Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset

by James Hunt

  ***

  “You really think this is going to work?” Mitch asked.

  “We’ve tried everything else. If this doesn’t get a response out of him, then I don’t know what will,” Ben answered.

  Mitch let out a long sigh and then opened the interrogation room’s door. Mike was inside, shackled to the chair and floor, and dressed in orange.

  Mike kept his head down as usual and Ben took a seat across from him. Ben laid the manila folder gently onto the table and folded his hands together.

  “How are you doing today, Mike?” Ben asked.

  The only answer Ben received was the shuffling of chains. Ben opened the file, but made sure Mike couldn’t see the contents of what was inside. He flipped through the pages, just examining them.

  “You know we had a friend of yours pay us a visit yesterday,” Ben said.

  It was the first time Mike actually looked at him. Whatever secrets Mike was hiding, having an “old friend” stop by was bound to make him nervous.

  “Did you ever spend any time in Washington, DC, before the blackout?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t have any friends,” Mike said.

  “I actually lived there, before the EMP blast. Most of the city was a dump, but it wasn’t without its charms.”

  Ben continued to examine the pictures in the file, glancing up every once in a while to see Mike’s eyes glaring at him.

  “The monuments there are incredible. It’s a great destination for families,” Ben said.

  Mike pulled hard against the chains, but they were so tight that the only thing Ben noticed was the flex of Mike’s arms.

  Ben set the folder down, and pulled out pictures of Freddy, Kalen, and Anne. Each picture slid across the table’s smooth surface and stopped abruptly at Mike’s arm.

  “Were they in on it too, Mike?” Ben asked. “Did your family help you break into that military base and launch that EMP? Did they even know who you were, what you were planning on doing?”

  Mike didn’t say anything. He just glanced down at the pictures. Ben tried reading the emotions on Mike’s face, but it was blank.

  “Do they know you’re here?” Ben asked.

  “We thought you’d be happy to see them,” Mitch said.

  Mitch leaned on the table, his large belly digging into the table’s edge.

  “You couldn’t protect them, could you? You weak piece of shit,” Mitch said.

  “AHHHHHHHH!” Mike screamed.

  Mike snapped and turned on Mitch, but the restraints did their job. Curses and spit flew from Mike’s mouth as he screamed at both of them. It was a stream of adrenaline that lasted for fifteen minutes, then finally subsided with Mike exhausted and slumped in his chair, looking numb as he stared at the pictures on the table.

  “Mike,” Ben said, “I don’t think you did any of what you said happened. I don’t believe a family man who was married for twenty-five years at a job you’d been at for just as long would snap like this. Tell me what happened. I can help you.”

  Mike’s eyes were red. Ben could see the tears he was holding back, ready to burst at any moment. Ben picked up a picture of his son and held it up for Mike to see.

  “What happened, Mike?” Ben asked.

  Mike gently grabbed the picture from Ben’s hands. It was Mike’s shoulders that started to shake first, then his arms and hands, and the picture wobbled back and forth. The first tear hit the table, and with the dam now broken the rest of the tears fell like rain.

  After a minute of letting himself go he started to regain his composure, drawing in deep breaths.

  “Who is he?” Mike asked.

  “Who is who?” Ben asked.

  “The man who came to see you.”

  “He identified himself as Dr. Quinn Wyatt.”

  The picture of Freddy fell from Mike’s grip. His eyes darted from Mitch to Ben.

  “Where’s the journal, Mike?” Ben asked.

  “Whatever he told you is a lie,” Mike said.

  “The journal, Mike. What did you do with it?”

  “Take me back to my cell.”

  It wasn’t going to work. Wherever the journal was, whatever happened, Mike wasn’t going to tell him. Ben called for the correction officer and Mike was escorted back to his cell.

  Mitch patted Ben on the back.

  “C’mon, kid. You need a drink.”

  ***

  Out of all of the businesses that started back up after the power came back on, the ones that had the quickest success were the bars. People wanted to forget whatever terrible things they did during the blackout as fast as possible.

  Mitch ordered a whiskey and coke and Ben sipped on a beer. The bar wasn’t too busy, but then again it was twelve thirty in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

  “I don’t know what he’s scared of,” Ben said.

  “This place is a dump.”

  “He knows he didn’t do any of this, and he’s still punishing himself for it. Why?”

  “Hey, barkeep! Where’s the bar nuts?”

  “If we could just reach out to his family. Maybe they could help us.”

  Ben rested his head on his arm and then felt a nudge in his side.

