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  Upper-lower metal bunks piled with rolled-up mattresses lined the room in two rows flanking a center aisle. Each bunk pair shared a metal wall locker backed against frame walls that were just whitewashed siding, an inch of wood between us and the Pennsylvania winter.

  Druwan Parker tossed his stuff on an upper bunk.

  I chucked mine below. “Unless you want the lower?”

  He shook his head. “Never had an upper.” He grinned. “It’s not a job. It’s an adventure.” His breath swirled as white as cotton against his cheeks.

  I shucked my field jacket, then shivered. They couldn’t turn up the heat in here soon enough. The jacket was lead-heavy but as warm and windproof as Ord had said. The bad thing about Drill Sergeant Ord was he was always right. The good thing was that he was senior drill sergeant for a company of four platoons, so we wouldn’t see much of him anymore.

  “Gentlemen!”

  Ord’s voice froze all sound and movement.

  His boots tapped down the center aisle. “Carry on. You have not been called to attention.”

  Unpacking resumed.

  Ord said, “I am saddened to announce that Drill Sergeant Brock has been transferred. He is as fine a noncommissioned officer as you will find in this army. It would have been your great privilege to be trained by him. However, I am pleased to announce that I will assume his responsibilities for this training cycle in addition to mine as senior drill sergeant. Therefore, I will bunk in the NCO’s office at the end of mis barracks. I will have the pleasure of getting to know each of you in Third Platoon, twenty-four hours each day.”

  Lucky us.

  “Your questions?”

  Someone, not me thank God, spoke. “Where’s the thermostat, Drill Sergeant?”

  Ord stood at the end of the aisle and clasped hands behind his back. “Heat for these barracks is generated by coal-fired boilers. As you know, coal-fuel burning and mining was discontinued in this country before some of you were born. Supplies are being imported from Russia. We expect them momentarily.”

  Momentarily turned out to mean sometime after 10:00 p.m. lights-out.

  Before bed, Parker had shown me how to shine my boots and arrange my locker and stretch the sheets over my mattress. The one thing I’d done right all day was choosing a bunkie who knew the ropes. Meanwhile, some people even found time to write letters home on their Chipboards, like Ord suggested. There was an old machine at the end of the barracks where you plugged in your Chipboard and actually printed a paper letter and put it in an envelope to be carried by mail. Ord thought up some bullshit about how we should soften up our new boots, as if he hadn’t invented enough chores already. Walking around tomorrow would be soon enough to break them in.

  We all bunked under coarse blankets, in field jackets, long Johns, and three pairs of wool socks, towels around our necks like scarves.

  In my pocket burned two forgotten Prozac II tabs. I was terrified either to take them or to get caught flushing mem. I hadn’t had a ‘Zac in a day.

  I stared at the mattress above me, sagging under Parker’s weight while fifty strangers snored, scratched, and farted.

  It was the first time since Mom died that I’d really thought about her without the warm fuzz of drugs. She was gone. Not for the weekend or to the movies. Forever. In a roomful of people I was completely alone for the first time in my life. I sobbed until the bunk frame shook.

  Finally, I closed my eyes.

  “Zero four hundred hours! Fall out, gentlemen!”

  It couldn’t be 4:00 a.m. I’d just closed my eyes. Overhead lights seared my eye sockets. Metallic thunder rattled the barracks. Ord stood in the center aisle, stirring a stick around the walls of a galvanized trash can. His uniform was perfect, his face glowing. Feet and bodies thumped floor tile. I sat up.

  “Hunnh!” Above me, Parker woke in his new upper bunk. The mattress bulged as he rolled off the bunk edge, didn’t find the floor, and crashed. He screamed and clutched his leg. I looked, then looked away and gagged. Under his long Johns, Druwan’s lower leg bent at the knee where no knee was supposed to be.

  Parker was our first training casualty. If he had been our last, human history would have been different.

  Chapter Five

  Ord showed two guys how to lace their arms to make a basket Parker could sit on, an arm around each of their necks. They shuffled him off to the infirmary while his complexion turned from ebony to putty. He clenched his teeth but never said a word while the platoon stood at attention on the company street’s frozen, floodlit dirt. Ord faced us. “Good morning, Third Platoon!”

