Killswitch Chronicles- The Complete Anthology

by G. R. Carter

  A creaking door broke her train of thought. Beams of natural light broke through from an outside window in the hall, resetting her internal clock to day. She’d been sure it was the middle of the night.

  “Kathy, my name is Robert Culper. Do you know who I am?” a voice asked from just outside the doorway.

  Kathy said nothing. She wasn’t any more in the mood for games tonight – or today – than she had been the day before.

  “I’m the Director of Intelligence for the Republic,” he said to the unanswered question. “I’m the one tasked with getting a better understanding of why our people are under attack.” He sat and stared at her for a moment. She refused to give him any acknowledgement.

  “Kathy, do you know how long you’ve been with us now?”

  She didn’t. She thought it was probably a few days. Although maybe longer, since she’d been moved a few times. So yes, probably a little longer.

  A tall man in a gray green uniform stepped into sight. “Kathy, I need you to know something.”

  Besides a couple of guards, he was the first person she’d seen since her arrest in the Red Hawk capital. She took in the sight of him. He was thin – most people were, these days, without the constant barrage of processed sugars available in times past – but clearly muscular, even through the heavy overcoat he wore. A bright Red Hawk emblem pierced out from the vertical camouflage pattern that made him look a bit like a ripe cornfield floating a few inches above the dirty tile floor.

  Under his wide-brimmed hat, also bearing the Red Hawk emblem, a set of icy eyes met hers. She felt a little transfixed, defenses frozen, unable to muster a mean-spirited remark.

  “What do I need to know?” she asked quietly, not sure why after all this time she finally chose to speak out loud.

  The man called Culper sighed and gave her a small look of pity. “ARK has fallen. We believe your cousin Tony is dead.”

  “Your people already told me that,” she replied, trying to spool up defiance. Something is different about what he’s saying. He really believes it.

  “We mentioned we thought it might be true,” Culper replied. “We promised we’d never lie to you. And I’m not lying now. There are black banners flying over the White City. Do you know anything about that?”

  Kathy’s heart sank, then leapt back. Maxwell will save me! Her lover must have figured out a way to wrestle control of the White City from Tony and Nicole. That was their ultimate goal, the culmination of all their planning, and he’d done it! Probably in retaliation for Kathy being captured and left to rot!

  “I know you’re in big trouble if that’s true,” Kathy replied with a grin. She couldn’t help but gloat a little, and her hatred of the Red Hawks surged new energy into her.

  Culper threw his head back and laughed, catching Kathy off-guard. “We’ve been in trouble since the day of our founding,” he replied. A sinister smile spread from his eyes, thinning his lips like a wolf measuring its prey. “What’s funny is that you’re in even bigger trouble than we are.”

  “Hardly. The Hamiltons better hand me back over or else your precious little farms will be the next ones to fall to Continuity. Like your Founder,” she spat the word out with contempt. Kathy kicked herself as she watched Culper’s face seem to register a note from what she’d said.

  Culper stared at her just a moment. “You’ve completely outlived your usefulness to this ‘Continuity.’ Don’t you get it? Your cult throws away anything that’s outlived its helpfulness. Do you think a member of the Diamante family is someone they’d keep alive after seizing control?”

  Culper’s sincerity hit Kathy like a sledgehammer. Could Maxwell have used her? Not a chance, he wasn’t strong enough or smart enough.

  But Demetrius…he was a different story. He was so handsome and persuasive. It had been Demetrius who promised her control of ARK once she helped Continuity get rid of Tony. Maxwell was her link to Demetrius, her guide to Continuity. How could such an enlightened religion leave behind someone like her?

  The truth of it brought nausea surging up through her insides. This time she couldn’t fight it. She suddenly found herself on her hands and knees, retching uncontrollably and sobbing.

  She’d betrayed her family. She’d worked with Maxwell to let savages into her beautiful city, believed Continuity when it told her she was something special, that she’d be in charge…and instead she’d killed them all. All for nothing!

