Defenders (30 page)

“Oh shit.” Tina fumbled with the zipper on her pack, stuffing the things she’d just set out by the mattress back inside.

As Kai lifted his pack and slung it on his back, he wondered, what now? What fresh new hell was coming their way?

They joined their squad outside. Kai watched some of the latecomers, crashing out through front doors and sprinting down driveways so they wouldn’t be late.

When everyone was assembled in a loose line on the sidewalk, Sergeant Schiller raised his voice and said, “The stilts are coming. They’re making an all-out siege, from both coasts.”

Kai exchanged a
Holy shit
look with Shoelace.

“Their bombers are on the way, supported by a fighter squadron. After that, in all likelihood one airborne division, possibly two, will parachute into the area. They’re trying to take Salt Lake City and the surrounding area as a jumping-off point for an overland siege of our center of gravity in the Cheyenne Mountain bunker.”

“How many will be coming by land after the paratroopers?” someone down the line asked.

“All of them,” the sergeant answered.

That got the whole division buzzing. The sergeant waited, hands clasped behind his back, letting the chatter die down naturally.

“So this is it. We must stop them here. Two additional reinforced divisions will be setting up to the north and south of our position. The rest of our western forces are scrambling to intercept the ground forces before they get here. We have a lot to do before they get here, and not much time.”

Kai looked out over the neighborhood. It was teeming with activity. Bulldozers were pushing vehicles into piles to form barriers; the few engineer soldiers they had were setting land mines in the road. Tanks and artillery were spreading out, finding protected spots. Soldiers were dispersing, seeking cover in houses, strip malls, wooded areas. Many wore tan camo, but most were dressed in jeans, stained sweatshirts, work boots, sneakers—whatever clothes they didn’t mind getting dirty, or bloody. Many had nothing but a pistol. They hadn’t been through even the cursory basic training Kai and his comrades had received.
Shoot at their faces
was probably the full extent of their training.

“We shouldn’t have dropped those nukes. It just pissed them off worse.” Tina was watching the horizon, where smoke rose from a copse of scrub pines that had been torched to improve sight distance, but her eyes were glassy, unfocused.

She had a star-shaped scar on her temple. Kai wondered how she’d gotten it; he was aware that the thought was bizarre, given the situation, and probably a sign that he was losing his grip.

“It just sped up their timetable,” Shoelace said. “They were coming one way or another.”

“At least we would have lived a few more weeks,” Tina replied. She sounded listless, more depressed than afraid.

Kai waited for someone to contradict her, but Shoelace went on cleaning his rifle, leaning up against the side of the house. Luis was listening to music with earbuds, his head bobbing, eyes closed.

A group of eight or nine terrified people was standing in the weeds nearby. They might have been an extended family—men and women, ranging in age from early teens to their sixties. More volunteers kept arriving all the time, answering a desperate last-minute call.

“When the sergeant said, ‘This is it,’ he didn’t mean the war’s over after this, did he?” Tina asked, stubbing out a cigarette on the house’s foundation.

“If the defenders overrun our center of gravity and kill the president, drive a wedge through the middle of the country, and meet in the middle…” Kai shrugged. “It’s over for the United States, that’s for sure.”

Tina considered this.

Kai had been watching the recently arrived group out of the corner of his eye. Now two of them broke off and approached: a stocky guy in his forties, and an Asian woman Kai guessed was his wife.

“Excuse me,” the stocky guy said. “We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re not clear about our role here. The officer who briefed us didn’t tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

“Shoot at their faces,” Tina said without looking at them, as smoke trailed out of her nostrils.

Kai rose. “Come on.” He put a hand on each of the newcomers’ shoulders and led them back in the direction of their group. “First, find an empty house, a drainage ditch, some cover to fight from. We’re facing a superior force, so we spread out, make them come to us one group at a time.” He let them absorb this for a moment before continuing. It was a lot to take in. “The first thing that’s going to happen is, you’re going to see
our
fighter planes overhead. That means their bombers are close.” The two newcomers nodded, looking grateful, and so utterly lost and out of their element. Kai knew the feeling; four months ago he hadn’t known a howitzer from a supply truck. “The defenders will have fighters to protect their bombers, and their fighters are more advanced than ours, so that might not go well, depending on how many planes they have and how many we have.” Kai pointed at each of the newcomers in turn. “
Don’t shoot at the planes.
You’re just wasting ammunition. Stay down.”

