Alan Dale - Death Nation's Army 01 (9 page)

“
Our Reality” was a NWO-sponsored program created to educate the population on how to be a better member of the new, changing, society.

Norman called it brainwashing of the mass populace to conform.

Bridjett remembers the day she first saw Draco Fortellis speak to the world. She watched along with her parents and brother during her first Christmas vacation back home after leaving for college. Shad appeared to maintain his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed demeanor. It appeared more and more to her that Shad was still clueless to what was going on around them just as long as he was treated like a star on the Evanston campus and got plenty of ass. Sometimes Bridjett wondered how a big brother could so easily be someone not to look up to.

Fortellis was then named President and Head Magistrate of the New World Order. It was the first ever, State of the People, address, shot out to every nation in the world. The whole planet became one populace to govern. The soon-to-be future residents of the building Utopias were the exception.

“
Wonderful people of the Order,” Draco began. “It pleases me to no end to address you as the first, true, leader of the planet earth. Having been named the leader of the NWO is a great honor and a crippling responsibility. Yes, I want this position, but I know at what cost this chair will hold to my mental and emotional state if for the only reason being I realize I will never make all of a world of eight billion people happy.

“
But that’s the reason why we are here now anyway, isn’t it? I am not here, the New World Order isn’t here because the people needed to be happy, right? No. It is because you didn’t see and listen to the evil that bled from our hearts and minds and into our mouth and fists and actions until it poured into our streets.”

Norman swore silently at the television screen and Bridjett saw his fists clench on top of the armrests of his favorite recliner. Shad? He simply watched, mesmerized.

“
For years we warned people their actions would lead to consequences many would never have dreamed of. Some say since the rise of the Order and its place as the one, true, governing body, that this is simply an excuse to take over most resources available to mankind. But, no…,” Draco paused and his beady, bright, blue eyes, bore a hole in the cameras as they waited for him to go on. The pause was for dramatic effect. “No. We are not taking control of anything the people themselves couldn’t control on their own.”

Her mother coughed and Bridjett watched as Jean watched the address, pensive, her right hand over her chest. She didn’t like what was happening around her and she definitely didn’t need to see what it was doing to her husband.

“
We don’t say, please. We don’t say, thank you. Our children do not respect our histories, let alone the living treasures of our past – their parents and grandparents. More and more of our future leaders are illiterate and overweight with the United States leading the charge. What does it say for a world when its biggest influence on its people is for all intents and purposes the least educated and lesser valued of all the alleged ‘civilized states?’ Draco took a sip of water and again took a moment for his words to sink in. “A new order, a new world had to be established to simply reboot the system that has failed us for decades. If we hadn’t, this world would eventually cease to exist and the NWO was not going to sit back and allow this to happen. So it’s up to…”

The screen went black and the television’s remote hit the monitor seconds later as Norman roared at the dead communications medium. He stood from his recliner, his body tense, face red, sweat glistening from his brow.

“
What the Hell, dad?” Shad challenged his father. “What is your problem?”

Norman roared with laughter then moved closer to his son, seated on the floor against the couch Jean occupied. The Alexi patriarch’s finger pointer firmly down on his son.

“
That’s rich, my problem?” Spittle flew from Norman’s lips. “The elite bastards created the problem and our lemming asses followed suit, you moron! How dare that monster tell us we needed to make changes because of our apparent lack of control? Our lack of proper behavior? Is he right? Sure he is! But he is only right because, all the rich fucks before him all around the world started this shit. Tolerance. Feelings. Political correctness! All of that shit did was create more animosity and ill will. If they allowed people to live their lives and not tell people how to live, things would have been fine. As long as people just minded their own business and didn’t physically harm anyone we were going to be okay!”

Shad stood up and stepped to his father inching within a feet of Norman.

“
What are you, living in a dream land?” Shad shot back. “There Is a lot of bad things happening out there dad. It’s time we took back this country and the good people started taking back the world in general. You can blame the government all you want, but the people voted our past and present leaders in and they themselves are to blame for their actions and nothing else.”

Norman noticed his arm was still raised, pointing, and immediately dropped it to his side. He was still fuming and he took a breath.

“
Son, you don’t see the big picture here,” he tried to lower his voice a bit and succeeded in doing so. “Yes, we voted them in. Yes, we should not blame anyone else for our actions. But, son, a father is a leader to his family and I tried to do a good job for you. I hope I did?”

Shad, tension still tightening his jaw, his eyes blazing, nodded.

“
So if I did, I am your leader, your tone setter, I set the standard,” Norman continued. “Sure, if I beat your mother, which thank God, I don’t and you copied me, it would still ultimately be your bad. But, I am the one who set the tone and who would I be to judge only you? Punish
only
you?”

Shad, stubborn like his father, said nothing.

“
These crooked, alleged, leaders of ours are the ones who set the table and society willingly sat down and ate from it,” Norman stepped closer to his son, reached out and place a hand on Shad’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “But the question is, if we all get sick from food poisoning do we take the blame for eating the meal or does someone ultimately have to punish the cook too?”

Shad looked his father in the eye, shook his head, and smirked.

“
It’s bad I know,” Norman said. “But you have to ask yourself, Shad. Does this progressive movement to eventually limit the general populace’s access to daily benefits, jobs, food, mobility, a reaction to a natural cause of events? Or was it a by-product of the government laying down the trap to catch us and eventually kill us in?”

