James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“That’s about what I’m guessing,” Hannibal said. He checked his watch, which had luminous hands. “In under two hours. We’ve got almost ten hours to make our rendezvous.”

“I’d rather get there four hours early than one minute late,” George said, and not for the first time.

“From what I was told climbing in and out of this pipe is going to be a pain,” Sarah told them.

“Still better than walking around outside the whole time,” Hannibal said. “And thank God we haven’t had any rain, can you imagine walking through knee deep water in here? Be a fucking horror show. I’m actually shocked we haven’t run into any mutant alligators.” He checked his watch and then squinted at the satellite windows on the sheet in his hand. “In sixteen minutes we’re going to have a four minute blackout window. I think that’ll be barely long enough just to get all of us out of this hole. Then there’s a bird above us for seven minutes, and a twelve minute blackout window. What do we have, about a quarter mile above ground to the next hole?”

Sarah was consulting her map and satellite data as well. “Yeah.”

“So do we wait until the longer window before popping our heads out like gophers?” Ed asked the group.

“This is going to get fucking old quick,” George said.

Jason realized Weasel was next to him in the dark as they sat down at their next rest break. Carrying the equivalent weight of a fourth-grader on their backs was just as tiring as they’d expected. “You were right about the rats,” he whispered. He could feel the sweat dripping off his nose.

“What?”

“You said we were like rats scurrying around and biting people, and here we are in a sewer.” Strangely enough, while at first he’d been terrified trudging through the seemingly unending, pitch black pipes, now it didn’t bother him. Probably because he was too tired.

“Shut the fuck up,” Weasel said tiredly. He was trying to nap before they had to move out again. He opened his eyes, closed them, opened them. There was hardly any difference. He turned his head toward Jason. “Hopefully when we get to where we’re going we do more than bite a few ankles.” He sighed, then added, “I can’t believe you got with Brooke. Asshole.”

“Ummm.” Was Weasel dating Brooke? He didn’t think so. He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. It had all been so fast. One minute he’d been walking down a hallway, then the next the big woman had grabbed him and pulled him upstairs, he’d had no idea why. And before he’d figured out what was going on she was out of her pants and pulling off his. He hadn’t had time to be nervous. At least the first time. He shook his head in the dark. A month ago he’d still been on the farm, getting yelled at by his dad. Now he was fighting in a war. Had killed at least one man. And then Brooke…. It seemed like all these things were happening to someone else, and he was just spectating.

“I’ve been trying to jump on that for two years,” Weasel said wistfully. “Those titties, Jesus. Were they—never mind, how would you even know? Fucking virgin.”

“Not any more,” Jason said softly, and even in the dark you could hear his smile. Weasel snorted.

“I read, years ago,” Ed whispered, leaning against his backpack as he sat on the floor of the sewer pipe, “a Navy SEAL wrote that by the time they got to where they needed to go on a mission they were so tired and pissed off and angry that they needed to kill someone. Like it was therapy.” He was trying hard not to wheeze. It felt like his entire body underneath his clothes was slick with sweat. “I understand what he meant, now.”

Mark, sitting next to him, just grunted. Ed dug out a bottle of water and chugged it straight down. He felt better immediately. “Drink some water,” he told Mark.

They’d traveled just over a mile in a little more than an hour, but it had been a grueling go. They’d been in and out of the sewer line three times, crawling up weed-choked slopes of mud and down through broken chunks of concrete, splashing through ankle-deep water that smelled of death. While carrying eighty-plus pounds of gear each.

One of Hannibal’s people had gotten sliced pretty badly by a piece of rebar jutting out of a jagged slab of concrete, and Quentin had nearly sprained his ankle in a short fall, but otherwise they were doing well. No other injuries, just growing exhaustion. But the excitement at the thought of what was ahead of them tempered their resolve.

To his left was a member of Flintstone. They’d only been stopped a few minutes and already the man was asleep. Which, Ed had to admit, was probably a smart move. Ed looked to his right, past Mark. The flashlights had been off long enough his eyes were starting to adjust. Just visible forty feet away in the glow of the moon was the next collapsed section of the tunnel and the base of the slope up. Once they clambered up they’d have the longest above-ground trek of the night, nearly half a mile, before they could get back down into the sewer line. Then it was a full uninterrupted mile underground, straight east.

He checked his watch again. They had eleven more minutes before there were no satellites overhead, then had a forty-one minute window to cover that half a mile. Provided nothing unexpected happened, that should be two or three times as much time as they needed.

They’d worked out the best way for climbing up into the world. Two men would drop their packs and scramble up. They’d set up on either side of the opening, or the building if it came up inside one, and provide security while everyone else, laden down with all their own gear plus the first men’s two packs, struggled out of the pipe which, most of the time, was a significant distance underground. It was all done in silence, other than grunts and the occasional muffled curse.

When it was time they crawled up inside a low-ceilinged commercial building. Ed was the fourth man up. He had to go on all fours and drag his pack behind him because of the low roof in the hand-dug tunnel. He took a few seconds to catch his breath, then shrugged on his backpack and stood up with a grunt. His hands and clothes were caked with mud and he had abrasions all over his arms and legs from climbing over and around concrete puzzle pieces for hours. The tunnel mouth was near the rear of the building and he stepped through the splintered hole where the back door should have been. Before him was an alley.

Mill, from Flintstone—Ed wondered if was short for Milton or Miller, but knew better than to ask the young man—was in the alley, rifle in hand, providing security. Ed breathed the night air for a bit, then leaned in and told him, “I’m going to scout a bit ahead.” He patted him on the shoulder and moved down the alley east. He stopped at the first cross street. While the light from the moon was starting to fade as it sunk in the sky, he could see the alley appeared clear of obstructions for at least the next hundred yards. That was only a fraction of the distance they had to travel aboveground, but it was a start.

He heard the soft hush of a breeze, and some crickets, but that was it. Ed strode across and stopped on the sidewalk on the far side of the street, at the mouth of the alley. He looked back the way he’d come and saw Hannibal walking toward him, his thick gray hair reflecting the moonlight like dirty snow. Under the weight of his gear the leader of Flintstone moved like an old man.

Hannibal stopped beside him and the two men looked around, north toward McNichols, south along the dark street, east down the alley, and back toward the building they’d just exited. A handful of dogsoldiers were now visible in the alley, black silhouettes against charcoal gray. Several started moving toward the squad leaders. Suddenly Hannibal shot his fist up into the air, and everyone stopped.