He called out the next hymn, “Amazing Grace,” one of his favorites. Some of the other churches had done a lot of Christian lite rock in their services. They would get a couple guys with a six-string and a bass and a drummer and sing some up-tempo songs no one had heard before and a lot of people liked that. Not Bellman. He was about the basics. “Amazing Grace” was the gold standard that Christian music was going to be measured against, and that was what they would sing in his church.
They finished the hymn and he gestured for the congregation to sit. The congregation did, and people put their hymnals back into the racks and settled in for the sermon. Bellman never wrote his sermons out. He kind of got an idea about what he wanted to say and then simply said it. He figured it was best if your sermon came from the heart. Anyway, his old audience of grizzled infantrymen wasn’t going to take some overly prepared performance seriously. You had to look those guys in the eyes and really talk to them, and that’s how he tried to do it in his preaching.
Bellman stepped to the pulpit and opened his mouth but then paused and said nothing. There was the screech of tires and the roar of engines outside. A lot of them. Something was happening.
The congregation heard it too, and they looked around confused. One man at the back stood up and went to the closed door and pushed it open a crack. It flew wide open and the People’s Volunteers were there, a dozen of them, smiling slyly, strutting as they walked inside, AKs up.
The foot soldiers pointed their rifles at the congregation, which sat staring and silent, as their leader swaggered down the center aisle. He had gotten his mojo back since his encounter with Turnbull. Bellman’s face registered nothing but contempt.
“If you’re not here to hear my sermon, you need to leave,” said the pastor.
The leader laughed. He was back in the role he loved, the only guy in the room with a gun, the one in charge.
“Fuck you, preacher. You make me leave.”
“You use that language in the Lord’s house again and I will.”
“Oh, your old ass is going to do something about it?”
“If you’re asking if I will walk down there and throw your ass out of my church, the answer is ‘Yes’.”
“Well, come on, old man.” The others laughed. One of the PVs stepped to an old woman in the aisle and grabbed her purse. She shrieked, and a man in the row behind her stood to defend her. Another People’s Volunteer hit him across the gut with the butt of his rifle. The other PVs burst into laughter as the man crumpled.
“Get the hell out of here!” Bellman roared.
“Where’s your friend?” asked the leader. “We’re here for him. And to collect some donations.”
“Go to hell,” said Bellmen.
“For a preacher, you got a mouth on you,” said the leader. He turned to his men. “Find him.”
The PVs commenced looking down the rows, scrutinizing the parishioners and grabbing purses. Three of them broke off to head to the back and they went through the door into the administrative areas, weapons up.
Do-Rag was greatly enjoying the party. “Get your wallets out, bitches! I’m taking a collection!”
The leader turned back to Bellman, who was gripping the sides of his pulpit so hard it seemed he might break them off. “You think you can just have your little church like you used to? You think you can just do whatever you want? You think you can disrespect us? No, you can’t do shit. You think this is your town, but it’s our town.”
A woman with her cell phone caught his eye – she was dialing 911, and the leader just laughed. “Go ahead and call the PSF. Call them! Hell, walk outside and talk to them because they’re here with us. Nobody is coming to rescue you. You belong to us. You’re ours now. You’re going to do what I say you’re going to when I say you’re going to do it, and you’re going to give us what we want, and you’re going to shut the fuck up about it.”
Do-Rag was a couple feet behind his boss, smiling broadly, when he saw Will Collins move his hand behind his back. Where Do-Rag came from, that’s where you kept your gun, and he reacted instinctively. Do-Rag swiveled and leveled the AK, firing a burst that caught Will Collins in the chest and sliced into his wife Sarah, blowing out her eye.
The other PVs reacted instinctively, opening up, panic spraying rounds into the seated crowd. The leader was stunned for a moment, and then he began yelling.
“Stop shooting, stop shooting!”
