Zero Zero

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As the clock ticks down for our planet and her inhabitants,
powers that have lain dormant for centuries are loosed on the Earth. Zero Zero
takes a look at a post apocalypse world in ruins. The governments are gone. The
police, the military. The United States is no more. And even the simplest
things are hard to come by. Some have hidden to ride out the storm unleashed
upon the Earth; others have taken a stance in the fight. Those that survive the
apocalypse are splintered and isolated. Mistrustful of one another but beginning to come together in small groups. They have been told of a place a
safety, but getting there, if it exists, is not a guarantee. The powers that
have been unleashed may not be done with them, and they have to be wary of
everything and everyone in a world where firepower and fearlessness rule the
day… One last time Earth comes to the brink of destruction. Controlled by
powers both on and beyond the earth her fate is left to a small group of
survivors to secure. Zero Zero begins with a secreted base that holds the keys
of destruction: A madman who holds those keys in his hand, and a small group of
men and women who will challenge him as the clock ticks down to Zero Zero…

ONE

June 15^th:
Seattle Washington

~1~

The wind kicked up
along Beechwood Avenue in Seattle’s red light district. A paper bag went rolling
along the cracked sidewalk: Skipping over Willie LeFray’s feet where he stood
watching the traffic… thinking. One trick… The right trick… Somebody
with money and he could call the night good. Just enough to get a good high…
Or enough to get enough shit to get a good high tonight and maybe a good high
tomorrow when it all wore off and the jingle jangles set in? … Maybe, he
decided. Maybe. Willie stood watching the cars as the paper bag
bounded over his feet and tumbled along the avenue.

– 2
–

For Franklin W. Morgan, just Frank to his friends, June 15Th,
had been a particularly hard day.

As he sat at the
small, scarred, wooden table at Mikes Pub on Sixth Avenue, nursing a shot of
gin, his thoughts turned inward, mulling over the same problem he had been
mentally chewing for the last several weeks. It always came back, no matter how
far away he pushed it.  It slipped right
back to the front and began to hammer away at him. But today was much worse. It
had seemed endless as it dragged on, and he had been able to concentrate on
next to nothing. He had avoided the office, and Pearlson, no sense compounding
things when he was so close to the truth by chancing a confrontation with
Pearlson.

Pearlson was… Pearlson
was, a piece of shit, he thought. However, at the moment it wasn’t just
Pearlson that had him so keyed up and anxious, it was leaving, and, he
supposed, that was just as it should be.

The thing that had
made it difficult to get through was the pressure and anxiety he always felt
when he was on the trail of a promising story. That and the stress associated
with the story.

It was not so much
the stress his job placed on him; he had always dealt with that quite well. He
knew what it was, and what it had been for several weeks now. All of those late
night calls to his sources in New York. No sleep, virtually working around the
clock; sifting through the information this source or another provided; sorting
out the truth from imagination, and getting to the facts, or as close as he
could get to them. That, coupled with the fact that he had been the only one,
save Jimmy, who believed it, and now Jimmy was apparently missing so he could
add the disappearance of a good friend to the growing list of worries that kept
him up at night. This was turning into a three ring circus damn fast, and he
didn’t like. He didn’t like it at all.

He was sure now,
or as sure as anyone could be. But, who the hell would believe him? Not his
editor, that was for sure. He would not soon forget the day two weeks ago, when
he had approached the subject with him either. It had been partly his own
fault, Frank realized. He had not been as prepared as he should have been. He
had also possessed no hard facts, he reminded himself, and he had speculated
far too heavily for Pearlson’s taste. Even so, he was just as convinced as he
had been then. No. More so now, he amended.

Two additional
weeks of digging into it, with Jimmy’s help, had produced a wealth of
information, and it was no longer just conjecture as the old man Pearlson had
said, but a steadily growing stack of cold hard facts.

Pearlson had still
laughed, and told him he should try writing fiction for a living. But there had
been something else lurking just behind that laugh, hadn’t there? Perhaps a
hint of nervousness maybe?

Pearlson had also
suggested that just maybe Frank needed a vacation, and, things being the way
they were Frank had taken him up on the last suggestion.

