The n00b Warriors (29 page)

Tommy slapped him on the back. “Come on, Dylan! You’re going to have to learn eventually that this is all a game! You’ve advanced to the next level. Can’t feel bad because a few people died—that’s what happens in games!”

Dylan stood and threw the apple at Tommy’s chest. “She was a real person! Not some character in a game!” He stormed away.

“You’re going to be a real killjoy to have around on this tour,” Tommy mumbled, rubbing his chest.

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At noon, after breakfast, a man called Boner picked them up in a Jeep. He took them to Portland, a three-hour drive away.

Boner was Mexican but talked with a Texan accent; he wore a straw hat with his uniform and sunglasses with no lenses. “I hear you boys killed a thousand Coco Puffs in one day,” he said as he sped down the empty freeway.

“Heard right!” Tommy bragged.

“I’ve never been to the lines. I’m been chauffeuring people around this state for two years, and never once had to go to the front—not even to pick someone up. Thank God every day, too.” He looked at Dylan. “Must be hell down there.”

“Worse than hell,” Dylan said tonelessly.

“He doesn’t speak for all of us, of course,” Tommy said. “Nothing bad about it for
real
soldiers.”

“I picked a man up yesterday who’d been at the lines for two weeks. Said he’d seen more bad things in one hour then he had seen his entire life. He talked to a soldier who was missing his entire bottom half as he died. He himself had lost part of his arm. You got any stories like that?” Boner seemed excited to hear what they might say.

“Saw a Coco Puff eat a man while he was still alive,” Tommy said. It was a lie, of course, but everyone liked brutal Coco Puff stories. They were easier to kill when they were heartless. “He ate his entire hand, and then he killed him. You should have seen the blood dripping out of his mouth. They like the taste of blood—that’s what I hear, anyway.”

The driver laughed wildly. “They’re wild, untamed beasts, those Coco Puffs!”

Dylan sat silently with Hunter, looking out the window, as Tommy proceeded to tell more stories of the front.

The further away from Seattle they got, the more normal it started to look. Occasionally, convoys would pass on the other side, but mostly it was empty and peaceful. Every so often, they could see homes where people still appeared to live undisturbed by war. Dylan gazed at those longingly.

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Portland was a training town. Schools had been taken over by the military five years ago. The city was largely intact, but abandoned. Business had moved out long ago and taken with them most of the residents. Some citizens still wandered the streets, and they waved at the Jeep as they passed.

Boner took them to a hangar at the Portland International airport. A large transport plane, just like the one that had taken them to Washington, was waiting. Boner stopped the Jeep, and a man in a suit approached. He wasn’t McCormick.

“My name is Mister Niles Coupland,” the man said, shaking each of their hands. “You may refer to me as ‘sir’ or ‘Mister Niles Coupland.’”

They nodded.

He extended his hand towards the plane. “Shall we?”

“Where will we go, sir?” Dylan asked.

“You will be flown to Utah, where the President is waiting to greet you.”

“Utah? I thought the President is in New Mexico.”

“He has to stay on the move—for security reasons.”

“What happened to McCormick, sir?” Tommy asked as they walked to the plane.

“He was crossing a bridge last night, and the driver didn’t know it had been partially blown out two days prior. Their car went right off into the water. So it looks like McCormick is dead. Found the driver, but they still haven’t found McCormick’s body.”

The inside of the plane was different from the one they had been on before. It was used only for transport, not cargo. The plane was empty except for them. It had enough seats for over one 100 passengers. All of the seats were large and reclined. They had video screens that pulled out of the armrests.

“I was against picking you up from the very start,” Niles warned as they fastened their seatbelts.

“I’m sorry for the trouble, sir,” Tommy said in surprise.

Mister Niles Coupland laughed to himself. “It’s nothing personal, understand.”

Tommy nodded.

“Thing is, I just don’t like kids. Never have. And when they called me up to babysit you three, I was none too happy.” He pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it up as the engines began to roar outside.

“Well, you can tell them we really don’t need a babysitter,” Tommy said.

Mister Niles Coupland raised his eyebrows at Tommy. “You think we should let a bunch of kids run around unsupervised on this nation’s capital?”

“We aren’t kids,” Hunter argued. “We’ve killed people.”

“And,” Tommy added, “we’ve been unsupervised in war for quite some time, sir.”

“The battlefield is different. Battlefield’s just a playground. Kids don’t need supervision when they’re playing. And you don’t have to be an adult to kill,” Mister Niles Coupland said dismissively.

“Have you ever killed a man?”

“No, of course not—that’s child’s play.”

“Child’s play!” Dylan said, speaking up for the first time. “Giving a child a gun is child’s play?”

Mister Niles Coupland nodded. “Besides, our studies show that when a child is released from war back into his normal environment, he goes back to being a child again.”

“What study was this?” Dylan asked.

“A study we did on rats four years ago.”