  When the meager contents of her stomach had emptied onto the floor, she fell onto her back and stared at the ceiling. It was the old drop-style, with water-stained tiles barely hanging on. Such a stark contrast to the beauty of her home in Renaissance Place. She closed her eyes and saw the marble and granite, the ornate fixtures her family had spent generations securing from all over the world. The view from magnificent picture windows that went out for miles; a view of a territory owned by her family.

  All gone for pride’s sake. She was truly sorry, maybe for the first time in her life. She just wanted it like it used to be.

  “I’m sorry, I take it all back!” she whimpered to no one. Kathy knew in her heart Culper wasn’t lying about any of it. She also knew that no one would be coming for her now. Her family was dead. Her lover had used her to get what he wanted. Demetrius and his religion had used her to remove one of their greatest adversaries…

  Her eyes darted around the room looking for a way out. Maybe if she could get loose from the Red Hawks she could get back to the White City and fix things. “It’s not too late, I can fix this,” she said out loud. She leaned toward the door, trying to figure out how to make her break.

  Culper loomed. “Where are you going to go, Kathy?” he asked. “Even if you could make it past me, then my guards outside the door, then my guards at the gate…” He shook his head with pity. “Even after all that, you’d have to cross hundreds of miles of our territory just to reach a people who consider you a traitor.”

  Traitor. She rolled the word over in her mind. After everything she had accomplished, she’d die alone and disgraced.

  The thought took root in her mind. I just want to die. In her mind she called out to

  Continuity. Would Maxwell make sure her Profile lived on? Of course not, they’d never intended to let her live, in this life or the next. She prayed to any god that would listen. Just let me die!

  “Kathy. Listen to me,” Culper’s voice echoed in the room. “You can help make this right. We want to take the White City back. Return it to your family again. But we need your help.”

  Self-preservation brought back her attention to Culper’s offer.

  “You said my family was all dead,” she rasped through a bitter throat.

  “We think Nicole made it out with the kids. There’s still hope—”

  “Ahhhhh! That name!” Kathy’s head was pierced with pain. Her chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe.

  “No!” she screamed and reached for the plate on the table. She fell back down and smashed it down on the floor, holding on to a jagged piece as the rest went flying across the room. With all her might she jabbed it upward into the soft tissue next to her windpipe just under the jaw.

  An explosion of pain caused her to gasp for air, but nothing came in. She tried to scream but now nothing released out. She put her other hand up to the wound she had just created, suddenly desperate to staunch the flow of the warm sticky substance gushing out between her fingers.

  Through bleary eyes she saw Culper standing over her and yelling something out to someone on the other side of the door. The sound was muffled from the hammer ringing in her ears. Excruciating pain topped her terror. Images flashed through her mind – her cousin, her parents, the White City, Maxwell…then Demetrius. The man’s face had a smile, a crooked grin that mocked her. At the very last of her existence Kathy knew what true evil looked like, knew she had been fooled.

  Then darkness fell.

  *****

  Robert Culper looked down at the body just now devoid of convulsi
ng and twitching.

  “That was a cluster,” he said aloud, but mostly to himself, as the attending medic gave him a final shake of his head. Culper’s best asset for gleaning any Caliphate details just disappeared. And all because he’d never considered a dinner plate to be a dangerous weapon. Chalk up another one to experience.

  He spun on one heel and briskly walked out of the room. No sense in lingering for the cleanup. He had other work to do, other prisoners to interview, and personnel to manage. His boots echoed off the walls and floors as he left the interrogation wing of the Republic’s intelligence headquarters. This area always gave him the creeps, even though it was his plan to keep the rooms in just this condition – stark contrast to the elegant beauty of the rest of the facility. The psychological games needed to get information out of those too brainwashed or evil to be cooperative meant removing any hope. Décor, or lack thereof, seemed to be a good place to start with even the most hardened adversaries.

  “You look troubled, Mr. Culper,” a deep voice called out down the hall.

  Culper nodded. “Yes, Bishop. Our guest just took the easy way out.”

