The Obama Youth kids didn’t react as a group to the first volley; several cried out and clutched their scalps. They did react at the second, as rocks found soft heads and they began to scatter as they realized they were under a rocky attack. The front rank, several of its members cradling sore skulls, dropped the “JASPER YOUTH IN PROGRESSIVE SOLIDARITY WITH PSF” banner on the street, where the scattering students trampled it as they fled. Others shrieked and howled, scrambling to get away.
More rocks flew. Now Carl and his friends were shouting and yelling themselves, half profanities and half “RUN! RUN!” to stir the pot even more. Some of the kids around them saw what was happening and joined in. Placards flew into the air. The regular students, smiling and laughing, took advantage of the chaos to scatter, some running toward the courthouse, others toward the sidewalks. The middle school kids broke ranks too; only the little elementary kids stayed put, watching the march break apart with wide, frightened eyes.
The band kept playing, not seeing they were serenading pandemonium.
Carl had a few more rocks and with the Obama Youth dispersed, he searched for targets. Ms. Marfull was up ahead, shouting incoherently into her bullhorn. He took careful aim and let fly. The rock sailed straight toward her and hit inside the speaker cone. The principal dropped the bullhorn like it gave her an electric shock. Feedback roared, and so did Carl – in laughter.
Ms. Marfull saw him.
The children were running wild through the square, teachers trying desperately to corral them, the spectators starting to laugh and point.
Turnbull smiled. The authorities looked ridiculous, and Dale’s people were recording it all on video. They would upload it, and before the internet controllers could snuff it out it would hopefully go viral and the PR would be a laughingstock.
Ms. Marfull turned and saw a chunky and perplexed PSF officer watching the remnants of the disintegrated protest running rampant through the square.
“Officer, officer!”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“Huh?” he said, not sure what she expected him to do about her uncontrollable charges.
“That boy! That boy there! He did this! Him!”
Carl saw the principal and the officer talking, and her pointing him out, and he stopped smiling. Students running in all directions darted between them, but now Marfull was pulling the officer along behind her as they came at him, trotting. Then Carl smiled again – he realized that PSF guy could never catch him. He laughed, and Marfull halted, furious, humiliated.
Carl turned to run.
“Stop him!” Marfull shouted.
The PSF officer was almost out of breath already. Carl turned and began to sprint, and the officer raised his AK and put a burst of three bullets through Carl’s back at lung level.
The crowd seemed to pause for a moment at the sound of the gunshots, and then true chaos erupted. Joy and laughter became fear and terror as everyone, student, teacher, and spectator, sought to escape.
Carl staggered for a few seconds, and then fell face first into the street. Marfull and the PSF officer stood there, stunned, and then the officer ran away. Marfull just stared until Turnbull pushed her out of the way and Dale followed.
They knelt at Carl’s body and Turnbull checked his pulse. Dead.
“Turn him over,” Turnbull said.
“What?” Dale said, not quite believing what had happened.
“Turn him over!”
Dale did.
“And pull down the mask.”
“Why?”
“Do it!” Turnbull yelled, and Dale did it.
Blood was trickling out of the corner of Carl’s mouth.
Turnbull stood and pulled out his phone. He took five photos.
“What are you doing?” Dale said.
“I’m making sure Carl didn’t die for nothing,” Turnbull said. And then they disappeared along with everyone else.
11.
Just after sundown, Larry Langer and two others knocked on the front door of Donny Moss’s modest two-story house on the west side of town.
Moss opened the door, puzzled. He thought he recognized Langer from the television. Wasn’t he some kind of criminal?
“Yes?” Moss said, cautiously.
“Get your shoes, Mr. Moss,” Langer said. “You need to come with us back into town to open up your print shop.”
“What? It’s almost nine…”
“I’m not asking you, and I don’t really care if you have your shoes on or not. I was just being polite. But you are coming with us.”
A few minutes later they were in a Buick navigating the side streets toward the center of town. Moss was in back with Langer; the two up front kept watch for PSF cruisers, but there weren’t any roaming the streets tonight. The security forces were hunkered down in the station house on the other side of town, expecting retribution after what happened at the demonstration earlier that day.
They didn’t use the headlights, and Langer had opened the trunk and pulled the wires from the brake lights, so they drove through the dark using the ambient light. Near the print shop, they parked and Langer took his passenger up to the front door. After some fumbling with the keys, Moss got the door opened and they went inside.
“I don’t understand what you want,” he said, frightened. Moss had always done his best to avoid trouble. To his horror, it appeared now that trouble had sought him out.
Langer took a thumb drive out of his pocket and held it up. Moss stared, confused.
“I need some posters, Mr. Moss. About a hundred, if you please.”
“I can’t print any posters,” Moss said, miserable. “You don’t have a permit.”
“You guessed right there. I most certainly do not have a permit to print the posters of what one of our more artistically-inclined compadres did up on this computer stick. But you’re going to print ‘em up anyway.”
“I can’t,” Moss whimpered. “They’ll arrest me. The printers, they have counters and the government checks to make sure I haven’t printed anything more than allowed.”
