Caveman actually began to weep. He blew his nose into a napkin. "I miss home."
Awkward silence fell across their table, and Marco hoped that Pinky and his gang—sitting at the next table over—hadn't heard.
A soft voice broke the silence. "I like it here."
They all turned their heads. Marco hadn't even noticed that Lailani had joined their table. The diminutive recruit was so small she could barely reach the tabletop. With her buzz cut and thin frame, she looked like a schoolboy in her father's uniform. When she reached across the table for a drink, Marco again noticed the scars across her wrists.
"Lailani Marita de la Rosa," Marco said. "Did I get that right?"
She nodded. "That's me. Lailani Marita de la Rosa, scum killer extraordinaire." She aimed her butter knife and pretended to fire. "Pew pew pew."
"What's your name, Spanish?" Addy said. "You Mexican?"
Lailani shook her head. "Filipino. I'm from Manila, capital of the lovely, sunny islands of the Philippines. Come for the sun and palm trees. Stay because your passport was stolen."
"Bullshit," said Elvis. "Philippines is the Eastern Command, like the Muslims. Or Sikhs. Or whoever the fuck those guys are."
Lailani snorted. "I don't look it, but I'm half-American. That's right. My pa was wholesome all-American like white bread, baseball, and clogged arteries. Probably loved Elvis too. I just happen to look like a lovely, exotic flower of the Orient. You better not have any yellow fever, white boys, or I'll chop off your balls." She sliced her knife through the air.
Marco glanced at her wrists again. It seemed like balls wasn't the only thing Lailani liked to slice.
"I like this one." Addy nodded, pointing at the girl. "I think we'll call you Tiny. If I'm Maple, Marco here is Poet, and this lovely specimen with jam all over his uniform is Elvis, you'll need a nickname too. Tiny it is."
Lailani leaped onto her chair. "I'm not fucking tiny!" She bared her teeth. "I might only be five feet tall—okay, four feet eleven—all right, four feet ten!—but I'm still tough enough to slice through you, and—"
"Recruit!" shouted a sergeant, marching toward them through the mess, and pointed at Lailani. "Kitchen duty tonight. Now sit your ass down."
Grumbling, "Tiny" Lailani sat her ass down. The sergeant marched away.
"Fucking fascist scum," she muttered.
As they swallowed their last bites, Marco glanced aside. Across the mess hall, Sergeant Singh returned to his own table, which was set across a barrier. The ranked soldiers and officers sat there, eating from a different kitchen. A few of them—corporals and sergeants—were laughing as they ate. Marco glimpsed Ensign Ben-Ari sitting among them. The Israeli officer was listening to Sergeant Singh tell a story, smiling thinly, yet it seemed to Marco, even from this distance, that there was sadness in her eyes. She was the commander of the Dragons Platoon, but aside from that brief encounter a few hours ago, they hadn't seen her up close. It seemed that officers were too lofty to mingle even with their own soldiers.
"She's a goddess and Singh is her angel of retribution," Marco reflected absentmindedly.
Addy sighed. "Oh, Poet." She cringed as a bell rang. "Dinner's over. Time for our kitchen duty." She waved a slice of Spam at him. "Thanks to you."
Lailani groaned. "Fuck me, I'd rather be killing scum."
CHAPTER SEVEN
They stood in the kitchen—Marco, Addy, and Lailani Marita de la Rosa—as the trays piled up into plastic skyscrapers.
Before the three recruits rose metal shelves, row by row. Through them, like prisoners gazing through horizontal bars, they could see the mess hall where thousands of soldiers were leaving their seats, trays in hand. The recruits slammed those trays down onto the metal shelves, spraying bits of food.
Addy groaned. "Gross!" She pulled chicken skin out of her hair. "Makes me want to barf."
More and more trays kept piling up. On them, plastic plates and mugs rattled.
"Come on," Marco said. "Let's wash them. It'll be over quickly. We've got the dishwasher."
As the trays kept piling up, he gestured behind him. The room was about the size of a typical living room. This wasn't the kitchen where the food was cooked, just a scullery where the dishes and pots were washed. Several of those massive pots already stood on the tiles. Between them, a conveyor belt moved across the room. Halfway along its journey, the belt passed through something that looked like a car wash. Water sprayed within.
