by Aimee Bender
“What the hell are they?” the woman yelled, but the man just pushed her back into the house and slammed the door.
“What the fuck are you?” Raz retorted as he jumped out of the car and picked up the end of the hose. He drank from it. “Here’s our fucking water!”
A group of men rounded the corner onto the street, riding on the backs of beasts. Raz rubbed his hands together. Dressica hopped out of the car, and Isa followed her. Dez remained in the car, too afraid to leave it.
“Keep it cool, Raz.”
The men stopped their animals and people emerged from the houses to form a crowd. None of them had mohawks, dyed hair or wore normal-looking boots. They sported plaid shorts and plain white shirts. Dressica counted at least five who held shotguns.
She put up her hands. Isa and Dez looked over at her. Quickly, they raised their own hands.
“Raz, do it!” Dressica said, just loud enough for him to hear.
Raz raised his hands. A man with a gold star pinned to his chest stepped forward. Dressica guessed that the star must’ve been some symbol of authority.
The man spoke. “I’m the sheriff of these here parts. Who are you and where did you come from?”
Dressica breathed a sigh of relief. He spoke Dischargian.
“Some kind alien weirdos!” yelled a woman in the crowd.
“Us, weird? Look at you, you fuckers!” Raz shouted.
“We came from a land beyond the red line,” Dressica said.
The crowd gasped.
“Nothing lives below the red line,” the sheriff said.
“That’s not true. Our land is called Dischargia.”
The sheriff shared a long glance with one of the men holding a shotgun.
“Lady,” he said, finally, “the red bastards dropped a few nukes on us, but this is still the US of A.”
Dressica looked wide-eyed at Isa. No one their age back in Dischargia believed the United States had ever existed. That country which promoted violence, war and greed. That encouraged conformity and brutal repression of the self. It was just an ugly monster that punk parents sang about in songs to scare children into behaving like good punks.
“We crossed into America?” Isa whispered.
“Fucking myth,” said Raz.
The sheriff watched them carefully. Dressica stepped forward; guns were raised. She kept her hands up.
“Look,” she said, “we need to talk about the river.”
The sheriff shook his head. “No, I think we need take to you to Chancellor Reagan.”
Dressica took a step back. Her stomach twisted in knots. “Did you say Reagan?”
Reagan was the ultimate boogeyman. His name was spit in anger in more songs of the elder bands than any other. The bastard Reagan, the man whose name Uncle Max had uttered just before his death. The man responsible for all evil in the world.
Reagan.
Raz had heard all the songs, too. He reacted out of sheer panic, swinging his bladed arm and spinning in a classic pit move. He closed his eyes, imagined his favorite TSOL song and slammed through the crowd to the beat in his head. Many standing in the front row fell to their knees, bleeding.
Dressica touched her thumb to her pinky. She spun like a top and her quills came free in time for her to roll her body against the crowd. Screams rang through the town of Goldwater. The people didn’t have it in them to riot. They just ran. The sheriff pulled out his pistol and fired at Dressica. She moved too quickly, and his aim was off. Isa threw a knife at the sheriff that hit him in the leg. Dez jumped into the front seat of the car, but couldn’t start it without lifting his head. He was too afraid to do that.
The sheriff came up behind Isa, kicked the back of her knees. She fell to the ground, and he placed his gun against her temple.
“Stop, or I’ll kill her.”
Dressica stopped and, in a single motion, retracted her quills. Raz stopped too, but didn’t retract his quills.
“Fine,” Dressica huffed. “Take me to your leader.”
CHAPTER NINE
Crowds of freakishly plain-looking people stared at the team as the sheriff pushed them through the main street of Goldwater. A guard held onto Dressica by her mohawk. Raz looked ready to explode, but the sheriff walked at the front with his gun still pressed against Isa’s temple. People yelled at the punks, and many laughed. The older citizens just shook their heads in disbelief.
