Chapter 16
One week in Richmond had Grace going stir crazy. It seemed the closer they got to Charleston, the more she itched to get there. Especially after what happened to Jimmy, she was desperate to get back out there and hit those aliens where it hurt. If she ever came face to face with that red-eyed skitter again, she wouldn't hesitate. She'd gut that monster just like it did to her friend.
In the meantime, she was sick of scavenging. Sick of sentry duty. Sick of seeing Robert E Lee's face painted on the side of a warehouse building. It was a massive mural that scaled the height of the old building, accompanied with the quote 'It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.' A once revered and honourable man to many, Tom pointed out to her when they first arrived, despite fighting on the side of slavery. The South worshipped him, even after leading thousands of men to their deaths. A strange choice of hero, Grace thought bitterly. But the quote stuck in her mind. She'd never grow fond of this war, even if it was all she knew now.
That's what she had been contemplating for the past five minutes now. Having just finished her early morning sweep of the perimeter, she'd found herself staring up at that big ugly mural again whilst most of the camp slept in their tents. Shivering in the bitter chill, thinking about how much this war had taken from her, she wondered how she would be remembered, centuries from now - if there was anyone left to remember her. Would people remember her as a hero, a villain, or just someone insignificant? A faceless soldier. A body in the ground.
"Morning," a gentle voice coaxed her from her thoughts. Lourdes appeared beside her with a thermos of hot coffee and a friendly smile.
"Hey," Grace smiled as the young medic handed her the hot thermos. It smelled heavenly and felt comfortingly warm in her palms. "Thanks." She took a welcome sip, burning her tongue but hardly caring as the warm liquid soothed her throat and warmed her up from the inside.
Lourdes folded her arms, warming herself. "So. Finished your shift?"
Grace nodded. "Hal and Maggie took over. How're your patients doing?"
"Good. Just the usual cuts and sprains lately. I just needed some air."
"Ah, yeah. I imagine it can get quite stuffy in that med bus."
The girl chuckled softly. "Sometimes."
Grace took another sip of coffee, feeling the pleasant sensation of the steam rising to her face. "How is everything with you and Jamil?" she asked curiously.
"Oh, good," Lourdes replied vaguely. She seemed distracted, her gaze fixed to the brick wall opposite her.
"Good? You sure?"
Lourdes seemed miles away. She didn't reply for a few seconds before realising Grace was staring at her. "Oh, sorry, Grace. Yeah. He's...perfect. It's just everything else." She sighed deeply.
Grace turned to face her properly. She could see now the discontent in Lourdes' expression. "What's wrong, Lourdes?"
She hesitated a moment, avoiding Grace's concerned gaze. Then another sigh. "That boy who was with your friend...Diego. I spoke to him. He said Northern Mexico was wiped out. I had an aunt and uncle there and I just thought...maybe…" She wiped a tear from her eye. "It was naive, I know."
"Not naive." Grace smiled sadly. "Hope's a powerful thing. You're brave to still have it."
Lourdes sniffed. "Jamil said I shouldn't stop hoping. That I've got to hope for something else."
"That's smart advice," Grace said. "I guess I've been trying that myself. For Charleston. So much bad stuff keeps happening, it's good to have that to focus on."
"I guess. But what if it's not all we're hoping for? What if it's another lie, or the aliens have found it already?"
Grace shuffled her feet slightly, pushing the gravel with her boot. "It crossed my mind. And if that's true, then at least we'll know for sure and we'll move on. But for now...let's hope."
Lourdes smiled unsurely at her. Grace was about to hand the thermos back to her when a bang sounded in the distance.
"What the-?"
A moment later and Grace was making a beeline to the war room tent. She wasn't the only one as she ran into Matt and her father amongst the panicked civilians and fighters rushing to their stations. He'd clearly been awoken by the loud noise, running a hand through his tousled bedhead.
"You heard that?" she asked them worriedly.
Tom nodded, chasing after an excitable Matt who was bearing a rifle at his chest as he darted towards the chaos. The weapon seemed almost the same size as him as Tom told the boy to slow down and took it off him, promptly handing it to Grace until he calmed down.
