patience, people. Just give this a chance.'
– The short gray-haired I.S. officer named Tucker repeated to Ashley, 'Man, we've talked about this for two days now. It's time to go. I have orders to follow.' Ashley stood in Trevor's old office on the second floor shaking in one part anger and one part fear. 'And I told you two days ago that I don't want to leave here. This is my home.' JB ran out from the master bedroom to his mother.
Tucker spoke to the boy, 'Hey kid, why don't you tell your mom how much you're looking forward to going to the beach? Didn't you spend summers with your dad down there?'
Jorge Benjamin Stone stuck out his lower lip, narrowed his eyes, and told the man now in charge of their security, 'You mean my father? Yes. Every summer. I expect we'll go again soon. How is the arm, Tucker?'
Tucker instinctively looked at his forearm. 'Hey, it's fine I-what do you mean?'
'Listen,' Ashley said to the brute who inherited Ray Roos' job. 'I do not see why President Godfrey cares where we spend the summer.'
Jon Brewer and General Jerry Shepherd walked into the room.
As had been the case ever since Evan had ascended to the Presidency nine days ago, Brewer refused to look Ashley in the eye. She, however, always searched for his. She knew that Jon Brewer held a lot more power than he realized. She knew that if any hope remained for Trevor's vision, it remained with Jon, especially now that Gordon Knox had died in a house fire. 'What's the problem?' Brewer asked as JB ran to Jon's leg and gave him a hug. 'Sir, I have orders to transport Mrs. Stone and her child to their summer vacation home.' Shepherd cocked an eye and asked, 'Now why is that?' Tucker answered, 'Death threats, General. Apparently there are some people out there who want to hurt Trevor's family.'
The last part of Tucker's answer played sourly on JB's ears. He glared at the I.S. man, pulled away from Brewer, and retreated to his mother's shadow.
'Death threats?' Shep scratched his head. 'Well, now, that surprises the heck out of me.'
Jon gently waved his hand as if to calm the situation and turned his attention to Ashley, still not quite looking her straight in the eye.
'Is there really a problem with going? I mean, maybe it'd be for the best. There isn't going to be much security around here now that everything important is moving down to D.C.'
JB asserted, 'But you'll still be here, won't you Uncle Jon?'
After a pause he answered, 'Well, I'll be working out of my house for a while and with Omar in his work shop. Then, I guess, I'll be headed down to D.C., too, to work in the Pentagon.'
'Jon, this isn't about security,' Ashley said. 'This is about Evan Godfrey hiding away any reminders of the way things used to be. He wants people to forget about this estate. He wants people to forget about me and you too, Jon.'
'Ashley, we just have to give this time.'
She stared at him for several seconds, but Jon refused to look back at her. Ashley then let out a frustrated huff and said, 'Okay then, we'll go. I'll take my son and we'll disappear down to the shore. Just like you, Jon, but you're going to disappear right here under a mountain of filing and busywork while Evan Godfrey turns Washington into everything we hated about the old world. I suppose I can't stop that, but maybe someday you'll wake up and realize that you've created a real problem, and you're the only one able to solve it.'
'Ashley, please,' Jon nearly pleaded. 'I'm trying to do the right thing here.'
Before the conversation could progress, Tucker jumped in, 'Your things are already packed, Ma'am, and the car is waiting.'
Ashley took a big, angry step toward the door but before she stormed out she stopped, turned, and gave Jerry Shepherd a big hug.
'I'll miss you, Jerry,' she said loud enough for everyone to hear. Her warmth and familiarity surprised him most of all. As she hugged him tight, Ashley placed her lips to his ear. 'Send Nina Forest to see me, quietly.' His expression wavered for a moment but as she drew away he smiled and nodded. 'Yeah, I'll miss you too, Ashley. But I reckon we'll see each other around soon 'nuff.'
JB grabbed his mother's hand and, after stopping to gather a stuffed bunny and blanket from the boy's bedroom, they left the mansion.
– The trees of the Medicine Bow forests had once been favorites of the Arapaho and Cheyenne for crafting bows. In the post-Armageddon world the jagged mountains, deep woods, and myriad of lakes and ponds throughout the Medicine Bow wilderness of Wyoming provided sustenance and cover for another tribe who felt at one with nature, albeit one from another world.
Captain Dustin McBride spent three months searching for the elusive band of alien 'Red Hand' warriors, finding dead campfires, garbage pits, and animal carcasses but unable to engage.
In fairness, weather and the turbulent events of recent months forced numerous delays upon the 1 ^ st Cavalry. From bad April snow to General Stonewall McAllister's death to the assassination of Emperor Trevor Stone, Dustin's pursuit stopped as often as it started.
Nonetheless, Dustin begrudgingly gave the enemy his due. The Red Hands/Feranites lacked fire arms and body armor, moved almost exclusively on foot, and used only the most primitive of tools. Yet for all they lacked, they easily outclassed humanity when it came to living, moving, and hiding in the wild.
However, for the first time Dustin felt the quarry within reach. In fact, the Feranites must have sensed the pursuit, as evidenced by the ambush party left behind to delay Dustin's force.
Captain McBride stood on a rocky slope gazing across Lake Marie at the Snowy Range Mountains with the red sash around his gray uniform fluttering in the wind and a Stetson sitting half-tilted on his head. Those mountains across the way offered a magnificent, foreboding sight: walls of gray rock that could have passed for the battlements of God's castle.
The main body of the Feranite tribe he followed waited somewhere on the far side, after having sacrificed several dozen of their number to delay the pursuit.
'What you wanna do with these fellas?'
Corporal Brown's lazy drawl pulled Dustin's attention from the mountains to the bullet-ridden alien bodies on the rocky mountainside.
The pale-skinned warriors with the ivory eyes had surprised McBride's lead riders with bows, arrows, and spears, killing four of Dustin's men in a close-quarters battle.
'Huh? What's that, Agarn?'
'Whaz wrong, did I talk to the wrong ear?'
Brown could get away with jokes about Dustin's missing ear because he had saved his ass more than once. Of course, the Corporal's joke also served to distract Dustin from the casualties suffered. Agarn seemed well-tuned to his commander's state of mind.
After responding with his middle finger, Dustin answered, 'We'll toss the Reds in the lake. Shit, let the fishes have em'. Our boys, well, I think this ridge makes a good resting place.'
Brown pulled one of his hand-rolled cigarettes from a pocket in his uniform, struck a match, and cupped the flame as he lit the smoke.
'I reckon so, yeah. What then?'
A trio of dismounted soldiers trotted by leading their horses by the reigns as they descended the steep incline. Supplies dangling from the mounts jingled and clanged.
'What do you mean, 'what then'? You wanna give up, is that it?'
'Gee, Cap, and give up all this fun? Seems to me this more a vacation than workin'.'
Dustin returned his eyes to the scenic vista surrounding the lake and explained, 'We keep going, Agarn.' McBride's voice softened and he spoke as much to the ghost of his beloved friend Stonewall McAllister as to the Corporal. 'I can feel them out there. We're getting real close.'
– Shep blew his nose into a handkerchief and, at the same time, felt a rough scratch across his throat. He could no longer ignore the fact that he had caught a cold.
Nothing worse than a summer cold. Sneezing in June? That just isn't fair.
Fair or not, Shep dealt with the burgeoning aches and pains as best he could as he walked toward the landing pad at the estate. With the meetings closed and plans made-or, rather, a lack of plans made-the time came for him to return to his duties, such as writing readiness reports and re-organizing his units in California.
Things certainly had changed drastically in only a few months. First Garrett McAllister, then Trevor, and now
