A few hours later, they pulled into the interchange at Spanish Fork, where the Provo regional church was being built. No time to stop, he was told, except for the thirty minutes it took to leave the intersection of 15 and 89 in ruins.
The Austin church was barely started. Abilene only a little further along. Slept through Amarillo. But the Albuquerque church. Then Crescent Junction. Spanish Fork. All road arteries destroyed. All where we had established sites.
They were moving higher now, night had fallen, and the wind through the smashed window blew tears from his eyes. Upward, into the moonscape hills and cliffs, shaved by years of landslides, where the road became a thin black ribbon winding through steep, dark gorges. The engines droned, making his head feel like it would explode. He was desperate for rest, but he was too angry and afraid to ask if they could stop.
“We’ll settle up here for the night,” Ben said at last, pulling past the ruined sign labelled “Mountain Dell Golf Course.”
Burger and Jenny Akindele carried the near-unconscious Desiree to what was left of the golfing pro-shop. In minutes, they had hoisted their cammo-nets and solar panels. They laid laser trip-wires while Ben scheduled guard shifts, sending assignments to each of his troops. They set up their small, mesh-walled cots—their “play pens”—to sleep safe from rats, snakes, and bugs. They plugged their sleeping bags into outlets on the sides of the vehicles, and they deployed motion sensors and automatic sentries.
A tiger-shark jump-jet, flanked by a hive of drones, thundered over their heads, almost invisible against the night sky.
Staggering to the quarters Ben made for him—a wall-mounted cot inside the bullet riddled cargo hold of their truck—Alias stopped to listen to their rescuers reporting on whatever it was that was happening. He was exhausted, but he had to know more. A stout man with a burn-scarred face did most of the talking, so Alias shuffled nearer to him to hear better.
The Mormons’ Legions of Joseph Smith Brigades, he explained, had turned on the hodgepodge of territorial militia, Consortium security, and Ellie mercenaries that had occupied the region for two decades since the Mormon rebellion. They were finally making their long-simmering push for an independent state.
That would explain a lot of the fighting, and the destruction of the church. But it doesn’t explain the massacre at the MAC, he thought.
Alias listened to accounts of a swirling binge of atrocities, mostly against immigrants and migrants. Dozens of MACs attacked. The nation’s seething rage unleashed again.
All these people fleeing drought, disease, famine, natural disasters, and war.
“Some folks already callin’ it the THREM,” the scarred man said. “The Third Migrant Massacre.” He paused for a moment.
But, he explained, some migrants were armed and determined to defend their meager lives by force. There were reports of immigrants storming ports and border crossings. Attacking immigration enforcement facilities and killing Domestic Security Service officers.
“Why didn’tcha lead with that?” Burger shouted. He was practically frothing at the mouth. “Motherfuckin’ ferners goddamned invaded us. People’re just fightin’ back. Gone on too long, if ya ask me, and it’s damned-well time for it to stop.”
“Hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of people in motion,” was the man’s only reply.
Another era of armed mass migration had arrived—along with bloodshed that was seemingly beyond the ability of anyone to stop.
Like something out of Joshua’s history books.
“But I think it’s way bigger than that. Yup, thissun’s diff’rent—least from what I been told of the first two.”
He went on to describe a swirl of drug-cartel fighters, local warlords, criminal syndicates, scavenger gangs, and corporate police in pitched battles across the country. The bulk of the Domestic Security Service was locking down the agricultural belts, and most provincial senators had declared martial law. There were even rumors of provincial militias fighting one another and the Domestic Security Services, though this seemed too farfetched for Alias
“That’s why we came for you lot,” he continued, pointing at Ben and Alias. “Sherman wants you back at HQ. More objectives up north. We’re s’posta drop Golden Boy here off in Park City, gear-up at the church, and make for Lolo Hot Spring to get re-supplied and take new orders.”
