The nineteen year-old Martial didn’t want to get out of his sleeping bag this morning. Not because he relived every day in the few dreams he had. No, it was because he dreaded the call on the DigiCom, and it would typically happen right before breakfast. He hated being the bearer of bad news and reporting another of Phoenix – another of his friends – had been swallowed by the black abyss. Sam just didn’t know if he had it in him anymore.

But, his state of mind didn’t matter. The DigiCom was already chirping. Chi-Town was calling.

“Good Morning, Sergeant,” came from the DC.

The communications device had video as well as audio, so the Colonel could see the young man. Sam stood at 6’1” with his barely adult frame all muscle and bone, compliments of military training and a hard few months. The Colonel looked into his soldier’s youthful eyes which showed more years than one so young should, while Sam’s just-longer-than-regulations-allowed hair flittered in the breeze.

“Delta-S-34, sir” Sam said to verify he was not presently being monitored by hostiles.

The campsite was like an oasis in a sea of fields. Located just outside of town, he’d taken refuge in a small wooded area bordering four corn fields. The season had just ended, and the decaying stalks sat in graveyard rows. The likelihood of a casual wanderer-by was nil. The likelihood of something more hostile was not.

“I rarely have to worry about that with you,” Colonel Riggs came back. “We noted your location on the Satellite; however, it’s Lieutenant Herrera’s location that has me worried.”

As it turned out, the military could track movements using the subdermal implants in their soldiers’ jaws. Supposedly, it was a happy “side-effect” and not at all planned by the military. Sam found this about as believable as Big Foot.

“Sir, I regret to report Lt. Herrera was KIA.” Sam did a good job of not looking affected. Gunny, his mentor, would be proud. “I moved his remains to a more suitable location, sir.”

The Colonel stopped him there.

“Aww…damn it Harry…”

Riggs was surprisingly attached to his soldiers. Some brass sat back and thought of their men as numbers or pieces in a chess game they could never hope to win. Riggs, while he typically didn’t engage in frontline offensives, felt every death. Sam thought of him as a good man with a horrible job and even worse decisions to make. Even though grieving Harry’s loss himself, Sam felt more sympathy for the Colonel.

Riggs collected himself and asked, “Was it Rawley’s men?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Rawley – a puppet of the regime that had long since vacated the area.

“Any HMDs on him?”

“No, sir, he was stripped of all equipment and weapons, sir,” Sam replied.

“I’ll send you the last known coordinates of his DP once you finish your report.”

HMDs – Hand Me Downs were what they referred to as their most sensitive and hard to come by equipment. When scouting hostile territory, Martials chose a secluded location to stash the HMDs they did not expect to need at the time. This was a Drop Point. Harry’s last check-in showed he was only doing recon and did not expect to meet much resistance. He was waiting for Sam to join him before his next planned engagement, so chances were good most of his equipment was still out there.

After a long pause the Colonel continued, “You know I hate it when you start and finish all your sentences with sir.” It was a statement, not a question. Colonel Riggs was visibly punching in information on his side looking something up. “I can have Jeff and Duncan there in about four days.”

“Sir, no need,” Sam countered very coolly. “According to my intel, only 36 hostiles remain of roughly 102, sir.”

“That correlates closely to the number of Officers Harry dispatched, but Sergeant…Zeek…” Riggs decided against his own argument. He knew Sam was right. “Do you have any civi assistance? Has Collins finally stepped up with some support?”

“I’m sending you a handful of names for the deputies and officials who will be taking over once I’m finished. Collins included, sir.”

“That would be a no then.” Riggs was looking over the information Sam submitted as he replied. “Do you think you can handle Harry’s gear?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Sam advised thinking of Harry’s unique H2O Carbine, which likely awaited him at the DP. “Just add water, sir.”

It was day 1089. At least that’s what Ezekiel “Zeek” Samuels wrote in his journal as he catalogued the day’s events thus far. “Sam” as he preferred to be called. The young man scoffed a little at his moniker. He didn’t know many people with multiple nicknames. It made him wonder if he’d go schizophrenic someday.

On all counts, it was an odd thing for Sam to bunker himself into the third floor of an old brick building with a bookstore on the bottom floor. The symmetry alone was too good for Regional Administrator Rawley. And, painting himself as an assassin, although it could be argued to fit the definition of the word, didn’t ring true to Sam. This was not an assassination. Assassinations were for political reasons. This was upholding the law. Therefore, it fell under a different definition altogether.

