J. Curtis: Calexit: The Anthology

It took effort to remind himself that he wasn’t a sheriff’s sergeant. The title ‘Sheriff’ was judged to be a trigger word harkening back to America’s colonial roots and it was no longer in use. Not anymore. Simply through attrition, Mike had become Militia Major and Station Commander. Having a Spanish surname boosted him over Larry Marcus, of mixed black and Vietnamese heritage, now a captain and Deputy Station Commander. Race had become everything in a society that rebelled against racism.

He pulled a safety razor and shaving soap from the shelf, took it to the sink and soaped up before dragging it over his hatchet jaw. He thought as he shaved. The National Militia absorbed him like a feeding amoeba. The old county of San Bernardino, which stretched from the outskirts of Los Angeles nearly all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada had been renamed the Caesar Chavez State, of the newly minted National Republic of Cali. Law enforcement duties passed from the purview of cities and counties to the National Militia. They needed a Spanish surname for their new province militia chief, but he spoke no Spanish, and neither had his father or grandfather, for that matter.

Mike didn’t have any mouthwash, so he took a bottle of Yukon Jack from his locker and sloshed two mouthfuls around before swallowing. Then he took a third. And then a fourth. He replaced the bottle in the locker, closed it and spun the lock.

He walked back to his office and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find five-foot-four inch with lifts-in-his-shoes, Colonel Dorris Tyrone Johnson, the Provincial Commissioner, taking to Larry Marcus. Johnson’s claim to fame was being a thirty-something community organizer, who had appointed his life partner, Luther Calder as his aide. He oversaw two states: Caesar Chavez and Eric Holder (had been Riverside County), and that made him Mike’s boss.

“Those mother-fuckers are still burning their homes, Major Sanchez.” Dorris never beat around the bush.

“They’re burning their mother-fucking houses,” Luther Calder echoed for effect. Calder stood two inches shorter than his mate and wore his hair in a man bun that didn’t quite work with tight African-American curls doped down with Afro Sheen. The best thing about Calder was that you could smell him coming because of the volume of women’s perfume that he wore. It was also the worst thing if you had to stand near him as Mike now did.

“I want militia troops dispatched to every cop’s house in the city to arrest those disloyal bastards and their families and take them to work camps. The fires that they set spread to other homes ‘cause there aren’t any firemen. It’s beginning to cause a problem.” Dorris Johnson cleared his throat, indicating that he finished his rant.

Mike wanted to make the same argument to Colonel Johnson that he’d made to Larry a few minutes before. Paying the militia in script meant that they spent all of their time looting rather than enforcing the law.

By national order, the homes of police and firemen who fled the National Republic of Cali were subject to confiscation. Rather than let that happen, they’d begun setting them ablaze on their way out of town, heading for the border and the United States. Mike knew that Dorris and his cronies wanted the homes for themselves to dole out as favors for personal loyalty on the part of key supporters. So far, it hadn’t worked out as planned.

Larry Marcus stepped in to save Mike, “We don’t have any militia to send, Colonel. They’re busy looting, or hunting down the disloyal and relieving them of their property. There’s a very fine line between the two.”

Dorris cleared his throat, signaling a pronouncement. “How many cops and their families have they brought to work camps?”

Larry smirked only slightly, “The militia is disorganized and the cops all have guns and know how to use them. Our people give them a bit of distance to keep from getting mowed down. We lost two entire squads out by the Barstow checkpoint three days ago. I sent two hundred more men out there, but I don’t think that they’ll last long either. We’re going to need to recruit more militia. Only the new people will go to Barstow, where there’s nothing left to salvage.” Salvage had become the politically correct term for theft by looting.

“Well major, you need to get out there and lead them.” Luther Calder chimed in, focusing back in on Mike. “What good is the militia if they can’t capture the disloyal?”

Mike Sanchez said dryly, “None of them are trained. They were plucked off the street or out of county jail, handed truncheons and sent out to enforce vague regulations. A lot of those people that you pinned badges on can barely read. It might help to deal with training before you send them against police families, who are capable of defending themselves.”

Luther Calder suggested to Colonel Dorris Johnson that an inspection of the militia would be a good idea since his was an official visit as the regional militia chieftain. Mike and Larry were able to round up a dozen men with a blend of official uniforms and gray clothes sporting a disk badge pinned over the heart. Grooming, uniformity and martial bearing were wanting, but they’d all been earning big since assuming the office of Militia Officer. The barter business out in the new nation was brisk.

CALEXIT

D+41

Captain Larry Marcus brushed down the street in the crowd and allowed the chalk in his hand to mark the stone on the side of the bank building. A squad of bodyguards flanked him while he stood off near a platoon of militia who were keeping the peace at an outlet mall as looters stripped the place bare. The chalk on the wall was not noticed and the militia moved on, disgruntled that Captain Marcus had not released them to beat away the looters and to scavenge for themselves.

Two hours later, Gary Simpson, drove past the bank building and noticed the chalk mark and then headed for the drop.

He’d never been the sort who volunteered, he mused, as he drove the old Ford pick- up down a narrow alley to the battered trashcan in the weeds behind a blackened skeleton that had once been a liquor store.

It had become all about Tommy. The something that snapped as he watched the mob kill his brother during the countdown to Cali’s independence from the United States, lead to a calm understanding of what he needed to do.

Hysteria ran high in those days before CALEXIT and people tried to reason with his anger. Everyone he knew wanted him to transfer his hate to the mother country. Outwardly he’d played that game. Inwardly, however, it had been different and he went to the police and volunteered. There had been a shuffle as his handlers changed twice and he’d been thrust into a brief, intense, training course. At D-7, a week before the hand-off, they’d flown him to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for more detailed training focused on what they wanted him to do.

“All I want to do is to pay back those people who killed my brother.”

The grim and nameless men and women who served as his training cadre assured him that he would be given the opportunity to do just that. Not necessarily the mob itself, but the shot callers and community organizers.

His first pick-up was heavy, taped inside plastic wrap, surrounded by a greasy brown paper bag, and slid into a plastic bag from Target. There was a certain irony to that, and it was not lost on Gary. He put the package into his truck, behind the front bench seat and continued on to work.

CALEXIT

D+42

Gary had been an auto mechanic for the adult portion of his twenty-three years. He understood machines clearly and could tell when they were worn or out of tune. People posed a far more challenging problem. He quit his job after his brother died. When he returned to Cali after the grand secession from the United States, he’d been dropped by parachute. Since the U.S. military had destroyed their bases and had left Cali en-masse, there was no radar to detect the aircraft. He’d been dropped into the desert and found the old Ford pick-up where they told him it would be.