Hold a Candle to the Sun

By Tony Masero

It is the near future and Armageddon has happened.
Sergeant Vincent Evimann, a decorated ex-serviceman with the elite First Infil Battalion, returns home to Port Coliseum to find it no better than the rest of the world. The Dust Engagements and the Great Oil War have taken their toll and created a wasteland. There is nothing here remaining for him except news of a family he had thought lost and Evimann sets off on a quest across the ruined country to discover the truth. His journey leads him to find both the bizarrely dangerous and the more noble remnants of a crumbling society. He may even discover love.
Meanwhile, the remnants of government and military try to understand the disturbing events caused by an unknown foe that are being reported across the land. As they struggle with these new dangers, in the depths of the capital’s Wound Laboratories a driven surgeon is creating a unique and powerful entity the authorities think will bring a semblance of order back to the shattered world. Once set on a mission it will not stop and nothing will stand in its way until successful.
In Book One of the epic Hold a Candle to the Sun, both protagonists are set on an inevitable trajectory that is bound to end in collision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Masero
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005595869

Tony Masero

It’s not such a big step from pictures to writing.And that’s how it started out for me. I’ve illustrated more Western book covers than I care to mention and been doing it for a long time. No hardship, I hasten to add, I love the genre and have since a kid, although originally I made my name painting the cover art for other people, now at least, I manage to create covers for my own books.A long-term closet writer, only comparatively recently, with a family grown and the availability of self-publishing have I managed to be able to write and get my stories out there.As I did when illustrating, research counts a lot and has inspired many of my Westerns and Thrillers to have a basis in historical fact or at least weave their tale around the seeds of factual content.Having such a visual background, mostly it’s a matter of describing the pictures I see in my head and translating them to the written page. I guess that’s why one of my early four-star reviewers described the book like a ‘Western movie, fast paced and full of action.’I enjoy writing them; I hope folks enjoy reading the results.

Book preview

HOLD A CANDLE TO THE SUN

BOOK ONE

Tony Masero

Cover: Tony Masero

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except

in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All names, characters,

places, and events are the work of the

author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places,

or events is coincidental.

Copyright 2012 Tony Masero

Smashwords Edition

Prologue

It is the vanity of man that he holds a candle to the sun.

The history of which we write is of those days after the Great Oil War when the nation was in the final days of its decline. We have seen the nature of such decline reported often before, great empires that tumble and fall, vanishing into mere artifacts of dust. In the pages of history books such descriptions may take only a few paragraphs, but in real time it is an erosion began perhaps across centuries and at an inestimable cost of human life. Such moments are always compounded it seems by nature, as if nature too feels the affront. Who can wound the mother without fearing some retribution? Such winds we saw, great tempests, storms and floods as the planet warmed to careless toxins. Tornados that tore the food from our mouths. Fierce tsunami that carried habitats to the deep and rebuilt the countryside in patterns of its own wayward design. And the mysterious plagues that followed. Pandemics not only of a viral kind but also of a more psychological sort. Deeper and more shadowy. Born of an indifference and self-seeking egotism founded in the slow forgetting of morality.

In such times there are always barbarians at the gate and the troubled populace living in its past glory is concerned too much with itself to be troubled by what happens beyond its borders. The far-flung battles of the Dust Engagements were barely realized; the secret disasters and skirmishes encountered were hidden from the digital eyes of video and satellite reporting. And yet they were only the prologue to the greater catastrophe of the Oil War.

The land was ruled by fear. A fear engendered by the State itself. By such a means the politicians sought to bring obedience to heel and create a unity built on a common foe. The foe though was ambiguous, a mysterious entity without name. Some called it a religion, others personalized it with a leader but in truth it was no more than a collective assimilation of some vague composite. The Great Evil. A nebulous and looming entity that rose out of the nursery room shadows and veiled itself in grim tales of horror. The real horror though was that this fantastic creation begot its own reality. Seeing the offensive fairytale as truth it engendered in itself a growing following of insurgents. The lie became an uprising and from out of that infected egg arose an enraged army.

Those that held the real power it must be seen had their own agendas, the grey tycoons that build and destroy according to whim or profit. In war is found wealth through the giant industrial complex of weaponry development and the entire attendant-manufacturing infrastructure entailed. When a country begins such a fall through the black hole of indifference it has this one last recourse. Focus the mind of all on a common foe that the country may stand together in strength. Call upon the jingoistic hymns of past victories and rally to the flag as the ideal. Forget the petty corruption and neighborly cries for help. Sweep forward together and survive as a unified nation. War! Is the cry and it is the warlords safe in their air-conditioned offices that press the button.

