Killswitch Chronicles- The Complete Anthology

by G. R. Carter

  “You the one that saved me last night,” Lamar asked. The bearded man shook his head as he shifted a shotgun from his right hand to his left.

  “That were my cousin,” the man said, extending the now free right hand in friendship. “He’s what we call our healer.”

  “I’d like to thank him for what he did. I’d like to thank all of you,” Lamar said and grabbed the man’s hand tightly. The two warriors took quick measure of the grip and both seemed satisfied by the strength and sincerity in each other.

  “I’ll pass ‘at along fer ya,” the man said. “I’m Thaddeus Marshall Paul Creek, third grandson to the second daughter of the Creek himself.” The way the lineage was presented seemed as though it should mean something extra special.

  Lamar quickly caught on and replied, “Lamar Jenkins Junior, first born son to the leader of the Congregation’s exodus from the Federal District. Guardian of the matriarch herself, Charlotte Jenkins.”

  Thaddeus studied Lamar’s face for the honesty of such a statement, then deciding it was true seemed to leave him content. He nodded saying, “Mr. Jenkins it’s my pleasure to make good the deal we’ve had with your people. Mrs. Jenkins has kept her word and traded fairly with we Creeks since the Tribulation hit. And we’s happy to wipe out that band a rovers from last night. Kilt somma our folk a while back. Jus sorry we’s didn’t git here a bit sooner. Didn’t get your message in time, I reckon.”

  “No apologies needed Cousin Creek,” Lamar said, using the friendly greeting the tight nit group used amongst each other. “The Congregation is eternally grateful for your assistance, now and in the remainder of our travels.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “We should probably be headin’ on if’n yer up to it, Mr. Jenkins. Got a good piece to trek for we git to the river. We can drag yer wounded out on sleds. We’ll have plenty of boats for them to lay out on once we git there,” he finished, leaving unsaid the reason for the extra spots.

  “Thank you, Cousin. I’m ready to move on.”

  *****

  Pina had never in her life been on a boat, at least not the kind without nightly entertainment and expensive ports of call. But here she was sailing, actually just floating with the current, down what the Creek men called Kanahwa. Lamar told her the common name was New River according to the maps the Congregation kept in their library.

  The water here ran swiftly, hemmed in on both sides by rock walls, with narrow bands of trees and shoreline bracketing the river. Obstructions from the old world had been blasted away by the Creeks over the years, and this and other waterways served as highways throughout their territory. Pina peered into the dark foliage, wondering what dangers might be lurking. “Are there any more of those eaters watching us?”

  “Relax. This is Creek country. They know if they’re being watched. They’re woodsmen, able to read signs from nature. Besides, there were no survivors after they got done with the pack that attacked us. And that was a big one.”

  Pina shuddered at the thought. “You seem pretty sure about these people. How do you know they won’t betray you?” she asked.

  “We made acquaintance with the Creeks a few years back, when our hunting parties ran into each other by accident,” Lamar told her.

  “How are they going to help you get west, and why?” she asked. Her curiosity was no longer a question of gathering intelligence for the Federals. She had long given up on escaping and simply wondered what twists and turns her life would bring now.

  Lamar smiled at her. “I’m amazed at how little our so called Federal government knows about what is going on in the interior. In fact, wasn’t your Elias the Secretary of the Interior? That’s a little ironic.”

  “Hey, we’ve been cooped up in that mountain since the Reset,” she insisted.

  “Why didn’t you use your drones to scout further out? Too busy trying to track us?”

  “Drones can’t get that far out yet. Just useful to scout along our routes,” she replied.

  “I didn’t think anything electronic worked anymore? Whatever didn’t get fried in the Reset won’t work because of the night lights,” Lamar said, pointing up to the sky to show where the cause of the pain started for the world of his youth. That world had been totally dependent on the free flow of electricity.

  “The solar storms don’t really bother electronics anymore. Believe it or not, they never really did. The story was sort of overblown. But it gave us a chance to get some much needed upgrades to the grid paid for by Congress,” Pina answered.

