The Good Dictator II: The Good Dictator, #2

By Gonçalo JN Dias

The second part of a trilogy, this is a thriller with a twist. 

Matthias, a young man living far from his family, is fighting for survival after taking his first few steps away from the family farm into a society that has risen from the ashes.

Sara is a young lady, who appears to be fleeing east to escape the claws of an oppressive society.  

Gustavo, after fifteen years in power, has decided that the time has come to find a successor. However, a surprise from the past may change his plans.  

The fates of Matthias, Sara and Gustavo are about to collide.    

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gonçalo JN Dias
• Release date: Sep 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781071507193

Gonçalo JN Dias

Gonçalo J. N. Dias nasceu em Lisboa no ano de 1977, licenciou-se em Engenharia do Ambiente e Recursos Naturais no Politécnico de Castelo Branco. Vive atualmente no País Basco, Espanha. É um autor independente, os seus livros têm sido traduzidos a vários idiomas.

Book preview

Title: The Good Dictator II – The Expansion

Author: Gonçalo JN Dias

Translator: Rachel Thomas

Print date: septiembre.2019

Cover: Izzy Designers

http://gjnd-books.blogspot.com.es/

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

Huey Newton

For my parents and sister

15 YEARS LATER

JOURNEYS

I

Jean-Pierre checked that the gate to his property was securely closed for the third time. His two children were already waiting for him in the carriage, together with a neighbor who had kindly agreed to take the three of them to the closest train station.

Jean-Pierre climbed up into the carriage, made himself comfortable and then signaled for the journey to begin. He felt a sense of anguish as he rode away from his château, but he tried to hide this feeling and pretended to be relaxed and unconcerned, forcing himself to smile. His children were not fooled by this. 

Don’t worry, Dad, everything’s going to be okay. We’ll be back here again soon, said Matthias, the only son among his children and twenty-one years old.

Yes, I know. I’m not worried, responded the father.

He tried to enjoy the two-hour journey he had ahead of him, but his mind constantly wandered back to the work on the farm he had left in the hands of his good, old neighbor. He repeatedly ran through a list of all the jobs that would need to be done in his absence, worried that one of them would be forgotten.

He noticed that many vineyards, once abandoned, were now gradually recovering; the shrubs had been removed and the small, pruned grapevines seemed ready to relive their former glory from a long time before when Bordeaux wine was the most prestigious in the world. It was a sign that civilization was returning to its natural course. 

The journey to the railway station was almost entirely along a tarmacked road where they passed other horse-driven carriages, small and modern solar cars and, on some farms, they spotted tractors, which were met with surprise. When they arrived at the small village of Le Barp, the neighbor said goodbye to Jean-Pierre and his children and wished them a good stay in Biriatu. 

The father and children made their way to the station with their old, simple cases and waited for the train on the platform. Right on time, the expected means of transport appeared and the three of them got on together with two other passengers. 

Both the locomotive and the carriages were fitted with solar panels on the top which produced enough energy for the train to travel thousands of kilometers. On the inside, the seats were reasonably comfortable and set in pairs. Jean-Pierre sat alone while his children took their seats in front of him. The father couldn’t help but notice his descendants’ excitement as they got on a train for the first time, laughing and commenting excitedly about the details of the carriage like two young kids. The whistle blew, like in the old days, and the heavy wheels started to turn. Jean-Pierre concentrated hard to think back to the last time he had used public transport. It must have been in Paris, before the attack, and almost certainly on the Parisian metro. Fifteen years before maybe, or more, in another life, when he was still young, married, ambitious and middle class.

As he was looking at his children, he realized something important: he had won; he had managed to escape death. He had reached his goal. He had managed to raise his three children despite all the adversities they had suffered in the last fifteen years. He remembered his deceased wife and imagined that she would be proud of his achievement. He contemplated his daughter, who was sitting in front of him. A beautiful nineteen-year-old, a young lady with straight, blonde hair, green eyes and a slightly pointy nose, identical to her mother. His mind raced back to the old days, before the attack. 

