He went to kiss her goodbye and had to pull the scarf down again. With any luck, she’d take her meds, sleep through most of the day, and not watch the news, which was pretty well nonexistent at the moment because nobody was leaving the city. The TV helicopters couldn’t fly anyway, and the broadcast system had been taken over by endless emergency announcements about staying at home, covering air vents, and filtering water.
In the street outside, a thick layer of dark gray dust covered everything like a negative image of a snow scene. Cars were parked nose to tail along both sides of the road, and it was only when he walked past one of them that he saw movement through a small patch scraped clear on its filthy windshield; there were people sleeping inside. Shit, he had refugees living rough in cars on his own street. They still hadn’t been able to move into reception centers.
He wondered whether to stop and help, but what could he do? He couldn’t offer them shelter—there was no way he could leave strangers in his house with Maria. And he had to report for duty. After arguing with himself for a few seconds, he walked on, eyes already stinging from the polluted air, and then broke into a jog all the way to the main road. It was hard going. The sidewalks were coated in the same greasy gray crap as the cars and roofs, almost slippery underfoot even though it felt dry. Whatever the soot and debris was mixing with, it was going to be hell to clean up.
Dom wasn’t sure what bothered him most as he made his way to HQ—the unbreathable air, or the sense that the place was packed solid with people even though nobody was visible on the streets. It felt like everything—people, fear, anger—had been crammed into the houses and the doors slammed shut, and one push would force the chaos to spill out. The situation beyond Ephyra that had caused it just was too much for him to take in. He didn’t even try to imagine it.
He’d see for himself soon enough. He was on the first recon today. He’d volunteered.
The ’Dills were still in the vehicle hangar, clean and serviced. The transport engineers had had nothing to do for two days except fix them and bolt makeshift filters over the intakes to keep out the worst of the fine particles caused by the vaporization of… how many cities? Dom didn’t actually know. He wondered if Marcus’s dad had told him that level of detail, or if Marcus even wanted to know.
Padrick and Tai were waiting for the briefing with the three other recon squads, sitting on the Dill’s front scoop. Poor old Tai; he had no idea what was happening to his folks in the South Islands, and Dom didn’t know whether to talk about it. Comms had been patchy since E-Day. Now the Hammer strikes had destroyed relays across Sera, and if there were survivors in the remote and rural areas, it was going to be weeks or even longer before anyone found out.
But there was no more Sera out there, not as any of them had known it. Now Dom had to drive out there and see how bad things really were.
And the whole idea is to check how little we left for the grubs to salvage.
It was an upside-down war in every way Dom could imagine.
“Seen Marcus?” Dom asked.
“Not yet,” Pad said. “You got to pity the guy. He must feel terrible now.”
Dom bristled. “Why?”
“His dad. You seriously think that someone isn’t going to give him shit over the Fenix connection sooner or later? Watch him try even harder to save the world now to make up for it.”
“Pad, shut the fuck up, okay?”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done it. I’m just saying that down the line, people will forget why we had to.”
“It’s not Marcus’s problem. Just knock it off.”
Dom knew the comment stung because it was true. Marcus always behaved as if he was personally responsible for every damn Gear, which was more than some of the officers managed. Now he was the same with civvies. Over the last nine days, Dom had lost count of the times he’d gone so far out of his way to rescue them that it was verging on a death wish.
It also stung because he knew Pad was right about the Fenix name. Nobody knew yet if Adam Fenix had saved humankind or just hurried along its extinction, so the jury was still out—in Ephyra, anyway. Anyone who’d been the target of the Hammer strikes would have made their mind up pretty fast.
Marcus turned up two minutes before the briefing was due to start and just gave everyone a silent nod. He didn’t even say anything to Dom. What was there to say, after all? Good morning really didn’t cut it today, and there was no point commenting on the weather. Eventually, boots echoed down the corridor, and the Gears snapped to attention beside their vehicles.
