The Crest

He dozed off standing. The smoke drifted across his body and obscured him from view. Keegan was fortunate that neither the Antisis nor the Sergeant spotted him. His consciousness floated too, in and out of nebulosity; he moved from slumber to suddenly jerking his head awake.

“We need help on the night shift and someone from your pod will volunteer,” Sergeant Wild Bill Johnson told the group the night before.

Keegan knew that double duty was coming, they’d been lucky so far. As the official pod boss, he offered to take up the double guard duty and now he paid the price. That was his way, the gentleman, always sacrificing for the team. He thought about courage, his mother told him that real courage was knowing you’re whipped before you start, but you begin anyway and somehow get through it. Those words rang in his head.

He made it through the night and now sunrise. The morning shift came in, the woke replacing the hackneyed. He needed to make it through the day.

He stirred from his vertical nap; his vision blurred.

“You look like hell,” Margot said as she arrived.

“Feel just as bad. Could use a cup of coffee.”

She handed him a hot thermos.

“You’re an angel. Thank you.”

“Least I can do, thanks for taking one for the team. Any action last night?”

“Nope.”

Margot prepared for the day. Everyone knew that the 7:00 am shift change was the most precarious and vulnerable. Even the Antisis knew that.

Keegan sipped the precious liquid, his attention revitalized. There is a god, he thought.

He gazed out into the chasm of smoke and tried to spot the enemy. The visibility was forty meters at most. In between the fog, burnt trees, and a few hardy shrubs, there was a lot of downed wood. Good enough for a sniper to hide behind.

He remembered the sergeant in basic training. “My name is Sergeant Johnson. Some call me Wild Bill behind my back, but you better never fucking call me that unless you want to be ripped a new one. Ladies and the rest of you candy-asses. There are four things you don’t do on the wall. One, you don’t run away from a fight. You engage, when you see the enemy, you shoot on sight. Two, you don’t run for cover in the flanking tower. If you do, you’ll get shot by me. Three, you will assist your fellow protectors on the Crest no matter what happens and four, no matter how tired you are, you will not sleep on the wall. If I catch you napping, you and your platoon will lose their monthly leave. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

The last rule, number four, rang in his head. He didn’t want to get on the bad side of Wild Bill, a fearless fighter with an unparalleled bloodlust. You were glad he was on your side, mostly. During an assault, he’d be up on the battlement screaming at the defenders, gun ablaze, seemingly impervious, a madman. Survival is everything, Keegan thought.

He turned his attention to his left, far down his left flank, he saw Agathe and Emilio smoking. He knew they were smoking weed, getting primed for the day in their minds. What are they fucking thinking? he thought. He understood their mood, they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Crefor, still, they were playing a dangerous game with the lives of the pod. He knew the patrol sergeant smelled weed from a mile away. The Antisis watched the wall too. He couldn’t see beyond the flanking tower; it blocked the view of the other pod members.

The explosion hit the battlement and shocked Keegan wide-awake. Not wanting to look terrified in his first skirmish, he rushed to the wall and started shooting into the void, at anything, anywhere, pray and spray. The rest of the pod followed suit. He saw movement and shot. More movement, more shots.

Another mortar round hit with a massive bang, then debris, then smoke and dust. His ears rang. He looked for Margot, still there. She looked at him and gave a thumbs up.

Too fucking close for comfort, he thought.

The fog came in, dropping visibility down to ten feet. Good for the Antisis to slither in.

The attackers waited for a sign to strike. Further downslope, they launched mortar rounds, several at the same time. The explosions kept hitting the battlement. He saw the flash of lightning; he could hear the whistling before they hit.

Someone’s guiding those rounds in, Keegan thought. He knew that a forward observer was somewhere near the Crest. When a round hit, the forward observer located where it hit and how far away from the battlement. He then called back to the mortarmen and said how many meters the bomb was away from the enemy.

Gunfire erupted out in the void and bullets started ricocheting off the crenels of the curtain wall. Now Keegan saw the attackers swarm the wall. They brought ladders. “What the fuck.”

