People's Republic

by Kurt Schlichter

  “She is the head gestapo guy’s girlfriend. You need to be ready for the possibility she’ll sell you out as quickly as she would me.”

  “Not her.”

  “I hope you’re right. But it’s pretty clear we can’t approach her here.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We get her somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere where there aren’t 30,000 people around. Come on, let’s head back to that administration building we passed.”

  They made their way back the way they came, which rubbed Turnbull the wrong way. He dealt with it, and surreptitiously scanned in front of them, behind them, and to their sides trying to spot surveillance, keeping his head down just enough not to draw suspicion but to frustrate any cameras peering at them.

  Nothing.

  The guy on the box was gone. His space was taken by three salty looking women with a sign calling themselves “Shriek Your Abortion!” Which was precisely what they were doing, loudly, shrilly, and in great, graphic detail. Apparently, abortion being legal and subsidized was not enough – everyone also had to hear all about it. But as loud as they were, not a student paused as they passed; the women were simply more human wallpaper, the background noise of the blue America university experience.

  The administrative building’s main entrance led to a waiting room with no exit, just a bank of mostly unoccupied service windows and long lines in front of the two that were open. They scooted around the perimeter looking for another way in. On the north side, out of sight of the main walkway, they stumbled upon a blue shirt walking out of an “AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY” door. Turnbull caught it as it shut. The worker stared blankly for a moment at the suit-clad man before her, shrugged, and walked away. Not her problem. Turnbull and Junior slipped inside.

  It was quiet in the building. They moved down the hallway, trying to radiate the impression that they belonged there. Most of the personnel were blue shirts; none dared question the suited men. Some senior administrators passed by, and they too declined to engage.

  The first floor contained no likely offices, so they went up the stairs to the second floor. More blue shirts hustled by pushing carts full of papers – apparently it was not a paperless office, something that struck Junior as exceedingly odd. You barely saw paper back home.

  “DATA SERVICES” read a sign on a door, and they went in. The room was rather large, with a dozen cubicles each manned by a blue-shirted worker typing away on a desktop computer. They walked to the very last cubicle, where a young blue shirt sat alone pecking at his keyboard. Looking over his shoulder at the screen, Turnbull satisfied himself that he could figure it out.

  Sensing them looming above him and seeing their unsmiling faces, he stopped, clearly concerned. Turnbull knelt down.

  “Yes?” the worker asked, his voice unsteady.

  “Hi,” Turnbull said. “You have access to student records?”

  The young man nodded. Turnbull read his name tag.

  “Obviously, you’re logged in, right Leon?”

  Another nod.

  “Okay, you need to take a piss.”

  The young man appeared puzzled but said nothing.

  “Leon, you are going to stand up in a moment and go take a piss. When you come back, we’ll be gone – forever – and you’ll completely forget about us. Plus there’ll be a thousand dollars under the keyboard. Okay?”

  The man sat still; Turnbull could see on his face that he was working this unexpected development through in his mind.

  “Now, it can go that way, in which you end up with a thousand dollars, or it can end up in another way which you don’t even want to think about. So,” asked Turnbull. “Do you need to take a piss or not, Leon?”

  Leon swallowed, but after a moment’s hesitation, the blue shirt stood up and wordlessly walked off toward the door. Turnbull nodded at Junior, who followed and planted himself outside the door as security in case Leon decided to narc them out.

  Turnbull planted himself on Leon’s seat and went to the student personal information menu. When the query window came up, he typed in “Ryan, Amanda,” and hit return.

  With time to kill, they decided to eat. Their walk off campus back into Westwood Village was uneventful. Turnbull amused himself by figuring out where he would place ambushes to bushwhack the numerous uniformed PBI patrols that ensured this island of prosperity was well-insulated from the turmoil outside the walls.

  They chose to eat at what had been a Mexican place and was now denominated “Respectful Latinx Cuisine.” Turnbull vaguely remembered the name had been “Pedro’s,” but that name was long gone. Instead, it was now simply “Restaurant,” as were most of the other eating places around town.

