Authors: L. Douglas Hogan
Upon receiving his promotion to the Executive Office of the United States, General Muhaimin made a few phone calls and assigned a civilian labor force to construct an Islamic-style architectural dome over the White house. He ordered a minuet with a United Nations flag to fly high above 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue. His designs were grand, but designed to keep the UN Council content that he wasn’t making a power grab, even though his intentions were to do just that. He was not yet set to make his grand reveal.
Route 3 west of Murphysboro, Illinois
Denny didn’t know how to regain his composure. He sat at length while the Marines busted open some MREs and started eating. Buchanan offered him one, but he wouldn’t take it.
“We must’ve missed her back at camp,” Denny said.
“That’s possible,” Nathan said. “We didn’t cover every square foot.”
“I’m heading back,” Denny said.
Nathan understood, but had a mission of his own: to find and kill the leader of the Southside Raiders.
“Will you be okay on your own, Denny? I need this guy dead, but I also understand you need to find Heather,” Nathan told him.
“Yeah, go ahead. I understand. I want him dead too, but I need answers.”
Buchanan heard most of the conversation and walked over to them. “Is there anything I can do to help you guys?”
“You’ve already done so much,” Nathan answered.
“Well, that’s how you see things. If we’re going to build America from the ground up, we’re going to need each other’s help.”
“That’s all well and fine, but you have your Marines to look after, and I need to find my sister,” Denny said.
Heather was all Denny had left, and nobody knew what would become of him if anything were to happen to her.
Denny adjusted the rifle on his shoulder and headed down toward the back of the convoy. The rear vehicle had the three Marines in it that had the firefight against the M249 SAW. The driver spoke to Denny as he passed by.
“Hey, man, there’s a jeep down the hill that’s drivable, just not sure how much fuel it has.”
“Thanks, I’ll snag it and take it home.”
Denny disappeared down the hill.
“Well, Lieutenant Colonel, looks like it’s just us. How about that ride to Murphy. It should be emptied out now.”
“Hop in, Nathan. You can tell me about it on the way.”
Cade was safely out of the UN-controlled zone. He was headed to the house of one of Mark’s old friends. They were introduced a couple years back, prior to the Flip, and had had a few good times together. He’d held a Federal Firearms License before they were all annulled.
Sweating profusely from the anxiety of being caught by UN troops, Cade cautiously walked up to the door and knocked. Nobody answered, and in his frustration, he wiped the sweat off his face and kicked at the base of the door.
“Wayne, I know you’re in there.”
“Go away or I’ll shoot,” a voice said from inside.
“Wayne, it’s me, Cade, Cade Walker.”
Cade waited a moment and then heard the sound of an unlocking dead bolt and chain lock. Wayne opened the door and peeked out.
“Cade? How long has it been? I can’t believe you’re still alive,” Wayne said as he continued to open the door.
“Wayne, I need your help,” Cade said as he pushed his way into the house and saw a lady on the couch with two small children.
“Wayne, children? Really? How irresponsible of you.”
“I met a girl, man. We fell in love.”
“I can’t be hearing any of that right now. I’m in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I’ve got the UN breathing down my back. I just escaped 149.”
“You were on 149, Cade? C’mon, man, I took you for being smarter than that. Nobody goes to 149. There’s a lunatic running some kind of faction down there. He takes women, food, water, supplies, and weapons, doesn’t ask and doesn’t have a conscience.”
Cade just looked at Wayne and didn’t say anything, but his body language said everything. Once Cade felt that he had Wayne locked on, he gave the lady on the couch the same look.
Wayne broke the silence. “Okay, I think it’s time for you to be leaving.”
“Wayne, I thought you took me for smarter than that.”
Wayne knew he had a situation on his hands and gave Cade a quick once-over. Cade saw Wayne looking him over and knew that he was either putting together a strategy of attack or checking him for guns.
“Wayne, I don’t have any guns. That’s why I’m here. I need your help. Give me a gun and some ammo, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I don’t have anything I can spare,” Wayne said, lying to Cade.
