He lowered his head. "Commander," he whispered.
Emilio Diaz gave a gasp, reached out, and clutched Marco's hand.
"My God," Elvis whispered. "He's still alive. The son of a bitch is still alive."
Diaz groaned, gasped for air, and tightened his grip on Marco's hand.
"I'm here," Marco whispered. "I'm here, Emilio. I'm here."
And Corporal Emilio Diaz—this great warrior, the man who taught Marco's squad to kill, who had slain scum in the mountains and the mines, always with a thin smile on his face—began to weep.
"I'm scared, Marco," he whispered. "I don't want to die here. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want my mother. Please. I . . ."
Diaz fell still. His eyes stared at the ceiling. His breath died.
They all gathered around him. Marco. Addy. Elvis. Beast. Lailani. All had served under him in Fort Djemila and here in Corpus. All lowered their heads. Ben-Ari joined them, silent, eyes closed, a tear on her cheek. Even Osiris the android stood watching silently, curiosity in her robotic eyes.
"He was the finest warrior I knew," Marco whispered. "I admired him. I'm proud to have fought with him. Goodbye, Corporal Emilio Diaz."
"Sergeant Emilio Diaz," Ben-Ari said. "I promote him to sergeant. We will remember him always." She knelt and removed his dog tags. "I will bring these back to his family."
They had no way to carry the body. They had to leave him here, buried in a distant moon. The train would no longer move, its locomotive shattered. They walked onward, heads lowered. From a company of two hundred soldiers, they were down to eleven.
I lost Kemi, Marco thought. I lost my commander. I'm lost in darkness.
He walked onward, gun held before him, seeking, as in his dream, a way out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They walked on through the darkness, eleven soldiers, the last of two hundred. All were wounded. All were haunted. They pointed their guns before them. The tunnels twisted and turned, branching into a great labyrinth. Marco was the only one with paper and a pen. As a writer, he always carried them with him. He kept a map of their progress, his ink forming a network like the roots of trees.
The rails stretched down most tunnels, but some tunnels were narrower, even cruder, and no tracks led down them. Slime coated these tunnels, and they saw the marks of claws on their walls.
"Scum holes." Addy spat.
"The scum are turning this place into a great hive," said Marco. "Maybe that's why they invaded Corpus. The mines had the basic structure of a hive already in place. They just needed to clear out the humans and expand the network."
"Where are the humans?" Addy said. "We haven't seen any. Only that weird woman with six arms, and I'm not sure she qualifies."
"They probably fled the moon," said Marco. "Smart. And once we find that engine somewhere down here, we're off this rock too."
As they kept walking, a sickly, almost sweet smell rose from ahead, a smell like honey spilled over rotten fruit. The cold lifted, and the air grew warm, thick, damp. The cloying stench soon became so powerful they all put on their gas masks. Stumpy, the only one without a mask, whimpered.
"Smells like unicorn shit," Addy said.
Sweat filled Marco's gas mask. His lenses kept fogging up. It was hard to see, but the tunnel seemed to grow lighter. Yes—there was definitely light ahead, not just the shine of their flashlights. It was an orange, warm glow, like that of a hearth. A rustling, clicking sound rose from ahead, soft, almost like white noise.
"We should turn back," Lailani said.
"No." Marco shook his head. "Kemi might be down here. Whatever else awaits us, we'll face it."
Addy hefted her rifle. "We'll kill it."
They kept walking as the light, the stench, the sound grew, until finally the tunnel opened into a vast chasm.
The soldiers froze.
Marco grimaced.
Elvis pulled off his gas mask, turned aside, and retched.
The scum had expanded the tunnel here, carving out a round, crude cathedral. Blobs hung from the ceiling, coated with skin and veins, glowing orange. Their light oozed over a writhing pile of eggs that covered the train tracks and spread to the walls, a pile the size of a house, stinking, dripping ooze. Each egg was as large as a watermelon, the shell translucent, revealing a blurred view of a scum maggot inside.
"Ugh." Addy shuddered. "A scum nursery."