  Thaddeus snorted. “The Creek himself told us about that. Gave a warning about when we try to create a leader bigger than the common man. Somethin’ about how they won’t let no crisis go to waste.”

  Pina flashed a begrudged respect at the man she considered at first blush to be a backwards hillbilly.

  “Anyway, when Grapevine, you know the system that controlled the grid, shut down, we had a parallel computer system that wasn’t affected. So we’ve had heat and lights the whole time, but we had to stay underground so we didn’t get caught up in the chaos afterwards. Those drones that chased you off the interstate are what’s left. We’ve got more waiting at the new capital, but we didn’t store up a lot of spare parts for anything at Continuity Mountain. That was a bit of an oversight on our part I guess,” she replied without thinking of the consequences.

  “So this really was planned? We figured it had to have been,” Lamar said. He watched the color drain out of her face. “What’s wrong, Pina? Thinking about how many millions of people you killed?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Pina replied defensively. She suddenly felt claustrophobic, trapped on this boat with a man who kept tricking her into saying things she didn’t intend to release.

  “Uh Huh,” she heard from behind. Thaddeus commanded their boat, giving he and Lamar a chance to talk things over during the trip. A line of other boats, some larger, some smaller, trailed off behind them. Two scout boats had already gone ahead and were out of sight.

  “What is ‘Uh huh’ supposed to mean?” Pina protested. “I never hurt anyone, I was just doing my job. I had orders from the acting President of the United States! What was I supposed to do? We were trying to keep some semblance of order, save the human race! The whole world is going to be destroyed!”

  Thaddeus and Lamar were hard men. They both had taken life and watched men close to them be killed. The world of their childhood spun apart when the power when out and nothing really surprised either of them anymore. But now they shared a look of amazement, clear to anyone who might know them well.

  Thaddeus spoke first. “What do you mean the world is going to be destroyed? Is that why the Cogs kilt’ everyone?”

  “It wasn’t like that. There’s an ice age coming and we needed to make sure that humanity survived,” she answered.

  Lamar didn’t have to fake the confused look on his face. “So let me get this straight, you had to destroy humanity in order to save it? I think I heard someone say something similar in a history class. Didn’t work too good.”

  “Everyone was going to die. Starvation, disease, rioting…the whole planet. Even the areas that wouldn’t be under ice would be flooded with refugees from the glaciated parts. We were just making sure that humanity could survive, don’t you understand?” Pina welled up with tears. Cognitive dissonance faded as she faced the realization of what her actions had wrought.

  Neither man spoke while they floated on. Pina sobbed, perceiving the pain these two suffered directly because of what she been a part of.

  “I’m…I’m so sorry. We thought we were…we thought we were saving civilization…how could we have been so selfish? All those people…I never thought about…” she kept stammering, holding her head in both hands.

  “When we took you, something was said something about a new capital. That you were all moving out. Where were you going?” Lamar asked.

  Pina said nothing, still sobbing.

  “You’re an admitted murderer, Pina. Thaddeus and I have
both killed people who committed lesser crimes. If you’re truly sorry for your sins, come clean with everything now. This information can help our communities, and other survivors. You can save lives. Make amends, help us understand what’s happening.”

  She looked up at him through red eyes. Snot strings hung off her face, flushed and streaked with tears. Gathering her strength she began to unveil the entire plan. “The government needed a new settlement area in a more temperate climate. We were going to move all of our citizens from the bases around DC to Georgia. Atlanta was destroyed by the Reset of course, but we had already build the underground foundations for a new capital outside of Athens.”

  “Georgia Guidestones,” Lamar mumbled to himself. “Pastor always said that was the work of a demon but I thought he was just being dramatic.”

  “Part of the distractions,” Pina answered. “We kept so many crazy conspiracy stories floating around that eventually the citizens became jaded. Truth was actually stranger than the fiction.”

  “You mean like Denver Airport, aliens on the moon and all that?”

