Beyond Armageddon: Book 03 - Parallels (24 page)

            "The point is
—what I’m trying to tell you
—is I’ve seen piles of Crawling Tube Worm shit that was still a better soldier than you, Pickering. And if you don’t wipe that cocky smile off your face I’m GOING TO CUT YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF."

            "Who the Hell are you?" Came the familiar voice of Jon Brewer.

            Trevor's head turned fast. Nina quickly interjected, "Your Legion has been briefed on this man. You know who he is."

            Trevor walked over to the Jon Brewer of this alternate universe. This was not the man he knew back home, but the one from before the world went to Hell.

"You're the worst of the lot," Trevor told him. "You want to know why? Because I know you're better than what I saw out there. You're too damn cocky to realize it. You need to stop talking so much and start thinking."

"Hey, easy does it," the instructor jumped in. "I’ve trained these guys myself. A little relaxed, yeah, but this a damn good team. Best in Third Legion."

            Murmurs of ‘yeah’ and ‘damn straight’ echoed amongst the troops.

            "Really? Best in third legion? Okay. Prove it. Clear the building," and Trevor walked toward the dummy structure.

            "Hey! You don’t have a gun!" Brewer yelled.

            Stone did not turn around as he replied, "I will in a minute."

            He entered through an open door then shut it behind.

            The instructor looked to Major Forest who said, "You heard the man. Clear the building."

            "Um," the leader stumbled. "Which team should I send in?"

            Reverend Johnny yelled from the top of the bleachers, "I’d send in both if I were you!"

            Nina ascended the stands for a better view. The instructor raised his platform and ordered, "Brewer, switch to Blue Team. Pickering, take Green."

            Brewer and Pickering discussed strategy, the former accentuating his points with shouts and a jabbing finger. The others poked their heads into the conversation offering alternatives, debating approaches, and generally foiling any attempt to create a comprehensive plan.

            Nina arrived at the top of the bleachers next to the Reverend.

"Either your Trevor has a big ego or he’s damned good."

"Perhaps a little of both. Or, maybe,
a lot
of both, my dear."

            While the instructor refereed from the raised bucket lift, Nina and Johnny watched from the stands. They could not see everything, but they could see enough.

            Brewer's Blue team entered through the door Trevor had used. The Green team circled around to the far side and headed in.

            For his part, Trevor maneuvered through the cluster of rooms toward the center of the giant cube where he paused until a shadow approached from a connecting room. He darted to another room, but someone spotted his shadow.

"There he is!"

           
Pop-pop-pop
mock guns fired plastic pellets hitting walls and fake furniture.

            "Wait, where’d he go?"

            Brewer followed his two team members through a four-way intersection near the center. They remained focused forward to the point that Jon did not see Trevor close in from behind. Stone reached up and grabbed the taller man around the throat with one arm and overwhelmed his trigger finger with the other.

           
Pop-pop-pop.

            The instructor's voice yelled, "Wilson! Edgars! You’re out!"

            Brewer struggled with Trevor for control of the gun, using his hands to try and muscle the weapon from his opponent's grip only to find himself letting go of the prize when a leg-sweep sent him tumbling backwards.

           
Pop-Pop.

            "Brewer is out!"

            Jon did not like that, regardless of how red his patches glowed. While Wilson and Edgars followed procedure and sat on the floor with their hands behind their heads, this Jon Brewer of an alternate universe followed Trevor along the hall. A moment later, Brewer flew out a window onto the gymnasium floor with a broken nose and an equally fractured ego.

"Brewer, you are
way
out!"

            If Green team had not been moving with an overabundance of caution, they probably would have caught Trevor in the midst of dealing with Brewer's insubordination. Instead, by the time they reached the commotion, Trevor had moved off.

From their elevated vantage point, Nina and Reverend Johnny watched Trevor move parallel to the enemy through rooms across the hall from Green team. He stayed hidden by using his ears—not so much his eyes—to track enemy movement, until he sensed an opportunity.

            The three Greens crept along a thin hall. Trevor darted in front of them and fired as he raced from one room into another. With the enemy packed so close together, he could not miss.

            In a voice that sounded one-part panicked and another part sad, the referee shouted, "Pickering! You’re done!"

            Trevor ran through the building in sort of a big circle, racing across rooms and allowing his footsteps to be easily heard.  Clearly, this unnerved the remaining two enemy fighters. They started in one direction, stopped, and stepped in a another direction, then back again to the extent that they did not move at all; like rabbits caught in an open field beneath a circling hawk.

            After a few moments of this, Trevor stopped. Everything went silent. The Greens lost any initiative. They hunkered down one each at the two internal door ways in a corner room.

            Trevor exited the building on the far side and re-entered through an exterior door directly behind the two soldiers who kept their eyes staring straight as if their foe could not approach from any direction other than the two interior hallways they guarded.

            Instead of taking the easy shots and shooting the two soldiers—one man, one woman—in their backs, Trevor entered the room without making a sound. He stood behind the two unsuspecting grunts and glared up at the instructor in his hovering bucket.

            Nina laughed as she watched from the stands. Reverend Johnny shook his head.

