People's Republic

by Kurt Schlichter

  Turnbull glanced left through his window and observed a long line snaking out of what had been a Ralphs supermarket back twenty–some years ago. Now it was a “People’s Market,” with trash blowing across its nearly empty parking lot. The people in the queue looked like something out of an old photo from the Great Depression – gray, tired, sullen. There were always lines outside the secure sectors whenever Turnbull came over, but this time something was different. The crowd’s mood, even viewed from a passing sedan, seemed unsettled, tense, angry. A fistfight over a place in the queue broke out; everyone simply stared as two ragged men pummeled themselves into bloody heaps for priority in purchasing three cans of generic beans imported from Argentina.

  “The store must have food today,” said his passenger. “You really don’t have food lines in the Flyover?” He was skinny, like everyone else who wasn’t elite, and maybe 17 years old, the kid of some rich guy back in Kansas City whose wife made off with him to leverage a divorce settlement and who got caught behind the border when the PRNA decided to shut it down for good. Daddy was willing to pay Turnbull’s price to get him out, an especially hefty one because mommy would certainly raise the alarm, and there’s nothing the People’s Bureau of Investigation liked better than catching an infiltrator. What the PBI did to infiltrators – “spies” – was distinctly unpleasant.

  “Don’t call it ‘Flyover.’ That’s going to be your country soon. It’s called the United States of America.”

  Of course, now there was no flying over it any more – the PR claimed it was the US that shut down the air corridors from the western blue states to the eastern blues, but that was a lie. They just didn’t want anyone to see what was happening in red America, even from 35,000 feet.

  After a moment, the kid asked, “Will I really have to join the Army?”

  “Only if you want to be a citizen. Now stop talking.”

  In the first years after the Split, there were refugees moving in both directions as people picked a side, but soon the flow from red to blue became a trickle and from blue to red a torrent as their left wing policies, freed of conservative obstruction, began to bear the bitter fruit they always did wherever tried. Determined not to import the same political pathologies that had ripped apart the old United States, Congress, now sitting in Dallas, amended the Constitution. If you had not been an adult living in the red at the time of the Split and you wanted to vote, to be a US citizen, you had to earn the right with a tour in the military carrying a rifle.

  There was no alternative service. No reading stories to juvenile delinquents. No scam make-work gigs for rich kids who didn’t want to soil their hands. You put on camo and served, and you only got citizenship if you discharged honorably after your two years—or you got shot sooner.

  The car shuddered and jerked; another pothole. But there was one nice thing about driving in the impoverished Los Angeles of 2034 – the near total absence of traffic. Thanks to gas being rationed, when it was available to the non-elite at all, people were finally obeying the urban planners who for decades had wanted them out of their cars and into public transportation.

  There were plenty of buses–wheezing, dirty buses driven by unionized drivers who answered to no one and ran on their own personal schedules that bore only a glancing resemblance to the optimistic ones the transit authority published. Near the intersection of Pico and Livonia Avenue, Turnbull was nearly sideswiped by a bus driver who felt no need to signal as he wheeled his rickety vehicle away from the curb and into traffic. On its side was a fading, tattered banner depicting an angry woman of ambiguous ethnicity, naturally with her fist in the air, under the superimposed words “WOMYN WILL SMASH SEXISM, RACISM AND DENIAL!” It was remarkable how a nation so focused on rooting out what it called bigotry under various labels always seemed to uncover more and more of it lurking inside itself.

  Their destination was not far now. Switch out the car, siphon the gas, get on the freeway, get as far east as possible and make the crossing into Arizona on foot. His mind ran through the checklist again; food, water, clothing for the hike. All good. Travel passes with carbon offsets accounted for, good to go. He had paid enough for them. Blues always talked a good game about being progressive, but they all had their price.

  His weapons? Ready to rock, if need be. Hopefully, there would be no need. Not that shooting blues made much difference to him – his time in Indian Country had disabused him of any illusions about the value of human life in the People’s Republic. Avoiding trouble was solely a matter of convenience. It was simply easier to avoid a fight if he could. This trip should be a milk run, but with everything falling apart, who knew. It was always worse every time he came back, but this time it was a whole new level of bad. He had almost got caught in a mini riot in Santa Monica surveilling the kid before grabbing him. Better to have superior firepower and be safe rather than sorry.

  In all of Turnbull’s life, he had never once regretted being too well-armed. Never once.

  Now an electronic noise derailed his train of thought.

  Da-da-da-da-da.

  Turnbull’s head swiveled right. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “I’m sorry,” stammered the kid, digging inside his jacket for his cell phone.

  Da-da-da-da-da.

  “I asked you if you had a cell. You said ‘No.’ By that I foolishly inferred that you didn’t have a fucking cell phone.”

  “I forgot,” the kid replied miserably. Turnbull made a mental note to always search his package. Trusting civilians not to be stupid was a bad bet.

  The kid looked at the caller ID. “It’s my mom.”

  “Don’t answer it,” Turnbull said. He assessed what he could do to undo this screw up. He settled on a plan.

  Da-da-da-da-da.

  “Give it here, genius.” The kid handed the phone over and Turnbull rejected the call.

  “Now roll down your window.” The kid complied and Turnbull glided the Dodge to a stop in front of a packed bus stop. “What’s the unlock code?”

  “Uh, one, two, three, four.”

  “Of course it is,” Turnbull replied, and then he yelled over his passenger out to the puzzled riders waiting at the curb.

  “Who wants a free phone?”

  The riders stared back, their faces thin, their clothes ratty, unsure, unwilling to move. Was this some trap? After a few moments, a young Hispanic woman stepped to the window.

  “Free? I’ll take it.”

  “The code is one, two, three, four,” Turnbull said, tossing her the device. She caught it, smiled, and stepped back as the Dodge headed down Pico again. Hopefully, she would lead anyone following them on a merry chase across the length and breadth of the Los Angeles public transit system.

  “Why did you do that?” the kid asked, petulant. “It’s got my address book! I don’t even know my mom’s number. I just hit the favorite!”

  “You understand you can’t talk to your mother, right? You get that she’s going to report you’re gone and that we’re fugitives and that that phone could track us, right? Geez, are you really that stupid?”

  The kid’s eyes welled with tears. Apparently mommy had never let her magical unicorn child in on the fact that he was a numbskull. Turnbull pitied the kid’s drill sergeant, assuming the kid had the stones to volunteer.

  “We have to lose this car.” Turnbull turned off Pico south on a side street. “Now listen, you do what I say when I say it. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” said the kid, petulantly.

  “Okay, any more surprises for me? Any other cell phones, personal computers, trackers, smoke signalers, anything on you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Like I said, you just do exactly what I tell you when I tell you and in a couple of days you’ll be in the red and wondering why your mother ever brought you to this shithole.”

  The neighborhood between Pico and the 10 Freeway felt abandoned, as if everyone had just vanished and nature had started to reclaim it. The buildings were dec
aying, and the yards had gone feral in the rows of houses liberated from their owners in the wake of the Split. Green weeds sprouted from cracks in the asphalt. Someone had left a broken couch on the sidewalk, and someone else had set it on fire.

  And in the midst of all the emptiness were more lies. There was another billboard, brand new but stuck incongruously in a deserted neighborhood. This one depicted a smiling young blonde woman, well-fed and happy, and therefore likely a fantasy. “I LEFT TEXAS AND TYRANNY TO COME HERE! BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR FOOD AND FREEDOM!” And in the corner, yet another version of the rainbow flag. The top stripe on this one was mauve. Turnbull had no idea what race, ethnicity, or personal lifestyle choice that tint represented either.

  After a few moments and a couple turns, they reached a forgotten commercial area. Turnbull parked the Dodge on a quiet street in front of a tan Ford Taurus from the mid-2010s. He said a silent prayer of thanks that it was still there after 12 hours. The Taurus was a bit beat up too, but the engine was still good. It would do the job. Turnbull used the key remote to unlock it.

  “Grab my duffle and put it in the back seat of the Ford. Then get in the car and sit there. Don’t open the bag. I’m going to siphon out the gas from this one to fill the Ford’s tank. Should take me maybe 10 minutes. Don’t do nothin’. Don’t touch nothin’. Don’t say nothin’. Just sit there and wait. Got it?”

  The kid nodded, and they got out of their respective doors. The kid opened the Dodge’s back door and dragged a large olive drab duffle bag with a zipper across the top off of the back seat and onto the cracked sidewalk.

  “This is really heavy,” the kid said, hefting it over his shoulder.

  “Why are you still talking?” asked Turnbull, scanning the area. Nothing but old gray industrial buildings, largely abandoned. It’s hard to manufacture without raw materials. He went to the trunk and popped it; it held two empty plastic jerry cans and a siphon rig.

  There was movement down the street. Turnbull stepped out from behind the trunk. About 50 yards out was a scraggly man on an ancient bicycle, plastic bags full of what appeared to be salvaged junk swinging from the handlebars. He was probably in his fifties, dirty, with the look of a druggie.

  Oh, great.

  “Uh, sir? Sir?” shouted the rider, coming closer, now maybe 20 yards out. “Sir, could you spare –“

  “No. Move on.”

  “You look like you got some extra –“

  “Move on.”

  The rider stopped perhaps 30 feet away, straddling his bike frame in the empty street.

  “Why you so selfish? I know you got stuff. I just want a little.”

  From behind, the kid leaned his head out. “What’s going on?”

  “Get your stupid ass back in the car,” Turnbull snarled over his shoulder, then returned the bum’s stare.

  “Move the fuck on, right now.”

  “This is my street and you can’t just come here –“

  Turnbull sighed and pulled back the left flap of his jacket, revealing his pistol.

  “I’m counting to three…”

  The rider remounted his bike, muttering.

  “You think you can come onto my street and run me off? Motherfucker, I’ll show you what’s up.” He turned in a lazy half circle and pedaled away back where he came from.

  Awesome. This guy would be back in a few minutes with his pals, or worse tip off the People’s Security Force that there was some guy with a non-government piece for the reward. Narcing out formerly lawful gun owners was a traditional profit center for lowlifes after the Split. They got a few bucks and the gun owners got stuck in the prisons the new government had emptied of real criminals.

  Turnbull grabbed the empty cans and siphon and shut the trunk. There was no time to salvage the gas remaining in the Dodge. The Ford had half a tank, about enough to ride the 10 Freeway out to near Palm Springs. Unless they got ultra-lucky and found a station with fuel to sell before then – fat chance – he’d have to figure something out there to get them the rest of the way to the border. He would burn that bridge when he came to it. Now it was time to go.

  After loading the cans in the Ford’s trunk, Turnbull got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. It started, and he offered a sigh of relief. They accelerated down the street; there was no sign of the bum.

  He went east several blocks, and at La Cienega, Turnbull turned right. He knew that up ahead was a freeway entrance, just a little ways south. And gas stations. At least there used to be.

  “Keep a lookout in case there’s a gas station open,” he instructed his passenger.

  “Like that one?” The kid was pointing. Parked in front of what had been a Shell was a white van, and snaking from the pump to its gas tank was a hose.

  “No way,” said Turnbull. Usually a station that got a fuel resupply would have fifty cars lined up out into the road. Weird. Something was not right. But they needed gas. He turned off the road and pulled up behind the van. The van’s driver smiled.

  “Hey there.”

  “Hey there. They got gas to sell?”

  “Well, no. This here’s a little bit of marketing. I got gas to sell, though. In back here.” He motioned to the van. “How much you need?”

  “How do you know I’m not a cop?” Turnbull asked.

  “You don’t look like a cop,” the entrepreneur replied.

  “And how do I know you’re not a cop?”

  The seller smiled. “Do I look like a cop? Three hundred bucks a liter. How much do you want?”

  “Nah. Pass. Thanks.”

  “Two-fifty.”

  “Nah, I’m not feeling like being an economic criminal today.” Turnbull pulled around and past the irritated van driver and onto the street.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Turnbull.

  “Who?”

  “That shithead. Look back, tell me what he’s doing.”

  “Looks like he’s on the phone.”

  “Fuck me. Okay, we just need to get to the freeway. It’s maybe two minutes.”

  “I thought we needed gas.”

  “We do. Except if he’s not a cop, he’s working with the cops, or that van was full of guys to rob us the second I flashed some cash, or best case, the gas in his cans was half water. Whatever his scam was, it was too good to be true.”

  A beat-up black and white cruiser from the People’s Security Force slowly pulled in behind them from a driveway of what used to be a luxury car dealer. Written across the rear quarter panel were the words “Diversity Is Our Strength,” except the “v,” the “u,” and the “S” had peeled off.

  “Di ersity Is O r trength.”

  For just a moment, before the light bar came alive with blue and red, Turnbull had hoped that the appearance of the cruiser was just a coincidence. But it really didn’t matter. Whether they were working with the guy at the gas station or whether they just wanted to relieve a citizen of a working car, there was no escaping a confrontation.

  “Oh shit, oh shit,” whimpered the kid.

  “Put your window down.”

  “What?”

  “Put your window down all the way, put your seat back, and do not say a fucking word or I’ll kill you myself.”

  Turnbull pulled over to the curb in front of an abandoned saloon. There were people milling about, and they had seen this little police drama unfolding in front of them before. No one paid much attention. Hassling people is what the PSF did.

  The blues’ cruiser stopped maybe 20 feet behind them and idled for a moment, but not long enough to run his plates. Both occupants got out, approaching by moving up each side simultaneously in some semblance of the proper tactical template for stopping an unknown driver. They did not seem afraid or even cautious – they were almost arrogant as they came forward. Turnbull could not get a good look at the one on the passenger side, but in the mirror he could see the neck tats of the one moving up on his side. The PRNA was still hiring the cream of the crop, Turnbull noted.

  The Peop
le’s Republic had decided that it needed to run the police force centrally, and it incorporated the local sheriffs and police departments into a national police force originally called the “People’s Internal Security Squads.” When it became obvious that acronym would not work, it became the PSF – the People’s Security Force.

  Cops were key villains in the left’s rogue’s gallery, and most police officers and deputies quickly saw the writing on the wall and left, heading to the red states before the borders closed. That left just a few professionals to address a lot of crime from freed prisoners and the refugees fleeing the welfare reforms in the red states. They flocked to the blues, where the People’s government doubled benefits in an effort to fight inequality and racism, as well as, apparently, individual initiative and fiscal stability.

  In re-filling the ranks, the People’s government decided to prioritize “diversity,” and evidently dirtbags constituted an important part of society that was previously shamefully underrepresented in law enforcement. The People’s Security Force long ago abandoned hiring standards, and they trained to somewhere lower than the lowest common denominator. But that was sufficient for the People’s Security Force’s primary task of bullying hungry, cold, disarmed subjects. The People’s Bureau of Investigation was a different story – the government ensured the PBI had the best of everything – but these PSF patrolmen were neither trained nor equipped to take on a professional.

  Yet they were still dangerous. They both carried holstered, battered Berettas from back when their organization was still known as the LAPD.

  “Where’s your ID?” the one at his window demanded. The other parked himself at the kid’s window, framing himself nicely.

  “Got it here,” Turnbull handed over a very expensive fake he had prepared by his guy in Houston. The name on the card was Charles Schooley. He lived in the Western Sector and had a Privilege Level of “7,” a number that indicated he was not quite untouchable, but normally you would not mess with him. Apparently, today was not normal.