Most Revolutionary - Chapter Twenty
Feeding The Wolf To The Wolf
Previously: Liberal US President Kristen Silver and her reelection Campaign Manager Ellen Lin hunker down in the coal mine survival bunker. Anonymously, Sabia Perez captures two new hostages: fugitive FBI Director Maximilian Castelan and his victim, welder Tucker Gere. Roca Perez and Jenna Ryzcek burn Castelan’s getaway car through the ice on Rathbun Lake. In the White House Cabinet Room, Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez and her Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier, Press Secretary Tisha Noori, Constitutional Law Advisor Irene Aetos, and Presidential Aide Malcolm Xavier confront Speaker of the House Barry Bombarill and Senate pro tem Richard Goldnut. The congressmen threaten Alecta with bipartisan impeachment, conviction, and removal from office if she does not reverse her revolutionary Presidential Orders. Alecta dismisses the officials and vows to authorize a national bank to enact more revolutionary measures.
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.
Alecta runs through the night. Fire on all sides. Apartment buildings explode. Bombs concuss. Alecta races through smoke and falling chunks of steel, iron, and cement. People around her vaporized. Others burned alive, buried alive. Lumps of bloody flesh litter the ground. Tortured screams on all sides. Genocide rains.
Alecta trips over a blasted leg — bare brown foot sticking out from pajamas. She stumbles over a child's head — severed from its neck. The child's face glows by flames. Wide-open eyes stare and accuse Alecta.
What have you done? What have you become?
What have you been all along? America?
Alecta stumbles. She collides and spins off someone or something streaking in the opposite direction.
It's the fucking Devil.
No, it's Alecta herself. She has run into her own fleeing body.
No, it's the Devil.
Alecta and the Devil tear apart. They speed in opposite directions. Buildings collapse on all sides.
Why is the Devil running through blasted streets?
Is even the Devil afraid of the genocide? Worse than Evil? This open air death camp — this free-fire range of incineration.
A full length mirror stands untouched by explosions in the center of the rubbled street. A miracle. Free of cement dust and smoky ash — clean and bright, crystal clear. Every cell in Alecta's body screams, Don't look in the mirror! She looks. Jesus Christ. She sees the Devil.
Alecta wakes in bed, clothes drenched — sweat if not blood or other body fluids.
The nightmare won't stop. Her skull aches. Her heart tears. A new explosion throws Alecta out of bed, face first into the apocalypse. The street roars. Cataclysm of fire, cement, smoke.
Alecta longs for real sleep. Even to wake feels too painful. She drifts into holocaust — a horror in slow motion.
Alecta is in Hell. Hell is in Alecta.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The explosions are like cars flying head-on into trains. Total obliteration. How can she be alive? Earth liquifies and punches up through her body and grabs her by the neck and throws her down — up and down simultaneously as if in earthquake exploding into volcano. Steel, iron, and rock missile from sky — rain of fire, shock-waves of death. The killing is forever. The dying and torture endless.
Who are these people dropping bombs? They must be complete psychopaths.
Alecta races through disaster. She can’t get away from explosion and concussion. Someone is behind her. Someone is chasing her. Is it the Devil? Alecta looks.
It’s Sabia Perez.
Fuck.
Alecta runs faster. She can’t get away.
Alecta wakes in bed, soaked.
All is Hell.
Alecta is trapped in the bombing and burning of Gaza, the blasting of Lebanon. Back in the day, she tried to stop it. She railed for a permanent ceasefire, for an end to American weapons, funds, killing. An end to supplying, enabling, and participating in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians that America could have stopped at any moment by not funding it, and arming it, and de facto authorizing it, and outright fighting in it. But both America and Israel chose expansion and conquest and war over security, for decades in Western Asia and all around the globe. A dual history of aggression and assault, invasion and conflict — a gore-fest of terror and massacre neither complex nor confusing to understand and in no way justifiable.
America and its blood-drenched financiers and profiteering corporations — not content to merely buy the massive amount of oil from the countries of western Asia — they must control it. Own it directly where possible, and decide the price and production where not — at the point of a gun, the biggest gun in the history of the world.
Toward this end, anything goes. Genocide. War. Slaughter. Invasion. Every gamble possible. The end of the world — enthusiastically risked. Anything goes and goes and goes, burning people alive. Burning them in hospitals. Burning them in schools. Burning them in places of worship. Slaughter everywhere all the time. And now the culmination of the ethnic cleansing, the geographic extermination, a genocide 76 years in the making — the final catastrophe in and of Palestine. A pillaging and profiteering madness of zealotry and demonization, fanatical religion and financial greed, military intoxication and political fraud.
The insanity and bigotry of all the religious states — the Christofascist American state not least. “In God We Trust” on every American coin and bill — the official national motto since 1956 — sheer insanity. Theocracy — One Nation, Many Nations, Under God — the pillaging and profiteering by genocide against the Palestinians, the wholesale theft of their land — hard on the heels of the Empire’s shattering of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and beyond. Lebanon, again. And Iran.
Anyone with even an ounce of justice in their bones tried to stop it. The whole world insisted on a two state solution for Palestine that Israel and America alone on the planet rejected — both the Empire and its outpost of Empire unwilling to stop their own madness, their theft, their terror, their inhumanity. Their racism. Their colonization. Their zealotry. Their war. Their genocide of the most vulnerable. The brutal insanity of their holocaust against the Palestinians, the holocaust against the democracy-building efforts of Arabs in general — and of the Persians, Kurds, and others who dare to attempt self-determination and self-ownership of their own lands and their own homes, their own lives and their own resources. America and Israel on the attack — disgusting baby-killers. Child murderers. Genocidal monsters. Creators of Hell on Earth. They should all be tried and convicted like the Nazis.
America and Israel want it all. By any means necessary.
