We cheered, as did everyone else who was waiting. We ordered the word to be put out.
Billy ran immediate tests on the infant. No signs of the virus.
It was done. It was over. That phase.
From beyond the grave, Dean Hayes emerged to be no less than a hero to the world all over again.
23.
End of an Era
Dean Michael Hayes Lincoln was born on November 2nd 2041; seven pounds four ounces, a happy, bright, healthy boy. His mother a thirty-five year old teacher was in great shape.
We were elated.
Upon the news of Dean’s birth I saw something on Frank’s face.
Peace.
He smiled genuinely, and that worn out look, that aged appearance, seemed to disappear that night.
I should have known.
I should have seen it coming.
We had a drink in Frank’s hotel room that night. Billy, Frank and me. It was relaxed and fun. Frank talked so much about Dean and Ellen.
Several times his eyes welled up with tears.
But they were tears of joy, not sadness.
He told me that I amazed him in how intent I was about finding solutions and how he had every faith in me that I would continue to find a solution for a better life for the rest of my days.
He told Billy how proud he was of him and how he was even prouder that he thought of Frank as his dad.
It was a great night.
The last great night for Frank.
He passed away in his sleep that evening.
Peacefully.
I found him when he didn’t show for our morning meeting.
He looked happy.
He truly looked happy.
24.
The Black Parade
When the Great War began they launched many low level nuclear warheads. But in a country as big as the United States, the slightly less than a hundred bomb payload caused chaos and a few damaged dents.
We did more damage to ourselves trying to get rid of the enemy.
But that was twenty years earlier and things were getting back to normal.
Sort of.
In the old days of film and television, many movies depicted the apocalypse.
Many movies showed cities in ruins.
That was the one thing we decided we did not want.
Museums of destruction. Ugly burned out buildings, destroyed.
One because it was so big, and two, because we needed some monument, we left a large portion of New York City, in its barren, destroyed state intact.
In Washington DC, we left a portion of the monument, the statue of Lincoln survived and we left that there. The dome of the Capital. Yes, so much was reminiscent of Hiroshima.
But twenty years after the Great War, those monuments still stand and the city is a park.
But the rest, the cities that were hit … we leveled them. It took about sixteen years and a lot of manpower to do so, but we leveled them. The rumble was reduced to rubble.
We would rebuild.
There were so many cities still intact.
Boston for example.
It was unlivable for about ten years. Radiation levels, though low, were constant. Fall out was heavy there. But rain, weather and snow cleaned up the dust, and time cleaned up the air.
Boston was our Capital.
The buildings gleamed. We cleaned it up, kept it modern and renamed it Boston York.
Don’t ask me why, that was a Joe thing.
Boston York was amazing. Beautiful.
Frank died in Boston York and it was only fitting that the tribute be paid to them there.
We were a country in mourning. Frank was our leader for thirteen years.
No one felt ambitious enough to do anything, but we still did. A committee formed, they ran everything by me, and I approved. Why not?
A week after Frank’s death a huge parade would be held in his honor. A funeral service that would parade down the streets led by a marching band.
The main drag, which we had renamed Patriot Road, went straight through the city. We gave ample time for people to arrive.
I swear every person in the United States was present.
They lined the streets. Men, women and children.
Myself, Hal, Joey, Billy, Nick, Alexandra, Johnny and Jack had a special spot in the center of the procession. Sitting on that platform, we’d wouldn’t be the first to see the procession, but we wouldn’t be the last.
We had our own funeral service before the public one, we said our personal goodbyes, and we buried Frank. Then we took our positions. The parade would carry a coffin, but we, the family, knew Frank wasn’t in there. It was symbolic, that’s all that mattered.
It was a celebration of life. Frank’s life.
Eighty years earlier there was a band called Journey. See, a lot of people knew the band because, well, there just weren’t many new bands, so the music of the old stayed young.
Frank loved Journey. Without a doubt it was his favorite band. He listened to them constantly.
Posters and banners showed pictures of Frank as a 'Soldier in Black.' Pictures were enlarged of his younger days and the early days in Beginnings. Women carrying flowers escorted the float that carried the coffin.
People cheered. People cried.
And the band played on.
They didn’t play dismal songs, they played Journey.
We stood when we saw the procession just about two blocks away.
The start of it.
Ah, we could hear … “Open Arms.” Frank’s favorite Journey song.
Jack Slagel was all of thirteen and damn near stood as tall as me. He was just starting to get the Slagel build and he definitely had the look of his father and grandfather.
I caught the glimmer of pride about the same time Johnny did.
Both of us to each side of him, looked at Jack.
“This is amazing, Dad.” Jack said in awe, staring out toward the oncoming parade.
“Yeah, it is,” Johnny replied.
