She grabbed him and walked away. Jess followed them and smiled at Nathan as she went.
“I hope we don’t come to regret this,” Nathan whispered to Denny.
Tori, Jess, and Jones took the POW to a train car that was sitting on the track. There were two or three of them sitting there alone, with no engine or caboose in sight. They stepped up into the car and pulled the door almost closed, leaving about one foot of opened door space.
Gary, Indiana
“What do you think?” Markus asked Rory, who had a blank look on his face. “About the meat?”
Markus had his wife grill up some meat from the fridge. They sat together and talked about memories of the old ways. Memories from before the Flip. Rory’s mind went elsewhere when that conversation died down.
“Oh, sorry, I was thinking about that crematorium place.”
“Ah, well, we’re not too interested in going there, are we?”
“I don’t know. I came with a large group of men and we were going to Goose Island, but then they were sidetracked. That’s how I ended up here.”
“So you’ve seen a lot of violence and understand that we live in a very different America than we used to.”
“Of course. I just want Americans to have their freedoms back. That’s what I fight for.”
“But until that day comes, you’re prepared to do what you have to do to survive, right?”
Sensing that Markus was taking this conversation somewhere, he addressed his question. “Where are you taking this?”
“Come with me. I probably shouldn’t be showing you this yet, but I think you’re going to fit in.”
Markus stood up and walked towards the front door.
Rory followed him.
Both of them had left their rifles standing in the corner, behind the door. When they had picked up their guns, they headed back outside.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’m going to show you how we survive, Rory. I’ve heard enough from you to know you’ve got a good heart, but will also do what you have to in order to survive another day. And that other day is the day you will see America restored, but you have to live that long first.”
Markus came to a place in the center of town. He pointed up to the building where they had met the board on the tenth floor.
“You see those guards in the windows there?”
“Yeah, I missed them before.”
“They saw you, that’s how I found out about you. They were actually waiting for me when I was talking to you on the roof. We always try to recruit before we move people in.”
“I’m a bit confused, Markus.”
“What I told you before about moving from place to place was just a story we tell people that we’re trying to get to know.”
“Okay.”
“Those guys in the windows keep the people on the tenth floor safe.”
“Okay, no problems there.”
“But they also maintain a watchful eye on the streets. If they see somebody, an emissary, like myself, is sent out to meet them and to assess for asset.”
Markus could see that Rory was having a hard time following his story.
“Rory, if we think they can be an asset, we introduce them to the board. If the board agrees, they are let in. If not, then they stay on the tenth floor.”
“Wait a minute, I thought the tenth floor was the community.”
“No, the community is everybody but the people on the tenth floor, excluding the board. They are kept there for strategic purposes.”
“Markus, please cut to the chase, because I’m getting lost in what you’re trying to say.”
“Follow me.” Markus motioned to Rory with his hands.
Markus led him to the bottom floor of a butcher’s shop.
“This is where we process our meat.”
“About that, where are you getting your supply of meat?”
“From the tenth floor, Rory. Don’t you understand?”
Rory started dry heaving and then vomited at the feet of Markus. When he was done, he wiped his mouth and said, “We’re done, Markus.”
“You can’t leave, Rory.”
“Watch me,” he said in a challenging tone.
“You’re our new shepherd, Pastor Rory. We need you here.”
“I’m not staying here. You’re sick, they’re sick, you’re all sick people.”
“You’re only saying that because you don’t understand just yet. Give it a couple more days.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not a murderer and I’m not a cannibal.”
“No, you’re a survivor, Rory. Those people on the tenth floor will be wasted in that crematorium. They have a use here. We keep them safe up there, and we tell them that we’re looking for placement homes. When they leave with us, they die quick, Rory. It’s not murder when it’s done for survival. That’s what you said. Kill where killing is necessary to insure survival. Those are your words, Rory.”
“You’re sick and you’ve perverted my message, Markus.”
“Run, Rory. They will come looking for you. If you resist, you won’t make it to the tenth floor. You’ll be on tonight’s menu.”
Rory took off running towards Lake Michigan and he didn’t look back. His heart was pounding and his veins were full of adrenaline. He couldn’t feel his face, his fingers, or his feet. He was beginning to lose the motor skills necessary to keep moving forward.
Rory was never trained for these kind of conditions. He wasn’t prepared for traveling alone or for the survivor’s mentality. The loss of blood flow to his limbs was from a naturally occurring physiological effect caused by the extremely stressful situation that he had found himself in. His blood was drawn in to protect his vital organs. When this happened, there was a lack of blood flow to his extremities. This caused a lack of feeling and control of his legs. Rory was starting to feel shaky and figured the sensations were caused by low blood sugar. When he was out of sight, he found a place to sit and dig through his bag in search of anything with sugar in it. His search for a sugary treat was in vain. No sooner than he sat down, he realized that he had left his bag at Markus’s house.
