The Liar

by Bobby Adair

  “We’re on our way to find my wife and daughter right now, right?” confirmed Tommy.

  Summer nodded.

  “Then I don’t care what Barry thinks,” said Tommy.

  “We do,” replied Summer. “So, right now he thinks we’re on an intel-gathering mission. Sometimes it's easier not to argue with Barry, but to just do what you're gonna do. Know what I mean?”

  Tommy didn’t agree. He nodded anyway.

  Summer rounded the curve and brought the Jeep to a stop. She looked into the back seat. “Ten minutes, guys. Then we’re on the move.”

  “On it.” Aaron had his tablet computer unfolded and was typing furiously.

  Turning to Tommy, Summer said, “You know when you’re driving down the valley and you pass that series of beaver ponds?”

  “South?” Tommy asked. “Yeah.”

  “Where the valley spreads out in those wide flat pastures?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “There’s that ranch down there,” said Summer.

  “With the fences falling down.” Tommy knew where she was talking about. It was impossible to miss.

  “Used to be Bunny Eaton’s place before she died.”

  Tommy shrugged. He had no idea who Bunny Eaton was.

  “Twenty years ago, her kids inherited the ranch but didn’t have any interest in living there. They sold off the livestock and pretty much did nothing with it.”

  “They lease the pastures for grazing,” added Dan.

  Nodding, Summer continued. “The main house and most of the ranch buildings are across the river, right there close to the highway.”

  “Across that narrow bridge,” Tommy confirmed. He’d driven by the property a hundred times at least.

  “At the edge of the pasture,” said Summer, “in the trees where the mountain starts to rise, Bunny built a special barn where she kept her prize horses. The word we got from one of those guys—”

  “—Matt was his name,” said Aaron.

  “Matt,” confirmed Summer. “He told us Frank Lugenbuhl is using the stable as a holding pen for,” Summer made a pair of air quotes, “NonCons.”

  “How big is it?” asked Tommy. “This barn.”

  “I know where you’re going with that,” said Summer. “You’re thinking it’s the detention center the 704s have been taking everyone to. Well, it’s not. There’s more than one and we don’t know where they all are yet. This place is something else. What this fellow Matt told us was—”

  “—and he hasn’t seen it himself,” clarified Aaron. “He said he heard it through the grapevine.”

  Nodding, Summer picked up again, “Matt told us he heard they were taking the pretty girls there. He said he heard that’s where Emma and Faith were.”

  “He knows who they are?” For Tommy, that was hard to believe.

  “Everybody in town knows Faith,” answered Summer. “And after last Saturday—”

  “—everybody in America knows Emma,” finished Aaron.

  “Wait,” said Tommy. “They’re taking the pretty girls? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “‘Cause people are assholes,” grumbled Dan.

  “We don’t know,” said Summer.

  "Yes, you do.” Tommy looked around at the others in the Jeep. "You know. What did this Matt guy say?"

  Nobody answered.

  “Tell me,” Tommy demanded.

  “Rape camp,” muttered Aaron.

  Tommy’s temper flared, not because he believed it, but because he didn’t want to believe. “He said ‘rape camp’?”

  “His words,” answered Aaron.

  “When the rules of civility dissolve,” mused Summer, “some people let their demons loose.”

  “History is full of it,” added Aaron. “Or read a newspaper. It happens every day, somewhere.”

  “It all sounds ridiculous.” It made no sense to Tommy. “This time yesterday we were all living normal lives and hating each other on Facebook. Now you’re telling me, not twenty-four hours later, these knucklehead assholes are setting up rape camps because somebody blew up town hall?”

  “They were about to shoot you this morning.” Aaron turned his attention back to his computer, figuring rightly enough that he’d won the argument.

  Summer turned to the two in back. “Learn what you can. We have to go pretty soon.” She reached over and put a hand on Tommy’s arm. Talking softly, like a friend over a cup of coffee, she said, “Right and Left have been diverging for as long as I can remember. That’s not speculation. It’s not even news. It’s just reality. You know it. Everybody knows it. Everywhere you turn, the things they say on TV and Facebook and all those stupid websites out there get uglier and uglier, vilifying and dehumanizing for what?”

  Summer put her hands on the steering wheel. Her stare lingered out across the hood of the Jeep and to the mountain peaks beyond. “If the news-face on TV tells you enough times the guy across the street is trying to steal your retirement and ruin your kids’ future, and he’s a fascist or socialist or a terrorist, but you’re a ‘real’ American, well, eventually, picking up a gun—whether Left or Right—to defend your family stops seeming like the crazy thing to do. It becomes the noble thing. The right thing. You don’t believe it, Tommy, but that’s where we are now. That’s the reason all of this is happening. Emma, your daughter, saw all this going on around her and she did what she could to stop it.” Summer turned away, hiding her emotions from Tommy. “I guess she couldn’t. All we can do now is fight.” Summer sniffled and checked her watch. “You believe whatever you want to believe, Tommy. I’m not going to sell you on it. It’ll be clear enough pretty soon. Right now, you use that phone, find a number for the FBI or call the National Guard. Hell, call the Colorado State Police if you think they’ll come. Be quick about it, because we’re not waiting long.”

