THE STORY HAS EVOLVED A LOT SINCE THIS DRAFT.
Explosions shake the earth beneath me. Dirt around my face trembles. I'm around two miles out from the frontline, where a small cluster of hills provides the safest cover I could find. The constant barrage of missiles blows so much dirt and smoke into the smoggy mid-day that from horizon to horizon, the sky is the color of bruises. The frontline looks like the fist of God itself has smashed through, sending soldiers, tanks, and trucks flying into a malaise of black smoke and raging fires. They have lost. I knew they would days ago--so did most of them.
A soldier gets out of a burning tank, bleeding heavily from under his helmet, disoriented as the sunlight hits his eyes. I zoom from an horizon to horizon shot, fields of debris from hell, down onto one terrified, human face. His expression is desperate as he hesitantly waves a piece of his t‑shirt tied what looks like to a wrench. ' He has heard my reports about what comes next, and heard Koch's News sugar‑coated, lying response. This morning at chow that soldier would have told you Koch News was all lies. As he drops to his knees and raises his pathetic flag he is praying otherwise.
The Ellison soldier grabs the kneeling kid by the co llar, takes out a laser knife, slices through the arteries in his throat and begins carving. The kid struggles as his head is sawed off. The soldier chops him into piece, tosses the gross viscera into a blood soaked, canvas bag and begins slowly dragging it toward a truck half‑filled.
Tanks aim machine guns at the survivors, giving them zero chance of fighting once they leave shelter. The move itself is asking for mercy where I know all too fucking well there is none. I can barely watch and I am practiced. I want these holo images to drive the same anger into my viewers that this does me... destroy the lies they hear. After 20 years plus reporting, the famous Juan Rivera sure as hell knows better though. I report nightmares so people have more nightmares, not necessarily because anyone was going to do anything about it.
They look so young now, as they crawl out of trucks, tanks, left with no choice except leaving the sanctuary of their burning vehicles. Some waving those pathetic white flags — which now seem like baby blankets. All get down on the ground, on their knees. After forcing the last soldiers out, Ellison's soldiers have them put on zip ties, hands behind their backs. I know what is happening next and so do a lot of them.
For almost a week I have been filming variations of the slaughter as the battline held, fell back, was won, held . . . I was surprised the first time one surrendered, after living with them, hearing how much they hated Ellison's civil war.
Ruby talks into my ear: my AI half‑track/truck is set as a cranky, elderly, misanthropic, southern woman’s voice; left over from the days when I had an agent and was a budding Celeb and he wanted me to have a sidekick; over the years she turned into a beast who could hit 390 inside six seconds while 'firing missiles in four directions at once and bullets to high heaven itself,' as she liked to tell gullible recruits. “A Union spy has approached. Evidently you are in danger, or he would be. That is all he will tell me.”
“Get him up here.” I pack up my camp. Carefully fold the weather proof tarp I have had wrapped around me and shove it in with a filthy change of clothes, an extra holo and . . . I shake the bag and hear the reassuring rattle of my pills. Plenty. I'm ready to go.
“Elias. Nice to meet you both.” He says as Ruby lets him inside and straps him in.
I turn on a camera in Ruby and check out our spy. He is nervously tapping a finger on his thigh and that is something trained spies do not do -- give away their 'poker face.' Period. I zoom in on his eyes and I know the look from the years on the front. Something happened to this man, something too big to fix the crack that I would have once been curious about---now I did not want to know.. something hard and cold inside of me cracks, just enough for a flash of real, unadulterated fear to flash through the drugs and misanthropic facade. Whatever he was afraid of, I was in the middle of the same shit.
"They need you at Thiel prison. That is where the soldiers are regrouping."
“Why bring me in?”
“We have been waiting until we made his move north. For the last few years, I was with Koch... I have holos...” He speaks so hesitantly, I have to take into account how young he is. Ill‑suited for his job.
“... proving Koch is a pervert, a pedo. He has plans that... you'll see.”
“They said so..”
“They wouldn't listen to the women, of course.”
“Never did, never do.”
“Before their release, we need a Celeb, so they are not buried, or laughed off. Juan Rivera, Celeb.”
Ruby pulls up out of the fog. Her modified half‑track/truck combo is covered in electrified cameo nets, and various assundries I've gathered over the years. Her open door looks as inviting as all heaven. Home.
My belts snap on and Ruby rumbles down the hill and out toward the open road. “How is Maya?”
“Good, I guess. I've only seen her a few times.” He noticed the tapping before I got in and stopped.
“Ruby, start drafting the video for tonight’s show. Only refer to the tapes, put an adult identifier on the holo, requiring three adults present to view. Cover all the private parts, on all the holos. I want them to fucking be afraid of this…”
I look out at the passing trees of a once forest, burnt almost to the ground in 2079, the new growth was sick, where there was any.
“Hide the faces of the children,” Elias adds in a soft voice that says too much. He mostly stares out the window as we talk, or closes his eyes, rubs his temples
“Add that, thanks. I don't know what happened, but...”
“I grew up watching you. Ruby was my grandmother. How did you find her, or build her or...”
“How old are you”
“26.”
“Christ. Ruby, show the man what you can do.”
Outside our window becomes an instant complete blur, the inertia pushes us gently back into the gravity compensating leather; usual the banging and clanking of Ruby's loose parts and all the shit I have tucked under her cameo goes from her usual roar into a beastial scream in the night. I talk to Elias now as a fan, though I notice his finger is tapping again. Whatever is going on in his head wants the moment. I try to take it with the story. “A physics professor once told me, 'Only trust what you can measure with a ruler.' So, I had Ruby programmed to act on pure physics, and scoff at anything else. The voice... to be honest... got me so many claps, she is probably why I became a Celeb. Though it was easier back then, before Koch owned all the media. There was a time I had an agent, and... it was different world, just forty years ago. I had comic relief, thinking people would... it is not appropriate, really, anymore.”
“Koch is planning on taking out Sanctuary 6. There will be no one except a few pirates then, and no one knows who to trust now... even about themselves.”
“Okay. Tell me what I can do?”
“I’ll take you to Thiel Prison, so you can counter the propaganda shit show that Koch is pumping out.... You're one of the last stars we have, the only one down here. They only seem to trust fucking lying Celebs, you and especially Ruby, not included of course.” His voice becomes eerily flat. “I spent the last five years down getting these holos. You put them out and get them believed."
"Playo..."
“No” Elias and Ruby interrupt me almost simultaneously.
“All right. You gave the holo's to Ruby?”
“I wanted her help dealing with your reaction.. She monitors your thoughts, so...”
Ruby tries. “Vegetarians used to say they only had to go to a slaughterhouse once to quit eating meat. Well, let me be the person who went and says don’t go. As most did not.”
“Fine. Thank you. Now, I am going to play this holo.”
Elias looks away from me, I see his eyes reflected in the doors window, closed as he tells me, in a voice flat and non‑judgmental. “You will, you’re too curious, and after a few seconds, you will regret it,” Elias starts talking faster then, has to stop himself from starting to rock back and forth. He is seriously fucked up and I really wonder what the fuck I am getting into but I have fucking seen it all right?
“You're going to want to turn away the second it comes on, listen for five seconds, watch it unredacted, know what the fuck he is... sorry. Get him a puke bag, Ruby." He is furious at me for wanting to turn away, I can sense this and watch as once more his finger starts tapping again.“Sorry. I have orders to get you to . . . watch and come work with us at the prison.”
“I want Koch as bad as you do."
