Watching Over Us

by Will McIntosh

  Lieutenant Carter was squatting, on her walkie-talkie, a finger plugging her free ear. Everyone was talking at once, chattering excitedly, their faces more animated than Laurel had ever seen them.

  “I told you,” Sergio said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Standing, Carter waved for silence. She was smiling, almost glowing. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just met our new allies. They’re called the defenders.”

  Through her icy shock, Laurel couldn’t help wondering how these defenders would turn the tide of the war. As Todd had pointed out, this wasn’t wrestling. Weren’t they simply larger targets?

  * * *

  At lunchtime they caught up with the defenders, who were leaning up against trees eating processed meat that looked like huge cubes of spam. Laurel’s platoon stood at a distance, whispering.

  Laurel marveled at their size, the slabs of muscle bulging beneath their skintight uniforms. How on earth had they been created? They were walking miracles, far beyond what Laurel thought humans were capable of engineering. She wondered if people had thought the same about the A-bomb back in 1945. When your survival depended on it, great strides could be made in a short time.

  One of the defenders waved them on. “You’re giving away our position. Move on.”

  “We just want to say, ‘Welcome,’” Lieutenant Carter called. “We’re glad to have your help.”

  “Just stay out of our way,” the defender said. His uniform sported vertical silver striping on the shoulders, but if it indicated his rank, Laurel couldn’t decipher it. He clearly thought he outranked Lieutenant Carter.

  “Let’s move out,” Carter called, waving them forward.

  They walked on, the defender’s words echoing in Laurel’s head.

  You’re giving away our position.

  How would saying hello give away these defenders’ position to the Luyten? If any Luyten were within eight miles, they’d already know where the defenders were. Unless…

  “That’s it,” Laurel shouted. The Luyten couldn’t read the defenders’ minds. That, after all, was the Luyten’s only advantage. They were outmanned, outgunned, in foreign territory, but they knew their enemy’s every move. If that advantage were neutralized…

  Laurel’s heart thumped wildly as she explained her hunch.

  * * *

  They crossed a backwoods country road, passed a tall peanut-processing machine—four tubes snaking into cylindrical tanks. Past that were open fields on either side.

  Although it made no sense, because the Luyten didn’t rely on their eyes to detect people, Laurel felt exposed as they walked in the open. She preferred having forest pressing tight on both sides. A mile on they hit a town. The tracks ran behind what passed for the main street—a dozen or so two-story buildings.

  “If Laurel’s right, the starfish don’t stand a chance,” Jared was saying. He was walking up on his toes, head up like he could walk a thousand miles.

  Down the crossing street, Laurel caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. She spun, pointed her rifle, was about to sound the alarm when she saw they were people. Two women, hurrying four young children along the sidewalk, each carrying an overstuffed backpack. Laurel was shocked to see people so far into enemy territory.

  “Lieutenant?” she called, pointing. “People.”

  Lieutenant Carter paused, squinted at the little group. “Why don’t you take someone with you and check in with them, make sure they don’t need help? We’ll wait.”

  “Yes, ma’am.

  “Jared, come on,” Laurel called. Jared trotted after her.

  “Hello,” Laurel said as she approached the group. The women greeted Laurel with cautious smiles. One was youngish, limping on a bad leg. The other was Laurel’s age, maybe a little older. The children were hollow-eyed, somewhat malnourished.

  “I didn’t know anyone was still living this far outside the cities,” Laurel said.

  “There are a few of us,” the younger woman said. “Not many.”

  “Don’t you want to move somewhere safer?” Jared asked.

  “There’s nowhere safer,” the older woman said. “We heard the starfish don’t necessarily go out of their way to kill children. So we keep our heads down, mind our own business. So far it’s worked.”

  There was a certain logic there. They were taking a risk, but who wasn’t?

  “No offense, but we’d rather you all just go on your way before you draw their attention,” the older woman said.

  That hadn’t occurred to Laurel. As soldiers, they had targets on their backs, and here they were getting up close to children. “I’m sorry.” She headed toward her platoon. “We’ll be gone before you know it.”

  Laurel got the Lieutenant’s attention, motioned that they could start walking and that Laurel and Jared would catch up. The Lieutenant lifted her hand to give Laurel a thumbs-up just as her uniform burst into flames. Her helmet melted over her face.

  Before the Lieutenant’s blackened body dropped to the tracks, the heat gun hit Pete Casing. He’d opened his mouth to shout some order, but was burned before he could get it out.

  Troops fled in all directions, clutching their rifles. With Jared at her heels, Laurel took cover in the doorway of a paint store.

  The bark of rifle fire and adolescent screams rang out as three, four soldiers dropped, charred to stumps.

  Shaking, panting, Laurel scanned the buildings, trying to locate the enemy.

  A glimpse of bright emerald flashed in a second-story window across the street. As soon as she saw it, it was gone. The Luyten knew she’d seen it.

  Laurel leaped up, pulled a grenade from her belt, intending to toss it in the window before the thing could escape. As she hefted it, she realized there was no way she could reach that window. She pushed the grenade at Jared, pointed.

  “I saw one up there. Can you get this in the window?”

