For the first days after her return, he comforted her, awkwardly. He explained how the world changed. He did not need to explain how he had changed, she saw that for herself.
Then he found out why he was supposed to be with Ashley. She told him about her nausea and a missed period. Dr. Maple quickly confirmed Ashley Trump’s pregnancy.
After JB’s birth, blood testing confirmed his paternity and his humanity. Whatever force stole her away on the ark did not manipulate the child’s development, only postponed the birth.
Trevor understood. Jorge Benjamin Stone was the reason he had to be with Ashley.
JB needed a father, not merely a sperm donor. A father and a mother. His father and mother. Trevor and Ashley.
Perhaps JB would be the next link on the chain.
To her credit, it did not take long for Ashley Trump to change, either.
Ironically, her ride on the ark made her something akin to royalty in the new world. That and her being—for all purposes—the wife of Trevor Stone. She demonstrated a quiet strength in her husband’s shadow.
In many ways, she legitimately became the ‘princess’ Lori Brewer often referred to her as in the old days. Yet the uppity attitude that elicited that derogatory title dissipated.
Ashley did not know of Trevor’s relationship with Nina Forest. Nonetheless, it did not take her long to realize she did not hold Trevor’s heart. Not firmly, at least.
They shared the same bed. Sometimes there was affection and there was always kindness.
It seemed Ashley had come to believe she played a role in all this, too. The role of JB’s mother. The role of Trevor’s supportive companion. A place for her in the world of nightmares she had awoken to. Like him, it was a role forced upon her.
Trevor watched the Eagle patrol ship move across the waters of the lake. Ashley stood next to him.
“Beautiful night,” she said. “I’m going to bed now. You’re welcome to join me.”
An invitation. Yet no matter how heated their embrace may become when they shared warmth, they both sensed a barrier between them. The same barrier imprisoning them in their roles in the new world.
Oh, it was not a harsh prison. She was beautiful. He had evolved into a handsome, chiseled man. There were worse fates.
Trevor looked out at the August night one more time. The lights of the patrol craft faded in the distance.
He thought he would accept the invitation. To feel her touch would be…would be nice.
Trevor walked away from the balcony…
…Through binoculars, a pair of eyes watched Trevor disappear inside the mansion.
The figure stood amongst the trees on the slope of the mountain. He had watched the estate for a long time. For days now.
At the same moment he watched Trevor move from view, the shadowy figure realized they had caught his scent.
Two Siberian Huskies abandoned their patrol route and raced toward the scent of the intruder. They came upon the shadowy man standing amidst the trees. They sensed he did not belong.
The shadow stood still as the angry dogs approached. He heard their snarls. He felt them prepare to strike, slowing as they circled the trapped quarry.
“Very good,” he patted his hands together in a quiet clap, cheering the dogs for their keen awareness. “You must be the best of the best,” he spoke as their nostrils flared. “What a shame.”
The Grenadiers stepped closer; snarls gasped from their snouts.
Then they hesitated.
The snarls stopped. Each tried to bark but only a tiny yap came from their throats.
Then the dogs whined as if an unpleasant scent assaulted their noses.
Anger came again. More snarls, this time not directed at the shadowy intruder in the woods but at each other.
The Huskies circled one another, twitching and drooling as they moved. Then they crashed together, teeth ripping and claws tearing. Blood spilled as they twisted and wrestled in the woods.
The shadowy figure turned and slowly walked away as the two K9s tore each other apart, inflicting mortal wounds and eventually slumping to the ground motionless as their lifeblood drained.
The man disappeared into the shadows. He would not be seen again until he chose to be seen. It was not time yet. That time would come, soon enough.
Soon enough.
3. Fishing
Nina turned off the shower and stepped from behind the curtain. A solitary ray of morning light entered between warped window blinds, cut across the small dorm room, and shot through the open door to the steam-filled bathroom like a golden laser.
While the room lacked electricity, the engineers managed to get the residence hall’s hot water heaters up and running, something Nina greatly appreciated.
Her towel wiped the inside thigh of her left leg, just below a tattoo depicting the profile of a wolf’s head. She paused and stared at the rendering permanently sketched on her body. The drawing still baffled her. More precisely, how had she worked up the courage—or stupidity—to allow a fat, smelly biker-dude ‘ink’ her?
It all started when she led a group of commandos on a mission behind enemy lines outside of Pittsburgh. Things went FUBAR and they found themselves surrounded by three-legged plasma-rifle-wielding platypus aliens. She and her men expected to die and hoped only to kill a number of the enemy before the end.
Instead, her commando unit not only survived, but turned the tables so thoroughly the aliens ran for their lives. Indeed, eschewing the opportunity to slip quietly away, Nina and her team chased the fleeing aliens and slaughtered them like wolves on the hunt.
On that day, Special Forces Unit Alpha-One became the Dark Wolves.
When they had returned to base camp a sense of euphoria overcame the team. Drinking, laughing, and then finally a dare to seal their bond. Each of the four agreed to the tattoo.
Before that year of lost memories, the idea of a tattoo abhorred her. Yet on that day she consented and not all of her consent could be blamed on alcohol.
