Event Horizon (8 page)

“Secure the door and post a guard. Nobody gets in or out without my say-so. We have to be on our toes,” said Eli, entering Limerick’s “Brick Town Hall.”

No longer housing Limerick’s municipal offices, the historical Brick Town Hall building had been recently renovated to house the town’s library and generate revenue by renting the large first-floor hall for private functions. The recreation hall served as the largest public meeting place within Limerick, aside from the elementary school a few miles to the east on the Newfield border. Eli had chosen the historical building for his debut public appearance because it was a familiar landmark located in the heart of town.

He strode into the room and grasped the podium, pushing aside the useless microphone.

“Citizens of Limerick. Please. I’ll keep this brief,” he bellowed.

The din of conversation diminished, but didn’t stop.

“Please. I don’t want to take up any more time than necessary! We all have enough going on at home,” he said, smiling widely at the crowd, which finally fell silent. “I want to thank Selectman Keithman for arranging this meeting and getting the word out on short notice. My name is Eli Russell. Some of you know me pretty well—I’m a Waterboro native. Several years ago, I started the Maine Liberty Militia. Our ranks are filled with hardworking, patriotic folks just like yourselves from all over York County. Gary Flannery is one of our original members,” he said, motioning for a thin man dressed in a MultiCam uniform to step forward from behind him.

“His family has lived in Limerick for nearly a century, and you’ve been eating his family’s pizza for three decades, for better or worse,” he said, slapping Gary playfully on the shoulder.

The tension in the room eased with the joke, setting the stage for Eli’s main event.

“Obviously, I didn’t come here to tell jokes. These are uncertain, frightening times for all of us, but one thing is certain: the hardest days lie ahead. Life as we’ve known it has come to an abrupt end and is unlikely to ever return to what most of you consider normal. This isn’t an isolated incident. The entire nation has been plunged into darkness. This has been confirmed by ham radio broadcasts.”

The crowd murmured in response to his statement.

“Trust me when I say that the situation out there will only get worse. The police and National Guard are overwhelmed at the border, which is leaking like a sieve right now, leaving us exposed to the same horrors that migrated into Maine during the 2013 pandemic. The sherriff’s department personnel assigned to these parts are nowhere to be found and—”

“They’ve been murdered. Haven’t you heard?” said an elderly white-haired man from the back of the room.

No kidding.

“We’ve been so busy helping the State Police at the borders, I haven’t—this is horrible. What happened?” said Eli.

“Three of them were killed at home. Assassinated along with their families. The other is missing, along with his car. He lived in West Newfield. Residents in town heard gunshots soon after that airwave hit us.”

The room launched into an uproar, which gave Eli the precious moments he needed to capitalize on the “news.” He couldn’t have planted a better link to what he needed to say next.

“This can’t be happening,” said Eli, feigning shock and indignation. “This has to be related to the massacre!”

“What massacre?” asked a woman near the front of the room.

“At the border,” said Eli, counting on others to eavesdrop.

“Where?” asked a young man a little further back.

“Milton Mills. The whole border checkpoint was ambushed. All of my men were killed. Completely wiped out! We also found a possible mass grave behind the Methodist church on Foxes Ridge Road, just a few miles from the New Hampshire border. We’d brought supplies over to the church, since it was so close to the border. Figured it might be a good place to feed and shelter the folks trying to get home to points north. Mainers have been showing up on foot from all over New England. By the time they get to the border, they’re spent and out of resources. We let at least fifty through in the first twenty-four hours, until I lost contact with the squad out in Milton Mills…” he said, trailing off for effect.

“What happened to them?” yelled a man from the back.

“What massacre?”

“Who was in the mass grave?”

One of the town selectman, standing along the wall near the door, shouted, “Everyone! Keep it down! This is important!”

“Once we realized that this was more than some freak power outage,” Eli continued, “I drove Route 11 to the border to see if I could offer any assistance and—”

“Where did you find a car that worked?”

