by Colin Sims
Next, I taped the “Mardi Gras Packet” to the inner lining of the open pouch, just above the foghorn. The packet was delicate to handle, as I didn’t want to set it off prematurely. The “detonator” was a short piece of fishing line, and I looped it into the zipper as I carefully zipped the pouch shut.
Now, I had to move on to Fred’s pants. Using my engineering skills, I’d also constructed what I had dubbed, “The Water Bomb,” but Josh insisted we call it “The Bed Wetter.”
It was made from a thin, deconstructed Maxi pad, and held 1.5 ounces of water, spread out over a smooth pouch that was about two millimeters thick. It also had a layer of adhesive on one side, so I could stick it to the inner thigh of Fred’s jeans. The idea was that the Bed Wetter was light enough and thin enough that the unsuspecting wearer was unlikely to notice it, at least for an hour or so. Ryan and I had tested it on ourselves, and both agreed that if we weren’t expecting it, then we wouldn’t realize it was there. At the edge of the water pouch, I also attached another radio-controlled sensor that would detonate a small firecracker.
After carefully sticking the Bed Wetter in Fred’s pants, I refolded them and put them back in his locker. I double-checked his backpack, making sure everything was sealed, and put it back, locking the locker as I got up to leave.
The whole operation took about two minutes. I figured if Hilldale said anything, I could just say there was a hold up at the weapons depot.
I ran out to pick up my rifle from the attendant and sprinted out to the training field. I couldn’t help but feel a jolt of pride. The most crucial step of Operation Downfall had just been completed.
***
After an hour and fifteen of PT, it was finally time for the one part of Boot that was actually a little fun: target practice.
If there was one thing that Boise had plenty of, it was guns. And good ones too—with all the modern tech mods for smart bullets and holoscopes.
The quality of the weapons was part of the reason Frederick Shaw was able to found Boise in the first place. In the days before the War, Gowen Air Base—which was part of the old Boise Airport—was a major arms and ammunition dump for the military. As a result, the city’s original founders had some of the best weapons around. Now, thanks to people like my dad, a lot of the tech had been reverse engineered and could be reproduced within Boise’s walls.
My whole class was jogging in formation from the PT fields to Ronco Field, which had been converted to a full-time firing range. It was shared by Boise Prep, Boise Academy, and the Boise Defense Force. Needless to say, it tended to have a packed schedule, which was made even worse by Boise’s incredibly strict firing laws. Firearms could only be discharged at very specific times of day for short durations. This ensured that a training session didn’t get mistaken for a Deadlander attack.
We passed under the gates of Ronco Field, still toting our empty rifles across our chests. We headed through a short tunnel before making it onto the “grass,” which was mostly dirt and short, prickly weeds.
The Firing Zone was located at one end of the field, while the holographic projectors for the targets were situated a hundred yards away. Next to the Firing Zone was the munitions depot, which already had a long line of students from Boise Academy waiting to get their magazines.
“Crap,” I groaned, seeing them turn to look at us. We were marching toward them in two single-file lines.
The classmate walking next to me, a portly girl named Susan Hammerschmidt, apparently overheard me and sighed. “I know, right? I totally forgot it was Wednesday.”
On Mondays and Wednesdays, the firing times for Prep and Academy overlapped. I glanced at her and said, “This rivalry thing has to end. I mean, we practically go to the same school.”
“It’s Hilldale,” she complained. “None of us would care otherwise.”
“Tell that to them.” I pointed to the Academy kids. They were already making all kinds of jerk off gestures toward us.
“Well … they are a bunch of bitches.”
I chuckled at her. “No way around it, I guess. Did you know my brother went to Academy?”
“Of course.” She grinned slyly. “Everyone knows that.”
“What do you mean, ‘everyone knows that’?”
“Michael,” she said, looking at me seriously. “Alec is the hottest guy in all of Boise. Accept it.”
“That’s only because you don’t know him. In real life, he’s a prick.”
Susan’s smile turned devilish. She’d known me long enough to know I wasn’t very fond of hearing how “great” Alec was.
“In my dreams I know him very well,” she teased. “He and I are F-buddies, actually.”
“Good God.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t sell yourself short, Hammerschmidt. You could do better.”
“Like who?” she asked. There was a slight uptick in her voice, but I might have been imagining it.
“So if he’s the hottest guy in Boise,” I asked, “does that make me the second hottest?”
Susan grimaced as she looked at me appraisingly. “No.”
“Third?”
“Nope.”
“Seventeenth?”
“What’s the population of Boise?” she asked.
“Something like twenty-six thousand.”
“There’s your number, big guy.”
I did a mock laugh, looking at her. “Don’t pretend like you don’t have a crush on me.”
“In your dreams, Tripp. Besides, shouldn’t you be more worried about what Sarah thinks?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
At some point over the past couple years, the sentence “I have no idea what you’re talking about” became my automatic response whenever Sarah Miller’s name was mentioned. It only served to deepen suspicion that I liked her.
