by K. M. Herkes
The sergeant kept his hands curled to hide the thick nails, but from his size, he was at least a T5. The hardened plating on his skin wasn't noticeable until you looked for the edges, and the tinted glasses might mean he was light sensitive. Marco would be thrilled to put a checkmark on their spotting list next to a rare Y variant.
Coby smiled as he turned back to Elena. His teeth were all very sharp like Tillman’s. He said, “You're still here, little tiger? You'll miss the start of the assembly.”
Run, fear whispered. Elena curled her toes in her shoes. No. “I had another question. For you. Ms. Watkins said I should ask how you get scale off your clothes.”
“Oh, did she?” Coby aimed a frown at Corporal Tillman.
He raised both hands, claws out. “I didn't say a word, I swear. Glass houses, man. A guy who has to bleach venom stains out of his socks never casts the first laundry stone.”
Dean Fratelli looked in from the hallway. “Sergeant, I don't want to rush you, but I'm needed in the auditorium.”
“Go ahead, sir. We're right behind you.” The sergeant gave Elena another smile. “I'll make you a deal, little tiger. If you'll walk with me to our post outside the auditorium, I'll tell you all about my lesson in the power of chemistry on the way. Fair trade?”
He offered his hand. Elena looked at the sharp, thick nails, then leaned back and saw her tiny reflections in the man's glasses. She clasped his fingers. His grip was warm and gentle. “Deal,” she said.
The hallways were always eerie when the school was empty. The addition that held the auditorium and the vocational workshops was attached to the main building by a single corridor on the first floor. High windows at both ends of the central hall cast bright rectangles of spring sunshine down the center of the main hall, and light pooled on the scuffed tile floor.
Sergeant Coby kept to the shadows, and he walked slowly while he told his story.
When he’d first rolled over, he’d been instructed to pre-soak his wash in vinegar. It dissolved flaked bits of armor out of the seams so they wouldn’t wear through. He tried to save time by adding soda and soap without draining the machine first.
Elena had done that experiment in sixth grade science. She pictured the massive sergeant standing at a clogged washer in a huge pile of sudsy bubbles, and she couldn't help giggling.
Corporal Tillman laughed too, and echoes bounced off the lockers all along the empty hall. Elena remembered that detail for a long time afterwards: the corporal was laughing when he turned the corner.
Light flared.
Coby scooped Elena up and clasped her against his hard chest, and she shrieked at the top of her lungs until the floor knocked the wind out of her. The sergeant's weight felt as heavy as the world on her back. Sunglasses and a hat landed in front of her nose, and then glass and bricks pinged and clashed and smashed to the floor everywhere.
Firecrackers popped in the distance, and people were screaming, and she couldn't breathe. Then the sergeant was on his feet again, not squishing Elena into the floor. She sat up, and she started crying because she couldn’t do anything else.
Corporal Tillman lay sprawled on the floor with a pile of bricks under him and piece of metal poking through him. Smoke drifted across a ragged hole where the wall full of trophy cases should have been, and a bitter, burned stink rolled inside on the cool draft of air. Rubble was scattered all the way to the closed fire doors that led to the auditorium lobby.
Sergeant Coby spun in a circle, checking up and down and all around before dropping to his knees beside Tillman. He slapped the corporal's hands away from the metal bar. “Don't touch it.”
“Oh, God, Sarge.” The corporal started sobbing. “It hurts.”
“I know, but it's keeping your insides in.” Coby ripped open a pouch on his belt and pulled out a thick white pad. His own back was a shredded mess of blood and fabric, with pieces of glass and metal sticking out at all angles. He pressed the pad to Tillman's belly, and pressed the corporal's hands to it. “Hold this.”
Tillman cried out, and he sounded like Papa, angry and hurt. Elena's voice came out weak and whispery. “Is he going to die?”
Coby looked over his shoulder. His eyes were dark like his hair, and he had tears running down his cheeks. His face was worse than Mama's at her most disappointed, when she said things like useless child and stay out of my way. “I don't know,” he said. “Shut up and sit down. Don't move.”
