by James Ryke
“Hey, that’s my car.”
All of Marcus’s frustrations culminated into this final moment. A gunshot rang out. The man’s chest turned a violent red. The body fell to the ground, struggling with its last breath. Marcus returned the gun to his chest holster. He revved the engine and sped off, running over the dying man’s foot as he did. It was not long before he was on the main highway and heading north.
He had never killed before, not directly anyway. He had put more hits on opponents than he could remember, as almost every politician had, but he had never been the one to pull the trigger. It always seemed so messy. He probed his emotions, trying to gauge the effect of what had just happened. He pushed his consciousness to the margin of his mind, allowing himself to take an objective look into his thoughts. My heart is still pounding from adrenaline, but it was like that before I shot the man. He was worried about his vehicle, and he would have given a description to the authorities had he lived. He might have even known the license plate. By killing him, I just bought myself time in this vehicle. It will now take hours, or longer, for anyone to realize that I’m driving in the dead man’s Prius. If I would’ve kept the man alive, he would’ve immediately reported the vehicle as stolen. It was not only necessary; it was beneficial as well.
But there was something more in his mind that he could not quite fathom. He felt strangely empowered, as if there was something immensely satisfying about being the one to pull the trigger. In an instant, he took what had been a problem and made it disappear, with a single movement of his index finger. He laughed. The movies make it seem like killing is such a big deal. It was easy, like turning on a light switch.
He turned his focus back to the road, revving his engine as he passed a vehicle. The Prius was not a vehicle known for speed or acceleration—especially this version of the Prius, which could run one hundred miles on a single gallon of gas. As a congressman, Marcus had taxed non-fuel efficient vehicles until they were all but off the road. It brought in tax revenue while at the same time making him look like an environment–friendly congressman. Not to mention that he also controlled the lion’s share of stocks in green energy, a fact that only a few people in the world knew, and when drivers transitioned to greener vehicles, it made him extremely wealthy. But he had never personally driven one before, and now he knew why. They lacked balls, to put it simply.
While he drove, he made more phone calls, arranging a private jet to leave as soon as he arrived. By his calculation, he would have just enough time to reach the airport, take off, and clear the blast radius. He was starting to feel better about his situation. A calm washed over him, like a pleasant breeze. After several more minutes of driving, his phone rang. This time he looked at the caller’s name before he answered. It said unknown.
“Speak.”
“Marcus, it’s Braxton again.”
“What?”
“Bed down. We’re about to light the sky.”
“What!” Marcus said, his voice uncharacteristically shrill.
“We’ll arrange an extraction.”
“Extraction?”
“Yes,” Braxton said. “What city are you near?”
For the first time in a long time, Marcus did not have an answer to a question. Instead, his brilliant mind had already begun to work on the variables at hand, piecing together the totality of the situation. The names of those who were still on the East Coast began to enter his mind, each one more prominent than the last. Once his mental list was complete, he studied it more fully. They were the future leaders of the UW—and all but one were on the East Coast. It was Braxton who sent me out here. It was Braxton who insisted that certain leaders stay on the East Coast until right before ignition.
“You bastard,” Marcus said, his voice regaining its calm.
“What city are you near?”
“Sharing power was not enough for you, eh? You had to have one last deceit before you were finished. It wasn’t enough to cut out your own little piece of the kingdom. You wanted the whole thing.”
There was no answer.
“Answer me,” Marcus demanded.
“God be with you.”
Marcus cursed again and again at the phone, but it was useless, Braxton was no longer on the line. This turned Marcus’s face a shade it had never been before. He ripped the rearview mirror down and threw it against the passenger window, instantly splintering it into tiny glass shards. Owing to the tinting, the window remained intact, except for a small hole that was left behind.
He took a deep breath and retreated into his subconscious. His mind was open to the history of the world and he drank it in. Nothing that is happening now is completely unique from the past. There’s a solution to this problem. He reflected on the human gods of the past, the living legends that came before him. As he was passing between two semi-trucks, his little engine ablaze with the effort, an idea began to nest in his head. This idea led to another that spilled into a third. Precisely one minute later, his perfect smile had returned.
There was a sign in yellow and green letters up ahead. It was carved in wood and delicately set between two decorated posts, “Welcome to Norwich. Population: 235,073 + YOU.”
His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I’m not that easy to write off Braxton, and one day you will learn how grave an error you’ve committed.”
EIGHT
Day 1
Despite the lack of wind, the smoke from the ashes wafted up into jagged shapes and directions, like an ill omen. Three concrete walls still stood, their color black from flames. Everything else was gone. Debris was piled chest high, collecting mostly around the collapsed walls. From out of the chunks of the building, like a sadistic set of braces, wires and rebar sprang out at random, wrapping around pieces of stone before disappearing into the earth below. The clean, consuming smell of charcoal was noticeable long before the ashes were visible. The smell was so strong that it permeated and dominated the landscape, forcing the nose to consider nothing else.
“Ah, hell,” Rick whispered as he picked up a thick piece of burned wood. He examined the chunk to see if he could recognize the part of the house it belonged to, but just like everything else, it had all turned into unidentifiable, worthless rubble.
