Rockabilly Limbo

by William W. Johnstone

  “Up for grabs?” Cole asked.

  “One way of putting it.”

  Cole nodded his head, thinking hard. Ruth’s country home would offer them all more room; the stone walls would make it much easier to defend. They certainly had enough fire power to beat back an attack . . . unless their attackers numbered in the hundreds, and that could just as easily happen here as anywhere else. It was only early spring, and already the days were unusually warm. It was shaping up to be a brutally hot summer. Ruth’s country home was air-conditioned, and with their tanker trucks full of fuel, they could keep the generators running indefinitely. They had left a lot of canned food hidden back at Ruth’s country estate . . . as well as a lot of other survival gear.

  Cole stood up. “Well, if we’re going, let’s get busy. We’ve got a lot to do before we hit the road . . . again.”

  * * *

  Unknown to the general public, President Mason had been secretly meeting with certain members of Congress: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. They were a mixture of moderates and conservatives. No avowed liberals were in attendance. Liberalism was a dying philosophy even before the madness. Now the theory was all but gone, except in the minds of a few diehards who refused to accept the fact that most of the liberal programs pushed through Congress since the mid-1960s had never worked, and the end result had cost the American taxpayers trillions of their hard-earned tax dollars.

  The new White House had not yet been completed (Blair House had been burned to the ground, after it was looted), so the President was still residing at Andrews Air Force Base.

  “The militias,” President Mason said, holding up several sheets of paper, “might hold vastly differing views about religion and law and order, to name but two points, but they damn sure agree on one thing—taxes. Their message is this: If a ten percent tithe was good enough for the Lord, it should damn well be good enough for the government.”

  “You’re talking about personal income tax?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We can’t function on a straight across-the-board ten percent,” another said.

  “Then we’d better learn how, and do it damn quick,” Mason countered. “Or these people—and they number in the millions—will refuse to pay any taxes at all.” He glared at the gathering. “The chickens have come home to roost, folks. The American people are no longer going to be intimidated by the government—”

  “We never did that!” a senator from Ohio blurted.

  “Oh, the hell we didn’t!” the President came right back. “We allowed the IRS practically unlimited powers. We allowed them to seize homes, cars, businesses. We allowed them to freeze bank accounts and put Americans into financial ruin. Well, this CTAF—”

  “Citizens for a Tax Free America,” a representative from Michigan said.

  “Yes. Well, the CTAF has just about put this government out of business. I’ve been in negotiations with them—”

  “You what?” a senator from California practically screamed the words.

  “Negotiate,” Mason said patiently. “As in talk. The CTAF is in agreement with the militias about income tax. Ten percent, and that’s it. Get used to this, folks. The government no longer tells the citizens what to do. They tell us what they want, and we do it.”

  “Nonsense!” the senator from New York State said. “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Yes,” President Mason replied. “That’s been the problem for a good many years. We all forgot that we take orders from the people, not the other way around. Now this is the way it’s going to be ...”

  * * *

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Cole said, sitting with the others in Ruth’s huge den, at her estate in the country, listening to the radio. “I never thought I’d live to hear anything like that.”

  President Mason had just delivered a stunning message to the people. By radio, since many TV stations were still dark. Many Americans sat quietly in their homes, by their radios, in silent shock, since none had ever heard anything like it from their government. Taxes were not just being cut, the system was undergoing major surgery.

  “I’ve been predicting for some years now that Americans were someday going to act violently to change the tax system,” Hank said. He smiled, then added drily, “I suppose the blowing up of ten IRS centers was enough to get the government’s attention.”

  “It would certainly be enough to get my attention,” Ruth said with a grin.

  “You think the government can operate on a flat ten percent tax rate, ma’am?” Russ asked the millionairess.

  “They could function with no income tax at all,” Ruth replied. “But I can’t see anyone complaining about a flat ten percent. It’s fair.”

  “Welfare and other public assistance programs have been either eliminated or drastically cut back, except for the very old. I just wonder how those who have been slopping at the public trough for generations are going to react to this?” Katti injected.

  “It will be interesting,” Sue said.

  Four

  At first, the reaction was rhetoric only (some of it in rhyme). But in many areas, that soon changed to protests and then to rioting. Since Washington had been totally out of touch with the working public for decades, politicians and hand-wringing, hankie-stomping liberals simply had no idea just how deep-seated the resentment was toward many of the country’s minorities. Out in the flyover zone, that huge sprawling part of the nation between New York City and Los Angeles, the rioting was put down brutally by the long-put-upon middle class. When the rioting and looting and drive-by shootings moved into predominately white neighborhoods, the reaction could have (and was) predictable. Whitey returned the fire with a vengeance.

  All the police could do was stay out of the line of fire and wait it out. And it didn’t take long.

  The majority of Blacks kept their heads down and stayed behind locked doors. Those who had long been part of the system (and who were just as fed up as anyone with people who bred like sewer rats and expected the taxpayers to pick up the tab), looked at their husbands or wives and said, “It had to happen.”

  Then they picked up their guns and shot the crap out of those responsible for the drive-by shootings and the rioting and the looting.

