Indian Country

by Kurt A Schlichter

  The porn boy slowly reached for his Android 29 phone, and the barrel of Langer’s .357 found him with his hand hovering in mid-air.

  “Y’all think that’s a good idea?” asked Langer. Porn Boy withdrew his paw and placed it back on his lap.

  “Okay, everyone on your feet. All of you. Stand up.” They did. Langer motioned them to the corner to the right of the door around the Truth Agency desk.

  “I’m gonna tell you all this once, and one time only,” Langer said. “If I see any of you around here again, I’ll shoot you. You understand?”

  The dozen PR bureaucrats stared in horror, silent.

  “We’re not playing and negotiating,” Langer said. “You ain’t welcome here anymore, and I’m giving you fair warning so you can leave and go back wherever the hell you came from. If you come here again and mess with our people, I’m going to put a bullet in you. You all feel me?”

  Nothing. So Langer shot Porn Boy in the kneecap.

  Porn Boy screamed, falling to the ground, clutching the ruined joint in his hands as blood poured through his fingers. Their ears rang; cordite wafted through the room.

  Some shuddered, some cried, some begged.

  “Please, don’t hurt us!” the Truth Agency woman whimpered, confused and terrified.

  Langer stood calmly, his weapon trained on them, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Take a good look at him,” he said. “Your job ain’t worth limping for the rest of your life.”

  The wounded man rolled, and moaned.

  “You all might want to help your friend. Go on! Wrap something around it so he don’t bleed out. Now you –” Langer pointed at Puig. “You, come here and take this pack. Come on, I won’t hurt you.”

  Puig stepped forward, shaking, streams of tears running down her face.

  “Take it,” Langer said, handing her his back pack. She took it, reluctantly. “Open it up.”

  She unzipped it.

  “Quick, take out that jug.”

  She removed a gallon milk jug full of pale yellow liquid – the reek of gasoline was already escaping from under the twist cap.

  “You just open that top up and spread that gas around the office. Don’t forget the computers. Get everything nice and wet down,” Langer instructed.

  She did as Langer instructed while he covered the others. He took a puff on his dying cig.

  “Get the file cabinets – open them up and splash a little on there. You don’t need a lot. Get those computers. Come on. Hurry up, now!”

  He could see what they were thinking – someone had to have heard the gunshots, so where was the PSF?

  Langer smiled. The PSF wasn’t coming anytime soon.

  It took her two minutes to empty the jug, and after she splashed the last out on Porn boy’s computer Puig looked up and stared. The place reeked of petrol fumes. The wounded bureaucrat was still crying on the floor.

  “Pick up your friend and y’all get out of here. Like I said, this is your one free pass. If I see you again, you’re going home hoppin’ on one foot. Now get going!”

  The ones who could run ran out the door; two others helped their injured co-worker out onto the sidewalk. Langer walked to the door, turned, and took his fading cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it onto the Truth Agency womyn’s gasoline-soaked desk. It bounced across the surface, kicking up some sparks, and then the whole desk erupted in a fireball.

  Langer jumped out the door and the fire roared through the office. Outside on the sidewalk, he could hear sirens wailing, but he knew they were not coming for him. He slid the pistol into his belt, covered it with the flap of his shirt, and strolled away as if nothing happened.

  “You sure you can make a 500 meter shot?” Turnbull asked Davey Wohl. Turnbull was watching the mid-town PSF checkpoint at Main and 5th through a pair of Bushnell binoculars he had borrowed. Wohl was lying next to him with the Winchester 700 rifle the man had dug up from his cache out in the woods the previous evening. The shooter was peering downrange through a Nikon Buckmaster II 4-12x40 scope – deadly to deer, but not so pricey that it was deadly to him when his wife saw it on his credit card statement a dozen years before.

  “Oh easy,” Wohl said. “I was the designated marksman in my unit back in Desert Storm. Shot an Iraqi major in the temple at 400 meters outside of Kuwait City. He was just sitting there on the edge of his hatch on top of his BTR. Dumbass.”

  There were four PSF officers around their patrol cars at the roadblock in the middle of the intersection. One was talking to the driver of a silver Toyota Corolla they had stopped. The other three were lounging around, barely engaged, their AKs either leaning on their vehicles or strapped across their backs. They were clearly expecting another fulfilling day of hassling locals.

  Turnbull and Rogers had selected their shooting position on a small rise in a wood line that offered a view a straight up the street to the north. They would be hard to see from the roadblock, and far enough away that it would be hard for the officers to effectively engage with their AKs. Naturally, there were good routes for withdrawal.

  Turnbull checked his watch. Just fifteen seconds till 10:45.

  “You got a round in the chamber?” asked Turnbull.

  “Of course I do!”

  “Can’t hurt to ask. Try not to take this guy in the head. Better to keep him alive. It’ll be noisier.”

  “Okay,” said Wohl, taking aim.

  Turnbull stared as the second hand ticked off the time. “Four, three, two, one. Take him.”

  The rifle kicked immediately, and loudly even though Turnbull had his earplugs in.

