As they flew over the desert, Sergeant Singh moved down the fuselage, pushing a bin full of civilian clothes.
"All right, soldiers!" the sergeant said. "For this exercise, you'll be emulating civilians, and I want you to look the part. Remove your uniforms and choose civilian clothes from this cart. You'll be leaving your uniforms, your helmets, and yes—your guns—here on the plane."
"And if the scum attack for real while we're there, Commander?" Addy said.
"Then they'll enjoy a delightful snack. Now off with your uniforms!"
There wasn't much time to rummage through the bin. The sergeant gave them each only a few seconds to grab whatever they could. Marco managed to pull out white sneakers, a pink button-down shirt, and green pants—not just olive drab like a military uniform but actual leprechaun green. He wanted to find a different outfit, but Singh rolled the bin away.
With a sigh, Marco pulled off his fatigues, remaining in his boxer shorts and undershirt. The green pants were too short, revealing half his shins, and loose around the waist. He reused his uniform's belt, hoping the sergeant would approve this single usage of military equipment. The shoes were too large, and the pink shirt was tiny. Marco was barely able to squeeze his arms through the sleeves, and there was no way he was buttoning the thing.
When Addy looked at him, she burst into laughter. "You look like an old lady whose clothes shrunk in the dryer!"
Marco grumbled. "Well, you look like a soccer hooligan."
Addy had managed to grab a soccer jersey, jean shorts that fit well enough, and flip-flops. She grinned and spun around, showing him the word "Alvarez" printed across the back of her jersey. "But I am a soccer hooligan! Alvarez—best player in the world!"
Elvis groaned, stepping toward them in a leather jacket and tight leather pants. "I told you, Maple, the best player is Santos."
Addy and Marco's eyes widened.
"Holy mother of God," Marco whispered.
Addy blinked and pointed at Elvis's outfit. "Leather daddy!"
"Hey!" Elvis bristled. "It's Elvis. The real Elvis. His Comeback Special, 1968." He gave a karate chop. "Thank you, thank you very much."
"I thought Elvis wore white jumpsuits with rhinestones," Marco said, thinking back to the classical music Kemi would play for him. "You look more like Rob Halford."
"Elvis wore leather too." Elvis grumbled and walked away down the fuselage.
Jackass pirouetted toward them in a frilly pink dress. Her unibrow was raised in delight, and her buckteeth thrust out. "Aren't I a pretty princess?" She danced through the fuselage, merely giggling as recruits tossed clothes at her.
"Great, it's an ogre in a dress," Addy muttered.
"She's not an ogre," said Marco. "Just a bit odd. She's a nice person."
Addy shuddered. "She eats dry paint she peels off the walls, Marco. She eats paint to get sick and spend days in the infirmary. She's a weirdo."
Marco shrugged. "I like weirdos." He thought about how the recruits mocked Corporal St-Pierre, how he had later seen her crying, confessing her fear to Ensign Ben-Ari. "Maybe there's more to Jackass than others see."
"Oh god, there's more?" Addy cringed. In the back of the plane, Jackass was now braying like a donkey and letting another recruit ride her. "Thank you, I've seen enough."
Soon all the recruits were dressed in an assortment of secondhand, discount-bin clothes. Marco had never seen a more ridiculous group of people. Nobody's clothes fit right, and no outfit seemed newer than two generations. Caveman wore a flowery Hawaiian shirt and kept stroking the fabric. Beast looked miserable, wearing a yellow suit that was several sizes too small. Pinky wore a bandanna and a jeans vest, and he was busy sawing through his sweatpants with his knife, shortening the legs.
"Holy shit," Addy whispered. "Would you look at that. It's true. She's actually a girl."
Marco turned around, and his jaw unhinged.
Wow, he thought. Just . . . wow.
At first he didn't recognize her, was sure it was a different recruit. But it was her. It was Lailani. She walked toward them in a blue dress that actually fit, white slippers, and a wide hat that hid her buzz cut.
Elvis approached, whistling. "Wow, de la Rosa is hot. Who knew?"
Lailani grumbled and kicked him hard, knocking him back. "Shut up, Leatherface." She came to stand before Marco, grumbling. "I look fucking ridiculous."
