Nomad's Force

by Craig Martelle

  “Better me than someone who’s not up to the task.”

  “Saving humanity is a task? I swear, TH, you need to get out more and enjoy life. Didn’t we have a great time shopping in Kingston? I mean, a great time?”

  “I’m glad we had a horse to help us carry it all,” Terry countered.

  Someone shushed them as Felicity had already asked the crowd for quiet. Terry clamped his mouth shut and tried to look innocent as he and Char inched closer to the platform.

  Felicity beamed from center stage. She’d finally unhanded Ted and he was slinking away. Char caught his eye and pointed to a spot next to her. She stabbed a finger toward him and resignedly, he shuffled over.

  “We are here to celebrate the wedding of two beautiful souls. In our tradition, we acknowledge before our friends and family the commitment of one to the other.

  “Cordelia Dawn Walton, will you protect your partner in life, love him as you love yourself?” Felicity asked.

  “I will,” Cory said boldly.

  “Ramses…” Felicity hesitated, waiting for Ramses to tell her the rest of his name. He shrugged and shook his head. “Will you protect your partner in life, love her as you love yourself?”

  “I will,” he said softly, looking into Cory’s glowing blue eyes.

  “I pronounce you married,” Felicity declared, stepping back to put the new couple at the center of attention.

  A tear ran down Char’s cheek. Terry saw it as he checked the comm device, expecting it to buzz at any moment. With the device still in his hand, he wiped the tear away with an index finger.

  “I know,” he told her.

  Clovis howled, making Terry jump. The dog had snuck up behind him. Clovis scrabbled past and launched himself onto the stage. Both Cory and Ramses dropped to a knee to give him some love, both getting their faces licked.

  The coonhound looked into the crowd, saw something he had to investigate, and was off like a shot.

  “When are you going to train that dog?” Terry yelled.

  ***

  The call never came. Not for the rest of the wedding day, or the next week, or even the next month.

  Spring arrived. Terry had a bad case of cabin fever. He felt like the Forsaken were out there, getting away with murder, while he was trapped in North Chicago.

  He trained harder and harder, keeping the warriors on their toes, and he gave them time off, more than he ever had before.

  Because he knew they couldn’t stand on the razor’s edge each and every day. He held himself to that standard and no one else, because it would destroy them. When he needed them most, they’d fail and wither.

  When he was in the Corps, he rode close to the edge at all times. He was an adrenaline junky. He was an old man now, by years, but gifted with a young man’s body and a partner who would keep him forever young.

  He had it all, but the drive to fight the undiscovered Forsaken gnawed at him.

  If you have the ability to act, you have the responsibility. That statement from his past drove everything he did. It was why he chose action to words; why he lead by example; and why he drove his people so hard. It was why he always asked people to give just a little more.

  Imagine a world of people with that in mind.

  It warmed Terry Henry Walton’s heart. Inspire, train, and turn loose.

  Maybe he had a different mission.

  “Nah! I’m a direct-action kind of guy,” Terry told himself.

  “What are you talking about?” Char asked as she toweled the sweat from her neck. She’d seen Terry disappear within his mind and waited patiently for him to finish his introspection before returning to the world.

  “Trying to move away from being the tip of the spear. I just can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can’t. Then you wouldn’t be you. Maybe someday it’ll happen, but that’s no time soon. And I’ll be by your side to carry your battered and broken body to the healers. You’ll smile and make a joke, and then in a week, you’ll do it all again.”

  Terry’s forehead creased as he frowned. “When are they going to find them, Char? Where did they go?”

  “Same as Joseph and Andrew. They’re sleeping, waiting you out. Terry Henry Walton scared the world’s Forsaken so much that they all went into hiding. Every. Single. One. I think you have made an impact, my dear, more than you’ll admit. Our job now is to wait without going stir crazy. You need to take up knitting or something.”

  Terry looked at Char in disbelief. “Can you see me knitting? Wait. Don’t answer that. Back to farming. I liked that shit when we were in New Boulder. I need to work on my beer recipe. I have some things in mind.” Terry looked into the distance.

  Char had lost him again, but only his mind, and only for a short while. Terry’s body was as hard as ever and his mind, sharp as the point of the spear that he would always be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  North Chicago

  Spring was mild, summer was hot, and fall was mild again. The barley, wheat, and hops had come in, but the dry summer didn’t produce the bulky kernels that he preferred. He felt bad using the sickly grains, but it was all he had.

  And he and Char had worked hard at the farms throughout the growing season to come up with what he had, as well as what they added to the community’s general supplies.

  As Terry brewed, he reviewed everything he knew about finance to help formulate a plan to move from a barter economy to one that used currency. Establishing a gold standard was immaterial because gold didn’t matter. Basing it on food value seemed to be working for San Francisco, but food value was weighed against trade goods from Japan.

  Terry would sit for hours, exploring his mind and wargaming the various ways it could work or fail. Work had a value when it produced something. Digging a ditch in the middle of nowhere kept one busy, but didn’t produce.

