Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2

by D W McAliley

  "If we get separated," Joe whispered, "that quartz boulder is our rally point, okay? We all meet back there and then head out together."

  Danny nodded along with Eric.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, and soon the long, low shape of the old tobacco warehouse loomed to the left, rising out of a concrete foundation six feet thick and the size of a football field. Massive steel columns were set in that gigantic block of concrete, and they arched overhead to form the frame of the walls and roof. Sheet tin that once covered the roof was rusted and collapsed in several places. Open loading docks stood like open mouths along the railroad tracks.

  Danny stopped, his eyes darting around. "Okay, we’re inside the edge of the city now."

  Eric smiled as he looked at the run down building. "I remember coming here," he said. "I rode on top of the tobacco bales in the flatbed, and I'd sit on the tailgate as Granddaddy backed up to the bidding floor."

  Joe nodded, his own memories of trips to the market rolling through his mind like a dim hum. "Danny, how far is it to the nearest neighborhood you said was on fire?"

  Danny thought for a moment before answering. "Probably Forest Hills. It's still a little more than a mile from here. Let me guess, I'm taking you there?"

  Joe gave a small smile and shrug. "We've already gone this far. I just want to see what's happening so I get a good picture of how serious these guys are."

  Danny glanced meaningfully up at the thick cloud of smoke rising a few miles to the northwest, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he drug in a huge breath of determination and started walking again. Danny never even glanced back, so Joe and Eric were left with the decision to either be abandoned in unfamiliar territory or follow. Joe took the left side and Eric took the right side as they followed Danny down the road that crossed the railroad tracks.

  The sun was almost directly overhead at this point, and it was warm enough to make walking a hot task. Joe took a bottle of water from the small trail pack on his back and sipped about a third of it. He tossed the rest to Eric, who did the same and then offered the remainder to Danny. After a brief hesitation, Danny took the water and drank it gratefully.

  Danny led them confidently through a series of intersections, either walking straight across and ignoring the side roads altogether, or checking carefully and making a calculated turn. After what seemed like an eternity of side streets and surface roads, they finally stood at a gas station a few hundred yards down the street from a broad avenue. A brick sign proclaimed the gated entrance to Forest Hills Community and Golf Course.

  Joe lay on his stomach with Danny to his left and Eric to his right, and they all three looked through their own binoculars at the scene less than a quarter of a mile from down the street. The thick, sweet smell of wood smoke and the acrid stench of burning vinyl and plastic hung equally thick in the air as all three men watched a group of women and children huddling in a trembling mass of fear.

  Four men stood in front of them, two with rifles in hand and two brandishing shotguns with side arms on their hips. Three men, also holding long guns of some sort, stood at the back of the group of obvious prisoners. One by one a man read names from a clipboard, and a naked woman would step out of the faceless mass. She would raise her arms over her head, turn in a few slow circles, then step either to the right or to the left as directed by the man with the list. Each group was ushered by several more men with pistols and rifles. There were maybe forty five women and children total and about half as many men guarding them.

  The women and children sent to the left were made to stand in a line facing the brick sign, and a man walked up behind each and shot them in the back of the head one by one.

  There was an immediate sound as the surviving women and children cried out, sobbing and screaming. The man in charge yelled some orders that were unintelligible due to the distance, and several of the guards man-handled the women into a four rows of five each. Another group went down each line and handed them what looked like orange prison uniforms. Several of the men led the group of women down the side street.

  The men began laughing and joking with each other as they passed around cigarettes and a bottle of brown liquor.

  Joe motioned with his chin, and the three crawled slowly down the back side of the storm ditch they'd used for concealment. Once in the low spot between a track house neighborhood and the golf course entrance, Joe turned and spat in disgust.

  "When did they start doing that?" he asked Danny after a moment.

  Danny shook his head. "Hadn't heard of them taking people like that," he admitted in a hoarse whisper, his face pale. "I heard of them robbing people and roughing them up some, but nothing like that. I know people that lived in Forest Hills. Some of them are your average rich pricks, but most of them are good people."

  "Where were all of the men?" Eric asked softly.

  Joe shook his head. "I didn't see a single one. No boys older than ten or so either. That can't be accidental."

  No one said it, but the slow realization was that the boys and men had probably all fed the flames of the gated community. Abruptly, Danny rolled to his side and stumbled a few steps down the ditch to retch quietly. Nothing came out, but his shoulders heaved a few times, and when he straightened, his eyes were grim.

  "I don't know what ya'll mean to do," Danny said, "But I'm gonna go kill those bastards."

  Joe and Eric shared a short look, but when Eric started to speak, Joe shook his head slightly. "I'm sorry, Danny," Joe said, "but we can't. I counted at least twenty two men up there armed to the teeth. Even if only half of them are any good, we're still out numbered nearly four to one."

  Danny's jaw clenched along with his fists. "We've got to do something," he growled through his teeth. "They're killing people and who knows what else."

  "I don't like it any more than you do, Danny," Joe answered. "But here's the cold hard truth of it, us getting killed in some idiot heroics will not help those women they marched off with orange jumpsuits. And it damn sure ain't gonna help the ones they executed or our families back home."