The bottomless Nazi trauma of World War Two pivoted within a single year into the long genocide of Palestinians — a second holocaust — the victims become the new monsters, immediately — culminating three-quarters of a century later in the obliteration of Palestine and Palestinians — armed and funded and authorized by America. Weaponized by America.
Alecta catches her breath.
Fuck.
She sits up.
All the dead and dying, the children vaporized and mangled — or scarred for life, if lucky — the women, the men, the boys, the elderly, the infants.
The murderers and the murders of a murderous Empire gone wild—
Fuck.
Sabia chases Alecta. Why?
Alecta clambers out of bed. Strips her clothes. She goes into the shower and wishes the warm water to erase her face. She wants to start entirely anew. She attacks her body with soap. Her face won't wash off. Her mind won’t wash away. Fuck.
Alecta rinses and steps out of the shower. Dries. Leans on the sink — braces herself. Looks in the mirror.
Fuck.
Who the fuck died and made her President of the United States of America?
White Empire.
Sons of monsters.
Alecta feels it worse than ever now, her sudden responsibility for the American war machine, the Empire with all its penetrating, perpetrating dollars and bombs. She feels the weight of Empire, the hideous banks and the grotesque military, like a bulldozer dropped on her shoulders.
It ends today.
Fuck it.
Another big speech.
Should have done it already.
She has done so much. And not enough. Never enough. Too much. Not enough.
The best time to end Empire was many bloody years before it ever came into being. The second best time is now. The immediate now. Yesterday.
In the Perez farmhouse, Sabia stands alone.
Just her and her captives — safe and warm, in the cold winter night.
The snowstorm rages across the Iowa prairie. The darkened window in the living room — it seems to mock Sabia by revealing nothing but driven flakes of ice and endless white — no Roca, no Jenna. Are they safe?
In the kitchen, Sabia powers on the news. Nothing is changed. Nothing ever changes. Not enough.
Sabia sweeps plaster off the floor fallen from the ceiling, blasted by Roca’s shot at Castelan. She sweeps and mops.
She uses vinegar and water to disinfect every surface. She wipes the counter and cabinets. She cleans around Tucker Gere still bound to the table and chair.
“Fuck.” She feels tired and broken. Mind mind, body, spirit. It’s just her and her four hostages now. Two of them men seemingly twice her size.
“What is it?” says Tucker Gere. He remains tied to the kitchen table and chair and sits on the floor. “You okay?”
“You’re the one tied up, not me.” Sabia wants to be alone. She wants to be clean, not cleaning.
“So this is your Revolution.” He pulls at the duct tape binding him.
“Most days the Revolution is grunt work.”
“I’m tied up. And what did I do? Castelan attacked me. He’s your enemy, not me. Cut me loose. I’m on your side.”
“I don’t know that. We’re at the mercy of circumstances, Tucker. Both of us. You’ll live.”
Sabia scrubs around Roca’s .22 rifle on the table. Why does she clean tonight like a woman who cleans too much? Too much for anyone’s good. Sabia is no mom with no little children spreading and imbibing germs. What is she doing? She is ruthless. She attacks the invisible enemy.
Sabia runs the vinegar-soaked towel up the leg of the chair that Tucker is tied to.
“The revolution will be clean, I guess,” says Tucker.
“If only,” says Sabia. She wants to puke.
The news seems all bad and is made worse by the studio moderators. Sabia watches as she cleans. Fired FBI Director Castelan in flight, the long list of ransom demands are labeled an outrage, Alecta’s efforts to meet those demands are demonized by an unending parade of Establishment critics who level character assassination on top of character assassination. The news is all about the bombing of Ground Force One and the assassination attempt against President Silver — the right-wing attempted coup, the left-wing turnabout with its progressive result and aftermath, officially decried. The Empire wants its government back.
A moderator drones: “The decision by Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez to fully reinstate Secret Service Director William Kingsley has been met with mixed reactions. Some say it was wrong to suspend him in the first place while others ask — How can you trust the man who lost the President and her staff?”
Director Kingsley responds to his reinstatement:
“The Acting President will be kept safe. She has tasked me with helping find the abductors of President Silver and her campaign manager Ellen Lin. I will do my best to locate and rescue the President and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
“You fucker, Kingsley,” says Sabia. She slashes a vinegar-soaked towel across the seat of the chair to which Tucker is bound. “Show your face around here again and it will be your ass. That’s a promise. You’ll be next, Kingsley.”
Tucker watches every move of Sabia, every look, and listens closely to the inflection of her voice. He might be her willing ally, but he can only regard her as his fateful or even fatal enemy until she proves otherwise.
“Kingsley is your next captive? Did you really capture President Silver? I won’t believe it until I see it,” he says. “You think you can take down the whole government, Sabia, is that it?”
“I already did.”
Sabia sets the towel on the table. Then she tapes Tucker’s mouth shut.
About an hour before dawn, Roca Perez and Jenna Ryzcek arrive back at the Perez farmstead. Jenna steers the pickup truck slowly through a foot of fluffy snow and parks beside the other truck, driving on top of the snow-buried tire tracks of Tucker's car — Castelan’s escape vehicle — seemingly every trace of it now vanished from the surface of Earth — the cold metal burned to the bottom of Rathbun Lake. As death ends life and life buries death, the wind and the snow of the winter storm fill in the new tracks in the farmhouse drive.
Into the warmth of the farmhouse go Roca and Jenna, where they find Sabia asleep on the living room couch, an assortment of cleaning supplies on the kitchen counter, and Tucker bound and gagged on the floor. No sign of Castelan.
“Shit,” says Jenna. She eases the tape off Tucker's mouth. “Where's Castelan?”
Tucker nods to the basement. “Down there. I guess.”
“Sabia took him?”
“Dragged him like a sack of potatoes.”
Jenna sticks the tape to the table edge. She looks to the cellar door. She looks at Sabia asleep on couch.
