"It's seven days now without a word from Roanoke or anywhere else." John sighed, looking over at Maury Hurt, who, along with several of the ham radio operators in their community, had been monitoring 122.9 around the clock.

The response was silence.

"Could it be a signal couldn't carry that far?" John asked.

"It used to be an open channel for uncontrolled air space," one of the "hams" replied. "With a handheld unit, I sometimes picked up traffic sixty miles away. The antenna I've got set up now picks up some distant chatter—not sure from where, I suspect down toward Charleston—so we should have heard something."

"And we're certain it was monitored 24-7, at fifteen minutes into each hour? No holes, no one asleep?"

The small group looked at each other, shaking their heads.

"John, we set up a regular rotation, at least two monitoring at any given time. Zero, zilch, nothing."

"Okay, thanks for coming over," John sadly replied. The four left his home, Makala seeing them off and then coming back to sit next to John, who was gazing absently at the fire blazing inside the woodstove.

"Feel it was all for naught?" she asked.

He winced slightly as she took his left hand to examine it. He had lost a glove while leaning out of the chopper, and by the time he had finally arrived back home, his hand was completely numb with a touch of frostbite that was healing but still troublesome, along with the wrenched shoulder from getting slammed against the outside of the chopper.

Makala had hovered over him ever since their return, muttering in stern nurse manner about busted ribs and other assorted injuries from the past with this new one now added in. The trip had drained him, again reminding him that he was no longer a young lieutenant or captain in the field; those days were more than half a lifetime ago. Once home, Makala held him in a fierce embrace, stifling back tears, whispering that when their return was long overdue, everyone had begun to fear the worst—that they had crashed, been shot down, or foolishly landed into a trap and taken prisoner.

He was beyond grateful for her response, given the anger she was feeling when he left and the way she snuggled up close to him after feeding him some hot soup and then packing him off to bed for twelve blessed hours of sleep.

A day later, another storm had rolled in, dropping an additional ten inches. Before the Day, such a storm, though significant for the South, was just part of life. Lifelong residents of the area were now saying it was beginning to look like the worst winter in decades, and given how precarious living now was, a long, snowy winter could indeed turn into a starving and freezing time. In the last three weeks, John calculated that he and Makala had gone through six to eight weeks' worth of firewood. With a baby due in just about two months, it was becoming another source of worry. He dreaded the hours of work splitting and stacking an extra cord of firewood.

The other source of worry was the apparent loss, at least for some time to come, of their Black Hawk. Bob Gillespie was stripping down the damaged engine; one of the turbine blades had indeed fractured. The wreckage of the three helicopters destroyed in the battle around Asheville Mall back in the spring had been dragged into the old Sears building to get it out of the weather and still rested there. John had agreed to allocate yet more precious gas reserves for Danny and Maury to go to Asheville to see if replacement parts could be salvaged from the wrecks and then transported all the way down to Morganton.

This apparently failed venture to try to get a message to Bob Scales had cost the community several hundred gallons of precious fuel already, along with the possible permanent loss of their captured Black Hawk.

He had long ago learned to compartmentalize the multitude of issues and anxieties that had become part of his daily life, and he had to do so now, forcing a smile as Makala gently massaged his still-tender hand and then checked his shoulder, which was still sore as well. The room was quiet, warm. John sighed and leaned up to kiss her on the lips as she stood beside him.

"You know, this could kind of lead to something," he whispered, and she hugged him. Several seconds later, he received a solid kick from their baby.

"And that little devil is a mood killer if ever there was one, John Matherson." She laughed. "Maybe come spring, we can get back to some fun."

He sighed, content to just hold her, both of them chuckling as the baby continued to squirm and kick.

He finally looked down at his old-style wristwatch, hugged Makala tightly, and then reluctantly stood up. "I really should go up to the college. Ernie and the Hawkinses want to show me what they're up to."

She helped to bundle him up, went into the kitchen, and came back with a quart mason jar of canned peaches, stuffing the bottle into his pocket. "That poor girl nursing twins needs these more than I do right now. Send her my love, and tell her once it's safe to walk I'll come up to check on her."

She watched as he went out the door, calling for him to stay in the middle of the road in case he fell. Maury had brought word to them this morning that one of the Wilson boys had been found dead the day before. Out hunting, he apparently slipped on some ice, fell, compound fractured his leg, and lay there helpless until he bled out and froze. In the few years prior to the Day, when cell phones had become a part of everyone's daily lives, such an accident was all but unheard of. If in trouble while out in the woods, one simply called and cried out for help. Falling where no one could see or hear you replaced the worry last summer about the plague of copperheads and rattlesnakes that had erupted in the area, at least a dozen getting bitten and, with no antidote, two children dying.

Warmly wrapped up, wearing a scarf, which he had always disdained before but was now grateful that Makala had wrapped one of hers around his neck, he trudged down to Montreat Road by the abandoned tennis courts and headed north for what used to be a short hike up to the campus. In a different time, he would have soaked in yet another beautiful morning after a snowstorm. No wind had followed the storm down here in the narrow valley, the trees canopying the road bent under the heavy weight of the wet snow forming a tunnellike vista ahead of him. A couple of heavy branches had snapped off, which he had to climb over, a barrier that road crews once took care of within minutes. To his right, Flat Creek was still roiling downstream through the park where he used to take his children to play. A couple of students were down there, enjoying the morning, laughing, the girl chasing the young man, tackling him, the two, not suspecting someone might be watching, rolling together, laughing, and then kissing passionately. He smiled as he surreptitiously watched for a moment, again aware of the desire he had felt for Makala just moments ago, and then seeing where their frolic might lead, he figured it best to quietly move along.

Even in the midst of death, there was still life, and young life. He recalled a favorite science fiction series, Battlestar Galactica, when after the near annihilation of the human race, survivors aboard a few remaining ships fled their home worlds. A fierce debate ensued with one character demanding that they make a final fight while the newly appointed president declared they should flee and that if there was a priority now, it was to have children, lots of children.

In the midst of death, life was again trying to reassert itself. The historian in him knew such was true; after every brutal annihilating war, the primal instinct was to repopulate, to replace with a new generation all those who had been lost. It made him think of Jennifer. She'd be fourteen and a half now, no longer his little girl, on the cusp of becoming a young woman. The baby would be Makala's first child, but for him? In a symbolic way, was the baby about to be born a replacement for the one he had lost?

He glanced back at the couple in the snow, definitely behaving like a young couple in love, ignoring the coldness of the snow for a moment, this next glance telling him it was definitely time to move along.

A wisp of a sad, understanding smile creased his features as he pushed on, leaving the secluded park behind, reaching the road bridge over Flat Creek, walking up the steep slope past what was now the community's source of electricity. To his right was Anderson Auditorium, converted into the town factory for turning out turbines, generators, and wire, the fundamental building blocks of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century technology.

He felt he should drop in to at least say hello, but he realized those working away inside the factory might see it as some sort of inspection tour and be thrown off their routine, and he therefore pressed on.

The road steepened for fifty yards or so, memories flooding in of one icy day when classes were dismissed early and he wound up driving down it sideways, laughing students helping to push him out of the ditch where he had finally come to a stop. It was distressing to realize now that this short walk, up a slope, trudging through nearly two feet of snow, left him so winded that he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath.

As he rested, he turned to look around at his valley. After a snowstorm, all sound was all so muffled. When still living near Ridgecrest, he delighted in the fact that the distant rumble on Interstate 40 ceased for a day or so during and after a storm. From childhood, there were memories of the sound of the few cars still on the road, tires wrapped in chains for traction, rattling by, and, blessing of blessings, days off from school. Now, except for the distant sound of hammering from Anderson Auditorium, all was silent. Whoever had penned "Silent Night" knew and understood it, as did Robert Frost when he wrote about stopping in the woods on a snowy evening.

It used to be his favorite time of year. It no longer was with all the worries about survival to spring for his family and community. The worry was compounded by the unanswered questions. Was Bob Scales still alive? Had Bob indeed sent one man on a desperate journey to reach him, and if so, why? And overarching all were Quentin's dying words about EMPs. The obsessive question haunting him. Were they ramblings of a delirious man slipping into death or a dire warning?

The thoughts of that terminated his moment of peaceful contemplation, and with breath somewhat back to normal, he turned to climb the last few hundred yards to the library.

Rounding the corner of the road by the chapel and the library, he was amused to see some of the students out sledding. Beyond their work schedule and rotation periods as community guards with the militia companies, the fact that they still had energy to enjoy such a beautiful winter day was, to him, a testament to the resilience of youth.

Going through the darkened entryway to the library, he was greeted by the musty scent of tens of thousands of books that for the last couple of years had been exposed to no temperature control and runaway moisture. The Hawkinses' living quarters in the back corner were blocked off with several layers of plastic sheets, and once through the swinging doors to the rear office, he was greeted with cheery warmth. Becka looked up at him, smiled, and put a finger to her lips. He looked over to the cribs where the twins were tucked in, fast asleep.

She smiled and offered him a chair by the woodstove that they had installed, which was giving off a cheery warmth. "Just got the little ones down at the same time for once," she announced, and without asking, she scooped a ladle of soup from a kettle on the fire, dipped it into a bowl, and offered it to John, who politely took it. Old Southern customs of greeting a guest with food still held, even now. The soup was watery thin; there was a hint of some kind of meat in it, wild onions, and he wasn't really sure what else.

They chatted for a few minutes about the babies, who were thriving, John remembering to pull from his jacket the canned peaches, which she clutched with gratitude. Finished with the soup, he asked about "the guys," and laughing, she pointed to the staircase to the basement.