It is all an illusion, of course. A stopgap that cannot hold back the flood. For the rot is internal. The corruption begins not in such pettiness but at the head and works its way down to every fingernail and toe-tip of the body. The Great Evil is faced with a greater evil, a leading body owned by giant financial lobbies, misled by its own insatiable concepts and holding the power to carry them through. Such is ultimate power.

But, we may ask, is this not the way of nature itself? When a growing entity expands beyond its measure, the branch will break, the tree will fall. And are we not all extensions of that continuum. Well, perhaps not all. There are some that swim upstream, those that feel an urge to find the source itself. It calls for such individuality, born of courage and determination that it is rarely found and then only outside the bland acceptance of the masses. For it goes against the grain and anyone that has cut a timber knows the difficulty of such a task. But these are small voices and with such an onerous existence they hide themselves for safety´s sake, protecting their private struggle from the ridicule of the fickle. But more of them later.

For the many, that great sleeping populace, feeding on its alter-life of facile soap operas and a surfeit of chemically rich products found easily on the store shelves, awakening only for brief moments of disturbance when the cupboard is empty. Its education has been to expect all that it wants without endeavor, to be spoon-fed. To be silenced with a sugared nipple. To sleep even deeper if it can, by the use of soporific medication, both legal and illegal. To feel no pain, to be numb in emotion and intellect. To exist in indulgence alone. Remembering only in fantasized dreams the hard climb the fathers made before them. By this means a nation falls.

It began in many places but the one that concerns us here is the small town of Port Coliseum. A barracks town with no more than three thousand souls more or less. The Marine base, standing six miles away from the town, fostered training units for amphibious craft. An anomaly now, as the once broad and fast flowing river that passed by the township had long since dried up. Its steep banks that had dripped with green willows and hosted lazy mountain waters were gone. Only the dried stumps of the trees remains now, the banks turned to dusty cliffs by a relentless sun. Flooding had carved new pathways and landslides upriver silted the stream beyond recovery. An orphan of a river, deserted by the source that had once fed her.

So we look down on this marginalized place. A pleasant enough situation, given the times, no more or less than any other small residential country town. Once sustained by the base, it now lingers on the periphery of drought denuded forests and bare dusty farmland. An island in a growing desert.

Chapter One

The dark, moonless night hears the swish of bicycle wheels. It is the town’s chief officer on his rounds. Sheriff Carl Longly approves of the new gestures to saving fuel. He feels it most in the comfort of his reduced waistline. Not a young man. In his fifty-third year. A fit, sturdy fellow though with greying hair cropped short and a uniform neatly pressed. The patrol car he had once used is now gathering dust behind the locked chain link fence of the police compound, where it awaits a day that will never come again. It is a lone office Longly holds tonight, this early hour patrol of 4.00 a.m. Nobody stirs. The servicemen are all abed, the tavern and dance bars closed. A peaceful time and Longly enjoys the moment. He can no longer smell the mossy taint of running river water that once encompassed the town and he misses that hint of freshness in the night air, that and the delicate early mist that would rise at this time in days past.

But still as he presses his pedals through the flat streets a pleasant sense of solitude fills him. No lights are on, there is no energy for streetlights and it is only his wavering dynamo bulb that shows the way ahead. The radio at his collar crackles into life.

Chief, you there?

He knows the voice of course; it is Colleen Boyar, his dispatcher. A comfortably built widowed woman some years younger than he with a pleasant homely way about her. She had once been military but her experiences overseas had long since stilled any passion she had held for the life and now she settled for this backwater task with contentment. Unusual for a woman to hold night duty but they are short staffed, the last flu epidemic carrying off two of his patrolmen.

Longly had thought occasionally how it would be to begin an affair with Colleen but then, guiltily, he would remember his twenty year marriage and the temptation died there. For his wife was a loyal and trusting soul and Longly would do nothing to harm her. But he still, on occasion, he would create the fantasy.

Longly brakes slowly and straddling his bike, switches to transmit. I´m here, Colleen. What’s up?

State Police have just reported a breakdown out on the freeway. Say they need you up there.

Whereabouts?

Five mile marker, north towards Carthage Crossing. You know it?

Sure, replies, Longly who has lived in this part of the county all his life. What is it that has a transport permit this time of night?

