Chapter 7

It dawned on me that the direction the stairs turned had to be a coincidence since nobody would have thought of attacking or defending this building with a sword when it was built 50-odd years ago.

We made a quick check of the second floor and found it to be empty of people, though it was obvious that at least one person lived here because we found a replicator that was turned on. Surely, that meant that the fire was not for cooking.

We were a lot more careful when we entered the third story. We skipped the room where the smoke was coming from so that we could make sure that we would not be attacked from the rear when we did go to check on the smoke. The entire level was empty, except for the unchecked room with the fire.

The door to that room was open, probably to provide a draft for the fire. We could feel a gentle breeze from our rear as we approached the open door. We were amazed when we looked into the room. The carpet had been rolled back to one wall and a large steel plate was resting on four bricks at the corners. Upon this steel plate was a circle of rocks and a pile of sand, and upon the sand was a widely spread sheet of red hot coals.

There was a tripod above the coals that was supporting a shallow pot containing a boiling liquid that would occasionally bubble over and drip onto the hot coals. That produced a flash of steam and black smoke that drifted out the open window.

An old man in a strange costume was tending the boiling pot while chanting in a language that neither of us could understand. The old man ignored us completely and spent all of his effort on his chant and his pot of boiling liquid. Obviously, there was no immediate danger to us from what was going on, so we simply stopped and stared at the sight. This was like nothing that either one of us had ever seen before.

The old man was skinny as a rail, to quote an old expression that I had no idea what it meant, but it seemed perfect for him. His very dark skin was wrinkled at every place that we could see, and that was most of it. He wore very little in the way of clothes, and those were all what appeared to be animal skins of a multitude of types. Surely, most, if not all, had come by way of the replicator.

His most remarkable piece of attire was his headdress, which looked like a large bird with spread wings landing on a ball of skin that was what kept the headdress properly centered on the man’s head. After looking at it for a moment, it occurred to me that the bird closely resembled the bald eagle that had been emblazoned on the Great Seal of the United States of America. The eagle was facing to its right toward the claws holding several arrows, symbolizing that there was a state of war.

Hardly had all of this registered than the old man finally turned to us, and his face lit up. “At last, you have arrived. Salvation is here! Gentlemen, please lower your weapons; I mean you no harm.

“I have been calling for days, and I had almost given up hope, but I find that you have finally arrived.”

I decided to go along with the ravings of the old man, because I figured that would give us the most information in the least amount of time. My radio was on, so the two women were getting a first-hand report as things happened.

The old man said, “My American name is Jack Martin, but my Penobscot name translates to Bringer of Truth. I know that you do not speak Abenaki, so I will speak to you in English.

“I see that you are fully armored and carry powerful weapons, so I am sure that you were sent by the Great Spirit to rescue us from the invaders. I thank him for his moment of grace. Time is short, so I will tell you immediately why I have asked for help.

“An army of demons is marching upon us. They landed on the great ocean and beached on the cape. They knew that we were too strong for them to conquer us as we originally were, so they gave us ‘gifts’ that served to weaken us to the point that we would be easy to conquer. Those gifts were the power source and the replicator. They knew that our great desire for leisure and fun would entrap us into abandoning what we had learned over the centuries and turn us into easy victims.

“What they did not know was that we would recover from our momentary stumble and return to our original strength, and even surpass it in time. You are the symbol of that recovery. You must find out everything you can about the invading demons and return to your people with that knowledge. In that way, means will be found to defeat them.

“Right now, the number of invaders is small, but they will increase if given the time to do so. Once they start to increase, they will swamp us with sheer numbers, so now is the time to stop them. Please do what you can. The fate of the whole world rides on your shoulders.

“I am about to die. I have struggled to stay alive this long so that I could pass the word along to you. Please leave me now so that I may die in peace, knowing that I have done the bidding of the Great Spirit. Goodby my friends, and may the Great Spirit preserve you.”

The old man struggled to his feet and made his way to a cot at one side of the room. He took off his headdress and lay down. As far as we could tell, he died the moment he laid his headdress on his chest. Juan and I saluted and left the room. On the way out, we did stop off long enough to shut down the replicator and the power supply.

We made our way back to the vehicles and bonded them together. We needed to discuss what we had heard. Either it was the ravings of a mad man or it was a dire warning from Heaven. We finally decided that there was only one way to be sure. After our meeting was over, I called the Double Os headquarters and played for them a tape that Lucia had made of what Bringer of Truth had said.

I also said that we had discussed at length what we should do and had come to the conclusion that Bringer of Truth had not lied to us. We intended to head east toward the Atlantic to try to find these “demons” and to determine if they really were a danger to us and to Earth. I would make a formal report of our progress each night, and I would make intermediary reports if they were warranted. We would leave for the east tomorrow morning.

We were told that we had made the correct choice, and Double Os was going on a “near-war” footing until we had more definite information on the situation. I acknowledged the change in orders and signed off. We went to bed, and that was when Sue told me that she was pregnant. There was no reason for concern for now, and we should be back home before her pregnancy made any difference in her capabilities as a fighter.

****

The next morning, we decided to leave the two units hooked together. Juan would drive and Lucia would function as our tail-end charlie to warn of any trouble coming up on our rear. Sue moved to the middle of the vehicle to act as a gunner on either side, as the situation called for. I moved to the weapon on the roof and installed the protective blister over the gun and me. This gave us a weapon with more power than we otherwise had in a dorsal turret that commanded a very wide range of fire.

We started out on a main street that was wide enough for us to get some distance between us and the buildings we passed. The street was four lanes in each direction and had a dividing median strip that had once supported trolly tracks. Juan held us to 30 MPH so that we moved quickly, but had time to react if any trouble showed up.

Naturally, think about a problem and it happens! We were tooling along minding our own business when bullets suddenly began to rattle off our armor. Now, why in the hell would somebody start shooting at us just because we were passing by?

Lucia called out through the radio, “Han, fire a bolt at that brown building that used to be a department store. Concentrate on the third window from the left end.”

It was easy to pick out the window she called for me to hit, and I could see muzzle flashes against the shadows inside the building. My innate reaction was to shoot at anything or anybody shooting at me, so I aimed at the window in question and put a bolt through it at the height of the muzzle flashes. I could not tell if I had actually hit somebody, but the shooting did stop. However, I was pissed off enough to need to let off some steam, so I held the firing button down and kind of reamed out the room behind that window.