The apartment door groaned as it was hit again and then again. Lu heard the sickening sound of wood splintering. The door wouldn’t hold. Soon they would be inside the home.
Lu pointed the shotgun in front of him just a few feet from the apartment entrance and waited, surprised and grateful for how calm he felt in the presence of such terrible danger.
He knew those on the other side of the door had just killed his father and he was fully prepared to make them pay for having done so.
The left side of the door frame broke apart. Lu’s right pointer finger felt the cool metallic touch of the shotgun trigger as he decided then the time had come.
America’s race wars had begun.
He fired.
------------------------------
EPISODE TWO:
24-hours after the events in Episode One:
Marion, Illinois
7:18 A.M.
Fifty-seven year old Tom Dolan had been Chief of Police for Marion, Illinois for nearly twelve years and in all that time he never thought he would be seeing the shit hit the fan like it apparently was today. He had grown up in Marion. It was where he had gone to school, played football, and was taught to respect God and family. After graduation he had entered the military and became an Army Ranger and served in deployments all around the world. After eight years of military service he came home and took community college night classes on Uncle Sam’s dime, eventually earning an associates degree in criminology. That degree, along with his military experience allowed him to join the very same police force he once tried to avoid as a teenager full of far more hell-raising rebellion than common sense.
Life is sometimes funny like that.
There was nothing funny about two murders, though.
Dolan was awakened just after 6:00 in the morning by Carol at dispatch. Two black men were shot and left dead in the street a block from the town square clock tower. Their bodies were discovered by old Mel Blume who’d been running the post office since Reagan was president.
Sure wish he was president now. Something tells me the country wouldn’t be blowing itself all to hell if he were still around.
Marion wasn’t so big that it had lost its American small-town feel. With a population of just over seventeen thousand, it remained a bastion of traditional family values that dominated the southern portion of Illinois that was in stark contrast to the far more liberal northern half of the state.
Like most of the country, Chief Dolan spent the previous night watching the news reports of the race riots in Chicago. The most recent law enforcement data indicated at least forty dead and as many as three hundred injured though those numbers were certain to rise as whole blocks of the city were engulfed in flame as the rioting continued for a second day.
And now Tom Dolan was on his way to investigate the murder of two black men in a small city over three hundred miles from the violent chaos that was Chicago.
Three hundred miles wasn’t nearly enough distance. His office was getting law enforcement reports of smaller-scale riots in cities as far away as Miami, Seattle, Boston, and San Diego. Chicago remained the epicenter, but its sickness was spreading quickly via social media and 24/7 news channels.
What the hell is this shit?
Chief Dolan could spot a fed from a thousand yards and usually smell them at an even greater distance than that. Two dark-suited, middle-aged men stood next to a black SUV clearly awaiting the chief of police’s arrival. Also with the federal agents was Detective Mark Raney, Dolan’s second in command in what was the small, twelve-person Marion police department.
The forty-six year old Raney also wanted very much to be the city’s next Chief of Police.
Dolan brought his somewhat bruised and battered seven year old white police cruiser to a stop on the left side of the black SUV and then exited his car slowly, quietly reminding himself not to allow the Feds to annoy him too much.
“Sheriff Tom Dolan?”
Dolan shook his head.
“No, that would be Chief Tom Dolan.”
Both of the federal agents appeared to ignore the correction. The taller of the two, a balding blonde man with a set of large jowls on each side of his face and close-set blue eyes stepped forward and extended his hand. Dolan paused and then shook it.
“And what department are you two boys working out of?”
The shorter man was dark haired, and appeared to Dolan to be Asian. He was thin and visibly tense, his dark eyes darting to various locations up and down the street before settling onto the police chief and answering the question.
“We’re FBI down from the Springfield field office. I’m Agent Wong and this is Agent Timmins.”
Chief Dolan scratched the light stubble that covered much of his face with the fingers of his right hand while sizing up Agent Wong and Timmins. He sensed something wrong about the two men right off but didn’t know yet what it was.
“And what brings you to my city on such a damn shitty morning? I would have figured you’d all be up north trying to put the flames out in Chicago.”
Agent Wong scowled at the remark, his eyes flashing annoyance.
“Actually, Sheriff Dolan we’re here to keep things from potentially blowing up in your city. We have reason to believe the murder of those two men over there was racially motivated and therefore, is a federal matter.”
The six-foot three Tom Dolan stared down at the much shorter Wong, knowing the fed continued to purposely call him Sheriff when the agent knew he was in fact Marion Chief of Police.
“Is that right? Would it be too much for me to ask how in the hell two FBI agents working out of the Springfield office happened to show up at a murder scene in my own city before I did?”
