by E. R. Torre
“What do you mean by that?” Jennifer Alberts said.
“It’s time for it to end. The child soldier program and the Arabian War.”
“How exactly do you propose to do that?” David Lemner blurted. “You have a magic wand we don’t know about? You just wave it and the big bad war is over and all is right in the world?”
“General Spradlin, I understand what you’ve been through,” one of the elderly men at the table said. “The war will end on its own accord. We’re estimating no more than another five years, at a maximum, before—”
“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” General Spradlin said. “It all ends now.”
The people around the table were confused and alarmed by General Spradlin’s words. Though their respect for him was great, they didn’t know how to react to his statements. Most feared the General had lost his mind.
“Fine,” Jennifer Alberts said. “You want to end the child soldier program and the war. All right, we’re listening. Tell us your plan.”
There was a great deal of weariness in General Spradlin’s face. For several seconds he said nothing. In that time, alarm filled the faces of the people around the table. They knew the General only too well. When he said something, he meant it. Even something as crazy as this.
“What have you done?” Jennifer Alberts whispered.
“For the past year, I’ve herded the leaders of Arabia and most of the population into several large cities,” General Spradlin said. “I’ve made them think our forces view those cities as safe havens, places where we would not attack.”
“It was the humanitarian thing to do,” one of the elderly men said.
“It was a ruse. I’ve watched the leaders of Arabia filter in and out of these cities for years. With each passing day, they’ve stayed longer and longer and the crowds have grown bigger and bigger.”
David Lemner laid his hands flat on the table.
“I see,” he said. “You get everyone together into a group of places and destroy them all at once. Cut the heads of the snake right off, as it were. What were you planning? Multiple nuclear strikes?”
General Spradlin didn’t say.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you were planning, isn’t it?” David Lemner continued. “But how do you deliver the nukes to their destinations? The Arabian cities have excellent defensive systems. If we send in missiles or aircraft they’ll be taken out well before—”
“The nukes were delivered by foot.”
“By...? What are you talking about?”
“For the past two weeks, I’ve ordered the child soldiers to infiltrate the cities. Each of them was carrying low yield nukes in their backpacks.”
“You had them set up bombs in the cities?”
“No,” General Spradlin said. “Planting stationary devices would have been too risky. If even one of them were discovered, the leaders and civilians would flee. What we needed was to get the bombs into the city but keep moving them around and away from detection. Only way to do that is to keep them on our child soldier’s backs until…”
General Spradlin didn’t finish his thought. The room was dead quiet for several seconds.
“You mean to use the child soldiers as...as suicide bombers?” Jennifer Alberts said. There was genuine horror in her voice. “This is barbaric, even for you. I won’t allow it.”
The General looked at his wristwatch.
“None of you have any say in the matter. Not anymore.”
As the words left his mouth, the cell phones carried by each of the members of the group buzzed. All of the people around the table, all but General Spradlin, reached for their phones.
“You didn’t?” Jennifer Alberts said.
“I gave the order just before this meeting began.”
“By the Gods.”
Like David Lemner and the others around the table, she stared at the images on her cell phone. Frantic newscasters reported mushroom clouds over areas that were once the mightiest of the Arabian cities. A cacophony of horrified reporters both on the field and in the network studios attempted to make sense of what they were seeing. Early estimates were that millions were dead. Many, many millions.
“What about the environment?” Jennifer Alberts asked. “That much radioactive material—”
General Spradlin let out a laugh.
“Of all the people around this table, I thought you would be the last one to care about the environmental impacts of war. I thought your kind didn’t believe in that stuff. After all, you denied global warming even as the polar caps melted away.”
Jennifer Alberts pursed her lips.
“All our child soldiers…they’re dead too?” David Lemner said.
“Yes.”
David Lemner couldn’t hold back his anger anymore. He slammed his fist against the table.
“I spent the last two years perfecting their programming,” David Lemner said. His voice grew into a shout. “How could you do this to me?”
“It had to end.”
“Why didn’t you warn us?” Jennifer Alberts said.
“The child soldiers were our only hope and you’ve flushed them away!” David Lemner injected.
“They were never part of the solution.”
“Then what is the solution?” Jennifer Alberts asked. “I thought we were agreed that to survive we had to fight fire with fire.”
“That plan ran its course,” General Spradlin said.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer said. “Arabia was a trail run, a test of how far we could weaponize individuals. Even after what happened with Joshua Landon, Oscuro was a success. We can still expand it, make it a force.”
“That was never what you intended, was it?” David Lemner said. The bitterness in his voice grew. “You humored us. You let us do all this work and invest all our time and money while you had some backup plan in the works. Isn’t that right?”
The group around the table grew quiet.
“What’s your endgame?” Jennifer Alberts asked. “If Oscuro isn’t the salvation of Earth, then what is it?”
General Spradlin didn’t say, nor would he. The others around the table realized this.
“With the child soldiers, we could have taken on anything,” David Lemner said.
“No,” General Spradlin said. “The coming war is one we could not win. Even with perfect soldiers.”
“Then…then what do we do?” one of the elderly men said. “Give up? Wave the white flag? What kind of soldier are you?”
“A realistic one,” General Spradlin said. “I’ve seen the future and I know what’s coming. We don’t have a chance.”
“Do our children simply lie down and die?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Still General Spradlin wouldn’t say. David Lemner’s patience was at its end.
“You might have given up, you fucking coward, but I won’t. I’ll fight.”
“No, you won’t,” General Spradlin said. “Your laboratories are military property. I’ve ordered them seized.”
“You can’t—”
“It’s already done.”
The fury in David Lemner increased. He faced Jennifer Alberts.
“He’s lost his mind,” Lemner said. “We have to stop him.”
Despite the strain evident on her face, Jennifer Alberts maintained her composure.
“You have another plan,” she said. “I know you do. Please, General, tell us. What is it?”
General Spradlin shook his head.
“Our work is done,” he said. “The Arabian War is over. When you leave this meeting, know that what you accomplished was not in vain. Now you can go to your company functions or the news or wherever the hell it is you go to spread the word of your sterling companies and their sterling business practices and explain to them how we –yes, we– decided on the final solution to the Arabian problem.”
“They’ll hang you from the highest pole and let vermin pick your corpse,” Jennifer Alberts spat. �
��I’ll be only too happy to give you up.”
“No, you won’t,” General Spradlin said. “My plan brought peace when the public’s patience for war was at its end and it didn’t even break your budgets. What more could any businessman –or woman– ask for?”
General Spradlin got to his feet. He winced as pain shot through his body.
“Enjoy your remaining years,” he said. “Leave the rest to me.”
General Spradlin walked to the door leading out of the meeting room. At its threshold he paused.
“If you play your cards right, you come out of here looking like heroes,” he said. He offered the people at the table a smile. “Cheer up. The war is over.”
33
Every single one of the monitors in the basement corridor shut down.
Darkness filled the ward.
Nox stood still, frozen in place, her eyes still on the now dark monitor. Beside her, General Spradlin’s head lowered, until he stared at the ground.
“Nox,” he said. The tone of his voice was soft, gentle.
Nox didn’t move.
“What is it you want to tell me, General? Was this a lie? A hoax?”
“No.”
Tears welled up in Nox’s eyes.
“You robbed us of our childhood and then…then you ordered us killed.”
General Spradlin bit his upper lip.
“That’s what Generals do.”
Spradlin’s head came up. In the darkness he found Nox. She stared at him. The gun in her hand trembled. A single tear ran down her face.
“Are you even human?”
A cool serenity settled on General Spradlin’s face. If he feared she would use the weapon on him, he didn’t show it.
“You saved countless lives,” he said. “More than you know.”
The gun in Nox’s hand trembled.
“If you feel I deserve it, pull the trigger,” General Spradlin said.
Nox shook her head. She could barely contain her fury.
General Spradlin closed his eye.
The fury grew until it was a full blown rage. The savagery in Nox’s face threatened to overwhelm her soul. The gun in her hand shook some more.
Nox closed her eyes.
“…fuck…”
She spoke in a whisper. She lowered the gun.
“Fuck,” she repeated. The anger in her face faded.
General Spradlin pulled up a chair and laid his hand on Nox’s shoulder. She sat down.
Seconds passed.
“They…they almost had me.”
“I know.”
“Why did you let the passkey bring me here?”
“I had to know whether it could get you. I needed to know if you were strong enough to remain independent.”
“Independent,” Nox repeated. She let out a dry laugh. It died quickly. “I’ll kill you because you need killing, not because someone else wants me to do it.”
“We know where we stand,” General Spradlin said. “But you couldn’t have killed me. Not with that revolver.”
Nox pulled the ammunition clip from the weapon. It was empty.
“I’ll be damned,” Nox said.
“I had to be sure you could fight back and stay in control. I had to know I could trust you.”
“Can you?”
“More than I thought.”
Nox shook her head.
“Doesn’t really matter.”
“Why?”
“Because they didn’t want me to put a bullet through your head,” Nox said. “That would have been too easy. They wanted me to kill you nice and slow. It wants to see you bleed, General.”
“I know.”
Nox handed the revolver back to the General.
“How did you know the child soldiers wouldn’t be here?”
“A calculated risk. I have eyes throughout the city. After kidnapping the children from the hospital, the soldiers headed to the Desertlands. As of yesterday, none of my agents saw them return. I was hoping we had some time.”
“That’s a hell of a risk to take on old intel,” Nox said.
“I was also relying on you. You said you didn’t feel them.”
Nox smiled.
