“No.” Livingston looked at Rick. “But you’re close. He said nothing about having Josh or Patricia killed.
Instead, he said that if I was to keep pressing this issue…if I let anything leak out…it was possible that…an accident…would happen to my grandchild.”
There was stunned silence.
Richard said, “Oh my God.”
“I hadn’t seen or heard from Josh in five years,” Livingston said. “We’d…sort of drifted apart when he was a teenager. I…I didn’t know what this guy was talking about at first. But then he mentioned Josh by name, told me that my son was now married and the father of a four-year-old and…that’s when I learned that I had a grandchild for the first time.”
Rick didn’t know what to say.
“That’s how they were able to guarantee my silence for the past eleven years,” Livingston said softly. “I assured the man who visited me that their secret was safe, that I would be glad to accept full retirement. And I did. I exited military life and became a civilian for the first time in over thirty years. I did it because I had to. I did it not for the sake of my country, but for the sake of a child I still haven’t even met.” Livingston regarded all of them. “Do you understand?”
Rick, Jennifer, and Richard nodded.
“I tried to enjoy retirement,” Livingston continued. “I really did. But Julie…she became bitter…saw that something was bothering me and insisted that I tell her about it. She could always see through me, and when I refused she became even more bitter. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t risk it and she should have known this, but for some reason she chose to ignore it. The last year of our marriage before she passed on was unhappy, I’m sorry to say.” For the first time it looked like Colonel Livingston was on the verge of breaking down; his stony veneer crumbled just a tad, then he regained his strength. “She finally passed on ten years ago. Breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said quietly.
“And that’s how our government has kept the Phillipsport incident under the radar from the mainstream media,” Livingston said. He regarded them all again. “I have no idea what they did after I retired. I have no idea what further research was conducted, what was learned. The men I served with in Phillipsport…well, there weren’t many of them. Richrath was one. You remember him, Rick?”
Rick nodded.
“Those of us who served in Phillipsport and saw things were, as far as I know, visited by the same gentleman. We were all given generous retirement packages. With the exception of one man, we’ve kept our part of the bargain.”
“What happened to that one man?” Jennifer asked.
“Most of the men who went into Phillipsport were Army Reservists,” Livingston said. “Many of them were either killed or wounded horribly by the Dark Ones and Clickers. Those that survived…many of them remain in military hospitals, locked away in psychiatric wards. Others have deteriorated into madness…they live on the streets; their families have been convinced that they’ve simply gone crazy. Some have disappeared, if you catch my drift. The one man I’m talking about, Chief Lieutenant Marshall Smith, headed a squad that entered Phillipsport from the north. His team played a part in securing that supermarket and retrieving the remains of the Dark One Rick and the others killed. He was given the same talk, given the same retirement package as the rest of us.”
“How many of you were there?” Richard asked quietly.
“My guess was no more than a dozen,” Livingston answered. “Smith kept quiet for awhile and then five years later the vehicle he was driving went off the road near his home in Montana and crashed into a rock. The vehicle exploded, killing everybody inside, which consisted of his wife, Alice, and their teenage children, Kathy and Cody.” Livingston paused. “An hour later, about fifty miles away, in a little town called Middletown, a house burned down. The blaze killed a family by the name of Dobbs. Marshall Smith and his family were returning from the Dobbs’ residence when they crashed.”
“You think Marshall Smith let it leak to the Dobbs family?” Rick asked, his mind racing. “And that…somehow those spooks knew about it when it happened?”
“I don’t know,” Livingston said. “But the coincidence is strange and frightening. I didn’t learn about the connection until years later. I simply did my part and stayed silent. I didn’t even poke into it or the Phillipsport incident. Instead, I got into breeding my horses and that became my obsession. It was a matter of survival. I had to obsess over something. If I didn’t have that to occupy my time, I’d probably be dead now from an accident.” He paused. “If you know what I mean.”
Rick mentioned the black car he thought he saw outside his brother’s house. Then he said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you this, but I was afraid to.”
“I have to admit every time you called me, Rick, I’d get paranoid.”
“I’m William, remember?”
“Right, okay. William!”
“Why the hell did you get paranoid?”
“There was never a tap on my phone, but I know that it’s easy to pull phone records,” Livingston said. “And I was always afraid that somebody, somewhere, would put two and two together and not only track you down, but think I was leaking information to you or withholding something. I was always afraid for Danny, my grandson. So after you called, I would get in touch with Josh to relieve my fears.”
“What black car are you talking about?” Jennifer asked Rick. “Were you followed?”
“He’s been wanted by our government since Phillipsport,” Livingston said. “So has Melissa Peterson. I imagine the same clandestine government agency that paid me a visit with my retirement papers and the friendly warning is also the same one that has been trying to find him all these years.”
“So they have been trying to find me?” Rick asked. “Even after all this time?”
