“I know, they’re a bunch of nut jobs.”
“Damn right they’re nuts. I mean, did you see him? Did you get a good look at that?”
“And all they gave you was a first aid kit; doesn’t seem right.”
“You’re damn right it doesn’t. You’re damn right.
What am I supposed to do with a first aid kit? You’re damn right it doesn’t…
And then I knew he’d be OK. He shook his head back and forth for the whole ride back, repeating the same thing over and over, but we didn’t care; this wasn’t the tunnels. The sun had begun to set, turning everything an orange pink, and with the noise of the truck and the wind, we couldn’t hear him except if we
tried
to hear him, and I knew from my own experience that he’d repeat himself as long as he needed to—maybe forever—but that it didn’t matter, and it beat the option I had chosen, the option of pharmaceutical oblivion. Getting high wasn’t on the menu that night. All my gear was where I’d left it, plenty of dope and zip, but when I crawled back into my hole and looked at it, it didn’t look back, didn’t beckon to me with its promise that everything would be better once I got lit, because I knew it was bullshit. It wouldn’t make anything better. I went to sleep that night praying for Bridgette to come back, and in the distance I heard the guy, all night.
“You’re damn right it doesn’t. What do they expect me to do with a first aid kit? I can’t do
anything.
”
My prayers were answered a month later. I had walked outside the perimeter to take a leak when on the horizon a dust cloud appeared, growing. We had taken to powering down everything except climate controls—to conserve fuel cells—and it took me a moment to remember how to activate my vision hood. I was so
high.
A group of Marines had laughed when I’d shuffled past; I was barely able to stand, so finding the forearm controls and the right sequence of buttons seemed impossible. Finally I got
it. The cloud zoomed in, nearly making me puke, and eventually the goggles focused so that I saw a single APC, dust-colored, cruising northward along the rail line in our direction.
Ox came out to see it. “Friendlies,” he said. “Let’s find out what gives.”
It took the APC about ten minutes to reach us, and the bottom hatches opened, disgorging a group of them, genetics, who took up positions around the vehicle while one of them approached.
“Task Force Karazhyngyl?” she asked. The voice made me flinch, brought back all sorts of memories. I had to helmet up—in case I freaked.
Ox nodded. “Yeah. What’s going on?”
“You sent a distress call. We’re here to help with the town’s defense.”
“What?” Ox looked around before clicking onto the net. “Everyone into their holes. Any patrols out right now?”
A voice responded immediately. “Negative.”
“You did not send a distress call?” she asked.
“No. We didn’t.”
I shit you not. The chick popped her lid then, so that I could see that grin, and I wanted to run up and grab her, swore that it was
Bridgette.
“This is good. Maybe it’s a trap. Russian genetics are operating in this area and we will meet them. With your permission, my sisters will evaluate the town’s defenses and determine what changes should be made, where to put our APC as a pillbox. We’re out of fuel alcohol and have been running the secondary plasma engine, but now we’ll need the reactor for firing and can’t spare any plasma.”
Ox nodded. “OK. Cool.”
“Yes.” She grinned again and then resealed her helmet. “Death and faith.”
One of the guys nearest to me cursed. “Screw death and faith. Come on, man, let’s bolt. This is for shit. I’m an
IT guy,
for shit’s sake. I worked on computers.” He scrambled out of his hole, almost making it before one of his buddies pulled him back in.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“I gotta get outta here.
Come on.
” The guy pulled his helmet off then and began popping his seals to unsuit. “I can’t breathe.”
But before he could finish getting out of his suit, the man just slid to the bottom of the hole and curled into a ball. He cried. We all heard the sobs, punctuated by some kind of moaning, and it made the skin on my neck crawl, but nobody did anything to him—just let him keep going. We all knew how he felt, and it was OK, because everyone realized that the next day
you
could be the one cracked up and balling because there was nothing you could do with a computer or a first aid kit; they were the same damn thing in Kaz.
