Desperate Times Three - Revolution

by Nicholas Antinozzi

  Sitting in a wheelchair parked at the end of the front row of pews was Arnold Connor. One of two survivors of the helicopter crash, Connor suffered two broken arms, multiple broken ribs and contusions. Facing certain death, he had miraculously been towed two miles to shore by the unlikeliest of heroes, Bill Huggins. Huggins would make the most of his fifteen minutes and would eventually grace the covers of over twenty news magazines.

  Bill would watch the funeral from his daughter’s bedside and spend a total of five complete days and nights in the ICU ward of MMC. The bullet had passed through Cindy’s left kidney, and she had nearly bled to death at the scene. The kidney had been completely destroyed, but Cindy had battled back, surprising her doctors.

  Ken Dahlgren had also surprised his doctors, who promptly pronounced him to be as tough as shoe leather and the luckiest man on the planet. The first bullet had nicked his heart, and the second had pierced his right lung. Ken had also nearly bled out at the scene. He died three times on the operating room table, and each time Ken’s heart had mysteriously begun beating again. The surgeons in the operating room would later confess that they had never seen anything like it. The stories would be shared with the public on national television and raise Ken to urban legend status.

  Patty, never doubting that her husband would survive, sat at his bedside with a Bible and read passages to him as the machines continued to nurse Ken back to health. Ken pronounced himself fit to leave the hospital on the third day, but would spend another two weeks in bed under orders from his doctors, and more importantly, his wife. When ordered to ride in a wheelchair on his way to being discharged, Ken shook his head. “Not in a million years,” he growled, shoving the wheelchair aside. “I’m walking out of here on my own two legs. Thank you, very much.”

  “Oh, please,” Patty had said. “Will you stop trying to be so macho?”

  Ken scowled at Patty, and she giggled, delightedly.

  The laptop divulged a mountain of information linking Wall Street and corporate America to Capitol Hill. The shock waves reverberated across the country for weeks as Congressmen and Senators fell like pawns in a chess game. The laptop listed names, dates, times, and dollar amounts. The numbers were staggering and nearly brought the country to its knees. The laptop also painted a picture of deceit and deliberate misinformation when it came to reporting by the mainstream media. The public outcry was fierce as they realized how many times they had been lied to and how big business had paid to have their stories spun.

  Julie Hartman’s ashes would be laid to rest next to her parents in a little cemetery outside of Crown. The service was private and attended by fewer than twenty souls. She had slipped away from Jimmy that night on the lawn, beyond miracles, leaving him in the very depths of despair.

  Jimmy waited to hold the service until Ken had been released from the hospital. Dark clouds brooded in a sky that threatened rain, and a cool breeze rattled the little canopy that had been erected over her gravesite. Jimmy, too distraught to stand, sat next to the open grave and wept throughout the entire service. He wasn’t alone, as countless tears fell that gloomy morning as they buried their friend.

  The rain fell in sheets as the little procession drove to Jimmy’s trailer home, which had somehow survived intact since the collapse. There, Patty prepared a light meal, and they did their best to console Jimmy—and themselves. The words did little to lift his spirits, and it would be many weeks before he was able to get through a day without tears.

  Epilogue

  “Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit” ~ Bern Williams

  They fell from the right and left and after they fell, America reclaimed the golden parachutes they hadn’t deserved in the first place. They fell kicking and screaming and somehow that made it more satisfying for the rest of America. Congress then went to work on Medicare and Social Security, passing meaningful legislation that provided solvency for both programs.

  Despite everything, Ken would lose the election by the barest of margins. Many cried foul, and there were demonstrations in the streets, but Ken pleaded for calm and pointed out how much had changed in such a short amount of time. The expulsions and the elections that followed had filled Washington with new blood, which had been his goal all along.

  The truth of the matter was that he no longer wanted the job, and he was happy that he’d been defeated. Job offers poured in from all directions, and Ken mulled them over, with Patty’s help, as they decided which direction they wished to take their new life.

  And life continued as the country got back to its roots. After sputtering for many months, the dollar found new life, and America once again became the economic powerhouse that it once was. With a shortage of workers, salaries exploded as companies began desperate searches for qualified individuals. A new middle class was born—young and strong, determined never to allow history to repeat itself.

  True to his word, Jimmy never drank another drop of alcohol. He would never forgive himself for being impaired at a time when he had needed to be in full control of his faculties. A year after Julie’s funeral, Jimmy also gave up smoking and began to run.

  Ken offered him a supervisor’s position at a large manufacturing company he had tied on with. The pay was good, and Jimmy buried himself in his work. He sold the trailer and bought himself a home just outside of Crown, a mile from where Ken and Patty had rebuilt. Slowly, Jimmy crawled out of his depression as he struggled to let the ghosts of his past rest in peace.

