Tom knew Jessica dropped into a deep sleep but didn’t slow his horse. The clock was ticking, and President Green’s bunker was still far away in Maryland.
“Sleep well, my child,” he whispered, and didn’t say another word to Jessica until the woman woke up outside of a town called Pranton. The first thing Jessica saw was darkness, but then she spotted a very small light and heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not be partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” There was a campfire. Tom, Alvin and Jacob were sitting around the campfire talking. Confusion immediately struck Jessica.
“What?” she asked, feeling disoriented and groggy. She pushed a brown saddle blanket off her.
“She’s awake,” Alvin spoke in a low voice after taking a sip from a cup of coffee.
“What...where are we?” Jessica asked, as her eyes struggled to focus.
“Close to the Maryland border,” Jacob explained in a low voice. “We had to stop and let the horses rest. We ran them hard today.”
Tom stood up from a fallen log and handed Jessica a metal cup of coffee. “We had to get off the road,” he said, keeping his own voice low. “We’re outside of a town called Pranton. The town is crawling with Red Widows. We couldn’t run the horses anymore, and we all need to rest.”
“We’re about four miles north of the town,” Jacob explained, as he took a sip of coffee. He was wrapped in a brown saddle blanket. “If we keep the fire low and leave out before dawn, we should be okay.”
“Man, you were out,” Alvin told Jessica and grinned. “You might as well have been in a coma. We lugged you around like a bag of taters.” Alvin fought back a yawn and then checked his right shoulder. “Good thing you’re awake, because the three of us need some shut eye. You can keep watch.”
“Please,” Tom urged Jessica. “I was about to wake you up to watch for a while.”
“Oh...of course. Yes,” Jessica nodded her head. “Please, sleep.”
Tom gave Jessica a loving smile, glanced around the dark, snowy woods, and then laid down on a brown saddle blanket. He covered up and immediately dropped into as deep a sleep as Jessica had. Jacob handed Jessica his gun.
“Shoot first,” he ordered, then yawned and laid down and went to sleep too. Alvin smiled and winked at Jessica. Then he followed Jacob’s route and went to sleep, leaving Jessica sitting alone. She felt confused and scared. She looked down at Jacob’s gun and took a few minutes to allow her fragile mind to focus and get back on track. A heavy snow began to fall all around the small campfire.
As the hours passed in semi-darkness, Jessica carefully fed the small campfire bits and pieces of wood that Tom had managed to gather. To stay awake, she sipped one cup of coffee after another. When four’ o’clock arrived, she woke everyone up and handed out three cups of coffee. Then, she began packing up the blankets.
Thirty minutes later, she was sitting behind Tom again. They rode toward the Maryland border, leaving Pennsylvania far behind. She sensed they were about to enter a strange and dangerous land; a land filled with unseen dangers and untold horrors.
Far away, Roger Alden was waiting and hoping for Tim to arrive. His second-in-command should have Jessica Mayes in his custody, along with the AI virus. Roger had no idea that Tim was dead. He also didn’t know that his enemies, who were in possession of the virus, were on three horses traveling straight toward the bunker in which President Green was safely secured. The days of Roger Alden were quickly coming to an end.
Chapter 5
Justice and Miracles
Roger Alden dreamed that he was being eaten alive by a giant snake which had countless heads. Each head held the face of dying Americans; screaming, hissing, and reaching for him with rotted, razor-sharp claws. The countless heads each took turns swallowing him whole and then spitting his diseased body out onto black ice. He slid in a panicky writhe, trying to get his feet under him. Elliptical eyes watched until another snake head, full of hideous fangs, snatched him up. Over and over and over, the snake devoured Roger and then spit him out. Again and again, he exhausted himself trying to flee before a head slithered and fangs struck.
“No!” Roger woke up screaming in a dark, concrete room.
Dripping with cold sweat, Roger was throwing his hands up into the air, trying desperately to fight away a snake that wasn’t there. When his panicked mind realized he had been trapped in a nightmare, Roger grabbed his chest to examine his racing heart.
