Tomorrow War

by J. L. Bourne

  There was no movement in the hallways, but I did hear voices at the end of the hall. I homed in on those and started moving, gun up to my cheek.

  Rounding the corner, I heard two confused guards asking one another what they thought the problem might be and when it might be fixed. I immediately shot one of them in the head, sending him to the ground, putting the other guard in a state of terror.

  He raised his hands up, begging me not to shoot him.

  “Rich —————————————. Take me to his cell, right the fuck now!” I demanded.

  “Y-yes . . . okay,” the man said, turning slowly and walking down the hall with his hands up.

  We went to the end of the hall and made a left, where I was forced to shoot two more guards. This only reinforced the resolve of the guard under my control to do exactly what I told him.

  At the door marked C3, the man gestured to the nameplate that displayed only one single word.

  TOURIST

  “This is him. I’ve done what you asked. Please.”

  “Open it! Open it now!”

  The man reached for a key ring on his belt as I touched the end of my silencer to his chest. Nervously, he flipped the rings around in the red emergency lighting until he found the one he was looking for, inserting it into the lock.

  As soon as I heard the lock disengage on the cell door, I squeezed the trigger, sending a 147-grain round into his chest, his body hitting the tile floor with a thud.

  The door sat there, partially open. I stepped forward and opened it the rest of the way, revealing a semi-dark room with a chair in the middle. Emergency lights in the cell flickered revealing someone balled up in a fetal position in the corner of the room. I placed my gun on safe and brought it up, pointing it to the body on the floor. Just because the traitor I’d killed said this was Rich didn’t mean it was true.

  I sidestepped the chair, noticing the thick leather straps and the empty jugs of water that sat arranged in rows next to it.

  They’d been waterboarding him.

  My blood pressure shot up, thinking of how painful and frightening that must have been for Rich. I reached the body and nudged it with my foot.

  “Rich, it’s me. It’s Max,” I said quietly to the motionless body on the floor.

  At the sound of my voice, the body stirred, throwing off an old wool blanket. The man lying on the cold floor was definitely Rich, but a much more gaunt version. Instead of the hobo Santa Claus I was used to seeing, I found a Bin Laden look-alike. Rich looked up at me but I realized that he couldn’t see me. The power was still cut; Rich was squinting at me, trying to make me out through the dim red light.

  “Max . . . ? Is it really you?” he asked, reaching for my hand in the darkness.

  I offered mine, gripping his hand tightly before responding.

  “Yeah. I’m here to get you out of here. Take this.”

  I pulled a squeeze package of caffeine-infused energy gel and gave it to Rich. He downed the whole package in just a few seconds.

  “Got any more?”

  I gave him another without saying a word and told him to get on his feet.

  “Things are about to get sporty—you get my meaning?”

  Rich nodded and asked for a weapon. I quickly recovered the AK-47 from across my back and handed it over to him along with an extra mag. Rich stuffed the extra down his scrub pant waistband and donned his paper slippers.

  “I’m ready to move. Let’s roll,” he said, checking the condition of his Combloc weapon. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Chinese soldier. He didn’t need it anymore,” I responded with a chuckle.

  “Thought so. Feels Chinese.”

  With that, we stepped out into the open. I told Rich to let me take the shots, as I was running the silencer. If I needed help, I’d yell out and hit the deck. He’d need to spray the fuck out of whatever was in front of him.

  “Just don’t shoot lower than knee level, okay?” I said.

  We turned right out of his cell and headed for the stairwell.

  As I passed the cell marked —————————————, I heard a familiar voice. “I know those were gunshots—what the hell is going on out there?”

  Maggie?!

  So, it looked like getting into bed with these fuckers came back to bite her. Wonder what she did to piss them off?

  I hesitated for a moment before taking the keys from the dead guard’s hand. Sliding the viewport over, I took a look inside and was instantly met with Maggie’s bruised and beaten face, obvious even through the green optics of my NVD and the flickering emergency lights. For a moment I thought back to when I’d first met her, deep inside a strange building that also happened to be an unacknowledged classified direct action support facility.

  She just stood there in her dirty scrubs, her arms hanging down at her sides as if standing at the position of attention.

  “Step back,” I said through the viewport.

  “Max?!”

  Saying nothing, I began to cycle through the keys to open the door.

  “I’ve heard her screams, Max,” Rich whispered over my shoulder. “They’ve hurt her pretty bad over the past few weeks.”

  The power flickered on for a second before cutting out again. It was time to move. The lock relented on the third key. I opened the door, telling Maggie to come out.

  “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing,” I said to her coldly as I kept moving to the stairwell access.

  I have no idea why I chose to let her go.

  Before going in, I broke the nearby glass pane and pulled down hard on the switch marked FIRE. All hell broke loose as Klaxons and emergency strobes began to fire, causing confusion and disorientation, hopefully enough to get us to the first floor and outside. Rich moved slow, a side effect of sleep and calorie depravation. I was really happy to find him vertical and mobile, but at his current weight, which I estimated to be about a hundred and sixty pounds, carrying him was doable.

  We hit the stairs and were met by people in normal civilian clothing. They weren’t armed.

