Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1

by T. C. McCarthy

  “To hell with you,” I said, paid her, and left. But looking back, I realize she was right. Death scared me but at the same time I wanted it, because life was too painful and the only thing that had taken that pain away was subterrene, Kaz, because I was too much of a coward to hang myself or put a gun in my mouth. I thought about ending it, though, all the time. But now? In the open, on the run, I felt like the only thing between me and total collapse was zip, but part of me wanted to collapse, to give Pops his chance at catching us so it could be over. It was the easy way out.

  Bridgette had run out of tranq tabs. She started crying, and as we sat under the burned-out hulk of an APC, she shook.

  “I can see them,” she said. “Kim and my sisters. They want me to go with them.”

  I snapped my tin to pack it and held it out to her.

  “You said it was like tranq tabs. What is it?”

  I explained and she snatched the tin from my hand, making me smile. I thought of that day with Ox and the others and repeated their advice. “Spit. Whatever you do, don’t swallow. And these doses are lower than what you’re used to, but hopefully the nicotine will do you some good too.”

  After a moment she sighed and rested her head against the APC. “Why do you smile at me?”

  “That suit,” I said. “It’s totally melted and obviously not a Marine suit. They’ll see you coming a mile away. If we’re going to try and get you south, hide who you are so you can get out of the war, we’ll have to get a replacement.”

  “You want me to stay with you. Alive.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to kiss her, not with that crap in her mouth, but I wanted to. “Yes. I’ll get you a suit.”

  We had found the corpse of a Marine corporal outside the APC, a guy who’d killed himself with a Maxwell shot to the head, and I didn’t spend more than a millisecond wondering why he had done it—kind of made sense to me, a last demonstration that he still had control over destiny. His armor was intact. I ducked into the snowfall and enjoyed the soft quiet as I dragged him out of the carapace, getting it ready for her, hoping that it would fit, because she was smaller than most Marines. Getting him out was tough. The guy had stiffened and cold only made it worse, forcing me to snap both his arms to bend them into the right angles. I dragged the armor under the wreckage and dropped it in front of her.

  “Get in,” I said.

  She grinned. When Bridgette slid from her suit, I marveled, thanked God for what she was. Perfect. Precise. Everything curvy about a girl that you could imagine, but all of it dangerously fluid. I grinned back at her. I think I drooled when I forgot about my zip, and we cracked up.

  “How does it fit?” I asked when she had finished.

  “Loose. But it will function. How do I seem?”

  “Perfect.”

  We’d have to start moving again in a few hours, so we spat out the zip and lay down together, huddled in a corner of the APC, where she rested her head on my shoulder. I don’t think I slept; I didn’t want to. I just wanted to breathe girl for a while.

  A few days later a thick layer of ice and snow collapsed underfoot as we marched, and both of us fell through, hitting a rock floor about twenty feet below. There hadn’t been enough time even to yell. Once my vision kit adjusted, I saw that we had fallen down a narrow access shaft and into an abandoned tunnel, making me think it was probably an old artillery position. In front of us the chamber stretched into darkness but headed in the right direction, south. It felt good to be underground again, superslick and in control.

  She nearly wiped them. Bridgette flicked off her safety and swung her Maxwell in a blur when a group of four Marines rose from behind a pile of rubble.

  “O’Brian?” one of them asked.

  I froze. O’BRIAN had been stenciled in white on the right side of Bridgette’s suit so you could see it for miles.

  “Holy Christ!” the man said. “It is you, what the hell?”

  “You know this guy?” another one asked.

  “Yeah, Lieutenant, guy from my platoon.”

  The Marine slapped her on the shoulder and I saw his name: Bauer. “Man, it’s good to see you. I thought all of Dog Company got wiped. What happened?”

  Bridgette stood still for a moment. “I got out,” she said finally.

  One good thing about being in a suit, about being buttoned tight: the speakers were for shit. You couldn’t recognize voices. I wouldn’t have known it was a girl if it weren’t for the fact that I did know it was a girl, and as soon as I heard what she sounded like, I went loose, trying my best to breathe out slowly so my relief wouldn’t be obvious.