Screw him, Frank
thought as he sat at the table and drained the last of his drink… Just screw
him.

That was what had
made his days so long and his nights so sleepless, he reasoned. Churning around
in his head was all of that knowledge… Along with fear, fear of what that
knowledge may mean.

But did he
actually know anything? He asked himself, and could he actually prove what he
did know? Yes, Dammit… And just as suddenly, probably not. He couldn’t
prove all of it yet, at least not entirely, he admitted.

Not for much
longer though, he told himself, the proof part of it was about to change. He
had made plans to go to New York. Directly to the source, so to speak, and find
out just exactly what was going on. No conjecture, no guessing, no screwing
around at all. If Pearlson wanted facts, Frank would get them one way or the
other, he had decided. And the suggestion to take a vacation couldn’t have been
a better cover for him to go under, he reasoned.

No, he decided, it
wouldn’t be much longer at all. Two weeks in upstate New York and he would know
for sure. Frank saw no way that Pearlson could kill the story then. Not faced
with cold hard facts.

But Pearlson could
be an idiot, what if he still rejected the truth even after the facts were
presented, he asked himself. Well, if he did, Frank reasoned, that would open
up a whole new set of problems. Maybe Pearlson was involved somehow… Maybe
not, but the whole thing had smelled of a cover up from the start, and if
Pearlson cut the story loose, if he still placed no faith in it, then there had
to be a reason, and maybe… And maybe shit! If it turned out
that way, then maybe it would be time to move on.

He rose slowly
from his chair and fighting his way through the crowded table area, made his
way to the bar.

“Another Gin,
Mike,” he said, once he had gotten the old man’s attention. “On
second thought hold the ice, just straight up.” He stared miserably at the
jukebox in the corner that blared incessantly, and silently urged it to fall
silent as he waited for the drink. His thoughts, still clouded, turned back to
the problem he was constantly turning over in his mind, when a glance at his
wristwatch reminded him of how late it actually was.

He turned his
attention back to the bartender. “Shit! Mike, I’ve got to go see the kid’s
and I am already late,” he threw a twenty on the bar, “that should
cover the tab.”

“What about
this?” Mike asked, holding up the shot glass.

“You drink
it, Mike, I truly am late. I’ve gotta go,” Frank replied as he started to
turn towards the front door.

“Hey?”
Mike called in a questioning manner. Frank turned back to the bar.

“Get some
sleep, Frank,” Mike said, “your eyes look like two piss holes in the
snow.”

“Yes
mother,” Frank joked, “I will.”

Frank smiled to
himself. They always played this game, and had been at it for the twenty years
that Frank had been coming into Mike’s. Mike seemed to think it was his duty to
mother him, even more so since Jane had died.

“See you in a
couple of weeks or so, Mike,” Frank called as he stepped out the door. He
glanced at his watch once again as he did. I’ll never make it, he thought, no
way.

He resigned
himself to the fact that he would more than likely be late, and not for the
first time this week. He had already been late three times, picking up Patty
and Tim from the sitter.

Cora Pratt, the
sitter, could pitch a real fit when she wanted to, he thought. “Well I’ll
deal with her when I get there,” he mumbled to himself. Besides, he
thought, tonight I don’t have to pick them up, just say good-bye for two weeks.

The heat assaulted
him as he stepped out of the air conditioned comfort of the bar, and he winced.

Twenty seven years
of living in Seattle had not changed a thing for him. He felt about the city as
he always had. It was too hot in the summer, what there was of it, and too damn
cold and windy in the winter, and it wasn’t home. He still thought about it as
a place he was only visiting. He never had gotten used to it, and, he knew, he
never would.

Frank worked the
handle upward slowly, pulling the driver side door of the company car open
carefully. He had to as this one stuck if you were forceful, and then he would
end up crawling over the damn passenger seat to reach the driver’s side. It
seemed to him that he had once had this car when it was new. It was hard to
tell though as it was a pool car, and the younger generation of reporters in
the press pool beat the hell out of all the cars.

“Too many
hot-rod kid’s driving the piss out of them,” he said aloud as he keyed the
motor and pulled the Plymouth Voyager out into the traffic. He headed out of
the city, towards the suburbs and Cora Pratt.

