Red Zone Soldier

[JINJUP6RICHARDS]

 

OPENING SCENE - Introduces the setting, tone, antagonistic forces, and highlights key themes.

If Solomon absolutely had to jump out of a plane, 0100 hours was not the time he would have chosen for it. Actually, scratch that, never was the time he’d actually pick, but since the Westsylvania Zone militia liked to hand out wall-to-wall counseling like a candy dispenser drone on Halloween, Solomon had little choice in the matter. Taking a deep breath, he climbed out of the cattle truck with the other dozen drafted teenagers, and began to help unload the parachute gear onto the departure airfield.

One of the plastic crates resisted his attempts to open it. He managed to pry the lid loose to count only three pairs of night-vision goggles nestled inside. Immediately he tossed one to Hyeon-Ju. His friend had weak nighttime vision, which made him a terrible candidate for combat jump training, but if optimum allocation of resources was the goal of any red zone militia, well, Solomon had yet to see it.

Speaking of seeing things – or not – Solomon squinted into the moonless night, his eyes straining to make out the vague outline of the aircraft on the runway. It loomed like a shadow against the dark backdrop of rolling hills behind it, its shape revealed only by the dim, flickering lights at the edge of the airstrip. Imminent now was their ascent into the pitch-black sky. There, at twenty-thousand feet, Solomon would make his first high-altitude jump.

Still gazing into the night, he turned his back to the cattle truck before stretching out his hands. He didn’t especially want anyone knowing his palms were already clammy. It wasn’t just because he was about to fling his body into basically the stratosphere, though, it was because of what a failed jump would mean. The memory of Adah’s tearful goodbye still haunted him, even a year and a half into his conscription. Promise you’ll come back!

His shoulders tightened. Forcing his thoughts away from his younger sister, he reached for his harness container. The last thing he needed right now was to be punished for moving too slowly.

But Wilson was already stomping across the dirt field. The lieutenant’s blue-green eyes jumped out at Solomon as the man held up his backlit AI tablet. “You can stare at the sky when you’re in it. Drop and give me twenty,” he barked, his voice cutting through the night air. 

Solomon wasn’t stupid enough to argue. He’d been trained sufficiently to know the only response was to hit the ground. Besides, with Wilson you didn’t get racial slurs, at least. Instead, as soon as Solomon got into position, he felt a weight begin crushing his fingers. It was a boot, Wilson’s boot, stepping with full force onto Solomon’s right hand as he pushed up and down against the hard-packed earth.

Twenty push-ups was nothing. Even the pain shooting up his arm Solomon could ignore. But the tightness in his chest was making it hard to breathe. He closed his eyes, fighting his sense of powerlessness. Now was not the time to feel anything, anything at all. He had to focus on getting ready for his jump. In a few minutes he’d be seated inside that plane, masked with oxygen, and rising through the clouds. The cargo door would open, like a mouth waiting to swallow him. And he would have to leap through it. Into the night sky, into a belly full of stars and soldiers hurtling a hundred miles per hour with nothing between them and the vast expanse.   

***

Umma had been out getting groceries at Seoul Mart when Solomon called to tell her Dad still wasn’t home from work. “Don’t be afraid,” was the last thing she’d said to him, her voice distorted by a bad signal. “I’ll find him. If I’m not back by dinnertime, you and Adah make some kimchi fried rice. Be a good Oppa, okay, Solo?”

Solomon was Adah’s older brother by four years. For seven months he’d tried to be a good Oppa by making sure she was eating, paying every bill, reassuring her they’d be okay. He hadn’t stopped calling Dad’s office downtown until after the HR lady snapped at him that his father’s absence was his problem, not theirs. “Quit harassing us. I can’t keep track of every disappeared employee.” And when he’d found Adah curled up under layers of blankets, her forehead hot to the touch, he’d made it his job to figure out how much seaweed to soak for the soup their mother used to boil for them whenever they got sick. Sure, the red zone insisted cooking was for women, but Adah was only thirteen, and she was the one throwing up. Solomon wasn’t going to let her go hungry no matter what he was told. 

“I have to figure out how to put the house in my name, but I don’t think I’m allowed to do that until I’m eighteen,” he said as he placed the tray on the two-drawer nightstand next to her bed. One bowl of miyeokguk with not enough cubed chicken breast in it, thanks to the militias getting the first cut of everything that made it through the zone borders. He glanced through Adah’s bedroom window at the cold, gray street outside. A bright red mail drone flew by, its rotors buzzing. “Careful, it’s hot.”

Adah’s face fell. Her halfro was pulled up into a single puff. She reached out to tug it loose, which didn’t surprise Solomon as her hair easily got knotted around the band. But he didn’t think that was what was upsetting her. Her gaze, fixed on something far beyond the room, told him she was grappling with the implication of his words, his unspoken conclusion.

“I haven’t given up on finding them,” Solomon said quickly even as his stomach sank. He wished he hadn’t brought up the house deed. It’d been a relentless weight on his mind, but even so, the last thing he wanted to do was stress Adah out, especially while she was recovering. “FaceSeek didn’t turn up anything, but I’ve been talking to someone online who defected from the Philadelphia zone two months ago. I asked him to meet me in person. I need some censor-free information and it’s been hard to find anyone willing to give it to me, but I think this guy will.”

“You’ll take the yellow route?” Adah asked. She gave him a tiny smile that didn’t hide the tightness in her eyes.

He nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. And I’ll make sure you have enough miyeokguk before I head out. Anything happens, you call me, okay?”

Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, when WhiteFunk1492 typed back, yeah, I can meet at the schenley oval tent, Solomon put his phone in his pocket and knocked on Adah’s bedroom door. Meeting WhiteFunk was what he'd been waiting for, but now that he was on the brink of it, he found his insides were churning. He didn’t tell Adah that, though. He didn’t tell her that there was a reason why school, church, and the grocery store were the only places he wanted to let them go these days. Instead, he took a deep breath and gave her a hug. “It's time.”

Adah dragged herself down to watch him through the open door connecting the kitchen and the garage. Umma had sung the “Lord bless you and keep you” passage from Numbers as a blessing whenever they left the house for school, and Solomon heard Adah start to sing it as he got into the car. That was just like her. To think of him even when she was sick, to encourage him the best way she could. His shoulders relaxed a little as he directed the car to pull out of their driveway and onto the road.

He still couldn’t help but look out every window, however, as his car drove up and down the hills, past cars half-parked on sidewalks per usual and lamp posts with pictures of militia veterans who had died. Neither could he help but think about the explanation his father had given him the very first time they got stopped at a checkpoint when he was only seven. “People have been calling it the Great Splintering because the nation split into patches of red and blue, scattered and for the most part disconnected. Some places, red militias rolled in from the fields and took over the cities. Other spots, cities held on and managed to spread that blue rule out to the country. Philly, right next door, they’re all under blue control, stretching across the east side of Pennsylvania. But not here. Pittsburgh, we fell into a red zone, and now those militias, they’re our law and our leaders.” 

It didn’t matter how many checkpoints Solomon had been stopped at since, he’d never not been nervous at a single one of them. Thankfully, Mappify’s yellow route didn’t let him down, and he arrived without encountering a single militiaman. It probably helped that it was one of those gray April days that felt like a leftover from winter. Nobody wanted to be outside when it was 38 degrees and half-hailing.