“We have a big organization,” he lied, “and a few of our cars survived. We were lucky. Anyway, State Troopers at the border told me that they didn’t have enough personnel to watch some of the smaller crossings until the National Guard fully mobilized, which may never happen, but that’s a different story. They asked us to set up border checkpoints at some of the smaller crossings past Milton Pond, doing the same thing the police are doing—screening refugees for Maine residents. Nobody wants a repeat of 2013, right?”

The group nodded and muttered in agreement.

“I lost radio contact with the squad at Milton Mills the night before…” He faded off, shaking his head slowly.

The room fell silent, everyone holding their breath for Eli’s next words.

“I drove out there myself yesterday afternoon and found them dead. Twelve well-trained, heavily armed militiamen killed in an ambush—by extremely accurate gunfire.”

“Who killed them?” asked several citizens at once.

“The same unit that killed everyone at the Methodist church. We found fifty plus bodies in the forest. All shot in the head, execution style. I had a few guys helping out at the church. They put up one hell of a fight, but whoever did this…” another well-placed shake of the head, “I haven’t seen anything like this since El Salvador.”

At 58 years old, the closest Eli Russell had come to Central America in his lifetime was a one-time trip to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico, with his ex-wife. He’d joined the army in 1981, completing the infantry basic training and airborne training in Fort Benning, Georgia. His airborne qualification earned him a duty assignment to the 101
^st
Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he served in 1
^st
Battalion, 327
^th
Infantry Regiment as an M-60 machine gunner until 1986.

After an uneventful stint in the army, Sergeant Russell returned to Maine, immersing the local bars with nebulous tales of “classified” black-ops paramilitary operations in undisclosed countries. The Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 dovetailed perfectly with his newly created persona, and he quickly became an underground celebrity in York County. Sergeant Eli Russell, suspected military advisor to the Salvadoran counter-insurgency effort, was born.

“Death squads,” stated Gary Flannery, intimately familiar with Russell’s history as a military advisor.

“Worse. Special Forces death squads. It’s the only logical explanation for how my men could have been taken out so quickly. I can’t go into the details of what I saw in El Salvador. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all, but it fits the pattern and confirms my suspicions about this whole EMP thing. I think we’re on the brink of a government takeover.”

“Not this again,” said a middle-aged man near the back wall.

“I’m sorry, did I say something to offend you?” Eli said. “I’m just passing along what I saw. I’m concerned for everyone’s safety.”

Eli knew he’d have to handle this carefully if he wanted to prevent a public relations backlash.

“Look, I’m just as displeased with Washington as anyone else, but I draw the line at this broad-reaching conspiracy nonsense,” the man replied. “They blame the same bogeyman every time. That one Internet nutcase has thousands of people convinced that the 2013 pandemic was allowed to enter the U.S. by the CDC, with the help of—you guessed it—the biggest bogeyman in human history: Homeland Security. I suppose this is the latest in a long line of ‘false flag’ operations that never materialize in the militarization of America? Like the Jakarta Pandemic? The conspiracy lunatics were sorely disappointed when the thousands of armored cars allegedly purchased by the Department of Homeland Security didn’t take to the streets with the billions of hollow-point bullets supposedly purchased right before the pandemic. This is more of the same.”

“We lost a lot of good men out there! Mr. Russell’s youngest brother, Jimmy, was among the dead,” barked Gary Flannery, stepping toward the crowd.

Eli extended his right hand to hold Gary back. “It’s all right, Gary.”

“I’m sorry. I had, uh—no idea,” said the man. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. It just all seemed…I’m really sorry to hear about your brother.”

“I didn’t take it as disrespect, sir. Thank you,” said Eli, pausing to let the crowd think he was struggling to get past the death of his brother. He continued when he saw a genuine look of compassion appear on the doubter’s face, signifying that his last hurdle in this room had been cleared.

“I’ll be the first to admit that all of this sounds outlandish, but only a Special Forces team is capable of doing that kind of damage so quickly. They even took one of my men for interrogation.”

