by Siara Brandt
Feral Blood: Deadrise VIII
Siara Brandt
Copyright © 2020 Siara Brandt
Feral Blood: Deadrise VIII
First edition. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or undead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidently.
Printed in USA.
BOOKS BY SIARA BRANDT
A Restless Wind
Blood Oath: The Dragon’s Claw
Blood Scourge: Project Deadrise
Blood Storm: Deadrise II
Savage Blood: Deadrise III
Blood Reckoning: Deadrise IV
Blood Moon: Deadrise V
Blood Curse: Deadrise VI
Bloodlust: Deadrise VII
Feral Blood: Deadrise VIII
The Haunting of the Opera
Shadow of the Phantom
Man of Darkness
Phantom: The Awakening
Dark of Peace
Into Night
Kadar’s Quest: The Legend of Iamar
Render Silent
Stealing Cady
The Ashes and the Roses
The Belly Dancer and the Border Agent
The Patriot Remnant: Return to Freedom
The Shadow’s Fall
The Meadow and the Millpond
Tales from the Water Lily Pond
Tangled Vines
For my Sleeping Dragon
Chapter 1
Jes Rawlins stopped dead in his tracks.
“What the- ” he muttered under his breath, the unfinished curse cut short as he surveyed the devastation that lay all around him. Birds, it seemed like hundreds of them, littered the ground of the park in all directions. Not a single bird was moving. Every one of them lay motionless in the peaceful landscape of sunlight and shadow, their feathers ruffling slightly in the early morning breeze. He saw black feathers, iridescent feathers, gray feathers, even the russet feathers of a female cardinal. Beyond that, barely visible, were the distinctive blue markings of a large jay that was half hidden in the brush. Whatever had caused this clearly made no discrimination between the different species of birds.
There were no other signs of life, or death, in the park. At this hour, half past nine in the morning, there should be something, but the immaculately-manicured area was eerily devoid of any human presence or sounds. There wasn’t a bird song to be heard, either, Jes realized as he lifted his face and scanned the leafy canopy of tree tops. There was just the silence, ominous and oppressive as hell.
After Bron’s message he had gotten here as fast as he could. Bron had told him to drop whatever he was doing and come to Loeckler Park. They had worked together as FBI special agents for seven years now, had been friends longer than that, so Jes knew by the urgency in Bron’s message that whatever was going on here was bad. Really bad.
Sensing that someone was coming up behind him, Jes spun around. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past half hour,” he said, not taking his eyes off the man who was approaching him.
“You never could get any reception here. This place has always been a dead zone,” came the answer. Both men looked down at the ground at the same time, realizing the unintentional irony of the statement. At least Jes thought it was unintentional. Looking up, he saw that Bron’s granite-gray eyes were as serious as he had ever seen them. Oh, yeah, Jes thought, whatever this was, it was bad and, knowing Bron, he braced himself for whatever was coming.
“What’s going on, Bron?”
“The sky is falling,” came the cryptic answer.
Jes narrowed his gaze at his friend and said, “Come on, Bron, tell me what we’re looking at. Besides the obvious.”
“Results of a test,” Bron answered him.
“What kind of a test?”
“The kind that is about to bring the world as we know it to its knees.”
Not what he wanted to hear.
“So this test makes birds what? Just fall out of the sky?” Jes asked.
“Pretty much. It’ll take out ducks and geese in the water. Swans, too.”
Jes sent a quick glance in the direction of the pond, part of which was visible beyond a hill, but if there were dead birds there, he couldn’t see them from here. “Who’s behind it?” he asked, going automatically into interrogation mode. It was a knee-jerk reaction.
Bron didn’t answer out loud. He jerked his head in the direction of a big, sprawling white building in plain view of the park, one that rose up high above all the other ones. Jes squinted into the bright morning sunlight, read the company’s well-known name and logo emblazoned in bold black letters beside the entrance, and then his sweeping gaze noted the big antennas positioned in several visible, and some not-so-visible, locations, realizing that they formed a near-perfect ring around the entire park. Yeah, the pieces were starting to fit together, but he had to ask, “Anything else dead?”
“So far just the birds.”
So far. Another answer he didn’t want to hear.
“This isn’t the only place it’s happened,” Bron went on without being prompted. “They’ve been conducting the same tests all around the world, all with similar results. And, just like here, they do their damndest to cover it up as soon as it happens.”
A cover up. Dread-inspiring words when Bron spoke them.
As the bad feeling in his gut intensified, and because there had been rumors of cover ups there, too, Jes asked, “Does this have anything to do with the recent fires?”
