Thirty days.
The countdown has started, North America shivers under the shadow of a massive alien spacecraft, and humanity is hurtling toward an unknown future that lurks at the end of the timer. Somewhere, somehow, the heroes are making their plan...
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THE FREE REPUBLIC OF THE ROCKIES, AKA THE FOOTHILLS AUTONOMOUS STATE
NEAR TWIN BUTTE, ALBERTA, CANADA
AUGUST 8, 9:30 AM
Jim missed newspapers. He would never admit this to anyone in the Free Republic of the Rockies, of course. No one with sense trusted the media anymore. You'd have to be pretty foolish to believe anything a mainstream reporter said while they were all parroting the government line about the mysterious "craft" that supposedly popped out of nowhere over eastern North America nearly two weeks ago. No, Jim didn't trust the lamestream news. But privately, he had always thought that nothing could beat a good, old-fashioned newspaper to keep you occupied while you did your morning business in the outhouse.
Since newspapers didn't deliver to the Free Republic, or maybe at all anymore with the world going nuts, he grabbed the Bathroom Reader that Mabel had given him for his birthday. He'd turned sixty-five the very day the "craft" arrived. Jim wasn't superstitious. That mighty big coincidence didn't worry him. And he was most certainly not thinking about what might happen today, exactly thirteen days after he'd watched the obviously fake newsreels of the "craft" popping into the sky. The Chief had put out the call that it was time to secede. The alien hoax was the perfect distraction. No better time for them to set up their own nation.
He swung open the trailer door. It was a bright, hot morning, and he had to squint against the blazing sun as he jumped down to the ground. That's probably why he didn't notice the little brown piles in the field until one of them went squish under his left boot.
He lifted his foot and watched the gooey, greenish-brown substance plop back to the earth. "Aw, nuts." He'd stepped right in a cow patty.
He peered up the trampled track that wound between trailers and tents towards The Chief's dilapidated ranch house on the hill: cow patties. He looked down towards the narrow creek: more cow patties. It was cow patties as far as the eye could see. Real impressive patties, too—gloopy brown puddles as wide across as the serving dish Mabel only brought out for the turkey at Thanksgiving. If he turned his head just right, they looked a little like the footage of the "craft", only these were real. He could smell it. The grassy-rotting odour was almost a pleasant change from the lingering stink of unwashed bodies in the August heat. Too many people and too little water did that to a place, he had learned.
"Alright there, Jim?" Isabel waved from her camp chair, set up out front of her trailer across the way.
"Morning, Isabel." Jim tipped his crisp felt cowboy hat. He'd worn it every day he'd lived in the Free Republic, chuffed to finally get to prove to Mabel that it wasn't just a costume put on for his corporate Stampede parties. "You see these cows come through?"