He reached for his radio button and said, “Quit shouting. Talk to me.”
His back was healing already. Elena watched one piece of glass move, then another, trapped by shifting muscles and skin. A humming sound filled her ears, and her throat went tight. Those things would have been inside her, if not for the sergeant's protection.
An odd sense of calm fell over her with that realization. Her voice kept coming up into her throat in little hiccups, but she picked up Coby's sunglasses and walked over to him. He squinted at her, tapped his earpiece, and snarled, “I said, sit down.”
Elena held out the glasses. “Do you have tweezers? For your back. I want to help.”
The sergeant’s astonished expression made her feel steadier. He had pliers in a pocket on his belt. While he kept talking to other people on his radio, Elena picked things out of his back so they wouldn't get stuck inside.
If she concentrated on that, then she wouldn't melt away from the fear. She wanted to yell and hit things, she wanted to know if Kelli and Izzie, and everyone else was dead or hurt, but acting like a baby wouldn't get her what she wanted. She focused on the sergeant's voice. It was cool and calm, and it helped her stop shaking.
“Fergus and Marin are inside with three Dips,” he was saying. “All wounded. Lt. Garvey, Smith, and Louis are confirmed KIA, basket and eggs as well. Fergus raised me on radio. I don't know why you can’t hear—yes, I'll relay. When will—sir, I have—” He paused longer, then sighed. “Aye, sir. I copy. Hold the site. I'm on it.”
He got to his feet, pulling away from Elena. The metal fragment in her pliers came loose from his flesh with a sucking sound. She squeaked, but Sergeant Coby didn't even flinch. He rolled his shoulder and frowned at her. “You going to start bawling again, tiger?”
“No.” Tears stung her eyes, but she scrunched up her face as fiercely as she could. “Not if you tell me what happened.”
Coby snorted. “What happened is that somebody out there blew up a truck and every piece of school property that had a Marine standing on it. Don't panic, your classmates and teachers are all safe for now. We told them the assembly was a—never mind. I’ll get you there safe. Don't run ahead. Wait for me, got it?”
“No! I don't get anything. How can you be so calm? Did you know this was going to happen? Why didn't you stop it? Why would anyone want to hurt us?”
All the questions came bursting out so fast that Elena had to bite her tongue to stop them. Coby wasn't going to answer. He wasn't even looking at her.
Tillman moaned when the sergeant lifted him. His eyes were shut, but his fangs were out, and glistening droplets hung from the tips. Elena shrank away when Coby swung around with him. The sergeant said, “Stay on my left, tiger. Got it? On my left.”
If she stayed on that side, his body would be between her and the hole in the wall. Elena nodded.
The battered fire doors wouldn't open. Coby knocked one off its hinges with two sharp kicks. The metal panel clanged to the floor. The narrow lobby beyond it was empty and dark. The exit doors to the front sidewalk lay on the floor in blasted pieces, but the outside security shutters had come down in their place.
Coby paused at the first set of closed auditorium doors. “Tillman, you still with me?”
“Wha—?”
“Listen up. Looks like those crank calls to the principal were legit. Someone with rockets or pyro support took out the whole DPS unit and most of our team. I'm ordered to secure the site until backup drops in. I'm going to have to leave you with the dips and the civilians. Don't you dare spike anyb
—”
“You've seen our power!” An amplified voice from outside drowned out Coby's voice. He had Tillman on the floor and his pistol aimed at the hallway behind them a second later, Elena scurried behind him.
The man outside said, “Now hear our truth. The Department of Public Safety was created to control us, not to protect us. The government blackmails us with our futures, silences dissent with disease, and crushes opposition with brute force. Internment and re-education elevate the unworthy and oppress those who worked hard for success. We will no longer stand aside and let the government destroy our lives. The monsters must die, and the system with them. The revolution starts today. It starts here.”
When the voice went silent, distant sirens became audible.
Elena felt dizzy. She had never heard anything so crazy in her life, but she knew the man’s voice. That nasal drone had put her to sleep in every French class her first semester in seventh grade. He'd left at mid-term. She couldn't remember why.
She asked, “What is Mr. Hall doing here?”