The woman looked up, blinking rapidly, trying not to cry. He knew that feeling, too. There was that moment when you realized this was real, that the defenders really were coming, and they were coming to kill you. Kai gave the woman a moment to get hold of herself, then he went on.

“Soon after that, more planes will come, and defenders will parachute out of them. When you see the defenders coming, that’s when you start shooting.”

“Go for their faces,” the stocky guy said.

“That’s right.” Defenders were hard to bring down with bullets designed to kill humans, especially given the extensive body armor they wore. Your best bet was a face shot; that way you knew they wouldn’t get back up. They were fast. So fucking fast. “Don’t move around; movement draws attention to you. Stay put.”

Kai raised his eyebrows, waiting for any questions.

“Thank you.” The guy held out his hand. “I’m Jaden, by the way.” Kai shook Jaden’s hand, then shook the woman’s hand. Her name was Julie. Jaden and Julie. He wished them luck.

As he walked back toward his friends, Kai heard the fighter jets’ engines coming from the east. A moment later they shot past overhead, going to intercept the defenders’ aircraft west of their position.

“I’m not as limber as I once was,” Shoelace said to Kai as he rejoined his friends. Kai raised an eyebrow, not sure what Shoelace was getting at.

“I’d like to kiss my ass goodbye, but I don’t think I can reach it anymore.”

Kai burst out laughing, and Shoelace joined in. Kai gave him a hug, and they clapped each other on the back.

They could hear the aerial battle, but couldn’t see it. Kai had seen enough of them to know what was happening. The defender fighters were big, almost twice the size of the human model. The defender model looked a lot like the Alliance’s YF-23, and what it lacked in maneuverability, it made up for in speed and firepower.

A half hour later, they heard the rumble of bombers. Kai and his friends headed inside the house they’d chosen, to ride out the initial bombing. It was a nondescript house near the center of the development; there was no reason it should be targeted over thousands of others spread over dozens of square miles, but some of them were going to get hit. It was all about odds, an oversized game of Russian roulette.

Slinking over, looking almost apologetic, Jaden and Julie’s clan came up behind them.

Tina waved them on. “Come on in, if you’re coming.”

Anyone who wasn’t terrified by the sight of defender bombers on the horizon was afraid of nothing. They were so big, and flew in such tight formation, that it was like a steel storm cloud blanketing the sky. As the air vibrated with the sound of their engines, Kai did what he’d always done in these situations: He closed his eyes and played poker in his mind. He found he could enter a trancelike state if he concentrated hard enough. It didn’t eliminate his terror, but it gave him distance from it.

The bombs began to fall. Mobile antiaircraft guns boomed. The newcomers huddled on the floor behind the couch. Lisa was thumbing through a coffee-table book of dog breeds. Luis listened to his music.

Somewhere down the street, a house took a direct hit. Kai heard pieces of wood and concrete
thunk
ing on their roof. He drew the five of clubs and the eight of hearts, and waited to see the bet. Maybe he would bluff. He did more bluffing in imaginary games, because imagining others playing out a hand wasn’t as absorbing as playing the hand himself.

Unbidden thoughts of Lila broke into his game. Kai saw her as she’d been the first time they met, at a genetic engineering conference Oliver had taken him to. Kai had asked to go only because it was in Miami, in February. When Kai saw Lila, trailing behind his dad’s friend, Dominique Wiewall, he’d ditched his plans to go to the beach and, to Oliver’s confusion and surprise, sat through an utterly incomprehensible presentation just so he could be near Lila. She’d been so wonderfully not what he associated with academic types. Dyed blond hair in dreadlocks, too much eye makeup, her expression daring you, just daring you, to piss her off and see what happened. That night, he’d convinced her to go with him to a poker game.

