Fireworks

by James A. Moore

  "Offi… Captain Osborn, you should stay away from them."

  The man shook his head as if irritated by an annoying noise. "Nope. Gotta see if any of 'em are alive."

  "Captain, those men are…" What? Notgovnganywbere? Armed and dangerous? Property of the U.S. Government? "How are they, sir?"

  "First two are dead," he stated as he moved to the third. "This one's still alive."

  Jack breathed a small sigh of relief. Craig Williams was his regular patrol partner, an easy-going, talkative man with no more desire to hurt anyone in Collier than Jack himself possessed. Not like a few of the others running around in environmental armor. There were at least a dozen men on report for excessive use of force against the civilians. They took the deaths of the other soldiers personally, and wanted revenge. Jack couldn't blame them; he'd had similar feelings himself, initially, but they weren't here as an execution squad. At least not yet.

  Osborn pulled the mask away from Williams' face, deftly moved his fingers along the sides of the man's armor, seeking a way to remove the ceramic breast plate. "How do I get this damned thing off him?"

  Jack didn't speak. He walked forward and pushed his fingers into the two slots where the locking mechanisms hid under the flat black fabric covering the armor. Three seconds later, he was peeling the stiff shielding away from his friend's chest. Aside from a small puncture mark along Craig's ribcage, near his armpit where the armor didn't offer as much protection, the man didn't look hurt in the least.

  Osborn spoke again. "You know CPR?"

  "Huh? Oh, yeah."

  "Then get your butt over here and start working on his chest. He ain't breathin' and his pulse just stopped."

  Frank Osborn started blowing air into Williams' lungs, while Jack placed his two gaundeted hands against Craig's chest and started doing regular thrusts. Seeing how pale Craig was, Jack focused on his actions, avoiding the thought that Williams might well be dead or dying. The activity became the center of his world, until he felt Osborn shaking his shoulder hard enough to rock his whole body.

  "What?" Jack realized that his arms were burning with fatigue, but continued his actions anyway.

  "I said forget about it. He's dead. There's nothing we can do." Osborn was silent for a moment, looking at the dead man before them. Then he turned to Jack and sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't think anything could've helped him."

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment, forcing thoughts of retaliation out of his head, right along side the thoughts of how fond he was of Craig Williams. They weren't exactly friends, but they'd been close to reaching that level.

  The photosensitive lenses in his facemask activated, switching over to night vision amplification. Jack hadn't been consciously aware of the world growing darker around him until that moment. The goggles' ability to magnify the light faint light until it imitated full daylight was a blessing. When his vision readjusted itself, Jack leaned forward and scrutinized Williams' body. The small wound on the dead man's side caught his attention again-it looked like a nasty bee sting, but hardly fatal-and Calloway looked over the opened shirt, trying to find a spot where something could have caused the break in Craig's flesh. What he found was a small dart, the sort used for tranquilizing animals, sticking out of the fabric between the front and back armor plates.

  Despite the best efforts to make a perfect suit of armor mesh with environmental gear, there were still areas left vulnerable. The heavy galvanized rubber over cotton hadn't managed to stop the dart anymore than it would a bullet or a knife. The sections where armor didn't protect the bodies inside the suits were necessary, at least if the person in the special uniform wished to move freely. Any more armor, and the suits became too cumbersome for combat situations. The best protection the military could design, and still it wasn't even enough to stop a dart from a tranquilizer gun.

  "Looks like these fellas might've been done in with poison." The voice behind Jack startled him, but he didn't let it show. He turned to face Osborn, and saw him pointing to a spot on Pike's side, where another of the darts was still sticking through the heavy material. "Guess maybe I know what was stolen from the veterinary clinics now, don't I?"

  Jack shook his head, irritated that no one, himself included, had considered the thefts worth a more careful investigation. Anderson was going to go ballistic. Jack couldn't blame him. Sloppiness was the only possible answer, and that was never a good excuse in the Colonel's eyes.

