The Liar Read online

  The LIar

  Book 1 in the Liar’s Apocalypse Trilogy

  A novel

  by

  Bobby Adair

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  Text copyright © 2018, Bobby L. Adair & Beezle Media, LLC

  Credits at the end of the book.

  Two Years After It Started

  Don’t get on the boat.

  That’s what he’d said, that sergeant in Amarillo whose squad of peacekeepers had been providing security for the Red Cross ladies shoving ration packets through the gaps on the side of the railroad car.

  Whatever you do, don’t get on the boat.

  He’d been so damned pushy about it, like he was passing a do-list down from God himself—the bossy one, the Old Testament one. But the sergeant had rushed the words in a Senegalese accent bloated with fat French vowels and bulbous African consonants. Tommy’s understanding of it had been half guess and half decryption.

  Tell the others.

  Those were the last words Tommy Joss had heard, and he’d been the only one who’d heard them. Well, except for Pete. Pete had been sitting on the steel floor near the front end of the three-layered auto carrier, on the other side of Tommy. Pete had seen the Blue Helmet sergeant on the platform lean across the gap, and watched him whisper.

  “What did he say?” asked Pete.

  A skinny girl who’d had her ration cut for catching rats looked on.

  Tommy told Pete what he’d thought had been said, and asked Pete what he’d heard.

  Pete hadn’t been able to make out a word.

  That was half a week ago.

  Three days, five stops, and nine delays.

  With nothing to do to pass the time, Tommy counted things, second-guessed his choices, and tried to recall the faces of all the people he knew who were now buried in a hole or burned to ash. He listened to gossip. He scratched at his lice and picked at his sores. He checked his satchel to make sure none of his water had been stolen while he slept, and he looked away when someone took a turn on the shit bucket.

  And the train rumbled on south.

  The world outside was bitter and gray because another goddamn winter had forgotten how to read a calendar. A damp wind blew through the thousand vent holes drilled in the walls. The rusty floor slowly thawed from frozen brittle to gnawing cold. An improvement, if just a bit.

  A hundred and fifty of them rode in each car. A third on each level. Most couldn’t stand up straight because the ceilings were too low, yet they had room to sit and they could lay down flat if they arranged themselves on the floor with a little care. Nobody complained. They’d all seen worse.

  Stomachs growled because their meal schedule was off and the Red Cross ladies—angels though they were—never brought enough.

  They speculated about where they were being sent this time, and argued about the Blue Helmet’s cryptic message. Something about a boat in Amarillo? Was the Senegalese sergeant giving Tommy instructions, or a cheat sheet for the next stop?

  Had Tommy misunderstood a bit of news?

  Was it simple trickery?

  Or just nonsense?

  Not a warning, though, because that’s what it seemed to be. Times being what they were, nothing was what it seemed. Not anymore. Not for a long time now. Everybody knew that.

  Another day on the slow train faded into a cold night. Every bad joint between the tracks sent a shock through the floor that rattled the teeth. Every warp in the rails felt like a sway into derailment.

  The moon rose silver and full.

  The fatigue of boredom lulled the riders to sleep.

  In the small hours of the night, Tommy’s mistakes haunted their way into his dreams, and the butchery of the years shoved him out of sleep like it always did, so he could remember every detail with a mind fully awake for the regrets. And the tears. And the death.

  And the dawn was still forever away.

  Barren fields of stumps and ash gave way to rusted cars in front of the black skeletons of houses, all platted in wavy rows by suburban developers back when there’d been so damned many people itching for a quarter-acre ticket to the American dream they’d buy a house anywhere that gave them a chance at a mortgage they could swing and a commute that’d get them home in time to kiss the kids before they drifted off to sleep.

  None of them realized back then that the tickets were worthless. All the good dreams had been shoplifted before they’d even gotten in line.

  When they figured that out, good God, how they’d turned on each other.