Rory stayed hidden for a couple hours, as he was hoping to wait out their search for him. He’d already heard a couple different search parties roaming the streets. Traveling on the streets of this city was going to be easy, in Rory’s mind. The streets were bogged down with automobiles that had been stopped due to FEMA checkpoints, and later by UN checkpoints. Rory’s plan was to move down the street from car to car, hiding under them and inside them wherever he could, until he was far enough out of this area to stand up straight again.
He had initiated his plan of movement and wasn’t but a few vehicles away when a dog began to bark at him. His fear was that this dog was going to give away his position. He thought in earnest for a way to silence the dog without shooting it. Rory stuck his finger down his own throat and began trying to induce vomiting. Puking was easy for him. He was still nauseous from the news that he had unknowingly eaten human flesh. With one attempt, Rory vomited the flesh and threw the chunks at the dog. This effort worked on the starving animal. It stopped barking instantly and it cautiously moved towards the flesh and began eating it.
Rory kept a low profile and continued moving along the roadway. He did so until he felt he was well out of the zone of Markus’s operation.
Rory next found himself nearing Interstate 90, where he feared heavily occupied zones of UN troops, checkpoints, and exchanges. He was dangerously close to the crematorium, where he could clearly see the plumes of factory smoke. He had lost some elevation since his previous glimpse over the interstate walls, so he could no longer see the train yard and factory buildings.
Taking a moment to sit and relax, he leaned against an old abandoned building and was close enough to the ground to see a thin coat of ash gently blowing along the surface of the sidewalks and roadways. He looked at his hands and saw that some of this ash was now on his palms.
Rory jumped back to his feet, realizing that ashes from the crematorium were settling on the city. Dusting the rear of his pants off, he could see that the fine particles of ash were more than gently blowing along the surface of the city streets and sidewalks, but he was covered in a fine layer of the ash that he could not feel. Until now, he hadn’t taken the time to examine the color of his skin or the cleanliness of his clothes. He frantically began dusting the human remains from his clothes and body. He found himself patting his jeans, only to see small plumes of the fine substance blowing back into the breeze.
The faint sound of several automobiles caught his ear. It was the familiar sound of US military vehicles. The roads were congested, so Rory knew they had to be making slow progress. He walked towards the sound of the vehicles, hoping to meet with the servicemen and to share his experiences with Lieutenant Charles Buchanan. The closer he moved to the sound of the vehicles, the more people he began to see moving out of the projects and towards the vehicles. Not knowing the intentions of the people, he didn’t know if he should slow his pace or speed it up.
The vehicles were now in view and he could see that they were Army vehicles. Once he had confirmed the presence of the Army, he felt comfortable picking up his pace. Rory was within a hundred yards of the convoy when a mob of people came charging like mad bulls from the buildings on the south side of the convoy. The convoy opened fire on the people, causing Rory to stop and watch in horror. A rocket came flying out of one of the upper-story windows and impacted the lead vehicle. It was an enormous explosion that sent several of the nearby mob flying in the opposite direction, away from the vehicles. Some of them caught fire and ran around screaming until they fell and stopped moving. The convoy continued to fire into the mob until they finally stopped the assault on the convoy and fled back into the projects.
The second vehicle in the convoy was now the lead vehicle and pushed the fiery wreckage until the path was clear for himself and those behind him to continue on. They were now nearing Rory’s position.
When the convoy was feet away from him, he laid his rifle onto the ground and raised his hands into the air.
“Take me with you. I’m a friendly,” he shouted. “I have military friends. I have high-ranking Marine friends and mission objectives. Please, take me with you.”
One by one, each vehicle in the convoy passed him by. Many of the drivers and gunners looked at him, but showed no sign of interest or compassion.
He felt in his heart that God was speaking to him in that moment, telling him to say, “I am about the Lord’s work.”
With only two vehicles left in the convoy, Rory followed after the impression he felt in his heart.
“Please, I am about the work of the Lord.”
The last convoy stopped next to him. An Army private first class was driving the vehicle and a Specialist was in the gunner’s turret, but it was the passenger in the front seat that said, “Are you a preacher or something?”
The soldier was wearing a Kevlar helmet with a captain insignia. His face was bearded and his cheekbones were dirty, not unlike everybody else that had no running water.
“I am, and I was separated from a group of Marines that were on an important mission.”
“Get in, preacher, we are on an important mission and we need God on our side. I’m Captain Lewis Richards.”
San Diego, California
The Bloods and Crips gangs took Sergeant Griggs to San Diego, where the reports were that the trains were taking American slaves and heading somewhere east.
The constant sound of gunfire was apparent from where they were poised near San Diego Bay. Americans were fighting back against the UN invaders, who had very little support technologically. Everything electronic or electrical in San Diego was rendered useless. There were no sounds of trains, no sounds of vehicles, no sounds of ships coming and going in and out of the bay. The only sounds these days were the sounds of people’s screams before and after a gunshot. San Diego was clearly a war zone, where the enemy wasn’t a politician or a different color of skin, but wore a blue helmet and spoke in French, Russian, or Persian.
“I guess it be no good showing you the slave trains if they not be moving,” the Bloods leader said.
