The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE (18 page)

The squad car stops some twenty feet behind him. Two troopers step out and approach on either side of his car.

“Good evening officer.” Cunningham addresses the trooper outside the driver’s side window. “How may I help you?”

“Are you aware of how fast you were driving?”

“I know officer, I was doing eighty, maybe a little more,” Dick says. “And I’m sorry about that, I really am, but I have to get to DC. I’m…”

The State Trooper sniffs at the air between them.

“Have you been drinking tonight, sir?”

“What?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Truth be told, yes,” Cunningham answers. “I had a couple of glasses of wine with Christmas dinner but…”

“Step out of the car, please.”

“Officer, please. I am Dick Cunningham, Speaker of the House.”

“Please step out of the car.”

If the trooper knows who he is, Cunningham can find no trace of it in the man’s stone cold demeanor. It’s ridiculous, Dick feels. Surely everyone in both Carolinas knows who Dick Cunningham is. The Senator has half a mind to gun the accelerator but he knows that it will do him no good. He is in a new Government Motors Volt and, like all cars built since the 2014 Auto industry bailout and nationalization, the hybrid comes equipped with a Patriot Governor. The safety interface allows law enforcement to remotely shut down vehicles that have them. He suddenly wishes he had taken the old century Cadillac instead. He didn’t have the federally mandated governor installed in the Caddy yet.

“Officer, I need to get to Washington. I’m the…”

“I will not ask you again,” the trooper’s voice takes on an edge as it raises a notch in volume.

With a show of great indignation, Senator Cunningham unfastens his seat belt and opens his car door. As he is stepping out, the trooper grabs his right arm, twists it behind his back and shoves him against the side of the car. The first cuff clicks close around his wrist in seconds.

“What are you doing!?!” Cunningham struggles and squirms to keep his left arm free. It is no use. The trooper is stronger, a score of years younger and well-practiced with the maneuver. The second cuff is clasped shut with as much ease as the first.

“Officer,” Cunningham protests. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“I’m removing an intoxicated driver from the road,” the trooper says as he pushes him towards the squad car. “South Carolina has zero tolerance for drinking and driving.”

“You can’t do this!” the Senator insists. “I’m the Speaker of the House! I’ve got to get to DC. The President has been kidnapped!”

“You heard that, Burt?” the trooper’s partner says it with a smile that alarms the Senator. “The President has been kidnapped. Interesting times we live in.”

Cunningham looks to the officer steering him to the squad car’s back door. His blank demeanor is gone. He is smiling as well when he opens the car door.

“Indeed, Ernie. Don’t you agree, Mr. Speaker?” he asks, forcing Cunningham into the back seat. “We live in the most interesting of times.”

The Speaker is speechless, struck dumb and open-mouthed as the door closes.

Brooklyn, New York

21:12:21

Sam Ericson takes the sleeping child from his wife’s arms. He kisses the boy’s forehead as his mother Mary folds herself into the back seat of the sedan parked outside of their Bensonhurst, Brooklyn home. The boy Peter is their only child but he is not their first. There was another. Their first child, a girl, was killed three years ago. Baby Marie was aborted, vacuum-ripped out of her mother’s womb at seven weeks while Mary was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. It was done without their consent and with a clinical callousness that still chilled Sam’s blood.

They found out about it a day after the fact, as Mary was signing herself out of the hospital. Sam would never forget how Mary hesitated and then pulled the pen away from the release form, sudden and startled-like, as if the sheet of paper had turned into a snake. The sedative-induced grogginess lifted from her instantly. She rose from her wheelchair so suddenly that Sam worried his wife would tear her stitching. She didn’t hear his advice to take it easy, absorbed as she was with the form on the clipboard. Her brow knitted in concentration as she read and reread the itemized list of services rendered. His wife’s hands began to tremble. Her blue eyes narrowed in comprehension and then widened in disbelief. She turned to him and there was fear in her eyes. She dropped the pen and clipboard. Her hands flew to her belly. She dropped back into the chair. Mary’s slender fingers curled into claws on her stomach.

Sam picked up the clipboard. He immediately saw the cause of his wife’s shock. The itemized list of services rendered included an abortion. When Sam turned to look at her again, Mary’s eyes were glazed with gathering tears. Her mouth was open but nothing came out. Her hands collapsed into white, tight and bony fists.

