A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller

by Charles W. Sasser

  She let that sink in before a quote from The Coming Insurrection popped up on her display screen. That and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals were the playbooks for American Progressives campaigning to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

  Visibility must be avoided. But a force that gathers in the shadows can’t avoid it forever. Our appearance as a form must be reserved for the opportune moment. The longer we avoid visibility, the stronger we’ll be when it catches up with us. And once we become visible our days will be numbered. Either we will get in a position to break its hold in short order, or we’ll be crushed...

  “America, the masks are starting to come off, but they’re not visible yet. We must make them visible and watch them scurry. What you see and hear on this program during the next few weeks will shake you like never before as we run down these cockroaches and show them to you in the full light of their intentions...”

  Nail sprang to his feet in sudden comprehension, his sandwich and Coke forgotten. Before Sharon returned to New York, she had been talking about secret international meetings and summits the “Shadow Government” was holding to discuss the final transformation of the United States to a socialist nation. If someone could discover where these summits were being held, she pointed out, and sneak inside to expose them...

  Students Demand More Funding

  (Washington)—Tens of thousands of students staged marches in cities across the nation today to demand more public funding for higher education. The unexpectedly large protests were backed by faculty, the National Education Association and the Public Employees International Union (PEIU). ACOA, American Progress Center, The Institute for Open Societies, and Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) were also represented...

  There were reports of windows broken and fires set in several locations. Homeland Security Director Vladimir Gonzalez warned that violence is being initiated by Rightwing counter groups bent on discrediting peaceful student demonstrations...

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Green Country, Oklahoma

  Militia cells across the breadth of the United States were organizing and arming themselves, creating intelligence networks and communications’ links, training for revolution against their government. It was nutcake to think a few farmers and good ole boys armed with pistols and rifles could take on the power of a United States corrupted by One World commies. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Karl Marx and the other socialist crusaders of evil who made the 20th Century the bloodiest in the entire history of mankind were sniggering in their moldering graves.

  In Big C Brown’s opinion, it was already too late to peacefully wean the country from Big Brother’s teat. Polls showed that forty percent of Americans in general—seventy percent of those under the age of twenty five who had attended public schools—openly approved of socialism.

  “Even if we do stop Marxism this time,” Sharon Lowenthal often warned, “it’ll be only a matter of time until it reemerges—and the next time it will take over if we go back to sleep. These people will never give up their crusade to stomp the boot of communism on our necks.”

  Once violence started, it was unpredictable where it would end. Still, there came a point when a free man had no choice but to fight if he intended to remain free.

  “What are we going to do, Corey?” Judy pleaded.

  She felt so small and vulnerable in his big arms. “Judy, we must be soldiers.”

  “I can’t go back to him,” she protested. “Not after us.”

  “You have a mission,” he reminded her. “If Trout’s notebook contain information like you say, we need get it to Sharon.”

  He felt like a pimp asking her to do it. All he needed was a pink Cadillac, a Super Fly hat and baggy pants wiping out his tracks. He would miss her country girl innocence not yet jaded by the big city, in spite of all she had gone through, but for her to stay with him was too dangerous.

  Big C put out feelers to the Defenders after his meeting with Marsha Ross and Carolyn. Tom Fullbright was the new commander of the Defenders, having assumed leadership after Big C cleared him by exposing Colonel Mosby as the snitch behind Ron Sparks’ hanging. He was a wiry Cherokee of about thirty and, like many of the Indians from the hills of eastern Oklahoma, a man of few words.

  Gary Philby, the District Homeland Security Director who took Kimbrell’s place, was putting pressure on the militias in his area. He was organizing groups like the New American Protective Society and the Homeland Security League to develop informants and spy on disloyal neighbors. To avoid being noticed, Big C met with Fullbright and some of the other Defenders in an old abandoned store in the secure little community of Hanson near Sallisaw while Judy waited for him in a Sallisaw motel room. There was no electricity in the meeting place. Someone produced a kerosene lantern and placed it on an upturned vegetable crate in the center of the room where it illuminated about a dozen tense faces. The militiamen were a rough-hewn bunch, not particularly well-educated by Progressive standards, most of whom were living on the edge of poverty after having lost their jobs due to the tanking economy or because of pressure from Homeland Security. Big C kept to himself any reservations he entertained about the Defenders’ ability to take on a heavily-armed contingent such as that guarding the “mental health facility” in Colorado.

  “We might be able to recruit the Colorado Sons of Liberty,” Fullbright suggested. “They’ll almost double our force. They have a .50-caliber Browning machinegun.”

  Having lost two men to the AmeriCorps raid on the Bunch schoolhouse, the Defenders were eager to take the fight to the enemy. Big C recalled how, once before in America, a few farmers got together to fight for liberty—and won.

