Burning Nation

by Trent Reedy

  “Is that fire?” Cal asked. “I thought I saw a flash.”

  “Well, put that saber down and pay attention,” I said.

  “Saber?”

  “Sword,” Sweeney said as he crept up to the window with his M4. “Nice piece, though.”

  Across the street, orange light flashed from a living room window. “Oh yeah,” I said. “She’s lit.” Smoke began to roll out from somewhere around the side of the building. “Get ready.”

  The light in the living room got brighter and brighter. The tan vinyl siding on the front of the house began to melt. More and more smoke billowed out. Finally, the town fire whistle went off. Still, nobody came, and the house burned.

  “What if the regular fire department shows up?” Becca asked.

  “TJ was very clear with Skylar,” Sweeney said. “He told him that any firefighter who showed up would risk being shot.”

  “Hope you can trust that guy,” Luchen said.

  “Grenke’s an idiot,” I said. “But he’s loyal. He’ll get the word out.”

  Red-and-white flames slashed through the walls and began to roar from the side of the house. Smoke and fire had invaded the second floor. We waited. Finally, two Fed Humvees showed up. Four soldiers dismounted from each, leaving someone behind to man both of their machine guns on top.

  “Is that all they’re bringing?” Cal readied the SAW. “Maybe they’re gonna let it burn down.”

  The snow on the roof had steamed off and a few flames began to lick up through the shingles. Some downstairs windows shattered.

  “Wait.” I eased down the barrel of the SAW. “They’d never bring only eight guys for a fire this big. Wait until we got more targets.”

  Finally, we heard sirens. Minutes later, all three Freedom Lake fire trucks rolled onto the scene, all covered in soldiers in full combat gear. Skylar’s dad climbed out of the first truck and started barking orders, pointing at the fire hydrant and hoses.

  “Grenke a traitor?” Sweeney asked.

  Skylar’s dad was frantic, trying to get the Feds to get the hoses running. Had he sold us out? A Fed pulled a nine mil and aimed it at Skylar’s dad, yelling something. Mr. Grenke put his hands up and shrugged, then pointed out some of the control valves on one of the trucks. Whatever he’d said seemed to satisfy the Fed, and Mr. Grenke looked around the neighborhood nervously.

  “No, he’s cool,” I said. “They’re forcing him to help them fight the fire. He’s no sellout.” There had to be at least forty or fifty soldiers down there. “Get ready,” I said. “Sweeney, hit the Humvee gunner on our left. Cal, you take out the one on our right. Becca, watch for returned fire. I’m going for that son of a bitch who was pointing a gun at Skylar’s dad. I shoot first.” I picked up my little Motorola radio and hit the transmit button to call Sparrow and Kemp. “Don’t hit the civilian. The civvy is not a target.”

  “Roger,” Sparrow radioed back.

  I aimed through the glass, but the glare was messing up my shot, so I grabbed Cal’s new saber and used it to pry the old window open. It swung up, and then I hung the frame on a hook on the wall. “Welcome to the Fed shooting gallery,” I said.

  I caught a concerned look from Becca and remembered our conversation about war and killing. She gave an encouraging nod. Focus, Wright. Mission first. I fell back on my training, aiming at Nine Mil Soldier, controlling my breathing, and easing on the trigger. The Fed seemed to drop at the same second my rifle fired. Sweeney and Cal cut loose. Mr. Grenke dove into the snow, sliding under a fire truck.

  “Go! Get ’em all!” I fired again. Again. Two soldiers fell.

  “Suck it, Feds!” Cal shouted. He fired a series of quick bursts, raining showers of bullets all over the field below.

  Sweeney let off a shot. “Damn. Missed.”

  Two rounds hit the outside of the attic. I spotted two Feds set up by the front fender of one of the fire trucks. They had to be able to see us perfectly in the firelight. But I had a clear line of sight on them too, and the next time one popped up, I put a round through his face.

  “We gotta think about getting out of here!” Becca yelled.

  Around the side of the house across the street a Fed’s lower body ripped away from his chest, arms, and head in a shower of blood. Kemp’s .50-cal. A soldier tried running toward one of the Humvees, probably going for the machine gun there. I put a round through his thigh, shook my head, and put another into his skull.

