That slate of white gave the impression humanity firmly controlled all that area, but Trevor knew the truth. No organized opposition existed within the new nation’s boundaries, but the people lived in isolated pockets with vast tracks of wild lands between.
Dangerous alien animals hid in the mountains, forests, and abandoned buildings. Travel between cities and towns meant heavily armed convoys. Life in the settlements bore little resemblance to life in the old world, due to constant shortages of food, medicine, clothing, power…the list went on. Only housing remained in great supply; plenty of vacant homes waited to replace ghosts.
On the map, a gray area marked the lands controlled by the “Grand Army of the Hivvan Republic.” That included the balance of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Big question marks rested over Alabama and northern Florida where the map cut off.
Trevor liked how the Baltimore New Press handled their war coverage. At the bottom of the same page, a statistic printed in bold gave meaning to the effort.
People liberated: 563,241.
That number, Trevor knew, came from his ‘Census Bureau.’ That number also sounded incredibly big. To have found so many people over the years seemed improbable. Yet Trevor knew that the areas they now controlled had once been home to 36 million people. This roughly translated into a 1.5% survival rate, meaning more than 35 million people in those areas died during Armageddon.
That accounted for the large patches of vacant towns and untraveled roads inside the ‘liberated’ zone. The number of saved people sounded large, but in reality was frighteningly small.
The 1.5% included large numbers of slaves freed from invaders who had beaten and worked them nearly to death for as long as five years.
Trevor felt a gentle shove as the Eagle increased speed. He hoped Rick would make good time. He wanted to get home fast; he had not seen his son for nearly a week.
During the first year of survival, Trevor thought he managed to grasp the rules of the new world: alien monsters lurking in every shadow and extraterrestrial armies trying to carve out zones of control. The key to victory, he knew, lay in finding survivors in the ruins and freeing hostages from alien captors.
Then came the curveball that challenged his understanding of it all: the 1.5% survival rate also included people who had “rode the ark”.
Oh, there were many names for the people who emerged through time and space covered in globs of green goo: Sleepers. Angels. Returnees. With time, one name won out: these people had “rode the ark.”
A fitting description, no doubt, because they disappeared during the early days of the calamity with no explanation. Most—including the U.S. government when there had still been a functioning U.S. government—believed those people vaporize. Not so.
Some force plucked them away from the fire of the Apocalypse just before or just as it started. Much as Noah saved his family and the animals before the Biblical great flood.
Trevor’s pre-war fiancée—Ashley Trump—and her entire neighborhood ‘rode the ark.’ What a surprise it had been when the vanished people of her neighborhood appeared out of nowhere one day, encased in coffin-like blobs of goo.
That was the way of those who ‘rode the ark.’ They were not merely waiting around hoping to be discovered. They appeared in areas shortly after that area came under human control, always within a certain distance from where they had disappeared.
For instance, missing cadets and teachers at the naval academy in Annapolis suddenly returned to the land of the living less than a week after Trevor personally led the assault clearing the city of ‘hostiles’. Those cadets and teachers reappeared scattered across campus.
The story always sounded the same with each of those blessed people. The same as Ashley’s story: they never saw it coming.
In Ashley’s case, while speaking on the phone with Trevor she suddenly felt a hot flash…and then opened her eyes as Trevor and Dante Jones pulled her from a case of green goo.
What did she remember?
She remembered talking with Trevor on the phone. Yet on some level, she understood things had changed. Not a complete understanding. She did not experience that passing of time, but knew it occurred.
In practice, for those who ‘rode the ark’ no real time elapsed. Their bodies either time-traveled or entered some sort of perfect stasis.
People suffering broken bones or a cough and cold or a headache when they disappeared awoke with those broken bones unhealed or with a sneeze on their lips or the desperate need for an aspirin. For them, awakening inside the slimy sarcophagi had simply been the next moment.
As random as those disappearances seemed, the return of the vanished showed they had not been random at all. Each batch included at least one, and usually more than one, person with important skills.
The military personnel from West Point and Annapolis; engineers and scientists from Georgetown University; a gifted doctor from a batch of empty cars on Interstate 80 by Milton, Pennsylvania; and many more. Without these experts and professional warriors, there would be no army to fight the Hivvans, only bands of refugees hiding and hoping to survive.
To date, Trevor’s forces had revived nearly 15,000 people who ‘rode the ark.’ He knew more awaited them in places such as the Citadel in South Carolina and the marine biology building at the University of Miami as well as Cubs fans at Wrigley field.
How many had been plucked from the world to keep them safe during the worst of the storm? And why them? Who had done it?
He incessantly questioned his mysterious benefactor, The Old Man, who granted Trevor gifts of knowledge, sanctuary, and control of the K9s when they first met. That entity sat by his campfire in the woods and remained tight-lipped about the ark. He either did not know or would not say.
So many mysteries; so many reasons to wonder. Yet none of it really mattered; not to Trevor Stone.
The Old Man once told Trevor he was a link in a chain; a man with a path to walk to keep humanity from dying and that he must survive, fight, and sacrifice.
