Black Autumn Travelers Read online

  This Texas roadside conflict quickly ramped into a defining moment for both men—a chance to live out their most passionate warrior fantasies. One of the men was an ardent, though preposterously heavy fighter for the American way. The other man was a sincere, liberally-educated East Coast naturalist and law enforcement officer. Both men had firearms within easy reach, and the psychological power of the guns emanated from the weapons like a magic spell. Conflict was in the air.

  “Mr. Chittendon, step out of the vehicle,” Jeremy ordered.

  The words gushing from Morris’ mouth were so tightly wrapped in righteous indignation and years of forethought and intensity, that they came out close to gibberish.

  “My rights as a sovereign citizen of the state of Texas, give me no leave to honor your authori-tay in this, the county of Hardin… Constitutional State of Texas. You have no sway here, you pig-fucking excuse of a… go back to your nature preserve, federal invader…”

  What else could Jeremy do? The man wouldn’t follow his order to get out of the car. Jeremy drew his gun.

  The appearance of the handgun launched Morris into an even greater tempest. “Now, by force of arms, you invade… my vehicle and… my rights as a citizen of the state of Texas…”

  Jeremy was flustered. He had never seen more anger in a man than Morris Chittendon. Spittle flew every which way. Chittendon’s heavy hands beat furiously against the steering wheel, emphasizing his constitutional rights.

  Jeremy’s pistol began to shake, the ultimate divining rod of his adrenaline, righteous conviction and caffeine.

  “Please step out of the vehicle,” Jeremy repeated, jumping two octaves in one sentence.

  Morris Chittendon held forth on his rights as a Texan, but the exact words had become meaningless. His face, apoplectic and beet-red, belied both his anger and his frustration at not being able to articulate his points in this, his defining hour.

  Jeremy’s indignation at not being obeyed gave way to wonder at the intensity of the heavyset man’s anger. Morris looked like he might explode, like he might actually be foaming at the mouth.

  Morris began to clutch at his left arm, and his rants became a raging mewl. Almost shrieking, Chittendon slumped over the center console, wheezing loudly.

  Jeremy panicked. He jumped into the middle of Highway 69 and waved his arms wildly, flagging down anyone who might stop to help. He never thought to re-holster, so he was waving his handgun when the next car approached.

  The eighties-era Chevy truck, piloted by a nineteen-year old local pothead named Thomas Oaks, stopped abruptly in the middle of the highway far back from the gun-wielding ranger. Besides enjoying a thrice-daily sojourn with cannabis, Thomas Oaks frequently played airsoft with the younger guys from the Hardin County Regulators. The last thing he was going to do was stop and talk to a federal officer. For starters, Thomas was high as a kite.

  It took young Thomas a moment to understand what he was seeing. There, in all his glory, was a park ranger, waving a gun looking like he had seen a ghost. The ranger’s brown-and-tan cruiser sat behind the Ford Taurus of Morris Chittendon, blue lights flashing. From this far back, Thomas could see Big Morris flopping around in his Taurus, definitely injured and in pain. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots.

  Thomas stomped on the gas and roared past Ranger Jeremy while screaming out his window.

  “Fuck you, pig! We’re coming!”

  While the Doppler effect of the passing truck garbled the boy’s war cry, Jeremy understood enough to send a chill down his spine. His adrenaline kicked into such a high gear that he almost dropped the gun on the pavement. He could barely feel his fingers, and his face tingled like it was being pelted by high-speed snowflakes.

  Jeremy whipped back to his suspect, realizing that there was probably a firearm in the Taurus. He threw open the driver side door, still training his pistol on Morris, who was now flopping like a fish out of water.

  His first idea was to pull Morris out, handcuff him and place him in the back of the Park Service SUV. Jeremy grabbed a fistful of Morris’ belt and pulled, instantly revealing the futility of the plan. There was no way Jeremy would be able to drag Chittendon anywhere.

