Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

“I would like that.”

“Please excuse our selfishness, Master Jorgie. In our haste to share our troubles, we have neglected to ask about your people. I sense things are not well where you come from.”

Jorgie admitted, “Bad things are happening. People are dying.”

While Cai remained on a knee studying JB, Trevor shared with the room in a humble voice, “From what you tell me, I believe the attack against your positions was a prelude to what is happening in North America. The Order launched a full-scale invasion on our western coast. They had planned an invasion on the east as well, but we managed to stop that before it started. Point is, they hit you hard enough to knock you back into place before they came after us full bore. Now my military is on the verge of breaking. We’ve lost tens of thousands of soldiers and as many civilians. The Order hit you good to slow you down and is now intent on destroying us.”

An Italian man with a prickly beard and wearing a sport snap cap asked, “What is it that makes you think you are the first priority of this Order?”

“Simple. We’re further along than you folks. This time last year we had secured the heart of North America and were prepared to hit alien positions in Mexico. Our industry was running great thanks to some alien technology, we no longer had major shortages of anything, and we had developed the means to project power anywhere on the globe. To put it bluntly, we were winning. None of the alien races could stop us; not since we shut down the gateways a few years ago.”

“That’s what you told us,” Sir Kaarle-the man with the shaved head-of Scandinavia countered, “but then The Order attacks us with an entire army. Right now there are large formations of Voggoth’s forces supporting the Duass and penning us in.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Trevor,” Alexander confirmed. “That is so.”

“There is a lot we don’t know,” Lady Cai-still sharing smiles with JB-interrupted. “And you’re here to tell us a great deal. Is that not true?”

Her hand reached out and touched JB’s cheek. She closed her eyes as if bathing in the child’s essence.

Armand stepped forward and in French asked her, “What is it, Cai? What is it with this boy?”

Trevor asked in English, “I don’t understand.”

Alexander shared, “Lady Cai-she-I’m not sure how to explain this…”

“I feel things,” she did the explaining for herself. “I have a very natural-oh, what would I call it? Sensitivity.”

Trevor-the man who spoke to dogs, periodically met with a mysterious old man in the woods, and had magically gained access to a library of genetic memories-asked in a skeptical tone, “What do you mean? A, like, psychic or something?”

“Father!”

Cai found that amusing. She exhaled a soft, comforting laugh.

“Nothing so exotic. Sometimes I feel things. Call it an understanding of people. Of things.”

“She sells herself short,” Armand said although the sneer in his voice showed that he did not like having to explain to the American. “She has had dreams of things to do, things to come. And she can tell a good heart from a bad one.”

Trevor remembered Stonewall McAllister. A vision had led him to the lakeside estate during that first year.

Cai jumped, “And Armand, what would you say if I tell you these two have good hearts? Would you stop projecting your frustrations onto them? Would you treat them as honored guests?”

Armand fidgeted but held his tongue.

The Lady then removed her hand from Jorgie’s cheek and addressed the boy in a soft one, “You are a very special child. But you know that, don’t you?”

He nodded. His eyes held the same fascination for her as she did for him; the same wonder.

She said, “I have thought about you before.”

Trevor asked, “You knew he would be coming?”

She corrected, “I knew he should come. Not that he would.”

“Trevor,” Alexander tried to move the conversation in a more purpose-orientated direction. “You say your army is in a battle for its life. You say you do not have the forces to spare to help us right now. To be blunt, why is it you came here? Why did you need to see us?”

Trevor realized his next words would cause a stir, but he had no choice other than to say them.

“Because if The Empire falls, all of humanity loses.”

Grumbles and snaps in a variety of languages circulated the room. Armand appeared ready to burst.

“It is not always about America!”

“We survived without you, we will keep on surviving!”

Alexander stepped forward and raised his hands to calm the commotion. The ‘knights’ quieted but the scowls and narrowed eyes suggested they did not calm.

Trevor sidestepped Alexander and addressed the gathering, “This is not about America, or Europe, or Asia or whatever. It is about our species, and that means a lot more than you might think.”

“If you are destroyed,” Sir Jef observed, “then we will remain in hiding until our strength returns. We spent years stockpiling fuel and raw materials. What we imported from you has been a great help, yes, but we will continue on. We will survive.”

“No, you will not,” but it was not Trevor’s voice that said those words. It was Jorgie’s.

A hush fell over the room. Lady Cai appeared quite pleased with JB. She touched his cheek again briefly, then rose to her feet and addressed the group.

“You keep calling him arrogant, but I think we have enough arrogance in this room ourselves. We still use names that have no meaning any more: England, Wales, Germany, Ireland. Pride can be a source of strength, but not vanity. Set that aside and listen to him. I am sure we can teach Mr. Stone a few things. But I am equally sure he has come here to share with us important information.”

Alexander asked, “What is it you expect from us?”

Trevor slowly surveyed the room, making eye contact with each of the knights and when he came to Armand he offered the answer that that man craved as surely as Nina Forest craved it.

“I expect you to fight.”

The southern half of the National Beef processing plant existed only as ruins: a few standing exterior walls resembling cheap sets on a stage play, jumbles of felled steel beams, collapsed walkways, and melted machinery. Like Air Force bases and bivouacked armies, The Order saw food production facilities as targets for their bombers and artillery. And while the processing plant had never reached its pre-Armageddon levels of output, it had distributed thousands of tons of meat products for The Empire’s population prior to its most recent evacuation.

In contrast to the southern half, the northern half of the plant remained fairly intact albeit open to the elements. From the shadows there came Nina Forest running through the beams of dawn’s first light between debris piles and darting behind an overturned, rusted conveyor belt just as a large explosion sent shrapnel and dirt flying all into the air.

She did not stop, however, and neither did Vince Caesar who paralleled her charge a dozen yards to her left as they advanced toward Route 400 on the southeastern edge of Dodge City, Kansas.

Working in unison, the two sprinted from what would have been the outer wall of the meat plant and across what had once been the employee parking lot.

Two more explosions tried to halt their progress. One sent the remains of a Volkswagen spinning over Nina’s head, another caused an ancient light poll to bend then topple.

Nina leapt over a heap of metal and rubber that might have once been a Chevy S-10 pickup and raced toward a jackknifed 18-wheeler so fast that her momentum only stopped when she slammed shoulder-first into the toppled truck’s roof. Another explosion-just six feet in front of her-let fly a lethal halo of metal and rock.