Then, you do what you do.
At the time, we did what the inputs told us to do.
And we didn’t do nothing wrong.
After we’d finished with the girl, Red took her outside and ended it. That’s all I have to say on the subject.
Croakman sat on the floor, hands behind his back.
The others, they didn’t believe in “the practice”—in the power of the blood. But I made sure to drink a little, straight from the hearts. The best way to do this is to open up the chest and lick it. If you do that, you won’t go crazy. It’s an old superstition, but I believed it. Still do. Red and Joseph didn’t. They didn’t lick the hearts.
Joseph shot himself five or six years later. We lost touch after the war ended, but I heard he was having a hard time adjusting. The country was celebrating the victory, but he was off drinking. Someone found him up there on Dinosaur Hill, under the oak tree, covered in leaves. It was autumn.
Red hung on a long time, ‘til about ten years ago when the government spilled the beans with their announcement. I don’t know if Red felt guilty, necessarily, when he heard, but it definitely don’t help one’s state of mind to discover they played a part in destroying the world. Then again, who could have guessed the Martians had come to help us escape from this rock before the solar flare comes two years from now.
Do I feel guilty? You keep asking me the same thing. Why? Is it gonna change anything? No. So stop asking.
I wasn’t the only one who did the killing—there were millions of us. That’s why there’s never been any war tribunals. We’re all in on it, you got that? What does it matter now that the planet’s almost dead?
Huh? You’ll have to speak up. . . .
What happened to Croakman’s wife?
Hell, I don’t know. She was away on a trip at the time. She prolly remarried someone else after she heard the news. Did she have more kids? Word was, they were expecting at the time.
As for how old her grandkids might be, I don’t know that either. Prolly about your age. How old are you? Thirty-three? Sounds about right.
It’s funny, but . . .
You kind of look like him a bit. Croakman. It’s in the face. The shape of it . . .
Hey, be careful with that knife . . . It ain’t something to play with . . .
Wait, what did you say your last name was?
And what’s that you’re doing with your eyes?
Still You Hear the Soldier Scream
It’s the forty-seventh anniversary of the start of the ongoing Terran War, and this is one of those events you’ll tell your friends about for years. You’re annoyed, because this man is going to make you late for work—he’s standing in your way, after all, and your office is up there, and why is he standing there screaming like this?
You glance at the other people who have stopped to watch. They wear dark slacks, nice shoes, like you. Hair coiffed, like yours. None of you have ever seen a screaming man like this. You sense a vague obligation to help him—but for some reason, you don’t.
You push to the front of the line for a better look. The screaming man is wearing camo fatigues. He grips a briefcase. You see white in his knuckles.
And his face. Contorted. Veins and tendons strained through his pale-white skin. When he turns profile, you see his Adam’s apple swelling like an oversized bulge in a man’s tightie whities.
The One-State Army Bureau in downtown San Francisco is no building to scream at. You all know this. No one has to say it.
“He’s been here an hour already,” a gray-suited bureaucrat tells you as he munches a doughnut. A few of the onlookers make conversation. A strange bonding experience. Somehow you feel like old friends now. “Hasn’t stopped once. Don’t know how his voice can hold up that long.”
Someone scans the screaming man’s face and runs it through the Forum. Details emerge. His name: Joe Armstrong. A military man. A sergeant, a sixteen-year veteran. Three tours in the Great War. You whistle, amazed. It’s a miracle he’s survived this long. You only did one tour, which was compulsory then, and got out after two years.
Police lights. Sirens.
“Sir, I need to ask you to quiet down.” The first officer, forty pounds of gear strapped around his waist, steps up to Sergeant Joe Armstrong, places one hand in front of his face. But Joe doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even notice him.
The officer tries again. “I’m going to give you a ticket for disturbing the peace!” No response. He steps away to confer with his partner and discuss their options. You doubt they’ve been trained for this.
The partner, a short, pudgy, bald guy who looks conspicuously out of place, tries his luck. They’ve got to be civil here. Delicate, even. Too many people watching. “Sir, I’m going to place you under arrest unless you stop screaming. Do you understand?”
You glance up the side of the building. Coworkers squash their faces against the glass as they peer down.
The soldier keeps screaming.
The officer removes the handcuffs from his belt. He yanks on Armstrong’s forearm, but it doesn’t budge. Instead, the soldier wobbles, stiff as dead wood, a mannequin cast in stone. The officer yells at him to stop resisting. When he doesn’t, he is tackled to the ground. You wince at the crack of his head.
Still, the soldier screams.
You turn. The crowd has grown. It’s starting to spill into the street, blocking traffic. The automatic cars have stopped, too. It seems eerily quiet.
The second officer rushes to help the first. They flip Joe onto his stomach and wrest his arms behind his back without his permission. You hear a bone snap.
Unable to unwind his fingers from around the briefcase handle, the officers bash them with their batons. Whap, whap, whap! The fingers refuse to loosen.
The two cops back away, breathing heavily. A federal security guard jogs up, hands them each industrial-grade earplugs. They stick them in and decide what to do next.
