Chapter One:
The Red Wolf cub yipped, the mother standing protectively behind it. Knight smiled, his green cloak blending in almost seamlessly, save for his head, which was not covered, and the front of him, which was uncovered for the fact that it was a hot, unusually hot day for the forests of what used to be South Carolina, in the former United States. Of course, some still knew it as such, but they left it to him, and the few of his kind that existed. He was a simple man, who lived in an abandoned mansion northeast of San Antonio, the last city south of Quebec. Humanity had abandoned much, but when they left, nature returned.
At one point in his life, he had worked for a conservationists group, and he saw no reason to stop when the world ended. His job was primarily to control populations of introduced species, restore habitats, and get a few struggling species back on their feet.
"Alright little guy, thats it." Knight said, having finished giving the wolf one last look over. He, and one of his partners, a Zachary Larsson, had spent the last seven months in the area, making sure nothing unexpected was occurring in the wolf population. It was, according to the standards of the end of the world, a lot of resources in one place, as there were only forty or so of their kind to cover all of Avairdian, or what had been Canada and America.
"Knight, you have anything?" A voice crackled from the earpiece he had in one ear as he scrawled his findings into the armband he wore. It was one of the few inventions to come out of the apocalypse, it was simply a computer that was able to wrap around one's arm, very useful for his kind, as it could translate their handwriting into words, and compile a database of species, analyse it, and, occasionally, come up with a solution that someone hadn't already thought of.
"Just a cub and his mother. Fathers probably out hunting, by the size of the den." He said, not caring explicitly whether or not the mic caught his words, and put them through to his partner.
"Good. By last count, our ground estimates are about a hundred more than the last arial ones. Probably got one or two thousand in the southern northeast, alone. You sure you still want to check on the southern populations?" Zach asked.
"I told you, something's wrong down there. They should have colonized Texas half a year ago, and I haven't seen any. Verona's meeting me in Georgia, we'll work from there." Knight said.
"You're calling in Nature for one of your hunches?" Zach said, chuckling. "Hope you are right, hate to see you dead."
"She called me in. I told you, something's wrong." Knight said. "And you do know she doesn't care if you call her by her old name, right?"
"Well, yes, but that's what you oldsters do." Zach said. "Every time I call her Verona near one of you, all I get are disapproving looks."
"Probably because you're one of the wide eyed youngsters who came out of Canada with no idea what we actually do. There is a reason we go around with assault rifles." Knight said, shifting his view from his wrist as he finished his entry and to the clearing a half mile back where the Blackberry had landed.
"You don't need my plane to get back, right?" He asked, cutting off whatever it was he was saying.
"It would be nice if you dropped me off at my base." He said.
"To bad, I have places to be." Knight said, tapping in a few commands, and watching as the ship rose, its vertical thrusters shifting to give it forward momentum. The thing was, as was most of the Order of LIfe's equipment, designed by one very special Romac. THat, at least, was the name she had given before she went down. She had held the eastern coast together through a massive invasion, using less than three hundred fighters and well placed spies, bombs, and ambushes to win, and drive the encroaching Lighters back to there god, with minimal damage to the natural ecosystems of the coast.
Of course, she died, but she was never one to let anything get in the way of her duty as head of the armed american forces, so she simply transferred her body to an android. Very odd at first, seeing it was barely human shaped, all silvery with hard edges, but after a while, they had gotten used to it, and then she decided that she could grow herself a new body, so she cloned some random girl, which actually happened to be a volunteer, and replaced most of the body with robotics. She was, in essence, still a robot, but she really hated to be called that, so no one mentioned it to her face. Of course, there were plenty of private debates, but as of right now, none of those matter.
"Next time," Another person said on the comn line, his line now that he had cut off Zach so he didn't have to listen to his complaints. "Warn me when you do something like that."
"Well, I assumed that someone with such a superior intellect would be ready for anything." He said, rolling my eyes, even though she was still a few hundred feet off.
"How, exactly, do you plan to get up here." Romac asked. "WHen there is no way in hell this brick is going to land down there?"
"Just because I made her better than you did doesn't mean you have to insult her." He said. "Just roll down the ladder, and I'll get up there."
    "Have fun." Romac said, tossing down the ladder, which, once it was unrolled, reached nearly fifty feet into the trees. Its bottom was still another fifty feet above my head.
"That might be a problem." he said, mostly to himself, but still getting a response from Romac.
"No, really? There's no further down I can get without coming all the way down with a few very loud noises, some fire, and quite possibly an explosion."
"That was some very unnecessary description." He said, already pulling himself up one of the nearby trees.
"Please don't tell me you're going to try and jump from that tree."
"Can't do that, doll." Knight said, grinning at her curses.
"I should just let you walk to our rendezvous." Romac said, just as Knight jumped, almost missing the rope, but getting a hold of the bottom rung.
"I've got a little problem here." Knight said, struggling to pull himself up.
"And?" Romac asked.
"Would you mind pulling up the ladder?"
"You know how this could have been avoided?"
"If I walked the half mile to where you were on the ground, yes, yes, can you just shut up and pull me up?"
"Eh." She said, but he could hear her moving on her end, and there was a slight jerk, and then another, as the rope, and he, started to move upward, slowly.
    "Well." Knight said, once he was standing inside the belly of the blackberry, which was in fact the only open space in the entire ship, the rest being taken up by the cockpit, two cots when the two of them were forced to sleep inside, or give the impression of sleeping in one case, and several crates filled with general supplies, and excessive amount of medical equipment, and several spare rifles.
"Off to the great old south." Knight proclaimed.
"Off to muggy air, high temperatures and a thousand bugs per square inch." ROmac said, with much less enthusiasm.
Still mia
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