The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Read online

  “Hey,” he added. “Here’s another two cases of canned chicken. I thought we agreed the heavy stuff would go on the lower shelves.”

  Ignoring his complaint, something she was really good at, Betty asked, “What brand is the canned chicken?”

  “Hold on a second...looks like it’s from Best Prices Storable Foods.” And just to make his point that he wouldn’t be ignored, he added, “I’m bringing it down where we can put it with the other meats.” He grabbed both cases and stepped down, his foot glancing off the second step, unbalancing him and spilling him to the floor, narrowly missing Betty with a case of chicken.

  She, “eeked” and dodged through an open door into the utility room.

  “You okay?” She asked, poking her head back out into their basement.

  “I think so.” He sat up rubbing his sore elbow, banged sometime during the falling process, and considered the differences between men and women. If their positions had been reversed, his instinct would have been to catch her. Hers was to avoid potential harm to their unborn child by getting quickly out of the way. This reinforced his secret opinion that women were the brighter of the two sexes.

  She helped him gather up the cans from the one case that had broken open when it hit the floor, and set the three dented cans aside for immediate use. They slid the remainders into a slot on the floor under a shelf labeled “Chicken,” and got back to work. To them, part of being prepared was actually using their food and supplies, rotating them, as it were, so the stock remained fresh. That wasn’t important with the freeze dried foods, many of which had shelf lives of twenty-five years, but staples like flour, baking powder, cornstarch or yeast tended to expire after a few years sitting on a shelf.

  “Honey,” Bob said. “Would you jot a note for me to add some Stabil to the gasoline for the generator.”

  “Already done,” she replied.

  Yep, women are smarter, Bob thought. He really hoped she’d reconsider and help him teach the Beginning Preps course he’d volunteered to do, but she was already teaching a gardening and canning class so he wouldn’t hold his breath.

  Bob didn’t prep solely because of his religion. To him it was cheap insurance against what he increasingly believed was the coming bad times ahead. He was genuinely concerned about the direction the country was headed. He didn’t think out of control government spending was healthy for the economy and was concerned it could lead to either hyperinflation or deflation. He worried that the war on terror was producing the perfect breeding ground for a police state here at home and was genuinely concerned about the NSA’s ability and apparent desire to spy on everyone.

  He grunted when his sore elbow gave a twinge as he shifted a five gallon bucket of wheat berries from Honeyville Grains over next to another bucket of oats. He loved the flavor of fresh baked, whole wheat bread, made from fresh ground flour. And that reminded him.

  “Betty, did the GrainMaker arrive yet?” She’d ordered a hand cranked grain mill as a backup to her Wondermill electric.

  “It should be here by Friday,” she said. “Meanwhile, let’s put some ointment on that elbow of yours and have lunch. Bob’s stomach rumbled agreement, but before he could ask what she was fixing, Betty looked askance at him and said, “I was thinking Olive Garden.”

  *

  LA

  Joey ducked through the doorway and strode out of the theater, opening the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. At seven-feet-four inches he towered over tall men. His golden blond hair, ice blue eyes and bulging muscles put most in mind of Thor, the Viking thunder god. Women might have considered him good looking if only his eyes weren’t so close set; and his nose, splattered all over his face, made him look like a thug. Truth in advertising.

  Still, it wasn’t just his size that made others flinch away. The aura he projected made those nearby feel unclean.

  Freak, others thought. Judging the book by its cover. And freak he was, but not for that reason alone.

  As he moved to his car a small girl, trying to get out of his way, tripped and fell. Instantly Joey went to one knee, his massive hands lifting her to her feet, what he considered to be a warm smile on his face.

  She screamed and ran.

  He rose to his feet looking almost wistful. Such reactions had hurt when he was young. Now, though he usually hid it deep inside, he enjoyed inspiring terror. Witnesses nearby remembered how they’d felt sorry for Frankenstein.

