Black Parade (9 page)

Oddly, after a near life or death experience in which he was injured, Johnny had an epiphany. He didn’t want to be on the side of Society, he just wanted to go home.

He hated himself for the things that he did and didn’t understand why he did them.

Being on the inside and a pseudo son to George, Johnny had inside information. On the Eastern side of the country was a little town called Lodi. Lodi, Ohio.

They weren’t with the Society, they weren’t with Beginnings. They were neutral.

Being neutral also made them a pain in the ass to George. He wanted them gone.

Johnny left the Society and headed there, to Lodi.

He told the leader, Mike, honestly about his past and Mike gave him sanctuary. Giving Johnny sanctuary meant safety for Lodi because George would never harm Johnny.

The Society knew of Lodi. Lodi knew of the Society and of Beginnings. But, Beginnings knew nothing of Lodi.

Johnny made peace with himself and the town of Lodi. But it was their doctor that discovered Johnny had a rapidly growing brain tumor. It was non-cancerous but it was pressing on his brain. This tumor was causing his behavior problems and could have been the reason Johnny had been so easily swayed to turn against his family.

The steroids Johnny received while injured, temporarily halted the tumors, which allowed for his clarity.

The Lodi doctor couldn’t do anything about the tumors, but Beginnings could.

Word was sent to Beginnings. Within a week, help from Beginnings went to Lodi.

Ellen, who was a doctor and also Frank’s wife, went there immediately. She put everything aside for Johnny. He was like a son to her. She was able to handle the tumor.

All was good.

So we thought.

The Fredrickson was another urban legend. A doomsday meteor headed to earth, due to arrive in February. It wasn’t as big as originally thought, but it was destructive.

Six weeks before it was due to arrive, it was confirmed. It would land in Asia, but the dust could and would cause a drop in temperature world-wide.

It was conceivable Lodi would not survive the cold and lack of food.

The answer was to move Lodi to Beginnings or further west. Johnny would be allowed back, but would have to live in one of the surrounding towns. He was still banned from Beginnings.

About that time George was wanting them gone. So he gave Lodi the option. Join us, leave, or meet the consequences.

I suppose it was a bully tactic to get the men.

A community vote decided Lodi wouldn’t budge for the Society, but would for the meteor.

I was part of the crew that went to Lodi to prepare their move west.

We were going to register all the people of Lodi and train a crew to prep the railroad tracks for the pilgrimage.

Frank went on that trip.

Egos clashed. Mike hated Frank and there wasn’t any love lost on Frank’s part either. A battle erupted between the two men resulting in Mike changing his mind about the move.

The town stood behind him,

As for me, I didn’t give a shit. They were ungrateful. They treated us like the Society when we were opening our home and resources to them.

We left.

Within days we found out that forty-three of the two hundred Lodi residents were en route to Beginnings. Only forty-three of them.

One was Johnny and another was Mike’s son. When Mike fond out his son left, he went after them to find him and get him to come back.

I don’t remember the date, not exactly, but it was late February when we returned to Beginnings.

It was also times up on the Society side.

George was patient, he gave them time to pack up and move, he agreed to back off forces since Lodi was going west.

George was also a man of his word. But when he found out Mike and the majority of Lodi had decided to remain on the Society side of the country, he deployed his troops.

In the tunnels of Beginnings not only was a cryo lab discovered, but also a communication room. This room enabled phones again, and a small range satellite link up to activity in the United States.

During a routine scan for Society soldiers heading our way, the monitor alerted us to the imminent attack on Lodi.

Frank immediately was on the phone to Lodi, but Mike wasn’t there. Through phone direction, he tried to help Lodi hold their ground. But Lodi wasn’t set up for a military defense. No, wait, physically they were, mentally they weren’t. Even though Frank told them this country was founded and defended by farmers with guns, the people of Lodi failed.

The Society annihilated them.

After failing to convince his son to return to Lodi, Mike arrived to find his home destroyed, his town in ruins and most of his people dead.

Mike was enraged.

It has been said that the Society was nothing more than snake. George Hadly was the head of that snake.

Remove the head, kill the serpent. Beginnings firmly believed that for the longest time.

Mike took on a one-man mission to do just that.

Mike was more than a man on a mission. He was a danger. A career military man, a former Navy Seal who went into law enforcement after retirement, he was a one man judge, jury and executioner.

Society headquarters were based out of Quantico. A base Mike knew well. George was at that base.

I wish I could give you this action packed story. How Mike trudged up there, went up against multitudes of Society troops and went through hell and high water.

But that wouldn’t be honest.

Truth is, Mike forged ahead on his mission with relative ease.

With just as much ease, he infiltrated Quantico, located George, and with a single gunshot to the head, eliminated George.

Killed him.

He walked off the base without a second glance.

The head of the serpent removed. Something everyone that hated the society dreamed of doing. It was like the planting of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

A victory.

Ding-dong the witch is dead.

That was the reaction of many. I remember when the phone call came from Mike. Yes, he called to let us know.

I was there. In Joe’s office. Me, Frank, Hal, and Joe.

Joe took the call. He did that Journalist thing of “What? Where? When? How?” and after a swipe f his hand across his face and a tag line of “I’ll get right back to you’, he hung up.

He glanced to us. “George is dead. Mike killed him.”

There was something about that moment. The look on his face. The feel in the room.

Nope we weren’t dancing a jig of midgets from Wizard of OZ. We went silent. My gut gnawed. The feel of the room, our faces, matched the look on Joe’s face.

George’s death didn’t feel like a good thing after all.

Why?

It wasn’t a good thing. Not at all. One would think with all the problems George had caused Beginnings and the Western half of the United States, that we’d rejoice. But unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

We didn’t have a clue.

We only knew of his master plan. To rebuild the population through the help of science and build a huge military force.

To protect and defend the U.S. when, not if, the invasion came.

No one took him seriously in that. After all, the world was knocked out by plague. Who the hell cared about war anymore? About invasion?

He ran it like one big military base. Several heads to his organization. All food and supplies went to his troops first.

He had an agricultural division. Transportation. He had the trains running. Phones up.

The one thing he didn’t have was well trained men. Granted, some of them were trained, but for the most part, he didn’t have the A team of the old U.S.

That's probably why he wanted Frank so badly.

Yes, George Hadly was the head of the snake, but none of us realized how big that snake was. And when you chop off the head you have a body just laying there.

It took two weeks for the news of George’s death to start making an impact on the Society.

Bertha Callahan, George’s military right hand man, tried with diligence to keep the troops together. But once Stewart Lang walked off the job, the troops started doing the same.

The complaint rang out.

We train, we carry guns, we walk every day, for what? Nothing.

That sentiment was echoed and hundreds by hundreds the troops abandoned posts.

Callahan estimated it would take six months to reorganize.

To make matters worse, many poured west. As if we had something more to offer.

They poured into the West. They set up their own homesteads.

The Society fell apart.

Within a month, Bertha placed a call to Joe, a cry for help.

Joe was going to just let it go until she told him the numbers.

Did we have any idea that the Society housed, fed, trained and worked over seventy-three thousand men and women? Not including the three hundred children that had been born. Infants.

We had no idea.

Joe Slagel suddenly went from Leader of Beginnings, to President of the UWA, and finally President of the United States.

George died in March.

By May, we were scrambling to put the country back into some order.

We had to.

It was going to be like starting all over again.

Joe was a big enough man to know he couldn’t do it alone.

He put Frank in charge of all military. Hal was Secretary of Defense. Three hundred UWA soldiers were sent out to locate and find where lost people had gone.

I was bestowed the highest honor.

Vice President.

Joe sent me to the East. Being that I was Mr. Organizer, Joe sent me out there to be his eyes and ears and to help Callahan reorganize.

Many of their farmlands were ravaged by the desperate, so we had to start agriculture and food production again. Luckily the greenhouses were protected. Immediately we worked the ocean.

We found fifty men who knew about fishing and they were our deep-sea men. We then had plenty of fish as a source of food.

June rolled around, crops were planted, food was growing. We were on our way.

Things were looking up.

Did I tell you I wanted to go home?

I did. I just wanted to go back to Beginnings. Cross-country travel was easier with the use of the trains. I had visitors during my two months with the Society, but I still hated being away from Beginnings.

Joe promised me time off as soon as the summer was over. Okay, I could deal with that.

But, unfortunately, that never happened.

Mid June I was down in Norfolk, Virginia. We had four main hubs where our fishing boats were stationed. Norfolk was one of them.

I got a call.

“We have problems,” was all Callahan said.

She received the call first then called me. I of course placed a call to Joe.

In an attempt to get the incentive we offered, one of our fishing boats went out way beyond where they were supposed to.

It was a Maryland fishing boat.

Good thing they did.

They hurried back, and requested a secure channel for radio communication.

They weren’t spotted, they didn’t think. But they did however spot and counted, thirty-seven ships, positioned and not moving, a hundred and fifteen miles off the coast of the United States.

The ships were all large and of various types. Cruise ships, freight carriers, air craft carriers.

I recall getting that information and feeling that shock wave shoot through my body.

When I called Joe the first words I spoke were, “George may have been right.”

I informed him what was going on and Joe then told me to get a hold of our other hubs to find our boats the furthest out and send them out further.,
The satellite scan in Beginnings didn’t pick up the ocean, so we had to rely on old fashion navigation.

Fuck that.

I did send out the boats east into the ocean, and then I began working on the radar on one of the old ships docked at Norfolk.

It worked, but it was useless. I saw a blur; it might as well have been a sea monster.

Within five hours our ships reported I. Ten hours after that, we had the entire eastern seaboard scanned.

Like first reported, the ships were sitting there. Just sitting there. Anchored. Waiting.

When the final count came in, it was frightening.

Ninety-eight ships formed a wall from north to south.

“I want every available pilot to man a plane. George’s plan is here,” Frank said. “I want a surveillance of the south. The gulf. The Florida Keys. Anywhere we have water.”