Defenders (28 page)

The newscaster, who had been rattling off details in a breathless voice, suddenly went silent.

“We’ve just received new information. The conflict may be expanding beyond Australia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is directing civilians to evacuate the following cities.”

The names of the cities appeared below the feed. Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco. Last on the list was Washington, D.C. The list was alphabetical. It was most definitely not in the order of cities most likely to be hit by a counterstrike.

Kai sprinted down the stairs, heading for the garage under the hotel.

Something small and black was skipping across the grass, blown by the Harrier’s rotors. Oliver squinted. It was probably a piece of trash, but it looked heavier, almost like a shoe. He watched it roll and bounce along.

“Hang on. What is that.” He pointed at it. Erik switched to Oliver’s side and peered out the window.

“What is what?”

“There.” Oliver pointed. “Is that a shoe?”

Erik lifted a pair of binoculars, trained them on the object as it skipped across a walkway and came to rest, pressed against a curb.

“It
is
a shoe.” He dropped the binoculars and turned to the pilot. “Set it down.”

Before they’d even touched ground, Erik was out of the Harrier, running toward the shoe. He was as desperate to find Lila alive as Oliver was. They could have won the defenders over, in time, if they’d been more patient, but the Luyten War had left humanity too skittish, too scarred. So instead the defenders were heading for Moscow, Mumbai, Washington. Oliver had no illusions about what they would do when they arrived. They were angry.

Erik was halfway back when Oliver caught up to him. Oliver took the shoe Erik handed him, barely had to glance at it. “It’s Lila’s.” She’d brought only two pairs of shoes, and bemoaned the limitations of her footwear almost daily.

Erik cupped his hands around his mouth. “
Lila? Lila.
”

Oliver scanned the horizons. The sewer grates were huge iron things, too heavy for a human to lift.

Cold.

That voice in his head, so familiar even after fifteen years.

“Five,” he said under his breath. Cold? It wasn’t cold. It was hot, even hotter than usual with so many buildings on fire.

Oliver turned, looking for some sign of Five. Was he nearby?

Warmer.

“What?” Oliver said aloud.

Erik frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” Warmer. Like the children’s game? Oliver took a step in the direction he was facing.

Warmer.

“This way,” Oliver said, with no idea where he was going.

A half dozen defenders padded behind and beside him as he trotted down the street. He was hot. Not red hot yet, not burning, but hot.

“Lila?” he called.

The pop of gunfire erupted to their left and behind them. Oliver dropped to the ground. He heard a shout—a human shout—then more gunfire as one of the defenders went down and the others ran for cover.

Oliver lifted his head enough to see human soldiers racing from the corners of buildings, peeking from behind buses, more of them pouring in from around an enormous block of concrete that had once been part of a building. He crawled on his belly, away from the soldiers, in the direction that was “hot.”

Hot.

Behind him, he could hear defenders returning fire, someone on a comm, maybe Erik, calling for air support, or a tank, anything big.

Hot.

It was all Five would say to him. For all Oliver knew, Five had been hot-and-colding him not toward Lila, but toward this ambush.

Very hot. Red hot.

Oliver glanced around. He almost laughed out loud when he saw the rectangular gap in the sidewalk to his left, the thick steel grate leaning up against the side of the building.

Boiling.

He clawed his way to the opening, swung his legs around, and grasped a steel pipe that was one side of an oversized ladder.

He slid twenty feet to the floor of a sewer pipe, looked left, then right …

Scalding.

He went right, wary that Five might be leading him toward a divorce-sized pit. He didn’t understand why Five was helping him.

There was a breach in the pipe. “
Lila?
” he called.

“Oliver?”

Oliver ducked through the breach, then took a few anxious breaths before plunging ahead, down a freshly dug tunnel.

Toward the bottom he saw a blue glow. He called again, “Lila?” Rushing around a bend in the tunnel, he saw Lila, the side of her head a bloody mess. She was in a room packed with Luyten, who were doing exactly what Five had said they would do if humans launched an invasion.

