Finally, coated in dust and sweat, Diaz nodded. "All right, soldiers. You've earned your breakfast. Come with me. You have fifteen minutes."
They walked toward the largest building in the base, the mess hall. It was smaller than the one back at RASCOM and just as crowded. Hundreds of other recruits filled it, turning toward the new arrivals, and murmurs rose across the tables.
"How much you wanna bet they're calling us fresh meat?" Marco said.
Addy licked her lips. "Mmm, fresh meat. I could go for some Spam."
They lined up to grab their trays.
"You can't possibly enjoy Spam," Marco said. "Or call it fresh."
She knuckled his head. "Fresh from the can, old boy." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a can of Spam. "I swiped this little guy from the RASCOM kitchen."
Marco examined the can and groaned. "Addy! This can is thirteen years old. It wasn't fresh back during the Panama Assault."
"So long as it's younger than the Cataclysm, I'm a happy diner."
They got their chow—gray gruel, gray slop, gray soup, and slices of—thankfully not gray—Spam. Marco sat at a table with his usual group. Caveman was tucking in, and even little Lailani seemed to be enjoying the fare. Elvis winced with every bite.
"So did you see those two hot corporals?" Elvis said, forcing down a spoonful of gloop. "Fucking hot, both of them."
Pinky walked up toward them, slammed his tray down onto the table, and sat to eat. He brayed like a donkey, crooked teeth thrust out. "That blond corporal's got a face like pizza." He laughed at his own joke. "Corporal Pizza! You like fucking pizza, Elvis?"
Elvis shuddered as he swallowed another bite of slop. "I'd rather eat pizza."
"I bet you would." Pinky brayed, then turned toward Marco. "What about you, Poet? You got the hots for Corporal Diaz, don't you? Bet you can't wait to shower with him. Just don't drop the soap."
Marco tilted his head. "Did somebody hear something? I thought I heard a cockroach squeaking."
Rage suffused Pinky's face. The little soldier leaped right onto the table, scattering trays, and lunged at Marco.
Marco leaped back, surprised at the attack, and fell down hard onto the floor. Pinky jumped onto him, only for the rest of the platoon to grab the little recruit and pull him back.
"Down, Pinky!" Elvis said. "Down!"
Addy grabbed the little soldier's arm. "Cool it, runt! Corporal Diaz is right over there."
Indeed, the tall corporal marched toward them across the mess hall, face red. "What the fuck is going on?" he said.
"I—" Marco began.
"Silence!" Diaz barked. "Stand at attention when your commander approaches."
Everyone at the table rose and stood at attention. Across the mess hall, all eyes turned toward their squad. Marco's tailbone screamed in agony, but he forced himself to stand still. Pinky was muttering, standing at attention between Addy and Elvis.
"What happened?" Diaz began.
Everyone started talking at once.
"Stop!" Diaz barked. He pointed at Beast, the massive Russian, who stood nearby. "You, Mikhailov. You saw the whole thing. What happened?"
The giant bald Russian gulped. He looked from one soldier to another, then back to Corporal Diaz. "Ya ne znayu. I don't know, Commander. I no see."
Corporal Diaz looked across the squad. "Then maybe every one of you sorry buggers needs to serve kitchen duty all week. Maybe—"
"It was Pinky, Commander!" rose a voice. "That is, Recruit Peter Mack, Commander. Him, the little guy. He started it all. He just lunged at Emery, Commander."
Marco turned toward the voice. It was Lailani who had spoken. The tiny recruit emerged from behind Beast, pointing at Pinky. She gave Marco a little nod.
Oh fuck, Marco thought. He didn't want Lailani implicated in all this. If movies had taught him anything, it was that in prison and the military, rats were not treated well. He could already see socks full of bars of soap in Lailani's future.
Pinky fumed and began to howl. "She's fucking lying!" He made to lunge toward her. "You fucking little China whore, I—"
For a man with a metal spine, Corporal Diaz moved amazingly fast. He grabbed Pinky, twisting his arms behind his back.
"You just earned yourself a few hours in the brig, Mack," the corporal said.
The platoon's other two corporals approached—the blond, hard-eyed St-Pierre and the dark, small Webb on her prosthetic blades. Both helped drag Pinky out of the mess hall.
