Seven Unholy Days (22 page)

40

3:53 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

NEAR OMAHA, NEBRASKA

              Hank Harrington drove. Jana pointed the gun. “Can you please put that handgun down? Those things make me nervous. I don’t believe in them.”

“You’re a fool if this one
doesn’t
scare you. Shut up and drive.”

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“You’re taking me to civilization. We’re going to find someone who has a working telephone and hopefully a computer. You’re going to tag along with your stinky self and act like we’re big pals so I don’t have to shoot you. There are some houses up ahead. Slow down.” Hank slowed the car and Jana said, “Turn into the second house on the right, the one with the blue car.”

They knocked on the front door and an attractive lady who looked to be in her mid-forties answered. “Could I help you?”

“We desperately need to use a phone. Is yours working?”

The lady looked skeptically at Jana in the fatigue jacket and sniffed the air trying to figure out what the odd odor was, but finally said, “Yes, it’s working. Come on in. It’s over there on the end table.”

“Thanks so much,” Jana said. She turned to Hank and said, “Come on, dear.” She went to the phone, picked it up, and dialed.

“Great Central Electric,” came the answer, the most beautiful words Jana had ever heard.

“Is Brett Fulton there?” she asked.

“No, I’m sorry ma’am. Mr. Fulton was killed in an autom
obile accident.”

Jana stood there, stunned, but no tears fell. Her brother lived hard and fast, and news of his death was something the whole family had come to expect. She could cry later, if she could manage to stay alive herself—

“Ma’am, are you still there?”

“Yes, who’s in the control room right now?”

“I’m not allowed to give out that information.”

“Who are you?”

“Ma’am, security has been stepped up a lot around here in the past few days. I’m not allowed to say much of anything about what’s going on here. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have released the information about Mr. Fulton. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Jana Fulton, Brett’s sister.”

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry! My name is Andrea. I used to work in accounting but they moved me to the switchboard to help out with all the calls—”

Jana felt something cold on the back of her neck and turned around to see the bull-of-a-man guard from Hart’s place, hol
ding a gun. She scanned the area and saw the lady who owned the house standing across the room with a terrified look on her face. Hank looked even worse. The situation didn’t look good, but she decided she plain would not go back to the hellhole she had just escaped. She swung at the bull and he grabbed her wrist. Her strength was no match for his, but it didn’t have to be. While he was occupied with her left hand, her right slipped into the pocket of the jacket. She pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

The bullet entered his lower abdomen and tore through his intestines before hitting and shattering two lumbar vertebrae and severing his spinal cord. His newly-paralyzed legs co
llapsed under him and he crumpled to the floor moaning as black blood gushed from the hole in his stomach. It was the last thing Jana saw before everything went black.

              Hank Harrington dropped the vase he had clubbed her on the back of the head with and said, “This woman is crazy. Let’s get the police over here.”

The lady who owned the house disconnected Jana’s call and dialed 911, shaking all the while.

41

4:00 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

             
I was talking to Tark when Andrea ran into the room. “Mr. Tarkleton, I didn’t know you were back! Jana Fulton called!”

“Come again?” Tark said.

“Jana Fulton, that’s Brett’s sister!”

“I know who she is, Andrea. When did she call? Where from?”

“I don’t know. That’s the weird part. She didn’t even know about Brett and then she just stopped talking, and ... ” Her eyes started tearing up and she was gasping for breath.

“Calm down, Andrea. We need the details,” Tark said.

“She’s hyperventilating,” I said. Abdul sprinted out of the room and returned in what seemed like two seconds with a paper bag. We sat her down and had her breathe into it for a couple of minutes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay, just tell us the rest of it if you can,” I said.

“I answered the phone and she asked for Brett. Before I even thought about the rules, I blurted out what had happened to him. She went real quiet, didn’t say anything for a while. Then she wanted to know who else was here. I wouldn’t tell her anything and asked who she was. She told me she was Brett’s sister. Then I told her who I was, but she didn’t answer me and I thought she was just upset ... ”

Her eyes started tearing up again. Tark gently put his arm around her and whispered something in her ear. She dried her eyes.

