There was a downtown Fenton, but it was more just a few blocks and intersections that had a bunch of businesses, behind which there were tons of suburbs. I found myself at the building quickly enough. It shared a lot with the local police station, and for a Sunday this lot was jam packed. There were more 4x4s, rednecks, and truck-nuts than I was used to seeing in such a small lot. It normally took a half of a Walmart lot to have this level of redneckery. But this is very much the heart of my district; the northeast edge of good ole boy country. I parked and made my way through the mass of men from the late teens to late fifties. Yeah, some of these guys are a bit old to be covered by the activation of the unorganized militia. However, I will let them volunteer to help move residents. They are able bodied enough, and they are going to take up arms whether I include them or not. That was an awful sobering thought. I pushed that particular anxiety aside and went inside. Maggie was the easiest person to spot: she was the only one behind the counter. Maggie had a rough job, she was trying to answer the phones, place people on hold, and attempt to calm down the growing group of men who looked like it was definitely rabbit season. The sheer amount of camo, tactical vests, and hunting gear put the cabin to shame. It was not fun weaving my way through the crowd. I received more than my fair share of dirty looks, or maybe, all the dirty looks. I finally squeezed my way through to the front. I smiled at Maggie, the sweet but frazzled thirty something receptionist, “Hey Maggie, I’m the newly appointed Congressman Neal Cassland. You said you were have a problem down here.”

  The look on her face warred between horror at 22 year old me and relief at someone with the proper authority showing up. She looked like she didn’t know which it was. “You!?!” were the first words out of her mouth. I can’t blame her. I was young and looked completely unqualified. She wasn’t there yesterday when we had friends die and had to fight literal demons; she doesn’t know that I am at least a little battle tested.

  “Yes, my grandfather died yesterday afternoon from a heart attack. The Governor got the constitution amended to be able to appoint me to the role until an election can be held.” I said that an awful lot louder than I needed to, but the noise from all the angry folks here might calm down if they know an actual government representative is on hand. That was the hope at least.

  Everyone did quiet down, though more from momentary shock than anything else. Someone finally spoke up, a man in his late forties or early fifties, “You said you’re the representative for our district with the state. You look awfully young to do that.”

  “That’s a fair question and concern. I’m Neal Cassland, your new state representative. My father is U.S. congressman Jeff Cassland. My family have a vested interest in protecting our district. Fenton is the heart of my district. I know its hot outside, so maybe there is a room that will fit everyone, I can answer some questions, and we can all help each other and our country out.” I then turned to Maggie, “Maggie can you unlock the town hall. I’ll talk to all these fine folks in there.”

  “Mr. Cassland. I can’t let anyone openly carry weapons into the town hall.” It was then that I noticed that I was one of the only people with a holstered weapon. All the other holsters had been emptied by everyone else. Oops.

  “We’re going to make an exception on that. 2nd amendment is alive and well today.” I flashed Maggie a smile. She looked pissed, but more than a little bit scared. She took that anger with her, along with the keys, to unlock the town hall room. I followed her in and waited patiently leaning against the desks where the city council and the mayor would sit. I watched as men and women slowly filed into the room. The room started to get really full, there must have been well over a hundred people, and we quickly got to standing room only in the back. “Hey everyone, I’m newly appointed State Representative Neal Cassland. I have met several of you before. Many of you know my father U.S. Representative Jeff Cassland, or my recently deceased grandfather James Cassland, my predecessor to this position. While I might have things to say about what is going on out there, I would prefer to hear from some of you. Maybe we can resolve a few questions, and then get out there to helping our family, friends, and neighbors during this tumultuous time.” I pointed Brad Schulack, a man I had met many times from fishing with grandpa and dad.

  “Neal, thank you, and well, on behalf of all of us here, I think I can say everyone would love to offer you their prayers and condolences about your grandfather. He was one of the few really good politicians who really helped the district and encouraged funds, businesses, jobs, and prosperity into Fenton. So again, condolences, Son.” I think I lucked out that dad’s fishing buddy was here.

