What struck Jack in the first week following the invasion was the quiet. Not silence, but the serene quiet of wilderness in the absence of man. It was the quiet of civilization’s demise.
It took a little time to set in. At first, the sound of alien craft filled the air, while ground troops overran the ruins and rounded up the last survivors. Then, after less than a week, there was nothing and no one left. With their task complete, the bastards withdrew and left nothing behind but the piles of dead, the unsettling quiet and the furious howling of the dust filled wind.
As the second week began, the next thing that struck Jack was the smell. Although his gas mask kept the dust out of his lungs, it did little to obscure the stench of death. He would’ve done anything to get that smell out of his nose, but there was simply no escape. At least they were in sparsely populated rural areas; he didn’t dare imagine what the cities were like.
The invaders were still on Earth, though. That much was certain. The cycling sound of their cuttlefish craft occasionally sounded high overhead, but they never came down. They never bothered. They had better places to be than in that stinking wasteland. China was defeated, and held no more mystery for them. No more resistance.
The enemy had exclusively targeted humans, killing them and moving on, never staying longer than it took to perform the extermination. This turned out to be a boon to Jack and his makeshift team. While buildings of every kind had been laid to waste, vehicles, roads and bridges were left untouched. Food was easy enough to find and quite a few places still had water pressure. Fuel cells were scattered everywhere amongst the rubble, whole and functioing thanks to their crash-proof casings.
On the eighth day, while the team sat on the edge of yet another ruined village, Jack decided time had come to find transportation. “Anyone know how to hot-wire a car?”
He still didn’t know his new corpsmen from Adam. They were jumpsuits and gas-masks with nametags, and nothing more. That would’ve been unacceptable at any other point in his career, but no one was feeling particularly social.
One of the jumpsuits raised his hand. The tag on his chest said Chase. Jack was a little surprised there was only one, actually. The Corps attracted loads of people with troubled pasts.
“Good. Nicotine, you and Corpsman Chase head out and find us some wheels.”
“Roger. Whaddya have in mind? A flatbed?”
“Anything with some ground clearance and storage space. Windows intact if you can manage it. It’d be nice to get this mask off for a bit. I suppose a troop transport would be too much to ask.”
“Dream on.” Nikitin glanced over at Chase, and gave him a nod. “We’ll see what we can find. Meet you back here in an hour?”
“That’s fine. The rest of us are gonna round up supplies. We passed a promising looking market on the way in.”
“My Chinese isn’t too sharp,” Albright said, “but that looks like a pharmacy over there. I’d like to stock up on medical supplies if we’ve got the time.”
“Make it happen.” Jack looked at the other three corpsmen and picked one at random. “Take McGrath with you.”
“Roger.”
“Alright. That means Hartnell and Cozar, you’re with me. One hour. Get it done.”
With that, they broke. Jack waved his team on, and they headed back toward the eastern side of the village where he’d spotted the market.
He kept it well hidden, but he didn’t like the ghost towns. He had little problem in the countryside where quiet was to be expected, but walking down abandoned streets in the middle of the day was a whole different matter. A constant feeling of something missing haunted him, like he standing on a stage without actors. The feeling of emptiness was unbearable.
The market was a one-story that had partially collapsed. Several large woven baskets full of decaying fruits and vegetables sat out front, and as Jack approached the door, the smell of rotting sea food filled his mask. It was something of a welcome change.
The inside was dark and musty, and they brought out their flashlights. The pungent smell of mold joined the rotting fish. “Water first, then canned foods. Fruits, vegetables, meat. Dried goods are fine. Build a pile by the door, and we’ll load up when Nikitin and… Chase find a car.”
Something made a dull clank on the far side of the room. “Did you hear that?” one of them asked.
“Just some rubble falling,” the other answered.
Jack wasn’t so sure. He motioned to stop, then put his finger in front of his mask. Hartnell and Cozar took the hint and quieted down.
He pulled the flare gun from its makeshift holster and unlatched the safety. He wasn’t confident it would even sting one of the invaders, but it was better than nothing. He hoped it was better than nothing.
Another clank sounded, and some cans clattered to the floor. There was the sound of something scurrying. Voices?
Jack advanced along one wall and motioned for the others to take the opposite side. Their flashlights danced along shelves as they moved in on the source of the noise. Jack raised his own flashlight with the flare gun at its side and found… nothing.
He muttered, “What the hell’s going on here?”
The other two were standing opposite him now, shoulders shrugged and heads on a swivel. What was he missing?
There was another sound. Whispering? “Does anyone else hear that, or did I pick a bad time to start hallucinating?”
“I hear it,” Cozar said.
“Me too,” added Hartnell while she took a step forward. “Seems to be coming from the floor, chief. Hard to tell with this damned mask on, though.”
Jack took a good look at the floor. It was hard to make things out in the circle of his flashlight, so he started scanning around with it. There was a small carpet with a corner raised, and a circular patch of tiles suspiciously free of dust. “You may be on to something, Corpsman.”
He re-latched the gun’s safety and returned it to its holster, then lifted up the carpet. Beneath, he found a rectangular panel with a shiny metal handle.
“Trap door,” he said. “I think we have survivors.”
He didn’t want to say it for fear of getting his hopes up, but there it was. Survivors. He hadn’t seen anyone alive since the woman on the first day, and he didn’t want to think about that. Not ever again, if he could.