  Any system they devised at the outset had to have a material item to which a currency was linked, without giving all the power to one place. The Weathers family would be the wealthiest of all if meat was the standard. The fishing fleet would take a huge chunk. The farmers would get their piece.

  And the weavers would be at the end, broke and hungry, begging the ranchers for a handout.

  He turned it around and around in his mind and it finally came to him, after sniffing too much boiling wort.

  “None of us are as smart as all of us.” Terry finished boiling his wort before transferring it to a homemade whirlpool to drive out the large solids. Terry didn’t have a way to inject oxygen into the beer as it cooled, so he used evaporating water to expedite the process. He finally added yeast and turned it loose to ferment. He figured he’d let it go for a week.

  “Char! I got an idea,” he yelled as he jogged toward his wife, where she was relaxing in a beach chair.

  She looked over her sunglasses at him.

  “Let’s bring everyone in together. They can bring their main items, the stuff in highest demand, and we’ll let them barter to determine a generic standard across all goods,” Terry recited proudly.

  Char shifted her glasses up her face and went back to reading her book.

  “Feign excitement?” Terry asked.

  She shook her head. “No. But you’re right, any denomination must be pegged to a mutually agreed to standard. A gross barter will help get everyone’s buy-in.”

  Terry stood dumbfounded. Not because Char knew what he was trying to accomplish, she was one of the most intelligent people he’d ever met, but that she hadn’t suggested it earlier.

  “I knew it would go better if you thought it was your idea,” she explained.

  Terry started to laugh. “I should have figured. Let’s go tell the mayor and see what she thinks.”

  And that was how North Chicago developed their standard and started stamping currency. Metal was easier than paper, so that decided it. People started to jingle as they walked because of carrying the coins.

  Terry knew it was the right thing to do to move the group forward
toward a more civilized society. He had bartered his work and provision of security for the food he ate and the housing that he enjoyed. He laughed at the irony.

  The biggest fan of barter was a ward of the state.

  At least he considered himself the hardest working ward.

  And Eve still didn’t hear a peep from the Forsaken. None of Char’s pack sensed anything in their cities.

  Life was moving forward, leaving the Forsaken behind. Wasn’t that what Terry had been working for?

  But he didn’t trust it. He didn’t trust them. They were out there, so many Forsaken left to kill. How many? They could count them when the war was over.

  Until then, Terry decided he’d take a lesson from Joseph and Andrew. It was time to hibernate, which meant an easy training schedule and regimen that he could follow day in, day out, for the long term.

  It worked as weeks stretched into months and the months became years.

  The FDG conducted rotational training, but they were nowhere the combat veterans Terry had before. They were losing their edge and there was nothing the colonel could do about it.

  WWDE + 65 years

  North Chicago

  Too many funerals. Too many good friends no longer with them. Gladys and Margie Rose had become good friends in their final years and that helped as they passed.

  Char had never seen a Werewolf die of old age before. She’d learned that Gladys had been over four hundred years old. Char didn’t share that she was relieved. She had a good three hundred years left. Mortality wasn’t something to fear, but it wasn’t something to take lightly either.

  She meant to enjoy her time on the planet. Char wondered how much longer Terry had left, figuring that he wouldn’t get old without her, or vice versa. He still looked the same as the day they met. She remembered the look in his eye. Billy and the others were easily swayed by her looks, but not Terry Henry Walton.

  He knew her for what she was—a Werewolf. He held her at arm’s length as he remained skeptical of her intentions. She won him over when she showed him her tail and belly fur. Back then, she never contemplated growing old.

  Gladys’s death put the issue at the front of her mind. She had to force it back down. Char didn’t think she had to worry about it for at least two hundred more years, maybe even three or four. Her mixed nanocytes made her more powerful than any Werewolf that had ever lived.

  That was what she thought anyway. She hoped that meant near immortality, like what the Vampires experienced. She had no idea how old Akio was and would never ask.

  After training with him, she learned that she and Terry were not far behind him. Akio had been enhanced as much as possible, she thought. Char hoped that meant that she and Terry would live far longer than others like them.

  Because there were no others like them.

  There had been no more funerals for the original members of the Force. Jim had gone to Wisconsin, moving in with a widow to help her run her small farm. James and Lacy were enjoying their grandchildren, acting as the daycare for the brood while their parents worked.

  Gerry and Kiwi ran their horse ranch with some of their children. Their other kids had moved to North Chicago and found their own careers in metalwork and the power plant. From the FDG, to the family business, to the modern conveniences, they’d raised children with the most diverse interests.

  What mattered most was that the next generation of adults, the ones born in North Chicago who were committed to its future. They weren’t afraid to work hard.

  Terry and Char didn’t speculate on who would die next. Losing friends was the worst part of living long lives. They hadn’t made new friends in the past ten years like they did with the original group from New Boulder. It was easier to stomach the loss of people who weren’t close.