“It’s got to be a mistake, honey,” he said, as much to reassure himself as her. “It’s got to be a mistake.”

It was not.

It was cold-blooded murder.

“You come from a family with a history of heart disease, Mrs. Ericson,” Ms. Pagan, the hospital administrator said by way of explanation. “And your husband’s family has a high incidence of cancer.”

“What of it?” Sam asked.

“Our model projects that your particular genetic blend will produce offspring that will draw disproportionately from the pool of healthcare services and resources relative to other genetic pairings.”

“One more time,” Sam said. “In English, if you please.”

Ms. Pagan took a slow, deep breath. “I mean to say that the children you and Mrs. Ericson would produce will likely require more medical attention and services throughout their lifetimes than children from healthier genetic lines. In fact, even without children, your wife and yourself, as the two of you age, are projected to expend more than the allotted per family healthcare credits.”

Sam could not believe what he was hearing. He knew of course about UN Resolution 2112. They both did. Sam and Mary saw the horror stories on the nightly news, lauding abortion and euthanasia as progress in healthcare. They watched the Healthcare Czar trumpeting before Congress the savings accrued by the rising body count of the euthanized old and comatose and the greater organ pool provided by incurable invalids. They had shuddered at his claim that, thanks to the Resolution’s proactive abortion policy, autism, Down’s syndrome and other genetic defects would soon become footnotes in medical history.

“This is the kind of war that America should be fighting,” he told the nation. “The war on disease is a war that America can win!”

His polished, Power Point presentation to congress purported “The savings to planetary healthcare costs are being reduced for the first time in human history thanks to Resolution 2112.”

Mary and Sam originally decided to have their child at home, delivered by a Christian doctor. They would never have gone to a hospital voluntarily, but Mary had collapsed from pain at her office. Her coworkers, not knowing what the problem was, rushed her to the nearest hospital. Sam was at work out of state and didn’t get the news for hours. When he found out he called the hospital immediately and was told that Mary was treated for a ruptured appendix.
They reassured him that the pregnancy was not compromised by the appendicitis or the operation. He thought no more of it. He believed they were safe. Sam believed his baby was not in danger. He had no way of knowing that it was only because his wife’s case had not yet crossed the desk of the United Nations’ Agenda 2112 Viability Panel.

Hearing the panel’s verdict from Ms. Pagan stunned him into silence.

“You killed my baby to save the government money?” Mary asked, choking back a sob.

“No, no, Mrs. Ericson,” the hospital administrator cooed. “This is not about money. I mean, yes, the Healthcare Czar has ordered us to make the most judicious use of scarce resources, especially considering these challenging economic times; but that was a small consideration in the hospitals decision to terminate the pregnancy. The congenital health risks themselves were the main determinants. We are trying to improve the quality of life for future generations by rooting out compromised genetic strains such as the ones that run in your families.”

“You killed my baby for some fantasy of a disease-free future?” Mary’s sob was swallowed and anger rose in its stead.

“It’s not a fantasy, Mrs. Ericson,” Ms. Pagan chided. “It’s a future that can be realized if we…”

“It’s a future you decided had no room in it for my baby.” Mary’s voice began to rise.

“It was a fetus, Mrs. Ericson,” Ms. Pagan said. “Let’s not get sentimental. It was a fetus. It was a clump of cells, no more human, no more a baby than the appendix we removed from you.”

Sam found his voice again. “That’s your opinion.”

“Not just my opinion, Mr. Ericson,” the hospital administrator said. “It is the opinion of the Healthcare Czar, the Healthcare & Human Services Administration and the United Nations’ World Health Organization.”

“It is not our opinion,” Mary said evenly, regaining her composure.

Ms. Pagan sighed wearily. “I should’ve expected as much, I suppose. Your DemPrint identifies you as Catholics.”

“Dem… what?” Sam asked.

“Your DemPrint,” Ms. Pagan repeated. “It’s your demographic fingerprint.”

“What the hell is a demographic fingerprint?” Sam felt his anger stirring.

