Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams Read online

  Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1:

  Pyre of Dreams

  A Novel by Damian Huntley

  Copyright 2016 Damian Huntley

  Published by Damian Huntley at Smashwords

  ISBN: 9781311676450

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Quote

  One - Capitalist Reform

  Two - Charlene

  Three - Questions

  Four - Shadowcab

  Five - DC

  Six - Calvert Cliffs

  Seven - Pizza and History

  Eight - Saving Mr. Beach

  Nine - The Void Garden

  Ten - The Hopper

  Eleven - Spiff

  Twelve - Fighting Shadows

  Thirteen - On the Road

  Fourteen - Compound Fracture

  Fifteen - The Kings Mosaic

  Sixteen - In the Beginning

  A Preview of Book 2 in the Series

  About the Author

  Connect with the Author

  For Ryen, because without you I wouldn’t know how to write a grounded happy human.

  For Jean Huntley, for life, the universe and everything.

  For Katie Blackwell, for having the sense to tell me to try harder.

  “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”

  - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

  CHAPTER ONE

  Capitalist Reform

  David Beach was starting to flag a little. The heat would have been enough to wear him down, but with the added frustration of his seven-year-old daughter sitting on his shoulders, pounding incessantly on his chest with her feet, he was beginning to think that even this historic event didn’t merit enduring such torture. He gritted his teeth and gazed towards the podium, hoping that the leaders of the free world would hurry up and get their shit together.

  “Stephanie, hun, do you mind standing for a while?” he asked his daughter, tapping her shins gently with his hands. He managed to contain a groan of exasperation when she responded, “Daaad, I might miss it.’ That whine … he only had himself to blame; he recognized his own corrosive determination in the sing song trail off of her plea.

  “Spiff, you don’t even know what you’re going to see.”

  “The PRESIDENT!” She still occasionally struggled with ‘r’ in president, but she had been practicing, and this time she managed to deliver the word perfectly, emphasizing her enthusiasm by gently patting her father’s hair.

  David’s eyes rolled and he inhaled slowly, trying to be as happy as he knew he should be that Stephanie had understood something of the importance of the day. Still, she was underselling the gravitas somewhat. Today the President of America, along with the fifteen other world leaders who made up the Economic Unification Council, were meeting in order to sign an accord that promised to change the world economy at its most fundamental level.

  It was an agreement that had been thirteen years in the making and David had played a part in its conception. It was only right that he should be within spitting distance of the podium. If you stood on the fifth floor of an apartment building and tried to spit on a passing pedestrian you could probably make the shot, and following that logic, David figured that he’d done alright; fifty feet or so from the podium might as well be spitting distance.

  David worked as an assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence in President Tiernan’s administration. If he was honest with himself, he was only attending the signing ceremony because of his involvement with the Undersecretary. He’d had a sense of impending doom about the whole thing for several weeks now, and when that feeling had refused to abate, he’d tried to wriggle out of attending, but Carlton wouldn’t hear of it.

  David’s friends often referred to him as a conspiracy nut, which was pretty much all you had to do these days to write off a person’s opinions. The Undersecretary valued much of what David had to say, even when his thoughts bled black. When David had voiced his concerns, Undersecretary Carlton hadn’t made him feel marginalized; however, he had reiterated that the signing of the Capitalism Reform Act had to happen. Everyone knew it. A great many people were concerned about today’s events, but those concerns could never be allowed to impact on the momentous occasion. The meeting of the Economic Unification Council and the signing of the act was to signal the end of the old regime; the President might as well have painted a bullseye on his chest.

  There was a wave of motion in the crowd in front of David, an eruption of applause and cheering, but all David could see were the bobbing heads and waving hands of a few thousand people. He couldn’t even see the billboard-sized display playing live coverage of the stage. Unseen by David Beach, but watched by the avid eyes of hundreds of millions of people around the world, President Allan Tiernan walked up the short staircase to the stage, followed closely by Russia’s President Abakumov, France’s President Loubé and the leaders of thirteen of the most influential countries in the world. The men and women lined up on the stage, with President Tiernan making for the central podium, ready to address the nation. Each of the figures on the podium would have an opportunity to speak directly to the concerns and needs of their people, but this was President Tiernan’s moment, and he steadied himself, licking his lips and looking down with an air of solemnity.

  By some miracle, a gap opened up in the crowd just large enough for David to push forwards a little and catch a glimpse of the giant monitor. David was already grinding his teeth, and as he arched his head to the side to see past Stephanie’s hand, his tension grew. There, writ large, crystal clear colors, strong contrasts, clean lines, the President stepped toward the microphone, smiling and waving confidently at the world.

