The Army airfield was on the east side of town. We drove west toward the heart of the city. The destruction was so complete in some parts of Norristown that the landscape looked like a painted desert. We passed an area in which a ten-foot knoll the color of red brick lined the road to our left and a thirty-foot hill of gray concrete and rusted steel lined the road to our right. The dusty shards of black glass along the top of the hill reflected the light from the sky.
“This can’t be Norristown, sir,” my driver said.
“This is it, Corporal,” I said. “That hill over there probably stood thirty stories tall when the aliens arrived.”
The driver slowed the jeep and studied the panorama around us. Perhaps he was trying to reconstruct the city in his mind, or he might have been watching out for an ambush.
A large river ran through the center of Norristown. As we approached it, we saw the arches and towers of a large suspension bridge spanning the water. I recognized the architecture from the flight in; it was the bridge that had collapsed on one side. “We’re not going to be able to cross here,” I said, as we mounted a rise and the entire bridge became visible.
“No, sir,” my driver said.
The closer half of the bridge—a brick-and-metal structure with grand arches, thick rails, and a spider work of cables—looked solid enough. One of the arches from the far side of the bridge poked out of the water like the elbow of a swimming giant. The rest of the bridge had vanished beneath the river.
Surfing channels on the interLink, I heard men groaning. We could very well have a big fight coming up, so I could not afford for these men to become discouraged.
We passed a row of small apartment buildings overlooking the river. Following the mostly clear road that ran along the waterfront, we searched for another bridge. A couple of miles up the road, we found an old concrete arch bridge that seemed untouched by the war.
It wasn’t until we crossed the bridge that we started seeing bodies. After four years out in the open, they were no longer rotting corpses, just bones. Had I removed my helmet, I would not have smelled the scents of death and decay; they were long gone.
From what I could tell, the people on this planet had died in groups. We might drive for blocks and see nothing more than an occasional Army helmet or fatigue-clad skeleton, then we would turn a corner and enter a boneyard in which the ground seemed paved with skulls and femurs. I understood this, of course. The concentrated areas were places where battalions made a stand; the scattered remains were soldiers who died in retreat.
The Marines who fought on Terraneau did not fight alongside the soldiers in these battles. We passed avenues that looked as if they had been paved with skeletons draped in dirty camos—places in which the Army made a stand. A few blocks later, Marine battle armor lay strewn along the street.
“Harris, why do I feel like I’m back in Valhalla?” Thomer asked.
Valhalla was the capital of New Copenhagen.
I did not respond, but I was thinking the same thing.
As we drove through one particularly corpse-sown battlefield, I saw a battery of rocket launchers leaning across the top of the wall of a two-story building like a drunk leaning to keep from falling to the ground. There were so many bones scattered along this stretch of road that it would have taken an army of archaeologists and psychics to reconstruct the skeletons. My driver steered the jeep right through the center of the mess. He had no choice but to drive over the dead, the wreckage lay everywhere. Our tires ground bones into the cement. Camos tore. Helmets popped and flattened or shot out from beneath us.
As we pushed deeper into the downtown area, the rubble of buildings that had once lined the roadway now covered it. Crossing a dune made of walnut-sized pieces of debris, our jeeps left cat tails of dust in their wake.
The Avatari seldom left buildings in their wake. When they calibrated their weapons to destroy skyscrapers, the buildings dropped like a man shot through the heart. Some broke off at their base, leaving straight edges poking up through the ground; but most caved in on themselves.
“Captain Harris, we’re picking up traces of shit gas in the air,” Herrington said. He was out of interLink range but the communications gear in his transport had a long-distance communicator that could reach my commandLink. Driving through the ruins of Norristown, I had almost forgotten that Herrington was out looking for the mines.
“Have you found the opening?” I asked.
“Not yet, but we’ve got to be close. You don’t get this much shit in the air unless there’s an asshole nearby.”
“Keep me advised,” I said, and signed off.
We drove into the downtown financial district, an area mostly reduced to dust. Less than a mile ahead of us, the three remaining high-rise towers rose out of the ground like giant pillars. They were straight-edged versions of Jack’s bean-stalk, and they seemed to reach all the way up into the shining white-gold sky.
Two of the buildings had black glass exteriors, the third had a silver metallic finish. These might have been the tallest buildings on Terraneau. Had they fallen, their rubble would have flooded three blocks in every direction.
The black marble walls of the first building were pocked with holes and scrapes from large-caliber bullets. Some of the street-level windows were shattered, and others were cracked. If people had died here, the bodies had been cleared out. The driveway into the parking lot looked like it had been swept clean.
If I had to guess, I would have said that the battle had wound down by the time it reached this part of town. Had soldiers entered these buildings, the Avatari would have demolished them. Apparently nobody did.
I had my driver park our jeep, and the other jeeps stopped behind us. A few of the men hopped out of their rides, while others stood on the vehicles. Everyone scanned the area.
“Listen up,” I called over an open channel, drowning out unauthorized conversations between my men. “We’re going to split up.
“Thomer, you take three jeeps and head out to Fort Sebastian. I want to know about weapons, power, and survivors.” Fort Sebastian was the local Army base. The force defending Terraneau used it as their hub.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Thomer said. Fallzoud haze or straight, Thomer would locate the fort and expedite. I could depend on him. He gave the command, and the last three jeeps in our convoy split off from the rest. I watched them leave, then I addressed the men who remained with me.
“We came here looking for survivors. I don’t give a shit about dead bodies, so don’t waste my specking air-space gab bing about them. Got that?”
They got it.
“We’ll search the whole damn city if we need to, but we’re going to start here, with these buildings. Now fall out.”
These men knew the drill. They broke into platoons and fire teams. As they headed toward the buildings, I reminded them about their priorities.
“Listen up, Leathernecks, we are not here to act like the specking police. We did not come here to specking serve and protect. If you see survivors, do not expect them to be rational human beings.
“If you see survivors, assume that they are armed. You may have noticed there are a lot more dead bodies than weapons on the streets. If the bodies are there, and the weapons are gone, you bet your ass that whoever took those weapons is alive and scared and dangerous as hell.”
“Sir …” one of my Marines began.
“What is it?” I snapped.
“Begging the captain’s pardon, sir, but this Marine saw lots of human bodies.”
“We’re racing against the clock,” I said, cutting the man off. “Spit it out, man.”
“Sir, this Marine did not see dead aliens, sir.”
“Yeah, they evaporate when they die,” I said.
“Can we kill them, sir?” the Marine persisted.