Free Dark Victory - eARC by Brendan DuBois

Thor and say, “Come on, Thor, let’s roll. The staff sergeant just told us to move!”
    I run down the steps of the battlement, Muller yelling after me.

An Excerpt From the Journal of Randall Knox

    Keeping a journal is against regs, because supposedly it violates OPSEC, Operational Security. Yeah, right, as if the Creepers are going to grab a hand-written diary off a dead sixteen-year-old and use it for intelligence. Not sure if they can read English handwriting; only know that they can detect high energy use—cars, ships, computers, power plants—and blast them all to pieces whenever they feel like it.
    Figure a journal like this will be useful once the war is done. If I live, maybe when I’m 25 or 35 or something like that. Books will be written, I’m sure, and the generals and the presidents who said they did all the thinking, fighting and dying, will write most of the books. This way, I can write a book from what it was like to be a grunt, BBQ bait, the ones slogging to kill the Creepers, face to face. Or face to arthropod.
    Journals are for stories, memories, or so my English teachers said. So here’s a memory. Was in the Boy Scouts, when I was eleven. New Hampshire scout troop, since Dad had dual state citizenship because of a vacation cottage up on Bow Lake. Doing salvage work in some of the homes near the Boston tsunami strike that got soaked but didn’t get crushed. My patrol was in a Marblehead neighborhood close to where I had grown up before the war. Times have changed since then, Boy Scouts now make sure scouts don’t go to their hometowns, but that rule wasn’t in place back then.
    Chore’s pretty simple. Break into an abandoned house, secure usable clothing, blankets, canned and bottled foods. Even if years have gone by after the stale dates on the food, it’s still edible, most cases. Mark the outside of the house with spray paint for pick-up crews to gather up the salvaged stuff. Go to another house. Sometimes you find remains, most often you didn’t. This far from Boston most people got out before the waves struck. A very few times you find survivors, folks who managed to hang on and didn’t want to leave their homes, even after five years of no power, gas or grocery stores.
    Anyway, was working one day, when our troop’s Senior Patrol Leader—a real dick named Calhoun—came running up to this ranch house I was working at, out of breath, big smile on his face. Hey, Knox, he said. Didn’t you say your older sister, her name was Melissa? I dropped the green plastic trash bag I was carrying. Yeah, I said, Melissa. Calhoun jerked a thumb behind him. Three houses down, real doll living there, said her name was Melissa.
    I ran out after Calhoun, legs pumping, lungs burning, got to a two-story Colonial with faded blue paint, door wide open, mind racing, thinking of Melissa, thinking about what I’d tell Dad, maybe she knew where Mom was, oh my God, and—
    Inside the house. Dark. No furniture. Rug rolled up. A fireplace and—
    On the mantelpiece, a doll, about two feet tall, sitting there, plastic smile, yellow hair, and a scrawled tag attached to her toe.
    MELISSA.
    Behind me I heard Calhoun and others laughing at me.
    Eventually it took three of the other Scouts to get me off Calhoun, but not after I nearly slit his throat with my Scout knife.
    Year later, when I was twelve, I left the Scouts and joined the New Hampshire National Guard.
    How’s that for a story?

CHAPTER EIGHT

    Thor and I race down the steep slope of the moat, across the swampy and thicket-filled bottom, and then clamber up the far side. Thor seems happy to be with me, and I know it’s stupid, running across an open field like this, but those screams . . . I can’t let it go.
    The brush and the grass whip against my shins and knees as I get closer to the flames. Three houses are now burning along, and the screaming has finally stopped. My booted feet hit pavement, and breathing hard, I advance up the road.
    That’s when