  Douglas Hart, Head Bishop of the Unified Church, cocked his head slightly in confusion. He seemed to hope he mistook Culper’s meaning.

  “She killed herself with a broken piece of plate,” Culper explained in an exasperated tone. Even he couldn’t believe the words as they came out of his mouth. For a moment, he saw a rare look of uncertainty in Hart’s face, then what appeared to be discomfort.

  Unconsciously, Hart rubbed his own throat. “What makes one of the Creator’s people reach such despair?” he asked out loud.

  “I don’t think she belonged to the Creator any more, Bishop.”

  “We all belong to the Creator, Mr. Culper. He never gives up on us.”

  “Even if we give up on him?” Culper sighed.

  “Especially then, sir.”

  Culper wasn’t feeling like a theological discussion just now. More practical matters were at hand.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to speak with her. I thought we were warming her up. But the damage was too deep.” He sighed again. “I’ll make sure you get your chance with the next batch.”

  Bishop Hart raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “We’re going to need some more assets,” Culper told him. “Before she went crazy, Kathy said we were in big trouble because of the black flag crowd.”

  “This is not new,” Hart replied.

  “No, you’re right. But something about what she’s said make me think there’s something a lot bigger we don’t understand. We’re not seeing the whole picture. This migration…I just don’t get the point of it. This isn’t just a random bunch of crazies heading for a better place to live. Her reaction makes me think this has been planned for a while now.”

  Hart pondered it for a moment. Culper didn’t know the man well – more by reputation than experience. Rebekah Hamilton requested Hart be part of the interrogation of jihadist prisoners. She had mentioned the idea of spiritual warfare. Culper had studied psychology, and he was well aware of the control religion could have on the human mind. He wasn’t particularly religious himself, but most people were in this bizarre world they lived in. That made his business of intelligence gathering acutely tuned in to what caused people to commit irrational acts.

  Hart finally spoke. “I’ll have Father Steve get a message out to Wasson and the Shawnee Trackers. We’ll have them gather more ‘assets,’” he made the air quotes motion, “to interview.”

  “I appreciate that, Bishop. I figured Father Steve was pretty busy with our new ditcher allies,” Culper chuckled.

  “That he is, Mr. Culper,” Hart replied with a smile. “But it’s all part of one big chess match. Father Steve knows that as well as you or I.”

  He stroked his beard, eyes distant with thought. “I agree with you about one thing. Someone, or something, is on the other side of the board. Right now, only the Trackers and Father Steve’s wild men can get close enough to the White City to get the information we need.”

  Abruptly, Hart turned and walked down the hallway. Culper watched him walk away. A cold chill went up his spine as he heard the Bishop mutter to himself, “Closer to the evil, closer to the truth.”

  Chapter Five

  Downtown Beardstown

  Western Frontier of the Red Hawk Republic

  Ancient glass rattled inside its decaying frame. Each gust of relentless winter wind tortured the dried caulk intended to hold glass to metal. The glass seemed to know its battle was lost, the creaking and tapping a final death song to remind the surviving humans inside of what it had once been. Another fading monument to the final generation of the United States.

  Levi Marshall longed to build again, to once again spend his days and labor trying to create a better world for the people of Mt. Horab. But like his parents’ world, that was gone now, too. All that work was destroyed in a short burst of violence. He and his fellow Buckles were forced to resettle here in Beardstown, saved a second time from destruction by the man holding court in the firelight of Beardstown’s Great Hall.

  Levi had expected a savage when he met the leader of those who lived in the forests between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers – a creature of nightmares manifested as man. Like a miracle, the Boar King’s armies arrived just in time to provide a buffer against a Caliphate surge preparing to sweep away the little river town. The whirlwind left Levi wondering if they’d traded evil for evil, without the time to make a good decision.

  So far, though, interacting with the Boar King made the rest of his religious brethren believe God Himself really had brought them earthly salvation. Buckles of every age sat here in the old theater, enthralled to hear the story of a man civilized folks had spent years trying to kill, speaking in an odd accent utterly foreign to Levi.

