by Sam Sisavath
Before the older man could lift his rifle to fire, he leaped across the open space and smashed the man’s head into the tree trunk. The resulting crunch! caused him a second of remorse, but he pushed it aside as the body disappeared into a bush below.
He leaped down soundlessly and stalked toward the first man, who was scrambling for his holstered sidearm but finding it slippery. There was no suppressor on the gun, but the man either didn’t notice or was too frightened to think of the consequences.
He batted the gun away just as the man managed to lift it, and the weapon disappeared into the grass. He’d heard the crack as the soldier’s wrist broke, and before the man could open his mouth to scream, he placed a hand over it. Pale gray eyes flew wide, but pain or not, the man had enough remaining sense of self-preservation to reach down with his other hand for the handle of his sheathed knife.
The silver coating on the blade made his skin crawl, but he ignored it and grabbed the soldier’s hand as he lifted the knife and twisted—not too hard this time, just enough to force the man to let go of the weapon. The figure underneath him thrashed, terror washing over his painted face. Unlike the girl at the loft, the soldier could see him clearly for what he was—the icy blue of his eyes under the hoodie, the impossible cold and heat that oozed from every pore of his flesh.
“Shhh,” he hissed, putting one finger to his lips.
The soldier went still, the horror in his eyes giving way to confusion.
“Don’t scream,” he hissed.
The smell of urine leaked through the man’s thermal clothing, but the soldier might not even realized what he had done.
“Scream, and you’ll die,” he hissed. “Scream, and the others will die. You’ll bring death on them. The others, like me, in the woods around you. Do you understand?”
The soldier was no fool and he understood, going perfectly still as a result. But the gray eyes continued to stare, unable to pull away from the dark face hiding underneath the frayed fabric of the hoodie.
He removed his hand.
“What are you?” the soldier said, the three words coming out in a breathless whisper that formed clouds of mist between them.
“Shhh,” he said, staring back at the man under him. “This might hurt a little, but I have to know.”
“Know what?” the soldier said, fear flickering back across his face.
“Everything,” he said, placing one hand on the soldier’s forehead and leaning in closer.
*
MERCER.
The man’s name was Mercer. He was responsible for the ambush at the airfield, a single day that was months in the planning.
Images of warplanes streaking across the sky and over clear blue waters. An endless expanse of ocean that made his skin quiver at the sight. People cheering. Children in overalls…fishing?
“You’re with us, or you’re against us.”
Men in uniforms training for hours, days, weeks, and months. Firing hundreds—thousands?—of bullets. That’s okay, because bullets are plentiful. You can always make more—or pick them up.
A voice on the radio resulting in a new kind of bullet. Silver bullets.
Where did they get all the silver?
Everywhere. From homes. Buildings. Piles of silver being smelted down.
Someone spray painting a white sun emblem onto the side of a vehicle. A tan-colored tank.
No. Tanks.
Another place, another time. A new mission. Watching bombs being attached to fixed wings. Then those same bombs dropping in the distance. The ground rumbling. Burning trees. Excited reports of hundreds dead over the radio. Thousands?
“You’re with us, or you’re against us.”
A city on the ocean. Another one underground. Gray walls and mazes of metal pipes, yellow tubing, and machinery.
Civilians. Soldiers. Uniforms. Guns. Ammo.
Flocks of birds? Bird soup…
Pull back, pull back…
Mercer. Concentrate on Mercer.
There. Fifties. Imposing, but just a man. A very dangerous man in control of an army.
“You’re with us, or you’re against us.”
More images of people, places, and things, but none of them involving Mercer. He had to know more about Mercer. Can he be trusted? Does he pose any danger to her?
No, no. He’d lost his way.
Find it. Have to find it again.
There…
A boy on his tenth birthday blowing out a candle in a backyard as people cheered. (No.) A brand new bike falling, a boy crying. (No!) A nervous first kiss in the back of a car. (Pull back! Pull back!)
No, too far back. He’d lost his way.
No, no, no…
*
BLOOD TRICKLED OUT of the soldier’s nose, somehow finding its way to the corners of his mouth. Gray eyes stared accusingly up at him, the blackened face frozen in a mask of shock, confusion, and pain.
He stood up from the lifeless body and stared for a moment. A flash of guilt, and then it was gone. He wasn’t sure if that should have disturbed him. He had felt the same way—and passed it over just as quickly—with the older man in the tree. He couldn’t help but think he should have been more disturbed by how easily he killed them.
Shouldn’t he?
He might have lingered on the conflicting emotions if not for the encroaching sunrise against his back. It wouldn’t be long now. Maybe an hour. Maybe less. He could already feel the heat pressing against his skin, urging him to move on, to forget about the dead.
He fled through the woods, replaying the soldier’s memories in his head. The man hadn’t been privy to much, but he had known enough. Snippets of important things, events, and speeches that he had been around to see and hear.
“You’re with us, or you’re against us.”
Mercer’s words, a clear signal that today was just the beginning, that the worst was yet to come.
He had sought out an army, hoping to find allies to use against Mabry. But all he had found instead was…what, exactly? Another enemy? Or something worse? Was there something worse than Mabry?
