Chapter 10

The following new character appears in this chapter:

Jillian Kelley

Magic user, 5’-3’’ tall, 115 pounds, 34D-22-34, 24 years old, long flaming red hair, bright green eyes, and very cute

The usual gang of suspects had gathered in the conference room near the mayor’s office just before nine on Monday morning the 20th of July. They were a tired looking group as most of them had been up all night again for the third night in a row. The only ones missing were the Precinct Commanders who were all still very busy.

The Mayor burst into the room just after nine o’clock in a disheveled condition, and he was boiling mad.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” he demanded in an angry voice. “They called me at 3:00 AM this morning to tell me that they had found my brother hanging from a street light near his house, like a common criminal. I’ve been out there since then trying to get things straightened out, and not one of you even bothered to stop by. What the hell was so important that you couldn’t stop by?” he demanded in a growl.

“Take it easy and sit down, Mr. Mayor,” the Police Chief told him in a tired voice. The Mayor looked at him angrily for several seconds before falling into his chair at the head of the table.

“Your brother wasn’t the only casualty last night,” the Chief began. “We found a City Councilman, a State Representative, a loudmouth activist and his bodyguard, a Judge and a FCS caseworker hanged last night in addition to your brother. There was also another explosion and a state vehicle was set on fire,” he told him before pausing for a breath. The Mayor was shocked to say the least.

“At the judge’s house, we found an abused girl and the man who raped her, who was tied up. We also found the video camera and the DVD that the judge was using to make a porn flick. It had a message on it from Max Hardtrick near the end. If the media gets a whiff of this, we are all in deep shit,” the Chief told him. The Mayor now looked extremely disturbed, and the Chief had paused for another breath.

“Now for the bad news,” he said as he began again.

“You mean that wasn’t the bad news that you just gave me?” the Mayor interrupted in a tired voice.

“Oh no, that was just the news about Hardtrick. The rest is even worse, and the media already knows about it, and that may save us from their learning about the judge,” the Chief told him.

“What could be worse?’ the Mayor asked, mystified.

“You had to ask,” the Chief told him with a tired grin. “Well, here it is, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

“With the release of the news about Max Hardtrick being the cause of our recent troubles yesterday, the hoods and gangbangers came out last night to grab what new territory or advantage they could. While they were fighting each other, and we were trying to stop all of it, because it was happening all over the city, the hoods and gangbangers from Decatur and DeKalb county arrived to horn in and take over what they thought was open territory here.

“We had both sides fighting among themselves and also fighting each other. The morgue is overflowing, there were dozens of fires, but no additional explosions. The hospitals are also full of gunshot and knife wound patients, and my jails are overflowing while we try to sort things out. Additionally, I have twenty officers in the hospital from various wounds and two dead.

“The Fire Chief has a dozen or more men in the hospital as well, but luckily no dead. There probably aren’t enough lawyers available to straighten all of this out in less than a week and a half, and the media is roasting our asses already. Is there anything else you would like to know?” the Chief finished in an exhausted voice.

“Good god!” the Mayor exclaimed in shock.

“You can probably expect more of the same tonight,” the Fire Chief told the Mayor.

“I thought you said that we have them all locked up,” the Mayor exclaimed.

“We have the ones that we caught locked up or in the hospital,” the Police Chief told him. “Today and tonight, you’ll have the rest of the gangbangers and hoods out as well as the various activists, and that’s not to mention those from the City Councilman’s district, or those from the State Representative’s district, though they’ll have some distance to travel.”

“What can we do?” the Mayor pleaded.

“Declare a curfew and ask the governor for troops,” the Fulton County Police Chief advised.

“Bu ... but that will make it look like we have lost control of the situation,” the Mayor exclaimed in a horrified voice.

“I’ve got news, Mr. Mayor, we just about have. Our people, both the police and the firefighters are worn to a frazzle. Another night of being on duty all night and part of the day is going to finish most of them. I’ve already put my fire crews on reduced duty for today, hoping there aren’t any big emergencies during the day. That will give me more people for night time duty,” the Fire Chief told him, before adding, “Oh yes, you aren’t going to like the overtime request either.”

“I’m trying to do the same with the police, plus we are calling in help from the surrounding counties, but they have worries of their own. Nobody knows what will happen next,” the Police Chief told him. The Mayor again saw his chances of being re-elected going down the drain.

“All right, when should the curfew start?” he asked in an exhausted and beaten voice.

“Hell, I’d say nine o’clock tonight, but that probably isn’t realistic or practical,” the Police Chief told him.

