A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  Forbis jerked as the bullet slashed through his brain. His weapon discharged at the same instant and appeared to blast a plume of flame directly into Sharon’s skull. Her body plunged out of sight into tall grass next to the stream. Forbis toppled the other way, dead before he hit the ground.

  “Sharon!” Nail bellowed.

  Too late. Just like before.

  Rage and grief drove him headlong toward where Sharon went down. Heedless of his own safety, his gun spitting fire in all directions, he charged directly through the three surviving Green Shirts. Caught by surprise, in shock at witnessing the annihilation of their leader, they lost their nerve and scattered without so much as drawing their weapons.

  At the same time, armed men exploded from the underbrush on the other side of the brook, splashing through the water in full cavalry mode. Nail attempted to take a shot, but his gun was empty. Somewhere within the fog of combat that enveloped his brain, he heard a familiar voice shouting.

  “James, no! It’s us, bro’!”

  With a muffled sob, Nail dropped to his knees in the grass next to Sharon. He crushed her limp body into his arms, against his chest. He heard a gasp, felt her move.

  “Sharon?”

  “What? What? I can’t hear anything. Everything’s a roar.”

  Nail’s bullet had smashed into Forbis’ brain just in time. The boom of the Green Shirt’s gun next to her head had deafened her.

  “I knew God would bring you in time,” she managed.

  With Sharon safe in his arms, Nail became once more cognizant of his surroundings. Forbis lay unmoving nearby, his skull ripped open and brain matter spilling out into the grass. Smitty was on his knees next to Nail, vomiting up breakfast. Several men Nail recognized from the Defenders’ meeting at the schoolhouse took up a perimeter around them. A black Incredible Hulk fell on both knees to embrace Sharon and Nail together.

  “You two all right? God, when I thought... We almost not make it in time.”

  “How did you find us?” Nail began.

  “No time explain, bro’. Got to get the hell out. They be coming like cockroaches.”

  Nail helped Sharon to her feet.

  “What are you saying?” she shouted, still deaf from the gun shot.

  Big C had a 30.06 Winchester with scope slung over one massive shoulder. Nail’s eyes hardened when he looked back toward where he last saw Henshaw and his squad. The job wasn’t finished yet.

  “Give me the rifle,” he requested of Big C. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  Militia Attacks AmeriCorps Youth

  (Little Rock, Arkansas)—A militia-instigated burst of violence in Arkansas this afternoon left two youth service workers dead. The attack occurred at approximately one p.m. at an isolated AmeriCorps forestry camp in northern Arkansas. Witnesses said a group of youth assigned to the region to construct hiking trails and monitor conservation efforts was ambushed by an unknown number of men wielding automatic weapons. None of the AmeriCorps members was armed. The dead are identified as Orville Forbis, 32, and Earl Henshaw, 28.

  The attackers are believed to be militiamen from Oklahoma. Known as the Defenders, they have been particularly active in recent weeks. The Defenders are believed responsible for hanging undercover Homeland Security agent Ron Sparks in an Oklahoma cemetery and for the attack at the ORU Center in Tulsa that left conservative TV talk show guru Jerry Baer and seven others dead.

  Two members of the Defenders were slain the night before the Arkansas attack near Bunch, Oklahoma, in what authorities are describing as a clash between rival militias over policy and tactics...

  White House spokesman Dewey Gubbins said the administration is considering declaring a national state of emergency and imposing martial law in several states if the violence continues to escalate...

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Keystone Lake, Oklahoma

  The moon was high by the time Nail and Sharon pulled his old green Chevy pickup through the wire fence gate and followed the long ruts across the field and through the trees to the concealed cabin on Cottonwood Creek. So much had happened within the past forty eight hours that it seemed they had been away for days.

  Sharon emitted a weary sigh. “Home sweet home, be it ever so humble...”

  “You’ll soon be barefooted and smoking a corn cob pipe.”

  Her ears were still ringing and she didn’t hear him. “Do you suppose they’ll come looking for us here?” she worried.

  “Big C put the deed and utilities for the cabin under an assumed name and address that’ll be hard to trace back. Thank God for paranoia.”

