Jack came down the stairs. “Jackpot. I found some jewelry for trade.”
“What’d you get?”
The kid showed him a few trinkets in his palm. “Probably junk. This wedding band, though, is gold.”
Alex stared at it. “It’s kind of creepy. When you think about what might have happened to whoever wore it last.”
“Well, they left it, so it’s mine now. Finders, keepers.”
“So what was it like for you?”
The kid pocketed his loot. “What do you mean?”
“When you went out on your solo?”
Jack chuckled. “It took me hours just to get there, I was so damn careful.” He held his hammer like a rifle and mimed walking real slow. “This was me, doing three-sixties every five seconds. I didn’t see the enemy the whole time. Maybe they were all laughing too hard to take a shot at me.”
Alex laughed with him. “I thought you were some kind of Rambo kid.”
“You got to have an image, bro.” Brah.
“You act the part well, I’ll give you that.”
“Hey, you should see me when I’m out with the guys on patrol. I’m a badass.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s a real adrenaline rush. Our guns are better than theirs. We move to contact, throw a lot of lead, and then hurry back. You’ll see when you go out your first time. We haven’t had a casualty in over a month. You’ll be fine.”
Alex said, “Let’s put this lib table out of its misery.”
They raised their sledgehammers.
“One, two, three—”
The hammers crashed against the table and broke its back.
“Nice,” Jack said. “What about you? What happened out there?”
“I found an old lady.”
“That sounds scary.”
“I couldn’t believe she was still living in No Man’s Land. While I was talking to her, some cops snuck up behind me and captured me.”
“What? Seriously?”
“I know I suck at this, but the Liberty Tree only gave me like a week of real training. I barely remembered how my rifle worked.”
It was good to talk to somebody he could admit this to. The adults all wanted one another to know how tough they were.
“But how did you make it back if you got captured?”
“It turned out they were on our side and had a message for the Tree. The Indy 300 is moving out. There’s going to be a big gap in the line for a few days.”
Jack chuckled. “The libs are idiots. The one hand never knows what the other is up to. One thing I can say for the patriots, they know what they’re doing.”
“I guess.” Alex shrugged. Both sides seemed pretty dumb to him.
“I take it back, though.”
“Take what back?”
“About things being easy,” Jack said. “If there’s a gap in the line, we’ll be attacking, you can count on that. This could be the big one, bro. We might end up seeing some real fighting.”
Alex sat on the floor fuming. “Just my luck.”
“On the plus side, it might be the only battle you ever fight.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned. “Because I might die.”
“No.” Jack grinned. “Because the patriots might win it all.”
ELEVEN
Long ago in Afghanistan, humping weapons and gear over mountains in breathtaking desolation, Mitch wrenched his ankle. The ligaments were like plastic holding a six-pack of beer. Once stretched, they stayed that way, and the ankle became unstable, making it prone to twist again or, just as bad, suffer a bout of chronic stiffness. That stiffness was now giving him lower back pain.
He should take it easy, but he soldiered through it. That’s how he was raised.
He surveyed his squad while he stretched out his back. The men went about their evening routines in the front yard of the house they’d been assigned. Some played cards by the fire.
Rubbing his bearded face, Mitch took note of everything. He required an orderly camp. Good hygiene, dry socks, and clean weaponry won wars. Regimen and discipline.
Alex Miller was putting supper together. He’d passed his test today and earned his place. The militia needed good fighters.
He said, “What are we having, kid?”
“Beef stew.”
“Take one of the beers tonight. You earned it.”
Mitch turned toward the western horizon. The sun was setting over a derelict public school. Smoke and particulates in the atmosphere produced lurid, beautiful sunsets rich with reds and purples.
“And keep my supper warm,” he added. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“You got it, Sergeant.”
“I want everybody to turn in early and get a solid eight hours tonight. We’re on the front line again tomorrow.”
“Where are you headed?” Grady called from the fire.
Mitch gathered up his gear and limped off into the twilight. “Going to see if the colonel wants to win this war.”
Yellow light flared in the north at the Brickyard Crossing golf course, followed by booms and crackle. The libs were making one last push toward the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The battle had been raging for days. If the libs captured the Speedway, the patriots would be in trouble. They’d have to stretch to hold a longer line using manpower they did not have.
With a brief smile, Mitch recalled the last Indy 500 he’d come to see. Sweltering Memorial Day. Drinking beers at a tailgate party. He’d loved watching the cars scream around the track, engines so loud his ears rang when it was over.
One day, he’d go again, in a free country.
He found the colonel’s command trailer, a ridiculous contraption up-armored against IEDs. Before the war, Ralph Lewis made a living as a tractor salesman in Columbus. He knew how to lead but had little practical experience. Mitch knew three ways he could knock the colonel’s vehicle off the road using a few simple materials.
Fighting the Taliban for two years had taught him well how to be an insurgent. In the US Army and Afghanistan, he’d learned everything he needed to overthrow the federal government.
He knocked on the door. “Friendly coming in, Colonel.”