“Hold my flashlight,” he said as he shoved it into Cozar’s hand. Then he grabbed the handle and gave the door a good tug. It was heavier than he expected, but with a little effort, it opened and revealed a short wooden staircase leading into the darkness.
Something shifted in the shadows, and Jack heard breathing. He held out his hand and Cozar handed him the flashlight. For a second, he considered pulling the flare gun back out, but decided against it. If they were people, he didn’t want to panic them. Panicked people were unpredictable. On the other hand, if this was a trap, he was already screwed.
He took two tentative steps into the cellar, and ducked his head down to have a look around. His flashlight swept the small storage room, and what he saw made his breath catch in his throat. A family of six huddled in the cellar, dressed in torn and dirty clothes. They were looking at him with wide eyes like he was the reaper come to claim them. A mother and father, teenage daughter, two sons and an infant. The baby was coughing, and the mother rocked him, whispering something into his ear over and over again.
Jack didn’t know any Chinese beyond the names of entrées, and he even screwed those up half the time. Albright knew a little, but she was elsewhere.
“Hello?” he said.
No response.
He had another option. The Corps had developed a language so squads from different parts of the world could communicate on some basic level. It had a simple syntax and a small vocabulary, making it easy to learn, but severely limited. A corpsman could tell someone his job or where to go, but describing a movie plot would be next to impossible.
The Corps also made an effort to spread pamphlets around and offered free courses, with the goal of making it easier for corpsmen to communicate with refugees. ”-Please be calm-” Jack said. ”-I’m here to help-”
The children were sobbing, and their father tried to quiet them. No one reacted at all to what he said. Jack lifted his gas mask and tried again. ”-I’m here to help. Do you understand me?-”
Nothing. He wasn’t surprised. For all of the Corps’ efforts, he’d never met a single person outside of the Corps who understood it. He thought it was worth a try, though, and suspected the ERC administration felt more or less the same way.
“We’ve got live ones. Hartnell, gather some cloth and water so we can improvise masks. Sunglasses or goggles also if you can find them.”
It occurred to Jack that the poor folks couldn’t see anything but his flashlight. In their position, he’d be scared witless too. He slid the flashlight’s casing back and reconfigured it into a lantern, and the small supply room was filled with dim light. “I’m here to help,” he said in English, and motioned to the ERC patch on his shoulder.
Everyone around the world knew the symbol, two hands in a diamond, gripping each other at an angle as if one was helping the other up. The family recognized it, and this time, their reaction was instantaneous. Jack suddenly had two small boys hugging his legs, while the parents began to spew incomprehensible babble at him. The father was motioned to the mother, who in turn was propping up her still coughing infant. Jack didn’t understand the words, but the message came through clearly.
He removed his work glove and motioned towards the child. The mother nodded, and he reached out and felt its head. He wasn’t being particularly scientific, but the baby felt warm to the touch, and its eyes were red. That was enough to tell Jack he was out of his league.
“Cozar, get Albright and bring her back. Tell her we’ve got an infant with a fever and a cough.”
“Roger,” Cozar said, and he took off running. That was the right reaction. Jack was always glad to see a corpsman pound dirt when given a task.
The parents were still heatedly telling him something, and the father was making all kinds of motions with his hands, but the gestures didn’t help at all. He hoped whatever they were trying to tell him wasn’t too important.
He put his hand on the father’s shoulder and said, “It’s going to be okay,” in a reassuring voice. “There’s a doctor on the way, and we’re going to get you out of here.” The father didn’t understand a word of it, but saying it made Jack feel better.
He peeled the small boys from his legs, then crouched down and took a good look at each. Their faces were dirty and they were frightened, but they looked healthy. The younger of the two had a quivering lip, and his eyes were wet with tears. He had to be six or seven years old, and he was trying as hard as he could not to cry.
“Don’t sweat it, buddy,” Jack said. “You’re both very brave little kids. After what you’ve been through, you’re allowed to cry, okay.” It didn’t matter that they couldn’t understand him. He tousled the boy’s hair and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
The girl was standing in the far corner, shivering and focused on her feet. Jack had done enough rescues to know that was normal, and he also knew better than to bother her. Teenage girls tended to react better to women after trauma, and he decided to leave her be.
A minute later, Albright came down the stairs at full sprint with her medkit in hand. She said something in Chinese and went directly to examining the infant. She raised her mask to get a better look, and Jack could see sheer amazement all over her face. It was the face of a lottery winner. Albright always had a special affinity for children, and this put her on top of the world.
She learned what she needed quickly then took a look at the other children. “Nothing too serious,” she said as she worked, “The little guy’s just having a bad reaction to the mold and dust. Should be fine once we get him out of here.”
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. That was exactly what he needed to hear. He was desperate for a win, and he got one. “Can you tell ‘em we’re bringing a car?”
“Dream on,” she said. “I know how to say I’m a doctor, order the general’s chicken, and ask for the toilet, but that’s the full extent of my Chinese.”
“That’s okay. We’ll figure something out,” he said. “We always do.”
Hartnell stopped at the top of the steps with her arms full of cloth, water and cheap sunglasses. “I got what you asked for, chief.”
That’s when it happened; Jack was filled with a feeling he hadn’t had in more than a week. If these people had survived, then so had others. Possibly many others. He had a reason to be there in that wasteland, and more importantly, he had something to look forward to besides another heap of corpses.
He had hope, and it was the single most precious thing in the world.