Read Online A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller by Charles W. Sasser - Free Book Online

also.”
    When she returned to the table, Nail said, “You read what Logan wrote about commies. Pardon me if I find that hard to swallow.”
    “No harder than this coffee. How long has it been in the pot?”
    “No more than a week at most.”
    She rolled her eyes before returning to her subject.
    “I’ll call New York to send me DVDs of Jerry’s shows. The man insisted on exhaustive research. He didn’t merely offer his opinions. He provided facts and evidence to back them up. He’s the Thomas Paine of our generation. The Tea Party movement started with him. He’s the major reason why the Anastos administration is trying to shut down opposition media.”
    “So the commies are coming?” he asked derisively.
    “Do you recall when Nikita Khrushchev came to the United States?”
    “I wasn’t even born. You weren’t either, unless you’re a lot older than you look.”
    “If that’s an off-handed compliment, thanks. This is how Khrushchev said it would happen: ‘You Americans are so gullible. You won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy that you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.’”
    “You’re beginning to sound like Big C Brown.”
    She lifted a brow.
    “One of the biggest and meanest detectives you’ll ever meet and an old friend who goes back to the first war in Iraq,” he explained. “Big C is always talking about black helicopters, concentration camps, foreign troops in Tulsa and Albuquerque, a secret army, commies in the White House...”
    “You’re making fun of me, James.”
    He threw out his palms. “I’m listening.” It was better than talking about other things that only further depressed them.
    “In 1963,” she went on, undeterred, “the Communist Party USA listed the goals it must accomplish in order to turn America socialist. You tell me which of them it has accomplished so far or is about to accomplish.”
    Her passion intensified as she set down her coffee cup and began ticking them off on her fingers one by one:
    “Capture one or both political parties;
    “Gain control of the media;
    “Exert influence over book reviews, editorial writing, and news content;
    “Dominate key positions in radio and TV to make programming decisions;
    “Infiltrate churches and replace revealed religion with social religion;
    “Exclude public prayer on the grounds that it violates separation of church and state;
    “Discredit the U.S. Constitution by labeling it inadequate and old-fashioned;
    “Discredit America’s founding fathers;
    “Ban private ownership of all firearms;
    “Infiltrate and gain control of labor unions;
    “Nationalize healthcare, banks, energy and other institutions;
    “Destroy the family as an institution by encouraging promiscuity and easy divorce;
    “Collapse the economy...
    “Feel free to stop me at any time.”
    Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory was a nut, but it turned out he was right. Still, that there was a communist cabal working under the auspices of the U.S. Government to subvert and take over the country made no sense whatsoever. Nail shook his head in denial. It was all too overwhelming. Next thing he knew, he’d be out with Big C looking for black helicopters and secret extermination centers.
    Sharon was not going to let him off the hook. Like she could read his mind.
    “Anyone who believes in Marxists is labeled a conspiracy kook wearing a tin foil hat and lumped with people who see UFOs and Bigfoot,” she said. “It was Marx’ idea to discredit and delegitimize opponents by marginalizing them. If that didn’t work, you sent them to re-education camps or liquidated them.”
    Nail was ready to let it drop and move on. “If they—whoever they are—wanted Baer dead, why didn’t they simply assassinate him without making such a big production of it? All those other