Dark Victory - eARC Read online

  Parker looks at my one-armed boss, then me, Thor and Abby, and shrugs. “God, I hope so. But damn it, I thought the war was over.”

  “Oh, it is,” the lieutenant says. “Has been, for a month, now.”

  Another tightness in my guts. Just over a month ago, the President had announced we had won the war, following an unexpected and successful manned raid by what was left of the U.S. Air Force up to low Earth orbit. Our post got the news from a telegraph message that had gotten to the state capitol, Concord. Lots of us had partied into the night and the next morning after the news was read at evening mess, but here I was, about thirty days later, near the Vermont border, getting ready for yet another bug hunt. As the lieutenant had said in our pre-mission Operations Order, this was typical in all wars, and they even had a phrase for it: mopping up. Which is great, so long as you’re the mopper, not the moppee.

  Mopping up. Sounds so innocent, like being assigned to KP duty, peeling potatoes, helping dress a whitetail deer, or sweeping out the fort’s dining facility. But on this cool dusk in May, mopping up meant another Creeper hunt, with a very good chance of me or one of my buds coming back in a potato sack, our remains looking like lumps of greasy burnt charcoal. Barbecue bait.

  I look over at the other side of the barn, where a car is up on wooden blocks. A sheet of canvas covers it and Parker sees me checking it out. He grins, revealing a gap at the side of his mouth where two teeth are missing, and motioning me to follow, he walks over, like he wants to make up for his earlier attempt to touch my Colt. He lifts up one end of the dusty canvas, revealing a low-slung sports car, bright red. It has orange and black New York license plates, registration just over ten years old. The tires sag, the air long ago having seeped out.

  Parker stares, sighs and drops the canvas. “Jaguar XJ-6. Damn, what a sweet ride.”

  “How did it get here?” I ask.

  “This place was a weekend home for my wife Ginger and me, before . . . Used to make a high-speed run up Friday afternoons, spend the weekend unwinding and relaxing. Then we’d get up bright and early Monday morning, make the drive south back to Manhattan. Lucky for us, we were here when the war started on 10/10.”

  “Did you work in New York?” I ask, thinking about that ghost city, and all of the ghost cities from the attacks that October 10th.

  “Yeah,” he says, wiping his hands on his overalls. “I worked for a hedge fund.” Then he barks a short laugh. “Now I’m a dairy farmer. Boy, if my parents were alive, wouldn’t they be pissed, knowing how I ended up using my Harvard education.”

  Thor comes up to me and I scratch his head. “What’s a hedge fund?”

  Another laugh. “Even back then, I had a hard time explaining it. Now? Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter anymore. Seems like an old dream, or a fairy tale from a strange country.”

  Then he comes to me, shakes my hand. “Good luck tonight, okay? We’ll be praying for you.”

  Not much to say after that, so I go out to the dirt yard.

  Out in front of the barn, Lieutenant May says, “Randy, just a reminder. You’re one of our best, but remember the Recon part of your job. Don’t be afraid to call for back-up, all right? If you make contact tonight, you don’t have to take it on your own. Don’t be a hero.”

  My assault pack weighs heavy in my right hand. “Understood, sir.”

  “I doubt it,” he says, slightly smiling, the healed burn tissue stretching, and I try not to smile back. This is where the Creeper had struck, and this is where I’ve been deployed. Corporal Monroe strolls over, pushing her Trek at her side. The lieutenant says to her, “Safe riding, corporal. Keep a sharp eye out tonight. We’ve got five other Recon Rangers out in the woods tonight depending on you, especially Ruiz. Don’t care how tough he thinks he is, this is his first mission.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  “Fair enough.” He stands for a moment, staring at us both, and says quietly, “Good hunting,” and walks back to the deuce-and-a-half. His driver Mike Schwartz, a PFC who’s in his sixties and who’s content being a PFC, steps out and opens the door for our boss. They both get in, the Ell-Tee leaning on Schwartz to hoist himself up to the truck’s cab. Belching and burping starts up, and the truck starts out of the yard and goes down the dirt driveway, leaving behind a trail of smoke, steam and sparks.

  Abby holds her fist out and I bump hers in return. “Don’t take a nap on me tonight, all right?”

