by Schow, Ryan
Emily saw it in his eyes, how he wasn’t really listening. The surgeon must have seen it, too, because he doubled down on his warning.
“Let me make this perfectly clear, Mr. Croft, since I can see in your eyes that you’re going to ignore my advice. One stiff blow to the head and it’s lights out on your life. If you pass out, you won’t end up here again. You’ll most likely end up in the morgue.”
When the surgeon who had saved his life said this, Hudson looked at Emily with those big, lost eyes. Those empty, scared eyes. Fortunately, Emily had been smart enough for both of them. Even though he dreamed of fighting every day, he never went back to the ring.
Since then, he’d spent three years protecting his head with his life. If only he’d worked so hard to protect his heart. Emily was about to break that next. Who would he be then? Who am I now? If he was a man without direction, a man with a broken head and a devastated heart, would he ever find direction, drive, another Emily?
Hudson pulled the Chameleon cold brew concentrate out of the refrigerator—which was barely cool since the power was still off—mixed it with water and a few drops of liquid Stevia to soften the bite—then handed it to her.
“Power’s still off,” he said.
“Thanks.”
By that time she had her hair pulled into a loose ponytail and she was ready to load her things into the back of her ’67 Mustang.
He started to say something, but she put her finger to his mouth and said, “Don’t ruin our ending. It’s about to be perfect.”
He didn’t know what to say. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, slow and soft, and then she said, “I loved you once, which means you’re probably worthy of it again. On the next girl, try to be present in your life, then maybe her perfect ending won’t look like this perfect ending.”
“Emily…”
“Don’t ever call me again,” she said as she breezed out the front door and started stuffing her belongings into the trunk.
He helped her out because she needed it, even though he felt like he was working against his own cause. What was he supposed to do? When he shut the trunk lid and she climbed into the muscle car, he felt helpless, vulnerable. Was there something he could say? Anything to stop her, or change her mind? She pulled the door shut, fired up the engine, then cranked the window down and said, “Oh, and don’t get yourself killed playing soldier in this almost war.”
“It’s only an almost war until it’s on your doorstep, Em,” he said.
By “playing soldier” in an “almost war,” Emily was referring to Hudson being an armed patriot with concerns for his community. Emily hated guns and street violence. He didn’t blame her. When you watched enough cities burn in perfect 4K clarity, when you watched people’s livelihoods get smashed to bits and pieces due to no fault of their own, when you watched good peoples’ deaths streamed live over a bunch of TVs and speakers, your taste for an uprising fell flat.
Emily’s stress kicked up a notch in 2020, right about the time of the uprising against America and her “antiquated values.” The steadily-splitting fissure that started in their relationship only widened further when Hudson decided to take matters into his own hands. She figured Hudson was just running his mouth, talking like vigilante violence was the answer, as he sometimes did when watching the outrageous things being broadcast on TV like violence porn or murder art. When he got a hold of a Springfield XD9, Emily’s concern skyrocketed. She wanted to know where he got the gun. He didn’t tell her. Eventually, she stopped asking about it, but Hudson knew that even though she was quiet about the issue, she wasn’t letting it go. She was merely lying in wait. He felt himself changing though. He’d changed. What finally derailed “The Hudson and Emily Fantasy” was his anger coupled with a mounting paranoia. Things were devolving too quickly.
Night after night, Hudson watched the nation burn. Even worse, he watched American citizens cheering for her destruction. He didn’t understand that. What was the rationale? Emily finally told him if he didn’t shut that garbage off, she would leave him. He knew the news was upsetting, that this soft insurgency into America by Marxists and violent revolutionaries bothered her immensely, but one could only bury their head in the sand for so long before someone pulled it out and put a bullet in it. He wasn’t waiting for that day.
“You see this violence spilling into the cities all around us,” he retaliated a few nights ago. “They’re closing in on us, Emily, cutting a path right to Silver Grove. What do you want to do, just pretend this isn’t happening?”
