Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (7 page)

     
He punctuated the end of the story with an acerbic smile.

           
“Nothing else?”

           
“I reckon there’s a lot else but to be honest with you I didn’t go ‘round keeping a diary on everything you were up to. But all the big stuff, that about covers it.”

           
“Uh-huh.”

           
Nina turned away and stared at the water.

           
Shepherd squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. He figured he probably could have done without the sarcasm. She was, after all, just a girl who had had something bad happen to her. He wondered how he would react if he could not remember an entire year of his life; if he had awoken from that year as she had:
changed.

           
That was the truth of it. She
had
changed. Shepherd could see that as clearly as he saw her sitting next to him. She seemed to want more in her life than just the fighting, but had been unable to find exactly what that was.

           
To him, Nina was like the daughter—
the child
—he never had, and he had just been mean to her. Man, did he wish he had a beer. Usually he brought a six-pack when he fished. Usually, when the two of them went, they brought a whole cooler full. Not this time. This was a temporary respite in the midst of a critical campaign, not a vacation.

           
The older man rested his fishing pole on the grass and slid closer to her. He put a fatherly arm on her shoulder.

           
“Say, I’m sorry, Nina.”

“Yeah, me too. I need to learn to stop looking to you for answers. I have to find them somewhere else.”

           
He said, “I just think I’ve been over about everything I can tell you.”

           
She rested her head, briefly, on his shoulder like a little girl looking for comfort.

           
“I’m sorry to be bothering you about all this. I won’t do it again, promise.”

           
“I know,” he answered, but she said that each time. In six months or so, he figured she would say it again.

           
The sound of approaching footsteps startled the two of them from the moment.

“Sir! General, Sir!”

Bogart hurried to the grassy slope. Shep and Nina stood to meet him. He held several sheets of paper toward the General.

           
“Sir, you need to look at this. It’s the Hivvans, Sir.”

           
Shep grabbed the papers. Nina peered over his shoulder.

“I’ll be damned. Get me a secure line to the estate. I need to talk to Brewer right away.”

–

           
Trevor leaned against the big oak desk in the den. His son crawled around on the floor amidst drawings of battles and monsters.

           
“Did General Shepherd do well?” JB asked.

           
“Shep did a very good job. Stonewall, too.”

           
“Yes, I know,” Jorge replied as he paid particular attention to one drawing. “The man on the radio talked a lot about General Stonewall this morning. Said he cut the heads right off a bunch of Hivvans.”

           
Trevor scratched his chin and said, “I don’t want you thinking about stuff like that, JB. It’s really not very pleasant.”

           
“No,” Jorge said without turning from his drawing. “I guess not. Not for the Hivvan getting his head chopped off.”

           
Trevor shook his head. JB always had something to say and he usually said it much more eloquently than any adult Trevor knew. Except for Stonewall, of course. No one spoke more eloquently than Stonewall.

           
He turned away from his son, glanced out the French casement windows, and stopped dead at what he saw: a white wolf loitering beyond the iron fence on the south side of the estate.
 

Stone shook his head.
Why now?
He finally had time to spend with his son and that damn Old Man summoned him.

           
“Jorgie,” Trevor said, still looking out the window. “I have to go for a bit. Why don’t you stay here and finish your drawings?”

           
“Uh-huh,” came the mumbled reply.

He patted his son on his blonde hair then left the den, leaving behind a black Doberman Pincher named “
Ajax
,” JB’s bodyguard.

           
Trevor moved along the first floor of the crowded mansion. One time dining rooms and guest bedrooms now served as meeting chambers and offices; the basement held the primary conference room and nerve center. The Stones kept the second floor as personal space.

           
He heard Lori Brewer’s voice from behind a half-open door.

           
“What? All riiiggghtty then, if that’s the attitude you’re going to take maybe we’ll just move you into the old warehouse on
eleventh street
. You know, the one where the Mutants entertained their guests. What’s that? Good. Now you’re being reasonable.”

           
Amused, Trevor shook his head as he exited the front door of the mansion. He did not even notice how Tyr had caught up to him. They walked side by side out the front gate, and then swung north. A few steps later and they entered the woods. The white wolf had circled around the grounds to meet them on the north side. Trevor and Tyr followed the beast into the forest.

           
Stone saw less and less of the Old Man in recent years. As long as Trevor freed people and killed aliens the Old Man rarely showed his face. The mysterious entity appeared to be most pleased when Trevor did the most killing. Indeed, the thing that looked like an Old Man wanted Stone to purge every non-human creature from the planet. No mercy. No prisoners.

           
At the same time, the Old Man often knocked Trevor down a notch. When his forces had cleared
Pennsylvania
, the Old Man pointed out that there were forty-seven more states to go in the continental
U.S.

           
When they captured
Washington
D.C.
the Old Man scoffed, “You should leave
Washington
a ghost town as an epitaph to the morons who had tried to rule from there.”

           
As for Ashley and the others who ‘rode the arc,’ Trevor’s mentor said nothing. He either kept a secret or did not know the answer.

