Odyssey

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  “What?” Homer had been back in his own head.

  “When we first got here.”

  Homer laughed. “Oh. Not a gang sign. Or maybe it is. Surfer-dude, hang-ten sign.” He turned the last corner before the officers’ billets, Sarah following blindly. While it was intimately familiar to Homer, it probably all looked the same to her.

  “Is he a surfer?” she asked.

  “No, quite the opposite. Kili was always an East Coast SEAL. And he always gave me grief for being a West Coast surfer-dude SEAL.” He stopped at their door, to dig out the key card.

  “Did you surf?”

  He smiled at her over his shoulder. “Occasionally. What can I tell you, almost everyone did out there.” He touched the card to the reader. But Sarah intercepted his hand at the latch.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t think Kili’s telling you everything.”

  Homer held her gaze, his smile melting away, his patience being tested again. “You’ve spent an hour with him.” There was now nearly an edge to his voice, which even he had almost never heard. “And I’ve known the man for more than two decades.”

  “He’s your brother. I get it.” She took a breath. “But loyalties aren’t always so simple, Homer. Sometimes… it’s difficult to reconcile them. People can get into impossible situations.”

  Homer didn’t answer. And his expression didn’t change.

  Not until he opened the door – and inside, in the glow of a nightlight, he saw Debi sitting on the edge of one of the beds. And in that bed were Ben and Isabel, fast asleep. Debi got up carefully, padded over, and whispered, “They wanted you.”

  She squeezed Homer’s arm and let herself out.

  Sarah whispered, “Looks like you’re their familiarity.”

  That left the other bed for Homer and Sarah.

  This time, she didn’t try to cuddle up.

  Marauders

  But she did grab onto him when the alarms went off.

  It was only a light alarm – a flashing red bulb strobing the black room. But it was enough to wake Sarah from a palsied sleep, filled with strange and immersive dreams.

  In the stroboscopic view, she could see Homer come awake smoothly, sitting up and powering his body out of bed, no doubt from years of sleeping on an irregular schedule in dangerous places. Both kids woke up the same way, even the little girl, looking neither scared nor alarmed.

  Evidently this wasn’t their first rodeo, either.

  By the time Homer checked on them, pulled on boots and clothes, and grabbed a weapon, the door was knocking. Behind it stood Kili. He was also dressed, but not armed.

  “Grab your kit,” he said. “Odin wants you out there.”

  “Out where?” Homer asked. “For what?”

  “Nothing existential.” Kili also looked and sounded relaxed. “Just dipshit marauders again. They’re no threat to us. But to other survivors and civilians in the area, not so much – they basically go around raping and pillaging. We could live with that. But when they go stumbling around the neighborhood, leading the dead up to our door – again, not so much. This is an interdiction patrol.”

  Homer just nodded, obviously getting it.

  It even made sense to Sarah, as she sat on the bed, watching and listening. Staying hidden from the living here would be critical. Not only would other survivors want to get into such a secure place. But they’d have a strong tendency to bring the dead following along behind them – and if they started a singularity, the infinite legions of walking corpses would eventually pile up and over the 20-foot walls. Any height walls.

  And bye bye Dam Neck Annex.

  Of course, it would have been by sweeping up their back yard that they’d stayed alive and secure this long. What Sarah was curious about was why it was Homer that Odin had asked for. But if Homer was wondering about that, he didn’t say anything. Sarah knew him well enough to know he’d simply come when he was called, and go where he was ordered, putting his head down and pitching in. He would never ask, Why me?

  Sarah sure wanted to ask. But she kept her mouth shut.

  As Homer pulled on his vest, clipped on his rifle, and grabbed his helmet and NVGs, he said to her, “Watch the kids for me.”

  She reached for her own vest. “Let me come. I can help.”

  Homer was already shaking his head, and behind him Sarah could see Kili shaking his more vigorously, as well as making a big Nooo shape with his mouth.

  “How about I shoot from the roof?” she persisted.

  “They’ll never get that close,” Homer said. He turned and mussed the hair of both children, who were sitting up in bed.

  And then he was gone.

  Kili gave Sarah the ghost of a look. Then he shut the door.

  * * *

  When Homer emerged into the team’s basement staging area, he found it thrumming with activity. The staging area consisted of two halves – a sprawling parking deck for tactical vehicles on one side, and a kind of open-plan team locker room on the other, filled with rows of oversized weapons-and-gear cages.

  There were about a dozen men in the last stages of jocking up, some already loading up. But Kili apparently wasn’t going to be one of them. He stopped and left Homer at the door.

  “This is you.”

  “But not you,” Homer said, turning to face him.

  “Not on this one. Get with Mike B and Three Troop over there. They’ll square you away.”

  Homer nodded and started to turn again.

  “Hey,” Kili said. “Have a good fight.”

  Homer nodded and dashed over to the second vehicle in a column of two that had been pulled out of their bays, even as its engine roared to life and other kitted-up operators climbed in. It was a little six-wheeled Pandur APC, long favored by the teams for being lightly armored, highly maneuverable, small, fast, and relatively quiet.

  Taking a seat in the cramped interior, Homer found Mike B. “Hey,” he said. “What’s the game plan?”

