Broken Worlds Super Boxset (75 page)

***

One by one, the community members grabbed the rifles, shotguns, and pistols from the sentry’s armory and loaded them into the trucks on Main Street, doing their best to step around the fresh streaks of blood on the sentry’s housing floor.

A few other community members were coming in and out of the meal station, piling any nonperishable goods they could take next to the weapons in the truck. Much to their displeasure, the only food they could find were the synthetic proteins and minerals they’d grown accustomed to tolerating. Anything that was fresh was consumed at lunch, in the largest feast any of them had seen in years.

Alex, however, didn’t partake in the spontaneous potluck. He sat perched at the community’s front gate, his face and clothes still bloodied and dirtied from the night before. He’d barely moved for most of the night and morning. Watching, waiting for another unit of sentries to force their way in. He’d stolen one of the radio scanners, which he monitored for any unscheduled check-ins the Coalition might try. So far, the call hadn’t come.

What he did hear were the Coalition’s forces in the west being overrun. A unit of United States soldiers were liberating communities and farm camps through Wyoming and marching southeast to their main target, which lay in the heart of Topeka, Kansas. It was there where Commissioner Gordon Reath sat atop his throne of skeletons and slaves, and it was where Alex needed to join them in their coup of his oppression. But he first had to make sure his people were safe. That had been his goal since the beginning. Now, with the cavalry heading their way, the job was almost done.

“Alex?”

Meeko appeared to his left, his hands clasped together, his left foot rubbing the top of his right, looking down at the ground and keeping his distance. Alex became more aware of the bloodstains covering his body. He knew the sights from the night before were still fresh in the boy’s mind. “Did you get enough to eat?”

“Yeah,” Meeko answered then extended a plate that had a pile of potatoes, corn, and chicken stacked on top. “Harper wanted me to give this to you.”

Alex examined the small mounds of food. Steam rose from the plate. He couldn’t remember the last time he actually ate something that was hot. But these days, no matter how the food was prepared, everything had the metallic taste of blood. Alex took the plate from Meeko, and the moment he looked down at the food in front of him, he heard the light patter of feet scurry away. The boy saw him differently now. Watching someone you cared about soak themselves in blood would do that.

“You don’t want that to get cold,” Harper said, taking a seat next to Alex at the front gate. Harper and Alex were around the same age, but the past few weeks accelerated the lines of experience on both their faces.

“I’m sorry about Alice,” Alex said. “If I hadn’t left, she’d probably still be alive.”

Harper remained quiet, fiddling with his fingers before he finally answered. “But I wonder for how long? People have been dying every day since the soil crisis, and most have suffered a fate worse than death. Now that she’s gone, she’s spared from any more suffering.” He placed his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Her death isn’t your burden to bear, Alex. It’s mine.”

The truth was clouded in a series of what-ifs. If it weren’t for the scientists who created GMO-24, then this world wouldn’t have been possible. Gordon Reath would never have risen to power. The Soil Coalition would never have been assembled. Alex would never have joined the sentry program, which would never have put him in the same zip code as Gordon Reath. He would never have had to break Meeko and Harper out of the farm camp, which would have allowed Alice to live, which wouldn’t have sent him to another community to betray one of the most brilliant minds of the century. But this wasn’t a world of what-ifs. This was reality. And the first step in fixing the world was trying to right his unforgiveable wrong against Todd Penn.

***

The tank’s tracks ground up whatever dirt or debris they rolled over on its detoured journey north. Commander Luis Claire let the wind whip the dirt and grease smudged on his face as he rode atop the tank’s open hatch, his broad shoulders almost too big for the entrance. The tank had the capacity to travel at speeds of up to forty-five miles per hour, so the wind cutting across him was quite harsh, but he didn’t mind. If he closed his eyes and just felt the wind against his cheeks, it was almost like being back on one of his ships. A tank was a poor substitute for a destroyer, but being in the Navy for the past fifteen years had made him biased. Seawater coursed through his veins, and the further inland he traveled, the drier he became. But his current objective overrode his thirst for the ocean.

Luis had received orders to continue his campaign into Oklahoma, then Kansas, but he first needed to find two men stuck somewhere in the untamed land of north Wyoming. These men knew who betrayed his sister, putting her in Gordon Reath’s twisted hands.