  While Jack was contemplating just who was going to get reamed, Medical showed up, along with five more soldiers. With the lenses over his eyes, he could clearly see the name and rank of every person on the detail. Lieutenant Powell was on the scene, and Jack felt himself begin to relax. Powell could take over the investigation, and Jack could go back to just being a grunt again.

  Powell looked at the bodies on the ground, looked at Jack, and shook his head. "You open the armor?" He asked, pointing to Williams' lifeless form. The voice came through on the private wavelength used for short range communications. No noise for anyone without a helmet to hear.

  Jack responded using the same method. To anyone around them, it seemed the soldiers were simply standing around. "Yes, sir. Captain Osborn and I attempted CPR, sir. He was the only one still alive when we arrived on the scene."

  The lieutenant stared in his direction and Jack realized how unsettling it was to have no idea what was going on behind the goggles they all wore. After several seconds, Jack looked away.

  "Take the captain with you, go identify the civilian at the front of the house. You're a little too close to this particular scene." Jack nodded and turned to go. Powell, along with the other officers, didn't want salutes or any indication of who was in charge. With the shootings going on, Jack couldn't blame them. The entire reason their rank was printed in paints invisible to naked eye was to ensure that no one knew who to kill in order to cause the most damage to the unit. Only Anderson and Hawthorne broke that rule, and that was simply because they had to be available to the civilians. They were also the best-guarded of the soldiers, for obvious reasons.

  Jack gestured to Osborn, and asked if he'd come around to the front of the building. He gestured to the older man as well, and the three of them started off. Despite the apparent freshness of the complex, the house they walked around was already starting to show signs of negligence. There were small flakes of paint peeling from the boards, and the grass hadn't been mowed in a long time. Up at the edge of the roof, just below the decorative trim around the gutter, a rather large wasps' nest brooded, like an oversized wad of wet paper. When he'd lived in Collier, no one would have let the minor details go for so long.

  The New Yorker pointed to the spot on the front porch where the body lay, covered by a bright blue bed sheet with yellow sunflower patterns. "There he is. I think it's Dutch Armbruster. I didn't want to get close enough to find out, in case there's evidence you need to examine, and my eyes, they aren't so good anymore. He's been staying here ever since that thing crashed in the lake. His girlfriend is inside. She's a nervous wreck. I tried to ask her if she knew what happened, but she hasn't been up to talking. I… I think she's in shock, but I just don't know for certain." The man spoke a mile a minute, and his smile was a nervous one, almost as if he were embarrassed to mention anything at all about the dead man's private life. His thinning hair was stuck to the crown of his head by a heavy layer of sweat. Jack knew the weather had to be killing him; New York seldom got anywhere near as hot as it did in southern Georgia.

  Frank Osborn moved the cotton sheet away, looking down at the battered form beneath the covering with a critical eye. Jack envied the man his detachment. Beneath his mask and helmet, he made a face as he studied the ruins of the man.

  Osborn ran a finger across the man's neck, pausing to feel for a pulse. With a puzzled look on his face, he lifted one eyelid and then the other, looking at them closely as he did so. Lastly, after he'd checked the man's throat again, he held out a hand in front of the pulped nose on Armbruster's face.
>
  Osborn looked over at Jack with a slight sneer on his face. Jack couldn't decide what caused the expression. Maybe it was just a bad day, or maybe he was questioning the competency of the person who'd covered Armbruster's body. "He's alive! You think, maybe, that you could convince one of your fine doctors to get the hell over here? This man's still alive, but he won't be for long if he doesn't get proper treatment. I can barely feel his pulse and he's hardly breathing at all."

  Jack nodded, then he toggled the switch at his jawline, and spoke into the radio. A few minutes later, two of the medics came around the side of the house. The night felt like it would never end.