Several adult scum came racing around the pile toward the soldiers. Addy fired a bullet, hitting one in the head. A few more bullets from the squad killed the other bugs—a surprisingly quick victory, considering how many bullets a scum could normally withstand. Marco frowned, stepped toward one of the scum corpses, and nudged it with his foot. He looked back at his comrades.
"These ones don't have claws." He looked back at the corpse. It was just as large as the regular scum—about ten feet long and wide as his torso—but it had soft legs that ended with prehensile hooks, and its armor was thinner. "I think these ones are nurses. Sort of how ants have warriors, workers, and nurses."
Addy loaded a fresh magazine. "Step back, everyone. Dead scum maggots coming right up."
The others stepped back and raised their own guns, pointing them at the eggs.
"Wait," Marco said.
They turned toward him. "Poet, what, you gotta pee first?" Addy said.
"I feel weird about this," Marco said. "These are babies."
Addy groaned. "Fuck me, Poet. This is like whenever a spider got into our house back home. You'd never let me kill it, just put it outside. These are scum, Poet. Scum! The creatures that destroyed the world."
Marco nodded. "Yes. I suppose you're right." He stepped closer to the eggs. Inside, the maggots were twisting, squealing, poking at the rubbery shells with their tiny claws. "Someday these creatures will grow up. They will kill. But . . . right now, it feels wrong to kill them." He turned toward Ben-Ari. "We should spare them, ma'am. We should walk on, seeking Kemi, seeking the engine. We didn't come here as exterminators."
But the lieutenant's eyes remained hard. "No, Emery," she said. "Private Linden is right. We will not spare them."
"Ma'am," he began, "they—"
"You called them babies," Ben-Ari said. "You tried to humanize them. But they are not humans. These are maggots. Maggots who will grow into monsters. What of human babies, Marco? What of the human babies these creatures might someday kill? What of Corporal Diaz, of Caveman, of the others who died? What of the billions who died on Earth? What of your own mother?" Her voice softened. "I'm sorry, Marco. You are kind. You are decent. But you're wrong. We are exterminators. That's why we're here. Step back, Marco. Let us do our job."
"Ma'am," he said, "you chose me for this mission because I wasn't just a killer. That's what you told me. That's why you brought me with you."
"Um, guys?" Addy said. "Maybe we can discuss ethics later? I think the eggs are, well, hatching."
Marco spun back toward the reeking pile. The eggs were writhing, cracking open, and the maggots emerging. Already the larvae had claws. They squealed, jaws opening to reveal sticky gullets. They began crawling down the pile, hissing, screeching, begging for food.
"Little fuckers," said Private Kalquist, a soldier who had joined their platoon just before boarding the Miyari. "Not even worth wasting bullets on."
Kalquist raised her boot above one of the scum. The creature—it was no larger than a house cat—leaped up and wrapped around her leg. Kalquist cursed. At once, twenty other maggots flew toward the private, landed on her, and began to bite. Kalquist screamed and the other soldiers recoiled. The scum fed like piranhas on a cow, ripping off Kalquist's face, tearing chunks off her limbs, exposing the bones, and still she screamed, her skull revealed, still alive.
The soldiers opened fire.
The bullets slammed into the scum, slammed into Kalquist, slammed into the pile behind. Ben-Ari fired her plasma gun, and the eggs burned. The fire spread, and the bullets kept flying, and the maggots screamed as they
died. They tried to flee the burning pile, wreathed in fire, pathetic creatures, burning, begging. Bullets hailed onto them. Still Ben-Ari fired her plasma gun, and it became as a flamethrower in her hands, gushing forth fountains of blue and white and red, ionizing the air, burning the fumes, and the eggs burst, and still more creatures emerged, and still they died.
Exterminators, Marco thought, firing his gun too, killing them, for perhaps Ben-Ari was right. This was who he was. This was what he had become. This was what the HDF was in space, not a force to defend humanity but to exterminate its enemies. And here underground, in a distant world light-years from Earth, they burned the nursery, destroying the young before they could grow. The flames roared to the ceiling, and they walked around the blazing pile, and they entered the tunnels again, leaving the stench and heat and the last dying screeches behind.
