Chapter Fourteen
The Executioner had decided to do a land crossing back into the United States, as he had never been in Washington State before. He enjoyed his time in Seattle, more so the trek up Mount Rainier than the city itself. The hiking made him feel better, and the angst that had slowly been setting in had now receded. Feeling in a good mood enabled him to get work done efficiently, so he immediately set out to buy a car for his cross-country drive to his hometown. Not being a fan of progress, he did a quick online search of Seattle cities and neighborhoods to find the one with the lowest level of electric car use. The petrochemical-loving city of Renton filled his need for a non-electric car, which he would need if the vehicle was to be of use in his hometown.
The Executioner finished his chore quickly and drove his new diesel engine car east out of Seattle. After about 30 minutes, the disapproving looks ceased as his politically incorrect choice of transportation became more acceptable with the changing demographics. And the changes were a surprise. He had assumed all of Washington State was electric cars, vegan aquaponic farms and marijuana kiosks. But, not too far outside of Seattle, the sights from the Interstate 90 highway revealed a blue collar and rural population. And in the new America that was not a good thing. ‘Blue collar’ was term from a forgotten era when there were still factory jobs to be had. Rural now meant only one thing: poverty. All rural areas were mired in poverty – unless they were sitting on top of oil and gas. Then they were mired in moderate poverty and environmental contaminants. The people throughout the area that The Executioner found himself driving through were, if they were lucky, employed in some sub-contract or service work for the Chinese logging companies working the forests. But most could only dream of steady work.
Farther east, over the mountains and into the rain shadow, the sun came out and the farms began, although it was nearly impossible to actually see a farmer. The circular fields with their center-pivot irrigation sprinklers were dotted out in all directions, with not a single house visible. The massive combines and the labor migrants would harvest in one methamphetamine-fueled harvest later in the year. Until then, only an occasional tractor or crop drone could be seen.
The interstate highway soon started to feel eerily empty. The trucks that were once common were now a rare sight. And with people no longer feeling the need for a personal car – or feeling the need but not having the cash – other motorists were few and far between. Most normal people would fly. Few would bother driving across more than one large state. Even fewer would consider the long drive that The Executioner was undertaking.
The Executioner was used to empty rural areas, but not areas as exposed and treeless as eastern Washington State. Back home in The Executioner’s part of Midwest, a thick line of trees paralleled the roads, leaving you to imagine that perhaps there was something still alive beyond the green barrier. Here there was nothing to obscure the procession of dead towns and abandoned houses along the interstate highway. The death of rural America was on full display.
Despite the lack of drivers, advertisers still dotted the roadside with billboards. Of course, none of the ads were attempting to sell a real product – unless you consider religion a product. Aside from the religious exhortations, there were various migration and work scams: ‘Work in Russia for top wages!’ ‘Guaranteed immigration to Australia!’ ‘China needs English speakers!’ and other false offers littered the roadside like trash.
As The Executioner got closer to the city of Spokane, he spied his favorite series of video billboards so far. The first billboard featured a fluttering Canadian flag and the question ‘Thinking of sneaking into Canada?’ in both English and Spanish. A hundred yards down the road the next billboard read ‘Think again! You won’t make Canada your home!’ The next billboard after that featured a video loop of a Canadrone border patrol UAV firing a missile that flew low to the ground and then sprinkled mini cluster bombs over some unfortunate group of…whoever. The Executioner chuckled, approving of the Canadian approach to undocumented border crossings. The final billboard in the series then cited the grim statistics. It seemed that everybody who illegally enters Canada is either caught, killed, or deported soon after – at least according to the numbers released by the Canadian Prime Minister’s office.
As The Executioner entered the outer suburbs of Spokane he spotted a friendlier Canadian billboard that read ‘Medical or dental degree from a top tier American school? Under 37 years old? Apply for Canada’s rural medical visa! 10 years of service in one of Canada’s beautiful small towns guarantees citizenship!’ This billboard was in English only. As for Americans, those in rural areas could only dream of living anywhere near an actual doctor.
