“It was planned that way,” the familiar voice spoke from the open office door. Hank Milam stood there.
Jim waved him in while his secretary closed the door behind him. Hank took a seat and Jim pointed toward the coffeepot.
The priest shook his head. “I just drank about a gallon of water from the cooler in the outer office. It’s hotter than the fringes of Hell outside.” He smiled. “By the way, that is a very interesting sign over at the bank.”
“Planned that way by whom, Hank?” Scott asked.
“Perhaps by the devil,” the priest said matter-of-factly. “How could you have civil unrest and riots and a complete breakdown of civility and law and order with all the authority figures in place?”
Jim sighed and shook his head.
“You sound awfully certain that’s what’s going to take place, Hank,” Gary said.
“As sure as we’re sitting here,” the priest replied. “I’ve spent the last hour stocking up on canned foods and bottled water. I suggest that you all do the same. At least a thirty-day supply per person, and preferably more than that. There is no telling how long this will last until the end comes.”
“Now, damnit, Hank!” Jim said, half-rising out of his chair.
“Wait a minute,” Scott said. “Just wait a minute. Calm down, Jim. Let’s say, for the sake of debate, that Hank is right. Hank, why does the end have to come? Why can’t we beat this thing?”
Hank smiled. “Beat the devil? How?”
“Well,” the FBI man said. “Well, we could . . .” He paused for a moment, shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Hank, I don’t even know what the devil is.”
“That’s right. You don’t know. Nobody here on earth really knows for sure. But for the past eleven months, I’ve been studying everything I could find on the Dark Prince. What is the devil? I’ll tell you: the most powerful force on the face of the earth, that’s what he is. The devil is indestructible, defeatable only by God. Why is the devil undefeatable by mere man? Because while God rules the Heavens, the devil rules the earth. Now, while the devil is able to perform all sorts of tricks, producing violent thunderstorms and lightning, rain down urine and excrement, make electronics do funny things—like that sign across the street—and all sorts of other mischievous things, the devil needs humankind to assist him in other more complicated endeavors. And, oh my, folks, he’s got millions of very willing and eager helpers. If you doubt that, just look at what’s happening here in Memphis this day. And according to the news, the same thing is happening all over the nation. It’s all part of the devil’s plan. First a breakdown of law and order. That’s what’s occurring now. Just look out the window. After a few days, it will ease somewhat; for how long, I don’t know. The lawlessness will resume again, but this time with more violent and deadly occurrences. The authorities will be unable to contain it. There will be riots and wanton mass destruction of property and murder and mayhem . . .”
Hank fell silent. The others stared at him and waited. All noted that the priest looked very tired.
“. . . As the people begin to realize what is happening, church attendance will pick up quite dramatically,” Hank said, his voice low. “For a brief time. But as the terror continues, indeed, increases, as the devil converts more and more souls to his side, the congregations will dwindle. Not because of loss of faith, but because of loss of life. Those who have either willingly or unwillingly aligned with the Prince of Darkness will be seeking out the Christians and killing them . . . in the most hideous ways. Then, when there are no more Christians to be found, they’ll turn on each other. The war to end all wars.” Hank sighed heavily. “Jim, I think I will take that offer of coffee. I am tired. I need the caffeine to pick me up.”
Jim poured him a mug of coffee, while the others in the room stared in shocked silence, first at Hank, then at each other.
Katti said, “Hank, you believe this heat wave is being caused by the ... devil?”
Hank took a sip of coffee. “Oh, yes. Certainly. The devil can do all sorts of things with the elements. The elements are hovering close to earth. I told you: the devil rules the earth.”
Scott checked his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office. You all take care. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You can be sure of that,” Hank said, looking down at his coffee mug.
Scott paused at the office door. “Hank, do you really think we should all stock up on food and water?”
“Absolutely. And get some cash, too. Oh, and stock up on one more thing.”
Everyone in the room looked at him.
“Ammunition,” the priest said softly.
* * *
Cole and Katti drove to a supermarket and bought several hundred dollars’ worth of canned foods and bottled water. Cole then drove to a sporting goods store and bought a case each of .223, 9 mm, and twelve-gauge shotgun shells.
“Going to start a war?” the clerk kidded him.
Cole smiled. “I believe in being prepared.”
“No kidding?” The clerk looked outside. “Is this damn heat ever going to break?”
“Eventually. But when it does, there’ll be a hell of a storm, I bet.”
Cole bought, several other articles, then he and Katti loaded up. The Bronco was packed full of gear when Cole finally closed the tailgate.
He and Katti sat in the Bronco for a time, looking at the radio. It was off, but music was pushing through the speakers—distorted and jumbled music. There was nothing familiar about it. The instruments were all out of tune and the vocalizing was mainly shrieking and wailing and moaning. Cole punched the radio on and hit all the buttons. No matter what button he hit, the garbled and horrible sounds were the same.
“What is that mess?” Katti asked.
Cole shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t make any sense out of it.”
Then the music stopped.
The silence was a blessed thing.
