AntiBio: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (4 page)

8

Ton stares across the table, his eyes boring into Blaze’s.

“You think you’re better than everyone here, Sergeant?” Ton asks.

“No, sir, just you,” Blaze replies.

“That so?”

“That’s so.”

Ton keeps staring, his eyes squinting until they are just slits in his face.

“Fuck it,” Ton says. “I call.”

“Good,” Blaze smiles and lays down his cards. “Full house. Sixes over eights.”

“Asshole,” Ton says, tossing his hand into the muck. “Lucky asshole.”

The other members of Zebra squad laugh as Blaz grabs up the pile of cards and starts shuffling.

“So let me get this straight,”
Hoagie says. “You had two chicks last night and you won’t tell us who either of them are?”

“Yep,” Blaze nods.

“You’re a dick,” Hoagie says.

“Yep,” Blaze nods again. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, boys.”

“Then why do you do it, man?” Milo asks, taking a sip of clear liquid from the glass in his hand.

“Uh…do what?” Blaze asks.

“Torture us with stories like that,” Milo says. “See if I watch your bug hound for you next time.”

“It’s gonna get you let off the squad,” Paulo says. “Command won’t stand for continued fraternization with non-operators. You could contaminate them. You get caught again and you’ll be
warping steel or molding plastiglass like the rest of the civvies out in genpop.”

“Who says they weren’t operators?” Blaze smiles. “You think support personnel can keep up with what I got going on.”

“No more,” Ton says, his voice serious. “You get caught and Paulo is right, you’ll be decommissioned and tossed into genpop.”

“Yeah, Worm keeps reminding me,” Blaze says.

“I do,” Worm says in all of their ears. “But Sergeant Crouch will not listen.”

Every man at the table nods in agreement, all committed to the lie. They know a GenSOF operator doesn’t get thrown into genpop when decommissioned, not with the bacterial time bomb they house in their bodies. It is not officially listed in any protocols, and Worm will not confirm or deny, but operators have speculated for years that what happens if you get decommissioned from GenSOF begins with “incin” and ends in “erated”.

Or end up outside the wall and become GenWrecks, living with the Cooties in the Sicklands.

The dogs at each man’s feet all glance up, smelling the shared lie on their masters. Except for Munch, who continues to snore loudly.

“They hot?” Hoagie asks, knocking back a row of shots.

“Who?” Blaze asks.

“The chicks you banged.”

“Yeah, they w
ere,” Blaze says. “Very.” He punches Hoagie in the shoulder. Hard. “Don’t call them chicks, it’s disrespectful. And I didn’t bang them.”

Everyone’s eyebrows
rise in surprise.

“I made sweet, sweet love to them,” Blaze grins.

The table erupts with laughter.

“Deal that shit!” Hoagie calls out, reaching for another line of shots. “I got some credits to win, bitches!”

Blaze laughs hard with them all on the outside, but inside he wonders how long he can keep seeing Jersey without it all crashing down around them. Being a GenSOF operator, he can handle what is thrown at him, but can Jersey? He doesn’t want to put her in a position where she has to find out.

9

“LT?” Blaze calls out as he jogs down the corridor after his CO. “Sir!”

“Don’t sir me, Blaze,” Ton says. “We’ve been through too much yuck and muck to stand on rank here.”

“I just wanted to apologize again,” Blaze says, looking down at Gorge as she casually sniffs
Snorts’ butt. “Putting you in that position when a tower wide alert is called? I owe you for that.”

“Pay me back by paying attention to your job instead of pussy,” Ton says, clamping his hand on Blaze’s shoulder. “Learn a different way to let off steam. Take up needlework or something.”

“You mean like knitting?” Blaze asks.

“No, like learning how to
kill with needles,” Ton says. “That’s a skill an operator can be proud of.”

Ton lets go of Blaze’s shoulder and pats him on the cheek.

“Walk with me, Sergeant,” Ton says. “I have a story for you.” He holds up a finger. “And don’t you dare groan. One day you’ll be the guy telling the stories.”

“Wasn’t going to groan, LT,” Blaze says. 

“
Righ
t
,” Ton smiles. “How old are you, Blaze? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six,” Blaze says. “I’ll be twenty-seven in October.”

“Just a couple months away,” Ton nods. “I still have a good decade on you, though.”

“Just a decade?” Blaze smirks.

“Fuck you, operator,” Ton grins. “And your bug hound.”

“Oh, that’s just me
an,” Blaze says. “Insulting my bug hound too.”

“Life of hard knocks, Sergeant. It’s how you learn.” Ton puts his hand
out and Gorge gives it a sniff then a lick, letting him know she isn’t insulted.

