"THAT’S ALL FOLKS!" Casey roared as he drove a bayonet into one of the poncho-wearing villains.
Stonewall joined the fray, skewering an enemy through the chest.
The Vikings returned fire in a chaotic fashion. Their columns had been prepared to thrust at a static defensive line, not repel a horde. They marched toward the mountaintop expecting to find a defeated, demoralized enemy' not maddened demons at close quarters.
For her part, Nina killed with precision.
While still jogging down the slope, she raised her M4 and squeezed the trigger once. A single bullet killed a single enemy.
She darted to her left as a pellet buzzed past her head, then back to her right to dodge another. Her weapon rose. Her eye found the mark. The trigger pulled. A bullet pierced a goggle on her opponent.
She raced forward again. Two Vikings-staggering backward in the face of the onslaught-noticed her approach. Their magnetic rifles discharged. She spun and jumped and rolled behind an Oak. The unfriendly rounds tore away tree bark.
Nina popped out on one knee, fired her third shot and with it killed a third alien; the gray and black colored poncho rolled lifelessly away.
The other enemy fired with shaky hands. His shots missed high. She launched her fourth of five bullets. It missed. The alien stepped behind the tree in search of cover.
Nina immediately took to her feet and sprinted around the other side of that tree. The sound of raging battle filling the forest hid the crunches of her feet on dried twigs and leaves. She surprised the alien from behind, placing the last of her five bullets into his skull at point blank range. The top of the poncho exploded into mess.
She pulled the extraterrestrial’s rifle from his dead hands and gazed at its slender, plain barrel and the oddly shaped firing mechanism. She did not understand the weapon's rate of fire, how to clean it, or even how to reload it. Nonetheless, she understood triggers well enough. She understood barrels.
The natural-born soldier raised the strange rifle and fired at the nearest enemy fighter. She felt no recoil, only a small vibration. No smoke discharged. No casing ejected. Yet the result was familiar: one of her enemies crumpled to the ground.
Nina charged again, further down the slope, hunting for her next victim. Her eyes sorted through the churning chaos of intertwined combatants and gave it order. She lived for the fight. Now she fought not because it was all she knew, but because she had so much to fight for. She fought for the right to live. She fought for the love she felt for Trevor. She fought for her people, not as an outcast warrior but as one with them.
Nina waded into the battle knowing that when the alien gun ran dry, she could turn to her knife and should that break she would use her bare hands.
Trevor led the mob of enraged humanity and chased the Vikings not only down the slope, not only over the stream and fields of the valley below, but also back up the second mountain.
The aliens ran in terror from the devils that pursued. They screamed in horror as they realized how horrid the monsters they had unleashed. They cried with fatal regret that they had dared come to this planet of death.
The Vikings ran faster and more fearful than any man had run from any of the nightmares that had descended upon that world.
They reached the top of the hill.
Fromm stepped from behind a tree and took aim at Trevor.
Trevor threw his sword. It pierced the Force Commander’s neck.
The remaining Viking warriors-some pleading in an alien language for their lives-were slaughtered without mercy. Their blood filled puddles across the mountain.
Trevor grabbed the dying body of Fromm and carried it on top of a red rock cropping at the crown of the mountain. His rage burned. His followers gathered.
Trevor found the strength of all mankind. He lifted the commander skyward above his head as the alien gurgled blood and clutched at air.
"IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO? IS THIS ALL THERE IS?"
He tossed the dead body to the ground. It thudded and rolled off.
Trevor raised his arms toward the summer sky. He shook his fists at the mysterious forces of the universe that had orchestrated Armageddon. He hollered a barbaric roar. A roar that echoed from the mountain and over the treetops and across the land.
The aliens and creatures from other worlds that heard that roar trembled.
34. Secrets
Trevor stood on the balcony and watched as the convoy of Humvees, SUVs and one Bradley left the estate. He worked his radio to talk to the man in charge of the expedition.