Ben, the old man who guided Luis to the hidden lab where Emma and Todd had completed their work, did the best he could in giving a description of Alex but had no exact location of where he was.

The Coalition wasn’t known for pardoning its community members or granting any sense of mercy. Reath ruled his subordinates with a spiked, poison-tipped iron fist. He didn’t just hurt people—he mutilated them. The farm camps were built on a foundation of corpses. Each day they added to it, raising their factories of death higher.

“There,” Ben said, shouting from inside the tank. “Just to the east.”

A significant piece of earth had been dislodged and exposed an opening, which revealed a staircase. The tank came to a stop, and Luis jumped to the ground in one swift, powerful motion. When he landed, the large piece of metal that was used to conceal Todd’s lab rattled. They were the only people around for miles, but Luis drew his sidearm out of habit and descended into the dark cavern below.

“Who’s there?” a voice called.

“Commander Luis Claire, United States Navy.”

“Christ, Luis! It’s Ray!”

Luis hurried down the steps and found the generator. He cranked it to life, turning on the lights that revealed both Ray and Nelson, bound together at the end of the lab. Luis holstered his pistol and pulled out his knife to cut the men free. “You two all right?”

The blade sliced through the rope used to subdue the two of them, and they both rubbed their wrists. “Yeah,” Ray said. “We’re okay.”

“Ray, I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to tell me everything you know about the man who was here. The hunter.”

“Fucking two-faced traitor is what he is,” Ray answered, sulking around the lab’s main table, still rubbing the tender flesh under his wrists and working out the stiffness in his legs from being bound up for almost an entire day. “He was from some community in Kansas, at least that’s what he told us. I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“I need to find him, Ray. And I need to find him quickly.”

“I could probably hack into the database and see where they’re keeping them,” Nelson said.

“You can do that?” Luis asked.

Nelson wiggled his way around Ray and took a seat in front of his computer. A few quick keystrokes and hundreds of lines of code and pieces of data flew across the screen. “It shouldn’t be too difficult.” Nelson’s fingers turned into blurs over the keyboard. “There, it looks like Alex was taken back to his community in west Kansas.”

“What about Emma and Todd?” Luis asked. “Can you find them?”

Another few quick strokes, and a massive error message filled the screen. Nelson quickly backtracked and tried another way in but was met with the same result. “They’re not coming up.”

Luis gripped the table next to him for support, hoping the other two men didn’t notice. The same sturdy legs that had weathered countless storms on the unforgiving ocean waves could barely keep him upright on level ground. If they weren’t in Gordon’s databases, then he wasn’t sure what Gordon was doing to them. They were most likely in Topeka, which was the heart of the Coalition’s infrastructure. It was surrounded by farm camps and communities armed with tens of thousands of sentries.

Invading Topeka was the endgame for the military’s push against the Coalition, but it would be some time before they could take the Coalition’s capital. And Luis wasn’t even sure if Emma and Todd would be alive by then.

The decorated chests and five-starred bars stretching across the shoulders of the president’s chiefs of staff remained reserved in the stone-etched expressions of the war-weathered generals in the president’s war room. Each gave their strategic advice to the president for his decision in taking control of the Coalition. At the helm of that top military brass was Admiral Frizen, who’d taken the lead as the official commander of the United States war efforts.

Last year, Admiral Frizen celebrated his thirtieth anniversary as a member of the armed forces and his fifty-ninth on this earth. Despite the patches of white and gray that had woven their way onto his head over the past decade, he still retained some remnants of the brown hair of his youth. His face and body, however, had maintained youthful exuberance, despite accumulating six decades of life lived. Of all the joint chiefs, he was the only one who still looked like he could join his men on the front lines.

“Mr. President, the Navy’s countermeasure for the Soil Coalition was put into place during the first few months of the Coalition’s existence. It was kept off the books in case the Coalition ever became a threat, and to also help supplement the research efforts set forth to find a solution to the damage done by GMO-24. The team was assembled through a mixture of military and civilian personnel. Heading that team for the Navy was Commander Luis Claire, who was stationed at Everett Naval Base, a low-key military installation where infantry assets were stored to stay out of the reach of the Coalition during their acquisition of many of the Army’s resources,” Admiral Frizen said.

