Wallace has a huge grin on her face. “I do.”
“I thought so.”
She says in a firm voice, “Sergeant Knox, you are hereby released from my unit. You are no longer under my command.”
I turn to Cranston. “I’m New Hampshire National Guard, so I’m not under your orders, jerk. I’m leaving, and I’m taking Buddy and Serena with me.”
Cranston’s hand moves to the holster, grabbing his pistol, but it’s not even a fair fight.
So what.
I shoot him right in the chest, and he falls right back into his bedroom. Everyone jerks at the sound, and I turn to General Scopes. My M-4 is lowered but still pointed in his direction.
The whole room seems to wait, all of us with ears ringing from the gunshot, smelling the burnt gunpowder.
“General?” I ask.
No hesitation. “I saw what happened. Hoyt Cranston was going to shoot you. Sergeant, you responded appropriately.”
Somehow, I’m not surprised. “Thank you, General.”
Scopes’s shoulders sag and he looks at us all with a bleak expression. “Ah, the hell with it…I’m no real general. I’m an insurance adjuster from Billingham. And I’m tired of it all.”
Wallace nods. “Aren’t we all.”
An Excerpt from the Journal of Randall Knox
Maybe there are other soldiers out there like me, frustrated writers who are in the military, and who have no other outlet but a private journal. We’ve all been warned, over and over again, about not keeping diaries or even letters, for the purpose of OpSec—Operational Security—but with a global war going on for years and years, I never thought a Creeper would be interested in what I had to write, no matter how many lectures I had gotten from Intelligence officers, including Dad.
Maybe that’s arrogance, maybe that’s smugness on my part for being a teenager who thinks he knows it all, but I’ve always been glad I’ve put pen to paper, though sometimes the pen has been replaced by a dull pencil when the pen has run out of ink. My English teachers at Fort St. Paul have always complimented me on my writing, and maybe those good words went to my head, but so the writing as gone on.
One time I was caught by a drill sergeant, and his response, if anything, encouraged me more.
I was barely twelve, having transferred from the Boy Scouts to the Army, and at a training center at an old Scout camp in the White Mountains, a very heavyset sergeant named Piper—he must have been seventy or so, for he’d sometimes tell us stories about fighting in Vietnam—and he caught me slipping my journal into my battlepack just before lights out.
He sat down heavily on my bunk, held out his hand, and I passed it over to him. Piper said, “This is illegal, you know.”
“I know, Sergeant.”
“Then why keep it?”
“Because…It’s hard to explain.”
“Then explain it, Knox, or I’ll seize it and you’ll never see it again.”
I was glad this portion of the barracks—an old camp building that had been divided up—was quiet, and I said, “Sergeant, I just want to write it all down. To record what happens. So I’ll never forget it, no matter what.”
“You think you might forget?”
“I might.”
He rubbed the leather cover of my journal. “Then…well, you keep at it, Knox, okay? Someday this will be over, or someday, you and your kids will be starving and fighting in the ruins, trying to kill those buggy bastards with sticks and stones, and you should keep it straight. So they know their history, know why they’re fighting.”
He gave the journal back to me. “But for Christ’s sake, do a better job keeping it under wraps, all right?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Chapter Thirty
There’s a flurry of activity as Navy corpsmen come in and take Cranston away—he’s unconscious; my 5.56 mm round apparently broke his sternum and some ribs—and with Captain Wallace’s encouragement, General Scopes takes control of the base. I’m sure it won’t last long, but it will last long enough.
After a quick meal and shower—my first in I can’t remember when—Captain Wallace assembles us in a small open hangar. She takes me aside and tells me that she received a telegraph message from Battalion saying Dad is still alive and being treated at a military hospital. I just nod, not able to say a word. I’m no longer in her command, but I’ll be damned if I’ll leave her side.
The survivors of Company K are lined up and some curious Navy personnel watch as prayers are said for the dead and wounded of Company K—boots marking them lined up in a depressingly long line—and Captain Wallace’s voice breaks a few times as she reads out the list, and I bite my lip, as she mentions the last name, Sergeant Bronson, who had sacrificed himself to get me and Buddy out on that last Osprey.
I’m standing next to Balatnic, who gently nudges me in the side and passes over a hand-written scrap of paper. She whispers, “We’re going to be singing a hymn shortly, called Sergeant Mackenzie. I don’t want you to be left out.”
“Thanks,” I say, and then MacRae, the piper, steps forward, and starts playing a tune, and as one, the Company starts to sing, and I join them, later learning that this particular lament was a century and a half old, written somewhere in the muddy trenches of France, though it’s been adapted to this time.
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
When Creepers come I will stand my ground
Stand my ground I’ll not be afraid
Thoughts of home take away my fear
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears
Once a year say a prayer for me
Close your eyes and remember me
Never more shall I see the sun
For I fell to a Creeper’s arm
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Where before many more have gone
When the tune is done, I turn and leave and bring Thor with me, my eyes so swollen I can barely see.