He turns and looks out the window, not disagreeing with me. At first. Then he adds, in that same quiet voice, "Watch the clip and know I filmed that for them, then repeat those words."
As I prepare to turn on the holo, Elias unconsciously closes his eyes and puts his fingers in ears, curls away from the holo like a child. I quit thinking of this guy as a spy. He is a broken kid playing spy
“Play. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thous...” A famous middle-aged actor speaking in a wise, whisky smooth voice, selLs lives into horrendous slavery as if they were luxury yachts,complete with pictures. I am puking before I realize the acrid taste is pouring out my mouth. Elias is ready with the bag held to my face… At first my hands shake too much to take it from him. ‘ Four seconds. Four Seconds I had to fight to stay trapped in an eternal montage of sadistic child rape.
2
Ruby leaves a cloud of dust behind us on the empty road. Around us are burnt trees, long dead, stubbornly still standing, their branches scratching at the smoggy sky. We travel a few hundred miles in silence, then begin to see people headed toward the prison -- as soon as they see the camo-covered beast coming they start waving, trying to get us to pull over and give them a ride. There are only a few at first, then more and more as we near the prison. War refugees. Promised food for days by 6 holos if they gathered at the prison. They are beyond carrying any possessions, just the clothes on their backs, unwashed and dusty, too worried about trying to get their next meal --or avoiding becoming someone else's -- to worry about petty shit like dirt. Kind of like me, lately. Four days laying in filth -- I stayed because I didn't want to leave until I knew none of the platoon was meeting back up with me.
"Ruby, start telling these people that we are law enforcement and will run them over if they do not get out of our way. We cannot take riders, and anyone coming near the truck will get an electric shock. Run on repeat." I try not to look too close at anything or anyone anymore. Hard to miss the road scorched black in front of me speaking of the fires of 2079 turning the skies dark, or the death of animals, plants, most life... or the ragged defeat in the posture of the people I pass/or their rugged ability to go on when all they had left was hope itself. When we are forced to slow down enough the windows beside us are no longer blurs, I start to see the dead, and much worse, the given up on, by someone else or themselves, laying here and there by the road preparing to join the rotting corpses.
I had heard enough of those stories to fill a holo library.
The announcement and a flashing blue light clears the road for a few minutes, while the refugees are few enough for such niceties, though the closer we get to the rising prison walls, the denser the crowds, the slower our progress. I stop about 20 yards out from the crowd trying to cram into the prison gates as guards direct them. 
As soon as I stop, Elias is wide awake. As I now suspect he has been for who knows how long?
"Ruby, open my window, please." He says in his preternaturally calm voice. Before I can think of doing shit Elias leaps out of the window and disappears in the crowd. "What the fuck?'
Ruby responds through the Ai sounding amused. 'Sherlock Not. Look in the yard, kiddo, before you start I banging on the dashboard.'
Around 15 or so young Black men, prison‑buff, well groomed and wearing clean clothes, are working their way smoothly through the crowd toward me. A few make eye contact with me, smile and wave -- like people do when they see a Celeb they have grown up with and think they know, before getting back to the business of moving through the people, flowing like water. They get here like that. Obviously practiced at picking up cars and shit, they hunch down under us and then smooth as hell lift this 2.3‑ton vehicle on their shoulders. Another gang, Mexican, goes out ahead of us and begins to clear a space for them to bring her in. They order the guards around, to get the refugees into the yard so we can get through. This is the last thing I expected. After all the horrors I have tried to walk past in the last week -- after a LOT OF PILLS trying to forget the sound and faces of this last platoon . . . they come rushing at me and I shake my head, come back to the now. There is never time to mourn.
I look around at the men carrying me and those clearing a path. They, like the whole place, are spotless. In a world with a dim sky and black mold everywhere, no showers or clean water usually, the simple luxury of being clean was part of the past. I figured I was driving into Chaos. Not in order. Not after the battlefield. Not after seeing that I will never speak. Not after watching a man tear his teeth into raw, bloody, steaming brown liver like the starving animal he was, right on the battlefield as he slaughtered a soldier. If there is a worst part it was how terrified he looked that someone would see him. His offense would get him shot in the Ellison army. A memory I repressed or the pills blacked out until now.
Try again to take comfort in the sheer order of the prison. Order — a strange, improvised, gang‑built order. The yard was filled with choreographed movements, people with purpose. Supplies were stacked neatly. Outside the prison walls there is extensive work being done. Battle prep from what I can tell, ramparts. Trenches. IED's. They are all white, muscled like the rest. Their tattoo's are Odin related. White supremist. Are they alone because they segregate?
I look back into the prison yard and realize I had no expectations coming into this prison, but clean and organized were not among them. Let alone a gang carrying me to a parking spot.
Maya is standing by where they sit me down. She looks harried. Her black hair disheveled--.what I used to call her 'Einstein hair' in university.
She looks at me with a wry smile, "Wow, aren't you Juan Rivera, the Celeb? You look shorter in person."
"Well, the camera adds a foot.."
“Touche.”
"It only took me twenty years to think of a good response to that.."
Her smile fades, first from her eyes, then her lips. “Koch is already slamming you.”
I don’t react at all and thank God for pills. "Of course he is."
“You’re helping lying deserters,” she continues. “And that your broadcast tonight will be dangerous. He’s putting on a special show — pulling out all the stops. The 40 Celeb's Phenom.”
I groan.
Celeb 40's Phenom — the most vapid, manipulative, emotionally engineered spectacle Koch had ever created. A nonstop parade of Celebs crying, confessing, forgiving, begging, praying, performing morality like it was a talent show.
“He’s trying to spare people from the pain you’re bringing,” Maya said. “That’s the line. Juan is a bummer, has been the tag line by Kosmo all day, promoting the show.”
I laugh bitterly and snide. “Of course, he fucking is.”
She nods.
“They know we're going to try to regroup here. Then take whoever we can to Chicago. They are ready to close their doors."
I frowned. Looking around the yard, how organized they are, with at least four gangs I can tell now. The blacks work with two others, the Mexicans and Native Americans. They must hate each other but I know they work together behind bars to deal drugs, AI's, keep the peace.
“Chicago?”
“The last public sanctuary,” she said. “The only one Koch, or the environment, hasn’t taken. His soldiers are starving. They want the food here. Supplies. They want to use... us, and our supplies, to get Sanctuary 6's working farms. They are not using slaves, so they don't have the problems Koch does. We have reports of people sacrificing themselves to stop his progress on his shelters. It's that bad. Now with what Elias went through, brought back... Lord. The world will walk past this. We just need enough people to get to Chicago.”
I looked around the yard — at the gangs, at the refugees, at the guards taking orders from men most people dismissed as criminals. They are more organized than the latest recruits to the union, who had seemed like cannon fodder. I wonder how many of them will listen when I ask them to regroup here?
“We can get north, with the last of the war refugees." Maya goes on, "Once Chicago shuts the doors on the shelter, they are shut. Sanctuary 6, complete. Unless Koch can talk his way in. That is where you come in. Pen mightier than the sword and all that. A counsel would have to vote him in."
I motion around at the bee-hive like activity, as the guards process the refugees, the gangs police a troublemaker silently, with no fuss. Just take him to a room off to the side. "Maya, I want to get this. For tonight. "
"Well, that's what we need you for, to prove these guys are not cannibals."
"He's saying they ... are.... the cannibals?"
"Psy-op's 101. School Yard Bully. 'I'm not, but you are." It works on people who want to believe. They want Ellison's army to be coming to save them. They believe the myth."
