A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  Fretting that they might be too late to help Lieutenant Ross, Big C and Fullbright rushed on through South Fork to reach their destination at a pair of remote trout lakes in the mountains north of State 160 and east of Wolf Creek Pass. It was already getting late in the valleys and hollows when they arrived in Big C’s rattletrap Impala. The early arrival of fall put enough bite in the air to encourage rutting elk to bugle and discourage most hikers and backpackers. Elk hunting season was still a few weeks away.

  “We got a hour or two daylight to burn,” Big C commented as he and Fullbright stuffed their backpacks with enough supplies to last several days. Once they studied the detention facility and devised a tentative assault plan, Fullbright would hike back out to guide in the militia while Big C maintained surveillance on the target.

  They left a note on the Impala’s windshield in case a Ranger happened by. The note said they were backpacking and would return in a few days. The vehicle shouldn’t arouse suspicion since its registration checked to Vernon Smith, the alias Big C used in Alabama. The two militiamen hoisted packs and followed the trail that led around the little lakes and climbed through big timber toward the summit of the Divide. They wore roughout hiking boots, jeans and light jackets, with heavier coats in their packs to be used against high mountain weather. Big C carried a Glock stuffed in his backpack, Fullbright a .45 in a belt holster. Big C calculated they should reach the facility by tomorrow evening.

  Shadows in the lowlands turned from murky gray to deep purple. Scarlet streaked the skies beyond the westernmost mountain peaks. A bull elk bugled, a high whistle that ended in a series of coughs, answered by the lonely cry of a loon on the lake.

  They camped in the timber when night made hiking hazardous. Tucked into sleeping bags, they listened to the mournful inquiry of a nearby owl. Fullbright said Indians believed owls were harbingers of death.

  FCC To Regulate Internet

  (Washington)—Requirements mandated by Congress in its Economic Stimulus Bill direct private cable and communications companies to provide the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with all internet data about individual homes, including what speeds they have, the kind of services a person uses, and their IP (internet protocol) addresses. Additional regulations being planned through the Wiedersham-Teague Fairness in Airwaves Doctrine (FAD) will enable federal government websites to combat foreign and domestic terrorism by tracking private citizens who visit certain websites... Government has already seized more than 1,000 domain names and shut down 1,000 websites—sites apparently engaged in illegal slander against the government…

  Citizens may report the e-mail addresses of suspicious persons to Whitehouse.gov...

  Chapter Seventy

  Washington, D.C.

  Out! That was what Trout kept thinking on the short flight from Chicago to Washington. He rented a car at the airport and drove to the Russell Building. Senate Majority Leader Wiedersham appeared to be in prime Godfather mode in his new Italian suit that was already rumpled across his ample belly. Justin Cobb propped himself against the doorframe of Wiedersham’s office as Trout showed himself in, past Liz’ reception desk. Wiedersham calmly looked him over.

  “You’ve been drinking again.” An assessment, not a question.

  “One on the flight.” His anger rose. He stuffed it back down. He felt his left eye tic.

  “I’ve warned you, Dennis. Booze and bimbos are the two things that will be your undoing in this business.”

  “You forgot the third—conscience,” Trout muttered.

  Wiedersham leaned forward and propped his elbows on his desk to regard Trout from beneath shaggy eyebrows. Like a lab scientist scrutinizing a new species of bacteria through a microscope.

  “I warned Marilyn about marrying you,” he said.

  “You should have warned me instead.”

  This was no way to get his toast buttered.

  “Trout, you can be replaced.” In a low, threatening growl, “You are on your way to Congress. A prince with wealth and power in a New World Order—”

  “In exchange for which I am willing to give up my soul.”

  “In exchange for which you were to give up that foolish blue-collar sense of self-righteousness. We serve for the improvement and betterment of mankind—”

  “You serve for the improvement and betterment of Joe Wiedersham.”

  Justin Cobb bounced off the doorframe and moved toward Trout. Trout thrust a finger at him, like a sword. “Don’t even think it, ass-wipe.”

