Trevor stood on the balcony and watched as the convoy of Humvees, SUVs and one Bradley left the estate. He worked his radio to talk to the man in charge of the expedition.
"How long will it take to get there?"
Stonewall answered, "We will be exercising abundant caution, but I anticipate our arrival sometime later this afternoon."
How much had changed since Jon’s expedition to Allentown last autumn! This time, after so many battles, Stonewall felt confident enough to travel the turnpike via motor vehicles, as opposed to slinking across the countryside on horseback.
The convoy included Reverend Johnny and it aimed to reach The Order’s abandoned facility, secure it, and confirm the existence of the correct enzyme. If all went well, Trevor and Nina would fly to Allentown in the morning and it would be done. The memories would be purged. The woman he loved would cease to exist.
And Trevor Stone would go on leading his crusade.
He walked from the balcony into the empty Command Center where maps and binders called for his attention.
Ten days had past since the Battle of Five Armies.
Despite the victory, their casualties had been many. So many dead, many more wounded. Yet, they would recover. Trevor knew that. In the meantime, he would need to bide his time, restock ammunition, find more refugees, birth more Grenadiers, and focus on basics.
Eventually, the war would start anew. More battles. More death. More killing.
All part of his role to play, his path to walk…alone.
– Lori Brewer-carrying seven and a half months worth of baby-wobbled toward the barn. According to Dr. Maple’s ultrasounds, she carried a girl. The first child of the new world.
Nevertheless, not even pregnancy could keep Lori from doing her work, so she wobbled toward the barn carrying a knapsack stuffed with bandages and medicine.
The animals surrounded her, jumping and fidgeting excitedly.
"Have we been good little doggies?"
Lori patted heads until she came to Seth, a German Shepherd, with shrapnel in his haunch. His bandages needed to be changed. Lori spent several minutes cleaning the wound and re-dressing it. Seth flinched a little but he flinched less with each day.
Her task complete, Lori struggled to stand. A strong arm reached in and helped her up. That armed belonged to Nina Forest.
"Oh, hey. Thanks. I don’t get around like I used to."
"Yeah," Nina gently tapped Lori’s belly. "With that big bowling ball you're carryin’."
Lori smiled but said nothing. An awkward silence persisted for several seconds until Nina broke it with the bad news: "Tomorrow."
Lori tried to find something to say. "Oh, well, I, um, well…"
"I guess there are some words you’re not good with, huh?" Nina lightened her words with a tiny smile as she finished, "Like ‘goodbye’."
Lori shook her head, saying, "No, no, it’s not goodbye. You’ll be back. You just got to get that thing out of your head."
"It’s goodbye."
Lori wanted to walk away from the conversation. It turned out there were a few things she did not like to tackle head on.
"Why are you saying that? You’ll be back by tomorrow evening."
"The person I am now won’t exist anymore."
"Allriiighty then, so what, you’ll be a six foot red head? Will your name change? You gunna have green eyes? No. You’ll be back."
Nina tried to explain as much to herself as to Lori.
"My memories of everything…everything since the crash will be gone. All those experiences. I won’t remember any of it. Not meeting you or Trevor or everyone else. Not all we’ve gone through since then. Things that have…have changed me."
"But you’ll still be you!"
"I can’t be. I won’t be. I’ll lose everything that made me…that changed me…since then. All the times you were a nosey pain in my ass," she smiled. "Shep…Shep being, being disappointed in me that day…feeling guilty about what I did to Trevor. I mean, who would you be if you had never met Jon? Or if you had never known Richard the car salesman."
Lori cast her eyes to the ground.
Nina went on: "I just wanted to say…I just want to tell you thanks for being my friend. I know what that means now. Just that, well, I’m going to forget it tomorrow."
Lori reached over and gave Nina a hug.
"This sucks. You know that? It sucks."
"I know. Listen to me; Trevor is going to need you. He’s going to need his friends."
"But-"
"No, listen. It’s going to be tough for him. Not just tomorrow or the day after that. The months and years after that. You know he’s a good man. You also know he’s in a tough spot. I’m just saying, don’t let him be too alone."
Lori did not understand what Nina meant. Certainly Trevor would try and win Nina again. How could he not?
Nina changed the subject: "So you’re thinking a girl, huh?"
Lori wiped a tear away, "Yeah. I mean, yes."
"Pick any names yet?"
"Catherine."
"Catherine. Catherine Brewer. Has a nice ring."
"Yes," Lori agreed. "Yes it does."
Nina smiled, put a hand on Lori’s shoulder, and then walked away.
Lori thought to herself, Catherine Nina Brewer.
That has an even better ring.
– "Do you understand?" Trevor asked Jon Brewer.
He did not understand. He did not get it.
"I thought you loved her. Was I wrong?"
"I do, damn it. Don’t make this any harder."
"I don’t get it, Trevor. Why?"
They stood together in the empty living room in the estate.
