"MARINE CORPS ORDERS ( Read more... )

“Hey. Hey, you ( Read more... )

You see a lot of things when you're a Marine Corps recruiter. You see all kinds of people come through your door, with all kinds of cockass expectations. Some of 'em you turn away on sight. Let's be honest, there's no way a fella with a guinea pig on his shoulder's gonna hack it in the Corps. Sometimes you get folks who lean way the hell the other ( Read more... )

There's a lot of beat-down used-up mining towns in West Virginia, or there used to be, before the Combine. Shephard's seen a good number of 'em. He's clear on the other side of the planet now, in another climate, in another kind of landscape altogether, but he can't help but look at the remains of Andamooka and see every mountain town that came out ( Read more... )

Dear Eleanor ( Read more... )

Dear Eleanor ( Read more... )

People say nature is quiet. It's not. Nature is loud, once you're in it. There's bugs, all kinds of 'em, everywhere, and there's just no such thing as a quiet bird, not really. Every leaf has its own sound, every critter that moves on four legs has its own footfall. The sound is there. You just have to walk away from the sounds of Man and put ( Read more... )

Greenbrier's ready for moving in, or as ready as it'll ever be without all the people there who're going to be living there to test the place out. When Pi popped in (at a suitably safe distance, of course), she had a message for him from Ms. Vance, and from Rowlesburg: come back with the boat, it's timeYou don't ignore messages like that, no sir. ( Read more... )

The door creaks open onto a field of mottled grey and white. It's been snowing in White Sulfur Springs, and for all the effort the handful of humans on the premises have been putting in, there's still snow virtually everywhere. It's just trampled and cracked and stained in places. Then again, so is what lies beneath it ( Read more... )

It's a hundred and fifty-some-odd miles from Rowlesburg to the White Sulfur Springs region, and even in the good old days that'd be a long drive. Not the straightest road in the world, after all, even back when it was a road and not a vaguely open area sort of half-reclaimed by trees and mudslides. This is what happens when your alien overlords don ( Read more... )