Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  "March into city hall and punch the mayor's big fat face," Addy said.

  "Not every problem can be solved with violence."

  "That's how I solve things!" Addy said.

  "Then you'll only prove those protesters right." Marco finally pushed his plate aside, giving up on his appetite. "You want my pancakes?"

  Addy added his meal to hers. She spoke between mouthfuls. "What we need is Lailani. We always worked best as a trio. The Three Musketeers. Well, we were more like the Three Stooges most of the time, but we still got shit done. She'd think of something. Where the hell is she?"

  "She needs more time," Marco said. "Last I heard, she was stationed in the Oort Cloud. That's a couple light-years away. It might take her a few days, maybe even weeks, to get back from there, depending on what starship she hitches a ride on. I just hope she has a home waiting when she arrives. The library is her home now, as much as ours."

  Addy's eyes lit up. "Hey, Poet. Since we lived in the apartment over the library, once they build that condo tower, does that mean we get a free condo?" She gasped. "The penthouse? Because we owned that land, right?"

  Marco loved Addy. Truly he did. But sometimes he wondered if she was more stomach than brains.

  "Sorry, Ads." He poured another sugar packet into his coffee. "My dad only rented the apartment. Our family never owned land."

  Addy groaned. "Nor mine. My fucking dad, man. In and out of prison. Drunk driving. Drugs. Fucker. Land? He didn't even own the dirt beneath his fingernails. I loved him, but goddamn, he and my mom—they left me with nothing but a hockey stick, big hips, and probably some side effects of fetal alcohol syndrome I'll find out about in a few years."

  "Don't forget the big nose," Marco said.

  Addy raised her fist. "When I'm done with you, your nose will be flatter than these pancakes."

  Marco pulled bills out from his pocket. It felt strange, paying with money he had found in the coffee tin on the top shelf at home—his father's money. But he imagined that dear old Carl Emery would've wanted his son and foster daughter to enjoy this meal.

  "He always made us pancakes on Sunday mornings," Marco said. "Do you remember?"

  Addy's face softened, and she lowered her fist. "I remember. He used to add blueberries and those little peanut butter drops, like chocolate chips but made out of peanut butter. I loved those."

  "Remember when we were in sixth grade, and we woke up early one morning, and we tried to make pancakes, and we set off the fire alarm?"

  Addy laughed. "They were still good, once we scraped off the burnt parts. Damn alarm was always too sensitive."

  Marco found himself laughing too. "Dad thought it was a scum attack. He put on his gas mask and everything."

  "With the amount of smoke in the apartment, not a bad thing!" She was laughing so hard now her eyes watered. "Damn, I miss the old man. I loved him."

  "I did too," Marco said quietly.

  "Hey, Poet, remember that time at boot camp when Elvis stole a bunch of packets of jam, then stuffed them into his boots to stop the blistering?"

  "I thought it was slices of Spam," Marco said.

  "Mmm, Spam." Addy licked her lips. "I love it. I wish they served Spam here."

  Marco groaned. "I never want to taste it again."

  "I have my lucky can back in the apartment," Addy said. "Stole it from boot camp. Carried it with me for five years in the army. Never going to eat it, though. That sucker is gonna be my army souvenir."

  Marco had his own souvenir at home—a severed scum claw. He thought that Addy's memento from the war was far more pleasant.

  "I miss it sometimes," Marco said. "Boot camp. I hated it when we were there. I was miserable. I thought it was the worst time of my life. But now I look back on it fondly. It was difficult but we had no responsibilities. Other people looked after us, taught us, fed us, sheltered us. Our friends were still alive. I miss it. Just hanging out at the mess, with Elvis, Lailani, Caveman, all the others. I miss Ben-Ari. I'd give up this bacon and pancakes and eat Spam again if we could be back there, together again, all of us."

  Addy nodded, head lowered. "Me too."

  Marco stood up. "Come on, Ads. We fought the bloody scum. We can face city hall. Let's go raise some hell."

  She pounded the tabletop. "That's more like it. Punching time!" She leaped to her feet. "We're going to punch the fuck out of them!"

  Several families turned to stare. Marco winced and shushed Addy before the waitress could toss them out.

  An hour later, they found themselves stuck in a line as long and exhausting as anything in the military.

  Hundreds of people filled the waiting room in city hall, covering the seats, standing in the aisles, lining up in the corridors. There were people in business suits, mothers with crying children, farmers wearing overalls and straw hats, and Marco could swear he even saw a chicken at one point. He and Addy took a number, but given that their number was in the hundreds, and the clerk had just called the eighth person of the day, it wasn't looking good.

  "I don't even know what we'll tell them," Marco said. "That we're war heroes, so please fund public libraries?"

  Addy grumbled, shifting her weight from foot to foot. There were no chairs left. "I'll grab the clerk by the collar and won't release her until we get our home back."

  The hours stretched by. The room got more and more crowded. Finally, at 5:00 PM, the clerk shuffled away from her desk.

  "Hey, we haven't talked to anyone yet!" Addy cried, and others in the crowd moaned in protest.

  "Come earlier tomorrow!" the clerk said. "We open at 6:00 AM."

  "Can we keep our number?" Marco called after her, but the clerk left the room, followed by a chorus of moans and complaints.

  Next morning, Marco and Addy arrived at five in the morning, only to find hundreds of people already cramming the halls.

  "Been coming here for three days," a heavyset woman told them. "Finally camped overnight in the hallway. Damn city turned my gas off a week ago, winter and snow and all. Ever since the last big war, everything breaks, and there's no money to fix it." She hefted the child she held. "At least coming here keeps the little one warm."

  "They should hire more clerks," Marco said.

  "No money," replied the woman. "War took everything we had."

  Marco thought about his time in the war, flying in a fleet of starships between the stars. The invasion of Abaddon had been humanity's most expensive endeavor, more than reaching the moon, more than building the pyramids, probably more than all of World War Two. A hundred thousand ships had carried millions of soldiers across hundreds of light-years to defeat the scum on their planet. Earth won. Earth was left bankrupt.

  It was something we had to do, Marco told himself. The scum attacked us. We had to fight back.

  Yet more and more, those words seemed hollow. He remembered the corruption of Admiral Bryan, a man consumed with vengeance for the scum, leading the fleet on a personal vendetta. He remembered seeing the Chrysopoeia Corporation logo on every weapon and starship in the fleet. He considered the trillions of dollars its shareholders must have earned from the war. He thought of the words the man with the megaphone had spoken—calling him a pawn.

  I never wanted to be part of any of this, Marco thought. I never wanted to be hero nor pawn. I just wanted to stay in my library and write.

  So why did such guilt fill him?

  Fifteen minutes before closing time, their number was finally called. They sat before the clerk—a stocky woman with bags under her eyes, a cold sore, and a frown.

  "Ma'am, we recently found that our home is foreclosed, that it'll be torn down," Marco began. "We'd like to speak to somebody who—"

  "Fill out this form." The clerk yawned and shoved a piece of paper his way. "You'll receive a reply within six to eight weeks."

  Addy growled, and Marco had to hold her back.

  "Ma'am," he said, "our home will be torn down in a few days. There must have been some mistake. It's a librar
y, and—"

  "City Council has voted unanimously to cut funding to all public libraries, parks, preschools, and drug rehabilitation centers." The clerk seemed to be reciting the words, stifling another yawn. "If you wish to register a complaint, please fill out a Schedule 15b." She shoved another paper their way. "You'll receive a reply within—"

  "Six to eight weeks?" Marco offered.

  "See? You figured it all out." The clerk rose to her feet. "Closing time."

  "We didn't even fill out the form yet!" Addy said.

  "Is there anywhere we can mail it to?" Marco called after the clerk, but he had barely completed his sentence before she left the room, again to a chorus of groans from the crowd that still waited.

  He filled out the form and left it on the clerk's desk.

  "I bet she's got a black hole back there somewhere," Addy said, "where all these forms go."

  "That or some paper-eating alien," Marco said. He rubbed his temple. "This was a waste of time. Let's go home. While we still have a home."