Lila launched herself at Oliver and hugged him fiercely. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it,” she said.

Above them there was a mechanical shriek, like metal being twisted. One of the defenders’ big weapons had arrived. He’d sorely hoped they would surface to find live human soldiers and dead defenders.

Lila let go, and Oliver examined the wound on her head. It was difficult to see much in the dim light, but from what he could see, it was bad, even if not life-threatening. It looked like she’d been partially scalped.

“How the
hell
did you find me?” Lila asked.

“Five.”

Lila looked surprised. “Why would he help me?”

Oliver shrugged. “Maybe he’s trying to make amends for breaking up my marriage. Maybe they want to deliver you into the hands of the defenders. I have no idea.” He motioned for her to go first.

She took a few steps, then paused. “I think he did it for Kai.”

“For Kai?”

“That’s right. I have no idea why I think that. I just do.”

“
Lila?
” He could just barely hear the voice. Erik, shouting from street level.

“That’s your special friend,” Oliver said, gesturing toward the surface.

“Oh, no,” Lila said, her voice low, and soaked in dread.

His car inched along. Kai was sure he could walk faster than they were moving, especially with the amount of adrenaline rushing through him, but not for twenty miles, carrying Errol and a trunk full of food and water. FEMA’s emergency navigation system had been activated, so Kai’s vehicle was under auto-control meant to maximize traffic flow out of the city.

He watched the news, keeping the feed small so Errol wouldn’t see it. Kai glanced at Errol, strapped in the back. He was sleeping, his cheek pressed against the side of the child seat. Errol’s peaceful face was a stark contrast from the images on the feed. When the defender force reached Mumbai, a piece of it had peeled off and attacked. They went right for the most densely populated spots, killing as many people as possible. Along with conventional weapons, their forces were equipped with chemical weapons. Huge fish-shaped fliers swooped low over neighborhoods, releasing gas. It was killing everyone, inside buildings and out, burning lips, eyes, lungs. Forty minutes after the assault began, everyone, everywhere in the city, seemed to be dead.

The retired general commenting on the feed said that was why the defenders had ceded Australia so quickly: In Australia their soldiers would be mixed with Alliance soldiers throughout the city; the battle would have to be fought street by street. The defenders had far fewer soldiers, so they were at a strategic disadvantage. By going on the offensive, they could capitalize on their strength: huge weapons of mass destruction; chemical weapons humans shrank from using against one another and had consequently ceased manufacturing decades earlier.

They were on their way to D.C., and they were targeting civilians. Kai dug deeper into the news feeds, seeking information about the fate of people trying to evacuate. Would the defenders target people obviously leaving the city, or just let them leave?

He found a panicked personal text feed from a woman named Sangita who was trapped in Mumbai. The people in Mumbai hadn’t had enough warning for any organized evacuation to begin, so the arteries out of the city hadn’t been clogged with evacuees. So Kai had no idea if the defenders would attack fleeing refugees.

He took a deep breath and dragged his hair out of his eyes. After the conversation he’d had with Lila, he probably knew more about the defenders than any other person on this highway. The defenders were killing as many people as possible, not just seizing strategic territory, and they wouldn’t hesitate to target evacuees.

The feed went dead. Kai didn’t bother checking his phone—he knew what had happened. The defenders were taking out the satellites, just like the Luyten had knocked out the satellites.

Kai glanced at Errol again, then ahead at the sea of taillights inching steadily along. They weren’t going to make it out in time. Kai suddenly knew this with such certainty that it felt as if he were remembering, not anticipating.

He looked out the side window. They were on a long overpass; beneath them was block after block of industrial sprawl, blanketed in darkness save for the occasional glow of yellow streetlights. It was all but deserted, not the sort of place the defenders would target.

Kai climbed into the backseat and unstrapped Errol. Errol’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again as Kai drew him out of the seat and held him. Kai had to override the safety lock to open the door in a moving vehicle. Clutching Errol to his chest, he looked down at the pavement rolling by. It wasn’t an illusion: They were moving at the pace of a swift walk.