"You look like Audrey Hepburn," Marco said.
She raised her fists. "Don't insult me. Who the fuck is that? Some princess?"
Marco smiled thinly. "Think of it this way, Lailani. It's a disguise. Your enemies won't expect a petite, beautiful woman in a summer dress to slaughter them."
Lailani groaned. "I don't want to be a petite, beautiful woman. Fuck this shit. Yo, Elvis! I'll switch clothes with you."
His head appeared over a seat. "What? I look glorious! Get lost, de la Rosa." His head vanished behind the seat, then popped up again. "Seriously, you look like a princess."
Lailani groaned and tossed one of her slippers at him. "Fucking ridiculous," she muttered, stomping off. "I look like a goddamn doll. I didn't join the goddamn army for this shit . . ."
Marco watched her leave. Addy grinned and elbowed his ribs. "Poet's in love!" She waggled her eyebrows at him.
He pushed her elbow away. "Shush, hooligan."
There were no windows on the plane, but Marco guessed that they were flying over the Mediterranean by now, heading toward the Greek isles. Marco had read many books about Old Europe, a place of civilization, art, culture, architecture, a rich history of both beauty and bloodshed. Half that continent had been destroyed in the Cataclysm, and many of the old landmarks from the books—the Eiffel Tower, the Big Ben, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Dio Statue of Rome—were gone. But still, Marco vowed to soak up whatever he could of this continent, even if they spent only a day here, even if he saw nothing but a few old buildings. It was better than looking at barbed wire and sand.
Sergeant Singh returned with a bag, handing out laminated cards that dangled from lanyards.
"These are your acting roles," said the sergeant, giving a card to each recruit. "You're already experts at acting like scum killers, so you might as well act like scum victims now. Once we land, we'll distribute you across the city. Wear these cards around your necks. Rescue forces will be along to save your miserable asses."
Marco accepted one of the cards and read it. "I have two broken legs."
Addy whooped, raising her card overhead. "Nice! Choking on scum miasma." She began to cough theatrically.
"Crushed by a collapsed building," said Elvis, slipping his lanyard around his neck. The card dangled.
"What?" Lailani exclaimed, staring at her card. "Impaled by a scum claw? No way I'd let those buggers get close enough."
Across the plane, they began to act out their roles. Recruits moaned, rolled on the ground, yowled in pain, coughed, choked, and begged for help. Caveman delivered a powerful performance of a burnt man, earning applause. Marco even caught Singh smiling, but the sergeant soon scowled again, and Marco realized that Singh too was an actor, had always been acting.
"All right, enough!" Singh said. "You've all won your Oscars. Wait until we land before you act up again. We're descending now. And remember, you might look like a bunch of idiots, but you are still soldiers of the HDF. You will conduct yourselves with dignity among the locals. You represent me now, represent your officer, and represent the entire Human Defense Force. So act like it. Even if you're dressed like a bunch of morons."
They landed on the runway and emerged from the plane, leaving their uniforms, helmets, and weapons behind, taking only their dog tags. They found themselves in an HDF airport, and buses pulled up to the runway. Each platoon filed into one bus, and they left the base, heading—for the first time in six weeks—into the civilian world.
They drove down a road between palm trees and a beach. Hills rose to one side, lush with pines, fig trees, and cypresses, and many white and b
lue houses grew among the greenery. Soon the buses were heading through the city itself, and on the sidewalks, they saw people—real people, civilians with real lives, shopping, chatting, laughing, eating. Inside the bus, the recruits of the Dragons Platoon pressed themselves against the windows, staring at the city rolling by. After two months in hell, it seemed impossible that this world could be real, that it wasn't just another propaganda reel.
Addy leaned across Marco, pressing herself against the windowpane. "It's real. It's beautiful. People. Food. Life."
"Get off!" Marco tried to shove her back into her seat. "Your knee is digging into my groin."
She ignored him, leaning over his lap, her elbow now pressing against his ribs as she stared outside. "I see a cafe, Marco. A cafe that serves real food, not just Spam."
