Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (26 page)

Dom looked around at the mass of people—scared, confused, unable to move. How the hell was everyone going to get to safety? He didn’t even want to think about it. The enormity would paralyze him and take his mind off what he had to do. He had his orders. He also had his mental list—unnumbered, unplanned, but if forced to recite it, he probably could—of people he would protect whatever the cost.

“Dom?
Dom!”
Marcus’s voice got his attention. He was on the opposite side of the stationary traffic with Tai and Padrick, talking to a transport sergeant. “Over here. Come on.”

The bombshell dropped by the broadcast was now spreading ripples. Not everyone had heard it live; not everyone had a radio with them. The news was being spread by word of mouth, car to car, truck to truck, person to person, and Dom had to wade through a sea of rising panic. At one point he looked across the bridge in the direction of the checkpoint and saw the Gears there under siege from pedestrians who had now abandoned their vehicles and were trying to cross on foot. The traffic jam was now becoming a permanent, fifty-meter-thick barricade of buses, trucks, and cars. Fuel rationing hadn’t stopped many from taking to the roads in the almost constant ebb and flow of refugees shifting from city to city after each Locust attack. And now that Prescott had announced the decision to smash Sera flat to stop the grubs, the refugee exodus to come would make today look like a minor inconvenience.

“Marcus! Marcus, you heard the announcement? Have you
heard the goddamn announcement?”

Dom had to slide on his ass across the hood of a car stopped so close behind a bus that he couldn’t squeeze through. He felt the edge of his holster scrape the paintwork. The driver yelled at him, just a muffled noise with a lot of
F
s in it, but scratched paint was going to be the last of anyone’s problems. By the time Dom crossed four lanes of nose-to-tail vehicles, the transport sergeant was fending off pedestrians. He was right on the edge, poor bastard, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. The name tab on his shirt said MENDEZ. He seemed to be trying to talk to Marcus in one breath and carry on a radio conversation with Control in the next. And anyone in uniform was now a magnet for terrified, confused, angry civilians who’d heard the world was ending in three days. He was trying to keep a man at bay with one hand, but the guy had a baby in his arms and he wanted answers right now.

“I
have
to clear this frigging road, sir,” Mendez kept saying. “We’ve already got a traffic jam ten klicks north because the grubs have trashed Andius. Now the bridge is blocked. You’ll have to wait. Don’t leave your car, okay?
Don’t abandon it
. I can’t get the traffic moving if you dump cars on the bridge. Do you understand?”

“What’s going to happen ?” The guy kept asking that over and over, not hearing a damn word Mendez said.

“Where am I going to go in Ephyra? My wife doesn’t know where I am.”

“Everyone on this road’s got the same problem, sir.” Mendez looked as if he wanted to manhandle him out of the way, but the guy had a baby, and that made everything awkward and emotional. “Look, go sit in your car. When the traffic starts moving again, you can drive straight into Ephyra.”

“Sir,” Marcus said, “give me your wife’s name and a number. I promise we’ll get a call through.”

He held out his hand, and when Marcus made a suggestion, even civvies took it as an order. It was the gravel voice and the steady blue stare, Dom thought, the weird combination of looking like a hard bastard while sounding like a guy you could always rely on.

The man fumbled for his wallet. Padrick helped him extract a business card and scribble details on it, then escorted him back to his car. Marcus watched, jaw muscle twitching.

“You’re good at fobbing them off,” Mendez said. “You should do my job. Now, I got to clear this bridge for military traffic, but you—”

“I meant it.” Marcus read the card, then slipped it inside his armor. “I’ll call her. Now, what do you mean, we have to wait for extraction? We got four pairs of willing hands here. What do you need done?”

“I got my orders, Fenix. Every crossing and VCP’s been told to hold you for pickup.”

“We haven’t been tasked for a mission. We’re just heading home. We can shift the abandoned vehicles.”

“Too late. I’ve flashed CIC and there’s a KR inbound. You’re going home, fast lane, Fenix.”

“Whose idea was
that?”

“Hey, why ask me?”

Marcus rocked his head slightly as if he was weighing up something, then shrugged. “We can do something here. We have to clear this route, whether it’s for convoys or refugees. Just tell us what needs doing.”

