Chapter 52 - Command Center

Where Turner’s office had been small, without much flair or extravagance, this room was anything but. It looked like the sort of hidden military command post you saw on movies: a huge screen, blank, of course, and buckets of equally useless computer terminals took up most of the space. I supposed those would all eventually end up tossed out in the trash, or maybe melted down to make something that was actually useful.

The main focus of the room was now a large table—and I mean very big. It was the size of three or four family-ready dinner tables all merged. The thing was covered with a diorama of the base and the surrounding land. Whoever built it had some real skills, too, because it was quite obvious what everything was. I saw the base fence, the building we were in, all the structures which made up the civilian airport terminal, and more beyond. The map didn’t go as far as UVM, but it did show some of the highway we’d crossed to get here.

The room looked like it had been designed for dozens of people to work there, but now there were only five soldiers gathered around the big map, and us.

“Welcome to the command center. That’s Major Kim Jones, my second in command. Beside her is Captain Hal Cisco, in charge of intelligence. Sergeant Williams, Tech Sergeant Brady, and Sergeant Meadows are here assisting us today,” Turner told me, beckoning me toward the table. Jones came over, and shook my hand, flashing me a smile. “This is where we gather intelligence on the surrounding land and use it to make decisions about how to move forward. Here’s the base, easy enough to see. That neighborhood there, it’s mostly cleared already. Once we have the numbers, we’ll settle those houses, get people in there. Probably have to build a wall around the place, to keep people safe, but we’ll get it done.

“Over there, to the north and easy, there are quite a few fields already under cultivation. Mostly corn, unfortunately. Feed corn for cows won’t do us a ton of good. We’re expecting a lean winter, and we’ll be relying on what we can scavenge from food depots and supermarkets to keep people fed. But next spring, we aim to get those fields back under cultivation, for human food.”

It was smart planning. The Winooski River ran alongside the base and a lot of those fields. It created a sort of defensive barrier, and more important it represented a consistent source of fresh water. That river never ran dry, not even in the summer. It got low, but it would keep on giving fresh water year round.

There were some islands in the river, too. I’d heard something about that, once, but I’d forgotten all about it. Might be something worth checking out at some point. I set the idea aside for the time being.

“This all sounds awesome. Have you heard any word from outside the area yet? Anything at all?” I asked.

Turner shook his head. “Not yet, no. I haven’t dared try sending any of my people out. We’ve captured a few horses during our scouting runs, but we only have a few, and even on horseback it would take someone a long time to reach anyone. I’ve considered sending troops to Montpelier, at least—we could see if the state government has any sort of structure remaining. Getting someone to Washington DC would make sense, too, but that would take weeks if not months just to make the trip.”

“And no guarantee of finding anything when they got there,” I added, nodding. “I think that makes sense. It sucks, that we’re on our own. But I can’t see throwing away lives trying to get that far. We need to rebuild…something…first, here. Use the tools we have and get people back together.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he replied, nodding.

“Why show me all of this?”

“Because you’re fifth rank,” Turner said. “We have five people at that rank or above on the entire base: myself, Kim, Farnsworth, and two other enlisted leaders. I’m the only one at rank six, but as you can probably guess, having another rank five person join us is a pretty big deal.”

I nodded, thinking. “I’ll be glad to help get things organized and people safer, sure. How can I help?”

“You’ve got black stones, right? That’s what Farnsworth passed along,” Jones said.

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“Yeah, mostly,” I replied.

“Then you’re a one woman army,” she replied. “You can do a lot of good. Those spells let you animate and control undead, so you’re an instant force multiplier. Instead of facing one foe, anyone fighting you is up against an entire strike force.”

“It’s been pretty useful so far,” I said. “Kept me alive.”

“And now you can use those powers to help keep others alive,” Turner said. “We want to bring you on board. To help us grow this place, expand it into a safe haven for people from all over the region. Folks badly need that right now, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

I agreed completely. After all, if I didn’t get back to Alfred before too much longer, odds were he and everyone with him would die. “I totally do. My friends need that sort of help badly. I don’t know if I’m the type to pop into uniform and listen to orders, though. I never joined ROTC for a reason.”

