by Travis Hill
I felt my stomach begin to rumble again, and could taste the bile trying to rise to my throat.
“I don’t know,” Lowell said. “No one does. Not even the ones we save know why. It’s like a compulsion, I guess.”
“When the outlook is as hopeless as ours seems to be,” Kirilenko said, surprising everyone, “maybe it’s easier to let go so there’s no suffering.”
“That’s some shit civilians say, not Marines,” Jordan said.
I shook my head. “Yeah, well, these people weren’t Marines.”
***
We spent the rest of the afternoon searching the remains of Hamilton. The Kai always ignored things like food stores, fabrication warehouses, even weapons shops. I guess they figured once they’d torched every human in the area, those things couldn’t be used against them. You can’t starve a dead enemy. Kirilenko and Bishara replenished our MREs from a small surplus store geared toward hunters and survivalists. Goldman and I spent most of the day scavenging bits and parts that could be used to repair the squad’s suits. Kirilenko’s suit needed the most attention, but according to the diagnostic panel, we needed another CR-31 from which to pull the proper components.
The ensign’s suit originally belonged to a sergeant major. Fortunately for Helen, she and the sergeant major were almost identical in proportion and size, and the suit was undamaged since he hadn’t been in it at the time of his death. It was a proper lesson in why you never got out of your suit unless you were sure it was safe. Since it was never safe, you took your chances, and sometimes the odds weren’t in your favor.
Kirilenko had taken a heavy blow from a mech unit that almost broke her spine during a skirmish near Grand Junction. The suit’s armor and framework held, but some of the power couplings had been severely damaged. Goldman and Hollingsworth did their best to fix what they could, and given the circumstances (and the fact we hadn’t found another suit in good enough condition to steal parts from), they did a pretty good job. Kirilenko’s suit was ninety-six percent functional, but its power cell depleted at quadruple the normal rate.
Goldman assured us he’d have her suit running like brand new if we could find a CR-31 that hadn’t been damaged in the same areas. Until then, she was the weakest link in our chain, although she already owned that title since she was the only one among us who wasn’t trained for combat. Personally, I was willing to overlook that, since she more than made up for it by being a fully trained surgical nurse. The CR-31 provided a lot of protection and had an amazing amount of medical tech built into it, but that tech couldn’t match an experienced medic when it came to more than holding your guts in or cauterizing a leg that had just been blown off.
Talamentez and Vasquez checked out the town’s police station, Home Guard armory, and city hall. They found enough metal scraps to help us regenerate ammunition for the 300’s, but little else. There had been no clue as to the final hours of this now-dead western Montana town beyond the ash covering most of its buildings and streets. Jordan and Hollingsworth scouted south of town, while McAdams and Monohan picked the two highest points in the small city and kept watch.
“Sarge!” Hollingsworth’s voice shouted over the Wire. “Sarge, come quick.”
“What is it, Specialist?” Lowell asked.
“There’s a pile of dead Kai on the southwest side of town…”
Everyone except the lookouts took off at a dead run toward Hollingsworth’s marker. I arrived next to last, and made my way around the knot of suits to get a better view. A hundred meters to my west was an iron fence at least three meters in height. Through the bars I could see what looked like a laboratory complex. The sign out front verified that I’d guessed right.
“What the hell is the Rocky Mountain Bio-Tech Research Labs?” Talamentez asked.
“It’s one of four places in human space where the military conducted bio-weapon research,” Goldman answered.
“Looks like they failed at their job as spectacularly as Command did,” Monohan said.
“Actually, last I heard, they were still developing weapons to be used against humans,” Goldman said with a frown.
“What the fuck?” Vasquez asked. “We’re in a fifty-year war with xenos, and these assholes are still working on how to kill our own people?”
“Were,” Goldman corrected. “It was always a worry that our own colonies would try to break free.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t much of a surprise to him.
“You know,” Jordan said, his voice full of the anger that hadn’t dissipated from earlier, “it’s shit like this that makes it easy to see how we got our asses kicked so badly.”
