A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  “So what have we detected so far, Detective?” Sharon asked, one hand on the wheel, the other punctuating the air. “We don’t seem to be collecting many marbles.”

  Nail pulled back from her sweeping hand. “Are you Jewish or Italian?”

  “Jews talk with their hands too.”

  “Huh!” he grunted. “All right, so we’re not on the fast track.”

  “What do you call a fast track? I’ve been shot at, ended up in a strange man’s apartment with mice, became an accessory to police brutality by threatening to run a fence post up a witness’ posterior, got in a brawl at a cemetery, and now we’re being chased by the federal government.”

  “I live a dull life.”

  He was trying to work it all out in his mind. Nothing made sense.

  “Sparks got himself off’d in a cemetery and the feds laid the rap on the Defenders,” he mused. “Rupert gets his marching orders over the phone so they can lay the blame on Rightwing fanatics when they were actually after Jerry Baer...”

  Sharon lifted an eyebrow at him. “They?”

  He flung his arms wide in frustration. “So I’m beginning to sound like I should be wearing a tinfoil hat. Kimbrell is up to his ass in all this. I’m willing to wager he gets his marching orders same as Rupert. Do you realize how wacky this sounds?”

  “Like a man starting to wake up?”

  “For God’s sake, Sharon, we’re talking government conspiracy here. It happens in Venezuela. Maybe in the Ukraine. But not here in the land of mom’s apple pie.”

  “One of the things Jerry and I had to contend with on his program,” she said, “was to understand that people in government are no different from anyone else when it comes to what they’re capable of doing. They can be spiteful, nasty and deceitful. Because they think of themselves as The Enlightened doesn’t mean they are enlightened. The only difference between a thief in Congress or the White House and a thief on the streets is that the latter snatches your purse while the former snatches your freedom.”

  Nail shook his head. His cell phone rang. He dug it from the pocket of his jacket and checked the number on the screen. Big C.

  “You all right, C?”

  “Man, you about took my head clean off.”

  “I’m passive-aggressive.”

  “James, where can I find you?”

  “The Safe House?”

  “That’s the only thing my ex-wife didn’t take. Her lawyers couldn’t find it.”

  “Meet us there?”

  “It be later. I’m with Judy Sparks. Tell you about it when I see you. Watch out for black helicopters. They starting to circle.”

  Open Letter to the Tea Party

  (CPI)—“Your kind—mostly white folks beholden to an absurd nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like—are dying. We just have to be patient and wait for your hearts to stop beating...”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Washington, D.C.

  President of The United States Patrick Wayne Anastos was working up the troops from the podium at the Kellogg Conference Center. Arrogant chin tilted up and out, looking down his long nose, the tell-tale wag of his head from left teleprompter to right teleprompter pacing his delivery. More than three hundred AmeriCorps platoon and company commanders from all over the nation stood in ranks and formations across one side of the convention center. A mass of ACOA members and union leaders and representatives filled the rest of the coliseum, cheering and whistling, punching fists in the air and chanting, “The One! The One!”

  The President’s rich baritone voice probed and soothed, stimulated and caressed.

  “Workers of the world unite isn’t, uh, just a slogan anymore. The system we have now is broken down and, uh, we can see it everywhere, from the oil spill in the Gulf and the arrogance on Wall Street to the pollution of our atmosphere and the, uh, desperate conditions of our citizens in obtaining equal social and economic justice. The free market system is not working, it is not going to work. Americans just haven’t, uh, recognized it yet. So we need to create a new one for them...”

  His words echoed from loudspeakers all over the convention center. Several hundred throats picked up his energy and threw it back at him. “The One! The One! The One!”

  “I am absolutely certain that generations from now,” the President resumed, “we will be able to look back and, uh, tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was, uh, the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake our world. We are the ones the world has been waiting for.”

  “The One! The One!”

  Fists clinched, The One bent down into his mike. “Fired up!” he shouted into it to make the sound of his voice reverberate and echo.

  “Yeh! Yeh!” thundered the response. His AmeriCorps disciples wore green AmeriCorps T-shirts, black ball caps and black trousers bloused into military combat boots. They stamped their feet in the cadence of troops marching through a conquered city.

  The President’s voice whipped his audience into a frenzy of excitement. “Ready to go!”

  “Yeh! Yeh! Yeh!”

  “Fired up!”

  “Yeh! Yeh!”

  “They can’t stop us now!”

  “The One! The One! Yeah-h-h-h!”

  Government to Stop Conspiracy Theories

  (Washington)—Speaker of the House Barbara Teague (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham (D-Ill) promise to introduce a bill to stop conspiracy theories against the government. They say this can be accomplished by legally banning the transmission of conspiracy theories through the internet, TV, radio, print, or by face to face conversations. The bill will also provide for cognitive infiltration of suspected conspiracy-oriented groups and for recruiting private parties to engage in counter-speech...

  Chapter Twenty

  Washington, D.C.

  Dennis Trout was still on a high after the meeting in which he was finally accepted by his brother-in-law’s political insiders. He and Wiedersham returned to the senator’s lavish office to discuss details of the meeting and the role Trout was to play in events currently unfolding. Wiedersham settled into a long and windy monologue on how fortunate Trout was to have a mentor like him. Liz, who ran the outer office, hurried in and handed the senator a sealed manila envelope. She was buxom and attractive in a matronly, premature gray sort of way. Trout sometimes wondered if she and Wiedersham might not be playing hanky-panky, as Judy would put it. Wiedersham’s long-fled ex-wife must have suspected the same thing; Liz’ name had come up in the divorce proceedings.

  “A messenger from the White House brought this over,” Liz said and hurried back out, closing the door.

  Wiedersham extracted a magazine from the envelope. On the cover appeared a depiction of President Anastos riding a donkey over a cliff. Trout recognized the magazine banner: Truth. Jerry Baer’s rag.

  Wiedersham read the note accompanying the periodical and turned to a page marked with a Stickem. He looked up, thought about it, and then handed the note to his chief-of-staff. It was a memo from White House Press Secretary Dewey Gubbins.

  Joe. P.14 by Sharon Lowenthal. Zenergy News is leading with a similar story tonight on prime time. The President is uncomfortable. He wants to know what’s going on with the FAD Bill. D.

  “Call over there and tell that fuckhead Gubbins I’m on it,” Wiedersham instructed Trout.

  While Trout was on the phone with Gubbins, Wiedersham read the designated piece in Truth, tossed the magazine open on his desk in disgust, and got on the other line. Trout hung up his phone and edged over to the Louis XIV desk and read the headline: One Year Ago. When Wiedersham didn’t object, Trout picked up the copy and scanned the article.

  “She’s not going to let Baer die quietly,” Wiedersham was saying to someone on the phone. “There’s speculation that she’s taking up Baer’s mantel. We can’t afford
to take shit from her any more than we could from Baer. They created the fucking Tea Baggers and now they have people organizing all over the country to make a run for the mid-term elections. That can really gum up the machinery. Do you know where she is?”

  Trout overheard only one side of the conversation, but he assumed Wiedersham was laying into Vladimir Gonzalez, head of Homeland Security.

  “How do you know she’s still in Oklahoma? Who the fuck is Kimbrell...? Yeah? What cop...? We don’t give a rat’s ass about some Podunk cop or his dead daughter. You tell Kimbrell what the President wants is for him to find that woman.”

  One Year Ago

  by Sharon Lowenthal

  (Truth Magazine)

  Jerry Baer was savagely murdered this week. He was not “collateral damage” in a Rightwing attack on innocent ACOA and PEIU demonstrators, as the mainstream media claims. He was a deliberate target by entities determined to silence the Thomas Paine of our generation. His was undoubtedly the most influential voice in America in the resistance to One World Government. The Tea Party and other similar grass roots movements were largely mentored, inspired and created by Jerry Baer. He predicted his own death just days before he died in a hail of rifle fire in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had too much influence and had to be stopped.

  One year ago, Jerry said you would not recognize this country by now. Can you believe what has happened in this single year?

  • That government has taken over our automobile manufacturers and many of our banks and financial institutions?

  • That government through the oil spill crisis is moving to nationalize the energy industry and enact a massive Cap and Trade climate bill that will destroy the economy?

  • That top-level advisors in the White House are avowed communists?

  • That the White House’s most frequent visitor is a labor union president who has repeatedly exhorted, “Workers of the world unite?”

  • That the U.S. President himself said that now is the time to establish a One World Government?

  • That there is a movement led by our own government to end the dollar as the world’s reserve currency?

  • That, through expanded eminent domain laws, government can seize your house and business in the public interest and give them to private entities?

  • That the President’s science czar has called for sterilization of people through drinking water and forced abortions?

  • That there is a proposed FAD bill for government to take over journalism?

  • That a multi-trillion dollar stimulus spending bill written by community organizers and union bosses instead of Congress will put the country into such debt that it may go bankrupt?

  • That Americans peaceably assembled in Washington, D.C. to exercise their First Amendment rights were deemed terrorists and fired upon?

  • That government would establish a private army along the lines of Adolf Hitler’s Brown Shirts?

  • That private citizens like Jerry Baer can be assassinated when they became a threat to government takeover of our country...?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tulsa

  After Ron Sparks’ funeral ceremony ended, Big C Brown expressed reservations about driving in his condition, saying he was still dizzy. Judy offered to drive his car for him to the downtown precinct station. It would provide him the opportunity to subtly interrogate her on what she might know about her cousin and his activities in Oklahoma that led to his gruesome death.

  She found and applied a band aid to his self-inflicted scratch. He told her he felt much better and offered to buy lunch to thank her for her kindness. They ended up in a little open-air taco place on the west side of the Arkansas River opposite Tulsa River Parks. Big C was a charming man with a dry sense of humor. Although she seemed sad at first because of the funeral, batting back tears, she was soon giggling and chatting with the big cop. Small talk mostly. Big C didn’t want to press her too soon too hard and have her clam up on him.