“So...real,” he whispered in a shaky voice, as his nose caught a strong scent of urine. Roger had wet himself. “So real,” he whispered again, and then managed to crawl to a concrete wall and stand up.
He examined the heavy darkness of a small sleeping quarters, which held a bed, a writing desk and a door leading into a cramped bathroom. How had he toppled from the bed?
“The nightmare,” he told himself in a shaky voice.
The room was designed for peasants, not men of power. Roger had never anticipated that he would be forced underground like the rats beneath him. The arrogant rat that he was and always would be had ordered the sleeping quarters to be outfitted with a simple bed and a writing desk. It was simply for appearance to please a bunch of corrupt politicians which he planned on killing anyway. But now Roger was the one stuck underground. He had been reduced to a frightened coward, trapped in a room he’d designed for peasants.
“So real,” he said, and raced over to the north wall of the room to flip on a light switch. Two overhead fluorescent lights flicked to life. They sounded like a snake licking a dead mouse, as they illuminated Roger’s pale, waxy face.
“I have to—” he began to whisper but was cut off by a knock on the metal door.
“Sir?” a man called out in a worried voice. “Sir, are you awake?”
Roger closed his eyes, drew in a scared breath, and then managed to bark, “Yes! What it is?”
“Sir, our position is being compromised,” the voice answered. “Our teams above have deserted their positions. The door leading down to the bunker has been located.”
Roger felt panic grab his chest. It wouldn’t be long before the bunker was overrun. How had the main entrance door leading underground been discovered?
“Secure the entry—”
“Already done, Sir,” the voice called out. “But, Sir...” The man’s voice was cut off by a loud explosion. “They’re getting in. We have to get out of here!” Roger heard the sound of M-16 rifles being fired. “Sir, get out of here!” the voice yelled and then ran off down a dimly lit hallway.
Roger, even though he was drenched in his own urine, grabbed his gray coat and gun off the writing desk. He threw open the room’s door and burst out into the hallway. The sounds of rifle fire and violent screams greeted his ears.
“We can’t hold them. I’m shot. Kill them!” A man screamed in agony, as the massive mob of over five-hundred men—armed with rifles and hand guns—began shooting their way into the bunker. Some were throwing smoke grenades, and others were shooting tear gas canisters.
“Kill them!” The leader of the mob yelled in a vicious, hard voice, “Kill them all!” Inside Roger’s mind, he imagined an old zombie movie from the ‘70s. Near the end of the movie, a mob of zombies had managed to overpower their prey and break into an abandoned grocery store where they killing everyone. Roger saw the attacking mob as raging zombies. He knew that, if the mob caught him, he would be torn to pieces.
“I have to get out of here,” he whispered.
He turned to his left and took off running toward a secret escape hatch that only he knew about. As he did, a flood of men and women being pushed by the angry mob entered the hallway. Some were injured while others were firing their weapons. They spotted Roger running down the hallway and quickly realized that their leader was deserting the fight.
“Mr. Alden,” a man yelled in anger, “where are you going! Help us fight!”
Roger didn’t bother
to answer the man. He had a much more important task than answering these people. He had to save his own life.
“He’s deserting us!” a woman yelled. “Stop him! Go after him!”
The flood of men and women began chasing after Roger who had heard every word they said. He whipped his gun around and began firing, striking three men in the chest. They toppled forward and created an obstacle which allowed Roger just enough time to reach a door marked Maintenance. He burst through and slammed it behind him. After he engaged a heavy lock, he ran for an escape tunnel secured by a metal hatch door. As he yanked open the hatch door, gun fire exploded through the locked door. Roger quickly scrambled into the escape tunnel, but not before a bullet struck his upper right calf. His pained cry could be heard by the angry mob. He slammed the metal hatch closed and engaged a security lock. Then he began limping down a long, dark concrete tunnel while using his hands to feel his way forward.
One miserable step at a time, Roger dragged his wounded leg down the dark tunnel. One step at a time, one miserable step through the darkness while feeling trapped in a fierce nightmare. Roger slithered away from the battle taking place inside the secret CIA bunker. He slithered away, toward where Roger assumed that he was safe.