  Wiedersham slowly rose to his feet. Trout backed away, his eyes darting suspiciously, palms extended in defense, thin hair tousled over his forehead, the cuff of one trouser leg stuffed into the top of an argyle sock.

  “Dennis, go home and sober up. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m thinking clearly for the first time. Joe, we’re in bed with communists who want to destroy the country. A rat’s nest of them all the way to the White House. We’re dupes. Worse than dupes. A dupe is gullible and naïve and stupid. We know what we’re doing, which makes it evil. It disgusts me, sickens me to my stomach to think how I went along because of selfishness and your nagging ladder-climbing sister. I should have married a fucking snake instead. A snake’s family has more principle—”

  “Get out of here!” Wiedersham shouted in sudden fury.

  Alarmed, Liz appeared in the doorway behind Cobb. She ducked back out of sight.

  “You’re finished, Trout. Through!” Wiedersham raged. “I tried to give you a chance for Marilyn’s sake. I should have known you didn’t have the balls for it.”

  Maybe it was the liquor. Whatever, Trout felt better than he had in ages. He parted his lips and expelled a loud, insulting burp that eased the pain in his gut like Maalox never could.

  “So what now, brother-in-law?” he jeered. “Are you going to have me hung in a cemetery? Shot? OD’d? Killed in a car crash? Do you remember the advice you gave me on how to survive in politics? ‘Everybody has something to hide,’ you said. ‘Find out what it is and you have ’em by the short hairs.’ Joe, I took your advice. Fuck with me and Zenergy News will know everything. You and this piece of shit—” He jerked a thumb at Cobb—“can go suck air. Fuck both of you.”

  He felt good. Even though his eye was tic’ing like mad. He turned his back on Wiedersham—that felt good too—and without another word marched out. Liz at the front desk looked pale and frightened. He did not notice Cobb follow him out of the building.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Washington, D.C.

  Brandi was working the lunch shift at The Fountains, Judy’s favorite low-class bar/restaurant tucked appropriately back behind the bail bondsman office. Dennis Trout took a stool at the far end of the bar down from a bleached blonde wearing tight everything who reminded him of Judy and therefore acerbated his foul mood. Brandi served him his usual.

  “Another tough day screwing the voters?” she sniped. Judy must have told her about his campaign, or else she had seen him on TV.

  He flipped her off with a middle finger. “Screw them.”

  “See if I vote for you.”

  “You have to be able to read the ballot first. Keep the drinks coming and keep your mouth shut.”

  Brandi kept them coming, as icy to him as the drinks she served. His quarrelsome posture warned off anyone else who might think to occupy the stool next to him. Sitting there with his blood pressure pumping the top limits, stewing over dupes and dupery. His old dad had warned him: “There are more commies in Washington than I saw all the time I was in Vietnam.”

  His father had served with the 101st Airborne. He returned, married, and built a successful real estate business in Illinois before he turned, briefly, to politics. He did two terms in Congress before he fled, declaring, “They ought to have listened to Joe McCarthy.”

  Trout personally knew at least one hundred members of the House and Senate who had come out of the closet and were now self-proclaimed Marxists, Maoists, communists or soci
alist sympathizers. All working toward a Utopian society, no matter how many Homers had to be sacrificed to achieve it.

  Brooding, he sucked the dregs from his drink and crushed the ice between his teeth before he knuckled the bar for another refill. Until this morning in Wiedersham’s office, he had so successfully repressed his conscience that he wasn’t sure he still possessed one. He had come so close to getting what he thought he wanted. What had spurred his downward spiral? Booze and bimbos, as Wiedersham asserted?

  It had to be the notebook. Writing everything down encouraged personal analysis and self-awareness. Not good traits for politicians who bowed at the altar of self-deception. Now, the drunker he got, the more clearly he saw things. These people—Wiedersham’s people, President Anastos’ people, Zuniga’s people—spoke with tongues as forked as the roads that led to Washington, D.C. Through the magic of their political dupery and a compliant press, Stalinists were being alchemized into civil libertarians, Marxists into defenders of “the working man,” murderers like Mao and Lenin and Castro into peace activists. Expropriation of private property became land reform. Tyranny, theft and seizure of personal wealth were “social justice.”

