Stand Your Ground: A Post ApocalypticDystopian Survival Fiction Series (American Song Series) by Chris Pike

Author:Chris Pike [Pike, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Present Day

West of Houston

Well, that piqued everybody’s interest, even May who, as of last week, was more concerned about her outfit matching and the latest gossip at school than matters of National Security. She had been suppressing her tears and masking her pain, and that made me very proud. My little sister, putting on a brave face.

From the concerned expressions, everyone else was waiting on the president to explain exactly what had transpired and what was so important in the pod. I had studied the constitution in class, and learned about world history, but I wasn’t versed on the intricacies of foreign affairs. Neither could I grasp why another world power would inflict so much misery and indiscriminate death on innocent people.

President Charles Sayer gathered us around him. The engine room had enough seats for the conductor, the assistant conductor, and the engineer, and fortunately a few more. A plethora of dials and gauges decorated the front panel along with other stuff I had no idea what it was. It looked like a mini cockpit. There were two bunk beds on one wall, which May and I occupied. This was a freight train, not a passenger train, so there were no comforts of the latter.

“Travis was right,” President Sayer said. “It’s not the water and medical supplies we need. It’s the entire pod.” He paused to let that sink in. “The escape pod is state-of-the-art technology and design. In layman’s terms, it has all the bells and whistles, hula hoops, skipping rope, along with the entire playground. The technology is so new that no other government has it, but I can tell you they know about it, and they want it. The technology is to today what the atom bomb was to WWII, and it will change the face of war. The energy that propels the pod is not a combustible engine, like what a car, an airplane, or even this train uses. It’s something different. It’s as sci-fi as the warp drive is on the Starship Enterprise. The possibilities are endless.”

“If you don’t mind me asking a question, who discovered it?” Travis asked.

“You won’t believe this, but a high school kid from Michigan. One of my National Security advisors saw it on YouTube.”

“You gotta be kidding,” I said, completely flummoxed.

“I’m not. It was a science fair project. To top it off, he didn’t even get an A on the project. You’d be surprised at the crazy things kids come up with, and how the brilliance of their ideas isn’t understood or valued. The kid knew, and that’s why he put it on YouTube.”

“What prevented the kid or his family from selling the idea?” Travis asked.

President Sayer’s gaze dropped to the ground. “The entire family was killed in a car accident.”

The room went quiet, and we all looked around at each other. Tommy’s jaw dropped, and May, being as young as she was, gave me a quizzical look. She was too young to comprehend the president’s statement or its implications.

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