Your stomach tightens, you’re going to vomit. You just know it. You whip around, kneel on the pavement, and the sensation passes.
When you stand, a second security guard emerges from the building holding a rag and a roll of duct tape. The officers shove the rag into the screaming man’s mouth. When it’s good and tight in there, they wrap the tape twice around his head. The scream is stifled now, but more guttural. Animalistic even.
Now, the briefcase. Your stomach lurches as the police resume whacking the screaming man’s fingers. After three whacks, the fingers turn purple. They looked like abused sausages. After ten whacks, the knuckles shatter like walnut shells.
Still the man screams. Still he grips his briefcase.
More police, more sirens. Eight or nine officers now. They each take turns smashing Sergeant Armstrong’s fingers. You overhear a female officer who hangs back—crowd control, you know—say the suitcase must be removed before they arrest him. There could be a bomb inside.
Woop, woop!
The bomb squad pulls up. In tow are more police, an ambulance, a fire truck. It’s very crowded now. You shove people away. Don’t want to lose your spot. A front-row view of this event is mandatory.
The robot steps out of the back of the police van. It’s seven feet tall and walks on two legs. A technician controls it remotely. Its fingers are made of metal pincers. Its jet-black eyes conceal a dozen tiny cameras.
When it reaches the screaming man, it pauses. Cocks its head to the side, sizing him up. The screaming man pays it no attention.
The robot’s metal pincers reach down and grip the man’s index finger at the knuckle.
And they pull.
The finger is ripped backward from the hand, connected now by only a thin strip of flesh. Someone vomits as a fingernail skitters across the pavement.
The robot moves on to the other three fingers and the thumb, breaks them all. Then it drags the briefcase a safe distance away. The fingers look like scrabbling crab legs.
Police demand that you back up. You run to building-right an
d leap up onto the statue near the water fountain. This is your perch now.
A little door opens in the robot’s abdomen, from which extends a whirring saw that severs the lock on the briefcase. The robot backs away. A technician appears wearing a puffy, protective suit. Kneeling by the case, he places his hands on the latches.
Pop! The briefcase springs open.
Silence.
The technician stares inside.
And withdraws a single piece of paper.
You crane your neck to see.
The words printed on it are big and black:
“LISTEN TO ME.”
The screaming soldier has burst the capillaries in his face. His nose has been shattered. Looks like smashed bread. At his feet lie his crumbled teeth.
Still, he screams.
Someone starts the chant and slowly everyone picks it up, and suddenly you’re chanting for the man, and it’s growing louder and more intense, and it’s not a chant anymore—it’s a scream. You all scream for the screaming man.
“LISTEN TO HIM! LISTEN TO HIM! LISTEN TO HIM!”
You realize now the message of the screaming man. You all do. It’s so obvious.
There is no message.
The scream is the message.
The police turn on the crowd. They yell into walkie talkies. They fan out, then encircle you all. Time to go home. Show’s over.
Someone strikes an officer in the head with a rock. He staggers, falls, and the others respond immediately with tear gas and rubber bullets. You feel a tug on your arm. You look down. You’ve been hit. You cover the back of your head and flee down the road through the smoke that’s sprung up like a magician’s trick. Eyes burning, throat aflame, you retreat to an alley, hustle through to the next street, and sprint to the police station.
There you wait for the screaming man to be delivered. You can hear him even before he’s led out of the police car, a sort of low-pitched growl-yell behind the rag.
The officers drag the screaming Joe Armstrong through the front door. Walking on his own is impossible. He screams while they book him. He screams when they strip-search him. He screams as they lug him down the hall past the other inmates.
Later, inmates and officers who were willing to talk tell you what happened. Joe Armstrong was retching, gagging on the wet, grimy cloth that had been shoved into his throat. In their cells, the other inmates smashed pillows over their ears, flushed their toilets repeatedly. Nothing could stifle the sounds.
The guards soon grew weary. After three hours, the screaming produced such an acute anxiety in them that they were unable to hold down solid food. They had no choice but to do what they did. The posse of twelve cops marched to the man’s cell. They tried once more to speak some sense into him. When that didn’t work, they tried fists. When that didn’t work, they tried clubs.
Finally, a shot rang out. Then another. The man who screamed screamed no more. The body mysteriously disappeared some time later. There is no record of an autopsy. You’ve checked.
The death is pronounced a “suicide by cop.” The Army sends the screaming veteran’s family a folded flag.
Two decades pass. The country has been at war with Terra for sixty-seven years. No protests to bring the troops home have worked. Nor has pleading with Congress, or letters to the president. And every year, more and more soldiers march up to the One-State Army Bureau to scream. This year, thousands will come. They will stand outside the building and wail. They will carry briefcases with one-sentence messages scrawled on slips of paper. They will be beaten and put to death.
It’s easy to see what they want.
But their message is never heard.
Wreckoning
Chapter 1
Sight
On his twelfth birthday, Charlie Webb’s parents decided it was time for him to see what it meant to be an adult, so they made the appointment to give him his eyes.