  2

  Contrary to his beliefs, Jack's shift eventually ended. Armbruster hung on, though there were still doubts about whether or not he'd live through the next twenty-four hours. Whoever'd beaten him had done a remarkable job of breaking most of the bones in his body. The only ones they'd left intact were the vertebrae around his spinal cord; if there were more undamaged, Jack was certain it was strictly an oversight on the part of the man's assailants. Unfortunately, Armbruster was is no shape to tell them anything.

  Jack Calloway, and virtually every other person he'd spoken with during the last twelve hour shift, was convinced the same people who'd worked over Armbruster were responsible for the deaths of the men from ONYX. Simply put, they had to be stopped at any cost. Every soldier killed was another weapon potentially in the hands of their prisoners. Just as importantly, the deaths of the soldiers broke morale.

  Despite what he suspected most of Collier felt about him and the other soldiers, none of them wanted to hurt anyone. The 'enemy' in this case wasn't a soldier from another land. The enemy was the population of a town caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The people of Collier were near the end of their collective rope, and it didn't take a genius to know that the situation was about to go from bad to much worse.

  He pulled up in front of the Collier House, an antebellum home that had long since been converted into a hotel. Since he'd left Collier, several additions had been added to the back. While the front lawn and the front of the house still retained the original style of the old place, complete with pillars and a second story verandah, the back looked much more like a Holiday Inn or a Ramada Inn. The rooms even had cable and HBO. Jack forced the thought of his night here with Karen O'Rourke from his mind. It wasn't easy.

  Just a few hundred feet away, the Dew Drop Inn sat like a bloated frog in the darkness. Even from this distance, the place looked like an eyesore. Hard to believe the same people owned both of them. Hard to believe, for that matter, that anyone on the planet would actually think the name "Dew Drop Inn" was even remotely cute-but he'd seen several sleazy motels and even a few nice establishments with the same name. The Inn was being used to store equipment and supplies, and only housed a dozen or so guards. Jack was lucky; he didn't have to stay in the sleazy little dump. Evan Walotsky'd told him the place had cockroaches bigger than the local squirrels. Jack was inclined to believe him. He turned away from the eyesore and walked towards the Collier House.

  On the bright side, the newcomers from a separate division, one not even connected with ONYX, were here to make matters worse. Oh, he had little doubt they'd manage to discover where all the weapons being used by the civilians came from. He had less doubt they'd do it quickly. But he'd heard about people like the "conditioning experts" who'd come in yesterday. They were normally saved for special situations, like when people witnessed something they shouldn't have and had to be silenced quickly. Or when the answers to questions were needed quickly and honestly.

  Jack vaguely remembered going into a room full of such experts right after he was chosen for ONYX. There were three men and two women. He remembered that much. But he couldn't remember what they looked like to save his life.

  Corporal Calloway, it is our job to make absolutely certain that you understand the gravity of the position you've been offered…

  All he truly remembered was being cold, and leaving the same room a full day later. Jack shivered, despite the heat, as he checked in with his lieutenant, Evans, a man who had absolutely no sense of humor, and headed towards the Decontamination room.

  The Decon room was a joke: once in the men's restroom, in the lobby of the Collier House, Jack took off his helmet and felt the air-conditioning attack the drops of sweat on his face. A few seconds later, two of the soldiers on duty sprayed him down with a yellow liquid and then hit him with a foul-tasting light blue liquid. After he'd dried himself off, he was allowed to go back to his room. Jack endured the same routine every day.

  He stepped out of the Decon room and moved down the long hallway towards room 117, his home away from home.

  Jack was lucky; he only had one roommate, as opposed to the four most of the soldiers had to deal with. Rank hath its privileges, after all. Ellison was already out on patrol, so Jack had the room to himself. He stripped out of the heavy survival suit and out of the sweaty garments underneath, as well. Despite his desire for a warm shower, he ignored the bathroom and fell straight onto his bed. The chemical showers in the morning would have to do; regulations didn't permit the use of local facilities for anything but answering the call of nature. Any water he consumed had to come from the canisters held in the kitchen, and there wasn't enough of that to allow for a shower.

