The Beachhead Read online

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER MARI

  Ocean of Storms (with Jeremy K. Brown)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Christopher Mari

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503942622

  ISBN-10: 1503942627

  Cover design by M. S. Corley

  For Juliana, Olivia & Luke

  Gutta cavat lapidem.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Angels have no need of an assumed body for themselves, but on our account; that by conversing familiarly with men they may give evidence of that intellectual companionship which men expect to have with them in the life to come.

  —Thomas Aquinas

  There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.

  —Aesop

  CHAPTER 1

  On a sharp and clear night like this one, John Giordano could glance down from his lookout post in the hills and see all that remained of the human race. The lights across the city flickered soft and yellow in grid-like patterns, so regular that no one observing them from any point above could doubt that an intelligence of some magnitude lived on this coast. If such observers were in no hurry and had watched for a long-enough time, they would have seen the lights’ warm fingers stretching ever outward, north and south, east and west, filling the dark spaces at the edges of town—and even upward. The most recent buildings in the city were now three stories high—significant, though still two stories lower than the ramparts of the city’s walls. Births, good crops, fair weather, and luck had added considerably to the initial population of 144,000. Two generations had joined those remnants of mankind and helped them build this city.

  John turned the collar of his worn brown leather jacket to the autumn wind and adjusted the strap of the carbine slung over his right shoulder. The air was ripe with the scent of the sea. After scanning the ridgeline, he glanced down again at the nighttime city and tried to imagine the early days when the Remnants lived separately from one another, in caves and mud huts, in anything that would protect them from the elements and prying eyes but could be abandoned easily if need be. It had taken years before the adult Remnants were comfortable enough with the idea of building that it didn’t feel entirely crazy.

  Few Remnants ever talked much about the end of the world or the days just after the Arrival. The still-living Remnants were just children when they came to this planet, so their memories of life before the Arrival were as impressionistic as anyone’s childhood memories. Whenever they did speak of Earth-of-old, they tended not to talk of the last days, but of things from their youths: books they read, toys they played with, or items that mankind once had but no longer did—electric lighting, motorized transportation, cures for infectious diseases.

  John ran a hand through his short-cropped blond hair and smiled as he walked his perimeter and thought of his grandfather’s stories. A young man in his thirties when he was brought to this shore, his grandfather loved to speak of his childhood far from this place. Because John was able to recount so many of his grandfather’s stories, his friends joked that he must be a Remnant himself, flash-frozen and thawed out two generations later. But he had never found it hard to recount stories that were told well and set in memorable places.

  He once found his grandfather lying on the beach in a chair of his own design. Made of a stretchy fabric he could sink into, it folded into three parts, and by setting its pegs into notches carved in its wooden frame, one could adjust it to raise the head or lower the feet. Grandpa had been in a mostly upright position, facing away from the sea toward a rock wall covered in a greenish-red vegetation. The air was thick with salt and wet earth. John, fourteen at the time and on weekend leave from his first year in the Defense Forces, had walked down to the beach to tell his grandfather to come home for supper. Cold as he was on watch this night in the hills, he could still remember the way that warm sand had felt on his bare feet.

  When he’d found his grandfather, he feared for a moment that the old man might be dead. The book splayed open on his hairy gray chest hardly moved. After several steps John could see him smiling through his thick beard. It was a perfect smile, serene. Years later when he learned what the word “beatific” meant, he would describe his grandfather’s smile that way whenever he recalled it—the beatific smile of a perfectly content old man.

  “Hey Johnny,” he said, sitting up a little, “you caught me at my daydreaming.”

  John, who had always been more comfortable with his namesake grandfather than with his own parents, asked what he had been thinking about. A bemused light passed through his grandfather’s hazel eyes before they settled on his grandson.

  The old man sighed and nodded toward the mossy rock wall. “My mother’s backyard. A lot of great days spent out there. She had quite a garden behind that brownstone in Brooklyn, the whole place lined with all kinds of plants and flowers. I wish I remembered all their names, but I do remember she had rosebushes, pink and red and intertwined, beautiful things. Ivy grew up the back wall, sort of like this. My favorite thing to do was sit out there on warm nights after my summer job and read in a chair not unlike this one until the sunlight gave out. Then I’d watch fireflies flickering in the twilight.”

  “Fireflies?”

  “Bugs with illuminated butts.” He shrugged. “One year my mother and I discovered a birds’ nest in the ivy. We didn’t want to disturb the birds, but we were curious to see if there were eggs in it. I took a ladder out, and sure enough there they were, three of them. But that wasn’t the surprising part. You know what else we found in that ivy?”