  “Good morning, Drill Sergeant!” Forty-nine voices feigned enthusiasm. “Would you enjoy a tour of the post?” Like a needle in the eye. “Yes, Drill Sergeant!”

  “Physical training is normally conducted in sweat suits and running shoes. Those are expected to arrive momentarily.”

  No doubt being imported from Russia on the coal boat. “We will therefore conduct PT in fatigue uniform. I am certain you all heeded the advice to soften and break in your combat boots last night.”

  Oboy. Ord faced us right, converting our four squads from four rows to four columns, marched us forward, then brought us to a double-time jog. He jogged alongside calling cadence without breathing hard. You’d have thought the bastard would have said something nice about Parker. He would either be offered a discharge or be recycled and start training over again when his leg healed. I had no bunkmate.

  After four hundred yards I broke a sweat and friction from the stiff boots warmed my heels. We’d have to stop soon.

  By the time we reached the edge of the board-building cluster that was the post, sweat stung my eyes, and I panted. My heels burned. I glanced at Ord. His boots skimmed the ground as he sang cadence. We would be turning back any second.

  “Anyone who doesn’t care to extend our tour to the pistol range?”

  Maybe they were all out of breath like me. Maybe they were chicken. Nobody spoke.

  “ Out-standing ! Marvelous day for a run!”

  We labored on.

  By the time we turned around at the pistol range, which was somewhere near Los Angeles, I hobbled fifty yards behind the pack. The problem had to be the high-topped boots and the jacket. I was a gazelle during soccer season. Okay, maybe I should have spent some time getting in shape like everybody had warned me.

  Deathlike wheezing sounded at my left shoulder. I glanced back. The guy flailed along, head peeking out of his field jacket’s neck like a spectacled turtle’s from its shell. At least I wasn’t last. His glasses bounced on his nose, and he sobbed and stared ahead of us. “Oh dear God.”

  I saved my breath. I figured he wept from blisters or exhaustion until I looked where he was looking. Ord drifted back from the pack toward us like a vulture. I almost sobbed myself.

  “Difficulty, trainees?”

  The Turtle shook his head on a scrawny neck.

  Ord smiled. “That’s the spirit, Lorenzen. Trainee Wander is seeking a new bunkmate. I believe you two are a perfect match.”

  Ord was saddling me with this geek! I wasn’t some nerd. I was just a tiny bit out of top condition. Not only had I lost Parker, who knew his way around, now I had to babysit this dork instead.

  Ord sped up and circled the platoon’s main body like a great white as they tromped along.

  The geek panted. “Sounds. Like the sergeant. Wants us to get To know each other. Walter Lorenzen.” He tried to hold out his hand as we stumbled along side by side but it flopped like windblown Kleenex.

  “Jason Wander, Walter.” I clenched my teeth as much at the prospective relationship as at my blisters.

  When we struggled back to the company street, Ord made us police the barracks to cool down before breakfast. If the blister-footed march to the mess hall cooled us down any more, we’d be ice sculptures. A white plume curled from the stovepipe that poked through the hall’s green-shingled roof. My heart leapt. Where there’s smoke…

  Side-by-side h
orizontal ladders stood basketball-rim tall between us, heat, and food. The first two guys in line peeled off gloves, climbed onto wooden steps at one end, and swung monkey bar-style across the ladders to cheers, then dashed up the mess hall steps to warmth and sustenance. The pair behind them followed.

  Lorenzen and I stepped up. Icy steel stung my palms as I rocked across the ladder. I’ve always had good upper-body strength. Halfway across I glanced back. Lorenzen dangled one-handed like an olive drab booger stuck on his ladder’s second rung.

  “Pair drop and go back to the end of the line!” We dropped as Ord motioned the pair behind us up onto the steps.

  Lorenzen whispered as we hopped up and down at the line’s ass end. “I’m sorry, Jason.”

  “No big deal.” I blew into my fists.

