Washington D.C. was abuzz with kinetic movement on every street corner. Restaurants, hotels, motels, and stores were all operating. The metropolitan migration wasn’t lost on D.C., as thousands of neighboring citizens flocked to the city in search of answers for the disaster that had befallen their homes and neighborhoods. The police and military were overwhelmed by the influx and helpless to contain it. The majority of migrants from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia had traveled on foot and were desperate for assistance; however, the District of Columbia was concerned with its own survival.
Mason approached a yuppie couple near a boarded-up Smithsonian Museum if he could use their cell phone. His own phone had been lost for some time, and Mason had no other choice but to try to reach out to the one contact he had within the White House, an old Air Force buddy who worked for the President’s Chief of Staff.
Mason had made it to Washington not in the decades-old Humvee he had commandeered and driven across state lines, but via a military cargo truck that was taking people into the city as part of a massive relief program.
He had made it as far as Charlotte before the Humvee overheated and burned out. But the details of his travel into D.C. weren’t as important as his resolve. Wearing the oversized clothes provided by the hospital in Georgia and carrying only a small, airtight package containing the USB drive, Mason made the call as the couple patiently waited. Unfortunately, the call went directly to voicemail, and he waited for the beep.
“Jack, this is Mason, I’m outside the Smithsonian and need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Please come here as soon as you get this message. I’ll be waiting.”
Mason handed the phone back to the couple and thanked them. As they walked away, he paced back and forth nervously, constantly looking over his shoulder. The traffic and the hordes of people were unprecedented, even for D.C. Within moments, he was surrounded by a horde of black SUVs. Whether they were Secret Service or a conglomerate of secret agents, he didn’t know.
Several men in black suits jumped out of the vehicles, armed with handguns. He could see what was coming and knew he had only one option left. Mason pulled the USB drive from his pocket, opened the packet, and swallowed it. It didn’t go down easily, and he nearly choked after being tackled to the ground.
They took him to an undisclosed underground bunker and put him in a holding room with only a table and two chairs in it. He sat in the empty room, contemplating his official role as an enemy of the state. He wondered if Jack had ratted him out, if they had intercepted the call, or if they got to his friend somehow.
Surprisingly, Scott Jenkins, the NSA director himself, walked in with a smug expression across his face. “You know what I want to know,” he said, getting right to the point. “The President is going to deliver an address soon, and he’s going to propose a declaration of war against the countries that launched the EMP attack against us. That’s what’s going to happen, and there’s nothing that you or I can do about it.” He paused, waiting for Mason to respond before continuing. “It’s immutable. You know what I mean. So let’s talk to each other man to man. Where is the thumb drive?”
Mason stared blankly at the cement wall in front of him and just laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jenkins asked, perturbed.
Mason pulled on the handcuffs at his wrists. “I lost the thumb drive. I don’t have anything. And guess what? You win. That’s why I’m laughing. I’m laughing because people like you always win. Corrupt to the core, your type always seem to come out on top, but one day you’ll burn like the rest of us.” He took a deep breath. “You really think that you can conduct a World War to your benefit?” Mason laughed again. “Hell, you’re much more optimistic than me.” As soon as he finished, Mason spat into the NSA director’s face as hard as he could. Jenkins slowly wiped his face with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket.
“Have it your way, Mr. Turner. You don’t want to play ball, fine. I’m going to have fun with you. I’m going to see to it that you spend the rest of your life in a tiny little cell with no windows and no contact with the outside world. One phone call and I can make it all happen. Now do you want to try again?”
Mason looked up at the fluorescent bulbs above him, then turned to Jenkins. “It sure is nice to bask in the warm glow of electricity again.”
Disappointed, Jenkins shook his head. “Is that some kind of joke? Does your little observation have a point?”
Mason looked away.
“No matter,” Jenkins said. “You were the last one we had to worry about. Now that we’ve got you, no one in the administration will ever know.”
Jenkins turned to the door and began to walk out. His dress shoes clicked against the concrete floor as Mason called out to him.
“What?” Jenkins asked, facing him.
“She didn’t deserve to die.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca, my girlfriend. Your agency murdered her in cold blood, for what? To get at me?”
“I admit, it was a bit of an overreach,” Jenkins said, sounding formal and detached.
“Mark my words, Jenkins, you will pay for your crimes, one way or another.”
Jenkins turned and exited the holding cell without saying another word. The lights shut off and the room went pitch black. Mason dropped his head while pondering his fate. His body was so damaged and full of pain that he didn’t think he had anything left in him.
The people Mason was fighting represented forces so powerful in their ambition that it made no difference how smart or resourceful Mason or others like him might be. They would see to it that their plans came into fruition, despite how many lives they had to destroy.
Having just been informed of Mason’s confinement, Jack left the White House and rushed down the corridors of the nearby underground bunker to try to see him. His hands were full, dealing with the nearing Presidential address and other responsibilities of a deputy secretary. He had to call in a favor from a guard he knew to gain entrance to Mason’s cell. When he found his old acquaintance, Jack wasn’t sure what to say.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Mason looked up. “Are we alone?”