  Nail unlocked the cabin door and turned on the lights. He stood in the doorway looking out.

  “There’s a thunder boomer coming,” he predicted.

  “What?”

  He faced her so she could read his lips. “A thunderstorm.”

  Lightning slashed across the black sky, illuminating the overgrown drive to the cabin and the pickup parked out front. Big C should be arriving shortly.

  “We got us a war now,” one of the Defenders said before the militia split up to find its individual way back to Oklahoma. “They are going to be on us like chickens on corn.”

  “Best ya’all lay low then,” Big C told them. “I be in touch.”

  “I wager it won’t be long until they ‘find’ evidence at the scene of the crime and issue an APB for me and some big, black, bald dude,” Nail said.

  Big C grinned tightly. “Big, black, bald, handsome, charming...”

  They raced through the back part of the woods to where their vehicles were parked on a logging road.

  “Best we split up too, James,” Big C said. “You take your truck. I got a ride back to mine. Catch you at Safe House later.”

  Smitty was still pale and terror-stricken when Nail and Sharon dropped him off in Muldrow where he could phone his dad to come get him. He said he was through with AmeriCorps and was willing to go public on TV as to what really happened at the camp should Sharon require it. Nail thought of what had befallen Greg Morris and Joshua Logan.

  “You go home and keep your mouth shut, Smitty. Understand?” he said.

  “I’m sorry for what we done to you,” Smitty apologized, tears of regret running down his thin cheeks. “It was wrong.”

  “It was wrong,” Nail agreed. “But you made up for it when it really counted.”

  Sharon sat as close to Nail as she could get for the rest of the drive to the lake, her hand gripping his knee as though to reassure herself that he was there with her and that they were, miraculously, still alive. Nail couldn’t even look at her without shuddering at how close he came to losing her. Neither of them was yet willing to talk about what had transpired. Their nerves were shot; they mostly rode in silence, keeping their eyes peeled for the “Black Mollies” the Homies drove. Nail figured it would take some time, several hours at least, before the manhunt began in earnest. They should be able to hide out at the Safe House until some of the heat blew over.

  Cool-headed again, Sharon suggested they stock up on supplies on their way to the Safe House, as it might be days before they dared venture out. Nail stopped at a travel plaza where Sharon could scrub Forbis’ blood off her face without being noticed. Afterwards, they purchased fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, cereals and dried goods like beans, flour and rice at a Wal-Mart in Sallisaw. No pork ’n beans.

  Thinking ahead, Sharon selected a laptop computer, printer, scanner and a video camera with which to tape programs in exile for The Jerry Baer Show. Nail threw into the cart two pay-as-you-go cell phones and phone cards that would take the Feds awhile to locate and trace. That accomplished, they passed a book store where Sharon insisted they stop.

  “They took the reading list you made for me,” he apologized.

  “We won’t need it.”

  The book store had one copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Sharon bought it, along with 1984 by George Orwell and Going Bonkers: The Wacky World of Cultural Madness.

&n
bsp; “We won’t be restocking these titles,” the clerk said. “We received a government directive listing books that will be out of print from now on.”

  Now, as the storm approached the cabin, lighting up the windows strobe-like, Sharon began preparing dinner at the propane stove. Neither of them had eaten since the previous evening in Stillwell. Nail’s mouth soon watered with the aroma of meat frying and bread baking. While he waited, he called Lieutenant Jack Ross on one of the throw-away phones to catch up on any news.

  “Kimbrell is snooping around,” Ross relayed. “He said he has evidence that you and Corey Brown led the ambush against the AmeriCorps workers in Arkansas. It’s all over the news. You and big C had better take to the mattresses. There are federal interstate murder warrants issued for both of you.”

  It hadn’t taken long for Kimbrell to identify Big C. After all, how many black Incredible Hulks were associated with Nail?

  “James, I’m opening an ATM account for you under the name Roger Carroll,” Ross offered. “I’ll keep money in it and get the cards to you somehow.”

  “Jack...?”

