The n00b Warriors (21 page)

“There are more reasons than love to get married.”

“It’s not right, Trinity—you don’t even know each other.”

She leaned closer and looked into Dylan’s eyes. “He’s the best person who’s made an offer.”

Dylan met her stare. A rush of emotions went through him, and he wanted to shout out the way he felt, but he couldn’t. Instead of speaking his mind, he muttered, “It’s not right.”

Trinity was quiet, and Dylan asked, “So is that it? You’ll just run off and get married and pregnant?”

Trinity sat back down. She looked exhausted. “I haven’t decided—but I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Dylan stalked away from Trinity and found Johnny with Aimee on the far side of the trench. She was shaving his head. Without a word, Dylan shoved Johnny against the dirt wall. Aimee dropped the razor and tried to wrestle him away. “Hold off—we’re all on the same side!”

“Why would you tell Trinity something like that?”

“What?”

“To have your baby! What are you thinking?”

“I should go check on the supplies,” Aimee said awkwardly.

“I’m doing something you can’t—protecting her.”

Dylan glared at Johnny and then grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. “You’re a fake.” He released him and started walking away.

“And what are you?” Johnny blustered. “You march around pretending to be something you’re not—you’re not a leader. You haven’t done anything to prove yourself.
I’m
a fake? I’m not the one pretending to have special skills that make me more qualified than everyone else. You’re going to get us all killed.”

Dylan stopped and turned. “Just stay away from Trinity.”

“Or what?”

Dylan didn’t answer. He walked away in fury.

He stopped at the supply closet, where Aimee was taking a mental inventory. “How are we?” Dylan snapped.

“Low as always—how are you?”

Dylan tried to control himself. “I kind of lost it.”

“I’ve seen a lot of leaders out here—good and bad. I know a thing or two about what it takes to lead, and I know you don’t get respect by pulling stunts like that.”

Dylan nodded, embarrassed and now angry with himself. “Have you ever thought about it? Having a baby so you could leave?”

“Never had someone make an offer,” Aimee said with a smile. “But if anyone did, I’d never consider it. So you leave for a few months, but they eventually come back for you, and if you don’t have a family then your baby just ends up with the government. Who wants to bring a baby into a world like this?”

Dylan looked down at the weapons.

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Trinity?”

“Yeah.”

Dylan shrugged. “Who has time for that out here?”

Aimee laughed. “You’re still a kid—stop trying to act grown-up.”

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Just in time for lunch, reinforcements arrived. They were a bunch of older kids from Company A who had come from training in Oregon. They had all the weapons of real war: RPGs, mortars, sniper weapons, landmines. They also had communication equipment and were quickly able to establish contact with HQ and, more importantly, air support.

But most importantly, according to the Company A team leader, they had beer. They had wheeled in two kegs of it over almost two miles.

The team leader’s name was Mac. He was one of the few people on the front lines who could legally drink, though many kids ignored the laws and still got drunk on a daily basis. One of the Company A men had gotten four of Dylan’s men drunk by nightfall.

There was little to do that night except stare at the stars and pray that the Cocos didn’t decide to stage a surprise attack.

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In between the infrequent battles, there was little to do with all the free time. Everyone took turns repairing the constant damages to the trench to keep it from caving in and practiced loading their guns—but mostly, they just hung out and did their best to relax.

The second night at the front lines, Milton taught Hunter and Dylan how to play poker. They sat crammed next to where the ammo was kept and used a small crate as a table.

“First opportunity you have to get me killed, I want you to take it,” Milton said as he shuffled the cards.

“I’m not going to get you killed.”

“Ha! Who are you kidding? The odds are against all of us.” Milton stopped shuffling and pointed at Dylan. “But this is what I’ve wanted—to be fighting here in Seattle. I want to die a hero. When you see the opportunity for me to do so, then you call me out and send me in.”

“You’re a crazy old man, Milton,” Dylan replied.

“So you won’t do it?”

“Who’s going to teach us how to play poker if he sends you off to die?” Hunter asked. “And all that other stuff you promised to teach us? You’re the only person here who can do that.”

Milton thought for a moment, and then started dealing. “Well, I didn’t mean I wanted to die a hero tonight.”

Dylan nodded. “Well, when you’ve taught us everything you know about everything, then we’ll consider it—but not until then.”

