He sniffled, stood straight, and opened his eyes.
"So, yeah, anyway. Once we got things under control, we were told to march on out and save the day. Yessir. Save the day. We had some of our tanks and plenty of bullets. We even had enough guys to do some good. But what did they tell us to do? What do you think?"
Prescott glanced around the room, a look of contempt rippling across his face.
He spoke again in a mocking voice: "Yeah, send some of your guys here…send some more over here. That’s right, let’s go plug all the holes in the dike all at once. Our big unit that could have dished out damage was turned into a bunch of little units. We did stuff, but not nearly what we could have done. We wiped out a crap load of these, like, Indian fellows with spears and crap. I mean, they charged our tanks with spears! Can you believe that?"
Prescott shook his head at the morbid memory.
"Sometime around the fourth of July we ran into these big things. Christ-Jesus, they were bigger than cars and had teeth that kind of…God…reached out and grabbed you. They tore the turret off one of our tanks, you know? Must’ve killed twenty of our guys before we put them down with heavy shells. Pardon my French but they were straight from Hell, I think."
Shepherd and Brewer shared a glance.
"So anyway, then we start seeing organized things. I guess aliens, right? We get dive bombed by these strange planes and run into a bunch of lizards driving like these little tanks. Flames…lasers…crap like that. Blasted them, too. But they were really organized, and there were a lot of them. Spent a week or two fighting battles here and there with those things. Lost a lot of guys. We headed north, they didn’t follow."
Trevor did not ask all the questions he wanted to ask. For now. In time, Prescott could offer a wealth of information as to what lay beyond the valley walls.
"Sometime around late-July the dropped a couple of pallets of supplies for us. I think we were in Ohio around then. We were supposed to hook up with the Ohio National Guard. We got to where they were supposed to be and didn’t find anyone. Well, you know, any one alive."
Brewer asked, "What did you hear about the chain of command?"
Prescott snickered. "Oh we had tons of people yanking our chain of command. Most of our unit officers got torn up early on. We had a Colonel running our group for a few weeks until something swooped on down and carried him off. That’s when I took over. I started getting all sorts of stuff over the radio. One minute it’s the Governor of Missouri telling me what to do, then it’s the Governor-I mean, Lieutenant Governor — of Ohio. The Pentagon sent some orders. Hey, we had no rest and were running out of guys but we never ran out of orders."
Nina asked, "How’d the rest of the military do? What’d you hear?"
"Heard California was putting up a hell of a fight; dogfights in the skies over San Fran and big ground battles. The Air Force was kicking ass all over the country until they started running out of bases and fuel. After July, though, we weren’t hearing much. Rumor had it the top guns-you know the brass-got wiped out. Don’t know about that, though."
"Tell me mister Prescott, sir," Omar asked. "What about the President?"
Prescott scratched his head again as if the memories needed help coming forth.
"Well, I suppose you heard he got out of DC early on, right? The only thing I heard after that were some Pentagon folks saying he had lost freedom of movement. I guess they were having real trouble with communications and such. Point is, by August there was no President any more. No Congress. Nothing. Last I heard in September there were still a lot of army units fighting in California and the navy was out there doing some good, but otherwise there wasn’t any U.S. military any more. Same goes for overseas. The Russians got their asses kicked, or so I heard, but no details. As for us, we got torn apart little pieces at a time. Like piranha on an elephant, I suppose."
Shepherd nodded. "I figure we all guessed that’s how it went down."
Trevor said, "Couldn’t have happened any other way. I think the troops could have handled one big army dropping from the sky. Not the chaos, though. Not all at once."
"We had no warning, no time to prepare," Prescott gripped his fists tight. "When I look back, I can think of a thousand things I would have done different. I’ll tell you, I would have turned off my radio. What’s that they say? Yeah, too many chefs, you know?"
Stonewall said, "Perhaps, Mr. Prescott, divine providence has steered you through the shattered lands to this place where you can fight once again with a purpose."
The Major sighed and changed the subject. "Maybe. In the meantime, I suppose it’d be a good idea for Mr. Nehru here to take the engineers under his wing and put them to use."
"Oh my goodness yes," Omar beamed.
"That sounds like a plan," Trevor agreed but his thoughts already raced ahead with a flurry of ideas now that trained and armed soldiers had joined the estate. Nonetheless, one issue hung in the air. As the meeting broke, Trevor took Prescott aside.
"Major, there is something we need to talk about."
The soldier raised his hand.
"Don’t worry none. I’ve spent the last six months barely surviving and wasting a lot of men’s lives. I look ‘round here and, geez, you’ve been doing some damn fine work. So yeah, I know whose giving the orders."
– One day later, Trevor formed a council of advisors. Evan Godfrey’s enthusiasm for the move faded when Trevor eschewed elections and handpicked the members.
Ironically, Godfrey’s work in helping new arrivals earned him a spot on the council overseeing housing and needs. Trevor put Reverend Johnny in charge of medical concerns and appointed Brewer as the point man for combat issues (with Prescott assisting).
Dante-still out scouting-would head internal security. This met with grumbles but Trevor wanted Dante on that council; the man had a way of seeing both sides of coins, even if his background lay in computers, not policing. Trevor knew that his best law enforcement people-Shep and Nina-would be needed on the front lines, not on guard duty.
Trevor placed Lori Brewer in charge of resident tracking and convinced Eva Rheimmer to travel in from her farm periodically to discuss the food supply.
Finally, Omar would handle "Science and Technology".
At the first council meeting-sans Dante-Evan bitched about the need for elected representation. Omar bitched about too many projects and not enough help. Reverend Johnny bitched about the lack of medical facilities. Eva Rheimmer bitched about having to travel all the way in from the farm to listen to all the bitching.
– On December 10 ^ th "Bear" Ross and McBride returned after having traveled all the way to Grove City in western Pennsylvania. During that trip, they contacted more than twenty survivors and spied a slew of solitary alien animals but no organized threats.
The next day Bird and Cassy Simms arrived home after having pushed far into New Jersey with the same results albeit on a grander scale: if all the people they met during their scouting trip managed to return to the estate then the ranks of survivors would grow by more than one hundred.
Dante and Kristy Kaufman completed their round trip on December 12 ^ th but brought no good news. Instead, they found something ominous outside of Binghamton, New York.
Trevor stared at a photograph as the council and other prominent survivors gathered in the command center.
Dante told them, "It’s one hellish looking thing. I mean, you stand anywhere near it and there’s like an electricity in the air."
Kristy added, "And lightning. All up there above it. Flashes in the sky."
The sphere in the photo stretched ten stories tall. It did not look as if it had been built; more as if it had been grown.
"Something bad, man," Dante explained. "I tell you, it gives me the creeps."
"And there’s things guarding it, too," Kristy said. "Disgusting things."