The Last Stand (Book 3) (The Repentant Demon Trilogy) (20 page)

“Right, Stephen, so what do we do?” Brady asked Cal, assuming he had a plan or he wouldn't have been showing them all this information.

“Prepare for our last stand,” said Cal.  “That will only be possible with cooperation from the military.  I'm going to show all of this to Agent Foley.  He's not much to hope for, but he's all we've got.  He's been a friend, and I think he's secretly disgusted with our country's lack of response.  Still, he's a dyed in the wool military man.  He'd have to jump rank in order to prepare us for battle.  I'm hoping he'd contact other bases and see if they could help.  None of us here know how to operate the planes and tanks stored in the mountain facility.  We would need to be trained.”

“I know how to operate a tank,” offered Nathan.  “That's what I did in Iraq.  I can also shoot almost any weapon out there.  But I can't fly.  There might be some vets among the newcomers who could help with that… if you don't succeed with convincing Foley to act.”

“What about the president?” asked little Stephen, unafraid by all he had heard, “Can't you find a way through all the computer networks to get to him?  Maybe send him a copy of this presentation?”

“Actually, that is a very good idea, Stephen,” answered Cal, trying to not sound too patronizing, “I thought of that, too.  Great minds think alike, don't they?”

“Well what about it then?” he urged.

“To tell you the truth, everyone,” he answered, “I'm not so sure I trust him.  I don't know whether he is an enemy or just inept.  But his mistakes have been fatal for us.”

“I've always thought of him as a
Manchurian Candidate
,” said Brady, “only he wasn't captured and indoctrinated by Communists.  He chose his beliefs willingly.”

“What's a
Manchurian Candidate?
” asked Cal.

“It's an old movie, actually a book first,” answered Mike.  “It's about a soldier captured by the Communists during the war and then brainwashed to do their bidding.  They used money, power, and influence to get him elected president.  It's fiction.”

“My suspicions are even more grim,” said Cal, “I think he may be the anti-Christ.”

*   *   *

Agent Rick Foley was extremely reluctant to listen as Cal explained his theories and showed the charts with all the overlays from Abigail's laptop.  At some point during the presentation, he began listening, however.  And the look on his face was intense.

“Who are you, Mr. Reece Callahan?” he asked when Cal shut the lid, presuming he was probably about to be fired, or at least denied further access to most of the information in the computer system.

Of course, Cal hesitated to answer.  If his theories had been hard to believe, how did he tell this military mind that he was a repentant demon given a mission by God to save mankind?

“Did you really think I accepted those phony ID's?” he pressed Cal for an answer.  “But I knew Mike Edwards got them for you.  And I know he's one of the good guys.  I figured whatever story was behind all this deception, it had to be a good one.  Tell me that story—right now.”

Cal had no choice, really.  So he went through it all as quickly as he could, starting from when he had been a demon following Abigail around.  Crazy as it would seem to a non-believer, even a true Christian might have difficulty accepting that they were staring into the face of a true miracle.  But the times made everything different.  They were in the midst of a world-wide crisis that no one would have believed possible until it happened.

“You've connected dots that no one else noticed,” said Agent Foley.  “A few have, after the fact, of course.  But it's your scenario of the future that concerns me.  I think you're right.”

“So are we going to prepare for battle, then?” asked Cal.

“I want to talk with your group,” he said.  “If what you think is true, then the generals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, probably a great number of Congressmen, and even the President are not to be trusted.  We can't let them know we are preparing.  Even if it's only one among them who has been compromised, he or she will leak it to the enemy.  I have to admit to you that I don't buy all that anti-Christ stuff, but I completely accept that a maniac can believe he is one.”

That made Cal uncomfortable to hear because it meant that perhaps Foley also thought him a lunatic who merely believed himself a transformed demon.  The important part was he was with them.  That was as much as he could hope for, and he agreed to set up a meeting with the Willow Creek community.  It took place almost immediately, after a few phone calls.

“I've been working as a federal agent too long,” he said, addressing the group, “to not recognize the signs of a major conspiracy when I see one.  And this is much more than a plot.  It's a war, World War III, to be exact.

“I may not accept all of your beliefs about this, but I agree that we're in the same boat, and we need to train every able-bodied man among us to use firearms.  We've got quite an arsenal at our disposal, including anti-aircraft machinery, tanks, automatic weapons and only a handful of people that know how to operate them.  It does seem strange, and possibly coincidental, that all of my personnel are computer nerds.  I'm not a believer in coincidences.  And I'm convinced that someone in Washington has been compromised.”

“I'd like to add one more theory to the discussion,” said Cal, and everyone listened intently.  “The major attacks began on Christmas day, then the following were on Easter Sunday.  Those are Christian holidays, but they are generally accepted as national holidays, too.  I think the next attack is going to be July 4.  There aren't any big Christian celebrations again until possibly Thanksgiving—even though it's not officially religious.  Neither is July 4, for that matter.  But that's too far away.  I think it's going to be sooner rather than later.”

“That's less than three months away,” said Nathan, “I can help train on tanks and all the firearms, but where we're coming up short is with jet pilots.  There have been no volunteers, but I'm not sure that means there aren't any.  Of course, Abby owns a Cessna.  She knows how to fly the small jets then, which might be close enough.  It's kind of a long shot, but it may be all we have.”

