Jericho,REIDVILLE 01,Hangover In Hell Chapter 1, a jericho fanfic

SUMMARY: David Reid starts his hangover in hell.

WARNINGS: Profanity

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Call it a distraction or a series for when there is no official Jericho. It is related to the Tuckers series which I will be posting shortly. This is my first FF posting so I thought I'd try something that stands on its own.

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DISCLAIMER: The name "Jericho" and all character names and trademarks associated with the television program are the intellectual property of Junction Entertainment, Fixed Mark Productions, CBS Paramount Television and/or CBS Studios, Inc. The following stories are works of fan fiction intended solely as an intellectual exercise without profit motive. No infringement of copyright is intended or should be implied.

TITLE: REIDVILLE-Hangover In Hell, Chapter 1 of 5

AKA:

STORY TYPE: Alternate Episode with Alternate Characters (Outside of Jericho)

TIMELINE: 200X0930 (Bombs-1)

EPISODE GUIDE: n/a

TUCKERAU GUIDE: n/a

--SCENE: Loft of David Reid in Reidville, SC

David needed his sister right now as his world fall apart around him. The state newspaper graciously gave him a heads up today that in a week they were publishing a story about his inevitable bankruptcy and the plan to make the implosion of his lifelong dream front-page news. Then they asked him for a comment. If he didn't believe in his heart that suicide was an unforgivable sin, he'd give them reason to print it tomorrow.

As he sat in the dark, with only moonlight to illuminate his loft, he raised a tall glass of Kentucky bourbon to his lips. He had already reached the point where the alcohol no longer burned his throat or warmed his stomach. Any sense of physical sensation had left sometime during the first bottle. Now his head swam and his sense of equilibrium moved in slow motion as the glass settled down onto the cool leather of his couch.

He thought about trying to stand up and head for the balcony overlooking the river, but realized if he did make it, he would only cast himself onto the water and rocks below. Normally, the gentle rapids worked to calm his nerves and to sedate his concerns, but tonight there wasn't enough water in the river to quench his distress.

While he thought about the slow moving waters of the Reidville River, he found irony in the subtle hypocrisies of his life. David Reid lived his life in false namesakes of his own creation and it was his connection to them that would be his downfall. He lived in the city of Reidville, which he helped build in the old Reidville Mill, which he converted to luxury lofts overlooking the Reidville River. The hypocrisy lie in the knowledge that the town of Reidville was almost two hundred years old and it didn't know who David Reid was. His adoption of the small rural town, which coincidentally held his name, started his long and rocky road as a city builder along which a selfish determination to create grand plans crashed into his ego and the solid rocks of reality.

For the lack of a few hundred million in liquid assets, everything would be fine, but events beyond his control would determine his fate. That's the way things fell apart in David's life. He thought, 'The best laid plans of mice and men.'. He created the thirty square miles of city that surrounded him, but his love for it would be his downfall. After ten years of planning and acquiring land, David convinced bankers and investors to back his plan to create a planned town out of cow pastures and peach orchards. Ten years after that, the reality of the wood and cement, the asphalt and bricks surrounded him.

It mocked him, for while it was the perfect reflection of his dream, it was no longer his. In his final bid to have his own city, David had applied for and received the position of city manager. While he had pulled the strings behind the scenes for the previous twenty years, his ego demanded some form of direct control and acknowledgement. The catch was that, to avoid conflict of interest, any assets that his new position touched, had to be placed in blind trust or a public company. In David's case, that was everything. Everything he had was tied up in building the city of Reidville. He traded one type of control for another and it had damned his dream.

The story that the paper was going to release was already national news. It's just his name hadn't been attached to it until now. The evening news and the internet had been abuzz all week with stories of a rogue trader that was taking down one of Wall Streets powerhouse brokerages. The trader had spent the last year performing illegal trades in ever-increasing gambles meant to cover a series of mistakes. Instead of recovering his investments, the net result were loses to the brokerage totaling 43 of the brokerage's assets. When the yearly audit discovered his illegal actions, it forced the brokerage to stop trading and to admit it would take the banks, auditors and courts years to return the assets to its investors.

With the exception of 20, 30 and 40 year private municipal bonds which he used to fund the infrastructure of Reidville, all of David's money was tied up in the now defunct brokerage. Even if they returned him 57 cents on the dollar, it would be years before he would see it as investors filed lawsuit after lawsuit trying to take the lion's share of the dad carcass. In the meanwhile, millions of dollars in mortgage payments needed to be paid monthly on hundreds of buildings and businesses. Reidville was a long-term investment for him and he was still years away from his break-even point. He couldn't take in as much money as he had to pay out.

Therefore, while David was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he was paradoxically broke. If he couldn't get all of loans restructured in the next week, there would be a run on his assets as banks and investors, panicked by the news stories, rushed to get in line to liquidate him.

For twenty years, he had worked to create his perfect planned city with right angles and manicured gardens. Since a child, he had dreamed huge dreams and fought all his life to create one of them. He got his bachelor's degree in architecture and his master's in business. He got into and worked in every real estate rush America provided for twelve years before he had enough experience and investors to start his own. With plans and land in hand, he set out to build the perfect, self-sustaining mix of urban center and residential development. Papers were published and articles written about his attempt to balance people, business and environment. After its first phase was accomplished, he was granted an honorary doctorate reflecting the long term impacts his designs would have. Ten years after ground breaking the one square mile town of five hundred had been transformed into a mini-urban center stretching for thirty square miles and home to eighteen thousand. Pundits held the city of Reidville up as a model for new development that might solve the problems of urban decay and suburban sprawl.