  Even Ted and Felicity’s child, Terrence wasn’t close. It didn’t matter to Ted, but Char considered children born from the pack to be in the pack. She wanted to play a role in the children’s upbringing, but the distances were vast when transportation was non-existent.

  San Francisco

  Boris walked with a heavy limp. He had slipped on the ice of the past winter and torn something in his knee. Cory couldn’t get to him to fix it. He lived with the pain. He suffered with his lack of mobility in a town of steep hills and where walking was an everyday necessity. It grated on him, but he had people.

  Lots of people. His job had become nothing but management, keeping track of the recruits, the privates, and where everyone was on a given day. He liked to think that he was overseeing training, but the seasoned warriors were taking care of that for him.

  They were becoming less seasoned by the day, but at least he kept them looking outside the wall. Some degenerated into thinking that they would police the population. He stopped those misadventures in their tracks.

  “We keep the city safe from enemies of civilization. City security takes care of keeping the populace from hurting each other. One gives the people their freedom while the other keeps them safe from crime,” he would preach. It was a constant mantra that he made the platoon sergeants and squad leaders repeat.

  He knew that the colonel would come unglued if he saw the Force de Guerre, the War Force, manning police stations and keeping the city’s populace in line.

  Eight platoons with two hundred and forty warriors. Most had no idea who Colonel Walton was or why he was held in such esteem by the older members. They painted him as larger than life, he and his purple-eyed executive officer, the major.

  Many thought of the colonel as a legend, the type you never get to meet, never saw. A few of the old hands tried to recount his prowess in battle, his speed and strength.

  It was unbelievable. Over time, even Boris started to question what he knew. He hadn’t seen the colonel actually do any of the things he told stories about.

  He started to wonder as he limped back to his office to count heads and approve training areas to make sure that no two platoons were in the same place and working at cross purposes.

  Yevpatoriya

  “Mayor Medved’! Please, listen to me!” the man pleaded. Gene rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “Enough!” he bellowed. “You say same stupid thing over and over, but I am not listening? Take your stupid face and go. One more word and you will be banished!”

  Gene opened the mayor’s office to resolve complaints and issues from nine to noon, every Tuesday. It was his worst day of the week. He preferred to work with wood and continue building Fu’s mansion. It was already the nicest building in all Yevpatoriya, but Gene insisted that it was only half finished.

  Fu was comfortable and happy. She had made friends over the years. Being the mayor’s wife had its benefits. She was skeptical at first, but got over it quickly when she met some kindred spirits, women in situations that she used to be in, servants to others.

  She helped them to their freedom, getting Gene’s support in moving them to a home for battered women. It just happened to be next door to the mayor’s home, where Gene personally guaranteed the women’s security.

  It wasn’t lost on him that the first resident was the wife of the man Gene had killed, the tar seller. She and Fu had become good friends and ran the center together while Gene ran the city.

  Yevpatoria had grown and become stable. Gene had set standards as he’d seen Terry Henry do and then he lived up to those standards. He worked harder than anyone else.

  And he loved Fu, giving her the life he thought she deserved, while listening and watching, knowing that the Forsaken had not yet come out of hiding.

  Japan

  “Way behind schedule, Terry-san. The rare earth minerals are very difficult to locate in the quantities we need. I have had to buy an exploration company in order to get their undivided attention. We are selling some to break even, and the rest is being diverted to the pod construction facility. We are making progress, but it will be years before any of the new pods are ready,” Akio said, reiterating what he had told Terry before.
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br />   The colonel was impatient and Akio couldn’t blame him. A long time had passed where he barely left North Chicago, and then only on horseback.

  “With new materials, and by cannibalizing two of the pods, I believe Eve has awarded us with one fully functioning pod, with a great deal of new life. Would you like to take a trip to see your people?”

  “You could have started with that, Akio-sama. It would have made the ‘years to go’ part a lot less alarming. Yes, please. We would love to take a trip around the world, Akio-sama. When can we expect you?” Terry could barely contain himself. Akio could hear it in his voice.

  “Two more weeks, Terry-san. Prepare yourself.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing for the last ten years, Akio-sama. We’ll be here.”

  Akio watched Eve as she worked. The pod was almost ready, but Eve was multitasking. She was exploring a faint signal that suggested localized Forsaken activity. It was too early to tell, and Akio didn’t want to get Terry’s hopes up.

  It wasn’t far from him in an area north of Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean. To Eve, it looked like someone had built a rudimentary radio set and was periodically broadcasting to see if anyone was listening. The signal was weak and no one answered, which made it difficult to geolocate, but it looked similar enough to Mister Smith’s broadcast signals that Eve suspected it was Forsaken.

  Until they knew for sure, Akio would not tell Terry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  North Chicago

  “Hot damn!” Terry declared and bobbed his head so hard that Char thought he was going to break something. “Did you hear?”

  “How could I not?” she said with a smile, knowing that being mobile was the biggest boost to Terry’s morale she could have hoped for. It had been a long time and he’d been hesitant to take the horses out because he wanted to be available for when the call came.