  Jeremy was drowning in a primal urge to get off the road and call for backup. He forced his legs and torso under the big man’s ass and shoved him up and over the console, dumping him sideways into the passenger seat.

  Jeremy re-holstered his handgun and jumped in the driver’s seat of the Taurus. He cranked on Morris’ massive key ring, causing the starter solenoid to grind like a squealing hog. The engine had been running the whole time. Jeremy stomped on the gas and bounced up and out of the bar pit.

  Why he didn’t go straight to the medical clinic in Hardin or the hospital in Beaumont was known only to the Lord Almighty. Instead, in a full-blown panic, Jeremy raced to the courthouse—probably because it was the last destination on his mind while he still possessed rational thought.

  The local pothead suffered no chemical impairment whatsoever when it came to navigating social media. Within moments of blasting around the park ranger, giving him a generous helping of the middle finger, Thomas Oaks Tweeted, Facebooked, and Snap-Chatted an urgent call to the redneck underbelly of Hardin County society. Pings, buzzes and lit-screens across the county alerted the Regulators. One of their brothers was in trouble, being oppressed by the federal government itself.

  Come in hot! the chain message screamed.

  Agent Castellanos drove through the small town of Hardin, eyeing his McDonalds bag. He finally succumbed to temptation and pulled out a McGriddle, starting his breakfast while he drove.

  He made the turn onto Monroe Street just in time to see something that made him double-blink. A Ford Taurus plowed over the center island, bucking like an angry bull, flew across the parking lot and smashed into the curb in front of the courthouse.

  “Holy Jesus,” blurted the FBI agent.

  He put down his sandwich and pulled in beside the Taurus. More curious than concerned, he stepped out of his car and walked around to the driver’s side. The brown-shirted park ranger in the front seat sparked a connection in his mind.

  Agent Castallenos rapped on the side window, and the junior ranger just about jumped out of his skin. He had been furiously dialing his cell phone, looking into his lap, and hadn’t seen the FBI agent pull into the parking lot.

  As he put the phone to his ear, the ranger searched madly for the window switch. By the time he found it, he was already yelling into his phone.

  “Come right now. We have a Code 15 at the Hardin County Courthouse. Yes! At the courthouse. Backup required, RIGHT NOW!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy. Take a breath.” The hair on the back of Agent Castalleno’s neck stood straight up. His hand drifted toward his Glock. “What the hell is going on?”

  The ranger looked at him with panic-stricken eyes, and the FBI agent noticed the big man piled up in the passenger seat.

  “Who is that man?” Fred asked.

  A look of recognition washed over the forest ranger and he burst out, “You’re the FBI guy... Call for backup.”

  “Take a breath, buddy.” Agent Castellanos repeated. “What’s going on? Is that guy okay?”

  “They’re co… coming... coming hot!” the ranger stammered.

  Suddenly, several cars caterwauled across the median and into the courthouse parking lot—a Jeep first, followed by a late model pickup truck and a Dodge Neon.

  The park ranger jumped out of the Taurus, pushing the FBI agent back, and scrambled for his handgun. The drivers of the approaching cars slammed on their breaks and doors flew open. Men with rifles leapt out, using the cars as barricades.

  “What in God’s name is going on?” Agent Castellanos yelled.

  Nobody answered. Everyone’s attention fixated on the guns. Guns in their hands. Guns pointing back. The guns charged the very air around them, like an electrical surge passing through the atmosphere, buzzing in their ears and vibrating the primordial co
re of their brains.

  More militiamen came. Within the next sixty seconds, ten more vehicles roared up to the courthouse and piled around the militia contingent already there. The scene looked like a tornado had touched down in a used car lot, except for rifle barrels bristling from every window and every door.

  The FBI agent struggled to place a call to his own office while he ducked and scrambled back toward his car, hiding behind any cover he could find.

  The last of the militiamen had exited their vehicles and taken cover behind them. A tense quiet descended on the scene.