Dom wasn’t expecting to see Colonel Hoffman this morning. But then this wasn’t any old mission, and he got the feeling that the man wanted to confront what had happened and see stuff for himself. Some Gears said Hoffman just couldn’t delegate, and interfered with every damn thing, but Dom knew him too well. They’d fought side by side—literally—and nearly died together; the Hoffman that Dom knew was simply a soldier who believed his job was on the front line, not shuffling committee papers or kissing politicians’ asses. The irony was that the more Gears who got killed, the more hands-on soldiering the senior commanders had to do, and their casualty rate meant that Hoffman was being forced higher in the command simply by staying alive.
No, he definitely wasn’t happy that way. The old bastard still looked naked and lost without a Lancer.
“Stand easy, Gears.” Hoffman seemed exhausted and angry. Maybe things hadn’t gone to plan. “Sorry if you’re pining for Lieutenant Faraday already, but I’m briefing you. We’ve got no intel whatsoever yet, so anything you can glean on this patrol is valuable. The air’s going to be filthy for weeks, so you will observe personal safety precautions, and those of you too macho to wear goddamn helmets will wear breathing masks, or I’ll stick you on a charge for hazarding COG property. Is that clear?”
It was a crisp chorus. “Sir, yes sir.”
“Good. Now, all I expect you to do is to keep to the main highways as far as you’re able, take air samples, assess the degree of damage to property, report any signs of grub activity, and any—well, shit, there won’t be survivors. Just stick to compass points today. You can’t cover much ground.”
“What if there are survivors, sir?” Dom asked.
Hoffman’s voice was hoarse. Maybe he’d been out in the streets. “You ever seen a firestorm, Santiago?”
“Probably not on this scale, sir.”
“Nobody ever has.” Hoffman took off his cap and wiped his shaven scalp with his palm. “If you find any live casualties, chances are that you won’t be able to do a damn thing for them. Okay, get going, Gears.”
Nobody ever has.
That summed up the day.
Padrick drove the ’Dill south out of the vehicle compound. Roads in Ephyra itself were still passable because Gears had been out making sure they were clear, bulldozing routes where they had to as far as the ring of barricades and vehicle checkpoints. But the world was already an alien landscape draped in dark gray velvet. Yes, that was what it looked like: not snow, but somber velvet.
It’s a fucking funeral.
And they were still a long way from the nearest city that had taken a direct Hammer strike. There was no destruction yet, no firestorm damage, just the debris from it that been swept for kilometers on air currents.
“Control,” Padrick said, “I’m going to have to find a cross-country route. I can see the highway ahead, but it’s nothing but solid cars.”
Dom thought of the refugees sleeping in their vehicles in the city itself. He didn’t want to believe anyone might be sheltering like that out here. But there was absolutely nothing he could do about it even if they were. If they hadn’t made their way on foot to the city, then nothing could help them here. Nobody could even get ambulances down this far.
“Okay,” Pad said. The ’Dill bounced down an embankment and onto the rail tracks, a bit too close to overturning for Dom’s tastes. He grabbed the nearest seat. “This is the only way ahead. Hang onto your n
uts. It’s going to be a very bumpy ride.”
Tai had his eyes shut, hands clasped. Marcus was glued to one of the secondary periscopes for a while, but swore and gave up after a few lurches that left him rubbing his bruised forehead. Even the ’Dill’s huge all-terrain tires couldn’t smooth out the ride along the rails.
“Pad, I’m going to grab recon pictures every half klick,” Marcus said. “Stop and pull back the front hatch when you can. Don’t deploy Baz. The crud in the air’s going to clog his parts, too.”
Even Marcus had fallen into calling the bot “he.” It might have been out of courtesy to Padrick, though.
The roads ran close enough to the rail network in places for them to get a good view of the endless frozen river of cars. Eventually, the dead traffic jams thinned out, and the charcoal velvet roads got emptier. People had given up running at that point; maybe they’d tried to sit it out somewhere. It was like looking at tree rings to see what had happened in history. Dom realized he could read the stages and times of panic and desperation from where vehicles had been abandoned.