“The fire department responded…” said Mr. Zhao.
“What happened? Why didn’t they put out the fire?” Zhao’s accent was not as thick as his wife’s, but Rick still had to concentrate to understand his neighbor.
“They said you were late on twenty-five dollar payment.”
Rick turned around, his eyes narrowed. “I paid the twenty-five dollars. I paid it twice in fact, but they said they didn’t have a record of my first payment.”
“Yes,” Mr. Zhao said, lowering his eyes, “but you still owed five-dollar late fee.”
Rick turned back towards the house, throwing the chunk of wood on the pile of debris. “They wouldn’t put the fire out because of a five-dollar late fee? I would’ve gladly paid them several times that amount. They sat back and watched my home burn for a five-dollar late fee? This was a six million dollar home.” He let out a cold, dark laugh. “This world can burn in hell.”
“I offered to pay,” Mr. Zhao said, “but they said you had to pay. They said it is because of liability; they didn’t want to get sued if something went wrong. I then tried to fight fire myself but something inside exploded. Big explosion. Knocked me on my back. How did this happen? Did you leave the stove on?”
Rick’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know.” He let his mind trace back to his last few actions before leaving his house. Maybe some kind of vermin chewed some of the electrical wiring? Possible but not likely. What could it be? The oily gun rags…but I put those in the trashcan. Wait…I never made it to the trash. I got Jacks’ text, and I had placed the box of trash in the garage—right next to the water heater. Suddenly, it all made sense. He shook his head. Years of preparation gone in the wake of one foolish mistake. There is no
time to dwell on it. Get moving. Rick turned towards his neighbor. “Listen, Zhao, that doesn’t matter. I need to use your Wi-Fi. It’s of extreme importance.”
“It would be my honor,” Zhao said. “Come inside. My wife make lunch for you. We sit and talk.”
Within five minutes, Rick found himself in Zhao’s home office. The home was small but immaculate and ornate. It had the rich smell of burnt incense, which initially nauseated him, but he soon adjusted and felt more relaxed. Despite refusing three separate offers for food or drink, Mrs. Zhao presented him with a steaming cup of egg drop soup.
Rick opened his laptop and visited his website. Within seconds, he could tell something was different. In the last few weeks, his blog had seen more traffic than it had seen all year. He had not been able to attract this type of attention for years, and that was when he was trying to draw people in. It took Rick a few moments to understand where all the traffic was coming from.
Rick’s website had been linked to another “survivalist blog.” He clicked the link and tapped his fingers as he waited. Within seconds an article entitled “Undivided West” popped up. The story was a pretty generic conspiracy theory that highlighted several misleading statistics and quotes. It also included an assertion that the United States is controlled by the Birmingham group. It was not until about halfway down the article before Rick could feel his stomach twist into knots.
The Undivided West will be formulated the moment the bomb drops. My sources have indicated that this bomb will not be nuclear, but will be a device that will cause even more chaos and destruction. So much damage, in fact, that it promises to eclipse every world war combined. Forget about every past misery you have suffered in your life because it will pale in comparison to the things you will feel in the future. The worst part of this situation is that there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. We do not have weeks before this final destruction, but days, and by the time you finish this brief, there may not even be hours left.
Rick sat back and folded his arms. Why is this article getting so much attention? This is just a random blog. People won’t give this thing much thought.
Without asking for permission, Rick disconnected Mr. Zhao’s computer screen and connected it to his laptop, giving him two screens to work with. He immediately pulled up his email account on one screen while he kept his blog up on the other. His first task was to send out mass emails to the nearly two thousand people he had ever considered a source. Within seconds of sending out his first email, people began to respond. Most of the responses were garbage; other responses contained information he already knew. He went back and forth between the screens, scouring them for anything that might give him a time frame, or even the sort of evidence to verify any of these assertions. It was not until he had begun pouring over the recent posts on his blog that he realized how much he had neglected to notice. He should have been wise to this plan weeks ago had he maintained even a halfhearted attempt to stay informed. It seemed that a group of regulars on his blog had come together and formed their own website, which was shut down by the government not long after its inception. The group had transitioned to using Rick’s Survival blog website and writing in a very simplified code. To the bloggers, they must have thought that their secret code had thrown the Federal Government off their trail but, Rick knew, that it was not the transparent code that prevented the government from taking down the website, but the fact that the website was owned and managed by a former CIA operative who could still provide valuable intelligence to the government. And that’s precisely why Jacks asked for my help in the first place. He must have known that they were using my website. Why didn’t he tell me?
Rick leaned forward in his chair as he began to decipher each post on his blog. He started with a conversation that was posted three weeks ago, which seemed to be about the time that his blog exploded with activity. The code back then was more straightforward. They used word substitution: Instead of saying “dropping the bomb,” they typed “New Year’s”; instead of posting “I am stocking up on food,” they wrote, “I am collecting food stamps.” To understand exactly what each word meant, Rick had to visit other obscure websites to pull all of the information together.