  “The Denver Airport is for real. Complete underground city. There’s a tunnel connecting it to Cheyenne Mountain. The chosen citizens we saved in the Pacific Northwest were supposed to go there, and then move south to eastern Texas for their permanent residence,” Pina said. “We lost contact with Seattle right after the Reset, but the Cheyenne Mountain group is still fine.”

  “If you were trying to reduce the population why were you trying to get people like my parents to come to the camps? Why not just kill them off,” Lamar asked.

  “We’d still need production workers, farmers, soldiers, those types of folks. We set up each VIP with sectors to manage in the new lands. They needed assigned assistants to help them,” Pina replied with pride.

  “You mean slaves? Plantation type arrangement?” Thaddeus broke his silence, clearly this idea touched a nerve. Pina chose not to acknowledge the truth and went back to staring at the river bank. A deer poked its head out and then disappeared just as quickly. Little eddies swirled around the boat and insects danced around just above the water’s surface. She lost herself in the peace of it all, wondering why she had never noticed such things before.

  “Whatever happened to the President before the Reset. Aguilar I think his name was?” Lamar interrupted.

  Pina jumped at the chance to change the subject. “Something happened to our bases in Chicago and Toronto. They went off line right after the Reset. So Elias sent scouts to Toronto first. Apparently a strain of tuberculosis hit pretty quick. When sanitation breaks down cities get bad in a big hurry. All those people in their own filth, nasty! A really virulent strain of TB managed to kill off a big chunk of the population and then work its way into the underground. Islamic patrols out of Michigan found the base by accident and looted it. Killed anyone that was left after the outbreak.”

  “Muslims? What’ve they got to do with anything?” Lamar asked.

  “The Detroit area was populated by refugees from the Middle East before the Reset. Muslims, you know? They lived in pretty bad conditions in their old countries, and it wasn’t much different here. So when modern civilization collapsed, they stepped right into the gap. Formed their own Caliphate and everything.”

  “You mean like their own country? Let me guess, this Caliphate is thriving and spreading and now Elias’s concerned.”

  “Was concerned. Because the exact same thing happened in Minneapolis. Just Sunni Muslims there instead of Shia. Both sects put aside their differences, mostly, and teamed up to take out any survivors between them. Slaughtered anyone who stood in their way. Convert or die for every man, woman and child. They think this is Allah’s will to give them a rich fertile land to build a new kingdom in.” Pina answered.

  “What’s that got to do with Aguilar?”

  “Right, well after the Reset, he and Speaker Reed agreed to turn over all their power to Elias for the sake of Continuity of Government. He got them involved in our religion so they understood it was for all for the greater good.

  “Anyway, they jumped at the chance to help in exchange for estates in the new capital. He gave them implants with a direct connection to our database. Gives them complete knowledge of maps, people and even religions like Islam. Pretty remarkable technology, even for us,” she bragged. “Then he gave them a company of soldiers with some of the new flexible exoskeleton suits we had saved back. A couple of VX drones killed hard core hold outs from out of sight. Muslims thought it was all God stuff or magic. By the time they were done, the Caliphate believed Aguilar was some kind of Muslim Messiah, they call him Mahdi. Then Reed took on the persona of the Muslim form of Jesus…no they really did,” she said to incredulous looks from her two boat mates. She assumed they were both Bible readers.

  “Okay you probably don’t believe me. But it’s true. They became the leaders of an Islamic Caliphate covering all of what was Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Part of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, too. They built the Caliphate’s capital in a city in Illinois called Aurora. None of the muzzies got the irony,” Pina chuckled.

  “You said you needed them to be slaves, okay workers or whatever. What’s the use of having the workers all the way up there if you’re going to have all your people down south?” Lamar asked.

  “Mass migration,” she replied. “Aguilar is going to lead them down south. They’re the perfect workers; don’t eat much, used to doing without and they’ll go along with whatever you say as long as they can worship how they want. The western group will float down the Mississippi River until they get to Louisiana, and the central and eastern group will use a variety of rivers and highways to get to the land between Louisiana and Georgia. Elias figures they’ll only lose about half on the way down.”