I watched as the girls formed up to walk the perimeter, Ox’s voice clicking in again. “Anything these betties say, you do.
That’s an order.
”
An hour later it was ready. The girls had our guys dig deeper holes, laid out additional sentry bots, and rigged a hundred meters of remote-detonated fléchette and gel mines, directional like the old claymores but specifically designed for Kaz—to look like grubby rocks. The girls concealed their APC near the hotel, checked its field of fire, and smiled.
Standing next to a hole and staring southward, I hadn’t
moved since they’d come, and didn’t hear her when one of the girls approached.
“You should take cover.”
I smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why are you out of your hole? You’re exposed.”
“I’m insane.”
“You need to take cover. We don’t know what they plan, but you must get into a hole, stay still.”
“I missed you. A lot. But I can’t get back in my hole, it’s full of scorpions.”
She checked it, saw that it was empty, and then cocked her head. “Your hole is empty.”
“I’m insane. I’m spoiling.”
She caught on. I heard her take a breath and it reminded me of Bridgette, who had breathed just like that when she got excited or upset, and it took me a second to gather the courage even to look at this one, and when I did, it nearly killed me. Green thermal paste coated her face, but it was her. All beauty. It was Bridgette on the train, in the old days, when things were good and we ran across the steppes, too scared to stop running but too into each other
not
to stop, for a second, just to screw.
“Do you know me?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I knew Bridgette. She was one of you.”
“And she was yours.” It wasn’t a question, so I just stood there. A second later she took my hand and led me to a hole, gently pulled me into it, with her, and made me lie on my back. She lay next to me. I wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“Bridgette is with Him now. It is natural, you should be happy for her.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not natural. That’s what
you’ve been taught but it’s not.” I tried to kiss her then, grabbed her face and pulled it toward me, but she backed away.
“We are not the same,” she said. “I am not her, and I don’t want you.”
For a moment we said nothing, waiting as the sun set and the sky darkened, bringing out stars for as far as we could see. I smelled her breath and pushed another wad of zip into my lip, waiting for the relief to come. My eyes started to flicker shut.
“Don’t sleep,” she said.
“If I don’t sleep, the scorpions will come back and I don’t want them to. If I close my eyes, nothing can see my face and I won’t exist and it will be as though I’m dead so that nothing more can hurt me. It’s cool, though, don’t worry about it. I’m insane.”
The chick rolled onto her side and looked at me, brushed the dirt from my cheeks and grinned. “I am glad that Bridgette got to know you before she died.”
“Where are they?” I asked. “The girls who want to live? Don’t any of you want to live?”
Her smile faded then, and she raised her head, listening. It took her less than a second to snap on her helmet.
“They come.”
A party had gone wrong. The embassy set up shop in Almaty, moved south from Astana, but the funny thing was that they moved into an ancient compound, the
former
site of our embassy, back in the twenty-first century. All things moved in circles; this proved it. As a kind of celebration, a bunch of Marine guards threw a party, one
of those don’t-ask-don’t-tell sex fests that became a thing of legends, more hookers than guys, more drugs than sense. It didn’t take long for me to become paralyzed, on Thai stick, probably dipped in
something.
He was like a shimmering vision, unreal. A Special Forces guy. His Class A had been pressed, with so much fruit salad that it looked about to rip the fabric, but there was one imperfection. He had just thrown up. A large stain covered the front of his uniform and I saw the bits of hot dog that had gone undigested, like
real
war decorations from Kaz, proof that he had been there.
“I hate this war,” he said.
“Why?” My voice sounded like a machine, a robot’s, and I swore I wouldn’t smoke any more of that shit if only everything would go back to normal.
He frowned. “I’m out. No more line for me, no more long-range patrols.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “It looks like you’ve done enough; your bros will take care of it.”
“Bullshit.” He wouldn’t look at me and it began to freak me out; his head was turning half shark’s, half man’s. “They’re pulling us off the line, all of us.”