He survived, at least so far.
He already fought an uncountable number of battles and knew many more were to come.
And he had made the most difficult sacrifice he could imagine; he gave up the only woman he truly loved, Nina Forest.
The Old Man warned Trevor that his soul was damned. Damnation meant living a life filled with violence, a life devoid of anything other than the mission. At least he had his son, Jorge. And Ashley, of course. On some level or another.
Trevor put aside the paper, closed his eyes, and tried to shut out the questions and the worries for a spell.
–
Ashley walked into the den on the first floor of the estate and spoke to the boy who was only a few months past his third birthday: “What are you still doing up?”
Jorge crawled around the floor on his hands and knees wearing powder blue racecar pajamas and surrounded by large pieces of paper and crayons. The boy stopped his drawing and looked into the green eyes of his dark-haired mother.
“I’m waiting for father.”
Never ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’, always “father.”
Ashley leaned against the doorframe.
Tall bookshelves filled with everything from science fiction to reference to religion lined the room. A massive oak desk sat in front of French casement windows facing the south grounds. Illumination came from wall-mounted antique brass fixtures.
One part library, one part office, this stuffy room sat unused during Trevor’s first years in the mansion. Jorge turned it into a playroom of sorts.
“JB,” Ashley called her son by his initials. “I don’t know when your father will be home. He had important business and may not get back until morning.”
The blonde haired, blue-eyed boy shook his head. “He will be home tonight. He likes to tuck me to bed.”
Ashley frowned. JB tended to be right about such things.
She walked further into the den. A floorboard creaked underfoo
t.
“What is it you’re drawing?” She knelt to examine one of the crayon sketches.
“It is the battle in the south. Father was victorious again.”
‘Victorious.’ What three-year-old boy uses such a word?
“Isn’t he always?” Ashley chided.
“No.”
The unexpected answer gave her pause. JB drew another scene: a giant monster waving fists at a mass of stick-people.
She huffed and told him, “That’s enough for tonight, JB. It’s late.”
He stood and gave her a hug.
“Please, mom. I just know father will be here soon. Another few minutes?”
“I see,” she found it difficult to deny him. He was, after all, her boy. Her child. Perhaps the only thing—the only person—in the world that she knew actually loved her. The two spent a lot of time alone together waiting for ‘father’ to return.
“Okay, okay,” she kissed him on the forehead as he smiled in victory.
Ashley glanced at the classic grandfather clock ticking and tocking in the corner. “Ten more minutes by grandpa’s watch,” she told the boy, referring to the clock. “But that’s it. Understand?”
“Yes,” he hugged her again. “I love you, mommy.”
–
Eagle One flew over the mountains and into the basin holding Harveys Lake. That lake had once been home to the region’s wealthy as well as seasonal summer dwellers of means.
Armageddon chased them away. During the first days, authorities urged evacuation to rescue stations. This ended disastrously for those who listened. Those who did not leave faced monsters and then starvation.
When the Old Man informed Trevor that he had to survive, fight, and sacrifice, he also informed the young man he would receive three gifts to help.
The lakeside estate came first, packed with survival gear and weapons. This had been his home during the early months. Eventually it morphed into the center point for rebuilding civilization.
His second gift proved more unusual: the ability to communicate with dogs, although he preferred to call them K9s or even “Grenadiers” as Stonewall McAllister nicknamed them.
Even after five years he did not fully understand how the communication worked, but it involved a combination of sound and mental projection.
Nonetheless, they were obedient, fearless, and ruthless; an extension of Trevor’s will. They never questioned his orders, argued morals, or hesitated to obey.
As the number of human survivors grew, the importance of K9s in pitched battles diminished. They transitioned from front line fighting to rooting out alien predators as well as security, although more than a few Hivvans met their fate in the jaws of Trevor’s Grenadiers.
As far as anyone could tell, Trevor remained the only human who could communicate thoroughly with the K9s. Nonetheless, the dogs were born with an instinct for human commands.
The K9s numbered in the tens of thousands throughout the new civilization and provided basic perimeter and patrol security for almost every human community. While certainly intimidating to newcomers, people slept better knowing Grenadiers patrolled the streets.
His third gift proved the most puzzling of all, at least to those who had known him before Armageddon. Trevor’s close friends—like Jon Brewer and Dante Jones—could not understand how Stone knew how to fly helicopters or repair complicated equipment. How had he learned to be a good marksman or understand the tactics of war as well as any General?
He told them he had just “picked it up.” They never questioned further.
A collection of human genetic memories, this third gift remained stored in a secret room in an underground chamber beneath the mansion; a chamber only he could access using a key that was always around his neck but only visible when he needed it.
Those memories served as a library of knowledge and with that knowledge Trevor gained the courage and self-confidence to become the leader mankind needed.
Yet he did not completely understand the gift. Among those genetic memories came the know-how to fly the “Eagle” ships stolen from the Redcoat aliens. That information should not be accessible to him, not through his network of human memories; human genes.