“Do I know you?” says Tucker. “Did I see you in the news?”
“Jenna Ryzcek. Water protector.” Jenna offers her hand to Tucker, then withdraws it when she realizes he’s not free to shake. “And this here is Roca Perez. Plant nursery owner. Sabia’s abuelo.”
Roca takes aspirin from the cabinet. He pours three glasses of water. He offers the aspirin to Tucker and Jenna. Tucker accepts. Jenna helps Tucker drink while bound.
“You were supposedly killed in the blast, Roca,” says Tucker. “The Ground Force One bombing. But nothing is as it seems, is it.”
“Sabia said that. She needed me dead and gone. She had her reasons.”
“The Revolution required it,” says Jenna. “That’s all you need to know.”
“I know all about the Revolution,” says Tucker. “The taking of hostages.”
“The Revolution requires a lot of things,” says Jenna.
“You’re all insane,” says Tucker. “You know that, right?”
Roca rests in a chair at the kitchen table. “Yes, we do,” he says.
He looks over Tucker’s head and sees about fifty years into the past — revisiting everything that has changed and everything that remains the same. He feels like a stranger in a strange land, and yet, it’s his land.
“The times are insane,” says Roca. “Always have been, I guess. So why should we be any different? Why should Sabia not be insane?”
“No, we’re different, Roca,” says Jenna. “That’s the thing.” She pulls the tape off the edge of the table. “Sorry,” she says to Tucker. She clamps the tape over his mouth.
In a black SUV that early morning, Director Kingsley travels south alone from Des Moines on the snow-covered old farm road. The woods are encased in snow and ice, the fields are blankets of blinding white. Kingsley pulls into the unplowed Perez drive and parks behind by the two Perez trucks. He exits the car and walks to the front of one truck. He stands by the snow-crusted hood and inspects the frozen property from that vantage — house, barn, winter orchard. Asleep. Quiet and still except for the punching wind that flicks up veils of snow and laces it across the land.
Kingsley assumes that this view has looked very much the same for the past hundred or hundred and fifty years. Or much longer. He feels like a time traveler standing in a past he can see and touch and feel and smell and hear and yet somehow not revisit.
He thinks of Sabia as if she herself is one hundred and fifty years old, standing there before him. He considers that he himself is less than a third that age. And from a distant land.
Sabia walks through the snow and fields over the course of centuries, Kingsley imagines. From house to barn. From barn to orchard. From orchard to creek. She can’t be real. No one can live for that long. Or is she? A supernatural element of earth. A rock ledge, slowly changing on the surface and never moving underneath. A rock ledge is damn near impossible to budge. You need to blast it out.
Kingsley imagines Sabia squatting on these grounds for centuries, claiming it for herself.
That’s Sabia, he’s convinced. She feels so born into this land that she is confident enough to massively arrest history. What does she care of the surface history above the ledge rock below the glacial till and the prairie soil meters deep. Even the glaciers barely scratched the surface of the bedrock. It would seem that not even the glaciers can move Sabia Perez.
But Kingsley must. He must root her out, dig her from the bedrock.
Jesus Christ, Kingsley thinks. Crazy thoughts come to you in the empty tundra. It’s like your mind gets sucked to the edges of worlds you never knew existed or could exist. Then what you imagine seems real and you can’t escape it — there at the end of the Earth. You must confront whatever the reality might seem to be, along with what the reality actually is.
And so Kingsley must confront Sabia as she seems to be and as she actually is — revolutionary, apparently, and, well, a nobody.
Kingsley looks to the bed of the truck and sees two snow shovels. Emergency tools for a harsh climate, he assumes. Why two?
He sees no signs of recent shoveling anywhere near the drive, house, or barn.
Kingsley goes onto the porch to the front door and pushes the doorbell. He waits. Then he opens the storm door and knocks. He examines the Victorian wooden door, the paneled design, and the antique, ornate brass knob, the old windows, bubbles in the glass, a few cracks. And the modern blinds that prevent him from seeing a damn thing inside.
He rings again, and knocks again. He looks back at the trucks.
“Your trucks are here. Where the fuck are you, Sabia? Out with a friend, maybe. Or asleep. It’s early.”
Kingsley walks off the porch, returns to the trucks, inspects the shovels.
Out with which friend?
Kingsley lifts one shovel and knocks the snow off. He notices a dark mark on the scoop. He examines it. He takes off a glove and tests the mark with his fingers — slick liquid, unfrozen in the deep freeze. He smells it.
Oil. Motor oil.
Kingsley puts the shovel back in the truck and examines the other shovel. Nothing unusual.
He surveys the grounds again. Everything wind-wrought and cold in sheathes of snow and ice. Nothing unusual. Everything strange.
The crunch and crackle of snow is sudden beside Kingsley. An electric snowmobile whirs to a stop — its sound like a robotic territorial squirrel. Billy the Moto Kid removes his goggles. “I know you. I thought you got fired.”
“You’re Billy the Moto Kid,” says Kingsley.
“Your people shot at me the morning after the bombing,” says Billy.
“At your camera drone, not you. This isn't the Wild West, Kid. Despite your name. Those were warning shots only.”
“Seemed wild to me. Buses and snowplows and SUVs exploding and shit.”
“A one-time event.”
“Bullets, bombs, guns, and missiles — that’s war is what that was.”
“There’s no war in Iowa, Kid. Not anymore.”
“Everyone owns a gun, though. Must be something going on.”
The winter wind bites at every point on Kingsley’s face. Annoying — like a constant slap. Like Billy. Kingsley turns from the bite, points at the farmhouse. “Are you here to see Sabia?”
“Why? You got a lead on the President? You tracking her? I would.”
“I’m here on old business, Kid.”
“You wouldn’t tell me anyway. My Youtube channel would love to know. You could sit for an interview. Don’t bother with your lies to me, Director, you’re welcome to lie to my audience. They expect it. Who doesn’t. I got people out looking for the President, everywhere. They report to my channel. You should join in — talk about Sabia. She's good for the ratings, gets more eyeballs and subscriptions than anything else. My web traffic is the real deal if you want to do some PR. I’m talking superior cash flow.”
“Where’s Sabia, Billy? Any idea?”
“Hell if I know. Hiding out — what she does. I set her straight last night though. Warned her to stay away from my little brother — Avery. She’s a bad influence on him. And in general.”
“Sabia is friends with Avery?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing around her. People like Sabia should be grateful for getting to live in this country, and they’re not. Sabia is not grateful at all.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be spied on by people like you, Billy. Are you grateful yourself, to live in this country? Is that why you complain nonstop online about the Deep State.”
“The Deep State is not American. You’re the Deep State, Director.”
“I’m American.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Okay. You think you’re funny.”
“I ain't no spy. I'm a high-tech media watchdog. A citizen journalist.”
“You spy on your fellow citizens. On Sabia.”
“I'm on civilian patrol with my cameras and snowmobile. That’s all.”
“Sounds like George Zimmerman. And Sabia is Trayvon Martin. Remember them? Trayvon — the Florida teen Zimmerman stalked and killed. Zimmerman said he was a watchdog like you.”
“This ain't no Florida neighborhood, Copper. This here is Iowa farmland. We do things differently around here.”
“Oh, I bet.”
Kingsley is cold and getting colder. Iowa is cold. Billy — cold.
“You’re a long way from DC, Director. And you work for Alecta O'Roura-Chavez. She sucks. She sticks up for the wrong people. And then it's us out here in the country who get hurt, not them.”
“You’re talking Whites and Blacks.”
“You said it, not me.”
“Us — Not Them! Sounds like a great campaign slogan, Kid. Do you really think Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez goes around hurting people? And do you really want her to?”
“If they deserve it.”
“So, you’re pure as the wind-driven snow, right, Billy? And others are dirty? Are you a pure soul?”
“Which side are you on, Director? That’s your whole problem.”
“I got a lot of problems, Kid, and one of them is that the only thing that people like you see is enemies. You’re fixated on the idea of having enemies. Like it’s the thing that warms your heart above all else, gets your blood flowing, pumps your brain.”
“I’m on the side of the American People, Director. And you’re not. You’re the Deep State. All you care about is protecting the Big Shots.”
“Don't look too hard in the mirror, Kid. You might punch yourself.”
“I ain't go no problem looking in the mirror.”
“You sound like you’re ready for civil war. Like a tough guy. But you’re a little person, aren’t you? Like most people. A little dude with a big website now — eager for a one-sided war by little guys like you against the other little guys who you think you know but really don’t. Makes no sense but keeps you warm thinking about it.”
“You can't tell me nothing, Copper.”
“If you know so much, Billy, and since you live around here — how do you think the President got taken? Where do you think she got hauled got off to? Who took her? Where’s your proof? This is your land, right? You should know. Or — maybe it’s not your land, and you don’t know a damn thing though you think you do. What do you know for real, Billy? A whole lotta nothin’?”
“Fuck you, Copper. I already told your people — I got nothing on video of the bombing. Or anything before the bombing.”
“Maybe you got more than you think.”
Billy stares far and hard across the cold landscape. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have no hunch about what happened?”
“Every guess I got I put on Youtube. If I could get President Silver on video — Pow! The sky would be the limit.”
“So go find her.”
“Only the kidnappers can let me interview Silver but that can’t happen now. She’s gone. And if I get one guess about where they took her — Alaska or Minnesota, same difference. Who could find her up there? Who would even want to look? That’s where I would take her. Fucking North Pole.”
Kingsley stares into the wind. Alaska. Or Minnesota. Could be. No record though of Sabia knowing anyone at the North Pole.
“Would you ever kidnap the President, Billy?”
Billy laughs. “Nah — too much hassle. But I would film it all day. It don’t matter though — I got Sabia on film anytime I want. And I got the blast site — every day. And I got the blast day on video. That’s all I need. Everything builds on that. If Silver gets found that could be trouble for me — and my site. I could be old news then. But I’ll adapt with something new, something related — every conspiracy you can dream of. There’s all kinds of conspiracies out there and half of them are true. Or true enough. Personally, I think President Silver, she turns up dead. Don't they always? Kidnappers get tired and shit — run out of options. But this land breeds hard types, all kinds of hard people. People been made hard. By hard times. There’s hard people all over the world too. Could be anyone took Silver. From anywhere.”
“Are you a hard person, Billy?”
“Sure. But I ain’t no kidnapper.”
“That’s good, Billy. You shouldn’t kidnap people. Look. When you see Sabia, tell her I was around, okay? Tell her, Director Kingsley is looking for her.”
Kingsley takes out his wallet and offers Billy his card.
Billy does not immediately accept. “What’s in it for me?”
“Story, Billy. The more information you get me, the more story I give you. I know you’ll talk about all this online.”
Billy reaches to take the card but Kingsley pulls it back. He returns the card to his wallet and pocket. He pretends to have almost made a mistake.
“You don’t work for me, Billy, and I barely know you. I’ll deny everything you say, if it’s bullshit. And if it’s really bullshit I’ll deny that we even talked. But I’ll come by your folks’ place soon and we’ll talk some more.”
“Who’s acting like a spy now?” says Billy.
Kingsley diverts to the snowmobile. “Nice ride, Kid. You sneaked up on me. A powerful machine, right? It could handle a storm. A blizzard even. On a terrible, terrible night.”
“It wasn’t me who took the President, Director. Only a dead man rides in a blizzard.”
“You love it out here, don’t you? The middle of nowhere. You’ll live your whole life here.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not a thing. Nothing wrong with the middle of nowhere.”
