Five Suns Saga I

by Jim Heskett

  “I’m going to take the tape off now,” he said. “This might sting a little, but it’ll be over quick.”

  He pulled it off, and the girl smiled at him. “Uncle Travis,” she said, and slipped her bound hands over his neck.

  He lifted her off the ground. “It’s all over, my little Delilah. You did really good. Were you scared?”

  “I was a little, when I couldn’t see. But then I remembered what you said about being a big girl, and I felt a lot better.”

  “Oh, sweetie, that’s great.”

  The girl’s eyes ballooned. “Is she dead?”

  “Yes, she’s dead.”

  “Do you feel better?”

  He faked a smile. “Yes, I feel a lot better.”

  She grinned and kissed him on the cheek. “That makes me happy. Can we have breakfast now?”

  “Of course we can.” Travis turned to address the court. “Ladies and gentleman, court is adjourned. Court will reconvene after my niece and I have breakfast.”

  He hoisted her above his head and set her on his shoulders, and as he turned to leave the court, a dozen of the people present started moving toward Beth’s body as it slumped out of the chair and onto the ground.

  Doubled Mattresses

  (DURING THE FALL)

  Ian Rappaport stared at the mirror in the interrogation room. Doubtful that anyone was behind it because all the cops in Atlanta’s midtown precinct had been dead for days. Much more likely that the chamber beyond the mirror and all of its sophisticated monitoring equipment were abandoned as well.

  He arched his back to stretch his aching muscles, then rolled his head around his shoulders. Sleeping on the cell cot had been murder on his back. Even though they’d doubled-up on his mattresses, he still couldn’t sleep more than two or three hours at a time.

  The door opened and in walked Hector Castillo. Today, he was wearing jeans and a button-down, much less formal than the faux-military garb he usually wore. But his scraggly beard still hung from his face like tufts of black cotton ejected from a chewed dog toy.

  “I’ve been waiting an hour,” Ian said. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Some troublemakers at the front door, Mr. Vice President. My men took care of it. Don’t you worry.”

  “I want to see.”

  Hector shook his head, his lazy eye shooting over Ian’s shoulder. “Better if you don’t.”

  “I haven’t been anywhere but this room, my cell, and the video room with that fake bunker crap for two weeks. I’m going stir crazy in here.”

  “This is the time to be patient, Ian. Revolution will find its own way.”

  “I don’t even know what that means. But I’ve done everything you people asked of me, so when do I get what I want?”

  “The boat will not be ready for another day. Your wife and son are already en route, and you will reunite with them on the island in a few weeks.”

  Ian sat back and scratched his chin. Something about the stare in Hector’s black eyes bothered him. He’d had to take a lot on faith when dealing with these people, but what choice did he have?

  “But,” Hector said, “in truth, you have not told us all we want. I could probably have the boat ready much faster if you would fully cooperate.”

  Ian averted his eyes and bit down on his lip. “I don’t know if I can give you everything.”

  Hector narrowed his eyes and switched his jaw from side to side.

  “The people outside, who were they?” Ian said.

  Hector sniffed. “People from the old world. Do not concern yourself with them.”

  Ian glanced at the clock on the wall as his stomach rumbled. “Can I have lunch?”

  “Of course. I will send something in very soon, as well as the speech writer. All of the Open Carry laws in your southern states are making things very difficult for us. Much resistance.”

  Hector added a little smirk to the last sentence, and Ian turned his head away. He knew these things had to be done, but did the bastard have to take such pleasure in murdering Americans? “I want to speak with my wife.”

  “Communications on the boat have been disabled, I am afraid. There are still many coast guard and Navy ships. Is too risky. Don’t worry, Mr. Vice President, you will join your family in Fiji soon enough. One or two more speeches and it will be done.”

  “Fiji? You said they would be in Acapulco.”

  Hector blinked. “My mistake. If that is what I said, then that is what it shall be.”

  Hector stood up, smiled his lopsided grin, then whirled and left the room.

  ***

  The writer brought sandwiches, and they created a rousing speech encouraging citizens to lay down their arms. To trust that the government was still in control and the men in the black uniforms were contracted employees. To give up the last of their freedoms in the name of safety.

  During his political career, Ian had said many things he knew were lies because he always believed in the greater good. With each bit of propaganda he filmed for Hector Castillo and his people, the greater good seemed to float a little further away.

  Maybe these people could reboot the country as they had claimed. Or maybe they were going to ruin the world.

  Speech in hand, he sat before the cameras and read it with a calm, assuring voice. But he couldn’t help but think of his wife and son, maybe in Acapulco, maybe Fiji, or maybe already dead. And if they were dead, then all of this had been for nothing.

  That night, they brought him some books to read and a third mattress for the cot. It didn’t help.

  ***

  In the morning, beams of the sun through the window burned white on the wall. The last four or five days had been rainy, so he welcomed the light. Too bad the window was high on the wall and he couldn’t reach it to see outside.

  He sat up and studied the position of the light. It had to be at least nine, judging by the angle. They almost always woke him for breakfast and a debriefing before now, so sleeping this late seemed unusual.