  At the building’s rear, next to us because of our preferred position at the line’s end, some idiot had planted a six-foot-tall twig of a sapling. A squared-off rock border made it into a scruffy garden centerpiece, awaiting spring.

  Someone needed to clue the army that there wouldn’t be spring as long as the sky only rained dust.

  After three tries and three drops we were the last pair into the mess hall. Walter had never made it past rung two. He rubbed blistered palms. A few seated guys glanced up and snickered. We two huddled like lepers.

  I stared across the tables while circulation revisited my extremities. Steam rose from pancakes, fried eggs, and bacon heaped on compartmented plastic trays. Bacon aroma made my saliva gush.

  Lorenzen said, “Good. No SOS.”

  “Huh?”

  “No shit-on-a-shingle for breakfast. Creamed, chipped beef on toast. It’s supposed to be awful. My grandfather was a soldier, and he always complained about it. He won the Medal of Honor.”

  “For eating it?”

  Lorenzen grinned. “Good one, Jason.”

  Yeah, it was. I smiled back and straightened up.

  The next few training days blurred into a muck of cold, sweat, and exhaustion. Instruction consisted of crap like drill and ceremony and how to boil water so you didn’t get sick. The only thing halfway interesting was a demonstration of plastic explosive that scared me nuts. Explosives terrified me since I was ten, when Arnold Rudawitz blew off his fingernail with a Fourth of July cherry bomb. They said we’d have to throw a live grenade before we graduated. I’d have to get sick that day.

  Rifles I liked, though. We got M-16s a couple weeks later. Ancient but deadly.

  In the classroom building they lay on tables atop cloths stenciled with outlines of their various components. First the army teaches you how to take your weapon apart and put it together and clean it and care for it like it was your puppy. Then they teach you how to kill with it.

  We stood at attention, each man behind his chair and his weapon, the whole four-platoon company.

  Excitement was palpable. It’s not that males want to kill living things with guns. It’s that hosing down targets with a ‘16 on full auto is the ultimate extension of writing your name in the snow with urine.

  Captain Jacowicz, the company commander, mounted the room’s foot-high stage. There was the usual preclass bullshit as each platoon demonstrated bloodthirsty esprit de corps by chanting some doggerel about how much more excellent they were than every other platoon in the entire army. Third Platoon growled “WETSU! WETSU!” Short for “We Eat This Shit Up.” Then silence.

  “Take seats !”

  A brief symphony of metal chair legs scraping floorboards as we sat was followed by more silence. Hands folded, we looked up. Not a few fingertips brushed the rifle in front of them.

  “Gentlemen,” Jacowicz began by addressing our cluster of teenage nose-pickers with that obvious he. “The war is going well.” Jacowicz’s tight lips said it was going poorly, indeed. Not that any of us had time or spirit to care. Life’s victories were squeezing out an extra sleep hour or a hot shower.

  Without personal communicators, not even TVs, we knew about the outside world only what the guys who got mail passed along. The word was the converted-shuttle Interceptors were flying and knocking aside Projectiles, but still imperfectly. Imperfectly meant people were dying by the millions. I wondered if Metzger was among the pilots. And if Projectiles shot back.

  Captain Jacowicz cleared his throat. We rarely saw him, except watching training from a distance, arms folded. He was hardly older than we were. A West Pointer, they said. His fatigues were even more razor-creased than Ord’s, if that was possible, his chin shaved even shinier. He wore no Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Even among the drills, only Ord had seen combat.

  He had spoken to us in this classroom once before, lecturing that the Geneva Convention banned mistreating prisoners. Considering any potential enemy prisoner was half a billion miles away, I slept through most of it.

  “Today your training enters a dangerous and challenging phase. This company has never experienced a range casualty. With care and attention, that is a record we will all preserve. Lights!” He stood aside as the lights dimmed and a flatscreen hushed down out of the ceiling. The title of today’s after-lunch epic faded in on-screen, “Introduction to Firearm Safety.”

  Nobody could train on six hours of sleep that were really four. So everybody napped every time the lights dropped for a holo or a video. The drills had to know it. And since the Russian coal had arrived, the classroom buildings were sweatboxes. Lunch stew rolled in my stomach like a bowling ball. My eyelids drooped.