  “ ‘I got out,’ ” said Bauer. “Shit. So did I, but I had to get away from a battalion of Russian Gs to do it. Who’s this?” he asked, pointing his Maxwell at me.

  “Oscar Wendell, with Stars and Stripes,” I said.

  “A reporter?” the lieutenant asked. “Out here?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “what are you gonna do?”

  They all laughed and I relaxed a little when Bauer shouldered his carbine.

  “You got one hell of a story now,” said the lieutenant. “Pops is heading south, probably just ten klicks north of us, and he’s pissed. Gonna take it all back. Command net just broadcast a sector-wide recall, telling us to stuff grass, leaves, anything between our undersuits and carapace. Fuel cells dragging everywhere and the weather’s too shitty for resupply, so I hope you brought your long johns.”

  I had no clue what in the hell a long john was, but got the rest of it and shivered, already cold at the thought. My current fuel cell had about a day or two left of power, and I didn’t want to think about it, tried to find anything to say, and felt embarrassed and out of place as soon as the words came out. “At least the weather’s keeping their drones grounded,” I said, and they all just stared at me.

  We marched. Nobody felt like talking, least of all me, but there was something in the air. Not just the anticipation of Popov’s coming. That was a given, and the thought constantly ran through my mind in an undercurrent of gut-wrenching fear. This was something else: the idea that she was a G, walking in a Marine suit—the suit of a Marine who had been a friend to these guys. Sooner or later she might have to take off her helmet and they’d see what she was, which would lead to the next question: “What did you do with our friend?” And because she was a G, they’d assume that she’d killed him. It was going to be bad. I knew it, and I tasted it.

  The tunnel broke into a large underground hangar, empty except for a small scout car that had two doors near the front and an open ramp at the rear. The Marines popped their helmets with a hiss.

  “Phew,” one said. “Some luck for a change. Let’s see if this rattrap works.”

  I noticed Bauer staring at Bridgette, waiting for something. “Come on, get that helmet off,” he said. “The scout car will shield our therms if it works. You need to conserve, man, unless you got a pack full of spare fuel cells.”

  My palms got slippery. Sweat on the palms and no spit almost made me laugh, because by now they were familiar, my long-lost cousins: Fear and Kaz.

  “No,” she said.

  “ ‘No’? What, are you nuts? Your fuel cells are already draining, they won’t last as long as it’ll take to reach Shymkent. We may have to go as far as Tashkent if Pops breaks the southern line.”

  Bridgette didn’t move. I was too strung out on terror to say anything, but with what might happen next, I thought I’d better keep my own lid on.

  “What’s wrong?” Bauer asked.

  “Nothing.” With one hand on her carbine, she popped her helmet, and they all went slack-jawed.

  “That ain’t O’Brian,” the lieutenant said.

  Bridgette raised her weapon and dropped into a crouch. “Please. Do not move.”

  “Motherfucker,” said one of the others. “Motherfucker.”

  “Don’t do it,” said Bridgette.

  The guy started lifting the barrel of his grenade launcher and I dove to the ground,
waiting for what I knew would come next: a shit storm of a firefight with nowhere to hide, so you could only pray for some way to get small. The man didn’t listen. If only he’d listened, thought for a second before acting like an asshole, he might have lived a bit longer; maybe Bridgette wouldn’t have done anything to them. For a second I wondered: if she could do it to them, to friendlies, would she do it to me? First came the sound of a spray, then the firecrackers of fléchettes breaking the sound barrier, snapping through ceramic and slamming into the rock walls beyond. But the man hadn’t listened. I opened my eyes and found that all of them had bought it, although one was trying to crawl away, barely alive.

  “Whiskey seven, this is Talon one-five,” the lieutenant said.

  I was about to go to him when she rested a boot on his neck and fired into his head.

  “I am sorry,” she said to me. “I had to. It would have been the end for both of us—for you because you helped me—and these men were too stupid to make it south if I had let them live. It was a tactical decision.”

