Resistance: A Prepper's War

by BJ Knights

  Jim looked away from the General back through the one-way glass. “I stopped going,” Jim responded.

  Locke heaved a sigh. “Jim, it’s important you go. What happened to you and your fam-“

  “She was going to kill him,” Jim cut him off nodding to Kate in the room.

  “What?” asked Locke.

  “She had a knife to her husband’s throat. If it came down to it she was going to kill him,” Jim said. “These people don’t care about threats. They don’t care about their families. He turned to leave. “You’re not going to get anything out of her.”

  “Go to the sessions, Jim,” Locke said. “It’ll help.”

  “There isn’t anything that can help me now.” Jim closed the door and left Locke by himself watching the cloth go over Kate’s head one more time as she struggled against the water poured from the bucket onto her face.

  Chapter II

  Chase Brenner, dressed in a fine dark gray suit, crisp white shirt and black tie, watched the news report coming in on the television. All the news channels were in an uproar about the same thing. Military abductions on civilians without warrant or probable cause were causing a hell storm in the media.

  The light from the parlor chandelier kept catching the diamonds in Chase’s watch as he poured bourbon, neat, into a crystal glass.

  Two other men sat across the couches as they sipped on drinks of their own. The elderly of the two men tapped his index finger on the armrest as he watched the interview between the reporter and a military official from the Pentagon. The other man, younger than Chase, was focused on an article in the Wall Street Journal.

  “We could use that,” Chase said sipping from his drink and catching the attention of his guests.

  Chase made his way over to the chair across from where the couch the two me were sitting on. He folded one leg over the other as he swirled the brown liquid in his glass, relishing and sniffing its contents.

  “Sir, it’s too soon to go public. We’ll risk exposing ourselves,” the elderly gentleman said.

  Chase gave a smile. “We’re not going public, Congressman,” Chase reassured him. “Who do we know on the appropriations committee?” he asked.

  The Congressman thought for a moment. “We have Wessick and Furth on that committee, sir.”

  The younger man next to the Congressman put the paper down and leaned forward, intrigued. “Leverage?” he asked.

  “Precisely,” Chase responded. He put his glass down and folded his hands in his lap. “The media is in a frenzy about the lack of constitutional rights our country seems to be going through. We’ll have our liberal friends push this as far as they can, trying to pass legislation through that’ll require more transparency in our military’s operations to Congress,” Chase said.

  The Congressman shook his head not quite following. “Even if we did it would take months to get the bill passed and we don’t have that kind of time,” he said.

  Chase looked at the Congressman like a father practicing patience on a child learning something new. “The bill isn’t meant to be passed, Congressman. We just need it to cause a stir. The more obstacles we can get our enemies to juggle, the better our chances of success,” Chase explained.

  The younger man smiled. “I’ll reach out to their offices,” he said.

  “Thank you, Derrick,” Chase replied and Derrick left the room, leaving Chase and the Congressman alone with the television.

  “Your brother is quite the ambitious one,” the Congressman said fiddling nervously with his hands.

  “Yes, he is,” Chase replied.

  Congressman Jones finally summoned the courage to speak what was on his mind. “Mr. Brenner,” he said, “I think that we may be biting off more than we can handle at the moment.”

  Chase narrowed his eyes on Jones as he sipped from his glass.

  Jones’ hands continued to flutter in his lap and he tried to reposition himself on the couch as he started to become uncomfortable. “I’m just trying to say that with the large number of people the military has been able to poach over the last few months maybe now’s not the best time move forward. What if they told them something?”

  “My people understand the meaning of conviction, Congressman,” Chase replied.

  “You don’t think they gave anything up?” the Congressman asked.

  Chase held up his glass to the light and examined it. “Do you know how long it takes to distill bourbon, Congressman?” Chase asked.

  Jones seemed confused by the question. “I… I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” he responded.

  Chase leaned forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees as he held the glass in both hands like it was a precious gift. “Most manufacturers require that the liquor is distilled for no less than four years. Now, if you want to really get the most out of the bourbon you want to age it between eight and ten years. That is where you’ll get the optimal flavor.”

  “But after ten years the aging process gets tricky. The wood from the barrels start to overtake the flavor of the bourbon. Most manufacturers don’t try aging barrels that long because if it goes sour they’ll lose profits.”

  The Congressman moved uneasily in his chair. His face was turning paler and the loose skin under his neck started to shake.

  “There are a few distillers thought that are willing to risk it because, if stored properly and in the right conditions, the bourbon can become even more flavorful as time goes by, mixing and fermenting the contents of the barrel into something that’s never been tasted before.”

  Chase took his eyes off of the glass and focused them on Congressman Jones and continued his story as he rose from his chair. “Now, the only way to check to see if an aged barrel has gone bad is to taste it. If it turns out the barrel has gone sour, then it’s discarded.”