  She smirks. “Dewey in the dining facility slipped me an extra Red Bull before I left. So I’m pretty wired up.”

  “Good for you,” I say. “Dewey getting sweet on you?”

  She gets up on her Trek. “Don’t worry about Dewey or anybody else, Randy. I’ll keep eyes and ears open. You be safe out there, all right?”

  I shift my pack from one hand to the next. “That you can depend on. Hey, before you leave. Ranger Ball is two nights from now. Get the first dance?”

  A big smile from Abby. “I don’t see why not. But only if you do one thing for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  A wink. “Don’t get crisped tonight.”

  Then she pedals off.

  A moment later the wife comes out of the main house, carrying a red glass of some liquid. She has on work boots, blue jeans and a mended red sweater. Her light brown hair is cut short and as she comes closer, I see a hint of make-up on her face. It comes to me that years ago, she was a rich woman, living a life of glamour and pleasure, and now, she’s the wife of a dairy farmer out in the middle of nowhere. One hell of a change. When I was six, I remember my parents promising to take me to Disney World for my birthday the next year.

  Last I heard, that and Epcot and Universal Studios is one big swamp.

  So we’ve all had to adjust.

  She smiles. “Would you like some lemonade before you head out, soldier?”

  Can’t help myself. I grin. “That would be great.”

  I take the glass and finish it off in three large swallows. Can’t remember the last time I’ve tasted fresh lemonade. I hand the empty glass back and see a small girl, peering out the screen door.

  “Good luck,” the mother says, spotting her daughter, as she quickly goes back inside the farmhouse.

  I take a moment as I approach the barn. I drop my pack and gently prop the M-10 against the barn’s wall. I pick up the old basketball—its pebbling worn off but still pretty firm—and I make an approach to the hoop, make a jump and whoosh! the ball slips through.

  I grab the ball as it bounces away. “Knox gets nothing but net,” I whisper. “And the crowd goes wild.”

  Then it’s back to the war.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Back in the barn with Thor I squat down, unzipping my assault pack and checking out my battle-rattle. Good luck from the farmer’s wife. Sweet words. I don’t have to worry much about Abby, whose brown eyes make me tingle whenever she looks my way. Last fall we were down in Massachusetts, supporting a Marine unit attacking a Creeper base outside of Fitchburg, when Abby was ambushed on a dirt road, riding from one Recon Ranger post to another. Her attackers were a couple of Coasties, refugees from Philly or Manhattan or any one of the half-dozen cities up and down the East Coast that were drowned when the Creeper-aimed asteroids hit offshore on the first day of the war. Abby broke through the ambush and kept focused on her mission. Only when our unit had been relieved a couple of days later did she mention, “Oh yeah, the Coastie ambush.”

  Their bodies were later recovered by mounted Massachusetts State Troopers, found on the side of the road, 9 mm bullet holes in their chests.

  That’s Abby.

  My battle-rattle is a mix of Army-issued gear with a few personal touches.

  I lay out my Colt M-10 on the workbench, and then shrug on my protective Firebiter vest, snapping it into place. Compared to the older Kevlar vests, it’s pretty lightweight, but that’s because those vests were made to halt incoming rounds or shrapnel from our fellow man. These vests are made of layers of an Insulfe
x cloth in a camouflage pattern, then some sort of protective membrane and then aluminum foil bonded to woven silica cloth to reflect the cutting lasers and flame weapons the Creepers use.

  Still, they weigh in at a toasty fourteen pounds. With another six pounds, I could don the new FireBiter arm and leg armor too, but I find those slow you down too much. Out in the woods, hunting Creepers, I like to be flexible and able to react fast, so I gamble, choosing speed and flexibility over added protection.

  Next up, a set of Rosary beads, personally blessed by the state’s Catholic bishop, which I slide in under the vest. Every soldier I know carries a set, even if they’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist. Out alone in the woods or fields, I’ll take all the help I can get. Stashed next to the Rosary beads, a laminated photo of my family, taken when I was about six by some forgotten cousin at Martha’s Vineyard, just before the war started. The photo’s about ten years old, and even laminated, the colors have faded. We’re sitting on a stonewall. I’m six years old, wearing a Boston Bruins Stanley Cup championship T-shirt, cuddled up next to my mom. She has on a light pink polo shirt and white shorts. She’s smiling, her arm tight around me, and she’s wearing dark sunglasses. I’ve wished maybe a hundred times a month that she hadn’t been wearing those glasses. I would like to still see her eyes.

  Next to Mom is Dad, also smiling, his black hair thick, his beard closely-trimmed. He’s wearing an UMASS-BOSTON sweatshirt, where he taught history and was also a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves. Leaning in against Dad, smiling and also wearing sunglasses, wearing a light pink sundress, my older sister Melissa. In this photo, she’s about nine.

  She’s nine forever. She died when the war started.

  So did my mom.

  Dad knows how they died, but won’t tell me much. It just happened in the chaos back on 10/10 when the war began, when I was with Dad and Melissa was with Mom. Maybe a dead airliner fell on Mom’s Volvo. Maybe part of the Boston tsunami swept them all out to the Atlantic. Or maybe something even worse happened, killed by one of the thousands of refugees desperate to get out to the countryside.

  And now I haven’t heard from dad in almost six months. A colonel in the Army’s Intelligence Corps, he’s supposedly been out on the West Coast, and my weekly letters to him have gone unanswered.

  Not surprising, but I still don’t like it.

  I shift the photo. Two years ago, at an Independence Day celebration at our National Guard post in Concord, I met up with a commander in the U.S. Navy, named Barnes. I found him fascinating, for he was the first Navy officer I had ever met. He was the executive officer aboard the USS Constitution, a new steam-powered dreadnought based out of Falmouth, up in Maine. During the party, we were talking and I mentioned Martha’s Vineyard, and he shrugged and said, “We steamed by Martha’s Vineyard just last month. Poor place got hit from the backwash of the Boston tsunami strike. Nothing there but rocks and sand.”

  Thor is nearby, whimpering, since he knows what’s happening as I get dressed. With vest on, I put on my fatigue jacket, with my name, rating and unit badges displayed: KNOX, SERGEANT, 2nd RECON RANGER. Over my jacket, a MOLLE vest with pouches for my compass, knife, water bottle and holstered Beretta 9 mm pistol with four additional magazines. The pistol is of no practical use against Creepers, and is only there mostly for Coasties, like the ones who had tried to ambush Abby. Speaking of Abby, on the other side of the belt is a holstered flare gun, used to signal her during the night. Fixed to the belt as well is a plastic card showing the three types of Creeper exoskeletons and their apparent missions: Transport, Battle, Research. Apparent, of course, because even ten years later, our guys and gals in the labs still don’t have a definite answer of what the bastards are up to or why they came to Earth. The plastic around the edges of the card is splintered and cracked.

  That’s all right. I never refer to the plastic card, because I know all three types of Creepers by heart; but I’ve carried the card since my first solo deployment, and that’s a lucky streak I don’t want to break.

  A couple of more things. Knee and elbow pads if I have to do some serious crawling on rocks or dirt or in rubble. A rucksack with a pair of binoculars, food, water and kit, a utility knife in my right boot, and around my neck on a chain, a little talisman from my first Creeper kill: a toe joint that somehow got broken off. Maybe it’s dangerous to tempt the enemy by bringing this souvenir along but I don’t care. It makes me feel good, knowing I’m going hunting with a war trophy dangling down my chest. In the center of my vest are slings carrying six 50 mm rounds for my Colt M-10 rifle. Each round had been carefully inspected and accounted for before I had left the base, since one round is worth a hundred New Dollars, or about ten weeks pay, so you don’t want to lose or waste them.

  Then I open a small jar, rub anti-burn and anti-flash cream on my face and neck, and after I clean up, I pull on a pair of anti-burn gloves. Next up is a set of passive night goggles, and a Kevlar helmet. We Recon Rangers laugh at the helmet; about the only thing its good for against a Creeper is to keep your brain matter in one convenient place for pick-up if you get toasted, but regs are regs. I pull goggles over the lip of the helmet. I check my left boot, where a spare set of dog tags rests, inserted in the laces. Usually boots and feet, and not much else, are left behind after a direct hit.

