The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 (26 page)

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THE QUEST,

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RED Book 1:

The Adventure Begins

    The one evil that Debbie could not conquer was the vile cancer that was slowly consuming her mother's body.

     Rita was in her last weeks when Debbie knelt at her bedside.

     "Daddy taught me how to fight. I kicked a boy's ass."

     Rita was aghast.

     "Oh, my goodness! That's not the proper way for a young girl to behave. Please tell your father to come and see me immediately."

     Debbie fetched her father, disappointed but not surprised that her mother didn't approve.

     "Butch, you're teaching our daughter to beat up boys? What kind of life will she live if boys are afraid to court her for fear of saying or doing something wrong and being beaten for it?"

     "I'm not teaching her to beat up boys. I'm teaching her first to be a peacekeeper. To try to reason with the unreasonable. To apply logic to the illogical. To try to talk her way out of a difficult situation.

     "But you and I both know that sometimes bullies, drunks and thugs can't be dealt with in civil terms. Sometimes she'll have no choice but to defend herself or those she loves.

     "And in those cases, you're darn right I want her to be able to kick a boy's butt. I want her to exhaust all other more peaceful means, but when she can see it's going to get violent, I want her to hit first, hit hard, and hit often. It's like that old Chinese proverb...
He who hits first stands the longest
."

     Rita was skeptical.

     "I don't believe I've ever heard such a proverb."

     "Okay," he confessed. "I made it up. But you have to admit it's pretty clever, don't you think?"

     Rita didn't think so.

     Butch turned to Debbie, who thought it was indeed quite clever, and who decisively nodded her head in agreement.

     "Oh, Butch, I'm just afraid for her. What if she starts something she can't finish?"

     Butch turned to Debbie and asked her, "Honey, what did Daddy tell you about losing fights?"

     "You told me that there are no guarantees that I'll win every time I have to use my fists. And that's why I should only hit someone as a last resort. And you told me that even if I don't win a fight, that I'll chase away a bully. Because bullies pick on people they don't think will fight back. And when they do, the bullies stop picking on them. They will find someone else, someone weaker, to bully."

     "And what else, honey?"

     "You told me that black eyes build character."

     Butch panicked.

     "No, not that. That was supposed to be just between us. What else did I tell you to tell your mom if she ever had any concerns with you defending yourself?"

     "Oh, yeah. You said that even though I may not win every fight, I'll finish each one a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser, and with one less bully."

     Rita still wasn't convinced. In principle, she agreed with Butch's attempts to raise Debbie as a strong girl, who didn't necessarily need a man to rescue her when the going got tough.

     But Rita was raised in another era, with a different set of social norms.

     "I'm just concerned that she'll never be able to find a boy," she explained. "When I was young, boys went out with girls who wore dresses and played with dolls. Not tomboys who climbed trees and skinned rabbits."

     "Times have changed, Rita. The men who are intimidated by a strong woman aren't worth having. A real God-fearing, salt-of-the-earth man now sees a woman as an equal. And he isn't concerned if she's capable of defending herself. In fact, I want her to have a husband who's proud of her for being strong."

     Debbie was just a bit confused. She had a girly side too, and cherished her time playing dolls and dress-up with her friends.

     "But Mom, can't I have both? Can't I be a girl when I play with my girlfriends and still be able to defend them when one of us is bullied?"

     And that, in a nutshell, summed up Debbie's outlook on life.

     She'd grow up to be a caring and nurturing woman. A loving wife and mother.

     But she'd also relish the role of protector when she needed to be. And any man who couldn't accept her on those terms wouldn't make it in her world.

     But that was many years away.

     Here, and now, she needed her mother's blessing.

     Rita asked, "What happened to the boy you fought?"

     Debbie smiled.

     "He lost a tooth and walked funny for the rest of the day."

     "No, honey. That's not what I meant. Did he also get punished? Do you think he'll learn a lesson from this?"

     "I know for a fact he has, mom. He called me last night to apologize. He admitted that his mom made him call, but he really sounded like he meant he was sorry. He said his friends were making fun of him for getting beaten up by a girl."

     "What did you tell him?"

     "I accepted his apology. And I told him that dynamite and hand grenades both come in small packages and he should never assume a smaller person can't fight back. I also told him that real friends don't make fun of each other, and that maybe he should find some new friends who accepted him as he was. A great big jerk."

     Butch stifled a laugh.

     "I told him that if he'd quit picking on Roy and the other kids that Roy and I would be his friends.

     "He never said yes or no to that, but he got quiet. Maybe he's thinking about it."

     Rita smiled and felt a rush of pride.

     "Maybe I've misjudged you, sweetheart. I think you handled a difficult situation perfectly. I hope he can change his ways and the three of you can be friends."

     "Yeah, maybe. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other. But I'll be his friend if he behaves himself."

     She changed the subject.

     "Samantha called. She said the whole school is talking about it. She said I have street cred now."

