The Cause by Roderick Vincent

Author:Roderick Vincent [Vincent, Roderick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Technological, General
ISBN: 1782797637
Google: aR_tBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00OMCD5F4
Publisher: Roundfire Books
Published: 2014-11-28T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

“The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.”

-Thomas Paine

Seee and I moved into the forest, entering the same trap door I crawled out of the day I was released from The Hole. Seee closed the hatch, smothering the light from above. The familiar gritty concrete scraped underfoot, and the days in darkness rushed back to me. Where was that naive prisoner now?

Moving in the opposite direction of my old cell, we came to a dead end after about twenty yards. A blip of red light flashed from Seee, and the massive concrete wall opened, sliding on squeaky wheels rolling on a track. Seee produced two headlamps and offered one to me.

“Welcome to The Anthill,” he said at the entrance. “There’s a ladder here.” He waved his headlamp at the metal rungs of a ladder at the foot of the opening. “One thing you have to understand is that knowledge is like a bridge. You only allow someone to cross if it’s absolutely necessary. This requires the strictest discipline, as inevitably human desire urges us to share with people we believe we can trust. But what is even more difficult is sometimes it becomes inevitable that one must share secrets with dubious persons out of pure necessity.”

I smiled slightly at his words. “And am I one of those dubious persons?”

“Most certainly.”

“What is down here?” I asked, but he simply told me in Yoncalla I would have to wait and see. Over the ledge, I peered down with my headlamp. No end to the darkness below, and I felt like Lazarus again, heading in the wrong direction. It appeared to be an old, dried-out well. The walls in front of me were pocked and blackened. “Why are the walls this way?” I asked.

“We have practiced engaging the enemy should they come.”

We climbed down. No end to the rungs in the iron ladder we descended. The air was stagnant, a dank smell of moss and decay.

After a long silence, I finally asked a question still burning throughout the camp. “Tell me, who were those guerillas that stormed the camp? What was their purpose?”

“It was a turf war,” Seee said. “But it had nothing to do with land. When we get below, it should help answer the question.”

The sounds of hands and feet stepping and sliding on the ladder echoed throughout the chamber. As we climbed downward into the mouth of some beast, the air smelled as foul as the imagined breath. Seee seemed content to descend in silence, but my agitation grew. “How do you think you can win?” I asked. “The U.S. government is a giant much bigger than you. What is your plan to fight it?”

“A giant’s size perturbs his flexibility,” Seee said.

“The giant is like an octopus arm. You cut off one tentacle, and it simply grows back.”

“When a giant falls, expect the ground to shake as he gets up to chase you, not yet realizing he is already dead.”

“I can think of nothing that could kill the giant,” I said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.