Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism

by DeCosmo, Anthony

  He nodded and answered, "They did. The people of Thebes. The humans over there. But I did the things I did. They didn’t force me."

  "They deceived you," Lori reminded.

  "It was my fault. The truth of that other Earth still can’t excuse what I did. How I acted."

  Lori knew most of what he had done including many stories left out of the written reports; stories told behind closed office doors over lunch.

  She knew he had shared a passionate and self-destructive relationship with an alternate Nina Forest, a woman he had loved on his Earth only to lose her when her memories had been stolen. In that other dimension, that Nina had unlocked his most hidden desires; desires hanging on the border between lust and violence, between love and possession.

  Lori also knew Trevor had killed his enemies without mercy, only to learn that his crusade over there had not been one of a just people but of an unjust invader.

  "You keep thinking you’re going to become that evil dictator?"

  "I am a dictator, Lori. I’m the Emperor. I have all the power."

  "Your friend Senator Godfrey might disagree. He’s got a fair amount of power these days. Most of it you’ve given him. I guess it’s because you don’t trust yourself."

  Trevor stared at the ceiling.

  "That other Earth…they weren’t different people, they just made different choices. What choice did I make over there that made me so bad? What choice will I make here, that changes me from the hero to the villain? Maybe it’s California."

  "But you’re so sure. You just told me that."

  "That’s the problem. I was so sure over there that I was doing the right thing, and I wasn’t. How can I trust myself to know where the line is?"

  Lori shook her head and said, "Things are a lot different here than they were over there. Look across this desk from you. Think about your life here. Think about the decisions you’ve made on this Earth. Think about your memories."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You have me, Trevor. And Jon. How different is Jon from the advisors you had over there? Your Jon, here, had to deal with his own demons, and it made him a better man and a better leader. You can trust him to tell you when you’re crossing that line. You can trust me. What about Dante? He’s on your case all the time."

  Trevor smiled. His best friend prior to Armageddon had been Dante Jones. In The Empire, Dante served as the head of Internal Security and he constantly questioned Trevor’s actions, but fell dutifully in line when decisions were made.

  Lori pressed, "On that other Earth, the other Trevor had everything he desired. Do you have everything you desire, Trevor?"

  He closed his eyes and pinched his nose yet again.

  "The best advice I can give you is this: get over it."

  His eyes shot open. "Oh, that’s great, counselor."

  "We make mistakes. All of us do. It’s what makes us human. You’ve made mistakes, you’ve made hard decisions, and you’ve lost a lot. That’s what keeps you from crossing the line; your humanity. When you begin to believe that you’re a god, that’s when I’ll worry. Until then, I’ll place my faith in you, just like everyone else does."

  Stone relaxed in his chair.

  She doubted her words could cure all his doubts and she knew that allowing him to vent his fears was not enough to make them go away. Her words, she figured, would sound hollow and distant in the middle of the night when he lay awake questioning his decisions; they would carry little weight when his armies marched into California and killed fellow human beings.

  Trevor sighed and stood.

  "You’re a real pain in the ass, you know? How does Jon put up with you?"

  "Well, it helps that you’ve got him out leading armies half way across the country, so he’s not around to have to put up with me."

  Her light hearted tone did not mask the truth in her words.

  "Yeah, well, I wish I could say it’s going to end soon. California is just the next battle, it’s not the last."

  "You’re not going to stop at the Pacific Ocean?"

  Trevor told her what she had heard a dozen times over the years.

  "This war isn’t about the United States; the United States doesn’t exist anymore. Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe. Those are the battlegrounds our children will fight on."

  There had been a time when those words sounded defiant. Now, after a decade, they served merely as a reminder of how great their task.

  "Okay," she walked him to the door. "At least that means we might have Chinese for lunch some day."

  He smiled, laughed, then placed a kiss on her forehead.

  "You’re a good friend."

  "No, I’m a pain in the ass, remember?"

  "Good friends usually are."

  He straightened the black and gray shirt he wore, one that mirrored the uniforms of his officer corps.

  "Big meeting next week," he reminded as he grasped the knob.

  "That means big decisions. Can you handle it?"

  "I think so, yeah."

  "Well, if not be sure to bring me some Florida oranges for lunch next time. They’re hard to get around here."

  Trevor opened the hall door, sending a small breeze across the office. That breeze gently pushed one of the discarded sandwich wrappers to the floor.

  Lori watched him go then bent and retrieved the wrapper, brushing the bottom of the desk as she reached; brushing within an inch of the small silver object stuck to the underside of that desk. An object the size of a watch battery but with a silver, wiry face.

  She threw the garbage in the waist can and mumbled, "Back to work."

  ---

  Nina Forest stood in the dark amidst a cluster of White Ash trees, doing what she did often: watching and waiting. This time she watched a second floor window and waited for movement. Her task tonight revolved not around infiltration or assassination, but surveillance.

  Unlike her combat missions, the rest of the Dark Wolves commando unit did not accompany her on this night. Instead, she waited alone. A disposition that, she had come to know, came with the territory called motherhood.

