The darkness lasted a long time.
Sara.
He tried to sit up, but his body didn’t want to coordinate. It didn’t want to do what he wanted it to.
He wanted the taste of pancake and rat-flavored vomit to get the fuck out of his mouth, too.
And, Parker wanted Sara.
But when he asked for her, the words came out as nonsense.
Taking the methadone might have fixed, for a few hours, the physical symptoms of withdrawal, but it did nothing to tackle the psychological effects. And the hallucinations… they were hard to shake himself out of. But still, the drug was the only escape.
He hated himself for doing it; he loathed himself for succumbing to their control. He knew that, while he was accepting their methadone, he was putting himself into their cage and locking himself in to save them the trouble. But he couldn’t make himself fight it.
Parker’s captors no longer gave him a spoon with which to eat his food. He’d been reduced to scraping food from the prison tray with his bare hands. But that food was ingested only once Parker had guzzled down the methadone, running his index finger around the bottom of the medicine cup and licking the precious liquid off his skin. He forced himself not to think about how pitiful he looked, how disgusting his habit had become, blanking his mind of everything he could. The fix came first, to the extent that it came at all.
It was while he was sucking up the last of his methadone, waiting for his puréed mush to cool enough for him to be able to scoop it into his mouth, that Parker had his first glass-half-full idea in months. And when the idea came, it exploded in his head like a grenade.
He sat there blinking for a moment. The simple beauty of the idea twanging around his head like a pinball.
Normally, in a situation like this, Parker would have been focused from the get-go on finding a way to escape. He would have been clinically set on identifying any wrinkle that could be exploited to his advantage. That’s what the step-counting, and internal map-making, had been for. The urge had been there to begin with, even injured as he’d been. Addiction, however, had blunted his thinking. Parker had become mentally numb to such an extent, and trapped in the routine so deeply, that one deviation from it—turning left instead of right in the corridor—had caused a full meltdown. A panic attack that had left him paralyzed with fear, shivering naked on this concrete floor for two cycles of Billy and three of Shania. That’s how far under his skin his torturers had wormed themselves in.
It was clear to Parker that the powers that be knew of his past weaknesses and were determined to use the knowledge to their advantage. They’d just ramped up his susceptibility to pills and alcohol and replaced it with smack. In just a short while, they’d succeeded in emptying him of all of his fight and fury.
But the new idea, sudden and crystal clear and shining with vibrant possibility, blossomed fully formed in his head, blowing away the methadone cobwebs which had silted his thinking.
While Parker had been getting injected with heroin, he’d had zero control over the amount of drug that had entered his body. Calhoun had seen to that. Now that he had been robbed of the most basic, if cruel, attentions of Calhoun, though, things had changed.
Parker was now in charge of how much methadone went into his body.
The strategy laid out before him by that bare fact was so simple.
And that was the key.
From this moment on, every time a tray of food was brought in with its accompanying pot of green addiction, Parker would drink the methadone down, yes, but he’d leave a little in the jar—just a milliliter or so. Just enough to decrease the level of active drug in his body, but not so much that it would cause a full cluck round of withdrawal. The residue, he’d mix into leftover food.
Within hours, Parker would become his own withdrawal program.
The accepted way to come off opiate dependency was through this form of graduated withdrawal. A little less methadone in every dose for a week, and then you reduced intake again the next week, and so on, until the body was weaned from the drug completely. It was a tried and trusted method, and one Parker was oh so familiar with from tackling his pill addiction. Here, he couldn’t afford to decrease the amount of drug week by week—he didn’t know how much time he had. But, he could do it every few doses, and despite the strength of the addiction he felt, he knew his motivation to find Sara would be enough to allow for the shorter regimen.
Parker’s thinking went like this: If he could get off the methadone completely, and yet make his captors think he was still hooked, it would give him an advantage—a slim one, but an advantage nonetheless. And sometimes a slim advantage was all you needed. Surely, they weren’t going to keep him here forever. What would be the point? And if they were softening him up for something, some greater purpose, as he thought they had to be, they were taking their damn time about it… which gave him time to get himself clean. And now Parker was determined to get himself ready for whatever was to come. To be free of the addiction would be a massive step forward in raw preparedness.
Enlivened, now, he saw that in one small way he was fighting back; he might not be out on the trail, striking hard and fast with astonishing violence, but he’d become the hero of his own body. However much Billy’s achy heart was breaking, Parker’s was mending.
Maybe that had been their next mistake, Parker reasoned. Locking up guys who opposed state oppression of the kind he was witnessing now, instead of leaving them to rot in a roadside ditch—that was nearly always a mistake. Just look at history. If Parker got free of this place, he was determined to make their mistake not just a single insect-like inconvenience on the back of the beast, but a whole fucking plague of locusts.
Naked, cold, and alone—wasn’t that the moment of birth for every animal?—this cell would become the womb from which another animal would plop defiantly onto the straw. Parker wasn’t interested in vengeance, either; this wasn’t about settling scores. This wasn’t going to be blind rage or a counter reign of terror just replacing one system of despotism with another. No. This was the beginning of something new, something better, and Parker would do everything he could to make it happen. Not for himself, but for the America that Sara and her children would grow up in.