"I thought you liked Spam." He struggled to pull her off him. She was all poking elbows and knees. "God, you weigh more than a scum queen."
Addy finally sat back down in her seat, eyes shining. She clasped his hand and squeezed it, and as she gazed at him, her smile faded.
"Marco, do you remember how at school we learned about . . . what was it called? The great tragedy before the Cataclysm. The one with the Nazis."
"The Holocaust?" he said. "From two hundred years ago."
Addy nodded. "Yes, that one. One story stuck with me. It was about a class of children from a ghetto. The ghetto was inside a normal city, but concrete walls surrounded it, and nobody could leave. It was like a prison inside the city. For years the children lived in that ghetto, starved, beaten, tortured. Finally they were loaded into trains, taken out of the ghetto, a journey toward death camps outside the city. As the trains pulled out of the ghetto, the children looked outside the carts, and they saw the actual city around the ghetto. They saw real life, people who weren't starved, beaten skeletons, people who had normal lives. The children realized that not all the world was hell, not everyone had been reduced to an animal state. Just them. And yet that world was beyond their reach. They could see it, but they could never live it. And the train rolled on. That's like us. We can see real life, but it doesn't belong to us."
"Grim story," said Marco. "And not at all like our story. Those children were taken to death camps. They were gassed to death."
"And we're being trained to become scum fodder," said Addy.
"No. We have guns. Helmets. Grenades. Brave commanders. We're being trained to kill scum." Yet his words sounded unconvincing to his ears. Perhaps Addy was right. Perhaps those people outside the windows—enjoying the day, walking with friends, eating, laughing—perhaps that was something he and Addy could no longer become, would never have again. Perhaps they were like those children, having a mere glimpse of another, older world before the poison and fire.
They drove up piney hills, moving higher. Between the trees and homes they could see the Mediterranean. White and azure buildings rose around them, some with arched windows, some with domes. The buses rattled along a cobbled street, then finally entered a war zone.
It wasn't a true war zone. Marco saw no scum, heard no bullets or bombs. But it looked the part. An entire neighborhood had been converted into a massive ruin. Ambulances flashed their lights. Medics were setting up tents. Buildings lay fallen, and bricks, uprooted trees, even bent bicycles littered the streets. Water gushed out from a smashed fire hydrant, and smoke unfurled from burning tires. The buses traveled through the ruins, and everywhere swarmed the rescue services of the HDF, wearing hazmat suits. Marco had grown up in war. He had seen scum attacks and their aftermath. But those had always been localized to a couple of blocks. Here was street after street of mock ruin.
"It looks like the Cataclysm," Addy muttered.
"Minus all the corpses," said Marco.
Addy grinned. "That's us."
They spilled out of the buses, three hundred of the oddest characters the town had ever seen. With saggy pants and tight shorts, with clattering flip-flops and shoes that clowns would think excessive, with frilly dresses and Hawaiian shirts louder than artillery, they walked through the town. Marco kept tugging up his sagging green pants, and his pink buttoned shirt was so small it was cutting off circulation to his arms. His shoes kept falling off his feet. His card hung around his neck on the lanyard, denoting him a man with broken legs—which could very well become reality if he kept tripping over his shoes.
"Spread out!" shouted Singh. The sergeant still wore his uniform, complete with a military turban, and carried his T57. "We begin in ten minutes. Find a place and stick to it."
Marco walked down the cobbled street, past parked ambulances, around a medical tent, and along a row of willows and pines. Even as radios hummed, hundreds of people bustled back and forth, and helicopters hovered above, Marco inhaled deeply, reached out, and let his fingers run between the willow leaves. He knelt and lifted a pinecone.
There's a world here. There is Earth. There is still beauty.
Lailani knelt before him, and Marco gazed at her dark face, her almond-shaped eyes, her somber mouth. She held out her hand, and on her palm stood a tiny turtle.
"Loggerhead," she said. "Thought you'd like it."
Marco smiled.
Yes, there is still beauty in the world.
They gently placed the turtle among the pines, then walked until they saw a pile of bricks and tires between three crumbling walls. It seemed like a good place for the scum to shatter a man's legs and impale a woman's chest. Marco and Lailani lay down on the rubble, and soon Addy and Beast joined them. Across the ruins, other recruits found their own places. Some lay on the street, a few recruits climbed onto a roof, and Elvis climbed onto a tree and slung himself across a branch.
