Daybreak of Revelation Page 5

  The desert was hot, even for early morning. The road Joshua took did not appear to be going anywhere, not on any paper map that he could see, but the coordinates he had plugged into his GPS were all he had to go on. The day got hotter, the sun kept getting higher overhead, and there was no sign of human life anywhere. The road became gravel, then it became dirt, then it was a smooth strip with no rocks or thorns. Then it was no more, and Joshua was at the coordinates he had.

  “Dandy,” Joshua said out loud to himself. He had bottled water, snacks, and a book, so he just decided to wait. Maybe someone would come. If they didn’t, he would try again tomorrow. How many tomorrows he might try, he didn’t know, but he had a good feeling. He’d come where Natalie had sent him, and he’d stay. Alternating between idling the truck to run the air conditioning and trying to conserve gas, Joshua waited.

  The sun went down, the moon came up, and Joshua’s water was warm, but he still felt that he should stay. The ground in the distance began to open up. It opened wider, a gaping black hole in the desert, and if it hadn’t been for the box in his pocket, Joshua would have driven away like a bat out of hell.

  “Drive in slowly,” a female voice rang out toward him.

  Even with the presence of the box Joshua felt fear try to take hold of him, but he shook it off, climbed back into BJ’s truck, and drove five miles per hour into a huge underground cement bunker. As soon as his truck was fully inside, the entrance he had come through began to close. Joshua waited to be told what to do. The entrance sealed behind him, and lights came on, revealing several people in camo clothes standing back from the truck. He rolled down the window.

  “You can get out,” a woman he could barely see informed him.

  Moving slowly, Joshua slid out of the cab of his truck, keeping his hands separate from his body, letting everyone know he wasn’t holding a weapon of any kind.

  “What’s your name?” the same female voice wanted to know.

  “I’m Joshua Henderson. I came from Blythe, California. Natalie and Jase sent me.”

  There was a long pause before the voice spoke again.

  “Brooke, take him to meet Curtis.”

  A tall woman with sandy hair and a strong build came toward Joshua and he stepped up to her. She tipped her head just a little to indicate that Joshua needed to follow, and he nodded. His eyes adjusted a little, but it was still too dark for him to see much beyond Brooke, who walked with confidence through the darkness. Joshua imitated her easy stride, determined not to show weakness to strangers. He tried to channel the way he had walked after winning the section basketball championship for the second time his senior year. In light of current developments, nothing seemed less important than basketball championships. It really mattered then.

  “Hey.” Brooke signaled slightly, and out of the darkness appeared a doorway only visible because miniscule amounts of light escaped from its casing. Joshua followed her through it, the light inside a large office blinding him for a moment.

  “Joshua, nice to meet you.” A buff thirty-something man with a chiseled chin and sparkling hazel eyes greeted him. The man remained seated, but his voice was engaging, a cross between the emotion of tenor and the authority of bass. As a musician Joshua instantly appreciated the man’s voice. He dismissed Brooke with a nod and Joshua stood at the door. There were three other chairs in the office, but he did not take one. It was like being in the principal’s office, not sure if you had done something wrong or there was other business to deal with. There had been the time in Mrs. Raspburtin’s office when he had pleaded with her not to call Bud and Danica over his after-lunch tardiness. He made a mental note not to sound like that now. “I’m Curtis. I am the official leader of our resistance group. Would you like a seat?”

  Joshua nodded and seated himself, the tension was heightening, but he focused on Curtis respectfully.

  “I don’t know what impression Natalie gave your father, but we are not actively recruiting members at this time. We have a solid group here.”

  Joshua had never been unpicked and sent to the last team needing a player. Suddenly he felt his stomach drop, and even though he was almost twenty, he felt the need to fight back tears. Only the box in his pocket kept him from getting up and walking out, which would be a super stupid thing to do given the fact that this group probably did not let people leave their secret base.

  “Your family’s exploits make you special,” Curtis went on after a long pause.