They say it’s a priority delivery to the military, that’s why they want your presence. Though Lord knows what they can use up there at the base now, place is like a ghost town.

Longly hooks his foot under his pedal. Okay I´m on it.

Anything else happening out there, Chief?

Nah, quiet as the grave.

Well, yawns Colleen, Lets keep it that way.

The countryside is pitch black and the darkness so intense without a moon that Longly sees the halo of lights from the State Police patrol cars when he is more than two miles away. The guiding beacon glare guides him through the warm silky night and down rough access roads until he is at the freeway service gully. Hoisting his bike across his shoulder he climbs the siding and steps over the guardrails. Breathing heavily from the exertion he sees he is still sixty yards short of the lone patrol car facing him, the headlights provocatively wasting energy as they blast into the empty freeway. Behind the beams the dark outline of a couple of patrol officers are leaning against the car. Beyond them, lost in the gloom and looming high above the police car, Longly can see the dark shape of two large container trucks.

Hey! State Patrol, he calls. You get it fixed?

One of the men steps forward, suddenly silhouetted in black against the beam. You Chief Longly?

Sure am.

Step up here, will you Chief. Take a look at this.

Longly moves towards them, wheeling his bike and guiding it casually with one hand on the saddle. Some intuition ensures him though that all is not right here. He feels a certain coolness creeping down his spine. There is no other sound in the night, the freeway, of course, is a desolate place, now empty of traffic. No one uses precious fuel except the authorities. It strikes Longly as odd that the patrol car radio is silent; normally the State Police use their position to broadcast freely. Gobbling up the thin supplies of energy with all the arrogance of their privileged position. He changes position, swopping sides and pushing the bike with his left hand whilst his right reaches for the holster at his left armpit.

He carries a standard issue AKKA/1 pistol. A lightweight weapon developed during the war, no more than a grip really. The grip holds a magazine of fifteen slim chip-controlled rounds, above rests a laser that sets the chips guidance. Gas powered the round will silently home in on the target set by the laser. But the round´s maneuvering power limits the effective range to no more than a hundred yards. An explosive head housed behind the chip control is enough to incapacitate a body totally at close range.

He watches the patrolmen carefully and sees one reach inside the car. You want to stand away from the vehicle, officer, Longly calls.

What’s up, Chief? One of the men chuckles. Think we´re hijackers or something?

Longly slides his pistol from its holster, it is light, too light; he misses the weight and balance of an older weapon. No offense. Just stand away until I identify you.

Okay, Chief. You got it. So saying, the man steps aside and only then Longly sees the single demon red eye glow of the laser centering on him. He raises his pistol but it is too late. The round strikes him mid-body and instantly blows a hole the size of a basketball in his chest; Longly is catapulted backwards off his feet and is dead before he reaches the tarmac. His bike stands wavering, unsupported in the headlight beam, then the front wheel curves in and the whole thing clatters to the ground.

One of the patrolmen reaches into the car and takes up the radio microphone. Refill, Refill, come in Refill, this is Tollgate.

The two-way crackles noisily in the silence. This is Refill. I have you Tollgate, go ahead.

Lone Star is down. I say again, Lone Star is down.

Very well, comes the answer. All stations, this is a green light. You are clear to go. I repeat, clear to go.

In the desiccated woods that surround the town, men rise. They are an awesome sight in the darkness, black clad and bulky in body armor. Faces hidden behind black heat-resistant balaclavas that allow only the eyes to show. They move as one, silently and with care. Not that it is necessary, no one knows of their presence, but this is how they have been trained. Moving forward, their way is mapped out for them by leaders with night vision glasses and small glowing beads of luminous light affixed to their backpacks. Like fireflies, almost beautifully, they dance across the dry terrain. Slowly the town is encircled in a half moon of moving men.

At the softly spoken command the men release thin silver tubes from their utility belts. A red button at one end, held safe by the simple and effective means of an old-fashioned ring pull. Inside, a plasma and phosphorus mix that burns ferociously under any circumstances once released into the air. The town is half surrounded now and the word is passed, the safety pins are removed.

The outlying houses are enclosed in traditional picket fences, glowing white in the darkness. Pathways wind towards porches lost in shadow. The houses are dark and silent. It is that hour when sleep is at its deepest. An alarm clock, newly wound, ticks off the minutes solemnly, the only sentinel amongst wax-polished heirlooms. A cat, startled from its early morning hunt, scurries