“What?”
“Are they listening to us?”
“Who?” Jack asked. “Listen, I have a lot of shit going on right now. I don’t know what you got yourself into, but now is not the time.”
“Now is the only time,” Mason said. “It’s too late for me. I want to give you something, and I want you to show it to the President before he delivers his address.”
“I don’t have time for this, Mason.”
“Just listen to me, you dense asshole!” Mason shouted. “Give me one minute, and I’ll give you something that will change the course of everything.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Get these cuffs off me, and I’ll show you,” Mason said.
After some arguing, Jack finally called the guard outside the room to remove the handcuffs from Mason. Once freed, Mason stood up and stuck his finger down his throat, like a true spy. “This isn’t going to be pretty, but it’s necessary. I’m going to give you something and you have to promise me that you’ll show it to the President and the President only.”
“What in the hell are you doing?” Jack asked, disgusted.
Mason ignored him and knelt on the floor, hunched over as he gagged and vomited the USB drive out of his system, painful as it was. Jack nearly ran out of the room in disgust, but he soon realized there might be some validity in what Mason was telling him.
Washington D.C. 4:55 a.m. Monday, October 5, 2020
The road to D.C. was long and arduous, but they eventually made it by the early hours of the morning. It was breathtaking to see a vibrant city at work, though checkpoints had been established at several key places and the ocean of traffic leading into the city inched along only intermittently. Terrance breathed in the fresh air and tried to take in the kinetic stimuli of the city.
T
he old van had made it despite Terrance’s doubts. They’d had to stop and siphon fuel at every opportunity, because most of it had already been stolen. Throughout the journey, they saw wanton destruction everywhere they drove: South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Desolation in all directions, and there seemed no place safe enough to stop and rest.
D.C. was different. It was their light at the end of a tunnel, and despite the large influx of people into the city, Terrance and Mark were relieved to see that they had made it to somewhere civilized. Everyone else in the back of the van was sleeping. Mark and Terrance had taken turns at the wheel, and their arrival felt like a remarkable cornerstone in their journey. They took a moment to observe the bustling city with awe. Capitol Hill was only a few miles away, and Mark could see the Washington Monument in view.
“We did right by coming here,” Terrance said confidently.
Mark glanced at the nearby military checkpoint. “Where are we going to stay? What are we going to do?”
Terrance looked ahead, easing on the brake pedal as five lanes of traffic, once again, came to a halt. “We got friends here,” he said. “Old friends of ours, Phillip and Ellen. They’ll take us in. You and Janice are welcome to stay with us.”
“I appreciate that,” Mark said. “I really do.”
“No problem, buddy.”
Mark looked around again. The sky was getting lighter as the moon began to fade. There were stationary spotlights everywhere, moving in unison. Helicopters buzzed overhead in droves. The sidewalks were clogged with people walking in both directions. Sirens blared, taxis weaved in and out of traffic, and news vans were parked everywhere. Mark had been to D.C. before, and he knew it to be a very busy place, but he had never seen it so overwhelmed. After being cut off for weeks, it was jarring to find themselves among millions of others in a blitzkrieg of sensory overload.
Mark looked back and smiled at the sleeping passengers. He then turned to Terrance. “James would have hated it here, that’s for sure.”
“You got that right,” Terrance answered.
Traffic moved forward when he suddenly took a hard right down an empty back street along a line of old buildings. The sudden shift shook Janice and Christina awake and further confused Mark. Terrance then pulled the van to the side of the road into the parking lot of a closed convenience store.
“What are we doing here?” Mark asked.
“I need a break,” Terrance answered. He shut the engine off as Christina leaned forward to look out the front window. They were parked near a small lake as the sun slowly rose over the horizon. No one else was around. Janice yawned from the back and rubbed her eyes. Terrance swung open his door and stepped outside. He let out a big groan of relief as he stretched.
Mark soon followed as Christina gently nudged Tobias and the others awake. Janice crawled out and took in the fresh air. Once everyone was out of the van, they looked out toward the lake as the sun continued to rise, its light reflected in the calm ripples. An Osprey swooped into the water, only concerned with its morning feeding ritual. Tobias, Richie, and Paula stretched and looked around in a daze, curious that there were no other people there.
Terrance stared into the lake with his arm around Christina as she rested her head on his chest. “So far so good,” he said.
Mark and Janice paced around the parking lot together to get the blood flowing through their legs. Tobias and Richie were busy talking over each other about all their different plans in the city. They talked of hotel rooms, electronics, watching TV, swimming, and anything else they could think of. They felt connected again. They felt alive.
“Guess the downside is that we’ll have to go back to school eventually,” Richie said.
“What about Gabby?” Tobias asked, catching his brother off-guard.
Richie suddenly looked at the ground, nearly ashamed. “Yeah, I guess I should give her a call.”
Tobias hit him on the back, startling him. “I’ll race you to the nearest McDonalds!”
