Will McIntosh: Watching Over Us

There had been no fence or wall to mark the perimeter of the human-controlled territory in and around Pittsburgh, only a phalanx of tanks, howitzers, and concrete bunkers filled with heavily armed soldiers who were neither children nor old. Laurel’s seventy-year-old legs struggled to keep up with her platoon as they fled through the wreckage of that breached perimeter; she saw the burned and mangled bodies of some of those soldiers.

People were screaming down in the valley behind them, down in the city. The Luyten were tearing them apart, electrocuting them with weapons that looked like divining rods, burning them alive with mushroom-shaped heaters. The air stank of charred bodies. Fires raged in a hundred places, the smoke funneling to form one big cloud over the city.

The few soldiers on the perimeter who’d survived had turned their heavy artillery around, were firing into Pittsburgh.

“Lieutenant Carter?” Laurel called to her CO. “What about the people down there?”

Carter waved her platoon on, between two bunkers, waited for Laurel to catch up. “They have to get out best they can. We can’t worry about them.”

The only civilians left were either very old or very young—people who weren’t capable of fleeing. The thought of them huddled down there made Laurel want to die.

Carter lifted her head, shouted, “Straight down to the railroad tracks. Let’s move.”

Bad as Pittsburgh was, Laurel dreaded leaving it for the forests and fields, all of it Luyten-controlled territory. The closest safe haven, now that Pittsburgh had fallen, was Cleveland.

“How far is it to Cleveland?” she asked Lieutenant Carter, shouting over the artillery.

Carter shook her head. “We’re not going to Cleveland. We’re being sent somewhere else. I don’t know where just yet.”

A black dread washed over Laurel. They weren’t retreating to Cleveland? What else was out there but Luyten territory?

Of course even their chances of making it to Cleveland were slim to none. The first time they got within eight miles of a Luyten it would sense them, and come after them.

They reached the railroad tracks, which ran behind a tract of row houses, bending off to the right, beckoning Laurel’s platoon, promising an easy walk to their deaths.

“If it’s a rumor, why are they all saying the same thing?” Sergio, who was walking just ahead of Laurel, asked. Laurel had been thinking about a trip to Scotland she’d taken years ago with her husband, Mark, and her kids, Paul and Julie, all of whom were dead now. She hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation.

“Because that’s how rumors work: One wrong idea spreads,” Todd said. “I mean, giant soldiers ? That’s the secret weapon? How would it help us to have bigger soldiers? This isn’t wrestling.”

“They kicked the Luyten’s asses down in Chile. That’s what Captain Noble said.” Sergio had a sticker of the Incredible Hulk on the back of his helmet.

“He did say that,” Jared chimed in.

At this point Laurel didn’t know what to think, so she stayed out of it. Giant soldiers? It sounded unlikely. But the details—that they’d retaken a power plant in Chile, that they were being created at production facilities deep below Manhattan, Moscow, Shanghai, and, of all places, Easter Island, were curiously specific and consistent. Diamond had picked up a short-wave transmission reporting the same thing Sergio and Jared had heard in the barracks.

But, giant soldiers?

Her legs were burning. No matter how hard she willed herself, no matter what trick she tried, Laurel could not widen the length of her strides. Her old hamstrings simply did not have any additional elasticity in them. It felt as if she had too-short steel cables attached from the bottom of her ass to the back of her knee.

Watching Sergio march along the railroad tracks in front of her, she gauged that she was taking almost two strides to his one. And he was only thirteen, and six inches shorter than she was. She could see right over his head as it bobbed along in front of her.

She burst out laughing.

Sergio hiked up his pants for the hundredth time since the platoon began the day’s march east, and turned to look at her.

“What’s so funny?”

“You ever hear the expression, ‘If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes?’”

Sergio frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was just walking along, thinking that saying isn’t true if you’re a head taller than the dogs in front of you.”

“Har-de-har-har,” Sergio said. A couple of the other young troops groaned.

“Maintain silence,” Lieutenant Carter, their lead dog, called over her shoulder. Carter wasn’t a head shorter than Laurel—she was the same height, carrying two hundred fifty pounds of beef, her brown skin mottled with burn scars from a close call with a Luyten heater.

Laurel wondered why silence was necessary. In a traditional war you were silent so the enemy couldn’t hear you coming, and to increase your chances of hearing them coming. Luyten could hear their thoughts, and if they heard Luyten coming, it was too late to do anything but say a prayer.

They cleared the stone ridge that had hugged the railroad track for the past mile or so, and a town came into view. Dead-end streets with ratty Cape Cods, a main street with a carpet outlet on the end. There was no one in sight.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Sergio asked.

“Probably to that pizza place,” Diamond said, pointing at the dilapidated, abandoned restaurant. In a few years Diamond would have become a cheerleader, with her long, skinny legs and pretty round face, but now those skinny legs only made it harder for her to carry a full pack.

“Right,” Sergio said, “we walked for two days to get pizza.”

“I’m joking ,” Diamond said.

“I’d walk two days for pizza,” Todd chimed in, speaking over Diamond. He was sixteen, and usually stayed out of the sillier conversations.

“I’m guessing we’re headed for Cincinnati,” Laurel said. Often she felt more like a camp counselor than a soldier. She spent much of her time mediating pointless disputes while choking back tears at the thought of these kids being slaughtered by jewel-colored aliens the size of elephants.

“I bet they’re taking us to rendezvous with the ‘secret weapons,’” Jared said. He’d pulled out his little game player, was using some of its precious battery power, somehow playing his basketball game while simultaneously watching where he was going. Laurel had no doubt he’d been a popular kid in school back in Queens, with his big brown eyes and dimpled smile. In that world he and Sergio never would have become friends. Sergio snorted when he laughed, and had no interest in basketball unless superheroes were playing.

“There ain’t no secret weapons,” Diamond said. “Every couple of months there are rumors of something that’s going to save us, and it always turns out to be bullshit.” She yanked at one of the shoulder straps on her pack, trying to tighten it.

“Well, Lieutenant Carter told me it’s true this time,” Jared said. His voice hadn’t even changed yet. “She said there’s something in the works, and it’s going to change everything.”

Up ahead, the tracks met up with a small river and curved right along the bank.

“She’s a lieutenant ,” Diamond said. She was behind Laurel, so Laurel couldn’t see her rolling her eyes, but knew she was. “They don’t tell her anything. You think they’d tell her about a secret weapon so the starfish can pull it out of her head?”