Noon: The Rise to Power Book 3 A Descent Into Hell
Present Day
The Colonel sat quietly in the conference room smoking a cigar. The room was darkening as the sun set. There were still the remnant odors of gunpowder, burnt oil and the melted plastic wafting through the shattered windows. Broken windowpanes covered the floor. The streets below were still filled with smoke but were quiet.
Quiet as a cemetery.
Something mid-town Manhattan hadn’t experienced in several hundred years.
As he tapped the ash in the ashtray, he’d occasionally let out a nervous chuckle when he thought of last week’s events. It was almost too much to take in.
The Colonel leaned back in his chair and shook his head in disbelief when he thought of Madalone and the Scarecrows, and how Noon managed to outwit and outmaneuver all comers.
There was an uneasy peace now, but it wouldn’t last. He took another drag, let out a plume of smoke and momentarily gazed at the overhead fluorescent light. He admitted he had no idea how Noon orchestrated it. He couldn’t remember which member of the team said it, but the line certainly rang true: They all forgot that the smartest man is also the most dangerous.
As he rubbed his chin he realized, that although he was never a fan of the Black Knight or the I-Man, both came through. Result? They would not test Noon again any time soon.
No, scratch that, he thought. That idiot general, without any official authority, sent a team of snipers to assassinate him. They wound up getting caught by the I-Man and being thrown out the still shattered windows of Noon’s 37th floor offices.
Shortly afterward the entire block of elite townhouses where the general’s family and other high-ranking officials lived was set ablaze.
There were no survivors.
Madalone, he thought.
A day later the general was found dead in his office at the Pentagon with a self- inflicted gun-shot wound. He left a note. It read: Please forgive me. I was only trying to save my country.
The Colonel was sure the man believed that to be true.
He took a moment and thought back on his own childhood. Sure, there was some political strife back in the early decades of the twenty-first century but that had always been the case with the two-party system. Both had their own agenda, and both were determined to make it succeed. But in the end, as stalemate after stalemate dragged on, and the American people voiced their displeasure in the voting booths, compromises were made, and the USA continued to chug along.
He took a moment, got up, walked over to the broken windows and looked down at the destruction. For as far as he could see the streets were covered in rubble and debris. All this, all this destruction, he thought as he continued gazing into the darkening streets. All because of an innocuous little invention created by Staford University scientists.
Although, he admitted, the M6 Titan scare played a significant part. That’s for sure.
The Staford scientists truly believed that it would solve the world’s energy problems and provide a safe, clean, inexhaustible source of power.
Instead, it brought about decades of class warfare, resulting in the elimination of the middle class and creating a generation of young Americans indentured to the wealthy and powerful.
He shook his head and gave an ironic chuckle as he walked back to his desk, then said, “It seems the road to Hell IS paved with good intentions.”
He was a mere boy when the decades of misery, of panic, of religious warfare, of unrestricted corporate greed, of political cowardice, rioting, and civil disobedience began. He clearly remembered how easy life was before it suddenly became a literal hell on earth.
He suffered a mild panic attack when he thought back to the days of his youth. Of what life was like back then, just after the descent into Hell began.
2.
Forty years earlier
Tad Murphy jerked back in his chair, rapped the screen of his e-pad in disgust, then growled, “Really! How the hell did things get this bad this fast?”
It was a rhetorical question.
After placing the e-pad on the table, he tugged at his red flannel shirt and nervously tapped his work boot on the floor as he read about the latest corporate espionage trial while eating his dinner. Only this time, there was the very real possibility the defendant, thirty-year-old Noah Wheatley, would be executed if found guilty.
Slowly shaking his head in disgust, the thirty-six-year-old Tad shoveled a fork full of beans into his grimacing mouth as the wind rattled the windows of the small single-wide trailer and a steady drip-drip-drip echoed in the sink.
With muscled arms and a weather-worn face, covered mostly by a closely cropped brown beard, the big man eyed his surroundings.
