by Chris Lowry
She nodded.
“I think so. It wouldn’t be too hard, if I had help.”
Lt clapped his hands together.
“Think you can skip the pre-drunk celebration and answer his question?” Renard grumbled.
“There’s no answer yet,” said Lt. “I’m still deciding. But I also have one more tool for my Lick killing tool belt coming up.”
“You’re going to give them corn mash?”
Lt grinned.
“I’m going to give them whiskey by the gallon.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jake lay back on the ground and stared up at the stars. His leg ached, but he couldn’t recall why. He shifted position to try and find more comfort, but the pain was deep, and nothing worked.
He rolled over on his side and saw Steph watching him in the low light of the small fire.
She offered a tiny smile, and he returned a half grin.
“Can’t sleep?” she murmured.
He shook his head.
“You either?”
“Not since before I was captured,” she said.
“You remember it?”
It was her turn to shake her head.
“Vaguely,” she said. “Like the memory of a dream.”
He grinned again.
“I can’t even remember that much.”
“Where did they get you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I remember being taken,” she whispered. “I was at a camp in Colorado. A couple hundred of us. The hovers moved in and zapped us with sound waves. I woke up on one of their bases.”
“Near here?”
He watched one shoulder shift up and down, a half shrug to his answer.
“I don’t know where here is.”
“Me too.”
“Where were you before?”
“Small town on the border of Missouri,” he said. “I think we’re still in the middle. Somewhere.”
“But you don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t look like Colorado, but there are mountains, ridges. Could be Tennessee?”
“Could be.”
“Could be West Virginia.”
“Maybe,” he said.
But he didn’t think so.
The Ozarks and Appalachians looked different. He couldn’t recall why, scratching back in his memory to some boring lecture in school by a teacher whose name he couldn’t remember too.
Something about climates and zones. Certain trees only lived in certain places.
Like people, he snickered.
“What?”
“I think we’re still near home,” he said. “A couple hundred miles. We were going North on the train.”
“Do you know where?”
“I don’t remember being put on the train. I remember waking up when it stopped.”
She sighed.
“I don’t remember being put on the train either,” she said. “Just when they rescued us.”
“Before this happened, the aliens,” Jake rolled onto his back and absently massaged his upper leg with his hand. “I used to get a funny feeling if I forgot my homework or left something at home. That’s what I feel like now, like I’ve forgotten something.”
Steph rolled over too and watched the stars shimmer and shine.
“I feel like that too.”
They stared up together in silence for a few moments.
“What do you think it means?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m not sure if I want to.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lutz stared at the metal ceiling of the warehouse where the prisoners bunked. Slept might be more accurate, since there were no bunks, but even sleeping was on the verge of impossible in their prison.
They worked. That’s all he knew. The Licks beat them, kicked them, tortured them to do whatever needed to be done on the former base, and then released them into the warehouse when the sun went down.
Food was rat, if they could catch it, fried on tiny fires built by some prisoners who snuck twigs, sticks or bits of whatever was flammable in their pockets back to the one giant cell.
That’s what the warehouse was, one giant cell, he thought. Tin walls, tin roof, blocking out the stars.
He had killed two rats the first day in. Caught them gnawing on a prisoner who had died in the night.
While he looked around for a way to cook them, six skeletons jumped him and stole his kill.
Six on one, he muttered.
He remembered watching the bomb fall from the sky, remembered running.
Then he woke up here, dumped into an airport hangar to work on a hovercraft. The learning curve was steep.
No one would talk to him. Even when he tried to whisper a question.
He learned why.
Another man, a prisoner from the compound where he was taken, balked at a Lick soldier. The aliens made an example of him by drawing out the torture so his screams echoed across the camp.
Then darkness fell, and he was thrust into a new hell.
The warehouse was large, big enough to hold four 747’s wing to wing. It was full of confused people who kept muttering about how they got there.
He knew how.
He just didn’t know why.
Why were the Lick taking new prisoners, and how did they know to attack the compound at the same time his squad was raiding it?
The ceiling didn’t offer any answers.
No one did.
The concrete under his back was cold, unforgiving. Cold seeped in, leeching his bones of warmth, filling him with a dull ache.