~3~

When he reached the
turnoff, from Route 5, Frank slowed the car and swung into Cora’s
driveway. 

The old farm had
been in the Pratt family for five generations. Ira Pratt, Cora’s long dead
husband, had steadfastly refused to sell any of the land that made up the small
farm, and after he had died Cora had adopted the same attitude. So in the midst
of suburbia, the old farm house sat on its own eighty acre plot. It was sort of
funny to Frank as you could drive a short way in either direction and you would
still be in the Wildflower subdivision, part of which was still a respected
suburb of Seattle.

The subdivision
had simply been built around the property when Ira Pratt had refused to sell.
Consequently the farm had become a boundary line of sorts. West Wildflower was
the poorer and run down section, whereas the eastern section was well kept and
quiet. In the middle sat the farm and Cora Pratt.

Cora was a
formidable woman, who, as far as Frank could tell, took no shit at all from
either side.

When the
“uppity bastards,” as Cora called them, on the east side had sent a
letter demanding that she cut down on the fertilizer her hired man used on the
corn field, she had called in John, the hired man, and told him to use just a
little more instead. They had of course “Taken her to the court’s,”
as she had put it, but to no avail. The court had upheld her Commercial Farm
Zoning, and the judge had told the “Smart ass lawyer,” as Cora had
called him that worked for the East Side Coalition, not to bother him with
anymore groundless lawsuits or he’d personally report him to the Bar
Association.

Likewise, when
some of the, “Shiftless no-accounts,” from the west side had tried to
steal some of her chickens, she had “filled their britches with
buckshot.”

Frank knew all
this was true because Cora had told him. She didn’t want to “Mince no
words” as she had put it, “lay it all out on the table,” she had
said. “Just in case you get to hearing things and think I’m a bit funny, I
ain’t… I just protect what’s mine.”

That had been her
little speech, on the day six years ago, when she had first begun taking care
of Patty and Tim, and, Frank had to admit, to her credit, she seemed to be just
what she said she was, and no one could have taken better care of his children
in his opinion.

Cora waved from
the front porch swing as Frank stopped the car, and walked towards the white
framed house. The scent of Lilacs in bloom came to him on the light breeze from
the porch front, where the bushes marched away in both directions, rail high.

“Thought you
weren’t coming to say good-bye to your kids,” she quipped.

“Sorry,”
Frank replied, “I got bogged down in traffic.”

More like a couple
of shots of gin, she thought but didn’t say.

“Yep, that
traffic can surely be a bother in the summer, that’s for sure,” she said
aloud. Tim and Patty leaped down from
the old porch and raced across the lawn. Frank went to his knees and caught
them in his arms.

Two

– 1
–

Frank Morgan
flipped the map back onto the passenger seat of the small red Toyota Prius and
glanced at his watch. 

He had figured the
trip from Syracuse to Fort Drum would take about an hour and a quarter. He
hadn’t, however, counted on the traffic. The whole day can’t be great, he
thought. The trip into Syracuse International had gone well. One short
connection in route and other than that the whole trip had been uneventful. But
now he had to deal with this. Something up ahead was slowing the traffic down,
and he was pretty sure he knew what the problem was. Still, if he lost much
more time, it would probably be close to dark when he arrived in Fort Drum, and
the possibility of arriving after dark, and trying to find the house didn’t
appeal to him. 

Frank eased the
Prius out into the passing lane, and slowly coaxed the car up to speed again.
He had been right; the problem was the same as it had been coming off the
thruway from the airport to get on route 81. Army convoys, and if you didn’t
get around them quickly, you could spend forever in the left hand lane. He had
learned that lesson the hard way coming off the thruway. Not only couldn’t he
get around them, at first, but when he did he couldn’t get back in for the exit
to Route 81 north. He had ended up heading south instead, and had wasted twenty
minutes getting turned around and back to the northern exit.

What the hell kind
of military base needs that many trucks, he had wondered. It was a question
that actually didn’t need to be answered, but he answered it anyway. The base
doesn’t, the caves do. They may unload at the base, but I bet they just drop
the load and ship it into the city at night, he told himself. 

