Black Parade (8 page)

They dressed like the Calvary of the Civil War days, fought on horseback and carried swords.

I believe heroism is genetically linked because every Slagel, including Frank’s son Johnny, had that instinct.

They were born and bred to be heroes.

The Rift ...

My tracking device was the factor that brought me immediate in to see Joe. Robbie was impressed with it. Initially, Joe didn’t buy it. He thought it was a trick. I know I annoyed him because I was so taken by how official his office was.

When we proved the tracking was real, Joe was astounded. Even more so than Joe, Frank was excited. He asked if I could build it on a grand scale.

At the time I didn’t have a clue how, but I knew it wouldn’t take me long to figure it out. So I agreed. Being in Beginnings also offered me the resources to work on the microchips that were in the drone soldiers brains. I needed to figure out how they worked, why they worked, and how to stop the chip.

My talents were put to immediate use and I was thrilled.

So were Bentley’s for that matter.

We arrived in the midst of a whirlwind and both Bentley and I were able to help. The people in Beginnings were overrun with mediocre hair and in the throes of a war.

A war where they were outnumbered.

A war that was their doing.

It was bad enough with the savages, but the microchip soldiers made things worse.

We had no idea that while we battled them, Joe’s son Hal, also fought them, pushing them further and further east where they came from.

It was a civil war born in Beginnings.

They say curiosity killed the cat. Well, a man named Henry murdered the kitten.

There were several key players in what brought about the microchip soldiers. Key players, that had they not done their part, the plague ravished world would have been a little more peaceful.

But they played their part. And played the game.

Player one: Joe. Joe and the original eighteen didn’t just happen upon this secluded piece of land secured by an electric perimeter, with housing, farming supplies,
etc.

They were led there.

By Player two, the President of the United States.

George Hadly, then President, knew of this place, called the Garfield project. In order for it to work, it needed people. Joe and the others were the people.

Even though George was the former president, Joe was the leader.

You know, thinking about it, George was more the game show host. He ran the game. But for the sake of history, we’ll still call him a player.

They moved to Garfield, renamed it Beginnings, farmed it and got it going. They brought in survivors and built a thriving community.

The one thing that made Beginnings different was the medical staff it had. One in particular, a huge player in the game was Dr. Dean Hayes. At the time of the plague, he was a brilliant virologist who worked on a cure. He came close, but never did it.

During the plague that was.

Dean was bound and determined to beat the plague. The virus. To cure it. He had to for future generations to come.

He was encouraged constantly by George to do so. On top of rebuilding antibiotics, Dean worked on curing that plague.

Underneath Beginnings was a series of tunnels. At the time, no one knew what they were for, but they were there.

Enter player four: Henry.

Henry is a micro version of me. He fixed things, did things, but I’ll never own up to him being as inventive as me. Heck, he was even Asian like me.

Henry worked and maintained the community. He maintained the generators. It was during routine testing he discovered something was not right.

While transferring all power to Generator One, Henry noticed that Generator Three was still draining power. Something was using that generator.

But what?

He couldn’t rest until he found out. He traced every single wire and line and accounted for them.

But the lines accounted for made no sense. They were lines running under Beginnings but they went directly into a wall.

Henry became obsessed with that wall. He studied it, trying to figure out where those lines went. What they powered. He became so obsessed he was almost removed from duty.

They thought he was nuts. He was warned to drop it.

But he wouldn’t give it up.

Not long after, on a winter night, Dean Hayes cured the plague.

Ironically, the same night Dean made the announcement to the community, Henry broke into that wall.

It opened.

The long gray wall that was always thought to be part of the tunnel system slid open, exposing a huge lab that was deep and wide.

In the lab was a long glass wall that divided the main lab from another room. In that smaller room, fifty-three individuals were cryogenically frozen.

The process for removing them from the cryogenic deep freeze was possible by using the equipment in the lab.

Dean Hayes figured it out. Why wouldn’t he? He had a brilliant mind.

But one problem remained. These fifty-three individuals were secured behind an airtight room. Data showed they were frozen before the plague.

So they hadn’t been exposed to the plague virus.

Knowing the air still contained the virus, Dean was certain that it would hit the fifty-three people like a bomb if they weren’t immune.

And it did.

Luckily, Dean had the cure. They didn’t die.

No one thought about what a strange coincidence it was that not long after Dean announced his breakthrough, the fifty-three were found.

These fifty-three were scientists, placed there to be defrosted after the world was over. The timing device had just failed to work.

They tried to take over Beginnings, but they failed. They moved on to their second location with Beginnings’ blessing.

What Beginnings didn’t know of was that George Hadly was aware of the frozen scientists all along and he was aware of the whole plan.

It had a domino effect.

The fifty-three left for other locations to release more, spreading out and releasing even more from multiple locations.

George eventually left Beginnings, gathered his forces, and started to rebuild by using the soldiers to gather survivors freely or against their will.