  Many of the Black looters and rioters were surprised by the hostility directed at them. “Hey, brother!” they called. “What’s happenin’ here?”

  “I’m not your brother,” came the reply. “Stop stealing and get a job, you worthless sack of shit!”

  Without social workers and assorted liberals and judges and worrisome laws that did more to protect the rights of the punks than it ever offered to the victims, residents—of all colors—slowly began to reclaim their neighborhoods. The action was neither pretty nor highly selective. Known drug dealers were stood up against a wall and shot or were hanged from the nearest lamp post or limb . . . it was all done very unceremoniously.

  Vicious gang members were quickly rounded up and either publicly flogged or, depending upon the severity of their past, shot or hanged.

  Rapists and child molesters were dealt with in a very final way.

  The police stood back and watched without interference.

  “Interesting way of solving the drug problem,” one cop remarked.

  “Yeah,” another said. “You just shoot the dealers.”

  “Very effective.”

  “I’ve thought about doing that for years.”

  When it was over, residents met and shook hands. “Now we can get on with the business of living,” they said.

  * * *

  In Nashville, Pete King had driven around for weeks, looking for his son. He found him living with several other young punks in a filthy hovel, all of them popped up high on drugs.

  “Hey, old man!” one of the punks called. “Didn’t you get enough of an ass-whippin’ last time?”

  Pete smiled. Sort of.

  “This time, whip his ass right,” Pete’s son said, grinning at his father
.

  The mouthy punk stood up and moved toward the older man. Pete slipped a pistol from his waistband. “Do you have a death wish, boy?”

  “Fuck you, Pops.”

  “You’re making a bad mistake, boy.”

  The punk pulled out a long-bladed knife and continued coming toward Pete. “I could just shoot you, old dude. But this way we get to hear you holler and squall. I’m gonna cut your nuts out. Providin’ you got any, that is.”

  “You really are as dumb as you look,” Pete said, then leveled the pistol and shot him.

  The bullet took the young man in the center of his forehead, blew out the back of his head in a splash of blood and brains, and knocked him backward. He landed in a lifeless sprawl of arms and legs next to Bob King.

  The two other punks went out of windows as if their asses were on fire.

  Pete looked at his son, staring up at him in pale, openmouthed, wide-eyed shock. “Just no goddamn good,” the father said to the son. He cocked the .357.

  “Hey, now! Wait. You can’t shoot me!” Bob protested. “I’m your son!”

  “You never were any good,” Pete went on as if he had not heard the young man. “I knew it, and your mother knew it. We just didn’t know what to do about it.”

  “I’ll be good, Dad!” Bob screamed, his eyes on the. 357 in his father’s hand. “I promise I’ll be good.”

  Pete shook his head. “That’s what they all say. But you don’t mean it. Because you’re not a decent person. No decent person would have allowed those sorry, punk-assed friends of yours to feel up their mother, beat her, and say those terrible things to her.”

  “Words,” the young man said. “They were words, that’s all. She didn’t get hurt. Some of the guys felt her tits and snatch, that’s all. She didn’t get hurt.”

  Pete stared at his son with open contempt in his eyes. “That’s all you think it was, boy? Just words? That’s all it means to you?”

  “Sure, man. I mean, hey, you started it. Pushin’ and shovin’ me around in front of my friends. I mean, hey, I got rights, you know?”

  “Rights,” Pete whispered. “I understand now why cops hate that word so.”

  Using his bare foot—which was filthy, his father noticed—Bob shoved the body of his friend away from him and crawled to his knees on the littered and dirty floor. “Yeah? You big buddies with that old pig, Cole, now, huh?”

  “We’re friends, yes.”

  “You got a taste for shit, man.”

  Pete slowly shook his head in utter disbelief.

  Bob crawled to his feet and grinned at his dad. “You won’t shoot me. You don’t have the balls to shoot me. If Mom finds out you shot me, she’d never give you any more pussy. You’d have to jack off for the rest of your life.”

  “How did you get this way, son?” the father questioned. “I don’t understand it.”

  The young man shrugged his shoulders. “What’s to understand? Go look in a mirror. That’s who’s at fault. I told you I didn’t want to go to church. You forced me to go. I told you I didn’t give a flyin’ fuck about the Boy Scouts. You made me join. I told you I didn’t want to go to school. You made me go. You didn’t like my music, my friends, my life-style, nothin’. It’s your fault, you dumb son of a bitch!”

  “That’s . . . strange logic.”

  “To you, maybe. Not to me.” Bob took a step toward his father. “I’m gonna take that pistol away from you and stick it up your ass, old man.”

  “Don’t try that, Bob. Don’t do it.”

  The son laughed at the father. Reached into his back pocket. Pulled out a folding knife. Popped open the blade.

  Pete could see it was honed down sharp. “Don’t come any closer, boy.”

  “Then go ahead and shoot me, you son of a bitch!” the son sneered at the father. “ ’Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna cut you up in little pieces.”

  “You don’t mean that, Son.”

  “The hell I don’t, you dumb bastard.” Bob lunged at his father and Pete shot him in the chest, the .357 hollowpoint round stopping the young man cold and sitting him down on the floor. He died with his eyes open, staring at his father.

  Pete’s eyes filled with sudden tears. He wept silently for a moment, then blinked them away.

  Pete stood for a moment, staring at the body of his son. “Your mother will never know what really happened to you. I’ll tell her I found out you were killed by the police, or the army, or some irate homeowner or parent.” He sighed. “We gave you what you needed. Punished you when you were ornery, loved you and cared for you and provided for you all the other times. But you were born bad,” he whispered. “Just born bad.” He turned and walked slowly out the door. He did not look back.

  Pete tucked the pistol into his waistband, his shirt covering the .357. He stood by his car for a moment, trying to make some sense out of what had just happened. He thought for a few seconds he might be sick, right there in the street. He fought back the sickness.

  A police car cruised slowly by, stopped, backed up. The cop on the passenger side lowered the window and asked, “Everything all right, mister?”

  “What? Oh, yes, Officer. Everything is fine. I ... ah, was looking for someone I used to know. Or . . . thought I did. The person I found was not the same person. They just, ah, looked a lot alike.”

  “You better be careful around here, mister. This is a real bad area. Punks and thugs and dope pushers is about all that stay around here. Last week in that place right over there,” he pointed across the street, “a father actually shot his son to death. The boy was just no goddamn good.”

  “What did you, ah, the authorities, do with the father?”

  “Do? Hell, we didn’t do anything. It was a righteous shooting. Kid came at the man with a gun. Things aren’t ever going to be the way they used to be, thank God. Well, watch yourself around here, mister. See you.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said as the cruiser pulled away. “See you.” He looked at the building where his son lay dead. “What a waste,” he muttered. “What a goddamned useless waste.” He looked at his reflection in the side window of his car. Shook his head. “No. No, you were wrong, Bob. I’ll accept part of the blame, but not the whole. Your mother and I did our best to put your feet on the right path. Being young doesn’t mean you’re not liable for the shaping of at least part of your own destiny.”

  The father got into the car and drove away. Several blocks later, he pulled over to the curbside, opened the door, and puked on the concrete. He closed the car door, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and took several deep breaths, calming himself as best he could. Then he sat for a few minutes, weeping silently. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of several gunshots, as the police or some homeowner exchanged shots with looters, or some other form of human garbage.

  Pete started the car and slipped the transmission into gear just as he heard more shots fired.

  “Dear God,” he muttered. “Is this madness ever going to end?”

  Five

  Cole had kept in touch with Gene Rockland and his bunch by shortwave radio. The group had just settled in at Ruth’s country estate when Gene radioed to tell them to make room for a few more. Ely Worthingham and his Believers were in control of nearly everything east of Nashville, and they were making life difficult for the Godless hippies, as Gene and the others were referred to.

  When the three couples showed up a few days later, Harry Slayden’s left arm was in a sling and Chad Prescott was nursing a bum leg, both caused by bullets.

  “It’s been hell,” Gene told the group. “All our homes were burned to the ground. You remember when we first met, the man I called John Burnside? Well, he’s now county commander of Ely Worthingham’s militia. And he struts around like a junior size peacock. I don’t know whether Ely was always a part of this Temple of Apocrypha, or whether they just linked up, or what, but they’re all intertwined now. And it’s one big organization, believe me. Ely
is the supreme poo-bah and behaves—and lives—like some East Indian potentate.”

  “What about this Cumberland Christian Militia that we ran into?” Jim asked.

  “They’re all a part of Ely’s bunch, now. Either that or they were run out of East Tennessee. Or killed,” he added grimly.

  “The cities?” Ruth asked.

  “Mostly in ruins, so we’ve been told,” Harry replied. “But I don’t know that for a fact. What I do know for a fact is that the government is going to have one hell of a job reclaiming East Tennessee. And from what we’ve been able to learn by listening to shortwave radio, the same thing is, or has happened over most of the nation, except for the extreme Northeast.”

  Cole nodded his head in agreement. “California is now cut into three sections. North, central, and south. It’s a great big mess all over North America. But it is getting better, slowly. Scott Frey told us, just before we pulled out of Memphis, that a lot of the ultra-right wing groups, religious and otherwise, are packing it in and returning to the Union, more or less.”

  “But it will never be the same, will it?” Cassy Slayden asked.

  “No,” Hank answered that one. “No, it will not. I don’t believe the government will ever again have the dictatorial hold over its citizens that it once had. That is about the only good thing to come out of this mess.”

  “Russ coming back,” Gary radioed from the outside. “He’s got a grim expression on his face.”

  Russ had decided to take a drive around the town, to check things out. The report he gave was not good.

  “I think they’re gearing up to hit us pretty quick. Why, I don’t know. But from the really crappy looks I received today, I got the impression that tonight is going to be very interesting.”

  “Then let’s get ready for it,” Cole suggested. He gave each person a long bleak look. “And finish it once and for all.”

  * * *

  “Cole?” Jenny called from the study, where she was working at the computer. “You’d better see these printouts.”

  Cole pulled up a chair beside the young woman. “What is it, Jenny?”