Downward Cycle

by JK Franks

  One more rat dead.

  Scott secured the weapon, checked the body, and gently slung the sub-compact rifle over his shoulder before walking gingerly out of the creepy, musty old building. Someone else could climb up and get the SR-15 as he was unable to. All was quiet outside as he emerged into the light, and the others began emerging from hiding to meet him.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  DeVonte and Kaylie met up with the group in the middle of town. “Is every day like this here?” DeVonte quipped. “You guys really know how to throw a welcome party. That was a lot of shooting.”

  “Just for you, man,” Scott joked.

  Todd was nearly carrying Scott as he struggled to stay on his feet. He finally set him down in some shade. “Kaylie, can you check on him, I think he may actually have broken something this time.”

  Kaylie removed Scott’s tactical vest and went to work examining her uncle. Solo also needed patching up, and Bartos tended to him as best he could. One of Jack’s new-found pilgrims had been shot dead in the gun battle. The man had been a prisoner in the old world, and most would not have welcomed him into the new. Some—maybe many—old ideas and prejudices would need to be revisited, it seemed.

  Many, indeed most of the other volunteers, began to come out of hiding. As an emergency plan had been in place since the beginning, they had all gone into hiding at the first sign of trouble. Sadly, Sheriff Warren and his deputies had not survived the day. They would have to be replaced, but for now, they would be mourned.

  Scott was not in good shape. Although he wanted to help with checking the town and beginning the recovery efforts, he was given pain meds and a cot in the aid shelter and told to rest. In the aftermath of the skirmish, there were additional unpleasant tasks to take care of and some of Tyrell’s men still to round up. Preacher Jack and Bartos put together a makeshift security detail to handle that. They had been reluctant to implement all of the Catalyst rules, but seeing the dead enforcement officers had convinced them to adopt even the more stringent clauses. With this, they declared everything owned by Hansbrough and Tyrell to be forfeited to the town, and their houses to be burned. The new world would have no mercy and no tolerance for crimes like these.

  Bartos made it clear to all: “Anyone living in those homes gets ten minutes to get out and to leave town.” This rule had been discussed and now implemented as a strong deterrent to anyone associating with criminals. As identities of the others in today’s activities were discovered, those homes would likely suffer similar indignities.

  Over the next several days as things began to settle, it became clear that the uprising had been costlier than they originally thought. In terms of human life and resources, too much had been lost. The population of Harris Springs was estimated to be less than 150 now. A few of the warehouses of food and supplies had been found and looted by Tyrell’s gang. While some of the loot was recovered, most seemed to have vanished. An entire tanker of diesel fuel had been torched, presumably because it wouldn't run in any of the cars Tyrell and his thugs drove. The plan to visit the train was put on hold until they had the manpower and the security to again mount such an operation.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Todd looked over at Scott. “You up for a little trip?”

  Scott was exhausted and filthy from moving supplies all week, but he was mostly recovered from his injuries. “Sure thing.”

  “Good, we need a computer geek.” Todd winked with a devilish look on his face as he took out a small radio—one Scott had not seen him use before. “Charlie One, Charlie One, mission is a go. I say again, mission is a go.” Todd put the tiny handheld back in his pocket. Within minutes, over the horizon of the gulf, came the thumping sound of a helicopter coming toward them.

  The gray Navy chopper settled to rest just outside of town in the old Publix parking lot. “Come on, ride’s here,” called Todd, already on his way.

  Scott hobbled to catch up and Todd helped him clamber in first, immediately coming face to face with a group of dangerous looking men. Todd followed, taking the last remaining seat. The chopper was airborne and heading westward out over the sea within moments. Scott had no idea where they were heading, and the headphones they provided were dead. For the nearly two-hour ride, all he could do was watch Todd's smiling face. Several times he tried to ask him what the fuck was going on. Todd just mouthed the words “You’ll see.”

  The pitch of the rotors changed, and the forward momentum translated into an elevator drop straight down. All Scott could see was open water, but while they were still several hundred feet above, the chopper made contact with something solid, and the engine began winding down. All of the men disembarked the chopper, landing onto the stark white landing deck of the still stationary Aquatic Goddess. Scott was stunned. This enormous, gorgeous boat appeared to be completely empty. His nose detected a faint smell of bleach and a deeper, sickly stench of something more foul. But damn, this was a beautiful boat.

  Walking down to the bridge, Todd relayed much of what he had found on his previous visit. The ship had enough supplies and equipment to help a small town survive for several years. He wanted Scott to work with the Navy team to get the PLC controls functioning again so they could cool and balance the engines. The Navy was going to help guide the big ship into the Intracoastal Waterway behind Harris Springs where they could use it as needed. A crew had apparently been on deck for several days, removing bodies and restoring power. It was not perfect, but everything seemed functional. The ship had diesel generators as well as a large solar array for electricity, a desalination plant for fresh water and enormous fuel tanks. The fresh food was gone, but the dry goods lockers were fully stocked. What would have been adequate for 5,000 passengers for the full cruise (plus extra) would indeed go a long way in helping Harris Springs survive the winter.