"You're fucking dead!" Pinky shouted as they dragged him out. "Both of you, Emery and de la Rosa! You're fucking dead!"
For a moment all the recruits stood in stunned silence.
Then everyone got back to eating, talking, and laughing.
"You going to eat your Spam, Poet?" Addy reached toward Marco's plate.
He let her take the slice. He turned toward Lailani.
"You didn't have to do that, Lailani," he said.
The little soldier snorted. "Why not? Fuck that prick. I'm not scared of him."
"He'll be out of the brig tomorrow and pissed off," Marco said.
Lailani scoffed. "Eh, fuck him. I grew up in the slums of Manila. Never had a roof over my head, had to fight for every scrap of food. On good days we slept by the train tracks. On bad days on the landfills. I've fought rapists and murderers before Pinky even learned how to jerk off. Let him come at me then. I hate assholes like him." She looked at Marco. "How he talked to you is wrong. He's a bully. A nasty one. And I don't tolerate bullies, whether they're aliens or little punks like him." She looked across the table. "You hear that, boys and girls? Any one of you has a problem with me ratting on a fellow recruit, you tell me now, and I'll shove my boot up your ass. If you wait until I have a gun, it'll be worse."
They all stared at her, then looked back at their trays.
At that moment, looking at Lailani—even with Kemi's photo in his back pocket—Marco was deeply, madly in love.
Addy nodded. "Yep. As I said. I like this one." She turned toward Elvis. "Yo, Elvis, you gonna eat that Spam?"
Elvis pulled his plate back. "Away with you, ravenous beast!"
The recruits soon forgot about Pinky, talking instead about their corporals, but Marco was silent. He kept thinking about the scars on Lailani's wrists, about Kemi back home, and about what would happen when Pinky returned to the platoon.
CHAPTER NINE
The first day of basic training was just as long and exhausting as RASCOM.
For what seemed like hours, they practiced their marching and formations.
They ran. They jumped. They climbed ropes. Push-ups, again and again.
Five minutes to run to the latrines—nasty, horrible holes in the ground without a toilet seat to be found.
Five minutes to gather around a single, leaky tap that rose from a rocky field, to fill their canteens with a few drops per soldier.
Ten minutes to shovel more gray slop and Spam into their mouths.
It all blurred together to Marco—the marching, running, push-ups, and everywhere the shouting, standing at attention, dropping down, rising, crawling through the dust, jumping, forming ranks, breaking ranks, an endless confusion, all in the sweat and dust and heat of the desert. His copy of Hard Times still bulged in his back pocket, but Marco couldn't even imagine finding the time to read a book here, and he realized the folly of his plan, his hope to find some comfort in a book. If they had only a moment without a commander shouting at them, they used that moment to pee, race to the tap and refill their canteen with a few drops—never time for more than a few drops—or gulp down a few bites. Then the shouting, racing, electrical prods, falling, jumping, all jumbled together into a mishmash that spun Marco's head.
"Fuck this shit," Addy said, doing sit-ups at his side in the sand.
"Yeah," Marco said, panting, awash with sweat. Suddenly the words blurted out from him. "I miss my library. I miss my father. I miss Kemi. I miss being a human. I feel like an animal here. Fuck this shit indeed."
&
nbsp; Addy raised her eyebrow. "What? Poet, it's only been two days! I'm talking about guns. Fuck this no guns shit! Let me shoot!"
Lailani jogged up toward them, plonked down, and began her sit-ups. "I agree. I want to blast aliens. Pew pew pew."
Marco sighed, rose to his feet, and began his jumping jacks. "You girls are insane."
At least Pinky wasn't here today. The little delinquent was still cooling off in the brig. If Pinky had been here, had heard Marco's moment of weakness . . . Marco didn't even want to think about that. He silently vowed to keep his weakness to himself. He would tell nobody else about his homesickness, his fear. If Addy and Lailani were so motivated, so tough, Marco would learn from them, would become as strong as they were.
It seemed the passage of years, generations, ecological epochs before dinner. In the darkness, they filed into the mess hall, collected their dirty plates and mugs, and accepted their meals.
"Mmm, Spam!" Addy said, sitting down at their table. "Poet, can I have your Spam?"
