Forging Zero Read Free

with them.”
    “No.” 
Their father’s tone brooked no argument.
    Sam,
the idiot, argued anyway.  “But—”
    “Go back
to your room.”  Their father’s voice was filled with warning.
    “But
Dad—”
    “Go, Sam.”
    Giving
Joe an agonized look, Sam went.
    Joe’s
father finished ironing in silence and then tugged his cammi jacket over his
wide shoulders.  The sleeves rested just above his biceps, crisp and perfect
despite the chaos outside.  Seeing it on his father for the first time in four
years, Joe felt a cold chill.  When their eyes met, there was a sadness in his
father’s face, a recognition that Joe could not understand.   He watched his
dad pick up the three guns he’d left by the front door, his throat burning with
the need to say something.
    “Take
care of your brother, Joe.”  Then his father opened the door and disappeared
into the chaos of black smoke, gunfire, and screaming.
    That
was two months ago.
    Joe was
still fourteen, but he felt older now.  Compared to the other kids in the hazy
red light of the obsidian dome, he was ancient.
    I’m
not supposed to be here.  Sam is.
    Joe
closed his eyes and let his head touch the wall behind him.  The black
substance depressed slightly at his touch, cradling his skull with its eerie,
alien perfection.  Like everything else on the ship, the wall seemed alive.  It
seemed to move with a soul of its own, like a billion little ants covered the
surface.  Sometimes his hair stuck, just enough that it was uncomfortable, but
not enough to pull it out.  The cloth under his butt and against his
shoulder-blades likewise fused to the stuff. 
    Behind
closed eyes, an image blazed in Joe’s mind.  His dad, stepping into the
whirling smoke outside, sleeves rolled for war.
    Joe
immediately fought the surge of anger twisting in his gut.  The government had
ordered the Marines not to get involved.  They’d told everyone to stay
in their homes, to do whatever the aliens told them.  Yet Joe’s father had
rallied his old friends anyway.  Why?  Why couldn’t they just hide Sam?  Why
did Dad have to fight? 
    The
children trapped in the room with Joe had long since stopped crying.  Some were
sleeping, snot and tears leaking down their faces.  Many were huddled in
whimpering groups, wide-eyed, clutching their knees or whatever relics of home
they had managed to salvage before the sweeps.  One little girl had a sooty
cloth doll, one half of its head singed from the fires. 
    The
stench of smoke still stung the insides of Joe’s nostrils.  In the weeks that
followed the start of the Draft, burning houses had cast the subdivision in a
putrid black haze.  Along the sidewalks, cars had smoldered, adding spent
gasoline and plastic fumes to the choking smog.  Constant gunfire had rattled
the glass in the windows.  Armed looters had followed behind the Congies,
taking stuff from the homes and bodies of people who had resisted the aliens’
collection efforts.
    But now
all Joe cared about was food.  He hadn’t eaten in so long that his stomach was
a constant pain to him, keeping him awake.  They had water, piped in from the
walls in constant-supply tubes that looked a lot like the bottles on a gerbil
tank, but that was it.  Worse, the water tasted funny, almost like algae.  Joe
guessed it had been days since their capture, but like the other kids that the
aliens had kidnapped and herded in here like cattle, Joe had spent most of his
time sleeping.  It had been so quiet since their abductors had shoved them in
here that several times, Joe had wondered if they had been forgotten in their
prison to starve.
    I’m
not supposed to be here.  It should have been Sam.
    Joe
took a deep breath and released it angrily, then pushed himself to his feet. 
The living black walls gripped his damp palms like frozen metal.  Joe yanked
his hands away and rubbed his palms together to rid himself of the sensation. 
    Everywhere,
little kids were watching him.  Joe