"Maya leads me through a CLEAN smelling prison. The windows are even clean. Smelling all the variations of cleaning products contrasts strongly with my stench. Of course, Maya is perhaps the only person on the entire damn planet I would even think to care about that shit.
The people we pass who recognize me say hello and I nod. Maya is amused by my act. I needed my
credibility in the beginning of my career, and part of that was not being an asshole to people. I always
hated people who used whatever bit of power they had to look down on someone else. Despite the
fame, inside I was never anyone and never would be, really. I WAS the kid who wanted to save the world . . . who learned the generations before me had already killed the planet. Forcing us to go underground for our last few years of life on the planet. Our next phase... then I became the guy who was going to expose injustice, in industry and the government, and that worked when we had a
government that could enforce laws. Before the multi-trillionaires decided fiefdoms were more to their
liking, and Ellison's private army grew too strong for the domestic forces to fight.
"I could give a shit, Maya. I watched the Holos... don't."
"I've been doing this long enough that I know enough, everything else is need to know.."
"Yeah, well, I spread nightmares. That is supposed to make them go away, for reasons that make no sense right now?"
"We are going to stay ahead of this. First show Koch, then you respond. I need you to win these people over. All of them. They're all your fans. They won't admit it. Well, maybe Theo. Just be ready, and know. For now, the Panthers and the Mongrels are protecting you, but no one wants you harmed, so... you are the safest person in the prison. For now. Fuck up in there, they might shiv you."
"My old agent used to try to motivate me, too. She never tried the Shiv thing, but... it works."
Maya has had the gangs gathered into the gym, along with most of the refugees, minus the children. The place is packed wall to wall, bodies pressed together. I walk in and it hits me like a body slam--swamp stench; after the clean smell I am a little shocked that I smell like them. The refugees have the usual reaction to a celeb, the glassy eyed look I never quite understood, as if they were discovering for the first time that I was real? They loved to be near me because of the face showing up on their holo, the same as the painted celebs Koch used to fuel his destruction and death. Nothing to be proud of. One woman wolf‑whistles. Most of the others just stare with that glassy, worshipful look I’ve come to hate — the look people get when they think fame means divinity. People always think I can get things done that... I wish I could. I hear a few of them mention my height. They always expect me to be six foot seven or something.
I know how others use their fame, and I hate the results worse than I could ever show. My instincts tell me to hate all humans for the shit I’ve seen, but something flips inside me and I slip into the role they expect — the hipster reporter in dark sunglasses and leather, driving the mythic beast Ruby, the cranky old woman who somehow has more fans than I ever did -- bless her cold, cold heart. I fought Sanct.6 on the addition, added when I was offered my first national show. I threatened to quit and they were ready to replace me with someone who would work with an AI Partner.
Maya raises her voice. “This is Juan Rivera." The gang leaders make hand signs and the gymnasium goes silent, other than a few people, who notice the silence after a moment and shut up too. "He has holos he’s going to release tonight, and Koch doesn’t want people to believe them. So, you’re going to see this tonight during Primetime Kosmo Live. Hold off your opinions until you see both broadcasts. Juan is responding right after this.”
The holos around the gym flicker on, showing everything in a perfect 90‑degree panorama.
Bright purple lights explode across the gym, pulsing in hypnotic strobes that shrink into a single dot and vanish. Music blasts — the number one hit of the afternoon. Kosmic Kosmo bursts onto the stage in a neon green suit, his candy‑apple red pompadour bouncing like it’s alive. He seems to be in the room, the 90 degrees of the holo giving the usual illusion of viewers being right in the audience of the show, like they could be touched.
“WE ALREADY KNOW THE STORY! WE ALREADY KNOW THE STORY! WE ALREADY KNOW THE STORY!”The audience chants it with him. A CLAP SIGN flashes overhead: CLAP NOW — YOU GET POINTS! People clap madly, hoping someone at home will clap while they’re on screen, raising their Celeb status. Their holos blink green: POINTS AWARDED.
The audience laughs. My stomach twists. They had laughed last week,too, when they countered my witnesses to the cannibalism with this food poisoning shit.
Kosmic spins, kicks, thrusts, freezes mid‑pose.
“Folks, folks, folks… apparently a certain someone — a certain Juan someone — thinks he’s BREAKING NEWS. Uhm, that was… gas, Juan.”
Kosmic cups his ear. “Little Red is SCREAMING. He says, ‘Kosmic, baby, we SAW that cannibalism LAST WEEK!’”
He twists his nipples violently.
“CRY ME A RIVER‑IARIA!”
The audience howls. The CLAP SIGN flashes again. More points.
Kosmic struts across the stage. “Juan, sweetheart, darling, my little battlefield blogger… you’re late. You’re SO late. We already covered the whole mayo‑madness thing!”
He winks.
“Bad mayonnaise, folks. BAD. MAYO. NAISE.”
The audience chants: “BAD MAYO! BAD MAYO!”
Kosmic nods solemnly. “Those soldiers weren’t monsters — they were HUNGRY and CONFUSED. Who among us hasn’t eaten someone... errr, I mean something questionable at a picnic?”
The audience roars.
Music softens. Plumage floats in wearing a feathered gown, made to glow like a saint descending from heaven. She smiles warmly.
“Juan… sweetheart… we worry about you.”
The audience “aww”s. The CLAP SIGN flashes: CLAP IF YOU CARE. Holos blink: CARE POINTS AWARDED.
“You’re out there alone, filming terrible things, and we admire your courage. Truly.”
Kosmic wipes fake tears. “He’s BRAVE, Plumage. SO brave. Like a puppy lost in a thunderstorm.”
“But darling… you’re seeing things that aren’t real,” Plumage says. “You’re interpreting chaos as conspiracy.”
She leans toward the camera. “Juan, we already knew about the soldiers. We already explained it. You don’t need to carry this burden alone.”
Music kicks back in. Kosmic shouts, “HIT IT!”
Backup dancers rush in wearing glitter‑covered military uniforms. They pretend to eat giant foam drumsticks, faint from “bad mayo,” and film themselves crying dramatically like me. Kosmic sings:
“🎵 MAYO MADNESS, BABY,
DON’T YOU LOSE YOUR MIND!
JUAN’S OUT THERE FILMING,
THINKS HE’S SAVING MANKIND! 🎵”
The CLAP SIGN pulses: CLAP FOR BONUS POINTS! Holos blink: BONUS AWARDED.
Plumage joins the dance, doing slow, exaggerated crying gestures.
Kosmic shouts, “Juan, honey, you’re not a hero — you’re a HOLO‑HYPE MACHINE!”
The audience explodes.
Music stops. Lights dim. Plumage steps forward, voice soft.
“Juan… listen to me.”
Kosmic holds Little Red like a wounded pet.
“We care about you. We really do.”
“You’re overwhelmed,” Plumage says. “You’re exhausted. You’re seeing patterns that aren’t there.”
“He’s cavorting with spies,” Kosmic says. “He’s talking to shadows.”
“Juan, sweetheart… we want to help you.”
She gestures to a holo graphic: CELEB MENTAL WELLNESS CENTER — FREE FOR JUAN.
The audience gasps.
“Come home,” Plumage says. “Let us take care of you. You don’t have to fight alone. We realize you are surrounded by criminals, and they have probably taken you hostage, or made you their bitch by now. We will save you. Don't worry. We are coming, so no matter what lies you say, or how you get this mistake... this 'mayonnaise mistake'... Oh, God, now I am laughing and crying.”