  “Just roll with it, man. You can improvise, right?”

  Homer figured he could. “How about an encryption key for the squad net, then?”

  Another dark head-shake. “Nah. You’re not gonna need it.”

  Visibility from inside these things wasn’t great at the best of times, but Homer worked out the direction of travel as their column of two Pandurs rolled out the main gates, crossed the land bridge, and then raced down the long stretch of empty, private, forested road beyond, finally turning left.

  This took them into what used to be the mixed residential and commercial part of Dam Neck north of the Annex, but behind the beachfront properties to the east. After that, he lost track – due to the dark, the tiny portholes in the Pandur, and the fact the whole area didn’t look quite like it had when he was last here.

  Peering up the middle aisle, between two facing rows of crammed-in operators, Homer could see the glow of a handheld device up front, and worked out that they had some kind of drone coverage up, with live video – and were using it to vector in on whatever the threat or target was. This was all done with minimal conversation and fuss, but with great efficiency.

  And, ultimately, to maximum effect.

  When the Pandur rolled to a stop, it was on an empty stretch of road beside a forested hillside. Still wordless – utterly soundless, in fact – the twelve Tier-1 operators spilled out the backs of the vehicles and slithered up the hill into the woods in two staggered lines. Both the section of forest, and the hill it was on, proved to be narrow, opening up on the other side to reveal another road below, also parallel to the woods, but ending in a T-intersection 100 meters to their left.

  Following hand signals only, Homer took up a position on the ridge, just inside the treeline, with the first section, the six men emplaced at ten-meter intervals. He scanned the road and the area beyond, all of which was empty – except for the roving IR lasers of the others. He could also see the other six guys slipping into position on the far side of the T.

  They wer
e setting a classic L-shaped ambush – one of the first things every SEAL gets taught in Land Warfare, Third Phase of BUD/S. In fact, virtually every ground combatant gets taught this. They learned more advanced ambush techniques in SQT, and developed others on the fly in theater. But sometimes – for instance, evidently, now – nothing more complex was required.

  Sitting in the dark and silence, waiting, but not knowing for what, Homer remembered one of his SQT instructors saying, “Let’s call this what it is, gentlemen. An ambush, plain and simple, is premeditated murder. If done properly, there’s very little risk to you, and the poor bastards in your killzone will never know what hit them.”

  Homer didn’t know who was going to walk into this killzone below. But he knew whoever did, it was unlikely they would ever walk out again. He tried not to think too much about who it was going to be. Instead, he focused on doing his job.

  And remembering it was Kili who had sent him here.

  * * *

  When the flashing red lights finally stopped, the officers’ billet was plunged back into darkness. Sarah had no idea where the light switch was, but Benjamin did. He appeared beneath it as the room lit up once again. Isabel still sat up in the bed.

  And Sarah realized she had absolutely no idea what to do with these two. She had only ever had one child, and it had been a long time since he was that small. Plus Mark had done most of the parenting in the early years, usually working from home, while she was off keeping the streets safe on overnight shifts, or else sleeping it off during the day.

  And anyway, she thought, who am I kidding? That system had been effect, not cause, of her not knowing how to take care of small children. And the root cause was: Sarah didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. Never did.

  Nonetheless, when Ben went back and got in the bed with Isabel, Sarah went over and sat beside them both on its edge.

  “How you guys doing?” she asked.

  “Good,” Ben said.

  “Fine,” Isabel said. Her voice really was precious. All of her was. Even Sarah couldn’t help notice that.

  “So,” she said, touching Isabel’s tiny leg through the blanket, searching for something to say. “I hear there’s an actual pirate in charge around here. With an eye patch.”

  “That’s Odin,” Ben said.

  “You know him?” Sarah asked.

  “He’s scary,” Isabel said, pulling the blanket up to her chin – like she enjoyed being scared, but in safety. “He tries to be nice to us. But he’s like the troll under the bridge.”

  “Are you the billy goats, then?”

  Isabel just pulled the blanket up over her head.

  “He used to come around a lot,” Ben said.

  Sarah squinted. “What, Odin? When was that?”

  “All the time. When he thought we were asleep.”

  Sarah sat up straighter. “And why did he come around?”

  “To visit with Mom,” Ben said.

  * * *

  Homer had to wait in ambush just long enough to get misgivings.

  God knew he’d killed his share of the living, and long before there were any walking dead to put down. And, most of the time, he’d done it in as unfair and one-sided a contest as possible. The presence of profound evil in the world meant some people just needed killing. And when they did, the great thing was to do it with minimal risk to the team.

  To his brothers.

  But, then again, that was before the walking dead. Now the living were an endangered species. And they were all brothers – weren’t they? Homer kind of wanted to cut off this whole line of thinking. But, like everyone else, he wasn’t really all that much in control of his thoughts. Especially with time and silence.

  Like those lulls in Hell Week. Thinking of what was to come.

  Surely, Homer thought now, they could apply some level of force short of an execution-style L-ambush? That was exactly why they learned close quarters defense (CQD) in the first place – so they could escalate or de-escalate situations as necessary, depending on the level of resistance, using only as much force as required. But then Homer remembered how Kili had described their target: as marauders, raping and pillaging.

