Most Revolutionary - Chapter Sixteen
Castelan Comes Calling
Previously: In the parking lot of a rural Maryland bar, with a warrant out for his arrest, and a lead on the possible whereabouts of President Kristen Silver, fired FBI Director Maximilian Castelan commits a brutal act against welder Tucker Gere then flees to Iowa. Sabia Perez cuts the ankle monitor off Jenna Ryzcek and takes her into hiding in her Iowa home. Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez gives suspended Secret Service Director William Kingsley one week to find Castelan before he too is fired. O’Roura-Chavez addresses the nation to detail her young administration’s social policy achievements and to urge the kidnappers to free President Silver and Ellen Lin — a plea that infuriates Sabia given the many unmet ransom demands. With a shotgun, Avery Yonkin shoots down the camera drone of his brother Billy “The Moto Kid” who spies on Sabia in the Perez greenhouse. Sabia takes the shotgun from Avery and uses it — with help from her abuelo Roca and Jenna — to force President Silver and Ellen Lin back into captivity in the coal mine survival bunker. Sabia and Avery share an intimate moment in the farmhouse. After driving all night, Castelan arrives in southeastern Iowa near the Perez farmstead with the intent to find and free President Silver by any means necessary.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
During a killer Iowa blizzard, fearless DAPL militant and radical plant nursery grower Sabia Perez first saves then kidnaps the stranded President of the USA to ransom a better world.
In full disguise, fired FBI Director Maximilian Castelan slowly rolls to a stop on the icy country road outside the Perez farmhouse late at night. He sees token lights inside. He backs into the drive, almost all the way to the house, by the two Perez pickup trucks. The car is not hidden but not conspicuous from the road.
A quarter moon casts more of a glow across the snowy yard and surrounding terrain than Castelan would like, but desperadoes like heroes like beggars cannot be choosers. They must act in bad circumstances and succeed regardless.
From his bag on the passenger seat, Castelan fishes out a screwdriver. He goes to the front of the car and removes the Maryland license plate that faces the road. Then at the trunk, he quietly lifts the lid. He stares at the body of Tucker Gere for a moment longer than he likes. He knows the body is a sign of how debased anyone might understand his life to be. Maybe there’s a genetic crook in his brain to blame. Life gets out of control. Then you work like Hell to save what might be left. It’s not about good or bad, right or wrong, he thinks. The need is to survive, to live like a man not a beast. Even if you are at times closer to beast than man. Others be damned. Sometimes it takes a villain, Castelan tells himself, to be a hero. What choice does he have now?
Castelan tosses the license plate onto the body of Tucker Gere.
He carefully lowers the trunk lid and latches it. He glances around in the moonlight, the owl light. How he must look if there were anyone there to see — the great Director Castelan, fierce as a hunting owl, a killer owl. A deceptively big and silent Snowy Owl — all-white and noiseless in lift-off and flight from a Halloween branch through the bitter night.
He goes toward Sabia. She must feel safe inside her farmhouse, but she should know she has made herself prey. This evening’s prey. Castelan’s prey. Sabia an outlaw — against his good order. Of course Castelan is an outlaw too, but it’s relative. Castelan has all the power.
The tricky thing is that Castelan needs something more than Sabia’s body and blood. If only it were that easy. He needs something more than her farmhouse or trucks or orchards. He needs information. He needs her to lead him to President Silver. Only President Silver can give Castelan his life back. Only President Silver, whom he is wrongly but believably accused of attempting to kill, can return Castelan to a version of his life that he again controls. And that lying little Sabia witch has everything to answer for.
Fucking ridiculous, beneath his dignity, that he needs to get his hands dirty on Sabia to get Silver. It’s one thing to kill a man who stands in your way. Happens all the time, often in a rush of testosterone and calculated attack. It’s another thing to intimidate and torture a girl. Happens all the time too but, in his experience, more as an insane fit of passion and rationalization than angry calculation. Castelan begins to feel possessed on all accounts. He grabs his bag and heads to the farmhouse porch.
If Sabia simply tells him what he needs to know, then things can go smoothly. If Sabia acts like Sabia, as Castelan expects, then she has only herself to blame. Sabia needs to learn quick. Give Castelan what Castelan needs — to save President Silver and himself — or suffer the fucking consequences.
Roca, Sabia, and Jenna work late tonight, at the packing station in the greenhouse, hoping to ship as many packages as soon as possible. They move like an increasingly cohesive team around tables lined with shipping boxes, tape, markers, labels, a laptop and a printer. Cuttings and small plants are not for sale at this frozen time of year. Instead, orderly bins of seeds and nuts from various trees and bushes are positioned nearby, all of which survive winter shipping cross country.
Too many lit LED grow lights would damage their eyes, so Roca, Sabia, and Jenna work by limited light. They are in the most recessed north corner of the sunken greenhouse closest to the house and storage bins by the frog pond and waterfall. It would take Billy the Moto Kid's blasted drone flying directly overhead for anyone to know where they are working. Not to their knowledge how very much it matters this cold night.
“Roca, how far behind are we on orders?” says Sabia.
