At first, the Brewers had lived in the mansion with Trevor. When Catherine came along, they moved a few hundred yards away to a Cape Cod style lakeside home. While not huge, it fit their new family just fine.
Two Doberman Pinschers half-slept/half-guarded their living room while additional sentries periodically patrolled by their home on a regular basis. As military Chief of Staff, Jon Brewer certainly sat in the cross hairs of humanity’s enemies.
A pair of over-stuffed duffel bags rested by the front door: his marching orders had come through; it was time to go.
Lori projected a tough front; little ever penetrated her armor and if anything managed to punch through, she reacted with bravado or venomous sarcasm. This time, Jon saw chinks in the armor. He heard her crying in the bathroom last night and she continuously asked questions to which he could only answer, “I don’t know” and she cursed Trevor for sending her husband on what seemed a hopeless mission.
What he saw in her that morning felt even worse: resolve. Jon realized his wife finally resolved herself to the fact of him leaving and everything that entailed. As she walked him to the front door, he understood she thought this might be the last time she ever saw him. And he could not kid himself. Had he seen his daughter for the last time? Was this the final good bye?
The journey ahead felt impossibly long and too fantastic to believe. He felt as if he flew blind into a storm with no real knowledge of the path to follow. He traveled to the frozen wastelands of the north, away from any support with only a handful of men and supplies to find a mystical object now sought by hordes of dangerous aliens.
He stopped between the duffle bags, took a deep breath, and tried to find the right words but speeches were not his strong point.
“Hey, listen, um, what I mean is…” Jon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and found a better approach: “I love you. I love you and I love that wonderful little girl sleeping in there. So I’m coming back. I’m going to do this and I’m coming back in one piece.”
Her eyes watered and she threw two powerful arms around him.
“God damn it, you better come home, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I mean it,” Lori repeated. “You come home to me and your little girl. Y ou come home.”
Jon pulled her away with his strong hands on her shoulders.
“Keep a light on for me.”
She nodded and wiped away the moisture from beneath her eyes. He saw her reach deep and find just enough to hold it together as he walked out. When the door closed behind him, he heard the facade collapse.
Trevor walked alongside the Doberman Pinscher, nodding his head as he moved across the front lawn toward the Eagle airship parked on the helipad. Floodlights from the mansion provided circles of illumination in the otherwise dark pre-dawn morning.
“Double the patrols,” Trevor said aloud and formed a mental picture of K9s walking routes around the estate.
With the communication complete, the dog trotted away just as Trevor rendezvoused with Jon Brewer at the rim of the landing pad. A line of soldiers hauling gear slowly boarded the craft up a short ramp and through the open side door.
“What’s wrong?” Jon asked.
“This shit with the K9s. Two more tore themselves to shreds last night. Both were still alive when we found them. Both were…they were unstable. Had to put them down.”
“What is happening?”
“I honestly don’t know. There might be some sort of hostile out there that uses insanity as a weapon or something. But they weren’t eaten or anything. They just mauled each other.”
The running lights on the Eagle clicked on and flashed over the men’s faces. Engines spooled to life with a heavy hum.
Trevor said to Jon, “Listen, don’t worry about the K9s. We’ll figure it out. Probably nothing. Relatively speaking, we’re only talking about a handful and only here around the lake. You worry about your mission.”
“Trust me,” Jon huffed. “I am worried about it.”
“I wish I could tell you what you’re going to run into, I just don’t know. I told you everything I can.”
Jon repeated all of what Trevor had shared. “I’m looking for a structure northeast of Qaanaaq, Greenland. I’ve got the exact coordinates and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Globestar GPS satellite is still functional.”
Trevor assured him, “Knox’s crew at the Pentagon checked the data at Space Command. They believe you’ll get a good GPS signal to follow.”
“Anyway, I get there and find these rune-things. Two pillars, about six feet high. Then I…then I…are you sure?”
Trevor nodded.
Jon shrugged for what had to have been the hundredth time since he received his instructions. “There’s a round ball of some sort on top of each pillar. I touch each one, one with each hand.”
“That’s right,” Trevor said.
“What is that supposed to do again?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory. I’m thinking it sort of reboots whatever force is controlling the gateways.”
“Reboots?”
“Somehow or another these gateways were opened to our world from other worlds. My guess is that once you come in contact with the runes you sort of establish that this world belongs to you, a human. Then the runes won’t allow any more non-humans to come through. Got it?”
“Shit no, I don’t got it.”
Trevor warned, “If some alien touches those things, then…”
“Then they get to start pouring in here as if they own the place. I guess I never realized that this invasion thing could actually get worse.”
“Think of it this way,” Trevor said. “There are rules governing all this, and some of those rules are controlled by these runes. Whoever gets there first gets to change some of the rules.”
“Looks like we’re all ready to go,” Jon said as the last soldier disappeared into the passenger compartment. “We’ll rendezvous with the other transports north of here.”
Trevor took a deep breath and then said, “Hey, Jon, we’ve been doing this for five years now, you know.”
“Wow. Man, where’d the time go?”
“I’m just saying that I don’t think I ever really stopped and told you how much I appreciate what you do around here. You do a lot of the heavy lifting, and I get most of the credit, but I know we wouldn’t have come half this far without you. You’ve been a tough and loyal soldier, and I don’t think I ever said ‘thanks’.”
“That’s because you don’t have to. You’re the boss, see? That’s the way things are. Don’t matter if I accept that or not. It’s the way. Just a fact, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, thanks anyway.”
“Thank me when I bring these stupid-ass runes back for you. Then I want a week off. Maybe somewhere in the Outer Banks. Make sure Shep clears them out soon. I got a feeling I’m going to be real friggin’ cold for a while. Need somewhere warm to melt.”
Trevor smiled, “You got it.”
“Mister Brewer!” Reverend Johnny shouted from the Eagle’s open passenger door. “Hurry up with your goodbye kiss!”
Brewer shot the Revered a stiff middle finger and then turned back to Trevor who extended his hand and said, “Good luck.”
Jon shook it. “Don’t worry, I’m coming back. At least you’d better hope so,” Brewer moved away. “Otherwise my wife will kick the shit out of you.”
Trevor watched his General climb the ramp and board the transport. The outer door slid shut and the ramp retracted. A moment later the Eagle lifted off the pad slowly and easily, turned, and flew over the mountains to the north.
Two miles east of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Interstate 95 passes under Route 24 in crisscrossing strips of concrete and long sweeping traffic ramps. NCDOT last tended to the intersection five years ago, leaving neglected landscaping separating the parallel north and south strips of I-95 while overgrown brush and trees died along the shoulders and banks.
Nearly twenty cars in various states of crash, burn, and otherwise shredded metal cluttered the highways, a memento from the panicked last days of the United States.