***
“I need a medic up here now!” Luis yelled, placing his hands over one of the men who had collapsed with a bullet to the gut. The warm ooze of fluids squished between his fingers as the medic dropped to his knees to take over for Luis.
Once the medic had the hands he needed, Luis picked his rifle back up and rejoined the men taking the farm camp. A stack of sentries were positioned at the front door and kept a steady stream of bullets aimed in their direction. The use of any heavy artillery had been prohibited to eliminate any collateral damage.
Three armored trucks and a tank surrounded the farm camp, but any attempt to step away from the protection of their armored escorts was met with fatality, and the field of bodies between the trucks and the farm camp had grown substantially.
Luis found the lieutenant in charge of the platoon. “We need to get the tank closer!”
“We’d be in grenade range, sir!”
“Then we’ll throw them back!”
The young lieutenant ordered his tank forward. Luis, along with twenty other soldiers, filed closely behind. The bullets ricocheted off the heavy armor. The concerto of war that was the rapid beat of metal on metal was a piece of music Luis had become familiar with. But what made this song so lethal was the crescendo, which revealed some new type of horror every time it was played.
The front entrance was only twenty yards away, and just as the lieutenant suspected, the first grenade landed three soldiers in front of Luis. While the rest of them scattered, Luis stepped on his horse and sprinted toward the grenade, palmed it on the run, then chucked it back to the farm camp’s entrance, where it detonated.
Any of the sentries who didn’t get wiped out in the blast retreated back into the farm camp. Luis turned around to the soldiers still in shock from his throw. “C’mon!”
Luis was the first man through, and the inside of the camp was completely pitch black. He lowered his night-vision goggles and turned them on.
The room morphed into a sea of green. The bodies of the dead and maimed sentries littered the ground, and Luis did his best to avoid losing his footing on the blood-soaked floor. The entrance was a short hallway, which opened up into the larger warehouse-like room where the bulk of the plants were grown and the majority of the farm workers would be.
The closer Luis moved to the opening of the hydroponic farm inside, the quieter it became. He could see the thin, frail bodies of the workers all hunched in a corner, shivering and silent. He stopped right before the entrance and signaled the men behind him to do the same. He looked around, searching for where the other sentries may have gone, but couldn’t see them.
Then, on the second level above them, a flash of light blinded Luis, and he ripped the goggles off his face as he felt a blast of heat overtake him. When he turned around, the inside of the warehouse was on fire, and the workers inside were scrambling to escape.
“Emma! Emma!” Luis called, sprinting into the blaze. Half the workers inside were paralyzed with fear, and the other half ran aimlessly through the building in a wild panic. Luis turned to the men following him and pointed to the surrounding chaos. “Grab as many of them as you can and get them out. Now!”
The team hurried to action, cutting through the flames and attempting to quell both the fires and the panic inside. Luis searched frantically for Emma, trying to distinguish her features from the flashes of faces rushing past him and the rising flames that consumed the building.
The farm camp was massive, with hundreds of workers attempting to flood out of whatever exits were close. Luis scanned the second floor of the building, trying to see if Emma was working there, but the smoke was becoming too thick.
“Help!”
Luis followed the cries, searching through the rising flames for the source. The long wooden tables holding the hydroponic tanks had tipped over, forming torched hurdles in his path. He took a few steps back, got a running start, and with the extra thirty pounds of gear on his back, he barely made it over the flames, rolling to his side on the other end.
One of the light fixtures broke loose from the wire holding it in place and crashed to the ground next to him, covering him in a mixture of embers and dirt. He patted the small fires out on his chest as the cries for help continued. Luis leapt to his feet, following the sound and dodging the flames devouring everything around him.
Then, down one of the aisles between a pair of tanks, Luis saw Emma with her shoulder under the arm of an elderly woman, dragging her forward in attempt to outrun the flames. Luis dashed down the aisle, catching both Emma and the woman as they collapsed. “Hang on, I’m gonna get you out of here.” Luis scooped up the old woman in his arms, and Emma held on to his shoulder for support as the walls of flames closed in on them.
The massive fire hurdles had multiplied tenfold, and Luis knew he wouldn’t be able to make the jump with the frail woman in his arms.
“We need another way out!” Luis said.
Both he and Emma hacked and coughed as the smoke grew thick in the air. The heat was sweltering, making it feel like Luis’s skin was slowly dripping off his bones.
“There!” Emma said, pointing to a side door.
“C’mon!” Luis said.
More tables and hanging light structures collapsed, weakened from the intense heat. Luis looked down at the old woman, now unconscious in his arms. He wasn’t sure she was even alive anymore. The door was blocked by one of the fallen tables, and Luis laid the woman down and rushed to clear the path.
Luis’s hands gripped the burnt, hot ends, which seared his flesh as he lifted the table and tossed it aside and into the encroaching flames. With his hands still red and blistering, he picked up the woman and shoulder-checked the door open as he tumbled outside into the fresh air and surrounding gunfire.
The soldiers had managed to push the sentries back, deeper into Topeka, but there were still a few lingering sentries. Luis stripped off his shirt and handed it to his sister to cover herself. He wrapped her in a hug and the two wheezed, both still lightheaded from the smoke inhalation.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” Luis said.
“Me either,” Emma replied.
Luis pushed her back slightly to get a good look at her. “Are you all right?”
“Todd. Where is he?”
“There’s a unit getting him out right now.”
Emma let out an exhale and then collapsed back into Luis’s arms. He looked over at the old woman, still lifeless on the ground. He let go of his sister and placed his fingers on the side of the woman’s neck. She still had a pulse and was breathing, just barely. He flagged down a medic and a transport and piled both the woman and Emma inside, taking them away from the front lines.
Luis rode in the back with Emma, keeping his arm around her and the rough blanket that was used to replace Luis’s shirt to cover her up. He looked out the back, his chin resting on top of Emma’s head as he watched the combined efforts of the marines, the army, and the navy as they pushed the sentries back. It wouldn’t be much longer until they occupied the city. But for Luis, the fight was done.