"How long will it take to get there?"
Stonewall answered, "We will be exercising abundant caution, but I anticipate our arrival sometime later this afternoon."
How much had changed since Jon’s expedition to Allentown last autumn! This time, after so many battles, Stonewall felt confident enough to travel the turnpike via motor vehicles, as opposed to slinking across the countryside on horseback.
The convoy included Reverend Johnny and it aimed to reach The Order’s abandoned facility, secure it, and confirm the existence of the correct enzyme. If all went well, Trevor and Nina would fly to Allentown in the morning and it would be done. The memories would be purged. The woman he loved would cease to exist.
And Trevor Stone would go on leading his crusade.
He walked from the balcony into the empty Command Center where maps and binders called for his attention.
Ten days had past since the Battle of Five Armies.
Despite the victory, their casualties had been many. So many dead, many more wounded. Yet, they would recover. Trevor knew that. In the meantime, he would need to bide his time, restock ammunition, find more refugees, birth more Grenadiers, and focus on basics.
Eventually, the war would start anew. More battles. More death. More killing.
All part of his role to play, his path to walk…alone.
– Lori Brewer-carrying seven and a half months worth of baby-wobbled toward the barn. According to Dr. Maple’s ultrasounds, she carried a girl. The first child of the new world.
Nevertheless, not even pregnancy could keep Lori from doing her work, so she wobbled toward the barn carrying a knapsack stuffed with bandages and medicine.
The animals surrounded her, jumping and fidgeting excitedly.
"Have we been good little doggies?"
Lori patted heads until she came to Seth, a German Shepherd, with shrapnel in his haunch. His bandages needed to be changed. Lori spent several minutes cleaning the wound and re-dressing it. Seth flinched a little but he flinched less with each day.
Her task complete, Lori struggled to stand. A strong arm reached in and helped her up. That armed belonged to Nina Forest.
"Oh, hey. Thanks. I don’t get around like I used to."
"Yeah," Nina gently tapped Lori’s belly. "With that big bowling ball you're carryin’."
Lori smiled but said nothing. An awkward silence persisted for several seconds until Nina broke it with the bad news: "Tomorrow."
Lori tried to find something to say. "Oh, well, I, um, well…"
"I guess there are some words you’re not good with, huh?" Nina lightened her words with a tiny smile as she finished, "Like ‘goodbye’."
Lori shook her head, saying, "No, no, it’s not goodbye. You’ll be back. You just got to get that thing out of your head."
"It’s goodbye."
Lori wanted to walk away from the conversation. It turned out there were a few things she did not like to tackle head on.
"Why are you saying that? You’ll be back by tomorrow evening."
"The person I am now won’t exist anymore."
"Allriiighty then, so what, you’ll be a six foot red head? Will your name change? You gunna have green eyes? No. You’ll be back."
Nina tried to explain as much to herself as to Lori.
"My memories of everything…everything since the crash will be gone. All those experiences. I won’t remember any of it. Not meeting you or Trevor or everyo
ne else. Not all we’ve gone through since then. Things that have…have changed me."
"But you’ll still be you!"
"I can’t be. I won’t be. I’ll lose everything that made me…that changed me…since then. All the times you were a nosey pain in my ass," she smiled. "Shep…Shep being, being disappointed in me that day…feeling guilty about what I did to Trevor. I mean, who would you be if you had never met Jon? Or if you had never known Richard the car salesman."
Lori cast her eyes to the ground.
Nina went on: "I just wanted to say…I just want to tell you thanks for being my friend. I know what that means now. Just that, well, I’m going to forget it tomorrow."
Lori reached over and gave Nina a hug.
"This sucks. You know that? It sucks."
"I know. Listen to me; Trevor is going to need you. He’s going to need his friends."
"But-"
"No, listen. It’s going to be tough for him. Not just tomorrow or the day after that. The months and years after that. You know he’s a good man. You also know he’s in a tough spot. I’m just saying, don’t let him be too alone."
