Will McIntosh - Watching Over Us

Laurel smiled wanly. Diamond’s logic was airtight. The only people who knew what was going on were miles underground, plotting hopeless strategies and doling them out a scrap at a time. Not that it had helped much against an enemy that always knew how many troops were headed their way, what weapons they were carrying, and, when it mattered, which way they were pointing those weapons.

Before she could cut off the thought, she was assaulted by an image of her daughter, Julie, clutching a rifle, perched on her toes, trembling furiously, her hair smoking.

Laurel squeezed her eyes shut, tried to banish the image. It was usually Julie she thought of, because she’d watched Julie die. Mark, Paul, their grandkids had all died far away. Sometimes she could delude herself into thinking they’d died quickly. Not Julie, though.

A dozen yards ahead, Lieutenant Carter blew her whistle. “Early camp today. Rest well.” Her red-rimmed eyes flicked from one recruit to the next, assessing the impact of her words, or perhaps trying to burn the significance of those words into these children.

Tomorrow, you will probably die. And so will I , she was saying.

Dinner was a treat: MREs, your choice as long as they lasted. Laurel picked corned beef and cabbage with mashed potatoes, and sat with her kids. The other two adults of legal age in their platoon—Pete Casing, an auto mechanic in his sixties, and Rob O’Neill, a retired advertising exec who had to be five years older than Laurel—ate with their own group of adopted comrade-children. They’d fallen into the arrangement without ever discussing it. It just made sense.

The evening sunlight shimmered off the water. Laurel appreciated reflected sunlight more than she had before the invasion. Anything that was the same as it had been before the Luyten dropped out of the sky, twisting and spinning like huge starfish, was precious.

“I’m gonna go swimming,” Jared said, licking the last of the vanilla pudding from its plastic container.

“No, you are not,” Diamond said. “The water’s probably polluted. Plus it’s too cold out.”

Sergio hopped up, ran down to the weed-choked shoreline, and dipped his hand in the shallow water. “It’s warm.”

Jared and Sergio looked at each other, grinning uncertainly.

“Should we?” Jared asked Sergio.

“I will if you will.”

Jared pulled his shirt over his head, exposing rows of ribs. He tossed it on the ground a few feet from the gently lapping waves as Sergio ran to join him, pulling off his uniform until both were in nothing but white underpants, wading in on their skinny stork legs, hugging themselves in the chill air.

Laurel expected Lieutenant Carter to shout the idea down, but she only eyed them from under the bill of her cap, eating fruit salad from a can with a white plastic spoon.

Shrieking, the two boys splashed into the water. It was three feet deep at most; they dunked themselves to the neck.

There had come a day, maybe ten years earlier—six years before the Luyten invaded—when it had suddenly occurred to Laurel that she likely had more fingers and toes than birthdays left. Less than twenty Christmases left. Less than twenty summers. The time ahead had once seemed all but infinite, then suddenly it was all too finite. Today, she could count the days ahead on one hand.

Laurel stood, unbuttoned the top button on her uniform blouse.

“What are you doing ?” Diamond asked, her nose scrunched in disgust.

“I’m going swimming.” For the very last time .

The kids stared at her loose, wrinkled skin. She’d been pretty once—not cheerleader-pretty like Diamond, but not bad. Now she was all saggy skin and age spots. Today, she didn’t care.

Sergio had been full of shit; the water was freezing. It felt good, though—it made her aware that she was alive, helped her drink in the feel of water pressing her old limbs, the scent of mud and fish.

The Lieutenant watched as half a dozen others stripped and took to the water, screeching, splashing, laughing. This time, she didn’t reprimand them to maintain silence.

Bobbing in the shallow water, Laurel watched the Lieutenant watching her troops. She’d managed a Wendy’s before being drafted two years earlier, so she was used to supervising teenagers. Laurel smiled, remembering what Carter had said when one of the troops pointed out how lucky Carter was that the Luyten hadn’t gotten her yet.

It ain’t luck , she’d said. It’s about knowing when to run .

A scream jerked Laurel awake. It was still dark, the air icy cold on her face.

“Mom. Mom .” It was Jared.

Laurel shoved her boots on, went to Jared, who was sitting up, his breath coming in gasps.

“A nightmare?” she asked, sitting on the cold dirt beside him.

Jared swallowed, nodded. “I was at the movies, with my mom and my sister, Jenna. Then when I looked around, they were gone. All the people were gone, and the theater was filled with Luyten. They were all around me, watching the movie, and I knew when it was over they were going to kill me.” Jared started crying.

Laurel put a hand on the back of his shaved head, pulled him to her, patted his back. Nights were the hardest. These kids had been given no choice but to grow up quickly, but in the middle of the night, when their guards were down, they turned into children again.

“Do you want me to get my things and sleep here?” Laurel asked.

“Okay.”

Laurel dragged her blankets over and pressed close to Jared.

“I miss my mom and dad,” Jared said as the dark leaves overhead clattered in a crisp wind. “Everyone else has it the same, I know. I just have to suck it up, but—”

Laurel put her hand on his head. “Just because everyone else lost their parents doesn’t make it hurt any less that you lost yours.”

She felt Jared’s shoulders jerk as he cried quietly.

“Everyone’s hurting,” she whispered. “Everyone. Even Lieutenant Carter. It’s okay to hurt.”

The soft rustling of blankets nearby made Laurel turn. Diamond was standing over them, pillow in one hand, blanket in the other.

“Can I sleep here?”

Laurel patted the ground.

It was comforting to have warm bodies pressed close on either side. It reminded her of camping out with her own kids thirty years earlier, up in Maine. Acadia National Park. That was the year Mark had so much trouble with nightmares, the vivid imagination he would channel into a career in computer animation still running out of control. Sleeping in a tent in the dark woods had terrified Mark, and they’d had to cut their vacation short. At the time the trip had seemed like an utter disaster. Laurel would give anything to be back there.

“I know they’re coming for us,” Diamond whispered. “I don’t know why they’ve waited this long.”

Sergio appeared out of the darkness, dropped his blankets next to Diamond. “I tried talking to them.”

Jared raised up on one elbow. “What do you mean?”

“They can read our minds, so I talked to them, kind of like I say my prayers. I asked them please not to kill me.”

“Why don’t you ask them for a pony while you’re at it?” Diamond said.

“It’s a chance, at least.”

Laurel shushed Sergio. “You’re going to wake the others.”

In a lower voice, Sergio said, “I’m only telling you because I thought you might want to try it, too. What could it hurt?”

It was nothing but fantasy, but Laurel kept her mouth shut. If it took the edge off Sergio’s fear, let him believe Luyten could be bargained with.

No one spoke after that. Laurel wondered if Jared and Diamond were praying to the Luyten for mercy as well.