Drop me off? Lolo Hot Springs? Gear up at the church? Based on the man’s reports—exaggerated or not—Ben was headed deeper into whatever nightmare this was. And for the first time, Alias paused to confront the larger implications of all this for himself and for everyone he cared about, though, it was more than he could fathom. His knees buckled a bit from exhaustion, and he quietly left the group, laying down in the dark and praying it would all have been just a bad dream in the morning.
Chapter 44: Recovery and Recuperation
(Paul Lancaster)
Brick and some of the soldiers on the Coit loaded Paul onto a jump-jet bound for the medical ship Salud, anchored just off the coast. It was a rusty bucket—painted white once upon a time—that looked like it might sink if someone as much as blew on it. As they approached from the air, Paul sat up in his stretcher and peered out at the yellow-green water, dotted with gray and rust-colored ships of all shapes and sizes. The sky was alive with whizzing drones and jump-jets.
From ants to shark and wasps, he mused to himself.
Upon landing on the deck, he noticed the medical staff of the Salud was scrambling in frantic triage mode. They looked gaunt and tired. A nurse gave him a welcoming look, as if she knew him, before doing a cursory inspection, patting him appreciatively on the shoulder, passing him on to an orderly, and moving onto others with more pressing wounds. The orderly, who introduced himself admiringly as Private Dominique Johansson, led him down a ramp to a long steel room with peeling paint and patches of rust on the walls. A narrow aisle ran between rows of even-narrower cots.
They passed half a dozen soldiers laid up in bed in various states of consciousness and pain. Most were wrapped in bandages stained crimson and yellow—but nothing on the order of what Paul had left on the Coit or on the triage floor above.
The whining-buzz of engines passing overhead had been incessant since he arrived, punctuated only by occasional shouting and the thunderous landing and take-off of jump-jets. But as the orderly helped him recline into his cot, the noise wasn’t enough to keep him from sleep.
Paul woke up feeling clean for the first time in months, and as his wounds reminded him he wasn’t completely healed, they forced him to appreciate that he was still alive. The hospital ward was just as frenetic as the evening before, and the doctors and nurses were so visibly exhausted that he wondered if they should really be treating anyone. He was depressed to see them still scrambling, and somehow felt guilty that he had been sleeping instead of helping, presumably all night. Sitting up in bed, he grimaced a little at the stretch required to put on his shirt and grasped the cane next to his cot to push himself up. Before he made it to his feet, a nearby nurse rushed over to help him up.
“Finally awake,” she said cheerfully. Despite her warmth, Paul was struck by her appearance. She was pale and weathered, with bags under eyes, but he could tell from her voice that she was younger than she appeared.
Too much time cooped up in this shit hole, Paul figured. Too much heat, blood, and stress. Too many people—men, women, and children—suffering and dying where she lives and works. Too little sleep.
He returned her smile, hoping his face didn’t betray his somber sympathies. She reminded him of his mother—the kind of person who was better off without anyone’s pity.
With a few strokes on her tablet, the nurse led him to the dormitory’s double door, and bid him to follow her along a blue line painted on the floor. She escorted him to a small, brightly lit examination room, where a petite Asian woman with a doctor’s insignia on her stained and discolored lab coat turned to him, lifting her eyes briefly from his record on her tablet.
“Well, the legendary Paul Lancaster,” she grinned, gesturing for him to lay down on the examination table.
Legendary? That made no sense, and he caught himself instinctively looking at the name badge on her lab coat.
[Biyu Ping – MD]
Having just lived through a vicious battle with fighters—some of which he knew to be Chinese—he took half a step backwards and was immediately ashamed of himself for doing so. Dr. Ping noticed his recoil and with weary annoyance returned her gaze to her tablet. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Lancaster. …Or I can call another doctor, though that’ll take some time for you to be seen.”
Her English was perfect, with a Cali-Sur accent he knew well. That somehow reassured him. “No. No, that’s OK. …Sorry.” He took a seat on the table with a wince and closed his eyes as the doctor untied his hospital gown and began to poke and prod him. Goosebumps ran over him at the touch of her small cold fingers. She laid him back on the table as the nurse lowered a body scanner and ran it over him. Dr. Ping lauded Brick’s stitching, as if to distract Paul and ease lingering anxiety. He promised himself that he would share her compliments with Brick if he ever saw him again. Dr. Ping then applied a honey-colored goo to his puncture wounds and gave him a small bottle of pills.
