“Keep down,” the driver said through the cracked rear window. “It they see you riding back there I’ll get pulled over.”
There was a whoosh from the bus, and inside a flickering orange light. Someone had set it on fire. Now the passengers were pelting it with shale rocks from the cliff face.
The pick-up began to inch forward slowly, but then the frightened face of the angry woman appeared over the side, her hands gripping the edge.
“Let me in!” she howled, trotting along with the accelerating truck. “I’m Privilege Level 6!”
As if that mattered out there in the middle of nowhere – your privilege level was useful for leveraging jobs, schools and getting a residence inside a secured sector, but not so much when the government was not watching.
Privilege levels were sold as similar to reparations. They were to be a way to remediate historical oppression and discrimination by creating a new hierarchy of the favored to replace an alleged hierarchy of oppression that had largely faded away decades before. The high would be brought low, and the low raised high, or something like that. But that had only inspired more jockeying for oppression pole position. Did someone whose great-great-great-great-great grandfather might have been a slave outweigh the oppression of someone whose great-great-great-great-great grandfather might have been shot by Custer? What if your cousin had been a transsexual in the 1970s – that had to be worth something, right? Soon, everyone named O’Connor or O’Malley was claiming their ancestors had been brought here as indentured servants, and that this ancient injustice had to be worth a point or two on their privilege levels.
Not surprising, as always, those with the greatest privilege prior to the introduction of privilege levels miraculously dominated the highest privilege levels afterwards. Rich people, movie stars, government workers in the Westside Sector – they were the eights, nines and even tens. In Compton and Inglewood, you might find a four, but he was probably only there to score drugs.
Turnbull sat up, smiled gently, and offered his hand to Ms. Privilege Level 6 as she trotted behind the pick-up. She took his hand gratefully.
He twisted, hard, and she shrieked in pain as he forced her off her feet and left her sprawling on the asphalt. As she receded in the distance, Turnbull could see the old man coming up behind her, something dark and heavy in his hands, something he raised above his head and threw down on her as she lay there. Payback was as much of a bitch as she was.
Turnbull reclined on the pick-up’s dirty floor. Over the edge, a thin reed of smoke was rising from where the bus sat burning on the shoulder.
“They’re torching their own bus. It’s going to get cold tonight and they burned their only shelter,” Junior said, incredulous. “What the hell is wrong with these people?”
“These people aren’t much for thinking things through,” Turnbull said. “If they were, they wouldn’t have split off from the part of the country that fed and powered them. Plus, I think they just don’t care anymore.”
The drive that would have taken 90 minutes a decade before took four hours. Their driver knew the area well enough to pull off and take backroads past the northern Los Angeles checkpoint. This meant a detour through some mostly empty mountain towns; the forest seemed to be reconquering much of it.
“Where are the people?” Junior asked.
“A lot of the kind of people who lived out here crossed over after the Split. It was pretty clear they weren’t beloved by the blue state types. Too independent. Too traditional. And since there’s no work out here anymore – no tourists, no water to farm – most of the ones that stayed had no choice but to move into the cities where they could get enough to eat. The rest, I guess, went off the grid. We won’t see them. That’s how they live, below the radar and out of sight.”
“So, basically, the countryside is depopulated.”
“Yeah, the People’s Republic figured out that it is a lot easier to control the people if they are packed into cities – especially when you control the food.”
“So, ration cards and government stores?”
“Right. No obedience, no dinner. Country people didn’t need the government before. They could grow their own food, or buy it from each other. And the People’s Republic can’t tolerate that.”
“I thought they liked diversity.”
“They do – they like a diverse variety of people who all agree with them and obey their commands.”
The old I-5 corridor through Valencia and Castaic was largely empty. Most of the restaurants, and nearly all of the gas stations, were closed. Magic Mountain amusement park was still there, but it did not seem to be operating. It was called “People’s Park” now – the government had liberated it from the Six Flags Corporation after the Split as an “essential industry.”
Coming south into the San Fernando Valley, there were considerably more private cars – though derelict vehicles still lined the freeway in even greater numbers. There were more billboards too – several offered the maniacally grinning and massively retouched visage of the elderly Hillary Clinton, who had presided over the Split, overlaid by the quote “WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THE SUPPRESSION OF WOMEN BY ANTI-PROGRESSIVE FORCES!”
The Valley was smoggy and hot and teeming with people. Yet it looked broken and worn, as if no one had bothered to maintain or repair anything in the last decade. Much of it was boarded up – there were massive auto dealerships that had closed and their lots were now filled with tents and lean-tos. “Abandoned” property could be taken by “the People” for housing, Turnbull explained. And by “the People,” they meant squatters. And by “Abandoned,” they meant “any property the squatters felt like taking – assuming the owner was not someone the PSF would actually care about pleasing. So in the Valley, full of regular citizens, there was plenty of squatting. In the Hollywood Hills, in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, where the elite lived behind a wall of security and had people with guns to do their bidding, there was zero.
Their driver leaned back and cocked his head around, shouting through the cracked rear window.
“Where you want me to drop you? South Central, Koreatown, Shariatown? Hollywood?”
“Hollywood,” replied Turnbull, getting close to be heard. “You know that restaurant on Sunset and Gower – they called it the ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll restaurant’?”
“The old Denny’s?” the driver asked, shouting over the wind. “Not a Denny’s anymore.”
“Take us there.” Turnbull sat against the cab, watching the I-5 recede behind him. The pick-up slid right into the exit to the old 170, which a sign announced was now the “LGBTQ!MCX*” Freeway. It did not provide a legend to help them decipher the acronym.
Most of the vehicles were buses, old and dirty, spewing black exhaust. There were more private cars on the road than they had seen so far, but not enough for the kind of traffic jams that used to gridlock the Southland’s roads. Some of the cars were quite new – many of them shot by in the “Privilege Lane” where the old carpool lane had been. It was hard to tell what constituted privilege, other than having a late model BMW or Mercedes.
Occasionally, a small convoy of three or four black SUVs would speed by, the other vehicles clearing a path.
“Who are they?” Junior asked.
“Officials. Movie stars. People with juice,” Turnbull replied. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Look,” Turnbull said, pointing back. There were many billboards with many messages, but Junior immediately saw the one Turnbull meant. There was a young woman, blonde, smiling. It read “VICTORY OVER THE RACIST HATE STATES! REPORT SPIES, DENIERS AND HATE CRIMINALS TO THE PBI! DIAL 911!”