A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  “Dennis?” Judy stood in the doorway looking at him. “Dennis, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Trout shook himself out of the trance into which he had lapsed. He knew what he was getting into when he signed his pact with the devil.

  I’ll give you wealth and power, promised the Evil One.

  Goody! Where do I sign up?

  He continued to stare at the TV screen. A shot of State Senator Lance’s mangled BMW flashed on the screen, accompanied by a voiceover explaining how the State of New Hampshire was withdrawing Lance’s nullification proclamation from consideration.

  Trout had to get hold of himself. Everything he wanted, everything, was within reach. All he had to do was hold his nose and go forward. After all, didn’t the ends justify the means?

  “The test of true leadership,” Wiedersham liked to say, “is when you can make those tough decisions that you know are best for the common good.”

  Judy bent over Trout to get his attention. The gold-plated locket he gave her dangled between her cleavage. She wore more rings than she had fingers.

  “Dennis...?”

  “Do you have any Maalox?”

  “There’s a convenience store on the corner. I’ll run get some?”

  He was still staring at the TV screen when the apartment door closed behind her. Wasn’t he as guilty as Wiedersham if he knew about all this and continued to go along silently just to get his ticket punched?

  * * *

  This morning, Wiedersham had taken him to a “Next Step” conference, saying he, Trout, should begin making appearances where he could be seen among Progressive supporters. The campaign for the Illinois 9th District seat was already down to its last heat while Trout hadn’t even left the starting gate. Not to worry, Wiedersham reassured him. Things had been “arranged.”

  Trout declined to consider himself a political radical, not in any true sense. He was pragmatic, like his brother-in-law. However, most of those at the Next Step were true radicals, prominent among them three ageing hippies from the late 1960s and 1970s: Bob Carter and the Ackharts, man and wife. All had been members of the Weathermen and, more recently, founders of The Renewed Weather openly advocating “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world under The New World Order.”

  Bob Carter, a small, bespectacled, inoffensive-looking man in his late fifties, was head of the George Zuniga-funded World Alliance. Congress had not written the twenty-five-hundred page Health Care Bill that nationalized health care in the U.S. and placed one sixth of the nation’s economy under government control. Carter and his allies had, with the guidance, no doubt, of Mr. Zuniga. Carter, along with Bill Ackhart and Ackhart’s wife, Bernadine Samson-Ackhart, had also drafted much of the President’s Economic Stimulus package.

  Bill and Bernadine Ackhart were professors at the University of Chicago who had worked with President Anastos and ACOA during Anastos’ “community organizer” years and were later Anastos’ neighbors in Chicago. The couple had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in the early 1970s for a series of bombings against the police and uncooperative politicians. Ironically enough, the City of Chicago awarded them its Citizens of The Year Award in 2006, followed by the same award for Patrick Wayne Anastos the following year.

  Present and prepared to take the “next step” were a number of others whose faces Trout recognized but until now had not met personally. Wiedersham made a point of introducing him around. As chief of staff, Trout previously stayed in the background and had not attended these meetings.

  Duane Smith—White House Environmental Czar, former Black Panther member, union organizer, President of PEIU, board member of SIGA, and avowed communist—called Trout “brother.” Speaker of the House Barbara Teague merely stared at him with her blank Botox expression. Homeland Security Director Vladimir Gonzalez looked like he might fit in well with Nazi Germany’s diminutive-brained Gestapo or Stalin’s KGB.

  Ira Romero, the President’s chief of staff, and Press Secretary Dewey Gubbins represented the White House, along with Regulatory Czar Sam Shrader. George Zuniga was not personally present, but he was well represented. What surprised Trout most was the number of mainstream media people present. Famous faces from the networks and current events magazines, obviously insiders who took no notes or video. There were also CEOs from major corporations that had recently been bailed out of their economic woes by the President’s Stimulus Package and subsequently nationalized. Five or six other stern-looking men spoke little or no English. Interpreters accompanied them.

  Zenergy News, Trout noted puckishly, was not represented.

  The conference goal, as best Trout understood it, having arrived in the middle of what was apparently an ongoing discussion over many months, was directed toward bringing about “change” in the U.S. Government. “Revolution” was bandied about as cavalierly as gossip at a PTA meeting.

  “In my opinion,” remonstrated a well-known TV anchor, “we must do all we can to destroy Zenergy News and the idiocy it foments. This isn’t about defending Anastos. This is about how the Rightwing media kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people. Common interest, as Walter Lippman said, eludes public opinion entirely. It can be managed only by a specialized class since the public are mentally children and barbarians. In order to have a semblance of control, we need a tougher legal framework that will be provided by The Fairness of Airwaves Doctrine...”

  Wiedersham and Barbara Teague reassured him that FAD was coming.

  “The average American is trained to be passive,” Majority Leader Wiedersham pointed out to the assembly. “The average American is ready to say ‘I give up.’ We have to count on that. The coming mid-term elections are critical in putting our people in place and our movement in control. The Immigration Reform Bill now in the House will legitimize twelve million undocumented immigrants and allow them to vote for us. Not that we necessarily need them, but it will give the appearance of legitimacy...”