  The place was bustling, and there were actually menus, menus that even provided choices. The prices were high – a plate of tacos was $520 – but Turnbull noted that there was no reference to ration cards. Apparently that was yet another rule that did not apply inside the sector.

  They waited a few minutes to be seated. Besides businessmen and women, there were a good number of students, half looking freshly pressed and the other half looking fresh from the hamper. Many wore light blue and yellow UCLA sweatshirts or hoodies, all with the circle mascot. Blue shirts hustled between tables, carrying trays, taking orders.

  They were seated at a two-top by a street front window near a table of sour-looking male and female students, one of whom wore a “Class of ‘34” t-shirt. The students were complaining about their classes and the oppression of homework. Turnbull tuned them out and looked at the menu.

  “Tacos,” he said.

  “You think they’ll be any good?” asked Junior.

  “Mexican food in California went downhill fast when the Mexicans quit coming,” Turnbull replied quietly. “I assume if Mexico hadn’t built the wall with the reparations money the PR gave them, Mexico might have some good American food by now, thanks to our emigrants.”

  “Okay, tacos. Hey, it even says ‘beef.’ Lucky I took my antibiotics this morning.”

  “I’m sure the food will be good to go. Can’t be food poisoning the future leaders of the People’s Republic.”

  “This is bullshit,” hissed the girl in the “Class of ‘34” sweatshirt. A young, Hispanic blue shirt man stood at her table, his notepad out, his face blank.

  “I know what I want and I want it!” she said. “Are you stupid? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The blue shirt mumbled an apology, but ’34 girl was having none of it.

  “You better stop disrespecting me or I’ll fucking tell your boss to throw you the fuck out of here.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You think he’s going to listen to you or to me?”

  “I’ll check in the back and see if they have it,” the blue shirt said, remarkably evenly.

  “You better,” the girl said. The server left and she turned to her friends. “After all we do for them, they treat us like shit.”

  “You ought to complain and get him fired,” another told her. “Otherwise, they’ll think they can do whatever they want.”

  Turnbull was casually covering the side of his face with his palm, seeming to shrink into the chair. Attention to his general area was always unwelcome, and everyone had been looking over at the ruckus – mostly with approval for the student putting the uppity worker in his place.

  “I hate it here,” Junior said.

  “Not long now. We get her tonight, we rendezvous with the hard drive, and we head home. Easy.”

  “Easy,” Junior replied, but uncertainly.

  The blue shirt returned, but he came to Turnbull and Junior’s table instead, notepad out.

  “Can I take your order…” he began, but he was cut off.

  “Hey shithead, what are you doing with them? What the fuck is wrong with you?” It was ’34.

  Turnbull saw it in the man’s face, the culmination, the breaking point, and he braced himself for whatever bad was go
ing to happen, because something bad was certainly going to happen and it was utterly out of Turnbull’s control.

  The blue shirt turned to face the student’s table; ’34 leaned back, smiling at her success with her petty humiliations. The blue shirt, for his part, said nothing. He simply reached onto the table beside one of ‘34’s comrades, grabbed a table knife, and leapt at his tormentor.

  ‘34’s expression changed in a fraction of a second from smug satisfaction to sheer terror as the blue shirt screamed “Fucking whore!” and brought the dull knife down over and over again, plunging it shallowly into her shoulder, then her chest, then her face.

  Her tablemates scattered; she shrieked. The knife was going in, but it was dull and there was more blood than actual damage outside of the rent across her right cheek. Yet the blue shirt was continuing to try and gut her there and then.

  One of the males with her tried to pull off the berserk server, but another blue shirt came up from the side holding a drink tray and swung it with all his might like a scythe across the student’s face, smashing his nose and spattering blood over the table. He went down to the floor, and the server continued to pound his prone, frantic victim with the edge of the tray.

  Across the room, the rest of the patrons were stunned. And the other blue shirts were inspired. One server dumped a sizzling plate of fajitas into the décolletage and lap of the blonde companion of an older man in an expensive suit. Another brought a beer bottle down on the head of a bewildered Asian student; foam and blood flowed down his face. A blue shirted woman attacked another diner’s face with her bare hands, clawing at her victim’s eyes.

  Turnbull was on his feet now, glancing over to Junior to see what his situation was. Junior was reaching for his weapon – Turnbull shook his head “No” and motioned toward the exit. A plate flew toward them and shattered on their table.

  “Oh, awesome,” muttered Turnbull, trying to spot a safe path out, but everyone was now on their feet, fighting, screaming, and/or panicking.

  ’34 had somehow escaped her chair and started running, but she plowed directly into Turnbull and bounced back, shaken and bloody, staring at him, her eyes imploring. The blue shirt was right behind her, coming at them both, his throat open to a punch. Turnbull made a quick decision and roughly pushed the girl back into the blue shirt’s arms. She screamed again as the worker descended on her in a silvery blur of knife thrusts.

  “Let’s go,” he said to the stunned Junior.

  They moved, Turnbull in the lead, pushing or throwing out of the way anyone in their path. Halfway to the exit, which was choked with terrified patrons trying to escape, a wide-eyed blue shirt wielding a chair blocked their way. At his feet was the crumpled body of the student he had just smashed over the head.

  Turnbull shook his head “No,” but the blue shirt only saw another well-dressed elite tormentor. He charged, the chair held high. Turnbull pivoted left, grabbing the man’s forearms, using his weight to throw him down to the floor. A heel kick to the sternum kept the worker down for good. Junior hopped over the wounded man and followed Turnbull into the chaos.

  The front door was a no-go – it was jammed and besides, a pair of busboys was beating on the clump of escapees with potted artificial trees that they wielded like maces. On one of the waiting benches, slumped over to his left, was the three-piece suited restaurant manager; someone had shoved a fork through his right eye.

  “Kitchen!” Turnbull said, turning against the flow. He pushed through the surging crowd, almost as if he were doing the breast stroke. One panicked man grabbed his left arm; Turnbull pounded his nose flat with his right fist and kept moving. The swinging doors to the kitchen were just ahead.

  Junior turned in time to see at least two black uniformed PBI men with AKs out through the front window. Inside the restaurant, the blue shirt who started it all stood up over ‘34’s inert body, panting, covered with blood. The PBI men opened fire on automatic, tearing him up, his body twitching and jerking as it was pushed backwards and to the ground. But several others, some patrons, some workers, caught rounds in the background and dropped too. Then a blur of blue shirts hit the two PBI men from the flank and they disappeared from view.

  Turnbull burst through the swinging double doors and was confronted with a blue shirt cook packing an oversized meat cleaver. It flashed as the man swung it, but Turnbull dodged and the blade planted deep into one of the doors. The cook pulled on it, his arm taut and therefore vulnerable when Turnbull smashed down on the locked elbow with his full weight. The cook howled as blood spurted from his compound fracture.

  A second cook approached, now with a long knife in his right hand and a skillet in his left. Turnbull drew his Glock in a smooth motion, aiming directly at the man’s face.

  “I am fucking tired of this shit,” he shouted, moving forward, gun up. “Get the fuck out of my way or I will fucking end you. Three! Two!”

  The cook complied, the blade and pan clanging on the floor as he turned and ran.

  “The PBI is out front. They’re shooting, but people are fighting them,” Junior reported. “Is this the revolution? Is this it?”

  “I don’t know if this is it, but it sure looks like what I think it would look like,” Turnbull answered. He bolted through the storage racks toward a door with an exit sign. Pushing it open, he carefully surveyed the rear alley. Nothing to see, but plenty of shots to be heard from around front. They put their Glocks away.

  “Let’s go,” he said, running outside, followed by Junior.

  They headed down the alley to the end, where it opened onto Gayley, one of Westwood Village’s main arteries. The bucolic town of that morning was gone, replaced by a battlefield full of running, screaming people. Across the way, a blue shirted gardener was hitting a middle-aged man, wearing a half-way unbuttoned white shirt and several gold chains, over the head with a hoe.

