Sabia Perez rises from the crypt.
Or at least from the cold stone of the bathroom floor in her underground home.
Still dizzy and lightheaded after having staggered from bedroom to bathroom to throw up at dawn, she pushes past her abuelo Roca and retreats to her bedroom. There she casts off her nightwear and swaddles herself in yellow and red sweats and blue wool socks. Then she goes into the great room.
The good nurse Jenna, her co-revolutionary, who tended her in the bathroom – where is she now?
Roca follows Sabia into the great room. “You need to rest, Sabia. Jenna says so.”
“Where is she?”
“Up in the farmhouse, meeting someone. I told her not to. She can’t be seen, she knows that. She can’t be known to be here.”
“Jasmine.”
Jenna is meeting Jasmine. The three compañeras, back together again – Jenna, Jasmine, and Sabia – water protectors for life.
Sabia goes to the hidden door in the mud room that leads up to the basement of the old farmhouse.
“At least eat something, Sabia.”
“I would puke.”
Sabia examines the utility shelves, the coats and winter garb hanging from wooden pegs mounted on rough-cut plank walls.
“Where are the weapons, Roca?” She thinks she remembers but wants to be sure.
“You don’t need any weapons.”
“Where are they?”
Roca looks away as if he can’t bear to see what he hears. “Some in the bedroom, down here. Some in the kitchen closet, up there.”
“Remind me exactly.”
“Why?”
“Roca. I’m trying here.”
“Trying what, Sabia? You need to rest.”
“Abuelo.”
“Shotgun, handgun, stun gun – up top. Rifle – down here.”
“Good.” Sabia climbs the hidden steps into the basement of the farmhouse, leaving Roca behind.
She goes up another flight into the farmhouse kitchen where she finds Jenna.
“What’s up, Girl? Where’s Jasmine?”
Jenna stands impatiently by the windows, as if to will Jasmine to arrive suddenly from Des Moines.
“‘Girl’, yourself. We need to get you to Planned Parenthood. That’s what’s what. Sit down and rest.”
“Fuck.” Sabia rubs her forehead. “Now?”
“Now, Babe. You know what you need. Plan B. Or a copper IUD. That’s the one for you, I think. The experts will tell us. At the Susan Knapp Health Center.”
“Shit,” says Sabia.
“You did it to yourself, Girl.”
“Not exactly.”
They hear the vehicle before they see it. It’s not Jasmine. It’s Secret Service Director William Kingsley. He drives down the remote farm road from Des Moines in a big black SUV. He slows and eyes the temporary FBI center built on the snow-buried field down and across the road, then pulls into the Perez drive. As if he owns the place, he parks near the front porch. Sabia and Jenna watch him through slits in the window blinds. He sits in the vehicle staring at his phone.
“Great,” says Jenna. “There’s your man of the hour. Good job, Sabia. He can’t keep away.”
“Fuck all the way off, Jenna.”
“He took total advantage of you last night. Get rid of him now. You know you can.”
“I do know it. I can do anything I want,” says Sabia.
“Well, do this.” Jenna surveils the shiny tank of a vehicle. The so-called security state – the insecurity state – travels in style. “You know I can’t be seen by Kingsley – or anyone, at all. We can trust Jasmine, only her. She’ll be here soon.”
“It’s not right, Jenna. They call us liberators terrorists. And they call terrorists liberators.”
“World we live in, Girl.”
Jenna Ryzcek has been at home underground, literally, for weeks now, in Sabia’s home, on the run from her conviction for the DAPL bombings throughout Iowa and beyond – which she executed meticulously with Jasmine Maldonado, and toward the end, Sabia. Their collective string of sabotage temporarily stopped the flow of deadly oil and destroyed tens of millions of dollars of pipeline infrastructure and heavy construction equipment.
Jenna and Jasmine hid Sabia’s involvement from investigators when the cops closed in. Jenna and Jasmine turned themselves in, shielded Sabia, and Jenna was charged and convicted as a “terrorist.” And Jasmine likely soon to be so.
Sabia busted Jenna out of temporary home confinement after her conviction, before prison, but for how long can she go undetected? Not long at all if she ever shows her face to anyone.
Secret Service Director William Kingsley glances toward the porch and the house. Jenna pulls back from the windows and moves toward the basement.
“No, wait.” Sabia grabs her arm. “Stay here.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. We can manage Kingsley.”
“What? We can’t. Not even you. I’m burnt, and you’re burnt, if Kingsley sees me. What about the others?” Jenna points straight down through sixty feet of shale and sandstone to the coal mine survival bunker beneath the farmhouse that holds President Kristen Silver and her re-election campaign manager Ellen Lin, both held for social ransom – the result of Sabia’s wild will to be most revolutionary in a reactionary world.
“Jenna, look!” Sabia keeps the blinds adjusted so that they can see out while no one can see in.
An orange Chevy Bolt comes down the road from Des Moines as if driving from past revolution into the present situation, from pipelines to farmhouse. It slows as it nears. Jasmine. She pulls into the drive and parks directly behind the big bulk of Director Kingsley’s vehicle, twice the size of the Bolt.
“Got him,” says Sabia.
“What?” says Jenna. “He’s got us!”
Sabia reaches up and pulls Jenna’s face down to hers. She speaks softly. “It’s like the night when Ground Force One got hit just down the road and everything went to Hell.”
“It’s not like that at all, Sabia. You want to relive it?”
Sabia nods outside at the bright wintry scene. “It’s the same thing.”
Jenna squints into the low-sun glare of the snow. “It’s morning, Sabia. Start of a brand new day. You need to take care of the business in your guts.”
“I will.” Sabia hangs onto Jenna’s arms. “Shit’s about to get dark, Jenna.” Sabia nods outside. “Again.”
What does Sabia see that Jenna doesn’t?
“Fuck, Sabia,” says Jenna.
“I know it. But it’s gotta be.”
Sabia desperately wants to return to growing.
She needs to get back to pruning and tending her spectacular native persimmon and pawpaw trees, and her incredible orchard of transplants from everywhere, the otherworldly delights of homegrown peaches and apples, hardy and flavorful as can be, plus pots of figs that shelter indoors through winter. Many cuttings to be taken, rooted, sold.
And all the incredible bush berries and nuts, brambles and vines, and other tree crops, annuals, and root crops. Mix in a few key supplements, and you’ve got everything you need to sustain and thrive on the modern-day prairie – food and fasting as medicine, steady exercise and some high intensity too, the warm bright sun as cure-all.
