“Hurry up and get out of here,” Nick yelled at Jake. “We got ya covered.”
Jake lay on his back propped up with one elbow. He stared at his other hand which held a gun; a gun he couldn’t even remember pulling out. Snapshots of his life with Gabby flashed through his mind. He’d screwed it up. In one moment, he’d killed their life together. Nothing would ever be the same again. Gabby would be devastated.
“I shot him,” he mumbled.
His hand trembled and his nervous system took over, producing a wave of shakes that made it impossible for him to hold the gun. He carefully laid it down and looked up at Nick.
“I shot a man, Nick,” he mumbled again through the fog in his head.
Nick shook his head. “No, you didn’t. I did. Now get the hell outta here.”
Jake looked around in confusion. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You didn’t even shoot. If you don’t believe me, I’ll poke you in the ass with the spitting end of this rifle and you’ll see how hot it is. That was my bullet.” He nodded toward the man on the ground. The thug wasn’t moving at all.
Blood puddled under him and ran into a crack on the pavement, making a dark river that ran toward where Jake lay. He scooted back in a hurry.
Surely, it didn’t kill him?
As though Nick could read his thoughts, he said, “It’s self-defense, Jake. Ain’t no one coming up in my house beating people up and stealing shit. Now go before the rest of those guys make it over. I’ll handle ‘em.”
Jake turned to look. Some of the other people had stopped in the middle of the parking lot, but two rough-looking men were heading their way. They’d be here in a minute at the most.
“The police might—”
“—dammit, Jake, there is no police. They weren’t here when I was under attack and having to defend my gas, and they ain’t coming now. You said you got cops at Grayson’s place. Tell them your story if you need to. But not here. Not now. Go!” he yelled.
The ATV had rolled to a stop against the curb with the motor still running. Jake struggled to his feet and picked up the gun, turning it over in his hand.
Suddenly he remembered.
It wasn’t loaded—and he had not a bullet one.
He jumped on the ATV and hauled ass home.
19
GRAYSIE THREW herself back onto her bed in frustration. She was on her own, and it was getting late. She was exhausted and home-sick. She needed to get home.
She’d gone looking for her boy scout, and came back empty-handed and disgusted. Out of the only three guys she would trust to take a road trip with—and that she could trust her dad not to kill upon first glance—two were drunk and the other was high. Their dorm was a tsunami of beer-pong with red Solo cups, empty food packages and weed bongs, all underneath an overwhelming smell of raw sewage.
In the shape she’d found them in, they couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag. They’d be useless on the road, riding or walking, and even more useless with a compass. She couldn’t believe no one was taking this seriously and making a plan.
Probably like Becky, they were expecting their mommy or daddy or the gooberment to swoop in and fix this mess. Or they were assuming the power would be back on soon, even though communications were down too. She doubted any of them had ever watched the news, but especially in the last year, or the last week.
They had no idea Trump was pissing off world leaders left and right and that this very well could be an attack on the United States. In Trump’s mission to make America great again, he was burning bridges faster than he was building them. But he was keeping his promises and making progress, even without those bridges.
Graysie disagreed with some of his policies, and she thought he was a disgusting male chauvinist pig and most likely a bit racist, but even she had to admit, he was getting it done.
And that confused her. She wasn’t sure anymore who she was behind, or which side of the line her loyalties lay. She selfishly wanted America fixed for her future, but was Trump really fixing it, or setting them up for war either amongst their own population or even their enemies abroad?
Was this war?
She and many of her friends and coeds had been behind Bernie; most of them not even sure just why they were behind Bernie, except that Bernie was cool in a nutty professor, or Back To The Future sort of way. They’d needed someone to get behind, and he’d fit the bill.
Especially after the bird.
During a Bernie rally it seemed as though he had called the bird forth, right out of the sky. It sat on his podium, watched by thousands of people both in-person and online. Bernie said it was symbolism for a dove, asking for world peace. It was a lucky bit of political magic is what Graysie had thought of it at the time. He’d won many followers after that when the best the other candidates could do was unknowing spit a glob of food from their mouth, giving them the perfect target for a zillion memes and GIF’s, or perform a little sarcastic and spooky shoulder-shimmy, or just throw childish insults about the size of hands and other body parts.
The election was all about entertainment for them… who could wow them or make them laugh the most… and Bernie’s bird had really grabbed their attention.
It was sad.
When Bernie dropped out, half of her friends threw their support behind Hillary, and the other half stepped behind Trump.
It didn’t matter to her who was in office. It was just a face and a name. Her father’s daughter, she was more worried about straightening out the economy and strengthening America, rather than personal opinions on race, color, gender, or sexual orientation.
After the election, her friends split again. Trump haters versus Trump supporters. Some just wanted a reason to protest. Some wanted to riot. They wanted a cause that would allow them to rally and scream and threaten and act like badly-behaved children. The other side pranced around in Trump sweatshirts, flashing MAGA signs and trying to be cool when in reality they hadn’t even voted. Both sides waited in anticipation for every Trump tweet to broadcast so they could fight it out in the comments in an online twitter-war, one hundred and forty characters at a time.
It was ridiculous.
She watched it all from a distance, feeling older than her years. While they fussed between them every chance they got over what wasn’t happening, she sat back and watched what was happening. She was shocked to see that in six months with Trump in office, there were a million new jobs in the Unites States, the unemployment rate was at a ten-year low, and illegal immigration was down by huge numbers, which freed up even more jobs and benefits for Americans.
This stuff mattered.
Who was responsible for it didn’t.
When and if they ever graduated college, they’d need a job.
Her friends had actually paid attention and cheered the imposed sanctions on Russia and North Korea. They agreed with Trump for attempting to put America back into the big-brother position America rightly deserved by not letting bullies take advantage of us, or making us look bad, but what they didn’t realize was that also put us more at risk for pissing them off. The Norks were playing chicken with their weapons—leaving parts of the world to wonder if they were one button away from a skin-melting death. China was talking out both sides of their mouth, refusing to commit to one side or the other. Russia was playing dumb about interfering with the election and their capabilities to hack our systems. If they’d done it once, they could do it again, this time with more dire consequences.