Blackshot Battalion
A mercenary fire crew tours the American Southwest in the early days of “Dissolution.”
"She's a real fuckin' scorcher!" the Aussie proclaimed to the crew arrayed about him. "Most danger I've felt in this season by a mile!
"Winds've shifted. Probably ought to start thinking of bailing then, yeah?" The Captain noticed himself raising his voice to be heard against a low, penetrating rumbling in the air. It was definitely getting louder.
He looked about him to make sure his crew had heard him. Some had, a few nodding and beginning to shift themselves, clearly seeing the wisdom of the captain's words and pulling themselves away from the hypnotic flames to their front. It wasn't an easy task, even for one as seasoned as Archie Cooper, and he tugged at the man in front of him as much to move himself as to get the crewman's attention. "This is turning into a proper fire now, mate!" He shouted over the intensifying roar. "This is turning into the Camp Fire all over again! We need to fuckin' boogie, mate!"
A call over the radio punctuated and affirmed the man's words. "Team 6. Team 6. Time to fall back." The radio chirped twice and buzzed, then popped back to life. "You need to evacuate, Team 6. Fire cloud indicating a full collapse. Plume domination event likely."
The chipper, matter-of-fact tone of the dispatcher did nothing to lessen the effect of the words. The other members of the crew stirred to full alertness once more as their minds attached the staticky warning to ideas from their training, and stories from their peers.
A plume-dominated fire, or a "coupled fire-atmosphere event" as Commander Rikes was undoubtedly calling it into a news camera at this very moment from basecamp, is among the worst nightmares of any wildland firefighter, perhaps akin to the fear of a backdraft for the structure fire crew, and a situation best avoided if possible.
A firestorm.
The winds, already heaving 45-mph gusts off the high desert below all morning, were picking up. The tall pines shuddered and swayed overhead. The drafting pillar of smoke, superheated by the blazing chaparral and lifted inconceivably high above, cooled and fell en masse upon the fire's perimeter in a great downdraft. In seconds it would be pulled back into the heart of the inferno, heating once more to temperatures that sent the air surging into the upper atmosphere once more.
It was a great convection engine beginning to chug to life, the leaping fire taking its first shuddering breaths as it created its own atmospheric currents to feed itself ever more oxygen. It pulled at the crew's clothes, a buffeting now which would soon turn to yanking as the fire burned hotter and demanded more and more and more. It would eventually become so greedy it would snap trees with its snatching winds, pulling all into itself in its infernal rapaciousness.
Then the crew was running, sprinting as fast as they could under the bulk of gear they carried. It was only seventy-five, maybe a hundred yards to the dozer-line cut across the ridgeline yesterday, and as one the crew surged upward toward it.
A young recruit named Corque began to lug his chainsaw up the hill, struggling to lift and balance the twenty-two pounds as he oriented himself around; a sound of clattering and a series of loud clunks punctuated his peers' footsteps and gave him pause. He looked about quickly.
"Leave that, kid. Just fucking run!" Charlie, an old Hot Shot from somewhere in New Mexico, bellowed as he passed. The grey-haired veteran threw down his own twenty-five-pound unit for emphasis, and it rumbled disconsolately for a moment before sputtering to a stop as the second landed atop it. Together, they scrambled up the crumbling slope.
The lashing wind was hot, full of cherry embers seeking the small bits of exposed skin on their faces and singing hair into tight, blonde coils. The roar behind them was evolving, reaching a thundering rage; foliage erupted, forged into atmospheric spires thousands of feet high. The day adopted a brown quality as the light of the sun high above found itself stymied by the blaze's plume, only a few rays having the strength to pierce the churning mass and guide the firefighters upward. The dreaded Black descended.
Corque found himself shoulder to shoulder with the team's leader, Cooper. He had arrived from the dimness somewhere, joining just as his newest member began to finger the chest-strap release of his backpack. The Aussie seemed to already know what Corque was thinking and placed a propelling hand on his shoulder to force him onward up the rise.
"Don't even think about it!" He shouted to be heard over the roar. "She's gone black!" The chief shoved from behind with renewed urgency. "You'd never get it out of the bag in time! Just run, mate!"
As a good leader should, he had anticipated the moment his greenest crew member would begin flagging in the retreat up the escape route, would start thinking maybe his best chance lay in the tight-packed fire shelter stowed in a side pocket of his large gear bag. The kid complied and picked up the pace mechanically along the flag-lined corridor that guided their way out of the inferno.
