Last War (22 page)

    
He saw a parade of people on the mezzanine level marching towards the bridge. He ran to the command post set up by the firemen and police. The captain was there.

    
“Excuse me sir. C.I.A. Where are you evacuating these folks?”

    
“We can’t send them out the lobby way, so we’re sending them through the underground to WTC 4 and out on Liberty St. It’s the Safest way.”

    
“OK. St. Mary’s middle school. Do you have any clue where they are?”

    
“Sir, I don’t have a single clue about anything, right now. This is chaos.”

     “Thanks for your hard work, sir. Your men are the bravest I know.”

     Jason darted into the middle of the lobby. The noise overwhelmed him. The dazed looks on the people’s faces made things seem unreal. Like a spooky nightmare after a terrible horror film.

     The firefighters moved less confidently than usual. Some    
moved swiftly. They acted bravely. But none of their faces—were like any other firefighter expression he had ever seen. Confusion and uncertainty was the main expression that emanated off of their face. One firefighter stood still in the middle of the lobby staring into dead space. He removed his helmet, wiped his forehead with his forearm and scratched his head. Dazed, he returned the helmet to his head and continued his stare ninety degrees to the left of him.

     J
ason looked in each direction, constantly and repetitively, scanning each face on the mezzanine, looking for Vanessa.

    
He made his way to the staircase and fought through the police guarding the top of the staircase so as not to let anyone back down to the lobby. Standing in that spot, the fear of the people around him hadn’t seemed to have eclipsed the fear of those on the outside.

    
The fear on the mezzanine was more shock swallowed by a zombie march towards one uncertain direction: where everyone else was going. He figured he’d march in the direction of the exit until he reached a far point to stand and wait.

    
As he squeezed and skipped through the dazed throng of people, he flashed his agent credentials.

    
He never made it to the exit, however. 

    
A thundering roar, at last, caused the urgent panic missing inside to erupt into fearful gasps and shouts. Jason looked out of the shattered windows to an abnormal amount of debris falling onto the ground outside.

    
“Get down!” Jason shouted flashing his badge.

    
The folks around him dropped to the floor causing a slow chain reaction. Jason ran to the window, hopping over bodies to see what was happening. Nothing changed for the first few seconds. Then, the debris from the sky became increasingly thick. Suddenly a grey powder crashed into the ground. The powder thundered through the window, violently, knocking Jason on his back and blinding him.

    
A mouthful of debris tasted like hot ash-tray mixed with chalk and dirt. It choked him. He literally felt like he was hacking up a lung as everything around him went pitch black. Only thing his ears registered is what sounded like a herd of bulls. And just like that, everyone disappeared. It felt as if he were dying alone in a dark lobby. He coughed out dust, only to suck in another disgusting mouthful.

    
He was going to die drowning in blazing hot dirt. It went up his nose, into his mouth, and it clogged his ear-holes.

    
Complete silence evaporated into a slight ringing noise before what seemed like a lifetime of pitch-blackness, dissolved slowly into a peach-hue haze. A muffled bass thump and echoing of inaudible voices slowly returned his senses.

    
His eyes burned, his ears were stuffed, and the only thing he could hear sounded like an ocean full of whales crying out under their fogged ocean.

     When things cleared enough,
people around him were coughing, vomiting and aimlessly tripping over one another. Soon, he heard a firefighter walking through order everyone to get up and continue marching towards the exit.

    
Jason approached him.

    
“What happened out there? That wasn’t a nuke, was it?” He shouted.

    
The fight fighter shouted back, “What?!”

    
Jason repeated the question a bit more slow, loudly, and deliberate.

    
“I don’t know. Some sort of explosion. It could very well, possibly some nuclear sonic-boom. I’m not sure we have a city anymore, sir.”

    
Jason ran back towards the lower lobby. He wanted to get to the central stairwell. He had a feeling that his daughter would be there. Just a feeling. If she were going to survive with the way this building were built, she would have to go to the central staircase.

     Covered in gray, powdered, debris, h
e darted into the stairwell, and fought through the folks rushing down the steps. As he passed everyone, they glared at him as if they had seen a ghost. Some even screamed upon sight of him. They were still clean.

    
“Vanessa!” He called. “Did you see school kids coming down here?” He asked as he passed people on their way down. He didn’t get much response from the people.

     As he continued fighting
though the resisting crowds, another thunderous sound shook the building. Jason’s thoughts tunneled. He thought about Vanessa—where was she?

     Jill crossed his mind
. She’s about to lose both of us. He thought to himself.

    
Screams echoed and the crowd in the staircase became exceptionally pushy and dangerous. Jason stepped off to the side as the rumble bared down on them. The rumble became louder and the shaking violently increased. Jumping back into the center of the crowd he ducked down covering his head. His phone rang as everything above him collapsed into darkness. He felt a body crash on top of him and several blocks accompanied by dusty debris before everything, once again, settled and went quiet.  

    
In the dark silence, dust trickled, as Jason’s phone rang its final ring before complete silence.