  Congressman Jones kept his eyes on the floor as Chase walked closer to him. His hands grappled his pant leg as he tried to contain his nervousness.

  “Unlike most bourbon manufacturers, I don’t have the fear of losing out on profits to see what can be created,” Chase said and grabbed the Congressman’s chin and lifted it up so he could look him in the eye. With his hand still on the Congressman’s chin he rubbed his thumb over the Congressman’s lips and bent down to whisper in his ear. “Don’t go sour on me now, Congressman,” Chase said.

  Chase walked off and left Jones on the couch by himself, breathing rapidly and putting his hand to his heart as he yelled back behind him. “Make sure Wessick and Furth do their job!” Chase barked.

  Once Chase was out of the parlor room and into the hallway, he began the walk down to his office. His footsteps echoed off of the finished oak floors up into the high ceilings of the house. He passed paintings, sculptures, and elegantly decorative furniture. The house looked more like a museum than a home. When he reached his office he opened the door to find Derrick sitting in the chair across from his desk typing away on his laptop.

  “Where are we at with Kearny’s widow?” Chase demanded.

  “Still looking for her,” Derrick responded.

  She was the missing link for him right now. Out of all of the people that disappeared he needed to find her the most.

  Derrick looked up and noticed the frustration on his brother’s face. “Why are you so convinced that Matt would have sent it to her?” he asked.

  Chase sat down forcefully onto his char and he leaned back as he bit his thumbnail. “Because,” he said, “we should have received his back up code by now and if his instructions weren’t to send it to us, then he must have sent it to her.”

  Derrick closed his laptop to focus his attention on his brother. “We’ve had our contacts watch all possible avenues. If Matt had instructions for a delivery then we would know about it.”

  “Keep an eye on the Congressman for me. He seems to be losing his nerve,” Chase said.

  Derrick nodded and reached for his phone. He instructed one of the guards to tail the Congressman and then dialed over to his st
aff’s office to confirm that he reached out to Furth and Wessick.

  Chase powered on his computer and opened up a file labeled ‘Matt Kearny.’ He browsed through pictures of Matt with his wife Samantha and daughter Annie. Birthday parties, vacations, it was all there in front of him. The sum of one man’s life that had worked for him compressed down into one gigabyte of data. He clicked on a subfolder labeled ‘Work’ and it opened up files of code and projects that Matt was in charge of.

  Chase never really interacted with Matt directly, but he was always impressed by the diligence in which he processed his work. Matt never missed an assignment, failed to hit a deadline, or showed any sign of disloyalty. The fact that he hadn’t received Matt’s final code sheet raised some concerns.

  “Wessick and Furth are good to go,” Derrick said getting off the phone.

  “Good,” Chase replied. “Where are we with San Diego?” Chase asked.

  “Everything’s on schedule. You were right in anticipating the President to bring home troops to help stabilize the country after the attacks. There’s over a quarter million soldiers in the southern California area right now,” Derrick said.

  “So predictable,” Chase drawled.

  “Do you need me for anything else?” Derrick asked.

  Chase looked at his brother and smiled. “No, you can go,” he said. Derrick folded up his laptop and headed out the door; just before Derrick left, Chase called out to him.

  “I love you, Derrick.”

  “I love you too, Chase.”

  Derrick shut the door behind him and Chase listened to his brother’s footsteps fade down the hallway. He around in his chair and looked at a family portrait of himself, his brother, mother, and father taken when they were children. Chase had to have been eleven and Derrick was six.

  They fought all the time when they were younger. Derrick had tried to beat him in everything, but always fell short. Chase was smarter, faster, and stronger at everything they competed in.

  He remembered one time when he was fifteen and was playing his brother in a game of one-on-one on the driveway of their parents’ home in Indiana. Chase had just hit his first growth spurt and was a good foot taller than his brother at the time. He had just won his third game in a row when his father came out and pulled him aside.

  Chase’s dad was never one for backing down, but he told Chase to let his brother win one. He told him that it would mean so much to Derrick to actually beat him at something. Chase started the game and let Derrick score a few early points, but then started to attack him.

  He scored again, and again, and again pushing his younger brother out of the way, knocking him down, whatever he had to do to humiliate him. The final score of that game was four to twenty-one. His brother ran off crying and when his father walked up to Chase and asked him why he’d done that, Chase answered casually. “You never let someone weaker than you beat you. If you do, then you become weak,” Chase said, looking up at his father.

  It was the first time his father had ever told him he was proud of him, and that mindset and philosophy stayed with him for his entire life. He had the ability to crush anything that came against him and he was on the verge of crippling the world’s biggest superpower and reinventing it in his own image.

