“Well, that’s good to hear.”
Puig jotted some notes down on her computer pad, then looked up. “You know, a lot of churches are moving toward a more inclusive framework that puts aside the patriarchal and racist elements of a lot of old religious practices. You should think about it. I can email you some recommended Christian principles.”
“Thank you, but I think I know the tenets of my own religion, Ms. Puig.”
“And you are free to practice whatever things you choose to believe inside here in whatever way you want. But you need to understand that outside of here we believe in science and inclusiveness and diversity. And there’s no room for Jesus-based intolerance.”
“That sounds kind of like the opposite of diversity.”
“Mr. Bellman –”
“Pastor Bellman.”
She ignored his correction. “We are simply not going to allow any group to undercut the progress and evolution we are putting in place after breaking away from the racist states. If you refuse to cooperate, you need to understand that there will be a price.”
“So my congregation is free to practice its faith however it likes except when you disagree with it?”
“In a democracy, the people choose what’s allowed and what isn’t. And they have chosen not to allow hate, Pastor Bellman.”
“Are you done here?”
“I’m making a note about this,” she said firmly, typing into her pad. “But I’m done here for now.”
“Then go.”
“I will be back.”
“There’s the door. Don’t let it hit you on your ass on the way out.”
Puig frowned, then turned and walked through it without a word. Out the doorway, Bellman could see the sun was setting. And he wondered if those PV punks would be coming back again.
Turnbull saw a young, dumpy woman with a weird piercing stomp out of the sanctuary and down the stairs as he approached from the parking lot. She carried a computer pad and seemed to have the officious attitude of an aspiring bureaucrat. There was no weapon visible so Turnbull went to his default.
If he had to take her out, it would be one to the face with the Wilson .45 he carried in the small of his back. He smiled, all friendly-like.
The woman marched past him as if he wasn’t there. Turnbull continued up the steps and through the doors into the sanctuary.
A man in his early fifties was standing near the altar. He turned and faced Turnbull. Good bearing, relatively in shape, probably ex-military.
“Pastor Bellman?” asked Kelly.
“Yes?” replied the man.
“I’m in need of guidance. You can call me Kelly. I’m visiting from Utah.”
“Come with me.”
“Tenth Mountain Division, Afghanistan, 2004,” Pastor Bellman said, handing his guest a Coke. Turnbull took it and thanked him – he knew how expensive soda was here now. The pastor continued.
“I was the battalion chaplain. Good unit, good guys. Worst place in the world to be wearing a US Army uniform and not have a gun. Some of the local nationals fought with us for 20 years and Clinton just abandoned them. Fucking disgrace.”
Turnbull lifted an eyelid at the profanity.
“Son, I was an infantry chaplain.”
“All the pieces fit.”
“And you? I was with the grunts long enough that I can tell what you were just by looking at you,” said the minister. “The big question is what are you now?”
“Just a guy here to keep an eye on things, maybe help you folks keep from getting ground down.”
“You here to start a war, son?”
Turnbull shook his head. “No. No war. I just watch, report, maybe give you some helpful hints to keep the assholes from stomping you. That’s it.”
“I’m a shepherd who wants to see his flock grow and be happy, not see them be slaughtered.”
“Like I said, it’s not my job to pick a fight. Observe, report, provide some suggestions. And they were pretty clear on the no killing part.”
“They were clear, but I’m wondering if you were clear.”
Turnbull shrugged. “Well, I haven’t killed anyone since I’ve been here, so that’s something.”
“Well, let’s try and continue your streak. You hungry? Food’s getting scarcer, but I think I have some chili.”
“Whatever you got. I appreciate it.”
“I live about –”
In the distance: Bam. Bam bam bam.
Turnbull was on his feet, listening.
Bellman too. “They’re back.”
The People’s Volunteer butt-stroked Dale Chalmers in the face with his AK-47 because he felt like it. Then he laughed.
Chalmers was with his wife Liz and Jimmy, his youngest kid, at what had been a Union 76 until the oil companies were nationalized, pumping his ration of gas into his Dodge when three cars tore into town. Two cars headed toward the center of town; the other one pulled up on the other side of the pumps from Chalmers, who was kind of stuck there. He tried to mind his business. That was not in the cards.
Four punks poured out, and two headed inside to see what they wanted to take from the quickie mart. One of the others, wearing the black coveralls of the PVs and a do-rag, crossed the island, pointed at the nozzle in Chalmers’s car, and said, “Gimme that, bitch.”
“What?” Chalmers said, not understanding that the punk wanted to fuel up on his prey’s dime – and his ration card.
The punk could have just grabbed the nozzle and taken it, but hitting the guy was definitely more fun. He slammed the wooden butt into the man’s face, blood and teeth spattering and scattering as his victim fell. Inside the car, the wife and the kid were shrieking, and on the ground the man was stunned and the red was flowing. The fourth punk, watching over the roof of their car, just laughed.
“Damn, you fucked him up!” he shouted, gleeful.
“Bitch,” the People’s Volunteer laughed, taking the nozzle. He thought briefly of squeezing a little gas onto him and lighting it, but he decided against it. The toothless punk had learned his lesson.