He stared out the
window of the car, and looked over the traffic as he passed it. Jeeps dump
trucks, Hummers, and tractor-trailer combos carrying who knows what. All of
them heading to northern New York, he knew. He also knew that the airfield, at
the base outside of Glennville, had been quite busy as well, the convoys of
trucks weren’t their only supply source.

Frank reached
towards the dashboard and fished a cigarette out of the pack that rested there,
lighting it just as he passed the last olive-green truck on his right. He
tossed the lighter into the plastic console, and it landed with a hollow
plastic bong. At the same time, he pulled back into the right hand lane, and
leaned back into the seat as he took a long pull on the cigarette.

From what he had
been able to determine from the map, and what he already knew from his
investigation, the military base was about twenty miles north from Fort Drum.
Don was right, it didn’t seem as though any of the trucks would be passing
through Fort Drum on their way to the base. Glennville was only about nine
miles away from the base though, and that was where the loads would end up. Not
in the city actually, he reminded himself, but under the city, and he hadn’t
found that little piece of information on the map. The map said exactly nothing
about the caves.

When he had first
started to seriously investigate the base, he had gotten the first hint of the
caves from one of his informers. The informer was an ex-private turned junky, who
had been stationed at the base when the project had started. The rest he had
gotten from the articles he carefully culled from the Glennville Daily Press,
and Jimmy, an old friend who worked at a Syracuse paper. Some things could be
hidden, but there was always a clue if you knew where to look. 

The first article
he had read, had seemed harmless enough, but coupled with the information he’d
already had, it had been intriguing. The United States Army had purchased some
abandoned property from the city to use as a storage depot. The story had gone
on to say that the land was close to the train depot, and the base would
benefit from the purchase as they would no longer need to truck shipments from
the base to the depot every time they used the rail yards. The ex-private had
tipped him off about the caves, which also happened to be located on the same
piece of property.

Even then, it
still hadn’t made a whole lot of sense to Frank. What would they save? They
would still have to ship whatever came in there, to the base. Wouldn’t
they? 

In other articles,
most of which had been written years before in the Glennville paper, he had
learned what the property actually consisted of, and at first it had seemed
like an unlikely purchase. It hadn’t been all that hard to dig up the old
articles, especially with the help of his friend in Syracuse. Although
Glennville had its own local paper, the Times Reporter in Syracuse, which was
only seventy miles away, often reported on the events that took place
there. 

It had been an
easy matter of looking through the archived data files, pulling the stories
that pertained, and with the help of an internet connection, the reporter
friend sent the stories to Frank in Washington via e-mail. He had learned most
of what he knew about the actual property from those stories, some of which
dated from the early thirties.

The property was
located on the river bank in the heart of the down-town section of Glennville.
It consisted of a stretch of road that began in the center of the city, and then
extended out of the city along an old set of rail road tracks. An old defunct
coal company and some run down out buildings were also included. Perhaps the
most important of all, an abandoned series of caves that ran under the city.
The city had bricked up the caves better than sixty years before, in response
to the community. 

In June of 1935, a
large group of school children, along with two adults who supposedly were well
acquainted with the caves and their various twists and turns had set out on a
field trip to explore them. They had never returned. A subsequent search had
turned up no trace of them at all. Three weeks later the city had sent a Public
Works crew to brick up the entrance, and it had been closed since. 

When the Army had
bought the property it was considered unsafe, and had pretty much been allowed
to go to seed. The road leading out of it had likewise been closed off some
years before, and the area had become a hangout for young kids and vagrants. On
any given night the police ended up being called to the area several times, and
the city had debated for years about what they should do with the property.

When the Army had
offered to purchase the property, the City Council had considered it a Godsend,
and had been more than happy to sign over the deed and accept the check they
offered. It had seemed to be the end of it. Frank had read later articles,
however, that seemed to indirectly touch on the property. There was an increase
in traffic after the sale, and an unusual amount of security that surrounded
the site. 

The local paper
had down-played it to normal, or as close to normal as they could. Glennville
had always been a military town, and so most of the complaints of increased
traffic, were actually seen in a good light. Increased activity at the property
might eventually mean more jobs, and in a depressed economy, which depended
heavily on the nearby base, anything the Army did was always reported in a
positive light. As far as the local paper was concerned, there was nothing
negative to report. 

So the real clues
had come from the Syracuse paper. Franks’ friend, Jimmy Patrick, kept in touch,
and had contacted Frank whenever he came across anything that was related to
the smaller northern city. Syracuse itself had had tremendous problems, initially,
with the traffic. 

When Frank had
called Jimmy, he had only wanted to know what he knew about the place. But
after Jimmy had told him about the traffic problem, he had asked him to keep in
touch, and he had. He had also filled him in on everything else he knew about
Glennville. As he drove along, Frank mentally ticked off what he knew about the
northern New York City.

The Black River
split the city in two, and there were four bridges that spanned it. Three of
the four also spanned the property that the military had purchased, and those
three bridges were new. When they had been replaced, the road that ran to the
old abandoned coal mine had been blocked off and abandoned. Ironically, or
maybe not, Frank thought, the Army Corps of Engineers had done all of the
work. 

The result was a
small discarded piece of property, with its own road leading in and out, in the
heart of the city. It was bound on the south side by the Black River and the
north by a sixty foot rock ledge that rose just behind the old historic
downtown district. That was, besides the caves, what Frank knew about the city
itself. Jimmy had seemed to have caught Frank’s enthusiasm for the mystery, and
had also sent him other articles he found as well. 

Some of them,
although at first glance seemingly innocent, were quite revealing about what
was actually going on in Glennville.

The first one
Jimmy had dug up and sent him, was from the Public Notices section of the
Syracuse paper.

“I thought it
was kind of strange,” Jimmy had said, “that they didn’t print the
notice in the Glennville paper.” 

Frank had read the
long notice carefully. It boiled down to a statement of facts concerning the
property in Glennville, and the Governments intended use of it.

The whole notice
hadn’t made a lot of sense. It seemed to be saying that they intended to invoke
the privilege to the mineral rights that had been deeded to them along with the
property. It also stated that the Army Corps of Engineers had decided that the
closed caves would need to be reopened for a feasibility study, to determine
whether or not they could be used as a storage facility. It had been the first
direct mention of the caves at all. 

The notice went on
to say that since this would involve transportation of, as well as disposition
of, excess material from within the caves, the Corps had asked for, and via the
printing of the notice, been given permission to begin the process without the
necessary permits. They were also granted permission to transport radioactive
materials to and from the site, the notice stated, and had like-wise been
granted a waiver of the Clean Water Discharge Act, to allow undisclosed
drainage into the Black River. 

Subsequent notices
and articles had detailed contract awards for “unspecified”
electrical and plumbing work, along with contracts for per-piece orders of
drywall and lumber. Another notice Frank had read, contained contract awards
for concrete and asphalt, to a Texas corporation. The amounts were unspecified,
and were listed as needed for road repair, and sub-wall replacement. Jimmy had
thought some of it was unusual, and probably even illegal, and although Frank
had agreed, there was not much that either of them could do without further
proof. 

Jimmy had also
told Frank that the Army had been building up the area for some time and that
from what he’d been able to determine, they had begun work on the caves even
before they had completed the purchase of the land.

They both
suspected that the notices were only a cover for some larger project the Army
was carrying out, and the radioactive permits bothered him a great deal. Jimmy
had promised to stay in touch, and he had, up until last week. 

Frank had tried to
contact him at work several times but to no avail, and the messages he left
were not returned. He had tried calling Jimmy at home and his cell as well, and
had only been rewarded with his voicemail. That had seemed strange to Frank
also. Jimmy was a damn good reporter who knew the value of answering his phone
whenever it rang. At work, at home, in the middle of the night, it made no
difference. Jimmy always answered the phone. Jimmy wasn’t answering and now
instead of four rings before voicemail, the phone was directing to voicemail
after the first ring.

He had even tried
contacting Jimmy’s editor, but he had refused to talk to him. He hadn’t given
up though, and had tried to call just this morning before he left Washington.
His call was put through, but all he had gotten was a steady busy signal at his
home, and when he had called his work number, a business like secretary at the
paper informed Frank, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, that Jimmy had left
just the day before on an assignment. When he had asked her where he had gone
to, her voice had gone even more business-like, and she had told him the paper did
not give out that sort of information. Just when Frank had been about to try a
different, more tactful approach to find out what was going on, she had hung up
on him. The whole thing, the caves, and Jimmy’s disappearance weighed heavily
upon him.

Frank inhaled
deeply from the cigarette, and then tossed it out the open window. 

That was why he
was here. None of it figured. The base itself had hundreds of acres of land, so
why did they need more? Why the caves? And what the hell had happened to
Jimmy? 

The Glennville
paper had come out, just last week, with a long article that had been picked up
by the wire service. Frank had read it, and wondered why they were suddenly
going public about the caves. The Army was now saying they intended to convert
the old caves into a large underground storage area. Frank already knew that
from the Syracuse paper though, and he didn’t believe it was that simple. The
rest of the story was bullshit, as far as Frank was concerned, and actually
didn’t say a whole lot of anything. Certainly nothing he hadn’t already known
or suspected. The article actually seemed to serve only one purpose, and that
was to mention that they were doing something with the caves. 

Why would they
feel the need to do that? Frank wondered. Had the Army found out that he and
Jimmy had been digging into the base? Is that why Jimmy was nowhere to be
found? Had they scared him off somehow? 

Frank didn’t
believe it was possible to scare Jimmy off of anything he was determined to
find out about, so if they hadn’t scared him off, what the hell had happened?
It all raised a lot more questions than it answered, and once he had lost track
of Jimmy it had made it personal to him. He needed to know what had happened to
him, so here he was cruising down the interstate, twenty eight hundred miles
from home, to find out. 

He didn’t have the
slightest idea what he would find when he got there. What do you expect? He
asked himself, missile silos? Little green men? Some sort of horror monsters
living in the caves?

The last was
pretty far-fetched, he thought, but the truth was that he didn’t know any of
the answers. But, he suspected, he would soon, and he also suspected it was
much worse than little green men, or missile silos, or even monsters, and he
felt drawn to it. Almost led in fact. 

His hand reached
automatically for the cigarette pack on the dash and just as abruptly stopped.

I’ve got to cut
back, he thought, that’s the second pack today. He wrestled with the urge for a
full thirty seconds and then gave in. To hell with it, he told himself, I’ll
have plenty of time to quit once I get settled in at Fort Drum. In fact, I’ll
probably be so busy that I won’t have time to smoke at all, he lied to himself.
Once again the lighter hit the tray, and Frank settled back into the seat,
mentally ticking over what he knew, or suspected, about the caves. 

The other clues
that something was not quite right with the upstate New York project had come
from keeping track of the Senate committee hearings on the UNRDC fiasco. UNRDC
stood for United Nations of Russia for Democratic Change. 

The Senate
investigations had hinted at CIA involvement in setting up the organization
that had swept to power in the fall of the previous year. UNRDC was comprised
of several ex-military leaders who had between them, ended up controlling the
entire eastern block. They also had strong ties to the now unified Middle
East. 

The CIA, had of
course, denied the allegations, and pointed to the unrest that still dominated
the organization as proof that it had not been planned or manipulated. Their
supposition was that if it had been, there would not be so much unrest.
Government organizations could be so stupid sometimes, Frank thought. 

They had disclosed
reports of their own which had seemed to back up their theory though, and
insisted that the area was unstable and controlled by no one. And their theory
seemed to be borne out by the President Elect of the new UNRDC, who had issued
a statement condemning the “Godless country of America” and scoffed
at the suggestion that he or any of his cabinet members had been planted by the
CIA, or that they had any ties whatsoever to them.

The Senate
hearings had continued anyway, and rumors had been circulating the press for
weeks that the Senate was about to drop a bombshell on the CIA director, John
O. Brennan. They had supposedly turned up a mouth piece within the
organization, and the mouth piece had confirmed that the CIA had indeed backed
the present cabinet and the current president. 

It was further
rumored that the CIA had been suckered into believing that after they had
helped to sweep the party to power, they would still be able to exercise some
type of control over them, and had only found out after, that they had no
control at all. Of course all of this was rumor, but just two days ago the
Senate had released a statement addressing the issue. The statement had seemed
to hint that a source within the CIA was indeed being questioned behind closed
doors, and had indeed confirmed many of the rumors circulating concerning CIA
involvement in the UNRDC, as well as in the Middle East. 

