by Travis Hill
I looked away, then felt a hand on my shoulder. Jordan nodded his helmet and I stood up. We walked to bottom of the hill, and without a word, we began a wide sweep of the area. I only looked back once, to see the two sharing a long kiss. It made me uncomfortable, yet I couldn’t look away until my brain finally shamed me into paying attention to the possibility of more Vipers hiding under my feet.
“All right, shitheads,” Lowell said in our ears fifteen minutes later. “Come on back so we can get this over with.”
My feet weighed a million tons. I wanted to run in the opposite direction. I couldn’t take one more person exiting the universe. I didn’t give a shit that forty billion other humans had already died, and we might be the last four left. I would have traded another forty billion humans just to avoid having to deal with Sergeant Lowell becoming the final nail in my own emotional coffin.
“Listen,” he said when we were gathered around. McAdams still held him, her visor down and blacked out, her suit hiding her hitching sobs. Almost. “This is it. I’m done, but you’re going on. And no, I don’t have a clue why. But you are. That’s an order.”
“What if we just disobey your order once you’re gone?” Jordan asked. It was the first thing he’d said in hours.
“First of all, don’t fuckin’ interrupt me when I’m giving my deathbed speech. Second of all, because I gave you an order. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir,” Jordan said, but he refused to look at his sergeant.
“Don’t fuckin’ cry. None of you. Not until the end. When you walk away, I’m going to finally let it out. You’ll get your chance soon enough, but for now, don’t fuckin’ cry. We’re Terran Marines. We don’t shed tears until after our friends die, not before.”
Lowell coughed, a small trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He looked like he was in tremendous agony, even with the meds his suit continued to pump into him.
“Now, Krista, Tyler, do me a favor and go do some patrolling. I wanna talk to Lofgren. He needs a pep talk pretty badly.”
McAdams gave him one last lingering hug, then took Jordan’s hand and led him down the hillside. I watched them while Lowell had another coughing fit.
“Listen, Dana,” he said after spitting out a gob of bloody phlegm. “Make sure you reboot your suit after I’m dead. I don’t know how long before the new Wire is opened and the flash goes out, but my suit has already queued the command, just in case whatever automated system was working is down.”
“Why?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Sarge.” I refused to call him by his first name.
“It does matter, though,” he said angrily. He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Listen to me, Lofgren. Reboot your fucking suit as soon as you can after you see the mushroom cloud.”
“Why?” I asked again.
“Because I fucking said so, that’s why!” He coughed some more. “Don’t make me yell, goddammit. Just do what I say. Okay? I trusted you with the Command Link info, and you stood tall. I know you got some dark shit inside you right now, and that’s why I’m having this talk with you. Not because I want you to buck the fuck up and stop being a depressive little bitch. I’m counting on you becoming even more of a miserable, lifeless bastard before this is over.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. There’s a reason I made you Vice-Chancellor instead of a General.”
“You lied?” I asked, truly surprised.
I hadn’t given a damn about the little promotion party or the promotion itself. I had pretended to enjoy it because it was good for morale, because I knew even after I’d stopped caring, others were still burning that candle.
“I needed to know if I got wasted first, you’d be the one in charge.”
“McAdams is gonna be pissed.”
“I don’t care, and neither will she. Just remember, Lofgren. You’re probably the last three humans in the galaxy. These Kai fucks won, but we didn’t make it easy. You won’t make it easy.”
“Okay,” I said, not understanding. I wondered if he was becoming delirious.
“We had some good talks,” he said, his eyes becoming glassy. Just when I thought he might have expired, he turned his head toward me. “You’re a true Marine, Lofgren. Pretty good in the sack, from what the ladies said.”
I laughed. “In any other circumstance, I’d pump you for details. Now…” We stared at our squad mates for a bit as they pretended to patrol the area below us. “I’m sorry, Sarge.”
“For what?”
“For Krista. For you.”
“Yeah. It sucks. I love her. I’ve loved her for the last three years.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Yeah. She didn’t take it very well.”