“Little Red says you’re crying,” Kosmic adds.
The audience laughs.
Plumage looks directly into the camera. “Juan… please. Get help. We’re here for you.”
Kosmic puts a hand on her shoulder. “We love you, buddy.”
The CLAP SIGN flashes: CLAP IF YOU SUPPORT JUAN’S RECOVERY. The audience claps wildly. Holos blink: SUPPORT POINTS AWARDED.
“You’re not alone, Juan,” Plumage says. “We believe in you.”
“Even when you’re wrong,” Kosmic adds.
Fade out.
The gym stays silent. Hundreds of eyes on me. No one cheers. No one jeers. They just wait.
I feel humiliated — not because of the jokes, but because the jokes work. Because truth becomes entertainment faster than I can film it. Because Plumage’s fake compassion cuts deeper than Kosmic’s cruelty. Because the gangs behind me are angry, humiliated.
I send an AImind to Ruby to edit the prison footage and start talking as soon as I can get control of my anger. Sanctuary 6 gives me an intro I do not hear, and Maya tells me I am on. Suddenly I am no longer just in the gym. I feel myself splintering into peoples living rooms, abandoned basements, anarchist camps, prisons, Union areas throughout the north and maybe the west. Standing in a gym filled with supposed bloodthirsty criminals -- who they are going to all notice are clean, just like he did, first thing.
“You saw what Ellison’s soldiers did.” My voice is steady. “I didn’t go looking for anything except the truth. I went looking for cannibalism… and I found something worse.”
I pause.
“I found slavery. AND MUCH WORSE!"
“And now you’re going to see what Koch calls ‘sanctuary.’ You’re going to see what he hides under his shelters. You’re going to see what he advertises to his Celebs.”
I have Ruby load the first Koch holo, faces and genitals blurred out as grotesque perversions of pain and pleasure play out. I leave the demonic voice over for five seconds, then cut it off.
"How can a human being even describe perversions in this manner? Like they are selling luxury yachts.? Let me frame them like they should be. Children. Raised for sex. Raised for torture. Raised for entertainment. Koch — you told the world I’m unstable. You told them I’m crying. You told them I’m late. You told them I’m wrong. But I didn’t find madness. I found your business model.”
I add, “I will only release this holo with three adults on the presets. I wouldn’t watch it if I were you. If you find anyone who likes watching this… kill them. The children's faces will remain marked out, the adults will be shown.”
I switch to footage of the prison — food lines, order, discipline, children eating, no chaos, no cannibalism.
“Koch says the prisoners are eating people. Look at them. Look at the food lines. Look at the order. Look at the discipline.”
I pause.
“The only people eating human beings are Ellison’s soldiers.”
I don’t yell. I don’t rant.
“Kosmic, Plumage — you danced. You sang. You mocked the dead. You pretended to be my friends. You pretended to care. You pretended to offer help.”
I shake my head.
“You don’t want to help me. You want to bury me. Or give me a personality like your own, vapid, insipid selves. I didn’t find a conspiracy,” I say. “I found a supply chain.”
"Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Pedophilia.
Propaganda.
Brainwashing.
This isn’t madness. This is policy.”
I raise my voice — not in anger, but urgency.
“If you can hear me — if you’re retreating from the battlefield, if you’re National Guard, if you’re local militia, if you’re armed, if you’re starving, if you’re scared — come to the prison. We leave for Chicago this week. After we kick Ellison’s ass. Which we will, with your help."
I nod toward the gangs.
“They all think very differently, but when it comes to working together to save their lives, they come together. Everyone is welcome, as you can tell. I always say, 'Friendship will be the last commodity.' If you are hungry, you know a meal is priceless, and whoever feeds you is a saint. They’re feeding people. They’re protecting people. They’re saving people. Some will only protect their own. This is like 6, they don’t care how you think, just how you act”
“They are not eating anyone.”
I look straight into the holo.
“Koch — you want to hospitalize me. You want to erase me. You want to put a compliant personality in my body.”
I smile.
“No. I am going to tell people the truth about your perversions, and Ellison's army. We know you want the last Public Sanctuary. You fucking multi-trillionaires were taxed one tiny fucking bit to get five shelters going. This is the last one we know of... we are going to shut your perverted ass out.”
I lean forward.
“As far as coming to the prison, well... we are ready to kick your ass. So, bring it the fuck on. This is Juan Rivera, wishing all of the good people out there a warm place to sleep, and a full stomach.”. ”
I end the broadcast.
The gym stays silent. Stoic. Concerned. Measuring me again.
3
am outside the war room with Maya, my hands going from pocket to pocket, frantically looking for my pills. She touches my arm to stop me, "Here." She reaches into her purse and pulls out a bottle of the ubiquitous pill.
After chewing up three and taking a few deep breathes, Maya opens the door. Inside are thirty or so men stuffed into a small gray, concrete brick room, with a large folding meeting table and chairs set up in the middle. Every single one is staring at me with looks ranging from openly hostile to amused as hell to meet someone they grew up with and 'loved' in the false celebrity way he had learned his hatred grew of over the years. All four walls are covered in old fashioned chalk boards, with extensive designs, few I understand, though the guist is obvious -- from the prison to Chicago, Sanctuary 6.
The first to speak is Adam, the Panther's leader, "The big Celeb makes his entrance, looking very short." He is standing up and looks twice as tall and wide as I am. "We don't need anyone playing general."
"If it includes understanding any of this," I wave around the room at the maps, "Then no... I'm a journalist."
Next up is the head of Sons of Odin. Maya's quick briefing on the way over was fighting with what I think of as 'horror memories' for my attention and I can't remember anyone's name, though this is one of the things I am known for. "You are a lot smaller in person." He is huge, long braided beard and dread locks.
"The camera adds a foot."
A few smile.
"You did well coming back at Koch. We need a face for this. Not a general. Just a reporter. If they sent you with some spy notions... we have obviously been planning this for awhile."
Maya has gone and taken an empty chair near the back of the room. I notice the East/West/North/South separation of the gangs is in place.
"Sanctuary 6 offered them pardons for helping gather the supplies to get refugees to Chicago."
"We are not going to let some piss ant Celeb come in and dazzle us with your... stardom, whatever Koch uses. Actually, neuro-science and synaptic growth, but no reason to go there now..." The leader of the Diablos sounds like an absent minded professor. He looks like death itself, huge and muscled he is leaning on the table on his left elbow looking down into the table.. His face covered in tattoos; one his left cheek is a vivid, red and black Santa Muerte, depicted as a skeleton with a Scythe. "You are being deployed. Nothing more."
Thank God. I almost say this aloud.
"You really stink." One of the Son's tells me in an amused voice and a few others laugh and make comments, gestures toward holding their noises.
Theo speaks finally, the leader of the Mongrels, a group of everyone who didn't fit in and wanted part of the Native American Sweat lodges -- which they invited the other gangs to join, setting them up to be the peacemakers. "So, using no AI, my name is Theo. Who am I named after?" His voice is amused.
I think for a minute and there is only one that.... "Theo, Van Gogh's brother."
He laughs and reaches up to shake my hand and then notices how dirty it is. I do too. We fist bump.
"You probably thought my name was He Who Eats Bear But?"
They all start laughing at this. When they are done, Maya asks in a voice that trembles ever so slightly of fear, "So, we done here."
I watch the faces of the men go from animated to blank, like conmen do when you bust them and they go from being your best friend to a fight to the death enemy. They all look at each other, a few hand signals are given I don't understand.