  One more thing. I kneel on the dirt floor of the barn and say a couple of prayers. Sometimes it’s an “Act of Contrition” or an “Our Father,” or sometimes it’s the famed astronaut Alan Shepard prayer: “Please God, don’t let me fuck up.” (Which is kinda ironic, since popular barracks-room night chatter is that one reason the Creepers came here was because they detected the start of our space program.)

  This early evening, all I can manage to get out is, “Please, God, let me win,” which I repeat a few times. I get off the floor and turn around, to see a small girl with blonde hair and big eyes looking up at me. She has on dirty khaki pants and a Red Sox T-shirt cut and mended to fit her slim body. My mouth is dry. She looks nine. Nine years old.

  “Mister?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You gonna kill the monster?”

  I squat down, touch her cheek. “You bet sweetie. I’m gonna kill that monster. Gonna kill him dead.”

  Her face is serious. She bites her lower lip. There’s a smudge of dirt on her forehead. I get up, reach into a cargo pocket of my pants, take out a black and dark green plastic wrapped treat. A Hershey chocolate bar. Her eyes widen at seeing the rare treat. On the back of the chocolate bar in large white letters: PACKAGED UNDER AUTHORIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE. NOT FOR RESALE OR REDISTRIBUTION.

  I pass the candy bar over to her. As one of my drill sergeants had said years ago, rules were sometimes made to be broken. “There you go, hon. Run along now and be with your mom and dad.”

  She trots away, smiling, holding the precious piece of candy in both of her hands, then she bursts out laughing with glee.

  I watch her race up the porch and wait for a minute or two. Thor moves and rubs up against my leg.

  “Let’s go hunting, pal,” I say, and we leave the barn.

  With Thor at my side, I go around the barn and past burnt fencing, and the two dead cows. Before me is a slight decline, with trees scorched and tossed aside, trunks snapped in two, their interiors bright white and yellow. I go past a line of boulders and then descend into the woods. The sun is setting off to the west, by the Connecticut River valley. In a patch of blue sky overhead there’s another quick line of sparks and flashes as more debris re-enters the earth’s atmosphere.

  I stay away from the charred path the Creeper made. To blunder in like that usually means a quick and painful death from burns, either from a laser strike or from the flame weapon Creepers use. Instead, I flank the torn up path and move slowly, and when I’m deep into the woods, far away from the farm, I find a rock and sit down.

  I pat the side of my leg. Thor comes up, sits down next to me, and I scratch his head. My heart thumps along. So doe
s his tail. I take a deep breath.

  “Let’s wait, bud,” I say. “Plenty of time later for killing.”

  Then the trembling starts, in my hands and legs. It always happens at the beginning of a hunt, and I’m always glad it happens away from the rest of my squad. I shake and shake, it’s hard to breathe, and for a few moments, it’s like I’m going to barf up that great lemonade I just drank. Something dark inside of me threatens to crawl out, a horrid temptation to stay here for the rest of the night and just before daybreak, fire off the green flare that indicates nothing was found, to be a coward, a chicken, don’t even move. After all, who would know? Nobody, except me, of course . . .

  I clasp my arms around me, rock back and forth. Thor rubs his head against my leg. I think about Dad and the photo inside of my vest, and the shakes ease away. I catch my breath and sit still as night descends upon the woods, and I hear birds chirping and peepers crying out.

  I keep quiet, not moving, and Thor, a good partner, stays by my side, letting me set the pace. Night settles and I slowly move my head, listening and watching, letting all of my senses adjust to the new night. With my damaged hearing, I could have gone out on disability months ago, but that wasn’t going to happen. A desk job would have sucked, I wasn’t going to leave my buds and most of all, I wasn’t going to abandon the hunt, no matter how butt-hurt scared I get before each Creeper mission.

  The Colt M-10 is comforting across my lap. A good weapon, but it’s only as good as the soldier holding it. Although he didn’t say it, I know the Ell-Tee brought me specifically to the ambush site, hoping I would be the one to find the Creeper.

  And kill it.

  It’s dark now. Wind rustles the branches from the trees about me. My sight, hearing, and sense of smell are now all tuned into the hunt.

  Now I freeze.