“I’m sorry,” Zanie burst out with her spoonful of oatmeal frozen halfway to her mouth like she could not stand it anymore and just had to get it out there. “But this just seems like a comedy sketch.”
She gestured with the spoon toward the TV screen, then ate the bite with a shake of her head. Jeremy understood where she was coming from. They were all standing around in the breakfast nook area of the hotel. Jeremy, Caleb, Zanie, and a handful of sleepy National Guard members all zeroed in on the TV screen there.
This was partly because it was time for breakfast, with the sun peeking over the edge of the horizon. From what Jeremy had experienced so far, most people dealt with the longer days and nights by treating sunrise as the time to get up and stayed awake far past when it set. The National Guard seemed to have adopted this, and so had Jeremy’s group. The other reason they had gathered - too many to sit at the tables, so they stood around spooning instant oatmeal into their mouths - was the story on the morning news.
They had bombed the gate in Texas a couple of days ago. Gate 1, through which hordes of the undead came crawling. This was not news. Well, it was news. It was a nuclear strike on home soil, but it was not brand-new news. Everyone was gawping at the screen because of what happened after the nuclear strike. When stuff kept crawling through the gate, it did not die of radiation poisoning within a few minutes the way the goblins did. Instead, the undead became horrifying, irradiated zombies.
The news program actually would not show the creatures, blurring them out so they were just flesh-colored blobs of pixels whenever they happened to be in the frame. Before, they had looked like Hollywood-set zombies, human for the most part, with bloody injuries and clothes so stained and shredded that it was impossible to tell what they originally looked like. Now, Jeremy could not even imagine. He did not know much about radiation, but he’d heard about skin peeling off and eyeballs liquifying. Horrific stuff, but apparently, not enough to give a zombie pause.
The news report honestly did come off like a comedy sketch. The stuff they described was just too unbelievable. Nothing had changed from the time before the bomb dropped, except now there was a huge no-go zone around the gate, where human troops could not enter. So, their perimeter had expanded to a ridiculous circumference around the blast zone, requiring more troops. The country was quickly running out of troops. It was a mad scramble to find any units that were not already critical to the disaster area or refugee camp where they were already stationed.
And the undead were maybe slightly easier to kill because the radiation damaged the structural integrity of their bodies, but it still required significantly more effort than it took to kill a regular biological creature. One thing Hollywood got right was that it seemed like getting the head was the ticket. Exploding it with massive 50-cal tank guns or chopping it off with a machete was the only kind of thing that stopped them.
But, they now brought radiation with them, spreading it like a sickness among the troops. Headshots were impressive, but it was more practical just to chop their heads off. Except when they tried to do that, the radiation that had seeped into the undead would poison the soldiers as if they were standing beside a core meltdown. It was unbelievable, but nobody was laughing.
“I bet the protestors are gonna get so much worse.” One of the soldiers said. A wave of murmuring swept through the room. Jeremy wondered if these soldiers had been among the ones dealing with the riot a few days ago before they were pulled here to deal with the disease-spreading mini goblins.
“Well, I don’t blame them,” another guy chimed in. “They were right. Look at the mess the bomb made.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like anyone could’ve predicted…”
“That’s everyone’s excuse right now! I’m so sick of everything being ‘unprecedented’ and nobody having any idea what is going on. It doesn’t exactly inspire my confidence in command’s decisions.”
“Well, I mean…”
The soldier speaking trailed off, and his eyes bugged out of his skull. All the tittering comments being made about the conversation ceased. Captain Byrne stepped out of the elevator and gave the crowd a strained smile. She seemed like a strained woman, but Jeremy supposed that anyone who had the responsibility of making decisions that impacted the lives of other people right now would feel the weight of it keenly.
“Don’t stop on my account.” She flapped a hand at them as she made a beeline for the coffee.
The conversation with her command staff in the tent yesterday made it obvious to Jeremy that she shared similar opinions about the competency of her commanding officers and the chain of command. But he doubted she wanted to make that insecurity known to the general soldiers. The cohesiveness of their company relied on the structure of the chain of command, after all. It would only undermine her authority.
So even though she said not to stop the conversation, she did not try to jump in, nor did anyone dare continue it in her presence. Instead, everyone went back to staring wide-eyed at the TV. The uncertainty of everything was still too fragile, and nobody was upset enough to outright rebel against orders yet.
Jeremy watched Captain Byrne paw through the instant oatmeal packets, make a face, and then sweep out of the hotel lobby. She marched straight for the command center. Jeremy looked at the clock on the wall and furrowed his brow, trying to do the math and figure out what it translated to in the new military 30-hour day.
“I think we should head for the command center.” He scraped the last of the oatmeal at the bottom of his bowl up and tossed it in the trash can. He had been told to report in the morning to essentially be deputized into the unit being put together by Captain Byrne. Caleb and Zanie were tagging along mostly out of curiosity for as long as they could get away with.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Nice, yeah.” Caleb slammed back the rest of the coffee, then wandered over to the coffee maker for more. “Let’s go.”
When they got outside, a line of other civilians gathering at one end of the tent became visible. There had to be at least twenty people there, which Jeremy found surprising. Yesterday, Captain Byrne made it clear that Jeremy was a special case. Not even Caleb and Zanie could join. Perhaps these people were here for information or to ask for help. They joined the line and watched in amazement as another fifteen or so people joined over the next ten minutes.
When they were closer to the front of the line, one of the guys in front of them could no longer help himself and turned to someone else. “I cannot believe how much the world has changed.”