He bolted off as Richie ran off after him. They scaled past the van and onto the deserted street. Terrance whipped around like a hawk and shouted to the boys. “Don’t go runnin’ off. Get on back here!” He separated from Christina and Paula and marched off to retrieve them as they darted around like boys in a playground.
Mark and Janice walked toward the pier overlooking the lake.
“We need to get in contact with our folks,” Janice said, “make sure they’re OK.”
“Yes, definitely,” Mark said.
“It’s going to be hard though. I mean, how are we going to track down everyone we know to make sure they’re OK?”
Mark took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tilted his head up. “We simply go down the list, one at a time. Terrance invited us to stay with their friends in D.C.”
“That’s nice of them,” Janice said.
“Very nice indeed,” Mark added.
From the street, Terrance gave up trying to catch up with his boys. They’d be back, he thought. He leaned into the van and turned the ignition key, activating the battery. He was relieved to see it still worked. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. He had retrieved something from their second trip to Atlanta, something that he had forgotten the first time. He walked to the back of the old, rusty van and opened the back double-doors. They squeaked horribly, as did everything else, and Terrance pulled his rucksack out and placed it on the ground.
“So tell me what’s on your mind, sweetheart,” Christina said to Paula. Her daughter had been in some type of comatose trance over the past week, ever since they entered Camp Liberty. She couldn’t figure it out, and it worried her.
“I miss James,” Paula said.
Christina paused and gave her a knowing look of understanding. “We all do, Paula. We all do.”
Terrance whistled and waved for everyone to gather around him near the back of the van. In his arms, he held up a bright red wind-up emergency radio like it was the Heisman trophy. With the van stereo long out of commission ages before the EMP strikes, the emergency radio represented their personal window into the connected world. Terrance cranked the handle and proceeded to turn the dial while holding the radio in the air for a signal. He could hear pops of static, followed by some voices.
“I got something!” he shouted. “Come here, quick.”
Tobias and Richie rolled their eyes and strolled over apathetically. Their minds were focused on tablets, cell phones, and computers while their father was getting excited over a windup radio. Though whatever had him excited appeared to be important. “Listen!” Terrance said. “I think it’s a news report.”
Everyone gathered around as Terrance continued moving the radio around the air. He finally picked up the signal of what seemed to be an urgent news broadcast. The reporter spoke a mile a minute about some “big development” that had just occurred. Something, he said, that would change the world forever. Terrance leaned against the back of the van. “Now quiet. And listen,” he said.
The announcer continued. “Moments ago, the President delivered an urgent address to the American people in what has been called one of the most shattering speeches in recent history. In this speech, President Redgrave not only acknowledged the long road ahead to restoring the nation’s power grid, he also addressed those responsible for launching the devastating and unprecedented high altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks across the nation. The stunning address was made directly from the Oval Office, and while there are still an estimated two hundred million citizens without power and no means to hear the speech, the President urged state governments to pass his words down to everyone affected by this unspeakable crippling of our nation’s infrastructure.”
Terrance turned the small radio up as loud as it would go, while Mark and Janice looked at each other in heightened anticipation. Even Tobias and Richie looked interested, if not captivated, by what they were hearing on the radio.
“I repeat, the speech ended only moments ago. The President placed blam
e for the attacks directly on two of the most powerful countries in the world: Russia and China. His speech is being called a rousing call to rebuild by some and a delusional conspiracy theory by others. But enough paraphrasing, we’re going to replay the brief speech before we engage in further analysis. Here’s President Redgrave, live from the Oval Office only moments ago.”
The group readied themselves as the broadcast switched to a repeat of the Presidential address.
“My fellow Americans, I deliver this message today not to promise any immediate answers or overnight fixes. I wish today to give you the entire picture, the unfiltered truth, and the main consequences that lie ahead. I promise to tell you as much as I can within the limits of national security and ongoing investigations. I want to first offer my most sincere gratitude to our law enforcement personnel, our emergency responders, our hospitals, doctors, and nurses, and, of course, our men and women in the Unites States military. This country couldn’t even begin to make the repairs necessary without your assistance.”
The President took a deep breath, then continued.
“I’ve done a lot of soul searching the past six hours, and in the meantime demanded an investigation into an apparent conspiracy within my own Presidential Cabinet, a scheme to lie, manipulate, and cause further destruction to the United States of America.”
The President nervously sighed again.
“At 12:30 a.m. Eastern time, I was alerted by my Chief of Staff about information that proves beyond a reasonable doubt who was responsible for the EMP strikes. It is one thing to indict a foreign nation about the attacks on our homeland, it’s an entirely different thing to discover that the attacks were done in willing concert with officials in my administration. The former director of the NSA, Mr. Scott Jenkins, is one of those infiltrators.
“The information that has been presented to me is both shocking and treacherous and I can no longer, in good faith, let this go on. It’s clear that I’ve made several errors of judgment, and appointed cabinet positions which allowed for these terrible strikes to occur.”
End Days Super Boxset Page 214