  One mile away, in a North facing room on the eighteenth floor of the Arctum Industries office complex, a lone figure packed ammo into four empty magazines. After all of the anxieties and tribulations, he was calm. Nothing could distract him from his goal. He wasn’t about to commit murder. He had told himself this so many times that he was almost convinced the rest of the world would see it that way. Five .338 Lapua Magnum bullets per cartridge. He loaded the first cartridge into the AWM rifle and checked the sights. There, through the glass of the U.S. Optics Scope, almost as clear as the image displayed on the high definition monitor next to him, the man watched President Tiernan commence his address to the nation.

  The shots themselves would not be a test of skill, he could make this shot one hundred times out of one hundred and still feel no sense of achievement. Timing, that might be an issue though. There were sixteen squibs, small explosive charges, mounted at strategic points around the precinct and these squibs were set to go off at very precise times. He knew the squibs had not been discovered by the Secret Service, or this historic event would not be running on schedule. Speed was absolutely of the essence; sixteen shots fired within the space of nine seconds, four AWM rifles mounted on the window ledge, and the shots all had to be timed perfectly to coincide with the sound of squibs firing in close proximity to the stage.

  The gunman felt no fear, felt no remorse for what he was about to do, no pride either. It wasn�
��t murder. It was just a message.

  David had been watching the monitor for what felt like an eternity now and he was starting to wonder how bored Stephanie must be feeling. Stephanie Beach was in her element actually, ecstatic that she was so much taller than the people around her, and at the same time, pleased that she hadn’t been made to stand. At some point, David would explain to her that she didn’t have to understand the word manipulate to be manipulative, but that conversation wouldn’t happen today. Today she would pat her father’s hair with mild elation and grin at the little people around her, all much shorter than her.

  President Tiernan placed his hands either side of the podium and focused his gaze on a distant point in the crowds. Behind him and to either side, the other heads of state prepared to deliver the address in their own languages.

  “We speak today as one voice.” Tiernan lowered his head briefly as the crowd cheered. “We are a voice, not unified by a tragedy, but by our desire to forestall tragedy.”

  David watched as the camera panned across the faces on stage, each of them pacing themselves to match the speed of Tiernan’s speech.

  “We are a voice, not of lamentation for the ills of the world, but of hope for what we have set out today to achieve.” He paused, his eyes moving slowly about the faces in the crowd, “Economic Unification has been a shared dream … An all encompassing passion for those of us who stand before you today, and we know we share that dream with many of you, but to those who would seek to silence our voice, as one we ask, where is your shame?”

  Cheers erupted from a crowd united, and David stepped to the side as one enthusiastic onlooker threw his arms in the air in celebration.

  “No longer can we ignore the clamor of the masses, the chant of the ninety-nine percent when they ask, what gall? Where’s their shame? How dare they? Today, with one voice, we will answer loud and clear, enough is enough.”

  Behind him, President Loubé finished, “ça suffit, comme ça.” Tiernan nodded, “Enough is enough. Today, with the introduction of a unified currency,” he raised the index finger of his right hand, counting off, “salary caps, minimum wages and globalized health care … today, we level the playing field, and we say as one, if you don’t like it, get off the field.”

  As the madness of the crowd set in about him, David didn’t understand what had happened at first. He heard a loud crack, somewhere off to his left and he didn’t react to it, didn’t flinch. He was so intent on watching the huge LCD display, the close-up image of the president smiling and waving casually. There was something odd there, something about the president’s face. The moment stretched out in front of David, a smear on the camera lens, a long dirty line appearing on the image, and a flash of dark red there, along the crooked line. An eternity between David’s brain processing the image he was seeing, and connecting it to the loud cracking sounds that he could hear. Then the red was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared and now the president’s hand was clutching at his forehead as he stumbled backward. The camera had cut to a wider shot now and there were more explosive cracking noises and the other figures on the stage started to stumble and fall over each other in the commotion.

  People around David pushed and shoved, some of them screaming and pointing at the monitor, other’s pointing to various buildings around the precinct. Stephanie was holding tightly around David’s shoulders and she was screaming too. David knew in the back of his mind that he should be doing something, anything to calm Stephanie or protect her from the pandemonium that was starting to unfold around them, but he was completely incapable of action. Something was profoundly wrong with what he had just witnessed. He was paralyzed by the thought, no, not even a thought. Just a feeling, an instinct. The hairs on his arms standing on end, Stephanie’s legs digging into his chest, the thought clattering around his numbed head, a clumsy but untouchable interloper.

  The shots were still ringing out.

  David blinked his eyes, trying to focus, trying desperately to see the stage or the monitor, but the panicking crowd made that impossible. Stephanie was patting her father’s chest, yelling at him to put her down. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t moving, what was wrong with him? Why wouldn’t he help her climb down? She was too scared of being knocked off his shoulders by the people who were running around. She would worry about why her father wasn’t moving once she got to the ground. She eased herself lower down his back, gripping tight with her knees, arms around his neck, then she dropped to the ground, stumbling slightly as her feet hit the floor. She tugged at her father’s hand, trying desperately to get his attention. “Dad, c’mon, Daddy … Dad!” She yelled at him, her voice breaking as tears started to flow.

