American Dreams | Book 1 | The Decline

by Parker, Brian

  “No,” I admitted. “But I want to think that the good guys will win out.”

  She wrapped her arms around me. “That’s why I love you. You’re an optimist.”

  “Every dark cloud has a silver lining, right?”

  “And you’re a nerd.”

  “I’m not a nerd. I’ve never read any of those fantasy books that my brother reads about trolls and dragons and shit. He’s the nerd.”

  “You think he’s gonna be okay with us coming home and cramping his style?”

  “He adores you,” I said. “I mean, fuck! Look at you. What sixteen year old boy wouldn’t want you coming to stay with him for an extended period of time? That reminds me. We’ll need to check the bathroom to make sure he hasn’t installed a video camera in there to watch you get naked.”

  “What?”

  “I’m joking, babe. Well, sorta. We should check just to make sure.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Hey, my eyes still get as big as saucers every time I see you naked. Imagine what his would do.”

  “You’re such a nerd,” she said, leaning in to kiss me.

  “Um… Maybe you should brush your teeth first?”

  “And you’re completely romantic too,” she replied. “Let’s get back on the road. I’ll brush my teeth in the truck.”

  I grinned and kissed her on the forehead. “We’re gonna be okay,” I assured her with more confidence than I felt. If the CEA wanted to push it, they could probably find my parents’ place pretty easily, but it was a risk that we had to take. We didn’t have any other options.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The months at my parents’ farm flew by as summer transitioned into the fall. My dad figured out a workaround for the potential raid issue by moving their RV into the woods and setting up an elaborate thermal reduction camouflage system to hide it from overhead drone cameras. Cassandra and I lived in the camper full time and came up to the house each day for meals and to help around the farm.

  It was a simple life and quite rewarding as the crops filled out and the harvest began. I’d never appreciated the simplicity of it as a kid because I was constantly doing homework and shuffling between football practice and games. Chores on the farm seemed like an added distraction at the time. With all the problems facing us, the distraction of a long day’s honest work was welcome.

  I was excited about being a father, even if we hadn’t planned to be hiding out in a camper in the woods. Cassandra’s body changed along with the crops. She was six months along now and the baby was showing. My mom gave her homemade lotions that she swore would help with the stretch marks if she used them enough. She applied them in the morning, at lunch, and after her nightly shower. She was determined to minimize any of the marks.

  One morning in early October, it was raining cats and dogs outside, so we wouldn’t be doing much of anything except hanging around the camper. Cassandra sat naked on the bed, applying lotion to her stomach, hips, and thighs. Her phone pinged from where it sat plugged into the outlet beside the refrigerator. We’d put it there months ago, leaving it on without using it in case Rogan needed to contact us for some reason. In truth, I’d forgotten about it until that moment.

  Cassandra’s hands stopped mid-rub and we both stared at the phone. It had been so long since anyone had even bothered trying to contact her that the noise was odd, one that we’d become unaccustomed to hearing. After texting with her parents that she was safe, she’d stopped answering text messages in fear that they could be tracked. Same with emails since the IP address could be tracked to a geographic location. She’d sent a few handwritten letters to her parents that my dad would pass off to friends who went down to Tuscaloosa every few weeks to drop letters off in a mailbox, but it was a one-way conversation. We weren’t sure if they even got them.

  “Do you think?” she asked.

  I nodded. “It might be Rogan.”

  “Go check it,” she said.

  I went from the back of the RV up to the driver’s area. The phone was pushed up in a cubby hole. I pulled it out and the message was from a weird number, not even a phone number, just a string of fourteen numbers.

  Welcome to the Revolution. Watch the news. We swore an oath against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. We could use you in Austin. –R.

  I read it aloud to Cassandra after reading it quietly to myself first. “Welcome to the revolution?” she asked.

  “That’s what it says. I feel like that’s from a movie.”

  Cassandra shrugged, the movement squeezing her breasts together. “I don’t know. It’s from Rogan, right?”

  “I mean, it says ‘R’ at the end, so I assume so.”

  “What’s on the news?”

  I clicked on the television and waited for the Wi-Fi to connect to my parents’ router. We were far enough away from the main house that we’d hidden a signal booster about halfway, but it was still iffy when the weather was crappy, like it was today. It finally connected and I scrolled through the channels until I landed on Fox News.

  The broadcasters were discussing a string of kidnappings overnight as hundreds of government officials went missing all over the country. Police departments were scrambling to figure out what the hell was happening and the FBI had kicked into high gear.

  “They’re taking out the leadership of these organizations,” I stated, pointing vaguely in the direction of the television.

  “Why?”

  I thought for a moment before speaking. “Well… I’d guess that they’re doing it for two reasons. One, obviously, is to throw the various agencies into disarray and delay any response when the next event happens. And, two, I wonder if they’re assessing the officer’s loyalties to their oath versus to the administration. That’s what Rogan’s text said, the oath to defend the nation against threats from the inside and the outside. I mean, you get some high-up guys who are more concerned with preserving the nation than what the current elected officials tell them to do, they could massively delay or derail any police or military response.” I stopped and then shrugged. “If this was like a full-on revolution and not just a bunch of people running around trying to make problems for everyone.”