Roca is amused. “What could possibly have wrecked our schedule, Mija?” He holds up several sheets of orders for seeds and nuts. He waves the sheets at Sabia. “Ground Force One was bombed and President Silver almost assassinated in our backyard. You locked Silver and Lin in the survival bunker. And me too. You told the world I was blown up in the bombing. Then Alecta visits you in the farmhouse. I had a heart attack. You got me to the hospital. Silver and Lin escape. And then they decide to stay on and play hostage for the poll ratings. Silver locks you and me in the bunker. Then we escape. Then you help Jenna run from the law, hide her in our home.” Roca shakes the papers again. “Did I miss anything? Oh —you chase Silver and Lin back into the bunker with a shotgun that scares the shit out of everyone. I’m lucky I don’t have another heart attack. And now Silver and Lin, our two royally pissed-off guests, seemingly permanent guests, we need to keep them alive. And I’m still dead. So—” Roca sets the lists of orders on the packing table and taps them with his fingers. “We’re a little behind.”
“You’re welcome, Roca, I know you love me,” says Sabia.
“That I do. But this is a one-of-a-kind winter shipping season.”
“Permanent guests — Silver and Lin?” says Jenna. “We know they can’t stay forever.”
“Not permanent permanent,” says Roca. “Long-term, maybe.”
“Permanent, could be,” says Sabia.
“These seeds and nuts won’t ship themselves. Let’s move,” says Roca. “People want what they want. Like the impatient chipmunks and squirrels and songbirds that they are at heart. Winter, summer, spring, and fall.”
“I’m more like a mountain lion,” says Sabia. “When I’m hungry, be afraid.”
“Then I’ll be a dove,” says Jenna. “To fly away from you, Sabia.”
“If you’re a dove, you’re a dove with a blowtorch,” says Sabia.
“Squirrel for me,” says Roca. “I’m happy with that. Seeds and nuts, that’s my thing.”
“A revolutionary squirrel. That’s you now, Abuelo. Everyone needs to be revolutionary these days, all days, past days, future days. Better be, in this world. It’s like the essential gesture you can make in your life. You knew, Abuelo, the way out of the bunker. You could have freed the President. You didn’t. That’s revolutionary as fuck.”
“I was concussed, remember. In shock.”
“No getting out of it, Abuelo. It’s because your heart is full of love for the world, and for me and everyone. That’s why we do what we do.”
“And now our hands are full of guns,” says Jenna. “How did that happen again? For our permanent guests? Is that love?”
“I was willing to play nice,” says Sabia. “Wasn't I, Abuelo? I played nice. President Silver forced me to it.”
“Yes, you're very nice,” says Roca.
“Sí, gracias,” says Sabia.
“Ask President Silver how nice you are,” says Jenna.
“Silver-Butt,” says Sabia. “She doesn’t care about us — no matter what she says. Look at what she does. She’s incorrigible. I’m telling you.”
Roca organizes and prepares seed and nut orders from the long list. Sabia fills and packs boxes and secures with tape. Jenna details and affixes labels. Simple work, good work but the creative limits make it a grind if assembling alone. Thankfully not the case for Sabia and Roca most days, even less so with Jenna now. So it goes with team Perez and Ryzcek, busy at work in the long winter night.
At the farmhouse door, Castelan removes a ring of skeleton keys from his bag. He examines the type of lock, then selects a key to try first. He goes through the keys one by one until the lock clicks. Castelan turns the knob and leaves the door unlatched.
He slips the key ring back into his bag. He selects a handgun and stun gun, and slings the bag over one shoulder. Surely he will not need bullets to deal with Sabia. He needs the gun as backup though, no question, because you never know, especially out here in the armed Iowa countryside. Anything can happen.
Castelan grabs the doorknob and takes a deep and steadying breath. He exhales evenly. Then he kicks the door wide open and goes in guns first.
He looks all through the farmhouse.
“Fuckin' no one here.”
In the bathroom, Castelan sets the stun gun and handgun by the sink, strips off his disguise. He wraps the eyebrows and beard in the wig and tucks it into his bag, which he leaves in the bathroom. He holsters the guns, returns to kitchen.
Shit, where is she? Both trucks in the drive. Must be out with friends. Which ones? Jenna Ryzcek is bound to her house by ankle monitor. Jasmine Maldonado? Could be with Jasmine. Or school friends.
Castelan can only wait. Might as well take care of himself in the meantime. He opens the refrigerator. Not much of a selection. Fucking cabbage. Wine. A bag of chestnuts. Sparkling water. And other weird stuff. A bottle of some sort of elderberry concoction. Cartons of local eggs. He reads the label: Yonkin Family Farm.
Castelan selects a Mason jar of dill pickles and examines it. “Homemade, no shit.” The jar seems packed to bursting with long green stalks and buds of dill, far more than he has seen in any store-bought jar of pickles. He opens it. Wow. A heady zing of dill and vinegar — flowery. “Healthy fuckers.” He wonders if the dill is supposed to be eaten too, there’s so much of it. He leans against the counter and eats the pickles with zest. He eats more than he thought he might as he watches the front door.
These are simple people, Castelan reminds himself, not that he has any idea himself how to make pickles that pack a punch. Simple folk. They understand simple things. Blunt force. Castelan is confident that he knows Sabia’s language. The language of sheer terror. Or maybe he’s thinking of his own particular dialect.