  His father’s words fueled him. He would become more powerful than his father had ever dreamed of being. The planning he’d done over the past twenty years was finally coming to fruition.

  He had influence, money, and power on his side and, just like that day over twenty years ago when he humiliated his brother in basketball, he would humiliate the United States Federal Government.

  Chase closed the window of Matt’s work file and just before he was about to shut down the laptop he saw the thumbnail of another picture that caught his eye. He opened up the file and there was a picture of Matt, Samantha, and Annie with birthday hats on celebrating Annie’s third birthday.

  He leaned in close to the screen to get a good look at the final missing piece of his puzzle.

  “Where are you?” he asked to himself.

  Chapter III

  When Samantha Kearny opened the door to her daughter’s room that morning, Annie was still as water. The only sign of motion from the 5-year-old’s bed was Jim’s cat Tigs who looked up at Samantha and meowed tiredly.

  “Annie?” Samantha whispered. “It’s time to get up, hunny.”

  Annie didn’t move. Her eyes were wide-awake and she just stared into the corner of the room avoiding her mother’s presence.

  Her daughter hadn’t spoken a word since she saw her father die three months ago. The doctors all agreed it was shock and that the girl would speak again, but it would just take time. How long that time was though the doctor’s couldn’t say. All they told her was to keep everything as normal as possible to allow her to get back into a routine of what her life used to be; a routine that no longer involved her father.

  The military had set them up in an apartment just north of San Francisco in a small town called Santa Rosa. It was their way of telling them how sorry they were for their loss. Because everyone knows that a cramped apartment in a town where you don’t know anyone is a perfectly acceptable replacement for the loss of a father, husband, and home. They hadn’t even had a chance to bury Matt’s body yet because the government was still “examining” the remains. Another reason the military was so willing to pay for a new place for them to live since Phoenix had been burned to the ground.

  Samantha scooped Annie up in her arms and Tigs bounced off the bed and followed them into the kitchen. She set Annie down at the table and then fired up the skillet.

  “How about eggs and hash browns today?” Samantha asked. It was Annie’s favorite dish and lately she was trying anything to get her daughter to say something, anything, but Annie simply stared at the kitchen table while Tigs weaved in and out of her chair’s legs.

  Samantha cracked open the eggs into the skillet and they sizzled in the pan. She pulled the hash browns out of the freezer and piled a plate of them into the microwave. The microwave beeped and Samantha grabbed the plate of piping hot hash browns and scraped some of them off onto a plate next to a pile of scrambled eggs. She set the plate right in front of Annie and made herself one too.

  Annie picked up the fork and poked at the eggs on her plate, but ate nothing.

  “Eat, sweetheart,” Samantha urged.

  Tigs jumped up on the chair and then climbed onto the table. The cat plopped right down next to Annie’s plate of food, staring at the girl.

  “You better hurry before Tigs gets it,” Samantha said as the cat gave a meow. The little animal then nudged the girl’s arm and Annie picked up the fork and put a small piece of hash brown into her mouth. Samantha smiled as the cat sat patiently while Annie slowly picked away at the plate in front of her.

  When the doorbell rang, Samantha almost dropped the fork in her hand. They hadn’t had any visitors since they arrived. The only person that knew where she lived was the military personnel aid that helped them move in and handled the paperwork.

  Samantha peeked through the peephole and there stood a small, balding man no taller than five feet in a black suit and tie. Samantha stood back and ran towards her bedroom quietly.

  She pulled out a small 9mm pistol no bigger than her hand out of her dresser drawer from a small lockbox hidden beneath her socks. She loaded a magazine, racked the chamber, and tucked the pistol in the waistband of her jeans under her shirt.

  Samantha cracked the door open, making sure she kept the chain latched on the door. “Can I help you?” Samantha asked.

  “Mrs. Kearny, I apologize for showing up unannounced,” the man started.

  “How do you know who I am?” she demanded.

  He padded his jacket looking for something. When he reached inside his coat Samantha drew the pistol out in the crack of the door and the man’s hands shot up in the air.

  “Don’t move,” she whispered.

  “Mrs. Kearny, again my apologies.
I’m not here to do you any harm. I was simply looking for my card,” he said startled.

  “Who are you?” Samantha asked with the gun still pointed at him.

  “My name is Kevin Mears,” he said as he dipped into a small bow. He then slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out his card and handed it to her while forcing a nervous smile.

  Samantha closed the door as she examined the card. It had his name on it along with the name of the firm he was with: Woolen, Woolen, and Mears.

  She shut the door and flipped the card over in her hands as she weighed her options of what to do. She knew that Jim would want her to contact the military before anything happened, but she couldn’t help but feel that if somebody wanted to hurt her they would have sent someone a little bigger.