“You could start driving vehicles or marshaling further back down the road, diverting vehicles onto the side roads. But you’re not going to have time.”

Dom could already hear the Raven approaching. They were getting out. He wondered how the people stranded here would feel when they saw Gears leaving right after the Chairman announced they had three days to get to safe ground before he fried the rest of Sera. He wondered if they’d be seriously pissed off at the Gears’ privilege, for once, getting a lift home out of this chaos while they were trapped here.
And Maria’s stuck on her own right now. She watches the damn news channels all day. She’s heard this shit,
and she doesn’t know where I am, and she’ll be going crazy with worry
.

“My father’s fixed this,” Marcus said. “Why the hell doesn’t he leave things alone?”

“Hey, Marcus, it could be Hoffman. He might have a job for us. Wait and see.”

The Raven set down on the other side of the checkpoint in a parking area. The crew chief jumped out and called to Mendez. “Where’s Fenix?”

Mendez pointed; the crew chief beckoned. Pad and Dom squeezed through the gap, followed by Tai and Marcus, then ran at a crouch to avoid the rotors.

“Whoa, no, we’ve got
one
space.” The crew chief held up both hands. Dom could see the Raven was loaded to the deckhead with Gears. “Move it, Sergeant. Chairman’s request.”

“Not without my squad.”

“Look, I’m running a shuttle here and I’ve got a shitload of trips to cover with zero downtime in the next three days. Make your mind up.”

Marcus was standing right under the crew bay. One of the Gears leaned down and said something Dom didn’t catch, but Marcus shook his head. “Thanks, buddy, but I can’t let you do that.”

Marcus turned to walk away. Dom had a choice, as everyone did at times like this; he could bleed for strangers whose problems he couldn’t fix, or he could do something solid and real. He shoved Marcus hard so that he fell back on the deck of the Raven, struggling for a moment.

“Go!” Dom yelled at the crew chief. “Get him out. Now. Or he’ll
never
go.”

The crew chief went to slap a safety line onto Marcus’s belt, but he was already scrambling off the chopper, cursing a blue streak.

“Fuck that,” Marcus said. “I don’t leave my squad.”

Dom tried to block him.
“Go.”

“You
go, you’ve got a wife who needs you.”

“Just go. We’ll be okay.”

Marcus looked around and made for the cars, ignoring him completely. Dom could see he was heading for the guy with the baby. The crew chief was yelling not to piss around and waste time, and Dom went after Marcus, grabbing at his arm. Marcus shook him off and hauled the father from the car.

“Come on, get going.” Marcus reached into the passenger side to grab the bassinet, complete with sleeping baby. “Forget the car, citizen. You got a ride.”

“Hey, thanks, I—”

Marcus just marched the man up to the Raven and handed the baby to the crew chief. “One space, one passenger. Kids go free. Right?”

“My orders are to get
you
back, Sergeant.”

“And I’m pulling rank,
Corporal
. Civilian evac. Send my dad the bill.”

The crew chief strapped in the shocked, bewildered father. “Hey, buddy, you know who just saved your ass?”

he said. “Fenix, the war hero.”

Marcus ducked out of the Raven’s downdraft and the helicopter lifted clear. If he’d heard the word
hero
, he didn’t react, but Dom knew he hated the label. It didn’t seem to matter to him that people meant it. Padrick just looked at him. “You’re a fucking martyr, Sarge.”

“No, I’m a Gear.” Marcus leaned into the first empty car in the line and felt around for the key. “Our job is saving civvies. Anyway, I didn’t notice any of you jumping aboard, either.
Shit
. Dom, can you hotwire this wreck?”

“Sure thing.”

Dom didn’t feel so bad right then. The test of any man, his dad had told him, wasn’t how he behaved when things were going fine, but how he handled himself when the shit was up to his neck and rising. Marcus passed the Eduardo Santiago test every time. Dom tried to. He felt he had today; they all had.
You’re right, Dad. And I miss you so much
.

Dom fumbled under the dash and touched wires, and the car rumbled back to life. “Now all we have to do is make some space.”

