Free State Of Dodge

by Javan Bonds

  The man closest to the front seat, who had “Clay” embroidered on his shirt, reached for the lid on one of the four barrels that were in the van. Martin yelled, “Don’t touch that, dumbass. It could be full of shit. Those were in the van when I picked it this morning.”

  Clay quickly moved his hand from the lid of the suspected shit-filled barrel and concentrated on the task at hand.

  Martin said he had killed men in Afghanistan. Frank had heard the other men talking about how they had “done their duty for the race,” but he was pretty sure at least a couple of them had never fired a shot, and Frank was positive he had never killed anyone. His father had pull in the militia and had sent his untrained son to gain experience on this mission—or to be martyred; Frank would never be sure of his father’s reasons.

  They were less than a mile from the gates and could clearly see a guardhouse that was undoubtedly occupied. Frank instinctively reached to his chest to make sure his pistol was still there.

  “Just be cool. I’ll do all the talking, and don’t look directly at the guard,” said Martin through a forced smile, trying to appear as cordial as any plumber contracted to fix government septic lines.

  Martin was already rolling his window down as he pulled up beside the guardhouse. He set his elbow over the window seal and angled his head to comfortably see through the Plexiglas of the guardhouse. He held his fake smile and spoke to the guard with forced cheer. “I guess you know why we’re here.”

  If he did we’d already be dead, Frank thought as Martin waited for the guard to respond, holding the ridiculously stupid smile on his face.

  “You come to fix the commodes?” asked the guard, forcing Martin to hold back a sigh, nod his head a bit too cheerfully, and rap his knuckles on the plumber sign painted on the van door.

  Frank rolled his eyes as the light bulb in the guard’s brain seemed to flicker on.

  “Oh, OK. Well, just keep going straight a few hundred yards, and take the first left. You’ll end up in front of the main entrance; you’ll know it when you see it.”

  Martin lifted his arm into the vehicle and placed both hands on the wheel while still looking at the guard with a trained grin. “OK, buddy! We’ll get in there, and we’ll see you on the way out.”

  We’ll be the last thing he sees, Frank mused from the passenger seat. Martin began rolling the window up as the automatic gates of the entrance in front of them slid open. When Martin’s window was fully closed, Frank excitedly cheered. “That was awesome! I think he bought it.”

  “Of course he did,” Martin said, proud of his acting ability. “And the rest of them will buy it. Just don’t get too excited and fuck it up.”

  Frank had never been very good at cussing. He always sounded like a child who had recently learned his first cuss word, so he avoided using profanity through the necessity of not sounding idiotic. But Martin cursed so casually, he seemed to be a professional curser. He had been in the army, so that was probably where he had learned it, Frank decided as he stretched his neck and popped his fingers.

  As the van came to a stop against the curb close to the entrance, Martin turned to face the men behind him and asked, “Are you guys ready?”

  He was greeted with a chorus of cheers from the four, and Frank was hoping for some type of motivational speech about how they were doing this for white children or that they were fighting against the oppression of their race. But he had learned from spending months around him that Martin wasn’t much of a talker; he just made things happen.

  Martin killed the engine, which signaled the back doors to be opened and the men to hop out and gently lower their equipment to the ground. The two large suction machines were on wheels, and while the explosives packed into the completely gutted machines were not armed, the fake plumbers still took considerable caution when moving them.

  The two men in the front stepped out onto the asphalt of the parking lot and slammed the doors as they swung around to walk toward their compatriots at the back of the van. The six men moved as one in complete silence toward the door, the two men in the rear dragging their “plumbing” devices on wheels behind them. Frank noticed his hands were sweating and was pretty sure he was pale. He looked around at the others to see that Martin was stone-cold sober, as always, and there were mixed emotions among the other four—looks of dread and fear of death along with bravery and jubilance were on each man’s face.

  As they all assisted in hefting the heavy machine up the curb and onto the sidewalk, Martin reminded them, “Remember: when these are set, we will have enough time to recite the Fourteen Words a dozen times, and we will be back to the van. We’ve been over this hundreds of times—simple.”

  A few yards from the main double doors, Martin and Frank moved to hold the doors open for the encumbered men, who nodded to each as they passed. When all six men had entered the doors, Martin immediately walked to the counter and explained to the receptionist the reason for their being there and that engine trouble had them running a few minutes late. As expected, the receptionist believed every word Martin said, which made Frank feel almost guilty—for betraying such trusting people.

  “Your manager said something about the employee bathrooms. How do we get there?”

  We already know, Frank mentally answered even as the receptionist answered, “Just go through the turbine room, through the door on the back wall, and then to your immediate right. Got all that?” she asked, and Martin immediately nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll see you guys on your way out. Good luck!”

  The men walked through each door in no particular formation, with Martin as the obvious lead. Most of the workers were getting ready or had already gone home, and they rarely came upon another person while making their way through the halls. As they entered the turbine room, a giant room that could have been a warehouse in itself, the group assembled into a V formation, inconspicuously passing the large turbines as they moved across the room. The pictures and re-creations were perfect duplicates of the room, and Frank almost felt he had been there before. Workers occasionally moved around, shoes squeaking on the concrete floor or clanging against the metal staircases throughout the giant room, which led to various other control stations. But they all completely ignored the crew of plumbers.

