"Sure, a rift in time just happens to occur as we're fighting the minions of something that we were warned was going to try to control time? Give me a break, Myers."

"I'm the one that has to talk to the President, damn it. I need to give him more than conjecture. I need proof! This is the biggest thing that has ever happened."

"Hell, I'll talk to the Prez," Sam added helpfully. "He's a Texan. He'll understand."

Harbinger ignored his teammate. "Myers, there hasn't been an attack of trans-dimensional forces since '95. That's a rare enough occurrence as it is. It has to be connected."

"There was the Vanni Fucci incident in Dothan a while back," Julie offered.

"Isolated case," Harbinger said.

"I know that, and you know that. But I need to explain this all to people who don't know a damn thing about monsters. They were already prepared to go all the way to 'final option' to stop Lord Machado; what are they going to do now? Preemptively nuke the whole state into a sheet of glass?"

"That'll alienate the Southern vote for sure," Milo said.

I started to speak. I could tell them exactly what had happened. Julie kicked me in the shin. She shook her head in the negative.

The news continued to babble:

"-UN General Secretary has just called for a unilateral ban on time travel-"

"-I'm telling you, Ken, space aliens are behind this. I talked about it in my book, The Coming Gray Invasion, this is just phase one of their colonization-"

"-does not appear to be as much widespread panic on the other side of the world, since many people appeared to have slept through the disturbance-"

"-just in, there are reports of… this can't be right… vampire attacks in Alabama and Georgia? Vampires? Uh… eyewitnesses are reporting that the dead are walking? What is this shit?" The screen went blank, and then to a static display that said they were experiencing technical difficulties.

Myers smashed the screen with his boot. Sparks flew from the sides of the TV. "Enough! Get out of here! Go take care of your local outbreaks! Just get out of my headquarters!" he shrieked at us. His phone rang. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."His face blanched. Looking like a deer in the headlights, standing in the path of a truck with no brakes, he slowly answered it and listened, his eyes rolling back into his head. "Yes. I will hold for the President…" He covered the mouthpiece. "Lieutenant, get these civilians out of here!"

The National Guard soldiers herded us out of the tent. We stopped outside. The rain had thankfully stopped, leaving us with a pale overcast sky. Harbinger sighed in relief and pulled out a cigarette. He offered one to the soldiers, who gladly took him up on the offer.

"So, Mr. Harbinger, is it…? Is this really the end of the world? Demons and all that?" one of them asked.