A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (11 page)

Holding his face with both hands, Big C clambered to his feet and staggered around in a daze. Through splayed fingers he spotted the busty bleach-blonde looking horrified from all the excitement. He stumbled his way toward her. People were exclaiming over his injury, but no one offered to help, their reluctance to get involved perhaps due as much to his size as to his race.

He dug a fingernail into his skin so blood leaked between his fingers by the time he reached the blonde. She attempted to get out of his way, but he intentionally tripped and plunged into her, bringing her to the ground with him. The ruse had worked once with the Homies.

Effusive with apology, he struggled to his knees and had to wrap his arms around the woman’s shoulders to keep from falling again. Denzel Washington couldn’t have given a better performance. Once a personal contact was made, it brought out the Good Samaritan in people whose souls weren’t already corrupted and hardened. The blonde braced herself to support Big C against her body.

“I all right, miss,” he wheezed. “Let me catch my breath. I’m a cop.”

He managed to extract his badge case. Flashing the shield made him the good guy automatically. He felt the blonde relax. He was on his way to gaining her confidence.

“I’ll call you an ambulance,” she offered.

“No, no. I be okay. Don’t let go just now ’cause I sure enough fall flat on my face. It’s a face enough to stop traffic like it is.”

People gathered around out of curiosity. The funeral ceremony went on hold. Only the Homeland Security Honor Guard remained in place since no one authorized it to break ranks. Someone handed the blonde a handful of tissues. She used them to apply pressure to the cut on Big C’s cheek.

“It ain’t hardly nothing,” she diagnosed. “That was a bad man that hit you?”

“Bad to the bone,” Big C agreed, hamming it up. “I come pay my respects to Ron and I recognize that dude wanted on a felony warrant.”

“What do you reckon he was doing here at the cemetery?” she asked.

“I was asking him just that when he catch me off-guard. It won’t happen again.”

“You sure enough you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“I stay. Won’t nothing keep me from paying respects to a friend.”

“You was friends with my cousin?” she asked.

“Buddies. What with us both cops and all.”

Which was true, in a way. Big C had become acquainted with him through the Defenders.

Big C pretended to be more unsteady on his feet than he anticipated, which prompted the girl to insist he continue to lean on her. They introduced themselves. Judy presented assorted uncles, aunts and cousins, most of whom seemed shy, stand-offish and backwards. The only thing the scene needed to complete it were dueling banjos.

Funeral services resumed after a few minutes. A preacher stepped solemnly to the head of the waiting casket. A small summer cloud came up and spat rain. Everyone who could crowded underneath the awning. There was no room for Big C and Judy. The sprinkle of rain felt cool on Big C’s shaved head. Judy clutched Big C’s arm and shed tears as the casket lowered into its final resting place.

Big C wondered about the blonde. On the surface at least, Judy didn’t appear keen enough—or deceitful enough—to be the Washington spy Ron Sparks had alluded to. She was too open and unassuming.

Nonetheless, even though he felt he might be wasting his time, C decided to go ahead and play out his hand, see what he could get out of her. She might not be nearly as dimwitted as she appeared. Besides, she was probably smoking hot underneath all that makeup, and he liked her.

Chapter Eighteen

Tulsa

Nail bee-lined for his apartment after escaping from the cemetery. He pulled to the curb a block away and sat in the car with Sharon until he was sure no one was staking it out, waiting for him. Logic dictated that another material witness warrant would soon be issued for Sharon now that Kimbrell knew she was with the Tulsa cop. She hardly batted an eye when he informed her of his reasoning.

“Jerry warned these kinds of things would happen once you start exposing the truth,” she said.

“Slip under the wheel and keep the engine running,” he told her. “I’ll get our things from the apartment. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“My bag’s already packed by the table.”

“I like a girl ready to go.”