     Her mother asked, "What on earth is street cred?"

     "Gosh, Mom, I don't know. I was goin’ to ask you guys."

     Debbie and Rita both looked at Butch.

     He smiled.

     "It means respect. Street credentials mean that you've earned your right to walk the streets. You've proved yourself. You're not someone to be messed with."

     Rita said, "Oh, my. I'm not sure I want my daughter to have such a reputation."

     Debbie summed it up a different way: "Cool!"

Please enjoy this preview of

REBELLION Book 1:

The Allegiance Device

     There’s a certain element in our society that believes the federal government is using FEMA death camps, mind altering drugs, and tracking implants to control us all.

     These people are generally ridiculed and scorned.

     But what if they’re right?

     Megan and Jason are a young couple with a small child, enjoying a typical American life in an average suburb. There’s nothing special about them at all.

     And then they notice that people around them are mysteriously disappearing.

     Some of them are never seen again. Some of them come back, but there’s something oddly different about them.

     Megan is a newspaper reporter, and starts investigating. Until, that is, she speaks to the wrong people and asks too many questions.

     Then she and her family are no longer just typical Americans. They are now targets of the United States government.

Chapter 1:

     “Honey, come here a minute. I want to show you this.”

     Jason slipped his mug out of the Keurig and dumped a teaspoon of sugar into it. He’d need an extra boost to get himself started this morning.

     “Be there in two shakes. Do you want coffee?”

     She yelled back, “No thanks! I have some already.”

     He stirred his cup and walked to the small office they shared on the back of the house. He walked up behind her and kissed her on the top of her head.

     “Well, thanks for making me some too.”

     “Hey, I never know how to make your coffee. You fix it different every day. There’s something weird and icky about a man who can’t decide how to drink his coffee. Besides, you were in the shower.”

     “
Icky
? People still say
icky
?”

     “I do. And what did you mean when you said ‘two shakes,’ by the way? Mi no comprende your weird language.”

     “Oh, so now I’m weird and icky. On the same day. I feel so honored.”

     “Seriously. I’ve heard you say that before. But I don’t know what it means.”

     “It’s a shortened version of something my grandmother used to say. ‘Two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ It means it won’t take long. Or something. When I say that it means the same as just a second.”

     “How bizarre. So should I assume it doesn’t take very long for a lamb to shake its tail twice?”

     “That would be my assumption, although I don’t spend a lot of time following lambs around and watching their butts. I’d much rather watch yours.”

     “Oh, you silver tongued devil, you…”

     “Another bizarre saying.”

     “Yes, and another I heard from you. Did you get that one from your grandmother too?”

     “Well, as a matter of fact…”

     “I knew it. No wonder you’re nuts. It runs in your family.”

     “Yeah, yeah… what was it you wanted to show me?”

     She called up a friend’s profile on Facebook.

     “Remember Linda, and her husband John?”

     “The black helicopter people. Yeah, they’re the ones I said I want to avoid forever, after that last Christmas party we went to. He bent my ear for half an hour about how FEMA was coming after all of us. I couldn’t break away from him and dump him on anyone else because everyone else already knew to avoid him.”

     Megan giggled.

     “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I should have warned you about him ahead of time.”

     “So what about them?”

     “Linda… she’s perfectly sane, by the way, hasn’t been on Facebook in almost two weeks now. The last thing she posted was twelve days ago.”

     “Maybe she’s too busy having her husband committed. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that process, you know.”

     “And speaking of John, he’s not on my friend list, but I looked up his profile. His last posting was the same day hers was.”

     Jason conjured up a look of terror, and the theme to
The Twilight Zone
.

    
“Doo doo doo doo… doo doo doo doo…”

     Then, in the falsetto voice of a scared little girl, “Oh, my goodness. What does it all mean?”

     “Please don’t make fun of me, baby. I’m serious. They just disappeared.”

     “They probably just went to the
Star Trek
convention and forgot to post it. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

     “That’s just it, baby. It’s not just them. I’ve had several other friends who have just disappeared from Facebook in the last couple of weeks. And the Delgado family, four doors down?”

     Jason gave her a blank look.

     “You know. Ethan’s little friend Will.”

     The light came on.

     “Oh, yeah. What about them?”

     “I walked Ethan over there a couple of days ago to see if Will wanted to come over and play. And they were gone. The neighbor said he had to close their front door and lock it because they vanished. Left their door wide open, their cars in the driveway, and food on the table, like they were ready to sit down for dinner.

     “And that same neighbor told me there were a couple of people he worked with that just stopped coming to work and nobody knows where they went.”

     “They probably went to the same convention. Listen, people take breaks from the internet all the time. And sometimes people leave their homes for short periods of time too, at the spur of the moment. Maybe there was a family emergency and they rushed out to attend to it.”

     “Rushed out so fast they forgot to close their front door?”

     “Hey, it could happen.”

     He wrapped his arms around her.