Both agents glanced at one another before the taller Agent Timmons decided to answer.
“We were in the area and received notification of a possible racially motivated double homicide from Detective Raney.”
Raney’s eyes fell to the ground hoping to avoid Chief Dolan’s stare. Dolan silently noted how the detective was standing just behind the two federal agents.
“I’m supposed to believe you two just happened to be in the area around 6:00 a.m. on the very same day we have two dead men left in the street?”
Agent Wong cleared his throat and placed both hands on each of his hips.
“Uh, I’m not sure what you might be implying, Sheriff Dolan, but it was your deputy who alerted us to the situation. We’re here doing our job same as you.”
The police chief turned his head toward the sound of an arriving vehicle and then gave a surprised grunt when he saw it was a white media van from one of the Springfield news stations. Chief Dolan’s eyes narrowed as he looked over at the two federal agents with an even greater degree of suspicion than before.
“You two have any idea on how the Springfield media is showing up so fast? You gonna tell me they just happened to be in the area too?”
Both agents ignored the question and instead made their way toward the van leaving Dolan to glare at Raney as the police chief tried to figure out what part the detective was playing in whatever bullshit the Feds were attempting.
“Care to tell me your version of what the hell is going on, Raney?”
Detective Raney cleared his throat while he continued to avoid looking Chief Dolan in the eyes.
“I just figured with everything going on in Chicago, and now we have these two dead black men, that it would be a good idea to give the Feds a heads up. Maybe we’re dealing with some kind of white vigilante group, and if so, we could use all the help we can get to shut it down before things really get mean around here.”
He’s lying.
Raney was a decent detective but couldn’t lie to save his own life. Chief Dolan was left wondering why his detective was lying to him. He scanned the area for any clues. The street was already blocked off a quarter mile in either direction but as the community woke up, the bystanders would start to gather.
Marion was primarily wh
ite, with just a few hundred black families calling it home. That meant that if the two dead bodies were locals, there was a better than fair chance Chief Dolan would recognize them.
“Uh, Sheriff Dolan, we need you to stay away from the crime scene please. This is a federal investigation.”
Dolan ignored Wong’s request and reached the two bodies that lay face down against the street pavement. The police chief turned the first body over and then the second. Then he stood up to look back at the FBI agents.
“These two aren’t from around here. Also, I’d wager they’ve been dead for at least twelve hours and if that’s so, there’s no way in hell they were killed here. No…somebody shot these boys and then dumped them in the middle of the street.”
Chief Dolan turned around and pointed at Detective Raney.
“Mark, have you notified Ted to get on out here?”
Ted was Ted Banks, the longtime Williamson County coroner.
Raney shook his head.
“No, I figured I should wait and see what the Feds wanted to do.”
“Since when does this department wait for the Feds when it involves crime in our city?”
Dolan walked up to Raney until the two men were face to face. Raney was not quite six foot, with thinning red hair and a light beard of the same color.
“I asked you a question, Detective.”
Raney’s mouth opened but then abruptly closed when both men heard the voice of the dark haired thirty-something female reporter seemingly interviewing Agent Wong. Dolan watched intently as both Wong and the reporter appeared to be repeating lines they had already rehearsed. He also noted how the man holding the camera was dressed in a dark suit very similar to that worn by both federal agents.
“Yes, we do have reason to believe the deaths of the two men here in Marion were racially motivated, likely as some kind of payback for the rioting going on in Chicago. We are in direct contact with the Department of Justice and will take counter measures to locate, apprehend and charge the person or persons responsible, even if it means declaring a temporary state of emergency to do so.”
Dolan’s mouth fell open. The Feds were, with clear cooperation with whomever the reporter was, pushing a pre-determined outcome for a case that had not yet even begun to be investigated.
A state of emergency?
Chief Dolan stood silently reviewing the situation as quickly as his mind could put together the pieces of what he knew to be a very peculiar and likely increasingly dangerous puzzle.
Two bodies dumped in the middle of the street where they were certain to be found. Two federal agents already on scene with Raney before I arrived. Refusal to allow our own coroner to assist in the investigation. And then this media van shows up with a reporter and a guy who sure as hell appears to be another fed.
Dolan shook his head and began walking nonchalantly toward his police cruiser even as his instincts screamed something was very-very wrong with the situation and was likely tied in somehow to the riots taking place in Chicago. He decided then to issue the three-word warning he had prepared for his wife and two children just over five years ago.
