A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (30 page)

“Like what the bear leaves when he goes in the woods.”

“I’m on the road to New York now. I got somebody closer help you, man, until I get there.”

Nail coughed and had to wait for a spasm of pain to pass. “Not Sharon!” he croaked. “Too dangerous.”

“Bleach blonde from the cemetery. Remember her? Judy Taylor,” Big C said. “I talk to her and she driving to New York now. She need to know exactly where you at.”

Nail told him.

“Say what? A trash can?”

“We all get dumped one time or another.”

“You wait right there, understand? It good to hear—”

Nail’s phone went dead.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, sleeping some, only half-awake at other times. His lips were parched and his throat so dry he could hardly swallow. He felt around for a bottle of water or soft drink with some left in it. After sorting through soiled diapers, potato peelings and some old clothing, the best he came up with was a half-rotted orange. He peeled it, a laborious process in his condition. Never had he tasted anything in his life quite so delicious.

He searched for another orange and found an apple core. He ate it and immediately fell asleep.

It must have been hours later when the rusty squeaking of the lid being raised startled him awake. His eyes adjusted to daylight to discover a blond head poked over the side of the dumpster and curious brown eyes regarding him.

“Detective Nail?”

“Jonathan Harker,” he automatically corrected her.

“Maybe I got the wrong trash can—”

“If you’re looking for Oscar—”

“Corey sent me. Big C.”

Nail recognized her then.

“Are you too bad off?” she asked.

“It’s according to the definition of ‘too.’”

“Can you get out of that thing?”

“If you’ll help me.”

She glanced around. “Hurry while there ain’t nobody looking.”

He took her hands and she pulled. He sank into his bedding, but his feet found bottom. Pain in a dizzy rush almost caused him to pass out.

“You gotta hang on,” Judy encouraged. “You don’t look near so dangerous as when you socked poor Corey in the jaw at the cemetery.”

Finally, with much straining and more agony, he toppled over the lip of the container and landed on Judy, her body cushioning his fall. She hastened up and helped him to his feet.

“You smell something awful,” she decided. “I seen on TV this morning what happened.”

While he waited to catch his breath, he heard chanting and shouting and marching feet instead of normal traffic noises. He scowled. There was something disconcerting about the sound of feet tromping through a city. He looked around for Judy’s vehicle.

“I couldn’t get my car downtown,” she explained, reading his thought. “There’s some kind of big hoop-dee-doo protest against the mosque the Muslims are building next door to where they blew up the Twin Towers. I guess we got to walk out to where I parked my car.”

He looked at her in disbelief. “Every cop and Homie in the state is looking for a Skid Row bum with blood all over him.”

“I thought of that,” she responded. “Can you walk if you lean on me?”

“I saw the movie, but... Never mind.”

He noticed the big paper bag she brought with her. She delved into it and produced an assortment of materials, including bandages and tape, poster board, colored markers, a flute, an Uncle Sam hat made of paper, an American flag...

“So we’re doing show ’n tell? Lady, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been shot and if I don’t make it out of here soon you’ll have to carry me—which I’m pretty sure you can’t do.”

Patiently, Judy explained. “When I see what was going on, I bought all this stuff at a store when I parked my car. The woman said they were selling lots of flags and Uncle Sam hats for the event. That’s what she called it—an event. I figure I’m going to be Uncle Sam, you a survivor of Nine-Eleven. Now hush up your yapping. We got to get you out of here.”

The girl was smarter than she appeared.

Concealing themselves in the shadows behind the dumpster, Judy first bandaged Nail’s wounds. Her face turned ashen at their sight, but she bravely continued. She wrapped his head in gauze to heighten the effect of his disguise. His shirt and jeans were crusted with real blood. Then she donned her Uncle Sam costume and pondered over the poster board.

“What do you think it should say?”

“’Don’t tread on me?’”

“I’ll draw the snake too.”

