TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3)

by Steve Windsor

  They followed me along the wharf—black van creeping behind me. It was about as subtle as ripping someone’s heart out. They were probably trying to see if I was meeting someone. On another day, they might have been in luck. Today, I knew they were coming. It was the only move they had left.

  I walked through the flow of filth on the streets. The rain had all the sins of Seattle washing away. Dripped oil from ten million rolling guzzlers and the shit and piss of thousands of homeless Protection veterans living in cardboard “barracks,” spending the last years of their miserable lives drinking themselves into a dream world so they can forget the nightmare that they lived in the Middle East.

  It all leaked down the gutters along the streets, pulled by gravity to the only place left to shove anything we don’t want—the humanity in the Northwest Quarter’s huge cesspool of sin—the salty shit of the Puget Sound, gateway to the Pacific Ocean.

  Seattle in the winter. Welcome to the cold, shit-steaming, pearly gates of the Emerald City. It’s still better than the granite hole they wanna cram me in for interrogation. More pointless rant, but this one’s not helping, and I’m running out of fire to fuel my legs.

  Now I’m like a drowning cat, struggling to get out of a burlap sack as I float down the last mile of the hopeless river of my life. That’s a little too poetic for me, probably my little voice.

  I can hear the boots below me, still stomping their way up, climbing. Shit, where would they go? I peek over the side and catch a glimpse of a black helmet—a few floors down, but they’re gaining.

  That’s because you’re not running.

  My inner critic—master of the obvious.

  I aim this time, try to hold my breath as I squeeze. I can feel my heart, trying to rip its way out of my chest and—Boom!

  Bullets make a particular sound when they hit meat. No way to describe it unless you’ve heard it before. A sloppy “whump,” maybe. I heard it plenty of times deer hunting when I was a kid, not to mention the other places. But there is no more hunting now, so not many citizens know that. The guy that just took that round … he knows it. Only difference when you hit a man is the—

  And I hear him scream, and then there is yelling and shouting and bullets come flying up the center of the stairwell—undisciplined fire. It’s angry and there’s a lot of it. Now I know I hit him.

  Maybe you can lose them.

  Ten floors later, barely able to draw breath, dizzy from the lack of oxygen to my brain, and wincing from the burning acid melting into my thighs, losing them is a little girl’s dream.

  You’re gonna have to—

  I try not to think about it, and I drag myself, clawing at the railing with whatever I got left. It ain’t much.

  You got her there okay. Kelly … she’ll make it. That’s what I tell myself. Or is it my annoying little voice again? It’s getting harder to tell the difference.

  Kelly. My only salvation in this dream of life. She needed a head start—time to get clear of all this shit, clear of me. If I didn’t give it to her, they would have her raped and tortured. I’m not letting that happen.

  Amy is ok.

  That is definitely not my annoying little voice, because Amy … my little angel … is gone. That was over a year ago? I wonder if the lack of oxygen is starting to make me hallucinate.

  I can’t let them take me—torture me into talking. Because the truth is, no one can outlast a Protection interrogation team. To them, torturing and raping a citizen is just a coffee break. Once the snatch and bag team… When Protection’s Citizen Compliance unit hands you over to interrogation, you’re talking, squawking like a chicken with its wings copped off, telling them anything they want to know. They would break me before I had a chance to piss myself. Whoever I used to be, I’m nobody on the wrong side of an interrogation room.

  Nobody. That’s who I turned myself into after I ran. That is, until two days ago. Then my name came up on Protection’s “list.” Couple of bad keywords later and the monster Protection data-farm in Utah, spit out my data on some cube-monkey’s screen. Then he ran thirty-seven years’ worth of stored and indexed email, text and wave information and he found the word—“Guns.”

  Never mind that I buried all of mine three years ago. Any idiot could see that coming. But that’s what they want, the buried ones. Shit, there are no more guns above ground. Not enough that it would matter, anyway. You can’t get two citizens to agree on coffee, much less shoot a gun in the same direction. But that was Protection’s plan—divide and crush. It’s easier to snatch and bag citizens when no one will help them. Too bad the old Mary Jane, Berkeley dumbasses couldn’t figure that out until it was too late.