  Where big-box stores and fast-food joints had bustled on the corners of busy intersections, only bombed-out rubble remained. Where the glass towers once stood along the highway, only pillars of pocked concrete supported cracked floors on the verge of collapse.

  Mile after mile it went on, withering tombs blanketing millions of acres, the remains of a great city turned into a marker on the grave of a country that once shivered the bones of the world when it swung its terrible, swift sword.

  The sound of the train’s rumble changed.

  The joints between the tracks banged past at a slower cadence.

  A stop was coming.

  A feeble dawn crawled out of the eastern sky.

  Soon, the snoring lumps carpeting the floor of the car would stir, and they'd remind Tommy he wasn't alone in the world. Some days, that made staying alive easier. Other days, it didn't.

  The smell of salt in the air carried over the stench of five thousand unwashed bodies sleeping in the cars ahead.

  Standing beside the tracks on a bent leg, but leaning on a broken one, a rusty sign with big black letters was impossible to miss. Tommy Joss didn’t need to read the sign to know where they were stopping. The train passed through a wall built of sea containers stacked four high with the black tubes of anti-tank guns standing out against the sky along the top edge. Inside the makeshift fortress, across a ten-acre slab of cracked concrete, three cargo ships lay tied along a wharf. The muddy saltwater of Barbours Cut and the San Jacinto River splashed against their hulls.

  The train was arriving at the Port of Houston.

  The Senegalese sergeant’s words suddenly didn’t seem so absurd. Tommy shivered.

  The Day It Started

  Idiots, assholes, and morons.

  Knuckleheads, newsies, and ‘tards.

  Two years of tailspin luck had soured Bill Miller past the point of liking most people. Especially those six breeds.

  And probably a dozen others that didn’t come to mind at the moment.

  From where he stood in the line of those waiting to speak into the mic, Bill watched Spring Creek’s seven-seat corruption club—the city council—lounging in eleven-hundred-dollar chairs behind a polished stone table that cost more than his repossessed truck was worth. Two of the councilwomen were whispering over a sheet of paper on the table between them. A councilman was nodding off, and a fourth was playing with his tablet computer. Mayor Casey, in the center seat, was staring through the woman addressing the council like he’d fallen asleep and forgotten to close his eyes.

  Like he couldn’t see change-with-a-capital-C hauling back to punch him in the mouth.

  Like he didn’t know he was living the last moments of his life.

  Police Chief Curly-Stooge and Sheriff What’s-his-nuts were in the corner yukking it up over a private joke, oblivious to the townsfolk packed into the chamber, sweaty-mad, rowdy, and loud.

  In the street out front, hundreds chanted their frustrations and shook their signs at the tourists in town for the weekend bike race. Like the tourists were at fault for anything besides being there.

  The woman at the lectern finished
her three minutes with a jab of her middle finger before stomping toward the door at the back of the chamber. A gangly man with perspiration circles under his arms took her place and shuffled his notecards. He started his rebuke with narrow eyes and a nasally voice.

  The speaking line shifted two steps forward.

  The air in the room sweltered hotter by a degree.

  One more ounce of crap-ass luck for Bill. A rare scorcher had settled over Spring Creek at the time he’d had a need to wear a jacket zipped up to the neck. In a mob of homeowners wearing t-shirts and angry faces, he stood out like a smelly transient, though he needed to go unnoticed.

  At least he was invisible.

  Not for real, but in a social way. Bill had become an uncomfortable non-thing that nobody wanted to look at, let alone talk to. He’d long since lost his means to earn, so he couldn’t spend. He’d stopped spinning his cog in the community economy and had turned into a drag on the system.

  He had no wife—not anymore.

  He had no job.

  He was a man with a bleak future.

  Bill recognized twenty, maybe thirty people he’d gone to school with, all in that room with red faces and dumbass opinions. Another few dozen were familiar from around town. He’d even worked at the mine with some of them, and not one had asked, ‘How ya doin’, Bill?’

  Not one risked eye contact.

