Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (28 page)

Parsons responded, “And if there is blood, then that, too, will be on your hands.”

A short while later, the full council refused passage for The Empire’s army.

–

           
What had been a very pleasant afternoon quickly turned dark as a line of thunderstorms rolled in from the northwest, skirting the top of the mountains and hovering over the lake.

           
Streaks of sunlight glittering through the den’s French casement windows flickered and then faded, snuffed out by heavy black clouds.

           
“It’s okay now, little feller,” Benjamin Trump—one time owner of the fourth largest fence company in Luzerne County—assured his grandson, Jorge. “Just a storm passing through. A little rain is good for the farmers.”

           
JB curled a little closer as he sat on grandpa’s lap.

           
“I suppose we need a little light in here,” Trump said and he reached for the desk lamp.

           
JB repeated words his father often said, “Do we need the light, grandpa? We have to con-serve energy because no sun means no power.”

           
“Is that so? I suppose you have a point, Jorgie, since the clouds have blocked out the sun for a bit and that means those fancy solar panels won’t be collecting any light for a while. But don’t you worry; this little light won’t cause a problem. Besides, how else am I going to read to you?”

           
Trump pulled the short chain and the lamp clicked on.

           
“Okay, now, where were we? Oh yeah…” Benjamin Trump consulted a red and white Dr. Seuss book. “And, speaking of shapes, now just suppose…” grandpa read slow while JB followed the pictures.

           
A flash of lightning lit the room in a sparkle. Three seconds later the boom of thunder followed. The lamp on the desktop flickered. Benjamin Trump eyed it as if to will the power to stay on.

He read, “Suppose YOU were shaped like these…or those!”

           
Light from outside flashed again, but a shadow blocked most of the flash this time.

           
“Of all the shapes we MIGHT have been…”

           
Grandpa turned to the last page of the children’s book.

           
“I say HOORAY for the shapes we’re in!”

           
The light on the desk went out. The room fell pitch black.

           
“Grandpa, what happened? Did the storm knock out the power?”

“No, that’s not the storm, can’t be, must be another problem—” Trump caught himself and corrected, “Well, um, maybe JB. Probably. Yes, probably the storm knocked the power out. It will be back on real soon.”
           
JB wiggled in Grandpa’s lap and faced the window. He saw the silhouette of a man standing just outside the glass, staring in. Looking at them. Looking at Jorge.

           
“Graa…graanddpaaa…”

           
Benjamin Trump turned as well. He saw the shape of a man, shaggy around the edges perhaps from torn clothes, maybe from disfigured skin.

           
The lightning flashed so brilliant that both grandpa and grandson shielded their eyes. Thunder shook the house at the same moment.

When they looked again, the shadow remained. Standing there. Staring at them through the thin pane of glass.

           
Benjamin staggered to his feet clutching the boy in his arms.

           
“Go away! Go away you bad man!” JB shouted.

           
The shadow raised a hand…drummed three fingers on the glass–
thud-thud-thud
—then waved.

           
Grandpa tried to move around the desk but he bumped his hip on the edge. This caused him to lose his balance and almost fall over.

           
“Security! Security!”

           
Two black-clad I.S. agents came through the door but when they looked to the window, they saw only the dark grounds of the mansion and falling sheets of rain.

           
Benjamin told them, “He was just there, but he’s gone now.”

           
JB corrected, “He’s still here, grandpa. He’s still here.”

Three days after the Dark Wolves rescued the hostages at
Airlie
Gardens
,
Nina
Forest
remained in
Wilmington
, much to her dismay. Massive Stumphides no longer hunted the streets, the Mutant gangs no longer terrorized survivors, and both types of Sloths nearly disappeared from the city. However, a job remained. A tedious job, but one she had promised to finish.

With the larger, more dangerous hostiles eliminated, the Hunter-Killer teams focused on the smaller and more numerous pests. They searched basements to root out cat-sized acid-spitting roaches, dug holes in parks to reach nests of otherworldly eels, picked through scrap heaps and trash piles for slithering carrion-eating slug-things, and burned nests of alien birds from treetops.

Nina had hoped that, with the city essentially secure for humans and supply convoys, General Shepherd would send her new orders. However, apparently a problem on the road to
Conway
occupied the brass’ attention. That left Nina in
Wilmington
overseeing pest-control and helping rebuilding efforts until someone from civilian administration saw fit to take over the task.

           
She began the day leading a convoy to
Wrightsville
Beach
, carrying a health evaluation team, medical screening materials, and a truck of canned food. A reporter from the
Baltimore New Press
sat in the back seat of the lead Humvee. She allowed him to ride along only after he promised not to quote her or even mention her in his article on the liberation of the area.

           
“This was a substantial group of survivors,” she told him. “About one hundred and fifty living near the coast. I think that helped, since they could fish and defending their camp against the threats in the city was a little easier, for the most part.”