"Those computers and all the other stuff have nearly turned me into a widow. Do me a favor and order Ernie to get the heck out of here at day's end and for Paul to remember he has a wife."

"Will do," John replied with a smile, and he headed for the basement, which had been renamed "the Wizard's Workshop." A joke that few caught was that long ago it was the name for Tom Edison's lab in Menlo Park, where he developed the incandescent lightbulb and helped trigger the electrical revolution of the nineteenth century that they were struggling to restore.

As John opened the basement door, he was surprised by the profligate use of electricity. The room was now brightly lit with fluorescent lights. He had always hated that type of illumination, but it used less juice than a standard incandescent bulb. A woodstove had been rigged into the basement, so it was no longer a damp, bone-chilling room, and, indeed a wonder, a dehumidifier was humming away. The stench of mold had at least abated somewhat as a result.

Six-foot stacks of magazines still cluttered most of the room, but a work area had been cleared in the far quarter, additional workbenches dragged over from classrooms and offices around the campus. Piled up around the benches were several dozen old computers—half a dozen more Apple IIes, early PCs, Commodore 64s, old Gateways, Dells, and half a dozen other models. Ernie, with Paul by his side, was hunched over a green computer board, and as John came up behind them, Ernie grunted out a curse and tossed the board to one side.

"Cooked, damn it. I would have liked to have had that one."

"How's it going?" John asked the two, obviously so intent on their work they had not heard him approach.

"Good and bad," Ernie grumbled without bothering to look back at John as he picked up another board from a pile on the table and started to examine it.

"We've got half a dozen machines cobbled together," Paul offered in a far cheerier voice.

He pointed to the restored computers off to one side, and John went over to examine them. Three were Apples, one of them an early Mac with its ridiculously small blue-screen monitor, beside them a couple of 1980s PCs and a Commodore 64. The 64 was turned on, the old television it was hooked to flickering, a popular fantasy adventure game of the '80s running, little stick figures being chased by a stick-figure dragon.

While in college, John remembered, he had splurged on buying an Atari 2600 game machine, he and his friends consuming endless beers while driving two tanks around an obstacle field and shooting at each other. It had triggered the first fight with Mary, who became fed up that he was spending more time on "that damn game" than with her.

He hated to disturb the two at what was obviously an obsessive task, but he felt he had to. Paul had been absent from the factory ever since the discovery of a functional computer. It was at least keeping Ernie busy and out of his hair, but still, Ernie's skills could perhaps be better devoted to working with the ham radio operators or helping as well with the production of generators and alternators to provide power to their ever-expanding State of Carolina.

Ernie and Paul were both hunched over a computer board, wearing magnifying glasses, absorbed with testing the board, quietly arguing whether it was fried or just one chip was bad.

"Mind if I interrupt?" John finally asked.

"In a minute," Ernie replied without looking up, overriding Paul's objections as he pried a chip off the board, fished a replacement out of a plastic tray, and snapped it in.

"There!" Ernie announced, pointing to a volt meter that surged to life once the chip was replaced. "It's good to go. We can use it!"

John sighed. "I hate to do this, but can I ask what we can use that board for?"

The two looked up at him as if he was a peasant rudely interrupting a royal banquet.

"If we can just get some computers back online, it's a huge step," Ernie announced, still wearing his magnifying glasses, which gave him something of a crazed look when you were staring straight at him.

"For what purposes that we can use right now?" John asked, regretting that his query did sound somewhat blunt.

"All right, John, we'd better settle this priority right now," Ernie replied sharply.

"I'm just asking where this can lead us, that's all," John said defensively. "You two are a couple of our most valuable resources. I just want to make sure we're spending those resources wisely."

"You suggesting I go out on woodcutting detail instead?" Ernie snapped.

"No, damn it."

Paul stepped between the two and put his hands up in a soothing gesture. "John's right, Ernie. We're spending a lot of time on these old machines; there has to be a profit in it, and he has a right to know what we're thinking about regarding all of this."

"All right, then," Ernie retorted. "God knows how many times when I was with IBM or contracted to NASA I'd be working on something and some damn project manager would come along, question its worth, and shelve it. IBM could have been years ahead of Apple and the whole PC revolution if people like me had been listened to."

"Let me take this," Paul said softly, sensing that Ernie was heating up.

"Fine," Ernie snapped, "but if our supreme leader is here to tell us to shut this down, I'll just hole up at home and keep at it myself. My family and I survived through the first year without the interference of others, and, John, you were damn glad to have us blocking the left flank on the day we fought the Posse."

"Why don't you three arguing fools come upstairs for some tea and talk it out up here?"

They looked back to where Becka stood at the base of the stairs, holding a teapot up as a peace offering.

John nodded a bit sheepishly and followed her back up to the sunlit warmth of the old library office. The twins were still asleep, so after gratefully accepting the herbal mint drink, John followed Paul out into the main area of the library. It was cold, but one corner of the vast room was sunlit and offered the comfort of overstuffed leather chairs. The three settled down.

"I know the machines we are working on look like toys," Paul began. "Compared to what we had just before the war, they are toys, but in their day, they were cutting-edge technology and used as such. Funny that we never thought about it before. The vast majority of computers being tossed aside were not broken; it was just that advances were coming so rapidly. It's not like old cars that got sold and resold until they finally just died. Most computers getting junked simply just had a hard drive cook off or motherboard going bad, but the rest of the unit was still good. They were just junked with no resale in mind because after three to four years, they were antiques. Moore's law at work."

"Refresh my memory, please," John asked.

Ernie sighed as if asked a dumb question by someone who should know better.

Paul said, "Moore's law, named after one of the founders of Intel back in the 1960s, postulated that computing power as defined by the number of transistors per square inch will double in a very rapid progression. It meant that computing power, speed of calculations, storage, all of it will increase at a geometric progression, while at the same time cost per unit such as a hard drive for example will plummet. That Apple IIe we first brought online had around 64K, not megabytes or gigabytes, but 64 kilobytes' worth of chips in it for around three thousand dollars of 1980s money. Eight years later, it was obsolete and thus wound up in the basement down here, and I bet in Black Mountain alone we could find a couple of hundred of them not plugged in on the day things hit the fan and therefore perhaps still viable. Imagine if we had two hundred of your old clinker Edsels. Unlike computers, they were run and resold until finally just junked. Not so with computers, and that is what has Ernie and me fired up. Your average five-hundred–dollar computer just before the war wiped out nearly everything that was hooked up online was equal to the military's top Cray of a couple of decades earlier."

"Therefore?" John pressed.

"That's the whole interesting point that we all seemed to overlook," Paul continued. "I remember the year the college purchased new laptops for every faculty and staff member. Great idea, but three years later, they were obsolete; five years later, they were in our junk pile or just tossed into a closet and forgotten. I remember seeing a whole Dumpster load of them, recalling when they cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars on delivery and five years later we couldn't give them away, so we just tossed them out instead. There was no secondary market for five-, let alone eight-or ten-year-old computers. Files once stored on five-inch floppy disks or even reel-to-reel were transferred to three-and-a-half-inch disks, and then to just memory sticks, downloaded into the hard drive of your new machine and the old machines tossed. Those files are still alive, John. But we've got to dig up the hardware to read them again and then build off that."

"Build what? I'm worried about having enough food and firewood to see us through the winter. Everyone is screaming for more electricity now that we've got something up and running again. Hey, I'd love to have a computer in my office, even an old green-screen machine hooked to a printer. I'm sick of my old Underwood typewriter with the dang F and J keys sticking half the time. But the time to get even one computer up and running, especially now?"

He pointed to the blowing snowdrifts outside the window, and a thought flashed of the young couple down in the park. He wondered if the cold had finally driven them back inside.

"It's stuff we can use now. Databases, for one," Paul replied. "We were lucky to find hard copies of all the IEEE journals from the nineteenth century so we could figure out how to start rebuilding, using the same designs Westinghouse, Tesla, and Edison did. It'd be nice to have all those millions of words in a searchable database. Even the library cataloging went online years ago, so we are no longer even sure what we have in the book stacks around us."

"And that would help us…?" John let the question trail off.

"Okay, I agree," Paul continued. "A computer working here, one in Asheville, another in Morganton … big deal other than the convenience of using writing machines we once took for granted. To talk with others? We already have some telephones up and running. Cell phones and Wi-Fi? Forget it for years to come, so yeah, I can see your point on that score. I agree; our more immediate concerns are firewood and food."

"I'm not saying stop working on this," John interjected. "It's just that as of the moment, I'm not seeing the short-term benefits. We replicate computer technology of the 1980s, maybe the '90s, and then what?"

"We eavesdrop," Ernie said with a smile, acting at least somewhat nonconfrontational for a change, "like I said the other day when Paul showed you the first machine up and running. Come on, John, I'm talking about Bluemont. You're ex-military. When you were in the Middle East, how did the White House and Pentagon micromanage every move you guys made?"

"Commodore 64s and Apple IIes?" John replied with a cynical smile.

"Not much better, actually, if you go back a few years. When Linda and I were writing software for Apollo, its guidance systems were 40K computers—40K! Think of it. We went to the moon on 40-kilobyte computers."

Ernie sighed and looked out the window at the snow-covered lawn in front of the library. "America did that in the '60s, and it seems crazy today. The first shuttle flights had little more than a meg on board. All that data going back and forth on something your cell phone, at least before the system fried off, trumped a thousand times over. Again, Moore's law."

"So with what you are doing downstairs, you think you can hack into Bluemont's communications. How?"