  They stepped outside into the cold, and Marco winced in sudden pain. His war wounds had been throbbing lately. He had spent most of his service in the deserts of North Africa and the Levant, and the heat had dulled the pain. Here in Canada, the snowy winds stabbed his old wounds like fresh scum claws. He saw Addy tighten her jaw, but she otherwise gave no sign of her own pain. Both still carried the scars of battle, even years after the war. A chunk the size of an avocado pit was missing from Marco's thigh where a claw had stabbed him, and skin grafts covered one of his arms, still rough to the touch. Addy's limbs and torso bore long, thin scars too. Both still complained of ringing in their ears, and Marco had trouble hearing from his right ear. But neither had lost organs or limbs. They were the lucky ones. But both had taken their share of ugly flesh wounds that still hurt if so much as a bedside fan blew on them.

  But I'd take a hundred more scars over the nightmares I still have every night, he thought. He wasn't looking forward to tonight. He knew that he would be there again. Lost in the scum hives, racing through the darkness, seeking a way out.

  These past few nights, he had dreamed of the fleshy bundle they had found on Corpus. The round, living creature wrapped in skin. The thing that had grown his face. Back in the mines, Addy had melted the abomination in a cauldron. But in his dreams, the creature emerged from the molten metal, dripping, crawling toward him, begging for the pain to stop. Marco's own face melted upon it. He had seen many horrors on Corpus. Humans and scum stitched together. Hybrids built in alien labs. Thousands of monsters in the dark. But it was that ball of flesh with his face that haunted Marco the most.

  He and Addy walked home through the snow, bundled up in their old jackets from high school. Marco remembered walking down this very street twelve years ago, fighting the snow, on the night his mother had died, on the night Addy had come into his life. He had carried a gas mask then. He had carried a gas mask for most of his life. It still felt strange to walk here without one. Without a gun. Without a helmet. He felt naked, exposed.

  The scum are defeated, he told himself. The war is over. We're safe now. We're safe.

  Yet still, when a motorcycle roared by, Marco started and nearly dived for cover. Still he kept reaching for his rifle, a phantom limb.

  They were a block away from their library when they heard the protests again.

  "No more war!"

  "War criminals to trial!"

  "Justice for aliens!"

  Marco and Addy rounded the corner and saw them there.

  "Great," Marco muttered. "Our friends are back."

  A crowd of hundreds surrounded the library, blocking any passage. There would be no reaching the fire escape Marco and Addy had been using to access the apartment above the library. The signs rose and news reporters were filming. A woman—the same one who had marched topless yesterday, though today she wore a jacket—stood on a platform, speaking into a megaphone.

  "We demand that the war criminals Marco Emery and Addy Linden stand trial!" Cheers erupted in the crowd. "No mercy for war criminals! Humans have no business in space. We antagonized the aliens. We called them scum. We invaded their territory." The protester's voice cracked with passion. "Can we blame them for lashing back, for defending themselves? And finally Emery and Linden toppled their civilization and killed their queen!" Tears flowed down the protester's cheeks. "The aliens can never recover from such genocide. Emery and Linden must face justice!"

  "Lock them up!" somebody called in the crowd. "Lock them up!"

  The chant gained more voices. "Lock them up! Lock them up!"

  "Get the fuck out of our way!" Addy leaped into the crowd. She began shoving and elbowing protesters aside. "Get lost, pests."

  "It's them!" somebody shouted. "The war criminals!"

  "Fascists!"

  "Xenophobes!"

  "Alien killers!"

  Somebody spat on Addy, and she lunged at him, fists flying. Marco tried to reach her. Chaos descended, and the news cameras kept rolling.

  "Let me through or I'll fucking kill every last one of you fuckers!" Addy cried.

  "She confessed she's a murderer!"

  "Lock them up! Lock them up!"

  A protester tried to grab Addy. She punched his face. Blood spilled. Suddenly everybody was brawling, and Marco was caught in the swarm. Hands grabbed him, pulled him, and tore his clothes. Faces spun around him, twisted with rage, shouting. Somebody spat on him.

  The scum raced around him.

  The claws grabbed him.

  He was fighting through the hive, trying to break free. Addy was shouting in pain as the aliens cut into her.

