Devans was not good at waiting. Period. You’re either doing something or you’re done doing something. Idling is a waste of time. Waiting in a loud, increasingly tension-filled airport while the world was going to crap was taxing his mind to exponential degrees, but it wasn’t about him right now, so he set aside his impatience as best he could.
Karen Wagner had boarded her flight for the moon, despite the agitation building up in the airport. The EFF was making bold moves at an alarming rate now, and he wanted to know she at least made it off the planet before they struck with their true intentions.
He felt a stab of emptiness.
Come on, you’ve only been with her a night and a day.
Yeah, but there’s something there. She didn’t have to check in with me almost daily during quarantine, and our conversations were more than just microbe-related.
Over the next twenty minutes of waiting for her flight to take off, he tried Cal several more times with his arm computer phone and mindtext. All went unanswered.
Karen texted that her flight was in the air now.
Devans set his jaw and headed out.
A river of people flowed along the wide hallways of the arrival and departure gates. He slipped through gaps and made his own way with a dividing hand when necessary, at first muttering a word of apology and then forgetting it altogether when met with angry replies. Escalators and people movers were damming points, but he could at least make headway on the stairs and walkways.
No sooner did Devans realize this when the airport—always a place of grand-scale bustle—turned into a house of mass indecision and rising panic. People clogged the hallways. Sometimes there were lines of movement, sometimes they came to a standstill. Workers attempted to usher people along. Announcements came that flight after flight was now cancelled. Murmurs rose to shouts and became a perpetual roar. Glass shattered in a gift shop window. The two men with chairs in their hands didn’t bother fleeing. Instead they vanished inside. The shock of this quieted the hall for a few moments; then the roar resumed.
Then came gunfire, screaming, and smoke.
Airport police ran through, shouting for people to run for the exits.
Devans stopped before another gift shop. The owner or manager was pulling down on the metal mesh to block the entrance, but it hit a snag at waist-level and would descend no more. On the display counter was a set of pocket tools. One was opened to revealed pliers, knife blades, screwdrivers, finger clipper.
“A hundred credits for one of those!” Devans shouted, reaching for his wallet.
“Damn EFF. Should just leave. Not sure there’ll be anything left after today.” The manager shook his head and tried to kick the gate down. He paused as Devans strode toward him. “Hey, you’re the Mars guy, right? Help me with this damn thing and I’ll give you ten of ’em.”
“Deal, but just the one.”
The manager ducked under the gate, unlocked the display case, and grabbed one of the items still in its small box. He slid it out to Devans, who opened the box and pocketed it. With the manager back on the crazy side of the gate, they reached and pushed down on the gate with their combined force. The metal mesh screeched over a catch point, then rolled down to slam against the floor. The manager placed a foot on the handle and locked it. He shouted to be heard over the rush of feet and voices around them. “Thanks, spaceman! Watch your ass. From the links I watched, it’s all going to crap at light speed now.”
“Get a seat on a shuttle and head to one of the orbiters,” Devans said. “Link me when you get to Lunar One and I’ll get you through.”
A woman fell with a cry, purse and bag skidding away from her splayed arms. Devans and the manager helped her up and grabbed a few of her items that hadn’t disappeared in the crowd. Without a word she took her stuff and limped back into the flow of frightened humanity.
“There’s a couple shuttles ready for takeoff, just down at the end.” Devans pointed.
“Thanks, but I got kids. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Good luck!” The manager clapped Devans on the shoulder and vanished through a side door.
“Good luck,” Devans echoed after him. He took off down the hallway along with thousands of others.
Finally they spilled out into the wider areas like cattle on prairie. The press of humanity divided into lower baggage claim or headed outside where passenger pickup and the hover rental companies resided.
The offices were dark. People pounded on the glass and called out, but the desperate summons went unheeded. Devans stood and looked around in disbelief, even as he was nudged and jostled. None of the rental companies were loaning out vehicles. As he pondered his next move, the people in front of him dispersed, leaving a sudden gap. Before others filled in, he caught a glimpse of a white board propped in the window. Scrawled upon it in red marker and all caps was:
EFF SHUT US DOWN.
Red finger and handprints marred the sign. It did not look like paint.
He ran. Twelve lanes designated by laser lights were set aside for drop-off or pickup of arriving and departing passengers. Enter a lane without proper signaling and alarms would go off and a fine hit your bank account. Such was not an issue at the moment. All of the lane alarms were going off, and the people streaming forth could not care less about a fine. People leaped onto rising and lowering hovers, urged the drivers to fly away at once. The autopilots issued warnings via exterior speakers. The owners did likewise. The operating systems took evasive actions. The vehicles shot up and down and tilted and swayed to shake off the strangers, while the frightened occupants frantically tried to locate whomever they had hoped to meet.
