Dominatus (14 page)

“But it won’t be enough.  There’s no way a hundred people, there’s no way you can win this thing.  Not against the New United Nations.”

Mac gave that thin smile of his again, the deep lines around his eyes flaring out across his cheeks.

“I’ve already won Reese. That’s the part of me, the part of Dominatus you still don’t get.  I was sent to prison for life.  Your dad got me out, and I was given a chance up here to live as a free man.  To run my own business, to talk openly and honestly with other people, to watch the seasons change.  To hunt and fish, to know joy and pain and happiness and regret, all of it without the hand of the mandates, without the New United Nations pressing down on me every moment of every day.

“How has life been for you in the Lower 48?  How many check points did you have to report to as you made your way up here?  How many times have you been detained and questioned over the years without anymore reason than that is what the authority now allows?  How many churches did you see closed down?  How many new end-of-life facilities have been built where the elderly are shoved into beds by the thousands and then assessed by N.U.N. healthcare administrators and promptly given medication that terminates their life within days of their being placed there?  That’s how your father went, right?  The government no longer allows people to die at home – the old and sick are forcibly placed into those end of life facilities and snuffed out thousands upon thousand every day.  The death panels we were warned about that have existed for almost twenty years?  All part of that healthcare bill that was passed in 2010, and then amended to include the population control mandates.

“That’s how you have had to live for most your life Reese.  Me?  I’ve lived up here away from all of that.  I feel sorry for you. You’re just now getting a chance to experience what America, what all of America used to be like.”

I sat silently, contemplating Mac’s words. He was right.  Most of my life had lived under the oppression of the mandates, of a police state where nearly every action was dictated by some governmental authority.  Where I traveled, what jobs were offered, the information that was allowed to be obtained, all of it controlled by the massive central authority of the New United Nations. Nearly since birth this authority attempted to control what and how I was to think.  If not for the dedication of my father to instill the ability to see through the haze of thought-controlled disinformation, I might very well be among the hundreds of millions in the United States currently living that life of a near mindless existence. 

“You know something Reese, today…when me and that Hess were squaring off?”

Mac’s question cut through my thoughts, bringing me back to the present

“What?”

“That’s the most alive I’ve felt in a very long time.  I forgot how much I enjoyed that kind of thing, the thrill of battle.  And Hess, I could sense he was feeling the same thing.  He misses it too.  I’m guessing he spends most his time cooped up behind some desk.  Today he got to draw a bit of blood, and taste a bit of his own.  Him and me…we ain’t so different Reese.  Not sure I like to admit that, but it’s true.  My body…it’s howling at me right now.  Gonna be sore as hell this time tomorrow, but man, I looked over at him, saw the kill in those eyes of his…knew he was seeing the same thing in mine.  That rush, the adrenaline – I do miss it.  Still comin’ down from it.  Back in the day, what I did, I don’t want to brag about that kind of thing but, I was good at it.  And killing, taking human life - that was a part of it.  And that scares me just a bit, how easy I could fall back into old habits.  Wanting a mission.  Wanting a chance to do that again.  The same way Hess wants it.”

“Mac, Hess is a killer.  He works for the New United Nations.  He’s wiped out innocent people, defenseless people, people whose only crime was their refusal to go along with every one of the mandates.  People killed for giving recognition to the old American flag.  That’s nothing like you…what you did was a different time.  Different government.  We were the good guys.  You went after the bad guys.”

Mac’s eyebrows raised, and his head shook slowly.

“Reese, the people I worked for, the government, killed my team.  Tried to put me away for life.  Back then, if they had left me alone, maybe I’d have kept right on working for them.  I enjoyed it.  That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.  What happened today between Hess and me, you know it took every bit of self control I had not to finish him off?  How much a part of me wanted to snap his neck, rip out his throat, thumb his damn eyeballs into the back of his head?  There was a second or two, it could have gone that way.  So much of me wanted to do it…to kill him.  Decades of training, of experience, it all came rushing back to me out there today.  And man.., did it feel good.  The only thing that stopped me, and it pisses me off to admit it, the only thing that stopped me was I was so damn tired.  Could hardly breath.  Seventy-three years old ain’t no picnic.  This getting older, it ain’t for cowards.”

“Seventy-three or not Mac, I watched you kick the shit out of a much younger man who I know thought he was going to do the same to you.  Nothing less than impressive about that.  Thirty or forty years ago, you must have been one of the most dangerous human beings on the planet.”

Mac snorted, his hand running across the close cropped hair of his scalp.

“My team, they had a name for me.  My code name was Abaddon.  From the Bible. It means the destroyer.  We were all good – maybe the best.  Me though, when there was killing to be done, they deferred to me.  That was my gift.  Gun, bomb, or by hand, it’s what I did best.”

Mac held his hands over the table, turning his palms so they faced upward.

“Sometimes I try to remember how many lives I took – their faces.  Some I do, but so many of them I can’t.  They just start to drift into the rest…faceless…nameless…”

“You might have been a destroyer before, Mac, but now, here in Dominatus, you’re the protector.  Maybe that’s your redemption?”

“Redemption?  For me?  Don’t know about that, better be a mighty forgiving God then.  Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’m shit out of luck.”

The sound of an approaching snow machine’s grumble made its way into Freedom Tavern – likely Dublin on her way to pick me up.

“Tell me something, Mac, if August Hess walked through that door right now with a handful of his own men and demanded every person in Dominatus be rounded up and sent to a re-education facility, what would you do?”

Mac answered without hesitation.

“I’d kill him.  All of them.”

