by Chris Bostic
“Seeing how we missed lunch and dinner, I’m down with that.” Pete leaned over his own pack. “What do we have?”
“Same ole grit.” Joe rummaged through Laura’s pack and felt plastic pouches in the bottom. When he pulled one out, his face blanched. “Whoops.”
“Whoa, a freaking doll!” Pete exclaimed. “Why’s that in plastic?”
“It’s…it’s about to fall apart,” Joe said softly, holding it carefully as he imagined a younger version of Laura cuddling it to her chest as she slept.
“Are we soldiers or babies?” Pete said.
“You don’t have anything to remind you of home?” Leisa snapped.
Joe didn’t, but he wondered what Leisa might have. Before he could ask, Pete exclaimed, “But a baby doll?”
“Drop it,” Joe said, but not before Leisa’s icy stare turned to daggers.
“It was her mom’s…like the only thing she had left, you callous-”
“Easy!” Joe stepped between them. He quickly, but gently, stuck the doll back in the backpack and fished out the right packets as Leisa turned to pace behind him.
“Here.” Joe tossed a granola-like substance to Pete. “Chew on this and keep your big mouth shut.”
“Whatever.”
Joe turned to Leisa and handed her a packet. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for him,” she said curtly, but took the food.
“I’m not…” He caught himself. “Well, maybe I am.”
“Let’s just get going.” Leisa looked to the sky, and Joe followed her gaze. Though it remained much darker under the canopy, he found spots of blue visible in places. It was going to be another brutally hot, clear day.
He ripped open a packet and guzzled it down in two gritty, painful swallows.
“Not much, is it?” he said once he’d washed it down with a sip from his tubing.
“All the nutrients you need,” Pete wisecracked, parroting the quartermaster’s words from back when they’d packed to head out of base camp. “A fella can live a month on three square packets a day.”
Joe snorted. “We better not be here that long.”
“We will if you two don’t quit your yapping.” Leisa had already finished her crumbs and shouldered her backpack. She grabbed her coilgun and ejected the magazine to find the bad news. “I’ve got maybe ten bolts left.”
“That’s not good.” Joe picked up his gun to check his ammunition but pulled up short. A faint red light glowed along the stock where the meter should’ve shown green. He shook the gun and stared again at the reading. “Oh, man. My power’s been fading just sitting here.”
“It’s not supposed to do that, is it?” Pete asked.
“Not really,” Leisa answered. “Maybe a little when you first flick it on.”
“I’ve got maybe ten percent. It was forty last night, I swear.”
“I’d swear at that too,” Pete joked, but his face fell when he picked up his own gun. “I’m down to twenty.”
“I don’t have any extra power packs,” Joe said. “You guys?” Two grim expressions served as a reply. “Great.”
“We could pitch the guns,” Pete said to the surprised reactions of his companions. “I don’t have much ammo either, and…”
“And what?” Leisa asked.
“And maybe the savages will go easy on us if we’re unarmed. It’s not like we can fight ‘em off.”
“Savages? Go easy?” Joe scoffed. “Remember what Connie said.”
“Yeah, not to believe everything he said,” Leisa replied.
“Well, they’re not taking me alive,” Joe said.
“Sometimes you can’t control what happens,” Leisa reasoned. “If they surprise us, you might not get a shot off.”
“And then you’re dinner,” Joe finished with another of Connie’s wild assumptions.
Pete had been jerking his head back and forth like a tennis match. He stepped between them and said, “So you’re saying we should or shouldn’t dump the guns and hustle outta here?”
“Well, we need to be hustling,” Leisa said, which drew an approving nod from Joe.
“I agree, but I’m not going back to camp unarmed.” Joe visibly cringed. “We come back without our weapons, and they’ll brand us as cowards or worse. Our own guys will probably shoot us for being deserters or something.”
“Connie might’ve actually been right about that,” Leisa agreed. “I don’t trust some of those officers.”
“More like any of ‘em,” Joe muttered.
“Fine.” Pete slung his coilgun over his shoulder. “I’ll lug the stupid thing, even if the battery’s dead when we get there.”
“Better it than you.” Joe smirked.
He shouldered his pack and followed Leisa off to the south. Pete brought up the rear, mumbling under his breath. The group kept to single file for quite a while, going slow through the brushier spots. In the more open sections of the forest, they didn’t bother to creep from tree to tree. Speed was more important than stealth, especially during the daytime when the savages seemed to bed down like deer and sleep until nightfall was about to settle in.
Pete even quit muttering once they moved into the tall-canopied sections of the forest. They still had to watch out for the occasional vine or low-hanging branch, but they made much better time.
Every now and then, a small clearing would open up in the valley, but none more than a dozen paces across. They didn’t bother to creep there either, or go out of their way to avoid them. With a quick glance, they kept right on going, staying close to the edge in case they had to run.
The river finally made an appearance by late morning. Leisa spotted it first, and brought the group to a tired stop.
“Is that the same stream?” Pete asked.
“I think so,” Joe said, even though the water crossing had grown to nearly fifty feet in width. “There’s no wading across here.”
