Earth Alone (Earthrise Book 1)

by Daniel Arenson

  "Pinky," Marco said. "Pinky, your turn."

  The recruit would not wake.

  "Pinky, man." Marco shook him, daring not speak louder for fear of waking the rest of his squad. They were all sleeping in their cots around him. "Guard duty."

  But Pinky turned away, still snoring. Marco cursed. Fuck it. He'd had enough. He wouldn't go out and guard for Pinky's shift too, and if St-Pierre or another commander walked by again, saw no guard outside their tent . . .

  Marco grabbed his flashlight from his belt, pointed it at Pinky's face, and flicked it on and off. The light hit Pinky's eyelids, and finally the runty recruit groaned, opened his eyes, and stared into the light.

  Pinky groaned loudly, rose from bed, and shoved Marco.

  "What the fuck are you doing?"

  "Guard duty," Marco said.

  Pinky's groans woke up soldiers across the tent. A few pillows were tossed their way.

  "Shut up!" rumbled a muffled voice.

  "Pinky, I'm not taking your guard duty," Marco said. "It's your fifteen minutes. It's—"

  But the small soldier returned to his bed and closed his eyes.

  Marco trembled with rage.

  "Just take his shift too, Poet," Beast muttered from his cot. "Little fucker will not wake. Sleeps like Russian bear in winter."

  "I'm not taking his shift," Marco said. "Nobody is taking his shift. He's going to wake up and—"

  "I'll take double shifts," rose a voice, and Marco turned to see Lailani approaching, pulling on her fatigues and strapping her gun across her back. "It's my turn after him anyway, and I'm already up." She passed by Marco, then looked at him and touched his arm. "You fought well against the Evil Pinky, but sometimes the goblin wins. Get some sleep, Poet."

  She stepped outside the tent into the night.

  Marco returned to his cot and closed his eyes.

  Losing to Pinky hurt. But Lailani talking to him, touching his arm, had felt wonderful.

  He sank back into an exhausted dreamworld. He stood on a distant, dark planet, wearing a spacesuit, holding his gun. Canyons, craters, and caves surrounded him, a rocky wasteland, the stars foreign. His platoon stood with him, and they were all wearing metal suits like mechanical exoskeletons. A clattering rose. From around them, hundreds, then thousands of scum were racing forward, and they fired their guns, and the bullets roared out, and—

  Sirens blared.

  Marco bolted up in bed.

  The siren wailed, up and down, mournful, warning. Scum. Scum. Scum.

  Across the tent, the squad leaped up in their cots—even Pinky. Marco tugged on his fatigues so quickly he nearly tore them, strapped his helmet onto his head, and grabbed his gun. He knelt between two cots, reaching down to touch the magazine of bullets that hung from his belt. The other soldiers knelt too, shadowy lumps, guns in hand. The siren gave one more wail, then fell silent.

  The squad remained still.

  For a long time they waited.

  "What's going on?" Elvis finally whispered. "Is it over?"

  Marco shook his head. "No continuous tone siren yet. Wait for the all clear."

  They waited. They minutes ticked by. The world was silent.

  "It's got to be over, whatever was happening," Elvis said. He crept toward the edge of the tent and peeked outside. "Hey, Beast! Beast! You see anything?"

  The Russian, who was outside on guard study, stuck his head into the tent. "I no see shit. No all clear yet. Stay on alert. Corporals walking around outside. If they see you leave tent, they smash you. Might be a fucking scum somewhere in sand. In Mother Russia we'd have killed it already." He closed the tent flap, remaining outside.

  Inside the tent, the recruits waited.

  Marco checked his watch. 3:15 a.m. The minutes ticked by. Soon it was almost four in the morning.

  "I got to piss," Elvis said. "I'm making a run for the latrines."

  "You can't go outside," Marco reminded him. "Remember about the smashing?" He imitated Beast's accent. "Corporal smash you."

  Elvis groaned and rose from between the cots, gripping his groin. "I'd rather get smashed than piss my pants. If the scum are attacking, I ain't dying with piss on my pants."

  Caveman raised a bottle of orange juice. "Here, piss in this," he said. "Wait." He gulped down the juice. "Now piss."

  Elvis grabbed the bottle. "How did you even get this, Caveman?" he asked, then shook his head. "Never mind. Guys, look away."