Lori did not understand what Nina meant. Certainly Trevor would try and win Nina again. How could he not?
Nina changed the subject: "So you’re thinking a girl, huh?"
Lori wiped a tear away, "Yeah. I mean, yes."
"Pick any names yet?"
"Catherine."
"Catherine. Catherine Brewer. Has a nice ring."
"Yes," Lori agreed. "Yes it does."
Nina smiled, put a hand on Lori’s shoulder, and then walked away.
Lori thought to herself, Catherine Nina Brewer.
That has an even better ring.
– "Do you understand?" Trevor asked Jon Brewer.
He did not understand. He did not get it.
"I thought you loved her. Was I wrong?"
"I do, damn it. Don’t make this any harder."
"I don’t get it, Trevor. Why?"
They stood together in the empty living room in the estate.
"Listen to me. You’re not dumb, Jon. You know there’s a lot of crazy shit at work in…in ‘all this’. Right? Things aren’t all straight up and forward, right?"
Jon nodded.
It had been tough enough to deal with the idea of alien monsters and armies invading the Earth, let alone Trevor Stone’s strange ability to command dogs and summon knowledge he should not have. Accepting Trevor’s post-Armageddon abilities without giving them much consideration always seemed the easiest route. Yet there could be no denying that Jon’s friend-the one-time car salesman-had a direct line to forces of some greater magnitude.
"This is killing me, do you understand?" Trev closed his eyes and clenched his fists. "But this is how it has to be. If not, then everything could unravel. That’s not my choice. Do you hear me? But this is how it has to be."
Jon repeated Trevor's strangest directive to date: "No one is ever to tell Nina about the relationship you two had. It is never to be spoken of. It never happened."
"And if they do?"
"Treason," Jon spoke the ugly tasting word.
"Your wife is going to be a hard sell on this."
"Shep may be harder. He said he never saw Nina as happy as she was with you."
Trevor raised a hand.
"Stop. Just stop. I can’t hear that now. It’s done. It’s over. Tomorrow is a new day."
Jon saw the anguish in his friend. He did not know why things had to be like this; he could not understand it. What grand plan did this serve?
He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
"I’m sorry."
"We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?" Trevor said.
"Wow, yeah we have."
"We have much farther to go. Much, much farther."
– The last night arrived. Trevor and Nina had the mansion to themselves
Shep had left for an all night poker game and the Brewers found a new home on the far side of the lake. Dante, in the meantime, did not say where he went but Trevor suspected he stayed with Kristy Kaufman for the night.
Trevor had secured a couple of prime cuts of beef, fresh vegetables, and a bottle of wine.
After dinner, they sat in the living room and dreamt of a normal world for themselves. A world without Armageddon.
"And where would we have lived?" Trevor asked.
"Hmmm," she smiled. "Well, Philly of course."
"Because that’s where you worked?"
"Well, I mean, I was a cop you were-"
"A car salesman. I know, I know."
"Philly is a great place. Lots of things to do. We could go to the zoo. Catch a Phillies game. Stroll through the museum."
"Now that’s a funny image," he laughed. "You and I, strolling through the zoo. After all we’ve seen I think a couple of giraffes would be kind of anti-climatic."
"This is a different world," Nina whispered. "A world where I’m not a soldier, and you’re not a leader. It’s a dream world. We’re we could just be together. No responsibilities."
He put his hand on her cheek.
"That’s a lovely world. A wonderful dream."
She wrung her hands.
"And after tomorrow, you get to dream it. I won’t remember enough to want to dream."
"Memories make us who we are. Take them away, and you change the person. But I’ll still…I’ll still…"
"Don’t say it. You won’t like me at all. Promise me; promise me you’ll try. Promise me that you’ll try to make me remember the dream."
"I promise."
They both knew he lied. A lovely lie, nonetheless.
