Amen.
Yeah, that would work. He’d learned early on to quit underestimating the gullibility of people. If they tugged at the right heartstrings and said the right things, and appeared to be humble enough while doing all of that, people tripped all over themselves to toss money at them. Sometimes conveniently withdrawn on an auto-debit system from their bank account every month.
Because Jerald was picking them up today, they didn’t need Silo’s regular driver, Henry. It also meant they could talk in private. Mary Silo rode in the backseat while Silo took shotgun.
“Still no word on our volunteers, I take it?” Silo asked.
“No, sir, but I have good news.” He relayed the message he’d received from Dr. Perkins.
Reverend Silo grinned. “Excellent. You do have someone in place, I take it?”
“The small contractor team, yes.”
Reverend Silo looked happy to hear that. “Good news, son. Good news indeed.”
Jerald breathed a sigh of relief. He could hold off giving the reverend the not-so-good news. That someone had already started waging a PR war of their own.
Pro-Drunk Monkeys.
He didn’t know who was behind it, but it had started with a blog piece by someone he’d never heard of before, and who wasn’t one of his usual contacts.
Now things were spiraling out of hand—in the favor of the Drunk Monkeys.
He’d seeded their own stories, yes, but it looked like someone had anticipated this step and was already ahead of them. They’d have to work fast and quickly not to look like the information coming out against the Drunk Monkeys was something planted by the US government to draw attention from them.
“To address another subject,” the reverend said, “I think I’ve narrowed down my choices from the Youth Corps files I’ve been perusing.”
Jerald glanced in the rearview mirror, but Mary Silo’s gaze was fixed out the window. She looked like she was oblivious, in her own little world. If she’d heard her husband, she made no indication of it.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ll have you a list of candidates by next week,” the reverend continued. “I want to start talking with them to make my final choices. I’m guessing that will not be a simple prospect, considering the state of transportation. Can we employ our private planes for that? Perhaps gather the prospects at the strongholds and let me speak with them there?”
Another glance in the mirror. “I’m sure we can arrange that, sir.”
“Excellent.” Silo nodded. “At least we can get the ball rolling on that. I suspect, considering the current state of Los Angeles, that it won’t be long before other large urban centers begin to fall. Especially if Kite takes off in them.” He shook his head. “I will be sorely disappointed if we spent all that money and effort to bring that about just to have nothing to show for it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jerald had a sick, growing suspicion that, somehow, their volunteers had not reached their intended final destinations. He didn’t know how they would have been stopped, and Macaletto had no insights about it either, yet it was an instinctive feeling. Like perhaps the carefully constructed castle they were building was slowly eroding around them, collapsing because they’d used sand instead of cement.
Maybe he was wrong. He hoped so. He wanted to be the power behind the throne, so to speak. He had no desire for the limelight. He wanted to be a key participant nestled securely within the inner sanctum, his efforts making a difference.
Changing the world.
Getting rid of the kinds of people who’d plagued his life before he became Reverend Hannibal Silo’s right-hand man. Not a position he took lightly at all.
But it had, over the years, allowed him the ability to instigate some overdue retribution, right wrongs done to him.
He was happy with that. And would happily follow the reverend to the ends of the earth, even if it meant speeding along an apocalypse to do it.
Chapter Ten
The electricity in their apartment building blinked out a couple of times during the morning and early afternoon, fortunately coming back on again after a few minutes.
Dolce wondered how long until it went off and stayed off.
Permanently.
Mark had a hand-crank battery pack that would power the TV or his laptop, or a radio, so at least they wouldn’t be totally out of touch with the world.
As long as the world was there to stay in touch with.
Something she suspected, in LA at least, wouldn’t be for much longer.
“You look like you want to be pacing the halls,” he teased.
“I’m sorry. I just…” She tried to relax. “Sarah and the others,” she finally said, knowing she didn’t need to elaborate.
“I know. But I’m not sure what you want me to say. I think you and I both know the realities of life. If you want me to comfort you or bullshit you, I will, but we both know that’s a waste of time.”
She didn’t know what she wanted him to say, either. “I wish I could risk going over to Downey to look for them.”
“Honestly? I don’t think you should. If they were there and could get back here, they would. You might find their car there, but not likely them. If they had their car they probably would have returned home by now.”
He didn’t speak her other line of thought, that maybe they weren’t alive to get to their car. But she knew he was thinking it just as much as she was.
The news was reporting increased violence in various parts of the city, not just in the original riot areas. The EOC casualty report was growing by the hour, but her friends hadn’t made the list yet.
During his searches on the Internet, Mark was finding more and more unconfirmed reports of people exhibiting Kite symptoms in the city. Nothing about that had made the news, of course, but it fed into Dolce’s suspicions.
“I think we need to seriously discuss finalizing our plans for leaving,” he said.
“We need supplies,” she said. “We can’t just hit the road without anything. We need a tent, camping equipment, something.”