  The gentle, peaceful gong of chiming bells drifted through the night, no doubt from the spires of St Anne’s over at Church Circle. Those bells rang out twelve midnight.

  The bells, Nina suspected, served as the signal. A sudden squeak as the second floor window edged open confirmed those suspicions. A moment latter a rope fell from the tiny concrete ledge and swayed against the brick wall of the apartment building. Two young legs dressed in faded blue jeans swung over the ledge.

  Nina’s heart would have jumped, but she knew those young legs to be agile and athletic. She had trained them herself.

  Sneakers pressed against the brick and gloved hands clasped the rope, then Denise—Nina’s adopted, teenage daughter—descended so quietly that the professional soldier in Captain Forest could not help but be impressed.

  She jumped the last two feet to the ground, her sneakers made a muffled thump.

  The blond haired girl peered through the darkness.

  "Jake?"

  A cricket answered.

  "Jake?"

  Nina summoned the mother inside, furled her brow, and stepped forward. Her footfalls drew the girl’s attention.

  "Jake? Is that you?"

  Denise’s hand rested on the pistol grip protruding from a hip holster. There had been only one attack by hostile, alien creatures in the greater Annapolis area in the last six months. Nonetheless, the survivors of the post-Armageddon world knew that danger sill lurked.

  Nina moved out from underneath a drooping branch.

  "Jake won’t be here tonight."

  Denise froze. Her eyes shot in every direction except at Nina. Mom could nearly see the cogs and wheels churning in the daughter’s mind searching for an excuse, a lie, a story.

  "I, hey, mom, hey, yeah, well I was just--"

  Nina raised a hand in the universal signal for stop.

  "Don’t bother, D
enise. You’ve been doing this just about every night now for the two weeks I’ve been home. Lord knows how many times you snuck past Barney."

  Barney, a vet who had lost an arm on the battlefield, served as the resident nanny and hall monitor in their apartment complex.

  Denise stopped babbling, stuck her lip out, and threw a hand on her hip.

  "You’re not going to go running off with boys in the middle of the night."

  "Boy."

  "Huh?"

  Denise spat, "Not boys. Boy. One. Jake. And I’m sixteen."

  "That’s right. Sixteen," Nina agreed. "That’s too young for skipping out in the night like this, especially with a boy a couple of years older than you. I won’t have it."

  "Mom. It’s no biggy. I mean, you’d like Jake. And I like him," Denise considered her words then drove her eyes onto mom’s and said, "I love him."

  Nina’s jaw dropped.

  "Love? You love him? Denise, you’re only sixteen. That’s too young--"

  The teenager cut off her mom and broke into a tirade that began with well-chosen words but ended in poorer ones.

  "Too young? Too young to love someone? Is that what you think? But I wasn’t too young for you to teach me to shoot, or how to fight, or how to kill with a knife. I’m too young to care about anyone but I wasn’t too young for you to teach me all about the bad things out there and how they can kill me and how nasty they are. I was never too young for you to make me into a little soldier just like you!"

  "Denise…"

  "And what do you know about it? What do you know about love? Every man who’s ever tried to get close to you you’ve driven away! You don’t know anything about people and relationships! Well I’m sorry, mom, but I’m not the same robot you are! I have a heart!"

  The teenager stopped ranting. Her breath eased in and out and in and out in big deep huffs. Her fists clenched but her angry eyes wavered in the slightest, as if fearing she had driven their confrontation over a cliff.

  Nina stood still, her eyes fixed on her daughter, her brow pulled taut.

  Two seconds, then three, then five past. Nina finally spoke a grumbled order.

  "Go to your room. And stay there."

  Denise grunted and stomped off, pushing through the lower branches of the White Ash trees. Nina listened to the angry teen march away until she heard the front door close, confirming Denise had made it safely inside.

  After hearing that sound, Nina exhaled and closed her eyes.

  What do you know about love?

  Nina knew Denise’s words had been spoken in frustration. She knew her daughter loved her. She knew that, in the morning, they would share a joke over breakfast then maybe play racquetball after school, or go to the bay for a crab dinner at night.

  She also knew Denise’s words held truth.

  Over the last five years she taught her daughter to be strong, to protect herself, and to understand the deadly world in which they lived. But she could tell little of relationships.

  Before the world had been invaded by a host of alien wildlife and extraterrestrial militia, Nina Forest had been a shy woman who always felt the outcast. She committed herself to the one natural talent she possessed; a talent for fighting.

  She found direction as a pilot in the National Guard and as an officer on a Philadelphia SWAT team, maturing far beyond her years when it came to soldiering. Yet the world of passion, love, and heart eluded her understanding.

  Things had improved in the years after Armageddon. In man’s old civilization, an expert woman soldier had been an oddity. Not now. The war to save humanity allowed her to truly be herself, to explore her natural instincts to their fullest.

  The more comfortable she became with the new world, the more she felt willing to take chances. She dated on occasion, dabbling in both serious attempts at building lasting relationships and short-lived affairs. Both always ended in failure.