  ***

  The phone rang. Tommy held it to his ear and waited as he looked down the valley.

  Nothing made sense. None at all.

  The idea that a rogue insurgent group had decided to start a hair-brained revolution in Spring Creek was far-fetched but the evidence was stacked up nice and pretty to support it. The thought that the insanity wasn’t confined to the Blue River Valley was just too hard to believe.

  How could so much have gone so wrong, all under Tommy’s nose, without him seeing it happening?

  And now, he was sitting in a Jeep with three people, who on any other day would be murderers, and they were pretty much claiming to be the good guys. Tommy would need to make a choice very soon, as to whether to believe them and pick up a gun and shoot some people, or not.

  Was ‘not’ even a choice? Not the way Summer framed it. In truth, she was right. She just didn’t know how right she was.

  After ten rings, Tommy stopped counting.

  When his frustration grew too obvious to miss, Summer asked, “911 again?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “Same as last night?”

  Tommy hung up. “I was hoping to connect with a different exchange since the cell towers were knocked out in Spring Creek.”

  “At least it rang,” said Summer. “The network is still up in some places.”

  “I have a signal,” said Aaron. “The data’s slow, but it’s coming.”

  Tommy switched to a browser to run a search.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Summer.

  “FBI office in Denver.”

  She checked her watch. “Five minutes, guys.”

  The search results loaded slowly, but the FBI number popped up in a double-sized font at the top of the page. Tommy dialed. Without even a single ring, the phone connected to a messaging system.

  “What?” asked Summer, seeing Tommy’s attention to the phone sharpen.

  You have reached the Denver office of the

  Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Extenuating circumstances have made it impossible for agents to respond to calls at this time.

  Matters of an urgent nature
are always best handled by local law enforcement.

  For all other matters, please leave a message at the tone.

  The phone disconnected.

  Tommy couldn’t believe it.

  “What’s it say?” asked Summer.

  “Nothing, just blah-blah-blah, leave a message, and then it hung up.” Tommy reopened the browser and searched for the phone number for the Colorado State Patrol.

  “It’s *CSP, but they won’t answer either,” said Aaron.

  Tommy searched anyway, navigating from one slow-loading page to the next.

  “I tried them last night,” persisted Aaron. “Nobody picked up.”

  “Nobody’s getting an answer,” confirmed Dan.

  Tommy finally arrived at a page displaying the number for District 4.

  “People are complaining about it all over social media,” said Dan. “Not just here, in other places, too.”

  “All over the US,” said Aaron.

  Tommy dialed the number.

  It rang.

  Frustration started to grow.

  It rang again.

  “See?” said Aaron.

  “Let him do it.” Summer checked the time on her watch.

  “The FBI and the Colorado State Patrol aren’t coming to the rescue,” said Aaron.

  The phone only rang five times before Tommy had already accepted it was never going to be answered. "What happened to them?"

  “Nobody knows,” said Summer.

  “Hacking maybe,” guessed Dan.

  “Or somebody blew up their offices,” said Aaron.

  “What?” Tommy scoffed. “These 704 dipshits blew up the FBI building in Denver and every state patrol office in the state?”

  “They took out Spring Creek,” argued Aaron. “And we’re nobody. Just a small mountain town the tourists pass through on the way to the good ski resorts. Why would they do that to us and nobody else?”

  “I don’t think one thing proves the other in this case,” Tommy countered. “I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m just trying to understand what’s happening. How many of these 704 guys are there? It could be just forty, fifty guys all following this cult leader Frank guy and they took over the town. Some kind of local group gone wild. Too deluded by a perverted sense of duty to see the stupidity of what they’re up to? And now we’re all caught up in it with them?”

  “Except it’s going on everywhere,” muttered Dan as he focused on his computer screen.

  Tommy started to say more as Summer hushed him with a look. "Everywhere might be a leap—we don't know.”

  “Because whole swaths of the country fell into a cyber black hole,” said Aaron.

  “A what?” asked Tommy.

  “It’s like they just disappeared,” answered Aaron.

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “He’s not crazy,” snapped Summer. “He’s saying nobody can communicate with most of the northeast and California, and where else, Aaron?”

  "Florida and the Midwest," he answered. "Everywhere else is spotty. Most of the national news sites are down, except Hazelton's personal propaganda channel, that one's doing fine. They're spewing non-stop garbage about a NonCon uprising. Riots. Burning buildings. National Guard trucks rolling through cities, but that channel was ninety-percent bullshit already so who knows how much of this current stuff is true?"

  “I saw some headlines last night,” admitted Tommy. “I figured it was all click bait.”

  “I’ve seen pictures and video posted by people I trust,” said Aaron. “Spring Creek isn’t the only town suddenly crawling with paramilitary types.”

  “704s?” asked Tommy, not believing they could be a national organization with no information out on the internet about them.

  Aaron snorted. “Dozens of groups.”

  “Hundreds,” added Summer.

  "You take any kind of lofty political word you can think of, string a few of them together, and you'll get the name of one of these paramilitary groups. Every one of them thinks the Constitution was a personal love letter from James Madison to them and they have Abe Lincoln sitting on their shoulders whispering George Washington's secrets in their ears."

