The Beachhead

by Christopher Mari

  She made a face, as if she had tasted something bitter. “Mischief.”

  “Don’t go back to that old chestnut about not being here during the Arrival. We who were born later really can’t help that!”

  “If only you had been,” Grace continued. “Maybe then you’d understand how much we’ve gained. You’d know all that has passed from us, the ways of war and division, that you’d better appreciate what our faith has accomplished here. True peace for the first time in human history.”

  “Peace through conformity. Peace through reverential awe and fear of the unknown.”

  “‘Unknown.’ We saw them!” Grace said, her voice filling with emotion. “We saw them, all of us. Angels they were, perfect in face and form and bearing. At first we feared they were the ones who destroyed us—but they brought us here from the White Place, they gave us redemption, they gave us and our children a peace unlike man had ever known—”

  John had been watching the exchange for some time before he saw Kendra’s short-cropped dark hair in the crowd and forced his way through to her. She was standing with several soldiers, all from his company. Her bright-blue eyes flashed a look of relief at him. “Where have you been during all this fun, Captain?”

  He laughed. “Where’s Weiss?”

  “Dunno. Nobody seems to be in charge of security here.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “Just give the word.”

  He nodded. “Much as I’d like to, I think you better take the lead.”

  “A little awkward with your mom up there, huh?”

  “Uh-huh. And not to mention Gordon.”

  Kendra gave a couple of nods, and a half dozen soldiers followed her onstage, John a step behind her. She barked a “Pipe down!” at Lee before heading over to Grace and Petra to tell them in a kind but firm way to go home. Lee griped behind her back, “Oh now Weiss has got his favorite pet doing his dirty work for him, eh?”

  “Gordon,” John said gently, a hand on Lee’s arm. “Time to go home.”

  Lee turned on him. “And you, John? They must think it awfully funny to send my wife’s old boyfriend here to shut me up.”

  “Come on, Gordon. Enough. Please.”

  “Johnny,” Petra said, “we’re not afraid of what he has to say. Let him speak. Daylight is the best antiseptic.”

  “Mom, please. Look at the crowd. This is getting out of control, and you know it. Grace, tell her.”

  Before Grace could answer, Lee shoved John’s hand from his arm. “I’m not going anywhere. These people want to hear what I have to say.” He turned to them. “Don’t you want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

  A roar of approval rose from the crowd, mingled with a fair amount of boos. Kendra stepped in and said through gritted teeth, “Move or I will carry your skinny ass out of here in front of your adoring fans.”

  But the crowd was still murmuring, which only egged Lee on. “Their interpretation is bollocks. We were brought to this world! Where does it say that in Revelation? Humanity was supposed to rebuild the Earth, not this backward planet. And the New Jerusalem is supposed to come from heaven, not be this poor imitation built from the sweat of our brows. My God, think for yourselves—”

  “Lieutenant,” John said as he and Kendra grabbed Lee under his arms. A quick glance over his shoulder brought the other soldiers forward to take his mother and Grace from the stage.

  No one made any effort to interfere. Coming down the steps, John challenged the grumbling crowd with a steely gaze as he had been trained to do. The eyes of hundreds of men and women and children peeled away from his. Long after he had left the scene he carried those looks with him. Their faces were like ones he had seen in photos in the Archives. They had been the faces of terrified citizens living in a police state.

  CHAPTER 6

  John had been meaning to talk to Kendra since that night at the gatehouse with the Newcomers. He had seen her several times in the weeks since, always while on duty. And when he had tried to find her in the off-hours, she was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t ask her bunkmates where she was, nor anyone else she was friendly with—not that Kendra had many close friends. He wanted to see her, sure. But he didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. He wanted to help if he could and was ready to accept any help she could offer in return.

  But it wasn’t just bad timing that had prevented him from seeing her. General Weiss had asked him and a handful of trusted officers to guard the Newcomers. The Tylers weren’t prisoners, officially, but they hadn’t been allowed to mix with the general population either. The doctors had recommended a general quarantine of at least two months. No one knows what germs they carry was the official justification. But John—as well as anyone else with half a brain—knew that he and his fellow officers were the Tylers’ jailers in everything but name. What he hadn’t realized was that he was also becoming their friend.

  The Newcomers had been living in a house in an isolated section of the city, an area that was home to much of New Philadelphia’s textile and furniture manufacturing—what little of it there was. It was a noisy neighborhood by day but very quiet at night. John had read about such neighborhoods on Earth-of-old and tried to imagine what those streets must’ve felt like at night, long after the quitting-time whistles had blown.

  The house itself, built long before that section became a commercial area, was a fine one. It had been constructed early in the city’s history by a long-dead Remnant, an architect on Earth-of-old. He had designed it in the style of an Italian villa, with a columned interior courtyard garden still bursting with lush cultivated greenery. If it were a prison, it was certainly a very comfortable one, despite the daytime noise from the surrounding streets. Often when John assumed his post, he found the whole Tyler family in the sun-dappled courtyard, the parents watching the children race between shrubs and columns before sitting down to eat a meal.