Katti cut her eyes to Cole. He had a very odd expression on his face. “What is it?” she asked.
“Hell,” he replied.
“What?”
“The music.”
“What about it?”
Cole looked at his wife. “I believe it was from Hell.”
* * *
At noon, Jim told the few people who worked in the office to close up shop and take a few days off. With pay. He’d let them know when to return. He pulled everybody in from the field, briefed them, and told them to go home and protect their families.
“I’ll start stocking up with canned goods and water and ammo,” Gary said. “I’ll load up the back of my pickup. Where will you be?”
“I want to drive out to Mrs. Pearson’s home, check on Beverly. When you’ve geared up, go on out to my house and wait for me. I’ll be honest with you: Hank scared the shit out of me.”
“You are not alone,” the PI responded. “See you in a couple of hours.”
Mrs. Ruth Pearson was a very attractive woman in her early to mid-fifties. Her home was a mansion in the most exclusive part of Memphis. But Jim sized it up immediately as being indefensible. It was too large, with too many windows and doors that a child could kick open. It would take a full platoon of trained infantry to defend the place.
Jim expected the wealthy woman to laugh at him when he explained all that Hank Milam had said. But she merely nodded her head and said, “I’ll pack a few things.”
“I don’t know, as yet, where to take you, us. Where we’ll all be safe, should this thing escalate.”
“I do,” Ruth said simply.
* * *
In Memphis, at two o’clock that afternoon, the federal building where the FBI was located was bombed. Someone loaded a large van with approximately two thousand pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and drove it up the steps and right through the front doors of the new complex. The damage was enormous and the loss of life high. No one would ever know who the driver was, because there wasn’t enough left of the person to determine even if
it was a human being. Floors started caving in on each other in a domino effect. Special Agent George Steckler was out in the field, working on a local bank robbery, and Special Agent in Charge Scott Frey had just walked out of the building and across the street to get a sandwich; he had missed lunch and was hungry. The blast knocked him out of his chair and slammed him to the floor and that probably saved his life, for the front windows of the cafe blew out and shards of flying glass killed several patrons.
Scott was bruised and dazed, but otherwise unhurt.
But the Memphis office of the FBI was, for the moment, out of business.
At precisely the moment the federal building in Memphis exploded, twenty other federal buildings, in major cities from New York to Los Angeles, Detroit to Houston, exploded in fire and fury and death. The death toll was horrendous; nationwide, Americans were on the raw edge of panic.
The press, print and broadcast (but especially broadcast, to give them credit where it’s due), were at their finest. They were spread thin, but reporting what they knew—which was very little at this early stage—and doing their best not to create any more panic in the streets.
Congress was called into emergency session, and for once, Republicans and Democrats worked together with the President and reached the same conclusion: the nation was under terrorist attack. The military was placed on high alert and a number of National Guard units were activated.
Certainly the nation was under terrorist attack, but not the sort of terrorism government leaders suspected. And they wouldn’t have believed Hank Milam even had they asked for his opinion—which they had not yet done. And by the time somebody in a position of authority and responsibility did, Hank would still have only half the answers to the problem. And no solution.
* * *
Katti hated to leave her home, but she knew that strength lay in numbers, and the house was just too small for the number of people in the group.
Cole hitched up a trailer and rode a four-wheeler up on it, lashed it down, and stacked more supplies around the all-terrain vehicle. He covered everything with a tarp, and secured it.
Cole came up behind Katti and put his big hands on her shoulders. “With any kind of luck, the place will be here when we get back,” he tried to assured her.
She shook her head. “No, it won’t, Cole. If just a tiny part of what Hank is predicting comes true, the looting and rioting will quickly spread out of the city. Oh, the rock walls will be standing here, but the rest of it . . .” She turned to face him. “You ready to go?”
“I’m ready. Beverly and Ruth are leading this little convoy. Right now, we’re waiting for Gary and his girlfriend.”
“Sue.”
“Yep.”
Katti smiled. “I like her. She’s a character.” She sobered. “Any further word on the death count at the federal building?”
“No. Scott said it’ll be a couple of days at the earliest. But at least he and George are all right.”
Jim got out of his Jeep Cherokee and walked over to Cole and Katti. Hank was talking with Ruth and Beverly, the women sitting in Ruth’s car.
“The more I think about this, the more I think it’s very premature,” Jim said.
“You could be right,” Cole replied. “But have you been listening to your scanner?”
In addition to other sophisticated electronic gear in their vehicles, they had scanners, with the frequencies of the Memphis PD and the county sheriff’s office programmed in.
Jim nodded. “I see your point. Memphis is certainly coming apart. Yeah. Maybe we’re just playing it safe.” He paused. “I called the ladies who make up my office staff to see if any of them wanted to come along with us. They said no. I don’t know what else I can do.”
“Did you tell them about Hank’s theory?” Katti asked.
“Yes. They didn’t believe me.” He looked at his watch. “It’s going to be full dark when we get there. It’s a good two-hour drive. More than that if there’s traffic.”