Unlike the gurgling upper reach, the river had become fat and lazy. Water swirled in pools and eddies, but mostly appeared as flat as a sheet of dirty brown glass.
“We’ve come a long way,” Leisa said. “A really long way.”
Joe turned to look at her, and found himself enchanted by the water’s reflection in her eyes. “Yeah, real far. My feet are feeling it.”
“We can rest for a while.” Leisa knelt next to a thick tree and slipped off her backpack.
“Good call.” Pete tossed his pack and helmet to the ground. He elicited a chuckle from Joe as he stretched out on the gravelly dirt and used the lumpy pack as a pillow.
“That was a solid morning of hiking,” Leisa said. “We’re doing good.”
“Lucky we haven’t run across any savages yet,” Pete said with his eyes already closed. “Shouldn’t we find our lines soon?”
“I hope so.” Joe leaned against a tree next to Leisa’s and looked to her for confirmation. “Connie just said to follow the river. Not how far.”
She shrugged. “There’s no telling. All we can do is hike.”
“And nap,” Joe said, gesturing toward Pete. “Might as well join him.”
He slid to the ground across from Leisa where he could keep his eyes on the river. She watched the forest behind him, which was probably the smarter of the two places. The savages were more likely to come at them from that way, but Joe knew it was best that they kept eyes peeled in all directions. At least as long as they could—and his were already getting heavy.
Joe pulled off his helmet with a sigh. He scooted to the side until his feet were almost touching Leisa’s, and leaned his head back against his pack.
“Don’t you be sleeping on me,” she whispered.
“I wish I was…on you,” he mumbled with a grin.
“Say what?”
He chuckled, growing delirious from heat and exhaustion. “Nothing.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything.”
“You’re strange.” Leisa harrumphed and shifted her position.
Joe thought she was cute when she was angry—and basically any other time. Nothing could change that. Not her being tired, filthy, scared, or exhausted. However, Regulator’s rules were rules, and he couldn’t act on those feelings, especially not then. But he thought maybe they could talk. That might get the frown off her face, and keep him awake.
“What’s your item from home?”
Leisa cocked her head to the side. “My what?”
“You know, what you keep with you? Like Laura had in her pack.”
“Oh, that.” Leisa cleared her throat. “It’s nothing much.”
“Well…”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell you.” She shot a sidelong glance at Pete, who moaned softly. Joe assumed that meant he was already asleep. The guy could nap through a firefight. “You’ll think it’s silly.”
“I didn’t with Laura’s.”
“True.” She looked Joe directly in the eyes. “Tell me about yours first.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Why not?”
He practically snarled as he said, “What’s to remember? Happy times?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your parents or something?”
“I guess.” Joe decided she had a point. His folks did the best they could despite the overwork and illness. And there was his little brother. It wouldn’t do for him to run out on them. Maybe there wasn’t a point in trying to desert from the Regulators. He had nowhere to go, and that was the hardest part of all.
“Joe?” Leisa said, pulling him from his grim thoughts. “You alright?”
“Never better.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out angrily. She didn’t deserve that. He weakly offered up an apology, simply saying, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She got a faraway look in her eyes, but returned to meet his with steely determination. “We’re getting outta here. I know it.”
“I don’t even think I care anymore,” he said, but he knew in the back of his mind that it wasn’t entirely true.
“Don’t say that. You’ve gotta have something to live for.” Leisa unbuttoned her shirt pocket and reached inside. “This is my reason.”
She pulled out a picture and turned it to face him. A handsome, smiling boy about their age stared back at Joe. His heart sank even lower when he remembered her kissing her fingers and pressing them to that shirt pocket, and he felt even less like living.
“This is-”
“Shh.” Joe interrupted her with a finger mashed across his lips. Over the top of the photo, across the river, the leaves parted. A pair of savages poked their melon-shaped heads out of the woods.
CHAPTER 18
“Wake up Pete,” Joe whispered without taking his eyes off the woods. “We’ve got company.”
Joe slouched even lower, willing himself to blend in to the forest floor. The woods came alive downriver from their position. A growing number of savages flooded out of the trees to stand at the bank.
He gripped his coilgun in his hands with white knuckle intensity, and tried to force his ragged breathing to slow. It was impossible to control his heartbeats.
The first savages walked to the edge. Upon a whistled command from someone farther back, they slid down the muddy bank into the river. With rifles held over their heads, they waded into the water.
“What is it?” Pete said once Leisa had him roused.
“Savages,” Joe whispered and pointed over his friends’ heads. “Crossing the river.”
“Dang.” Pete slid to his side, and Joe cringed as a dry leaf crunched. But the sounds in the woods had grown exponentially louder as the whole Kunuri Army seemingly converged on the river to cross.
Joe watched with incredulity as a group of savages burst out of the woods carrying homemade rafts of logs lashed together.
The first two men made it out to the middle of the river where they apparently lost contact with the bottom. One ended up flailing.
Whistling from the far bank encouraged them. The better swimmer of the two sank his rifle and a pack full of gear to help the weaker swimmer the rest of the way across.
Teamwork, Joe thought. And sacrifice, though he figured there was no doubt the savages were well-armed and the weapon could be easily replaced. But to his amazement, as he watched them file out of the woods, a number of the savages appeared to be weaponless.
