thousand fishermen, farmers, and children of the new age gathered to hear the invitation.
By the end of that month the message found tribes surviving in the mountains outside of Almaty in southeast Kazakhstan-boat people hiding in the fjords of Finland-and nomads herding goats and hunting in the Carpathian ranges of Romania.
During August, the word reached far across Asia where remnants of the Russian and Mongolian armies had battled the Geryon Reich’s garrison at Ulan Bator for a bloody decade. Hostilities had ceased nearly two months before as part of the general armistice but Trevor’s invitation brought post-war direction to the combatants and they eagerly accepted the invite.
Around the same time, Duass water transports conveyed Armand himself to their prison colony on the Greek island of Mykonos, where the human POWs found the reason behind their liberation in the words of Trevor Stone’s message.
In late September, couriers who had traded in their motorcycles for horses came across the stubborn remains of the PLA’s 38 ^ th Mechanized group at their Baoding base 100 miles south of the ruins of Beijing. Since the first days of Armageddon, 5,000 soldiers and civilians held the city against Geryon battleships and Steel Guard Golems. Time and war had eroded any ideological objection to the invitation while Geryon-supplied foodstuffs proved the sincerity of the truce.
Back in North America, Jon Brewer received the message via HAM radio with the added information that Trevor Stone lived and would return ‘soon’. He and his generals spent the time rebuilding infrastructure.
With the help of Chaktaw and Centurian aides, Jon and Jerry Shepherd oversaw the demolition of dormant gateways in Atlanta, Sacramento, and Northern Mexico. Based on the concept of ‘leave well enough alone,’ such gateways had remained observed but untouched after being shut down by the runes six years ago. Demolition charges placed at specific points disintegrated the structures-of various design-into harmless pieces.
Ambassadors reached the Hivvan holdings in the Caribbean and brokered the return of human prisoners there. At the same time, well-armed rebel forces in Trinidad and Haiti agreed to release hundreds of the intelligent bipedal lizards they had captured in recent years, many in as poor physical condition as human slaves freed from Hivvan labor camps.
Mass graves holding victims from both sides were uncovered; a rogue human sniper killed a Centurian inside a declared alien safe zone; an anti-air missile fired from a Chaktaw position knocked a Chinook transport from the Missouri sky killing a dozen men onboard-but the truce held.
Jon Brewer had overcome great odds in war; he worked just as hard to maintain the peace. He sat in judgment at a junior officer’s hanging for shooting a Hivvan prisoner; he accepted a Geryon Captain’s assurances that the soldier responsible for badly beating a human civilian would be severely disciplined.
Alien consulates were established in vacant Pennsylvania cities to serve as staging points for repatriation and with each day more of the invaders found their way home through the runes in the caves behind the estate.
Centurian soldiers as well as civilians-the offspring of an invading army-came from across the Americas to the empty streets at Towanda. Soon they would come from outposts scattered across the world. Chaktaw personnel gravitated to Tunkhannock, Geryons established a community among the farms and rural homes of Huntington Mills. Eventually such bases for the Duass and Hivvans would be needed.
By autumn, hundreds of invaders from those civilizations returned to their home worlds via the runes. Thousands more waited to make the trip. Considering the runes served as the only means of returning them home and considering the spread of invaders across the globe-often times grossly off their original intended mark-Jon Brewer estimated it would take at least three years to complete the task, assuming they could contact and establish transportation for all the extraterrestrials in a reasonable amount of time.
That job grew easier as the aliens sought out that exit as part of their new orders. The Geryons proved the easiest to assemble. Their airships offered effective transportation from their primary bases in Asia to northeastern Pennsylvania. The dirigibles made constant sorties while human airliners helped shuttle evacuees from points across the North American continent.
A world away, in November Armand and a convoy of his best riders met the Kurdish governors of Mosul, Iraq where they shared their homeland and oil reserves with refugees from across the region; an oasis of calm in an otherwise desolate land.