  Beast was roaring, and grenades tore him apart.

  Caveman died on the tarmac.

  Everywhere—the faces of the aliens, swimming around him, and no way out, no way out.

  Marco fell to his knees. He rose. He tried to move between them. His heart pounded and he was blind, he was losing consciousness, his hands were shaking, and sweat drenched him even in the cold.

  "Back off, assholes!" Addy was shouting somewhere in the distance. "He's sick. Back off!"

  He saw her through the storm. Addy shoved protesters aside, reached Marco, and helped him rise. He stood beside her, panting, his chest aching. It felt like a heart attack. His ribs pressed together, and his heart felt like grinding stones, struggling with each pump. Sweat covered him. He and Addy stood back to back. The sea of protesters surrounded them, hissing with rage.

  Beyond them, on the makeshift stage, Marco saw him. The bearded man with the long brown hair and round spectacles. The man who had led the march down the street yesterday.

  "Talk to us!" Marco cried out. "Come here. Pull back your people. Talk to us."

  The man stared at him through those round lenses, looking like a cross between Harry Potter and Jesus. Their eyes met, and Marco didn't see cruelty there, didn't see the mindless fury in the crowd around him.

  This one isn't just a follower, he thought. This one can see some reason.

  "Let them through!" said the bearded man.

  "Lock them up!" the crowd chanted. "Lock them up!"

  "Let me speak to them," said the man. "Bring them to me."

  Rough hands grabbed Marco and Addy, manhandling them toward the library. The long-haired man stepped off the stage and approached them. They stood outside the padlocked library door. Protesters surrounded them, blocking off any escape.

  "Hello," said the man. "My name is James. I apologize if my flock got rough with you. I don't condone violence."

  "Your flock?" Addy said. "So you admit they're sheep?"

  "And I'm their shepherd." James smiled. "As I said yesterday morning when our paths crossed, I wish you no harm."

  "Aside from making sure we end up in prison?" Marco said.

  James sighed. "An unfortunate escalation, and not a path I condone. There are those who must be imprisoned for their crimes in the Second Galactic War. The admirals and generals who led our fleet to exte
rminate the alien civilization. The politicians who funded them. The CEOs who profited from the violence. We will make sure they all stand trial. But you, Marco. You, Addy. You two were mere corporals in the war, mere marionettes. And I don't wish to see you languish for the rest of your lives in prison because of how you were manipulated."

  "So call off your goons," Addy said, "and get the fuck out of our lives."

  James sighed. "That I can't do. Because though you were marionettes, the old defense of 'just following orders' has never applied to those guilty of war crimes. But perhaps . . . we can work out a deal." He leaned forward, eyes shining. "Join us, Marco and Addy. Join the Never War movement. You will rise high here, become the poster children of our struggle. The world will see that Marco Emery and Addy Linden, the so-called heroes of the war, the warriors who destroyed the alien civilization—that they oppose the violence! That they support withdrawing all humans from space! That they support sending their officers to prison! Join us, and I'll protect you from both harassment and legal action."

  "Hmmm." Addy stroked her chin. "I have a counteroffer. Why don't you go fuck yourself?"

  James's smile tightened. "This attitude might have served you in the war, Sergeant Linden. But it won't win you many friends on Earth. And right now, you need all the friends you can get."

  "Right now you need to get the fuck out of my way before I plant my boot up your ass," said Addy.

  "James," Marco said, stepping between the two. "We just got home a few days ago. We're tired. We're cold. We're jet-lagged. Give us a few days to consider your offer. Give us space. A ceasefire, if you'll forgive a military term. Then we'll talk again."

  It was, perhaps, the best Marco could hope for now. He needed time to gather his thoughts, to come up with a plan—a plan to deal with his library foreclosing, with Lailani still missing, with his father's death, with the Never War movement, with his own guilt and confusion, with this new civilian life that already was looking like another war. He could deal with all this. He could face it. He just needed time to calm the damn shakiness, to ease that pain in his chest, the flashbacks that still haunted him. Perhaps, once his thoughts were clear, he could find peace with this movement, with the city, with his own tormented soul.