The Rain: The End by Marietta Standlee (good summer reads TXT) 📕

to keep up appearances, but nobody enjoyed the party, human or not, it was cut short, and without further fanfare, we left.

The other good part is our surviving pilots gave us a ride back to Earth. The Gorongiaths offered us the use of over a hundred ships. Not bad. Our pilots will be able to have more training and even teach others. In the meantime, we can arrange for a few accidents to keep more hidden until the Gorongiaths decide to recall their little fleet.

When we arrived a couple of weeks ago, we were overwhelmed by our friends' and family's welcome. It feels good being home, although I'm using the term home lightly here. Many soldiers, including Colin and I, don't have a home any longer. Fort Lewis has grown in our absence to the unbelievable number of over a half million residents.

President McFarland has not been idle in our absence, neither has the remaining military and militia: scouting troops were and are sent out all over the continental US and Canada to drum up any survivors they can find.

The result is an overrun Fort Lewis, and not just our base, other military installations all over the continent are filled to the brim. More humans than previously thought have survived. The challenge now is finding them and giving them new homes.

Which brings me back to our current predicament. Colin and I don't have a place to stay. Martin shares a small two-bedroom apartment with Blake and Maggie; the barracks burst out of the seams with soldiers and civilians. Whatever number of people was meant for a room has been tripled, or more. People have to share beds and sleep often in shifts.

The small town surrounding the Fort has been filled up as well. Tents popped up everywhere, campers are filled way over capacity, no resource has been left untapped. Some of our soldiers are actually sleeping inside the spaceships, clearing out in the morning so that the pilots can train.

It's not only an unsustainable situation; it's also a very dangerous one. Fences and makeshift walls have been erected, but none of those would be able to withstand a calculated mass attack by the maniacs or some of the larger lizards roaming the countryside.

But it's not only the outside dangers weighing on everybody's minds. With so many people streaming in, not all of them are upstanding citizens, and there is no way to eliminate criminals at this point until they're caught in the act. And even then, even after they are tossed out, they can just re-enter under a different name (it's not like they have to show passports) or move on to another camp.

Besides those worries, we have to consider hygiene. Diseases are a very distinct possibility. An outbreak of any sickness could be disastrous. Sanitary facilities are spread as thin as places to sleep. All things considered, we're sitting on a ticking bomb. It's not a question of if, but when something will happen.

For now, Colin and I found a small space inside an old broom closet, that we cleaned out. We sleep on sleeping bags, which, thankfully, due to the military facilities here are the only things in abundance.

Safety and places to sleep, however, are only part of the problem; a much bigger part is food. With nothing being produced, everything is running low or already on empty.

Hunting parties go out every day into the surrounding woods and search for game or even dinosaurs. Other scouting parties roam the surrounding towns, but they also have to travel further and further with each passing day. Blake told us the food scouting parties are now two days out.

This is where part of our mission comes into play. We're supposed to get a group together and start clearing out surrounding towns so that Blake can send civilians in to build fences and walls to make the available houses and apartments livable once again.

On a positive note, having so many civilians available gives us also plenty of hands to build fences and walls once the military clears out maniacs or any other threats lurking inside the small towns.

It's slow going though, and with winter at our doorstep, we'll be wishing for warmer temperatures soon. Thankfully a group of military and engineers were able to secure the power and even a nuclear plant in the area, and we have electricity, which means heat.

Come spring, we'll need to clear fields and start farming if we don't want to starve. One of the huge jet hangars on the base has been converted into a barn of all things. Whatever kind of livestock the scouts find is brought there, meticulously watched and protected.

Blake confided his soldiers have orders to shoot if anybody approaches without authorization. The livestock could feed a lot of people but only for a short period of time; that's why they are taking every precaution to keep the animals inside safe and healthy. My aunt is the chief vet on-site, which makes me happy and fills me with some nostalgia because not long ago, that was my dream.

The hope is to create a breeding program for the animals as soon as possible. The sooner we'll be able to substitute livestock for food to feed the growing population, the better off we'll be in the long run. But this plan is still a few months out. First the herds need to multiply. For right now, at least, we have milk and eggs, albeit only sparingly.

But tonight, we sit in Alfredo's overcrowded restaurant, at the table he always keeps empty for certain customers. It's rumored he has a list of people allowed to sit at that table, but nobody has seen it.

Sometimes I wonder if he just makes it up as he goes, but either way, I'm not complaining, as I'm greeted by a huge bear hug from the large, loud Italian who has been feeding us since the beginning. Which I still can't believe has only barely been nine months. It seems a lot