Jon Brewer walked the first floor hall with a bundle of file folders tucked under his arm. The sound of his footsteps caused a flat echo that drifted through the nearly empty mansion.
He intended to head for the second floor office which, according to Ashley, now belonged to him. Of course that made little difference. The skeleton staff at the estate held little in the way of responsibility. What had been the beating heart of humanity’s comeback now resembled something like a morgue.
Guess that makes me a zombie, he thought.
Instead of climbing the stairs, he turned to the old dining room. He found his wife in there sitting behind her desk staring at the calendar blotter (bearing an advertisement for North Run Rail 'Steam or Diesel, we deliver'). 'Boo,' but his jest held no humor. She glanced up, sighed, and told him, 'My phone hasn't rung all day.' He sat in the chair across from her. 'Wow, is that so bad? I mean, you were pretty over worked before.' Lori looked at Jon. No, he realized, she looked at the chair he sat in.
'Trevor used to come in and see me, from time to time. He'd sit there and we'd just bull shit. Sometimes serious stuff, sometimes nothing important.' 'I know.' She went on, 'With all the changes…well I guess it's starting to hit home. How permanent it is.' 'Yeah, tell me about it.' 'Now the work has dried up. At least that was keeping me busy, but now,' she motioned to the nearly empty desk top.
'All this will sort out, Lori. It hasn't been that long. Besides, before it seemed like you had your hand in everything. You had almost no time for Catherine, no time for yourself. Now you're doing important work with more free time.'
His explanation, despite how hard he tried, sounded weak even to his hears.
'Allright, yep. I’ve changed from the Administrator for the entire nation to the regional director for Adoption and Child Placement. Woo-hoo.'
'Helping kids.'
Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew rough, 'I helped kids before, too. I also worked with logistics, and supply, and the military, and Internal Security. A couple of months ago, I could tell you how many bags of flour they had on the Chicago docks or the name of the engineer on the west bound mail express. And yeah, I also placed orphans in new homes, made sure they had schools to go to, and made sure those schools had text books. What now, Jon? What? You know what the problem is?'
He did not have an answer. She supplied one, 'The problem is Trevor. He made sure that each of us knew we had a stake in all this; that we had a responsibility to fight and to work hard to save our people. Hey, look, I like having extra time with my daughter. But I don't like this feeling that I should be doing more. While I sit here bored, somewhere out there is a kid being eaten by a monster or in an alien slave camp because that asshole in the White House decided the rest of the world isn’t worth fighting for. And you can't tell me you don't feel the same way.'
His mouth unhinged. Jon struggled for words.
'I'm a soldier.'
'You’re a clerk now, Jon. Dante has got you filling out paper work and doing studies and making reports, keeping you here. You're like me, General; we're big paper weights now.'
He stood fast and with a hurt edge in his voice told her, 'This damn paper weight has work to do. Maybe it seems quiet to you, but it's not.'
Jon threw down one of the files he carried and said, 'That's a security bulletin, Lori. Two members of the Dark Wolves commando unit were arrested at the General Hospital emergency room after breaking in to Trevor's tomb. There's a BOLO out for Nina Forest and a man who fits the description of Gordon Knox.'
Lori stared at the paper in disbelief and read, 'Suspects are wanted in connection with the death of Secretary Maple, a homicide that may be part of a larger anti-government conspiracy.'
Jon continued, 'Dante called me earlier. He asked me about loyalty, Lori. He's saying that there are those in the government that think someone is going to try a coup real soon.'
'Nina Forest? I mean, Gordon Knox, sure, but not Nina Forest.'
'Maybe she started to get some memories back, I don't know,' Jon ran a hand across his cheek as if checking for razor stubble. 'Point is, things are really tense out there. I've got to calm things down. I have to go make some phone calls.'
Lori spoke with poison-laced sarcasm, 'Right. Make some calls. Tell you what, I'll put a pot of coffee on, too. Why, we're really going to change the world today, aren't we?'
– At one o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday, July 5, Eagle One landed along the banks of Spruce Knob Lake. Thick forests, colorful wildflowers, and the mountain peaks that represented the highest point in West Virginia surrounded the remote landing area.
Pilot Rick Hauser had not chosen that location for its vista but, rather, for the clean lake water. With Gordon's help he managed to fill the transport's hydrogen tanks. Nina waited inside, gazing at the weapon collection. She even dared to run a hand of admiration over the shiny blade of Stonewall McAllister's sword.
In any case, the Eagle took to the skies again and managed to make it most of the way across Kentucky before being challenged by a monitoring station at the old Warren County Airport in Bowling Green. Before intercept jets could make it on-scene, Hauser found a suitable hiding spot inside the Mammoth Cave National Park. While hiding from air patrols, they dined on a late supper of emergency rations.
After night fell, Eagle One went airborne once more, hugging the ground and relying on Knox's recollection of radar zones to weave their way across Tennessee into Mississippi.
However, with Hauser the only Eagle-trained pilot, they had to stop for a few hours of rest before he fell asleep at the sticks. He chose a landing spot alongside the Tennessee River. While Hauser slept, Gordon and Nina replenished the ship's tanks.
As they continued their journey, Knox's knowledge of radar stations combined with the computer maps onboard helped them avoid air defense systems. They stopped to refuel water at the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas/Louisiana border then pushed on through the day into the night to the Rio Grande.
At that point, Eagle One could go no farther. An extensive net of radar installations and surveillance Eagles kept a close watch on the Mexican border. There would be no flying over it.
The Eagle carried a pair of personal hover crafts based on reverse-engineered Mutant bikes resembling a cross between a jet ski and a snowmobile.
While Hauser and Odin the Elkhound remained behind to guard the ship, Nina and Gordon crossed the border at high speed heading south toward Monterrey.
– They rode all night, moving much too fast to be distracted by shadows in old towns, specks of fire on the horizon, or wild beasts.
According to surveys conducted before Gordon 'retired' from his post as Director of Intelligence, most of northern Mexico remained a dangerous wasteland prowled by predators as well as human bandits in coastal areas.
The two followed the main roads heading south, using the powerful front headlights of the hover bikes to illuminate the path in fifty yard stretches. On more than one occasion they felt the presence of airborne predators overhead, but even those hunters could not keep pace with the determined riders.
Three hours before dawn, the two found shelter among the remains of an abandoned Mexican army convoy covered in a decade of dust, including an intact armored vehicle. More specifically, a World War II vintage half-track painted in modern camouflage patterns. Nina could not believe Gordon when he told her that such an old vehicle had, in fact, been a part of the Mexican armed forces at the time of the invasion.
Regardless, they spent a few hours catching some sleep within the relative security of the abandoned vehicle. As the first flickers of dawn's approach glowed orange on the horizon, a sound stirred the travelers awake; a low rumble of a sound.
They exited the temporary shelter and scanned the fields of broken buildings, brush, and foothills around the deserted convoy. After a moment, they realized the rumble came from the south; it came from Monterrey.
Nina and Gordon mounted their rides and hurried off in that direction surrounded by the shadows of morning twilight. The whiz and whir of the speeding hovercraft could not block out the growing roar of the noise, but it was not until they climbed the brush-covered hills northeast of the ruins of Monterrey that they could trace the source of the sound.
Nina dropped to her belly and wiggled forward amidst the dusty ground and dried sage at the crest of the mountain. Her black tank top and green BDUs quickly grew covered in powdered dirt. Gordon knelt low beside her
