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“That the lot?” Homeland Agent Ben Maravich wiped sweat from his forehead with the tail of his black T-shirt. Fucking Texas. He hated fucking Texas at any time of the year as the temperature always seemed one degree warmer than hell. Hated Texas the state and Texas the attitude. Everything here, from the people to the lizards to the plant life, hated the federal government and its humble servants like Benny Maravich and his partner Angel Ramirez. Everything in Texas wanted to kill you or suck your blood, or both.
“That’s all,” the stubby Ramirez confirmed. “I’m going to call it in.”
Six men, four women, and eight scruffy kids lined the fence in the front yard of the rural homestead in the Ass-end of Nowhere, sixty miles south of Fort Worth. Kneeling in the dirt, wrists plasti-cuffed behind their backs, they didn’t look like much now. Certainly not the terrorists their activities revealed them to be.
Scrawny chickens head-bobbed across the yard, clucking and restless at the multiple vehicles and dozen team members of the Terrorist Interdiction Taskforce (and if Maravich could ever find the bureaucrat who came up with that name, he’d gladly turn the prick into walking dead meat), lounging in whatever shade they could find. They’d shot the dogs on the way in, and flies circled the blackened, glistening blood matting the dead mutts’ fur.
A pencil-thin cat slunk under the house and disappeared before Maravich could draw and fire. He hated cats worse than Texans.
The patriarch of this little clan of anti-government libertines twisted his head around and fixed Maravich with a green-eyed glare of distilled bile. “You got no right to do this. We ain’t did nothin’ to you people.”
“Learn English, ya mook,” Maravich sneered. “Didn’t they teach you nothing in school? And, yeah, you did do something. See that?” He pointed to a stack of illegally modified AR-15s. “And we got emails and voice recordings of you preaching sedition: overthrow of the U.S. government.”
“Overthrow?” the man scoffed. “Overthrow? All we wanted was to be left alone. The only thing I preached was to get out from under Uncle Sam.”
“That’s not what you said when the farm subsidies payouts rolled around. I noticed you lined up with your hand out like all the rest of your backwoods motherfuckering buddies.”
“You tell ’em, Benny!” one of the gathered taskforce officers called out. He and his buddies lounged in a circle in the meager shade of a lightning-cleaved oak. Dressed in black TAC gear, the men dripped sweat, spat nicotine-free dipping tobacco, and waved at the flies and mosquitoes dive-bombing them from the air.
“Shut up, Daniel,” the woman next to the green-eyed farmer hissed. “Keep shut, or no tellin’ what these sunsabitches will do.”
“Listen to your woman, Farmer John,” Maravich warned. “I’m hot, I’m pissed, and I hate this fucking state and all you people in it. No telling what I’ll do.”
“Understood, sir. We’ll make it happen.” Ramirez came back at the end of his call, tapping the connection off.
“So?” Maravich asked with a raised eyebrow.
“The evidence is clear.” Ramirez kept his voice pitched low so only Maravich could hear. “We have a green light for summary judgment, based on Executive Order 22666.”
“Cool.” Maravich eyeballed the oak branches overhanging the yard. He called out to the leader of the TAC agents lounging in its shade. “You think that tree will hold the weight?”
The lieutenant squinted, considering. “Not if we do them all at once. Maybe three or four of the adults, do them first. The kids will go in a batch.”
“Finest kind,” Maravich said. “Get the ropes, boys. It’s piñata time!”
Ever serious, Ramirez frowned. “That’s not funny, Agent Maravich. These people will be relocated to Camp Dakota for reform and cultural alignment.”
“You’re right, amigo. No doubt.” Maravich grinned. “But I do so enjoy hearing the rope twang when a Texan drops. It’s music to my ears.” He sighed. “But the bounty’s higher for live bodies. Let’s get ’em loaded, boys!”
***
I STIFLED A SCREAM and only whimpered a little when Chelle applied the ice pack to my head. I’m manly that way. We were back in our palatial apartment, where I reclined on our single piece of living room furniture, an antique (curbside pickup) sofa. The cushions smelled faintly of urine.
“So what’d Dr. Buyavowel say after I mopped the floor with him and his goons?”
Chelle slouched on the floor next to me. Her forehead glistened with sweat. She was the one dying, and here I was, taking my leisure on the only cushiony thing in the living room-slash-dining room-slash-kitchen.
Real manly.
“After they zapped you unconscious—you peed yourself, by the way—”
“Oh. I thought that was the sofa making that smell.”
“—the assistant searched for a hospital with an opening. Everything’s booked up for months.” She choked up, and her voice roughened. “Any minute I could start having seizures, or go into a coma and never wake up again.” She snapped her fingers. “Dead. Just like that.”
“Don’t worry, Chelle.” I patted her shoulder. “Tomorrow morning I’ll get up early, go down there and put my foot down. We’ll find a way through the red tape and get you cured.”
“Sure,” she said, without a shred of emotion. “They gave me a pamphlet. I can opt to become a Revivant before I die, which will mean I can continue to be a productive member of society.” Chelle grunted with the effort of getting off the floor and wobbled toward the bathroom. “I need to throw up now.”
I watched her backside and tried to feel the spark that view once inspired. It didn’t even flicker. We’d had something once, but it was the classic story of high school boy meets high school girl, knocks her up, they move in together, she miscarries and they live together long enough to hate each other. Or at least to not love each other the way they once did. Funny how life jerks your chain. Before the doctor’s visit, I’d been planning to break up with Chelle and give us both a chance to move on, but dumping her now would be a really shitty thing to do.
The door thunked closed, and minutes later the sound of muffled sobbing trickled through the apartment.
I stayed on the sofa and pretended I couldn’t hear.