Most Revolutionary - Chapter Two
The Coup Against Ground Force One
Previously: DAPL revolutionaries Sabia Perez, Jenna Ryczek, and Jasmine Maldonado sabotage an oil pipeline transfer station and fire-bomb bulldozers and excavators in their desperate attempt to spark a revolution that will change and save the world.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY - A SERIALIZED NOVEL
Exposed. US President Kristen Silver's re-election campaign bus, Ground Force One, swerves and brakes in the slush on I-35 in southern Iowa. The bus is forced to stop behind the bulk of a wreck caused by an unexpected prairie blizzard. Headed north from Kansas City to Des Moines, the mighty black bus is blocked and ensnared by the cascading multi-car crash and traffic-jam. Sitting alone and weary near the back of Ground Force One, President Silver feels both jittery and depressed due to the near-crash and delay.
President Silver needs a breakthrough in the debate this weekend in Des Moines, anything to salvage her chance at re-election. It's almost all she can think about on the ride tonight, storm and crash be damned.
Of course President Silver has no thought for Sabia Perez, or Jenna Ryzcek, or Jasmine Maldonado – having never heard of them.
Nor do the eco-warriors think of President Silver, not directly. They operate on a more basic level, in a different world almost, different planets really, different spheres, orders of magnitude, and yet unbeknownst to them all, their two very different worlds will collide tonight, in a way that threatens to tilt their alignments, shift their lifetimes, and all but punch the sun, if not universe.
Secret Service Officer Darius Vance looks toward the back of the bus where Campaign Manager Ellen Lin takes a seat across the aisle from the President. Silver stews over her poll ranking, well below the challenger now, and grows increasingly pissed at the delay in getting to Des Moines. Palms flat on her thighs, Ellen Lin works through a quick routine of deep breathing and singular thinking for stressful times. Part of her daily routine, sometimes hourly. Sometimes every five minutes.
Officer Vance is angry, though probably not as pissed as President Silver and Sabia are, as few people may be, not that Officer Vance has ever heard of Sabia either. And not that he can show his anger on the job. Especially not this job, not in front of the President. Stuck in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere with the most powerful person in the world who expects and prefers to be in the middle of everywhere all the time, far from here. What a night. Officer Vance has no way of knowing how exponentially worse things will become, how soon his own world will go entirely terminal.
He does know that his boss, Secret Service Director William Kingsley, good guy though he may be, will get chopped on the chin, if not worse, for this fiasco of a bus screw-up. Logistical chaos in the midst of a flailing re-election campaign – entirely unacceptable, especially when the supposed Guardian Angel Secret Service Director is warm and snug in DC, probably with his feet up on a couch, watching a ball game, while Ground Force One carrying Vance, Silver, Lin, agents and staff take body blows and face slaps from the blizzard. The weather. It stops for no one, especially here in the dead of winter Iowa.
Officer Darius Vance is in charge. He knows it's on him now. Only he can keep President Silver safe and happy in the hidden hinterland of America. Midst campaign, midst governing, midst chaos of life. All the pressure, his. Fortunately, he is more than adequate to the task. Not that it will matter tonight.
Moving carefully from the front of the bus toward the back, Officer Vance approaches President Silver and tries to draw a confidence into his face that he doesn't feel in his bones.
“President Silver, we’re clear now to the interstate exit. From there we’ll go north on an alternate route. Director Kingsley is coordinating the diversion.”
“As long as we're not going south. Very good, Darius, thank you. Please send this stormfront on an alternate route as well.”
“Ma’am, I wish I could.”
Officer Darius Vance knows a thing or two about stormfronts. Political, physical. More than he would like to know. He knows things that President Silver is likely to be only dimly aware of, or with a second-hand knowledge at best. Officer Vance thinks he knows what he's up against tonight, insofar as it's possible to know. Normally, he would be entirely correct.
Officer Vance returns to the front of the bus. The driver looks nervous. Vance holds onto a metal pole and surveys the storm, the slippery way forward. It's time. The bus sways, shudders into the wind, slush, and snow, and lumbers on.
President Silver turns to her campaign manager. “Finally, they’re moving this tank of a campaign bus. Ground Force One! Who names these things?”
“It won’t be long now, Kristen. First we get you safe and secure in Des Moines. Then we get you re-elected. One step at a time.”
“Ever the optimist, Ellen. Campaign manager or self-help guru?”