She attached a thin-slatted handle to the protest sign and helped Nail to his feet. He felt pale and out of breath.

“I can walk on my own,” he protested.

“You wouldn’t make it out of the alley,” she scolded. “Do like I say before I get a peach tree switch after you.”

With his arm over her shoulders and hers around his waist, they managed to work their way back to Sharon’s street, which was only a block off Avenue of The Americas. Nail hadn’t gone far after being shot last night. Ahead at the intersection, a noisy, colorful river of humanity flowed past carrying signs and waving American flags. Nail wondered about Sharon when they passed her apartment building. He hoped she was right about God looking over her since Nail hadn’t done a very good job of it.

They joined the protesters, melding in. Thousands of angry-sounding people packed the wide avenue and seemed to stretch out of sight. Lee Greenwood’s
God Bless the U.S.A.
blasted from portable loudspeakers. Signs stabbed the air. One said
Sharia
in dripping blood-red letters. Another asked,
President Anastos, Whose Side are You On?
Two men dressed as Colonial Americans marched by pulling a mock missile ridden by mannequins in Islamic terrorist garb. Police and Homies armed with automatic rifles lined the route, but did not interfere. The mood of the crowds, Nail sensed, was volatile.

He wasn’t the only one limping and hobbling along as a Nine-Eleven survivor. “You are great!” someone applauded him. “Mister, you look like you really
are
injured.”

“I’m an out-of-work Broadway actor,” Nail replied.

Judy had no more than assured him they hadn’t much farther to go when a Homie in full riot control mode, all in black, broke away from the sidelines and started briskly toward them. Nail spotted several other armed Feds rushing in his direction. Judy stiffened and began trembling.

Nail had no right to take her down with him. There was no way he could escape, badly wounded as he was. He started to push her away and order her to run when, unexpectedly, the Homies stormed past them and descended upon another victim. More Homeland Security and NYPD materialized. A roar of protest echoed with rippling effect down the avenue. The march bogged down and came to a halt. Tear gas grenades began popping like fireworks. Toxic mist clouded the street, sending protesters into panicked retreat, tramping each other as they scattered. A phalanx of police armed with shotguns and riot batons cleared a pathway through the march, their clubs thudding against bones and flesh.

“Judy, how far’s your car?” Nail hissed.

Too frightened to answer, she pointed in a general direction that, fortunately, was the direction in which many of the marchers were attempting to escape. Carried along in the stampede, Nail and Judy managed to break free into a side street where her eight-year-old Honda sat parked against the curb. They piled into it. Nail collapsed in the back seat, breathing heavily and suffering from excruciating pain.

Judy recovered her senses and maneuvered the Honda through packed streets over which police and the feds had not yet taken control. They fled Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel just before authorities sealed it.

“You did good,” Nail complimented her, after which he became only vaguely aware of what was going on, his recent exertions having taken their toll on his ravaged body.

SEC Chairman: Finance Bill Not Public

(Washington)—
Under President Anastos’ Finance Reform Bill, action by the Securities Exchange Commission headed by SEC Chair Ben Robbins will not be open to public scrutiny. The Freedom of Information Act does not apply whenever government is compelled by an economic crisis to move against any financial institution, business enterprise or individual, Robbins said, adding that the public does not have a right to know what transpires between government and private enterprise.

“You know, sometimes these pundits, they can’t figure me out,” the President said. “They say, ‘Well, why is he doing that? That doesn’t poll well.’ I know it doesn’t poll well, but it’s the right thing to do for America.”

President Anastos is doing what he said he would do when he ran for office. He has used government as an instrument to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots; he injected $900 billion in tax dollars to stimulate the economy and prevent a depression, he has provided health coverage to thirty-five million uninsured citizens; he has made America safe from domestic terrorism; and, now, he has reordered the relationship between government and investors and consumers...

Chapter Fifty-Four

Washington, D.C.