"First of all, the data goes up and down. Sat comm. Even low-earth orbit satellites are super hardened against EMPs generated by the sun, coronal mass ejections. For military use hardened against EMP hits as well. But a lot of that stuff goes all the way up to geosynch orbit. How did you get your television before the crap hit the fan?"

John started to smile. "An eighteen-inch dish."

"Exactly."

"But it's encrypted, isn't it?"

"It all comes down to zeroes and ones in the end, John. When Linda and I left IBM, we set up our own business, writing software and providing some of the precision hardware for large-array tracking dishes—mostly civilian business contracts, but a few overseas governments as well. Recall a scandal a few years back of a high government official with an unsecured server in their home that was hacked by some guys in Poland, Romania, somewhere overseas?"

John had some recollection of it. So much of what happened before the Day, which had once seemed all so important, was now becoming hazy memories.

"John, you remember this college was starting on a cybersecurity major before the war started."

He nodded with memory of that. President Hunt had even asked him, as an historian and ex-military, to think about creating a course on the history of technology. The idea had intrigued him, and he had even done some preliminary research into the fascinating history of World War II, the tales about Enigma, Ultra, the tapping into Japanese and German radio traffic, the work of the legendary Turing and the team at Bletchley Park, England.

Is that where these two were leading?

"Take me to the conclusion," John said, looking out across the windswept yard in front of the campus library. Lowering clouds were sweeping in from the northwest, a light sprinkling of snow flurries swirling down. If another storm was coming in, he wanted to get home, split some more wood, and huddle in close to the woodstove with Makala before it hit.

"Remember those huge satellite dishes folks used to have in front of their homes twenty years ago?" Ernie asked, pressing in.

John chuckled. It was a bit of a stereotype of ramshackle trailers, with a dish half as big as the trailer planted in the front yard for television.

"They nearly all disappeared once the big mainstream servers came in with an eighteen-inch dish you could tack to your living room window."

John nodded, remembering installing one himself when he and Mary moved here with two young girls. A hundred-plus channels to choose from, and he had visions of all the educational programs that could be offered, rather than what most stations had degenerated into with the advent of the nauseating reality-show craze.

"If I could get my hands on some of those big old dishes, which hopefully were off-line and disconnected on the Day, and cobble together parts that were not cooked off, I think in a few weeks I could be tapping into communications traffic."

"Of…?"

"Bluemont, for starters," Ernie replied enthusiastically. "Raw reportage from BBC uplinking and downlinking out of Canada, even the Chinese. They still must be using comm sat systems. You just point, listen, download, and evaluate."

"Just? You make it sound easy, Ernie. So you got gigs of data flying around, and chances are the stuff we want to know about is highly encrypted. They're no fools."

"No chain is stronger than its weakest link. No data is foolproof. Turing built a system from scratch and was able to break down the German codes, looking for patterns of usage coming from those German Enigma machines that supposedly could be programmed to create billions of variables and thus thought to be uncrackable. Come on, historian, how did we figure out the Japanese were going to hit us at Midway in June 1942?"

John smiled at such an easy underhand pitch. "You know as well as I do if you asked the question. Paul, do you know?"

John looked over at his electrical wizard who had once been a student and was surprised to see the quizzical look and shake of a head.

"I remember you being in my World War II class, Paul."

"Sorry, sir, I was diverted a lot that year," he replied, smiling. John remembered how Paul and Becka had shared the same class and spent most of it staring at each other.

"All right, then. We were picking up radio chatter about a 'Target X,' indicating the Japanese were preparing for a massive naval strike. One of the cryptanalyst guys at Pearl Harbor came up with the idea of Midway Island sending out a report that their desalinization plant to provide fresh water on the island was off-line and they were desperate, the message to be sent via a code we knew the Japanese had already cracked.

"The message was sent, and only hours later, radio traffic from Japan was monitored that extra desalinization equipment would have to be shipped to Target X once taken. Bingo—we knew where their next offensive would hit; we had our carriers waiting to receive them and wiped out their carriers in a surprise counterstrike. It is a textbook example of code breaking changing the course of a war."

"How many kids from this school's old cybersecurity program are still here?" Ernie asked.

"I'm not sure." John sighed. Too many of his students were now long gone, killed in the fighting or dead from disease and malnourishment. Those left were serving in the community's defense force, working in the ever-expanding electrical parts factory down in Anderson Hall, or assigned to other equally crucial tasks.

"If I could pull in four or five—even just two or three—and put them to work to help me," Ernie pressed, with Paul nodding in eager agreement, "John, I just might be able to get something useful out of our tinkering in the basement. Just imagine if you had known Fredericks's orders before that piece of trash even came to Asheville." Ernie pressed in with his argument, "Hell, for all we know, five hundred troops with more choppers could be on their way here right now, and we are clueless until they arrive."

"Or suppose what that poor guy Reynolds said is true," Paul interjected, "that something is up regarding another EMP. Who is thinking about it? Why? When? Do you want the answers, or do we sit back passively and wait?"

John looked back and forth at the two and then back out the window at what was obviously another storm coming on.

He sighed and finally nodded. "Okay, you got it."

The two broke into grins, the elderly Ernie and young Hawkins high-fiving each other.

"Quietly, and I mean quietly, run a query today. If any of our old students were in our cybersecurity program pull them off whatever they are working on now. I then want this building secured. Tell Kevin Malady and Grace Freeman I want a guard on here henceforth. Nothing overt—just that we learned with our encounter with Fredericks that he did have spies inside our community. If we're going for something like this, I don't want it broadcasted all over town."

"John, we'd be a lot more secure if we moved this entire operation over to my place," Ernie replied.

"Why so?"

"Simple. It is out of the way of prying eyes. Easier to maintain security. Plus, my diagnostic tools are there. I can run things 24-7 at my place. Come on; it's the logical choice."

John hesitated as he thought it over and then just simply nodded. "Your place then, Ernie. I'm not going to mention this to our council. We keep it under wraps for a while. The kids stay at your place."

He hesitated and then smiled.

"You house them and you feed them as well; that will justify their being pulled off of regular work details."

To his surprise Ernie did not object to that additional requirement.

"You two got that?"

There were eager nods.

He sighed, wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck, put on his old forage cap that looked like a relic from the Civil War, stood up, and started for the door.

Once he was outside, the cold was a bracing shock, the snow coming down hard so that he pulled his hat brim low to protect his eyes. He shuffled down the path out to the middle of the road, trying to let all the concerns of his life slip away at least for a few minutes. The weather was triggering so many memories. As he walked against the renewed snowfall, he found himself recalling a time when, as a boy, a storm like this would send him out hiking up to the South Mountain Reservation a few miles away from where he lived to find a favorite secluded spot in a pine grove. Knowing the reservation patrol officers were nowhere about on such a day, he'd build a fire and enjoy the snowfall, youthful imagination taking hold, that he was a sentry for General Washington, posted along that low ridgeline to keep an eye on the British over in Manhattan.

But now? He simply longed to be back at his home for the rest of the day, sitting by the woodstove with Makala—unfortunately without any scotch to sip or cigarette to enjoy, but at least there was her company awaiting.

He glanced over at the park along Flat Creek as he stepped out onto Montreat Road and chuckled softly. He couldn't see the amorous young couple, but there was a plume of wood smoke swirling up from within a grove of trees and he smiled with the assumption that the two were nestled in there, enjoying the storm and solitude while being together.

He shuffled on in silence, turning up the steep hill to his house above the old tennis courts, glad to see smoke rising from the chimney. Stamping the snow off his boots, he stepped inside and was surprised to see Maury Hurt in the sunroom, Makala by his side.

"John, where in the hell have you been?" Maury asked excitedly.

"What's wrong?"

"It's Bob Scales," Maury announced with a grin. "We just got a message. He wants to meet."


John slowly read the message again, out loud, looking around at the nearly dozen men and women crammed into what had once been the office of the president of the college.

I lament the sad news of the loss of our beloved J. I recall a day in May, when I last talked to her, the same date in May that holds different connotations now. My friend, please return so that we can meet and discuss so many things of importance to both of us.

He put the transcript down and looked around the room.

"And that is it?" Reverend Black asked. "Just that?"

"I think it is fake," Ernie stated, arms folded across his chest.

"I don't," John replied.

"Why?" Ernie's query was picked up by several others in the overcrowded room.

"J is obviously my Jennifer. The day in May—he knew that was Jennifer's birthday. We were on the phone talking when the EMP hit, thus his reference to 'connotations' that others held regarding that day of days. It is something only Bob and I knew, a code to tell me it was really him."

"But tapped out in Morse code, for heaven's sake, with a preface to first switch to a different frequency to receive the message, that in Morse code as well?" Billy Tyndall snapped. "It's like some bad movie. Apparently, it had been going out for several days, until one of our ham listeners even realized it wasn't just interference and remembered enough to start copying it down. Why not voice? What is this, 1941 or something? How many people even know Morse code today?"

"Maybe that's the point," Maury said in response. "Who knows how many people saw the dropped message before it got into Bob's hands?"

"If this Bob is even alive, is he someone we can trust?" Forrest growled.

John sighed and looked at the old Underwood typewriter resting on his desk, absently tapping the F key to see if his tinkering with it had solved the problem. The damned thing still continued to jam.

"Let's add in this latest news from the BBC," John now added. "All correspondents within the territory of the United States to be deported because of an alleged breach of national security. BBC? England, perhaps our only ally left in this crazy world? Something is up; we all know that. But what?"

"And you think your friend, if still alive, holds the answer?"

"Anyone have a better suggestion?" John asked. "If so, put it out there."

He looked around the room. Most just sat with heads lowered; Maury was shaking his head.

"I've got to take the chance and meet him."