“All this for Pap.”
“Pap was a great man.”
“You’re like Pap.”
I smiled.
Johnny smiled.
Then Johnny leaned to his son. “So will you be. My father … his father … they were leaders in a world that was desperate. One day it’ll get better. One day you will lead them into a better world. You’ll be a hero, Jack. It’s your destiny. It’s our destiny as Slagels to lead the broken, the beaten. Uncle Hal picks up where my father left off. I’ll help him, then you’ll finish it.”
I have to admit. I cocked an eyebrow. What a hell of a responsibility he was placing on young Jack.
“And it stops with you.” Johnny touched his son’s chest “You’ll take it to the finish line.”
Jack nodded, hands behind his back, and stood a little prouder. Of course, unlike most teenagers his age, Jack, like all Slagels, had his weapon strapped to his shoulder.
I had to say I felt a tad insulted for Frank. As if he hadn’t accomplished anything in his son’s eyes.
I know what Johnny meant. We were decades away from being a perfect society or even close, especially with the LEPs. That would take years to end them, make them extinct and stop them from being the next dominating race.
Briefly I flashed into a daydream that was frightening.
A world dominated by LEP’s. It would be like Planet of the Apes, only instead of apes, it was LEPS. Where man would be the underdog. Not strong enough, their prey.
The change of song brought me out of that thought. And like the others on that platform, I stood straight, in silence and respect as the parade passed by.
But not for long.
We underestimated them, you know. The LEP’s. Underestimated their strength, numbers, intelligence and perceptiveness.
Frank Slagel was a hero, a strong force. A frightening force. His presence was felt everywhere, even with the LEP’s.
Remember I spoke of Frank’s
ability to communicate with the original LEP’s behind Beginnings.
We never thought he had some other connection with them.
But the moment the parade made it nearly to the end, when the coffin faded from view, that was the moment if began.
They were there, hiding, waiting, and they attacked. Multitudes of them pounced upon the unsuspecting mourners.
It was almost as if they feared Frank. Feared his strength, and they sensed he was gone, and they no longer had the fear.
Like a wallet in the old days, most men carried a gun. But guns were almost useless against the LEP’s. Only armor penetrating bullets worked and there wasn’t enough of those.
Bullets did, however, stun the LEP’s.
People ran into buildings for cover.
For some reason, and this is odd, the LEP never really learned how to open doors. So when people went inside, they were safe.
It still didn’t stop the destruction.
The city was destroyed. They took over.
People escaped via underground sewer systems.
The war had begun.
25.
The Turn
We didn’t live in huts, or hide in trees, but we had to retreat.
Although we kept our technology, we had to do so behind walls of valor.
We build protective walls against the LEPs.
That was the only way to live.
And it still wasn’t good.
They became smarter as they got older and bigger. Man, these things were huge.
But we started to learn about them as well.
Johnny Slagel took over the Army and adopted his father’s plan of attack. Hit the camps and the cities where they lived. Hit them before they hit us.
But they started to outnumber us.
Virginia was their base, and they destroyed that city.
Just animals, and they lived in filth.
They destroyed Boston York and moved south.
We drove them from three cities with nuclear weapons before we realized that it was a terrible error. We were driving them from the base.
.
It was a war, a civil war. I talked about the Planet of the Apes, we had almost become that. They hunted us.
They fed off of us.
Strangely enough, for as intelligent as they became, they never adapted to our speech, they had their own. They never practiced science, they were like animals. They lived for survival.
And they never learned how to turn a doorknob.
It was easy to hide from them, because they didn’t seek you out.
Like a dog chasing you. You slam the door, the dog barks at the door, maybe scratches it.
That’s sort of what they did.
Chase you. Hit the door three times, bellow out and leave.
When they hit the cities, when the packs were too much for our guards to take out, we just took cover.
We had bomb shelters and if too many took over a protected city, we used a napalm style bomb to wipe them out.
Sure we lost our homes, but they lost their lives.
They had no weapons, that was the advantage we had over them.
But that was absolutely no way to live.
And horribly enough they were taking over.
There were a few things we did learn about them. They hated the cold. Although they were created to withstand the elements, they moved slower and simply had no agility. They also knew they couldn't feed in the cold unless it was off of us.
We couldn’t feed in the cold either, but we had the ability to build greenhouses and indoor gardens.
They hated the open air.
Like fields, anything wide open, they avoided. Instinctively they sought cover. Forests and trees were great hiding places as were buildings without doors.
They also drowned instantly because they couldn’t swim,
We would just lure them to water and the ones that were really dumb just went in.
We started constructing most of our homes around bodies of water.
We had to keep any woman excreting pheromones because of ovulation hidden away. The scent of the women was a calling card and a dinner bell to them.