“This part of Iowa is the center of the universe to me, Director. I like it remote. Anyway, what’s remote about the heart — the heartland of America? This is the real country. Plus, I got my Dad’s farm to work.”
“Most people like to live closer to one another. In town. In cities. Close and warm.”
“No. They don't. They’re forced to ‘cause they can’t get out. Everyone would live out here if they could. People need space to feel good and safe.”
“Like President Silver? Is that what she found here in Iowa. ‘Good and safe’.”
“Shit happens. Some people aren’t from around here. And never can be.”
“President Silver could never move to Iowa? You wouldn’t let her?”
“She never would. She doesn’t respect us. Doesn’t care. What has President Silver ever done for the country? Nothing but taxes. And all the money goes to the cities.”
“That’s not true. But people don’t learn, do they, Billy? Not like you. They don’t learn that this land is your land, and always has been, right? Land of the brave? Home the free? And death to all outsiders.”
“Hey, look — I didn’t do nothing. I wasn’t around when the Indians were here. I know where you’re going with this, Director. It don’t work on me. I ain’t ashamed of nothing and I ain’t afraid of nothing, not in my home here and not anywhere else. Native pride, Baby!”
Billy mounts his snowmobile like an arctic cowboy on a mini and rigid horse. The snow creaks under the metallic beast and Billy glides low on the winter terrain.
Kingsley sucks in the icy air. The surrounds look and feel like 1842. Ever since the bombing, Kingsley has researched the good land of Iowa, the good people and places, the events. 350 years after Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” and cut off the hands of the indigenous who failed to turn over enough gold, America imposed a “treaty” on the Sauk and Meskwaki people to leave Iowa within 3 years. Otherwise, the American Army would continue with its bloody work of “ethnic cleansing.” That was 1842 Iowa.
And now, generations later, Billy the Moto Kid Yonkin roams free over the frozen prairie on his snowmobile — free as a bird — and complains about “outsiders” as he surveils his closest neighbor, Sabia Perez — her own ancestors actually native to Turtle Island — North America — unlike the German ancestors of Billy.
Sabia Perez would of course call Christopher Columbus a crazed European Imperial conquistador. And Billy — Billy says the history of the world has nothing to do with him.
Kingsley takes shelter in his SUV, starts the engine, tries to warm up.
Over the course of his research into Iowa and its origins, Kingsley learned that most counties in America today are predominantly of German ancestry, by far — including almost all of Iowa — including Billy Yonkin himself.
After German, most American counties are predominantly African, Mexican, Irish, English, Italian, and American Indigenous — in that approximate order.
Crazy to see Europeans in America still ganging up on Africans and Mexicans after decades and centuries of Anglo and European slavery and conquest, but then again it makes sense — it was the Germans who waged war against the world, twice. The Germans don’t exactly have a reputation for peace and sanity, not in Germany, America, or anywhere else. And the Germans remain the dominant group of origin in most American counties — coast to coast, from Canada to Mexico and to the tip of Florida.
And Kingsley knows now that Sabia sees it like an endless tide of white supremacy so pervasive that not only does the genocide of the indigenous in America remain scarcely acknowledged, but the leading figure of the genocide, Christopher Columbus gets an official national holiday all to himself. The genocide is officially endorsed. Celebrated.
So Sabia nabs the President of Empire — Kristen Silver who was campaigning through Sabia’s land, campaigning in a heavily armed platoon of steel vehicles and with Kingsley’s finest soldiers.
Kinglsey thinks he knows every side of Sabia now. And it’s still tough to argue with her and could be impossible to break her. But he must. He promised Alecta. He promised himself. Capture Sabia as the kidnapper of President Silver and salvage his own position in life.
How much Kingsley might appear to be like the rogue Castelan in this situation, Kingsley shudders to think.
Jesus Christ, it’s like the Cowboys and the Indians all over again — the Army against the Indians. Did it never end? How did it never end? And how and why did he become part of the fucking Army in this modern day and age?
The Secret Service is no Boy Scouts club. It’s the guardian for the head of Empire, for the Commander in Chief. Might seem a noble thing in the abstract. As long as you don’t look to closely at the Empire itself. At which point it might seem like something a little less, a little different. Like a paycheck. A wage. Like the job of a vassal loyal to his Lord — keeping the serfs in check. Silver the Lord, Kingsley the vassal with his fiefdom, Billy and Sabia the serfs who seem to be constantly trying to act like vassals and Lords themselves. Civil war indeed.
Well, if Sabia is in fact the kidnapper of Silver, then maybe about that one thing, Billy is correct. Sabia has got it coming to her — she deserves what she gets now. She deserves to be captured and brought to justice.
Not that Kingsley can prove it. Not that he can even see, let alone show, a single link between Sabia and President Silver. Not quite yet.
Kingsley only understands that when you’re dealing with Sabia Perez, you had better know your shit. He is determined not to get blindsided by her again — by her mouth, her will, her wit.
Kingsley fails to consider her muscles.
Or anything else.
Weapons.
Allies.
The deeper reach of the land.
Not that he has it all mapped out, but Kingsley thinks his smarts and willpower and perseverance will carry the day. He hopes. And then he will be the hero.
Not much of a plan but he feels like he knows the truth where once he was clueless.
How long ago it seems now from the first time he interviewed Sabia in the farmhouse the morning after the horrific bombing of Ground Force One. How long ago it seems from when Sabia, as the sudden woman of the household, grilled him on his presence in her home, and ordered him out, essentially. He obliged. He felt justified and empowered in his chivalry. He challenged Castelan and handled every order that would have removed Sabia from the farmhouse.
She played them all. Him especially. And she is still playing, and winning. Meanwhile Alecta ramps up the stakes. Every day she issues some new proclamation of popular rights and administrative actions — a new wave of health clinics here, a new tranche of housing there, a new type of medical right, food right, education right, ecological right, and rights for the elderly and children and prisoners and debtors and mothers and fathers — and elements of reparations for every people under the sun.
So the stakes are increasingly national, going global, and are personal too. How is it possible — to be totally played by a teen girl in the middle of Iowa? What does Sabia know that Kingsley does not? What did she do? Who helped her? Who did she help?
True — when you’re a late teen, you’re sort of old. You’re no kid. You’re strong and full of yourself, if you’ve got any confidence and brains at all. You’re strong as a Perez oak, though fleeting as an Iowa summer breeze — here today, aged out tomorrow. Sabia cannot keep it up — her so-called Revolution. There’s no way. Sabia has truckloads of confidence and brains and more, beginner’s luck by the bushelful, but that luck and the mindless pluck of youth will be gone tomorrow — and Kingsley will be the one to speed it fast and furious on its way.
He knows the possible complications too. It could be an inside-outside job by now if Silver and Lin are collaborating in any way large or small. Stockholm Syndrome — a real thing. And Silver’s polls look awfully good, her campaign never stronger, thanks to the bombing, coup, kidnapping. Ironically. How could Silver not be conniving to win the election however she might? Defiant facts on the ground complicate everything as always.
Fuck if he knows the terrain as well as he needs to.
What the Hell is really going on? And where is it all headed?
Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavz keeps making unprecedented moves for the people in her capacity as President. For Sabia? For the demands? For herself? For the People? What on Earth has Sabia Perez set in motion?
Or is she all mouth? A convenient decoy for the real Revolutionaries? Hidden where?
Fuck if Kingsley knows. It’s good to be alive and involved, he can’t help but feel it, and revel in that at least, especially when so many are iced out by the swirling chaos of life, or don’t survive the holy mess in the first place.
Kingsley drives the short distance to the bomb crater, where he stays warm in the vehicle. A successful day in Iowa, he begins to think, is determined by the number of hours in which you can remain completely warm in hostile weather.
He watches Billy speed back and forth along the Perez greenhouse. Billy zips through the Perez orchard. Then Billy runs the snowmobile down along the creek and into a patch of woods and around a bend until he disappears.
It’s like The Kid was never there in the first place, but might reappear at any moment.
Sabia would be outraged by his trespass, as with so many things.
Beyond her farmstead, Kingsley tries to imagine what on Earth it is that Sabia Perez actually does like.
Her abuelo.
But her abuelo was killed in the bombing.
Endlessly sad. Terrible.
No wonder, Kingsley thinks. No wonder that Sabia would be out for blood — no wonder she might be driven to help kidnap and ransom President Silver.
Nothing can bring Sabia’s abuelo back. So what can make her happy now? Can the land be enough in and of itself?
Sabia has nothing to lose but her home — and it’s too late to take that away from her as a means of leverage.
How do you stop someone with nothing to lose? How do you get them to reveal, to brag, to slip up? Kingsley considers again for the millionth time.
You join them.
Except Sabia would rather slit his throat than trust him, person-to-person, Kingsley is sure.
But Avery Yonkin?
Maybe that’s the way in. Get close to Sabia through Billy’s younger brother.
And who is Avery Yonkin? Another teen, even younger than Sabia and Billy. Another passing breeze. What kind of revolution is this?
One way or another, Kingsley needs to get back inside the farmhouse, as far in as possible. And stay there.
Permanent surveillance, as it must be.
Kingsley stares through the windshield into the tundra. He turns up the heat.
Chief of Staff Shakeeta Glazier enters the Oval Office and stands inside the doorway. She takes a deep breath, then crosses the room to Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez. Shakeeta slides a black bill-signing folder, with a few lesser documents, to Alecta seated behind the Resolute Desk.
“Your signature, please.”
Alecta lifts the folder, examines the leather covers rather than the paper contents. She sets the folder unceremoniously on the desk.
“Shakeeta. Where would you hide President Silver — if — you know—”
“If I were a kidnapper?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Imagine you were. Do you ever dream—”
“Of hostages and blackmail? Do you? Madame President?”
“Shit, Shakeeta, I have dreams, you know. And nightmares.”
“It’s that kind of world.”
“Yeah, fuck.” Alecta stares at the folder.
She knocks her knuckles on the English Oak top of the Resolute Desk.
“Shakeeta — it was a real whiteout blizzard that took Silver and Lin. Who would know best how to get around in a blizzard?”
“Nanook of the North.”
“True. And people from Iowa.”
“I don’t know. Those missiles. That’s an outside job,” says Shakeeta. “People hunker down and ride out blizzards. They go nowhere.”
“Sure, but grab the President, then go underground from the storm. Come up later.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think Silver will be found and soon. If she’s alive still. And she had better be. There’s no way that all the resources of the FBI, NSA, Cyber Command, CIA, Secret Service—”
“What if they’re all looking in the wrong place.”
“I'm sure they are. For now. Every place is the wrong place. Every place but one. Until you find it.”
“What if they never find her, Alecta? Think about how long this could go on. I mean, would that be a terrible thing? When you deliver this speech about Mountainview Bank and Skyview Bank funding all the pressing needs of the country and of the people—”
“Who could hide the President of the United States from they prying eyes of the entire world, Shakeeta? Who would? What kind of person does that? Can you imagine?”
Shakeeta’s gaze lingers on the black folder of documents. Alecta off schedule again.
“Okay, well, Hell, there’s all kind of revolutionaries online, Madame President. Thirteen-year-old kids posting manifestos and personal flags about generational change and radicalization of the masses — there’s Communist-Capitalist alliances, Catholic Atheists for Liberty and Tradition, Evangelicals for Anarchy, Fascists for Equality, Criminals for Justice. It’s everything psycho you can think of out there — a whole new wild, wild West — online, at least. I think it’s mostly performance art.”
“But what if. You know? What if there’s some crank in a closet — or some happily antisocial or ultra-singular individual. Someone with a Revolutionary mindset — with a brain and a heart and a stubbornness big enough to encompass the whole fucking thing.”
“The world and a revolution?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. A crank in a closet. That would be a Hell of a magic closet, Alecta. You don’t know. I don’t know. There’s no way Kingsley figures anything out. Why do you trust him?”
“I trust Grace Lamont more. To guard us. Not that we can trust anyone more than ourselves. We just need to.”
“Kingsley is not going to find the kidnappers. You know how this works. Almost by chance. Someone slips up. A neighbor sees something. Or a hostage escapes. Sometimes the kidnappers snap.”
“Not this time,” says Alecta.
“Don’t be too sure. What if President Silver did not disappear the way everyone thinks she did.”
“That’s exactly what happened. No one knows how she got taken. Or where. It’s like the blizzard ate her alive.”
“Or—” says Shakeeta. “What if Kingsley actually does know what happened already. What if he’s responsible. What if he knows that no one else can know. Except maybe Castelan.”
“Anything’s possible, I guess,” says Alecta.
“So maybe we never find out. Who cares? Of course, you don’t say that publicly.” Shakeeta leans over the Resolute Desk and pushes the folder of documents aside. “These signatures can wait till tomorrow, if you want. Or the fucking next day. Maybe it’s time for something bigger. Maybe you should get to your new speech and move this country all the way in the direction it needs to go.”
Alecta slides open a drawer in the Resolute Desk. She takes out a glass flask pocketed in fine burlap. She sets is on the desk by the folder of documents. “Sabia gave me this flask. I filled it.”
“Oh, fuck,” says Shakeeta. “What is it?”
Alecta sips from the flask. “Medicine,” she says. She offers it to Shakeeta.
“I’m sure.” Shakeeta takes the flask. Sniffs it. She's puzzled. She sips it. Her lips pucker. She shakes her head.
“Elderberry cordial,” says Alecta. “Doctor's prescription.”
Shakeeta hands the flask back to Alecta and wipes her mouth. “Who's the fucking doctor?”
Alecta toasts Shakeeta. She drinks deep this time. “I am.” She licks her lips. “Sabia advised. And I prescribed.”
Jenna crosses the Perez farmhouse living room to Sabia lying on the couch. Jenna touches her forehead. Sabia wakes. Jenna slides in beside Sabia and holds her.
“Car sunk?” says Sabia.
“And burned,” says Jenna. “Castelan?”
“I killed him.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Buried him out back under twenty feet of snow. Maybe it was a dream.”
“I'm sure it was.” Jenna strokes Sabia’s hair while Sabia stares at the ceiling.
Sabia looks into the kitchen up at the corner where Roca’s blast at Castelan half-missed and tattooed and tore the plaster.
“He's down below,” Sabia tells Jenna and Roca. “Tied up. The car’s really gone?”
“Bottom of the lake.”
Roca checks the basement for Castelan. When he finds no one, he comes back to the living room.
“Where’s Castelan, for real, Sabia?”
Sabia sits up, swings her legs over the edge of the couch. “I dragged him all the way into the great room. His next stop is Hell.”
Tucker tries to make himself heard through the tape on his mouth. Sabia gets up, walks past Roca, and rips the tape off Tucker’s mouth.
“Where’s Hell?” says Tucker.
“You mean when,” says Sabia. “Hell is now. It’s time.”
Roca goes ahead of Sabia and Jenna as they drag Castelan down the steps leading to the low hallway and the survival bunker in the coal mine.
Sabia and Jenna pull Castelan to the bunker door. Roca unbars the door. Sabia and Jenna drag Castelan inside.
Asleep in the dark tomb of their bunker bedroom, Lin wakes when she hears the commotion.
“Kristen!” President Silver wakes. “Voices!”
They listen to the commotion. “That’s fucking Sabia!”
Silver and Lin hurry out of bed dressed in their makeshift sleeping wear — sweats and tee shirts borrowed from Sabia and Roca’s supply. In the main room they see Sabia and Jenna drag a bound and gagged figure to the center of the space, where they drop his legs to floor.
Roca slams the bunker door shut. He turns on most of the lights. Everyone stares at each other.
“Who the fuck is that!” says Silver. “Another victim!”
“Sabia, what did you do!”
“Look close,” says Sabia. “It’s your old friend.”
“My God,” says Lin.
“Who?” says Silver. “There’s too much tape on his face.”
“Your friendly fucking assassin,” says Sabia.
President Silver looks directly down at Castelan. “How in the world? Maximilian. You fucking — you fucking tried to kill me!”
Castelan shakes his head, blinks his eyes, utterly hapless, bound and gagged, flat on the floor.
“Yes, he did,” says Sabia.
“And me,” says Lin.
Sabia walks between Silver and Lin and sits down at the kitchen table. “I need some tea.”
“Fucking fix it yourself, Sweetheart,” says Silver. “I'm not hosting my own kidnapping.”
“How on Earth did you capture him?” says Lin.
Roca guards the door. Jenna stands beside him.
Jenna holds up the stun gun, shows it to Silver and Lin. “Castelan kindly brought us this good-behavior device. So do what Sabia says and make the fucking tea.”
“So, you’ve got an electric cattle prod now,” says Lin. “Fine. I'll make the tea.”
“Not you,” says Sabia. “Kristen. You make it. I want black raspberry tea, dark and healing.”
“No,” says Silver.
“I'll make it. I don’t mind,” says Lin.
Ellen Lin selects a small box of tea from a cabinet and sets it on the counter. She fills a teapot with water, and heats it on the stove. Somehow, someway, maybe because she's making tea, she seems to be the most human presence in the room.
President Silver takes a seat by a corner of the kitchen table near Sabia.
Lin comes over and sits beside Silver while the tea water heats.
Roca and Jenna remain by the door, Jenna standing, Roca now crouching down, back against the wall.
Sabia feels like Roca looks — a thousand years old and worn out, by the night, if not by the entire universe itself.
“You kidnapped the FBI Director,” says Silver. “How?”
“The fugitive ex-FBI Director,” says Jenna.
“We thought you could use the company, Silver-Toes. He’s your boy now. Make the most of him,” says Sabia. “He’s your top cop after all. Your big gun. Your gallant protector. Your dirty assassin. Your Police State — all the way.”
“What really happened?” says Lin.
“He attacked us. Me and Sabia. Sound familiar?” says Jenna. “Roca shot him in the shoulder. And I did what I could to repair it. He came looking for you, Madame President.”
“And now that he has found you, what will you do with him?” says Sabia. “Nothing good, I hope.”
“He’ll lead everyone straight to you, Sabia,” says Silver. “You can’t kidnap the Director of the FBI and get away with it. Literally everyone will find him.”
“Like they found you?” says Sabia.
“We took care of that problem,” says Jenna.
“No you did not,” says Silver.
“We burned his car through ice to the bottom of a lake,” says Jenna. “No one will find that car. No one will find Castelan.”
“And no one will find you, Silver,” says Sabia.
“You’re toast now, Sabia,” says Silver.
“Sabia, what’s going on?” says Lin.
“You heard Jenna. This piece of shit broke in and attacked us.”
“A desperate man,” says Roca. “He thought Sabia knew about your disappearance. But we stopped him. Shot the shit out him actually.”
“He will try to kill me all over again down here,” says Silver. “You can’t leave him with me and Ellen.”
“He’s your problem now. He tortured me. He beat Jenna bloody. I’m sure you know what to do with him. Just keep him alive until we get a good ransom video.”
“He tortured you?” President Silver examines Sabia’s bruised face. She covers Sabia's hand with her own. Sabia allows it. Everyone notices. “What did he do to you?”
“Never mind.”
The tea water boils.
Sabia pulls her hand away from President Silver.
Lin gets up and pours everyone, but Castelan, a cup. She sets five hot servings on the table with five teabags.
Roca and Jenna come over and sit at the table.
Sabia dunks her teabag repeatedly, stares into the darkening liquid.
“Is he dying?” says Lin.
“Who cares?” says Sabia.
“The shot missed his scapula and major arteries. There was a lot of blood. I think he makes it,” says Jenna. “Unless it gets infected.”
“Bad aim,” says Roca. “I was shooting from the cellar steps. Awkward angle.”
“No, shit,” says President Silver. “Maximilian, what a fuck up. Got yourself shot by a farmer.”
“It’s been a long night,” says Roca. “We should go.”
“I want this tea,” says Sabia. She blows on it, lets it cool.
“You sure you’re not found out?” says Silver.
“So far so good,” says Sabia.
“He can’t stay here in the bunker,” says Lin.
“Oh, he will,” says Sabia.
“He can’t. Not with the President. Not with me.”
“There’s no other option.”
“There is. We go up top. Keep us up top. Not down here.”
“It wouldn’t be right. Silver loves to play power games. Now’s her big chance.”
Lin pushes aside her tea and walks away from the table.
“If we take off his bonds he’ll overpower us,” says Lin.
“Keep him tied up.”
“How will he eat? How will he shit?”
“That’s on you and Silver.”
“It’s not ethical,” says Lin.
“An Ethics Advisor!” says Sabia. “You know, I was not aware that Silver had one. Silver-Jaws — does she actually speak the language? Not for real.”
“Sabia. Let us up top,” says Silver. “Leave Castelan in this hole alone. Not with us.”
“No way.”
“I want to come up top, Sabia. I’m still the President.”
“Not my President,” says Sabia. “Consider this an educational moment. You lie down with the Devil, you wake up with him too. Me, Roca, and Jenna are free of that shit forever.”
“Sabia, at least let Ellen out. I’ll deal with Castelan. Let Ellen go.”
“That’s not like you, Kristen. Thinking of others. What are you planning? To chop him up and flush him into the mine. No one could ever know, right?”
“Everyone would know,” says Lin. “It's campaign season. Everything comes out.”
“Nobody’s killing anyone,” says Roca.
“That’s not who we are,” says Lin.
“Oh, that’s exactly who you are,” says Sabia. “Silver-Fang especially.”
“You’ll be caught, Sabia,” says Silver. “You should show us some mercy while you still can.”
Sabia sips the tea. She feels a kind of electric relaxation flow through her. She turns the cup of tea repeatedly on the table. “He raped me.” She looks directly at President Silver. “There. Now you know. It was bad.”
Jenna looks like she suspected as much. The others suck in their breath.
“Sabia—” says Roca.
He gets up from the table and walks over to Castelan. He kicks him direct in the bloody bandage.
Castelan writhes and rolls to the base of the wall.
Roca kicks Castelan again. Lin hurries over and grabs Roca. He pushes her away.
Sabia watches without expression. Jenna touches Sabia’s arm.
“I’m so sorry,” Lin says to Sabia.
President Silver says nothing. She gets up and goes to Roca. She leads him away from Castelan.
Lin paces. “It’s one nightmare after another.” Lin goes back to Roca, takes his arm, wraps her arm around his. Roca looks to Sabia, his eyes wet.
Silver sits again beside Sabia and covers Sabia's hand with both of hers. Sabia tolerates it, for a moment.
“I’m never going to like you,” she tells President Silver. “Because you betray everything there is to betray. You betrayed me. You betrayed the country. And the world. And you will betray us all again.”
President Silver removes her hands from Sabia.
“In the meantime,” says Sabia. “I give you this fugitive from justice. And I expect you to do what’s in your nature, to be who you are, in your official capacity. Silver Law. Do exactly as you wish with this high authority who tried to kill you. I’m sure it will enlighten all who might see. You as head of Empire, and he as traitor to your rule. Do your damnedest, Madame President. We all know you know how.”