“Let’s see these Kai bodies,” Lowell said.
Hollingsworth led us through the gates. The dead aliens were scattered along the path. As we got closer to one of the main buildings—the exterior radiating the fact that it was a bio-weapon research lab with its dull gray concrete and lack of windows—the corpses became more numerous.
“I count forty-six,” Vasquez said.
“Jordan and I counted sixty-one, but that’s because there’s more inside the front doors,” Hollingsworth said.
“You two didn’t go in there, did you?” Lowell asked, taking a few steps backward. He almost sounded nervous.
“No, Sir,” Jordan answered. “We shined a light in from about ten meters, then called it in.”
“Good,” Lowell said, turning around. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Now.”
“What is it, Sarge?” I asked, beginning to jog when he did.
“Something in that building killed the Kai. Killed them quickly, it looks like.”
“So?” Grummond asked. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“We should be running into that building and grabbing whatever it is that killed them so we can go back to Missoula and get some revenge,” Jordan grumbled, but kept jogging with us.
“Our suits are designed for combat against lasers and projectiles and bombs, not viruses and microbes and germs,” Lowell said. “Whatever killed them might kill us.”
“Or it might not,” Jordan argued. “It might be what we need to finally have an advantage in this fucking war.”
Lowell stopped and turned on the corporal. “Don’t you think that we’d already have gassed or infected the shit out of the Kai by now if it was that easy?”
“The way I see it,” McAdams said from her perch two klicks away, “is that the lab guys were probably frantic once the Kai arrived in the system. Maybe they developed something useful, maybe even a magical war-ending viral agent, who knows? The fact that the Kai are dead and the town was still liquidated means whatever happened in there wasn’t enough to stop even a small Kai force. The lab geeks are probably dead from their own virus or whatever it is. How helpful would such a weapon be if it killed humans just as easily as it did aliens?”
“What Sergeant McAdams means,” Bishara said, “is that this fucking war is over, and that’s that.”
FIVE
Sergeant Lowell decided to make camp within sight of the ruined lab. It was spooky as hell, but he said that since we never found a liquidated city that still had a furnace in it, the Kai must have freaked out about whatever had killed their comrades at the lab and bailed from the area quickly. The Kai rarely left their dead to rot in the sun. We didn’t know if they buried their fallen, cremated them, or sent them on a rocket ship into deep space. We only knew they cared for their dead enough to remove them from the battlefield whenever possible.
There was an argument over whether or not it was safe enough to debark from our suits. Lowell wasn’t worried about the Kai showing up as much as he was that there might be a deadly bio-agent floating around. In the end, he gave the okay for us to get some downtime. The discomfort of being in our suits for almost a week since Missoula outweighed the risk of a bio-agent taking us out. At least, that’s what the twelve of us ultimately agreed upon. It wasn’t like Hollingsworth and Goldman put up an indefensible argument, either. I think they argued again
st downtime for the sake of argument, just in case there was a chance to throw it back in our faces later with an I told you so!
We set up camp inside a small department store with a pharmacy two blocks from the lab complex. McAdams and Jordan linked the perimeter sensors after placing them around the entire block, while the rest of us checked exits, blind spots, and fields of fire. The plan was to take watches in shifts, with half of us awake and alert (but out of our suits, thankfully), while the other half finally got some real sleep. The floor was vinyl tile over concrete, which was worse than sleeping inside a CR-31, but we grabbed as many blankets and towels as we could find in the housewares section, along with four sleeping bags from the tiny sporting goods area.
I thought Monohan and Grummond might end up in a fist fight over the sleeping bags, until Grummond learned that Talamentez and Monohan were partnered up for the night. That wouldn’t have broken the “no fighting over partners” rule, but Grummond gave in more for the fact that it was the right thing to do. Or maybe it was because we only had four females with us, and that put a lot of power in their hands in terms of choosing partners. Denying Talamentez her time with Monohan meant Grummond’s potential pool of downtime activities partners would dwindle to three, most likely less given that McAdams and Hollingsworth were watching from a meter away. They’d also happily relay the private’s asshattery to Kirilenko, consequently dropping him into lonesome masturbation territory.
