Invasion Day: An Oral History of the Veech War by Micah Gurley (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

and some sugar. Anyway, I was about to head out of town when I saw a neighbor of mine, a rancher, pull up with a truckload of horses. He stopped and told me he was gonna rent some horses cause nobody had gas. I remember thinking that was a hell of an idea.

Two days later, that same neighbor rides to my place on his horse and tells me they need more horses up in the city, so I get some of my grandsons, and we take a line of about twenty of the more gentle ones. We set up shop here after makin' a deal with the owner. I've been here ever since.

A few years into the war and this town looked like a genuine western town. Everybody was getting around by horse. It was a sight to see, I tell you... By that time, they were getting oil production back, but just a little. They didn't have the workforce cause of the war going on just to the south of us.

The gas mainly went to those good boys fightin', and the rest of us made do with these fine beasts. That lasted until three or four years after the war when oil finally started flowing again, but that didn't last too long either, cause them new alien planes started being built and they didn't need no oil. Course, it took a while for enough of them to get out, but that was the end of the horse HEYday. (Laughs.) You get it, boy? HAYday? Kids don't know what's funny anymore.

Do you own all the horses or just rent them?

I own 'bout sixty of 'em, but all mine are back at the ranch. My stock was mostly for breeding anyway, so I raised the horses, broke them for the city folk, and sold them in town. We had some problems with some idiot trying to breed 'em wrong, ended up with some lame and crippled horses. Damn fool! I'm not sure what happened to that boy… (Turns and winks.)

The horse breedin' started slow 'cause there weren't many people who knew how to keep or feed them. That's where most of my business came from. I couldn't take them horses not being cared for. At one time, I had four hundred horses in here. Now, I'm down to about twenty, and soon I'll close up shop and take these tired old bones back to the ranch.

Nowadays, nobody's breeding 'em anymore, which is just fine. We've got too many, but we've been placing them in parks and reserves and lettin' em go free. Nature will take care of everything else, not some government flunky who don't know nothin' 'bout nothin'.

Tyler Lopez

San Antonio, Texas

For fifteen years, Tyler Lopez was the lead anchor for CNT nightly news. Based out of Atlanta, CNT was destroyed by the Veech. Tyler Lopez survived by covering national debates at the time of the attack. After the attack, Tyler took a job at a medium-sized news program out of Orlando, Florida. Deciding to forgo an anchor job, he became a journalist reporting the news from the road. During and after the war, he produced several controversial segments that left a reeling country angered.

Two years after the war, Tyler wrote an op-ed column entitled, "The time for Peace is now."

The article pushed Americans too far, and he was promptly fired from his job as thousands of complaints poured in. Tyler refused to apologize for his article and even went on the offensive, criticizing the war effort and the creation of the TSC.

Tyler now lives on an orange farm, outside Tampa, in relative seclusion due to the many threats on his life.

Americans are irrational. Not just Americans but all of Western society. The Asians are a far more pragmatic people, and I think that article would have gone better over there. Whatever—it was the truth. We can't stand up to the Veech, and it's just a matter of time before they come back with so much firepower that we won't be able to stop them. Who knows why they haven't already?

I wrote the article to get people thinking, to get those morons in Washington to put the people first instead of their damned pride. Irrational. We won the war, for the moment at least. Congratulations! But do they always want to be fighting? Do they still want war? Haven't we bled enough? All I was saying is that we should open a dialogue with them. We don't have to make a deal if it's not right, but what can it hurt to talk about peace? Nothing! That's what. Honor! Justice! Revenge. They're idiots.

Am I angry at the Veech? Sure, but what am I? A child? It's better to accept the truth than throw a fit. They were just doing what they've always done. Can we blame them for that? We need to understand they're fighting for survival, too, and see if we can fit into their plans.

You mentioned in your article that you would be willing to live under Veech control.

I posed the question of whether we could survive under the Veech? Isn't it better to live under their control than die? And I mean die as in the death of our species. Everything and everyone. Do you want to be responsible for the human race dying?

Things change. We might have to bow down for a few years, but empires rise and fall all the time. We might get stronger under the Veech. We might one day have the Veech kneel to us, who knows? But at least there's a chance. A chance of surviving. I want to live, and I want our species to live. There are only two reasons why we're alive today. The first is because the Veech wanted slaves and our planet intact. They could have dropped rocks and erased all human life. The second is because the Jhi showed up. Well, they're fleet is gone now, so what happens when the Veech show up