“Committing treason,” the sergeant said.
He relayed the name to someone over the radio. A squeal of feedback preceded Mr. Hall's next words. “It's time to pick a side. If you shelter the enemy, you are the enemy. Send out the monsters and their makers, or die with them. We want our children to live free, but we will not shrink from sacrifice. You have five minutes.”
Coby made a noise that was so deep that Elena felt it in her bones more than she heard it. The hair on her arms rose, and prickles ran up her spine.
“What do we do now?” she asked, because she couldn't bear to listen to that growling in silence. The sound stopped, and Coby showed his teeth. It wasn't a smile. Dogs bared their fangs like that before they fought, and so did baboons at the zoo.
“Now I make sure your teachers do the right thing,” he said.
2:15 PM, 18 April, Sherman Middle School Annex, Elgin, Illinois.
Sergeant Coby slammed open the door into the auditorium with his shoulder, and the roar of three hundred people talking at once spilled over Elena in a solid wave of sound. When the sergeant shouted, “Marines, on me, now,” the words bounced off the walls into a shocked silence. He added in the same carrying, commanding tone, “Bring the dips with you. Everyone else, out of the way.”
A group of teachers in the aisle scattered to seats at the ends of rows, and the noise rose again. On the stage at the far end of the room, Principal Hogan grabbed the microphone stand in front of the empty choir risers. It scraped over the boards, and a piercing hum rose over the babble.
“Remain seated,” she said, and her voice was like the sergeant’s, sharp and full of authority. “Quiet, please. Everything is going to be fine.”
The principal sounded convincing, but that had to be the biggest lie Elena had ever heard. She checked the usual row in back for Kelli and Izzie. They were easy to spot in their black and white stripes. Izzie's nose was red and her eyes were puffy. Kelli's mouth was moving. She pointed at a seat.
If Elena sat down, she would start to scream and never stop. She pointed at herself, meaning no, you come here. Kelli shoved Izzie, and they started swapping seats with other students to get closer.
Mr. Fratelli came hustling up the aisle, huffing and red-faced. His hair wisped over his bald spot and his belly jiggled, and on any other day, Elena would have been howling with laughter. Now she wanted to cry. The dean was out of breath because he was doing most of the walking for a woman in bloodstained khaki who could barely stay on her feet. Over in the far aisle, three people in gray DPS uniforms were helping a bloody, scaled figure limp towards the doors on that side.
Mr. Fratelli said, “You can't be serious, Sergeant. You can't go out there. You're supposed to protect us.”
“I am,” Coby said. “If we stay, that nut will bring down the building and tell the world you were afraid to force us out. If we go, he’ll probably blow the building and say we did it to you, but that’s still better. Worst case, you and Principal Hogan gain time for evac. Best case, we’ll hold him until the Captain brings down the wrath of God on his ass. Either way, this maniac does not get the live-feed imagery of callous government brutality that he wants. Go. Now.”
Mr. Fratelli gave Izzie a puzzled glance as she arrived in the aisle seat, and then he hurried back to the stage. The woman Marine had weird eyes, white all the way around the dots of her pupils. She said, “I'm tapped out, Sarge, and the blast got most of Marin's tail and part of his left foot. Won't be much of a scuffle.”
“Won't need to be.” Coby pointed to the group on the other side of the auditorium, then to the lobby, before putting his arm around his comrade’s shoulders and retreating with her. “All we have to do—”
The door shut on his words. Elena could not stop trembling. Izzie jumped out of her seat and tried to squeeze her to death.
“Did you hear him? Mr. Hall?” She sniffled. “He was at my house last night. Can you believe it? He used to be friends with Mom and Dad, and Mom made me pancakes for dinner, and Dad didn't even yell about my test result, he said it was a mistake, that I must be a null, and I believed him, and—and—do you think they knew he would do this?”
Elena’s heart broke, but she didn’t say a word. She met Kelli's eyes, and they both hugged Izzie as if the world was ending, because it had for her, and it might being ending for all of them soon.
