The worst part is the dread.
Everyone--everyone, not just those involved in the military--knows that the Great Cross is on its way, burning its way inevitably through the landscape.
Hence the evacuation. There are those who do not want to, who do not want to leave the only place for miles around where the soil will grow plants, where water is something like fresh, but staying behind requires hoping that the inevitable path of destruction does not hit you or anything you love.
Leaning on a makeshift building at the edge of the military zone is a man in normal clothes. The only sign that he isn't one of the hundreds of regular soldiers is the elaborate life support system covering his mouth, nose, and eyes, the thin tubes snaking down into his clothes.
It's that tubing, and his reputation, that make him notorious. You don't know his name, if he has one, but you do know what he's called.
Gun god.
