The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 12

The spread looked like four Thanksgivings, every homemade morsel of it mounded in steaming dishes around a long banquet table set with polished silver, cloth napkins, and company china. When everyone had taken their seats, the patriarch of the family stood at his place and spoke his welcome, introducing each of the guests by name and background as though he’d known them all his life.

Hollis had, in fact, known most of these ten people for as long as he could remember. Of late he’d known them chiefly as a disheveled band of tired, filthy, and cantankerous vagabonds who could neither run fast enough nor shoot straight enough to be of much use as legitimate fugitives. But looking around the table now as each one was called out in turn he began to see them differently again, through the admiring eyes of another.

As the name of their organization suggested, these ten had sworn an oath to be keepers of the words and thoughts of their nation’s Founding Fathers. It was really as harmless as that, and not at all a political movement in its beginnings. They’d started out as nothing more than a quaint conservation society, a counterpoint to what they perceived as the subversive, progressive rewriting of mainstream U.S. history.

Each of the group’s members had responsibility to preserve a single Founder’s written wisdom. This wasn’t a simple matter of rote memorization, though that’s where each apprentice always started. Something odd would always happen then: after a few weeks of total immersion a peculiar transformation would begin to manifest in these people, as if the vital spirit captured on the page might be coming alive again to take up partial residence in a new incarnation.

He took a look around the table and paused a moment on each of his people as they sat interspersed among the Merricks. Day to day, to Hollis these ten were Doris, and Mae, and Paul, and Miles, and Grace, and Jeremiah; twin brothers Bill and Ronald; their father, Gene; and then Molly. Seeing them now, well dressed, upstanding, and largely recovered from their latest ordeal, he could also detect in them the faint but unmistakable presence of their alter egos: Hancock, Adams, Allen, Rush, Paine, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. As Jefferson had proved to be too much for any single vessel to contain, his essence was divided evenly between the two brothers.

They’d never found a decent George Washington, and now with the death of Ben Church the group had lost their Benjamin Franklin as well. There had been others, too, who’d disappeared, defected, or otherwise fallen away in the past year as the going got tough. But as of tonight these core survivors were alive and well, and after a hot bath and a good day’s rest they appeared to have once again begun to take on the distinguished mantle of their namesakes.

Hollis was seated next to Molly’s place of honor at the foot of the table. When his time came he was briefly introduced, with only a few kind words to gild the lily, and thus his role in the group was left appropriately vague. Then, with the opening toast complete, one of the grandchildren was asked to step up and say grace.

As the child began to speak every head was bowed to partake in her sweet, simple prayer, with only three exceptions. Hollis himself was one of these outliers; he generally used such ritual pauses to attend to his own private thoughts and observations. The second was young Tyler Merrick, whose gaze seemed downcast mainly to avoid eye contact with the big mean man on the end who’d taken away his phone earlier in the day.

The last of these nonparticipants was seated at the head of the table, down at the far end almost directly opposite him. She was an old woman, very old it seemed, who appeared to be composed of little more than ghost-white hair, barbed wire, vinegar, and whit-leather. She wasn’t concerning herself with the prayer or the piety of the other dinner guests; her attention was fixed on only one person.

Old age can etch a sour expression onto a person’s face, but that alone couldn’t account for the ire he saw burning behind those sharp, watery eyes. As this frail, withered woman stared across the table at Thom Hollis, she looked for all the world as though she knew him, and loathed him with every ancient fiber of her being.

• • •

He’d suddenly found his appetite wasn’t what it should have been, and just as soon as good manners allowed, Hollis had quietly excused himself. He wandered to the great room, perused the shelves, selected a Faulkner novel he’d always hoped to tackle, and took a seat alone to read by the light of the fire.

Later, when dinner was finished and the others began to filter in to have their coffee, he closed his book and retired to his suite. There he found the laptop computer he’d requested earlier, opened on his desk and ready to run. It had been several weeks since he’d had even brief online access so there was a great deal of catching up to be done.

The machine was configured for maximum stealth in its internet connection, bouncing all masked requests and responses through heavy firewalls, virtual private networks, and shadow servers scattered around the world. The performance was slow and spotty due to all this security, but the trade-offs were necessary and the setup would be more than adequate for his needs.

He’d just finished tapping into the group’s many e-mail accounts to begin the long download of messages when Cathy Merrick and her son came to his door. She apologized profusely for the boy’s confessed behavior, and this time when Tyler said he was sorry it was clear that he spoke from the heart. He’d obviously been read the riot act from multiple directions already, but Hollis felt the need to make the central point once again.