The crowd ran beneath the hovers. The auto sensors prevented crushing incidents. En masse they flew off, twenty feet from the ground, the highest legal altitude.
Sensing the crowd as an obstacle, no other vehicles entered. The twelve lanes consisted of human traffic only.
Glass walls popped with holes and shards as lead and plasma bullets tore through.
New cries rang out.
Devans ran toward the fences at the edge of the airport grounds. There were vehicles parked in the decks, but he was reluctant to take someone else’s ride. These outer zones were set aside for the rental companies. He leaped onto the fence and scrambled up and over, silently thanking whoever installed it for not using razor wire. In the Third Middle East War this had not been the case, but then he had blown the fence with a grenade and strode in. He grabbed the multitool from his pocket, wishing he also had a gun. He didn’t waste time trying to finesse his way into the first hover. A decorative stone from the nearby landscaping met the rear passenger-side window with force, and a thousand tiny cubes cascaded inward. With the alarm blaring, he reached in, pressed the unlock switch, and went inside, shutting the door behind him.
The operating system’s bot’s voice warned him to vacate the vehicle as he pried the dash control panel open. He didn’t have an auxiliary wire this time, so he used the flat head of the screwdriver to pop out the auto-drive chip. The dash monitor was about eighteen inches wide and six in height, and fully interactive by touch or voice. A driver could leave the driving to the bot and work or play on the galaxynet.
He tapped at the control center holo and killed the alarms. He pressed start and flew the hover above the other rentals and out over the fence. He left the chaos of the airport.
At first he merged into the designated air lanes of northern Virginia. In the map finder he plugged in Cal Devans’ address, only a few miles away.
Slow going was replaced by halted traffic. The hovercraft around him descended from twenty feet to just inches above the old asphalt, typical of a traffic jam in this overpopulated area.
Smoke trails rose along the shoulders.
Some people remained inside their parked hovers, others hung around them, uncertainty upon their features. Other abandoned their vehicles to walk quickly or run along the old roadways. Dozens of police cars with flashing lights were on the sides of the roads, doors flung open. People with guns were jumping on hovers, firing into the air and taking potshots at other vehicles. Uniformed bodies were draped over guardrails and sprawled along grassy shoulders. Then Devans saw civilian bodies in and around their vehicles.
Devans gunned the hover, sending it up and off-lane while trying to raise Cal on the mind link and then vocally.
“Come on, Cal! Answer your damned vocal link, just this once.”
“Hello, Ry Devans.”
The voice was too calm given all the chaos of the region. Perhaps the tone had always been there and he’d chosen to ignore it, but it sure sounded smug.
“Cal! Hey, it’s you! You know what’s going on, right?”
A pause then. For effect?
“I do.”
“Then you know the whole damned world is in a crapstorm of cosmic proportion.”
“Yes!”
Devans was taken aback at the zeal. “Are you zoning or something? This is not a good thing, son.”
“This is the transition. Father.”
“Whatever you call it, we’ve got to go! Well, listen, I’m almost at your place. There’s still a planetary shuttle or two around that we can use to get off Earth!”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Your EFF friends are hunting people down and you need to ditch ’em. Time to get out!”
“Time for the Earth to use its warrior protectors, Father.”
“You can’t be serious…Tyrants do this crap! Come on, grab Mala, and the three of us will shuttle to one of the orbiters while this plays out on Earth.”
“Haven’t you noticed that orbiters are a huge part of the problem? All those resources in space when we need them here. The fact that you want to run to space just when we at the EFF have gained power enough to actually stop some of mankind’s Earth-killing ways is troubling.”
Silence between them.
“So you’re full EFF now?” Ry Devans asked finally. “Perfectly happy if humans were wiped off the Earth, including your own brainwashed selves?”
“We are a blight on the Earth.”
“Damn it! Even Nazis wanted some humans to survive! Well, after you’re done picking and choosing who to murder and who to enslave, and you wipe out the space programs, some day an asteroid or dozen will make sure almost all life is eradicated here on dear ol’ Mother Earth. The orbiters can take the rocks out, but since you won’t have them, life will be extinguished shortly after impact.”
“And the cycle of life will eventually start again.”
“Maybe not.”
“Of course it will,” Cal Devans said.
“Enough of an impact from a celestial body and Earth goes the way of Mars. Cores seize up with cold, magnetosphere shrinks to nothing, radiation kills anything left alive and keeps it that way.”
