Flame

by Jim Heskett

  He was in the porch swing, but not moving.

  "Oh no," Tenney said. "Is he… is he dead?" They all broke into a run. Tenney reached there first, his big boots thundering up the steps and making the whole house shake. Rosia arrived a moment later. When she knelt, she could hear the air wheezing in and out of his nose and see his shoulders rise and fall.

  No, Xevon wasn't dead. He was drunk. Dead drunk. Passed out and in no condition to drive.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Yorick knelt down and looked Xevon in the eye. The younger pursed his lips and studied the elder. He still seemed too drunk. He could barely keep his head from swiveling around his neck.

  "If we don't go soon," Tenney said, "it will be daylight outside. We can't sit here forever."

  Since discovering Xevon drunk on his porch, the group had moved inside the man's house. They’d filled him with food and water for several hours, trying to sober him up. No one—not even Xevon himself—knew how much he had drunk the previous evening. But it had been enough to make him bleary-eyed several hours later.

  “I’m fine,” Xevon said.

  Rosia crossed her arms. "What do you say, Yorick?"

  Yorick stood. "You can drive?"

  "I can drive.”

  Yorick shrugged as he looked at his companions. "Then, I guess we go. We stick to Rosia’s plan but know that we’re now also fighting the dawn. Townspeople are going to be up and about in a couple hours.”

  Tenney excused himself to use the bathroom, and Malina went with him. Yorick and Rosia stood in the room, observing Xevon. His eyes were half-shut, and he tried to force them open every few seconds.

  “Do you remember the joyride?” Rosia asked.

  “The what?”

  “Three summers ago.”

  The memory bubbled up to the surface of Yorick’s brain. “Yes. Yeah, I remember. Can’t believe I almost forgot that. The guard who went crazy. It was all we talked about for weeks.”

  Three summers before, one of Wybert’s plantación guards had too much to drink one evening and decided to borrow one of Wybert’s vehicles for a good time. Yorick and Rosia had seen it, walking out of the cafeteria after dinner. The car burst out of Wybert’s garage, then drove in circles across the grounds outside the mansion. He destroyed the lord's flower beds. Everyone present watched in stunned silence as the guard, drunkenly giggling, piloted the car. Not very well, either. It stopped and started, gears grinding as he tried to figure out how to do it.

  Everyone assumed this guard would be put against the wall and shot to pieces to be made an example for his insubordination. And, while Wybert was furious, he did no such thing. He merely took the guard into his mansion where he was never seen again.

  “Maybe you can do it,” Rosia said, looking Yorick in the eyes.

  “Me?”

  “You’re the only one of us who has any experience driving.”

  Yorick turned up his palms. “Sure, but that was one time, as part of an experiment. If you remember, it didn’t go well. Wybert never let us do it again after that day, especially not after what the guard did on that joyride.”

  “Nothing wrong with me,” Xevon blurted. “I’ll get you where you need to go. You young ones can stop worrying about me.”

  Rosia bit her lip as Tenney and Malina came back into the room. Everyone gathered their possessions and shuffled out the door, letting the screen door bang against the front each time. Yorick and Rosia were the last to leave.

  Before she left, she held up a hand with her pinky extended. Yorick touched his pinky against hers.

  "Always," she said.

  He hesitated a moment, nervous energy making his finger jitter against hers. “Always.”

  When everyone had gone, Yorick helped Xevon up, and the man did seem a little wobbly. But, definitely better than a few hours before.

  Xevon grinned. "Don't you worry about me, kid. I've had nights a lot worse than last night, and I'm always just fine in the morning."

  Yorick didn't know what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut. They ventured out to the front yard, and he slipped into the passenger seat of Xevon’s car. It was a curvy thing, exotic and sleek. Much sexier than the utilitarian cars that populated Lord Wybert’s collection.