“A DemPrint is a profile,” the hospital administrator sat up as she explained. She seemed excited to impart some highly specialized or even secret knowledge to them. “DemPrints are composite sketches, very detailed, precise, very scientific profiles that our computers use to make their projections. You each have an individual DemPrint and a shared demographic fingerprint as a ‘genetic pairing’, that is, as a couple. DemPrints takes everything into account, your individual and family medical histories, your ages, jobs, incomes, earning potentials, spending and backgrounds, including of course, your religion. All of it is taken into account by the computers when it makes its decision.”

“Our religion was a factor in this decision?” Sam asked, instantly afraid of the answer.

“Why of course,” Ms. Pagan responded. “Like I said, it’s a very detailed profile. And as Catholics, from large Catholic families, the model determined that you would likely exceed the Healthcare Czars recommendation of one child per family.”

“Yes, it’s a Catholic thing,” Mary said. “Having large families is a Catholic thing, you know, like believing abortion is murder.”

“Well, you’re certainly entitled to believe what you wish,” Ms. Pagan said. “However the government does not allow religious belief to guide or set policy. We’re trying to create a better world, Mrs. Ericson; a sustainable civilization. We are trying to eradicate disease and create a future free from the hunger, poverty and crime that overpopulation creates. We are trying to create a healthy, prosperous world, Ma’am. Giving up the beliefs of a long ago, superstitious age is a small price to pay for such a world, don’t you think?”

Mary did not answer her. She stared at Ms. Pagan, not wanting to believe what her eyes showed her.

“We must all make sacrifices,” the administrator went on after an uncomfortably long silence.

“Yes,” Sam said. “Human sacrifices, is that not right, Ms. Pagan?”

The administrator started to answer. Her mouth opened and closed without saying anything. She turned from Sam’s murderous glare and looked down to pick imaginary lint from her skirt.

Sam Ericson was a soldier. He had killed men in battle, five for certain that he watched fall in his sights. He remembered their faces and knew that he always would. There was nothing personal in their killings, however. It was
combat. Training, skill and providence put them on the business end of his bullets before he could end up on the wrong side of theirs. There was no hatred in it. There was certainly nothing remotely akin to what Ms. Pagan evoked from him at that moment. The cowardice of abortionists and their apologists whose bloodlust could only be sated by the butchering of the most helpless and defenseless sickened him to his core.

Sam squeezed Mary’s hand. “Let’s get out of here, hon.”

He wheeled his wife out of the office and hospital, willing, with great effort, one foot in front of the other. It was all he could do not to leap over the desk and throttle the life out of the fat, clump of cells seated behind it.

That was three years ago. It almost seemed like another lifetime. There was so much pain and hatred and…

Sam puts it out of his mind.

Mary and he have Peter in their lives now. There is new life and a new purpose to go with the new child. There is the revolution, the Crusade. And it has, at last, begun! The revolution will insure that their boy grows up in a world where what happened to his parents and to his sister will never happen again. The Crusade will be their response to Ms. Pagan, their answer to the Healthcare Czar, the UN and the whole satanic, sustainable society of theirs. Sam is eager to begin his part and help bring the whole, unholy house down on their heads.

New life, Sam feels it tonight in every limb of his body. New life, new promise; like the child in his arms, everything seems possible tonight. He kisses Peter once more and places his boy in the safety seat beside his wife. Together, mother and father secure him.

New life, thinks Sam, seeing it in his wife’s eyes as well. He is glad of it. For a long, fearful year he thought he had lost her to the nightmare.

“Now, I don’t want you to worry,” he tells her.

“I won’t,” she says. “I’ll be too busy praying.”

Sam kisses her. “That’s my girl.”

Sam closes the door and blows her a kiss.

“Don’t you worry either, bro.”

“We’ll get her to the farm lickety-split.”

Sam turns to his brothers-in law, the twins, John and Luke. They are Mary’s younger brothers. The two are in costume for the occasion, Thing One and Thing Two in bell-topped, camouflage, Santa hats. At nineteen years of age,
John and Luke are good, solid kids, cut from the same cloth as their elder brothers, Matthew and Mark. Sam served with the latter two in Iraq. He met Mary through them and married into their wonderful family. The younger brothers are going to take turns driving Mary and Peter to her parents’ farm in Iowa. New York City is bound to get dangerous. Sam wants his young family out of harm’s way.