Armand learned that few remained alive in the great expanse from the Mediterranean shore to Baghdad: the arrival of Armageddon provided an opportunity to settle old-world scores. The forces of hatred from all interests in the Middle East had battled one another, often times at the expense of fighting the invaders. A decade of assassinations, ambushes, massacres and slaughter left empty lands soaked in blood. The well-fed vultures tasted no difference in religion or ethnicity.
The more civilized minds from that region took flight in those early years and, as Armand discovered in December, camps of the more reasonable from all flavors of diversity survived in settlements along the lower Nile where brigades of the Egyptian army bravely carved safe zones and tolerated no in-fighting. Although disease and starvation culled their numbers over the course of a decade, they survived on cooperation and tolerance; the lack of which had doomed many of their kin.
It took until January for the invitation to penetrate the jungles of southeast Asia where The Order’s rampaging monsters had forced civilization into the wilderness. Many riders lost their lives, but the message was delivered and preparations made.
The fortress of Hong Kong with 20,000 people-well-armed partisans in the Philippine archipelagos-a flotilla of Indonesian military and civilian vessels linked together in an ocean-bound city-all accepted the message.
No one lived in Japan or Taiwan to hear the call. The couriers found an infestation of Voggoth’s creatures on both islands. Meanwhile, Witiko forces-rejecting any peace overtures-fired on the couriers from their enclaves in Papua New Guinea and fortifications along the northeast coast of Australia.
Still, Sydney remained a human city thanks to a combination of Aussia military and civilian recruits. They eagerly accepted Trevor Stone’s invitation, but the Aboriginals from the continent’s interior chose to remain recluse.
While the riders carried the word across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific rim, Trevor personally led an expedition into the heart of the dark continent.
In the early months of the new year, his convoy of Land Rovers drove across a golden savannah under the harsh beams of an unforgiving sun. Drinking water had become a commodity as precious and nearly as scarce as gasoline. Fortunately, human settlements in Algeria and Mali as well as a Centurian outpost in Niger willingly helped re-supply the travelers.
In any case, Rick Hauser slowed the lead Rover of four to a halt on what passed for a road. A wooden fence and armed check point blocked their way. Trevor exited the vehicle and approached the guards, one of whom accepted and then hurried off with a copy of the note Trevor came to convey.
The soldiers wore patches on their green uniforms suggesting old-world affiliations with the Central Africa Republic, Cameroon, or the Democrat Republic of Congo; political entities devoured by Armageddon’s fires.
Some appeared older: veterans, no doubt, of those countries’ old world militaries. Several more appeared younger-late teens, even-new recruits for an army of new thinking.
Movement on the plains caught his eye. Trevor saw a small herd of zebra daring the heat of the afternoon to graze. They paid no attention to the shaggy brontosaurus-sized creature sporting spiked tusks that wandered by on its way toward the delicacies offered in a nearby cluster of trees.
If Trevor had his way, all such otherworldly beasts would be purged from the planet to restore the natural balance of things. But as he watched the docile giant bite into the branches of a hardy umbrella thorn acacia, he realized that the new life brought to Earth by the invasion had grown roots. And besides, if he truly believed what he had argued in the temple of Voggoth, then all the universe’s life shared common beginnings and thus would find a new, acceptable balance here on Earth.
The guard directed Trevor beyond the checkpoint to a more shaded stretch bordering a large pond. As he moved forward he saw buildings. A few were makeshift shanties built from scavenged metals and stone; a few more crude shacks of thatch and bamboo. But at the heart of the settlement stood a series of sturdy concrete structures.
Around it all ebbed the currents of life: a woman in a flowered Senegalese-style Bubu pushing a cart loaded with vegetables; a man in a silk shirt and work pants carrying a tool box en route to some repair job or another; a cluster of children kicking a soccer ball on a makeshift playground near the skeletal remains of a well-scavenged
