Free The War for Mare (The Fall of Man Book 3) by Jacqueline Druga

embarked on a journey
to change the world, to defeat the foe. I was fast finding out, my
foe was not the Ancients after all.

TWENTY-THREE – TANNER
     
    “I delivered game systems to restaurants,
bars, you name it,” Burt said. “That was my job. I liked it.”
    We sat around a
table in their main room. The air hockey game was popular and folks
had to write their name on a board to line up to play. It was
relaxing and I wasn’t antsy, although I couldn’t wait to get back
to Angeles City. Burt said they’d take us close. About a two hour
walk from there.
    Brea joined us at the table, though she said
she couldn’t stay too late. She was a pretty cool girl. I liked
her. I invited her to come to Angeles City with us and she
laughed.
    “We’re pretty happy here. I arrived here
when I was a kid.”
    I asked Burt, “How did you guys get this
place?”
    “Geez. Hard to remember what came first. But
I got here early on. I delivered games here. That’s how I knew it
existed. And the Ancients left us alone, Savages too. Pretty good
living.”
    “How do you get people from the Straits?”
Snake asked.
    “They wander to the shack above,” Burt
replied. “What did you do before becoming a soldier against the
Ancients?”
    Snake took a drink of his whiskey. “Rocket
scientist.”
    We all laughed.
    “Seriously,” Snake said. “I worked for NASA,
fifteen years. Hydraulics. If I hadn’t been working there I would
have never seen the satellite images that pushed me west.”
    Burt furrowed his brow. “But west was where
the war was and the virus missed.”
    “The virus had an immunity factor. We didn’t
escape it, we were immune. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ill
informed,” said Snake. “We saw them coming. Big black movements
that came out of nowhere.”
    “Saw what?” I asked.
    “Savages,” Snake said. “They couldn’t figure
out what it was until reports from the ground came in. They were
everywhere, black masses in every continent. The war story wasn’t
exactly true, it was smoke and mirrors to keep the public calm. We
actually thought we were gonna beat them. People were told to go
west because that was the only place that didn’t show large masses,
well, enough to be picked up by the space station. New Zealand is
pretty safe from everything, from what I heard.”
    “Wait. Wait. Wait.” I leaned into the table.
“The hall of history, that’s fake?”
    Snake shook his head. “No, those are real
clippings from real news stories. No one knew. It was ugly. Very
few saw the Savages invade cities.”
    “We see it all the time in Angeles,” I
said.
    “That’s nothing,” Snake scoffed. “Imagine a
wave of tar, thick and black, rolling in, that’s how many there
were. Ancients may not be able to reproduce with other Ancients,
but the Savages can multiply. They can turn people.”
    “So China didn’t nuke us?” Burt asked.
    Snake shook his head. “No, we did it to
ourselves, just like they did. It was the only way to defeat the
masses. They moved into a city and half of those they killed became
Savages. We were praying for an act of God, a great flood.
Firehouses were a good defense, busted them right up. But the flood
never came and the only way to save the human race was to force
people to migrate to areas with fewer Savages.”
    “Wow.” Burt swiped his hand down his face.
“I never knew that.”
    “If they said monsters were taking over
cities, how much panic would there be?” Snake said. “It was easier
this way. Then the Ancients emerged and that kept the Savages
partly out of the west. We’re gonna conquer the west ones, though.”
He gave a nod to me. “Tanner here found their base.”
    “What’s the plan?” Burt asked.
    “Don’t know yet,” I replied. “There’s too
many to go hand to hand. We need to draw them out in the day.”
    “Then use fire,” Snake added. “Burn them
down if we can find the resources.”
    “I see why you fight,” Burt said. “That’s a
lot