  “Now, all that aside, Neal there is a whole lot a crazy talk coming from the television, radio, and even the internets. I heard people saying that there are demons inside those there gateways. I even heard that the rest of the world is completely overrun with em.” Mr. Schulack was afraid. I had not heard him be fearful in all my life.

  “Mr. Schulack, it is true that there are demons and similar creatures coming through those portals. As of right now, any portals in our country are getting periodically peppered with rockets and missiles. That is delaying wholesale invasion. To my knowledge Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia are quite overrun with the demonic creatures. They have sent advanced forces as early as yesterday morning to keep our population close to the gates. I know that because I was in no less than 4 firefights on my way from grandpa’s cabin back to here.”

  Mr. schulack was a little stunned, as was the rest of the audience. I made his fears very manifest. “Son, then what chance do we have?”

  “We always have a chance. My friends and I have been learning what we can about the system that we find ourselves saddled with. This system is a gift though; it is how we are going to fight back. We’re going to fight until we secure our country and win back our planet. We won’t let this enemy defeat us, but it is going to take every able bodied man and woman to protect what we have. I know we are going to make sacrifices: some small while others great. The only promise I can make is that I am not going to abandon you to Jeff City. I’m not running from this fight.” That got some cheers. At least I didn’t go full cheesy movie speech. Note to self: never become a villain since I monologue too much as is.

  “But what about the monsters already here in our neighborhood?” someone blurted out. The growing audience started talking over each other.

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  I took a deep breath and attempted to mentally tap into both my public speaking and persuasion; not that I could simply channel skills on my status page, because that would be crazy talk. “Do you have sightings of demonic creatures in the Fenton area?” I spoke up loudly over the audience. I really needed an ability to project my voice over a crowd, that would be super useful moving forward. I tried lowering the volume by hand gestures, and eventually I was mostly successful, so I repeated myself, “Do you have sightings of demonic creatures in the Fenton area?”

  An overweight man who looked like he was trying far too hard to be geared up for the apocalypse spoke, “Yes, I killed a wolf headed man. He shot Brenda over there in the leg. These demons be here now. What are you going to do about them.” The crowd erupted in shouting about far too many things: demons, wolves, wolf headed demons, illegals, aliens, and worse. It took a hot minute until they calmed down again.

  I used that moment to check my messages. I got a response from the Colonel’s assistant. “You’re new rank is a field commission at Captain. Organize as many citizens as necessary to help protect remaining civilians.” That is all I needed.

  “Everyone, it isn’t about what I am going to do, but what we are doing. I will work with everyone here to get as many people organized into the national guard as I can. We will send out squads to scour the area to hunt down any demonic invaders.” There were murmurs of approval. “We need each other. We’re going to do what it takes to make us and our neighbors safe. Not everyone has training. Not everyone has a fighting spirit to them. Now is when we step up and help all of our neighbors. Let’s start by organizing you all into groups of six. Two such groups will make a squad. And we are going to need squads to searching down these groups of lupin, that’s the wolf headed demons race by the way. There may be other creatures like what I fought yesterday with them, and we’ll hunt down those as well.”

  From there the meeting turned into me setting up ten separate squads of twelve, and then letting them decide how to divide that in half. Some of the older guys I had to exclude, but I told them would be needed as both reserve and as folks to help train teens not yet ready war. Most of them didn’t take it great, but I didn’t really have much of a choice. Part of me knew this was going to be bad enough that I was going to be commanding squads of sixty year olds before long. All this took over an hour as people tried hard to be in squads with their friends. By the end there was at least one full squad of unclaimed folks. I got them sorted out and had to bring everyone back together. “Everyone, I need your attention because we need to know where these lupin sightings are.”

  “The one I shot was over off Forest Knoll Drive. My house sits towards the back of the neighborhood. On the other side of the woods is the Fenton City Park.” I saw the blown up map of Fenton on the wall of one side of the room. I went over marked it with an x.

