– On the eastern mountainside of the valley sat the small neighborhood of Georgetown, home of the annual 'Giants Despair' hill climb: the oldest automotive hill climb in the country. Every July stock cars and modified street rods flocked to the twisty road on the high end of the neighborhood to challenge the steep curves.
Otherwise, Georgetown existed as an average middle class suburb a mile and half from downtown Wilkes- Barre.
Fortunately, for those average middle class suburbanites, the worst of the early apocalyptic onslaught spared Georgetown. The monsters that had foraged through those steep streets came in smaller numbers.
True, those residents who survived the initial waves did so with the ringing of neighbors’ screams in their ears. Yet still, there had been no row house fires and no gigantic spider-things casting webs over entire blocks, in effect the carnage and death remained more personal.
Like watertight hatches on a flooding submarine, the residents of Georgetown barricaded themselves behind locked doors and boarded windows, turning the neighborhood into islands of survivors keeping to themselves in fear of losing what little they had.
Around early August, the peanut butter and bottled water and cans of Chunky soup ran dry. Then pirates sailed forth from those islands. Empty bellies turned the suburbanites into their own breed of monster.
During the latter half of summer, sharp cracks of nighttime gunfire signified either a successful or a very unsuccessful robbery. With time, the violence waned as the islands of survivors withered and died.
One man weathered it all. Before the world changed, he drove a Frito Lay truck. He made it a habit-long before Armageddon-to borrow and stockpile snacks destined for convenience stores and super markets. Those stocks not only helped him survive the summer, but also kept his potbelly intact.
Yet, the Doritos ran out.
So when he heard the preacher’s voice on the street, the potbellied man decided to take a chance.
He pulled aside the curtains and peeked from his island. Outside his window walked a man in black holding what might be a book, most likely a bible. The man in black marched downhill, leading a rag tag group dressed in dirty clothes hanging on scrawny frames and stumbling forward with vacant stares as if sleep walking.
'Come out sinners and repent!' the man of the cloth beckoned in a fiery tone. 'I have what you need to survive! The Day of Judgment has come and you shall be saved but only by accepting His tender mercies.'
The potbellied man who had survived on snack foods glanced at the wall above his nineteen-inch color television, the one that had not broadcast any game shows, pay-per-view porn, or wrestling in a long time. There, nailed to the dirty peeling brown wallpaper, glinted a dusty old crucifix reflecting a beam of sunlight slipping in through the parted curtains.
Could this be a sign?
The Frito Lay driver opened his front door-cautiously-as the clergyman’s group moved past. That clergyman had a thin body but broad shoulders. The skin on his face drew tight around his jawbone but his eyes were afire with life. Old, perhaps, but not elderly.
'Father…?' the snack food man called tentatively.
The procession halted. Its leader smiled at the shut-in who desired to hear the good word.
'My son! Come, join us!'
Snack food man descended the concrete steps of his home for the first time in many, many weeks. As he moved he begged, 'Father, do you have any food?'
'Yes, my son, plenty of food; especially food for the soul! Join us and partake!'
The potbellied shut-in reached the sidewalk and exclaimed to the preacher, 'Oh thank you, Jesus!'
The man in black opened his good book. Except it was not a good book, more of a container.
Things squirmed inside.
'Jesus?' the Father corrected sternly. 'No, my son…'
The preacher took one of those things in his fingers and reached toward the snack food man.
'Thank the living God and all his blessings. Come, join The Order and be one with Voggoth. He so desperately wants to be one with you.'
7. Paradigm Shift
par-a-digm, n. model; pattern. -Webster’s Dictionary
Trevor Stone slid the metal cabinet in front of the gray door. With the cabinet in place, the small utility room underneath the basement stairs appeared to serve no purpose other than a holding place for the propane-fueled hot water heater.
He kept the key that opened that hidden door on the end of a necklace, which hung out of sight beneath his t-shirt.
Satisfied everything needing hiding had been hid, Trevor exited the glorified closet for the main room of the basement. That room offered a stocked bar, a pool table, a plasma screen TV, leather furniture, and 'Penn State Nittany Lion' pennants.
One thing overshadowed everything else: a big heavy door set in one wall and controlled via an electronic access pad.
A bout of lightheadedness came over him, the price of visiting the third gift. He steadied his mind by listing the projects he wanted to tackle: a solar power grid, more security cameras around the estate, add stabilizer to every stockpile of gasoline he could find in the county before the petroleum degenerated and-just as the lightheadedness faded it returned, not caused by the third gift this time but by the volume of projects awaiting his attention.
So much to do and he had wasted nearly a week spending too much time comforting Sheila. Some days she did nothing other than cry. Other days she stared out the front window watching for approaching horrors until deteriorating into hysterical paranoia.
Trevor wondered if he picked the wrong day last week to extend his patrol route. More worthy survivors must be out there, somewhere, and today he intended to find them.
As the calendar inched toward the end of September, it also inched toward winter. He needed to move aggressively to find survivors before the weather turned. The right people with strong backs could help finish those projects before the snows came.
He sighed and tapped in the correct code. The door buzzed open leading him into a large, rectangular room filled with racks and shelves and cupboards and cabinets full of assault rifles, pistols, shot guns, sniper rifles, collapsible batons, knives of all conceivable types, stun guns, ballistic armor, helmets, and crates of ammunition.
A closet stored a variety of BDUs in a multitude of sizes. A row of drawers held rigs and assault vests and garrison bags and all the other toys that made a survivalist’s life so neat-o.
Trevor, already dressed in gray pants and a black T-shirt, strapped on a thigh rig as well as a utility belt and grabbed a black cap. The day threatened rain, so he added a lightweight army camouflage jacket.
From his gun collection, he chose his preferred weapon: a Colt M4. Trevor’s version sported a scope for distance and a laser-targeting beam perfect for striking those hard-to-hit weak spots on Earth's visitors.
He added a nine-millimeter side arm, a collapsible baton, and a combat knife to make ready for an afternoon drive.
– Trevor chose the custom-built motor home parked behind the six-car garage. The woodland camouflage paint served notice this vehicle had not rolled off the traditional Winnebago assembly line.
Inside, only the rear bedroom and the bathroom remained unchanged. Modifications had gutted the interior equipping it with gun cabinets, a first aid bunk, wall-mounted map holders, and a docking station for the lap top computer Trevor used to compile a 'Hostiles Database.'
After starting the engine, Stone hopped from the cabin and walked toward the main house with Tyr at his side. The dog’s tail wagged in anticipation of the day’s work despite an annoying light drizzle falling from fast moving gray clouds.
'I want two patrols plus you and Odin.'
As he spoke, Trevor visualized what he wanted: two patrols of three K9s each, and his two Norwegian