  We rained down hundreds more bullets for another minute until the last of them was dead. “Mr. Grenke, you okay?” I called. Skylar’s dad crawled out from under a fire truck and gave a thumbs-up. I slammed the window shut. “Time to bail! Let’s go!”

  We rushed down the stairs and out to the yard behind the house. Then hot pops of gunshots went off and we all hit the ground. Some Feds were firing from behind a backyard fence across the alley. I fired four rounds. Luchen, Sweeney, and Becca shot too. “Alpha, this is bravo,” I said into the little Motorola radio. “RTB! We’ll catch up!” With them heading back to base, I focused on returning fire. When I’d emptied my rifle’s magazine, I rolled onto my side to pull another one from my pocket. Where was our machine gun? “Cal, let ’em have it!” But Cal was gone. I slammed a full mag into my rifle, rolled back onto my stomach, and fired. We had no cover. Our only chance was to continue the suppressive fire to keep those soldiers from jumping up and killing us.

  “Your boy left us!” Luchen yelled with his cheek fixed to the stock of his M4. He squeezed off one round after another.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I said. We’d run out of bullets soon, and more Fed soldiers had to be on their way. “Cal, where the hell are you!?”

  Sweeney had switched to Cal’s SAW, stabilizing it on its bipod and shooting in three- or four-round bursts. “I’m almost out,” he shouted.

  I pointed to a white toolshed in another yard. “I’ll cover you guys! Get behind that shed!”

  “I can shoot on the move,” Sweeney answered. “You come too!”

  “Okay, get ready.” I fired more and more, hoping some of my rounds would cut through the fence and take some of those assholes down. Sweeney and Becca rose to their knees, getting ready to move.

  Then across the alley, Cal hurdled the fence right into the nest of Feds. “Wanna hurt my friends!?” He swung his stolen sword down, twisting his whole body, and blood sprayed the white snow on a tree nearby. He pivoted and whipped the bloody blade around again. “I’ll kill you all!” More blood splattered up over the fence, and a shrill scream echoed through the neighborhood. “You leave ’em alone! Die, asshole!” Cal slashed down at the soldiers behind the fence again and again.

  “Cal!” Becca yelled.

  He kept hacking. “Not so tough now, are you!? Huh? Come on!”

  Becca ran toward the crimson-stained fence. “Cal! Calvin Riccon! Stop!” I followed her. When Becca looked over the fence, her eyes went wide and she gagged, holding up a hand to stop me. I stayed back. “Cal, you got ’em! Let’s get out of here.”

  When Cal turned to us, his face was unrecognizable, his bulky shoulders heaving. Blood ran down his cheeks and dripped from his nose and chin.

  “Cal?” I asked. Could he even hear me?

  Cal found a small clean spot on his coat and wiped his sword mostly clean. “Ain’t none of them gonna hurt my friends.” His boot thudded like an ax on wood as he kicked something on the ground. “I’ll kill them all first!”

  “Cal!” I shouted.

  He shook his head and seemed to recognize me for the first time. Then he sheathed his sword in the scabbard hanging from his belt and reached down to pick up a blood-soaked M4 and a couple full mags of ammo. The five of us sprinted down the alley, away from the tower of fire and smoke behind us.

  “Follow me,” I said. Sally had offered us a hiding place at the Bucking Bronc. We had to move fast if we were going to make it.

  We rounded the corner into another alley, and Luchen slipped on a patch of ice, landing on his ass
. “I’m good,” he groaned. Becca helped him up.

  “Wright!” someone hissed from a garage nearby. My rifle was at the ready in a second, but I lowered it when I saw Coach Shiratori. “Follow me. You all have to hide.”

  “Yes, Coach,” Cal said, following him immediately.

  “Cal, we can’t bring Coach into this,” I said. “They’re going to be after us, and he doesn’t deserve to —”

  Coach glared at me. “Now, Wright!”

  Moments later, we were rushing down the stairs into Shiratori’s basement. “Daddy?” A little girl’s voice came down the stairs.