"All right, girls," Marco said. "Let's get the dishes on this conveyor belt and run 'em through the wash."
They began to grab the trays and place them onto the belt. The belt clattered onward, moving inch by inch, taking the trays of dishes into the square spraying structure. It reminded Marco of the belts that ran suitcases through X-ray machines at airports. The trays emerged from the other side wet . . . and still dirty.
"There's still bits of food all over this!" Addy said, raising a plate.
"More trays piling up!" Lailani called. "The whole structure's about to collapse!"
Marco returned to the shelves. More and more soldiers in the mess hall were slamming down their trays. Plates and mugs wobbled on them. Lailani was busy lifting the trays, trying to carry them to the conveyor belt, but they were piling up too fast. Finally the three recruits were reduced to placing the trays on the floor, only for more trays—hundreds of them—to instantly replace them on the shelves. There was no time to even take the three steps toward the conveyor belt, let alone wait for it to run through the wash. The trays stacked up on the floor, rising to their hips. Plastic mugs rolled across the dirty floor.
"Fuck me, no wonder the dishes are always so dirty," Addy said.
Lailani was stacking trays on the conveyor belt, desperate to fit them all on, but her wobbly towers couldn't fit through the little car wash, and the structures collapsed.
"There's no way this belt will wash things fast enough," the tiny recruit said. "Not if we want to be done by breakfast, and those fucking trays are still piling up."
Indeed, trays now rose in wobbling minarets on the shelves. One structure collapsed, and Marco ran to catch the falling trays. Soup and crumbs spilled over him. Addy cursed as condiments sprayed her.
"Fuck this shit!" Addy grabbed a knife and brandished it at nobody in particular. "I didn't sign up to clean plates but to kill aliens."
"Pretend the trays are scum," Marco said.
"They are!"
A hoarse voice rose from the mess hall. "Hey, kitchen slaves!" Pinky's ugly mug appeared behind the shelves. "Wash these." The recruit placed his tray down atop a pile of them, then shoved. A hundred trays and plates clattered onto the floor. Smirking, Pinky walked away.
"Joke's on you!" Addy shouted after him. "We were putting the plates on the floor anyway!"
Lailani walked toward the back of the room, then returned carrying a hose. "Guys," she said, "you know, there's probably a reason somebody installed this hose here."
Marco cringed and pointed. "There's another hose there. I think people figured out ages ago that the dishwasher is for show."
Addy was wobbling under a pile of trays. "Hose these damn things!"
Marco and Lailani turned on their hoses. Icy water blasted out, spraying over Addy, over the trays on the floor, the shelves, the entire kitchen. Whoever had installed the hoses must have installed the grates on the floor too. The dirty water trickled away.
"So the kitchen is a giant shower?" Marco said over the roaring water.
Lailani nodded. "At least we'll get to wash up." She sprayed Marco with her hose.
He yowled. "It's cold!" He sprayed her back, and Lailani squealed and ducked for cover behind the conveyor belt.
For two more hours, they toiled. Addy kept pulling trays and dishes off the shelves and onto the floor, while Marco and Lailani hosed them down. When the trays and dishes were finally clean—or at least, as clean as possible under the circumstances, which wasn't very clean at all—they got to hosing and scrubbing the giant
pots. Addy sang as they worked, old songs from home, and Marco and even Lailani joined in.
Finally, at 10:30 p.m., they emerged dripping wet into the hot, humid, South American night.
Sergeant Singh awaited them there beside their duffel bags. The tall, turbaned soldier glowered at them. The moonlight shone on the curved kirpan blade that hung from his belt.
"You will stand at attention when you see your commander," he said, "or you'll do another two hours after breakfast."
Addy, Marco, and Lailani stood at attention, heels pressed together, backs straight, chins raised. Water dripped off them into the dust.
The sergeant nodded and checked his wristwatch. "You wet worms are just on time. Follow me."
Marco hoped, prayed, yearned for sleep, but it was not to be. The sergeant led them to—surprise, surprise—another squat concrete building. They entered to find a gymnasium with a stage at the back. Thousands of soldiers stood here, facing the stage. Marco spotted his platoon, and they headed over to join the rest of the Dragons.
A soldier stepped onto the stage.