“Really?”
“I’ve never seen the woman cry before. Not like that, anyway. She wants to stay here, to sync her override with mine. Double-poof.”
“Why not let her?” I asked. “It’s not like she’s going to live much longer anyway. No offense. I doubt I’ll be able to survive more than a few more days, a week, two at the most.”
“I know. I’m counting on that.” He saw my frown and cough-laughed again. “But I’m also counting on you winning the game.”
“Last man standing, eh?”
“You know it. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint your species. Go out with a bang, like I’m gonna do.”
FOURTEEN
Sergeant Lowell held on for another six hours. We didn’t know if the Kai showed up to investigate and he detonated his suit, or if he programmed it to detonate once his vitals flatlined. We continued south down the main highway, no longer caring if the Kai sent units to intercept us. Jordan’s suit slowed us down, the hydraulics in his suit’s legs losing pressure with each kilometer. The terrain was too uneven to do anything but stick to the center of the road, which helped keep his suit from having to bend and stretch. I hoped it didn’t give out on him until at least Horseshoe Bend, which was still ten klicks away.
I spent the day keeping my mind occupied with random nonsense. The only time I broke the pattern was when the flash from Lowell’s suit lit up the sky, a second sunrise that cast a foreboding shadow across the dark depths of my emotional detachment. I stared at the mushroom cloud for a full minute before silently turning on my heel and continuing my march toward destiny. The hunger pangs began a few hours later, but I ignored them, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. By the time the sun began to fall behind the hills to our west, I was too exhausted to do anything but fall down and sleep. I kept walking.
McAdams came to a halt at a narrow gravel road that led down into a shallow depression. I almost walked past her without registering that she’d stopped until her hand reached out and grabbed my arm. I looked around in a daze, worried about the hours I’d lost during our trek. Last I remembered, it was late afternoon. I kicked on my night vision filter and looked down into the depression to see a large two-story farmhouse with a barn ten meters behind it.
“Come on,” Krista said, her voice weary, tired, barely audible. “Let’s hole up for the night. We need to eat and get some sleep.”
I wanted to ask why we should even bother. It was just another delay to prolong the inevitable. I didn’t bother to voice my dissent, instead choosing to go along with it after my legs (and brain) began to complain endlessly that they were tired. We walked the quarter-klick gravel road, the three of us scanning the area repeatedly as we neared the house. If the Kai were hiding in the darkness beyond our sensors, well, then good for them.
After a short recon of the area, we entered the barn. We silently agreed it was the best place, as we could get our suits inside without any issues. Though the owners of the farmhouse were already traveling the weather patterns or fertilizing the dirt, it felt wrong to smash a hole through a wall of the house just to park our suits near where we’d be sleeping. We continued our silence as we popped our suits and extracted ourselves from the various internal systems.
&nbs
p; Once free of the suits, McAdams suggested we raid the house for something to eat, as well as for the largest mattress we could find. As ready for death as I was (and surely Jordan and McAdams felt the same), I didn’t want to sleep too far away from my suit. It had become a second womb to me, a bubble I could hide in and block out the external world. It was a layer of skin that protected me from the last two living human beings, a barrier to keep their personalities from triggering the emotional responses I not only feared, but now hated.
Jordan and I dragged the mattress back to the barn, then returned to the house to grab the bedding and some food. We stopped when we heard the sound of running water, and crept to one of the bathrooms. McAdams was in the shower, singing softly to herself. Jordan coughed to let her know we were in the area. She poked her head out from behind the shower curtain.
“It’s cold as fuck, but you stop noticing it once your nipples freeze and snap off.”
I looked at Jordan, who shrugged at me. I grinned and began to remove the underclothes that had been stuck to my skin for too many days to remember. We waited for her to finish, then did a rock-paper-scissors match to see who would go next. I won, though I wouldn’t have called it winning for the first two minutes. I was pretty sure I felt my heart come to a complete stop the instant I turned on the faucet. The water had a strange smell, not disgusting, but very odd. It dislodged a memory in my head of the well water I’d bathed in during a camping trip with my father.
