I look over to my wife and she senses from my sorrowful eyes that I learned how she had died, "We need to get to that server room and do as much damage as we can. If we can knock out communications and the signal to those hovercraft, any people still resisting occupation will have a better chance of surviving. I am reasonably certain now that if we focus, we can manipulate physical objects.
Ricardo looks at me baffled, "Server room"???
"I'll explain", I tell Ricardo.
I stuff The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries into my backpack. I had pushed Joe aside and spent quite a bit of time turning the pages of that book. "I have learned much from this book", I say.
"If it is correct, the ability to work in the visible and invisible realms give us an advantage. The book is also in agreement with Einstein's theory of relativity. E=MC2. Energy and Mass are equivalent and transmutable. Ghost can transmute from pure energy to mass and back again".
After we disrupt things inside this compound, we need to find survivors. A place like this can't run without food and labor. I expect to find prisoners of war, at least those not sent to Gitmo, working the farmland near this complex". Both my wife and Ricardo nod in agreement. I look over at Joe, but he is gone.
"I guess Joe will not be joining us today. Lead on", I say.
Silently, my wife leads us down a series of corridors. We seem to be heading down several levels below the ground floor. Some of the doors in this corridor have windows. I look through one curiously and see a soldier with his back to me. He is sitting down at a table facing a large television screen, drinking a vending machine coffee and smoking a cigarette. He is playing Solitaire with a deck of cards. Instinctively, I know this is the man who killed my dog and shot me in the leg.
I whisper to my wife and Ricardo to continue to the server room.
" I will catch up, I have something I need to take care of".
The look on my face forestalls the discussion and they both head down the hall, walking with purpose toward the server room.
Flipping through another losing hand of Solitaire, Lt. Col. Daniel Cooper takes a long drag on his Winston, feeling utterly bored. Now that the war against domestic terrorism has basically been won, there have been few missions and lots of down time. He sits back remembering each confirmed killed, each hurrah, he got from his company. Even Homeland Defense television is down right now he laments to himself. Suddenly, the television flickers on and off in rapid succession, a blur of white noise and some sort of image. The screen settles into the solid image of a small white dog walking out to a mailbox, that Cooper remembers quite fondly. The dog vanished and in its place is a smoking crater. Cooper whoops in triumph. The crater scene fades and in its place is a home video Cooper took from the top of his tank moments later. Some idiot yokel, had come rushing out at his tank firing off a few rounds. Cooper turned the machine gun on him. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, he smiled. Cooper's smile turns to terror just as quickly, as a figure in a dark brimmed hat, wearing a black trench coat and dark boots slowly oozes up from out of the tile floor forming a solid mass before him.
Cooper stammers in a stilted voice, "No! Nna-nooo! I Sshhot you!
You're Da-da-Dead man!
I killed you"!
I laugh hideously. In sing-song whispering tones I speak,
"Oh no, I'm not dead!
I was merely sleeping.
I am reborn.
I am REVENGE!!
I am revenant".
Cooper reaches for his pistol. Average human reflexes can perform an action like this in .45 seconds. Cooper is well above average and pulls his pistol in half this time. Before he can pull the trigger, I shoot the gun from his hand with my old WWII German handgun. While Cooper looks at his wounded hand, I pull a jar of my grandfather's moonshine from my backpack.
Lighting the wick, I smile wickedly at Cooper and say, "I understand you like to smoke"! I hurl the jar of flaming liquor at the door, cutting off Cooper's escape in a wall of flame.
"Cooo-per!
My little dog demands an apology. My little dog thinks you don't like her. Coooo-per! Hell has come to collect a debt. Won't you embrace her fiery bosom? My concentration seems to enhance the flames. I take my leave as the cacophonous choral ode of Cooper's screaming reaches its climax and then fades to dead air.
Drawn to their energy, I find my wife and Ricardo heading toward me from a lower level with several unconscious people in tow.
"Who are they?" I ask. Ricardo shrugs that he has no idea. My wife looks at me with a piercing glance,
"Interrogation victims".
"Did you destroy the servers"? ,I ask.
Ricardo answers with glee in his voice,
"Mrs. Archer sure knows how to do damage! There will not be any online poker tournaments tonight!"
A few claxon horns alarm repetitively before stopping completely. There is the sound of marching boots and shouting voices. Then the lights go out. We exit the complex and see a few vehicles parked nearby. We set our rescued prisoners on the flatbed of an all-terrain vehicle and drive off into the woods. There is a stock of food, water and an emergency kit in the storage compartment of the ATV. We do our best to help the prisoners as we streak off toward the nearby farmland.