The Future of Warfare by Benjamin Gorman

“You know,” Rob said, “this has all happened before.”

Gary looked up at his friend and coworker, frowned, and started to ask what the hell he was talking about, but right then their boss arrived and interrupted.

The boss was named John, but they all called him Boss. He used to work for the city, but after the last big storm he’d started his own private firm, so now, even though his only customer was the city, he had become his own boss. The city’s money to pay John all came from federal dollars, really, so in a sense John had gone from being a low level bureaucrat to a successful private contractor for the federal government. In reality, it meant he used to order around a dozen suits in an office, and now he ordered around a dozen guys in t-shirts. Not such a huge step up.

“Okay, guys. Today we’re not going to worry about any trees or structures or anything interesting. Just the grass for the next two blocks north of here. We’ll hack it down to a manageable height today, cover it with that Monsanto weed poison tomorrow, then worry about the trees while we let it kill the grass before we replant the genetically modified stuff in its place. And hopefully that will work this time.” It wasn’t too hot yet, but John ran his hand across his forehead anyway. Maybe the futility of the work was getting to him. It didn’t bother the guys on the crew as much. An impossible job meant lots of paychecks. John, on the other hand, had to keep explaining to anxious politicians why the city wasn’t cleared and ready for rebuilding. “So, nothing interesting. Just the grass.”

“Don’t worry, Boss,” Gary said. “There’s always something interesting in there!”

Everybody laughed. John rolled his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Stay together and stay sharp. Call me if there’s anything I need to know about.”

The guys split up and began grabbing their gear out of their trucks. A few had those big new electric ones, but most had the old fashioned hybrid pick-ups that were popular back in the teens. Each of the workers wore a little backpack carrying water bottles, spare blades, and batteries for the weed trimmers. In holsters on their lower backs, they carried 9mm or .22 pistols. Some guys liked the .22s because they were so lightweight. Others liked the 9mms because they had a bit more stopping power, especially loaded with hollow-points. Rob favored the .22. It was enough to scare away packs of dogs, which were the most common threat. He’d also noticed that the same guys who carried the 9mm tended to drive the biggest trucks, and he didn’t want to be part of the mine’s-bigger-than-yours competition. Still, he’d seen some things that made him wish he carried something bigger. Like maybe a shotgun. Or a bazooka.

It was going to be a hard, hot day. It used to be a very comfortable city, a few decades ago. Average daily temperatures ranged from low forties at night to high fifties in the day in January, to high fifties at night and low seventies in the day in September. They used to have the odd 100 plus day in the summers, but those were rare. Now they would have 110 degree days often in the summers, and weird attacks of snow in May or November. On the cold days, guys could just layer up, but on hot ones like today they couldn’t strip down too much. When the trimmers got going the guys had to have at least one layer on or they’d get pretty cut up, and even a long-sleeved t-shirt, jeans, gloves, goggles, and mask were pretty unbearable when the temperature got over 100. Today might get up into the teens. Rob expected each guy would drink gallons of water and still not piss all day.

Once he’d grabbed his trimmer, he walked across the street with Gary. Calling it a street was a bit generous. There were enough chunks of black asphalt to identify where the road had been, but the tree roots had chewed it up enough that whole new trees could poke through it. No truck would be passing down this road until they’d cut all those down, and even then the city would have to pay to have it rebuilt before cars could use it. Fat chance, Rob thought.

Rob let his goggles hang around his neck. His face mask, basically just a ski-mask made of lighter cotton, hung from his back pocket. His t-shirt was bright, hunter orange. On the back, in big letters, stood the acronym C.R.C. On the front, in smaller letters, where a breast pocket would go, it said, “City Reclamation Crew.” Under that, their slogan, “Beating Back the Blight.” All the guys in matching bright orange shirts looked like a prison work crew. Considering how many of them were on probation, that wasn’t too far off.

“So, what were you talking about?” Gary asked him.

“Huh?”

“Before the morning meeting with the boss. You said something about how something has happened before?”

“Oh, yeah,” Rob said. He motioned to the field they’d be cutting today. “I meant this. All of this. A city being reclaimed by nature.”

“Well, sure,” Gary said. “Like the ancient Mayas and stuff.”

“No. Well, yeah, them too, but it happened here. I saw a thing about it on the History Channel last night. More than twenty years ago, this big hurricane hit New Orleans. One whole part of the city was basically abandoned. Then, when people wanted to come back, it turned out that the ground there was so fertile it had turned into a jungle. Only it wasn’t like the Mayans, because the people in New Orleans had all these crazy invasive species of plants and psycho exotic pets that went nuts and took over.”

“So what did they do?”

“Pretty much the same thing as here. They hired some guys to go in and kill everything.”

“Did it work?”

Rob laughed. “Nope. Not a bit. First, they hired like a dozen guys for the whole thing. Mostly ex-cons like us. By the time they’d made it from one side of this little part of the city to the other, it had all grown back. Plus, nobody wanted to move back to a place overrun by wild animals, so it wasn’t like anybody was setting down behind them and taking care of the space they cleared.”

“Stupid,” Gary said.

“Well, it was mostly for show. They just didn’t want to admit they couldn’t win.”

“So what happened?”

“They also couldn’t admit it was a bad place to put a city. After the storms started getting bigger everywhere, it was just a matter of time until another one hit and leveled enough of the rest of the city that they gave up.”

They reached the field that had been a suburban neighborhood. The decaying houses still identified the centers of each plot of land, but once their roofs had caved in, trees had even climbed up within these, leaving rectangles of broken walls in the midst of the field. Most of the field was grass now. Bamboo, specifically. About ten feet high and growing fast. The broken-down houses weren’t the only things hiding in that dense growth where once there had been manicured lawns. Packs of wild dogs competed with coyotes for the smaller prey, which kept the rat population down, but the crew had also come across snakes of all different sizes, two alligators, and one mountain lion.
And then there were the dead bodies. And worse, the not quite dead ones.

“Do you think that will happen here?” Gary asked. “They’ll give up eventually?”

“I don’t know.” Rob frowned and thought about it while he screwed a cleaned blade onto his weed trimmer. “On the one hand, California has a lot more ex-cons than Louisiana. Lots more people to put to work.” He looked off to the west. The giant cranes loading shipping containers in the harbor were so tall they could be seen over the tops of the grass and through the growing trees in the streets. He nodded in the port’s direction. “All the rebuilding keeps the economy humming along, so they can afford it, I guess. But…” He shrugged.

“But what?” Gary asked. “What’s the other hand?”

“It keeps getting warmer, a little bit, year after year. Who would have thought a jungle could grow in Oakland? The rich keep moving further north and further up, onto higher and higher ground. They can keep promising this land to prisoners and poor people, if we’re willing to work it off, clearing it for ‘em, but that doesn’t change the fact that the storms keep getting bigger. Who wants a house that keeps getting knocked down?”

“So, do you think it’s pointless?”

Rob shook his head. “I think it’s a war. Us against nature. We started it, and we can’t go back.” He pulled his mask down, pushed his goggles onto his face, and hoisted his trimmer into position. “Now we gotta’ keep fighting because there’s nowhere to retreat to.”

He pushed the start button. Gary did the same. And the soldiers went to work.