Then he was gone.

  “Oh shit.” Tina fumbled with the zipper on her pack, stuffing the things she’d just set out by the mattress back inside.

  As Kai lifted his pack and slung it on his back, he wondered, what now? What fresh new hell was coming their way?

  They joined their squad outside. Kai watched some of the latecomers, crashing out through front doors and sprinting down driveways so they wouldn’t be late.

  When everyone was assembled in a loose line on the sidewalk, Sergeant Schiller raised his voice and said, “The stilts are coming. They’re making an all-out siege, from both coasts.”

  Kai exchanged a Holy shit look with Shoelace.

  “Their bombers are on the way, supported by a fighter squadron. After that, in all likelihood one airborne division, possibly two, will parachute into the area. They’re trying to take Salt Lake City and the surrounding area as a jumping-off point for an overland siege of our center of gravity in the Cheyenne Mountain bunker.”

  “How many will be coming by land after the paratroopers?” someone down the line asked.

  “All of them,” the sergeant answered.

  That got the whole division buzzing. The sergeant waited, hands clasped behind his back, letting the chatter die down naturally.

  “So this is it. We must stop them here. Two additional reinforced divisions will be setting up to the north and south of our position. The rest of our western forces are scrambling to intercept the ground forces before they get here. We have a lot to do before they get here, and not much time.”

  Kai looked out over the neighborhood. It was teeming with activity. Bulldozers were pushing vehicles into piles to form barriers; the few engineer soldiers they had were setting land mines in the road. Tanks and artillery were spreading out, finding protected spots. Soldiers were dispersing, seeking cover in houses, strip malls, wooded areas. Many wore tan camo, but most were dressed in jeans, stained sweatshirts, work boots, sneakers—whatever clothes they didn’t mind getting dirty, or bloody. Many had nothing but a pistol. They hadn’t been through even the cursory basic training Kai and his comrades had received. Shoot at their faces was probably the full extent of their training.

  “We shouldn’t have dropped those nukes. It just pissed them off worse.” Tina was watching the horizon, where smoke rose from a copse of scrub pines that had been torched to improve sight distance, but her eyes were glassy, unfocused.

  She had a star-shaped scar on her temple. Kai wondered how she’d gotten it; he was aware that the thought was bizarre, given the situation, and probably a sign that he was losing his grip.

  “It just sped up their timetable,” Shoelace said. “They were coming one way or another.”

  “At least we would have lived a few more weeks,” Tina replied. She sounded listless, more depressed than afraid.

  Kai waited for someone to contradict her, but Shoelace went on cleaning his rifle, leaning up against the side of the house. Luis was listening to music with earbuds, his head bobbing, eyes closed.

  A group of eight or nine terrified people was standing in the weeds nearby. They might have been an extended family—men and women, ranging in age from early teens to their sixties. More volunteers kept arriving all the time, answering a desperate last-minute call.

  “When the sergeant said, ‘This is it,’ he didn’t mean the war’s over after this, did he?” Tina asked, stubbing out a cigarette on the house’s foundation.

  “If the defenders overrun our center of gravity and kill the president, drive a wedge through the middle of the country, and meet in the middle…” Kai shrugged. “It’s over for the United States, that’s for sure.”

  Tina considered this.

  Kai had been watching the recently arrived group out of the corner of his eye. Now two of them broke off and approached: a stocky guy in his forties, and an Asian woman Kai guessed was his wife.

  “Excuse me,” the stocky guy said. “We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re not clear about our role here. The officer who briefed us didn’t tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

  “Shoot at their faces,” Tina said without looking at them, as smoke trailed out of her nostrils.

  Kai rose. “Come on.” He put a hand on each of the newcomers’ shoulders and led them back in the direction of their group. “First, find an empty house, a drainage ditch, some cover to fight from. We’re facing a superior force, so we spread out, make them come to us one group at a time.” He let them absorb this for a moment before continuing. It was a lot to take in. “The first thing that’s going to happen is, you’re going to see our fighter planes overhead. That means their bombers are close.” The two newcomers nodded, looking grateful, and so utterly lost and out of their element. Kai knew the feeling; four months ago he hadn’t known a howitzer from a supply truck. “The defenders will have fighters to protect their bombers, and their fighters are more advanced than ours, so that might not go well, depending on how many planes they have and how many we have.” Kai pointed at each of the newcomers in turn. “Don’t shoot at the planes. You’re just wasting ammunition. Stay down.”

