by Glen Tate
“We can look all through the house to find the registration,” the woman said. She did not want to be there all night, though.
Matt knew even these idiots would find a lot more evidence against him if they kept searching. He decided to try the best strategy against the FCorps.
“Maybe I could get you guys a little something for your effort tonight,” he said, “I know you guys are underpaid with all the budget cuts.”
The FCorps people looked at each other, as if they were deciding if they should accept the offer of bribery. They were new together as a group and didn’t trust each other enough yet to know that one of them wouldn’t turn them in for bribery.
The woman, who was in charge, said, “That’s a second violation: attempted bribery.”
“Well, I don’t have my bolt-cutter registration handy,” Matt said. “So what happens now?”
He was handcuffed in front of his family, with zip ties instead of real handcuffs because that’s all the FCorps had, and taken to the FCorps van waiting outside. The bolt cutters were taken, too. He noticed that the lights were on in Terry’s house.
Matt sat, very uncomfortably, in the van for about two hours. Then they took him to the school and put him in a classroom with five or six others. They locked the door so they had to stay in there. About half of his detention mates looked like petty criminals and the other half looked like regular guys like him. No one talked. They were tired. The mood of the detainees seemed to be one of a giant inconvenience more than fear of going to jail. It was like TSA had seized their luggage and they had missed their flight more than they were going to a real jail.
Matt woke up, his back aching, in a student seat in the classroom. A guard was taking them out and down the hall. He got up and went.
The hall took them to the cafeteria. He looked around to see if his family was in the audience but they weren’t; there wasn’t anyone in the audience. He sat with his hands zip tied in a cafeteria seat for another few hours – his back and legs in severe pain at this point – watching the so-called “trials.” They lasted about five minutes and consisted of the guard reading some vague charges and the “judge,” who looked like someone at the DMV, asking the defendant if they had anything to say. Most didn’t, but a few started talking until they were cut off after about a minute. All of them were convicted. The standard sentence seemed to be thirty days and the loss of an FCard. A few of the prisoners seemed distraught about going to jail, but most didn’t. From what Matt could tell, most of the prisoners were like him: Patriots charged with petty crimes. The Patriots knew the TDFs were a light sentence so they didn’t get too upset about having to go there.
After a few hours of sitting there, without any food or water, they took him back to the classroom. Apparently, they didn’t have enough “judges” for the remaining “trials.” He finally got some water and one chance to go to the bathroom. Still no food. He got the feeling he’d be hungry for the next thirty days or so. It still wasn’t that bad, he kept thinking.
Finally, in the evening, he was hauled back into the cafeteria. By now, some people were in the audience. That’s when he saw his family.
“Collins, Matthew,” the DMV-looking judge called out. Matt looked at the guard to see if he had permission to stand; she signaled that he did. He stood and forcefully and confidently said, “Present.” He wanted his family to see that.
“You are charged with possession of an unregistered bolt-cutter,” the judge read. That was it; no mention of the attempted bribery. Interesting, Matt thought. None of the other prisoners had been charged with that, either. It was like the FCorps didn’t want the bribery issue discussed, which made sense given how often they took money. “How do you plead?” the judge asked.
“Not guilty,” Matt said. “The bolt-cutter registration law is unconstitutional,” he asserted.
The judge was unfazed. She heard this all the time. Wacko tea baggers.
“I have reviewed the evidence and find you guilty. You are sentenced to thirty days in a Temporary Detention Facility and the loss of your FCard. Bailiff, please take the prisoner away.”
The guard motioned that he could talk to his family briefly. That was when he told them he could TDF time “standing on his head.” This would be a piece of cake, he assured himself as he went off to jail.
Chapter 250
The Football Field
(December 20)
Christmas was in a few days. The pending Christmas had a strong effect on many people. It got them thinking. No one wanted a horrible Christmas, yet Christmas was looking horrible for most people.
In Seattle and the suburbs, and in the state capitol of Olympia, things had been getting worse the entire autumn. Food was getting scarce. There was not mass starvation, but people were starting to skip meals. Except the connected; they still had plenty. Regular people were noticing that more and more. Crime was through the roof—but instead of gangs, now it was largely regular people stealing food or items to sell for food. Most Loyalists were realizing that the “Crisis,” as they called it, wasn’t a temporary emergency that they’d ride out with the help of the government. Now, even the most die-hard Loyalists were realizing things were headed in the wrong direction and wouldn’t get better soon.