“For the aches and pains,” she said. “You’ll be fine,” Dr. Ping told him with a forced cheerfulness before turning to the nurse and orderly. “Let’s get him some food and process him for PT. He can start light duty tomorrow. Battle ready in two weeks.”
Battle ready? Paul thought in disbelief. The idea of being battle ready—going back to the Coit—sent a shiver of panic over him. Paul shifted his anxious stare between the doctor and the nurse, hoping one of them would let him in on the joke. But no reassurance came, his stomach turned, and he fought the impulse to punch them all and run for it. Oblivious to his seething anger, Dr. Ping patted him on the shoulder, as if his initial reaction to her was forgiven, and left. Dominique Johansson, whom he hadn’t even noticed come in, helped Paul stand up, while the exhausted nurse draped his gown over his shivering body and re-tied the lace around his neck. Johansson then led him from the examination room and down another dark, rusted hallway.
It wasn’t far to the mess hall, where Paul was relieved to find a host of familiar faces, who gingerly got up from their chairs and approached him. Chris Parmooch, Mauricio Gonzales, Phil Kim, and to his surprise and joy Charlie Turner.
I guess they forgot to keep us separated, Paul thought at the sight of his dear friend Charlie. He figured it was probably an oversight resulting from the confusion of the attack, but he felt an odd sense of gratitude for the military’s incompetence.
Missing, he noticed, were George Fernandez and Gajah Mada, even though Paul knew Gajah had been transferred back to the Commonwealth before the assault. While their conspicuous absence dragged down his spirits for a moment, he resolved to focus on the happiness in seeing his comrades.
As his friends gimped over to Paul, Johansson put his hand on Paul’s back and leaned in.
“I’ll be back for you in thirty minutes,” he whispered. “Make sure you eat. Don’t just shoot the shit.”
Paul acknowledged with an appreciative nod as the first of his companions reached out to embrace him. Henry Sycamore, the other survivor of the suicide truck-bomb on the Coit. Henry had been on the shitter when the truck exploded and was thrown into a field covered in out-house debris and human excrement. He spent three miserable hours before soldiers found him. Paul hadn’t seen him since they’d been released from the infirmary, but during their recuperation, he learned Henry’s familiar story.
Henry joined up when the tower gardens where he worked automated its operations and threw out most of its workers. He took his young wife and daughter to Harrisburg, found a job as a security guard with Baumgarten Industries and then joined the Provincial Militia before getting sucked up in the Commonwealth Security Lottery. Another one of the “economic volunteers,” relegated to the social escape-valve of the military—the largest workfare program the country could still muster. For Henry, everything revolved around his wife and daughter, and he was prone to inserting stories and pictures of them into most conversations.
Henry and the rest of his comrades led Paul back to their table, and Omar Kalanski, a humorous but quick-tempered soldier who’d once been chewed out by Gajah for being a nationalistic ignoramus, presented Paul with a tray of egg-flavored biotein, drought-oat biscuits, and hot Cafecito. Greetings over, the group immediately returned to its discussion of the battle, which had landed all of them in the hospital, though they were keen to hear from Paul. Half of them were with him at the command center, when he’d taken control of the Black Eagles and saved their souls.
Paul was still preoccupied with how much time he’d missed being asleep, and he was more keen for answers than stories. “Whaddaya we know about ‘em?” he asked. He still hadn’t figured out how a rag-tag force of men and women—some maybe even children—could have launched such a devastating assault.
“When I first got here,” Chris Parmooch explained, “I heard they’d dug tunnels just outside the perimeter wire. They’d been clearing our mines in the Minge for weeks and building mortar emplacements. Then, when they was all ready, they unleashed everything at once. Knocked out our artillery and air defenses right before the fighters hit the first two rings.”