The world stretched before them, growing opaque before all became black.
The Blackshots recouped in a small bar somewhere outside Orinda, California. It had only been a few hours, but already the crew traded hyperbole like soldiers as they washed soot-stained lips with near-freezing beer. "Coldest Beer in the Universe!" a sign over the bar assured, and Corque could do little to argue as he squinted through the contractions of brain freeze, regretting the second greedy quaff of the piss-colored liquid. His eyes cleared as he strove to focus on movement to his right, a large shadow pushed through the stereotypical swinging doors of the Three Alarm Saloon.
"Lost some twenty grand in gear this afternoon," the shade grumbled, becoming first a shape, then a figure as he walked up to join the crew, "that's most of our contract." Appleford was glum and he wiped a dirty hand futilely on the chest of his black-turned-chalky uniform. The crew quartermaster's quick inventory of the trucks outside had confirmed his worst fears in regard to their beloved equipment.
"You weren't there," Charlie's deep voice reminded. "There was no way we could get all the gear out and still be here sipping beers. Anyone can—and has—told you that."
There were a great many nods across the whole group, though whether they were in agreement with the truth of the statement or simply seeking a path out of penalties for losing company equipment, Appleford couldn't be sure. He eyed them all speculatively but said nothing. He knew Charlie was right; he hadn't noticed the smoke completely enveloping the opposite slope until he turned from filling water canisters at #3 Tanker, hadn't heard the shouts rising to his rear.
He had been the first of the logistics team to see his crewmates fleeing over the slight rise shielding the trucks from the crest of the hill, appearing from roiling darkness as staggering, charred shapes of friends, collapsing in panting heaps in the shade of #2 Wagon. The last ones billowed with steam and smoke as they flew over the embankment, their nomex jackets flaking in the suddenly brisk air of the thick dozer-line. Despite himself, he knew that he had marked the lost equipment almost faster than he had noted the survival of the crew. That's why he had the job.
"We'll make do, Blackshots!" the Aussie chirped nearby from his newly anointed "Captain's Chair" at the end of the bar. "Insurance'll cover."
"Ain't no insurance gonna cover this. We weren't running video." Appleford frowned into the sudsy beer slushy in a frozen mug that had just slid before him. "Fire ran up too fast." He grumbled to nobody.
A silence fell for a moment as the crew looked to the drawn face of their leader. "We didn't unpack anything from State Gas & Electric?" he asked after a moment.
Appleford shook his head.
"Good." The man's accent had hardened, the oft-cheery uptick of his tone turning grimly to business at hand. "They'll cover losses incurred trying to dig their damnable line to the cell towers. I'll see to it." He slammed his drink in a singular draft and gasped a little as the ice on the top clung to the roof of his mouth. "I'll check on Sierra Union as well. Captain Swern is a smart old firie, I'm sure he got his crew out even faster than we did."
The mug in his hand was replaced with a satellite phone of apparently ancient origin. Once yellow, now only the odd edge peeking through the device's tattered soft leather case betrayed the vintage plastic's original color. He began poking at the blue-illuminated number pad as he shoved the heavy doors aside and marched into the scorching afternoon.
His crew watched him go solemnly. After a moment, some returned to their well-earned beers while others—seizing the opportunity presented by an otherwise occupied bossman—began to chat up some obviously interested locals who had been eyeballing the bedraggled troop since the first round. Time felt about right to unwind and by anyone's account, they had earned it.
The contract to dig emergency telecom lines through the "Oakland Hills 2 Fire" was up at midnight, thank God, and in a few hours their beloved, if foreign, captain would be back to haul them into the trucks for another few thousand miles. The Blackshots had no time to waste.
As a government-recognized Mercenary Fire Battalion, they were eligible for some of the most lucrative fire management contracts around, and competition was fierce. Cooper was sure to already have a job somewhere in the newfound Western Tenantry—and they were likely to already be running nigh-late as well.
"Maybe somewhere up North? The PNW?" An Atlanta greenhorn named Sara asked the group of mostly old-timers huddled around a tall, round table. She was young, with all the eagerness of facing death without regard for life still burning bright in her eyes. Corque looked to see if the near-death-by-flashover had dimmed that spark at all. Whether from her char-covered face or not, he suspected it hadn't even a bit. She was itching for the next gig.
