Creeping Tyranny

by Robert Boren

  “It kinda runs in the family,” Robbie said.

  “Oh, really, now?” Morgan asked. “We’ll see about that.” She turned towards him, laying herself partially on top of him. They kissed tenderly.

  “Guess what’s back,” he whispered.

  She looked at him silently, then straddled him, raising up, coming down while she bit her lower lip. It was slower and more tender. They drifted off to sleep afterwards.

  Robbie woke later to a knocking on the door. “Yeah?” he shouted.

  “You better come see this,” Gil said.

  “What’s going on?” Morgan asked. She stretched, then got up on her elbows. “You look proud of yourself.”

  “I’m happy,” he said as he got off the bed. “It’s never been like that for me.”

  “You’ve had other girlfriends, though, haven’t you?” she asked.

  He watched her get out of bed and dress. She noticed him looking and smiled.

  “Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’ve had other girlfriends. Even a couple who I was in love with. This was different.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to describe.”

  “Try,” she said.

  “It’s like I want to become part of you.”

  She stared into his eyes, searching, then tears came down her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “We feel the same way, and I know where it leads,” she said.

  “I don’t care where it leads, I just don’t want it to go away.”

  “Hey, you guys,” Gil said from outside the door.

  “Coming,” Robbie said. He walked to the door, Morgan right behind him. She pulled him back right before he opened it, hugging him close and kissing him again.

  “My God,” Robbie said, his whole body trembling.

  “I know,” she whispered, looking at his face for a moment. “Let’s go see what’s up.”

  They walked out into the living room, but froze when they saw the video on the TV screen.

  “Is that New York?” Morgan asked.

  “Somebody floated a nuclear device into New York harbor and set it off,” Gil said, looking at them with glassy eyes. “The lower part of Manhattan and a big chunk of New Jersey are gone.”

  “Oh no,” Robbie said. “They say who did it?”

  “Not yet,” Gil said.

  Steve and Colleen came up the stairs.

  “Oh, my God, what happened?” Colleen asked.

  “Somebody nuked New York City,” Morgan said.

  “No,” Steve said. They gathered around and watched the video. Then the announcer’s voice came back.

  “This just in,” the announcer said. “Another device has gone off in Puget Sound, near Seattle, Washington. It appears to be a larger device than the one detonated in New York harbor.”

  “No!” Colleen said. “What if they do that in LA Harbor? Will it kill all of us?”

  “Probably not,” Gil said. “Depends on which way the wind blows.”

  “The wind almost always comes from the ocean,” Robbie said. “So we’d probably survive here. LA Harbor is pretty far south.”

  “Not that we’d want that to happen,” Steve said.

  “There’s the understatement of the year,” Gil said.

  “Seattle police are working out a way to evacuate as many people as possible,” the announcer said. “Prevailing winds will probably blow the fallout east, which is going to make evacuations more difficult.”

  “Who did this?” Morgan asked.

  “If it wasn’t the Islamists, it was somebody working with the Islamists,” Gil said.

  The front door opened. Killer lifted his head, and then trotted down the stairs.

  “Hey, Killer,” Justin said. They came up the stairs together. Justin stopped when he saw the TV screen. “Holy shit, what happened?”

  “Somebody lit off nukes in New York and Seattle,” Gil said.

  “No way,” Justin said.

  “This changes everything,” Robbie said. “I’ll have to spend some time writing for the websites today.”

  “The blast in New York harbor has caused tremendous damage in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. There are no estimates of casualties there, but the numbers will be horrendous, as will the economic impact.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Justin said, “they saying who did it yet?”

  “No,” Gil said. “It just happened.”

  “This reminds me of 9-11,” Morgan said.

  “Seriously,” Robbie said.

  “The White House has just released a statement,” the announcer said. “We know who made these attacks possible, and they will pay a heavy price.”

  “Can we go back to bed and forget about this?” Colleen asked.

  Morgan flashed her a grin.

  “You heard us, didn’t you?” Colleen whispered. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “You didn’t hear us?” Morgan asked.

  “No,” she said. “I guess I can be a little loud. I’ve been storing it up for a while, though.”

  “Storing it up?” Steve asked.

  “For you, dummy,” Colleen said. “What took you so long? You could’ve had me a few months ago.”

  Morgan laughed. Steve shot her a sheepish grin.

  “This just in,” the announcer said. “The Port of Vladivostok in Russia has just been hit. The device was larger than the New York bomb. It appears to have been the size of the device detonated earlier today in Puget Sound.”

  “Well, either that was us, or Russia had nothing to do with this,” Steve said.

  “I didn’t think it was Russia,” Gil said. “They’ve been on our side against the rise of the Islamist Caliphate in the Middle East.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” Robbie said. “They have a problem with terrorism there too. Worse than ours, in some ways.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have yet another report of an attack, this time in Charleston Harbor,” the announcer said. He sounded really shaken now.

  “What’s happening?” Colleen asked, on the verge of crying. Steve pulled her close.

  “The world is going crazy,” Gil said. “We’re living in historic times. This is like 1939.”