  Big C stood up in the yellow light from the lantern and explained how it was the militia’s duty to rescue Lieutenant Jack Ross and as many others as possible from a secret extermination camp and bring them to the American people as irrefutable proof of what the Anastos’ administration planned for the nation. For security reasons, he withheld the location of the camp. He couldn’t afford loose lips.

  In that humble, isolated shack built in a previous century, Big C concluded with a short speech in the strong, simple language that ordinary men of the soil understood. Sharon would have declared it worthy of John Adams.

  “That watchman Paul Revere who made the most famous ride in history of the world is riding again,” he began in a ringing voice. “We must likewise have balls to muster with the free and the brave, else we be judged cowards unworthy to live free. We are drawing a line in the sand to tell a repressive government No! No more commies in the White House, no more laws, rules and regulations that oppress people. Not one inch more will we yield. The time is arrive! Rebellion is at hand!”

  These good, common men from the hills sprang to their feet and thrust their weapons at the wind-rattled roof of the old store and cheered. They had followed this big black ex-cop to Arkansas for that little fight, such as it was, and trusted his judgment and generalship. Little Tump Kinsey shoved a fist at the ceiling. He was almost seventy.

  “We Vietnam vets can still fight!” Tump shouted.

  “I know you can and you will. None of us who has been in combat is fond of it, but we do what must be done.”

  They were ready. Mad as hell and they weren’t going to take it anymore. Big C ended with the famous quote from John Stuart Mill: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by better men than himself.”

  He paused and, after a long moment, added, “You are those better men.”

  President Signs Education Transformation Bill

  (Washington)—Flanked by public school teachers from across the nation, President Anastos signed into law the Education Transformation Bill that proponents say will streamline A
merican education and make it more relevant to the challenges faced by a modern society. Speaker of the House Barbara Teague called passage of the bill “a great vote for our children.”

  “If Congress hadn’t passed this bill,” the President said, “education would have sunk into a crisis we may not have been able to reverse. For every day we drag our feet on key issues like this, more of our citizens will lose their jobs and their dreams.”

  Due to the flagging economy, the bill calls for saving money by the elimination of certain niche programs that are no longer necessary for a good public education. Among those programs being dropped are U.S. history, civics, economics, and academies on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights...

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  New York

  Executive Producer Carl Patton of the Zenergy News Cable Station received a phone call from a man who identified himself as “John.”

  “I work for Mr. Zuniga,” John said. “I think we should meet for lunch.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “To hash out some critical issues that affect your TV station, the nation, and particularly Miss Sharon Lowenthal.”

  They met at a little out-of-the-way eatery on Broadway. John was about fifty, nondescript, but with an air of authority that came from associating with powerful men. It didn’t take him long to get to the point. They were still waiting to be seated when John began.

  “Sharon Lowenthal is corroding the foundation of America and instigating violence,” he said.

  They were shown to a table before Patton came up with a response. As soon as they were seated, John continued with an accusatory diatribe against the “Rightwing conspiracy” led by Zenergy News and Sharon Lowenthal against George Zuniga.

  “Why is she focused on Mr. Zuniga?” John demanded. “Why does Zenergy allow it?”

  “Can it be because Zuniga’s name and his various Open Society projects keep popping up wherever there are failed economies and failed nations?” Patton shot back. “Zuniga has spent the past quarter-century recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing Marxist operatives in countries around the world to establish a One World socialist government. Now he’s targeting the U.S.”

  “His influence is overhyped,” John insisted.

  “Is that a fact? Let me revisit his modus operandi. He moves in, forms a shadow party which leads to a shadow government built on bribery and corruption. He takes control of the airwaves, destabilizes the nation’s economy through massive state overspending and corporate bailouts, provokes or exploits a national crisis, after which his shadow government takes power in order to quell massive unrest initiated by various leftwing organizations and so-called community organizers. Feel free to stop me at any time—John, is it?—when you think I’ve gone wrong.”

  “These are not normal times,” John replied, unperturbed. “Mr. Zuniga does not accept rules imposed by others. If he did, he would not be alive today. One needs to adjust one’s action to changing circumstances.”

  “I read somewhere that he considers himself a god, sort of like the world’s conscience.”

  “The world needs a conscience.”

  “Some people think he may be the Antichrist.”

  John scoffed at the suggestion. “I don’t think you understand me, Mr. Patton. If people like Sharon Lowenthal—and you—don’t recognize that the world is changing, they will be left behind. She is hurting Mr. Zuniga and his business.”

