One little nuclear explosion and everybody goes batshit. The newscasters had been jabbering all night, talking heads talking out of their asses, but nobody seemed to have anything to add to the initial reports that it was a military plane crash during training except that the Chinese government was now stating that the nuclear blast had been part of “an internal matter” and they were “securing the affected area.” Not exactly comforting, Kim thought, but probably not worthy of this level of alert. They were locked and loaded and ready to be boots up at any minute, though she wasn’t really sure what she was supposed to do in the event that nuclear missiles started coming down. Duck and cover? Probably better to be on a plane headed somewhere when mushroom clouds started growing. But then she remembered she’d read somewhere that a nuke could cause electromagnetic pulses that shut down electronics. Being aboard a plane when the electronics were fried seemed like an unpromising way to spend a morning.
Kim yawned and shifted in her bunk. Gunnery Sergeant McCullogh had spent the rest of the evening barking at the company until everything was as ready as it could be, and then Gunny did what good leaders do, which was allow them to get some rest. That was one of those military maxims that proved to be true: sleep when you can. Kim knew Mitts probably spent the night awake and overthinking the day to come. She wasn’t sure about Duran, but Elroy never seemed to have any trouble sleeping. Even though Kim had her nightmares—the usual one of making a decision that got one of the men killed, plus a new and not unexpected nightmare of having the flesh melt off her body as she was enveloped in a nuclear blast—she’d gotten some solid shut-eye. An hour of lounging in bed after waking up would have been nice, though. That was one of the things she missed most from civilian life. She loved the order, the discipline, the uniform, the weapons, the promise of violence, the sense of belonging to something bigger than herself that came with the Marines, but she sure as shit missed lolling around in bed on Sunday mornings and taking her time getting ready.
She gave her head a quick scratch, sat up, slipped the elastic off her wrist, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She’d actually worried for a little while that she was going to have to shave her head as part of enlisting. Kim knew she would have been able to pull the look off. She wasn’t vain, just honest about the fact that she had a pretty face. She’d always been athletically built, but as a softball catcher, she sometimes veered more toward solid than sleek. Three months in the Marines had erased all the extra padding. It felt as if she’d gone through a metamorphosis, turning into the woman she always wanted to be. Even though there were times she was terrified about being a lance corporal, about being responsible for her unit, she was also the most confident she’d ever been. Of course, that didn’t mean she was in any hurry to cut her hair.
She double-timed it to the mess and sat down with her unit, Duran sliding down the bench to make room for her. “What’s the scuttlebutt?”
Mitts glanced up but didn’t slow down in shoveling his scrambled eggs. Kim took note of the dark circles under his eyes. The part of her that had wanted to sleep with him and could imagine dating him under different circumstances felt bad, but the part of her that was adjusting to having command over her unit thought that she had to make sure he was on top of his game. If he fucked up, at least in the eyes of their squad leader, it meant Kim had fucked up too.
Elroy shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. “Heard a bunch of things. One of them is that it wasn’t an accident. The Chinese dropped a nuke on purpose.”
Kim felt her mouth drop open and snapped it shut. “Wild-ass guess?”