One person seemed to be posting more information than anyone else, $urvivalpimp. Rick recognized the avatar and name because this same individual had been a regular on his blog for several years. As he continued to cruise through the posts, he half-heartedly sent $urvivalpimp an instant message. Rick’s eyebrows arched when $urvivalpimp answered only a few seconds later.
“I’m here.”
Rick maximized the IM on his right screen. “I’ve been out of it lately. What’s been going on?”
“It’s a hell of a time to take a vacation.”
“Why?”
“This line is not safe.”
Rick’s fingers hovered above the keyboard before he typed. “Does that matter?”
$urvivalpimp seemed to be considering the risks because it was a while before he answered. “I guess not. What do you know?”
“Let’s pretend I know nothing,” Rick replied.
“The Union is collapsing. The definition of the United States is about to change forever.”
“Why?”
“States are seceding from the Union. Some are coming together to form their own countries, others are going to strike it out on their own.”
“I think you’re forgetting about the army. The President will deploy troops and restore order. There’s no way states will be allowed to leave the Union.”
“No. Not unless they’re too busy dealing with other problems.”
“Like what?”
“Wake up. Use your imagination.”
“I can think of a million things, but each one will have far different implications. Be more specific.”
“THIS LINE IS NOT SAFE.”
Rick hesitated. If I blow my cover and he’s something more than an internet savvy geek, he’ll blackball my name and website for sure. After that, I’ll be lucky to get spam mail in my email box, much less find out any additional information. But at the same time, I could spend weeks digging for information that this individual could tell me right now. And if I take my time digging up information, who’s to say I’ll get any closer than I am right now to the truth? I haven’t kept up on my sources for years. I haven’t posted on my survival blog in weeks. It will take months, if not years, to cultivate new sources. And, who knows how much time we have.
Rick chose his next words carefully. “Are you for or against the Union splitting?”
“Both. I’m for a better Union.”
Rick’s fingers hovered over his keyboard for a moment. “What do you mean better?”
“I’m a Constitutionalist. The only way out of this mess is to revert to the principles that we were founded on: We need limited government; we need a power shift from the Federal Government to the States; we need a return to a system of checks and balances.”
“Then you can trust me because we’re on the same team. This line is secure.”
“How do I know that?”
“I’m a Government operative using a secured IM. If you’ve got some techie friends, call them and see if they can hack the line, but other than that, I can’t offer you any proof.”
$urvivalpimp did not respond for a long time, so long in fact that Rick began to think he had signed off. Rick’s attention had drifted far from the IM conversation when $urvivalpimp finally answered.
“What do you want to know?”
Rick scrambled back to his keyboard. “How could the Western States possibly stop the military from coming in and enforcing the law? The states might be able to muster up the manpower, but they certainly don’t have the training or the technology to fight a sustained war.”
“They have two plans. They have a bomb planted somewhere on the East Coast. I don’t know what kind of bomb—that’s one of the biggest debates taking place online, but I’m th
inking either nuclear or chemical.”
“Most likely biological,” Rick typed. “It’s a lot less expensive, more portable, and a hundred times more devastating.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If it’s biological, any sort of disease that’s released would most definitely spread to the Western States as well. They would be cutting their own throat to save their head.”
Rick momentarily pulled back from the screen. Smart kid.
“True,” Rick typed, “But, the other two bombs are even less likely. All the Uranium enrichment and large-scale chemical laboratories in the United States are controlled by the Federal Government and are heavily guarded. There’s absolutely no way any of them would be compromised. Of all the things to fall apart in the United States, it won’t be our chemical or uranium enrichment facilities. What other options do they have?”
“The other option they have at their disposal is an EMP. They built a stealth rocket that can reach the stratosphere in only minutes after it’s deployed. It’s designed to travel about one hundred miles above the surface of the earth where it will explode. If it explodes above the state of Kentucky, it will completely wipe out the East Coast grid. I doubt the American Titan defense system—that’s to say if it’s even still functional—will be able to track the missile because it will be coming from inside the United States. ”
Rick laughed as he typed. “Electromagnetic pulse? That would take out some television sets and possibly disrupt the grid, but it would hardly stop an army from coming in and cleaning up. Ever since 2009, the military and several government agencies have been secretly hardening their electrical equipment to protect against such an attack. Many of the major cities have also undergone similar treatment—at least, in the wealthy parts of the cities. Washington DC is impervious to an EMP. Even then, I never thought an EMP would be that effective. You must not have read the article about EMPs on my blog. Remember a few years ago when a solar flare hit the earth? There were massive electronic disruptions reported, but little of it resulted in permanent damage. There were some fried transformers and electrical equipment, but most of it was easily replaced. Most everything inside well-built buildings was protected; our structures actually provided half-decent Faraday Devices. It had little to no effect on vehicles because of their curved metal surfaces and tire insulation. Only one thousand and three vehicles were reported damaged by the solar flare, and most of those were bogus claims so that they could collect on insurance money. An EMP would not be devastating enough to stop the Federal Government, much less the Army.”