"Listen to me. You’re not dumb, Jon. You know there’s a lot of crazy shit at work in…in ‘all this’. Right? Things aren’t all straight up and forward, right?"
Jon nodded.
It had been tough enough to deal with the idea of alien monsters and armies invading the Earth, let alone Trevor Stone’s strange ability to command dogs and summon knowledge he should not have. Accepting Trevor’s post-Armageddon abilities without giving them much consideration always seemed the easiest route. Yet there could be no denying that Jon’s friend-the one-time car salesman-had a direct line to forces of some greater magnitude.
"This is killing me, do you understand?" Trev closed his eyes and clenched his fists. "But this is how it has to be. If not, then everything could unravel. That’s not my choice. Do you hear me? But this is how it has to be."
Jon repeated Trevor's strangest directive to date: "No one is ever to tell Nina about the relationship you two had. It is never to be spoken of. It never happened."
"And if they do?"
"Treason," Jon spoke the ugly tasting word.
"Your wife is going to be a hard sell on this."
"Shep may be harder. He said he never saw Nina as happy as she was with you."
Trevor raised a hand.
"Stop. Just stop. I can’t hear that now. It’s done. It’s over. Tomorrow is a new day."
Jon saw the anguish in his friend. He did not know why things had to be like this; he could not understand it. What grand plan did this serve?
He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
"I’m sorry."
"We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?" Trevor said.
"Wow, yeah we have."
"We have much farther to go. Much, much farther."
– The last night arrived. Trevor and Nina had the mansion to themselves
Shep had left for an all night poker game and the Brewers found a new home on the far side of the lake. Dante, in the meantime, did not say where he went but Trevor suspected he stayed with Kristy Kaufman for the night.
Trevor had secured a couple of prime cuts of beef, fresh vegetables, and a bottle of wine.
After dinner, they sat in the living room and dreamt of a normal world for themselves. A world without Armageddon.
"And where would we have lived?" Trevor asked.
"Hmmm," she smiled. "Well, Philly of course."
"Because that’s where you worked?"
"Well, I mean, I was a cop you were-"
"A car salesman. I know, I know."
"Philly is a great place. Lots of things to do. We could go to the zoo. Catch a Phillies game. Stroll through the museum."
"Now that’s a funny image," he laughed. "You and I, strolling through the zoo. After all we’ve seen I think a couple of giraffes would be kind of anti-climatic."
"This is a different world," Nina whispered. "A world where I’m not a soldier, and you’re not a leader. It’s a dream world. We’re we could just be together. No responsibilities."
He put his hand on her cheek.
"That’s a lovely world. A wonderful dream."
She wrung her hands.
"And after tomorrow, you get to dream it. I won’t remember enough to want to dream."
"Memories make us who we are. Take them away, and you change the person. But I’ll still…I’ll still…"
"Don’t say it. You won’t like me at all. Promise me; promise me you’ll try. Promise me that you’ll try to make me remember the dream."
"I promise."
They both knew he lied. A lovely lie, nonetheless.
Trevor pulled the necklace holding his secret key from around his neck.
"When did you get that?"
"I always wear it. It’s always with me."
"What? How come I've never seen it before?"
"Because it's my key. No one else's. Come with me. I want to show you something."
He led her to the basement.
"I think you need to know something about me. About me and, and ‘all this’."
They followed the stairs into the basement. The armory door stood locked. The plasma screen TV off, the bar dusty and on the pool table sat quiet, a full rack waiting to be broke.
He maneuvered her toward the small door under the stairs.
"Trevor," she hesitated. "You don’t have to do this."
"I don’t want to have secrets from you. I want you to know it all."
Nina took a deep breath and kissed his cheek.
"Okay then. Show me."
He opened the door and clicked on a solitary bulb that shined on a dingy little chamber surrounding a utility cabinet and a hot water heater. Trevor slid that cabinet to the side, revealing a small gray door.
Stone slipped the key from the necklace into the lock. It clicked. He grabbed the iron knob and turned it, eliciting a squeak. The wooden door opened to a dark entrance.
He took her by the hand and they carefully followed a tight stairway down.
Nina heard a low hum in the air that grew louder as they descended into a dimly lit space.
No stone, no concrete, only walls of earth. Old tree roots poked in from the ceiling.
"Where are we, Trevor?"
"Now that’s a good question. I suppose we’re under the mansion."
"You suppose? Where else could we be?"
Trevor walked to a plain wooden table. An oil lamp and a pack of matches waited there.
"I suppose we could be…somewhere else. I honestly don’t know. I do know there’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you trust me?"
She nodded.
He lit the oil lamp. The soft glow of the flame bounced off the dirt walls.
"Look at this."
At the far end of the room sat an old wood and iron chest. Trevor walked to that chest. Nina stood a pace behind.
He reached over and, with two hands, pulled open the heavy lid. As it opened, a blue/gray light streamed out from inside, first in streaks then as a glow.
Trevor stepped back. Nina stepped forward.