  David Beach looked down at his daughter, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t really recognize her in that instant. He couldn’t hold on to the fact that she was his daughter, and she needed him. Reality only gripped him when he realized that Stephanie was crying. He bent quickly and scooped her up in his arms, hugging her close to his chest. He started to try and dodge between the crowds of people to make his way toward the stage, unsure of what good it would do if he could reach that destination. Would anyone there allow him close enough to find out what had happened? Nonetheless, he obeyed his instincts.

  By the time he reached the vicinity of the stage, he could barely hear Stephanie’s sobs over the wail of sirens and announcements being made through bullhorns. He patted the back of his daughter’s head and kissed her ear, “it’ll be alright honey, don’t worry.” He tried to sound reassuring, but his voice trembled as he spoke.

  There was already a pretty intimidating line of police in riot gear surrounding the stage. David could see what looked like paramedics and a number of governmental agents swarming the stage. He entertained the notion that his White House credentials would get him closer, but when he arched his head back to see Stephanie’s tear-stained face, he thought better of it. What did any of this really matter anymore? This was the culmination of all of his worst nightmares. He didn’t feel vindicated in his paranoia. He might be out of a job. The president might be dead, and from the sounds of gunfire that he had heard, it was possible that more than one country would be left in turmoil.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Charlene

  I could just kill them, West thought to himself, that would put a stop to it easy enough. He gazed vacantly at the television and he imagined the feeling of his fingers stroking the cold leather arm of the couch. He couldn’t remember the feeling of leather, or cold for that matter, these pleasantries long since lost to him. He was slightly melancholic for such things. Friends too … god knows how many friends he’d lost over the years, each of them as distant now as his sense of touch. He could recall them, friends, leather, places and all, if he could muster the courage to step up to the hopper, but even that had lost its appeal.

  Weary, he cast an eye over the images of the riots on the large flat screen, well aware that if he walked up to the window, he would be able to see the lunacy unfold in real time on the streets below. This had been the state of affairs since the assassination three weeks earlier, but he was distracted and detached from it all, and this feeling had been building in him for months now, engulfing him.

  Hearing had become somewhat of a problem. If he put his mind to it, he used to be able to hear conversations all over the city. Over the past year, he had struggled to restrain that ability, and it had reached a point where now, it required exhausting feats of his imagination just to block out the wall of sound. He would sit in darkness, imagining blazing infernos swallowing the city, or tornadoes sweeping through the streets of New York, sucking up the unwitting citizens as they went about their business. Anything, just to turn off the infernal babble of humanity.

  The neighbors had been talking about him. Watching the news reports of the riots, he was beginning to understand his neighbor’s concerns at least. The screen went momentarily dark as the news coverage cut to commercials, there in his own shadowy reflection, unk
empt, bearded, gaunt and brooding, definitely a terrorist. In another moment, he saw President Tiernan’s image, accompanied by that same sickening diatribe they had been playing over and over; the inaugural ball, the handshakes in front of the white house, and always such saccharine headlines, ‘The Nation Remembers President Tiernan: Too Young to Die.’ He shook his head in disbelief.

  These were the end times, sure enough. All portents pointed to it. The bones had been cast. West needed someone. He needed someone who he could make understand. In that moment, West knew what he had to do.

  Miss Osterman lived several doors down from West, apartment 412. When she heard the gentle knocking at her door she decided that whoever it was would go away if she ignored it. When the knocking was repeated, she rolled her eyes and braced herself, one fragile hand on the arm of the cushioned chair, the other hand grasping her dully aching right hip. Again, there was the knock and she hissed under her breath, shouting as politely as she could manage, “Just a minute will you? I’m eighty-five years old you know?” She breathed heavily, closing her eyes as the memory of some of those years flowed through her. She sometimes wished that she had been blessed with a little more grace and dignity along with her advancing years, but Miss Osterman reconciled herself to the fact that the younger woman in her, the one who would have already made it to the door, was pissed off.

  She undid the deadbolt, pulling the door open a crack, the thick and reassuring chain preventing it from opening further.

  Her eyes adjusted to the light in the hallway beyond and she managed to make out the hulking unruly form of that damned foreigner from down the hall. Definitely a terrorist that one, no doubt about it. She made to close the door, but his voice rang out, “Miss Osterman I need a haircut.” His voice was clean, almost practiced, Ford A-type, Apple Pie and Elvis American. Not what Miss Osterman had expected, and she was suddenly aware of the fact that she’d never heard the man talk, other than the occasional agitated utterance as she had passed him in the hallway.