They walked onward. They were down to ten soldiers. And still Kemi was lost. The soot stained Marco's face, and he knew that it would forever remain, a stain he could never wash, a nightmare he could never wake from.
* * * * *
They walked for hours, crossing many kilometers of tracks, following one path after another, lost in the labyrinth. There seemed no end to the darkness. There had to be an end. Somewhere here, they would find the last station of these rails, would find the machinery deep inside the moon, find the engine, find Kemi. Marco had to believe that. It was the only thing that kept his feet going. The others walked beside him, silent, faces washed with sweat.
"Addy." Marco walked closer to her, limping now, his legs and back aching. "Do you remember that time in boot camp, how we had to carry the radios around the base?"
She nodded. "My back still hurts."
"I miss that day now."
"Me too," Addy said. "Fucking hell, I'm turning into Lailani, missing boot camp."
"Addy, do you remember how Dad would cook us omelets for breakfast, how we'd all watch cartoons in the kitchen, how he'd laugh so hard at the roadrunner?" Marco's eyes stung with tears. He was a soldier. He had killed scum, many of them. But right now the tears filled his eyes. "Do you remember Earth?"
Addy nodded. "I remember."
"We'll be back there soon," Marco said. "I'm done with space. I'm done. As soon as we're off Corpus, we'll request a transfer back home. We'll watch cartoons again. We'll see Dad again for Christmas."
Now Addy had tears in her eyes. "I'm scared, Marco. I'm scared we won't make it back home. That we'll die here like Diaz. Like Caveman and Sheriff. Like all the rest of them."
"We'll make it home," Marco said. "We're survivors. Come Christmas, you and I will be sitting by the fireplace at home, drinking eggnog, and watching cartoons with my dad."
Addy laughed through her tears. "He's my dad too, you know. I think of him that way since my own folks died." She held his hand. "And you're like my little brother."
"I'm a few days older than you, Addy."
"But you're sweet like a little brother." She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him as they walked. "I fucking love you, Marco. You know that, right? I fucking love you so fucking much."
He shoved off her helmet and mussed her hair. "Love you too, sis."
Lailani walked up to them, like a child in her father's uniform, her pants baggy and her helmet wobbling. She spoke in a soft voice. "I've always hated Christmas. It was a dangerous time. A time when thieves would move through the slums. When those better off than us celebrated in their homes, but we had only the turkey and pork bones we found in the trash the next morning." She looked at Marco. "If we ever get out of here, can I celebrate Christmas with you, with your family? I promise to just sit at the back and not bother anyone."
"I'll give you the best seat in the house," Marco said. "And the biggest piece of turkey and the biggest slice of ham. So long as I'm with you, Lailani, you'll never want again."
"Want what, turkey?" Lailani said.
"Whatever it is you do want."
She leaned against him. "You."
Addy made a gagging sound. "So sweet I'm going to throw up." She shook her head wildly. "Anyway, we should invite everyone to Christmas." She looked around her at the other soldiers. "You'll all fit! Sergeant Singh, and Lieutenant Ben-Ari, and—"
"Sergeant Singh is Sikh," Marco said. "And Lieutenant Ben-Ari is Jewish. They don't celebrate Christmas."
Singh, who was walking behind them, smiled within his black beard. "I would be happy to eat some of that turkey," he said.
"As would I," said Ben-Ari. "And nobody has to salute me while carving it."
Marco was silent for a moment. Then he said, "It's hard to remember things. To think about home. Somehow it makes the darkness even blacker, makes the pain more real, makes this place worse. It's like when I was back at Fort Djemila. The hardest time wasn't marching with the radios, wasn't our journey through the desert with the litters, wasn't even the lack of sleep. It was one moment—the moment when I called my dad at home, when I heard his voice. That is the only moment in basic training that broke me. And I don't know exactly why."
"Because it made you human again," Ben-Ari said, voice soft. "Basic training is all about depriving you of humanity. That's why we raced you, shouted at you, harassed you day and night. We didn't want to give you even that one moment to think. To be a boy again. We had to turn you into machines, thoughtless, mindless, emotionless. When you called your father, you were human again for just that moment—and all the pain hurt so much. But right now, here in the dark . . . I want us to remember. I want us to be human, not machines, even if it hurts. Because I want us to have hope. To know what we're fighting for, what we'll see again."
