by J B Cantwell
But now, after all day protecting the building, and after the days it had taken us to even get there, I was simply exhausted from seeing so many men and women go down. Their bodies piled up in the streets, stark reminders that this war would continue, that the killing wouldn’t stop.
The elevator opened and we went back to the same apartment we had been in that morning. I was hungry, and I considered raiding the pantry again along with my three teammates. But it wasn’t really the luxury of food I was looking for. I wanted the luxury of sleep.
I wandered into one of the bedrooms and crawled into the bed, impossibly fluffy and clean. I couldn’t remember the last time I had bathed, and now the dirt and sweat clung to my skin like the Primes’ armor clung to theirs. I dug through my pack and produced a packet of nutrition squares, the old standby in Brooklyn. Our survival food, hard and dry. I took a bite and washed it down with water from my canteen. Then I stuffed the whole square into my mouth, relieved by the familiarity of the food, something I had never imagined I would actually crave.
I kicked off my boots and peeled the socks from my feet. They were stark white, the only part of me that had been spared the grime of the dust and explosions. I draped the socks over the edge of the bed and pulled a new pair from the pack for later.
I set the alarm in my lens to 1130, then lay back into the pillows and gingerly touched my cheek with one hand. The blood from the scrape had set into a thin scab, less painful now that the flesh beneath was protected, but still stinging.
I left the light on as I began to doze, unwilling to let the night fully take over. Just as I was starting to fall asleep, there was a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” I said, waiting for another attack from Hannah.
But it was Rachel who entered the room.
“Do you mind if I stay in here with you?” she asked. “It’s making me nervous being out there without you.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You got us this far.”
“What about the others?”
“Mark has been talking to Hannah. It looks like she’s coming around.”
I grunted.
I told myself I didn’t care either way, but the truth was that Hannah had broken the fragile trust that had existed between us. I tried to imagine her reasoning for joining the Service. She had played herself as an Orange, just one step away from the freedom a Green designation would bring her.
The trouble was that, with my lens unable to read designation, I had no idea if anything she had told me was true at all. She could be dangerous, just as Lydia had indicated months ago. Or maybe she was simply nasty, a feature of her personality I had seen so many times before. I had looked past it, though, at least until now. Now it seemed that, when the chips were really down, her true colors came out, fully visible to the rest of us.
It didn’t matter what color designation she was. It didn’t matter that she had shed a few tears while in battle. What mattered was now, how she was acting now. How we all were.
Maybe we weren’t meant to be friends after all.
Rachel spread herself out on a small couch on the other end of the room.
“Oh,” she sighed, looking over. “These people sure lived it up, didn’t they?”
I dug my face into the soft pillow.
“Yeah,” I said. “How did you end up here, anyway?” I asked.
Rachel and Mark were both new to our crew, trained at some other camp, traveled on some other bus.
“It’s the same reason as you, isn’t it?” she said. “To try to get out?”
I didn’t answer.
Yes, to get out.
Out of our circumstances, whatever they may be.
“At first I thought I might have a chance,” she said. “You know, at the prize, the money at the end. But now, well, I guess I’ll just be lucky to get out at all.”
She sniffled a bit and I realized she was crying.
“Jonathan and I were in training together,” she went on. “I had seen others from our camp go down, so many. He and I were the last of our group. I kind of figured we had both beaten the odds. But then … yesterday …”
The sound of her crying was muffled, but I felt so numb that I did not join in her tears.
“We’ll be lucky to get out,” I said. “Prize or not. And if not … then not.”
I closed my eyes again, thinking of Alex now. He had been my person, the one I looked to to survive this with me. He was still alive, barking out his orders downstairs. But how long would he make it? How long would I?
The drones buzzed by as they uselessly battled one another in the skies, and I fell asleep with the sounds of explosions as my lullaby.
The building shook, and the breaking sound of the lamp hitting the floor jarred me awake. I read the time on my lens. 0935. Too early.
Another explosion and I was knocked to the floor. Around us came the sound of windows blowing out.
Had we been wrong about the Fighters? Had they been willing to destroy their city if it meant getting rid of us?
“What’s happening?” Rachel shouted over the noise.
I pulled on my boots as fast as I could. The bedroom door burst open.
“They’re taking down the building!” Mark yelled. “We have to get out!”
Another explosion rocked the floor, and the building creaked above.
“Alright!” I yelled. “Let’s go!”
Hannah was already up, packed and waiting. I wondered if she had slept at all. I ran to Rachel, who seemed shell-shocked, and grabbed her shoulders. She looked terrified as pieces of the ceiling rained down on our heads.
“Not today!” I yelled, staring her in the face, her eyes wide.
I turned away, a plan forming in my mind.
“Let’s go!” I yelled again.
In a flash, Hannah was at my side.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Stairs!” I said as we ran for the front door.