  Joshua knew Curtis had been trying to put him off guard, and it had worked, but that didn’t stop Joshua from feeling relieved that Curtis thought the Henderson family was special. Everyone knew it back in Blythe. It was a relief to know Curtis recognized that.

  “Going into one of the Hollister intake centers… that took guts. Seeing what you saw and not pretending it didn’t happen and drinking it away… that makes you special. Do you know what everyone in this place has in common?” Curtis wanted to know.

  Joshua shrugged.

  “Everyone here is willing to see the truth of what the Hollisters are really doing. The Hollisters are the top one percent of the one percent, and they don’t want to share with the rest of us. They are erasing us. When I brought my first work crew to the desert, I can’t even tell you how different it looked. That was six years ago. In six years, the Hollister Youth Foundation has torn up roads, replanted damaged ecosystems and reintroduced native animals that had been extinct for generations. Why do you think they did that?”

  “They’re really liberal?” Joshua hazarded a guess. In the town of Blythe, being a liberal, a murderer of innocent children, meant you were capable of anything.

  “Hell, they are the most capitalist capitalists,” Curtis scoffed.

  To Joshua everyone from New York was a liberal. Danica had trained him well. He didn’t know how to respond at that point. Liberals were power hungry, domineering sources of evil, and everyone in Blythe knew it.

  “They want the world to themselves,” Curtis went on. “I know Natalie told you about the vaccination chips, but that’s just the start. Do you know how many people belong to the Global Forces?”

  “Six million people?” Joshua guessed. That had been on the radio recently. Well, not recently. He could remember switching off the radio right after that was on to show Bud the song he’d been working on.

  “Six and a half.” Curtis frowned. “All of the men in Global Forces were sterilized without their knowledge when they joined. They were vaccinated against the coming virus, so they will live to clean up the mess that’s coming, but they won’t live long after that.”

  “Really?” Joshua only said that to be polite. He wasn’t surprised. Nothing about the Hollisters was fair or legitimate.

  “Global Forces will be the only people left other than the Hollisters and a few of their partners in crime, and they won’t be in much condition to repopulate the earth.” Curtis frowned. “Stopping the Hollisters at this point is impossible. Large portions of China, India, Africa, and Russia were discretely chipped over the last year, Europe and the US and Latin America were waiting for the higher-grade version of the chip. On the East Coast tens of thousands of people were chipped last week. If no one else was chipped, it would be enough to spread their deadly virus across the world.”

  Joshua had nothing to add. After all, he had accepted what Natalie told his family the month before.

  “The good thing about us is that we are getting ready for what’s coming. We run the Hollister Youth Foundation chapter for Kern County.”

  “No kidding.” Joshua was shocked.

  “We’re mostly done cleaning it up, but we’ve got some work left to do. If you stay, you’ll become part of the work crew and get familiar with this place. What do you do that can help us out?”

  Joshua had known from the minute the ground opened before him that he wasn’t leaving the compound alive. It was too complex, too clever. Any people who set such a thing up were too smart to let him leave and tell anyone about it. He
had come in, he was a part of the group now, for better or worse. The only question would be if he would want to send for his family, and if he could if he wanted to.

  “I can weld,” Joshua told him. “I have a welding certificate. I can fix lots of things…”

  “Welding and fixing things are skills we need. We lost a welder last week.”

  “Lost him, like in the desert?” Joshua wanted to know. He didn’t really expect an honest answer.

  “Her. We lost her in a bad accident recently.”

  “Oh.” I’ve got a box in my pocket that’ll help me be more careful. “I’m sorry.”

  “We were all sorry. Hollister Youth Foundation workers die all the time. Restoring the planet to a previous state is more dangerous than the Youth Foundation lets people know.” Curtis’s face showed what he thought of the Hollister Youth Foundation.

  “I’m ready to help,” Joshua promised.

  “If everything goes well, I’ll be glad to send for your family,” Curtis said.

  Joshua was surprised at Curtis reading his mind.

  “It’ll go well.” Because it has to.