Just then a group of UN soldiers were seen a few hundred meters up the road. Griggs gave the command to his unit to take cover.
The Bloods leader looked at the Crips leader and said, “You ready to roll?”
“Man, you know I be ready to roll.”
The several dozen gang members jumped out of the group and took off running towards the UN soldiers.
Griggs looked at Edwards and said, “Well, I guess that’s our cue.”
Griggs’s unit of soldiers advanced towards the UN soldiers, who had donned riot shields and rifles. Unlike the gangsters, his men and women were advancing forward using the buildings as cover.
The Bloods and Crips opened fire on the UN soldiers. Their bullets were flying wildly towards the foreign invaders, but otherwise showing little results.
“They’re outside of the range of those pistols,” Edwards said.
“Yeah, let’s show them some support.”
Griggs went prone, along with many others, and set their sights to the proper elevation. There was very little wind where they were prone, but on the road, where the buildings gave way to roadways, the wind was blowing faster.
Griggs launched the first shot and couldn’t see the impact.
“I think you shot left.”
Griggs guessed some windage calculations, setting his aim more to the right. He shot another round and dropped a UN soldier.
“Set your elevation to three hundred yards and go six clicks right for windage,” he told his unit.
The soldiers started dropping the UN soldiers, enough so that they began to flee. The gangsters gave chase and followed them into a side road where they lost seven men to the UN invaders before they finally closed in on them enough to execute what was left.
Griggs stood up and looked around.
“All clear,” Griggs shouted.
One of the soldiers spotted a UN MCC (mobile command center) sitting along the roadway. “Hey, guys, check that out.”
“It’s useless,” another said.
“Yeah, but maybe there’s some logbooks or something we can use,” Edwards suggested.
“Let’s look and see.”
The group made their way to the MCC and did a breach-style clearing to make sure it wasn’t occupied. Griggs stepped in and started rummaging through the drawers, looking for logs. Edwards was near him, doing the same.
“Hey, check it out,” she said, showing him a clipboard with several pieces of paper attached. “These guys are morons.”
“What did you find?”
She handed him the clipboard and right behind the cover sheet was a list of virtually every UN-occupied zone with the twelve FEMA regions of the United States and the frequencies they were using to communicate. More surprising was the list of names they were filed under.
“Bioengineering and Research, Sheridan, Oregon?” Griggs read out loud. “Bioengineering and Research, Metropolitan, San Diego? Bioengineering Research and Development, High Desert State, Nevada? What is all this?”
“All those places used to be federal penitentiaries. Sounds like they’re being used for more sinister purposes now.”
Griggs continued to thumb through the alphabetical list of places and their frequencies, from A to Z. When he was done, he looked back at the second page of the clipboard and saw Arsenal Island, Illinois, Region V.
“None of this is good news, Eddie.”
Eddie was Griggs’s pet name for Edwards when they weren’t in uniform. She caught the discrepancy and corrected him.
“Edwards.”
“Sorry, my mind is elsewhere. You ever feel absolute zeal and at the same time absolute helplessness?”
“Not until now.”
“What can we do? I’m out of ideas.”
“We
ll, we can start by taking those freqs back to my ex’s house. Maybe he shielded his radios from that EMP thing.”
“Let’s go.”
Black Hills Ordnance Depot, Edgemont, South Dakota
General John James’s HMMWV came to a stop and he stepped out and waited on his entourage of officers and high-ranking enlisted Marines to meet with him before heading up to meet Hensworth. After a couple of minutes, he was joined by Admiral Belt McKanty and the others. Together they walked up to the makeshift parade deck area and the commandant was greeted by Colonel Hensworth.
“General John James, it is such an honor to see you again.”
“Likewise, Colonel. I see you have kept things tidy and organized, just the way I like it.”
“Yes, sir. I hope the perimeter security wasn’t much of a burden.”
“I was glad to see it, Colonel.”
James stepped aside and said, “I would like you to meet my friends Admiral Belt McKanty, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Buchanan, Gunnery Sergeant Franks, Captain Kurt Riley, and Sergeant First Class Benjamin Reynolds.”
Hensworth shook all of their hands and said, “Gentlemen, without any further hesitation, I would like to invite you into the chow hall.”
They all looked at each other with half smiles and grins.
“Colonel, we would love to sit down and eat.”
The colonel led the entire group into a separate bunker where tables were neatly aligned and dressed for banquet-style food.
“Gentleman,” the colonel said, “we don’t have free-range chickens or cattle here, but we have canned goods that I have saved for this very occasion.”
Gunnery Sergeant Franks insisted that the officers eat first. He knew they had much talking to do and there were many details and much information to share. It was generally James’s style to let the enlisted eat first, but in this case, there was much to discuss.
When the officers had gone through the serving line, they took their plates to a table that was apart from the others. Only James, McKanty, Hensworth, Buchanan, Riley, Barker, Barnes, Wright, Cox, and Howard were allowed to sit at the special table. The information that was about to be shared was confidential and not intended for the ears of just any military personnel.
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 53
