The n00b Warriors (19 page)

There were three zones in Seattle: the Forward Zone, where the trenches were and where they were heading; the Rear Zone, where the headquarters and hospital were; and the Battle Zone, the area they were currently traveling through. This zone was full of artillery and tanks; some were being used as they passed, but most were out of service.

The Battle Zone was also full of rubble and crumbling buildings. There was little hint that the road they were on had been paved at one time. Dylan watched men and women quickly loading mortar into one of the artillery canons as they passed. A part of him wanted to be them. They didn’t have to see who they killed and hurt; they were given radioed-in locations, and they fired from a long distance, never knowing if they even hit anything.

A hundred feet away, he was an overturned medical truck that was on fire. Soldiers were trying to pull bodies from it, but as they did so, the entire truck exploded into a huge fireball that went up nearly 100 feet. The force of the explosion rocked the truck that Dylan’s company was in. Dylan remembered a teacher who had once said the Rules of Engagement forbade you to ever fire on the injured or doctors. He didn’t know if that was true, but he knew that the Rules of Engagement wouldn’t apply in Seattle—there was only one rule in Seattle: Survive.

They passed a sign that said “Washington Park Arboretum.” The sign was odd to Dylan; there was no such thing as a park in a warzone. Whatever beauty and nature there had once been, it was now long gone.

More bombs came. There was more than one close call. The truck dodged left and right, avoiding the explosions. Dylan listened to the sounds and thought back to Disneyland—the only battlefield he knew. Already he knew that this was a different warfront; this was the real warfront. He still wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but he knew that the war here was constant—the fighting never seemed to stop.

The truck stopped without warning, and the driver turned and nodded at Dylan. Dylan quickly hopped up from his seat in the truck’s bed. “Alright everyone, move out,” he commanded as he jumped from the truck to the surface.

No one could hear what he said over the blasts and gunfire and bombs flying above and occasional fighter jets firing at their objectives, but they knew what he meant, and no one stalled.

They followed Dylan, clinging shoulder to shoulder, as they ran. Two of the kids froze. Dylan didn’t realize it until they were several feet away from the rest of the group. He yelled, but they couldn’t hear him. He motioned, but they didn’t follow. They just stood hopelessly—clinging to each other—too fearful to even shake. He signaled to Hunter to move everyone forward so he could go back to get the two stragglers. Just as he turned around, a bomb exploded, and they both were gone.

Dylan was now the frozen one. He stared at the small crater the bomb had made, at the charred and lifeless bodies as they smoked on the ground. He was not even aware of the noise anymore. Then he felt a tug on his shoulder. He turned. Milton was pulling at his shirt and yelling that he had to move on. He still didn’t move; he tried to think what their names were, but he couldn’t remember. Milton pushed him again, and this time shouted into Dylan’s ear, “There’s nothing you can do. The others need you!”

Dylan nodded, and then ran with Milton to catch up with Hunter and lead the troops forward.

A bomb exploded so close to Hunter that the impact made him lose his balance as he ran. When he got back up, he was crying, and he grabbed on to Dylan’s hand. They ran several hundred feet before Dylan even noticed that they were holding hands.

Dylan didn’t know where he was going, but he knew if they kept on running, they’d reach their trench. It was dark and hopelessly smoky, but frequent explosions helped keep it just bright enough to see.

Subconsciously, Dylan hoped that this was another test, that at any minute Tommy would jump out from nowhere, laughing and saying it was just a silly game he’d made up to amuse the men. But this was no joke.

Every building in sight was crushed. Bodies were scattered on the ground. Dylan watched several different people trip and fall over corpses; vehicles were turned over; women were left naked; the dust was thick; the smell of death was thicker. But they kept running, too afraid to realize they were tired and scared.

Fifty feet away, they saw a helicopter shot from the sky. They watched in horror as the bright light on the bottom of it got closer and closer until it finally crashed not far from them in a burning blaze.

Men were running towards them, telling them to turn around. “Run for your lives,” they shouted, “they’re trying to kill us!” One of Dylan’s soldiers started to follow the men going the other way. Dylan grabbed her by her shoulder as she ran past and shook his head no, forcing her to stay with the company.

A bomb blasted not far away. When several more hit the same area, Dylan led everyone to a collapsed multistory business complex, where they waited a few minutes. When the nearby bombing had stopped, they ran again.

They came to the remains of a drawbridge, and Dylan knew they would have to cross it. The middle of the bridge had been blown away, and no car could cross, but there was a beam just wide enough for them to run over single file. If the map was correct, Dylan knew that the University of Washington was just on the other side, and that was where they were supposed to be.

The deeper they got into the war zone, the softer the sounds got. Most the bombs were now flying over them instead of crashing right next to them.

About a mile after crossing the bridge, Dylan tripped and fell into a trench, and was met by the high-strung Company B team leader.

“Glad to see you,” he said to Dylan. “I lost ninety percent of my men in the attacks yesterday. Welcome to the Forty-Fifth Street Parallel Trench.”

