The Midnight Stand (The Elysia Saga Book 1) (3 page)

Sy, the country boy, pulled a small tube of
rubber sealant from his utility pouch. Sy was the crew’s handyman and all
around fixer. He had a knack with putting things back together quickly. He wore
a bandanna around his head and had dirty blond hair that came down to his
shoulders. He bent down and applied the sealant to the loose nozzle.

As this was happening, Maxon noticed something odd
about the chair Mrs. Delany was sitting on. From the light that was shining
from their helmets he could make out what looked like wires running down the
back of the chair and going off into the darkness. He covered his nose with the
crook of his arm and moved closer to the body. He saw three wires, one red, one
blue and one green, coming out of the bottom of the chair. He followed their
path along the floor until they reached the wall and started to climb up. The
wires were held to the wall by pieces of duct tape. They ended on top of the
window molding attached to a small black box that was partially obscured by the
hanging drape.

Maxon knew what the box was and its purpose. The
blinking red light in the center of it told him all he needed to know. Everything
at that point seemed to happen very fast. He remembered it almost like a series
of images.

He turned and opened his mouth to alert the
crew, but Canton was already signaling to Hayes and Sy to pick up the body. A
sound escaped Maxon’s throat just as they lifted Mrs. Delany off the chair. The
red light on the window device turned green and then the world turned white for
a brief second and Maxon felt himself being flung against the floor. After that
he didn’t remember much.

There was smoke and heat and screaming and
sirens. Someone had pulled Maxon out of the house and when he came to he was
lying on the lawn with an oxygen mask over his face. He was looking up at the
night sky. He remembered it was full of stars, so many that it seemed to cover
him like a blanket. He sat up and where Mrs. Delany’s house used to be now
stood a pile of smoldering wreckage. They had succeeded in demolishing the
house after all. In the files of official documents that would be all that
mattered, that the job was done. They would get full credit for that. No
asterisk would be place next to the entry under Eleanor Delany. It would simply
read “wrecked”.

Miraculously, the entire crew survived the
explosion, but several men were severely wounded. Hayes lost an arm and was
blinded in one eye. Canton lost his leg and his job as Lead. One year later
Maxon took over the position.

The weight of responsibility was not lost on
Maxon as he mulled over that nights impending wreck, reading over the case file.
His job was to get the wreck done in a safe and timely manner, with few or no
altercations, but there were too many factors that could come into play. How
could he know each one? How could anyone have known that Mrs. Delany’s husband
had boxes of contraband explosive in the basement or that he had taught his
wife to wire homemade bombs? It was enough what ifs to keep Maxon thinking
until roll out, but there was more work to be done tonight and contemplation
was a luxury not afforded to people in his position.

It was twenty to nine. Harley finished the
bottle of Scotch and was now rummaging in an old trunk that was stored under
his bed. The trunk was solid oak and polished to a high shine. It was his
grandfather’s trunk and everything in it belonged to him. He found what he was
looking for under a pile of old linens that were once white but now gray.

He laid the object on top of the bed and closed
the trunk. He wanted to preserve everything in it if he could, but that wasn’t
going to be possible. This one thing though, he had to take. It was the Medal
of Honor his grandfather had received from his service during the Mid-East War,
well before Harley was even born. Harley took the medal in his hands. It was
heavy, made of solid gold with an embossed eagle at the top of it and the word
Valor written below. He placed it around his neck and looked at himself in the
mirror, feeling the gold star with his fingers.

He remembered some of the stories his
grandfather told of it. He described it as being trapped in the mouth of hell.
Harley could remember sitting cross legged on the living room floor, his chin
propped in his hands as he looked up at his grandfather smoking his pipe and
recanting story after story. His grandfather never liked to turn on the
television. He called it the moron screen. He saw it as the state’s weapon
against human thinking. In many ways he was right. As a child, though, Harley
never understood his grandfather’s militant rejection of all things
technological and even thought it crazy. He came to understand it years later
when it was already too late and when everyone was already gone.

His father, Daniel, never got it. He was part of
the movement that created all this - at least he supported it when it started
to gain momentum. The Committee he called it. He even went to some of the
planning meetings and think tank sessions. “Just to see what they were all
about,” he’d say. They met once a week every Wednesday and when he came home he’d
talk about all the good that the group was doing and all the things they had
planned, the new toys they were developing. How they were going to change the
way everyone in the world lived and worked. He also spoke of Henry Ellis, the
mysterious brainpower behind it all. He called him a genius and a social revolutionary.
 

