Dark Victory - eARC (7 page)

An Excerpt From the Journal of Randall Knox

Keeping a journal is against regs, because supposedly it violates OPSEC, Operational Security. Yeah, right, as if the Creepers are going to grab a hand-written diary off a dead sixteen-year-old and use it for intelligence. Not sure if they can read English handwriting; only know that they can detect high energy use—cars, ships, computers, power plants—and blast them all to pieces whenever they feel like it.

Figure a journal like this will be useful once the war is done. If I live, maybe when I’m 25 or 35 or something like that. Books will be written, I’m sure, and the generals and the presidents who said they did all the thinking, fighting and dying, will write most of the books. This way, I can write a book from what it was like to be a grunt, BBQ bait, the ones slogging to kill the Creepers, face to face. Or face to arthropod.

Journals are for stories, memories, or so my English teachers said. So here’s a memory. Was in the Boy Scouts, when I was eleven. New Hampshire scout troop, since Dad had dual state citizenship because of a vacation cottage up on Bow Lake. Doing salvage work in some of the homes near the Boston tsunami strike that got soaked but didn’t get crushed. My patrol was in a Marblehead neighborhood close to where I had grown up before the war. Times have changed since then, Boy Scouts now make sure scouts don’t go to their hometowns, but that rule wasn’t in place back then.

Chore’s pretty simple. Break into an abandoned house, secure usable clothing, blankets, canned and bottled foods. Even if years have gone by after the stale dates on the food, it’s still edible, most cases. Mark the outside of the house with spray paint for pick-up crews to gather up the salvaged stuff. Go to another house. Sometimes you find remains, most often you didn’t. This far from Boston most people got out before the waves struck. A very few times you find survivors, folks who managed to hang on and didn’t want to leave their homes, even after five years of no power, gas or grocery stores.

Anyway, was working one day, when our troop’s Senior Patrol Leader—a real dick named Calhoun—came running up to this ranch house I was working at, out of breath, big smile on his face. Hey, Knox, he said. Didn’t you say your older sister, her name was Melissa? I dropped the green plastic trash bag I was carrying. Yeah, I said, Melissa. Calhoun jerked a thumb behind him. Three houses down, real doll living there, said her name was Melissa.

I ran out after Calhoun, legs pumping, lungs burning, got to a two-story Colonial with faded blue paint, door wide open, mind racing, thinking of Melissa, thinking about what I’d tell Dad, maybe she knew where Mom was, oh my God, and—

Inside the house. Dark. No furniture. Rug rolled up. A fireplace and—

On the mantelpiece, a doll, about two feet tall, sitting there, plastic smile, yellow hair, and a scrawled tag attached to her toe.

MELISSA.

Behind me I heard Calhoun and others laughing at me.

Eventually it took three of the other Scouts to get me off Calhoun, but not after I nearly slit his throat with my Scout knife.

Year later, when I was twelve, I left the Scouts and joined the New Hampshire National Guard.

How’s that for a story?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Thor and I race down the steep slope of the moat, across the swampy and thicket-filled bottom, and then clamber up the far side. Thor seems happy to be with me, and I know it’s stupid, running across an open field like this, but those screams . . . I can’t let it go.

The brush and the grass whip against my shins and knees as I get closer to the flames. Three houses are now burning along, and the screaming has finally stopped. My booted feet hit pavement, and breathing hard, I advance up the road.

That’s when the stupid part hits home. I’m alone with Thor, with no flare gun at my side, with no back-up waiting to roar in and help me out. It’s just me and my dog. I advance up the road, Colt M-10 straight out, hoping that once Staff Sergeant Muller gets over being pissed at me, he’ll tell the CP that I’m out here by my lonesome, so that maybe other soldiers can be peeled away from the nearby battlements to join the fun.

The light and the sound of the flames and the stench of things burning are all overwhelming me. Thor keeps stride with me, as I pace up the road, looking, scanning, not seeing any target.

Up ahead. First burning house. Then the second. And the third. They look like small Capes, homes built here during the 1950s after the last real big war, nice homes for the returning veterans, full of piss and vinegar and a G.I. Bill after destroying fascism on both sides of the globe.

At the first house, a body is halfway out of the doorway, collapsed on a brick set of steps. It’s charred so badly I can’t tell its age or sex. I take a deep breath, move along. At the second home, bodies are scattered on the burnt front lawn. Three small shapes, two larger shapes, smoke wisping up from the blackened corpses.

Mom, dad, and the kids. Killed in view of a military base supposedly dedicated to their protection. Some job we’re doing.

I look up. The night sky is its usual chaos of moving dots of light and flares as debris comes back home to earth.

Thor is right next to me. If it weren’t for him, I think I’d turn around and run back to the fort.

