Lords Under Reign

By Ken Galloway

The year is 2021. Their goal is collective. To quench the thirst of a deteriorating populace beaten by religious wars and coveted genocide. A myriad of races pillaged from the greed and hunger of their last remaining resources. But first, the podium must be cleansed from its filth, purged from their works as the American government disintegrates. World leaders are stepping up to the plate, taking action to unravel the damage that has sustained our planets demise in the years past, and only then their plans can begin.

A musician, surfer, lawyer and revolutionary are the men that will not only change the face of government, but will reverse the cataclysmic events that would soon follow the very footsteps that we took in the past. Backed by a global collective for the desire to change in the name of truth, these men embark on a journey to rid the American government of its cancers and make things right for everyone, once and for all!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 15, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595837625

Ken Galloway

No stranger to the worldly air he breathes, Ken Galloway has traveled to many ends of the earth from the time he was born until today, living under dictatorships and nationalist regimes, in search for the truth that can only come from a positive mind. Ken Galloway lives in Seattle, Washington and is an avid surfer.

Book preview

Contents

NOT NOW.

LIGHTS OUT.

THIS IS FOR THE

PEOPLE OF THE SUN

BULLS ON PARADE

EVERYBODY LOOK,

HE’S GOING DOWN

BATTLE FLAG

VOODOO PEOPLE

DON’T CARRY ME

TOO FAR AWAY

TURN AND FACE THE

STRANGE

THREE DAYS

EULOGY

SPIDERS

WINDOWLICKER

SEVEN-CAGED

TIGERS FLY

SHE PULLED HER

DINNER FROM HER

POCKET

LIKE CLOCKWORK ON

THE ORANGE PLAIN

PORCELAIN

What happens when you cross a musicians’ test of faith, a defense lawyers’ fight for truth, a socialists’ revolution, a surfers’ quest for knowledge?

—LORDS UNDER REIGN

By Ken Galloway

NOT NOW.

It was muggy inside his room. It was as if the air hadn’t circulated for a couple of days. The sour stench of alcoholic sweat permeated throughout the quarters in which he had passed out almost twenty-four hours ago. Remnants of the smoke-filled evenings by the bed, a half full bottle of Crown Royal and a serious hangover would open his day perfectly. Hidden underneath the bellows of an alcoholic slumber, with instantaneous spurts of deep laden coughs and overblown sniffles, one could not detect any movement whatsoever; not even a flinch. His comatose state personified a corpse’s soul that has just passed into the spirit world; constantly battling with the pull from the place he had just left, stirring occasionally while his body settled itself from the gravity’s pull. The room began to talk, with its own settling. Moans and groans indicated that his cadaver might just rise one more time for the occasion. A more amplified force quickly mimicked the mumbling from the sheets. However, this is not from any man made structure or of man doing his will on a near dead soul and his blissful sleep. But of a force so strong, that even man has failed over and over, countless times throughout the millennia to soften the blow of its inevitable wrath.

Hurricane Allie, no pun intended by meteorologists, was touching down on the Florida key, Key West, with gust winds up to two hundred and sixty five miles per hour. The whole town had evacuated, except for some die-hard locals, there wasn’t a single bird chirping outside. The air had felt like all elements that are naturally present on any normal given day, had just vanished and was replaced by an electric myriad of atomic particles that would leave the hair on your skin standing straight up. The sky was staring down at the helpless little island howling, informing it of its next meal. With black and gray mists to gaping holes providing a vacuum into the violent world of the hurricane’s cloud structure, it was safe to say this one wasn’t going to take any prisoners.

A black cat was hopelessly hiding underneath the staircase of a brick apartment complex howling in bleak desperation at any of the rooms that may have an occupant. Inside one of those rooms, there lay vampire stench and a strong, whiskey breeze, unaware of the horror that is about to unleash itself upon the tiny set of islands in which he chose to spend his birthday for the week. The only problem is, the week before there was no hurricane on its way toward the slew of islands that encompassed Key West, Florida, USA, so Steve Taylor decided unintentionally to embark on a special birthday binge that he has been avoiding for such a long time. And with a few hours of sleep here and there, he could stay fucked up the whole entire time.