“On
rats?
” Dylan yelled. “We’re not rats—we’re human!”

“Temper,” Mister Niles Coupland said. “See what I mean? You’re acting just like a kid would again.”

“This is ridiculous,” Dylan said.

“You’re the ridiculous one.” Niles sighed and said, “This is exactly why I hate working with children. They’re impossible.”

No one talked for the rest of the flight. As soon as the plane was in the air, their TVs turned on to cartoons, and they were given headphones. Mister Niles Coupland took long drags on his cigar and cursed for no reason in a quiet mumbles every so often. Every time one of them started to speak, he would tell them to be quiet.

They found out later that Mister Niles Coupland was the father of 14 kids, but he was always traveling and only saw them a half-dozen times a year.

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In Utah, Secret Service agents herded them from the plane into a convoy of black SUVs with tinted windows. The windows were also darkened on the inside, so they couldn’t see where they were going.

After 20 minutes, the car stopped. Dylan thought they were there, but then the car started going downward, like it was on an elevator. They continued going down for several minutes and then abruptly stopped. The men in black opened their car doors, and two women in flowered print dresses stepped forward to welcome them.

“Welcome to the White House,” the women cheerfully said in unison. They reminded Dylan of his sister and were probably about the same age. They had blonde hair and were both a little overweight; they were, in fact, the first overweight people Dylan had seen in a long time. Most people couldn’t ever eat enough food to gain weight since everything had been rationed.

Dylan looked around. Wherever they were, it didn’t look like the White House he had expected. They were in a large room that looked more like a hangar than any house he had ever seen.

“What’re your names?” Tommy flirted.

They women ignored him and said, “Follow us this way.” They led the way down a series of long, dark halls that were dimly lit by flickering lights. Several spots had water dripping down from the ceilings. It was obvious to Dylan that they were underground. Occasionally, they would pass someone in the hall, but no one ever spoke. The two women didn’t shush them when they spoke, but they also didn’t reply as Tommy continually tried to speak with them and asked questions.

The women led them to a large conference room, where the “hero” tour was explained by equally overweight men with beards. They told them where they would go and what they would tell people. Their story would be exaggerated and glamorized.

“What we want,” one of the men, who both carried clipboards, said, “is for you to make the war seem not so bad—parents are at these things, and we need them to know that their kids are safe and happy. We need you to boost morale.”

“You need us to lie—we got it.” Dylan clarified.

“We just want you to go out there and give parents hope—make them feel like one day their sons and daughters will be heroes. That’s not lying. It’s never a lie when you give hope.”

Tommy had sneaked off to the food table, which was behind them. It was loaded with more sweets than any of them had ever seen before. He began to stuff his face with cookies as he said, “I’m happy to lie for all of you!”

“So what if we don’t want to tell your story?” Hunter asked. “What if we tell what really happened?”

The man with the clipboard shrugged. “Then we’ll send you somewhere worse than Seattle and make sure you don’t have the chance to be heroes again.”

“Sign me up for that,” Dylan bitterly replied.

“Lost a friend in Seattle,” Tommy explained.

The man became sympathetic. He looked at the clipboard. “It’s Dylan, right?”

Dylan nodded.

“What was your friend’s name?”

“Trinity.”

“You seem like a good guy—this is what Trinity would have wanted. She would have wanted it that way. You go out and get people excited to fight, and maybe we might just end this war. Don’t you want to end it, Dylan?”

“Nothing will end it—we’ll just keep fighting.”

The man smiled and said, “Well, how about this—how about if you don’t say what we want, then
all
of you go fight again? Sound fair? That way you keep each other accountable.”

Dylan was quiet, and Tommy came up and grabbed him. “I don’t want to go back, Dylan—I’ll kill you myself if you screw this up.”

“Maybe we should just try it, Dylan,” Hunter said.

Dylan eyed him. “What happened to you missing the fighting?”

Hunter peeked at the food. “I do, but it’s still nice to do something different for a change.”

Dylan finally nodded. “I’ll do it for Hunter, but not for you, Tommy.”

“Works for me,” Tommy laughed.

The men made all three of them sign their names on long contracts that they were not allowed to read. The tour would cover the whole country, with a stop in Carlsbad, where Dylan would get to see his parents.

Tomorrow, the men explained, they’d meet the president, who would announce the plans of the tour to the country.

“Will Niles stay with us?” Hunter asked.

“No—there’ll be someone else. He has fourteen kids of his own to worry about.”

“Do we get paid?” Tommy asked.

“You’ll get spending money. We’ll go over details more in the next couple days. And we’ll be giving you acting lesson to make sure you don’t screw up—a lot is riding on this tour.”

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(Coco Puff, Blog Entry)

CENSOR THIS

Posted: Wednesday, April 1 2015| 10:02 AM (GMT)

Today I received a memo from the director telling me not to write anything offensive to the government on my blog because I was being watched. I am a supporter of the cause—why they watch me, I don’t know!