“The difference?”
President Silver hates buses. She hates crowds. She hates campaigning. She likes power. Money. Attention. Making a difference as she sees fit – good, bad, or indifferent. President Silver is glad to be the chief busybody in power, for power, by power, of power. She likes to be the authority who gets things done, always has. She's a leader, some would say. A conventional leader.
President Kristen Silver is very far from the first leader in the world to be strikingly free of ideals while mouthing them in every speech, which is where they properly belong, she thinks. How else to get away with it? Wielding power. You can't piss on people's heads and expect them to thank you for it. You need to explain it as a great and needed rain, of ideals – a real reign of authority. Of course that may be a cynical take but also, let's face it, real too. Power politics. Pragmatic. Practical. Silver is no Lady Naive. Please. All the Presidents do this, liberal and conservative, fascist and the so-called progressive – not that there have been any progressive Presidents, except possibly the reluctant FDR, in moments only. Long ago. It's an old story, and Silver knows it well: to varying extents Presidents speechify their way through absolute shit. And why not? Someone needs to lead, and to seem to lead. Might as well be her, since she has a good heart (self-described), clever ideas (from time to time), and a great campaign manager (universally acknowledged).
President Kristen Silver smiles across the aisle at her campaign manager. Ellen Lin is confused. Such sudden congenial expression when they are stuck on a bus in a blizzard, and their poll numbers are lethal. Why would the President smile now?
It's not a refusal to raise wages, it's not a denial of universal health care, it's not a crippling failure to otherwise alleviate pain and suffering – No! – it's fiscal responsibility, and personal freedom, and social morality. These are the first rules of capitalism, the closest thing to capitalist ideals, the enablers of modern power – fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, and social morality. That the reality of power politics has nothing to do with the truth of life is beside the point of campaigning, winning, and ruling. Or rather it's everything – on the down low.
“You're a great campaign manager and a great friend, Ellen,” says President Silver. “I can always count on you. Winter, summer, spring, and fall.”
“I see,” says Lin. She receives the remark with a slick side bob and weave of her head, a gesture the President appreciates for what it conveys: everything and nothing, yes and no, maybe, maybe not, and on we go.
“Count on nothing,” says Lin.
“You don't mean it. I know you, Ellen. You don't mean that at all.”
Unlike President Silver, Ellen Lin feels full of ideals, all of them trapped and dying within her like a bunch of pigeons and doves shoved into a linen sack and swung over her shoulder and then bludgeoned to death on the side of the road. Well, maybe not that bad. Or maybe worse. Of late, maybe because Lin knows it's her final campaign, she feels she is falling, failing inwardly to be as cynical as need be in the bloody cesspool of power politics. Lin feels unexpectedly weak inside, if powerful yet in habit. This is definitely her last campaign. What more can you do once you've elected your boss to the Presidency twice? Already, Lin is scouting good non-profit gigs for the future.
One final campaign through which to endure and prevail. Lin has the rest of her life to be good, she tells herself, and only this one remaining chance to win it all, again. To be as powerful as the young. After this final campaign, Ellen Lin believes that she will be officially old, agelessly so. And she will be glad for it. If she survives the now.
Led first by state police and then relayed to two huge snowplows, the Secret Service caravan of black SUVs and Ground Force One diverts off interstate to a parallel farm road a few miles to the east of I-35. The road runs straight and undulating. Those on bus looking out feel the wild storm as little more than a nuisance, a partial experience at best, an inconvenient path to elsewhere. They could not be more wrong in their sense and sensibility.
Up front in the bus the road feels alive, magic, the way it constantly appears out of nowhere beneath flying lines of snow streaking into the bus lights. Every shift and rise, angle and slope, every pothole, bump, and smooth stretch and dip, the roadway, the snow way, the fluid tunnel of snow illuminates what it can, instant gratification, a sense of the vast invisible future coming due. Anything can happen. Officer Vance hopes it doesn't. Movement, this moment, mesmerizes and enchants, as if the road carries the riders on its back like a supernatural creature, like a stone snake, alive and endless. It's late, Vance is tired, he hopes the bus gets to Des Moines safe.
Gusts and waves of wind shake and rock the bus from seemingly every angle. The whiteout grows increasingly bizarre, the snowicane unrelenting, planet Earth obliterated. Big and bad as Ground Force One may be, it becomes increasingly clear that no one in this storm is safe tonight.