Ralph tapped keys on the laptop on his desk. “Just updating our recruiting page.”
Important work. Alex Miller wasn’t the only kid in the company. They had lots of kids, a real children’s crusade. Men went home to their families and jobs, or they got shot on the front line. To remain combat effective, the Liberty Tree needed grown men willing to fight for their country. Men with military experience most of all. Women too. If not, Mitch would be upgrading even more kids to combat status. Kids stuck around and didn’t ask for pay.
“I got some solid intel today,” he said.
The fingers stopped typing. “What’s up?”
Mitch passed on the information Alex Miller brought back. Ralph swiveled his chair and rested his forearms on his knees, thinking.
“It’s either a major break or a big, fat trap,” the colonel said.
“It’s a break. We should take it. More than that, we should throw everything we got at it. Blitzkrieg.”
Indy was a Blue city in a sea of Red. At the start of the war, the militias had gained control of the countryside easy enough. They’d roll into a town, find out who was friendly and who wasn’t in the local government, and make some changes. None of it had been planned. It just happened, a nationwide armed protest that snowballed into a revolution. So sudden, so widespread across the country, the military hesitated to respond, and by the time the generals figured out what they wanted to do, it was too late.
Gary, Bloomington, Hammond, South Bend, and other liberal-leaning cities fell under siege. The main prize was Indy, the state capital. There was talk of making Fort Wayne the new capital, but that wouldn’t do. The patriots wanted it all.
Emboldened, the Liberty Tree militia convened a secret court and convicted Mayor Charles Kingdon of treason. If they took the
city, the governor might declare the whole state Red and throw the National Guard into the fight on the patriot side. The fighters mounted their trucks and raced into Indy to seize city hall.
And got their asses kicked, plain and simple.
Swollen with fresh recruits, the patriot groups poured in. Thousands fled the city in all directions while thousands more struggled to get in. The militias encircled it, shut off all traffic, and started squeezing.
In no time at all, the liberal elite learned who was feeding them all these years.
But it wasn’t working. After nine months, Indy held, the governor remained on the fence, and the libs showed no signs of surrendering. If anything, they were getting stronger. The patriots needed a new strategy.
“Blitzkrieg,” Ralph echoed. “What do you have in mind?”
“As long as the Guard holds the airport, we can’t starve the libs out. The siege is a sham, a war of attrition we can’t win. We need a knockout blow.”
“We’re a single company. We’re good, but we aren’t that good.”
“I’m saying we pull other militia off the line and concentrate here in Fairfax,” Mitch explained. “Send in the shock troops and have plenty more mounted up and ready to race ahead through the breach. Go all the way to city hall.”
Ralph fished around the papers on his desk until he found his pack of Camels. He lit one with a puff of silver smoke. “We tried that once.”
“Then we do it right this time.”
The colonel took another drag and tapped his ashtray. “Won’t work.”
“Goddamnit. Are we trying to win this thing or not?”
“The other militias won’t submit to a single command. And they won’t take orders from us, even for an opportunity like this. Christ, you know it would take eight days just to get everybody talking in the same room.”
Mitch growled but said nothing. Ralph had spoken the plain truth.
The militias stood united behind a similar narrative, the same general principles and goals. America had virtually become a socialist dictatorship, and President Marsh was trying to fix the broken nation. This had resulted in a soft coup by the Deep State. The Right had taken up arms to defend the president and restore the republic as it was intended by its founding fathers.
Their successes on the battlefield inspired them to demand broad-reaching reforms based on a purer reading of the Constitution. As the Second Amendment guaranteed all other freedoms, zero restrictions on gun ownership topped the list. After that, a balanced budget amendment. Centralization of power to the local level, including control of schools. Dismantling the welfare state. Sell-off of public lands. A national ID card. English as the official language.
Government small enough to fit in a toilet, where it could be properly flushed.
Nonetheless, the factions differed in ideology enough that on a bad day, they went at one another as much as they did at the libs. Mitch himself sometimes fantasized about taking a shot at the First Angels, who fired their mortars into civilian neighborhoods.
“We’ll have to do it on our own,” Ralph said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean in eight days, we push hard into that gap. It’ll throw the libs into disarray. They’ll give up their offensive for sure. They might even pull back, maybe as far as the river. We hit them hard, then tell everybody we’re doing it.”
Mitch grinned. “That’ll get the other militias moving.”
“It won’t win the siege or end the war in our state, but it’ll improve our strategic position. It could even play a part in the peace talks.”
His expression soured. “Yeah.”
“It’s been a year, Mitch. We need to start thinking about the end of this thing. Our position appears strong, but it’s weak. Less than thirty percent of the public supports the president now.”
“Because of the liberal media spreading lies.”
Ralph ground out his cigarette in his ashtray. “We’ve got a lot of people in this state sympathetic to our cause and supporting us. A solid support system of opinion makers, safe houses, transporters, and the like. What we don’t have enough of is fighters.”
“So this is how it is. We’re going to go for a negotiated settlement.”