  “Hey,” Mitch said. “You can’t save someone that doesn’t want to be saved, Ben.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “During the blackout. I know you weren’t stationed in DC. You said you were from Philadelphia, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “That place was a madhouse. How’d you survive?”

  “Hey, it’s the city of brotherly love.”

  Ben laughed, and Mitch gave a chuckle. Both of them took another sip of their drinks. Ben placed his beer on the small white napkin.

  “Ben, the things that happened during the blackout were bad. People… they lost who they were. I saw people stab each other over crumbs. Fuckin’ crumbs,” Mitch said.

  Mitch drained the rest of his drink and slammed it down on the counter. He called the bartender over again and asked for another.

  “Did you kill anyone?” Ben asked.

  Mitch grabbed a handful of the bar nuts next to him and shoved them in his mouth, then washed them down with another swig of his fresh drink.

  “We all did what we had to do, Ben. There’s not a person out there that doesn’t have dirty hands.”

  Ben knew Mitch had a point. Everyone was without power for too long. People will stay calm for only so long before they riot. The dependency on technology became abundantly clear when none of it worked.

  History books would record this time period as one of the worst in American History. The stories would surpass the Great Depression, both World Wars, 9/11, all of it. It was as if the entire nation lost its sanity with the rest of the world watching, and now we were waking up from the nightmare, looking around at the damage and trying to sweep it under the rug.

  That’s why Ben wanted the proof so bad. He had to pull one truth out of all the lies being peddled to everyone. There had to be one beam of light out there.

  “I killed someone,” Ben said.

  Mitch stopped chewing and set his drink down.

  “Ben, you don’t have to—”

  “It was in the middle of the day, about three months in. I was on guard at the food bank in DC. You should have seen the lines of people waiting. It stretched for miles. You couldn’t even see the end. We moved on to the emergency reserves at that point. You could see the hunger on everyone’s faces. The food bank was handing out the bare minimum. The tension running through the crowd was thick, and there was this guy, a dad with his family, and they were close to the front of the line. His little girl was crying, and she just wouldn’t stop. He walked up to me, saying that his daughter hadn’t eaten in three days. He begged me to let him cut in line, just to grab food for her. He was even willing to give up his rations just to feed her, but we had protocol. No one could skip, no exceptions. Then other people started pleading, arguing why the
y should be able to eat first. The guards were outnumbered a thousand to one. If they rushed the gates, then it would have been over. I pulled my gun and told him to get back in line, but he just wouldn’t stop. He kept screaming for me to let him through, and the crowd around him was getting restless. I couldn’t let the chaos break out. I couldn’t let one person destroy what little we had left. I warned him one more time to get back in line and he made a move on me so I pulled the trigger. One shot through the head. The rest of the crowd backed down after that. I can still hear two things from that day when I close my eyes to fall asleep. I can hear the sound of my gun going off, and the screams from his wife, cursing me as she wept over her husband’s corpse.”

  Ben took another sip of beer then clutched the drink in both hands as he closed his eyes, letting out a breath that was soft and slow.

  “The supplies from Europe arrived the next day,” Ben said.

  “You followed your orders, Ben. There was no way of knowing what would happen if you hadn’t pulled the trigger. You knew what you had to do. It was a hard choice, but one that had to be made.”

  “Yeah… orders.”

  ***

  Even though Dr. Wyatt volunteered to come to the investigator’s unit, Ben and Mitch housed him in an apartment building onsite. He was impressed with the size of the facility they were able to use. It looked like an old university that swapped housing bright young minds for suspected criminals.

  Dr. Wyatt unpacked his suitcase and placed what spare clothes he had into the small dresser at the foot of the bed. There was a TV on top of it, which he didn’t use. He found himself not using any piece of electronics out of habit. He managed to make it as far as he did without it and realized just how much of a time waste it was to spend your free hours glued to a television numbing your mind.

  His room was on the eighth floor of the building and he had a decent view of the surrounding area. There were cars moving on the roads, traffic lights changing from red to green, and he could hear the hum of the electrical transformer from the power lines just outside his window.

  It was such a different sight than the one he experienced just a few months ago. The frozen cities had been thawed and were now beginning to teem with life again.

  Dr. Wyatt sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers along the fabric of the comforter. The sheets on the bed were clean, the floor in the room was vacuumed, and the A/C was blasting through the vents.

  All of this was brought back for mankind, the same mankind that ignored him, shunned him, and tried to bury him. He started to think that him being there was a bad idea. Even if he had a chance to speak with Mike there was no guarantee that he’d be able to help him, and even if he was able to help him, there was no promise that Mike would accept it.

