The Third Revolution Ch. 08

Jason and Nathan joined the others in the main room of the house. A tall man stood in the center of the room and looked at Nathan, offering his extended hand.

"It's an honor to finally meet you," Nathan said, shaking his hand.

"The honor is all mine," the man said. He then turned to Jason. "You must be Jason. I'm John Reardon."

"Nice to meet you," Jason said, shaking his hand. The old custom was becoming more familiar to him.

"Let's take a seat," Reardon said, and the others followed his lead.

They discussed their plan of attack. A team of hackers would use the back door provided by Nathan to access the main communications satellite of the State. A video message from Reardon had been composed, in which he revealed the true nature of the State.

"This is Phase One of our operation," Reardon explained. "Informing the people will help us to gain their support when the Third Revolution begins. The next step is holding the people in power accountable for their actions. One by one, we will take down this State from the inside out."

Heads nodded in cadence with his words. Reardon rose to his feet, and the others interpreted that as a sign that the meeting was adjourned. Kat pulled Jason aside, and led him into the back room. She closed the door and kissed him. He looked in her eyes, and was puzzled by her expression. Was it anxiousness? Excitement? Fear?

"Kat, what's wrong?" he asked.

Just then, a loud explosion erupted from the front room of the house, causing the floor to tremble beneath their feet. Flinging open the door, it seemed as though time slowed to a crawl as Jason surveyed the unimaginable scene before him. The windows at the front of the house shattered under a barrage of heavy fire, and Jason splayed onto the floor. He felt a trickle of wetness on his forehead, and when he wiped it away, his hand was covered in dark red blood.

His ears ringing, he crawled along his belly toward the nearest wall, and that is when he saw the body lying on the floor near the front door.

"Get down!" Kyle screamed. He was firing his weapon haphazardly through the shattered window. The noise was deafening.

Jason remained frozen, staring at the body, unable to come to terms with what his eyes were telling him. Lying just inches away from him, with his eyes staring straight ahead in a deathly stare, his forehead ripped open, and surrounded by a pool of blood, was his father.

"Jason!" Elena shouted. She pulled him toward a doorway as bullets continued to shred through the front windows and siding of the house. Behind her, Kat sat, shivering in fear, pressed against the wall.

"What do we do?" Jason shouted over the sound of heavy gunfire. Elena simply looked at him with an expression of hopelessness. "Where is Reardon?" he shouted.

Elena motioned toward the opposite end of the house, where Reardon had overturned a table. Shards of wood erupted all around him as bullets tore into the table. Jason looked at Reardon, and then glanced past him at the door leading to the garage.

"Elena, Kat, follow me," he said. "Kyle, cover us!" He crawled across the floor toward Reardon, and Elena and Kat followed as Kyle blindly fired into the darkness. When they reached the other side of the room, Jason rose to his feet and peeked around the corner.

"Kyle, let's go!" he shouted.

Kyle continued firing toward the flashes of light from all directions. "I'm staying!" he shouted. "You go!"

Jason hesitated for a moment, and pushed Elena and Kat through the door to the garage. He looked at Reardon.

"Do you think it'll start?" he asked, motioning toward the car.

Reardon looked at the car, and then to Jason. "You know how to operate this thing?"

"No," Jason responded, "but it can't be that much different than the video games."

"Let's just go!" Elena shouted, pushing Kat into the back seat with her. "It's not like we have a better option!"

Jason slid into the driver's seat as Reardon rode shotgun. "Hold on!" Jason shouted. He braced himself and pressed the gas pedal with his foot. Nothing happened. He frantically searched the dashboard, looking for a button or switch.

"Try the key!" Reardon said, pointing at a key in the ignition next to the steering wheel.

Jason twisted the key, and the engine ignited. His eyes widened, and he turned to Reardon and grinned. "I guess someone has been keeping this thing in working condition," he said.

"Yeah, well, you can thank them later," Reardon remarked. "Make this thing move!"

Jason gripped the steering wheel tightly and stomped on the gas pedal. The engine emitted a deafening roar, but the vehicle remained still. Once again, he searched the dashboard for an indicator of some kind. Outside, bullets continued to relentlessly pummel the side of the house.

He spotted a lever in the middle of the console beside him, and instantly recalled seeing something similar in one of the arcade games he had played. Reardon noticed him reaching for the stick.

"'R' for 'Run'?" he asked.