He exited the Saturn and walked down the side of the street to his apartment building. Not many cities had sidewalks anymore. Deciding it was safe, he hurried upstairs. He returned to the car ten minutes later with Sharon’s bag and his old parachute bag packed with clothing and necessities. No telling when they’d be able to return. He tossed the bag in the back seat and got in on the passenger’s side, dropping a small FedEx package on the seat between them.

“This came for you while we were out. Overnight express left it at the door.”

She glanced at the return address. “It’s the DVDs of Jerry’s show I promised you and the new copy of
Truth
distributed yesterday. I had to call in changes to my piece after... after ORU. Am I driving?”

“A woman’ll be less conspicuous.”

“You could hide on the floorboard.”

He wasn’t sure if she was teasing or not. “Head north on Peoria and catch the Keystone Expressway toward Mannford when we get downtown.”

“Won’t they be looking for you?”

“Life is full of chances.”

Nail breathed a little easier once they hit the Keystone and headed west out of the city on the heights paralleling the Arkansas River.

“I take it you have a plan?” Sharon said.

Nail grunted. He stared out the side window. Within the space of the past few hours, he and this woman he barely knew had become fugitives together wanted by the law. Perhaps it would have been best for both of them if he had remained in the hospital to answer Kimbrell’s questions. Except, he suspected Kimbrell wanted him out of the way and would have locked him up, no matter what.

“So what have we detected so far, Detective?” Sharon asked, one hand on the wheel, the other punctuating the air. “We don’t seem to be collecting many marbles.”

Nail pulled back from her sweeping hand. “Are you Jewish or Italian?”

“Jews talk with their hands too.”

“Huh!” he grunted. “All right, so we’re not on the fast track.”

“What do you call a fast track? I’ve been shot at, ended up in a strange man’s apartment with mice, became an accessory to police brutality by threatening to run a fence post up a witness’ posterior, got in a brawl at a cemetery, and now we’re being chased by the federal government.”

“I live a dull life.”

He was trying to work it all out in his mind. Nothing made sense.

“Sparks got himself off’d in a cemetery and the feds laid the rap on the Defenders,” he mused.  “Rupert gets his marching orders over the phone so they can lay the blame on Rightwing fanatics when they were actually after Jerry Baer...”

Sharon lifted an eyebrow at him. “
They?”

He flung his arms wide in frustration. “So I’m beginning to sound like I should be wearing a tinfoil hat. Kimbrell is up to his ass in all this. I’m willing to wager he gets his marching orders same as Rupert. Do you realize how wacky this sounds?”

“Like a man starting to wake up?”

“For God’s sake, Sharon, we’re talking government conspiracy here. It happens in Venezuela. Maybe in the Ukraine. But not
here
in the land of mom’s apple pie.”

“One of the things Jerry and I had to contend with on his program,” she said, “was to understand that people in government are no different from anyone else when it comes to what they’re capable of doing. They can be spiteful, nasty and deceitful. Because they think of themselves as The Enlightened doesn’t mean they
are
enlightened. The only difference between a thief in Congress or the White House and a thief on the streets is that the latter snatches your purse while the former snatches your freedom.”

Nail shook his head. His cell phone rang. He dug it from the pocket of his jacket and checked the number on the screen. Big C.

“You all right, C?”

“Man, you about took my head clean off.”

“I’m passive-aggressive.”

“James, where can I find you?”

“The Safe House?”

“That’s the only thing my ex-wife didn’t take. Her lawyers couldn’t find it.”

“Meet us there?”

“It be later. I’m with Judy Sparks. Tell you about it when I see you. Watch out for black helicopters. They starting to circle.”

Open Letter to the Tea Party

(CPI)
—“Your kind—mostly white folks beholden to an absurd nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like—are dying. We just have to be patient and wait for your hearts to stop beating...”

Chapter Nineteen

Washington, D.C.

