by L. E. Howel
“Why did they do it?” She flung the words at Birch like an accusation.
He shrugged.
“It looks like they took out this whole area. I don’t know why.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Karla’s voice was unusually cold. “Why did they destroy everything? It was like they wanted to even wipe the memories from this place. Why would they do that?” Karla stopped walking and looked tearfully back at the greenery of the town. “They didn’t destroy the trees anyway.”
Birch sighed heavily. “It looks like a scorched earth policy to me, except they only destroyed the shelter rather than the earth itself. Perhaps they just wanted to make it as hard as they could for anyone to come back here. Probably if you went to all the other towns around here you’d find the same thing. It seems like they were pretty systematic.”
“So why didn’t they do the same in Denver, that’s a much bigger danger isn’t it?”
Birch shook his head. “I’m not sure I really understand that either, maybe all these small towns would be harder to keep and protect from enemies. They may have just been trying to make sure none of them could be taken back and used as bases against them later. That would be my guess, though I suppose only the Ares themselves really know. It may all be less logical than any of that. It may just be another sign of their savagery.”
Karla was silent again. Birch’s answers seemed to calm her somewhat. Perhaps the thought that her town was not alone in the destruction gave her some strange sense of relief, a perspective that lessened her sense of victimization. This wasn’t just about her and the place she knew, it was hundreds of towns and millions of lives across this land that had been destroyed. To grieve only for herself and what she knew was selfish.
Birch himself was finally getting the scope of it all. Strangely, in the city he had felt it, but he had been able to blank it out. It was a big, impersonal place, but now, seeing Karla’s town through her eyes he couldn’t escape the pain of understanding what all of this meant. It almost sent his mind back to his own pain, but he struggled to avoid that. Karla wasn’t the only one to have lost, but he was far more capable of acknowledging her loss than his own.
For a time they followed an old paved road, cracked and worn into a thousand pieces, like sun-baked dirt in a drought stricken land. Grass grew high through the gaps as nature struggled to overcome the bonds of civilization, soon it would win. Eventually they turned onto what he guessed must have once been a dirt road. There was little left to indicate what it once was, but by the way Karla walked it seemed that she was following some unseen highway. This was a road she knew from memory, for it was only there in her mind now.
“Is it much farther?” Birch asked, trying to break the silence again. He wanted this ordeal over, partly because of his concern for Karla. This was a living horror to her, and if he hadn’t thought it would make things even worse, he would have snatched her away from these moldering memories already.
His primary concern, though, was with his own horrors. They seemed to grow greater with every step. He was still fighting to master them. Most of all he wanted to leave these dead cities and towns behind, to get out of the past and finally live in the future. It seemed that the longer he stayed here the more real it all became and the more his mood darkened. He could almost slip back into the former life and exist, not now, but then. This was not what he had come back for. He had wanted a new life, not the old one.
“Not long,” Karla answered hopefully. “It’s just a little farther along here.”
Silently they walked on the featureless landscape. Birch couldn’t see anything to indicate that anybody had ever lived here. All that was there was the flat grassland with occasional undulations too small to be called hills, more like wrinkles on a great flat tablecloth that spread out for miles. The crumbs of civilization had all been shaken off years ago and left this uncluttered land. It might have been beautiful, but while the sun was still bright, the sky still blue, and the grass and wildflowers as active and lively as ever, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the gloomily empty scene. Finally Karla stopped. She glanced about in all directions before looking helplessly to Birch.
“I can’t find it,” she stuttered through a sob. “I don’t know where it is.” She slumped over and fell listlessly onto the long grass. Birch cast an uncomfortable glance where she sat but said nothing. He looked away. “You’d think I wouldn’t forget something like that,” Karla continued. “It’s my family, how could I forget? What kind of evil person forgets their family?”
Birch sighed. “Everything’s forgotten,” he remarked bitterly, “you just have to wait long enough.” Karla looked up at Birch, but her bleary eyes couldn’t meet his. His gaze was fixed into the distance.
“Think of all those worn tombstones in the graveyards,” he continued, “‘To the loving memory of my husband, wife, parent, or child… whoever. We will always remember.’ That’s a lie, it’s a promise they can’t even keep because they’ll die too, and when they’ve gone so has the memory. It doesn’t even take that long anymore because nobody cares. So this is our fate, to be forgotten, leaving nothing behind but a pile of meaningless photographs that no one wants, or our impressive stone marker that will only wear away until the writing becomes as faint and meaningless as the feelings they were supposed to represent. We all disappear in the end!
“Nothing lasts. This place, above all, should make it clear. We’d be better off if we could leave it all behind anyway. I can tell you now that there will be no happy ending here. There never is when you go searching through the rubbish of the past. Even if you did find your precious home, what would you find? Rubble and dust that have decayed to nothing and won’t even leave a memory once you’re gone. That’s all that any of this is, so I don’t even know what you’re looking for because there’s nothing here except what is in your own head. Leave it behind!”
Karla’s face had crumpled into an angry frown.
