Her second-in-command, Sergeant Bryan Brent, was on his knees praying when she found him next to the CATVs in their garage. They were sturdy machines, designed by a Scandinavian firm for controlled, aggressive maneuvering on snow and ice. The main cabin looked vaguely like a flat-nosed semitruck, but with tank treads in place of wheels. Each pulled a trailer behind it; this also had tank treads. They were somewhat absurd looking, strangely squashed around their long axis. They had a machine gun on top, and a hatch for the gunner. Each could carry four people.
“Hey Sergeant Brent, get your guys together, we’ve got a mission!” she yelled to him as she ran over.
The young man stood slowly, shockingly so, eschatologically undisturbed and with a faraway look in his eye. He muttered, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
Marinakis cocked her head to the side. “What?”
“You wouldn’t understand. What’s up?”
She let the comment go and gave him a thirty second briefing, told him to grab up ten other guys, preferably people with named jobs, and get back to the garage in five minutes.
He took off running. She wondered at how differently he seemed to perceive the world. To her, humans themselves were the start, the birth of all possible futures, of all beginnings and ends. There was no means, no actions beyond that which existed in the world. And they were all being wiped away in one horrible, sudden present.
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