Shifting Fates (5 page)

Ben’s all I had left and I couldn’t even keep him.

The buzzing in my head grows stronger and stronger until it drowns out the bugle, and my vision narrows until all I can see is Ben’s gleaming black coffin and the clumps of dirt raining down on it scoop by scoop.

I’ll kill all of them. I’m going down to that city and killing every last fucking one of them…

The first of three honorary volleys fires off in the distance, and tears blur my vision as reality finally sinks in. Ben’s gone forever, and everything we’d planned was for nothing. I was going to finish school and then we were gonna skip town together after his tour was up. He was saving up to start a business and I was going to help him with it.

It’s bad enough Ben’s gone, but why’d they have to bury him here? He hated this town and now he’ll
never
escape.

Mother’s hand presses gently on my shoulder as I stare down into the hole, but she’s not helping. I can’t breathe. I feel as if I’m going to suffocate as the dirt finally covers my brother and—

—and somewhere in the back of my mind, I suddenly realize I’m reliving the nightmare. I’m smothering myself with my pillow again.

I wake up on my cot and gasp for air as the nightmare fades around me. No matter how many times I relive Ben’s funeral, the pain never lessens—it’s still as real as the day they brought his remains home. I close my eyes and lie in the darkness, listening to the soft, somehow calming sounds of the soldiers—my new family—sleeping around me. My pulse slows to normal, but there ain’t no way I’m getting back to sleep now. The sheets are completely soaked with sweat and cling to my skin with every movement, and I feel like I could use either fresh air or a stiff drink.

I climb out of bed and throw on my fatigues, and then I tiptoe down the long line of cots. The red glare of the digital clock above the door burns
04:40
into my retinas the entire way. Out in the lounge, the grunt on night watch is lying on the couch with his feet up on the armrest. He snaps to attention and salutes, trying to pretend he wasn’t just dicking around with a comic book. I return an exhausted salute. I’d chew him out on any other day, but I’m too tired right now to care. Instead, I keep going straight past him, past our makeshift mess-hall in what was once an executive break room, and out into the stairwell.

If there’s one thing that’ll wake anyone up, it’s climbing fifteen flights of stairs. I sure as hell ain’t enjoying it, but by the time I’ve huffed and puffed all the way up to the roof access door, my head’s as clear as ever. The rusty hinges squeal in protest as I shove the door open, and I slip out into the cold morning air.

I may be a bit of a country boy at heart, but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m
never
gonna get tired of the view from up here. The city feels like it goes on forever, a speckled checkerboard of light and dark thanks to limited electricity. If it wasn’t for the winter haze, you could probably see Ground Zero from up here, the deep, black-charred hole where the first bombs struck. Tonight, though, the city just fades to a deep, midnight blue on the horizon.

“What, you ain’t sleeping either, Cage?” asks a soft voice from my left, and I nearly jump out of my pants in surprise. About fifteen feet away, a short blonde leans out over the railing with her arms crossed before her. It’s Emma, a second lieutenant in the Alpha Platoon.

Shame on me not checking my surroundings, but she scared the shit out of me.

“You shouldn’t be awake either, Emma,” I answer gruffly. I’m not very good at avoiding questions, and she sees straight through my non-answer.

She cocks her head to the side and raises one eyebrow as she looks me up and down, and then she grins, pushes off the railing and saunters over to me.

“My excuse is the snoring and I’m sticking by it,” she says, leaning in so close to me against the railing that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin. “What’s your reason, or do I need to play twenty questions like last time?”

I shuffle a few inches to the right and put a little space between the two of us before answering.

“Thinking about Ben again. More of the usual.”

She nods and then turns away, staring down at the city as her shoulder-length blond hair dances on the wind. I try not to be too critical of military management now that I’ve gotten a taste of how hard it is to keep the grunts in line, but some administrator
seriously
screwed up when he deployed Emma with us. Not only is she the only woman in our pathetic excuse for a company, but she’s just barely eighteen and so thin that I could pick her up with one hand. I’ve seen her handle a rifle during training exercises, and she’s living proof that even the best stance in the world won’t help when you’re too light to stop the recoil. What sort of madman thought it was a good idea to send a frail young girl into the Lazaretto Containment with a bunch of unruly grunts like us?