Jason looked at him with bemusement. "You're not a gamer, are you?"

He shifted into drive and pressed his foot to the floor. The engine roared and the car lurched forward and sped toward the garage door. With a thunderous crash, the vehicle smashed through the door and sped into the darkness. Jason turned the wheel sharply, and the car responded, sending them away from the gunfire that now peppered the rear of the car, shattering the back window.

The tires squealed as the car careened around a sharp corner, barely managing to avoid running off the road. Jason pushed the pedal to the floor as they reached a straightaway, and they sped uphill along the bumpy road, their path lit only by moonlight. Jason fumbled in his pocket and came to the sickening realization that he had left his device back at the house.

"I can hardly see a thing!" he said. "Can someone find the switch to activate the night vision?"

All three passengers craned their necks toward the darkened dashboard and the console between the two front seats.

"Try that lever on the left of the wheel," Elena offered. Jason pushed the lever, and a light blinked on the left side of the dashboard.

"What the fuck did that do?" he said. He pulled the lever on the other side of the wheel, and a pair of rubber blades began swishing back and forth across the windshield

"Here," Reardon yelled, handing him his device. Jason placed it behind his ear and activated the night vision feature, bringing the road ahead into clear focus just as the vehicle reached a sharp corner. Jason yanked the wheel hard to the right, and all three of the passengers slid in their seats.

"We're good!" he shouted, straightening the wheel.

"Don't celebrate yet," Elena said. "We've got company."

In a mirror just above his head, Jason saw two dark shadows approaching rapidly. He put more pressure on the gas pedal, and the car responded with a roar, surging up the hill. At the top of the hill was another straightaway, flanked by empty fields on both sides.

"They're gaining!" Elena shouted from the back seat.

"You can't outrun them with this old technology," Reardon noted, speaking in a calming tone.

Jason glanced in the mirror. The shadows of the two State vehicles had become better defined. He could see both vehicles filled with armed officers prepared to haul all four of them into a State prison, where they would likely remain until their transfers to a labor camp. Or perhaps the four of them would simply be killed in cold blood, and left for dead on the side of the road.

Jason activated his GPS. For the next two and a half miles, there was nowhere to go except straight ahead. The lead vehicle in the rearview mirror had gained enough ground that its front bumper was no longer visible. He checked his GPS once more, and inspiration suddenly came to him.

"Hold on to something!" he shouted. He turned the wheel hard to the left, veering into the open field adjacent to the road. The car bounded off the road and landed in the field with a hard thud, sending all four occupants bouncing off their seats and landing hard on impact. The wheel flew out of Jason's hands, and he lost control for a moment as the car nearly toppled over onto its side.

Jason overcorrected, steering hard to his right, and the vehicle nearly flipped over in the opposite direction. All the while, he kept his foot pressed hard against the gas pedal, with his white knuckles gripping the wheel.

He glanced in the mirror, and both vehicles had stopped along the side of the road, their shadows growing darker and less defined. His plan worked. The navigation systems on the State vehicles prohibited them from deviating from the road.

The car sailed over a hidden hill, and for a moment, all four wheels left the ground. All four of their heads hit the roof of the car when the vehicle landed, momentarily stunning the driver as he overcorrected once more.

He yanked the wheel to the right, and the car skidded sideways down an embankment. Jason turned the wheel to the left, and the vehicle flipped over onto its roof, ripping the wheel from his grip and slamming all four passengers against the underside of the roof. Kat shrieked as the car skidded along the embankment, upside down, before coming to an abrupt halt against a stone wall.

"Is everyone okay?" Reardon asked.

"I'm bloody and sore," Jason said, "but I'm okay." He turned to look at Kat.

"I'm okay," she said, her eyes swollen and red.

"Bloody and sore here, too," Elena said, "but alive."

"We need to get out of here," Reardon said, "quickly. They're more than likely heading toward us right now on foot."

The four of them scrambled from the upside-down wreckage and into the darkness of the night. Jason reached into his right pocket, and hung his head in disbelief.

"I found my device," he said.

With Reardon leading the way, they moved as quickly as they could through the field, to the edge of a forest. After more than an hour on foot, they came across a neighborhood. Reardon led them through the back yard of the first house they encountered, and they scaled a fence and entered a house on the other side.

"Another safe house?" Jason asked.