"Fucking hell," Addy muttered. "It's Captain Butterflies."
Marco recognized the smiling, perky soldier from the spaceport back in Toronto, the one with the butterfly pendant. The young woman gave the crowd of recruits a huge, glistening smile that practically blinded Marco.
"Welcome, recruits, to the Human Defense Force!" she said into the microphone. "We here at the HDF hope you've been enjoying your first day as soldiers. Your service and sacrifice keep Earth safe! I'd like to extend my welcome with a little gift—from the HDF to you."
A military band stepped onto the stage. They began to play a marching song—deafeningly loud, the speakers thrumming across the gymnasium. As the music blared, a projector displayed images on a screen, showing HDF soldiers spraying scum with bullets, Firebird jets blasting scum ships, and military marches across the world's capitals. The flags of the HDF, displaying a phoenix rising from ashes like humanity rising from the Cataclysm, waved in the background of every image.
"I'm tired," Marco said to Addy. "It's late. Why are we subjected to this?"
"What?" she shouted.
"I said I want to sleep!" he shouted back.
"Stop being an old man!" Addy replied, then turned back toward the stage and sang with the choir. "Kill the scum, kill the scum, kill the evil scum . . . For Earth's glory, beat the drums! Kill the scum, kill the—"
Marco covered his ears and closed his eyes. He tried to take deep breaths, to ignore the noise as best he could, and he thought of Kemi. Of her smile. How they would walk through the cemetery together, the last green space in Toronto. But even those thoughts turned sour, and again he saw her reaching to him, tears in her eyes, telling him she'd be away for ten years, maybe more.
What are you doing now, Kemi? he thought. Are you thinking of me too?
"Play 'Freebird'!" Addy shouted at the band.
Finally, at midnight, Sergeant Singh led them out of the gym. As they marched down the road, limbs aching, Marco prayed to see another squat concrete building—this one full of beds. He didn't expect military cots to be particularly comfortable, but he had barely sat down since dawn. It still seemed ludicrous, unthinkable, had to be a mistake, that this had all been just one day, that this morning—this same day!—he had been back home with his father. Surely time was different here in the HDF, and he'd already been a soldier for weeks.
They marched toward concrete barracks. Through the windows, Marco saw rooms full of cots, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Finally—bed. Yet Sergeant Singh marched them past the barracks, ignoring the groans of protest, and they headed down a path between trees toward a rocky field.
More cardboard boxes awaited them here.
"Trio formations, soldiers!" Sergeant Singh barked. They formed rank—too slowly. Again and again, Singh had them take formation, checking his stopwatch. When finally he was satisfied, he pointed at the boxes.
"Open them," he said. "Inside you'll find tents. Raise them. But not before you clear this field of stones. Go."
Tents? Marco groaned, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Clearing the field of stones was long, laborious work. Marco was ready to sleep on nails, but Singh drove them onward until finally the field was cleared. Then another task awaited them: constructing the tents. This involved hammering pikes into the ground, raising metal frameworks, and snapping drab sheets into place, then constructing hard metal cots within.
It was 2:00 a.m. before the work was complete.
"All right, soldiers," Sergeant Singh said. "Get some rest. You've earned it. I'll see you at 4:30 a.m. for morning inspection. I want everyone with polished boots, tidy uniforms, and helmets on heads. Maybe then we'll finally ship your asses off to boot camp."
This elicited more groans. Only two and a half hours of sleep?
"Fuck me," Elvis muttered as Singh marched away, leaving them in the field. "Let the scum kill me. I'm ready."
Lailani nodded and pulled off her fatigues, remaining in a tank top and boxer shorts. A rainbow tattoo lit up one of her arms. A dragon tattoo coiled up her other arm, sneaked under her shirt, and poked its head over her collarbone—appropriate for the Dragons Platoon.
"I'm ready to spend eternity sleeping in the digestive track of a scum," she said.
Marco stepped into one of the tents. Fifteen cots were pressed together like seats in a subway car.
"Boot camp will be easier," he said, trying to ignore the laughter of his fellow recruits.
"I'm telling you, Poet," Elvis said. "RASCOM is a whorehouse. You'll miss it."
