Amerika

by Brauna E. Pouns

Eric pulled a bottle of homebrew from his pocket and took a swig. “That’ll be the day,” he said. “He and I won an Emmy together before the Bolshies took over.

  He was a young hotshot on the rise, and I was an old-timer on the skids.”

  “You’re Eric Plummer?” Kimberly asked. “I remember you from the ‘Nightly News,’ like when I was in high school.”

  “The very one, madam,” Eric said with a bow. “Behold how the mighty have fallen. Welcome to Radio Free Omaha.”

  “You broadcast from here?” Cliff asked. He was shocked.

  “I do indeed. Usually one step ahead of the law. My driver is a very talented young man; we’ve dodged their patrols and electronic gear for three months now. Drives ’em crazy.”

  “And there are people listening?” Miller asked.

  “I daresay I have the highest ratings in Omaha. People twist their dials all night long, hoping for a few words of news, satire, or truth. And do I understand that this charming lady is to be my guest performer tonight? That we have a special message for my listeners?”

  “That’s right,” Miller said. “We took some serious chances to get her here. And I think we’d better get started.”

  Eric took another long pull of rotgut whiskey. “Say no more,” he declared, and started twisting the dials on his radio equipment. Lights began to flash and transmitters to hum. The truck was headed uphill now, toward higher ground. Kimberly began to feel nervous. Before she left Chicago, even when she talked to Andrei, the idea of “danger” had been an abstraction, but now, closed up in this old van, banging around the streets of Omaha, knowing that police cars would be searching for them, the danger seemed very real indeed. And yet, when she thought of Devin Milford, and the courage he had shown, and the love of America that he had stirred within her, she knew she could not turn back.

  The van rattled to a halt. “Okay, kids, this is it,” the old newsman said. “Do your stuff, then we’ll move to another location for an encore.”

  He handed Kimberly a microphone. She smiled at him, at all of her fellow conspirators, and began to speak in a sweet, passionate voice.

  “Hello, fellow Americans, we have important news. Devin Milford, the founder of the American party, has been arrested and brought to Omaha. He’s in the psychiatric unit of the People’s Acceptance Hospital. He’s been fighting for us and now he needs our help. Please help any way you can: give him your prayers, show him your support. Now I want to play you a remarkable tape, of Devin speaking to the people of Chicago from the courthouse steps last week. Please listen; his message touches us all. I know it touched me.”

  Kimberly set back, emotionally exhausted, as Eric punched a button and the tape began to play.

  Over the airwaves of Omaha, the voice of Devin Milford began to proclaim “America, America!” and the people of Chicago chanted back “America, America!”

  The tape played on for three minutes. Then, lest the police patrols pin them down, they stopped broadcasting and lurched off to their next stop. Kimberly was grinning, glowing, looking ahead to an encore of her greatest performance.

  General Sittman arranged for a national guard plane to fly the Bradfords back from Chicago to Omaha. At

  Peter’s invitation, he joined the flight. They had not been aloft long before Amanda and the children were asleep. Peter and the general sat at the rear of the plane talking in whispers.

  “You don’t want a head-on collision with Marion Andrews and the party, not yet,” Sittman insisted.

  “No, but I’m not going to let her walk over me, either,” Peter insisted.

  “You’ve got to pick your issues carefully,” the general said.

  Peter was still in his tuxedo. “My issue has been picked for me,” he said. “It’s Devin Milford. Marion and I had a deal and she broke it. Now he’s in the hospital and I have to assume she’ll try it again. I can’t tolerate that.”

  “You can’t take him out of there,” Sittman said. “All you can do is make his treatment as humane as possible, which depends on whether the doctors are taking their orders from you or from her.”

  Peter stretched out and pulled loose the black tie Amanda had tied for him that afternoon. “It’s bigger than that, Fred,” he said. “I found out something today. I’m a popular figure and that translates into power. I’ve run some checks on that hospital they’ve taken Devin to. It’s a perfectly okay hospital, except for one sealed-off wing where they use human beings— mostly political prisoners—for guinea pigs. I think people would be outraged if they knew what’s happening.”

  “Just what do you propose?” Sittman asked.

  “I have to assume that’s where they’re taking Devin,” Peter continued. “Like you say, I can’t send in tanks and bust him out. But suppose the new first lady of Heartland was making a routine inspection tour of the hospital. And suppose the commander of the national guard was with her, to add a little muscle to the operation. Naturally there’d be television coverage, and suppose they stumbled onto an ugly, really inhuman brainwashing experiment, and the cameras shot it, and it was shown on Natnet’s regional news show that night. How would people react?”

  “They might be shocked,” Sittman said cautiously.

  “I think they’d be mad as hell. I think that if the popular new governor-general protested, they’d support him, and the PPP would have to get rid of their nasty little program. I don’t think even Marion would want to defend that kind of treatment of her ex-husband.”

  “It’s risky,” Sittman cautioned.

  “What isn’t?” Peter demanded. “The way I figure it, if you and Amanda go to the hospital, and anything goes wrong, I don’t get blamed.”

  Sittman was about to object.

  “What I mean is I wouldn’t be directly involved,” Peter said.

  “No, but if everything worked out perfectly, you could step in and take the credit, right? Hell, that sounds like just another goddamn scheming politician, Bradford!”

  Peter took the accusation with a smile. “Well...”

  Earlier that evening, Alan Drummond had watched from a distance as Devin was brought into the hospital in handcuffs and whisked into the psychiatric unit. Alan was still unsure how he could help Devin there. He had gotten inside that house of horrors only once, by impersonating a visiting African doctor, and had very nearly gotten caught for that. He heard later that the hospital’s administrator had been asking questions about the visiting doctors, but by then the visitors were halfway around the world and nothing could be proved. Alan gave thanks each day for the relentless confusion of the hospital bureaucracy.

  Alan had come to People’s Acceptance to minister to the people wounded in the raid on the exile camp. In truth most of them were well now but he was stalling their departure. In the first place, the Exiles were better off in the hospital than back at the shattered remains of the camp outside Milford. And in the second place, ever since that one heartbreaking look at the psychiatric unit’s behavior modification program, Alan had vowed not to leave that hospital until he had found a way to free whatever remained of Justin.

  Thus far, he had made little progress. Security around the unit had been tightened. He had tried to cultivate a friendship with a nurse named Helen Quint, who supervised the unit’s day to day activities. She had been flattered by his interest—she seemed to find a black exile doctor from Philadelphia, by way of Milford, an exotic creature—but he had never been able to persuade her to give him a tour of the hospital’s most secret, sinister wing.

  Then, this night, as he watched Devin Milford led into the psychiatric unit in handcuffs, Alan had a feeling that his “treatment” would start immediately. Alan could not permit that. He had been too late to truly save Justin, but with Devin, he stood a chance.

  Alan walked across the hospital grounds to his little bungalow and turned on the radio. Several nights he had caught some sort of outlaw, underground radio broadcast, that ridiculed the authorities, challenged the official “news” broadcasts, a
nd hinted at resistance and rebellion around the country. This night he listened for a while to a dispiriting medley of Kenny Rogers’ greatest hits, then, suddenly, a young woman’s voice broke in. She was speaking of Devin Milford. Her words startled him and, Devin’s own voice, following hers, filled him with pride and hope. He was not alone, none of them was: that was the truth they must always remember.

  Alan grabbed his black bag and started running through the night, across the frozen grass, back toward the hospital. He still didn’t know what he would do, but he knew he must do something.

  Chapter 14

  Although Ward had been fired from the sheriffs office for not finding his nephew Billy, no one had bothered to take back his patrol car, his riot gun, or his keys. Thus it was a simple matter to admit Alethea and himself into the jail during the predawn stillness.

  Their friend Cy Spraggins was asleep on a cot in the front office. To the rear, the cells were packed with Exiles and the townspeople who had befriended them. Ward gazed at the gently snoring deputy.

  “He’s too decent to be involved with the likes of us,” he whispered to Alethea. He took out his blackjack and carefully, even lovingly, whacked Cy on the side of the head. The sleeping deputy went limp, whereupon Ward handcuffed him. “I think we just got ourselves our first prisoner of war,” he muttered.

  “Gimme those keys,” Alethea cried, and raced to the jail. She began to free her friends, Exiles and townspeople, and they were surrounding her, embracing her, with tears in their eyes. Aiethea didn’t know what might lie ahead, but she knew she’d never felt more worthwhile, more loved and needed in her life.

  They packed the front office, thirty or forty of them, where Ward had unlocked the storage room. Soon he was handing out riot guns, tear gas, even a brace of M-16s, to every one who wanted a weapon.

  “I don’t know what’s coming, folks,” he said, “but these things can be helpful sometimes when you have to deal with the wrong sort. Which we’ve been having to, lately.”

  “Ward, get the deputy to tell you what’s happening in Omaha,” one of the Exiles urged.

  “Omaha? What about Omaha?” Aiethea demanded. “I don’t know, except he got a phone call, something about Devin being on the radio.”

  “Hell, I put him out, now I got to wake him up,” Ward grumbled. Aiethea soaked a washcloth and brought it to him, and he gently stroked the deputy’s brow until he began to mumble incoherently.

  “Take it easy, pal,” Ward whispered. He was sitting on the edge of the cot, cradling the deputy’s head on his lap. “You’ve fallen into the hands of dangerous revolutionaries. You resisted bravely but you’re our prisoner now and we need some information.”

  “Won’t tell you nothing,” the deputy declared. “Hell, I ain’t asked you nothing yet,” Ward said. “Listen, all I want to know is what was the call about Devin tonight. If you don’t tell us, I reckon we’ll have to blow your head off.”

  “Aw shit, Ward,” the deputy protested.

  “Spill it fast, pal. We’re bad hombres.”

  “Heck, all it was was some actress on the radio, saying he was at that big Omaha hospital, and everybody should help him,” the deputy said.

  “Thanks, Cy; go back to sleep,” Ward said. Then he looked at Alethea. “What do you think, sis?”

  “Omaha,” she said.

  When Alan reached the door that led to the psychiatric unit, he paused to compose himself. If he lacked much of a plan, he was nonetheless well fortified with determination, rage, and an abiding faith in the stupidity of bureaucracies.

  He glanced for a moment out the window, at the front gate, bathed in iridescent lights. What he saw confused him. At this hour, in the stillness before dawn, the gate should be deserted, except for a few guards and deliverymen, but Alan saw perhaps a dozen people gathered there, standing, waiting.

  He turned from the window, poised for his own solitary action. He strode down the hallway and confronted the young national guardsman on duty outside the heavy door marked psychiatric—keep out!

  The soldier was talking in a monotone on the phone. He looked up in annoyance.

  “I’m Dr. Drummond,” he said loudly. “They called me.”

  The soldier, a gawky, rawboned youth, whispered into the phone and cupped it in his hand. “They didn’t tell me nothin’ ’bout it, doc.”

  “I can’t help that, young man,” Alan declared.

  The soldier sighed and punched the hold button on the phone. “I’ll call the nurse on duty,” he announced.

  “Helen Quint,” Alan said casually.

  “Naw, she’s off. It’s Nurse Tate.”

  He dialed a number and got a busy signal. He redialed, but the line was still busy. “Shit, probably talkin’ to her old man.” He thought for a moment, taking a leap of faith. “Just go on down there, doc.”

  The soldier pushed the button that unlocked the door. “Thank you,” Alan said, and walked confidently through the doors.

  Outside, thirty or forty people were gathered at the front gate. The guards threatened them, but the people remained. And their numbers grew. New arrivals, moving like ghosts through the predawn mists, were fanning out along the fence that surrounded the hospital. There was barbed wire atop the chain-link fence, but it was old and broken, easily surmounted by determined men and women.

  The nurses’ station was a blazing island of fluorescent light in the dark corridor. A young nurse was perched on a stool, chewing gum and talking animatedly on the phone. Alan charged up to her.

  “Nurse Tate, get off the phone!” he demanded. “I have been told there is a man whose condition is critical here.”

  Linda Tate dropped the phone and stood up, shaken by his wrath. She was a shy woman who hated this assignment—the zombie ward—but it paid extra money and she needed it to be married. “Who?” she stammered. “What?”

  “I’m Dr. Alan Drummond. They called and told me that the Milford patient was dying. Where is he?”

  “Who called . . .”

  “Nurse Quint. Dr. Page. An emergency. Didn’t they tell you?” He looked from her to the phone that lay haphazardly on the desk where she dropped it. “Perhaps they couldn’t get through to you.”

  She followed his gaze to the phone and looked up at him ashamedly. “Follow me,” she said, and started anxiously down the corridor.

  Alan was stunned when he saw Devin. He was in a private room, strapped unconscious to the bed, with IVs in both arms and electrodes fastened to his temples and chest. He was pale and sweaty, and his heartbeat was slow and irregular.

  “That will be all, nurse,” he said beginning to examine Devin.

  “But—”

  He looked at her incredulously. “Nurse Tate, I am a patient man, but I’ve just about reached the end of my rope with what I’ve witnessed tonight. So, if you’ll leave me to do my work . .

  He turned back to Devin and heard the door open and close quietly. Alan kept one eye on the soldier at the door and leaned down to Devin, who seemed to be out. “Hang in there.” He rushed to the door where the guard stood. “Get me the nurse!”

  After a moment Nurse Tate entered the room with a burly attendant in a dirty T-shirt.

  “This man is dying,” Alan announced.

  “Oh no sir,” she said. “It’s the. normal procedure—”

  “Don’t argue with me, nurse!” he yelled. “We’ve got to get him to ICU.”

  “We can’t let him out of the unit, doc,” the attendant said adamantly.

  “Have you got a medical station? Respirator—I’m going to need a respirator.”

  “Yes,” Linda stammered. “But it’s not an intensive-care setup.”

  “It’ll have to do,” Alan proclaimed. “Let’s go. Unhook him.”

  Linda quickly began to remove the IV lines and the electrodes. The attendant scowled but went off to fetch a gurney.

  Alan leaned over the silent Devin and said, “Hang on, hang on!”

  Alan knew he had gotten this f
ar because hospital workers, like these, had been taught to regard doctors as gods whose decrees must never be challenged. But there might be tougher characters on guard elsewhere in the hospital, standing between him, his patient, and freedom.

  Alan still didn’t know where this drama was leading, but they were moving and that was half the battle.

  Outside against the predawn darkness, people were slipping over the fence, onto the grounds, and into the hospital. They mingled there with Alan’s exile band, moving up and down the corridors, embracing, whispering, seeming to have a plan, a destination, that no one else could fathom. The nurses, the attendants and the guards watched nervously but could not imagine what was happening.

  They took him on a gurney to the psych unit’s small, cramped treatment room and hooked up the respirator. By now Alan had convinced Nurse Tate that Devin was at death’s door. “We don’t have the equipment here for a medical emergency,” she protested.

  “Dammit, this is a hospital,” Alan roared. “We’ll go where the equipment is.” He was caught up in the drama he had created. It had momentum now, a reality all its own. “You push the respirator,” Alan told the surly attendant. “She and I will take the gurney.”

  “We’ve got orders,” the attendant protested.

  “Don’t you understand? This is one of the most important men in America. If he dies . . . would you like to explain his death to the PPP Discipline Committee?”

  Alan began to push the gurney, and after a moment the attendant did the same. Soon they reached the door that led out of the psych unit. The young national guardsman was there, still on the phone. “Get that door open!” Alan demanded. The young soldier reacted to the urgency of the scene and unlocked the door without a word.

  They moved quickly through the corridors, toward the distant ICU, and people were surrounding them, ghosts appearing from out of the shadows. Alan recognized his fellow Exiles; he didn’t know the others but he remembered the young woman, broadcasting on the radio, and how her words had emboldened him, and then it seemed natural that these good people should be here, and become part of the procession.