Being new to the effort at the packing station in the greenhouse, Jenna enjoys seeing where the shipments go and learning about how the various seeds and nuts came to be. First up, thornless honey locust seed packets to growers in Texas, Ohio, Alabama, and Delaware. Sabia explains to Jenna that she and Roca forage the long stout curls of twisted pods from commercial strip malls in Kansas City each year before the owners pay for clean-up crews to gather and trash them.
Next, black walnuts to upstate New York and Kentucky and Pennsylvania gathered from the Perez orchard and from lawns in Des Moines, whose owners would otherwise laboriously dispose of them. Sabia and Roca use nut rollers and bins to quickly pick up and move thousands of the big nuts, fragrant in green hulls, always leaving a good portion for wildlife where possible, most places.
Black locust seed packets to western Iowa and Nebraska. Burr oak acorns to Colorado. Mixed red and white oak acorns to Massachusetts, Michigan, Arkansas, Tennessee, and New Jersey. Hazelnuts to Illinois and North Carolina and to the National Wild Turkey Federation in West Virginia. Hickory nuts, chestnuts, chinquapins shipped far and wide.
“What do people do with these seeds and nuts in winter?” says Jenna.
“Everything,” says Sabia, and she’s off and running. “Not only is winter twice as long as any other season across much of the country, and cold as sin, the darkness is far greater too. It’s a double whammy times ten. Lacking sun, people’s vitamin D levels plummet — and D is a fucking powerful hormone for your immune system. The government is too corrupt to supply people with free D, even though it’s cheap. The government is basically owned by the trillionaire pharmaceutical companies so it won’t recommend taking big doses of D that would save and improve the lives of so many. Do I need to mention COVID and the fucking flu? People die-off the most now, in late winter, coming on spring, because things spiral out of control by then. Your body get so depleted.”
“Is there vitamin D in seeds and nuts?” says Jenna.
“Not really. Sorry. I’m off track.” Sabia seals a package of hazelnuts and acorns and slides it to Jenna to label and stack with the rest.
“No track can hold you, Sabia,” says Jenna.
“No shit. During the first years of the COVID pandemic, all winter long, people went crazy to the good, gathering seeds and nuts to feed wildlife, or to save for growing, like they do with seedling plants and scionwood to root themselves in spring when warm enough. Can’t ship too soon, cuttings and plants — cold kills all tender live material. A lot of people do what we do — sprout new life, sometimes all winter. They get hooked on it. Some people like to secure a supply of seeds and nuts for springtime growing. Or to feed songbirds and squirrels and chipmunks in their winter yards and at their windowsills. Do you know that not only does money itself increase happiness, so does increasing the diversity of bird species around people? Studies show that increasing the diversity of songbirds by ten percent is as satisfying to people as increasing money in the bank by ten percent. People talk about how healthy ‘forest bathing’ is, taking in all the scents and sounds and feelings beneath trees — next they'll be talking about 'wildlife massaging' or something equally bizarre and wonderful. Trees and orchards, gardens and yards, and our lives would be dead without that healthy mix of wildlife. We would all be dead.”
“Gotta ship when people demand it,” says Roca. “If at all possible.”
“That’s not entirely true,” says Sabia. “These days we could ship twice a year and get by, fall and spring, but we like this winter work.”
“Helps with storage issues too,” says Roca. “Space and monitoring the conditions of the seeds and nuts.”
“Come summer, it can’t all be wild where we grow,” says Sabia. “The etymology of ‘garden’ is ‘enclosure’ so we need to be smart about places for the critters and places for us.”
“Too true. Though we’re all critters really,” says Roca.
“Roca and I — we grow and gather the surplus of life, and send it to people who have a surplus of money to send to us. The cycle repeats. We plant and grow more and new every year — winter, spring, summer, fall. What else are we going to do here in this great belly of this great island of this great turtle of our lives, Turtle Island?”
Jenna smiles. “I can think of a few things.” She checks an order on the laptop and prints out the address with bar code and postage. She sticks it to the next package that Sabia sends along. “Seems like a lot of work,” says Jenna.
“What’s not? Nursing. What you do. Dealing with all those people,” says Sabia. “That’s a lot of work.”
“It used to keep us out of trouble,” says Roca. He sets a bag of hickory nuts on the table and looks toward the coal mine bunker. “Not anymore.”
“Those days are gone,” says Sabia. “We’re full-blown revolutionaries now.”
“President Silver can’t be a permanent guest, Sabia. You know that, right?” says Jenna. “Maybe ‘exceptional’ guest. Not permanent.”
“We don’t know that,” says Sabia.
“I saved their lives,” says Roca. “And then Silver locks me down. And Lin allows it. I'm not calling them 'exceptional' anything. ‘Difficult' maybe, ‘highly problematic’.”
“Pain in the ass,” says Sabia.
“Anything but ‘permanent’,” says Jenna. “It sounds so fatal and final.”
“We’ll see,” says Sabia.
“Sabia, we only destroy machinery and pipelines, not people.”
“You think you’re more moral than me on this, Jenna? Well, I think that’s the opposite of reality, if you want to push the issue. You and I are like family, Jenna. And you’re no guest here. You’re home. And Silver and Lin are not really our guests either. Maybe we should think of them as campers. They do what we say. Not that they’re free to leave. They chose not to anyway. And look at it this way: Silver and Lin are living their best lives in Camp Bunker, as far as we know. Way far. Silver, and her enabler, her accomplice Lin. How dare we allow them back to their destructive ways? It would be the end of everything.”