  He looked up. “Stay up there! In fact, go to your room and play. I’ll be there in just a little bit. Go find your mom and you two play in your room.” He let out a shaky breath and tossed a dingy old towel to Cal. “Mr. Riccon, you’re getting blood all over. Clean yourself up.”

  “Wow, Mr. Shiratori.” Becca slowly turned around, taking in the main basement room. From the floor to the ceiling, every wall was covered in shelves filled with paper books. “So many books.”

  He shrugged. “I have a big storage closet in a back room down here. You all can hide there until things calm down and you can sneak off to wherever you go.”

  “Thanks for helping, Coach.” Cal wiped blood from his face. “You’re a real patriot. Like George Washington, but for Idaho.”

  Shiratori stopped as he opened the door to the back room. “I’m doing this to keep my former students alive, not for Idaho.”

  “Come on, Mr. Shiratori,” Sweeney said. “The Republic of Idaho needs good guys like you.”

  “Yeah, you almost sound like a Fed traitor,” said Cal.

  I moved to put my hand on Cal’s arm to tell him to go easy on Coach, but I stopped when I saw all the blood on his sleeves.

  “Yeah, I like America, Mr. Riccon. Are you going to burn my house down now?”

  “What? No, but Coach—”

  “Was the United States of America really so bad?” Shiratori asked. “Water, roads, electricity, and plenty of food all the time. Was there a war in your backyard in the United States? Look at you, Mr. Riccon, all covered in blood. What happened to the powerhouse football player I knew? The biggest worry on all of your minds should be your schoolwork and basketball games and the Valentine’s Day dance. Now what do you have? You’re lucky to be alive, and who knows how much longer you’ll live, if you keep this up.”

  “The Fed attacked us,” I said quietly. “We have a right to defend our —”

  “Were you defending yourselves when you killed all those soldiers up on Silver Mountain? Which, by the way, destroyed Freedom Lake’s food ration, so now I’m down to one meal a day just so my daughter can get enough to eat. And I’m not the only one in town going hungry. Were you firing in self-defense today?”

  “I’m sorry you ain’t got quite as much food, Coach, but it’s been tough for us too. Because of the Fed. Anyway, it’s too late for all this,” said Cal. “We’re in the Idaho Army now. This is the revolution.”

  “Okay, say hell freezes over and Idaho somehow wins. What happens then?” He sounded like he was lecturing. I missed the tapping of his Stick of Power on the classroom tiles. “A lot of people here in the Northwest have been prepping for a war with the federal government for years. Certain groups have been inviting like-minded people to this region, stockpiling weapons and getting ready for a war just like this, in their own little self-sufficient villages and compounds. Some of them are neo-Nazi, white supremacist groups. Some are basically terrorists or wannabe terrorists.”

  “It ain’t like that, Coach,” said Cal. “Don’t go playing the race card. There are a lot of people who just want their freedom. Not everybody fighting for Idaho is some weird racist or whatever.”

  “Of course not. But you can bet that plenty of the people on your side have belonged to these sick and dangerous groups for years, and now some of their dreams are starting to come true. And even putting that issue aside, how do you know this government in Boise will be any better than the one in Washington, DC? Over a hundred years ago, some revolutionaries in Russia had this idea that everybody should be equal. They threw out the tsar and the old government, and what they got instead was the Soviet Union, an evil empire that murdered millions. Even this government you’re fighting now was once fought for by revolutionaries.”

  Now Mr. Shiratori was way off. I folded my arms. “The Founding Fathers never intended for the federal government to be so powerful and run every bit of our lives.”

  “That’s what the Soviet leader Stalin always said about anyone he put to death— that they were traitors to the intent of the revolution.”

  “President Montaine isn’t Stalin,” Sweeney said.

  “You don’t know who he is.” Shiratori opened the dark closet in the back room and pushed some boxes aside. “You don’t even know who’s really in charge anymore. Could be General McNabb. Could be anybody. Tyrants always use fear and uncertainty to rise to power in times of chaos. Over and over in history, revolutionaries turn around only to realize, too late, that they’ve made themselves slaves to a worse government than the one they’d fought to overthrow.” The five of us found places to sit behind the pile of boxes in the closet. “Rest. I’ll come and get you when it’s a little safer. And please, for your own sakes, take some time to think about finding a way to leave this war behind, while you still can.”