  Chapter 4

  September 1st, Outer Banks, NC

  “Your final stop, ladies.” Sugar Simpson smiled fondly at Maddy and Tilly as all three of them walked up the stairs to the gorgeous three-story beach house that her grandparents had rebuilt repeatedly after every hurricane. “Unless I can convince you to come to Daytona with me.”

  “We’re going to regretfully pass on the Daytona leg of this trip.” Maddy smiled back. Sugar was an absolute dream, and Maddy would be sorry to see her literally sail into the sunset, but that was exactly what needed to happen for everyone’s safety.

  Behind Sugar, Brice held a large box of groceries. It was his third trip to the house with the supplies Maddy and Tilly would need while they stayed there. The things they were being dropped off with today were only the very beginning.

  “Anything you want from Catrell’s is to be added to my grandparents’ account,” Sugar had insisted. “I called the store and worked it out and I called my grandfather’s accountant and cleared it with him.” Looking at Tilly, Sugar had gone on. “When your brother and Sadie and your grandfather get here, make sure you get whatever they want. It’s not a problem at all. I swear!”

  “Thank you.” Tilly was humbled by Sugar’s generosity. She had never expected it, and it had kept unfolding over the last several days that Tilly and Maddy had sailed with Sugar and her friends. “It was really lovely of you to send for them.”

  “What Molly doesn’t know hurts her the most!” Sugar said cheerfully. “All the mean things she did in junior high are coming back to haunt her now.”

  Privately, Tilly was a little disturbed that only now, at the age of twenty-four, was Molly paying for her junior high misdeeds. Molly had spent all summer forcing Tilly’s former coworkers to compete on a reality television show. She had kept them prisoner and even frozen Maddy and Tilly’s bank accounts. With extraordinary luck, Tilly and Maddy had escaped Molly Hollister and her fiendish manipulations, meeting Sugar for the first time at a Long Island marina and sailing away with her and her friends. Sugar had been an old enemy of Molly’s from junior high through high school and knowing that keeping Maddy and Tilly from Molly’s show was utter revenge, Sugar had been delighted to help them out. More than that, Sugar was a nice person who would have helped them anyway, Tilly was sure.

  “I’ll come check on you when I’m done in Daytona,” Sugar told them. “I’m going to miss you, I don’t know when I’ve ever made faster friends!”

  “This time with you has been amazing,” Maddy told her sincerely. “I’ll never forget your help!”

  “We have lots of good times ahead!” Sugar insisted. “I don’t know why, but this was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. This whole trip has just been perfect!”

  It really had. Five women on a boat, and the handsome captain was Maddy’s ex. Everything could have gone wrong. Instead, there had been nothing but good times and laughter. No drunken squabbles, even though alcohol flowed continuously, no hurt feelings or misunderstandings. The proverbial smooth sailing had even been quite productive. Along the way Maddy had helped Sugar outline her graduate thesis and Tilly had helped Livy organize her art portfolios on her website. Sugar had managed not to think Maddy and Tilly were hopelessly paranoid when they explained about the chips that Doctor Justin had removed. She had even agreed to fund a Dark Web data center from her grandparents’ island. She had wired Daniel, Tilly’s brother, the money for it in a complicated way so that it would be hard for Molly Hollister’s people to trace.

  “So intriguing!” Sugar had gushed. “Like a movie!”

  Groceries and clothes were brought in, Sugar left Maddy and Tilly with some cash (Sugar had been horrified at the way Molly had frozen Maddy and Tilly’s bank accounts), and more goodbyes were said. Sugar, Livy, Bonnie, and Brice had sailed away, and Maddy and Tilly were left to watch the evening news in Sugar’s grandfather’s TV room.

  “Hollister media.” Tilly shook her head, annoyed that they were bothering.

  “I have a feeling we should pay attention,” Maddy said, flipping the channel. An entertainment news show had a picture of Sadie, Maddy, and Tilly in the background. “Oh, crap! Watch!”

  “The Toughest Customer has been a summer sensation,” Tia Morales said on Foxxy Entertainment. “Reality TV had become rather trite in the last few years, but the sizzling cast of the Toughest Customer really brought a new dimension to the genre and sparked great interest. Molly Hollister’s brainchild show made her the star of the summer line up. Three of the Toughest Customer’s former contestants have not been heard from and strangely even their families claim not to know where they are. Sadie Jones, Tilly Banks, and Maddison Petersen are all missing.” Tia cut away to Molly Hollister who was giving an interview in the Crackhouse bar.

  “No one has had any contact with Sadie since she was voted off the show.” Molly’s wide set eyes looked deeply concerned. “I understand she was unhappy to be voted off, but many of us just want to know that she is really okay. As far as Maddy and Tilly, their abrupt departure after a personal altercation and a bad love triangle has caused all of us to worry. I’ve been hoping that they would turn up, but they have not. Since I care about their welfare so much, I am offering a one-million-dollar reward for information leading to their whereabouts. Just so that all of us from Crackhouse can know that they are truly fine.”

  “One million dollars to know where we are…” Tilly was stunned.

  “Other than the girl at the marina office, who else could guess how we left New York? The driver who took us to the marina, maybe?” Maddy asked thoughtfully.

  “Sugar, Brice, Livy, and Bonnie know exactly where we are…” Tilly thought out loud. “They wouldn’t be tempted by the money, though.”

  “All those people are going to stick by us.” Maddy thought it through the way a person organizes a new deal of cards in their hand.

  “We left Long Island and we’re in North Carolina now. We did stop lots of times, but we stayed on the boat every time.” Tilly bit her lip trying to remember exactly what had happened at each stop.

  “I don’t think we were seen anywhere we stopped,” Maddy said. “I wonder if the woman at the marina will remember us for a million dollars. Doctor Justin’s driver might remember for that amount.”

  “That’s a risk too, I guess,” Tilly said. “Molly took our money and our safety… We aren’t living the life we were meant to live… I have to wonder if she just means to kill us outright.” Just as revenge for leaving the show?

  “I’d think that was crazy if it wasn’t for the chips Doctor Justin took out of us.” Maddy breathed in and out slowly to calm herself. “We just need to sit tight and wait for Daniel and Sadie and your grandfather to get here and hope no one recognizes Sadie.”

  Sadie had been wearing a face mask and a turban, with a lot of white makeup, looking like a cancer
patient as Tilly and Daniel’s grandfather drove down the toll roads in Pennsylvania and Maryland. It would have been hard for anyone to see inside the car anyway, but Sadie took no chances. There was one stop at a rest area when she really, really had to go. There were no other cars there and Daniel even walked through the women’s room to make sure no one was lurking inside. Sadie even used a cane as she entered and exited the restroom, making sure to look the part of a fragile woman.

  “Do you want Taco Bell, or Subway?” Daniel asked as he surveyed the choices across from the gas station in Washington, DC. “We’ll grab something and go on.”

  “Subway,” Sadie said, at exactly the same time that Travis, Daniel’s grandfather said, “Taco Bell.”

  “Both it is!” Daniel said cheerfully. “Travis, head over to Taco Bell and I’ll pick you up in a few.”

  Travis crossed the parking lot to the Taco Bell like a junior high student.

  “He hasn’t been getting out enough,” Daniel commented.

  “Obviously.” Sadie grinned.

  In just a few seconds Travis walked over to the Subway.

  “The line was too long, and it was chaos in there,” Travis explained to Daniel when he entered the Subway. “Just give me a minute and I’ll know what I want.”

  “Welcome to Subway. I’m Reggie, can I take your order?” a young man with troubled skin and dark shadows under his eyes asked.

  “Sure.” Daniel ran through Sadie’s order and then his own while Travis studied the menu. In less than five minutes they had their food. Daniel added some cookies for good measure at the cash register. “Thanks for being so quick. I haven’t even seen anyone leaving the Taco Bell.”

  “That’s ‘cause they have Wi-Fi over there,” Reggie told him. “Everyone’s checking the news. Molly Hollister was just in a bad accident. I think she died.”