Not machines, Marco thought, turning to look at Osiris. The android walked behind them, silent. Soot covered her uniform and skin, but her metallic, platinum hair had not a strand out of place, and her eyes still shone.
"Masters," the android said, "may I join you at Christmas too?"
Marco nodded. "Of course."
"Do you want to hear a joke, masters?" Osiris said. "What kind of tree grows in your hand? A palm tree. It's funny because palm means a tree of the family Palmae but also means the part of the inner surface of the hand that extends from the wrist to the bases of the fingers."
"Yes, thank you for explaining that," Marco said.
"You're welcome, master. I have five hundred and twelve other jokes in my database. I'll save them for Christmas."
And you'll be with us too, Kemi, Marco thought. I promise you. I will find you. I will bring you home.
For a few moments, they walked in silence.
Finally Elvis spoke. "If we ever go home, we won't be the same. We won't be human anymore. Not the way Ben-Ari said."
They turned to look at him. Normally Elvis was the one singing, dancing around, telling jokes, but now his face was solemn, his eyes haunted.
"You mean we'll go home as cyborgs?" said Addy. "With metal limbs like Corporal Webb had?"
Elvis shook his head. "I mean we'll be different inside. Sort of . . . broken. Like my brother. He served in the HDF for five years. He came home, and . . . he was empty inside. He wasn't wounded. He was still tall, strong, worked in the fields with us. But he never laughed anymore. He never danced, sang, told jokes. Never dated a girl." He lowered his head. "A year after he got home, he killed himself. We found him in the barn. His suicide note only said: 'I'm sorry.'"
Marco walked closer to his friend. He remembered the story Elvis had told him back in Fort Djemila, how his girlfriend had died in a car crash. "I had no idea you lost your brother," Marco said. He placed a hand on Elvis's shoulder. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Elvis nodded. "I guess that's why I sing so much. Why I don't like being serious. Because I don't want to turn into that. A hollow man. But if we ever go home, after seeing all this . . ." He swept his arms around him. "These tunnels, this war, the monsters in the darkness . . . How can we ever be happy again? How can we ever sing, dance, be like we were, even if we make it back home?"
L
ailani spoke in a soft voice. "There can still be joy after pain. I suffered all my life. My life was like these tunnels, dark, twisting, full of suffering." She raised her scarred wrists. "I tried to kill myself once. But I found some light. I found some joy. The pain stays with you always. Always. Even if we go home, the pain will still be there, forever scars inside us, as true as these scars on my wrists. So no, we won't ever be as we were. But that doesn't mean there can't also be some light among the shadows. The world still has some beauty in it, even with all the fucking shit all over. I believe that now. I have to."
After that, they walked in silence for a long time, each soldier lost in his or her thoughts, remembering home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They kept walking until they reached a doorway.
They froze.
A doorway. An actual metal door, not just a crude tunnel. Two soldiers flattened themselves against the walls, guns at the ready, while Ben-Ari grabbed the doorknob and shoved the door open. They peered inside to see a metal chamber full of pipes, control panels, generators, and drills. The train tracks ran through the chamber. There were a thousand places here for scum to hide, and the soldiers stepped in slowly, guns raised, flashlights shining. A metal trough ran alongside one wall, full of bubbling molten metal. A few veined blobs clung to the ceiling and vents, casting their dim orange glow.
"Scum lanterns," Marco said. "The bastards were here, or were here not long ago."
"Fucking scum." Addy grimaced and pointed. "What is that? Is that a kid?"
They looked. Marco covered his mouth, nauseous. Something like a burnt corpse, not very large, lay between a few pipes, charred black. If there had been limbs, they were gone, and the face was burned away.
"Maybe it was one of those things like in Ben-Ari's pack," Marco said.
As if in answer to his question, Lieutenant Ben-Ari's backpack rustled.
"What the fuck," Addy whispered. "Did the thing in her backpack hear you? Understand you?"
Earth Lost (Earthrise Book 2) Page 15