  Agent Castellanos broke the silence when the office girl answered at the Beaumont FBI office. “I’m at the Hardin County Courthouse and I need backup...” he trailed off, realizing how pointless it was to call the office, thirty-five miles away. “Send backup,” he repeated hopelessly before ending the call. He scanned the parking area, counting almost two-dozen guns pointed at him and the park ranger. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ranger squirm into the doorway of the Taurus, trying to gain a little extra cover, his handgun trembling.

  A door slammed.

  A rifle boomed, shattering the charged silence.

  The parking lot erupted in chaos. One of the first bullets from the Regulators passed through the rear quarter panel of the Taurus, spalling as it smashed the corner of the tire jack and cartwheeled through the backseat, through the front seat and directly into the lower brain stem of Morris Chittendon, ending his life about ten minutes before his heart attack would’ve killed him anyway.

  Ranger Jeremy Hellmund was shot fifteen times in five seconds. He succeeded in busting a headlamp on the Jeep with three rounds before taking a round to his chest.

  As Hellmund fell to the ground, another Park Ranger SUV that had been in Hardin that morning raced into the parking lot just in time to see the man in the brown uniform slump beside the Taurus. The two rangers inside jumped from their vehicle, drew their sidearms, and mistakenly shot Agent Castellanos as he crouched behind his car.

  The rangers’ fire drew a bullet whirlwind from the Regulators, perforating their Blazer with more than a hundred rounds, killing both men instantly.

  In the moment of silence that followed after the rangers fell, the door of the courthouse burst open and two constables and a sheriff’s deputy stepped out, saw the carnage, and ducked back inside to call for backup.

  Half the Regulators piled back into their cars and sped away. The other half walked toward the three pock-marked cars in the parking lot, guns at the ready. They found the body of Morris Chittendon, shot in the back of the head.

  Thomas Oaks was there, iPhone in hand, taking pictures of the dead militiaman and the park ranger, his handgun on the ground beside his body. Nobody rendered aid to Agent Fred Castellanos as he slowly died, slumped against the rear hubcap of his personal vehicle.

  Thomas Oaks’ meme went out two minutes later, and it was almost immediately picked up by conservative patriot blogs across America.

  “This is what happens when you stand up to the federal government,” the meme, displayed across a picture of the deceased Morris Chittendon, threatened.

  “But this is what happens when a federal agent kills a Texan,” the meme finished, showing a picture of the bullet-riddled body of Ranger Jeremy Hellmund.

  Sometimes human history unfolds reliant on the thinnest of moments. If only Ranger Jeremey Hellmund had taken the dying militiaman to the hospital instead of the courthouse, there might still be a United States of America.

  Highway 6 Roadblock, Delta, Utah

  Dale Trenton, commander of the Delta Desert Patriots militia, contemplated the endless column of semi-trucks stretching beyond the horizon on Highway 6.

  In the parlance of militia-speak, the flag had gone up. Within forty-eight hours, two events had shattered the self-absorption of America. In Dale’s mind, the events connected through an interlocking scheme of the Deep State, the Illuminati and Neocon Zionists. He didn’t have enough information to follow the bouncing ball, but it would only be a matter of time before the patriot commentators of the internet figured out the connection between the slaughter of one Texan patriot, a dirty bomb recently exploding in Saudi Arabia, and the death spiral of the stock market.

  The bomb in Saudi Arabia screamed false flag operation. Russia, Israel, or the United States itself had orchestrated the dirty bomb that took out a pipeline junction, probably just to pin it on someone else. That’s how secret societies operated. The international banking syndicate had been working overtime for years to generate a stock market failure in order to launch the New World Order, so maybe they had played a part. No doubt George Soros, may his soul rot in hell, had something to do with it all.

  Dale stretched his leg and flexed his hip as he watched the semi-trucks, loaded with coal, moldering in the morning sun behind the roadblock he had erected. His one big regret, now that the shit had finally hit the proverbial fan, was that he hadn’t replaced his bad hip in time. With the collapse upon America, hip replacement surgeries wouldn’t be happening again for a long, long time.