           
Yes, the Old Man could be quiet when he did not want to share, yet very loud when he had things to say, such as the time he told Trevor he could not be with Nina because she did not share the path he walked. Or when Trevor had announced his grand plan to secure a thermonuclear warhead. The Old Man had been loud with
laughter
that day.

           
The weapon would not detonate. Nor the next one, or the one after that.

           
“They aren’t allowed,” the Old Man eventually revealed. “Against the rules. No—what do they call em’?—oh yeah, no
wep-uns of mass destruction.
You best be thankful for that cause lemme tell you, there’z stuff on the bad guys’ side that makes a nuke look like a water balloon.”

           
Stone pushed his way through the brush and tree limbs until he found the Old Man sitting by a campfire with his butt planted on a chunk of red rock.

           
“Sit down, Trev. We got to talk shop.”

           
Trevor stepped into the glow of the fire light. His K9 companion, Tyr, rested on the ground by that same fire while the wolf took its usual position next to the old timer.

           
“What is it?” Trevor said in a short burst like a teenager reluctantly reporting to dad for his daily chores.

           
“Oh, no nice little howdy-do? I ‘spose I went and pulled ‘ya away from more pressing matters? Gee-whiz there Trev, please accept my apologies.”

           
Trevor did not given an inch.
 
“You didn’t call me out here to talk shit. What is it?”

           
The man stiffened his lips and nodded slowly as if to say, ‘so that’s how it’s going to be then? Fine.’ Trevor stared at the entity unfazed.

           
Who knew what it really was? Could it be God? Trevor did not think so—the Old Man denied that the first time they met. But he was something. Something extraordinary. Something with incredible power to match his incredible knowledge. On some level, this entity pulled the strings of Armageddon but also stood in humanity’s corner; or so it appeared.

           
Nonetheless, Trevor no longer feared the Old Man, no matter what it might truly be. That entity had taken so much from Trevor that he was not afraid of it—he
hated
it.

           
Besides, one thing became apparent from the first day they met. No matter how powerful the entity wearing the cloak of an elderly white human male may be, it needed Trevor.

           
“Right then, straight to brass tacks,” the old timer went on. “You got to go get the best of your best people, Trevor. Get em’ and send em up north. I know, I know—I’ll tell you where, hold your jock strap on. But here’s the thing, they gotta get moving real fast like. Got a real chance here to help things along, or get em’ screwed up even worse still.”

           
Stone shook his head as if to clear away the double-talk.

           
“For Christ’s sake, just tell me what you need to tell me.”

           
“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Big-Shit. Lemme just lay those cards all out on the table for ya’. Someone’s gone and broken the rules, so there’s a new element in play now.”

           
The ‘rules.’ The first time they met the Old Man informed Trevor there were rules governing Armageddon. What that meant, Stone did not know. Whatever they were, those rules kept the Old Man from revealing too much.

           
“A new element in play? What?”

           
The Old Man told him, “Lessee…hmmm…what to call ‘em…hmmm…okay then, let’s go and say the ‘runes’ are now in play. Open for the takin’. First come, first served.”

           
“The what?” Trevor never heard of the ‘runes’ before.

           
“The runes…ya’ goin’ deaf? Maybe I could of called them the ‘gateway’ or the ‘gate’ or the ‘key’ or the ‘multi-dimensional sequential thingamajig.’ But, gosh-darn it, ‘runes’ just seemed like the easy way out.”

           
Trevor shook his head again but the confusion remained.

           
“So what? What do you want me to do?”

           
“So what? Oh, Jimmy Christmas! Well, I suppose it’s not your fault for not knowing. Lemme see if I can clear this up a shade. If you and your boys goes and get the runes you can shut down every last gate on this planet.”

           
Trevor’s eyes widened. He knew about the gates. He did not know how many existed but he had destroyed one in
Binghamton
,
New York
that first year. Closing them off would mean no more reinforcements for the bad guys.

           
“Oh, yeah, hey, look it here the old timer does have something important to say. Don’t that just shake the cat?”

           
“So you can tell me this,” Trevor asked. “And it’s not against the rules?”
           
 
“Not now it ain’t. Someone else gone and broke them rules already so it’s fair game. Bad news being that a lot of other folks competing for living space on this rock are getting the message about now, too. They get hold of them runes and they can control the gates for themselves. Here’s a hint, Trevvy—that’d be real bad for you.”

           
 
“So where are the runes, how do I get them?”

           
“I’m getting there. Tell your boys to pack a warm set of long johns, hehe. Oh yeah, you going to have to haul ass, too. Now that the rules have been broken on the runes…well, let’s just say the starters’ pistol just went BANG.”
           
Trevor asked, “Hold on a sec.
Who
broke the rules?”

           
The Old Man’s eyes grew narrow.

           
“Why Trevor,
you
did.”

           
Before he could respond the Old Man added, “I mean to say, you
will.
I suppose from your point of view it hasn’t happened yet. For me, well I keep telling you time is irrelevant. But the long and the short of it is that you really are going screw things up, Trev.”

           
The Old Man smiled.