Pad halted the ’Dill again, and this time Dom got up to assess the terrain with Marcus. Without the navigation aids in the ’Dill, Dom wouldn’t have had a clue where he was now.
It was so fucking quiet. No birds, no traffic, nothing. The world was dead.
“Shit.” If Marcus said it once, he said it twenty, thirty times. It seemed to be all he could manage. “Shit.”
“You’ve seen enough road,” Pad said quietly. “Let’s just keep on to Gerrenhalt. It’s on this line.”
It was hour after hour of utter misery, hammering along the rails and being shaken shitless. There was nothing to see, nothing to discuss, nothing to imagine that wasn’t death and fear. There wasn’t even the constant background of radio chatter to listen to, because there were only four units deployed, and they were probably looking at the same shit as Dom.
All he could do was sit clinging to his seat, rattled like a can of beans despite the safety belts, and try not to let Tai see how shocked he was. Tai’s expression was one of complete calm. But he had to be going crazy inside. As for Pad—Pad never talked about family, so maybe he’d lost touch with home anyway. Dom hoped so, for his sake.
We’re not even there yet.
We’re not even near the worst shit.
Oh God. What’s going to be left now?
How the hell could Sera ever rebuild? It was going to take years to clean the place, let alone anything else. He couldn’t even begin to think about the grubs. They didn’t seem to matter right then.
Marcus sat with the back of his head resting against the bulkhead behind him, staring up at some fixed point Dom couldn’t see, and every jolt and shudder bounced his skull off the metal. It had to be hurting him. But he didn’t make any effort to sit forward. He looked as if he was punishing himself for something, but—of course—he’d done nothing, and maybe that was his problem. He needed to do things. Everyone knew that Sergeant Fenix could do the impossible, pull any situation out of the fire, beat any odds. But now he could do nothing except take pictures and stare at a man-made disaster on a scale that even he didn’t seem able to take in.
And this was what his dad did for a job. It was all around him now.
“Chemical factories,” Marcus said at last.
“What?”
“Think what happens when you destroy industrial areas. The toxins that get released. All that shit in the air, in the soil, in the water.”
“That’s the idea, man. Destroy everything the grubs can use.” Dom found himself veering between it’s-all-going-to-work-out and blind panic. Maria was waiting for him at home, and life carried on in Ephyra. Out here, though—he didn’t even have words for what he saw. He tried hard to sound rational and in control. “With any luck, some of the shit will run into their holes and poison the ugly fucks, too.”
Marcus shut his eyes at that point. Dom, like any Gear, grabbed sleep when he could, but he couldn’t sleep now. It wasn’t just the constant shaking of the ’Dill; he was too scared to close his eyes. He’d fall asleep, wake up, and then have to accept all over again that the nightmare out there was real. He hated those few seconds of forgetfulness every time he woke up before the crisis of the day reminded him it was still waiting for him. The best way to deal with it was to gorge on it, overload himself with the pain until it ceased to have any meaning, and not try to avoid it.
“Hey, we’ve got an obstruction ahead.” Pad slowed the ’Dill. “We’re about a kilometer outside Gerrenhalt. I’m going to back up to a point where we can get off this track.”
“You’re going to roll this damn thing,” Marcus muttered. He sounded like normal Marcus again. “Can you get back on the road?”
“Hang on …” The engine revved. Pad kept shunting back and forth, trying to turn and hit the bank at the right angle. “Whoa …”
“Shit, Pad, take a run at it,” Dom said.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
The ’Dill’s engine screamed and for a moment it felt like it was floating. Then Dom’s teeth nearly punched through his lip as all four tires hit the ground again. Metal crunched and groaned.
“I think I hit a car,” Pad said. “Like that’s hard to do here. We need a bloody Centaur for this. Control? This is PA-Five-One. You getting all this? It’s useless deploying ’Dills. You better send out tanks next time and just get them to roll over the debris.”