  Our uniforms were so old-fashioned that they had pin-on collar brass. The stay-awake trick was as soon as you felt drowsy you undid the pin, reversed it, and held it under your chin with a thumb. When you drifted off, your head nodded and you got a wake-up call and lost only a little blood. It was a stupid ritual, but you had to do it because there was hell to pay if a drill caught you asleep.

  I was fumbling to get my collar pin pointed against my chin. I swear I was.

  Crash.

  My head rested on the jigsaw-puzzle rifle cloth in a drool puddle. My M-16 spun on the floor.

  “Soldier!” The lights flashed on, and the captain stood over me.

  I popped to attention. “Sir!”

  “Firearm safety bores you?”

  “Sir, no sir!”

  “You disrespect your weapon?”

  “Sir, no sir!”

  “Then pick it up!”

  I did. Godammit. Everybody slept during the flicks.

  “Sergeant Ord!” Jacowicz snapped.

  The Great One appeared alongside, a statue at attention.

  “Trainee,” the captain peered at my name patch, ”Wander is Third Platoon?“

  “Yes, sir.”

  I supposed there was nothing a drill sergeant liked better than having one of his own fuck up in front of the commanding officer.

  “See that Third Platoon learns to appreciate its weapons.” Captain Jacowicz spun an about-face that did West Point proud, remounted the stage, and the flick resumed. I stayed awake.

  That night after chow we broke down, cleaned, and reassembled our M-16s six times before we returned them to the company armorer. In addition to policing barracks, shining boots, and the usual bullshit. Drill Sergeant Ord left us four glorious sleep hours by generously extending lights until midnight.

  Lights went out, Ord closed his office door, and disappeared. My forty-nine roommates lay silent until somebody hissed, “Wander, you fuckhead! You should be shot!”

  I waited in vain for the expression of an opposing view.

  Four hours from now we would wake and march out to the range, where every one of these guys would be armed with an assault rifle loaded with live ammunition.

  Chapter Six

  The next day began ordinarily enough.

  “The girl I marry she must be…” Trainee Sparrow stood six-six and weighed 160 pounds without his pack. But Ord had designated him to count cadence because he sang like the black choirboy he had been.

  “Airborne, Ranger, Infantry!” Third Platoon sang
back as we marched rangeward, rifles slung, in the gray morning. In the name of equal misery, women had served in the combat branches—Infantry, Armor, Field Artillery—for decades, even though they trained separately. But still the lyric seemed mythic. Actually, women seemed mythic.

  I envisioned Metzger lounging poolside in trunks and a star pilot’s scarf while twin blondes—no, one blonde, one brunette—ministered to his blistered trigger finger, suffered while he zoomed through outer space, saving millions of lives weekly. Here at Indiantown Gap, my idea of living large was seconds on something the army called apple cobbler.

  It was what you’d call a nice day since the war started. The haze was almost bright, and it was a windless thirty degrees or so. Then something in the air went funny.

  Of course, it was overpressure. As everybody knows now, a Projectile is so big that it piles air in front of it when it plows into the atmosphere at thirty thousand miles per hour.

  Walter spun his head toward me, brow knit beneath his Kevlar pot. “Do you feel—”

  We saw it before we heard it. I never want to again.

  Sun-bright light boiled in a streak that seemed as wide as the sky and a hundred feet above us. It was actually twenty miles up. The noise and shock wave as it roared by knocked us all flat. Then the impact-flash bloom blinded me like an old film-camera flashbulb, even half a state away.

  The ground rolled underneath us, like a bedsheet snapped over a mattress, then we all tumbled and fell back onto the road. It knocked the wind out of me, and I saw stars.

  Somebody said, “Holy shit!”

  Then the blast wind swept across us, whipping house-tall, bare trees like goldenrod straw in a breeze.

  For too long nobody moved, just lay and breathed.

  Ord was first up. It was the first time I’d seen him even faintly impressed. His eyes seemed wide, and he stood close enough that I heard him whisper, “Holy Mother of God!”