Or actually, there wasn’t any suspicion at all. Everyone knew that I liked Sarah Miller, including Sarah Miller. It led to at least three to six awkward moments for me on a daily basis.
Susan smiled. “Of course you don’t. Maybe I should go ask h—”
Before she could finish her sentence, she was cut off by the thick, Russian-sounding accent of Sergeant Orlinski, the drill instructor for Boise Academy. Our class had now stopped behind his in the line for the depot.
“What is thees?” He pointed a finger at Sergeant Hilldale. The two of them had never gotten along. “There is a height requirement to use range. You must leave.”
“Blow it out your ass,” Hilldale said. “My cadets have beaten yours for the past two weeks running.”
“Ah.” Orlinski chuckled. “Such big talk from such leettle man.”
“Better than being a horse’s ass.”
Orlinski grinned as he stepped forward, towering over Hilldale. “I am not sure of thees, my friend. A man of your size—more of a mule’s ass, no?”
There were a few chuckles from the Academy students. There were a few from the Prep students, too.
“Alright, cut the crap,” Hilldale barked. “I was going to spare you another ass whipping today, but screw it. Worst-Best trials in five.”
“As you say.” Orlinski shrugged. “I ask boys to take it easy on you.”
Hilldale grumbled something under his breath as he turned to us and said, “I want you all ammoed up and firing by the bell, got it?”
We all gave the obligatory “yes, Sergeant” in unison.
The bell Sergeant Hilldale had referred to was the Firing Bell, which let us know that we could legally shoot our weapons for the next thirty minutes.
I took a moment to check my weapon while I waited in line. It was an M4 Carbine, rigged with a designator and holoscope. If I were in the BDF, the standard ammunition would have been the S03 Seeker smart round. For target practice, however, we mostly used “dumb” rounds, which didn’t involve any tech.
The Seeker was pretty much the only type of smart bullet that was small enough to work with the 5.56 calibrated M4s. The true mechanics of how it worked
were beyond me; all I knew was that inside each round was a magnetic nano motor, which allowed the bullet to veer in one direction or another during flight.
For the Seeker to work, it had to be used with a holoscope, which used Tactile Holograph tech. The blue projection emitted from the scope was about two feet wide and mostly translucent as it filled the air alongside the rifle. It displayed a real-time thermal image, courtesy of the designator, showing everything that the rifle was pointed at.
If you were firing Seekers, you could use your free hand to “double tap” any specific object, especially living ones with a heat signature. Then the internal computer would designate it as your primary target. The Seekers would then curve their trajectory as close as possible to their mark. So even if your aim was off by a few feet, you’d likely still hit the bullseye.
Before I knew it, I’d picked up my ammo and was headed to Firing Deck 23.
The decks were scrunched against the far wall of the field and were three levels high. They were mostly made of concrete and their purpose was to allow up to ninety shooters to be firing downrange at the same time. With physical targets, this wouldn’t have worked. Everyone would’ve been shooting at the same things. But at Ronco Field, the targets were holographic and synced to each deck. So in a way, when you were firing, it appeared as though your target was the only one on the entire field.
As I got to my assigned deck, Josh DePalma appeared to my left. There were still a few minutes to go until the Firing Bell and he nodded at me with a huge grin.
“T minus forty-one minutes,” he said. “Look at him over there.”
He pointed his thumb at Fred Dolan a few decks down.
“Poor bastard.” I grinned.
“Yeah. But if he finds out we did it, that’s what they are going to be saying about us.”
“He won’t find out.”
“Full body casts at the hospital. Especially you.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“He’s never liked you.”
I frowned. “Didn’t he used to beat you up every day in second grade?”
“That was Tommy Frankenberg. Dolan was fourth grade.”
“Well, either way.” I shrugged. “He’s not going to find out it was us.”
“No one has in three years.” Josh grinned triumphantly.
“Exactly. Now get out of here. They’re about to ring the bell.”
“T-minus forty minutes …”
I stepped inside my Firing Deck and laid flat on my belly. There were a couple of sandbags to prop up the barrel for steadier aim. There was also a worn-looking headset for hearing protection. I mechanically checked the breach before loading the first magazine.
I flipped on my holoscope. The semi-transparent screen lit up instantly, filling my field of vision. Downrange, everything was tinted in light blue. Living creatures would’ve shown up as red. The targets themselves would appear purple, as the range’s projectors emitted a slight heat signature.
“Thirty seconds!” Sergeant Hilldale shouted from somewhere to my right.
I flipped the safety off, switching my rifle to semi-auto.
“TEN!”
I sighed. I didn’t know why Hilldale insisted on making target practice seem like a major event that required a countdown. We did it practically every day.
DING!
There was the bell. The holo-projectors came to life, giving us our targets. A second later, the air was filled with the crackling of seventy rifles firing at once.
For me, there were three targets slowly making their way to my position. They made me sick to my stomach. I wished that whoever was in charge would switch the imagery to something else. I would have preferred to shoot at anything but them. They reminded me of the nightmares.
The target projectors had originally been found inside the armories of Gowen Air Base, along with all the other weapons. Apparently, the projectors had been programmed to train troops bound for India following the Mantidae’s crash in the Himalayas.