“Well, Mr. Moss,” said Langer. “Then when they come and check your machines and see you’ve printed a hole shitload of extra posters, then you can honestly tell them that some of the local boys came in here and told you that if you didn’t do it, they were going to splatter your brains all over your shop.”
Moss swallowed, and took the thumb drive.
“I expect you saw the town this morning,” Kunstler said coldly to the wide-eyed Lieutenant Kessler. He was standing in the doorway of her office in the station. She put down her Starbucks latte.
“Yes, I saw.” What the inspector was describing was hard to miss, and there was no doubt what he was referring to.
But Kunstler still wanted to make his point and he produced a tattered poster, the edges ragged where it had been ripped off a wall. The photo was in full color and showed the dead Carl Hyatt lying on the street. The blood flowing down from the corner of his mouth and collecting on the asphalt was bright red.
In large white letters – Arial Bold – it read “THE PSF MURDERS OUR KIDS.”
Kunstler gave Kessler a moment to take it in, then crushed it into a ball in his hands.
“Dozens of them, everywhere. Get your officers on the street, Lieutenant. Right now. All of them. We need to demonstrate that we control this town, not these terrorists.”
Kessler’s eager nodding was interrupted by a ruckus across the squad room. Two plainclothes PBI detectives were frog-marching Donny Moss into the station.
“The printer,” Kunstler said.
The PBI agents brought Moss before their boss. Kunslter looked the miserable little man up and down.
“I didn’t do anything! They made me! They said they’d kill me!” Moss whimpered.
“Interrogation,” Kunstler said, and Moss’s eyes went wide as they dragged him away. Kunstler turned back to the lieutenant. “Get on it. In the meantime, I have an interrogation to finish myself.”
The PSF officers went out on the street fully armed and ready, hiking up and down the main streets in a show of force. The people pointedly ignored them; for the most part the citizenry pretended the armed invaders weren’t even there.
A few lost it and their curses got them tackled, hooked up, and roughly dragged back to the station. Even as the PSF officers hooked up a protestor, a crowd would gather – not too close, not too aggressive, and respecting the AKs pointed at them, but still there, watching.
The PBI detectives, drawing on their pattern analysis software and input from electronic surveillance, headed out on raids of likely insurgents. A teacher, a plumber, a fireman and more – all were dragged into the station and hauled into interrogation rooms where the PBI read them their rights with fists and batons.
By sundown there had not been too many incidents, and they had made a dozen arrests, but there had been no shootings and no real attacks on the security forces. Kessler breathed a sigh of relief.
“This town is ours,” Kessler said proudly to her PBI counterpart.
“We’ve only just started,” Kunstler replied, wiping the blood off his hands. “Tomorrow we continue. We show them we are in control.”
“What did he tell you?” the lieutenant asked.
“Nothing interesting yet,” said Kunstler. “But we have all night.”
The inspector walked back to Interrogation Room #2 and opened the door. A beefy PSF officer, stripped down to his t-shirt, was standing over a slumped and bloodied man handcuffed to the suspect’s chair.
“Wake him up,” Kunstler said, and the big officer smashed Ted Cannon hard in the jaw. If the chair had not been bolted to the floor, he would have gone flying into the wall.
“So Deputy,” Kunstler said, leaning in at Cannon’s swollen face. “As we’ve discussed for lo these many hours, you’re the only real candidate for being the spy who told the terrorists about the People’s Volunteers. So why not just do your duty and admit it and we can move on to who you told?”
“I told you,” Cannon said, his fat lips and shredded mouth muffling his voice. “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”
“Well, then who did?
“How the hell should I know? Maybe one of these assholes looking to score a bribe,” he said, gesturing to the big thug beside him. The officer did not bother to wait for the inspector’s signal and drove his fist hard into Cannon’s gut. The deputy coughed and retched.
“You know, the problem with you and your terrorist friends is privilege,” Kunstler said. “You were privileged before the Split and you think you still are. But you aren’t, not anymore. Not in the People’s Republic.”
“Like I said, I don’t know who dimed out your punks,” Cannon said. The thug smacked his head hard.
“Those were patriots, Deputy, murdered by your friends for daring to speak truth to power.”
“What does that crap even mean?” That drew another hard blow.
“Look, Deputy Cannon, I’m sure Davis here will be happy to pummel you all day and all night if need be, and I’ll be happy to watch. But I don’t think we’re getting anywhere this way, as delightful as our discussion has been so far. So,” Kunstler said, picking up a folder off the table and opening it. “Maybe tomorrow we start off again, only this time we bring in your sister and her husband the middle-aged insurance agent and their kids and Davis and I talk to them while you watch? How about that idea? Sound fun?”
Cannon lifted his head and stared, breathing shallowly, his face inscrutable under the swelling and blood.
“Well, you take tonight and think it over and if tomorrow morning you aren’t more cooperative then we’ll invite your family to participate. Sound good?”
Cannon said nothing. Kunstler shook his head.
“You’re right-wing scum,” Kunstler said.
“I’m a real cop,” said Cannon. “Not a thug.”