“Get ready,” he screamed at Margot.

Fog wave again. He could barely see them now. This is it, he thought. Over-run.

He couldn’t tell how many there were. He shot his M4 down in the mist and then the ladders and grappling hooks appeared out of nowhere and men now swarmed up and down the battlement. He remembered his hand grenades and dropped them over the side. He ran and dropped, ran, and dropped two more. He looked for Margot. She continued to fire, not looking at him, consumed in the firefight. An attacker made it to the parapet and Keegan opened fire. The man dropped.

More Antisis reached the curtain wall and climbed through the merlons. Two attackers fired at Keegan. Unexpectedly the 50-caliber machine gun opened fire with bullets whizzing right over the top of Keegan’s head. The attackers’ bodies seemed to explode from the massive projectiles. Wild Bill Johnson screamed at the attackers from his position atop the flanking tower. He scattered fire along the base of the wall and Keegan saw the Antisis drop like flies. Then he saw them retreat. The attack ended.

Wild Bill climbed down from the top of the flanking tower and walked toward Margot and Keegan. “You both did good,” he said. “Except, someone’s calling in those mortars. You’ve got a traitor in your pod. Better find out who it is and fast.” Wild Bill strolled away. Margot and Keegan stood there, stunned.

That evening the pod gathered for dinner and rehashed the attack of the day. They were all jittery and morose. They clustered loosely at the end of one table.

“Chicken and noodles,” Margot spoke out loud to the group, trying to lighten the mood.

“Stem cell chicken?”

“Yep, third time this week.”

“How can you tell the difference?”

“Texture, really and taste. You can’t beat real chicken.”

“I prefer the old-fashioned kind.”

“Good luck. Remember FORC is a science facility, not a farm.”

While they ate, Keegan reflected on each person in the pod. Some were from the enclave while others were from old Portland. He made a list, Agathe, Emilio, Lenore and himself were from Old Portland. The others, Markus, Beatrice, Ben, and Margot were from the enclave.

Wild Bill believed there was a conspirator in their pod. Why did he pick me to find the traitor? he thought. The idea of finding a turncoat in his pod was demoralizing to him. The only person he could account for one-hundred percent was Margot, she was his partner.

He started off the conversation innocently enough.

“Are you going home this weekend?” he asked the group.

“Have to,” Agathe said. “Gangs causing problems. Getting worse now with the food situation.”

“What’s going on?” Keegan asked.

“Extortion from gangs is what’s going on. Our neighborhood is going to hell.”

“How are your parents?”

“Surviving. Even though I send them my pay.”

Keegan continued the conversation, hoping to draw Agathe out. “I’ve heard the enclave authority is letting more people in.”

“The enclave is a crock as far as I’m concerned, they’re controlled by the Permafrost Corporation,” she said. “Sorry, we applied for sanctuary like thousands of others but they turned us down. Now I’m up here on the Crest and they’re letting the planties live in the enclave.”

She had a point there, he thought.

Agathe was on her soapbox now. “What’s the deal, we’re defending the enclave for the rich and a street girl can’t get a place for her family?”

The others who lived in the enclave said nothing. They knew they were lucky to get in. Their parents had paid lots of cash to get into the enclave. What did it mean to get into the enclave? Basically, it was getting a small home, safety, and food, and all run by the massive corporation called Permafrost. Ideally, in the enclave, you were protected from gangs and shielded from the worst effects of the Shift. You had access to running water once a week, and you could buy food in stores. They had hospitals in the enclave.

Agathe quoted an old phrase. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.’ Ha, it’s about the survival of the enclave, plain and simple.”

Keegan thought about Agathe. She smoked weed and complained a lot, but she didn’t seem like the traitor type.

After Agathe’s outburst, there was an awkward silence. They sat eating their soup.

Keegan looked at Markus and Beatrice. He knew little about them. From the enclave, yes. Middle-class, yes. They seemed quiet, skittish, didn’t interact with the rest of the pod, maybe out of guilt. Who knew?