The next day the
United Soviet Democratic Republic had refused a meeting with the President of
the United States, and had at the same time declared that all nuclear weapons
in the newly held territories had been “Secured,” and were to be,
“Considered the property of the USDR,” and further more “All
agreements entered into with any and all nations of the world concerning
Strategic Arms Limitations with the former USSR, are declared by this government
to be null and void.” 

Press Secretary
Jay Carney had released a statement from the President promising a, “Quick
solution to this obviously disturbing development.” He had also officially
denied any involvement in, or any knowledge of any involvement, by the CIA, or
any other government organization, in the takeover of the former Soviet Union.
Nor had he found any evidence that the newly formed USDR, or its ruling
organization, UNRDC, Had had any ties to the Middle East, or the newly formed
country of New Iran. 

He had also
promised to investigate the matter himself, and promised full disclosure to the
public in an address to the nation in July. He had urged the public not to
speculate on nuclear war, or to concern itself with it as the age of peace in the
world would continue as it had, unimpeded by the recent events. 

Frank hoped that
the CIA had been involved, and was still able to exercise control. If not, the
possibility of nuclear war could be real, and he actually didn’t want to think
about that possibility.

As Frank neared
the exit for Fort Drum, he mulled the possibilities over in his clouded mind.
It could be a missile base, he thought, or it could just be a buildup of
conventional weapons. 

He honestly didn’t
know, but he intended to find out. One thing was for sure, it wasn’t just a
storage facility, and he couldn’t quite believe it was a new missile site.
They’re all out in the Midwest aren’t they, he questioned himself. He could
think of no valid use for the property at all, and that bothered him. That
along with a basic distrust of a government that had been caught lying to her
people so many times before. 

He had just
flipped the turn signal on to exit the interstate, when he felt a shimmy begin
at the rear of the car. It quickly turned to a deep pounding vibration as he
slowed the small car and pulled to the side of the road.

Frank climbed out
of the small cramped car, and, walking to the rear, stared down at the flat
tire that he knew was there. Muttering under his breath, “Damn rental car,”
he returned to the front; retrieved the keys, and unlocked the trunk to search
for the spare he hoped was there. It wasn’t. 

Frank locked the
small car, and taking his laptop bag with him, set off in the direction of the
exit to find a service station.

– 2
–

Two miles away, Joe
Miller tossed a steel clipboard onto the passenger seat of his Camaro as he
pulled into the long driveway at 6620 Main Street, in Fort Drum. 

Joe hadn’t seen
the old brick house since three weeks before, when he had been sent out as part
of the clean-up crew from Bud Farling’s real estate agency. The house had
looked horrible then. The windows and doors had been boarded up, and the now
graceful grounds had been choked with weeds. 

The old house
looks damn good, he thought. He hadn’t been there himself for most of the work
as Bud had kept him busy with his other properties. Joe tended to get most of
Bud’s work, probably due to the fact that he was dependable, and showed up
every day ready to work. To Bud, Joe knew, that meant a great deal. A low
whistle escaped his lips as he stared at the imposing estate, which had always
seemed so forbidding before.

The van that he
usually drove was in the shop for the third time in as many weeks, so he had
come in his own car. This time it was the transmission, and Bud had been
downright pissed about it. Not pissed at Joe though, the van was old, and, Bud
had told him, he supposed he’d have to buy a new one soon. 

When Bud had asked
if Joe minded driving his own car out to the house to put in the locks, Joe had
told him he didn’t mind at all, and that considering the way the van was
constantly breaking down lately, he felt better taking his own car. At least
that way he wouldn’t end up walking like he had last week when the van had
broken down in the middle of nowhere. 

Joe Miller
actually had a large amount of expertise in home repair, and it had always
seemed to him that all the different aspects of it had been easy to learn. He
had made Bud a lot of money, and he worked as a sub-contractor so Bud could
work him as many hours as he wanted without having to pay overtime.

The arrangement
worked out well for both of them. It meant Bud could count on Joe, and because
of that he paid him well. 