“But who the fuck were they?” Paul questioned. “I didn’t see any military uniforms. The ones I saw looked Chinese, but not all of ‘em.”
“None of the ones we caught have fessed up,” Mauricio answered.
“Not yet anyway,” Kalanski said with a malicious and vengeful tone. “What’s it matter, though. Buncha dinks kicked our asses.” He turned to Mauricio, a soldier of Filipino and Mexican descent. “No offense.”
“Why would I take offense to that, you dipshit fuckin’ cracker.”
“Enough,” Paul intervened, rubbing his head in frustration. “Kalanski, how many times do I have to tell you?” A tense silence passed over the group. “Their numbers—and their gear. They had to’ve had help. I’ve heard of the syndicates hitting military posts before, but only when they knew they could win and escape. But never anything on this scale.”
“I dunno about any of that,” Phil Kim interjected. “But if you hadn’t made your way up the hill and taken over, we’d all be done for. That I know.”
The group chimed together in agreement, something that took Paul off guard and left him a little uncomfortable.
“Well, maybe we’re too spent to counterattack, and we can go home to our families now,” Sycamore posited.
The others in the group didn’t like that kind of talk. For all their misery, they didn’t like the idea of actually losing.
“I don’ wanna hear none of that defeatist bullshit, Sycamore,” spat Kalanski.
Paul glared at Kalanski intently and then urged Sycamore to say more. Conflicted, Sycamore proceeded cautiously. “All I mean is, what happened to us ain’t the half of it. I hear we got hit all over. Africa. South America. I dunno where else. And God knows what’s goin’ on back home, but it can’t be nothin’ good. I figure they’re gonna evac the whole Coit and ship us back to get whatever the fuck’s going on at home back in the box.”
“Fuckin’ eh,” sighed Phil.
“If that’s true, count me in. I’d rather kill traitors back home than fight chinks half-way ‘round the world,” Kalanski sighed.
It only took a moment more for them all to realize that if the situation back home was bad enough to pull them out, they’d probably end up being ordered to fire on their own people—traitors and loyalists alike . . . innocents.
They hit us because they knew we’re too spent to counter. Paul stared knowingly at Sycamore.
“What’ve you heard about home?” Paul was almost afraid to ask.
“Just rumors,” said Sycamore. “The comms officer told me that most comms are still down. MediaStream is static. Operetta is only maki
ng local broadcasts, but they’re telling people all over the place to stay on lock down. Mostly in the Desert Plains and the borders of the agri-belts.”
“I heard that just about every MAC got massacred, and the migrant corridors too,” Mauricio volunteered.
“Way overdue, if you ask me,” quipped Kalanski.
“No one did,” Paul said flatly, shooting him another shut-the-fuck-up glare. Kalanski retreated.
“I heard LA’s burned to the ground,” Mauricio added.
“Was there anything left to burn?” japed Kalanski. Paul understood his point, having seen first hand the ruins of the once-great city, ravaged by decades of fires. But it was too big and sprawling for the whole thing to have burned. Still, he was also fed up with Kalanski’s nonsense.
“Houston ‘n Dallas are gone,” Mauricio said, ignoring Kalanski.
“Whaddaya mean ‘gone’?” Paul demanded.
“I dunno. Nuked? Petri’d?”
“That’s bullshit,” Kalanski sniped. Mauricio just shrugged his shoulders, reminding them all they were just trading in rumors.
With each piece of information causing more confusions, Paul was semi-relieved that his medical bracelet began blinking green and making bell-chimes. Reminded that he had hardly eaten a bite, he quickly shoveled a few spoons of cold egg-flavored biotein eggs into his mouth and prepared himself for the admonishment of Dominique Johansson, who would soon return. The others started scarfing the scraps on their plates as their bracelets began blinking and chiming too.
“I want ya’ll to find out everything you can—anything you can learn about anything.”
With that, Johansson flung open the double doors, flanked by a handful of orderlies and a couple MPs in toe.
“Alright ladies and bugs,” he announced forcefully, “good news and bad news. Good news first. We’re going home.”
Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Page 49