  It wasn’t who cast the votes but who counted the votes.

  “The masses will fight for socialism when they understand that the fight for material conditions cannot be won under imperialism,” declared the former Black Panther Duane Smith. “Holiday Inn, American Airlines, all of Hertz’s automobiles, your TV set, you car and your wardrobe already belong to a large degree to peoples in the rest of the world, particularly to peoples of color...”

  Trout stared. What the hell did that mean?

  There seemed to be some disagreement in the conference over when the “Next Step” should be taken.

  “We find ourselves in a situation where the movement that we built for hope and change is on the bubble,” interjected the President’s chief of staff, Ira Romero. “There is great danger in delay. We must strike now...”

  Everyone finally conceded that it was up to Mr. Zuniga, the President, and the International Board for Social Justice to make the call on when the United States and the globe was ripe. It was quite obvious to Trout that Progressives considered themselves good people come to save America and the world.

  Trout’s head was spinning by the time it was over. On the way out, Wiedersham barked his strange laugh and said, “In six months, it’ll be done. Dennis, you and I will be two of the richest and most influential men in the universe.”

  * * *

  Thinking about that now in Judy’s apartment put Trout’s head back on straight. The end game made everything in between worthwhile. He turned off the TV and was feeling much better by the time Judy returned with his Maalox.

  “I don’t need it now,” he decided. “Put it in the medicine cabinet for later. I’m hungry.”

  Universities Employ “Facilitators”

  (Harvard)—Universities and colleges are employing student “facilitators” to monitor hate speech on campuses nationwide. Should students be engaged in incorrect, harmful or anti-government speech, facilitators will step in to correct the offenders. Second and third offen
ses could lead to fines and incarceration. Duane Smith, President of PEIU (Public Employees International Union), which represents most school teachers and university employees, explained that such intervention will help create an atmosphere of inclusivity...

  Chapter Forty-One

  Keystone Lake, Oklahoma

  Recent events coupled with Nail’s inability to attend his daughter’s funeral left him empty and restless. Burning at the back of his mind was the conviction that the nightmare wasn’t over yet, might never be over. Green Shirts Forbis and Henshaw pulled the triggers, but someone else bought the bullets. Someone else had Jamie’s blood on his hands, someone else higher than Kimbrell. Lust for revenge raged deep in Nail’s soul.

  Things at the Safe House between Nail and Sharon after Arkansas were reserved, almost formal. They took no time for fishing, leisurely coffee over the breakfast table, or long talks by the creek underneath the stars. Part of it was because every Fed in the nation, as well as state and local police, was hunting for them. The hideout couldn’t hold forever. They would soon have to split up, move on, and keep moving.

  The other part of it, Nail suspected, was that Sharon saw a side of him at the AmeriCorps camp that she didn’t realize existed. A hard, violent side that had caused Connie to divorce him.

  Sharon was also changed. Getting splattered with the brain blood of a man seconds away from killing you was enough to give even the toughest cop or soldier PTSD. She had witnessed reality as few others had.

  “None of us will have a private life again,” she said. “We must activate the American people. When I go to bed and say my prayers, I ask God what else can I do to wake up America before it’s too late.”

  She kept herself occupied writing pieces for Truth and preparing in exile the next Jerry Baer Show, now being billed as The Jerry Baer Show w/Sharon Lowenthal. The show, she learned through internet conversation with Zenergy executive Carl Patton, was being cut from five evenings a week to one night until lawyers could clear up the mess in Oklahoma and get her back to New York. The laptop she bought in Sallisaw provided her the means to stay in contact with the show’s twenty or so loyal reporters and investigators not yet scared off by threats and the increasingly dangerous atmosphere coming out of Washington. This week’s would be her first production as star of the show since Baer’s slaying; she wanted to get it right.

  In the meantime, Big C painted his red Ford pickup black to disguise it; he intended to lift new plates from some junkyard the next time he dared venture out. He played with the idea of linking up the Defenders with militias in other states to declare war against the United States Government. Nail had not yet reached that point, although, like John Wayne said, there came a time when a man had to fight back.

  Sharon argued with Big C. “Don’t you understand that that’s what they want us to do? They want turmoil in the streets. It doesn’t make any difference if it comes from the Right or the Left, it will allow them to act to restore order. And they will abolish the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the process.”

  The nation had been brought to its economic, cultural and political knees while Nail was too busy living life to realize it. Time at the Safe House provided him the opportunity to catch up on history and current events that he had neglected since Desert Storm. He read 1984 and Going Bonkers, sitting outside on the big log by the creek with a pencil to underline key passages. Atlas Shrugged was such a door stopper that he was saving it for later.

