Kurt Schlichter: People's Republic

Larsen nodded. He called over the PSF senior leaders and gave them their instructions. Their forces began to surround the building. Next, they would go in and retake it. And woe to whomever had not yet escaped with his lucre.

Larsen next directed the drivers of the SUVs to the gas pumps in back of the station to top off. Then he proceeded to contact the techs at headquarters about transferring the tracking program to his tablet, and to his tablet alone.

Early Friday morning on old Interstate 15, the traffic was sparse. There were a few cars roaring out to Las Vegas on spontaneous trips, the kind only those wielding Privilege Levels of 7 and up could plausibly explain at the frequent checkpoints. By Barstow, they had hit four of them, the bored PSF guards scanning their passes and then waving them through to keep heading out across the desert. The stars were subdued and obscured through this part of the journey, since the dozen coal plants that at least intermittently powered Southern California had been located out here in the middle of nowhere. They were out of sight, well off the freeway off in the desert, the better to avoid raising uncomfortable questions about why the government was essentially eliminating private vehicles from the non-elite citizenry in the name of climate sanity while it was also pouring many tons of carbon into the air every hour of every day.

They had switched seats after taking a rest break in the abandoned town of Victorville. Turnbull had pulled the Explorer off the road and behind an old, abandoned fast food place.

“See,” he said to Junior, pointing out the two untrimmed palm trees growing at a weird angle that created an “X.” “This was an In-N-Out. Now I’m going to go take a leak. See if that spigot still works. We need some water.”

They continued down the freeway, having filled several discarded plastic bottles they found lying about, with Abraham holding a flashlight from the front passenger seat while Amanda tried to dig the buckshot pellets out of Junior’s leg with the forceps from the medical kit.

“How about a pain pill?” Junior hissed through clenched teeth.

“Nope, need you fresh. Have a Motrin. And give me one. Damn rib hurts like a motherfucker,” said Turnbull. “So does my hip. Thanks, Amanda.”

Outside Barstow, they passed a broken down sign for Fort Irwin Road.

“Ugh,” said Turnbull. “If the old US Army had a rectum, Irwin would be it. It’s all gone now since the blues decided they didn’t need a real army.”

“Shit,” Junior said, wincing as Amanda bandaged his leg.

“You were always such a baby,” she replied.

“Will you be able to walk?” Turnbull asked.

“I think so, as long as it’s not too far.”

“Yeah, well I’m driving this to as close to Utah as we can get, off road if necessary.”

“What, we’re going back the same way we came?” asked Junior. “We don’t do that.”

“I know. Amanda’s boyfriend Rios-Parkinson may be a hack, but he probably has one or two real soldiers working for him, and they are going to tell him that there is no way we will ever go back out the way we came in.”

“Do they know we’re coming?”

“Nope. But once we cross the line, Meachum will pick us up and vector in some of his guys to check us out and they’ll bring us in. Now all we gotta do is get there.”

They got through the Vegas checkpoint without a problem shortly before 4:00 a.m. and drove through the heart of the city on the freeway. The Strip was so bright it cast shadows in the desert. The rest of the town was a black hole; the power went off overnight, and the masses were left to swelter while the elite partied in icy comfort.

About 20 miles out of town, they ran into stopped traffic that extended over a ridge to their front. The high flyers had all turned off in Las Vegas. This was mostly trucks and locals. And the line of vehicles was simply not moving.

“I’m going forward to see what’s up.” Turnbull tossed Amanda the remote. “I’ll be ten minutes, tops.” He got out and crossed over the median and the westbound lane into the dark of the desert.

He moved out about 100 yards from the freeway and climbed up the ridge parallel to it. He did not stop at the top of the ridge, but instead crawled over top, sliding down a few yards to the military crest where he would not be silhouetted against the sky on the ridge line. The line of vehicles descended down the hill maybe a quarter mile and stopped at a roadblock of four vehicles with blue and red light bars, probably PSF.

But the PSF officers were not doing anything. Turnbull watched them through the binos. They were just standing there, walking around their vehicles, not checking documents, not interacting with the people they had halted, nothing. The westbound lane was open; every once in a while a truck passed through going toward Vegas. But eastbound was completely stalled – and there was no indication anyone was in any hurry to get it restarted.

What the hell?

It was maybe an hour and a half until dawn. He took his binos and turned them toward the desert. There was a little bit of moonlight, maybe enough, he decided.

Fifteen minutes later he was back at the Explorer.

“What is it?” Amanda asked from the driver’s seat.

“It’s a problem. Get in the passenger seat.” Turnbull said, going to the back of the vehicle and opening the rear hatch. Inside, he opened the access panels to the rear lights and pulled the bulbs out of their sockets, then shut the hatch again. Behind him, a trucker watched him curiously from his seat above the road. Turnbull gave him the stink eye, and the driver averted his gaze. He didn’t see anything. This was none of his business.

Back in the driver’s seat, Turnbull killed the headlights, cranked the ignition, and engaged the four wheel drive, then pulled a hard left over the shoulder and into the median and across the westbound lane and then into the desert. The brown Explorer soon disappeared from view. With the bulbs gone, he was able to brake without flashing his red lights. Slowly, but faster as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he drove north around the far spur of the ridge.

“The freeway turns north. If we go east here maybe five miles, we hit it again way past the roadblock,” Junior said, squinting at the map by the light of a small pocket flashlight with a red lens.

They passed the roadblock lying a mile to their south; there was no reaction as they bypassed it. No one was looking out into the desert. Turnbull pressed on, concerned that they would be making the crossing well-past dawn. And the fuel indicator was dropping much faster than he had hoped.

The SUV convoy roared through Las Vegas at 80 miles per hour. They were making up lost time. Larsen convinced Rios-Parkinson to refuel in Baker to ensure they had gas for the entire conceivable route. The station had been closed and two of the ten PBI tactical team members had had to kick in the door of the gas station’s proprietor’s trailer to convince him to fuel the vehicles.

The tracker now indicated that their quarry had left the freeway.

“This can’t be right,” Larsen said, looking at the screen on his tablet. “They were sitting there on the road for 20 minutes a mile south of the roadblock and now it’s showing them north of the freeway, off-road, heading east.”

“They are bypassing the block,” Rios-Parkinson said. He had ordered the PSF to seal I-15 outside of town to the east, where no one who mattered would ever be at this hour. Then the tactical team could easily take them trapped in traffic and no one would ever know what happened. A few civilians might get killed in the crossfire, but that was acceptable. Except these bastards were refusing to cooperate – again.