The War After Armageddon

Harris scraped out the last lumps and smears of chicken a la king, streaking white grease across his knuckles. Then he stood up, defying his joints again. He dropped the foil envelope into the burn bag meant for all his trash, classified and unclassified, and, a bit cranky, turned toward the door to look for his aide.

Just then, Major Willing knocked at last and came into the room.

“Sorry, sir. I dozed off.”

“What have you got for me, John?”

“I pared it down, sir. But these can’t wait.”

Harris held out his hand for the papers. “Get some sleep. Tell the adjutant — whoever’s on duty over there — to have a runner wait outside my door.”

“Sir, the document with the blue tab has to go straight to the Three shop.”

“Have them send a runner, too. I hate to say it, but there are times I miss my old computer. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” But the aide didn’t leave. He looked at the floor, then looked back up. “Sir… I’m glad you—”

“Me, too, John. Now get some sleep.”

But as the aide was leaving, Flintlock Harris had a moment of weakness.

“John?”

“Sir?”

“How are we doing on long-range comms?”

“Back to Washington?”

“To the States.”

“We had some open channels earlier, sir. I can check.”

“Before you turn in, see if they can get my wife on the line.”

HEADQUARTERS, 2-34 ARMOR,

600 METERS WEST OF PHASE LINE LONG BEACH

As the world emerged from the darkness, restoring the contrast between solid forms and empty space, Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell felt a relief so intense it was almost joy. The night had been hellish. But they’d made it through. Most of them. Even though the lightening sky to the east promised only another day of combat, Maxwell felt an unreasonable confidence that things would be better now.

He had grown up in a world where armor ruled the night, when magic night-vision devices and perfect communications had made his kind masters of the midnight hour. But this was a different world. First, the jamming had gone crazy again. Then a tank in Alpha Company and a Bradley in Charlie had each run over an EMP mine, wiping out every electronic system on their company property books.

For almost two hours, Maxwell had remained unaware of the company-level crises. Waiting in his command post and listening to slivers of the war, he’d blamed the jamming for the lack of updates from his subordinate commanders. Meanwhile, his forward companies had been fighting for their lives. Even Bravo Company, with intact comms gear, had been hard up against it, infiltrated by commandos wearing cool-suits that masked the body-heat signatures that should have registered on Bravo’s thermal sights. With the noise of battle all around and artillery fire falling like an endless avalanche, Maxwell had lost control of his battalion without realizing it.

Only when he grew restless and went forward on a personal recon — half to keep from dozing off — had he encountered the Alpha Company first sergeant, who’d peeled off from the fight to alert battalion.

Maxwell had turned around just in time to warn his command post to be prepared for a knife fight. Suicide commandos had penetrated the line. The TOC got hit just minutes after he got back.

After that, it hadn’t been a question of commanding his battalion but of survival. The Headquarters Company clerks and jerks had gotten their chance to kill or be killed in pitch darkness, guided only by tracer streams and cries. Maxwell would’ve retrieved his sword, on practical grounds. But there hadn’t been time. The Jihadis came out of the darkness in waves. Screaming and hurling grenades. Firing wildly. After breaking his carbine while beating a Jihadi to death, Maxwell had scavenged a weapon from a dead soldier. After that, he fought with short bursts and the bayonet. When he wasn’t fighting for his own life, he tried to impose order on the free-for-all.

Where Jihadis had tangled themselves in the wire, they blew themselves up as Maxwell’s men approached. After that, his soldiers shot anything that screamed or even rustled.

One of the commandos had gotten inside a tank. That set off a razor fight in a locked closet. Out of ammunition, another soldier fought with his bare hands for the cab of his V-hull truck, finishing the job only by biting through his enemy’s neck and thumbing out an eyeball.

Neither side took prisoners.

The first orange crack split the horizon into heaven and earth. As if the night had been slashed open with a saber. Maxwell could see faces. Bodies. Damage.

“Sergeant Major?” he called.

No answer.

“Captain Barnes?”

No answer.

But plenty of his soldiers remained alive. More and more of them emerged, ghostly, from the gray depths between the trees. More had survived than seemed reasonable after those infernal hours. But it was hard to spot one who wasn’t smeared with blood.

Black lumps littered the ground. Lot more of them than of us, Maxwell thought. But it was slight consolation. Behind scorched trees, a comms vehicle smoldered.