"Nah," Appleford mumbled, "that's Army territory up there. Don't reckon the cap will be interested in renting us out to them."
"Good money."
"Aye, the cream of the government teat these days. But he won't be interested in putting us on the line like that. Not for any amount."
Charlie, nodding, took his opportunity to weigh in. "Those are war fires up there, like those burning out the Upper Great Plains. They're started with the intent of causing damage, intended to interface with cities and towns. You've never been in a situation like that before, none of you little fries."
Now all the veterans were nodding and exchanging knowing looks; a few firefighters from another company who had parked themselves nearby began to listen in.
"Those are resistance fires, set by-“
“Bullshit!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the dinginess.
Charlie looked to find the voice’s provenance, but nobody seemed willing to physically punctuate their contradiction. He turned back to Corque, the young man looked at him, concern and uncertainty wrought across his grubby face.
He continued, his tone hushed even as his peers huddled protectively around their most loudmouthed veteran. “Those are militia fires, resistance activity meant to burn out towns and bases. You don’t want any part of that. Trust me.
There were nods from those intently listening nearby. A few frowned, leaning away to whisper something to a neighbor.
“Now, I don’t know what kind of shit your shovelin’ over here, talking about terrorists like they’re heroes." A blonde man wearing a uniform designating him as coming from the local firehouse interjected sloppily from beyond the tight circle. The apparent source of the first interjection, he stepped confidently, if unsteadily, forward.
“Heard they're shooting at firefighters up there, anyone trying to protect anything. Washington sending in Chinese and Russian mercs, kidnapping kids."
Charlie spat. "Nonsense." Beside him, Appleford stiffened. "Those are Americans, through and through. Fighting for their land, first from the British and American imperials, then this new Western Tenantry branching out of the Rockies."
His tone struck the wrong chord—or perhaps the right one based on a slim smile creeping across his thin lips—and the local inflated to his full height as he approached the table in two long strides.
"I was there when we toppled that false government in Sacramento." The local opened as he pushed into the table. "This here is my nation, and you are welcome to take your sorry ass back east if you don't like it."
Corque looked about quickly, shocked at the exponential collapse in the conversation, the ongoing absence of anyone willing to cool it down.
"Nation?" the old firefighter rose to his full height. "And what do you know about nations?"
"Listen here, Chief—"
"Chief?" Charlie was about to lunge.
Appleford positioned himself strategically beside his old friend. "The fu—" His hand strayed to something hard and heavy on the bar top beside him, he didn’t care what it was and wasn’t going to spare a moment to look.
"THIRTEEN DEAD!" The Aussie captain's shout cut through the pending disaster as if smoke. "Sierra Union lost thirteen today. Swern included. They're already calling it the Alhambra Flashover." Shock crushed the room under silent weight. "Lost two wagons," his fingers snapped resonantly, "they're still trying to get back to them now."
"Thirteen?" Sara's face had gone slack. "How is that possible?"
"Jumped the line a kilometer north of us first, flashed them just as we got orders to boogie. Got lucky with our winds, I guess." He added after a moment. "Right side of the canyon."
A ponderous moment settled before an anonymous voice in the suddenly very crowded bar called, "Sierra Union!"
"UNION!"
They drank.
Several hours and a couple hundred miles east, the crew had finally begun to move past the morose silence that had descended after the first bout of survivor's jokes and forced nonchalance had faded away to the low rumbling hum of the road racing away under their tires. The night had taken a dark tone after the announcement and drinks had flown too freely; tongues loosened into speculation as other crews in the region trickled in to add to the story.
Rumors swirled that the blaze had already overrun the unit before dispatch issued the evacuation order to the wider sector. Allegedly, a fire crew working out of a detention center somewhere in the south had had their radios tuned to the wrong station—an effort to prevent suicidal orders coming from the company who had rented them from the State—and had heard Captain Swern requesting evacuation two minutes before his crew got overrun. Sierra Union had been told what the prison crew had foreseen would be their lot: hold the line.
"Man, fuck California." A husky man with a thick mustache turned over from his role as navigator in the front of #2 Wagon to get face to face with Corque. "You know what I'm saying, man?" He turned briefly to check his phone where it was charging on the dashboard then returned his attention to the young recruit. "Never once have I worked a fire in this shithole state without someone dying on-line. Hope we get a chance to work a few fires in the South. Home country, easy work."
