“Thank you,” he chimed. “I built this underground facility inside the original NORAD footprint because I needed a base central to the mainland of North America—” He seemed surprised, then talked to himself in monotone. “I need to rebrand the whole continent. The name America must be stricken from everything, including the landmasses.”
David looked up at her. “But never mind all that. Once my agency had this base, I knew it would be an excellent place to start over. It’s hardened against missiles. It’s got water and a food supply. Those Air Force people really thought this through.”
“And?” She was terminally impatient with him. It was the only way she knew to fight back.
“And…here we are at day three of the invasion. We’ve had total success on all fronts. I’m already planning for phase two, which will happen once we have some of the new territories cleaned up. I’ve announced my intentions to the world, I’ve motivated my foot soldiers, and now it’s time to unveil all the wonderful new products we’ve been holding back for when this became our reality.”
They walked through a large chamber with metal walls. A row of pedestals ran along the back—about ten had been spread along the forty-foot-long wall. While the rest of the room looked like a military bunker, the well-lit lineup seemed like it could have come from a museum. David skipped the first one, which was a small box-like machine about the size of a toaster.
The second display case contained a paddle-shaped piece of equipment decked out in white. He pointed inside. “This is a device we’ve been working on for years. It’s designed to scan the human body in real time, parse out the cancer cells based on the unique speed of their subatomic particles and use a tiny burst of energy to erase them.”
She cackled. “You can cure cancer, but you can’t get your silly little trucks to avoid the mud? You’re joking, right?” The surreal nature of where she was, how she was dressed, and who she was talking to caught up with her.
“I’m not joking, I—”
Tabby hated how she’d lost her cool. “Can this thing also cure diabetes? My friend, um, Audrey is here with me. She could really use a hand.”
David looked upset. “If you’ll let me finish, I want to show you what else we have. All your friends could benefit from these.” He stepped a few pedestals down the row and held out his hand to an object that looked like a ray gun. The silvery metal pistol had a cup at the end, facing away from the handle.
“A gun?” she said with thick sarcasm.
“This is a photon reconnaissance device. It’s a practical application we’ve incorporated into some of our aerial drone programs. Basically, it uses invisible photons of energy to splash light over a room and around corners. The photons bounce on things around the corner, then come back to the source and create a picture.”
“Like a bat,” she said, seeing the potential.
“Yes, if a bat could see around multiple corners,” he replied happily. “All these things manipulate energy down to the quantum level, where things get really weird. Some of these are, in fact, weapons, but my best work is this one on the end.”
Tabby followed him, not wanting to admit he was far more advanced than she’d given him credit for. Despite her lame attempts to belittle him and show disinterest, if he had the cure for cancer sitting in some random room in a bunker, he had more power than anyone in history. She was bothered by the fact she suddenly didn’t want to decapitate the man who had destroyed the United States. If this was all his work, he needed to be captured and then forced to make things right, as much as was possible. The only thing that would impress her more was—
“If you’re trying to impress me, it’s failing,” she fibbed.
David strode up to the box without rising to her prodding. “You saw one of these in the East St. Louis warehouse. I only have a few in each zone, so consider yourself one of the lucky ones.”
A small model of the tank machine that had almost zapped her sat upon the pedestal.
“It’s not full scale, of course, but I put it here because it represents the milestone before we finally went big time with our knowledge. I call them butterflies, because the projector array looks like it has wings.”
She didn’t need to see it; Tabby and her friends had gotten a close look at a real one. “Why are you showing this to me? I’d rather learn about the one that’s going to cure my friend. This is just a bug zapper on steroids. It killed two sweet dogs who traveled a long way to find us.”
He chuckled softly. “I told you, the dogs aren’t dead. This machine requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep, as do all my toys. I would never use it to kill when it would be a lot cheaper to use a lead bullet.”
She been running at high alert since she’d come out of the decontamination system, but her heart rose in her chest as she thought up the question. “Does it mean you can bring the dogs back?”
He shrugged. “This mobile design is the smaller version of the one under your feet. This entire NORAD facility was designed like my little butterfly. When its wings unfurled, it wiped away the most dangerous people on the planet: the Americans. You’re standing on my greatest museum piece, a triumph of science that will launch man into the next thousand years.”
“But can you bring my dogs back?” she said impatiently. The answer to that question had implications she wasn’t yet ready to voice. If he thought she was too smart for her own good, or caught on to what he was doing, he might get rid of her.
David strode to another of the steel doors and waited for her to catch up. She reluctantly followed, angry that he was being obtuse about his intentions.
“Tabitha Breeze, old American, I brought you here for a reason. I showed you these marvels of technology as a peace offering. They’ll all be part of your life going forward. These and many more, including what’s through this doorway.”
She shook her head while holding her hands on her hips. It was her mean-girl pose showing how she wasn’t pleased at the turn of events. Why wouldn’t he simply answer the question?
The door opened slowly.
