I kneeled over Natalie’s still body. I didn’t know what to do. All my preparation and wariness about Karen didn’t prevent the tragedy. My arrogance and naivete were paramount. I wanted to die, but I wanted to lash out. I already killed the person who killed the woman I was really falling in love with. She killed the woman I promised to protect. I even gave her that amulet in the hopes that it would help with a stray bullet or two. At point blank range it was pointless. I was angry. While kneeling at her side, I balled my hands into fists and smashed them to the ground next to her body. I wanted to just weep for the loss. I had no words to fully embody my rage, my loss, or my regrets.

  My eyes flashed towards her bodyguards. All of them had put their weapons on the ground and had raised their hands. They looked from me, to Nat, to Karen. Of the three, only I was alive, and my jaw was set in a way that made anyone who looked at me know that they should choose their words carefully.

  I looked back to Natalie. Seeing her angelic face both drove me to greater anger, and somehow gave me a measure of resolve. She did what she loved, right up to the very end. She said she would expose someone’s corruption someday. It was a throwaway statement from four years ago, but it felt far more prophetic now than then. She did just that; she paid for that truth with her life. I pulled my eyes away from looking at her. I needed to focus. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Neal. You need to get up. Natalie would want you to take command of this situation. I wouldn’t say nothing if we didn’t need you.” Leave it to dependable Frank to say what was needed. I wanted to hit him, but he was right. I slowly nodded. I really wanted to wallow. All the grief I had bottled up and not let out was suffocating. My grandfather was dead. My sweet wonderful, wise, fun loving grandfather. Chris was dead. I had known him since middle school. We were damn good friends, sometimes even closer than Billy. Brett was dead, a child really. He died before it was his time. It was extremely unfair. Now, Natalie was gone. I didn’t even get to tell her I loved her back. She was the best most amazing person I knew. Who else would die?

  Regardless, I got up. I had to get up. Someone had to take charge, and sadly it fell to me. I really didn’t want to do that at the moment. I’d never fully allowed myself to grieve my grandfather, much less anyone else. Yet I couldn’t give up. I turned to look at the folks around me. I suddenly realized that the cameraman was still filming, and I could hear something buzzing from her earpiece. Was the studio still on the line with her? I picked up the earpiece and put it in my ear. “Oh, do we have Captain Neal Cassland joining us live?”

  I recognized the voice, “Tad, is that you?” I remembered him from the Republican National Convention four years ago. He and I had a long talk while playing pool in the wee hours of a Thursday morning.

  “Neal, of course It’s me. How are you?” To be fair Tad was, is, and always will be an ass. He is a nepo-baby, but his fake bright and cheery voice was unmistakable.

  “Not great, Tad. Natalie is dead, Tad. How do you think I feel?”

  “Umm, I’m sorry, but can you help all the folks watching. They just saw you murder Ms. Karen Conway, a long time contributor on Hound Financial.”

  “No, Tad. That wasn’t murder. I am a lawfully appointed Captain in the United States National Guard. We have martial law, the insurrection act, and the nationalization of the all the guard branches. That means, I am functioning in a police capacity. Ms. Conway just shot your reporter Natalie Snowe in cold blood. I determined she was a lethal threat. I took action as I felt threatened. She could just as easily have turned the gun on me and fired. I am in the right on this legally, Tad. It’s why we have places called law school.”

  “Captain Cassland, you sound upset. We are just voicing the concerns of our loyal viewers. They would describe the situation differently, Captain.”

  “No Tad, your not voicing concerns of your loyal viewers. Your loyal viewers love the police, the military, and law enforcing in general. They would see what I saw: a person who just killed another person in front of me and presented themselves as a clear threat.” I was keeping this as even as I could, but I was going to talk down to this dumb ass. People needed to hear facts put straight to them.

  “Neal, you may not know this, but we are getting a surge of online commenters voicing worries like ours. They are worried that you shot her without provocation.”

  “Tad lets be serious for a moment. You are worried about your multimillionaire and billionaire viewers and corporate backers. Those are the folks that you are trying to appease right now, and not my fellow second amendment loving middle American Republicans. Don’t insult mine or the viewing audience’s intelligence with your nonsensical angle.” I knew I was starting to lose it. This was not the time to be talking to these people. I made an appeal to the viewing audience. That is what mattered to me. I needed to stay focused on what average Americans would think of the situation.

  “Neal, are you saying that there was no other way to handle that situation? We have legal experts who are concerned that you didn’t order her to drop the gun.” Yeah, I shot her immediately. I knew it wasn’t self-defense. It was revenge and justice. I couldn’t say that. That would extremely stupid.

  “Tad, I’m fairly certain habeas corpus and miranda rights become less enforced in these situations. You should check with some constitutional experts. Also, I’m in a war zone. Pretty sure that will trump just about anything you want to argue. Get military law experts. She shot a reporter, your reporter I would add, right on camera. I believe I have a lot of latitude in such circumstances. And on that note, this interview is over.” I dropped the microphone. Luckily for me, the cameraman also shut off the camera and put it down on the ground.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I walked over to him. I had never gotten his name. “Hey there, neighbor. Thanks for turning the camera off for now. I didn’t get your name earlier, and that was my fault.”