As cold as it was, I took my time, using as much soap as I could. By the end, the water felt warm, but the panic area of my brain began to worry that I might be working my way into hypothermia. I shut the faucet off and pulled the curtain back. McAdams was gone. Jordan was doing his best to clean the wound in his shoulder. He looked at me in the mirror and smiled then stepped past me to begin his shower. I couldn’t contain the laugh that escaped me when he let out a howl and a string of curses.
McAdams was in the kitchen, doing her best to scrape together a meal that didn’t consist of freeze-dried, reconstituted, or synthetic food items. We could have built a fire and had an actual dinner, but no one suggested it. By the time Jordan sauntered into the kitchen, we were halfway through a bowl of cereal. The powdered milk did the job, even with the odd taste from the water. Crackers, a few cans of shredded chicken, and half a dozen warm beers topped off our extravagant feast.
“Fuck you guys,” Jordan said after expelling a tremendous belch.
“What’s that for?” McAdams asked.
“You’re too goddamn quiet. It’s like traveling with zombies. Except zombies moan and groan and demand brains every few minutes.”
“Sorry,” McAdams said, looking away. “I don’t know what to say anymore.”
“There’s nothing left to say,” I whispered, looking down at the remains of my meal.
“I know that,” Jordan snapped. “But shit, this is already depressing enough.”
“Sorry,” McAdams and I said in stereo.
That got a short laugh from the three of us. We didn’t bother to clean up when we were finished. We wouldn’t be back. No one would.
We returned to the barn, the three of us dead on our feet. McAdams and Jordan moved the mattress between our three suits and began to stretch sheets and blankets across it while I set my suit to power down. The other two suits would stay awake, but we didn’t bother to set up a perimeter of any kind. If the sensors detected EM radiation, they’d activate a warning tone through the helmet’s external speaker, but with the five to ten minutes it took to get suited, we’d already be dead.
The three of us flopped onto the bed. I stared at the ceiling until I felt Krista’s hand touch my arm. I turned my head toward her. Her smile, as sad and pained as it was, made my heart speed up for a few seconds. We linked hands and she kissed me on the cheek. She turned her head and did the same with Jordan. I felt her hand squeeze mine tightly, then I fell asleep.
My dreams were somehow worse than my waking reality. I was always in a line, the humans in front of me members of my own squad. I looked beyond them to see two Kai guarding the doorway to an oven. I looked back to see a million, maybe a billion Kai and their millions of tanks, troop carriers, drones, Vipers, mechs, and assault cruisers blocking our escape. I tried to call out to Private Monohan and Private Grummond, but they didn’t hear me, or they ignored me. I screamed when they walked through the doorway, and again when the doorway opened seconds later, empty but for a wave of ash that settled over us.
I tried to scream again when Hollingsworth and Talamentez stepped into the doorway. I tried to run forward when Goldman and Kirilenko went next. My feet were rooted in place. The ashes coating my hair, my skin, and my clothes had a sickly-sweet scent to it.
“Don’t fight it, Lofgren,” McAdams said from behind me. “It’s over now.”
I wanted to punch her hard enough to knock the serene smile from her lips, but I couldn’t. I began to hear voices, all belonging to my friends who had stepped into the oven. Their ashes seeped in through my pores, their words, their laughter, their distinct personalities fighting for control of my sanity. I felt a soft push from behind and looked back. McAdams and Lowell were locked in a kiss, her leg wrapped around his hip, neither looking at me as they gestured for me to hurry up.
I turned away and saw the gaping hole before me, the alien guards staring wordlessly ahead. The glow inside beckoned to me, or maybe it was the voices in my head telling me to give in, step inside, end the pain. My legs moved of their own accord. I blinked and was inside the oven. I turned around to see the endless line of humans waiting for me to do my part. McAdams and Lowell favored me with smiles and a thumbs-up. I began to scream when the door closed and the flames erupted from every direction.