  No one had ordered John not to talk to them. And in spite of the quarantine, he hadn’t even been asked to adhere to basic protocols—something he knew his grandfather would have insisted upon if a true quarantine situation existed. Maybe it was because he felt comfortable talking with the Tylers. Maybe it was just because he was naturally curious about them. Or maybe the Weiss brothers figured the best way to get intelligence was to have trusted men like him strike up easy conversations with these mysterious strangers. Whatever the reasoning, it didn’t matter. Here he was.

  His conversation with William Tyler that morning was the main reason he’d spent the day looking for Kendra. The two men had been in the courtyard enjoying the comfortable morning air in lightweight jackets. The noise from the street was little more than a dull background rumble from where they were sitting.

  William had looked out across the courtyard from a bench in the garden, his elbows on his knees and his hands folded between them. “So you all think the Orangemen are the angels and demons described in the Bible?” His broad face, recently freed of its beard, was bright pink and clean-looking.

  “Can’t speak for all of us.”

  “But most, right?”

  “The Remnants witnessed the events, so they can speak to them better than I can,” John said, sitting next to William. The children were playing nearby. Eva was somewhere inside. “Many of them were nonbelievers before the last days on Earth, so the realization didn’t come easily for them. Grace Davison, if you can imagine it, was what she likes to call an ‘evangelical atheist,’ a psychology professor who had built her career ‘dismantling’ religions.”

  William shrugged. His thin shoulders swam in a white shirt a size or two too big for him. “It’s not so unbelievable. Alcoholics often become the greatest teetotalers.”

  “I know you’re skeptical about this.”

  “Not skeptical, just a bit surprised that everyone accepted the attacks as prophecy fulfilled.”

  “Is it really that surprising? The world was destroyed, just as predicted in Revelation. And exactly the number predicted in
Revelation was saved. And since that time we’ve built a new kind of human race here—also predicted. Our society doesn’t have any of the troubles of Earth-of-old. No one goes hungry. No one steals. No one has ever been seriously assaulted by another citizen. No one has ever been murdered.”

  “But it’s not a Utopia. You’re all forced to serve in the military, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not a military; it’s a defense force. And we’re not forced. If we’re healthy enough for it, we’re asked. Everyone understands the need to protect the little bit of the human race that’s still alive.”

  “And what if someone did refuse? Would they be ostracized?”

  John shook his head. “No one has ever refused, because we all understand why it’s so important to serve.”

  “You’re describing a kind of group society collaborating in a way I find hard to imagine.”

  “Isn’t that the point? People here aren’t like the ones you remember.”

  “Come on!” William said with a laugh, deep and rich. “No grudges at all? Rivalries? People who just don’t like each other’s faces?”

  “We know there were once all kinds of divisions in the world. The books we have tell us that much. But we don’t see any divisions between us. We only see the human race—and we’ll protect that with our lives.”

  “Please don’t think—”

  “I don’t think anything. You’re just asking questions.”

  “I think I’m dancing around the big one, though.” William cracked his neck, as if to prep himself. “Okay, so I’m asking, Captain. Are you certain about what the Orangemen are?”

  John kept his voice flat, his face expressionless. “You mean certain that they’re angels? They’re winged creatures with perfect forms. Some protect us. Others hunt us, looking to do us harm just as the fallen angels did in the Bible.”

  William held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to question your beliefs as much as understand them better. But let me ask this: among the Remnants, were there any scientists or doctors? I mean, not just psychologists like Grace Davison.”

  “Sure. Quite a few.”

  “Did any of them think the Orangemen might be something else? I mean, you’re all not even certain that the Orangemen were the ones who destroyed the Earth, right?”

  “The Friendlies told the Remnants very early on what had happened, that fallen members of their race had destroyed humanity. And to answer your first question, my paternal grandfather was a doctor. He always had a lot of theories. But he and the others, after seeing what they saw and reading Scripture, accepted that the Orangemen were the angels and demons of the end times. At least, that’s what they told us.”

  Tyler rubbed his clean-shaven face and looked straight at John. “Did anyone ever think the Orangemen might simply be aliens?”

  “Aliens?”

  “Yeah. Not angels. Not demons. Just intelligent beings from other worlds.”

  “I remember my grandfather once saying there was a lot of discussion in that direction early on. But the ones who had been scientists couldn’t safely prove they were aliens. I think what they felt and saw in the last days convinced them that these weren’t just another kind of mortal being.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I mean, think about it,” John continued. “Think about all the years humanity had searched the nearby stars and had never discovered even the slightest hint of intelligent life.”

  “You know about the searches for extraterrestrial life?”

  “Whatever I could find in the Archives, though there’s not much. In fact, we don’t have any books on astronomy, though we do have one or two about searches for aliens.”

  William smiled at that. “Of course, just because we didn’t find them doesn’t mean aliens don’t exist.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of thinking about things, Will. No offense. The authority of a hundred and forty-four thousand eyewitnesses—far more eyewitnesses than the original Apostles—saw this and believed. Yet you’d toss out all that testimony in support of a theory that aliens must exist simply because the galaxy is so big and somebody has to be filling up some of that space. I mean, that’s the crux of the argument, right?”