There had been a lot of unexplained fires lately, the worst of them in the last two weeks. They were devastating fires that had some weird characteristics. Electromagnetic fires some were calling them. Sure, some firemen were speaking out about it, saying something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t enough to get most people’s attention even though the latest fire had engulfed almost all of the nearby town of Merchant so fast that hundreds of people had tragically lost their lives. Even that wasn’t a wake-up call. The fact that the fires were mostly going unreported or that the cause was still being listed as unknown was raising suspicions, at least for the thinking minority, those who were paying attention. During the past two weeks, as reports of fires began to circulate with more and more frequency, the powers that be must have decided that they had to give some kind of explanation to allay any fears or suspicions, so they were starting referring to them vaguely as terrorist attacks, but any idiot could figure out that it was just a smoke screen. For a - and he hated to even think the words – a cover up.
Yeah, just like 9/11 was blamed on terrorist attacks, except they had been the inside kind. Jes had been skeptical in the beginning. You didn’t want to believe something like that about your own government, but there was too much there to ignore. Way too much. When you spent any time at all looking into it, the pieces started falling quickly into place and they added up to a chilling picture. And then once the truth hit you with a wash of soul-wrenching reality you couldn’t go back and unlearn all the facts, no matter how sick they made you feel deep down inside. You just had to learn to live with it and be a little more cautious in believing what you were told.
Bron nodded soberly. “It has everything to do with the fires.” He looked around. “We don’t have much time. They’re already mobilizing to do damage control. They’ll seal off the area around the park until the birds are removed. They’re putting up a perimeter of mowing signs right now to keep people out while they clean up. The few people who might have seen someth
ing won’t have any idea what they were looking at and anybody raising an alarm will be called a conspiracy theorist. You know how it works. Most people will want to keep their head buried in the sand. They think it’s easier that way and for a while it is.”
Bron ran a hand across the dark stubble of beard that shadowed his cheeks and chin. “The more these bastards get away with this bullshit, the bolder they become. They’re already at a point where they think they can get away with anything because, hell, so far they have.”
Bron shook his head. “You’re not going to hear about this on any news station,” he went on. “If they think they have to report on it, they’ll be told what to say, probably that it’s some kind of mysterious new disease in the bird population. They already know people will buy that. News stations don’t report the news anymore because they have all sold us out. But you already know that. They spew propaganda to keep us believing what they want us to believe so we keep acting the way they want us to act, dumb and clueless like sheep milling around in a confused circle while the wolves are closing in. They keep us distracted and feed us controlled information to keep us frightened or to keep us stupid, whatever works for their sick agendas.”
Jes wasn’t going to argue there. Anyone thinking, rational person had already figured that out. Eventually you had to accept on some levels that that was kinda the way the world worked.
“This is no disease,” Bron said soberly. “Every one of those birds died at the same time. There isn’t a single bird here that is sick or in the process of dying. Something hit them hard and it hit them fast.”
“And you know what this something is.”
Of course Bron knew. That’s why they were both here.
“Yeah, I know and you’re probably already figuring it out yourself. We’re looking at the results of weaponized EMF’s.”
Bron wasn’t one to mince words. He said things right out. He always had, no matter what the consequences. Jes didn’t expect anything different here. But, damn. Those were the last words he wanted to hear.
“This new faster technology that they’re pushing is just weaponized microwaves,” Bron went on. “Which our military has been using for decades. They can use it for crowd control, for changing people’s emotions or making them sick, even for putting thoughts into people’s heads. They used it in Iraq which was a testing ground. If they want to, they can kill using the same technology. Make no mistake about it. It’s lethal. Absolutely one hundred percent lethal. The current society has been brainwashed into actually wanting what is going to kill them. And what they’re calling the latest technology is going to kill people once they get it fully implemented. Not years down the road, but months. And then when a good percentage of the population starts dropping like flies, the people behind this already have a plan in place. A new vaccine for a new disease. They’ll scare the shit out of people, which will make it easier to make it mandatory that everyone gets vaccinated.”
Bron paused and sighed heavily like he was suddenly very, very tired. “And there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it.”
It was like that sometimes. Both of them had seen enough to know that there were times in life when you couldn’t change what had happened or what was coming even though you knew how bad it was going to be. It was just reality. Sobering, inescapable reality.
“Lord knows, I wish there was something I could do to sound the alarm,” Bron went on. “But we know how well that goes over.”
“Hell, Bron, most of your own family’s barely speaking to you now. If you haven’t convinced them of any dangers by now, it’s because they don’t want to know. It’s like the saying goes, it’s a hell of a lot harder to convince people that they’ve been fooled than it is to fool them.”
“Even if they’re gonna die,” Bron said with a heavy drag of weariness in his voice.
“Even if they’re gonna die,” Jes echoed soberly, and then he went silent for a moment as he studied Bron’s face. “So how bad are we talking? Give me some kind of scenario.”
The lines about Bron’s mouth grew even more rigid with suppressed emotion. “The end of civilization as we know it,” he replied.