He paused for a moment and reached into an ice box stowed securely behind the driver's seat, retrieving himself a funny-shaped bottle with a big yellow label. "Yoo-Hoo!" he proclaimed proudly, holding the vessel of what appeared to be chocolate-water into the air for all to see. "Great warm—mind you—but when the days are this hot, ice cold is never a bad shout."
Turning the bottle over a few times to mix in the brown sludge settled at the bottom before twisting the top off—plastic seal and all—in one smooth motion, he took a deep swig. "Kinda acidic in the throat a bit after it gets a good day's sun warmth into it." He smiled and offered the remaining half-bottle to Corque who shook his head at once. Shrugging, the navigator turned back in his seat. "You'll see!"
Chief Navigator H.L. Tully may not have been the only mustachioed man in the Company, but he was the only one from Oklahoma. With that, he claimed, came a devotion to two things in particular: the aforementioned Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink, and a #1 combo with tots and cherry limeade from a place called Sonic that had—apparently—been founded in his hometown of Shawnee. The burger drive-up had gone under some years before, but rumors that a few locations had taken on self-management fueled a quest to find one that had taken on an almost fanatical overtone as of late.
He had cut his teeth in the Anderson Creek Fire and often told stories of the great race across the Kansas border, of the wonder of five hundred dead cattle and calves pressed against unyielding fences while the nearby buffalo were more-or-less unharmed by the charging prairie fire. The Northwest Complex Fire the next season, and the Rhea Fire the one after, all but guaranteed his acceptance when he applied to go professional and join a BIA wildland team out of Muskogee. He was fire-mad, a lifer.
"Where we headed?" Corque inquired mutely after a third governmental roadblock just outside of California City, "back to HQ?"
H.L. turned back once more. "HQ? No." He pondered for a bit as if he didn't already have the orders programmed into his little tablet. "No, we're headed into the desert. Barstow and beyond!" The man turned to Charlie who until now had been morosely staring out the window at the rolling, dry hills punctuated by the vast agricultural batteries, greenhouses, and food warehouses. "We're headed to my people's homeland, the beating heart of the desert Southwest of Old America. Brother, we're going to New Mexico!"
Since the tech-corporate integration in an event known as the "Consolidation," anywhere in the decayed systems of the great banking sector the C-Suite oligarchy could sink their ruthless claws had been consumed by the large corporate cartels. It was the grand overthrow of the Old Money families, giving rise to the new aristocracy of the Western Tenantry and the total revocation of the United States' regulation regime west of the Rocky Mountains. Ultimately, even the unity of the nation once so gratuitously called "United"—insofar as it ever truly existed at all—was torn away by the rising technofeudalists.
Orollo, petro-pharmaceutical behemoth out of Houston, had taken the opportunity to hostilely acquire nearly all the farmland in the San Joaquin Valley of California; the Blackshots watched as the vast company towns passed endlessly alongside them. Every once in a while, they would arrive at a checkpoint marking the boundary of some town who had yet to succumb to the squeezing of the great corporation.
The guards who searched under their trucks with flashlights, mirrors, and dogs laughed as the navigator leaned out of the window to inquire about the delay. "We're looking for debtors. Making sure none have worked their way into a wheel well or over an exhaust pipe."
They wore the deep, proprietary shade of Orollo Blue and always kept one hand on their pistol as they eyeballed the lumbering white-and-black trucks full of impatient firefighters. For a moment Corque was sure they were going to try and search the ambulance, the meticulously packed HAZMAT trailer it towed, but an officer of some description came out just as medics Johnson and Delaney were being ordered from the high truck. They were ushered through with not a few disgruntled guards watching them go.
The towns were starving in every way as the convoy crept through abandoned main streets and tumbledown parks. These places had chosen to resist the velvet glove of the corporations and now they suffered in its smothering fist, losing access to the great corridors of commerce as all goods flowed through the arbitrary filter that was Orollo security.
"It's a siege," Charlie explained, "those who don't sell immediately, they will eventually. Lose everything in the process."
Things become introspective in the quiet of twilight. For some reason, this is when the old Hot Shot liked to talk to Corque, with Tully doing the night shift behind the wheel and Cap nestled sleepily on the rear bench seat. The greenhorn didn't mind; Charlie was the kind of guy you listened to when he took the time to speak to you personally. It meant it was something you probably needed to hear.