She expected the superweapon to be revealed. He’d said it was in the NORAD base. She figured there’d be rows of the giraffes, dogs, or hovering drones. Anything that a maniacal leader would install as a way to impress the prisoners. But when the door swung open, she was faced with a far more serious problem having to do with her alone.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she lamented.
Inside the hangar-like enclosure, a formation of people stood in rows and columns, like they were part of a military parade. There were about a hundred of them, she figured, with her quick glance. However, they weren’t soldiers. They were all women dressed in the same blue suits as her.
David stepped up to the entry and spoke loudly. “First, we took out America. Next, we take out the world. We’re going to need young women like you to repopulate God’s newest paradise.” David put his arm around her shoulders, which poured cold water all the way down her backside.
“Crackers,” she murmured.
Folsom, CA
“What an amazing day,” Bernard said with reverence. “David really is going to take care of us, like he said.”
Dwight had been in a state of panic since the dam fell apart. He’d never been one for superstition or religion, but being in that crowd made him feel like the only saint inside a convention in Hell itself. The cheering for the destruction of the city of Folsom was unnatural to his ears, and he wasn’t even a patriotic person anymore. It wasn’t right to do, and it wasn’t right to watch it. He hated cheering with the others.
He glanced up; Poppy sat on top of his head. She sometimes came down when she really needed his attention, but he didn’t want to deal with her at the moment.
“No, I’m not going to do that,” he replied. “Stop talking.”
Bernard looked over his shoulder. “What?”
Dwight smiled, sure one of these days he would be caught talking to the bird. “Nothing.”
Be
rnard was the last one to fill up his tank of flamethrower fuel. The rest of his seven-man team had already topped off from the mid-sized fuel truck that had come to meet them at a new point in the city. The floodwaters hadn’t taken the whole town away, but it had cut a huge swath out of the middle. Bernard said their job was to chip away at what was left.
“What should we burn next?” Bernard asked his team. “Should we get rid of what’s left of the prison?”
His team whooped with enthusiasm.
Poppy continued to cry out to him. She knew how he felt about the destruction he’d been witness to, and she wanted to help. He remained still, however, as the bird repeatedly flapped her wings to rise, then bonk his head when she dropped back down.
“You doing okay?” Bernard asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
The town was full of ghosts. All those little splotches of clothing were ghosts. The water barreling down the valley was now filled with tens of thousands of shoes, shirts, and pants. None of the men around him cared a fig for the dead. What would they say if they knew he was part of this?
“I, uh…” he said as he thought of what to say.
Poppy dug her claws into his scalp. “Ow! Stop it!”
She continued to give him advice, but none of it was good.
Bernard had a confused look on his face. He was seconds from being done gassing up, then it would be back to the road and back to more burning. He was never happy with the idea, but Poppy’s complaining, along with his imagining of ghosts, made him think of how he could get out of working with them for a second longer.
I only want a warm bench and a smooth bottle.
Dwight heard himself think and knew in his heart that those weren’t the only things he wanted. No matter how many times he’d let himself down in the past, he always tried to be one of the good guys. He’d managed to steer clear of the hard drugs that had brought down countless friends. He’d stayed away from the prostitutes. He rarely got taken to jail, and the times he did were usually for sleeping where he didn’t see the keep out signs. Poppy was complaining because she knew…
This isn’t me.
He rolled his motorcycle away from the fuel station but didn’t hop on or start it up. When he’d gone about fifty feet, Bernard seemed to notice him. “Hey! Wait up! We’re almost ready.” The leader of their crew talked to the fuel-truck guy standing next to him.
Dwight swatted at Poppy, catching her on the wing. That made her get off his head and fly wildly away from him. She still cawed at him with advice he was reluctant to hear.
“You think it will work?” he asked, terrified of her answer.
The bird told him it would be cleanliness in all things, as they liked to say.
“If you say so,” he replied.
He didn’t like having the dark thought, but Poppy was right. The work Bernard and his team were doing wasn’t for him. They were the bad guys. They were evil. And it was up to him to make things better.
Dwight pulled out his flamethrower tube and hit the electrical ignition. When it came to life, he didn’t look up or aim. He simply crunched the handle and sent a jet of liquid onto the men tending their bikes nearby. Bernard screamed for him to stop—a distinctive voice he heard above the others.
“Sorry, Bernard. You aren’t a good guy.”
The pleas were heartbreaking, but he flicked the switch to touch off his flame. The men went up with wet screams. Every square inch of the nearest twenty yards rose into a plume of hot gas and fire.
Poppy flapped away as fast as she could, but she also yelled down that he’d done the right thing for once.
He didn’t stick around to see the grisly end. At some point, the fuel truck blew up, which meant someone was going to come looking for what went wrong. There were thousands of bad guys in the city, if the dam-breaking party was any indication. Hundreds could have chased him if they’d known where he was, but he’d chosen a road that took him out of the city and toward the mountains in the east.
However, the second he felt like he’d put enough distance between him and the city of Folsom, he pulled in front of a liquor store and raided the place. Before, Poppy had been all over him to kill the bad men, but now she warned him against having too much liquor.
“You silly girl! There’s no such thing as too much liquor!”