Turner laughed. “I wasn’t planning to stick you in uniform unless you wanted it, no. We can certainly do that if you want, but if you’d rather remain civilian, that’s fine too. In fact, you’ll end up being a leader among the civilians. None of them are higher than rank three, so you’ll have a great deal of influence right away.”

I wasn’t wholly sure that was true. I was young, and if there was one thing I’d learned it was that older people generally thought they ought to be obeyed by those younger than themselves, whether it made logical sense or not. Still, he was right that my powers would afford me some extra oomph.

“That all sounds great, but—Colonel Turner, we need to get some people out to the university to pick up those refugees I left behind. I promised Alfred I’d be back for them, and I won’t break that promise. How do we get them back here?”

“Hal, want to fill her in on the situation? Short version—the long one would take the rest of the day,” Turner explained to me.

Hal Cisco was maybe four or five years older than me, with dark hair and a little brown tinge to his skin that made me think he had some Latino blood in him somewhere. He grinned, enthusiastic as he moved back to the table to show off his stuff.

“The main issue is the avians,” Cisco said. “They didn’t appear right away, interestingly enough. On day one, we had skeletons to our west, some sort of mud monsters coming out of the brooks south-east of us, and a few spiders in our base itself. The avians first appeared on day three, and they grew in numbers every day after that.”

“The things look like pigeons,” I mentioned.

He nodded. “We’ve noticed that, too. We haven’t seen a single pigeon for almost forty-eight hours, and we’re thinking those two things might have something to do with one another.”

I nodded. “Yeah, same. The goblins are all over the forest, but squirrels? Nowhere to be seen. Also, giant spiders, giant snakes… It’s like a lot of the wildlife just got all magicked up.”

“Interesting about the goblins,” Cisco said, making notes on a clipboard. “I may want to ask you some more about that, later. But anyway, we’re getting off track. The avians are gathering at Burlington International Airport. They have complete control of the facility there, and there’s hundreds of them. They’re mostly tier two, with some tier three warriors as well. The leaders might be higher still.”

“So they’re roughly at parity with you guys, from what I’m hearing?” I asked.

“More or less,” Turner said. “We haven’t seen any avian rank fives, yet, so we probably have an edge in raw power. And if you include all our civilians we almost certainly outnumber them.”

“But most of our civilians are not warriors,” Jones added. “Some are, and a few have even sworn oaths and put in Air Force uniforms. But most are just scared people trying to keep their families safe. We’re trying to get everyone at least one tier one stone, but not everyone is willing to go outside the fence. Most are not, in fact.”

That felt understandable to me. It must be nice, sitting behind mostly safe walls where the bad guys couldn’t get you. They had food, shelter, and people risking their lives to keep them safe. What more could a post-apocalyptic refugee ask for?

I couldn’t believe how differently my own course had gone. I could have been just like those people, if I’d made a few less-weird choices. Instead, I’d ended up being one of the most powerful people in the whole area, from the sounds of it. How wild was that?

“Okay, so the avians are going to be an issue,” I said. “The goblins, too. They’re in the forest just past the highway there. Also, south of the goblins, Kara and I saw a big collection of what looked like rat-people, too. They might also be trouble. But surely we can thread a path through that mess?”

Cisco looked at Turner, the map, then back at me. His frown didn’t look confident at all. “Maybe. But every time we send anyone west, across the airfield, the avians come after us in force. We’ve tried going around, but they’re keeping lookouts. Even when we went a half a mile south, trying to dodge them, they still spotted us and came swooping in. Turned into a big fight.”

“Weird that they didn’t attack us in force, then,” I murmured, staring at the map.

“Yeah, they don’t seem to do more than harass groups coming east toward our base,” Cisco said. “But they have a serious hate on for us. We don’t know why.”

That left me with far fewer options than I wanted. I had to get back to Alfred’s crew soon, or they were done for. Every day that went by, the area between here and there was only going to grow more hazardous, harder to break through. It was obvious to me that more monsters were continuing to appear, and they were getting stronger, too.

We needed to get through or around these avians. But how, I didn’t know—yet.