Sabia wants to get busy again selling nursery stock and scionwood for cash. She wants to amp up her Fig Girl Youtube channel, keep it monetized and vital. She wants to add to her subscriber newsletter on politics and issues of the day. Her paid subscribers demand ready access to her views, rants, and insights, her passions and cold hard reason.
Sabia wants to keep cobbling her own way through the world – all that she wills. She wants to do what she knows she was born for – revolution, and living the good life – revolution that only she can make. One that must be made.
The Revolution, though – it keeps getting in the way of what might otherwise be a natural and good life – of living full, loving whole, coming clean. Revolution – it can be a big part of living the good life, it must be, but how not to let it overwhelm the whole? Or how to? What is possible? What must be done. Hard choices. Tough options. A real fight. Revealing. A fight every living day.
Sabia stares out at the SUV looming in the drive. She considers Director William Kingsley sitting inside, high official. And – after last night – compromised to Sabia. Kingsley is a crucial part of the police state, the military state, the surveillance state. Looks like he’s talking on his phone now. Sabia knew what she was doing, scheming and drawing him close to her last night. Her body, her life. Her life, her farm, her home. Her body, her choice. Her day, her night.
It’s too much too fast, maybe.
Vintage Sabia. Angry Sabia. Smart Sabia. All brains and nerves, heart and guts – a Revolutionary of One for a Revolution for All. Universal Revolution. Someone needs to fight the death cult of the plutocracy, and that includes the lingering Trumpist cults, still pounding and breeding all across the fruited plain.
Like Trump, Trumpism is performance theater and brutality – a tyranny of one – where everyone can be their own Superman and Wonderwoman – a cult of themselves. Join the Trumpist cult, the neo-Nazi fascist army, and be an “Army of One”! Be a “Tyranny of One”! Nothing revolutionary to the good about you, a tyrant above all, a bigot before your God, for your God, for your bigoted false God. Your own self as cult – your super-self, your Trumpist self. Your Trump self. This is the way to destroy collective consciousness – all for one and one for all. You change it to the perverse, sociopathic Trumpist view: One against all, because – supposedly – all against one. Such bullshit.
Someone needs to fight that shit, and that someone is Sabia Perez. Wise Rock. Common sense. Willful determination. Fragile flesh and mind, guts and blood. Sabia and whomever else she can bring along – like Alecta O’Roura-Chavez, the Acting President of the United States of America, more diplomatic but similarly aimed. Sabia needs to get together with Alecta again soon. Maybe today. They’ve done a lot so far. They need to do more. Alecta is too slow for Sabia, too slow for the people. Sabia created the anonymous American Liberation Alliance to push her. And did a few other things.
The ALA makes ransom demands that allow Alecta to use the hope of freeing President Silver as an excuse to meet the People’s demands, to help everyone everywhere. And to save the planet for all creatures and ecologies, vast and small.
Make the demands, meet the demands – Sabia’s Revolution. The People must know themselves, and the world, to solve the problems of the public. To come together one for all and all for one. Sabia is here to help that.
Money levers, money concerns are the basis of most politics, that and need and abuse, including much brutality, much of it bigoted. There’s a huge brutality crisis, of which the affordability crisis is part. Bernie Sanders focused on the affordability crisis and less so the bigotry crisis to nearly win the Presidency, twice. Zohran Mamdani did the same to become Mayor of New York City, using the fertile ground Bernie prepared, to be a social and political leader. And Sabia fucking does what Sabia does. She doesn’t want any fucking applause for it. She wants results. And she wants them now.
Just so, Sabia took President Silver to lever Alecta to meet the people’s demands, and they achieved a good bit: guaranteed monthly income, higher wages, expanded poverty relief, universal health care, free childcare, paid family leave, the abolition of ICE, and full legalization and inclusion of undocumented people for the survival, dignity, and relief of all. Plus demands for structural power that erased medical and educational debt, making college free, sharply reducing incarceration, and redirecting police and military funding into housing and social services. An end to America’s killer economic sanctions and military invasions that crush people around the world.
The ALA also demanded shorter workweeks, more vacation and voting access, and a restructured financial system funded by wealth taxes and a trillion dollars of national emergency credit to a public bank. After all, liberation means material security and dignity, reduced coercion and oppression, and a decisive shift of resources away from the police state to the social dignity state, away from punishment and war to human and ecological care and public well-being.
And so it is that Sabia’s Revolution has already gutted all student and medical debt, gotten paid holidays expanded, wages raised for federal contract workers, which lifts wages for others, far more access to food, housing, and education, health care, and marijuana decriminalization with nonviolent convictions cleared, post offices transformed into free public banks, a new national bank established and freely funded ex nihilo, out of thin air, like the big private banks do for their rich buddies but not for the people, in fact against the people, to pillage and profiteer. And Sabia and the demands and leverage of the ALA got many other kinds of material improvements, environmental repair, and a massive reduction of militarization at home and abroad. But much more needs to be done, because private business does so little for people who cannot pay the price, and often performs poorly for even those who can afford goods and services. Some serious nationalization of industry and society is in order or the world will continue to burn and the people will suffer and die as always. Sabia and the ALA still face too many monstrous creations of the world, like David against Goliath. Main Street and country roads have been improved for the better – patched and bandaged here and there – but remain far from fully transformed for the good of all.
And, oh yes, Sabia has read her Karl Marx and her Walter Benjamin. Jasmine Maldonado – Montessori teacher extraordinaire – insisted on it. You fight performance politics with material politics, brutal bigoted expression with socialist art and expression, action and accomplishments. During interwar Germany of the past century, the ill-fated left partisan Walter Benjamin saw in the depredations of capitalism and Nazism and fascism – those ghoulish blood brothers – he foresaw the genocidal cult of bigoted tyranny of Trumpism-to-come, firsthand, and he described this omnicidal state of consciousness in his 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin showed that fascism turns politics into aesthetics, using ritual and the “Führer cult” – the cult of personality – to dominate the masses. Bigoted grand illusions become aestheticized politics used by the plutocracy, to preserve and further enrich itself by mobilizing the masses into war – civil war and national war and cultural war and entirely irrational war. People become alienated, and even take pleasure in their own destruction, let alone the destruction of others – Evil made aesthetic.
In contrast, the workers of liberatory revolution, they politicize art and material gains for the good of the people and against the aestheticized politics of supremacy, homicide, and pillaging rendered by lies and illusions into mesmerizing Evil and omnicide, like a lethal supremacist cult of the Joker.