“Nice theory, but I’ve had enough. Are you willing to denounce space and embrace Earth, Father?”
“Guess you’ve been freebasing the crap the EFF is pushing too long now, son. It’s not too late. Grab you wife and I’ll bust us out, and we’ll see how it goes from space.”
“Then I’m sorry you’re on the other side. But there was a link once, so I would encourage you to avoid the traffic bots and roving cells. Or not.”
“This isn’t some stranger talking to you, Cal! I’m your father, damn it! Cal!” The vocal link dropped.
“CAL, WAIT…!”
But his son was gone. Devans tried his number again but it didn’t connect. Cal had blocked him. Devans swore, struck the steering wheel a few times, then bent forward with pain in his chest. He wished briefly for a heart attack.
The radar chimed. Two blips were coming at him, fast.
Good, he thought. Wreck or be wrecked.
Two dark machines flanked him. The traffic bots were half the size of his hover. Their flashers were going and spotlights flooded his hover’s interior. Devans didn’t wait. He wrenched the wheel right and left. He took out the first with a metal clash and shatter of glass, but missed the second when it performed evasive maneuvers. He chased it, cutting over travel lanes and old roadways, to areas of trees and fields and homes. Devans abruptly turned and started back for Dulles, swaying back and forth for the next phase to come.
He did not have long to wait.
Plasma bullets tore through the roof and out through the floorboards. He pulled back hard on the wheel and got a satisfying crunch, though in return he went into a spiral, the smoke sensors blaring. He tried keeping the vehicle level, but the best he could do was a rapid descent at an angle, toward the rusted uprights of a high school football field.
The hover took out the uprights with a clang, and Devans braced for harsher impact.
The crash and roll jarred him despite the airbags. White mist filled the cabin. Glass shattered. He fumbled at the safety belt, feeling like a tiny point of consciousness inside a massive and cumbersome body.
Through a ringing head reminiscent of his experience on Mars, Devans heard banging. Unlike the event on the red planet, there were now voices to accompany the banging.
Arms reached and pulled him roughly outside.
“Get them nylon cuffs on ’im.”
Vision was hazy. He made out the sun’s rays across a field. He wanted to rub his eyes but couldn’t get his arms free. He was walking, getting shoved in the shoulders and prodded by something hard like a gun barrel in the middle of his back.
Voices wormed their way into his struggling senses.
“Move, old man!”
“Dude is Mars expansion proponent all the way, earthman. This is the guy who took our man down on the moon!”
“What man?”
“Nuro, man. The unit who plasma’d that town hall crap SCONA put on.”
“Oh, yeah! That crap.”
“And this is the unit that charged our boy Nuro on that platform. Don’t you recognize the spaceman they almost blew up on Mars? Then he tangled Nuro on the moon, earthman.”
“Maybe that changed his mind.”
“Nah, he’s gonna say anything to save his ass like all them others.”
“How ’bout it, spaceman? Why you here and not up there?”
Devans blinked to try to clear his vision. Three youths were standing around him. Two males, one female. They had plasma guns and knives, and were smoking dope and passing it from one to another. They had bound him by the wrists, in front of his body. His fingertips touched the universal tool in his pocket. He inched it up to the top of his pocket. “Came to see my son.”
“Sweet. He here, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s his name, we’ll check the logs.”
“Cal Devans.”
The trio paused.
“RL Devans is your son?”
“RL?”
“Region Leader. Cal Devans runs the entire DC show, spaceman!”
They laughed.
“Cal Devans is my son. Don’t know about any ‘leader.’”
“Hold on.”
Devans blinked against the sweat and blood and wiped as best he could against his sleeves and squinted. Then he did it again with a groan of dismay, hoping that what he’d seen wasn’t real.
The field that had once been the site of recreational life was now Death’s playground. The weeds that had grown inside the track were trampled and stained red. Dozens of bodies lay strewn about in haphazard stacks.
Devans spat blood. “You three punks killed all these people?”
A knife blade pressed against his cheek. The fingernails in the back of his neck told him it was most likely the female. “Called weapons, spaceman. We got ’em, y’all don’t. Want a personal demonstration?”
“Yeah, why not?” Devans said. “A little bitch like you wouldn’t stand a chance on a real battlefield, so you play death cult instead.”
She hit him with the base of the knife to the back of his head. It hurt, but he could have remained standing. Instead he pitched forward. He went down hard, but now his side was toward them and he could work at getting the universal tool from his front pocket. He’d just have to two-hand it.
“How’d that feel, space prick?” the female said.
