Chapter 4: So That’s How It Is

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing with that hardware?” the cop on front security asked me, and Ted and I, we knew each other real well. He was a real cop, moonlighted doing security because he needed the money, just like I moonlighted in the Walmart down the road doing stocking.

Bitch of a job at less than minimum, and I’d only gotten it because I went all ching-chong-chow on them and faked being an illegal. Helped with the budget though, because I swiped as much of the food that they tossed after its use by date as I could. So did everyone else and that helped.

“You hear about the Veep?” I asked him, and he hadn’t because he was near the end of his shift and he’d been out here for a few hours already, bored to frigging tears.

“Go look,” I said, because they had a big CNN screen up in the waiting area so he strolled in and when he came back out his face was pale.

“What the fuck...” he said. “Just, what the fuck? They made that crazy bitch the President? They fucking think they can fucking get away with shit like this?” and Ted was fucking furious. As furious as Brad and I’d been. Not to mention everyone we knew.

“Yeah, they do think they can get away with it,” I said, and I waved to the guys in the half dozen old Jeeps and SUV’s and rustbuckets. “So Ted, you with us or you against us, because we’re not taking this shit anymore and you know who’s having some big hoo-hah thing up in the admin boardroom tonight?”

“Nah,” Ted said, because he was never interested in stuff like that and I wouldn’t be normally except old Doc Savage in ER ‘d told me that Admin was wasting a frigging fortune on some big party tonight for the Ratdog assbitch that’d cheated and rigged her way into taking our local House seat and there were half a dozen more of them all come from around to pat each other on the backs and have some big party on the Hospital’s dime and they screwed me for half my frigging crap wages so that they could party on it? Brad and I were on the bones of our asses just barely making ends meet and they were feeding like pigs at the trough on the goddamn taxes they made us pay because it wasn’t like there was a choice was there?

“That bitch, Testudo, the one that just cheated her way in,” I said, “n half a dozen frigging Ratdog reps and all the frigging political appointees running the hospital and their buddies, that’s who.” All of them living high on the hog on our dime when we had to work two jobs each and scrimp and save for every cent because they taxed the absolute crap out of us and what could you do?

Brad and the boys and a few of the girls were wandering across the drop off lanes and they were loaded for frigging bear and Ted saw.

“So that’s how it is,” he said, and he had one hand on his cop issue handgun but he wasn’t going for his radio.

“That’s how it’s gonna be, Ted,” I said, and I had my 1911 out and not quite pointed at him. “It’s past time, Ted, and you know what they said way back when and, well, we figured it’s time to water the garden.”

“You did, didcha?” Ted said, eyeing me. “Never thought you were one of those.”

“Never thought I was either,” I said, and I never had until now.

“Well,” Ted said, “I never thought I was either.” He was looking through the window at the CNN screen and the veep’s limo went about a hundred feet up into the air as we both watched. “But, well, sometimes you just gotta accept that things are so completely fucked up that there’s only one way you can roll and fuck it, I voted for Svetlana.” He grinned at me now and it wasn’t a humorous grin. “ ... And my security pass ‘s got full access and it’s not like I got a wife and kids.” He turned his head. “Hey, Brad.”

“Hey, Ted,” Brad said, and they were all locked and loaded.

“I’m in, buddy.”

“Happy to hear that, Ted. Real happy about that, man. So what’re we waiting for then.”

“Beats me,” and Ted grinned and it still wasn’t a humorous grin, more just showing his teeth. “Let’s roll.”

“Follow me,” I said, because I knew exactly where that party was being held and me, I wasn’t smiling at all.

Twenty minutes and a conference room full of bodies later, and that hadn’t taken long because it was smile and spray and there wasn’t much spraying because we’d all spent a lotta time on the range, we all kind of looked at each other and we all kinda looked at the LCD up on the wall and they’d had it set to CNN and the fuckers really had been gloating about the Veep going up in smoke and the food and the booze. Jesus, it really was pigs at the frigging trough.

“Goddam, look at this steak, dude,” Frank said, and he had his 1911 in one hand and an entire steak in the other. “Jesus, I ain’t eaten steak like this in years.”

“Missed this mother,” Rick said, and there was a screamed protest and a crack. He grinned. “I musta missed that gun-free zone sign I guess.”

“Sorted,” he added, not that he needed to and me, I smiled and I never thought I’d smile about seeing someone shot but I did and I’d shot one or two myself and I didn’t feel bad about it. Actually, I felt rather good and that steak was making my mouth water.

“Whatta we do now?” Eddie asked and they all looked at Brad and me and I was, like, frigging heck, why look at me, because I kindof thought we were all gonna be doing some serious time for this shit if they even bother taking us alive because we’d just terminated half a dozen members of the House and double that of local state politicos, and maybe Ted was with us but we’re talking Feds here and those Feds, they were assholes. Mean assholes.

“Help ourselves to the buffet,” I said, real brightly and I wasn’t really joking because I kinda thought we were pretty much screwed so we might as well have one good meal before they came for us or we ran, not that running ‘d do any good, and Rick was a bit distracting because he was putting a round into every head and that 1911 of his was frigging noisy.

“Making sure of ‘em,” he shrugged when I kinda looked at him. “Learnt that one in the sandbox, Jenny. Make sure of the bastards. Excuse my language,” and craaaack. A spray of red and a jerking body and I kinda saw the point because that one hadn’t been quite dead and from the dawning comprehension on their faces, so did a couple of the others and I guess that was a real lesson I learnt that day.

“Fuck me,” Brad said, and we all looked where he was looking and that LCD, the news, oh man! CNN had a camera outside some big Fed building and the whole thing was going up in flames and there were riot police but they were falling back under a rain of petrol bombs and you could hear shooting and the odd cop was going down and the on-the-spot announcer was looking totally freaked.

“ ... outbreaks of violence have broken out across the country and on military bases following news of the Vice-President-elects tragic death, which the Federal Bureau of Intelligence has blamed on Islamic terrorists. Following the courageous assumption of the Presidential mantle by Speaker of the House Ortez, who was sworn in this afternoon in an emergency session, steps are being taken to plan a response. President Ortez will be making an announcement shortly, appealing for calm. Unofficial sources say a smooth transition from President O’Rorke’s administration is expected to take place...” and then her head exploded and the camera kind of moved around and you could hear the shots and a bullet hit the lens and the camera went dead and after a couple of seconds CNN cut back to the studio.

“ ... and we seem to have lost contact with our news team,” the announcer said, before leaning over and puking on the floor and they didn’t manage to cut that one at all.

“Guess they did a bit more than lose contact there,” Eddie said, and he was grinning. “That live feed just went dead,” and he wasn’t the only one laughing.

“Like fuck it’s going to be a smooth transition,” Brad said, n I could tell he was thinking. “We just got rid of seven of the asswipes right here.” He grinned, looking around. “And that CNN news team looked kinda fucked to me so it’s not just us and I guess we’re committed now, folks, unless you wanna be staring at concrete walls for the rest of your lives, coz this is a real insurrection now.”

“So whadda we do?” Mike asked what I guess every one of us was standing there thinking that except maybe for Frank because it looked like he was on his second steak already.

“Rick, you and Boris and Eddie ‘re still in the Guard, right. You guys start calling your buddies in the Guard, get everyone you know down to the Armory and ask them to call their buddies and tell ‘em to get down there, like, right fucking now-now. Breal in if you have to, we want everything there. Like, half an hour ago now. Rest of you, you know who you know, get on your phones and pull in everyone you know, get them down to the Armory. We’re not just gonna water the tree, we’re gonna soak the fucker before they take us down. Now you, Mike, that buddy of yours runs that big gunshop, right? I want you to...”

Me, I already had my phone out and I was hitting that speed dial, coz I had a few friends too and I knew which way they rolled.

They didn’t take us down. The cops came over enmasse, except for the political appointees at the top and their own men blew those asswipes away. The Guard? Once the political officers were taken care of, and the guys all knew who they were, the Guard was ours and Reservists and anyone who knew how to handle a gun or who was ex-military and a lot that didn’t or weren’t just flooded in and we went to it with a vengeance.

The local Ratdogs didn’t have a snowflakes hope in hell and we threw them into the holding pens by the tens and then by the hundreds and finally the thousands and we weren’t too gentle about it and we didn’t take shit and there were more than a few bodies along the way. Quite a few. Wasn’t hard to find Ratdogs. Party membership lists. Lawn signs from the elections. And people knew who the asswipes were anyhow and they told us and the volunteers just kept on flooding in.

Chaos. It was chaos everywhere and for the first few days, CNN and Fox News and the other mainstream media tried to broadcast the party line. Didn’t work to well after the first couple of days and the news that did come out, the accurate news, that was mostly over the internet and the government was trying to shut that down but fast as they took sites out, new ones popped up until the Internet went down. Or got taken down. Never knew which.