This caused many Loyalists to start thinking long and hard about the future. Would there be more Christmases like this? Would this be their last Christmas? Would Christmas be ruined for their kids? All the traditions of a normal Christmas were now in direct contrast to reality. Going out and getting a Christmas tree? Not this year. There were none. Having a big Christmas dinner? Not this year. Even the most head-in-the-sand people suffering from normalcy bias had to acknowledge that this Christmas would not be “normal.”
The reality of a non-normal Christmas had two different effects on the Loyalists and the Undecideds in the Lima areas of the state. For some, the approaching Christmas gave many Loyalists a strong urge to hunker down and make this Christmas as “normal” as possible. They would put up a branch in their house and call it a Christmas tree, give gifts of canned food, and try not to hear the gun shots in the distance.
For other Loyalists, the approaching Christmas meant they had a strong urge to get out of their deteriorating situations and move to a safer place where things might be better. Getting to a safer place meant getting out of their semi-safe situations in places like the suburbs of Olympia and going to the fortress of Seattle. It only took a few percentage points of the people moving from wherever they were to Seattle to cause a refugee crisis.
The highways were filling up with buses taking people to Seattle. The government controlled which vehicles could use the highways, of course, but private bus companies, which were illegal, were charging enormous fares to take people to Seattle or wherever they wanted to go. The authorities controlling the highways were happy to take the bus company bribes and sell them gang gas.
Nancy Ringman, who ran the Clover Park TDF was noticing all the people going up Interstate 5 from Olympia to Seattle. Her facility was right off of I-5 and inside the “JBLM ring” south of Seattle and north of Olympia. JBLM was the defensive ring surrounding Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which encompassed the area around Ft. Lewis and McChord Air Base.
She also noticed that her FCorps guards were melting away. There always seemed to be one more guard “out for the holidays” at roll call for every shift. The approaching Christmas gave people cover to desert. And they were leaving in increasing numbers.
Then Nancy got a phone call from her boss, Linda Provost.
She told Nancy that the decision had been made to get important civilians—high- and medium-ranking government employees—out of the suburbs and Olympia and closer to Seattle. The Loyalists knew that the Patriots would be sweeping in from the rural areas in a few weeks or months. The Loyalists couldn’t hold these extended territories, so it was better to abandon them and concentrate their people in strongholds, like Seattle and its surrounding defensive areas, like the JBLM ring.
“You need to make room for fleeing civilians at your TDF,” Linda told Nancy.
Room? Nancy thought. There is no room. They were stuffed way beyond capacity with detainees. They were sleeping on the floor and diseases were spreading among them. Not like Nancy cared. All those teabagger terrorists needed to die. She wondered why they even fed them, which explained why she didn’t care that the guards sold most of the food destined for the detainees to the gangs. Nancy got a cut, too.
“Civilians? What kind of civilians?” Nancy asked.
“Good ones, not teabaggers,” Linda said. “Civilians with high clearances.” “Clearance” was the system of hierarchy the Loyalists used. The higher a clearance, the more connected a person was, and the more they got on their FCard, along with other perks.
“How many civilians?” Nancy asked.
“I show your TDF as having a capacity of 1,250,” Linda said. She paused and slowly said, “I need all 1,250 spots for the civilians.”
“Where do I transfer the detainees?” Nancy asked. What a colossal headache this would be. All the paperwork and she was shorthanded with more and more of the FCorps staff being “gone for the holidays.”
After a long pause, Linda said, “You don’t.”
“I don’t transfer them?” Nancy asked. Well, if she wasn’t going to transfer them, what would she do with the detainees to make room for the civilians?
“No, Nancy, you don’t transfer them,” Linda said. “You … you’re smart, you figure it out.”
Nancy was trying to process what Linda was saying.
Oh. That. Wow. Well, at least that will simplify the paperwork, Nancy thought, trying not to think any deeper than that.
“Will the DOE regs be waived for onsite disposal?” Nancy asked. “DOE” was the Department of Ecology, the state version of the EPA.
“Yes,” Linda said. She was relieved that she didn’t have to spell out for Nancy what needed to be done. This was hard enough to do without being explicit about it.
“When do you need this done?” Nancy asked.
“ASAP,” Linda said. “You will start getting civilians in forty-eight hours. Make sure your facilities are clean for the civilians. There might have been some illnesses among your detainees. We don’t want our civilians to get sick.”