“Hey, hey, shut up! Region Leader Devans says put the spaceman to the question.”
“Bullcrap on your question!” Devans snarled, glaring over his shoulder at them. “You murdering crap piles, you told him it was me?”
They had a good laugh.
“Sent RL an image and everything an’ he still says ask it!”
“Listen up, spaceman. It’s the standard question for you nonbelievers. Are you one with the Earth?”
Devans gazed at the bodies in the field. He listened to the buzz of the flies around them. “Like them?”
The youths laughed again, faces twisted by zeal and murder lust. Devans had seen it before with extremists on battlefields, both foreign and domestic. The same look was often in the eyes of those who hid their weapons and mixed with the villagers until it was time to ambush.
One of them strode forward, kneeled to look him in the eyes. “Gun, knife, or needle?”
“Cut these cuffs off and I’ll tell you.”
“Gun, then. Just ’cause of RL an’ all.”
The one with the killing tools took a few steps back and nodded to one of his cohorts. The female held her bloody knife up. With a cry she ran forward and placed a boot on the side of Devans’ neck. Something sharp bit into the side of his neck, but he held back.
“Cut that throat like a pig!” she said.
Devans snarled as his blood ran down his neck, hot and wet. Shielded by his body, he gripped the all-purpose tool he’d gotten at the airport, small blade exposed. There was no time to cut the cuffs now. He’d have to launch an offensive.
“Nah on that gun! I wanna see some splatter.”
Laughter from them.
“They’re coming for you!” Devans said, summoning a triumphant laugh.
“Bull,” one of the males said. “We own this world.”
They turned anyway.
Devans shoved off the ground, threw his shoulder into the female’s back, and rushed the one with the gun. Rage offset his unsteadiness. His blade sank to the handle into the eye socket of the one with the shaved skull. Blood spurted hard and fast. The punk screamed and reflexively fired shots into the ground.
Shielding himself with the thug’s body, Devans grabbed the wrist and force-fired at the second thug, whose raised pistol barrel flashed once before he went down. Devans jerked his head to the side, felt the heat from the round as it passed. He tore the pistol away as his human shield fell to the ground. Just the female remained, a look of shock and confusion on her cruel features. She backed away, arms out as she dropped the bloody knife.
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t get crazy, spaceman. You don’t have to—”
The pistol cut her short.
Sucking air, Devans turned and turned again, wary of other threats. Quickly he cut the cuffs off, constantly looking up and at different angles.
Pillars of smoke rose beyond the tree line, both near and far. A new stench of death and destruction carried along with the smoke, mixing with that which already hung over the field.
These three had to have been part of a larger EFF force that had since moved on. Gone were the sounds of suburban life: hovercraft engines, voices, dog barks.
The rest of the force wasn’t here now, but they’d be coming back to view the carnage.
Devans put one plasma pistol in his waistband and pocketed spare magazines. With the other pistol in hand, he ignored the moans of his dying attackers and walked to the body piles. There he stood, trying to make sense of it, before having to walk away. Children of maybe eight years old and up were there.
And his own child had had a hand in this, or was responsible.
Was he himself somewhat responsible for not raising Cal the right way? Should he try to find and kill his own son?
This was too big, too fast. He couldn’t fix it. There should be cops here, but judging by what he’d seen on the roadways, they wouldn’t be coming. Doubtless a new order of enforcement was being sent, Earth First Law Enforcement or some crap.
The nearest house was empty. No one around. He paused at the family portraits. The father was now part of one of the body piles. He hadn’t seen the mother and daughter. He thought the boy was out there. A knife had ruined several of the faces.
Devans turned and rummaged.
There was running and bottled water. He drank and splashed his face repeatedly, letting water seep into his skin, into whatever was left of his soul. He took some dry food from the cupboard and put it in a grocery bag, unable to stomach it right now. He’d seen plenty of death in the army, but this was his homeland. Two hovers were in the garage, the keys hanging on a hook in the kitchen. If the mother were still alive, she’d at least have one.
He wanted to leave a note by way of explanation, but there was no time. The EFF was in the process of locking down flights around the world and into space, but he doubted they had scuttled the spacecraft at this point. A few more days, and it would probably be too late.
Again he bypassed the operating system of one of the hovers. The whirring engine made him think someone else could hear. He checked around as the garage door went up. He rested his foot on the accelerator in expectation, but no one was around.
No adults, that is.
There was a girl.
He guessed she was maybe nine or ten. If so, she was at the cusp of the contagion age for the Martian microbe. Her face was dirt-caked, and blood had been wiped from her nose and clotted in her hair. Tears had traced paths through her dirty and red-slicked cheeks. She stood motionless in a bloody dress, watching him with a dazed expression.