“I’d ask if you want to talk about it, but I already know the answer,” she says, still not looking at me. “Eventually there’s nothing more you can say, is there? You just want it to end so you can move on, but it keeps on hiding inside and waiting for you to let your guard down, doesn’t it?”

And there’s why Emma doesn’t belong here
, I think. She shouldn’t be here because she’s too damned smart to be stuck at Ground Zero. She should be off working as a psychiatrist or something, not stuck here in hell with me. I’m here because my big plans all died along with Ben, but why on earth did she join up?

I just nod back to her and stare silently out over the city. She’s right as usual—she’s heard Ben’s story plenty of times. The show’s over and there’s nothing left to talk about.

“I probably ain’t supposed to ask this, but why’d you sign up anyway?” I finally ask after what feels like forever, and for a brief instant, Emma’s face hardens into a grim mask. Before I even know what I’m looking at, though, the emotion’s gone and the lost little girl is back.

“You’re from upstate too, right?” she asks, glancing in my direction before returning her gaze to the darkened streets below.

“Yup. Ontonwa Falls,” I answer. Emma’s from some podunk little village a good fifty miles north of my hometown. I forget the name, but the town’s so small that Ontonwa is like a boomtown in comparison.

“Then you know what it’s like.”

I sigh and shake my head, and my breath crystallizes in the freezing night air. I may be from upstate, but I ain’t psychic and I have no idea where she’s going.

“Pretend I ain’t from up there,” I tell her. “Imagine I’m some stupid city-boy from SoCal or something and explain it in my language.”

“You? A SoCal city-boy?” she snorts. “Might as well tell me to pretend you’re a minotaur or something, Cage.”

“Would it help if I mooed?” I ask with a grin, and she doubles over the railing in a fit of laughter. I don’t think my joke’s quite as funny as she seems to, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it. The frozen cloud of Emma’s laughter quickly disappears into the night, and she rolls her eyes at me before answering.

“Cage… what’re all the girls from your high school up to these days?”

“Dunno, really. Haven’t given them too much thought lately,” I answer, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot as I lean over the railing beside her. Somewhere off in the distance, a car alarm goes off. The apocalypse came and went and people still ain’t learned how to shut those stupid things off.

“Any of them make it out?”

Out of where? Oh, I see where she’s going now. I shake my head.

“Nope. Last I heard, pretty much all the ones I knew from my class are still in Ontonwa.”

“Exactly! You think it’s hard for guys to get out? Take a look at us,” she all but spits at me. I don’t
think
the venom’s directed at me, but I still take a step back to keep a respectful distance. “We all end up stuck there doing whatever the hell we can to make ends meet. Strippers maybe, married to our old high school sweethearts if we’re lucky, probably mothers by nineteen…”

“It ain’t
that
bad, Emma,” I protest, but I already know I’m full of it. She rolls her eyes at me again and scoffs.

“It is and you know it, Cage,” she says, looking me straight on with a fire in her eyes I ain’t seen before. “You wanted to know why I’m here?
That’s
why. I’m here because it was my only way out.”

She turns away again, her anger spent, and all I can do is lean against the railing beside her in silence. Damned if I know what to say to her after something like that…
you and me both, Emma?
No, it ain’t really both of us. I could’ve worked in the mines if I stayed, but they would never have hired a tiny thing like her. She’d have ended up trapped and helpless just like everyone else.

The one thing I can honestly tell her finally comes to me.

“Sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault, Cage,” she says, still not looking at me, and silence takes over again. Now her story’s told, too, and there really
isn’t
anything left to say.

Emma shivers after a few minutes, or maybe more. I have no idea how long we’ve been standing out here in the cold, and I only just now realize she’s not wearing a coat.

“You want to head back in? You won’t be much use if you get yourself sick, Emma.”

She shakes her head. “No, not yet. Still need some time to think.”

