End of the Line

by Travis Hill

  “What the hell?” Hollingsworth asked again.

  “I just want some privacy,” I said, lowering myself onto a rock. Standing in an unpowered combat suit wasn’t something anyone did for fun.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Just to talk, just to hang out.”

  “You’re not going to tell me some weird story that will freak me out and make me avoid you until one of us gets wasted, are you?”

  I laughed. “Maybe. Maybe I just want you to tell me about Veronica Hollingsworth. Before she became Specialist Hollingsworth and perfected the proverbial thousand-yard stare.”

  “Why do you want to know about her?”

  “Because she’s the last normal human being I’ll ever meet. Everyone else is going to be dead, or a dead-eyed killer like you.”

  “And you.”

  “Sure. And me. But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

  “Are we?” she asked, doing her best to sit next to me on the rock, our awkward suits clanking and banging together until she was settled. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “Anything,” I said. “Just nothing about the war. I want to escape reality for a few minutes until Captain Terra calls us back and makes us continue on our death march.”

  “More like a death run,” she said, and I could see the glint of moonlight off her teeth. She sighed. “Fine. Veronica Hollingsworth was a smart, talented, carefree girl who loved to laugh.”

  “Sounds like a romance ad you’d put on a Wire dating node.”

  She tried to punch me in the arm, but it was like trying to fight underwater. She gave up and stuck out her tongue. I studied her face, seeing the beauty that I’d imprinted on my brain from the picture of the real Veronica. Under the deathly pallor of her taut skin—a sign of not enough sunlight or proper nutrition, my brain reminded me—was a woman who was still beautiful, inside and out. Even if she, like most of us, was now ruined by the horrors of war.

  “I honestly don’t know what to say,” she finally said, breaking eye contact with me. “I’m me. I don’t even remember that girl. We’ve already had this discussion.”

  “Fine,” I said, not wanting to push her any further. “We don’t have to talk about it. Or anything.”

  Her hand reached out in slow motion. The haptic feedback function of my suit would normally let me know she’d grabbed my hand, but with our suits powered down, I barely felt her armored fingers slip between mine. I was glad for once to be in my suit when there were no immediate threats. I knew my bare hand would start to sweat the instant hers touched it, just as I knew she’d end up clutching mine too tightly until my fingers began to ache. I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. As with Krista after I’d watched another segment of humanity snuffed out forever at Missoula, there was nothing to say.

  Veronica leaned her body in as far as she could, both of us trying to stifle giggles at the sounds our suits made as the composite armor scraped together. I didn’t want to look at her face. I knew she’d make me laugh out loud, and part of the competitiveness of being a Terran Marine was never losing a battle. We were in a battle of wills. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and looked at her face, expecting to see her mugging it up to make me laugh first. Instead, she had a lopsided smile waiting for me. She closed her eyes, leaned her neck forward, and squeezed my hand to let me know it was okay.

  I felt the horror of Missoula wash away instantly. I knew it would return when our lips no longer touched, but for now, all I wanted was for the moment to never end. My mind became blank, a blissful, almost orgasmic experience considering the suffering I’d put it through in the last two years. Especially over the last six months. Veronica’s tongue gently probed my lips, and I parted them for her.

  After thirty seconds of the slowest yet most desperate kiss I’d ever been a part of, we broke away from each other, only to immediately begin again with even more desperation, more longing. I mentally cursed Lowell for not letting us have at least a short downtime, even though I knew the fifteen minutes we’d spend trying to break a galactic record for consecutive orgasms would coincide with the moment the Kai showed up.

  “All right, kids,” Lowell’s voice said from behind us.

  I mentally cursed him again, this time for interrupting what might be the last intimate experience I’d ever have. He walked around the rock, the servos of his suit’s joints whisper quiet.

  “Sarge,” Hollingsworth asked, “why do you hate me?”

  Lowell blinked, surprised at the question. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re always interrupting me when I need alone time the most.”