In thirty minutes, he’d drunk himself into his own version of a flammable fuel truck. It took the edge off, then continued its rub until all his senses were numb. He heard the complaints from his bird, but he thought he deserved a little drinky-poo since he’d done the right thing, so he ignored her.
Before his blood alcohol level reached uncharted territory, he saw a man dressed like Bernard come into the liquor store. Then, several other Bernards came in behind him.
“Hey, Bernard! I’m glad you made it. Won’t you join the celebration? It’s all free for the taking. Look at this place!”
The Bernard look-a-like said Dwight must have forgotten about the tracking device on his motorcycle. The men converged around him, kicking and punching, shouting about payback, but then a white bird arrived at the front door.
The white shape hovered mysteriously, like a ghost, but its voice was human and male. “Stop! Do not kill him. Bring him to NORAD, my rebels. I want to know how the Americans got a spy this deep into my precious legion.”
What a wild dream!
Poppy flew rings around a white bird, screaming at it, advising Dwight to run from it, but he was too far gone to even stand, much less run.
“It will be done, David,” the Bernard-clone replied.
The last thing he vividly remembered was someone’s fist hitting his face.
“Hey, man,” he pleaded as blood pumped out of his broken nose. “He said you couldn’t kill me.”
“But he didn’t say we couldn’t hurt you,” the man in black replied.
Dwight laughed and talked with a heavy slur. “Bernard, I kind of liked you when we were friends, but Poppy said I needed to kill you to keep up with the ‘cleanliness in all things’ motto you like. Plus, you turned out to be a real asshole.”
Poppy scolded him.
“No, I’m not trying to get you in trouble, Pops,” he pleaded with her. “Honest.”
The bird flew down, green and red wings flapping, and landed on his head. She begged him to stop talking before he got himself killed.
Sometimes, he did the opposite of whatever she said. “Free America, people!” he shouted in glee.
The next punch chased her back into the air.
He didn’t remember anything after that.
CHAPTER 28
Minot Air Force Base, ND
Kyla had the ability to hack the NORAD defense system, but she knew better than to push Uncle Ted to let her do it. Over the years, Mom had tried repeatedly to get her brother to do things her way, but he always had the patience to wait her out. Kyla always thought Mom was the stubborn one, since she saw her every day, but Uncle Ted took it up a few notches whenever he was around. “Oh, shit,” she said breathlessly when she saw the trouble outside.
Uncle Ted had gone out to the parking lot to be with Emily and Meechum. They’d made it to the bikes but were being “sniffed” by two animal-styled robots. The tall giraffe-like shapes stood over them, heads swiveling around on the upright stalks. Emily and Meechum didn’t shrink with fear, but they did act standoffish and wary. As much as she wanted to go back inside and knock out the bad guy’s access to the American computers, she owed it to her friends to stick around.
Several of the technicians came into the doorway, and she let herself be pushed to the side. Instead of running with them, she punched up some code on the data tablet. Her eyes absorbed the coding as she tried to modify the screen to let her have access to whoever controlled those things. They couldn’t be truly autonomous, or they’d harass friend and foe alike. Someone had to be feeding it the basics, such as who was the enemy.
She walked gingerly down the front steps and stood at the e
dge of the parking lot. Dozens of people ran by, most heading for the civilian cars and trucks parked on the lot. They seemed untroubled by the robots...
Kyla sped up until she was a lane over from the trio at the motorcycles. They continued to hold position away from the bikes, as if waiting for the robots to discover them. “Uncle Ted! Look at everyone else! Just hop on the bikes!” She waved her hands to the rest of the people on the parking lot.
He looked at the giraffes, then at the people, then back to her. He stuck his thumb up. Moments after that, he’d gathered the other two ladies and motioned them to saddle up.
She calmly walked over to the bikes, then climbed behind Meechum like the robots were invisible. Emily did the same on Uncle Ted’s motorcycle. In seconds, they were on the move, though Kyla kept the tablet out as she held on with one arm.
“Can you drive?” she asked the Marine. “What about your arm?”
Meechum turned back a little. “I’ll let it hurt when we’re somewhere safe.”
Kyla couldn’t even offer to drive for her; she didn’t know anything about motorcycles. That was a deficiency she had to fix right away, if they made it to that ‘somewhere safe.’
“Let me know if I can help,” Kyla offered.
“You keep watch, dudette.”
Her uncle led them through the base until they got close to the front gate. She figured he was going to try to go out the same way he came in, but he veered down an alternate street shortly before reaching the exit. When clear, he leaned over to her and Meechum. “The base is locked down. They’ve got it blocked off.”
“Where to?” Meechum replied.
Kyla peered at her tablet, hoping she was competent enough to pull off what she needed. Then she spoke to her uncle. “Go over the grass by the runway. I’ll call off the drones guarding the perimeter.”
“You can do that?” he asked with surprise.
She nodded. “With this account, I have access to the whole system, but we have to hurry. I’m not sure if they’ll shut down my link, or if the link has a range.”
Minus America (Book 3): Rebel Cause Page 22