A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “Don’t worry about me,” grated Brown. “Get your ass back out there and rip those ZOG bastards a new one!”

  “Let me drive, I know the way,” said Cody. “Jack, you ride shotgun. Nightshade, you stay in the back with Farmer and let me know if anything happens, if he starts bleeding again. Let’s go.”

  “Where exactly are we going?” asked Emily as they pulled out of the mall.

  “Kelly Shipman’s house,” said Cody. “Her father’s a doctor. A pretty good one, apparently. The problem is, they live on Mercer Island, and there isn’t any way to get over there from here except on I-90, which is where we’re most likely to run into Fatties. I’m going the most direct route, since time is of the essence here. Get ready to hold Farmer steady in case I have to try and outrun or bust through something. Jack, you get ready to fire in case we have to bop our way out of a situation.”

  “Got it,” said the Englishman, who had folded in the stock of his AK-74. Cody drove down five blocks and got onto Highway 908, the Mercer Slough Park on his left, and then up an entrance ramp onto I-90. Right at the top of the ramp they passed a burning FATPO truck and an overturned Humvee, with several uniformed Federal bodies lying on the asphalt. There was no sign of any of the NVA or SS who might have been responsible for the attack. Traffic was very light and they made it to Mercer Island with no mishaps, and down onto East Mercer Way.

  “What if the doctor isn’t in?” asked Farmer.

  “Then we go find him and bring him back,” said Cody with determination. “This is actually better for you than some emergency room, Farmer. Doctor Shipman’s got part of his house in the front set up as an office and a kind of a little clinic for his private patients. I saw it when Kelly had her pool party, that time I told you about when I ended up tossing that asshole Crabtree in the pool. It’s got an examining room and all kinds of medical equipment, an X-ray machine, drugs and supplies, the whole nine yards. Kelly told me that he sees a lot of celebrity and politicians privately, treating their AIDS or other loathsome diseases, drug ODs, that kind of thing. Kind of a physician to the hoi poloi, so you’ll be getting the best.” They pulled up to the large wrought-iron gate which led into the Shipmans’ exclusive housing community. Cody reached out to the automatic control panel, punched in a code, and then when a mechanical voice asked for verbal confirmation, he stuck his head out the window and said “Kelly Shipman, guest. All the world’s a stage.” The gates rumbled and began to swing open.

  “My, my, we’re cozy enough with the homecoming queen to have her entry code to the palace, are we?” said Nightshade waspishly. “Done this before?”

  “No, she gave it to Craig Crabtree, and he couldn’t resist bragging about it in gym,” explained Cody. “That and their little get-togethers in the Shipmans’ pool house,” he added with a sigh.

  “Did you ever do Miss Shipman the courtesy of telling her about the bounder’s unconscionable conduct?” asked Jack curiously.

  “The Arabs have a proverb: ‘There is danger to him who snatcheth the tiger’s cub, but more to him who snatcheth delusion from a woman.’” answered Cody.

  “Point taken,” said Jack.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Emily archly from the back seat.

  “No disrespect, comrade, but women do have a nasty habit of shooting the messenger,” said Jack.

  “Do you really want to say that to a girl sitting behind you with an M-16?” asked Nightshade.

  “We need to keep an eye out as we drive through here,” said Cody. “I think they’ve got some kind of private security guards who patrol the area to keep riffraff like us out.”

  “I wonder if these rich people who are so loyal to America ever notice how much time and effort they have to spend in protecting themselves from America?” said Brown.

  “How you feeling, Farmer?” asked Cody.

  “Not so bad with that dope you gave me,” replied Brown. “This hole in my hand just feels like a bad sprain right now.”

  “We’ve got more if you need it, sir,” said Jack.

  “Naw, I don’t wanna end up getting hooked on painkillers,” replied Brown.

  “Is there a house in here that goes for under two million?” sniffed Nightshade.

  “Uh, you live in a neighborhood that’s just as ritzy,” pointed out Cody. “And your house is just as plush as Kelly’s.”

