“Welcome to Cube Eighteen One,” she said with a smile.

  Caleb joined her in the apartment, his eyes quickly scanning the layout. The space wasn’t large, but even his brief glimpse of Habib’s cube told him it was almost twice the size of that one. Everything was painted a flat white, and there was little decoration. A small kitchen sat in the back of the room with a window above the counter offering a view of the next cube over. There was a tiny eating area ahead of it, and a small sofa, table, and terminal in front of that, arranged more like an office than an entertainment area. There was a single door on the right side, and two doors on the left.

  “This has to be better than a barracks rack, doesn’t it?” Lily asked.

  “What kind of cooking are the people of Metro going to be doing?” Caleb asked.

  “Admittedly, the food supply is all prepackaged and recyclable. But there are flavorings added to it to offer some variety. It’ll all get cooked in the microwave, so no stove or anything, but there will be dishes to clean.”

  “Recyclable?”

  “Two hundred years is a long time,” Lily said. “All of the waste will be filtered, the nutrients captured and reconstituted.”

  “You’re talking about piss and shit?”

  “How very delicate you are. Yes. Have you read the protocols?”

  “For the city? No. They didn’t apply to me.”

  “Didn’t?”

  “I may be having second thoughts.”

  “Good. Am I responsible for that?”

  “Maybe.”

  She laughed. “Good. Not only piss and shit,” she said, lowering her voice to mimic him when she referenced the waste. “When a resident reaches a certain age, they’ll be cut off from medical care. It’s highly recommended they turn themselves in for end-of-life care, at which point they’ll be painlessly put to rest. Their body will be processed similarly to the waste.”

  Caleb suddenly felt nauseous. “You’re going to be eating the dead?”

  “Technically, we’re always eating the dead. Fertilizer goes into the ground providing nutrients to plants, which we either ingest directly or feed to animals to slaughter them and ingest. It’s the natural cycle of life, with a technological twist to speed up the process.”

  “I never thought about it like that.”

  “Neither did I. Doctor Rathbone explained it to me the same way I just explained it to you.”

  “Doctor Rathbone?”

  “She’s the head of the hospital.”

  Lily walked to the kitchen and opened a cupboard, lifting out a square package the size of her fist. It was wrapped in foil and had a sticker on it. “Salmon with fettuccine,” she said, holding it up. “I’ve tried it. It doesn’t taste anything like what it says it is, but it isn’t too bad.”

  She put it back and then opened the single door on the right. “Second bedroom, intended for any children I might have.”

  Caleb glanced into the room. It was small and empty and didn’t have any windows. “How many kids can a family stuff in here?”

  “Two bunk beds,” she replied. “Up to four. That’s the max family size they’re allowing.”

  “In here?”

  “So they say.”

  She closed the door and took him to the other side, opening the first one. “Standard head.”

  He glanced inside. It was a simple bathroom. He pointed to the last door. “Let me guess. Master bedroom?”

  “You are sharp, aren’t you Sergeant?”

  “As a baseball. I miss baseball.”

  “What team?”

  “Yankees.”

  “Ugh. And here I thought we were getting along.”

  “I grew up in Connecticut.”

  “So you should be a Red Sox fan.”

  “No.”

  They laughed for a few seconds.

  “Is there a reason you’re showing me the master bedroom last, Sheriff Aveline?” Caleb asked.

  “Is there a reason you’re asking me that question in that tone of voice?” she replied.

  “What was it you said to me again?” Caleb said. “About the old world being dead and new ways of thinking?”

  She smiled. “Using my words against me?”

  A loud tone sounded from the terminal at the front of the room. Both of their heads snapped to face it, reacting to the sudden noise.

  “What is that?” Caleb asked. He could hear a similar noise from the apartment adjacent to hers.

  “Emergency alert,” she said. She was wearing a communicator badge on her shirt, and she tapped it. “This is Aveline, what’s going on?”

  “Sheriff, we’ve got orders from Space Force Command to help get the residents inside and locked down in preparation for launch.”

  “What?” Caleb said. They were still sixteen hours from launch.

  Aveline looked at him, her face hardening, her expression deadly serious. A moment later, Lieutenant Jones’ voice crackled through his comm.

  “Sergeant Card,” he said. “Sorry to do this, but your leave is over. Head to the ship’s armory and gear up.”

  “What’s happening, Lieutenant?” Caleb asked.

  “The installation is under attack. A group of scavengers led a massive slick of trife to the base, and they’re breaking through our defenses. We need to hold them at the hangar and keep them from getting on the ship. We’re preparing for an emergency launch.”

  “Shit,” Caleb said, forgetting himself.

  “Shit is right, Cal. Get moving.”

  “Yes, sir. On my way.”

  Caleb looked at Lily. They both had a job to do. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Sheriff.”

  “You too, Sergeant,” she replied.

  “Maybe we can get together again once things are settled? We can share a salmon and fettuccine.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He nodded and rushed out the door, running down the hallway to the lift.

  The fleeting hope of laughter and happiness quickly faded away.

  Chapter 18

  The realization that Espinoza had brought the trife to the military made David sick to his stomach. He lowered his head to the ground, looking up at the sky. There were still trife moving past him, and he watched the swing of their arms, the flex of the muscles in their legs, the pulsing veins in their necks and the saliva dripping from their teeth. He went into some kind of shock, prone and static beneath the dead demon, his mind pushing out the sounds around him so that all he heard was the thumping of his heart and all he felt was the struggle in his lungs to keep breathing.

  He had always been too frail to survive in this world. He had been smart and lucky, but apparently that luck had run out. He should never have joined up with Espinoza. He should have realized how this was going to end. They had delivered the trife to the base like leading a starving man to a feast. How could they have been so dumb?

  He sat there for what seemed like an eternity but it was really only a handful of seconds. The trife were swarming, but this was still a military base. It was still an underground facility. Would they really have designed it to be so easily overwhelmed by the trife?

  David looked around again. The bulk of the horde was almost past, the stragglers the only ones still nearby. He shifted slowly beneath the dead creature, moving it off him. He carefully rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his knees, listening for the hisses of the demons to measure whether they saw him or not. He gripped his revolver in his left hand and took a few deep breaths, trying to draw in as much air as he could. This was going to burn his lungs as bad as anything, but it was his only chance to live.

  He had to get into the base before they sealed it closed. Either he was going to make it, or he was going to die trying.

  He glanced around one more time. There were two trife near him, and the rest were ahead. He could see them near the front of the building, nearly stopped in their tracks as they tried to all push in at once. There had to be thousands inside already, pouring down every corridor in search of people to kill. There was no way Espinoza was still alive. There was no way any of the scavengers were still alive.

  He planted his foot and pushed off, rising in a dash, cutting to the right of the building. The Marines had come from somewhere. A hidden entrance the trife didn’t know about. If he could find it, if he could make it there, he might be able to get inside.

  The trife noticed him almost immediately, turning around and hissing. He aimed his gun and fired, one bullet for each of them – too close to miss. They fell in front of him and he ran past their dead bodies, sprinting as hard as he could.

  The demons at the building saw him but ignored him, maybe sensing better hunting inside. He found the Marines, their bodies prone near the top of the hill, bloody and shredded between the armored plates. One of them was holding a discarded rifle near his chest, and David decided he was going to take it.

  Something caught his leg and he tripped, falling forward. He looked back and saw a trife had grabbed his ankle and was pulling itself up toward his face. He brought the revolver around and fired, just before the demon’s teeth reached down to his neck. It collapsed on him, and he wiggled out, jumping back up and taking off again.

  He made it to the Marine, grabbing the gun from his dead hand. He heard more trife coming and he turned and fell, squeezing the trigger on the weapon and watching as a dozen rounds tore through a pair of trife.

  He gulped in air, trying to feed his starving lungs, jumping back up.

  “Hey. Kid.”

  He was shocked by the voice, and he shook with fear, spinning around and aiming the rifle at the source.

  One of the Marines was still alive, his helmet on the ground next to his head, his arm severed at the shoulder. He had put something on it to stop the bleeding, and he was lying still on the dirt, playing dead the way David had.

  “Don’t move,” David said, feeling stupid right after he said it.

  “Who are you?” the Marine asked.

  “David. Who are you?”

  “Corporal Carlyle, United States Space Force. What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Trying to escape the trife.”

  “Us too. Behind you.”

  David spun, firing the rifle as he did. His rounds cut an incoming trife in half.

  “The warehouse is overrun,” Carlyle said. “Look, I don’t want to die out here. We’re so close to escaping this bullshit. There’s a bolt hole on the other side of the hill, that’s where my squad came up.”

  “I thought there would be,” David said. “You don’t have many Marines in there, do you? Only one squad came out?”

  Carlyle laughed. “We have plenty of Marines and plenty of gear, but we aren’t going to waste it here. We’re leaving.”

  “What do you mean you’re leaving? How can you leave? Where are you going?”

  “You’ll see, kid. Sarge volunteered us to die out here to slow them down, and they did. I guess I’m the lucky one?” He lifted his remaining hand. “Help me up.”

  David took it and pulled Carlyle up. Then the Marine picked up his rifle and glanced at a small display on the side, tapping it. “Rounds remaining. How’s yours?”

  David turned the weapon. “Fifty-seven.”

  “Not bad. Take point, stay close. You see that rock down there?”

  David found a large stone about two hundred meters down the slope. “Yeah.”

  “That’s the bolt hole. We make it there; we get inside.”

  “And then what?”

  “Hope we aren’t too late.”

  David almost asked him what they would be too late for, but he decided to focus on making it to the hole alive instead. He started forward, running down the slope, slipping on some rocks and sliding. Carlyle started shooting behind him, and he heard the screams of dying trife.

  “They spotted us,” Carlyle said, navigating the rocky slope like he had done it a thousand times. The Marine started shooting again, killing more trife.

  David looked over his shoulder. At least fifty of the demons were coming over the hill with renewed fervor, as though they understood the armored Marines were the real threat and were eager to take this one out.

  “Help me thin them out,” Carlyle said, his rifle going empty. David slid to a stop and turned around. The Marine had to swap magazines with one hand, and while he had gotten the empty one out, he had to cradle the rifle between his legs to put the fresh one in, slowing him immensely.

  The trife were bearing down on him, and David brought his rifle up to shoot. He clenched his jaw, and then turned and started running again.

  “Kid!” Carlyle shouted. “Kid! Wait!”

  David was almost at the boulder when he heard the gunfire behind him. It only lasted for a second, and then Carlyle started screaming again.

  David didn’t look back. He raced to the stone, his lungs on fire, struggling to breathe. He was almost there, and Corporal Carlyle had said they were going to escape.

  Not without him.

  He reached the boulder, almost overshooting it as he fell onto his back to slide to a stop near it. He rolled over, looking back up the hill. The trife had finished with Carlyle, but they hadn’t continued after him. They were headed back up the slope to the building. He was grateful for it, but he didn’t understand why.

  It didn’t matter. He stood and moved behind the stone. A small plate was visible beneath a thin layer of dirt. David wiped the dust away, revealing a control panel. He tapped on it, sliding a bar from closed to open.

  The boulder rotated away, revealing a long, narrow tube and a ladder that plunged down the hole into the darkness.

  He tried to figure out how to carry the rifle in with him. He knew it attached to the Marine’s body armor magnetically or something, so it didn’t have a strap. He decided he couldn’t take it, tossing it aside and quickly reloading his revolver before shoving it between the waist of his jeans at the small of his back. Then he threw his feet over the side, finding the rungs of the ladder. He climbed down a few steps, pausing at the control panel to close the hatch. Once it was sealed, a string of dim lights came on, lighting up the entirety of the shaft. David looked down, suddenly nauseated by the height. He couldn’t believe how deep the cavern went.

  He started to descend.

  Chapter 19

  The armory was above the hangar on Deck Twenty-nine of the Deliverance. It was part of the Marine Corps module that had been installed in the ship for use by the Guardians. Caleb made it there within seven minutes of Lieutenant Jones’ call, having sprinted the entire way from Sheriff Aveline’s apartment.

  The space was almost empty when he arrived, save for the Master Sergeant who was in charge of the weapons and armor stored in the armory. With so much time before launch, most of the Marines were still in the external barracks rather than in here.

  “Sergeant Caleb Card,” Caleb said to the man, who was standing behind a desk. “I have orders from Lieutenant Jones to gear up and get into the fight.”

  “Confirmed,” the Master Sergeant said, checking his tablet. “Hurry, Sergeant.”

  The hatch to the right of the desk slid open, and Caleb ran into the room. It was a standard armory, with multiple shelves of various weapons and racks of body armor in the back. He went straight to the armor, flipping through it to find something close to his size and then hastily stripping off his utilities to put it on. He grabbed a helmet from a shelf above the rack and pulled it over his head, expertly completing the ATCS connection between the two pieces of the SOS. Then he moved to the guns, grabbing a search and rescue standard carbine and sidearm and snapping them both to the armor, along with extra magazines for both. He connected the carbine to the ATCS as he ran out the door and past the Master Sergeant.

  “Good hunting, Sergeant,” the MS called out behind him.

  With the ATCS online, Caleb was able to check the tactical, getting an overlay of a three-dimensional view of the hangar pieced together from the feeds of the Marines already participating in the fight. He was dismayed to see how much red was spread around the isometric view, with hundreds of the demons already finding their way to the bottom of the lift shafts and getting into the base.

  “Display Washington,” he said, asking the system to search for the big mute. “Display Sho. Display Rodriguez.”

  The ATCS pulled up the three Marines, putting their name and vitals across the top of his HUD. All three were online and in the fight.

  “Link displayed,” he said.

  A line connected the three Marines, putting them in a subnetwork with him.

  “Vultures, this is Sergeant Card,” he said.

  “Sarge!” Rodriguez cried out. “It’s about time. We’re in deep shit here.”

  “Mark displayed,” Caleb said. The view of the battle adjusted, the green spots of the friendlies mingling with three yellow markers grouped near the industrial lift. “Sho, sitrep.”

  “Not good, Sergeant,” Sho replied. “We’re losing Marines faster than we’re killing demons.”

  “Roger. I’m on my way to you.”

  “I hope you’re bringing the cavalry, Sarge.”

  “Sorry, Vultures. It’s just me.”

  “Sergeant Card,” Lieutenant Jones said. “I’ve got you active on the grid.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re packing in and prepping for launch. The hangar is lost. We’re about to order a full retreat to the Deliverance. You’re being moved to Eighth Company, Captain Lyle’s command. He’s running the ship defense.”

  “Roger, sir. What about the Vultures?”

  “Sergeant Trask is picking them up. They’ll be part of the retreat with everyone else.”

  “Roger. How the hell did this happen, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Bad luck? Jones out.” The comm fell silent, but only for a moment.

  “Sergeant Card, this is Captain Lyle. I’ve got you on my grid. Reverse course and head back to the lower hangar entrance. We got caught with our pants down, and the hangar blast doors are malfunctioning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caleb replied, pulling up and turning around. He was worried about his squad. His Vultures. There was nothing he could do. He had his orders, and he trusted the officers watching the battle unfold.