Dawn of the Void -
Chapter 91: Crisis
They loaded Joanna’s body onto the Chinook and flew back to Fort Hamilton. People were giving commands, there was plenty of activity, but James felt like the hollow center of the storm, the quiet eye of the hurricane that spun up around them as they were returned back to New York.
An overwhelming urge to grab a bottle of whiskey and drain it dry had him by the throat. To just stop thinking, planning, and being responsible for people and cities and this whole fucking apocalypse. To check-out, for a day, for a week, forever.
To be done with it.
But he couldn’t.
Too much damned Arete.
Even as he sat in the Chinook, strapped in and staring blankly down at his hands, his thoughts slowly pulled together from the chaos. It was natural to feel guilt, to feel self-destructive, to want to put down his burdens. He was only human. He’d made mistakes. Big mistakes.
He studied his palms in the harsh lighting of the overhead red bulb within its wire cage. He’d led his crew into the hive without much thought. Had been consumed by grief and horror over the millions that had just died, had been buoyed up by his Bronze aura and lulled into a sense of fatalistic complacency by his nihilistic despair.
He’d been a shit leader. He’d simply walked into that deathtrap without thinking things through, with no plan, with nothing but an overwhelming desire to bring death to the demons and a false sense of invulnerability.
Now Joanna lay cooling in the black body bag at the end of the chopper.
It took more willpower than he thought himself capable of mustering. It felt like pulling himself out of sucking mud to just raise his head, the weight incredible, the guilt punishing.
But he had to do it.
Slowly, with enormous effort, he raised his head and looked about the crew.
Everyone was shell shocked. Serenity was watching him, displacing her own pain through concern for him. Olaf was raw with grief, his eyes glassy, his face openly showing his loss. Denzel, Yadriel, and Jason were all trying to bottle up their anger and pain, while Kimmie looked helpless, unsure of herself, tormented by indecision. Kerim was the most poised of them all, his features composed, his brow furrowed, his arms crossed.
“I’m sorry.” The words were lost in the background noise of the rotors, so he tried again. Louder. “I’m sorry.”
People looked his way. They frowned, some went to protest, but he carried on.
“Joanna’s death is on me. You followed me into that hellhole, and I didn’t think things through. Then when things went to shit, it took me too long to order the retreat.” He spoke loudly, evenly, with great deliberation. “I was overconfident and… I don’t know. Overwhelmed by what had happened with the Third Wave. The sheer scale of the deaths. I think on some level I was trying to kill myself, maybe, or punish myself by entering the most dangerous place I could find. I let you all down, and I’ll never be able to apologize to Joanna for it.”
Kerim straightened. “You must temper your words with the fact that your Bronze aura seemed the perfect weapon. We all made the same assumption that you were invulnerable, including Joanna. We had hours in which to question your plan leading up to the attack, and none of us did. This is not completely your burden to shoulder.”
“But I’m the leader of this crew.” James held Kerim’s dark gaze. “So it is my responsibility. I let my gloria and Animus and Heavenly Assaults and Bronze aura get to my head. I thought we could march in there and just law waste to those demons. I should have gone in first by myself. I should have called for the retreat far sooner.”
Jason rubbed his jaw. “Hindsight is 20/20, sir. Don’t be too harsh on yourself. Kerim’s right. We went in as a team. None of us here are children. We were just doing our best.”
“I appreciate your words.” James considered them, the comfort they offered, then set them aside. “But they don’t change the facts. If we’re going to survive this - all of this, with whatever’s coming - we have to do better. I have to do better.”
“You’re just a man,” said Serenity, almost too quietly to be heard. “You’re not a machine, James. You’re doing your best.”
“My best needs to be better.” It was not bravado, nor was it self-recrimination. It was a simple fact. “The country looks to New York, and New York looks to Blue Light. Blue Light looks to Crimson Hydra, and you all look to me. I lost the right to fuck up like a regular jackhole when I chose to help run this show. So again, I hear what you’re saying, and I thank you for it, but I’m simply going to need to do better or we’re not going to survive what’s coming.”
The Crimson Hydra crew exchanged glances.
Kimmie hesitated then leaned forward. “I think it’s fair to say we all admire you, James, and none of us envies what you’ve got to handle. We… I mean, Joanna’s death…” She trailed off, tried again. “This is a war. We all know what we’re risking out here. I don’t think… I hope none of you think me presumptuous, but I don’t think Joanna would regret her actions if she were still here.”
“No,” said Olaf, voice raw. “She was brave. Strong. Quiet. A beautiful soul. She knew what we did was dangerous. She would do it again.”
“Right?” Kimmie looked around the group. “You all agree with me?”
Nods, some more hesitant than others, but everybody agreed.
“Then…” She took a deep breath. “Know that we don’t blame you, James. We’ve all gotta do better, and we will.”
Her words hit him like a fist to the chest. His throat closed up and his eyes watered. He saw in his mind’s eye Joanna’s ruined head, so ghastly, so… unreal… and felt bands of iron tighten around his chest.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and though he knew the words were lost in the muted roar, he also knew the others had felt his gratitude. He wanted to push this aside, to move on, but Kimmie’s power, her Inspired words, hit him hard and deep and he realized he’d been in the process of building a wall around himself, cutting himself off from the others. Isolating himself as their leader and taking on all the responsibility for what was to come.
