The War in 2020

huddled by a fender, breathing like an excited animal.

The huge, unmistakable sound of helicopters swelled over the broken city. The closer sound of his men working their way forward, seizing control of the street, began to dominate the scene. He could even hear them shouting now, calling out orders, employing the urban combat drills whose repetitive practice they so hated.

The firing and hubbub of voices from the front of the column dropped off distinctly. The gang members were going to ground.

Pistol extended before him, Meredith began to step toward the twisted, restless figure of the boy he had just shot. His opponent's automatic weapon lay safely out of reach now, but Meredith's trigger finger had molded to his pistol. He could not seem to get enough breath, and he felt his nostrils flaring.

He guessed the boy's age at somewhere between fifteen and eighteen. It was hard to tell through the grimacing that twisted the boy's features.

As Meredith approached, his opponent seemed to calm. The skin around his eyes relaxed slightly, and he stared up at the tall man in uniform who had just shattered the order of his body. At first Meredith did not think that the eyes were fully sentient. But they slowly focused. On the winner in the two-man contest.

The boy glared up into Meredith's face, breathing pink spittle. Then he narrowed his focus, locking his eyes on Meredith's own, holding them prisoner even as his chest heaved and his limbs seized up, then failed.

'Tool,' he said to Meredith, in a voice of undamaged clarity. 'You… think you're a big man…' His lips curled in disgust. 'You're… nothing but a fucking tool.'

Meredith lowered his pistol, ashamed of his fear, watching as the boy's chain-covered chest dueled with gravity. There were no words. Only the hard physical reality of asphalt, concrete, steel, broken glass.

Flesh and blood.

The boy's chest filled massively, as though he were readying himself to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Then the air escaped, accompanied by a sound more animal than human. The lungs did not fill up again.

'Medic,' Meredith screamed. 'Medic.'

The final tally was six soldiers dead and three wounded, five civilians dead and a dozen wounded, and four identifiable gang members killed in the firefight. The Army cordon-and-sweep operation rounded up another fourteen suspected gang members in building-to-building searches — a task the soldiers hated not only because of the danger of an ambush but also because they were as likely to discover rotting corpses as fugitives from the law. Few of the supposed gang members would survive. They would all go to the internment camp at Fort Irwin, to await a hearing. But the judicial calendar was hopelessly backlogged, and waves of disease broke over the crowded camp, preempting the rule of law.

That night Meredith went to see Major Taylor. The acting commander was never very hard to find. When he was not out on a mission, he literally lived in his office. Behind the desk, beside the national and unit flags, stood an old Army cot, with a sleeping bag rolled up tightly at one end. The closest the room came to disorder was the ever-present stack of books on the floor beside the cot. Whenever he had to see the commander, Meredith's eyes habitually went to the litter of books, curious as to what this hard, unusual man might read.

Meredith knocked on the door more briskly than usual, and at the command to enter, he marched firmly forward, relishing the ache in his banged-up knee, and stopped three paces in front of Taylor's desk. He came to attention, saluted, and said:

'Sir, First Lieutenant Meredith requests permission to speak with the squadron commander.'

Taylor looked up from the computer over which he had been laboring, surprised at the formality of tone. For a few seconds, his eyes considered the artificially erect young man in front of his desk. Then he spoke, in a disappointingly casual tone:

'Relax for a minute, Merry. Let me work my way out of this program.'

With no further acknowledgment of Meredith's presence, of the lieutenant's swollen intensity, Taylor turned back to his screen and keyboard.

Meredith moved to a solemn parade-rest position. But the stiffness of it only made him feel absurd now. He soon softened into a routine at-ease posture, eyes wandering.

He felt angry that Taylor had not automatically intuited the seriousness of his intent, that the commander had not paid him the proper attention.

Taylor's desk was unusually cluttered today. Meredith noticed that a stack of mail remained to be opened. The squadron S-3 had been evacuated, sick with RD, and the executive officer's position had gone unfilled for months. Meredith felt, in passing, that he might not have a right to take up any more of Taylor's time. As it was, the man slept little, and even the scars on his face could not hide the chronic black circles the major wore.

But the lieutenant was determined to have his moment. He had launched himself from hours of meditation, finally decisive. And he intended to stick to his decision.

Taylor fiddled with the computer for an unbearably long time. Meredith felt his shoulders decline as his posture deteriorated even further. He realized that he was very, very tired.

His eyes roamed, settling on the stack of books Taylor had gathered by his cot. Meredith was eternally amused by the changing titles. The only constants were the Spanish grammars and dictionaries. Tonight, Meredith could make out the titles of a work on urban planning, a text on the Black Death in Europe, Huckleberry Finn, the short novels of Joseph Conrad, and the latest copy of Military Review. Meredith was just trying to make out the title of a halfhidden book, when Taylor startled him.

'All right, Merry, what's up?' Taylor glanced back toward the computer. 'You know, it must have all been a lot easier back in the old Army when all they had were typewriters. Then there was physical limit on how much nonsense the system could expect out of you.'

Meredith stood before the man who seemed so much older than the few years separating them. And he found it very difficult to bring himself to speech, to articulate the decisive words he had so carefully prepared.

'This looks serious,' Taylor said, and the lieutenant could not be sure whether or not there was a flavor of mockery in the voice.

'Sir, I request to be relieved and reassigned to conventional duties.'

Taylor looked up at the younger man, eyes hunting over his face. It was always difficult for Meredith to read Taylor's expression under that badly mottled skin. He felt perspiration breaking out on his forehead and in the small of his back. The major was taking an unreasonably, an unconscionably long time in responding. Meredith had expected shock… perhaps anger, perhaps disappointment. But this silent consideration was as unexpected as it was intolerable.

When Taylor finally responded, he offered Meredith only a single word:

'Why?'

Meredith reached for the appropriate response. 'Sir… I do not believe… that I'm suited for this job.'

Taylor nodded slightly, but it was symbolic of thought, not agreement. Then he tensed and leaned forward slightly, like a big cat who had spotted something that just might be of interest.

'Don't beat around the bush. Merry. What you mean… is that you think you fucked up. And you're feeling sorry for yourself.' He brought the tips of his fingers together. 'All right then. Tell me what you think you should have done differently today.'

Meredith had no ready answer for the question. Instead, he felt himself seethe, defiantly childish in his incapability. Was Taylor trying to humiliate him? He searched for a sharp, tough answer that would set this acting commander straight.

But it was hard. He had done everything by the drill. He had taken the actions prescribed for such circumstances. There had been no warning, no intelligence that so big an affair was in the wind. Try as he might, he could think of no practical way in which he might have changed the day's events. It would have required a quality of foresight no man could claim. He had done his best, playing his assigned role. The only other thing he might have done would have been to die with Rosario and the others, and, even in his fury, he recognized the senselessness of that.

And the boy dying in the street? His eyes, his words? What was this all about, anyway? Had his parents been right? Was he just an oversize boy playing a very dangerous game with living toy soldiers? He was too emotionally excited to answer himself rationally. He wanted to feel guilty. But he could not help detecting a tone of falsity in these attacks on his long-held convictions.

'Sir, I don't know. But I know I failed.'