“Why do you do that?” she spat the words at him. Birch couldn’t see the pain etched deep on her features. He was still looking to the horizon ahead as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“Every time it seems like you’re going to be different, like you’re going to be human, you come back worse than ever.” Birch still did not answer. “You don’t understand things nearly as well as you think you do. People do live forever. There are more memories alive than you could ever know! A lot of things will never turn to dust; they will live forever. You may never understand it, but you’re a part of it. What you’ve said and done will live after you, Major, whether you think it will or not. You can’t change that. You’re living your legacy!”
“Oh spare me your simple Midwestern philosophy lieutenant,” Birch snapped angrily. “I don’t need your homespun country goodness wrapped up for me. I don’t need your Sunday-School-happily-ever-after stories to make me feel good before I go to bed at night because I’m not buying it. This is a hard world, it’s hard to be born, it’s hard to live, and it’s hard to die. Nothing is easy, and you haven’t experienced enough life if you think anything different. We are nothing, and then we die”
“I’ve experienced plenty,” Karla responded, her face reddening. “What about you? What have you experienced? Sure, I bet you’ve done stuff, but have you experienced it? Maybe you just never cared enough about anyone else in your life to want to know that there’s something more you could do!
“We are everything, and we have to live it! It’s our world and it’s all about what we do. The good or the bad will live on in the lives of those we leave behind. You will be immortal in the lives you affected and the lives they will affect after them. You don’t need my Sunday-School-philosophy to understand that, just a heart and a brain!”
Birch glared furiously down at the young lieutenant. His eyes blazed and the muscles at the side of his face tightened as his jaw clenched.
“I understand fine,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Now get up! We’re getting out of h
ere!” He pulled Karla to her feet so violently that she almost fell forward into the grass. She regained her balance with her face just inches from Birch’s. Their eyes met. Her still, blue pools gazed deeply into him, as though trying to cool his fiery emotions. He almost felt it happen, but he released her hand and turned away.
“We’d better get going,” he barked gruffly, “we haven’t got much daylight left and I want to get as far from this town as we can before dark.”
Karla nodded mutely and followed him toward the horizon.
THIRTY-FOUR
The departure was simpler than their approach had been. Instead of the contorted twists and turns of their entry they moved away from the base in a swift, straight dash to the south. Their line of vehicles ploughed through the tall grass, flattening it beneath them. Soon they had reached top speed and were thrashing through the blowing weeds toward safety. As they pulled away Edwards stole a last glance at the little base behind them. Soon it would be gone, like so much before it. The Ares were coming. When they got there they would destroy everything, but their victory would be brief. They would pay this time, and the revenge would be swift. The army coming from the east would repay in kind.
There wasn’t anything they could do about it- nothing, except run. From what he could gather Edwards figured that the retreating Ares were fleeing from the advancing armies to the east, while another horde of Ares attackers was rushing in from the west to help them. They were in the middle and had to squirt away to the south as quickly as possible to avoid getting caught in the fight. Above all, they had been told, get to Washington safely. No more losses.
And so they would flee, running from the danger as fast as they could, hoping that in the confusion they might escape alive.
Edwards couldn’t shake the impression that they had a more central part to play in this drama than anyone was willing to admit. Perhaps the Ares had some idea about their mission and its deeper meaning. If they did then this convoy was in terrible danger. Their flight needed to be swift, for he knew the Ares would give chase with all of their rage and might. No base, no army, nothing other than their complete destruction would stop them. And so they had to run.
Their flight continued without pause through the rest of the day. The emptiness of the countryside engulfed them. They were alone, but Edwards kept his eyes on the horizon, watching for any sign of pursuit. There was none, and he felt some sense of relief as they entered the last few hours of daylight with no visible sign of danger. That quickly changed.
The peril came from an unexpected source. He had been watching for any sign of attack, but it was not a human foe they had to contend with, but nature’s destructive power that now approached at speed. It was one of those summer storms, a mighty squall that the plains could suddenly bring up on even the brightest of days. A huge thunderhead cloud was moving from the southwest and, like a great black blanket, was drawing itself over the blue sky.
Darkness spread like an incoming tide across the land as the clouds covered the sun. The tiny line of trucks kept moving swiftly, but was soon caught up in the storm. From his window Edwards could see a great curtain of hail approaching. It hit a moment later with the sound of a thousand thud-thuds against the bodywork of the trucks. They were big, and heavy, and there were a lot of them. Even with their armor it seemed that the trucks must suffer some damage from the barrage.
More worrying was the visibility. Edwards, in the second truck, had already lost sight of the lead vehicle ahead of them. The radio cracked to life, it was Linkhorn from the truck ahead. “This doesn’t look too good,” His voice hissed through the speaker. “I can’t see any of you back there. We better stop here for a while until this storm blows over. We can start up again as soon as this clears.” The radio went silent and their truck came to a halt.
Edwards watched the hail fall. The windows fogged and the wipers screeched against the glass. He could see nothing. It was strange how a storm made the world seem so small.
