I slowly stood up. The last time I had moved I was broken in a dozen places and so dizzy I couldn’t see straight. I expected my head to go light and pain to shoot up my leg. Instead, I felt surprisingly strong. There was no pain. No dizziness. No nausea . . . and no fatigue whatsoever. I felt great. At least physically.
“Follow me, Zero Three One One,” came a man’s command.
Standing between the rows of beds was another Retro soldier. This guy wasn’t part of the medical staff. The black baton weapon he held proved that. I’d seen that weapon in action and knew that the charge it shot out could knock somebody into next week . . . or kill them, depending on its setting. I’d used one myself to threaten Mr. Feit—Colonel Feit of the United States Freakin’ Killer Air Force. The fear of getting zapped convinced him to turn a giant attack craft back from its mission of wiping out the rest of the population of Los Angeles.
The Retro soldier motioned for me to walk ahead of him between the two rows of beds. I obeyed and walked slowly past him toward a door that was thirty yards away. The whole way, I stole quick glances at the poor victims who were being healed, hoping to catch a glimpse of my mom or the others. Many were awake, staring blankly at the ceiling. None made eye contact with me. It was like being trapped in zombie-land.
I pushed through the door at the far end of the building and entered another structure that looked nearly as long as the hospital ward, but it was twice as wide. Rather than hospital beds, there were dozens of white domes that looked like igloos lined up neatly in two rows.
The Retro soldier pushed past me and hurried up to one of them. He used his weapon to rap on what looked like a door. A second later a panel slid open with a quick, sharp hiss.
“Inside,” the guy commanded. “Sit down. Wait.”
“Why?” I asked.
At the sound of my voice, the guy stiffened as if I had just slapped him in the face. He started to bring the weapon around to shoot me for daring to open my mouth, but he took a deep breath and got hold of his emotions.
“If you keep asking questions,” he said, “you won’t be alive long enough to get any answers. Inside. Sit down. Wait.”
Message received. I ducked down and entered the dark dome.
Inside was a black wire chair with a wide back that faced a flat, blank white wall. That was it. The entire inside of the dome was white, except for the chair. I sat down, as instructed, like a good little primate prisoner.
With a hissing sound, the door closed, plunging the dome into total darkness. I felt panic rising. What were they going to do with me? If they knew I planted the bomb that destroyed every last Retro plane at Area 51 and killed one of their leaders, I could be in for a rough time. Was this my prison? Was I sentenced to live the rest of my life in dark solitude? Or would it be my execution chamber?
I sat there in pitch darkness for what felt like an hour, though it might have been only a few seconds. I was a breath away from screaming out, “Why am I in here?” when words appeared in front of me. They were white letters that looked to be floating in space.
YOU ARE ZERO THREE ONE ONE. ACKNOWLEDGE. I heard it spoken as I saw the words written in front of me. It was said aloud by a woman who spoke with no emotion and not much inflection. It felt like a computer-generated voice, but it sounded way more natural than that.
The words disappeared, only to be replaced by the single word: acknowledge.
“ACKNOWLEDGE,” the voice repeated.
“That’s what they tell me,” I replied.
I figured that was a good answer. I wasn’t accepting the fact that they considered me a number rather than a human being, but I didn’t want to pick a fight with a machine that was probably way smarter than me.
Each time the computer spoke, the words appeared in front of me. I guess it was in case I was deaf or something.
“YOU ARE FORTUNATE, ZERO THREE ONE ONE,” the voice said. “YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO HELP REDIRECT THE COURSE OF THE WORLD.”
“You mean I’m lucky because I wasn’t killed when you guys wiped out most of the population,” I said.
I couldn’t help myself.
The machine didn’t acknowledge that.
“THE WORK WILL BE DIFFICULT,” the computer voice and the floating words continued. “BUT YOU WILL BE REWARDED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE PERFORMING AN IMPORTANT SERVICE TO MANKIND.”
“And if I get hurt you’ll just plug me into the magic medicine machine and fix me right up so I can get right back to work, right?”