Lt would come.
He hoped he would. Unless they thought he was dead.
In all of their ambushes, in their attacks on Lick patrols, they had never discussed being taken prisoner.
What to do, how to handle it.
He heard sobbing in the darkness across the warehouse, someone breaking down into hysterics.
“Handling it better than them,” he muttered.
“Good for you,” a voice said next to him.
Soft. Raspy, but a woman’s. Or girls, hard to tell. It was dark.
“Could be worse,” he said.
“How?”
It could be weeks later, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
Weeks later, there would be a lot more dead, from starvation, and beating. Those who still lived would be little more than animals, fighting for scraps of food, for places on the concrete floor.
But he didn’t say that to the girl with the raspy voice.
“Could be hot,” he said instead.
“It will be,” she told him.
As if they would still be around when the seasons flipped and it got hot again. Southern hot where the air is so thick with humidity, the sun turns it into a muggy clinging mist that offers no relief.
The inside of the warehouse would be fetid with the stench of their unwashed bodies, mixed with the dead, and offal.
“Summer’s gonna be bad,” he agreed even though he knew they wouldn’t live to see it.
“Then we need to get out before then,” she answered.
Lutz sat up and stared into the darkness. He was used to the woods, where starlight created an ambient glow, at least enough to see shadows and shapes.
But the darkness in the warehouse was complete, total pitch. He couldn’t make out shape, or shadow, just the area where the raspy voice originated.
“Count me in,” he said.
But this time, she didn’t answer. He heard the scuffling sound of a body moving across the concrete, away from him.
“Hey!” he called after her.
“Shut up!” someone screamed back. A man. Another on the verge of hysterics.
He didn’t dare chase her in the dark. Too many people to trip over, too many chances to get hurt.
Lutz sat back, put his hands behind his head and stared up at the metal ceiling he couldn’t see.
He worked on committing her voice to memory, so that when he he
ard it again, he could mark her.
He had an ally.
Now he just needed a plan.
CHAPTER TEN
“What’s the plan, Lt?” Babe marched up next to Bonney.
“You know the plan, Babe. It ain’t changed.”
“We’re not looking for Lutz,” Babe reminded him. “That should be the plan.”
Lt sighed.
He too wanted to run off to rescue Lutz. If he was even alive.
“Do you know how much damage we could do with these suits?”
Babe flexed an arm out in front of them, curling the gloved fingers into a tight fist.
“Yeah,” said Lt. “I’ve got a damn good idea of what we could do with them. The thing is Babe, there are a couple of ways this could go down.”
He glanced at the rest of the squad spaced out in the woods.
“We’re a little short handed right now.”
Babe looked around too.
“I don’t see what you’re seeing, Lt. There’s seven of us. Six suits.”
“I know you’re itching in your britches to go kill some fucking Licks, but we need to hold up. Take it down a notch.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Lt,” Babe swore under his breath, his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear.
“I signed up to kill, and you’re fucking telling me it’s time to back off. What happened to the man who wanted a thousand fucking heads?”
Lt glared at Babe and the look sent a shiver down the suited man’s spine. He took a step away from Bonney, held up a hand.
“Sorry,” he said.
Lt took a deep breath and let it out through is lips.
“Apology accepted,” he said. “Tensions running high and fuck all. You still owe me a thousand heads, and since Lutz is taking a breather working for the Lick, you owe me his heads too. I ain’t forgot why we’re out here.”
“Then let’s suit up the new two, and go get him. Get them,” Babe tried one more time.
“Getting Lutz is a priority. But it ain’t priority one. We’re gonna get these two vets up to High Command, check on Doc to see if he’s got those last two suits ready for us, and steal us a hovercraft.”
Babe stopped and watched Lt’s back as he kept walking.
“Steal a hovercraft.”
“That’s what I said, Babe,” Bonney called over his shoulder.
“We don’t know how to fly it,” Babe shook his head and trotted after him. “I don’t know how to fly it. Do you know how to fly it?”
“That hovercraft came up on a straight line,” Lt said, pointing through the trees to the black ribbon of asphalt as it wound in and out of view while they moved.