"You probably don't remember it, kid. Shit, I don't know that Ol' H.L. here remembers the time before this felt normal." A mustache twitch from the driver's seat was the only response and the seasoned fireman continued. "When I was young, we didn't have the Tenantry; no political party so under the sway of businesses as the slate of executives and lobbyists run by that camp."
"Hell, brother." Tully turned slightly to address his old friend in the navigator's seat. "They've always been that party. Both of 'em."
Charlie nodded in agreement. "But they always had the façade of... something else. Something popular about them." He turned his attention back to the young Southerner's lesson. "This wasn't the case here in California—or Texas after. The Tenantry-backed Western Prosperity Party wiped the slate in elections across southern and northern California in only four years, then... Sacramento."
A natural, if hard, brake gripped the conversation at the naming of the former capital of California. Minds returning to the night before once again.
"That local douche said he was at Sacramento." Corque offered after a moment. "What happened there?"
H.L. Tully looked sharply at the young recruit in his mirror, shock clear across his face. "You serious? You seriously don't know?"
Corque shook his head uncertainly. "I'm from the South, Louisiana. Moved here with my family in the early days, when the borders were still open to migrants.
"I mean," he corrected himself, "I remember Sacramento, but I was just a kid at the time. Only really know what they taught us in school afterwards..." He faltered as he looked at Charlie. The old man's face was confused, maybe even concerned at the young man's words.
"What did they tell you in school?"
"The usual? You know, the terrorist attacks on schools and office buildings... the derailing of that high-speed train into the city. The riots and the burning of the State Capitol building.
"I remember they compared it to the War of 1812, said the government of the old America had been beaten for good this time."
"Who burned the Capitol? Did they teach you that?"
"The anarchists?" Corque felt himself walking into something, he just didn't know what it was exactly. His voice took on a more uncertain tone. "I mean, they burned it down to try and stop an election, right? Killed all those people?"
Silence
Corque faltered. "The... Martyrs. Y’know? That's what May 1st is about, right? Martyrdom Day?"
A whistle issued through the mustache behind the wheel.
"That's IWW Day, mate." Cooper's sleep-slurred voice crept from the rear of the long cab. "Labor Day."
"IWW?"
"Industrial Workers of the World." Charlie informed matter-of-factly.
"What?"
"A workers union."
Corque let that sit for a moment. "Those were outlawed. Anarchists."
"Indeed, they were." H.L. Tully remarked. "Time is a flat circle, brother." He couldn't see the confusion on the face to his rear and he ignored it. "Hand me a Yoo-Hoo." His questing hand poked back between the seat and center console for emphasis.
Corque obliged him, shaking the water droplets from the bottle and mixing the sludgy bottom before placing it in the man's grasp. It disappeared and a moment later the distinctive pop of the seal emitted from ahead.
"Unions were responsible for the riots. That's why they're called the Union Riots."
Charlie shook his head, then shrugged. "The unions were there, that's true. It wasn't them who started the riots, though."
Always cryptic, the young member thought. "Who did then?"
"The police, then the National Guard."
"Then the Marines." H.L. added.
"That doesn't make sense." Corque was sure. "The soldiers only fired in self-defense. The unionists threw bombs at them."
"That's not how it went, Corque." Charlie was grim.
"He's right, kid. We were both there in the aftermath, you know."
Corque hadn't known and his eyes skittered between driver and navigator. He said nothing.
"We were." Charlie nodded again. "We had our own union too, once."
"So what happened, then? What actually happened?"
"They massacred a bunch of students. Corralled them in an encampment and opened fire when they tried to push out."
"The South Green Slaughter," Tully informed in answer to a question he felt forming from the back. "If you ever find a place that'll let you, look it up sometime."
"That's enough of that, boys." Cooper had awoken fully and was now staring intently between Charlie and Tully. Corque felt suddenly very small and invisible, his innocent education suddenly painted as something else entirely. "Stow that, right now." He pointed to the blinking light on the radio. "Right. Now."
Thanks so much for taking some time to read this short from my WIP anthology! If you found it enjoyable and can spare a few bucks, a tip would be greatly appreciated. Your support plays a crucial role in making it possible for me to continue working on projects like this. It truly means a lot!