“Why don’t you go out and see what you can find before it gets too dark.”
“Do you think it’s safe?”
“It certainly won’t get any safer. Besides, tomorrow’s Sunday. A lot of places might be closed. Maybe get a couple of duffel bags, backpacks, some matches, flashlights, things we’ll need. A good filet knife. Fishing poles. Do you need any money?”
“Not just yet. I will when we hit the road. I’ll save the receipts and we can divvy it up.”
“You have your gun?”
She patted the slight bulge under her shirt.
She headed for the door. “Oh, something else,” he said.
“What?”
He laughed. “Get some damned toilet paper. I don’t want to wipe my ass in the woods with poison sumac.”
She grinned. “I’ll do my best.”
Giving a wide berth to any areas she’d heard had problems with violence, she’d managed to assemble a good number of things from their list. A tent, a couple of bedrolls, and some backpacks, from an Army surplus store.
As she unloaded the car and moved her purchases into the lobby, she realized she hadn’t seen any other residents lately. There were a few empty parking spots in front of the building that had remained vacant all day.
Highly unusual.
It hammered home their situation. That it was not improving, and it would get worse.
Dolce resigned herself to using the elevator, bringing everything in there for one load upstairs, breathing a sigh of relief when it made it.
Mark opened the apartment door for her.
“Hey, success,” he said as he helped her pull everything into the apartment.
“Sort of. I couldn’t get over to the grocery store for trail mix and stuff. I’ll do that tomorrow.”
“Yeah, don’t do it tonight,” he said. “It’s getting late, and I don’t want you out on the street.”
She’d seen a couple of National Guard trucks heading toward the downtown area while she was out. The armed soldiers riding in them looked grimly prepared.
I’m sooo glad I didn’t reenlist.
Now more than ever.
To make matters worse, there’d been a couple of small earthquakes during the day, nothing large, barely enough to blip the scale, but those invariably put people on edge when they happened.
It would only make the problems in the city worse, adding additional strain to the already overworked police and fire departments.
“Here’s my thoughts,” Mark said. “Tomorrow, make one final grocery run for basics. We then spend the day gathering whatever we can pack and fit in your car. Tomorrow evening, when it’s a little cooler, we’ll hit the road. It’ll be easier on the car, less traffic on the road. At least try to get up to Bakersfield before tomorrow morning. If we can make Fresno before stopping, even better. Spend the day there to regroup and take stock. Buy some food supplies to keep us going a couple of weeks. Then keep heading north until we’re out of California, at least.”
“Canada?”
“Maybe. I know a guy with a place in Montana. That’d be a good option, if I can find him.”
“As long as it’s not here in Los Angeles, or near any other big city, I’m willing to listen to options.”
“Then let’s try to get some sleep and talk about it in the morning.”
Unfortunately, she suspected sleep wasn’t in the cards. She’d checked her apartment again several times and still nothing. Now she was sleeping on Mark’s couch. He’d gone to bed for the night, but she kept the TV on, volume turned down low and watching news reports about what was going on a few miles away.
I hope leaving tomorrow isn’t too late.
Chapter Eleven
Sunday morning, Mary Silo sat in her usual place on the stage, off to the far side and mostly in the shadows, with Jerald next to her. She couldn’t care less about her husband’s sermon.
It was just meaningless words. She knew the man.
Knew the true evil he housed in his heart.
If she paid attention to what he said, it might make her physically ill right there in front of the entire congregation.
And she couldn’t have that at all. It might reveal her secret, if she did.
She knew to keep her expression bland, to act as if she were in a clueless fog, hands still and demurely clasped in her lap.
If she didn’t, no doubt Hannibal would suspect something. So far, neither he nor her nurses had caught on to the fact that she’d been weaning herself off her meds.
She planned to keep it that way.
Between her husband’s scheme to spread the Kite virus, and his goal of acquiring what amounted to child brides for some sort of demented harem he’d planned, she knew she had to risk whatever consequences came her way to try to put a stop to things once and for all.
It was too late for her. But she wouldn’t idly stand by and let girls be used and abused by him.
Other than her fear of her husband, Hannibal held no sway over her any longer. She couldn’t believe it took her so long to come to that realization, but she doubted her husband would release the college video he’d taken of her to the public. Not at this stage. It would ruin his reputation, not hers.
She was nobody. She was just a woman.
He was the one trying to keep a sanitized, carefully cultured image intact.
Her parents were dead. She didn’t care what others learned about her past over thirty years earlier. She knew that while Hannibal personally handled all their banking, there was still money in her accounts, which had been left to her by her parents. She knew, because she’d checked.
Enough money that if she could get away from her husband, she could survive on her own.
If she could get away from him.
Him, and that damn Dr. Isley. Little weasel of a man.
She wasn’t sure what nasty evidence her husband held over the psychiatrist’s head, but it had to be horrible for him to go along with Hannibal’s schemes for all those years.
