"Jon!"
A jeep roared up beside him. George leaned out, gesturing for him. A few Bahayan women and children were sitting in the back, trembling. Etty was farther ahead, driving a jeep of her own.
Stay conscious, Jon, he told himself. A moment longer.
He climbed into the jeep, George hit the pedal, and they rumbled away from the burning village.
Jon sat in the back. The women began tending to his wounds. He closed his eyes, and he could see it again. A vision of Clay burning, a demon risen from hell, racing into the smoke. Jon didn't know if Clay was alive or dead. He didn't know if you could kill a demon with fire.
He pushed that hellish image away, and he thought instead of Maria. He imagined himself back in her room above the club. She was smiling, eyes bright. He finally passed out with a memory of her smile.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wildfire
They sat in the heart of the jungle.
Jon. George. Etty.
They sat in silence, heads lowered, and shed tears for the dead.
The rainforest was a living being, wrapping around them, cloaking, hiding. A place of mist and shadows and motes of light. The roots coiled like petrified serpents, and the trunks soared like buttresses, supporting a cathedral of dark green and gray. Iridescent insects moved along branches, tiny emeralds with fluttering wings, and glowing pollen glided between vines, ferns, and mushrooms. Yellow eyes peered from holes and branches, watching but not judging. The forest was alive. The forest was a single great being, breathing, withering. All over this planet it was dying. Here in the last beating chambers of its pulsing raw heart they hid.
It began to rain. The canopy rustled. A gleaming blue bird glided between the branches, resplendent with raindrops, and vanished into a hole in a trunk. The raindrops pattered ferns and moss and fallen logs, forming curtains woven from ten billion reflective beads. The forest was weeping. It was weeping for Bahay.
They sat there. Three friends. They were all hurt. Bruised. Cut. Burnt. But the physical pain was nothing. Their bodies were nothing. The agony came from within. The memories had been seared into their hearts with fire and anointed with blood.
The people they had saved sat with them. Sixteen women and children. The only survivors of Santa Rosa. Five hundred people had once lived in the village, they said. They were the last.
The children curled up and slept, and the women tended to the soldiers' wounds. They knew the ancient medicine of the forest. They picked purple flowers, squeezed out nectar, and applied a healing ointment to deep cuts. Instead of stitching the wounds with needle and thread, they used ants. At first, they peeled bark and leaves off twigs, then used the rods to fish ants from hives. Next the plucked the pincers off the ants. Even severed, the pincers still clasped the wounds tightly, sealing them shut like staples. Finally, the women placed broad leaves over the wounds, gluing them down with sap.
The village women were as skilled as any Earthling medic. As they worked, they wept. For the loss of their families. For their fallen home. For their sundering world.
"You are angels," said a village woman, tending to a wound on Jon's forehead. Her accent was thick but her English was flawless. "You saved our lives. We'll always remember you."
Jon looked into her kind dark eyes.
"I wish we could have saved more." A sob fled him. "We should have stopped Clay earlier. We should have shot him at once. We should have done more. We could have saved five hundred."
He lowered his head, overcome with grief.
Etty held his hand.
"The world must know," she whispered in the shadows. "We must show them. Do you still have the photographs?"
Jon pulled out the phone. He scrolled through the photographs of Santa Rosa. He could barely look at them. Photographs of soldiers slaughtering, raping, mutilating. Photographs of the piles of corpses.
"Any photographs of Bahay are highly classified," Jon said. "If we show these to Earth, we would become criminals. We would get life in prison."
"Not if we leak the photographs anonymously," Etty said. She took the phone from him. "Let this be my task. I'm good at this. Find me a computer, and I'll make sure everyone on Earth sees these."
George, who had been silent for hours, finally spoke. "Etty, if the army catches you leaking these… Oh God, Etty. You'd die in prison."
"I'm already dead," Etty said.
Jon embraced his friends. "Let's make a promise. That when we return to Earth, we leave the pain here. That whatever we saw, whatever we did—that it remains on Bahay. Someday we'll be on Earth again. I believe that. And when that day comes—let us not be soldiers anymore. Let the soldiers die. On Earth, we will be reborn."