And they didn’t just kill the women.
Some of them raped our women.
We had a few survive the rapes.
We had a few give birth to LEP babies.
They were more human, but still LEPS.
We needed effective weapons against them in one on one battles and for attacks.
Then we needed to mass-produce the weapons because we couldn’t take a chance on not having enough guns or ammo.
Hal Slagel took over as President in 2041. He served for seven years and died in 2048. As funny as it was, I was elected. I was sixty-five years old and uncertain how long I would serve.
Keep in mind we didn’t live like peasants or like prey. We lived a normal economic structured society, but under lock and key.
The two major issues we had to deal with were the LEPS and illness. Because basically, as time moved on, the educators passed on and the doctors of yesterday were gone.
Books were the only source of medical knowledge we had and we did the best we could.
I wanted Billy to instruct the next generation. Unfortunately, I had to put Billy elsewhere. I had to put him on weapons.
Like his father, he excelled.
He invented and perfected the first efficient working laser weapon in 2050.
There were the handheld laser weapons, and the ones that blasted a pulse. The pulse weapons were used take out a nest or an incoming batch of LEPS.
The laser weapons tore them apart.
Holy shit, did they tear them apart.
When Billy came up with the prototype, Johnny and Jack managed to capture two dozen LEPS, by rendering them unconscious.
Billy experimented on them.
Hell, Billy got credit for over four hundred LEP kills before the weapon was issued for use.
I loved it. I loved that day.
I had watched him test the laser before.
The earlier weapons cut into the skin of the LEP and although it was enjoyable to watch, it drained a lot of the lasers power to finally kill the LEP.
Don’t get me wrong, it did work and the LEP were injured and didn’t attack any further.
But they worked on energy cartridges. They were expensive to make and held only ten shots.
Anything bigger was a danger to the shooter, and too heavy.
So Billy had to work on that.
Finally he did it.
I had heard it before. He had it. He had it. So I was less than enthusiastic when he called to say he had it.
Billy was sick and twisted and reminded me every bit of both of the men who raised him.
There was a chamber. I saw the blood on the walls, but that wasn’t unusual.
The chamber was padded, square and about twenty-five feet long.
The observation room was above the chamber. I had been there many times positioned behind the protective walls. There was a weapons port in the glass. Billy would place the laser weapon there, ask for the release of the LEP, and then fire from behind the protective wall.
On that particular day, Billy had the weapon in his hands.
“What are you doing, Bill?” I asked.
“I’ll be back.” Billy walked to the door.
“Bill … wait.”
Before I could say anything else, he left. What was he doing? Then I saw him go into the chamber.
Was he insane? Twenty-five feet was nothing. Especially for a waiting LEP. They would lunge and Billy probably might only have three seconds at the most.
A second for the door to lift, a second for his presence to register with the LEP, and a second for it to get to him.
I pressed the intercom. “Billy, what the fuck are you doing?”
Billy waved out his hand as if to say don’t worry.
He waved me off?
Worry? I was scared to death.
My heart beat so hard, I feared my aged pumper would stop.
Billy placed on a headset. “Test, one.. two.” He spoke through the speaker. “Am I coming in?’
“Roger that, Doctor Hayes.” Another man said.
Billy raised his weapon.
My hands went to the glass. I begged in my mind. Please don’t. Please don’t.
Billy instructed, “Lift the door.”
Here it was.
Three seconds.
Thump. Thump. My heart pounded.
One second …the door lifted.
Two seconds… the beast eyed Billy.
Three seconds … it lunged.
A mighty growl rang out as it lunged.
Fire!
One shot, dead center of its chest, ripped the torso in two.
Billy shouted. “Holy Fuck! Did you see that?” He grinned. “Uncle Dan, did you see that? Was that fucking beautiful or what?”
A few more ‘who hoo’s’ and self celebration squeals and cheers, and Billy gloated in his own inventive glory.
The look upon his face was one I’d never forget.
The feel of that moment was also one I’d never forget. Billy felt Victory, I felt, for the first time in a long time … hope.
26.
Against the Odds
It took a year to manufacture enough laser weapons and pulses, along with cartridges, to arm out elite LEP forces.
We didn’t have many that were classified as Elites, but enough for Johnny’s plan.
We still had access to working satellites, one was close to a hundred years old but the images told us where the LEPS lived.
It was easy. They killed everything and moved on. Like Locusts.
They were always down south.
Finally we had an offensive plan.
Johnny estimated our ammunition and how we to hit their camps.
Just north of Savannah was probably one of the biggest LEP communities. Johnny wanted to hit that one. They had been successful with four smaller ones.
In protective suits, unable to be detected, we sent in spies and saw the nest.
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