  The woman looked up, blinking rapidly, trying not to cry. He knew that feeling, too. There was that moment when you realized this was real, that the defenders really were coming, and they were coming to kill you. Kai gave the woman a moment to get hold of herself, then he went on.

  “Soon after that, more planes will come, and defenders will parachute out of them. When you see the defenders coming, that’s when you start shooting.”

  “Go for their faces,” the stocky guy said.

  “That’s right.” Defenders were hard to bring down with bullets designed to kill humans, especially given the extensive body armor they wore. Your best bet was a face shot; that way you knew they wouldn’t get back up. They were fast. So fucking fast. “Don’t move around; movement draws attention to you. Stay put.”

  Kai raised his eyebrows, waiting for any questions.

  “Thank you.” The guy held out his hand. “I’m Jaden, by the way.” Kai shook Jaden’s hand, then shook the woman’s hand. Her name was Julie. Jaden and Julie. He wished them luck.

  As he walked back toward his friends, Kai heard the fighter jets’ engines coming from the east. A moment later they shot past overhead, going to intercept the defenders’ aircraft west of their position.

  “I’m not as limber as I once was,” Shoelace said to Kai as he rejoined his friends. Kai raised an eyebrow, not sure what Shoelace was getting at.

  “I’d like to kiss my ass goodbye, but I don’t think I can reach it anymore.”

  Kai burst out laughing, and Shoelace joined in. Kai gave him a hug, and they clapped each other on the back.

  They could hear the aerial battle, but couldn’t see it. Kai had seen enough of them to know what was happening. The defender fighters were big, almost twice the size of the human model. The defender model looked a lot like the Alliance’s YF-23, and what it lacked in maneuverability, it made up for in speed and firepower.

  A half hour later, they heard the rumble of bombers. Kai and his friends headed inside the house they’d chosen, to ride out the initial bombing. It was a nondescript house near the center of the development; there was no reason it should be targeted over thousands of others spread over dozens of square miles, but some of them were going to get hit. It was all about odds, an oversized game of Russian roulette.

  Slinking over, looking almost apologetic, Jaden and Julie’s clan came up behind them.

  Tina waved them on. “Come on in, if you’re coming.”

  Anyone who wasn’t terrified by the sight of defender bombers on the horizon was afraid of n
othing. They were so big, and flew in such tight formation, that it was like a steel storm cloud blanketing the sky. As the air vibrated with the sound of their engines, Kai did what he’d always done in these situations: He closed his eyes and played poker in his mind. He found he could enter a trancelike state if he concentrated hard enough. It didn’t eliminate his terror, but it gave him distance from it.

  The bombs began to fall. Mobile antiaircraft guns boomed. The newcomers huddled on the floor behind the couch. Lisa was thumbing through a coffee-table book of dog breeds. Luis listened to his music.

  Somewhere down the street, a house took a direct hit. Kai heard pieces of wood and concrete thunking on their roof. He drew the five of clubs and the eight of hearts, and waited to see the bet. Maybe he would bluff. He did more bluffing in imaginary games, because imagining others playing out a hand wasn’t as absorbing as playing the hand himself.

  Unbidden thoughts of Lila broke into his game. Kai saw her as she’d been the first time they met, at a genetic engineering conference Oliver had taken him to. Kai had asked to go only because it was in Miami, in February. When Kai saw Lila, trailing behind his dad’s friend, Dominique Wiewall, he’d ditched his plans to go to the beach and, to Oliver’s confusion and surprise, sat through an utterly incomprehensible presentation just so he could be near Lila. She’d been so wonderfully not what he associated with academic types. Dyed blond hair in dreadlocks, too much eye makeup, her expression daring you, just daring you, to piss her off and see what happened. That night, he’d convinced her to go with him to a poker game.

  The silence startled him out of his semi-dream state. He lifted his head, went to look out the windows with the others, at the ruined houses, the leaning mailboxes, the scorched and battered ground. Smoke acted like a thick fog, making it difficult to see more than a few hundred yards, but he could see enough damage to get a sense of where they stood.