  Jack thought briefly about the time he'd spent living in Collier. He expected some sort of emotions to come through with the memories, but there was nothing. At least not until he came to Karen. There were plenty of feelings there, oh yes. Despite himself, he still wanted to be with her. The years hadn't changed that much.

  Seeing her when she'd found the body of that kid stuck in the razorwire hadn't done him a lick of good. Just like that, he'd been a teenager again, weak in the knees at the sight of her, and feeling his own heartbeat thundering behind his ears. He'd wanted to wave to her, to see her recognize him, and to pull her into his arms. Naturally, the survival suit between them sort of slowed down that whole concept.

  That, and she might not understand just why he was one of the people holding Collier at bay. Hell, he had trouble with that one himself. One minute he's off in the desert, living the life of any other grunt in the Army, and the next he's on a plane and cruising towards his old home town, carrying a gun and trained to kill in hand-to-hand combat. Aside from his face, and his feelings for Karen, there was little that he had in common with the Jack Calloway that she'd known so long ago.

  He'd tried writing to her several times after he moved away, but he'd never received a response. He'd even tried calling once, but Karen's mother had simply stated that Karen was no longer interested in him. Jack wasn't too stupid to take a hint. Despite a very strong desire to see her, to talk to her, he understood that Karen was off limits.

  Jack closed his eyes and started to drift towards sleep. It was a long time in coming.

  3

  Waking up took a lot less effort than finally convincing himself to rest. Jack suspected the explosions had something to do with that. The first rattling boom had Calloway rolling off his bed and reaching for his survival suit. Long years of practice paid off, and he managed to slip into the pants and torso of the outfit in less than a minute. When he realized his eyes were starting to water, the rebreather went straight over his face. Two plugs later, power and oxygen were making the mask do its stuff. Immediately, the lenses in the faceplate activated, adjusting to the lower level of light. Jack grabbed his boots and slid them over his feet, managing to shove his feet into his socks in the same motion. Clarion horns started screaming throughout the building, and he thought he heard gunfire.

  Jack wrestled his second glove into place as he activated the radio-speakers in his helmet. The helmet slid over his head and worked on the clamps even as he listened…

  "…umber of attackers unknown. Best estimate is at least seven, repeat, at least seven." Arlbuck was in the command center, barking orders and keeping everyone apprised of the situation at the
same time. Jack grabbed his firearm and stepped closer to the window, spying what he could through the glass.

  Several of the Humvees were on fire, burning as brightly as the noonday sun. There were already soldiers doing their best to put out the fires, but Jack could tell it was a lost cause. He switched his radio from Standard to Command and called out to Arlbuck. "Corporal, this is Sergeant Calloway. Get those men away from the vehicles and have them finish scoping out the area. The last thing we need is any of our boys caught watering the lawn by another asshole with a dart gun."

  "Affirmative, Sergeant!"

  Calloway was about to ask what the situation looked like when he got a first-hand serving of the local hospitality. From the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw the bottle sailing through the air. There was no wick, nor was there a flame, but he had the good sense to duck anyway.

  The bottle shattered against his window, spilling down the side of the building. A second later, greenish smoke boiled across the wood and glass. Then the whole trail of liquid burst into flames, hungrily chewing into the aged wood.

  Calloway kicked the window hard, breaking the glass from its frame. He climbed outside. There, in the distance, he could see the forms of half a dozen people darting behind a few of the Humvees that weren't yet burning. They were too far away to see clearly, but he could easily tell that they weren't in survival gear.

  Everything was automatic. Jack was barely aware of his commands, toggling his radio switch instinctively and alerting the others to where the potential threats waited. Jack made certain none of his people were in the way and opened fire, moving forward as he did so. Several of the soldiers followed his lead, and Jack barked orders into the radio.