Joe Haldeman: Earthbound

A few individuals and small parties have made it here from the East Coast and Midwest by horseback or bicycle. I’ve heard of people who walked all the way, but haven’t met any, and would not be inclined to believe them. That would be a long walk in less than two years.

The tales these travelers bring are not usually happy. Most of the heavily populated parts of the East are burial grounds, or just boneyards. There are towns like this one, able to guard enough land to grow subsistence crops, and keep a moderately large population safe from marauders.

Of course these towns tend to be on rivers or lakes, in temperate or warmer climes. The surviving population of Florida is probably ten times that of New England.

(The people who originally settled this country from Europe did live in the north, and had to deal with killing winters. They wouldn’t have done so well, though, surrounded by millions of starving people with guns. Hard to get a farm going when people will kill for one ear of corn.)

Fortunately, ammunition is getting scarce…

I felt Paul wave and turned around to see Namir running toward us, his rifle pointed down at a slant. “We’re okay,” he said, too softly for Namir to hear.

Still holding me, he turned partway around, to look in the direction the man had been running. “I think he went back into the HQ building. Here.” He handed me the pistol. “Sit down behind me.”

He sat down cross-legged and planted his elbows on his knees, bringing the man’s rifle up to sight down the barrel. He clicked a switch, I guess a safety, several times.

The pistol was heavier than it looked. The barrel was warm. I kept my finger away from the trigger.

Namir ran up and hesitated, looking at the body, and then got down prone next to us and pointed his rifle in the same direction. “Somebody in there?”

“I think so. I’ve got his weapon.”

“Probably more in there. Come on!” He sprang across the road to where a panel truck was stalled sideways. “Get cover.” We followed him and crouched down behind it.

“So what happened?”

“Two guys wanted to go down to the motor pool and kill a Martian. They didn’t know we had Elza’s pistol.”

“That one grabbed me.” I pointed at the body. “Grabbed my breast.”

“And you shot him in the head. Remind me to mind my manners.”

“I shot him,” Paul said. “Had to. It was obvious they… they weren’t…” He swallowed hard.

“Weren’t going to let you live,” Namir said. “Good you thought fast.”

“I didn’t think at all.” He left the truck’s cover and walked over to the man he’d killed. He nudged the man’s body with his toe. “Fuck.” He kicked him. “Shit. Fuck.” Kicked him harder.

I ran over and held him, then pulled him so close I could feel his heart’s hammer in my own chest. Felt him kick again and again. “Fucking shit,” he sobbed.

My eyes stinging wet on his chest, I echoed him, fucking shit. Strong and meaningless words.

“Get back here,” Namir said. “Please! You’re sitting ducks.” He fired a short burst at the door.

Paul snapped out of it and hurried back, with me staggering in tow. “Sorry,” he said to Namir, as we got down next to him. “Never done that before.”

Namir squeezed his shoulder and nodded, not taking his eyes off the door.

A spot of white appeared in one corner of the door, a white cloth being waved. “Show yourself,” Namir shouted. “Hands up.”

He stepped into the light, blinking, still waving the white flag, which turned out to be underwear.

“Don’t shoot. I don’t have no gun.”

“Who else is in there?”

“Ain’t nobody now.” He started to gesture.

“Keep your hands showing!” To Paul he said quietly, “Stand up with the gun. Aim it at him but stay behind cover.” Then he stood and started walking toward the man.

“One move and you’re dead. If anyone else shows up, you die first.”

He got close enough to point the rifle right between the man’s eyes. “Now turn around, slowly.” He did.

“We’re going into that building. You’re certain there’s no one in there?”

“Nobody I know of.”

“If I see one person, I’ll blow your brains out.”

“One dead guy! There was one dead guy, maybe two.”

“If they’re still dead, you’re safe.” He tapped him on the back of the head with the rifle’s muzzle, and the man flinched. “Move it.”

“This doesn’t look smart,” I whispered to Paul. “How does he know he’s not walking into an ambush?”

“He’s the expert.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe he’s assuming that if there were someone armed in there, he would have fired at us while we were exposed. But he has to know for sure before we turn our backs on the building.”

“Maybe.” Or maybe, I thought, Namir was going to kill the man in cold blood, and didn’t want to do it in front of us.

They went inside the building, and I waited for the shot.

It didn’t come. They shuffled back out, and Namir said something to him, and he ran away at top speed. Namir kept the gun pointed in his direction but walked casually toward us.

“The place is a mess. A man and a woman dead, and it looks like someone sprayed around the whole control room with automatic fire. Nothing there for us.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“No idea. That man, Jemmie, said it was like that when they came in. He’s probably lying, but I don’t think he or the other killed those two. They were shotgunned.”

“They might have used a shotgun and then discarded it,” Paul said.

Namir nodded and shrugged. “ ‘Every man shall die for his own sins.’ I had to either let him go or kill him.”

“We couldn’t take him with us,” I said, but didn’t like the idea of him being out there and brutally angry.

“Let’s go back to the motor pool,” Namir said. “Wait for darkness.”

“Or the U.S. Marines,” Paul said, “whichever comes first.”

Elza was waiting for us at the door. I handed her pistol back. “It works.”

“We saw, through the binoculars. Good thing you had it.”

“It was.” Though I’d been thinking of it more as a curse than a blessing.

“You should go talk to your brother. He’s not taking this well.”

“The shooting?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t see that. Just things in general.”

The end of civilization? How childish of him. “Where is he?”

“Snack room.”

He was sitting cross-legged under the skylight with six empty near-beer cans in a pyramid in front of him. Pretty fast work. Thirty minutes?

“Card—”

“I saw Paul kill that man.”

“Yeah; me too. See?” I turned to show him the speckles and spatters of blood and gore on my left shoulder.

He nodded, looking at it as if it were a shirt pattern. “I couldn’t be part of it anymore.”

“You’re not going through one tenth what Paul is.” Not to mention your sister. “He’s never killed before.”

“I know, I know. But you don’t understand.”

“I guess I don’t.”

He took the can off the top of the pyramid and sucked at it. “I have three physical identities. Had. The other two are completely, were completely, electronic. They could take external forms—rent-a-bodies—when it was convenient, but they didn’t have to.

“For most of my life, when this original body became uncomfortable, I could step out of it, and automatic repair nanosystems would take over, while I stayed in one of the other two bodies.”

“You mean if your brain makes you uncomfortable?”