helping in the motor pool, so I’d better get going. Have a fun day, Son, and don’t take shit from anyone.” He walked past me, and out the door he went. Brian collected his weapons from his room and followed Julie and I out the door, and outside to a sun just coming over the top of the east mountains.
“So, what job did you get Brian?” I enquired.
He took over the pushing duties of my chair from Julie. “Personal body-guard of a pompous ass Major, named Dan.”
I laughed and doubled over from the pain. “Oh my God, that hurts when I laugh. I order you to stop being a wise-ass, joke-cracking Sasquatch.”
“Sure, the minute you can get up and kick my ass, I will stop. Plus, I like seeing you in pain.” He chortled and kept pushing my chair down a serene, tree lined street. Life almost felt normal, no immediate danger of zombies or of Ridder trying to kill me.
“What about you hun? What are you doing?”
“I’m the aid to the same pompous ass that Brian is tasked to guard.” she quipped.
I tried my best Rodney Dangerfield voice. “I tell you, I get no respect.”
“That was a terrible impersonation of Robin Williams.” Brian said.
“That’s because it was Rodney Dangerfield.”
“Like I said, that was a terrible Robin Williams.”
I said nothing else as we came to a large two story, brick structure. So this is where I start my new job, a round of emotions took their turns, working their way through me. It started with panic, went to anger, then finally muted to excitement. I know that sounds weird for me to go from panic then anger, only to end in excitement, but you have to remember, I love working. I love being busy, I cannot be the guy who sits around and do nothing. I like being productive, and a part of the solutions. Brian pushed me up the ramp and we entered the lobby. Kuppers stood there dressed in new camouflaged BDUs. I felt set up, wearing these formal clothes. He had a small army of men and women standing behind him. As I entered, the staff came to attention and saluted. I moved my feet to the ground, gripped the arms of the wheel-chair, and pushed myself up. Brian and Julie tried to reach out and grab me to help, but I pushed them away. I stood as straight as I could and saluted back.
Kuppers cracked a smile as if to say, good job son. I dropped my salute and the staff surrounding Kuppers stepped forward to shake my hand. I eased myself back into the chair, hissing quietly to hide the pain it took to do that. I tried to remember names and titles as they gave them to me, but shortly, I became overwhelmed. I kept a smile though and shook everybody’s hands.
“Alright, that’s enough, everyone back to work. Major, follow me.” Kuppers swung on his heels and walked away. Expecting that I would follow.
Brian took the chair and pushed me quickly to catch up. We entered a large auditorium room, and Kuppers led us to a bank of computer stations. “You and your staff will work from here. If you need something, let me know. I have already uploaded all of the intel reports we have gathered. I need you to go through it, and give me an operational view of what’s going on. Oh, before I forget, we somehow wrested control of two satellites from Ridder. Alright I will leave you to it.” Kuppers patted my shoulder and headed down the stairs to the front of the room and sat at what I guessed was his station. Once he’d settled, a line of people appeared in front of him, with items that needed his attention.
I grabbed the desk and pulled my chair up to one of the work stations, locked my wheels, stretched, and opened a file on the desktop. One hundred and forty-five PDFs appeared. Brian took the station to my right and Julie, the station to my left. “Alright, this is how I want to do this. Let’s break down these reports into categories then rank them by priority and actionable content. We will need a couple of other analysts to help out. Julie, can you take control of getting the