“Eleven o’clock is probable more doable, and it should last until six in the morning,” the Fulton County Police Chief told him.

“And the Governor?” asked the Mayor in defeat.

“I’d call him right now and see when he is available. You’ll want to speak to him in person,” the Fire Chief advised him.

“Right, he may listen since it was a State Representative that was killed last night,” the Mayor finally agreed, remembering about the representative.

“Are you kidding?” asked one of the Mayor’s aides who had come in with him, and had been listening to the news on his smart phone. “She was one of the governor’s biggest enemies. He is probably dancing around in his office,” the aide finished.

“You’re going to need to get this done swiftly, Mr. Mayor,” one of his assistants told him. “You will need to make an announcement by noon time so people will have time to make preparations,” he finished. The call was made, and the Mayor went over to the Governor’s office. It was actually quicker to walk than to take a car, as it was only two blocks or so away. He also went with a police escort.

The Mayor came dragging back to his office a short time later. He looked even worse than when he left. Everyone who had been at the meeting was already gone, but there were a couple of City Councilmen there waiting for him ... with questions.

“What did the Governor say?” was the first.

“He’s going to declare a state of emergency in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. There will be a county wide curfews starting at eleven tonight and running until six tomorrow morning. It will be the same on Tuesday and also Wednesday, if needed,” the Mayor told them.

“What about the National Guard?” another one asked in concern.

“He has two companies of National Guard Infantry on the way here. Hell, I found out that he had alerted them yesterday,” the Mayor told them.

“And he agreed to all of this just from talking to you?” a third Councilman asked, puzzled.

“Hell no, I was the last one to arrive. When I got there, the Mayor of Decatur, and the Chairman of the County Council for both Fulton and DeKalb counties were already there and several of them had been talking to him for more than fifteen minutes,” the Mayor admitted.

“Damn, what else is going on?” the Councilmen asked.

“The Governor was practically dancing behind his desk over the death of that State Representative. He had wanted to get her out of office for a long time. He thinks that he can get one of his supporters elected to her seat,” the Mayor told them.

“We wanted to offer our condolences on your brother’s death,” the three Councilmen told him.

“Yeah, his wife and kids were real broken up over it when I was there this morning. Not much any of us can do about it though,” he told them in a tired voice. “With all of the trouble lately, there will probably be a waiting line to have a funeral at a church,” he added.

Also on Monday morning, the ward that Max had set around the veterans’ camp expired, and they were able to leave the area again.

Over the weekend they had heard the sounds of explosions, and they had heard and seen numerous police cars and fire engines rushing along the roadways to the various scenes of violence. On Sunday night and early on Monday morning, they had heard the shooting as the various gangs and criminals had clashed, in addition to hearing and seeing the police and fire departments’ responses. That was when they were glad that they couldn’t leave their camp, and they hoped that others wouldn’t be able to enter it as well.

At 0800 on Monday morning, Farley came to speak to George.

“Whatever was keeping us in here is gone now,” he told George in a very quiet voice.

“Does anyone else know?” George asked.

“I don’t think so,” Farley replied.

“Don’t spread the word. Let’s wait and keep everyone here for a while yet. Those were major battles that we heard last night, and who knows how many of those idiots are still running around. I’ll get the others moving in an hour or so,” George told him.

It was just after 0930 when George allowed the others to head out for their daily rounds. They were to collect as much news and information as possible, and everyone was to be back well before dark. A number of the men also carried out the empty food containers and the other trash that had accumulated over the weekend to be disposed of in other people’s trash containers.

Men and information began returning within a couple of hours. They brought with them the front pages of several issues of the local papers from over the weekend and from that morning, as a number of extras had been published during that time.

“Look at this, George,” Albert called after looking at the front page of a paper that one of the men had brought in.

“That’s Airborne’s picture in the paper,” he told him in a quiet voice, as George joined him.

“Yes, and according to what I have read in some of these papers so far, he really raised Cain over the weekend. It’s a good thing that we were trapped here and weren’t involved in any of that,” George told him.

Later that day, one of the men returned with a somewhat functional boombox. The disk player didn’t work and neither did the cassette player, but the radio part still worked, and it still had batteries.

“Listen to this,” he told George before turning up the volume.

“To repeat,” a voice from the radio said, “the Governor has declared that a State of Emergency exists in Fulton and DeKalb Counties due to the unrest there. There will be a curfew from eleven o’clock at night until six o’clock each morning until conditions return to normal. All citizens are to be off the streets during the hours of curfew except for emergency and police vehicles. The police and the National Guard will arrest anyone who is outside during those hours. Two companies of the Georgia National Guard will be present and on patrol in Atlanta and Decatur.”