  — IV —

  “PRY IT FROM my cold dead fingers.” That was what my dad used to say when he was drinking the state swill. Nobody can afford the good stuff.

  I talked a lot of shit with him about something no one thought would ever happen. Most citizens wouldn’t know what to do even if something did. But we didn’t care because we figured it never could happen to us. Then … it did.

  Protection massacred all those middlegraders—blamed it on some single-parent momma’s boy whose overindulgent mommy just happened to have an AR-17 assault rifle, lying around in her closet. So much for the nine-foot fences and armed Protection sentries, guarding every state conditioning campus in existence.

  Give me a break. I bet if you checked those agents’ weapons you could match up the bullets they pulled out of those kids pretty well. But Protection marched the parents out in front of the PIN cameras so the idiots could beg all the citizens to turn in their weapons … for the sake of the children, of course. That’s how the State and Protection get everything done—threaten a hen with her chick—she’ll kill a priest if she has to.

  Then that bitch senator started squawking for tougher laws and more Protection enforcement again, and everyone bought it—ate it up like kindergraders mowing through All Hallows candy.

  When they finally got all the sheep baa’ing in the right direction—begging for safety—everyone’s favorite uncle tipped his red, white and blue riot helmet and smiled at his ignorant nieces and nephews. “Uncle Satan” was what we called him now. The State asked for them all back.

  “Asked”… not the right word, because in his left hand were the bastards over at “rat” and in his right was Protection. Neither of them was “asking” for anything.

  Rat? It’s not pleasant, I can tell you that. Hah, one of the only freedoms a citizen has left—sarcasm and bitching. They do it in private and mostly to themselves, of course. No one wants to get remanded for unlicensed dissent.

  R.R.A.T.F.—Revenue, Religion, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms. None of them are sanctioned anymore, and they took control of them in that order. Okay, that’s not entirely true. They nationalized the most profitable ones—the ones they could keep people drunk, diseased and devout with. Take a guess which ones those were. And the revenue… the State gives just enough back so that the citizens don’t pull out their pitchforks.

  Most of us—I guess I’m one of them now—just handed our guns over. Not much more than fussing and cussing. Sure, the few faithful left, yelled and bellowed about tyranny and the old Constitution.

  Eddy and Muffy dummy, tucked safely in their habitat in one of the State Scrapers downtown, had never even read the relic, much less wondered what might happen after State dissolved the damn thing. They didn’t miss a lick of latte, watching the nightly snatch-and-grab playbacks on the PIN. To them, we were dangerous, old wolves. They were happy to see us lose our teeth.

  A few hardcores knew it was all over—downhill for the red, white and bruised from then on—grizzled old Iraq Protection vets, or Iran and Syria amputees—they knew the drill.

  In haji-land, the first thing they did was limit each Muslim household to one AK-47 each … for “protection” purposes. Then, after too many insurgent “incidents,” they took those away, too … for protection purposes. A few Syrian citizens protested the wro
ng way and ended up on the business end of some nineteen-year-old’s M7 riot rifle.

  Didn’t much matter—after Iraq and Afghanistan, we were all used to seeing bearded Middle Eastern dudes lying dead in the dust. We sipped our coffee while unmanned drones blew the living shit out of anything that looked remotely unfriendly. One less “terrorist,” the media dogs told us … over and over again. Shit, we barely winced at the images of dead babies that slipped out through the State wavewall. We just clicked away as fast as we could—pretended we never saw a thing—hoped our browse history didn’t show up in Utah. Then the drones started flying over us, and that finally got our attention. The “sheeple” went bat-shit crazy.

  What did they think would happen when the wars were done? Let’s just shut down a multibillion credit industry because the fighting is “over.” Hell no! You gotta find a new enemy to point the revenue at, that’s all. And they did. Only they pointed it right at us, “We the People”—enemies of the State.