“What if they die down there?” says Jenna. “How far underground did you say it was?”
“We can’t control everything,” says Sabia.
Jenna types into the laptop. “I’m going to look up what kind of personality disorder you have, Sabia.”
“Okay, girls,” says Roca.
“Save it, Roca,” says Sabia. “Let her look. She won’t find the obvious. RPD. Revolutionary Personality Disorder. It will be in all the textbooks as soon as I die and they conduct my autopsy.”
Jenna sets aside the laptop. “I get that there’s no stopping you, Sabia, but someday, if you’re lucky, you will be forced to release President Silver. It will happen. At best in exchange for pardons and binding promises — and maybe some further contract for change. I don’t know how it might work but—”
“We’re a billion times more likely to be shot dead on sight,” says Sabia.
“That’s not going to happen,” says Roca.
“I’ve got a contract already. It’s called ransom demands. We don’t need Silver’s pardon. Alecta will do it, when the time comes, if the time comes, like she has done everything else. Everything depends on what the Revolution demands in the moment.”
“Be realistic. They'll figure this out,” says Jenna. “Then you won't have a choice.”
“They won't find out from me,” says Sabia. “You? Roca?”
“You need an endgame.”
“This is the endgame, Jenna. We’re in it now. We started in it. And it may be that this endgame can never end.”
“But that’s monstrous!” says Jenna. “You can’t go on forever with Kristen Silver and Ellen Lin stuck underground.”
“That’s the Revolution, Jenna. That’s how we win. I wish it were otherwise. It’s not. And I know what monstrous is, Jenna. And so do you. And this is not it. Actually this is entirely the opposite of monstrous. No one is getting hurt here.”
“Mija, listen,” says Roca. “Jenna is trying to remind us of what we are actually doing.”
Sabia shoves aside a package half-taped. “Are you two even kidding me right now? If we give up Silver, we have no leverage. Nobody gets anything, they'll roll it all back. The Revolution dies. The American Liberation Army is no more. The country, the world is toast. You can’t think with a captive mindset,” says Sabia. “I’m not captive. I’m nobody’s captive.”
“Liberation ‘Army’?” says Jenna. “I thought it was ‘Alliance’. It's just you and Roca and now me.”
“You, me, and Roca are armed now, aren’t we. And it’s a lot more than us, Jenna. Come on. It’s a lot of the country. You see what what people do and say in support of the demands. More people across the country are coming together and acting out. They mean it. We need one great call to action after another. Anyway, the entire country is fully armed already, not just us. The anti-fascists do not back down. They push back against bad actors. And you know what happened to that traitor Bombarill. People raised their voices to the good and he lashed out and got reminded firsthand of the natural law: violence leads to violence. Well, here we are. People demand more of the asshole officials. And the predatory systems. And they need a strong leader. They need—”
“A kidnapper with a shotgun?” says Jenna. “Joan of Arc with no real army? You remember what happened to fucking Joan? She was forced to renounce using weapons, and she was forced to renounce wearing men’s clothing. She was forced to give up. She was imprisoned. And then she was burned alive — tied to a stake. That sounds like fun. She was almost exactly your age. 600 years ago. And you’re on that same Joan fucking of Arc collision course with history.”
“My politics are better than old Joan’s. My strategy too. I don’t march with any King’s army. They’ll never tie me to a flaming stake.”
“Sabia of Iowa. Is that what you are? The People's Kidnapper?”
“See, it's catchy.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Well, don’t call me anything then. I don’t mind being a ghost like we all are anyway. A ghost for the future, from the future, of the future, of the present, here today, tomorrow, and forever.”
Sabia takes a bag of hickory nuts from Roca and shoves it into a USPS priority mail cardboard box.
“You make me fucking nuts, Jenna. Good leaders matter, even if faceless, even if forced underground. Especially then. Not Silver. Me. You. Roca. We are the energy of the internet and of any civilization worthy of the name. We’re not voiceless even if faceless. We are ideas and ideals and identities in the ether. We come to life this way. Leaders must go where others are unwilling to go, at first. It’s a constant revolution in consciousness and conditions, forever. We need to do what otherwise would not be done — at the right time, in the right place, with the right people. Our transgressions are necessary. And necessarily not transgressions.”
“Good speech,” says Jenna. “You can’t keep Silver and Lin here forever."
“You and Jenna have your lives to live,” says Roca.
“Does anyone hear me here?” says Sabia. “If we let Silver go, she will stab us in the chest. You know that, Abuelo. She already did. Do you want to see me stabbed in the chest again, Roca? I don't.”
Sabia steps away from the packing station. She looks around. Then she leans forward and smells the fuzzy rough and ornate oversize leaves of the most cold hardy type of fig known and grown anywhere in the world. It goes by many names now — Mt Etna, Marseilles Black, Hardy Chicago — and can be traced to the many mountains surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. In Iowa, Marseilles Black is an immigrant from a far land, dying to the ground outside in winter, and if well-situated and mulched, the plant rises miraculous from the ground in summer to bear a sweet jam of fruit in fall. Sabia loves the musky smell of fig leaves even more than the ripe resin-berry scent of the fruit. It’s so intoxicating. The flavor though, and the luscious jammy texture, the grape-cherry punch taste of this most remarkable and most cold-hardy of figs is absolutely to die for.
