(Wrath-09)-Spiders From The Shadows (2013) (7 page)

“But you know, Caelyn, I thought a lot about it—and it’s funny, but I think I realized something I’d never thought about before. They didn’t give up so easily because of all the difficulties that lay ahead. They didn’t lie down and surrender because the future looked so bleak. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t the difficulty of the future that made them so despairing. It was the emptiness of the present, the meaningless of their lives, the barrenness of how they had chosen to live, detached from their families, their religion, any sense of purpose or worthy cause.
Hey, dude, my iPod isn’t working. Guess I’ll lie down here and die.
I mean, it was almost like that.
You’re telling me my 401(k) isn’t worth anything? My Mercedes won’t start? My 80-inch flat screen got quick fried into smoke? Well, I guess that’s pretty much it for me, dudes. Mix up the Kool-Aid™ and let’s get this over with.
”

Caelyn looked at him. He smirked, his sarcastic humor biting.

“You really think that’s the way it is?” she asked. “People lose their easy lives, their possessions, and that’s it, they give up? They roll over and just give up? I don’t know, honey, I think you might be underestimating your fellow Americans.”

Bono ran his hands through his hair, thinking of the hellish highway he and Sam had walked around Washington, D.C. “Maybe, Caelyn, maybe.” They started walking again. He didn’t know how much to tell her. What good would it do? He didn’t even want to think about it himself.

Ellie let go of their hands and ran before them. Bono thrust his fists into his pockets as they watched her go. “I don’t know if I can explain it very well, Caelyn, but it was pretty much unbelievable. I saw hundreds, no, thousands of people on this highway who had absolutely
no idea
what to do. I understand that they were shell-shocked—I mean, the people in D.C. took a double hit: first the nuclear explosion think you should go’ father, then the EMP. I understand that’s a lot to live through, but there we were, twenty-four hours after the EMP attack, and some of them were still sitting by their cars.
Sixty miles to make it home. Way too far to walk. Someone’s got to help me.
I wanted to shake them. I wanted to scream, ‘This is your life. Take responsibility. It isn’t over. There is hope. You can make it through this.’ It wasn’t until later that I realized how many of their lives had become meaningless and sterile, an empty candy wrapper in their hands. “
Might as well check out now as later
” seemed to be a common attitude. All they wanted was for the end to be painless. Geez, Caelyn, if you had seen it, it would have driven you insane.”

She pressed her lips together and glanced down the road to Ellie, who was balancing on the white stripe in the middle of the road, her hands extended at her sides. “I had a visitor a few nights ago,” she said, wanting to change the conversation. “You probably won’t remember him. Pastor Simpson. He used to be the preacher of the congregation here. We’ve met him a time or two.”

“A big guy? Kind of a down-to-earth farmer, as I remember?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Bono leaned toward her, instantly interested. “That’s good. That’s really good. What did he want?”

“He didn’t want anything, really, though he did bring a couple of boxes of dry goods. More than anything he was checking up on his former congregants from these parts.”

Bono noted the “from these parts.” His wife tended to revert to the country vernacular when she’d been home awhile. “Why did he stop at your parents’ house? How did he know that you were here?”

Caelyn thought back on the night the old farmer had shown up. She could remember his words almost perfectly. “
The Spirit brought me to you
,” the man in the baseball cap had said. “
I was going to turn around. I wanted to get home before it got dark. But I couldn’t. I knew that someone else was out here.

“
I think you prayed me to you, Caelyn. Your faith is strong enough that God was able to use even an old fool such as me.
”

She considered her husband’s question. “I don’t know, babe, it’s kind of a funny story, but the long and short of it is that he found me out here. Anyway, they’re having a meeting at the church. They’re going to work out a system to check up on each other, help each other, you know, share things if we need to, see who has what, who needs what, that sort of thing.”

Bono listened with even greater interest. “That’s beautiful, Caelyn. Exactly what I had hoped. That’s got to be the plan. It will work that way, don’t you think? I mean, if we can stick together on this thing, if we can work with our friends and neighbors, then things will be OK.”