It was an execution.

“You have to help me,” the Officer in the corner gasped with what might be his last breath. Sam thought this an odd statement from a man who would have shot him in the back.

The nineteen year-old soldier had been setting up a perch in the building across from the old city hall/police station, now an Officers Station/Administrator’s Office, when the intruder happened to find the backdoor ajar - a sloppy error Sam would never make again.

“I do?” he replied with a puzzled face.

“Yes,” said the man. “You’re a Marshal. You have to help people.”

“I help people all the time,” the young soldier told the bleeding Officer while continuing his entry. “Usually, I help them stay alive, while people like you make it harder.”

The man obviously thought he had found a run of the mill thief. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have walked into the room so carelessly. One hand removed the Officer’s gun, then wrapped around the Officer’s mouth, while the other hand plunged a knife into his chest. Sam should have ended the intruder’s life then and there, but for reasons unknown to him, he did not. Instead, he dropped the man into a shadowy corner of the all but vacant room.

The Officer’s wheezing reverberated from the darkness like a saw grating on Sam’s spine. But, the man could not scream nor could he run. So, he posed no threat, and therefore, there was no immediate need to kill him.

“What’s your name?” Sam finally asked the Officer. He did so to partially calm the man and partially so he could refer to him as something other than “Officer Pin-Cushion” in his journal.

“Creedence,” the man coughed out. “Creedence Clearwater.”

Sam put his pen down and looked upon the Officer’s slumped body.

“You’re kidding, right?” The name’s reference was not lost on him. “What’s your mom’s maiden name? Revival?” He uplinked his Digital Communications Display, or DigiCom, as the man responded. The device was about the size of Sam’s hand, but it was small and durable enough that it could be clipped to a belt or shoved in a cargo pocket. Currently, he had it propped up on its metallic legs, resting on the table beside him.

“No. That’s my sister’s name,” the Officer replied. His eyes searched the young man as if looking for help. “God’s honest truth.”

Sam thumbed through the names linked to the local Administrator’s worker bees. It listed various men, women, and children who signed up to become Officers, stayed on to become puppets, and then held on when Westlake cut ties and put all his “administrative skills” into governing the Sovereign States.

“Please, Mr. Marshal. You can take me to jail. I don’t care. I just need a doctor.”

Sam found the entry.

Name: Clearwater, C.

Known Relation: Clearwater, R.

Creedence wasn’t lying.

“Well, you see….” Sam said, “that’s the problem right there.”

Clearwater shook violently as he coughed again, this one much bloodier than the last. The cough would eventually attract attention. Sam was being left with little choice. He shut his DC off, as if he didn’t, it would somehow bear witness. Slowly, he ambled to Creedence and knelt down to look him in the eyes.

“An officer of the law is obligated to help his fellow man,” Sam said as he placed his hands on the wounded Officer’s shoulders. “However, I’m not that kind of Marshal.”

His hands moved before Creedence ever saw them. With one quick, clean jerk, Officer Clearwater was out of his misery, and the young soldier was once again alone. Guilt rarely entered Sam’s mind these days, but the man evoked the Law Martial name as if they were knights of the round. He repaid the Officer’s respect with a broken neck. It was the quickest and quietest method to finish the man’s agony. However, Sam could not help wonder: Could he have lived? Could Sam have tended to the man’s wound, gagged him, and gotten medical attention after the assault?

Law Martials, as they were dubbed – not technically named, were just soldiers on a mission. They weren’t cops. They weren’t even Military Police. Heck, the name Law Martial was a term the press came up with as a not-so-subtle flip of the words “Martial Law.” What was the government supposed to do when it was suddenly fighting a war on three fronts? It couldn’t afford to pull the National Guard out of the most populated cities. It couldn’t pull the Army from the Southern border or DFL - Dome Front Line. The Air Force and Navy couldn’t exactly tackle the local riffraff in Jeffersonville, and the Marines – well, there was no way they were leaving the DFL. So, it was left to a handful of soldiers to travel the free states, each assigned a different region to set-up insurgencies or re-take on their own. And, in Sam’s experience, it was typically the latter.