  “Huh. That’s—”

  A high-pitched beeping from the television cut her off and I turned my head to see what it was. The image on the TV had gone to two pictures with a diagonal line bisecting the screen from the lower left to the upper right. The American Flag dominated the upper left triangle, while the bright yellow Gadson Flag with the coiled snake was in the lower right. The words “Don’t Tread on Me” were emblazoned along the bottom of the Gadson Flag.

  The beeping continued for five full seconds, then a muscular figure stepped through the flags, using the green screen effect to have them projected behind him. He wore a mask and dark glasses with a hat pulled down low. The only thing visible was the dark brown skin on his cheeks. To add to the image, he wore a black tactical vest over a long sleeved shirt and held an AR-15 in his gloved hands. There was no way anyone would be able to get biometrics off of the video.

  “What the hell is this?” I mumbled as Cassandra came to stand beside me.

  “I am Every American,” he began, his voice was distorted, fed through a voice modulating device to fool the intelligence services. The sound of it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “We have been lied to, America. Right now, thousands of pages of reports have been sent to every major news outlet across the country, from the national level all the way down to the local television broadcast stations in each market. At some point, the truth will be told. These pages outline the truth behind the H5N8 virus, the so-called Crud that has crippled our nation. H5N8 has a fatality rate of zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-one. That means you have more of a chance of dying from a deer hitting your car than you do of dying from the Crud. Only severe pre-existing conditions are even remotely affected, and yet, we were on lockdown in quarantine for months on end. Why? It was all a political move to usher in the NAR’s System a
nd rewrite the US Constitution.

  “Take a look around you. We are living in a police state. No-knock raids are the norm. Informing on your neighbors to get additional ration tickets in a nation that provided a surplus of food for the world up until last year when government bureaucracy limited how much a farmer could produce or grow. Now, we have people in the cities literally starving to death while the political elite and their flunkies live in excess. It’s time to put a stop to it, America. We’ve taken the first steps, and the major risks associated with it, by removing the leadership of the most heinous organizations. Those officers and officials are safe, for now, but I cannot guarantee their safety if the NAR attempts to track them down.

  “There are tens of thousands of us, but in a nation of three hundred and fifty million, we are just a drop in the bucket. We need all Americans to rise up and take back our nation. Yes, there were problems with it before, but they are nothing compared to what we face on a daily basis. We must return to our Original Constitution, the document that our nation was founded on, not this fraudulent New Constitution that the elites have forced through into law while we cowered in fear of the Crud.

  “Even now, entire units of the US Military are defecting, turning away from the government to uphold the oath they swore against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic. Well, my friends, if you don’t believe that we are facing domestic enemies today, then you are not paying attention.”

  He looked off camera for a moment, then nodded before turning back to the front. “My time is up. We must rise up against the tyranny of our government. We want a peaceful transition of power, however, we are unafraid of conflict. For our children’s sake. For our grandchildren. We must take America back now!”

  He stepped backward though the green screen visual effect and the dual flag design dominated the screen once more. Then it disappeared and the scene went back to a stunned anchorwoman on Fox News where we’d had the channel before the broadcast.

  “Uh, well. We don’t really know what just happened,” she said. “We’re being told that the satellite feed was hacked on every major network. A man calling himself ‘Every American’ appears to be calling for a revolution to overthrow the US Government.” She paused. “Fox News confirms that our corporate offices and several anchors have indeed received a massive email file with an attachment labeled ‘H5N8 Conspiracy to Destroy America.’ We don’t know what it means yet. Obviously, we’re cautious of opening the document on any computer linked to our network if there are viruses, so our analysts are downloading it onto disks that they will open on a non-networked computer. We’re being told that the process could take a few minutes longer, but it’s the safest way to protect our network from a cyber-attack.”

  She droned on for a while and I turned to look at Cassandra beside me. Her hands rested on either side of her belly. “You’re going, aren’t you?” she asked. It felt more like an accusation than a question.

  “I don’t… I don’t know. Without Rogan, I’d be dead. They were going to hang me and arrest you too. We owe him our lives.”

  “I know we do. But now he’s asking you to risk yours. It’s treason. You know what they do with traitors, right? They shoot them.”

  “What if this really is the revolution? Do you want Bathtub to grow up in this shit?” I asked, pointing at her stomach. I called the baby “Bathtub” because that’s where he’d likely been conceived one night.

  “No. Of course I don’t. But this isn’t our fight anymore. We’re safe here.”

  “It isn’t our fight? What does that mean? We’re Americans. We live in constant fear of being discovered and arrested for my refusal to become a criminal. I mean, we’re living in an RV hidden in the woods behind my parent’s house for Christ’s sake.”

  “Bodhi, I—”

  “Please, babe. Just think about this for a minute. I’m not saying that I’m going. Truth be told, I don’t want to go. We are safe here right now,” I said, stressing the words. “But what happens in six months or a year from now when the NAR completes its stranglehold on rural America too? My parents won’t be able to hide us forever, and once those Rationing Board fucks start coming around, they won’t be able to justify why they need so much food for just the three of them. They will find us eventually and then Bathtub is done for. What if they take her from us? Hang me, lock you away forever, and take her to some orphanage or give her to a loyalist family? Or worse, just kill her outright to get rid of the burden? That guy on the TV is right. We have to stand up for ourselves and take back our country.”