Third house, burning along. A bearded man with a ponytail is standing on the lawn, staring at the flames roaring up from what was once his home. Two young boys are at either side, holding onto him. They are all barefoot, the boys wearing pajama bottoms, their dad in a patched pair of jeans. The boys have their heads burrowed in dad’s side. Dad turns to me, eyes wide.

“It’s gone,” he says, voice raspy.

I lower my Colt. “Do you know where it went?”

He tries to move but it’s hard to do, with his sons holding on so tight to him. He raises an arm and points it to the northern end of the road. “It . . . it hit the Crandall house, then the Johnson’s, and then ours . . . me and the boys, we ducked into the woods. My wife . . . Thank Christ she’s working the night shift at Concord Hospital. From the woods, I saw the damn thing move fast . . . I mean, real, real fast . . . could be miles away by now.”

My legs are quivering and I sling my M-10 over my right shoulder. Thor sits down and he doesn’t seem to sense anything alien in the neighborhood. Poor civilian seems right. Creepers can creep right along at the speed of a lazy cockroach, hence the name, but when they want to, those eight legs can move
fast
and they can be over the horizon in a manner of minutes.

I say, “I’m sure the Concord Fire Department and the Red Cross will be along soon, sir. You just take care, okay?”

I rub Thor’s head and make to walk back to my duty station, and one really angry staff sergeant, when the man says, “Oh, do you mind?”

I hesitate, wondering what in hell he’s going to say to me, especially since he’s just seen his neighbors get scorched down, his home and their homes flattened and destroyed. So I’m not really ready for what happens next.

He breaks free from his sons, comes over and offers a hand.

“Thanks for your service.”

I make it back to the battlement and Staff Sergeant Muller meets me at the bottom of the stone steps. His face is taut and he says, “That was disobeying direct orders, Knox. Clear as can be.”

I tug my helmet off, tap my left ear. “Sorry, staff sergeant. My bum ear. I was certain that you said move. So I did.”

He crosses his arms. “Dunlap will back me up when I meet with Lieutenant May. You’re going to be in hack so long that when you get out, that damn dog won’t even recognize you. What do you think about that?”

I tie my helmet off at my utility belt. “I think Dunlap might think differently.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

I brush past him, to go back up to the top of he battlement. “Because I don’t think she—or you—will want me telling the lieutenant how you both ended up in our duty station wearing each other’s shorts. Hard to tell the right size and color in the dark, am I right?”

That shuts up Staff Sergeant Muller pretty well as I get back to where I had started out, Dunlap on the other side of the battlement. Thor lays down and stretches out, and across the moat and field of fire, I see additional movement, and bring up my binoculars. A truck from our Quick Response Force is there, and I hear the tingling of bells. Two horse-drawn steam-powered fire pumpers roll in from the Concord Fire Department, red lanterns hanging from the side. Soldiers and dogs start moving up the road, and firefighters get to work, watering down the smoldering homes.

I take my Colt, work the bolt and expel the 50 mm round, twisting the bottom back to safe.

Muller finally comes up and stands in one corner, and it’s one quiet post until the field phone rings and sends us home, just as a series of horns blow across the fort, signaling an all clear.

After turning in my Colt and ammunition at the Armory, I trudge back to my barracks, other soldiers from my squad and platoon eddying about me, but I’m too tired to join in the gossip and chatting that goes on, except a quick slap on my butt gives me a jerk.

Corporal Abby Monroe joins me and I toss my left arm around her, give her a quick squeeze. “How was your alert, corporal?”

“Pretty damn routine, glad to say,” she says, leaning into me as we walk a few yards, my arm still around her, feeling damn fine. “Went to the CP, trusty Trek at my side, and waited to bike out with dispatches in case the phone lines were cut. They weren’t, so I sat on my butt. How about you?”

“Ticked off Staff Sergeant Muller,” I say.

“Want to say any more?”

“Not right now,” I say. “Try me later.”

“’Kay,” she says. She moves to break away and I say, “Not so fast, Abby.”

We’re in a shadowy part of the walkway, which works for me, and I give her another inappropriate kiss—this time to her sweet lips—and she squeezes my hand and heads off to her own barracks.

I unlock the door and go in, Thor right behind me, and I’m not sure what time it is. I light off a candle and there’s a rap at the side of the door. It’s Corporal Manning, and he smiles at me. His small teeth are yellow and brown.

“Glad to see you made it back, Sergeant.”

“Glad to be here,” I say, stripping off my gear, putting it carefully back where it belongs. Thor jumps on my unmade bunk, moves in two circles, and then thumps himself down.

“Hear you got in a pissing match with the staff sergeant.”

I shake my head. “Jungle drums move quick.”

He grins, taps a wrinkled finger at the side of his nose. “Us old-timers, we stick together, we pass little bits of news along. So good for you. Muller’s not a bad sergeant but sometimes gets too big for his pants, but you be careful.”

