“I’ll come back, Mav.”
“Promise.” Maverick’s demand was simple, but Sawyer’s voice refused to offer the words.
Carl pulled Maverick away, replacing Sawyer’s hands on the boy’s shoulders with his own. “With passion, there is purpose; with purpose, there is progress; with progress, there is promise. They will return.”
Sawyer held those words to him as he knew Maverick did; as the promise he couldn’t offer.
Chapter 4. progress
The pungent tang of smoke lay heavy in the air, making every breath one of inhaled, rancid water rather than oxygen. Wil’s heaving at his side told Sawyer he was not alone in his struggle to maintain speed through the marsh. Their movements slowed in tandem as they reached the threshold of dark and light. Moving with a hushed, hurried harmony, their footsteps mixed with the pat and hiss of the rain as it cooled the burning buildings ahead of them. Each step irrigated the seed of trepidation in Sawyer’s gut, twisting vines of unease around his extremities and drawing him to an eventual halt behind the last row of dwellings. Sawyer hesitated to step into the exposed courtyard beyond; “Something’s wrong.”
“What? Did you see something?” Sawyer raised a hand to silence him.
It was not the sights – the fading flames, plumes of black smoke forming overhead, and flickering lights – nor the unpleasant mingling of acrid smoke with the standard night aromas of oxidation and decay which disturbed him. It was the sounds – or lack thereof – which drew his concern. Silent, still, standing in the rain, Sawyer wondered: “Where is everyone?”
“What do you mean?”
Beneath the crackling and popping of failing embers, the grounds were quiet and still. No sirens of warning; no shuttles spooled to carry innocents to safety; no rush of people to offer aid to the wounded – no wounded. The hum and pop of the generators in the electrical shed seemed jagged in the night; the lights set around the main buildings flared and dimmed. There were no footprints in the mud mounded between puddles, nor were there any sounds of human habitation drifting on the breeze. Sawyer wondered how such an attack could go without reaction. There should be terrified colonists seeking aid or shelter from the attack, other squads geared up and ready to fight back, or at least a random Admin barking orders into a communication device; there was only silence.
“There should be sirens, squads entering formation, people running around,” Sawyer looked around them. “They couldn’t have evacuated everyone this fast. Where is everyone?”
“Let’s keep moving.” Wil’s whisper seemed abnormally loud.
They stepped around the final row of dwellings, their feet sinking into the soft dirt of the courtyard as they both stuttered at the sight before them. The ground was littered with cold, still bodies: men, women, children, elderly and young, dressed in night clothes, day clothes, and the uniforms of service. There were no bullet holes, no blood; no smell of copper or decaying flesh. Sawyer recognized the faces of those he spoke to regularly: the elderly couple from the dwelling three down from his lay face down in the dirt, their hands clasped still as they’d aided each other to escape; the young parents with the one-year-old baby girl – Celina – were laying in each other’s arms with their daughter on her mother’s chest as if they’d just laid down and went to sleep in the mud; a member of his squad always late for rotation, his uniform in a state of disarray as he’d clearly thrown it on without taking care to fix it, lay with his eyes still opened to the sky above them.
“Sawyer, there’s no blood; no bullets,” Wil’s whisper shook. Sawyer was about to say he didn’t know what was happening either, but couldn’t find his voice. “Hellfire, it’s something in the air.”
“No, if it was we’d be dead too.” Sawyer heard his own voice at a distance; the logic of his thoughts separated from the shock of what lay before him. “We still have to find Lieutenant Pierce and get the supplies. There’s nothing we can do for these people now; we have to focus on those we can save.” Sawyer turned away from the horror, giving it a wide berth as he led their crossing of the courtyard.
Crossing the higher grounds of the settlement wasn’t physically strenuous, but Sawyer’s feet slipped on patches of liquified dirt, his mind heavy with images from what lay behind them. An odd euphoria filled Sawyer’s chest as the outline of the training facility glimmered in the silver light of moons. Sawyer heard a loud pop seconds before he was thrust forward into the mud. Dirt filled his nostrils and mouth, scraping his chin and chest where they slid across the ground. A disorienting scream pierced his eardrums, keeping him prone on the ground as pressure built over his body.
“Stay down!” Wil’s shout was distant despite his proximity.
An ache settled in the back of his skull; the intensifying pressure – as if a shuttle was crushing him with its weight – testing the limits of his consciousness. Sawyer cried out as the wave ebbed, drawing in deep gulps of smoky air as he struggled to sit upright. Dizziness nearly overwhelmed him as he turned his head. A gaping, smoldering hole pierced the middle of the command building, splitting the three-story structure in half. The heat of the internal inferno blew out the windows, glass mixing with raindrops in glistening slivers of reflected flames. Sawyer struggled to orient himself as if waking from a deep sleep, watching Wil’s lips move but unable to make out the words he spoke. Wil’s movements seemed unusually slow as he stood and gripped Sawyer’s arm, pulling him to stand beside him.
The remaining distance to the training facility seemed endless, the vision of it never
