TH nodded and turned to the other expectant members of the team.
“Stack weapons in here. See Captain Boris for money and go enjoy yourselves. Be back in… Fuck, I don’t know. Be back before the major!” Terry nebulously declared.
He watched them go. Once again, his war was put on hold, but what he’d learned in the past day gave him pause.
“Boris!” he yelled after the man had been mobbed. “We have a new training regimen to discuss.”
Cancun
Even though Char had forgiven her, Shonna was still torn up. “Listen!” Char declared for the third time. Merrit chuckled to himself as he kept a protective arm around his mate.
“How can I be angry that you’re doing what we showed you was the most important? You can stay on the tac team, hang out in North Chicago, or you can be here and influence an entire generation? We are changing the whole world to be a better place! Ain’t that some shit.”
Shonna looked up. “I was still out of place and wasn’t thinking about the people here. I was thinking about me. Now, I’m thinking about them and if we can take this style to Kingston, then who knows what will happen there? Changing the world, one town at a time. Plus, I’d like to look at their industrial complex. I think they don’t have an engineer like me.”
“I think they don’t have an engineer like you, either,” Terry replied. “I like the plan.”
Shonna and Merrit invited the entire group to a special meal. Leaving the closed pod on the roof, Akio joined them. A seafood extravaganza was on the menu, and he was a fan.
It was nice to treat him for once.
Shonna had secured a dining room and closed it for other customers. Shonna and Merrit did more than wield influence, they were the power couple of Cancun.
Like Terry and Char were in North Chicago.
“I want to thank you all for just being you. It’s difficult to volunteer your lives for the mission of keeping the peace. No one gets to see your sacrifices, but know that they are appreciated. This is the least we can do. And understand that if you need us, we’ll take a break from this and we’ll join you, because when the Forsaken rise, it will take all of us to defeat them.”
Merrit raised his glass. He hadn’t asked Shonna about that, but turnabout was fair play, and it was the right thing to do.
WWDE + 68
North Chicago
Clovis barked and brayed, maintaining a hellacious racket. He was old, over fourteen years. He spent his days laying on the porch of the mayor’s building, barking at people who used Mayor’s Park and furiously wagging his tail.
That earned him a great number of treats. He got a cut from every picnic or lunchbox. At one time, he would have helped himself, but maturity meant that the food was delivered to him.
He liked the new process. And continued to bark to improve the pace of deliveries.
“Shut up!” Felicity yelled from her office. Marcie and Kaeden ran out to keep the dog company. William looked at his parents and knew what they were going to say.
“Take him for a walk. I know.” William rolled his eyes.
“Please,” Marcie said. The young man turned and smiled. He was short. Taller than his father used to be, but not anywhere near as tall as his parents.
He wouldn’t be either. It had been nice being home most of the time over the past thirteen years. They’d been able to shape his development more than they’d done with Mary Ellen.
Which wasn’t a bad thing, since she had spent the most time with Auburn. She loved cattle, and she loved horses. That was where she could be found all seven days of the week, working as a cowpoke, driving the boys crazy while keeping the cattle herd in line.
William was getting close to trying his hand at work. Most teenagers started in M and M’s, the newest name for Claire’s Diner in honor of Mayra and Mark.
Marcie and Kae watched as he called the dog and Clovis followed obediently.
“I’ll be damned,” Cory said as she appeared from around corner of the building.
“Just takes a firm hand and consistency,” Kae told her.
“But I just want to kiss that happy face of his!” Cory cooed as the dog raced to her. She dropped to a knee and hugged him as he showered her with slobber and dog hair.
Ramses strolled up behind her, holding his hands out to fight off the old dog as he tried to do the same thing. Clovis quickly gave up and loped back to where William waited. The two headed west toward the woods where the wolf pack hung out.
There were only a few wolves left. Mostly the older ones as the younger alphas took small groups and moved on. Ted encouraged them to find their own way. Should he run across them, they would defer to him as the supreme alpha. Ted had to set the boundaries away from the cattle, horses, and growing hog trade. He wasn’t sure where the wolves went, but suspected north where they would find greener pastures, greater big game, and cooler temperatures.
He couldn’t blame them, but the weather was what it was. He only cared in how to calculate fluid dynamics as it related to cooling the Mini Cooper’s core.
And Felicity cared because she liked sleeping in the cool, especially since Ted was a Werewolf with a high body temperature. He generated a great deal of heat while he slept. Felicity found it nearly intolerable, except that his company made her happy. She had learned that she was far more independent than she ever suspected.
She enjoyed not having to answer to one person as much as she enjoyed having Ted around at other times. Their relationship worked and worked well.
When Marcie stood to leave, her mother was leaning in the doorway.
“When are you going to retire?” Marcie asked.
Kae rubbed Marcie’s back, letting his hand slide down until he was cupping her butt cheek. She looked at him out the corner of her eye. He shrugged and looked away, but didn’t remove his hand.
“I really should think about that, shouldn’t I?” Felicity drawled. “But what would I do?”