The first outer bands from the hurricane were considered the hardest, and the most destructive. Live video cams that streamlined everyday life in the Floridian keys to the watching world, once connected to the World Wide Web; openly and with clear cut digital quality, had been recording the whole catastrophic event practically in real time, allowing a mass populace in the United States and world the ability to view the horror, when just days before folks were planning their vacations to this famous getaway while watching the tourists and locals having a ball. Realistically, the whole event was evenly destructive throughout.

Unannounced, the windows came first, slinging glass everywhere. The storm’s mighty fingers took form as its vacuum-filled funnel clouds gripped the tiny island’s geography touching down left, right and every which way but loose, assimilating the once beautiful getaway into a riddled mess. The trees outside were bent at a seventy-five degree angle, snapping like twigs and flying in all directions leaving survival outside more perilous. Luckily, some blankets had covered Steve Taylor or else he would have been dead from the beginning. Since he was fortunate and by the grace of God to have made it passed that, he was definitely awake and more than undoubtedly aware, he began to move real slow, feeling his way around the bed, not to mention the fact that he had completely forgotten where he was at. The mere thought of heavy, sharp-like objects landing on his legs and torso were a rude awakening in itself. The best thing he could do now was to remain calm and collective, reviewing all that he has been trained in situation like this one, considering this is not his first go around with nature’s fury and the elements of its unlimited danger.

With one eye open and peering over the edge of the bed from underneath the blanket, he saw gusts of paint and wood along with pellets of rain like bullets slamming into the room from the now non-existent window. He moved gracefully to the edge of the bed and away from the violent blasts, insuring his survival once again. Steve always thought ahead no matter what condition he was in. He dropped to the floor and slid underneath the bed like a snake to get a better view to the whereabouts of the door, and his way out of whatever the hell had ripped him off of one hell of a good time and the finest of finest blackouts in

Steve’s history. That is, if he was able remember the good time he was thinking about.

Not now mother fucker, he pled as his eyes lost temporary focus, just give me one more chance Lord, and I’ll put it down forever!! I swear on my own soul!! His hands were holding the wheels attached the bottom of the bed. The room felt as if it had been swaying back and forth. This wasn’t the first time Steve was uprooted from his place in such a chaotic manner. A few years ago, about the same time of year, Steve was doing a gig on the Queen Mary III, and a category four just decided to formulate and gather its army in a matter of twelve hours and erratically bounce all around the Caribbean. The cruise ship casino was a sitting duck just a few hundred miles east of Belize when the storm took a behavioral turn, and smacked the ship into oblivion without any mercy at all. Steve and a handful of others were the only left to survive its fateful voyage, and with the remains of the granddaughter to the original Queen Mary that still operates on the riverbanks of the Mississippi in New Orleans, sitting at the bottom of the sea. It was a sheer miracle that any body made it. If it weren’t for Steve, none of the other survivors would have had a chance. However, that wasn’t going to happen this time around. A twister of some sort just passed, probably a F4 or F3 at the least. It missed the apartment complex by about five hundred meters. But with all probabilities in place, one was sure to make contact. Keeping alive was on Steve’s agenda, so making a move was not only necessary, it was necessary to make one soon.

His eyes had caught a glimpse of the door. Hoping it was just that, he crawled on his belly to the open door that was flapping violently and stretching the hinges beyond their capacity, only to notice in the corner of his eyes, the window had grown four times its size. Steel, wood and plaster like spears were being jousted in all directions. The inside of his apartment, quaint but obviously of Victorian design, had been turned into mere scraps of insulation and drywall bombarding every square inch of space, hurling them at record-breaking speeds in all directions. And by the time Steve had gotten to the top of the stairs and figured out what the hell was going on, the bedroom began to rip apart as if the jolly, or well in this case, the furious green giant was grabbing the roof with a firm grip and yanking the building right off the ground.

Praise the Lord…