A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (33 page)

Yes we can.

Wiedersham retook his front row seat next to Trout as Anastos began his teleprompter wag.

“Fucking dickhead,” he sniped, glaring at the screen.

“The need for de-development, uh, presents the world with a major challenge,” the President began. “It is up to us to design a stable, low-corruption economy in which there is a more equitable redistribution of worldwide wealth. Redistribution of wealth within and among nations, uh, as well as among a necessarily smaller and more manageable population, is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided to every sustainable human being...”

What the hell did he mean by
sustainable?
Trout’s stomach was already starting to sour.

While the President’s opening remarks may have been purposefully vague, his words carefully chosen to permit damage control if necessary, there was nothing equivocal about what followed. The program began with a film in which historical Progressives from the late 19
^th
Century to the present extolled the virtues, indeed the
necessity
, for worldwide population control if the human race and the planet it inhabited were to survive. It featured George Bernard Shaw, Nobel Prize-winning playwright and one of the founders of England’s Fabian socialist movement a century ago. Typical intellectual with a beard, high-foreheaded and high-handed.

“I think it would be a good thing,” lectured the dead man preserved in film, “to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax administer and, say every five years or every seven years, and just put them there and say, ‘Sir or madam, will you be kind enough to justify your existence...?’ A great many people will have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”

He was followed by shots of professors, environmentalists, scientists, politicians, and other prominent people, all saying essentially the same thing—that it was necessary to eliminate undesirable populations for the greater good of the collective. To Trout, there was something surreal about the intellectual and social elites of the world getting together in secret to focus on one of the primary objectives of One World Government—population control.

“The simplest answer is that the world’s population should be about two billion, and we’ve got six billion now...”

“”If I were an animal, I would like to return as a deadly virus in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation...”

“We are the riders of the Pale Horse and we have the means to eliminate uneducated masses...”

“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license...”

“In order to stabilize the world population, we must eliminate three hundred and fifty thousand people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it...”

“The Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged from the planet...”

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind... We have no business to perpetuate citizens of the wrong type...”

“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion...”

“The state must interfere on behalf of the really fittest...”

“Universal Healthcare must include the provision, based on objective judgment, that care will be rendered on the basis of individual merit and level of productivity...”

“There’s nothing wrong with killing things that are replaceable...”

Trout was sweating and feeling sick to his stomach by the end of the film, Nevertheless, he stood with the rest of the auditorium and applauded wildly. The elites obviously agreed upon the principle of eugenics, the necessity to reduce the global population by weeding out undesirables.
How
it was to be done was the challenge. The congregation broke up into smaller workshops to discuss specifics.

President Seeks Increased Power

(Washington)—
President Anastos today asked Congress to grant him special powers to issue executive orders in order to quash growing disturbances across the nation. Congress immediately granted his request. The temporary measure will allow the President to bypass Congress for a period of one year. The unusual petition followed thousands of demonstrators marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in protest over alleged voter irregularities in the upcoming mid-term elections. Dewey Gubbins, White House spokesman, described the rioters as “tea-bagger revolutionaries.” They were driven back and beaten by police and Homeland Security...

Two marchers were killed...

PART IV

“
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

President Ronald Reagan

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Scranton, Pennsylvania

The candle in its globe on the table in an intimate corner of
The Eclectic Diner
diffused soft shimmers of light into the faces of James Nail and Sharon Lowenthal. They chose the restaurant because it had enough atmosphere to make it a night out but was remote enough that no one was apt to recognize either Sharon or Nail through their minimal disguises. They held hands across the table, their drinks almost untouched.

“Is this a real date?” Nail asked.

“Feels like a date.”

“I want to kiss you.”

“In public?”

They leaned toward each other across the small table and kissed briefly but tenderly. Both appeared more sober and reflective when they withdrew. Nail entertained no illusion that their time together was not coming to an end. In this Brave New World, there was no such thing as Happily Ever After.

They glanced as in common accord toward the restaurant windows and the violence that seemed to lurk against them in the darkness beyond. Only Big C’s presence out there watching over them on this special night held it in abeyance.

Sharon had wanted Nail to recuperate in North Dakota or Wyoming, somewhere far away, but he insisted on remaining near her. They compromised. After Judy returned to D.C., Sharon and Big C had moved Nail out of the seedy motel in New York to a pay-by-the-month apartment she found across the Pennsylvania line in Scranton, far enough from New York that Homies wouldn’t likely be out in force searching for Nail.

“I’m a fast recuperator,” Nail had promised. Hair had almost grown back on his head to cover the scar from ORU.

He seemed to be coming along. Fortunately, the Homie’s bullet had made a clean in-and-out hole, striking no vital organs.

This being their first real date, they agreed to discuss nothing beyond the moment—like any other normal couple going out for dinner.

The waitress at
The Eclectic Diner
was small and dark black with a pretty face and a name tag that introduced her as
Chloe
. She refilled their drinks and displayed gleaming teeth in a friendly smile.

“It’s wonderful seeing happy folks like ya’all,” she said. “People ain’t so happy no more.”

Sharon took Chloe’s hand and squeezed it, smiling. “It’s our anniversary,” she said.

Chloe beamed. “How many, folks?”

Sharon laughed delightedly. “Eight weeks.”

It occurred to Nail that if this was the anniversary of their having met, it was also the anniversary of the deaths of the people they loved.