  “But what if?” William urged. “What if the Orangemen are aliens? And what if them looking like the angels from Scripture is just a simple twist of fate?”

  When he finally saw Kendra, she was sauntering down the street toward the barracks from the direction of Central Square, her hands in her front hip pockets, lost in thought. He stood directly in her path until she looked up, blinking as she recognized him. She whistled low and long and pushed her olive-brown cap back on her head with her thumb under its bill.

  “Wanna go grab a beer?” she asked. “You look like you need it.”

  “Sure. That is, if you’re buying.”

  “Be glad to, once they ditch this impeccable bartering system of ours. But let’s not hit the usual places.”

  “Lead on, Lieutenant.”

  While most people bottled their own liquor, there were about five bars in the whole city that served beer of decent quality. Kendra and John knew most of them very well and almost everyone in them. So he had little idea where she planned on going to avoid the usuals until she ducked into a corner shop—really no more than a stand that traded staples from an old couple’s front room—and emerged a minute later with two bottles and a grin spreading across her wide mouth.

  “No beer. Red and white wine, though. One of each. Probably bottled ten minutes ago and not worth the two hours of cleaning I promised the owners to get them.”

  “Fine. Where we going to go? The square?”

  “Nah. I know a place.”

  “Oh you know a place.”

  “Yeah.” Her smile was cocked higher on one side than the other. “Interested?”

  A few minutes later he found himself being led back into the industrial part of town where the Tylers were being sequestered. For a second he was sure Kendra was leading him to their house. Could she have figured out where they were being kept? But then she turned down the next street and made her way to the city wall. The section she seemed to be looking for was about halfway between the two closest gatehouses. They could see the guards in both towers in the middle distance, their silhouettes a hard black against the starlit night sky.

  John had little idea what was going on as he watched Kendra glance from one guard tower to the other.

  She handed him both bottles. “Watch the streets, okay?”

  He nodded and kept a lookout but wasn’t surprised to find the streets empty on all sides at this hour. People were staying home for a lot of reasons—to talk, to speculate, to sleep. Familiar surroundings were always a comfort if one feared the future.

  When he turned back, Kendra was nowhere to be seen. He could see straight down the wall for blocks and had a clear view of the street heading out perpendicularly before him. Gone. Completely vanished. But she couldn’t have just disappeared. Stealthy as she was, he was sure he would’ve heard the crunching of the gravel all around them. He looked back and forth, squinting into the night.

  “Hey!”

  The call came from just to his right, near to the ground. He looked down. There was a hole in the wall that hadn’t been there a second ago. Kendra’s dark head was sticking out of it, her eyes bright blue and bemused.

  “Hiya.”

  “What the hell—”

  “Just make sure the coast’s clear before you follow,” she said, and was gone. Then her head popped out again. “And don’t break the bottles.”

  A quick glance around and he was in the hole, bottles tucked into his leather jacket and buttoned tight against his chest. What he had ducked into wasn’t a hole as much as a tunnel that—if Kendra’s lantern light in front of him was any indication—led clear through the thick city wall and out into the countryside behind it.

  The light he had followed was gone when he got to the outer opening. The rich smell of dewy ve
getation all around him was overwhelming, a living perfume. Ten paces from the wall he could see Kendra’s pale face in the moonlight, partly hidden by shrubs. He waited for her to give him an all-clear sign and then joined her. Lying next to her, their faces obscured from each other by leaves of grass, he heard her say, “Watch this.” Then she tugged on a half-buried rope of serious vintage.

  The rope pulled up a stone that perfectly sealed the tunnel. Even from their close proximity, he couldn’t tell that there was a void behind it.

  “The rope also replaced the slab at the other end at the same time.”

  “Did you build this?”

  “Nah. Found it. A long time ago. Me and Alex used to sneak out this way as kids. Come on.”

  Alex. The offhand reference to her dead boyfriend didn’t hit him as hard as the fact that a six-year-old mystery had suddenly been solved. He followed her through an overgrown path into the hills. The bottles clinked dry and safe in his jacket.

  The first time he had met Kendra McQueen she was fourteen years old and had been missing for three days. He was a young lieutenant then, twenty-four years old, years past his relationship with Sofie Weiss. Was she already married to Gordon then? God yes, and for a long time too. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was his career, moving up the ranks, doing what was asked of him. With his father and Christian gone, with his mother growing ever more connected to her faith to better understand their deaths, finding purpose in orders and rigors made sense to him then.

  He was part of the search-and-rescue effort for Kendra. No one wanted to call it a recovery yet, although many feared that she had been killed by one of the animals in the hills. How she had gotten outside was a mystery, but after three days of searching inside the walls it was clear she was no longer in the city. And Alexander Raymond, her boyfriend, didn’t seem to know anything about her disappearance.

  No one suspected malice. There had never been a crime committed in all of their history. But many of the old-timers began to wonder if something was amiss. When it was suggested they search outside the city, the Council agreed to it readily. There was comfort in that. If they found Kendra’s bones picked clean beyond the walls, the civilization they had built was still safe.