  “Is the girl from Jerry Baer still with you?”

  “Sharon.”

  “She’s good people, James. And you’re a good cop.” He hesitated. He voice turned wistful. “Good luck, James. To the three of you.”

  Nail hung up and told Sharon about the murder warrants. She turned from the stove with spatula in hand and a towel wrapped around her waist as an apron. She had showered and changed clothes. Nail wondered if she could ever scrub the stain of this day off her soul.

  “I suppose that makes us real fugitives now,” she said.

  “Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “That ended well.”

  He walked up and put his arms around her from behind while she cooked. There was nothing left to say.

  * * *

  Big C arrived in time for dinner, ushered in by the crack of a bolt of lightning that bounced down the creek like St. Elmo’s fire. He slammed the door against the weather and shuddered.

  “Starting to rain,” he announced. “Gonna be real toad strangler. Umm, something smell good.”

  “I was hoping you’d get here,” Sharon said.

  “You can hear again!”

  “What?”

  They all laughed.

  “I want you both to know that not one can opener was employed in preparation of this meal,” she said.

  “My kind of woman,” effused Big C.

  She laughed at him. “I thought you preferred blondes.”

  “Now, tell us how you found us at the camp?” Nail asked Big C when they sat down for the late dinner. It was almost midnight by now.

  “Let’s have a nice meal first,” Sharon suggested with a tired smile. “We have a lot to thank God for.”

  That was the cue to bow their heads.

  “Lord God, thank You for providing our needs, and for delivering us from the shadows of this day. Lord, we would like to pray for the souls of those who departed this world at our hand. Forgive us for what we had to do. Bless this food we are about to receive, and be with us, Lord, in the perilous days ahead. Amen.”

  There was no further discussion of Nail’s killing the Green Shirts. He would deal with it his own way. He recalled how horrified Connie had been when he shot the man that time to save Big C’s life. “You mean, you can kill a man and it doesn’t even bother you?”

  She had never had a cocked gun pressed against her forehead.

  After they ate and cleared the table, they sat over coffee in the living room while Big C told them everything he had found out. How he captured one of the attackers at the schoolhouse, who revealed the location of the AmeriCorps camp. The Defenders had arrived just in time.

  “Colonel Mosby was snitch inside the militia,” Big C explained, sipping coffee. “He set it up for Homies to kidnap you two and get rid you. Kimbrell behind it all. He terrorized Mosby’s wife and kids. He even shot Ol’ Ranger, the kids’ dog.”

  Big C explained further how Ron Sparks had heard from his contact in Washington that “people” might be plotting to assassinate Jerry Baer when he made his public appearance in Tulsa. Sparks passed the information to Colonel Mosby, who he assumed would contact Tulsa Police and Jerry Baer’s security. Sparks couldn’t do it himself without blowing his cover. Instead, Mosby went to Kimbrell.

  “And so Kimbrell had Sparks hung and blamed it on the Defenders,” Nail said.

  “Kimbrell organized it all. Everything from your daughter’s boyfriend bringing out PEIU and ACOA demonstrators to the stolen chopper and the shooters.”

  “Motive?”

  “Jerry Baer getting too close to the truth and people starting to listen. Everything else just to shift blame or cover up. My guess is he got marching orders from someplace higher up.”

  “My guess is with yours,” Nail agreed. “How did Logan and Morris fit in?”

  “Greg Morris call me that morning the Homies kill him,” Big C said. “He meeting Logan at McDonald’s because he saw something prove who really hung Ron Sparks. I suppose to meet Greg too, but the Homies beat me there.”

  “Morris saw the hanging,” Nail surmised. “Kimbrell had to get rid of him. From the jailhouse note Logan left me, Morris must have told him something about it over the phone.”

  “Sharon suppose to be killed along with Baer,” Big C went on, speculating. “James, you got in middle because of Jamie, started nosing around and—”

  “—here we are. And we still don’t have all the marbles.”

  “Nor do we know who they are or how many,” Big C added.

  Nail and Sharon were on the sofa, she nodding off with her head on his shoulder.