Switching Errol to his left hand, Kai moved to the edge of the car, grasped the hood with his right hand, and stepped out, immediately breaking into a trot. He stumbled, then regained his footing. Slowing his pace, he let the car pass him, then fell into step behind it. He popped open the trunk, grabbed the backpack he’d filled with the things they would need as soon as they arrived at the refugee center, and headed off to look for a way down.

He found a stairwell a quarter of a mile on. Errol was crying in his ear, disturbed by the jostling. Kai’s thighs burned as he descended to street level. Errol was heavy.

When they reached the bottom, Kai jogged with Errol’s head pressed to his chest until he was too tired to go on.

He was gasping for breath. Too much poker, not enough exercise. He looked around. Across the street was a yard filled with construction vehicles, enclosed by a cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. To his left was an electrical power station, nothing but wires and big generators. To the right, a big old warehouse. Kai headed for that.

“I want to go to my bed,” Errol said. It was after ten; the poor guy was exhausted.

“Try to sleep on my shoulder,” Kai said, knowing that was nearly impossible.

The warehouse was locked, its big bay doors chained and padlocked. Kai didn’t think he could carry Errol and the pack much farther without rest. He circled the building and found fire escape stairs in the back. The only thing he could think to do was climb to the roof and wait up there.

Errol protested when Kai set him down on the gravel that covered the roof. Kai shushed him, ran a hand over his hair, coaxing his head into Kai’s lap.

From the roof Kai could see the line of vehicles fleeing the city, a million lights that turned to pinpoints in the distance. The tall buildings rising from the downtown area were mostly dark.

The last thing, the very last thing in the world Kai wanted his son to go through was a war. He hated the Alliance for starting this. Surely they could have found some way to resolve the dispute. Anything would have been better than this.

It looked as if a storm was coming. On the horizon the stars winked out and the sky grew darker. Kai saw something moving inside the darkness, and that was when he heard the engines. On the causeway, people were fleeing their vehicles, running toward the exit ramps.

The aircraft were deceptively fast. In what seemed no more than a minute, they reached the city. Antiaircraft fire erupted from a dozen locations; tracer rounds rose, along with surface-to-air missiles. Aircraft were hit, but not enough of them. Bombs began to fall. Kai pressed his hands over Errol’s ears, knowing it would not be enough to block the sound.

When the first ones hit their targets, it was like thunderclaps. Errol jolted fully awake, squealing in surprise and fear. Kai hugged him, still covering his little ears.

“It’s okay. We’re okay,” Kai said, but Errol wouldn’t be able to hear him over the bombs, so he was only consoling himself.

There were a few American fighter jets in the sky, but not many. Most were in Australia. By now some must be on their way back.

Kai watched the Washington Monument fall, disappearing into billowing smoke. The rest of the important buildings were too low for him to see from his vantage point, but he had no doubt they were gone, too. There was only one area that was being spared, just north of downtown. Maybe Logan Circle. The old defender production facility was under Logan Circle.

Kai ducked, held his breath as the planes passed overhead. As he’d hoped, they saved their bombs for riper targets.

What he hadn’t anticipated were the parachutes. Defenders hung below black nighttime chutes, dropping in the outskirts of the city. One came down only a few blocks away. He heard shrieking as the defender’s automatic rifle roared to life before it even landed among the people fleeing on I-395.

Hardly able to grasp what he was seeing, Kai watched the defender deliver sharp bursts into the backs of fleeing figures, tearing holes in them.

The defender’s crazed shout, its maniacal, wide-eyed expression reminded Kai of a thousand clips he’d watched of the Luyten War. If anything, this defender seemed more battle-crazed than those in the clips.

When everyone in range was dead or dying, the defender jogged up the street, toward the city center. He was going to pass right by the building where Kai was hiding.

Errol was screaming. His nose was running, his eyes wide and terrified. Kai tried to shush him, but that only made it worse, so Kai swept Errol up and, keeping as low as possible, carried him to the far end of the roof, praying that the added distance, combined with the explosions in the city center, would prevent the defender from hearing Errol.