“You say that like it’s going to be hard,” Padrick said, sliding into the driver’s seat. And Sera was going to be razed to the ground. Every time Dom forgot that, tied up in the physical effort of shunting cars and yelling at drivers who just wouldn’t follow the marshaling signals, it came back and slapped him, demanding attention.

No, it couldn’t be right. There had to be a mistake, a bluff, some shit even Marcus couldn’t guess at. Dom kept telling himself that right up to the time he saw the first of the convoy trucks rumbling down the shoulder that he’d cleared. This time he’d earned that ride home. He climbed over the tailgate and held out his hand to haul Marcus inside.

VICTOR HOFFMAN’S APARTMENT, EPHYRA, LATER THAT NIGHT.

Margaret never yelled.

Hoffman had often wished she would, because then he would have been able to gauge just how far he’d fallen from grace with her. But perhaps her complete silence was his answer. She stood at her desk in the study, phone wedged between ear and shoulder as she rummaged through the drawers. He stood in the doorway and tried to pick his moment.

“Natalie? Are you still there?” She was talking to her sister. “Damn, it’s taken me all day to get you … No, I don’t care, I know you’ve got casualties … Listen, Nattie
… Please
, Nattie, I’m serious, I’m coming down to Corren … Yes, I mean it. I’m coming to collect you. Stay at the hospital.”

Margaret laid the phone down again. She must have known he was behind her. But she just tidied the case folders on her desk, slipped them into the drawers, and locked them away. It took her a full five seconds to turn around and face him.

“I’ll get her on a COG transport,” he said, wanting to die of shame. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, I do. Because I can’t trust you any longer.”

“I’m sorry.” He was; he regretted having to do it, so much that it hurt. “I am so, so sorry.”

She made an odd little strangled noise, as if she’d started to laugh and then lost the will to carry it through.

“Sorry?
Fuck you, Victor. Fuck you and all your secret little cabals, holed up in your bunkers while the rest of the world dies.”

He’d rarely heard her swear in their entire marriage. He understood why the news had devastated her—she wouldn’t have been human if she’d taken it in stride—and he knew this fight was coming. He also knew that even if changing his mind could turn back the clock and make her respect him again, or even despise him a little less, that he’d still nod and say to Prescott that this had to be done.

“Don’t go down there, Margaret,” he said. “Please. The roads are at a standstill. You won’t get back in time, either of you.”

“And Nattie won’t make it out otherwise. And you
knew.”

Hoffman could have begged forgiveness, or told her that it was Prescott’s decision, or that the best estimate now was that the Locust would reach Jacinto Plateau in ten days, probably sooner, in numbers that the whole army couldn’t stop. But there was no point.

“Yes, of course I damn well knew,” he snapped. “I’ve known for a week or more. And what would you have done if I’d told you?”

“Oh, if this is going to be the public-spirited lecture on not spreading panic, Victor, why don’t you switch on the goddamn TV and watch the panic
now?”

“You’d have told Natalie. Then she’d have told her colleagues. She’d have tried to move patients early, and the whole thing would have been a hundred times worse, with numbers of refugees worldwide that we just couldn’t handle. And the enemy guessing what was coming, or even
knowing
, and concentrating on Ephyra—because once they take Ephyra, the human race is finished. Do you seriously think I would go along with this if I thought we weren’t facing
extinction?”

Margaret held up her hands to shut him up. “I don’t want to hear this bullshit,” she said. “The longer I listen and try to believe the man I married might still be inside you, the later I’ll be to save someone who actually matters a damn to me.”

“So what’s it about, Margaret?” She couldn’t possibly make him feel like a bigger pile of shit than he already did. “Me not treating us as special cases who need to be saved when every other bastard has to take their chances, or destroying most of Sera? Spit it out, honey. I don’t quite know where the moral outrage is coming from.”

“I don’t have to justify my outrage to
you.”

She snatched up her jacket and walked straight at him; he thought of just grabbing her and pushing her back, but that only turned the tide of a fight in movies. She wouldn’t suddenly see how he’d done a necessary thing, weep for her sister, and fall into his arms. She’d just spit in his face.