“Mr. Blackstone, Preacher…the world outside these walls…”
A muffled scream echoed from somewhere down the hallway outside the warden’s office. The sound caused the hair on the back of Preacher’s neck to stand up.
The warden’s tear-filled eyes stared into Preacher’s.
“Mr. Blackstone, do you believe in hell?”
Preacher flinched as another, louder scream made its way into the dimly lit office followed by the sound of gunfire.
“Yes sir, I do.”
Warden Wydell emptied the flask and then placed it gently on its side on the top of the desk. His voice was a low, hushed whisper as he leaned forward while continuing to stare at Preacher.
“Hell has come to us all, Mr. Blackstone.”
Preacher said nothing, sensing the warden’s dangerous insanity.
“Here, look at what I’m doing.”
Preacher watched as the warden withdrew a paper from his file and signed it at the bottom.
“That’s your release papers, Mr. Blackstone. You’re a free man.”
Preacher’s mouth fell partly open as he struggled to form his words.
“I don’t understand, sir.”
Tears streamed down the warden’s sunken cheeks. His voice rose, the shrill, frightened cry of a child suddenly convinced of some terrible beast lying in wait underneath the bed.
“What’s to understand? You can go! You can leave this prison! I only hope its enough of a gesture to grant me a place in heaven.”
Both Warden Wydell’s hands disappeared into a drawer and then withdrew two identical handguns which he slammed down onto the desk. Preacher pushed himself against the back of the chair as he prepared to catapult himself toward the door.
“You’ll need this.”
The warden slid one of the two guns across the desk.
Preacher remained frozen in the chair, a thick layer of sweat covering his forehead.
“Please, Mr. Blackstone, take it with you. Now go, get the hell out of here!”
Preacher stood up and took the gun and slipped it into the front pocket of his orange prison jumpsuit. The warden’s face cracked open into another madness-infused smile while motioning with his right hand for Preacher to leave.
“Good, the soldier in the hallway will escort you outside.”
As Preacher’s hand reached for the door, Warden Wydell spoke to him one last time.
“Please be careful out there, Mr. Blackstone. The world that awaits you outside these walls is not the same one you left.”
A moment later found Preacher following the soldier toward the prison’s primary exit. Both men paused as the sound of a single gunshot erupted behind them. They both knew it came from inside the warden’s office.
Then the soldier was on the move once again as Preacher made certain to keep up.
The world outside awaited.
The screams were getting louder…
----------------------------
EPISODE FOUR:
Bellingham, Washington
Get the kids, get the kids, get the kids…
That was the only thing that mattered to forty-three year old Sabina Markson as she navigated the rust-plagued, 1973 Ford F-100 pickup in and around the emerging chaos that threatened to overtake the small college city she had called home for nearly her entire life.
To her right she saw one of the newer red-bricked multi-story business buildings engulfed by flame. To the left was a mob of nearly a hundred people, most of them younger, breaking the windows of cars and businesses while screaming at the top of their lungs that a new world was coming.
If this is the world they want, they can damn well have it.
Two city police cars were parked two hundred yards to the south of Main Street. Four officers stood next to the vehicles watching the destruction unfold.
It was still early morning. Sabina had dropped off her sixteen year old son Jackson and fourteen year old daughter Mika at the high school less than an hour earlier. She recalled Mika pointing to a small group of college-aged kids who had surrounded someone who appeared to be one of the several homeless people who often wandered the city’s side streets.
“They’re pushing that poor man around. What a bunch of jerks.”
Sabina glanced to where her daughter was pointing and then shrugged. She was already running late for her scheduled 8:00 a.m. off-load time at the docks. If she missed her appointment that meant no paycheck which meant the mortgage payment would be late – again.
“Remember, I got practice, Mom.”
Sabina gave a quick smile to her son and then watched both her children exit the truck and make their way toward the high school’s main entrance. Mika looked typically grumpy. She had spent most the night before finishing up a required cultural awareness assignment for her social studies class. Her daughter’s lack of patience for the political correctness that dominated public education reminded Sabina of Jack, a man who only wanted to be left alone by everyone but his own small circle of family and friends.
In three weeks it would be the fourth anniversary of her husband’s death. He had spent his adult life on the waters of the Pacific Northwest as a commercial fisherman. It was tough work, but work he loved because it allowed him to be his own boss on the small, rickety, single-engine boat he had inherited from his fisherman father. Sabina had met him nineteen years earlier when she was working as a bank teller. Jack would come in every Friday to deposit his pay check. He was a large man with a mop of unruly brown hair, kind eyes and a somewhat shy, soft-spoken demeanor who always seemed slightly embarrassed that he smelled of the sea.