He did have his own reasons for wanting to build the country again, to get it back on its feet and to have a strong military presence. George Hadly firmly believed and stood by the fact that one day, when we least expected it, we were going to be invaded. The United States provided seventy percent of the food for the rest of the world.

Eventually, the rest of the world would come for that.

That was the reason behind his rebuilding.

One everybody dismissed.

Day-to-Day...

Despite the conflicts and the microchip soldiers outside of Beginnings, life was Utopia within the secure walls.

When I first arrived, I was taken to a place called Containment. It was there that they processed ‘survivors’. They tested them to see if they were civilized and if they could be retrained to live in society.

Bentley and I were there one day.

I firmly believed they wanted Bentley out of there more than me. He had hair appointments lined up before his release.

My ability and talents were able to provide Beginnings with answers and technology they wanted.

Often times I’d chuckle because Joe would complain to me that, “It’s the Apocalypse, Danny. We’re
supposed
to struggle.”

But that wasn’t the case.

Beginnings was far more than a home. It was a way of life. Behind the secured walls, there was always plenty of food, the best medical attention, and freedom.

People lived as they wanted to.

They had moved on from the tragedies of the plague and though they’d never forget the loved ones lost, they were able to smile again.

Beginnings lived up to the urban legend it was. It was no less than a Utopia to everyone who lived there.

I was where I wanted to be.

There was no place else I wanted to go.

I was home for the rest of my days.

Life didn’t get any better, couldn’t get any better, than in Beginnings, Montana.

The Great War

Five hundred and twenty-three men made up the United Western Alliance. Horse soldiers who were reminiscent of the Civil War days in the way they dressed and fought.

A mere five hundred.

Four hundred and seventy were active soldiers who went out and fought.

They estimated that Hadly and his Eastern Society had more than twenty thousand soldiers and over nine thousand more in the West.

Before we even discovered they existed, the UWA had managed to push every single Society soldier from the western half of the United States, securing a border that began in Kansas. Quite a feat for a small band of men. But their spirit was strong and their desire for freedom even greater.

It made perfect sense that Hal Slagel, along with his right hand man, Elliott Ryder, were in charge of the UWA. Hal and Elliott devised each and every attack against the Society and were successful.

What a gift to his father it was upon Hal’s discovery.

Hal thought his family was dead and had founded his cause.

Then when he discovered his family was alive, they joined causes.

But being there from close to the onset of the war between Beginnings and the Society, I have to say, the intensity of the war had decreased by the time Hal got there. Hell, after all, Hal’s men did a lot of the work.

Many believed George Hadly to be a mad m an.

Frank Slagel hated him with a passion and had actually tried several times to kill him.

And George projected nothing less. Look at the Society he was building. A total military society where you fought or were a workhorse for those who fought. Farming was for food for the soldiers. Fuel, for the soldiers.

Women .. Well, George couldn’t take a chance on them reproducing fast enough, so he farmed humans.

Woman became mere housing for embryos, most of which were created in a lab.

Some of those lab creations were unnatural.

Frank called them killer babies.

Actually, they were humans genetically created to withstand the elements.

They had genes of other animals incorporated into their DNA and that’s where the problems began.

They had animal instincts and if left to their own resources, followed those. They reproduced like animals, fast and in multiples.

They grew at four times the rate of humans. They ate human flesh, attacked and were high speed.

All before they could walk.

Killer babies.

The Society recognized their error in this breed and as one of the numerous acts of war, dumped a shit load of these things on Beginnings.

They remained outside and although it took years, we finally were able to get rid of them all. Frank was actually opposed to it at first because he was for some reason immune to being attacked by them. But as they grew and he recognized their destructive power, he took full charge of eliminating that species.

Back to the Society.

They farmed in order to get a bigger population. And the population on the side of the Society was huge. The eastern half of the US was booming, but it wasn’t civilized like Beginnings. It was all military.

George was convinced it was needed.

So why bother with Beginnings?

Beginnings as originally a government installation.

We all knew there was something in Beginnings he wanted. But it wasn’t until after the war with the Society was officially over that we found out.

Too bad it was a little too late.

Too bad we all thought George was mad.

If he had just shared the information of what he wanted from Beginnings, I truly believe things would have been different.

There were a lot of factors that caused things to turn out the way they did.

Being a country divided and against each other, East versus West, was the biggest culprit.

And we actually thought it was a good thing when we felt peace.

Little did we know. It was the calm before the storm.

George Hadly, former president of the United States, lived in Beginnings from the onset. Frank Slagel was so engrossed in getting the property secure, that his surviving son, Johnny, found a father figure in George.

Johnny had all the Slagel traits. Speed, agility, heroism, plus brains. But he had an unholy commitment to George.

Shortly after George left Beginnings, Johnny did as well. But not without making some bad decisions. He burned his bridges, so-to-speak, with his home and family.