  But she didn’t have to say sorry, not to me. I didn’t give a shit, not about the stupid. It was over for them; they were lucky. Popov wouldn’t get to catch them in the open and drop thermal gel, toy with them a little before sending Gs to finish the job. Truth be told, I felt nothing. Empty. I even got it when Bridgette started popping their fuel cells, pushing them into a pack that she ripped from the lieutenant’s dead hand, because what else was there to do? The dead didn’t need fuel cells; the dead were at home in the cold. She waved me over after throwing her helmet into the back of the scout car.

  I didn’t like feeling nothing. Wanted something. So I kissed her there, among the silent Marines, and heard our ceramic chests click. The thought of two insects getting it on kind of killed the moment for me, but not for her; there was something new in Bridgette that I hadn’t seen. She was hungry, wouldn’t let me go until she had finished, and when she had, Bridgette leaned over to press her mouth against my ear.

  “I need you.”

  It took us a while to get out of our armor, and we shivered, but she had started the scout car and it was warm by the time we were ready to screw. And after we finished in the car, we just lay there. Did it again later, with Popov bearing down and not even a second thought except for fuck it. She didn’t know anything; I had to teach her. But she was perfect—dug it and made me feel so cool about everything.

  That was when my calculus clicked, when I figured out why it felt like a gut wound once she gunned the car to head south again. I loved that betty. It was easy to fall in love, because neither of us was likely to live long anyway. I thought that the realization would make me feel better, like, Don’t worry, just feel it now because it might be over tomorrow, but it didn’t. I had to zip before I started bawling. Kaz had antibodies for anyone who started to feel good, and sent battles to scream in at a moment’s notice and chew on anyone who began to feel happy.

  All we had for now, to keep the feeling, was zip.

  From the top of a low hill, I saw them, a slow-moving mass of retreating soldiers, stretched like a wide green snake across the steppes. There was no point in avoiding them. We had used up most of the spare fuel cells, and the car had run out of juice a few hours earlier, so our only chance was to hook up—join them in a last push to friendly lines and a supply depot. I hadn’t thought much about what I was going to do to get her out of Kaz, make it safely, but we were close now and I’d have to think of something before they took her from me. Bridgette shouldered the carbine and wiped her faceplate clear of ice, and ten minutes later we joined the column.

  Sometimes, Kaz was really banged up, in a trippy, what-are-the-odds kind of way. Seriously. As soon as we entered the column, I heard a voice asking if someone wanted to trade for a chicken curry.

  “All I’ve got is this French shit,” I said. “Wine-poached salmon.”

  It was him. Only Ox hated chicken curry; it was the one pack worth eating as far as most Marines were concerned, but not him. He tackled me. At first Bridgette thought he was attacking, and dropped into some fighting stance as she leveled that damn carbine, but I waved her off.

  Ox didn’t even know how close it had been. “You little shit, you stupid rube!”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “Thought you’d still be in the hospital or on light duty, rear-style for a while.”

  He looked away. It was hard to tell, since he was buttoned, but I’d been at it long enough and realized it was the wrong question. A killer question. “You know how it is, Scout. I had to get back.” That was all he had to say, and I knew what he meant.

  Ox didn’t realize that Bridgette was with me, and I didn’t push it, didn’t want to risk another scene. But as we walked, trudging through snowdrifts, I noticed her acting funny. First the snowfall started to lighten and she got all twitchy, unslinging her carbine and smacking the ice from its barrel while looking rearward. A few minutes later, she stopped and stared at the ground.

  “What’s wrong with that guy?” Ox asked. “He with you?”

  I stopped too and was about to whisper to her that she needed to start acting normal, when she grabbed my harness. “Move.”

  I moved, followed her out into the nowhere, pushing through chest-high snow that hadn’t been packed down by a column of men, so it was incredibly hard going. Like torture. I was in one of those nightmares you’d see on shitty holos, where a character ran but didn’t get anywhere.

  “Come on, Ox,” I said. He knew me well enough to listen, and followed.

  When we had gotten about a hundred meters away from the column, she dove into the snow and motioned for us to get down. I hit it and then slapped her ankle.

  “What’s up?”