  Afterwards, they took a walk across the pedestrian bridge that spanned the river. It was covered to protect strollers from the weather. They stopped halfway across and leaned elbow to elbow on the railing to watch brown water cataract across the low water dam. They made a curious pair, the bald black giant and the tiny bleach-blonde who wasn’t much taller than past his elbow.

  “How you ever go from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C.?” Big C asked casually in their get-acquainted conversation.

  “I married this soldier named Sam Taylor stationed with the Arlington Honor Guard,” she replied. “I stayed in Washington when he took off with some bitch prettier and younger than me. I danced for a spell. I tended bar. I waited tables. A girl on her own has to get by.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Once she got going, she was like the Energizer Bunny and just kept going on and on. Completely guileless. A quality Big C found oddly attractive. They walked to the River Park end of the bridge and bought Sno Cones. He had strawberry, she lime. She linked her arm through his elbow as they retraced their way back across the bridge.

  “I suppose I might have done come back to Oklahoma,” she explained, “except I got myself tied up with a married man. Dennis is an important man in politics. Sometimes he thinks I’m stupid, which I ain’t. I’m just not quick and ain’t had that much education. Truth is, Corey...”

  They walked some more while she searched for the right words, both of them gazing upriver toward Sand Springs.

  “Truth is, I’ve done fell in love with Dennis,” she finally continued with obvious pride that a poor country girl like her could hook up with a man like that. “I miss him already. Do you care if I smoke?”

  She extracted a pack from her purse. Big C didn’t smoke, but he carried a lighter with the inscription 2ndCav on it from when he and Nail went to the first war in Iraq. He lighted her cigarette. She blew smoke and smiled at him as smoke threaded from her nostrils.

  “It’s a nasty habit,” she admitted.

  “We all got our habit, Judy. What do Dennis do in Washington? A congressman or something?”

  “He’s Chief of Staff for Senator Joe Wiedersham. Do you know who he is?

  “Senate Majority Leader.”

  Wiedersham had been ubiquitous on all channels pushing the FAD Bill and speaking up on behalf of the President about the oil spill crisis. Cousin Judy, Big C realized, must have been Ron Sparks’ inside Washington contact, whether she was aware of it or not.

  “Dennis wants to be a congressman,” Judy said, searching Big C’s expression to see if he believed her.

  Big C made no comment. As far as he was concerned, ninety-nine percent of politicians gave the other one percent a bad name.

  “Dennis ain’t like them others,” Judy went on, as though reading his thoughts. “He says sometimes you got to do things that ain’t so good so you can do good for the most folks. I done got a real education on politicians since I been in Washington. Dennis likes to talk to me about things. Sometimes it can be real scary. Nobody there trusts anybody else. Dennis says they’d rather screw you than say howdy-do. But Dennis is smart too. He keeps notes and stuff and writes them down in his notebook. He takes it with him almost everywhere. One time he told me he knows too much about what’s going on, so he keeps the notebook as insurance in case they try to screw him over.”

  “Sounds like smart thing to do. You ever read anything in it?”

  “Huh-uh. No, sir!” She shook her head vigorously. “I beg him to get out of politics so we can move someplace else.”

  “But he stay.”

  “It’s just temporary,” she said too quickly. “One term in Congress, then he’s getting out and divorcing Marilyn.”

  She sucked on her cigarette, her cheeks caving in and her lips puckering around the cylinder. She left lipstick on the filter. She looked troubled.

  “You talk to your cousin Ron often, did you?” Big C asked.

  “Ron and me was always calling each other on the telephone,” she said, brig
htening and then growing sad in almost the same instant. “We grew up together and was real close. Like brother and sister.”

  “Did you ever meet any of Ron’s friends, people he worked with or anything?”

  She squeezed his arm. “Just you.”

  “When was the last time you talk to Ron?”

  She answered immediately. “Like two days before it happened, you know. Ron called me and said he was scared. I knew he was doing something with some militia people. Working undercover, I think.”

  “He scared of the militia?”

  “I guess so. There was something about this guy who was on to him and would cause trouble.”

  “Did he say who?”

  “It was something like Kimbrough. Maybe Kimble.”

  “Kimbrell?”

  “That’s it.”

  She stamped out her cigarette butt and took his arm again. “My flight to Washington leaves in three hours. You want to walk some more first?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Keystone Lake, Oklahoma

  The fishing cabin Nail and Big C called the “Safe House” dwelt in timber on the banks of Cottonwood Creek that flowed into Keystone Lake west of Tulsa. The rutted road that cut down to it was so overgrown that Nail missed the turnoff on the first pass and had to turn around and go back. The ruts snaked across a field and through a stand of elm and a persimmon thicket. Shade from old growth oak surrounding the cabin prevented weeds and grass from overpowering it. Entwined branches made the cabin almost invisible from the air, especially during the summer. A couple of window shutters rattled in the breeze that crept up the narrow creek from the open lake. The cabin looked neglected. It needed paint and maintenance. No one had come fishing here much lately.