  “Breaking News!” I turned back to the television where the words were emblazed on the screen and garish music meant to catch the viewers’ attention sounded out. It worked.

  The anchor reappeared. “Good morning. We have breaking news coming out of North Carolina. According to reports, soldiers at Fort Bragg, one of the United States’ largest military bases, have taken over the installation. It’s too early to determine what the group wants, but there are armed soldiers guarding all of the entrances onto the installation. We—”

  “Breaking News!” The words blared out again, drowning out the anchor.

  She put a finger to her ear and adjusted the earpiece. “Um, now there are reports that the same thing is happening in Texas, at Fort Hood. You may remember Fort Hood from the 2009 shooting rampage where fourteen people were killed by domestic terrorist Nadal Hassan. The soldiers have secured large tanks and are moving weapons of war into the streets of the surrounding city.” A man appeared, setting a piece of paper in front of her.

  “I’ve just been handed another update. The Air Force base outside of Kansas City, Whiteman Air Force Base, has been put on lockdown. They have released a statement that they are prepared to defend their installation with deadly force. Whiteman is home to several bombing wings, including the nuclear-capable Stealth Bomber. That means the separatists now have the capability to bomb targets inside the United States, possibly with nuclear weapons.”

  The anchorwoman’s hand went to the side of her head once more. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to shift our broadcast from the Breaking News Desk to my colleague, Andrew Longmere. He has the latest on the contents of the H5N8 file that we reported on earlier. Andrew?”

  The camera shifted to a man with salt and pepper gray hair. “Thank you, Audrey. New evidence against the federal government reveals that the severity of the H5N8 virus was grossly exaggerated. According to information obtained by Fox News, the virus is less contagious that the common flu and even less deadly than originally thought. We are combing through thousands upon thousands of documents that compare actual clinical causes of death listed by medical professionals at hospitals versus what is listed as the cause of death on the death certificate, which, as you know, is how we in the media receive our numbers. It’s unclear at this time, how extensive the forgeries are, but there are thousands of pages similar to these documents from Chicago’s Lake Shore Hospital.”

  The picture of two pieces of paper side-by-side filled the screen. Each had a name and date highlighted and the cause of death on the hospital form listed “gunshot wound” while the death certificate stated “complications form H5N8 infection.”

  “We are in the process of verifying information. As you can imagine, this will take time, but it seems the US Military has seen enough. We’ll be sending you back to Audrey Tolliver at the Breaking News Desk with more information regarding the developing story on America’s Coup.”

  “Holy shit. A coup,” I said. “It’s really happening.”

  “Welcome to the Revolution. Isn’t that what Rogan said?”

  “Yeah. If the military is backing this—”

  “What about local cops or the two hundred million Americans with guns?” she asked. “Won’t they stand up against the military? We don’t want to trade a police state for some military dictator or something.”

  “What if the military doesn’t want control? What if they just want things to return back to the way it
was before all of this bullshit came up?”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Cassandra’s hand gripped mine. I pulled free, grabbing the pistol off the counter. “Go back to the bedroom,” I ordered.

  I glanced at her nude ass as she rushed back the other way. She needed to get clothes on before they paraded her around in handcuffs naked for the cameras to see.

  Bang! Bang!

  “Bodhi! Bodhi, open up!” I breathed a sigh of relief. It was my brother, Rowan.

  I opened the door and his eyes went wide at the sight of the gun in my hand. I set it back down on the counter. “Get in here,” I said. The poor kid was soaking wet from the rain.

  “Cassandra, get dressed,” I called out once he’d come inside. “My brother probably saw you naked through the window and wants a better look.”

  “What?” she yelled.

  “Rowan’s here,” I clarified. “Not a bounty hunter.”

  “Bodhi!” Rowan said, still breathless from his run down from the house. “Have you seen the news? There’s a war starting. People are fighting against the government!”

  “Yeah, we’ve been watching.”

  “Dad wants to know if you guys can come up to the house.”

  “Yeah. Of course. We just need a minute and then we can head up there.”

  Rowan’s eyes drifted toward the bedroom door and I cuffed him across the arm hard enough to send him staggering. “Ow!” he grumbled, rubbing his bicep. “What was that for?”

  “Because you’re a perv, dude. Just go on the internet and jerk off to pictures and videos of any woman you’d like.”

  “Huh?”

  “Porn. Go look at some porn.”

  “I watch porn all the time, Bodhi.”

  Of course he did. What seventeen year old didn’t these days? Hell, what twenty-three year old didn’t either? I thought, remembering the video I’d watched on my laptop just this morning as Cassandra slept.

  “Well then, let me tell you the truth about life, little bro. All those scenes where the guy sees the girl changing and that miraculously leads to sex aren’t real. If you accidentally see a woman changing in real life, they’ll call the cops on you.”