“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Harlan ordered, although the man didn’t seem to hear. The suspect stuck one pinkie beneath the hoodie to dig at his ear, and stuck the other in his jeans pocket. No way he had a gun in there, Harlan could tell that much, but he didn’t like being ignored.
He drew his Smith & Wesson. “Freeze.”
Saying “Freeze” was awkward, the first time he’d ever felt like a cop on a television show. I’ll be eating donuts if this keeps up.
But Hoodie didn’t seem to care whether Harlan was playing tough. He glared at the officer—and something about his eyes was wrong. They had the wetness of a drunk’s, and that puffiness around the lids, but instead of red spangles splotching the whites, familiar greenish veins streaked through them.
Like the sky. His eyes are like that weird stuff in the sky.
That sounded too much like hallucinogenic hippie hullaballoo. Harlan needed to nail down this situation fast, before it got any weirder. Or worse, before some helpful do-gooder citizen came along and witnessed whatever might happen next.
What happened next was the last thing that ever happened for Officer Harlan McLeod.
Hoodie clucked his tongue, making a chuckling, popping noise, and then charged Harlan. The assault was so sudden that Harlan instantly went for his holster. He’d forgotten he already had his revolver in his hand, and the confusion cost him a precious split-second. Before he could raise the weapon again, Hoodie was on him, clawing and snarling, his teeth clacking together near Harlan’s face.
So much for all that training. The chief is going to be pissed.
Harlan stepped back but lost his balance, and that abetted Hoodie’s momentum. They slapped against the asphalt, with the policeman bearing most of the weight. Something crunched in his lower back and his legs went numb. Harlan tried to raise the Smith & Wesson, but it suddenly seemed to weigh thirty pounds. Then Hoodie’s teeth found his cheek and cleaved a wet strip of meat from his skull.
Harlan bleated an unprofessional squeal as Hoodie hammered and scratched at his body. The pain was bad, but the worst part was those eyes—like rarified lightning, glittering with profane fire.
On his back, he rolled his gaze up toward his forehead, looking at the twin headlights of his cruiser. Ghostly rims of haze circled the orbs, droplets of late-summer mist. Somehow it cast a calming presence over the horrible tableau. Like this was only a show.
Then something went for his throat—the impact simultaneously blunt and piercing—and the light washed over Harlan and vacuumed him into its endless blank brilliance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shits and Giggles.
Those were the nicknames Franklin had given to the idiots on the AM radio talk show. They were what the blabber set called “rising stars,” loudmouths who sought to become even more provocative than Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones and his circus-like Infowars network.
Shits was a hawkish Republican from the Midwest who fought for small government, the Holy Bible, and his personal interpretation of the Constitution upon which America was stolen from the natives and bequeathed to rich white men. Giggles was a small-L libertarian who thought John Locke was a liberal and that any public service, including federal disaster aid and orphanages, amounted to totalitarianism disguised as socialism.
In general, Franklin could relate to any debate which started on the fringe right of the spectrum and went off the cliff from there. But he was particularly intrigued today—and neglecting his garden—because Shits and Giggles were talking about the solar flares and their potential impacts. It was difficult to tell whether they were wildly misinformed or just issuing whatever propaganda the Establishment had pushed their way. For all the brazen defiance of the Establishment, talking heads always understood that advertisers were still their corporate overlords.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Shits was saying. “All this speculation is designed to stir fear on Wall Street and send stocks into a tailspin.”
“And that’s a good thing for the wealthy elite who own this country,” Giggles replied, right on the end of the statement as if their schtick had been rehearsed. “Because they already cashed out during the last government-subsidized bubble and are waiting for another crash to buy low.”
Franklin sneered at people who simplified the shell game to a matter of dollars and cents. Just like political noise, the financial markets were diversionary tactics to hide the true consolidation of power. The New World Order was just waiting for the right opportunity, and a worldwide natural disaster would fit the bill nicely.
“Let’s look at infrastructure,” Shits said. “The U.S. has conducted tests that say satellite communications are the weakest link and most vulnerable to solar radiation.”
“Who cares if you lose your cell signal for an hour? The real problem will be when people can’t start their cars.”
Shits was on that one, jumping from subject to subject with an unrestrained glee. The topic didn’t matter—he was an expert on them all. “Only the most recent cars will be affected. Government tests—”
“Did you look at that test? They borrowed cars and had to bring them back undamaged, so they limited the electromagnetic pulse exposure. Talk about foregone conclusions. Now, the Russians back in 1962 had vehicles totally shut down during their tests, and that was before the advent of all this technology.”
“Count on the Rooskies to go balls to the wall. They probably had human guinea pigs sitting behind the wheel, too.”
“Some folks say the older vehicles will still work, but what happens when you run out of gas? What happens if the pumps don’t work and the refineries shut down? Not to mention the gridlock on the highways.”
Franklin had read all sorts of research on the pulse effect, and some scientists suggested a car in a concrete garage would be unaffected. But unless the entire vehicle was in a huge Faraday cage, isolated from any conductivity, then it was a goner. He suspected only the military would plan for such extremes.
But try telling that to a scientist. They looked at facts instead of the truth.
Giggles was on a roll now. “These media reports we’re getting—people going crazy and attacking other people in some sort of mindless rage—I think it’s all part of the program. First they scare you, and then you willingly give up a bunch of rights. Then when you’ve given up enough rights, it’s easy to take away the rest.”
“We lost a police officer in North Carolina, two sailors on leave in Norfolk, a pediatric nurse in Texas, and there are rumors of other unconfirmed deaths. God bless their souls.”
“Mindless rage. Antisocial behavior. Total chaos. Are we talking about Zapheads or are we talking about Congress?” Giggles snickered at his weak joke.
“The Administration is invisible on this issue. That’s what happens when you vote liberals into office. Right now we need some strong leadership—”
“Right now we need folks to take care of themselves and not sit around waiting for government to solve their problems,” Giggles interrupted.
Sounds good to me. Franklin reached for his battery-powered radio but the signal went dead before he touched the dial. He thought the batteries might have drained, but the steady hiss of unfilled bandwidth poured from the speaker.
Maybe the Prophecy According to Shits and Giggles was correct and the End Times were finally here. Franklin rose from his chair, crossed the little cabin’s dark interior, and gazed out the doorway onto his little compound. The sunset was a purple scar along the crown of the mountains, and Franklin wondered if the sun was busy dealing its silent destruction as a new part of the world turned to face the heat.