  He closed the door, leaving us there in the cold dark.

  —• FIRA News continues. I’m Army Staff Sergeant Hinkelthorn. Tragedy struck last night in Freedom Lake, Idaho, when terrorist insurgents resorted to arson, setting fire to a civilian house and endangering an entire neighborhood in an apparent attempt to lure United States soldiers to the scene. Eighteen soldiers were murdered while they fought to extinguish the blaze. The house was completely destroyed and a small adjacent structure was damaged by the fire. Local reconstruction authorities are still investigating possible insurgent accomplices among Freedom Lake residents.

  FIRA officials in Smelterville report almost total compliance with reconstruction regulations, with over 95 percent of citizens there signing up for the federal identification cards. Ration distribution in the small mining town has brought a standard of living unheard of since James Montaine’s criminal regime forced the late President Rodriguez to halt the flow of food and other supplies into the state. One Smelterville resident was nearly in tears as she watched the trucks roll into town to distribute food. “It’s like Christmas,” she said. “Thank you so much. Now I can finally make sure my kids are getting fed. •—

  —• From ABC News, I’m Tara Albron. Only moments after the legislatures of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine voted to officially declare themselves neutral in the national conflict, the governors of those three states activated their entire National Guard forces. Their first orders to their troops? Stand down. Here’s New Hampshire Governor Madeline Hanson: “The soldiers and airmen of the New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine National Guards enlisted to protect their states and their country. Many of them have contacted me and other elected representatives, expressing fears about the federal government forcing them to fight against other Americans. Our actions today will prevent that grievous step and protect our enlisted men and women. We support the United States and the federal government, and while we encourage reform to the Federal ID Card Act, we do not support nullification. What we demand is peace, and we will not allow New England soldiers or New England resources to be used in a destructive and counterproductive war against United States citizens, even those who claim to live in the so-called Republic of Idaho. I know I speak for the other governors, legislators, and people of the New England Peace Alliance when I call for other states to follow our lead in doing whatever they can to stop this needless bloodshed.” No comment from the White House on these developments.

  Five people were killed and dozens injured after a peace rally on the Florida State University campus went terribly wrong. What began as a
demonstration calling for a cease-fire in Idaho quickly escalated into mob disorder before ending in tragedy. Some students attempted to resist arrest, and shortly after that, shots were fired. It is unclear who fired first or why, but Florida officials are asking for calm pending a full investigation.

  Pressure is growing in Congress for a change to the status of 952 Idaho Army National Guard soldiers who have been pulled from their service in Iran and reassigned to correctional facilities in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Colonel Brent Hayes, special officer in charge of these Idaho Guard detainees: “I’ve spoken to the president. She and I are in agreement, and I’ve made it very clear to the Army corrections specialists in charge of running the facility that the Idaho Guardsmen stationed here are guilty of no crime. They are not prisoners, but simply soldiers who are staying at this facility on a temporary basis. They are being well paid, and every possible effort has been made to ensure that these honorable soldiers are as comfortable as possible. They are, however, trained soldiers, and they cannot be allowed to return to their homes in Idaho, where they might strengthen the rebel cause.” A number of veterans groups as well as Amnesty International continue to press Congress to order their release. You’re listening to ABC News. •—

  —• South Korean Prime Minister Jung Park reassured the United States and the United Nations today that South Korean military forces are capable of withstanding any possible future aggression from North Korea, and after over fifty years, the majority of American military forces are withdrawing from the Korean peninsula. In Seoul, at a ceremony to mark the historic transition, Prime Minister Park also offered military and humanitarian aid to assist the United States with its quote, “domestic challenges.” White House Spokesperson Kelsey Santos says the president appreciates South Korea’s generous offer and will take it under advisement. Meanwhile, while there are no signs of increased military activity in North Korea, the North Korean supreme leader has ordered his citizens to celebrate what he is calling “a historic victory.” •—