"Back up there? How?" Maury snapped. "Gillespie thinks he can replace the coolant line, which was damaged as well, in a week or so, but the turbine blade is proving to be a real problem. But then what? Fly in, after being shot at last time, and expect the red carpet treatment? John, you and the rest of this council can order me to go, and I'll tell you to kiss off for your own good."

Maury looked over at Forrest for support.

"I only go into a hot LZ once, John, no repeat trips. I'm with Maury on this."

"And the fuel," Danny McMullen added. "We burned through a lot of Jet A just going up there and back. I thought the intent was we keep that fuel in reserve in case we ever needed the Black Hawk for defense here. Even if they are ready to kiss our butts when landing, will they refuel us? John, they'll seize that chopper as stolen government property, and if we're ever let go, it will be one hell of a long walk back home."

John looked over at Makala, who insisted upon attending this meeting, and saw her nod of approval. The room fell silent again, the only sound that of hammering and sawing from the adjoining chapel, where half a dozen students were at work, still laboring to restore it to what it had once been before being partially destroyed during the fighting back in the spring.

John took it all in and realized if he put it to a vote, no one would support his going. This was one of those times he wished he had not relinquished the power he once held as virtual dictator of this community during the first year after the attack. He returned his gaze to Makala, who sat in stoic silence, but her glance in reply said everything. Like most women in their final months of pregnancy, she held the trump card with her husband if he in any way cared for his wife.

"All right," he finally said with a sigh. "Alternatives?"

"This guy, if he is real, is trying to reach out to you," Reverend Black said, forcing a smile to try to ease the moment. "If real, he tried to reach out to you with that tragic messenger. Now this cryptic reply in Morse code.

"Those two methods"—Black paused for a moment—"tell me that there is some important reason behind this entire affair, and he wants to keep his cards close, perhaps even from those around him. Acknowledge receipt of the message, counter with some alternative."

"If it is so all damn important, tell him to come here," Forrest snapped.

"Why not?" Black intervened. "Forrest is onto something. Tell him to come here."

The answer was so simple and obvious. As he contemplated it, John found himself wondering why he had not thought of that first. Perhaps a touch of the old hierarchy of command still held sway within him. When a general summoned a colonel to a meeting, it was "Yes, sir, where and what time do we meet, sir?" and that was it.

John smiled and nodded. "Okay, I'll go for that. How and where?"

"Asheville?" Frank Nelson, now the mayor of that town, suggested.

John shook his head. "Too public. A helicopter coming in there just might spook folks who survived the fighting back in the spring to take a potshot at it."

"The Asheville airport, then," Frank pressed.

"We disabled the runway," Black interjected, "and it means an overflight of all our territory around here. Chance for a good recon if he is not on the up-and-up."

"9A9," Danny said quietly.

"What?" John replied, not sure what he meant.

"Old FAA designations for airports. All airports in public use were given a three-letter code. CLT for Charlotte, AVL for Asheville. Shiflet is an old grass strip airport in Marion, which is our territory. You come in over the mountains to the north, and there it is. No overflight of our territory."

"Then why not Morganton?" Maury asked.

"Our disabled chopper is there," Danny replied. "Even though it's in a hangar, if he or the people with him poke around and see that and then they try to take it back, it would become a confrontation. Even if they don't try to take it back, they'll know our bird is down. Also, if they are planning some sort of nasty surprise, bringing in a lot of troops aboard an old C-130, we're not offering them a big paved strip. Stripped down, they can land at Shiflet. But take off with all that snow on the ground?" He chuckled. "They can land, but then try to take off? If we see a C-130 coming in that can carry up to a hundred troops, we just bogey off and leave them stuck in the snow.

"Shiflet would be ideal, John. Couple of dozen hangars, most of them ramshackle affairs like out of the 1930s. We put some heavily armed people in there as backup if they try to pull any stunts with a couple of choppers—hell, we might even pick up an extra bird or two if they try any crap. Plus, 9A9, you transmit that on Morse code, some geek listening in might not even recognize it and figure it is code for something else. I say 9A9 Shiflet."

John looked around the room and finally saw nods of agreement. "All right, then. Send out a response on the new frequency they shifted to. Ernie, can you and Danny figure it out? Something like 9A9, a date, and then Zulu time and see what the response is."

"And if they reply no deal, we go to meet them?"

"Politely tell them to go to hell," Makala replied sharply.


On the walk back from the meeting, John held Makala tightly by his side to ensure she did not slip and fall.

"You aren't trusting this, are you?" he asked.

She laughed softly. "I never understood just how much a pregnancy can mess up one's thinking. I want my husband by my side when the baby comes. I want him by my side as our baby goes through all those moments that then follow—the first smile, the first belly laugh, the first crawl, the first step, then the little hellion running amok around the house, and then one day—"

She paused and began to choke up. "Damn it, I was never this way before, John. Yeah, someday, if this world ever turns sane again, that we watch our child graduate from college, your college, and still are together when they one day come through the doorway carrying their child, our child, the same way you look at Elizabeth and her toddler. I want that, and anything that might snatch it away fills me with dread."

She struggled to hold back her tears. "You heard Elizabeth after the father of her child was killed," Makala continued, and now the tears were flowing, "bringing a child into the world with the baby's father dead, the way she would cry herself to sleep at night. The times she would look at her boy and we could sense she could see the boy's father being there, but he was not and never will be. Don't get me wrong; her husband, Seth, is an incredible, decent young man, the spitting image of his father, Lee. The fear she carries now is that something will happen to Seth the same as it did to Ben. I carry that same fear. At least the idea of this mythical friend of yours coming here alleviates some concern, but even then, what if it's a trap? Let's just say that rather than your friend coming in to meet you, it's half a dozen of those attack helicopters—or, for that matter, some plane loitering at thirty thousand feet, and they pinpoint your being at this remote airport and drop one of those fuel-air bombs I hear people talking about or even one of those neutron bombs as payback for what you did to Fredericks."

"If they really wanted me dead, they would have taken this place off the map months ago. That's why I have to believe that Bob Scales is real, most likely in command of the forces up in Roanoke, and is trying to reach out to me, perhaps to prevent further bloodshed."

"It still makes me anxious."

He did not reply that it filled him with the same concerns and fears. If there was no reason for anxiety, if Scales was indeed alive, the overture to meet would have been overt, out in the open. Not like this.

Whatever the reason, he did know one thing for certain: He had to find out the truth and find out now.


The Black Hawk, which had crested over Linville Gorge just a few minutes earlier, came sweeping in low over frozen Lake James, crossed over the railroad bridge that spanned the Catawba River where it emptied into the lake, and came sweeping down the length of the snow-covered runway at well over a hundred miles an hour.

John shaded his eyes against the glare of the early morning sun, watching as it raced in, scanning it carefully with a pair of field glasses, feeling a touch of nostalgic pride at the sight of the chopper painted in faded desert camo, taking him back to the desert of Iraq so long ago when, filled with awe, he watched scores of them sweeping out ahead of his armored battalion.

He spared a quick glance to Forrest, who was watching intently, silently, wondering what this torn-up veteran of Afghanistan was feeling at the sight and sound of a machine that meant that friends were overhead, ready to protect, ready to attack anything in their way.

The chopper thundered past, the Doppler roar dropping in pitch as it passed, and then it pitched up in a steep turning climb.

The pilot was hotdogging a bit, but then again, if he was coming into a potentially hostile site, it was standard to do at least one high-speed pass and if they drew any fire to get the hell out fast.

He had more than fifty with him, concealed in several hangars and scattered in the wood line across the runway. If this was a setup for a trap, it was about to turn into one hell of a fight. Danny, who stood beside him, clutched a flare gun firmly in his gloved hand, ready to fire off the signal if anything looked even remotely hostile.

The day was cold, crystal clear, perfect for keeping a sharp watch aloft. Several of his people, concealed under white blankets, were doing just that, sweeping the sky overhead for any telltale glint or whisper of a contrail indicating that someone was hovering up at twenty thousand feet, just waiting to unleash a Hellfire or gravity-dropped munitions.

The chopper, leveling off from its high-speed pass, circled around, the sound shifting as the pilot throttled back, pitching the nose up slightly to bleed off speed as he started to make a landing approach.

"So far, so good," John whispered as if to himself.

He looked around at his friends Danny, Maury, Forrest, and Lee, who stood to either side, all watching intently and waiting for the slightest suspicious act.

A hell of a world we have become, John thought. There was a time when we never would have doubted the sight of a helicopter with that star on its side. But now?

The chopper continued to settle, kicking up a near whiteout of swirling snow, the pilot edging it toward where John had ordered that Forrest's 4×6 should be parked as an indicator of their presence.

"If this goes bad," Forrest complained, "you own me a new vehicle and the gas that took it here."

John said nothing, the chopper all but invisible as snow swirled about, a glimpse of it then touching down, turbine engines throttling back, and as the snow began to settle, he saw the side door swing open.

Even from this distance, he could see that it was indeed him. It was Bob.

John stepped out of the concealment of the hangar, ignoring the protests of his friends, Lee cursing and then stepping out behind him and protectively moving in by his side. The rotors continued to wind down, and he started to lift a hand to cover his face from the stinging blast but thought better; he wanted Bob to see that it was indeed him and not some sort of setup.

Bob leaped down from the doorway, nearly fell, and came up slowly, and John could see that his friend had indeed aged, remembering long ago how in so many training exercises, inspection tours, and their brief hours of combat together in Iraq, Bob would always be the first one out with a leaping bound and confident stride, radiating self-assurance and leadership. The snow from the three storms that had rolled in within as many weeks was nearly two feet deep at the level, even down in the piedmont region of Marion. The chopper's rotors had blown most of the ground cover back as Bob moved slowly toward him. Perhaps, John realized, it was to make sure he did not slip and fall, and it be misinterpreted by his crew and what John could now see was a security team inside the chopper, that he had been shot.