  Sergeant Lowell laughed. “Keep your hormones in check for another twenty-four hours.” He knelt down in front of us and picked up a small twig, dragging it through the hard dirt. “Look, I understand. It’s a lonely world now. But you know why we can’t have any downtime.” Both of us nodded. “I promise if we’re clear for the next twenty-four hours, you two will be the first out of your suits. God knows I could use some release myself. But you can’t reproduce if you’re dead.”

  “I can’t reproduce for another three and a half years,” I said, reminding him that we’d all taken a birth control shot. Babies being born to actively engaged combat engineers was bad for everyone involved.

  Lowell grinned. “Yeah, but you can practice like a madman until you’re no longer shooting blanks. Like my Pappy always said, you gotta know how to work it to make sure you get a boy.”

  He winked and stood up. We powered up our suits and followed him back to the makeshift camp. Within twenty minutes, the twelve of us were asleep, parked in a circle, upright and facing outward. We left the suits in standby mode to monitor the passive threat sensors linked to the perimeter system and the 300’s. My last thought was that I’d regret sleeping in the damn CR-31, or worse, enjoy it almost as much sleeping in zero gravity, considering how exhausted I was.

  FOUR

  Hamilton was a ghost town. I saw a lot of evidence that the Kai had been through here already, and very little evidence that its citizens had put up a fight. We watched the town for a day and a half from the slopes of the Bitterroot Mountains before making our way across the narrow valley and into the city. After almost two days of utter boredom, Lowell ordered us to break up into pairs and scout around once we’d stored our gear under the blankets in an empty garage at the edge of town.

  “Jesus, Lofgren,” Grummond said ten minutes into our search.

  “What’s up?” I asked, turning toward his green marker in my HUD.

  “This is where they did ‘em in.” His voice was almost inaudible in my earbuds.

  “Did what?”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  I left the empty store I’d been rummaging around in and made my way over to Private Grummond. I froze mid-step when I realized what he was staring at. Ten meters in front of me, in the middle of a shopping complex parking lot, was a portable incinerator. The concrete for a hundred meters around was covered in ash. My feet had left imprints in it at least two centimeters deep. When I looked toward Grummond, I saw his trail leading in from a different direction.

  “Bastards,” Grummond growled.

  I said nothing as I stepped forward and stood beside him. I couldn’t take my eyes off the incinerator. It was at least four meters in height, with a cylinder large enough to hold ten humans at a time. I walked to the door and pulled it open. The interior was dark, and made more so from the carbon residue fused to the cylinder’s interior. I heard Grummond join me as I turned on my helmet light.

  “I’m not going in there, Lofgren,” he said. He sounded as edgy as I felt.

  “No sweat,” I said.

  I didn’t want to go in either, but I was too curious. The massive ovens the Kai had used in Little Rock and other metros had been built on-site to liquidate hundreds of thousands of humans at a time. We’d wondered about the smaller towns, expecting to find heaps of bodies that had been gunned
down, as that method seemed more efficient than building a small furnace or hauling a few thousand victims to the nearest metro.

  “Sarge,” I said over the Wire. “We got something here.”

  “Roger that,” Lowell replied. “Be there in ten.”

  “Don’t go in there,” Grummond said. It sounded almost like a plea.

  “Calm down,” I said, poking my head inside the doorway again.

  The walls were textured with carbonized residue. I felt drawn to the endless patterns made by the ridges, shapes, peaks, and valleys. The horror building inside me over my fascination with the remains of these obliterated humans struggled to overpower what I felt was a duty to somehow understand what I was seeing.

  “I’m serious,” Grummond said in my ear. “What if you go in there and it’s got some kind of sensor that detects you and thinks it’s time to fire up the grill?”

  “I guess I better hope this piece of shit suit has good insulation.”

