“Brown bread!” He responded, and we hugged and pounded each other on the back so hard it knocked the wind out of me. Jesse Colter, from Arkansas and a proud son of the South, which is what he’d told me when I first met him in basic training. I called him ‘cornpone’ because that was, I think, something people ate in the South. ‘Brown bread’ was his retort, referring to a molasses-sweetened raisin-filled bread in a can that is a New England tradition. I had served him a slice once; some people heat it in the can in hot water, but I prefer to toast each slice. You cut off both ends of the can, and push the bread out, with the rings from the can visible on the bread.

I know. Trust me, it’s delicious.

“Or should I call you Barney now?" Jesse laughed.

Shit. The story had gotten around, I'd been teased all winter by the National Guard guys I was with. 'Barney and the Smurfs' is what people were calling me and the gang who captured the alien soldier. "Oh, man, does everyone know about that now?"

"With the internet kinda back up, the whole planet knows about it. Damn, man, good to see you!” Jesse said. “There’s a few of the 10th here, but nobody else from our squad yet.”

“You’re the first person from the 10th  I’ve seen.” I admitted, looking around for other familiar faces.

“How’d you get here?” Jesse asked, as he bent down to pick up the duffel bag he’d been carrying before he saw me.

“After Columbus Day, I was going to try to get back to Drum, but nobody had enough gas to make the trip. So, I hooked up with the local National Guard, asked if they knew what was going on. The Guard colonel commandeered me, they’d been Federalized anyway. I figured what the hell, they gave me a rifle, a helmet and food, right?" Orders officially assigning me to the Guard came by shortwave radio later. "So, I played soldier in Maine, helped harvest crops, guarded fuel and food convoys. Then I got the call to come here, so I hopped a train to Boston.” A freight train. Riding in a converted old boxcar, I'd felt like a hobo, even though I'd had a ticket from the US government.

“No, what I meant was, how’d y’all get here? You fly?”

“Oh, yeah, uh, they put us on a troop train from Boston, it took us five days to get to Miami. We flew in about two hours ago.” We'd flown on a United 767 that had seen better days.

Jesse nodded. “I took a train to Dallas, and sat around there three days waiting for a flight, the damn Air Force couldn’t scrape enough fuel together to gas up the plane. I hear some units are coming on ships, from New Orleans and Houston.”