It seemed the more Trevor learned about the new world the more mysteries he found.
In any case, as his Eagle approached the mansion, the deceleration woke Stone. With no windows inside the passenger compartment, he activated a view screen to look outside the craft.
Each time he saw ‘home’ he felt relieved; a part of him feared finding nothing but ruins overrun by hostiles; a fear that was a part of the responsibility he carried on his shoulders.
Surrounded by a tall black iron fence, the mansion sat isolated except for two neighbors: a silent A-frame on one side, a small white church fifty yards in the other direction.
A driveway climbed a slight grade toward the east-facing main house through a perfectly manicured lawn dotted with ornamental trees. A six-car garage with apartments on top rested in the northern quadrant of the grounds. Other, smaller buildings hid among the trees on the back half of the lot in the shadow of a mountain, including a barn that had been the original home for Trevor’s first army of dogs.
Standing two stories tall, the architecture suggested Victorian roots but lacked heavy gothic flavor. Thick pillars lined a big front porch while a second-floor balcony overlooked the front grounds with a breathtaking view of the lake.
The Eagle airship slowed to a stop in mid air and then descended onto a concrete helicopter pad built in the front yard.
–
Trevor pulled the sheets to his son’s chin. It was August, it was warm, but tucking Jorge in always meant literally tucking him in. No doubt Jorgie would soon toss and twist those sheets but Trevor followed the routine step by step.
“Tell me again, how fast did the Hivvans run?”
Trevor smiled at his boy’s desire to know about the world he would someday inherit. For such a young child he held an unusual grasp of the situation.
“They ran like a boy from a Jaw-Wolf,” he tickled JB’s nose. “Maybe even faster.”
“That’s pretty fast,” JB giggled. “I’m glad you’re home, father. Mommy is glad you’re home, too.”
Trevor kissed his boy on the forehead.
“Could you wrap bunny up?” JB asked before his father left.
‘Bunny’ was a fuzzy yellow rabbit given to the boy by Jon Brewer last Easter. JB had a small white and red blanket that always stayed with Bunny; the plush rabbit’s version of the covers Trevor pulled tight over his son at night.
Bunny always went to bed with JB and often times accompanied the boy on long trips. Most important, however, Bunny required wrapping, too.
When he finished, Trevor handed the bundle to his son who accepted it with a warm hug. Daddy then pulled those bed sheets snug again to his son’s chin.
“Sweet dreams, Jorge.”
Jorge, with his eyes closed, repeated, “…like a boy from a Jaw-Wolf…”
Trevor turned off the lamp on the nightstand and tip toed into the hallway. Ashley stood there with crossed arms.
“Like a boy from a Jaw-Wolf? Are you trying to give him nightmares?”
Trevor gently closed the door, but not quite all the way.
“I don’t think he gets nightmares.”
“Hmmm…” Ashley tried—unconvincingly—to sound annoyed.
They walked along the hall toward what had once been the second-floor ‘Command Center‘. Now it served as Trevor’s personal office. The majority of official business and meetings took place in the basement conference room.
“So things went well?” Ashley asked.
“The bad guys are on the run.”
“You were victorious,” she said in a funny tone.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
The sliding doors to the balcony stood open and a soft breeze blew in. Outside, over the lake, an Eagle patrol ship flew through the night sky w
ith spotlights searching the waters below and its running lights flashing like big fireflies.
He stood at the balcony and watched. The image of the ship floating over the waters with its lights flashing resembled a special effects shot from a movie; surreal.
In truth, so much of what happened at the mansion seemed surreal any more. He and Ashley, for instance. Their relationship felt more like a stage play. They never actually went through with the wedding they had been planning before the world fell apart. All the seating chart strategies and finely planned details were now faded memories of a dream life.
In truth, few people formally married in the post-Armageddon world. Those of strong religious beliefs went to clergy and received the blessings of their preferred church, but Trevor’s bureaucracy offered no official sanction of ‘marriage.’
Appointed regional judges settled “legal” disputes between people but had no time to stamp marriage licenses. More important issues—from food to alien monsters—vied for ‘government’ attention.
To Trevor, finding Ashley covered in the green goo four years before had been a surprise, but not a shock. Some how it seemed to fit. Of course. He could not be with Nina because he was supposed to be with Ashley. Why?
She was no fighter. Ashley had been somewhat of a whiny princess in the old days. Not a survivor at all. Ah, but what better reason for her to have been chosen to ‘ride the ark’?
Yet for her, no time had elapsed. She spoke to her fiancé in one breath, then gasped for air in the next as he pulled her from a gooey coffin.
Not so for him. Between the moment of her disappearance and the time of her reappearance, his entire person changed from a directionless young man to a single-minded leader equipped with the knowledge and burdened with the responsibility to fight a war against alien invaders.
His months with Nina taught him the truth about his feelings for Ashley: he never really loved her. Not the type of deep, open love he felt with Nina. With his true love stripped from his life, he did not want to return to that old-world lie.
Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire Page 3
