Charlie McShane's world has just collapsed. His parents, John and Mary, are killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Worse, the driver is an illegal alien from Mexico. To keep himself from destitution, Charlie moves back into his parents' home in Arizona. And it is then that the silent war begins. Already suffering from mental illness, Charlie is pushed to the brink his parents' death. His passive racism suddenly roars to full-blown hatred, engulfing friends, neighborhood strays, and the unfortunate Mexican population. As schizophrenia seizes Charlie's mind, virtually no one is safe from Charlie's wrath. He is now in an undeclared and very personal war of perverted justice and revenge. Charlie embarks on a random killing spree and especially targets the Mexican population. Fear and terrorism grip Arizona, and despite the efforts of law enforcement, there is no end in sight until one valiant man determines to stop Charlie, no matter the cost . . . Gripping and timely, The Silent War mixes current political issues with the horrors of mental illness to paint a disturbing picture of misguided vengeance and racism.

The Silent War

By Wayne Patrick

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Wayne Patrick
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3559-5

Chapter One

THE SPARK

"How could you ask me if I enjoyed the party? You know I only go to these parties of yours because it could mean more money for you," Mary McShane said to her husband with a smile, while driving in the fast lane of the freeway. She almost always drove in the fast lane, even on a night like tonight when there were no other cars on the road. "Your boss loves me, you know. He told me so." She enjoyed serving her wit with a facetious bite.

"I don't know about that, Babe," her husband, John, said from the passenger seat, his words a bit slurred from one too many glasses of Christmas cheer. "But even though you weren't drinking tonight, you sure looked like you had fun."

Mary laughed. "How would you know, looking out from the bottom of a Stoli bottle?" She turned her head toward John to glimpse his reaction to the clever comeback. Her long, auburn-dyed hair slipped off the left shoulder of her white silk blouse and dangled in front of the steering wheel. She loved to make him laugh, and in this, she excelled.

The smile she anticipated was missing. It seemed to have been snatched in an instant by fear, as his face lit up like a holiday tree on fire. Her eyes widened seeing the look of horror stamped into his handsome face, his mouth wide open. Her smile vanished.

Throwing his hands out toward her, he shouted, "Look out!"

Mary caught a glimpse of two bright lights shaking violently, getting much too big and way too fast.

Oh, my God! Where the hell did you come from?

With a crack like a lightning strike, the head-on crash echoed into the December night. It knitted together an old clunker of a pickup with the McShane Pontiac Grand Am using crushed and pleated sheet metal stitches.

An air bag deployed with a wallop, instantly mashing Mary's nose and snapping her head backward into the headrest. Stars replaced the headlights. Blackness blotted out vision.

Her body jerked forward with agonizing tension across her chest in a successful yet painful restraint. The left side of her neck and her right ribs burned in pain.

A fierce jolt of pain shook her entire body, as the collapsing front end of the car assaulted passenger space with vengeance and a roar, obliterating all other noise including the stereo. Mary's legs snapped in agony under the intense pressure of the conquering floorboard. The steering wheel, in spite of the air bag, punched her chest so hard she lost her breath.

She wanted to faint, expected it at any moment, but somehow remained on the edge of consciousness. She felt sick and drained at once. She screamed inwardly, endured the torture, and wished to be knocked out cold.

And then the violence stopped. In the relative stillness, pain took over, growing stronger.

Mary felt wedged. Unable to move, her chin slumped to her chest, her forehead resting on what she assumed was the steering wheel. She sat in total submission. That's when the tears came. Only tears. Unrestrained crying was impossible because she could barely breathe. Her senses tried to cope, but the sting of affliction bullied them into regression, an escape. For what seemed like eternity, Mary drifted into a silent world without substance.

She inched back to reality with the sound of faint ticking noises, and then the stereo. Incredibly, it still worked. Strange how those ticking noises came before the much louder stereo.

Then, she began to feel again. Not overpowering pain as before but the minute sensation of something dripping. Blood. She felt it trickling from her face onto her white silk blouse and down her chest. She realized she was breathing, not through her clogged nose, but through her mouth, in short, rapid gasps. Her chest was unable to fully expand. Even though her eyes were closed, she knew what it was. My nose is broken. Just like she knew blood was dripping down her crushed legs and the sensation she felt was not a swarm of insects assaulting her shins and rushing to her feet.

Her attention snapped to John. Is he okay? Oh, God, what happened to him? She refused to believe the bad thoughts to which her mind ran. He was hurt. But he couldn't be. Not my Johnny. No. He promised he'd always be there. She needed to see him, to find out how he was, but she couldn't move her head. The effort sent a new surge of pain into the back of her head. If anything ...

"John?" she whispered in a gurgling and muffled voice. She waited then tried again, this time a little louder.

Why is he not answering?

She knew why, deep inside, but refused to believe. He didn't respond.

The sound of a desperate baby crying for its mother could not have elicited a fraction of the powerful emotions of sorrow and urgency that Mary experienced in thinking what this horrible accident had taken from her. The thought of loosing John forever was no less crushing than the thought of never seeing her son Charles again. The poignant yearning in her heart for the two great loves of her life forced her to fight against the pain.

The hand of God molded a twisted and doubtful future through this head-on collision, and she felt this thought reflected in the twisted features of her dejected face. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her puffy cheeks to join the blood flowing from her battered and broken nose.

"John? Can you ... hear me?"

Only the stereo made any sound.

She had to know. Amid all the pain and suffering, she dug deep inside to find the strength to open her eyes. That was a start. They were sticky, almost glued shut. The movement of her eyelids hurt. Nothing like the pain in her legs, but pain nonetheless. She willed them open and prayed desperately that she might see her husband alive, at least like she was; clinging to life, determined to survive, working to beat the odds.

The effort paid no reward. All she saw was the dark, deflated airbag.

If she could have clenched her broken fingers, or stomped her shattered legs, she would have, to emphasize the sudden rage that now filled her spirit. All she wanted was to see him. Is this too much to ask? In denial, her wrath eclipsed her pain and this horror she was forced to endure.

Damn this accident, and whoever caused it. When I get through this, I will find out who did this and I will have my revenge. God help me.

She began shaking. Uncontrollably. In anger, or pain, or shock, she wasn't sure, but Mary wallowed in misery, while her relaxing eyelids slowly descended. And with their closing, she imagined that she stood at the edge of a small stream between life and death, and watched while it grew, until it became a bloated expanse so wide the banks on the far side blurred from her view.

* * *

From the time the call came into the firehouse, it took twenty long minutes for the ladder truck to arrive at the accident scene. A plume of drifting steam directed by a cool, light breeze flowed from the accident across the slow lane to the west. It became disoriented and chaotic with the wind blown by this first emergency vehicle's arrival.

The driver, Kip, as apparatus operator and second in command to the Captain, parked his rig at an angle near the crash to block all lanes of southbound traffic for scene safety. He turned off the sirens but left his emergency lights pulsing into the darkness. Distant wails announced more emergency...