President of The United States Patrick Wayne Anastos was working up the troops from the podium at the Kellogg Conference Center. Arrogant chin tilted up and out, looking down his long nose, the tell-tale wag of his head from left teleprompter to right teleprompter pacing his delivery. More than three hundred AmeriCorps platoon and company commanders from all over the nation stood in ranks and formations across one side of the convention center. A mass of ACOA members and union leaders and representatives filled the rest of the coliseum, cheering and whistling, punching fists in the air and chanting, “
The One! The One
!”

The President’s rich baritone voice probed and soothed, stimulated and caressed.

“Workers of the world unite isn’t, uh, just a slogan anymore. The system we have now is broken down and, uh, we can see it everywhere, from the oil spill in the Gulf and the arrogance on Wall Street to the pollution of our atmosphere and the, uh, desperate conditions of our citizens in obtaining equal social and economic justice. The free market system is not working, it is not going to work. Americans just haven’t, uh, recognized it yet. So we need to create a new one for them...”

His words echoed from loudspeakers all over the convention center. Several hundred throats picked up his energy and threw it back at him. “
The One! The One! The One!”

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now,” the President resumed, “we will be able to look back and, uh, tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was, uh, the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake our world. We are the ones the world has been waiting for.”

“The One! The One!”

Fists clinched, The One bent down into his mike. “Fired up!” he shouted into it to make the sound of his voice reverberate and echo.

“
Yeh! Yeh!”
thundered the response. His AmeriCorps disciples wore green
AmeriCorps
T-shirts, black ball caps and black trousers bloused into military combat boots. They stamped their feet in the cadence of troops marching through a conquered city.

The President’s voice whipped his audience into a frenzy of excitement. “
Ready to go!”

“Yeh! Yeh! Yeh!”

“Fired up!”

“Yeh! Yeh!”

“They can’t stop us now!”

“The One! The One! Yeah-h-h-h!”

Government to Stop Conspiracy Theories

(Washington)—
Speaker of the House Barbara Teague (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham (D-Ill) promise to introduce a bill to stop conspiracy theories against the government. They say this can be accomplished by legally banning the transmission of conspiracy theories through the internet, TV, radio, print, or by face to face conversations. The bill will also provide for cognitive infiltration of suspected conspiracy-oriented groups and for recruiting private parties to engage in counter-speech...

Chapter Twenty

Washington, D.C.

Dennis Trout was still on a high after the meeting in which he was finally accepted by his brother-in-law’s political insiders. He and Wiedersham returned to the senator’s lavish office to discuss details of the meeting and the role Trout was to play in events currently unfolding. Wiedersham settled into a long and windy monologue on how fortunate Trout was to have a mentor like him. Liz, who ran the outer office, hurried in and handed the senator a sealed manila envelope. She was buxom and attractive in a matronly, premature gray sort of way. Trout sometimes wondered if she and Wiedersham might not be playing hanky-panky, as Judy would put it. Wiedersham’s long-fled ex-wife must have suspected the same thing; Liz’ name had come up in the divorce proceedings.

“A messenger from the White House brought this over,” Liz said and hurried back out, closing the door.

Wiedersham extracted a magazine from the envelope. On the cover appeared a depiction of President Anastos riding a donkey over a cliff. Trout recognized the magazine banner:
Truth
. Jerry Baer’s rag.

Wiedersham read the note accompanying the periodical and turned to a page marked with a Stickem. He looked up, thought about it, and then handed the note to his chief-of-staff. It was a memo from White House Press Secretary Dewey Gubbins.

Joe. P.14 by Sharon Lowenthal. Zenergy News is leading with a similar story tonight on prime time. The President is uncomfortable. He wants to know what’s going on with the FAD Bill. D.

“Call over there and tell that fuckhead Gubbins I’m on it,” Wiedersham instructed Trout.

While Trout was on the phone with Gubbins, Wiedersham read the designated piece in
Truth
, tossed the magazine open on his desk in disgust, and got on the other line. Trout hung up his phone and edged over to the Louis XIV desk and read the headline:
One Year Ago.
When Wiedersham didn’t object, Trout picked up the copy and scanned the article.