"Stop that!" Marco slapped her hand away and shoved the mystery loaf into his mouth. "I'm hungry enough to eat even this, and it's probably made out of scum asses."
"I want to kick their asses, not eat them," said Elvis, sniffing at his meat.
Marco groaned and looked over to the commanders' table at the back of the mess hall. Sergeant Singh, the corporals, and Ensign Ben-Ari were sitting there, enjoying sandwiches. Sandwiches weren't fine dining, perhaps, but compared to this gray slop and gooey meat, it would have felt like a king's feast.
"Why do they do this?" Marco said, looking at his friends. "Why the sleep deprivation, the shouting, the marching, the drilling, the inspections, the slop . . ." He let the goo plop from his spoon back onto his plate. "How does any of this help us fight the scum? Lailani is right. We should be learning how to fight, not suffering through this nonsense."
Lailani spoke softly. "Because they want to break you."
"Oh, they've broken me," Marco said.
Lailani stared at him, and Marco was taken aback by the rage that flared in those dark eyes. "You think this is hard, Canada? What do you know of hardship? Did you ever rummage through trash bins to survive? Did you ever sleep in gutters as hundred-peso whores pissed around you, screaming as it burned them? Did you ever live along the train tracks where thieves, rapists, and murderers lurked at every corner, where thirteen-year-olds whored out their bodies, where they had daughters with American soldiers, and—" Lailani stopped suddenly and looked down at her plate. "Forget it. You wouldn't understand. You think you're broken now, but you know nothing." She rose from her seat. "I'm done eating." She tossed her Spam at Marco. "Eat it. And don't ever fucking complain about it again. It's more than many people have."
With that, eyes damp, Lailani de la Rosa marched away.
All the recruits sat in silence for a moment.
"Say," Elvis said, "do we have ranks?"
Addy looked at him. "What?"
"Do we have ranks?" Elvis said. "Are we privates or what? I think we're privates, if Diaz is a corporal and Singh is a sergeant."
"You're not a fucking private!" Addy said, tossing slop at him. "You're just a pissant recruit. All of us are. We ain't got no ranks yet. Not until we're done with boot camp."
"But we have to have ranks!" Elvis said. "You can't be a soldier without a rank."
"Well, then, you're ranked Pissant Elvis, how about that?"
As the squad all began to argue about whether they had ranks or not, Marco sat silently, staring at Lailani's empty seat. He thought about how, only yesterday—or was it this morning?—she had stood up for him, had faced Pinky for him. He had thought they would become friends. Right from the very start, seeing her jog up to their platoon at RASCOM, Marco had felt instant affection toward Lailani Marita de la Rosa. What had he done to sour things so badly?
He thought about how her life must have been. His life had been hard in Toronto—losing his mother to the scum, spending his childhood and youth racing into bomb shelters and subway stations, seeing death, fire, disease. One summer, he had spent three whole months underground with a gas mask on as the scum had relentlessly pounded the city. Not an easy life, not as easy as lives in pre-Cataclysm books. But it seemed downright idyllic compared to what Lailani had described. Marco had never had to eat from garbage bins, sleep on trash heaps or train tracks, or deal with rapists and murderers.
Who are you, Lailani? he wondered. She had mentioned being only half Filipino, that her father was an American soldier. That's how she was able to serve here in the Western Command. So why had she grown up homeless in Manila? Had her father died fighting the scum, or had he abandoned her to poverty?
Marco thought he understood the scars on her wrists a little better now, how that sort of life could have driven her to cut herself.
"I'm done." He rose to his feet and stepped out of the mess hall. He wanted to find Lailani, to apologize to her, to comfort her somehow, but within moments Sergeant Singh was ordering the platoon into formation again, and Lailani was careful to stand as far away from Marco as possible.
After lunch, when Marco was bracing for more exercise, Ensign Ben-Ari returned to lead them to a rocky field, where they sat facing the concrete wall of an armory. The officer clicked on a projector, and the words Why We Fight appeared on the wall over a background of fluttering HDF flags. The title faded away, replaced with a woman, ten feet tall, smiling sweetly and saluting. A butterfly pendant hung around her neck.
"Well, if it isn't our old friend, Captain Butterflies," Addy whispered to Marco.
