A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  Nail nodded reflectively.

  “You could have did worse for a partner,” Big C said after a moment.

  “We’ve always been partners, C.”

  “I was talking about Sharon.”

  Nail looked toward the door through which Sharon had gone. “For her sake,” he said, “it might be best to turn ourselves in. I owe her that. I’m getting her in too deep.”

  “The sis in deep already, James. You think Kimbrell going to let you walk right out again? Least he going to do is keep you and her lock up someplace. You think because you a cop it make any difference to this peckerwood? I ain’t risk a friend on what these people may or may not be capable of.”

  They saw Sharon through the window as she left the parked Saturn and returned to the cabin in the sunshine. Big C leaned across the table and lowered his voice.

  “I bet she suppose be killed at ORU too. How long you think she last on her own? What you owe her, bro’, is keep her alive.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Keystone Lake

  Nail had always considered Big C to be an intelligent and rational man. He was also a conspiracy freak. Like, China would send in foreign troops to enforce martial law; secret internment camps were being built to imprison dissidents; private ownership of guns was about to be outlawed; the government was compiling a list of Americans deemed dangerous; black babies were being poisoned in the ghettos; voter fraud and intimidation stole elections... Freemasons; Bilderbergers; New World Order; One World Government; Illuminati; black helicopters...

  “Even if you paranoid,” Big C would quip, “it don’t mean they ain’t out to get you.”

  It disturbed Nail that Sharon seemingly agreed with C.

  “We are under attack by our own government,” she declared grimly. “Anyone like Big C or Jerry Baer who connects the dots is branded a paranoid kook who has to be discredited. First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, and if that doesn’t work, there’s the gun and they win.”

  She extracted the copy of Truth from the FedEx parcel and thrust it upon Nail. “Read this,” she ordered. “After that, I want us to watch Jerry’s DVD together.”

  Nail begrudgingly took the magazine into the living room and settled at the end of the sofa, reading in sunlight shining through the window. His brow knitted in concentration while Sharon and Big C continued weaving their dark intrigues together at the kitchen table. He finished One Year Ago and read it again carefully. Sharon was standing there when he looked up.

  “Only one year,” she said, “and they are well on their way to ‘fundamentally transforming the United States of America.’”

  He stared at the magazine in deep thought, his previous assumptions challenged not only by Sharon’s article but also by the events of the past week. Sharon turned on the TV, slid in a DVD, and sat next to Nail on the sofa. Big C occupied the easy chair. Light inside the cabin was afternoon dim and yellow and the blue light from the TV screen flickered off their faces. Doves outside cooed and a meadow lark issued its tri-noted plea for companionship.

  Nail immediately recognized the fifty-year-old doughboy with the pale hair and pink skin who exploded on the screen with charm, enthusiasm, sincerity and intelligence. Nail glanced and saw tears flowing down Sharon’s cheeks. She batted at them with her hand. He started to take her hand, but didn’t.

  “This was taped only a few days before...” She stopped at that.

  They were soon engrossed in Baer’s personality and the show’s content.

  “Welcome, America, to the Jerry Baer Show. This is my producer, co-host and friend Sharon Lowenthal.” There she was on the screen with Baer, smiling and looking gorgeous. “Tonight we are going to expose how individuals within our own government are collapsing America economically and socially and replacing the Constitution with a shadow government that is almost ready to take over. Don’t accept my word for anything. Listen to them, their own words. If you want the truth, America, if you can handle the truth, come on. Follow me.”

  Bumper music and the show’s screen logo faded into a film clip of President Patrick Wayne Anastos at a microphone with his ubiquitous teleprompters in place. An adoring drive-by media telecaster had once commented how Anastos “could read a grocery list and mesmerize. The power of his voice alone makes people want to run out to the nearest supermarket and buy peanut butter, jelly, cookies, soup and everything else on the damn list.” In truth, however, while his baritone voice was rich and compelling, he appeared haughty and condescending before the camera and his speech was interrupted by irritating pauses and “uh’s.”

  “This, uh, Supreme Court never ventured into the issue of redistribution of wealth,” he was saying. “The tragedy of the Civil Rights Movement was that the Civil Rights Movement became so, uh, court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities that, uh, are able to put together a coalition of power through which you bring about redistributive change. I refuse to, uh, allow America to go back to the culture of irresponsibility and greed that made an economy with, uh, soaring salaries for some and shrinking working class incomes. I did not run for office to, uh, help a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”

  For the next hour, Nail sat glued to the set, astonished at the historical depth of Baer’s knowledge, taken aback that almost none of this was appearing elsewhere on TV or in the newspapers. It was easy to see why the political ruling classes might have wanted to hush Baer. Clip after clip, politicians caught off-guard and therefore more candid than they might otherwise have been indicted themselves to support Baer’s assertion that Washington under the Anastos administration was full of Marxists scheming against the American people.

