by Sean Liscom
“He’s got his men moving supplies into the garage level as we speak. They are taking what they need to set out on their own. Food, fuel, vehicles, medicines, and the means to grow their own food. Those are his priorities now. He played his part for me, now he’s taking care of his own.”
“But, Jack.... I saw a sign back there that pointed to a daycare center. If you lock down the other ARK’s....” her voice trailed off as she tried to comprehend the horror.
“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t do to the other ARK’s what I did here. That’s something I have to be on-site to do. Eventually, yes, they will all die, but if that’s the price that has to be paid to ensure the survival of the rest of the human race, I can live with that. If that’s the price that has to be paid to wipe these assholes out, once and for all, I can still live with that!”
“Children? Really?”
“Call them casualties of war. Shit happens! Besides, you seem to be overlooking the fact that they want to destroy, absolutely destroy the human population so they can enjoy their utopia and rule over whoever remains with an iron fist!”
“Jack....”
“Embrace the suck, Mel. The sooner you do, the longer you’ll live.”
“But....”
“There is no “but”! It’s us or them and I’m planning on making damn sure it’s them! My sons, my daughters and everyone that has a place in my cold, dead heart is either at the ranches or standing right in front of me. I can live with my actions knowing that those people will survive. Good people, all over the world, deserve a chance and these sons of bitches want to deny them that!”
“Let me tell you something else; you’re either with me or against me! There is no in-between! You’re free of your cuffs. You know where the Jeep is parked, and you know how to get back there. If you want me to open the damn doors, I’ll open them, and you can turn your ass around and walk right on out of here! IF that’s what you decide to do, then, so be it. You should know that I won’t stop you!”
“The rub is; if this goes bad, you’ll be killing a lot more people than I ever have. You’ll be killing the people you care about the most. Is that something you want on your conscience? Is that a chance you’re willing to take? Is that the last thought you want racing through your brain as your organs fail and you begin to bleed out internally? Do you want your friends to have their last thoughts include thinking YOU could have saved them? If you want to risk it, that’s on you, kid! Otherwise, put one foot in front of the other and get moving down these stairs!” he finished as he pushed the door open to the stairwell.
Melissa stood, staring into Jack's eyes for nearly a minute. She could hear her heart beating in her ears and it felt as if it would burst out of her chest at any moment. Her hands were shaking, and her knees felt as if they could collapse at any moment. The look in his eyes, the way his face had contorted during his tirade had scared her far beyond any fear she’d ever known.
The man she had known for nearly a lifetime as “Uncle Jack”, was gone. Before her stood a maniacal figure she no longer recognized. The way he talked bordered on fanatical. It was as if she’d suddenly been thrust into some demented lunatic’s nightmare. The man that had treated her so kindly and gently as a child was now the monster under the bed. How could the man who had treated her family with such kindness even consider allowing children to die?
“Well?” he asked impatiently. She stole one last glance at his face and then cast her eyes to the open door. Slowly, she did as he had suggested; put one foot in front of the other and entered the stairwell.
Jack shoved his way past her and began to descend the stairs two at a time. His boots sounding loudly on the steel steps. He didn’t slow his pace, even when confronted by the shriveled bodies they passed. Finally, he came to a stop on the landing for level 7. He reached into his pocket and retrieved one of the pendants.
Swiping it against the wall, Melissa heard the door unlock. When he twisted the handle and pulled the door open, the body of a woman fell to the floor at his feet. Without batting an eye, he stepped over her corpse and into the corridor. Melissa counted a dozen dried out bodies in the dim light.
Jack seemed completely unfazed as he stepped over them. He was focused solely on the set of double doors at the far end of the hall. Stopping at the door, he swiped the pendant again. Again, there was a loud “clunk” when the door unlocked. He pushed both doors inward and stepped into the dark room.
“Honey, I’m home!” he announced loudly as Melissa stepped in behind him. The ceiling lights began to flicker on, one by one. “Let’s get the power up and running, shall we?”
“Sure,” Melissa muttered, looking around the large room. Her eyes fell upon a man’s body that was propped against the wall behind the door. He wore black fatigues and a gun belt. The front of his shirt had gold lettering that identified him as “security”. Melissa glanced in Jacks direction. He had taken a seat at one of the laptop computers.
“Beautiful!” he remarked. The laptop powered on when the screen was opened. “Main power may be down but the computers, emergency lights and door locks can run for years on the battery back-up.”
“Uh-Hu,” she grunted in reply, stepping closer to the security guard. Her mind was racing again, filled with thoughts of how to stop Jack from sealing the ARK’s after he destroyed the missiles. She knew she had an agonizing choice to make. Let him destroy the missiles that could kill millions, if not billions of people, and let him kill the people that would do it, their kids included. Or stop him from destroying the missiles and sealing the others in the ARK’s.
“Jack?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Can those missiles be launched from any of the other ARK’s?”
“Nope. It’s all done from right here, in this room,” he continued to type furiously on the keyboard.
“What happens if those missiles are never launched? What if we destroy this command center?” she took another step toward the gun.