“You going to tell your story or what?”

“Yes,” Ton says. “So shut the fuck up and stop distracting me.”

He takes a deep breath and his mood shifts slightly. It doesn’t go down, just becomes muted.

“When my platoon was sent out to the front lines of the Unseen Wars, we had no idea that only one percent of us would come back,” Ton begins. “We were pumped, half of us juiced on synthstim, ready to take on the Cooties that kept trying to hammer their way into the Clean Nation cities. We bore down on those savages like Death on a pale horse. They, of course, thought they were one of the Horsemen too, Pestilence, riding high on their white horse, but they were only Don Quixote charging at windmills on a sad donkey.”

“I think you mixed your metaphors there, LT,” Blaze smiles.

“Shut the fuck up and listen,” Ton says. “Whatever the metaphor, the outcome was the same: we kicked their asses.” He pauses, glancing sideways at Blaze. “Did you know the earth didn’t used to be scorched clear? Even during the Unseen Wars? That’s not something that’s often talked about here in GenSOF since so many old timers like me would rather forget that the world was once beautiful and not a constant blue-grey created by the Caldicott City StatShield.”

“Of course. The wind used to blow across miles and miles of prairie grass, instead of the miles and miles of ash piles and bla
sted rock,” Blaze responds. “There are plenty of pictures and vids to show that.”

“Pics and vids aren’t the same as seeing it for yourself,” Ton says. “I never got to see the prairie grass, but I used to hike amongst trees that were nearly half as high as the GenSOF tower.”

“If there’s a lesson in this story, it just got lost in a forest of bullshit,” Blaze says.

“Well, maybe
the trees weren’t half as tall, but close,” Ton says. “I’m just making a point that the world was once something different.”

“Okay. Point made.”

“Those platoons, one of which I was part of, set fire to everything. We tracked down Cootie holes and dropped chemicals in there that have since been outlawed. We blew up entire Cootie settlements. Men, women, and children. Toasted them like they were ants.

“All because we thought they were animals; monsters that had to be hunted for the good of ‘real’ human beings. We didn’t think of them a
s
huma
n
, Simon. And we have paid a price for that.”

Blaze is taken aback by the use of his first name; a name only his mother used to use.

“So I should be thankful for what I have because it could get a hell of a lot shittier? Is that it?” Blaze asks

“In a way. Listen, Sergeant, the whole reason I’m telling you this is because I know what it’s like to want more than what the GenSOF life can provide. I also know what it’s like to think I’m invincible and then find out that is far from the truth. We had those Cootie fucks destroyed.  Then they turned the tables and unleashed bacteria that made even God cry. We’d worried about the Strains for so long that not a single one of our scientists at Control even dreamed someone would create bugs that were even worse. Let alone the ignorant Cooties.

“But it happened. And those of us that somehow survived came back and were quarantined. We were studied day after day, night after night, put through tests that bordered on torture. All while platoon after platoon was sent out to die. Die in a place we turned from Paradise into Hell on Earth. By the time command and Control figured out what was happening, more than a million soldiers were dead
.
A millio
n
.”

“Yeah, I know all this,” Blaze says. “It’s sad, but it’s history.”

“Not quite, Sergeant,” Ton says. “GenSOF was created, and expanded, out of those of us that somehow had a natural immunity to the bacteria the Cooties sent at us. Command saw the strength of that and put us to work back out in the Sicklands, no longer willing to risk regular soldiers’ lives. We wiped out the Cootie menace in weeks instead of years. Took them the fuck down.”

“They didn’t stand a chance,” Blaze smiles. “Still don’t.”

“We were heroes to millions,” Ton says, ignoring Blaze’s last comment. “But we were
–
ar
e
- also Death to millions. If what grows inside our guts were to be released into genpop then Caldicott City would become a ghost town in days. There’re two sides to our coins, Blaze. We are special, you, me, the rest of GenSOF operators. Genetic freaks of nature that stand out from the other 99.99% of humanity. But so are the Strains. They are genetic freaks that stand out from the other 99.99% of bacteria. Special can’t always mean free, Blaze. Sometimes special has to be contained.

“We are contained here in GenSOF tower so that the civvies down there on the streets that hustle from TransPod to TransPod
so they don’t have to make contact with each other, will never have to know the horrors of the 0.01% that waits out there ready to eat the flesh from their bones and turn their insides into jelly. We take on that burden for them so they don’t have to. You pledged an oath as an operator to take on that burden. Get it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Blaze nods. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Ton smiles. “Lecture ain’t done.”