Three feet above the concrete, he pulled out of the garage, like he was going to work or something. Instead he was headed back to Dulles Airport. It normally hosted several Earth shuttles, even if they were grounded now. It was also big enough to have gaps in security, particularly in this initial chaos.
He eased past the girl, was about to gun it when he looked in the side mirror at the forlorn figure. He stopped, then reversed until the passenger-side window was alongside her. He rolled it down.
“This your house?” Devans said.
“Why are you stealing our hover?” She spoke in a monotone.
“I need to get away and thought it’d be okay. There’s another you could use.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Just tell it where you want to go.”
She gazed across the street.
Devans’ guts knotted.
All she has to do is get in and tell the host where she wants to go. The hover’ll do the rest.…including getting shot down or rammed by EFF drones or human hunters.
Devans needed to go soon or he’d never get off this rock. He eased the hover past her once more, but he could feel her gaze the back of his head. He reversed and lowered the vehicle until it was an inch above the ground. “Where’s your mom?”
The girl pointed to a cluster of weeds and shrubs across the road. A pair of bloody legs stuck through the underbrush. Devans already knew about the father.
“Brother?”
“With Daddy.”
“Any other family? I’ll take you to them.”
“Their life statuses have all turned black.”
He pressed a switch to open the passenger door. “Ever thought about the moon, and beyond?”
“No.” One small hand clenched at the hem of the dress. “Is it better than here?”
“Maybe. If we fight.”
She climbed in and shut the door. She trembled in her bloody dress. “I’ll fight.”
He recognized the look in her eyes.
“Run inside and change first. I’ll wait. Grab some more clothes.”
“They’re coming back. We need to go now. To the moon.”
“What’s your name?”
“It was Holly.”
“Still is.”
“Not anymore.” She worked the hem of her dress. Blood oozed from the material when she squeezed. “Now I’m Scarlet.”
* * * *
The standard air lanes that mimicked the old highways and roadways were blocked by EFF checkpoints of hovering cop cars and chase drones. Stray from the designated air lanes, generally above the ground roads, and alarms would go off, mobile lights and tracking devices would be shot at your vehicle, and the drones and cops came after you like wild dogs after a fleeing gazelle. Most people didn’t want that kind of attention. Devans found the alternative untenable. Going rogue could mean death, but the chances of getting through were slightly better, particularly with the chaos in full swing.
As he and Scarlet flew out of the neighborhood at tree level, Devans tried Karen Wagner on the mind and vocal link.
“Ry! Are you okay? Where are you? Link the visual.”
“You don’t want to see this. Damn EFF fantasy land. Three EFF killers have killed at least fifty people, including children, in this neighborhood alone. They’re killing all the space advocates and nonbelievers.”
“We’ve got fighting here on Lunar One as well, though Shakuri’s squads have backed several of them into corners.”
“Good man, Shakuri. Look, I just…just wanted to say I’m sorry this is all going down.”
“Like you had a hand in it.”
“Inadvertently, maybe.”
“Bull. How long has the EFF been a terrorist organization? Two centuries now!”
“Truth.”
“Can you get to an Earth shuttle?” she asked.
“Maybe. But they’re banning space flights.”
“You’ll have to go hard at it.”
“I’ve got a young girl with me…” He turned. “How old are you, Scarlet?”
“Ten,” she said woodenly.
“Scarlet’s ten. Wants to see the moon and an orbiter,” Devans said.
“How does she look? She likely is dealing with the microbe.”
He glanced at her. “She’s going through enough hell without it, that’s for sure. And isn’t the microbe in the population already up there?”
“Yes, I’ve tested three cases personally since landing. Bring Scarlet and come up, before they send more people to take us out.”
“What’s the status of MOS-1?”
“Holding for the MEPs, but it’s a struggle. Cyclops atomizer got hit but is salvageable. Trent has been fighting against the EFF. There’s not a lot of weapons. It’s a lot of hand-to-hand.”
“Gwen?”
“She’s on MOS-2. Different there. Fighting…but she says too many EFF.”
“She needs to bug out for MOS-1, Karen. And so do you.”
“I will when you get to Lunar One. I’ve still got to study the microbe.”
“Screw Lunar One. It’s too easy for them. Tell Shakuri to round up everyone he can and get to MOS-1. You can use the labs there to fight this thing.”
“See you soon?”
“We’ll get there.”
But Devans was a realist. He knew the chances were a little better than catching a falling star.
Against all humans.