  Jared grabbed the grenade, ran halfway across the street, then stopped, fumbled with the grenade. “How do I work it?”

  Laurel ran out to him, trying to recall the brief tutorial she’d received on activating grenades. She took the grenade from Jared, squeezed the safety lever, thumbed the clip, then twisted the pull pin. Keeping the safety lever tight, she handed it back to Jared.

  “Throw.” A good twenty seconds had passed since she’d spotted the Luyten; Laurel knew it must have repositioned long ago.

  Jared wound, whipped the grenade at the window. It struck the brick sill, ricocheted up and to the right, dropped to the sidewalk. Laurel dove just before it exploded.

  “Laurel.”

  Laurel looked toward the tracks. Sergio was racing toward them, dragging his rifle by its strap, his too-big helmet bobbing over one eye.

  The arm holding the rifle blackened and curled. Sergio howled, dropped to one knee, clutching the charred stump.

  “Sergio.” Laurel raced toward him. He was screaming, writhing on the asphalt. There were burned bodies everywhere.

  Laurel grabbed Sergio under the armpits, the left—the burned one—was red-hot, but she ignored the pain. Laurel meant to drag him, but Jared was there, grabbing Sergio’s legs. They trotted back to the doorway of the paint shop, gently set Sergio down on the sidewalk.

  His eyes stared sightlessly up at the store’s awning.

  “No, no, no,” Laurel moaned, pressing her face close to Sergio’s. She knew she had to get up, had to keep fighting, but this little boy with a Hulk sticker on his helmet and comic books in his pack was dead, and Laurel wasn’t sure she had any fight left in her.

  A sharp intake of breath from Jared got Laurel’s attention. She lifted her head. A Luyten was rounding the corner across the street. It was red orange, the size of a minivan, moving on four of its six appendages. It held a mushroom-shaped heater in one of its free appendages.

  Laurel’s rifle was on the sidewalk a few paces away; Jared’s was strapped across his back. Of course, the Luyten already knew that, or it wouldn’t have moved into the op
en. It pointed the heater in their direction.

  As Laurel tensed, its insides burst out the front of it, an explosion of coal-black entrails and organs. Black blood sprayed halfway across the empty street.

  Stunned, Laurel struggled to her feet, tried to decide whether to make a run for it just as a defender jogged into view.

  It paused at the same corner the Luyten had recently occupied and looked around, its massive rifle pointed at the sky, deep-set eyes hidden in the shadow of its helmet.

  Laurel raised a hand, but it didn’t acknowledge her, or even seem to notice her.

  Four Luyten came galloping down the middle of the street. Laurel dropped to her stomach as half a dozen defenders appeared in pursuit, firing what might have been grenades from launchers that appeared to be built right into their forearms.

  As the Luyten approached, the defender hiding across from Laurel leveled his rifle and fired. Behind her, the façade of the paint store burst inward; in the street the Luyten’s thick, jewel-colored skin blossomed with wounds, and they fell.

  The defenders set upon them, firing point-blank into their eyes, which were set at spoked intervals around the center of their bodies.

  Laurel pressed a hand on Jared’s back. “Are you okay?”

  Jared lifted his head. “Yeah.”

  They trotted back to the tracks. Two of their platoon mates were still alive: Diamond, who was pressed along the steel rail of the track, and a boy named Artey, who’d been hiding in the tobacco field on the far side. If they’d survived, the Luyten would have come back and finished them both off, but it was hard to shake off the primordial instinct to hide when monsters were all around you.

  The defenders were gone.

  Numb, her ears ringing, Laurel led the three survivors along the track until they reached the forest. She didn’t outrank them, but she was an adult, and they were kids, and no one questioned her taking charge of what was left of their platoon.

  Before the sun had even set, Artey was asleep, curled against a big elm tree. Laurel and the others sat on a fallen tree and ate MREs.

  She’d been right: the Luyten couldn’t read the defenders’ minds. How confused and disorganized the Luyten had looked without that advantage. For the first time in four years, Laurel felt a green tendril of hope sprouting in her heart. Maybe the human race would survive after all.

  It was hard to feel elated. Most of her companions were dead. All those kids left for the vultures, if the vultures would even have them, burned like that.

  “Where are the defenders?” Jared asked. His face was red from close contact with heater guns, as if he had a bad sunburn. “They could get us to Cleveland, or Cincinnati. The starfish wouldn’t dare attack if we were with the defenders.”

  “They lose their advantage when we’re around,” Laurel said. It was ironic: The defenders had been created to save humanity, yet humanity was their Kryptonite. If anyone in Laurel’s platoon had seen the defenders before the Luyten attacked, the Luyten would have been tipped off, and could have run, or set a trap…

  A cold shock ran through Laurel. She set down the slice of pie she’d been working on.

  With all of the miles and miles of enemy territory, the defenders just happened to be close enough to arrive not five minutes into the firefight?

  The defenders had been waiting for the Luyten to show up. Using them as bait.

  But if the defenders had been watching Laurel’s platoon, why had they waited those precious minutes before joining the fight? She pictured Sergio stumbling toward her, cradling what was left of his arm.