Eli let the implication of kidnapping and torture settle into the captivated gathering of sheep. He hoped the rest of the townships would be this easy. He’d triple the size of his personal army within a few days.

“These are textbook guerilla tactics for rural paramilitary operations. Trust me, folks. I’ve seen this before, in another life. It’s a brutal, systematic process designed to strike fear into the local population and disintegrate your resolve. We can expect more of this until…”

“Until what?” said a woman clutching a young child.

“Until the new authority arrives to
save
and
protect
us from this terror. I’m telling you, this is by-the-book Spec Ops stuff. Psychological operations—PSYOPS. They want you afraid to leave your house. Afraid to close your eyes at night, lest you be snatched away,” he said, snapping his fist shut and pulling it toward him. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that our satellite phones don’t work? I have a full signal on mine—tracking nine birds, but all I can do is receive government transmissions. They don’t want us talking with anyone outside of our immediate communities. Keep us isolated until our saviors arrive.”

“A false flag ploy?” asked the town selectman.

“The bigger event is the false flag. Whatever they did to turn off the lights, that created the crisis.”

“The government announced that a space-borne object broke up over the U.S and hit the East Coast. It explains the shockwave,” said someone deep in the crowd.

“But not the EMP. I’ve studied this stuff. Meteorites don’t cause electromagnetic pulses. Only nukes and solar flares do that. Did you notice how they haven’t given an explanation for why your cars don’t work or why the lights are out? That’s because it doesn’t make sense. Instead, they say, ‘widespread power outages have been reported.’ No kidding, Sherlock. I couldn’t microwave my breakfast burrito this morning. Tell me something I don’t know.”

The group broke into open laughter.

Man, I love this,
Eli thought
.

“I’m not buying the asteroid story, and neither should you. They’re watching the skies 24/7, detecting and analyzing inbound space objects years away. Ain’t no way they missed one as big as they claim. Judging by the blast wave we all experienced, I’d say they detonated a nuke over the water in the Gulf of Maine. Far enough away to minimize civilian casualties, but close enough to let us know that something big happened. I bet they did this up and down the East Coast where most of the people live.

“I know this sounds extreme. I’ve gone over it in my head time and time again, trying to come up with a different scenario. Until the Milton Mills massacre, that is. I recognized the military’s handiwork immediately, I’m ashamed to say,” he said, letting those words sink in.

“I’ve held you up long enough. If anyone is interested in learning more about the Maine Liberty Militia, we’ve set up a table in one of the smaller rooms down the hall. We’re looking for volunteers. Prior military experience is preferred, but anyone with basic firearms experience or a willingness to learn is welcome. We’ll provide the training and the firearms to keep the people of this town safe.

“I know what you’re thinking; if the government hit team can take out fifteen of Eli’s best-trained men, what chance do you stand? I’m not going to BS any of you; we’re not training anyone to be a Navy SEAL. Militarily, we’ll never be a match for the teams roaming these parts, but if we organize quickly, they’ll back off. They’re in this for the long game. If they can’t keep us isolated and scared, they’ll switch to less drastic tactics or disappear completely.”

“Does that mean the government won’t bother with us?” asked the selectman.

Eli shook his head and grimaced. “The government’s still coming. They’re too vested at this point. The only thing we can do is change their early tactics. Save some lives. Keep your eyes open for strangers and any suspicious activity. Once word gets out that we’re not afraid, they’ll start employing some hearts and mind shi…stuff. Pardon my language, ma’am,” he said, directing his apology at the woman holding a toddler.

“He’s heard worse, I’m afraid,” she said, smiling nervously.

“One last thing everybody, before we all melt from the heat,” he said, fanning himself with his hand. “Two of my men were shot dead in Waterboro yesterday afternoon. The suspects, who may be women, were last seen driving toward Limerick along Route 5. Witnesses say the suspects shot them in cold blood and took their vehicle, a Black SUV. This happened around one in the afternoon, so if they made it to Limerick, they might have cruised through town maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later. Was anyone in town yesterday afternoon?”