“There are lives on the line here, son,” he said, “and my people and your folks believe there’s a great deal more at stake than only that. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded.

“Good. Let’s not speak of it again. Now, I’ll be out in your uncle’s workshop tomorrow morning at seven. I want you to come by then, seven sharp, and I’ll give back what I took from you.” Before the mother could raise an objection he continued on. “The people hunting us are looking for a trail to follow. There isn’t much friendly shelter out here that we could have reached by this time, and one thing they’ll be looking for is a place that’s gone quiet, where something’s changed in the past couple of days. We have to assume they’re watching everyone and everything, and that means all of you here need to behave just like you did before, like nothing’s any different. Okay?”

Tyler didn’t respond until his mom gave a mild thump to the back of his head, and then he said, “Okay.”

Hollis stood and walked over to them. “I regret I’ll have to say good night to you both now. Ma’am, I hope you have a pleasant rest, and I thank you again for your kindness today. And Tyler, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

When they’d gone he closed the door and returned his attention to the scrolling computer screen. Though the massive influx of messages was far from complete he began to scan the subject lines and summaries to gauge their general tone.

From the old public boxes it was all-caps hate mail mostly, rife with the sort of empty threats, vulgar slurs, and general ugliness that anonymity promotes in the lowest class of mind. Already it was obvious that only a tiny fraction of what came in here would prove worthy to be passed along to the group for reading and response.

Next he opened a Web browser and clicked to one major news site after another to check the headlines.

He couldn’t say what he’d expected to see being reported about Molly and her righteous struggle of good versus evil, but he had to sit for a while to fully comprehend what he actually found there.

Not a solitary word.

After these many grueling months and the sweat and toil they’d spent at the front lines of a battle for the very future of their country, according to the obedient, complicit mainstream media it had all apparently happened only in their fevered minds.

Instead the top-line “news” was filled with the vain antics of celebrities, breathless details of the scandal of the week, sports highlights, puff pieces, PR plants, and the opulent wedding plans of some royal offspring overseas. The rest was rounded out by name-calling and grandstanding from politicians and pundits embroiled in the upcoming national elections.

When any hint of the looming worldwide meltdown got a mention at all, it was there only to be spun toward someone’s cynical agenda: the Fed chairman declaring that his next money-printing spree was all that could save us from ruin, the DHS head fear-mongering in her pitch for even more draconian search-and-seizure tactics to be aimed at ordinary Americans, and the incumbent President leading by deflection, still spouting vague and empty campaign promises while laying all blame at every doorstep but his own.

But the free press was still alive out there. Despite all attempts to tame the fourth estate, the Internet had spawned a million independent sources of real news, from amateurs and professionals alike. The best of them owed no allegiance to anything but the truth. They were doing their job as reporters, in other words. And as one might expect, their work was either being ridiculed by the old guard, attacked with blunt force, or marginalized, buried several levels deep under a never-ending flood of manufactured propaganda and infotainment.

As he gradually found and read these reliable sources he saw a chilling picture emerging—and it was all unfolding just as Molly’s mother had predicted years before.

The lit fuse on $1.5 quadrillion in bogus financial derivatives had now burned down to within a hair’s-breadth of the powder. Spain and Portugal were at the brink of fiscal and social catastrophe. Greece was already on fire, its economy destroyed and teetering like the first domino in a fragile line poised to tear across Europe and then on around the globe. And sure enough, sponsored revolutions igniting from North Africa to western Asia were revealing themselves to be only a foot in the door for the region-spanning rise of a virulent hard-line radical theocracy.

Domestically the stage was set for a plunge into total economic destruction with nobody’s hands on the wheel. The price of oil was skyrocketing again. True inflation was well into double digits, dragging the middle class toward poverty and the poor into violence and desperation. True unemployment would soon blow through 25 percent, and all those Made-in-the-USA jobs weren’t just temporarily lost, they were gone from these shores forever. Almost fifty million Americans, one in seven, were now hand-to-mouth dependent on monthly aid from their bloated and bankrupt federal government, with almost twelve thousand more joining them every day.

The United States had soldiers deployed to seven active fronts overseas, and inside sources revealed many more covert ops under way in hot zones from the Middle East to central and southern Asia and Africa. Old enemies were rising again; an axis of dark alliances seemed to be forming, testing their limits and preparing to surge forth and seize power amid the spreading global unrest. Meanwhile, the undeclared and unspoken war along our own southern border was advancing steadily northward, having already claimed almost fifty thousand lives in just a few short years.