Etty and George looked at him, eyes damp.
"What if we can't?" Etty whispered. "What if soldiers is all we are now? What if there's nothing left of who we were?"
"I don't believe that," Jon said. "When facing the massacre, we did not succumb to barbarism. The other soldiers in our platoon, almost fifty of them—they lost their humanity. They followed Clay. They raped and murdered, because they had become nothing but machines of destruction. We three stood against them. Our humanity is not dead. Maybe it's brighter than ever."
George sighed. "There's only one problem. We're stuck here in the middle of a jungle. Where do we go now?"
Jon rose to his feet and balled his fists. "Back to base. To find Colonel Pascal. And we're telling him everything."
* * * * *
Jon stood in the colonel's trailer, hands clasped behind his back, and told the tale.
He told everything. From his first moment in Santa Rosa to the last. He told of every atrocity. As he spoke, he stood still, voice steady, feeling numb. He spoke almost in monotone. His insides had shattered. And everything was spilling out.
As Jon spoke, Colonel Pascal sat behind his desk. The white-haired man listened silently. At some points, he leaned forward. At others, he frowned. His lips tightened when he heard the worst atrocities. And when Jon finished his tale, the colonel heaved a long, deep sigh.
For a moment, the two men were silent.
Finally Pascal spoke. "Is that all, corporal?"
"That's all, sir. That's what happened in Santa Rosa. That's what Lieutenant Clay Hagen and his men did."
He handed the colonel the photographs. He had printed copies.
The colonel stared at them in silence for a long moment.
Jon left out just one detail. That Etty still had the original files. That she was hiding them on George's illegal phone. That she planned to leak them to Earth. This Jon could not reveal. Not if he wanted to see daylight again.
Moment by moment ticked by. And Pascal just sat there, looking through the photographs.
Finally he lifted his phone and made a call.
"Debbie? Let me talk to the Sergeant Major." He waited a moment. "Bob, that you? Yeah, this is Joe. Can you hear me? It's Joe Pascal. Yes, the colonel! Send word to all battalions. To every officer in the goddamn brigade. We're halting Operation Search and Destroy. Bring everyone back to base. Right now. Get moving."
He hung up and looked at Jon.
"Sir, is it over?" Jon said.
Pascal rose from his desk. He stood for a moment, facing the wall. "It's a terrible thing, war. It's a terrible, terrible thing that we do. Necessary, yes. We join the army. We learn to kill. We do this because the galaxy is full of so much evil. We become monsters so that we can defend our families from monsters. We are soldiers, and we make the ultimate sacrifice. We sacrifice our souls to protect the innocent. But sometimes… sometimes this necessary mechanism goes haywire. We are like a campfire that holds back the wolves. Sometimes this fire spreads and consumes and burns everything in its path. In this war, we've become a wildfire."
"Sir, when I joined the army, I thought I could become a hero," Jon said. "Like the heroes from the stories. That I could fight monsters. But I didn't see monsters in this war. And I began to wonder if I was the monster."
The colonel clasped Jon's shoulder. "Son, you showed remarkable courage in Santa Rosa. You didn't just save those sixteen women and children. By coming here, by telling me, you halted the entire operation. You made sure no more villages would be destroyed by men like Clay Hagen. You saved thousands of lives, Corporal Jon Taylor." He heaved a sigh. "I'll probably end up in deep shit with the generals. But fuck it. And fuck them."
Jon couldn't help it. His eyes dampened. Not only from relief that the operation was halted. Not only for the knowledge that he had saved thousands of lives. But mostly for learning that there was still goodness in the Human Defense Force. That not all his commanders were evil. That there was decency and nobility to humanity along with all the cruelty. In Santa Rosa, Jon had seen the depravity of man. He had seen the pits of evil humanity can sink into, had sunken into so many times in history. But here in this trailer, he saw an act of nobility. Of compassion. And Jon shed tears because it meant he was not serving evil, that perhaps the soul of humanity could still be salvaged.