  I keep the rant in my head burning as hot as I can. It’s all I got left to help me climb. Nothing like some pointless rage while you run.

  They tested the waters in Wyoming first. Hardly anyone in the little hamlet of Kaycee to cause much PIN media attention—some guy bakin’ up some judgment in his shed—last ditch effort to get someone to pay attention to the people.

  They sent a Vengeance drone and launched a couple of Hellfury missiles at that guy. I doubt he knew what hit him before the angels collected his ass. His wife and daughter did, though. They were out in the yard feeding little cherub chickens—just far enough away to escape disintegration … not far enough to live. That must have been something to see—feathers and guts flying through the air with their own arms and tits.

  Then some remote pilot—joystick jockey in Syracuse, NY—sipped coffee in the break room when he was done. Probably gave him a Feathered Phoenix, the coveted Protection medal of valor. Bet his initials weren’t at the top of that arcade game for more than a week.

  When the PIN reporters finally showed up, the “powers” told them to say it was “Domestic Terrorist Weapons Cache Explosion.” And they printed that shit like they were told to. We’re way beyond investigative journalism, too. An investigative journalist is just code for “Future Detainee”—Foxtrot Delta—more commonly referred to as … “Fucking Dead.” And no one wants to be a protectant at that prison.

  We all knew that Wyoming was crap. Didn’t matter—average citizen has the attention span of a three-year-old in a balloon factory. It only took a couple weeks for the story to get shoved out of their overstimulated minds. And if the beehive doesn’t sting you when you go in for sweet nectar the first time… Any citizen who didn’t voluntarily give up their guns got a visit from a Hellfury. That was how they dealt with the rural zone holdouts. I only heard those stories from my dad. They weren’t any prettier in person. I can hardly remember the first ones.

  Sending a missile at a farmhouse in the rural zone caused less collateral damage. Not that anyone at Protection gave a shit, but the paperwork is a bitch. I remember that.

  A Hellfury for breakfast was bad, but it was better than a “3@3.” If you lived in the vast concrete prisons of the new urban zone—and who didn’t—the countryside around them got bought up long ago by the rich and unaccountable. But if you rested your chest anywhere it would be hard to lie about a missile strike, you got an official “three-at-three.” We called it a “TAT for tits.”

  Only this tat was a bit more painful than a little needle and some ink, because a trio of black-suited, hard-booted Protection Citizen Compliance agents would bust down your front door at three o’clock in the morning. Then they ripped you, and whoever you happened to be on top of, right out of your bed, shoved a black sack over your heads, crammed you in a diaper, and stuffed you into the black van they had waiting outside. No one came back from that.

  We only heard stories from the neighbors, cowering in their homes, glad as shit it wasn’t them, while they watched a Protection cleaning crew gut their neighbor’s house. After I got done training them, those guys were thorough.

  Sure, being blown up in a drone strike is probably pretty scary, but killing you leaves everything about you behind. And when you think the wrong way, we gotta make sure it was like you never existed. Cleaning crews… Hah! Dirtiest sons a bitches you ever wanna meet.

  I can see the door to the roof, and there’s a poem rolling around in my head as I trudge up the last set of steps. And when they came for me, there was no one left… I think that’s how it ends. My father used to tell it to me when we talked about all the wars. It wasn’t because he believed that anyone could be saved by the realization that if they worked together no Protection military on the planet could control them. He knew that.

  “People want to believe that warriors think like they do,” he used to say, “that they make decisions based on morality and mercy.” And he would get a faraway look on his face, before he continued. “But an eighteen-year-old with a rage rifle, scared shitless and afraid for his own life every day, does what he’s told. Shoots anyone who gets in his way … as fast as he can. Mom, dad, princess or puppy—dead things can’t kill you. We teach them that first.”

  He told me how they used that knowledge in his war. “Divide, demoralize, destroy” was the Protection procedure for subduing a civilian populace. “Shoot one person in the head while the other ones watch,” he said. “That’s how the Nazis did it. Controlled thousands of people in concentration camps. People with absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting back, marched into gas chambers without lifting a finger.”