Revolutionaries fight against the plutocrats who make people act evil and even against their own best interests, who make evil aesthetic. The plutocrats make evil godly. They make the lie the truth. They make the good the terroristic and demonized. They make evil glamorous and glorified. They are monsters garbed as heroes. They are viruses clothed as saviors. And if they can’t dupe you, they try to scare you. And if they can’t scare you, they assault you. Or they impoverish you, or lock you up, or kill you. And so Sabia fights back. As do many others.
Revolutionaries, like Sabia, fight the fascist glorification of war that further enriches the rich. But where are the Revolutionary artists of the age? Hard to find a good literary and revolutionary novel today that is explicit about the contemporary moment in America. And what of shows and movies? The commercial establishment is too bought-and-sold by capitalist profiteering. The literary establishment is too stupid and brainwashed, too gutless and cultivated, too culturally conditioned and ideological, supremacist, too institutionally captive to know or to care, to act or to create for revolution. Or even to much allow it in its midst. The unspeakable revolutionary reality remains taboo among the respectable. So be it. Fuck ‘em all.
Sabia, Jenna, and Jasmine fight the monstrous day like the socialist partisans who fought Hitler and Mussolini. They fight the Trumpocracy, and the plutocracy everywhere. They fight establishment apologists. They fight the tyranny of money and bigotry, whether Democrat or Republican, or any other sellout to big money and hate, bought-and-sold. The Police State must be defanged, defunded, and replaced with fully funded and strong social units – services of life, not death. And fuck these weak-ass motherfuckers who have the gall and brainlessness to say, no. Fuck you.
The revolutionaries need to hold fast. Sabia, Jenna, and Roca – they need to keep President Kristen Silver hostage in the coal mine survival bunker below the farmhouse – hostage for social ransom, for political revolution, still long overdue, desperately needed.
And hostage too are Ellen Lin, Maximilian Castelan, and Tucker Gere. The Revolution must go on below ground as above. It’s Sabia and her abuelo Roca and her water protector ally, Jenna Ryzcek, and Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez – them against the world – or so it can seem. Not that Alecta knows this, exactly, that this unlikely crew in Iowa are the hostage-keepers. Who would suspect little Sabia Perez of holding hostages, and such big hostages too? But Alecta does suspect now – however inexactly – Sabia having thrown enough hints directly toward her, as with Kingsley. Sabia is fearless in her play to change the world. Maybe too much.
It needs to be everyone, general uprisings and actions, general strikes, and all pushing forward. And today it must be Jasmine who is brought deep into the fold again, into the power of action. Sabia and Jenna must pull Jasmine all the way in, for the first time since the pipeline bombings, all the way in with kidnapping President Silver to ransom a better world – the outrageous reality of which Jasmine currently has no idea. Jasmine needs to know. She needs to be part of it. She needs to help. Like the old days, a mere few years ago when she and Jenna and Sabia and the other DAPL fighters stopped the planet-burning, Earth-destroying oil flow for awhile, when they took the fight to the state, the thug nation they refuse to be ruled by and destroyed by and de-brained by. The people refuse their own destruction, for some crazy reason, some primordial impulse. It may be a mystery, but it’s also the first principle of life. To refuse death. To refuse death in life.
They may be the few, but they are the growing many, against the mighty, in lonely outposts across the world, central spots of the universe, like the battered American prairie – here today on the Perez farmstead, caught between a hard place and the Police State, between Des Moines and brute winter.
When it’s the people against the mighty, you need all the help you can get. You need most people everywhere. Sabia and Jenna and Roca will start with Jasmine, then finish with the world.
This is how things begin. Always. And must not end.
Sabia wills her bad dreams away – her horrible extended nightmare of last night, following the reality of her drunken tangle with Kingsley. Jasmine tried to warn Sabia years ago about “The dark desire to make new life. Penetration and impregnation, to be blunt. It will get you, Girl, if you don’t watch out.” Well, maybe it got her after all, or maybe Sabia used it to get Kingsley. He owes her. She half-controls him now.
Then came the horrible nightmare of the collapse in the bunker far below the farmhouse – caught and bombed. Sabia wills it away, that nightmare of her own capture and killing, the hallucinatory smashing of her only home, the obliteration of her allies and some of her enemies in the coal mine survival bunker, buried alive, killed dead. Her home, her life erased, all the living.
Today is a new day – as real as it gets. Sabia is pregnant by her enemy Secret Service Director William Kingsley who is merely one of her enemies but the one in her face now, and she needs Jasmine to help her take care of things. She needs Jasmine for something more too – for Jenna. The hour demands action. Sabia wills it. She pulls Jenna’s arms tight to her body. Jenna’s all in, Sabia knows. She must be. The three compañeras will act as one again. As they must. And can. Ready or not. Here they come.
Cross-continent, the news of the day already is nothing but bad, and it goes everywhere all at once. Before she even got out of bed, Jasmine heard it on the news – the pre-dawn bombing in DC.
Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez – targeted again.
Marine One – blown up on the White House landing pad.
Alecta’s top economic advisor, Iris Aetos – killed.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Alecta is wounded badly by the blast. She is hospitalized but continues to give orders as if her life depends on it, which it does, politically at least.
Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez has no Vice President appointed, let alone confirmed by Congress.
Next in line of succession to Alecta and the Presidency is US Speaker of the House Barry Bombarill, Alecta’s sworn enemy, whom Alecta suspects but cannot yet prove was involved in the bombing of President Kristen Silver’s reelection campaign bus in Iowa a few months ago, Ground Force One, the bus Alecta, if not for food poisoning, would have been riding prior to the final debate in Des Moines before the first primaries. The bus crashed by Sabia’s farm before the bombing, and Sabia and Roca saved whom they could. Everything all at once, for real. Sometimes it happens that way. Sometimes it needs to.
Everyone else on Ground Force One is several months dead now, except for the two taken hostage for social ransom – President Silver and her campaign manager Ellen Lin. Gone missing in Iowa.
And now Alecta’s top economic advisor, Iris Aetos, blown apart on the landing pad of Marine One like some nightmare within a nightmare.
Alecta suffers a concussion, thrown flat onto her face, and deep lacerations to her back, arms, and legs. Poor Iris and the Secret Service guards unwittingly absorbed enough of the fatal blow to keep Alecta alive. And there by some miracle, Sabia’s revolution survives. Sabia and Alecta need to make the Revolution anew. They need to make it disaster-and-attack-proof, miracle-proof, and they know it.