“In that case, eventually the seals on the canisters will begin to leak and kill everyone anyway,” he paused his typing long enough to remove a pendant from around his neck. He placed it in a box looking object that was plugged into the laptop and closed the lid. He never looked in her direction, so she took another step.
“How long would that take?” she asked.
“It’s already happened on one of the ships. Wiped out a village and a load of people in South Africa.”
“I see,” another step.
“Mel?” he asked, still typing away.
“Yeah, Jack?”
“If you want the gun, just walk over and take it. If it makes you feel any better, go push that big red button on the wall to your left. That’ll open up the weapons locker and you can grab yourself a rifle,” he said, still not looking in her direction. She froze in place. “I know what you’re thinking, Mel,” he continued. “Kill me and save the kids or try and force me to leave the doors open, yes?”
“Something like that,” she muttered.
“Kill hundreds or kill hundreds of millions.”
“There’s got to be another way, Jack!”
“There’s no other way,” he hovered his finger over the “enter” key for a brief moment before taping it. Suddenly, the lights got brighter, and every computer monitor in the room turned on. Three giant screens at the far end of the room lit up and went to a blue screen. On each screen was a countdown timer announcing a system reboot in progress. The counter was working its way down from 30 minutes.
“These people are evil, Mel,” he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “You’ve got your priorities misplaced, I’m afraid. The kids with parents involved in the ARK project will grow up to be just as evil as their parents. Sure, it’s not their fault, but they will. Those kids are taught to be true believers from the time they pop out of the womb.”
“From day one, they are being groomed to be the next leaders of this obscene movement, of this cult. They a
re being taught nothing but how to obtain absolute power and control. If I leave those doors open, they will emerge and continue to try and do just that. I cannot let that happen.”
“You want to know who will be first on their list of people and places to destroy? The ranches, that’s who. They will crush anything you could throw at them and they will hunt every single one of you down and put a bullet in your head. I can’t let that happen. Not to my family, which I consider you a part of, or my friends.”
“By destroying those missiles and sealing them in their tombs, I can stop them. Hell, if I hadn’t been so distraught over the loss of Olivia, I might have seen this as a step that I should have taken when the EMP went off. Maybe, just maybe, I could have saved the ranches a lot of headaches and heartbreaks. This is one of those necessary evils, Mel. It has to happen this way.
“One more thing, just so you know; yes, I feel bad for the kids. I really do but it’s not because they will die. It’s because their parents had to be such assholes and never give them a normal upbringing. I feel bad because their parents are the ones who brought this on them. What I’m going to do, it’s a horrible, desperate and distasteful thing but there is nothing else that can be done. I’m truly sorry about that,” he stood from the chair.
“These people will exterminate without remorse, anyone who refuses to fall in line. We have to do it to them first. We have to do it while we still have the means,” he walked past Melissa and knelt down in front of the guard’s body. “If a dog goes rabid, you have to put it down, am I right?” he unbuckled the belt and pulled it from the body then looked up at her. She answered with a nod.
“That’s all this is, Melissa,” he stood and held out the belt. “All you have to do is decide who the rabid dog is.”
She took the belt, removed the Glock 19 from the holster and checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber. Satisfied that it was fully loaded, she tucked it behind her belt and pulled her shirt over it. She then removed the two spare magazines, checked them, then slipped one in each of her front pockets.
There was a set of handcuff keys, those went in her back pocket. She tossed the belt toward the dead guard. Her mind was running through the entire emotional gambit but settled on anger. Anger, not at Jack, but at the people that had put them in their current position. She locked eyes with Jack who was looking on curiously.
“Let’s make a deal, Jack.” she stated bluntly, he raised a bushy eyebrow. “You knew the inner workings of this whole setup. You knew who was in charge, you knew what their plans were, and you can give me every shred of damning evidence. Don’t try to feed me some bullshit story, it’s time for nothing but the truth between us, okay?”
“I’m listening,” he crossed his arms across his chest.
“I want everything. EVERYTHING! Names, places, operations, I want everything you have including the code to unlock the doors of the ARK’s, ALL of the ARK’s, and I want it before I leave here.”
“That sounds like a great deal for you. What do I get out of it?”
“First, I’ll deliver the vaccine to the ranch. Second, I’ll get the information you give me to the authorities so they can go and do something about the ARK’s. They can send in the military and arrest all of them. Third, you get to do something else good, you get to save the children. Deal?” she extended her hand. He just snickered.
“No. No deal.”’
“WHAT?”
“It’s no deal because there are too many of them and they will clog up whatever working legal system there is for years, decades even. Hell, most of them know the workings of the old legal system better than 99% of the lawyers and judges did before the world went to shit. They will figure out some technicalities and get to go on their merry way. No deal, Melissa.”
“It’s either that or I won’t deliver the vaccine. Is that a risk YOU want to take, Jack?” she said heatedly.
“You want to play that card? Really?” he chuckled again. “You’ll deliver the vaccine because you don’t have it in you to take that kind of risk. You don’t have the intestinal fortitude, young lady!”