“A cop. Pathetic. And you’re probably proud of it.” Kunstler looked over at David. “Throw this hate criminal in a cell.”
“I don’t know where Cannon is,” Dale said. “He was supposed to be here already.”
Turnbull considered for a moment. “Then let’s hurry this up. Do we all have our targets?”
There were a half-dozen other insurgents, men and women, in the living room of the zombie home – a different one than where Langer and Turnbull had stayed. All of them nodded.
“You sure you want to do this yourself, Larry?” Turnbull asked Langer.
“Oh, this one is most definitely mine,” Langer said.
“It’s a woman,” Turnbull said.
“Well, I try not to be too much of a male chauvinist.”
“Okay, we know ours. Everyone else? Are you absolutely clear on what you’ll do?” The others nodded. Turnbull stood up.
“Then let’s do it. 0715 hours tomorrow. Let’s synch our watches.”
Becky the waitress woke up at 6:52 a.m., grabbed her clothes off the chair then went straight into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Though the name had changed, the Best Western logo was still on all the old towels.
“Becky?” a man shouted from back in the room.
“I’m taking a shower!” she answered. Something muffled came back.
Becky slipped into the shower and scrubbed herself hard, then turned it off and stepped out and dried herself with the threadbare towels. She pulled on her clothes and combed her hair.
7:07 a.m.
She sat down on the toilet lid and waited.
In the former Best Western’s tiny gym room, two PBI detectives got onto the exercise bikes and began pedaling. The television set was on the People’s Republic’s number one network, MSNBC. Morning anchor and national institution Rachael Maddow was touting the upcoming segment where she would read her dream journal.
Three PBI detectives walked out of the ex-Best Western and into the front parking lot. No one around, they noted. They walked quickly to their 2022 government issue Ford Fusion. The PSF officer guarding the parking lot nodded to them. The driver backed out, and pull onto North Newton Street.
Lieutenant Kessler and three PSF officers in battle gear with AKs walked down Main Street toward the Starbucks. There were a few passers-by, but no more or less than usual. She lifted her head up a little higher as the locals averted their eyes.
“This is my town,” she thought.
Becky opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the room. The man in the bed – the same PBI detective who had come and taken the Mayor the other day – lifted his head and smiled.
This shitty assignment got a little less shitty last night, he thought to himself. Guess these hick gals were starved for some city lovin’.
“Big day at work today?” Becky asked as she walked past his suit and the detective’s holstered Beretta on the bureau.
“Lots of terrorists to catch,” he replied, sitting up.
Becky walked to her purse and glanced at her watch. 7:14.
In the exercise room, Rachael Maddow was reading aloud and intently about her dream of a world where there were no red states anymore, where their oppression had been wiped from the face of the earth. The detective on the left shook his head.
“You think she really dreamed that?”
“Probably. Don’t you dream about dead racists?”
“I usually dream about ass –”
His insight was interrupted as the gym room door opened.
The Fusion was headed south on Newton, which was Route 231 inside the town. They passed St. Joseph’s church on the right – it was boarded up and the sign out front on the dying lawn said “PEOPLE’S SHELTER COMING SOON.”
A hundred meters or so on, they came to 9th Street and stopped at the red. The driver glanced in his rear view mirror. A tan Ford van was idling behind them.
The clock radio read “07:14.”
The van pulled to their left, straddling the line of the oncoming lane and started moving forward.
“What’s that guy doing?” the
driver asked.
Becky picked up her large purse and stood over the bed.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said.
“Good, because it would be sexist for you to expect something from me. I’m glad even here in bumfuck Egypt you’re escaping primitive and sexist gender roles.”
She glanced at her digital watch, as 7:14:50 turned to 7:14:52.
“So,” he said, leering. “What is it? Because I know I deserve something good after how hard I fucked you last night.”
Becky reached into her purse and pulled out a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 Chief’s Special. The man’s creepy face turned frightened.
“I fucked you harder,” she said, and shot him in the face.
The cleaning woman – her job title was actually “Room Reconstitution Specialist” – opened the back door and Davey Wohl and his companion walked into the hotel laundry from the rear parking lot. She handed Wohl a key card and walked away back to her work.
Wohl and his partner knew where they were going. They went through the opposite door and into the first floor hallway, walking fast. The gym room was coming up. They drew their pistols from under their coats. Wohl had a Sig Sauer .40 caliber and his partner one of the Berettas liberated from the PVs.
Wohl paused outside the door for twenty long seconds until his watch read “7:15,” then swiped the keycard and pushed open the door. There were two men in their thirties on exercise bikes pedaling away while Rachael Maddow spoke into the camera.
Both bikers turned and looked at them, puzzled. Wohl and his companions stepped in and they raised their weapons. There was a thud from somewhere upstairs that Wohl heard over Maddow’s droning monologue. They aimed.
“Hey wait –” one rider began.
The insurgents fired again and again, then each finished off one of the PBI men with a headshot. Ears ringing fiercely, they walked out the door, leaving the two detectives dead on the floor. Back in the gym room, to her silent audience, Maddow concluded, “And that’s my dream, a dream of final victory over the forces of hate.”
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