  Xevon placed a key fob against the panel next to the steering wheel, and the engine roared to life. A bank of electronics behind the steering wheel flicked on, an orange hue from the glow painting Xevon’s face.

  “You like that? How about the way this kitten purrs? This is one of the last models they made with a manual drive option.”

  Yorick didn't quite understand. It sounded nothing like what he imagined a kitten’s purr should sound like, but he nodded appropriately anyway. "Let's keep quiet, please.”

  Xevon nodded as he pulled the car out of his driveway and crept along the neighborhood street. He swerved a little, enough to make Yorick's temperature rise, but he managed to get them to the end of the street without crashing the car. That was a promising first step, at least.

  “How about you give me that chip now?” Xevon asked.

  Yorick shook his head. “Not until we get to the next town.” He pointed toward the gate at the eastern end of Pinedale. "We’re going to idle right over there behind the gazebo in the park. And then, as soon as the gate starts to open, you hit the pedal over toward it. Then, you stop, I open the back door to let in our three friends. Then, we move out the gate as fast as possible.”

  "Sounds easy enough."

  “The whole thing should take no more than ten seconds once I tell you to go. Can you do this?”

  Xevon let out a burp. “I can do this, kid. Stop pestering me and let’s get on with it.”

  Yorick slipped into the back seat and gripped the door handle. He narrowed his eyes out the tinted window, staring at the little shack where the gate crew monitored from a surveillance station. Yorick could see it all plainly. Tenney, off to the side, waiting in the shadows to intervene if the women got into trouble. Rosia and Malina, entering the gate shack, distracting the guards so they could open the gate.

  Yorick watched Rosia shuffling through the shack, positioning herself between the guard and the big yellow button on the panel that had to be the one for opening the gate. Tenney moved closer. Malina gave a laugh that sounded hearty and fake, drawing attention to her. Rosia moved in front of the button. The guards weren’t watching.

  "This is it," Xevon said. His hands tensed around the wheel. He licked his lips, leaning forward. Then, after a quick pause, he pointed to the north. “Kid, there's a little problem there.”

  Yorick squinted in that direction to see five men with rifles, marching step in step. Big, burly guys, all dressed in the same garb as Jefe’s personal guards.

  Men out for a late night interior perimeter sweep. Headed in the direction of the gate shack. Their feet lifted and fell all at the same time. Their eyes forward, their chests broad and shoulders back.

  Had they noticed anything strange yet? Didn’t seem like it. They were talking amongst themselves, smiling and laughing at each other.

  They would notice soon, though. In one or two more seconds, this whole situation would blow up.

  “Mierda,” Yorick said. No time to hope they might suddenly reverse course and remain oblivious. The roving guards had a set course. They were closing in on the gate shack.

  Yorick rolled down the window and leaned out as Rosia pressed the button to open the gate. An alarm sounded. The rotating blast bounced all around, echoing off the corrugated metal walls of this section of the town barricade.

  Tenney raced forward into the shack. The guards on the perimeter sweep reacted to the sound, searching around, hunting for the source.

  The gate’s wheels started to roll, drawing back. Yorick could see the road on the other side, revealed a little at a time.

  "Hey!" Yorick said, to distract the roving guards. They didn’t hear him, or chose not to look.

  Within two seconds of entering, Tenney had engaged
both of the shack guards. He went to work quickly. With almost no trouble, he wrestled both of them to the ground. Rosia and Malina jumped over their prone bodies to escape the shack as Tenney held them down. The gate was halfway open. Tenney jumped up and trailed after the women.

  But the roving guards now had seen the source of the commotion. All at once, their eyes fixed on the two young women fleeing the shack, followed by the oversized former farm serf.

  Tenney, Malina, and Rosia raced toward the car, but it was too late. The guards all raised their rifles, pointing them at the fleeing gate openers. The guards’ attention tracked the runners.

  They were going to shoot. Yorick’s friends wouldn’t make it to the car in time.

  He panicked. He had no idea what to do. "Xevon," he said, desperate for counsel. Or hope. "We need to do something, now."

  "I'm on it," Xevon said, and then he slammed his foot down to gun the engine. The Camaro raced forward, but not toward the gatecrashers, rather, directly at the perimeter guards.

  Yorick’s head twitched, confused for a brief second. They were headed away from his friends. Why?

  A cold understanding gripped Yorick. Xevon intended to turn his car into a weapon. To drive straight into the five roving perimeter guards, their weapons now tracking Yorick’s friends.

  “What are you doing?” Yorick yelled, but his voice was lost to the wind out the car window.

  A couple bullets punctured Xevon’s front window, the shots whizzing through the air. But nothing hit home. Half a second later, Xevon crashed into the crew of guards, knocking them to the ground.

  Yorick, horrified, listen to their bones crunch. The car bounced around as it drove up over the bodies. Yorick didn’t hear their screams and cries, but he could certainly imagine the fear and confusion those guards were feeling.

  That had happened. In an instant, all of them had been squashed like flowers under the foot of a careless pedestrian.

  “Stop!” Yorick shouted. “Don’t do this!” But, it was already too late. It had already happened.

  Xevon backed up, the Camaro’s wheels rising as it raised up over the bodies a second time. Xevon put it in gear and jerked the wheel to point it toward the others. “Get the door!"

  Yorick snapped awake as Xevon swerved within a meter of the others. He pushed the door open, and his companions jumped in. Frantic, he shuffled to the front seat of the car. Engine revving. Xevon pointed the nose of his beast toward the open gate leading out of Pinedale. And in another second, they were out on the open road, speeding along the highway.

  An excerpt from “A brief history of the decline of the United States of America”

  by James Eppstein, Ph.D.

  The first shot in the war was fired in Little Rock, Arkansas. Little Rock was an anomaly because it was one of those places that neither the Mexicans nor the Canadians owned outright. The Mexicans had bought bits and pieces of the city over a few years. The Canadians—who many people had begun to refer to as “Frenchies” by this point—came in after and bought up the rest of it.

  No one knows exactly why it happened this way. Maybe neither side viewed the city as having strategic importance. Or, maybe they thought it could work to jointly have control over one city. There are some writings that suggest the Canadians viewed Little Rock as an opportunity to have negotiations with the Mexicans there. Maybe they intended to use it as a prototype for a peaceful partnership municipality.

  There’s no direct evidence of this, however. Who knows, though, how things might have worked out if both sides had taken seats at the bargaining table? If there had been peacekeeping forces on the ground to make sure everyone played nice with each other.

  Because that’s certainly not how it happened in real life.

  Americans must've had a propensity to choose sides because the average population of Little Rock seemed to be aligning themselves with the Mexicans. The Frenchies were seen as unwelcome. I would posit the reason for this as simply being that the Mexicans arrived first.

  And so, when the Canadian government bought a hobby and craft store in the same strip mall as several Mexican-owned businesses, the tensions flared immediately. At first, it was petty vandalism and robbery. But those lower-grade animosities lasted only a few weeks.

  The first person killed in the war was a Canadian man named Marc Philippe. He was shot in the head in the parking lot of the strip mall by the owner of a Chinese restaurant two doors down.

  Around the same time, other minor skirmishes were happening in places like Sacramento, Oklahoma City, and Memphis, but Little Rock was seen as the genesis.

  At the time, there was still an American president, who ordered the National Guard to intervene. What was seen as a measure to ease tensions and quell any further fighting actually made things much worse. During the fallout from the currency crisis, formerly-public agencies like police and firefighters took on a completely different operational philosophy. Essentially, they became opportunistic and for-profit. If you wanted the help of the police, you had to pay. You had to be able to barter something worthwhile or offer them a good reason to help if you were in trouble.