Alecta doesn't much notice the storm at the moment.
In a drab Kansas City hotel room, Vice President Alecta O'Roura-Chavez sits cross-legged in sweats alone on her bed gulping electrolytes and watching TV coverage of the upcoming debate in Des Moines. She's not in the mood to reflect on the campaign, the state of politics, her personal life. She's sick.
She has the habit of scolding herself rather than scorning her mindless attackers – whatever and whoever they may be, human or inhuman: food poisoning, flu, COVID or the lunatic and bad faith members of society, many with deep, very deep pockets. Self-critique surely is a survival mechanism, sometimes taken too far, sometimes taken far from far enough. Alecta takes it too far. Into self-debilitation. Too much self-scourge and flagellation, too little healthy self talk. Too much of the intimate whip and the lash, too little putting her foot down, hard.
Insofar as women are prey and men are predator, Alecta wonders if excessive self-critique is a gendered survival mechanism, inescapable and galling. Alecta feels galled. The moment lapses. Then she proceeds to gall herself.
“Food poisoning before the debate. Why, why, why did I try the salsa? Tisha told me not to. Did I listen? No. Why? — Because you don’t listen. — Yes, I do listen. — I mean you’re willful. — Yes, I am. Shut up.”
Alecta gulps more electrolytes.
“Kristen is probably changing the entire election strategy while I sit here, talking to myself. Really, I have no say with her. And I’m the fucking Vice President. — Well, she's the President. And you had to try the salsa. — Shut up.”
Alecta barely registers what poses as news on TV. Tonight it enters her eyes and ears and exits without landing in her brain. She begins to sense some of the winter storm blasting the hotel window. She feels bad, and she scolds herself for feeling bad.
“Fucking salsa,” she says. She looks around for something to throw. At anything.
Safe and warm in southcentral Iowa in their underground home, Sabia and her abuelo Roca Perez are keenly aware of the fierce storm as they shell hickory nuts near the wood stove.
They know a thing or two about prairie storms and other kinds of storms.
This underground home, concealed below their farmhouse above ground, was built covertly by their ancestors – in hurried response to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. It remains a sign of times not gone by.
Roca and Sabia move quietly in a pair of rocking chairs.
Roca's rocker is elaborate, all curves, locally fashioned of bent willow stalks and obtained in a trade for sacks of nuts: hickories, hazels, and walnuts.
Sabia's rocker is far simpler and older and built of lightning-struck bitternut hickory wood, cut and constructed on the farm over a century ago, a chair passed down from Sabia's abuela's mamá, Sylvia, a chair perfect for rocking babies, mending clothes, shelling nuts and seeds, beans and peas, and for dispensing or receiving wisdom and the emotions of the day, however warm or bitter.
In summer, several similar rockers line the front porch, while in winter the rockers shelter in the peg-and-post bank-barn – built with the farm's wood milled on the premises a century-and-a-half ago.
Sabia thinks of summer and the drafty and rugged barn of blackened boards, sun burnt and wind-weathered, which hulks surprisingly elegant nearby, as if content in its modest and neglected half-forgotten space, on the steep slope by the farmhouse, by the road. Reassuring, the old structure lingers somehow vigilant, like a friend ever-present, a hay and horse barn that has long outlasted its original and primary use.
Sabia has no desire to ever live far from the well-worn and hard-earned footprints of her family's past, harsh though it may be. The Perez family survives in the form of Sabia and her abuelo Roca, and she is determined to see them thrive.
If they know anything now, after rough years and decades, they know how to dig in and dig deep through tragic times and brutal seasons. If an asteroid were to hit nearby, or a nuclear bomb, or a tornado, a pandemic, an economic collapse, or a murderous white supremacist race riot, all-too familiar, then underground with their stores is where Sabia and Roca could take refuge to live to see a better day. Unfortunately, for the tragedies that have impacted Sabia and Roca and the entire Perez family the most, ducking underground has proved completely useless.
Tonight it's the rockers that keep Sabia and Roca moving, as on many nights, whether swapping tales of the day or shelling the smooth and beautiful nuts, especially the hickories, those nuts of nuts, the most troublesome, most delicious.
Part meditation, part hand-yoga, Sabia and Roca skillfully crack the shells and pick the sweet kernels tight-twisted in tiny slits and crooks of their inner lining.