  “Lose’m to what?” Thaddeus asked.

  “We got intel that there are some pretty strong groups that survived the Reset in southern Illinois and Indiana. Not just survived but are actually expanding. One of these groups discovered our base at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Wiped them out like the original Chicago group we had to replace. So according to our spies these holdouts have a pretty good handle on who we are and what we did. That makes their reactions to our plans unpredictable. Elias doesn’t like variables.”

  “You mean he don’t like free peoples,” Thaddeus spat back.

  Pina shrugged. She couldn’t argue with the truth of the statement, Elias really didn’t like free people. Free people were variables, too. They wouldn’t follow plans the way it had to be done for the greater good. “Elias figured the Northern Caliphate would have to go right through these free groups. There wouldn’t be much organized resistance to trouble us by the time the horde moved through.”

  “Lamar?” Thaddeus cut Pina off. His accent drew the final syllable out longer than was customary. “Have you ever met a colder hearted group then this? I mean, we been fightin’ rovers and such for years, hated ‘em every wakin’ moment. But I guess they’s just trying to make it. Folk like this,” he pointed a long calloused finger at Pina, “did this just outta comfort and schemes. That just WRONG, man.”

  “Schemes within schemes,” Lamar nodded back. “Only government types got time to think this complicated stuff up. Instead of just living their lives and letting others live theirs.”

  “I’m telling you guys, it wasn’t that simple. We had to act preemptively. If we just let nature take its course, civilization would have been wiped out. Maybe the human race would have become extinct even. Climate change is something we just can’t fight. Those solar storms were the warning that the Sun was going dormant, and we don’t know for how long. Could be a hundred years, could be a thousand,” she replied.

  “Who got to decide who lived and who died? Who gets to play God? You really want to face your maker knowing that you helped murder so many innocent people? Lamar asked.

  “I don’t believe in your God, Lamar. I follow Continuity. My mind will live forever on our Network. I already have an Elite P
rofile, Elias made sure of it. All of us follow that path, so even if this body dies I’ll be rebooted into another,” Pina said. Lamar watched in amazement as her demeanor changed. Facial features softened, eyes narrowed, and a seductive smile radiated. “Open your mind to what I’m about to tell you,” she purred. “Someone like you deserves to have their Profile live on…”

  Pina pitched forward in the boat, landing with a thud. Her head struck the wooden rail, seeming to knock her out cold. Lamar looked up to see Thaddeus standing behind her. His slip on leather boot had caused the woman’s sudden jolt.

  “What in the world are you doing?” Lamar shouted.

  “Sorry Cousin. Hate to hit a lady. But you don’t wanna hear what was comin’ out her mouth. That’s some bad demon magic right there. The Creek himself sent word up and down the river to be on the lookout for that evil. Said the folk you’re on a mission to see warned him this Continuity group was behind shenanigans causin’ the Tribulation we’re in. Mind control or somethin’, who knows? Without there bein’ a preacher around to help guard our souls, don’t want a demon talkin’ on my boat. Mm hmm.”

  “You never told us about that. What kind of demons are you talking about,” Lamar stammered.

  “The Red Hawks can tell you more when you get there. But Cousin, I’m telling you, gag her if you have to. Don’t let that poison up in your head, alright?”

  They floated in silence for what seemed like a couple of hours. Lamar tried to process what had happened, what Thaddeus had said. He couldn’t tell how far they’d traveled. The scouts had returned twice to relay news their path remained clear. Lamar let his mind wander letting Home and family catch up to him. He fought back desperation; a feeling he had abandoned them. His mother’s face filled his mind, a picture of her sitting inside the hideout, praying for him and the ones he led.

  He was jolted out the waking dream as a geyser of water jumped up about fifty yards ahead. He watched the water come crashing back down, nearly swamping one of the lead boats. Another sprung up just a few feet from the first, this time flinging the boat and its occupants into the air. People were flung in a whirling mass of arms and legs to either side. Three, or was it four, Congregation members came back down into the water followed by the boat, somehow still holding the Creek who was steering.