Outside of Commander Claire’s unit, there were only a handful of other people, both military and civilian alike, who knew about the countermeasure. It was a hand that Frizen played close to the chest. He had advised against the formation of the Coalition since the beginning, but reelection fears overpowered the decision-making process.

“Wyoming was originally chosen due to its distance away from the earlier Coalition communities, as well as the soil quality during that same time. The civilian team that Commander Claire organized comprised Nelson Willow, PhD in computer science and analytics, Ray Nickle, PhD in statistics, Todd Penn, PhD in biochemistry, and Emma Claire, MD. Their task was the research and resolution of the soil effects created by GMO-24. Now, the last communication we had coming out of Wyoming from that team was one of success.”

The quiet seal of the room broke open as the president’s staff erupted with a slew of questions and accusations.

“How could you keep this from the president?”

“What were the civilians’ credentials? Were they vetted?”

“When was the last point of contact?”

“Where is Commander Claire stationed now?”

Out of all the shouting and questions that Frizen took on the chin, none of them asked the most important question until Jared Farnes, who sat just to the right of the president, rose and quieted the room with the commanding presence of a general, without the want or need for the title. “Gentlemen! Please!” The waves of clamor quieted instantly.

“Admiral,” the president said, his words sullen and low. “Does Gordon have the soil solution that you and Commander Luis’s team were working on?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

A collective sigh escaped the room, which refueled the barrage of blame and frustration. Every syllable that was thrown toward Frizen simply plunked off the front of his uniform and fell to the floor. Words in a time of war were about as useless as a bail bucket full of holes. In his experience, bullets were much more effective.

“Enough!” the president ordered, slamming his fists on the table, silencing the childish nonsense. “If it weren’t for Admiral Frizen’s actions, we wouldn’t have the upper hand on Gordon’s sentries.” The scolding was enough to shut the rest of the room down and the president gestured for Frizen to continue.

“As of right now, Commander Claire’s campaign in Wyoming has been successful. We believe that success to comprise two reasons: that area of the Coalition’s control wasn’t as densely populated, and we were able to catch them by surprise. Now that Gordon is aware of our strike, he’ll be quick to retaliate. Our strategy is to continue to have Commander Claire push southeast, while the Navy’s Atlantic fleet repositions itself in the Gulf, where we will retake the fishing villages of Louisiana and Mississippi and the oil refineries of Texas. Once we have a strong foothold on the coast, we will push north into Kansas, and our forces will meet in the middle, where we’ll take Topeka.”

“How many men, Admiral?” The president asked, his cheeks continuing their sullen dip into the sides of his face. “How many will we lose on both sides?”

“Our initial assessment is ten thousand, Mr. President. But because most of the Coalition sentries were former army and marines, we believe they’ll join us once the real fighting begins. However, there will still be significant support for Gordon as long as he’s able to keep the sentries fed.”

“General Mears,” the president said. “Do we have enough ground troops to combat the sentries at Gordon’s disposal?”

“The Coalition ground forces outnumber us three to one at the moment, Mr. President, but our Naval and Air Force support will give us the edge.”

“Let me make one thing clear, gentlemen. I don’t want us dropping bombs on civilians,” the president said. “Collateral damage must be minimal, and when this is over, I don’t want the American people to return to homes that were destroyed by the very military that was supposed to protect them.”

“Or course, Mr. President,” Mears answered. “The installations we’re targeting with our air support will be strictly military. We’ll be using a combined effort from our reserves and the Navy to squeeze the Coalition out of the local civilian populations, minimizing loss of life and infrastructural damage.”

“That’s something Gordon knows as well, sir,” Frizen replied. “He’ll use the oil refineries and the fishing villages as shields against our missiles. It will be crucial that the ground forces we have in those engagements understand the risk they’re facing.”

The United States’s first civil war spanned over four years and claimed the lives of over 620,000 soldiers. It was the bloodiest conflict in United States history. However, if Gordon felt cornered or threatened that everything he had would be taken away, then there was the very real possibility that he would resort to a scorched-earth policy, burning anything and everything in his control.

“Mr. President, every second spent waiting is one less we could be using to turn the tide in this conflict. We have our resources in place in the Gulf, and we’ll need you to authorize the use of force against American citizens,” Admiral Frizen said. “I understand the gravity of that decision, and the weight it will carry on you and everyone in this room. But we must act now.”