  People used to laugh at Pop for warning against Marxists taking over colleges and high schools, the news media, politics and other American institutions.

  Trout missed his dad. Sitting alone at the bar, he had never felt so isolated or vulnerable in his life. Marilyn had always cared more about her pink poodle than she did him. Judy abandoned him to go home to Bugfuck. Spasms in his eye blurred his vision. His belly ached and he thought about the Maalox in his briefcase. He placed his foot on the briefcase to make sure it was safe. He carried the notebook in it wherever he went.

  He took out his Blackberry and dialed Judy’s cell. There was no answer. Slut! She was probably still in Bugfuck screwing her cousins. She was no different than that trailer trash intern who sucked Clinton’s knob in the White House toilet.

  On second thought, it was he who was fucked. He should have known it the moment he turned his back on Wiedersham and walked out of the office. It had been a foolish act of defiance, blurting out about his “insurance” and threatening to release it to Zenergy News. Brother-in-law or not, Wiedersham wasn’t likely to give him a pass. He was lucky if he didn’t end up dead like so many others who stood in the way of progress.

  Brandi delivered a fresh Whiskey Sour. It sloshed over onto the bar. Scowling with fury, Trout recoiled to keep from getting splashed. When he looked up, he glimpsed a familiar figure near the door foyer. His tongue froze against the roof of his mouth. He caught only a glance before the figure disappeared out the door, but it was enough for Trout to be sure. Justin Cobb, Wiedersham’s Chief-of-Staff and chief lackey, must have followed him.

  “Sorry about that,” Brandi apologized sincerely, wiping up the spill.

  Trout kept staring at the front door, barely aware of her. Something cold and clammy stirred inside the liquor fumes that befogged his poor brain. He went in an instant from don’t-give-a-shit inebriation to mere muddled drunkenness.

  “Look, I’m sorry about—” Brandi tried to apologize again.

  The muscles in Trout’s eye were twitching insanely. Brandi stared.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Bring me coffee. Black.”

  The coffee was hot and as bitter as his life. He slugged it down, only half-aware of the TV behind the bar turned to CNN. What the hell was he going to do now? He had made his bed, as Judy would have put it, and now he had to lie in it.

  In a moment of weakness, of regret, and of cold fear that sobered him even more than coffee, it occurred to him that perhaps all wasn’t lost after all. He still might be able to retrieve his life, make amends. Marilyn was right. Without her and Wiedersham, he was just another minimum-wage slob out in the streets with the other Homers.

  Impulsively, his heart racing, he dialed his home number, prepared to take Marilyn out to Komi’s for dinner, send her roses, kiss her ass and her brother’s ass and Reggie’s too, if that was what it took. He would even give up Judy.

  Marilyn picked up on the first ring. “Trout, you dirty sonofabitch!”

  “Wha—?”

  She hung up on him.

  He sat there in a funk staring sightlessly at the TV screen behind the bar. He pushed back his coffee cup and ordered another Whiskey Sour. Brandi looked at him, but brought it anyhow.

  The more he thought about what happened, the more furious he became. He’d had it up to here by the time he gulped down still another drink. He called home again. The answering machine picked it up. Marilyn had changed the message on it.

  “Trout,” it taunted, “you and your slutty tramp can both go to hell.”

  Wiedersham must have told her. Fuck them both very much, thank you. He didn’t need either of them. He dialed again. This time he left a message of his own.

  “We’ll meet you there in hell, bitch.”

  He glared at the TV. To his surprise, a photo of Judy and him appeared on TV. He recognized the setting—from the time he took Judy to New York when he met “John.” Apparently, someone had followed them there to collect “insurance” for Wiedersham. A voiceover from behind the photo narrated in a smarmy tone:

  “Leading Illinois congressional candidate Dennis Trout involved in steamy love nest with former hooker. She is identified as Judy Sparks-Taylor, cousin of Homeland Security Agent Ron Sparks, who was found hung by militia members in an Oklahoma cemetery...”