Then Dressica heard something she had longed to hear: the river. After another minute of walking they came upon it—clear, blue water flowing toward a large dam near the mountain. The guard twisted Dressica’s mohawk when she raised her head to gaze up at it. She almost released her quills out of pure anger.
“Keep moving!”
Dressica obeyed, but attempted to speak with the guard.
“Where does the river go after the dam?”
He kept pushing her, silently.
“Does it go to your farms?”
He remained silent as they reached a building, the tallest Dressica had ever seen. It had at least twenty floors and looked like it was made of glass. The sheriff pushed Isa through a revolving door.
Inside, the building felt like a refrigerator; cold air blew out of slots in the walls. Even Raz got gooseflesh and shivered. The guards herded the team into a small room with silver walls.
The sheriff and the guards made disgusted faces.
“What’s wrong?” Raz asked. “You have to take a dump?”
The sheriff shook his head. “No, but it smells like you people did.”
Raz laughed. “At least I don’t look fuckin’ weird.”
The sheriff approached Raz and pressed a finger into the punk’s chest. “Have you looked in mirror, freak?”
At that moment, a bell sounded and a robotic voice spoke:
“Welcome to Chancellor Reagan’s penthouse.”
The door opened to reveal a spacious glass-walled room. The guard released Dressica’s mohawk, but the sheriff and four guards kept their guns pointed at them. Cautiously, Dressica approached the far glass wall.
The mighty river surged below. A water plant that serviced the town had been diverting it. Beyond that, she saw forests being torn down by work crews and fields of animals lined up to be led, single-file, into a building. Dressica knew these barbarians planned to eat those animals. North of the city, more trees were being destroyed. Houses were going up in their wake.
“Well, what do you think of my empire?”
Dressica turned at the sound of the raspy voice. There were two large desks at the end of the room. A man sat behind the desk on the left. He was old and shriveled with black, greasy hair. Dressica couldn’t see his eyes. Just empty sockets. A woman sat behind the desk on the right. Her eyes were gone too. Her skin wrinkled and her graying blonde hair was done up in a bouf.
The man’s right arm lifted, but his hand remained frozen. Dressica heard a voice, though his mouth didn’t move.
“Those damn reds thought they could destroy us, didn’t they, Maggie?”
The woman’s arms trembled. Dressica observed this was because they were attached to sticks. Someone covered by a black curtain sat behind the office chair and directed these “people.” Dressica stepped toward the desks. The guards and the sheriff all readied their guns. Dressica raised her hands.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The Reagan puppet flopped behind its desk. “I am Chancellor Reagan, savior of the American dream. And this is my partner, Prime Minister Thatcher.”
The Thatcher puppet clapped and spoke with a ridiculous accent that Dressica had only heard between songs on The Damned and Sex Pistols bootlegs.
“Oh thank you for saving the world, my sweet Chancellor,” it said.
The two puppets took a moment to blow kisses to each other. Raz squeezed his fists in frustration.
The Reagan puppet’s head shifted as if scanning the group. “And just who the hell are you freaks?” it said.
“My name is Dressica Killmaiden
. I come from a land downriver called Dischargia.” She pointed out the window. “Is this your empire?”
“I thought Gorby was weak.” The Reagan voice giggled, the puppet dancing falsely in its chair. “That was before he blew the piss out of our silos in Turkey. Crazy, red-splotched motherfucker. I’ll have you know, little lady, that we leveled Moscow like a truck stop pancake.”
“I don’t care about the old world.”
“It’s coming back, darling,” the Thatcher puppet said.
“It took a few years, but I made a promise that the American Dream would be reborn. Hamburgers, banks, no trees causing pollution and, goddamn it, the lowest tax rate imaginable.”
“For the wealthy, right?” Dressica scowled. “My mom played me songs about Reagan.”
“Songs about me?”
“It’s how my people pass down history, and those songs told of a boogeyman bent on exploitation. I think you believe those myths. But I would ask that you think for yourself. That is ultimate law in my land.”