Born with congenital cataracts, Charlie had never seen his parents, their home, or the sun that had become increasingly reddened by the synthetic Martian atmosphere. His parents, who had great health benefits, were able to get him the procedure at a lower price than most.
At home, they unwrapped the bandages from around his head. Charlie squinted, getting used to the light. In his blindness, he hadn’t seen nothing. He had seen colors and streaks, here and there. His parents always told him that was normal for the blind. Something about synapses and protein strands.
“Is that the bookshelf?” he asked after the unwrapping, putting visuals to the items he’d groped at in the dark for his entire life. He spent three days gazing at everything, especially the hover cars that zoomed outside their windows.
And all was fine and good, and their family was as fine and good as could be.
Chapter 2
Gremlins
Two weeks later, Charlie and his mom were taking a stroll around their neighborhood. Each large home had a lawn manicured by tiny robotic insects. As they returned, Charlie pointed to something at the base of their house. “What’s that?”
“What? I don’t see anything,” said Mrs. Webb.
“Right there! It’s an animal or something.”
“Oh, that. That’s nothing.” She waved her hand and kept walking.
“But it’s chewing up the bottom of the house.”
Mrs. Webb took his hand and told him not to worry so much, that it wasn’t good for his health. She unlocked the door with the retina scanner, and they went inside. Soon, Charlie forgot all about the small creature.
That night, as he was trying to sleep, he heard something scratch-scratch-scratching on the side of the house. Peeking out his second-story window, the wind flash-chilling his skin beneath his pajamas, he spied the same red creature he had seen earlier, low to the ground, scurrying along the base of the house on all fours.
Charlie craned his neck for a better look. Everywhere the creature went its jaw clanked up and down, up and down, splintering the wood panels. Then it set its mouth sideways, walking along, nibbling away.
Charlie shut the window and tried to sleep. Mom had said not to worry. But how long would they eat the house for?
Mrs. Webb poured her son a glass of orange juice and set it alongside his eggs and toast. She took her own plates to the sink and washed them. “There’s your father again,” she said, shaking her head, peering out the kitchen window into the backyard.
Yep, there was Charlie’s papa alright. Already in his rocking chair, looking out over the golf course they lived on—the ninth-hole green.
“What’s he holding?” asked Charlie.
“His shotgun, silly.”
Charlie’s eyes gleamed. He’d heard many stories about the gun—heard it go off many times, but—
“Can I play with it?” he asked.
His mom sighed. “I suppose. Go ask your father.”
Moments later, Charlie was standing next to his dad. Mr. Webb didn’t look at him. He just rocked in his chair, back and forth, watching the golf course. He rocked for quite a long time.
His father rarely spoke to him. But Charlie often spoke to his dad; he knew his dad liked it. He’d told him so, once. So Charlie sat and asked questions, and Mr. Webb didn’t respond but that was okay.
Every so often, Mr. Webb would yell into the air and fire his shotgun. The noise was loud, but at least now Charlie would know it was coming. Unlike before, when he had only the short warning of the pump. The very mention of the gun was enough to tighten his neck and shoulders and invoke intense bodily shaking.
The doctors sometimes called that stress.
Mr. Webb racked the gun. An empty shell landed behind him on the small pile of shells that had accumulated there. Beads of sweat lined his forehead. He looked pained.
“I got the cancer,” he said. “I got it bad.”
“No, you don’t, Dad. You’ve been saying that since I was a baby.”
Mr. Webb ignored him. “It’s in my stomach. It’s working its way into my liver and kidneys.
I can feel it growing. You’d think in the year 2158 we’d have a cure, but I guess not.” He stared off for a long while. Somewhere a golf club struck a ball.
Suddenly, he shrieked like an animal in agonizing pain. Again he fired the shotgun into the air.
Charlie watched the discharged shell fall onto the growing pile. His vision drifted past the pile, to one of the creatures gnawing at the base of the house. He could see it had already eaten a six-inch hole into the wood; soon it would be able to crawl under their home.
Charlie asked his father about them.
“Huh? Those are nothing. Don’t worry about them. They’re just doing their job.”
“What job?”
But Mr. Webb shrieked again and shot his gun into the air three times. “I got the cancer,” he said.
Charlie sighed, and returned to the house.
Chapter 3
Misgivings
Charlie couldn’t have guessed Matilda was so pretty. By society’s arbitrary standards, she was not. She had a weak chin and a square head, and never grew out of either. She walked duck-footed. But when Charlie saw her his first day back at school, he grew shy and found it hard to speak.
“Do you see colors now, too?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
She held up a forest green marker. “What color is this?”
“Blue.”
“That’s right!”
Then it was time for the children to line up at their desks, where they stood for thirty minutes each day while the teacher got herself sorted out.
Charlie had always heard the sounds of Ms. Temple’s self-flagellation, and was curious about what exactly happened during those periods of intense whacking and crying.
Escaping Midnight (What Goes On in the Walls at Night Book 3) Page 9