I turned right and found the staircase next to the elevators. Another team of six or seven soldiers joined us as we fled.
“Move! Move!” someone I didn’t know shouted.
We flew down the staircase and out into what had been the lobby. Scraps of plywood littered the floor. And bodies. Everywhere bodies. I looked frantically across the room, searching for Alex.
“We have to get out!” Mark yelled as I dug through the rubble.
Then I saw him. Fowler. Dead.
No.
Another explosion erupted on the far side of the lobby.
And then he was there. It was like a dream the way he came to me, eyes suddenly alert. Blood spattered his face, but the rest of his upper body had been protected by the armor. Then I realized, not every part of him had escaped. He limped painfully across the lobby toward us. It was the same leg he had broken weeks ago.
“You have to get out!” he yelled. “Head north, toward the pipeline!”
“What about you?” I asked. “We can’t leave you here.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I can make it.”
“You’re coming with us,” I said.
“Soldier, I told you—” he began.
“I’m not your soldier!” I yelled, angered by his tone. “Mark!” I called. He was the only one near Alex’s height, though the contrast of the two together was jarring. Mark was long and lanky, Alex huge and muscular. “Mark, let him lean on your shoulder as we go. We’ll take turns.”
“You’re not allowed to bring me,” Alex said.
A bomb went off on the other side of the building, which creaked and groaned above us.
“You don’t get a choice!” I shouted, turning away.
Together we raced for the end of the building that had just been bombed, hoping that the Fighters would choose the other side next.
We made our escape into the streets. We could see that no Fighters were out. Still, the noise continued behind us as the building took blast after blast.
>
“You have to leave me,” Alex kept saying. “I can’t keep up with you. You know that.”
The other soldiers eyed me, but I didn’t respond.
The group from the stairwell had joined us, and I beckoned for two more of the larger men to come and help Alex move faster. They looked wary at first, not sure if they should listen to me or to this Prime.
“Shouldn’t we leave him?” one asked.
“Negative,” I said. “Now get your shoulders under him.”
The two soldiers did as I commanded. Clearly their own leader was gone, either dead or lost in the chaos. I was the only one they had to answer to. Normally, soldiers would have defaulted to the orders of a Prime, in this case, Alex. But with him injured, they looked to me now, ignoring his insistence that we leave him behind.
I pulled up a map of the city on my lens and found the way north, toward the pipelines. I directed my lens to send the map to everyone in the crew, including Alex.
“It’s not too far,” I said. “We can get you somewhere safe at least.” His giant body shook with shock and pain.
We began the long trek out of the city. Nobody fired at us. It seemed that all the attention was still around bombing the Pearl. I had become accustomed to the sound, not giving it much thought as we hobbled up the street.
Then, a different sound. The sound of crunching metal, and then crashing, crashing, cement on cement, windows breaking. I turned, and in the early morning light I could just see it.
The Pearl was falling.
Chapter Eight
Panic.
Where would we go?
Crashing. The huge structure splintering behind us.
“To the left!” I shouted.
We had been passing long rows of stores, the first floor of the many residential buildings. I found one with the glass still intact, and we ran for it. The door was the only part of the facade that had been blown out, and we stepped into the space, our boots crunching the glass that littered the floor.
“In back!” I shouted. The sound outside was deafening.
I led the team to the deepest part of the store, which had at one time sold electronics. While the Canadians had adopted much of the same technology as us in the states, the one thing they had avoided was lens implants. At home, a store like this would be filled with chip upgrades and fashionable caps to cover them. Here, it was simply cell phones and home viewscreens, both antiquated technology compared to what we had.
But they were free, the people here. They were free to make choices on their own about what technology to use and not use.
I felt around in the dark and found the back room. I opened the door, and we all stuffed inside, shutting it behind us.
It was coming down now, and despite the dark we could see the dust from the building billowing into the room through the crack in the bottom of the door.
I pulled out a headlamp and strapped it to my forehead, searching for something, anything to block the dust. I came up with a roll of rags, presumably used for cleaning, and stuffed them one by one into the crevice.
The crashing seemed endless. The ground shook, the contents of the room swayed and fell off shelves. Then, gradually, the sound of the building falling faded, and finally stopped.
I removed one of the towels, but the dust was still moving, filling up the store. I stuffed it back in.
“We’ll have to stay here,” I said. “I don’t think anyone will come looking. Not here.”
I looked over at the two still holding onto Alex.
“Put him down,” I said, and they gradually lowered him to the floor.
His face was white from the pain, and he looked like he might vomit. I rummaged around and found a bag, handing it to him, just in case.
“Well,” I said, “it looks like we’ll be here for a while. Everyone still have their rations?”
Mark, Rachel and Hannah all nodded. The others looked confused.
“They told us back at the Pearl to take everything out, to leave it in the pile of that one upstairs apartment,” one of the soldiers I didn’t know said.
