Cannon lifted his head and stared, breathing shallowly, his face inscrutable under the swelling and blood.
“Well, you take tonight and think it over and if tomorrow morning you aren’t more cooperative then we’ll invite your family to participate. Sound good?”
Cannon said nothing. Kunstler shook his head.
“You’re right-wing scum,” Kunstler said.
“I’m a real cop,” said Cannon. “Not a thug.”
“A cop. Pathetic. And you’re probably proud of it.” Kunstler looked over at David. “Throw this hate criminal in a cell.”
“I don’t know where Cannon is,” Dale said. “He was supposed to be here already.”
Turnbull considered for a moment. “Then let’s hurry this up. Do we all have our targets?”
There were a half-dozen other insurgents, men and women, in the living room of the zombie home – a different one than where Langer and Turnbull had stayed. All of them nodded.
“You sure you want to do this yourself, Larry?” Turnbull asked Langer.
“Oh, this one is most definitely mine,” Langer said.
“It’s a woman,” Turnbull said.
“Well, I try not to be too much of a male chauvinist.”
“Okay, we know ours. Everyone else? Are you absolutely clear on what you’ll do?” The others nodded. Turnbull stood up.
“Then let’s do it. 0715 hours tomorrow. Let’s synch our watches.”
Becky the waitress woke up at 6:52 a.m., grabbed her clothes off the chair then went straight into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Though the name had changed, the Best Western logo was still on all the old towels.
“Becky?” a man shouted from back in the room.
“I’m taking a shower!” she answered. Something muffled came back.
Becky slipped into the shower and scrubbed herself hard, then turned it off and stepped out and dried herself with the threadbare towels. She pulled on her clothes and combed her hair.
7:07 a.m.
She sat down on the toilet lid and waited.
In the former Best Western’s tiny gym room, two PBI detectives got onto the exercise bikes and began pedaling. The television set was on the People’s Republic’s number one network, MSNBC. Morning anchor and national institution Rachael Maddow was touting the upcoming segment where she would read her dream journal.
Three PBI detectives walked out of the ex-Best Western and into the front parking lot. No one around, they noted. They walked quickly to their 2022 government issue Ford Fusion. The PSF officer guarding the parking lot nodded to them. The driver backed out, and pull onto North Newton Street.
Lieutenant Kessler and three PSF officers in battle gear with AKs walked down Main Street toward the Starbucks. There were a few passers-by, but no more or less than usual. She lifted her head up a little higher as the locals averted their eyes.
“This is my town,” she thought.
Becky opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the room. The man in the bed – the same PBI detective who had come and taken the Mayor the other day – lifted his head and smiled.
This shitty assignment got a little less shitty last night, he thought to himself. Guess these hick gals were starved for some city lovin’.
“Big day at work today?” Becky asked as she walked past his suit and the detective’s holstered Beretta on the bureau.
“Lots of terrorists to catch,” he replied, sitting up.
Becky walked to her purse and glanced at her watch. 7:14.
In the exercise room, Rachael Maddow was reading aloud and intently about her dream of a world where there were no red states anymore, where their oppression had been wiped from the face of the earth. The detective on the left shook his head.
“You think she really dreamed that?”
“Probably. Don’t you dream about dead racists?”
“I usually dream about ass—”
His insight was interrupted as the gym room door opened.
The Fusion was headed south on Newton, which was Route 231 inside the town. They passed St. Joseph’s church on the right – it was boarded up and the sign out front on the dying lawn said “PEOPLE’S SHELTER COMING SOON.”
A hundred meters or so on, they came to 9th Street and stopped at the red. The driver glanced in his rear view mirror. A tan Ford van was idling behind them.
The clock radio read “07:14.”
The van pulled to their left, straddling the line of the oncoming lane and started moving forward.
“What’s that guy doing?” the driver asked.
Becky picked up her large purse and stood over the bed.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said.
“Good, because it would be sexist for you to expect something from me. I’m glad even here in bumfuck Egypt you’re escaping primitive and sexist gender roles.”
She glanced at her digital watch, as 7:14:50 turned to 7:14:52.
“So,” he said, leering. “What is it? Because I know I deserve something good after how hard I fucked you last night.”
Becky reached into her purse and pulled out a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 Chief’s Special. The man’s creepy face turned frightened.
“I fucked you harder,” she said, and shot him in the face.
The cleaning woman – her job title was actually “Room Reconstitution Specialist” – opened the back door and Davey Wohl and his companion walked into the hotel laundry from the rear parking lot. She handed Wohl a key card and walked away back to her work.
Wohl and his partner knew where they were going. They went through the opposite door and into the first floor hallway, walking fast. The gym room was coming up. They drew their pistols from under their coats. Wohl had a Sig Sauer .40 caliber and his partner one of the Berettas liberated from the PVs.
Wohl paused outside the door for twenty long seconds until his watch read “7:15,” then swiped the keycard and pushed open the door. There were two men in their thirties on exercise bikes pedaling away while Rachael Maddow spoke into the camera.
Both bikers turned and looked at them, puzzled. Wohl and his companions stepped in and they raised their weapons. There was a thud from somewhere upstairs that Wohl heard over Maddow’s droning monologue. They aimed.
“Hey wait—” one rider began.
The insurgents fired again and again, then each finished off one of the PBI men with a headshot. Ears ringing fiercely, they walked out the door, leaving the two detectives dead on the floor. Back in the gym room, to her silent audience, Maddow concluded, “And that’s my dream, a dream of final victory over the forces of hate.”
The van whipped around the Fusion on the driver’s side looking like it would pass them and roar through the intersection, but it skidded to an immediate stop right beside them.
“What the hell?” sputtered the driver.
The side door of the van slid open. Two men and two women were inside, aiming semi-auto rifles.
They opened fire, shattering all of the windows on the driver’s side. The driver himself took the first round through his forehead, splattering brains on his passenger beside him. Then several more rounds slammed into him and into the detective in the back seat as well. They didn’t try to flee – they just jerked under the impacts and died where they sat.
The detective in the passenger’s seat was hit twice but didn’t know it with the adrenaline, and he was big enough and the 5.56 mm rounds were light enough that they didn’t stop him from opening his door and tumbling out on the street.
The dead driver’s foot came off the brake, and the Fusion began the drift forward even as the firing continued and the roof erupted in bullet holes.