“I will,” I say.

The corporal leans out, like he’s looking up and down the hallway, to make sure he’s not being overheard, and then he says, “I know you don’t use it, but make sure you never think your family connection will save you if things hit the fan, Sergeant. Number of people out there would like to take you and your family and shove it up your butt at the right time.”

I rub at the back of my head. “The only family I think about is my dad . . . if he ever gets my mail.”

“True enough. Feel like a cold treat to cool you down?”

I cock my head. “A what?”

From his baggy fatigue pants, he reaches into a side pocket, pulls out an aluminum can, red and white. I stare at it. Coca-Cola. He pops the top open and passes it over. I take a long, satisfying cold and biting swig.

“Holy God,” I say, as I lower the can. “Where did you get this?”

“From the colonel’s private stock, and don’t say any more. But I figured what you did last night, and what you did right now, you deserved it.”

I pass the can over to him and he doesn’t stand on ceremony. He takes a healthy swig himself and passes it back. I take another cold swallow, feeling the tickling in my mouth and nose from the carbon dioxide. Last time I had a Coke was at the fort’s Christmas celebration, about five months ago.

“Ask you question, Corporal?”

“Sure,” he says, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Last floor bull session, when you were passing out the clean laundry . . . were you telling the truth about that television show?”

“The one about the housewives?”

“That’s the one,” I say. “Tell me again.”

The old corporal says, “For a few years, just before the war started, one of the television channels, they’d run these hour-long programs about these rich housewives.”

“From New York?”

He nods. “That’s one of the places. And New Jersey. California. Atlanta. A couple of others.”

“An hour long? Really? What was so interesting about these housewives that they could do an hour show about them?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, were they artists. Or doctors. Scientists. In the military. Were they something like that?”

Manning laughs, though it’s more of a cackle. “Hell, no. Most of ’em didn’t do a damn thing. They were rich, and they were bored, and they spent a lot of time at parties or restaurants, gossiping about the other wives. Truth be told, a few were kinda pretty to look at, but most of ’em were as dumb as a sack full of hammers.”

“So what was the program about?”

Manning says, “Didn’t you hear me? The program was about the housewives. Camera crews followed ’em around and later showed their eating, their dressing, their fights and their parties. That was it. That was the program.”

I turn the cold Coke can around in my hand. “And people watched that? Honestly?”

“That they did. They were pretty damn popular.”

I take one last swig of the cold Coke, pass the rest of it back to the good corporal. “Good try,” I say. “I don’t believe it. Can’t believe anyone would be that dumb to make a program like that, and dumb enough to watch it.”

Manning gratefully takes the can from my hand. “Funny thing is they did.”

When the corporal leaves I close and lock the door, and push Thor aside to climb into my bunk. A quick check of my watch shows it’s three a.m. Later in the day, that evening, to be specific, is the Ranger Ball. A dance where I was promised the first one by Corporal Abby Monroe. At least three hours sleep if I’m lucky, before I have to get up and face the day and hit the books.

Some luck.

Banging on the door wakes me up just before reveille. I don’t know how much sleep I got but I know it’s not enough. It’s never enough in the Army.

I get out of bed and Thor yawns and snuggles himself back in my bedding. I look to him and say, “Some guard dog you are.” He yawns again and flops over. So I’m not a happy sergeant when I open the door, and I become even unhappier when I see who’s standing there: an MP from the post’s Provost Marshal office, about my age. His nametag says SALTIER, and his rank is PFC but he’s all attitude, standing there sharply in a clean uniform with the MP patch on his left upper arm. His face is puffy and pimply, but he still carries himself like he’s a cop, which he is.

“Sergeant Knox?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Sir, you’re to report to the Provost Marshal’s office at oh nine-hundred.”

Oh crap, I think. Staff Sergeant Muller must have decided to go all out against me and not worry too much about the Mystery of the Swapped Shorts.

“I see,” I say. “Any idea of what’s going on?”

He shakes his head. “Some sort of complaint, sir, that’s all I know. And that you’re to report at oh nine-hundred. Any questions?”

Lots of questions, but none of which this chubby young MP can answer for me. “No, no questions.”

Saltier leans to the left and peers over my shoulder. “Sir, is that a K-9 unit in your bunk?”

I don’t bother turning around. “It is.”

“Sir, I’m sure you know the regulations about unauthorized K-9 units staying overnight in the barracks.”

“An oversight, I’m sure.”

Something that looks like it might be a small smile splits the MP’s face. “If you’d like, sir, I could help you correct that oversight by returning him to the K-9 barracks.”

I feel a bit better towards the cop. “That would be great, private. I’d appreciate that.”

I grab a leash, secure Thor, and he gives me a look of sad betrayal, as he and the MP leave the room, leaving me alone and in one hell of a mess.