  John shook his head.

  “A flowerpot my grandfather—my mother’s father—had nailed to the wall, probably decades earlier. I never knew it was there. And my mother had completely forgotten about it.” He passed a hand across his head. “But evidently the birds hadn’t. They had made their nest in it.”

  John laughed. “And this is what you were grinning about?”

  His grandfather shrugged again and turned back to the rock face. “Among other things.”

  That summer John had often found his grandfather near that mossy rock face on the beach. Sometimes the old man would be there doing research, trying to piece together bits of the medical knowledge humanity possessed in the years before t
he Arrival. Other times John would find him nose deep in a book they knew to be a classic or—usually but not always—the Bible. Then there were times when he would find his grandfather just staring at that rock wall, watching the sea breeze lift its reddish-green foliage. Toward the end that’s the way he found him most.

  After his grandfather died near what most of his fellow Remnants guessed was his seventieth birthday, John suggested that they bury him not with the other dead in the cemetery to the west beyond the city’s walls but out on the beach beside that rock face. The Council met and decided it would be permissible since the tomb was far enough from their water supply. John had helped to carve his grandfather’s name in the rock, the only difference between his name and the dead man’s being his grandfather’s MD.

  A whump, more felt than heard, pulled John from his memories. His eyes shifted back to the ridgeline nearest the beach, and yes: a slight flash of light came from behind those hills.

  They’re here.

  If they stayed on the ground, it would take them about twenty minutes to travel through the underbrush to the party of Remnants waiting at the designated spot on the beach. Now more alert, John kept a keen watch on his surroundings, aware that if something were to happen, it would probably happen very soon. Yet it all still seemed normal, same as it ever was.

  He raised his collapsible spyglass to his right eye and made a quick scan of his immediate area and then another of the perimeter around the city. Outside the city no noises, no lights, nothing. He resisted the urge to recheck his carbine. He gave it another few minutes, then lit his torch with a match palmed from his watertight pouch. He raised his flaming brand to signal all clear to the nearby perimeter guards, who would then relay the message on. All clear—at least as far as they could see. The guards would remain at the ready just in case.

  John imagined that all of them—mostly Seconds like himself, but a few Firsts in command positions—were simultaneously trying to picture the biennial ritual about to take place. They knew that a party of Remnants, twelve in all, waited on the beach, unarmed and bareheaded in white robes, for the Friendlies. The Friendlies would come unarmed and wearing only loincloths, as had been agreed upon since their first official visit a half century ago. None of the Seconds—and probably only a few of the Firsts—knew how or why these rules had been established. Twenty-six visits, if you counted the Arrival, and nothing had ever deviated from ritual.

  “Hiya.”

  John spun on his heel, surprised by the closeness of the voice behind him but not by whose it was. No one but Kendra McQueen could sneak up on him like that. Kendra, just turned twenty, was by far the stealthiest soldier he had ever met. He’d like to think it was simply a matter of training, that her being two years past the mandatory four-year term of service in the Defense Forces had honed her covert-ops skills. But he had twelve years of additional service and not a tenth of her ability. Kendra had already possessed such skills when she entered the service at fourteen and had only improved since then. Some suggested, only half jokingly, that angels held her under her arms to lighten her tread. Others believed she had found the lost crate of Eastern books and had gleaned her skills from them. Of course, there were some who believed that her encounter with that Orangeman had to be the explanation—but the only people who thought that were the ones who didn’t know the true story. John didn’t know or care how she did the things she did. He was just glad to see her moonlit face and know she was on his side.

  “You’re out of position, Lieutenant.”

  “So rat me out to the superior officer, Captain. Oh wait—right.” Her wide mouth drew up into a mischievous smirk.

  He couldn’t help but chuckle. “So they’re down.”

  She unscrewed the cap of her canteen and shook her head before taking a swig. “I swear that landing gets softer each time.”

  “They’ve had enough practice.”

  “So we’re assuming this is the same as always.”

  He shrugged. “Why shouldn’t it be? It’s a checkup, one the whole human race gets every two years.”

  “You’re starting to sound like one of the crankier Remnants, John.”

  “Let’s say I appreciate such a healthy level of suspicion.”

  “Let’s say I agree with you.”

  “Figured you might.”

  Kendra raised her sniper rifle and peered through the scope in the direction of the beach. “I just wish the Remnants would bring a few of us with them. They’re not getting any younger.”

  “Don’t worry about them. I think they’ve gotten sneakier and smarter with the years.”