  He walked through the open cell door into the hallway. Empty. The adjoining holding cells had always been empty, but they usually kept at least one guard at the desk at the end of the hall.

  “Hello?”

  Silence came back.

  Ian turned the corner into the precinct’s main hall, a good-sized room lined with desks surrounding a large conference table. Still empty.

  He moved through the room, listening for any sound. A framed picture on one of the desks caught his eye and he picked it up. A man and a woman sitting under a tree, with two little kids laying on a blanket in front of them. Smiles on everyone’s faces. Ian looked at the picture, and four people who were probably dead looked back at him.

  A throat cleared at the far end of the room.

  Seated at a desk near the precinct exit was a tall, busty woman in a sharp business suit. She nodded at him.

  “Hello.”

  He crossed the room. “What happened to everyone?”

  “A problem in New York. We needed the team to travel immediately.” She cocked her head to one side. “Do you know who I am?”

  He looked her up and down, but couldn’t find anything familiar in her features. He shrugged.

  “I’m Hector Castillo’s boss. My name is Beth. Do you know who Edward LaVey is?”

  “Sure, that’s the congressman from New York. No, wait, senator.”

  She nodded. “That’s correct. That’s who I work for. So that’s who you’ve been working for.”

  “I don’t care about that right now. If everyone is gone, I’d like to leave too. Hector said my boat would be ready today.”

  Beth sighed. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us what we want.”

  His temperature started to rise. “I’m the vice president of the United States, damn it. I should now be president, after what you did.”

  “You can’t be the president of a country that doesn’t exist. Besides, you were never sworn in.”

  “To hell with t
his and you people. I’m leaving.”

  Beth reached into the purse on the desk and removed a large silver revolver. She motioned to the chair across from hers. “Sit down, Ian.”

  Ian did as he was told and Beth placed the gun on the table, but she didn’t take her finger off the trigger.

  “I’m a patriot,” she said, flat-faced.

  “That’s what you people keep telling me. You say you want to rebuild America, but all I’ve seen you do is kill people and tear everything down. How does it benefit anyone to destroy the infrastructure of finance and commerce? How are you helping the world by ruining the dollar?”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Sometimes, the world needs to be cleansed of its false hope. Big things are coming, bigger than anything you’ve seen yet.” She reached into her purse again, removed a yellow legal pad and a pen, then slid them across the desk. “Do it.”

  He looked at the pad. “I don’t understand what good having the codes will do. Are you going to point those missiles at America?”

  Beth pursed her lips and gave him a blank stare. “America still has enemies, Ian, and we can’t protect ourselves if we’re vulnerable. You’re the only person still alive who knows the launch codes, so you need to write them down for me. Do that, and you can leave.”

  He wasn’t sure if he believed her, but what choice did he have? “What about my family?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that what Hector told you? Something about your family being kept safe somewhere, like the British Virgin Islands or something? He likes that kind of story.”

  A dagger dug into Ian’s chest. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know anything about your family. Alive or dead, it’s none of my business. You write down those codes for me, and you’re free to go look for them. You don’t write those codes down, and I’ll put a bullet in you, right now. I don’t have time to torture the information out of you, Ian, so you’ve got a choice. Make this easy for me, and we both get what we want. Make this hard for me, and I’ll get the launch codes anyway. It will take me longer and require a lot of work on our end, but you won’t be around to see us toil.”

  He stared at her, trying to discern her angle from her expression. But she gave nothing away. “Why would you let me walk out of here, with everything I know?”

  Beth let out a chaste laugh. “Who are you going to tell? The plan has been executed, and anything remaining is minutia. You can sing your story to the rooftops and it won’t change anything.”

  A tightness gripped his chest because he knew she was right.

  “We appreciate what you did for your country. We want to reward you for that.”

  He picked up the pen and held it above the yellow legal pad. The tip of the pen danced as his hand shook. He started scribbling.

  “If I had to guess,” Beth said, “I’d say your family is in DC, so there’s a good chance you’ll find them there. But I can’t make you any promises.”

  Ian stopped writing, and Beth turned the legal pad around and ran a finger down the numbers.

  “How am I supposed to get to DC with the planes and trains no longer running?”

  “That’s not my problem,” she said. “You can go now. Good luck.”

  He glanced at her gun.

  “Don’t be a hero, Ian. It’s not a good look for you. Why don’t you be a good boy and run along? Maybe you can find a functioning car and a gas station that hasn’t been pillaged. But if you want my advice, lay low for a while. Soon enough, we’ll have installed the new government and everything will be back to normal. You could maybe even get back into politics.” She said the last bit with a wry smirk.

  “I wish I’d never met you people.”

  “Sorry you feel that way. Oh, wait, I almost forgot: this is for you,” she said as she sat a campaign button on the table. The button featured a graphic of five suns encircling a pair of hands shaking.

  Ian brushed the button aside. When he stood up, he realized the weight of the deal he’d made with the devil. Not only had he betrayed his country, he’d been duped into thinking that he was on the right side of justice when he’d been doing it.