“I would rather you voluntarily help me than otherwise.”
“Like I said—” Wayne started to say, but he was rushed by Cade, who ran at him with his shoulders and head tucked. Wayne tried to knee him in the face when he was close enough, but only got a glancing blow. It seemed that Wayne was in control, but that was only because Cade was fighting one-handed. His other hand was digging in his pocket for his four-inch switchblade.
Cade pulled out his knife, hit the button, and the sound of steel sliding against steel was heard as it locked into place. Wayne felt a sharp stick to his heart that turned into a burning sensation. Cade had stabbed Wayne and was pushing all his weight up into Wayne as he pushed him off. Cade never let go of the blade and kept it firmly planted in Wayne’s heart. They shifted positions with Cade getting on top of Wayne.
“I told you I wanted to do this voluntarily. You didn’t have to tell me no, and now it’s gonna cost you more,” Cade whispered into his ear. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the lady.”
When Cade was sure that Wayne was dead, he stood up. He brushed himself off and looked at the lady, who was too frightened to budge from the couch. She was holding her children’s eyes closed and pulling them in tight.
“Where does Wayne keep the guns?” Cade asked defiantly.
“They’re in the gun room, to the right,” she said, pointing in the direction of the room.
Cade walked in that direction.
He heard the door close in the front room and returned to make sure nobody was there. The lady and the kids had left.
“They won’t survive out there, either,” he said as he went back to looking for the gun room.
He found the room, but it was tightly secured. Cade returned to Wayne’s body and patted his pockets down for keys.
“Nothing,” he said, standing up. He walked into the kitchen and started going through the junk drawers, which turned out to be every drawer.
He found a ring of keys that were labeled. On one key, he read “Guns.”
“This must be it.”
He walked back to the room and unlocked the door.
The walls were covered with rifles, and the tables were covered with pistols.
“Wayne, there’s plenty here for the two of us. Why did you have to lie?”
Cade was thinking “long distance,” so he grabbed a Bushmaster .30-06 and some ammo from the ammo locker, which opened with a key from the key ring he had found.
He grabbed a Glock G26 9mm pistol from the table and secured some ammo for it from the ammo cabinet.
He then went into the front room and sat down on the couch where the lady and kids had been sitting.
“Still warm,” he said.
Cade began familiarizing himself with the Bushmaster .30-06.
“This should do just fine.”
Somewhere west of Opal, VA
Aaron had been walking for hours, following the country road and staying concealed in the vegetation just off the roadway. He was beginning to wonder if he would ever find the town that Mayor Arnie spoke of.
Aaron had never been on such a high-risk mission before; excluding his escape from the District and Michael’s bunker, this was the most deadly risk he had ever taken. He’d spent his previous years preparing his mind for the challenges of the future. He was old enough and wise enough to know that there was going to be a gloomy life ahead if he wasn’t prepared for it. His mother and father immigrated to the US when his mother was pregnant with him. Zamora had barely made it to the US when Aaron was born. Aaron always thought it was cool that he was conceived in Israel and born in the United States. To him, that was the talking point of his life.
Aaron decided to stop moving forward. He felt that he’d either missed the town or hadn’t followed directions accordingly. He wiped the sweat from his brow and took a moment to catch his breath. Just as he stopped to breathe, he looked around the dead-silent forest. Off to his right, on the roadway, he saw something colorful. It was an out-of-the-ordinary color.
“Blue and white?” Aaron whispered to himself.
He began walking closer to the roadway and noticed a blue and white minivan sitting just off the road in the ditch.
He silently moved toward the minivan to get a closer look. It was dead silent, and his footsteps through the foliage sounded like explosions of breaking branches.
The van looked like it had been there a while, and there were no signs of life anywhere, save a few birds.
He walked even closer to the van and peered through the window. He saw a blue baby seat strapped in the back. He grabbed the door handle and opened the door.
“Nothing too strange about an empty vehicle parked out in the middle of nowhere,” he said to himself.