  One old woman mumbled, “She didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Joey, who hated pity, flashed his eyes at her and said, “Yes, she did.”

  He climbed into his jet black Dodge Ram Mega Cab pickup and sped off. He liked the truck. It was one of the few vehicles with adequate leg room and headroom for a man his size. Most of his other cars had been convertibles.

  His thoughts drifted back to the movie.

  “I like a big man,” Lola had cooed on screen. God, how those violet eyes of hers melted his heart. Maybe she meant it? Maybe he should do something to get to know her.

  Chapter 4: The Prophet

  Denver

  Shark Cassidy and his partner in crime, Skull, leafed rapidly through their latest vic's wallet. The victim, a middle-aged white man who should have known better than to walk this section of Colfax at this time of night, lay crumpled in the alley, a trickle of blood running across his forehead. He hadn't offered any resistance, but then he didn't need to. Shark and Skull enjoyed kicking shit out of whitey: a perk of the work.

  “Cheap-assed Mo-Fo,” Shark threw the wallet down. “Kep' ones in his 'fold, make it look fat.”

  “Musta caught him after he done wit’ de ho,” Skull shrugged. East Colfax was Denver's red-light district.

  Shark held up the take. Thirty-two dollars, a Mastercard, a gas card and a driver's license. The license could be altered and sold, the credit cards hocked to others who would max them out in mere hours. Still, it was a shitty take. Viper wouldn't be pleased and that scared Shark, made him mad. He gave the victim's head a final, vicious kick, as he and Skull left the scene. The night was young.

  The unconscious man's breathing slowed and stopped. The light in Jason McFarland, husband and father, a sales clerk who, just once, wanted to taste the forbidden delights of East Colfax, grew dimmer with each passing second. There was still time to save his life, but even if Shark and Skull knew he was dying they wouldn't have cared.

  *

  Sandusky, Ohio

  Retired Gunnery Sergeant Emil Smolensky looked like he’d been carved out of a rather large block of granite, well, except for the prosthetic leg. That was steel. He didn’t consider himself a Prepper, or survivalist. He was simply a man whose son-in-law was serving a life sentence for murder in the Colorado State Penitentiary at Canyon City and whose daughter and granddaughter wouldn’t go hungry if he could help it. To that end he was moving to Pueblo, Colorado, to be near them.

  He’d been packing and shipping them boxes of MRE’s, freeze dried foods and other light weight supplies for months. Now about all he had left to put in his Army Surplus M35A3 truck were his weapons, gunsmith gear, reloading supplies and bug out bag. He unlatched a side panel on the left side of the armored box bed of the truck and neatly stored eight of his five gallon fuel cans inside. The other eight would go on the right hand side.

  By nightfall he had the rig loaded, including a spare prosthesis.

  He wolfed down a ham sandwich, grabbed his cell phone and dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Darla?” His nine year-old granddaughter had answered, her voice vibrating with energy and enthusiasm. That was Darla, so full of life her curly blonde hair bounced even when she was standing still.

  “Grandpa?” Then, before he could say anything. “Mom, it’s grandpa!”

  They talked about school and a garter snake she’d seen eating a grasshopper in their garden that day until her mom took the phone.

  “Hi, dad,” his daughter Heather said.

  “Sounds like you had a busy day
.”

  Heather laughed and said, “She took a video of it and posted it on YouTube. She even got her friend Michaella involved.”

  “Yeah, she said she emailed me the link, but I’ve been loading the truck all day and haven’t checked email yet.” He swatted at a house mosquito and missed.

  “You know you can check it from your phone,” Heather said.

  “I haven’t exactly figured out how yet,” he admitted. “Darla can teach me when I get there.”

  “When are you pulling out?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning. I should be there in three or four days.”

  *

  Southwestern Missouri

  Jonathan and Mabel Hicks stood in the walnut grove and stared at the pitch black opening in the side of the mountain. Weathered faces, gray of hair and somewhat stooped from years--this was not what the elderly couple had in mind for retirement.

