Breaking the Beast

by Steven Bird

  Looking me directly in the eye, Bud said, “Until recently, you were Lieutenant Joseph Branch of the One World Defense Force.”

  I felt a tingle run through my body at his utterance of those words. “How the hell did you know that?” I asked, losing my patience and wanting to reach for my rifle. I could see his eyes watching my hands, waiting to see if I was going to make a move.

  “Relax, Joe. If I may call you that,” he replied, attempting to set me at ease.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, then,” he continued. “You and another gentleman defected from the OWA with some highly valuable items and intelligence.” His eyes danced across the room to the Symbex pack in the chair next to me. “I can see you’re still hanging on tightly to those things. That’s good to see.”

  “Once the OWA realized what you had done, they chose to monitor and surveil rather than go all out to apprehend or kill you. They hoped you’d lead them to bigger fish. They hoped you’d lead them to fish like me, but that hasn’t worked out so well. Now they’re ready to put an end to the games and stop you before your treasonous mission actually has a chance to succeed.”

  I was in absolute shock. I couldn’t fathom how this man we’d never met, other than the strange encounters in the woods, knew seemingly everything about me. “Bigger fish like you?” I queried.

  “I’ll get to that,” he said, waving his hand as if signaling me to be patient. “Then, along came Ms. Adams, here.”

  “Ms. Adams?” I mumbled aloud, turning to Tamara. For the first time since we’d met, she seemed speechless.

  After a brief moment, she looked at me and said, “That’s my name. Tamara Adams.”

  “How have I not known that this entire time?” I muttered, still in shock at what was being laid out before us.

  “It just never came up,” she said softly.

  Smiling, Bud said, “It’s very fitting for such a patriot such as yourself to bear the family name of a great patriot of the past. But I digress, back to why we’re all here right now. Like I said, and as you surely see by now, I’m with an organization who primarily observes and reports, rarely becoming directly involved.

  “We’re not all that different from you and your recently-departed friends, my dear,” he said, nodding to Tamara. “Except, of course, that we have avoided skirmishes to the best of our ability. Such things always lead to a loss of intelligence-gathering capabilities as the flames of fine patriots are prematurely extinguished.

  “Now, don’t get me wrong, ma’am, I’m not saying your roles weren’t needed; they were, and it allowed others like me to continue to operate unnoticed behind the scenes, furthering the cause. You did a lot of good. You righted many wrongs. And while the OWA was focused on grassroots insurgent activity such as yours, others, like me, received less scrutiny.”

  “The cause?” I asked.

  “We serve the same team, Joe, even if you didn’t even know the team’s name. And at this moment, you’re the man carrying the ball, I’m here to help you make your touchdown.”

  “How exactly do you plan on doing that?” I asked.

  “There are many more of us out there, Joe. More than you know. We can help you see this thing through.”

  Tamara and I looked at each other. It was as if we were having a conversation with no words. I could see it in her eyes that she wanted everything he was saying to be true, just as I did, but we both had been given plenty of reasons to doubt since our journey had begun.

  Turning back to Bud, I requested, “Tell us more about the last few days. From the first time we made visual contact with you, until now.”

  “Okay,” he said, shifting in his chair and getting comfortable. Having an idea, he stood up and said, “This might take a while. I’m gonna grab a beer. Would you like one?”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “You have beer down here?”

  “Home brewing was a hobby of mine. As you can certainly tell, it stays pretty cool down here, so the beer doesn’t get too warm. I also use a lot of hops, just like the British India Corps did to keep their beer fresh without refrigeration.”

  Appearing from the darkness, Robert handed both Tamara and me a brown glass bottle with an old-fashioned ceramic mechanical flip-top cap. “Here ya go,” he explained. “You may as well enjoy it while it lasts. This will be one of my last batches for several reasons, one of which is that my ingredient stockpiles have been depleted.

  “How did you keep them fresh this long?” I wondered.

  “The magic of vacuum sealing,” he replied.

  Holding his bottle out to us, he said, “Here’s to seeing this thing through!”

  Smiling, I said, “I’ll definitely drink to that.”

  As Tamara and I sipped his harsh, hoppy, and unfiltered concoction, he sat back and continued his story.

  “I’m gonna start a little further back than you asked,” he explained. “Please, bear with me.”

  Taking a sip, he said, “A little more than a decade ago, I retired from the U.S. Navy as a Chief Cryptologic Technician (Collections). I had worked extensively with the special operations community during the Global War on Terror, and needless to say, it garnered me a lot of important connections back in the real world as a result.”

  “Is that like a spook?” Tamara asked.

  Chuckling, Bud replied, “Yes, they called us spooks. CT’s and IS’s are basically the enlisted side of the Navy’s intelligence community.

  “Anyway, after I retired from the Navy, I returned here to Georgia and our family farm here in Villanow, this very property.

  “To say my family’s roots run deep in the area would be an understatement. My brother and I grew up playing in these old civil war era hideaways. My daddy used to tell us to never show or talk to our friends, or anyone else for that matter, about these dusty, old holes in the ground. I guess he saw the value in having a secret place to run and hide if need be.