Then they are done. They go back to talking as if nothing had happened. Adam stands up and says to me, "Time to hit the showers."
Maya winks at me from the back of the room, mouths, 'See you later.'
Adam leads me down the hall queit, listening to the prison, the voices of children break through and he laughs, "Wow, don't hear that here. Nice. Well, here we are. You're dressing room."
The showers are in a one large open room. Toilets and drains in front, and in back shower heads, tiles and drains. Adam makes a series of hand motion to someone who has been tailing us who I hadn't noticed. "He's going to get you some prison threads, so you fit in-- smell wise. “Clean up, Celeb. We'll have the make-up and hair people ready when you are done. ”
"I'll have champagne an my masseuses' ready, too please,"
"Just part of the accommodations, sir."
The warm water feels like ambrosia flowing over my body. Hot water is a rarity. The prison is one of the last vestiges of a working government; boilers still had parts, and despite the draughts killing the forests around us, water still flowed though a near by river. I thank God for this moment as I feel the luxurious water and look down at the drain and watch the stench and dirt flow away.
Behind me, Adam’s voice echoes down the hallway.
“Juan — remember out there, we’re ‘the’s.' 'The' murderer... 'the' killer... In here, we’re our actions. We might hate each other, but we follow the rules. And you? You’re the one who makes the world see us. You have got to pen mightier than the sword. Most of them wanted to kill you, but I told them, unless you can get us some recruits, we lose. Don't try to use Celeb shit on us."
I step out of the shower, water dripping from my hair, dry off a bit, throw the clothes on and they cling to my damp skin. Adam waits in the hallway, leaning in a shadow against the wall stroking the small beard on his chin, looking off into the distance as he talks. He pushes off the wall and starts walking. I struggle to follow.
I nod, still rubbing water from my eyes. We come to a locked door that Adam opens with a key off a ring on his waist, goes inside and comes back with two plastic bags, gives them to me. "Put that shit in here." My clothes do stink. We walk away from the smell and a cleanliness that feels like Godliness settles in over us, whatever the hell that means?
We turn a corner that is tight, the hallways going from open to tight hallways. Everywhere are the signs of incarceration. Small windows in the Solitary Confinement wing remind me of the stories of the insane being sent into such cells only to get worse, losing themselves in their own world's, never quite to return.
A Mongrel steps aside quickly, eyes down, as we pass. A Panther nods at Adam as he passes, looks at me and says, "You were always my favorite, but Ruby... man, when we got to carry her in... sorry. Sleep well, man." He nods to Adam and something passes between them I miss. He then stations himself near by, under an open gangway of steps, just leans back against the wall silent and still.
We reach the end of the hallway. Adam stops and faces me fully.
“Juan,” he says, “you need to understand why they need you.”
I wait.
“Out there,” he says, “we’re ‘the’s. The killer. The thief. The monster. The convict.”
He gestures around the prison. “In here? We’re men. No labels unless we choose them.”
“But the world won’t follow us,” Adam says. “They won’t trust us. They won’t listen to us.”
He looks me dead in the eyes. “They’ll listen to you.”
He laughs, "Sure you are.”
“Not a general, though,” he says. “You’re a symbol. I am a mother-fucking General, little man,”
"Like I don't know that." We laugh, me hesitantly.
Adam turns away, starts walking again. “One more thing.”
I follow.
“I was a lieutenant,” he says. “I reported a rape. Nothing was done. The woman was broken, but expected to drug up for combat. She did.".
His voice goes flat. “These fuckers get drunk again, taunt me. Tell me they were going to do it again.”
He stops walking.
"We were at the officers bar and I just pulled out my pistol and started firing. Someone stopped it by putting two bullets in my side,” he says. “And now? Back in the army.”
I breathe out slowly. “And I’m the Celeb.” He is trying to impress me. Not be a 'the' after his speech. A man with so much respect, gets around a celeb who has been in their room for years, and they... I would cry if I still did that.
Adam nods once. “The only one who can make the world see us.”
"This is your room. You get the guards rest area. We'll be keep watch of things."
He turns and walks away, leaving me standing in the hallway, hair still dripping water, heart pounding, mind flips through images from throughout the day with the occasional horrors from the past breaking in. So. I am the only Celeb left outside of 6 still alive. They kept saying I was the last one without saying that meant Latoya, Cecelia, Kathy, Pauly and others died or perhaps worse, signed on with Koch and suddenly converted to their conservative religion in public, and perversions in private...
4
The showers are one large room, with toilets and sinks at one end, tiles and shower heads at the other end,. I go in and Adam stays outside, makes a series of hand motion to someone who has been tailing us who I hadn't noticed. "He's going to get you some prison threads, so you fit in-- smell wise. Clean up, Celeb. We'll have the make-up and hair people ready when you are done.”
"I'll have champagne an my masseuses' ready, too please,"
"Just part of the accommodations, sir."
The warm water feels like ambrosia flowing over my body. Hot water is a rarity. The world a wasteland out there, especially where I travelled, toward the trouble with nothing but a holo and a huge killing machine with a voice based on a tv show my agent saw in some ancient holo. The prison is one of the last vestiges of a working government that they were thirty miles into, and losing ground by the moment; boilers still had parts, and despite the draughts killing the forests around us, water still flowed though a near by river. I thank God for this moment as I feel the luxurious water and look down at the drain and watch the stench and dirt flow away.
Behind me, Adam’s voice echoes down the hallway.
“Juan — remember out there, we’re ‘the’s.' 'The' murderer... 'the' killer... In here, we’re our actions. We might hate each other, but we follow the rules. And you? You’re the one who makes the world see us. You have got to pen mightier than the sword. Most of them wanted to kill you, but I told them, unless you can get us some recruits, we lose. Which might be true, actually. Only a fool believes the pen is mightier than the sword. Don't try to use Celeb shit on us."
I step out of the shower, water dripping from my hair, dry off a bit, throw the clothes on and they cling to my damp skin. Adam waits in the hallway, leaning in a shadow against the wall stroking the small beard on his chin, looking off into the distance as he talks. He pushes off the wall and starts walking. I struggle to follow.
We come to a locked door that Adam opens with a key off a ring on his waist, goes inside and comes back with two plastic bags, gives them to me. "Put that shit in here." My clothes do stink. We walk away from the smell and a cleanliness that feels like Godliness settles in over us, whatever the hell that means?
As we pass, a Mongrel steps aside quickly, eyes down. A Panther nods at Adam as he passes, looks at me and says, "You were always my favorite, but Ruby... man, when we got to carry her in... sorry. Sleep well, man." He nods to Adam and something passes between them I miss. He then stations himself near by, under an open gangway of steps, leans back against the wall silent and still.
We reach the end of the hallway. Adam stops and faces me fully.
“Juan,” he says, “you need to understand why they need you.”
I wait.
“Out there,” he says, “we’re ‘the’s. The killer. The thief. The monster. The convict.”
He gestures around the prison. “In here? We’re men. No labels unless we choose them.”
“But the world won’t follow us,” Adam says. “They won’t trust us. They won’t listen to us.”
He looks me dead in the eyes. “They’ll listen to you.”
He laughs, "Sure you are.”
“Not a general, though,” he says. “You’re a symbol. I am a mother-fucking General, little man,”
"Like I don't know that." We laugh and I feel relieved, like maybe I can trust this guy, much as I do. Though I can't reach around far enough to get all the knives out of my back already.
Adam turns away, starts walking again. “Sleep well.” He walks off and three of his officers appear,one holding a clip board.
