Defenders (29 page)

After a few moments Kai lifted his head; he could see the defender two blocks away. They were safe, for now.

The downtown area was in flames. Defender bombers continued to pound it. They were doing the exact opposite of what the Luyten did, Kai realized. Where the Luyten took the wilderness, driving people into the cities, the defenders were attacking the cities, driving everyone into the wilderness.

Kai had to get out of the city.

The Harrier set down on the roof of a building that looked mean and unforgiving. Oliver guessed it was the defender equivalent of the Pentagon. The door swung open. Wordlessly, Erik gestured for them to step out, where two armed defenders were waiting.

“She needs immediate medical attention,” Oliver said.

Erik grunted, gestured more emphatically for Oliver to step out. He did as he was told, then reached up to help Lila down. She looked hideous, the hair on one side of her head caked with dried blood, her scalp red meat. Her knees nearly buckled as she stepped off the Harrier.

One of the defenders waiting for them took Oliver by the shoulder; the other took Lila by the arm.

“No, we stay together,” Oliver said, dragging his feet as the defender pulled him toward a doorway.

Lila’s eyes were wide, suddenly alert. She turned toward Erik as the defender pulled her toward an open elevator. “
Don’t you do it.
If you kill him, you might as well kill me, because I won’t help you. You know I won’t.”

Oliver stiffened, and redoubled his effort to get away from the defender holding him.

“
Wait
,” Erik called to the defender holding Oliver. “I’ll take him.”

The defender released Oliver’s shoulder.

“Come on,” Erik said.

Oliver hurried to catch up with him. “I want to see my companions. Galatea, Sook, Alan. You gave me your word they wouldn’t be hurt.”

Erik stopped walking. “You want to see your companions? I’ll take you to them.” He turned, then stormed through the doorway, which led to an immense escalator. Oliver climbed onto it, then had to jump from step to step as Erik, not satisfied to let the escalator carry them along, strode down the stairs.

When they reached the lobby, Erik curled around beneath the steps, crashed through a door, and breezed past a security checkpoint with Oliver running to keep up. They headed to the end of a long hall. Erik pushed open another door that led into a walled courtyard. He held it open for Oliver.

“There you go.”

Oliver stepped through the door. Erik slammed it shut behind him. His friends were piled beside a fence, their bodies riddled with bullets.

Everyone stood as President Carmine Wood breezed into the war room, flanked by his brother, the former president Wood, and his wife and chief advisor, the former actress Nora Messina.

Dominique still couldn’t believe she’d been flown to Colorado Springs to join strategic command. As far as she knew, no one else on General Willis’s invasion team even held federal positions any longer. Maybe as the chief engineer of the defenders she was considered irreplaceable.

She felt a certain sick satisfaction that Willis would end his days as the modern face of incompetence and failure, but she wasn’t proud for feeling it. There was nothing good about any of this.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen, ladies,” the president said in his nasally voice. He was getting old; there was a noticeable bend at the top of his spine. He’d seemed so much younger seven years ago, when he’d been elected not through his own accomplishments but because of his wildly popular brother, who was credited with helping to turn the Luyten War around when all seemed lost.

“We’re losing,” the president said with no preamble. He allowed a moment of silence to stretch, to emphasize his words. “But you already knew that.”

Yes, Dominique knew that. The defenders held most of the world’s major port cities. They held the Panama and Suez Canals. They held Gibraltar and Morocco, so they controlled the Mediterranean Sea. They had superior weapons, maintained air and sea superiority, and held all of the defender production facilities. They didn’t sleep; they just kept coming, day and night, wearing down humanity’s superior numbers.

Something else had become clear, at least to Dominique: They carried boundless rage toward their creators for designing them so carelessly. Deep down they knew they were fucked-up, that there was something missing at their core. In a very real sense, Dominique was responsible for that rage.

When she’d been charged with creating them, her focus had been 100 percent results oriented. It had never occurred to her to give any thought to the quality of the defenders’ lives. She’d designed their hands to shoot and climb, not paint; she’d designed them to be tough and angry, not content.