“Screw you, Jack! You know nothing about me! You knew me when I was a kid. That version of me is long since dead. Just like the Jack Sterling I knew is dead! The man standing in front of me now is nothing more than a murderous piece of shit!” she shouted, her finger was pointing at his face.
“Ouch. That kinda hurts, Melissa,” he retorted. He looked up at the screen and could see that the countdown timer was down to 21:00:32. “We got things to do, are you done making demands you’re in no position to make?”
“I’m nowhere near done!” she spun on her heal and went to the computer that he had been using. She pulled the pistol from her waist, gripped it by the barrel and held it up like a hammer.
“Go ahead, smash the laptop. There’s a million more around here.”
“I’m not going to smash the computer, Jack,” she looked at the box containing the pendant. When she locked eyes with him again, she saw the concern on his face.
“Don’t do it, Mel,” he took a step toward her.
“You take another step and I swear to God, I’ll destroy it!” she raised the gun higher. He stopped in his tracks and blew out a long breath.
“Under one condition.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you the information you want but you have to make sure that word of what these people have done will be spread far and wide. Everyone needs to know! If you can do that, I’ll give you want you want,” she looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before she said anything.
“Deal. Now, take the three other pendants, put them on the table next to you and step away. You can have them back when I have what I want.”
“Mel….”
“DO IT!” she shouted.
“Fine,” he reached in his pocket and withdrew the pendants. He set them on the table and walked away. She flipped the gun around and pointed it at him. Slowly, she walked over, picked them up and slipped their chains around her neck.
“When this place is up and running, you will download all of the information I want. Then and only then, can you have these pendants back. You understand?” she asked as she slipped the gun into her waistband again.
“You’re the one holding the cards,” he said.
“You said we have things to do?”
CHAPTER 20
Tuesday, September 5th, 2017
The Ranch.
“Gate one, Rogue two,” I said into the mic from the driver’s seat of the lead Hummer.
“Gate one, go ahead Rogue.”
“We just made the turn off. Have the gate open for us, please.”
“Roger that, sir,” I hung the mic back up and looked at my sister who was in the passenger seat. The hospital in Elko had set her broken arm in a cast with a sling to support it. It had been a rough night for her too. She’d lost two of her men in the shootout with Greg.
I glanced at the luminescent hands of my watch as we passed through the gate, 3:26am. What was supposed to have been a quick, quiet trip into Elko had gone terribly wrong. Two of our own dead. Six members of the President’s detail, dead. Two Sheriff’s deputies, dead and 3 from the Elko security force, dead. Thirteen people were dead and that didn’t include Greg and his accomplice, the one who broke Isabella’s arm.
“Sorry about your guys, Isabella.”
“Honestly, Jason, that’s not what’s bothering me. I’ve lost men before, sadly, I think I’m getting used to the loss of friends. It almost seems like it’s just a part of life anymore,” she sighed.
“You’ve lost others? I mean, not just at the Fortuna ranch?” I asked as we pulled through the gate.
“We left Fortuna with three teams. Sixty-four people left there on a beautiful, early summer morning. There are 38 of us left and we have no home to return to. It all seems like such a waste of life, ya know?”
“I know,” I paused as I backed the Hummer into a parking spot. “Can I ask what I
S bothering you?” I shut the engine off.
“That man, Greg. You killed him, in cold blood. That was something my father, our father, would have done....”
“That man and his accomplice left 13 people dead at the Governor's office. He would have killed the President of the United States had we not shown up when we did. You said it yourself, the man you killed was about to execute the Governor and the other three people in the room....” I put my hand on the door handle.
“It pissed me off, Isabella. It pissed me off and I made the split-second decision to say, no more. No more being soft on these people. No more being complacent. It pissed me off and I’ve had enough. What we’re facing now, the release of a biological agent, I can’t fight that and I sure as hell don’t know how to stop it. What I do know is this; from now on, the game will be different.”
“The population of the planet is going to get a whole lot smaller and I fully intend on being a part of the population that survives. The survival of this ranch and the people who call it home are my single most important priority. Make no mistake, I will stop at NOTHING to see to their safety. People like Greg, Marvin and Ray Judge will always exist to threaten what we have here and I’m telling you; no more.”
“I’ll drop them in their tracks whenever and wherever I find them. We don’t have the luxury of getting to be compassionate anymore. We don’t have the luxury of a promised tomorrow,” I pushed the door open. “The gloves are off, Isabella. The gloves are off and the sooner we adapt to that mentality, the better off we’ll be. You may not be too broken up over the loss of your men, but it pissed me off! You may be getting used to it, accepting of it even, but not me!”
“Those two men in the body bags in the MRAP were my men too. Men I never had the pleasure of knowing. Hell, I have to officiate their funerals and I know NOTHING about them. I don’t even know their names! You’re damn right I’m pissed off and you’re damn right when you say what I did was cold, but to defend this ranch and her people, you can bet your ass I’ll do it again!”