by R. A. Mathis
Citizen Foucault sounded over the speakers again. “Get to work!”
Once again, cargo trucks waited to take them to some unknown destination. Cole helped Hicks into one of them, then made sure the rest of his men boarded without incident.
The ride lasted hours. The trucks finally stopped and their passengers disgorged onto the empty parking lot of an electrical facility next to a mid-sized town. He recognized the place. It was Cookeville, a college town halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. Guards handed out axes, hammers, shovels, and other tools to the prisoners.
The head guard raised a bullhorn to his mouth. “This site will be cleansed. If I find so much as a flashlight battery in working condition, somebody dies. You will eat and sleep when you are finished, not one second sooner.”
The laborers hoisted hammers and shouldered shovels, then set to destroying the place. Cole and Hicks spent the morning chopping down electric poles and bashing transformers. The private hadn’t the strength to lift his axe, so Cole did the work of two men to avoid the guards’ wrath.
Cole counted his captors, estimated distances, and factored rates of fire in the calculation of his possibility of escape. The numbers weren’t good. When he accounted for Hicks’ condition, the figure fell to zero.
Midday stretched into afternoon. No water. They kept working. No food. They kept working. The sun sank low. No rest. They kept working. Cole’s hands bled. His limbs ached. His stomach roared with hunger. He felt himself growing weaker with each passing hour.
Hicks fell, coughing, to the ground. Cole helped him to his feet. He put the soldier’s arm around his neck and took a step. Both men fell.
Cole tried to pull his friend to his feet. “C’mon, Hicks. You gotta get up or we’re both dead.” But it was no use. The young man’s strength was spent.
Alex grabbed Hick’s other arm and helped get him up.
“Back to the trucks!” the bullhorn called as the last light of day retreated over the horizon.
Cole and Alex got on each side of Hicks, putting his arms over their shoulders, and walked him to the waiting vehicle.
“What’s wrong with him?” A guard sneered as they hoisted Hick’s into the back of a cargo truck.
“He’s just tired,” Alex said with a smile. “He’ll be ready to go again tomorrow.” He and Cole climbed aboard.
Once ten men were in the cargo hold, guards raised the tailgate and tossed in two MREs. Alex scrambled for one of the bagged meals. Others dove in. Cole was shocked at the dog pile of scratching, clawing, biting to get a share of the food. They looked more like ravenous beasts than human beings.
The bag ripped open. It’s contents scattered on the floor. The scrambling intensified. Alex grabbed an olive-green metallic pouch. A ragged man jumped him. Alex’s eye went wild. The man swung at him. He dodged the blow. The man grabbed for the pouch. Alex launched into him, biting the man’s ear. The man howled in pain. Blood ran down his neck. He released his grip. Guards laughed outside as Alex darted over to where Cole and Hicks sat, his chin wet with gore.
Alex tore the package open and removed a beef patty. “Here.” He tore it into three pieces and shared it with Cole and Hicks. “Our daily bread.”
“This is it?” Cole held up the paltry morsel.
“Until tomorrow.” Alex popped the food into his mouth, closing his eyes as he chewed.
“Two meals for ten men.” Cole ate his portion. “If we don’t escape, we will die here.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you last night,” Alex said, still chewing his dinner, “I can get us out.”
“Yeah, right. Through the front gate.” His words dripped with sarcasm. “Or we could grow wings and fly out.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“I know you’re crazy.”
The engine started and the truck lurched into motion.
Alex said, “I told you. I built that camp. I know every inch of it.”
The truck sped up. Autumn air rushed through the canvas awning and bit into grimy flesh.
Cole pulled his collar to his neck. “You have a plan?”
Alex nodded. “It’s risky, but it’ll work.”
Cole glanced at Hicks. The private hadn’t touched his food. His face was twisted in pain.
He looked back to Alex. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”
7
HANK
Freeport, Tennessee
“We need more food, Sheriff!” a man in the crowd shouted.
“My kids are starving!” a woman yelled.
Several hundred ravenous citizens filled the Food City parking lot this wintry morning. Hank was doing his best to keep the crowd from becoming a mob, wondering how much longer that would be possible. He had already increased the guard to four officers at all times. It looked like even that was no longer enough.The lines grew longer as more people exhausted whatever food stores they had in their homes. Each day saw more mouths and less food. Hank knew it was the mathematics of famine. The mood grew angrier as stomachs grew emptier.
Hank looked to his deputies guarding the door. The men nervously gripped their shotguns as they looked back to him for reassurance.
“We’re doing the best we can!” He tried to calm the crowd before it became a mob. “We have to make the food we have last until Spring.”
“I’m hungry now!” An angry man replied. He was Hank’s neighbor.
“I know it’s hard, Frank. We’re all suffering, but we have to stick together!” Hank pleaded.
“Too late for that, Hank! I’m goin’ in there and gettin’ all the food I can carry!” Frank turned to the others. “Who’s with me?”
The crowd cheered and rushed toward Hank. He drew his pistol. “Stay back!”
The deputies readied their shotguns.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The crowd ducked all at once. Panicked screams went up from the throng.
Hank looked at his men. None had fired. The shots came from the other side of the parking lot.
Agent Sanger stood with four of her own officers at the far edge of the gathering, her smoking pistol aimed up in the air.
“I know you are hungry,” she said. “How would you all like to go to bed with full bellies tonight?”
“What are you gettin’ at, lady?” Hank’s neighbor spoke again for the group.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m ‘gettin’ at’…Frank, is it?”
The man nodded.
Sanger glanced at one of her agents. He returned a knowing look.
“I am here to tell you that help has arrived, just as I promised.”
“You have food?” Frank asked.
“Plenty.” She laughed. “Enough to make you all fat by Spring!”
“Where is it?”
“It arrived on a train last night. It’s waiting for you at the post office. All you have to do is register yourselves and your families. Then you feast.”
“When can we register?” a woman asked.
“My people are waiting there for you now.”
The crowd evaporated like ether as everyone tripped over one another, rushing to the post office and their promised victuals.
Hank turned back to his deputies. “You boys stay here.”
He got into his squad car as his police radio blurted, “701, this is 702.” It was Gunny.
“Go ahead,” Hank replied.
“Have you turned on your FM radio lately?”
“No.”
“Give it try.”
“Why?”
“You’ll know it when you hear it.”
What now?
The car radio had been nothing but static since the stations all went off the air after the collapse. He turned it on. There was a voice. He turned the channel. Same voice. Another channel. It was there too. He scanned the full band. Every AM and FM channel played the same thing—Eduardo Garcia, the voice of America’s Second Founding. He drove by Sanger’s headquarters. The big screen outside displayed the video to accompa
ny the audio. Loudspeakers simulcast Garcia’s words in case spectators didn’t have a radio handy.
The talking head was reciting a bunch of new rules, executive orders and other nonsense. Then something stopped Hank cold.
Garcia’s image was replaced by footage of a camp. A female narrator spoke in a soothing tone. “Thanks to President Tophet’s Advanced Care Centers, millions of seriously ill Americans in all ten regions are getting the care they urgently need.” The camera advanced into a Quonset hut lined on each side with hospital beds full of smiling, waving patients eating hearty food served by beautiful young orderlies. A team of attractive doctors and nurses made their rounds as the patients dined.
The scene changed to the ruined hulks of transport trucks on an empty highway. The narrator continued, “Constitutionalist extremists continue to conduct cowardly attacks on defenseless targets such as this peaceful convoy delivering needed medical supplies to an Advanced Care Facility. Hundreds of innocent patients died as a result of these vicious actions.”
The view switched to an instructional video about citizen registration procedures.
Hank drove on to the post office to find what looked like half the county there. He left his car and walked to one of the registration stations.
The FEMA agents were swamped with registrants. One agent sat at a field desk with a laptop.
“Full Name,” he said to a twenty-ish girl holding a crying baby.
“Sheila Anne Moore.”
“Baby’s name.”
“Sean Colby Moore.”
“Child’s father’s name.”
“We’re not together.”
“Address…”
“Surrender your firearms,” a different agent at another computer said to a man in a denim jacket.
The registrant handed the agent an old shotgun and a small caliber pistol. Another agent took the weapons.
“All of them,” the agent said.
“That is all of them.”
“You have two more.”
“No I don’t.”
“Our records show that you also own a Beretta nine millimeter and an AR15.”
“How the hell did you know that?”
“No guns, no food. You have until the end of the month. Amnesty ends on the first of December.”
“But I need food. My kids…”
“Next!” An armed agent ushered the man away.
Agents in lab coats stood nearby with RFID injectors, implanting registrants once given the go ahead by the clerks at the computers. Once chipped, each person was given a three day supply of MREs.
Hank made his way to the post office’s fenced in parking lot and peeked through the chain link. It was filled with pallets piled high with MREs. The agents in there wore heavy overcoats. Each had a green armband on the left sleeve. He recognized one of them, then another. Hank soon realized that these green-clad officials were all from Freeport.
He turned to see more emerald armbands directing the crowd all around the post office. Hank was shocked to see one of his deputies among them.
“What are you doing here?” Hank asked the officer.
“I work for the mayor now.”
“When were you gonna tell me?”
The agent shrugged. “I don’t answer to you anymore.”
“You just saved me the trouble of firing you.”
The former deputy pointed to Hank’s pistol. “I’ll take that.”
“Touch it and the next person you answer to will be God himself.”
“Let him be.” Sanger said over Hank’s shoulder.
“Yes ma’am.” The former deputy backed off and found something else to do.
“Sanger.” Hank, said curtly.
“That’s a cold reception for someone who saved your ass twice today. It’s not even lunch yet.”
Hank pointed to the registration desks. “How do you know how many guns people have?”
“We realized a long time ago that gun registration was never going to happen, so we found other ways to track them. We already had the gun and ammunition sales reports, business tax documents, background checks, bank records, credit card receipts, wills, and carry permit applications. All we had to do is develop an algorithm to cross reference all those data points, compile a list of suspects, and match them to the guns. It’s not a hundred percent accurate, but it’s close enough.”
“What if they don’t turn them in?”
“We’re not going to conduct door to door confiscations, if that’s what your asking. When people get tired of watching their children starve to death, they will beg us to take their guns. Then they will thank us once we their gullets are full.”
The young mother Hank saw at the registration desk walked up to Hank and Agent Sanger, her baby in one arm, a sack of MREs and baby formula in the other. The left hands of both mother and child were red and swollen from their new RFID implants.
“Thank you so much!” The girl said to Sanger. “You saved my baby. You saved both of us.” Her eyes grew moist. “I thank God for you.”
“Thank President Tophet. He’s the real savior.” Sanger responded. “We have plenty of food. Come back when you need more.”
“Thank you. I will.” The girl gave Hank a dirty look.“I’m just glad somebody’s doin’ something to help.” She walked away.
“Your popularity is waning, Sheriff.”
“This isn’t a popularity contest.”
“Everything is a popularity contest.” Sanger glanced at Hank’s hand. “You should register. Looks bad when you don’t lead by example.”
Hank indicated his missing left arm. “No place to put the chip.”
“We can use your other hand. Or we can put it in your forehead. It’s all the same to me.”
“No thanks.”
“What about Maggie?”
“I can take care of her.”
“It’s going to be a long winter, Sheriff. Maybe longer than you think.”
“We’ll make do.”
“The world is a dangerous place, getting more dangerous every day. Freeport is no exception.”
“I thought Tophet was here to save us all.”
“His protection only extends to those who ask for it.”
Hank watched another citizen walk past, food in one hand, a chip in the other. “That protection comes at a high price.”
“Nothing is free in this world, Sheriff. Nothing.” Sanger waved a hand at the chain-link fence containing the MREs. “Take all this food for example. It came on the train last night, but it wasn’t without cost. The train came to us full. It did not leave empty.”
“What was on it?”
“Livestock…and a few other things.”
“What other things?”
“Sacrifices—for the alter of progress.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sanger’s lips parted in a mysterious smile.
Hank’s gut tightened.
“Sacrifices must be made. Quotas must be met.” Sanger clasped her hands behind her back. “Like I said, Sheriff. It’s going to be a long winter. Things change. Danger grows. Anything can happen. Be careful. Maggie needs her grandfather.”
“Is that a threat?”
“When was the last time you went to the movies?” Sanger asked. “You should visit the drive-in.”
Sanger strolled off, leaving Hank confused and alone among the crowd.
He hopped back into his cruiser and headed toward the old drive-in. On the way, he passed vacant pastures that were filled with cattle the day before.
Nothing is free.
He pulled up outside of the outdoor theater and walked to the fence. His fingers grasped the chain-link as he looked upon the space inside. Empty. He spotted a guard at the entrance and ran to her.
“Halt!” the agent ordered as Hank approached. She leveled her M4 at him.
“Take it easy.” The sheriff put his hand up. “Where did the prisoners go?”
“There are no prisoners here.
”
“This place was full of them yesterday. Where did they go?”
“No prisoners here. Depart this facility or I will shoot. You have five seconds.”
“Not until you tell me where my people went.”
“Four.”
“I know they were put on a train.
“Three! Her finger moved to the trigger.”
“Where did the train go?”
“Two!”
“Dammit! Where did you take them!”
“One!”
“Fine! Fine. I’m going.” Hank returned to his car and sped to the courthouse.
A familiar voice sounded over his car radio. “This is Lucy Sanger, Special Agent in charge of the greater Freeport area of FEMA Region Four. I just wanted to let you know that our agents are doing all we can to help your great community in these difficult times, but there are traitors among us who seek to undermine our efforts. We need your help to root them out. If you hear something, say something. “
Hank turned the radio up.
“Additionally, the bandit known as Dante has again demanded supplies from Freeport. He has promised to attack the town if this ransom is not met. But we will stand strong together against this threat. We will not be intimidated. We will not give in to fear. We will not tolerate criminals.”
Sanger concluded, “Hundreds of your fellow citizens are gathered at the courthouse to see how we deal with criminals. Come join us if you would like to see a demonstration of our resolve.”
Hank turned his radio off and raced toward town. He found the streets there bustling with people and cars, all of which were headed toward the courthouse. The narrow, small town streets were choked with traffic. Horns honked. Drivers cursed. Nothing moved.
He pulled into the parking lot of a dry cleaner and set out on foot in the same direction as the others.
He saw Green Guard members in heavy brown winter coats busily hanging posters on storefronts along main street.
Strong, handsome young men and women struck patriotic poses, waving the new national flag while holding up copies of Tophet’s Little Green Book. The green banded figures were larger than life, leading the poor masses. The words ‘Be a hero. Join the Green Guard!’ were written across the top of one in bold letters. The motto ‘Obedience, Equity, Sustainability’ flashed across another.