The smile on Parker’s grubby, grizzled face showed itself now against every possible force that was being used to crush his spirit. His surroundings would have the opposite effect from what had been intended. This cell, with its squalor and insane music, had not destroyed him, and it would not. It would rebuild him.
And Parker was ready for that. He’d make himself ready.
6
Chan had not been exaggerating.
The government was coming, but it was only in the direction of the cell’s base of operations. It wasn’t that they’d discovered the cell and were sending forces to engage them on home turf. But the route they were taking down US 40 out of Terre Haute would bring them within yards of the substation and the work going on there to adapt the firetruck, which was only half-finished.
Sara, Ava, Margret, Brian, and the rest of the cell had lit out toward East Glenn, where the advance scouts under Brian’s command had reported FEMA activity coming their way. They’d be able to catch sight of them near there before they got too close.
Ava passed the binoculars to Sara as they crouched in the treeline overlooking a section of US 40 heading into the city. The land was flat and without ready cover beyond this line of cork elm and low spicebush with its gentle slopes of grass. The road was mostly clear of dead vehicles, and the FEMA convoy—made up of two Ford F-250 Super Duty trucks, each with vehicle mounts holding M240 7.62 mm machine guns—rolled almost silently along. Ahead of the trucks, a phalanx of maybe twenty FEMA infantry walked in weapons-cold formation. They weren’t expecting trouble, Sara noted. This was just a patrol… perhaps one heading to the nearby pissant burgs of Seelyville and Cloverland. Going there just to be a presence. Reminding the populace that the government was in control and that the
y wouldn’t countenance any resistance. Sara was reminded of the Robin Hood films she had watched in her early youth, sitting on her dad’s lap, chewing popcorn and guzzling chocolate shakes. The Sherriff of Nottingham’s men would always be out terrorizing the locals, throwing lit torches onto thatched roofs and generally oppressing the serfs. Now, there was just bile rising in her throat—no sweet taste of chocolate and popcorn as she surveyed this scene.
Sara was only grateful she saw the Council for what they really were now. Vultures pecking at the corpse of America. Ruling by fear and violence. She shivered in the spring heat, the chill of all those wasted years running down her bones. She would be eternally thankful that her father had gotten her away from the influences of the Council and the Church of Humanity. If, at the end of this, she found out James Parker was still alive, then that would be the only icing on a huge cake of shit; reconnecting with her father, and seeing him survive all this, would almost make everything she’d been through worth it.
Margret elbowed up through the brush and, keeping her voice low, asked for Sara’s assessment.
Sara whispered back, “They’re not coming for us, but they’re heading for the substation. There’s a good chance they’ll find what we’ve been doing to the firetruck, and we’ll be down one asset. It’s going to be difficult to replace.”
Margret cursed beneath her breath. “We need it for the assault on the prison.”
Sara nodded. “If we want to hold onto it, we’re going to have to take them out.”
Ava licked her lips and squinted at the small column of soldiers. “We could risk it, get back to the substation, cover up our activity there and see if they just stroll on by.”
“Won’t happen,” Sara hissed. “They’d have been bound to have taken the firetruck already if they knew it was there, and if they didn’t and this is their first recon, they’ll take it this time. No question.”
Sara knew that taking on the FEMA forces in the open was a risk, but US 40 offered no high ground before the substation for mounting a fully surprise attack. She pulled a map from her pack and spread it out on the grass. “They’re two miles out of Seelyville. We passed through it on the way here.”
Ava snorted. “I must have blinked and missed it.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s a small town, but remember that Christian Center we passed?”
Ava shook her head. “I was kinda concentrating on staying alive, not taking in the architecture. Is there a guide book?”
Sara grinned and punched Ava lightly on the shoulder. “Funny.” She turned to Margret. “If we could get back to Seelyville fast, and I mean really fast, that big old barn of a Christian Center has given me an idea.”
Margret was silent, thinking, her face a mask of concern. “We can’t jeopardize the firetruck; we’re going to have to engage, and it’s going to have to be a ‘No Survivors’ action. We can’t risk there being communication back to FEMA. These guys have to disappear off the field like they never existed. Will your plan deliver that?”
Sara explained what she was thinking to Margret and Ava. When she finished, Margret repeated her question about whether or not it would work to eliminate the whole force.
Sara nodded, sure of herself now. “Yes, ma’am.”
Margret nodded curtly. “Then, let’s do it.”
One hour later, they were ready. Sara and Brian Chan waited beside US 40 in the April sunshine. Seelyville was pretty much deserted. Without power or supplies, the residents without prepper stores had gravitated to the government’s so-called Mercy Centers in Terre Haute or Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, the rest of the cell’s members were also in position. Sara felt uncomfortable about using the Christian Center as a massacre point now that they were acting out her plan, but it really was the best building between the FEMA column and the substation. Any chance of success rested on this location.
Sara couldn’t risk looking down the highway with the field glasses, as one glint from the lenses could be spotted, but she knew they were coming. Both her and Brian were twitchy without their MP7s, too, but the guns were hidden within easy reach if all this went south.