Bob pulled back the hood of his parka, John doing the same, and with this mutual gesture, the two old friends could now see each other's grinning features. Bob had indeed aged, his thick short-cut thatch of gray having gone completely white, features ruddy, heavy bushy brows squinting nearly shut from the morning glare and blowing snow.

They stopped half a dozen feet apart, and old instincts kicked in, John coming to attention and raising his right hand in a near-reverent salute.

"General, sir."

Bob, coming to attention as well, silently returned the salute, the two gazing at each other, and then Bob made the final steps forward and threw his arms around John.

"My God, John! It really is you! Thank God you made it after all."

"Sir, I thought you were…" John was overcome by emotion, and he fell silent.

"I wish," Bob began. "I wish I could have seen Jennifer again, just one more time."

Those words nearly broke John completely. Bob had stood as godfather for both of his girls. Childless himself, he had formed a special bond, especially with Jennifer, who used to call him "Uncle Bob." A most memorable moment, at a formal review that was just wrapping up, Jennifer had shaken free of her mother's hand and raced up to Bob, who was standing in the middle of the platform where he was at rigid attention, reviewing the troops marching by. She threw her arms around his legs and loudly asked what Beanie Baby he had brought for her that day. And in spite of all the formality of the moment, Bob had motioned to the ever-present aide that hovered by a general's side. The young captain with grave features had reached into Bob's attaché case to produce a stuffed golden retriever puppy for "my girl."

And with that, the memory flooded to completion. The aide that day was Quentin Reynolds.

There was a squeal of delight as she clutched the latest addition to her collection, Bob picking her up and showing her how to salute the last company of troops marching by as he held her. There was not a soldier in the ranks of that company able to conceal a grin as they marched by. It was the exact kind of gesture that rather than creating smirking laughter later endeared him even more to his troops and their families who had witnessed the moment.

It defined the man that John was now hugging with open warmth.

John finally broke the embrace and stepped back, but Bob reached up, for John towered over him by a half foot or more, and put his hands on John's shoulders.

"Son, it is so good to know that at least you survived."

"And you too, sir."

There was a moment of awkward silence, and the two reverted back a bit to remembrance of command, that at such a moment so many were watching them for the slightest signal or gesture, friendly or hostile.

John looked back at the chopper. There were at least half dozen heavily armed men in the crew compartment, while Bob's eyes darted past John to take in the old airport, obviously evaluating.

"Yes, sir, I've got a lot of people concealed around here," John said softly, "so let's defuse them. Okay?"

Bob nodded as John turned away from him for a moment and raised his arms high, waving them over his head to indicate that all was well.

"We've got a woodstove ready to light in the airport clubhouse and packed along some MREs. Let's get your team in and get mine out of the woods," John announced. "This damn cold makes me long for the desert again."

Bob motioned for his security team to get out, gesturing as well for them to sling their weapons, while John stepped away from the chopper so those in the wood line could clearly see him, waving his arms and shouting for them to stand down.

The six-man detail in the chopper got out, weapons slung over their shoulders but still obviously wary as they spread out into a loose circle around Bob, watching as Forrest stepped out of the hangar, M4 held casually in his one hand, followed by Maury, Danny, and Lee, who had yet to shoulder their weapons.

"Your friends?" Bob asked.

"Yes, sir."

"The one-armed character with the eye patch?"

"Airborne. Sergeant in Afghanistan, Silver Star and obviously a Purple Heart."

Even though he was moving slowly, Bob was still in his usual form as he walked up to Forrest and without going through the formality of a salute just extended his hand.

"Trooper, I'm honored to meet you."

The gesture forced Forrest to sling his weapon, catching him off guard, and John breathed a sigh of relief when Forrest actually forced a bit of a smile and extended his hand.

"First time a damn general ever offered to shake my hand, sir," Forrest announced. "Maybe you're okay like John said."

"I hope I am. If we get time, I want to hear your view on some things."

Bob's comment had a casual air to it, the type of line many in high command used as a friendly gesture but still a brush-off, but from Bob it was indeed genuine. When in command of John's battalion, Bob was the type of commander who would swoop in on a unit before dawn, ignore any officers who might be fumbling around, head straight to where breakfast was being dished out, get a cup of coffee, and then start peppering the cooks and dishwashers as to how they saw the unit. Dishing out his own meal, he'd then sit with a table of enlisted men and ask questions.

At the end of more than one such inspection swoop, an officer might very well be on his way out to reposting in some godforsaken place. Chances were that regardless of their friendship, Forrest might be asked a few pointed questions as to how he felt about John's leadership.

It was a technique John had learned as well. If you want the straight dope, go to those at the bottom of the food chain of administrations, not the middle or the top.

The two old friends turned to look back at each other.

"Any place where we can sit and talk one-on-one?" Bob asked.

"It will be crowded in the airport clubhouse. Let our people get out of the cold, grab something to eat, and mingle."

John did not add that Forrest, along with Grace and several others, had been thoroughly briefed that if the two sides did get together, they were to break out a jar or two of moonshine and pump for any information they could glean. He realized that chances were at least one of Bob's security team was his intelligence officer who would be doing the same. Forrest should be able to sniff that out quickly enough.

"The hangar we were waiting in is out of the wind and catching the morning sun; let's you and I settle in there," John offered, pointing the way.

John fell in by Bob's side, subtly gesturing for his friends to leave them be and take care of their guests. He looked back to the chopper; the rotors were slowly turning over in idle.

"Your crew can shut down if they want; there's no threat here, Bob."

Bob just smiled but did not reply to the offer, and John did not press him.

Getting out of the snow, they stomped into the hangar. Its long-gone owner had turned it into an aviator's man cave, posters of World War I and II aircraft papering the walls, along with a couple of classic pinups of nose art from that era. There were a couple of overstuffed lounge chairs next to a long-cold space heater, the chairs smelling unpleasantly of mouse or some other rodent. John dragged the two chairs into the morning sunlight while Bob examined the posters and, brushing the dust off the windshield, looked into the cockpit of a long-grounded Aeronca Champ, its tires cracked and deflated after years of sitting idle.

"I actually learned to fly in one of these." Bob sighed. "Sweet plane, postwar version of that L-3 I heard you have up and running."

John looked over at his friend. Of course he would know what John had.

There were so many questions, but Bob opened first. "John, what happened to Jennifer?"

The question took John aback, and with it returned all the pain of those tragic days. He looked away from Bob, gaze unfocused. "She died, Bob. The way so many died. In her case, diabetes." He fell silent, not wanting to say more; it was not the conversation he wanted for now.

Bob reached over and in a fatherly gesture patted John on the knee. "Sorry I brought it up. Last time we talked, it was her birthday. Remember?"

"Of course I remember." John could not keep the bitter edge out of his voice. "Her last birthday thanks to whoever, whatever triggered all this madness."

He looked back at his friend. It was, of course, not Bob's fault.

"And you, Bob? How is Linda?"

"I'll never know." Bob sighed. "She was visiting friends in Florida when it hit." A pause. "You most likely know what Florida turned into. I somehow knew she was dead within a few weeks. You know how that is with someone you love. You just wake up in the middle of the night, you know they are there in the room with you … and they are dead and have come to say good-bye. I just pray it was gentle and swift."

"Jennifer's wasn't," John said, and he instantly regretted it, seeing the hurt in Bob's eyes. "I'm sorry I said that, Bob."

Bob did not reply, the two old friends sitting in silence for a moment until John stirred from his seat. Remembering the thermos of coffee left by Forrest, he picked it up from the floor and motioned to it. Bob nodding agreement as John poured out the hot brew into two battered cups, handing one to his friend.

"The real stuff?" Bob asked.

John nodded and could see the look of surprise.

Bob reached into his parka jacket, produced a flask, motioned to John's cup. John could pick up the welcome scent of scotch and looked quizzically at Bob, who just smiled while he poured several ounces into his own cup before raising it in a toast.

"I thank God you are still alive, John. Here's to those we lost."

"To those that we lost," John whispered.

The two sipped their drinks, and it helped to relax the tension.

"Bob, a personal question?"

"Sure."

"How the hell did you survive? You were in the Pentagon the day it happened. What happened up there?"

Bob looked down at his drink before taking a long gulp. "Some of us got lucky. Most tried for their homes to get their families out. Washington went into total chaos within hours. Those that had set out to try to reach their families, some with forty miles or more of a hike ahead of them? Never heard from again. Me? Linda was in Florida—no reason to try for home. Some of us struck out for Fort Meade and hunkered down there until we tried for Fort Belvoir, the rumor being that local assets were trying to regroup there. From there, well, for a while, I was out on a carrier. The navy with assets overseas fared better than the army on that count."

"What really happened, Bob?"

"We got hit, and we lost."

"That simple? 'We got hit, and we lost'?" There was a sharp edge to John's response.

"About all I can say."

"All you can say, or all that you know?"

Again a moment of silence.

"John, you were on the phone with me when it hit. You know I and all those around me were as off guard as you and a minute later literally in the dark, same as you and the rest of the country. Pearl Harbor in spades."

"And if I remember my history, a couple of lectures from long ago at the War College, the warning signs for Pearl were clear enough to read."

"After the fact," Bob interjected. "After the fact, the patterns fell into place. But before?"

"Some read it correctly."

"Don't tell me you are buying into some conspiracy shit?" Bob snapped. "You've too sharp an intellect for that."

