A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  Black-and-white city cop cars prowled the streets in the aftermath of the shooting. The Homies had apparently somehow identified Logan as Greg Morris’ intended contact and were determined to chase him down. The ambush had gone down too smoothly for the Homies not to have had sources. Who had Morris told about their unscheduled emergency meeting this morning?

  A police cruiser stopped on a viaduct that spanned the creek, waiting in a line of rush hour traffic for the light at the intersection to turn green. Logan ducked underneath the span and crouched in the dark. After the traffic started moving again, he climbed the concrete bank and peeked over the top. The cruiser turned left at the light and headed back toward McDonald’s.

  Logan was wet and muddy. Water sloshed in his shoes. He was sweating. He reached for his cell phone, thought better of it. Asking other Defenders to come to his rescue would only place them in jeopardy. Homies would be monitoring electronic signals in the area. Logan was on his own.

  He hadn’t so much as a Saturday Night Special with which to defend himself.

  He slid back down the bank into the water and hurriedly made his way downstream, intent on getting out of the area as fast as he could. The creek cut from the housing addition toward East Admiral Boulevard, a busy street this time of morning. Dogs barked from some of the houses. They could smell fear.

  The creek flowed into an older working class neighborhood where Logan felt more comfortable in his soiled and wet laborer’s clothing. He was approaching another viaduct punched underneath Admiral when blue lights lit up as a cruiser pulled a vehicle to the side of the road. Cops were stopping anyone in the vicinity who looked suspicious.

  Logan cowered in the viaduct directly underneath the traffic stop. He heard a car door open and the sounds of a police radio. Policemen often turned up the volume when they got out of their cars in traffic. Logan realized the dispatcher was talking about him.

  “...white male thirty-five to forty years old, wearing old jeans, a blue shirt and an Oilers baseball cap... Subject belongs to a militia organization called the Defenders... Consider armed and dangerous. Wanted by Homeland Security for the murder of Ron Sparks...”

  Traffic passing over his head did not quite drown out the thumping of his heart in the confined space. A semi-truck rattled the bridge. The angry honk of a horn... Somewhere a factory whistle... Normal sounds on a morning not so normal.

  The cruiser’s flashing blue lights reflected in the dirty water of the shallow stream. Logan craved a cigarette. His hands trembled. He felt trapped in the sewer, like a ’coon in a creek with hounds baying on its trail. He resisted the urge to break and make a run for it.

  Mustn’t do anything stupid.

  After a tension-filled two or three minutes during which Logan was certain the cop must overhear his ragged breathing, he heard a car door slam. The blue lights went off. Logan thought the cop was leaving. He crept to the opposite opening of the viaduct and peered out.

  He was unable to get a look at the roadbed above. Three kids playing hooky from school were skipping stones on the creek about a block away. Logan heard them laughing and shouting.

  One of the boys looked up and noticed Logan hiding in the viaduct. He pointed excitedly; the other two honored his point. All three began waving their arms, pointing and jumping up and down to attract the attention of the cop, who apparently hadn’t driven on after all. Logan had no choice but to run for it.

  He bunched his legs and charged from the viaduct, like a cottontail punched out of a hollow log. He hadn’t taken more than a half-dozen steps before the mechanical Kraa-a-a-ck of a pump shotgun being charged stopped him in his tracks.

  “Freeze, asshole, or you’re dead meat!”

  Bill Will Ban Violent Words, Symbols

  (Washington)—In the aftermath of a federal official being hung in Oklahoma, a crime blamed on violent anti-government rhetoric, Congress is calling for a return to civility by passing a law that will ban the use of violent words and symbols from national discourse. Pointing a finger as though it were a gun or telling a rival sports team “we’re going to kill you” could become criminal offenses...

  “Violence caused by reckless and irresponsible speech is a major alarm going off,” said Speaker of the House Barbara Teague (D-CA). “We need to tone down the rhetoric. If the people won’t do it themselves, then government must do it...”

  Chapter Four

  Washington, D.C.