Trevor pulled the necklace holding his secret key from around his neck.
"When did you get that?"
"I always wear it. It’s always with me."
"What? How come I've never seen it before?"
"Because it's my key. No one else's. Come with me. I want to show you something."
He led her to the basement.
"I think you need to know something about me. About me and, and ‘all this’."
They followed the stairs into the basement. The armory door stood locked. The plasma screen TV off, the bar dusty and on the pool table sat quiet, a full rack waiting to be broke.
He maneuvered her toward the small door under the stairs.
"Trevor," she hesitated. "You don’t have to do this."
"I don’t want to have secrets from you. I want you to know it all."
Nina took a deep breath and kissed his cheek.
"Okay then. Show me."
He opened the door and clicked on a solitary bulb that shined on a dingy little chamber surrounding a utility cabinet and a hot water heater. Trevor slid that cabinet to the side, revealing a small gray door.
Stone slipped the key from the necklace into the lock. It clicked. He grabbed the iron knob and turned it, eliciting a squeak. The wooden door opened to a dark entrance.
He took her by the hand and they carefully followed a tight stairway down.
Nina heard a low hum in the air that grew louder as they descended into a dimly lit space.
No stone, no concrete, only walls of earth. Old tree roots poked in from the ceiling.
"Where are we, Trevor?"
"Now that’s a good question. I suppose we’re under the mansion."
"You suppose? Where else could we be?"
Trevor walked to a plain wooden table. An oil lamp and a pack of matches waited there.
"I suppose we could be…somewhere else. I honestly don’t know. I do know there’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you trust me?"
She nodded.
He lit the oil lamp. The soft glow of the flame bounced off the dirt walls.
"Look at this."
At the far end of the room sat an old wood and iron chest. Trevor walked to that chest. Nina stood a pace behind.
He reached over and, with two hands, pulled open the heavy lid. As it opened, a blue/gray light streamed out from inside,
first in streaks then as a glow.
Trevor stepped back. Nina stepped forward.
She raised her hand to shield her eyes as the glow rose out from the box like a balloon lazily drifting into the air.
Nina blinked rapidly as her pupils adjusted to the sudden influx of light. After a few seconds, she dropped her hand and stared at the object.
A sphere of a kind. She guessed it slightly larger than a basketball. The surface appeared made of a clear membrane that fluttered as if containing liquid. The light came not from that surface, but from an object inside.
Nina narrowed her eyes and leaned closer to the ball hovering above the open trunk.
"Not too close. It can be overpowering."
"What is this? What is inside of it?"
Here eyes separated light from substance until the object inside the sphere took shape in her mind. She recognized the twisting parallel lines and ladder-like rungs between. She recognized them from science class, the Discovery Channel, and posters at the FBI crime lab.
A double helix. DNA.
Trevor confessed, "How can I fly an Apache helicopter? How can I shoot so well? How come I know tactical hand signals? I mean, c’mon, I sold cars, remember?"
Nina concluded, "So this is where you get it all from? This is how you ‘pick it up’?"
"That’s right. I have to come down once and a while and recharge. It’s sort of like a library. I can only read so much at any one time. It’s not complete. There’s a lot of shit not in there. I can’t do much more than basic first aid; could never be a surgeon or anything like that. It was a gift to me. But a gift with limits."
"It’s human DNA."
"The genetic memories of humanity. Like I said, not all the memories. Just a shit load of em’. I could fly that Apache because there are memories in here from a pilot from the Gulf War. Memories are also in there from engineers and scientists and generals who won great victories."
She stared at the beautiful ball.
"Amazing."
"One thing that I don’t get, though," he scratched his chin. "This is how I know how to fly Eagles. I shouldn’t know that. There shouldn’t be non-human memories, right? But the flight controls and all of it came to me from here."
"This is…this is beautiful."
His voice grew deeper, softer. She thought she heard regret in his tone but soon realized that she really heard embarrassment.
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