Sabia loves fresh nuts, especially the lowly hickory nuts, for their taste and nutrition and their infinite aesthetic perfection and utility, for their economic value – and for how wonderful and magnificent they dwell on the land.
Who cannot love nuts as food and fuel for humans and critters alike? For generations, since arriving in America, Sabia's family sought to maximize the role and value of the humble nut in their lives. It may be a bit nuts, they're well aware.
“I think we really are most like the hickories, aren't we, Abuelo?” says Sabia, not for the first time. “The pignuts, them especially, and the shagbarks, if not the northern pecans. More shell than pith.”
“And twice as sweet,” says Roca. “On our best days. You know we can thank my abuela for the first of these trees and really some of the most prolific in their age. What a great wealth she created. Every single year, the Earth provides, the trees rain food, pre-packaged, ready for storage, exquisite in every way.”
“It's a great wealth-”
“You know it is.”
“-and a hard wealth, Abuelo. Working the land like we do, it's a real hard road.”
“Life is hard, Mija. Mi reina de las nueces.”
“La reyna des nuez. The queen of nuts. I'll take it.”
Tonight is like a night of a hundred years past – or even a thousand, or two thousand, and more – and hopefully of hundreds and thousands of years to come. Safe from blizzard, Roca and Sabia shell hickories and rock in the warmth of their super-efficient “rocket” stove, fueled and made even more efficient by the heat of some of the hardest and hottest burning trees on the continent: the honey locust and the black locust, vigorous and thorny trees of a million seeds and pods, with heartwoods dense and rot resistant. Sabia and Roca are like two tough and ambulatory trees in their own right, in their own element. They crack nuts in steady rhythm with their willow and bitternut rockers. They wait for the blizzard to blow itself out and the day to begin anew.
“Hell to be caught out in the storm tonight, Abuelo.”
“Blizzard as bad as I’ve seen in many years.”
Sabia and Roca play their metal picks into tiny hickory cavities as deft as any dentist, heart surgeon, or chef. What they fillet this evening they will use in the coming days in gravies or spreads, dressings and oils for potatoes and salads and soups.
“It’s climate collapse.”
“It’s something,” says Roca.
“'Climate change' was poll tested, you know. It rated better than 'climate collapse.' Less scary. And old Silver-Fang keeps approving new oil and gas development, pipelines, drilling....”
“Silver-Fang. Is that any way to speak of the President?”
Sabia points her stainless steel pick at Roca. “Yes, it is. The Con-Jobs are like the Lib-Liars on speed, but they’re both bad. Liberals and Conservatives, they’re all crap to me. Nothing like the great Alecta O’Roura-Chavez! Too bad she had to settle for being Vice President to old Silver-Fang.”
“You’ve got your mother’s mouth.”
“Mom’s dead.”
Roca sucks in his breath. His face is grim. He feels accused. He tries not to.
“Abuelo, you know the hands of the Doomsday Clock are mere seconds from midnight. There’s a reason people are mouthy.”
Roca exhales. “Not my Papá, back in the day. No. Instead, he and his papá built this underground house — and the bunker too — many years ago. And I finished it and brought it up to date. We can be safe here.”
“Maybe for a moment, Abuelo, but when civilization collapses it will be the lucky ones who die first.”
“Let’s hope we never find out.”
Sabia and Roca rock gently into the night, fingers nimble, ceramic bowls filling. They separate the pith and fragments of the nut kernels from the sharp broken shells like nimble creatures of forest and field. They are people who plant trees. Tree-planters, designers of Earth, savvy and strong and weather-wise humans that the nut trees have helped them to become.
Worried now. Peering out a window of Ground Force One into the Iowa blizzard is US President Kristen Silver. She argues in an intense phone conversation with her progressive Vice President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez.
“You can’t keep pushing your agenda in these re-election speeches, Alecta. You’re my Vice President. We need to balance what we say.”
In her hotel room, the Vice President rolls over on the bed looking flushed and ill. “Wait a minute.”
In sweatshirt and leggings, she scoots off the bed with her phone, moves to a high window. She looks into the same blizzard. She grabs pills and a sports drink from an end table, swallows all. Looks at a lit Kansas City sign.
“Apple cider vinegar pills and electrolytes, Kristen, that’s all I care about right now – food poisoning is no joke – but as far as I can tell, I’m the only thing keeping the campaign afloat. You need to act on what you promised.”