He slid the nozzle into his Chevy and squeezed, ignoring the ruckus around his victim.
From the center of town: Bam. Bam bam bam.
The nozzle popped, the tank full. He pulled it out and dropped it to the ground.
“Come on!” he shouted to the pair coming out of the store loaded up with beer and chips.
They were missing all the fun.
When Kessler finally released the deputies from the station, Cannon rushed to his cruiser and headed the four blocks to the town center. A Ford truck was sitting in the middle of the street, its windshield shot out. He was gratified not to see any bodies. People were out and about – he could feel the tension. Some were sweeping up glass. Others stared at him as he parked and stepped from the cruiser.
“Where the hell were you?” asked Roy Coleman bitterly, an older man who often worked as a greeter at the Walmart on the north side of town.
Cannon ignored him, but he was drawing a lot of angry looks. It occurred to him that the townspeople saw him as an outsider, and that stung.
Pastor Bellman was ahead, his arm supporting someone – shit, Liz was with them. It was Dale, his face bloody, his front teeth a cracked and shattered wreck.
“The PVs,” Bellman said as Cannon approached. No judgment, just the fact.
“What happened?” Cannon said, because he could not think of anything else.
“What do you think?” Liz shouted, half angry, half frightened.
“We called Dr. Klein. He’s coming to open up his office,” Bellman said. Dr. Klein was the dentist, but his milieu was fillings and braces. Dale would need much more to restore his wrecked jaw.
“They ordered us to stay inside the station,” Cannon said, not to anyone in particular, and no one was particularly interested in his explanation for why he had been unable to stop thugs from rampaging through his town and beating his people to a pulp.
Cannon’s eyes settled on a tall, lar
ge man with a serious face following a few feet behind the others. The first thing he felt was a twinge of fear. The man looked him over, as if he was assessing the deputy. The man’s eyes went off him and somehow, Cannon felt relieved he had not been assessed as a threat.
“They attacked Becky Collins,” Bellman said. “They didn’t rape her, but they groped her. She’s upset. And they hit Bill Simms in the leg with a round. Flesh wound. Maybe you should go see them.”
Cannon nodded, and moved off toward the Sunrise Diner where Becky worked.
Dr. Klein arrived quickly, pulled from dinner and wearing a polo shirt. He unlocked the office and brought the group inside. Liz stayed with them in the exam room. Jimmy was quiet and sat reading in the waiting room. He’s barely spoken since watching his father being assaulted. Turnbull took the minister aside.
“They’re going to kill someone next time.”
“I know.”
“Tonight was a message. Maybe I’m screwing up your metaphor, but the wolves want your flock to be sheep. Nice, quiet sheep. And they’ll do what it takes to make that happen.”
“I know,” Bellman replied, thinking.
“So what are you going to do?” Turnbull asked.
“You’re the expert. What are my courses of action?”
“I guess we’ve taken killing the bastards off the table for now, so maybe we let the People’s Republic know there’s a cost to this kind of bullshit.”
“How?”
“Strike.”
“Strike?”
“Sure. Strike. Non-cooperation. No one cooperates with the government. You ignore it. And you create your own shadow government. Cut the PR out of the loop. If you can convince your people to do it.”
“A shadow government…. sounds like you’re an insurgent, Kelly. Sounds like you’re trying to make me into one too.”
Turnbull shrugged. “I guess you can all get your teeth bashed in. Your women can get groped. Or worse. You can live that way, if you want.”
Bellman assessed the outsider. What was this man’s agenda? Bellman was certainly happy to help the new United States – he’d move there if he wasn’t needed in Jasper – but clearly the newcomer was pushing him towards…what?’
“Remember, we have to live here,” Bellman said.
“If you call it living,” Turnbull replied. “I call it serfdom. Now, I’m going to tell you something. Something I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway.” Turnbull looked over at Jimmy; he was still ensconced in his book.
“Yes?”
“There are negotiations going on to redraw the boundaries from the Split. Southern Indiana is one of the places looking to be traded. In a month, this could be red – if the blues let it go.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Our interests correspond, Pastor. I have an interest in making sure this area is a pain in the PR’s collective ass. And you have an interest in not seeing your congregation get its teeth smashed down their throats.”
“We need to organize. Which is why your people recruited me.”
“Churches are about the only extra-governmental organizations left,” Turnbull said.
“Yes,” the pastor said. “The VFW was outlawed as warmongering and the Rotary Club spends its meetings talking about systemic racism. Even the Boy and Girl Scouts are gone. They’re now the ‘Genderchoice Sharers’ and all the kids have to wear green skirts.”
“I’m guessing there’s a merit badge for denouncing thought criminals.”
“Merit badges are patriarchal. Everyone just does macramé.”
Turnbull leaned in. “It’s time we met up with some locals you can trust. And that cop – who was he?”
“Tom Cannon. Local guy. I think he’s okay. They are taking all the local agencies and folding them into the PSF.”
“Will he help us? We can use someone on the inside of the security forces.”
“You want to get him arrested?” Bellman looked him over. “This is a dangerous game, Kelly. Assuming that’s even your name.”