  They all groaned and looked aside. Elvis filled the bottle, then placed it near the tent flap. Marco grimaced to see droplets drip onto the floor only a foot away from his cot.

  "Fuck, I gotta piss too," Lailani said. "Caveman, got another bottle?"

  Caveman shook his head but offered her a milk carton. "Use this. Wait." He chugged down the milk. "Here."

  Lailani grabbed the carton. "Perfect."

  Soon three more soldiers had filled cartons and bottles, placing them by the tent flap—uncomfortably close to Marco.

  "Marco, you want this Tupperware?" Caveman asked, handing him a container.

  "I'll hold it in," Marco said. "How do you even have these things, Caveman?"

  Caveman grinned. "Easy, I—"

  The siren wailed again—a long continuous tone. All clear.

  The recruits all exhaled in relief. When Marco checked his watch, he saw that there were only thirty minutes until the morning inspection. He had slept . . . how long so far? An hour? Two? Not even? Since joining the military, he hadn't slept more than three hours, he estimated, and had barely slept the night before the army too.

  He flopped down onto his cot, remaining in his fatigues, boots on his feet. Yet exhausted as he was, he couldn't fall back asleep, not with the knowledge that any minute now, Sergeant Singh would be rousing them, inspecting them, shouting, push-ups, another day in hell.

  In the darkness, a voice rang out.

  "Up, up! Morning inspection!" Sergeant Singh pulled open the tent door and stomped inside. "Morning inspe—"

  The sergeant's boots hit the bottles and cartons, and piss spilled across the floor.

  The recruits all stared.

  "Fuck," Lailani whispered.

  Sergeant Singh stood very still for a long moment, then looked up at the recruits. "Well, you've all just earned an hour of latrine duty tonight. You have sixty seconds to present yourselves outside the tent. And somebody mop up this piss."

  Marco groaned. Tonight? It was 4:30 a.m. He didn't know if "tonight" meant now, the next time it went dark, next week, this month, back in time—the entire concept of day and night was a blur now. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Marco thought that dawn was soon coming, that it was his third day in the army, but that seemed impossible. He had always been trapped here. The old Marco Emery, the boy who had lived in Toronto, who had been writing a novel, that was just a past life or a dream.

  "Sixty!" Sergeant Singh shouted outside. "Fifty-nine!"

  Elvis rose and stretched. "Goooooooooood morning, 4th Platoon!" he roared out, then shook his head at the perplexed looks. "What, no classic film buffs? Philistines."

  Marco was thankful that he had slept in his fatigues. He splashed his boots with polish, straightened his shirt, hurriedly made his bed, and rushed outside for inspection. The recruits lined up. Caveman was still wearing his pajama bottoms—this time they were covered with little dinosaurs.

  Only four recruits passed inspection that morning. Marco failed on account of his rifle; he had forgotten to oil the chamber. All those who failed lay down in the sand for their push-ups, then tried again, again, finally passing inspection—uniforms and beds neat, boots polished, faces shaved, guns oiled, helmets on straight.

  "Sergeant Singh!" Elvis dared to say. "Commander! The alert last night. Did the scum—"

  "False alarm, recruit," Singh said. "A scum pod was spotted in the sky, but it landed in the nearby town, skipping our base."

  "Nearby town, Commander?" Elvis said. "Where are we?"

  "You're in hell, re
cruit, and I'm the devil," said the sergeant. "That's all you need to know. Now run—all of you."

  In the darkness, they began to jog around the camp. Another day in Fort Djemila, AKA hell, began.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Running.

  Push-ups. Sit-ups.

  A breakfast of gray slop—and finally a quick, queasy foray into the toilet stalls to expel it.

  Gathering around the tap in the desert, waiting for the drip, drip, drip of water into the canteen.

  Running. Heat. Sweat.

  One soldier passed out from heat stroke. Another threw up his breakfast. They ran some more.

  They sat outside the armory, watching Captain Butterflies speak of the scum menace and the glory of the HDF. They fired their guns. They tossed grenades. They ate, and another race to the latrine, and rumbling stomachs and shuddering and exhaustion and more sweat.