Marcie didn’t have an answer. She turned to Cory, who also shrugged.
“Is anyone calling for me to step down?” Felicity asked, checking the pulse of the community that was starting to run itself. The mayor’s day to day duties were becoming more and more limited.
“I think you’d make a great banker!” Kae said.
“The mayor is already chair of the CBNC, the Central Bank of North Chicago. I could see splitting it off and remaining over there, in charge of keeping the money flowing.” Felicity played with her ear as she contemplated it.
Marcie and Cory both tapped their pockets, making the coins jingle.
North Chicago had currency and people used their coins to buy things they both needed and wanted. It had been a huge step pegging the currency to an arbitrary standard, then creating wealth from nothing. It took a while to bring everyone on board, too.
But they had patience. Terry and Char helped by being there. They sold the people on the necessity. They helped them understand why it was important to move from a communal model to a market-driven one.
It unleashed the people’s ingenuity.
And gave Terry and Char something to do. Akio’s pod had had mechanical problems, making their expected trips around the world a non-starter. They were stuck in North Chicago once again.
Terry and Char strolled into Mayor’s Park as they did at some point every day. They were happy to see family and made a beeline toward them.
“Do you have Ted tied up in the love-nest upstairs? We need to talk with him,” Terry said as he watched Char go from one person to the next, hugging them.
Felicity raised her eyebrows. “I do declare, TH, you have a most uncivil tongue in your mouth,” she replied slowly, drawling her words deliberately. “And no. He’s at the plant,” Felicity added.
“We don’t need the pods since they won’t be done for yet another ten years. We’ve been talking and it’s time to move the FDG to San Francisco. They now have blimp service, so we can be more mobile than we are here, as well as move No
rth Chicago into the trade routes. No one else has had any luck, but it’s time. And Ted has a train that is woefully underutilized.” Terry watched for Felicity’s reaction.
She only had one and it was predictable.
“You’re not taking my Ted away from me. That’s not what you’re suggesting, or am I mistaken?”
“Nope. We just need to take his train with a bunch of cars loaded to the gills with stuff. And we’ll need all the FDG to repair track as we go. It’ll be a long and painful train ride, but Akio has already mapped out a path where all the bridges are still up. We’ll need to reinforce them, but that’s easier than rebuilding them,” Terry explained.
“I’ll let Ted know that you’ll be borrowing his train. You do know that he’s still mad about that sailboat?”
“Holy fuck!” Terry looked around to make sure his grandson wasn’t around. He was trying to swear less because of being around the town’s people, but some things rated a good curse. “That was before Cory was born, for fuck’s sake, and it was one bloody handprint. You can tell him that we’re going to leave his train fucked up twelve different ways from fucking Sunday. We’re taking the train and Ted can suck shit through a straw!”
“What do you really think?” Char asked.
Terry waved her away. “Don’t tell Ted I said that. Grease the skids, Mayor. There’s magic that needs to happen!” Terry said happily.
“And that magic is in San Francisco?” Felicity asked.
Terry and Char both nodded. Cory smiled broadly.
Kae clapped and laughed. “If we leave soon enough, Kim and Auburn’s baby will be a San Franciscan.” He then clapped a hand over his mouth as he had revealed a secret that his parents hadn’t known.
Char’s head snapped to lock him with a laser-like gaze.
Terry looked at Kae with wide eyes. “I feel like there’s something profound that I’m supposed to say.” He didn’t know what that was, so he didn’t try to continue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
North Chicago
Ted turned over the train reluctantly, giving Terry so many instructions that he couldn’t keep up. So, Ted wrote them down and showed them to Terry, page by page, as he knew that Terry had a photographic memory and would be able to regurgitate each and every word of Ted’s guidance.
“I give you my solemn word that there will be no bloody handprints on the train when we return it to you.” Terry held his hand over his heart as he solemnly swore his oath, which he had no idea whether he could keep or not.
“I will hold you to that, you ingrate!” Ted shouted. Terry nodded, trying to be convincing.
“I’ll make sure he takes care of your train,” Char said soothingly, but Ted wasn’t having it.
“You were in on it before and you’ll be in on it again. No respect for other people’s property!” Ted claimed, tipping his head back to better thrust his nose in the air.
Terry started rubbing his temples. This was the sixth day straight they’d had the same conversation. It was taking a while to load the train because of having to move everything from the barracks by the water to the closest train tracks, which included tearing up some side tracks to stockpile the ties, track, and spikes. The steel mill produced more, but they weren’t of the quality that they could scavenge.
The FDG worked like fiends to do everything that needed done, to include cleaning the barracks.
One of the last things that needed to happen was to wake Joseph and Andrew. It would be poor form for them to wake up and find that the FDG and the pack were gone.
Terry wouldn’t do that to them, so they loaded the train and Auburn brought a couple cows for slaughter, securing them in the unused hangar for the Forsaken to feed on. They’d been sleeping for almost fourteen years.