When he had broken into the bookstore at about 0500, a full 90 minutes before his encounter with Creedence, the young Martial had used the scope on Harry’s BR-11 sniper rifle, or “Bring-It” as his friend called it, to search for any heat signatures in the building. The owner was nowhere to be found, and no one came to open the store that morning. The books were dusty but not so dusty to indicate no one took care of the store at all. Either the shop had closed recently, or the owner hadn’t shown up today.

Maybe Officer Clearwater was the shop’s owner. It would explain why he’d have come there. Then again, Creedence didn’t look like the reading sort.

Actually, no. It had been longer. Sam didn’t start his log until sometime after signing up, and he would miss days here and there. The watch on his arm could give him the date, and he could do the math; however, not knowing how long he’d lived in a world of nightmares was for the better.

Sam felt as though he should have known the exact date it happened. He figured somebody somewhere must have taken the time to write down, “October 4th, the day modern society died.” Sam was certain it merited a note.

When the Domes first appeared, or at least the North American Dome, no one panicked. Sam couldn’t speak for the whole world, although it was his understanding the rest of the world reacted similarly. Everyone was too shocked to panic. People just stopped whatever they were doing and watched the news unfurl.

Rippling, golden Domes appeared on every major continent. There was no grand invasion. No earthquakes or moonships. No demands or warnings. In the blink of an eye, they simply materialized.

The North American Dome encompassed nearly the entire western United States and most of the Midwest. Only 100 mile slivers of California’s coast escaped, Texas was split in half, as was Arkansas and the Michigan Peninsula. Missouri and Illinois were mostly inside. And, it literally split Chicago in two.

Then, there was Canada and Mexico. Mexico got off easy with the Dome only reaching in a few hundred miles. Canada though, poor Canada wasn’t any better off than the U.S. Ontario only lost a couple of hundred miles, but British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan were cut in two. Their losses seemed reasonable until you realized the majority of their most populated cities resided within the Dome.

Needless to say, Canada’s economy was crushed, and the U.S. wasn’t far behind. Petroleum reserves ran low and importing oil became too expensive to consider. The United States had virtually no domestic oil to rely upon, half their workforce was enclosed in the Dome, and its “allies” were too busy with their own Domes to lend the U.S. aid.

Current time on deck was 0712. According to Harry’s logs, this was when Rawley typically showed up for work. Sam’s blue eyes searched the street for any sign of his quarry. About this time, most civilians were scurrying off to the local solar plant, many on bicycles or in electric carts. A couple drove by in small solar cars loaded to capacity and then some. Sam was surprised when a hydrogen scooter drove by. He thought the smaller communities hadn’t gotten those yet.

Looking down the street, Sam snorted. His chosen nest was the tallest building on the block, and it was only three stories tall. He questioned if, in fact, it might be the tallest building in the whole little burg. It made the young man wonder if the store’s owner recently closed down and went to work at the plant with everyone else. Monetarily speaking, it made sense. The entire region’s, if not entire country’s, economy now revolved around solar power, as well as hydrogen to a growing extent. Since the Domes, small shops didn’t pay the bills unless you had a second income.

The Domes...Sam couldn’t understand why he didn’t hate them. Not as if he would ever discuss the issue.

To say their appearance was unprecedented was to say you’d never seen a dog with wings. The differing footage, which rolled into the news stations and onto the internet, all shared one similar item. The camera’s original subject was interchangeable, but what appeared in the subjects’ place was not. One minute a camera was recording a skyline, a building, a car, etc., and the next a golden Dome which undulated like water.

The desperate, more so than the faithful, tended to believe the Domes symbolized the Rapture upon us. Before long, these holydisciples took to skies in whatever craft they could find. Robed in white and hovering above the Domes furthest edges, they hurled themselves from the heavens, disregarding whatever hell may lie below. The golden walls absorbed them, but no one knew their real fates, or if they found the peace they so urgently desired.

The only thing, or things really, which kept the economy from completely tanking and sending everyone out into the streets, was the sudden emergence of the Solar and Hydrogen industries. Conspiracy theorists and some more respectable news mediums thought this was a little too convenient. The real story, as Sam understood it, was most of the energy consortiums were already sitting on the patents for these technologies and had been perfecting those resources for years. They hadn’t rolled them out because the real money was in oil. However, when their entire fortunes, not to mention the world’s economy, hung in the balance, they stepped up and essentially saved the planet.