  “I told you at the beginning that this went deeper than you’d ever believe,” she reminded Nail.

  Nail took the coffee from her hand before she spilled it. None of them had slept much for more than forty eight hours. They were out on their feet.

  “What did you do to Mosby?” Nail asked.

  Big C looked at him. “Man got a good family. I expect him and them are in Arizona by now.”

  Nail nodded approval.

  “Bro’,” said the black cop. “Look like it three of us against the entire U.S. Government—and I don’t know can we win or not.”

  “Three Musketeers,” Sharon mumbled.

  Big C’s lips curled slightly in a grim smile. “One for all, all for one.”

  Nail said, “That’s better than Bonnie and Clyde.”

  A bright flicker of lightning and the instant crashing of thunder rattled the cabin’s windows. Rain drummed on the cedar shake roof.

  “A storm’s coming,” Nail said. “It’s coming all right.”

  PART II

  “Each generation of Americans is conditioned to accept less freedom than the generation before.”

  Donna Sue Sasser

  Chapter Forty

  Washington, D.C.

  Dennis Trout heard Judy finish her shower and turn off the water. He waited for her in her cramped living room, watching TV. She kept the apartment clean and neat, he gave her that, even though the cheap furniture she insisted on was more suitable for a room at Motel 6. You could take the girl out of Bugfuck, but you couldn’t take Bugfuck out of the girl.

  “I’m getting dressed now, honey,” Judy sang out.

  He was taking her out to The Fountains for dinner, which meant he didn’t have to dress. She kept a spare wardrobe for him in her apartment. He had changed from “work clothes” to fresh slacks and an open-collar sports shirt. Marilyn thought he was working late again.

  The TV networks were full of some twit actress named Lindsey and her third or fourth drug bust. Talking heads gravely deliberated over whether or not she deserved to go to jail, and, if so, for how long. Trout flipped channels in disgust. This was what passed as hard news? Cakes and circuses to keep the sheep busy until the wolves got around to eating them.

  CNN was airing something about Michael Jackson the p
op star. Wasn’t he dead or something?

  CBS played a live shot of President Anastos giving a news conference of sorts in the Rose Garden. The late sun reddened against his long face. His head automatically began its teleprompter wag when he started to speak.

  “Uh, change has not come fast enough for too many Americans,” he baritoned. “I know that. It hasn’t come fast enough for me either. I, uh, know it hasn’t been fast enough for many of you who fought so hard during the election for, uh, hope and change. The fact is, uh, it took you to get where we are now and it’ll take time to get the change we want.”

  Judy stuck her bleached head out from the bedroom. “Just another minute, honey. I want to look pretty as a pea for you tonight.”

  She seemed as happy as a hog in slop, as they might say in Bugfuck. What she perceived as “pretty as a pea” usually meant something tight with plenty of sparkle and cleavage. Sometimes, he questioned his taste in women.

  “Honey...?”

  “I heard you, sweet dumpling,” he replied, mimicking her down-home corn pone Okie tawk.

  She giggled. “Whatcha watching?”

  “Lies and hog wash.”

  “Oh. Politics.” Still giggling, she popped out of sight. He heard her singing happily to herself. He wondered if it was Michael Jackson.

  He flipped the remote to Zenergy News. The crawl across the bottom of the screen caught and froze his attention: State Senator Morgan Lance of New Hampshire has been killed in a tragic one-car accident on Highway 93 near Manchester. Lance was the primary author of a state proclamation that threatened to nullify federal authority...

  Blood drained from his cheeks as he stared at the screen. “They’ll know better than to fuck with me,” Wiedersham had threatened. The federal judge who struck down President Anastos’ ban on oil drilling in the Gulf had also died tragically and suddenly, of an accidental drug overdose. “Judge Fielding won’t be a problem,” Wiedersham had promised.

  Was it mere coincidence that people who “fucked with” Wiedersham and Associates ended up dead? “Make an incident,” Wiedersham raged when the Tea Party marched on the Capitol—and three were gunned down. Coincidence that the administration’s number one nemesis, Jerry Baer, ended up assassinated in Tulsa?