battlements!'
They discarded their trays and hurried from the church. Trevor and Nina flanked Johnny as they jogged the road toward the estate where a convoy of dangerous newcomers waited: an Abrams tank, six big deuce and a half cargo trucks, one empty flatbed, two military Humvees with 50 caliber weapons mounted on top, and another Humvee with a TOW missile launcher as well as a pair of camouflage-painted SUVs.
Trevor, Nina, Johnny and the rest felt naked in front of such firepower. There they stood in the cold morning air facing off against a main battle tank and enough firepower to obliterate them in seconds.
Soldiers dressed in full US Army battle gear disembarked from the trucks as did a ragtag group of civilians including parents and young kids, teenagers, a few elderly, and more.
The hatch on the Abrams flew open. An early thirty-something soldier stuck his head out.
'Shit, you fellows were pretty hard to find.' The man hoisted himself from the cupola.
Trevor asked, 'What can we do for you, soldier?'
The man tilted and scratched his head. 'Well, gee, that wasn’t the welcome I had been expecting, considering that the two guys we met out by State College said you people were taking in refugees.'
Trevor's jaw dropped. Refugees? These guys?
'Name’s Major Tom Prescott. This here is what’s left of the U.S. Army, near as I can tell. We’ve been wandering around for the last few months looking for a good way to die. Then we saw ‘Bear’ Ross west of here yesterday. You know he was a linebacker for the 'Skins? Anyway, he gave us directions and told us you were putting things back together.'
Trevor's concern morphed into smiles as Prescott jumped off the tank.
'Glad to meet you, Major.'
– They gathered in the Command Center on the second floor of the estate. Stonewall, Shepherd, Jon Brewer, Nina Forest, Omar, and Reverend Johnny joined the discussion that included Prescott and his key people.
From power issues to the food supply to available munitions, Stone explained the situation at the estate to the new arrivals. Major Prescott shared what he brought to the table: one hundred trained U.S. soldiers including ten engineers and three chopper pilots as well as nearly half that number in civilians they had picked up along the way.
Ammunition for the Abrams was in good supply but it ate so much fuel they tended to leave it on the flatbed. They also carried plenty of small arms munitions, grenades, and mines. The fifty-caliber guns were well stocked but only one shot remained for the TOW.
After the Major catalogued his inventory, Trevor asked the question on everyone's mind: 'What happened?'
The Major understood the question. He took a deep breath, scratched the side of his head, and told the story.
'We were at a base in Missouri doing a training program with the Mizzou National Guard. Fact is, though, no one was ready. Not the police, not the army, and especially not the politicians. You got to remember how an army is put together. There’s an order of battle. There are procedures. When you go marching off to war, it takes weeks to put the pieces together. It isn't just about bullets and bombs; it’s about supplies and orders.'
Brewer added, 'There were some units that got mobilized.'
'Sure,' Prescott agreed. 'But organized for what? What do you do when monsters are popping up everywhere you turn? We woke up one morning in June and found monsters running through the base gobbling people up. Christ-Jesus, a lot of the guys on base…I mean…they had families, you know? You think they ran to the parade grounds to line up in neat ranks to go marching off to save St. Louis? We were fighting for our lives from the get-go.'
Trevor rested a hand on Prescott’s shoulder. 'Relax. This isn’t about blame. We just want to know.'
'Oh man, you couldn’t blame any of us more than we blame ourselves. Most of us spent our lives getting ready to fight for, well you know, God and country and all that. But this type of war…it wasn’t war. It was like we suddenly got thrown down in the middle of the jungle with hungry lions surrounding us. Do you know how long it took just to get off base?'
Prescott shook his head and stared at the floor.
'It took a couple of days to get our house in order. Pardon my French, but things were really messed up. I don’t know how many of our guys died that first day-a lot of them were in town for the weekend, you know? So any way, they finally got the armory opened up and started getting out the big guns. By the third day we had most of the base cleared out but, Christ-Jesus, the things kept flooding in at us. We killed things by the bucket load.'
Trevor said, 'I’m guessing that was the story all over. If it weren’t for how much you guys did do in those first few weeks things would’ve been worse.'
'Oh now, we weren’t patting ourselves on the back. We knew how bad it was out there. We saw the news reports. Thank God, the phones went out because for those first few days guys would be getting calls from folks back home. Man, you ever, you ever…' Prescott closed his eyes. '…you ever listen to someone you love begging for help? Begging…when you could hear something banging in the door and your kid screaming for his daddy? You ever do that?'
Hands from both Johnny and Brewer joined Trevor’s on Prescott’s shoulders.
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