  “Maybe it was the WWII-era upbringing that made him inherently suspicious of the stability of the world around us. I dunno. But I’m glad he was, because these old bunkers have all but been forgotten, since everyone else who ever knew about them are dead and gone. Most of them from old age and natural causes, long before the Sembé virus was ever unleashed upon the world. The memory of this place simply became lost over time.

  “Once the conspirators released the virus and the world began its spiral around the drain, many of my contacts reached out to me, knowing that our trust in each other might pay big dividends, depending on which way the political winds began to blow. Once the actors who became the OWA started to coalesce, we tightened our allegiances and began operating as an underground network of intelligence-gathering patriots.

  “Today, there are several loosely-affiliated groups, who together, make up a fairly large and effective resistance. The group I’m with goes by the code name Knowlton’s Rangers.”

  Being a history buff, I scratched my chin and asked, “Isn’t that from the Revolution?”

  With a look of surprise on his face, Bud smiled and said, “Why, yes. Yes, it is.”

  Elaborating, I asked, “Weren’t they an elite reconnaissance and espionage detachment of the Continental Army?”

  “You know your history, Joe,” he replied with a nod and a smile. “Since you’re familiar with Knowlton’s Rangers and such, you’ll probably get a kick out of this, too. Each of the aforementioned loosely-affiliated groups that make up the resistance are named after other such historic groups from the Revolution. All the groups combined are referred to by the code name ‘Continental Army’. That’s not a formal name for the organization as a whole, but I guess you could say it serves as a reminder of what our mutual goal is here. No one should be looking to seek power for themselves. We all merely wish to return power back to the people by kicking the OWA off our shores, and hopefully, someday, off the planet.”

  I had to smile at the idea. It was brilliant. “What is the formal name, then?” I asked.

  He leaned
back in his chair and said, “We’re the Americans, of course.”

  Speaking up, Tamara asked, “Why have we never heard of any of this, other than rumors, that is? Why is no one fighting back?”

  “Yet!” he replied sharply. “Why isn’t anyone fighting back, yet? That answer is simple: because we know that unlike with the patriots of the American Revolution, we don’t have the same weapons and technology as the tyrannical force we oppose.

  “The circumvention of the Second Amendment over the years, as well as the rapid advancements of military technology that was denied to the public, has led to a civilian population that doesn’t stand a chance fighting toe-to-toe against a superpower with both airborne and ground-based weapons superiority.

  “We have some military hardware and experienced personnel, but when you add their new biological stranglehold on humanity, well, we’ve got to get into the proper position first. What you bring to the table may prove to be exactly what we need, which is why they are trying so hard to stop you.”

  Taking a sip of beer, he continued, “But back to your question: our group caught wind of your defection from our network of underground sources. Once you were reported to be in our area, I was alerted and briefed on the situation. I located you by observing both the actions of Miss Adams’ group and the ODF, and then kept watch from a distance. Sometimes I kept a watch on you indirectly, by noting the actions of the OWA, and the placement of ODF and OSS assets, and as you saw recently, sometimes I kept watch over you directly.

  “When Ms. Adams here and her group got involved, our operational clock sped up significantly, which forced me to become involved more so than normally desired.”

  Looking to Tamara, he said, “I mean no disrespect by that. There was no way for you to know the ins and outs of everything, especially of a group who had never presented itself to you. That was our mistake, and for that, I apologize.”

  Tamara simply nodded in reply.

  I was again struck by her silence. She had been one of the strongest-minded people I’d ever met, and now she just sat there, taking it all in instead of driving the conversation.

  He then continued, “When you entered the woods, I knew an OSS team had been dispatched to find you. I made you aware of my presence on the first occasion to lay the foundation of our alliance, in the event we were forced to meet. On the second occasion, the OSS had been inserted into the area, and I was steering you out of their path.

  “On our most recent encounter, well, they had tracked you and were making their move. My ability to be a mere observer had come to an end.”

  “Were there others with you? It sounded like someone was cutting them down with a belt-fed machine gun or something.”

  “That was me.”

  “You had a belt-fed?” I inquired.

  “I had one, yes. Unfortunately, I was forced to leave it behind to facilitate our rapid egress.”

  Just then, our conversation was interrupted by a thunderous boom that could be felt as its shockwave rippled through the ground.

  “And so it begins,” Bud mumbled as his face turned downcast.

  “What? And so what begins?” I asked.

  Another thud shook us, as he said, “We knew if their OSS detachment wasn’t successful, they’d have to up their game. This situation had gotten too far out of hand for them. No, they’ll level those woods and everything in the area to make sure you’re dead and that your assets are destroyed.”