And they began to act.
"My skull is cracked like melon!" cried Beast. "Feels like Russian tank drove on it! Not puny American tank, they can't break walnut!"
Addy was coughing and rolling around. "Help, I'm poisoned! Scum miasma! Evil scum butt gas all up in my lungs!" She coughed and made gagging sounds. "Almost as bad as Marco after eating cheese!"
"Help, a scum claw skewered me!" Lailani cried. "Though I don't know how, because there's no way they could have come close enough! Because I'd kill them in half a second!"
Marco, for his part, did not join the orchestra of voices. He lay on the rubble, trying to convey broken legs as best as possible, which just involved bending them and giving the odd grimace.
After a few moments of this, Addy said, "Well, where are the medics?"
Marco shrugged. "It's meant to be a realistic drill. The scum just devastated Greece. It'll take the medics a while to organize."
"But nobody's appreciating my performance!" said Addy.
"It's lovely," said Marco. "Encore, encore."
"Don't you talk fancy French to me," said Addy. "I'm not Corporal Pizza."
Marco had taken his copy of Hard Times with him. Before the military, he would read a lot. He had read exactly five pages in the past five weeks of basic training. When he opened the paperback, Kemi's photo fell out. He looked at her for a moment. For two years Kemi had been his girlfriend—the girl he loved, wanted to marry. The girl who was now at Julius Military Academy, training to become an officer, to have a military career. Marco looked over the photo at Lailani, who lay on the rubble nearby, moaning about the scum claw, which had inexplicably pierced her despite her fierceness.
"It's only because I dived in front of it to save Marco's life!" Lailani was calling out. "Otherwise I'd never get stabbed!"
Lailani was an odd one, a broken bird Marco wanted to heal, whom he loved, a woman who shouted about killing scum and dying in battle, yet one who was soft, loving, kind.
You brought me a turtle, he thought. That means more than you know.
He stuck Kemi's photo between the back pages of the book, then returned the book to his pocket.
Air blasted the ruins as three medical helicopters hovered down toward them. They landed by the rubble, red lights flashing. Medics leaped out, wearing gas mas
ks and carrying stretchers. They wore white HDF uniforms, and patches on their arms displayed serpents coiling around staffs.
"Triage and take the most serious cases you can save," rose a voice from inside a jet. "Leave the mortally wounded. We have no room for them."
Marco lost his breath.
"You can save me!" Addy said, coughing. "My goddamn lungs are full of—ow!" She yowled as a medic stabbed her with a needle. "Hey, what the fuck, man, this is pretend!"
"I'm done for!" cried Lailani. "Gored! Skewered! Leave me. Save the others!"
Marco frowned and pushed himself onto his elbows. He recognized the voice that had come from the chopper . . .
"Get them on litters." A woman emerged from the helicopter, wearing a white uniform, a blue beret, and a gas mask. "Not that one. She's a goner. Take the poisoned woman, and that one, his legs are—"
She stopped talking.
Marco's heart pounded in his chest.
"Kemi," he whispered.
She stared at him across the ruins. She pulled off her gas mask, revealing wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
"Cadet Gray?" asked a medic, standing by Marco with a litter.
Kemi stared at Marco, gasping, then collected herself. "Take him, Doc. Load him into my chopper. Go, move! Another scum attack is imminent."
The medics lifted Marco onto the litter. He wanted to leap off, to run toward Kemi, but they strapped him in place and carried him into one of the medical helicopters. Kemi entered after them. Other medics carried Addy and Beast into the two other choppers, leaving the mortally wounded—included Lailani—behind.
With roaring engines, the helicopters rose.
As they flew over the city, Marco managed to rip off the straps binding him to the litter, ignoring the medics' protests. He stepped toward Kemi, and she stared at him, frozen, face hard, a cadet in training dedicated to her task. Then her eyes dampened, and she laughed, and she pulled him into an embrace.
Earth Alone (Earthrise Book 1) Page 20