  Through the Bushnells, Turnbull watched one of the PSF guys near his cruiser suddenly slammed against the rear quarter panel as if someone had just pounded his thigh with a sledgehammer. He fell to the ground, rolling, spurts of red visible even from that distance.”

  “Nice shot.” They could hear faint cries from that direction. The other PSF took a moment to figure out what was happening and they were now scurrying like ants hit by a splash of Raid.

  “Next shot. Take out a window.” No sense in trying to hit one of the scattering PSF officers – anyway, they needed to be alive to call in for help.

  “Roger,” whispered Rogers, letting out his breath then squeezing the trigger. The big deer rifle kicked up again.

  Downrange, the rear window of one of the cruisers exploded. The other three officers had taken cover; one of them had the limited presence of mind to fire a series of bursts from his weapon in the general direction of the noise. The guy in the Corolla opened his door and ran away; he forgot to put it in “Park” and it started rolling forward. One of the other PSF decided to shoot it full of holes for some reason as it drifted toward the curb.

  “Not a bad shot for a Walmart guy,” Turnbull said.

  “It’s like riding a bicycle,” said Wohl. “Except louder.”

  Through the binoculars, Turnbull could see a second officer was not shooting while a third one had gotten inside a cruiser and was shouting into his radio.

  “He’s making the call. Shoot out another window.”

  Wohl said nothing. Aim, breathe, squeeze.

  Another cruiser’s window blew out. The return fire, which was aimed nowhere near their position, ceased as they ran dry and reloaded.

  “I think we’ve got a sufficient distraction. Let’s move out.” Turnbull paused to pick up the three empty .30-06 shells Wohl had ejected. No need to provide the PBI with any evidence.

  The pair moved off to the rear, heading quickly back into the woods and away.

  Inside the station it was chaos since the call from the checkpoint came in. Since the previous morning, they had been expecting something, but no one was exactly sure what. Now it was here.

  “This is Unit 15! We’re under fire, we’re under fire! Over!”

  Ted Cannon watched the squad room freeze, then burst into activity. Everyone was rolling, but not him. He had been restricted to the station, assigned to assist in inte
grating the 20 new PSF officers and several PBI detectives down from Indianapolis early after the bloodbath at First Baptist the day before.

  When the report of the PV shootings came in, he had to be physically restrained from leaving the station. Even Kessler was stunned – she hadn’t anticipated that her instruction to intimidate the townies would be interpreted as orders to commit mass murder. They were just supposed to find that big guy, and break a few heads – help the locals get their minds right, as it were. They were supposed to send a message, but not that message.

  Still, perhaps the inadvertent message would prove useful. Kessler had recovered her composure quickly once her higher PSF headquarters essentially shrugged when she broke the news. Now she was ordering the PVs out of town and doubling patrols on the street, just in case there was a reaction.

  “We did not want to have this happen,” she told her officers. “But the racists and Christianist extremists brought this on themselves. Understand that we will defend the integrity of the People’s Republic, and we will not allow the forces of reaction to delay or derail our journey to true freedom!” Some of the PSF officers clapped.

  “Only twelve?” sneered one male-identifying officer a little too loudly. Cannon lunged at him and had to be held back by several others.

  Kessler stepped between them. “Deputy Cannon – Officer Cannon – you will control yourself. Your connections to this community are useful to us, but remember that your duty is to all the people of the People’s Republic, not just the ones here. You can help these people most by helping them accept what has changed, and commit to the new reality. Now get back to work.”

  It was about six that Sunday evening when Cannon was finally able to leave the station. He headed out and drove directly to his sister’s house. There were only a few people on the streets – Kessler’s curfew began at 7:00 p.m.

  The first place he went was the Chalmers’ house to see his sister. Liz and the kids were fine. She gave her brother a beer, then started crying. Dale came in a few minutes later while Ted was still hugging her; his church clothes were caked with dried blood.

  He ignored them, went to the kitchen, and brought back a Budweiser. It was in a rainbow can, and it tasted like Old Milwaukee backwash. The PR had nationalized all the breweries after the Split; too many brands was “inefficient.”

  “You okay?” Ted asked, letting Liz go. Upstairs, Jimmy started crying – he’d been crying a lot after what he saw that morning – and she left the living room to go to him.

  “Do I look okay?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen, Dale.”

  “Twelve people. Twelve of our friends. Will Collins, Patty Enright. Some of this is Pastor Bellman’s blood, Ted. And your people just let it happen.”

  “They didn’t mean to let anything happen,” Ted replied, miserable. “That wasn’t planned. They just came looking for the guy who drove off the PVs. It wasn’t supposed to turn into a massacre.”

  “You think giving a bunch of gangbangers guns and sending them out to threaten us, to come into our church, is going to end well? You think they care that this happened? They don’t. They think it’s going to scare us into giving up. A bunch of dead hicks isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.”

  The deputy said nothing. What could he say?

  “You need to choose a side, Ted.”

  “What do you mean choose a side?”

  “I mean choose a side for what’s coming. Because this can’t go on.”

  “I’m not choosing some side, Dale. I’m just choosing to try and keep some order, keep people safe.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “What the hell do you want me to do? It’s me, maybe two other locals left and a few support people and that’s it from Jasper. Everybody else is from outside. They’re sending in another couple dozen people and some detectives too. I can’t do anything.”

  “You can’t?” said Dale leaning back on his couch and taking a swig. “You’re inside.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ted said. “Do you want me to quit? Walk away, go south like all the others and leave you with nobody from here in that station?”

  “No Ted, I want you to stay. I want you to do your job. I want you to be the very best PSF officer Jasper’s ever seen.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ted replied, but he really did – he just did not want to go there.

  “I want you in there, telling us what’s happening. From the inside.”

  “What do you mean ‘us’?”

  “I mean us. Our people. This is war now. They started it, and we have no choice. None at all.”

  “You aren’t hearing me. We’re going to have 60 officers here, plus detectives.”

  “That won’t be enough.”

  “What, are you and your us going to start some guerrilla war?”

  “We’re going to finish one. My question is whether you’re going to help us or not. That’s the question.”

  “You want me to spy.”

  “Yeah. Get us information. You’re on the inside. You know what they do, you know who they are, you know where they’re watching. You know what’s happening.”

  “They already don’t trust me. They won’t even let me call out when there’s an operation underway. They don’t let me leave until the op is over.”

  “You still have more access than anyone else. You still see the bigger picture. The question is what are you going to do to help us?”

  “What, help you kill them?”

  “It’ll probably come to that.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are? You’re an insurance agent, Dale, not a guerrilla.”

  “The guys who won World War II weren’t soldiers either, until they were.”

  “You’re crazy. You need to never tell anyone else any of this or you’ll end up in a cell, or worse. You and all your stupid friends, digging up your deer rifles and playing war.”

  “We’re not playing. Like I said, you need to choose a side.”

  “Is this your idea? Who’s in charge of your little rebel band?”

  “It isn’t little, Ted. It’s big, and it’ll get bigger.”

  “You’re really going to do this.”

  Dale nodded and pointed at his bloody shirt. “That’s real, and so is what’s coming. You in or out?”

  “What, what do you want from me?”

  “Tell me about who is in charge.”

  “Lieutenant Kessler. She’s a female – at least she uses female pronouns. She got sent down to take over a few weeks ago with a bunch of outside officers. She moved the Sheriff out. She’s converting us from deputies to PSF, and I’ll have to wear black too.”

  “Okay, that’s good to know. What does she do, where does she live?”

  “What are you going to do? Kill her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that your plan?”

  “Our plan is taking back our town.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can. You want to do some vandalism, write some graffiti about how the PR sucks, go for it. But I’m not going to be a participant in murder.”

  “You think you’re not already? Whether you like it or not, you’re part of the People’s Republic, and it just killed a dozen of our friends. You need to make your choice.”

  “This is crazy,” Ted replied.

  “This is happening,” Dale said, and finished his beer.

  “Get the tactical team assembled!” Kessler shouted from the squad room floor. The lieutenant should have been planning and supervising – she was stepping into sergeant’s business, something the old sheriff would have never done when he was still in charge.

  The PSF officers were scrambling following the call about the sniper attack on the cruiser. The officers assigned as the quick reaction force ran to the supply room to draw their body armor and AKs. Cannon sat at his desk, watching but not offering assistance, the other administrative staff, a few men and women from around Jasper who acted as clerks and receptioni
sts, simply kept their heads down as the uniformed officers ran about.

  “Lieutenant,” a sergeant yelled across the chaotic squad room. “There’s reports of shots fired at the administrative building, and a fire.”

  Kessler stared for a moment, then said, “We need to respond to the sniper call first. The firemen can put the fire out.”

  “But, there were shots –” began the sergeant.

  “The sniper is the priority!” Kessler ordered.

  Ten minutes later eight of the station’s cruisers roared out of the police lot heading towards the checkpoint. Cannon monitored the operation on the radio. The casualties were light – one rifle round in the leg and some damage to one of the vehicles. There was no sign of the snipers. Nobody on the street saw anything – the PSF was canvassing everyone within sight of the checkpoint. They were able to generally pinpoint the direction of fire as from the south, probably in the woods somewhere. A search yielded nothing.

  With the station almost empty, Kessler finally assigned Cannon and another PSF officer, a young man with curly hair and a surly mien, to respond to the continuing calls from the administrative building. Cannon parked his cruiser down the street. Firemen were putting out the flames and a young man with a bad leg wound was being lifted into an ambulance.

  Cannon’s temporary partner just stood there.

  “Maybe we ought to interview some witnesses?” suggested the deputy. The PSF officer seemed put out by the imposition.

  “You can talk to them,” he said, fingering his rifle. Cannon left him and began corralling onlookers.

  Interestingly, the descriptions by the bureaucrats was consistent. The citizens were all over the board. It was some tall skinny guy, or a short fat guy, depending on who you talked to, who had walked into the People’s Republic administrative building, shot one of the diversity workers in the leg, and set fire to the place. All while the PSF was out responding to the sniper call.

  “Langer,” thought Cannon. He scribbled down his notes, making sure to include all the different descriptions. The PBI people would not be happy about it, but too bad.