    
“Well, I think the public here in America are fearful enough. Everything from 9/11 and beyond has shaken them up pretty good.” Michael said.

             
“What about the conspiracy theorists?”

     “They’ve gotten so far off of the
track, no one even takes them seriously.”

    
“So, the 9/11 Commission is mostly accepted?”

    
“Yes. Some people may question it, but not enough to do any damage. There’s too much going on, and this land is entirely too comfortable for people to want to agitate things, too much. We’re good enough to move forward. We plan to move to action in the fall. We’ll take the backlash, as usual, then Christmas and New Years will distract and calm things down. ”

    
“Where do the Megiddos stand, at this point?”

     “They’re still idle. They have not expressed any opposition to anything we’ve done.”

     “So where do we go from here?” Brendenhall asked.

    
“We’re pitching this war on terror.” President Harris said. “We’ll ‘fight’ these extremists until we feel F.A.I.T.H. is ready to go into its final stage, then we’ll activate the home stretch of this thing and begin our new era.” Michael said.

     “And these extremists are?”
Brendenhall asked.

     “We’ve been usin
g them for years like this. They’re a group of people the Megiddos found us during the 80s. Extremists under the impression that they’re Muslim. They don’t  have enough of anything to challenge the U.S., really, but the Megiddos use them as an easy group to hate and kill.”

    
The Brendenhall members were sitting around the table slouched back in their padded luxurious oak chairs, while the government representatives were sitting erect with their papers in front of them.

    
“How long do you suppose you’re going to ‘activate the home stretch?’” George Dempsey, CEO of the biggest oil company in the world asked. “I don’t want us to have to discuss peak oil with the folks, any longer.”

    
“They don’t have a clue what’s going on. Don’t worry. I know we’re on a time-table with that and Operation F.A.I.T.H. We’ll get it done. Banks, oil, business… all of it, we’ll have a plan for all of it. It will work. The only people who can foil it are those crazy Megiddos. They’re silent.”

    
“What about religion?”

     Michael felt uneasy
. He peered off to his left towards his colleagues.  Some never picked their head up to acknowledge the question, at all. A congressman spoke up, “Well, that’s, as you can imagine, a bit of a challenge—“

    
“We’re on top of it, though.” The President interrupted. “We have a group of folks here in America who are a bit stubborn. Our forefathers gave so much freedom to the people that they fail to realize total freedom couldn’t be given.” Shaking his head, the President continued, “If our forefathers had made it legal to kill someone who attempted to, let’s say, try to sleep with your wife, then the American citizens would have accepted that as their birth right. It’d probably be a debate up to this day. But, because the founding forefathers did not, it’s not accepted.”

    
A member of the Brendenhall Club chimed in. He was a bishop. He asked, “Well what do you do to reel it in?”

    
President Harris nodded his head. “It’s a step-by-step process. It’s easier to tell someone they’re not allowed to do something they’ve never done than to take away something they’ve been allowed to do freely for many years. It has to be done with caution and care. This is one thing we can not rush. Hopefully we timed everything right. Our psyops folks have been on it for decades.”

     “The captain of said psyops team is roaming willy-nilly, like an old person at a geriatric center. How are you on it?” Brendenhall said.

     “Sir, you’ll have to trust us.” Harris responded.

     “Well,
maybe we can help.” The clergyman interjected. “What do you want us to do?”

     “Promote
listening to their government, and supporting the troops at all costs.”



The Mall at Prince George’s

Washington D.C.

Next day after chase 10:00 a.m.

    
Jason stood outside of the dressing room while Dany changed into his new clothes. Czyra had already picked out his clothes and changed.

    
“So, what has you on the run, son?” Jason asked.

    
“We’ve been researching 9/11 since it happened and ever since then, weird things started happening.”

    
“Weird things like what? How in depth was your researching? Were you crossing lines?”

    
“It’s a long story.”

    
Dany came out of the dressing room in a purple polo shirt and white pants. Czyra and Jason stared at him for a brief moment.

    
“That’s what you’re wearing?” Jason asked.

    
“What’s wrong with this?” Dany asked.

    
“Are you boating on a yacht to a golf party?”

     “What?”

     “Nothing, let’s go.”

    
Jason paid with cash before discarding the kid’s old clothes in a mall waste basket. “You hungry?” Jason asked. “Let’s go to the food court before we hit the road.”

    
Without looking back in the kids’ direction he asked again. “So, I’m going to need you guys to speak up. What do you know? Why are they after you? You chased me down, now you’re going to have to step up to the plate. Speak.”

    
Czyra started speaking as Jason approached the end of the line at the fast food window. “I was in school that day. 10
th
grade.”



MD HS September 11, 2001 8:50 a.m.

    
Czyra sat in history class behind the prettiest girl in school. Jasmine Beckard – a fairskinned, brown-eyed girl. Everyday he’d attempt to peek down towards her lower back. Her shirt always raised high and pants sunk low enough to expose the fair skin of her lower back. Her panties showed everyday. Usually, this made it hard for him to listen to Mrs. Mulforson. They were talking about World War II; a subject Czyra could care less about.