  A PBI trooper came up behind him and shot the gardener through the head with his AK, then moved on.

  “Let’s get to the car,” Turnbull said. They were well-dressed so they would not attract any PBI attention, but those idiots were shooting wildly, and there was also the threat of enraged blue shirts along the way.

  The chaos was clearly winding down. They ran east, sometimes against, sometimes with the flow of terrified civilians. It was a few minutes until they got to their parking structure, and it was calm inside. They went up to the second floor and found their Lexus unharmed. However, someone had thrown a trash can through the back window of the Tesla.

  There was more commotion in the street out front. Junior and Turnbull walked over to the side of the building and looked down to the street below. PBI men were marching a half dozen blue shirts under guard. In the middle of the road, they halted the column and ordered the workers to their knees in a line.

  “No way,” Junior muttered.

  Four PBI men behind them lifted their AKs and, on order, fired into the backs of the prisoners until all six sprawled dead on the pavement.

  “Oh, shit,” Junior said.

  “That’s insurgency, Junior,” Turnbull said.

  “They just shot them down right there in the open!”

  “Yeah, that’s how it works. You need to understand. When push comes to shove, when it gets real like it did today, when they are faced with a real threat, they are going to do whatever it takes to hold on to power. These aren’t nice people. They aren’t good people. They care about one thing, their own power, and when that’s endangered they take no prisoners. Literally.”

  “So that’s why you don’t take prisoners either.”

  “I stopped playing nice back in Indian Country, kid. That good guy bullshit goes right out the window when the killing really starts.”

  “Okay, what now?”

  “We wait,” Turnbull replied. “We aren’t going out on that road anytime soon anyway, and we aren’t doing anything until tonight anyway. Let’s get in the car and sleep.”

  “I wish we had at least gotten to eat.”<
br />
  “Yeah, I think the restaurant’s going to be closed for a while. At least until they hire a new staff.”

  14.

  It was a bad day for Martin Rios-Parkinson, meaning it was a bad day for everyone around him.

  “You failed to reacquire them?” the Director asked Larsen. His aide shifted uncomfortably. Next to him stood, silently, three of Larsen’s department heads, a man, a woman, and a non-binary wearing a flowered muumuu.

  “They never showed up. We watched her all day. They never came anywhere near her.”

  “But they were there in Westwood, inside the secured sector we control, weren’t they?”

  More uncomfortable shifting. Rios-Parkinson turned his laptop around 180 degrees so Larsen could see the screen from the far side of the desk. It was displaying several freeze frames of grainy surveillance camera footage of Westwood Village taken that afternoon at the height of the chaos in the restaurant as it spilled outside. Rios-Parkinson tapped the screen, pointing out two vague shapes walking away from the melee.

  “That would be them, correct? At least the software thinks so from their size and gait. Do you know something the software does not know?”

  “There’s no way to tell…”

  “No, they just happen to be two gentlemen who appear to be the same ones who you have been trying and failing to monitor and who just happened to manifest in the middle of a rioting outbreak right in the middle of the Westside Sector. My sector, my responsibility.”

  Larsen swallowed, weighing a response. Rios-Parkinson did not wait for it.

  “This is more than just a pair of intruders, more than just another pair of spies. They are here to incite. I am not having another Indiana explode on my watch, not in my city.”

  “No,” said Larsen. He had fought in Southern Indiana, Indian Country, though you would never call it by that name out loud in the blue. Larsen still walked with a slight limp from a 40-pound homemade Tannerite bomb that a farmer turned guerilla had detonated with his .30-06 just as Larsen’s armored personnel carrier rolled past down a country road on the way to shoot up an unruly town inside the Hoosier National Forest. The reds had sent in trainers to organize the populace just as the blues had almost managed to assert control over the rebellious region. Larsen was well aware of what a few operatives with combat experience could do in terms of mobilizing an angry population, especially one that had buried all of its many, many guns the minute the People’s Republic announced it was banning the civilian possession of firearms.