Chapter One
While serving in the New Hampshire National Guard and also studying as a junior at Fort St. Paul in Concord, one learns a lot about wars ending. You also see a lot of old black-and-white photos from the past: General Robert E. Lee outside on a farmer’s porch at Appomattox Courthouse, German General Alfred Jodl signing the surrender papers at a schoolhouse in Reims, and American General Douglas MacArthur standing casually in front of a row of tophatted Japanese officials on the deck of the USS Missouri. All nice, clean and formal.
The funny thing now is that being present at what I hoped was the end of the war doesn’t look so formal, staged or historic.
It looks like a muddy mess, it does.
I’m sitting in dirt, up against the front tire of an electric-powered Humvee, splattered with mud, exhausted. My best buddy Thor, a Belgian Malinois still wearing bandages along his side and a cast on one leg, rests his head on my lap as I idly scratch his ears. Up a ways is the dull gray-blue of a Base Dome for the invading Creepers. There’s a large slit along one side, meaning the way is clear to get inside.
I shouldn’t have lived long enough to see such a sight, but there are other crazy things to see as well, in this muddy field outside of Schenectady, New York, near the old Route 7. Beside the Dome are seven Creepers of the Battle mode, stretched out in submission, their weaponized arms lowered. For the past twenty minutes or so, they haven’t budged. Think of an exoskeleton about the size of a school bus, with a proportionally smaller tail and larger head than your standard scorpion, and lucky you, you’re face to face with a Creeper.
I’ve never seen so many Creepers out in the open, either in my twelve years of civilian life or four years as a soldier. I don’t think many folks have, since the war began, and so I want to focus on just scratching Thor and feeling his relaxing weight.
There are other people here as well. Specialist Serena Coulson, one year younger than me, who’s with her brother, Robert “Buddy” Coulson. Serena and her brother are wearing forest camouflage BDUs, and she’s holding a canteen cup in her hand, trying to get her brother to drink some water.
Water.
If I had my way, I’d beg, borrow or steal a rare, cold Coca-Cola and give it to the boy—he’s twelve—for what he’s done, for behind that quiet, studious and silent face of his is a brain that has learned some of the Creeper language. Enough of their chirps, whirls and clicks so they’ve surrendered to us.
About three meters away from the brother and sister is their father, Major Thomas Coulson, who is standing stiffly, shirtless, with bandages around his torso, wearing torn BDU trousers and muddy boots. A while ago a Creeper—now dead, killed by yours truly—had scorched him, and his daughter had expertly bandaged him up in the chaos afterwards. Despite his wound, he is talking with some enthusiasm to one Henry Knox, also wearing muddy and torn BDUs. Knox is wearing black-rimmed glasses and happens to be a colonel in Army Intelligence.
And my father.
I go back to scratching Thor’s head. This poor guy has saved my life at least twice in the past week, having gotten burnt and stomped in the process, and he really should be at a K-9 veterinarian facility, but I like to believe he’ll heal better with me at his side.
An illusion, probably, but what the hell, most of humanity is surviving on illusions nowadays.
There’s a loud laugh, and Dad starts coming towards me, across the muddy and churned-up field. Thor gets off of my lap. Off to my left is a patch of woods, and in the frantic moments after I had burst through there, armed with an old-fashioned M-4 rifle and a new-fashioned M-10—the only weapon capable of killing a Creeper—I had run through and over old trench lines surrounded by bones, uniform scraps, melted weaponry, shattered M1A tanks and 105 mm howitzers. This muddy field had been a battlefield once before, and now, any God listening up there permitting, it was a site of victory.
Dad looks down at me and says, “Thinking about where the statue is going to be placed?”
“What’s that?”
“The statue,” he says. “You know, the noble remembrance of what happened here. You with Buddy, yelling at the Creeper Dome, me and Major Coulson, standing there in the background. Even Serena and the ever-brave and noble Thor, doing his duty for us all.”
The ever-brave and noble Thor is currently licking his butt. “I…I don’t know, Dad,” I say. “It’s…I’m still having a hard time processing it.”
“Aren’t we all,” Dad says. He turns to look at the Creepers and the open Dome and says, “If I wasn’t so scared, Randy, I’d take Major Coulson and go for a walk. To see what’s really inside a live Creeper Dome.”
“I’d rather you didn’t, Dad,” I say. “Leave it to the experts.”
“Son, we are the experts.”
“And you’re both dinged up pretty bad. Let me handle it.”
I get up and go to the rear of the electric Humvee. Since the Creepers attacked ten years ago and dropped nuclear weapons into our upper atmosphere in a very planned and detailed pattern—thereby creating a world-wide EMP effect and frying every computer and bit of electronics—a lot of vehicles and other things have adjusted.
I rummage around the crowded rear of the Humvee and finally find what I’m looking for: a quick-release container of flares. With radios and most phones out, this man’s Army—all right, this man and woman’s Army—often has to fight with nineteenth-century technology. I take the wooden container out, open it up, and view the assortment of colored flares nestled inside. There are ones indicating a Creeper sighting, others seeking assistance, others marking an “all clear” and others designed for who knows what.
