Overrun: Project Hideaway (13 page)

The President’s hardened
expression did not react. His eyes moved to Baldwin and then back to Faulken.

"You are not in a position
to change anything, Mr. President," Faulken continued. "Your power is
very limited if not nonexistent in terms of how this war operates. Everything
is in the hands of the war department. It has been for some time and you know
that. Your role is simply that of a figurehead for people to rally behind.
Acting beyond that is not your place. The war department is out there fighting
the war. Your job is to occupy the attention of the people so that they can do
it. There isn't a thing more you can do. Or are expected to."

The President felt his heart
sink to his shoe.

“There isn’t a thing more you
will be allowed to do,” Faulken finished evenly. “As this country’s figurehead,
you will also be the person held accountable. You will take the blame.”

Baldwin didn’t move from where
he stood in the center of the room and silently observed the confrontation
between the two men. When the President looked over at him again, he lowered
his head and focused his eyes on the floor. He could feel the man's anger
searing across the room.

"Get out of here, Faulken,”
the President hissed. “Get out of here now. Before I grab your fucking tongue
and hang you with it."

Faulken didn’t answer. He nodded
at the President and returned to the briefing table. He quickly gathered a
small pile of dark folders and sloppily creased papers. Shuffling them
together, Faulken stood up, straightened his tie, and walked past Baldwin to
the door behind him.

"I expect full access to
all war material within six hours,” the President called commandingly after
him. “All information is to be sent to this room, War Minister. Is that
clear?"

"Yes, sir, Mr.
President," Faulken replied as he brushed past Baldwin and walked from the
chamber.

When the door had finally sealed
shut behind him, the President spoke again.

“Mr. Baldwin, tell me as much as
you can about the Hideaway Project. “

Baldwin walked towards the
President’s desk at the far side of the large room.

Tuttle took two more steps,
staggered once and collapsed under the weight of the bleeding load he carried.
Brandon's body pitched forward out of his grasp. Tuttle vaguely felt his own
numb body fall after it. Very little of his own pain registered across his
senses, not even the gunshot wound that had nicked off an inch of skin above
his shoulder. He tumbled alongside Brandon down the embankment away from the
main road.

At the bottom of the hill where
the land evened out, their bodies stopped. Tuttle laid facedown in the burning
sand which covered most of the outside terrain. Brandon groaned softly next to
him. The heat from the sun, still burning and rising up from what was absorbed
daily into the ground, singed Tuttle’s lungs and throat.

Drawing from a strength
somewhere deep within his soul, Tuttle forced himself to pull his body up and
lean over John Kirken's son. He prayed earnestly to any god or spirit that
might be listening that he was not dead. That this young boy would live and
give him a chance to redeem himself for his participation in this hellish war.
And atone for what he had done.

Until now, Tuttle had only
experienced the war and the plan he implemented from behind the multiple rows
of holovid screens in his own command center. The screens had hidden the faces
of the civilians whose deaths he had ordered and the children he had deemed
unnecessary to protect. Across the monitors he mostly saw location points and
statistics. And satellite footage of the explosions when the city finally went.

Every mission success brought
him further and further away from realizing what it was he was actually doing.

Until an hour ago, he had
thought of himself as a national hero. A grand protector of his country. That
was always how he had always described it to the new young troops that came to
him on a regular basis troubled by their own participation.

As a quadrant commander, he had
often preached he was implementing the greatest war plan the world had ever
seen. Its ultimate purpose was to improve life on a fast-dying world. He was
clearing the decay of a world since forgotten to make way for the life-saving
construction of the Beam Cannon Hardware. It didn't register until now that he
was clearing away life that already existed. And that rather than a hero, he
was a monster. He was one of the leaders of the biggest act of genocide the
world had ever seen. It was an act he knew would not go unpunished.

Tuttle didn’t know what had
possessed him to leave the command center and undertake the helicopter rescue
operation. The city had already been ordered terminated by the Administration
Dome and the President himself. He wondered why the plight of John Kirken and
his family had been the only thing to tug at his morality and bring out a sense
of comprehension and compassion that he had not felt since the onset of this
war.