He gasped, a broken laugh. Even now, with his attempts to come clean, he’d been subtly tricking himself, his guilt trying to find a new way to punish himself.
But Arete 100 and Kimmie’s words stopped him from doing so.
Some of the tension left his shoulders.
“I don’t know what it’s like in a regular war,” he said to Jason, “but I’m guessing one of the hardest parts is not having time to process shit, to grieve. The Fourth Wave is coming tomorrow, and we need to be ready. Much as my soul cries out to give Joanna a proper burial, we just don’t have the time. So when we return to Brooklyn, we’re going to report what we learned to Hackworth and Star Boy, then we’re going to get ready for what’s to come. Because one thing’s become clear. We need to stop as many Nem3’s from entering the black fire hives as we can.”
Again, nods all round.
“So.” He inhaled deeply. “Enough of my jabbering at you. Thanks for staying with me. When we get back, you can all rest up. I’ll handle the after-action report with command.”
More nods.
“We’re with you, James,” said Denzel. “No doubt.”
“Yeah,” said Yadriel. “And hell, we done learned a lot about what’s going on in those hives, right? That’s valuable intel.”
“For sure,” agreed Denzel. “Now we know we need to nuke those fuckers from orbit.”
Jason laughed quietly, shaking his head.
“Hang in there,” Kimmie said. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
And as cheesy as the expression was, the power behind her Benediction gave James comfort. More of the guilt and horror left him. He met Serenity’s gaze. In her eyes he saw compassion, concern, and unflinching support. He drew strength from her unwavering friendship and settled back to wait out the rest of the ride.
* * *
“We’ve got a problem,” said Star Boy as James strode through the ballroom to the ASOCC corner. “A real big one.”
James frowned. “You’re referring to what happened to us in Philly?”
“No man, but you got my condolences, for real.” Star Boy checked himself. “Seriously. That sounded bad, and I want to hear all about it, but - look, just come check this out.”
James put aside his irritation over Star Boy’s casually dismissing Joanna’s death, his team’s pain, all of it, and followed Star Boy to one of the computer terminals.
“What am I looking at?”
“It’s been building all evening. There’s been a huge backlash to yesterday’s #dontlook hashtag. Social media’s… I mean, it’s a burning wasteland of horror and people screaming at each other, but there’s one thing they’re all agreeing on.”
He opened a video feed from what looked to be a helicopter. It showed an aerial view of a highway that was backed up, bumper to bumper, on one side. The other was empty.
“That’s the 95 south heading to the Lincoln Tunnel.”
Another video feed, this one from a stationary traffic cam. “Here’s the approach to the Holland Tunnel. Just as backed up.”
Another camera. “The Goethals’s Bridge into Staten.” Another. “The George Washington Bridge.” Another “Mario Cuomo Bridge, way up north. And the highways coming south through the Bronx. They’re all packed.”
James ran his hand over his head. “What are you saying? Everyone’s coming to New York?”
“From Hartford, from New Haven, from Trenton, Philly, Scranton, fuckin’ Albany.” Star Boy looked up at him, face pale, freckles stark against his skin. “They’re all coming here, man. They all want Blue Light protection.”
James grabbed a chair and fell into it. “How many people we talking?”
“I mean, I don’t know, the highways are all jammed up, Manhattan is a fucking gridlock nightmare. We got folks flooding into Staten, we got millions leaving Long Island trying to get into Queens and Brooklyn. We had, what, four or five million left in the city proper after all the deaths? We’ll easily double that the way things are going. Maybe more, man. I mean, fuck, the NYC metropolitan area has almost eighteen million people in it. After what happened today with the massacre, everybody wants in on here, they want protection, and New York’s one of the few places that looks like it’s got its shit together.”
“Fuck,” said James. “Can we… I don’t know, close the bridges?”
“Do we even want to?” Star Boy slowly shook his head, changing from one video feed to another. “Jersey’s a warzone right now, people fighting to get through. We’re talking millions in the street, man, it looks like one huge fucking concert all the way from Bayonne to Fort Lee. If we don’t let them in, the Fourth Wave’ll happen right there and there’ll be nobody to help ‘em.”
“We can’t… I mean, Blue Light can’t fight off… what’s the estimate for Nem3’s?”
Star Boy shook his head, overwhelmed, then opened the calculator program. “Fuck, say, I don’t know, ten million people coming. Say half of them are Fourth Wave. Five million. Divide that by a 100, as nobody’s going to have any trouble finding each other. That’s 50,000 Nem3’s tomorrow.”
They both sat in silence.
“And don’t get me wrong. There’s like 7 million people in Long Island alone. It could be double that. 100,000 of Nem3’s. I mean, who fucking knows.”
“What do we do?” asked James, eyes wide as he watched people shoving and struggling with the National Guard trying to bring order to a crazed intersection. “I can walk through ‘em all with Bronze aura, but… the number dead…”
Star Boy dropped his hands into his lap. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
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