  “Is that what this is?” asked Tommy. “You, Barry Engle, and now the rest of us, a grown-up Boy Scout troop with automatic weapons and a bullshit name?”

  Dan snorted again, and muttered the word, ‘asshole.’

  Tommy ignored it.

  “They’re not automatic,” added Aaron.

  Summer said, “We’re not anything like that, Tommy. Barry and Aaron suspected something was going to happen—”

  “—when Hazelton’s impeachment vote went through,” said Aaron.

  “That seems to have been the trigger,” said Summer. “All of this started once the vote was taken.”

  “And how were you and Barry privy to all this?” asked Tommy.

  “Barry runs a news website,” replied Summer. “It’s pretty political.”

  “We have a point of view,” added Aaron, in his defense. “We only tell the truth.”

  “Doesn’t everybody.” Tommy regretted saying it immediately. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Aaron took the challenge instead of the apology. “How did you mean it?”

  “He probably meant it just like he said it,” said Summer. “Don’t forget why you and Barry started that website. You wanted to present the facts to a country that was losing sight of them altogether. Should you be surprised that you and Barry were the only people who thought that?”

  Aaron stewed.

  Summer turned to Tommy. “Barry edited the content. Aaron is the tech guy. One of them. They ran it together.”

  “We had nearly a hundred contributors and collaborators across the country,” said Aaron.

  “Your sources?” asked Tommy.

  “Trustworthy sources,” corrected Aaron. “We vetted everything, double-checked facts in every article before we uploaded anything. Everything was true. No opinion, just news.”

  Summer shared a look with Tommy that said Aaron might be glossing his resume a little too brightly.

  “The point is,” said Aaron, “we had sources. We heard things. What we could report, we did. Some things we couldn’t verify, like rumors that the pro-Hazelton groups were lining up at the starting line for something big if Congress tried to oust him. It was Barry’s idea to start prepping for a violent reaction, and if you knew Barry, you’d know why. Like Summer said, he’s always thought the world was coming to an end, yet he convinced me that he might be right and he convinced Summer and some others.”

  “And he was right,” said Dan.

  “So do we know for sure what’s going on elsewhere?” asked Tommy. “Last night, Summer and I watched a video of a volcano erupting in the middle of Spring Creek.”

  “Propaganda,” answered Aaron.

  “And loaded too quickly for it to have been created after the incident,” agreed Tommy.

  “Exactly,” said Dan, getting back into the conversation. “The internet is flooded with disinformation right now.”

  “It all started last night.” Aaron was nodding vigorously. “Somebody launched a huge propaganda campaign coordinated with the assaults.”

  “They’re not just a bunch of guys with guns, then?” asked Tommy.

  “Technically savvy,” said Dan. “Hackers.”

  “We think that’s why some parts of the country are dark and silent,” said Aaron. “Power outages.”

  “Coordinated with everything else,” said Dan.

  “We think they hacked into the power grid,” said Aaron, “and managed to shut some of it down.”

  “That’s a guess?” asked Tommy.

  Aaron nodded.

  “How many confirmed attacks do you know of?” asked Tommy, “Like the one in Spring Creek? I mean 100%, certain.”

  “There’s fighting down in Denver. I can tell you that for a fact.” Aaron glanced over at Dan. “We have friends down
there. They’ve posted videos. Dozens of them. Two or three insurgent groups are down there, trying to take control of the state office buildings. The governor called up the National Guard, but nobody is sure whose side they're on.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Tommy.

  “Chaos,” answered Dan. “Nobody knows. Everybody’s spreading rumors.”

  “Except,” countered Aaron, “we’ve seen video of Guard units fighting alongside extremist units.”

  Dan shook his head vigorously. “We don’t know for sure they were Guard units.”

  “They were,” said Aaron. “I know they were.”

  “So Spring Creek and Denver.” Tommy listed. “Where else for sure do we know about?”

  Dan held up a hand and started raising fingers for the count. "Steamboat, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Fort Collins."

  “Fighting in Boulder,” said Aaron. “The Army is in the streets down in Colorado Springs. Tanks at the intersections and shit.”

  “So,” Tommy guessed, “the fighting is just here in Colorado, then?”

  "I know for sure it's happening in—" Aaron looked up at the numbers in his head, and he silently counted. "Seventeen states for sure. This is everywhere, man."

  “Bombings?” asked Tommy. “Like here?”

  "Some," said Dan. "In some places, guys stormed in and set fire. In other places, dudes in uniforms just showed up in the streets."

  “And where that happens, do the police step in?” asked Tommy. “The National Guard? The Army?”

  Dan shook his head. “Nobody seems to know what’s going on.”

  Aaron added, “And nobody seems to know what to do about it.”

  "Except the insurgents," said Tommy. "They have a plan, and they're executing it."

  “It’s civil war,” said Aaron, “Pearl Harbor style.”

  “Time’s up, boys.” Summer tapped her watch, started the engine, and the Jeep crunched down the narrow road.

  ***

  Turning off the flat road that ringed the mountain’s peak, the Jeep headed down, following the switchbacks toward the tree line.