Harley was nine when his father signed him and
his mother up to join what was then known as The Project, an experimental
living community. That’s what they promoted themselves as anyway. That’s how
they persuaded his father to support them. Daniel worked for the research
company that was behind the Project. It was clear to Harley that his father was
merely used by them to get something they wanted, someone in fact. The memory
was still too vivid for him to bear and tears started to well at the corners of
his eyes.

He put down the medal and rummaged in the trunk
some more, tossing aside old papers and clothes until he came across the book.
He pulled it out and examined it. The binding had come loose and it was covered
with stains. The book was banned and being caught with it meant immediate
eradication. Only a few copies ever existed and those copies were passed around
by a small group of people who tried very early on to counter the movement. Ancil
introduced him to several of those early members, two of whom helped to keep
him safe after the standoff.

Harley opened the book and flipped through a few
of its brittle pages, not turning too fast for fear of ripping them. It was
more of a manual really, one that someone handwrote and copied. It was a text
on home defense, each page outlining different methods of making homemade
explosives, detonators, and even hand guns. Why he still had this thing hidden
away in a trunk he didn’t know. If Sara ever found it she most likely would
report him directly to the Council, labeling him as a danger.

Even just holding it gave Harley a sense of
unease. He shouldn’t be holding this book. It was like a ticking time bomb in
his hands, set to go off at a moment’s notice. The diagrams in it looked
complicated, full of dimensions and chemical equations, but he felt he knew
enough about the simpler diagrams to copy them for his needs. He wouldn’t need
to do that much to be honest. Since he received the final letter two weeks ago,
Harley was slowly putting plans together for this night. He made daily visits
to the abandoned junk yards off on the edge of the sector where a bit of the
old world still existed. He took home anything he could find; metal canisters,
PVC tubing, electrical wiring, old spark plugs and stock piled them in the
basement.

It was difficult hiding the pile from Sara. When
she asked him about it Harley said that he was working on another handy
project. That’s what she called all his construction projects around the house.
She viewed them as a time occupier and a hobby, something akin to model ship building;
nice to look at when finished but essentially useless.                  

He put the book down and searched for one more
thing in the trunk. He found it at the bottom, wrapped in an old tea shirt. He
folded the shirt open and the gold crucifix gleamed up at him. It was his
grandfather’s and it’s been hidden in the box for thirty years. He felt that
now was as good a time as any to take it out, even though being seen with it meant
being brought up on sanctions. Harley wasn’t sure if there was anything out
there to believe in, but if there was, he decided he was going to need all the
help he could get tonight.

He placed the crucifix around his neck, along
with the medal of valor and went into the kitchen. He glanced up at the wall
clock. He just had enough time to finish this last task before he needed to get
to work.

He pulled a piece of paper and pen from a drawer
and sat down at the table. He smoothed out the paper in front of him and at the
top of the page wrote, “The last will and testament of Harley Jacobs”. 

  
The
pickup bounced along the unpaved road, hitting every rock and crater. Ancil had
driven this route hundreds of times, but this was the first time he decided to
bring Harley with him. They had been driving for an hour and a half with no
stopping. Harley asked several times if they could stop, but Ancil told him
they had to keep going on because there wasn’t anywhere to stop for miles.  

He understood his grandson wanting to get out.
It was stifling in the pickup with no air conditioning and the breeze coming in
from outside was stale and humid. A twangy country song about a cheating woman
was playing on the radio. The reception was bad this far out of town and most
of the lyrics were buried under static. The whole situation was one that
couldn’t have been pleasant for a nine year old.  

“Where are we going?” Harley asked.

“We’re going to visit some people. Good friends
of mine. I’d like you to meet them”

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing much, just talk. I haven’t seen them in
a while. It’d be nice to catch up.” Ancil slowed the pickup down and turned right
onto what looked like an abandoned road leading nowhere. They were headed into
the woods, down a narrow path.

“Why didn’t you bring Dad and Mom with us?”

“They don’t know the Delany’s.”

“Neither do I”, Harley said, with a touch of
attitude.

Ancil sighed and turned off the radio. “The
reason they’re not here is because this meeting isn’t for them”.

“What do you mean? What meeting?”

“Technically, I shouldn’t even call it a
meeting,” Ancil said, “that would insinuate a group of people getting together
to plan something out. This is more like an information discussion between
likeminded individuals with a common purpose and I’m afraid it’s not the type
of get together that would be welcomed by your parents. I can only imagine what
they would say if they knew I was taking you to this thing.”