In the video, the pretty young soldier smiled, dimples deep and teeth sparkling. She wore a white uniform with three golden bars on each shoulder.
"Hello, soldiers of Fort Djemila!" she said. "I'm Captain Edun, happily here to serve the Human Defense Force!" She gave an adorable salute. "Did you know that every day across the galaxy, soldiers of the HDF—just like you—kill over a thousand scolopendra titania aliens? That's right! With proper training, you'll learn how to defend Earth and make your families proud!"
Images appeared in the reel, showing sickeningly sweet families—all with blond hair, blue eyes, and bad tans—smiling and waving to the camera in suburban yards. A golden retriever wagged his tail, and a happy mailman tipped his hat.
Captain Butterflies appeared back on screen, more somber now. "Fifty years ago the scolopendra titaniae, a predatory alien race from the Scorpius system, launched a surprise attack against Earth." Images appeared on screen, showing flaming purple balls hurling down toward Earth, followed by cities collapsing and forests burning. Butterflies spoke over the images. "Six billion lives were lost, more than half the world population. Entire cities were laid to waste. Humanity seemed close to extinction."
Images showed hungry, skeletal survivors searching through ruins for food, and Marco thought about Lailani. He sought her in the platoon, saw her sitting on the other side by a few soldiers whose names Marco hadn't yet learned. Lailani was staring at the reel, face blank, but her tiny fists were clenched.
Captain Butterflies continued speaking, this time more firmly. "But humanity did not fall. The armies of the world gathered together in the ruins, forming the Human Defense Force, an alliance of humanity's best. We launched our own spacecrafts, repurposing vehicles previously used for exploration and tourism. We launched a desperate attack on Abaddon, the scolopendra titaniae's planet. Many of our brave pilots perished. But one courageous pilot, the hero Evan Bryan, reached the enemy planet and successfully launched a hydrogen missile."
The film showed a grainy photo of a handsome young hero in an old-fashioned uniform, saluting the flag. The image changed to an animation of a starjet raining down death onto an enemy planet.
"Millions of scolopendra titaniae died that day," said Captain Butterflies. "The HDF struck back! Since that day, the aliens have never dared destroy entire Earth cities again. For fifty years they've been trying to break our spirit with a War of Attrition, killing u
s one at a time. For fifty years they believed they could shatter our resolve, that our civilization would collapse like cobwebs if terrorized enough. But humanity still stands!" The images now showed proud children, mothers, fathers, and senior citizens saluting flags of the HDF. "Thanks to soldiers like you, your families can sleep well tonight. Thanks to the HDF, Earth and her colonies across space thrive. The HDF—defending our species, defending our hope, defending our civilization. That is why we fight!"
The camera zoomed out, revealing a crowd of smiling children, all raising toy guns. They stomped centipedes—these ones Earth centipedes, only a couple of inches long—under their shoes. "That is why we fight!" they chanted.
The images crackled, then faded, leaving only the concrete wall.
A few soldiers clapped politely.
"Play 'Freebird'!" Addy cried out, earning a glare from Corporal Diaz and an extra hour of kitchen duty the next morning.
After the brief indoctrination, Ensign Ben-Ari faced the soldiers again.
"Are you ready to learn how to kill these creatures?"
They all shouted, "Yes, ma'am!"
Their eyes all shone, but Marco felt queasy, and he kept seeing it again and again—the pods slamming into the Earth, millions dying, and his mother in the snow.
CHAPTER TEN
The recruits marched through the desert base, heading past boulders, crossing a dune, and walking along a barbed wire fence. A vulture circled above. Two rusty bins rose ahead in the sand, each the size of an automobile. The smell of oil and metal hit Marco's nostrils, and the sun baked their helmets.
"All right, recruits!" shouted Sergeant Singh, his teeth brilliantly white against his black beard. "Grab your body armor and grab your guns."
"Fuck yeah!" Addy shouted, earning an hour of kitchen duty.
"Yes, Commander!" shouted the others.
They stepped toward the closer bin. Inside, they found knee and elbow pads made from hard green plastic. Marco strapped them on.
"I feel like a Ninja Turtle," he muttered.
Earth Alone (Earthrise Book 1) Page 10