  So, when the National Guard arrived on the scene in Little Rock, the situation worsened immediately. Mexicans paid off the National Guard to join their side of the dispute. The Canadians negotiated with the police to join their side. There were no neutral third-party arbiters to keep anyone from escalating the tense situation.

  Within a day, the standoff had blossomed into a bloody conflict. “Americans” were killing other Americans in the dozens, and then hundreds. Once this began, there was no way to come back from it. It spread like a virus, from Arkansas outward.

  The skirmishes in the aforementioned cities of Memphis and Oklahoma City melded into Little Rock. A wave of violence continued, and while there was no congress to declare war, no one could argue that it had already begun.

  The Canadian armies descended from the north, and the Mexicans rose up from the south. Making matters worse were the American–hold out militia members who took this as an opportunity to start their own rebellions. This was the chance they’d been waiting for to repel these foreign invaders.

  Some historians blame these militias for the Mexican use of the EMP bombs, but I think that's just an easy answer. Mexicans were going to use the EMPs no matter what.

  Either way, once the war started, the destruction was total and complete.

  It sounds like a biblical lesson, this act of destroying the thing you love in order to fight for the thing you love. There must be a parable or proverb (or something) about this. Regardless, the Mexican and Canadian armies battled all over the continental United States, destroying much of it in the process.

  Because many of the Americans sided with the Mexicans, the politically-minded Mexican opportunists inserted themselves into positions of power within the failing American government.

  Doing so gave the appearance that Mexico was interested in maintaining the sovereignty of the United States and keeping the prior government functioning. But, as we now know, this was an illusion. A trick to gain absolute power. They now had control of the ICBMs. Combining that with their EMPs, Mexicans obliterated entire cities under Frenchie control. Bangor, Seattle, Charleston, Chicago. They were all destroyed on the same day.

  It’s hard to imagine now the scale of that sort of power, even though—in the grand scheme of the country’s history—it wasn’t all that long ago. Millions dead by the press of a button.

  There have been disagreements about how long the initial war lasted. Some say one year, some say five years. What matters is that, in the end, the Mexicans emerged victorious. The whole of the United States—or the new, nameless country that had been known as the United States—was under the sovereignty of the Mexican government. Pockets of Frenchie resistance remained, but they were little more than terrorist cells at that point.

  The American militias had been eradicated completely. I believe the Mexicans cared more about stamping th
em out than the Canadians. The Mexicans knew they could unite the people against the Frenchies. But, they would have to kill off any loyalty to the former America to do so.

  And, as history shows, they succeeded.

  When the first war ended, Mexico was the only clear winner, but there were several losers. However, it wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Xevon drove, Yorick stared out the passenger seat window, to the pre-dawn expanse of wilderness. At night, he’d seen little besides the blur of trees and the occasional deer trotting across the small flat areas. Still another few minutes until the sun would rise.

  He kept picturing Xevon's car crashing into those patrolling guards. The sounds of their bones crunching under the car's tires. Yorick repeatedly asked himself if there could have been anything he should’ve done to stop it. The answer was obvious, of course. He could've grabbed the steering wheel and forced it to the side, or he could've leaned over and jabbed his foot on the brake pedal.

  But, he hadn't done anything. He let it happen. A group of men just doing their jobs who had no direct intention of hurting him. Would those five patrolling guards have fired on Rosia and the others? Would they have hauled them down to Jefe’s office for questioning?

  It didn’t matter now. They were all dead.

  Of course, not long ago, Yorick had killed several people himself. Lord Wybert’s guard and the soldados. He’d pulled a trigger and watched life bleed out of people as a result.

  Somehow, this felt different. Unjustified.

  So, Yorick stared out the window and let the guilt rattle around inside him as Xevon drove and whistled melodies to songs Yorick had never heard before.

  Yorick’s head jerked toward Xevon when he realized the older man had asked him a question. “What?”

  “I asked you what’s in Cheyenne. I understand why you’d want to get out of Pinedale, being wanted by the soldados, but why go all the way down there?”