  When it wasn't Sergeant Singh shouting at them, it was the three corporals. When the corporals weren't around, the sergeant was back. Ensign Ben-Ari rarely saw them, only to deliver a quick sermon on the pride of the military, indoctrinate them with a propaganda reel, then head off to wherever officers spent their days.

  Whenever Marco was on his feet, he hoped, wished, prayed to sit down. His leather boots were so rough his blisters were growing blisters. He had developed a limp, and his lower back soon cried in protest too. It was only his third day in the military, but aside from two or three hours of sleep since leaving Toronto, he'd been running, exercising, training, sweating, shouting, and being shouted at, and he had never felt so weary. As they jogged around the base, as they stood firing their guns, as they marched in formations, as they stood for inspection—the thoughts kept racing. Please let us sit. Please let us rest. Often he felt close to collapsing, as if the blazing sunlight could knock him down.

  Yet whenever they sat—to watch a reel, listen to a corporal's combat lesson, even just eat—Marco kept praying to please stand up. Sitting was agony. Whenever he sat down, his eyelids felt like weights again, and sleep kept creeping up on him. Yet whenever his eyes began to droop, somebody was there—their sergeant, a corporal, even Ensign Ben-Ari—to shout, to rouse him, to threaten him with more latrine or kitchen duty or push-ups. As Marco sat watching films of soldiers battling scum, or watching a corporal demonstrate how to assemble a rocket launcher, Marco could barely focus, had to divert all his energy to his eyelids, this war to keep them unpeeled.

  And whenever they rose, he felt such relief—finally he could walk off his sleep!—only to instantly feel that agony in his back and legs, to keep praying to sit again.

  Whenever I stand, I want to sit. Whenever I sit, I want to stand. If Marco had to summarize his third day at Fort Djemila, it was like that.

  In the afternoon their corporals led them toward a canvas pavilion near the barbed wire fence that surrounded Fort Djemila. A few screens stood at the back of the pavilion, showing propaganda films and historical footage of the Cataclysm. The hero Evan Bryan was smiling on one screen, describing his mission to nuke the scum's home planet. Twenty or thirty massive radios sat in the shade by the screens, each the size of a duffel bag, with two leather straps like those of a backpack. The machines looked two hundred years old, like a relic from the great wars of the twentieth century. Rust coated their dials and switches.

  "Field radios," said Corporal St-Pierre, gesturing at the bulky machines. The recruits stood before her under the canvas pavilion. "With these machines you'll learn how to communicate with your fellow soldiers."

  "Corporal St-Pierre," said a recruit, "they're a bit . . . large. And rusted. And ancient. Doesn't the HDF use electronic earpieces?"

  The blond, stern corporal glared at the soldier. "Earpieces can be hacked by the scum. These radios are over a hundred years old. The scum don't expect us to use technology so primitive. You will learn to use these radios, and you will spend the next twenty-four hours patrolling the camp's perimeter with them. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, Commander!" they cried out, all but Pinky, who shouted a "Yes, pizza!"

  A few recruits turned toward Pinky and smirked. Marco winced. He was sure that Corporal St-Pierre, whose face was badly pimpled, had heard Pinky's insult. Indeed, her eyes hardened and her lips tightened. But the corporal said nothing, perhaps too ashamed, and Marco felt sudden pity for her.

  Their corporals were lords and masters to the recruits, but Marco realized that St-Pierre couldn't have been more than a year or two older than them, just a girl far from her own home. Maybe she too was afraid. Maybe she too cried in the shadows. She too was human.

  "You will take shifts," said St-Pierre. "Half of the platoon will patrol the entire fence of Forth Djemila, carrying the radios on your backs, then hand them over to the other half. Each patrol should take two hours. Then you will rest for two hours. Then you will do another patrol. You will continue to do this for a full twenty-four hours. During your two-hour resting periods, you're free to rest in this pavilion—and I strongly suggest you use those hours to rest." St-Pierre nodded toward the cots in the pavilion. "Remember. There are cameras all around this base. We will be monitoring your patrols. If anyone so much as stands in place for a minute, let alone sits down during a patrol, that's a serious strike against you. Too many strikes, and you will fail to complete basic training. Unless you want to fly back to RASCOM and start over, I suggest you take these patrols seriously. Now pair up! I want each pair to walk side by side, the next pair walking several feet behind."

