End Days Super Boxset (213 page)

On the porch of an abandoned farmhouse on Oak Street, he miraculously found the pumpkin still there. It had rotted and collapsed slightly, but the contents still remained inside, right where they were supposed to be. With the Humvee still running loudly—and its one headlight illuminating the front porch—Mason looked around frantically for signs of anyone else.

He knew that the agency had not given up their search. They would find out about the hospital, the Colombians, and the stolen Humvee. It wasn't long before they would deploy a cavalry of helicopters and drones to find him. It wouldn't be that hard, all they had to do was look for a lone Humvee driving down I-85 toward North Carolina. Mason didn't waste a second. He ran to his waiting vehicle and drove down the dirt road in a fury, more determined than ever.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave, 11:00 p.m. Sunday, October 4, 2020

The Oval Office was in a frenzy unlike anything seen in Clancy Redgrave’s second term as President of the United States. After winning the reelection, he considered his administration ready for anything. The writings on the wall, however, seemed to have escaped his foreign and domestic agenda. Redgrave, a moderate Democrat and former governor of New York, had run on a non-specific platform of peace and prosperity. He promised to continue his policies to end ongoing military conflicts and reverse the country’s declining economy. Neither had happened in his first term.

Now he was faced with a national crisis of unprecedented levels. His staff advisors were proposing restraint. His national security team and military advisors stressed swift action. Somewhere in all the chaos, the CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security had presented him with bombshell information linking the attacks to a newly formed axis, which included Egypt, Libya, and Iran.

The President was due to address the nation the next morning after receiving his briefing, and there was much speculation about what he was going to say. The press demanded answers. Washington D.C. did, in fact, still have its power grid intact as well as mobility and communications. It was one of the few major areas of the country that had not been hit with an EMP. As the President struggled to maintain order in the Oval Office amid twenty or so advisors shouting over each other, his wife, Margaret, the First Lady, sat on the couch clutching a Presidential pillow in her arms.

They knew of the breakdown of several major cities, and the desperate attempts of governors to maintain law and order. The country was crumbling around them, and there seemed little they could do to contain it. Each day, the reports got worse. States descended into chaos, mismanagement of resources reigned in all areas. There was looting, mass rioting, death, and destruction. The military had been spread thin. FEMA had been overwhelmed. Law enforcement was understaffed with reports of officers leaving their jobs to be with their families. President Redgrave wondered how things had gotten so bad so fast. Whatever the intent of the attacks, America had been effectively brought to its knees.

An urgent meeting was called in the Situation Room to assess the measures to be taken against the countries said to be responsible for the attack. The Oval Office emptied as fast as it had filled up earlier as the President rushed off for another briefing, leaving his wife to cope on her own. They hadn’t slept in days. Things were so bad that even the President and First Lady hadn’t heard from their own out-of-state relatives since the EMP strikes occurred.

The room was full of top-ranking officials from every department. Several aides stood cramped around those seated at the table. The screens on the wall projected images of affected areas across the nation. Black indicated a presumed “blackout” status, while areas in green were those that still had their power grids intact. The entire country was nearly consumed by black, all but some mid-west states such as Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska. The pattern was baffling. No one, no matter their expertise, knew why certain areas were attacked and others were not.

The President stood at the head of the table, flanked by advisors, waving a thick report the size of a novel. He immediately called on the director of the NSA, Scott Jenkins, to elaborate.

“If I’m reading this correctly, you mean to tell me that the NSA collected correspondence between these three Middle Eastern countries that proves they conspired to launch EMP attacks against our country?” The President looked tired and disheveled. His hair had grayed during his presidency and had now lost its color completely. He looked frailer than ever, not over 120 pounds. If it wasn’t for the presidential jacket he wore, no one would think that the skinny, unshaven man before them with glasses resting on the tip of his nose was the President.

“That’s what we’ve determined, Mr. President,” Jenkins replied as murmurs of outrage filled the room.