            Stone then clamped a hand over the man's mouth, and put his gun barrel to the fellow's temple. Next, he marched his captive to the center of the room. The red-headed woman remained oblivious to the events behind her as the hallway ahead held her complete attention.

            "BOO!"

            The red head turned and fired, hitting the human shield. Trevor, of course, shot her "dead" a split second later.

            The match
—the demonstration
—ended.

            Trevor exited the building as the instructor’s lift came to the floor and a medic attended to Brewer.

            "Just a training exercise," Trevor spat as the defeated soldiers gathered without a sound.

            Trevor thrust a finger toward the outer wall of the gymnasium but actually pointed at much more. "There is a world out there that is trying to kill you. Do you understand? There isn’t any mercy out there. They don’t use fake guns."

            "We know that," the instructor mumbled.

            "Then act like it! If you die, here, in this prison of a city then
everything
dies with you!"

Nina and Johnny descended the bleachers.

"Our city stands," one of the soldiers dared, yet Trevor heard something in the heckler’s voice that kept him from breaking the man’s neck. He heard the voice of defeat. He heard the sounds of a man who had been led down too many dead ends or who had seen too many comrades wasted. He heard the sound of a man resigned to his fate.

"It will fall. You are not getting stronger. You are getting weaker. Your walls are crumbling. The enemy is reaching for your throat."

Trevor found the eyes of every person listening and met them one after another.

"You are better than this," his tone kicked up and he walked amongst them, touching a few shoulders along the way. "I know you're tired. Your city is attacked constantly. Supplies are almost gone. The weight of the world is crushing down on you. No matter where you look, there is no sign of hope. So you have to stop looking for hope from somewhere out there.
You
are that hope. Don’t surrender your power to the monsters out there. Take that power and use it."

Stone maneuvered to the front of the pack, curled his arms, and made fists.

"You were great, once," he looked toward Nina as he said that. She nodded.

"Your armies were on the march. The monsters feared you. I say, make them fear us again. Let us pour out of these walls and strike terror into the hearts of those nightmares."

He heard a mumble or two of approval. Just a little. Not much. But a spark.

"We can’t march out of here," the instructor almost pleaded. "It would be suicide! Don’t fill them with empty promises. The Committee has decreed that we are on the defensive."

"NEVER! It is never enough to sit and wait for death. If death is to come for us, then I say, meet it head on! Meet it where it lives!"

"Easy to say, but we aren’t capable of launching attacks."

"No," Trevor agreed with the man this time. "Not yet. We must prepare. We must train. Before we can challenge the enemy, we must challenge ourselves. But not like what I saw here. You do your men a disservice. If you don’t expect the best then they won’t be the best."

"And what do
you
expect?" The instructor sneered.

"Victory."

A simple word that dared not be spoken in a long time.

            "And I will accept nothing less."

            The instructor shook his head. The other soldiers…they listened.

            Brewer—his nose bandaged and his eyes cast down—stood among the group. Trevor walked to him and while he spoke to everyone, he looked at this doppelganger of his friend.

            "You are full of potential, but you must set aside your egos. I know there is greatness inside you, there are leaders here waiting to rise. You just have to give yourself a chance."

            He stepped to the front of the crowd and said, "So we’re running through this again. Blue Team, with me. Green team," Trevor looked to Nina. "Major Forest, you have Green Team."

            "She’s not an instructor!" the man who was pointed out.

            "I don’t need instructors. I need warriors.
We
need warriors."

            This breech of protocol flabbergasted the drill supervisor, but he could do nothing.

            "All right Green team, let’s go," Nina called.

            The soldiers glanced at their instructor, then to Trevor, and then followed the Major.

            With that, the exercises began anew. Again, sloppy, but Trevor and Nina took the men aside and revisited basics; the fundamentals they had not practiced in a long time. He learned the terms of their army and introduced them to terms from his; the language of war translated easily.

            According to Nina, these men had been briefed on Trevor's origins and they accepted him without questions. He purposely steered clear of discussing his world, he wanted to focus on theirs. He also did not ask about the past because it made no difference now; today was a new day, the first day.

            On the second pass, things improved. The third time through, better still. By the time the fourth practice run began, spectators gathered in the gymnasium, some even joined in.

            They fought through the building, and outside it, even charging across the gymnasium.

            By late afternoon, he and Nina turned over unit commands to other soldiers. By evening a line of people waited to be a part of the war games. To be a part of the energy. To see the man who inspired the hard work: the man who looked like…no, it could not be.

            Trevor felt their thirst for direction and he met that enthusiasm with correction and encouragement.

            Nina arranged for the 3
^rd
Legion’s Training Facility to stay open late that night. Trevor told her it would need to stay open late many more nights.

            But it was a beginning. He had planted a seed.

            The dual rotor Chinook helicopter chopped through the air with an oversized van-like vehicle dangling from a winch underneath. The helicopter slowly descended to place its cargo in an open field adjacent to a dense, black forest.

            Ten days ago, Trevor landed a black-painted Eagle in that same field which, at the time, lay behind enemy Platypus lines. Much changed since then.

            Now tents, water buffalos, a latrine, and the Chinook's cargo—a mobile bio-weapons lab salvaged and modified from the old world--filled the field and created a command post for the Science and Technology task force named "Prodigal Son".