Gorgeous view. Prime view.
Soon to be replaced by the not-so-stellar St. Louis landscape.
Well, that wasn’t exactly fair. The church stronghold was just outside of St. Louis. He wouldn’t even be able to see the iconic Arch from his office or his condo there. But it would be their new main headquarters now that Kite had taken hold in Los Angeles and would begin its inexorable trek across the American landscape.
Construction was now complete on all but two of the strongholds, and they were being stockpiled with supplies, enough to keep the chosen residents safe for two years.
By then, Hannibal reasoned, he would either have the Kite vaccine and would have gotten himself elected President of the United States for heroically saving the human race, or everyone else would be dead and he and his people could start over.
He’d envisioned the first scenario. It was his preferred option, but lately it seemed that damned General Arliss and his Drunk Monkeys were stymieing his attempts at every turn to get his hands on the scientists from The List. He had his own people working on a vaccine, but they were still months away from a breakthrough, if that soon. Losing the LA facility, and its precious research data, had set them back weeks or months.
What he needed were the blasted people who’d engineered the damn virus in the first place.
He’d even gone to the president and threatened to reveal the information he had on her daughter, about her abortion in college, which would ruin the woman’s chances for reelection. He and his church had campaigned heavily for her election in the first place.
And so far, bupkis.
Jerald had wanted Silo relocated well before now. Kite wasn’t in New Mexico yet, that they were aware of. The governor had closed all roads into the state and was forcibly stick testing everyone before they could enter. Because of his political connections, Silo knew the New Mexico National Guard had already euthanized several dozen people and their traveling companions, who’d tested positive for the virus, but that wasn’t being made public information.
In fact, the soldiers were under explicit orders not to reveal that info, under threat of their own deaths.
The fact that these soldiers had families in the state that they wanted to protect didn’t hurt.
But it appeared Kite was starting to spread both north and south from Los Angeles as stray refugees had escaped the area and managed to infect others along the way.
He’d never liked Southern California, anyway. Far too liberal for his tastes, despite the amount of money that had once been concentrated there. Most of the Hollywood powerhouses were either liberal, or deeply closeted conservatives who wouldn’t dare be affiliated with any kind of organization that might possibly reveal that side of their psyches. They couldn’t afford to be slapped with a label like that. It didn’t matter that, in public, he’d carefully cultivated a kinder, more inclusive version of Christianity with his church.
If it wasn’t some New Age woo-woo kind of bullshit, Hollywood types weren’t interested.
Now, however, his church’s primary income flowed from the average man looking to secure his place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
With easy monthly auto-debit payments, too.
How convenient.
If Jerald doesn’t get here soon…
Silo took a deep breath and cut off that line of thought. Jerald Arbeid, his right-hand man, was running a little late with his morning updates. They’d pretty much written off all the volunteers from the Preachsearch Project they’d been operating out of Los Angeles.
Silo didn’t know how, but it seemed that all of their volunteers had failed to spread Kite as they’d been trained to do under the auspices of giving out medicine that would help people feel better. Which was Kite the drug, impregnated with Kite the virus. There were no new or unusual pockets of infection anywhere in the locations the volunteers were sent. And none of the prepaid debit cards the volunteers were given to take care of expenses had been used, either.
It was unlikely all the pilots, some of them not even church employees but hired charter flights, had banded together to lie about safely delivering the volunteers to their destinations.
The other option was that, somehow, the Preachsearch Project had been infiltrated and the volunteers intercepted after their arrival at the airports.
Silo suspected General Joseph Arliss and his SOTIF teams had something to do with that.
Especially his pet team, SOTIF1, AKA the Drunk Monkeys.
How I despise that name.
It was bad enough to have his plans foiled.
But by a bunch of men called the Drunk Monkeys?
Ugh.
He was also highly disturbed to learn from Jerald that their campaign to smear the Drunk Monkeys in the media had backfired. Someone had gotten a head start, spreading the word that the special ops unit was actually working to find surviving scientists from The List and protect them so they could formulate a vaccine.
It hadn’t hit mainstream media yet, fortunately. In fact, they’d had to scale their own efforts back in that area, worried that all the attention might actually drive mainstream media focus and public opinion in favor of the SOTIF unit.
They couldn’t let that happen.
In fact, other than LA, New York, and the occasional skirmish elsewhere, it was as if mainstream America thought it wasn’t directly impacted by what had happened with Kite yet. Like they were simply going about their normal, pathetic lives. The rich had been stockpiling and preparing, of course, because they could afford to.
The rest of the sheeple were willfully oblivious to what was coming.
He didn’t know if that should disturb or delight him.
Oh, sure, his own congregations around America, and indeed the world, knew how dire the situation was. But it was as if people in general had thrown up blinders. Perhaps they’d hit bad news overload and decided to opt out of it?