President Redgrave looked to his CIA and Homeland Security directors in desperation. “And your reports confirm the same?”

Bill Simmons, the pudgy CIA director and lifelong bureaucrat, fumbled to straighten his glasses and address the President. “Uh, yes, Sir. I mean, we don’t have access to the same level of information afforded to the NSA, but I can say that these claims of Middle Eastern involvement fall completely in line with their repeated threats against the U.S. as well as their promise to extend the reach of their totalitarian regimes across the region.”

The President slammed his fists onto the table, startling everyone in the room. “I have to address the country in a matter of hours! I need us all to be on the same page here. One day, I’m hearing that the Iranians did it. The next it’s China. Before that, it was the Russians. Hell, just the other week, you reported to me that Cuba may have been behind it. Fucking Cuba! We need evidence. Hard, substantial evidence that we can present to the United Nations in order to reach a peaceful resolution to this matter. We need to restore order to this country and rebuild our electronic infrastructure.”

Jenkins cleared his throat and removed his glasses. “Mr. President, may I suggest that such passive actions could prove detrimental in the long run.”

“Detrimental?” President Redgrave asked, leaning forward. He moved away from the table and pointed to the map of the United States projected behind him. “The latest reports of casualties in the blackout states since the EMP strikes run in the hundreds of thousands. How much more detrimental can we get than that?”

Jenkins seemed unnerved despite the President’s shouting at him. “I’m simply saying, Sir, that the role of the NSA is to collect cyber intelligence. Our information, without a shadow of a doubt, implicates the countries of Egypt, Iran, and Libya in attacks on our country. We know of their exact launch sites throughout the Middle East. They bypassed our radars from technology made possible by misguided treaties proposed by the previous administration.”

“And you’re sure about this?” The President asked.

“Yes,” Jenkins answered.

The President looked at the two generals sitting at the table and then at his CIA director. “And you’re in agreement with this?”

Breathing heavily under his girth, Simmons replied as the generals nodded. “We’ve received similar intelligence; however, I must admit that I never personally cared for the amount of nondisclosure the NSA has with their intelligence. It’s as if we’re just supposed to take their word about things.”

“We’re all on the same team here, right?” Jenkins asked, cutting in.

“Yes, I certainly hope so,” Simmons replied.

“Well, then let’s quit playing games with the lives of the American people and do something about this egregious attack on this country. Mr. President, the decision is all yours.”

The President took a step back and ran his hands through his white hair. The tension in the room had reached an exhausting fever pitch of confusion and grandstanding. After taking a deep breath, President Redgrave continued. “All right, gentlemen, that will be all for now. I have to comb through this report line by line before I come to a decision. I have to know exactly what to say in my address.”

He stopped and looked around the room at all the eyes fixed upon him. Going to war was against everything he had ever believed throughout his entire political career. There
had
to be a peaceful solution to the attacks. The United Nations could advise them. They could put sanctions on the newly formed axis and limit their sphere of influence, or at least that was his thinking.

The President then took another look at the casualty counter on the screen behind him. Ten thousand more had just been reported dead in riots. The FEMA camps had also reached maximum capacity, and all attempts to control the situation and contain the citizens in stadiums or makeshift refugee camps had turned disastrous.

He called for quiet and spoke with a clarity not seen in years by any of his advisors. “If talks fail, prepare for immediate military response against these aggressor nations. We may just have to send them further into the Stone Age. They won’t even know what hit them.” With that, he stormed out of the room, leaving his countless advisors stunned.

Washington D.C. was abuzz with kinetic movement on every street corner. Restaurants, hotels, motels, and stores were all operating. The metropolitan migration wasn’t lost on D.C., as thousands of neighboring citizens flocked to the city in search of answers for the disaster that had befallen their homes and neighborhoods. The police and military were overwhelmed by the influx and helpless to contain it. The majority of migrants from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia had traveled on foot and were desperate for assistance; however, the District of Columbia was concerned with its own survival.