“YOU WILL BE FED WELL AND GIVEN MEDICAL TREATMENT WHEN NECESSARY,” was the reply. “AS LONG AS YOU COOPERATE AND WORK HARD, YOU WILL BE TREATED FAIRLY.”
The conversation had turned ominous.
“And what if I don’t cooperate and work hard?” I asked.
“YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED,” was the horrifyingly matter-of-fact answer.
“My name is Tucker,” I said, belligerently.
“IRRELEVANT,” the machine replied. “WHAT USEFUL SKILLS DO YOU POSSESS?”
“Useful skills? What do you mean?”
“DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR TALENT? ARE YOU ACCOMPLISHED AT SOMETHING PRACTICAL?”
“Like what?” I really didn’t know where these questions were going.
“ARE YOU A PLUMBER? AN ELECTRICIAN? A WELDER? DO YOU WORK WITH WOOD? CAN YOU COOK? WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THOSE WITH USEFUL SKILLS. WHAT ARE YOURS?”
I really had to think about that. What could I do? If I had some kind of skill it might get me out of doing hard labor. Or dangerous labor. The trouble was, I had nothing. I was a fourteen-year-old second-string running back on my high school football team. What was that going to get me? Suddenly all those hours studying math and writing essays in school felt pretty wasted.
“Wait,” I said. “I have a skill. I’m a landscaper. I design gardens and know how to care for pretty much anything that grows. They say I’ve got a green thumb.”
That was totally overselling my abilities. The truth was I mowed and raked grass for my dad’s gardening business. I knew a little bit about fertilizer and how to trim plants to keep them looking good, but that was about it.
“IRRELEVANT,” the machine said.
Gee, thanks.
“What happened to my mother and my friends?”
As soon as I said that, I regretted it. This machine didn’t know who I was. If it connected me with the others there was a better chance we’d all be found out. But I couldn’t help myself. Without my friends I wasn’t sure how I’d have enough strength to go on.
“YOU NO LONGER HAVE A MOTHER AND FRIENDS,” the machine said. “YOU ARE ZERO THREE ONE ONE. THAT IS YOUR HISTORY AND YOUR FUTURE.”
I wanted to jump out of my chair and throttle this person, or whatever it was. But there was nothing to grab on to but glowing white letters that came and went as if blown by the wind.
“DO NOT SPEAK WITH AIR FORCE PERSONNEL UNLESS YOU ARE REQUESTED TO SPEAK. DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THE OTHER WORKERS UNLESS IT REGARDS THE TASK AT HAND. THERE ARE SEVERE CONSEQUENCES FOR DISOBEDIENCE.”
I didn’t have to question that. I believed it.
“YOU WILL SLEEP IN A COMMUNITY BARRACKS AND EAT IN A COMMUNITY HALL. YOU WILL NOT SLEEP IN THE SAME BUNK TWICE SO DO NOT HOARD PERSONAL ITEMS.”
This was going to be even more horrible than prison. They were taking away everything that made a person unique, starting with their name. “WHAT YOU WERE BEFORE ARRIVING HERE DOES NOT MATTER; THEREFORE NAMES ARE IRRELEVANT. WORK HARD, OBEY THE RULES, AND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WILL BE WORRY-FREE.”
“Yeah, except it probably won’t last very much longer.”
“GOODBYE, ZERO THREE ONE ONE.”
The door to the igloo slid open. I shielded my eyes from the bright light and saw the Retro guard waiting outside for me. I stood and shuffled out.
“So I guess I’m registered
,” I said. “Now what?”
The guy zapped me with the baton.
I screamed, but it was more out of surprise than pain. His weapon was dialed to shoot a very light charge . . . just enough to keep the rowdy in line.
“Do not speak,” the guard warned. “I’ll bring you to your unit.”
There wasn’t anything else I could do but follow the guy. If there was any hope of finding out what happened to my mom and my friends, I was going to have to play along . . . at least until I saw a chance to escape. As I followed the Retro guard through this frightening new world, there was only one thing I knew for sure: I was not going to live out the rest of my life as a slave to these murderers. That would have to become my focus because all hope of bringing down the Retros was gone.