Leaves me standing in the hallway, hair still dripping water, heart pounding. My mind flips through images from throughout the day with the occasional horrors from the past breaking in. So. I am the only Celeb left outside of 6. They kept saying I was the last one. Without saying that meant Latoya, Cecelia, Kathy and Pauly were dead. Or worse, signed on with Koch and suddenly converted to their conservative religion in public, and perversions in private... Elias said they were coming for me. I could have ended up.
I think this night ends with a pill vacation and then I notice her, coming down the hall, Maya, her eyes soft in a way I haven’t seen since university. He hair the usual disheveled maven crown, slim body moving toward sleek as a cougar. There are no words spoken as she comes into my arms and I am kissing her neck, smelling her hair, hearing her moan.
We step into my room, I push the door closed with my foot. Hear Maya reach back and lock the door. We push down our pants and she lays back on the bed, I touch her smooth thighs as she pulls them wide apart, then her wetness on the tip of my finger.. I slidedeep into her and grind, pull back out, shove in hard again... again.. All the way out, all the way in. Again. Again... Desperation. Fire. Forgetting. Remembering. She goes lunatic as she comes, screams and scratches my back bloody. As her nails rip my flesh, I come hard; seem to shoot everything I am into her, the top of my head to the tips of my toes spews out through my groin into her. For a moment empty of everything, existing as pure pleasure and affection, we are both just animals, sated and panting. We hold each other too tight, painful. Battle sex I call it. Usually between soldiers in the midst of horror, desperately just needing to feel something good. Only kind of sex I can remember having for decades.
She sits on the bed smiling and looking up at me. She doesn’t say anything at first. I don’t either. “You smell tolerable again. Come on,” she says, getting up and putting on her clothes,. “You haven’t really seen this much of my office. Bring your holo.”
We walk through the corridor, past refugees sorting blankets, Panthers carrying crates, Mongrels fixing a broken pipe. The air smells like soap and metal and cooking. The place runs 24/7. From the yard and outside in the yard I can hear big machinery working, moving earth into place for their elaborate plan.
Maya pushes open a set of double doors.
The kitchen gleams.
Stainless steel counters shine like mirrors. Pots hang in perfect rows. The floor is scrubbed so clean it reflects the overhead lights. Prisoners move with the precision of a five‑star restaurant staff. Chopping vegetables with experienced rhythm. A great pot of stew is boiling on three of the stoves.
"They are cooking the perishables, to feed to them now. They will start making pancakes in a few minutes, if you want to come back."
I stop walking.
“This is…” I whisper, "You're home." I feel the warmth of what I just assume she has created here. “It’s beautiful.”
She smiles. “The gang leaders insist. They knew to keep discipline. They plan on getting to Chicago before they close the doors -- against the elements, like they keep saying.”
"They know about this pedo..."
"Yeah."
We move on, down another hallway. The cells are open. Families are inside them now. Blankets hang as curtains. A few home made toys, obviously made by the prisoners, mostly dolls, are clutched by the children.
I stop again. “Where do the prisoners sleep?”
“They gave up their cells.”
“All of them?”
She nods. “Every last one. They like sleeping outside.”
"I would too. Gorgeous night. Breathability has to be a nine but at least it's not that hot. A hundred or so."
We walk into the gym.
Hundreds of children sleep on mats, curled under blankets, breathing softly. The lights are dim. The air is warm. I ask Maya, "Remember that book we read, White Noise? There was a line about a Cathedral of Sleeping Children.
I use Aimind to pull up the quote as she says, "We laughed so hard... that academic world was already gone by our time, but still... I don't remember that line, though it's nice."
"Yeah, this is nice. Here it is I read the quote:'
“Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. It is the closest I can come to God. If there is a secular equivalent of standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows, it would be watching children in their little bedrooms fast asleep...."
Looking out at the children, some laying still, others moving about obviously having nightmares; rolling about, making noises, talking in gibberish. I want to reach into their dreams and save them. I want to save them. Not film them. Not witness them. Save them.
I pull Maya in close and she leans into me. We stay like that for a long time before going back to my room to grab my bag, then head back to her apartment for battle sex until we are exhausted. Then again... until we are really exhausted. I go to sleep now for once feeling warm, safe, and clean... even a bit loved, though I am no idiot. I know this passes.
The sky is a sheet of dark gray Smog presses down hard on you, makes you breathe a little shallow. The rising sun is a small smudge of glowing clouds in the smog. Adam, Maya, Theo, and I are standing on the wall overlooking the battlefield. The brown concrete walkways gives you a view of the entire field of battle.
Below us, the ground around the prison has been built up into a series of ramparts, rising higher than a tank, and then falling. Jagged, improvised, brutal and beautiful: built high enough to get the tank’s machine guns firing into the sky, for the seconds needed for the runs to sanctuary points set up to weather the machine gun fire when the tanks came back down and pointed into the fields. The Sons of Odin built most of them, preferring to be with their own, working day and night, hauling concrete chunks, welding scrap metal, stacking sandbags, shaping the fields around the prison into a series of landmines. They went up. The day before I was in the yard when a seemingly minor conflict came up and his military side came out like a repressed beast.
“You need help, and you don’t take it, why? You want to die here?” Jake tells them, “The more ramparts, the more chance we have of winning this battle. You don’t have enough people to finish, you call on the Diablos.”
The Son who is demanding they finish on their own tells him, half‑joking, half‑serious — too serious for Jake. “We are going to Valhalla. Are you suddenly afraid of dying? We are…” Jake is beside the man before I realize he has crossed the field. He smacks him open‑hand across the face, the ‘crack’ is loud as hell. Silences the yard. Turning around looking at all of his men he tells them, “I . . . . .HAVE NO NEED . . . . FOR CORPSES!.” His voice thunders across the fields, into the quieted yard. The Diablos were helping them within the hour.
In the blackened trees on either side of the road, the National Guard and the gathered soldiers were hidden by camo invisibility equipment blending them into the environment, scramblers for the heat sensors on the drones. Their firepower leading into the prison — ancient artillery pieces dragged out of storage, humvees, and a few shoulder held missiles. Enough, they are thinking. They’ve set up firing positions, dug trenches, placed spotters with drones all over the battlefield. They look tired, underfed, their uniforms loose on their bodies, but their movements showing the determination of hope.
They know Adam is in charge, follow his orders without hesitation. They’re young and were without officers since the front broke and the wealthy officers took off in helicopters for safer ground. I can tell they are happy to have an authority figure. I read once that 80% of people are looking for someone to follow. Not me.
‘Trust no humans,’ is my favorite line from the bible. That and the shortest verse. ‘Jesus wept.’ Shows my complexity, eh?
‘Shut up’
Fine, asshole.
Adam holds a walkie‑talkie in one hand, binoculars in the other. He scans the horizon from left to right. Finally stops dead center out from the prison where the road was, still an open pathway through the surrounding forest.. “They’re coming. Anyone think they’re ready? Time to think again.”
Theo mutters, “May we live to see another day, says Big Chief Who Munches On Bears But.” He might be the only one who laughs at his joke, but everyone seems glad he tried. Maya’s hand finds mine. She squeezes my hand too hard, her nervousness exposed before she loosens her grip.
The first tank appears on the ridge — dark silhouettes appear against the smoggy brown sky. A distant, blurry motion coming slowly at us. Then another. Another and another. Three in the first prong of the attack, just like the deserters predicted..
Adam speaks into the walkie. “Positions. Sons, prepare to charge. Napalm ready. No Valhalla trips today.”