  Every time he thought about it a sour feeling hit the pit of his stomach and spread throughout his body. He reached for his bag and pulled out the bottle of pills he kept with him to ease the stress.

  He washed the pill down with a cup of water he filled from the sink and lay down to let the medicine take effect.

  ***

  Ben called Dr. Wyatt first thing in the morning and told him to come to his office immediately. He didn’t tell him why though.

  Ben was still hung over from the day before. Mitch just kept feeding him drinks and before he knew it he was hunched over in the toilet puking his guts out. Ben took a taxi home and when he woke up in the morning his head felt as if it was on an anvil being pounded by a sledgehammer.

  When he saw Mitch come in the office looking as fresh as a newborn calf he shrugged his shoulders in disbelief.

  “How the hell are you not dying right now?” Ben asked.

  “My liver’s used to that sort of punishment.”

  Mitch offered him a little hair of the dog which Ben emphatically declined. He couldn’t even look at alcohol without wanting to vomit.

  One of the office assistants came in a little later to let Ben know that Dr. Wyatt was there. He met Wyatt in the interrogation room alone.

  “I appreciate you coming in on such short notice,” Ben said.

  “Well, the armed guards you sent to collect me were quite convincing.”

  Ben could feel the strain of trying to focus on the conversation at hand. He rubbed his eyes.

  “Long night?” Dr. Wyatt asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “We all have ways of coping, Agent Sullivan.”

  “Is that why your pupils are dilated?”

  “What can I help you with?”

  “When you came in you said you wanted to help Mr. Grant, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And it’s something you’re still interested in pursuing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “As I told you before he—”

  “Suffered a great deal, yes, I know that, Dr. Wyatt. But how did he suffer? I know he had a family. Do you know where they are?”

  “You need to let me speak to him.”

  Ben let out a sigh. He was exhausted. He was running out of time, and patience. Whatever Dr. Wyatt believed he could do to help Mike involved speaking with him.

  “He doesn’t want to be saved,” Ben said. “I’ve tried reaching him, but it’s just no use. He believes he’s guilty. The evidence we have suggests that he is, and my superiors are breathing down my neck to close this case.”

  “Besides your drinking have you turned to anything to help you cope with the things you did during the blackout, Agent Sullivan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was it?”

  “My family.”

  “It’s nice to have something to help pull you out of the darkness. Myself, I didn’t have any family, so as you can see from my ‘dilated pupils’ I’ve coped in other ways.”

  “Dr. Wyatt I don—”

  “Do you know how Mike Grant coped after what happened in Cincinnati?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do. And if you don’t let me speak with him a good man is going to die.”

  Ben didn’t know what else he could do. He researched every possible lead, checked every scenario, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that through all of those procedures something was wrong. Maybe it was time to try something a little unconventional.

  “All right, Dr. Wyatt. I’ll bring him in,” Ben said.

  Cincinnati (Day 25)

  Mike kept Kalen close the entire morning. He was next to her when they were grabbing their gear, loading their ammo, and boarding the trucks to take them to the rallying point where they would try and take the bridge from the rebels.

  He tried making a case for her to stay in the city, but it fell to pieces when she spoke up demanding that she be a part of the raid. Once Blake heard that the discussion was over.

  The brief was simple. The rebels were running low on supplies and ammo. They were outnumbered and this campaign was to be the last push to get them back over the river and take control of the bridge, allowing the rest of Bram’s men to connect with his other units in Lexington.

  Blake and the rest of his men outnumbered the rebels two to one, so the tactic would be to drive a wedge between the rebels. Divide and conquer.

  The rebels hadn’t used any heavy artillery for the past week, so it was believed they’d run out. Everything would be handled on the ground, with man-to-man combat. Mike, Sam, and Kalen were a part of Unit One and charged with taking out the left flank.

  When the truck came to a stop Mike’s heart was pounding out of his chest. His hands felt like bricks holding the rifle. He tried massaging them earlier in the morning, but it didn’t really help.

  Blake gathered everyone around him once the trucks were emptied. Mike watched them turn around and head back to the city, toward safety. All he wanted to do at that moment was throw his daughter in the back of one of those trucks.

  “All right, everyone, listen up!” Blake said. “We’ll be joining up with the rest of the troops
at the front line. We have them on their heels, so this is it. You all know what needs to be done. Let’s move out!”

  There were only thirty of them, but from Blake’s description that was more than enough to overrun the enemy. They broke off into five groups of six. Mike’s group consisted of himself, Sam, Kalen, and Blake. Two other guys rounded out the group, Steve and Jimmy. Both were hunters before the blackout, and both were excellent marksmen. Mike’s group could’ve done a lot worse.