  They looked over each machine as they passed but realized it was pointless because although the re-creations had been flawless, it was as if they had been created with the same blueprints. After the group had made it through the monstrous turbine room and through the heavy door on the far side, a collective breath was let out that none of them knew they had been holding.

  Another turn down a short hallway, and they were facing the bathroom door. This is it—there’s no going back now, Frank thought as they pushed through the door one at a time. As the door shut behind them and Martin leaned against it, the men immediately began pulling guns from their pockets and setting them on the wide sink. After all the handguns were in a uniform line in front of them, the two men with the gutted machines lifted the casing off of each and began connecting wires inside to arm the explosives. During this time it was Frank’s job to check every weapon; he could feel his heart beating a little harder with the snap of each action. Once the explosives were armed and the outer casings were replaced, all that was required was to press a button, and the timer would start counting down. Frank knew they would have plenty of time to get back to the van before the bombs went off, but he felt like running now, running as far away as he could.

  Each man checked his grenades and any other explosive devices, each with a timer that would be set to go off a few seconds before the big ones. As he handed each pistol back to its original owner, Frank eyed Martin, standing with his foot against the door, pistol ready in his hand, looking as if he was born for this. Frank wished he had Martin’s dedication and swore if he lived through tonight, he would become like Martin: brave and fearless.

  As the men worked, Martin stepped out of the bathroom and walked to the end of the hall to watch the
foot traffic. There wasn’t much. When everything was set, the other five slowly advanced out of the bathroom and grouped around their leader, the two armed bombs on wheels in tow. I can’t believe how easy this is, Frank thought. We are all going to make it out of here in one piece.

  The group made its completely unnoticed trek across the room between two giant turbines and stopped as three of the men pulled one of their machines to the marked location between the two farthest turbines. Each man began placing thermite grenades around the base of each turbine, and upon completion of that task, one man stood at each suction machine and counted down with one hand. When the buttons had been pressed, the timer would begin for one minute, and the radio timers on the grenades would also start counting down. “We could do this at all of the dams in the state,” Frank almost said aloud, but he realized silence was the key to not getting caught.

  Each group of three casually walked in opposite directions. Martin, Frank, and one of the other men headed toward the entrance they had come through, and the other group planned to escape through another door. As Martin pushed through the door to the empty entrance hallway between the powerhouse and the lobby, he whispered to Frank, “Good job.”

  Frank knew this was as close to any congratulation Martin would ever give, and he smiled, feeling as if he had won a gold medal.

  As Martin’s squad entered the main lobby, the receptionist turned her head to them as if to ask what they were doing. Martin immediately answered the unspoken but obvious question. “We need to grab some tools out of the van, and we’ll be right back.”

  The receptionist gave a nod and went back to doing whatever she was doing on the computer. With each step closer to the door, Frank could hear his heartbeat harder. He wanted to run to the safety of the van, to get out of there before they realized something was wrong. He was pale, soaked in sweat, and afraid the receptionist had noticed his wet jumpsuit sticking to his back. He stayed in pace with the other two men, and, as soon as the front door had closed behind them and the cool night air was on them, Frank wanted to scream and run.

  As they made their way to the vehicle, Martin could see the panic in Frank’s eyes and knew he was about to lose it. “Calm the fuck down. It’s over,” Martin roughly soothed, even though he was trying hard to hide the panic in his own voice.

  Upon reaching the van and opening the doors, they saw the second squad of three walking out of the shadows, heading their direction; they had obviously made it out of the complex without a problem. Frank leaned back in his seat, rolling his head to the side, wanting to pass out, and asked without bothering to look Martin’s way, “How much time is left?”

  “We got out faster than expected. Twelve seconds.” Frank knew they had been ordered to wait to hear the explosions before leaving. This would be the longest twelve seconds of his life, so he used it to repeat the Fourteen Words one more time: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

  The other men joined the recitation. Martin lazily pushed the key into the ignition, ready to turn it over at the designated time, and he could almost feel the expectation from the men around him. Through all of the steel and concrete between them and the bombs, even the large explosions were small pops and thuds. After he heard the four explosions, he reached his hand back to the ignition to turn it, and Frank thought about what would happen now: nothing would ever be the same. There would be no power from Huntsville to Birmingham after tonight, and his militia would help restore the white race to its rightful place of power as the federal government tried to deal with the problem they had just caused, which was coordinated with other events across the nation. His last thoughts were of his father and how proud he would be of him. As Martin turned the key, Frank detected a flash from the barrels, and the van erupted in a giant explosion.

