The Purple Creation: The Dexter Tanner Chronicles

© 2011 Howard Duff Bailey. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/13/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5902-5 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5903-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5904-9 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011905943

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Chaos

Spring the Net and See What We Get

Chaos

Click! The light comes on telling me that it is morning. The coffee maker clicks on and starts to brew as my eyes open to the brightness of the artificial light. The neon bulbs in the shelter cast shadows behind everything in the room. Dark shadows that things can hide in and slither out when you least suspect it. It is cold and damp. The atmosphere makes me imagine what it is like to be buried alive. It is time for me to gather my senses and get a cup of coffee. What magazines will I read today? Which crossword puzzles will I try to complete? At 10:00 am I can take a shower and look out the fake window and imagine that the fan behind it is the warm breeze instead of the stale air with the hint of concrete. People in prison have it better than me because they have others to associate themselves with. This is like isolation. I just have this bomb shelter, a few magazines, and the last 200 copies of playboy; I have them for the articles. The year is 2020 and it has been a hell of a year. Not only are the water, air and land polluted, but also noise pollution and space debris falling to earth makes a simple walk in the concrete jungle a hazard.

My name is Dexter Tanner, Dex for short. I consider myself to be a man with many talents but the one that I have the most experience with is killing. Wet work was my thing. My resume has a lot of blacked out areas and my passport is simply a pass-card that is scanned at airport terminals. Who I work for and what I do will become ambiguous and even more confusing. That is the way I live. I move around easily and simply because there are people in my line of work who are less suspicious of an African American. Little do they know the places I have been and the people I have seen through the scope of my rifle. It would make them reconsider their thinking.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio and was raised in the normal ways that society considers normal. Dyslexia as a child, forced me to learn differently. I had to learn to look at things in all angles instead of just the normal paths to a conclusion. It was not until I reached college that I realized that I have is a gift. I have the gift to think outside the box. Some would call it abstract thinking. It was a curse as a kid but once I learned how to use it, it became an asset. No silver spoon in this mouth and our family had the typical problems that all families have. I am the youngest of three kids. I had to fend for myself. Hand-me-downs were not real warm in the winter. They were pretty warn and tattered.

The month is now March and three months ago a nuclear cloud was predicted to start floating around the globe. The origin of the cloud is unknown but it is speculated that it is caused by a space station falling to earth. When it entered the earth’s atmosphere, the core of the power plant went nuclear and formed a nuclear cloud the size of Northern America. The cloud completely destroyed the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere kept harmful radiation from the sun from reaching the earth. Our poles switched from north to south. Scientists did not know exactly what impact that will have on life on this planet, but they do know that death will occur when our world will be without any protection from the sun. Radiation rained down on the earth killing every living thing on this planet. At least that is what was scheduled to happen before I hunkered down in this shelter. Before this mess, humans had adapted to the deteriorating conditions of the atmosphere. The day of being in the sun without UV protection is over. We have adapted a new material that when worn, shields us from the air and radiation pollution that we are exposed to. The suit also removes any ingested pollutants by increasing our sweat and disposing of the pollutants when absorbed into the suit. The suit has to be drained and maintained on a daily basis but one can go a week without servicing in emergency situations. The radiation that the earth is being bombarded with is too much for these suits. We did not have enough time to come up with a stronger suit but there have been a lot of new advancements in the area of science, but we have not evolved much in the area of humanity.

In the past 10 years Civil Wars and militias have popped up all over the country. Our government has become corrupt. Hate groups of all kinds have become stronger in number. I watched the way the world is heading and prepared for years for such an event like this and bought a bomb shelter. Finding a bomb shelter was not easy because in 2015 they were outlawed. Some psychologist found the shelters inhumane to allow only a few who bought them to try to survive on this earth to live in what would be considered hell. I will take my chances as opposed to being fried like an earthworm on a hot sidewalk. The shelter is built for three but I lost my wife and child to a senseless act in 2012 during the year of school bombings. Eighty-Five school bombings happened in this year and one of these bombings changed forever who I am and how I feel. Will the pain ever end? I was employed as a Technical Specialist and my job was installing security devices in schools to guard against threats. My wife was a schoolteacher and my son was a student in her class. As I was going to the school to start my installation of the security device, I pulled into the parking lot. The school exploded as I closed my van door. I never knew that a single act of violence could devastate me and change me into a cold person but it did. I miss them both, more with every passing day. It truly was the first time I have had anything taken away from me. It made me think about what I had been doing. I guess my attempts of redemption were not enough. The government investigated the bombing and found that a kid that was pissed at the world decided to kill innocent people, same ole story as always.

