Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition

  INFERNO 2033 – Book Two: Perdition

  Copyright © 2018 by Michael Compton, Allan J. Walsh, and Sherry J. Compton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

  critical articles and reviews.

  For information contact: info@thejourneypress.com

  Published by The Journey Press, LLC

  PROLOGUE

  Guitars clash like sirens. A tattered American flag ripples, transparent, over scenes of turmoil: Riots in the streets. Confrontations at the border. Trains derailed. Bridges collapsed. Buildings toppled.

  A Christmas tree burns like a bonfire.

  A pair of evil eyes, like vultures in the billowing smoke, gaze down upon the scene with delight.

  Drums come up, and the guitars settle into a pounding rhythm. Jet fighters roar through a blood red sky. Bombs burst. Soldiers march. Guns blaze. The tattered flag catches fire.

  But as it burns, instead of turning to ash it is renewed. The transparent rags become solid. The soiled, faded colors become brilliant against a pristine sky.

  Rising up, the war-chiseled figure of President William Stockdale looms like a monument, resplendent in his full general’s regalia, his elbow cocked, his hand brandished over his brow in a perfect military salute.

  At his shoulder, Vice President Henry Brzinski is a watchful shadow in black leather jacket and beret, congruent with the Commander-in-Chief in every form and angle.

  As the two men hold their salute, the President’s voice rises above the still-driving music:

  “When America called, I answered! When America asked, I gave! When America needed a champion, I fought! I bled for you, America! And when I bleed, I bleed red, white, and blue!”

  Dissolve to the Stockdale inauguration. As his words resound, the hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall before the Washington Monument cheer wildly.

  An announcer, in voice-of-God cadences, narrates the scene:

  “When the citizens of the United States of America elected General William Stockdale as their president, he made three promises…

  “Lock out the foreigners!”

  Images from the border: A forty-foot, concrete wall. Gun turrets. Militarized checkpoints. Illegals rounded up. Clamoring hordes locked out. A smiling Mr. and Mrs. America, papers in hand, waved through.

  “That promise has been kept, with secure borders and ten million illegal aliens expelled.”

  “Lock up the criminals!”

  Images from the streets: A SWAT team swarms a crack house. Terrorists arrested. Flag-burners beaten down. Floating prisons built off-shore. Prisoners frog-marched into waiting cells.

  “That promise has been kept, with the Prisoners at Sea Secured program--one hundred new floating prisons built and over five million criminals locked away, far from our shores.”

  “Free the Citizens!”

  Images from heartland America: Combines harvesting wheat. Cowboys driving cattle. Steel workers building skyscrapers. Kids playing baseball. Families going to church. Children running with sparklers. Fireworks. Flags. Couples ice-skating. A restored Rockefeller Center, with the President playing Santa Claus before its towering Christmas tree.

  “That promise has been kept. Our cities have been rebuilt. Our jobs are back. Our streets are safe. And America is standing tall.”

  The saluting duo emerge again, looming like titans before a rippling flag.

  Right on cue, they complete their salute as the announcer declares:

  “Promises made. Promises kept!”

  The music comes up again. The two figures are marching now, Stockdale holding his bible and revolver like talismans. A phalanx of Americans from every branch of service and walk of life follow in lockstep, marching up Pennsylvania Avenue in time to the rhythm of the music.

  A soaring voice sings:

  “When they come, will you answer the call?

  “When they ask, will you give them your all?

  “When they hand you a gun, will you shoot?

  “When you bleed, is it red, white, and blue?”

  -1-

  In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular.

  —Kathleen Norris

  The song’s refrain repeated and faded until the cell monitors throughout the prison ship Inferno went silent. It was a catchy tune, and the fact that it was pure propaganda for the government that had built this hellhole didn’t keep a few knuckleheads from belting it out like drunks at a party singing karaoke.

  Sands knew the song well. Everyone called it “Red, White, and Blue,” but the actual title was “Bleed.” That was the first clue it was not what it seemed. The song had been a big hit back in the ’twenties—the only hit, as far as Sands knew, by a band called The New Tomfools. No idea what happened to the Old Tomfools, if they ever existed. That was the second clue. The song had been hugely popular among military people, Sands included. But some of the verses had always seemed off to him, and he began to get the idea “Bleed” might not have been the patriotic anthem everyone seemed to think it was.

  When he proposed to guys in his unit that the song might actually be anti-military, they all looked at him as if he were crazy. Irony was a concept that didn’t play well in Special Forces. When Sands tried to explain that no one literally bleeds red, white, and blue, one of his compatriots had angrily declared, “You better believe I bleed red, white, and blue, Bro.”

  Sands had dropped it. No sense getting in a fight over a song. But he was proven right several years later when the Stockdale presidential campaign made the song its unofficial anthem and The New Tomfools promptly sued, saying the song was against everything The New Freedom Party stood for. Sands had no idea how the dispute was worked out, but the campaign kept playing it, and now the song was associated with Stockdale as sure as “The Star-Spangled Banner” is associated with the Super Bowl. Funny how politicians can convince people of exactly the opposite of what’s true. Funnier still, Sands thought, when we convince ourselves.