"With everything we had? Surely…"

Bob did not reply.

John fell silent and looked at his friend closely. Bob had answered a little too sharply and quickly. Was there something he was holding back? Even before the Day, Bob held many a secret that generals held while those under him were kept in the dark and knew better than to try to ask. He filed the suspicion away. Bob would only share what he felt he could share at this moment and nothing more.

Bob had aged ten, fifteen years since he had last seen him little more than three years ago. Though there was still something of his once sharp, penetrating gaze of confidence, there also seemed to be an infinite weariness behind the eyes.

His shoulders were rounded over slightly as if carrying some unspeakable burden. Gone was the ramrod-straight posture, that certain look and feel of command. There was a slight tremor to his hands as he held the warm mug. Was it just exhaustion of the moment or something far deeper?

"And out there?" John finally asked, shifting the topic away from the personal for the moment.

"Where?"

"The world. Everything, anything. We no longer trust Voice of America out of Bluemont. We try to glean what we can from the BBC, even China and their News to America program. What's the straight dope?"

Bob sighed, set his coffee mug down, unscrewed the cap to the flask of scotch, and offered it to John, who took another ounce while Bob emptied the rest back into his cup.

It surprised him. Bob always had a taste for good twelve-and fifteen-year-old scotch, but only after hours and off duty.

"John, the world has gone three-quarters of the way to hell and is tottering on the edge of the final abyss."

John sipped his coffee and waited.

"From the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Oil is no longer the export. Maybe when things finally cool down enough, they can sell glass where once had been a score of cities."

"Who?"

"Israel against the rest. Their ballistic missile shield held protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but the rest. Their government is now underground in bunkers somewhere out in the Negev desert. It was a full exchange. Then Indian and Pakistan cut loose on each other. Not much left on either side."

"Russia, China, Europe?" John asked.

"Holding off. Mutually assured destruction at play there. Russia was brushed by the EMP hit that went off course. Saint Petersburg abandoned. Moscow, word is some semblance of order there, the government holed up somewhere out in Siberia with their fingers on the trigger. John, the moment America was taken out of the paradigm of the balance of power, a vacuum was created. While survivors here were trying to just find the next meal, the rest of the world tottered to the edge and at least for the moment have held back from the final descent into the apocalypse."

"It was the apocalypse here." John reached over to the thermos to pour out some more coffee for the two of them.

The sun was climbing, radiating at least some warmth into the hangar, the icicles hanging along the eaves dripping puddles of water near their feet.

"John, we hang by the slenderest of threads. We still have a lot of nukes; the navy's boomers are still out there, each one packing a couple of hundred warheads. The surviving carriers and their escorts pack more."

"Surviving?"

"Guess we wouldn't admit it. When all hell broke loose in the Persian Gulf the week after the EMP strike and we launched on Iran in retaliation, they took out two of our carriers with nearly all hands. In the wake of that, with the emergency back home, the assets we had over there, we pulled out."

He nodded to the Black Hawk fifty yards away, rotors stilled but turbines still humming if things here went sour and Bob decided to pull out quick.

"John, most of what we have here now in the States we pulled out from the Middle East and Europe. After North Korea was taken off the map, equipment from the Pacific was pulled back stateside as well. We try to keep China in check by letting them know if they try anything with nukes, a boomer parked out in the Pacific will hit them with over two hundred nukes—starting with an EMP, of course. Sword of Damocles over their heads if they push us too hard."

"But Bluemont is ceding half our country to them, Bob. I don't get it."

"Let's just focus on the here and now," Bob replied, obviously diverting the direction the conversation was taking.

That triggered another suspicion for John, but he knew better than to press the issue—and besides, Bob was right. It was the here and now that he had to focus on.

"Blunt question, Bob, for the 'here and now.'"

"Go for it."

"You got other assets nearby just in case this meeting went bad?"

Bob nodded. "Couple of Apaches and an extraction team set down on the far side of Linville Gorge. Sorry, but that's the way it is."

"Hell of a position for two old friends, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"So why are you here?"

"To talk as we are right now."

"Why?"

"John, you most likely know the political and military situation for our country. BBC has been rather close to the mark, and I assume you've been monitoring that."

"We have."

"I eventually was assigned out west, commander center in Cheyenne Mountain for a stint. We all knew it was a no-win with China. Sure, humanitarian aid was the guise; they wanted it to look like another Marshall Plan, with 'hearts and minds' thrown in. Can't blame the folks out in California and on the rest of the West Coast. Infrastructure down, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, even Vancouver turning into snake pits of chaos. Someone trying to keep their family alive, feel that our government has utterly failed to protect, and container ships flying red flags start coming in. Rations, water purification plants, medical supplies."

He paused. "Things like insulin, John. What would you have done?"

That barb, if it was intended as such, stung deeply, and he did not reply.

"Their first troops even wore UN-blue helmets. Three-quarters of the population out there already dead? People forget LA was built on what was near desert. Without the Colorado River being pumped in from hundreds of miles away, along with a dozen other reservoirs off-line, people were killing each other for a lousy bottle of water after just three to four days. Someone hands your kids water and a meal—"

"So they are there to stay, is that it?"

"Unless we want to go to nuclear war, yes."

"These reports that we are abandoning the line along the Continental Divide, military assets pulled back to east of the Mississippi?"

"It's being defined as neutral air space to defuse any chance of a confrontation. That and Mexico, with backing from half a dozen Central American countries pressing up over the Rio Grande. What do we do?"

"It was once our country, Bob."

"Argue that with Mexico, who now claims we ripped them off in a long-ago and forgotten war."

"And they ripped it off from those who were there before them."

"History, John. It has always been thus. Take the veneer of civilization off, a major power receives a visceral blow and totters. Nature abhors a vacuum. Amazing—the years of political correctness pumped out in our colleges became an education of national guilt. Some out there along the West Coast actually say we deserved what we got for our past sins and welcomed a chance to try out socialism. Just feed us, and we'll get along with whoever is in charge."

"Anyone fighting back?"

"Yeah, Texas, of course. Voice of America isn't reporting it, but some group in Texas declares they're the new government, cite what they claim was the original treaty of annexation from the 1840s, and they are justified in withdrawing from the Union. They got representatives with them from half a dozen other states saying the same. It is ripe for a blowup. Logical, therefore, that our regular military pull out completely to avoid the prospect of this going really bad and what is left of our country getting sucked into the conflict."

"Meaning nuke?"

"The Chinese are just as afraid of that as we are. They know if we popped three or four EMPs over their mainland, they would be in the same boat we are. But if we do that, they blanket what's left of our country with ground bursts. We do the same back. Who wins other than death?"

"Thus we concede west of the Mississippi, and Bluemont focuses on bringing everything east back under their control. Are those the orders you're following, sir?"

Again, Bob did not directly reply. "Full-scale war with China now?" he finally said. "Then who gets to grab what's left of the radioactive pie? Mongolia?"

John actually chuckled and shook his head.

"Some years back, I was over there for a conference," Bob continued. "Great people, beautiful country. Remember camping with the head of their military up in a northern province for a weekend of fishing." He smiled wistfully and took another sip of coffee. "Anyhow, we were finally talking shop. That guy said they assumed someday it was all going to hit the fan. Russia against us, China against Russia, or just the whole world goes crazy. He then said, and I swear the guy was serious, that when the dust settled and radioactivity cooled off, they would mount up and ride again. Maybe that's who wins if this unravels any further. John, we are balanced on a razor's edge. A couple of third-rate powers triggered all of this; I swear that pudgy nutcase in North Korea did it just to see if they could do it. Iran joins in on the plot for whatever it was they used to believe about their hidden imam returning. We allowed them to get their nukes and missiles to hand off to terrorists like ISIS. Damn all who allowed that to happen. Any idiot could see eventually they'd go for us.

"Anyhow," he said, sighing wearily and staring into his coffee cup, "I saw the report that where the well is that their imam was supposed to come out of is now a crater a thousand feet deep. Same is true for the cities controlled by the terrorists and all of North Korea. Some vengeance.

"That's all moot now as far as you and I are concerned. It happened, and we lost. The job now is to pick up the pieces of what is left and try to reassemble some sort of united front. A United States out of what is left and project outwardly that, though our backs are to the wall, we're standing again as a united country. If not, we completely cease to exist."

There was a long moment of silence, the two friends sipping their scotch-laced coffee, a cold breeze sweeping into the open hangar so that they zipped their parkas back up, while outside the helicopter turbines continued to turn over with a low steady hum.

John wished he had not accepted the scotch. Never have a drink, even with a once trusted friend, until whatever issue was between them was settled.

"You're here to either pull me in or take us out, is that it, Bob?"

His friend looked over at him and slowly nodded.

"What exactly is your job now?"

"Military governor of this entire region. Everything east of the Appalachians from Charlottesville down to the wreckage of what was once Florida. Navy is working the coast; I'm to deal with everything inland."

"I assume you know what happened between us and that idiot Fredericks that was sent down here back in the spring."

"Yeah. Don't look at me, John; I had nothing to do with that screwup and the idiotic idea of the Army of National Recovery. Those of us left from the regular military were appalled with that idea. You can't pull a bunch of kids out of surviving communities where they are needed most right now, throw a weapon in their hands, given them twelve weeks of basic, and send them into hellholes like Chicago, Pittsburgh, or what had once been D.C. or New York City. It was the same kind of stupid thinking about how to fight Vietnam, and remember, I'm old enough to have been in on the tail end of that one. Draftees who barely knew how to wipe their own butts out in the jungle without getting jungle rot or snake bit didn't stand a chance. Same with the ANR. After that battalion got taken prisoner in Chicago and every last one tortured to death by the gangs running that place, the whole concept was quietly dropped.