Mason approached a yuppie couple near a boarded-up Smithsonian Museum if he could use their cell phone. His own phone had been lost for some time, and Mason had no other choice but to try to reach out to the one contact he had within the White House, an old Air Force buddy who worked for the President’s Chief of Staff.

Mason had made it to Washington not in the decades-old Humvee he had commandeered and driven across state lines, but via a military cargo truck that was taking people into the city as part of a massive relief program.

He had made it as far as Charlotte before the Humvee overheated and burned out. But the details of his travel into D.C. weren’t as important as his resolve. Wearing the oversized clothes provided by the hospital in Georgia and carrying only a small, airtight package containing the USB drive, Mason made the call as the couple patiently waited. Unfortunately, the call went directly to voicemail, and he waited for the beep.

“Jack, this is Mason, I’m outside the Smithsonian and need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Please come here as soon as you get this message. I’ll be waiting.”

Mason handed the phone back to the couple and thanked them. As they walked away, he paced back and forth nervously, constantly looking over his shoulder. The traffic and the hordes of people were unprecedented, even for D.C. Within moments, he was surrounded by a horde of black SUVs. Whether they were Secret Service or a conglomerate of secret agents, he didn’t know.

Several men in black suits jumped out of the vehicles, armed with handguns. He could see what was coming and knew he had only one option left. Mason pulled the USB drive from his pocket, opened the packet, and swallowed it. It didn’t go down easily, and he nearly choked after being tackled to the ground.

They took him to an undisclosed underground bunker and put him in a holding room with only a table and two chairs in it. He sat in the empty room, contemplating his official role as an enemy of the state. He wondered if Jack had ratted him out, if they had intercepted the call, or if they got to his friend somehow.

Surprisingly, Scott Jenkins, the NSA director himself, walked in with a smug expression across his face. “You know what I want to know,” he said, getting right to the point. “The President is going to deliver an address soon, and he’s going to propose a declaration of war against the countries that launched the EMP attack against us. That’s what’s going to happen, and there’s nothing that you or I can do about it.” He paused, waiting for Mason to respond before continuing. “It’s immutable. You know what I mean. So let’s talk to each other man to man. Where is the thumb drive?”

Mason stared blankly at the cement wall in front of him and just laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Jenkins asked, perturbed.

Mason pulled on the handcuffs at his wrists. “I lost the thumb drive. I don’t have anything. And guess what? You win. That’s why I’m laughing. I’m laughing because people like you always win. Corrupt to the core, your type always seem to come out on top, but one day you’ll burn like the rest of us.” He took a deep breath. “You really think that you can conduct a World War to your benefit?” Mason laughed again. “Hell, you’re much more optimistic than me.” As soon as he finished, Mason spat into the NSA director’s face as hard as he could. Jenkins slowly wiped his face with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket.

“Have it your way, Mr. Turner. You don’t want to play ball, fine. I’m going to have fun with you. I’m going to see to it that you spend the rest of your life in a tiny little cell with no windows and no contact with the outside world. One phone call and I can make it all happen. Now do you want to try again?”

Mason looked up at the fluorescent bulbs above him, then turned to Jenkins. “It sure is nice to bask in the warm glow of electricity again.”

Disappointed, Jenkins shook his head. “Is that some kind of joke? Does your little observation have a point?”

Mason looked away.

“No matter,” Jenkins said. “You were the last one we had to worry about. Now that we’ve got you, no one in the administration will ever know.”

Jenkins turned to the door and began to walk out. His dress shoes clicked against the concrete floor as Mason called out to him.

“What?” Jenkins asked, facing him.

“She didn’t deserve to die.”

“Who?”

“Rebecca, my girlfriend. Your agency murdered her in cold blood, for what? To get at me?”

“I admit, it was a bit of an overreach,” Jenkins said, sounding formal and detached.

“Mark my words, Jenkins, you will pay for your crimes, one way or another.”