NIGHTMARE

 

 

Military troops are occupying American cities.  Masked thugs are abducting American residents and executing mass deportations without trial.  Thousands of people deported.  Millions more in danger.  Families shattered, lives destroyed.  The president of the United States is making a mockery of the rule of law.  Any law enforcement official who prosecutes him or refuses to prosecute his political enemies is either discharged or prosecuted.  The president is launching murderous military attacks without a declaration of war against people in retreat in international waters and is now quite possibly preparing to invade a neighboring country.  He cuts off federal funding to any institution that won’t allow him to dictate to them who to hire, what books to display, what to teach or what thoughts they can voice.

Did I wake up in Nazi Germany this morning?  Is this a nightmare?

No, it’s quite real.  Though it’s certainly not the United States of America any of us remember.  It’s not the America symbolized by Lady Liberty with her torch a shining beacon of hope to the world’s downtrodden saying “Send me your tired and poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

No.  It’s an America based on fear.  On hate.  On exclusion.  On lies.  On selfishness and greed.  An America based on autocracy and bigotry.  An America our chosen leader is trying to racially purify and indoctrinate to his extremist right-wing ideology.  What we as Americans always assumed was impossible is happening before our eyes.  The foundations of fascism are being laid on American soil.

How far will this go?  Congress won’t stop it.  Congress is controlled politically by the president.  The courts are the only remaining firewall against the president’s autocracy.  Judges are slowing the president’s illegal deportations and other acts, but how much longer?  The president is advancing his extremist agenda through projecting his fantasy of national disaster.  First, city by city.  Later…state by state?  Maybe, he’ll declare a national state of emergency, declare martial law and have all the judges shot as traitors?  Those who won’t tow the line, as some judges under Hitler did.  If our president can kill people at sea, miles from American shores by accusing them of being drug dealers…why not simply slaughter the millions of deported immigrants under the same pretext?  For that matter, why not nuke their home nations?  Why not genocide against entire races?  The Supreme Court has ruled the president cannot be prosecuted for any official act.  What then stands between us and absolute tyranny?

This story presents one answer.

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PATRIOT’S CALL

Andy Callahan lifted his helmet, wiping sweat from his brow in the hot sun.  Columns of black smoke rose in the distance over the shattered L.A. skyline, where the loyalist bombers had struck, after the California National Guard had risen in revolt.  Andy shook his head, trying to shake from his mind the image of dead bodies strewn through the rubble.  All his buddies… He trembled, tears coming to his eyes.

“Hey, Andy, snap out of it,” Joey Burke whispered urgently, shaking his shoulder.  “You know what they do to guys they see with tears in their eyes, don’tcha?  I’ve seen them torture guys for less.  Shoot ‘em, even.  Pull yourself together, will ya?  I can’t pull you out of every scrape, y’now.”

Andy took a deep breath, patting Joey’s shoulder.  “Thanks, pal,” he whispered.  He sighed.  He’d have been dead a long time ago, if not for Joey, he thought.  When those damn Cally National Guard traitors had ambushed his battalion, he was sure he was a goner.  But, Joey had his back.  Joe had risked his life to warn him.  And, he’d put himself in the line of fire to do it.  Not a lot of guys would’ve done that.

“Don’t sweat it,” Joey said, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to Andy.  “We’re off combat duty, at least until the Callies bring up reinforcements from Oregon or Illinois, or wherever.  ‘Till then, we’ve got it soft.  Garbage disposal.  Not pretty, but damned easy.  If you can get used to the stench.”  He chuckled.

Andy took a drag and smiled.

“Move it!” the sergeant shouted.  “We ‘aint got all day!  Double time!”  Andy poured it on, his pack heavy as he and the rest of the squad jogged into what looked like a large warehouse.  “Fall in!” the sarge shouted as the squad formed up.

Andy looked around.  Masked guys in black armor were herding deportees.  The new crack purification squads he’d heard about.  The ones we were supposed to protect, he thought bitterly.  Screw it.  We do all the work and most of the dying.  Those elite bastards in black got the easy jobs and drew the higher pay.  But, what the hell were they doing, he wondered.  They were stripping down the deportees…Hispanics and blacks mostly…men, women, children…hell, babies even…and herding them into some kind of makeshift cells or something.  “What the hell are they doing?” he whispered to Joey.