Milton nodded and pulled his feet in to give a Company A man room in the walkway; as he passed by, he kicked mud onto Milton’s camouflage shirt. “But soon, Dylan. I’m too old to be sleeping in the mud.”

“Hey, Milton?” Hunter said eagerly. “What was it like—before the war?”

Milton dropped his head and thought for a moment. “Simple, I guess. I mean, I had seen my share of bad things in Iraq, and when I came home all I wanted to do was move somewhere quiet and stay unnoticed, so that’s what I did—became a teacher in a small town and kept to myself. Stayed like that until the rebellion.”

Dylan’s father had been an early supporter of the rebellion. He’d told Dylan about it not long before Dylan left, but he had ignored most of what he said. Now, Dylan asked Milton curiously, “Did you support it right away?”

“Of course not,” Milton replied. “It’s like I said, I tried to keep it simple. I wasn’t about to join some cause and get thrown back into conflict. Besides, it was a small town. The rebellion didn’t exactly reach our doors until later. By that time, you didn’t have any choice—once the big towns decided which side they were on, you pretty much had to follow suit.”

“But you support it?” Hunter asked.

Milton nodded. “Not at first. Not until the Cocos came into our city and I saw what kind of people they were.” He paused and added, “There’s nothing glamorous about fighting. It’s just what you have to do sometimes.”

Hunter nodded, satisfied.

“But when does the fighting stop?” Dylan asked.

Milton smiled. “When we win.”

Later that night, Dylan and Hunter lay flat in the trench, staring upward at the sky, silently watching bombs burst above them. It was like a firework show.

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Everyone spent most of the next day getting acquainted with the new company and repairing parts of the trench. Dylan and Mac decided that a few Company A men would go out the following morning to repair any damage to the wire in front of the trench, and Dylan’s men would connect a bomb-made crater to their trench. The crater was about five feet away, but would provide good fire ground once they connected it. The wire mission was far more dangerous, and Dylan’s men didn’t have the skills for it.

As Hunter fell asleep that night, Dylan watched two Company A men peeing on one of Dylan’s men, who had passed out after having too much to drink.

His scowl was quickly wiped away when he heard Mac scream, “Incoming! Take cover!” Dylan threw himself over Hunter just as the blast hit.

It was one of those moments when everything seems to happen in slow motion. Dylan turned to his right, and he saw soldiers panicking and screaming and crying and wetting their pants; he turned to his left and saw a blaze of fire coming towards him. He saw Mac, the Company A leader, on fire—screaming—dying.

Dylan’s eyes widened as Mac got closer. He could feel Hunter pushing at him, and trying to get up.

Another blast came. This one just missed the trench.

Dylan blinked and focused. He staggered up and ran to one of the periscopes to see what was going on. He looked towards the enemy lines. “What do we do?” he heard a Company A man screaming at him, just as confused as everyone else. Dylan didn’t answer. He kept scanning. He could see the Coco Puff launching a grenade from an RPG. “What do we do?”

Dylan pointed ahead and yelled, “Disable those men.” He ran low in the trench to a Company A sniper and told him to take out the RPG man, then he shouted at the rest of the company to return fire.

He saw an A man—an 18-year-old who had boasted during a poker game earlier that he graduated from an Army academy—in the fetal position, crying. Dylan ran to him and got down in his face. “Do you want to die?”

“No,” the soldier sobbed.

“Then get up and fire that weapon.”

“I can’t.”

“Then they’re going to kill you. Those no-good Coco Puffs will kill you and eat your nuts for dinner.”

He didn’t move.

Dylan yanked the soldier up by his limp arm and helped him to the firestep. Together, they fired a single shot. “That’s the way it’s done—now do it!”

“They’ll kill me.”

“They’ll kill you either way—at least this way you stand a fighting chance.”

The soldier nodded and slowly peeked his head out of the trench and began to fire. It was slow at first, but then adrenaline pushed him to fight hard. Dylan took aim next to him, and together they killed Coco Puffs. Hunter quickly joined them, but Dylan pushed him back. “Go find Trinity and protect her.”

They were under fire for so long that Dylan lost sense of where the fire was coming from. From all corners. From the air. From planes. From grenade launchers. For three hours, they fought back and forth in a disoriented struggle for their lives.