“I know it’s happening!” she shouted. “We just don’t need to wallow in it every single night!”
He vehemently disagreed. The looming threat had thrust him into greater heights of situational awareness and vigilance. Not everyone understood the nuances of a fight like he did, especially Emily, but that was irrelevant. No matter his concerns, the fight was on its way to his front door, and boy did he need a good tussle!
Last week, protestors spilled out of Cincinnati, marching peacefully all along Mary Ingels Hwy/Hwy 8 in the heart of Silver Grove. He was on high-alert. Were they there to send a message? Or was Cincinnati just so sick of them they ventured out to more fertile grounds? He wasn’t sure. In the end, Hudson assumed they were saying they could overrun the small towns as much as the big cities. Much to his relief, it seemed the march was actually filled with peaceful protestors.
“Are they here?” Emily asked after Hudson got the call.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are they looting and rioting?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”
When hundreds of protestors marched into Silver Grove, a few of the Silver Grove citizens joined them. To Hudson, it didn’t make sense why anyone would march through such a small town, for half the protestors were media sensationalists and architects of noise. Silver Grove was not the type of small-town scene rioters were accustomed to hitting, for it didn’t have the population of Louisville, Lexington, or Cincinnati. Sadly, predictably, things turned ugly. It started with someone throwing river rocks at some of the cars and trucks for sale at Silver Grove Motors, the locally-owned dealership where Emily bought her Mustang just last year.
At its height, the quiet riverside town of Silver Grove housed a little over one thousand souls. What these protestors were doing there was still anyone’s guess, but as things started spiraling out of control, all that noise that Hudson was afraid of now touched the sleepy riverside town.
“Is it the Hayseed Rebellion?” Emily asked when he returned.
“They’re hijacking peaceful protests all over the South,” he growled, “so I think so. Or maybe it’s an offshoot of it, I don’t know. You know these clowns just want a reason to act out, to defy the law, to flex their chests long enough to get slapped down and then cry ‘victim.’”
The Hayseed Rebellion had been rising in prominence among the “protest hijackers.” Hudson was well aware of them. They first emerged in Charlotte, North Carolina almost a year ago, but only within the last six months did the highly organized group cut a bloody, violent path up through Asheville, Knoxville, and Lexington. They were now in Ohio, too—Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield, Columbus.
Making matters worse, subsidiary factions were popping up in small towns and college towns all around the cities they hit. These domestic militants were gobbling up incels and junior revolutionaries as if it were recruiting season for the Army. But this was not an army looking to protect the nation; they were an army looking to erase it. These mutineers were devout men and women who were ready, willing, and able to highlight the failings of America while working to shove Lady Liberty’s face into the proverbial wood-chipper.
The radical movement started out with a light touch. With each state, however, that light touch became a fist. That fist soon became inflamed. This movement didn’t call for change; they demanded chaos. Civilized activists and recreational socialists alike distanced themselves from these brutal mercen
aries, for the Hayseed Rebellion wasn’t a grassroots movement, they were a well-funded and highly-trained activist movement. What became clear to both sides of the political spectrum was that the HR wasn’t a political advocacy group as much as they were an atypical insurgency. Right, left and center…everyone agreed. These people were not good for the nation. Hudson did not insert himself into the first march into Silver Grove, but he vowed to go to the second. The first march of violence felt like a warning shot. Would the next kick off the war?
Invariably, for Silver Grove, it did.
Hudson was sitting on the couch with Emily, enjoying dessert and each other’s company for a change when his phone rang. He looked at Emily; she rolled her eyes. He picked it up anyway.
“Yeah,” he said.
“They’re back,” his friend Pete said, breathless.
“Now?” Hudson asked, sitting up fast.
His friend told him how protestors had blocked all four of the main bays of Silver Grove’s volunteer fire department. “They’re burning houses, businesses, everything. And now that they’re going after the fire department, it’s clear they plan on reducing this town to ash.”