It took a second before Shad finally shook free of his father’s hand and stepped back. The move was so sudden it brought Jean up from the couch, while Bridjett sat in her same spot in front of the now, silent television.

“
Dad, you have blamed the government for everything from the curfews today to the cancelling of
Survivor
after season thirty,” Shad shouted back. “It’s human nature which led us to this. We are inherently lazy and fundamentally insane. We eventually blame someone else, in this case the government, and go through these cycles. We will get better.”

Norman scoffed and looked at the two women in the room before continuing.

“
This isn’t just a phase, boy,” Norman said through gritted teeth. “They are trying to control the majority of the human populace. How can you not see the problem with that?”

Shad smirked, shrugged his shoulders, and crossed his arms across his chest. Arrogance of a mini God at its full display. “Not my problem.”

“
Until it becomes your problem,” Bridjett whispered.

Shad turned on his younger sister, glaring, but refused to say a word. Regardless of his being older and having a much more imposing figure he still would never admit to being in awe of his strong willed sibling.

“
She’s right,” Norman continued. “You have it easy now. We will see what happens when it doesn’t turn out like you thought it would.”

It was Shad’s turn to stare long, hard and intently at his father.

“
I’ll take my chances.”

“
You do that,” Norman said and spat on the ground, in front of Shad’s feet.

“
That’s enough!” Jean injected herself finally into the fracas.

“
No. It will only be enough when Big Shot here realizes the the trust fund babies who make up the most of our government want the whole playground to themselves and decide to bury all the rest of the kids in the sandbox!”

It was then where Bridjett watched as her father stormed out of the room with Jean trying to catch up to him and calm him down, leaving the Alexi siblings In the room alone.

Shad locked eyes with Bridjett, the two engaged in a staring tug of war for moments before he decided to break the silence.

“
That just made my decision easy.”

Shad turned around and headed toward the door, grabbing his jacket from the rack inside the foyer.

“
What are you talking about?” Bridjett yelled out to her brother but she received no answer as the door shut behind him.

She wouldn’t see her brother for a few days and when they did finally run into each other, Bridjett had to head back to school shortly so the last hours together were terse and basically an exercise in civility. The Alexi house would turn cold if Shad was seen in any of the rooms with one of the other three family members. Conversations would stop and the warm moments eventually faded into memory.

Like so many other things ultimately would….

Months passed and the world’s individual governments in rapid succession were soon finding themselves enveloped under the New World Order’s umbrella.

It was one large world-federal governmental tree. The NWO executive set policy for the world, which would be enforced by each nation’s own top officials or face the consequences. Each nation owned some flexibility with cultural and geographical–based policy making on an independent basis, but nothing more and anything else, much less.

Also, it wouldn’t be until the next summer when Norman and Jean would see their son. Shad came back with straight A’s for the third straight year at Northwestern while Bridjett fared well at Morton, especially in her night art classes. Bridjett became an assistant manager of the Starbucks and began taking kick boxing classes at Endo’s while maintaining a solid B average. Even her father had to shake his head at the incredibly well-built, strong woman, his almost 20-year-old daughter became.

Norman called her to say the family was gathering in the back yard for a barbecue celebrating their reunion after a long time apart. None of the other three Alexi’s heard from Shad after the Christmas holiday passed until he called Jean in late May saying he would be coming home in a few weeks.

In the world at large, things were getting worse for the general populace. Curfews began to call for segmented ‘windows of movement.’ In all major city centers, a move was made to create staggered work schedules based on location. So if one worked in say, the east section of an industrial and/or business district, they were scheduled for 6 a.m. – 3 p.m. shifts, then the next area would go from 7 a.m. – 4 p.m. etc. If anyone from another section was caught on the streets during another population segment’s time, they could be fined at best and jailed for 90 days at worse.

For a first offense.

People were not to be seen in public outside of work hours, with the exception of a two-hour, post-employment window where persons could go shopping for groceries and other basic necessities. Lock downs commenced between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. worldwide and soon even television networks would eventually fail to entertain as all news broadcasts seemed to be tailored toward positive propaganda for the NWO and the increasing stories of success inside the Test Zone Zero laboratories. More and more ‘breakthroughs’ were reported toward the advancement in medical care for the sick and dying according to medical spokespersons coming out of Australia. It appeared the NWO decided its people couldn’t go many places but they wouldn’t get sick at least while being bored to death.

Of course the lock downs did not stop the people from lashing out against one another. Even in a world of mostly have nots there does exist a class order within their ranks. Some have nots had more than others and this would cause plenty of animosity as more violence between members of the general populace continued to grow. If you couldn’t take out your angst against the NWO then your neighbor was the second best option. This happened enough times where it led to the NWO finding more excuses to tighten its grip on the people. All they had to do is create more restrictions on movement and thinking eventually the people would think themselves out and the armies would come in to clean up the mess.

Eventually a small bubble of localized riots began to spring about the world to eventually get quashed, quickly, and not without bloodshed. Word started popping up on the internet- albeit it wasn’t easy due to the multiple government controls on the web’s capability, ultimately leading to the Underwave – about a small, covert, group of former and current military officials throughout the world getting together to form an organized front to challenge the NWO. In those early days, information was sketchy at best.

For the meantime, the NWO continued to recruit more and more young men and women into its ranks.