“Hmm,” Kristy Kaufman grunted.
“You have something to add, Princess?”
Kaufman scowled but remained focused. “What if they realize what’s going on? What if they realize that Raleigh is lightly defended?”
“The only way they can threaten Raleigh again is with their retreating forces which are currently slipping into our jaws,” Stonewall answered. “If they reconstitute we’ll see that from the air. Regardless of what they do, if we cut off their supply lines they will not last long.”
“Then I guess we’d better get going,” Dustin said. “On to Dillon and all, right?”
“Yes, Mr. McBride. We must press on to Dillon. It is not so far away.”
The General gazed southward and fell silent. They waited several seconds until Kristy prodded, “Do you know this area?”
Stonewall shook himself out of the trance.
“What was that? Oh, yes, I do. Dillon, after all, used to be my home.”
7. Goat-Walker
As he gazed up at a perfectly black sky, Jon Brewer realized he had never truly known darkness before the invasion shut off mankind’s power plants and generators. The absolute absence of artificial light took him by surprise during those first months after the collapse. He found it unnerving; the pure blackness made him feel like an animal, naked in the wilderness not knowing from which direction the next horror would pounce.
Conversely, he had never really seen the stars in the sky before the end-of-the-world, either. The very concept of ‘light pollution’ sounded ridiculous to his ears, until he lived in a world without it. Those tiny flickers of light in a vast sea of black came to life in a way he never imagined. So many of them, and so bright; not specks but radiant spheres flashing, winking, and swirling in patterns his mind could not quite grasp.
Of course, he regarded those stars with as much suspicion as wonder, considering alien beings came from those heavens through a network of gateways to slaughter his race.
On this particular night, those mysterious and dangerous orbs hid behind a thick blanket of cloud cover.
As his armada of nine Eagle air ships paused one hundred miles northeast of Montreal on the northern bank of Lake Edouard, he felt his nerves jitter once again, perhaps because he felt surrounded by darkness.
While he did not feel alone this time-not with one hundred well-armed soldiers and a compliment of K9s under his command-he felt vulnerable.
The lake stretched nearly two miles north to south but little more than a quarter mile across at its widest point. Tall coniferous trees dominated the land around the lake, stretching off into the unseen distance; a vast void of nothingness dwarfing the small ring of light carved by the floodlights of parked ships occupying the only stretch of open ground for miles.
Two specialty Eagles parked at the water’s edge near a sagging rack of canoes once rented to summer vacationers now left rotting on the rocky dirt and rough grass comprising the shoreline. Instead of rectangular passenger modules, a large round gray tank occupied the space between nose cone and engine baffles. One big hose ran from each ship to the lake, sucking H2o into the purification filters onboard the customized craft. Several soldiers oversaw the extraction process aided by lights mounted above the landing struts.
Five troop transports and two cargo carriers landed further inland, two of which were on the receiving end of the ‘fueling’ ships. The fleet formed a circle of sorts.
Jon walked toward the fueling pumps alongside Captain Casey Fink, an old-world military veteran and a big man; so big he could have been a professional wrestler. Around them within the circle, men sat on the ground or on access ramps enjoying a few minutes respite from the cramped quarters of the transports.
“Cold out,” Jon muttered in reference to the bite in the Canadian air; a frosty-white exhale accentuated the point.
“Refreshing,” Casey flapped his arms as if jump-starting circulation. “I managed to catch some shut eye during the trip. A little nip in the air is just what I need to wake up.”
“That’s because you didn’t ride with Reverend Johnny. The man snores loud enough to wake the dead.”
“Praise the Lord,” Casey mocked. “Either way, the men are happy to be out of those ships for a few minutes.”
“I’m not,” Jon cocked an eye toward the darkness threatening to engulf their oasis of light. “I don’t like it. Wish we didn’t have to refuel. Can’t those pumps work any faster?”
They arrived at one of the specially equipped Eagles filtering lake water for use in the airships’ hydrogen-powered engines. The hum and swoosh of the working pumps forced the men to raise their voices a notch.
Casey touched the metal tank and said, “Better let them take their time. Last thing we want is to have dirty fuel grounding one of the birds in the middle of no where.”
Jon snapped, “We’re already behind schedule. I wanted to get here before dark, but look at it. It’s dark.”
“Our pilot said it must be all the extra weight with the gear and the vehicles in the cargo ships that’s slowing us down. If we went any faster we never would have reached this stop.”
“That’s one excuse. Two ships were late getting started, one had mechanical problems and needed to be switched out, and then we find out someone miscalculated our cruising range so we had to power down to a flying crawl. This whole mission is borderline FUBAR and we’re not even at the sub yet.”
Casey peered at the northwestern sky. “I think it’s going to get worse. Must be a storm coming, I just saw lightening. Funny, it was pretty close, but no thunder.”
One of the K9s at the center of the makeshift camp barked. Then another. And another.
Jon felt his nerves kick into overdrive.
“Mother…Casey, get these pumps going, I want out of here.”
“Yeah…yeah sure,” any good humor drained from the soldier’s voice as more of the Grenadiers howled in warning.
Jon left Casey at the fueling ship and hurried toward the center of the sphere of light. Relaxing soldiers stood and tensed; others wandered out from inside ships.
A dozen dogs-mainly Huskies and Shepherds-trotted to the northwest edge of the camp staring at a line of giant evergreens that resembled more a castle wall than the rim of a forest.
Reverend Johnny emerged from one of the cargo Eagles wearing a white arctic jacket and carrying a machine gun.
“I fear something has taken note of our presence. Perhaps we should be leaving?”
Brewer-his eyes focused on the forest-answered, “We’re not done refueling yet. We have two birds that can’t take off.”
Johnny said, “It is our misfortune that despite the brevity of our stay something has stumbled upon-dear Lord, did you feel that?”
Both men glanced at the tough soil beneath their feet and felt another tremor.
The Reverend whispered, “Whatever it is-”
“-it must be big,” Jon finished and as the words left his mouth he saw the line of K9s growling at the woods step back, in unison, and their angry snarls grow more subdued.
He ordered, “Reverend, all the fueled ships airborne now.”
Both men saw movement in the otherwise black forest, and heard the unmistakable crack and crash of a tree falling. Then another. Then another.
“Rev, get going!”
As ordered, Reverend Johnny hurried toward one of the nearby cargo-carriers, identified by a larger side door. He went inside where the pilots should be waiting.
Jon managed to pull his eyes away from the forest and take stock of his men. Like him, they stood and watched, waiting to see what evil came their way. He pulled his walkie-talkie and radioed, “All ships that are refueled get airborne now. Drop everything, board now, and get airborne. Everyone else to arms!”
Suddenly, the K9s retreated in a sprint from the perimeter and gathered near the center of the camp as a giant came out of the forest.