  They were the people who had cast the invisibility cloak over him.

  The nasally man finished his piece, gathered his cards, and made for the back of the room.

  Frank Lugenbuhl stepped up to the lectern and looked down on the council, though they were seated above him. Frank was one of those men who had that talent—of always looking down on his lessers. He was a big man with a rumbling voice, a weather-beaten nose, and skin the texture of an old golf ball. Forty-five years of life’s ordeals had done nothing for his looks, but every victory had left him tougher.

  Boos rolled out of the back of the room.

  Frank turned his head just enough to let the detractors know they weren’t worth the effort of a glance.

  People on Frank’s side rallied a cheer.

  Bill wanted to holler, too, yet kept his silence.

  The speaking line shifted forward again.

  A waddling mom in front of Bill stopped unexpectedly short. Bill bumped into her pear-shaped ass because his mind was too occupied with other things.

  “‘Scuse you,” she said, glaring. She’d forgotten Bill was invisible.

  Lugenbuhl started in.

  Council members rubbed their eyes. They’d gone too many rounds with Frank and his attorneys. They expected to hear nothing new. The only thing different about this day’s battle were the stakes. A decision date was looming that would settle the matter for good.

  Frank berated the council over the alleged plumbing infrastructure code violations for the condo complex he’d been trying to build just down the valley. He talked about an expansive land donation that would triple the size of a preserve for a rare type of owl. No condo approval meant no donation, and he put the blame for that squarely on the council. They’d as much as stolen the valuable land gift from the community. The two issues had been the eye of this particular storm for nearly five years. And the town, like the country had on every question that crossed its consciousness, chose up sides, dug their trenches, laid their mines, and stocked their arms. All metaphorical, of course, in a war of words and votes where all was fair, no quarter given, and no prisoners taken.

  Because Spring Creek was a Colorado mountain town, the sides were mixed up. The gun owners shopped at the organic food mart, and the snowboarders spent their weekends at the gun range. Blue and Red didn’t cling to the party script like lots of folks did in other places around the country. But that didn’t mean the enmity didn’t run as deep.

  It surely did with Bill. It had burrowed into his brain, laid its parasitic eggs, and twisted him rotten.

  At least that’s how it felt. Every shitty thing that had gone wrong in his life over the past two years could be tied back to a conspiracy of politicians somewhere, rat-fucking him in absentia.

  He’d been laid off. His unemployment had run dry. His wife took the baby and went back to her mom’s. That was coming up on a year ago, and now he couldn’t get a food stamp to save his life. The IRS was threatening him over taxes and penalties and late fees for withdrawing his meager 401(k) to pay the bills while he was looking for work.

  The only kind of jobs in plentiful supply in Spring Creek were minimum-wage, seasonal gigs smiling for tips from summer hikers and winter skiers. That kind of work didn’t pay the mortgage, and it sure didn’t cover the IRS vig.

  Now they wanted his house.

  Well, they could fight the goddamned bank for it!

  The pear-shaped woman ahead of Bill stepped forward, and the man behind Bill nudged him, bringing Bill’s attention back to the room.

  Frank finished. He glared one last time at the council, and spun on his heel.

  As he turned to walk away, he patted the pear-shaped woman on the back and wished her luck. He leaned in close and whispered a secret into Bill’s ear that smashed his last bit of happiness, leaving Bill paralyzed.

  Frank then moved down the line to dole out encouragements to a few more aspiring speakers.

  Bill’s head filled with swinging fists and broken teeth and the harpy scream of that bitch who’d run off when the paychecks ran dry. Sweat dribbled into his eyes, stinging them to the verge of tears. He didn’t want to believe what Frank had just said. But Frank had been honest with Bill at a time when lies had become the currency of the world.

  The kicker of it was, Frank’s secret felt true. In a world of Fujita-scale bullshit, that feeling was all Bill had left.