“Your tent or mine?” Hollingsworth asked me after the two men shared a laugh and a high-five instead of trading punches.
“I’ve got a holo theater set up in mine,” I said.
“Pick out a good movie. Nothing with aliens, though.” She smiled, the dust near the corners of her eyes cracking and flaking away. “I’m gonna go clean up a little.”
“Oh, right,” I said, smacking myself in the head. “I’ll join you.”
“How about you use the little boys’ room, and I do my thing in the little girls’ room?”
“Uh,” I said, wondering why she suddenly needed some privacy. “No problem.”
I gave her a smile, then snatched one of the bath towels I had commandeered from the shelves and headed toward the bathrooms. She did the same, falling into step beside me. Lowell gave me a grin around a thick cloud of cigar smoke as we passed him by. He had scavenged a lounge chair to relax in after raiding the tobacco section. All that was missing was a football game on the holo and a cold beer in his hand. Maybe three screeching kids zooming around and a wife in curlers screaming at all of them. I gave him my middle finger and a shit-eating grin in return.
Veronica slapped me on the ass before entering the door on our right. I chuckled and took the left, hoping the store manager made someone clean up before the Kai had disrupted everything. I unclipped my microlantern from its shoulder pouch and turned it on. The phantom in the mirror staring back at me was straight out of a zombie movie. I set the lantern down and leaned forward, taking a long look at Dana Lofgren, PFC, Terran Marines, 307th Wardogs, B-Company, First Platoon.
The small scar running from below my left eye to just above my chin had faded a year ago into a dull white line. The rest of my face was both too dirty and too scruffy to make out any more detail. I grunted and decided to find a razor. Anything had to be better than the hacksaw the Terran Marines claimed was for shaving.
Before I turned away, I spent another full minute staring at my face. I wanted to (hopefully) be impressed with the difference once I cleaned up. Besides, Hollingsworth was undoubtedly washing the dirt from her haggard face. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to not pay the same sort of respect to her.
I let out a laugh at my moment of mental chivalry and headed back into the toiletries aisle, passing the small book and Wire node area. Private Bishara had his prayer mat unrolled between bookshelves and was touching his forehead to it. I paused at the end of the aisle, listening to his lyrical Arabic chants. I wasn’t religious, but I felt like I could be down with what he was doing. Just listening to him made my mind loosen up, as if I were meditating or under the influence of some good dope. I almost asked him once if I could join him. I didn’t, as it seemed insulting, like I was mocking his faith, even though that was the farthest thing from the truth. It felt cheap to co-opt his God just for the parts that made me feel better, discarding the rest as if it was useless chaff.
I found all the razors I could ever want, along with every shaving cream known to man, a small bottle of aftershave, and even some cologne. I pictured myself all gussied up like a Kilerian prostitute, smelling to high heaven with my inability to judge what a proper amount of cologne should be, and put it back. On my way back to the bathrooms, I stopped in the clothing aisle and found some socks and underwear, though nothing as good as what the Marines supplied. I suppose if there was only one thing the military jugheads at Command got right, it could have been worse than proper underclothes.
Maybe winning the war should have been a better focus, but as a CR-31 operator who had to live in his own sweat for a week at a time (sometimes longer), I was glad they at least got that part right. The microfiber lining of the suit was a champ at wicking away sweat. While this feature was also tied into the suit’s waste expulsion system—which was what ate up at least five minutes of the ten it took to get into a suit—it couldn’t eliminate the slimy, grungy sensation that made my skin crawl after three days without downtime. And I’ll be honest that shitting and pissing as nature intended was the one thing we lived for above all else, except maybe sex. Dropping a deuce while tied into the suit’s waste system was just… unpleasantly necessary.