Marco flopped down onto one cot. Addy and Lailani took the cots at his sides. The recruits of the Dragons Platoon were soon fast asleep—all but Marco. Despite his exhaustion, his mind kept racing. The old images kept flashing before him: his mother's corpse in the snow, the scum rearing above her, his father's tears at the funeral, Addy afraid in his bed, and always Kemi's face. He pulled the book out from his back pocket, and Kemi's photo dropped onto his chest. He looked at her—that quirky expression, one eyebrow raised, lips smirking, the photo she hated and he loved. He put it back into the book and closed his eyes. Finally, with an hour before wake-up call, he drifted off to sleep. His first day as a soldier ended.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Inspection!"
Sergeant Singh's voice rang through the night.
"4th Platoon, inspection!"
Marco leaped from his cot. He checked his wristwatch. 4:30 a.m., an hour since he'd fallen asleep.
"4th Platoon, damn it, line up for inspection!" Singh pulled open the tent flap. "Uniforms tidy, boots polished, helmets on head, faces shaved, now!"
They scrambled. Marco had been so exhausted last night he had fallen into bed in his fatigues. Other recruits had stripped down to their underwear. Some wore pajamas brought from home; Caveman's pajama pants featured tiny fire trucks and dogs. Outside the tent, Singh was counting down seconds.
Marco pulled on his boots, gave them a quick rub against the back of his legs, and passed a hand across his cheek. Thankfully, his beard was naturally thin, and stubble barely covered his cheeks, though other recruits—like Elvis—were already showing a deep shadow.
"Three, two, one—out, now, form rank!"
They rushed outside the tent, slapping on their helmets, and lined up in the darkness. Sergeant Singh marched across their lines, holding a flashlight. Disgust suffused his face.
"Is this how you present yourselves?" he shouted. He paused before Addy and pointed at her uniform. "Shirt not tucked in."
"Sorry, Commander!" Addy said. "I'm used to hockey jerseys."
With a grunt, the sergeant turned toward Beast, the massive Russian recruit. He pointed the flashlight down at his legs. "Pants not bloused."
"Eezvinite, Commander," Beast said, accent thick. "Sorry. Pants too small for me."
Next, the sergeant approached Elvis and stared at the boy's face. "Stubble on your face. And shave those sidebur
ns."
Indignant, Elvis touched his cheeks. "These babies? But—" He gulped seeing the wrath on Singh's face. "Yes, Commander."
The turbaned sergeant turned toward Marco, frowning down at his boots. "You call those polished?"
"Sorry, Commander!" Marco said, wishing he'd had time to polish the boots with actual shoe polish, not just brush them against his pants.
The sergeant moved on and paused by a tall, lanky recruit. He frowned at the soldier's helmet. With a thick black marker, somebody had drawn a star and the word Sheriff on the helmet.
"Did you draw that, recruit?" Singh said.
The gangly recruit gulped. "Yes, sir—"
"I'm not an officer." The sergeant's face reddened. "Don't you sir me. I work for a living. Did you deface military property?"
The recruit—Marco knew that from this moment, he would be known as Sheriff—nodded. "Yes, s—I mean, yes, Commander." He spoke with a thick Southern drawl. "It's tradition, Commander! To write on your helmet. Born to kill. War is hell. That sort of thing."
"Well, wipe it off," Singh said. "You don't want Bob Marley to shoot you, do you?" Laughter sounded across the platoon, and the sergeant growled. "Shut it! All of you, silence!"
Singh kept walking and paused in front of Lailani. His eyes widened. "Fuck me. Another helmet-scrawler."
Marco glanced over at Lailani. She too had drawn words onto her helmet with a permanent marker: Life is a bag of dicks with syphilis.
"Sorry, Commander!" Lailani said. "Sheriff told me it's tradition."
Marco could swear that the bearded sergeant was struggling not to smile. "Wipe those words off, recruit, or I'll make you wish life were that easy."
"Yes, Commander!" Lailani said.
The sergeant turned toward Caveman, and his eyes widened further. The beefy recruit was still wearing his fire truck pajamas.
"Sorry, Sergeant!" Caveman said. "I didn't have time to change."
"You didn't have time?" Sergeant Singh roared. "Do you think the scum will give you time next time they invade? Do you think the fucking scum will wait while you pull off your fire truck pajamas, soldier?"
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