“Can I groan now?” Blaze smirks.

“No,” Ton says. “Let me ask you a question, okay? What do you think happens if you don’t fall in line? If you let your little head rule your big head?”

“
I get tossed in the incinerator,” Blaze says.

“
If you are lucky,” Ton nods. “But most operators don’t go so easily. You’d be surprised how strong your will to survive is. Maybe you escape out into the Sicklands instead.”

“A GenWreck,” Blaze sighs.

“A GenWreck,” Ton says. “Men and women like you and me that couldn’t handle the GenSOF burden. Something in them wouldn’t fit with what we are. They wanted more. They needed more. Maybe it was their own psychology or maybe it is something inherently human that craves freedom, a portion of DNA that won’t let us just be sheep. We don’t know. But it all starts with one thought: I am bigger than the whole.”

“Okay, okay,” Blaze says, holding up his hands. “Point has been thoroughly drilled home.”

“Not yet it hasn’t,” Ton says. “You know any operators that have become GenWrecks?”

“No, of course not,” Blaze says. “Hasn’t been a GenWreck in years.”

“That you know of,” Ton frowns then waves away Blaze’s curious look. “Back when GenSOF started, operators were slipping into the Sicklands left and right. Not just sergeants, but officers all the way up to captain. I knew a lot of them. But one that I knew had the same look in his eye that you do. He didn’t leave for freedom, but for love.”

“Love?” Blaze laughs. “I just screwed a couple of-”

“Don’t,” Ton says. “You may have fooled the other guys, but not me. Why? Because like I said, I’ve seen it before. A good man threw everything away for nothing.”

“Love isn’t nothing,” Blaze says.

“Oh?” Ton smiles. “So have said many a young man who has met his tragic end.”

“This GenWreck, did he at least get to take his love with?” Blaze asks.

“No, he didn’t,” Ton says. “He moved against Control and was killed. Probably a good thing since the woman he loved was part of Control. A brilliant researcher on her way to Management status.”

“I guess that was ruined, huh? Associated with a GenWreck probably got her thrown in the incinerator.”

“No, it didn’t,” Ton says, his face looking years older in a flash. “I’m the only one that knew about her. As far as I know, she’s still there. But you know how closed Control is, the doctors that sit on Management aren’t public knowledge.”

“Right,” Blaze nods.

“As a lieutenant I am given a lot of leeway with how I run my squad,” Ton explains. “That is because GenSOF operators are different. We aren’t regular military. We think different, act different, are made different. We also break different. I have to balance squad discipline with those differences. That’s why you haven’t been busted for copulating with non-operator personnel.”

“C
opulating, sir?” Blaze smiles. “You sound like one of the scientists from Control.”

“You still aren’t getting it, and that’s my fault,” Ton sighs. “I’m no good at this metaphor, story as a lesson shit.” He grabs Blaze by the shoulders, holding his gaze. “Not all the GenWrecks wanted to escape into the Sicklands, Sergeant.
But they had to for the good of others. I watched it happen once; I don’t want to see it happen again. Get in line or get out. I’m too old to keep others’ secrets.”

Blaze’s mouth goes dry and he swallows hard.

“Yes, sir,” Blaze says. “I got it. Loud and clear. I won’t put you in that position again.”

“Good,” Ton says. “Never going to
think of GenWrecks the same again when out in the Sicklands, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“I am sorry for that. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I wish you could just think of them as burnt out loners sent out to die. But not all are,” Ton says then yawns. “Now I’m going to hit the sack and catch some shut eye. Losing half my credits to an asshole like you is fucking exhausting.”

“Night, LT,” Blaze says. “I’m going to hit the sack too.”

“When you’re done working,” Ton replies then smiles.

“Uh…what?” Blaze asks.

“Just because I give you leeway so you don’t burn out and become a GenWreck doesn’t mean I’ve thrown all discipline out the window,” Ton says. “There is an entire bay of transports that need their latrine systems mucked out and flushed. It’s a big job, but you’re a big boy that can handle it.”

“You’re joking, right?” Blaze asks. “LT? Right?”

“Nothing more satisfying than spending your leave time helping others,” Ton says as he walks away. “I’ll check on you in the morning. If the Chief says you met her expectations then you will be good to go. If not…”

He lets the sentence fade as he waves and turns a corner.

Blaze watches him go then looks down at Gorge.

“What the fuck just happened?” Blaze asks his dog. “Was that all bullshit just so he could spring shitter duty on me?”

Gorge doesn’t answer, just takes a seat and starts licking her nether regions.

“You’re a big help,” Blaze says, shaking his head.