  “No problem, man. I’m Julio. That bitch seriously SHOT Natalie. It’s just… Natalie seemed like good people. This apocalypse stuff is bull shit.” With that Julio sat next to his dormant video recording device. The whole thing was mentally and emotionally draining. I wasn’t surprised by Julio’s outburst.

  I had my own thoughts on everything that had just happened, but I didn’t have time to sort them out. Frank already had to pull me back to being a part of the solution once. I didn’t want to make him have to do that a second time. I surveyed the situation now that the media spectacle portion was over. The three former bodyguards, no living person to guard any more for them, were all sitting on the ground near the rear of the closest truck. All three were big guys, though one was larger than the others. Before I could even look at everything else, and firmly avoiding looking at Natalie, I stepped over to the three. Pete, the British guy, and the third guy of some mixed multinational heritage that I had no hope to place all looked to me. Their eyes held some contempt, but not nearly much as I would have thought. I reminded myself that they were hired guns, and not much else. “Gentlemen. We need your assistance emptying the trucks of their cargo. We are going to go through the crates to determine what is necessary. I’m not going to put the lifting and moving just on you three. We will have as many people as we can help.”

  They shared glances at one another. This dragged on for several seconds. Finally, the British guy, though possible Australian, “You’s ain’t gonna punish us?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it. You surrendered the instant your boss went down. I like it when people make smart decisions, and to be clear, that was a smart decision. Just start with unloading trucks.” They all nodded with looks of shock playing across their faces. They really didn’t believe that I wouldn’t punish them. I had better things to do than to try and arrest or otherwise detain capable people. I needed them in case we had more demon problems. I also knew that I needed all the help I could get to evacuate everyone.

  Which reminded me, my friends were on their way. As if in answer to that though I heard Billy’s voice from off to my right. “Hey buddy!” I looked at him to see him jogging up to give me a high five. Maybe he was happy to see me, but he saw Natalie’s body on the ground and his smile turned to neutral before ending in a deep frown as he lowered his hand. He must have decided high fives were off the table. His situational awareness was improving. He just hugged me instead. It had been a while since I hugged my friend, and I almost let my emotions out, but I held them in for now. I could grieve thoroughly when we finally got back to Fenton. That was my promise to myself.

  While in a hug with Billy I saw Joe, Brittney, Will, and Vern accompanied by almost two squads of troops. Everyone eventually spotted Natalie. What should have been a joyous occasion with all of them immediately turned into a somber and subdued affair. I looked to Ted and Joe, “Find the special forces guys and have them deploy the two squads. We have well over 150 people here on top of a similar number headed here behind you. We need to protect civilians while the train is prepped.”

  Billy released the hug and stepped back. His expression still looked sad, but there was something more. “About that. We have a few more than 150 people at this point.”

  What the hell! I couldn’t say that out loud, but secretly I think Billly enjoyed throwing curveballs. He could be a difficult dungeon master at times, so this felt very much on brand. “Neal, we have ballooned a little bit in the last few hours. Someone in the military had it broadcast to cell phones in the vicinity that if they were unable to flee west, that they should carefully head south past Manchester to get to the train tracks and follow them here.”

  “How many people are we talking about?” I was almost afraid to ask.

  “It had ballooned past 600 at last count. And the back three squads are still discouraging demons from pursuing us. That’s why we need to get the train ready to go. Eventually those guys are going to fall back to us, but they will be chased by orcs and any other creatures that are out there.”

  “So, your saying that we need to be ready to leave the instant they reach the train yard in general. Then we make them chase the train to avoid otherwise certain death at the hands of a horde of demonic creatures.”

  Billy had the good sense to look a little embarrassed. “Something like that.” He shrugged his shoulders, but then continued. He knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer by itself. “The good news is that the when we get the train moving it takes us straight to the train yard in Fenton.”

  “Fenton has a train yard? Why am I just hearing about this now?”

  “Funny thing happened, Mr. Captain Representative, when I was stuck in a city hall staring at a map of the municipality for a few days. I started noticing little details like the train repair yard in the upper Northeast corner of Fenton.” He smiled just a little bit.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Umm, Well shit. How much time do we have until you think they either get here or are overrun?”

  “We have over an hour. How much over an hour, I have absolutely no clue. We found a few gun safes in various houses on the way here. We cannibalized every bit of ammo that we could to ensure that the squads at the rear don’t run out any time soon.”

  “What about when the monsters get here, do we still have enough ammo if the train isn’t moving yet?”

  Billy grimaced to cover the guilty look on his face, “Probably not.”

  “Then I guess we have to get a move on.”

  I turned to find Brittney. “Brittney, if you have the space in your storage ring, then you should start putting those crates in there.” I locked eyes with her, and her sadness matched my own. Hers was probably a lot more for Brett than Natalie, but loss is loss. Right now, we seem to be having a ton of it. All she did was bob her head in acknowledgement before turning to the closest crate.

  “Neal, you want me to store this crate of shoes?”

  “Maybe not any of those.” Now that there was no more Karen Conway to worry about, I was going to utilize the storage ring to the best of my capabilities.

  Once I had everyone directed back into motion, I had to decide what to do with Natalie’s body. I didn’t want to leave it here. She deserved way better than that. I knelt down beside her and glanced at her necklace. I should give that to her parents. I wonder if she would want to be cremated or buried. I know my standard logic was burn the dead just in case necromancers were in fact a thing, but could I lay her body to rest the same as everyone else? Did that make me a hypocrite?