Wolverine: Election Day

by Peter David, Marvel Narrated by Andrew Eiden

Overview

There's less than one week to go in the run-up to the nation's next general presidential election-a heated political contest pitting the incumbent president against a popular challenger. But all bets are off when a heinous act of domestic terrorism results in a young boy being held hostage before the eyes of America... with the ultimate demands to result in nothing short of changing the face of history. As a nationwide investigation into the boy's possible whereabouts is quickly mobilized, military brass requests that the mutant Wolverine become involved as well-there's simply no one more qualified with the tracking skills and vicious talent necessary to uncover the truth, even as the country threatens to descend into chaos...

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173332493
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1

Matthew Hayes had come to the conclusionthat he hated, despised — no, loathed — the concept of democracy.

In his twelve years of existence, he'd never actually had any strong feelings about it before. Back in the days when he'd had two parents, he'd heard them discuss such matters, usually with their voices extremely loud. Then again, anything his parents discussed tended to be at a high volume, so politics had simply blended in with everything else they talked about. When the subject of politics had been broached at his school, however, his social studies teacher, Mr. Schwartz, actually had managed to make it sound kind of interesting.

What helped was that the country was in the throes of an intense and hotly debated campaign for the presidency. As apolitical as Matthew was, even he was aware of such things. He was rather taken with the prospect of learning more about it so that he could understand more clearly just what it was that the adults were always going on about.

Mr. Schwartz had challenged the students to "sell" a candidate of their choice. First they were to comb through the field of candidates in any party — Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever. Then they were to zero in on one whose opinions on various topics were in line with their own. After that, they had to develop their own version of a "campaign" in which they would endeavor to convince their classmates that their particular candidate was the best suited for the office of president of the United States.

Some of the kids had snorted derisively at the idea or laughed outright. Quite a few had called it a waste of time, saying that all of the candidates were exactly the same. Their teacher's response had been that that was the cynicism of their parents talking, not the kids themselves, and that if they would only take the time to investigate the candidates' policies themselves, they might well be surprised at what they discovered.

Matthew had taken Mr. Schwartz at his word, and he'd actually been impressed to discover genuine differences among the candidates, if one were willing to look past all the surface similarities.

The candidate Matthew had been most taken with was on television right that very moment. Wisconsin senator Winston Mazone was, as far as Matthew was concerned, extremely presidential.

Winston Mazone was tall, just over six feet. He had a shock of gray hair and eyes that seemed to burn with not only knowledge but also a thirst for more. Not that Matthew was capable of analyzing them in such a fashion; he just knew that Senator Mazone seemed like a pretty smart guy with a lot on the ball. He had specific opinions about certain topics that he was willing to speak about in plain, no-nonsense terms (unlike some of the other candidates, who appeared determined to talk their way around some of the touchier points). As opposed to other candidates who seemed overrehearsed, their speeches carefully screened, Mazone wasn't afraid to say exactly what was on his mind.

"It's like he's actually thinking about what people are asking him," Matthew had told his teacher, "instead of thinking about what other people told him to say." Mr. Schwartz had been extremely pleased with Matthew's analysis of the candidate and said that Matthew was far more perceptive than many adults, much less other kids.

All through the end of the school year, Matthew had pushed the idea of Senator Mazone to be his party's candidate. When his class had conducted the mock election, Matthew had been so frustrated when Mazone had only finished third in his class's election results that he'd almost burst into tears. Mr. Schwartz had taken him aside and told him that, for what it was worth, Matthew had convinced him that Mazone was the best man for the job and, come the primaries, Mazone would get Mr. Schwartz's vote.

As it turned out, he wasn't the only one. Sometime during the summer, people started listening to Mazone, and on September 1, in a fiercely contested national convention, Mazone had beaten the odds and been named his party's presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, there were some who believed that Mazone had been offered up as a sacrificial goat. That although the sitting president's policies were unpopular with some, there weren't enough people who were sufficiently dissatisfied with him to vote him out of office, particularly since they were in the middle of a war. They saw the upcoming election as a losing proposition, and it had been decided (some theorized) behind closed doors that it would be best to let Mazone take the political hit of being a failed presidential candidate and instead look toward the next midterms and subsequent presidential election.