“Shit’s really hitting the fan,” Brad said to me, middle of a break from signing up volunteers and getting them organized, and there still wasn’t any shortage. “Jesus, will ya look at that.”

I did, and it was some Air Force base going up in smoke, lines of burning aircraft, explosions and clouds of black smoke in the background and it was on Fox News so I flipped the sound up... “ ... over two hundred billion dollars worth of aircraft destroyed in the latest terrorist attack...” and I flipped the sound down again because it was just the usual bullshit.

“Weren’t no terrorist attack,” Rick said from behind us. “One of my boys is down there in the air force, called last night, got through somehow. Government was planning air strikes on us up here, and a bunch of the boys took the aircraft out along with a lotta the infrastructure. They’ve gone underground down there, he says it’s a real mess.”

“Jesus,” Brad said again, shaking his head. “They really did have no idea, did they?”

“Nope,” Rick said, picking up his coffee. “Better get back to it.”

Two days later, the National Liberation Army had started to take form officially, the first EMP bombs had been dropped by both sides, theirs and ours, and electronic stuff ‘d been fried all over the country. Brad was a Captain and I was a frigging First Lieutenant in his task force with my own company and Saint Mary was ours and so was half the State and it wasn’t just riots going on round the country.

There was full on fighting going on all over and the Regular armed forces had fragmented and in Saint Mary and across most of the rest of the State, we were cleaning up and actual Battalions using Guard and Reserve equipment were starting to fan out, heading east, west and south and CNN and Fox News and all the other fake media were screaming insurrection and Nazis and terrorism.

For once, the lying bastards got it right. At least partially, because we sure as shit weren’t Nazis, but it sure was an insurrection and three days later the Second Republic was proclaimed and someone got to Ortez and blew the bitch to hell and back and some Air Force puke took off in his aircraft and pickled half a dozen bombs into the House before a SAM took him down and that sort of fairly abruptly terminated an emergency session that was going on and then it was all on.

Over on the east and west coast in the cities, the Ratdogs were rounding up anyone they thought sympathized with us and they were shooting them by the hundreds and then the thousands, but our guys had the rural areas and those mass executions that the Ratdogs were doing were all over the web and after that came out, we formed our own clearance units. The Army, Air Force and Navy had fragmented, seemed like there weren’t many aircraft left for anyone and god knows what happened to the Navy. Us, we were going back to the old manual systems, and that gave us the edge coz a lot of our guys were older vets and they knew their stuff.

Three months later, here we were, a frigging Army in control of a quarter of the country and taking control of more by the day and the regular army had totally disintegrated. There we were, Brad and I, commanding a Clearance and Processing Unit within the Quartermasters Corps of the Second Republic’s National Liberation Army. And yeah, Clearance means what you think it means and we went to it with a will.

Highlight of my life up to then was dealing with an CNN reporting team that one of the frontline units overran and wasn’t that just a pure pleasure, and you can look at me and call me a murderous bitch but guess what, back then I didn’t give a fuck because those evil bastards had it coming and if it was up to me, I’d have hung them with a short rope because it’d take a sight longer for them to die that way. Reg’s said we had to shoot them and the National Liberation Army was strict on following the regs.

Shame, but there you are.

I did it by the regs.

I enjoyed it.

Sometimes I could even pretend things were almost normal. Clearance activities around Harrisville. Small town, and there weren’t that many ratdogs to process, and most of them went off for re-education or to the labor camps. Only a few didn’t pass and I tried not to think about them. We’d even had a hotel to stay in. Cheap one, nothing much but it was a bed and our own bathroom and we got a room together and there was electricity and the water was hot and we took a long shower together and it was almost like a honeymoon and after that shower together we both knew what we wanted and we walked together to the bed, holding hands.

Without thought, we were on that bed together and we hadn’t been in a real bed together for weeks and I was in his arms and he was kissing me hungrily, ravenously and we lost ourselves in each other.

“I love you, Brad,” I breathed and I loved everything of him. “I love you so much.”

“Love you, Jenny.” His breath came hot in my ear, his weight heavy on me now, limp and relaxed and he was smiling and I knew he did.

Lying in bed afterwards, intertwined, arms and legs around each other, as close to each other as we could be, relaxing after making love. Whispering. Making plans for after the war, trying to forget what we were doing, what we’d done. Almost succeeding for a few brief minutes as we talked about that log home we both wanted and the furniture we’d like and the kids and everything.