He didn’t even bother asking Emily for permission. He simply hung up the phone and said, “They’re burning the town and blocking the Fire Department.”
Hudson and Emily lived on 4th Avenue, right off Uhl Road. In the near distance, he saw Silver Grove’s K-12 school, grateful that it was not on fire. On foot, he passed the First Baptist Church and the Post Office on 4 Mile Road and E. 2nd St., grateful neither of those buildings was burning either. But when he reached Mary Ingles Hwy, he saw rioters trying unsuccessfully to burn the Fire Department down.
Across the street, masked creatures with bats and semi-automatic rifles were swarming Pelle’s & Company, one of the only places you could get a good burger in town.
His heart fell into his gut as he reached for his gun. He stepped behind a nearby house on W. First St., made sure he wasn’t seen. He unholstered his gun, tapped his two extra mags, then pulled his hood over his head, and waded into the heart of darkness.
If these were the same anarchists burning down cities all throughout the South, then ransacking the nearby communities, he wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing. He was, after all, a fighter. With a racing heart, he slid his balaclava up over his nose, then tucked in his shirt so that his handgun was easily accessible. That’s when his phone vibrated. He looked down, saw it was Emily calling. Stepping into a bank of shadows, irritated, he picked up.
“What?”
“They’re broadcasting Silver Grove on the news, Hudson. They’re burning people’s homes.”
“I told you!” he hissed. “I’ve got to go.”
“Sit this one out, Hudson,” she begged, stopping him. “Please.”
“When they’re done here, they’ll move into our neighborhood,” he growled, half-crazed with anger and moving deeper into the night. “Our neighborhood, Em! That’s all of our friends, their kids, their homes!”
“Let’s just grab our stuff and go. We can go to my mom and dad’s house.”
“I’m not running from these cowards.”
“Hudson…”
“Listen, I’ve got to go, these idiots are stopping traffic.”
“I’m already scared enough with you here,” she said. “Now you want to get in the middle of it? What happens if they hit your head? This isn’t smart, Hudson. This is stupid!”
“If they get to the neighborhoods,” he said, calmly, “we won’t be able to stop them.”
“What…you’re going to stop them now?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I love you, but I have to go.”
She hung up on him, which really scraped his nerves. If she was trying to make him mad, it was working. Nevertheless, he and Emily lived too close to the highway to just sit by and hope the violence didn’t touch them.
When he reached Pelle’s & Company, he saw the glass door had been broken, the frame pulled out. They were already looting it. He peeked his head around the corner, to the main thoroughfare, saw the mob stopping an old pickup truck. Next door to Pelle’s & Company was Pelle’s Tax Service and Joni’s Hair Salon. Rioters were setting the buildings on fire. Grinding his molars, he ducked back around the corner.
He did his taxes at Pelle’s, got his hair cut at Joni’s. Now they were trying to burn them down? As he stood there wearing the same disguise as those people attacking the town, he watched crowds of rioters flocking to the old-as-dirt pickup truck they were now blocking in the street. A younger heavyset woman was screaming at the older woman in the truck’s passenger seat. Hands started slapping the rusty gas hog, feet started kicking it, and then some bone-thin, long-haired hillbilly walked in front of the truck with his rifle in hand.
All of Hudson’s bravado threatened to run down his leg in a thick yellow stream. What was he supposed to do with this? He was just one man! Looking around, he wondered if anyone else had come to stand up for the town. He saw no one. Glancing back, he started shaking his head. There were too many of them and now they were escalating the violence.
The masses started rocking the truck and chanting racial obscenities. The rifleman in front of the truck pulled out a water bottle, poured the liquid all over the hood of the truck, then lit it on fire. The huge, flaming whoosh proved that what he’d poured on the hood was not water. It was either alcohol or gasoline, he couldn’t tell. Then a VW Beetle came barreling up on the truck, honking its horn and flashing his headlights.