“And why is that, Mac?”

This time Mac paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he considered the question.

“It’s what I know how to do.”

I shook my head.

“No, that’s not it.  Why would you take on those odds?  Why take on Hess and his men?  What would really motivate you to risk your life doing that?”

Again Mac hesitated, his eyes looking through one of the small windows to the outside.

“This is my home.  I care about these people.  They’re my family.  Been my family, some of them I’ve known for twenty years.  I feel…Dominatus gave me a life. It’s my duty to try and protect them.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Exactly, Mac.  You’re not following orders.  You’re not fighting because it’s what you’re good at, or what you know how to do.  It’s why you were able to go up against Hess today – you’re fighting for your home.  Your way of life.  Your family.  You’re doing it because it’s your duty.  Maybe for the first time in your life – you know in your heart you’re doing it for the right reasons, and that makes you a far tougher and more dangerous soldier than you ever were before.”

Mac stared at me, his face betraying almost no emotion before his voice finally broke the silence.

“You really are your father’s son.  Thank you for your words, Reese – I mean that.  Thank you.”

The sound of Dublin’s snow machine was just outside Freedom Tavern.

XI.

As I sat upon the back of her snow machine, Dublin indicated she wanted to show me the place where she spent most of her time – the large greenhouse facility that sat approximately a hundred yards from the Dominatus operations center I had visited earlier.  A light mist-like rain fell down on us as Dublin expertly operated the snow machine over the small hills leading to the greenhouse.  Within a few minutes we had arrived there.

Like the operations center, it was a long single story building, though unlike the operations center, the greenhouse roof was covered almost completely in solar paneling.  Near the entrance a small pump house could be heard running – I assumed powered by the energy being harnessed by the large solar panels.  Dublin noted my attention to the pump house and stopped to explain how it worked.

“We have two generators in there.  The main one is run off of a battery bank charged by the roof panels.  A back-up coal-powered generator will kick on if needed, though that only happens maybe once or twice a week during the winter months.  A line runs directly below the pump house about forty or so feet where it hits the natural aquifer that is below us.  That’s where we get our water supply for Dominatus.  Pure, clean water.  No filtering needed.”

Dublin motioned to the entrance, a wide smile breaking out across her face.

“Wanna see inside?”

“Absolutely.”

As the door opened, I was greeted with the smell of freshly worked earth and felt the warmer temperatures of the greenhouse’s interior.  Various growing beds were set up, from vegetables of all kinds, to a row of raspberries and even a corner set up like a small indoor apple orchard.  Dublin pointed proudly to what appeared to be some kind of small overhead heating or watering unit that hung from the center of the room. 

“That was my design.  It runs directly off the solar panels.  We store the heat generated by the panels and cycle tubes of water through it to warm the air.  A basic radiant system that uses very little energy.  Keeps this place above 50 degrees even when it’s well below freezing outside, so allows us to grow year-round.  And this one building…this greenhouse, can feed everyone in and around Dominatus.  This is where I come almost every day.  I spend hours out here.  From seed to harvest, I love planting.  I love helping things to grow and then sharing the harvest with others.”

We walked a path running down the center of the greenhouse, as Dublin proudly pointed to various areas where this one crop had just been seeded, or another crop was almost ready to be harvested.  Each plant showed the great time and care Dublin had provided.

“Dublin, this is amazing.  I really mean that.  You did all this?”

“Oh no, I’ve had help, but most of what is grown in here now, yeah…I just love doing it.  There’s something very relaxing about it.”

Looking around, I shook my head in amazement.

“Just…wow.  Gardening isn’t my thing, but this is really impressive.”

Dublin took a deeply colored green bean from a row that ran up a large trellis, and snapped it in two, handing me one of the halves.  As we happily chewed our half, the sharp crunch of the bean’s exterior echoed in our mouths.

“So what do you think?”

I swallowed the remaining bean and smiled down at Dublin.

“That’s the best bean I’ve ever had, hands down, by far.”

Dublin returned my smile, unable to hide the pride she felt in the compliment.

“Well thank you, good sir, I do aim to please.”

An uncomfortable pause made its presence known, and I turned away to look back toward the entrance.

“So, where to from here?”

Dublin walked past me, answering my question as she did so.

“Off to the cabin.  My grandfather wants to talk to you before dinner, and his talks can take a while so we better get going.”

The Old Man’s cabin sat amidst tall evergreens – a simple structure that would have looked appropriate in the location a hundred years earlier.  Its simplicity surprised me given the legendary wealth of the man who had called it his home for over twenty years.  The warm glow of light coming through a small window and the faint trace of smoke from a fire emanated from a small chimney pipe.  Another snow machine sat parked outside the cabin’s hand made door.

Dublin tilted her head toward the vehicle.

“That’s Doc Miller.  Grandfather was very tired by the time I got him back home today.  His breathing is a bit off, so Doc stopped by to check in on him.”

I followed Dublin through the door, my winter clothed body protesting at how warm the cabin’s interior was as I also detected the rich aroma of cigar smoke.

“Sorry about the temperature.  If I don’t keep it warm in here it gets very uncomfortable for him.  You’ll want to take off that jacket.”

As I handed over my jacket I was already forgetting about the warmth of the room.  My eyes took in the numerous photos and mementos of a life very long lived, showing Alexander Meyer as a much younger man shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan in a room I was certain to be the Oval Office of the White House – the former residence of American presidents before the New United Nations designated it as a public museum shortly after eliminating the position of President in 2024 – two years after Barack Obama had been declared Great Consulate.