by S D Tanner
“Sound off.”
He hadn’t directed his order to anyone specifically and only his squad answered.
“Judge.”
“Rok.”
“Ash.”
“Flak.”
“Hawk.”
The Dead Force must have heard his order and yet not one of them replied. Puzzled why they wouldn’t obey his order, he barked, “Sound off.”
“We just did, Tag,” Rok replied irritably.
“He’s talking to the Dead Force,” Judge said. “Guess you’re not their commander, Tag.”
A moment earlier they had fought on his command, but now they were ignoring him. Perhaps it was a matter of threat. When he’d been under attack they’d defended their own regardless of who was in command. The venators had lost the fight, so now the Dead Force were heading toward the surface as a single unit. Thousands of men and women were driving powerfully through the water.
Swimming upward, he wondered if he’d just done the wrong thing. What if they wouldn’t fight for him? Jessica had broken the squad’s protocols, meaning they could think for themselves, but he’d seen no evidence of that in the other Defensors. What if they could only ever be mindless drone robots? Is that what he’d been before Jessica broke his programming? How many innocent people had he killed to destroy civilization?
Once he would have given his life for a brother in uniform, but now he began to wonder what was swimming beside him. Not all men were equal, some were better than others, but not for reasons easily measured. A good man knew when to hold his fire, but none of the Defensors had. The aliens had taken apart their brains, turning even the good soldiers into bad ones. He’d been no different and, if it weren’t for Jessica, he would still be a puppet killer unable to remember what he’d done. Jessica was the key to their freedom, meaning her life was more important than his own. He needed the Dead Force to save the only person able to stand up to the aliens, but he was swimming in a sea of sharks. When they broke the surface, they might just as easily destroy him as join a battle against an enemy they didn’t know they had.
“Judge…?”
Unable to explain the fear that had gripped him, he let the question drift away. How could he explain that he might have unleashed an enemy worse than the aliens? His hatred for the aliens was pathological, but Judge didn’t share it. Maybe the soldiers swimming by his side wouldn’t agree with him either. If they didn’t then nothing could ever be right again. Earth would be forever lost, becoming merely an outpost of an invading force no one had ever known existed. Humans would disintegrate further into chaos until the likes of Merc defined civilization. Only he and the squad would remember what the world had been, and even that would be lost once the aliens restored their protocols. Failing to win the Dead Force would be more than losing an argument, it would be the death knell for everything that once was.
Seeming to understand what was worrying him, Judge replied, “No man is an island, Tag.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Dead Men Talk
Fewer people on Earth meant the once congested beaches were perfectly clean. Although the tide still ebbed and flowed, the sea didn’t wash the sand with polluted water, leaving it stained with filth and trash. He might have appreciated the sunny, blue skies and crisp, white sand had it not been for the thousands of soldiers emerging from the sea. Dressed in their armor, some had removed their helmets as they trudged up the beach. A few had been injured in the fight, not that there was any blood on any of them. One man was holding a torn flap of skin that extended from his forehead to the line of his jaw, and on the other side of his face was the familiar eye cover that stretched across his left ear. No doubt the man also had a prosthetic arm beneath his armor just as he did.
Silent and weary, the soldiers’ boots dug deep into the sand, until eventually they reached the edge of the beach where shrubby bushes took over from the crisp white shore. In the distance was a dark and broken pier that abruptly disappeared into the water. Skeleton legs stuck out from the water, but the walkway they had once supported was gone. There were no boats on the water, nor were any aircraft flying over them. The beach must have been abandoned long ago, and all that remained were the collapsing structures of what must have once been houses.
Standing along the shoreline, appearing to be lost about what to do next, the Dead Force were staring expressionlessly at the houses ahead of them. He walked further into the shrubs, until he found a two-story structure, which might have once been a restaurant or maybe a house. Stretching upward, he grabbed hold of a ledge, hauling himself onto what had been the second level of the building. Now only two walls were left standing, and the metal frame of the building was deeply rusted. It creaked under his weight and dribbles of concrete landed on the ground. Standing with his legs astride, he held onto a chunk of the collapsing wall for balance.
Scanning across the beach, the Dead Force were waiting for orders, but he wasn’t sure they wanted to hear his. Further down the beach, someone waved at him. It was Judge, and he was pushing his way past the idle soldiers. The rest of his squad had sounded off, so they had to be somewhere on the beach, not that they could help him.
When Judge reached his position, he shielded his eyes and looked up at him. “What’s the plan, Tag?”
Looking past Judge at the thousands of expressionless faces staring back at him, he replied, “We need an army.” Using his free hand to gesture at the motionless men and women, he added, “Looks like an army to me.”
Still shielding his eyes from the sun, Judge shook his head. “What do you expect to achieve even with an army?”
“I have to free Jessica.”
A soldier in armor was pushing his way between the men and women. Once the man was closer, he recognized Rok’s roughly carved features. Another man was making his way across the beach toward him. One-by-one, his squad were finding their way to his position.
Overhearing his last words, Rok flicked his head at a motionless soldier next to him. “Don’t need these goons to free Jessica.”