Alecta needs to appoint a Vice President – yesterday. She needs to do it, should’ve done it already. Her Chief of Staff, Shakeeta Glazier, stands over her hospital bed with the papers at last.
“Give me that.” Sitting up painfully against pillows, Alecta signs the document. And so it is, unofficially until confirmation by Congress, the new Vice President and, if necessary, Acting President is stalwart progressive leader, Reynida Taleed – a rare brilliant and brave member of the House of Representatives, from the upper Midwest. A popular politician significantly farther to the left than even Alecta.
Alecta signs the document with a flourish. “Does this make me assassination-proof? I hope,” she says to Shakeeta. The monsters of the plutocracy want Reynida Taleed in power far less than they want even Alecta – everyone knows.
“Talk about a full communal takeover,” says Shakeeta. “Reynida would be as awesome as you, Ma’am.”
“More awesome,” says Alecta. “Return the public to the public. The commons to the common. The commonwealth to all the people. A just wealth to those who should inherit the Earth – all of us, together, for the benefit and prosperity of–”
“Good speech,” says Shakeeta. She takes back the pen, the signed document, and official folder. “Now rest up and recover so that you can deliver that speech to the world. Soon.”
“One thing more, Shakeeta. We need more papers, new papers.”
“For what?”
“Kingsley.”
“Oh.” Shakeeta shakes her head. “I told you about him. Warned you.”
“You did.”
“First, he nearly got you blown up. I mean, you were lucky not to be on the bus when he lost the whole thing – Ground Force One and President Silver. And all our people.” What a fuck-up. Horror of horrors. “Now here you are yourself, Ma’am, blown up anyway.”
“It wasn’t Kingsley’s fault, Shakeeta. Really. How could he–”
“Someone in a position of responsibility needs to take responsibility. Ma’am.”
Alecta sighs.
She knows, she knows. She thinks she stretched Kingsley too thin by putting him in Iowa to further investigate Sabia, to keep an eye on her, to figure out her relation to President Silver’s disappearance, if any. One President at a time to secure is enough. “Let’s reassign him there permanently, in Iowa, Shakeeta. He can head a special task force to find President Silver.” And so Alecta wills it – end Kingsley’s tenure at the Secret Service – move up his Deputy Director Grace Lamont to top spot in the agency. “That’s the paperwork I need. And get me the phone so I can tell them both.” Alecta leans back into the pillows and looks out the window toward the opposite block wall of the hospital. She sees nothing but the cold light of day.
“Yes, Ma’am. ‘Bout time, Ma’am. A secure line and a SCIF for this bed. When can Tisha make the announcement?”
“After I make the calls. Not before. Then our lovely Press Secretary can say anything she likes.”
“Not anything.”
“I trust Tisha Nouri. And I know you do to, Shakeeta.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m glad you’re okay, Alecta.”
“None of us are.” Alecta stares outside. Iris is dead. Like so many on Ground Force One. Like some many everywhere. “We live among savages, Shakeeta – white-supremacist bomb-throwing rich fuckers – the worst people in the world. We’re in the battle for our lives. The battle for all Earth.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I know it,” says Shakeeta.
Other than that it’s just another ordinary day in the life of these United States of America. Alecta drinks in the flush of light from outside. It fills her gaze, her mind, her emotion.
“I was supposed to give the big speech of nationalization today, Shakeeta. I practiced it so many times in my head. I was going to fucking nationalize everything, almost everything, and give it back to the public, all that it deserves, everything, and is wholly denied. Someone tried to stop it.”
“They did,” says Shakeeta.
For the moment. “We’ve got Priama Steiner as head of the FBI now. She’ll find them and fuck them. I’ll give the speech anyway. When I’m stronger. Soon. I’ll issue the orders. If Priama can’t catch these killers, these killer financiers, no one can.”
“You were going to send Priama to Iowa to investigate our good friend Sabia.”
“Fuck that now. I’ve got Kingsley on Sabia. I want Priama to pivot the whole FBI against the heart of Empire, to put a few stakes in it. One final stake, ideally.”
“You really trust her?”
Alecta considers. And considers again. Priama Steiner comes out of the US Marshals Service, but she’s not a Good Ol’ Boy. Alecta thinks. “Sometimes you go with what you’ve got, Shakeeta.”
“I’ll work up the documents. The phone and the SCIF. And then you will be one hundred percent secure. Or, uh–”
Alecta feels the pain. “Best we can do, Shakeeta.”
Best we can do.
Alecta wonders. What would Sabia do?
Alecta muses for the briefest of moments. Her lips thin.
Sabia would take names and kick ass. Or something like it. There’s nothing not sharp about Sabia. Maybe too sharp.
Alecta sinks slowly into the sterile white pillows of the hospital. She feels like a test tube in a rack on a shelf in a laboratory. A clinician is going to come in and take her off the shelf and from the rack and pour out her contents and test them. And what will they find?
She cries.
Iris is dead.
Her guards are dead.
And fuck – everything hurts.
Alecta would fall asleep if she could. She can’t, though. Not quite yet.
Ellen Lin is killing Kristen Silver and Maximilian Castelan at Pitch – deep in the coal mine survival bunker beneath the Perez farmhouse. They are trapped there, below the secret underground home, in the kitchen at a wooden table, between a painted old coal pillar and the plastered coal mine wall, in Sabia’s hidden playhouse of a decade past. The three official captives play cards – Pitch – President Kristen Silver, her re-election campaign manager Ellen Lin, and fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan who is one of a handful of coup plotters and failed assassins of President Silver.
As Silver and Lin are captive to Sabia and Roca and Jenna, so is Maximilian Castelan captive to President Silver and Ellen Lin – tied to his wooden chair, his hands bound. He is able to drink, eat, shuffle cards, and little more. Untied, he can stand and hobble, not walk. He can barely move with bound ankles to the bathroom if released from the chair. He cannot fully undress himself. Silver and Lin do with him as they please. Lin ignores him, primarily. Silver rides him without mercy.
“Your bid, Killer.”
“You know I was framed, Kristen. I tracked your bus. I did not explode it.”
“So bid.”
“Pass,” he says.
“And I pass,” says Lin.