The trip did feel like they were hiding
something when Ancil suggested he take Harley to see the sand flats on the edge
of town. He said he used to play in those flats when he was a kid and catch
lizards. He wanted Harley to see the flats first hand before it was built over
and developed into shopping malls.

“What kind of purpose?” Harley asked.

“Well, that’s a little complicated to get into
right now. It has to do with what we discussed the other day in the backyard”.

“You mean about the committee people?” Harley
asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to stop them?”

Ancil didn’t respond right away. He starred
ahead for a long while thinking over the best way to approach this subject with
Harley. He didn’t want to expose him to too much, but at the same time he felt
that he was old enough to know what was going on and why they were driving to
the meeting in the first place.

“We’re getting together today with a few people
who feel just as strongly about preserving our way of life as I do. A lot has
changed in the world since before you were born; politically and geographically.
The war in the Mid-East created repercussions not only in our government but throughout
the world as well. Nations have fallen; many others are on the brink.

“The European financial market has collapsed,
throwing them into a state of economic depression not seen since the Second
World War. All that global instability has led to fear and panic in our own
government. That fear has allowed certain people to infiltrate high sectors of
the government and manipulate things in their favor. And what’s good for the
few is never good for the many.”

“But how can the government be against its own
people? Aren’t they supposed to help and protect us?” Harley asked.

“Governments are made up of people, Harley, and
people are corrupted very easily. It’s happened all throughout history. Give
someone a platform to speak to an audience and people will listen, feeding the
fervor. It’s why dictatorships rise to power so easy in economically ravaged
countries where the people have nowhere better to turn. They cling to the first
person who can give them hope, no matter how bad it will be for them.

“We’ve been able to avoid that scenario for the past
250 years, but I don’t know how long that can last for, not with things the way
they are”. 

Ancil turned left onto another path and a house
could be seen in the distance. The house was small and looked like something
out of one of Harley’s history books.  

“This is it,” Ancil said as he pulled up in
front of the house. Three other cars were parked in the dirt driveway. He put
the car in park and they stepped out.

It was cooler under the shade of the trees as
they made their way to the front door. Ancil knocked twice and a voice answered
from behind it.

“Password,” the man said. The voice was low,
almost a whisper.

“Just open the damn door, Lee,” Ancil said.

The door bolt unlocked and it opened to reveal a
middle aged man in glasses and a red tank top. He was laughing as he let Ancil
in.

“Can’t be too sure now a days,” Lee Delany said,
“lotta spies running around these woods.” He took a look at Harley.  “Who’s
this?”

“This is my grandson, Harley,” Ancil replied. “I
wanted him to see what was going on here today.”

“I didn’t realize we were recruiting kids.” Lee
said. His expression revealed he was not happy about Harley’s presence.

“He’s old enough to know what’s happening. And
besides, we can use younger people.”

“I don’t want anything of what we talk about here
to get out.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, he
understands. He’s a smart kid.”

“And what about his parents?”

“They don’t know where he is. They just think I
took him out for the day to show him how to catch lizards. We’re fine.”

Lee studied Harley over again, rubbing the
stubble on his chin.  “Alright, go grab yourself a soda from the fridge kid and
have a seat.”

Ancil nudged Harley over to the kitchen where
Ruth Delany was speaking with another woman. Ruth smiled at Harley and showed
him over to the refrigerator, handing him a Coca-Cola.

There were a few others in the house, all about
the same age. They nodded at Ancil as he entered.

“This is all who came?” Ancil said to Lee as
they moved into the living room. An air conditioner rattled in one of the
windows. It was powered by a generator on the side of the house. The whole
house was powered by generators. It was off the grid.

Lee took out a self-rolled cigarette and lit it.
“What do you expect? No one wants get involved. No one wants to get their hands
dirty.”

“This isn’t enough. They’ve got thousands of
signatures already, political backing, who knows how many judges in their
pocket.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Lee shot back. “We
have no means of communication. We can’t get the word out. They’ve got people
checking the mail and the phone lines. We can only pass word through the church
and that’s not yielding too many prospects right now.”

“What about the libraries?” Ancil asked.

Lee snorted a laugh at Ancil and took a long
drag off his cigarette. “Nobody’s at the library anymore. They’re dead.”

Ancil surveyed the room: only two other couples
were at the meeting. That made eight people, and that was if you counted
Harley. Barely enough to have a baseball team let alone a militia.

“Let’s just get started then,” Ancil said.

Ruth went over to the couch and Harley sat next
to her, his can of coke in his hands.