Nature’s fury gusted about them. A gale howled and rocked the truck on its wheels. The hail beat down on them harder than ever. It seemed to Edwards that the dormant power of the earth had been awakened and was seeking them out, just as the Ares were. Perhaps this was a global conspiracy against their advances. So be it then. If this was the worst they could do then they would overcome both the world and the Ares if necessary to make their mission a success. They would win.
As if in response to his thoughts a sudden burst of brilliant lightning illuminated the whole scene in an unearthly glow. It was instantly followed by an explosion of thunder that rolled ominously around the plain. In that one moment of light he saw the mass of hail hurled down at them like a solid sheet of ice. He laughed nervously to himself. He had better watch what he thought. That lightning was close.
***
Birch had seen the storm coming first. It was one of those fast moving ones that wasn’t going to give them much time to find cover. There wasn’t much to be found out here anyway. They had to improvise, and as he saw the curtain of hail drawing toward them he pulled a blanket out of his backpack and shouted to Karla. She looked gloomily back at him but didn’t move.
“Move it Karla,” Birch growled, “this looks like a real heavy storm coming in and the more cover we can get from it the better. I don’t think you’ll want to take too many hits from those hailstones, they look pretty big.”
She shrugged, “What are you going to do, push me down if I don’t?”
“I won’t have to; the hail will do that for me. It’s your choice.”
Karla moved sulkily toward Birch, pulling her own blanket from her pack. They both quickly combined their bedding to provide the thickest possible cover from the storm, and as the dark clouds rolled over them they both ducked beneath the blankets.
It was hot, stifling, and awkward under the makeshift shelter. Their animosity, already present before this inconvenience, seemed to be magnified under the confining blankets. A great gulf of empty space opened up between them as they struggled to stay as far from each other as possible, while still remaining protected from the hail. And so they wrestled between them for the covers, like an old married couple on a cold night. It might almost have seemed comical if they hadn’t been so angry.
For a time Birch just watched the storm. A heavy torrent of hail was now dropping on them, but the protection provided by the blankets kept them safe. The hailstones were impressive, big balls of ice, the type that would put some serious damage on anyone, or anything, struck by them. From under the cover it was almost peaceful to watch them striking the ground around them. In pleasant silence the two watched the fury of nature and listened to the thunder rolling above their heads.
Birch and Karla’s anger cooled and their hearts warmed beneath the blankets as they watched the scene around them. It was strange the calming effect a storm could have on the mind when you felt warm and protected from it. Even the lightning that flashed and danced across the sky in powerful bursts somehow seemed distant; it couldn’t touch them. Their thin blanket covering, in their minds, became a substantial barrier against harm. Like the old blanket tents of childhood, it was almost a magically safe place as they hid silently beneath it.
Finally Karla spoke. Her words were soft and quiet amidst the blasts of the storm, but they were more clear and penetrating than any of the noise outside.
“So why did you sign up for this mission?” Her voice was warm and kindly, with no hint of the bitterness of before, but still it jolted him like an electric shock. “Everyone has a reason. You don’t volunteer for this kind of thing without having something pushing you to it. You know my reason, so what’s yours?”
Birch was silent. The only sound was that of the thudding hailstones against the ground and the rolling thunder above. He wished it could stay that way, but he knew it couldn’t last. She was waiting for an answer.
“Nothing,” he finally muttered, “nothing but duty.” Karla had turned to face him. The blankets made it dar
k, but not dark enough for him to avoid seeing her expression. She didn’t believe him. A knowing smile played across her lips and her deep blue eyes fixed upon him, as though to penetrate through his skin to prize out his inmost secrets. It made him angry. What were his secrets to her, and why should he tell her when he couldn’t even tell himself? So what if she had told him all about herself, he hadn’t asked for it. It wasn’t as though he was interested, or really cared to know about her. She had forced the information on him, so why should she think that she had the right to know about him and his life. It was like some grown-up version of truth-or-dare. He wasn’t going to play. Karla’s smile remained and she seemed to change the subject.
“That was a brave thing you did for me,” she gushed, “coming to get me off that mountain. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment I came around and saw you there. It was like you were my guardian angel or something, except that you’d passed out from the fumes on the cloth!” She giggled lightly at the memory. “You saved me. It takes a special person to do that.”
“That was duty too,” Birch remarked sourly, he wanted to hurt Karla. She was hurting him, bringing him back to where he didn’t want to be, and now he wanted to strike back, to make her feel it too. “Everything’s a duty in life. On a mission it’s just easier to know what that duty is. In life it’s not so easy. I had to save you if I could. I’m your commander.” He watched for her reaction, but to his surprise the smile remained fixed to her face. She seemed to understand more than he had hoped.
“Not everything,” she responded quietly. “I’ve seen more than that.”
She was right, of course, but he hated to think of it. He hated to think of anything because it just hurt too much. Somehow, in spite of his efforts, he had felt himself opening up to Karla. She seemed to care and that had made a difference. It brought down his defenses. It was like she was some great emotional can-opener, and he was the helpless can caught in her grip, and, no matter how hard he tried to hang on, the lid was going to come off.
