Do you think all the experiments were worth it?
Were they worth it? How the hell do I know? But if it saved lives, then I don't have a problem with it. If it had happened to a human, then, of course, I would have had a problem with it, but they're not humans. And I'm not saying I would want that to happen to all aliens, but the Veech aren't just any aliens, are they? They got what they deserved, and more is coming!
The Jhi are our friends (Makes air quotes.), but I don't trust those guys at all. I know this is going to sound stupid, but they're truly... alien. I've seen their ambassadors talk on T.V., and they're likable and friendly and interact well with us, but that's their job: to talk with us, learn our language and culture, to be ambassadors. But I've met other Jhi, those who weren't ambassadors, and those guys are beyond strange.
Don't think just because they helped us, they care about us. They don't care about us any more than we care about ants on the ground.
Jonathon Howell
Chicago, Illinois
Just outside downtown Chicago, not too far from the Illinois River, lies Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. In the open prairie, surrounded by grazing bison, rests a monument to people who died on Invasion Day. A four-meter high, white marble statue of a family standing together, sits above a mass grave of Chicago residents.
Jonathon Howell meets me, with some reluctance, at the memorial. Jonathon is 65. He is a thin man, with a wiry frame, who moves slowly through the park. He has pale skin and wears wire-rimmed glasses.
Jonathon is a funeral director from Rockford, Illinois. He doesn't like being called an undertaker.
I got a call ten days after Invasion Day, a few days after most communication was working again. It was from an assistant working for the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. He called me and asked if was I the funeral director of Howell's Funeral Home. I told him I was, and he asked me to help with the dead in Chicago. Well, I told the man that I was just a local funeral home director and I couldn't possibly help. And I was scared. We knew the Veech were invading the country somewhere, and we didn't know all the details. We knew we weren't safe, but we thought we were safer in Rockford than anywhere else. So, I apologized and told the man that I wouldn't be able to help him.
The next day the lieutenant governor himself called and ordered me to help. I wasn't so sure he could do that, nor am I today, but he told me every reserve soldier in America was being called back in, even those who were technically too old. He said they would have a problem with disease if they didn't get Chicago cleaned up and that they needed me. He told me the Veech were in the East and weren't concerned with dead cities. I wanted to ask where he got his information, but I finally agreed. I wanted to help anyway, but... I had a family. My sons were grown and assisting in the business, but their safety was the most important thing to me. We all talked about it, and everyone agreed we needed to help.
It wasn't just me. Every funeral director in the state was ordered to help. Along with them, we were also given help from the Old Man's Brigade. (Small smile.) I think it was the first day we had gotten there, and everyone was receiving directions about the area they would be working on when a group of buses, all painted black, pulls up and offloads a geriatric army. The guys were all old. The youngest had to be in his late 60s. But, for all that, they were spry and willing to help. The governor of the state called for any and all volunteers to help. All the young men were called away to fight, and so we got the geriatric army. We had younger people, of course, men and women who weren't fit to fight, but wanted to help. But those old guys, they were the heroes.
Each section of the city was divided up, then assigned to a group of people. Each funeral director was appointed as the leader of their team. Mine consisted of 300 members. It wasn't what I had trained for at all. My job back home was to take the body of a loved one and help the family through a tough time, direct them, and comfort them in the process. That was not what we did in Chicago. We couldn't. There were almost three million dead in and around Chicago. Three million! The governor made a statewide address telling the people of the state that they could enter information about their loved ones into a website, and they would try to find them. (Shakes his head.) People used it, but not as many as you would think. Whole families died in the attack. Who would look for them? Not to mention, America had turned into a war zone. Then you had rioting and gas and food shortages. It was chaos. No, there weren't many inquiries, and it wouldn't have mattered if there were. What awaited us in that city gave nobody time to look at identification.
The first days into the city were a nightmare, something I still dream about, something I wish I could forget. Nobody was prepared for it. Intellectually, we knew the city