Sabina appreciated the smell. It had a certain mystery and quiet nobility to it, just like Jack – a man of few words who somehow still managed to say a great deal to those important to him.
After nearly six months of depositing his checks, Jack decided one day to ask Sabina out for dinner that Saturday.
They were married just three months later.
Every day since Jack’s death Sabina replayed the moment that late Sunday afternoon when she looked out the kitchen window into the family’s small fenced backyard where Jack was playing with Bosco, their two-year old Golden Retriever. Jack was wearing a pair of loose fitting cargo shorts and the remnants of a white t-shirt that should have been thrown out years ago. He hated buying new clothes and would wear something until it was literally falling apart.
Jack looked up and saw her and smiled, his chubby cheeks pushing up against the bottom of his twinkling green eyes. Sabina smiled back and then glanced down to the sink full of dishes that were clearly unwilling to wash themselves.
Bosco began barking loudly but Sabina assumed it was just the dog and Jack playing as she began filling the sink with water.
Bosco kept barking.
Sabina looked up and for a half-moment she thought she still saw Jack standing in the yard smiling at her. Then she blinked and reality revealed itself. Jack was lying face down on the ground, his legs bent like a pair of broken sticks underneath him.
It took Jack Markson’s wife less than a few seconds to bolt from the kitchen to where he lay unmoving in the back yard, but to her it felt like an eternity.
“Jack! Jack!”
Sabina screamed his name over and over again, but Jack gave no indication he could hear her cries. She struggled to roll him over and when she finally did her right hand flew upward over her mouth as she fought to stifle another scream.
Jack’s eyes were open, bulging, and devoid of all life. Sabina knew she was looking at the corpse of the man who had been the love of her life – the father to her children and the quiet foundation of their family.
Within twenty minutes the city paramedics loaded up Jack’s body into the ambulance. He was officially declared dead shortly after arriving at the hospital though the doctor who later spoke with Sabina confirmed his death was most likely instant, the result of a massive heart attack.
Jack Markson was just 44-years old and left Sabina with a mortgag
e and a pile of other bills his work as a commercial fisherman had always struggled to keep up with. She had two children to care for and no idea how she would manage.
She did manage though as she discovered a strength within herself she never before knew existed.
In the days following Jack’s funeral, Sabina considered trying to sell his beloved old boat. She went down to its slip at the Bellingham Marina and sat inside the cabin flooded with the memories of them working on the craft side by side, hauling in crab pots, checking salmon lines, or simply watching the sunset against the backdrop of a horizon Jack was convinced was the most beautiful in all the world.
It was the same boat both Jackson and Mika had caught their first fish, and the boat the family had crowded onto for various weekend mini-vacations that took them to some of the many small islands that dotted the waters of the surrounding area.
A photo of the family sat above the helm steering wheel, and next to that was hung a sterling silver Saint Christopher necklace that had been in Jack’s family for three generations. Jack’s father had placed it in the boat, believing it would help to ensure he returned back from the sea to his family safely. It was the same necklace worn by Jack’s grandfather when he served as a soldier in Europe during World War II.
One time when the family was returning from a trip to their favorite island of Sucia a storm system rolled in just as a particularly strong tide shift was underway. The result was six foot waves that pummeled the small fishing vessel as it struggled to make its way back to Bellingham. Jack looked over at Sabina and the two kids as they huddled together in a corner of the boat cabin and then pointed to the necklace and smiled.
“No worries, Saint Christopher has never let this family down yet. We’ll be just fine and home soon.”
Sitting alone inside the vessel that represented the life her husband had loved so much, Sabina Markson decided then she couldn’t sell the boat. Instead, much to the surprise and worry of family and friends, she took over Jack’s business and began fishing for herself.
The family continued to struggle to make ends meet, but Sabina found herself able to bring home almost the same amount of income Jack was and there were times she was certain she felt his presence on that boat as she travelled slowly over the water on her way to hopefully bring home another catch.
After dropping the kids off at school this morning Sabina had quickly made her way to the marina and was greeted by the sickening sight of dark plumes of smoke that she instantly suspected were signs of burning diesel fuel which most likely meant one or more boats had caught fire.
Please don’t let it be our boat.
It wasn’t until she was halfway down the gangplank that Sabina realized there were still no fire trucks responding and in fact, hardly anyone was seen inside the marina itself.
What the hell is going on?
That was when Walt Caldwell shuffled her way. He was in his 70’s, a thin and frail man who was among a handful of marina residents who lived on their boats all year. He owned a beautifully restored sailboat he and his wife had shared until her death two years earlier. Now it was just him.