  Boom after boom could now be heard, leaving little room for conversation as we each pondered the changing dynamic of the situation, and what it would mean for our objective from that point forward.

  ~~~~

  Several hours later, when the bombing campaign had finally stopped, empty beer bottles littered the table. Barely a word had been spoken during the bombardment. When each beer was finished, Bud would simply replace it with another. Maybe he expected a bunker buster to come pounding into us from above and didn’t want his precious brew to go to waste, or maybe he just wanted to numb his mind to his new reality.

  After all, this wasn’t just another step in the journey to him; it was his home. It was where his family had been since before the Civil War, and now, everything he knew was being destroyed by those who had inflicted an agonizing death upon the population he loved. Just like when I walked away from D.C. that fateful day, he, too, understood everything he held dear would be nothing more than a memory.

  Breaking the silence, Tamara asked through a slightly inebriated voice, “Um… where’s the ladies’ room? That was a lot of beer, and…”

  “My apologies for not explaining sooner,” Bud said as he stood. “Right over here,” he explained, pointing to a curtain hanging in the corner of the room which was barely visible in the poorly-lit conditions. “I have a compost toilet set up over there.”

  I was thankful Tamara had asked that question, as I had reached maximum capacity as well.

  Once we all began winding down for the night, Bud noted, “There are sleeping bags in that barrel in the corner,” he explained as he pushed himself back from the table. “They should be ready to use. Pests can’t get in there. And there’s no need to be in a hurry. Sleep as long as you can. We’re gonna have to let the dust settle for a while. We’d get stomped like cockroaches if we went out there scurrying around right now. I’m sure that’s how they see us, anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I awoke in the darkness of the bunker with a pounding headache and a desperate thirst. Only one remaining candle flickered, with its wax oozing off the edge of the small metal tray and onto the table where nearly six inches of it used to stand.

  I hadn’t had a hangover in a very long time, and it was a feeling I didn’t miss one bit. Sitting up, I saw a faint view of Tamara in the flickering candlelight, sitting on the floor with her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees.

  “How’s your head?” I asked, referring both to her hangover and her injury.

  “I hate hoppy beer,” she replied. “It’s always been like a bottle full of headaches for me. It doesn’t help that I’m nursing a concussion, either.”

  “Maybe he has some Tylenol hidden down here somewhere, too,” I said, half in jest.

  Hearing the heavy, iron door creak open behind us, we both spun around in the darkness to see Bud enter the room carrying his inflatable lantern. “Good morning,” he said. “Or good afternoon, to be more precise.”

  “Afternoon?” I mumbled. “I can’t believe we slept that long.”

  “I can. You two were looking pretty rough,” Bud declared. “You needed the rest, and I’m sure nearly passing out from all the beer helped ensure you got it.”

  “I sure don’t feel rested,” Tamara interjected. “I feel even worse than before.”

  “That’s the price we pay for drowning our sorrows,” Bud replied as he placed three new candles on the table and lit them. Looking up with a smile, he added, “In a letter to a friend, Ben Franklin once said, We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!”

  Holding his finger in the air as if to signify the birth of an epiphany, he added, “If it is wine, or in our case, beer, that is a gift from God to see us happy, the hangover is an act of the devil to take that happiness away.

  “I brought breakfast,” he added. “It’s nothing fancy like sausage and gravy, but it’ll do, and it’ll help get your aching body back on track,” he said, placing several packages of dehydrated meal pouches on the table. “I just need to get my camp stove all set up, and we’ll be good to go.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have coffee, too, would you?” Tamara asked as she massaged the sides of her head with her fingertips.

  “Coffee and aspirin,” he replied
with a chuckle.

  “Did you go outside?” I asked.

  “No. Not yet,” Bud grumbled. “We’ve got to give it more time. I’m sure they have scouts in the area searching for evidence of your demise.”

  After we ate a breakfast of rehydrated scrambled eggs and potatoes, I checked the battery level on the Symbex pack and saw a reading of sixty-two percent.

  “How much longer do we need to stay down here?” I asked.

  “Why, do you have an appointment?” he quipped.

  “I need the sun to charge something,” I explained, placing my pack in the chair beside me.

  “Is that a cooler pack?” he asked.

  I reluctantly nodded.

  He smiled, saying, “We wondered how you were keeping that stuff from spoiling during your trip.”

  He clearly knew every detail about both Tamara and myself, so there really wasn’t any reason to be keeping secrets from him anymore. Knowing that Tamara and I were due for a Symbex dosage from our limited remaining supply, I asked him, “So, where do you receive your treatment?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Your regular dose of Symbex.”

  “I don’t,” he replied as if not giving it a second thought.

  Tamara and I shared a concerned glance.

  She then said, “I didn’t think I had seen you in line at the support center before. How are you getting by if you aren’t being treated?”

  Taking a deep breath, he looked at her and explained, “There was more than one reason my work was limited to observation and intel collection. I wasn’t infected.”

  “Wasn’t?” she repeated redundantly, realizing precisely what he meant as the words escaped her lips.

  “You mean…”

  Interrupting her, he said, “What would be the point of living in a world where there was nothing worth dying for?”

  He then looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. Your assets are safe. I won’t be asking you for any. It would only serve to delay the inevitable, anyway. You’ve probably only got enough for a few months between the two of you as it is.”