Will McIntosh - Defenders

Something small and black was skipping across the grass, blown by the Harrier’s rotors. Oliver squinted. It was probably a piece of trash, but it looked heavier, almost like a shoe. He watched it roll and bounce along.

“Hang on. What is that.” He pointed at it. Erik switched to Oliver’s side and peered out the window.

“What is what?”

“There.” Oliver pointed. “Is that a shoe?”

Erik lifted a pair of binoculars, trained them on the object as it skipped across a walkway and came to rest, pressed against a curb.

“It is a shoe.” He dropped the binoculars and turned to the pilot. “Set it down.”

Before they’d even touched ground, Erik was out of the Harrier, running toward the shoe. He was as desperate to find Lila alive as Oliver was. They could have won the defenders over, in time, if they’d been more patient, but the Luyten War had left humanity too skittish, too scarred. So instead the defenders were heading for Moscow, Mumbai, Washington. Oliver had no illusions about what they would do when they arrived. They were angry.

Erik was halfway back when Oliver caught up to him. Oliver took the shoe Erik handed him, barely had to glance at it. “It’s Lila’s.” She’d brought only two pairs of shoes, and bemoaned the limitations of her footwear almost daily.

Erik cupped his hands around his mouth. “ Lila? Lila. ”

Oliver scanned the horizons. The sewer grates were huge iron things, too heavy for a human to lift.

Cold.

That voice in his head, so familiar even after fifteen years.

“Five,” he said under his breath. Cold? It wasn’t cold. It was hot, even hotter than usual with so many buildings on fire.

Oliver turned, looking for some sign of Five. Was he nearby?

Warmer.

“What?” Oliver said aloud.

Erik frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” Warmer. Like the children’s game? Oliver took a step in the direction he was facing.

Warmer.

“This way,” Oliver said, with no idea where he was going.

A half dozen defenders padded behind and beside him as he trotted down the street. He was hot. Not red hot yet, not burning, but hot.

“Lila?” he called.

The pop of gunfire erupted to their left and behind them. Oliver dropped to the ground. He heard a shout—a human shout—then more gunfire as one of the defenders went down and the others ran for cover.

Oliver lifted his head enough to see human soldiers racing from the corners of buildings, peeking from behind buses, more of them pouring in from around an enormous block of concrete that had once been part of a building. He crawled on his belly, away from the soldiers, in the direction that was “hot.”

Hot.

Behind him, he could hear defenders returning fire, someone on a comm, maybe Erik, calling for air support, or a tank, anything big.

Hot.

It was all Five would say to him. For all Oliver knew, Five had been hot-and-colding him not toward Lila, but toward this ambush.

Very hot. Red hot.

Oliver glanced around. He almost laughed out loud when he saw the rectangular gap in the sidewalk to his left, the thick steel grate leaning up against the side of the building.

Boiling.

He clawed his way to the opening, swung his legs around, and grasped a steel pipe that was one side of an oversized ladder.

He slid twenty feet to the floor of a sewer pipe, looked left, then right…

Scalding.

He went right, wary that Five might be leading him toward a divorce-sized pit. He didn’t understand why Five was helping him.

There was a breach in the pipe. “ Lila? ” he called.

“Oliver?”

Oliver ducked through the breach, then took a few anxious breaths before plunging ahead, down a freshly dug tunnel.

Toward the bottom he saw a blue glow. He called again, “Lila?” Rushing around a bend in the tunnel, he saw Lila, the side of her head a bloody mess. She was in a room packed with Luyten, who were doing exactly what Five had said they would do if humans launched an invasion.

Lila launched herself at Oliver and hugged him fiercely. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it,” she said.

Above them there was a mechanical shriek, like metal being twisted. One of the defenders’ big weapons had arrived. He’d sorely hoped they would surface to find live human soldiers and dead defenders.

Lila let go, and Oliver examined the wound on her head. It was difficult to see much in the dim light, but from what he could see, it was bad, even if not life-threatening. It looked like she’d been partially scalped.

“How the hell did you find me?” Lila asked.

“Five.”

Lila looked surprised. “Why would he help me?”

Oliver shrugged. “Maybe he’s trying to make amends for breaking up my marriage. Maybe they want to deliver you into the hands of the defenders. I have no idea.” He motioned for her to go first.

She took a few steps, then paused. “I think he did it for Kai.”

“For Kai?”

“That’s right. I have no idea why I think that. I just do.”

“ Lila? ” He could just barely hear the voice. Erik, shouting from street level.

“That’s your special friend,” Oliver said, gesturing toward the surface.

“Oh, no,” Lila said, her voice low, and soaked in dread.

June 9, 2045. Washington, D.C.

His car inched along. Kai was sure he could walk faster than they were moving, especially with the amount of adrenaline rushing through him, but not for twenty miles, carrying Errol and a trunk full of food and water. FEMA’s emergency navigation system had been activated, so Kai’s vehicle was under auto-control meant to maximize traffic flow out of the city.

He watched the news, keeping the feed small so Errol wouldn’t see it. Kai glanced at Errol, strapped in the back. He was sleeping, his cheek pressed against the side of the child seat. Errol’s peaceful face was a stark contrast from the images on the feed. When the defender force reached Mumbai, a piece of it had peeled off and attacked. They went right for the most densely populated spots, killing as many people as possible. Along with conventional weapons, their forces were equipped with chemical weapons. Huge fish-shaped fliers swooped low over neighborhoods, releasing gas. It was killing everyone, inside buildings and out, burning lips, eyes, lungs. Forty minutes after the assault began, everyone, everywhere in the city, seemed to be dead.

The retired general commenting on the feed said that was why the defenders had ceded Australia so quickly: In Australia their soldiers would be mixed with Alliance soldiers throughout the city; the battle would have to be fought street by street. The defenders had far fewer soldiers, so they were at a strategic disadvantage. By going on the offensive, they could capitalize on their strength: huge weapons of mass destruction; chemical weapons humans shrank from using against one another and had consequently ceased manufacturing decades earlier.

They were on their way to D.C., and they were targeting civilians. Kai dug deeper into the news feeds, seeking information about the fate of people trying to evacuate. Would the defenders target people obviously leaving the city, or just let them leave?

He found a panicked personal text feed from a woman named Sangita who was trapped in Mumbai. The people in Mumbai hadn’t had enough warning for any organized evacuation to begin, so the arteries out of the city hadn’t been clogged with evacuees. So Kai had no idea if the defenders would attack fleeing refugees.

He took a deep breath and dragged his hair out of his eyes. After the conversation he’d had with Lila, he probably knew more about the defenders than any other person on this highway. The defenders were killing as many people as possible, not just seizing strategic territory, and they wouldn’t hesitate to target evacuees.