  He stepped away from the desk as Beth folded the sheet of yellow paper. She smiled at him as she stuffed it into her purse.

  He left her and walked toward the double doors underneath the EXIT sign.

  Outside, the Atlanta sun lit up his eyes and he had to block it out for several seconds before he could see anything. When his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he realized he was standing on the front steps of the midtown precinct in a field of dead bodies, many of them in cop uniforms. Smoke rose from half the buildings on the street.

  Atlanta was burning.

  Shower Blowjob

  (AFTER THE FALL)

  Kellen repositioned the chain around his ankle, lifting it above the section of mangled flesh. That bought him a few seconds of relief, but what he needed was some hydrogen peroxide. Some antibiotic ointment, at least.

  Not that his captors would give him any. They were going to work him until his leg fell off.

  He got out of bed and limped across the room, the massive chain clinking and uncoiling as it moved with him. He leaned over the wash basin in the corner, then splashed some water on his face and under his armpits. He held his breath as he lifted his arms, since he hadn’t experienced anything more than a whore’s bath since they’d moved him here, a week ago. The last place had showers, but they’d revoked the privilege of running water after his most recent escape attempt.

  A thin sliver of light trickled between the makeshift bars on the solitary window. Wherever he was, it was somewhere warm, at least, since he figured it was almost autumn and the days were still sweltering. Humid too, so he guessed the south, maybe South Carolina or Georgia. The view out the window showed only a crumbling office building and an intersection with missing street signs.

  This is all your fault.

  “I know,” Kellen whispered to the relentless critic in his head. “But I had to do something, at least. People needed to know.”

  He slipped on a shirt as the door to his room unlocked. When it opened, a man Kellen didn’t recognize entered, carrying a folder stuffed with printouts.

  Today’s assignments.

  The man didn’t look at Kellen. Instead, he carried the folder to the desk and plopped it down. Some of the loose pages scattered onto the floor.

  The man pointed to the chair next to the desk. “Sit.”

  Kellen knew the procedure by now. He sat in the chair, pulling the chain behind him. The man took out a single mechanical pencil and placed it on top of the folder.

  “What does he have for me today?” Kellen said, and his voice came out like the croak of a frog.

  “Power grids in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Look at the numbers and tell us where the juice is going.”

  The man turned to leave, but Kellen slapped the table to get his attention. The man stopped.

  “Wait, please,” Kellen said. “When am I going to get to talk to him?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who I mean.”

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  Kellen gritted his teeth. “Peter Anders, damn it.”

  “After what you tried to pull last time, you’re an idiot to even ask that question. Mr. Grant is here, but his day is pretty full. I’ll tell him you asked to speak to him.”

  The only thing Kellen wanted to say to George Grant would be surprise, you piece of shit, right before he stabbed the mechanical pencil into George’s nutsack. But George would never stand close enough to Kellen to let that happen. After seeing what George had done to that poor librarian and the girl with the Hello Kitty backpack, he had it coming.

  But Anders and LaVey were more important. They were the ones who needed to die.

  ***

  Kellen spent the next two hours crunching numbers, examining patterns, and trying to find meaning in the data. His captors never told him much,
but the data suggested that resistance groups or militias in those three states had somehow reactivated several power plants and were using them to provide electricity. That was his best guess.

  They brought him breakfast of an untoasted bagel, orange juice, and coffee so weak that it was more like bitter water. He often thought of The Espresso Bean in Buffalo, his favorite spot to buy coffee for the staff, back when he was a campaign gopher. Beth, that bitch, always gave him a drink order so complicated he had to actually write it down.

  Whether or not Beth was still part of the equation, he didn’t know. She hadn’t made any appearances at any of the places they’d been keeping him. Kellen might not be able to contain himself if she was the one bringing him this weak excuse for coffee. It would be worth whatever punishment they doled out to get a chance to throw a scalding hot drink in her face.

  Once he’d finished the bagel, the door opened again, and there stood George. He’d died his hair blond now, but he still looked the same. He lifted an aerosol can from a basket next to the door and sprayed in an arc around himself. “Damn, it stinks in here.”

  “Blond is definitely not right for you, George.”

  “Who gives a steaming crap what you think, fairy-boy. They told me you wanted to talk to me. It better be about that data, or else I’m leaving. I got a busy day.”

  “Looks like you’ve got some rogue players out east. Is Chalmers expanding her Chicago empire?”

  George came a step closer, but not close enough. “That’s not your job. I don’t even know how you know that name. You tell us where the power is going, without the interpretation.”

  “Maybe I could be of more help if you told me why I’m looking at these spreadsheets all day long.”

  George took a nail file from his pocket and buffed his thumbnail. He knew the sound of the scraping made Kellen crazy, which is why he was doing it in this room. “Because, Mr. Soothsayer, you’re being punished. I would have thought these prison cells you’ve been living in the last few years and the big-ass chain around your ankle would have made that clear. If you’d kept your damn mouth shut about what you knew, things would have been a lot easier for everyone. You almost spoiled our move against the White House.”