“You better believe it.”
“But why?”
“It’s a matter of national security.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Lower your voice,” Livingston warned.
Despite being exhausted, Rick’s mind was awake. He was scared and furious. “I knew we were wanted early on, when Melissa and I left. You told me so yourself when we first called you when we were on the run. That’s why we disappeared. In the years that passed, we basically kept our heads down and didn’t draw attention to ourselves. I figured if we even tried to see if we were still wanted, something would happen to make us a target.”
“That is correct,” Livingston said. “Even an internet search on your names would have alerted the proper organization.”
“Even now after all this time?”
“It’s become more complicated now, but yes. Granted, your name does turn up on Google searches due to your former career, and that has been taken into consideration. But believe me, that kind of information is monitored. You’ve done a good job in remaining underground.”
“Apparently I haven’t done that good a job,” Rick said, trying to control the shakiness in his voice. “Or something happened that tipped them on to me but…I could’ve sworn that before I left my brother’s house I saw a black car cruise around the house. It freaked me out. I’ve been real paranoid about that shit since Phillipsport, you know what I mean?”
“Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean,” Livingston said.
“That’s why I took off and started heading west. I thought I would lose them somewhere, but instead I wound up in York with some fucking psycho!”
“No need to go where you don’t want to go, William,” Livingston advised.
Rick was cognizant enough to realize Livingston was giving him an easy out. The Colonel probably realized Rick had either seriously injured or killed somebody in self-defense and was encouraging him to let it alone, bury it. He also had a hunch. “You never told anybody that I was calling you?”
Livingston’s gray eyes locked with Rick’s. “No.”
“Not even when you were still active
?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Like I said. I had a feeling they would do to you what I saw them doing to my men, that you would be detained in secret, whisked away to some secret location. Maybe even disappear.”
The hunch was proven correct. Livingston had been covering for him the past twelve years.
“Why would the government want to cover something like this up?” Richard Linnenberg asked. “I would think in the name of science…of human safety…”
“I can’t answer that question,” Livingston said. “I have no idea why such a tight lid was clamped on this. My initial thought was it was a matter of avoiding a nationwide panic.”
“This government agency…” Jennifer asked. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know the code name, but they work independently of the FBI and the CIA. They don’t take orders from either political party or any branch of government. They were formed during the beginning of the Cold War to keep certain things under wraps, and they do so indiscriminately. They know things about our past…about certain current events, that our current legislative and executive branch know nothing about.”
“Kind of like the whole Men In Black myth,” Jennifer said.
“Yes,” Livingston answered. “Very much so.”
Jennifer’s features changed to a slow dawning of terror. “Oh my God!”
“What?” Rick asked.
“If the Dark Ones are as intelligent as they…as they think they are, maybe this organization knows about it…maybe they’re afraid of this information getting out. Maybe they—”
“Maybe they think the Dark Ones might be capable of emotional thought,” Rick said, catching Jennifer’s epiphany. “Which would enable them to—”
“Seek revenge for what happened in 1994,” Colonel Livingston finished.
The four of them looked at each other, a sense of horrific comprehension now stitched through all of them.
Outside the lounge came the faint sounds of men screaming in horror and pain.
* * *
The White House
2:30 AM
Things were happening within the White House and Clark Arroyo felt powerless to stop it.
No, he thought. Not things. Things weren’t happening. Shit was happening. Things were what was causing the shit. Those crab things...
He was still inside the cramped closet, still clutching his Sig Sauer tightly, and he knew in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t escape now.
It would be impossible.
He could hear the dim sounds of scattered gunfire coming from outside. He didn’t know what was happening, but his guess was that those creatures were heading toward the White House and government sharpshooters were beginning the process of picking them off. He wondered if they’d gotten anywhere on the White House grounds, or perhaps breached the interior of the building. The power outage could have been due to the storm, but it could have gone out from other nefarious means. Clark had to keep those options open.
He was just beginning to plan how he might escape the closet when he realized something.
As a Secret Service agent, Clark Arroyo knew all the ins and outs of the White House grounds, buildings, and the various secret bunkers and tunnel networks within the proximity of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. The Magog Bunker was just one such secret underground complex largely unknown to the general population. What a lot of people didn’t realize was that the White House itself had secret rooms and passageways that snaked through various sections of the building.
Clark took a step back and began moving his hand along the wall of the closet. Despite being a little disoriented from everything that had happened, he was fairly certain this closet had a hidden panel that opened onto one of the secret corridors.
His palm rubbed against a section of the wall and he felt it slide back automatically. Cool air touched his back, indicating the passageway behind him.
Feeling relieved, Clark stepped into the hidden passageway, now completely hidden inside the White House.
* * *
Various locations across the United States
2:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time
Eric Lansdale had insomnia, and as he sat up channel surfing late that night in his Nashville, Tennessee apartment, he came across CNN.