Maybe. One way or another, the answer would come.
It always did, eventually.
CHAPTER 15
KEO
BLEACHED WHITE BONES crunched under his boots, and the acidic smell of burnt flesh lingered in the early morning sun, threatening to suffocate him if he so much as let down his guard. It was only bearable because of the size small T-shirt he had found in the storage shed covering the lower half of his face, and though that made breathing difficult, it was preferable to the alternative.
He was making steady progress toward the M1 Abrams tank that had, sometime during the chaos, ended up in the fields about 200 meters from where it had started on the road. He wouldn’t be surprised if the thing had simply run out of fuel, given how active it had been last night.
It sat unmoving under the bright sun now, jagged pieces of white bones wedged between its tracked wheels, bony fingers clutched around sections of the 120mm cannon and limbs jutting out along the crevices of the turret. A couple of ghouls had managed to wedge themselves into the loader’s armor gun shield, for all the good that had done.
Further visual evidence of last night’s carnage could be found all across the fields around him. The craters of 120mm impacts dotted the landscape, and the crumpled heaps of destroyed homes made him question if he had emerged out of the storage box into a landfill instead of a beachside neighborhood. Miraculously, the house with the red roof that he and Jordan had hidden underneath had been spared. Maybe his luck was looking up after all.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, pal.
He stepped through the carcass of a white house with Trex decking, then wound his way through the remains of the living room and out the back, into a crater about a meter deep, before climbing back up among blackened grass. The tank was frozen about fifty meters in front of him, sunlight glinting off its desert tan hide and the shattered remains of bones draped ov
er it.
He slipped out from behind the leftovers of another house and jogged across charred grass, doing his best to skip around as many skeletal remains as possible, though he might as well be trying to avoid the ground for all the good that did. It was impossible not to crunch or snap an arm or a limb or a deformed skull as he made his way toward his objective. After a while, he just gave up trying. If the tankers heard him coming through all that armor, then so be it.
Forty meters to the Abrams, and Keo was finally able to make out the words “Eat Me” along the length of the 120mm cannon, while “Get Off Me Bro” was spray painted across the armor tiles that covered the track wheels. A white circle with triangle-shaped objects coming out of it was prominently displayed at the front of the tank. After a second glance, he concluded the emblem was supposed to be a sun, and the “triangles” its rays. He had seen a lot of U.S. Army insignias, and that was definitely not one of them.
Thirty meters later, Keo was able to identify some kind of modified flamethrower welded in place of a machine gun inside the loader’s gun shield on top of the turret. An M240 was mounted on the second station, but he didn’t remember machine gun fire from last night. He could, though, recall in great detail the thick smell of barbecuing meat.
Keo changed up his approach and began moving sideways so he could take the remaining distance from the rear. He felt a flood of relief not having that smoothbore cannon pointing right at him—or anywhere close to him, for that matter. He knew it was stupid; chances were, they had blown all their load last night. Still, the sight of that thing staring right at him…
With just five meters left to go, Keo was feeling good about making it to the tank undiscovered. That was, until the loud grinding of metal filled the air. He dived to the ground and rolled to his right until he was covered in the shadow of the M1’s turret. Keo pulled down the shirt and took in a deep breath, his first unhindered one since he had stepped out of the storage shack. Thank God for the constant waves of fresh air coming from the ocean nearby, otherwise he might have choked on the stench.
There were impossibly white skeletal remains all around him, a shattered skull directly two inches from his head, and his rifle was resting on a pile of white and gray ash. He did his very best to ignore something pricking at his legs through the fabric of his pants. Probably a broken hand, or fingers…
A loud clang!, followed by a figure with a shaved head raising himself out of the commander’s hatch of the tank. The man was wearing a tan shirt and pants, and the same sun emblem was embroidered across a red collar, but nothing to indicate rank. The shirt had a white patch of the Lone Star State in the front, with scribbling inside it, but Keo was at the wrong angle to read the letters. It was a military uniform of some sort, but not one he was familiar with. But then, BDUs came in all shapes and sizes, and maybe this was a new variation for a new world?
The possibility that Jordan might have been right, that maybe he was looking at remnants of the U.S. Army, made him question what he was doing out in the fields hiding from them. The last thing he wanted was to start popping U.S. soldiers.
Keo took his hand off the M4, then reached down and drew the Glock. His fingers brushed against something sharp hidden among the grass, and something else was poking at his stomach and had been for the last few seconds, but he managed to ignore it, too, even though he had a pretty good idea what it was.
The soldier (?) had climbed out of the tank and was stretching. When he was done, he opened a canteen and took a long drink from it while glancing around at the fields. “Jesus Christ,” the man said. He tossed the canteen back into the open hatch, then dug out a white silk handkerchief and pressed it against his mouth.
