“I hate fucking spics.” Lois spat. “Don’t you know who I am? I am an agent with The. Cali. Department. Of. Education!”
No response, although the number of spectators was increasing.
“I can take your babies away from you.” Lois shrieked.
No response.
“If I want to, I can eat your babies and there is not anything you can do about it because I am fucking untouchable!” Lois screamed.
Some men are sheep. Some men are wolves. Both sheep and wolves are social animals.
When a troublesome ewe endangers the flock, the flock shuns her and forces her to the outside edges where she becomes vulnerable to predation.
Wolves deal with their problem members directly. They tear out the throat of the wolf that endangers the pack.
The spectators around Lois were mostly sheep. But a few were wolves.
Lois had stepped over the line for the last time.
They rolled the body off the road into the channel. One of the more experienced men covered it with rushes to deter the vultures and delay discovery. They did not need to worry about the vultures. They were feasting on the first of the Walkers to die, as they were wont, out in the open.
Eventually, her bones were found but hers were just one skeleton among millions.
The spectators shared the seven thousand Callors and the three hundred gas ration tickets they found in her fanny pack. That boost was enough to allow some of them, a very few of them, to survive the crisis. The skinny, young Hispanic woman took the hounds tooth jacket back home to her mother.
Epilogue
Chad limped back home at 9:00 the next morning. He had slept in Fast Eddie’s barn to provide the others with “plausible deniability”.
Miguel and the crew assumed that Chad was limping because he had just ridden six hundred miles on a dirt bike. They were impressed. He was elevated to El Patrón because very few men could do that in twelve hours and then put in a full day’s work the next day.
Mardi had her doubts. She had seen the bruises on Chad’s backside but she did not ask about them. She figured Chad would tell her what happened when he was ready.
The BOLO on Lois Gale-Lienhart-Diaz was updated to an APB, and updated again to the top ten wanted list, as an enemy of the state, but rumor had it she’d escaped to Mexico, based on a blurry photograph that showed an older woman in a hounds tooth jacket crossing the border a month after the APB had been put out.
By Hook and Crook
Lawdog
The waitress — excuse me, waitperson — winks at me as she catches me admiring the view down her top, then waves a finger in amused admonishment before swaying off through the tables. And the view from behind was every bit as pleasant.
When it comes down to biology versus socialism, never bet against Mother Nature, folks. She cheats. Something that the fundamentalist idiots running the People’s Democratic
Republic of Cali still haven’t quite managed to figure out, bless their little hearts. I take a sip of the allegedly-caffeinated, chicory-flavored dishwater, before turning my gaze to the pasty little guy sitting across from me, who’s currently picking his locally-sourced ciabatta tofurkey roll into a little pile of crumbs next to the papas’ fritas and the tomato-vinegar reduction.
“Relax, Fred,” I say, sipping at the cup of despair and regret I’m probably going to wind up paying way too much for, “The key to conspiring is to not look like you’re conspiring. Relax. Eat a french fry.”
He blanches, “You can’t call them french…” He stops, takes a deep breath, then snatches a no-gluten, no-fat, no-sodium, no-GMO, no-taste, Fair-Trade, Locally-Sourced fry off the plate and bites furiously at it. I wouldn’t have believed you could make fried potatoes disgusting, but when your Food Code occupies six feet of a library shelf, it can be done.
Ten years after California formally left the Union to form their Own Little Country Based On (insert random bits of Leftist propaganda here), and things have gone every bit as well as anyone with a lick of sense — or a degree in history — would have told you. It’s a Third World pest-hole.
Which brings me to why I’m in a no-name hole-in- the-wall cafeteria, sitting at a much repurposed card table across from an arch-typical software engineer, drinking what passes for coffee in Cali these days.
“I want out,” he says, grabbing another Inclusivity Fry and demolishing it in two savage bites — I’m a little worried about his fingers — “I want a fucking steak that came off of a fucking cow; and I want to cook that steak outside on my own goddamned grill; I want to put 50 bucks of real fucking gasoline in my car, and drive anywhere I fucking please whenever I fucking please; and I want to run my air-conditioner all goddamned day, and keep the house at 65 goddamned degrees because I can, god damn it!”
Okie-dokie. I make shushing motions with my hands, but he seems to have run out of steam. He squidges a fry through the puddle of tomato-based Misery Sauce on the plate and stares at it, tiredly, “I want my kids to learn science, instead of feely handwavium. I want my son to be a boy, and do boy things. I want my little girl to be a little girl, and stop being angry and scared all the time.” he blinks at the fry, drops it on the plate. “Four of us. I’ll pay whatever…” I raise my hand, smiling at him.
“We’ve got this, Fred. So. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
Ten minutes after a visibly-relieved Fred has left, I hand the waitress five 200-denomination scrip notes that the Cali government laughably calls Callors for the bill; then catch her eye before slipping a folded twenty-dollar U.S. note into her hand. Her eyes get big — although I’m not sure if that’s because tipping is against the law, or because it’s technically unlawful to possess American money — the note vanishes, I wink at her, touch my hat brim, and slip out the side door.
Two weeks later, and the alarm doesn’t go off. Looks like we drew the short-straw in another “random” rolling brown-out. Sigh. Luckily I’ve been lying awake for the last two hours, as I always do before an op— excuse me, job. I’d make some snarky comment about how the rich areas never come up on the very-touted computerized randomly-generated schedule for power outages, but it’s hot, and I’ve got things to do.
Quick shower, and I’m waiting in line at the dispensería, chatting amiably with my fellow sufferers. The tech, a cute little Anglo girl, looks at my card, and frowns at me, “You get four ounces. For your asthma.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I smile, happily, just another happy customer.
“You’re smoking four ounces. Of medical marijuana. A week. For your asthma.”
Socialized medicine is expensive. Marijuana is cheap. And since most folks in Cali believe that marijuana is a miracle cure for everything from hamster clap to Mongolian rabies to brain cancer (and if I were a cynical man I’d point out that stoned people don’t complain… right up until they’re eating their salads from the roots up), the Cali Government has crunched some numbers, and you can get a medical marijuana scrip for just about anything.
However, not everything. She glances at her supervisor, a large, gruff Hispanic female, and unconsciously clenches her fists. I slide my Cali ID card across the counter. There’s a twenty-dollar U.S. bill paper-clipped to the back, and she glances up quickly when she sees it. I smile, gently, “I’ve got a really bad case of asthma. It’s okay, miss.”