They waited until nightfall to minimize the shock to the systems of the newly risen. Lacy had passed the key to the new company gunny, Ayashe, after Nickles had been promoted to lieutenant. She unlocked the door and together, they went about the dangerous process of waking a sleeping vampire. Usually they awoke on their own, but rousing them required tact and grace and quick hands in case they reacted without thinking.
Terry and Char personally did the waking as they kept themselves in top condition at all times. If anyone was fast enough to fight off an enraged Forsaken, it was those two.
But nothing untoward happened. The Forsaken woke, a little groggy. Both refused water. They needed something more nourishing to bring them to the present.
Helping them from their beds, they worked their way upstairs and to the hangar where they could feed without anyone watching. The cows made a little noise and Terry felt for them, helping to quickly dispatch the beasts as soon as possible. They loaded the carcasses into a waiting wagon and sent them to the diner for processing.
“Welcome back, boys!” Terry said happily once the unsavory business was finished.
“How long?” Joseph asked as he adjusted his clothing. The leathers had been cleaned and conditioned for both men. They appreciated the effort. Even Forsaken liked to put on clean clothes.
“Fourteen years, my man,” Terry replied. “We lost the pods, but we’ve got a whole fleet of them under construction! Too bad they won’t be ready for another ten years or whatever. In the interim, we’re moving the FDG to San Francisco. We have a train and we’re ready to go, so there we are.”
“There we are?” Andrew asked. “This is my first long sleep, and I feel like crap. I’m supposed to blindly climb aboard a train. I’ve heard of them but am not really sure what you’re talking about.”
Andrew started to gag, but fought it back, recovering after a short coughing fit.
Lacy stood nearby with a small group that would make up the garrison, one of many that Terry intended to put at strategic locations around the world. He hoped that they would all get a pod eventually, to respond the quickest to regional issues.
“Exporting justice. Bringing civilization back to humanity. This is what we’re doing. We need a bigger population base and more logistics if we are to evolve into what we need to be.” Terry said the words he had repeated often over the years.
“What do we need to be, TH?” Joseph wondered.
“We need to be the people that the world can trust. The one group that will keep them safe while they’re trying to help themselves. Humanity almost died out because our leaders went so far down the wrong path, there was nowhere left to go. The world purged itself and is finally recovering, sixty-eight years later. We can’t let that happen again, because we are in a position to guarantee that it doesn’t happen. And that means we can’t let the Forsaken be in charge because they may help civilization return, but mankind will always be a food source. I can’t have that.”
“I know you can’t,” Joseph replied before turning to Andrew, who was rubbing his stomach while grimacing. “It’ll pass. A train ride will do you good. Next stop, San Francisco.”
Minnesota
The first four hundred miles went smoothly. Old bridges were good enough, although Terry wished that Merrit or Shonna was along to give them a better look with a well-practiced engineer’s eye.
They didn’t go fast, but they didn’t need to. They stopped a few times to restock on coal. Akio had mapped out the stops based on scans from the orbiting satellites where he knew coal would be found. The FDG would hop off the train with picks and shovels and get to work. They’d wheelbarrow the coal to the train and refill the coal car. Then they’d all pile back on and be on their way.
Auburn filled one car completely with tools, equipment, and raw materials to use for repairs. The old coal-fed steam engine was pulling twelve cars, a combination of passenger and freight, with freight accounting for the most weight. Weapons and ammunition were in great supply, thanks to the Gitmo discovery.
Professionals talk logistics.
Terry and Char rolled up their sleeves and joined the work details, as did Joseph and Andrew. Kae, Marcie, Auburn, Ramses, and Cory all took turns driving the t
rain because they also had to stoke the furnace. It was hot work better suited for the enhanced. Kim received a pass for being pregnant, although her brother thought she was fine to work.
Terry and Joseph sat together and talked constantly.
Joseph had shaped the history that Terry studied. TH wanted to know every detail of the American Revolution and the people behind it. Especially the people behind it—Jefferson, Adams, Greene, Henry, and so many more. Terry was fascinated by the stories, often reciting speeches by the gentlemen, saying things that Joseph had forgotten.
Andrew watched, mesmerized by the replay of history.
“Someday, Andrew, you are going to look back and be able to say, ‘I was there.’ Then you can tell your own stories. Every day of our lives, we make history, but will our story be worth telling? What do you want people to say when you are long gone? ‘He made a difference. He was a force for good. We wouldn’t be where we are today without him.’ Those are things I hope people will say. With every breath, I try to make that history come true. We are all part of the same future. Help us make it great.”
“How can I turn down something like that?” Andrew said, offering Terry his hand.
As they shook, Terry added, “There will be no pay, no glory, no anything really. You’re doing this all so when you’re dead, someone will speak kindly of you.”
“You are such a fuck,” Andrew stated, uncharacteristically crass. Joseph chuckled out loud.
“And on your deathbed, you’ll achieve total consciousness, which is nice,” Joseph quoted. Terry nodded in appreciation of the movie reference.
North Dakota
The first real challenge came when they were crossing the plains. One of many wildfires had destroyed a long section of track. Miles and miles of track. They had enough with them to fix a few hundred feet.
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