“I’ll get to Canada. My people in Canada will protect me,” he whispered. He was shaking all over, reduced to a lesser man; the coward he truly was. “I’ll win this battle and set up the nuclear weapons. It’s not over. This world is mine.”
Roger continued down the dark tunnel for what seemed like hours. When it seemed that his body could not take one more step, he finally reached the end of the tunnel. Reaching out his bloody hands, he examined an icy cold metal hatch door. The hatch had a metal security bar firmly strapped across it, secured by two heavy locks that required keys. Only Roger Alden was in possession of those keys, or so he thought.
“Keys,” Roger whispered in pain, and began searching his pants pockets. A cold, vicious terror gripped him when he encountered a big, ugly hole in the right pants pocket. It had been created by the bullet that had wounded him. The keys must have fallen through. Roger slowly turned his head to stare back into the darkness and began shaking all over.
“I...no...” he whimpered, fully aware that he had already lost a great deal of blood and needed immediate medical attention. There was no way humanly possible he could travel back down the tunnel and located the missing keys. But, there was no way to open the escape door without removing the security bar. Roger Alden was trapped.
“I...need to rest.” Roger slid down onto the cold concrete floor. Breathing white clouds of smoke from his mouth, he examined his wounded leg. “I’ll rest, and then go back for the keys. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
Roger placed both of his hands over his right calf to apply as much pressure as possible. “I’ll rest and—”
He stopped when he spotted what appeared to be dancing beams of light —not just one beam of light but many—in the far distance. A crowd of people were approaching. Warm urine began to soak Roger’s pants.
“No...how...”
Absolute panic gripped him. Roger knew there was no chance for escape. Whoever was approaching would surely kill him. They would murder him without mercy. The hate and rage which Roger had spent decades injecting into the American people had now turned to look back in his direction. The same anger and violence that Roger had poured into a once-great nation—shamelessly orchestrating every war imaginable, forcing people to turn on each other like rabid dogs—quickly approached him from down a cold, dark tunnel. He equated them to hungry zombies on the search for one last victim. The people’s murderous attitude, which Roger Alden had shamelessly created, would now propel the end of his miserable existence.
“No...I’ll...not this way...never!” Roger yelled. He grabbed his gun and rammed the barrel into his mouth. “My way,” he mumbled around it. Then he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
Click!
Roger’s eyes snapped open. He removed the barrel of the gun from his mouth and quickly checked the gun’s clip. Empty. No bullets.
“No, this can’t be.”
“This way!” a gang member belonging to the T-14s yelled. It was the same gang member who had killed four people but was allowed back into America by corrupt politicians. “I heard someone yell!”
A group of twenty men, along with a few T-14 gang members wanted for murder who had hidden in sanctuary cities, ran down the tunnel in an obvious and mad hungry for murder.
Roger only had a minute at best before the zombies arrived. Again, he desperately checked the chamber of his gun. It was still empty.
“No! This just can’t be happening!” he cried, and then decided he only had one chance to live. “Help! help me!” he cried out. “Help me!”
The leader of the attacking group, a gang member known as Jose, heard Roger yelling and shined the flashlight he held in his hand down the tunnel. He spotted a wounded man pressed up against one of the tunnel walls and yelled, “There!”
Roger watched in horror as twenty men, armed with assault rifles and flashlights, stormed up to him.
“Yo, dog. What’s your game?” Wearing a thick black coat and a black doo-rag, a tall black man named Snake demanded.
Jose stepped around Snake and studied Roger with hard, soulless eyes. He demanded in a thick Spanish accent, “What’s your name, homey?”
“I...was being held prisoner,” Roger lied, speaking in a trembling voice. “I’m...an undercover agent working for the Canadian government. I was sent to gather information on Roger Alden.” Roger dared to raise his eyes to see a face that was covered with tattoos and hate. “I was shot. If you help me, the Canadian government will help you.”
“Yo, this dog is out of his mind!” Snake yelled at Jose. “Cap this fool!”
