The Hidden Society

by R. Chauncey

  “You’re working for Julian?” he asked in a surprised calmer voice.

  “Me, too,” Dodge yelled as he thought, things are looking real good for me with the other two leaders dead and the Council of Twenty, too.

  “Who the fuck is me, too,” Derrick yelled at Dodge.

  “I’m the soldier who killed Betty, Willow, and Karl.” Dodge answered.

  “You’re working for Julian, too?” Derrick asked him.

  “That I am,” he answered.

  “Why are you working for Julian? He was a fool,” Derrick asked, confused by what he had just heard. “He never knew how to use the power of a leader.”

  “Your brother knew you better than you thought, Derrick,” Dorothy said. “He knew you were a selfish, narrow minded man who only thought of himself. He knew you would dominate the Society and use its power and wealth to dominate the world and not care what happened to the world after you were dead. He knew you had to be stopped and the only way to do that was to expose the Society.”

  Larson and Marajo could hear over their com-cells what was going on outside the door.

  “Looks like we’ve had a guardian angel,” he said to her.

  “Two,” she said correcting him. “And one of them helped us at the ambush.”

  “The shot you said you saw from that hill on the left,” Larson said.

  Marajo nodded.

  “But how? Where did they come from?” he asked her.

  “Julian probably recruited them a few years after I went into hiding,” she answered. “That explains why it took him so long to find you. He was busy looking for two soldiers from the Society he could trust to help us.”

  Larson turned his attention back to the computer. “Computer, how long will it take to download everything from all the files from all three information centers onto the Internet?”

  ‘Two minutes thirty-one seconds,’ appeared on the screen.

  “Then do it,” Larson said.

  ‘Do you wish to retain copies of the files?’

  “No,” Marajo said, reading what was on the screen. “If we have any copies, those members and soldiers of the Society who aren’t arrested will come after us, Larson.”

  Larson turned and looked up at her and said, “Marajo, we’re dead anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “Those two soldiers outside were also working for Julian like us.”

  “They’re experienced soldiers, Marajo, killers that Derrick guy sent to kill us. That means they’ve committed murders in the past, and those murders are on the files. Once they’re downloaded they, like the rest of the Society, will be exposed as murderers, and hunted down by every government in the world.”

  She thought about what he’d said a few seconds and replied, “You’re right. They will kill us as acts of revenge.”

  Derrick heard what they’d said. “I can help you,” he said over his com-cell. “I can protect you from these killers. But you must not download those files, and you must open this door. Our lives, yours and mine, depend upon you doing as I tell you.”

  Marajo raised her com-cell and said, “We’re not that crazy or that stupid.”

  “Failed again, Derrick, Great Leader,” Dodge said. He was deliberately attracting his attention so Dorothy could get into a position to kill him.

  Not as long as I’m alive. He thought. He looked at Lester who was a lying wounded two yards from him next to a cubicle and asked him softly, “Can you move?”

  Lester nodded and raised his weapon to indicate he was ready to carry out Derrick’ order regardless of the cost to him.

  “They’re on both sides of us. I’ll start firing in all directions to pin them down while you move back and stay quiet. When they return fire, I’ll scream that I’ve been hit. That should draw them out from their positions. Then you kill them,” Derrick told him.

  Lester nodded his approval of the plan and painfully moved into a crouching position so he could jump up and shoot.

  “You and I will rule the Society and the world as equals,” Derrick promised him.

  Lester smiled and said in a voice filled with pain, “Okay, Leader.”

  Derrick flipped the selector switch on the side of his semi-automatic electric gun to automatic fire, built up his courage, and jumped to his feet and started shooting waving his weapon in a semicircle.

  The weapon spit out three hundred volts of deadly electrical volts within five seconds.

  He kept firing till he caught sight of Dorothy moving forward to get him in her sights.

  Dodge knew it was a trick. He knew he had hit Karl at least once and had seen him fall, but he didn’t know if he was dead or just wounded. He assumed his other two shots were wasted.

  “Stay down,” he yelled. “It’s a trick.”

  Dorothy rose up and fired two shots at Derrick.

  Derrick screamed like he’d been hit and fell down

  Lester saw her from his position the moment she rose up. He rose up to his feet painfully and as quickly as he could and aimed and fired once in Dorothy’s direction. He saw her stagger backwards and fall. He dropped back to a crouching kneeling position and waited.

  The shot struck her just above her left breast knocking her backwards. She dropped to the ground on her back knowing it was a fatal wound.

  Dodge heard her body hit the ground, and decided to go directly at Derrick and whoever was still alive from the one position they wouldn’t expect him come. Straight at them down the center aisle. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could till he reached the first cubicle on the center aisle. Then he stopped and listened.

  Derrick and Lester were quiet.

  No one said anything or made a move for a minute.