  He laughed, against his will I’m sure. I gave him a thumbs-up then stepped inside the incinerator. I did a three-sixty, shining my helmet light on everything I could. When I got to the door, I saw Grummond holding it with both hands. It was a good idea, if it worked like human systems, which wouldn’t fire or turn on or do whatever dangerous things they were supposed to do if the door was open.

  I looked down at the floor and saw I was standing on a metal grate of some kind. I went down to one knee and cranked up the brightness on my helmet light. Ten centimeters below the grating was a series of oddly shaped nozzles. I stood up and looked toward the ceiling. A meter above my head, it was the same thing: a grating like the one I was standing on, and above it, more of the nozzles.

  “Are you seeing this?” I asked Grummond.

  “No,” he replied, his voice tight. “And I don’t want to, either.”

  I took one last look around and stepped back through the door. The whole thing was so simple. The Kai showed up, oven in tow, rounded everyone up, and then five or ten at a time into the fire they went. No one fought them other than a few who had to know they were doomed anyway. The ones who fought, I understood them. I knew the terror, the helplessness, the hopelessness they’d experienced, and how it fueled their need to die on their terms, taking as many of the Kai with them as they could.

  It was the ones who marched right into the flames that frightened me. Angered me. Why? Why would they go along with the Kai’s extermination plan? When we first saw it in Little Rock, we worried the Kai had some kind of mind control device that made humans docile or suggestive, which of course scared the shit out of those of us still fighting. We spent the first few days worrying about the Kai switching on a loudspeaker or brain wave generator and we’d all lay down our weapons, pop open our suits, and get in line with everyone else. That worry was heavily countered by the thought the Kai might use this form of mind dominance to turn the hundreds of thousands of civilians waiting to meet their maker into mindless soldiers we would have to gun down.

  The survivors we liberated in Little Rock were adamant the Kai hadn’t used any kind of telepathy or suggestive subliminal messages on them. They didn’t have an answer as to why they didn’t fight. Some said they didn’t have the necessary firepower. Others said it was hopeless since the Kai had the entire planet locked down. Most said nothing, ashamed that they had unconsciously agreed to allow the enemy to exterminate them efficiently. Sergeant McAdams told us how one of the women she talked to said it was better to get it over with quickly. The blank stare on the sergeant’s face as she relayed the woman’s words to us haunted me for almost a week.

  I felt the same hopelessness growing in me every day. I tried to imagine what it would be like to give in and allow the enemy to round me up. What would I think about while shuffling slowly along, waiting for my turn to walk through the doors? What would I think about as I stepped into the final chamber? What would my very last thought be?

  I popped my helmet and spewed vomit at least two meters. I fell to my knees, kicking up a cloud of ash. I felt it blanket my face, becoming a muddy bog as it soaked into the sweat, snot, and vomit around my mouth before joining the tears streaming from my eyes. Rage began to burn within me, doing its best to destroy the despair that consumed me. We were completely and totally fucked. My stomach rolled and bubbled for another minute, but nothing more came up.

  I dragged a finger under my eyes, feeling the strange coating of my suit’s glove as it wiped away the sludge that had formed on my cheeks. I looked up when I felt a hand gently touch the back of my head. Private Talamentez looked utterly horrified while trying to convey sympathy to me. The afternoon sunlight bounced around the inside of her helmet, reflecting from the tears streaming down her own cheeks. When I stood up, I almost threw up again at how my suit was covered in the ashes of the dead.

  “I don’t even know what to say,” Lowell whispered when he finally arrived.

  Kirilenko immediately came to me and began to wash my face. I could tell she was doing it mostly to not have to look at the scene behind her. Most of the squad did their best to avoid going near the furnace. A few stayed at the perimeter, as if they didn’t want to disturb the dead by walking through their remains.

  “We need to wipe this fuckin’ thing from the face of the earth,” Corporal Jordan demanded.

  “I agree,” Lowell said. “But we’re not going to do that.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Monohan asked.

  “Because I said so,” the sergeant snapped.