  Man, he could go off on a rant. Probably where I got it. One of his favorites was, “They taught us how to control a civilian population with nothing more than a platoon of hard Protection vets.” Then he showed me the Protection manual for creating prisons—concentration camps just like the Nazis had. I read it. Learned the theory later. Make each citizen-protectant believe that their best hope of survival is compliance. Then no one will help anyone else, and when it’s their turn, no one will help them.

  I fall to my knees—I’m spent.

  Get your sorry life moving, soldier, or I’ll end it for them. That sounded like Kelly’s voice in my head and I shake it. The delusions are starting.

  Whoever it was, she’s right. That’s how this is going to end for me if I don’t finish this climb. Alone against the lie—as good as dead.

  Occasionally—about every third day—the Utah data-farm spits out the wrong address—the wrong citizen gets tagged for a 3@3. It doesn’t matter. Once Protection snatches a suspected “Whiskey Hotel”—Weapons Harborer—they don’t risk letting them talk about it. They simply change all that guy’s data in Utah and lickety-split, he is a “DT”—Delta Tango—Domestic Terrorist. But that’s pretty old jargon—I’m an old dog, I guess—because the Protection Citizens Relations department just shortened everything to “protectant.”

  The State and Protection keep telling us they are protecting us—keeping us safe. Protection? Safe from who?

  When it all started, a lot of ex-Protection war veterans barricaded in their habitat cubes, figured it would be better to shoot it out. Then dozens of thugs in black from Protection—the one agency that all of the other country and citizen-saving services were rolled into—rammed down doors and made quick meat of the “mentally disturbed” vets.

  “Tragic” but “unavoidable” was what the flapping faces on the PIN called it. Most of them were labeled as a “PDTS—Person Dangerous To Society.” A society whose freedom they were told they fought and got maimed to secure, coincidentally. Protection agents had a code for it. During every pre-PDTS takedown briefing, they would joke about the objective—“Put Down The Shithead.” And that’s what they did—buried him. Technically, we burn the condemned now—no more room for the bodies. Don’t ask me how I know that.

  The first few were just a warning—let the rest of us see what resisting looked like. They made sure t
o let the PIN cameras get a glimpse of the carnage as they wheeled out the bullet-bloodied bodies. And when no one bellyached too bad about it… From then on, Protection killed anyone who talked or fought back and made up their own version of events after. None of the guys on the gurneys were disputing much, anyway. History of slavery, written by the guys with the whips. It happened so often that most citizens just flipped the damn wavebox off. Then they guzzled State swill or went to bed, prepared for their next daily dose of judgment—anything to help them deal with the lunacy of it all.

  Then Protection agents, dressed in their perfectly pressed black uniforms, would come out and spread all the guns across tables for the cameras, like they busted some South Continent drug lord and piled up the bales of bud before they burned it all—show the citizens what a public service they had done.

  Only they didn’t burn it. They kept it and sold it back to the same muchachos they took it from. Follow the money—the only law left.

  We knew they didn’t destroy the guns either. They sold or gave those to “freedom” fighters, battling on the right side of a debate on someone else’s continent. And if the argument went the wrong way, if “Uncle Satan’s” favorite new buddies looked like they were gonna get their asses kicked… Protection sold that government some drones and let them wipe that inconvenient truth right off the map.

  Once they got the guns, they pried the ammunition out, too. Every crevice where a “GOGO”—God-fearing Gun-owner—Protection citizen stompers have an acronym for everything, too … anyplace a citizen could think to stash bullets, they found. Under a concrete patio, in the attic, or up someone’s ass, it didn’t matter. They draped it all out for the cameras, like jackass Rural Zone rednecks strapping an unauthorized animal harvest over the hood of their pickup. Never mind that two years ago and for two hundred and fifty-some years before that, guns were how the country—shit, the whole planet’s civilization—was built. Unfortunately, I was a big part of that. Hindsight—head up my ass and couldn’t see.