David's sister had even caught the bug. When she and her husband moved west as part of their own business plans, he volunteered to handle the land development himself. He started the land acquisitions years ago and was due to fly out a week early for Thanksgiving to get the ball rolling for a spring groundbreaking. Their plans for a new Jericho were already in motion.

'Oh fuck.'

Even in his sadly inebriated state, David made a realization. While all the land in Jericho was owned by his sister and her husband, it was owned through his companies. When the banks came after him, they would inadvertently seize their assets as well. The thought of failing his sister like that almost sent him through the plate glass and over the railing. She had done too much for him over the years for him to let her down. She was the only one in the family that believed in his dreams and was willing to help him make it happen. The first house he designed, built and sold in Reidville had been to his sister and her husband.

'I'm so sorry.'

He looked down at the drink in his hand and remembered the last time he had been this drunk. It was shortly after his wife had left him, that Beth and John came over to find David bleary-eyed drunk. When he didn't answer the door, Beth used her key to let themselves into his loft. They found him sitting in the exact position with two empty bottles on the floor. If he had been able to stand, he would have found a third.

"David… you can't do this." Beth Tucker turned to her husband, John, "Could you get some coffee started and bring us a pitcher of water… make that two pitchers. One with water, one empty."

"Yea… we might also want to get him closer to the bathroom."

David tried to understand what they were saying, but could no more sense of it than he could feel the urine that soaked his lap and puddled on the leather of the couch.

His sister knelt in front of him ignoring the stench, "You can't blame yourself. You followed your heart."

Realization shown in his bloodshot eyes has he remembered what she was talking about, "So you heard."

"Yeah… the lawyers called to let us know, but you had no way of knowing."

"I thought she loved me. You warned me she might be a gold digger."

"Honey… she wasn't even that. She was a pure scam artist. A professional led you on, but that's not the end of it. The lawyers say they can protect your money. All those threats she made… she can't do anything."

"I don't care about the money. I've only had two dreams… she used one to get to the other."

"I know you married her for love, but you need to get off this couch and come to grip with the fact that she was just after your money. When she left and filed for divorce, it got the lawyers looking. She's still officially married to her partner in this scam. Your marriage was never legal."

"Well it was real to me. It was real to God."

"David… DAVID! Listen to me. The church will annul it and you'll be free to pursue your dreams."

"I just wanted a family like yours. I thought it was that easy… nice neat package."

She picked up the glass John had just put on the table and filled it with water. "Here drink this." As he began to sip it, she started to bring him back to reality and back to his dreams.

His sister had saved him that night from drowning in the alcohol, but tonight he had only her memory. If he called her, she would talk him down again. If he called her, she would be on the next plane to Reidville even if she had to charter one.

But if he called her, he'd have to tell her that he lost half of her family's assets. It was one thing to lose his own dream. It was something else to lose someone else's. He couldn't do that. He couldn't do that tonight.

He couldn't do that ever, so he sat on the couch waiting for time and space to distort reality. The next time he went to take a drink though her image and her voice resonated in his head. He didn't take that drink and as he set the glass back down, a muscle tremor released the glass from his hand. It fell off the edge of the couch and shattered on the floor below.

Minutes passed before he raised his watch and saw that it was almost eleven. He always watched the news at eleven, so he picked up the remote and turned on the plasma screen. Nothing but white noise showed on the screen. He set the TV to scan the channels, but it was the same on all of them. Some displayed a test pattern but most were white noise. He had no one to blame but himself since he owned the cable provider for Reidville. 'Maybe they realized I can't pay the bill.'

He laughed at himself and with himself for a moment before the acid reached the back of his throat. Knowing what was coming next, he struggled to get out of the couch's grip, but as he tried to stand his knees buckled bringing him down into the broken glass and spilled bourbon. His dignity gone he debated on collapsing right there, but the smell of the bourbon was making his stomach roil even more. He got to his hands and knees finally and slowly starting crawling.

There was no way he could make it to the second floor, so he headed for the guest bath on the first floor. He made it there without vomiting, but as soon as the porcelain framed his face, his stomach let loose. It emptied until the bowl was putrid and he flushed several times until nothing but dry heaves racked his body. 'Well tomorrow is another day… 'course with my luck… it will just get worse.'

Eventually he was unable to kneel any longer and lay down on the cool tile before he passed out. Behind him and around the corner the plasma screen completed its run through the digital channels and began to search the analog channels. On the third analog channel, the white noise gave way to a screen from the local news desk in Greenville.

"For anyone just tuning in, the emergency broadcast system has been activated and this message will repeat every sixty seconds. We have been in contact with FEMA and Homeland Security. They have verified that the United States is under nuclear attack and EVACUATION IS MANDATORY for the upstate areas. It has been verified that nuclear warheads struck Charlotte to our north at 5:47 pm and Atlanta to our south at 5:52 pm. With current wind conditions, fallout will reach the Greenville-Spartanburg area by nine o'clock tonight. All residents of the upstate are advised to evacuate north-west before then by taking Highway 25 or I-26 west to interstate 40. Fallout is expected to cover areas north, east and south of here. The nearest safe zone has been determined to be the other side of the Smokey Mountain chain. DO NOT… REPEAT… Do not plan to stop until you reach Knoxville, TN where the first organized response will be. FEMA advises that you have at least three days worth of food and water, but if you can carry more you should. If your vehicle becomes disabled, you are advised to move it from all lanes of travel and proceed on foot."

The anchor then went off script with genuine fear showing on his face. He didn't shout as much as he emphasized every word, "Get out and get out now. Knoxville is two hundred miles and the roads are going to clog. You can assume the gas stations are closed and your credit cards won't work anywhere. The survivors in Charlotte are also being directed to Knoxville. You have to get out and get out now."