She smiled at him. “I think when you say ‘if we can work with our friends and neighbors,’ what you really mean is ‘if Caelyn can work with strangers,’ isn’t it, babe? I mean, you won’t be here. And these really aren’t our friends. I don’t know any of the people around here.”

He stepped toward her. “I understand. And yes, I’m sorry, I was probably making it sound too easy. I’m just so relieved to know there are others here to help you and they’ve non-commissioned officersening the stepped forward. I was planning on going to the church to talk to the pastor before I left. I felt like I had to find someone who could watch over you while I was gone. Even better, Pastor Simpson has reached out to us. I
knew
the people here would be willing to help us.”

“But are they
really
willing? Think about it, honey. They don’t know me. They’ve got their own families, their own problems, their own worries and concerns.”

He sensed the hesitation in her voice and put his arms around her, pulling her close. “I do, Caelyn. I really do. I can’t believe that God intends for us to go through this by ourselves. He understands, they understand, that I can’t be here to help you. They recognize the challenge you will have here, by yourself, with Ellie. They recognize that I’m not off on some overseas vacation. They are patriots and they’ll want to help us.” He lifted his eyes toward the heavens as if saying a quick prayer. “It’s going to be OK.”

She watched him, then started walking again. Ellie was forty or fifty feet ahead of them now, looking at something along the side of the road, and it made Caelyn nervous not to have her immediately by her side. It was silly, she knew—there wasn’t anything up there that was going to hurt her daughter, but she was skittish now, afraid of so many unseen things. What if Ellie got hurt, bitten by a snake or a spider? What if she fell and twisted her ankle? What if she got sick? Before, a doctor or a hospital was just a short drive away, and they would take care of things: medicines, surgeries, painkillers, antibiotics, the world’s best medical care, all at her disposal if she ever needed help. But all of that was gone now. And it scared her. There were so many things to deal with that she’d never had to think about before. So she wanted to be close to Ellie. She wanted to wrap her in a tight cocoon and keep her safe until this thing had passed.

If it ever did pass . . . .

If things ever got any better . . . .

Would they? Would things ever get better?

She really didn’t know.

The emotion of the moment caught up to her and she turned suddenly toward her husband. “What’s going to happen to us?” she whispered, her voice unsure.

Bono pressed his lips while looking straight ahead. “Things are going to work out, Caelyn, I really believe they will. As bad as things appear, I still have hope.

“Some people think this is the end, that God is going to show up from the heavens with a host of angels, that the Millennium is finally here, Satan bound, heaven established here on earth. And who knows, maybe all those things are going to happen really soon. But I don’t think so. Not yet. Not right now. There are still some things that have to happen. Cool things. Great things. Maybe some more hard things, too. But I don’t think all the prophecies have been fulfilled yet.” He stopped and motioned to the empty landscape around him. “Do I think it’s going to get better? Yeah, I really do. I don’t think that we are finished, not as a people, not as a government. This has knocked us to our knees, maybe even come close to killing us, but I don’t believe our heart is gone. It’s going to be tough, no doubt. In fact, it’s going to be way more than tough—it’s going to be horrible. Lots of people are going to die. Maybe millions, maybe a hundred million, I don’t know. It will be unlike anything we’ve ever tried to imagine before. We might not be
OK,
not in the normal sense of how we think of things, but I think we can get through this. I think eventually we’ll rebuild.”

“But who, baby,
who
? Who’s going to rebuild? We don’t even have a government!”

Bono nodded slowly. “I don’t know.”

“All of our leaders in D.C. have been killed. Something isn’t right. It just feels—I don’t know,
bad
somehow. We’ve got no government, no infrastructure, no medicines, no food. How are we going to do it? Who is going to do it? These are the things that I don’t know.”

Caelyn waited, hoping he would answer. But he didn’t, and she turned back to the road.