“Abby is six months pregnant,” protested Cal.  “She can't fly now.  Especially some strange and much bigger jet with which she's never had any experience.  And she doesn't know how to drop bombs or fire missiles.”

“Of course not,” answered Nathan, “I didn't mean she should fly.  I thought she could set up a lesson plan, so to speak.  She is a teacher.  Perhaps she could set up some kind of simulation; a program we could use to train fliers.  Hopefully, we could find some men with commercial aircraft experience.  I'm even willing to settle for amateurs under these conditions.”

“It wouldn't hurt to evacuate everyone starting say the first of July,” said Agent Foley.  “If that isn't the date, we can consider it all a drill and assume it will be Thanksgiving instead.  It would be good to know how long it will take to get everyone inside.  And let's keep all this information confidential.  I don't want to create panic.  I'm not entering any of this into the computers in the facility.  There's no easy way of telling if the system's been compromised.  I know I'm going to start monitoring usage on the fifty desktops in the surveillance section.  So far, the only unauthorized usage has been to gaming sites, and the only bizarre snooping activity I've notice was Cal.”

Everyone laughed because they all knew what Cal had been doing, and they all knew how most office workers stole secret hours away from work to play games or check Facebook.  Of course by now, Facebook was down, and the only games left were the ones attached to networks that had incidentally survived the loss of manpower at their stations.  Contrary to the theories of some sci-fi enthusiasts, the computers were not able to run by themselves. 

The group disbanded and left for their jobs.  By this time, they had devised several working groups into teams based on their talents and inclinations.  A large group of men and women, a combination of the military-housed families and the newcomers, had formed to work on establishing a large garden of approximately one hundred acres.  It was spring, and planting time had arrived.

Over one hundred cattle had been bred and were pregnant with calves.  The milking had become an enormous undertaking, but machines had been scavenged from local farms with the help of some military trucks and human ingenuity.  Men worked on expanding the barn, making it ten times larger and, with Jerry's engineering skills, they outfitted it with automatic feeders and a watering system made from more scavenged materials. They had been given permission to take the trucks into the nearby abandoned farms where they cannibalized all kinds of equipment to re-invent devices to make life easier.  They also found many still living animals and brought them to Willow Creek for rehabilitation.  Such was the way they found bulls to breed with Brady's dairy cows.

They built a huge pavilion with an outdoor kitchen.  Groups gathered there to do cooking, cleaning, and serving food, as well as butchering the meat from hunting and fishing expeditions.  It was among these workers that Nathan spotted ideal candidates for military recruitment; as well as the lazy bunch who contributed nothing.  These were the ones he flagged in his mind for watching more carefully.

Whether of a military mind, a religious one, or one merely with a practical understanding of life, all agreed that the ones who did not want to work presented a potential for danger to the group.  They would be the ones who cared more for themselves than others, the ones willing to take without asking, or the ones looking for an easier, softer way regardless of ethics and morals.  Nathan was determined that when the new housing units arrived through Canadian suppliers, these individuals would not jump ahead of the line to get houses before the ones that had earned them.  Even Saint Paul became impatient with the early Christian community, saying that if you didn't work, you wouldn't eat.

When the first of July arrived, a caravan of personnel carriers began moving the now two thousand residents of Willow Creek Ranch to living quarters inside the mountain facility.  All of the tent shelters had since been replaced with simple but sturdy homes, but most of the kids were happy to move, having seen the recreation room with video games and an assortment of toys for all ages.  These were the things that children missed, while their parents would have preferred even tents to the dorm-like setting. What made everything worse was that no one knew how long they would be living there.

Everyone brought their pets which led to a lot of chaos.  Not everyone had crates or carriers, so many animals ran loose.  Not all dogs liked cats, and vice versa.  Add in the birds, hamsters, and even one set of hermit crabs, and it promised to be an unpredictable time for all. 

An area had been set up to house animals down a side hallway.  It was designed like a kennel or a veterinary hospital complete with a fake grass area which sloped toward a drain where feces and urine were swept away automatically by spray jets along the rim.  Kitty litter boxes lined one wall, also equipped with automatic cleaning systems.  Pet food was dispensed cafeteria style, plastic feeding bowls were provided, and all kinds of pet accessories were available. 

Crates allowed for housing sick pets or ones that were too unruly to get along in the open areas.  Brady was not happy to see that farm animals had not been included in their plans.  But he learned later that they had all been herded to another section and were safe near another entrance further down the mountain.  This was necessary, he was told, because theses animals would not have enjoyed riding on the elevators.  They had been escorted through a series of ramps to a comfortable space where the only danger they faced was that of being spoiled.  It was temperature controlled, and music had been piped in to calm them.

Abigail drove their loaner van, and Cal took her car still loaded with baby equipment; things they anticipated needing soon.  The Deckers and the Edwards families had been provided vehicles once Agent Foley realized they were limited to bicycles for transportation.  Rayetta was now seven months old, and they brought a porta-crib inside which they placed at the end of an aisle next to her mother's cot.  Everyone was permitted to bring one suitcase of clothing and personal items.

The mattresses were not bad, being made of six-inch thick memory foam, but Abigail still could not seem to get comfortable.  Walking around felt better than anything to relieve her aching back.  So she busied herself by greeting everyone as they arrived.  Just seeing her in that condition made most people feel too embarrassed to complain about their own sense of inconvenience.  She wasn't trying to elicit sympathy.  In fact, she was greeting everyone with as much cheer as she could possibly muster.