And one might think he was talking about the longer days, or the nuclear strikes, or the monsters running around everywhere, or the fact that people could throw fireballs outside of movies. But that was not what this guy found shocking.
“I mean,” He guffawed, “The government handing out guns? That’s how you know it’s the apocalypse.”
“It’s odd, too.” The other guy chimed in, “What with all the warnings not to engage the monsters and not to mess around with magic.”
Jeremy did remember someone in the tent yesterday mentioning something about handing out weapons. At the head of the line, a soldier in fatigues sitting behind a folding table called next. Beside him stood an ordinary police officer all done up in his black bulletproof vest, thumbs hooked into the arms of it and hands spread out over the chest as he leaned forward to say something to the National Guard soldier. They were both looking at the screen of the laptop. Jeremy assumed they were running everyone through their system before handing them an assault rifle for free. The man who had just been talking about how odd the situation was gave a shrug and stepped up to the table.
“Do you know what day it is?” Caleb suddenly asked.
“What do you mean?” Jeremy frowned at him. “Like, day of the week or calendar day?”
“Either.”
“Uh…” Jeremy had no idea.
“Everything is all screwed up, but if you go by revolutions of the sun instead of a 24-hour cycle, it’s technically Monday, August 17th,” Zanie informed them. “Why’re you asking?”
“Huh,” Caleb poked the side of his cheek with his tongue and stared off toward the rising sun with a look of deep contemplation. “Just wondering if anyone even goes to work anymore.”
The line now stretched around the parking lot and out of sight.
“There’s still people running the hotel,” Zanie pointed out.
“Yeah, that’s true, but…” Caleb meandered off into his thoughts, losing the thread of one and jumping to something else entirely, “Hey, do you think the longer days and stuff will change our calendar? Are we still going to have 365 days in a year?”
Jeremy made a face, “Yes, because it’s the size of the earth that determines the length of the day, but that doesn’t impact how long it takes us to go around the sun.”
“Doesn’t it?” Zanie asked with horror dawning over her features, “I mean, wouldn’t being more massive throw Earth’s orbit out of whack? What if we end up flying straight into the sun or off into space.”
“I doubt that is going to happen,” Caleb assured her. “It doesn’t seem as simple as the earth just becoming more massive. Like, there are spaces that expanded and those that did not, so I’m sure the spell somehow accounts for the earth’s orbit and makes sure we don’t fly off into space.”
Zanie did not look convinced.
“Besides,” Jeremy jumped in, “The way things are is how they originally were on Earth, right? Before the spell? So, if anything, the spell had to make sure we did not veer off course when it was originally cast. If we revolved around the sun just fine like this before the spell, I’m sure everything will be okay now.”
“Next!”
Jeremy guided a rather dazed-looking Zanie toward the table. She was probably imagining that all their problems were hardly worth worrying about if they were going to go careening into the sun soon anyway. Jeremy convinced himself that would not be the case. There was no way the world would suddenly get so interesting and then just go poof into the sun.
The National Guard man looked like he was about to tell them it was only one at a time, but he just sighed and held out his hand. “ID, please.”
Jeremy patted his pockets for his wallet. Caleb beat him to it, handing over his driver’s license almost instantly. He eyes Jeremy critically. “You feeling okay, man? Usually, you’ve already got your credit card out by the time we reach the register.”
Jeremy scoffed at him, but it was true. He ignored the little bubble of anxiety welling in his chest and pulled out his wallet.
“I’m actually reporting to Captain Byrnes.” He said when he handed over his ID, “About being placed on a recon team going into the portal.”
The soldier’s eyes shot up to Jeremy’s face. He frowned and tapped Jeremy’s ID on the table. “You know about the portal?”
“Uh…yeah?” Caleb stated this like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “General Byrne asked us…”
He trailed off when the soldier’s attention turned to rifling through a small stack of papers at his elbow. The memo he was looking for finally appeared, and he glanced between it and the three of them. “Jeremy Miller?”
“That’s me.”
“Alright.” He set the memo aside and handed back Jeremy’s ID. “You need to head straight into the tent to meet with Staff Sergeant Mwai.”
Zanie held out her ID for him to run through the system.
Jeremy looked over toward the large cargo trucks that everyone else had been directed toward. There were several men guarding them stoically, rifles held at the ready across their chests. Others sat on the edge of the truck bed, waiting for the next person to come along so they could hand them a gun and send them off to the other truck to get a ration of ammo.
“Are you really handing out guns?” Caleb asked even though they were watching it happen in real time.
“We are unable to assist with a proper evacuation.” The soldier told them, “Or patrol to keep people safe. Just not enough personnel and, unbelievably…” He shook his head as he ran Zanie’s ID. “We are low on the priority list out here.”
“The entire state park is on fire,” Caleb argued. They could smell it in the air. A white film of ash had settled over everything. The sun was once again a hazy, burnt-orange blob in the sky.
“Well,” The soldier shrugged. “The fire response is a separate civilian operation. We are assisting, but the National Guard is not here for the fire. We are here for the portal. But anyway, it is a mess, so the captain had some of us go door-to-door yesterday to inform people of the dangers that the monsters pose and encourage them to evacuate if they have a place to go. We also gave them the option to come to us and arm themselves whether they can go or need to stay.”
Caleb shook his head in amazement. “Never thought I’d see the day that they handed out guns like this.”
The soldier shooed them off. “We’re all seeing a lot of things we never thought we would.”