  The meeting and the lunch ended right after the salad arrived. With a slow, sinister smile, John rose to his feet. Before he walked out, leaving Patton with the check, he handed Patton a DVD of an old movie—A Face in the Crowd starring Andy Griffith as Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drunkard and petty criminal who becomes a powerful radio personality before being corrupted by the system. The movie ends with him posed to commit suicide by jumping off a building.

  “Give this to Ms. Lowenthal with Mr. Zuniga’s compliments,” John said.

  The news media had compared Jerry Baer to Lonesome Rhodes just before he was gunned down in Tulsa at the ORU Convention Center.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chicago

  Strategy meetings were breaking out somewhere every week. Something was about to happen. Majority Leader Wiedersham expected Trout to attend them. When he became the junior congressman from Illinois, his loyalty to the cause must be well-tempered by the growing fires of the coming workers’ revolution.

  Today’s summit was being held in the meeting hall of a Chicago AF of L/CIO, a dingy, depressing place out near the old stockyards. About thirty people showed up. Trout recognized some of them as, like himself, Illinois candidates for office, no doubt placed in position by George Zuniga and his friends. Others were key leaders in the labor movement—teachers, state employees, airport air controllers, most of whom represented the Public Employees International Union, PEIU. The topic tonight, as Trout soon learned, was a frank one on what labor and community organizers could do to help collapse the American economy, a prerequisite for a Marxist takeover.

  The keynote speaker was Duane Smith, White House Environmental Czar and current head of PEIU. Trout had encountered him before, during conferences on the AP oil spill, the “Next Step” Conference, and at several other insider meetings. He was no doubt a major player. Behind the podium as he took the stage hung a large red and yellow bunting inscribed with Karl Marx’ war cry: Workers of the World Unite.

  The continuing objective of these summits, Smith explained, was to “create conditions of ungovernability” as explicated by Francis Fox Pivens.

  “What the folks in charge want—you know, the big banks and everything—what they want is stability,” he said. “There are extraordinary things we can do to destabilize the folks that are in power. For example, a quarter of the people who own a home are underwater. They are paying more for their homes than it is worth. Ten percent of these people are now in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their homes. They figure out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is all backed up. I’m going to say I won’t pay. It’s a good business decision. What would happen if we organize these homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike. Just say if we got half-a-million people to agree we won’t pay our mortgages. It would literally cause a new financial crisis for the banks, but not for us. We would be doing quite well, thank you, because we wouldn’t be paying.”

  A prattle of laughter rippled through the small audience. Trout did not laugh.

  “The folks that control this country care about one thing—how the stock market does, how the bond market does. I think we need a very simple strategy. How do we bring the stock market down? How do we interfere with their ability to be rich, which means we have to politically isolate them, economically isolate them, and disrupt them.”

  Trout squirmed in his seat. What if his father was still alive and knew he was mixed up in all this?

  “A bunch of us around the country think about who would be a really good company to hate. We decided that would be J.P. Morgan Chase based in New York. So we’re going to roll out over the next couple of weeks, as soon as we can get enough people together. A week of action in New York with the goal of—I don’t want to give away the details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room.”

  More conspiratorial laughter.

  “Labor can lead. We do have money, we have millions of members who are furious. We also need coalitions of community groups if we really believe that we are in a transformative stage of what’s happening in the decline of capitalism. We need to confront this in a serious way and develop a real ability to put a boot in the wheel. We have to think about how, together, labor and community alliances are building something that really has the capacity to disrupt how the system operates...”

  Trout’s practical side kept telling his uncomfortable side that what he was doing was securing his future. Buttering his toast. He was sweating and his left eye twitch
ed.

  “I assume some of you have been invited to the Sustainable World Conference on Lake Ontario two weeks from today,” Smith concluded. “It is there that we will propose and debate final solutions. Until then, everybody, you know, must continue to work to produce chaos in his region to allow us to at long last implement social and economic justice. Truly, we are at that point. Workers of the world unite!”

  Trout’s eye began tic’ing. Since linking his fate with his brother-in-law’s, he had seen enough to know that once someone was in there was no safe way to get out.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  South Fork, Colorado

  The crude map Carolyn sketched for Big C in Oklahoma City showed the “mental health facility” situated west of the Great Divide in the San Juan Mountains, at the end of a narrow road blocked off and guarded against intruders. Big C couldn’t be sure how accurate the map was, since Carolyn drew it from memory off directions supplied by her husband. He and Tom Fullbright set out for Colorado to scout the camp while the rest of the Defenders stayed behind near Alamosa to link up with Colorado’s Sons of Liberty in the mountains and wait for the call to action. Judy decided to spend a day or so with relatives in Oklahoma before returning to Washington.