  “Bullshit,” Jordan said, his voice rising to a shout. “We can’t let this thing just sit here, Sarge. How many civilians do you think this thing burned up? We’re standing in what’s left of them!”

  “If it’s all the same to you, Corporal, I’d like to finish our recon, grab what supplies we can, and get the fuck out of here without the Kai showing up.”

  “This place is dead,” Monohan countered. “I’m with the corporal. Let’s torch this fucking thing. It’s an abomination.”

  “Tell you what,” Sergeant McAdams said. We heard the low whine of her rifle charging. “When your rank is lieutenant or higher, then you get to make decisions. Since it still looks like you’re wearing private’s stripes, you get to follow orders.”

  “This is bullshit,” Jordan said before stomping away.

  “Corporal!” Lowell shouted, the commanding tone serious enough to make me wince. Corporal Jordan stopped in his tracks. “Get back here. That’s an order!”

  Jordan turned around slowly, and I wondered for a second if he was pissed enough to attack Sergeant Lowell. McAdams had her plasma rifle aimed at the corporal’s chest, and Vasquez had his casually pointed at Monohan’s back. We watched in silence as Jordan returned to stand in front of the sergeant.

  “Listen to me, and listen to me good, Corporal Jordan,” Lowell said, his voice the very stereotype of a drill instructor’s. “You too, Private Monohan. And the rest of you. We might be the last humans left in the galaxy, but as long as I’m still alive and we don’t run across a lieutenant or higher, I’m your commanding officer. I make decisions that revolve around keeping you fuckwits alive, even though there doesn’t seem to be a reason to go on living anymore.

  “We’re Terran Marines. We live until we die. We’re not dead yet. We will be soon enough, but not today. So let’s stop acting like little children who don’t get their way because we didn’t destroy this fucking barbecue, and realize the reason we aren’t gonna do that is because it wouldn’t fucking solve anything! What do you think is going to come of blowing this fucker up? Huh? Admiral Heinke comes down in a dropship and pins a fucking medal on your chest and declares the war over?”

  The two men stared at each other until Jordan’s face broke into a grin.

  “Fuck Heinke,” he said. “Cocksucker is the one who got us into this mess.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s slightly pleasurable to know we’re still fighting down here while that son of a bitch is a frozen ball of meat floating around th
e asteroid belt. But it still stands. Blowing this thing up would make you and the rest of us feel a lot better for about ten minutes, until we realize this is just one town out of a million that has suffered. It would also bring someone or something around to see just what the fuck is going on.”

  “You’re right, Sarge,” Jordan said. “But this ain’t right.” He pointed to the incinerator and the ashes surrounding it. “This ain’t fuckin’ right.”

  “I know,” Lowell said, holding out his hand. “Are we cool?”

  “Yeah,” Jordan said, shaking his commander’s hand.

  “What about you?” Lowell said, turning to Monohan.

  “Yeah,” Monohan said, looking at the ground. “I’m sorry, Sarge. It’s just…”

  “I know,” McAdams said, lowering her rifle and putting her free arm around Monohan’s shoulder. “I keep thinking one day I’ll grow numb to this. Each time I see it, though…”

  “Fucking Lofgren got to see it up close,” Grummond said. I couldn’t tell if he sounded disgusted or amused.

  “What’s up with that?” Vasquez asked, frowning at me.

  “Looks like he paid the price for it,” Hollingsworth said, taking a theatrical step away from me and the muddy vomit near my feet.

  “I needed to see it,” I said. “I need to understand why.”

  “Why the Kai are liquidating our entire species?” Goldman asked.

  “No,” I said, looking around slowly. Everyone’s face was pointed at me, as if I were a one-man freak show. “I need to understand why we just allow ourselves to be gathered up and killed en masse. Everywhere we go, other than some of the metros, there are hardly any signs that people put up a fight. Why the fuck would they just walk into an oven?”