  Yet, Dale had prepared for this day. Given his apocalyptic religious upbringing, he had always kept food storage stashed in the crawl space of his double-wide trailer. On top of the food, he and his wife stockpiled water, gasoline, guns, ammunition, and just about everything else one might need during the collapse of society. Most important, Dale had started his own “well-regulated militia,” just as the Constitution suggested. The Delta Desert Patriots numbered around 300 squared-away men and women who could be ready in ten minutes to defend their hometown.

  Just the day before, Dale had called up the full militia to defend the town against an incursion of California National Guard who had come to take over the Delta coal power plant for the benefit of the state of California. Because of the massacre of militiamen in Texas, raging in hundreds of internet memes, his militia had already been placed on high alert. Within ten minutes of their arrival, Delta Desert Patriots had confronted and disarmed the California invaders. Now Dale waited on a hill overlooking his roadblock to see what else California would throw at him. With the power plant shut down—out of coal and understaffed because of the roadblock—the rich people of Southern California would be crying in their lattes, with no electricity to run their cappuccino machines.

  He took no pleasure in their suffering, he told himself, but they had it coming, polluting the community of Delta, Utah with a huge coal power plant for far too many years. California had run their air conditioners and the children of Delta had breathed their coal smoke for twenty years too many. The time for patriots to stand up and say “no” had arrived.

  The Second Coming of the Lord Jesus was upon them, any way you sliced it, and those whoring folks in California were going to burn sooner or later. Living without air conditioning for a few days would be the least of their worries.

  Three Miles Outside of Alameda Harbor, Alameda, California

  The helicopter circled the two Muslim villagers and their sailboat again, and it became clear that they were the subject of the helicopter’s interest. The gut-thumping throb of the rotor blades threw the Filipino sailors into a panic. Njay steered the boat while Miguel rushed to complete his ablutions to Allah in preparation for his death at the attack of the helicopter.

  Njay shaded his eyes, searching for weapons. He knew little about military aircraft, but the helicopter was painted blue and white and had bulbous pods above the landing skids. Unless the pods were bombs, Njay could see no obvious threat.

  Even louder than the howling rotors, a loudspeaker blared from the aircraft. “Sailing craft, cut your engine immediately. We detect radiation aboard your vessel. Cut your engine immediately and wait to be boarded.”

  Miguel paused in his ritual cleansing and shouted something to Njay that he probably couldn’t hear over the roar of the helicopter. Neither man understood the words coming from the loudspeaker, but the intent was clear. They were being intercepted. They would not reach Los A
ngeles before the Americans destroyed them. Njay ducked low behind the steering wheel and motored directly toward Alameda Harbor, full steam.

  Miguel shouted again and pointed off their bow. In the distance, a large boat with a blue light bar raced to block their course.

  Njay’s bowels tightened like an angry snake. He muttered prayers to Allah as he rushed down the narrow stairs into the hold.

  As the prayer reached its end, Njay opened the simple trap door and pressed the red inset button.

  1

  “Live for liposuction, detox for your rent

  Overdose for Christmas and give it up for Lent

  My friends are all so cynical

  Refuse to keep the faith

  We all enjoy the madness

  ‘Cause we know we’re gonna fade away.”

  Millennium, Robbie Williams, I’ve Been Expecting You, 1998

  57 Freeway, Anaheim, California

  Cameron should’ve left last night.

  Now it might be too late, he fumed.

  He groaned as he merged onto the freeway. He could think of only one reason for the 57 to be packed with cars at 11:00 a.m. on a weekday. Some tiny percentage of Los Angelenos had seen the same news and had come to the same conclusion; their world was on the ropes and, if it absorbed one more punch, the whole thing would crumple like a rotted roof on a slapdash casino.

  One half of one percent of eighteen million residents of Los Angeles apparently had the same hunch as Cameron. Instead of making him feel smart, it made him feel like another dipshit crammed into the smoggy basin of tract homes and strip malls that made up southern California. The endless train of idling cars on the asphalt smoldered like a portent of doom.