“There’s still families that are willing to adopt?”
“Of course there are. Pastor Erik says it is our Christian duty to care for all wayward children. I’m sure I can find a family who would be willing to adopt you. If your parents make it here at a later date, then we can reintegrate you back to them without a problem. Either way, you’re safe here. Those pagan devils won’t touch you because we are protected by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ here.”
Tara nodded slightly. Yeah right. More religious crap. She was tempted to roll her eyes but thought better of it. “Okay.”
The lady smiled as she typed on the laptop again. After about a minute she gave Tara a slip of paper. “Great. I’m assigning you to cot one hundred seventy, that’s over at the expo hall. I’ll have one of the volunteers bring you a pillow and blanket. In the meantime, if I get a flag on my computer if your parents show up, then I’ll let you know.”
“Alright, thanks,” Tara said as she got up and walked away towards the other hall.
As she made her way into the expo hall, she noticed there were around two hundred people either lying in cots or just hanging out. A few kids were running in between the folding beds as they noisily played with an inflatable ball. A small group of people were on the far side of the huge convention center as they all knelt down in a semi-circle, their hands clasped together in silent prayer. Tara’s assigned cot was there but she didn’t feel like resting, so she moved right past it and walked out into the corridor. All over the walls were billboards, along with lists of people that were evidently either missing or dead. There were metal folding tables near the end of the corridor that had trays of paper wrapped sandwiches and small plastic bottles of fruit juice. Tara took a sandwich, tore off its wrapping and bit into it. It was mostly bread with mayonnaise, as well bits of ham and tomatoes. After taking a few more bites she threw it into a nearby trashcan. Tara then took a bottle of orange juice and walked back over to where the billboards were. Many of the letters were handwritten. There were a few pictures of families that were pinned on the board, from casual photos to formal portraits. Tara just kept going through the printed lists of dead or missing, hoping that she would find any clue as to where her brother was. That was when she noticed a short, thin man with brown hair covered by a baseball cap. He was standing beside her as he too scanned the names on the board.
Tara glanced at him before looking at the lists again. “You’re trying to find a missing relative too?”
The man wore slightly tinted glasses and had a plaid shirt on. His voice was in a low whisper. “Just checking to see if they finally executed my brother and put his name up here.”
Tara half turned and stared at him. “What?”
The man looked around to make sure no one was staring at them before answering her. He looked to be middle aged and had tanned skin. “Didn’t you know? Some of these lists are for the people who were executed by the new Christian government they got here. The lists says they died due to accidents, but I know better.”
Tara took in a deep breath. “No. I-I just got here. I’m looking for my brother. We got separated and I heard he left my home state with another family. I was told they were on their way here. He’s only six.”
The man nodded. “Yeah, I figured you were new to this place. I saw you talking to the processing officer. Your parents not here?”
“I ran away from my dad. He used to beat me and he gave my little brother away. My mom moved away years ago. I don’t even know where she is.”
The man held out his hand. “Sorry to hear that. My name’s Aaron.”
Tara shook it. “Tara. Did you just come in recently too?”
“Yeah,” Aaron said. “Just came in as part of a convoy from Wyoming. My family and I used to live in Dubois, near the Shoshone National Forest. About a week ago the whole town was attacked by giant monsters. Just smashed the whole place to bits. Thankfully my wife and kids survived, so I packed whatever we had left and took the truck towards this state. I’m not what you’d call a hardcore Christian, but I’m a believer. Now that I got here, I ain’t so sure.”
Tara frowned. “What’s happening over here? When I took the bus going into the city I saw the cops rounding up a whole bunch of people.”
“Those are the morality councils. Anyone who isn’t a white, straight member of the church is going to get arrested,” Aaron said. “I’ve been here for a few days now and I’ve talked to a lot of people. Some of us are gonna leave. You’re free to join us if you want to.”
“Where you going to after this?”
“We’ll try to make it back to the Federal territories over in Virginia and maybe New York after that. I heard New York is peaceful and they tolerate different types of people there. The ones over here are too cruel for my tastes. Anyway, I think there’s gonna be a full scale war between the Christians here and the US government soon.”
Tara looked down on the carpeted floor. “I’ve been away. Do you really think there’s gonna be a war between Kansas and United States?”
“There will be for sure,” Aaron said. “The Christians got whupped when they tried to take Kansas City over at the Missouri border. Just heard rumors about it but I think it’s true. Everybody’s nervous because they all think the Feds are gonna counterattack. The way the leadership here is going, I think they may be desperate enough to try something crazy, like using one of their nukes or something.”
Tara shook her head in disbelief. “This is all so crazy. I can’t believe they’re going to fight each other while the Aztecs are coming up from the south.”
“Yeah, well the fundamentalist Christians here think the apocalypse is happening anyway so they figure they got nothing to lose by resisting to the very end,” Aaron said. “I still care for my family and I want to keep them alive as long as possible. That’s why me and some others are gonna get outta here in a few days.”