Every door was unlocked and the hatch was popped. It looked as though everything had been gutted from the vehicle, except dangling from the rearview mirror, Aaron saw a picture of a family. It was a baby boy and his mom and dad. It was hanging from a chain and dressed up in a plastic frame. The picture was barely two inches by two inches, but big enough for Aaron to see.
Aaron’s mind flashed back to the wallet he’d seen on Mayor Arnie’s cabinet. It was memorable because who carries a wallet these days? The man and the baby in the wallet were the same two in the picture hanging from the rearview mirror.
How could this be? What’s going on?
Aaron thought to himself as he continued his investigation.
Why would I be sent out after a red herring?
Aaron rose up out of the van and continued his inspection on the outside. The registration plates said FIRST IN FLIGHT across the top and North Carolina across the bottom.
They were traveling north
, Aaron thought to himself.
Aaron went back around to the passenger side and opened the glove box. There was a map and insurance policy inside. He opened the insurance policy and read the names of the owners of the vehicle. “Cody and Joyce Pearce.” Aaron compared the policy to the vehicle and it matched. He assumed the picture on the mirror was of Cody, Joyce, and their baby boy.
As Aaron closed the door and turned around, he saw a trail of trash in the overgrown ditch. The trash looked more and more like clothes the closer he got to it. Stooping down in the ditch, he reached down and grabbed a stick. He buried the stick in the piece of cloth and lifted it up. It was a man’s shirt. Aaron followed the trail deeper into the woods and found a lady’s pair of briefs.
Aaron began to expect the worst as he continued to find things in the woods. His fears came to a culmination when he found the bones of two adults and one infant.
Aaron began to talk to himself as he tried to rationalize this new information.
“Arnie has a wallet…the picture of the man on the driver’s license in the wallet looks like the man that owns the minivan…the baby picture in the wallet looks like the baby in the picture in the minivan…If his son forgot his wallet, then why is the minivan on the wrong side of the town? If his son lived in Virginia, why do the plates read North Carolina? This minivan should be broken down on the other side of town if they were headed to Philly. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Aaron turned to walk away but was met by Alex. His presence startled Aaron.
“What are you doing here?” Aaron asked him.
“When you never showed back up, they sent me out to look for you. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I guess, I wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, but look what I found.”
Aaron pointed at the corpses.
Alex had a shovel that he was hiding behind his back. Aaron hadn’t noticed, probably because of the excitement of having found the corpses. When Aaron turned to show Alex the bodies, Alex hit him over the head with it, rendering him unconscious.
“Sorry to have to do that. You seemed like a nice guy, but we have mouths to feed.”
Later that evening, John, Belt, and the others began to smell smoke from the grill.
“Aren’t you worried about attracting other groups?” John asked.
Arnie just shrugged his shoulders and said, “No, we haven’t had a problem yet. The boys are good hunters. They always bring home the bacon.”
John and Belt could sense that something wasn’t measuring up, but they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Everything seemed too copacetic for a town in the middle of nowhere. John had his guard up and was on high alert. Little sleep was to be had that night, but for the time being, they were going to enjoy some meat cooked over the grill.
Arnie stood up and walked outside to the yard, where he saw Alex at the grill. Arnie patted him on the shoulder as he came up behind him and said, “Nice job.”
Arnie turned back towards the house and pulled up a lawn chair next to a fire pit. “You guys going to stand around or are you going to relax a little?” he joked.
The group walked over and grabbed what chairs were left, and some remained standing. Gideon sat on the ground and stared into the fire, wondering how his brother was doing and where his parents were.
“My folks should have been back hours ago,” Gideon said. He had been holding his peace, but all the while, the other three had forgotten about them.
John stood back up. “It’s going to be dark soon and we still have two friends out there that haven’t returned.”
“Here, let me help you—” Arnie started.
“No, you’ve helped enough. We’re going to be heading out now, back to the bus,” John said.
John, Belt, Gideon, and Michael stood up and brought their rifles to the ready.
“Be back later,” John said as they took off towards the bus.