I was glad I hadn’t listened. My insubordination was serving me well today.
I opened my pack and began doling out food. A package of hard breads stuffed with peanut butter. A can of beans, another of soup. They passed the food around, staring at it in the same way I had, with confusion.
“Eat it,” I encouraged. “Just not too much. If you’re only used to mash and nutrition squares, it will take your body a little while to adjust.”
Everybody opened the packages and lay out a sort of banquet of unusual foods on the floor before us. I sat back against one wall and pulled out a nutrition square. I didn’t trust the other food, not right now. I didn’t trust anything.
I wanted out. Out of my obligation. Out of leading my team. Why on earth had I joined this fight? The threat of poverty seemed so unimportant now. I had ruined everything, every safety I had had back in Brooklyn was gone. My friendship, or whatever it was that I’d had with Alex, was gone, too.
He would have joined either way. He would have joined without me.
Probably, yes. And I would have been left home with my mom. Or maybe even left on my own, homeless in some far off place, fighting for survival. Just as I was now. Was there a difference?
I moved closer to where Alex sat, his face a little less white than it had been when we arrived.
“You doing ok?” I asked.
“No. You should have left me.”
“Yes, I know. But you didn’t leave me.”
He had, after all, followed me into the Service.
“I’m not leaving you behind,” I said. “They can go on if they want.”
Hannah snorted from across the room. “Like we have the authority to do that. You’re the highest ranking person here besides him, and he’s down for the count.”
“Then I guess you’re all going to have to wait for us.”
I sat back, exhausted, nibbling on my cracker and waiting for the dust to settle.
Everyone stayed silent for a time, tired, or maybe just lost in thought. I turned off the light on my forehead, plunging us into darkness as the dust outside fell to the ground.
After a while, hours maybe, I was startled awake.
Someone had cracked open the door to find the place filled with inches of dust, the remnants of the Pearl. Maybe the Fighters had thought we hadn’t escaped the building. If so, they thought they had annihilated our total force.
There were others, though. It wasn’t just twenty soldiers taking over the city. Hundreds more had spread out to try to gain control. I wondered if they were as obvious to the Fighters as we were.
I walked out into the room and wiped off one of the windows with my sleeve.
It was like looking out onto a snowstorm. Cars that remained were buried in dust. Windows across the street were shattered from the blast. They had turned their own city into a ghost town, a ruined shell they could never return to.
But it was the gateway. We knew it, and they must have realized it, too. Would they be waiting for us when we got to the pipeline?
We wouldn’t make it, not with Alex barely able to move. The cars gave me an idea.
“It’s time to go,” I said, turning. “Does anyone know how to steal a car?”
I had never ridden in cars back home. So few people could afford to own one, especially in Brooklyn. In Manhattan, taxicabs still drove citizens to and from their destinations, but such travel would have never been affordable to us. Still, I knew there were ways to start a car without a key. I just didn’t know how to do it.
One hand went up from the back of the room.
It was Hannah’s.
I sighed.
“Alright then, soldier,” I said. “What do you need?”
She pulled an army knife from her pack. It was small, but loaded with different tools. “I’ve got what I need. Point me in a direction.”
I took a head count and saw that we had twe
nty-one soldiers, including myself. We would need four cars for all of us to fit.
“Do you know how to drive?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “As well as any of us.”
“Alright. We need to move or we’ll never get out of here in time.”
“In time for what?” one of the soldiers I didn’t know asked.
“Are you ready for another firefight like the one we just escaped?” I asked.
“There won’t be,” he argued. “They don’t even know we escaped. They’re probably just checking bodies right now.”
A flash of light caught my attention, and I looked up at all the tall buildings around us.
“They know,” I said. “And they won’t be looking for bodies in all that rubble. There are eyes everywhere in this city.”
I was reminded of the way the Fighters had taken to the trees in the forest, watching us from above.
“We need to get out now, before the dust settles any more. Before they can see everything we do.”
I found myself taking charge again, even though I had no conscious desire to do so.
“Everyone cover your faces with whatever fabric you can find. The dust is bound to be full of glass and who knows what else.”
The street outside had already become too visible to anyone watching from above. We stepped out onto the sidewalk. Already I was kicking myself for having waited too long. We would be too easy to spot, too easy to trap.
Hannah went to work quickly. In minutes she had quietly started two out of the four cars we needed. I started piling soldiers into them. By a stroke of luck, one of the cars was a small truck. The two soldiers propping up Alex helped him over to it. He hoisted himself into the back and lay back into a bed of dust. He was shivering now, moaning in pain. I pulled out my silver blanket and wrapped it around him.
“Just hang on,” I said. “It won’t take long now.”
“You should have left me,” he said through a t-shirt he had torn and wrapped around his face. “Riley, you need to leave me here. You’ll never make it if you have to carry me around.”
“Yes we will,” I said. “I can’t—”