He didn’t know.
But he wanted to know. Needed to know. A key part of what made him good at his job wasn’t that he had the Bible memorized cover to cover and knew how to inspire people with a sermon.
No.
What had made him good at his job was the ability to read and manipulate people.
And if there was a population of people he couldn’t manipulate one way or another…
He didn’t abide any weakness, in himself or his plans. And that blind spot annoyed him.
He wouldn’t admit that it had approached a level close to worrying him.
Damn sure didn’t want to show any weakness. Appear to falter.
No, not even in front of Jerald.
Maybe especially so…
Despite his best efforts to logic it away, doubts had crept in lately about Jerald. Silo didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his relationship with the man. Jerald was too vital to his plans at this stage to lose him or cut him loose.
At least his plans were finally moving forward in regards to selecting himself a new wife for each compound. He’d completed his tours of all of the facilities, met with the potential candidates he’d selected from the church’s Youth Corps files, and given Jerald a list of his final selections. From those, he would pick one for each compound, providing they would agree to what he wanted.
He wouldn’t approach it in such a direct or coarse manner, obviously. He would finesse their agreement, play to the fact that they’d been raised in his church, faithful to him as their leader, and to the higher calling.
Their parents had inadvertently done most of the brainwashing for him. All he had to do now was see which ones would willingly jump to have a special place with him.
Which would also guarantee their families had all the housing, food, medical care, and other supplies they’d need for the duration of their stay in the stronghold.
Secure places, in well-guarded strongholds, at absolutely no cost.
He knew many would agree on that basis alone, either on their own or with a little familial pressure.
; Hey, they were—or would be—eighteen years of age or older, able to make up their own minds.
If they made them up the way he wanted, all the better.
Fifteen young women, perfect, fertile, ready to carry on his name and his legacy. Finally, he could begin spreading his seed, breed a new generation of children to carry out his work. And once those fifteen girls were carrying his children, the Legacy Program would start, searching for women willing to bear his children in exchange for certain favors and guarantees, of course.
In one generation, he could quite possibly have a large number of offspring ready to take over and spread the word of Hannibal Silo, the way it should be spread.
I’ll have to make sure my firstborn son is named after me.
Aaaand there went his cock.
Thinking about all those women, their bellies heavy carrying his children, always made him hard and horny.
I will make Mary’s life a living hell torturing her with that before she leaves this earthly plane.
He adjusted his trousers. Just in time, too, because he heard the familiar rap on his office door.
“Come.”
Jerald rushed in and closed the door behind him. “Sorry, sir. I was on the phone with a contact from the CIA.”
Hannibal turned. “And?”
“He’s working on trying to find me an alternate in with the SOTIF team structure. He might have a person and will try to contact them today and get back to me later.”
“Nothing from President Kennedy yet regarding our little…chat?”
“No obvious changes that I’ve found, no, sir. General Arliss is still in command of the SOTIF program, and SOTIF1 has not yet been brought in as you told her to have done.”
Silo took a few breaths to buy him time to maintain control. He didn’t want to pitch a tantrum there in front of Jerald. The man had already witnessed too many childish explosions of his temper over the past few weeks. He didn’t need to add one more to the list.
Those kinds of outbursts did not inspire confidence in people, and the last thing he needed was the risk of one of them ever being captured on video and broadcast to the world.
So far, he’d maintained a perfect public and private facade.
Well, except when he gave Mary her nightly discipline and made her perform her wifely duties. But lord knew she wasn’t going to be revealing anything about him to anyone else.
“Any information or insight as to why President Kennedy hasn’t done that yet?” Silo asked him.
“No, sir. She did have a private meeting with Arliss yesterday, so perhaps it’s just that she didn’t have time to issue the order to him until then.”
Silo relaxed a little. If his hold on the president wasn’t as secure as he thought it was, that could severely complicate things on his end.
But he certainly understood if she couldn’t simply up and lean on a general. “Keep an eye on that situation.”
“Of course.”
“Anything new for me?”
“We’ll need to give serious thought as to when we want to relocate our operations to St. Louis. I’ve already started transitioning some of the staff out to their new assignments. Many of them can work remotely until they are in place. I’ve divided key staffers among several of the strongholds. The bulk of them will go to the St. Louis stronghold, of course, but not all of them need to be there. That location will be very large and heavily populated as it is.”
“How is Marianne Parnassus and her family settling in? And how goes her work?”
The wife of a junior senator from Ohio, the woman was an expert in hydroponics and food production. Silo had handpicked her because of the dirt he had on her husband…which she was still clueless about. But she’d leapt at the chance for her and her three children to have secured spots in the stronghold. Even better, she was now in charge of their sustainable food production program. Not just for the St. Louis stronghold, but she was setting up customized hydroponic and aquaculture farming programs for each of the strongholds.