           
“How’d they react when your forces showed up?”

           
“They love us. I think some of them had their first good night’s sleep in five years. I think if they had ticker-tape, they would have thrown us a parade.”

           
The soldier driving her Humvee swerved the vehicle to the left. They bounced over a particularly nasty pothole—more a bomb crater—as the convoy turned onto a bridge.

           
“That’s cool,” the reporter said.

           
“Yeah, but it’d be weird if it were any other way. They’ve been stuck out here, isolated, for five years. Got to give them credit, they really conserved their fuel and they did a good job scrounging supplies, but you have to wonder how many of them died off from basic diseases and simple injuries. Stuff we took for granted in the old days and are only now starting to deal with again.”

“Did they have, like, a leader or President or something?”

           
Nina shook her head. “More like a couple of dominant personalities. People tend to find their place in situations like this.”

           
The convoy arrived at the parking lot of a hotel that had become the community center for the survivors in
Wrightsville
Beach
.

           
“Remember, I don’t want my name or even mention of me appearing anywhere. I’m sort of a behind-the-scenes type of girl.”

           
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed.

           
As the reporter walked off into the hotel, Nina exited the Humvee and stretched. A mob of
Wrightsville
Beach
survivors descended on the trucks and picked the contents clean. She watched them remove everything in a fast but orderly manner. This group impressed her; they had maintained their dignity despite the hardships they had endured. It felt good to have been a direct part in liberating them. Usually her work kept her at a distance from the survivors who benefited from her team’s missions. Maybe that had been Shep’s intent when he assigned her this task; to show her the good her bloody work produced.

           
Around eleven, Nina prepared to depart from the hotel parking lot and return to her headquarters at City Hall.

           
“Hey, let’s get going,” she called to the soldier standing at the hotel entrance who served as her driver. The young man busied himself talking to one of the liberated ladies who gazed into his eyes like
Lois Lane
staring at Superman.

As Nina jumped in to the passenger seat of the roofless Humvee, a man approached calling, “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

           
“Yes?”

           
“Hi,” he caught his breath. “Sorry, I spotted your cars and I didn’t want you to leave without getting a chance to thank you.”

Nina squinted and examined him. Probably in his early thirties, maybe a little thin but otherwise in decent shape.

“I remember you,” she said. “You were with the kids, right?”

           
“Jim Brock,” he extended his hand. “And thank you, Miss..?”

           
“
Captain
,” Nina corrected. “
Captain
Forest
.”

           
His smile faltered and a little red shot to his cheeks.

           
She reconsidered her harsh tone and said, “Had we found out about it sooner maybe we could have got there before your two friends were killed.”

           
Brock’s soft features hardened and his eyes cast to his feet.

           
“Yeah, well, I mean, I can still…I can still…”

           
“You can still hear the screams,” she knew. “That’s what Mutants do; they like to hear people scream. It’s how they’re wired, I guess.”

           
He said, “At least all of the children made it out safe. Maybe, in some way, their deaths bought time for you to get there.”

           
“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

           
Her driver—a smile on his face—slid behind the wheel and turned the ignition key. The Humvee rumbled to life.

           
Nina asked Jim Brock, “What were you doing with all those kids? I mean, the guy said something about them being a part of your orphanage or something.”

           
“Before the world went to hell I was at a day care center. You wouldn’t believe how many people went to work on the day of the Apocalypse. The parents never came to get their kids. You know, dead or injured. Maybe just trapped. We got a couple of phone calls. At least some of the children had a chance to speak to their moms or dads one more time. But the parents never came.”

           
“Oh.”

           
It seemed to her there were a million stories of that day, a million angles and new perspectives. She had never thought about the day cares or schools. Probably because she had no children or close friends with kids.

           
Or any friends in those days,
Nina thought.

           
“Well done,” she told him.

           
“What’s that?”

           
“When all this started, I was heavily armed, with a group of trained police officers, and, honestly, I barely survived the first day. I’m guessing that instead of machine guns and grenades, you had diapers and juice boxes. I’m just saying, you did a good job.”

           
“All of it would have ended if it weren’t for you. We were not getting out alive. No matter what. Those things, they wanted to kill the kids. It would have happened eventually. They want to kill every living thing that was on this earth before they got here.”

           
And we want to kill everything that wasn’t here before then
, Nina chewed on the irony.

“Well, good luck and all. See you ‘round, Jim.”

           
“Nice meeting you, Captain.”

           
She nodded to the driver and as the Humvee pulled away, she told Jim Brock, “That’s
Nina.”

–

           
Half an hour later, the Humvee parked outside of City Hall. A minute after Nina and her driver exited the vehicle, a corner of the canvass tarp covering crates in the Humvee’s cargo bed lifted and a pair of young eyes peeked out.