  Joe gripped Danny's shoulder with one hand and looked the man in the eye, his face serious. "I want them to pay too, Danny, and they will. But if we're going to make that happen, we've got to be smart about it."

  After a long moment Danny nodded. "Listen, what I said earlier about not getting involved..."

  He trailed off and Joe patted him on the shoulder. "Consider it forgotten," he said reassuringly. "Now, let's see if we can get out of here with our hides intact. We've got some plans to make."

  Ch.73

  An Early Dinner

  The four guards formed a box around Senator MacArthur as they ushered him through the hallways. Rather than making him feel secure and protected, the armed men in their strange uniforms and stern, silent expressions fed his anger and his unease. They had the look of dangerous men who were accustomed to both receiving and delivering violence. The Senator had known such men his entire life, and he had served with many of the same. He recognized the type when he saw them.

  Their presence in the Capitol and all that he was sure they stood for made the hackles on his neck stand on end.

  They passed offices on the right with windows that opened onto the National Mall and revealed a mass of men in blue and black uniforms putting up tents in neatly laid out rows and columns. It was still light outside, though the shadows were getting longer. Daylight savings time was running out, and in a few weeks they'd be solidly in the heart of fall. Normally, by this time in the year, the Senator wasn't in D.C. much because he spent whole weeks hunting in the backwoods of Tennessee.

  Odd that he would think of hunting at that moment. He felt more than a little hunted himself, as a matter of fact. Treed was more like it, actually, and Senator MacArthur suddenly had a pang of sympathy for the raccoons he'd hunted as a boy. With deer it was one thing, waiting in a tree stand or stalking them down on foot. But raccoons were hunted with dogs at night until the dogs treed
them. The hunt was more about the chase than it was about the kill.

  Looking at the four guards walking around him, Senator MacArthur couldn't help but hear the sound of his old tracking dogs baying in his ears.

  After walking for what seemed much longer than necessary, the guards stopped outside the entrance to Statuary Hall. The massive double doors of the main entrance stood closed and were flanked by two armed guards on each side. The two guards in front of Senator MacArthur stepped to the side, and a uniformed man to the right of the door opened it.

  No one spoke, and for a brief moment, the Senator debated whether or not to test the situation and see what happened if he just decided not to move. He quickly discarded the idea, though, as foolhardy at best. If he'd been well-rested and well-fed, that might have been a different story. As it was, his knees felt shaky just from the long walk through the marble and granite halls.

  He stepped inside and made a conscious effort not to glance around at the faces of history staring back at him.

  In the center of the round chamber was a large dining room table made of dark, ancient hardwood that had been polished and oiled until it shone with the reflections of history that surrounded it. The crystal chandelier in the center of the massive domed ceiling was lit, though dimly. It was a subtle, but effective reminder that the entire building was under generator power that had been supplied by the man sitting at end of the table. The smells from the President's meal made the Senator's stomach growl loudly enough for him to wonder if the President might have heard.

  For his part, President Hall didn't look up from his plate for a long time. Finally, unsure of what to do, the Senator started to turn for the chair at the opposite end of the table. Just then, though, the President set down his fork and knife and stood, wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin embroidered with the White House Seal.

  "Senator MacArthur, from just outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee," the President said, extending his hand with a broad smile that never quite touched his eyes. "I'm glad you could join me. Please sit."

  The President motioned for the other chair and returned to his seat as the Senator walked to his. "I had the chefs prepare a meal for you, Senator," the President said without preamble. "I hope you don't mind. I know you've made a point of not eating since my men established the security perimeter here a few days ago, but I'd hoped you would make an exception for the President."

  Senator MacArthur looked down at the plate that was placed ceremoniously in front of him by a uniformed FSS agent. He lifted a silver plate cover and the smells of grilled steak, steamed vegetables, and mashed potatoes hit him hard enough in the face to make him dizzy.

  The urge to pick up the silver fork and knife by his plate was so strong his fingers trembled. But then Senator MacArthur looked up and saw the President watching him with an eager, expectant expression. He knew the Senator was hungry; he knew the meal would be nearly impossible to pass up. Once the Senator accepted food, he and the President would share a subconscious bond that would be difficult to break, even with conscious effort.

  Senator MacArthur clenched his teeth and slid the plate away from him.

  President Hall's face twitched once, and then the smile was back. "Senator, I assure you, I haven't poisoned the food," President Hall said. "If I end up killing you, and I may yet, it won't serve me any purpose to have you die in private, so obviously murdered by my hand. No, if it's to be murder, it will be very open, very public, and very messy."

  Senator MacArthur sat for a long moment seething in silence. The President seemed not to notice as he continued eating. In that moment, Senator MacArthur made the decision not to eat another morsel provided by President Hall or his men. There might not be many things left to him at this point, but this was one. It was a way that he could make his dissent known and let others see it.

  "If you're trying to intimidate me," Senator MacArthur said quietly, "it won't work. I was a police officer in Knoxville and Nashville for twelve years and a Tennessee State Trooper for fourteen. I've had thugs a lot tougher than you with a gun in my face."