"That's why what is left of our regular military was pulled back from the face-off with the Chinese and Mexico out west and redeployed here. We got to get things back into a single, unified whole—at least east of the Mississippi. That's my job now."

"Did you send a courier to me by the name of Quentin Reynolds?" John asked.

"He was a good man." Bob sighed. "Said he grew up in the area, knew his way around. After we took Roanoke, I wanted to get word to you outside regular channels." He paused, obviously carefully choosing his words. "Let's just say that Major Quentin took it upon himself to try to reach you with that and some other things."

"What other things, sir?" John asked.

"Let's stick to Quentin for now. He left with several others in a Humvee. Did he get through?"

"He's dead, Bob. Don't know about those who came with him. Some of my people found him along Interstate 26, on foot, badly beaten. It is still no-man's-land up in parts of these mountains, and he met the wrong folks. Only thing one of my men got out of him before he died was that you sent him and wanted to talk."

Bob sighed and then stared straight at him. "Obviously, he had some contact to you; otherwise, you wouldn't have tried to reach me. What exactly did he say?"

The way Bob spoke the last few words, John could sense his friend was tense. "I never spoke to him directly, sir. He reached an outlying community run by my friend Forrest, the one-armed Afghan vet. They fetched me back to meet him, but Quentin died before I could talk to him."

Again silence from Bob.

"Why him?" John asked. "A trek from Roanoke to here by land, that is damn near suicide, especially at this time of year. Why not just send a message in the clear? You got the air assets."

John nodded out to the Black Hawk that, in a profligate display, was still burning precious Jet A fuel.

"I couldn't, John."

"Why?"

Bob stood up, downing the last of his coffee and setting the cup on a cluttered workbench next to the dust-covered Aeronca Champ.

"Because I have orders to kill you. Kill you and either rein this so-called State of Carolina into line or wipe it out."

Bob turned his back on John as he spoke, and John wondered if his old friend and mentor did so because he could not look him in the eye as he spoke.

"John, I would like you to come back to Roanoke with me to talk this thing out further. I promise you no harm will come to you or your community while you are away. I'm asking you to trust me on this."

"Is that an order, sir, or a request from a friend?"

"I'd prefer the latter." He paused for a moment. "John, I'm doing this as a dark op. No one further up the line knows I'm here talking to you privately. I'm doing this as a favor to a trusted friend. Please come back with me for your own good and that of your community."

"And if I say no?"

Bob sighed and turned back to face John.

John shifted his focus to the pilots in the chopper. One appeared to be talking, attention focused toward Bob. Had there been some sort of signal? Was something being called in if he refused Bob's "request"?

"John, I hate to say it, but I think you can assume I can bring hell down on this place in less than five minutes. I assume that the men who were with you when I landed are some of your closest friends and advisors."

"They are."

"If this goes bad, they will be caught up in it as well."

"I know that."

"Therefore?"

John looked into his eyes and could still see his old friend, a commander he respected and would have given his life to protect. Was he really capable of doing this?

"Why, Bob?"

"Orders."

That left him stunned, and he lowered his head. "I recall an ethics class you personally taught at the War College," John said softly, voice tinged with sadness. "A code that stated that an officer must refuse an immoral order, even if it meant his career or even his life. Bob, I know you too well to accept that you are—and God forgive me for saying it—only following orders."

Bob bristled at the reply and did not speak.

"I sense this order is one that you yourself have inner questions about, sir."

"What the hell do you think?" Bob replied sharply. "An order to either arrest or kill a man I saw as a son, his children substitutes for grandchildren I would never have? Just what the hell do you think?"

"You know I won't go with you."

"I kind of assumed that."

"So I guess this is at an end," John said, coming to his feet. "It's your call, Bob, and I'm leaving it to you. You asked me what Quentin had said. And as I just told you, by the time I reached his side, he was dead. But he did spill something beyond the fact that you were alive." John paused. "At least what he rambled about to my friend Forrest and the nurse trying to save him. Like I said, the poor man was damn near dead when he was found and out of his head."

"And he said what?"

"Something about another EMP."

Bob stiffened and broke eye contact.

"Bob?"

"John, I'll ask you one more time. Come back with me to Roanoke. We can talk further then. Bluemont wants you dead. If I've got you stashed away in a safe place, believe me, it's for your own good."

"Sir, I'm not going back with you, and if all was reversed, you'd say the same."

"Yeah, I assumed it would be thus."

"So, what's next?" John asked. "You're free to go. I won't stop you, and you knew that before you even stepped foot off that chopper. You get your people back in, lift off, I tell my people to scatter, and in five minutes, you and I are personally at war. Is that it?"

Bob did not reply.

"Kind of like what we read happened at West Point a long time ago, when the superintendent was ordered to hold on charges of treason any cadet or faculty that would not renew the oath of allegiance to the Union. Instead, he told the secretary of war to go to hell and let his old friends and students—now enemies preparing to serve the Confederacy—leave without a fight. Is that it?"

Bob nodded. "I've served my country over forty-five years. If not for this current mess, I was about to retire out, settle down with Linda; she was already picking out a place down on Marco Island, and you know how it is. Old soldier writes a book or two, kills the boredom by fishing, and quietly grumbles how the country continues to go to hell but there is nothing he can do about it. And now, instead, I'm here, freezing my ass off."

"Then why did you really come, Bob? Really? Your comment a few minutes back tells me that if I don't go, you are most likely expected to lift off, and five minutes later, this place is toast. Is that what Bluemont expects?"

Bob did not reply.

"So why not do it?"

"In reply, John, I assume there are at least a few heavy weapons stashed in this hangar and you got extra personnel in a hangar next door to this one. You could hold me hostage and back out. Chances are if I'm taken prisoner, in spite of my orders to hit you even if I am being held, my people would hold back on a strike, allowing you to escape."

John sighed, shook his head, and gestured for the general to sit back down by his side. "You know I wouldn't do that to you, and unless this damn war has twisted you inside out, I know you won't order a strike on me, at least not like this."

"Oh, damn all this shit to hell," Bob whispered, and with a weary groan, he returned to sit at John's side. "It's cold out here, so damn cold."

"Yeah, I know." John emptied the last of the thermos, most into Bob's cup, the last few drops into his.

"What did they used to call it? A Mexican standoff or something like that, though I guess that became politically incorrect to say years ago."

"Something like that. 'Mutually assured destruction' kind of fits better at the moment. Both of us die or both of us walk away."

"Stupid, all of it."

"You need not tell me, sir. So who ordered me dead?"

"Bluemont."

"Again Bluemont. Can you give me a straight answer?"

"Maybe."

"Just who the hell are they? They claim to be the legitimate government of the United States. Claim line of succession as defined in the Constitution. But who are they really?"

"They are the government, John. At least that's something."

"How did they survive?"

"By coincidence, on the day things went down, there was a simulation attack training exercise, with some people evacuated up to the FEMA fallback position, which was the Bluemont facility. You know the president went down while aboard Air Force One. Damn fools in charge had never hardened it to the current level of a high-yield EMP. Congress wasn't in session, so nearly all those people were scattered around the country. Therefore, the survivors lucky enough to be at Bluemont were it."

"You ever meet them or been there?"

Bob looked down at his coffee, swirling it around in his cup before drinking down the now-tepid brew. "No. I was bounced around after the Day, out west, briefly in Cheyenne Mountain—like I said, out on one of our surviving carriers that for a while served as a joint command center. Then took over assets coming back from the Middle East and the Far East that began to deploy out of what was left of Norfolk with orders cut several months ago to, as I already told you, reestablish control in the southeast. No, I've never been there. At least on the inside."

"Mind if I ask a few questions, sir?"

"Maybe."

"Why keep meeting me a secret? Do your friends in Bluemont know you did this?"

"Did what?"

"Came down here like this, based on a somewhat cryptic transmission back and forth? Why didn't you tell them?"

"John, to be honest, at the moment, I'm really not sure."

"Come on, sir," John replied sharply. "Do you trust Bluemont?"

"What?"

"Just that. You claim you have never met anyone up there face-to-face. Do you trust them?"

"I trust the Constitution of the United States, which I am sworn to uphold. We have to have something to hang on to. There's nothing else out there now, John. Bluemont is at least something."

"I took the same oath, sir, to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." He emphasized the last word, domestic.

Bob stared at him and finally nodded. "I'm not in the loop on a lot of what is going on. Just rumors—you know how it is—and my focus is the mission to bring this entire region back under control. Your community, what you folks are calling the State of Carolina, is part of that mission."

"But you've been hearing rumors."

Bob nodded in reply.

"Quentin rambling about an EMP—is that a rumor or fact, and from whom?"

"John, my entire life I've served. I served under some brilliant men in the White House, and yes, some that I thought at best were naïve when it came to the harsh realities of the world and what warfare truly is. And yeah, I served under more than a few I thought were an outright danger to the survival of my country, at least my country as I saw it. But always, in the end, I saluted.

"I recall Lincoln once declaring that across four years, no president could do ultimate fatal harm to the Republic, and at the end of those four years, the people could vote him out and replace him with someone they thought more capable. Even when I passionately disagreed with a president, I took solace in that and forced myself to salute even when I felt the person I was saluting was unworthy of that. At such moments, I saluted the office and not the person."

"EMP, General Scales," John pressed in, unable to contain the question any further. "Fact or rumor? If fact, by whom and when?"

"I can't give you a straight answer."

"Because you aren't sure yourself, or if you are sure, you can't say?"