Bellman was on him grabbing his arm, going for his rifle. The leader kicked Bellman in the gut, pushing him back, and without thinking he raised his rifle and fired. Five bullets ripped through the minister’s abdomen, and Bellman sprawled back into the aisle.
“Stop shooting, stop shooting!” the leader yelled. The PSF officers who had been outside securing the area were at the door now, weapons in hand, looking in, horrified.
The shooting stopped.
Smoke wafted across the sanctuary. It was silent for a moment, and then there arose a chorus of moans and screams and yells. The three PVs who had gone off to investigate the administrative rooms burst back in, looking panicked at the chaos.
“Let’s go!” shouted the leader. “Let’s go!”
He stepped forward and found his Nike submerged in an expanding pool of blood from an elderly woman his men had shot in the face.
The People’s Volunteers ran out the door and to their cars, wasting no time clearing out of the area.
Turnbull and Langer burst out of the wood line in a full run heading across the grass towards the church. The stained glass window facing them had been largely shot out – it did not take a genius to know what had happened well before they arrived at the sanctuary door.
Bodies, some alive, some clearly not, were strewn across the floor and the pews. Some people were focused on first aid; others shook and cried, useless. Others carried the wounded out to their own vehicles.
Dale Chalmers was there, dazed. Turnbull came over to him and he looked up, his jaw still bandaged, as he leaned over the corpse of the pastor. None of his family had been hit, but the brains of the school teacher sitting in front of him were splattered across his white shirt. Turnbull knelt beside him as Langer went to help other casualties. He checked for a pulse on Bellman, but knew there would not be one.
“Who?” Turnbull said, knowing the answer.
Chalmers blinked dazed.
“Who?”
“The Volunteers again. They’re gone now. And the PSF were here too. They didn’t do anything to stop it. They just started shooting for no reason.”
“Call 911. Do it now.”
“We did, a bunch of times. They, they won’t come. Not the PSF, not the paramedics. The dispatchers just hang up on us.”
Langer was putting pressure on a teenager with a sucking chest wound; his eyes were black with rage. But Turnbull allowed himself to feel nothing. He was in operational mode.
“Who has medical training, military combat lifesaver training, nurse school, anything?” he shouted.
A hand went up, a middle aged man who was helping a boy shot through the right arm. “I was an EMT.”
Turnbull pointed to the open area behind the pews. “That’s the casualty collection point. You take it over. You’re the doc until a real one shows up or we get them all out of here. The rest of you, if you have an SUV or a station wagon, back it up here. You’re our ambulances. Everyone else, if you have a wounded family member, you stay with them. Everyone else, our EMT is going to tell you what to do. If you have a sweater or something you can use to apply pressure to a wound, take it off and put it where the EMT says.”
People began gently moving the wounded to the casualty collection point as others ran to get their vehicles. Turnbull began his own triage, walking from casualty to casualty, coldly assessing which was likely to live and which was likely to die – or was already dead. He counted 12 dead, including Pastor Bellman. He organized the evacuations, selecting the most seriously wounded who would have the best shot at the hospital to go fir
st.
Ten minutes after the first SUV left with a serious abdominal wound, Dale’s cell rang.
“What do you mean the ER won’t take the wounded?” Dale shouted into his iPhone. Turnbull turned to the EMT.
“You keep evacuating these wounded. I’m going to the hospital,” Turnbull said to the ex-EMT. He motioned to Langer and Dale; they headed out to the parking lot at a sprint toward the insurance salesman’s Dodge.
What had been Memorial Hospital and was now Chuck Schumer People’s Health Center, was a modern-looking building on West 9th Street. A crowd of SUVs was bunched up by the emergency room entrance. Dale parked and Turnbull and Langer were out the door.
The wounded were still in the backs of their vehicles.
The pair rushed up to the glass doors, which were shut tight. Several parishioners were pounding on them, but a severe-looking nurse was standing inside, just shaking her head.
