Nyarl selected a minimum of equipment to be carried, while the others sorted out personal kit, tools, maps and documents, and supplies from the plane’s galley. Davis broke out a cache of weapons that he had acquired and distributed them in addition to the ones that Marie and Gerofsky were already carrying, giving Cade an automatic rifle. Cade had never fired a gun. Marie promised him an improvised lesson.
Hudro refused. “No,” he said. “I see too much. I no longer carry weapons.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
A STAFF CAR STOPPED IN RESPONSE to Gerofsky’s flagging. It was carrying the acting commanding officer of a motorized infantry regiment pulling back to a redoubt that was being formed south of Denver. Apparently, the armies of the central front were attempting to consolidate a line along the eastern edge of the Rockies. The vehicles were already crammed with wounded and stragglers picked up along the way, and the group from the downed plane had to be spread out among several to find room. Gerofsky squeezed into the staff car with the officers. Koyne insisted on accompanying Hudro in an armored personnel carrier to make it clear to any objectors that “this guy is okay.” Nyarl went with Powell and Davis in a supply truck. Cade and Marie found space in an open truck carrying a field-gun crew with their artillery piece hauled behind. Cade felt as if he were back in Brazil after the helicopter crash. But this wasn’t happening in Brazil; it was the middle of what used to be the U.S.A. At least, whatever lay ahead this time, he and Marie would face it together.
The air attacks came in at intervals ranging from twenty or thirty minutes to an hour or more. Sometimes they took the form of jets screaming in low to strafe and walk bombs and rockets along the column; at others, air-bursting missiles launched from several miles away. These were Terran weapons systems, not Hyadean, and Cade saw a number of the attacking aircraft brought down. Existence degenerated into a dull, stomach-churning, constant awareness of vulnerability and feeling helpless. The shouts of “Cover! Air incoming!”; the sour taste of fear, face pressed to the sand while the ground shuddered and white-hot metal hissed overhead; climbing wearily back into the truck, blurred into a routine that he found himself acting out mechanically with deadened senses. A few images remained etched in his memory: a soldier staggering from a truck that had been hit, one arm and one side of his face a blackened mass; a limbless torso in a ditch; a civilian bus with corpses hanging out of the shattered windows. And he began to understand how it was possible for people to see others killed, maimed, burned, blown apart, and no longer be capable of feeling anything. When survival became the driving consideration, something primitive and protective took over, shrinking one’s focus to a narrow world of self and the few who qualified for the time being as one’s “own.”
Changing drivers in shifts, the depleted column carried on through the night through Pueblo, the terrain becoming more broken and craggy. Flashes and lights continued to light up the horizon all around, but the immediate attacks slackened to a few intermittent missiles coming in just often enough to make rest impossible when physical and nervous exhaustion craved relief into sleep. Cade sat hunched by Marie, his body aching and protesting more as with every mile the truck’s metal-and-fabric seats seemed to get harder and grow new sharp corners. If life ever returned to normal, and if they survived to enjoy it, he would never complain about airlines again, he told himself.
Daybreak brought a scene of dry gulches, mesas, and rocky bluffs rising among broken, dusty mountains of brown and gray ahead. This seemed to be the outer edge of the defensive line, with forward positions being prepared and activity visible away into the distance on both sides. The commander called a halt to regroup the regiment’s scattered vehicles, give the stragglers time to catch up, and assess losses. Two trucks were missing, which was not as bad as the attrition that some units had suffered. One of them, however, was the one that Nyarl, Powell, and Davis had been riding in. Radio calls for it to report in brought no response. Hudro and Koyne were the most shaken by the news—understandably.