The Executioner crossed the Washington-Idaho border and approached the center of Spokane, which was technically actually Coeur D’Alene. Only the older locals still called the city Spokane-Coeur D’Alene. Spokane won out eventually, thanks to intensive lobbying from the Chamber of Commerce, who felt that ‘Spokane’ was easier to say and remember for the Asian investors who, a decade ago, built most of the downtown high-rises. The city, now approaching four million inhabitants, ignored both the state governments of Washington and Idaho. The attempt by the city of Seattle and the Washington State governor to reign in Spokane through an economic blockade failed miserably, as Spokane negotiated favorable terms from the port of Vancouver and the Canadian government. Spokane’s main road and rail connection headed south, east and north. West to Seattle was a fading connection. The large corporate farms to the west of Spokane also found the state government burdensome, and chose to deal instead with the new city-state, which helped them to export through the Canadian route to their Asian markets.
Passing through the last of the Spokane eastern suburbs, The Executioner was greeted by the sight of the City of Spokane Customs and Immigration Deportation Facility. Beyond the razor wire were the would-be migrants to Spokane. They would be brought before a judge, stripped of their assets and possessions, and placed on a budget prison plane flight to wherever in the United States was considered by the deportees to be the most inconvenient place to wind up in. Basically, the punishment for illegally entering Spokane or overstaying your visitor’s visa was a penniless exile to a homeless camp in a strange city where, if you were lucky, there would still be a church that was enthusiastic about feeding America’s army of beggars and hobos.
East of Spokane, beyond the city’s reach, the real America began again. The only business appeared to be logging, and the convoys of heavy trucks passed by with their loads of timber, escorted by old Humvees with autonomously-controlled .50 caliber machine guns mounted on top. The convoy’s guns automatically tracked The Executioner’s car as he drove by. It was not a good feeling to see right down the barrel of a gun. It was a feeling that the hijackers had had enough of. The road piracy and kidnap of truck drivers had declined steeply as security stepped up. There was no longer any serious threat, but the companies knew that the piracy would return as soon as they cut back on security.
As the prime timber lands transitioned to less commercially viable forests, the quality of the road surface deteriorated. But more worrying was the warning sign: ‘You are now entering a Department of Transportation patrolled region.’ Most people who lived here were well aware of what this meant. The Executioner had only found out when researching his road trip. This meant that the police on the road were not there to protect or serve you. They were there to kill anyone they suspected of road piracy. Their name was DOTSOC: Department of Transportation Special Operations Command. At their disposal were unarmed surveillance UAVs, armed drones, spotter planes, several satellites, heavily armored intercept vehicles, refurbished A-10 attack planes, and numerous weapons systems in development or in the early stages of procurement.
The Department of Transportation found its military ventures more rewarding than its secondary line of work. As a result, it now focused more on combat operations rather than on road construction and maintenance. The hea
d of the Department of Transportation directed most of his energy towards arranging the acquisition of weapons systems in consultation with lobbyists from weapons manufacturers and the senators that he helped to get elected. His deputy in turn was mostly engaged in hyping the road piracy threat – something that had long been on the decline due to the take-no-prisoners attitude of the various armed lawmen that patrolled the roads.
As for the actual management of transport infrastructure, highway construction and road repairs west of the Mississippi had long ago been subcontracted to a large Turkish company. The Turks, apparently completely immune to terrible security conditions, sent their engineers and foremen to supervise the equally desensitized Guatemalan and Mayan laborers who arrived every construction season from the Chiapas region of Mexico. DOTSOC found guard duty to be beneath their dignity, and so the construction crews and their equipment were protected by Ugandan guards who were much cheaper, less trigger-happy and far more sober than American guards. Their orders were: ‘Protect the equipment first; the Turks second; and the laborers last.’
DOTSOC country was a blur of half-dead towns and semi-abandoned wastelands populated by multi-ethnic drug gangs and rampant decay, especially once The Executioner crossed into Montana. The city of Missoula was barely alive, with the University of Montana long gone. Butte was poisoned by every type of heavy metal and chemical imaginable. The city was completely abandoned, except for the Chinese mining company that was reworking the old mining sites. Their Burmese workers would likely have short and very unhealthy lives. Not even Americans would take the mining jobs here. Farther east was Bozeman – also stripped of its university – which appeared to be getting taken over by nature. Not much of Billings could be seen at night, and very few lights were actually on.
But Montana was, in the eyes of The Executioner, the most beautiful state be had ever visited. He imagined it as a paradise a century ago. He couldn’t understand why such dysfunction had set in. Then he remembered that he blamed both the government and the people of America for the death spiral that the country was entering. This brought back the unsettled feeling that he had lost on Mount Rainier. And his mind was now comparing his present feelings with the complete and total relaxation that he had eventually come to feel in Saigon. It was deeply frustrating.
He didn’t feel any better before or after he went to sleep in his car in the outskirts of Billings. The truck stop he slept in offered secured parking for a fee, but the security measures included bright flood lights that The Executioner couldn’t keep out of his eyes, no matter how he positioned the shirt over his face. The next morning began on a depressing note as he drove by the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. It might as well have been a monument to two dead cultures, with a large sign apologizing for the closure and promising to re-open when the security and funding situation improved. The sign was more than a decade old and beginning to fade.
Farther down the road a large home-made sign read: ‘Dear non-Native Americans: How you live now is how we’ve been living for the last 200 years. Don’t panic yet. It’s going to get worse.’ It wasn’t clear what the point was in erecting this sign. But what was clear was that for the Native Americans it was also getting worse in terms of quality of life; but better if you prioritize land ownership. The Plaines Indians in this and in other sparsely populated rural areas were moving back onto Federal land that they had been long ago forced off of. And for now, they didn’t include private property in the unauthorized resettlement schemes, but their non-native neighbors were still wary.
Living on the resettled land was hard, but several European charities were supporting the Indians with buffalo reintroduction programs while building schools and medical clinics. The buffalo programs, however, were determined to be not only worthless, but actually harmful to local livelihoods. The buffalo were destroying fence lines and colonizing new areas on their own without any help, and they had no commercial value to the locals compared to the cattle that they chased away or killed. But the European donors always insisted on a buffalo-component to their development projects on the American Plaines. Some of the same charities with unclear funding were allegedly also secretly providing training and a range of military equipment well suited to the insurgent guerilla. If and when the federal government decided it would move against what it termed ‘illegal squatters,’ it would likely find a very difficult and bloody job in front of it.
Wyoming was even more deserted than Montana. Traces of a fence of some sort could be seen along stretches of the road. Beyond what remained of the fence line, there was nothing but sage brush and isolated tufts of grass. Occasionally a dirt road would cut across the interstate highway, leaving a patch of dust on the road. There were no signs to indicate where these roads came from and where they were going. Only locals knew and it was of no concern to outsiders. Very little around here was of concern to outsiders, something that many locals of the anti-government variety grew to appreciate.
The Executioner knew that one of the many potholes on the decaying interstate highway would eventually cause a flat tire – not too serious of a problem. But after pulling off to the side of the road in South Dakota with a flat, he could see that the pothole had also put the rim of the tire so badly out of alignment that he would need to hand everything over to a garage. The car had already said as much, displaying the recommendation on the monitor screen – a recommendation that The Executioner didn’t even bother too look at.
The Executioner eventually resorted to allowing the car to call the American Patriotic Automobile Association. If the Association wanted to make one thing clear, it was that they were in fact Patriotic, even if 80% of their members drove foreign electric cars. Even the most patriotic American could not help but acknowledge the fact that foreign cars were half the price and twice the quality. As for the non-electric customer, they had to agree to not display the Association’s sticker on the car, and they would be treated just as well – for 40% over the regular membership price.
When the tow truck driver dispatched from Rapid City eventually showed up, he was, unsurprisingly, wearing body armor and sporting an old Heckler & Koch MP7A1 Personal Defense Weapon, which in some cities could only be termed an ‘Illegal Personal Offense Weapon.’ Of course, the city governments of New York and Washington never appreciated the nuances of German submachine gun ownership. But in Fly-over Country everybody had a gun these days, even the hippies and their marijuana plantations – especially the hippies and their marijuana plantations.
The jovial tow truck driver strode over to The Executioner’s car to take a glance at the rim, more out of force of habit than necessity – thanks to remote diagnostics. He greeted The Executioner in the traditional local manner.
“Hey man, you want to buy a gun? My scanner says you’re unarmed.”
The Executioner smiled and retorted “No thanks. Guns scare me.”
“That’s exactly why you need your own gun. You know that some people have illegal scanners and can see that you have no gun, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m only doing one trip and I only stop for diesel. I’m a fast moving target.”
“Sure, sure. Well, you are going to probably have to wait a few days in Rapid City until a new wheel flies in. Parts for the newer cars take forever. So you have plenty of time to cruise the gun shops. But if you want something decent, and I mean German, let me know. I have exclusive dealer rights in a 50-mile radius from Rapid City for the Heckler & Koch line of products and I offer a quick local repair and support service on top of the manufacturer guarantees. But seriously, why don’t you have a gun? From the wrong side of Spokane until the Pennsylvania state line is, like, Mad Max territory. I mean, we’re not Missouri or some crazy place like that, but there’s shit that happens here that you won’t see in the news. It would make you sick. Entire families, man. Gone. Those roadside memorials are probably only 1% of what’s gone down on the roads here.”