“Everyone, get back,” Turnbull said. The crowd retreated a few feet and Turnbull rotated to face the nurse through the glass. He motioned her forward with his index finger.
She stepped up tentatively, shaking her head and shouting “We’re closed.”
Turnbull smiled, reached behind him, drew his .45 pistol and shouted “You’re now open.”
She stood, terrified.
“I’m counting to three, and then I’m shooting out this door. One!”
She shook, but did not move.
“Two!”
Nothing.
“Screw it,” Turnbull said. He fired six shots down the pane of glass, then kicked it hard. It shattered and fell inward. The nurse screamed and cowered. Langer slipped in and hit the OPEN button and the doors slid apart.
“Get stretchers and get them inside. Dale, put someone on security. If the blues show up I want to know.” Turnbull stepped up to the nurse.
“Where’s your boss?” She pointed. “No, take me.” Turnbull and Langer followed, Turnbull holding his guide by the rear of her uniform collar.
She led him to a tall, thin man in a white coat. His badge said “People’s Doctor Dr. Gorman.” He was probably doing an involuntary hardship assignment down here in Jasper – after all health care providers had been nationalized post-Split, the government simply ordered them to work wherever it needed them at its pleasure.
“Hi,” Turnbull said. “We have multiple gunshot wounds. You better call everyone in, and you better do it right now.”
“We are not authorized for this level of treatment. We’re officially closed. You need to take them and go to Indianapolis.”
“Oh,” said Turnbull, releasing the nurse. “Larry?”
Langer drew his .357, grabbed the doctor and pressed him against the wall. Then he stuck the massive pistol under the doctor’s chin.
“You open now, doc?”
“Okay, okay.”
“And unless you want a firefight in your ER, you should probably not follow through on that idea you had about calling the PSF,” said Turnbull. Behind him, people were starting to wheel in the wounded. “Larry, can you hand me the doctor’s wallet.”
Without removing the pistol, Langer reached into the terrified man’s pocket and withdrew a black leather billfold then passed it to Turnbull.
“That’s my ID – I need it!”
“You sure do,” said Turnbull, selecting his driver’s license. “Okay, Dr. Ronald Vernon Gorman of 1324 Heathcliff Street in Indianapolis, let me tell you how it’s going to be. Now we know where you live. So, if you don’t do a really good job on these wounded people, one of us will come visit you, and you are not going to like how that turns out. If you’re lucky it’ll be me because all I’ll do is shoot you in the head. You do not want it to be him.”
“No sir, you do not,” reiterated Langer, shaking his head.
“Now go do your job,” Turnbull said. Langer released the doctor, who fled down the hall toward his patients.
They stood outside the hospital, Larry taking a drag off of a smoke he had bummed from an orderly – in fact, the terrified orderly had generously given over his whole pack. Dale was still shaken. Turnbull causally slid a fresh mag into his pistol and put it back in its holster. He slipped the mag with three rounds into his pocket.
“Well, we got us a war now,” Larry said.
“Yeah,” Turnbull replied. “We need to get ready. Dale, you’re a pretty useful guy.”
“I want to fight,” Dale said, his words still muffled.
“I don’t think fighting is your strong suit. I think you can do more for me on the intel side than on the shooting side. I can get plenty of trigger pullers. You know almost everyone around here. I need you to start gathering information on the enemy. The PSF especially, since they stay here. Where they are, what they are doing, their chain of command.”
“I can do that,” Dale said. “So what’s your plan?”
“Plan?” said Turnbull. “My plan is to kill them all.”
8.
Larry Langer walked out of the woods and into town at 10:38 Monday morning, careful to avoid the enhanced patrols that went up to try and keep a lid on the town in the wake of the First Baptist massacre. There was an obvious increase in the number of PSF on the street, but Langer kept to the residential streets and approached downtown from the north. A fair distance away, the checkpoint in the middle of town was still operating, but there just weren’t enough officers to completely cover even a small burg like Jasper – much less the other villages and townships within their zone.