There was more. While on the road he’d heard rumblings of this next bold stroke of fascistic audacity, but he hadn’t really believed it. The latest National Defense Authorization Act had passed both the House and Senate before arriving at the Oval Office on New Year’s Eve. This legislation finally made it official: anyone, anywhere, citizen or not, was now subject to arrest without charges and imprisonment without trial—and according to some, even outright assassination—based solely on being named as a suspect by the Chief Executive.

With typical bald-faced duplicity the President had protested the clause that applied to Americans at home, even as he’d signed this abomination into law. Assuming his objections were honest, of course, they were also meaningless. In recent years Americans had seen this very pattern play out with the Espionage Act, the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Enemy Belligerent Act, and other such open-ended assaults. Once the NDAA was on the books neither his own nor any future administration would be bound by their election-year pledges of restraint.

The writ of habeas corpus had once ensured a fundamental civil right even older than the Magna Carta. Now it was reduced to a king’s option, to be selectively granted or revoked as an increasingly grandiose and militarized bureaucracy saw fit.

A quiet rap on the door behind him nearly startled Hollis out of his chair.

“Come on in,” he said, after he’d taken a long breath to reset his composure.

As the door creaked open the dog poked his head in first to get the lay of the land before leading Molly inside.

“Are you decent?” she asked.

“I’m fully clothed, if that passes.”

Cody brought her over to a chair near the desk, and she sat.

“You left dinner early,” Molly said.

“Yeah, about dinner. You know the old lady at the table?”

“Did you see her then? She came by and read me a Bible verse earlier, kind of as a gift. She said she had something for all of us, including you.”

“I did see her, and she saw me, too. Mercy, she’s got a scowl that would stop a Swiss watch. I haven’t gotten such an evil eye since I backed over my aunt Ruby’s coon hound.”

“What does she look like?”

“With all candor, she looks like Death eatin’ a Ritz cracker.”

“Hollis.”

“Well, you asked me and I told you. Not that it matters much, but you wouldn’t have any idea what a person like that might have to hold against me, would you?”

“No, I said nothing but good things. And she hasn’t come by to give you anything yet?”

“Nope.”

“She’s already visited everyone else.”

“Well, if I’m to judge by her demeanor tonight the only gift she’s cookin’ up for me is a butcher’s knife between the shoulder blades.” The dog had jumped onto Hollis’s bed, and after some pawing and a few rotations he settled down into a nest among the pillows. “Tell him not to get too comfortable, would you? I don’t want to seem unwelcoming, but I’m in the middle of some business here.”

“That’s okay, I’ll go. Before I forget, we’re all going to have a planning meeting in the dining room, tomorrow morning before lunch. I just wanted to tell you that and say good night, and see if you’d gotten any news. They told me that you might be in here on the computer.”

“I only just got started. There’s no news to speak of yet.” He studied her for a moment. “Molly, I need for you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“We’re safe now, at least as safe as we could hope to be. And I need for you to give some serious thought to the idea of all of us staying on here, and lying low for a while.”

“Okay.” She frowned. “I thought that was the idea.”

“No,” Hollis said. “This is what we talked about before, out on the trail, remember? I mean staying here and staying quiet, for a long time. Maybe for the duration, if they’ll have us.”

She sat back. “Oh.”

“I think after all we’ve been through that I know how you feel. It’s not easy for me to come to you and ask you to give it all up, but I’ve got a real bad feeling. Lay it off on me if you want; I’m spent, Molly, and I’m worried I can’t protect you anymore. Just promise me you’ll give it some thought.”

Her expression didn’t change much but he could see the wheels turning. She made a subtle motion with her hand and the dog jumped down to her side as she stood to leave.

“I’ll pray on it,” Molly said.

“Well, amen to that.”

When she’d gone he turned back to his research. Digging deeper now, way out in the far-left and far-right hinterlands of the Internet, he soon saw the beginnings of a rumor that was forming and making the rounds. It seemed to have started very recently and was the subject of much discussion among the basement-dwellers. With every repetition the unsupported facts gained strength and confirmation.

As he tried to swallow, Hollis found that his mouth had gone bone-dry.

The gist of the rumor was simple: like her blood brother Danny Bailey before her, Molly Ross and her Founders’ Keepers had now joined forces with George Pierce and his neo-patriot army to wage open war against the U.S. government.

The battle lines were drawn, first blood had been spilled, and the legions of followers in this new alliance were being called to keep their weapons at hand and prepare in the coming days for a spectacular, devastating commencement of the second American Revolution.