Ellen Lin almost always passes the bid to the next player. She likes to score points and go up, while forcing someone else to miss their bid and go back in points. It’s the campaign ideal too. Why merely win when you can force your opponent to lose, simultaneously? You never want to simply take a win when you can punish and break the opponent at the same time. You must destroy the opponent to guarantee success, not merely beat him. Pile on. Call it win-win, if you like, and Lin does, though it’s more accurately described as win-lose.
“Goddamn it,” says Silver. “The dealer must bid two, and I do.”
The cards are played. Lin, her hand heavy in trump, wins three points. Castelan wins none, and Silver wins only one, and so fails to make her bid, thereby losing two points. Lin advances to twelve total points total and wins the game, the race to eleven. She is three for three today. She is fucking tough to beat, at cards, at elections, at snap decisions, at reading the opponents, and using strategy.
“You’re a passive aggressive little bitch,” says President Silver.
Lin smiles. “Thank you.”
“I like you better on the campaign trail.”
“You love me no matter what, Kristen. You know you do.”
Castelan strains at his ties. He’s always thinking of how to get free, and what he would do if he were. He would find a way out of the bunker, he knows that. But he can’t if he’s not freed first. If only he were free, he would have a chance, a good chance, a great chance. He is sure that Lin and Silver missed something, or are hiding something. He is sure there is a way out. There must be. Even if it means flipping the tables and taking them hostage and negotiating his way out. There must be a way, and there is, but it’s so hard to get free without freedom. Bitter irony. Universal.
Wrists bound and awkward, Castelan deals the cards. He considers his hand. Another bad one.
“Pass,” says Lin.
“Pass,” says Silver, smiling darkly at Castelan. “I have a great hand, Max. But I want to see you go down. I learn from Ellen.”
Castelan sighs. “The two of you, working together. You’re playing this whole hostage scenario to get reelected, I know you are. It’s been your salvation in the polls. Be honest.”
“Tell it to Sabia,” says Lin. “It’s not like we can just walk out of here.”
Of course, they had their chance. For a moment, when Roca collapsed and needed to be hospitalized, they were free as birds. But what Castelan can’t know is that Silver decided to remain hostage, because of the polls. The immense sympathy for her kidnapping surged her polling for re-election right before the primaries, launching her from cellar to ceiling. She is sweeping the primaries now even far absent from the campaign trail, but that was never going to be a problem. She will win the general election too, if she can remain captive for the duration. She was facing almost certain loss, but no longer.
And the new policies of her treacherous former Vice President now Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez, are super popular, which further boosts her polls. Silver would never implement any of those programs, directives, orders – she never did. And her donors would force her to roll much of it back if she were in power, so it’s best that she stay incognito for now – still on the ballot everywhere, but at full remove, a ghost campaign, in name only, by her proxy Alecta.
So how to get Sabia to free her after the election? That will be the real trick that remains to be played by Silver and Lin, and possibly Castelan. Sabia is seduced by Alecta – a seduction that establishmentarian Kristen Silver can in no way hope to break. That may leave one future option – brute force. In other words: Castelan. At some point, Silver and Lin may need Maximilian Castelan to regain their freedom and power, just as they need Sabia now to keep them captive and thereby in position to win. Such are the wicked webs you weave when your will is to rule the world.
And so here Silver sits, hostage and happy to be so, but unhappy that Sabia won’t release her, maybe ever, of her own free will. Silver is too valuable as captive to Sabia’s revolution to ever be freed. She’ll fight her way out then with the help of the deplorable Maximilian Castelan. Not that he can know that yet. God help her.
“So what if we’re fortuitously hostage, Max. I’m going to win,” says Silver. “And you’re not going to like it when I do. I’ll be President another four years, so you better be nice to me, or I won’t be nice to you.”
“I bid two,” Castelan says, and plays his first card, an off-suit eight. He has little trump, and no aces. “You’re corrupt, Kristen.”
“You’re a killer, Max.”
Castelan fails to score even a point, and loses his bid. Silver and Lin split the four total points. There’s a long way to go till the election in fall, but even buried as they are by Sabia, especially buried by her, out of sight but never out of the sympathetic mind of the public, they know they are golden, a slam dunk, especially with another hostage video, which should help. Silver is eager to dangle the spectacle of captive Castelan – hostage to herself, powerful even in captivity. Though captive too. Way of the world, such as it is, Silver’s world, where might makes right and right makes reality. Pax Americana – peace at the point of a gun.
(The gun of capitalism – bigoted, white supremacist, plutocratic, and anti-democracy as it can be. Shh. Don’t tell anyone.)
“My deal,” says Lin.
“You don’t get to pass this time,” says Silver. “No. I guarantee I will pass instead of you.”
“Try me. There’s more than one way to win. And to make you lose,” says Lin.
Ellen Lin is the best card player in the bunker by far and she knows it. Good thing too. Something’s got to keep her happy, because it was definitely not her idea to remain captive in the first place – a colossal insult to her campaign skills. She and Silver should have walked during the chaos of Roca’s heart attack. Silver said no because her poll numbers were skyrocketing like never before – from deep under water into the stratosphere – and, fatefully, Lin was loyal. Now here she sits, caught between Silver and Castelan, stuck in a bunker deep in a hole in the ground. Buried alive.
This will be her final election, the one for which she’s writing a tell-all book, without telling all. You’ve got to save something for a sequel, for the passage of time, when the more true and full telling can be more safely told. Scoundrel on her left, scoundrel on her right. Ellen Lin is tempted to kill them both in the book, Silver and Castelan, rhetorically or otherwise. If she were the killing kind. Which, she’s not. And so her memoir of captivity will ring with both authenticity and grace, her best cards played well. Future forward – always be moving forward into the future. No need to avenge the past. Ellen Lin is a player in the game. She knows her memoir will publish to massive sales, great publicity, and prestige. If only she can survive the two behemoths of power who flank her. If only she can outlast the unholy arrangement, or derangement, that can seem to flow through this squalid, sordid bunker like air.
If only she can survive Sabia.
“Goddamn it.”
Sabia Perez and Jenna Ryzcek peer through the blinds of the Perez farmhouse. “It’s Billy,” says Sabia.
The fucking Moto Kid. Billy glides his electric snowmobile onto the ridge across the road.
“Looks like he’s got a new spy drone onboard,” says Jenna.
“Fuck you, Billy,” says Sabia. “Okay. Let’s end this right now.”
Sabia goes to the kitchen closet. She takes out a box of shells and the shotgun that she bought from Billy’s younger brother Avery. She loads half a dozen shells into the pump action tube.
