heard.
She held up her hands, “I meant no offense. I only wanted you to see where I’m coming from. Could you imagine what happened to me happening to your daughter?” She looked deep into my eyes and must have seen the pain there. “Yes, I see that you can. Then maybe you’ll understand why I can’t stand by and let people like them continue to exist.”
“But what does taking over the Presidency have to do with any of that?”
“Not much really. It’s the taking over of the world that I’m after. I would advise you to go home, buy several years’ worth of supplies and head into the mountains. This world is going to get very…,” she pulled back the long sleeve of her shirt to reveal a thousand little scars, “painful.”
“How is that Fetch still here?” was all I could think to ask as she walked away.
“Who?” She looked over her shoulder at the guard. “Oh, Alric? I’ve given Fetches the ability to choose whether to stay or go. And those who stay are able to draw their energy from all of humanity rather than just one human. All of humanity except me, of course.” She giggled. “Even Ghanka no longer feeds from me.”
She became one with Ghanka and walked out the door towards the tarmac where Air Force One was waiting. Marissa came running in with a thousand questions but I held my finger up to my lips. She was a good girl, she had seen me kill her Fetch and obeyed without hesitation. I went to my store, checked that James wasn’t there, and set Marissa to getting every canned good she could into the carts.
Zene was just getting off work and I told her things were going to get bad. She, like everyone in the world, had heard about the assassination of the imposter President. She put her hand on my cheek and I reveled in the touch. But I pulled away before Marissa could come upon us. She believed me, thinking I had been given some insight for my service to the President, and joined Marissa in stocking up.
I headed to the cash room, empty of the day managers who had already gone home, and I took all the cash. The LP guys wouldn’t be coming because the camera in the cash room had been out for a week. I was the only one outside of LP that knew about the outage as I had been in the room when the camera broke.
Thirteen hundred dollars’ worth of groceries were put on my employee tab. I authorized the transaction, a fire-able offense, and we loaded everything up in Zene’s car. At the apartment we transferred our stuff to the Wagoneer. I invited her to go with us but she said she wanted to be with family. I understood and waved goodbye as we went inside to pack. I’d known Sara wouldn’t come from the moment I was told to run. The surprise was that she didn’t fight me over custody of Marissa.
“Sweetie, the men I’m going to stay with, they don’t really do kids.”
Marissa shrugged and went to her room. Sara gave me some snarky comment about not being uppity and bounced her hips out the door. Two seconds later she was back demanding keys to the Wagoneer.
“Sorry honey, it’s in my name. As is the scooter. There’s a bus station down the road.” I said as I slipped her phone and wallet out of her purse.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking back my phone, my credit cards, and my debit card. That’s money I made, not you. So, I’ll leave you…seven dollars in cash. That will get you all the way across town.” I tucked all of it into my pockets and handed the purse back. She stormed out the door and I went back to work.
We filled the back of the Wagoneer and part of the back seat as well. I grabbed the six thousand dollars I’d been hiding in a safe bolted to the floor in the closet. It was covered with Star Wars stickers and held boring tax documents in it. But I’d made a false back wall to keep Sara from stealing it. That combined with the ten K I had taken from the store gave me enough to buy some essentials.
We stopped by the new uber outdoor store on the way out of town. I grabbed a satellite tv, internet, and phone device which maxed out my credit cards. I bought a .270, a 30-06, and two twelve gauges with enough ammo to last us a while but not enough to call the authorities about. As well as fishing rods, a two thousand dollar tent with a shower, heater, and four rooms built in, along with clothes, survival gear, more food, and five thousand dollars on a couple of ATV’s and a trailer to pull them on. The sales girl must have thought she was winning the lottery. Apparently they worked on commission and I dropped over twenty-two thousand in less than an hour and a half. Most of that was the paperwork.