Bev Dolan was two years younger than her husband, Tom. Their son Max was a senior in high school, and their daughter Grace a sophomore. All three had rolled their eyes more than once as their dad reviewed with them the protocol should he send the message. They joked about how much time he spent getting the abandoned cabin ready “for the end of the world” that Tom Dolan had discovered while hiking on the outskirts of the Shawnee Forest where it bordered Kentucky.
Getting to the cabin could only be done by four-wheel-drive. It was a simple one room structure situated alongside a small freshwater stream that provided both water and trout to the property. Dolan believed it had once been a miner’s cabin in the early half of the 20th Century when rumors of gold in the waters of the Shawnee Forest spread. Whoever had built it though had clearly left it decades earlier and not returned.
Dolan wouldn’t have been able to explain why he was suddenly convinced it was time to send the message – he just knew.
And so as he felt the eyes of Detective Raney staring at him from behind, the Marion Chief of Police took out his cell phone and texted his wife.
GET OUT now.
Then he offered a quick prayer to a god he knew he should speak to more often, that his wife would in fact do what he told her many times she must should he ever message her those three words. Bev was to get the two kids, lock up the house, load up the restored 1971 Jeep Wagoneer the family kept undercover in their garage, and then meet up with her husband at mile post 18 ten minutes outside of the Marion city limits where they would all then make the two-hour drive to the cabin and wait out whatever hell had visited the world.
The cabin was stocked with enough canned goods and dry foods to last four people several months, as well as a fully automatic AK-47 and a classic Winchester 94 hunting rifle that had been in the Dolan family for three generations. Every member of the family had received several hours of instruction on how to use each weapon.
“Who you talking to, Chief?”
Dolan put away his phone and then turned around to face Raney.
“Family business is all, Detective.”
Raney’s face stretched into a cold smile, his eyes noting Dolan’s right hand that hovered over the holster of his sidearm.
“Just let them do what they are gonna do, Chief. It’ll be better that way. We can’t fight it.”
Now it was Dolan who smiled.
There it is. Raney confirmed he’s in on whatever shit is about to rain down on my city.
“What’d they offer you?”
Raney shrugged as his green eyes flashed a very brief moment of guilt.
“I’ll be the new chief.”
Tom Dolan shook his head as the last remnants of hope that Raney would rediscover his loyalties faded.
“Damn, Mark, you would have likely already been chief in another few years. I was set to retire by then. You knew that.”
Raney took a deep breath as his own right hand came to rest on the butt of his police revolver.
“The world is changing, Chief. I’m just trying to keep up.”
“So if you’re the new chief, where’s that leave me, Detective?”
Raney’s almost apologetic expression gave Dolan his answer.
They’re trying to set me up. White chief of police shoots two young black men in the streets of predominantly white city. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but they are.
“You killed those two men, didn’t you?”
Raney shook his head.
“No, Tom – you did.”
Tom Dolan recalled a conversation he had over several beers with Chief Jack Bennet, the man who had first interviewed and then hired Dolan to be a part of the Marion police force. Bennet had by then been a law enforcement officer for nearly thirty years, seventeen of which had been as the city’s chief of police.
It was on that night a somewhat inebriated Chief Bennet told Ray of the time he shot a man following a domestic disturbance call. He had been on the force for just a few months. After getting the call he drove up to the home and was on his way to the porch when the front door flew open and a long haired man dressed only in a pair of tattered blue boxer shorts greeted him with a cheap Saturday night special pointed at Bennet’s head.
“I remember seeing that boy’s eyes, all glassy red. Crazy eyes is what I call them. The eyes of a man ready to pull a trigger and see me dead in his front yard. I knew him. Locals just called him Johnny-Boy. He was Melba Walter’s youngest. That family was never much good, peddled some dope, robberies, that kind of stuff, but murdering an officer? That was a new level of bad even for them. So Johnny Walter is pointing his gun at me and I can see in his eyes he’s ready to pull the trigger. He’s high as the noon sun and don’t give a shit about nothing no more.
“It was like time stopped for just a second. Like God was giving me a fighting chance. It was just that second
though and I knew if I wasted it, I’d be done for.
“So I draw on him. Johnny fires first and misses me wide left, wasn’t even close really. I fire second.
“I didn’t miss. The bullet entered the lower half of his throat and then lodged in his brain stem. Johnny, the poor bastard, falls like a sack of wet grain onto the front porch, blood pouring out of the hole in his neck. More blood than I ever thought a human being could hold. I sat there next to him, he’s looking up at me and all the crazy has gone out of him. He’s just scared, crying, begging for me to not let him die. He knows dying is what’s coming for him though and there’s not a damn thing to be done about it. Then he shit himself, his mouth opened and closed a few times and that was it. Johnny-Boy was gone.
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 2