“Sabia! What about Kingsley and Jasmine? They’re right there. You could hit either one. You can’t fucking shoot up the world in front of the goddamn Secret Service Director.”
“I can do anything I want,” says Sabia. She pushes past Jenna and goes out on onto the porch in her socks and sweats – no coat, hat, gloves. Sabia against winter. Sabia against all elements. She pumps a shell into the chamber of the shotgun. She raises the barrel. Targets across the road.
Kingsley stands now outside his SUV, phone to his ear. He watches Sabia. Jasmine stares too from her car behind Kingsley.
Sabia steps to the edge of the porch and raises the gun to sky, aiming directly over Billy’s head. She fires. Boom-boom! The explosion is magnified for being triggered from the cave-edge of the porch. Even Sabia is shocked by the concussion.
Billy looks to the farmhouse, sees Sabia, and the gun.
Sabia lowers the gun and pumps another shell into the chamber. The spent shell flies out and lands in snow. She raises the gun again. Aims over Billy’s head. Boom-boom!
Jasmine Maldonado sits frozen in her car in front of the Perez farmhouse. What the fuck did she drive into? Even inside the car the blasts from the shotgun are staggering, rattling through metal and glass, punching her brain. What in the world is going on? Jasmine turns and looks at where Sabia faces across the road. She sees a young man mount a snowmobile and speed off. What the fuck?
Then she turns and looks more closely at the man standing in front of her. She has a back angle, but he looks familiar – on his phone, staring at Sabia on the porch. “Sabia! Knock it off!” he hollers, lowering the phone. He sounds and postures like he knows her – almost like he might have some control over her, even beyond any official power. The man then turns and stares at Jasmine.
“Oh, shit.” It’s Secret Service Director William Kingsley. And here she sits, an all-but-convicted DAPL bomber and so-called terrorist, water protector, during a short break from her trial but on the verge of conviction and imprisonment, like her ally Jenna Ryzcek before her – Jenna, now on the run, Jenna whose voice sounded on Sabia’s phone this morning telling Jasmine to come to the Perez farmhouse – for god knows what reason. A fucking war?
From felony to felony. Jesus Christ, Sabia, Jenna, what are you up to now, what are we doing shooting a shotgun over this suit-and-trench-coat-garbed-gun-packing Director of the Secret Goddamned Service here in the middle of fucking nowhere winter Iowa? Shit.
Jasmine takes out her phone, still staring at Kingsley staring at her. Kingsley recognizes who she is suddenly and then looks like he is attempting a sort of complicated math problem in his head.
Jasmine calls Sabia’s phone, if not Sabia. What the fuck is going on?
“Jasmine?” Jenna answers. She sounds totally fatigued.
“The fuck is going on, Girl?” Jasmine keeps her eyes straight ahead, tracking Kingsley. “I’m at the farmhouse, outside, staring at the goddamned Director of the Secret Service, and where the fuck are you, Jenna? You’re on the run, Girl. How are you calling me from Sabia’s phone?”
“I’m inside the farmhouse, Jas. With Sabia. Come in. She needs you.”
“Sabia is shooting the shit out of the world right now from the porch, Jenna, so what the fuck are you talking about? She’s shooting at some dude behind me on a snowmobile. What’s going on, Girl? What if he fires back?”
“Kingsley won’t allow it,” says Jenna.
“Says who? And you’re aware that the fucking Secret Service Director is standing right here in the driveway by the porch, mere feet from your fugitive self?”
“He’s been here all night, Jasmine. All fucking night.”
“What?”
“It’s what I’m trying to tell you, Girl. Sabia is in trouble. Come inside now. You can help her.”
“With what?”
“Just do it.”
Jasmine has no idea what Jenna is talking about. “Jenna – if you really are there inside the farmhouse, you know you can’t be seen by Kingsley. Or anyone.”
“Sabia says I can now.”
Jesus Christ, people are nuts.
Jenna stares at Kingsley who is still staring at her, a contemplative and seemingly comprehending look on his face, as if a wide array of dots in his head have begun to connect.
Jasmine stares at the phone and tries to picture Jenna in the farmhouse. Then she watches Sabia standing on the porch with the shotgun. Sabia holds the gun over her head now with one hand, like some sort of macho revolutionary pose, while she stares across the road.
“Jenna, is Sabia high? Or what?”
“Maybe,” says Jenna. “Get in here.”
Jasmine has no idea that Sabia and her abuelo Roca and Jenna are holding hostage President Silver, Ellen Lin, and fugitive former FBI Director Maximilian Castelan in the coal mine survival bunker below the hidden underground house – far beneath the old farmhouse. And Tucker Gere too. And Jasmine has no idea who Tucker Gere even is – almost no one does – a welder from Maryland caught in the wrong place at the wrong time next to the wrong person when Castelan thought he killed him and threw him in the trunk of his car, then drove secretly to Iowa to try to capture Sabia Perez to clear his name.
Maximilian Castelan, the ultimate bad guy of empire, was then taken down by Sabia and Roca and Jenna. He attacked and brutalized Sabia, but Roca and Jenna rallied and captured him instead. And that was the end of the evildoing of the accomplice of the bombing of Ground Force One. For now. It might even be said that it was Most Revolutionary.
The three heroes of the revolution then saved the life of Tucker Gere, if too bad for him, he was forced to become the fourth hostage. Not for social ransom, unlike the others. Crazy things go down in Iowa and all across America, especially in the cold dark depths of winter – who can doubt it? Iowa has seen worse, and not better. Tucker is held by the heroes now merely because he can’t be released. Sabia’s orders. They all agree, to this point – what Sabia says goes. But now it’s time for Jasmine to weigh in, and the reality is that Jasmine is as much a wild card as Sabia, maybe more.
Directly Kingsley listens grimly to the bad news on his phone. Of course he knew first thing about the grisly assassination attempt and bloodbath of Marine One. He came by the Perez farmhouse this morning to correct things with Sabia before flying back to DC, but Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez tells him now to stay put. Winter Iowa, his new home.
It’s no wonder Alecta kicked him out as Director of the Secret Service, leaving him with power only to investigate and monitor Sabia, as related to the kidnapping of President Silver and Ellen Lin. It doesn’t seem like he can keep anyone safe anymore, maybe not even himself. He is being demoted to a nearly one man operation. At least he still reports directly to Alecta. But if anything happens to her, which seems increasingly likely, he’s done.