  “Any others? It would be useful to know before we go out and do anything.”

  A young man rose his hand, “I think I saw one over by Treefield Road.”

  “Well, that’s good. We should split off 5 squads to each area. I want everyone to go carefully and go and search the woods in those areas. As far as taking them down combine fire from multiple shooters on them. Also, small caliber weapons don’t seem to overpower their natural damage resistance. It’s very freakish.”

  “Wait, what do you mean by ‘Natural Damage Resistance’?” someone asked while using actual air quotes for natural damage resistance.

  “Just that, their skin is tougher than ours. It probably resists almost all of a 9mm shot. Imagine as if its entire body was wrapped in Kevlar. You simply need much higher caliber bullets to penetrate successfully. We were using assault rifles with a combination of 5.56 millimeter and 7.62 millimeter. Our best shot with the larger caliber was able to one shot the little wolfmen as long as he got a head shot. However, lets just go for multiple rounds in the body. That should work just as well.” The dumbfounded looks I received for those words a bit overwhelming. I was afraid I broke their brains. I saw a bunch of them looking at their 9mm handguns and shaking their heads like the gun lost all its value. Fortunately, they quickly got over it. I got phone numbers for squad leaders so they could give me updates, and then I sent them out. There were already more people showing up to sign up.

  I made a beeline over to Maggie. “Maggie, sorry about earlier. I figured it was better to take control of the situation before the situation went bad.”

  “You just gave 120 men license to terrorize their neighbors.” She said that with far too much conviction to ignore.

  “I hope that is not the outcome. I’m trying to empower my constituents to hunt down demons in large groups. With the shelter in place orders and curfews there aren’t a lot of people outside. If we’re lucky, then we can flush out and kill all the lupin groups in our territory. We can go from there and build up defensive efforts for when the military stops wasting missiles on the portals.”

  “Lupin?”

  “that’s the name for the wolf headed creatures. My class gives me an ability called assess which lets me identify a targets race, class, and level. It has been at least somewhat useful.”

  “And why exactly do you think the military is wasting missiles by shooting them into the portals.”

  “All it is doing is delaying the inevitable. Any civilization that is advanced and powerful enough to open up thousands of interdimensional portals to our world is also sufficiently advanced enough to have countermeasures for all our missiles going through. Again, the missiles are merely delaying invasion. My job for the next few days is to get our people organized and as far from those portals as is reasonably possible.”

  “Hmm. You sound very confident that you are right. I’m not sure if that is a good thing.”

  “I hope I’m wrong and that the portals all close before we stop firing missiles. However, most of the federal government is relocating to Colorado Springs, Colorado. I think someone somewhere knows that the missiles are to delay the invasion.” I didn’t smile at her as that would probably be construed as condescending. Instead, I asked, “what kinds of calls are coming at this point?”

  “Tons of calls still coming in about this whole activation of the unorganized militia. I don’t get it myself. You’re either a civilian or your military. The National Guard is still just military.”

  “Ahh, I see the issue. This actually goes back to revolutionary war, and then later to the Second Amendment.”

  “Isn’t that just about the right to bear arms.”

  “That’s the second half of the that amendment. The whole thing is ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’ We are a citizen militia, every single male between the ages of seventeen and forty-five.”

  “So, I’m not part of the militia?”

  “Technically you shouldn’t be, but the wording by the governor was men and women. He broke historical precedent in saying that women could be called to duty. That’s the other part though. Him activating the unorganized militia simply means that he is making every eligible person an option to be called to service. However, this won’t come to a draft, as people will volunteer when their homes are being attacked.”

  “But the President invoked the Insurrection Act.”

  “That puts any state National guard and now unorganized militia under Federal orders. The president now technically runs all levels of the military. I still need to head next door to the police station so I can let them know they have been federalized under my command.”

  “Good luck with that. What do you want me to do with all the new people gathering about the militia?”

  “Send them into the big room I was in before. Let them know I will be in soon.” With that I called Nora to get an update.