Forgotten Forbidden America | Book 7 | Highway To Hell, page 23
part #7 of Forgotten Forbidden America Series
Hearing the whine of the grinder, he looked across Styx to Remembrance Rock. He didn’t know who was adding the name but he knew the name of the Sin Eater. Demon, one of the Opera. Three hours ago, Demon had been found hanging from a limb with a note pinned to his vest. He apologized for his leaving but just couldn’t consume any more sins, his limit was reached.
Like the others, Demon was added to the list of fallen and was looked at in honor. Instead of putting others at risk, Demon had taken his own life so he wouldn’t endanger those who depended on him. Reaper had suggested to the captains that those feeling that way could be left at Hades, but all the captains went against him. Everyone was a Sin Eater, and nothing but Sin Eaters were here. At any time, one could be called on to consume and there couldn’t be any doubt from that Sin Eater. With nearly three hundred and fifty Sin Eaters now, nearly a hundred were always at Hades when all seven sections were out.
Of course Reaper agreed, but it had felt good to hear it from the captains.
Phantom was working on his final selections to join the Opera and only to himself would Reaper ever admit, he wasn’t good enough to be in the Opera. Havoc had voiced his opinion because Nightmare was still in the running, and Nightmare had been Phantom’s wife in the past life. Only the captains and sisters knew and Reaper had kept his eye on them. Watching them, Phantom and Nightmare acted like two Sin Eaters. When they talked, it wasn’t like they even knew each other.
One thing Reaper pointed out, Nightmare was fucking good at sneaking around and that’s why Phantom had allowed her in the final selections. Havoc was certain they were having sex and Reaper didn’t give a shit, as long as masks were on and it was consensual. On Nightmare and Phantom, Reaper really doubted they were having sex but there were others he knew of and others he suspected, but they followed the rules. They were Sin Eaters but they were also human, and that was one part of humanity Reaper wasn’t going to drive out of the Sin Eaters because he was certain that would remain after the mask was taken off.
All captains had certain hang-ups. Titan came unglued when they were setting up Hades and the bathroom. Nobody got privacy because there were only Sin Eaters and anyone trying to be modest, Reaper ran for his stick. As Titan brought up in every meeting for a week, ‘some of those here have been raped so we need to lighten up on that, men and women raped’. Then Reaper would point out, ‘The Sin Eater has never been raped because the Sin Eater was born only when the mask went on. The old self may have been raped, but not the Sin Eater and there are only Sin Eaters here’.
The reason Havoc was worried about the sex was offspring. He didn’t want a Sin Eater to become pregnant because that was a liability they didn’t need. If a Sin Eater were to have offspring, then it would be detrimental to the female because the Sin Eater had it, not the person. On that, Reaper could agree but a month after putting the mask on, women stopped having cycles because of the brutal training. Not to mention the shit WW and Ivy were pumping into them. Each Sin Eater concoction was different and though she’d never said it, Reaper was certain Ivy was adding something to Sin Eaters who were female to make sure there were no offspring while the mask was on.
Most Sin Eaters were scared of the sisters, others were unnerved by WW because he could make chemicals like it was magic. Reaper, he was scared of Ivy. He was certain if he told Ivy he wanted to give Gifford something to make only his toenails fall off, Ivy would grab a flower, bit of fungus and a mushroom, and make it happen.
There were no mirrors near Hades, but Reaper couldn’t help but look at his body when he showered. Never could he remember his body having muscles like he had now. He could bench four hundred pounds and run a mile in under four minutes, with his gear on. But even Reaper knew, this enhancement would have to be paid for later. The human body wasn’t designed to live with this kind of constant punishment and stress.
Just thinking about ‘stress’, he lifted his arm to see it was getting close to 0200, judgement time. Even if one setup was spotted now, there wasn’t anything the feds could do. Opening the laptop, he powered it on. The screen was divided into six sections, each in a different area of the country from the view of a traffic or security camera. On each section was a water tower.
