In the wake of the Split, the presidential election was cancelled due to the “emergency” and was thereafter never uncancelled. In the blue states, the liberal elite that was left in complete control suddenly found itself without any constraints whatsoever. It wrote a new Constitution, a better one (they promised), one not infected with the virus of racism and oppression inherent in the one it replaced, written as it was by a bunch of dead white males a zillion years before. There was a right to free speech, but not to racism or hate crimes or a variety of other exceptions—exceptions inserted by design to swallow the rule. The same with the freedom of the press and assembly. You could print what you wanted and protest what you wanted, assuming what you wanted was what the ruling elite wanted.
And Rios-Parkinson was now part of that ruling elite, as his militia was folded into the new police force and he was installed as the police chief. The past police chief was by then retired to Norman, Oklahoma, having decided that Los Angeles deserved whatever miseries it decided to inflict upon itself. So when the new People’s Constitution was signed– the new government had begun using the modifier “People’s” to rub the new reality in the faces of the reactionaries who remained in the blue states – Rios-Parkinson was on the VIP reviewing stand for the parade. Except no one called them VIPs – they were just fellow citizens, citizens who merely happened to have power. And despite having 218 amendments in the New Bill of Rights – which included the rights to a job, a home, to “climate justice” and “to be free of cisnormative bias,” those were the only people with any power at all.
And now Rios-Parkinson was where he had always known he belonged – wielding power. He left the police department (which was soon nationalized, along with all other law enforcement organizations) to take over the California branch of the People’s Bureau of Investigations, which also provided oversight of the People’s Security Force. In doing so, he found himself among the handful of California’s most powerful men and women and non-binary persons (the current mayor of Los Angeles was named simply “Chris” and refused to accept any specific gender identity; “xe” was Chris’s preferred pronoun).
And as a member of the elite, he had claimed Amanda Ryan.
“Get up,” he said again. She did, but slowly, and it grated on him. It did not occur to him at any conscious level that she looked quite like one of the affluent Orange County blondes who had ignored him through most of his youth; that weirdness was submerged deep in his roiling psyche. But he understood that he derived a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that she belonged to him, both physically and emotionally.
And though he never gave it any specific thought, he understood that his satisfaction would increase exponentially when he had fully broken her to his will.
“Why do I have to go? I’m sick of school. All they do is talk,” she said.
“You are contaminated with red state bullshit, Amanda. And you need to be decontaminated.” He went over to the bureau where she kept her things and picked up her purse, reaching in to pull out a wallet of photographs that Amanda often flipped through.
“Put that down,” she hissed.
“You can’t seem to give up your old life, can you, Amanda?” he said, smiling a reptilian grin. “These people, these family and friends, they are all dead to you. Or, at least, they should be. You are lucky, you know. Most people who crossover end up in rehabilitation camps, like the friends you came with, and the camps are not quite as comfortable as this place.”
Amanda moved toward him and took the wallet, replaced it in her purse, and put it back on the bureau top. Then she walked over to a credenza where she kept several bottles of imported whiskey and poured herself a tumbler full.
“It is eight in the morning,” Rios-Parkinson sneered.
“Then it’s ten o’clock back home,” she replied, drinking a gulp and staring.
“Your problem is you still think of the US as your home. Sometimes I wonder if you really meant it when you told me you came here because you believed in what we are doing.”
“I did. Then I got here.” That was true. She had come believing the blue would be a Utopia. She had been thrilled when a valiant defender of the People’s Republic had selected her as his own. And then she came to know both the People’s Republic and Martin Rios-Parkinson.
“I have arrested people for less than that, Amanda. You should watch your mouth. Now put the glass down.” Rios-Parkinson could not have her drunk. She was too important to his plan.
Amanda smiled and took another swig. “You’re going to arrest me? That’d be pretty embarrassing for you, your own domestic partner, your defector girlfriend in a camp. That’d be the end of the famous, powerful Director Martin Rios-Parkinson.”
That pushed him too far. He stepped forward and slapped her on the right side of her face – she tried to dodge the blow but drowsiness and the booze had slowed her enough so it connected. She dropped the tumbler onto the carpet.
He stood there for a moment, himself shaken. He had rarely done any violence himself. Though sometimes he liked to watch it done, he always had others to do it for him. But she had gotten under his skin, probed at the festering sore of resentment that would never quite heal.
She blinked for a moment, and then smiled, and then she began to laugh.
“You call that a slap, you fucking pussy? You hit girls, and you hit like a girl!” She continued laughing, a bitter but genuine laugh. “The big, bad Senior Director of the PB fucking I and he hits like a little girl!”
“You better shut up, bitch,” he said quietly, and her expression changed and she fell silent. “I need you at UCLA today, and if you aren’t in the car in ten minutes I will send Arthur and Sam up here to bring you to UCLA. Do you understand?”
She stared at him with hatred. Arthur and Sam were the two thugs who escorted him in to work each morning. They would smash her face in as soon as they would look at her.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she hissed, and now Rios-Parkinson smiled as he watched her dress. He had broken her to his will. And now he would put her to use to turn this disaster into another triumph.
11.
The Lexus turned over and hummed; Jackson had tuned it up nicely. The tank was full; the range read as 456 miles. Their packs were in the trunk, along with two extra sets of People’s Republic license plates. Junior held a thick, tattered paper map book Jackson had handed him. The cover read “Thomas Guide – 1995.”
“You use the index in back to find the page with the map section for wherever you are going,” Jackson had told them.
“My dad used to have one of these in his car, back before nav systems. Everyone did,” Turnbull had replied.
“It’s forty years old, but it’s still pretty accurate,” Jackson continued. “Obviously it doesn’t show the new names of the streets they renamed for being offensive or for PRNA bigwigs. And it doesn’t show the security sector walls or the gates, but other than that it’s pretty good. Best of all no one can trace you online when you look something up.”
They wore suits; Junior had selected a red power tie. Their new IDs were in order, with Level 8 privilege, a nice bonus. Getting that done, arranging for someone inside to make the changes in the national database, had cost plenty – all 20 gold coins.
“You ready for this?” Turnbull asked Junior, who sat in the passenger seat checking his Glock.