Matthew hated that kind of talk, but he was hard-pressed to see the flaw in the logic.

Now he was draped across his bed, watching Senator Mazone deliver a televised speech. Although the sun had not yet set, the skies had already darkened, and there was a fierce wind blowing; a storm was rolling in. The branches of a large tree were whipping about outside Matthew's windows, but they were far enough away that he was certain the windows would remain intact.

The speech wasn't live; rather, it was on a DVD that Mr. Schwartz had given Matthew, which he, in turn, had recorded off the feed from some cable station or other. It was from way early in Mazone's initial campaign, before he'd been made the nominee. Matthew had seen it before, but he enjoyed watching it, since it had been the first complete, uncut speech from Senator Mazone he'd ever seen, and it was — to use Mr. Schwartz's phrase — a "barn burner" (although Matthew didn't see any barns in the process of being burned, but go figure out what the hell adults were ever talking about).

"The president," Mazone was saying to an appreciative crowd, "has failed the American people on every level. He has failed us as a leader. He has failed us as a voice and a face for this country. He has failed his vow to uphold the Constitution of these United States. His aggressive actions have not only failed to make America safer from those who would threaten our way of life, but they have actually turned our own allies against us. His failed wars and failed policies cannot be allowed to continue, and when I am your president, I assure you that I will not be the one to continue them!"

This prompted a rousing cheer from the audience, and Matthew nodded in agreement. It wasn't as if he was positive that everything Winston Mazone was saying was right, but it certainly sounded right. He'd come to understand that the way something came across was often more important than whether or not it was accurate.

Senator Mazone continued to excoriate the president's policies, and Matthew listened and dutifully took notes. Even though the course had ended months ago and Matthew was on to a new school year, he was still thinking along the lines of possible election strategies. He figured that, if nothing else, it might be valuable practice should he ever have the opportunity to work in a real election.

The longer Matthew listened to the speech, the more he started to believe that he preferred the senator in a debate situation. In debates, the senator had to think quickly, respond to questions posed to him. Mazone seemed to enjoy the challenge more, and it showed in the way he conducted himself. Here, delivering a speech, Mazone was certainly interesting and compelling, but he lacked the spontaneity that Matthew had come to enjoy.

Matthew paused the DVD and went to his computer. He sat and started checking the latest opinion polls he could find, praying that the results would be more in line with what he was hoping for than what he had been reading lately. Unfortunately, the news continued to be bleak: Senator Winston Mazone still trailed the president by a considerable margin.

He found it frustrating. How could the majority of voting Americans be so blind as not to see a real leader when he was staring them in the face?

A possible angle to take for the campaign began to form in his mind. Everybody always wanted to be part of the new, cool thing. Nobody ever wanted to be left out or left behind. So maybe, he reasoned, he could find a way to position Senator Mazone so that not voting for him would be the most uncool thing that anyone could possibly do. "It would be, like, 'How can you be voting for anybody else, because they're all totally losers?'" Matthew said to himself. "Make it so that people would make fun of you if you voted for anybody but Senator Mazone."

He returned to the DVD and was about to start it up again when he noticed the time. Immediately, all thoughts of politics in general and Senator Mazone in specific fled his mind. One had to have priorities, after all, and in this case, Matthew's priorities had shifted away from the real world of politics and into the unreal world of television adventure.

Kaz was on!

His mother hated Kaz, absolutely hated it. She said it was mindless and violent and gave Matthew all sorts of ideas that he didn't need to be carrying around in his young head. In retrospect, Matthew decided that his mistake had been in trying to convince his mom of what a great show it was in the first place.

"He's this bounty hunter, see," Matthew had said as he encouraged her to sit and watch an episode with him. "In fact, the guy on TV, that's not an actor. That's really him, playing himself."

"It's a reality show?"

"Nah. Better. It's stories that are based on his actual cases. And all his cases are cool because he's so cool."

"And what's so cool about him?" his mother had gamely said.

Buoyed by the belief that she had seemed willing to share his favorite program with him, Matthew had warmed to the subject immediately. "He's got superpowers. He got his powers from aliens that — "

His mother had stopped him right there. "Aliens?"

"Sure!"

"From another world."

"Yeah!"

"That's ridiculous."