“I suppose there is some use for me after all,” she said. “What was all that at the end of the video? About the coming war?”
“Words,” General Spradlin said. He slid the revolver back into its holster.
“No they weren’t,” Nox said. “The people at that table thought they were making the first generation of super soldiers. They were obviously planning for more generations to follow. Why? Why would you need—”
She didn’t finish her thought. She turned her head and her eyes lost their focus.
“Guess what, General,” Nox said. “Our time’s up. They’re here.”
“Inside the building?”
“Not yet. They’ve surrounded it. Your men should see them any second now…”
Nox expected to hear the sound of gunfire as General Spradlin’s soldiers and the one-time child soldiers engaged in battle. Instead, there was silence.
“Where are your soldiers?” Nox asked. Realization quickly dawned on her. “You told them to leave?”
“They were gone as soon as we headed down the stairs,” General Spradlin said.
“It’s just the one-time child soldiers and us?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t want to risk your men’s lives?”
“As well trained as they are, they wouldn’t have survived Joshua Landon,” General Spradlin said. “Besides, Lemner’s passkey doesn’t want them. It wants us.”
“Now what?”
“They will come after us, Nox. They’ll come hard and fast.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We run.”
34
They backtracked to the building’s natal ward.
Along the way General Spradlin found and picked up a rusty metal tube. He used it against the glass that divided the room in two. The glass shattered into pieces.
“Quickly,” General Spradlin said.
Both General Spradlin and the Mechanic climbed over the destroyed glass divider and stepped past the dusty infant cribs. On the other side of the room was a door and beyond it a storage room. Shelves that once were lined with medicines, food, and infant clothing were bare except for a couple of strips of old folded sheets and a single dusty stuffed bear.
“This way,” General Spradlin said.
They exited the storage room and entered a small kitchen area. Beyond it was a corridor. They moved deeper and deeper into the basement, past several dusty rooms littered with boxes and refuse, ancient dreams rendered a long forgotten reality.
At the end of the corridor they reached a very large storage room. Empty shelves were lined along the walls in rows and at the corners of the room were crumpled boxes. General Spradlin threw those boxes aside and felt along the newly exposed rear wall.
“I hear something,” Nox said.
General Spradlin stopped what he was doing.
“They’re in the building,” she said.
General Spradlin heard it, too. Footsteps. Someone –a group– was making their way down the staircase and to the underground natal unit.
General Spradlin returned to the wall. His hands moved quickly, feeling for indentations and poking his fingertips into cracks.
“If you’re looking for a way out, you better find it quick,” Nox said.
General Spradlin’s fingers continued feeling along the wall, pushing and pulling at cracks. The people in the corridors were nearing the storage room.
“They’re almost here,” Nox said.
There was a small click, and everything went silent. General Spradlin found the device he was looking for. A small red light embedded in the wall came on. It flickered and faded, dead with age. A five inch square panel slid down, revealing a faded numerical keypad.
The General frantically pressed several buttons.
A loud buzz follo
wed. It was loud. Too loud.
“Shit,” General Spradlin muttered. He entered the wrong code.
The footsteps outside the storage room turned into a gallop. In seconds the one-time child soldiers would arrive.
“Hurry up!” Nox said.
“Doing the best I can,” General Spradlin said. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Without opening his eyes, he again pressed down on the keypad.
Nox watched his fingers glide. He pushed a series of ten buttons. Once done, he opened his eyes and looked at the keypad. There was no buzz.
Instead, a loud click was heard and part of the wall, a hidden door, swung open.
“Get inside!” General Spradlin yelled.
Nox jumped into the darkness and fell to the ground. General Spradlin was right behind her. He pushed the door closed, but not before three shadowy figures entered the storage room. Their guns were drawn and they fired repeatedly at the General and Nox. Bullets slammed against the secret door. Several of the deadly projectiles whizzed dangerously close to General Spradlin’s head. They lodged themselves somewhere in the darkness of the hidden room.
The door closed and a heavy lock clicked shut. General Spradlin took a step back.
The pursuers on the other side of the door lunged at it. They banged their fists and slammed their bodies against the barricade. Their blows were like sledge hammers, but they could not get the door to budge. There was silence for a second or two, then a burst of gunfire. The roar was deafening but the door still held. After a while, they stopped shooting and there was silence once again.
General Spradlin leaned closer to the secret door to hear what was happening on the other side.
“Don’t worry,” General Spradlin told Nox. “This door was built to withstand—”
An explosion erupted in the outer room. Its force hurled General Spradlin back into Nox and the two fell heavily to the ground. Nox quickly got to her feet and helped the General up. Their ears rang and their senses were shocked. General Spradlin shone his flashlight on the door, fearful of what he would see. The door had warped but held.
“She was built to last,” General Spradlin said of the secret door. “But she won’t take much more of that. Let’s move.”