The countless missions and
excursions experienced in previous battles and wars had not prepared him for
what he had come upon on today. When he had set his feet down on the roof of
the shopping mall, he finally saw what had been hidden from him this whole
time. It was something he had been able to somehow push and keep away since the
birth of the Vulture squad and the leadership he had assumed within it.

Tuttle was horrified by the
extreme youth of Kirken’s children and was sickened by their pain.

On the rooftop, he was haunted
by the look in John Kirken's eyes when his daughter died. Only then did he
realize what was happening in this war and what exactly it was he had helped to
create. Tuttle had seen hope, long before life, rush from Kirken’s body before
he was consumed by the flames on the rooftop.

And only now after Tuttle had
escaped with Kirken’s son from that fate-filled place, did he feel the eyes of
a vengeful God watching him from above the flames. He sensed his own damnation
falling from above the poisoned clouds hanging low above the Earth.

Only when he had escaped the
exploding city of Beuford did he finally realize what it was he had done and
what the consequences would be. A sickening sense of realization washed over
him as he half-dragged half-carried John Kirken's bloody son.

Tuttle had to keep him alive at
all costs to silence the accusing voices of the spirits that walked with him.
The souls of those that had already lost their lives in Beuford or other
similar towns. They followed Brandon expecting to soon welcome him into their
ranks.

Tuttle could almost feel them
walking at his side step for step and whispering blame and condemnation into
his ears.

Beneath the faint light of the
half moon, Tuttle pulled himself over to where Brandon laid sprawled across the
ground. He reached at Brandon’s puffing eyes and pulled gently at his lids
looking for any signs of life.

His pupils stared blankly back
over Tuttle’s shoulder, lifeless under the dirt and grit covering his charred
eyelids. When Tuttle pulled his hand back, he was horrified but not surprised
to find it completely stained red.

Tuttle lowered his head across
Brandon's chest and rested it there briefly there. He hoped John Kirken was not
watching and damning him for not being able to do more.

Brandon wheezed once, coughed
violently and gasped blood from his throat. His head moved around slightly and
then settled still. His breaths became shorter and less pronounced.

Tuttle tore open the boy’s shirt
and pressed his ear across his chest. A final single breath of air slowly
released itself from the young Kirken's mouth. His body then was silent.
Another breath did not come.

"Don't do that!"
Tuttle yelled while swinging his aching frame across Brandon's legs and waist.

Tuttle raised his black gloved
fist into the air and brought it down hard across the teenager’s chest.

"C'mon, Brandon!"
Tuttle screamed.

Tuttle raised his arm and struck
the center of Brandon’s chest a second time. He could hear the sound of jeeps
and tanks moving across the road at the top of the hill.

"Breathe for me, goddamn
it!"

Tuttle rolled to Brandon's side
and kneeled near his face. His own body screamed in agony. His head ached and
patches of skin still burned from their narrow escape from the exploding mall.
He could also feel the thick wet of blood run down his arm from the two wounds
just above and below his shoulder.

His own injuries didn’t matter
now. He welcomed the pain. It kept him conscious. It kept him working. It kept
him from slumping over and sealing both their fates right there.

Tuttle lowered his head and made
a tight seal over Brandon's mouth.

Taking a deep breath through his
nose, Tuttle brought the hot outside air into his lungs and exhaled it into
Brandon's throat. Coughing and wiping blood from his burnt lips, he raised his
head and waited for the air to make its way back out.

Tuttle breathed for him again.

Forcing his battered body to
continue to work, he straddled Brandon’s long body again and pressed his hands
across his heart. He tore away more pieces of the tattered burned fabric of his
jacket to get closer to his skin.

He pushed at it in rhythmic
counts trying desperately to bring it back to life. Wiping sweat from his
forehead and cursing under his breath, he swung to the side of Brandon's body,
lowered his head and slowly breathed again.

Brandon coughed twice. His eyes
fluttered open. And then closed again. Breath meandered weakly through his
chest. Tuttle grabbed his wrist and did a quick prayer of thanks when he could
feel a faint pulse. It was just enough. For now, the young Kirken still clung to
life.

His body strained and his spirit
weak, Tuttle rolled from Brandon's bleeding body onto his back. The ground was
warm against his skin. While life still breathed through the body of John
Kirken’s son, a chance at redemption for Tuttle’s charred spirit was still at
hand. Keeping him alive was the one thing right and just he could accomplish
while still on this dying planet.