"Aw, come on, Ma! Everybody knows there's aliens!"

"What everybody knows is not what I know," his mother had said in an annoyed tone. "Just because other people are gullible enough to believe in wild tales derived from mass hysteria..."

He hadn't known what she was talking about, and ultimately it hadn't mattered. After giving him a ten-minute lecture on the evils of accepting as gospel the wild beliefs and speculations of others, she had forbidden Matthew to watch Kaz when it aired in its time slot of nine P.M. every Wednesday on NBC. Mom even made sure to check that if Matthew was up in his room at that day and time, the television was safely off.

Mom, however, had not realized that the Sci-Fi Channel aired repeats of Kaz on Friday at seven p.m., and the magic hour had struck. So, after glancing out his door to make certain his mother was nowhere around, Matthew tuned the cable box to the Sci-Fi Channel, turned the volume down, and plunked himself in front of the TV to watch the adventures of everyone's favorite bounty hunter.

Tonight's episode looked primed to be a good one, something involving a competing bounty hunter who was actually a cyborg from the future. Matthew watched the teaser with barely restrained enthusiasm while musing upon the incredibly exciting life that Kaz had. "Nothing cool like that is ever going to happen to me," he muttered.

A glow — a series of glows, actually — came streaming through his window. At first, he thought it was lightning, and then it came across like swarms of fireflies, although he couldn't begin to guess why they'd be amassing there. Slowly, he climbed down off his bed and padded softly over to the window.

Just as he reached it, the lights shone directly in his face, and he realized they were man-made rather than something conjured by nature. He thought he caught a glimpse of shadowed forms in the trees and on the ground, but the light glaring in his eyes flash-blinded him before he could determine exactly who or what was approaching.

He stepped back from the window, reflexively throwing his arms in front of his face, and instinctually called out to his mother.

The window exploded inward, wood and glass spraying in all directions. Matthew let out an alarmed shriek and tried to run for his closed bedroom door.

He was five steps away from escape when a knife sliced through the air and thudded into the door just above the knob. Matthew had been reaching for it but automatically yanked his hand back.

If Matthew had ignored the threat, had kept going, grabbed for the door anyway, and yanked it open, he might have gotten out. Chances were that whoever was doing this simply would have pursued him to another part of the house, so he would have bought himself only seconds at most. It was as if he were paralyzed, unsure of what in God's name he should do, and that paralysis was all the intruders needed. Matthew's feet left the ground as he was hauled backward. His screams were quickly muffled as he was dumped unceremoniously into a sack.

"We have him," said a gruff nearby voice with an odd accent.

Matthew was able to make out another voice crackling in a filtered manner, which suggested that the man who had just spoken was having a conversation over some sort of walkie-talkie. The responding voice said briskly, "Get going."

"The mother is coming up the steps. Should we — ?"

Matthew's heart stopped within his chest. They were going to wait for his mother to burst into the room, and then they were either going to kidnap her...or worse. The notion was so horrific that, as much as he wanted to shout a warning, his throat had closed up with terror. He tried to speak but could manage only a constricted whisper.

In the end, it didn't matter. The voice over the speaker said, "She can't ID you, and she can't stop you. Get out of there now."

The brief feeling of relief that pulsed through him about his mother quickly evaporated as his own predicament loomed large before him. He heard the voice of Kaz the Bounty Hunter talking with confidence about the fact that no one and nothing could get away from him if he came looking for them.

"Save me, Kaz," he managed to whisper. Then he was hauled through the air, and he could sense — although naturally he couldn't see — that he was no longer in his room. The chill air cut through the sack, and he shivered, but not just because of the coldness. His world, previously so safe and secure, suddenly had become a terrifying and uncertain place.

In the distance, he heard his mother screaming his name. Then it was cut off by the abrupt slam of what sounded like a car trunk. He could hear an engine already running; the car had been waiting for him. Seconds later, it hurtled forward, causing Matthew to be slammed up against the inside of the trunk. The top of the bag was drawn too tightly, and his body was far too constricted, to make the slightest move.

Insanely, the last thing that went through his mind before the terror overwhelmed him and shut down his conscious thoughts was, Mom's gonna see that I had Kaz on. She's going to be so pissed off...

Copyright © 2008 by Marvel Characters, Inc.

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