The Click Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Steve Shear

  The Click

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc. and other major retailers

  “I’m afraid I’ll need some blood work from you, Oliver,” Hitch heard Dr. Delahunt say.

  He swung around. “Me?”

  “You’re a Beater. And, well you know, first OJ, now…”

  Hitch held both hands up, as if to surrender, and shortly thereafter was in the lab area having his blood drawn. Two days later, in the afternoon, he and Edna were back in the doctor’s office, without Kathy and Christopher this time. Ralph Delahunt sat across from them studying the lab report, nodding his head and shrugging.

  “Well,” he said as he handed them the report. “Two Preemies in one family does not appear to be coincidental.”

  “Are you saying it’s because of…” Edna started to say without looking at the report.

  Delahunt nodded at the report, as if the answers were there, and he didn’t want to compound the pain by repeating the reasons aloud. All the time Hitch was studying the report and knew exactly what Ralph didn’t want to verbalize. He was a carrier of the virus, of the plague.

  Praise for Steve Shear

  “I enjoy mysteries, political intrigue and international intrigue. I was taken in by the first 6 pages… I am looking forward to purchasing the finished product. Please let me know as soon as it is published.”

  ~ Gladys L

  “I couldn't put The Click down! I continued to read it at home, at the public library, and at Starbucks. The novel held my attention, even with noise around. Not many books do that for me! … I really liked The Trials of Adrian Wheeler, yet this one is better. I found myself anxious throughout the book, wondering what would happen next.”

  ~ Cass M

  “I really enjoyed the read. I think you incorporated all the elements of a great story—mystery, complexity, political intrigue, sex, and of course limited but effective violence.”

  ~ Jack G

  The Click

  by

  Steve Shear

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Click

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Steve Shear

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Kim Mendoza

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Sci-Fi Rose Edition, 2018

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2276-6

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2277-3

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To my son Mike who clicked me on to the idea and to Erik Wolter, a great screenwriter and collaborator on The Click screenplay.

  Prologue

  In The Future

  It began slowly, according to all the articles appearing on television and the Net, like the upward seepage of water from a small crack in a pipe below ground. And then without warning, like a total failure in the pipe, an explosion of illness, then death, spread from city to city, from village to village, across the Earth; citizens of the world on the streets coughing, vomiting, dying. Many of the more fortunate who needed to venture out wore masks as they weaved around deceased bodies yet to be picked up by the caravan of mortuary trucks that carried with them bright orange body bags. The citizens still living but too weak to move from the streets, sidewalks, and even the gutters were attended to by medics and paramedics who also knocked door to door hoping to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

  Before the Plague, people lived longer and died of old age, most of them in their late nineties and older. Humanity had cured cancer, heart disease, most infectious ailments, and many old age catastrophes like dementia. By then the religious fanatics making up the Coalition United for Theocratic Oversight, the Cūtocracy, had successfully infiltrated the legislative bodies of much of the world, including the United States, institutionalizing many of its theocratic policies within what were once secular democracies. They prohibited the highly successful use of stem cell reproduction to correct birth defects and dismantled all the international programs scientifically regulating weather. Indeed, any technological advancement that placed man above God, at least according to the Cūtocracy, was considered sacrilegious. The most dramatic of those policies were the absolute banning of abortions and birth control, and the insistence on large families. The combination was synergistic, devastating, and inevitable—severe overpopulation.

  The left-wing populists had no miracles, the right-wing Cūtocrats no cures, and the politicians no talking points. Eventually, all the nations of the world raced for the little bits of land and resources that remained and began staking their claims. First the Chinese, then India, two of the four economic superpowers, followed by the other two, the United States and Neuropa, both fighting polarizing internal political battles focused mainly on border control, keeping out the riffraff, and escalating budgets. They all had nuclear warheads rusting away in readily accessible silos. A touch of the button could have easily solved the problem of overpopulation. A gigantic boom here, a mushroom cloud there, and presto, no more problem. But alas, world order was restored, sensitive trigger fingers anesthetized, and overpopulation was at least temporarily curbed by the plague’s deadly virus, quickly dubbed the ERAM virus, Earth’s Revenge Against Mankind, or sometimes merely ERAM-V. The water in most places carried the deadly virus, but sometimes it was the air. The righteous, encouraged by the Cūtocrats, branded it the hand of Heaven avenging all the malignant murderers of the innocent and their renunciation of the Good Books. The Godless ones repudiated such demagoguery, insisting that the great lady of nature recoiled against a worldwide population boom playing havoc with her creation. And so it went—in churches, on street corners, barbershops, salons, and on the Net.

  With time and deliberate action on the part of all nat
ions, the plague relinquished its hold on humanity but not before a startling twenty percent of the world population fell within its grip.

  Well before that devastating plague was more than a bothersome influenza in areas around the world, a small segment of the scientific community examined the virus, the likes of which had never been seen before. They recognized its virulent nature right away, that it could and more than likely would rear its ugly head on a large scale and continuously replicate itself if not eradicated once and for all. A super vaccine had to be developed.

  Chapter One

  On a sunny day in spring, the Cūtocracy headquarters in Rome became the destination for a string of solar powered hydro-pneumatic limousines hovering inches above the ground. Each carried one or more members of the all-powerful Cūtocratic council, including High Minister Charles Sheen, Emissary to the Supreme Minister of the Ecclesian Church, Smotec Innocent II. Trying to avoid the others arriving at the same time, the High Minister had his Limo glide around the corner and drop him off at the side entrance. From there he entered the headquarters carrying a large purse.

  By the time he worked his way up six flights of stone stairs, out of breath even though he rested at each landing, Minister Sheen, now eighty-six years old, entered the reception area on the Council floor. The receptionist, a young woman conservatively dressed in grays and blacks and wearing weighty looking black-rimmed glasses, waved him into the conference room where it was clear he was the last to arrive. Everyone else had already taken their places around a large, elongated, mahogany table. Along the center edge at the far side sat the Council Chair from the United States, a young fat man in a three-piece suit. To his left sat India, then Canada, and so on. There were fourteen members in total representing the entire world. Minister Sheen’s seat to the right of the Chair awaited his arrival.

  He nodded to the others as he limped around the table and took his seat, carefully holding on to his purse. He knew why he was there and didn’t like what was coming. The agenda for this emergency meeting merely set forth the meeting time and the requirement that all attend and cast a vote. Days earlier, each representative was contacted individually, in secret, and apprised of the details, or so the minister was informed. They were also told how to cast their votes.

  The Council Chair called the meeting to order and declared it was time to vote. No discussion was allowed. He started with India to his left and went around the table. India voted Yes, Canada voted Yes, South America voted Yes… And so it went. High Minister Sheen heard China’s Yes vote two chairs to his right, then Neuropa, the same, as if the word Yes was a mere echo within the room, as if it indicated how the chair expected him to vote. It was his turn, the last to vote, given the chairman only voted to break a tie. All eyes were on him, clearly assuming he would make the decision unanimous. The high minister bit his lower lip, slowly opened the purse in front of him and took out a document. He stared at it for a moment, as did the others, then held it up.

  “Gentlemen, I have here a Smotecal Decretum executed by Smotec Innocent instructing me to vote No. I am sorry but we cannot make the Council’s decision unanimous.”

  The stares from the others turned to disbelief, then anger. The room echoed those sentiments like all the yes votes that preceded them until the chairman from the United States banged his gavel insisting on silence. He glared at Minister Sheen for a moment, then banged his gavel a second time. “Nevertheless, the measure passes. Thank you all for attending,” he announced and shooed everyone out, but not before eyeing the high minister as if he had committed a dastardly deed.

  ****

  Meanwhile, in a Chinese village only accessible by air and rail stood a complex of concrete buildings the color of sandstone, located deep within the shadows of the Great Wall of China. Prestigious medical doctors, scientists, and politicians, all loyal to the Cūtocracy, presided over the complex and understood the high technology grandeur operating within its 300,000 square feet of laboratories, offices and manufacturing facilities.

  Regardless of the time of day, under the supervision of those loyal to the long arm of the Cūtocracy, the workers within labored to develop and produce a vaccine, and all the time the Great Wall’s shadow and surrounding landscape hid their effort from the skies above. Over a period of two years and well after the ERAM-V plague had done significant damage, but long before it had completed its task, the Cūtocratic alliance concluded its development of the ERAM-V vaccine and began manufacturing it at their Chinese hideaway.

  Within the compound, Jonathan DeCarlo, tall, thin and black with Ethiopian blood running through his veins, took large strides across the complex grounds, studying a clip chart of the previous week’s vaccine production. He entered the Manufacturing Building A2 that housed all types of processing equipment, conveyers, tubes, computation shells, and control panels, then practically danced from one station to another talking to operators over the noise of equipment that ran day and night. His name and Cūtocracy had been threaded into the shirt pocket of his uniform. It was sandstone in color with light and dark greens and browns scattered about in order to make him less visible from the Protolytes whizzing through space. Those floating brains made instant communication and computation possible while at the same time searching for anomalies on the ground like forest fires, earthquakes, and invading armies. All the nations on Earth had them, as did the United Nations, as did the Cūtocracy.

  Jonathan climbed the opened staircase and finally reached his office door with a large sign printed across it—J. DeCarlo, Director of Vaccine Production. Exhausted and desperately in need of a break, he fell into his desk chair and closed his eyes, only to open them wide upon hearing a tap on the door. A blur across his vision caused him to squint. Commander Ginger Fly, around thirty years old, short and stocky, poked her head in, seemingly agitated. She too wore a similar camouflage uniform with her name and Cūtocracy on the pocket.

  “Ginger?”

  “Shut everything down…now!”

  “What?”

  “That’s an order. And destroy the stockpile.”

  “But I’ve spent the last six weeks, twenty-four-seven, building it up.”

  By the time Jonathan finished his declaratory rant, Ginger was gone. He could hear her all the way down the hall. “Orders are orders. Do it now!”

  For a moment he stared at the empty open door as if she were still there, as if he could talk reason into her. He shook his head and looked for his scud, a device he was fascinated with. It was a hand-held best friend that just about everyone on the planet took for granted. While ‘scud’ was an acronym for Satellite Communication Utility Device and did just about everything except reproduce, most people were not aware of what it stood for, especially since the term satellite was an archaic reference to the earlier version of the protolytes of present day. They only knew it could communicate with anyone on Earth both visually and audibly, even holographically, and could access dozens of search engines with the tap of a finger or the sound of one’s voice. Jonathan had to have the latest and greatest scud available and was the first in line to purchase the most recent version.

  After finding it, he called his foreman and barked out the bad news. The foreman knew better than to question his instructions.

  Later that night, having slept restlessly for at most an hour, he shook himself out of a dream he couldn’t remember and jumped up from his chair. Jonathan raced down the open staircase painted a high gloss steel gray, taking two steps at a time, and through a presently silent processing facility void of operators. He left the building and practically jogged across campus under a moonless sky. He entered Administration Building A6 and bounded up several flights of similar opened stairs before approaching Ginger Fly’s office. Surely she would be there. She was a workaholic. Across her partially opened door was printed Ginger Fly―Chief Operations Attorney. Her office lights were on.

  Just as he poked his head in, a clerk walked by. “If you’re looking for Ginger, she was rushed to the
hospital with a burst appendix.”

  Appendix? Jonathan didn’t know anyone who still had one these days. Taken aback by the news, he watched the clerk walk away without thinking to ask for details. Instead, he stepped into Ginger’s office and reached for the light switch when he saw her safe ajar. He went to close it but a red bound diary entitled “Top Secret” practically fell out. He hesitated, looked back into the hall, then rushed over to close the door.

  After returning to the safe, he pulled out the diary and opened it. A document entitled Smotecal Decretum fell to the floor. He looked around, read it, first slowly, then again even more carefully. His teeth began to chatter. His shoulders tightened. He could feel his temples pulsating. His fingers seemed to graze the gold seal—real gold, he was sure. He swallowed hard then read through the diary.

  “Jesus!”

  He looked at the wall clock. It was one-thirty. He could practically hear the second-hand ticking. After indecisively kneeling at the opened safe for a while, he finally shut it with the diary and Smotecal Decretum clutched within his fingers.

  “Jesus!” he repeated as if somehow a call to the Ecclesian savior was going to do something to help a black Jew from Ethiopia—actually, from Mumbai and parts unknown.

  One thing was for sure—he couldn’t stay where he was, and he had to get those documents to his sister, Juliette, somehow. Hopefully, he had at least a couple days before they were missed. Draped in a shroud of urgency, he turned off the lights in Ginger’s office and scurried onto campus with the consequences of his thievery held tightly under his shirt, against his belly, as if they might otherwise be seen by the protolytes thousands of miles above.

  His apartment was only ten minutes away. He would pack some essentials and think about how he planned to get the hell out of there, especially since no one could leave the village without permission and an authorization pass. The only thing he could think of at the moment was to jump a supply train on its return to Beijing and buy a throwaway scud. He had to reach Juliette and make arrangements―papers, cash, a scud, a new identity. DanSheba had to have people in Beijing and she would know how to contact them.