The silence startled him out of his semi-dream state. He lifted his head, went to look out the windows with the others, at the ruined houses, the leaning mailboxes, the scorched and battered ground. Smoke acted like a thick fog, making it difficult to see more than a few hundred yards, but he could see enough damage to get a sense of where they stood.

“Ninety minutes,” Luis said. “I figured they’d be at it until nightfall, at least.”

“I think they’re in a hurry,” Kai said. “It shook them, when we bombed our own people to get them. They thought they knew what to expect from us.”

“Yeah, well, they forgot they ain’t starfish.” Luis pointed at his temple.

Something was unsettling Kai. For a moment he didn’t know what it was, then the sound registered. The low rumble of aircraft.

“Oh, come on,” Luis said, crying up at the ceiling. “Can’t you give us a few hours first?”

“You talking to God, or the stilts?” Shoelace asked.

“Anyone who’ll listen.”

Shoelace tilted his head to one side and smiled grimly. “Then you’re talking to no one.”

They filed onto the back porch and watched the distant transport planes spit defenders. The paratroopers dropped feetfirst, their sky-blue parachutes not deploying until they were close to the ground. Heavy artillery pieces dropped out of one of the planes, their larger parachutes deploying almost immediately.

Kai eyed the tank at the top of the hill, nestled behind the blockade of vehicles the dozers had constructed. Its presence was somewhat comforting.

Shoelace turned to Jaden. “I don’t want to be rude, but a dozen shooters in one location is a waste. How about you take your people and set up a few houses down the road?”

When they were gone, Luis and Tina took up positions in upstairs windows. Kai took the back door. Shoelace chose a window facing the front and knocked out the glass with the butt of his rifle. Kai pulled the sliding glass door open; he left the screen closed, figuring it provided a bit of extra camouflage.

“I’d like to say today is a good day to die, but I’m not feeling it,” Shoelace said. “Today would be a shitty day to die.”

“I’m with you there.”

Soon they heard gunfire. It was distant at first, coming from the north. It grew closer.

Then it was everywhere. A thousand battles, going on simultaneously. That was the way you wanted it if you were facing a superior force—harass the enemy, slow them down.

Before he’d stepped into line the day he’d volunteered to fight the defenders, Kai had zero interest in military strategy. Now it was the only thing that did interest him, besides poker and his family. He figured he had better odds of staying alive if he knew what was going on, and why.

Kai scanned the backyard, watching for movement. There was an in-ground pool back there, the water murky and greenish brown, and a shed too small for a defender to use as effective cover. Beyond that was a line of pine trees, then the backyards of houses facing the other way.

At any minute, the first defenders would appear. They’d likely come along the road in front, but they might come through the back.

“You know what I’m craving right now?” Shoelace asked.

Gunfire erupted from the street in front of the house.

“Do you see anything?” Kai called.

“No.”

Kai ran to join Shoelace at the front windows.

The face of a defender appeared over a rooftop across the street. It had climbed onto the roof. One of its eyes closed, the other sighted down a rocket launcher. Kai ducked away from the window as an explosion shook the house. It must have hit the house next door.

Kai went back to the window. Another defender had joined the first, peering from the roof. Everyone in Kai’s house held their fire. Shooting at them from this distance would only serve to get the rocket launcher pointed in their direction.

Three defenders broke from between two houses up the street.

The tank at the top of the hill
boomed
; the roof of the house across the street exploded, shooting wood and black tile into the air.

Kai sprang up, took aim, but the three defenders who’d been on the move were already gone. He ran to the back door and spotted human soldiers in the backyard, running. They passed out of sight. A moment later two defenders appeared in pursuit. Kai raised his rifle, squeezed off a few tight bursts that missed. Then they were gone. They were so fast.

Upstairs, Tina and Luis were firing at something in the street.

Shoelace opened fire, then paused. Cursing, he dove away from the window. Defender bullets ripped through the window, shredding the wall beyond in a wide arc.

Two or three more defenders opened fire on them, their bullets thumping into the front of the house, shattering windows. Kai heard shouted orders outside, then a roar. Outside, the air suddenly grew bright orange.