Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

lowered Mazer onto the stretcher. Then he moved the pulleys up the crossbeam toward Mazer’s head and lifted the front end of the travois high enough to tie it to a harness he had made for the water buffalo. The hardest part proved to be getting the water buffalo to stay still long enough for Bingwen to do the lashings. Finally, though, everything was set.
    Bingwen gathered all the supplies from the med kit, including the small, flat digital device that Mazer had used to scan Bingwen’s broken arm. Bingwen examined it, brushing off the mud and grime from the screen. There was a crack across the glass, but the device turned on at Bingwen’s touch. The home screen was bright and colorful and gave him a variety of options: SURFACE TISSUE SCAN, ULTRASOUND, BLOOD EXAM, SURGERY TUTORIALS, PHARMACY . Bingwen put it in his saddle pouch then did a final scan of the wreckage for more supplies. He didn’t see anything else worth taking until he spotted the combat vest the female soldier was wearing. It held several cartridges of ammunition like the one currently snapped into the rifle.
    Ammunition they could use. Without it the rifle would be useless. But retrieving the cartridges wouldn’t be easy; Bingwen would have to turn the woman more onto her side in order to undo the straps that held the cartridges. And that meant touching a dead person. The idea made Bingwen sick to his stomach; he couldn’t bear to look at the woman, much less touch her.
    He was being ridiculous, he told himself. Selfish even. They were dead without a weapon, dead without ammunition.
    He ran to the woman, his eyes half shut, his lips pressed together tight, and pushed the woman’s shoulder to rotate her body. She was stiff and bloody and didn’t roll easily with her arm bent back behind her. But Bingwen dug in his heels, and finally the woman’s torso moved enough for him to reach in and pull the cartridges free. They clattered to the ground in front of him, and Bingwen scrambled back a heartbeat later, scurrying away on all fours and hating himself for being such a coward.
    His eyes were wet with tears, he realized, and he wiped at them quickly. He got to his feet, collected the cartridges, and dropped them into the tool pouch. Next he tied a rope around Mazer’s chest, securing him to the stretcher; then, after one final look back at the wreckage, he took the lead rope and pulled hard. The water buffalo moaned in opposition and resisted, but after another hard jerk from Bingwen, the animal followed.
    Bingwen had heard aircraft all day, most of it far away, but now the skies were quiet. It was dusk, and he figured he wouldn’t reach the farmhouse until well after dark.
    They arrived at the valley of corpses and found that the aliens had killed all the remaining crops. Without any healthy grass to walk on, Bingwen cut north, looking for another place to cut back toward the mountain. He found one a kilometer later, another wide field of crop without much standing water.
    There were more bodies here: people and animals. A family of pigs. Three water buffalo. A group of children.
    And Mother and Father.
    Bingwen saw them from fifty meters away and stopped dead. They were lying facedown in the mud, Father’s arm draped across Mother’s shoulder, as if comforting her.
    Bingwen didn’t move. He couldn’t see their faces, but that was Mother’s shirt and Mother’s back and Mother’s shape. And that was Father’s clothes. And Father’s boots and Father’s hair. And the glint of sunlight was off Father’s watch on his left wrist where he wore it.
    Bingwen felt as if his body were made of air. His eyes couldn’t focus. His knees felt flimsy and unstable. He stood there, staring at them, him upright and alive and breathing and them not. Their hearts weren’t beating, their lungs weren’t taking in air, their mouths weren’t moving, telling him how much they loved him and that they would protect him and that he would be safe with them. Their arms weren’t wrapping around him and pulling him close to their chests. Their bodies weren’t doing anything except lying there in the mud and misted grass.
    Bingwen stood there for a long time, how long he did not know. An hour perhaps, maybe double that. The water buffalo mooed and pawed at the ground, impatient. Bingwen ignored it. He ignored everything. If aliens were coming, he wouldn’t run from them.
    He breathed in and out. No tears came. No wails. No cries of anguish. Everything was