“Let me think about it,” Tara said. “But I have to find my brother first. If he’s here I got to get him out before I leave. I talked to that processing lady and she told me that his name isn’t on the database, so maybe he isn’t here.”
Aaron pressed his lips together. “The names on that list that she has only contains the people who are citizens. The other ones that don’t belong get sent to camps.”
Tara was shocked. “Camps? What kind of camps?”
“Internment camps,” Aaron said. “I heard they made Leavenworth into an internment camp for undesirables. They don’t allow people to leave anymore, that’s why we gotta sneak out in order to leave the state.”
“My brother is around seven by now. You think he could be in those camps?”
“I dunno about your brother,” Aaron said. “If he’s that young maybe they had another family adopt him and change his name. I’m pretty sure the ones they can’t brainwash are in Leavenworth.”
“Why are they keeping all those people prisoner? Why don’t they just let them go?”
“Bargaining chips in case the Feds attack,” Aaron said softly. “Hostages and human shields, maybe. That’s what I heard, anyway. Nobody talks out loud in public here, so it’s all hushed rumors, but word gets around.”
“I can’t believe they would stoop that low,” Tara said. “It’s disgusting. Cowardly.”
“It is. That’s why we’re leaving.”
Tara scratched the top of her head as an idea formed in her mind. “If that processor clerk only had a list of the current citizens that they had, do you think there’s another list somewhere with the original names of the people who changed their names?”
“I bet you there would be,” Aaron said. “I don’t know where you could access that kind of a list though.”
Tara stuck her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket as she tried to think. “There must be a place here where they would have that list. But where…”
Aaron smirked as their eyes met. “The morality council headquarters. They must have the complete lists of everybody because they wo
uld need it to find people. I bet they would probably have a list of people in the camps too. I mean, they run them camps anyway.”
Tara smiled a little. For the first time in as many days there was a tinge of hope. “Okay, where is this headquarters of theirs?”
“They’ve got several,” Aaron said. “They took over all the FBI offices in the city, that’s for sure, and probably all the other Federal buildings as well. I wouldn’t know the exact place, but I bet it’s the one with the most lights on at night.”
It was close to midnight when Tara sat up from her cot. She was too nervous to sleep, but at least she was able to close her eyes and rest her body for a bit. After lacing up her sneakers, Tara put on her denim jacket and walked out into the adjoining corridor. There were still a few people milling about, mostly volunteers who were vacuuming the red carpeted floor of the theatre hall. When Tara walked over to the entrance foyer, she saw two uniformed church security guards were standing outside of the glass doors.
The two guards were facing the outside parking lot, so they didn’t notice her standing behind them. Tara saw that the raven was perched on the roof of a pickup truck parked nearby and she gestured at it. One of the guards sensed something and turned to see her silently waving her arms in the air. The man was shaved bald and he had thick, muscular arms, evidently after working out using heavy weights at the gym. The guard seemed confused as he tapped his partner and they both turned to face her. As he came down from the top of the roof, Patrick Gyle landed behind them, then threw a series of lightning fast punches to the back of their necks. Both guards crumpled and fell face down. Tara pushed open the glass doors as Gyle dragged the guards to the side of the entrance. The raven landed and perched itself on a nearby guard rail.
Tara stared at the results of Gyle’s handiwork. She thought his methods were brutal, but effective. “Did you kill them?”
Gyle kept moving until he was behind a column. With the parking lot’s streetlamps active, his pale, naked body stood out like a sore thumb. “Nope. At least I don’t think so. They may be concussed though.”
The raven blinked as it turned to face Tara. “Did you find any clues as to where your brother is?”
Tara started buttoning up her denim jacket. There was a chill wind in the night air. “We need to find a building that’s sucking up a lot of power. It ought to have a computer where we can search through a list of names.”
Gyle poked his head from out of the shadows. His pale red eyes glowed from the reflection of the streetlights. “I think I know just the place.”
The William Donovan Federal Building was brand new. It had been constructed just two years before and was designed to house a new department for the NSA. As such, the eight story building near the banks of the river was one of the standout landmarks since Wichita had very few skyscrapers. What made the design of the building so remarkable was that it had very few windows, most of its façade was tan-colored concrete. The Federal government had hoped to put up one of its core databases for the PRISM surveillance program there. Most of the rooms within the building were composed of nothing more than sterile housing for internet web servers. A minimal staff was to be assigned to maintain its massive database and keep unwanted intruders out. Then the Glooming happened.
When Kansas declared its independence, it threw the NSA into a panic. With no clear instructions from the government, the NSA leadership did its best by shutting down all the servers and evacuating its personnel. As soon as the Rock of God Church took over the city, a number of former NSA contractors had already defected over to the separatist side, and within a matter of days had restarted the database, this time with the aim of using the records stored in it as part of a new counter-intelligence apparatus to defend Christian Kansas against outside attack. In addition to that, another part of the database would also serve to keep the most intimate secrets of the newly independent state. Several months after the Glooming, the building now served as the official hall of records for the separatists, and it was administered exclusively by the ROG morality council.