  That bubbly toddler of Bill’s, the one he’d convinced himself looked just like him, wasn’t his at all. Frank said he knew who the dad really was, had said he’d seen the proof.

  The man behind Bill crowded him forward, like the line was going to move faster if Bill took a step. “Hey.” The man’s wet breath flowed over Bill’s shoulder with a pointed finger at the wide space past Bill’s toes. “Move up.”

  Bill resisted.

  This herd needs a culling.

  Bill took out his cell phone and snapped a selfie, capturing the hopeless anger on his face in front of a crowd ready to turn on each other.

  “Hey,” a gruff voice called.

  Bill ignored the voice and turned around to pose for another selfie with the town council’s bored faces behind him.

  A strong hand gripped Bill’s arm.

  Anger flashed into Bill’s fists and fear splashed on his face.

  Am I caught?

  An old security guard with a kind face whispered, "No phones in line.” The guard's smile looked every bit the apology. "Okay?"

  Bill nodded and tucked the phone into his pocket.

  The guard turned and heaved his old bones toward his assigned post against the wall.

  Bill put his back to the guard and pulled the phone out again.

  “Hey,” said coffee-breath man.

  Bill opened a text window on his phone and did a quick send of both pictures he’d just taken. His place in history needed to be documented.

  The woman at the lectern came to the end of her remarks and stared expectantly at the council, as though housewife words would sway them off their bought positions.

  One of the council’s lackeys shooed the pear-shaped woman away. She jostled past Bill and bumped coffee-breath man as she worked her way up the aisle.

  The line monitor lackey waved Bill to fill his place at the lectern. “State your name.” She glanced crossly down at her watch. “Be brief.”

  You bet I’ll be brief.

  Bill scowled at the council, and felt the weight of the explosives hanging from the vest under his jacket. He fondled the detonator in his pocket and his thumb settled on the red button, the one that would change the world.

  One day
, they’ll call me a hero.

  But he lost his nerve.

  He excused himself and made his way to the back of the line for another go at ginning up his anger and courage to do the thing that needed to be done.

  Chapter 1

  The air tasted like car exhaust dusted with ash.

  The sky was gray over a yellow glow without a speck of blue.

  “Fires down in Poncha Springs,” said the driver, standing behind the airport shuttle after having just unloaded Tommy’s bag. “Burned thirty thousand acres since Tuesday.”

  Tommy Joss tipped him a hundred.

  The driver smiled like the bill was a five. “Hundred’s the new twenty.”

  Mathematically speaking, the guy wasn’t far off. Tommy lifted his bag off the hot asphalt as he tried to recall the guy’s name. He’d driven Tommy three or four times since May. “This inflation’s got to be hard on you hourly guys. Do they adjust your pay?”

  “Annually.”

  “Jesus, that’s criminal.” Tommy dropped his bag and fished two more hundreds out of his billfold.

  The driver glanced at Tommy’s old Ford, alone in the transit center parking lot, and raised his palms. “I wasn’t—”

  “Don’t worry about the car.” Tommy glanced at his SUV. “It’s kind of a POS, but my wife’s got family money.” He pushed the bills at the driver. “Take it.”

  The driver shook his head. “By this time tomorrow it won’t make a difference.”

  That confused Tommy, but he smiled and lifted his bag again. “You have the winning lotto numbers?”

  “Seven-O-Four.”

  “Don’t you need six numbers for a lottery ticket?”

  “Never mind.” The driver hurried toward the airport shuttle’s door.

  “What’s Seven-O-Four?”

  “You seemed like a good guy, so I thought—” The driver mounted the steps. “Forget it.” He dropped into the driver’s seat. “You have a nice day.”

  Before Tommy could ask again, the door was closing, and the wheels were rolling.

  Tommy waved and headed for his Ford. It wasn’t the homecoming he’d hoped for after thirty-seven days at the client’s site—a heat wave, a weird shuttle driver, so much smoke in the air he could barely see the mountains, and no wife to kiss him.