  Deeper in the woods, a light flashed briefly. It wasn’t the soft glow the Luytens’ equipment sometimes emitted, but the hard, white light of a human-manufactured flashlight.

  Laurel stood, brushed herself off. “Stay here. If I’m not back by dawn, keep following the tracks.”

  “Where are you going?” Jared’s tone pleaded for her to stay.

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to find the defenders. I’ll be back.”

  She headed toward the spot where the light had flashed.

  Not five minutes later, a defender on watch stopped her.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, towering over her, assault rifle clutched in front of his chest.

  “Looking for you.” Craning her neck, she kept her eyes steady on his. “I want to speak to your CO.”

  With a grunt, the defender led her into their camp. They were sitting in silence, not looking at each other, their backs propped against trees.

  Their commander rose when he saw Laurel. “What are you doing here? You’re betraying our location to the enemy.” They were terrifying to look at. Their faces looked as if they were chiseled from stone, their shoulders remarkably broad.

  “You’re using us as bait,” Laurel said.

  The commander blew air from his nose, folded his arms. “If we hadn’t been following you, you’d be dead.”

  Laurel saw Sergio’s half-charred body lying in the eaves of the paint store. “Most of my platoon is dead. I’m not questioning your strategy, I just want to know why you waited so long to help us.”

  The defender folded his arms. “We needed to know how many Luyten were present, and where they were positioned, to formulate a battle plan.” He was clearly smart, even though he didn’t look it.

  “People were dying,” Laurel said. “You don’t hang back and gather intelligence when an entire platoon is being slaughtered.”

  The defender snorted again. “Our mission is to defeat the Luyten. Strategically, it wasn’t worth risking defenders to save a few individuals.” He shrugged. “I judged it an acceptable level of collateral damage.”

  She wanted to disagree with him, but she couldn’t. Winning the war mattered above everything; that’s why her seventy-year-old bones were humping an assault rifle through the woods. But people had died. Kids. A bizarre and contradictory mix of emotions coursed through her: gratitude, resentment, awe, flat-out dislike. She didn’t know what to do with it all.

  “Who’s giving you your orders?” she asked.

  “We answer to General Peter, of the Defender High Command.” His tone bordered on reverence. “The defenders are a fully independent fighting force, for obvious reasons.”

  They weren’t even under the authority of a human commander. Yes, it made sense. It was also chilling.

  * * *

  It was nearly dark when Laurel pushed through the foliage, into their camp. Her three comrades leaped up to greet her.

  Jared gave her a big hug. “I was worried about you.”

  “Let’s bed down,” she said as crickets peeped around them. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “Where are the defenders?” Jared asked. He looked uneasy about the prospect of another night in the woods after such an awful day.

  Laurel pointed into the trees. “They’re right over there, not two hundred yards away. So don’t worry. They’re watching over us.”

  Meet the Author

  Photo Credit: Paul Harrison

  Will McIntosh is a Hugo award-winner and Nebula finalist whose latest novel, Defenders (Orbit Books), has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. His previous novel, Love Minus Eighty, was named the best science fiction book of 2013 by the American Library Association, while his debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. Along with four novels, he has published short stories in Asimov’s (where he won Readers’ Awards in 2010 and 2013), Lightspeed, Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and elsewhere. Up next is a Young Adult novel, Burning Midnight, to be published by Delacorte Press/Penguin Random House. Will was a psychology professor before turning to writing full-time. You can follow him on Twitter @willmcintoshSF, or on his website, www.willmcintosh.net.

  Also by Will McIntosh

  Love Minus Eighty

  Defenders

  WILL MCINTOSH SHORT FICTION

  The
Heist

  The Perimeter

  Watching Over Us

  City Living

  If you enjoyed

  WATCHING OVER US,

  look out for

  DEFENDERS

  by Will McIntosh

  Our Darkest Hour.

  Our Only Hope.

  The invaders came to claim earth as their own, overwhelming us with superior weapons and the ability to read our minds like open books.

  Our only chance for survival was to engineer a new race of perfect soldiers to combat them. Seventeen feet tall, knowing and loving nothing but war, their minds closed to the aliens.

  But these saviors could never be our servants. And what is done cannot be undone.

  Prologue

  Lieutenant Enrique Quinto

  June 26, 2029. Morris Run, Pennsylvania.

  It was a quaint Pennsylvania town, many of the buildings well over fifty years old, with green canopies shading narrow doorways. Even the town’s name was quaint: Morris Run. If not for the abandoned vehicles, filthy and faded by two years of exposure to the elements, and the trash stacked along the sidewalk, Quinto might have expected someone to step out of the Bullfrog Brewhouse and wave hello.

  “Lieutenant Lucky?” Quinto turned to see Macalena, his platoon sergeant, making his way to the front of the carrier. Quinto wished he’d said something the first time someone called him Lucky, but it was far too late now. Most of the troops he was leading today probably didn’t know his real name.

  “One of the new guys shit his pants,” Macalena said when he drew close, his voice low, giving Quinto a whiff of his sour breath.

  Quinto sighed heavily. “Oh, hell.”

  “The kid’s scared to death. He hasn’t been out of Philadelphia since this started.”