  “Right, mate, I'd never seen so much prayin' in one place as I had the night we sent the wailers a-runnin' back down the hole they crawled outta. Right good huntin' that night, all true, I tell yah.” A big smile accentuated the deep lines in his weathered skin. The Boar King's face was clean-shaven – strange for their time and unheard of amongst the ditchers. He held himself unlike any other ditcher Levi had ever seen, almost like he was one of the green-and-silver-clad Bishops of the Unified Church: well-spoken, with a warm smile that seemed to draw you in.

  A man with the exact opposite appearance sat beside the main attraction dressed in well-worn homespun clothes partially covered by a long unkempt beard. He laughed right along with the crowd, eyes and smile warm and engaging. It was clear they were friends.

  “Tell them how you almost killed me,” Father Steve said while laughing, as though that might be a good way to meet a friend.

  “Right, mate, I woulda if you'd not drawn that bushwhacker of yours and stuck it against my best mate's throat. Bugger snuck it in his cloak – a man of the cloth!” he nearly shouted as he slapped Father Steve on the back. “My clan hadn't taken kindly to that sort, being unfamiliar with sincere religious types. Took him for one of the wailers, jijis you call ‘em. We did! But what a surprise findin’ a real man among the soft types, huh? Figured if his God gave him enough courage to wander into our area, might be somethin' worth hearin’ about.”

  Father Steve seemed to think that was hilarious. “You were the first ditcher chief I didn't have to kill in single combat,” he barked. “I knew you were the one we were looking for.”

  The Boar King winked and pointed. “Ditcher King, holy man, you remember that.” He slapped Father Steve’s shoulder again and continued. “Right, we heard from the other tribes in the bush about a madman, some sort of demon who could walk right into a camp and kill their magic men. All the talk of gods and demons and such were rubbish to me. But the rest of 'em weaklings believed even the trees had spirits. You’da thought these loonies were in the bush for hundreds of years, not just a generation from civilization. Well, Ol' Father Steve here did for them spirits…and gave al
l the tribes and lands to me, he did!”

  “A bit of a stretch, King, just looking for the right man to help lead them.”

  Darwin King smiled bigger somehow.

  “Maybe that god of yours had something to do with that…” King said, then changed the wording when he felt the stare of Father Steve.

  “Our God had something to do with that,” he corrected.

  “Right, Father Steve thinks God Himself put me here in the bush when the lights went out. I think it was just a hunting trip gone bad!” he said. “Like luck or fate had no hand.”

  “Why here, why that very moment?” Father Steve asked the room more than King himself.

  King turned serious, and Levi could see the wheels turn behind the fading smile. He ran his fingers through his thick locks of unbrushed hair. “Somebody had to do something…decided it would be me.”

  Levi had already heard the story. King had been on a hunting trip with business associates from Chicago the day the electronic world failed. The sparsely-populated rolling timber and farm fields of Western Illinois held the best whitetail deer hunting grounds in the world. Big city tourists in new camo outfits toting expensive but seldom-used imported shotguns were the only source of income for many of the small towns still hanging on at the time of the Reset.

  King acted quickly after realizing the magnitude of the catastrophe the Reset posed. Between the tourists and the townspeople, he’d had just enough survivors to ride out the worst of the Reset’s immediate aftermath. He’d steered his flock through escaped prison gangs and then the consolidation of roving bands of ditchers by the Gangstar leadership operating out of Springfield, creating just enough of a hard target for them to bypass instead of assimilating. Once the Gangstar alliance broke itself against the walls of the Red Hawk Republic’s capital city, King turned his attention to consolidating anyone and anything left into a loose confederation.

  Levi never took the time to discern between different groups of bush people. Like most who thought of themselves as civilized, he saw them all as savages better killed than negotiated with. Despite his religious beliefs, he’d never lost any sleep over killing them. Hearing stories about what the Boar King did to his enemies left him feeling justified, until now.