She’d designed killers.

“During the Luyten War, when things looked their worst, we took decisive action,” the president was saying. “I believe it’s time for decisive action again.” Dominique had missed some of what he’d said. She needed to stay on task.

An aide activated a map of the world. There were yellow circles set over about a dozen major world cities, all of them currently under defender occupation.

“Based on our current intelligence, it will be a matter of months, if not weeks, before the defenders are able to erect cloaks over the territory they hold and install their spectroscopic nuclear detection technology. Once that happens, our military options become extremely limited.”

Dominique leaned forward in her chair, examining the cities with the yellow circles over them. New York, Los Angeles, London, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, Mumbai, São Paulo, Mexico City. The Alliance couldn’t possibly be planning what she thought they were planning.

“All told, the Alliance has seventeen cruise missile submarines on the open waters, doing their best to evade defender naval patrols.” President Wood II rested his hand on a table and took a deep, sighing breath, as if he didn’t want to say what he needed to say. Surely everyone in the room knew what he was going to say. “We’re going to target the defenders’ centers of gravity with nuclear strikes while we still can.”

No one stated the obvious. There were still millions of people living in those cities under defender occupation. Bombing them meant bombing human civilians.

“The defenders will not be expecting this,” the president said.

No, they wouldn’t. Neither would the people living there. Dominique listened carefully as Peter Smythe, Wood’s secretary of defense, filled in the details. The strikes would kill an estimated 20 percent of the defenders’ forces and a quarter of their weapons capability. It would cripple their communications for a short time, during which Alliance ground forces would launch an all-or-nothing assault on their remaining assets.

A woman Dominique didn’t know raised her hand. “I’m assuming Premier Santos made this call?”

“The premier is against this action,” Wood said. “We’re acting in concert with China, Russia, India, and half a dozen other countries.”

There was stunned silence. The Alliance had split? This was worse than Dominique thought.

“Ms. Wiewall,” the president said. Dominique raised her head. “How will the surviving defenders react to this action?” he asked.

“I can’t answer that question,” Dominique said.

“I’m sorry?”

Dominique shrugged. “I’m not a military strategist. Their reaction will be whatever gives them the best chance of defeating us. Your military people will have to advise you on what that would be.”

“There they are.” Luis pointed at the horizon, where tufts of white smoke rose toward the sky. Kai had been expecting mushroom clouds, like the ones he’d seen in pictures of Hiroshima, but these were thinner, maybe because they were tactical nukes rather than big bombs.

No one said anything as they cruised along Route 89, elbow to elbow in the back of the open troop transport. Even if Kai felt like cheering the deaths of tens of thousands of defenders despite all the human lives that were being snuffed out at the same time, someone within earshot might have loved ones living in Los Angeles.

Kai wondered what he would have done if, when they were informed yesterday about the nuclear strikes, Atlanta had been one of the targets. Would he still be here, willing to fight? No. Not a chance. There would have been nothing he could do to save Errol, but he wouldn’t be carrying a rifle now.

He understood that it was necessary. It was still a terrible thing to do.

Kai fingered the plastic sack holding the radiation shield he’d been issued.
They’ll help
, Sergeant Schiller had said as they lined up to get one,
but there’s no guarantee you won’t get sick
.
I’m not going to lie to you: You probably will get sick. But with the shields, you’ll live.
How comforting. In an ideal situation, they would have twenty thousand big, expensive radiation hazmat suits to hand out, but this was not an ideal situation.

The convoy pulled off the highway at the next exit. They passed a shopping center with a Target, an Applebee’s, CVS, Golden Dragon Chinese. A little farther along they passed a strip mall. Just beyond it, they turned into a neighborhood, past a big sign that read
WINDMILL PLANTATION
.

