officers found refuge behind their squad car where they reloaded side arms.
Fortunately, he avoided the crossfire by changing course and heading for an expressway on-ramp.
Wilkes-Barre and the rest of the Wyoming Valley is essentially a big bowl between two moderate mountain ranges. A river runs through the middle of that bowl. The raised 'Cross Valley Expressway' travels roughly east/west from one end of that bowl to the other, bridging the Susquehanna River on its way toward the rural countryside of the 'Back Mountain.'
Richard drove that expressway. From the highway, he could see the eclectic mix of old and new buildings downtown, the rotunda of the massive Luzerne County Courthouse along the river, and the quiet neighborhoods of surrounding suburbs.
Fires…distant dots flying in the sky…emergency vehicles… loud booms… those were the things he saw and heard as he cut across the valley.
Temporarily clear of the carnage, his mind finally offered sentient advice. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he used the other to hit the speed dial on his cell phone and heard an automated 'all circuits are busy,' three times before a ring.
Ashley answered. She spoke in an eerily calm voice.
'Hello, Richard, are you coming over?'
'Wh-what? Oh God, Ashley, things are…things are going crazy,' he sobbed as he swerved to avoid a Mustang that had slowed to get a better view of the large spider-thing crawling on the courthouse dome.
'I know,' she said, distantly. 'I’m wearing my wedding dress. I look beautiful… you should see it.'
His heart raced. The steering wheel nearly slipped from his grasp as his palms grew greasy with sweat.
'Ashley, are you safe there?'
'Safe? Oh yes, my daddy is downstairs. We can hear…we can hear stuff but it's all far away. This dress is so beautiful.'
'I’m coming, honey. I’m coming.'
'Richard, there’s something you need to-' Her voice switched off.
'Ashley? Ashley!'
He slammed the brakes to stop for the red light at the end of the exit ramp. No traffic moved in any direction, yet he waited five full seconds until realizing how ridiculous that was.
Richard Stone ran the red light.
– The Trumps lived in Kingston, one of half-a-dozen small boroughs lining the western banks of the Susquehanna. Rich drove slow and cautious into the quiet neighborhood. He saw not one soul. Nothing.
After parking in the half-circle driveway, he raced to the porch. The only noises that reached his ear were noises drifting in on the wind from afar.
The front door stood ajar creaking softly in a gentle breeze. He went inside.
'Ashley? Mr. Trump?'
Rich stumbled over coveralls piled on the floor. A breast patch read 'Trump Fences'.
Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God…
Dick ran the first floor hall ignoring the television news broadcasting to an empty living room. He frantically climbed the stairs and burst into her room.
A wedding dress lay on the floor in a haphazard bundle. Singe marks stained the delicate white fabric near the straps.
Ashley had been right.
The dress was beautiful.
4. The Old Man
Richard sat for an hour in Ashley’s vacant bedroom.
Hideous beasts crawling the streets…authorities powerless to stop the onslaught…human beings killed before his eyes…his fiancee vaporized by what Jon had characterized as 'alien artillery.' It all warped and spun together in a vortex of confusion within his mind.
He had never faced death before. Now he had witnessed more people dying and more dead bodies than he could count, all in the span of an hour or so.
Just days ago it had all been a joke in the tabloids, then an oddity on the nightly news. Now it was reality. His reality.
It left Richard dazed and confused, sad and scared.
The cry of distant sirens slipped in through the closed windows. He felt the occasional tremble and saw periodic flashes outside the window that warned of something else exploding, burning or otherwise adding to the anarchy.
A single sound-the pop of a faraway gunshot echoing at the right moment between all the other sounds- finally focused his attention.
Rich Stone stumbled to the first floor and into the living room. The television broadcast a cable news network. A waver on the edge of the anchorwoman’s lips suggested she could burst out laughing or break down crying at any moment.
'Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, and Washington D.C., are all in a state of chaos. Here-New York City-is in the same condition. We can hear gunfire outside our studio and people who work in this building have reported seeing…seeing a wide variety of…of… animals…or beasts…or even monsters. I suppose we should call them what they appear to be.'
Rich sunk into the couch, the couch where he had made love to Ashley several times that week.
'We had a report an hour ago of fighter jets shooting down an unidentified flying object over Phoenix. Furthermore, we have accessed satellite uplinks from several affiliate stations across the country, mainly video feeds showing the same thing nationwide: street battles between police officers and armed citizens with whatever these invading creatures are. It should be noted that the variety of these…these…things is…well there seems to be a lot of different kinds of things involved in this…this…whatever this is.'
Richard felt sorry for the woman. She chronicled the disintegration of society to viewers around the world in words that sounded ridiculous and unworthy of national news.
'Our station chiefs in London, Paris, Moscow and Beijing report the same type of mass pandemonium. Yet still no idea as to what is actually happening, why, or what types of precautions should be taken. Umm… precautions? Who’s writing this shit?'
He turned the television off as the flustered anchorwoman ran a hand through her hair.
– The community surrounding the Trump’s modular home remained undisturbed but the panicked car horns, the cries for help, and the plumes of smoke in the beautiful late morning sky drew closer.
Rich drove to the Cross Valley Expressway unmolested and headed west, putting more distance between himself and Wilkes-Barre.
The highway snaked through a rock cut in the western valley wall emerging in the rural area nicknamed the 'Back Mountain.' At that point, the expressway morphed into a two-lane rural route passing islands of development among a sea of rolling green mountains.
He left the main path at the first opportunity for the hidden country roads he knew so well. The car radio offered more-not better-information.
'This is a new development. Can we get confirmation of this? Is this another prank?'
A female voice joined the male newscaster.
'It’s confirmed. That came over from Atlanta City Hall five minutes ago.'
The man said, 'Okay, well, then, um, it seems a group has provided a communique to the Mayor of Atlanta demanding…'
'Maybe you should just read it.'
'Yes, yes of course,' the man cleared his throat. 'It says, ’the leader of the humans of Atlanta is now demanded to surrender to the Grand Army of the Hivvan Republic. All humans will report to processing