The guard led me through several more buildings that were connected by wooden walkways. Each time we left one building we stepped out into the blazing-hot desert. After a few steps we’d enter the next long building in line. It wasn’t much cooler inside the structures than out in the open. Each building had ceiling fans that didn’t do any more than push the hot air around, but it was still better than being under the sun.
The buildings we passed through were nearly identical. They were barracks similar to the wooden hospital ward but with one big difference: The beds here were empty. The buildings themselves looked and smelled brand-new. The wooden beams were fresh and there was none of the grime that came from use. It looked to me as if the Retros were preparing for an influx of more people. Many more people.
When we were given the briefing back in Las Vegas before setting out to sabotage the Retro fleet of planes, the leaders of the survivors said how the Retros were heavy on equipment but light on manpower. They were absolutely correct. Area 51 was home to well over a thousand attack drones, but we saw almost no people. Wherever this camp was, it looked to be just as under-manned. But from the number of empty beds I was seeing, that would change. People were coming. But who?
After passing through a dozen identical empty barracks, I began to hear the sounds of work. There was hammering and sawing and the general cacophony one would expect from a large work force. We exited the final building and arrived at a busy construction site. Three more barracks in various stages of completion were being worked on by several dozen workers. Prisoners. It looked as though I was going to be put to work along with all the other orange-wearing, number-given slaves. This was my future. At least my immediate future.
The guard led me through the work zone when a new sound entered my consciousness. It was music. Eerily familiar music. I froze. It was a sound I’d heard far too many times. Slowly, I turned around to see what I knew would be there and was greeted by an even more disturbing sight.
Looming high above the new structures, no more than a few hundred yards away, was the giant steel igloo-like dome.
The gate to hell.
I had to fight from falling to my knees.
A black Retro attack plane rose up next to it. It lifted vertically into the air until it cleared the top of the dome, then its musical engine kicked in and the killer craft shot off like a rocket. In seconds it was out of sight.
I knew exactly where I was . . . the Mojave Desert, not far from where our SYLO helicopter was attacked and downed. Captain Granger had made a foolish mistake by flying us by here to see this structure. He should have known they’d be watching. Before we were attacked, we saw a Retro fighter plane float out from inside the dome. It proved that in spite of the fact that we had obliterated their entire fleet at Area 51, the Retro Air Force had not been defeated. More of these deadly craft were arriving from whatever factory was churning them out. How long would it be before the entire fleet was replaced so they could continue their ghastly purge of the planet’s population?
From the sky we had seen the wrecks of hundreds of SYLO fighter jets strewn across the desert floor that had tried to destroy this monstrous structure . . . and that were blasted out of the sky by drones and antiaircraft guns.
The dome was untouchable, the Retros were still very much in business, and I was their prisoner. The war, or at least my part in it, was over.
I found myself wishing I hadn’t been thrown free of the crashing helicopter. I wanted to be together with my mother and my friends, however dire their fates were.
THREE
The guard pushed me toward a long half-completed wooden building that would eventually look like all the others. Next to it was a deep trench that looked to be the beginnings of the foundation for yet another building. This pit was being dug by hand, painstakingly. A large group of tortured-looking men and women in orange coveralls used simple shovels to move the dry desert sand. They methodically filled wheelbarrows that were carted off by other equally exhausted-looking prisoners.
The Retros were at it again, forcing the survivors of their attack into slave labor. Seeing the vacant stares of the beaten and abused prisoners as they worked under the hot desert sun made my heart race with anger. How could a group of people who said they were trying to right the course of civilization treat their fellow men so badly?
A Retro wearing camouflage, but unarmed, stood next to the growing pit, monitoring what looked like an oversized iPad in her hand. She was a severe-looking woman with short, steely hair and broad shoulders. The guard I had been following approached her and said a few words I couldn’t hear. The woman gave me a quick look and turned away, shaking her head. I guess she didn’t need any more workers, which was fine by me.