  Marco glanced toward Lailani, hoping—daring to hope—that maybe, just maybe, the two could be paired up, could patrol together. He just wanted to learn more about her, about her past. That was all, he told himself. It wasn't at all the warmth when she looked at him, or how she wouldn't leave his mind, or the memory of—

  "Pairsies?" Addy said, reaching out to grab Marco's hand. The rest of the platoon hooted and whistled.

  "Romantic stroll!" Caveman said, chortling. "They're going to kiss!"

  "Remember, Marco," Elvis said, "Addy likes to be spanked."

  Addy rolled her eyes. "I'm going to spank you, Elvis, right on your big fat ugly face." She grabbed one of the radios. "But first patro—whoa!" Addy swayed, clinging to the boxy radio. It was larger than her torso. "Thing weighs a fucking metric ton."

  Marco grabbed his own radio. Addy was stronger than him, and he struggled to even lift the damn thing. He needed Elvis to help strap it across his back. At once, Marco's spine—already aching after days of basic training—screamed in protest. When he took a step, a blister burst. Across the tent, other pairs were lifting their own radios, swaying under the weight. Lailani had paired up with Beast. It was hardly fair, Marco thought, watching the massive Russian and the tiny, four-foot-ten Filipina carrying the same burden. Lailani was barely able to stay standing, but she tightened her jaw and stepped out of the tent, the radio—it must have weighed more than her—across her back.

  "Come on, soldiers!" Lailani said. "Let's patrol these fences for fucking scum. Just . . . without . . . talking." She wobbled under the weight.

  Half the platoon headed out, leaving the other half behind in the pavilion to rest and absorb some propaganda films. Each pair walked side by side, the other pair walking several paces behind.

  They began their patrol, circling the base, carrying their burdens. Every step was a nightmare. Every step was an inferno. Every step was the Cataclysm. Every step was scum claws tearing into Marco's spine. Every step was scum piercing his feet. Every step was the distance back home. The sun beat down, and sand blew into their eyes, and their guns banged against their hips. Their helmets wobbled on their heads. The straps of their radios tore into their chests, ripping, digging through, pulling down, pressing the segments of their spines together.

  "Do these radios even work?" Marco said, trudging forward.

  "Doubt it," Addy said, gleaming with sweat. "They're relics."

  "So why the hell are we carrying them?" They walked around some thorny b
ushes, among the only vegetation in the base.

  Addy spat. "Same reason they barely let us sleep, feed us slop, and shout at us all day."

  "Because they're assholes?" Marco said, wiping sweat from his eyes. The barbed wire fence stretched ahead, endlessly long.

  "Because they need you to forget who you were," Addy said. "They need to shock you, to shatter you, to break your body and spirit, before they can rebuild you into a soldier."

  "I'm not going to forget who I was," Marco said. "I don't want to forget home. To forget the boy I was."

  "Marco, sweet darling, the boy you were wouldn't be able to kill a spider, let alone a ten-foot-tall centipede predator from deep space. To survive in this war, we're going to have to change. All of us. We're no longer the kids we were, a writer and a hockey player. We're soldiers."

  "Well, nobody asked me if I wanted to be a soldier," Marco said.

  Addy glared at him. "Nobody asked the Earth if it wanted space scum to nuke it, but them's the breaks."

  Marco was too weary to keep arguing, and in truth, Addy was right. Marco focused only on walking now, one foot after another. Addy began to sing but soon gave up, conserving her breath for the journey. The other recruits walked ahead and behind them, trudging with the radios on their backs. Whenever they so much as slowed to wipe their brows and drink from their canteens, cameras on the fence moved, and voices blared out from speakers.

  "March!"

  They kept marching.

  An hour stretched by, and they had only patrolled halfway around the camp. Every step now felt like a war against a horde of scum. The sand kept stinging, the wind blasting them, the sun burning them. Marco shook the last few drops from his canteen, blinked, and trudged on. Addy was walking ahead but slowing down. Caveman was last, sweating and drooling and wailing as he walked, mumbling something about flowers and scum and bullets being so loud. Lailani walked near him, encouraging the brutish soldier onward, patting his arm. The smallest soldier in the fort looked just as exhausted, however, her face dripping sweat, her eyes sunken.