Closing the laptop, “I’m not watching,” Reaper declared, and felt his heartrate increase. “Back off, Nelson,” he said, fighting the anxiety from increasing. “Nothing can be changed even if some are discovered now and this sin needed to be consumed.”
The door to Tartarus opened up and the sisters stepped out. “Aren’t you going to watch?” Misery asked.
“I have my laptop,” Reaper countered and Pain just shook her head.
“We’ve been working on this sin for nearly a year. Come and watch it on the big screens.”
The sisters just stared and waited on Reaper as he looked out over Styx. Both knew Reaper was nervous, and they also knew he didn’t want others to know it. He was Reaper and Reaper trusted his Sin Eaters’ commitment and skill, but this sin was spread out with thousands of moving parts.
“Are you coming?” Misery finally blurted out, but it was really, ‘get your ass inside, if it doesn’t work then so be it’.
Not even in the mood to grab a cheese packet, Reaper sighed and headed toward Tartarus. “This is going to be so cool,” Pain giggled as Reaper walked past her.
“I damn sure hope so,” Reaper mumbled walking inside. All the other captains were inside staring at screens on their desks and monitors on the wall. Heading for his desk, Reaper just dropped into his chair and set the laptop on the desk.
“Email just got sent to Gifford,” Death called out rather cheerfully.
Reaching up, Reaper tapped his computer to turn on one of the fed broadcast stations. In his mind, he could almost picture Gifford getting woken up by an aide because of the Sin Eater email. Once it was opened, it just said, ‘Turn on TV’.
“Gifford read the email,” War chuckled and Reaper knew Gifford was turning on a TV as he called Marshall.
Finally coming to terms with the stress, “Even if it doesn’t all work, they’ll know fear,” Reaper mumbled. “Granted, if it doesn’t all work they’ll think we’re incompetent and that’s worse than anything because we lose the fear.”
The fed program playing on his computer blinked and Reaper was looking at an image of himself that started to speak. “Hello, Samuel,” the screen sang out. “Tis the season and the Sin Eaters have gotten you and those that follow you a present. I hope you like our ‘Water Well’ as much as you wanted to like yours. I must say, I’m disappointed Marshall isn’t playing the game anymore because I left clues just to see if any of you had a brain. Too bad. I’m sure he could’ve given you warning, but decided to try to find his little dick. To the federal states from the Sin Eaters, Merry Christmas and wait till you see what comes for the New Year,” Reaper heard himself on the screen and then the screen went blank for a second before returning back to another reality show run by the feds.
“Damn, that was cold,” Havoc chuckled, looking at a line of cheap clocks on his desk. All were identical and were in every event they had set up for ‘Water Well’. The clocks were two-inch square and half-an-inch thick. They were just cheap alarm clocks that were made by the thousands to be given away as promotional items for advertisement, but they had an alarm function and that’s what they’d needed. Havoc had a line set up on his desk to see how close they stayed synced. There were more outside set up for the same reason and they had found out the cheap clocks didn’t stay synchronized very well, with some running twenty minutes behind those inside, but they were working and that’s all Havoc cared about.
Five minutes before 0200, everyone’s’ computer beeped as Oracle sent a message, ‘First explosion off in Maine’. “Shit,” Conquest spat. “I would rather them go late than early.”
“The clocks cost ten cents each so as long as they work, I don’t care,” Famine said, then let out a cheer as one of the divided screens on his computer showed an explosion cutting through one of the legs of the water tower. Over a minute later, the opposite leg charge went off cutting another leg, then another went off. With only three legs supporting, the tower started leaning and everyone could imagine the loud groan of steel as the stress of gravity worked to bring the steel tower down. When the last charge went off, the tower dropped hard and fast, crushing a house a hundred feet away. The holding tank hit and ruptured, sending half a million gallons into the cold night running down the streets. Almost unnoticed, the small pump house beside the tower blew apart.
Now on the screens more charges were going off, but in haphazard times. Some towers fell with only two legs cut and the other charges went off after the tower was on the ground. Everyone watched as one tower dropped after one cutting charge took out a single leg.
