October 31, 2020 - Somewhere in Utah

It was a helicopter that picked up Kat and her friends from the wilderness and took them to a hospital. Salidda held tightly to the golden dog, trembling, as the rotors chopped through the sky. They gave as little information as they could to their rescuers and eventually they were released from the hospital. Kat had to stay behind due to an infection in the animal wounds to her shoulders, but even she was out before too much longer.

November 3, 2020 - Nolan Acreage near Nevada, Iowa

No one in the Nolan household slept that night and as dawn broke over the farm, they sat around the kitchen table bleary eyed. Hadrian brought the coffee pot from the woodstove and poured everyone a fresh cup. Jes picked at her fingernails as she kept looking out the front window, waiting for the soldiers to return.

Gwendy was the first one to spot a soldier. She was out the door and down the stairs as soon as she saw him limping up the hill. “Martinez!” They helped him into the house. His helmet had been lost somewhere along the way and a long gash had dug its way through his close cropped dark hair. Dried blood stained that side of his face and speckled his camouflage jacket. A blood stained bandage was wrapped tightly around his right thigh and he was limping heavily on the limb.

He flopped back into the armchair they settled him in with a relieved groan. “I looked for the others before I headed back, but they probably all went to ground.” He swallowed heavily, “Can I have some water?”

Jes immediately went to the kitchen for a glass. Hadrian sat heavily on the loveseat next to Martinez. “We are glad that you have returned.” The orckin said. “Can you tell us what you saw?”

“I fought two elves.” He shook his head. “We are outclassed. Outgunned.” A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “They’re using bows and arrows for fuck’s sake. Fucking arrows.” He shook his head. “They dodge bullets.”

The room was silent for a moment as everyone digested that. Eventually, Rock spoke. “What do we do then?”

“The Azmaelan Empire is not to be taken lightly.” Hadrian said. “Ograkill has fought them for generations, pushing them to desperation. All that was weak in the Empire has been chipped away. What remains is mostly the best that they had to offer. These soldiers have fought for decades. Sometimes centuries.”

“Shit.” Rock said.

“We go.” Gwendy said, her voice sounded hollow. “What we need is the army, right?”

“We need more than soldiers.” Martinez protested. “We can’t bring our full force to bear in the Null Zone.”

Gwendy took a soft cloth and began cleaning the soldier’s head wound. He hissed out a breath and barely kept himself from pulling away. “I’m no nurse, but I can stitch this closed.”

“Go for it, Mrs. Nolan.” Martinez said.

“I’m going to clean it out first.” She said. “It’s going to hurt and we don’t have much for the pain.”

“Our medic has some. There’s more at camp, I think. I can pick some up later.” His voice shook despite his bravado.

He held up well, but by the time she had finished with the head wound, he was sweating and barely holding to consciousness. Gwendy set aside the dirty towels and sat down on the sofa to give him a few minutes before she treated his leg wound. It was then that the next soldiers arrived. There were three stumbling up the hill, carrying a fourth. One of them was the medic, a tall slender woman named Parker.

They settled the unconscious man on the long sofa under the window and Parker started checking over Martinez. “Not a bad job.” She said. “Not bad at all.”

All four of the newcomers were injured to some extent, but Parker had treated them in the field. Beyond looking exhausted, every soldier that had returned thus far looked defeated. Gwendy fed them, made them as comfortable as she could. Parker improved upon the battlefield healing she had done, tending each soldier in turn. A heavy pall hung over the farmhouse as the reality of their situation truly sank in on them.

It was hours later before anyone else arrived, the sun was already past its zenith and sinking slowly to the west. This time it was Captain James with five others. He was harrying the injured soldiers, pushing them beyond their limits. Jump was stumbling along at the front of the group, bearing the rifles of a half dozen soldiers. As she slowly climbed the steps to the porch, it was her face as much as anything that told the true tale of the conflict. Her brilliant green eyes were red-rimmed and hollow. Her expression was blank, empty of emotion on the surface but there was a tightness to her features that told of emotion barely held back.

Captain James was the last one to enter the house. The features of his face, on the other hand, were tight with fury. His voice was clipped and contained none of its usual cheerfulness. He looked over the soldiers and civilians gathered in the Nolan home. Including himself, there were fifteen of them. He shook his head without saying anything. The soldiers collapsed around the living room, some just laying flat out on the floor. A couple of the soldiers had been grievously injured, one was missing most of his left arm and another had most of his face bandaged in dirty cloth that was nearly black from blood. Parker immediately got to work. The Captain’s shoulders sagged for a moment before he squared them.