“I figure they took Lutz back on that line, and,” he pointed a finger toward Jake and Steph. “That train came from that direction too.”
Babe stared at the two walking on the far side of them.
“We still don’t trust them?”
“You can trust ‘em Babe. I’m not sure enough for the both of us.”
“What about them?” he pitched his voice low and shot a look at Weber and Renard.
“Hell Babe, you can trust them too.”
“But you won’t.”
“I just trust you and Waldo. That’s about all I got room for right now. Good enough?”
“Good enough,” said Babe.
They walked for a hundred meters in silence.
“Just worried about him.”
“Me too, Babe. Me too.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He smelled smoke first. The misty fog clung to the branches of the pines as they worked their way through the woods.
“Smell that?” Waldo asked.
Lt nodded.
Weber sniffed.
“Metal. Plastic. Bodies,” he announced. “You think this place is safe?”
Lt turned his fast walk into a jog through the trees, moving up past Jake to take point.
“We need weapons,” Weber yelled.
Then he saw the bodies.
The first was burned into a skeleton, the roasted muscles contracted it into a fetal position.
A discarded M-16 lay just out of reach.
Renard leaned over, scooped it up and checked the magazine with a practiced hand.
“Not a blaster,” he said as he passed it to Weber.
“But it’ll do,” they said in unison.
Weber and Babe jogged to join Lt as he stared at a former derelict warehouse.
“Was this it?” Renard asked.
He spied another dead body, this one missing it’s lower extremities, rifle still clutched in both hands, and relieved it of the weapon. He took two magazines off a belt clip and passed one to Weber.
“Was,” Lt gulped.
His blue eyes scanned the bombed out wreckage of the warehouse that used to hide High Command.
“Looks like the Lick made it through round Three,” said Babe.
“Round Three,” said Weber. “Was that the code for this place?”
“Round three of leadership,” said Waldo. “Lick killed the first round on Day One. Second round a little after that.”
“Surprised these idiots lasted this long,” said Babe.
“They were good at hiding,” said Lt.
He began moving around the perimeter, eyes roaming over the structure and grounds.
“You want us to split up?” Babe asked.
“That didn’t work out so well last time,” said Lt.
Babe shrugged, checked the charge on his blaster rifle and followed.
Waldo motioned the two veterans, Jake and Steph after them so he could watch them from behind.
“Bombed from the inside,” said Weber.
“Looks like,” Lt agreed.
“And attacked out here.”
“Yep.”
“Does he always talk this much?” Renard spat at Babe.
“Lt? He’s a chatty Cathy most of the time. Unless he’s thinking traitorous sabotage. And when he’s thinking traitorous sabotage, watch the fuck out.”
“How do you know that’s what he’s thinking,” Jake asked.
“Cause it’s what I’m thinking about you,” Babe answered. “Lots of bad shit has been happening since we rescued you. Starting with Rook.”
Lt stopped them at the entrance to the compound. It was littered with the bodies of burned fighters ripped apart by blaster fire.
“Only Stormtroopers are so precise,” he said.
“What’s a storm trooper?” Steph asked Jake.
“It’s like we’ve lost all our culture, Babe,” Lt complained.
“I know what they were,” said Weber. “Movies, right?”
“Nazis,” Renard corrected. “My grandfather told me about them before. But they didn’t use lasers.”
“It’s a movie,” said Lt. “At least what I’m talking about. And this is Lick work, not some science fiction make believe.”
He hunkered down on his knees and stared at the dark hole where the door once was on the warehouse.
“Think those food crates had a transmitter in them, like his jacket?” he said aloud.
Babe glared at Jake, who shrugged.
“They did that on Mars,” said Weber. “Bug a supply drop, and follow the radio signal to our posts.”
“Lick can be crafty sons of bitches,” said Lt.
“You think Suds was in there?”
“Where else would he be, putz?” Babe shouted.
“Hey!” Waldo raised his voice. “Don’t take it out on me. I didn’t lead the Lick to him.”
“No,” Babe rushed Jake and pounded him into a tree. He put his forearm across his throat and lifted him off the ground. “He did.”