Ellie was running toward them now, excited. “Look at this!” she cried. She was holding out a purple thistle, fuzzy at the bottom with tiny filaments of color bristling at the top. Deep purple. A hint of yellow. Beautiful but thorny. Bono took it cautiously. “You’ve got to be careful, Ellie, this thing has pricklies that can hurt.”

Ellie held up her index finger with childish pride. A tiny blot of crimson blood was dripping down the front. “I already found that out, Daddy.”

Caelyn took her hand and held it, examining the tiny prick. “That looks like it hurts, baby.”

Ellie pulled her hand awayt of glass doo

NINE

Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania

James Davies, FBI Director of the legitimate government of the United States, walked toward the presidential office suite. He took a quick breath, his heart pounding. Too many people were up ahead of him. Someone was bound to see the drone! It couldn’t get into the compound unobserved with so many people standing there, and the batteries were only good for a couple of hours. Once the batteries were gone, the drone was useless. He had to find a way to get it inside the compound now!

For a moment he wished that he had waited to drop the drone, but, looking ahead of him, he knew that wouldn’t have worked. The instructions they had agreed on had been correct.
Deploy the drone before you get into the presidential office suite. There will be far too many people once you’re inside. You’ll be surrounded, and they will see it when you drop it. Either that or the metal detectors will detect it. Wait until you’re as close as you can get, then deploy it just outside the door.

His mind raced. Only four steps to the door. The Army officers watched him carefully, two men he didn’t recognize. Behind them, there was a security wall and reception desk, then a wide and beautifully furnished hallway that led to the president’s den, all protected behind a metal scanner. A red sign had been posted near the doorway:

STOP

PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY AREA

USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED

DO NOT PROCEED UNTIL INSTRUCTED

It was easy to pick out the two Secret Service agents behind the glass walls. Others were there as well, not seen, but watching. Even here in Raven Rock, the barrier between the open corridor and the president was as impenetrable as steel.

One of the Army officers, a thin-haired colonel, pushed the door back a little further and stepped across the threshold to meet the unwanted intruder. He didn’t extend his hand to James to shake it, but reached out for his arm the way an irritated father would reach for a wayward son. “Mr. Davies,” he greeted simply, “come with me.”

Without waiting for an answer, the colonel nodded at the two Marines who had escorted Davies down. “We got him,” the colonel said.

The Marines stopped at the door, releasing Davies’ arms.

James shot another look back. The fly had disappeared. Somewhere along the ceiling? He didn’t know.

He had to give them time to fly the drone through the open door and inside the presidential compound without being noticed. But he didn’t know how!

Only one idea came to mind. He turned toward the colonel. The bald man reached out again for his arm. James pulled his arm back defensively and stepped angrily to the side. The colonel gestured impatiently for him to come and James hesitated, then moved gingerly forward, then suddenly tripped. Falling, James slammed his head into the side of the glass door. Bulletproof, the heavy glass didn’t break but left a painful dent against his forehead, which immediately started to bleed.

The colonel looked down at him lying in the open doorway. The men on the other side of the glass turned instantly at the sound of the crash. For a moment no one moved; then one of the Marines stepped back and reached down to James. James took the Marine’s hand and pulled himself up, his other hand at his head, a smear of blood seeping through his pressed fingers. “I’m sorry. I guess I tripped on something. I’ve been feeling dizzy . . . .”

The other Marine reached into his uniform pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and flipped it toward James. James thanked him and pressed the handkerchief against his forehead. The Marine steadied James while he wiped the blood away. The colonel released the two Marines with a determined nod. The Marines stepped back, turned around, and started walking down the hall.

Handkerchief still pressed painfully against his forehead, James followed the colonel into the presidential suite.

Behind him, the glass door closed on its smooth, pneumatic hinges.

James glanced back.

Had the drone made it into the presidential office suite? He didn’t know. But whether it had or not, there wasn’t anything more that he could do.

Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska