Uncle Evans: A Fictional Tale of Anarcho-Tyranny in America

The Texas Hill Country. August 1st.



Evans and Kyle spent all morning working on the yard, and they didn't talk much. The Vanguard was active in Texas now. One group seemed to be centered around Dallas. A second group around Houston. A third group was operating out of Austin. That group had hit Neuheim the night before and Esperanza del Rio the night before that. Neither was far from where they stood now.

In the middle of the day, when the heat was up, they stopped for lunch. After lunch, Kyle lounged in his room while Evans went to his workshop.

When afternoon ended and the evening began, and the air cooled and the sun began its descent, they returned to the yard, clearing brush and scraping clean tracts of dirt around the house. And when the sun was nothing more than an orange semi-circle on the western horizon, they stopped for the day. Evans stood and surveyed the work they'd done. Kyle surveyed his uncle.

"That's what a pile of brush looks like," Evans said. Kyle nodded. The brush pile of dead wood was as high as a man at the shoulder and over 100 feet long from end to end. It flanked a long section of the driveway that ran up to the house.

"Are we going to burn it?" Kyle asked.

"Not now. Not with a burn ban in effect. I think we'd be alright if we did though. Nothing around that brush pile in any direction but twenty feet of bare dirt. Unlikely a fire there would do anything but burn itself out."

"Let's check out the hole," Kyle said.

Evans said, "Okay."

They walked over to the hole they began earlier that summer. The hole was bigger now. Deeper and longer but not wider. The sides were shored up with used pallets and plywood. Kyle and Evans had piled up the broken rocks and loose dirt outside the hole and formed them into a parapet with embrasures. Kyle stood at the edge for a moment, then jumped down inside. He leaned against the edge of the hole. A spied a hunk of limestone. It was one of the pieces they broke apart with the expanding grout. Kyle spotted the seam of one of the boreholes and traced his finger along it. Bits of grout flaked off. Then Kyle sighted through one of the embrasures towards the long driveway.

"This ain't for brushfires, is it?" Kyle asked.

"It is not," his uncle said. He dropped into the hole beside Kyle.

"From here, we can observe the entire length of the driveway. The slope of the ground and the way we formed the dirt outside the hole make it hard for anybody on the driveway to tell this is more than just another piece of Texas. If somebody on the road were to take a knee or drop down completely, a man up here could still see them. Anybody caught on the drive wouldn't have a good way to run. They could keep going up to the house. They could go back the way they came. Or they could try charging up the hill towards us. Not much between here and there except bare ground. No cover. Nowhere to hide."

Kyle looked over the ground, seeing everything his uncle just pointed out. There was a direct line from their hole to the driveway to the brush pile on the opposite side.

"You planned this all out when I got here? Before maybe?" Kyle asked. Evans didn't answer that question either.

"We're close enough to the house that a man could get from the house into here pretty damn quick. But we're far enough away that somebody focused on the house wouldn't necessarily spot this hole."

"What were you doing in the workshop?" Kyle asked.

"The next step here is to build overhead cover. Run some logs or some railroad ties over the top, then cover that with a few feet of dirt. It doesn't look like the PVD have grenades. At least, they don't yet. They just got those choppers, as you call them. But there is still another month of summer. Ninety days until the election."

"You make forts like this before?" Kyle asked.

"I did when I was a combat engineer. That was before I went EOD and started playing with bombs."

"What were you working on after lunch? Something for this?" Kyle asked again. Evans looked at his watch. The shadows had gotten long. He looked back over his shoulder to the trail Kyle still ran down every morning.

"Let’s check the laser."


The dazzler they mounted on the roof came on just like it was supposed to, and when they used the remote control to swing and pitch the repurposed camera system, everything worked as it should have. It was twilight now, and the beams of green laser light pulsed across the hills and danced amongst the oaks and the elms and the cedars.

"It won't work," Kyle said.

"What won't work?" Evans asked.

"The dazzler. It won't work. This isn't the Middle East."

"Don't I know it," Evans said.

Kyle looked at his uncle in frustration. He was tired of more of his uncle's evasions and non-answers. Kyle went on.

"It won't work. That dazzler isn't going to see the scare the vanguard off."

"It'll work," Evans said. Kyle shook his head.

"Once the PVD see the laser show, they're going to come marching right up the driveway. It isn't going to work."

"It'll work," Evans repeated. He checked his watch. "Let's go inside and get some dinner before the bugs get us."

"You want to watch the live streams after dinner?" Kyle asked.

"I don't want to, but we will," Evans replied.

 

The Texas Hill Country. August 1st. Continued.

After dinner, Kyle cleaned up and Evans went up to the office. Evans booted up the computer and opened up the normal newsfeeds and livestreams. He didn't bother looking at any of them though. They were just background noise. A part of the environment that could be registered and dismissed. He went over to the ready rack on the wall. Only the carbine was there now. He traced a finger along the hammer that hung where the full-length rifle used to be. That rifle was gone. All the other guns were gone. Even his gun safe was cleaned out. Nothing in the house. Gone. Vanished. Disappeared.

Evans glided across the office from the ready-rack to the display on the wall with the busted bomb-suit helmet mounted on it. It was big. Heavy. It hung from the wall via a French Cleat screwed directly into the studs. With both hands, Evans hefted the display off the wall. He turned it over and read the names and messages on the back, all scrawled in black Sharpie pen. Old names. The names of friends. Names from the past. Names that brought back good memories. Names that brought back bad ones too.

Evans heard his nephew coming up the stairs. Evans bowed his head as if genuflecting and rehung the display. Kyle entered the office.

"Anything happening yet?"

The sun was just a razor-thin orange line across the horizon. The East Coast was already dark. The West Coast had hours to go until sunset, but Los Angeles and San Francisco started early. Portland and Seattle never really stopped. From Bellingham to San Diego, urban "Autonomous Zones" sprung up with so routinely they weren't even reported by the alternative media anymore.

"Dunno. Honestly. Wasn't paying attention."

"Supposed to be a big interview tonight?"

"Who?"

"You know who. That big guy."

Evans shrugged. "Anybody getting a mainstream interview isn't going to say anything I haven't heard before. Want to drive?"

"Sure." Kyle slid into the desk chair and started tapping the computer's keyboard. The sounds coming out of the computer's speakers rose, fell, crashed, shifted as Kyle cycled through the different feeds. Chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" Chants of, "No Justice-No Peace." Chants of, "The whole world is watching." Angry cries blare out, too ugly and shrill to be intelligible. Evans heard them all before. Now they just made him feel tired.

Something rattled electronically inside the desk. Evans opened a drawer and took out his burner phone. Text messages glowed on the face.


We'll bring her by in a couple days.

Hombre Enojado is picking up some new devices. He says we've had these ones too long.


The burner was stripped down to bare essentials. No emojis. No pictures. No camera. No mic. Just basic text. Evans heard they were specially made in Ciudad de Este in Paraguay, especially for people who wanted to leave a minimal electronic trail. He typed a reply.


Muy Bien


Kyle opened the news interview. A media stalwart sat across from a career politician that looked as ancient and desiccated as a mummy. The politician had an expensive blue suit and thin whisps of white hair expertly styled to appear more than what they were. The politician had just been asked a question. He was answering.

"If the voters want these demonstrations to stop, then the answer is simple…" Kyle watched as the politician leaned in menacingly toward the interviewer and the camera. His eyes were dark, drug-addled pinpricks, and insane. His smile was a skeletal rictus. He let out a conspiratorial stage whisper.

"If you want it all to stop, then vote for me. Vote…for… me."

"Can you find something else?" Evans asked.

"Not a fan of that one?" Kyle asked.

"I'm not a fan of any of them," Evans answered.

"Any feed you want to check out?" Kyle asked next.

Evans shook his head no. "Whatever. You pick."

Kyle looked his uncle up and down. The man was there, in the office, but only physically. His eyes were fixed on the Texas hills, now black against a midnight blue sky. Kyle typed. A few interesting feeds came up. Boston. Groton. Harrisburg. Another police car burned. Looters ran out of another department store. Kyle's eyes darted from the screens and up to his uncle. His uncle isn't there.


Evans is back in the Middle East. He's younger. He's got hair on his head. His body is all tight, lean, muscle mass. Not an ounce of fat. Nothing sags. Nothing is wrinkled. He's with his Marines and they are in a poor, Middle Eastern farm villa. Everything is made from cinder blocks and cheap sheet metal with flaking paint. Somewhere, goats bleat. Dogs are barking. When the sun finally sets, the barking will stop. When the sun rises tomorrow, the barking will begin anew, as if all the dogs are working in concert. A Soviet tractor and a Japanese pickup sit dead and derelict in front of the farm buildings, the mechanical equivalent of dinosaur bones in a museum. On one side of the compound is a river. Evans doesn't know which one. He is too junior to have a map.

In every other direction, the land stretches out to the horizon, flat and smooth as a billiard table. Marines and Sailors scramble about to finish out various last-minute tasks before the sky goes dark. They've all been in the field for two weeks straight, sweeping along the river, on foot, and online. Old Corps, as some say. It is August, and it is hot. Temperatures reach 120 by midday. Along the banks of the river, it is humid. Jungle like. Palm trees and fig orchards. They could be in Vietnam, or some island in the Pacific. They're all filthy. Everybody has heat rash from the sweat and the dirt. Everyone reeks. They've eaten nothing but pre-packaged rations since they've been out there. Some men are constipated from the rations. Others have the runs from drinking water from the farm ditches and irrigation canals. The mood is one of elation. Morale couldn't be higher.

Stacked between the Soviet Tractor and the Japanese pickup is the gold mine they came searching for: a mountain of enemy weapons: 122mm rockets, 155mm artillery shells, Italian "cake" anti-tank mines, Semtex and ball bearings, and cheap Croatian tactical gear: all the ingredients for suicide vests. There are Romanian assault rifles and banana mags made in East Germany back when it was its own country.

And more.

Inside the farmhouse, the captain is glowering over eight stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Each stack is four inches tall. Each bill is brand new. The U.S. currency is not as alarming as the two rifles they found with, "Property of U.S. Govt." stamped on the receivers.

Military intelligence reported there were weapons caches along the river and for once their reports were right. The Marines sweeping along the river found the cache and every piece of ordnance they captured means one less roadside bomb. One less dead Marine. One less dead corpsman. One less widow. One less set of heartbroken parents back home. One less child growing up without a dad.

This cache was actually many caches spread all over the farm. The officers couldn't see everything and Lasky and Evans helped themselves to some souvenirs. Lasky has gangster rolls of the country's old bank notes, enough to fill an empty green satchel charge bag. Arabian Stallions are on one side of the notes. The old mustachioed dictator is on the other. Lasky believes his roll of old money will be worth millions in a few years. Evans has a brand new Yugoslavian made machinegun. The action is stiff. It has never been fired and smells of Cosmoline.

"They aren't going to let you take that home," Lasky says.

"I know they won't let me take it home."

"Are you gonna try?"

"Try what?"

"To take it home?"

"Even if I was dumb enough to try and smuggle this home, I wouldn't tell anybody. Especially somebody like you who can't keep his mouth shut."

"You think they'll let me take all this money home?"

"I'm sure nobody cares about all that Monopoly money you've got."

"I'm taking it back," Lasky says. "Gonna use it to buy a house back in Soldotna. Cash. Gonna buy a Mustang too."

"The second most productive thing you could do with that money is set it on fire," Evans says. He looks his RPK over, admiring it.

"If that's the second, what’s the first?"

"Think about it. It'll come to you."

"What did the EOD guys say?" Lasky asks.

Evans sets down the RPK. After they found the cache, a team of intel pogues swooped in and whisked away everybody living in the house. Next came a team of EOD technicians. They'd been called in to blow the weapons cache up right where it was. But when the EOD team arrived, they looked the pile of terrorist ordnance up and down and said, "It is too big to blow up."

"What do you mean it is too big to blow up?" Somebody asked.

"I mean it is too big. We don't have enough of our own demo to blow all this stuff in place. Even if we did, the explosion would flatten every town along the river for two miles. Too big. Too beaucoup."

"Then what do we do?"

The EOD team leader shrugged. "Call back to the rear. Let the officers figure it out."

They called to the rear. The geniuses in the rear agreed it was too dangerous to blow the cache where it was. For safety's sake, they said the best thing to do was load everything up in trucks, drive it back to base, and blow it up there. Evans spent the afternoon loading ancient ordnance onto trucks. They ran out of trucks long before they ran out of ordnance. Now they were going to spend the night on the river. More trucks would come the next day.

"The EOD guys said to come over and talk to them after we get back to Pendleton. They'll help me put the paperwork together."

"To go EOD?" Lasky asks.

"Yes. To go EOD," Evans says.

Lasky thinks for a moment. "That would mean you'd have to stay in. You want to stay in?"

Evans thinks about that, but only for a second. He answers, "Yes. It is."

"Think I could make it into EOD?"

"That's up to you man. You got the physical fitness score to get in. Your run time is good." Evans answers.

"What does running have to do with defusing bombs?"

"This is the Marine Corps," Evans says. "Running has something to do with everything."

Evans looks out across the foreign landscape. The river. The desert. The night sky and the captured pile of bombs. The elation at a job well done. All is right in his world, and everything is clear. He'll get back to Camp Pendleton. He'll transfer from the combat engineers into Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Getting into EOD will mean coming back here and to places just like it, just as bad, just as dangerous. It will mean wearing the uniform for most of his life, however long that might be. But that's okay. Here, in the desert, on the river, with his Marines, it all makes sense.

"I think you're wrong," Lasky says, breaking the mood. "I think I can at least get a Mustang for all this money."



The drug phone rattled again, and Kyle watched as it brought his uncle back from wherever he was into reality. Uncle Evans picked up the phone and read the message.

"Look for a feed named Austin Andy," Evans said. Kyle's fingers danced across the keyboard. Austin Andy came up.

Austin Andy's channel was comprised of five different live feeds. One was a livestream of "Austin Andy" making comments about the riots on the other four. Those other four were all coming from New Fredericksburg.

All of Evans' muscles tensed at once.

"You remember how to load magazines?" His uncle's question was so cold and emotionless that it sent a chill down Kyle's spine.

"Yes."

"You remember where I keep them? And the extra ammo?"

"Yeah. In those green metal cans."

"Go get them. Then start loading mags. Use the speed loaders, just like I told you."

Kyle went to get the ammunition and empty magazines. Evans watched the feed.

What was happening in New Fredericksburg was a variation of the earlier riots in the cities and suburbs. New Fredericksburg was ranch country. Isolated homes. The lighting was different. Darker. There weren't any streetlights here. The lighting for the feeds came from headlights, headlamps, and flashlights the streamers wore or carried. It came from the wavering orange firelight. In one stream, a rancher's flatbed truck and tractor were fully engulfed in flame. Twenty, thirty, maybe forty rioters milled about the ranch house and outbuildings. Some smashed property. Some were looting. Most were just there. Some of the rioters looked like typical political activists. Others were dressed in black, masked, with Choppers in their hands. There was no sign of the people who lived there.

In another feed, a farmhouse burned. Tongues of flame licked up out the windows and doors. When that streamer panned left and right, Evans saw barns and other outbuildings on fire. The camera panned across the ground. Evans saw a dead dog and dead chickens lying in the dust. The dog had been shot. The chickens had been stomped to death. Kyle came back into the office with a green metal ammo can in each hand. He set them down and then looked at the feed.

"They got bussed in," Kyle said.

Kyle was right. When the camera swung again two motorcoaches came into view. They both looked to be high-end charters. A black-clad vanguard member waved to his comrades. He said, "C'mon! C'mon! We going to the next one! We going to the next one!" Kyle popped the lids on the ammo cans. He took a magazine out of one and a stripper clip loaded with bullets out of the other. Evans did the same. The bullets made a distinct metallic sound as they were pushed from the stripper clip into the magazine. Something like grating, but smoother. Metal rolling against metal as it was designed to.

Vanguard members, masked and wearing black, climbed into the bus. They carried choppers. Some had bright green egg-shaped devices hooked to their black tactical gear.

"Are those grenades?" Kyle asked.

"Illumination grenades," Evans said. "Serbian made. An old Soviet design. Powdered magnesium. A good way to start fires."

The feed of PVD getting onto the bus cut out. A new feed came up. The view was unsteady. The focus kept going in and out. Somebody was shooting from their phone. The only light came from a burning building in the near distance. Dark figures were backlit by the fire. Whoever was shooting was whispering unintelligibly. To Kyle, it looked like somebody had run from their house and hidden in a nearby field and now were watching their home get looted and burned by the PVD. Without warning, that feed went out. Kyle had a suspicion that it was not the owner who shut it down.

"Where are the police? The sheriffs?" Kyle asked.

"Paid off, maybe. Tied up somewhere else. Maybe got a court order to keep them away, filed by some non-profit that's just a lawfare arm of the PVD and their masters, handed to some activist judge who's also down for their cause. Whatever the reason, the point is nobody can hide from what's coming. Not even in Texas." Using a speed loader, Evans pushed another stack of ten rounds into a magazine. The brass made the familiar grating sound. The bus feed came back on again. Kyle and Evans were looking out the bus's big windshield. The bus was heading down a driveway of packed earth. The headlights washed another remote ranch house in ghostly light. Kyle heard the PVD agents in the back of the bus laughing maliciously.

"How far away are they from us?" Kyle asked.

"Far enough that they won't be here tonight," Evans answered.

"What about tomorrow night?"

Evans pushed the last rounds into the magazine he was loading. Then he set down the speed loader and tapped the spine of the magazine against his desk. Next, he looked down into the magazine, making sure all the rounds were properly seated. Satisfied, he set that loaded magazine with the others.

"I can't say about tomorrow. Let's shut those feeds off. We've seen enough."

 

August 2nd . The Texas Hill Country.
Three Days before D-Day.

Kyle began the morning breakfast ritual with high hopes. He'd had a variety of foods delivered to the house and now the kitchen counter was loaded with different spices, sausages, fruits, and cheeses. He even had three different types of tortillas. He hoped to make something special for his uncle beyond the usual fare of scrambled eggs and bacon or scrambled eggs and sausage. But when he came into the kitchen, Kyle found his uncle distant. When the old man spoke, he used his words as sparingly as if he were paying for each syllable.

When Kyle spotted the old plate, he thought it would be a good way to get his uncle talking. It was the plate the farmer's wife loaded with muffins and gave to them, back when his uncle got the old stock tank, back when Kyle first got there. Kyle held the plate up for his uncle to see.

"Hey, we could take this back to that couple today. The one that gave us the muffins."

Evans froze. He looked at the plate a long time. Then he looked Kyle right in the eyes.

"That couple is gone. There's was one the houses the PVD burned down last night. The fire department found their bodies in the askes this morning." Evans looked the plate over one more time, then said to his nephew, "I'm going out to the workshop. I've got something I have to do."

Kyle watched his uncle go. Then, not knowing what else to do, he dropped the old plate in the trash.

 

I was hoping for more, but that said it all!

 

August 3rd. The Texas Hill Country.
Two Days Before D-Day
Part I

Evans woke, sat up, and spent a long time just sitting on his bed. The morning sun shone through the window, and outside the birds sang their morning songs. Evans didn't want to get out of bed. He checked his watch, not for the time, but for the date, even though he knew it already.

The watch read 8-3. August 3rd.

Evans spent a long time after that just sitting on his bed, trying not to think, trying not to remember. If it wasn't for his nephew, he probably wouldn't have left the room. Maybe he wouldn't have even left the bed. But Evans heard Kyle working in the kitchen and that gave him the strength and the courage he needed to get up and face this day.


"Sleeping in," Kyle asked when his uncle came into the kitchen. Evans saw that Kyle was working on something. Pans and dishes and various ingredients were spread across the kitchen counter. It smelled good, Evans had to admit, though he knew he couldn't bring himself to eat.

"Not sleeping in, just kinda zoning out," Evans answered. He decided there was no point in avoiding what he needed to say to his nephew, so he came right out and said it.

"Kyle, look at me." Kyle stopped what he was doing at the kitchen counter and faced his uncle. He knew what his uncle was about to say was serious, and the young man's look reflected the gravity in the air.

"Today. Today isn't going to be an easy day for me. I'm going to be in bad mood. It isn't anything you did or didn't do. It is me. Something I've got to deal with. All the same, I'm not likely to be my normal self today. I might be shorter. Curt. Angry maybe. But I want to let you know before the day gets going it isn't you. I'm glad you came out here this summer. You coming out here, it really made me happy."

Evans took a deep breath and let it out in a long and heavy sigh.

"I've got some errands to run today. Will you be alright here by yourself for a few hours?"

Kyle nodded, then asked, "You want some tea before you go?"

"Not this morning," Evans said. "I've started too late already." With that, Evans grabbed his keys and headed out the door. Seconds later, Kyle heard the truck engine come to life and his uncle drive away.

Kyle looked around the kitchen counters. Strategically hidden in all the breakfast clutter was a package he ordered just for his uncle. The face of the box read:

Chai Tea. Original Flavor.

Sweet and Spicy

Export of Iraq.



Kyle picked the box up and tucked it away in the back of one of the cabinets. He'd make it for his uncle another day.


Evans didn't bring any guns into town. He drove carefully, just under the speed limit. He consciously checked his mirror frequently, looking for any law enforcement vehicles. Unconsciously, he checked the sides of the road for any anomaly that might be hiding an Improvised Explosive Device or IED. There weren't any IEDs of course. But the deeper parts of his brain weren't going to admit that, especially on this day when he was only partly living in the hear-and-now.

Evans' first stop that morning was the bank. He needed cash for today's errands. He parked well away from the bank, and any cameras that might be monitoring the bank's parking lot. Of course, the inside of the bank had its own cameras, but Evans didn't feel like making things easy for anybody.

His next stop was at an auto parts store. Just like the bank, he parked several blocks away and then walked the rest of the way. Inside, he hunted through the aisles until he found the motor oil with the lowest viscosity. He bought a case, paid cash, and walked out without a single unnecessary word to the clerk.

It was August, in Texas, and the walk back was hot. The heat reminded him of all his time overseas, and that made him think about today, and the anniversary, and that set him on edge. He felt anxious, angry, and sad, all at once. When he got back to the truck, he threw the oil inside, started up the truck, put the AC on as high as it would go, and just sat there. The cool air blasted into his face, and Evans just sat in the truck, staring off into nothing. He turned the truck's radio on, then turned it off a second later.

When he finally felt under control again, he thought about what he had to do next. He thought through all the steps, forced himself to relax, then thought through all the steps again. He couldn't write any of the steps down, not on paper, and certainly not on anything digital. He had to do everything from memory, which he knew he could do, he just had to be careful and deliberate about it.

"You always knew you were going to have to do this someday. You thought this out a thousand times. Now it is time to do it," Evans said to himself. The cold air kept blowing through the truck's vents.

Evans buckled his seat belt and shifted the truck into drive. The next stop would be back to the paint supply store. The next town to the north had a chemical supply store. Then, he'd double back. The town to the south had a store that sold chemistry equipment to schools and laboratories, as well as an industrial lubricant outlet that sold the type of lithium grease he wanted. After that, he would be the wrecking yard out on Farm Route 325. The last stop would be the package store and then back home. He'd priced everything out already. He had the cash he needed. He'd also scouted out where to drive and where to park to avoid any cameras. He'd done all this long before his nephew arrived. Back then, it had all been an intellectual exercise. At least that's what he told himself.

"No," Evans said to the air vents. "You were fooling yourself. You always knew you'd be here someday. You just never knew the path that would lead you to this point. Now you know."

Evans turned on the radio again with a stab of his finger. A few notes played and he thought it might have been that Fleetwood Mac song he hated. He didn't wait to find out. He turned the radio off with another stab of his finger and drove the rest of the day in silence.



While Evans shopped, Kyle fired up the computer in the office. His fingers tapped at the keys, and he made his way through the daily news feeds. A new law had been passed in California: The West Coast Cleaning America's Air Act. The law required that any private or commercially owned vehicle leaving California had to have a full tank of fuel, and the California Highway Patrol had repurposed all the Agriculture Checkpoints to now check the fuel gauges on all the cars and trucks leaving the state. It was no coincidence that price of a gallon of fuel in California was three times the national average, the majority of that cost being state taxes. Kyle wondered how that would delay his parents' departure from the state.

Kyle switched to another news feed. A senator from Utah was being interviewed, and the senator expressed his support for the latest gun control bill being pushed through Washington D.C.

"Look Shawn," the senator began, "there is no bigger critic of this president and his party than me. You know that. But common-sense gun control is just that: common sense. We can't have our schools and our daycares being turned into warzones because some child bought an AK-47 off the internet or through a gun show loophole. And to be perfectly clear with you Shawn, I'm really embarrassed about how our party's voters haven't moved forward with the times on this issue. I've represented my party in politics for over two decades. My father served as a governor and a cabinet secretary. I know what's best for our voters and I'm telling you now, this Second Amendment absurdity just needs to stop.

"Well, I'm a shooter myself, senator, and I couldn't agree more. You don't need a grenade launcher to hunt a deer," the host groveled. Kyle flipped to another news feed, watched another career media personality interview another career political figure. The same questions. The same non-answers. The same self-serving theater. Kyle looked the interviewer and the interviewee up and down. Neither one cared about him, or his parents, or his uncle, or the things they were going through. Neither said anything about the riots. Neither one had any inkling about how things worked outside of their political-media bubbles. Neither one cared. Kyle shut off the computer and looked around the office.

The display on the wall with the smashed bomb helmet caught his eye again. He walked over to it and, inspired by some hunch hefted it off the wall and turned it over.

Messages were scribbled all over the back of the display in black Sharpie pen. A note at the very top read:

FROM:

EOD TEAM 14

TASK FORCE 14

TO:

GUNNERY SERGEANT "FRANKENSTEIN"

SOON TO BE

WARRANT OFFICER "FRANKENSTEIN"


Below that were personalized messages all made out to his uncle. Frankenstein. Beneath each of the messages the author signed their name. Hoffman. Bloem. Fraser. Lasky. One was signed Menudo, which Kyle thought odd, since Menudo was a soup and not any name he'd heard of. Kyle's eyes locked on to the longest message, scribbled out in an inelegant, almost childlike mix of looping cursive and blocky print. Kyle read the message.


Frankenstein,

What can I say. You and me have been rockin' together since day one. One adventure after another. One bomb after another. It won't be the same without you watching my back, but I can't wait to salute you.

Semper Fi

SSgt Lasky.


Kyle counted the number of Frankensteins written on the back of the display. He thought back to his uncle's story, and about the Frankenstein demolition charge: a bale of barbed wire packed full of explosives. He thought about what damage that could do; 80 pounds of exploding barbed wire.

Kyle hung the display back on the wall and went out to his uncle's workshop. The imprints of the bales of barbed wire were still there. Faint, but noticeable if you knew to look for them. Kyle kicked away the last of their imprints, then he tried the door to the workshop. It was locked.

Kyle peered in one of the windows. No signs of barbed wire in the shop. No signs of anything. Every surface was clutter-free and clean. Every tool was in its place. His uncle's shop could was tidy enough for a catalogue shoot.

Kyle went back in the house. His uncle kept a bowl by the front door. Inside were odds and ends and loose change. Kyle took a few dimes out of the bowl and went up to the office.

He checked the carbine. Seeing it was unloaded he set it on the desk. Then Kyle unloaded a couple of the magazines. He slipped a dime into each empty magazine. The small coin fit perfectly beneath the feed lips. He inserted one modified magazine into the carbine and racked the bolt. With the small, flat coin holding down the magazine follower, the bolt did not hold open on the empty magazine. It ran freely.

"Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong," Kyle said to himself. He picked a point on the wall, brought the carbine up, and dryfired it, using all the shooting techniques his uncle taught him. Then racked the action and dry fired again. And again. And again.



Evans came out of the package store with a case of his cola in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. It wasn't a large bottle, and it wasn't an especially good one either. He wasn't looking for taste, he was just looking to get drunk. And given that he almost never drank, he didn't require much volume to make that happen.

Everything he'd purchased was in the bed of the truck. He tarped the load, tied it down, then added a second tarp and tied that down, just in case. The odds of anybody seeing the contents of his shopping adventure and adding them all up was damn close to zero. Still, there was no point in taking chances. Not with his nephew's future hanging in the balance.

Evans opened the passenger door and put the cola and whisky on the floor. He shut the door and went over to the driver's side. Across the street, four patrol vehicles were parked. The police officers were standing outside, talking with each other. Evans looked them over.

They looked young. They looked too fresh, too innocent, too clean and too soft for Evans taste. Conspiracy theories on the internet said that law enforcement across the nation was being shaped at the highest levels to ensure only the right type of people got into the profession. "Right" being defined as politically reliable. Evans suspected there was some truth to that. In any event, Evans looked the police officers over and didn't like what he saw. They had their fancy equipment and their fancy vehicles. But what did that mean? The oath they'd taken wasn't that much different from the one Evans and all his friends had taken. But what good was the oath if the police didn't uphold it? They didn't stop the burning, or the rioting, or the looting, or the murders. They just sat back and watched from the inside their expensive vehicles. Evans never sat back, not when there was a bomb to dispose of. Not even when the bridge was about to collapse and raked with machinegun fire. Lasky never sat back either. Or Hoffman, or Reed, or Fraser.

And what would the police do if Evans tried to stop the PVD? More importantly, what would they do to Kyle. Evan knew the answer to those questions without even having to ask them. Evans took one look at the tarped load in the back of his truck, then climbed inside and started the engine.

The thing about bombs, he knew, was that there were lots of ways to keep them from going off, if you got to them in time. But when the detonation process starts, the options get very limited very quickly. Lots of things in life were like that. If you got to the problem soon enough, you could keep it from getting bigger. But if you chose ignore the problem or just hope that it went away… well… problems have a way of getting bigger and bigger until one day they explode.

"Its your job to stop this," Evans whispered at the police across the street. "If you don't, the consequences are on you."

Evans put the truck in drive and headed home.

 

Damn, this is getting good!

 

The Middle East. August 3rd. Two Days before D-Day. Cont.

Evans turned into his development. He passed the big "Silver Springs" sign and made another turn toward his home. It was then that Evans saw the spectacle, and it made him groan out loud.

It was all laid out before him, a circus of the absurd, as if all its perpetrators and participants had conspired together to put this performance on solely for Evan's benefit. Evans saw Dale, George, and John, along with other neighbors. He saw the motorcycle lying sideways on the road. He saw the flashing lights of an ambulance, half a dozen police vehicles, and the county animal control van. But the thing that was most prominent of all was the dead dog.

The dead dog lay in the middle of the road. A bundle of gray and white fur. One of the police officers stood over the dog with a shotgun up in the crook of his arm, triumphant.

"You've no idea what you've done," Evans whispered at the young cop.

The road was partially blocked. Police cruisers and SUVs sat parked half-on-half-off the road haphazardly. An officer waved Evans forward. Evans was immediately glad Kyle wasn't with him. He took one more look at the tarped load in the back of the truck, then crept forward. Dale and John rushed to the truck.

"You'll never guess what happened?"

Evans looked over the bike in the road, the dead dog, the cop with the shotgun, and George in the open back of the ambulance. In the back of the ambulance, two EMTs poured over George's leg.

"I bet I can," Evans said.

John and Dale explained what Evans already deduced. Lori's dog had gotten loose. Again. It embarked on its usual reign of terror, which peaked when George was attacked on his motorcycle. George was bit and dumped the bike.

Somebody called the cops on the dog, and this time the cops came. When the dog charged one of the cops, the cop responded with two rounds of .12 gauge 00 buckshot. That was that for Lori's fur baby.

"He must have been a cat person," Dale joked.

"Is George okay?" Evans asked.

"The dog bit him, but not badly," John said. "He was wearing his leathers. He was on his bike when Lori's mutt got him. He ended up dumping the bike and the crash scared the dog off. He got lucky."

"Maybe," Evans said.

George must have sensed them talking about him. From the back of the ambulance, he flashed them all a thumbs-up sign. Evans returned it.

One of the police officers, the oldest one, maybe a decade younger than Evans, walked up to the truck.

"What are you doing here?" the police officer asked.

"I live up the road," Evans answered.

"You know anything about this dog?"

"I know it gets loose and tries to bite people all the time," Evans said.

"Yeah. I figured," the older officer said.

It was then that the agent of their destruction came trundling up on a clapped-out golf cart.

It was Lori. Her golf cart came puttering up towards them. It swayed from side to side on dilapidated suspension. Everybody around the truck braced themselves for what was about to come. Even the cop, who'd never met Lori in his life, shifted uneasily.

The cart stopped just short of Evans' truck. Lori applied the parking brake, and it made a loud and unhealthy mechanical sound. She stepped out of the golf cart. Her shoes were cheap molded plastic clogs, and they were just as clapped out as the golf cart. They seemed to be spilling apart at the top and broken at the soles. They'd been asked to support far too much weight for far too long. Lori took one last look at her dog. Then the screaming began.

"You mother fuckers! You murdered my dog!"

Everybody stopped and turned towards the screeching sound. The EMTs in the back of the ambulance stopped what they were doing. The officer with the raised shotgun lowered it, then quickly headed for his car.

"You killed my dog, my poor dog. My baby," Lori screamed again. And Evans realized Lori wasn't screaming at the police but at him. At him, and at Dale, and at John. The older police officer stepped away from the truck and towards Lori. He raised his hands in a placating manner.

"Ma'am…" He began.

"You mother fuckers," Lori swore. A lock of unkempt, dyed hair flopped into her eyes. She brushed it away and swore again. "You mother fucking men."

"Ma'am," the cop repeated. "Right now I need you to calm down…"

Lori bent down, picked up a handful of gravel from the side of the road, and hurled it at Dale and John. Dale cowered away from the thrown gravel. John whined, "Hey. You can't do that."

"Fuck you," Lori swore. She picked up another hand of gravel and plastered John a second time.

"You men! You fuckers!"

The cop stepped forward, more aggressively now. "Stop that."

The gaggle of other, younger cops up the road came forward.

"And you!" Lori screamed. This was directed at Evans. "You and your fucking truck! I bet it was you." She picked up a baseball-sized rock and hurled it at Evans' truck. It thunked against the side of his truck.

"Hey," Evans and the old cop said at the same time. The cop stepped right in front of Lori. She cursed about her dog again.

"I'll get you. I'll get all of you. You killed my dog. You fucking… I'm going to ruin your lives."

"Ma'am," the cop shouted. "Ma'am, that man in the back of the ambulance? That man was bit by that dog."

Lori paused. She looked like she was going to pick up another rock, then stopped. She seemed to see the cop for the first time. She straightened. Looked right at the cop and said, "Fuck that man. He deserves to get bit. You all do."

"Ma'am, is that your dog in the road?" the cop asked. He was trying to reason with Lori, but Lori was beyond reasoning. Her face tightened.

"You're going to let them murder my dog? You're going to let them do that? You fucking men. You are all in it together. You men. You fucking pigs."

And then, Lori spat right in the cop's face.

Evans expected Lori to get arrested right then and there, but she didn't. Things were different now. Some people got arrested and some people didn't. Lori wasn't the type that didn't.

The older cop wiped the spit off his face and looked like he was about to rip Lori in half, but the younger cops came rushing forward. Buy they didn't come for Lori. They came to restrain their older partner. They ignored Lori and surrounded him. Evans overheard one of the cops say, "We can't arrest her. The chief and the DA…"

Lori kept cursing. She spat and pointed her finger like a knife.

"My dog! I'm going to fuck you up. I'm going to ruin you. All of you. You're all fucking dead."

The cluster of officers broke apart. One, a female with long orange nails, broke free to try and soothe Lori. Evans caught another's attention and asked, "Do you need me here?"

The cop shook his head no. Evans nodded once, then put the truck into drive. He wanted out of there. Nothing good could come from lingering. He left without another word.

In the rearview mirror, Evans watched the scene continue: the twirling flashing lights, Lori screaming, Dale and John standing dumbfounded, the police kind of milling about, and the dead dog in the middle of the road.

"Of all the days. August third," Evans said to himself as headed home.


Evans backed up to his workshop. Easier to unload the contents in the truck bed that way. Easier, and harder for his nephew to see what was inside not. Not this his nephew could infer Evans' recipe from the ingredients in the back of the truck. Still. Why take a chance?

Evans switched off the engine. He looked down at the whisky and cola on the truck's floor. They were pretty tempting, especially after this day, with its shopping trips and Lori's dead dog, and with the anniversary. Something Evans didn't want to remember but felt obligated to do so. Evans wanted to crack the bottle and the cans open and just get drunk right there in the truck.

But he didn't.

He got to thinking about the war, and the battle of the bridge. He thought about the enemy and all the work they'd done. Setting up the ambush, Hauling all the ammo out to the island. Observing the passing American convoys to calculate all the moves and countermoves necessary to set up a trap. They'd done their work. Evans had to respect that. He decided instead of drinking he needed to do his work first. He got out of the truck, unloaded the bed, and brought everything into his workshop.


Up in the house, Kyle watched his uncle through a crack in the blinds. One tarp came off the load in the back, then another. Kyle was no dummy. Two tarps over a load of parcels, and there hadn't been a could in the sky for weeks. It wasn't weather his uncle was worried about.

His uncle took the various parcels and packages into the workshop. Lights inside flashed on.

Kyle wanted to make dinner for his uncle, but Evans said he needed his space tonight. Kyle thought it was best to respect that. He closed the crack in the blinds and walked away from the window. He went back into the office and reloaded the magazines he'd emptied earlier that day.


It was late when Evans finished up his project in the workshop. He washed off his hands and arms thoroughly and then locked everything up. After that, he checked his watch. Again, he was looking for the date, not the time. It was still August 3rd.

Evans looked up into the clear night sky of Texas. The stars were all there in their orbits, shining and looking back down on him.

"Well, my friends," Evans said to the heavens. "It is that time again. Let's have a few drinks and think about what happened."

Evans found a chair and table on his back porch and set himself up. He took a glass, nearly filled it with whisky, splashed some cola into it, held the whole thing up, grimaced, then drained it in one go. He repeated this twice more, going for speed and volume over taste. When it was time for the fourth glass, he went heavier on the cola and easier on the whisky. It was time to slow it down now, he knew. It was time to slow it down now, to remember what happened, and to pay respect where it was due.

Evans looked up at that big, clear night sky with its expanse of stars. Animals hooted and insects chirped. Evans sipped his drink, and he remembered.




The Middle East. August 3rd. Years Ago.

Gunnery Sergeant Evans pushed on the passenger seat of his armored vehicle while the other members of his EOD team watched. The seat toppled over.

"Well, that's not supposed to happen."

"I told you, all the bolts sheared off," Staff Sergeant Lasky said. The wind kicked up. Evans was grateful for the breeze, but he didn’t like the cloud of sand that just got blown into his vehicle. Either way, it didn’t help him with his current problem of a broken seat.

"It’s brand new, multi-million-dollar vehicle. How the hell did all the bolts shear off at once?" he asked. The answer to that question didn’t particularly matter right now, but it would give him a few extra moments to think. He turned and looked up the long line of military vehicles, all parked along the side of the road, all painted the same sandy-tan color. The convoy was about to leave, and he'd just come to find his vehicle wasn't roadworthy because of some cheap bolts on the passenger seat.

"Hell, if I know how they broke," Lasky said. Hoffman shrugged once in support. Hoffman had had enough of deploying overseas and disarming bombs while his kids grew up without him and his wife grew distant. Instead of trying to save the Middle East, he was going to get out, start a new career in the private sector, and try and save his marriage and his family.

The other two crewmembers assigned to the vehicle, Fraser and Bloem, watched the events unfold. Evans stood up the seat on its brackets again, then touched it lightly with his finger. The touch was gentle as a fallen feather. The seat toppled over again and crashed backward into the second row of seats.

"We got any spare bolts?" Evans asked as he checked his watch. The boss, HE-6, said he wanted to be moving in ten minutes. That was five minutes ago. HE 6 was not an even-tempered man in the best of times, and missing a timeline was sure to elevate his anger from its normal state of barely controlled anger up into a blind rage.

"No. We don’t have any spare bolts," Lasky said.

"Won’t matter if we did," Bloem added from the gunner’s turret. "Those bolts in the seat bracket were welded in. We’d need to get the broken stubs out first. With time and the right tools, I could do that here." Bloem was a reserve Marine and when he wasn’t running around the Middle East he and his family ran a chain of auto repair shops in Columbus Ohio. In the outside world he could fix anything mechanical and knew enough about finance and tax law to work on Wall Street. In the Marine Corps, he manned a machine gun. "We probably don’t have the right tools and I doubt we have the time."

"No, we don’t," Evans agreed.

"The bump plan was for somebody to ride in the command vehicle. But… maybe we could just set the seat up and try it. Maybe tape it down with some rigger tape?" Lasky said hopefully. Evans shook his head.

Evans looked at Lasky like he was crazy. "Tape? Really? You wanna go riding around in a warzone on a seat that's held in with duct tape?"

"I don't want to ride in the command vehicle, I can tell you that."

"I'm sure none of you do," Evans said. He took another look over his EOD team. Bloem and Fraser weren’t EOD techs, they were infantrymen who’d been added to his team when they arrived in country, but they were all still HIS team. HIS Marines. He looked at their faces. They spent the last eight months together. Eight months into a deployment that was only supposed to last six. He knew these young Marines as if they were his own children. In some ways, they were. The broken seat meant somebody had to ride in the command vehicle with the First Sergeant and with the commander, HE 6, and all the other brass. No young Marine wanted to be stuck in a vehicle with a senior officer and a First Sergeant. These Marines were no exception.

"Wait here. I’ll go talk to the boss," Evans said.

"You mean HE-6?" Fraser asked.

"Yeah. And don’t let him hear you call him that. He won’t like it. You can call him Yes Sir or No Sir."

"I don’t see why not. It’s a cool call sign. Plus, I heard he got a Bronze Star for it, clearing out that ambush on that bridge all by himself."

"They hand Bronze Stars out to officers like candy," Bloem said. Bloem was a bit rough around the edges. He wasn't afraid of officers, not even HE-6. He wasn't afraid of IEDs either. When he wasn't behind his machinegun, he would go poking around looking for them with reckless abandon.

"Not Bronze Stars with ‘Vs’ they don’t," Lasky said.

"Maybe he didn’t want that Bronze Star, V or not," Evans said. This was his fourth tour overseas with HE-6. He knew their commander better than anybody in the task force, even the First Sergeant and the Executive Officer. Evans examined the sheared bolts one last time.

"You fucktards wait here, and try not to break anything else on my vehicle while I'm gone."


Evans walked up to the head of the convoy of military vehicles to the 6x6 armored truck that served as the command vehicle. It was hot. It was always hot in this part of the world, and he already swimming in sweat under his Nomex coveralls, heavy body armor, and layers upon layer of gear. Along the way he passed dozens of vehicles like his own, each sporting machine guns and whip antenna, with backpacks hanging off the sides and roof racks overflowing with gear. At one vehicle, the Marines and a Sailor had some gadget out that was blasting music while they cleaned their machine guns one more time. The song was Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac. The sailor had a guitar out and was trying to match the chords. Evans kept walking. When he finally got to the command vehicle, the Air Officer was standing at the open back hatch. He had his helmet off. One hand held a radio handset to his ear. The other hand worked its way through a thick tangle of black hair that had grown beyond acceptable military standards, even for a fighter pilot. As was often the case, the pilot was singing.

"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl."

The Air Officer saw Evans. He smiled, made the Hawaiian shaka gesture, and stopped singing.

"We're still waiting on air to check-in. What's up, Frank? You looking for the boss?"

Evans nodded. The Air Officer pointed toward the front of the truck. "He's up at the hood of the truck, looking at a map and brooding." The pilot winked. Evans kept walking.

At the front of the armored 6x6 truck, Evans found the boss, HE-6. The man had a map spread out and was studying it. Evans studied the man. When they first met, Evans had been a Lance Corporal and the other man had been a Second Lieutenant. Now Evans was a Gunnery Sergeant about to become a Warrant Officer, and the other man was a Major about to become a Lieutenant Colonel. They had been coming to this hot dusty part of the world since the war started. Years later, they were still coming here. The major saw Evans and folded up the map.

"What’s up?"

Despite his reputation for being a hothead, HE-6 was a good officer as far as Evans was concerned. The man just took it all too personally, these military misadventures of the last two decades.

"I got a problem with the EOD truck," Evans answered. "The passenger seat broke off its brackets. All the mounting bolts sheared off."

"It’s a multi-million-dollar vehicle. How the hell did all the bolts shear off at once?" HE-6 asked.

"I asked that very same question."

HE-6 shrugged. "No problem. Bump one of your guys up here. Once the pilots check in we'll get going."

"Roger sir. Actually, I’ll be the one riding up here with you. I’ll let my guys know and be right back." Evans said.

"Sounds good, but before you go, let's talk," the Major said.

Evans had already half-turned to head back to his team. He stopped, turned back, and faced the major.

"I got word back from Quantico. They aren't going to let you delay your start date. So, as soon as we get back to base you need to get packed up. You're heading out on the first plane back to the States."

"What about the deployment? What about my team?"

"I'm sure Staff Sergeant Lasky can take over. He's been around a few times. He's ready, right?"

Evan looked back down the column in the direction of his vehicle. Lasky had been riding his coattails for years now. They'd been through just as much as he and the major. Maybe more."

"Lasky's ready. He can handle it."

The major nodded. "As far as the deployment goes, you getting through the Warrant Officer program is more important than anything here. This whole war here…" The Major made a sweeping motion with his hand. "It is all on hold. The only bad guys left are smart enough to wait for us to leave before they start killing again. All the dumb ones, we already killed. The only people here for us to kill are the Iranians, only we've been ordered to pretend they aren't here so we can't very well kill them.

"Just so you know though, your boys have something planned for you when we get back to the rear. They put together a gift for you. Something for you to remember us all by."

"So, they already know I'm leaving when I get back."

"They kind of know," the major said. He gave a half-smile and held up his hands. "What do you want? You were going to go sooner or later. I wasn't going to let you slip out without a proper goodbye."

"I don't want to go. I don't like the idea of leaving my team here in country."

"Good," the major said. "You shouldn't like the idea of leaving your team. But you still have to do it. You're taking the next step in your career. Which reminds me.

"I made some calls back to the Headquarters Marine Corps. The Mexican Marine Corps is looking for an EOD expert to advise them. Once you get done with your training in Quantico, I can pull some strings and get you down to Mexico."

"I'd rather be where the action is."

"You're going to be a Warrant Officer. Your days of being where the action is will be few and far between. Besides, there's plenty of action in Mexico. It'll give you a chance to see a different type of war. You could always end up back here later. This part of the Middle East isn't going away. It's just going on pause for a bit."

"Major, when are you getting promoted?" Evans asked.

"Not for a while, still. I was lucky to get selected for promotion at all. I pissed a lot of people off throughout my career. I was never good at playing the establishment game. I spent too much time focusing on how to outmaneuver the enemy. I should have spent more time figuring out how to outmaneuver the establishment. Had to learn that lesson the hard way. I won't make those mistakes again."

"You survived whatever happened on the bridge. Career-wise, I mean," Evans said.

"Yeah, I got lucky there. I didn't know it at the time, but I had somebody looking out for me."

The Major paused, as if he was puzzling something out in his mind. He reflected a bit longer, then went on.

"Like I said, I'm never going to make those same mistakes again. You shouldn't either. It is like the game of chess; you need to have everything planned out four, five moves ahead. What you are going to do? What your opponent is going to do? Action and reaction. Only after you've done all that thinking and planning do you start making moves. Remember that."

It was then that the Air Officer came up to the front of the vehicle.

"Our air cover just checked in. We can get moving."

"Roger," the major said. He looked at Evans. "Alright. We'll talk more when we get back."

Evans nodded. "Let me go brief my team. I'll be right back."

Evans went back along the column, back past the scrambling troops in their dusty tan uniforms, past the guns and the antennas and the classic rock concert again. They were playing that same song. The Navy Corpsman still had his guitar out and was strumming along.

"How many times are you going to play that song?" a sergeant yelled down from the vehicle's turret.

"I'm trying to figure out how to play this part," the Corpsman yelled back.

"Figure that crap out on your own time, doc. Now pack your crap away, we just got the word to move out."

Evans kept walking back along the convoy.

At the EOD truck, his team members had the faces of men about to be led to the gallows, each wondering who'd be the one condemned to ride in the command vehicle with the brass. Each hoping they weren't the one.

"I'll ride in the command vehicle," Evans said. The four Marines collectively sighed with relief. "You all take the truck just like normal. If we find something along the route, just stay in the truck and I’ll come to you. And when I say stay in the truck, that means stay in the truck." Evans pointed at Lasky. "And don’t ride in that broken seat."

All the Marines smiled, even Hoffman. The Gunny had given them a reprieve. None of them would have to endure a long ride sealed up with the brass today. Evans smiled too. They'd come a long way, his team.

"Alright. Catch you on the flip side," Evans said. He looked his team over for the last time, then he turned and headed back up the convoy.



Within minutes the convoy was moving down another dusty, potholed, road that stretched out to the horizon.

IED stands for Improvised Explosive Device and EFP stands for Explosively Formed Penetrator. EFPs are a type of IED, but there is nothing improvised about them. They are sophisticated demolition charges built for a specific purpose. This EFP had been built in Iran, and it was purpose-built to destroy American armored vehicles. It was good at its job.

The Iranian program that designed and built these EFPs had been suspended for a period for a lack of funds. But political winds in the United States changed, and the nation that led the sanctions against Iran was now providing it with cash.

This infusion of American cash reinvigorated the Iranian weapons program and provided Iranian intelligence operatives the means to smuggle the weapons to their agents throughout the Middle East. Those agents, of course, would use the weapons to target Americans. It was a move that could only make sense to somebody living in Washington DC. The Iranian agents were good at their job too. They'd been trained to discriminate between the look-alike desert-tan American vehicles. High on their target list were the EOD vehicles.

When Evans' EOD truck passed, the EFP detonated. In less than a second it pushed a seven-pound molten copper slug out at Mach speed. This slug punched through the EOD truck's multilayer armor as if it were mere sheet metal. Lasky, Hoffman, Bloem, and Fraser were all killed instantly.

When he thought about it later, Evans remembered the call on the radio. "They got the EOD vehicle." Evans didn't remember anything after that. He didn’t remember the convoy stopping. He didn’t remember jumping out of the command vehicle and running back down the convoy to his truck and his dead Marines inside. He didn’t remember yelling, screaming, crying. He didn’t remember burning his hands trying to get into the smoldering wreckage.

When he regained his senses, he found himself being dragged away from the burning wreckage. HE-6 and the Air Officer each had an arm around him, pulling him away from the twisted and burning metal that was his truck. His truck, with his EOD team, his Marines inside.


Two days later, Evans boarded a plane for the United States. Under one arm he carried the going away gift his team members but together: a walnut slab with his old bomb helmet mounted on the front, and their signatures on the back. For Evans, the difference between life and death had been a set of bolts built by the lowest bidder, and a decision he made on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. The Iranians had just killed a few more American servicemen. The American government was pretending they hadn't. Evans was headed back to the States. Lasky, Hoffman, Fraser, and Bloem were dead. And as tragic as it all was, that was the way things were.


Back in Texas, Evans took one last sip of his drink. Then he stood and poured the last of it out onto the ground. He looked up into the night sky. Maybe his old team members were up there, looking down at him from the vast, twinkling expanse. Maybe they weren't. Evans didn't say anything. No words of condolence or regret. He just looked up. And when he decided he'd lingered long enough, he went inside and went to bed.

 

Almost worth the long wait, but still good!

 

The Texas Hill Country. August 4th.

The Day before D-Day.



Kyle was working over the stove top when his uncle came downstairs and into the kitchen.

"How are you feeling?"

"Nothing that some water and a cup of tea won't cure."

"I didn't think that you wouldn't be down so early."

"Yeah, well, not as late as it might have been when I was younger," Evans began. "My days of staying up all night and burning the town down are long behind me. When I do drink, it is more of a race to finish what I'm drinking before I fall asleep."

"Well, try this." Kyle spooned a mixture of eggs, cheese, chorizo, and potatoes into a tortilla. He folded his creation up and passed it to his uncle. "We've got red sauce and salsa verde… the verde is the green one."

"I know what verde is," Evans said. He bit into the burrito. Chewed.

"Hey, this is pretty good."

"Better than your chowhall food?"

"Better than my chowhall food," Evans agreed. "Got any hot water?"

"Not yet," Kyle said. He glanced over at the cupboards, thought about the tea he had hidden in the back of one, then thought against it. "I'll put some on."

"Don't bother. What did you have planned for today?" As Evans asked this, he walked to the window, cracked open the blinds, and peeked into the driveway.

"No plans," Kyle said. "I figured you had some work for us to do or something."

Evans smiled and turned away from the window. "No work. But I've got plans. Take a look in the driveway."

Kyle walked over to the window, opened the blinds, looked outside, and gasped.

"What is that?"

"That is a 1969 Ford Bronco. Restored and modified with loving care by a guy who knows what he's doing. It has a 302 under the hood, custom-built to perform. Most importantly, it’s a manual transmission."

The Bronco was a work of automotive art. It was red with black trim. Big, knobby tires fit under a lifted body and suspension. The stock bumpers had been replaced with heavier ones made of tube steel. The front bumper held a winch. The Bronco's top was off, exposing a roll cage of gleaming black metal. Kyle's jaw dropped. He looked at his uncle.

"You wanted to learn how to drive a manual transmission. I found something with a manual transmission."

"We're going to drive that?"

"You're going to drive that," Evans said.

Kyle was still overcome with disbelief. "How? How did you get that?"

"I know some people. They dropped it off this morning."

"I didn't hear anything."

"Yeah, well, those two aren’t the kind of guys you hear coming. You ready to drive."

"Now?" Kyle asked.

"Right now."

"What about breakfast and the dishes?"

"The dishes can wait," Evans said with a smile. "You learning how to drive a stick is more important."


Out in the driveway, they were both seated in the Bronco. Evans was behind the wheel. Kyle was in the passenger seat.

"I thought you said I was going to drive," Kyle said.

The Bronco's 302 engine gave a throaty rumble.

"We're going to somewhere flat first. We'll switch seats then."

"Why not now?"

"You see all these hills?" Evans said, sweeping his hand across the horizon and the rolling hills. Kyle nodded. Evans said. "That's why. You'll thank me later. Besides, it ain't like I don't want to drive this thing too."

Evans gassed the engine. It made a mighty, satisfying rumble. Evans put the truck in gear and hit the accelerated. The Bronco screamed powerfully down the driveway and out into the hills.



"Grind a pound for me, buddy," Evans said.

"Huh?"

"Something we used to say back in high school," Evans said. He looked around. They were in the parking lot of the local high school. It was empty now, but wouldn't be for long. Summer was ending. School was about to restart. He hadn't enrolled Kyle in any school. He didn't like the idea of that, enrolling his nephew in school here. But he knew they had to do something, and quick. He needed to call his sister and see how the exit from California was progressing. Of course, right now Evans had a more pressing matter.

Evans looked at his nephew in the driver's seat. The sun blazed, and the sound of grinding gear still lingered in the air. Kyle's sweaty hands gripped the controls of the Bronco. The leather-wrapped steering wheel. The gearshift which even to Evans now seemed like some ancient artifact of alien mechanics. Kyle's face was red, a mix of shame, embarrassment, and frustration rather than the Texas heat. Evans felt nervous for his nephew, though he didn't show it. If you could teach teenagers how to handle bombs, you can teach your nephew how to drive a stick, he told himself. Evans took a deep breath.

"All right, Kyle," he began. His voice was a reassuring presence amid the sweltering heat. "Remember, driving a manual's all about the timing between the clutch and the gears. It's a rhythm, like a dance. Once you get it down, your muscle memory will take over. Like riding a bicycle."

"I haven't picked it up all morning."

"You'll get it."

"I'm going to burn out your friend's shifter or clutch or whatever."

"He won't care. It'll give him an excuse to put a whole new transmission in his toy truck. Now let's get back to it."

Kyle's heart raced with a mix of excitement and nervousness. He had seen his fair share of automatic cars, but a manual transmission was an entirely different beast. He looked over at his uncle and was reassured by the older man's calm and patient smile.

"Okay," Kyle whispered.

Kyle pushed the clutch pedal in and turned the key in the ignition. The engine came to life with a throaty roar. The truck rumbled with power, shuddering with the heartbeat of the big engine.

"Good, good," Uncle Evans encouraged. "You've got the engine running. Now, put the clutch in, and gently shift to first gear."

Kyle's sweaty hand pushed on the shift knob. The truck rumbled and shook, but not in a good way. The engine was about to keel over.

"That's third," Evans said. "First is over further. Get it back into neutral."

Kyle had made this same mistake several times already this morning. This time he was able to save the engine from dying. He got back into neutral, then up into first. The Bronco, which was trembling like a wounded animal, settled down.

"All right, nice and easy, Kyle," Uncle Evans said. "With one foot on the clutch and your other foot ready on the gas pedal, start releasing the clutch slowly while giving it a bit of gas."

Kyle followed his uncle's instructions. He'd done this many times already today, and it almost always ended with the vehicle jumping forward and the engine shuddering and dying. His feet eased on the pedals, moving slower than before, smoother. He could feel the tension move up the shifter as the teeth of the gears engaged. Kyle felt the power of the truck, it was like a horse that wanted to break into a gallop. The big tires eased forward.

"You got it. Nice and easy, Kyle. Keep it going," Evans said.

The truck began to move, a jerky motion that mirrored Kyle's unsteady coordination. He'd killed it many times already, just going into first or getting from first into second. Too much to think about; feet and hands, brakes and acceleration, shifting and steering. This time Kyle was ready though. The Bronco lurched forward, but it picked up speed. The forward movement smoothed. Kyle glanced at the tachometer. The speed increased.

"Listen to the engine," Evans said.

The speed increased. The Bronco was accelerating smoothly now. Not the mechanical bucks and lurches of earlier today.

From first to second, Kyle thought.

"From first to second," Evans said.

The Bronco rolled faster. The engine began to strain. Kyle could hear it. He could feel it coming up through the gear shift.

First to second, he told himself again. The big tires rolled. He was running short on runway, even in the open parking lot. The few times he had gotten this far he'd killed it going from first to second. He'd panicked. He'd overthought it. His hands and feet didn't make the connections. The engine whined. The end of the parking lot loomed ahead.

"First to second," Evans said.

Kyle got from first to second. Hands and feet worked together. He hit the clutch. He pulled the shift knob down into second. The needle on the tachometer dropped. The engine stopped its strained whine.

"Turn," Evans advised. The end of the parking lot and a row of cedar trees were just ahead. Kyle was already ahead of his uncle. His right hand left the shifter and grasped the steering wheel. The Bronco eased to the right. It wasn't the frantic careening of a panicked driver, but an easy long, looping turn.

"Accelerate through the turn," Evans advised.

Kyle accelerated. His confidence was boosted, though he wasn't conscious of it. He was in a groove now. The Bronco came around, looping around 180 degrees and accelerating back in the direction it first came. It came out of the turn. Kyle kept on the gas. The Bronco straightened. Without thinking, Kyle's hands and feet went to work again. His right hand went back to the shifter. His foot pushed it. His right hand pushed up and over. The engine whined for a split second, the power screaming free in neutral, and then the gears engaged. Kyle felt the resistance through the shifter. The Bronco ran forward. Smooth. Easy. The wind whipped through the open cab. Kyle shot a quick glance over to his uncle and smiled. Evans smiled back.

"All right Kyle, now let's try slowing it down."

Kyle slowed the truck, braking and downshifting and working the gears back down to first. Just as their runway of empty high school parking lot ran out, Kyle brought the vehicle to a complete stop. In neutral, the engine rumbled away. No jerks. No jumps forward. No violent death rattles as the engine died. The throaty 302 growled, ready for more. Kyle smiled.

"Good job," Evans said. "Now do it again."

"Practice until you can't get it wrong?" Kyle offered.

"Practice until you can't get it wrong," Evans agreed.


Thirty minutes and several flawless circuits of the parking lot later, Evans asked, "You ready to try it on the road?" Kyle looked over at his uncle. "I thought we could go to the store and grab a couple of steaks for dinner."

Kyle grinned. "That depends. Who is grilling the steaks? Me or you?"

"I will, but I think you're the better man for that job."

Kyle's grin grew broader. "Let's do it."

Kyle put the Bronco in gear and pulled out of the high school parking lot. The first traffic light they came to was changing from green to yellow. Kyle accelerated, beat the light, and got from second to third just as they crossed the intersection. He was smiling the whole time.



Dinner was excellent. Steaks with sautéed mushrooms and onions and baked potatoes. After dinner, Evans and Kyle sat around the table. The remains of the steak dinner lay spread out before them. Kyle picked at his teeth. Evans sipped at the cola he liked.

"You want to watch the riots again tonight?" Evans asked.

Kyle thought about it. Then he answered, "No. This day's been perfect. Let's not ruin it."

 

The Texas Hill Country. August 5.

D-Day.



Evans woke, rolled out of bed, and greeted the day with a smile. The day before had been great. Maybe this day would be just as good. Maybe even better.

Before he headed downstairs to the kitchen, Evans stopped in his office. Everything was right where it should be. The controller for the laser unit on his roof was on the desk next to his computer. The single rifle hung in the ready rack. Beside it, a hammer rested in one of the empty rifle spots. The bomb-suit mask/display from his EOD hung on the wall. Evans rested his hand on that reverently and bowed his head. Then he headed downstairs.

"Morning," Evans said to his nephew, who was busy at the stove.

"Good morning to you. Hey, the jeep is gone."

"You mean the Bronco?"

"Yeah, the Bronco is gone."

"Yup," Evans said. "They came and got it early this morning."

"Funny. I didn't hear anything."

"Well, like I told you," Evans said. "Those guys aren't the kind of guys you hear coming."

"They weren't coming though. They were going."

"You don't hear those guys going either."

"I guess so," Kyle said. He turned from the stove top and faced his uncle. He had the biggest smile spread across his face.

"What's got you so happy?" Evans asked.

"Try this," Kyle said. He passed a tray to his uncle. On the tray sat a small dish filled with sugar and a tiny spoon, and an ornate glass filled with tea the color of dark honey. Steam rolled up out of the glass.

"What's this?" Evans asked.

"Special order," Kyle said. "I hit up some message boards. This is supposed to be the best tea you can get. I think I got the right amount of sugar for you too. If not, there's more there."

Evans set down the tray, took up the decorative glass, and sipped. Kyle waited anxiously for his uncle's reaction. Evans lowered the glass, smiled, and said, "damn."

He sipped again.

"Like it?"

"Like it? I love it. This is the real deal. Where'd you get this?"

"At the getting' place."

"Ha," Evans laughed.

"I wanted to heat the water with charcoal and a brazier. You know, the traditional way."

"No, no," Evans said. He took another sip and the kick of the hot, strong, sugary tea hit him. "No, this is perfect. It takes me back. It is like I'm back over there again."

"Oh," Kyle said. And his mood immediately shifted from pride and elation to dejection. His eyes lowered. His shoulders sank.

"No. No. I meant in a good way," Evans said. He took another sip, and the spicy, sugary sweet kick hit him again. He remembered the good times: paling around with Lasky, first as Combat Engineers and later as EOD technicians. He remembered their small victory on the bridge and relaxing along the riverbank after. And he remembered all the other small victories; the weapons caches they discovered and the bombs they disposed of. He remembered that crazy pilot, always singing that Marty Robbins song. And he remembered that moody infantry officer everybody feared, the one whose path he always seemed to cross. And he remembered his EOD team, the one he'd lost on a nameless highway in a war everybody back home was quick to forget. They'd been taken too soon. Evans had never been able to shake the feelings of guilt and the remorse, and the nagging questions about how things might have been different. But he figured parts of his team lived on in him, the good parts. And maybe, just maybe, he'd passed those good parts along and into his nephew, and they could live on in Kyle.

Evans smiled. "The tea is perfect Kyle. It is just perfect. You did good. Really good."

Kyle's mood shifted back again to pride and elation. "Good," he said. "Now, what do you want for breakfast? Anything you want. I'm making it."

"Anything?" Evans asked.

"Anything."

Evans thought. Then he answered with a smile. "Scrambled eggs. Bacon. Potatoes."

Kyle's face crinkled up. "You want chow hall food?"

"Yup," Evans said. "I wanted chow hall food."

Kyle shrugged. "Okay. If that's what you want."

Smiling, Evans sat down and quietly sipped his tea. It was shaping up to be a great day.



Lori

Lori was not having a good start to her day. While Evans felt contentment, Lori felt anger. She was angry about the murder of her dog. She was angry that those men up the street killed it and, in her mind, the police let them get away with it. She was angry that she was stuck in the State of Texas, with its radical politics, all run by filthy and insensitive men who only motivation was to further the patriarchy. She was angry that neither the State of Texas nor the federal government was giving her more money. She was angry that she was poor. She was angry that her family was poor. She was angry that she was married to a cripple. She was angry that she lived in a house that was falling apart all around her.

But most of all she was angry about her miserable and empty life.

Looking back to when she was a child, her opportunities had been endless. But she hadn't seized any opportunities. She'd wasted away all those years and now, an old and miserable woman, she had no opportunities and nothing to show for her life. Her failures were all her own. Deep down she knew that, but she would never admit that. Not to anybody, and especially not to herself.

Lori wanted to spit on her own floor. Instead, she looked around her house. Her husband, nearly comatose and wheelchair-bound, sat drooling in front of the TV. She never loved the man. She married him because he was a meal ticket. He came with a house and steady checks from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Social Security Administration. When he was younger, he also came with the necessary connections to maintain a steady flow of marijuana and other recreational drugs into their living room. His life had been one party after another until all the fun and the drugs and the booze caught up to him.

His health had never been good, and his decline had been rapid. Now he was essentially a vegetable, and like any vegetable, Lori had to nurture and care for him. If she didn't and he died, the checks would stop. Once she'd seen him as a meal ticket. Now he was a gilded anchor chained to her neck. Lori would happily take her husband to the nearest lake and drown him, but if she did, she'd have to fend for herself.

The TV flashed. Lori turned from her invalid husband and looked around the rest of the house. It stunk. It needed cleaning. It had the ammonia smell of dog urine, cigarette smoke, and the stink of half-eaten food left to rot. Fast food bags littered the kitchen counter. A garbage can that should have been emptied days ago, stood beside an ancient refrigerator that didn't match any of the other appliances. Overloaded ashtrays cluttered the coffee table. Some were spilling over with cigarette butts. Others were filled with the pungent leavings of cheap weed. Trim around one door frame had come loose and now it hung from the frame by a single nail. One window, broken, had been crudely patched with cardboard and duct tape. The cardboard had gone yellow with age. The duct tape was turning into dust. Her dead dog's waste occupied several corners. It had occupied the corners so long it had dried to the consistency of cement.

"Are you going to the store today? I need cigarettes and some stuff for my hair," a voice screeched from the bathroom. Lori's eyes flashed in that direction.

"Lori? Are you there? Did you hear me?" the voice screeched again. It was Lori's sister. She lived in the house too. Just as Lori leeched off of her husband's disability checks, Lori's sister leeched off of her.

"Did you hear me? I need some cigarettes." The screeching was endless. The least her sister could do was clean this mess of a house. But her sister wouldn't. By noon she'd be high as a kite and by dinner she'd be drunk as a skunk and if she was lucky her fat and purple-haired ass would find some disgusting man on the internet to buy her a case of beer and fuck her.

Men. Lori wanted to spit every time she even thought of the word.

Men were the cause of all the bad things in the world. Men were the cause of all the bad things in her life. Men were the reason she was stuck here. Men were the reason her dog had been murdered in the middle of the street. Whether it was those racist cops or her redneck, hick neighbors, it didn't matter. They were all men. They were all in it together.

She knew what she'd do though. She knew.

Lori logged into her computer. Her husband sat nearby in his wheelchair, the clear tubes of a nasal cannula wrapped around his ears and nose. His eyes saw, but his mind did not comprehend. Lori typed and tapped. With just a few keystrokes she was right where she wanted to be.

A banner across the top of the webpage asked, "Know Any Ultra-Fascists? Know Any White-Supremacists? Know Any Christian-Nationalists? Identify the Enemies of True Democracy Here!" Below those questions were professionally edited pictures of the PVD in action, marching peacefully through the streets, proud, their fists raised, their faces covered with masks.

Lori navigated through the website and found what she was looking for. She clicked some radio buttons and opened an online form. She filled it out, describing in detail the murder of her dog, her mega-irredeemable neighbors with their ultra-deplorable ways. She listed the multitude of injustices she'd been forced to bear. She ended her digital tirade with an address and description of the Silver Springs development. That done, with a smug grin smeared across her face, Lori hit the form's submit button.

Her husband coughed. In the kitchen, her sister was bitching that there was not enough of the food she wanted. Lori didn't mind though. Her unhappiness had melted away, replaced with self-satisfaction. She was going to show those men. The PVD truly was a vanguard that would destroy the patriarchy and bring about equity and social justice once and for all. And she, given her lifestyle choices, was an undeniable ally to their progressive cause. Together, they'd smash the patriarchy. They would show those men who had the power now. She'd show them that it wasn't their world anymore.

She'd show them. Oh yes, she'd show them.



The Contractor


In a previous life, the contractor worked for the US Army. Now, he worked for a company called Unified Security Consulting. Unified Security Consulting was a subsidiary of United Security Consultants. That company was a subsidiary of Unity Specialized Consultants. All of that was confusing, and that was by design. If one had time and abilities, the various subsidiary companies, holding companies, shell companies, and partners could be traced back to The McMaddis Leadership Group. The CEO of that company was retired Army General William McMaddis.

Before retiring, General William McMaddis hunted international terrorists around the globe. After retiring from the Army, he formed the McMaddis Leadership Group. Now, he hunted domestic terrorists in the United States. If he felt any reservations about hunting down American citizens on American soil, McMaddis did not show it. Combining years of counterinsurgency experience with big tech, William McMaddis provided a very specialized service to the highest levels of the US Government. He made a very healthy profit, and as a private entity, he was able to operate without the legal constraints or congressional oversight a public entity might have to endure. William McMaddis hired many of his former staff officers for this very important work. This contractor was one of them.

All summer the contractor had been on the road. His job was to provide operational support to the PVD. Lately, that meant focusing their efforts on targets. It wasn't the targets themselves that mattered. One group of middle-class suburbanites was just as good as any other. What mattered was focusing the efforts of the PVD, forcing upon them a unity of effort lest they attack in a hundred different directions at once. For the contractor, it wasn't much different than what he did as an Army Officer, building up foreign military forces and directing them to take actions favorable to the United States. In a lot of ways, it was easier. The PVD all spoke English. They were also a lot more motivated than the average Third-World conscript. The PVD were all true believers. And of course, the pay in his new role was a lot more than what he made in the Army. Like the retired general, the contractor showed no qualms about attacking average middle-class Americans.

He needed to find a target for tonight's "First Amendment Celebrations," as they were now being called. As in any operation, logistics was a concern. He needed to find a suitable target close to where the PVD were currently staged, somewhere in the Texas Hill Country. He logged into the database where people nominated targets for the PVD.

Normally devoid of any sense of humor, the contractor read one suggestion and laughed out loud. Some lady, he assumed it was a lady, was mad that one of her neighbors shot her dog. Now she was suggesting, no, demanding, that the PVD come to her neighborhood and avenge her dog's death. Did she not know who the PVD were? did she not know what they did? They'd been ravaging one neighborhood after another all summer; burning, looting, murdering. Now this lady wanted the PVD, with all their rage and fury, to come into her neighborhood? All over some dumb dog? The contactor chuckled and shook his head. "You want the PVD to come to your home? Okay, lady. I'm going to give you exactly what you asked for."

The contractor kept on laughing as he typed away at his computer, turning the call to avenge the dead dog into the operational directive for tonight. Just as he finished his personal phone rang. He picked it up and looked at the display. It was his wife. She was calling about their daughter, no doubt. Lisa was entering high school and needed some dental work done. The thought of his wife's hectoring changed the contractor's mood from amusement to emotional exhaustion.

"She needs braces, I'll get her the damn braces," the contractor said to the unanswered phone. With that, he typed the last keystrokes that would send the PVD to Silver Springs.

 

Things are getting interesting.

 

Teddy

Teddy stepped out of a secure room located deep inside a nameless federal building in Dallas Fort Worth. He took up his phone and dialed a number. Just like Evans, Teddy used to have a "burner" phone for this type of work. That was in the past. Now he just used his government-issued phone for everything. There was no need to hide the things that he was doing. Certainly, a lot of those things were illegal. Many more were unethical and immoral. But it wasn't like anything Teddy did would ever be investigated or exposed. There were laws and rules, but those laws and rules were only exposed one way. People like Teddy were, "on the right side of history" and "serving a greater good." His moral superiority, evidenced by his political affiliations, made Teddy and others like him exempt from the laws and regulations that bound ordinary Americans, especially those Americans with incorrect political views.

The call went through to Greg's voicemail. Normally, Teddy wouldn't have left a recorded message. But again, Teddy didn't need to worry about leaving evidence. He knew the Justice System was one-sided. And he knew he was on the right side. He began speaking as soon as he heard the beep.

"Grey, Teddy here. I wanted to give you a heads-up. There are going to be some serious First Amendment Celebrations in your jurisdiction tonight, so be ready.

"Also, the gun safety bounties just increased. Keep your fingers crossed. If you're lucky a couple of chumps and dregs will do something dumb tonight and you'll be able to rake it in at their expense.

"Okay. Talk to you soon."

Teddy put his phone back inside a tiny metal locker mounted on the wall and built to store phones. He swiped a badge and re-entered the secure part of the federal building. The part where phones were forbidden and secrets were kept.

This part of the building was called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF for short. Because this was a SCIF in a secure Federal Building, it was not supposed to be used for any political campaign. At the very minimum, that's what Teddy and the others were doing here today. What they were doing was much worse, but nobody in the room was worried about that. The Justice System was one-sided, and they were all on the right side.

Teddy walked down a hallway and entered a conference room. Other people filed into the room. Some held fresh cups of coffee. All were dressed like typical government types: dark business wear.

"Okay, let's get back to it," the man running the meeting said. "Once again, this is option "B" for the unlikely event the election doesn't go correctly. The list we are compiling today is for just locals in the area and this is for round six. So, the names we put on this list will all be arrested on the sixth political sweep."

"When is the sixth sweep supposed to happen, again?" a grey-haired woman in a dark pantsuit asked.

"Great question. The sixth sweep will take place somewhere between Memorial Day and Juneteenth. Remember, there will be big jury verdicts and convictions on Juneteenth and the 4th of July, but those won't be for anybody on this list. Those will be reserved for the biggest names that get arrested in the first and second sweeps."

"Will the people arrested in the sixth sweep get a trial?" a man asked. He wore a pin on his suit lapel: the multi-colored Pride flag crossed over the Iranian flag.

"Of course. What do you think we're doing now?" the woman in the pantsuit quipped. Everybody in the room let out a sensible chuckle.

"Okay, okay, let's get back to it," the moderator said. "We've got a quota we need to meet of a hundred names for arrests and we aren't even halfway through. Let's focus.

"Are next victim is… Mr. Robert Webster, age forty-four. Father, veteran, goes to church… all the same crap."

"What did he do?" Teddy asked.

"Nothing really," the moderator said. "Misinformation. Disinformation. A few mean posts here and there on the internet. But his family owns twenty acres. One of our big donors wants us to imminent domain this guy's land so he can buy it back a develop it into a smart city."

"What is our margin on something like that?" the woman in the pantsuit asked.

"Minimum twenty percent," the moderator said.

"Done. Hell, let's arrest him now," the man with the flag pin said with a smile. That brought more smiles out from around the room.

"Any children?" Teddy asked.

"Page two of the dossier," the moderator said. Teddy flipped the page over and quickly scanned it. Done, he tossed the dossier back onto the conference table.

"Arrest his wife and kids too," Teddy said. "His son isn't old enough to drive, but I can massage the system and have him tried and held as an adult. With his son in general population and his daughters with protective services, he'll roll over on the land quick enough."

"After we get the land, what do we do with the wife and kids?" another woman at the table asked. Teddy shrugged.

"Who cares? Leave them in jail. Fewer people for us to worry about and it will send a powerful message to the rest of these fly-over types.

"The point we're at right now as a country, guilt doesn't matter, innocence doesn't matter. And people like this guy and his family, they don't matter either. What matters is that we win. That we gain and maintain power. That," Teddy said, "Is all that matters."


John


"I'm heading out," John called to his wife.

His wife sat on the couch in the darkened room. The TV flashed and flickered. She didn't stir. She didn't make a sound. John looked at his wife, so small on the couch, so focused on the TV. John looked at his shoes. He looked up at his wife again.

"I'll spend the night up there in Austin and then come back in the morning," John said. His wife said nothing. The TV flashed. John looked at his shoes again. Then he looked around the dark house.

"Our daughter found me a nice hotel near the campus," John said next. The only reply was a flash of images and some canned laughter from the TV.

"Okay, I'm going now." Nothing came in response. John shook his head and headed into the garage.

His 1990 Dodge was still there. It sat, still waiting for him to fix it up. Someday, John thought. Someday I'll get to it.

He left his house, his wife, and his project truck and headed up to Austin to see his daughter.

 

Dale

Dale's heart leaped with joy when he saw the package on his doorstep. As quickly as he could, he snatched up the box and brought it inside. His eyes were bright. The smile on his face was wide.

Inside his garage, Dale tore through the outer packaging. The package was actually three boxes all wrapped together in plain white paper and plastic to make one big box. Dale cleared away the detritus of the outer layer and surveyed his findings.

Each of the three boxes was decorated with an American flag and the maker's emblem: crossed cannons over a pyramid of cannon balls. Dale was giddy. He opened the first two boxes. Each contained most of the parts necessary to build a carbine. All Dale needed to finish these kits off into functioning weapons was the lower half of the receiver. Dale smiled and clapped his hands together.

The third box also contained parts kits. These were for pistols, and there were four of those kits. Like the carbine parts kits, Dale just needed a frame to build them out into functional weapons. Dale surveyed his treasures. Impressed with his new treasures, he clapped his hands together a second time.

The problem now was where to store the kits. Like many American garages, Dale's had been turned into a storage facility. There was no parking a car in this space. It was filled with dusty cardboard boxes and the kind of plastic storage totes you find at box stores. Some of the boxes and bins had labels like, "Christmas Ornaments," "Old Kids' Clothes" and "Easter." Others had no labels at all. Some of these boxes had not been opened in years and neither Dale nor his wife and children had any idea what was inside them.

Scattered amongst all this flotsam and jetsam of modern Americana was all of Dale's gun stuff. A variety of ammo cans were stacked in one corner. In another corner sat an old metal gym locker, repurposed as a rifle cabinet. There were more boxes with the cannon and cannonball logo. They were tucked into various nooks and crannies without any apparent rhyme or reason. Against one wall stood a workbench. Its surface was cluttered with tools, gun pieces, and parts of all descriptions. More of Dale's projects. He'd been planning on cleaning out and reorganizing the garage one day, just as he'd been planning on finishing off these gun projects one day. "One day," Dale said to himself. One day. But that day was not today.

The gun safe stood next to the workbench. Its door and sides were covered with stickers from across the firearms industry. Children's bicycles and a plastic Christmas tree box blocked the door to the safe. Dale moved those. Then he spun the dial and swung open the heavy door.

The inside of the safe was much like the outside of the safe. It was crammed full of rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Many of those were still parts kits waiting to be assembled. Others were damaged guns. Dale picked those up on the cheap with a promise to himself that he'd fix them later. Others, he'd bought just for the sake of buying them. None were especially high-end. Dale was a man of quantity over quality.

Dale surveyed his predicament. He'd have to do some shuffling and reorganizing if he was going to get these latest kits inside the safe. He didn't want to, but he knew he had to. He also knew he needed to get off his ass and finish off some of these gun projects. That, or sell some of this inventory off. He knew he should be taking some of these pieces out of the safe and actually shooting them. Some hadn't been fired in years. Some hadn't been fired ever. As he looked the contents of his safe over, he realized that just taking all the rifles to the range and zeroing them would be a monumental task, even if they were all functional, which they weren't.

"Oh well," Dale said aloud to his cluttered garage and his collection of guns and gun parts. He crouched down and began shifting things around inside the safe.


George

George had the opposite problem. Unlike Dale, George had too few pieces and parts. He couldn't get the right building supplies to move forward on the family house. If it wasn't supply chain issues it was labor issues, with too much work for too few willing to labor.

Supposedly the US economy was running at full speed. Every time George opened his phone, he found a new news article in his feed touting the president's accomplishments. They remarked on how quickly the president's policies turned the economy around. They pointed out how the president deeply empathized with common, working-class Americans and how, even though he held the highest office in the land, at heart the president was just another average, ordinary middle-class joe.

George had been all over the world. He knew what good economies looked like. He knew what bad economies looked like. And he knew what he was looking at now. The journalists could write all the puff pieces they wanted. Between them and his lying eyes, George knew who to trust.

As frustrating as the house was, getting spare parts for his bikes was equally frustrating. His bikes were vintage, and thus not easy to find parts for most days. But now it was even harder, and George blamed California for that problem.

The California legislature was never idle. One of the latest laws they passed prevented anybody from selling any parts to any device powered by an internal combustion engine to anybody but the State of California. The law covered everything from lawnmowers and chainsaws to semi-trucks and commercial fishing boats. There were, of course, special carveouts for yachts and private jets. But there was no carveout for motorcycles. If a Californian owned so much as a set of hubcaps for a 1958 Plymouth Fury, their only legal option was to sell it to the state for scrap metal prices.

So goes California, so goes the United States, as the saying went. George was finding that to be true for vintage motorcycle parts. Oregon and Washington were quick to join in with California on the law. Colorado soon followed suit. Before too long, a dozen states had joined in on the war against privately owned internal combustion equipment. Calling themselves the coalition of Progressively Oriented Governors (POGs), they sought to save Mother Earth from the evils of two-stroke engines and Saturday afternoon car shows.

George had hoped to have a few extra bikes' worth of parts standing by before he began his great cross-continent motorcycle trip. Now he knew he'd have to settle for what he had. Even so, things weren't that bad. The bikes he had ran well enough. The accident with that damned dog had done little damage to the bike, and what damage it had done, George had already fixed.

George cracked open a beer and guzzled the first half of it. The cool liquid eased the triple-digit temperature. The end to the scorching summer heat was nowhere in sight. October maybe. Maybe the first week of November even. But not now.

George rolled up his pant leg. The wound Lori's dog left him was healing up fine. George rolled his pant leg back down and finished the beer. He decided that if he couldn't get the house built, he might as well go for a ride.

Minutes later he was soaring up and down the Texas hills, past the oaks and the elms and the cedars. When he came up to Evans' place, he saw the old man and his nephew outside the workshop. George thought about pulling in and seeing if the boy wanted to do some riding. But just as quickly George decided against it. Best not to intrude, he thought.

George hit the throttle and continued his race through the Texas countryside.


Kyle

The one and only time Kyle saw his uncle panicked came that afternoon. He and Uncle Evans were cleaning out the workshop. The workshop looked clean enough to Kyle. In truth, it looked more than clean enough. Still, Evans insisted on cleaning the already clean workshop.

“Something might be hiding somewhere, just waiting for the wrong person to find it,” his uncle said.

Evans was putting an attachment on his shop vac when Kyle accidentally knocked the bucket over. It was a five-gallon bucket, metal, and labeled, “transmission fluid.” Kyle hadn’t even seen the bucket. He was looking at something else and shifted his feet and when he did his heel came around and knocked the can of transmission fluid over. The can was empty. It toppled over lightly and landed with a metal “bang” against the concrete slab floor. As soon as that bang rang out, Evans spun. Kyle saw his uncle’s eyes lock on the can, lock on the Transmission Fluid label, white letters on black paper. Every muscle in his uncle’s body tensed, but the man didn’t move. Evans’ eyes tracked the empty bucket as it rolled across the floor as if it might explode at any moment. Then, a moment later the old man seemed to realize the empty bucket was just that, an empty bucket. The tension released out of Evans and released out of the room.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” Kyle asked.

Evans looked at his nephew, then at the bucket, then back at his nephew again.

“I just didn’t want to be cleaning up spilled transmission fluid all afternoon.”

“Huh,” Kyle said.


What little needed to be cleaned in the workshop, Kyle and Evans cleaned. All the dust and sweepings and the tiniest scraps of anything went into a thick plastic bag. The empty metal bucket and another just like it also went into garbage bags. Kyle and Evans tossed the bags into the back of the pickup truck.

“I’m taking this all to dump. Now.” Evans said.

‘Why? Why not just put it out with the trash on Tuesday.”

“Too much clutter,” Evans said.

Kyle looked over the collected garbage. One bag with only a few handfuls of dust, and the two empty buckets. That didn’t seem like clutter to him. He shrugged.

“You think you can whip up lunch by the time I get back?” Evans asked.

“Sure can.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Chicken fried steak. I already have a recipe picked out.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it when I get back,” Evans said.

The whine of an accelerating motorcycle up on the main road made them both turn. They got a brief glimpse of George racing away on his bike.

“It’ll be ready,” Kyle finished.

 

The Law Students

While Kyle was making lunch, the law students were just waking up. One of them got a wake-up call in the form of a loud banging on his hotel room door.

“Jamie, wake up. Time to get going. Open the door. C’mon.”

Jamie, a law student from New England, groaned and rolled over in bed. He was a member of the Student Champions of Legal Equity (SCLE), a team of law students whose sole mission was to provide legal support to the PVD.

The night before had been a long one. He and his cohort had been up late, supporting the PVD as they rampaged through some small Texas town.

“Jamie, wake up!” the voice behind the door. Jamie half rose and looked around the hotel room. Empty alcohol bottles and other recreational items lay scattered about. The door received another pounding. Jamie got to his feet, staggered to the door, and opened it. It was Bobby, a law student from Brown University.

“What is it?” Jamie asked.

“We’ve got to get up and get going. We just got our location for tonight.”

“So? It’s barely past noon.”

“It is a long drive.”

“How long?” Jamie asked.

“My phone says it’s almost a five-hour drive.”

“What?” Jamie said with disgust. “Five hours? Five? How big does this state need to be?”

"C'mon, man. Duty calls," Bobby said.

Back in May, the SCLE saw their role as assisting with the legal defense of any PVD members who were arrested. But that role didn’t provide much work. Local law enforcement and local prosecutors all received the same message loud and clear: the PVD were off-limits. Very rarely were protestors arrested. When they were, they were almost always released without bail, and they were never charged.

As the situation changed, so did the SCLE’s mission. Now, instead of setting up legal defenses for their allies, the Student Champions focused on prosecuting their enemies. The SCLE accompanied the PVD in their nightly “First Amendment Celebrations.” They observed, and they filmed everything from a white commuter van decked out with the latest recording equipment. The van looked like something out of a spy movie. If Jamie or the others observed anybody interfering with the PVD, they recorded the incident, edited the footage, and then sent the evidence to either a friendly prosecutor or to a legal firm that would take civil action. Already, Jamie and his friends’ work had led to criminal and civil action against dozens of police officers and scores of civilians: mostly homeowners who didn’t want the houses burnt or their families attacked. Those homeowners were going to lose everything one way or another, Jamie reflected. “You can lose it all in the street, or you can lose it all in the courtroom, but you are going to lose,” Jamie said to the nameless and faceless victims of the PVD. “You can’t stop progress.”

The van and its equipment had all been funded by a private grant. The donor was an institution that claimed to advance the interests of America’s retired persons. In truth, it advanced progressive politics and put on a con man’s veneer through slick publications, celebrity endorsements, and corporate discounts. Similarly, all of the SCLE’s expenses were paid for by corporate donations that got passed and repassed through various bundlers and non-profits before they made their way to Jamie and his friends. Everything was covered, from travel across the country to all the PVD hot spots, to food, to fuel, to the hotel room Jamie was in right now. All the Student Champions had debit cards that were refilled with cash every week. In the event of a big expense, they had a number they could text that would put them in touch with some bundler's bag man. Money was not an issue. The PVD and their support network were well-funded.

“How hot is it outside?” Jamie asked next. Bobby rattled off a three-digit number. Jamie cursed.

“Will we at least be close to Austin?” Jamie asked. As far as he was concerned, Austin was the only part of Texas worth anything.

“We’ll be close for around here. It is still over an hour away.”

“An hour?” Jamie whined.

“C’mon man, we got the job of taking the van down and we need to get going. So c’mon and get up. do you want to smash the system or not?”

What Jamie wanted to do was hook up with one of the other law students in their group, maybe that girl from NYU, the dangerous, street-smart one with dark skin and darker eyes. Then he wanted to get out of Texas, with its triple-digit heat, its weird food, and all its dirty working-class people who wanted to pretend it was still the 1800s.

I don’t have to be here, Jamie though. I’m rich and from a good family. I could be back in New England, sailing out the rest of the summer. Or I could be in Europe. Paris, say. Or Amsterdam, living life free and easy until school started.

He could be, but he wasn’t. And Jamie knew that this summer of political activism was a necessary step in his career trajectory. It would give him the bona fides he needed to prove he was among a certain class of people: wealthy and connected, but not so much so that they turned their backs on the underprivileged. In another year, Jamie would have his law degree. Then, he’d get snatched up by a big firm. Then it would be in through the revolving door: a stint in the public sector, a stint at some non-profit or maybe academia, then back to the private sector again. He didn’t need to do this, to be sweating his summer away in fly-over country. He had money. His family had connections. He was doing this out of the goodness of his own heart. He was doing this to help the downtrodden.

And there was no better way for people like Jamie to help the downtrodden than by attacking the middle class.

“Yeah, sure,” Jamie said. “Let’s go smash the system. Just let me get some real coffee first.”



Greg

Greg got Teddy’s message. He got it loud and clear and now he was planning on how to spend what he hoped would soon be a nice windfall. He was on his computer looking at clothes: Italian suits, French knit ties with matching pocket squares, Tom Ford shirts that would, of course, have to be tailored. You had to look the part. Fashion and style were one of the many things that distinguished men like Greg from ordinary Americans.

The money would be nice. The Gun Safety bounties were high, and if there was one thing Texas didn’t lack, it was guns. In that one regard, Greg thought, it was good he wasn’t back home. There weren’t so many guns floating around in his home state, and the people who had them weren’t the kind of people you were allowed to prosecute.

“Somebody do something tonight,” Greg wished aloud as he navigated through various websites. He’d need new outfits for both the election night parties in November and the inauguration parties in January. But more than the money, he needed to get his name out in the media. Greg knew how the game worked. Every election or reelection brought sweeping personnel changes in the administration. Cabinet members would come and go. Senior executives would rotate Some people would retire. Others would leave public service to take up the private sector jobs they spent the last four years setting up. Government posts would open. The deck chairs would get shuffled, and Greg could find a path that led out of this fly-over hellhole and back to somewhere civilized, like Boston, Baltimore, New York, or maybe even Washington D.C.

Getting one of those posts meant being known as a loyal and productive soldier. Greg had been loyal and productive, but his name didn’t have the recognition needed to break out to the next level. That could change though. All he needed was the right kind of prosecution. The media loved a good courtroom drama, especially if the defendant was the right kind of bad guy.

The PVD were going to be active in his area tonight. Maybe one of these fossils could pull a gun on them, like that couple in Missouri or wherever it was. It would be even better if somebody killed a member of the PVD. Nothing like a good old-fashioned murder trial to elevate a prosecutor’s career trajectory. The shooter would have to meet certain criteria though. First off, it would have to be a man. A woman defendant wouldn’t do. Race wasn’t that important. Some races were more preferable than others, of course. But race could be massaged in a way that sex could not. A Hispanic could be rebranded as a “White-Hispanic.” A black man could be sold as, “The black face of white supremacy.” Race, like so many other things, could be molded and shaped as the narrative required.

The thing that was far more important than race was veteran status. In the world of domestic terrorism, military veterans were still the hot thing. Vigilante-Veteran was a buzzword tailor-made for media soundbites. A male veteran who murdered peaceful PVD protestors would play in the media. That would mean national coverage. In a situation like that, a courtroom win would be a slam dunk, even here in Texas. After the guilty verdict, Greg would be on his way to bigger and better things; a federal posting in D.C., a deal for a book he wouldn’t even have to write, maybe even a side gig as a paid legal commentator on one of the networks. All it would take was one yokel with a gun and the right confrontation with the PVD.

Time was a factor though, Greg knew. The election was the first week in November. Right now, it was the first week of August. That didn't leave much time. If something was going to happen, it needed to happen soon.

Greg also recognized that the above scenario would mean one or more people dying and at least one going to prison for the rest of their life. But that was life. Some people mattered and some people didn't. Some people ran the country. Everybody else just lived in it. Greg knew what type he was.

Greg clicked on the search bar and typed in “French Blue, three-button suit, men’s.” Then he leaned back in his chair and waited for the search results to come up.

 

Kyle/Evans

“Don't get me wrong, Kyle. The chicken fried steak was good, but it was kind of odd you made the same dish for lunch and dinner.”

Kyle and Evans stood at the sink washing dishes.

“I didn’t make the same thing. I made chicken fried steak for lunch. I made Jagerschnitzel for dinner.”

“What’s the difference?”

“For starters, you wouldn’t serve sauerkraut with chicken fried steak,” Kyle said with a hint of a smile.

“They tasted the same to me,” Evans said. “Where’d you get the idea of German food?”

“I’m listening to a podcast about Texas cuisine.”

“A podcast about Texas cuisine, and that inspired you to make jager schnitzel?”

“A lot of Germans immigrated to Texas,” Kyle said.

“Yeah maybe. It was good all the same. But maybe tomorrow you can try your hand at barbeque, or maybe some chili.”

“Does that chili come with or without beans?” Kyle asked.

Evans was about to answer, but then something occurred to him. Something dark and upsetting. The beginning of panic started in his stomach, but Evans pushed it down, deep down and out of the way.

“Kyle,” Evans began. “All this fancy food you’ve been serving up lately, the tea you made, how are you getting it?”

“I have it delivered.

Evans frowned when he heard that. He dried the plate in his hand, set it on the counter, then turned to Kyle.

“And when you order all this gourmet food, I’m guessing you do it through some app on your phone?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said.

“And you are doing it through some account you’ve set up, which is linked to you somehow? Some account that has your name and is linked to a bank account or a credit card or something?”

Kyle looked puzzled. “Yeah. Why?”

Evans grumbled a non-answer to that question. Then he said, “How about this? Tomorrow, you help set up one of these gourmet food delivery accounts. After that, I’ll order all the food. I’ll pay for it too.”

“I don’t mind paying.”

“I don’t mind paying either. More than that, I’d like to minimize the digital footprint you’re putting out while you are here.”

“Why?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“A hunch, huh?”

“A hunch. It’s a polite way of saying I have experience because I’m old. Something else that’s bothering me. I want you to go call your mom and dad tonight. School is about to start. I need to know if I’m enrolling you in a school here.”

“I’m not keen on going to school.”

“I’m not keen on having an uneducated nephew and I’m sure your mother feels the same. Give them a call, I’ll finish the dishes.”

Kyle headed upstairs. Evans finished the dishes. After he put the last one away, he put both hands on the countertop, leaned forward, and thought. He thought about his old boss talking about chess moves. He thought he'd made his chess moves. He thought he'd been careful. Even so, he’d missed his nephew ordering gourmet food through some digital account. It wasn’t realistic to expect his nephew wasn’t leaving some kind of digital trail. The food service would matter even less if he had to enroll Kyle in school. What bothered Evans was he missed it altogether. If he missed that, what else had he missed, Evans wondered. If the PVD came, everything Evans had in mind was an intricate series of moves and countermoves to protect his nephew. Evans knew that if he hadn’t planned all the moves out correctly, Kyle would suffer for it.

It was all maddening. He shouldn’t have to be in this position, Evans thought. The whole country shouldn’t have to be in the position it was, and yet they all were. The weight and the hopelessness of it seemed to crush him.

Evans went up to the office and turned on the computer. He immediately went to the riot feeds. There was a big demonstration in Olympia, Washington. The demonstrators wanted the governor to change the name of the state from Washington to Evergreen, or Rainbow, or some such nonsense. They’d get what they wanted. They always got what they wanted. The governor already removed the profile of George Washington from the state’s flag and replaced it with an evergreen tree.

Protests had already started in other parts of the country. Freeways were blocked in Los Angeles. A box store was being looted in Michigan. More of the same. The police stood by and watched. The media cheered the bad actors on. Ordinary people turned their heads and prayed they wouldn’t be swept up in the storm.

Evans reflected on the sum of his life. Decades of service to a country that had descended into this. His own government hated him. His best friends had been killed. He had no family of his own. His nephew was a refugee. What had his life been for?

On the computer screen, angry college students waved fists, and white women with purple hair waved signs. Evans felt a very cold anger start boiling inside his chest.



The Community Organizers



The demonstrators assembled in the parking lot of a non-denominational church, in a city more than an hour from the Silver Springs development. The community organizers had planned and organized the event. They were very good at their job, and it showed.

“Before you get on the buses, everybody needs to grab their T-shirt from station number three,” one of the organizers announced to the assembled demonstrators with a bullhorn. There were at least two hundred people assembled for the night’s political activities. They moved through a variety of stations, gathering the things they would need for their First Amendment Celebrations. In addition to the t-shirts at station three, volunteers handed out snacks, bottled water, pre-printed signs, laminated cards with advice for television interviews on one side and all the media-coordinated phrases on the other, phrases like “Veteran-Vigilante,” “Our love is stronger than their hate,” “Suburban Bastions of Mega-Extremism,” and of course, “This is the most important election of our lifetime. It will decide the fate of our Democracy.”

The community organizers were well-funded. They ran a "non-profit" that purportedly provided services to the city: drug treatment, counseling for the homeless, and advocacy for the poor and marginalized. City leaders funded the community organizers generously with taxpayer dollars. In return, the community organizers donated generously to the city leaders’ reelection campaigns. The drug addicts never overcame their addictions. The homeless never got off the streets. The poor and marginalized remained poor and marginalized. But the community organizers got rich, and the politicians got reelected. And the taxpayers kept the money coming.

“Your bus captain will hand out your gift cards once everybody is on the buses and we get rolling,” the bullhorn announced.

The taxpayers weren’t the only ones funding this operation. Large corporations were doing their share as well. These corporations donated gift cards to the community organizers in exchange for the promise that they wouldn’t be targeted by any demonstrations. In turn, the community organizers used the gift cards as an enticement to get people out in the streets and demonstrate for the cause de jour. It was an extortion racket on one end and a bribery scheme on the other. It was also something that polite society never talked about, and no reasonable prosecutor would ever investigate.

“It’s a long drive to where we are going tonight, so make sure you get plenty of bottled water and snacks people.”

The people came from all over the community. These were not hard-core members of the PVD. These were mostly ordinary people. Some were politically motivated. Others were motivated by the gift cards and snacks. The people came in all shapes and sizes. There were moms demanding action. There were oldsters, trying to relive their ideas of the glory of the 1960s. There were families from public housing, children in tow, eager to grab some free snacks and gift cards. There were students from the local campuses. There were political activists advocating their own causes that somehow, tangentially intersected with what was going to go down tonight.

Although they didn’t know it, these people were there to provide cover for the PVD. Their role was to make tonight’s protest appear more grassroots than it was. They would make the protest appear legitimate, sincere, and a true expression of democracy. After the fact, when the other side claimed that the PVD came in and looted homes, burned buildings, and attacked innocent people, the mainstream media would show footage of the students, the mothers and grandmothers, and the children all smiling and waving their pre-printed signs, and they would say that the demonstrations had been mostly peaceful.

One of the community organizers stood atop a step ladder with a microphone in hand. He addressed the crowd. He spoke of their collective responsibilities as global citizens and the need for non-violent action. He spoke of oppressors and the oppressed. He spoke of all the voices, silenced for so long that were now about to cry out and demand social justice. He spoke of all the evils of the United States, past and present, and why the system had to be destroyed.

He finished by saying, “Now let’s get everybody on the bus. Let's make our voices heard! Tonight we show the world who we are!”

It took over an hour to get everybody loaded onto the buses. Once they were all finally aboard, the buses drove west into the setting sun. They were headed for Silver Springs.



The PVD



Somewhere west of Houston, two other charter buses were on the road. The drivers were ex-military. They worked for McMaddis Transportation which was a subsidiary of The McMaddis Leadership Group. Like everything else, taxpayer dollars paid for the buses. McMaddis Transportation had contracts with Oregon and Minnesota to provide transportation services to marginalized communities. That they were transporting the PVD across Texas was just another thing that wasn’t discussed, and would never be investigated.

The air inside the bus was heavy with smoke from cigarettes, marijuana, and vaping products. Graffiti adorned the interior walls, and trash covered the floors. The buses would have to be scrapped at the end of riot season, but that was okay. That cost had been built into the business plan. Retired General Williams McMaddis was still going to make a healthy profit.

The 38 passengers were all dressed in black. Black body armor and AK-“Chopper” pistols lay scattered about. Two panel vans followed the buses. They were bringing ammo, bottled water, and other supplies to the protest. After the protest, they’d be filled with loot. Maybe more than loot. Some of the PVD were talking about taking captives they could ransom off. And why not? All summer they’d been given the freedom to do whatever they wanted.

The PVD convoy had gotten a late start. They’d arrive at Silver Springs almost two hours after the community organizers.

 

Evans

In California, the Berkeley Student Alliance for Global Justice occupied the Emergency Room of the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. They pledged that they would not let any patients in or out of the ER until “Colonist states around the globe dismantled themselves, and their leaders publicly confessed their crimes against humanity.” Inside the ER, students shouted into bullhorns and banged pots and pans They blocked the nurses trying to get their patients into surgery. Doctors shouted. Students spat. An assistant dean ran around the ER, unplugging ventilators, and heart monitors. A nurse followed behind him, desperate to undo his damage. Security guards stood in the corners with their arms folded, observing and reporting but not intervening lest they get fired or worse. Outside, the ambulances were stacked eight deep waiting to get their patients to medical care. Their lights flashed. Men and women wearing the uniforms of the Berkely Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office stood idly by at a safe distance. Evans imagined all the patients, suffering, bleeding, lungs struggling to draw in air, hearts struggling through each beat. All that pain amidst the student chants and the clanging of pots and pans.

Evans went further down the digital rabbit hole. He found a recent Sunday show interview with the CEO of Black Guard, one of the biggest asset management firms in the world. The interviewer led off.

“Now, you have taken a controversial stand against insurance companies who are processing claims filed by these so-called ‘victims’ of the First Amendment Celebrations that are sweeping the country.”

“I certainly have, Candy.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“What we are seeing across the country is a true expression of the will of the people. At the same time, our democracy is under attack by these political extremists who seek to subvert the coming election. We all know this. This is settled fact. So why should insurance companies reward these extremists who stand in the way of progress? These demonstrators are just expressing their Constitutionally protected rights. Why should insurance companies provide any restitution to the people who are actively working against the progress?”

"But how would you respond to the claims that some of the peaceful demonstrators have gotten a little bit… over-enthusiastic, and confronted a few homeowners?”

“Candy, all the violence has been one-sided. We all know these are mostly peaceful demonstrations. Any acts of arson, if there even were any, were provoked by these extremists who sought to stifle free speech. They were reactionary. Reactions to hate and the obstinance coming from middle America.

“Candy, what happened in Tulsa is a perfect example. If that vigilante veteran had not violently confronted those students who were just exercising their First Amendment right to protest, nobody would have gotten hurt. But he did. Now, this Army or Navy veteran or whoever he was, he had no problem when these demonstrations were going on in the inner cities. He had no problem when these things were going on in Baltimore, or Philadelphia. But when the demonstrations were occurring in his neighborhood, on his lawn, on his property, then, he pulled out a gun. That's racism Candy, pure and simple. And I don't think any responsible insurance company should reward that kind of behavior."

“Sir, I think you meant Oklahoma City, not Tulsa.”

“What’s the difference?” the CEO quipped. The interviewer smiled.

“Mr. Rink, what would you say to those who say the insurance companies have an obligation to pay out these claims?”

“What I would say is that we have no responsibility to extremists and domestic terrorists. The public sector. The private sector. None of us. We have no responsibility to those people in any way. If they lose their homes, if they lose their businesses, if they lose their property, that’s the price they pay for rebelling against the will of the people in a democracy. This is about love, and science, and progress. It is not about their hate, or their conspiracies or some deluded and antiquated middle-class fantasy about what America is. I have no sympathy for those people. None. You are either with progress, or against it. And if somebody stands against our progress, they get what they get. And my company will take very targeted, and very active measures against any insurance companies who want to reward such resistance. They can pay out those claims, but if they do, I will ensure those companies never get another loan. I will ensure that their workers will feel the pain in their company pension plans. I will ensure that their stock prices get pinched down to nothing.

“Candy, I’m sitting on top of one of the largest asset management portfolios in the world. Yes, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my investors. But I also a larger and greater duty to use that power and that capital to promote social justice on a global scale. That obligation is especially acute with the upcoming election. I’m not sitting on the sidelines. So yes, I am using my power and my money to influence the upcoming election. And I make no apologies for it. As a citizen of this democracy and as a global citizen, it is the right thing to do.”

Evans sat stewing before the screen when his nephew came into the office. Kyle looked like a man who had just been broken in half. He collapsed into a chair.

“What’s up?” Evans asked.

Kyle needed to take a moment to compose himself before he could speak.

“I talked to my mom. I should enroll in school here. They won’t be coming. Not anytime soon. They got delayed again.”

Evan gave it a moment. He didn’t pry. He could tell by his nephew’s flushed cheeks and puffed-up eyes that he needed to be patient. When Kyle was ready, he continued.

“California just passed a new law.”

“Another one?” Evans joked. Kyle offered a look that let Evans know his joke fell flat.

“I don’t really understand the new law. What my parents told me is if they sell the condo all the money from the sale goes to the state. They have ninety days to buy a new home, but it has to be in California. If they don’t buy another place in California, the taxes on the sale are over 60%. California takes all the money, basically."

“Yeah,” Evans said. “Too many people have been leaving California. Looks like they are doing anything they can to stop it.”

Kyle hung his head and looked at his shoes. “How can they do this?”

“The strong take what they can. The weak suffer what they must.”

“It is like our own government hates us.”

“It is not so much that they hate us,” Evans said. “They do. But what it really is, is that they take us all for granted.

“They take it for granted that we’ll just sit here and take it. We’ll keep paying taxes. We’ll keep obeying the one-sided laws. We’ll keep putting up with the erosion of our institutions. They take it for granted that we’ll keep walking around with our heads down, hoping we’re lucky enough to make it through the day without getting caught up in the madness.”

“Will we?” Kyle asked.

“Will we what?”

“Keep putting up with it?”

Evans shrugged. "Maybe. Most likely. But eventually, they are going cross the wrong person, somebody who is angry enough not to care about the consequences and smart enough and skilled enough to do something. And a person like that, they will know. They will know they won’t be given any quarter. They know they won’t be given any mercy. They’ll still go, on a one-way mission that goes straight into the dark and medieval and does not come back. When that happens, who knows? Sometimes it only takes the right person at the right time to spark the right fire.”

Evans stopped, sighed, and ran his hand over the gray stubble on his head.

“I’ll talk to your mom tomorrow. There is no point in delaying. We only have so much time left. The closer we get to this election the worse things are going to get.”

“What about the condo.”

“Forget the condo. It is just a house. A house isn’t worth a family, or your lives. I know it’ll be tough walking away from all that investment and equity. But sometimes you must accept a big loss now to score a bigger victory later. There is no victory without sacrifice.

“I’ll talk to your mom tomorrow,” Evans repeated. Kyle looked a little happier after that.

“You want to watch the riots?” Evan asked. Kyle shook his head.

“Why? It will just be more of the same. More of them just dishing it out and more of us just taking it.”

Evans smiled sadly as Kyle left the room. Alone, Evans looked from America’s decline unfolding live on the computer to the window. The night was out there, dark, and beautiful. Owls hooted at each other. The night called. Evans looked back at his computer and said to it, “I’ve had enough.”

For no reason he could remember, Evans opened one of the desk drawers. His cheap phone and his pagers were inside. Without thinking about it, he scooped them all up and stuffed them in a pocket. He went downstairs, grabbed one of his colas, and went out onto his back porch and into the night.


The sky was midnight blue, clear to the horizon in all directions. The sky made Evans think about Texas and all its vast wildness, and the eternity beyond. A cool breeze came up, and Evans thought about the night on the riverbank, after their small victory on the bridge. He thought back to those times. Back to when he was young and strong. Back when Lasky and his other friends were still alive. Back to the best years he would have.

All those decades of service, what had any of it been for? His friends were mostly dead. Instead of a hero, he was a villain in his own country. He lived by himself in an empty house. No wife. No kids of his own. He was old and tired and the best years of his life had been spent in service to a nation that now hated him. And his nephew? His nephew would be saddled with a country that was falling apart. That was the legacy Evans was leaving Kyle.

At some point, Evan dozed off. What woke him up was the pager in his pocket. He could count the people who knew about that pager on one hand and still have fingers left over. Evans fished it out.

The display had a code word. The code word meant danger. After the code word was a URL. After that were the words, “Acknowledge receipt.”

The pager buzzed again in his hand. A steady stream of messages.

Acknowledge Receipt
Reply.
Frankenstein. Wake up. Check the URL. Now.

Evans, a man once called Frankenstein by his friends, ran back into the house. His old legs took the stairs two, three at a time. He burst into the office and jumped behind a computer. Seconds later he was looking at a live stream of protestors and charter buses in front of the Silver Springs sign.

Evans didn’t know much about computers, but he knew how to do what he was told. He’d been told what site to navigate to when things went from bad to worse. He did just that. He found himself looking at a familiar face on the computer.

“We were headed back down to Paraguay. When we stopped to refuel, we checked the riot feeds and saw the crap going on back there. As soon as we finish fueling, we’re heading back.”

“You remember what we agreed to?” Evans asked.

“We do. They might not head up to your house.”

“They head up here. You and I both know that.”

“You could still run.”

“I’m not running. I run and what happens then? A year later it starts all over again. Only worse. Because I’m a year older. He’s a year older. We’re all a year older. And they’ve been given another year to get stronger.”

“The boss says…”

“This time I don’t care what the boss says,” Evans said. “People always say the time isn’t right. Well, tonight the time is right for me. You remember the promise you made to me?”

“I remember.”

“Keep the promise.”

“We will.”

“I have to go. I’m out of time,” Evans said. He dropped the connection.

Evans ran from the office to Kyle’s room. He threw open the door to Kyle’s room and turned on the light. His nephew sat up, half-awake, rubbing his eyes. Evans spoke.

"Wake up. It’s happening. Now. Just like we talked about."

 

Finally, we're getting to the meat!

 

Great story!

 

Yes, sorry about that. It took us a long time to get here, both in time and in words written and read, but we are here at last.

 

It was time well spent and I have enjoyed getting here, but now things get interesting. I realize that a lot of work goes into laying the foundation of a good story, you can't just jump to the climax or conclusion...kinda like telling the punchline without the rest of the joke, it just doesn't work. So, as much as we would like to read the last chapter and discover that the butler did it, we will let the story play- out. Too soon, it will be 'THE END' and we will be both happy and sad!