Everyone knew what happened the previous morning, even though the licensed news outlets made no mention of it. Moreover, Jasper was small enough that everyone knew at least one or more of the dead or wounded. Only a few people were outside on the sidewalks – those who worked were working and most others simply felt it was better to stay indoors that day. But some of the ones who still had permits for animal companions were walking their dogs, while others felt simply being outside was their own act of moral resistance.
They all recognized Larry Langer. He wore a loose shirt over his familiar tee, and wore a tattered backpack, but it was Larry all right. Some people went to school with him, others knew him as a town fixture – usually the subject of a parent’s warning to behave lest “you end up like one of those Langers!”
They knew he was wanted by the PR, so they knew his presence out in the open meant something was up. Most simply looked away. Some nodded at him, with approval, while others stared. If they looked too long, he stared back. They got the message.
No one reached for his phone to call the PSF.
The city’s administrative annex had been taken over by various People’s Republic agencies, which had largely displaced most of the old city government. The mayor still had his office, but the city council wasn’t necessary, they had been told. Now that freedom and social justice had descended upon America, there was no need for local control. The bureaucracy would take good care of them.
Langer hung back across the street and checked his watch. It was 10:43. The annex itself, was a storefront located in a plain, one-story brick building with the latest version of the PR flag flying outside. Next door was a closed Subway sandwich restaurant and a shuttered vacuum cleaner repair shop.
The agencies it housed were listed on a sign out front – the Fairness Commission, the Inclusiveness Bureau, and the Truth Agency. There was no security, no PSF in sight in front or anywhere along the street in either direction.
Langer checked his watch. 10:44:13 a.m. It was all good. It was going to go down in about 45 seconds. He walked gingerly across the street, leaned back against the brick and lit a cigarette. It was a Marlboro, a real one, from a pack his cousin the trucker had brought back from Kentucky and that Langer had been saving. Then he listened.
The clock hit 10:45 a.m. and from the southeast he heard a “pop.” Then, cig clenched between his teeth, he drew the .357, pushed open the glass doors and walked inside.
There were several agencies sharing the open space
. The Truth Agency was to his immediate right. A sad woman with mousy hair was marking up the Dubois County Herald with a red pen for her meeting with the editors later that day. She had been particularly irritated by the paper’s total invisibling of trans citizens’ experiences in the front page corn harvest story.
A young male in a vintage dress coat and sporting a goatee was in the Fairness Commission section, staring at some approved pornography. He would never admit it, but he liked smuggled-in, unapproved red state porn DVDs much better – too bad you couldn’t get that stuff on the blue internet. The approved porn always took ten minutes to get started while the participants obtained express consent and discussed how what they chose to do sexually should not be construed as validating traditional patriarchal sexual power structures. And you could not fast forward through any of that to get to the good stuff.
Darcy Puig, the county Inclusiveness Inspector, was seated nearby. Her name plate gave her name, her job, and alerted all that her pronouns were “her” and “she.” A poster on the wall behind her featured a cartoon crew of multi-cultural children dancing on some prostrate Scandinavian-looking guy with a moustache and, for some reason, a top hat. It declared that “All Peoples Reject White Cis-Het Male Privilege.”
Puig looked up at the strange man, wondering what he was doing there, since no one ever came inside willingly. Most of the other workers simply ignored him; they were not being paid on the basis of customer satisfaction, and they acted accordingly.
Langer aimed his big revolver and shot out the monitor on Puig’s desk, which exploded in a shower of sparks.
That got their attention.
The dozen bureaucrats in the office froze at their desks, staring.
“Don’t do nothin’,” Langer instructed them. The workers were mostly young, having been hired at their colleges to come and run Jasper since the townspeople were obviously incompetent to do so themselves. Over 40% of blue college grads found jobs in the PR bureaucracy.
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