  “Why is the Navy helping?” Scott asked.

  “I was in a position to help them out with our friends, the grayshirts,” Todd explained. “Afterward, I picked up DeVonte and told him about the ship. This was actually his idea.

  Scott had been wondering how Todd had found the boy. Todd filled him in. “Mobile had been overrun, his family…well, they had mostly been wiped out when he got home. He hid out until things got even worse. Eventually, thanks to your damn bike, he made it down to the bay. He had taken the bridge road out to Dauphin Island, nearly in the middle of Mobile Bay trying to escape the gangs. I finally heard him on the handheld radio and managed to stop nearby and pick him up.

  “By the way, Scott, the Navy commander would like to speak with you. Actually, he wants to debrief you on what you know about Catalyst once we get this beast back home.”

  “He knows about Catalyst?” Scott asked.

  “He knows some of it, but he needs to know more… we all do,” Todd replied.

  The following Tuesday afternoon, the Aquatic Goddess slowly pushed down the Intracoastal Waterway behind the town, guided in by two smaller Navy tugs. The giant, white ship would stand out like a beacon for everyone around to see. While that could be a bad thing at the moment, no one cared right now. It was a refuge. It meant hope. It was a sign of what could be, and for many, it would also now be home.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Out on a rough macadam highway, a lone figure walked awkwardly toward the burned-out structure. Buzzards circled in the afternoon sun, keeping watch on a makeshift dumping ground for decaying bodies. Scott Montgomery stumbled on the steps of the old cottage, which still smoldered slightly. It had been his hiding place, his safe harbor, but now it was gone. Kaylie, Bartos and DeVonte had removed everything salvageable which sadly, wasn’t much. The generator he had hidden under the rear deck had survived, but very little else had. Scott knew it was time to move on. Kaylie had already settled them into one of the beach houses out on the little cove. Scott just had to get his Jeep; he had refused to tell anyone where it was. Kaylie knew, but she wasn’t telling either.

  Over the weeks before the attack, Scott had made the
decision to take as many of his supplies as possible to his primary bug-out location. He had become increasingly convinced that trouble was coming, he had just not expected it to come so fast. That day he had taken the Jeep and a full trailer down to his hideout, and with luck, it would all still be there. If Scott had been able to ride his bike, he could have been there in thirty minutes. If he had been willing to ask one of his friends for a lift, it would have taken ten. On foot, however, it took several hours. Keeping secrets was something Scott had always been good at.

  The roads leading into the bug-out spot were barely visible now, which was good. The Jersey barriers blocked the road completely a few hundred yards in. Scott had found an old maintenance trail through the woods that went around the barrier. He knew this spot very well now as he had made countless trips to bring supplies out since the CME. He still felt bad for Pete. His forced retirement had not gone well. Scott had found his body in an old RV, parked at a campsite on the reservoirs park land. Scott had taken only the keys from the man’s belt. Those keys unlocked every gate and door on the property.

  Scott bypassed the road on top and instead walked down the two-track toward the river. Here, he removed the netting and limbs camouflaging the Jeep and its attached trailer. It took a few trips to load supplies from his bug-out inside the dam. He was only taking enough to get by at the new house. He would leave the bulk of the goods here. The old generator room in the dam was huge, isolated and apparently unknown to everyone. Once he had decided on this location, he had scouted it from every angle and knew it was ideal. While damp and musty, it had been safe harbor several times for them recently. It would have been a great long-term place to ride out the storm of the last few months. If he had done that, though, would he have gotten to Kaylie on campus? Would he have met any of his new friends? Would the town still be standing? The old Scott, the damaged Scott, would have hidden out here until the supplies ran out, likely dying a quiet death like poor Pete, the caretaker apparently had.

  Now he had a purpose. And he had the will to fight. Scott knew he wanted to live and help as many others as he could to do the same. His refuge here would stand vacant, guarding his emergency supplies, but it would never be home for him. In fact, Scott had been wondering more lately about getting these enormous power generators back online. The old transmission lines still ran in the direction of town. He would have to talk to Bartos and then find an engineer able to help, to see if it was even possible. Electricity would be a wonderful thing to have. Locking up the room, and then the gate on the rust covered security fence, Scott climbed into the Jeep and drove back toward home—a new home.

  Epilogue

  He had felt uneasy revealing what he knew about Catalyst. Scott had been flown over to brief the Navy commander just before the fleet moved on. His internal conflict was obvious to the lifelong Navy man. After revealing most of what he knew, the commander considered Scott for a moment, then said, “You think they are doing the right thing, don’t you?”

  Scott took a moment, then slowly nodded once. “Yes, sir. I don’t like it, but I see the wisdom in it. It’s cruel; it's brutal…but we can’t save everybody.”

  The commander smiled and nodded his head. “I agree with you.”

  “You do?” Scott was surprised. “But you’re at war with them—a civil war, or is it a coup?”