It was one of those endless suburban neighborhoods. The expansive lawns, now nothing but neck-high weeds, must have needed constant watering during the hot summers. Most of the residents had probably worked in Salt Lake City, commuting an hour to work every day. It was long deserted. Everyone had fled during the Luyten War (either that, or the Luyten had killed them), and afterward none of the survivors of the war had reason to return and claim a free house in neighborhoods like this one. There was nothing here, no point in living here. There were plenty of free, fully furnished houses closer to the cities.

“Four to a house,” Sergeant Schiller called as the transport ground to a stop.

Kai followed Luis, Shoelace, and Tina toward a big beige house sitting on what must have been two acres. Tina reached the door first, pushed it open, and jumped back with a shriek.

“It’s a
nest
.”

Kai joined Luis and Shoelace at the door to take a look. Sure enough, some Luyten had made itself at home. Fabric stretched all over, cutting the room into weird semi-enclosed chambers. He’d seen videos of Luyten nests, but he’d never seen one for real. He stepped past the others and went inside.

“You’re sick,” Shoelace said. “Seriously ill.”

“What?” Kai glanced back at Shoelace. “You afraid a few starfish stayed behind? Maybe one’s still hiding out in here?” He ran his fingers over the fabric. It was tight as a drum, and softer than it looked.

“Let’s just find a place to sleep,” Shoelace said.

Sleep. That was the magic word. Kai followed Shoelace and the others down the driveway, toward the next house. He was so tired. When was the last time he’d gotten even five hours’ sleep at once? During basic training? Had they gotten five hours a night during basic? He couldn’t remember. And in the morning they were going into a city that had just been nuked. Yes, he needed some sleep.

The next house was fine. Without a word they split up, located bedrooms, and dragged mattresses—still in dusty sixteen-year-old bedding—into the living room.

As Kai lay down, his thoughts immediately turned to Errol and Lila, as they always did, and he felt the now-familiar stab of pain and panic. Were they all right? Kai knew Lila’s aunt Ina would protect Errol with her life, but the defenders had overrun Atlanta. Bombs and bullets had flown. Kai had no way to know if they’d survived, and what was happening to them if they had. He was tortured over his decision to report for military service.

Lots of his comrades had young kids, though; that’s why they were here, to fight for those kids, for their future.

“Do you ever wonder what would happen if the defenders won?” Tina asked from the mattress to Kai’s left.

“Come on, shut up. That’s the last thing we need to think about,” Luis said. He was sitting on the couch, thumbing through a tattered book of comic strips he’d found in one of the rooms.

“I’m just asking. I’m not saying they’re gonna. But if they did, what would they do? Would they just be in charge? Like, they get to be the presidents of all the countries, and we don’t get to vote?” Tina sounded almost relaxed. All of these people, his friends, seemed to be taking it in stride. Kai could barely stand it; each moment of being here, in this strange house in a strange town, missing his family, filthy, tired beyond anything he’d ever imagined, was torture. The defenders didn’t sleep, but people needed sleep or they’d just break down.

Kai was breaking down. He wiped a tear as it rolled to the bridge of his nose. He’d always thought of himself as tough, like steel, forged in the streets of D.C. during the Luyten War. He didn’t feel tough now. He felt like that twelve-year-old kid hiding in a bathroom, lost, cold, scared, ready to accept help from anyone, even a starfish.

“I just want to understand what we’re fighting for,” Tina went on. “They can’t put us all in prison camps like we did with the Luyten. There are too many of us. How would they feed us if we were all in prison camps?”

“Would you shut up?” Luis said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, they’re going to build a prison camp the size of Texas and put us all in it.”

“
Then what are they gonna do?
That’s what I’m asking?”

“
I don’t know.
Nobody knows.” Luis spit on the carpet, studied the glob of spit for a moment before rubbing his boot over it. He stabbed at his temple with one finger. “They’re crazy. They’re psycho. There’s no telling what they’d do.”

The front door swung open. Sergeant Noonan stuck his head inside. “Everybody outside. One minute. Let’s go.” Then he was gone.