"Nope," Reardon said. "Just a house. Hopefully, we're the only ones here, or this will be a really short stay."

"You mean there may be others in the area?"

"There are small pockets of people who roam from one place to another," Reardon explained. "They are constantly on the move, surviving in whatever way they can, hiding from the State for as long as they can. Most of them are found eventually, and brought to the labor camps. Then there are the permanent camps, like my home base. That's our next stop. For now, we rest."

Jason nodded, and slumped onto the floor with his back against a wall. He assessed the damage both to himself and the others. Each of them appeared bloody, bruised, and covered with dirt and plaster. He ran his fingers along the side of his head, and found it caked with dried blood. A bullet must have grazed him, he thought. He had likely avoided instant death by mere inches. His thoughts immediately turned to his father, who hadn't been as lucky.

"Jason, I'm sorry about your father," Elena said, as if reading his thoughts.

"I just met the man," Jason said, "and yet it feels like I lost a dear old friend."

"We all lost today," she noted. Without his father, it seemed that all the planning by the Third Revolution had been for nothing. All of the events that had led to that moment, from his imprisonment, to his escape, to the rescue of his father, had been pointless.

"It's all my fault." The soft voice, barely audible, broke Jason's train of thought, and he turned to find Kat slumped against the wall beside him. Her eyes were glistening and swollen, and she stared straight ahead, motionless except for her quivering lips.

"What did you say?" Jason asked.

"It's my fault," she repeated. "All of it."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. He made a move to put his arm around her, but she recoiled and stood to her feet.

"I tipped them off," she said, her voice growing louder. "I contacted the State and let them know where we were. I activated my GPS while we were at the safe house, and I led them straight to us."

Jason stared at her in disbelief. Reardon slowly stood, watching Kat's every move, while Elena did the same.

"Kat," Jason said, "what are you talking about? Why would you do something like that?"

"I told you I worked as a companion for a senator," she said, making eye contact with Jason. "That was true, and it was as horrifying as I told you it was. But I escaped. I lived for nearly a year, out here beyond the walls, fending for myself. One day, the State did a sweep of the area where I was living. I didn't even see them coming. They took me back inside the walls and locked me in a prison."

"You...didn't tell me any of this," Jason said.

"After more than a month of solitary confinement, I nearly went insane," she continued. "Finally, I was given an offer. I could be shipped to one of the birthing camps, where I would be forced to become a birth mother again and again, for as long as my body could withstand it, or I could work for the State. They gave me one assignment, and if I completed it, I would be assigned a ration level ten, and a spacious living quarter within the city."

"You bitch!" Elena shouted. She made a move toward Kat, but was restrained by Reardon.

"What was that assignment?" Jason asked.

"Capturing me," Reardon interrupted.

Kat nodded. "The State knew that Elena had ties to the Third Revolution. They knew that she had reached out to you, Jason. And they knew about your ties to your father, and the plans to rescue him from State custody. They released you from prison, knowing that Elena would reach out to you again and eventually lead you to Reardon."

"That's why it was so easy for us to escape the city," Jason muttered.

"I knew it!" Elena shouted. "I told you right from the beginning we couldn't trust this cunt!"

"They promised me that no one would be harmed!" Kat shouted, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I had their assurance that Jason and his father would be safely returned to the city, and that Reardon would be taken into custody. That was part of the bargain!"

"Yeah, and how did that work out for us?" Elena spat. "Those bullets flying through that house weren't exactly discriminating, were they? How stupid can you be?"

"I...I just wanted to be left alone," Kat sobbed. "I wanted to feel safe and secure for the first time in my life. The State offered me security."

"They offered you imprisonment," Reardon said. "Just because you are supplied with food and shelter doesn't mean you are free. A caged animal isn't free, no matter how well it is cared for."

"I...I know that now," Kat said softly.

"Yeah, well, great," Elena said, turning her back and slumping onto the floor once more. "Because of you, everything we have worked for is gone. Everything we have sacrificed was pissed away for nothing."

"I...I'm so sorry," Kat whimpered. She broke free from Jason's grasp and fled into an adjoining room.

Jason returned to his spot on the floor and lay on his side, resting his head against the cold, hard wood floor. The only sounds were the chirping of crickets, the croaking of frogs, and the soft sobs coming from the next room. He exhaled slowly, and could feel the tension drain from his weary body. That night, he dreamed of living on a tropical island with his mother and father.