I once asked Alec why no one had changed the targets from Mantidae to “Deadlander,” but he got angry with me. He said it was important for people to remember who was truly responsible for the end of the Old World. The governments of the time had only fired their nukes out of desperation, he told me. And even though the Mantidae were gone, it was crucial that people not forget that they were the reason the world went from having billions of people to millions within a matter of months.
The Mantidae.
I grimaced, firing a few shots. I hit two of them in the head, causing them to turn red and disappear. Five more materialized, still moving slowly on their long, spindly legs.
From the movies and books I’d read from the Old World, people seemed to think that when aliens finally visited Earth, they would arrive in flashy spaceships with magical new technologies. And in the movies, there was usually a great battle between the humans and the aliens, which the humans always won.
But in the case of the Mantidae, there was no flashy technology, no great battle, and in the end, most of humanity and all of the Mantidae were dead.
April 17, 2026 was the date when their giant, bulbous ship came smoldering down from the sky. It broke into several pieces before crashing into the mountainous border between India and China. I’d seen the historic footage of the crash. It looked surreal. Some sort of technology was keeping the ship, which was almost as big as some of the mountains it landed on, from dropping at a free fall. Instead, its descent was slow and steady, yet clearly undesired. There were huge plumes of smoke and fires erupting all along its outer shell, which had the shape of a giant beetle.
As soon as the ship crashed, the Chinese and American militaries seized control of the area. The two countries had previously been the world’s biggest rivals, but upon the Mantidae’s arrival, they formed an immediate alliance.
Eight days later, the first few Mantidae exited the ship on foot. The American soldiers who were there took video of the whole event. The creatures were a mix of disgusting and scary. They looked like giant insects, which is how they earned the name Mantidae. They had large, triangular heads that looked almost identical to those on a Praying Mantis, with huge bug eyes on top and mandibles at the mouth.
The rest of their bodies were semi-humanoid, with four arms and four legs, and bundles of wiggling tentacles for hands.
I squeezed my M4’s trigger six more times, dropping only two of the five advancing Mantidae.
“Crap,” I muttered to myself, although I couldn’t hear my voice amidst all the firing.
Admittedly, I wasn’t a very good shot. Especially with dumb bullets. The only way I was halfway decent was with Seekers.
I refocused on the remaining three, imagining that I was one of the soldiers who had first fired on the aliens.
I remembered seeing the video in History class. Standing at about seven or eight feet tall, the dozen or so Mantidae just kept walking straight toward the soldiers who were yelling at them to stop. The stupid things just kept walking on a collision course. Honestly, I was amazed the soldiers didn’t fire sooner.
At first, the Mantidae didn’t seem like much of a threat and were easily killed with standard rifles. A month went by, and not a single human was hurt.
But then the first soldier got sick. Then a dozen. Then a hundred. There were attempts to set up quarantines, but they didn’t work. Before long, the sickness spread to the civilian populations of India and China, and from there, it spread to the rest of the world. Anyone who caught it died within a week.
Over the next couple months, the plague began popping up everywhere and the whole planet went nuts. I couldn’t even imagine what a world of eight billion people, completely seized with panic and paranoia, would look like.
But ultimately, it resulted in the U.S. launching over a hundred nukes at the Mantidae ship, completely erasing it from existence. Unfortunately, America didn’t ask China’s permission, and within a few minutes of the U.S. launch, China and every other countr
y that had nuclear weapons was firing them at everyone else.
All except Russia. But that’s another story.
In the end, America’s plan to eliminate the source of the plague backfired. The detonations of so many nukes sent most of the world back into the Stone Age, rendering any attempts to set up shelters, quarantines, or medical assistance impossible. It didn’t take long before the Old World was completely gone. There were no more countries or nationalities. No more global communications or businesses. There were just a few million survivors doing whatever they could to keep breathing. And so, for the survivors in the North America region, the twelve years of the Hopeless began.
It was crazy to think my parents were actually alive back then. To me, they always seemed so ordinary. And yet if I thought about it, they survived a plague, a nuclear holocaust, the Hopeless, and the founding of Boise all before I was born. But maybe that’s why they seemed so intent on giving me a normal life. Maybe.
I finished off my first mag and reached for another. In Worst-Best trials, we fired ninety rounds from the Firing Decks, and then the worst and the best shot in our class were paired against the worst and best from Academy. Sarah Miller was consistently, and I mean every time, the best shooter in our class. My friends and I all agreed that it was shockingly attractive that a girl that hot could also be the world’s deadliest shot with a rifle.
After about twenty minutes, everyone had stopped shooting. The holo-projectors would tally everyone’s score and transmit them to Hilldale. He kept his face buried in his tablet as he stood beside the Firing Decks.
“Best!” he shouted without looking up. “Miller!”
I rolled my eyes, as I imagined numerous others were doing as well. The girl was some kind of prodigy.
“Worst!”
Please God, let someone be worse than me, I prayed.
“Tripp!”