  The latter simply felt wrong; she would not give away her body and heart lightly.

  As for longer relationships, she could not decide what she wanted and thus walked away, or the man grew frustrated in trying to break through her armor-plating.

  At thirty-three years old, Nina knew it strange that her heart remained sealed away. Even a broken heart would be better than a hidden one.

  Still, she knew something lay dormant inside. Sometimes she felt it, struggling to break free. Alas, she could not find the combination to that lock.

  Nina strolled through the trees as she considered her daughter’s words. She wondered if, in a world of monsters and alien armies, it might be too much to expect Denise to be the same sixteen year old girl Nina had been. A recluse. An outcast. Why would she even want Denise to be the same? Perhaps this whole motherhood thing had been a mistake after all.

  She shoved aside those thoughts and approached the figure bound to the tree.

  He wore the gray pants and white dress shirt of an academy cadet. His complexion hinted at Middle Eastern descent but the new world taught that things such as ethnicity, religion and race were thin, unimportant shells painted over the common bond of humanity.

  Nina sighed and pulled the gag from his mouth.

  "I’m sorry Captain Forest I’m really sorry I’ll never do--"

  "Listen," she forced the words. "You want to see my daughter? What is it…Jake?"

  He stopped babbling. The cautious gaze in his eyes suggested he could not be sure she honestly wanted an answer, so he stayed silent.

  "Okay, look, if you want to see my daughter you come by tomorrow night at a decent time. But you come to the front door, understand?"

  Again caution kept his tongue in check, but the young man nodded slowly.

  "All right then," Denise’s mom finished. "We’ll see you tomorrow night."

  Nina took a step, stopped, and then added, "Bring her some flowers or something. Flowers are nice."

  Nina walked away, nodding to herself in agreement with that line of thinking.

  Jake relaxed as he realized that the woman’s threats to his body parts were not to be carried through. He only relaxed for a moment, however.

  "Um…Captain Forest…um," he wriggled his hands in the tight ropes. "Um…Captain Forest…I…uh, could use some help here…with the…ropes…"

  ---

  The Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter produced a steady chop-chop-chop bouncing off the flatiron foothills to the west and echoing around Boulder Valley.

  Jerry Shepherd rubbed frost from the window and eyed those famous tilted slabs of sedimentary stone for a long second, allowing the impressive sight to steal his thoughts away from the reason for his side trip to Boulder.

  Shep knew that, somewhere deep in his soul, lurked the heart of a cowboy. There had been a time in his life when he pictured himself retiring to the Rocky Mountains. What a way to cap off his military and law enforcement career with a couple of years of fishing, hunting, and napping in hammocks in the shadow of grand mountains.

  Such dreams evaporated when the extraterrestrial armies and alien animals came pouring through the gateways.

  Shep sighed and pulled the zipper on his parka another inch higher.

  The foothills he admired remained capped in white frosting that reflected the sun brilliantly. For all its beauty, the snow in a place such as Boulder, Colorado, often grew into an impenetrable barrier. He wondered why any settlers would choose to re-open a city that not only sat in isolation, but had suffered so many horrors in the early days of Armageddon.

  To Shepherd, much of The Empire’s push westward had felt like McArthur’s 'Island Hopping' campaign during World War II in that the military commanders carefully picked where to strike and where to leave alone.

  Boulder had been one of those islands left alone during the push to the Rockies. Denver, on the other hand, had been cleared, particularly the sections east of Interstate 25, including the International Airport and the Buckley Air National Guard Base. Both of those locations became important military facilities and supply point
s.

  The distance between Denver and Boulder could be driven in minutes…if the snow plows cleared Route 36. The snow plows had done no such thing in years. The people of Boulder could not count on contact with the outside world until spring, except for the occasional flight into the airport and sporadic mounted couriers.

  Part of the decision to leave Boulder alone had come from the cursed aura surrounding the city. Survivors from across the region told stories that made even the most battle-hardened warriors cringe. Stories of monsters—not animals--but monsters.

  During the first days of Armageddon, creatures from the realm of Voggoth descended upon Boulder Valley and turned it into a nightmare. Unlike the animals and predators from the other alien environments, Voggoth's beasts killed for fun, as if inflicting pain served as a goal unto itself.

  Perhaps the colonists saw themselves as a cleansing agent. Shep heard that the Boulder settlers hailed from a religious sect, although he could not remember the specifics.

  "General Shepherd, we’re approaching the LZ, sir."

  The transport flew over the remnants of Boulder proper. Shep eyed crumpled buildings and charred homes; rusting hulks that had once been automobiles on streets that had cracked and twisted from years of frost and thaw with no street department to patch potholes.

  A stream of orange smoke rose from an open area to the north of the University. The helicopter swung about and descended into a small park filled with bare, broken trees. An old basketball court served as a makeshift landing pad.

  The downdraft from Blackhawk scattered the signal flare’s smoke as the craft landed. Shepherd gathered his thoughts, checked his side arm, then exited the transport escorted by two well-groomed soldiers dressed in winter jackets and clean BDUs.