  “I think we got them,” Derrick said softly to Lester.

  Lester, bleeding badly from his side wound, nodded and said nothing. He felt cold and weak and had a desire to lie down and go to sleep. His stomach felt terrible and the pain in his side had increased when he rose up.

  “Did you get her?” Derrick asked him.

  Lester, unable to speak, nodded.

  Derrick looked at him and knew he was finished. He smiled as he thought I never intended sharing power with that county bumpkin anyway. I’ll see to it that he gets a decent burial, but I won’t attend. It would be beneath me to attend the funeral of one such as he, He moved to the cubicle on the center aisle and hid behind the stone cubicle and turned to his left and waited for Dodge to attack.

  Dodge took a quick glance around the edge of the cubicle he was hiding behind and saw Derrick waiting for him to come from the left. He moved back quickly and cursed himself for not looking for the other man. He hoped it wasn’t Karl.

  A minute of silence fell over the cave.

  Derrick was impatient. He wondered if he had hit Dodge. He looked at Lester who was leaning against a cubicle with a pale, lifeless look on his face. He decided to play a hunch. “Oh,

  God, help me,” he screamed. “Help me!”

  Dodge smiled as he thought, No soldier worth the salt in a drop of his blood would fall for that, you asshole! He stole another quick glance around the edge of the cubicle. This time he took a few extra seconds to get a good look. He saw another man leaning against the side of a cubicle opposite the one Derrick was hiding behind. The man’s left side from the hip down was covered with blood and there was a pool of blood on the floor to the left of him. His weapon was in his left hand the muzzle was pressed against the floor like he was using it to prop himself up.

  Dodge moved from his position out into the center of the aisle, took aim at Derrick, and yelle
d, “I’m here, asshole!”

  Derrick snapped to his left just as Dodge fired and flung himself to his left.

  The volt hit Derrick in the center of his stomach a few inches below his ribs knocking him backwards onto his back. He hit the ground with a thud his head struck the ground as his weapon flew farther backwards out of his right hand, as he grabbed for the hole in his stomach with both hands. For a moment the hole in his stomach felt like a very bad stomach ache. He raised his left hand and saw blood on the palm.

  “Oh, no!” he cried out. “Not me. I’m the Leader. Not me.”

  Dodge slammed into the ground on his stomach on the other side of the aisle with his feet still out in the aisle. He swung his feet around to his right, and lay quiet and listened. He heard Derrick’s pathetic whine and knew from the sound of pain in his voice he’d hit him. How bad he didn’t know, and at the moment he didn’t care. He got up and moved in a crouch toward where he thought Dorothy was lying.

  Dorothy was lying on her back with her weapon still in her right hand pointed in the direction she heard sound coming from. When she saw it wasn’t Karl, Charlie, Lester, or Derrick she pointed it away.

  Dodge stopped at the edge of a cubicle and looked at her. His weapon pointed at her chest. “Are you hit bad?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied in a tight pain filled voice.

  He crawled over to her and stopped next to her and took off his backpack saying, “I think the others are dead. I shot the Leader.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m only sorry I didn’t shoot that bastard.”

  “I’ll try and stop the bleeding,” he said, taking the medical kit out of his backpack.

  “No need for that,” she said. “After what I’ve done for Derrick, death is justice for me.”

  ***

  Chapter 57

  While the fighting was taking place outside the office, Larson and Marajo watched the computer download every file the Society had.

  ‘Download finished,’ flashed on the screen on the wall above the desk.

  “For the other two information centers also?” Larson asked the computer.

  ‘Yes.’

  “We did it,” Marajo said in a voice filled with relief and satisfaction.

  Larson turned around to face her with big grin on his face. “Yes, we did,” he agreed. “We’ve destroyed the Society.”

  They stared in silence at each other for a few seconds then burst out laughing as if they’d heard a joke that had taken them took a few seconds to understand.

  Marajo backed to the far wall next to the door as she laughed and slid to a sitting position on the floor.

  Larson sat in the chair and roared with laughter. Tears came to his eyes and rolled down his face leaving clean streaks in the dirt on his face.

  Marajo pointed at his face and asked between laughs, “Tears of joy?”

  Larson nodded his head as he continued laughing. After a few seconds he managed to say, “And relief.”

  “Me, too,” she said and laughed harder as if ‘me, too,’ was some sort of punch line to a very funny joke.

  After two minutes of uncontrollable laugher, they stopped and stared at each other waiting for the other to say something.

  “What do we do now,” she asked, breaking the silence.

  Larson took a deep breath exhaled and said, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here, can we?” she asked. There was a serious tone in her voice.

  “Guess not,” he replied. His voice had the calmness of a drunk’s voice who has just sobered up and remembered every stupid thing he’d done the night before and complained in regret.

  “Think the world will know what we did?” she asked him. Her voice was calm with a touch of happiness in it among the seriousness.