  One clip showed House Speaker Barbara Teague with her Botox’d face frozen like that of a deer caught in a trucker’s headlights. “I think we’ve had enough of capitalism. I think we need more regulation of society.”

  A rumpled, heavyset man appeared on the screen, identified as Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham. Nail exchanged looks with Sharon and Big C. This was the man from whom Judy Sparks-Taylor through her lover Dennis Trout had apparently obtained certain sensitive information that she passed on to her cousin in Oklahoma.

  “The need for de-development presents economists with a major challenge,” Wiedersham was saying. “I believe basically the system is broken. It is basically a bankruptcy of free marketing and a refutation of the principles of Reagan and Thatcher. Economists must design a stable, low-corruption economy in which there is a more equitable distribution of wealth. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”

  A clip of Congresswoman Nadine Walters followed. “The dumbest poor creature on Capitol Hill,” Sharon editorialized to Nail and Big C.

  “And guess what this liberal would be all about,” poor Nadine confessed on TV. “This liberal would be all about socializing...” Uh oh! Bad choice of words. She caught herself and stared into the camera while she tried to think her way out of the trap. “Uh, what I really mean would be about basically taking over and the government running all your companies for the good of everybody.”

  Baer came back on, with Sharon sharing the set with him.

  “Listen to them, folks,” he exhorted. “They’re not even bothering to hide their intentions anymore. The masks are coming off. They think we’re a bunch of pasty-white, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting, pickup-driving reactionaries with racist tendencies sitting slack-jawed in front of our televisions, too stupid to know we’re being spoon-fed in every aspect of our simple, dreary lives. It’s the responsibility of the elites in society to manipulate the general public and tell us how to vote, what to eat, who to love and hate, what to think and when to think it. In their minds, man cannot govern himself. We aren’t enlightened enough to make our own decisions.”

  The scene changed to a late-night network TV host. “We can’t get sixty percent of people
to agree on anything,” he ranted. “Sixty percent doesn’t even believe in evolution. Sixty percent doesn’t even have passports. They’re stupid. It’s up to President Anastos to drag them into the New World Order.”

  The TV Sharon appeared. “It doesn’t make any difference which political party is in power,” she said. “Republican or Democrat. Both parties are full of Progressives leading us down the same path, one only at a slower pace than the other.”

  A printed quote came up on the screen to support her statement:

  The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies...is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will...still preserve, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies. Professor Carroll Quigley.

  “Seventy percent of our economy is now run by government,” Baer resumed. “It’ll be the same no matter which party is in power. The nation has been leading to President Anastos since the 1930s. Folks, if you haven’t heard about Cloward and Pivens, it’s time you do some homework. Their goal for the country is to collapse it internally and create a crisis that requires emergency measures by government. Progressives are already in position to control everything. Folks, our country as we know it is being destroyed.”

  Next appeared a scary-looking man with black eyes staring out of caves, thick lips, and an Eastern European accent. Baer introduced him as “George Zuniga—the richest and most dangerous man in the world.”

  “What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that zee principal risk to the earth comes from zee actions of rich capitalist nations?” the unsettling man asked rhetorically. “In order to save zee planet, the group decides that zee only hope for zee planet is that zee industrialized nations collapse. Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?”

  Baer climbed onto a stool and dropped his head into his hands. When he looked up again, his face was haggard and dead serious.

  “More banks have failed this year than in all of the last decade,” he lectured. “The country is in debt eighteen trillion dollars. We suffer from double-digit unemployment. The economy is entering a spiraling freefall. Government borrows five billion dollars every day from China just to keep afloat. Sooner or later, the world will realize that our debts can never be repaid. There’ll be a worldwide panic against the dollar, the results of which will be fatal and irreversible to the Republic. We are deliberately being made to collapse.”

  He jumped to his feet, pacing across the set. A crusader warning his countrymen.

  “Societies need government,” he continued, sweating and punctuating the air with jabs and chops. “Government elevates men to power, and men who seek power are prone to corruption. Corruption spreads like a plague. Out of lust for money, power and sex, for their own gain and their evil ideology, such people will replace equal justice with social justice. They will trade individual freedom for an all-powerful, all-knowing government that will forsake the creative potential of individuals for a two class system in which the elites rule and everyone else is a serf. Throughout history, we have seen this slide into tyranny. As we slept, a corrupt and expanding network was being built to replace our Republic the moment it was weak enough to fall. While we slept, our servant became our master. Now is the time the master will act. Now, while they have the power, they will destroy America and take it over from the inside.”

  Nail was stunned, speechless. He felt Sharon watching him.

  The camera zoomed in for a close-up of Baer’s worn face.

  “Someday people will ask, ‘Why didn’t somebody warn us?’ Somebody is warning you, folks. We’re under attack from enemies both foreign and domestic. It’s all wrapped up in political correctness, the economy, corruption in Washington, our involvement in overseas wars, radical Islam, allowing illegal immigration for votes, Marxists in Congress and the White House.