  “More like 1941,” Robbie said. “I need to write about this now. I’m gonna go set up on the kitchen table.”

  “Can I watch?” Morgan asked. “I won’t say anything.”

  “Sure, but it won’t be too exciting,” Robbie said.

  “I don’t care. I want to stay close to you.”

  They got up.

  “Can we go back to the bedroom?” Colleen asked.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. They got up and went down the stairs.

  “This enough space for you?” Morgan asked as she followed Robbie, looking at the cluttered table.

  “Sure, I’ll just move things over. I used to write on this table when I was living here,” he said. “When nobody was home and it was hot outside. This room has better airflow than my old bedroom does.”

  He set up his laptop on the table and pulled chairs over, then got to work. Morgan watched him, reading the text on the screen as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He wrote several pages, and then paused and opened up a browser, going to a message board.

  “Buzz is that North Korea supplied the devices, and the Islamists placed them,” Robbie said. “Not surprising to me.”

  “Isn’t North Korea closely aligned with China?” Morgan asked. “I hear Asian people in the card clubs talking about that all the time.”

  Robbie chuckled. “Yeah. What is it with Asians and poker?” he asked. “I’ve been to the card clubs a few times. It’s almost always half Asian.”

  “Part of their culture, I guess,” Morgan said. “They tip pretty well. Do you play?”

  “Poker?” Robbie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I used to play online a lot until the Feds shut the good sites down,” Robbie said. “I was better
online than in person, but I could play well enough to win a little money at the clubs.”

  Gil rushed into the kitchen. “Hey, man, Russia just warned China to move its troops away from the North Korean border, or risk losing them.”

  “It’s on,” Justin said, following Gil into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing on the message boards,” Robbie said. “Now get out of here so I can write this article.”

  “Oh, crap, he’s in writing mode again,” Gil said. He looked at Justin and snickered. They went back into the living room.

  “What do they mean by writing mode?” Morgan asked.

  “I can get a little obsessive sometimes,” he said. “Don’t worry, that’s usually only with the fiction. I’ll have this article done in a few minutes. Want to proof read it for me?”

  “Sure,” she said, her eyes lighting up.

  Robbie concentrated on the article, eyes on the screen as his fingers rushed over the keyboard. Morgan watched silently for almost ten minutes.

  “There,” Robbie said. He turned towards her and saw her expression. “What?”

  “This is you,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Not too late to back out.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Move over so I can proof it for you.”

  Robbie rolled his chair away and Morgan rolled hers in front of the laptop screen. She read silently, putting a pound sign by problems she saw. After a few minutes she turned to him and smiled. “Done. Caught a few things.”

  “Thanks,” he said. She showed him where the typos and misspelled words were, and he fixed them on the fly.

  “You’re a good editor,” Robbie said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re brilliant, you know,” Morgan said, looking him in the eye.

  “No I’m not,” Robbie said. “I’m kind of a hack, but at least I’m good enough to get paid a little, and I love doing it.”

  Morgan shook her head. “I’m anxious to read your fiction.”

  Robbie’s face turned red. He got back in front of the laptop screen and published the piece, then pushed himself away from the table.

  “Listen. There they go again,” Morgan whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Steve’s in love with her. I knew that before we met her.”

  “Because of the way he talked about her?”

  “Yeah,” Robbie said. “We’ve been pushing him to get up the courage to talk to her. He’s painfully shy.”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” Morgan said, “but look who’s talking. You could have had me months ago too, you know.”

  “We’re heading into a crazy time,” Robbie said. “You know that, right?”

  “I know that,” she said. “Better to be together than apart.”

  Morgan’s cellphone rang. “Be right back.” She raced out into the living room and grabbed it off the coffee table.

  “Hemingway done in there?” Gil asked. Justin snickered.

  “Yeah,” she said, putting the phone to her ear as she went back into the kitchen. Robbie watched her have a quick conversation. She ended the call. “My boss. The card club is opening this weekend. He wants me there.”

  “Wow, the government is really pushing to get everything moving again,” Robbie said.

  Morgan laughed. “My boss was chomping at the bit to re-open. There’s money to be made. You know people tend to gamble more when things get nuts, right?”

  Robbie laughed. “Reminds me of what one of my friends told me,” he said. “About Valley Forge.”

  “One of those friends?” She nodded to the living room.

  “No, one of my fellow bloggers. He lives in Valley Forge, in a house built in 1730. Cool place. I got to visit there once. Some of Washington’s officers actually lived there during the Revolutionary War.”

  “Wow,” Morgan said. “What does that have to do with gambling?”

  “General Washington got alarmed because his troops were gambling too much. They used dice. Washington confiscated all of the dice to stop it.”

  “Wow, never heard that story,” Morgan said.

  “It gets better,” Robbie said. “The soldiers started carving their musket balls into dice. There were so many sets of homemade dice in the dirt out there that just about everybody who lives there has found some. My friend had two sets. Found them in his garden while he was planting flowers.”

  “You’re kidding,” Morgan said.