Dylan nodded and looked around as the rest of his company jumped down beside him. It was the first time he had ever seen a real trench. In high school, they had practiced building trenches, but it was nothing like this. The ones in high school were solid and perfect. The 45
^th
Street trench was muddy and falling apart.

“Name’s Faulkner, by the way.” He grabbed Dylan’s hand and began to forcefully shake it, then he looked at the rest of the company that was piling into the trench and said, “Got a young bunch of kids on your hand. What company did you say you were with?”

“D.”

“D?”

Dylan nodded.

“They must be desperate or stupid if they’re sending D men out here. This is A-B turf.”

Dylan nodded again, still too shocked to speak.

“Well, get your men settled in. There should be fighting all night.”

Faulkner was 25 and a graduate of Stanford University. He had been recruited three years ago and had traveled all over the world. This was his third rotation to the front lines in the four months he had been in Washington. “I should have been dead three times over, but I keep lucking out.” He told Dylan all he knew about battlefront war in one sentence: “Fire first, question later.” And he told him the nickname of the front, “Gehenna,” which in ancient times was where children were sacrificed to the gods.

“Where’d you start out, anyway?” Faulkner asked, pouring Dylan a cup of coffee.

“Saw my first battle at Disneyland.”

“Disneyland? I’ve heard stories. Did you ride Space Mountain when it was over?”

Dylan nodded.

“That’s what I would have done. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Is it always like this here?”

“Like what?”

“So intense.”

Faulkner smiled wickedly. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Some days it will be like this. Real quiet like. Then out of nowhere there’s fire and ambushes and bombings. Sometimes those last less than a minute, and other times they go on for two days straight. We call it Gehenna for a reason.”

“How much longer do you have?”

“My time’s up,” Faulkner said. “I’m hitching a ride out tonight. You’ll be in charge of my boys now.”

“They don’t get to leave?”

“They can if they want. They’re just going to die eventually, anyway—might as well stay out here and make it sooner than later. To tell you the truth, there’s not much accountability out here—people die so often that if you run away, they just assume you’re dead.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette, then slapped Dylan on the back, wished him luck, and said he was leaving.

Faulkner’s luck ran out after he left the trench, as guerillas started firing on him from nowhere. He took 17 shots to the upper body before falling to the ground and dying.

The remainder of Company B located the three guerillas and returned their own bullets, but it was too late. Faulkner was dead. And Dylan was now in charge of the four men he had left behind.

Dylan collapsed against the wall as soon as the guerillas were dead.

“You okay?” Hunter asked, sitting next to him.

Dylan closed his eyes and nodded with difficulty. “So our mission, at this point, is to fire at anything that moves.”

“I guess,” Hunter softly replied. “But the thing is, we can’t really take out anything that’s moving. How do you fire at bombs coming straight at us?”

Dylan didn’t say anything, but he knew Hunter was right: they were human shields, and they could only watch in horror the beautifully tragic effects of war, isolated from all but themselves. If there were other companies around, they were not able to establish communications.

The trench was long and uneven; it stretched several hundred feet. Dylan was now in charge of an area longer than a football field.

There were many layers to the trench, Dylan quickly learned. Every 50 feet, there was a listening post that raised a few feet out of the trench and was bordered with several sandbags. Two people at a time could be stationed at the post, where they would listen for the lightest noises. Periscopes also lined the walls of the trench, which allowed soldiers to see out of the trench without putting their head in firing range.

The trench had a two-foot step that was called the firestep. It gave soldiers the ability to be high enough out of the trench to fire on any incoming enemy troops. There were ladders every 20 feet for soldiers to climb quickly out.

The soldiers ate, slept, and lived wherever they could find room in the middle of the trench, but there were more fortified areas every several feet called dugouts. These were used for ammo, food, and sickbays.

Sandbags lined the entire trench, which provided extra protection. However, they did little for flooding, despite much effort. The trench was muddy and in need of constant repair to keep it from caving in.

In front of the trench was a rifle pit where soldiers could lay flat with their weapons, but be down in the ground just enough to have cover. In front of the pit, past a series of wires, was no-man’s land—the vacant, bomb-filled area of land that separated rebel trenches from Cocos. It was unprotected, unsheltered, and the area no one would ever want to be in.

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Dylan put the four B men on watch throughout the trench’s lookouts, and he stationed two D men with each, hoping they’d learn something. There was nothing they could do except fire whenever they were being fired upon. They were surrounded by trees and seemed well-enough protected.

While Dylan sat back and drank some coffee, Trinity came and sat next to him. “Welcome to hell,” he said to her.

She didn’t smile.

“It’s not so bad, really—now that we’re here, anyway.”

“So now we wait.”

Dylan nodded. “It’s the worst part.”

She looked down at the grime on her skin and admitted, disappointed, “I miss being a girl. I feel like the Army tries to make everything unisex—there’s no opportunity to be pretty.”

Dylan was about to say something about Trinity’s looks, but got embarrassed and stopped.

Trinity left him and went to Johnny, who was staring out of the trench. She put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, then whispered into his ear. Dylan should have turned away, but he couldn’t—he wanted to be the one being kissed on the cheek and comforted by her.

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