  “Yes,” he said in a tired voice, “Senior staff commanders have known something like Catalyst would be a contingency plan. Marshaling resources, retreating to a more manageable position. It’s all coldly logical. We in the Navy have also been aware that, for years, many of our best Seals, Army Delta Team members, and other elite soldiers were being increasingly reassigned into a single black ops project. They are now what you and Captain Todd call the grayshirts.

  “You see, Scott, I don’t disagree with their goals, I disagree with their tactics. If they were just going to allow cities to fail on their own, we might not have been ordered into battle. As a military man, I—we all took an oath to defend the Constitution. That mandate forces me to render aid to our country, no matter the foe. Right now, our foe is our brothers in arms, and that sickens me. The fact is, they are actively aiding the country’s downfall in many areas, exacerbating the misery. In many cases propping up guys just like the asshole your team took out.”

  Scott nodded, unable to disagree.

  Scott was surprised but probably shouldn’t have been; this was not a battle of good versus evil. This was a battle of survival versus humanity.

  “Sir, what I haven’t been able to grasp is how any of our politicians—our president especially—would have ever allowed a plan like Catalyst to take effect. It robs them of their power, something I just can’t see many in DC giving up.”

  The commander mulled this over for several seconds. “That troubled many of us as well. It seemed…very out of character. Those of us on the senior staff, especially the ones who served in Washington, always felt the rumors of a shadow government were probably true, at least on some level. Too many clues over the years pointed to a select few people that seemed to have the real power. People or organizations just like your DHS, whose reach went well beyond their charter… You have to understand, son, that most politicians are imbeciles, too wrapped up in their own popularity to be able to lead or make decisions for the country. Yet the country keeps functioning just fine. Why is that?

  “Consider for a moment that the public face of the government is mostly a farce. Yes, they pass laws and puff their chests, like the issues of the day are of extreme importance, but the real decisions—on things that really matter—are almost certainly made elsewhere. In quiet rooms, out of sight of any of the people you would ever have seen on a Sunday morning news show.

  “This group obviously saw the inevitability of such a catastrophe and felt that if they didn’t help direct the collapse, they and the country would lose everything. You can probably be assured this group is still alive and functioning just fine.”

  “Do you have an idea of who these people are?” Scott asked.

  The commander gave a faint smile. “Many names have been bandied about. Illuminati, Freemasons, Templars, Trilateral Commissions, New World Order… None of these are true, and most are likely misdirection, put in place by them. We do know they call their battle units, the ones you call grayshirts, The Praetorian Guard—Praetor5 for short. Modeled, apparently, from the Roman Republic’s elite bodyguards.

  “Scott, what I am telling you is purely conjecture, though informed conjecture. This group is ancient. Hell, for all we know they’ve been around since Rome. Certainly before America. They may only be a handful of people. They are intelligent, extremely well-funded, and know what they are doing. They are suspected to have engineered the Civil War, profiting from both sides. Their reach must also be on a global scale—their plans were not just for the US. We may likely never learn the identity of any of the people involved.”

  The commander continued, “These people protect their own. Their power and influence are rumored to be beyond belief. This is probably why elements in the US government have been known to carry out covert operations that seem to make no sense on the surface. Why, for years, have the CIA and the US government wanted to destabilize a country, throw it into civil unrest and allow a corrupt dictator to take over? What possible reason could there be for that? The answer is more mundane than you would think, and for that reason, more obscene than most would imagine. Several years ago, when I began to accept this as fact, our government, which many times in my life and career has seemed insane to me, finally began to make terrible sense.

  “One well-documented plan, many years ago, was Operation Northwood. It was a false flag plan to begin a campaign of terror on American soil. American citizens would be shot in front of witnesses; Cuban migrant boats would be sunk on their way to Florida; bombs would go off in every major American city; and an airplane full of American University students would be brought down in a fiery crash. It would have been blamed on Fidel Cas
tro, and would have convinced the American public that it was a good idea to start a war with Cuba.

  “President John F. Kennedy was brought in for his approval. Although not a fan of Cuba, he did not agree to it and even considered charging the high-ranking men, but in the end, not a single one was charged—at a minimum a gross miscarriage of justice. The odd thing is that Kennedy was assassinated soon after… supposedly by a man with ties to Cuba. But doesn’t it make you wonder what other acts of terror the government has incited? Remember the missing weapons of mass destruction used to justify invading Iraq and toppling Saddam? If you get the media and enough idiots to repeat something enough times, people will believe it and rally behind it as a real issue.”

  The commander looked squarely at Scott. “Mr. Montgomery, I am not a conspiracy nut, I am a man who has worked within this system for most of my life. I can assure you, the people that run this country have always run this country. They are not the ones you might think, and they are definitely not the ones you vote for. Our electoral process was clouded and indirect. For a supposedly true democracy, our process was not all that democratic. The group behind Catalyst desires control. That is all they seek, and they will do anything necessary to retain it.”