Tara and Gyle stood on the roof of the building and looked down below. They could see several Humvees with machine gun turrets stationed at the parking lot. Several squads of heavily armed soldiers were milling about, completely oblivious to them. Two soldiers were lying inside the back of the vehicles, asleep.
The raven was sitting on one of the generator units that dotted the roof. “Must be a whole platoon guarding the entrance down there. Funny how those people didn’t even station any guards up here.”
Gyle turned and started walking around, looking for a way inside. “There are no nearby buildings of this height. If a helicopter tried to land up here, they would notice it. I guess they didn’t expect anyone to materialize out of thin air to appear on the building roof.”
“If I could laugh, I would,” the raven said. “No surveillance cameras either. So how do you suggest we get inside?”
Gyle stopped in front of the door that led to the stairwell. He ran his clawed hands along the sides of the door. “I can feel the electrical current along the frame and the lock. If I break it down, it will trigger an alarm.”
Tara walked over and stood beside them. “How about through a ventilation shaft or something. I saw that in a movie once, I think.”
Gyle pointed to a nearby exhaust vent. “You mean that one? It’s too small for me to squeeze through.”
Tara looked around, then she pointed at a slightly raised concrete platform. “What’s that?”
Gyle walked over until he was standing beside it, then he ran his hands along its base, feeling for any electrical currents. There was none. The top of the platform led down into the main elevator shaft. “Yeah, this will do.”
Dave Reeder zoned out a couple of times as he stared blankly at the server uptime, disk usage and network traffic on the monitor screens. He wore a thick wool sweater in addition to his leather jacket as he sat in front of a number of consoles. The temperature in the entire seventh floor was maintained at a slightly chilly 68 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure that the servers wouldn’t overheat. Most of the upper floors in the entire building consisted of large, air conditioned rooms that had nothing but rows and rows of plastic and metal boxes and their attached cables. Out of all the buildings still operating in the city, this particular one had the most priority when it came to electrical use. There were reserve diesel generators in the basement levels, ready to kick in automatically should the metropolitan power grid would ever go belly up.
As he sipped the last of the lukewarm coffee from his paper cup, Dave got up from his office chair and yawned. He hated these lonely nights, but he felt that he had a duty to his new country. Only a few months before, he had been a systems administrator here as the company he worked for had a contract with the NSA to maintain the database for its organization. After the Glooming began, Dave refused to heed the call to shut down the servers and head east. He was a devoted Christian and he felt that the words of the great Pastor Erik Burnley were the only possible way he could save his soul. His wife disagreed, and she took the children with her and went back to California. But Dave’s faith was unshaken. He fervently believed that Kansas was the one true sanctuary against the demons and devils that had suddenly appeared throughout the world, and he was determined to stand with the church against them.
Dave shook his head rapidly from side to side as he tried to fight off the combined effects of a lack of sleep and fatigue. His eyelids felt heavy as he took off his glasses and rubbed them with his hands to put some life back into them. He knew that from experience, the only thing that could keep him awake until the morning shift would relieve him were the constant, almost endless cups of coffee that he drank all night long. Since the entire department was short-staffed, he had to cover for his subordinates too, so that meant even longer hours. The church deemed that it was imperative that their records were constantly updated in order to make sure that their citizens remained loyal, as well as to identif
y any potential subversives that could possibly be a threat to them. To that effect, the servers had to be running constantly, day and night, seven days a week, without any interruption.
Time for another cup, he thought as he walked out of the office and headed towards the pantry at the end of the corridor. While the server rooms and offices had dimmed lights, the adjoining corridors had bright overhead illumination that had the effect of daylight, so Dave squinted for a bit as his eyes slowly adjusted. The church had been training a new systems administration crew, but they were still weeks away from being assigned here because of other priorities. Dave felt his frustration growing, but his loyalty to the church kept his dissatisfaction in check.
When he got to the gleaming white pantry, he noticed that the pot was empty again. As he poured water into the percolator to boil a new batch of coffee, Dave suddenly felt a slight jolt. The overhead lights in the pantry dimmed slightly for a few seconds before returning back to normal. It felt like a slight tremor, as if the whole building was hit by a small earthquake. As he waited for an aftershock, there was none so he shrugged and took out a can of instant coffee from an overhead cabinet. Almost immediately, he heard a distant grating noise, like the sound of metal being bent or crushed. Dave placed the coffee can on the countertop and nervously looked around. It didn’t sound like it was coming from nearby, it seemed more like it was coming from inside of the building somewhere. Dave stood still for a few minutes as he wondered what could have caused it. Then he heard the sound of glass breaking from somewhere close by.
Dave immediately ran out into the corridor and looked around, but nothing seemed amiss. Since the security office was just one floor below him, he decided to head over there and would ask them what was going on. So he walked over to an adjoining corridor, stood in front of the elevator doors and pushed the down button. After a few minutes, nothing happened. Dave frowned as the buttons to summon the elevator didn’t seem to be working.
A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3) Page 16