Judge’s snort was loud enough to make some of the Dead Force look in his direction. “He knows that.” Looking up at him again, Judge drawled, “Doncha, Tag?”
If all he wanted to do was free Jessica then, with the help of the city, he could probably storm it. All he had to do was kill everyone inside, then hold the room until the robot Jessica freed the woman who controlled her. He didn’t even need to take a shuttle, they could teleport in and then out again. It might prove harder to do than that, but he wasn’t even bothering to try, instead he’d chosen to hunt for the army that now stood in front of him.
Looking down at Judge, his mouth twisted with the rage that never seemed to go away. “They have to pay, Judge.”
Judge looked at the collapsing buildings and then turned to face the Dead Force. “Who do you blame for this? The aliens? The Dead Force? The people fighting for a pod on the arks? The hunters?” Shaking his head at him, Judge asked, “Just who are you going to make pay? Hybrids like Lolo?”
Irritation flared inside his head and he glared down at Judge. “This is someone’s fault, Judge. Somebody took their eye off the ball and look what happened.”
“What’s done is done, Tag,” Judge said.
“The real question is, does it have to be done?” Looking at the army in front of him, he added, “There’s nothing we can do to make this any worse than it is.”
Hawk’s sharp laugh caught him by surprise, and he peered across the beach looking for him. Spotting him walking with Flak through the shrubby grass, he waved him over. “Got a point to make there, Hawk?” When Hawk shrugged, he turned to face Judge again. “We will go back for Jessica, we owe her that, but…saving her isn’t enough. I want more than that.”
“What do you want?” Judge asked.
What he really wanted was his life back, but he’d lost that on the battlefield long before the aliens had taken over Earth. He wanted to know what had happened to Daisy, but she’d been
dead for nearly three hundred years, probably murdered by soldiers under the control of aliens. Although the beach was free of the pollution of civilization, he didn’t want it to be. Humans were messy, greedy, thoughtless, selfish and stupid, and they wrecked Earth just by living on it. Their overconfidence and arrogance had allowed aliens to take over Earth without a single shot being fired. The last of the humans had now been slaves for so long they didn’t even know that’s what they were.
Whenever he’d envisioned the end of civilization, it had always come with more than one mushroom cloud. There should have been a war, a long drawn out battle to win control of Earth. Mankind shouldn’t have ended on its knees, a slave to a master they didn’t even know wasn’t human.
“We need a war.”
Judge shrugged. “Every soldier thinks war is a solution.”
“Don’t you?”
Lowering his hand so that the sun made his eyes narrow, Judge glanced over his shoulder at the motionless Dead Force. Turning to face him again, he flicked his thumb at the Dead Force soldiers behind him. “These guys gave their lives already, just like we did.” Shrugging, he added, “Who are you gonna save anyway? Jessica? The sleepers? The survivors?”
He couldn’t have what he wanted. The past was the past and, despite having the Dead Force standing in front of him, there was no resurrecting the dead to be the men and women they had once been. Although he couldn’t prove it, he wasn’t the same man who had died in combat. Whatever the aliens had done to them, they’d been changed into a warped version of the people they’d been when they were alive. He wouldn’t say he was a worse version of himself, but reanimating him had taken away something. In most men, their anger was tempered by what they stood to lose, and their rational mind held back any rage they felt about life, making sure it was never cut loose. Maybe it was what they’d done to his brain, or simply the loss of everything, but nothing prevented him from cutting loose. More than not being held in check, he wanted to unleash his fury at something, and saving Jessica wasn’t enough.
“I want a war against the aliens.”
Flicking his thumb at the soldiers behind him again, Judge asked, “What about these guys? Are they aliens or army?”
It was a good question and not one he could answer, not without asking them. He let go of the wall, balancing on the beam that had been the second floor of the building. Spreading his arms wide, he boomed, “Defensors, will you fight?”
If he’d expected his dramatically asked question to get a response, he was disappointed. Thousands of faces, devoid of expression or interest, stared back at him. Trying another approach, hoping to get them to at least speak to him, he asked, “Defensors, what is your mission?”
Speaking as one voice, their reply drowned out the sound of the waves. “To fight and win.”
“Who do you fight?”
“Enemy.”
“Who are your enemy?”
His last question drew no reply. Like robot Jessica, the Dead Force had reached the end of their programming, meaning they had no answer to give. A human brain had an unlimited capacity for thought, but theirs was now part machine. Whatever the aliens had done to the Dead Force, it capped their thoughts, limiting them to simple processing. How was he supposed to explain to them what had happened on Earth and their role in it? Looking at Judge, he raised his hands as if to ask, what now?
Judge turned to face the Dead Force, raising his voice above the sound of the waves against the beach. “Will you fight with us?”
The wind blew past his face, sending a scatter of dried leaves across the sand. Above his head, birds were circling like vultures waiting for the dead to finally stop moving. Otherwise, the beach was as silent as the grave they belonged in. He and Judge might as well have been appealing to statues, the Dead Force had no idea what they were versus what they should have been. Although he’d found his army, they weren’t one he could use. The men and women standing before him dressed for battle were nothing more than oversized animated puppets.