  “Human nature,” Robbie said. “People find ways to relieve pressure in times like these. Gambling is one way.”

  “I know what another way is,” Morgan said. She looked at him with a sly smile.

  Robbie moved in and kissed her.

  ***

  Sam, Connie, Officer Ryan, and Officer Patrick stood by the mobile artillery piece behind the clubhouse, looking it over and chatting. Clem hurried out to them.

  “Hey, guys, let’s go in the clubhouse,” Clem said. “Things just went nuts.”

  He turned and trotted back to the clubhouse. Connie looked at Sam, worry in her eyes.

  “What the hell happened now?” Ryan asked.

  “C’mon,” Sam said. They rushed into the clubhouse.

  “Dammit, is that New York Harbor?” Patrick asked, looking at the TV screen.

  “Yeah,” Clem said. “Somebody floated a nuke in there. They just announced that a bomb went off in Puget Sound too.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Ryan said.

  Connie trembled and started to cry, Sam pulling her close.

  “This changes everything,” Clem said.

  “Yeah it does,” Sam said, his brow furrowed, anger in his eyes. “They’ve signed their own death warrants now.”

  “Look, one went off in a Russian harbor too,” Clem said, pointing to the text streaming along the bottom of the screen.

  “Hell, look at it now,” Ryan said. “They hit Charleston Harbor too.”

  Ryan’s lapel radio scratched. “Ryan, you there?”

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said. “Patrick, c’mon. Outside.”

  The two officers went through the door. Connie, Clem, and Sam looked at each other. John and Sarah rushed in.

  “You see what happened?” Sarah asked, tears streaming down her face.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “We’re under attack.”

  “Big time,” John said.

  “You don’t think it’s the Russians, do you?” Sarah asked.

  “No, they got hit too,” Clem said.

  “This was Islamists and somebody else, I suspect,” Sam said. “Things are gonna get crazy now.”

  Ryan and Patrick came back in.

  “We gotta go,” Ryan said. “The brass is calling everybody in.”

  “Because of this?” John asked.

  “No, because our idiot Governor and the President invited somebody else into the party,” Patrick said.

  “Who?” Sam asked.

  “The frigging UN,” Ryan said. “Idiots. The Administration is targeting domestic terrorism.”

  Clem laughed. “Oh, please. The enemy is coming over the Mexican border and from the coast.”

  “At least they didn’t call it workplace violence,” John said.

  Sam and Clem chuckled. Ryan and Patrick looked deadly serious.

  “We need you to let us out,” Ryan said. “Lock up after we leave. Don’t let the UN come in here. If I were you I’d take that mobile artillery out there and point it down the damn access road.”

  “You sound pissed,” Clem said.

  “You’re damn straight I’m pissed,” Ryan said. “In my book this is treason.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’d call it,” Sam said. “You can’t bring in foreign soldiers to control our population.”

  Clem laughed. “Yeah, only we can do that.”

  Patrick shook his head. “You know, he’s got a point, Ryan. Now we’re gonna find out how it feels.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, boys,” Clem said. “I’ll fight these Euro-trash idio
ts to the death.”

  “How do you know they’re from Europe?” Ryan asked.

  “Because this is exactly the kind of crap I’d expect from Brussels,” Clem said. “Remember when half the countries left the EU about ten years ago? The Globalists haven’t given up even after that rebuke, if you’ve noticed.”

  “I noticed,” John said.

  “Okay, I’ll go get the gate opened for you,” Sam said.

  “I’m going with you,” Connie said. “I don’t want you out of my sight right now.”

  “No problem, sweetie,” Sam said. They walked out the door with Ryan and Patrick.

  “What do the UN vehicles look like?” Connie asked.

  “White and blue,” Ryan said. “Usually marked with a big UN on the sides and back.”

  “What about Europe?” Sam asked. “I’d think they would be in more trouble than we are. Look at their population. They let in all those radicals before the partial collapse of the EU, remember? As far as I know, most of them are still there.”

  “Britain deported a lot of them. So did France and the Netherlands after they left the EU,” Ryan said. “Still a big problem, though.”

  “You’ve been following this, obviously,” Connie said.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “See you guys at the gate.”

  Ryan and Patrick got back into their cruiser. Connie and Sam got into the Jeep. They drove down to the gate.

  “You folks take care, and keep your eyes open,” Ryan said. “Remember what I said – about the National Guard and the UN.”

  “Which is it more likely to be?” Connie asked.

  “I have no idea,” Ryan said. “The brass isn’t accepting the authority of the UN. We’ve been told to arrest any UN personnel trying to push American citizens around. The Governor might step in and remove our leadership, though. If they do that, I’m done. I’m joining the resistance.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Patrick said.

  “You could always come here and join us,” Sam said.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Ryan said. “You guys have me impressed.” He watched as Sam opened the gate. Then he and Patrick got back in their cruiser and drove away. Sam closed the gate, locked it, and reset the alarm.

  “My God,” Connie said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “A lot more than the authorities want us to know,” Sam said. “Somebody is going to mess with us over that pass. I can feel it coming.”