The place was already thirty-years-old and looked it. There were ribbons of peeled white paint on the walls, a missing floorboard near the sink, as well as a spider-like crack in the back wall that was already beginning to show on the outside. One that would no doubt widen if this latest series of Oklahoma wind storms didn’t abate sometime soon.
His wife, Tamalyn, just shrugged in response to his outburst and continued folding the laundry on the nearby threadbare faded blue couch. Now in her early thirties, she was still in good shape physically, with straight, chestnut brown hair and blue eyes.
Although age lines were beginning to announce their arrival, she still had that pleasant girl-next-door, homespun appeal.
The truth was Tamalyn was the type to count her blessings, not dwell on her misfortunes. Together she and Tad owned a commercial-sized washer and dryer purchased at a bankruptcy auction and she started a small business, washing, ironing and folding the laundry of the well-to-do.
In addition, Tad was making some real money selling bootleg hydrogen. Yes, it could mean a lengthy jail sentence if caught, but the police were also angry that such an inexpensive form of energy was illegal, and so, for a little piece of the action, most were willing to look the other way.
Sure, gasoline was at its lowest price in 20 years but so what? Hydrogen was damn near free if you could get your hands on a water-splitter. Except the components to make a water-splitter to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water were no longer sold commercially, and to get a hold of one legally required mountains of paperwork and a federal investigation of the applicant’s background.
But, as always in these types of situations, there were ways to get around that. There were always ways.
Tad wiped his mouth with his napkin and placed his fork and knife on his now empty plate. “Damn fine meal, Tam. Thank you.” He blew her a kiss backed with a loving smile.
She knew he meant well but also knew her man’s tirade was just getting started. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be back on topic, raging about the government and the corporations and then settling on what she knew was his favorite.
That bullshit about hydrogen destroying the American economy. And almost like clockwork, he was off.
“You know, back in the early twenties-twenties, it looked like all our energy problems were solved. All that was needed was for us to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen and we’d have a dirt-cheap source of fuel, you know, like gasoline was a hundred years ago in the nineteen-twenties. Japan would have converted already if that damn tsunami hadn’t devastated their country. Poor bastards, two killer tsunamis in less than thirty years. Hell, even the poor third world countries are using water-splitters. But here in the most technologically advanced nation in existence the use of water-splitters is illegal?!”
Tamalyn enthusiastically nodded in confirmation knowing it would be over in a few minutes when Tad set out for his evening delivery rounds to the other hydro houses.
Their water-splitter looked exactly like the hot water heater it had replaced. Tad put a lot of work in its design and installation and took special care to make sure it was safe. Hydrogen, he knew, was extremely volatile, and like the many generations before him, he had seen the newsreels of the Hindenburg disaster.
The trailer itself may be falling apart but the water-splitter was in top-notch condition.
As he continued his rant she began smiling, realizing they would soon have enough money to leave this shit-box of a trailer, buy a proper house, then finally afford to have the children they always wanted.
Her smile grew as she imagined her and Tad in the backyard of their real home, playing with their kids, some burgers and franks on the barbeque, lemonade in frosted glasses. She could even imagine the aroma filling the air in the evening hours as Fourth of July fireworks lit the skies.
With the clothes neatly folded, she removed them from the couch, carefully placed them in the brown paper bags and taped the ends closed. Tomorrow morning when Tad got home, she’d make her deliveries to the folks in those expensive homes across town.
In homes like the ones she imagined for herself and Tad and their soon-to-be family.
As Tad’s diatribe petered out, he pulled his jacket and ball cap from the coat hook and put them on.
“You fill the truck yet?” Tamalyn asked as she approached.
He shook his head. “Gonna do that now then head out. Gotta lot of deliveries tonight but I’ll get back as soon as I can, so you’ll have the truck to do yours.”
He gently pulled her into his arms and gazed lovingly into her eyes. “Not too much longer, Tam, my girl. Pretty soon we’re going to have that life we’ve always dreamed of.”
Her heart leaped with joy at the thought.
They kissed.
And they both closed their eyes, savoring the moment.
And they would never open them again.
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