“Uh, say again, over?”
“Stop your vehicle and arrest them!”
“Uh, I can’t because…,” the voice began and then there was screeching and static-like sounds.
“Is she making those interference noises?” wondered Cannon, and everyone else.
Kessler was shouting now. “Unit 27, come in!”
More fake static.
Kessler threw the hand mic across the room, except it was connected by a wire and bounced back, hitting her in the chest. She stomped back toward her office.
Cannon noticed Kunstler of the People’s Bureau of Investigation, apparently just returned from the ambush site, watching from the shadows. He was holding a sheet of paper, and taking in the scene.
Sergeant Greely walked over to Candy Bandit and his pal. “You two, get rolling out there.”
“Hell no,” Candy Bandit said. “I’m not going outside of town. They’ll shoot us!”
“I said get out there!” shouted the sergeant.
“I’m not going! I quit!”
Kunstler approached and stood by Greely.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I, I—” Candy Bandit began.
“You said you quit. Did I hear that correctly? You quit?”
“I just… I can’t,” the officer stammered.
“Can’t what?” asked Kunstler
“They’ll kill us!” Candy Bandit cried.
“You’re not willing to die for the People’s Republic? Is that what you are saying?” The entire squad room was watching now. Kessler came out of her office and watched too. Candy Bandit’s eyes darted frantically around the room.
“Look, if you go out into Indian Country, they’ll kill you!”
“Indian Country? Is that what you and your friends call it? So you’re racist too?”
“No, it’s just… other people call it that. I—”
“So, are you comparing Native Americans to criminal terrorists? Using an illegal stereotype in order to justify your criminal insubordination?”
“That’s not true!”
“Are you insulting President Warren as well? Wasn’t one of the racists’ lies before the Split based on attacking her Indigenous Peoples’ heritage?”
Candy Bandit couldn’t get any more words out. He just sat back in his chair at the desk, terrified.
“Take his weapon, Sergeant.” The sergeant reached down and pulled the Beretta from the quivering officer’s holster.
“Please,” whimpered Candy Bandit.
“Take him into custody,” Kunstler said. The sergeant nodded at Candy Bandit’s partner, who helped hustle the pleading prisoner back to the holding cells. Kunstler walked over to Kessler, who said nothing, and handed her the sheet of paper. She started reading it.
“These are the actions we are taking. We are going to put a stop to this, regardless of what it takes.” He turned and walked back to his office. Kessler kept reading.
Cannon’s eyes moved back to the map as a pair of officers were coloring it in with markers. They had colored everything except the city of Jasper itself in bright red.
Turnbull and Langer sat in the living room of one of Jasper’s many zombie houses, the homes abandoned in the dead of night by the owners who had fled south to the USA post-Split. It was comfortable, if a bit dusty. The power was still on, since the PR had decreed that electricity was a human right and no one at the newly nationalized People’s Power Cooperative had any incentive to make the effort to turn it off.
Turnbull was cleaning one of the 9 millimeter Berettas he had liberated from the PVs. Without any .45 rounds – why the hell no one had any .45 rounds was beyond him – his tricked out Wilson was just a brick. But there was plenty of nine mil. He had five mags full.
“I don’t understand why these people can’t clean a weapon to save their lives,” Turnbull snorted.
“I guess cuz you don’t get a participation trophy for taking care of your gear,” Langer suggested. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Turnbull said, releasing the slide.
“You seemed a little out of sorts.”
“Are we sharing our feelings now, Langer?”
“See, I got a reason to kill these sons of bitches after what they did. But you? Why are you even here?”
“To help you people help yourselves.”
“Yeah,” said Langer. “But you know, whenever the government sends someone to help people like us, they aren’t really coming to help people like us.”
Turnbull stopped wiping the pistol for a moment and looked over.
“No, when the government sends people to help us,” Langer continued. “It’s really trying to help itself.”
“I don’t work for your government,” Turnbull said.
“No, maybe not, but you work for a government, and in the end they’re all more the same than different, if you get my meaning.”
“I can’t make you people do anything you don’t want to do,” Turnbull said.
“No, I reckon not. And sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. But I know where this ends for a not-so-nice guy like me. I’m just not sure where it ends for all these nice people who are fighting your war for you.”
“Their war,” Turnbull said.
“Yeah, their war. But you’re more than happy for them to be having it.”
“My personal happiness doesn’t matter,” Turnbull snarled.
“No, but I’m just wondering how you want it to end, if you even do. I figure I’m going to keep taking payback until one day they surround me and I go down fighting. That’s okay with me – it ain’t like I’m throwing away any great future. I always figured I was gonna end up in jail or bleeding out on a barroom floor with a knife in my liver anyway. But these folks? Do they think if they cap some PVs and some PSF eventually the PR’s just going to let them be? Just gonna walk away and say bygones are bygones? How’s this end? And why’d the USA decide to send you up here?”
“I didn’t say I came from the red.”
“You know, I’m country, not stupid, Kelly. You trying to take Jasper back into the red? Is that the plan?”
“That’s above my pay grade, Langer.”
“When an officer doesn’t want to answer a question, that’s what he always says,” replied the former Marine.
“You got me there. Hit the TV. Find some news.”
The cable box was still working – Article 366 of the People’s Republic Constitution guaranteed “free access to cable television and internet service, as appropriately regulated to eliminate hate speech, including but not limited to racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQN$%EÜ speech and paradigms.” The right to be protected from “unprogressive paradigms” was also enumerated in various forms in Articles 3, 47, 234, 562, and 722 through 771. Those articles set forth the list of banned mindsets in significantly greater detail.
Langer changed channels until he found what he was looking for. There used to be hundreds of channels; now there were dozens, because the People’s Republic had decided that people did not “need so many choices,” as the elderly Rationalization of Production Minister Bernie Sanders had put it. So many different options was wasteful and irrational in the government’s view. His first initiative had been to limit the number of deodorant types to two, “men’s” and “women’s.” That had created an entirely new controversy as genderfluid individuals protested. Now there was simply one deodorant, called “Deodorant,” which smelled like wet cardboard and stained your shirt, blouse, or burqa.
The People’s Republic was hoping to soon be able to expand the constriction of choices to products throughout the economy as part of its quest for greater freedom.