  “You really think this is necessary?” Mabel asked. “I mean, I’ve seen those military convoy’s and aunt Zelda can’t hardly talk about anything but the strange goings on at all those commercial caves, but really?

  “If I didn’t think so we wouldn’t be doing it,” Jonathan answered.

  Mabel flipped the switch on her headlamp, bent and lifted the handles of her wheelbarrow, piled high with Mountain House Freeze Dried food and Eneloop rechargeable batteries. “Then I guess we best get back to it,” she said and started walking toward the cave.

  Jonathan smiled as he clicked on his miner’s headlamp, hoisted the handles of the much larger garden cart, and started after her. His Mabel didn’t convince easy but once she bought in get out of her way.

  “Leastways we don’t have to worry about water,” he said. There was a spring fed pond in the cave that had never gone dry and while he and Mabel were in their golden years it was still his job to protect her. He didn’t hold much truck with government men, but if they were prepping hidey holes and not telling the public, well...he’d do the same.

  Denver

  Temple of the Dark Lord

  Leroy Parsons, AKA Mustapha ben Muhammad, AKA Viper, checked the growing pile of booty, and addressed his congregation with the ease of a practiced persuader. He stood behind the raised altar in the center of the pentagram. Black candles flickered around him.

  “The Dark Lord has been good to us tonight brothers and sisters.” He spread his arms, flaring the red and black cape he wore during services. Viper had left a Baptist Seminary school when he converted to a radical Black Muslim sect, but even that hadn't been enough for him, so he had taken the Black in Black Muslim and given it a whole new meaning.

  “Though some of our brethren have been less than zealous,” the look he threw at Shark and Skull made beads of sweat pop out on their foreheads, “overall, the evening was a success!”

  He stepped up to the shrine and drew a gleaming blade.

  “Let us give to our lord.”

  The crowd inhaled collectively.

  The goat tethered to altar tossed its head and tried to pull away, but the knife was too swift, slicing cleanly through its jugular. Two acolytes hoisted the animal above the granite slab, securing its hind legs to a meat hook suspended from the ceiling, so that the goat's body hung head down over the altar as blood gushed from its throat and pooled in a depression in the center of the stone.

  Viper dipped a cup into the blood and raised it to his lips. “Let us partake of the sacrament.”

  The congregation sighed.

  He drank and passed the cup to those in the front row, his favored ones. His helpers dipped other cups in the blood and handed them around. When all had shared, Viper again took up the knife, slicing the goat's abdomen, spilling its guts onto the slab. He put down the knife and ran his hands through the steaming entrails. His eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back, exposing the whites. He shook with the force of possession and when he spoke his voice was deep and resonant and harsh.

  “I see the death of the white man’s world! The rise of our power!” He raised handfuls of intestines into the air. “In the chaos brought by the Dark One we shall reign supreme and our justice shall rule! All who follow me shall be rewarded beyond their dreams.” He lowered his arms and stepped back.

  “The Dark One has rewarded my faith with the gift of prophecy.” He pointed at his flock.

  “Do you follow?”

  “Yes!” They swayed.

  “Do you trust?”

  “Yes!” They cried.

  “Do you believe?”

  “YES!” They roared.

  “We know that Satan, our Dark Lord, our Black God, has been viscously maligned by white religions solely because he is black. We know that Satan is the true, good and just God, whose position has been usurped by a false and evil White God.

  “For these sins, our Dark Lord has decreed the coming death. I have seen the world shake and waters reclaiming the land.” He strode back and forth, arms waiving. “Seen the fires and gales, the darkening sky and the coming cold.” He stopped and pierced them with his intense black eyes. “I have seen the fall of the white racists who have oppressed us so long, brothers and sisters, seen the demise of their cancerous injustice.”

  “As you see, so it be,” chanted his followers.