Our nation, in turmoil, just voted in its first African-American President. President Marcus Trendal has boyish good looks and a small frame. His horn rimmed glasses makes him look like those men that spend most of their time behind a computer screen but his graying hair shows a little bit of a distinguishing quality and gives away his half a century age. His deep voice and articulation demands attention. Trendal ran on the platform that we are all equal and deserve equal treatment under the law in the United States and in the world. Trendal grew up in Los Angeles in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the nation. He started a business at the age of 14 that dealt with supplying the students in his school with technology. He soon had contracts all over the globe and had contacts that could get any kind of technology one could want. By the age of 16 years old he was recruited by the United States government and a procurement specialist. He also started college at the age of 16. At the age of 19 he graduated from college with a degree in engineering and minored in electro-induction physics (the study of electric power in nanotechnology). Trendal joined the Air Force and perfected many of the weapons that we currently use. He holds 300+ patients and 400 pending patients. He enters the world of politics after he started to see the trend of racism in our government.

The mere attempt of an African American running for President started the activity of hate groups. Minorities thought that the shift from people of color being the minority to the majority would make it equal, but just the opposite happened. Leaders who did not like the way the world heading started crawling out the woodwork. One leader that started to make a name for him-self is Lee Parker.

Lee Parker is a name that sends shivers down my back and left a cold pit in the bottom of my stomach. Parker grew up in the South. His southern drawl sometimes made him sound uneducated but that is very far from the truth. His childhood was uneventful except the fact that his family was rich. Old southern money flowed through his veins. His family directly benefited from slavery. At slavery’s end, Parker’s great grandfather was smart enough to invest in textiles and steel. The Parker family still owned 55% of all steel mills in the United States. Parker attended college in the South and focused his studies on politics. His dissertation was titled: How Prosperous Would the World Be If Slavery Sever Ended. Shortly after college Parker was quickly recruited by the Southern Republican Party and so began his political career. He soon became a United States Senator that was vocal in his contempt. He was not shy about the hatred he felt for minorities and the cultures different than his. He considered anyone not of the white race substandard. His racist actions got him ousted out of office. Everyone got the impression that someone as powerful as Lee Parker would not allow this setback to prevent him from making his name known in the world of politics. These events had everyone jumping on sides and thus were the birth of the underground groups.

Underground groups started forming all around the country. A number of foreign governments started chipping away at our way of life. Japanese super corporations started buying the large corporations of the United States. Smaller governments like Mexico and Australia started fighting over who was going to lap up the scraps of the textile industry. The only thing that was not picked apart like a chicken carcass was capitalism. The rich were still getting richer and the gap between the two extremes had grown to an uncontrollable level. Revolution is in the air and I can smell it. If there is a group that is prepared to start a revolution, it is the Underground. The Underground is a group made up of high ranking government officials who did not like how the world looks and decided to funnel money off special projects that have occurred in the past 20 years. They used the money to start this underground faction to work as a shadow government. My guess is that the underground will attempt a coo. The underground’s plans might have changed since we are looking at the end to the world that we all know. There is no doubt that the underground would have been successful. The group is well equipped and has the firepower to take over a country. If there is a world after this devastating radiation, it will not be a pretty one. As I sit here sipping my coffee and rubbing the scar that is left on my face from the school explosion that killed my family, I start to take my mind off the experience and read a National Geographic magazine printed in 1997; my mind starts to wander.

I start to imagine what the world would be like when I open up this bomb shelter. Will the world be empty and desolate? Will there be others like me with bomb shelters? I know one thing; there will be the Underground. They are the group that sold me my bomb shelter. I also purchased