“Their jobs,” Joey whispered back.  “And, keep your voice down!  The sarge don’t like questions!”

Andy looked at the roofs of the cells…if that’s what they were.  There were big, black hoses being fed into them through vents.  His eyes traced those hoses into big pumping systems.  He looked at those machines.  Miserably primitive and improvised, they chugged along, making a gawdawful racket.  Just like jeep engines, only bigger, he thought.  His nose twitched.  He smelled it.  Clouds of the stinking gas wafting across the renovated warehouse.  He recognized it.  Carbon Monoxide.  He looked at those hoses again.  And, at the people being pushed inside.  Dear God.  No, it couldn’t be.  He’d assumed those stories were just separatist propaganda.  But… “Joey,” he whispered, his mouth dry.  “Are they pumping CO2 into…”

“Shut up!” Joey spluttered through clenched teeth.  “Are you trying to get yourself shot?”

“Left face and forward march!” the sergeant shouted.  Andy and Joey snapped to and marched alongside the other guys, past the cells.  “Halt!  Time to take out the trash, people.  Move it!”

Andy choked as they opened the hatch, his face wrinkling with the stench of CO2.  Then, he saw it.  The bodies.  Hauled out in one great mound on rollers.  His stomach turned inside out as he doubled over and vomited.

“Oh, man…” Joey whispered as he pulled away.

“S’matter, Callahan?” the sarge jeered at him.  “Can’t stomach it?  Maybe you’d rather be on the front lines in New York or Chicago, huh?  Pull yourself together, faggot!  Haul that trash to the trucks, pronto!”

Andy’s head was spinning, his breath labored.  “That’s f**king murder!” he finally choked out.

“That’s treason, you little prick!” the sarge shouted, his eyes flaring.  “Those were criminals, s**t-for-brains!  Drug dealers!  The worst of the worst!”

“There’s babies in there!” Andy shouted, his blood turning to fire.

“Those little s***s turn mule the minute they start walkin’, stupid!  Besides, how many more can this country take, huh?  Since the fires and floods, they’re pourin’ in here by the millions.  Wise up!  Don’t you listen to the President?  It’s them or us!”

“Murderer,” Andy sobbed, clenching his teeth, tears streaming down his face.

The sarge spat in contempt.  “You make me sick!  Consider yourself on report, Callahan!  They’ll probably send you to the camps with the other queers and fairies!  The rest of you…haul that trash to the trucks now!  They gotta make the run to the incinerators and come back in time for the next load.”

Next load?  Andy looked up, seeing the black shirts stripping down the next group of deportees.  His heart pounded, blood racing to this brain.  A roar rose in his gut and exploded through his lungs as he lunged, rifle-butting the sergeant in his fat gut and hammering him across his skull.  “No!” he roared, opening fire and killing the black shirts.

“Andy, stop!” Joe shouted.  “They’ll kill you!” 

Andy’s eyes were tearing as he yelled for the deportees to scatter.  More black shirts showed, firing, killing several of the escapees.  Andy roared as he opened up, killing as many black shirts as he could.

“Kill him, you bastards!” the corporal screamed, drawing his side arm.

Andy shot the corporal.  His eyes locked with Joey’s as Joe trained a bead on him with his rifle.  Andy didn’t see Joey’s eyes as he fired.  Only the eyes of those little kids lying dead in that damned mound.  He felt nothing as Joe fell dead.  He felt nothing as a dozen assault rifles trained on him.  He thought of his mother…the look in her eyes the day his draft notice came in.  He remembered the empty look in his dad’s eyes the day they came and took him away for being too black-friendly.  Andy closed his eyes…

Gunfire surrounded him.  He opened his eyes.  The other guys in his squad lay dead around him.  Surrounding them were California National Guardsmen, all in gas masks, their rifle muzzles smoking.  Andy was numb as a Cally sergeant approached him.  The sergeant removed the gas mask.  Andy gasped as he saw the sarge was a young woman.  Brown-skinned, dark-eyed.  Hispanic, by the look of her.  Her nametag read Garcia.

Andy offered her his rifle, butt first.  “I offer to defect to the Free America Alliance,” he said, in a dry, clenched throat.  The words came so easily.  So naturally.  Words he never thought he’d say.

Garcia raised her fist in the revolutionary salute.  Andy returned the gesture.

For you, Dad.