Sharon Parsons stood, placed her cloth napkin on her crowded plate, and left the room.
Evan’s act of fond remembrance evaporated and his eyes widened.
“I’m sorry, what did I-?”
“It is okay, Evan. It isn’t your fault,” Sharon’s father explained. “Sharon’s husband-Tory’s father-was a Marine killed during the fighting.”
“My Dad was a hero!” Tory exclaimed but his attention focused on a huge slice of fresh bread dripping with gooey butter.
“So you found many weapons, yes?” Gunther asked.
“Excuse me,” Godfrey said and stood. “I think I have an apology to make.”
“That is not necessary,” Parsons insisted.
“I think it is.”
Evan walked out of the room tracing Sharon‘s steps.
Dante continued the story, without any sense of drama. “We found lots of weapons. Then we found the means to build what we needed. Some of that came from old industry, some from alien technology we grabbed.”
“Air forces? Tanks?” Gunther craved the knowledge yet every answer seemed to fill the man with more fear. His eyes widened, his hand trembled more.
“Equipment for entire divisions parked on bases,” Dante told them. “Armories still locked and convoys of unused supplies. We only have a few planes because we don’t have many pilots, but we have a flight school going, every few weeks we can put another plane or two in the air. Fact is we found hangers full of fighter jets and fuel from the Pennsylvania and New Jersey National Guard.”
Elizabeth Doss said, “As if they were meant for you to find.”
“No,” Dante corrected. “They were there because the soldiers and pilots they were meant for never received the proper orders. The bureaucracy failed our troops while the aliens appeared everywhere out of thin air. There was little time to muster and organize. It wasn’t our troops who failed us, but a disorganized chain of command.”
Robert Parsons nodded. “So that is why you are an Empire? One Emperor controlling it all. No chains of command to be thrown into chaos. No confusion. One man in charge, one man making the decisions.”
“Yes.”
“Very efficient,” Gunther surmised. “Very brutal, no doubt.”
Dante answered, “It can be, yes.”
“And so you think your Emperor will send his troops here?”
“Gunther,” Parsons interrupted. “Let us save those questions for the entire council. I think Mr. Jones has given us a good idea of how his people have come to be here. Perhaps we should return to a pleasant meal and talk of other things for now.”
Gunther Faust appeared ready to protest but the glares he received from both Parsons and Doss silenced him. The older man shoved beans in his mouth and chewed…
…Evan descended the stairs and walked outside in a fast trot. Sharon Parsons stood across the small street leaning against a brick wall biting at her thumbnail.
“With everything you have here, you’d think you’d have a decent pair of nail clippers for that,” Evan said lightly as he approached her.
“Why are you out here? Go back inside and tell them the tales of your great victories. Tell them how your soldiers march and kill everything in their path. How glorious it must be.”
“Not so much,” Evan answered. “I find it depressing.”
She stopped biting her thumb and looked at him.
“Your father told me that your husband was killed in the fighting. That he was a soldier.”
“He was a killer,” she spat. “A brute of a killer. It was him and people like him that brought this down on our heads.”
A bird flew overhead between buildings, the flap of its wings echoed along the empty passage.
“Your son says he was a hero.”
“A child’s illusions,” she answered. “What should I tell him? The truth?”
“The truth? What is that truth? He wasn’t a Marine?”
“Oh, he most certainly was a Marine. He was stationed north of here at Camp Lejune. How charming he was with the ‘yes ma’ams’ to me and the ‘no Sirs’ to my father. Perfectly cut hair, a stiff upper lip, and he always opened the car door for me. A real gentleman.”
“And?”
“Why am I telling you this?” She wondered aloud and looked at him as if he might know the answer.
“Because I’m not like the others who have come here,” he assured her. “I’m not like the Generals and that tin-pot dictator. I’m different. That’s why they asked me to come down here. They figured maybe I could do what they failed to do.”
“And what is that?”
Evan said, “No, not yet. First, you have to tell me. What is the truth about your husband?”
She bit at her nail again.
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because you have lovely hands, you don’t want to ruin them.”
She glanced at her fingers and palms. They were strong but far from lovely; rough with callus’ and hangnails, feint traces of old cuts and even a small, fresh bruise on the back of her thumb.
“Lovely?” She found the idea that her hands were ‘lovely’ hysterically funny.
Sharon Parsons laughed as she said, “My hands are scarred and battered. They haven’t been lovely in a good many years.”
Evan told her, “They are lovely because they wear the marks of a person who works with her hands in the Earth. They are lovely because you have used them to build something amazing. They are lovely because I can see how strong they are.”
“You have quite a way with words, Mr. Godfrey.”
“The name is Evan, and you’re avoiding the subject. Tell me the truth about your husband.”
She nodded as if saying, ‘okay, okay,’ then she glanced skyward, perhaps hoping to find the right words there.
“He was certainly a gentleman. How handsome he was on our wedding day in his perfectly pressed uniform marching me in his arm down the aisle. Little did I know that the perfectly pressed uniform and the ‘yes ma’ams’ and the chivalry hid much. We weren’t married a year before he hit me for the first time.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, Evan, ‘oh.’ That wasn’t quite my response, of course. By the time I realized that his backhands were becoming a regular occurrence, Tory was born. Then I hoped our child would change things. It did, for a week or two.”
“I’m sorry,” Evan said honestly.
“And I realized then that there is no such thing as a weekend warrior. There are two kinds of people in the world, Mr. Godfrey. Those who live by the sword and those who don’t. A man cannot spend his day training to kill and then come home and be a peaceful husband, a peaceful father. It is not possible.”
“No one? Never?”
She sighed. “Not in my world, no.”
“That’s why New Winnabow is so important to you, why you are so quick to protect it from all outsiders. This is your personal refuge.”
“Not all outsiders,” she countered. “From those who resort to violence. From those who live by the sword. Which are you, Evan? Are you a man of war or a man of peace?”
“I am a man of peace.”
“A man of peace? And you’ve been sent here to convince us to let your war machine march through our lands. I suspect that you will also tell us that if we don’t comply, your armies will come here and kill us. Is that not so?”
“That’s what they want me to do, yes. They sent me because they figured I could relate to you better than they could. The truth is that Trevor does not trust me and does not like me. I am-I must admit-his rival.”
“So why doesn’t your all-powerful Emperor have you killed?”
Evan told her and himself at the same time, “Because even he must live with political pressures and consequences. Even he knows he cannot kill off his rivals, or slaughter a town full of innocent people.”
“So what is it you propose to do?”
Evan drifted into thought. He saw the lines of his life, the lines of the new world, the lines of Trevor’s Empire…converging to a single point. He saw it perfectly clear and in that moment he knew fate delivered to him the chance he waited for since the first monster stepped foot on Earth.