  He started pacing again, too full of energy to stand still, and the heads of his people tracked him back and forth like a slow motion tennis match. “I have seen us take our righteous revenge, seen the birth of Black justice, seen slave auctions where the slaves were white and their masters black.”

  An excited murmur ran through the crowd. “As you see, so it be.”

  He stopped again and his voice fell from ringing tones to an intimate whisper, forcing his followers to lean forward to hear. “But brothers and sisters, the way will be hard and we are few.”

  They nodded.

  “We must grow in numbers and in power. We must unite the gangs and forge new alliances. We must bring all our deluded brethren into the fold.”

  He walked around the altar and into the crowd and they gathered close, eyes gleaming, hungry for the touch of his bloody hands, eager to do his bidding. Other than private praises and greetings he was silent until he had touched those worthy of the honor, weaving his spell about them all. He even flicked Shark on the nose and tugged Skull's ear, at once elevating them with his attention and reminding them to do better.

  He withdrew into the pentangle, turned his back to them, threw his arms up and his head back. A small, soft spotlight illuminated the face of the Dark One, drifting in the air above them all. Once more Viper's voice filled the room.

  “Go! Bring new recruits, money, guns, and food. Bring bottled water, warm clothes and two-way radios. Bring jewelry, batteries for flashlights, liquor and cigarettes. Bring anything useful for consumption or trade during the coming collapse; for the Dark One says the white world dies soon. Go!”

  Like cockroaches scattering before the light they fled.

  After they were gone Viper dismissed his attendants and retired to his inner sanctum to compose his thoughts. He paced restlessly through his well-appointed apartment, eyes and mind turned inward, not noticing the dark, heavy Mediterranean furniture, or the African statues on the tables, or the masks and tapestries on the walls.

  Usually he had a good idea what he would reveal when in the grip of God, but not this time. Memories of the apocalyptic vision swept though him, forcing him, trembling, to a stool by the wet bar. He uncapped the first bottle his shaking hands found and drank straight from it, not caring what it was. The liquor scorched a path to his stomach and spread a bright glow through him, steadying his nerves.

  Normally he was content in the knowledge that, like Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon, the true God spoke to him and through him, revealing His divine will along with the future. But he had much more planning to do if he was to get his people through the disaster ahead.

  He put the bottle back and headed for his office, stopping briefly in the kitchen to grab a Coors from the
fridge.

  Seated at his desk, pad and pen in hand he laid out his plans, first for survival, then, as opportunity occurred, for taking over Denver, then the Front Range, and eventually the world. Leroy was old school, not trusting such sensitive information to his PC or Android. The way whitey’s NSA peeked over everyone’s shoulder gave him the creeps.

  Hours later, rough draft complete, he sat rubbing his temples, trying to massage away the headache building there. Time to stop, for now. He needed some music and a long, hot shower. He pushed the FM button on his Bose, selected an R&B station, popped two Excedrin and turned up the volume as he headed into the bathroom. Music from the Troubled Land Band floated through the air.

  So you can take your paper promises,

  and all your worldly treasures,

  But you cannot buy,

  Peace of mind,

  Or escape,

  From the headstone garden.…

  A faint smile played across his lips as he lathered and rinsed. Ofay got that right, he thought. Ain't no escape from the headstone garden.

  Leroy had labored hard in pursuit of the Three G's of power: guts, guns and gold. He had never lacked the former, and his hoard of the latter two was growing every day. His smile widened as he toweled off. In His own way, God had been preparing him for this event his whole life.

  He slipped on a silver gray, velour robe and walked out of the bathroom. As he passed an oval mirror that hung at the end of the hallway his reflection caught his attention. Not bad, he thought. Women found his smooth, almost hairless, black skin and chiseled features pleasing. He grinned at himself, practicing a warm smile that melted panties, then froze... His eyes glazed over and a single bead of drool trickled down his chin. A voice grew in his mind, crowding out all other thoughts, filling him with a sense of presence and power. “You must hurry,” it said. “The time grows near.”