He continued along some gap—possibly the soft shoulder that would bog down cars—scraping metal on one side in a near-continuous screech. Dom had had enough of imagining what was going on and moved to open the top hatch.
It took him awhile to work it out, but the velvet-coated landscape was now different. The shapes of the cars were distorted, and the more he looked, the more he could see they had no tires and their glass was gone.
“Shit,” he said. “Guys, I think the fires came this far. Look.”
The bitter, sooty smell that filled the air in Ephyra was now overwhelmingly smoky. Palls still rose from buildings in the distance, black plumes on a gray sky. There was no color at all in the landscape. The only color Dom could see was inside the ’Dill—blue lights, yellow warning signs, red emergency controls—and it just added to his sense of unreality, like watching a black-and-white movie. Real life was colored. Everything in Dom’s brain told him not to believe what he was seeing.
“Pad? Pad, stop. Marcus—you got to see this.”
Pad stopped the ’Dill and opened all the hatches. With the hatch covers fully retracted, they could all stand up in the crew bay and stare around them. Dom watched their faces to make sure he wasn’t going mad, and he knew then that he wasn’t.
“Oh, fuck …” Marcus did that very slow head shake that he reserved for his worst moments, like he couldn’t find even a few basic words to express what he was feeling. His shoulders sagged. Eventually he managed something. “It’s just incinerated.”
Dom had to dismount and look. He knew he wasn’t going to like what he found, but he had to do it. He tried to walk between the cars, but many of them looked as if they’d rammed into each other in some pileup, and then he realized that their fuel tanks would have exploded in the intense heat, and he was simply seeing how they’d been thrown against the vehicles around them. A truck was silhouetted against a lighter patch of sky, the bones of a metal frame all that was left of its trailer. So far, Dom hadn’t seen any recognizable bodies in the seats.
Marcus called him on his radio. “Dom, get your ass back here.”
Yeah, Dom had done what he had to do. There would be kilometer after kilometer just like this, and they hadn’t even reached the first city that had taken a direct hit. He made his way back to the ’Dill.
Pad cleaned the periscope glass again. “I’m going to take a pee break. Then we head back. That okay with you, Marcus? Either we use Centaurs or wait for the air to clear and send in Ravens. This is crazy.”
Marcus grunted. Pad walked do
wn to the shoulder of the road to unzip.
“You okay, Tai?” Marcus asked. They got back in the ’Dill and waited. “It can’t all be like this. The Hammer can’t cover every square centimeter of planet.” He looked down at his gloves. “Very few of the islands were targets. Grubs can’t get to them.”
So Marcus knew some detail, then. Dom imagined him trying to extract some information from his dad on behalf of his squad, neither of them able to manage more than a couple of words at a time.
“I can change nothing in the past,” Tai said, “so I must move on.”
Dom envied his ability to do that. Maybe, though, he was just saying it to persuade himself that he could. Then the sound of crunching boots interrupted the quiet.
“Shit. Shit.” Pad jumped back into the Dill like he’d come under fire. “Shit.”
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Dom’s first thought was that he’d seen a fire front approaching. “What is it?”
“It’s all bodies.” Pad was shaking. “I was having a piss by the wall, and when I looked down on the ground I thought it was just burned wood or plastic or something, but it was all bodies. It was people.”
He slid into the driver’s seat, but he started fumbling with the controls as if he didn’t recognize them. Marcus reached out and caught his arm.
“Come on, Pad. I’ll drive.”
“I’m okay. I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“I know. Come on.”
Padrick wasn’t a guy who gave in to anything, but he let Marcus take the controls and sat with his head in his hands. Even on the punishing ride back, he kept that position. The ’Dill was the last APC back to base that night. When they rolled in, the engineers were trying to clean the filth off the other ’Dills.
“Yeah, we get it,” one of the guys said to Marcus as he dismounted. “It’s bad out there.”