Ever since the day four years ago when she opened her eyes inside the bowels of The Order’s abandoned base in Allentown with Jerry Shepherd the only familiar face in a room full of strangers, she felt something missing in her life.
Like an elusive itch defying all attempts to scratch, Nina failed to satiate that feeling. Perhaps the adventure of getting the risqué tattoo had served as another scratch and like all the others, it failed to chase a sense of loss. Of emptiness.
She experimented with relationships over the years, even taking two lovers. Yet each ended in failure and she placed the blame on herself. She always stopped short of opening herself to people and she found no interest in casual flings: she could never separate the physical intimacy from the emotional.
Thus, she focused almost entirely on her work. This produced the best results. She felt most at home on the battlefield or sneaking behind enemy lines or picking off an alien leader with a sniper rifle at three hundred yards. In such cases, the mission may be difficult and dangerous but at least the goals were well defined.
Nonetheless, as much as she tried to submerge herself in work; as much as she tried to chase away that empty feeling; it managed to return. It always wormed through to nag at her, particularly between missions.
Nina moved into the center of the dorm room, strapped on her watch and slipped into black BDUs. A North Carolina State Wolfpack pennant decorated one wall, a small refrigerator filled with skunked beer sat between two skinny beds. The whole place smelled old and dusty; the calendar remained stuck on a summer day five years past.
A stranger’s room with a stranger’s stuff. She owned only an assault rifle and a duffle bag of equipment that traveled with her from mission to mission. Everything else in that place belonged to a world long-gone; echoes from a civilization ground to dust.
Wait, no, one more item belonged to her: a fishing pole propped in a corner.
Nina checked her watch and realized she had enough time to put that fishing pole to
use.
–
Not far from the campus of North Carolina State University lapped the calm waters of Lake Johnson, situated on the southwestern corner of Raleigh within the perimeter of the Hivvan walls.
General Jerry Shepherd and Nina Forest sat on an isolated grassy bank with their lines cast in the lake. No bites came and given the strands of industrial slime floating on the surface after years of Hivvan manufacturing, they doubted anything edible lived in those waters. In fact, they worried more about something unearthly coming from the depths to feast on them.
Of course, catching fish was not the point.
Jerry Shepherd had been Nina’s mentor in the Philadelphia police force. Since those days, she viewed him as sort of a second father.
A veteran of both the military and law enforcement, Shep treated Nina like a soldier since the day he first met her, not like some chick trying to muscle her way onto the sacred ground of masculinity. Ironically, Nina Forest‘s disposition remained shy and reclusive, except on the battlefield. Except on a mission.
Except—Nina might add—when getting wolf tattoos etched on her upper thigh.
Shep had led Nina and a handful of others from Philadelphia that first summer of the invasion when the chain of command broke and splintered, when a nation deteriorated into individuals running for their lives.
When they happened upon an abandoned police helicopter north of the city, Nina’s skills as an Army National Guard pilot allowed them to take to the air. During their flight north, the chopper experienced mechanical problems forcing an emergency landing in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
The story went on from there but it ended with Shep and Nina joining Trevor’s band of survivors.
In the years since, the two saw less of each other due to their diverging roles in the military campaign.
Technically, the Dark Wolves served as part of Shepherd’s “Southern Command,” but their unit often moved fast with little break between tasks.
Those tasks included reconnaissance, assassinations, sabotage, harassing enemy supply convoys, taking out particularly nasty predatory hostiles, securing key river crossings, and more.
Overhead, the sound of a military jet cut through the otherwise peaceful morning.
Shep glanced skyward and told her, “We’ve been running sorties since dawn. Hitting em’ with everything we got.”
She asked, “But not ground forces? I heard 2nd Mech hasn’t moved an inch.”
“Supplies are stretched to the limit. We got some units down to less than a dozen bullets per man and gas tanks are about dry. It’s going to take some time before we can get after them.”
“Same old story,” she said. “We’ve got the manpower but no supplies. I thought you brought that up at the last big meeting?”
Shepherd chuckled. “Yeah, Nina, I brought it up. That don’t mean there were any more bullets to spare.”
Something moved in the lake waters. A fish. Maybe. Whatever it was scurried off. Some of the new animals on Earth came to feast, but the bulk of the new creatures were herbivores and carrion eaters.
“Speaking of that last powwow,” Shepherd referred to a military conference held at the lakeside estate a month ago. “Prescott asked about you.”
He meant General Tom Prescott, in command of the 1st Armored Division as well as the “Western Command,” currently securing their flank along the Appalachians.
“How is he doing?”
“He’s doing okay, I suppose,” Shep probed. “Nice guy. Kind of a warped sense of humor, but nice.”
Nina sighed and gave in to his prodding. “Yeah, nice guy, but not exactly, well, not exactly the right fit for me. I hope he wasn’t too hurt when I broke it off.”
“Oh, he’s a tough fellow, seems to me his spine is still intact.”