What the hell.
“Today isn’t the Fourth of July, is it?” I ask Dad.
“You know it isn’t. It’s…hell, I know it’s May. That’s what I know.”
I open up a bright orange flare gun, insert the first flare I can get my hand on. “Whatever day it is, maybe it’ll be a new national holiday when this over.”
Dad smiles. “Or a world holiday.”
I lift up the flare gun, fire off a flare. I work quickly, snapping open the action, putting in another one, firing it off, repeating and repeating. I’m really tired now, muscles and bones aching, hungry and thirsty as well, and I need to have a vet check on Thor, and a medic check on my dad and Major Coulson, and most of all, I want to be done.
The flares all shoot up with showers of sparks and streamers, red, yellow, white, multi-colored, exploding a couple of hundred meters above us.
And like the universe is responding, there’s a brighter flare of light, off to the west, as a chunk of space debris—a destroyed satellite, the remnants of our International Space Station, or even a broken chunk of the Creeper’s orbital base, destroyed by the last of our Air Force last month—reenters Earth’s atmosphere.
So what.
I drop the flare gun and wait for the cavalry to arrive.
Dad waits next to me. “What happens next?”
I fold my arms. Thor is curled over on his side, breathing easy. “First things first, we need to control whatever units show up. Whoever isn’t helping out the refugees from Albany, they’re going to get here and see an open Dome with seven Creepers outside. They’re going to want to shoot first, and shoot second, third and fourth, and ask questions later.”
“Good point. What then?”
“Above my pay grade, Dad,” I say. “I just hope…well, I hope we’re not wrong.”
“Me, too.”
“Yeah. Buddy over there, he said something to the Dome in the Creeper language. The Creepers emerged, surrendered. But is it just this base? The Creepers in New York State? The United States? The Western Hemisphere?”
Dad says, “That boy is key.”
“We have to make sure he ends up with the right people. Your people. Major Coulson’s people. Not…”
“Not the politicals.”
“Yeah. You said you and Major Coulson, you were arrested for conducting unauthorized negotiations?”
Dad laughs for a second, takes off his black-rimmed Army-issued eyeglasses, rubs at his reddened and sooty eyes. “Yeah. Some negotiations. We were just trying to talk to them. Establish a dialogue…try to figure out…try to figure out their language. And for that, we were imprisoned. Everything has to go through channels, son, you understand how it goes.”
He put his glasses back on. “Even if the channel is fuzzy and full of man-made static. Looks like the cavalry has arrived.”
Sure enough, two men and a woman on horseback are gingerly emerging from the woods, and I go forward to meet them.
The woman is wearing Army BDUs, and her two male co-riders are wearing a mishmash of old fatigues, with a large S patch on their shoulders. Both men are bearded, and the woman—she has lieutenant’s bars on her collars—has an M-4 slung over her back. Her male companions are making do with scoped hunting rifles.
I think of saluting her as I approach, but I’m not wearing a cover and she beats me to it by saluting Dad and Major Coulson. “Lieutenant Mitchell, liaison with the Schenectady County Militia…sweet Jesus, what the hell am I looking at?”
“Those Creepers have surrendered,” I say. “Their Base Dome is also open.”
A bearded guy says, “Bugs don’t surrender. They’ve never surrendered.”
“These have,” I say.
Other bearded guy wipes at his eyes. Crying. “You know how many years those damn bugs have been in that Dome…”
Lieutenant Mitchell says, “Are you sure they’ve surrendered?”
“Pretty sure,” Dad says. “We’ve managed to…well, we have a line of communications open to them. They were ordered to surrender. They did.”
The lieutenant is in her early twenties and has a black wool cap over her head. The horse is nervous, whinnying, and she leans forward, rubs the side of his neck. There is suspicion and fear in her eyes, and I say, “Is there anyone else coming?”
“More of the militia, I’m sure,” she says.
“When they get here, we’ll need to set up a perimeter around this entire field. Once word gets out…every newspaper reporter and photographer within a day’s march will be rolling in, not to mention curious civilians. You’ll also need to dispatch a courier to the nearest Army unit. We’re going to need the Army to take control of the situation, the prisoners, and whatever the hell is in that Dome.”
The lieutenant looks to me, slight disgust on her face, and then to my dad the colonel, and to Major Coulson. Thor is sniffing the air. He doesn’t like horses. Serena is still tending to her mostly mute brother.
“Excuse me for saying this,” Lieutenant Mitchell says, sitting back up in her saddle, “but who in hell is in charge here?”
I see her point. She sees a sergeant, a colonel, and a major, who also happens to be a doctor. Plus one suspicious K-9 unit.
Major Coulson limps forward, with difficulty puts an arm around me.
“The sergeant is,” he says. “The sergeant is in charge, and I suggest you listen to him.”