by Frank Klus
“So how come you aren’t monitoring the ramps?”
“I was looking after you, Genie.”
“Me?”
“That’s a little hard to explain,” Dennis said. “I tell you what, why don’t you come over to my house Saturday afternoon for a barbeque, say about twelve?”
Dennis gave him his business card. He lived on the south side of Old Chicago. Dennis sensed his friend’s fear.
“Don’t worry, my man. I live in one of the better neighborhoods, and I’ll make sure you get home safely.”
“Okay.”
“Great! Now we’ll give you an escort to the 294, before the bad weather hits.” Eugene looked at the sky. A thunderhead rolled above; a storm was coming.
Home was West Chicago. The affluent built a walled community about twenty years ago because blight was attacking the old district. Catherine was in the study working on some papers for the school she taught in.
“Hi, hon,” he said, as he reached down and kissed her.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said as she kissed him back. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Guess who I met on the way home?” Eugene explained all that happened, but he noticed that Catherine’s cheerful countenance turned sour upon hearing Dennis’s name. “What’s wrong?”
Catherine forced a smile. “Nothing. It’s just that…oh, never mind. Let me check on dinner.”
Catherine straightened out her desk and made her way to the kitchen. Eugene grabbed the evening paper and sat down in his favorite chair in the living room. It was an expensive overstuffed brown leather recliner. He opened the paper and began to read.
Senate to Take up Welfare Omnibus
“Hey, Cath! Did you see tonight’s paper?”
Catherine came into the living room. “Yeah, it looks like they may get rid of welfare altogether now.”
“First they roll everything into one omnibus package, and now they’re going to get rid of that too.”
“We knew that was going to happen.”
“Some guy was urging government to get rid of it on the radio today.”
“It’s like you always said—first they get people riled up about something; then it’s easy to change the law.”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s what Professor Zinney always said. When NOGOV wants something done, they put the word out in the media. The media plays it up big time; then NOGOV goes to the government and demands they do something about it.”
Catherine just shook her head in disgust. “A regular racket.”
Eugene and Catherine sat down to a pork chop dinner and salad. Catherine liked to set out candles on the polished oak table, dining as if they were in a cozy restaurant. They ate in quiet until Eugene broke the silence. “You frowned when I mentioned Dennis.”
Catherine looked up, somewhat startled. “Did I?”
“He invited us to his house Saturday afternoon for a barbecue.”
“This Saturday? Oh, I don’t know, Gene. I have so much to do.”
“It’ll only be a couple hours. Surely, you can make time for that.”
“I’ll have to think about it. Gene…never mind.”
“That’s the second time you started to say something and changed your mind.”
Catherine flashed an embarrassing smile. “Did I?” she snickered. “I’m always doing that.”
“I couldn’t believe it when he stepped off that bike and took his helmet off,” Eugene said with a smile and a titter. “After all these years. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. Did I ever tell you about him?”
“I think you mentioned his name one or two times.”
“We used to do everything together as kids.” Eugene was beaming. “We’d pretend to be astronauts visiting some strange and alien world.” He stopped to gobble down another bite of his pork. Catherine just picked at hers. “We’d be out in some field, playing around some drainage ditch—”
“Please,” she said.
“What’s wrong? You used to love hearing my stories.”
Catherine perked up again. “Oh, I’m sorry, hon. I guess I just let my mind wander.”
Eugene tried to continue, but Catherine pushed her plate away.
By midweek, Catherine had made some excuse to bow out of the barbecue, and encouraged Gene not to go either. “He’s Lightning Squad,” she said.
“So what.”
“Please, Gene—just make up some excuse. Let’s go out together. We haven’t done that in a long time.”
Eugene frowned. “Cath, I want to see him. And what does the Lightning Squad have to do with anything?”
Catherine started to smile, but her face was flushed, and her mood quickly turned somber. She didn’t answer.