  This time President Hall did look up, his face cold and hard. "This isn't a threat, Senator," he said in a deceptively quiet voice. "I'm simply trying to set your mind at ease. I wanted to talk to you, see if you could be reasoned with, before I decide whether I'll have to kill you and how. That's all."

  A chill ran down the Senator's spine as he listened to this madman Hall discuss killing him as if he were talking about what to pick up at the grocery store. There wasn't a hint of malice or anger in the man, just cold, calculating logic. Slowly Senator MacArthur realized that President Hall wasn't a thug, but something much more dangerous, more sinister.

  "It was you, wasn't it?" Senator MacArthur asked in barely more than a whisper. He couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth, but he couldn't stop them either. "You did the whole thing.....the attack, the Blackout....all of it."

  President Hall looked up from his plate, chewing a piece of steak, and smiled. "Do you really think I'm capable," he began after he swallowed, "of pulling off the single most elaborate and most devastating terrorist attack in the history of mankind? Do you really think I'm the kind of man who could kill more than two hundred million of his own countrymen just to seize power?"

  The smile never left President Hall's face. After a moment of tense silence, that smile twisted into a grin that looked more like a snarl. "And what if I said you were right?" President Hall asked in hoarse whisper. "What if it was me? What if one day I had simply looked at our country and had really seen the state it was in—the state that politicians and their selfish self-indulgence had pushed it to—and I decided someone had to put an end to it? What if I had realized that in order to save even a remnant of what this nation once was, I'd have to destroy it, take it down to the very foundations and rebuild it....stronger, more united....better than it was before. Who else would do it? Who else would dare?"

  President Hall trailed off, his snarl turning slowly into a glower of seething indignation and rage as he stared at the dark wood of the table a few inches in front of his plate. After a long and uncomfortable silence, he regained composure. He took a deep breath and exhaled with a slow shudder. When he looked up at Senator MacArthur again, the President's face was an unreadable blank mask.

  "You have only two choices," President Hall said calmly. "You can either help me, or you can choose to resist me. If you help, I can promise you that you will be protected, and your every need and desire will be provided for. You will have a permanent place of prominence and power in the new nation we will forge together. Your children and grandchildren for generations to come will be the aristocrats, the lords and ladies that determine the fates of millions."

  "And if I say no?" Senator MacArthur asked in a quiet, but strong voice.

  "I don't know," the President said honestly with a small shrug of his shoulders. "I've never had anyone turn down the offer before. You'd be the first. I'm sure I could indulge your reticence for a while. It may even help me to establish a tighter grip on the rest of the sheep if they see your active, principled, and utterly futile fight against my will."

  President Hall leaned forward and fixed the Senator with a hard, determined glare. "But you understand that in the end, if you don't submit, there's only one way it ends for you. I'll be forced to make an example of you so that no one else has the false impression they can stand against me with impunity."

  The President leaned back and gave another slight shrug. "I'd really rather not go that road, if it can be helped. You're a man of principle, clearly, Senator MacArthur, and such men are difficult to find. I would hate to have to lose someone of your character for such a pointless cause. You can't stop me, so why die trying?"

  Senator MacArthur stood, a cold knot of fear twisting in the pit of his stomach. He knew President Hall could kill him with a word and that none of the guards standing around the perimeter of the round hall would hesitate to carry out such orders.
Still, he couldn't abandon every principle and value he'd ever had just to preserve his own safety and life. If he did, what would be the point of living?

  "There's nothing as dangerous," Senator MacArthur said softly, "as a powerful madman who thinks he's saving the world."

  Without another word, Senator MacArthur turned and headed for the door. He half expected the President to call out and stop him, but there was only silence behind him as his footfalls on the black and white marble floor echoed in the domed chamber. At the doors, two of the guards stood and hesitated, looking over Senator MacArthur's head before opening to doors for him to leave.

  Back in the hallway, the guards that had accompanied him on the way to the early dinner meeting waited. They formed a grid around him once more as he walked through the corridors and hallways. None of them spoke a word or even acknowledged his presence in their midst, other than going out of their way to avoid getting closer to him than a couple of steps.

  As they walked, Senator MacArthur looked once more through the windows and out onto the National Mall. Even though he couldn't have been with the President for more than a half hour, the shadows on the broad open greenway had stretched nearly from side to side. Already cooking fires had been lit among the rows of tents that the President's army had worked hard to raise.

  At one of the windows, Senator MacArthur paused for a moment. A steady flow of what appeared to be civilian refugees was trickling in from the side streets that opened onto the Mall, and they were being directed by men in blue and black uniforms to a large pavilion tent that stood at the corner of the Mall closest to the Capitol building. A line of ragged looking people stretched from that tent to the edge of the Mall, where it turned and ran out of sight under the trees. As Senator MacArthur watched, the people continued to come in alone or in small, huddled groups.

  One of the guards with a few stripes of rank on his right shoulder stepped up to the Senator and looked out the window as well. After a moment, he nodded, turned to the Senator, and said with a cold smile, "Recruitment center."