Brian had been enthusiastic about the plan when he’d first heard it explained on the cross-country jog back to Seelyville, but Sara could see that the reality of it was now biting into him. They were going unarmed into the teeth of the enemy. There were few people with the balls to face up to that notion, yet Brian had said yes in less than a heartbeat when Sara had asked if he’d stand with her. She knew Brian had the hot desire to fight back against the Council, whether he had felt any tiny wavering in his courage or not. And besides that, Parker had always told Sara that any soldier or policeman who faced possibly deadly hostility without fear was most likely to be killed. Fear was a sharpener, and fear was sharpening both Brian and Sara now.
But Brian saw them first.
Shading his eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun, under a bowl of perfect blue sky, he nudged Sara. “Windshield glint. See it?”
Sara squinted, seeing nothing at first, but after a few moments the windshield of one of the Fords crawling behind the infantry gave a telltale glimmer. They had about ten minutes.
The Christian Center was a one-story, forty-yard-a-side square prefab church with corrugated steel sides. Thirty feet high, it was an imposing addition to the flat landscape. It stood back behind a wide and empty parking lot on the opposite side of a highway dotted with occasional one-story clapboard houses.
Now that the column was approaching, Sara reached into her pack and brought out a small, tissue-wrapped bundle, held together with a tightly wound rubber band. She’d left it to the very last moment. Her heart bumped as she snapped free the band and peeled back the paper. Sara looked at the innocuous silver crucifix stud earring in her palm. How could something so small represent something so bad?
Even though the Church of Humanity and its systems were out of her life, she hadn’t been able to get rid of this one symbol of her rank within the Church. Worn in the left ear, it told anyone who knew its significance that she was a mid-ranking officer. If it was anything to her now, though, it was a physical representation of her misguided thinking. A touchstone to symbolize a past to which she no longer belonged. She hadn’t looked at the stud for months; it had ridden in the inside pocket of her pack like a bad memory she couldn’t get rid of, even given the choice.
Sometimes we need our bad memories to remind us what good ones feel like, Sara thought. She hoped to use this to her advantage when the FEMA column fetched up outside the Seelyville Christian Center.
With a sigh of final resignation, she reached up and, with well-practiced fingers, popped the crucifix stud earring through the hole in her left ear. It felt strange to have the jewelry back in place. Perhaps, after today, she’d be able to let it go for good.
The FEMA soldiers’ Advanced Combat Helmets made them look like an army of approaching ants as they came slowly into view. The M240s mounted on the trucks were manned, but the gunners didn’t look perturbed. Sara and Brian didn’t look like they posed a threat, after all, just standing by the side of the road. But as the column arrived, Sara leaned into Brian’s ear and made it seem like she was whispering into it. Any of the FEMA forces with eyes on her would have caught this. It was designed to give them pause. The troops kept walking, and the Fords kept rolling.
Great.
Sara had anticipated that subtlety might not get the job done, and tapped Brian on the shoulder. She heard his dry lips smacking as he tried to work up saliva. He was going to have to turn his back on the soldiers now, and that was never the easiest course of action. But Brian did what was expected of him and broke briskly away from Sara, jogging toward the Christian Center.
“You there! Wait!” a voice boomed from the cab in the lead Ford. “Patrol, halt!” the same voice barked, and the soldiers came to a stop. “Stand easy there.”
Brian froze, keeping his back toward the soldiers as long as he dared. Sara w
ished her MP7 was nearer, and not resting beneath the bushes by the church sign which said “Jesus Loves You. And We Do Too.”
The door of the Ford opened and a lieutenant in camouflage ACU and a platoon cap, holding a drawn Beretta M9A1, stepped from the cab. His nametape read Solon. The lieutenant was steel-eyed and sharp-shaven across his lantern jaw. Teeth flashed white behind his thin, dark lips, and he walked with a swagger toward Sara. As he walked, eyes fixed on her, he motioned with the pistol in the direction of Brian.
“You, boy,” he said, and his voice, when he wasn’t barking orders to his men, was pure Texan drawl, “why don’t you join us back over here, hmm?”
Brian did as he was told, turning and beginning to walk back, eyes not making contact with Solon’s.
“We were of the impression that everyone in Seelyville had left. So, who might you two be?”
Sara kept her arms in a neutral position, not presenting any threat to the lieutenant or his men. The troops were taking maximum advantage of Lieutenant Solon’s “stand easy” order. Not one had his 5.56 mm caliber M16 raised. Some were drinking from canteens, others chatting with comrades. This was not a platoon that was expecting resistance—which was exactly what Sara had been hoping for.
“Oh, me and my folks decided to stay, sir,” she said. “We got a well for water and a bunch of supplies. Anything we want to eat, Daddy can go out and shoot,” she added, keeping her voice even and her smile easy. Brian stood at her side and nodded his agreement.
Solon looked from Sara’s brown skin to Brian’s Asian eyes. “Your… daddy?”
Bingo. “Well, we calls him Daddy; more like an uncle really. We’s both ’dopted, see.”
Solon was obviously a man who didn’t let inconsistences slide. “Let me see your papers,” he said, holding out his hand.
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