  “The next step is force. Soldiers will be coming. A witch hunt has already started for dissidents, those who will oppose a socialist takeover of our country. If the elites have done their job right, there will be almost no fight left in the public. People will welcome the tanks when they roll in to restore order. We will submit to searches, give up all our Constitutional rights—and forget about our neighbors who have been dragged away to disappear.”

  The man appeared to be in agony. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his face, soaking his collar. This man on the screen was now dead, murdered along with Jamie Nail. Ice ran down Nail’s spine as Big C’s warning finally sunk in as to what he owed Sharon—to keep her alive, even though she seemed determined to take Baer’s place as the next Thomas Paine sounding the alarm.

  President Touts Second Bill of Rights

  (Washington)—In his crusade to initiate reforms to provide new goals of human happiness and well-being, President Anastos said it is time to amend a Second Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, as first proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt. The new Bill of Rights cements a pact between government and citizens that, under government supervision, would guarantee equal standards of living. The Second Bill of Rights will include:

  The right to guaranteed employment and pay;

  The right of every family to a decent house;

  The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

  The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

  The right to a good education;

  The right to rest and leisure...

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Washington, D.C.

  Chief of Staff Dennis Trout—perhaps it would soon be Illinois Congressman Trout if everything went well—hadn’t had a swig of Maalox since yesterday. He was thinking about it now though, on the phone with his wife. He had no idea what might have set her off this time. As best he could determine, she was raising hell for no other reason than that she was married to him. She should have been ecstatic with joy. After all, he had achieved insider status—and found a possible sugar daddy to fund his campaign in Illinois.

  His stomach rumbled and he opened a desk drawer to find his Maalox. He was trying his best to placate the bitch. He didn’t want to piss her off, which in turn would piss off her brother and cause him, Trout, to lose everything he had kissed ass for these last years.

  Whatever her other complaints, she quickly moved on to the issue of his having neglected to feed Reggie this morning before he left for the office. Marilyn had had an early spa appointment.

  “I won’t forget again, Marilyn, I promise. Say, why don’t I take you out to Komi’s for dinner.” Komi’s was her favorite dining. “Not tonight. Tomorrow evening, okay? I’m working late tonight.”

  He held the phone out from his ear. It seemed to vibrate from her on-the-other-end fury. The damned thing would explode if she knew he was actually meeting his mistress instead of working late. Judy had returned from her little foray into Deliverance and Trout needed his ashes hauled in the worst way. It took so little to make the blonde happy—a stolen night now and then when he was horny or needed a bedpost to talk to. She was so simple.

  He finally got off the phone on a final refrain from Marilyn. “Damn you, Trout!”

  Liz in the outer office transferred an incoming call to Trout for screening before he passed it on to Wiedersham. It was that idiot from Homeland Security again. Vladimir Gonzalez. Another ass kisser looking to get his toast buttered. Trout thought him a pompous little man with a little man’s complex. A Russian immigrant’s grandson who claimed direct descent from Vladimir Lenin via a Venezuelan his mother married.

  “Hold one, Officer Gonzalez,” Trout said politely but with deliberate slight.

  “Director Gonzalez.”

  “Hold one, Director Gonzalez.”<
br />
  Trout knocked once, then opened the door that separated his much, much smaller office from Wiedersham’s. Wiedersham didn’t like to be buzzed like some Michelin tire dealer from the Midwest. He was on the other line. One Vigotti shoe propped on top of his desk and his Armani suit looking cheap enough on him to have come off the rack at Wal-Mart. He held up a finger to Trout and laughed his odd bark at whoever was on the phone.

  “It’ll be out of committee in two weeks latest,” he was saying. “It may take some arm twisting, but Teague assures me we have the votes in House and I have them in Senate. The web’ll be ours along with other communications.”

  “It’s Gonzalez,” Trout announced when Wiedersham clicked off his phone and sat up in his chair.

  Wiedersham scowled.

  “He says it’s important.”

  The Majority Leader took the call. Curious about what the two might be up to, Trout took his time going through the Out box on the table next to the door. Wiedersham transferred all his routine crap to Trout for him to take care of—such as the RSVP to the media formal dinner to be held Saturday night. Trout gofer’d the mundane for Wiedersham so his brother-in-law could gofer for the President. With a wry smile, Trout speculated on how everybody in D.C. was a gofer for somebody else. Even the President of the United States.

  Wiedersham was less cautious about his Chief of Staff overhearing his conversations now that Trout had won insider status. Nonetheless, out of old habits of distrust, Wiedersham turned his back and lowered his voice, which made him sound like Marlon Brando in the old Godfather movies. Trout pretended disinterest, but he was mentally taking notes.

  “Power is a matter of whose balls you can squeeze,” Wiedersham had once explained. “It’s who’s banging who, who’s cheating on his income tax, who’s a closet fag, who’s in bed with which lobbyist, who’s stealing campaign funds... Collecting that kind of dirt is like money in the bank. You can call your own shots. Everyone has something to hide. You find out what it is and use it when you need it.”