He remembered his daily journeys on the metro with his wife; the two of them would head off to their respective jobs. They were both lawyers. They used to live in the Latin neighborhood of Paris, in a 1800sqft apartment where they had a maid who helped with the housework and even took and fetched the children from school.

They had had a comfortable life, an upper-middle class one. She used to work at her father’s law firm, a very renowned firm which defended, above all, white-collar crimes or clients with economic power. He had worked at a different law firm which dealt with crimes committed by less well-off people but, nevertheless, a profitable business for the firm he represented. 

They had met at the Law school in the French capital; they had fallen in love and the fact that his father-in-law was a reputable lawyer had made it easier for Jean-Pierre to ask for Annie’s hand in marriage as soon as they graduated. His father-in-law had helped them find good, well-paid jobs. 

The years had passed and Matthias had come along, the first of the couple’s children and, two years later, the twins had been born. It was a family who seemed outwardly happy. They had been economically healthy and spent their holidays in exotic places, frequented private clubs with some of the Parisian high society and the children had studied at an expensive, private school. 

When an object had landed on the Moon and the first riots had started in the suburbs and moved towards the French capital, Jean-Pierre and Annie had decided to go and stay at her father’s château in the vineyard area of Bordeaux. The idea had been to make it into a kind of mini vacation until the situation went back to normal, but the cities had been turned into dust and they had remained confined to the farm.

Astonished, they hadn’t known what to do. Initially, they had held out hope that the State would recover rapidly and restore the old order. During the first weeks, Jean-Pierre, together with some neighbors, had broken into abandoned houses searching for food, seeds, weapons or clothes but when they had started running out of houses and food, the situation had begun to worsen.

Jean-Pierre knew nothing about agriculture, he had never fired a gun and he had no idea how to hunt animals. Throughout the summer, the family had eaten what was in the pantry, which had come from the attacks on the houses, the grapes from the vineyard and some fruit from the small orchard on the property. With the arrival of winter, however, the situation had become worrying: there was little food. They mainly ate berries, roots, some cereals and small fish from a lake nearby. The kids complained they were hungry.

To make the situation worse, the first acts of violence in the region had begun to happen. In broad daylight. Armed men were entering houses in search of food and, according to rumors, raping the women and practicing cannibalism. Fear had engulfed the Leduc family. They decided to make a kind of bunker in the basement where they stored food and slept. At the end of February, they were visited by three bearded men with guns in their hands. 

The men had entered the property at nightfall. The sound from the horses’ hooves had served as an alarm and the five family members had hidden in the improvised bunker. Jean-Pierre, with his only shotgun in his hand, had stood, rigid and tense on the stairs which led to the basement, waiting for the thieves to find their hideout. Annie was surrounded by the three children and illuminated by a faint light from a candle. The youngsters held their hands over their mouths so that no words or groans could escape; they were all shaking. The twins were wide-eyed, wanting to cry, while their brother looked at his father with panic written all over his face. The three thieves had turned the house inside out, looking everywhere for anything useful but, above all, food. It was difficult, but Annie managed to keep the children in silence while a variety of noises could be heard from above. Jean-Pierre was about to go out with the gun in his hand and try to kill them, but his wife gestured to him, pleading with him not to abandon them. Finally, after almost two hours of anguish, the three men had left the house. 

This visit had had an enormous effect on the family’s morale. Now, not only did they have to fight for food, fight against the cold, the loneliness and the lack of basic essentials, they also had armed men coming with evil intentions. Annie was the main one who had shown this despondency.

There’s no hope, Jean-Pierre. The State has disappeared. It’s the survival of the fittest now. We don’t have food to give to our children, no clothes, no shoes. They look like beggars, dressed in rags, thin and uncared-for. We can’t bring them up in these conditions.

Be calm, Annie, things will get better. The State will rise again. Spring is coming, we’ll be able to plant something soon. We can lay some traps to catch animals and fish. Things will get better.

