Story code: ST-001339
Part 3: Directed Energy
I grabbed the back of his flannel shirt, my fingers digging into the thin, greasy fabric. He didn’t even break stride. With a violent jerk of his shoulder, he threw off my grip, sending me stumbling sideways into the dust. The crushed rock of the RV park bit into my palms, but I scrambled up instantly, propelled by a sheer, blinding panic.
“Richard, stop!” I screamed, my voice cracking in the dry, hundred-and-four-degree air.
He reached the rear passenger side of my sedan just as I recovered my footing. He grabbed the chrome handle and yanked it upward.
The heavy *thunk* of the engaged mechanical lock held firm. The car rocked slightly on its suspension, but the door didn’t budge.
He yanked it again, his pale blue eyes wide and manic, staring into the dark tint of the glass. “Open it!”
I threw myself between his body and the car, pressing my back flat against the hot metal of the door. I shoved him backward with both hands, hitting him squarely in the chest. He stumbled a half-step back, surprised by the force, but immediately squared his shoulders. The stench of stale beer and ammonia radiating off him was nauseating.
“Give me the paper, Richard. Right now,” I demanded, my breath coming in short, jagged gasps. I checked my phone screen. 3:01 PM. “I have to leave. I am not playing games with you.”
He didn’t look at my phone. He didn’t look at my outstretched hand. He looked up at the sky. It was a brutal, cloudless blue, baking the desert floor below.
“You’re still asleep,” he muttered, his voice dropping into a gravelly, conspiratorial whisper. “You come out here crying about your insurance company. Crying about a fire. You think a pine needle and a dry wind did that to your house?”
“A transformer blew on the ridge,” I said, my voice trembling with forced restraint. “It took out four hundred homes, Richard. Mine was one of them. Sign the paper so I can rebuild it.”
He let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. “A transformer. That’s what the news anchors read off their little teleprompters. That’s what they want the sheep to repeat.” He leaned in, his face inches from mine, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, unblinking conviction. “A normal wildfire burns at sixteen hundred degrees. It doesn’t melt aluminum engine blocks into puddles. It doesn’t turn a house to white ash while leaving the plastic trash cans in the driveway completely untouched. Wake up!”
I stared at him. For six years, I had kept him away because of his neglect, his drinking, and his catastrophic selfishness. But standing here in the blistering heat, I realized I was facing something much worse. The isolation of the trailer park and the endless feed of internet rabbit holes had entirely consumed him. He wasn’t just cruel; he was completely detached from reality.
“My house is gone,” I whispered, trying to anchor him to the facts. “I have until five o’clock to save the property value.”
“Your house was vaporized,” he snapped, stepping closer, forcing me to press harder against the glass to maintain my barrier. “Weather-modification. Barium particulates scattered in the upper atmosphere, ignited by orbital lasers. Directed energy weapons, deployed by the Vanguard group. They’re clearing the rural population grids. They want us all stacked in fifteen-minute smart cities. Pacific Standard Insurance is just a front. They burned you out, and now they’re using a paperwork loophole to steal the land for the high-speed rail corridor!”
“There is no rail corridor! The house was at the bottom of a canyon!”
“That’s the frequency hub!” he shouted, slapping his open palm against the roof of my car. The metal boomed like a drum.
Inside, through the dark tint, I could see Leo’s silhouette. He hadn’t moved. The heavy blue noise-canceling headphones were still firmly clamped over his ears, his eyes glued to his tablet. The absolute trust he had in my rule-*nobody takes off the headphones, nobody gets out of the car*-was the only thing keeping him oblivious to the monster raving inches away from him.
Richard followed my gaze. He pressed his face close to the tinted glass, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the desert glare.
“He’s wearing them, isn’t he?” Richard sneered, his breath fogging the glass. “Staring at a screen. Letting them pump the programming right into his optic nerve. You’re letting them indoctrinate my grandson. You’re handing him over to the same people who burned down your house.”
“Step away from my car.”
He patted the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, where my insurance appeal was folded away. “I’m his blood. It is my duty to break the conditioning. I wasn’t there to save you, but I can save him.”
“Richard, I will call the police.”
“Call them! They’re part of it!” He turned his back to the glass and faced me, his expression hardening into a chillingly calm ultimatum. “I have the paper. You have the keys. I want five minutes in that back seat with the boy.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. “No.”
“Five minutes,” he repeated, his pale eyes entirely dead to my panic. “Unlock this door. Let me sit back there. I am going to tell him the truth about the sky, the fire, and the frequencies. I am going to educate him about how the world really works. You give me five minutes to wake my grandson up, and I will sign your surrender document.”
He raised his fist and rapped his knuckles hard against the glass, right next to my head. *Bang, bang, bang.*
I looked at my phone. 3:04 PM. The drive took an hour. Security downtown took twenty minutes. The paper was in his pocket. The glass was the only thing between his madness and my son.