Tropic of Kansas

by Christopher Brown

  You could see the river from the overpass as you came into the old downtown, and you could see it was dead. Something about the color, like chemical mud, the gelatinous texture of the current, the way all the banks were devoid of flora and even the adjacent urban blocks appeared to have been cleared out.

  Along the highway was a billboard with the image of the President, back when he had both arms, out in a green field with a group of farmers in their biotech logo ball caps and scientists in their company lab coats watching the new corn come up, corn so big it looked sci-fi. The governor was there, too, his hand on the shoulders of one of the farmers. They called him governor for life, which used to be a joke, until the dominant factions made it real.

  The militia base where they had Moco was a gated compound out on the east end of the town, the home of one of the local owner class families who relied on the militia to protect their property and keep the other locals under control.

  The militia were mostly white, generally stupid, and all scary. The kind of men you would avoid if you saw them on the street, especially if you were black and a woman. The midwestern ones were extra dangerous, because most of them seemed kind of nice when you first talked to them. Nice like the guy at church who smiles at you and offers you a brownie before he tells you how he is going to regulate your life. It helped if you remembered that they were as miserable as the people they were policing. Guys, and a few gals, who had grown up in these blighted quarters neglected by capital and had no ticket out. The kind of people who believed it when the politicians who worked for the businessmen—or were the businessmen, using their fortunes to buy another flavor of power—told them that the source of their suffering was other people living among them, the people who had even less than them and were trying to cut in line.

  Having a black woman in a big-city suit show up at their door was not quite as exciting for these guys as having aliens land, but Tania tried to use the shock to her advantage, and to make herself feel as alpha as she could manage among this predatory gang.

  The welcome party were a big ruddy guy in bulletproof brown overalls with built-in ammo pouches and the smell of cigarettes, and a little red-bearded guy dressed more like a run-down pastor than a militiaman, complete with a wooden cross hanging from his neck—and a big pistol on his belt. Turned out he was the doctor, Dr. Craven, and the big guy was the commander. Patrol Leader Koenig was the way the commander introduced himself, but then he said just call me Bob.

  “Where’s my prisoner, Bob?” asked Tania.

  “So which agency are you with again?” asked Bob.

  “OSI,” she said, showing him her ID badge. “Seconded to Secret Service for now. You can cross-check my credentials on the govnet.”

  “Okay, they don’t give us access to that, but they called and said you’d be coming. We got him down here in the basement.”

  “We’ve been giving him the special treatment, just like you guys asked,” said Dr. Craven.

  “I’ll be the judge of whether you’ve been following the protocols,” said Tania, asserting status she didn’t have, and hoping it would work. Seemed like it did, from the look they gave each other.

  The house was huge, on a big acreage, a suburban home converted to paramilitary command center. The walls were covered with big maps of the area, annotated in black grease pencil and red marker. Tania saw photos of targets, some of them mug shots, others surveillance photos. Radios and computers and all manner of gear. Styrofoam cups and a big pile of beer cans in a corner. More guys who looked like Bob, other guys who were leaner and harder looking, and one Asian woman who looked toughest of all, even though she couldn’t have been much taller than five feet. More guns than Tania had ever seen in one place outside of an armory. And tons of motivational posters, the banners of identity.

  Out on the porch were dog kennels holding two German shepherds and a pair of pit bulls. One of the dogs, a tiger-striped pit with scars across his snout, stared right at Tania as she walked by.

  “Come on down here,” said Bob, unlocking a triple-bolted metal door that led to the basement.

  The light down there flickered, the barely perceptible strobe of cheap fluorescents.

  Bob led and Dr. Craven shuffled behind her as they walked into a hallway of cinder-block walls and cell doors made from the material of chain-link yard fences. The cells were empty, except for the one at the end, which had a solid door with a tiny glass window. Tania had to stand on her tiptoes to look.

  Inside was a naked little brown kid, strapped to a cot, freshly shaved head propped up with a bunch of cheap pillows.

  “What the hell?” said Tania.

  “He had a concussion,” said Dr. Craven. “We needed to keep him elevated.”

  It was cold down here, winter basement cold, and you could see it was even colder in the cell. Opposite the bed was a small portable toilet, overdue for a cleaning.

  “This is a total violation of protocol. A violation of human rights.”

  “Don’t come in here talking about ‘human rights,’ girl,” said Bob, turning nasty fast. “We’re fighting terror, you understand, and this is how your own people showed us to do it. We’re keeping him safe and healthy until you all come get him.”

  “Don’t call me ‘girl,’ big Bob,” said Tania, looking up and jabbing her finger at him without actually touching him. “And don’t tell me what the rules are. I know all the rules. I can quote them to you. Like the rules that authorize me to suspend your militia privileges pending review the minute I see something I consider a violation. Just because no one ever has the guts to yank it doesn’t mean people like you aren’t on a short leash. Jesus.”

  You could see that Bob had never been bossed around by a black woman. He was back on his heels for the moment, but Tania knew that particular spell wouldn’t last long. As soon as he got out of her sight he would be scheming how to get the pecking order back the way he liked it.