“Yeah…” was all The Executioner could sa
y in return to the tow truck driver’s rapid-fire monologue.
“What you gotta realize is that the DOTSOC police are here to make money or to kill whoever they think are the bad guys, not to help you. They pay for their positions now, and they gotta make that money back somehow. And road piracy is picking up again. It was gone for a few years, but it’s back. And it’s clear that the new pirates have a deal going with some corrupt DOTSOC guys. If you are in the transport business, you pay the DOTSOC crew or the pirates will get your trucks, guaranteed.”
“Huh.”
The tow truck driver, deciding he had dispensed enough knowledge, then asked a very vague question.
“So, did you just get released, or have you been out for a while?”
“From where?” was the only question The Executioner could give as a reply.
“From prison.”
“What makes you think I’ve served time in prison?”
“You got the look. I was there. I can recognize it. I can’t explain it in words, you know? But you got the look. The way you act and hold yourself. It matches. You are respectful, but wary. You are keeping your distance, but you aren’t acting scared. You also seem like you’re sorta tightly wound, and like you could release all that energy.”
“Yeah, you aren’t the first ex-con to recognize that. Where did you do your time?” he asked the tow truck driver.
“Here. In South Dakota. I was a road pirate, ironically enough. I got caught with most everybody else in the big sweep by the Interstate Army guys – that’s what we called DOTSOC back then. I didn’t go after regular people like some of the others. Me and my crew hijacked transport trucks and sent the driver walking. I ended up doing my time in the main State and Tribal correctional facility. It’s a joint jurisdiction thing to save money. It made for some crazy racial stuff. But I kept my head down and did my seven years. And you?”
“I did three of a five year sentence in Illinois for accessory to armed robbery. I drove the car. That was a while back. I also did two years in a Chinese prison.”
“China? Damn. How was that?”
“Very controlled. Not much happened. There was a separate section for the local white collar guys that were put in for financial crimes. Foreigners willing to teach English were welcome in that section. I guess we were considered the wimps. I learned a bit of Chinese and a lot about how dirty money works.”
“Why did the Chinese throw you in?” asked the tow truck driver.
“I was in a bar and some random guy punched a girl and then kicked her while she was on the ground. I didn’t know who they were or why he hit the girl, but I figured the guy deserved a beating.”
“Two years for beating a guy up?”
“Well, he died,” noted The Executioner.
“Shit, OK. So then the question goes in the other direction: why only two years? I thought that China was hardcore with punishments.”
“The guy that died was American; the girl he was beating was local.”
“Ha! Good stuff. Beating up local women in foreign countries is something you should know is not good for your health. Never underestimate the stupidity of your fellow American!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to kill the guy,” said The Executioner. “I only kicked him in the head a couple times.”
“Huh. The human body can be a fragile thing… Well, anyways, I should get moving. The car behind the tow truck is yours until your ride is all fixed up. Throw your stuff in and off you go. Insurance regulations say you gotta let it auto-drive for you, sorry! But they’re paying this bill. So manual drive is disabled, except in emergency situations where it will switch on at your request. And, uh, if you don’t want to use your phone, go ahead and use the navigation screen in the car to find a motel or a couch to crash on. My suggestions are listed on the front page menu. Most of the places in town are half decent, but I’ve put a warning notation on the profiles of the places that are cheap, but full of addicts, weirdos or US Air Force guys. And if you were Air Force, I thank you for your service and for whoever you’re bombing this week. Please add Washington, DC to your target list…. Just kidding, man! I know you’re not Air Force. If you were one of them, you would have said some weird shit about me being sent by Jesus or something. God I hate those guys….I was a Marine. Am a Marine, as they say. Come to think of it, I hate most Marines too, always talking about how they are still a Marine. But at least other Marines don’t tell me I’m going to hell. I already know I’m going to hell. After I was discharged I fought in France for cash Euro money. Nah…just kidding. I don’t believe in hell and I love the south of France. I didn’t serve long enough to get my French passport, but I can visit visa-free whenever I want. The French are great, by the way. Total rednecks. I love ‘em! Don’t listen to American media commentators. They lie.”
The Executioner had all the information he needed for an exciting three days in Rapid City. Thanking the tow truck driver for the help, he got in his new car and was driven off.
Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom Page 32