  “They will when our bodies are found outside,” he said in a more serious voice. He thought about what he’d said then said, “No, they won’t. They’ll just think we were two of the Society’s soldiers.”

  “You know I’ve never thought about what happens to this place after the information is downloaded on the Internet,” she said.

  He turned around and looked at the screen.

  The words ‘Download finished’ were still on the screen.

  “I suppose the download also included a map of where this place is and the other two places.”

  “The government’s going to send ever computer expert it’s got to this center,” Marajo said. “And they’re going to take this place apart piece by piece.”

  “Yeah, once they do some checking and realize what’s on the Internet is true,” he said.

  “Boy, are they going to be pissed,” she said.

  “I can’t begin to imagine what they’ll find,” Larson said as he still stared at the screen.

  “So what?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

  Larson stared at Marajo wondering what to say next. Then he said, “I wonder if there’s any way to permanently shut down the laser defense system?”

  “Why are you worrying about that?”

  “Just because the files have been downloaded that doesn’t mean the defense system has been shut down.”

  She got to her feet and walked over to the desk and said, “Computer, is there any way to shut down the laser defense system in this center?”

  Larson turned around to face the screen.

  ‘Yes,’ appeared on the screen.

  “How?” she asked.

  ‘Type or say laser defense system shut down.’

  “That simple,” Larson asked.

  ‘Yes,’ appeared on the screen.

  Larson turned his attention to the keyboard and typed, ‘shut down the laser defense system.’

  ‘Laser defense system has been shut down’ appeared on the screen.

  “So what now,” Marajo asked.

  “I don’t think my children and ex-wife are going to like all the attention they’re going to get,” he said as he turned around to face her. He didn’t want to answer her question, but he knew what was next. He stood up.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” she said in a more serious voice. “My family is going to be very angry at me for disappearing the way I did twenty years ago.”

  “Somehow, Marajo, eh, Marlene, I don’t think they’re going to hold that against you,” he said, standing up.

  “Just a thought, Larson,” she said. “It was just a thought.”

  “The bad thing is our families will have to identify our bodies,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “We expose the Society to protect our families from a horrible death only to give them the unpleasant experience of identifying what will be left of our bodies.”

  “I don’t think they will hold that against us either,” he told her.

  “You know, not only will the members and the soldiers of the Society have the law on their backs, but a lot of rich, politically powerful people who’ve willing done business with them are going to be exposed, too.”

  “The prisons of the world are going to be filled with a lot of rich people who’ve never dreamed of going to prison,” he said. He gave her a serious looked and continued, “Like it or not, Marlene, we’ve probably done a lot of damage to a lot of people.”

  “Good. They deserve it for dealing with the monsters of the Hidden Society,” she replied. “A lot of other people, good law abiding people, are going to have questions about the deaths of family members and friends answered.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “While we’ve hurt a lot of people wh
o deserved to be hurt for dealing with the Hidden Society, we’ve also done a lot of good for more people who’ve been hurt by the Hidden Society and didn’t know it.”

  “Revealed Society now, Larson,” she said.

  He picked up his com-cell with his right hand and passed it from his right hand to his left and took his semi-automatic out of his right parka pocket. “Ready?” he asked her.

  “Yes, Larson, I’m ready,” she said after a deep sigh, knowing they had two choices. Stay in the room and eventually die of thirst, or open the door and face Derrick and his killers.

  He hesitated before he typed ‘open’ onto the keypad pushed enter and said, “To tell the truth I don’t think I would have been able to handle all the publicity anyway. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a published novelist leading a quiet comfortable life.”

  “All I’ve ever wanted since Julian recruited me was a safe life,” she said. “Spending twenty years looking around for someone to shoot you tends to make you a bit suspicious of people. Though I would have loved to see how the members and soldiers of the Society would react to being exposed along with the people who’ve done business with them and gotten rich at the expense of others. I think I deserve that after waiting for twenty years to do what we’ve done.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  They stood staring in each other’s faces for a few silent seconds.

  “Well, let’s go,” he said as he punched the enter button on the keypad and put the com-cell in his left parka pocket.

  Marlene calmly turned to face the door.

  Both stood with their semi-automatics ready to shoot the moment they saw anyone.

  The stone door didn’t move.

  Larson took his com-cell out of his parka pocket and pushed the enter button on his com-cell again.

  “You opened and closed the door by saying open and close,” Marajo told him. “Maybe it works the same way when you want to get out.”

  Larson looked at his com-cell a second then said, “Open.”

  The stone door quietly opened on a scene neither expected to see.

  Derrick was lying on his back moaning and breathing deeply with his both his hands over the hole in his stomach. His expensive shirt and pants around his handmade leather belt were soaked with his blood. He was in too much pain to move toward his weapon which lay only a yard from him.