  “Yeah, but my dad was a criminal. What’s her excuse?”

  A minute later they pulled up in the Shipmans’ driveway. The house lights were on and all three vehicles were in the open carport, including Kelly’s new Explorer. “Okay, I’ll go first,” said Cody. “You two follow along and bring Farmer.”

  “If the quack has drugs in there, won’t he have some kind of security system, closed-circuit television monitors?” asked Jack. “If only to prevent break-ins by addicts, that sort of lark?”

  “There is an alarm system, yes, and a panic room inside the house, but no cameras,” said Cody. “Kelly and Kelly’s mom didn’t like the Big Brother feeling of being constantly spied on by cameras. I asked about that when I was checking the place out in case we ever needed it for something like this.”

  “Oh, is that what you were checking out?” asked Nightshade skeptically. “Not Kelly in a bathing suit? Now that’s dedication.”

  Cody ignored her. “I’ve been here a few times, and Kelly’s folks know me. They’ll open the door for me.”

  “You can tell them you and Kelly have a date to go and watch the revolution,” said Nightshade.

  Cody got out of the Cadillac, reached back in and pulled the Makarov out of the holster of his web belt, and stuck it into his belt behind his back. “One of you bring my belt, will you? I don’t want whoever answers the door to see me wearing it if they look out first.” He took his AK from Jack and went up the front walk to the door. He leaned his rifle against the corner of the door frame, out of sight. Then he rang the doorbell. After a short delay Doctor Ed Shipman opened the door, dressed casually in shorts and a knit shirt and sandals. He looked distracted. “Oh, hello, Cody,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming over. If you had a date or something with Kelly, she forgot to mention it. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but this isn’t a good time. Not only is there apparently all kinds of rioting and shooting going on all over town, but we’ve got a bit of a family crisis on our hands, and I…”

  “I’m not here to see Kelly, Doctor Shipman,” Cody said politely. “I’m here to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid we need your help. Medical help.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Kelly’s father. Suddenly Shipman looked up as the three other Volunteers appeared behind Cody. The bare-chested Brown was able to stumble along, but he was leaning on Jack, and the bandages his hand were starting to drip red. Nightshade stood beside them with the M-16 on her hip, Cody’s web belt over her shoulder, rolled balaclava on her head, looking very revolutionary and determined. Cody reached down and took up his own Kalashnikov. He didn’t point it. “Our friend has been shot. He needs your help,” he told the flabbergasted Shipman.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed. “You’re one of them?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “But you’ve been a guest in my house!” babbled Shipman in a daze. “You’ve been out with my daughter! You…”

  “We need to come in, sir,” said Cody politely but firmly. “If we’re seen standing out here and one of your neighbors makes a phone call, then you might end up having some visitors who are even more unwelcome than we are.” As if to give point to his remarks, there was another sudden burst of machinegun fire, spluttering rifles, and several explosions possibly a half a mile away.

  “What are you going to do if I refuse, son?” demanded Shipman. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  Cody ignored the question. “We’re wasting time, Doctor Shipman,” he said.

  “Oh, Christ!” sighed Shipman, accepting the inevitable. “The whole damned world has gone
insane! Bring him in!” They half-carried Brown into the house, down a hallway, and into Doctor Shipman’s medical office. Shipman opened a folding partition into a room glass cabinets and a paper-covered examination table. “Lie down there, Mister…what’s your name anyway? Or do I really want to know?”

  “They call me Farmer Brown.”

  “What happened?” asked Shipman.

  “What the hell do you think happened?” growled Brown. “A political gangster with a Federal badge shot me.”

  “That’s his job!” snapped Shipman. “Shooting political gangsters without badges.”

  “Yeah, well, this is the last job he’ll ever do,” said Brown. Shipman turned pale.

  “Dear God, we see this on television, and sometimes we forget it’s all real,” he moaned. He turned to Cody. “What the hell have you been doing tonight? Are you people trying to take over the city or something? Why all this shooting and bombing?”

  “Uh, you didn’t see the President on TV tonight, sir?” asked Cody.

  “No, I was going to watch but something came up, a family matter, and…why, what did she say?”

  “Well, I don’t quite know how to tell you this, Doctor Shipman, but the Americans have surrendered,” said Cody. “We’re going to get our Republic, and you’re standing in the middle of it.”

  “What?” shouted Shipman. “What the hell do you mean the Americans have surrendered? You’re an American yourself!”

  “Just because I was born in a sty, that doesn’t make me a pig,” replied Cody evenly.

  Shipman shuddered. “Okay, look, I’m not even going to try to wrap my mind around what you just said. I’ll do what I can for this man and then it would be nice if all of you would leave, and it would be even nicer if you’d leave without murdering anyone in this house.” He went to a drawer, drew out some stainless steel scissors, and cut the bandages away. “What did you do to him thus far?” he demanded, studying the wound.

  “Sterilized it with alcohol,” said Brown.

  “He’s had two oxycodones,” spoke up Emily.

  “That’s good, because otherwise he’d be screaming in agony and going into shock,” said Shipman. “I suppose a hospital is out of the question? Silly me.” He examined the wound with a probe light on an odoscope. “Good clean wound, at least. Okay, the alcohol was a good move. It partially cauterized the injury and hopefully stopped any immediate infection. You had a stroke of luck in that it was through and through, and also that it seems to have missed the bone, although I’m going to have to X-ray it and make sure. There are no major arteries in the palm, although there’s sure to be nerve damage and I can’t promise you that you’ll have much use of the hand, not yet. I am going to apply a local anesthetic, do the X-ray, and then depending on what I see there I’ll pack it with antibiotic foam and put on a better dressing. I’ll give you an antibiotic as well. The packing will hurt like hell but we can’t leave that hole open. The oxycodone will do for a while, but they’re addictive as the devil. You need to take it down to Darvon or something lighter as soon as you can. Do you know your blood type?”

  “A-negative,” said Brown.

  “You’re sure? I’ll need to top you up and I don’t want you going into shock.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to come in here with a gunshot wound they want treated with discretion, although usually it’s some eminent person who doesn’t want the world to know what games he’s been playing with sex and drugs and rock and roll.” He took a phial out of the drug cabinet and tore open the paper wrapping of a syringe.

  “Ed, what’s going on?” spoke up his wife Marty fearfully from the doorway. “Who are these people? Cody?”

  “Hey, Mrs. Shipman,” said Cody. “I’m really sorry about this, but we need your husband’s help. We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here, and we’ll be gone as soon as our friend has been seen to.”

  “Guns!” she said, shrinking. “Oh, Cody, I always thought you were one of the good and decent ones!”

  “He is, ma’am,” said Brown from the table. “That’s why he’s carrying a gun tonight.”

  “I don’t understand. Which side are you on?” asked Marty, confused and upset.

  “Oh, they’ve got us working for the other side tonight, marm,” Jack Flash told her cheerily.

  Shipman injected the wounded area several times, making Brown wince. “Lie back. We’ll give that a minute or to take effect.” He pulled a big wad of gauze off a roll and cut it with the scissors, then folded it up in a smaller roll. “All right, one of you needs to put down your weapon, come here and hold this down into the hand, while I set up the X-ray machine. Don’t worry, none of us will snatch up your gun and do a Bruce Willis. None of us would know what to do with one anyway.”

  “I never would allow guns in my house,” said Marty.

  “I’ll do it, Dad,” said Kelly Shipman, calmly walking into the room. She was barefooted and wearing gym shorts and a sweat shirt, and her long blonde hair was down her back and wet, as if she had just stepped out of the shower, which she had. She had been in the shower for almost two hours and finally accepted that she would never again be clean.