“Freedom’s a dangerous business. If you people want to go on like this, you can.”
“We don’t.”
“Then find some people you can trust and let’s get together. Stay off the phones.”
“I may be a country preacher, but I’m not that dumb,” replied Bellman, irritated.
“I’m used to operating in enemy territory. You aren’t. And this is now enemy territory for you. If you do this, if you defy the PR, they will come down on you. You saw what happened to those people at that farm.”
“The Langers were nuts with guns.”
“They killed the Langers because the Langers defied them, not because they were nuts with guns. The whole PSF is nuts with guns. If you choose to defy them too, there’s no limit to what they’ll do to you. You have to understand that.”
“We can’t keep living like this.”
“No, you can’t. I just want to make sure you are going in to this with your eyes open.”
“They’re open,” Bellman said firmly, but Turnbull wasn’t sure he believed him.
Turnbull slept in a small caretaker’s room in the back of the church. Bellman went off to contact the key folks he needed for the face-to-face meeting; he would stay the night at his parsonage a few blocks away. There was a small television set and Turnbull tried to watch the news. There was a summer shower coming, which the determinedly ugly weathercaster of unspecified gender attributed to the United States’ “racist climate crimes.”
Turnbull flipped the set off. His .45 sat on the bedside table. He read for a while, though all he had was his paperback copy of The Runewench of Zorgon, and the fact he had not read the prior eleven books meant that Part XII was utterly incoherent. He still had no idea what the “Elf-Blade of Norxim” was, but apparently it was a sword that talked because it gave a seven page libertarian-themed speech that sounded like something Ayn Rand would have written if she had dated J.R.R. Tolkien.
He tossed the book at the wastebasket and missed. It was quiet; he settled back on his pillow listened for a while. Satisfied that it was safe, he allowed himself to fall asleep. He dreamed that he was short of ammo, and he tossed and turned.
The center of town was already largely cleaned up. The damaged Ford truck was gone, and the broken glass from its windshield and several of the plate glass windows the PVs had shattered the previous night had been swept from the street and the sidewalks. But the people were on edge, walking faster than usual, and fear hung like sullen fog. It reminded Turnbull of some of the dictatorships he had operated in, and then it came to him that this should be no surprise. It saddened him that he felt the same oppressive gloom in his own homeland.
Or, at least, what had been his homeland until four years ago.
Turnbull had spent the day in the church thinking about the meeting and cleaning his .45. When Bellman came to get him at about five, he had put the weapon in its holster in the small of his back. Bellman saw it, but said nothing.
The meeting would be at the Sunrise Diner.
“It’s a nice little place right there on Main Street,” Bellman said.
Turnbull smiled. “Main Street.” That was almost too on the nose. But then the town had been founded and its roads laid out long before the discovery of irony.
Turnbull had originally been leery of meeting in a public place, but Bellman assured him that unless he wanted word of a secret rendezvous to get out they had best do everything above board. Everyone already knew there was a stranger in town; if he started having secret meetings that would certainly get around, and there were informers. So better to do it in plain sight.
They took Bellman’s Ford Taurus and kept to side streets most of the way. The pastor pulled into a small parking lot behind the row of storefronts. Turnbull surveyed the area without thinking about it – clear. He stepped out and onto the pavement.
Something growled at him.
A small brown puppy, some mix of terrier and
spaniel and who knows what else, was blocking his path, snarling, with something in its mouth. It looked like a flattened frog.
“You don’t have a lot of rabies around here, do you?” Turnbull asked.
“A lot of dogs went feral when the government decided you needed a license for an ‘animal companion.’ Of course, the animal control people rarely do anything since they know they can’t be fired. It’s sad.”
The dog growled again, his dead toy quivering in his jaw.
“I think he wants to play fetch,” Turnbull said. “Go away, dog.” He stepped around the puppy, and they began walking. The puppy trotted behind them, proudly carrying his squashed amphibian prize.
They walked around to the front, Bellman greeting various townspeople on the way, but never introducing the large stranger with him. And in the current environment, no one asked.
The small, cozy Sunrise Diner was only partially full with the early dinner rush – “rush” being a relative term. Turnbull assessed the space quickly – plate glass frontage, one door in the front, a corridor heading rearward, probably to the restrooms and the kitchen. There would be an exit back there somewhere.
A pretty girl in her twenties dropped off a couple of plates of thin sandwiches; their French fry servings were pretty skimpy. The waitress was red-eyed, and Bellman stopped beside her on the way to the back.
“Are you all right, Becky?” he asked. She nodded. Bellman hugged her. Turnbull stood uncomfortably, unsure exactly what to do. She looked the stranger over, but said nothing. The pair moved on.
Bellman had arranged for a table in the rear. The table was already populated with three women and four men – including the unlucky man who had gotten his teeth bashed in. He looked only marginally better than he did last night.
Turnbull slid into a chair facing the front door, but with easy access to the corridor leading to the rear. From there, he could dominate the entire room.
Bellman sat at the head of the table.
“Hello. Thanks for coming out. This is my friend Kelly. He’s…not from around here.”
“What are we going to do?” Dale Chalmers said, his voice muffled by his ruined teeth and swollen lips.
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