From Maine to Florida across to Illinois to Mississippi, water towers started falling. Along with the pump houses, pumping stations and over a hundred water plants were hit. The explosions weren’t big and many of the buildings remained intact, but the motors and pumps inside were destroyed.
Even though all the charges had been set for 0200 on the fourteenth, very few went off at exactly the same time. At 0230, as the feds were just realizing what had happened and the towers had stopped falling, more explosions started sounding off in the federal states.
Thousands of more explosions started rocking substation electrical yards all over the fed. These charges were small but when they blew apart the huge transformers, great balls of plasma were released and other transformers that weren’t even rigged to explode detonated.
On the main screen in Tartarus was a live satellite image of the federal states. There weren’t as many lights as before the collapse, but it was still illuminated. Because the feds had pulled people into the main cities, it had made this very easy for the Sin Eaters to hurt.
The screen showed large sections of the fed going dark as substations were taken out all over the occupied zone. Like the water towers, they didn’t all go off together but they went off. Other explosions also were going off but neither the Sin Eaters nor the feds could see them, but the feds would soon feel the implications of these explosions. Less than a hundred explosions cut gas pipelines that fed cities, and all heat stopped as the lights went out and the water stopped.
By 0302 it was over, and on the main screen there was only one area of light in the fed, D.C. After killing the middle management and helping the feds Reaper was a bit worried to do anything there again, in case he helped the feds even more.
When Reaper stood up, he felt relief on so many levels it was hard to imagine. Seeing Reaper stand, the others stopped cheering and stood up at their desks. “Sin consumed,” they all said with Reaper. Once again, the Sin Eaters had impacted the theater of war.
Chapter Sixteen
I have shit to do, so give me some warning!
Uncharacteristically, Colonel Marshal was already in the White House West Wing conference room before anyone else. Unlike other meetings, this one was scheduled at 2100 instead of during the day. Since he had been moving nonstop, Marshall was taking the time to get caught up on happenings other than the Sin Eaters. It had been ten days since Reaper had launched his own ‘Water Well’, and Marshall was still trying to comprehend the commitment and training to pull that off and still maintain the Sin Eater attacks.
For the past ten days he had flown to many sites, finding out how in the hell the Sin Eaters had fucked the feds in the ass so hard. Marshall’s appearance spoke volumes because he was filthy and had three days of stubble on his face, something he never reported to the White House with. As always, Bolton was near, sitting along the wall after politely refusing to sit at the ‘grown-ups table’ until the meeting started. Bolton was typing away on his laptop and reviewing field notes.
Pushing the Sin Eaters from his mind because he was going to report on them, Marshall scanned over intelligence reports, briefings, security, troop placement, and many other things that someone of his rank shouldn’t even be reading, much less be responsible for. But that was why Marshall was who he was, not just a creature of the swamp, a controller of the swamp.
Scanning a report, Marshall couldn’t help but grunt. The royal family and all high-level politicians had vacated England. Well, those who could get away because it seemed the revolting citizens had captured a few. The royal family had tried to use Crown Law and force Australia to allow them entry to which the Aussies politely replied, ‘Fuck Off’. The Australian Parliament and Prime Minister informed the royal family and all politicians that any plane seen advancing toward the country would be shot down and no rescue efforts would be made. It seemed no one even entertained the idea of flying across the pond to Canada, so they all dispersed among the countries of Europe.
As of last week, the shooting war in England had ended and the people were banding together, expecting Europe to invade any day. On that, Marshall couldn’t help but grin. The EU wouldn’t do anything like that until America was dealt with. Scotland, Ireland, and England had formed into a loose alliance similar to the Republic states. Each would rule how they wanted, but would be held to a declaration of rights. Because all had agreed to pass a law that every person could own weapons for the purpose of self-defense, the Republic was sending aid, lots of aid. This aid was going to make taking the isles rather costly for the EU when the time came but Marshall knew even if everything went well, the EU wouldn’t be able to mount an assault for five years after the war was wrapped up here in America.