Sabia loves figs. They infuse her brain. Some days, life among the figs is all she needs. Other days, if Sabia is not overthrowing the corrupt powers that be, she is pissed. Sabia, the Fig Girl of Iowa, and maybe of the whole country, she hates to be pissed. Often there’s no avoiding it.
“We do what we do and then we justify what we do. Okay. I can justify it.”
Sabia talks, nose to fig leaves.
“And sometimes you need to stop and smell the figs,” she says. “Revolution or no revolution. And we do. We will continue to. See, Roca, we can live through these most revolutionary times and be fully alive.”
“Are we though?” says Jenna.
“We are. It can’t be all survive and grind through the day for a better tomorrow. The ideal tomorrow never comes. The ideal day never is. Fully alive never means full life. That’s a mirage.”
“Some lives are more full than others,” say Jenna.
“I know,” Sabia says.
Sabia gets back to work with Jenna and Roca, binding the package she set aside.
“Figs are one of the earliest known cultivated foods, maybe the earliest,” she says. “So what then if we die early ourselves? We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but we are already ancient, living among ageless creatures, plants, sun, earth, water, and air. We know eternity. We live it every day. We need to keep ourselves from killing it all off.”
“Let’s not go nuts now,” says Roca.
“Too late,” says Sabia.
“Life is precious. You're young and getting younger every year, Mija. We all are if we put our minds and lives to it. We’re always learning and growing more toward life.”
“Nuts aren't always nuts,” says Sabia.
Roca hoists a bag of northern red oak acorns onto the table. “Except when they are.” He pats the bag. “Let’s leave the nutty to the oaks.”
Down the line they move things along, Jenna, Roca, and Sabia, tending one package and order after another.
“Don't fig leaves smell like cat pee?” says Jenna. “I read through your fig forums, Sabia. Some growers say the leaves smell like pee. Yours don’t. Why?”
“I mean, they can,” says Sabia. “But only when the plants don't get enough calcium — garden lime. It sweetens everything. Figs were born to grow from the limestone of Mediterranea. They love that chalky substrate to sink their roots to. Keeps 'em sweet. Like you know who.”
“Like me,” says Jenna.
“Like the Revolution,” says Sabia.
“Like a hickory,” says Roca.
“Take the fig out of Mediterranea, you won't take Mediterranea out of the fig,” says Sabia.
“Take the girl out of the revolution, and you won't take the revolution out of the girl,” says Jenna.
“Take the gardener out of the garden, and I’ll still be planting in my mind,” says Roca.
“It’s enough to break your heart,” says Jenna.
“Nothing breaks my heart,” says Sabia. “Nothing or everything. There’s no in between.”
“Someone should spread garden lime on you, Sabia. Sweeten you up a bit,” says Jenna.
“She’s okay with sour,” says Roca.
Sabia presses a length of tape onto a large package, then slides it to Jenna to address. “Take a bite out of me, and away you’ll run. I’m like the limbs and leaves of fig plants, full of caustic latex that burns,” says Sabia. “You and me, Jenna, we’re not the ripe fruits of this world. We’re the protective enzymes.”
“A few lovers I know will be disappointed to hear that,” says Jenna.
Sabia blows Jenna a kiss. “We make the occasional exceptions.”
“Fuck!”
Sabia slams a package onto the table. She walks into the moonlit dark, the entire length of the greenhouse, before returning.
“What is it?” says Roca. “Did you cut yourself?”
“No. I should have,” says Sabia. She looks to Jenna. “My demands. I missed a massive one. What the fuck was I thinking? We need a new hostage video to make new demands. What the fuck is Alecta doing? She should have done this already on her own. Suspend all arms ships permanently to all countries. We need to more than slash the military budget. We need to disarm the world. We need to kill the weapons industry. How the fuck could I miss that?”
“Sabia, you’re only one person,” says Jenna. “You’re not Amnesty International. Even they make mistakes.”
“They sure as fuck do,” says Sabia. “Fuck. It’s so easy. The President has total and uncontested control over the decision to allow any and all weapons sales and shipments. All she needs to do is say, ‘No guns.’ And guess what? No guns! What the fuck is Alecta doing? It’s fucking my fault.”
“Sabia, it’s the whole country’s fault.”
“Do you know how many people are slaughtered each year by US weapons? Palestine. Iraq. Afghanistan. Syria. Yemen. Russia. Somalia. Indonesia. Philippines. Egypt. And on and on. North Korea was obliterated by US weapons. No wonder they hate us to this day. And Vietnam. El Salvador. Nicaragua. And on and on. How many people around the globe live under the threat of US weapons? The entire planet. Hard to say what will end the life of the world first — climate collapse or nukes. There must be abolition. In the meantime, mass slaughter by gun and bomb. Bomb and gun. Mostly white weapons killing brown people. And black people. Most weapons in the world are sold by the US. Its European allies sell many of the rest. It’s the great white death. It’s the European conquest 500 years on — direct and by proxy. And I fucking left it off the list of demands. Stop making and selling death! Abolition.”
Sabia takes another walk. At the far end of the greenhouse, she stares out at the moonlit snow and craggy lines of trees and bushes. Everywhere is the end of the world, she thinks.