“We need reinforcements.” He said at last, breaking the tense silence.

“What do we do, sir?” One of the men asked.

“We take everyone here and we leave the Null Zone. Command needs to know what happened here. They need to send a real fighting force.” He looked to Hadrian, his expression grim. “Can they be negotiated with?”

Dark brows creased over red-brown eyes as the orckin considered the question. “Not historically. The Azmaelan Empire believes that it is their gods-gifted responsibility to rule those they consider lesser, or at least they always have. Faced with truly superior strength of arms?” He shrugged. “Perhaps they would negotiate, but I doubt it.” He grimaced and scratched at his black beard. “I seriously doubt it.”

The captain made a thoughtful sound as he looked around the room at his wounded soldiers. Almost half of them had died out there. The elves had been so much more than what they had expected. Fast enough to dodge bullets, strong enough to take more than one before they fell. There was so little a reconnaissance squad could do against their numbers. “We retreat then and reorganize. We don’t know what else is going on out there and they don’t really know what’s going on in here.” His brown eyes zeroed in on Jes’s hunched figure. “The truck that you rewired, have you tried rewiring anything else?”

Jes looked up, her scarred face filled with sadness. “I haven’t tried.”

“One truck isn’t enough to move us all and we need to move as quickly as possible. The longer they have to settle in the harder it’s going to be to expel them.” James said.

“It took days to do the first one.” She said.

Rock put one arm around her shoulder, pulling her close against his side. “We can hook up a trailer and carry everyone in the truck. It’s the simplest way to get us all out of her as soon as possible.”

Captain James nodded stiffly. “Lets pack up anything you four can’t leave behind and then head to the basecamp and get it packed up. We’re moving out today.”

November 4, 2020 - East Dubuque, Illinois

The National Guard had set up an outpost on the east side of the highway 20 bridge, not that anything beyond foot traffic had approached since the Null Zone spread this far. The big, dark truck was met by soldiers as they crossed the bridge. They were immediately shuffled off to be debriefed, separately. Hadrian in particular was cause for quite a stir.

Finally, the powers that be had real information coming out of the Null Zone. Whether they would make the best use of that information was yet to be seen, but they had it.

November 7, 2020 - National Forest, Southeast Texas

They had moved quickly once they were out of the hospital, renting a large SUV and heading for their campsite in Texas to retrieve their cars and the rest of their gear still packed inside. They stood in the empty campsite where it all started and Jet wasn’t the only one looking around almost smugly.

“And we thought this was roughing it.” Sophie said with a laugh.

There was a tension in the group that seemed to dissipate as they shared in the laughter. “Makes the Appalachian Trail seem almost easy after all that.” Kat admitted. Her shoulders were still heavily bandaged and she would need much more time to fully heal from their adventures.

Salidda looked around at the strangers apprehension clearly showing on her face. “I do not belong here.” She said at last.

All four of the Texans looked at her, their expressions of mirth fading as quickly as they had appeared. “You could make a life here, couldn’t you?” It was Kat who said it.

Salidda’s brown eyes looked toward the cars that were parked near the campsite. “Can you really just walk away from everything? Something is not right in my homeland and it has affected yours.”

“We’re not heroes, Salidda.” Cora protested. “We’ve seen enough heroes to know better.” Her hand was tense where it buried itself in Tillie’s soft fur.

“If not us, then who?” Salidda shot back.

Sophie stepped closer and put an arm around Cora’s shoulders. She didn’t answer the other woman’s challenge. She didn’t want to answer it, because Salidda was right. If they didn’t step up, who would?

“You can’t seriously be considering going back there.” Kat protested.

Jet’s rubbed Kat’s back gently, between the bandages. “We could be much more prepared, knowing more of what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“It’s dangerous.” Cora protested. “We’re finally safe again and you want to go back in there?”

Salidda heaved a sigh. “I can’t force you to come with me, but will you at least take me back to the Rift we came through?”

“We could carry plenty of supplies, even bring horses or something. Guns, modern bows.” Jet was trying to convince himself as much as everyone else. “Could make a big difference over there.”

“Maybe everything we’ve seen has something to do with that Null Zone in the midwest.” Sophie said. “I heard the military was involved in cordoning off the area. Maybe we should contact some of our old company and see if anyone knows anything?”

“Nothing wrong with doing some recon and preparing everything we can. Even if only Salidda is going back, the more she knows about the situation the less danger she’ll be in, right?”

“Right, so we’re not going back. We’re just investigating?” Kat’s voice was tentative.

“Right.” Jet agreed.

Sophie and Cora exchanged a glance. They both knew that none of them would let Salidda go alone.