Since the Chinese forces in the east had been granted safe passage across the pond and ordered home, they’d loaded up on transports and headed home with the last pulling out this week. On the West Coast and Hawaii, the Republic had refused to allow the Chinese to take heavy weapons. In the east, it was the feds and UN. They wouldn’t let China take home equipment that they sorely needed here. About to put the report down, Marshall paused reading eighty percent of the transports from the West Coast and Hawaii had been sunk.
They were granted safe passage by the Republic, but it seemed Japan and the Philippines hadn’t signed on to that. And since China had sunk some of their ships, they returned the favor. China protested to the Republic, but Brandy sent word the agreement only meant the Republic Navy wouldn’t engage unless fired upon. Brandy did say if China didn’t like that, she could order the Navy to start hostilities again and China had dropped all protest. Then Brandy informed China to approach Japan and Philippines for a ceasefire. As of now, talks were underway and there was information.
China had just ended the clash with India and was now in a state of near civil war at home, so the government was doing anything to stop fighting elsewhere to keep assets at home.
Filing that information away, Marshall picked up a report on supplies and couldn’t help but be impressed. Hearst had come through on the F-16 fighters, but also two hundred ground attack planes. What really impressed Marshall, Hearst had gotten sixty Su-57s, Russia’s sixth generation fighter. There were some already here but compared to the Raptor, the Su-57 was just a target. But with the Republic having so few Raptors now, the Su-57 was dangerous to other planes. It was the fact Russia had refused to send any more, wanting to keep them close because of China mainly, not to mention India and the EU, Marshall knew the only way those had been sent over was the money men had bought them. Four billion dollars from the private money men who really ran the world was paid out to send the Su-57s over. Even though he didn’t have the latest cost, Marshall was sure the other five hundred planes together cost what those sixty had.
Supplies were coming in from the Caribbean and Bermuda but losses were more than Marshall suspected, with less than half making it through. Scanning the report, Marshall was surprised the Republic hadn’t widened their war and just cut off the Caribbean. Then he saw many islands in the Caribbean had formidable air defenses and long-range anti-ship missiles. Marshall was surprised the respective islands even allowed the risk of irritating the Republic, but knew the money men were behind that as well.
Just reading about the supplies coming in, Marshall was impressed and blown away because the money men had to be throwing hundreds of billions into just supplies. Food was getting in but since November, the fed citizens were once again on starvation rations but this was tightly controlled by all. So far, there hadn’t even been Republic reports on the food shortage in the fed states. That was good because many in the fed watched Republic TV, even though it was against the law. Just like it was against the law to visit sympathetic Republic websites, but many still did. Well, they used to, Marshall corrected because since the Sin Eater attack, very few had power to watch TV or turn on a computer.
Pushing that thought away because he would report on it, Marshall grabbed the next report and just shook his head. Indonesia had managed to land troops on Australia in the Northern Territory near Goulburn Island about a hundred and fifty miles east of Darwin, but were bottled up on the coast and the Aussies seemed content to just sit there and starve them out, sinking ships that tried to resupply them. Another invasion force that was heading for Seisia in far North Queensland had been sunk. Two million troops on four hundred transports and five hundred supply ships were all sunk one hundred miles off the north coast.
Both operations were on the scale of Normandy, and Marshall just couldn’t figure out why Indonesia had tried to pull off two at the same time. Just the fact Australia had sunk an entire invasion force should’ve told Indonesia to back off, but they’d continued and were still trying to break out of their beachhead. Reading the report, Marshall knew the Republic had lent a hand because the Aussies didn’t have that many subs, and over five hundred ships were being reported sunk by submarines. The rest were sunk by land-based aircraft.
Shaking his head, Marshall couldn’t believe Indonesia would even try to invade one, much less two invasion forces at the same time since they were in a stalemate in Mexico. But, Marshall reasoned, Mexico didn’t need supplies because they had factories in Mexico to supply that war.
