An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (28 page)

    
Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With
that
look.

     “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

     “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

     “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

     The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

     Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

     Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

     “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

     “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

     Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got
owned.
”

     “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

     “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

     Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

     “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

     Beth made a gagging sound.

     “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

     “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

     Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.

     In other words, he played right into
Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.

     “Okay, here goes.”

     Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.

     It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been “Name That Tune” champions in another era.

     All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

     Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.

     “Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”

    
Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”

     Dave scoffed.

     “Where did you hear that?”

     “On the internet. Why?”

     “That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”

     “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”

     “On the internet.”

     It was too much for Lindsey.

     “Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”

     She turned to her little sister.

     “Do we have to teach these old people
everything?
”

     Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.

     Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.

     “Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”

     “No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”

     “I wish you could come with us.”

     “I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Susan get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”

     “Bet I will!”

     Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.

     It was as if he could read her mind.

     “We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”

     “I’d like that.”

     He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.

     He held
Sarah close and told her he loved her.

     Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”

     Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”

     Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.

ALONE
, Book 1:

Facing Armageddon

is available now on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

Please enjoy this preview of

REBELLION  Book 1:

The Allegiance Device

     There’s a certain element in our society that believes the federal government is using FEMA death camps, mind altering drugs, and tracking implants to control us all.

     These people are generally ridiculed and scorned.

     But what if they’re right?

    
Megan and Jason are a young couple with a small child, enjoying a typical American life in an average suburb. There’s nothing special about them at all.

     And then they notice that people around them are mysteriously disappearing.

     Some of them are never seen again. Some of them come back, but there’s something oddly different about them.

    
Megan is a newspaper reporter, and starts investigating. Until, that is, she speaks to the wrong people and asks too many questions.

     Then she and her family are no longer just typical Americans. They are now targets of the
United States government.

Chapter 1:

     “Honey, come here a minute. I want to show you this.”

     Jason slipped his mug out of the Keurig and dumped a teaspoon of sugar into it. He’d need an extra boost to get hi
mself started this morning.

     “Be there in two shakes. Do you want coffee?”

     She yelled back, “No thanks! I have some already.”

     He stirred his cup and walked to the small office they shared on the back of the house. He walked up behind her and kissed her on the top of her head.

     “Well, thanks for making me some too.”

     “Hey, I never know how to make your coffee. You fix it different every day. There’s something weird and icky about a man who can’t decide how to drink his coffee. Besides, you were in the shower.”

     “
Icky
? People still say
icky
?”

     “I do. And what did you mean when you said ‘two shakes,’ by the way? Mi no comprende your weird language.”

     “Oh, so now I’m weird and icky. On the same day. I feel so honored.”

     “Seriously. I’ve heard you say that before. But I don’t know what it means.”

     “It’s a shortened version of something my grandmother used to say. ‘Two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ It means it won’t take long. Or something. When I say that it means the same as just a second.”

     “How bizarre. So should I assume it doesn’t take very long for a lamb to shake its tail twice?”

     “That would be my assumption, although I don’t spend a lot of time following lambs around and watching their butts. I’d much rather watch yours.”

     “Oh, you silver tongued devil, you…”

     “Another bizarre saying.”

     “Yes, and another I heard from you. Did you get that one from your grandmother too?”

     “Well, as a matter of fact…”

     “I knew it. No wonder you’re nuts. It runs in your family.”

     “Yeah, yeah… what was it you wanted to show me?”

     She called up a friend’s profile on Facebook.

     “Remember Linda, and her husband John?”

     “The black helicopter people. Yeah, they’re the ones I said I want to avoid forever, after that last Christmas party we went to. He bent my ear for half an hour about how FEMA was coming after all of us. I couldn’t break away from him and dump him on anyone else because everyone else already knew to avoid him.”

     Megan giggled.

     “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I should have warned you about him ahead of time.”

     “So what about them?”

     “Linda… she’s perfectly sane, by the way, hasn’t been on Facebook in almost two weeks now. The last thing she posted was twelve days ago.”

     “Maybe she’s too busy having her husband committed. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that process, you know.”

     “And speaking of John, he’s not on my friend list, but I looked up his profile. His last posting was the same day hers was.”

     Jason conjured up a look of terror, and the theme to
The Twilight Zone
.

    
“Doo doo doo doo… doo doo doo doo…”

     Then, in the falsetto voice of a scared little girl, “Oh, my goodness. What does it all mean?”

     “Please don’t make fun of me, baby. I’m serious. They just disappeared.”

     “They probably just went to the
Star Trek
convention and forgot to post it. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

     “That’s just it, baby. It’s not just them. I’ve had several other friends who have just disappeared from Facebook in the last couple of weeks. And the Delgado family, four doors down?”

     Jason gave her a blank look.

     “You know. Ethan’s little friend Will.”

     The light came on.

     “Oh, yeah. What about them?”

     “I walked Ethan over there a couple of days ago to see if Will wanted to come over and play. And they were gone. The neighbor said he had to close their front door and lock it because they vanished. Left their door wide open, their cars in the driveway, and food on the table, like they were ready to sit down for dinner.

     “And that same neighbor told me there were a couple of people he worked with that just stopped coming to work
and nobody knows where they went.”

     “They probably went to the same convention. Listen, people take breaks from the
internet al the time. And sometimes people leave their homes for short periods of time too, at the spur of the moment. Maybe there was a family emergency and they rushed out to attend to it.”

     “Rushed out so fast they forgot to close their front door?”

     “Hey, it could happen.”

     He wrapped his arms around her.

     “Don’t put too much thought into any of this stuff, honey. If you do, it’ll drive you crazy.”

     He pulled her hair aside and kissed the nape of her neck. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

     “Well, if you want to change the subject just keep that up.”

     So he kept it up.

     She asked softly, “Is Ethan still sleeping? Do I have time to take advantage of you?”

     “I let him stay up watching SpongeBob until ten, remember? He’ll sleep for at least another hour.”

     She got up from the chair and stood before him, draping her arms over his shoulders and clasping her hands behind his head.

     Then she said, “Well, that’s not as much time as I’d like, but I guess it’ll have to do.”

     A little while later, when they heard the mournful words, “Mommmmm, I’m hungry!” coming from the general direction of the dining room, Megan got up to take care of their son.

     Jason lay in bed a little longer, thinking about the conversation they’d had.