“Consider it done, Linda,” Nancy said.
“Happy holidays,” Linda said.
“You, too,” Nancy replied.
Click.
Nancy sat back in her chair and thought about this. She would separate the sick ones from the able-bodied ones. She would split the able-bodied ones into a digging detail and a cleaning detail.
The cleaning detail would clean everything with hot water and bleach. The digging detail would make the ground ready for the sick ones. They could use the football field.
The sick ones would go outside to the football field and … make room for the coming civilians, those loyal people who respected their government. They were the ones who deserved to be taken care of. Not teabaggers who were all about violence and hate. Then the cleaners would go to the football field and join the sick ones. Then the digging detail would join them.
This was the most humane thing to do, Nancy told herself. Civilians needed food and shelter. It was inhumane to deny civilians food and shelter. The current occupants needed to go. To the football field. At least the football field would now be put to good use. She always hated football. It seemed so violent.
Every few minutes, she would painfully realize that what she was about to do was extremely violent; she couldn’t reconcile her hatred of violence with … what would happen in the football field. Then she’d snap back to reality and realize that she had a job to do. Her facility needed to be emptied to accommodate fleeing civilians. Good people who weren’t teabaggers.
Nancy summoned her chief FCorps guard and told him the plan. He walked out of the room without saying a word. She never saw him again.
After about ten minutes, she called in the number two guard, Timothy. She forgot his last name, but he was the effeminate one who really hated teabaggers.
Timothy listened to the plan. He only had one comment.
“We don’t have enough ammunition to carry it out,” he said. “We have, what? About 2,100 detainees?”
Nancy nodded.
“We’ve had some thefts of our ammunition,” Timothy said with a straight face. Of course, the FCorps had sold most of it to a gang. Nancy hadn’t seen a cut of that. Oh well. It was too late to care now.
“So what do we do?” Nancy asked.
“We have some .22s,” he said.
“What’s that?” Nancy asked.
Timothy explained what a .22 was.
“They’re quieter and do the job. They use them on cattle they’re butchering.”
“Oh, okay,” Nancy said. “Whatever works is fine with me. Get things ready. And get it done.”
Timothy nodded and walked out of her office.
Time for a glass of wine, Nancy thought. It’s been a hard day. She picked one from her wine collection that the facility’s food contractor had provided her. The wine was a little “thank you” for all the food that seemed to be diverted from the detainees to the contractor. She picked out a bottle that she’d been meaning to open for a special occasion. Upgrading her TDF to a civilian humanitarian center qualified as a special occasion.
An hour—and a bottle of wine—later, Timothy came back and said, “We have a problem.”
“What’s that?” Nancy asked, drunk and not caring too much.
“Most of my staff left when they heard the plan,” he said. He was embarrassed his staff was disobeying him.
“Go get them,” Nancy said. “They can join the detainees in the football field.” It was that easy to order people’s deaths. That easy.
“I have an idea,” Timothy said. “Most of the detainees are teabaggers, but some are regular criminals. Some are pretty bad people. We could have the criminals do the work on the football field. We’d let them go in exchange.”
Nancy thought about letting hardened criminals go. They’d go into the areas held by the Legitimate Authorities, and that would be a problem. But it had to be done. They had to make room for the incoming refugees. “Excellent problem solving,” Nancy said. “Go with it.”
He did. About six hours later, the football field was dug up with the help of a bulldozer. Soft pops and some screaming were heard for over an hour, but it was faint. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother Nancy, despite her hatred for violence. Perhaps it was because she didn’t have to do the dirty work herself, or even witness it. Or maybe it was because she was busy making plans for the new guests. The decent people who deserved food and shelter. She wanted to impress Linda with how well she was making the transition to civilian guests.
There was a ruckus in the middle of the night, but Nancy slept through it. One of the cleaning details found out what was going on and rioted. The remaining guards and the criminal detainees handled it. Luckily, the rioting took place outside. The remaining guards hosed the blood from the rioting off the cement and the rain washed away the remaining blood.
Nancy was asleep on the couch in her office. It was dawn. Someone came in to her office.
“All done,” Timothy said. “Exactly 2,114. Topsoil going over them now.”
“Great,” Nancy said, still in a sleepy haze. She couldn’t wait to tell Linda the good news in the morning. Then Nancy fell back asleep. She had worked really hard that day.
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