  Dennis Trout occupied his post as Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham’s Chief of Staff mainly because he happened to be Wiedersham’s brother-in-law. While he waited for Wiedersham to get off the phone, he cracked an office window blind to look out over the Capitol grounds and the Washington Mall. He had hardly had coffee yet and these damn Tea Baggers were already marching up Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol. Their homemade signs buffeted the morning air.

  Roses are Red, Violets are Blue

  Anastos’ is a Commie, Wiedersham is Too

  America’s Greatest Threat is Congress

  I Love My Country; It’s Government I’m Afraid Of

  Senator Wiedersham sat with his expensive Balmorals oxfords propped on his Louis XIV oak desk, cell phone pressed to his ear. His twelve hundred dollar Brooks Bros. suit and two hundred dollar haircut never fit just right on his corpulent frame. He was about fifty. Trout had taken perverse pleasure in a description of the Majority Leader broadcast by a commentator on Zenergy News Channel. He had copied it word for word in his notebook: “...an obsequious weasel with all the moral core of a cheap streetwalker and the philosophical understanding of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He makes ‘greasy politician’ sound almost flattering in comparison…”

  The shadow of the Capitol dome stretched all the way out to Third Street where a line of helmeted SWAT-type Homeland Security police were lined up to block the Tea Partiers. They were armed with automatic weapons. Armored riot vans sat parked in the traffic circle.

  From what Trout had seen so far of the Tea Party Movement, it was composed mostly of grandpas and grandmas and hicks from the sticks who brought their kids and grandkids with them. They came to Washington with their crude signs and listened to speeches by Right-wingers such as Jerry Baer or Congresswoman Michele Bachman, afterwards breaking up to feed their kids ice cream and catch buses to see the sights. If they only knew what was really going on in government, they’d come armed with pitchforks and torches.

  The official line in Washington was that the Tea Partiers were “violent” and “traitorous” bottom suckers feeding on “a virulent strain of anti-Americanism.” It always astonished Trout at the contempt the average politician in Washington harbored for the common people. But, of course, Trout kept such thoughts to himself. He was a pragmatic man who knew which side his toast was buttered on. Marilyn was always there to remind him of how much he owed her brother; Joe was going to take him all the way to the top.

  Trout listened in on his brother-in-law’s phone conversation while pretending to be absorbed in the scene playing out on the Mall and in front of the Capitol. Protesters were starting to push close to the security line.

  “A bunch of ignorant Homer Simpsons, a bewildered herd!” the Majority Leader spat into his cell phone. “T-shirts and baseball caps,” he mocked. “Sundresses with bra straps sliding down their arms. Fuchsia bandannas and American flags wrapped around their heads. Jerry Baer’s Tea Baggers. You half expect to see them wearing face paint and foam fingers and shouting, ‘Hook ’em, Horns!’ They’ll leave a ring around Washington that even Mr. Clean can’t wash out.”

  He laughed at his wit. A short, quick bark of disgust.

  “Jerry Baer is beginning to look like Mr. Big out of a James Bond movie,” he continued to the person on the other end of the phone. “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet gun up his ass and he’ll explode like a fat blimp.”

  He barked again and hung up.

  “Dennis, move away from that fucking window,” he snapped. “Get me the Director on the hook.
”

  Dutifully, Trout moved to the end of the Senator’s desk and used the land line to dial Vladimir Gonzalez. The Director of Homeland Security answered on the first ring. Trout handed the receiver to Wiedersham and returned to the window. Outside, leaders of the Tea Party protest halted at the security defense line on Third Street. The rest of the march piled up behind. Trout saw some people breaking out thermoses of coffee to pass around.

  “What the fuck’s the holdup?” he overheard Wiedersham demand of Gonzalez.

  Wiedersham was one of the most powerful men in Washington, a Beltway mover and shaker, an important figure in the larger global community. “Nobody fucks with me,” was how he liked to put it.