“Attention, everyone,” Principal Hogan said. “I know you're frightened, but stay calm, and we'll be fine. We're going to do a fire drill, up and out the back of the stage here. File out like we've practiced—”
Elena stopped listening. It was all lies, and she knew it. Anyone with eyes could see the place was packed. No one in the rear of the auditorium would get to the front in time.
Mr. Hall had blown up kind, old Ms. Watkins, the smiling man from the gym, and a whole lot of other people, and now he was going to blow up everyone else because he hated some of them for things they couldn't change.
A quiet thought rose up: if you have to die, wouldn’t you rather die with the people who tried to save you?
Elena turned away from the crowd, and eased open the lobby door. It swung wide as Kelli pushed harder, behind her. “Trouble Triplets,” she said when Elena frowned at her, and Izzie nodded, sniffling. “Together, Elena. We go together.”
Elena took her hand, and Izzie took Kelly’s.
The Marines had taken off their belts, weapons and uniform shirts. The woman's undershirt had been white once. Now it was splotched with dark red. The scaled man had a bloody stump of a tail, and two men in white dress shirts and gray trousers were helping him balance. The third DPS employee, an older woman, was wrapping her uniform blazer around the bar still sticking out of Tillman.
Coby picked up the corporal as if he weighed nothing, and moved him into the crook of one arm. “They probably won't blast us until we're in the clear, nice and visible. Forward in rank as soon as the shutters lift. Make sure they see you, then fall in behind me if you can. Five minutes is our—” He stared at Elena. “Where the fuck do you think you're going, tiger?”
Kelli giggled at the obscenity, and Izzie gasped. Elena lifted her chin and looked all the way up. The sergeant looked terrifying, and he sounded worse, but he had soft, kind eyes behind those glasses. Elena lifted her free hand and hooked her fingers into his. “We're coming with you.”
* * *
9:15 AM 22 April,
USMC Camp Butler,
Elgin Illinois.
Captain Malik Jefferson swiped the imagery from his desk screen to the larger display on the wall behind him. He made the gesture with more force than strictly necessary, but he'd earned the right to some aggravation. After four straight days of damage control meetings, press conferences, report-writing and political spin, he was more than ready to let a little of the emotional overload roll downhill.
“Look at this,” he said to the man standing at stiff attention in front of his desk. “Look at it, Jackass. Thi
s picture is still a top hit on every news outlet in the country a week after it was taken. Holding the record for early-onset longevity wasn't enough for you? You had to get a little more publicity, did you?”
“No, sir.” Sergeant Coby's service uniform was recruiting-poster perfection from the top of his cover to the toes of his shiny black boots, and his posture was regulation precise in every degree. Between the reflective glasses and the limited mobility of his facial muscles, his expression was more than honor-guard blank. It was unreadable. The tone, though—his voice always gave him away. He was worried.
Captain Jefferson stopped teasing him and turned in his chair to inspect the photographs for himself. Coby had come a long way in the six months since Jefferson took command of Camp Butler, but he still struggled with social interaction outside the chain of command. He did have a sense of humor; he simply never applied it to his job.
The image was pixelated from magnification, but it glowed bright in the dim room. Sergeant Coby was the centerpiece, out of uniform, bloodstained and looking even grimmer than he did today. Cameras exposed the telltale glow of incipient rampage a null’s eyes never saw, and the photographer had a magnificent eye for light and shadow. He’d even captured the motion of swelling musculature beneath armored skin. The gentleness of Coby’s clawed grip on the limp, bloody man in his arms made a brilliant counterpoint to the show of physical strength.
Beside him, Corporal Meredith Fergus was ethereal and unearthly, her own aura glowing faint and her eyes opaque with fatigue. Private Angelo Marin on her far side looked like a defeated dragon. The array of men and woman framing them—equally battered, identically determined—offset the unarmed Marines with perfect, vulnerable humanity.
The foreground provided the crowning touch which had made the image an instant international sensation and a shoo-in for the year's Pulitzer award: three young women with tear-streaked faces. They were dressed in stark black and white, and the one with the calm smile of a saint was holding the biggest monster of all by the hand, leading him out of the shadows into the sunshine.