“I thought you said the snoring kept you up?”

“Sure… let’s go with that,” she answers, shooting me a thin-lipped smile. “It’s as good an excuse as any.”

She looks disappointed that I don’t follow up on her invitation to talk more, but one, I ain’t a junior psychiatrist the way she is, and two, I’m her senior officer. I stepped over a line by even telling her about Ben in the first place, and I have no business treating her like anything more than a soldier. She’s too… damned if I know what it is—
young
for me, maybe? No. That’s not it. Innocent?

Fragile.
That’
s the word I’m looking for. Even if I wasn’t her senior officer, it’d never work because I just can’t see myself ending up with someone I have to protect all the time. No way in hell I could deal with that. I can barely deal with protecting my platoon.

There’s one thing I can do, though. I take my coat off and drape it gently over her shoulders.  The cold wind stabs bitterly into my exposed arms, but it’s still worth it. You’d think I gave Emma a kitten judging by her smile.

“I’m gonna try to get some sleep,” I say, patting her on the shoulder as I turn away. “Just toss the coat on my trunk when you come in and I’ll grab it in the morning.”

“Sleep tight, Cage,” she tells me, and then as I head for the stairwell, she calls after me.

“Hey, Cage?”

“Yeah?” I look back at her over my shoulder.

She opens her mouth to speak, but then shakes her head and turns away again.

“Thanks for the coat,” she says, sounding almost as if she’s ashamed of herself or something. I stare back at her for a long time before answering.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” I tell her, and then I step inside out of the cold and close the door behind me.

Fifteen flights down… tiptoe past the sleeping soldiers… and into bed again. The clock reads
05:45
now, and I’ve still barely slept a wink. At least it’s Christmas and we’re getting the day off. I’ll have plenty of time to catch up on my sleep—it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.

This is my second Christmas in New York. I can’t believe I’ve been in this awful city for two years now. What the hell am I doing?

Spinning my wheels? Surviving? Trying to make up for Ben?

None of the answers seem to fit tonight. I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. My eyelids flutter shut and I finally fall asleep.

Merry Christmas.

Chapter Five

Bindi

The patrol guard stops me again as I go to leave. He turns me around. Again I see his eyes like yellow bismuth twinkling under the fluorescent lights of the military grid. This time he doesn’t let me go.

This time he kisses me.

Twirling in a slow embrace, my movements seem impossible to prevent. My hand pushes against his chest, but not unwillingly. Lips hotter than the sun seize mine, and I am dizzy with pleasure. A sweet ache works itself through my body until I am arching against him, and then we are kissing, kissing, and I never want him to pull away. I know in his arms I am safe.

Something falls out of my pouch. The rations. He pulls back and I see a flicker of doubt in his eyes. Then his face begins to shift, to morph into a kind of creature I’ve never seen. His nose pulls back into a snout, and he grows even bigger. He looks down at me in terror and anger, and I know somehow that it’s my fault that all of this is happening.

All my fault.

He’s huge now, furred and fanged, and his claws pull me back toward him, closer, closer, until his hot breath puffs out through his sharp teeth. Then...
he roars.

I jerk out of my fantasy with a start and tear the covers off of my shoulders. Too hot. Kit, still curled up next to me in the cot, flicks her tail once but doesn’t wake up. I’m panting with an embarrassed mix of desire and fear.

It stings me that I can’t control my thoughts. Even my fantasies end in nightmares.

Patting Kit’s furry fox head, I whisper soft things until I know she is sleeping soundly. Sweat has dampened my clothes, and as I pull the blanket off of me, the cold chill of the tunnel makes me want to snuggle back up with Kit and sleep until morning.

But today is Christmas, and I am Santa Claus.

I tiptoe to the stove where I left the pack of rations and pull out the small ragdoll with red hair. Kit should love it, even if one eye is a bit torn off, dangling by a loose thread. I think that maybe I should fix it but I don’t know where Lily keeps her sewing stuff.
Oh well.
They’ll have fun fixing it together. I wrap the doll in a piece of colored cloth and tiptoe back to the cot.