Either that, or maybe he was just as evil as her husband.
She didn’t know.
She didn’t care.
As she continued to tune out her husband’s narcissistic droning, she stared at the audience packed into the auditorium.
She couldn’t bring herself to call it a church. It wasn’t a church. It was simply a way for her husband to enrich his bank account.
It always had been.
He wasn’t a man of God.
He wasn’t even a man of Satan.
He was Satan.
And if she was doomed to spend her life in hell, by God she’d make sure that man spent it there with her.
As always, when the services ended, Hannibal descended from his pulpit to the floor level to shake people’s hands and greet his sheeple, as he called them in private.
She had practiced with the phone while in one of their guest bathrooms at the house. Hannibal only had video cameras in her bedroom and bathroom. He didn’t want to risk someone else accidentally discovering them if they were placed elsewhere. He couldn’t afford that kind of scandal.
Mary now had the controls down pat. She knew how to use the phone’s voice recorder feature, and had tested it while talking with her nurses at home, unbeknownst to them. Within fifteen feet, it pretty much captured everything, even from her purse or inside her pocket.
Meaning in the car, or in Hannibal’s office, or anywhere else she might find herself in close quarters with her husband and that creepy little sidekick of his, she could record their conversations.
As she always did, she went to use the private washroom backstage once the service ended. Jerald stood outside to wait for her. While she was inside, she switched the voice recorder function on and slipped the phone into her jacket pocket.
Hannibal never put his hands on her in public, never touched or hugged her, never even held his arm out to her for her to hold on to.
Which meant he had about as much chance of accidentally discovering the phone in her pocket as he did suddenly having a change of heart and becoming a decent human being.
Absolutely zero.
When she left the washroom, she sat in one of the chairs backstage to wait, as she always did. When Hannibal emerged through the curtain a few minutes later, she felt her heart begin racing.
Calm. Slow. Remember, you’re medicated.
She blankly focused on the back side of the stage curtain. None of the technical crew was there, all of them up in the control room, or down in front of the stage with the cameras. It was just the three of them.
“Excellent sermon, sir,” Jerald said.
Hannibal smiled. “You should know. You wrote most of it.”
“Yes, but only you could deliver it like that, sir.”
Simpering little bastard.
She felt painfully alive now, making it that much harder to pretend she wasn’t.
Not when all she wanted to do was stand up and scream at Hannibal, or gouge his eyeballs out with her bare hands.
But that might give away the fact that she’d stopped her medication. Not to mention it would only serve to give more credence to his story that she was fragile and unstable.
He’d never given anyone a definitive diagnosis, so he could have the flexibility to weasel his slippery way around anything and use her “condition” as an excuse.
It bought him sympathy and extra donations when he trotted her out on TV like a prized show pony.
Hell, a pony probably got better treatment than she did.
“Any news yet?” Hannibal asked him.
“News?” Jerald didn’t look confused. He looked like he wanted to confirm her husband really wanted to have that particular conversation at that particular place.
They’d been talking in greater detail around her lately. Which gave her more reason to believe Hannibal was up to something involving her as well. That maybe he wasn’t
planning on keeping her around any longer than necessary.
And if he was going to take her down, she’d take him down with her.
In any way she could.
Hannibal glanced around to ensure they were alone other than her. “The Preachsearch volunteers,” he clarified. “Any word?”
“Eh, no, sir. Sorry. I don’t understand why, either.”
“Maybe you need to start digging a little harder.”
“I’m going to put in a call to our well-positioned friend and ask if he’s heard about any unusual domestic activities that might have cropped up.”
Hannibal froze, looking like he’d just received bad news. “What? You said the pilots reported no problems delivering the volunteers to their destinations.”
“Yes, sir, but upon further digging, I have also discovered that none of the pre-paid cards they were furnished with for expenses have been used.”
“None of them?”
Jerald shook his head.
Mary forced herself to keep her breathing slow and even, to pretend she couldn’t hear or didn’t care about the conversation going on next to her. From the context, she guessed this had to do with their scheme to infect clueless idiots with Kite and drop them all over the country.
Maybe someone finally took a shit in Hannibal Silo’s sandbox.
She feigned a yawn to mask her grin.
Hannibal, however, hadn’t even noticed. He was focused totally on Jerald and their clandestine conversation. “I want answers, son. This is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
They’d started to walk toward the exit when Hannibal finally seemed to remember Mary. She never stood until he called for her, and she didn’t this time, either.
“Mary,” he snapped. “Come on. Move it.”
She slowly stood, as she always did, and drifted her way over to the two men.
“I think Dr. Able overdid the medication a couple of weeks ago,” he said to Jerald. It’s like she’s too loopy in the other direction now. I’m going to have to talk to him again.”
She kept her eyes focused on the floor, as she usually did when walking behind her husband. Inside, she silently giggled with joy. He didn’t suspect anything was amiss with her that was of her own doing.