of a new night.
– Shepherd pushed open the door to Nina’s apartment. Odin darted inside and slumped into his favorite corner.
'This is your place; you’ve been living here since last fall.'
Nina stepped in to a stranger’s living room with a stranger’s furniture.
'Here, huh? This is too much,' she meant all the day’s revelations.
He rested his hands on her shoulders.
'I know. It’s going to take some time. You need to get a good night’s sleep. All your stuff is here. You know how to reach me.'
Nina pointed toward the Elkhound.
'This dog is mine?'
'K9,' Shep corrected. 'He’s not so much yours as he is a friend. You can trust him.'
She had so many more questions, even after Shep spent hours telling stories. Yet even she knew her mind could take only so much. The rest would have to wait.
'I ‘reckon I’ll be back in the morning. Everything is okay. You’re safe here. Just…just try and get some sleep.'
He smiled one more time, nodded, and then descended the outside stairs toward the driveway. Nina watched him go then closed the door.
She had no idea where to begin or what to do, so she strolled around the living room snooping for signs: signs that this unfamiliar place could possibly be her home.
Nina found weapons and tactical outfits and other clothes in the closet; clothes in her size but she doubted she would ever wear anything like the black party dress hanging there.
Something caught her eye. A light from a cabinet on the far end of the living room. She stepped over there and leaned close. The light came from a button. She pushed it.
The speakers of the stereo came to life and played a melancholy melody. I'm always walkin' after midnight, searchin' for you…
What is this? Is it…the least bit…familiar?
No. She had never heard this song before.
Still…nice. Sad but kind of sweet. It made her feel a little better but, at the same time, it gave her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She did not understand; she wasn’t hungry. Could she be getting sick?
She stood there…listening…wondering. I go out walkin' after midnight,
Out in the moonlight,
Just hopin' you may be
Somewhere a-walkin' after midnight, searchin' for me…
36. Time
The Humvee sped along the Cross Valley Expressway. Two escort vehicles followed at a respectful distance.
Trevor sat in the passenger’s seat meandering through pages of reports, updates, and proposed plans attached to a clipboard. Jon Brewer drove the car and Tyr rode in the rear.
Jon did not typically serve as Trevor’s chauffeur, but they had been in the middle of a meeting when Dante’s urgent call had been piped through to the new meeting hall in the basement of the mansion.
Dante refused to explain the emergency, forcing Trevor to the road. With the new autumn offensive only two weeks away, Trevor and Jon could not afford to miss meeting time. Therefore, Jon volunteered to drive them from the estate to meet Dante in Kingston.
Trevor smiled and read from one of the reports.
'Yep. Omar’s got the coal plant one-hundred percent on line. That should put the lights on in Wilkes-Barre permanently. Told you he’d do it. You owe me five bucks.'
'I’ll admit it, I was wrong. Still, would have been nice if he had gotten the power back when that heat wave tore through.'
Stone remembered that heat wave in July. Air-conditioned rooms had been at a premium during that second summer in the post-Armageddon world; a summer that had begun with him losing Nina, but also saw the addition of hundreds more people to the community after finding and destroying a line of Red Hand camps by the New York state border.
It seemed the more they accomplished the more the accomplishments rolled in. Trevor knew things changed at Five Armies, but he had not expected things to change so fast. The August census showed the community had grown to five hundred people. Just as Stonewall had said, there were pockets of humanity out there waiting for a leader.
Nonetheless, the overall survival rate appeared to be somewhere between a half percent and two percent of the pre-Armageddon population, meaning they still found many more dead bodies than live ones.
'Okay, so Prescott says Chamberlain Munitions is back on line, too' Trevor read from another page as the Humvee drove along.
Jon echoed what the report revealed: 'Omar’s been able to crank out some of the raw materials with that matter-maker thingy, so we’ve started production on bullets and light artillery pieces at the Chamberlain plant.'
'But Scranton isn’t secure yet.'
'No, we turned the Chamberlain complex into a fortress. Besides, most of the baddies in Scranton are small stuff. Nothing that’s a big deal. We can clear it out in a week or two once we get enough bullets.'
Trevor shook his head in disappointment. Still, he knew he should know better than to try and move too quickly. The last year-the first year-of the fight taught him that while bold moves would be necessary on occasion, patience would be necessary just as often.
'So you think we should clear Scranton before we launch the big push?' Trevor asked his lead General. 'What does Shep say?'
'Shep says his folks are ready to go at any time.'
Trevor knew one of Shep’s ‘folks’ was Nina. Shep oversaw what would soon be the ‘southern command.’ Nina fought at his side. They had built a base outside the mountain top city of Hazleton to the south. That meant Trevor did not see Nina around the estate much any more.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Trevor returned his focus to the important stuff.
'Does he have enough bullets to clear Hazleton? Can he do that?'
Jon answered, 'We got the Gentex plant up in Carbondale running. We found all the plans for the contracts those guys had with the Marines before ‘all this.’ Shep’s got the first batch of ballistic armor and helmets from there.'
Trevor knew Carbondale to be a small town north of Scranton. He knew that the Gentex facility had also been turned into a fortress.
'I didn’t ask you about helmets and body armor. I asked you about bullets.'
'Shep thinks he’s got enough.'
'Do you think he’s got enough?'
'Um…not yet. Give it another week. Push the launch back to October.'
Trevor sighed, nodded his head, and made a note on the report.
'Oh yeah,' Jon thought of something. 'Eva Rheimmer says she needs more human guards for the new farms.'
'What? She’s already got, like, a hundred K9s.'
'Yeah, well, she’s got like a dozen farms now.'
That surprised Trevor.
'A dozen? I thought it was ten.'
