For instance, missing cadets and teachers at the naval academy in Annapolis suddenly returned to the land of the living less than a week after Trevor personally led the assault clearing the city of ‘hostiles’. Those cadets and teachers reappeared scattered across campus.
The story always sounded the same with each of those blessed people. The same as Ashley’s story: they never saw it coming.
In Ashley’s case, while speaking on the phone with Trevor she suddenly felt a hot flash…and then opened her eyes as Trevor and Dante Jones pulled her from a case of green goo.
What did she remember?
She remembered talking with Trevor on the phone. Yet on some level, she understood things had changed. Not a complete understanding. She did not experience that passing of time, but knew it occurred.
In practice, for those who ‘rode the ark’ no real time elapsed. Their bodies either time-traveled or entered some sort of perfect stasis.
People suffering broken bones or a cough and cold or a headache when they disappeared awoke with those broken bones unhealed or with a sneeze on their lips or the desperate need for an aspirin. For them, awakening inside the slimy sarcophagi had simply been the next moment.
As random as those disappearances seemed, the return of the vanished showed they had not been random at all. Each batch included at least one, and usually more than one, person with important skills.
The military personnel from West Point and Annapolis; engineers and scientists from Georgetown University; a gifted doctor from a batch of empty cars on Interstate 80 by Milton, Pennsylvania; and many more. Without these experts and professional warriors, there would be no army to fight the Hivvans, only bands of refugees hiding and hoping to survive.
To date, Trevor’s forces had revived nearly 15,000 people who ‘rode the ark.’ He knew more awaited them in places such as the Citadel in South Carolina and the marine biology building at the University of Miami as well as Cubs fans at Wrigley field.
How many had been plucked from the world to keep them safe during the worst of the storm? And why them? Who had done it?
He incessantly questioned his mysterious benefactor, The Old Man, who granted Trevor gifts of knowledge, sanctuary, and control of the K9s when they first met. That entity sat by his campfire in the woods and remained tight-lipped about the ark. He either did not know or would not say.
So many mysteries; so many reasons to wonder. Yet none of it really mattered; not to Trevor Stone.
The Old Man once told Trevor he was a link in a chain; a man with a path to walk to keep humanity from dying and that he must survive, fight, and sacrifice.
He survived, at least so far.
He already fought an uncountable number of battles and knew many more were to come.
And he had made the most difficult sacrifice he could imagine; he gave up the only woman he truly loved, Nina Forest.
The Old Man warned Trevor that his soul was damned. Damnation meant living a life filled with violence, a life devoid of anything other than the mission. At least he had his son, Jorge. And Ashley, of course. On some level or another.
Trevor put aside the paper, closed his eyes, and tried to shut out the questions and the worries for a spell.
–
Ashley walked into the den on the first floor of the estate and spoke to the boy who was only a few months past his third birthday: “What are you still doing up?”
Jorge crawled around the floor on his hands and knees wearing powder blue racecar pajamas and surrounded by large pieces of paper and crayons. The boy stopped his drawing and looked into the green eyes of his dark-haired mother.
“I’m waiting for father.”
Never ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’, always “father.”
Ashley leaned against the doorframe.
Tall bookshelves filled with everything from science fiction to reference to religion lined the room. A massive oak desk sat in front of French casement windows facing the south grounds. Illumination came from wall-mounted antique brass fixtures.
One part library, one part office, this stuffy room sat unused during Trevor’s first years in the mansion. Jorge turned it into a playroom of sorts.
“JB,” Ashley called her son by his initials. “I don’t know when your father will be home. He had important business and may not get back until morning.”
The blonde haired, blue-eyed boy shook his head. “He will be home tonight. He likes to tuck me to bed.”
Ashley frowned. JB tended to be right about such things.
She walked further into the den. A floorboard creaked underfoot.
“What is it you’re drawing?” She knelt to examine one of the crayon sketches.
“It is the battle in the south. Father was victorious again.”
‘ Victorious.’ What three-year-old boy uses such a word?
“Isn’t he always?” Ashley chided.
“No.”
The unexpected answer gave her pause. JB drew another scene: a giant monster waving fists at a mass of stick-people.
She huffed and told him, “That’s enough for tonight, JB. It’s late.”
He stood and gave her a hug.
“Please, mom. I just know father will be here soon. Another few minutes?”
“I see,” she found it difficult to deny him. He was, after all, her boy. Her child. Perhaps the only thing-the only person-in the world that she knew actually loved her. The two spent a lot of time alone together waiting for ‘father’ to return.
“Okay, okay,” she kissed him on the forehead as he smiled in victory.
Ashley glanced at the classic grandfather clock ticking and tocking in the corner. “Ten more minutes by grandpa’s watch,” she told the boy, referring to the clock. “But that’s it. Understand?”
“Yes,” he hugged her again. “I love you, mommy.”
Eagle One flew over the mountains and into the basin holding Harveys Lake. That lake had once been home to the region’s wealthy as well as seasonal summer dwellers of means.
Armageddon chased them away. During the first days, authorities urged evacuation to rescue stations. This ended disastrously for those who listened. Those who did not leave faced monsters and then starvation.
When the Old Man informed Trevor that he had to survive, fight, and sacrifice, he also informed the young man he would receive three gifts to help.
The lakeside estate came first, packed with survival gear and weapons. This had been his home during the early months. Eventually it morphed into the center point for rebuilding civilization.
His second gift proved more unusuaclass="underline" the ability to communicate with dogs, although he preferred to call them K9s or even “Grenadiers” as Stonewall McAllister nicknamed them.
Even after five years he did not fully understand how the communication worked, but it involved a combination of sound and mental projection.
Nonetheless, they were obedient, fearless, and ruthless; an extension of Trevor’s will. They never questioned his orders, argued morals, or hesitated to obey.
As the number of human survivors grew, the importance of K9s in pitched battles diminished. They transitioned from front line fighting to rooting out alien predators as well as security, although more than a few Hivvans met their fate in the jaws of Trevor’s Grenadiers.
As far as anyone could tell, Trevor remained the only human who could communicate thoroughly with the K9s. Nonetheless, the dogs were born with an instinct for human commands.
The K9s numbered in the tens of thousands throughout the new civilization and provided basic perimeter and patrol security for almost every human community. While certainly intimidating to newcomers, people slept better knowing Grenadiers patrolled the streets.
His third gift proved the most puzzling of all, at least to those who had known him before Armageddon. Trevor’s close friends-like Jon Brewer and Dante Jones-could not understand how Stone knew how to fly helicopters or repair complicated equipment. How had he learned to be a good marksman or understand the tactics of war as well as any General?