  Tania looked over at Dr. Craven—his eyes, his weird little beard, his wooden cross—and gave him new orders. “Unbind that boy. Get him some clothes. Bring me some water. Better yet, some hot coffee. And a space heater.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Bob, turning away. “You do it, Doc.”

  “Who are you?” said Moco.

  “My name is Tania. I work in Washington, for an office you’ve never heard of, investigating rich crooks.”

  Moco rubbed his face, then rubbed his arms. He had his clothes back now, and the sweatshirt she made them give him. He felt the hoodie, looked at it, like he couldn’t remember where it came from, and then leaned forward, looked right at her, pulled back his sleeve to expose his left forearm.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked.

  His arm was fresh and irritated in a red tender spot just above the wrist. In the middle of the spot was a cluster of black bars and dots, but it didn’t look like it was made of tattoo ink.

  “I think it’s an ID,” said Tania.

  “Thought so,” said Moco, looking down at it, looking pissed, then pulling his sleeve back down.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tania.

  “Fuck you, too,” said Moco.

  “Who did that to you?”

  “That creepy-ass doctor,” said Moco. “Him and two other dudes. Woke me up in the middle of the night last night.”

  “I’ll find out what it is. He is creepy.”

  “Comes in here with sugary treats and talks to me about Jesus in bad Spanish and tells me in his soft voice how I can get better treatment if I just rat on everyone I care about. How my tattoos, the ones I came here with, are going to send me to hell and that he could take them off if I want to be ‘clean.’”

  “What else did they do? I can make a report.”

  “A report? You must think I’m as stupid as them.”

  “Tell me. I can tell you want to.”

  He looked down, then looked at her.

  “Fuck with me every way they can think of. Stand there and watch me while I’m taking a shi
t. Punch me around.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” said Tania. She wanted to hold the kid. She started thinking in the back of her mind how she could get him out.

  They brought the coffee, and Tania helped Moco feel better, or at least more comfortable.

  They talked for a long time, and as he drank more coffee he became more chatty, even if he seemed to know very little about the subjects Tania wanted to cover. Which was part of her plan—the technique where you ask questions you know the subject can’t answer, questions so hard they make his brain hurt, so that when you get around to the questions you really want answered, the subject is keen to display his knowledge. It didn’t always work, but it worked more times than not.

  She asked him about senior leadership in the underground, what they were planning, what their beliefs and ideals were. She asked him the same kind of questions about the movement in New Orleans, who had survived the Repo, where they hid. She asked him about antennas and secret frequencies and pirate TV, even quizzing him on codes. She got more from him than she expected. About safe houses he’d worked in Chicago, down south, and around here. About holes in the border. About the autonomous cooperative in Iowa City, and the supplies they provided to others. That was when she showed him the picture of Sig.

  “Where was this guy during the raid?” she asked.

  “Gone,” said Moco. “He was gone like three days before that.”

  “Where did he go?” Tania watched for the tells, trying to assess whether Moco was lying.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Where would you go?”

  “Where he would go is keep moving. Maybe New Orleans. Sounds like there’s sanctuary there.”

  “Not anymore. Unless you count the camps.”

  “Not what I heard. Where else would you go if you were him?”

  “South. All the way, across the border.”

  “Nicaragua?”

  “Nicaragua’s over. You could see it even before the merger.”

  “How many ‘business trips’ have you made to Nicaragua?”

  “A couple.”

  “Land?”

  “Yeah, first time. That sucked. So I introduced my teammates to some guys I know that have boats that work the coast.”

  “Is that where you took the Minnesotan?”

  “I didn’t take him nowhere. I picked that other lady up to go to Houston. Real top secret stuff.”

  “What lady?”

  “The burned lady. Traveled all covered up.”

  Tania tried to imagine the scene. Made a list in her head of underground leaders. Ones who would match that weird description.

  “Name?” she asked.

  “They never said, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Was it Maxine Price?”

  He paused. Tania tried not to hold her breath at the implausibility of her question, and the possibility of his answer.

  “If you want me to take you away from these marshmallow crackers you need to tell me it all, Mauricio.”

  “I didn’t even know who she was. They said she didn’t used to look like that, and I never even knew what she looked like the first time.”

  “She was the Vice President of the United States.”

  “Yeah, I heard, but I didn’t know. I was like a little fucking kid back then.”

  “Did you know she was supposed to be dead?”

  “She looked pretty worn out.”

  “Who was with her?”

  “Nobody. Some people brought her to the boat when we picked her up but she was the only one who got on.”

  “Hard to believe a VIP fugitive like her would travel solo. Crazy.”

  “She was a real nice lady. Real smart. I didn’t understand half the shit she said but when I did it was pretty cool. Don’t you think we should all be more like how they were doing it in New Orleans before the Repo? You should have seen it. Crazy. They were like people from the future. Only like a future that came from a totally different past.”

  “Now it’s just the past. And a lot of us might like the ideas, but not think it’s okay to blow up the White House to make them real.”

  “You don’t think someone should blow up that asshole?”