The store, possibly the entire town, still had water pressure, although the electrical grid was down, which meant no hot water unless the owners had installed gas units. I crossed my fingers while holding my other hand under the water for two minutes. The water wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t ever going to be more than tepid either. Good enough, I decided, and started removing the dirt, ash, and whatever else that had formed a second skin on me. The sink turned black, then gray, then mostly clear as I made my way through the stages of bathing. I’d have risked heart failure to stand under a real shower, even if the water was piped in directly from one of the nearby icy mountain streams.
“Jesus, Lofgren,” Vasquez grumbled when he entered to use the toilet. “I thought you were one of my Honduran brothers for the last six months. You’re nothing but a creamsicle.”
“Don’t make me cut you, mang,” I said in my best gang member imitation while waving my cheap multi-blade disposable razor in his general direction.
“How long before you’re done?” he asked after zipping up and pushing the manual flush mechanism.
“Why? You want a turn before or after Hollingsworth?”
“Funny. Answer the question, Private.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I had no choice but to answer him, but I was annoyed that he’d suddenly pull rank for no reason.
“Maybe ten or fifteen more minutes. Can’t just shave my face and let the rest of me reek.”
“Roger that,” he said, saluting me.
I returned his salute with a puzzled expression on my face. He gave me a single nod then exited the bathroom. I shrugged and began to strip my underclothes from my skin. As I peeled away each item of microweave underwear, my mind filled in the silence with the phantom sounds of Velcro latches being pulled apart. It felt weird, cold even, to suddenly be free of the material. I filled up the second sink and did my best to wash the gross out of them, then finished washing myself below the neck.
I couldn’t help staring at myself as I wrung the moisture from my wet underclothes. I wasn’t particularly handsome, but I had all of my eyes, teeth, and hair. Without the short beard on my face, my scar was more prominent. I wasn’t ashamed of how it made me look, as the Navy surgeons had done a good job repairing it after hot shrapnel from a Kai mech ripped it open. If I hadn’t been wearing my helmet, I’d have been decapitated, a memory I tried to forget as often as possible.
It was the reason I kept a short beard, even though mirrors were as rare as the need for them these days.
My mind tried to wander back to Gamma Crucis, our desperate fight to reclaim the system while outnumbered two to one. I shook my head. It wasn’t worth the mental expenditure, even if it was the last real battle the Terran Coalition won against the Kai. The victory only lasted six weeks. We were forced to redeploy our fleets holding the sector to reinforce the M4-159 and Tauri systems, which let the Kai take GC back from us without a fight. Or whatever fight the poor bastards of Striker Battalion put up before being wiped from the system.
I touched the scar, feeling my heart hitch for a moment with fear that Hollingsworth would see it and decide I was too ugly, that it was too gruesome for her to forget even if we were in total darkness. It hitched again when I worried that she might have a scar or worse that would be too grotesque for me to forget about. I forced myself to laugh at my own foolishness. It was the end of the world, the final days of humanity, and I was worried about not being able to get it up over a scar or a missing toe. Genocide does crazy things to a person’s mind.
I took a deep breath and left the bathroom. The grins and smiles from those still hanging around, waiting their turn for a private bathroom moment, made me uncomfortable, as if they knew something I didn’t. I even expected one of them to inform me that Hollingsworth had grown a penis since I last saw her naked. I felt my face turning red, and was glad to finally get to the small tent I had set up in the beauty supplies aisle. Hollingsworth was already inside, but she turned off her lantern when she heard me approach. The fear that she was hiding a horrible disfigurement (or a penis, my mind supplied helpfully) returned.
I crawled into the small tent, barely big enough for two adults, and closed the flap.
“Veronica?” I asked softly.
I reached out, my fingers fumbling over a blanket, then what felt like… a leg with a nylon stocking covering it. My breath caught in my throat as I slowly let my fingers glide down the material to her foot, then back up until there was only bare skin. I paused, hearing her breathing pick up in tempo, then resumed my wandering. My fingers ran into the lacy edge of her panties high up on her hip, and I felt my heart kick into another gear.