  “Demonstrations are outlawed in Washington,” Wiedersham shouted into the phone, hauling the Director’s ass over the coals. “What part of ‘outlawed’ don’t you understand, Gonzalez...? It’s Southern populist terror... Fuck it. Make an incident.”

  Wiedersham’s face was so red it looked about to explode.

  “They’re rioting in the streets,” he raged. “These Tea Baggers have to be stopped before we have people hanging in cemeteries all over the country.... Gonzalez , quit your stalling, man. We own the fucking media. They’re with us. They won’t print shit unless we tell them to.”

  He hung up and swiveled in his chair to face Trout across the office. “Get away from the window,” he ordered again, impatiently.

  Trout turned away from the blind to face his brother-in-law. He had a bad feeling in his gut. Wiedersham and he simply looked at each other, not speaking, waiting. They didn’t have long to wait. Trout flinched when he heard a sudden roar from the distant crowd, followed by popping sounds. Like firecrackers, but which Trout knew were not firecrackers.

  He closed his eyes and dropped his chin on his chest. He felt sick.

  Tea Party Riots in Washington

  (Washington)—A Tea Party march protesting high government deficits and the National Health Care Act erupted in violence in front of the U.S. Capitol this morning when gunshots rang out from several points in a crowd estimated to number at least ten thousand. In self-defense and out of fear for their lives, Capitol Police and Homeland Security Police returned fire. Three Tea Party members were reportedly killed and four wounded. One Homeland Security officer suffered a sprained ankle. Fifteen leaders of the march were arrested and charged with inciting to riot...

  Chapter Five

  Tulsa

  Detective James Nail’s daughter, Jamie, 19, lived in a modest second-floor apartment on Cherry Street, the closest thing Tulsa had to Greenwich Village or the French Quarter. Off-duty after the abortion at Mickey D’s, James Nail limped up the outside stairway to his daughter’s door. He wore his Glock-22 strapped butt forward underneath his jacket and his shield on his belt. He let himself into the apartment using his key. He walked through the kitchenette—dirty dishes in the sink—to the cluttered living room. Messy, like her mother. He heard the shower running.

  “Girl, you know how I hate to wait!” he sang out.

  “Oh, Daddy!” came the cheery, gurgling-water response.

  “It’s your mother’s birthday. We only have a couple of hours to shop before I go on duty.”

  “Daddy, you’re divorced. You don’t have to remember Mama’s birthday.”

  “If she hadn’t been born, we wouldn’t have you.”

  “You old silly. You’re such a romantic. Even if you buy her a present, she won’t let you come in the house.”

  “You can say it’s from the milkman.”

  Jamie giggled. “There’s coffee on. Pour cups. I’ll be just a minute.”

  Nail returned to the kitchenette. The pot was on the stove. He poured a cup and looked in the frig for cream. Leftovers from days before, a banana turned black... Again, the mess made him think of Connie. She divorced him three years ago after Jamie turned sixteen and started driving.

  “You’ve changed, James. You’re not the man I married.”

  No shit, Dick Tracy. For God’s sake, he wasn’t toting up numbers on a spread sheet or calling on clients to sell widgets and gadgets. His clients were generally dead, shot or stabbed or ground up in a wood chipper, dumped in old septic tanks, boiled, burned, dissected...

  “You come home smelling like death. I can’t stand it anymore. I don’t think you feel anything.”

  He located evaporated milk still in a can. He scraped crust from around the opening and made his coffee blond. Before carrying the cup to the table, he opened a closet door and looked inside. Ragged men’s jeans and political-slogan T-shirts cool with campus radicals. One had the likeness of Che Guevara wearing his revolutionary black beret. Another displayed President Patrick Wayne Anastos’ campaign slogan: Hope and Change.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?”

  He hadn’t heard the shower turn off. She wore a terrycloth robe with a towel wrapped around her long black hair. Her face glistened with diamond water droplets. Amazing how much she looked like her mother when Connie was nineteen. Except for the seawater blue eyes; they were like her father’s.

  “I was making sure he wasn’t hiding in here,” Nail said.