Jose held up his flashlight to get a better look at Roger. “Hold up, snake,” he said in a curious voice. Then he bent down and placed his filthy face in front of Roger’s. The smell of liquor and cheap cigars hung in the air between them. It was obvious Jose was lit. He couldn’t stop twitching, and his eyes were glazed from the high. “Yo, homey, you look familiar to me.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s the fool from TV,” another T-14 gang member holding a bottle of liquor yelled out from behind Jose.
Snake squatted down next to Jose and grabbed Roger’s face, so he could examine it. He swung his flashlight up repeatedly, creating a strobe effect to blind Roger.
“Hey, this fool is Roger Alden!” he yelled. “This fool is trying to play us!”
“No...no,” Roger begged, blinded again and again by the bright beam on Snake’s flashlight. “No—”
“You playing us, fool?” Snake yelled, punching and shattering Roger’s nose. He grabbed Roger by the hair and spit in his face. “You playing us? We done killed all your people. We gonna kill everyone!”
Jose narrowed his eyes. “Is this homey Roger Alden; the Roger Alden?” he asked Snake. “You sure, man?”
“This is him,” Snake said in a sour voice and spit in Roger’s face too. “This is the man of the hour, Jose.”
Jose stared into Roger’s bleeding face. “You really know people in Canada, homey?”
Roger, half dazed from Snake’s punch and half dead from blood loss, managed to nod his head. “I have...p-people in...Canada.”
“Yo, homey, what happened to the power?” Jose asked, as his eyes danced with murderous hate. “We can talk about Canada in a minute.”
“EMP attack...North Korea...”
“EMP what?” Jose snapped.
A twenty-year-old punk named Styles who was wearing a fancy leather jacket and a white hat stepped forward. “An Electromagnetic Pulse, right dog?” he asked Roger. “Yeah, yeah, I’m into all these conspiracy theories!” Styles turned to Jose. “Man, if this germ is telling the truth, we ain’t gonna get the juice back on for years and years.” Styles kicked Roger’s left foot. “We best get to Canada, righ
t dog?”
Roger nodded his head. “I know people. Please. If you help me, I’ll help you.”
“Yo, dog,” Styles said, holding an M-16 rifle he had stolen from one of Roger’s dead men, “this game ain’t rolling no good dice. If the juice is down, we won’t be able to get food and water.”
“The pad we just busted has juice, dog,” Snake snapped at Styles.
“They’ve got a generator. It won’t last forever,” Roger warned. “Russia and China...going to nuke America...all a game...America will be destroyed...have to evacuate.”
“Oh man, this song just lost its rap, dog,” Styles told Jose.
“This fool could be lying.” Snake warned.
“I’m not lying...Russia...China...nuclear weapons...the EMP attack...first strike...” Roger mumbled, struggling to remain conscious. He raised his head and saw an ugly snake with numerous heads staring down at him just like his nightmare. And that’s when he screamed, “The snake!”
“Yeah, dog, my name is Snake!” Snake yelled, thrusting his face close to Roger’s. He stood and lifted a heavy steel-toed boot and kicked Roger right in the face. An eternal darkness, the same blanket of darkness that held Wendy Cratterson, invaded Roger’s world. Snake told Jose, “I’m gonna cap this fool. Stand back!”
Sick of Snake’s attitude, Jose pretended to step back and give Snake room. Snake nodded his head and turned his back to Jose. That’s when Jose put a bullet into the man’s head. Only then did he turn his attention to Roger. Laughing, he aimed his gun at Roger’s chest and filled him full of bullets. “So long, homey, thanks for the warning.”
With Roger dead, Jose kicked his body to the side and began examining the escape hatch door. After a moment, he yelled, “Yo, these locks. Who has those keys we found?”
“I do,” Styles called out and stepped over Snake’s dead body. He handed the keys to Jose with a shaky hand. Styles had liked Snake, but knew the guy was pushing Jose too far. That was the way of gang life. Styles didn’t know that Snake and Roger had gotten off really easy. The darkness of peoples’ hearts, much more of a threat than every member of the gang, had awaited him outside. Their combined hatred was more terrifying than anything all of them could ever imagine. Styles was stuck in an escape tunnel, safe for the moment, while America was trapped in a nightmare that was swallowing everyone alive.
Green File Crime Thrillers Box Set Page 45