Most of the Odins react with bluster, but a few look up at Adam before talking among themselves as they take their place in a line behind the ramparts, faces painted with ash, tattoos gleaming. They look like warriors from some ancient myth — doomed, ecstatic, hungry for the fight.
Adam looks tired. I doubt he has slept in days. “Attack.”
The Sons wait until the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns momentarily rise too high to fire down on them. Then, for the first time in a hundred years, an infantry unit charges.
They start screaming, hitting their chests, waving the napalm wildly in the air. As the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns are too high to hit a ground attack, they run… at a dead heat, and one makes it to the steel‑reinforced foxhole they built. Another hesitates, then follows. He’s psyched up and drugged and gets his mojo way too late.
I hear Adam behind me whisper under his breath, “Fucking idiots.”
The Son runs through the dirt and garbage walls, weaving through the path they made. The tank comes down and machine gun fire rips across the battlefield, first hitting the dirt and then goes across the lost Son. Blood spurts from a line of bullets slamming into his chest, spinning him around.
“Stay. Hold your positions.”
I hear Jake come through Adam’s walkie‑talkie, head of the Odins. He comes walking up to us on the wall. I straighten up for some reason and he looks at me and automatically says, “At ease.”
He has refused to speak to Adam up until then, except through Maya. “Adam, no matter what a man believes, I judged them in the military by their actions. Right now we are both warriors. We have no color. I am not going to be a slave. To die in battle is our highest honor, and the most foolish part of this damn religion. My men judge me by my actions, too.”
“No fucking way,” Adam says as he steps forward and offers his hand. Jake takes it without hesitation, then pulls him in for a hug. “We die in battle together, we go to Valhalla together.”
Adam breaks off the hug and laughs. “We live together. We will make it to Chicago.”
“Better,” Jake adds, joining in the laughter, showing me how much of his ‘hatred’ toward Adam was part of his act to keep discipline among his men. Divided and conquered. Always works.
The tanks rise on the ramparts again. Adam does not appear to be watching, though he is the first to notice and has the walkie at his lips, sounding nonchalant this time as he sends men to their death.
“Charge.”
Next up they try three, explicitly against Adam’s plan, and they know it.
“Two at a time. Stand down.” They ignore Adam, one taking the time to flip him off.
The first runs fast, covering the maze with the other two Sons on his ass. Too many, too many, too many… I try to remember this is just some fucking racist but it is too late not to care a bit about people who died on our fucking team, or whatever.
They hit the rampart a third time, the machine guns again useless — this is the suicide run.
I watch an Odin’s muscled arm throw the canister of napalm into the dark underside of a tank. Orange fire lights up and spreads across the bottom hatch. The tanks are at their highest point on the gauntlet, useless machine gun fire blasting into the sky. As all three begin their runs back from the burning tanks, they begin the tip back down. The men take off running toward safety, breakneck speed… one is too nervous, keeps looking back. The others pull off ahead of him. The tanks come back down and the Son is not going to make it.
Adam yells, “Stand down.”
Machine gun fire rips across the muscles that once defended him by intimidation alone. A line of four bullets across his abdomen splattering blood and spinning him around before he falls to a knee. The bullets have ripped up his guts so much, they eviscerated him; his intestines fall from his gut. He tries to shove them back in before collapsing, falling face‑forward into the macabre mess.
A tattooed, muscular arm comes out from behind the steel sanctuary, trying to reach him. A bullet shatters his wrist, leaving his hand dangling by a flap of flesh. The sanctuary is fired upon now. They scrunch down, cowering as bullets rip apart the flesh,
Adam, beside us, has been screaming “Stand down” into the walkie and again. An Odin did not listen to a Black man and this one lost his hand, the other his life..
“Jake, you need to issue orders. Jorge, you too. Theo, you need to get on here, too. Everyone needs to know these orders are from all of us. Not just some n——.”
Adam hands Jake the walkie. “How is Jason doing?”
“Jake?”
“Yeah, they got a tourniquet on that?”
“All the leaders are up here. Adam is instigating a plan that we all worked on for many months. I was the one who thought we could finish the yard, not any of you.”
“So when you don’t listen to some n——, you are not listening to me. How many times do I have to say this? In this military, we tell people how to act, not how to think. Next time you get an order from anyone, I do not care if it is a goddamn cell mouse, you better jump. Period..”
Jake lifts the walkie, voice suddenly iron.
“All Sons — stand down. Hold positions. No more charges unless Adam says so.”
The battlefield shifts.
The chaos tightens.
The Odins freeze, then obey.
The tanks, burning from the underside, begin to panic. Hatches slam open. Soldiers spill out, coughing, choking, dropping weapons, stumbling through smoke.
The Panthers move in — not to kill, but to disarm.
The Mongrels herd the soldiers behind cover.
The Diablos drag wounded men — enemy men — out of the fire.
The National Guard sees it.
They stop firing.
The battlefield goes quiet except for the crackle of napalm and the sound of men — enemies — gasping for air.
Adam lowers the walkie.
“That’s it,” he says. “They’re done.”
Jake nods. “We won.”
Theo exhales. “Holy shit.”
Maya squeezes my hand again — not fear this time, but relief.
Below us, the captured soldiers sit in a line, dazed, coughing, terrified.
A Mongrel hands the first one a steaming bowl.
Soup.
Actual soup.
The soldier stares at it like it’s a hallucination.
“You’re feeding us?” he whispers.
Maya calls down, “Eat.”
Another soldier sobs.
A third mutters, “We thought you’d burn us alive.”
Adam walks past them, not unkind, not gentle — just practical.
“Prisoners get fed,” he says. “That’s the rule.”
Jake adds, “Honor.”
Theo shrugs. “Soup’s good.”
I holo it all for posterity..
Mercy, confusion. Humanity. I feel something in my chest loosen — just a little — like a knot that’s been there for years finally giving way.
Not hope.
Not forgiveness.
Just… possibility.
The sky is a flat sheet of gray, the kind of smog that presses down on you, makes you breathe shallow. The sun is a smudge of lighter smog. Adam, Maya, Theo, and I stand on the wall overlooking the battlefield. Below us, the ground around the prison is dirt churned up into a series of ramparts rising and falling — jagged, improvised, brutal and beautiful. The Sons of Odin built most of them, preferring to be with their own, working day and night, hauling concrete chunks, welding scrap metal, stacking sandbags, shaping the fields around the prison into a series of landmines.
A minor conflict comes up while Jake is showing me their efforts. They needed help finishing their job. “The more ramparts, the more chance we have of winning this battle. You don’t have enough people to finish, you call on the Diablos.” The Son who is demanding them finish on their own, tells him, half-joking, half-serious – too serious for Jake. “We are going to Valhalla. Are you suddenly afraid of dying? We are going with, or without you.” Jake is beside the man before I am aware of what the holo is recording. He smacks his open hand across the face; the smack is loud as hell, even over the tanks,. “I have no need for corpses.”
Back in the blackened trees around the road, hidden by cameo and invisibility equipment blending them into the environment, scramblers for the heat sensors on the drones; the National Guard was ready. Their trucks sit on both sides of the road leading to the prison — old Humvees, battered transports, ancient artillery pieces dragged out of storage. They’ve set up firing positions, dug trenches, placed spotters with drones all over the battlefield. They look tired, underfed, determined. They know Adam is in charge here, and they follow his orders without hesitation. They're young and have been without officers since the front broke and the wealthy officers took off in helicopters for safer ground. I can tell they are happy to have an authority figure. I read once that 80% of people are looking for someone to follow. Not me.