Hudson had seen people getting run over all throughout 2020, but he was about to see it live and in person. And then he wasn’t. The VW slammed right into the back of the truck to a wild ruckus of chanting and cheers. The VW’s driver stumbled out of the car, dazed from hitting the steering wheel. Instead of sitting down, or falling down, he lifted his fist in the air and pumped it hard.
He was one of them.
Overwhelmed, scared, not sure what to do, he turned his attention to the older couple in the truck. The old man driving was terrified, and now most likely injured. Instead of getting out of the vehicle, he stepped on the gas, knocking into the rifleman blocking his way. The old man slammed on his brakes the second he hit the rifleman. The idiot grabbed his rifle, got to his feet, and backed up, limping. He fell back down though. Staying down, cursing, he held his leg. This riled the crowd. With a battle cry and a roar, they mobbed the truck.
The driver stepped on the gas, running over the rifleman’s legs as he tried to scramble out of the way. The truck didn’t get very far, though, for the VW Beetle was still lodged underneath the bumper. Someone shot out the truck’s tires, then approached the driver. But it was the rifleman Hudson couldn’t stop thinking about. His screaming was like nothing Hudson had ever heard before. That matched with the raspy, howling drumbeat of the agitated masses was enough to rattle the soul.
Whatever violence started before the rifleman got run over doubled, then doubled again. Hudson knew it was time to be smart and go back home, but for some reason—maybe a greater sense of social or moral obligation, or maybe it was the burning truck and what it symbolized—he didn’t exactly flee the scene. He should have, but his legs refused to do his brain’s bidding.
Someone threw a rock through the truck’s broken back window, shattering what was left of it; two girls in masks and rainbow halter-tops tossed smoke bombs inside the minute the window was gone.
Hudson tucked himself into the corner of Pelle’s & Company, just outside of the chaos and hysteria. Smoldering in his rage, his heart was bucking like a mule. One hand became a fist at his side, while the other sat on the holstered XD9’s backstrap. When the horde dragged the old man out of the car and started beating him, Hudson’s adrenal glands activated, flooding his system with adrenaline.
Up ahead he saw law enforcement coming with their lights flashing. But they were motorcycle cops. He didn’t remember seeing motorcycle cops in Silver Grove, not for a while now. Hudson held his positio
n, waited. They stopped a hundred yards back, making a V in the street with their bikes.
What are they doing? Why are they just sitting there?
Flash mobs like the one he was witnessing had gained momentum during the recent riots. He couldn’t say the actual reason for this—be it greater private funding, media brainwashing, or the same kind of milquetoast law enforcement response he was seeing now—but they had grown in size, strength, and popularity. Now Silver Grove was about to fall to the anarchy, to domestic terrorism made to look like activism, to the end of civility, safety, and relative peace for everyone.
So stay or go? He wasn’t sure. God, he hated these people!
With smoke filling the truck’s cabin, the old man’s wife was forced to open her door into the mob. She looked like she was sixty, maybe sixty-five years old. Heavyset with white hair, she raised her meaty arms to cover her face as rioters pummeled her for no reason but trying to escape her burning truck and their overt tyranny.
The driver held his own for about thirty-seconds before being thrown to the ground and beaten into submission. As he sat there on bent knees with one hand on the ground and blood pouring from his face, he held up a hand and begged for leniency. That’s when one of the thugs came from the side, wound up a big soccer kick, and caught him right in the kisser. He dropped face-first into asphalt, his forehead planted there. Others stomped on his head to the cheers of the crowd, which was too much for Hudson.
He looked down the road to where the motorcycle cops were parked. They began to approach, but after a few yards, both cops turned around and headed back to where they came from.
What the…?
Eyes back on the chaos, Hudson realized no one cared to stop what was happening. But he wasn’t like that. He cared. Which meant he had to do something, anything!