He was about to step down, to tell Judge they were wasting their time, when a beacon swooped and spun from the sky. Skimming across the top of their heads, the beacon emitted a high-pitched wail, and he quickly understood the order it had given.
With a single mind, the Dead Force straightened until they were facing his squad. Fixing him with a hard stare, the one closest to Judge said, “You are enemy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Dead Force
“Ruuuunnn!”
Rok wasn’t wrong, but he was stating the obvious. After declaring them to be enemy, the Dead Force were chasing them along the shrubby ground beyond the beach. Thousands of men and women, all dressed in armor, were on their six.
Despite not needing to breath, Judge’s voice sounded ragged. “What’s the plan, Tag?”
He was supposed to know what he was doing, otherwise why was he their Commander? Not for the first time since being woken, he had no idea what to do next. The damaged houses along the edge of what had once been a road offered no defense. They weren’t armed anymore, not that it would have helped against tens of thousands of undead soldiers. For once, Rok was the one to give the only order that made any sense, but it wouldn’t save them. No matter how fast or far they ran they would be caught. At best, they would be reprogrammed, yet he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. It would mean becoming a mindless drone killer again. Rok had been keeping a tally of the people he’d killed since being woken, and at last count it was one million and one. Killing the enemy was what he was trained to do, but taking a human life was murder. He’d wiped out enough lives in the short time he’d been awake.
His left foot was automatically following his right as he ran across the crumbling asphalt in front of the houses. If he lost his footing, then a hundred dead soldiers would pounce on him, probably tearing him apart, or worse still they would hand him back to the aliens. He didn’t want to reenlist in the alien’s warped version of the army. Enough was enough, and he slowed his pace until he was standing in front of a house. The door had been kicked in and every window was broken. Sea air had stained the walls, leaving long vertical streaks from the top to the bottom. Even from a distance he could see straight through the house to the streets beyond. This had once been someone’s home, a place they could go to find peace. He had no peace and there would never be any if he kept running.
Spinning on his heel, he flicked up his faceplate. “Defensors! Stand down!”
The abrupt tone was enough to make the Defensors nearest to him stop. Eyeing him distrustfully, neither side moved, and Judge turned to look at him. “Tag?”
“Not running, Judge. We stand or fall here.”
Rok had also stopped, but now he looked at the dirty street and trashed houses in disbelief. “This is where you draw the line?”
Judge’s shoulder’s slumped and he nodded tiredly. “He’s right, Rok. There’s nowhere to run.” Gesturing at the street, he added, “And I don’t just mean now. If we don’t have an army, then none of us has a chance of any future.”
Hawk and Flak had turned to listen to Judge, but Rok screwed up his face in disgust. “We’re already dead. What kinda future were you expecting?”
Eyeing the Dead Force soldier in front of him, he replied, “It was our job to die defending our home. It’s still our job, but we can’t do it alone.” Pointing at the soldier, he added, “We need you.”
The soldier straightened in the same way they had on the beach. “You are enemy.”
Squaring up to the soldiers blocking their way back to the beach, Rok said sourly, “Repetitive, little fuckers, aren’t they?”
They couldn’t win, not against thousands of soldiers, but he wouldn’t be taken captive again. What would be the point? Jessica would die pinned to the wall of an alien city, the last of the humans would be wiped out, and the hunters would be all that was left on Earth. He would be used to conquer another planet, acting as a slave to a master he wouldn’t even know he had
. Jessica had shown him another way, and lousy option that it was, it was better than being a puppet soldier. He would rather let the Dead Force tear him into so many pieces that no pod could ever repair him than fight for the aliens.
“Bring it on. You’ll have to take me apart.”
Seeing the soldiers in front of him brace to fight, he instinctively dropped his center of gravity. Launching from his left foot, he hit the closest soldier in the chest with his shoulder. It was enough to throw the man off balance, but someone wrapped an arm around his throat. He was pulled backward until he lost his footing and collapsed against his attacker. His fingers curled around the armored arm and he pulled it away from his throat. He might be willing to die, but he couldn’t go down easy, that went against his nature. Something punched or kicked him in the gut, making him grunt as the air was pushed from his lungs. Kicking sharply, his boot hit something softer than it was. It seemed to signal all out anarchy, and blows rained down onto his head and shoulders. He was pushed to the ground where he felt boots kicking him in the back.
“Judge…”
“Busy, Tag.”
“Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Lolo.”
He couldn’t move. Everywhere he rolled was blocked by more boots. When he tried to reach out his arm, it was stomped on and, fearing it would break, he clutched it back to his chest. His desire to live ran stronger than he expected, and his final death would be harder than his first. Knowing the end was near, all he felt was relief until he remembered Jessica trapped inside the city. His gut contracted and it wasn’t from the boot in his gut, but the realization she’d chosen the wrong man to save her. Maybe the mission had been impossible from the get go, but like any man he didn’t want to believe he could be bested, especially not by an alien force that didn’t even fight its own battles.
“Jessica…”
The ark Extrema was somewhere in orbit, blissfully unaware he’d lost the fight. At best, he would be torn apart, but there was a risk the aliens would reprogram him. Either way, he would be a broken man and nothing like the soldier he was trained to be.