Adam holds a walkie‑talkie in one hand, in the other binoculars. He is scanning the horizon from left to right. Finally stops dead center out from the prison and says, “They’re coming,” he says. “Does anyone think they are ready? Time to think again.”
Theo mutters, “May we live to see another day, says Big Chief Who Munches Bear But.” He might be the only one who laughs at his joke but everyone seems glad he tried. I smile. All of us seem reassured he is just acting like himself.
Maya’s hand finds mine. She squeezes once, hard.
The first tank appears on the ridge — a dark shape against the smoggy brown sky. A distant, blurry motion coming slowly at us. Then another. Three more. .
Adam speaks into the walkie. “Positions. Sons, prepare to charge. Napalm and Molotov's ready. left flank, disabling tank in position L-2. Let’s burn some fucking pedo lovers.”
Most of the Odin’s react with bluster but a few are looking up at Adam for a moment before talking among themselves as they take their place, in a line of Odin’s behind the ramparts, faces painted with ash, tattoos gleaming. They look like warriors from some ancient myth — doomed, ecstatic, hungry for the fight.
Adam looks tired. I doubt he has slept in days. " Attack"
The Sons wait until the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns momentarily rise up too high to fire down on them. Then for the first time in a hundred years an infantry charges. They start screaming, and hitting their chests, waving the Napalm wildly in the air. As the tanks hit the ramparts and their machine guns are too high to hit a ground attack, they run... at a dead heat, and one makes it to the steel reinforcement foxhole they have built, another hesitates, then follows, he’s gets his mojo way too late.
I hear Adam behind me whisper under his breath, "Stand Down. Now.” He tells the walkie. To us he whispers, “Fucking idiots."
The Son runs through the dirt and garbage walls, weaving through the path they have made. The tank comes down and machine gun fire rips across the battlefield. Bullets slam across his stomach, the bullets large and frequently fired, he takes God knows how many across his lower stomach. Blood spurts from the line of bullets slamming into his chest, spinning him around.
"Stay. Hold your positions." I hear Jake come through Adam's walkie talkie, head of the Odin's. He comes walking up to us on the wall. I straighten up for some reason and he looks at me and automatically says, "At ease."
He has refused to speak to Adam up until then, except through Maya. "Adam, no matter what a man believes, I judged them in the military by their actions. Right now we are both warriors, we have no color. I am not going to be a slave. To die in battle is our highest honor, and the most foolish part of this damn religion. My men judged me by my actions, too. “
"No fucking way." Adam says as he steps forward and offers his hand. Jake takes it without hesitation, then pulls him in for a hug. “We die in battle together, we go to Valhalla together.”
Adam breaks off the hug and laughs, “We live together, we make it to Chicago.”
“Better,” Jake adds, joining in the laughter, showing me how much of his ‘hatred’ toward Adam was part of his act to keep discipline among his men, divided and conquered. Always works. All of the gang leaders relied on the principle.
The tanks rise on the Ramparts again. Adam does not appear to be watching though he is the first to notice and has the walkie at his lips, sounding nonchalant this time as he sends men to their death, "Charge!"
Next up they try three, explicitly against Adam’s plan, and they knew it. The first runs fast, covering the maze with the other two Son’s on his ass. Too many, too many, too many. I try to remember this is just some fucking racist but it is too late not to care a bit about people who died on our fucking team, or whatever.
They hit the rampart a third time, the, machine guns again useless – this is the suicide run. The tanks are up and as the two run at different tanks, trying to get the napalm burning through the bottom, sending noxious fumes inside, driving the soldiers outside, where they are going to have to fight fully armed, motivated soldiers.
I zoom the holo in on an Odin’s muscled arm as he throws a canister of napalm into the darkened underside of the tank. Orange fire erupts, and spreads across the bottom hatch.. The tanks are at their highest point on the gauntlet, useless machine gun fire blasts into the sky, as they all three begin their runs back from the burning tanks, they begin the trip back down . . . the men take off running back toward safety, break neck speed… one is too nervous, keeps looking back and the others pull off ahead of him. The tanks come back down and the Son is not going to make it.
Adam yells, “Stand down.”
The machine gun rips across the muscles that once defended him by intimidation alone. A line of bullets across his chest splatters blood and spins him around before he falls to his knees. The bullets have eviscerated him, his intestines fall from his gut. He tries to shove them back in before collapsing, falling face forward into the macabre mess.
A tattooed, muscular arm comes out from behind the steel sanctuary, trying to reach him. The aim shifts back and a bullet hits his wrist, shattering the bones, leaving his hand dangling by a flap of flesh.
Adam, beside us, has been screaming ‘Stand down’ into the walkie again and again, an Odin did not listen to a black man and this one lost his hand. The first one lost his life.
“Jake, you need to issue orders. Jorge, you too. Theo, you need to get on here, too. Everyone needs to know these orders are from all of us. Not just some n……. “
Adam hands Jake the Walkie. “How is Jason doing?”
“Jake?”
“They got a tourniquet on his wrist.”
“Yeah, all the leaders are up here. Adam is doing a plan that we all worked on for months.”
‘So when you don’t listen to some n….., you are not listening to me. How many times I gotta say this. In this military, we tell people how to act, not how to think. Unless it affects the job you are doing. Like this shit. Stand down, and wait for orders.”
“Get back Samuel back with Theo’s folk. Listen to your commanding officer next time, dismissed.”
Adam mouths to Jake, ‘Stand down, Be prepared for further attacks.’
He adds, “For now, stand down. Prepare for further attacks, if nothing happens, I will send you over to do back up for Panthers and Mongrels. The National Guard. Now, fucking understand something. I love you dumb fuckers, but right now, whoever talks through this walkie is the general, and I don’t give a shit if it is a goddamn cell mouse.”
Adam takes back the Mic, “N.G., when you have six tanks in the lines… hold on, almost there. Now, break your cover. Fight well.”
He is addressing the National Guard out in the forests.. I zoom the holo in on a camouflaged soldiers face, painted black and brown to fit in with the smoggy sky and burnt earth. The forest of mostly burnt stumps, has just enough still standing scorched trees to hide the old fashioned arteliery, flame throwers, trucks; other tools of death. Called up, they go from staying still to a clockwork of movement, sketched months ago on a chalk board, in a crowded war room, carefully separated by Gang affiliations.”
The black smoke and stench of the burning tanks attests to their being disabled chunks of metal blocking the route into the prison. Forcing the line of tanks to go around, though the woods that the National Guard had filled with artillery. They begin to fire immediately, a tanks is hit and the top explodes. Between the exploding missiles fired from shoulders into tanks, the gangs run fearlessly, using the chaos exactly as was meant to be, throwing napalm on the remaining tanks to force them out into the open, IEDs are hit, blowing out he tracks on the humvees. Explosives built by chemists with what they had in the prison, and they had plenty of explosives and hundreds of years of prisoners research into making explosives in prison.. The retreating soldiers brought more. The commanders, trapped now without nine of their tanks, are trying to retreat. The soldiers they interrogated said get the commanders and they will surrender. The commanders, in their black and gold uniforms, with guts that show they are not lacking for any food. The National Guard moves in quick again, the prisoners again thinking they will die bad, one commander shoots himself in the forehead rather than face the lies about us.
They surrender and are surprise when they are zip tied and lead to the other prisoners, who showed their anger toward them, to the point they needed to be separated.
We won the physical war. What was to come next, who knows?
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