Sabia crouches low to the ground and puts her hands on her head and continues to stare across the land. What else did she miss? What is she missing now? Think. Something may be way off in her approach. She can feel it. Something she should know better than she does already. What? What is she missing? Fuck. She needs to talk to someone. Jenna and Jasmine. And fucking Alecta. Who else? Maybe they can figure it out together.
Sabia returns to work. An alarm sounds. Mounted on a truss above the packing station, a small speaker chimes insistent, not loud. Another speaker chimes in their underground home though it cannot be heard outside the great room.
Roca and Sabia glance at the alarm. Then they look at Jenna.
“What?” says Jenna.
“We don’t get that alert much,” says Roca. “Especially not at night. Did you leave the front door of the farmhouse unlocked?”
“I haven’t gone back there,” says Jenna. “I haven’t been near the door.”
“It just now opened. Fucking Avery,” says Sabia. “I told him. It’s either him or Billy. Goddamn it.”
“Did you lock it?” says Roca.
“Always,” says Sabia.
Sabia leaves behind an unfinished package and goes up into the farmhouse.
President Kristen Silver and Ellen Lin gather at the kitchen table in the bunker where they drink hot chocolate and watch news of ex-FBI Director Castelan's alleged involvement in the attack on Ground Force One. Still unsure of what to do with her mangled hair, Silver continues to wear Sabia’s cap, and Sabia’s flannel, in the cool confines of the converted mine.
“Maximilian Castelan, that cretin. He targeted my ass.”
“And mine,” says Ellen. “I warned you to get rid of those Republican holdovers, Kristen — both directors, FBI and CIA. Why Democrats allow wingnuts to head those agencies is beyond me. It’s suicidal. Look at the two of us sitting here in this godforsaken bunker, barely alive as we speak. There’s almost never a CIA or FBI Director who’s a Democrat. And they would be bad enough, I mean, they're gun nuts too. Probably wouldn’t throw missiles at a Democrat President though. I would hope.”
“Ellen, do I look like a boat-rocker to you? You know what the arms industry wants — gunslingers, war makers, at the top of those agencies and many others.”
“Well, we got gun-slung, didn’t we, Kristen. That’s the system. But it’s to the point now where our own boat got rocked, flipped, and blown up.”
“That’s the absurd thing,” says Silver. “The 'Deep State' the right-wingers whine about is overwhelmingly right-wing. The fucking irony.”
“It’s disinformation,” says Lin. “And pretense on top of pretense. The right-wingers make up fantasies to bullshit people, the better to shovel cash to their rich donors. They seek out crazy explanations of the world, they’re so detached from reality. I mean, people like us are more likely to cut straight to the bullshit, when we absolutely need to. We don’t make up fantasy tales to feather the truth.”
“What’s more effective though, Ellen, implausible plausible deniability or fairy tales?”
“Take your pick. But when the brainwashed can't see the brainwashing—”
“Careful. You’ll sound like Sabia.”
“Sabia is no idiot, Kristen. What she is, is a daredevil.”
“Or plain Devil.”
“She can see up from down, and down from up, at times. God save us from the wingnuts though. I mean, they killed our staff and guards.”
“Sabia’s problem is that she conflates right-wingers with us. Good liberals.”
“Facts. Full stop,” says Lin. “Sabia thinks we're almost as bad as them. What did she call us the other day? ‘Sneaky fascists'.”
“'Sneaky fucking fascists', I believe,” says Silver. “I didn't know whether to be offended or proud. Am I sneaky, Ellen? How sneaky can I be under the microscope of all the public lights?”
“Just because us Democrats are not entirely upfront about everything ourselves doesn't mean—”
“Of course not. Fucking Sabia. And Roca. They’re no saints. Roca says we're safe and secure down here in this dungeon. Nothing more secure than a prison, right?
“Forget them, Kristen. Let’s control what we can control. Why keep the wingnuts in charge of the guns at the head of the agencies? It's stupid. The so-called Security Forces. Now here we sit, deep in a bunker.”
“But it’s those left-wingers Sabia and Roca and now fucking Jenna who shoved us in here, Ellen.”
“They’re bad, I know.”
Silver and Lin drink deep of the reassuringly hot and sweet chocolate.
“But how often does it happen?” says Lin. “The right-wingers tried to eliminate us entirely. And if not for the fascists trying to turn this country into a medieval European theocracy, I bet Sabia and Roca would be growing carrots and potatoes instead of playing revolutionary war hero. What is this — 1776? And not 1861? I thought America was halfway into a second Civil War not the second Revolutionary War. Fucking Sabia. She wants to cross the Delaware River through winter ice like George Washington.”
“And then storm the Capitol like the January 6 mob.”
“She would need to cross the Potomac, not the Delaware for that.”
“I know where the rivers are, Ellen. Fucking Alecta — my oh-so loyal Vice President — she already crossed the Potomac this winter. Took the Capitol, the White House, and the Oval Office. All at once. My office!”
“They can’t win,” says Lin. “Sabia and Roca and Jenna and Alecta. They can’t change the world overnight. It will be blowback on top of blowback.”
“They don’t mind the fight though. That’s the problem,” says Silver. “They want the fight. They’re in this to the end. Aren’t they. So you and I might sit here a long while, maybe even until after the election. It’s you and I who suffered the blowback so far, not them. Thanks to fucking Castelan in the FBI.”
“I’m telling you,” says Lin. “At least Alecta threw out Alspi and Bentcan. Now that piece of shit Castelan is running like a fucking coward. If we wait, if we’re patient, things will get back to normal again.”
