The Tories were PR loyalists, and they were a threat to people like Carl.
The news of the PVs being run out of town had thrilled him, and a number of his pals who likewise had packed their pockets with rocks before the march. Word spread that something more was happening, that people were organizing, that folks were going out in the woods and digging up their rifles, that they would finally be standing up to the PR.
Carl wanted in.
“You’re too young,” Dale Chalmers had told him. Carl had shown up at the office after school and demanded to talk to him alone. Dale had no idea how the kid had figured out that he was part of the resistance, but the fact Carl did was impressive. Still, at seventeen, the kid was too young to be running and gunning, as Turnbull had put it. But there were other things teens could do that would hopefully keep them out of the literal line of fire.
Carl selected several friends with similar sympathies – and he avoided the suck-ups and go-along types who the administration allowed to run the student government or who joined the Obama Youth Club and monitored fellow students for improper thoughts and attitudes. With their blue sashes, they wandered the halls and reported their findings to the administration at the end of each day. Carl had been tagged a number of times for “after school reeducation” – luckily, the teacher who got stuck running it, because of his own bad attitude, was an old PE teacher. The guy had been in the Navy before the Split and didn’t hide the US flag tattoo on his right bicep. Instead of haranguing the imprisoned students about their thought crimes, he would lock the door, shut the curtains, and burn up the time screening forbidden films like Dirty Harry and Animal House on an ancient DVD player.
Carl was in the church in a back pew when the PVs opened fire. He and his mother were unharmed, but he was splattered with blood from an elderly woman they had shot in the face.
Carl asked Dale for a weapon. Turnbull, who would not meet with Carl personally due to security concerns, directed Dale to exploit the young people’s greatest assets. Teens appeared harmless and with their bikes – driving was forbidden until 23 in the PR because of climate change – they had exceptional mobility within town and could easily avoid check points and roadblocks without drawing attention.
Soon, Carl was organizing his friends to spy on and report PSF and PBI personnel movements and deployments. He would then take the information his cell gathered, compile it, and report back to Dale. Carl was aware there were other cells out there – obviously someone was responsible for the shot-up PSF cruisers his people were reporting being towed back into town – but he did not know who they were. He just knew he’d rather be doing that than spying.
But just gathering information was not enough for him. He and his pals started by using a sharpened screwdriver to poke holes in the tire sidewalls of PSF cruisers left unattended. After disabling three cars the first night, the PSF took to leaving an officer to guard the vehicle when the others got out. They could do so since they had now taken to traveling with four to a vehicle for safety.
Carl remembered some spray cans that had been left in the garage by the family down the street that had picked up and left in the middle of the night. He liberated them, and his cell began tagging walls around town with graffiti of increasingly profane and insulting intensity. They had created a very special one for just this march, but Carl was disappointed to see some government workers actually working and trying to remove it. Too bad – he was pretty proud of his phallocentric masterpiece.
Well, he thought, then they’d have to do something else to liven up the protest.
Ms. Marfull was shouting through her bullhorn, and while the Obama Youth were eager to obey, filling the front ranks of the march in their blue sashes, the rest of the students moved sluggishly and passive aggressively. As they failed to comply with all deliberate speed, the principal’s amplified hectoring increased, and the kids – sensing her growing frustration – only moved more slowly as they fell into order.
The march began twelve minutes late, with the high school Obama Youth Club at the head holding a long banner across the front rank that read “JASPER YOUTH IN PROGRESSIVE SOLIDARITY WITH PSF.” Behind the beaming blue true believers were the regular students, many half-heartedly holding signs with slogans like “PEOPLE’S JUSTICE AGAINST TERRORISTS NOW!” and “PR AND PALESTINE: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.”
Another placard read “YOUR GENDER IS YOUR CHOICE!” while a few feet away, a kid used his “SOCIALISM IS SCIENTIFIC” sign, which featured a picture of President Warren for some reason, to poke another boy, who shouted “Stop it, racist!” and started crying. Following them were the junior high and elementary school kids, several of whom ran out of the ranks to pet some stray dogs that had come over to bark at the spectacle.
At the end of the procession came the high school band, which struck up “We Dedicate Ourselves To Inclusiveness,” the song that had been the national anthem of the People’s Republic until it itself had recently been declared insufficiently inclusive – specifically, because it “ignores and denies the existence of differently-sized, abled and gendered beings.” There had been a lot of controversy about trying to write a new national anthem, so they finally settled on an instrumental. Unfortunately, the band did not know the new tune yet, so they stuck with the old tune and hoped no one would notice. Only the blue-sashed Obama Youth Club kids even attempted to sing along, most forgetting the majority of the lyrics except for the chorus. The chorus concluded, “And every village/rejects white privilege!”
The march began its slow progress south on Main Street past perpendicular east-west streets blocked off with sawhorses. The ranks, except for the first ones in which the blue sashes tried to keep in some semblance of order, soon disintegrated into a mass cluster of uniformed students. Carl and his friends, about a half-dozen of them, maneuvered themselves into the middle of the pack, hidden from the view of the teachers marching along the flanks in order to keep the group moving forward.
There were a lot of PSF deployed along the route, including what appeared to be the head of the local station – she was surrounded by a half-dozen officers. And they all carried long weapons.
The people of Jasper were largely indifferent to the march. They sort of stood there, their attendance noted, but offering no more enthusiasm than the minimum they could get away with. There were exceptions – a few Tories applauded a bit too loudly and shouted encouragement.
“Fight hate criminals and denialists!”
“Progressive youth is our future!”
“There’s no need to fear expressing your chosen gender identities!”
Jasper was a small town, so Carl recognized most of the collaborators – and made a mental note of them.
The march moved at a leisurely pace toward the center of town and the old courthouse, with teachers shouting and gesturing for their charges to stay in line. The band was playing something no one could hear over the chattering students.
There were a lot more people in Courthouse Square. Except for a few Tories waving and cheering, must townspeople just stared in sullen silence.
Carl slipped the pre-knotted bandana he was carrying around his neck and reached into his pocket.