“That’s nuts. Why?”
“Refit. Retrain. We’re going to be cops and assassins.” He
did
look at me then and must have seen the cluelessness on my face. “
Genetics,
man. We’re going after them. Hard.”
“Their genetics? How is that any different from what you’ve
been
doing?”
He lit a cigarette, and I swear, every time he exhaled, dolphins swam through the smoke, jumping straight upward and diving back in. “Not theirs. Ours. We’re losing track
of them, ones who don’t think that eighteen is a good time to die. So they’re sending us to hunt them, in rear areas and in other countries, and when we find them, we’re to slaughter ’em. I loved this place, man, speak the language, you know? I don’t
want
to leave.”
I nodded, but it was a lie. I didn’t know, hadn’t been on the line yet. Even wasted, I understood what the guy was saying, but it didn’t connect with anything I had yet experienced and the guy seemed crazy for it. A lunatic. How could anyone love Kaz, love the dust-and-sulfur smell, tinged with the odor of shit?
I handed him my pipe. “You need this more than I do.” And left.
I thought about it in Karazhyngyl after the betty said they were coming—knew what the Special Forces guy had meant, and knew that she had heard
something.
Precognitive, both of them. Bridgette and the others were just like that guy, a different kind of organism that breathed plasma and had thermal gel for blood, perfectly suited for life in battle. They could
smell
war on the wind.
Almost immediately after she said they would come, they did. Stealth bored, all the way into our pos, and before we knew what had happened, Russian genetics popped from the ground inside our lines and their rockets slammed into the front of the APC, which shot a ball of fire skyward while tracers flew in every direction, in every color. She rose to the edge of the hole and started firing, her carbine shifting methodically as though it was attached to a machine, ticking from side to side.
At one point she ripped a grenade from her harness and tossed it, looking for another. I grabbed one of mine and flipped it to her. Then another.
“I’m out,” I said.
“Do not fight.” She pulled a new hopper from her harness and slapped it onto her shoulder with a click. “Stay down, and do not fight. When this is over, head east first—put as much distance as you can between you and the rail line—and then south. Make for Almaty. Then on to Bandar ‘Abbas, because those of us who want to live all head there. To Bandar.”
And then it ended. A flash illuminated her face for a second, and I watched as a cloud of fléchettes buzzed overhead, through her faceplate and out the back, spraying everything with her blood. She collapsed on me, and I froze. I wanted to scream but Karazhyngyl went quiet then, and a breeze had picked up, blowing smoke over the hole like fog.
Their voices made me want to shrink, disappear.
Mentally evaporate.
They sounded like boys, teenagers who giggled and laughed as they ran through Karazhyngyl, looking for something. I didn’t speak Russian, didn’t understand the words, and couldn’t imagine what they meant. One of them peeked over the lip of my hole. He saw her and pumped a few more fléchettes into her head before popping his helmet off to survey the job—to grin. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but several teeth were gone, knocked out so that his face resembled a round jack-o’-lantern, with glassy black eyes. He spat once and then disappeared.
I hadn’t been breathing, and let the air out slowly, scared that they’d hear the slightest noise. She saved me. The girl’s body covered mine completely, and I prayed that they wouldn’t come back to bury her. I didn’t have to look to know that everyone else was dead, that Ox
wouldn’t be there when I crawled from the hole, would be shredded like the rest, an empty shell, and by the time I got the courage to move, the sky had brightened with morning light.
Karazhyngyl was gone. Everything. The hotel had burned to its foundations, and every fighting hole had been hit, sprawled bodies lying everywhere. I found Ox. His helmet was off, and he seemed to smile, staring at the sky without seeing it. He didn’t show any wounds and looked as though his body had sunk into the dirt, so I tried to lift him, surprised by how light he had gotten. I dropped him when I saw it. His entire back side was gone—he was filleted straight down the middle, leaving only the front half.