“Fat lot of choice we have,” says Silver. “But I don’t know. You go along to get along with the donors, and you wink and nod at the gun nuts in the powerful positions, and you try to hand out a few social band aids along the way, and what do you get? This. What more could we do?”
“I know. It’s like they send a missile your way no matter what.”
“Well, you watch, Ellen. I’ll get my revenge, I promise you that. I’ll be back in power and I will fuck Castelan beyond all repair. You watch me. I will see him burn. Top cop, my ass.”
The alarm stops sounding in the greenhouse.
“That’s Sabia,” says Roca. “She either closed the front door or disabled the system.”
“I like that,” says Jenna. “Disable the system.”
She and Roca continue to work methodically, packing and labeling seeds and nuts.
“What’s the deal with Sabia and Avery?” says Jenna.
“No idea,” says Roca. “I thought you would know. Avery worked summers with us the past two years, part-time, nothing big. He was always coming around on his dirt bike.”
“Getting away from his big bully of a brother maybe.”
“Avery would ask a million questions about everything we do. And since Sabia was okay with him, so was I.”
“How long will Sabia be up in the farmhouse?”
“She’ll try to investigate the thing,” says Roca. “Could be a mouse chewed the wires. Happened once before at another door.”
Jenna looks toward the farmhouse again. She has an odd feeling. “Roca, how much security do you have?”
“We monitor the doors of the house. That's how we can get up top to act like we live there.”
“Is someone really at the door? Or through it?”
“The alarm indicates the door is open — or was. High tech ain’t always worth a damn.”
“Cameras would show you everything.”
“Some people are afraid of the world. Not us. We use tech to preserve our privacy, not to monitor others.”
“So when Sabia unplugs the wifi and takes the battery out of her phone and puts it in a lead-lined wooden box with her laptop in the portable refrigerator that's never plugged in like I’ve seen her do in the farmhouse—”
“It blocks the big tech spies. All of them, she thinks. And any government spies. That's when she really wants to talk free about her big ideas. There's no smart TVs and no other smart devices on the farm. Nothing connected to the internet, except our phones and laptop.”
“Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, they would all be proud. No e-spies. No one up in your business.”
“I can't imagine who cares about us on this little old farmstead,” says Roca. “Peeping in, stealing electronically? But Sabia says e-predators are everywhere. I'm sure she has her reasons.”
“She kidnapped the President of the United States of America and offered Silver for ransom, you know, so other than that—”
“Shit happens,” say Roca.
“Sabia is so gutsy,” says Jenna. “She’s always ten steps ahead, always has a plan, even when she doesn’t.”
“No one’s that smart,” say Roca. “Anyone else would say she’s crazy. At best.”
“That's Sabia. When the goddess-on-high dropped the Queen of Empire into her lap — old Silver-Face — Sabia felt she had no choice. That’s because she’s no regular girl.”
“To me she is. Mija.”
They work in silence for awhile. Jenna reflects. Roca looks over the bins and bags of seeds and nuts and the remaining orders. Too much to do tonight.
“How long do you think till we’re busted, Roca?”
“Days. Weeks. Never. Any second.”
“Think of the story we’ll be able to tell in prison — one like no other. If those pardons don’t come through.”
“You and Sabia have a few stories to tell already, no?”
Jenna looks past Roca. Her thoughts keep being pulled in the direction of the farmhouse. “We had our moments,” she says. She sets aside a package of black locust seeds and chinquapins. “Sabia is so tough. I mean, it takes guts.”
“Too tough, I think,” says Roca. “Sabia is so tough I worry.”
Sabia comes up from the farmhouse basement into the lit kitchen to check on the front door, which is closed and locked. She opens it and looks onto the porch, sees nothing at first. Then she sees the car in the drive. “What the fuck?”
Castelan grabs her from behind.
He spins her around and holds her by the neck with one hand against the wall. He practically lifts her off the floor. With his other hand he closes the door and locks it.
“You sneaky little bitch.”
Castelan drags Sabia by the throat into the kitchen. She cannot talk or much breath even before he smothers her mouth with a dish towel. He bends her backwards over the kitchen counter.
“If you scream, I will break your fucking teeth. Got it? Anyway, who the fuck will hear you all the way out here in the countryside. Tell me. Who?”
His eyes, when she can see them, look more dead than angry.
Castelan removes the dish towel and relieves some pressure on her throat.
“That’s right. No one,” he says.
Sabia stares wide-eyed. Fucking Castelan — what the fuck? Her throat, Jesus, crushed agony. She can’t think. Her brain processes one word over and over again: escape.
She tries to nod.
“That’s a good girl,” says Castelan.
Then he manhandles her into the living room. He shoves her onto the couch. She presses back into it, stares up at him. Free of his grip, prisoner to his will. What kind of brutal arrest is this? How? Castelan is a wanted man. He broke into her house. She’s his personal prisoner.
He looks desperate. He must be. Sabia tries to think. Get out.
“I know about you and Jenna,” says Castelan. “Where is she tonight? Not here. Too bad. You could use a friend, Sabia. What were you doing in the cellar? I checked it out. You hide good, girl. But you can’t hide anymore.”
“Get the Hell out of my house,” says Sabia.