* * *
Outside is an overcast, cool night, though the clouds look like they’re breaking apart. Serena is talking to three soldiers from K Company, and she comes up to me, and we hug, and I take her hand and lead her to a park bench, set next to a tangled lawn that must have looked spectacular back in the day, when there was fuel and time enough to waste to mow the lawn. She has a bottle in her hand and offers it to me, and I take a swig. Cold, hard cider, and I shouldn’t be drinking it, but what the hell. I take one more swallow and give it back to her.
“How are you?” I ask.
“I’m…I’m all right,” she says, bringing the bottle up for a quick sip. “It’s hard to be back here but since Captain Wallace has taken over, a couple of Cranston’s fellow Langley men have disappeared. Someday…someday I’ll find out who killed Father, and I’ll do something about it.”
I put my arm around her. “I’ll be there to help. Where’s Buddy?”
“In the canteen, eating ice cream. Thor is with him.”
“No surprise there.”
We cuddle there for a moment, and she says, “Randy, who’s Abby? Was she the girl that waved at you on the train, back in Concord?”
I feel splayed out and embarrassed, like I’ve been caught doing something against regs, dressed only in my underwear. “Yes,” I said. “She was the girl back in Concord. I guess you could say…she was my girlfriend.”
Serena says, “All right, but what do you say? Back at the hilltop, she came into the CP, looking for you. Had a quick chat with your dad. And I thought I recognized her.”
What the heck. “Yes, Abby’s my girlfriend.”
Serena shifts around so her pretty face is so close to me, and she says, “So what.”
And we kiss and touch
and kiss some more, and she tastes so different from Abby, and I guess I should feel guilty, but I’m just confused.
That’s all.
For a moment we break away, and I say, “But…You’re okay with that? With me and Abby?”
Serena sighs and moves in with me, even closer. “Fool. I haven’t told you about Brian, back in Maine, have I?”
I feel even more foolish. “No, you haven’t.”
“He’s in Bar Harbor. Your Abby is out there somewhere. For all we know, they’re dead. For all they know, we’re dead. But I know we’re safe and we’re here, and that’s all I care about.”
I’m not about to argue, though I do feel a twinge of guilt, thinking of Abby, how she made her way from Concord to New York and—
Serena reaches down and takes the bottle of cider, and in the dim light, I spot the label.
RED VENGEANCE.
She notices the label too, and says, “What’s it mean, ‘Red Vengeance’?”
“Cider’s made in Vermont. Named after a kick-ass Marine who grew up there, returned to Vermont after World War II, ran the State Police for a while. Guy’s nickname was ‘Red Mike.’ Got the Medal of Honor and Navy Cross. Fought on Guadalcanal. There’s no Domes in Vermont, and the rumor is, the ghost of Red Mike is scaring them off.”
“What do you think?” she asks.
“If it works, it works,” I say.
I stroke Serena’s shoulder, and she puts the bottle on the ground and sits up suddenly. “Did you mean what you said back there?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I say.
She’s looking up at the sky. “Back at that Air Force base, underground, facing that…thing. That damn bug. You challenged her. You told her that we would never give up, that we’d always fight. Even with sticks and stones. Did you mean that?”
“I certainly did,” I say.
“Oh…Randy. For God’s sake. Look up, will you?”
I do and the clouds have broken away, and about half the sky is clear, and there are a few little streams of orbital debris coming back to Earth, and there’s a small bright disc, and for one quick moment, I think, the Moon looks odd tonight.
Then I’m frozen in place, right next to a terrified Serena. Out on the base there are shouts, and the ringing of a bell, as others notice what’s above us.
“I see it.”
Holy God.
“It’s…it’s another orbital base. Replacing the one that got destroyed last month.”
“That’s right.”
“Randy…where do you think it came from?” she asks.
I pull her closer to me, feel her shivering, either from cold or fear, I can’t tell, and really, does it make a difference?
“From the dark side of the moon? In orbit somewhere around the Sun? Who knows?”
“Oh Randy…What the hell are we going to do?”
I pull her even tighter. “We’re going to keep on fighting. And we’re going to win, no matter what.”
She doesn’t say anything, and to make it clear, I say it again.
“We’re going to win, no matter what.”
There’s a rustling noise, and Buddy emerges through some waist-high brush and grass, being followed by dependable Thor. He has a dish and a spoon, and seems to be eating ice cream. Buddy comes to us and then stands still, looking up at the bright and deadly orb in the sky.
“Oh,” he says, and I whirl and stare right at him.
He keeps on looking up.
“Sister,” he says, in his young boy/old man voice.
“Yes, Buddy, right here.”
A heavy sigh comes from him, like a walker bearing an impossibly heavy pack and realizing he has many more miles to march.
“Sister…Please don’t let them take me back up there again. Please.”
Red Vengeance Page 32