I almost fainted at the amount of money I threw around but I knew it wouldn’t matter when Nicole made her move. The dreams told me this world was about to become a pit of misery and people would work for and be fed by the Fetches. Economy was a word of the past, not the future. I spent what I had left on motorcycle off of craigslist. It would be faster to get in and out of town on and, sue me, I bought it because I wanted it.
We were up in the Snowy Ranges for five days before the news broke. We’d found an old campsite at an abandoned mine and set up shop. Three days after we had set up another family joined us. Zene’s family. They said it had been unintentional but her aunt had guided them here so I didn’t believe it for a second. Things had already begun to change. Bills being passed by Senators and Representatives that shouldn’t be working together. World leaders changing policies and generals moving troops around.
On the morning of the fifth day, the news was filled with revelations that those in power weren’t human. Nicole, on live TV, stepped out of her Fetch and declared Earth under her power. What followed couldn’t accurately be called a rebellion. They tried fight back, but camera crews documented as mobs took to the streets only to fall asleep as they marched. One man, a retired Gunnery Sergeant, didn’t let the lack of energy dissuade him. He pushed on towards the White House, rifle in hand ready to reclaim America. He withered to a frail old man as we watched. As he blew out his last breath his Fetch appeared before him, straightened, and took its place in the ruling class of Overlords.
By the time the sun was sinking towards the horizon the overthrow was complete and all signs of rebellion were gone. Early reports said millions dead, possibly hundreds of millions, their bodies turned to dust in the street. All those with a spark of resistance had been culled, their Fetches forced to move on to the next world.
The greater Fetches, as I now call them, gained control over the lesser Fetches through Nicole’s magic. The next three weeks were called the purge as the Overlords killed millions of the lesser Fetches while leaving their humans as cattle to be fed from. They also stopped new Fetches from entering this world without their permission. They couldn’t risk the world being over populated by Fetches and destroying the crops through overuse.
Zene’s two aunts, her sister, and she herself put up a ward around our camp. It kept Fetches out of the camp and with the separation I was able to kill theirs with minimal pain. I went out on several missions to bring back many of the other mystics I had visited months before. They were wandering the mountains looking for me as well, though they said they didn’t know that’s what they were doing. As the morning of the sixth day arrived our numbers had risen to around sixty people. There was enough food for about seven months and plenty of shelter to go around.
That morning as one of Zene’s cousins, a slip of a boy about the same age as Marissa, was out scouting for strays from the town he saw two men coming up the mountain. He couldn’t explain how but he said they just looked wrong. I followed him and found two fully manifested Fetches. Most humans had trouble telling a greater Fetch and human apart if the Fetch wore a human disguise. For me though, it was clear as day. And these two, they were powerful. I didn’t know the redheaded one but the other was Alric, Nicole’s personal bodyguard. Though his features were beginning to change, become more angular.
We headed back and I made the decision to leave. With the others’ Fetches dead and the camp not having a road to it, it was beyond unlikely that the attackers would be looking for random stragglers on such a direct path. And as far as Hyan knew, Fetches couldn’t find humans throu
gh any magical means. I confirmed that I was the target when I left the camp and headed further up the mountain. Their path bent to follow me.
But they didn’t know the mountain and I lost them in a rock field. With a hasty goodbye to Marissa I was off down the mountain on the bike. I didn’t go too fast, I wanted them to follow; I wanted to lead them away from Marissa and the others. They were on foot for most of the way; their car was at the bottom of the mountain. I stopped and filled up with gas from their tank while I waited for them to catch up.
The chase across America was far more orderly than I had expected, they didn’t break the speed limit. I don’t know why they cared about it, must be deep-seated conditioning to not draw attention to themselves. Once we were past Kansas City I took off like a bullet. The roads were empty, people confined to their homes or work and I held the speedometer as near to the hundred mile an hour mark as my nerves could handle. After a couple of hours and most of my gas I pulled over forty miles before St. Louis.
I filled up, nobody asked for money anymore, and took a hotel room. When I say took, I programmed my own keys and went up and locked the door. I moved the furniture against the door, propped the mattress in front of the