What does Castelan know about her and Jenna? Sabia looks to the left and to the right. There’s no way out, no space to get past. She is not near strong enough to go through him. Castelan looks twice her size.
Castelan kneels on one knee in front of her. They are nearly eye to eye, except his eyes remain above the level of her own. He makes a fist with his right hand and puts it gently under her chin, pushing up. This is somehow more frightening than if he punched her. He smells like old sweat.
Sabia has seen this so many times before. The vole in grip of the hawk. The moth in the beak of a grackle. The robin's egg in the mouth of a milk snake. The bunny in the fangs of a feral cat. The bodies of water protectors bashed by the weapons of police.
Sabia braces for impact.
Castelan merely stares at her, but the interrogation has begun.
“Tell me where she is,” he says. “I've come to rescue the President. I’ve come to save her.”
Sabia does not dare move.
“Tell me,” he says.
“I don’t know,” she says.
His rising anger, Sabia feels it.
She does not see the hand that strikes her, that obliterates the world.
When Sabia comes to, lying flat on the couch, she has difficulty hearing out of her left ear. Something feels swollen in her skull. Her jaw and entire face throbs. She tastes blood.
And yet she can think. Or she thinks she can.
Castelan sits in an armchair across from her smoking a cigarette. Having found no ashtrays, he taps ash into a teacup and saucer on the arm of the chair, a lighter and a pack of Marlboros beside.
“Would you like some tea,” he says.
Sabia does not move but watches him.
“I'm not a bad guy, Sabia. I need to find the President. I need to find her now, need to do it my way, and you need to help me. That's all. I'm asking for a little help here. And you’re going to give it to me. I've got things I need to do.” Castelan thinks of the body in the car, and the car itself. He knows how to lose a body and how to disappear a car. He has seen it done well and poorly a number of times. He does not want to be all night about it.
Get the girl, get the President, lose the evidence, get a photo op. Voila. Underground outlaw no more. Undercover cop of cops. An American Hero.
Castelan needs to able to renegotiate his life.
He feels he could almost call Director Kingsley now and bargain by way of the audio and video of Sabia confessing to Jenna Ryzcek, but that won’t be enough. He should have shared the evidence with the FBI already and gone through proper channels to gather it in the first place. No, he needs an all-out hero's story to trump the story of villain that was forced upon him. He needs to produce President Silver alive and in the flesh — safe, secure, rescued by National Hero, American Hero, World Hero, Maximilian Castelan. Then he can connect with Kingsley and come in from the cold in a dignified way.
Of course Castelan knows he will not be invited back to the FBI. Not ever. Except for questioning. No reason he cannot make a killing on right-wing speaking tours. He will insist on it. That and a multimillion dollar book release of his life exploits. Maybe even a movie and TV series. Castelan thinks he would make a great protagonist. From Villain To Hero. An All-American story.
If his old buddies and associates, those still alive or not imprisoned, if they want to try to whack the President again, well, that remains their business. Not his. Never was. Castelan's great crimes lie elsewhere — in places most people do not know or care to look. This whole assassination and coup thing was bad luck, a mistake, professional misjudgment, as far as anyone might be able to prove against this American Hero who shows his true colors by saving the President.
Sabia needs to help him out. Or he will need to force the matter.
Castelan blows smoke across the room away from Sabia and taps ashes into the teacup. “Do you get lonely out here by yourself?”
Sabia is almost ready to sit up. She survived the first part of this horrible attack, apparently. Now on to the next.
“Do you smoke?” Castelan asks.
Sabia pushes up on the couch, leans back against the cushion. “Not that shit.” She needs to delay. She needs Jenna and Roca. Terrible as that might be.
“Pothead, are you? You little kidnapper. I heard what you said to Jenna Ryzcek. I got it all on record. Where’s Silver? Who has her?”
Yes, Roca and Jenna will need to save her now. Unless she can save herself. She fears for their safety. She fears for her own.
“I see what goes on in the heartland,” say Castelan. “Good old-fashioned Iowa coups and kidnapping. And lies — all the livelong day.” Castelan pulls a cigarette from his pack of Marlboros and extends it to Sabia. “You should smoke. It might be your last for a while.”
Sabia accepts the cigarette and the lighter and the saucer as ash tray. She thinks she knows what Castelan is doing. Playing good cop and bad cop all as one.
She smokes. Been a long time since she tried tobacco just to try it. Never got hooked. Was always against it. Sabia does not even smoke much pot. The mouse-chewed brain scans of pot smokers put on Youtube by functional medicine doctors — those surprising images scared her from going too far down even that sweet old herbal route.
But she smokes this cigarette now. She lights the cigarette and sets the lighter on couch cushion by the saucer. She inhales, then blows smoke directly at Castelan.
“Tobacco,” she says. “The revenge of the indigenous, against the white man.”
Sabia imagines jabbing the burning end of the cancer stick direct into Castelan's eye, though she is sure it will take more to escape, more than a bit of fire to the eye to get free of Uncle Satan.
Sabia needs Jenna and Roca. She knows she does.
Or one of the miracles she never believes in. Not for her. Not for anyone. No miracles for Sabia, not for the Perez family. Never have been. Never will be. Only hard real life.
There may be one other path of escape for Sabia. Maybe the most likely.
The final route, her least favorite option. Martyrdom. That might be the most revolutionary way out for Sabia tonight.