The Reagan puppet stared blankly at her.
Dressica stepped closer to the window. “Your river flows downstream and provides the water for my people. Surely, we can work together and share it.”
The puppet knocked pictures of Nancy Reagan and her children off the desk.
“My America! My river!”
Feminine laughter burst out from the curtain behind the desks. A woman rolled forward on a scooter, her gray hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her voice was shaky. “I warned you about these vulgar punk rockers!”
Another old woman walked robotically on mechanical legs to the Reagan puppet. Wrinkled, stretched skin hung off her head, which was her body’s only remaining biological part. Brown dyed hair, curled in a perm, shook as she walked. Blood flowed through tubes coiled around her artificial body back to her head.
“Tipper’s right, Ronnie,” she said. “They want to undermine our new America.”
“What should be done about them, Nancy?”
A smile: “Public execution.”
The Reagan and Thatcher puppets clapped. The guards stepped forward. Dressica looked at Isa. Both knew the score. They had tried to talk, but now they had to act. Dressica jumped onto the Reagan puppet’s desk and released her Punkupine quills. She swung the quills at the puppet, but it dropped to the ground. Isa shoved the sheriff to the floor. Dressica grabbed the pistol out of his hand. The Nancy-bot leapt onto the desk and swung at her with inhuman strength. The mechanical arm bashed into her quills. Dressica shrieked as the quills bent beneath her skin.
“You fucking fucker!” the Nancy-bot screamed. She hit Dressica again. Dressica fell against Thatcher’s desk, and the puppet of the prime minister came at her, but she batted it away.
Raz swung with his blades, cutting open the belly of a guard. The guard’s guts raced to the floor even as he fired off a final shot. The shot went wide of Raz, striking the Tipper lady’s face. Her head exploded in skull fragments and brain chunks. She never had time to scream.
“Guards!” the Nancy-bot called out. “Seal the building!”
Two of the guards disappeared into the elevator. Raz punched the door after it closed. Dez ran over and pushed the down button repeatedly.
The Nancy-bot shook her head. “It won’t work. You’re trapped.”
Dressica shook out her quills. “Sorry, lady, but we’re going down.”
The Nancy-bot laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong. In less than a minute, my minions will surround this building, ready to kill at my command.”
Dressica ran the length of the table and slammed the Nancy-bot against the window, shattering the glass. Dressica closed her eyes as she flew out the window with the Nancy-bot.
The last thing she heard was Raz yelling, “Fuckin’ A!”
They fell faster than Dressica thought possible. Clinging to the Nancy-bot, she opened her eyes to see the river coming at her. She hoped it would be deep. She closed her eyes and held her breath just as they hit water.
CHAPTER TEN
Dressica flailed her arms and legs in the wild flow of the river. Her head popped to the surface just long enough for her to hear Dez screaming and the plops as the rest of her team landed in the river. Dressica held her breath as she slid back beneath the surface.
After a few seconds of struggling, she again found air, but Raz and Dez still fought to get their heads above water. In front of them, Isa gripped the floating body of the now headless Nancy-bot.
“Grab on!” Dressica shouted. “We’ll all float down to the dam!”
Raz had to pull Dez toward the Nancy-bot. The whole team held onto it. Crowds had gathered on the shoreline.
Raz shook their flotation device. “Where’s the fucking head?”
Dressica shrugged. “Paddle to the right!”
They started shifting their weight, directing themselves toward the main control center. Over on the far bank, the sheriff ran, barking commands while trying to catch up with them. Shots were fired, but they were moving fast enough downriver to avoid being hit. The team passed an armory and a truck depot before reaching the dam.
“Are they going to have someone meet us there?” Dez asked.
Raz nodded as they rolled up on the beach.
Water collected behind the dam. Traps and ducts had been built to divert the water around Goldwater.
