compound’s stockpiles could put any survivalist—or town full of survivalist preppers—to shame. The compound’s refugee population needed a forty-foot shipping container brought in every day for bottled water alone, let alone food. Keeping them fed was a labour of Hercules. Providing aid to the remaining population of New York? Impossible.
“Tell Holly to find someone to take the furnishings away. Hell, give these people the trucks if possible—I don’t want anything left for Stockman’s goons.”
“I’ll tell her. Now can we please get your PR campaign moving again before Stockman arrives and takes you into custody?”
It took Gray two takes to make his grim pronouncement on the state of the world. His acid suggestion that Stockman’s forces would do more good by assisting in reclaiming parkland for World-War-II-style victory gardens turned into a perfect soundbite. Once upon a time, a PR coup like that would have mattered. But the public was too busy surviving to listen, these days.
Thankfully, PR wasn’t the only way Gray was fighting Stockman’s 11th Infantry Division. “We need to slow that division down,” Gray said afterwards, leaning in against the window while the helicopter whisked him away from the mucky reality of the world. “Literally slow them down, catch their feet in molasses.”
Miller, back in his combat gear, M27 across his knees, the touch of cologne he’d applied under his jaw little more than a fond memory. “We can do that,” he said. “Not with molasses, but we can do that.”
“Good. I’ll tell Harris to make it happen.”
2
“ W E LOST ANOTHER drone. Re-pathing what’s left to provide coverage... ”
“Third one in an hour. The 11th finally attacking, Northwind?”
“ Negative, Cobalt-2. Engine failure. ”
Miller edged in closer to the window of the building, squinting up at the sky to search for the failed drone.
There was a yellowish tinge to the light—maybe the after-effects of the dust storm—but no sign of any drones plummeting down from the heavens. They’d lost one to bird-strike earlier, or titan-bird strike, but the drones typically flew too high to be seen, let alone be interfered with by the new wildlife. It had to be those fungal particles that the storm had kicked up. Helicopter pilots were spending more time picking strands of pinkish-red gunk out of their air intakes than flying.
Well, in the event that Cyclops-Northwind lost all their drones, Miller and his team had a decent overwatch position. They were two-thirds of the way up a mostly abandoned apartment block. Fungal masses in the basement necessitated the use of gas masks while they’d been securing the building.
The local residents, thin and emaciated, ran for it the second they’d seen the well-armed Cobalt-2 team in the hallways. Miller had yelled that they were there to help, but the fearful survivors hadn’t believed him.
He didn’t blame them, not with the city’s only remaining television channels broadcasting Swift’s ranting tirades and carefully cut footage of corporate atrocities. There simply wasn’t enough functioning bandwidth in the city to spread the now official story—that while the government strongly condemned the actions of a few out-of-control subcontractors, it supported Schaeffer-Yeager’s larger humanitarian mission. And that the attempt to take control of the city under martial law by Major General Stockman were the actions of a mutineer.
Stockman’s mutineers, advancing up the avenue towards Biogen’s Upper West Side Laboratory, weren’t wearing eye-patches and hobbling around on peg-legs, the mental image of a mutineer in Miller’s addled-by-Hollywood imagination. They were rolling in sand-coloured Bravo convoys and wearing forest-green camos—using vehicles built for Middle-Eastern wars but never deployed, and wearing uniforms only ever intended for peacetime.
When was the last time America sent her troops anywhere that
“Tell Holly to find someone to take the furnishings away. Hell, give these people the trucks if possible—I don’t want anything left for Stockman’s goons.”
“I’ll tell her. Now can we please get your PR campaign moving again before Stockman arrives and takes you into custody?”
It took Gray two takes to make his grim pronouncement on the state of the world. His acid suggestion that Stockman’s forces would do more good by assisting in reclaiming parkland for World-War-II-style victory gardens turned into a perfect soundbite. Once upon a time, a PR coup like that would have mattered. But the public was too busy surviving to listen, these days.
Thankfully, PR wasn’t the only way Gray was fighting Stockman’s 11th Infantry Division. “We need to slow that division down,” Gray said afterwards, leaning in against the window while the helicopter whisked him away from the mucky reality of the world. “Literally slow them down, catch their feet in molasses.”
Miller, back in his combat gear, M27 across his knees, the touch of cologne he’d applied under his jaw little more than a fond memory. “We can do that,” he said. “Not with molasses, but we can do that.”
“Good. I’ll tell Harris to make it happen.”
2
“ W E LOST ANOTHER drone. Re-pathing what’s left to provide coverage... ”
“Third one in an hour. The 11th finally attacking, Northwind?”
“ Negative, Cobalt-2. Engine failure. ”
Miller edged in closer to the window of the building, squinting up at the sky to search for the failed drone.
There was a yellowish tinge to the light—maybe the after-effects of the dust storm—but no sign of any drones plummeting down from the heavens. They’d lost one to bird-strike earlier, or titan-bird strike, but the drones typically flew too high to be seen, let alone be interfered with by the new wildlife. It had to be those fungal particles that the storm had kicked up. Helicopter pilots were spending more time picking strands of pinkish-red gunk out of their air intakes than flying.
Well, in the event that Cyclops-Northwind lost all their drones, Miller and his team had a decent overwatch position. They were two-thirds of the way up a mostly abandoned apartment block. Fungal masses in the basement necessitated the use of gas masks while they’d been securing the building.
The local residents, thin and emaciated, ran for it the second they’d seen the well-armed Cobalt-2 team in the hallways. Miller had yelled that they were there to help, but the fearful survivors hadn’t believed him.
He didn’t blame them, not with the city’s only remaining television channels broadcasting Swift’s ranting tirades and carefully cut footage of corporate atrocities. There simply wasn’t enough functioning bandwidth in the city to spread the now official story—that while the government strongly condemned the actions of a few out-of-control subcontractors, it supported Schaeffer-Yeager’s larger humanitarian mission. And that the attempt to take control of the city under martial law by Major General Stockman were the actions of a mutineer.
Stockman’s mutineers, advancing up the avenue towards Biogen’s Upper West Side Laboratory, weren’t wearing eye-patches and hobbling around on peg-legs, the mental image of a mutineer in Miller’s addled-by-Hollywood imagination. They were rolling in sand-coloured Bravo convoys and wearing forest-green camos—using vehicles built for Middle-Eastern wars but never deployed, and wearing uniforms only ever intended for peacetime.
When was the last time America sent her troops anywhere that
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