“That sounds damned grim,” Jes said, the sinking feeling in his gut taking a little deeper hold.
“Armageddon should sound grim.”
To some people, most people, Bron sounded like a crazy radical, but Jes knew that Bron had a track record of 100% accuracy when it came to predicting dire things to come. Or exposing cover ups.
Like 9/11. Jes hadn’t believed him at first, but he became a believer when he began to look into the evidence. It was hard to have your beliefs shaken so thoroughly, so deeply. It was hard to believe there could be people who were so diabolically evil. To think that the people who were supposed to be in charge of keeping you safe, the ones you had voted into office, were, in fact, nothing but cold-blooded murderers. Yeah, that shook your faith some. Then there was the moon landing hoax. When Jes realized the truth, even he felt like an idiot. But that was nothing like the time when Bron had told him that the earth was flat. Of all the dumb, naïve, completely irrational things Bron could have said, Jes had thought at the time that it was the dumbest. But that was before Jes had been challenged by Bron to do his own research. It turned out the naive one was Jes. Bron had been right. The truth had been right in front of their faces the whole time. It was brain-washing pure and simple everywhere you looked and you only started realizing you’d been conned once you looked with different eyes.
“Our military and the powers that be have been using microwaves against people around the world for a long time now,” Bron went on. “They have the capability to transmit the invisible, but deadly waves directly into the skulls of people and animals. And birds. It’s a sucker punch to our neuro systems and every other system that makes us human. And now they’re putting it in place so that every man woman and child right here in America won’t be able to escape it.” He squinted at the towers for a several narrow-eyed seconds. “And they’re doing it right under everyone’s noses. They’re selling it as the latest technology, something the people can’t live without, and people are buying into it. They have no idea what it’s going to cost them. It’s no coincidence that they are calling it the Beast. At least that’s what they were calling it. They’ve wised up and changed the name, but that doesn’t change how dangerous this is going to be. Not to mention, it’s complete and total surveillance. They’ll be aware of everything anyone does, anywhere at any time. We won’t be safe even in their own houses. And when they’re through,” Bron said soberly. “They will have built a giant, earth-sized microwave oven capable of microwaving every one of us.”
“How far up does this go?” Jes asked.
“That’s a good guess. Whoever they are, there’s something dark and twisted in their hearts. They don’t see things the same way we do. Human life, human suffering means nothing to them. But as long as man has walked the earth, there have always been cold-blooded, ruthless men whose greed will make them commit any crime.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“Because for the last year you’ve been halfway across the country. You had your life. I had mine. Having a family changes things,” he added in a ghost of a voice as a haunted look came into his eyes. “Now that you’re back, I was going to talk to you about it tonight, but I thought the birds would be a lot more convincing. Like they say, a picture paints a thousand words.”
It had been almost four years since Bron’s wife and only child had been killed in a car accident. Four years of him trying to piece together his broken life. At the same time, Jes had been coming to the end of his own brief, failed marriage which had been a mistake from beginning to end.
“I’m almost glad they’re not here now to go through what’s coming,” Bron said, emotion roughening his voice. “As for the rest of my family, I can’t make them hear inconvenient truths if they’ve decided to go on believing lies. I can’t count the times
they’ve called me a crazy conspiracy theorist, behind my back and to my face.”
Jes had known Bron too long to think that way. “So what do we do now?” he asked.
Bron was shaking his head again. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news and I’m all for looking for silver linings, but there is no way to stop this. It’s headed straight for us like an unstoppable freight train. We just have to keep hoping there are enough people out there who know what’s about to happen and that they’re getting prepared. The rest of them? They’ll go on believing anything that they’re told because they’re addicted to their smart technology. They want more and they want it faster. They’re going to want their vaccinations, too. They’ll be lining up to get their shots. Once they realize what’s happening, if they ever do, it’ll be too late. Because- ” He looked around at the unmoving birds. “I don’t have to tell you that they have the capability to crank this up to do anything. They’ve been working hard at suppressing information while they’ve been putting their plan into place. Thousands of studies on the dangers of this have been ignored or hidden. There’s a reason for that. What they want,” Bron paused a moment. “What they want is mindless zombies that can be easily controlled or killed off. And they’ve found the perfect way to do that, because the majority of people would rather die than unplug. And that’s just what is going to happen. They’ll die. In numbers that will stagger the senses. To say that it will be tragic is an understatement.”
Seeing the look on his friend’s face, Bron added, “I wish to God I could say that there is a bright side to this or that there is something we can do to change things, but there isn’t. Even my family members don’t want to listen to me, so I’ve quit talking. I feel guilty as hell about that, but I can’t force them to listen or to take measures to protect themselves. I can’t spend any more time wasting my breath when there are more important things to do.