Ancil continued, “Okay everyone, thank you for
coming over today and for the Delany’s for hosting this get together. I just
want to-“

“What are we doing here, Jacobs?” Earl Henderson
called out. He was there with his wife Theresa. Earl was a farmer who owned
twenty acres of land that he was currently struggling to keep up with since the
government subsidy program was abolished. He would end up losing the farm
within the year.

“We’re here to talk about what I believe is a
concern for everyone in this room,” Ancil said. “You’re all aware of it, we’ve
been seeing it every day for a long time now and it’s only going to get worse.
I’m talking about the Ellis project.”

“You mean the Elysia project”, Lee broke in.  “I
heard that’s what they’re calling it now. Sounds like some foreign bullshit to
me.”

“What’s to talk about?” Earl said. “They got the
support of the local authorities. I see them knocking down houses and building
the tracks for that damn thing already.”

“Yeah, so do I. Just the other day I saw em`
knock down Eddie Fletcher’s place, the one over by the river,” Allen Keyes
said. “That place was in his family for eighty years and they just took it
right out from under him. Eminent domain or some non-sense.”

Allen was a mechanic whose business was hanging
on by a thread. He couldn’t keep up with the new electric cars that rarely
broke down. The younger kids didn’t want to buy gas cars anymore and his
clientele was dying out along with his business. “What’s preventing them from
doing it to anyone of us?” he said.

“That’s why we wanted you here today, to figure
out a way to stop them,” Ancil said.

“There’s no stopping them. It’s just a matter of
time,” Earl said. He sat back on the couch with his arms folded and his legs
spread out in front of him.

“So you’d rather just do nothing and count off
the days till they come for your home? Or your kids. And you know it’s going to
happen,” Ancil said to him. Earl didn’t have a response to that. He just sat
there quiet, his eyes focused on the floor.

“They feed off the young. They manipulate them
to follow their cause.” Ancil looked at Harley as he said this. Harley was
looking up at his grandfather intently, never taking his eyes away. Whatever
part of Ancil that regretted taking him here today was gone. The boy needed to
hear this.

“I hate to break it to you,” Lee broke in, “but
this is all going to happen within the next year probably, not years. We wake
up each morning and hear more and more trucks in the woods, clearing trees. Soon
this will be all gone. All sacrificed for their project”.

“So, what’s your plan?” Allen said.

“First of all we can’t get anything done without
numbers,” Ancil said. “We need people to get involved. We need you to spread
the word, okay. We need people willing to take the chances. We need people who
are going to stand out in front of their homes and block them from setting foot
on our property.”

“Sure, and probably get killed doing it,” Allen
replied back. His wife, Charlotte, took his hand.

“Honey,” she said as she gestured over to Harley
on the couch. Allen ignored her.

“No, it seems like you invited us here today to
try and recruit us all to die in your crusade,” he said, eyeing Ancil and Lee
as he did. “Well, I have a family, I have kids and I’m not going to put their
lives in jeopardy to fight some war you have no chance of winning anyway. Come
on Charlotte, let’s go.”

He stood up and made his way to the door. Ancil
called out to him. “If you walk out that door, you can consider yourself one of
them.”

Allen stopped and turned to face Ancil. “What’re
you saying?”

“I’m saying no matter how much you try, you
can’t turn your back on this thing. You can leave now, bury your head in the
sand and nothing may happen to you. But what are you going to do when they
knock on your door, or maybe they won’t even knock. Maybe they just come in the
middle of the night and force themselves in, dragging your family out, kicking
and screaming. What will you do then?” Allen stood silent in the doorway. His
hand slid off the doorknob just as all the energy he had from a moment before
seemed to slide off him.

Ancil continued, “You think if you play ball
they’ll leave you alone? The fact is Al, we have nothing they want. They only
want to get rid of everything we built and stand for. You want to help your
family, preserve your legacy and your children’s future? This is how you do it.
Now’s the time to choose which side you’re going to be on.”

Allen looked back over to his wife, who was
still over by the couch. She held her hand out to him and pleaded with her eyes
for him to accept it. To accept them. He took her hand and sat back down. He
looked up at Ancil and said, “We’re going to need weapons.”

“Weapons we have,” Lee said.

“I never fired a gun in my life,” Theresa said.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of,” Ruth assured
her. “I was nervous at first too, but after Lee showed me, I got the hang of
it.”

Ancil spoke to Earl and Allen, “Do any of you
have military training?”

“Four tours in Iran,” Earl said with pride.
Ancil looked at Allen. “Four F”, he said, “but I used to go hunting with my
father every weekend.”

“That’s fine,” Ancil said. “Lee and Ruth will
show Theresa and Charlotte and anyone else who needs it.