The anchor was broadcasting from Los Angeles. “We’ve just received this communication from our Wire Services,” the female anchor said. “And we’re broadcasting it as our duty to keep you, the viewers, informed. As you know, the East Coast is currently being bombarded by Hurricane Gary, a massive category five storm. As some of you may also know from scattered reports on CNN and elsewhere, a species of giant crustacean have been discovered; literally hundreds of thousands of these creatures have been beaching themselves along the East Coast from northern Florida to the coast of Maine, and there have been reports of human fatalities as a result of these giant creatures. Some scientists have taken to calling them Clickers. Shortly after we began reporting on this, CNN corporate headquarters in Atlanta received an order by both the Department of Agriculture and the
Department of Homeland Security to stop reporting this story, so we complied. However, in light of what we are about to show you we’ve decided to air this clip and let you decide for yourself whether President Tyler’s speech, which CNN has just broadcast live, is yet another smokescreen attempt at concealing the truth from the American people or if he is, indeed, telling the truth.”
Eric was intrigued. He sat up on his sofa, hands on his knees, wondering what it was this time the government was trying to cover up.
The feed cut to an interior shot. An older man who looked like a high-ranking military official was standing behind a podium. Flanking him was a middle-aged man with short dark hair and glasses wearing a tattered white lab coat, and a woman in her early-thirties with shoulder-length auburn hair who looked like she’d been awake for too long.
“Good morning,” the military official said. “My name is Colonel Augustus Livingston, U.S. Army, retired. Yesterday my country had need of me and I answered the call. I was asked…”
Eric Lansdale sat spellbound as Colonel Livingston made his plea.
Five minutes later, Eric was on the phone with his best friend, Donald, in Cookesville to see if he’d heard about this. His friend hadn’t. Furthermore, his friend was fast asleep and was pissed off at him for being woken up. “I gotta go to work tomorrow,” Donald said.
“Turn on the news,” Eric said.
“The fuck for? Asswipe!”
“Just turn on the fucking news!”
“This better be worth it.” Donald said. Eric heard Donald fumble with something, and then he heard the TV click on. Then silence.
Five minutes after that, both men were calling friends and family across the country. Only a few were aware of the Livingston speech. Most of them were asleep and expressed irritation at having been woken up. That irritation quickly gave way to disbelief when they heard what Eric and Donald had to say.
It turned to outrage and fear when they turned on the news for themselves and saw replays of Colonel Livingston’s speech.
“Tell everybody you know,” Donald said to one friend, Barbara Thompson, a woman he’d dated a few years ago who he was still friendly with. “This is some major shit.”
“I’m calling my mother,” Barbara told him before hanging up.
And so it went.
In Ottersville, Missouri a middle-aged couple named Dave and Annette Murray were up late watching Fox News when the anchor cut in with the story of the Livingston coup. “I wonder how Washington is reacting to this?” One of the anchors mused.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this administration brings him up on charges of treason,” his co-anchor, Robert Feldman replied.
“What are they talking about?” Annette asked. She yawned. It was 1:30 AM and they’d just finished watching one of the Left Behind movies on DVD.
“I don’t know,” Dave
said.
“To give you an idea of what is being played now on CNN and MSNBC, we’re running an excerpt of a tape our affiliates in Nashville picked up from the wire service not too long ago,” the anchor said. “Take a look.”
Portions of Livingston’s speech played. Dave Murray watched in stunned silence. “This is…this is…”
“Terrible!” Annette finished for him.
“What a…how…”
“Outrageous!” Annette finished his thought again. Her tone had taken on an edge of anger.
“How can…I don’t…”
“Believe I’m hearing this,” Annette finished for him again. They were both looking angry now.
“Calling our President a religious fanatic?”
From Annette: “How dare those…those…” She was so angry, she could barely speak.
“Heathens!” Dave finished for her. He stood up from the sofa. His face was red.
“So is that what we are then?” Annette asked. “Religious fanatics? Because we’re doing what the President says and waiting for the official government scientists to make their statements on this hurricane and those so-called creatures?”
“We should have known something foul was up,” Dave said. With a look of disgust, he switched to the Trinity Broadcasting Channel. “I never liked Fox News anyway.”
Annette looked at her husband in amazement. “You never liked Fox News? You? When did this happen?”
Dave thumbed the volume up on Pat Robertson. “Since three minutes ago when they started streaming this crap from the liberal media.”
At Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Clemente, California, First Officer Lance Pearce was hanging out with his buddies Steve Gerald and Henry Lee Weinrib in their barracks, playing cards, drinking Lone Star beer, and shooting the shit. Pearce was in the hole to Gerald for a hundred bucks and Weinrib was in the hole by about twice that when Private Jerry Petty stormed into their room.
Jerry looked excited. “Turn the news on!”
Clickers II: The Next Wave Page 24