Free Watching Over Us by Will McIntosh Page B

so the starfish can pull it out of her head?”
    Laurel smiled wanly. Diamond’s logic was airtight. The only people who knew what was going on were miles underground, plotting hopeless strategies and doling them out a scrap at a time. Not that it had helped much against an enemy that always knew how many troops were headed their way, what weapons they were carrying, and, when it mattered, which way they were pointing those weapons.
    Before she could cut off the thought, she was assaulted by an image of her daughter, Julie, clutching a rifle, perched on her toes, trembling furiously, her hair smoking.
    Laurel squeezed her eyes shut, tried to banish the image. It was usually Julie she thought of, because she’d watched Julie die. Mark, Paul, their grandkids had all died far away. Sometimes she could delude herself into thinking they’d died quickly. Not Julie, though.
    A dozen yards ahead, Lieutenant Carter blew her whistle. “Early camp today. Rest well.” Her red-rimmed eyes flicked from one recruit to the next, assessing the impact of her words, or perhaps trying to burn the significance of those words into these children.
    Tomorrow, you will probably die. And so will I , she was saying.
    Dinner was a treat: MREs, your choice as long as they lasted. Laurel picked corned beef and cabbage with mashed potatoes, and sat with her kids. The other two adults of legal age in their platoon—Pete Casing, an auto mechanic in his sixties, and Rob O’Neill, a retired advertising exec who had to be five years older than Laurel—ate with their own group of adopted comrade-children. They’d fallen into the arrangement without ever discussing it. It just made sense.
    The evening sunlight shimmered off the water. Laurel appreciated reflected sunlight more than she had before the invasion. Anything that was the same as it had been before the Luyten dropped out of the sky, twisting and spinning like huge starfish, was precious.
    â€œI’m gonna go swimming,” Jared said, licking the last of the vanilla pudding from its plastic container.
    â€œNo, you are not,” Diamond said. “The water’s probably polluted. Plus it’s too cold out.”
    Sergio hopped up, ran down to the weed-choked shoreline, and dipped his hand in the shallow water. “It’s warm.”
    Jared and Sergio looked at each other, grinning uncertainly.
    â€œShould we?” Jared asked Sergio.
    â€œI will if you will.”
    Jared pulled his shirt over his head, exposing rows of ribs. He tossed it on the ground a few feet from the gently lapping waves as Sergio ran to join him, pulling off his uniform until both were in nothing but white underpants, wading in on their skinny stork legs, hugging themselves in the chill air.
    Laurel expected Lieutenant Carter to shout the idea down, but she only eyed them from under the bill of her cap, eating fruit salad from a can with a white plastic spoon.
    Shrieking, the two boys splashed into the water. It was three feet deep at most; they dunked themselves to the neck.
    There had come a day, maybe ten years earlier—six years before the Luyten invaded—when it had suddenly occurred to Laurel that she likely had more fingers and toes than birthdays left. Less than twenty Christmases left. Less than twenty summers. The time ahead had once seemed all but infinite, then suddenly it was all too finite. Today, she could count the days ahead on one hand.
    Laurel stood, unbuttoned the top button on her uniform blouse.
    â€œWhat are you doing ?” Diamond asked, her nose scrunched in disgust.
    â€œI’m going swimming.” For the very last time .
    The kids stared at her loose, wrinkled skin. She’d been pretty once—not cheerleader-pretty like Diamond, but not bad. Now she was all saggy skin and age spots. Today, she didn’t care.
    Sergio had been full of shit; the water was freezing. It felt good, though—it made her aware that she was