  “Hurry, go back upstairs—there’s a fire raging in the holding areas!” I yelled, hoping I got the terminology correct enough.

  It seemed to work, as the civilians turned around and began to run back up to the first floor. I followed them up and through the access door to the floor.

  I heard someone say, “Why aren’t the sprinklers on?” and someone else respond with something about the lack of water pressure. This played to our favor as panic and fear began to spread.

  “Hurry, it’s spreading—it’s all over the basement!” I screamed, trying to use a different voice than the one I’d used on the civilians in the stairwell.

  That was it.

  Another voice of authority that I didn’t recognize began to give instructions, “Everyone, follow me to the exit. There is nothing here worth saving—just grab your phones and follow me.”

  Cell phone flashlights began to wave back and forth, resembling digital lighthouses inside my NVD. There were enough of them on the floor that I raised my optic up and stepped back into the shadows, waiting for the floor to clear. As the workers began to leave the floor for the fire exit, I filed behind them.

  The lights flickered once more, this time staying on for nearly five seconds. Luckily, no one noticed the “prisoners” I had with me during the brief moment the lights were on. I moved with a little more speed as I looked over my shoulder, gesturing Rich to catch up when the lights went out again.

  Maggie was following behind Rich.

  I didn’t know where she thought she was going, but it was a pretty bold move.

  Ignoring her for the moment, I reached the door that led to the outside and stepped through, blending in with all the evacuees in the darkness. I grabbed Rich’s clothing, keeping him concealed by the moon shadow behind me. One of the evacuees started to ask a question, but I cut her off, telling her that I’d received a radio call about restoring the power and that I’d a
nswer all her questions when I got back. She nodded in acceptance, and Rich and I made for the back side of the building towards a space of fence between two tall guard towers.

  The tower on our left was empty, or at least no one was standing up in it. The one on the right had a guard, but he seemed focused on outside threats, not inside.

  With careful deliberation, I pulled my handheld radio and quickly removed the tape that prevented the power source from contacting to it.

  Depressing the transmit button, I said, “Fire in the hole.”

  Two minutes.

  I headed toward the tower to the right, knowing that if I got close enough, I’d be in its blind spot and could do what I needed to do. I pulled the small master key strapped to my pack and began to cut the fence wires.

  An explosion hit the building somewhere behind me; the blast wave nearly blew the NVD off my head.

  The NAI mortars were beginning to fly.

  As soon as I’d finished cutting a 3x3 section from the fence, I sent Rich through, knowing that the guard’s attention would by now be shifted 180 degrees toward the building. After Rich was on the other side, I looked back one more time.

  A dark figure moved toward me from a dozen yards away, gaining the attention of the tower guard. Goddammit, fucking Maggie.

  “Halt!” the guard commanded.

  I stepped out away from the base of the tower and took aim at the guard. I squeezed the trigger as another mortar detonated; the man doubled over and fell from the tower, slamming to the ground with a thud.

  Moving quickly through the opening I’d cut, I took the lead and checked my wrist compass before moving south and west, dissolving into the winter landscape as if I was never there. As I moved farther away, my NVD lit up with a new light source. Power had been restored at the fusion center, illuminating the ongoing NAI mortar strike in vivid incandescent color.

  I adjusted my speed to go faster until Rich began to lag behind. Letting up a little to allow his beaten and tired body some reprieve, I noticed Maggie’s shadowy figure pacing us from a distance. I decided to address this once and for all.

  As I approached, I caught a flash of steel, instantly bringing my gun up to meet her. She was carrying an M4 carbine and wore combat boots with her prisoner garb.

  “From the guard?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she responded. “Kill me or let me come with you. I only want one thing. Just one.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Payback. For what they did to my child . . . what they did to me,” Maggie replied through clenched teeth.

  Knowing that she could have killed me at any time from the fence line until now, I just turned away and began to trek southwest once again. Maggie followed—not because I told her that she could, but because she knew that she should.

  Rich was in poor shape and shaking with exposure and hunger by the time we arrived at the rally point, ten miles away. As we approached, I heard the massive diesel engine from Inky’s MRAP fire up. The familiar IR challenge signal was sent from the crew-served operator on the machine gun on top, and I responded in kind, using the signal of the day as briefed.

  Rich was back in the fight, but so was Maggie. To what end, I didn’t know or comprehend. I placed a canvas sack over her head as soon as she entered the MRAP and we were on our way.

  ARKANSAS UNDERGROUND

  I ripped the hood from Maggie’s head after getting her back to the camp. She was checked head to toe for any electronic surveillance devices on the way in. For someone as strong as she was, for all of her training, I was slightly perplexed as to why she wouldn’t stop crying. After a series of questions, she finally let go and told me what I needed to know.

  When she was repatriated by the provisional government after I left her at the helicopter, she was interrogated. Heavily. They didn’t believe the story she told them, and promptly arrested her on charges of abetting a known terrorist. The interrogation turned extreme. They then brought Maggie’s daughter into the chamber and went to work on her. Maggie finally gave in and admitted to providing false information as to my whereabouts to her interrogators.