Keo heard a second voice, this one coming from inside the tank, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“We made a hell of a mess,” the man standing on top of the Abrams said, his voice muffled by the cloth. “Got a whole fuck lot of them, boys.” He lowered the handkerchief and let out a satisfied sigh. “Who’s got mop-up duty—” the man continued, but he stopped in mid-sentence because he had been turning when he said it, and—
Keo pushed himself up from the ground at the same time the man’s eyes locked onto him. He got his knees under him, then held out his left hand, the palm outward, while his right kept the Glock pointed down at the ground.
“Wait,” Keo said.
The man stared at him, mouth partially agape. His right hand was holding the cloth, and while he wore a gun belt, the sidearm was on his right side, which meant he was right-handed.
“Don’t—” Keo said, when the man dropped the handkerchief and reached for his holstered weapon.
Keo shot the man in the chest.
The soldier fell, slamming into the turret before sliding off it, the white silk cloth fluttering in the air after him.
Keo jumped up to his feet and ran toward the Abrams, thinking, Fuck, fuck, fuck with every step.
“What if it really is the U.S. Army? What if they’re finally fighting back?” Jordan had said last night.
Then I’m screwed, Jordan, Keo thought as he grabbed the closest handhold on the vehicle, his feet searching for anything to use as a stepping stone, finding them, then flinging himself up and over the turret.
He made the top of the tank just as a head poked out of the same commander’s hatch. The man had short spiky hair and was whirling around, the back of his head initially facing Keo. When the soldier finally completed his turn, the man’s eyes widened at the sight of Keo perched behind him. Keo might have held his fire, except the soldier had a gun in his hand and was swinging it around.
Sonofabitch, Keo thought, and shot the tanker between the eyes. The man’s head snapped back before it dropped and slid through the hatch.
Keo scrambled over the turret and reached the opening and looked through it, seeing a third figure below. The man had one hand cradling his dead comrade and the other stretching up with a Sig Sauer. Keo jerked his head back as the man fired—a thunderous boom! as the gunshot exploded in the confines of the tank—and the round zipped past his head, so close he swore he could feel the trail blazed by the bullet.
Instead of leaning back toward the hatch, Keo held out his hand, gun pointed down, and fired two times into the Abrams. Before he even knew if he had hit his target or not, Keo lunged forward and jumped through the round door feetfirst and—
—landed with a wet thud against the stomach of the man with the spiky hair, his momentum sending both him and the tanker with the Sig Sauer sprawling across the metal floor. Keo didn’t have to shoot the third man again because he was already dead—there was a single hole in his chest.
Keo lost his balance as soon as he touched down somewhere in the turret basket and hit his ass on cold, hard metal. Thankfully he was facing the right direction and immediately saw the fourth soldier up front, reclining back in the driver seat underneath the main gun. The man was turning his head and reaching for his sidearm, still in its holster draped over his seat, at the same time.
“Think about it!” Keo shouted, his voice thundering inside the vehicle.
The man did and stopped moving altogether. While his body was frozen in mid-turn, his eyes were free to dart to his two dead comrades before returning to Keo. He was covered in sweat despite wearing only a white undershirt and khaki shorts, similar dress to the third man Keo had shot. A pile of tan-colored uniforms hung from handholds around them.
“Shit,” the guy said.
“Yeah,” Keo said.
*
“U.S. ARMY?” KEO asked.
The soldier, who said his name was Gregson, shook his head.
“Collaborator?”
“Hell no,” Gregson said, looking almost insulted.
“Guess not,” Jordan said.
She stood next to Keo, holding another T-shirt from the storage shed over her mouth. Keo hadn’t needed his since hauling Gregson out of the tank. He wasn’t entirely sure what that said about his sense of smell that he could
“get used” to his current environment.
Gregson sat on the ground with his back against the wheels of the Abrams. He had looked older when Keo first saw him inside the cramped space of the tank, but under the morning sun he was a man in his mid-twenties, with light blue eyes and dirty brown hair. His arms, covered in sleeves of tattoos, were draped over his knees. If he ever had any thoughts about escaping, he let it go when he saw the uniformed body on the ground with the hole in its chest.
“So if you’re not U.S. Army and you’re not collaborators, who are you?” Keo asked.
Gregson didn’t answer right away, as if he was trying to decide whether or not he should say anything to them. Keo could have told him that only delusional idiots tried to withstand interrogation. Sooner or later, you broke. Everyone did. Which was precisely why his old organization never bothered to rescue captured operatives.
“The way I see it, we’re on the same side,” Keo continued.
That elicited a snort from Gregson. “Was that before or after you killed my friends?”
“I had no choice. You should thank me for having the self-control not to shoot you back there.”
Gregson seemed to think about that before finally saying, “I guess.”
“So, let’s start at the beginning. Who are you, and what were you doing running around out here last night, shooting up the beach?”
“I was following orders.”
“Whose?”
“Mercer’s.”
“Never heard of him.” He turned to Jordan: “You?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“So, who’s Mercer?” Keo asked Gregson.
“He’s a great man,” Gregson said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“And this great man told you to come down here and empty 120mm shells on an innocent beach?”
“Not exactly.”
“So what, exactly?”
Gregson hesitated.
Keo sighed and drew his sidearm. “I’ve tried to do this the easy way, but you’re just wasting my time now.”