The guard came back to me and said, “This is your unit. Unit Blue. Do whatever your supervisor orders you to do. The more productive you are, the easier it will be for you. More food. Better food. Shorter shifts. Better bunks. If you don’t produce, then . . .” He let his voice trail off and he shrugged.
I wanted to hit him, and might have, if he hadn’t made eye contact with me.
Up until that moment he had been totally cold, as if I were an annoying dog that needed training. But in that brief moment I thought I saw something in his eyes that looked strangely like sympathy.
Or maybe I just imagined it.
He gave me a slight nod and headed off, leaving me alone with the silver-haired supervisor who didn’t look any happier about being there than I was.
The guard hadn’t told me the supervisor’s name and I didn’t dare ask. Maybe her name was as irrelevant as mine supposedly was.
“Grab a shovel,” the woman barked without looking at me. “We need to move two tons of earth before nightfall. Get to work.”
Nightfall. Was that how it was going to be? Were the prisoners forced to work until it was too dark to see? I picked up a shovel from a pile near the edge of the pit and gazed over the side to see at least twenty people laboring in the furnace that was to be the foundation of yet another bunkhouse. The hole was roughly six feet deep. Grave depth. But it was only half the size of one of the long buildings. There was a lot of work to be done.
I didn’t want to go down there. I feared that I might never come out. In that one moment, all the horror I’d been through since the night of Marty Wiggins’s death on Pemberwick Island came flooding back in a rush of violent images that sprang from my memory. I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart raced. What was going on? Was I suddenly overcome by sorrow? Or was it fear?
No, it was anger. Who were these Retros and how were they able to use the United States Air Force to take over the world and enslave the survivors? They had turned the world upside down. For what? Nothing could justify the deaths, the destruction, the loss. To make it worse, they were treating the survivors like animals in a slaughterhouse. We were given numbers. Numbers had no personality. No history. No humanity. What was next? Would they brand us with a burning hot iron?
I gripped the shovel tighter as my rage grew. I glanced at the silver-haired Retro supervisor who still didn’t think enough of me to make sure I was climbing down into that pit
. She was busily scanning her tablet. In that one second I felt as though she alone represented the heartless force that had destroyed our world. I wanted her to suffer for what they had done. I raised the blade of the shovel and strode toward her. I’m not crazy, or a killer, but in that moment I didn’t feel like myself. I was a number. Zero Three One One. If they could treat me like I was nothing, then I could do the same to them. I raised the shovel, poised to bash it over her head and exorcise the demons that had taken control of my emotions.
I lifted the shovel higher, ready to strike . . .
. . . as a military jeep came screaming out from behind the last of the completed barracks. The sound jolted me back to my senses. I assumed it was carrying Retro guards who were coming to stop me from beaning the unwary supervisor.
I was a heartbeat away from dropping the shovel and running when the jeep turned hard and an orange-clad body was thrown out. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and tumbled in the sand like a broken doll before coming to rest.
Three Retro soldiers sat in the jeep. One behind the wheel, the second in the passenger seat. The third Retro was in back. That was the guy who had tossed the prisoner to the dirt. The jeep slid to a stop near the edge of the foundation pit, kicking up sand and dust that hung in the air and giving a coughing fit to a few of the workers.
The unit supervisor stood there staring. Apparently she didn’t understand what was going on any more than I did.
The guy in the passenger seat twisted and pulled himself out. He wore black-and-gray Retro fatigues but carried himself more casually than the other soldiers. He rolled more than walked, as if every joint in his body was loose—the exact opposite of the ramrod-straight Captain Granger. His shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, showing off deeply tanned skin. Though he looked to be about my dad’s age, he had longish, bleached-blond hair that had to be constantly swept out of his eyes. Other than the uniform there was nothing military-like about this guy. He looked more like somebody who played tennis at the uppity Arbortown Racquet Club with Kent Berringer than a soldier at a military prison camp.