  “Still. What’s General Weiss? Fifty-five? Sixty? They’re going to have to trust us at some point.”

  “They do—it’s just, well, you know the problem.”

  “Nobody’s saying they have to trust just the Firsters.”

  “But the Firsts are their children, despite everything. And our own goddamn generation—”

  Kendra flashed him a look. “Lord’s name.”

  He ignored her admonishment. “And our goddamn generation is too indifferent. You know that.”

  She shook her head and smirked again. “Not all of us, friend. But I see two members of our illustrious generation have just drifted from position.” She snapped a half-serious salute. “Semper fidelis, Captain.”

  “What?” John turned to see what she’d spotted, but she was already disappearing into the woods, probably to ream out a couple of Novices. “Semper fidelis, Kendra,” he muttered to the wind.

  If history were any guide, the meeting with the Orangemen would end a few moments before dawn, just as the sun began to light the coastal horizon in the east. A signal would flash down the perimeter line to indicate that the twelve Remnants had been spotted walking along the beach toward the outskirts of the city, where other members of their generation would be waiting for them. A week later a brief report would describe the meeting in slight and almost meaningless detail. No Firsts or Seconds believed that the reports included everything that had taken place on the beach, but until any of them were in positions of authority, they would never know for sure.

  His grandfather had been chosen three times as a representative for these meetings with the Orangemen Friendlies. The first two meetings occurred when the elder Giordano had been a member of the government, the last when John was a boy and had just recovered from a particularly bad fever. The illness had infected much of the city, killing several dozen and incapacitating hundreds for weeks. What disturbed his grandfather most about the outbreak was the way it had slain far more young than old.

  His grandfather had volunteered for that final meeting, although John didn’t find out that he had done so until after the old man had gone down to the beach. While he was in his room recovering from his illness, he overheard his parents insisting that his grandfather beg the Orangemen for a cure. The conversation had surprised him; there were few things his parents ever agreed on. Then his mother grunted. “Of course, he won’t do that. None of them will. How can we expect love and mercy from the Orangemen if we’re so unwilling to give it?”

  About two weeks after his grandfather returned from the beach, John found him in the Archives. He liked to visit his grandfather there. Part of the appeal was the location: the only fortified bunker in the whole city, filled with all that remained of human knowledge. There, deep in a dry underground cavern, were the original books brought with the Remnants when they arrived here. Every piece of their fragmentary knowledge of human existence was contained in those dusty yellowing pages. As a child, it had been hard for John to imagine that millions of books had once existed. He couldn’t picture a single volume more than the 4,453 that had survived. He’d once asked his parents if they knew exactly how much was missing. His mother answered, “A civilization.”

  The vast majority of the books were in English, their spoken language. The next largest group was Latin, then Greek. A few were in the dead Spanish language—mostly Bibles and religious wr
itings—but they also had several works of Russian literature. References in the books to things that they knew nothing about made them sharply aware of how much of mankind’s rich diversity had disappeared. Worse still was what they had lost themselves—a crate of Eastern writings, mostly in Chinese and Japanese, many about religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, that had been in the initial inventory but went missing sometime after the Arrival.

  At first they copied everything by hand or memorized it, as had been suggested in a book by an author named Ray Bradbury, so that it would never get lost or forgotten. Eventually they redeveloped movable type and built their first printing presses. With them, they were able to make as many copies of the original works as they needed. They had even written and printed a few hundred original books since the Arrival, but none, not even his grandfather’s medical books, were consumed with the same zeal as the most recent printings of Paradise Lost or Anna Karenina.

  On that visit he found his grandfather where he usually did—sitting at a desk surrounded by papers and open volumes, his long Roman nose so close to the printed page that it looked as if he hoped to absorb the words through his eyeballs. John pulled an English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses from his grandfather’s desk and sat in the chair next to him. It was open to a passage that described the ancient pagans’ idea of creation:

  There still was lacking a being more venerable than animals such as these, one with greater powers of thought and reasoning who might be master over all other living creatures. Thus man was created, and although the other animals look down upon the earth, the creator of all things gave man an uplifted countenance and caused him to look to the sky and raise his upturned face toward the stars.

  He looked up and found the top of his grandfather’s gray head facing him. “Grandpa, you understand everything in these books, right?”

  The old man stopped reading, blinking clear hazel eyes. “No.”

  “Think you ever will?”

  “Not likely, Johnny.” He twirled his pencil at the stacks surrounding him. “Even these precious few that remain are too many for a lifetime.”