“I heard someone else talking in the background, and then I heard a bunch of scuffling and a loud bang. I’m sure it was a gunshot. It scared me to death. I kept screaming for her over and over but no one answered and then someone hung the phone up on that end.”

“Thanks, Andrea. Tark, please tell me you have caller ID or some sort of call logging on the switchboard,” I said.

“Not locally. All of our calls get routed through a switch at headquarters. I’ll call them and see if they can track it for us.”

42

4:40 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

DOUGLAS COUNTY JAIL

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

             
Jana’s eyes fluttered open to the sight of a dingy ceiling. She rose up and the back of her head exploded in pain, quickly bringing her back down. Rolling her head to the left, she saw the bars of the jail cell door. At first she thought she was dreaming but as the fog cleared it was evident it was all too real. Her heart started racing, which increased the pounding in her head, and she forced herself to stand up and walk to the door. “Hello, is anyone there?” she said, softly at first, then in a scream. After the fifth time, a female guard clanked her way through an outer cell door and made her way down the hall.

“You need to be quiet, missy. I’m not about to listen to a bunch of this.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the Douglas County jail, little lady, after being a
rrested for murder. I suspect you’ll be arraigned in the morning.”

“Murder? Have you lost your mind? I shot that guy in self defense! And I have important information about what’s going on with the electricity!”

“Uh-huh. Half the guests this week have had ‘important information’ about what’s going on. Everybody’s looking for a deal, sugar, but we ain’t dealing.”

“Would you please listen to me? There’s a bomb at Great Central Electric back in Mississippi!”

“Well that’s one I haven’t heard yet. Still not dealing, though. Save your stories and your innocence for your lawyer.”

“I don’t have a lawyer! I haven’t been offered one. I haven’t been read my rights. I need my phone call.”

“Well let me take care of that. You not only have the right to remain silent, I insist on it. You’ll get a public defender lawyer as soon as we can round one up. Things are working a little more slowly these days. As for a phone call, ours don’t work, so it looks like you’re up that creek without a paddle. Now go to sleep or something.”

The guard walked away and Jana heard the outer door open, then clank shut, its metallic tones reverberating through the halls of bare concrete and cold steel. She walked back to the bunk and sat down. Things weren’t exactly going her way, but at least she was safe here. When her lawyer arrived, maybe she could get a message to Great Central.

5:03 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HART COMPLEX

Hart bounced along the narrow farm road in the Hummer, headed for the airstrip on the backside of his sprawling property. The pilot was staying in the small apartment inside the Gulfstream’s hangar, ready to leave with little notice. Without telling anyone, Hart had radioed ahead and the engines were at a low hum when he arrived. He hated to leave without his whore, but such was the unfairness of life.

“Where to, sir?” the pilot asked when Hart stepped on board.

“Moscow.”

“Russia?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll take me a little while to plan the flight, get clearances, find a qualified co-pilot—”

“There will be no co-pilot and no flight plan.”

“Sir, I’m not happy about a transoceanic solo flight, but I’ll do it. Doing it without a flight plan is another matter altogether. With no commercial traffic to clutter the skies, an unauthorized private flight will draw a lot of attention. If we don’t file a flight plan, we’ll pick up an Air Force escort within a hundred miles.”

Hart closed his eyes and breathed deeply, summoning control. The pilot deserved to be shot in the groin and fed through one of the turbine engines, but Hart could not fly the aircraft himself. “Plan your flight, and have me out of here in fifteen minutes.”

“Yes sir.”

43

5:05 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

Andrea was working the phones hard. In addition to trying to reach Alpine Village for me and Abdul’s family for him, Tark had her trying to reach someone at headquarters to get the info on the call from Jana. I had also sent an email requesting the trace, but there had been no response. Tark was in the lounge going over all the communications that had come in from AC during the week. “You have new mail,” my laptop said.