  Do I believe her?

  Yes.

  The interrogators accidentally killed Maggie’s daughter on a waterboard, right in front of her, days before I showed up to extract Rich.

  She was only twelve.

  For people that think torture doesn’t work, they’re wrong. It definitely fucking works, but once you do it, you’re a piece of garbage forever. If there’s a God, he’s coming for all the torturers, murderers, and belligerents, and the ones that give them orders. And the only thing worse than garden-variety torture is hurting a child, and that’s a line I’ll never cross—the same line that will make Maggie forever question her notions of reality.

  Inky reports that the fusion center has been heavily damaged, and that it’ll take them a good while to get back up online. The word has been dispatched to the radiomen and should soon be in the hands of every NAI cell.

  Rich gorged on food the rest of the morning after our return, and is now sleeping somewhere in the tunnels below. Maggie sat wrapped in a blanket near a small fire, drinking coffee and soaking her feet in some warm water.

  I’m not done with these tyrants. Through my own mistakes in Syria, I tipped the first domino that eventually caused this entire collapse.

  I’m going to spend the rest of my life fighting, to somehow right these wrongs, any way that I can.

  —————

  I awoke to bustling activity in the passage underground, near where I slept. Sliding my curtain open, my bare feet touched earth, and I felt like some caveman about to pick up his spear and go to work, hunting and gathering in the saber-tooth-tiger-dense hills of Arkansas. Instead of a spear, I reached for my machine gun, a cold, harsh German tool of war that hasn’t failed me yet. Rich was still sawing logs in a bed that was dug into the earth waist-high like some ancient grave one might find underneath some church in Europe.

  Stepping groggily out into the passageway with my boots in my hand, I shuffled to the war room atop a line of wooden pallets that meandered through the tunnel to the lights up ahead. Inky sat at the table scanning over charts, passing what appeared to be important notes to the radiomen-bound couriers near and far.

  “Hey, Max. We really shook things up. The system is requesting more UN troops to augment the security forces in Northwest Arkansas. That ain’t necessarily a good thing.” Inky slid photographs over in front of me.

  Three grainy black-and-white photos that looked as if they were Normandy invasion archive pictures depicted dozens of large ships sitting in a harbor. A giant star could be seen on the superstructure of the closest vessel in the photo.

  “What am I looking at, Inky?” I asked.

  “The harbor at 32nd Street Naval Base, San Diego. Yesterday,” Inky responded.

  “How did you get these from California in a day?” I asked, incredulous.

  “We have a digital network setup with the coasts. It’s not even close to 56k speed, but we can receive low-resolution images via digital shortwave radio network from our radioman out there. Bottom line is that the troop transports from China keep showing up, dumping military personnel on our shores.”

  Inky analyzed the intel just like he did when I first showed up. The more troops that arrived on the coast, the harder our job would be to take the country back and restore our own brand of order.

  The influx of UN peacekeepers isn’t our only problem as I write this. Most of the military deserted, leaving for their families when all of this shit went down. The rest left their posts when they stopped getting paid and fed, electing to strike out alone and survive with whatever military hardware they could bring with them. Some of them were a threat in the uncontrolled areas. Some of them might be a friend to the NAI, and some of them may not. The whole country was torn in hundreds of pieces, shards, and factions all vying for survival by any means necessary.

  Savannah walked into the operation
s center, brightening the room, and skimmed the table’s intel for a few moments before speaking.

  “Good work out there—I hope the old man was worth it,” she said.

  “Anyone they take from us is worth it,” I said flatly.

  “What about the woman who was with you? She’s not allowed in here. We’ve got a couple guards posted on the surface, keeping an eye on her.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said.

  “Make it soon. We don’t like her here,” Savannah said on her way out.

  —————

  23 Dec

  Noon

  After enduring Savannah’s concerns about Maggie, I thought it a good idea to check in on her to see what she was up to, or maybe how big her testicle necklace was getting from all the guards she’d killed. I approached her fire cautiously, waving the guards away so that I could speak in private. She looked better today, her face less swollen and her eyes less bloodshot. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could see the burning desire for revenge swirling in the dark circles of her eyes.

  I didn’t say anything, letting her adjust to my presence. The fire popped and cracked.

  “Got any food?” was the first thing Maggie said to me.

  I ripped off a layer of beef jerky from my cargo pocket and handed it to her.

  Chewing the jerky, she asked, “They took my gun. I’d like that back. We’re going to need it.”

  “What do you mean ‘we,’ Maggie?”

  “ ‘We’ means a collective group, two or more persons; in this case, the latter,” she said. “There’s a small chance we can fix this mess. Turn off what we turned on. They sent me after you to kill you, but that wasn’t my plan.”

  And down the rabbit hole I went. I had to send the guards away twice while listening to Maggie’s story, which is what I’m going to call it for now.

  Maggie explained that the virus we hardwired into the Syrian telecom network could be neutralized if we could get back to Alexandria, back to Delmay Glass. The secure storage facility there would have a duplicate telecom interface unit. Against orders, she had two constructed. One went to Syria and one was hidden away in a vault under Delmay.