He wiped his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts.
War shows us the evil that men do, but it also shines a light upon all that is noble in man. In the shadows of war we see the most wicked of man's demons, but we also see angels shine their brightest. If I ever make my way home, that is what I'll remember of this war. That I saw darkness and light. That I saw cruelty and compassion. That I saw the worst of man but also his finest.
He saluted. "Thank you, sir."
The colonel gave him a long, hard look. "One more thing, Corporal Taylor. And you're not going to like it." He lifted the photos, then held a lighter to them. They burned in his hand. "I'm going to need the camera that took these photos. I'm going to need every copy of these files. Nobody must see them. Or we're all screwed."
Chapter Thirty-Three
Leave-Taking
Etty walked through the dark camp, lips tight, horror in her heart.
She had never felt more lost.
This place was nothing like Fort Miguel in the south. Down at the Old Mig, there had been concrete buildings, a little temple open to all faiths, a mess hall, a commissary. Down there, there had been some innocence. Some joy.
She missed it.
But Etty was now in North Bahay. And Camp Apollo, where her brigade bivouacked, was a circle of hell. The ground was littered with charred brush and animal skeletons. The only solid structures were wooden palisades topped with barbed wire. Soldiers slept under the sky, many clutching their trophies of war—Bahayan daggers, jewels, even sickening mementos like ears. By a fallen log, a soldier dropped a severed head into a pot of boiling water. It was how some soldiers collected skulls as souvenirs. They boiled off the flesh.
Etty kept walking through the camp. It was a dark night. Smoke rolled over the twin moons. Darkness fell, and the horror around Etty faded into shadows. But in these shadows new horrors rose.
"No," Etty whispered. "Stay away! Not you. Not now. Not again."
But they wove around her. Caressing. Taunting.
"Leave me!" she said.
But she could not banish them. Not tonight. Not after the trauma of Santa Rosa. They rose like demons from a crypt.
Her childhood memories.
She saw again her homeland.
Rolling dunes under a yellow sun. A mountain rising between coast and desert. Walls of ancient bricks and gateways from a time beyond memory. Standing here on a forsaken world in deep space, Etty returned to a lost land of milk and honey.
She ran down the cobbled streets of Jerusalem, a little girl in a white dress. It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. A garland of wheat adorned little Etty's hair, and she carried a straw basket full of pomegranates. She felt like a princess.
Jerusalem had been destroyed so many times. By cruel empires. By wild tribes. By invading aliens. Yet for thousands of years, people had continued to live here, stubbornly clinging to these ancient roads and halls of limestone. The cobbled streets were narrow, and brick homes and temples rose everywhere, forming labyrinthine walls. But this was not a dark, twisting place. It was a place of light, of gold and copper and life. The bricks had been carved in biblical times, and nobody could determine their color. They were golden at dawn, brilliant white under the searing noon sun, and pink tinged with blue at sunset. Jerusalem was a city of a thousand generations and the countless colors of the desert.
There were no cars driving along these ancient streets. Not on a sacred day like today. The people of Jerusalem all wore white, a color of holiness and rebirth. A rabbi blew a ram's horn, and people prayed. It was the Day of Atonement, but despite the solemnity, it was a day of joy. Children all in white ran along the streets, laughing, playing. Etty and her friends spent hours collecting pine nuts, cracking them open with rocks, and feasting. They played with apricot seeds like marbles, and they built little boats from olive leaves—one leaf for the hull, the other for the sail. They were poor, but they found joy in every leaf, nut, and stone. To them, it was a city of wonder.
"Etty! Etty, come! It's time for synagogue."
It was her mother calling. Etty looked up. Mother stood across the courtyard where Etty was playing with the other children. Like Etty, she wore a white dress, and a garland of wheat adorned her hair. Father stood beside her, also in white, the strongest man Etty knew, yet kind, smiling at her, a twinkle in his eyes.
Etty blew them a raspberry. "I don't want to. I still want to play."