“I guess that things really got out-of-hand last night,” George said after the announcer had finished

“Yes, I guess so, look what the Moocher just brought in,” Albert told him before handing him a part of Monday’s Extra newspaper. George spent many minutes reading the front page articles of the paper.

“Lord have mercy,” he finally said. “It looks like they had a war last night between the various criminal elements. It also looks like Airborne was active again last night. We’re going to need to get everyone in here early Albert and keep them quiet as church mice for the next several nights until all of this blows over,” he finished. Albert didn’t disagree with him.

A patrol car pulled up a few hundred feet from the camp a short time later and honked its horn a number of times.

“We got visitors,” Farley told George and Albert, as if they couldn’t hear the horn.

“Yeah, I guess that we better go out and see what they want. If they were after us, they wouldn’t have stopped that far back and there would be more than one of them,” George told the other two. He and Albert walked out to see what the cops wanted.

“You guys been pretty quiet the past few days,” a Police Lieutenant said from his rolled down window, obviously preferring not to get out of the patrol car.

“Yeah, well we heard the explosions and saw all of the emergency vehicles rushing around, and figured that it wasn’t safe to be out this weekend. We also heard the war that went on last night. We all been to war, and don’t need anymore,” George told him.

“We just came down to warn you that there is a curfew in effect for the next several nights. None of you want to be out on the streets at night,” the Lieutenant told him.

“We heard. One of the guys brought in a well used radio, and we heard about the curfew on it. We’ll all be staying home the next few nights,” George assured him.

After a number of hours of sleep, I came awake suddenly and cast my wards around me before opening my eyes, as I had a feeling that someone was watching me. When I sat up and looked to my left, I saw a short young woman with bright red hair and large breasts who was about 23 or 24 years old watching me. She started applauding as soon as I noticed her.

“That’s very good, Major. You have a very finely tuned sense of awareness, and it is much better than that of others that I know,” she told me with a smile.

“Who are you and how did you pass through the ward that I have around this house?” I asked in a reasonable voice since she didn’t appear to be a threat presently.

“I’m Jillian Kelley, I’m Irish, and I drove down here from Charleston in an SUV to talk to you,” she told me.

“And how did you get in here?”

“It took me a while. The ward that you have around this house isn’t one that I am familiar with, and it took me some time to devise a spell to pass through it, as it appears to be impossible to crash it. You have a very strong Talent and can put a lot of Magic into your spells,” she told me.

“But how did you know where I was,” I demanded.

“Do you know how strong the Magic signature is that you leave everywhere you go and every time you do something using Magic? I just followed your Magic signature to this house,” she told me.

“Can anyone do that?”

“No, it takes a strong Talent and special training,” she admitted.

“You know about Magic?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m a Magic user, and I represent a national group of Magic users who are opposed to the government’s keeping Magic use a secret as well as those who are opposed to the use of all Magic, and Magic users,” she told me.

“I never knew there were people opposed to the government’s use of Magic or until recently about this other group who are opposed to all Magic.” I told her.

“We are opposed to their keeping Magic a secret and controlling those who use it,” she corrected me.

“Okay!” I acknowledged. “Why are you here, and you can call me Max rather than Major.”

“You have a very strong Talent for using Magic, Max, and we, that is our group, want to recruit you to aid us in opposing those who suppress the use of Magic, and those who are totally opposed to Magic of any type,” she answered in a quiet voice.

“Yes, those opposed to the use of Magic are the ones responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and killing my children, They also sent my wife pictures of the children and what had been done to them which caused her to kill herself,” I told her.

“Oh dear, we didn’t know about your wife,” she said in a disturbed voice. “I’m sorry.”

“That won’t bring any of them back,” I said in a sharp voice, but was immediately sorry that I had.

“No, it won’t, but if you join us, we may be able to prevent such things from happening in the future,” she told me.

“Where are you people located?” I asked, “In Charleston?”

“I’m in Charleston, but we have members in all of the states in addition to some overseas. We have to be very careful, as most of us don’t have as strong a Talent or the use of Magic that you do,” she told me.

“So, you want me to go to Charleston with you, is that it?” I asked.

“Charleston would be the first stop. You would be sent to study with Masters around the country to improve your knowledge of what is possible with the use of Magic. From what I have heard on the news, which is undoubtedly biased, most of the spells you are familiar with deal with violence and your own safety. There is so much more that can be done with Magic, Max” she told me in a passionate voice.