Bugging Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

it disappear in a feat of digital magic whose origin was apparent to anyone with half a brain. But by then, more reports, often with video or photos to augment their authenticity, were flooding the internet. Not every bit of damning evidence of a government running amok could be done away with. The depth of the crisis was beginning to creep into the collective consciousness of the nation. People were scared. Checkpoints had become rife with standoffs. The disconnect between the governed and those who governed had become very, very real.
    And very dangerous.
    Something within told me I should go. Not in an hour, or a day, or two days, but that very minute. In the dark as the day spun down toward midnight, I should get in my truck and go. So strong was the feeling that I had walked around my home all evening with the keys to my pickup in my pocket.
    I did not, however, want to give in to fear, regardless of what I knew had to be coming. Logic should inform the moment of my departure. As long as the situation was relatively stable, everyday living would be easier right where I was.
    Stable, though, seemed more and more relative to the reality engulfing society. The news droned on that evening with story after story of the spiraling situation. Looting had begun in Oakland. Rioters were fired upon by police in San Antonio. A train in Indiana had been derailed, the contents of its boxcars carted off by hundreds of nearby residents. People who, until recently, would have reported such an act to authorities, were now participants, maybe out of some need for food that might have been aboard, or simply because they, too, felt that some tipping point was nearing and it was time to grab whatever was there for the taking.
    I turned off the news and went to bed just after midnight, drifting off soon after, a combination of physical and mental weariness dragging me down to sleep. Dreams of football and high school and Neil soothed me. Drowsy memories of good times.
    The respite from the real lasted just two hours.

Part Two
    The Red Signal

Five
    A t ten after two in the morning my cell phone buzzed on the night stand, the grating sound dragging me up from sleep. My eyes opened to a room I’d expected to be dark. It wasn’t. A reddish glow was spread upon the ceiling to the left of my bed, directly above my phone.
    I rolled and took the vibrating device in hand. A bright red rectangle glared at me from the screen, nearly filling it. It buzzed again in my hand, as if a text or call was coming in. But none was. The thing had glitched, I told myself. Like the tiny computer it was. Likely it needed the same medicine that often cured its larger brethren when they electronically misbehaved, so I switched the power button off to reboot it.
    But it stayed on. The grating vibration stopped, but the screen remained on. I tried again to shut it down, and again it didn’t respond. It was either suffering from a major fault or...
    ... when the signal is given, there’ll be no mistaking it.
    Neil’s words. Was he that knowledgeable? Or that prophetic?
    Once again I tried to shut the phone down, and it refused.
    Beyond the windows of my bedroom, in the distance, a chorus of sirens began to sound, rising and joining, wailing in unison as they moved across the city. Police and fire units, it seemed. Racing in convoy to the north. Toward the airport.
    I kept my phone in hand and climbed out of bed, heading to the great room of my house, TV dominating what was, essentially, my man cave. I snatched the remote from the coffee table and turned it on. The sixty inch screen hummed and washed up from darkness until a bright red rectangle nearly filled it.
    “Shit,” I said, the word coming as mostly breath.
    ...there’ll be no mistaking it.
    I tried other stations, every station, from 24 hour news to reality TV, and all that I saw was that stretched square of red. The remote slipped from my hand and thudded softly on the floor.
    “Shit,” I muttered this