Read Age of Power 1: Legacy for Free Online

from Earth, Yama
showed up in the night sky as a bright moving light amongst the stars. The
world shuddered at the sight.
    And here, in
Riverlite, people leaving, went, and those passing through, passed. But after
days of watching all this, I found I needed some time outside. Mom was
reluctant though and it took some effort to convince her to let me go. By this
point, it wasn’t about the beer. She just didn’t want some random crazy person
hurting me. I think it was more an extension of the worry that we’d be
house-jacked by crazy people.
    I wasn’t worried
too much. Sitting where we were, not many people driving by would take much
notice of our home. We sat back from the edge of a cliff-side left over from
Ice Age glacial melt. The house’s isolation kept us safe from all but the most
determined thief. And nothing like that ever happened. But now, it was a
problem. Because of the isolation, I was going stir crazy. Television wasn’t
showing much more than repetitious scenes of panic and rioting. And even if I
had all the comics and video games in the world, they wouldn’t be enough to
distract me from what was just plain cabin fever.
    After a long
session of whining, I managed to get Mom to let me go out. She was still edgy,
but Dad stepped in to help me convince her. I think he wanted some time alone
with her. Once outside, I cut across the neighbor’s garden area and started
walking towards Brand’s house. I knew he wasn’t home. The Housemans had left
town and had not once gotten a hold of us. But I realized that I just wanted
something—anything—that reminded me that Brand and I were like brothers.
    I’d grown up
with him, and while it hurt that he and his family hadn’t told us they were
taking off, it didn’t end years of a friendship that saw as much as Brand and I
had. He once had a big brother. And I’d been there when they had reported that
Kyle had been killed in Iraq. I’d helped Brand through
many hard times after that, and he’d helped me through the times when Mom and
Dad argued over which parent I would live with during the summer and winter
months. They were surprised when I told them to let me decide that.
Surprisingly, they did, and both got roughly equal time with me. Hey, I like my
parents, even if they couldn’t handle living together. I never told them it was
Brand’s idea in the first place.
    I reflected upon
a lot of this as I headed to their home. I had to take the roads. While snow
had fallen since the coming of Yama, the cars and trucks had packed it down on
their way out of town. That was good, because the sidewalks still had heavy
drifts of snow that would have been too tiring to walk through.
    Spooky.   I had grown up in this area of town, and
sidewalks were usually clear of snow by the next day. And seeing the emptiness
of the homes sent a cold feeling down my spine that had nothing to do with the
weather. It could have been much worse, though.
    In the news, I
had watched riots and mobs actually destroying homes and businesses. One
extreme example was where some crazies had torched their entire town as they
left it behind. But nothing like that had happened in Riverlite. At least, not
from what I could see in the short distance I was walking.
    So imagine my
surprise when I got there and saw James Houseman, Brand’s father, pulling a box
full of canned food from their blue SUV.
    I said, “What
the hell?”
    James Houseman
was tall, with hair almost as white as Brands. But that was where the
resemblance ended. Brands dad was a Marine whose body still showed those years
of constant physical training. Brand wished he could have that kind of build,
but he took more after his mother’s lithe frame. And, because James Houseman
still played football with friends, and hunted annually, he kept in shape.
    I liked him. He
and Dad were friends. He moved here from Chicago because of Dad, and stayed
even after Dad went back to Chicago. That was good, because by then, I was
friends