When Saturday came, Eugene asked Catherine to call him about three o’clock to ask him to come home. “This way I’ll have an excuse to get out of there. When I come home we can go out, okay?” Catherine seemed to stare right past him.
Eugene frowned. “Please don’t go out drinking today.” Catherine continued staring into the unknown.
Chapter 3:
Into the Lair
Gene got into his Lexus and started driving down the highway. He turned the radio on, and a commercial was playing. Gene rolled his eyes and looked up at a billboard.
This section of the Tri-State Tollway is presented by Parker’s Whole Milk
He rubbed his nose. Was it all worth it? It was his company that encouraged the state to privatize the tollways as a way of raising revenue without increasing taxes.
The commercial was still playing so he changed stations and picked up a conservative talk radio show.
“I tell you folks, it’s the poor. They’re ruining this country. They don’t want to work; they drop out of school; and they suck from the government’s teat. I tell you folks, something’s got to be done about them.
“These people don’t want to work or can’t work. They drop out of school; they take after their welfare-driven parents; they commit crimes to get even more money; then they use that to buy drugs. It’s disgusting folks, but I, Joseph P. Barnum, have the solution. Get rid of welfare altogether. No money, no drugs.
“I’m tired of government spending mine and your hard-working money on these slime balls. That’s right folks. You heard me—slime balls. That’s what they are, and that’s what they always will be.”
Eugene just smiled and changed the station.
“Know someone who belongs in jail? Call 1-800-GO2-JAIL. Now, there’s justiceforall.com. With the shortage of judges, let our officers of the court take care of your problem. And when we put your problem away, you get paid! Just call 1-800-GO2-JAIL. We keep the jails full and you safe. So call today and get paid.”
Yeah, just put your problem in jail. What a laugh!
It took more than a half hour before Eugene reached Dennis’s neighborhood. This can’t be right. The streets were filled with potholes. The shops looked ill-kempt. The streets in the marketplace were fairly empty with only a few people ambling about. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere, stopping frequently; occasionally, talking to others and sometimes to themselves.
Where am I? Great! No street sign. He came across a strip mall with only two cars in the parking lot. Only a laundromat was open. A convenient store was boarded up. The signage was terrible; old and faded. He glanced down at his navigation screen to see what street he was on. Then—“Turn right on Pierce Lane.” Some man was snoozing against a decaying building to his left, while another one stretched out on a sidewalk nearby.
Eugene kept going until he almost ran into zombies. It was his description for the aimless wanderers of the streets. They didn’t seem to care that they were in the street in front of Eugene. He tooted his horn and a couple of them turned around to give him a dirty look. One or two moved to the side but the rest just stared at him, wondering what he was doing in their hood.
As Eugene slowly edged past them he heard a banging on his car window. “Got a cigarette, man?” a scuzzy look
ing guy with large tattoos around his neck said. Eugene kept going.
Then he heard someone pounding on the back of his car. “Nice car. Can I have some C?”
Then another guy shouted from his left side. “You got a spliff?”
Eugene sped up past them, and through a few potholes. Where the hell am I? There was more of the same as he continued to drive. At one point the road began disintegrating. Weeds began popping up in the middle of the street. As he continued on, there was less pavement and more greenery. He backed up and went another direction. Once more, weeds began replacing pavement. Eugene could sense his nerves jangling. There was an eerie silence. His heart began racing when he looked ahead and saw a pack of zombies moving eastward. He quickly braked and spun around to find a new direction. His GPS gave him new directions, but it was directing him to another dead end.
Eugene stopped and got out. There was an eerie loneliness; a fear that he was lost in a dead district. He rifled through his wallet looking for his friend’s business card, but when he found it there was no phone number. “I’m lost,” he muttered to himself. Eugene resolved to resume his old direction, hoping not to be seen by the seemingly mindless horde. He heard many stories of zombie packs attacking cars on the road. They surround the car because one couldn’t go very fast on the poor roads. They’d pull the driver out, rob him and trash his car. Anything on his possession had value to these guys. Eugene knew to stay clear of them. He was relieved when he got to Dennis’s block.
His friend’s house looked like it had been built in the early fifties of the last century. It still had the aluminum siding that was popular in its day, but it was dull and cracked now. There was an eerie silence. Where are the children? Where are the people? Eugene parked his car. He walked to the front door, but turned around a couple times to look at his car, and then up and down the street. He felt his heart beating a little faster.
Dennis greeted him with a warm man hug. He was tall and angular, and his muscular frame reminded Eugene of his friend as a kid. Dennis was the tallest and strongest kid on the block, except maybe for his younger brother, Ray.
“Hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding us,” he said. “The streets can be a bit tricky.”
“It was a little tricky, but I know the way now,” Gene said.
“This is my wife, Teresa.”
Teresa greeted him as if she had known him for years. “Where’s your wife, Gene?”
“Oh, she has her hobbies and visits friends on weekends,” he lied.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I would have enjoyed meeting her.”
“I’ll be sure to bring her the next time I come over.”
Teresa was a nice looking woman, around 40, with short black hair and grey eyes. Her dress had a small hole in the sleeve that Eugene noticed when she raised her arms. There were also loose threads and a faded appearance.
They went into the enclosed front porch, which Dennis had turned into a kind of all-purpose room: part den and part family room. There was a round, plain white table in the center of the room with a settee in front of it, and against the wall of the interior of the house. Opposite the table were a couple of lawn chairs sitting side-by-side against the far wall. There was an old fashioned TV, looking like an antique, set to the right of the room as one walked in. A picture window showed Front Street and the sidewalk. Above the window were three pictures that fascinated Eugene.
“Remember President Cummstaff?” Dennis said with a big grin on his face. “Greatest president the country ever had.”
“Yeah, I wrote a paper on him when I was in college. You know, Dennis, I never thought of him as a great president.” Dennis frowned.
“He was the first president to begin undermining New America, and reducing communication with it.” Eugene suddenly realized that he was offending his friend. Teresa also looked puzzled.
“But, maybe, he was just what the country needed.” Dennis and Teresa both perked up.
The next picture was of the Lightning Squad pulling some guy over. The squad leader was pointing his rifle at the car they triangulated.
“Lieutenant Barnett gave me that picture,” Dennis said. “That’s him when he was a squad leader, like me.” Under the picture was the caption:
Power grows out of the barrel of a gun
Finally, to the right, was a painting of a junkyard dog behind a steel fence with vicious canine teeth that looked twice the size of the real thing. Under it was the caption:
Protection is Freedom
The pictures put Eugene on edge, but the friendliness of Dennis and Teresa, who welcomed him like a long-lost son, quickly brought him back.
A baby’s cry sent Teresa into the interior of the house. As Dennis and Eugene continued to talk, Teresa came back a short time later holding a baby.
“Jerrell just woke up and I have to feed him,” Teresa said. “He’s really a good boy; hardly ever cries.” She gave Dennis and Eugene each a glass and a bottle of beer, sat down, and began discreetly breastfeeding the infant.
“How old is Jerrell?”
“Just two months old,” Teresa said. “We’ve only been married for two years.”
“We met when I pulled her over for speeding,” Dennis said.
“Isn’t that hysterical?” she said, laughing. “He was so tall and handsome in his uniform.”
“All brown and blue. An ugly combination of colors if there ever was one—brown for military, and blue for justice.” Dennis was chuckling.
“Just look at that cute dimple on his chin. Doesn’t he look like Kirk Douglas?” Gene smiled, understandably. “Anyway, he started hitting on me; even asked me out. Told me he’d tear up the ticket if I agreed. What else was I to do?” Then Teresa began giggling as she pinched his cheek.
Dennis was still cackling. “I was smitten. Look at her, Gene. Have you ever seen a more beautiful smile in your life?” Teresa smiled, but one side of her mouth seemed to curl upward more than the other. Still, Eugene nodded pleasantly.
“Now tell me about Catherine,” Teresa said. “I want to know everything. How long have you been married? How’d you meet?”
“We’ve been married for almost twenty years. We met during our college days, at a seminar given by Professor Harold Zinney. You may have heard about him. He was Redd Piper’s best friend and confidant. He even helped write the Constitution for New America.”
Dennis made a face, and Eugene picked up on it. Wasn’t Dennis a populist? The Lightning Squad was set up by populists. Still, there was that picture of Cummstaff on the wall. Wasn’t he the hero of the RAC? Of the American Party?
Eugene continued. “She just happened to be sitting next to me. I’d seen her in a class I took the previous year, but I was shy. I wanted to talk to her, but it just seemed I never got the chance. Well, anyway, I talked to her that night. We were both populists and fans of Harold Zinney. We talked all through the seminar. You should see her, Dennis and Teresa. She has the most beautiful eyes; light blue with just a touch of grey streaks near the pupils; almond-shaped. And that lovely smile of hers; it’s perfect. But what I noticed the most were her fingers. I know how weird that must sound, but they’re so sleek and tender; so kissable; so lovable. Anyway, we began dating, and we married a few years after we got out of college. We were both twenty-five and madly in love.”
Eugene smiled gently to himself, like he was reminiscing. Teresa looked mesmerized, but Dennis’s eyes were downcast. He tried to smile, but his jaw slackened and his lower lip sagged.
“She teaches high school at St. Paul’s in Carol Stream.”
“Do you have children, Gene?” Teresa asked.
“No. We don’t want children. I think part of the reason was that we want to have fun first before having a family, but part of it is we’re afraid of bringing a child into this world. It just doesn’t feel like we would be doing the right thing. I don’t know. Now, it seems that our marriage….” Eugene stopped himself. He didn’t want to say too much. He didn’t want to spoi
l the day with his friends. So he just smiled while Teresa went to the fridge to get a couple more beers. Teresa just drank bottled water, and Dennis stared into the distance.
“Now, tell me, Dennis. What did you mean, the other day, when you said you were looking out for me?”
“Well, remember that incident involving your father a few months back?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“The Lightning Squad had set up roadblocks in Skokie, which they patrolled, and there was an argument involving the squad leader and your father and his passenger. It wasn’t the first run-in with the Lightning Squad, and they threatened to jail him. Your father told them he would sue. He spent the night in jail, and then was told to stay out of Skokie. I heard the story a few weeks ago and recognized this was your father. Genie, I feared that if the Lightning Squad found out your name was Sulke they’d punish you because of your father. If they caught you speeding in Squad territory, or out after curfew, they’d stop you, and that would be bad for you.
“I took advantage of the technology the Lightning Squad had, found out where you lived, and the kind of car you drive. I put a GPS transponder under your car. I knew the other night that you were running late in leaving work, and could be stopped by the Lightning Squad. So I intercepted you to give you an escort out of the city.”
Eugene looked a little nervous. “Dennis, why didn’t you just tell me you were helping me?”
Dennis looked sheepishly at his friend. “Well, Gene, maybe that’s what I should have done, but I thought your father or brother might spot me and start an argument. I just thought it easier this way. More fun too.” He began laughing, playfully pointing at his friend. “You should have seen the expression on your face when I pulled you over. Man, you looked like you’d shit.”
“Yeah, Denny, you’re probably right.”
They talked some more about their childhood years until the topic of Harold Zinney came up. “When I went to college at the University of Illinois, I found that Harold Zinney was chairman of the Political Science Department. I remembered that he was a close friend of Redd Piper and my father—at least when they were young. I just couldn’t pass up a chance to study under him. I visited him in his office so many times that we became friends. We still correspond. He turned me into a Populist, although I think I was one already at that point; but now I was sure of it. He taught me how to think. I know how strange that must sound. But he said that one must seek truth. No one, not populists, and certainly not the Corporatists, had truth on their side. Truth comes about through questioning and investigation. When it came to politics I was always investigating; always questioning.”