"Damn it, John, don't press me on this!" Bob shouted back, an action so rare in the past when they served together that it startled John.

He stared straight into his old commander's eyes. "I believe you at least suspect something is up. That perhaps I'm even tied into it, directly or indirectly."

Bob returned his gaze without blinking.

"I suspect you are disobeying them right now," John whispered as if someone might overhear their conversation. "You said you had orders to detain or kill me. But here you are when it would have been just as easy to lure me into this meeting, confirm I was here, and then take this whole place out."

Bob stood back up. "I'm freezing. Let's at least go outside and stamp around a little bit and stretch."

John followed him out of the hangar. The glare reflecting off the snow was so intense that John wanted to put on his old scratched sunglasses but decided against it. Sunglasses were often the cheap trick of concealing a man's eyes—or worse, the way some cops used to wear them to intimidate.

The air was sharp, crisp puffs of wind kicking up crystals of snow that glimmered and danced in the morning sunlight. If not for the presence of the Black Hawk, the landscape would have been one of peace. It was an unnatural sound now after more than two years of near-total silence with the death of nearly all man-made machines. There were times he missed those sounds, the hum of traffic on the interstate, the near-constant whispering of jets passing high overhead, all the multitude of sounds of an advanced technological world.

Now it was usually silence except for the whispering of wind in the trees, the delightful sound of summer thunderstorms coming down off the mountains, and what had always been his favorite, the winter sound of wind cracking the ice out of trees, the hissing and tinkling of snow swirling down, and the scent of wood fires carried on the breeze. As they walked along the row of hangars, he could catch a glimpse back to the airport's cinderblock clubhouse. Smoke was wafting up from the chimney, a bit of a crowd gathered outside, weapons shouldered, his people pumping Bob's for information, and Bob's troops undoubtedly doing the same.

His orders had been that if such a situation developed to be friendly but reveal nothing about their numbers under arms, praise the food situation as well supplied—though the reality was that it would be tough going by spring—and convey confidence that all was well. The precious supply of moonshine that Forrest had brought along was to be applied liberally to any of Bob's people who were willing to try a swig, but except for Danny and Forrest, who seemed to have a prodigious capacity for holding their liquor, the others were to refrain.

He assumed nearly the same orders had been given by Bob to his personnel.

"Things seem okay over there," John announced, nodding back toward the clubhouse.

"I understand you have created a highly capable fighting force."

"Old tradition of militia. Remember a favorite movie of ours, Drums Along the Mohawk. We had to defend ourselves or go under."

"John, there are a lot of places like yours, actually. Not around the cities—they all became death traps. The enclaves of those who had tried to prepare beforehand, some survived a year or more, and then the barbarians just finally overran them. You most likely know that every major city of a quarter million or more east of the Mississippi is gone—a twisted, burned-out, perverted wasteland. They just were not sustainable without modern technology. That and all social order broke down within a matter of days.

"But once you got farther out, some of the smaller cities like Asheville somehow hung on. Those in the south had a better chance during the first winter, but even in the north, remote rural areas banded together. A fair part of West Virginia rallied around an eccentric old congressman a hundred miles west of here in Tennessee; there's an area nearly as big as what your community claims to be the State of Carolina. They're reviving the old name of the State of Franklin. More than a few, especially in mountain areas where folks rebuilt long-abandoned hydro dams, even have power again. So you are not just the only pocket of survival."

"So why does Bluemont want us suppressed?"

"I saw my mission as assimilating back in."

"Ever hear of the Borg? Jennifer was fond of the old reruns of that show. And, Bob, it looked like you had one hell of a fight going around Roanoke when I was up there a few weeks ago. Obviously, whoever was there was not happy about being assimilated."

"It hasn't been easy. I heard about that Posse group you took care of. There's a lot like that still out there. Most have pulled back into what is left of the cities, gleaning whatever can still be looted and raiding out into nearby countryside. That's why nearly every major urban center is dead ground. As for Roanoke, that was what we were fighting to put down. A number of decent folks were hidden in there and glad to see our return, but there were holdouts who we had to finish off. Did you know a group of maybe a thousand or more are still dug in at Winston-Salem? Chances are they've been eyeballing you for some time."

That did catch John by surprise. Of course they would be fools not to assume that Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and major urban area were hotbeds of groups like the Posse, who had taken to settling in to one spot and systematically stripping out anything that could provide another meal until absolutely nothing was left and then striking out again. It was a good bit of intelligence. With the small city of Hickory coming into the State of Carolina, he'd have to look at beefing up their security.

"Thanks for that info."

"It is the upside of why I took on this assignment. The ANR was a total failure. I saw my mission as reaching out to communities like yours. In more than a few, I had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and it got tough. But most survivors want to be pulled back into the fold. Bring stability and law and order back. That is the upside of my job, tough as it is. Network them together. I heard you've got electricity strung up. Sooner or later, after you get some electricity flowing again, you might start digging around in closets, basements, and realize that computers that had been tossed aside and not online the day we were hit just might still be functional."

That caught John off guard. Had someone leaked that info, and if so, how had it reached Bob so quickly? Surely it had to be a guess or an observation of what had happened somewhere else. But as he looked at Bob, he was all but certain that it was a warning that someone within his own community was at the least talking too openly, or perhaps far worse, was a spy for Bluemont, maybe slipped in by Fredericks.

"Interesting guess, Bob."

"Just an observation, that's all."

"Sir, we've drifted from the question I asked earlier."

"And that is…?"

"Do you trust Bluemont? Are they truly the legitimate government of the United States as defined by the Constitution?"

There was no reply.

"Do you?"

Bob remained silent, finally breaking the moment by shading his eyes to look at the snow-covered mountains to the north. "Beautiful spot you have here. Linda wanted us to retire to Florida and after following me from pillar to post for near on forty years—how could I say no to her? But this is where I wanted to come. I even remember visiting this airport once. Thought about after retiring, getting my pilot's license again, buying a plane like the one in the hangar we were just in. A nice club here to join."

"Sir, dare I press that you are dodging me?" John said softly.

"Yes, John, I am." The old general sighed and slapped his hands together several times to get the circulation going. "I'd better head back."

"So that's it?"

"Kind of."

"It's good to know you're alive, sir."

"And you too. I have a strong sense of faith, John. Your reason for coming here so many years ago was motivated by a tragedy, the illness and impending death of your wife and a place to raise your girls after she was gone. But as I look at it now, I feel you were led here by God for a higher purpose."

"You helped to lead me here, sir."

"Be that as it may. I'd like to think there is a purpose to all of this and a purpose for the position I know you must take."

"If it means we will wind up as enemies, it is one I can barely grasp after everything you, I, and our country have been through."

"You've given me food for thought. The trip was worth it." Bob reached out, taking off his glove to grasp John's hand. "As used to be said back during the Civil War, if a day comes when you and I must face each other across a field of conflict, each of us doing what we believe our duty compels us to do, know that I will do what I must do as my sense of duty and honor compels me to act." He sighed, his voice going thick. "And it will be the worst day of my life."

"For me as well, sir."

The handshake turned into an embrace. Looking over Bob's shoulder, John could see that the gathering outside the clubhouse stood silent, looking their way. John finally let go of the embrace, stepped back, came to attention, and saluted. Bob stiffened and returned the salute.

"God be with you, John."

"And with you, sir."

Bob started to turn away, hesitated, and then turned to face John again. "A word of warning: watch your back. Please watch your back every single minute until we meet again."


John stood silent, parka hood back, hand up to shield his face from the stinging blast kicked up by the rotors as the Black Hawk lifted off. Fortunately, he could explain the tears clouding his vision as a reaction to the bitter cold.

"I think we'd better get the hell out of here!" Danny shouted as the chopper lifted heavenward. "I managed to get one of those guys a bit toasted; some of what he had to say doesn't sound good. They've got four Apaches just on the other side of Linville. They can rip the shit out of us in five minutes."

John nodded. "Order everyone to disperse, no vehicles. Just scatter out for an hour and see what happens. If we don't get hit by then, we rendezvous and head back to Black Mountain. But it won't happen now, today; I'm certain of that."

"Why?"

"I trust him."

"A general working for Bluemont?"

"No, because I trust him as a friend. He came here to warn us."

"Of what?"

"That a war is coming."


This is the BBC News. It is 3:00 Greenwich War Time.

As stated in prior broadcasts, all our correspondents have been ordered to leave their posts within the territories still controlled by the United States immediately. We can report that our correspondent who was briefly stationed in Bluemont was, this day, placed under arrest and is in detainment with the charge that he had disseminated false information harmful to the goal of completing the reunification of the United States east of the Mississippi River. We have no information at this time as to his safety or whereabouts.

It has been reported by other sources that the government's efforts to regain control of territory along an east-west axis, Norfolk to Richmond and Roanoke, Virginia, has been completed with minimal loss to either side and that former local governments in the latter two areas have greeted the return of central authority. This same source that we are now relying upon added that the next step shall be establishment of a new zone of unification and security along an axis from Charleston, South Carolina, west to Atlanta and shall include urban areas amongst which are Raleigh, Charlotte, and Asheville, North Carolina. It is claimed that significant progress has already been made in those areas, though there are reports of significant resistance as well. It shall be recalled that in the spring, the central government faced a major setback in the Asheville area with the report that an entire battalion of ANR troops had been annihilated with no prisoners taken, though contacts in that region deny the reports of the refusal to take prisoners.

On other fronts, China has again issued a stern warning to Bluemont that it must regain secured control of any and all weapons of mass destruction or that China, in order to defend the security of the regions it has extended humanitarian aid to, will be forced to take, and I quote, "rapid and stern action."