  CHAPTER 7

  July 5

  AS HE MADE his way through the yard that held so much of his childhood, Jackson could see these scenes unfold before him: eight-year-old versions of Redstone and him sword fighting with sticks to his right; an eleven-year-old Jackson riding his bicycle over the makeshift ramp he and Redstone had built using the stone bench to his left; Redstone watching in amazement as Jackson crashed painfully to the ground, snapping his collarbone. Finally, as he reached the cement steps to the house he had grown up in, he could see himself, twenty-one years younger, stumbling backward off the porch, cracking the back of his head on the bottom step, and he reached up to feel the old scar where the back of his head had been stitched. Just as his boot creaked on a warped board of the porch, the sounds of his life faded behind him. As he reached for the doorbell, he could hear latches clicking and knew that his parents had already been made aware of his presence by the motion detector at the gate, inwardly feeling stupid for forgetting that. His mother pulled the heavy door in, and he reached out to open the glass security door reinforced by steel bars.

  “Your daddy is waiting for you in his Batcave. I told him you had a crazy story to tell,” his mother told him as she pulled the door completely open and gestured for him to enter. He grinned, finding it amusing that she had always referred to the underground bunker attached to the house as his father’s Batcave. His father had always been a survivalist and had been adamant about building a bunker, especially since 9/11; he had just never had the funds to do so. Jackson’s family had never been rich, but even at their poorest, they were far from destitute. When he was younger, Jackson could remember, he worked to earn the toys he bought, and he played with a lot of hand-me-downs from his cousins. But they had never gone without. For most of his adult life, the Pike family had been fairly financially comfortable, yet Jeff had still lacked the resources to fulfill his dream of building a bunker. But that vision had been made a reality a few years ago.

  The factory where Jeff had worked for the majority of his life settled with him, outside of court, after a workplace accident destroyed part of his foot. A friend of the family who practiced law mentioned something to the company about the injury being a “disfiguring disability,” and since Jeff had been a loyal employee for over twenty-five years, the company decided to throw some money at him. Jeff’s injury only inconvenienced him, forcing him to insert a pad in his shoe where part of his foot should have been, and this settlement had been more than enough to retire on.

  Jeff designed the structure, and, because of the money from the settlement, he hired a crew to construct his masterpiece—a large underground bunker. Jeff joked that it merely cost him “chump change,” but coming into money had not spoiled the Pike family. Denise had been raised, and therefore raised Jackson, as a penny pincher, so they did not consider themselves rich people. Jeff had mostly used the money to complete his survivalist goals.

  Jackson stepped through the door and closed it behind him while his mother began walking toward the back of the house.

  The entire house was floored with pinewood shelving, and the first room Jackson passed was the kitchen/dining room. It was a large room with a bar separating the kitchen and dining room, with the bar, kitchen cabinets, table, and chairs all matching the wood of the floor. Jeff had purchased a black-and-white wood-burning stove that served as a decoration but was fully functional, with a smokestack running into the wall and attaching to the fireplace on the other side of it.

  He passed through the opening into the living room. Bright light poured through the French doors on the far wall to his left, and the table and leather couch flush with the wall made it seem as if he were moving down a long hallway to his destination. Jackson could see where his mother had been sitting on the couch before she had roused to unlock the door for him, blanket and basket of unfolded clothes placed beside her customary seat on the matching leather couch against the other wall, TV remote placed squarely on the second end table. He glanced over to the corner on the opposite side of the fireplace to see a large flat-screen TV, muted, on his mother’s favorite classical music channel. His father had said the reason he had bought satellite TV
was because they would not be affected by the local power outages, but Jackson knew the real reason was because his mother was in love with the various music channels.

  He quickly moved through the living room doorway to a small foyer leading to another outer door and entered the actual hallway. A few family pictures lined the walls on each side, and he passed the open entrance to the small, tiled communal bathroom that he had used as a child, soon followed by the closet that contained the air-conditioning unit directly opposite the room that had been his for the majority of his life. Though now this room was set up as a rarely used guestroom, with a small daybed and a couple of chairs against the wall, he did not even have to look in to see his childhood quarters. After dropping his pace a few steps while passing this room, he began to catch up with his mother at the end of the hallway, where his parents’ larger bedroom, with their private bathroom and closet, was located on one side, and the room that had formerly been tasked for his unborn and miscarried sibling and turned into one of his father’s many workshops on the opposite side.

  The clothes closet door facing him led down into the bunker. His mother stepped to the side and opened it. Jackson thought it was funny that she tried to make this seem theatrical, even though he knew what lay behind the door. He had done this many times, and this was just an ordinary closet door.

  He realized she was waiting for him and passed her, saying, “I got it, Mama. Thanks.” He entered the small closet; his mother reached in to flip the light switch for the single bulb above him and gently shut the door. Jackson pushed aside the coats directly in front of him and saw the keypad with its blue digital readout. His father had not found it necessary to disguise this entrance with the coats; this was just a convenient place to add a door, and his mother refused to leave valuable closet space empty. He entered the six-digit code into the pad, and a soft beep emitted with each press of a button. “Bunker” was a simple code that even Jackson admitted a common burglar or bandit would not guess, but it was something one could remember even with a concussion. Playfully arguing when deciding on the entry code, Jackson could remember, his father had said, “What are you trying to do? Where are you trying to get when you come to the door? In the bunker.” It was a good idea, he thought as he imagined the internal locks snapping open and hissing while it unsealed.