They slid down the bank in waves, and turned back to catch the rafts as they were lowered down the slope. As they stood in knee-deep water along the shore, boxes of all shapes and sizes were passed down the bank and loaded onto the rafts.
“They’re not for the men,” Joe remarked.
“What aren’t?” Pete said.
“The rafts. They’re for floating supplies across.”
Leisa seemed as amazed as Joe when she said, “To think we have trucks and hovers for that kinda stuff. That’s crazy.”
“They’re like pack mules,” Joe noted, seeing how every man carried a heavy pack on his back. They seemed far heavier than what the Regulator’s carried. The savages’ backs bowed as they lumbered toward the bank to slide the overloaded packs down to the rafts.
Then came wooden crates and metal tubes.
“Mortars,” Leisa noted as she scooted over next to Joe. Her shoulder brushed his, and he recoiled at the innocent touch. A touch he would’ve craved so badly earlier was even more taboo now—and not just because thousands of savages were crossing before their eyes.
“Shouldn’t we get the heck outta here?” Pete whispered.
Joe had already considered the idea but quickly discounted it again. “No sense risking a move. We’re hidden pretty well.”
“Yeah, these guys look like they’re moving out,” Leisa added.
To Joe, it was more a question of where. Once their first rafts made it across and were unloaded, savages swam them back to load up a second time. It seemed obvious to Joe that this was some kind of supply train, though the number of savages seemed to indicate more than that. Like maybe this was a whole army group on the move, and that didn’t sit well with him.
After all their walking, Joe had hoped he was nearly out from behind enemy lines, but the sight he witnessed gave him no optimistic feeling. They were as alone as ever before, and their path down the river didn’t seem to be all that viable anymore.
“The crates are mortar shells,” Leisa was saying as Joe tuned in again. “I’m thinking there’s food and ammo in those heavy packs.”
“It’s no wonder they’re so hard to root out of these hills,” Joe said. “They’re so old tech that our new tech can’t keep up.”
“That’s ‘cause we’re lazy,” Leisa said with a tight grin. “Like Connie would say. Regulators are too soft for manual labor.”
“I think he’d almost respect these guys,” Joe said, still watching as endless soldiers and material made their way across the river.
“I think he did. He just…you know.” Any further words seemed to get caught in Leisa’s throat.
“You’re upset?” Joe whispered. “I get why it hurts so bad to lose Laura and Kayla, but Connie? After the way he treated you?”
“I forgave him. And you know what? I think he really meant what he said.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “All that rude stuff?”
“No, not that. At the end…about how he only did that to make me tougher.”
“He did a pretty good job of that.”
“I think so too. I wouldn’t have made it this far without him pushing me. He could’ve done it nicer, but it worked.” She turned from watching the river to look at Joe. “He was a complicated guy…always hard to read.”
Joe knew what she meant. Up until the end it’d been impossible to see the real Connie through the carefully constructed façade he’d built.
Eventually, the last raft was pulled up the bank into the woods, and all grew quiet again.
“How long do we give ‘em?” Pete asked. He’d rolled onto his back and looked ready to take a nap again.
Joe was ready to sleep
himself. He’d been through the whole range from panic to curiosity, and found himself almost too tired to move. He sat up and stretched his arms over his head.
Looking at his coilgun resting on the ground next to his helmet, Joe said, “Guess we know ten bolts aren’t going to be enough.”
“We need more like ten thousand,” Leisa said. “Those guys just kept coming and coming.”
“Our guys have no idea what’s headed their way.” Joe shook his head and exhaled. “We should probably warn them.”
“If we knew where to find them.”
Joe shot Leisa a fake hostile look. “You’re a real downer.”
She shrugged. “Just keeping it real.”
“Too real.” Pete’s eyes closed again. “I’m gonna pretend this is all a dream.”
“You’ll have time for that later,” Leisa replied. “We really should try to find our guys and warn them.”
Joe grabbed his helmet and pulled it back on. “Yeah, I kinda doubt we can move any faster than the savages, but we’ve gotta try.”
“Fine.” Pete groaned and sat up. “Lead on, fearless leaders.”
Leisa looked to Joe. “Where to?”
He turned from staring at the river to the imposing hillside above them. She followed his eyes and nodded slowly.
“I was thinking that too,” she said.
“It doesn’t look so bad.”
For a change, there was solid green tree cover, and none of the blackness where the Regulators’ drones had scorched many of the other hillsides.
“Where?” Pete asked. “What are you two talking about?”
“Keep up with us, bud.” Joe pointed through the trees to the peak of the ridge towering to their south. “We’re goin’ climbing.”
“Great. My feet don’t hurt enough yet.”
“That’s the spirit.” Joe hopped up and offered a hand to Pete. He pulled his buddy up and turned back to Leisa. She was on hands and knees after putting on her helmet. With only a minor hesitation, he offered a hand to her too.
“Thanks.” She took it without reluctance and pulled herself up, but didn’t immediately let go. The touch grew more awkward for him, and he wriggled his hand out of her grasp.