Mr. Decker:

My name is Larry Bond and I have been instructed by the director to liaison with you. I will keep you posted on all significant developments and of course ask that you do likewise. For the sake of expediency, my communications will be informal as opposed to official reports which take too long to prepare.

We just received a bizarre report from a town in Texas called Earth. A number of men showed up in this small town (pop. ~1000) and had plans to “exterminate” one fourth of the town’s official population, half with VX nerve gas and half with swords. Several dozen townspeople were killed, along with all but one of the intruders.

Will forward more details when I have them. Please let me know if you and your people can make any sense out of this.

Best ...

Larry

I printed the message and headed for the lounge. “Tark, take a look at this,” I said.

He read the message and shook his head. “Lord help us. He figured he couldn’t kill a fourth of planet Earth, so he went for Earth, Texas instead. He was cutting some corners in another way too, though.”

“Explain.”

He peered at the big Bible. “Verse eight calls for a fourth of the Earth to be killed through sword, hunger, and the beasts of the earth. Looks like they had the sword part covered. The beasts of the earth passage is theorized to be some kind of plague or pestilence.”

“The poison gas could be pestilence.”

“Yep, but he missed the famine altogether. Hard to figure why he’s so meticulous on some things and sloppy on others.”

Andrea ran into the room. “I finally got hold of headquarters. They’re having generator problems and can’t access the phone computers until morning.”

“Any luck reaching the other places?” I said.

She shook her head. I suddenly couldn’t keep my eyes open and laid my head down on the table. “Just keeps getting better,” I said into the table.

“Andrea, it’s five o’clock but we need you to stay if you can.” Tark said.

“I’m here as long as you need me.”

He thanked her and I pushed myself upright. He was read
ying the pipe for another session, tamping tobacco with furious purpose.

“Tark, you’re onto something. What is it?”

He flicked his lighter and sucked the flame into the bowl. “I’ve figured something out, but I don’t know that it’s any help to us now.”

“I’m listening.”

He puffed and studied a sheet of paper. “We’ve already spotted the antichrist theme, so this part is sort of irrelevant.”

“Come on, out with it.”

“Hold those ponies, Matthew, I’m getting there. You remember your first email, when I said the first line sounded familiar?”

“Sure, the ‘Never more horror’ line.”

“That came from one of Nostradamus’ quatrains.”

“Meaning?”

“Generally thought to be part of an end-of-days prophecy, which fits right in with the antichrist stuff.”

“I agree, that’s irrelevant. We already—”

“I’m not through.” He was power-puffing now, sweet billowing clouds. “Once I figured that out, I looked at the rest of the emails. Here, take a look at the one he sent to the White House.” He shoved it in my face.

“What am I looking for in this one?”

“’You will tremble mightily.’”

“I see it.”

“Guess who else used that line?”

“Nostradamus?”

“Bingo.” He picked up an open book from the table. “I swung by the house on my last trip back from the hospital and brought back anything I thought might help. Peggy bought this thing at a yard sale years ago.”

I took it from him and looked at the spine.
Nostradamus Complete.
It was open to a page with a heading of Century Nine, Quatrain 83. Underneath was the verse itself, first in French:

Sol vingt de Taurus si fort de terre trembler,
Le grand theatre remply ruinera:
L’air, ciel & terre obscurcir & troubler,
Lors l’infidelle Dieu & saincts voguera.

Then in English:

Sun twentieth of Taurus the earth will tremble very mightily,
It will ruin the great theater filled:
To darken and trouble air, sky and land,
Then the infidel will call upon God and saints.

“So, AC uses a line from Nostradamus,” I said as I continued to read, “predicting an earthquake.”

“And the sixth seal involves a massive earthquake.”

“So the question is ... ”

“How do you fake an earthquake?”