Fire by Alan Rodgers

Author:Alan Rodgers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apocalypse, reanimation, nuclear war, world destruction, Revelation
Publisher: Chameleon Publishing Inc
Published: 2015-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

SOUTH KOREA

Bill saw the boy for the first time that evening at dinner.

He was an ordinary child. Happy and healthy; blond and blue-eyed and freckled. Charming the way a child can be without giving it any special effort — or even meaning to be.

None of that, of course, was what caught Bill’s eye.

The thing that caught his eye was the way the boy glowed like a cloud lit up with heat-lightning when Bill first set eyes on him, looking across the room as Major Carver led him in.

Bill blinked, surprised; did a double take, because that was the kind of thing he expected to see when his eyes were playing tricks on him. And sure enough, when he looked at the boy again — looked him in the eye good and slow and careful — he was nothing but a boy. With blond hair. And blue eyes. And freckles.

He’s touched, Bill thought. And wondered where the thought could have come from, because he sure didn’t know anything about being touched or anything like that. Fact was, he couldn’t even have said what the phrase meant. Let alone have thought it.

Touched, said the voice inside his head that was his own voice but couldn’t possibly be him. Said it all insistent like Bill ought to know what it meant.

Well, he didn’t know. And it was dinner time, and he was hungry, and by damn Bill was going to eat. Maybe not all that hungry, actually. But Bill Wallace was a man who liked his dinner.

So he sat at the table, and he smiled politely when Joey — or Joseph or whoever the hell he was now — introduced him to the boy and to Major Janet Carver’s other two assistants. One of those two was a civilian, like Joey; the other was a naval lieutenant who still looked a little wet behind the ears. Almost like he’d just managed to get himself out of Annapolis in the last couple of weeks. (Bill had never had an awful lot of respect for junior officers, even if they were officers. Sure, an airman had to follow their orders. And he had to treat ‘em like they were somebody special. But no one ever told Bill that he had to believe in a lieutenant who was ten years younger than he was.)

All of which was pretty darned peculiar, when you got right down to it. Here they were, officers, enlisted men, civilians. Even a child. And they were all sitting at the same table for dinner, like it was some kind of a family meal or something.

Weird.

When he’d sat through all the introducing he could possibly take, a corporal came in wheeling a meal cart. Handed out plates and glasses and trays, set a tall pitcher of iced tea in the center of the table. And took the one empty seat for himself. When he was done Joey introduced him as their supply clerk, which in English probably meant that he was the Major’s private secretary.

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