  These thoughts buzzed in the back of Sands’ mind like so many gnats, but the forefront of his attention was taken up with his new prison block-mate, Victoria Brzinski. She remained unconscious, strapped to the grate of her cell, her body slack, her head slumped forward and her hair spilling into her lap. He could just make out the side of her face, the slow rhythm of breath through her open mouth. How had the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the world been brought so low as to end up like this, in a place like Inferno? And why had she been placed in a cell directly opposite Sands? It was too fantastic to be a coincidence, but Sands could make no sense of it.

  In the corridor, Ahmer continued to gape as if he had never seen a woman before. Probably, Sands realized, he never had seen one like Victoria. Even in her comatose state—with her eyes empty slits, her face ashen, her lips almost blue—that avalanche of red hair seemed to glow of its own light.

  “Do you—do you really know her, Sands?”

  “Everybody knows her,” Sands grumbled. “She’s the Vice President’s daughter.”

  “Of the United States, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that’d be the one.”

  Ahmer’s head wagged as if the thought made him sad. “I don’t follow politics.”

  But it wasn’t through politics that Sands knew Victoria Brzinski. He had known her since long before the presidential campaign, going all the way back to his days at Stanford. At that time, Henry Brzinski was a professor of political science and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace. The Do
ctor always insisted on referring to the institution by its full name, he said, to distinguish it from the “Hoover Institution of Vacuum Cleaners and Floor Sweepers.” He was a star lecturer in the department, and his seminars on government were always filled to capacity.

  Sands had missed the cut-off, but he managed to get in by simply having the temerity to knock at the office door of the Great Man himself and ask.

  “I already have a hundred and fifty students,” Brzinski said in reply to his request.

  Brzinski didn’t look Sands in the eye when he said this. Sitting behind a desk cluttered with musty-looking books and a menagerie of antique gewgaws and mementos, he had tried to give Sands the generic The-Great-Professor-Deigns-to-Acknowledge-You glance, but the student’s unexpected bulk stopped him. Brzinski blinked twice at the muscled torso in the black t-shirt, where gold letters spelling out “Money’s Gym” were stretched like a pull of taffy. He raised his eyes briefly to Sands’ face—as if to verify that there was indeed a face hovering above this mountain of flesh—and then contented himself with speaking to his belt buckle.

  “Why should you,” he said to the buckle, “be number one-fifty-one?”

  “I’ve read your book,” Sands said simply.

  Brzinski smiled at some inner thought. “Which one?”

  Sands hesitated, but he wouldn’t be tripped up. He knew Brzinski had written only one actual book-length work—the rest were pamphlets and compilations. “The one where you say you won’t be writing any more books. ‘The Truth,’ you said, ‘is conveyed through living speech, not dead words on the page.’”

  Brzinski nodded. “That will be an inconvenient quote when I decide to publish my memoirs.”

  Sands shrugged. Brzinski had lifted his gaze just high enough to catch it. “I guess a man of your stature ought to be entitled to write two. Books, I mean.”

  Brzinski didn’t laugh or smile. Instead, he reached for a slip of paper and a pen. “I could quibble with your math, but I fear to further engage your formidable wit.” He scribbled something and handed the paper to Sands. “Take this to the Registrar.”

  Sands thanked him, but Brzinski only replied that he should close the door on his way out.

  From day one, it was obvious to Sands that Brzinski’s seminar would be no run-of-the-mill course on American government. Having entered the classroom without a word of greeting, carrying no books, no notes, not so much as a roll sheet, the Doctor wrote on the white board: “Capital is the river on which all freedoms flow.” He included the quotation marks, and like any good scholar, added his attribution: Henry U. Brzinski.

  He didn’t elucidate on what the “U” stood for. Instead, he paced back and forth, looking the students over as if conducting a military inspection. He didn’t ask for quiet. He didn’t have to. One by one, every student fell silent, mesmerized, it seemed, by his slow, pendulum-like movement. As abruptly as he had entered the room, he spoke: “George Washington said that government ‘is force...It is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.’”

  Pause.

  “If you doubt that, ask anyone who has ever been audited by the IRS.”

  Polite laughter.

  “And if you doubt that the Father of Our Country meant exactly what he said—if you doubt that our first Commander-in-Chief had any qualms about putting down any challenge to his authority—and I mean the authority to tax the citizenry for their hard-won capital—even if putting down that challenge meant personally leading an armed militia thirteen thousand strong against his fellow citizens, the very citizens who had voted him into office, the very citizens from whom his authority originated…Well. Then I invite you to look up a little incident known as The Whiskey Rebellion.”

  He added, “Not now.”

  The blonde seated next to Sands turned a brilliant red, as if Brzinski’s laser eyes had the power to broil her like a lobster. Her guilty thumbs retreated from the keypad of her phone and curled into hiding. The phone itself leapt from her hands into her purse like a startled rat down a hole.