“Newlyweds, huh?” Chloe said. “God bless you folks.”

“God bless
you
,” Sharon responded. “You’re a Christian?”

“They ain’t took that away from us yet. Ma’am, you sure do look familiar, like I seen you before.”

“We just moved here,” Sharon said.

Chloe moved on to another table and Nail lifted a brow. “Newlyweds?”

“Tonight is what we have,” she said, and left it at that.

“It seems like I’ve always known you.”

“Yes,” she said. Then, a little wistfully, “I miss the Safe House.”

TV sets were hooked to the walls in the restaurant, as in most public places these days; it seemed people couldn’t even go out to eat without being accompanied by their boxes. Nail and Sharon had an unavoidable view of the nearest one. It was tuned to CNN, which Big C referred to as the
Communist News Network
. A commentator was busy lauding the big
One Nation
rally at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., extolling it as the greatest gathering since the Civil War era. He had a PEIU representative cornered at the bottom of the steps leading up to Lincoln.

“Have these workers shown up because they’re being paid or because they want to?” he asked.

“Union members are doing this for both reasons. They’re being paid, which is only fair, and they want to stop the un-Americanism and lies of the Tea Parties, talk radio, Sharon Lowenthal and Zenergy News. We’re ready for a fight.”

CNN and the networks had edited tight in order to show only the more innocuous elements and placards.

Full and Fair Employment

Silence Tea Party Lies

Educate Every Child

Zenergy News, on the other hand, as Nail saw at the apartment before they left for dinner, aired it all. Chanting fanatics wearing red Mao and Che Guevara Tees and waving signs revealed the true color of
One Nation.

Capitalism is Failing

Socialism is the Answer

Capitalism Sucks

Make the Rich Pay

Vote for Hope, Not Hate

Communist Party USA

Jerry Baer had tried for the past two years to expose what was happening. People weren’t listening, or if they were listening they weren’t doing enough to stop it. The Anastos juggernaut’s takeover of the nation proceeded unchecked.

Nail shook his head in disgust. “We can’t escape them even for a little while,” he groused.

“Are you ready to blow this joint, Jonathan Harker?”

They walked outside. The street was almost deserted. Only a single streetlight struggled valiantly against the darkness a block away. The ten-year-old tan Toyota Sharon bought for Nail at a used car lot, paying cash under an assumed name, sat parked in a customers’ lot with four or five other vehicles. He had abandoned the old pickup he drove from Oklahoma; it was likely stripped down to its frame by this time on the mean streets of New York.

He looked around. He didn’t see Big C’s clunker, but he knew his faithful friend was somewhere nearby, watching over them. A man could go an entire lifetime without a friend like that.

They had intended seeing a movie on their first date night. Sharon moved close to him once they were in the car and pulling out of the lot. He stopped the car so they could kiss. The kiss turned passionate. She broke first. Her eyes were dark, moist and demanding in the light from the dashboard panel.

“Let’s go home instead,” she said.

Like a typical cop, he attempted to cover with a flippant remark the flood of emotion that made his voice crack. “Your place or mine?”

“
Ours
,” she said.

* * *

There was pain in his side from the unhealed bullet wound, but Nail barely noticed it when he opened his eyes. Last night was so incredible that it took him a moment or so to orient. He felt the length of Sharon’s warm body snuggled close in his arms, one of her bare legs between his, her arm across his chest and her tousled hair dark in the nest between his shoulder and neck. He lingered in his contentment. He needed this moment of awaking to last forever, even though there was no such thing as forever. Not in this life.

Not since before his wife left him had he experienced serenity to settle his unsettled soul. There had been other women from time to time over the years. Mostly one night stands, sweaty trysts in some woman’s house or apartment. A three-month thing with a female detective had been his longest-running relationship. Connie was always between him and any other woman. Until now.

Nail was a one-woman man; anything less would have been an affront to Connie, even though she no longer wanted him. And to Jamie.

At some point last night Sharon and he decided to get married. Marriage would make the night okay from her moral Christian perspective, if not exactly right. They came to the decision together.

There was only one hitch. They could never marry like ordinary people, not under their true names. The tabloids would be all over it, followed by Homies and the FBI.

“My groom would be ‘Jonathan Harker’ on our marriage license?” Sharon exclaimed, laughing with him. “Maybe I could change my name to Mary Shelley, you think?”

Under whatever names, they would never be able to hold back indefinitely the maelstrom of events into which they had been cast.

“When we marry, I want it to be under our true names,” she decided. “Maybe a Jewish wedding even though I’m a Christian convert.”

“I’d marry you in a Buddhist temple, in a Creek Indian wigwam, in the middle of Transylvania...”

“Would you really?”

“Try me.”

She giggled naughtily. “I already have.”

Now, with daylight breaking through the bedroom window, Nail was forced to accept reality. Last night and
now
, these few hours, were all they had.

Her dark lashes fluttered. She must have felt him awake. Her eyes opened. She smiled. She lifted her head and kissed him.

“I love you, Jonathan Harker.”

“Morning breath and all?”

“Bullet holes and everything.”

It had been a long time since a woman told him she loved him. Not since the early days with Connie—and look how well that turned out.

“I—” he began.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”

“I love you.”

“When did you know,” she asked, teasing. “After you got me in bed?”