  And now, finally, he saw them.

  There were eight men, all armed, most wearing paramilitary garb, patrolling down the edge of the street. Hardly stealthy, but at least they weren’t out in the middle of the road. They looked like they were trying to be serious. But they weren’t serious. The way they moved, the way they carried their weapons and gear, and particularly how they carried themselves, told Homer everything he needed to know.

  Just like back in Ohio, this was Amateur Day.

  But this Amateur Day was walking right into their killzone.

  Homer had no way to know whether there was any chatter on the local net. But he could feel pretty sure there wasn’t. Silent as the tomb. Just as he’d been told, it wasn’t needed. He could also see, vivid as neon, the IR aiming lasers settling on their targets. Dividing them up. There were half again as many shooters as enemy. And Homer felt relieved by this.

  Because it meant he could sit out the slaughter.

  With no preamble, the patrol leader dropped.

  That was the signal. In the next second, the others in the column fell almost as one, all without sound. It was truly a firing squad, a summary execution – except silent, instantaneous, and perfectly choreographed.

  But then, inexplicably, movement caught Homer’s eye.

  One of the men got back up – either not hit or just wounded. That was totally unaccountable. Tier-1 guys didn’t miss – not at this range, inside 100 yards. But Homer could see the survivor clearly, back upright. He looked around wide-eyed and open-mouthed at all his friends, lying motionless at his feet. And then he looked up again, straight into the treeline Homer and the others hid in. He wouldn’t be able to see anything. But he could figure out where the shots must have come from.

  And he brought his rifle to his shoulder.

  Homer could see the weapon wasn’t suppressed. And when it went bang, their op would go noisy. Which would draw the dead. Which was precisely what this op was meant to avoid. There was also the small but non-zero chance the guy would get lucky, and hit one of Homer’s teammates.

  Homer took the shot.

  The man dropped.

  * * *

  Back in the staging area, as he unfolded himself out the Pandur, his limbs heavy, Homer felt a powerful hand clap him on his back. When he turned, he found a bearded face with fierce black eyes pinning him. It was Mike B. But now, for the first time, Homer noticed the pelt on him.

  It had been crushed down under his vest.

  “Nice job,” he said. Then he turned and started to walk off.

  But Homer grabbed him by the shoulder. When the man turned again, he didn’t look exactly thrilled that Homer had put his hands on him. He took the hand off again, but kept him pinned with his gaze. “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah. What.”

  Homer pointed across the dark underground level at the parked-up vehicles, past the line of Pandurs, at a couple of hulking up-armored Humvees. The far one had what looked like a big hexagonal satellite dish mounted on its roof. On the way in, Homer had raced into the fray too quickly to notice it. But he noticed it now – and also recognized it. “Isn’t that an ADS – Active Denial System?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  Homer cocked his head. “So if we’ve got one of those, why the hell didn’t we use it? On the civilians?”

  Mike B shook his head. “Tried it. They just come back, man.”

  And he turned and stalked off.

  Homer had been vaguely troubled by this mission from the start. His unease became palpable when they set up the ambush, worsened when he saw who they were ambushing, and wasn’t helped one bit when he had to shoot that last survivor.

  And it wasn’t getting any better now.

  In fact, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on was bugging him about the whole episode.
But, as he walked back alone, he put that aside and mentally reviewed what he remembered about the ADS.

  Sometimes called the “heat ray” or “pain ray”, it was a directed-energy weapon system developed by DoD’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, designed for perimeter security and crowd control. It was basically meant to give soldiers on security an option north of yelling, “Hey, get the fuck away from the embassy fence,” but south of opening fire with machine guns.

  It used a transmitter to send a narrow beam of microwaves toward a hostile subject. The radiation penetrated the skin, but less than 1/64th of an inch, just enough to flash-heat the skin’s surface. A two-second burst could raise the skin temp to 130°F. The result was an intense burning sensation, like being exposed to a blast furnace, with some sharp stinging thrown in.

  Unpleasant in the extreme, it almost always caused anyone hit with it to pull away quickly and automatically, and then run like hell. And it was not only non-lethal, but the pain ended the second the target got out of the beam, or when the transmitter got turned off. Moreover, as Homer recalled, it left no lasting effects – anyway, not at less than several minutes of exposure, at which point the skin could actually start to cook.

  In other words, it would have been the perfect tool for keeping civilian survivors the hell away from their walls – without L-shaped firing squads. As far as Homer knew, they’d never had one of these at Dam Neck, not back in the day. But he could totally understand why they had one now.

  What he couldn’t understand was why they hadn’t used it.

  Reading In

  By the time he got back to officers’ country, Homer realized a couple of things. One, the sun was coming up. Two, he wasn’t tired anymore. And, three, he felt too grimy to get back into bed anyway – his last shower had been on the JFK, four days and at least that many fights ago.

  He veered off to a locker room and treated himself to a shower – a hot one. The water was plentiful, as was the soap and shampoo, all of it fragrant and indulgent. Standing there just luxuriating for a full two minutes, it was easy to forget the world had ended outside those walls.