  “Rupert’s afraid of you, Daddy.”

  “Because I compared him to a rare bird?”

  “I don’t think a yellow-bellied scum sucker is actually a bird.”

  “You think?” He fanned through the other T-shirts. “I’m still not convinced his skinny butt isn’t hiding in here.”

  “Rupert is not skinny. He’s—”

  “—scrawny?”

  “I was going to say revolutionary lithe.”

  She dried her hair. He poured another cup of coffee and slid it across the table to her place. She took a hurried sip and dashed back to the bedroom. Nail heard her getting dressed.

  “You’re so old-fashioned, Daddy,” she called out from behind the door. “People like Rupert with courage and foresight are helping President Anastos bring social justice to America.”

  “We should have sent you to Oral Roberts University instead of TU.”

  “The capitalist system is broken, Daddy. We must change the future in order to restore hope.”

  Nail sighed. Like a lot of Americans, he was too busy with a job and day-to-day life to pay a lot of attention to politics. On election day, he had had two dead bodies in a northside Kentucky Fried Chicken and a suspect exchanging bullets with cops. The polls were closed by the time he took the perp into custody.

  He sipped his coffee. “Damn, daughter. This oil spill you call coffee would melt a ten-penny nail.”

  “It’ll put hair on your chest,” she teased back.

  “Then what happened to Rupert?”

  She laughed, refusing the bait, and came out in jeans and a blue low-necked T-shirt. At least it didn’t have a slogan on it.

  “Rupert won’t drink it either,” she said.

  Nail pushed his cup aside. “That’s one thing we have in common.”

  “You have to give him a chance, Daddy.”

  “I will—as soon as he gets a job.”

  She sat down and smiled patiently across the table. “He has a job.”

  “Community organizer is not a job.”

  “Daddy, let’s call a truce and go shopping?”

  * * *

  Jamie purchased a bracelet for her mother’s birthday, Nail a sweater he thought she might like, as long as she didn’t know it came from him. Jamie hooked her arm through his elbow and they strolled to the Food Court for cold drinks while she rambled on about an event at school during which a student got his nose ring caught in his girlfriend’s earring.

  “Daddy? Earth calling Dad. You’re not listening.”

  “Of course I am, kiddo. You know how transfixed I am over dudes wearing nose rings and high heels.”

  She giggled. She was accustomed to his sarcasm. They purchased Cokes and found a table next to one of the TVs turned to a news channel. The screen showed protesters at the U.S. Capitol Building being disperse
d with tear gas and gunfire. An elderly woman overturned her wheelchair in the panic and people stampeded over her. The crawl at the bottom of the screen listed the death toll at three.

  “Kiddo, about Saturday?” Nail ventured.

  She looked up at him, a soda straw between her lips. “What about Saturday?”

  They’d had these conversations before, he the over-protective parent, she the newly-emancipated daughter guarding her independence.

  “I suppose Rupert will be out at the ORU Center with all the other crazies waving their signs?”

  “Daddy, Rupert is not crazy. People are justifiably outraged. Jerry Baer is the reason the rednecks hung that census worker in the cemetery.”

  “I suppose Baer put the noose around the guy’s neck?”

  “He’s responsible with his hate rhetoric. We have to let him know he’s not welcome to spread his venom in Tulsa.”

  Jerry Baer: They’ll Destroy Me

  (New York)—Jerry Baer, the most-listened-to personality on U.S. TV, said he feared for his life and expects to eventually be destroyed, one way or the other. He became a media sensation through Zenergy News Cable and a popular TV program that placed him at the top of his enemies’ list. Senator Joe Wiedersham’s (D-Ill) introduction of the FAD (Fairness of Airwaves Doctrine) Bill was initiated in response to widespread fear over hate-speech and Baer’s unfounded allegations that President Patrick Wayne Anastos’ White House is full of Marxists and communists.

  “It’s unpatriotic at this time of war and economic crisis to criticize the government,” Wiedersham said. “We’re simply not going to tolerate those who stand in the way of national security and progress...”