Mother rolled her eyes. "Okay, Etty, five more minutes and—"
The shock wave lifted Etty into the air.
She hit a brick wall, and white light and fire blazed.
Shrapnel pattered into the wall around her, embedding in the ancient stones.
She remembered sitting there in a daze. Bleeding. Seeing body parts all around. A child's severed leg in an olive tree. Pools of blood. But she did not see her parents. The suicide bomber had stood too close, and almost nothing remained.
She remembered the years that followed. The days in the orphanage. The long flight to America. Her aunt's big, creaky house among the maple trees. A strange town in a strange land, so cold and different from everything Etty had ever known. A house of memory and quiet despair and slow death. A house where her aunt lay in bed, ravaged by cancer, leaving Etty alone again, a husk of wheat scuttling in the wind.
"You've always had something to fight for, Jon and George," Etty whispered. "But I never did. I have no home waiting for me."
She wiped her eyes, and she kept walking through the dark camp.
She had joined the army. Volunteered. Lied about her age. She was sixteen, orphaned, broken. She had come here. To be a soldier. To be like Einav Ben-Ari, her heroine, the great warrior of legend.
But she had found evil, and not among the enemy.
She had found terror, and not in the battlefield.
At Santa Rosa, Etty had gazed into the eyes of orphaned girls. Their parents murdered. She had stared at herself.
"And I've had enough," she said to the shadows.
She walked onward, small and silent, sneaking between rows of tents. Finally she reached the edge of Camp Apollo. A wooden palisade rose here, topped with barbed wire. Beyond spread the jungle, cloaked in night.
Guards patrolled the defensive palisade. But Etty had memorized their shifts; they were now patrolling another area of the camp. She pulled wire cutters from her pack. She had given a pair of panties to a sergeant for these. A small price to pay for freedom.
She approached the palisade, prepared to climb the wooden stakes, cut the barbed wire, and flee into the night.
"Etty!" An urgent whisper sounded behind her. "Damn it, Etty, what are you doing?"
She spun around, placed her hands on her hips, and glowered. "Don't you try and stop me, George. Don't you dare!"
He stood before her, a blob in the darkness. He stepped closer.
"Etty? What?" He gasped. "You're not sneaking away, are you?"
"Shh!" She glar
ed, grabbed him, and pulled him behind a charred tree—one of the few that remained standing in the devastation. "Shut up, will you?"
Just then, a guard came by, patrolling. Etty and George stood in the shadows, not even daring to breathe. The guard was a young corporal with a shabby uniform, ill-fitting helmet, and a joint between his lips. He was whistling a Santana tune as he sauntered by, wreathed in smoke. The enemy could probably smell him for miles away. George and Etty waited until the guard passed around a patch of brush, then exhaled shakily.
"Etty," George said, holding her hand, "you can't just leave us. Where will you go?"
"Anywhere but here," she said. "If I must live in the jungle like an animal, that's better than here!"
"Etty!" George knelt, bringing himself to eye level with her. "Don't go AWOL. If you do, and they catch you, they'll toss you into the brig for a very, very long time."
Her eyes burned. "The brig is better than this!"
"No it isn't," George said. "Because I won't be with you."
Etty went limp. She embraced the giant, shed tears onto his shoulder. "Oh, George, I can't stay here. I can't. Not after what happened in Santa Rosa. When I was a child, George… You know what happened. To my parents. I swore then that I'd always fight evil. But now I find myself fighting with evil. The HDF, the proud army that fought the aliens… it lost its path. This is no longer the noble army that Ben-Ari once led. This army destroyed families like my family was destroyed. And I can't serve here anymore. I can't wear this uniform anymore. I have to go. To run. Even if I run for the rest of my life. I can't stand another single day here."
George took a deep, shaky breath and squared his shoulders. "Then I'm going with you."
Etty stroked his hair. "My sweet ginger giant. You can't. You have to stay here for Jon. He needs you more than I do."
George deflated. "But how can I let you go?"
Earthlings (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 2) Page 24