Kingsley has dealt with Billy before for spying on Sabia, and he will deal with him again. Kingsley hardly cares that Sabia is shooting a gun over their heads now that Billy has fled. Typical Sabia these days. She’s gone full-blood American, apparently, out here in the far reaches of the Iowa countryside. Kingsley wonders if Sabia has gone completely stir crazy this late winter. Or if last night set her off. The lure of herself that she set for him, the trap, the seduction – was it the result of prairie isolation and boredom. Or was it a straight-up power play against power?
His moment of weakness – maybe he is the one crazy on the frozen plains.
Kingsley stands freezing there in the wind-battered drive, partly shielded by the adjacent barn and farmhouse. He leans into his phone – President Alecta is not entirely done with him. “I want you to watch Sabia, Bill. Do you understand? Monitor that girl. Figure her out.”
“As much as anyone can, I will,” he says.
“What was that sound, Bill?”
Kingsley watches across the road. Billy has circled away, but a new snowmobile comes on scene.
“Just Sabia shooting a fucking shotgun, Ma’am. Would you believe it? Standing on her porch in her socks blasting across the road at Billy the Moto Kind come to spy on his snowmobile again. It’s the wild fucking West out here. Damn cold too.”
“It’s not exactly smooth sailing here in DC, Bill.”
“Of course, Ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“God help us,” says Alecta. “What is it with people in this country and their love of guns? And bombs.”
“Nature of the beast,” says Director Kingsley, staring at Sabia with the shotgun thrust over her head and sticking out her tongue at the retreat of Billy the Moto Kid. Then Kingsley sees Avery Yonkin ride in on a machine of his own, and so does Sabia.
“Fucking history of Empire, more like it,” says Alecta. “You know the legacy, Bill. Slaughter the Natives, enslave the Africans, invade the Mexicans, and the rest of the world, ‘from sea to shining sea’ Manifest Destiny. Even poor Sabia can’t escape the grip of empire, weapons and all.”
“I know, Ma’am. I’ll watch her. I’ll find out what she knows. I think I’m close.”
“Good luck then. Here we are, Bill. Iris is dead.”
“I’m so sorry, Alecta. Feels like civil war.”
“Where the fuck is Maximilian Castelan? Is this more of his ghoulish work?”
“I wish I could tell you, Ma’am. I can’t image he– But maybe–”
“Tell me something useful, Bill, the next time we talk.”
Alecta ends the call before Kingsley can respond.
Kingsley will do everything he can to monitor Sabia. But he may have already fucked things up with her last night. He and Alecta both have their own unique reasons to suspect Sabia of the worst in regard to the kidnapping of President Silver. What Kingsley can hold over Sabia’s head now, after their intimate night together, he has no idea. That’s how she turned it. She pushed his investigation back into his own face. Now he can be investigated himself. He’s fully implicated, by Sabia who is the only known and sole surviving witness of the bombing of Ground Force One. Containing Sabia seems an impossible task. A Revolutionary of the People, for the People, she wholly believes herself to be, and if only it were a romantic notion it might not seem so threatening or uncontrollable. But Sabia is no romantic, as far as Kingsley can tell.
She’s a fucking populist revolutionary, and she wants a liberatory socialist revolution for the people. And she wants it now. And she’s half fucking getting it with Alecta in power. Kingsley feels caught between Sabia and Alecta, and dominated from both sides. He sees no way out but directly through the mess. He almost feels like he needs to go native in Iowa – swap his SUV for a pickup and somehow get to work, boots on the ground, back to the wind.
Sabia watches her off-again, on-again lover Avery Yonkin pull up on his electric snowmobile just across the road, after crossing paths with Billy who flees. Sabia is eighteen years-old, about to graduate from high school, which gives her two years on Avery, which can be like twenty in teen years, especially female to male. She told Avery never to show up at her house without an invitation, but like a boys-will-be-boys boy, Avery keeps breaking the rules. Avery’s older brother Billy has fled the wrath of Sabia’s gun today, and she won’t hesitate to threaten Avery too.
Is this how things work only for Sabia, or is it solely the power of a gun that boys understand when it comes to what a person really wants and needs? Most days Sabia thinks that she is too much of a rebel for their little whitewashed minds.
Sabia tries to make her point again by waving off Avery with her shotgun. He rather haplessly waves back, in a friendly way. She won’t waste a shotgun shell on his sorry ass. Sweet Avery, she can just ignore him, she thinks. She believes he’ll be there when she needs him. She thinks she knows. After all, he already and always has been. Gave her this gun that his Dad won in a church raffle. And before that, he shot down Billy’s spy drone over her greenhouse. Avery is firmly on her side, Sabia knows. Anyway, he better be.
Sabia takes a long look at Jasmine who continues to sit in her car, judicious in not come out into this bonkers and evident warzone. Then Sabia glares at Kingsley who continues to eye her. She goes back inside.
“These motherfuckers,” Sabia tells Jenna in the farmhouse. She lays the shotgun loaded on the kitchen table, pointing it to the back of the house and the orchards beyond. “You know what we need to do with Kingsley, right, Jenna?”
“Sabia – look at this.” Jenna has turned on the TV news in the living room next to the kitchen, where they both watch the horror of the bombing of Marine One replayed over and over. And they learn that William Kingsley is out as Secret Service Director, and Grace Lamont elevated. And that Reynida Taleeb has been appointed Vice President to Acting President Alecta, though of course not yet confirmed by Congress, and no guarantee that she ever will be. Reports are that Alecta insists on an immediate swearing-in ceremony for Reynida, even without congressional confirmation.
“Well, holy shit. Poor Iris.” They contemplate in silence.
“Shit.”
“It forced Alecta to pick a Vice President. Jesus. Finally. Shit can change quick,” says Sabia. “You just need to do things like they should be done in the first place. When you have the power that’s what you do. When you don’t have the power, you go get it.”
“Now, what? Losing Alecta– We almost lost everything today. Losing Alecta–”
“Would fuck the revolution.”
Sabia returns to the window blinds and looks outside at Jasmine in her car and Kingsley staring again at his phone. “What the fuck are they doing?”
“What the fuck are we doing, Sabia? I can’t be seen by the Director of the Secret Service. You know that.”
“The time for hiding is over, Jenna. You can’t keep getting walked on like this.”
“There’s no one here doing anything to me. I’m fine.”
“You are not.” Sabia cuts Jenna with a hard look. “When you’re in hiding, you’re being walked on.”
“I’m where I need to be.”