Tuttle pleaded to the souls that
had gone before him that saving this boy could help him make up for what he had
done and what he had been a part of. He would honor his vow to the man he had
failed to save and now whose son was bleeding at his side. The man Tuttle had
left to die alone on the rooftop. But not before watching his own daughter
leave this life first.

Tuttle leaned back on his arms
in the darkness and stared at the burning rubble in the distance. The ruins
along with hundreds of thick black columns of smoke were all that was left of
the town. He thought of the countless missions he had authorized and the
nameless cities he had ordered destroyed. And of the evil he had done.

Tuttle watched with a choking
sorrow as the flames of Beuford licked into the sky. Its fire cast a tired glow
across the barren countryside. The inauspicious sight sent a dull chill down
his back. As a quadrant commander and general in the Vulture secret army, he
was part of this Armageddon, a creator of this nightmare. He was now a sole
witness of the hellishness he had released upon the Earth.

Another moan came from Brandon's
lips sending blood trickling down the outside of his throat.

Tuttle looked away towards the
jeeps, tanks and the giant dome-killer transports heading into the flaming
ruins. One-by-one they burrowed through the fires and debris towards the
destroyed Science Dome 15 on the city's far side.

He sat there for a long time
without moving. He rested his arm on the teenager's chest only to assure
himself that it continued to move up and down.

The Vulture general gazed out
through the darkness and watched the city burn. A victim of Plan Zero. A victim
of the Vulture air and ground team. And a victim of the young boy dying beside
him as well as Tuttle himself.

It was during this point of
self-realization, one harsh enough Tuttle feared it might take what was left of
his own life, that something else caught his eye. Slight bits of movement had
begun detaching themselves from the flames.

For more than an hour, Tuttle
watched them multiply and transform into the shapes of dark figures. Little by
little they further approached. They moved slowly taking great pains to stay
hidden within the night.

A single figure appeared at the
front of their small mass. He directed those that followed behind keeping them
far away from the road to Tuttle's side. The figure waved them all to the
ground when a straggling vehicle from the J.G.U. land fleet drove by.

As they moved closer, Tuttle
could see that like himself some carried others. From their direction, tiny
muffled cries sporadically slipped out into the night. It would only be a short
time before the figures were upon their own hiding place in the dark.

Bloodied and bruised, Tuttle
slowly stood. A slight pressure on his ankle interrupted his thoughts and drew
his attention downward. Brandon Kirken was again conscious. His eyes were wide
open and stared straight out into the moving darkness. His weak hands tried to
pull Tuttle back to the ground.

Ignoring the slight tug on his
leg but not pulling himself completely free, Tuttle stood his full height and
held his hands up and open in front of him.

The figures crept steadily
towards them. For the most part, they remained hidden within the surrounding
darkness. As they came closer, Tuttle recognized they were military most likely
his own. Ragged figures of men, women and children walked with them. Tuttle
knew in a heartbeat they were refugees of the shattered town.

"That's good right
there," a voice said evenly from behind him. Tuttle felt the warm nudge of
a long-barreled weapon press into his left ear. "Identify."

"It's alright," Tuttle
said keeping his hands up and letting his eyes wander across the pained faces
of the wounded women and children that approached. The soldiers near the head
of the formation held their arms up motioning them to stay back.

“It’s alright,” Tuttle said
again and carefully moved his right arm across his left. With a slight tug, he
lifted a black swatch from his across forearm revealing a patch of the United
States flag and the dark insignia of the Vulture squad.

"Vulture General,
soldier," Tuttle said while another soldier broke from the shadows and ran
a retina scanner across his eyes. "Tuttle, Maxwell A., Quadrant Four
Vulture Commander. I sent you here, son."

"It’s him," the
soldier with the scanner confirmed softly and used his hands to lower Tuttle's
own. "What are you doing out here, General?"

More soldiers approached where
they stood. Others quietly herded the refugees to a slight clearing to their
right. They first looked at Tuttle and then down at Brandon Kirken lying
bleeding at his feet.

"I need a medic,"
Tuttle answered in a voice barely able to be heard above the warm breeze.

"There’s one coming,"
the soldier behind him said lowering his weapon and stepping back into the
shadows of the night.