People's Republic

by Kurt Schlichter

  “Don’t shut it. I gotta check it.”

  “For what?”

  “For my own personal safety. Do you have any phones, tablets, electronics, anything that has lights or buttons?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see. You’d be surprised how many people forget to mention shit that they can track us with.” Turnbull unzipped the pack and rifled through it. Socks, a jacket, some bandages – smart thinking. A wallet.

  “What’s this?”

  “My photos,” she said. “Hard copy prints.” Turnbull nodded and put it back in the pack. Then he walked to the master bath and slid the door shut behind him.

  The commotion began as he was washing his hands; Turnbull heard the noise and threw the towel to the floor. He pulled the door open and drew his Glock at a run down the long hallway. At the other end, he heard a hail of gunshots and saw Junior coming up the stairs and dive onto the landing as a flurry of bullets slammed into the wall.

  Amanda was standing stunned, and Turnbull pulled her to the ground.

  “You hit?” he shouted at Junior, who held the Ruger in his right hand. Its slide was locked to the rear.

  “He got the jump on me and ran downstairs,” Junior said. “I tried to shoot him through the wall as he went down the steps, but I don’t think the bullets went through the plaster, I ran after him, but he must have got the pistol off the dead guard. He can’t shoot for shit, though.”

  Turnbull ran to the big window and looked out across the backyard. Nothing.

  “He’s in the wind. Fuck. Okay, out front. Amanda, get your keys. We’re taking your car down to get ours and then hauling ass back to David’s.”

  The trio ran out front, with Amanda dodging the bodies and Turnbull stepping on them. He slid into the Nissan’s passenger seat and, as Amanda drove out the gate and down the street, proceeded to open the back of Rios-Parkinson’s cell phone and slip out the SIM chip. That went in his pocket; he hurled the dead cell phone out his window into someone’s jasmine bushes.

  Rios-Parkinson was out of breath – he was never an athlete and this scramble out of the house and across the yard, then over walls into other yards and down the streets, was probably the most physical exertion he had indulged in since his racist PE coach had made him do laps as a high school sophomore. The house ahead seemed to be occupied, but there was a wall and an iron lattice gate. He ran to it and pounded on it; nothing. There was an intercom, and he hit the button.

  “Open the fucking gate!” he shrieked into the microphone. The lights inside the house went dark and none of his pleas or threats convinced the occupants to turn them back on. Finally, he gave up and ran down the street, looking for another house that might admit him.

  It was another block before he found a house with no wall. He ran up the steps to the door and pounded. There were noises from inside, and an elderly man standing behind a walker opened the door a crack.

  Rios-Parkinson pushed and forced himself inside.

  “I am the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation,” he announced. “Where is your telephone?”

  He did not wait for an answer – there was a wall-mounted land line in the kitchen. He ran to it and put it to his ear – nothing.

  “That phone hasn’t worked in years,” said the old man.

  “Your cell phone, now!”

  “It’s…where is it?”

  But Rios-Parkinson spotted it on an end table in the living room and lunged for it. There was a signal, but a weak one, maybe one or two bars depending on where he stood. He dialed the main exchange but, because he was without his address book feature and did not remember the individual phone numbers, he had to bully his way through the central exchange until he finally reached Larsen.

  “Seal the Sector! No one leaves!” he screamed. “And take the Jews now!”

  16.

  They parked across the street from the eastern wall of the Westside Sector, in as quiet and out-of-the-way place as they could find, and waited. No patrols. There was a camera, mounted on a light pole. Turnbull got out of the car and walked directly underneath, then shot it with the silenced Ruger. Chances are the guys assigned to watch the feeds of all the security cameras would write this off as just another malfunction. After all, who would disable a camera inside the Sector? The problem was keeping people out, not keeping them in.

  He got back into the Lexus, which they had driven to in Amanda’s Nissan, and swung it around to the other side of the road, right up next to the wall. Turnbull left the keys in the ignition; hopefully someone would come along and remove the evidence. They climbed up onto the trunk, then onto the roof, snipped through the razor wire with their wire cutters, and climbed over the wall.

  It was a long walk to the abandoned Del Taco. They moved fast, knowing they needed to warn David. Turnbull was not sure exactly what he’d do to help the people, but it was pretty clear their time was running out. They would have to go out, all 27 ½ of them.

  The three of them kept to the shadows and tried to avoid arousing attention. Amanda was particularly nervous; she had rarely left the Sector and it was clear she was worried. She had reason to be; several salty looking crews looked the trio over. Turnbull’s hard looks in return convinced them that discretion was the better part of predation. They moved on to weaker prey.

  Other than that, there were few people out that night. Maybe they sensed something.

  When the three got near to the old restaurant, they didn’t go straight in right away. They watched it from the ground floor window of a deserted office building about 150 yards away. The kid, Abraham, was there all right, staying generally out of sight in the back parking lot. No one else was around. No one seemed to be watching.

  “He’s got a pack on,” said Junior, handing back the binos.

  “Yeah,” Turnbull said. He scanned the surrounding bushes for signs of an ambush.

  Down the street, maybe 350 yards to the east, in the direction of David’s building, a pair of PSF cruisers slid into view and blocked the intersection. Their light bars went on. Four PSF thugs got out, casually standing around their vehicles.

  “Awesome,” said Turnbull bitterly, but he didn’t move. He just watched.

  “Shit, they’re setting up a perimeter,” Junior said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t see any other cruisers.” Turnbull pivoted to look south and north. Nothing there. Then, from the east, the rattle of gunfire. Controlled bursts.

  “What’s happening?” asked Amanda.

  “It’s a perimeter all right, but not one around us,” said Turnbull.

  “David?” asked Junior.

  “Yeah. Gotta be. I should have shot that son of a bitch in the doorway.”

  “We need to go get Abraham.”

  “Ah shit, he’s moving.”

  Abraham had stared east for a moment, then paced, then began running east down the street, directly at the cruisers.

  “What’s he doing?” Amanda asked.

  “The kid’s going back to his house. Damnit!” Turnbull pointed at Amanda, binos still in his hand. “You stay here! Junior, come on!”

  They dumped their packs and tore out of the building at a run, not entirely sure of exactly what they intended to do. It was clear they were not going to outrun Abraham, who was charging toward the PSF roadblock at full speed.

  In the distance, more bursts of gunfire. Many more. And the dull thud of an explosion.

  The kid was far ahead of them – there was no way they would catch him before he reached the vehicles, so Turnbull pulled Junior into an overgrown yard and watched.

  Abraham seemed not to have a plan either. He kept running east on the sidewalk. When he was perhaps 50 yards away, one of the PSF thugs started yelling something at him. Abraham ignored it, and as it became clear that the kid was going to try to rush through the roadblock, the PSF thugs spread out to take him down. He tried to dodge, and when they tackled him, he struggled. He was shouting, but Turnbull could not make out the words. Turnbull b
rought up the binoculars.

  They rolled him over on his face and took off his pack. One of the PSF thugs then kicked the pinned teen hard in the ribs. Another pressed a knee into his back to hold him down while zip-tying the kid’s hands behind him. Two of them lifted Abraham to his feet and threw him against one of the cruisers. They patted him down while another put the pack on the trunk and started going through it.

  Turnbull focused the binoculars, trying to see what was coming out of the pack in the red and blue flashes of the light bar.

  The thug was looking at something, puzzled. It was small, maybe metallic.

  “Is it the drive?” Junior asked, straining to see unaided. Another long burst of gunfire from the east echoed through the deserted streets.

  “Maybe. I can’t say for sure. But whatever it is, the blues don’t seem to think it’s important.”

  One of them opened the back door of the cruiser and unceremoniously shoved Abraham inside. The other went to the passenger’s seat with the pack. After a brief conversation, the driver got in, started up the cruiser, and pulled away to the south.

  “They gotta be going to the Hollywood station,” Turnbull said.

  “Shit, what do we do?”

  “Come on.”

  Turnbull stepped back onto the sidewalk and started heading toward the remaining cruiser. Junior followed, unsure.

  As they approached, one of the PSF thugs shouted, “Hey, turn your ass around.”

  “What?” asked Turnbull, slurring the word a bit.

  “Turn your drunk asses around or we’ll kick ‘em!”

  Turnbull closed to about 15 yards and the PSF thugs were imagining some entertainment. The closer one pulled out his stick and stepped forward.

  “I told you to….”

  Turnbull drew and fired two quick shots into his face, then pivoted and dropped the other with two rounds as he tried to draw.

  “Shit, Kelly,” said Junior.

  “Take their vests,” Turnbull growled. “And a Beretta plus some extra mags.” In the distance, there was more gunfire.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Well, we aren’t leaving that kid and the hard drive with those assholes. Everyone else is probably dead by now, but I’m not leaving that kid. We’re going in to get him.”

  “He’s in a PSF station. It’s full of cops.”

  “Don’t ever call them cops. They aren’t police. They’re just criminals with guns and uniforms, and they just helped the PBI kill all those people who helped us.”

  Turnbull had the driver’s door open and was looking under the dash for a switch. There it was – he flipped it. The PSF thugs liked to be able to cut off their GPS tracking sometimes so they could do their personal business using official vehicles, so most had unofficial kill switches installed by PSF mechanics they threw a few bucks at for the service.

  “You know what empties a station of PSF assholes fast? Dead PSF assholes. Now get in.” Turnbull reached for the radio hand mic as Junior brought the Kevlar vests around and jumped into the passenger seat.

  Turnbull keyed it.

  “Uh, help, I’m a citizen and there’s two PSF who are shot here. Help! Somebody shot them!”

  The speaker came alive. “Who is this? Say again?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m just a citizen and there’s two officers lying in the road here near, uh….” Turnbull thought about it for a moment. “Rosewood and Fairfax.”

  That would lead them away nicely. Then he added, “The guy who did it is a short cismale, red hair, blue jacket!”

  “What is your name?”

  “You gotta come quick! They’re both really badly hurt. Oh no, he’s coming back!” Turnbull kept it keyed as he pulled out his Glock and fired a round out the window, then tossed away the mic. Next, he flipped off the light bar, turned on the ignition, and gunned the cruiser west up the street back to Amanda.

  They pulled up outside the deserted office building where they had left her and trotted inside. Amanda stood, holding a two-by-four that was splattered with red. On the ground, a dirty gentlemen groaned. His head had evidently become acquainted with the piece of wood in the not too distant past.

  “He was very rude,” Amanda said. “He has no social graces.”

  “Yep, you’re a Texas girl. Get the packs. We’re out of here.”

  They sat in the cruiser, idling, watching the police station from across Wilcox Avenue. The patrol car lot was nearly empty. On the way over, they had seen at least a dozen heading west fast on their wild goose chase after the cisnormative ginger assassin.

  “It looks like they keep the impounded cars over there. I don’t expect them to do an inventory of them and find one missing before we get out to the border,” Turnbull said, slipping a mag into his M4. Junior started putting on his suppressor, but Turnbull stopped him.

  “No, we want it loud,” he said. “This is flat out urban guerilla warfare. We’re done with subtlety. We’re going in and shooting anyone who gets in our way. Speed, aggression, and violent execution. Remember, these assholes aren’t soldiers. We are. They’re just thugs with a mandate. I saw it in Indian Country. We hit hard and fast and they’ll be disoriented. It’ll take them time to react. By then, you will have keys to one of those cars and I’ll have Abraham and the drive.”

  “How do I find where they keep the impound keys, Kelly?”

  “You take a blue and you shove the muzzle of that M4 in his face and ask him.”

  “What if he doesn’t tell me?”

  “Then you pull the fucking trigger and then ask the next one. He’ll tell you.”

  Turnbull was stuffing spare magazines into the black PSF vest Junior had liberated. Junior was staring.

  “What?” asked Turnbull.

  “Maybe I’m just not as angry at them as you are,” Junior said.

  “No, but you should be. They say the worst wars are the civil wars. Well, they’re right. You know those nice Jewish people who helped us? These fuckers helped slaughter them. We laugh at their stupid political correctness shit, but deep down what they are about isn’t funny. We’re all expendable when it comes to them preserving their power. They’re just the latest people to try to butcher their way to utopia. Did I ever tell you what they did to a church full of people in Indiana who they thought were red sympathizers? I got to help pull out the bodies of people whose only crime was not worshipping socialism’s false god. Now that kid and probably a lot of other innocent people are going to die unless we do what we gotta do. So are you coming?”

  “I’m coming.”

  “You know, I didn’t ask for it to be this way. I didn’t ask for them to rip my country apart. But it fucking is what it is. Now let’s go get that kid.”

  They got out and opened the rear door for Amanda. Turnbull produced the PSF Beretta and handed it to Amanda, along with three extra magazines.

  “You know how to use this?” he asked.

  “I may have been stupid enough to leave it once, but I’m still from Texas,” she answered, pulling back the slide and loading a round.

  “Shoot anyone who gets in your way. We’ll be out in about ten minutes with one of those cars.” Amanda nodded, got into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.

  Turnbull and Junior locked and loaded as they walked across Wilcox Avenue to the PSF station.

  17.

  The convoy of three SUVs eventually arrived at the home of the baffled elderly man on the ridge above Beverly Hills who had played the unwilling host to the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation. Rios-Parkinson was livid – he had spent that critical hour trying and largely failing to organize his forces via intermittent cellular phone communication. But now, in the back of the middle SUV, he had clear comms again.

  “Do you have the tracker up yet?” he demanded of Larsen.

  “The techs are still working on it.”

  “Tell them to get it operational. And the raid?”

  “We are about an hour away from being ab
le to launch,” Larsen reported. “We are organizing the PSF’s perimeter and the assault element from the PBI.”

  “An hour?” Rio-Parkinson shrieked. “Do it now!”

  “Director,” Larsen said patiently. “You can’t just launch an assault. You have to plan. You have to move the people and equipment into position.”

  “Larsen, I am warning you. Raid the compound. They are coming. The spies are coming if they are not already there and they cannot get the hard drive.”

  On the other end, Larsen scowled. Unlike his boss, he was a professional. He had run operations in the old military before the Split, and then for the blues during the bloody Indiana counter-insurgency campaign. If you did not plan, prepare, and rehearse, you failed. Even a relatively simple operation like this could go very wrong, especially when so much was at stake.

  “We will move the moment we can, Director,” Larsen said, trying to be soothing.

  “When you secure it, you search the building. Everywhere. Tear it apart. Tear out the walls. The drive has to be there,” Rios-Parkinson ordered. But there was a doubt in his mind. What if it wasn’t?

  “Understood,” Larsen replied.

  “And take the main one alive, this David Kaplan. Get him to tell you where he hid it. Remember, I want not a word of this to become known. So kill the rest.”

  The convoy was speeding east toward David’s compound when Larsen called back to report.

  “We have entered the compound and engaged a number of the subversives already.”

  “Have they resisted?” Rios-Parkinson asked.

  “No,” said Larsen. “They have no weapons.”

  “Execute your orders. And find the drive.”

  The convoy flew past the PSF perimeter and onward until it reached the crush of PSF and PBI vehicles surrounding the apartment complex. Rios-Parkinson’s new ten-man personal security team – it was all male, in defiance of the strict rules designed to stamp out phallocentrism in the security forces – exited the vehicles before their boss, ensuring it was safe for him to come out. They wore black uniforms with modern vests, and each carried a new M4-style carbine with optics. No second hand Chinese-made AKs for them.