Primary Termination
Page 23
“God speed, Dad,” I solemnly whisper to myself. “God speed, Mom. We’ll be together again one day. But it’s going to be a while.”
The congregation disperses and the Resistance funeral detail begins to fill in the graves by hand with spades. The funeral ceremony is officially is over. Ben and Tony do not let go of my hands. Not yet. But when Gus approaches, asks me for a moment of my time, Tony and Ben have no choice but to let go.
“Follow me,” Gus says, the tone in his voice serious, if not stern.
“What’s happening, Gus?” I ask, drying my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
Pulling me off to the side, he retrieves his smartphone. He thumbs the icon for the Everest News channel app. A woman is standing at a podium with several microphones attached to it. The black wall behind her is illuminated with a bright red hologram version of the Everest Corporate logo. It’s a person I recognize. It’s Kate, the woman I once considered my best friend . . . my sister from another mister. She’s dressed smartly in a black business suit, her hair pinned up in back. Standing off to the side is Matt Tyrel. He’s dressed in his black Everest police uniform, and he’s wearing a sling that supports his left arm now that his shoulder was wounded during my extraction from the re-education facility on behalf of the Drake Corporation.
“As of this hour,” Kate announces from the podium, “we now consider Tanya Teal and Anthony Smart enemies of the Everest Corporation and traitors to their country.” Photos of both myself and Tony appear on the upper right corner of the broadcast. “Both persons are not only considered terminated from the Everest Primary Program, they are responsible for the murder of dozens of Everest Police officers and fulfillment center guards. They are also members of an Everest resistance movement which is rumored to be hiding in the mountain regions approximately one-hundred-twenty miles north of Albany, the capital of New York State, and also the home to the New York Everest Corporation Headquarters. If anyone should come into contact with either Teal and/or Smart, please be informed that they are considered armed and extremely dangerous. What you need to do is immediately inform Jacquie of their whereabouts and Everest will take it from there. Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.”
My heart pounds, not because Kate just referred to me as an enemy and a traitor, but because she was working as an Everest spy the entire time. The hard realization courses through my veins . . . the hard truth. Kate was never looking out for me . . . for my best interests . . . like she wanted to protect me, which is precisely what I wanted to believe, even when that dentist was torturing me. She was, in fact, in the process of betraying me.
Matt Tyrel didn’t just happen to be stretching out in the park when I passed him on my way to my jog inside the New York State Employees/Everest Corp. Upstate Headquarters Campus. Jacquie knew I was going for a run, and she must have alerted both Kate and Tyrel as to my intentions, which is why Kate called me immediately upon my exiting the house’s front door. Jacquie knew I was a risky Primary Program member and she must have alerted her spies the second I signed on the digital line. By signing up, I’d set the trap not only for me, but for Tony and my parents.
But that doesn’t mean I killed my parents. It doesn’t mean I killed Mike.
Kate killed them.
She betrayed me, and I now consider her personally responsible for their murders . . . for Mike’s murder. This war between us, as hard as it is to swallow, has only just begun. And it is so very, very personal now. As Kate leaves the podium, reporters shout out questions.
“Is it true that war with the Drake search engine is imminent?”
“Is the Jacquie AI satellite about to be launched this week?”
“Is every US citizen required to join the Everest Primary Program or else face arrest?”
Kate and Tyrel disappear through a door officially ending the press conference. Gus lays his big, but gentle paw of a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know how close you two were once.”
How he knows this, I’m not sure, but then there’s a lot about Gus I don’t know. Now that I am solidly a member of this Resistance, I will almost certainly get to know more of him. As for Kate, my heart doesn’t break for the destruction of our relationship so much as it only hardens it. Kate took the red pill, and I’ve swallowed the blue pill. Or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, we’re enemies, and if my gut instincts are right on, one day in the future, be it near or far, we will have a reckoning, and that reckoning will not be pretty for her.
From out of the distance comes a roar. A loud, thunderous roar.
“What is that?” I say, my mouth suddenly going dry, the fine hairs on the back of my neck rising to attention.
“Those are rockets,” Gus calmly answers. “Medium range ICBMs.”
Then, out on the eastern horizon beyond the mountaintop, two individual rockets cutting through the clear air, flying at supersonic speed.
“Everest?” I whisper, the sensation of dread washing over me. Tony and Ben rejoin us.
“No,” Gus says. “Those are Drake Corporation rockets. I’ve been expecting them any day. Any minute. Any second.”
Tony and Ben both take my hands again, squeeze them as the rockets speed frighteningly fast and immediately out of sight. Barely three tense seconds pass before we make out two separate earth-shattering explosions. Off in the distance, two bright red/orange mushroom clouds appear above the mountaintops. They are not nuclear explosions, but they are very violent and very powerful explosions, nonetheless.
“There goes Dannemora Supermax Fulfillment Center,” Gus utters, his tone ominous. “The first of many Everest dot com facilities all over the globe that have been targeted for this hour.”
The reality of the situation hits home.
“That means Everest will retaliate with a counter-strike.”
“Yes, they will,” Gus says. “Soon, the Resistance will be in the fight, too. Our operation today at the fulfillment center was only an audition for something much larger, and much more lethal.”
“I can only hope that most of the inmates were able to escape today,” Tony says under his breath.
“Many did,” Gus says. “Some certainly did not.”
“Collateral damage,” I say, gazing at the graves over my shoulder. “The sad casualties of war.
“The war,” Ben says. “The corporate war we’ve been waiting for between the Everest Corporation and the Drake Search Engine Corporation. It’s finally begun.”
“Life won’t be the same for a while,” Tony says. “Neither will dying.”
My stomach grows tight and my blood runs cold.
“I’ll pray for a very short war,” I say, repeating the words of a great, long dead writer.
“I’ll pray that God is listening,” Gus says.
Together, Ben and Tony make their way across the lawn to the four open graves. Both of them grab a shovel a piece and proceed to assist their fellow Resistance soldiers in burying the dead. As I watch them working, my heart beats for them both. As the corporate war begins, so does my love for two men. Both wars will be a struggle.
A struggle for the ages.
THE END
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About the Author
Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for MOONLIGHT WEEPS, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and AMAZON KINDLE No.1 bestselling author of more than 30 novels including THE REMAINS, EVERYTHING BURNS, ORCHARD GROVE and the soon to be released, THE DETONATOR. Zandri's list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, Polis Books, and Oceanview Publishing. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated in the Dutch, Russi
an, French, Italian, Japanese, and Polish. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and FOX news. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the "Best Books of 2014." Recently, Suspense Magazine selected WHEN SHADOWS COME as one of the "Best Books of 2016". A freelance photojournalist and the author of the popular "lit blog," The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Writers Digest, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more. He lives in Albany, New York and Florence, Italy. For more go to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Vincent Zandri © copyright 2019
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published in the United States of America
The author is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary