J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

“I’ve seen enough. Keep me updated if anything changes. Lemmons out.” His screen went black and the dam filled the main screen once more.

“Ten hours?” Frio asked.

Dominic nodded. “Ten. I’m assuming Imperial will slow it a little.”

“Assuming. Eight hours then. ‘Scuze me,” Kira Nguyn waved her permission and he creaked up from his chair and left, dialing the phone as he did.

She looked at the screen again. An incoming call chirped, and Ms. Villanueva of the CWB appeared, face flushed, all but spitting fire. Before Nguyn could speak, Villanueva thundered, “What the fuck do you bastards think you are doing? Stop the upstream releases at once and open diversions! You’re going to kill us!”

Nguyn muted the pick-up in the conference room. “No one say a word unless I tell you to, understood?” Everyone nodded. She unmuted. “Right now, Ms. Viallanueva, we are watching part of Parker Dam give way. One of the sides appears to be ripping out.”

“That’s impossible. We’ve maintained the dams, no thanks to you. And we need techs now at Imperial. The President has authorized a one-time entry for ten of your people to come in and get the gates closed.”

She muted the send again. “Can we do that? Close the gates?”

“I don’t know, ma’am, but we do not have override access or remote capabilities, or so I heard as of a few weeks ago from IT,” Dominic replied.

Lupe nodded. “We do not. And we do not have any personnel we can send at this time.”

“Damn it, answer me, what the fuck did you do to my dams?” Villanueva’s face grew redder, and Dominic thought he could see the vein on her temple throbbing. She had rage tears in her eyes as she pounded the desk. “You’re going to destroy everything Los Hermanos de la Tierra have struggled for, you fucking gringos !”

Nguyn unmuted the microphone. “We do not have the people to send to Imperial. We are not permitted to send technical staff across the border without authorization from the U.S. president. And we had nothing to do with the high flow—”

“Bullshit!” Thump. “You opened the upstream dams. You’re deliberately flooding the Imperial Valley so people will starve to death. This is an act of war.”

Nguyn went red, then white. “No, Ms. Villanueva. This is an act of nature, the Colorado River doing what rivers do. They flood when there is a lot of rain and snowmelt. That is what rivers do,” she repeated, hands at her sides, voice calm. Dominic wondered if she were going to reach into the screen and slap Ms. Villanueva.

“Fine. What you won’t give, we’ll take. The Army of Cali will bring those technicians back to us. You’ll see. This is a declaration of war by the United States on Cali.” The image disappeared.

Silence filled the meeting room. “Can they even do that?” Lupe asked.

Ranger Pat shook his head. “Not with that river in the way.”

“Still. Lupe,” Nguyn said, “Warn people. I’ll pass the word up-channel. The rest of you, we have things to do before the media arrive.”

Groans and sighs arose, before they scattered out. Dominic went to his office, closed his door and smiled. Ten hours until the waters reached the Imperial Valley. Ten hours. “But let judgement roll down like waters,” he smiled as he quoted from the King James Bible, Amos 5:24.

Chinmalis nodded once as Eloi shouted orders. “You and you, get the prisoners moving. You, chase the work-camp crews out of the barracks. Point them west.”

“What about the ones in the infirmary and cells?” someone dared to ask.

“Screw them. They need to drown anyway. It is the will of Tlalac .” He snarled, started to turn, and they heard gun-shots, screams and yells, and a chant of “USA USA!”

What? That was impossible. “Get them!” Shotguns thundered, people screamed, and she saw a flash of light on a metal something as a man brought a hoe down on one of the guards, chopping his face. “Get their guns!”

Eloi raced into the night, Chinmalis close behind. He jumped on her four-wheeler and started off. She cursed, looked around, found a three-wheeler. She climbed on and started it. It acted sluggish. The power had been off and on all day, so that explained it she thought. A figure loomed up in the headlights and she dodged, almost tipping over. She looked back and saw a skinny, pale female waving a shotgun, death in her eyes. Not bad for a gringa , Chinmalis allowed, then turned her attention back to the road and following the headlights ahead of her. She and Eloi had to get to the next post, to get reinforcements.

Over the rumble and hiss of the tires she heard a sound, a low burbling. She looked left and right and saw nothing but darkness and stars. The crescent moon wouldn’t rise for a few more hours. A coyote, the four-footed kind, darted across the road and she slowed. Three more coyotes, some rabbits, and paisanos , roadrunners, darted or jumped through the light, all racing north. What was going on? The burbling and hissing from the darkness grew louder, and the lights ahead of her slowed, then stopped. She heard Eloi starting to curse, then he turned the four-wheeler around.

“Flood water, damn it. Someone must have fucked up with the canal. We’ll have to go south, to the high road.”

Before they could move, knee-deep water surrounded them. Chinmalis turned off the motor. She did not want to be electrocuted. They could just sit out the surge, and she lifted her feet onto the saddle. The machine shifted, the water slapped higher, and Eloi swore, then tried to drive off. The motor revved once and stopped with a loud splash.

“Help me! Bitch, help me, I can’t sw—” He screamed, then gurgled. The water pushing against the three-wheeler slammed harder, cold, very cold, cold like the stars overhead. The three-wheeler shifted, shifted again. Before Chinmalis could do anything, cold black water grabbed her, sweeping her off the three-wheeler and tumbling her, filling her lungs as she tried to call for help, then smashing her down, down, into the depths of an arroyo before continuing on its way to the sea.

The next morning Andy looked at the aerial images Mr. Waters had sent him from the American’s drones and satellite. He smiled. The river had erased the farms of the Imperial Obscenity and was racing through Mexico, once more in its proper path. Brown and blue covered the basin, and brown and blue stretched down, from Pilot Point toward the old delta. Andy smiled serenely.

The river had gone home.

He heard the boom . Turned on his tablet and checked the cameras. Yep, they’d gotten past the trees he’d laid across the road and had moved far enough to hit the first trip wire. The bridge timbers were still raining down as splinters across the vehicles. He’d now made the opening move. He sure hoped his son would get back soon so they could get out of here before these assholes called for help and that help arrived. He could handle these amateurs, he thought, but if professionals showed up, he was outgunned and likely out-equipped. He pulled out his cell phone and texted his son: Hurry!

“Well, shit”

The alarm was loud and piercing and it got his attention from fifty feet away. It was the computer attached to his wireless surveillance network system telling him that someone was coming up his driveway. Then his phone went off as the alarm was retransmitted via his Wi-Fi. He heard his tablet warbling in the living room as well. He cancelled the alarm and opened that window on his monitor.

He’d been sorta waiting for them to arrive for weeks now, but he’d been hoping that it would have taken a bit longer.