  Pop always said people ate their own when their own stepped out of line.

  * * *

  Had he been sober and therefore more aware of himself when he left The Fountains, he might have noticed how his left foot dragged slightly. His eye also tic’d, like the shutter of a digital camera gone ape. Bile rose in his throat and he felt it surging through his veins. Numbness set it on the left side of his face. His toast had been buttered all right—with rancid fat.

  A beginning rain turned the late afternoon as gray and gloomy as his inner weather. Naturally. God was going to piss on him too. He hunched his neck into his shoulders and trudged to the parking lot across the street where he left the BMW he rented at the airport. He was soaked by the time he reached it, chilled to the bone already, with water streaming from off his head and making his balding look more pronounced.

  He tossed his briefcase into the passenger’s seat and looked around before sliding underneath the steering wheel. There was a dark four-door sedan parked across the lot from him. Rain made it difficult to be sure, but he thought he saw two figures occupying it. He flipped them off with savage fury, jumped into the BMW, and fishtailed off the lot onto 6th Street. The dark sedan followed.

  A half-hour’s drive later, he carried his briefcase into Judy’s apartment, letting himself in with his key, bolting and chain-locking the door behind him. He walked through the silent kitchenette-living room and into the bedroom. Missing her and angry with her at the same time, muttering deep in his throat where resentment and anger formed.

  On Judy’s dresser he discovered the gold locket he gave her, which she always wore between her cleavage. He picked it up, glared at it, then wrapped the delicate chain around his knuckles and ripped it to pieces. He ground the locket beneath his heel when it fell to the floor.

  He found what he was looking for in the drawer of the nightstand next to her bed. Homers believed in God, guns and NASCAR. He checked to make sure it was loaded, then stuffed the .357 S&W revolver into the waistband of his suit pants.

  The notebook was no longer inside his briefcase when he exited the apartment building. He carried the gun in his other hand against his thigh. Rain fell harder than before. Through its skeins he saw the ominous dark sedan that had followed him from The Fountains. It was parked down the block. Exhaust emitted into the cold, wet air told him its engine was running.

  Both front doors suddenly popped open. Two men in raingear and hats pulled low jumped out and hurried toward him, walking in a way
that let him know they meant business. Trout made a break for his BMW, dragging his left foot. The two men ran to cut him off, their footsteps pounding on concrete and splashing through puddles.

  Realizing he couldn’t reach his car ahead of them, he whipped up the .357 and fired. Two quick shots that, for all he knew, sent slugs ricocheting all the way across the city; it was the first time he had fired a gun since he was a kid at home with Pop.

  The two men were near enough for Trout to see the shock that swept Justin Cobb’s face underneath his hat. He and the other character did a nervous little jig in the rain, like puppets, before they ducked for the cover of a line of Boston pears and their hands fumbled to draw weapons from underneath their raincoats. Obviously, they had expected Trout to be the puss he had always been or they would have approached more cautiously.

  Trout winged another shot in their direction for good measure. It sent both attackers flopping belly down into the rain-swollen gutter. He was laughing wildly, maniacally, as he roared off in the BMW and turned toward Takoma Park and home.

  Illinois Congressional Candidate/Wife Found Dead

  (Takoma Park, Maryland)—Late this afternoon, police responded to a neighbor’s call for help to find Illinois congressional candidate Dennis Trout and his wife Marilyn dead in their fashionable eastside residence. Police described the bloody scene as an apparent murder-suicide.

  “It appears Trout murdered his wife Marilyn, then turned the gun on himself,” said a Homeland Security detective. The couple’s poodle was also shot to death.

  Marilyn’s brother, Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham, said Trout may have “gone off the deep end” after the news media exposed his extramarital relationship with a Washington, D.C. prostitute...

  “Dennis was a dedicated public servant,” Wiedersham said. “He was leading the polls to become the next congressman from Illinois’ Ninth District. The people lost a great man who would have fought on their behalf. I have lost my only sister and, until he let the pressure destroy him, a loyal friend...”