She raised her hand to shield her eyes as the glow rose out from the box like a balloon lazily drifting into the air.
Nina blinked rapidly as her pupils adjusted to the sudden influx of light. After a few seconds, she dropped her hand and stared at the object.
A sphere of a kind. She guessed it slightly larger than a basketball. The surface appeared made of a clear membrane that fluttered as if containing liquid. The light came not from that surface, but from an object inside.
Nina narrowed her eyes and leaned closer to the ball hovering above the open trunk.
"Not too close. It can be overpowering."
"What is this? What is inside of it?"
Here eyes separated light from substance until the object inside the sphere took shape in her mind. She recognized the twisting parallel lines and ladder-like rungs between. She recognized them from science class, the Discovery Channel, and posters at the FBI crime lab.
A double helix. DNA.
Trevor confessed, "How can I fly an Apache helicopter? How can I shoot so well? How come I know tactical hand signals? I mean, c’mon, I sold cars, remember?"
Nina concluded, "So this is where you get it all from? This is how you ‘pick it up’?"
"That’s right. I have to come down once and a while and recharge. It’s sort of like a library. I can only read so much at any one time. It’s not complete. There’s a lot of shit not in there. I can’t do much more than basic first aid; could never be a surgeon or anything like that. It was a gift to me. But a gift with limits."
"It’s human DNA."
"The genetic memories of humanity. Like I said, not all the memories. Just a shit load of em’. I could fly that Apache because there are memories in here from a pilot from the Gulf War. Memories are also in there from engineers and scientists and generals who won great victories."
She stared at the beautiful ball.
"Amazing."
"One thing that I don’t get, though," he scratched his chin. "This is how I know how to fly Eagles. I shouldn’t know that. There shouldn’t be non-human memories, right? But the flight controls and all of it came to me from here."
"This is…this is beautiful."
His voice grew deeper, softer. She thought she heard regret in his tone but soon realized that she really heard embarrassment.
"And that’s how I know that memories are what make us who we are. I know because Richard Stone would not have survived in this world without this gift. The memories of great victories or how to rig generators or hunt game; all of that gave me confidence and strength."
She turned and faced him, her face slightly askew, puzzled by his words.
He made a finer point: "I’m a cheat. Without this, I’m nothing but a car salesman, and not a very good one, either. All the memories this thing has given me…and the skills; that’s why I’m a leader. Not because I’m brave or smart, because other people were brave and smart and now I’m standing on their shoulders. I’m a fraud, Nina."
Nina grabbed his face with both hands and pushed her lips against his. When she finished, she pulled away and spoke her mind.
"Information, Trevor. That’s all. How to do things, what worked in the past…that’s all this is. What you do with that, that’s what makes you special."
"Don’t you get it? With this, anyone can be a hero."
"Not just anyone, Trevor. You. You got this gift for some reason. Not me, not the others. You. Did all those memories give you the resolve to charge down that hill? Did these memories make you reach out to me? To show me who I could be?"
He opened his mouth but no words came out, so he shut it again.
Nina lectured, "Sure, you’ve got some pretty fancy tools. But you have to use those tools, Trevor. Being a leader isn’t just about what you know or what skills you have, it’s about what you do with all that. Some men would take these gifts and use them for their own gain. You use all this to save your people. I’ve watched you listen to advice when you needed it, or block everything else out when you knew you needed to be decisive. I saw you kneel before me in the rain, Trevor, just so I’d stay. You put aside your ego for the good of the cause. You’d do anything. You’re no fraud, Trevor."
"I never wanted this. It’s no gift. It’s a curse."
"That’s why you make such a damn good leader."
He shook his head; "I’m not the man you think I am. I’m…less."
"Now you listen to me, because I don’t know what you’re saying. I love you. I don’t love you because you fly alien ships or can shoot good. I love you because you care about people and you cared about me. You brought feelings out in me that I never had before. You believed in me. None of that came from memories," she pointed toward the mystical object. "I would love you if you weren’t the great leader. I would love you if you were still just selling Chevrolets. And I’ll tell you what…if I could have any wish at all, I would wish that you and I could live in that dream world where we didn’t have to be something; we just lived."
He hugged her and said, "I’d like that, too."
– It would be their last night of being in love.
They lay together in bed and whispered as he massaged her with gentle caresses, as he felt the magnificent strength and warmth of her body. She purred softly at his touch.
He studied her and wondered; he wondered what path the future held for her. He wondered if she would find someone else. If she did, would he be happy for her, or jealous?
They explored one another a last time. A desperate time. They could feel the ticking of the clock; the certainty that dawn marched toward them, that a new day would come and steal away all the days that had come before.
Tears flowed even amidst the sighs of satisfaction. The embraces became frantic clutches.
When finally their love had been fully satiated, they lay together and dared not sleep because then the next moment would be morning. So they whispered more. They whispered as long as they could.
Slowly their tired eyes wavered, their exhausted bodies begged for rest; they slipped stubbornly into sleep.
Time ran out.