L Akers - Fight Like a Man

He jumped on the ATV and hauled ass home.

GRAYSIE THREW herself back onto her bed in frustration. She was on her own, and it was getting late. She was exhausted and home-sick. She needed to get home.

She’d gone looking for her boy scout, and came back empty-handed and disgusted. Out of the only three guys she would trust to take a road trip with—and that she could trust her dad not to kill upon first glance—two were drunk and the other was high. Their dorm was a tsunami of beer-pong with red Solo cups, empty food packages and weed bongs, all underneath an overwhelming smell of raw sewage.

In the shape she’d found them in, they couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag. They’d be useless on the road, riding or walking, and even more useless with a compass. She couldn’t believe no one was taking this seriously and making a plan.

Probably like Becky, they were expecting their mommy or daddy or the gooberment to swoop in and fix this mess. Or they were assuming the power would be back on soon, even though communications were down too. She doubted any of them had ever watched the news, but especially in the last year, or the last week .

They had no idea Trump was pissing off world leaders left and right and that this very well could be an attack on the United States. In Trump’s mission to make America great again, he was burning bridges faster than he was building them. But he was keeping his promises and making progress, even without those bridges.

Graysie disagreed with some of his policies, and she thought he was a disgusting male chauvinist pig and most likely a bit racist, but even she had to admit, he was getting it done.

And that confused her. She wasn’t sure anymore who she was behind, or which side of the line her loyalties lay. She selfishly wanted America fixed for her future, but was Trump really fixing it, or setting them up for war either amongst their own population or even their enemies abroad?

Was this war?

She and many of her friends and coeds had been behind Bernie; most of them not even sure just why they were behind Bernie, except that Bernie was cool in a nutty professor, or Back To The Future sort of way. They’d needed someone to get behind, and he’d fit the bill.

Especially after the bird.

During a Bernie rally it seemed as though he had called the bird forth, right out of the sky. It sat on his podium, watched by thousands of people both in-person and online. Bernie said it was symbolism for a dove, asking for world peace. It was a lucky bit of political magic is what Graysie had thought of it at the time. He’d won many followers after that when the best the other candidates could do was unknowing spit a glob of food from their mouth, giving them the perfect target for a zillion memes and GIF’s, or perform a little sarcastic and spooky shoulder-shimmy, or just throw childish insults about the size of hands and other body parts.

The election was all about entertainment for them… who could wow them or make them laugh the most… and Bernie’s bird had really grabbed their attention.

It was sad.

When Bernie dropped out, half of her friends threw their support behind Hillary, and the other half stepped behind Trump.

It didn’t matter to her who was in office. It was just a face and a name. Her father’s daughter, she was more worried about straightening out the economy and strengthening America, rather than personal opinions on race, color, gender, or sexual orientation.

After the election, her friends split again. Trump haters versus Trump supporters. Some just wanted a reason to protest. Some wanted to riot. They wanted a cause that would allow them to rally and scream and threaten and act like badly-behaved children. The other side pranced around in Trump sweatshirts, flashing MAGA signs and trying to be cool when in reality they hadn’t even voted. Both sides waited in anticipation for every Trump tweet to broadcast so they could fight it out in the comments in an online twitter-war, one hundred and forty characters at a time.

It was ridiculous.

She watched it all from a distance, feeling older than her years. While they fussed between them every chance they got over what wasn’t happening, she sat back and watched what was happening. She was shocked to see that in six months with Trump in office, there were a million new jobs in the Unites States, the unemployment rate was at a ten-year low, and illegal immigration was down by huge numbers, which freed up even more jobs and benefits for Americans.

This stuff mattered.

Who was responsible for it didn’t.

When and if they ever graduated college, they’d need a job.

Her friends had actually paid attention and cheered the imposed sanctions on Russia and North Korea. They agreed with Trump for attempting to put America back into the big-brother position America rightly deserved by not letting bullies take advantage of us, or making us look bad, but what they didn’t realize was that also put us more at risk for pissing them off. The Norks were playing chicken with their weapons—leaving parts of the world to wonder if they were one button away from a skin-melting death. China was talking out both sides of their mouth, refusing to commit to one side or the other. Russia was playing dumb about interfering with the election and their capabilities to hack our systems. If they’d done it once, they could do it again, this time with more dire consequences.

But had they? Had someone else? Is that what this was?

She’d be glad to get back home where she could discuss and debate her father and uncles on politics and what might really be happening. Her stepmom, Olivia, wouldn’t discuss the president or anything political. She lived in a world of unicorns and rainbows. But her Aunt Gabby was always good for bouncing things off of, or having a calm and intelligent debate with.

Her breath was wasted on Becky and the guys down the hall. They were blithering idiots.

She was better on her own.

But without someone who knew how to read a compass, she realized she needed to take the quickest route, one that she knew well frontward and backward.

The interstate.

Home was a little more than an hour away by car, at normal speed.

Graysie grabbed her gun and tucked it into the back of her pants, stowed the ammo in her backpack, waved goodbye to a still-sleeping Becky, and ran down the two flights of stairs to the security guard’s desk.

“I’m leaving.”

The guard looked up, blinking rapidly at Graysie.

She’d interrupted his nap.

He cleared his throat and stood. “The administration said—”

“—I don’t give a rat’s ass what the administration said. I’m nineteen years old. If I don’t need their permission to have a baby, buy a pack of smokes, join the army, or be shipped over to be shot by our enemies overseas, I sure as hell don’t need their permission to go home. To my home, where I’m safe with my father.”

Graysie flipped her long red hair behind her shoulder and stood tall and defiant—or as tall as her five feet five allowed—her lips pursed and her green eyes glaring at the nervous man.

“See here, young lady. It’ll be dark soon. You need to—”

Graysie held up one finger. “No. You need to worry about what’s going on right here under your nose. Upstairs, there’s shit overflowing. There’s parties going on in nearly all the suites. Underage drinking. Illegal drugs. Pills. You need to get the administration to look into that. And what about water? They’ve got three days to find water for all these kids before they reach a stage of dehydration that will need medical attention. If they’re forcing us to stay here and you all aren’t taking care of us, what’s going to happen when our parents do arrive and their kids are sick… or worse? That’s what you and the administration need to be worrying about.”