When they caught up with Weaver, he was already aware of the disturbance. A group of fighters, including Hal and Maggie back from their sentry duty, were following him, awaiting his orders. Apparently, mech fire had been spotted about a klick out. They weren't headed their way yet, but Weaver didn't want them to be caught with their pants down. He ordered all units on an advanced defensive perimeter. The Beserkers were to do some reconnaissance and figure out what the hell was going on.
"Question," Tom piped up as they followed Captain Weaver through the camp.
"Make it quick!"
"If that's another resistance group, we should send another unit to assist." He clocked Weaver's unsure expression as he tried to keep up with him. "We'd want them to do the same for us."
Weaver halted, his thick brows creased together. "Take Grace and your Beserkers. I'll go with Hal and his unit. We'll flank the area. We'll suss it out, but we're not doing anything to jeopardise the position of the Second Mass," he warned, pointing a finger towards Tom. "You move out in ten."
"Okay. Understood." Tom looked around as Weaver hurried off to assemble his team. "Hey, where's Ben?" he yelled over to Hal, who was already backing away.
"Thought he was with you," Hal called back.
Tom frowned. "Did you see him this morning?" he asked Grace.
Grace shook her head. She didn't remember seeing him when she left for her sentry duty.
They left Matt to guard the med bus with orders to keep Doctor Glass safe. Tom told him if he saw Ben, he should tell him to stay put. Meanwhile, Grace departed camp with her father and her least favourite team to investigate the disturbance.
They could see the black smoke rising from the distance as their truck dodged the rubble on the ground. The echoes of gunfire and explosions made Grace's heart pound as she jumped out of the vehicle. Cautiously, she and the Beserkers followed Tom through the debris of what used to be Richmond's city centre, until they came to a clearing.
A battlefield. That's what it was. Dead mechs and skitters laid sprawled across burning wreckage and ruptured mounds of concrete. The hot smoke and foul stench stung Grace's nostrils. They began to inspect the aftermath, contemplating what the cause of all this destruction could have been. Could a resistance group have done this? If they had, it was the cleanest attack Grace had ever seen. Not a single human body could be seen amongst the broken bits of metal and skitter guts. They were good, but they weren't that good. There would have been some evidence of human involvement, even if it was just a splatter of blood, a bullet casing. But there was nothing to suggest a human had even been involved.
A whistle in the distance stole their attention. Captain Weaver and his group waved at them from the other side of the street.
"No skitters, no resistance. It's like a ghost town out here," the captain mused aloud as they reunited moments later.
Grace kept close whilst everyone else checked out their surroundings. Lots of burned up skitters, abandoned vehicles, crumbled mechs. And no sign of what did this to them.
"Let's investigate this mess. Check for humans. See if there's anything we can salvage," Weaver said to Tom.
Grace looked around, kneeling down beside a fallen mech. It had a large hole in its armour, revealing a mess of wires and a brown, sticky substance reminiscent of a wound. Beside the 'wound' oozed a whitish gooey substance.
"Gross," Grace muttered.
"These are all mech hits," voiced Tom, verbally confused.
Weaver looked up, his furrowed brow hardly visible behind the shadow of his cap. "So these bastards are shooting each other now?"
Tom ran a hand over his beard, the lines in his forehead deepening. "That would be different."
"That doesn't make any sense." Grace wobbled back to her feet, losing her balance slightly and causing her to fall towards the dead mech and touch the gooey substance dripping down its armour. "Eugh!"
"You okay?" her father asked her.
"Yeah," she muttered, annoyed as she attempted to shake off the sticky sludge. "I just touched mech gunk."
A hand grabbed her arm and she turned to see Crazy Lee creeping up behind her. Instinctively, she shook off the Beserker, giving her an irritated look. But then Lee simply raised a piece of cloth towards her.
"Relax. Just a hanky."
Grace softened, gratefully taking the cloth from Lee and wiping her hand with it.
"Dad! Over here!"
Her head snapped towards Hal's urgent cry. They all ran to find him wrestling to move a dead skitter.
"Dad, get it off. Get it off," he grunted as Tom and Maggie stooped down to help lift the corpse off of something.
Grace stood back, watching as they threw the skitter to one side to reveal an unconscious boy with a glowing harness. Her heart stopped for a split second, expecting to see Ben lying there.
But when Tom turned him over, it wasn't Ben.
It was Rick.