Joe had no family,
so even if Bud called in the middle of the night with some emergency at one of
his properties, it wasn’t a big deal for Joe to get dressed and take care of
it. 

Joe retrieved the
new locks from the seat and headed towards the front door. The keys had already
been mailed to the man who was renting the property, Bud had explained. 

“Just remove
our master locks, and swap ’em out for these,” Bud had said, “And oh,
don’t forget to bring the keys and the master locks back with you
tomorrow.” 

Joe had lost a set
of the master locks a year ago, and Bud had never let him forget it. 

Whenever Bud had a
crew working on a property, the master locks were used. That allowed everyone
to come and go whenever they needed to, and all the tradesmen that worked for
Bud had a master key. It had come in handy on several occasions. 

The keys fit all
the rental properties Bud owned, or managed, as well, and Joe couldn’t count
the times that had come in handy to him. Half the time when there was a problem
with an apartment, it was usually reported by one of the other tenants, and
nine times out of ten, the tenant who lived in the apartment wasn’t home. The
master locks solved that problem nicely. 

Joe reached the
door; slipped the master key into the lock, and entered the house. He squinted
in the gloom, peering cautiously inside at the shadowy hallway. 

The old house had
long had a reputation of being haunted. Joe didn’t necessarily believe it, but
he had always found the old house to be unnerving. 

It still seems
spooky in here, Joe thought as he stepped into the entrance way. Stupid though
letting this old house get to me. He couldn’t explain why he suddenly felt
nervous about entering the house, and he glanced nervously back out the doorway
at the driveway, where the Camaro sat gleaming brightly in the late afternoon
sun. 

The light stupid,
he reminded himself, turn on the fracking lights. 

He turned his
attention back to the hall, and let his searching fingers locate the switch,
and with a small push of the old button-style switch the lights came on.

Soft shards of
light flickered across the walls of the entrance way, from the large
chandelier, suspended from the old tin ceiling in the middle of the entrance
way. Joe carefully edged the door shut with the heel of one scuffed work boot,
and stared child-like around the room as the splashing patterns of light danced
on the dark mahogany of the walls. 

The wood panels
reached more than twelve feet to the old tin ceilings, and intricate flowing
lines covered the tin panels in an ornate flower design. 

The dark walls
were divided with carefully scrolled moldings, which broke the walls into
squared sections, and a matching mahogany stairway curved away from the dark
gray marble flooring, towards the upper reaches of the house. 

He could make out
the darkened upper floor where the staircase ended, and a small balcony that
looked down over the entrance way. 

To the left of the
staircase, at the end of the long entrance way, massive double doors were set
into the wall. A smaller single door led off to the right, directly across from
those doors, which was the kitchen area, he knew. 

To his immediate
right, was another set of double doors, and directly across from that a
graceful arch led into the living area. He knew that the doors set into the
wall at the end of the hall led into a formal dining area, which also had a
small door that opened into the kitchen area. The doors to his right opened
into a large den, with book shelves from floor to ceiling, and a massive stone
fireplace.

Joe had seen it
before, when it had been stuffed full of the dusty old furniture that had been
left in the house, when the owner had died. The house had been tied up in
probate court for years, Bud had explained, and so everything had been left
pretty much untouched. 

He hadn’t been
here when the final cleaning had been done however; he hadn’t seen just how
imposing, and elegant, the house actually was, without the dust and dirt that
had covered it, and to him the transformation was astounding.

Joe carefully set
the cardboard box containing the new locks on the floor by the front door. He
decided that he wanted to take one more look at the house before he put in the
locks. He walked down to the far end of the dimly lit entrance way, pushed open
the double doors at the end of the hall that led into the dining area, and sent
his left hand skittering across the wall for the switch. Sparse light from the
hallway fell through the doorway and beyond. 

Suddenly, a silver
flash swept from the darkness towards him. His hand was still looking for the
light switch, and his mind did not immediately register what it was. 

…WHAT? His mind
cried out in alarm as his eyes watched the shining flat arc sweep towards him.

…A knife? …At
me? …Why?

“Not
real,” he muttered aloud backing away. 

But his hands came
away from his chest with bloody drops clinging to them… 

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