“That’s the real world,” Ralph told him. “Getting half of what we want is better than nothing. We score some touchdowns, maybe we get more than half.”
“It’s how we got into this shit in the first place. Compromising our principles.”
“Hey. Big guy. I’m on your side. I’ll plan an attack, all right?”
“Yeah.”
“We sent a clear message tyranny will not be tolerated. We’ll defend our liberty to our last breath, so help me God. If the new America fails its promises, we’ll be here, and we’ll be ready to do this all over again.”
“All right, okay, stop selling me.”
“Assuming the intel is solid, we’ll push far enough to get the libs on the run. But stay out of the core. We don’t need a Stalingrad. We need a big win, and we need every lib in Indy to know we won.”
“Yes, sir,” Mitch said and left the trailer.
He stood outside fuming. Here they were, giving their blood on the battlefield, while the politicians were getting set to carve up the turkey and sell them out.
Stalingrad. Now there was an idea. He was thinking more of a Tet Offensive.
Ralph had founded the Indiana Chapter of the Liberty Tree out of his own pocket, which explained his lofty rank, one he’d given himself. He’d built the website and did all the administrative work. The members had elected him chair. Now he gave the orders, and Mitch had always followed them.
Some orders required disobedience, however. For him, America always came first. When he pushed through the gap, Mitch would run his boys into Indy and take city hall. The boldness of the attack would inspire the other patriots to make a concerted push. The governor and National Guard might finally pick a side and step in to recognize a new constitution and declare the state Red.
Or the patriots wouldn’t follow his lead. The Guard might continue to sit on its ass and let the militias keep fighting. The libs might organize and blow them all to hell.
Mitch knew it was a gamble, but it was one worth taking. He’d sworn he’d fight to the death for the America he wanted. The country every real American deserved.
And that’s exactly what he’d do.
TWELVE
Blue UN flag flying from the aerial, the SUV hurtled down the street. It came to a skidding stop in a spray of snow in front of the Peace Office.
Gabrielle slapped at her seat belt until it released. She jumped out, glad to feel solid ground under her feet again. Everywhere they went, Aubrey drove like a maniac while bad news droned on the radio and heat blasted from the vents.
It was the safest way to drive these days. With the gas shortage, few vehicles traveled the roads. Snipers targeted those that did. Another generalized worry, whether a bullet would punch through the windshield at any given moment. And Gabrielle was a worrier. Once she thought about it, she couldn’t stop picturing it.
No sane person would ever come here, she thought again. No sane person would choose to live here. No sane people would do this to themselves.
The reporter joined her on the sidewalk. “When this is all over, I’m going to write a book. The working title is, It Happened Here.”
“When do you think it will end?”
“When the inmates decide to let the doctors run the asylum again.”
Gabrielle surprised herself by saying, “Did they ever?”
She wondered how future historians would describe what happened to America. Most likely, they’d agree with Aubrey and call it a period of temporary derangement. But for Gabrielle, who’d followed American news for years, the trouble started long before President Marsh. Derangement, yes, but the country had been slowly losing its mind as long as she could remember.
Aubrey flashed her a look that turned into an approving smil
e.
She didn’t smile back. She was here to help not judge. It wasn’t that long ago her own people in Quebec flirted with the idea of insurgency to pursue their dreams of separation. She directed her gaze at the Peace Office, where she hoped she could do some good.
Like other Quaker meeting places, the Vermont Street Friends Meeting House was spare and simple. No steeple or crosses.
Missing posters covered the doors. They showed pictures of family members stranded when the fighting began. Loved ones arrested by various authorities. Disappeared children. Names and birthdates, social security numbers, locations they’d gone missing.
Gabrielle only knew what she’d heard about Quakers. To them, a church was a community, not a building. They believed people were innately good, every human being a recipient of the divine spark. And they were devout pacifists. She wanted to believe they were people who used their faith to make things better rather than reinforce the prejudices they were raised with.
A young man with blond dreadlocks greeted her in the foyer. “Can you bring those in with you?”
“Bring what?”
He pointed at the missing posters on the door. “Would you mind?”
“Sure.” Gabrielle collected them.
He accepted the papers. “Thanks.”
Aubrey walked in stomping snow from her boots. “What do you do with them?”
“One of our goals is to reunite families separated by the war,” he said. “We try to arrange cease-fires for this purpose. People leave them on the door for us.”
“Any successes?”
“Some. But, you know, never enough.”
“What about you? Is that your job here?”
“Me? No, I’m the bean counter. But we all chip in on what needs doing.”
The reporter nodded, mentally filing it for future reference. Gabrielle could tell she smelled a story. Aubrey was one of those type A people who didn’t know how to be still and were always working.
She extended her hand. “I’m Gabrielle Justine with UNICEF. This is Aubrey Fox with the Indy Chronicle.”
“Very glad to meet you. I’m Paul.” He shook their hands with enthusiasm and threw Aubrey a sly look. “Fox, huh? The same last name as our founder.”
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