John Ringo: Manxome Foe

He spent most of the sermon checking out the congregation. It was pretty much the same faces he’d seen most of his life. He was born in Fayetteville, NC, when his dad was still in the Army, a “leg” who did something in logistics Eric had never quite understood. But Eric didn’t remember North Carolina as a kid. His dad had moved to Crab Orchard to work in the, then new, plastic plant as a dispatcher. Josh had been born in the Arh Beckley Hospital as had his sister Janna.

Most of the people in the church had been born in Arh Beckley, those that hadn’t used a midwife. And he’d seen the same faces every Sunday for as long as he could remember. So was it his eyes that had changed or the people around him?

Coach Radner had been a nightmare during high school. The head coach for the phys ed department and the lead coach for the Crab Orchard High School football team, the former paratrooper was missing two middle fingers from some industrial accident back in time. One time Bob Arnold had mocked him as the coach was instructing him on the fine point of the three-point stance of a blocker. Bob, thinking he was being funny, had taken up a three point stance with those same fingers folded back as if they’d been cut off. Radner, half Arnold’s weight, had knocked the tackle flat on his ass with that same damaged hand. You did not cross Coach Radner.

Looking at him now, Eric saw a man who was relatively out of shape and on the back side of fifty. He looked satisfied with his life but not the demon that Eric recalled.

Bob Arnold was in the audience, too, with his wife Jessie. Jessie was one of the co-heads of the cheerleading team; Bob was the school’s top tackle. It had been a natural match. Now, they both looked worn and washed out, with two kids already; Bob’s muscle was turning to fat quick and Jessie wasn’t exactly svelte anymore. Eric heard Bob was in construction framing down in Beckley. Eric had a hard time adjusting the picture of the two in high school.

Behind them were the Piersons. Mr. Pierson and Mrs. Pierson looked pretty much the same as they always had, a good looking couple. Mr. Pierson was the local veterinarian, Mrs. Pierson had been a legal secretary to one of the town’s lawyers for years. But Eric stopped and blinked for a moment at the people with them. The Piersons had four children. Paul had been a year ahead of Eric in school and Eric heard he’d gone to college so he wasn’t around. The youngest girl had to be Linda, but she’d really grown. She must be ten or so by now and had shot up. Then there was Hector. He was recognizable by the shock of white hair but that was about it. Where’d the pimples come from?

But the one that really caught him was the teenage girl with them. The other Pierson child would be Brooke but… that couldn’t be Brooke. He conjured up a vague memory of a gawky and awkward blonde girl who had just entered high school the year he was graduating. She’d had a serious overbite that mildly affected her speech and a mass of metal to go with it. Nice hair, a mass of naturally curly blonde locks, but…

Jesus! It had to be Brooke Pierson. But the maulking vision in a pink dress sitting with them couldn’t… Same damned hair, though. Shit, it was Brooke… She’d sure shot more than up .

He turned away as the girl in question looked his way, as if divining that he’d been staring. It wasn’t that, though. He’d caught other looks from the congregation as the service had gone on. The dress blues certainly stood out and Dad had told him that the decoration had been written up in the local paper. Given that they weren’t, as far as anyone knew, at war, the award of the Navy Cross had been big news in a very small town.

Looking away from the girl who… hell, she’d be seventeen, which would get you twenty even in West Virginia… he saw Coach Radner looking his way. The old paratrooper gave him a respectful nod, one former warrior to the present generation, and turned back to ignoring the sermon.

It was times like this that got Eric thinking. Looking around the congregation he picked out the veterans. There were a bunch: small towns like Crab Orchard had always provided more than their fair share of soldiers and Marines. But they left quite a few behind, too. The annual Memorial Day celebrations pointed that out, the roads lined with crosses with names on them. More crosses than there were people who lived in the town it sometimes seemed. WWII, WWI, Korea, Vietnam, the aborted “War on Terror,” the Dreen War…

Would one of those crosses one day say “Eric Bergstresser”? Or would he be one of the guys in the congregation, running to fat but there to see their grandkids? Would he sit around in the VFW hall and tell stories about crabpus and Demons? Or would he be an empty box in a grave, a guy people sort of recalled on Memorial Day, but really nothing but a fading memory?

He shook his head to clear the thought as the sermon finally droned to a close. The new priest, priestess, whatever, sure seemed devoted but my God she was boring. There had to be better uses of his time but Mom wanted to show off her Marine-hero son. Given that it might be the last chance she got, he owed her that. It was that that had decided him on coming. Not that he was going to put it to her that way.

Since he was in church he figured he ought to pray, some, for a chance to come back to it. But he was blanking on prayers. No, there was one.

“What was that, Eric?” his mom asked, as the congregation rose to do what Eric thought of as “the huggy” thing.

“Just a prayer, Mom,” Eric said as the lady in front of him, whom he didn’t recognize, turned around to get a hug and a welcome. “It’s called ‘Recessional.’ ”

Getting from Huntsville to Newport News had once been a major endeavor. Especially after the events of 9/11 when security cracked down on airport travel.

The virtual destruction of the mujahideen movement in the Dreen War had pretty much eliminated the need for the increased security measures. But they had, of course, continued on as long as the airlines survived. The only thing more eternal than the stars was a government program. However, the increasing replacement of airlines with Looking Glasses had eventually killed even the TSA.

Even up to a couple of years before, security had searched people moving through the Glasses. There wasn’t any reason for it that Weaver could ever see; the Glasses weren’t exactly worthwhile targets. Sure, you could shut one down. If you set off a nuke in close proximity. But the nuke was the problem, not the Glass shutting down.

Eventually even Congress had come to its senses and now there wasn’t any more “security” than a minor police presence in airports. The airports remained as a good center for long-range Glasses, but that was about all.

So as soon as he got to his car, Bill drove to the Huntsville Airport. He parked in long-term parking, hoping that he’d get a chance to move the car somewhere else if he was going to be gone long, then walked into the terminal. There was a Glass opening to DC in fifteen minutes at Gate Nine.

He had plenty of time to walk to the gate and got there well before the opening time. Really, it was just traffic control. People could walk back and forth easily enough but you couldn’t see if anyone was coming on the other side; Glasses would pass certain particles but not electrons or any wavelength of light. The “opening” times were just to make sure nobody ran into a person coming the other way. Bill had suggested a system based on muon generators that could be used as a signalling system but it hadn’t gotten implemented last time he checked.