  In Bonkers, he underlined:

  If we remain intimidated by the insanity infecting our culture and stoically accept the madness of our Brave New World, we essentially concede away the final remains of liberty. It isn’t civility to remain silent; it’s cowardice. If I go down, I prefer to go down firing from the bulwarks rather than with a whimper in the shadows of madness and tyranny.

  Passages from 1984 seemed even more pertinent. He highlighted one phrase in particular and read it over several times, then closed the book and sat for a long time thinking about it.

  Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.

  James Nail was beginning to see.

  Supported by the internet which, so far, was still ungoverned from Washington, Sharon and Big C spent their evenings together introducing Nail to the major players in Anastos’ government.

  “It is no conspiracy anymore,” Big C proclaimed. “These people doing all this in the open now. They think they got us cowed down.”

  Sol Alinsky, Cloward and Pivens, Students for a Democratic Society, ACOA, George Zuniga, Duane Smith, PEIU, the New Weathermen, dozens of other individuals and groups whose radical agendas seemed to be playing out in Washington… These were the players. Avowed Marxists surrounded The One in the White House. Health czars, green czars, auto czars, financial czars, media czars... Over forty “czars” at last count, a kind of U.S. politburo that was not elected or approved or vetted by Congress. Anastos merely appointed them with the authority to regulate and control virtually every aspect of American commerce. A caucus led by House Speaker Barbara Teague was initiating a movement to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in the event of a national crisis. If successfully repealed through the states, the amendment would allow a president to serve more than two terms in office. Say, President-for-Life Patrick Wayne Anastos.

  Big C said, “This is the same stuff thugs did in Italy and Germany in 1930s.”

  “Scary stuff,” Nail agreed.

  Sharon downloaded a copy of Sol Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals from the internet, along with The Weatherman Manifesto written by, among others, Bill Ackart and Bernadine Samson-Ackart, who were involved in bombing police stations and the Pentagon in the 1970s and were now personal friends and associate “community organizers” of the President of The United States. The publications laid out philosophy and tactics for fomenting a Marxist revolution to seize power.

  Nail had to read the dedication page in Rules for Radicals twice.

  Lest we forget at least one over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical, from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins, or which is which) the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

  Big C was fixing himself a sandwich in the kitchen. Sharon sat at the table working on her laptop. She looked up at Nail, who was reading on the sofa by the window’s light, and saw him shaking his head over the Alinsky title page. She got up and walked over to him.

  “His tribute to Lucifer should erase all doubts that what we are confronting is raw evil,” she commented.

  “How do we stop it if it’s gone this far?”

  “Our weapon is truth,” she replied bravely. “The days are over when we got out of bed with the New York Times and had dinner with Dan Rather—and kept quiet in between because our elite betters told us what to think. The flame of truth is hard to put out once it’s kindled.”

  “And if nobody believes you?”

  “Then we’re doomed to repeat history.”

  Big C sank down on the other end of the sofa with his sandwich. “Peanut butter and bananas,” he announced. “Me and Elvis.”

  “It’s the oldest story of mankind,” Sharon continued. “If we go down this poisoned path, all knees will bend and all heads bow.”

  The way she looked at him. There was something she wasn’t telling him. Nail had thought so all day from the way she avoided him. She sighed a sad note and walked to Nail’s window to block the light. Looking out, she said, “Our attorneys at Zenergy have gotten the material witness warrants against me lifted. I received the e-mail this morning.”
/>   Here it came.

  “It won’t be safe for the two of you to be with me after my first show airs Friday,” she went on, with her back still to Nail and Big C. “I’ll have to be able to use the phones and computers. Homeland Security can trace them.”

  Nail got up and stood beside her at the window, looking out.

  “I’m returning to the studio in New York beginning with next week’s show,” she announced.

  “Have you forgotten what happened in Arkansas?” Nail demanded. One kiss under the stars gave him no claim on her. “They don’t care about a warrant. Going back to New York is what they want you to do.”

  Big C sided with his friend. The low-tone disagreement went back and forth, with Sharon contending that she would have around-the-clock bodyguards. Besides, she was too high profile for anything to happen to her.

  “And Jerry Baer wasn’t?” Nail argued in frustration.

  “They hold off maybe few weeks,” Big C pointed out. “Then they be coming, sis. Won’t be nobody there love you like James and me.”

  She turned from the window to face them. She took one of their hands in each of hers and squeezed.

  “This is bigger than us,” she insisted. “It’s about saving the country. How can I ever justify myself if I quit?”

  “You can justify it if you’re dead?” Nail retorted. “I’m going with you.”

  “James, no. They’ll be looking for that.”

  * * *

  After dinner on Thursday, Sharon loaded the program DVD of The Jerry Baer Show w/Sharon Lowenthal into the player so they could review it in its entirety before she dispatched it electronically to Carl Patton in New York. It would air tomorrow at five p.m. Eastern Time. Nail and Big C had acted as cameramen for her portion while she spliced in clips received via internet from Jerry Baer reporters and investigators. Big C pulled up the ratty easy chair to watch while Sharon sat on the sofa with Nail and took his hand. Big C smiled his approval.