I opened my eyes, feeling the shriek lodged in my throat. My skin was covered in sweat. I began to turn over when I felt movement in the bed. I rolled my head slowly to my right. McAdams and Jordan were doing their best to discreetly reach that moment of infinite pleasure without disturbing me. I turned my head to the other side, giving them their privacy.
Krista’s hand brushed my stomach just as I was working my way back into sleep. I looked over at her. The need in her eyes mirrored my own. I thought of Hollingsworth, Talamentez, Kirilenko, then of Lowell and his last moments alone with Sergeant McAdams. For a fraction of a second, I collapsed inside, becoming an empty vessel. When her fingers traced a line from my stomach to my thigh then back to my chest, I filled with a desperate longing.
We did our best to slow time to a crawl, even stopping it for a few seconds when I dug my fingers into her hips as I became a supernova, an entire universe, a god. At the peak of that sensation, the feel of her skin in my hands, the pain from her fingers gripping my arms as she shuddered and spasmed, I lost my fear of death. I hadn’t realized that I’d been afraid of it until that very moment. The pollution of loss, sadness, despair, all of it washed away in an instant, revealing the true Dana Lofgren underneath. I had been so afraid, had seen so much death in thousands of grisly, horrifying settings, that I’d been unable to cope with my own impending demise.
Krista rolled over onto her back, her breathing beginning to deepen. I felt her hand on my neck, hinting for me to lift it. I did, and she immediately wrapped it around my neck and pulled me toward her. We shared a deep, passionate kiss, then I laid my head on her chest and closed my eyes. I felt the movements of her doing the same with Jordan. I opened my eyes long enough to see Jordan’s face across from mine, McAdams’ smooth skin rising and falling with each breath between us. I fell into a dreamless sleep.
***
I woke to a chirping sound. I opened my eyes to a dim amber glow. McAdams’ suit was actively tracking something. I sat up, then looked behind me to see two sleeping bodies in a tangle of sheets and arms. I rose and walked to the helmet, glancing toward one of the barn’s windows. The faintest of glows in the east let me know what time it was. The helmet’s visor let me know we weren’t alone. Her helmet chirped again.
I stood still for a full minute, straining to hear something. When the helmet chirped a third time, I almost dropped it.
I sat the helmet on the floor and went to my suit. Sergeant Lowell’s insistence that I reboot my suit had floated at the edge of my consciousness the day before, but I had been so exhausted that I’d forgotten to power it back on before going to sleep. I pulled my helmet over my head and worked the interface, authorizing the suit to do a full reboot. I watched the display for a few seconds before removing the helmet. I walked to McAdams’ helmet and put it on. I couldn’t power up her suit without a Command Link override code, but the CR-31 had been designed for human soldiers to use the suit’s computer for various tasks without being the assigned operator. I was sure that if we’d been fighting other humans, the suits would have been programmed to explode if anyone but the owner tried to interface with them.
The EM sensor had been chiming for a while. I replayed the last two hours of tactical data. The Kai were moving heavy armor and air units around outside, but only one or two here and there. I replayed the data a few more times. I couldn’t tell if they were simply patrolling the area, or were setting up a division near the highway. The only Kai unit close enough for the EM sensor to get a definite read on was a heavy mech that was in the middle of the gravel road where it met the highway. I heard my own helmet ding and removed McAdams’ helmet, replacing it with mine.
I was greeted by a message on my visor informing me that my suit was about to receive a firmware update. There was no option to decline or accept, but I was used to that with military hardware. Even if the software and firmware updates were known to get squads wasted (or sometimes even entire battalions), the military pushed them through anyway. They didn’t want a bunch of field commanders second-guessing their expertise, I guess. It wasn’t like the generals and admirals sitting around sipping fine coffee and brandy had time to be concerned that their troops were getting their asses kicked out of every sector with heavy losses.