  Bill landed on his feet and hit the ground running. After explaining to the authorities how he had deciphered the password to Gnomes’ computer—a 72-character encrypted code—Bill was offered a top secret position working for the CIA as a troubleshooter. He worked from home, and although he wasn’t allowed to discuss how much he was being paid, he and Cindy had moved out of the trailer and now lived in a four-story home on sixty acres. He had also taken a fancy to vintage muscle cars and soon had several in his pole barn.

  Cindy would go on to college at the U of M where she became an instant celebrity, but only partially because of her past. She continued to lead the fight against Wall Street and corporate America, urging her fellow students to help her ensure that things would never return to the way they had been. She dated, but decided against seeing anyone seriously. She was determined to get her education and begin a career before settling down with anyone.

  Ken and Patty quickly reestablished themselves as the bedrock of their community. They took in six adolescent children, all orphans, and began raising them as their own. Ken ran for City Council and won, receiving nearly every vote. They held Bible study at their home on Thursday evenings and sponsored a firearms safety class once a month. Patty had also picked up the runner’s bug. She had been pronounced to be in perfect health, and she was determined to stay that way.

  They began having serious discussions eighteen months after Julie had died. They talked about hundreds of subjects, everything from the meaning of life, to the depths of faith, and the very real possibility of karma. Jimmy fought with himself for months, feeling for some reason that what they were doing was wrong. He felt like he was betraying Julie’s memory, and it wasn’t until he opened up to Ken about it that Jimmy was able to see past it. He needed to quit living in the past.

  For her part, she had a hard time competing with a ghost, but she never let on about it. She was in love with Jimmy, head over heels in love, and she knew that he was still healing from a wound which he would never fully recover. She wasn’t Julie, would never be Julie, and never attempted to fill her shoes. She lived with the Dahlgrens and worked out of a clinic in the neighboring town of Elk River.

  They were married on a summer day under a cloudless sky. The service was small and casual, held on Ken and Patty’s back lawn. Ken would stand as Jimmy’s best man, and Patty would serve as the matron of honor. And after a short service, a radiant Sonya Chen became Sonya Logan.

  And the heartbeat of time drummed on.

  The End<
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  Author’s notes

  Thank you so much for reading this series and I hope you’ve enjoyed the books. I’d like to begin by saying that when I began writing this trilogy, my thoughts about a total economic collapse were something akin to a bothersome fly in the room. I’d always considered the possibility, but like most of you, I’d always reasoned that people much smarter than me were at the helm of our economic ship and that they were capable of guiding us though any storm.

  That rationale seems to fade a bit each day.

  At the time of this writing and like so many of you, I am currently under-employed, working roughly 30 hours a week for an hourly wage. I pray that we all wake up to a brighter tomorrow and that our children inherit a strong country and economy. Time will tell.

  I believe that we are on the verge of something; that we stand at a defining moment of world history and that each of us should be prepared when that something happens. At the very least, we should all have a plan in place in case our ability to electronically communicate is disrupted. Like a fire drill, this is something that should be discussed with our families and friends. Begin with a meeting place and start your planning from there.

  I wrote Desperate Times as I envisioned them, and I pray they never come to be. I also wrote the series to (surprise) share my point of view. I don’t trust Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, or the entire banking industry as a whole. I believe that corporate America is poisoning this country and that the obscene salaries of the CEOs are a testament that they don’t give two shits about the rest of us. I am still in shock that we allowed multimillion dollar bonuses to be shelled out from the bailout money that Congress provided to failing institutions. I know its water under the bridge, but we should all be mad as hell about that. Think about it—we not only saved those responsible for nearly bankrupting our entire system, we rewarded them for doing so.

  Heads should have rolled, but they didn’t because the people who created this mess are above the law. You can’t convince me that I’m wrong. Billions and billions of dollars vanished without a trace, and what did our government do about it? What meaningful legislation has been passed to ensure that this type of financial fiasco never happens again? Please, go back to Chapter 1 and reread the first paragraph. We learned nothing from the past and continue to do so at an alarming rate of speed. This is why we need term limits in government. The career politicians have got to be ousted from Congress so we can get a fresh perspective on our situation. At the very least, we need to vote out the incumbents, especially those who allowed our taxpayer bailout to be tossed about like so much plunder.

  Secondly, whatever you think about the Second Amendment, we can’t afford to have it taken away from us, like so many of our other rights have in recent years. There will come a time in the very near future that they will ask for our guns, and only fools will willingly hand them over. The bleak picture I painted in DT2 was to remind people of how vulnerable we all are without the means to protect ourselves.

  Lastly, I’d love to know what you thought of the books. I quit reading the bad reviews a long time ago. I know my weaknesses and strive to improve. And seriously, if you’ve read DT1 and DT2 and you hated them, why on earth are you reading DT3? Please contact me by email @ Noodlez1@hotmail.com or on Facebook (both as Nick Antinozzi and on my author fan-page: Desperate Times). I gladly accept all friend requests and do my best to read and respond to all.

  Dec 22 2011

  Thank you and God bless,

  Nick