Hank walked up in time to hear Jim’s remark. “It’ll be night when we get there,” the priest agreed.
The music began, very faint, but audible. “Night Train.”
“Very funny,” Hank said sourly.
“That is the point I was making earlier,” Katti said. She pointed to the emptiness of the blue sky. “We can’t get away from that . . . thing. He, it, knows every move we make.”
The music changed. The soothing voice of Tommy Edwards sprang out of the air. “It’s All in the Game.”
Katti shivered. A pickup truck, 4 × 4, pulled into the drive. The bed of the pickup was loaded with supplies.
“That’s Gary and Sue,” Cole said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Hank muttered.
Four
At five o’clock that afternoon, the heat wave that was gripping the entire nation showed no signs of abating. It was over a hundred degrees in most areas. At five-thirty, the subway system of New York City was bombed, bringing the trains to a halt and trapping hundreds of people. The death toll was estimated to be enormously high. A few minutes later, the tunnels linking Manhattan to the outside world were blown closed, trapping millions of people on the island. At seven o’clock, as electrical brown-outs were trapping people in elevators, air conditioners quitting due to the strain, water pressure dropping because of hundreds of opened fire plugs, and the temperature dropping to a mere one hundred degrees, the rioting began in New York, Boston, Washington, and several other cities in the East.
As evening began wrapping the entire nation in a cloak of hot and humid darkness, the rioting spread to every major city in the nation. In many cities, the mayors reluctantly gave the orders for the badly outnumbered police to shoot to kill.
By eight o’clock, the small group from Memphis had reached the country estate of Ruth Pearson. The several hundred acres of woods and gently rolling hills, with twenty-five acres mostly cleared and landscaped around the home, backed up against a river on the east side. The cypress and brick home was built to conform to the land and blended in well.
Cole and Jim exchanged glances. Cole nodded his head and said, “It’s defensible.”
The men began unloading the supplies, while the women began opening windows to let the musty smell out and stripping the furniture of dust covers.
“The house has been closed for almost a year and a half,” Ruth explained. “Ever since my husband’s death. But a local man comes out twice a month to check on things and make certain everything is in working order. We have our own water, and in case the power goes off, there is a large generator in a block building out back. It’s diesel-powered, and drums of fuel are stored in the building next to the generator house.”
Katti and Gary’s girlfriend, Sue Wong, went to the kitchen and started making sandwiches for supper. The Pearsons had installed a very expensive satellite system, capable of picking up television transmissions from all over the nation and Canada, and the men paused for several moments in the bringing in of supplies to listen to a news broadcast. Regular scheduling had been halted and all networks were in a full-time news mode.
To say that the news was grim would be the understatement of the century.
Those cities where the police had not been given authority to use deadly force against the rioters and looters were in a state of siege. The police in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles were slowly gaining the upper hand, due to their use of deadly force against those types of human vermin with a propensity to break the law. But many other cities were in a state of war. Innocent citizens were being terrorized, while the criminal element were being treated with kid gloves.
“We must not violate a criminal’s rights,” Cole said, very sarcastically.
“Yeah,” Jim agreed. “Absolutely.”
“How about the rights of the law-abiding?” Ruth asked.
“They don’t have any,” Beverly told her.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Ruth
said, sitting down on the long sofa. “I don’t understand how you people can know what is happening, and no one else seems to have a clue! Millions of people heard the music coming out of nowhere, they didn’t know what was happening, but you people put it all together instantly.”
“Hank did,” Cole said. “And it’s a long story. Let us get these supplies in and stowed away, and then we’ll explain it ... as best we can, that is.”
Over sandwiches and coffee, the group told of the events of a few weeks last year, up in Northeast Arkansas. About Katti’s brother, Tommy, and his death. They told about their brush with the devil, or, as Hank now believed, something not of this earth. And he would not elaborate further on that. And of the ghost clubs that would materialize on certain nights and lure unsuspecting travelers in ... to their deaths. Of the dead who rose up and walked. And finally, of the massive government cover-up.1
“I remember something about that,” Ruth said. “I was in Europe at the time and read a short article about it in an English language newspaper. Bad water, I believe the paper said caused the, ah, incident.”
“Yes,” Hank said. “Bad water. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the government explains this incident.”
“I’m just wondering if there will be anyone left to explain it to?” Sue asked. Then her eyes touched on a dozen flat hard plastic gun cases leaning up against a wall. “Are those what I think they are?”
“Yes,” Gary told her.
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Sue said.
“I’ll teach you,” Ruth Pearson said. “I’ve been doing skeet shooting since I was a little girl. But I’ve never shot at a human being.”
“It isn’t that difficult,” Cole said. “Dropping the first one is what’s hard.”
Nobody had a thing to add to that. But Cole did receive some rather strange looks.
* * *
After eating, Katti and Ruth and Sue went off to their assigned bedrooms, fresh linens in hand. Beverly stayed, knowing she was going to have to pull a guard duty shift. Cole noticed, as did the others, that Hank had strapped on a .45 autoloader and a magazine pouch with two extra clips for the .45.
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