Silo had wanted her close to him. So close that when he’d approached the senator and blackmailed him that the man would realize how easy it was for Hannibal to reach out, literally, and touch his family.
And that’s how you get people firmly in your pocket and keep them there.
“Things are excellent in that department, sir. She’s already made quite a few changes and improvements to the systems. She’s also working with the teaching staffs to implement school programs integrating the agriculture and aquaculture programs with lesson planning. You made exactly the right call in recruiting her for the position.”
“She’s basically training our next generation of farmers, isn’t she?” Silo gleefully asked. “Excellent. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect outcome if I tried.”
“Funny how things work out sometimes, sir.”
“Yes. Funny, indeed, son. Funny indeed.”
After giving Silo a few more standard updates, Jerald left him alone. Silo turned again to stare at the Sandias.
They were beautiful.
Maybe one day, once I’m president and things have settled down, perhaps I can have an office here again.
Well, stranger things had happened.
I just need to have patience.
Although time was drawing short. Kite was advancing. It hadn’t yet taken down America, but Los Angeles was a prime example of what the future might hold if they didn’t stop it, and soon.
Hopefully their scientists came up with that vaccine sooner rather than later.
Or President Kennedy remembers where her loyalties lay and gets me those people from The List and takes the Drunk Monkeys out of commission.
That would be the best outcome, and one he still had at the top of his list, one he placed the most confidence in.
Mostly because he believed he would not fail this time.
Chapter Six
Mary Silo, long-suffering wife of Reverend Hannibal Silo, sat on the toilet in the locked guest bathroom of her house and desperately worked to wipe the gleeful smile off her face.
It wouldn’t do for anyone to see her smiling. The drugs her husband thought she still took should have her doped out of her mind.
A smile would reveal to her husband two things had gone wrong—that she was no longer a pharmaceutically induced zombie…and that she felt happy about something.
And neither of those situations were ones her husband would tolerate.
At all.
In fact, he took great pride in making her life as miserable as possible.
Which was why she desperately tried not to giggle as she stared at the burner cell phone he didn’t know she had.
On the screen, a reply e-mail from a person who ran a blog reporting on religious matters.
Specifically, a blog that liked to take potshots at what it considered hypocritical and un-Christian behavior. Well, unreligious, because it also went after other faiths, not just Christian churches.
Meaning they were very interested in hearing the evidence she had on her husband and his slimy little sidekick, Jerald, discussing their devious plans to spread Kite and obtain what amounted to little more than innocent child brides for her husband.
She knew Hannibal had poured through the Youth Corps files and selected girls just on the cusp of turning eighteen to become his special new concubines in all of the fifteen strongholds he’d built to weather the coming Kite storm.
He wanted to get them knocked up as soon as possible. He’d also started a disgusting program to save his seed so he could artificially inseminate willing women he deemed worthy.
The one thing she’d desperately wanted, to be a mother, and he’d forcibly taken that dream from her by getting her tubes tied years ago.
Claiming she was “too fragile” physically and emotionally to be a mother.
The truth was, it was simply one more way for him to torture her.
And she’d be damned if she’d let him get away with this.
/> She’d already started forming her plan on how she would escape. The success of her escape would hinge upon several key points, including her husband’s incredible ego and narcissism, and that he would erroneously assume several possible scenarios before hitting on the right conclusion—that she’d left under her own power.
By that time, she’d hopefully be far enough away from him she could disappear until she was able to get all her evidence distributed for people to see what a monster he really was.
Another soft giggle escaped her.
She jumped at the sound of a knock on the door. “Mrs. Silo, are you all right?” The day nurse was new and incredibly conscientious.
Mary took a deep breath and blew it out before remembering to use a bland, doped-up voice. “Yes, I’ll be out in a moment. Thank you.”
She shut down the phone completely and slipped it into her pocket. She stood, flushed the toilet even though she hadn’t used it, and washed her hands. One last look in the mirror and more practice on using her dead face. At least, that was how she was coming to think of it.
She certainly had felt dead for a lot of years, allowing Hannibal to control her.
But no more. No longer.
Now, she felt alive, more alive than she’d ever felt in her entire life.
And, very soon, she would be free, or kill Hannibal Silo while trying to free herself. It would be worth it.
The days of her literally rolling over and letting him do anything he wanted to her were over. Forever.
And she would throw one hell of a funeral for her old life when she started her new one.
Hopefully, she’d get to dance on Hannibal’s grave in the process.
Chapter Seven
When Kilo arose late the next afternoon at his usual time, he found their leader, Papa, and several others gathered around a table in what had become their kitchen and dining area on the first floor.
He grabbed himself a mug of coffee from the perpetually running machine and walked over to the table. “What’s up?”
Papa didn’t look up from the tablet he was studying. “Planning our next sweep. I want you and Foxtrot to join in the search this evening.”