Sabia cuts another longer look at Jenna. Colder.
“Shit,” says Jenna.
“That’s right,” says Sabia.
“Just forget Kingsley, Sabia. Take care of yourself first. I’m telling you. He’s not even Director anymore. It gets us nowhere. It gets us nothing but another mouth to feed, nothing but another investigation to stave off – if you kidnap him too.”
“It’s not like that,” says Sabia.
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s not permanent. We take him temporarily. And we demand your immediate pardon. And Jasmine’s. From Alecta. Before it’s too late. Then we free him, and everyone goes on with their day. And you’re free. And Jasmine’s free. Instant freedom. Not just you and Jasmine. We demand the freedom of all political prisoners in America. And all non-violent offenders. And reduced sentences and vastly improved conditions for everyone else. We get it all – all at once. And we get it now, right at the beginning of Alecta’s rule, not at the end. Before they can do anything more to her. We get all that and more. For you and Jasmine and everyone.”
“Let’s just make another hostage video, Sabia. With Silver, and Lin, and maybe Castelan.”
“We’ll do that too. Everything it takes.”
“We’ve already got so much going for us, Sabia. We should slow down.”
Sabia goes ballistic, throws up her hands. “The people need more, Jenna! And they need it now. We can’t wait any longer. Alecta barely survived the morning. No way she gives her nationalization speech today, maybe not ever – who knows? We need to force her to act anyway. A quick negotiation with Alecta using Kingsley, why not? We don’t have an immediate or direct line to Alecta otherwise. His freedom for your pardon, Jasmine’s pardon, everyone’s pardon, a new world.”
“You’re crazy, Sabia.”
“Thank you, I would not want to pretend to be sane in an evil world.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what is needed. We should at least act sane, Sabia. Things are not that simple!”
“No? Well, let’s make it simple then. Anyway I’m the most sane person on the planet. Prove me wrong.”
Jenna shakes her head. She stares at the window blinds. “Just when I was getting a good feel for hiding out. Lying low. Living deep in Earth. I was beginning to feel like– I was beginning to feel like myself. I was beginning to feel like one with you and Roca.”
“It’s bigger than you and me, Jenna. And Roca.”
Jenna slits the blinds again and stares outside, far outside, into the frigid distance.
Sabia watches her. “We won’t live on our knees, Jenna – you and me. And Jasmine. That goes doubly for everyone else. For We the People. Remember them? I do. I know you do too.”
“You just want to do this, Sabia, for yourself. No matter what.”
“Your point?”
“You know my point.”
“This is happening, Jenna. There’s more weapons in the closet. We need to use them.” Sabia nods across the kitchen. “Maybe go for the stun gun. And the zip ties. We’ve done it before, Jenna. Not that anyone knows. Not that anyone needs to know what we do here in the privacy of our own home. Our own home, Jenna. If you won’t live on your own two feet in your own home, where will you live? Anywhere?”
Jenna exhales deeply. She backs away from the windows and sits on the edge of the couch in the living room.
“Are you sure this is how the revolution is supposed to go, Sabia? Aren’t we supposed to be part of big general strike, or collective action, surrounded by tens of millions of others, united across all the nation and world?”
“This is how the revolution goes for us, Jenna. For others it will be different. We forced President Silver, on video, to state the revolutionary demands, we got the demands out to the world, and Alecta met some of them. She was supposed to meet many more demands today, before someone bombed her. So we keep fighting fire with fire. We can do it. We’re doing it. You need to hold the feet of power to the fire of the revolution, Jenna, you know this, or they will do nothing but their worst.”
“Sabia – you don’t want things spinning out of control.”
Sabia waves her arms madly. “It’s already all out of control. Kingsley and his kind – out of control. The officials are berserk with guns and money and slaughter and poison and sickness. We saw what the plutocracy did to Palestine. Mass slaughter. Genocide. And in Sudan. In the Americas. Everywhere. Out of control. What the fuck have we done by comparison? Roca and I actually saved Silver and Lin from the assassination explosion, the would-be coup. We won a big battle with the first demands of the American Liberation Alliance. We got a lot of people badly needed everything. Now we need to win the war. In the meantime, what’s the cost? We merely briefly detained Silver and Lin.”
“Briefly? It’s been months. And we’re holding Tucker Gere too. And Castelan. Now Kingsley?”
“Tucker is tough, he’s on our side. Kingsley can take it. As for the others, it must be Hell to spend more than a minute in close proximity to Castelan. Oh, well. Silver and Lin worked with him willingly in DC in the past. The Devil’s Crypt. That was their choice and Castelan’s, not mine. They’re fine, made their own bed. We need to detain Kingsley, now, Jenna. Briefly.”
“Briefly?”
Sabia smiles. “One would hope.”
Jenna takes a long look into the kitchen.
“So much talent, so little vision,” says Sabia. “I refuse to be one of those people.”
This is news to Jenna. She tries to think what Sabia means. “Do we really have the capacity for this, Sabia? For wholesale revolution?”
“We fucking do. So good, so far.”
Jenna considers how little there is to consider. She’s in too deep to back out now, or maybe even to slow down. They both are.
Jenna gets up off the couch. She goes to the closet. She takes out the stun gun and zip ties. She shoves the ties into a pocket of her jeans, and the gun into the back of her waistband. She stands by the table and turns the shotgun to face the front door, just off to the side. She puts one hand on it and waits.
No gun this time, Sabia goes again into the cold. She walks to the edge of the porch and stands in her socks with her hands on her hips. She looks harmless. She appears vulnerable. She seems small. She is small. She stands impervious to the Arctic weather.
The landscape is a sea of snow, the fields broad and rolling to a long forest edge – a phalanx of dormant hardwoods pocked by stands of evergreens, pines and spruce. Avery is nowhere to be seen. Sabia waves for Jasmine and Kingsley – ally and enemy. She calls them both inside.
The problem of her pregnancy, it might need to wait, a bit. She feels instead the pulse and urgency, the absolute imperative of a different sort of due date. She feels more full of Revolution than ever before. And she aches to give birth to its fullest and greatest expression. The time has come to free her friends – the rest of the world too, why not? Why not now? No reason. Every reason. It’s due. The Revolution demands what the Revolution demands, and when. Sabia decides. It’s going to happen.
And if by that she means that ex-Secret Service Director William Kingsley must be briefly constrained in the Perez farmhouse or deeper in the ground – or be otherwise disposed – so be it. The way Sabia feels now – it’s really not for her to say.