  Sands always said it was in that moment that he fell in love with Carrie, but in truth, it was the moment after. With everyone around them laughing, the redhead sitting in front of Sands turned around and said, “Oh, my god—it had to be a blonde.”

  Although the words were cruel, Victoria Brzinski didn’t say them with any particular malice. As Sands would learn, Dr. Brzinski’s daughter simply had no filter. Or better to say, she chose to have no filter. She gave no quarter, but she expected none. Life was more fun that way.

  If it had been the stereotypical case of a “sweet girl” being humiliated in class by a “mean girl” for the entertainment of her cynical, oh-so-hip peers, Sands was perfectly capable of choosing up sides and going into White Knight mode. But Carrie was a competitor, a cheerleader and athlete who knew what it was to fall on her face in front of a crowd. The redness that had glowed from neckline to scalp disappeared as quickly as it had emerged. She matched Victoria Brzinski smirk for smirk and turned her gaze right back at the professor, coolly waiting for him to continue. And it was in that moment that Sands really fell in love with Carrie.

  After class, the snarky redhead turned to Sands again, held out her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Victoria.”

  A lot of students—female students—had introduced themselves to Sands since his arrival at Stanford, but she was the first to offer to shake his hand. Sands took it and replied in kind. And then, just as if she were included in the introduction, the blonde held out her hand to the redhead and said, “Hi, I’m Carrie.” She smiled at Sands, but they didn’t shake, as if no introduction were necessary.

  From that moment on, it seemed, Sands and Carrie were a couple, with Victoria as frequent third wheel. “I didn’t even get a say in the matter,” Sands would joke later, when he told the story to friends. “It’s like they looked at each other and said, ‘Okay, he’s with you.’”

  But it wasn’t that simple. Although Carrie and Victoria would tell anyone who asked that they were good friends, there was always an edge to the friendship. Of course, with Victoria, “edge” was a given, and if it ever seemed that the two women were in some kind of unspoken competition, Sands refused to accept the notion that he might be the prize.

  A poor kid from the wrong side of 110th Street in lower Manhattan, Sands felt himself in heady company with two campus titans like Carrie and Victoria, the cheerleader and the professor’s daughter. With his grades and athletic ability, Sands could have gotten a scholarship to any mid-level state school he wanted, but the elite schools were out of reach. The only way Sands could attend Stanford was on an ROTC scholarship, shuttling back and forth between Palo Alto and the University of Santa Clara campus where the program was located, working doubly hard to get all his coursework completed before the Army came calling for him to fulfill his end of the bargain—four years of active duty.

  Sands had no particular desire at that time to make a career in the military. He had actually earned a walk-on role on the basketball team as a freshman, but when the coach offered him a full athletic scholarship, Sands hesitated. He had seen enough in the gyms and playgrounds of New York to know what an athletic scholarship usually meant: Four years of putting the classroom on the back burner for the team, after which the scholarship ran out and you were left to finish your degree on your own dime, wherever and whenever you could. At least with ROTC everything was paid for and you graduated on time.

  As Sands considered his answer, the Coach asked him, “How many hours are you taking, Sands?”

  “Nineteen, sir. That includes my ROTC lab.”

  “You’ll need to cut back to fifteen. I know you want to graduate on time, but this is the Pac-10. We may not be UCLA, but we’re a perennial contender, and that takes commitment. We’ll redshirt you to give you an extra year. Now, I’m not promising you a lot of minutes. Maybe no minutes. That’s up to you. But you’ll be on the big stage.”

  “Can I think about it?”

 
The Coach told him he could. As it happened, it was Henry Brzinski that helped Sands make his decision.

  -2-

  There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  It was later that week. Sands was in Brzinski’s class wearing his ROTC camo after a morning of drills. Brzinski was lecturing on his pet topic—the social contract between a government and its citizenry. As usual, he began with the concept of force.

  “The only legitimate use of government force,” he pronounced, “is the protection of our freedoms—not only from foreign terrorists but from domestic criminals as well. The worst kind of criminal is the thief. And the worst kind of thief is the unproductive citizen.”

  He let that sink in a moment. “How many of you are here on scholarship?”

  The students exchanged uncomfortable glances. Brzinski never surveyed his students without leading up to some devastating point.

  “Come now, a scholarship is something to be proud of. Let’s see those hands.”

  A number of hands went up.

  “Quite a few. Good. And how many receive grants of some sort?” More hands. “Student loans?” Many more hands. “So all but a handful of the one hundred, fifty-one students in this lecture hall receive some sort of financial aid. The rest of you, I presume, had the good fortune to be born to wealthy parents.”

  Chuckles from the room.

  “And how many, out of all the students here, are paying the full cost of a Stanford University education, out of their own pockets?”

  Not a single hand was raised.

  “So, then. You are all receiving a handout, of one form or another.” He raised his dark eyebrows, inviting anyone to quibble with him, but none took the bait. “So tell me, are these handouts charity, or must you repay them in some way?”