“Yes, sir.”
“On your way, Citizen.”
He hands me the travel documents back, and turns to go back into the Customs shack. I notice that the Playboy has been tucked gently under his arm.
Taking a deep breath, I get back behind the wheel, put it in ‘D’, and wave to the
Cali officials as I ferry Fred and his family into the American city of Topaz Lake.
Fifth Column
Kimball O’Hara
CALEXIT
D-45
Gary Simpson stood on the cracked concrete curb, behind a wall of blue clad police in riot gear and watched as his brother Tommy’s head was pounded soft by a mob supporting Black Lives Matter placards. They’d been smashing and burning businesses on Ventura Boulevard for no reason beyond the fact that they were African-American. Their march was marked with a line of black smoke that stained the sky, pushed inland by an on-shore breeze.
The fact that Tommy Simpson was also black didn’t enter into the equation because the blood lust was up and he decided to make a stand in front of the greasy spoon restaurant he managed for an owner who had taken out an insurance policy against just such an eventuality.
Tommy tried to stand in their way and speak to them, asking the mob to listen to reason. They didn’t. The mob wanted to burn the whole world down. The police stood by and allowed them to. After Tommy fell and was stomped to death, the mob burned both his body and the diner.
The crush of numbers, the blood lust, the fire, the theft, the hysteria of the mob was lensed by Gary as a surreal act. He’d screamed and screamed, but no voice came out. He tore his hair, he ripped his clothes, and he clawed at the ground until his fingernails came off. It made no difference, but from that gaping wound in his psyche came a resolve as hard and pure as a diamond.
California’s impending secession from the United States of America caused red, white and blue flight with many police officers and firemen taking their families east to Nevada, Arizona, Utah or even further east to Texas. Cities and counties tried to replace them, but it took years to train police officers, firefighters and paramedics. The police at the scene had been undermanned and Gary knew it. He bore the officers no malice. It wasn’t only the cops. Doctors, nurses, and the best healthcare professionals all saw the handwriting on the wall.
CALEXIT
D+20
“I know what you’re thinking so you can wipe that smug look from your face. I’m still here because I’m a drunk. An alcoholic has more dignity than a drunk because he’s taken the time to try and fix the problem.”
“It’s just that you look like a derelict Mike and your breath smells precisely like dog shit pickled in cheap booze. Did you sleep in that uniform?”
Mike looked down at the gray militia uniform. Gone was the Sheriff’s Department khaki shirt and green trousers. Gone was the star on the uniform, replaced by a round disk edged by stick people holding hands with the words, ‘Cali Militia’ in the center. “It’s not much of a uniform is it?”
“You could have it tailored and it wouldn’t sag so much. You’re a major in the Cali People’s Militia now, for heck sakes. You’re a big shot.”
“Yeah, Larry, you, me and thousands of untrained thugs and inner city people are in the militia now. When they opened the prisons and released people they called political prisoners, I knew things would turn out badly. When they replaced the criminals with political opponents, all of the guys with any integrity headed off for the states. Present company excepted.”
“That’s right,” Larry told Mike, “and they walked away from their homes and their pensions. Yours is still intact.”
Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of banknotes with the face of the late Governor Jerry Brown, a.k.a. Moonbeam, hero of CALEXIT, in the center. “We’re being paid in script. The People’s Republic of Cali,” Mike amplified. “You got this bullshit?” He waved his hand around like a flipper.
Larry soothed him, “The militia conscripts are pretty raw, but they can keep order. At least I think that they can.”
Mike Sanchez turned to go and then looked back at Larry Marcus. “Why’d you stay, Larry? You have a lot going for you. Army special forces with combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, a solid record here at the Sheriff’s Department — okay, now it’s the Militia.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. I figured that I’d stay and see how this all works out.”
Mike grunted, and he kept on grunting as he walked. His reflection in the locker room mirror looked like twenty miles of bad road. He stopped at his own gray metal locker. His own image greeted him again as he opened the locker and peered into the mirror. Two days growth of beard, dark bags under his eyes and a swollen nose where Curtis James tagged him made him look more like a derelict than the sheriff’s sergeant he once had been.
It took effort to remind himself that he wasn’t a sheriff’s sergeant. The title ‘Sheriff’ was judged to be a trigger word harkening back to America’s colonial roots and it was no longer in use. Not anymore. Simply through attrition, Mike had become Militia Major and Station Commander. Having a Spanish surname boosted him over Larry Marcus, of mixed black and Vietnamese heritage, now a captain and Deputy Station Commander. Race had become everything in a society that rebelled against racism.
He pulled a safety razor and shaving soap from the shelf, took it to the sink and soaped up before dragging it over his hatchet jaw. He thought as he shaved. The National Militia absorbed him like a feeding amoeba. The old county of San Bernardino, which stretched from the outskirts of Los Angeles nearly all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada had been renamed the Caesar Chavez State, of the newly minted National Republic of Cali. Law enforcement duties passed from the purview of cities and counties to the National Militia. They needed a Spanish surname for their new province militia chief, but he spoke no Spanish, and neither had his father or grandfather, for that matter.
Mike didn’t have any mouthwash, so he took a bottle of Yukon Jack from his locker and sloshed two mouthfuls around before swallowing. Then he took a third. And then a fourth. He replaced the bottle in the locker, closed it and spun the lock.
He walked back to his office and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find five-foot-four inch with lifts-in-his-shoes, Colonel Dorris Tyrone Johnson, the Provincial Commissioner, taking to Larry Marcus. Johnson’s claim to fame was being a thirty-something community organizer, who had appointed his life partner, Luther Calder as his aide. He oversaw two states: Caesar Chavez and Eric Holder (had been Riverside County), and that made him Mike’s boss.
“Those mother-fuckers are still burning their homes, Major Sanchez.” Dorris never beat around the bush.
“They’re burning their mother-fucking houses,” Luther Calder echoed for effect. Calder stood two inches shorter than his mate and wore his hair in a man bun that didn’t quite work with tight African-American curls doped down with Afro Sheen. The best thing about Calder was that you could smell him coming because of the volume of women’s perfume that he wore. It was also the worst thing if you had to stand near him as Mike now did.
“I want militia troops dispatched to every cop’s house in the city to arrest those disloyal bastards and their families and take them to work camps. The fires that they set spread to other homes ‘cause there aren’t any firemen. It’s beginning to cause a problem.” Dorris Johnson cleared his throat, indicating that he finished his rant.