Don’t be naive. You know perfectly well that no State will come, no new police. The only ones who will come are starving, bearded men and, next time, they’ll find us, they’ll kill you, your daughters and I will become slaves and they might eat your son.

What do you suggest, Annie? Run? he shouted.

Run where? The world we used to know doesn’t exist any longer. This world is horrible. Annie, beside herself, was also shouting.

What’s the solution?

We’ll take the pills we have left and sleep forever. A holy death.

Don’t ever say that again! I forbid you.

It was their son Matthias who had found his mother asleep in the haystack with a bottle of pills in her right hand. They had dug a hole on the land and rolled her up in sheets and flowers that had blossomed that Spring. Jean-Pierre had attempted to hide the suicide, saying that Annie had died a painless death, that she had fallen asleep, called by God. 

Curiously, following the mother’s death, the situation had started to improve for the family. With the Spring came new plants, seeds, fruit, more berries and cereals. They made traps to catch animals and, slowly, they started to adapt to nature and use it to their advantage. More men came. Some, Jean-Pierre stood up to with his shotgun in his hand. Others, he hid in the basement with his children. These grew up and quickly lost their childhood innocence and, out of necessity, each one took their place in the family to reach their main objective: survival. 

The years had passed and the children had become adolescents. Jean-Pierre had tried to give them an education based on times gone before. He talked of cities, countries and people who no longer existed; stories of another world where there were laws, police, a State, television, music and stores where you could buy everything. Sometimes, he wondered if his children believed him, if they thought they were stories of science fiction to cheer them up.

First came the Vandals, a group of outlaws who had joined together and dominated a vast area in Central Europe, between the Alps and Zeebrugge, in ancient Belgium. It was a group intent on stealing, looting, killing and raping. Once more, fear took hold of the Leduc family. They could arrive at any time, they weren’t that far away. They intensified their protection. They started to watch over the property day and night, in shifts, and when it seemed as though a light at the end of the tunnel was impossible, the first rays of sun from the West appeared.

People were saying that a strong nation from the Iberian Peninsula was coming, that they were bringing peace, order, security, health and organization. When the first soldiers arrived from this so-called Serrano nation, a party was thrown to welcome them. They promised democracy, justice, freedom and, above all, security against the Vandals. They held elections to choose the political representatives of the region, they opened schools, a health center and a courtroom. They created markets and stores and they installed cameras to watch over the people, roads and property.

For Jean-Pierre, the arrival of the Serranos was proof that humanity had resisted. That there was hope for him but, particularly, for his children. Some accused the Serrano nation of a lack of transparency or an abusive use of means of communication but Jean-Pierre, who had suffered days of hunger, misery, loneliness and a tremendous lack of faith in humanity and in the future, defended the Serrano nation tooth and nail. 

Jean-Pierre was awoken from his thoughts and memories by his children. A young ticket collector was asking for their train tickets. Matthias was the first to show his and was fascinated by the beauty of the young assistant. She looked East European, had a beautiful French accent and she was wearing perfume with a mild almond scent. She sensed Matthias’s indiscreet gaze and she looked at him with some distaste. He had dirty hands and nails and his face and hair were also unclean. His clothes were no more than rags and his shoes were covered in holes. Matthias sensed the contempt in her look which was then reinforced when two soldiers, smartly dressed in the Serrano nation uniform, passed by her. The girl returned their greeting with a broad smile and a complicit look. 

Jean-Pierre, who had witnessed the whole scene and seen how his son had become disheartened, thought about cheering him up by saying something but then he decided that maybe, that wasn’t the right time and so he remained quiet. He was extremely proud of his first-born; a young, hardworking man, strong, dedicated to their family, who never complained about anything and who had a good heart. It was admirable how Matthias had such an impressive physique after the lack of food he had sometimes had to endure. He was 6ft 2" and had an oval face with a thick-set jaw. His hair was straight, light brown and he had green eyes and long eyelashes. His body was very muscular from working in the fields, his back was broad and his shoulders were large, just like his legs which looked