Ignite, p.14
Ignite, page 14
“It’s dusty here,” Tan remarked, wiping some dark dust off his shoes.
“That’s coal dust,” Austin said. “There are two big coal mines nearby. I remember driving here with my dad and commenting on how hazy it was. He said it’s never clear here because of the coal dust in the air. Super bad shit for your lungs as well.”
Half an hour later, he pointed out the deserted coal mine in the distance. A long train with countless cars filled to the brim with coal blocked an intersection. It had to have been on its way when the EMP hit. The locals were lucky it hadn’t caught fire. Man, that would’ve been the mother of all fires.
Wright turned out to be a different town than Mack had expected. No small-town country charm here, but more of an industrial settlement, clearly aimed at the oil and coal industry. They passed countless oil pumps, silently waiting to resume their job.
They had all agreed to hide their supplies, not wanting to alert anyone to their valuables. Right when they’d seen the town pop up on the horizon, they had come across a half-collapsed farm, the sad remnants of better days for the inhabitants. Weeds surrounded the house and the two barns that were nothing more than rotted wood, held together by a few beams that would soon give way as well, and they hid their backpacks in three different spots, only bringing water and the last of the bars they had. Finding any suitable food in the town was definitely on their list of priorities.
The debate whether or not to split up had been short, with none of them really wanting to leave the others. In the end, they had decided to stick together. Austin had admonished Tan to do his best to appear straight, and while Mack hadn’t been exactly sure what Austin had meant by that, Tan seemed to understand and had promised he’d try.
As soon as they hit the city limits, they started seeing people in the streets. Most were on foot, but there was the occasional lucky person on a bike.
“It’s weird, seeing people again,” Austin said softly.
“I know, right?” Tan said. “I have to force myself not to hide when someone approaches us.”
They gave friendly nods to everyone who met their eyes, sticking to the small-town habits they were all familiar with. They were strangers here, and considering the size of the town, people would quickly recognize them as such, but if they showed they were at least from the same region, that might get them some goodwill.
It soon became clear that they weren’t the only ones drawn in by the soldiers, as most of the people seemed to be making their way toward the city center, wherever that was. They followed others and soon found themselves in a respectable crowd, considering the town size.
The tank was parked in the biggest intersection in the middle of the town, right next to the gas station. Various people were using hand pumps to pump gas into canisters, handing them to the soldiers. With no electricity, the normal pumps wouldn’t work, Mack understood.
Inside the gas station, others were gathering food, packing it in boxes, crates, even plastic bags. Those, too, were handed to the soldiers, and to Mack’s surprise, they loaded those onto a horse cart that stood right next to the tank.
It made sense, considering the soldiers would need supplies and had no other way of transporting them, but Mack had to smile a little at the old-fashioned solution. He could only hope some of these soldiers had been farmer boys who knew how to handle horses, otherwise they’d be in for a nasty surprise or two. Handling a double span looked a lot easier than it was in reality.
“What’s going on?” Austin said, and it took a second for Mack to realize he was addressing an older guy standing right next to them.
“Them’s our boys, going off to war,” the man said with a ring of pride in his voice.
“To war?” Austin asked, and Mack admired the casual ignorance in his tone.
“War against the aliens,” the man said, confirming that the general public at least knew they were dealing with extraterrestrials.
While Austin made small talk with the elderly man and a few of his neighbors who joined in, Tan was quiet. Mack tuned out the conversation as well, confident that Austin had it covered, and studied the soldiers. The gas station was about half empty of food now, bad news for the town people if that was their only source of supplies, Mack thought. Bad news for them as well, if they were hoping to find food in this town. He could only hope it had a grocery store too, which wasn’t a stretch considering the size, but it made him wonder why the soldiers weren’t loading up there in the first place.
Austin had the same line of thought, apparently, because he asked the man about it, and they learned that it had been destroyed in a fire caused by a few meteorites landing close. That was interesting, Mack thought. So far, the damage they’d seen from the meteorites—aka the rocks that held the spider bots—had been minimal. They’d seen black circles, but hardly any damage outside of those. Even the one that had landed in the forest close to them had not caused a forest fire, which was a miracle considering how dry that wood had been.
“We’re happy to provide them with as many supplies as we can spare,” another man said, carrying that same pride in his voice. “They told us they’re meeting up with other troops, all heading to the front line.”
Mack hummed in agreement, then casually asked, “Where is the front line?”
The man waved his hand in a western direction. “About a hundred-fifty miles west,” he said. “Near Shoshoni, their commander said. That’s why they need the supplies. They’ll be marching there since none of our vehicles work. The aliens destroyed them all, you know.”
“Our boys will defeat them,” the elderly man said. “We’ve never lost a war, and we won’t lose this one.”
Mack shared a poignant look with Tan, who probably thought the same thing he did. He could think of a few wars that had been lost, the Vietnam War for instance. And if you counted the southern part of their country, the Civil War might have been a while ago, but Mack was pretty damn sure the South had lost. Not that he was going to bring that up here. He might not have well-developed social skills, but even he was not that stupid.
“Yes, we’re proud of our troops,” the man who had pointed out the front line said. When one of the soldiers walked past them, he slapped him on the back with a hearty camaraderie. “This is their commanding officer,” he said. “If you boys want to join in the war effort, you can sign up with him. I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before conscription starts anyway.”
Mack could only keep his mouth from dropping open with effort. That was a complication they had never even considered, but the man was right, of course. If an actual war against the aliens started, there would be a draft once the government figured out a way to communicate with its citizens. And once that started, the three of them would have to hide permanently.
They couldn’t serve, not with them being registered as gay, so it was a choice between getting sent back to camp—if camps even existed anymore—or hiding for as long as the war lasted. Or join the army under a false name, which out of all the options was the least attractive to Mack. Call him unpatriotic, but he had no desire to serve in an army that was under the command of a president who considered him a criminal simply because of his sexual preferences. One more reason to try and escape to the WUS, because then they’d be safe from camps and persecution.
The commanding officer, whose insignias showed he was a platoon sergeant with the last name Walken, looked all three of them up and down, something flashing through his eyes that made Mack uneasy.
The sergeant cleared his throat, then said, “Yes, we are in desperate need of recruits to join our ranks. Come find me if you want to join.”
He gave them a courteous nod, then briskly walked off. Mack followed him with his eyes, unable to shake the tingles down his spine that something was off. As Austin continued to chat with the people in the street, Mack stepped aside so he could watch Sergeant Walken. One of his soldiers walked up to him, giving him a crisp salute.
“That’s weird,” Tan said, the first time he’d spoken up. His voice was soft enough so only Mack could hear him.
“What is?” Mack asked, his eyes never leaving the sergeant.
“That salute.” Tan stepped close to him, almost whispering now. “My older brother, Calvin, is in the army. He’s the only one who was ever nice to me, and he told me all about life in the army, probably because I was the only one willing to listen. You don’t salute in a situation like this. It’s way too formal. Plus, the guy is a sergeant, a noncommissioned officer. There’s no need to salute.”
Mack’s heart skipped a beat. “What are you saying?” he asked, his voice just as soft.
“I don’t think they’re soldiers at all. He probably is, the sergeant. You can tell by his military gait. Maybe some of the others, but there’s a few in there that are definitely not army-trained.”
They were after supplies, Mack realized. If these men were not actually soldiers, there could only be one reason why they were doing what they did. They were trying to get supplies so they could survive, stealing them, basically, from the very townspeople they pretended to defend and protect. He and Tan looked at each other, and Mack could see Tan had come to the same conclusion.
They casually made their way back to Austin, who was still chatting. Geez, the guy excelled at making small talk, Mack saw with admiration. He waited till there was a lull in the conversation, then signaled Austin as subtly as he could that they needed to move on.
“Let’s see if we can give them a hand,” Austin said, picking up on Mack’s signal. They walked toward the gas station, then made a quick turn and ducked into an alley, taking a few more turns until they had moved away from the crowd.
“There’s something fishy about these soldiers,” Austin said.
“That’s because they’re not soldiers,” Mack said. He pointed at Tan. “Tan deserves the credit here.”
Tan explained again what he had noticed, and Austin’s eyes grew big for a second. “Damn, that’s ballsy,” he said. “You know, if they had pulled this stunt with bad people, I might’ve even admired them for it. But to steal from this isolated town that has no other means of survival, that’s low.”
“We were planning on stealing food ourselves,” Mack pointed out. “What’s the difference?”
Austin’s eyes narrowed, then he let out a sigh. “You’ve got me there. I don’t know why, but it feels different to me. We’re only three people, and we would’ve only taken what we needed. They’re taking the town’s whole emergency supply of food. These people will be left with nothing.”
Mack nodded slowly, accepting that explanation.
“What makes a difference is the false hope,” Tan said. “They’re not just stealing food, they’re giving these people false hope that someone is defending them. To tell them that the front line is that close to their town and then pretending to be sent there to prevent the town from being invaded by aliens, I think that’s low. When these people find out these guys lied to them, all their hope will be crushed. And by then, they will be out of supplies.”
They looked at each other, identical looks of frustration on their faces. “Can we do something to stop them?” Austin asked. “Is there a way to expose them that won’t get us into trouble?”
It took them almost an hour to come up with a plan. Tan still wasn’t convinced their final idea would work, but he did agree it was their best shot and the least risky one. They would nab one of the soldiers in an unguarded moment, interrogate him about the details of what the fake soldiers had planned, and then go from there. Austin had suggested taking his place or pretending to be a real soldier with new orders, but Mack had expressed doubts that would work. Instead, they’d agreed to get more information first about what these men planned to do with the loot.
They had to wait for the right moment, but when one of the soldiers strolled into an alley by himself to take a leak, they had him. Austin yanked the guy behind a dumpster, a hand firmly clamped on his mouth, while Mack shoved his wrists together, binding them quickly with a piece of rope they’d stolen from the bed of a construction guy’s pickup truck. Tan did as he was told and grabbed the soldier’s legs to prevent him from kicking. He could barely suppress a squeal, excited and nervous at the same time.
The guy’s eyes went big with fear, even more so when Austin leaned in and whispered, “We know what you guys are planning, you deceitful little shit. And we’re here to stop you.”
The guy mumbled something behind Austin’s hand.
“I’m gonna remove my hand from your mouth. If you scream, we’ll kill you,” Austin told him in that low voice that gave Tan shivers. He didn’t mean it, Tan thought, but it was still chilling to see this cold, dark side of Austin.
Austin removed his hand, and Tan held his breath, waiting for how the soldier would react.
“I didn’t want to do it,” was the first thing he said, and thank fuck he kept his voice low.
“How the hell did you guys even come up with this? Where did you find all the uniforms and the tank?” Austin asked.
“One of the guys runs an army surplus store,” the soldier said, still whispering. “He had that tank in his back yard ’cause he’s an army freak, and it’s still operational. He’s a vet and so are two others, but most of us aren’t. We’re all from the same neighborhood.”
“It’s a fucked-up thing you’re doing,” Tan spoke up. “A low and despicable thing.”
“I know, okay? I didn’t want to go this far, but they told me if I betrayed them, they’d kill me. It’s the survival of the fittest now, they said.”
Well, he had a point there, Tan had to admit, but that still didn’t mean you could fuck over a whole town.
“What were you going to do with the food?”
“Bring it back home. We’re from Rapid City. The aliens destroyed all our supermarkets. Walmart, drug stores, everything is gone. Burned to the ground. Gas stations too. There’s barely any food left other than what people had in their cupboards. If we don’t get food, our families will die. So we scoured some towns and sent back what we found with horse carts, hoping they’d make it.”
Rapid City? That was where they had come from. Tan looked at Austin, then Mack as he let that news sink in. Something sat heavy in his stomach about this news, but they’d have to discuss that later.
“With what?” Mack asked, and when the soldier looked at him quizzically, he added, “How did the aliens destroy it? With the meteors? The spider bots?”
The guy shook his head as best as he could with Austin still holding him down. “No, with their tanks. They came in at night, blew everything up, then left. Half the town was on fire.”
“When?” Mack wanted to know.
“Five days after the first meteor shower. We had a hell of a time putting out the fires without power, so we lost a ton of houses to the flames. When we left, it was still smoldering in some areas.”
Austin asked the guy something else, but Tan’s ears picked up something in the distance. A scream. Then another one.
“Guys,” he said softly, then put a hand on Austin’s arm. “Shut up and listen.”
He closed his eyes, reaching out with his ears. Yes, people were screaming.
“Spider bots,” Mack whispered. “That’s what it sounds like when spider bots show up.”
“We have to go,” Tan said, almost jumping up, but Austin clamped down on his arm.
“No! You can’t outrun them, not on foot. We need to hide.”
“They’re sentinels,” the soldier whispered urgently. “Sarge, he’s a real sergeant, and he thinks those bots are sent out as spies, to search through towns and report back to the aliens.”
“They can kill people,” Mack said, and the soldier nodded hard.
“Yes. They have a kind of needle that can stab people, and it kills them within seconds. Alien poison, Sarge said.”
In the distance, the screams increased in frequency and they also sounded closer. A gunshot rang out, and Tan cringed. “We need to hide,” he said, unable to keep the fear out of his voice. “Like, now.”
Austin looked around and Mack did the same, both scanning the alley in every direction. “Where do we go?” Mack asked, panic slipping into his voice as well.
“The dumpster,” Austin pointed to the big, gray container right next to them. “No one will search there, not even spider bots.”
Tan closed his eyes for a second. The smell of the dumpster had been bad sitting next to it, and that was with the lid on. He couldn’t even imagine… No, he told himself. It doesn’t matter. Being smelly is way, way better than being dead.
“Take me with you,” the soldier said.
Tan could barely suppress the urge to roll his eyes. What the fuck was up with people who tried to fuck them over, then wanted to join them? Hell. To. The. No.
“Get in the dumpster,” Austin told the guy, even as he and Mack lifted the lid as silently as they could.
Tan couldn’t hide his surprise until Austin met his eyes and gave him a subtle wink. Okay, then. The man had a plan. As usual. That, Tan could live with.
He hoisted himself up and climbed into the dumpster, his stomach revolting instantly, and he gagged. God, that smell was horrific. Like something had died in there. Garbage never smelled nice—and he should know, as he’d been fucked behind the camp’s kitchen often enough which was where the camp’s garbage disposal had been—but this was a whole new low. Why the fuck was it this foul?
Mack and Austin worked themselves into the dumpster as well, then closed the lid. Tan gagged again, relieved when he heard someone else do the same.
“God, this stench is too much,” the soldier guy whispered.
“This bin hasn’t been emptied in at least three weeks, and it’s been sitting in the full sun all that time. Of course it’s revolting,” Mack said, ever his practical self.