The State Dinner for the Chinks at the White House had been more of the same old bullshit, everybody kissing everybody else’s ass and pretending to all get along. The only thing missing was a bunch of LGBTs holding hands and singing
Kumbiya.
It was enough to make Trout throw up in his won ton soup. Marilyn scowled at him all during dinner and hissed warnings in his ear, each proceeded by, “Trout, you bastard.”

After a word from Marilyn, Wiedersham had taken him aside. “I’m beginning to have doubts about your loyalty as a team player, Trout.”

The next morning, Saturday, Trout made an excuse to get out of the house and keep a tryst with Judy. At least that congenital dimwit didn’t call him by his last name. Since Marilyn expected him back within an hour or so to attend another of her screwy society functions, he had little time to pound off last night’s taint from the White House. As he was leaving Judy’s apartment, she received a ring on her cell. Usually she took her phone calls in front of him. This time she looked surprised when she answered and slipped into the bedroom to take it in private.

“Who is it?” Trout demanded.

“A girlfriend.”

She hung up after asking the girlfriend to call her back in a few minutes. She wore a guilty look when she returned to see Trout off. He was in too much of a hurry to press the issue.

“I’ll have some time off tomorrow,” he promised.

She nodded, looking distracted. And then she had phoned him Sunday morning saying she couldn’t see him today after all. The bitch! He paid for her fucking apartment and kept her in a style of luxury to which she had never aspired to previously. What made her think she could put
him
off?

It had not been a
hell of a weekend.
It had been a totally
fucked-up weekend,
Trout conceded peevishly on Monday as he made his way to the den with coffee and his notebook to catch the beginning-of-the week news cycle. He had already called a cab to pick him up at nine a.m. to drop him off at Wiedersham’s office for the usual bullshit session before he continued on to the airport and the campaign trail in Illinois.

He paused at the bottom of the stairs with his coffee to listen for Marilyn or Reggie. Satisfied that they weren’t stirring yet, that he had at least a few minutes of peace to himself, he hurried to his recliner in the den and sat with notebook on his lap, coffee on the little end table, and began channel-surfing the news channels. It was one of his few indulgences. That and Maalox.

President Anastos was all over the nets and cables. The Nobel Committee was awarding him this year’s Peace Prize. Trout could see no accomplishment that warranted it. More likely, he suspected, the award had something to do with George Zuniga and One World Government.

“We will move forward together as a united world during this, uh, time of economic and social change,” the President declared on one channel, “or we will perish separately.”

Chaos seemed to be consuming the globe. The Middle East was in flames, despots and dictators toppling like dominos, being replaced by even more despots and dictators. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco...Scenes of cities burning flashed on the TV screen. Rioters thronging the streets. Soldiers firing machineguns. Dead bodies. Protest signs featuring the hammer and sickle of the International Workers Unions.

Social Justice!

Kill the Jews!

Throw off the yoke of Capitalist Imperialism!

The hammer and sickle also appeared at union picketing in Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois... A red-faced commentator on CNN was screaming and shouting, raving, “Progressives in Congress are fighting like hell for a jobs bill to create more jobs. This is an ideological war. I say it on camera tonight. I will fight those bastards trying to take down President Anastos. I will fight those bastards because I know what they want to do. They want to take down our President and our American workers. They want to destroy the American dream, control minorities and concentrate the wealth at the top...”

Members of the New Black Panther Party accused of voter intimidation in Ohio appeared on another channel, foaming at the mouth.

“I hate crackers, every iota of every cracker! You call yourself a black man, then you have to start killing white crackers. We kill the men, we kill the women, we kill the babies...”

A 9-1-1 recording played: “There’s a white guy getting beat up by about one hundred black people. It’s like a freaking riot out there. My mom just got attacked by a mob… She’s bleeding a lot.”

It was like that on all the channels. One good thing, Trout thought: all the turmoil in the Middle East and the interruption of the oil supply was going to drive Petrobras oil investments through the roof and make him a very wealthy man.