“Walt, where are the fire trucks?”
Walt stopped a few paces in front of Sabina and shook his head, appearing surprised at the question.
“Haven’t you heard? There’s some kind of disturbance downtown. A whole building is on fire, a mob of kids, gunfire…”
Walt’s voice faded into silence as he turned and looked at the burning remnants of what were two of the more expensive pleasure craft moored at the marina. They had been cut loose from their slip and had been pushed out farther into the water so as to minimize the threat of the fire spreading to other tied up vessels.
“I woke up to a bunch of smoke. Me and another young fella managed to cut those two loose and get them away from the docks. He said he heard some yelling and laughing earlier, and then the fires. I heard a boat taking off out of here right before I got out of bed. I’d guess they were the ones who set the fire.”
Sabina shook her head. None of it made any sense.
“Why? Why would someone do this? Why would people be setting buildings on fire downtown?”
Walt grunted to himself as he leaned on a railing for support.
“Hell if I know, but if you’ve been watching the news, it seems like whatever bullshit has been going on in Chicago and elsewhere has come here too. I heard Seattle was on lockdown. The mayor declared a state of emergency. As for the ones who set those boats on fire, the young man who helped out said they looked like they were Native American - kids from Luttia.”
Luttia Island loomed just a few miles across the water to the west of Bellingham Harbor, the traditional home of the Luttia Indian Tribe.
“Your boat is fine though. I went around and checked on the others.”
Sabina was about to tell Walt thank you when she heard her phone announce a text message. She looked down and saw it was from Mika.
Mom, cops all over the school. Bomb threat. –M
A tight knot began to form deep inside Sabina’s stomach as a growing sense of unease took hold.
A second text arrived, this time from Jackson.
They are trying to lock down school. Kids leaving. I am getting Mika. Can you come get us?
Sabina quickly texted Jackson back.
Be right there. Wait for me.
“I got to go, Walt.”
Walt already knew why Sabina suddenly appeared so concerned.
“You go get your kids. Be careful. You coming back here?”
Sabina nodded, already walking quickly back to the truck.
“Yeah, I think so. It’ll be safer here.”
The drive back to the school revealed the incredibly swift transformation of a normally tranquil, slow-moving city into something out of a terrible nightmare.
Cars were left in the middle of the street, blocking some of those streets completely. Sabina saw people running from their homes carrying luggage and stuffing them into vehicles, their faces masks of terror. Overhead several black border patrol choppers flew just over the tops of the city’s tallest buildings as the sound of sirens cried up at them from the pavement below.
It was a war zone.
Get the kids, get the kids, get the kids…
After speeding down several back alleys to avoid the main roads, Sabina saw the outline of the high school just a block away. She was almost there.
The Ford’s engine roared as she accelerated past a group of twenty Hispanic students who were throwing rocks at passing cars. Like most cities throughout America, Bellingham’s Hispanic population had increased dramatically over the last twenty years. Sabina recalled reading a recent article in the local newspaper that just over six thousand Hispanics called the city home.
Sabina’s own family had originated from Spain two generations earlier so she welcomed the influx of immigrants into the community. On this day though, she couldn’t believe the aggression on display by the teenagers who appeared determined to break out one of her truck windows. The faces of the roadside mob were contorted into snarls of rage as they flung the rocks toward the Ford. Sabina recognized two of the teens as the kids of neighbors who lived on the very street she did.
One rock struck the passenger door with a loud thud, causing Sabina to let out a frightened shriek. She swerved to the left and then pushed down on the accelerator even more, making certain the kids were left safely behind.
“Little shits!”
The truck screeched to a halt in front of the school. Two empty police vehicles were parked no more than twenty yards in front of her.
“C’mon you two, get out here.”
Sabina flinched as she heard the sickening sound of gunfire originating from inside the school.
Oh, no. No-no-no-no…
The mother of two pushed open the driver door and ran toward the back of the truck, intending to run into the school and find her kids. It was then she saw Mika emerge running as fast as she could fr
om the right side of the school building with her brother close behind.
Both of her children were terrified.
Sabina cried out as she heard more gunfire from inside the school. She held her hands out in front of her, desperately motioning for her kids to somehow move even faster toward the truck.
Mika fell to the ground.
Jackson stopped to help his sister up and then looked around to locate the sound of something moving from behind him. Sabina followed her son’s gaze and felt a terrible chill. She wanted to scream, to move, to somehow stop the world from spinning on its axis, but instead was unable to move or to even make a sound.
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 4