  “Kelly, I think you need to go back upstairs,” said Ed. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “I’ve helped you before, and I don’t think any of our guests has had the hospital CNA course I went through,” said Kelly. She did not look at Cody. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything any more.” She walked to the head of the table and took the roll of gauze from her father, and molded it gently and firmly into Farmer Brown’s gunshot wound to absorb the oozing blood and lymphatic fluid. Shipman went to his cabinet and began pulling out X-ray plates. Then she finally looked up, at Jack Flash. “I know Cody and Emily, but you I’ve never seen before,” she said. “You don’t go to Hillside High, do you?”

  “No, I got my A levels some time ago, in the U. K.,” said Jack.

  “We call him Jumping Jack Flash,” said Cody. “The man you’re working on is Farmer Brown. I know you won’t believe this of any of us, but he’s a good man and worthy of your help.”

  “I’m glad. I could do with meeting a good man today,” she said quietly.

  “You know, in view of this evening’s developments, it strikes me that we really have no further need for a nom de guerre,” said Jack. “My name is Nigel Moore, and I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Shipman.”

  “That’s your real name?” asked Nightshade.

  “It’s the name I’m wanted under in Britain, yes,” said Jack with a David Niven-ish smile.

  “What did you do in Britain?” asked Marty fearfully. “Did you kill someone?”

  “Actually, I was a columnist for a student newspaper at Oxford, and one night after a bit of a fracas with a West Indian policeman I came back to the Quad quite bottled, got onto my laptop, and wrote an article which carried ten years’ penal servitude under the Race Relations Act. I hit send, and staggered into bed to sleep it off. I was awakened the next morning by the Special Branch dragging me out of bed and kicking me with steel-toed shoes. In view of the fact that my copybook was now permanently blotted, I decided to come to this country where the racial resistance has taken on a more robust form.”

  “He drinks tea, too!” Emily informed them. “With his pinky extended!”

  “You couldn’t murder black people in your own country so you came here to do it?” snapped Doctor Shipman. “Is that it? So you can take over and lord it over us here in Washington?”

  Moore replied with cool courtesy, “In point of fact, doctor, my reason for joining the NVA and helping to establish the Republic here is rather similar to the motivations of most foreign Volunteers. We want help to go back to our own countries and fight against the same kind of Zionist régimes as those which broke my ribs with those steel-toed boots, and put the bullet in that man on your table.”

  “And what about you?” Kelly aske
d Emily. “I thought you were kidnapped and brutalized by these gentry a few weeks ago? You must have one hell of a case of Stockholm syndrome.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Emily. “My code name is Patty Hearst. Death to the Zionist insect!”

  “Well, congratulations are in order, I suppose,” said Kelly with a faint smile. “I had the TV on when I was upstairs drying off. Everybody’s going batshit over the President’s speech tonight. Looks like we’re going to be living in the Fourth Reich soon, Dad. Better start learning how to click your heels, and I suppose I’d better quit calling you guys spuckies.”

  “That’s Mister Spucky from now on!” said Cody.

  “What? You were serious?” said Shipman, staring incredulously. “The President and the Congress are actually going to hand us over to—you people?”

  “It’s not that simple, and there’s a lot that has to happen still, but the process has begun, yes,” said Brown. “That’s what all the street fighting is about tonight. There are those who can’t handle the idea and they’re refusing to go along.”

  “Then you can still be stopped!” said Shipman desperately.

  “Check the news from Eastgate Mall,” said Brown. “That was where I got this. It was we who stopped them tonight. Barely armed kids and blue collar rednecks like me, the people you rich guys have spent your whole lives looking through like we didn’t exist, until you needed us to fix your cars and your air conditioners and your toys. Outnumbered three to one, and we beat the best America could put up. We wiped them out. We’ll stop them again tomorrow, and as long as we have to, until every American soldier leaves our land and that goddamned red, white, and blue Masonic dishrag comes down forever in the Northwest.”

  “As Victor Hugo said, ‘Mightier than the tread of marching armies is the power of an idea whose time has come.’” put in Jack