Nina went silent and kept her eyes focused forward, as if studying her fishing line but Shep knew better. He scratched the back of his neck and waited for what he knew would come because they went through the same routine every six months or so. He hated it; he hated lying to her. Still, he had given his word to Trevor and what good would the truth do now? So he waited for the inevitable question and considered which strategy of deception he would use this time.
“Look, Shep, I think there’s more you’re not telling me. More that lots of people aren’t telling me about what happened. I feel as if something is missing. I’m just saying that I deserve the truth, that’s all.”
He licked his lips and answered, “I don’t know how many different ways I can tell it, Nina. You know it all.”
Funny, he thought, you’d think lying would get easier each time, but it don’t.
“Then tell me again.”
“Well aren’t you the little detective. What am I, a suspect or something? You going to keep badgering me until my story slips up or something like that?”
She glanced away as if ashamed for pushing, but turned her eyes back to him just as quick. No, he would not get away easy this time.
Shepherd adopted an annoyed tone as he told her the story once again. “Helicopter crashes. You and Scott lure away the bad things from me and Sal ‘cause I’m all banged up. Trevor and Jon Brewer mosey along and help me and Sal back to the estate, then they go looking for you. They don’t find you for nearly three whole days and there’s no sign of Scott. He didn’t make it but you look right as rain when they do stagger upon you, other than being out cold. A few months later, you get snatched by The Order and taken to one of their bases. Turns out, they had implanted you with some sort of thing that was recording your memories. Sort of like a spy thing, except you didn’t know about it.”
Part one of the story followed the truth with the exception being that Nina’s implant caused her to betray Trevor to The Order. The second part of the story included a different take on the rescue mission but one meant to cover up this betrayal. She had not been at fault and with all she lost, it made no sense to Shep to add guilt to the equation.
“Jon Brewer and Trevor and a whole posse of us help get you out of there but we didn’t know there were two implants. So you go spending the next couple of months fighting alongside all of us, killing the bad guys, wiping out the Redcoats, and helping win the Battle of Five Armies—hooray for you.”
Nina furled her brow; his sarcasm apparently hit a nerve.
“But then you start fainting. I never thought I’d see you faint by the way. So ole Reverend Johnny finds the second implant. To take it out we got to get you down to The Order’s base and find the right enzyme or something like that. We do that and the second implant is gone before it can cause any more brain damage to your stubborn l’il noggin.”
He punctuated the end of the story with an acerbic smile.
“Nothing else?”
“I reckon there’s a lot else but to be honest with you I didn’t go ‘round keeping a diary on everything you were up to. But all the big stuff, that about covers it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nina turned away and stared at the water.
Shepherd squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. He figured he probably could have done without the sarcasm. She was, after all, just a girl who had had something bad happen to her. He wondered how he would react if he could not remember an entire year of his life; if he had awoken from that year as she had: changed.
That was the truth of it. She had changed. Shepherd could see that as clearly as he saw her sitting next to him. She seemed to want more in her life than just the fighting, but had been unable to find exactly what that was.
To him, Nina was like the daughter—the child—he never had, and he had just been mean to her. Man, did he wish he had a beer. Usually he brought a six-pack when he fished. Usually, when the two of them went, they brought a whole cooler full. Not this time. This was a temporary respite in the midst of a critical campaign, not a vacation.
The older man rested his fishing pole on the grass and slid closer to her. He put a fatherly arm on her shoulder.
“Say, I
’m sorry, Nina.”
“Yeah, me too. I need to learn to stop looking to you for answers. I have to find them somewhere else.”
He said, “I just think I’ve been over about everything I can tell you.”
She rested her head, briefly, on his shoulder like a little girl looking for comfort.
“I’m sorry to be bothering you about all this. I won’t do it again, promise.”
“I know,” he answered, but she said that each time. In six months or so, he figured she would say it again.
The sound of approaching footsteps startled the two of them from the moment.
“Sir! General, Sir!”
Bogart hurried to the grassy slope. Shep and Nina stood to meet him. He held several sheets of paper toward the General.
“Sir, you need to look at this. It’s the Hivvans, Sir.”
Shep grabbed the papers. Nina peered over his shoulder.
“I’ll be damned. Get me a secure line to the estate. I need to talk to Brewer right away.”
–
Trevor leaned against the big oak desk in the den. His son crawled around on the floor amidst drawings of battles and monsters.
“Did General Shepherd do well?” JB asked.
“Shep did a very good job. Stonewall, too.”
“Yes, I know,” Jorge replied as he paid particular attention to one drawing. “The man on the radio talked a lot about General Stonewall this morning. Said he cut the heads right off a bunch of Hivvans.”
Trevor scratched his chin and said, “I don’t want you thinking about stuff like that, JB. It’s really not very pleasant.”
“No,” Jorge said without turning from his drawing. “I guess not. Not for the Hivvan getting his head chopped off.”
Trevor shook his head. JB always had something to say and he usually said it much more eloquently than any adult Trevor knew. Except for Stonewall, of course. No one spoke more eloquently than Stonewall.
He turned away from his son, glanced out the French casement windows, and stopped dead at what he saw: a white wolf loitering beyond the iron fence on the south side of the estate.
Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire Page 4