Suddenly, a blast knocked up sand at Dressica’s feet. Even sopping wet, she was too fast for the Goldwater cop. Dressica unleashed her quills seconds before Raz opened his razors. Dressica spun, stabbed the cop with her quills and took the shotgun from him in one swift motion. The three other cops protecting the dam nearly shit themselves. They lowered their guns in fear.
With his arm blades, Raz opened up one cop and spun to take out another with his razorback. He grabbed a machine gun and threw it to Isa, who caught it with her mechanical hand and fired bullets into the remaining cops’ path. The cops scattered for cover.
Finally, they reached the control center. The room was filled with blinking lights, keypads and monitors. Raz entered the room soon after and tapped the screen on one monitor.
“The whole city is coming down on us, Dressy. What’s the plan?”
She stared at all the blinking lights. She had no idea.
Dez approached one of the computers and pushed a number of buttons. “This is perfect, really.”
“What’s perfect, Dez?”
He turned to Dressica. “I just closed everything off.”
Raz punched his shoulder. “You fucking wank, we need water! Open it back up!”
“The dam is brand new. It’s not strong enough to hold all that water back.”
Dressica hugged Dez. He squeezed her tighter than was appropriate, but right now she didn’t care. Breaking the embrace, she traded guns with Isa and broke open the firing chamber. She shook out her quills before firing multiple rounds into the control equipment. Red lights flashed; sirens blared.
“Follow me to the truck depot!”
Raz flipped off the room and followed everyone else down the hall and to the exit.
Outside, a crowd had gathered. Dressica spun through it. Some people fell away screaming; others ran. Dressica saw frustrated cops across the river in boats. They were almost to the shore and in firing range when a tremendous cracking diverted everyone’s attention.
Those in boats fell overboard as the river surged. Dressica ignored the screams of panic. She waved her team into the truck depot.
“Find the mechanics shop!”
Isa pointed to a garage where four big trucks were opened up as though in mid-surgery. There, Dressica saw what she needed.
“Get those empty tire tubes!”
Raz grabbed his with a laugh. “Hell yeah! We’re tubin!”
Dressica found a pump station, and everyone began to inflate the tubes. It was too long. The earth was shaking and the dam would soon burst.
Dressica wasn’t sure how Raz and Dez had done it, but their tubes wer
e already full, and they were heading toward the river. Both Isa and Dressica continued to struggle with inflating their tubes.
Finally, Dressica’s tube felt firm. She capped it seconds before Isa capped her own.
The dam had almost completely broken apart. Dressica and Isa ran to the riverbed and dropped their tubes in the water.
Isa floated away but then a voice rang out: “Stop her!”
The Reagan puppet was set up in a convertible with America flag decals on the hood. Dressica could see the puppeteer lying in the back seat. She lifted her middle finger.
“Fuck you, Reagan!”
The power of the unleashed river picked her tube up and, in a matter of seconds, Dressica had disappeared down the river.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sheriff Newt took a deep breath as he entered Chancellor Reagan’s penthouse, carrying the Nancy-bot’s decapitated head by her permed hair. It was amazing how the perm had held after being submerged in the river, stuck beneath a floating log. But that stump kept the head from flowing downstream.
“Oh, thank God! You found my dear Nancy!” Chancellor Reagan’s arm went up, and a headless, robotic body clunked forward from behind the curtain.
The sheriff held the head aloft. Metallic arms reached and took the head. It made a few squishy noises before clicking into place. Then the robot stabbed the head with two tubes. After a third tube went into the head, its eyes shot open and Nancy’s mouth vomited week-old river water and a dead frog onto the chancellor’s desk.
“Nancy?” Chancellor Reagan said, speaking without the assistance of a puppeteer.
“Goddamn it, Ronnie! What happened?”
“Uh, well...”
The Nancy-bot moved away from the chancellor’s desk and looked out the window. No one had even begun repairs on the broken dam. The river still flowed naturally down toward the red line and beyond. She saw lawns dying in the suburbs of Goldwater. She saw empty fields where they had released the cows they no longer had the water to support.
