The car stopped. Armand put his leg up on a toppled Duass wall, hoisted his rifle high, and shouted to the late arrivals, “It is about time you made it here. Any longer and I would not have left any of them for you to kill!”
Alexander left the vehicle. Trevor and JB followed suit.
The two Europeans spoke. In the distance another shot fired.
“Casualties are light,” Armand bragged. “The plan worked perfectly. I told you, the ducks are easy.”
Trevor stopped listening. Instead, he watched Jorgie as the boy approached the remains of a four-wheel vehicle; an ATV. The chassis of the thing had been cracked in two, fluids leaked on the ground mixing with the blood of the driver.
“Father-Father look.”
Trevor did. The dead rider was the same scruffy-bearded man who had ruffled JB’s hair and given him the thumbs up back at the garage. The man would ride no more.
“Father-he is-he is dead…”
Trevor knelt next to Jorgie and put an arm around his boy.
How often had JB tossed around words about war and death and killing? How many pictures of glorious victories littered with crayon-colored dead bodies had he drawn?
Jorgie turned to his father. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“I am sorry, Father. I should be stronger than this.”
“No, no. I’m glad. This is exactly how you should feel. War is a horrible thing, Jorgie. I wish you and I could know something better in our lives.”
Trevor thought of himself on that parallel Earth. A tyrant Emperor. A murderer.
He told Jorgie, “When you don’t cry over this-well, that’s when I’ll be worried.”
A motorcycle approached quickly from the north. Loitering soldiers leapt out of the way as a shiny, blue Yamaha flanked by matching bikes screeched to a halt a few paces in front of Armand. The rider onboard jumped off the seat and removed his helmet.
It was Gaston, the former Russian intelligence agent with the very black skin. His wide eyes and fast breath suggested something had blown away his cool demeanor.
Alexander and Armand hurried to Gaston. Trevor waited a few paces behind.
“What? What is it?”
Gaston answered, “It is The Order at Clermont-Ferrand…”
“What?” Armand jumped. “Are they mobilizing? Already?”
“No-no…” Gaston struggled with an explanation. “They’re gone.”
Armand and Alexander simply stared at Gaston as if the man had set forth an idea so foreign that their brains could not process his words.
Trevor spoke. “The city is empty. Dead bodies of victims but none of The Order’s troops. Just gone.”
Gaston gasped at Trevor, “How did you-but there were so many of them there! Our spies confirmed this just last week.”
“They moved? Where did they move to? Further north? To the east?” Alexander guessed as his gaze alternated between the other parties to the conversation.
“No, no,” Gaston shook his head. “No signs of movement. They are just-they are just gone. Vanished.”
Alexander forced his voice to calm, approached Trevor, and asked, “You knew this would happen?”
“Call it a pretty good guess,” Trevor answered and as he did he made eye contact with Alexander, and Armand, and Gaston. “Voggoth is breaking all the rules, gentlemen. The alien invaders came here through special gateways that I shut down a long time ago. But not Voggoth. He’s got an ace up his sleeve. Back in North America, for the past several years, we’ve noticed towns full of Order-creatures disappeared. Poof. Just like what happened to people before the invasion.”
“Yes? So what is the point?”
Trevor replied to Armand, “I was taken to a parallel Earth by the powers of something called the Nyx. Voggoth had somehow given the humans over there access to that power to grab me. When I was there-at the top of their world finding their runes-a creature of Voggoth’s appeared out of thin air in that green shit.”
“What’s the point?” Armand repeated in a louder voice.
“The point is, Voggoth thinks I’m dead. He thinks I went down on the Newport News. He thinks my mission to come here and fight my way across Europe to go knock on his door is over. Besides, he could use those troops in the final battle against my people.”
Alexander and Armand glanced at one another, clearly shocked at the missing enemy forces and what that meant for any offensive.
“So-so what is it you think we should do now?” Alexander asked.
Trevor stepped forward with his son at his side and made eye contact with each man as he spoke. Nearby soldiers and bikers gravitated toward him. Soon a circle of humanity surrounded Trevor.
“Call out all your forces-every hidden redoubt-all your knights scattered across Europe. Tell them that the time has come. There can be no hesitation. We must strike as fast as we can.”
Alexander said, “It will take time to muster those forces.”
“No, we have no time,” Trevor insisted. “Have them join us along the way. We will be one mighty horde growing in size as we move across Europe and into the heart of Russia.”
A smile-no, a grin-grew on Armand’s face. A big, evil and satisfied grin.
Alexander again protested, “But, Trevor, what about our supply lines? What about logistics?”
“We don’t need them.”
“Yeah,” Armand shot with that grin beaming, “logistics are for pussies.”
“We take what we can carry. We live off the land as best we can. But the only thing of importance is that we attack before Voggoth realizes his mistake, before his creatures start popping up in front of us again. We have to be one giant sword stabbing into our enemy.”
Alexander offered a long exhale. Armand nodded his head, smiling. They both stared at Trevor, waiting for the last word.
Trevor recalled the Chaktaw leader named Fromm from that parallel Earth as he mustered his forces for a great battle. He remembered what he had said on that day. Trevor repeated those words to his new allies.
“We march.”
16. Preemption
“I don’t want you to go, Daddy. Please stay.”
Jon knelt in front of his nine-year-old girl and ran a hand over her long, dark hair. She usually returned his gaze with beautiful eyes that were-as much as any could be in that new world-innocent. But eleven days ago her mother had been murdered by The Order’s assassins.
Together, Jon and Catherine Nina Brewer had drifted through a memorial, a funeral, and a bereavement dinner. Worse, they drifted through a quiet house with daddy sleeping beside his daughter each night to stem her nightmares and to keep from facing his own empty bed.
The knock at the front door came for a second time. A soft knock. Courteous. Somber.
Catherine glanced at the closed door then back to her father.
“If you go, you won’t come back and I’ll be all alone. I don’t want you to go!”
How could Jon answer that? Voggoth’s armies had firmly established their operating facilities in Kansas City and western Missouri. All of the enemy’s preparations appeared ready and the most recent intelligence reports- perhaps the most terrifying and puzzling reports ever provided by Gordon Knox-suggested the great battle along the Mississippi river would be a human slaughter.
Adding it all together, Jon did not expect to return home; he did not expect to see his daughter again, despite the fancy plan brewing in his head.
Desperate plan.
Of course, he could not tell her as much.