  “You know that’s another federal felony you just committed?”

  He shivered and stared at her.

  “Where is Maxine Price now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did you leave her?”

  “I told you already, didn’t I? New Orleans. We got tracked, fucking submarine drones, who knows. Diverted in time. Delivered her to safe friends. Then we split up and burned the boat.”

  “I have some more questions about the Minnesotan.”

  “I need a break,” said Moco.

  While she left Moco alone in the room, Tania’s mind reeled with the implications of what she had just learned. The idea that Maxine Price was still alive, and in hiding.

  It made her suddenly very confused about what she was doing. She thought about Mom, and what she said to her when they parted.

  Maybe Tania could take Moco with her. Turn him into an ally.

  She asked the redneck on guard where to find Bob, and the guy said he was just looking for you.

  When Tania got to the top of the stairs, Bob was standing there waiting, with half his crew, all armed.

  “Time’s up,” said Bob. The short woman Tania had seen earlier was cozied right up next to him, looking even meaner than before.

  “I need to take the prisoner back with me,” said Tania.

  “Not without some official Motherlanders with you. I think you’re fishy. Joyce here just made some calls and we’re starting to get a little confused.”

  Joyce stared hard at Tania.

  “That’s because you are a little bit slow,” said Tania. “And you are calling the wrong people. But I don’t have time to teach you how to do it. Get out of my way.”

  And then she straightened up her suit and walked right through them, and they let her.

  As she drove away, south instead of north, looking back every few seconds for them to come roaring after her with the full crew, she thought about Moco, and how she could free him. About Mom, and how she could free her. About all the other people like them.

  Things were starting to clarify, except that she didn’t really know where she was going.

  Maybe Sig could help, if she could find him.

  She drove faster.

  38

  Billie convened her meeting at the barn.

  “This is not a regular meeting,” said Billie to the seventeen people she had called together. “It’s a crisis council.”

  Sig looked around the room. It was all gray hair except for his.

  “Let’s have a war!” joked one of the old guys. He had a long silver beard and a shaved head.

  “Cut the shit, Rich, or leave,” said Billie.

  Billie, it turned out, really was a terrorist. Fritz was the one who finally told Sig about it. She’d been a member of the Blackhawk Army, a midwestern student revolutionary group from back in the eighties. She was arrested after the BellNet Regional Headquarters bombing in 1986 but skipped bail and went underground. Fritz said her real name was Catherine. Even he didn’t know her real last name.

  Sig flexed his hand in the strap-on cast. They had taken him to a bone doctor who was a friend of the cause. The doctor set it as best he could and told him to take it easy if he wanted to get his full range of motion back.

  Sig listened to Billie make her case to the group. She wanted them to free Moco. The militia had announced he was a high-value denaturalized terrorist they planned to turn over to the feds for transfer to the Corn Islands.

  “That’s the extraterritorial prison,” said Billie. “Worse than Detroit. The one where the Constitution doesn’t even apply—unlike here, where it’s just suspended. One-way trip, guys.”

  There were a lot of incredulous groans. All of the others who didn’t escape with Sig had been freed, through a com
bination of good lawyering and payoffs from the community kitty. Fritz told Sig that was the real deal with the militias in those parts—most of their so-called law enforcement was really just kidnapping and protection for money.

  “We need to stop harboring these little militia bait pets of yours,” said one old guy who looked like a bad Santa. The guy pointed his thumb at Sig as he said it. “Or we’ll lose everything we’ve built here.”

  “The ones who are hot are going to leave, Tom,” said Billie. “After we free the last one.”

  “By going back to the ways that failed the first time,” said one of the women in the group.

  “There’s real change brewing, Mary,” said Billie. “Yes, we may need to help get the fire going again. Right now, the deal is we told these kids we would give them sanctuary, and we failed, because we had the naïve idea that if we did it peacefully no one would mess with us. We need to fix that. Now. We cannot let anyone be sent to that place.”

  “So you want to blow up a bunch of militia?”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone,” said Billie. “I just want to start fighting back again. It’s more like psychological warfare—playing the media game. Hopefully better than they do.”

  “Psychological warfare with guns?” said one of the women in the group.

  “Hear me out,” said Billie. She laid out her basic plan. It took a while, with all the discussions and digressions. Billie had explained to them at the Co-op how she did not believe in the idea of management hierarchy—of people telling other people what to do. She believed, she said, in “pure autonomous cooperation.”

  This time, though, no one was cooperating with her. She lost the vote.

  “I’m sorry, Sig,” she said when he argued for his friend afterward. “But I can’t second-guess the wisdom of the group. It’s for the best.”

  39

  Fritz offered to help Sig. It gave him a chance to use his homemade drones.

  Of course, Fritz didn’t call them drones. He called them models.

  They used the big one first. It barely fit in Fritz’s rusty old Mercedes wagon. It was one Sig had seen in the basement, shaped like a stuffed triangle. Turned out the nose was a lens. A thick antenna swept back from behind the lens, not quite flush with the fuselage. The pusher prop blade was at the back, powered by a gas engine.