  “Look.” Bridgette held out her hand and for a moment I didn’t see anything, but then, all of a sudden, it was there. Her shadow. The weather had begun to clear and that would mean only one thing.

  “Aw, mother of… said Ox. “Scout, make sure that chill can is on. And chameleon skins.”

  The chill can sat below the suit exhaust, cooled it to the same temperature as ambient so we’d be invisible on thermal sensors. Mine was fine, and there was power enough for a short time with chameleon skins. Then I saw it. A group of Russian drones flew overhead, supersonic, so that we didn’t hear anything until the boom cracked and shook the ground, covering us in a minor avalanche that only got worse when the bombs fell, over and over. I tried digging. Wanted to get underground so badly that nothing else mattered. Eventually my gauntlets hit dirt, frozen solid into concrete with no way to get through, but I couldn’t stop and found out it was over only when Bridgette and Ox pulled me up, the tips of my gauntlets sanded flat.

  A few minutes later it started snowing again. I don’t know how many guys bought it in that attack, but we walked over them for a couple of hours, on a road paved by corpses.

  Ox went down one day out from Shymkent. At first he just looked tired, like everyone else, and I almost didn’t notice when he dropped his carbine. It seemed normal. I was so tired that I felt asleep on my feet, my muscles beyond screaming and at the verge of quitting, so I would have dropped the Maxwell ages earlier. But then I heard him laugh. Ox started hitting the buckles on his carapace, one at a time, opening them so that he could get out—until I grabbed his wrist.

  “What the shit are you doing?”

  “I’m so hot,” he said. “Gotta get out of this suit.” His words slurred and I didn’t notice that Bridgette was right next to me.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “Hypothermia. Symptoms include lethargy, disorientation, euphoria, hallucination. Then death.”

  It had gotten dark and the column came to a halt, which was good because I had to stay there, to keep Ox from unbuttoning while she watched. But it was bad because with the night, temperatures would drop even further.

  “I’m so tired,” he said. “Just let me sleep for a while.”

  After that, he fell over, and I couldn’t wa
ke him up.

  “What are they doing?” asked Bridgette, pointing.

  Several of the Marines had collected webbing, ration packs, and other flammable material and threw them into a pile. Atop this they placed several frozen corpses. Then one of the men pulled the caps off three flares and tossed them on top so that the flash overloaded my infrared.

  “Bonfire,” I said.

  Men gathered around it, jockeying for position as they loosened their armor—to enable the heat to penetrate more quickly. I was about to drag Ox closer when I heard someone shout.

  “Goddamn it!” An Army colonel pushed into the circle. “Put that shit out now, you’ll draw fire.”

  “Screw you,” someone said, a Marine. “They can’t send aircraft through this shit, and even if they could, let ’em. The weather’s killing my men.”

  “Captain, you listen to my orders or so help me God—”

  The Marine drew his fléchette pistol and fired. He pointed at two of his men, who then liberated the dead colonel of his suit, tossing the already freezing corpse onto the flames.

  Bridgette cocked her head, and I smiled. The last few days had been so bad and I was so tired that I had forgotten what she looked like, hadn’t seen her face since the scout car. That one gesture brought it back. I pulled her into the snow next to me.

  “I think that the captain was right to do that,” she said.

  “I do too.”

  “Do you want to know what else I think, Scout?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Love to know.”

  “I think that you and these men are not so different from me and my sisters. Come. We need to get your friend near the fire.”

  The closest thing I’d ever had to a real friend in Shymkent was Pete German, a freelance photographer. We went everywhere together, arrived in country at the same time. It was good, because I needed a photographer; the guy from Stripes had gotten appendicitis and had to leave, and they didn’t know when a replacement would arrive. So I picked up Pete.

  He was one of those shits that caused trouble. Anywhere, every time. One night we got completely wasted and decided to hit the USO show in Shymkent’s downtown rubble, a real blowout with some comedian from the States. Pete was gay, and I think he had a crush on me, because he kept trying to get me loaded, always had the best drugs and wouldn’t share with anyone except me. I’d have to fight him off at the end of the night, though, remind him that I hadn’t yet joined the team.