“I couldn’t get Congress to move on any big items and you know it, Alecta.”
Alecta and Kristen use each other’s names like daggers.
“It’s not all up to Congress, Kristen. Use your executive orders.”
“I don’t think you fucking get it, Princess. The votes are in the middle not on the edge.”
“I’m the real middle, Kristen. I’m the popular one. I’m not fake or full of lies. I’m what your donors fear.”
“Our donors,” says President Silver.
“Your donors. It’s the people not the profiteers filling up the campaign coffers for me.”
“We need those donors, Alecta. That’s reality. I’m the reason the fascist right didn’t win it all.”
“You’re the reason the police state almost did win. And you’re the reason I didn’t win the office myself. Yet.”
“Dream on.”
“Progressives can’t defang fascists with liberals giving them cover.”
“Which means what exactly?”
“In front of every fascist is a fucking liberal. You’re the one blocking basic change, Kristen. The fascists love that. I’m good, thank you, by the way. Fucking speech food. I should be able to catch up with you in Des Moines for photo ops before the debate this weekend.”
“I’m not blocking shit, Princess. That’s on Congress. I’m judicious. And I’m glad you’re feeling better. We need to get our message together or they’ll tear us apart.”
“Couldn’t agree more, but you won’t budge.”
“I’m the President.”
“Thanks to me. You said so yourself. Remember? This isn’t the Kristen Silver Show that you want it to be.”
“Look, this is not the way to get me to support you when you hope to succeed me in four years-”
“You will never support me, Kristen. You will never support my platform. Unless you’re forced to.”
“You don’t know what I will or-”
The bus driver slams the brakes. President Silver and her campaign team are punched into seat backs. Ground Force One shudders, stops.
Alecta hears screams on the phone.
“Fuck. The bus, it stopped.”
“Are you okay?” Alecta hears raised voices. “Kristen?” Alecta puts one hand, left hand, flat against the hotel window, peers into the blizzard above the city.
“I think we fucked up trying to outrun the storm. They put us on a goddamn farm road. I bet we hit a fucking cow. Goddamn Iowa, this fucking campaign-”
Reception breaks off. Alecta lowers the phone, stares at the storm hammering the window. Bursts of snow and ice hit the glass like machine-gun fire. Alecta flinches, recoils, steps back. Holds phone as shield.
Sometimes you're caught and you can't go back even if you can't go forward and you can't stay where you are. They've got you then. You keep trying though, because you don't know – or you hope you don't know what the future holds.
What happened to the President? A winter wreck. In blinding blizzard, the Presidential caravan had pushed on long beyond what was prudent.
The snowplows stop twice to cut better angles to clear snowdrifts solidified as thick dense waves across the old farm road, a great road, in summer. The plow drivers are skilled. They guide and slide Ground Force One and the Secret Service SUVs through the narrows not long before gale force winds drift the road closed behind them. But get through the federal vehicles do. For awhile.
They make steady progress otherwise, north toward Des Moines, until they reach a sudden drop in the road where the lead plow veers into a snow-buried field.
The driver suffers a stroke and slumps onto the steering wheel.
The second plow follows the lead plow into the field and smashes into its back end when both come to a sudden stop. It's all chain reaction as Ground Force One drops into the field too and just misses crashing into both plows, while Secret Service SUVs faithfully follow Ground Force One, swerving at the last second to avoid collision. And with that, President Silver is on the floor of the bus, and all vehicles of the President's caravan are stopped and stuck in the field in deep snow in the fierce storm in the middle of nowhere Iowa.
Right next door to Sabia.
Most of the drivers are slow to realize that they've left the roadway, even when they exit their immobilized vehicles and stumble through snow. The blizzard whiplashes them front and back, icy flakes biting. Headlights or no headlights it's difficult to see and hear in the snow-exploding wind.
The Secret Service agent in the lead plow performs CPR on the driver, to no avail.
The driver of the second snowplow and the Secret Service agent in that plow clamber through storm to assist. They pull the driver out and lay him in the snow. The President's doctor hurries out from the bus and staggers through the storm.
He assesses the driver who has by now suffered a heart attack as well as a stroke. The doctor continues CPR.
Eventually, they give up. It's over. The body is put in the cab of the lead plow, hopelessly stuck.
To free itself from the back of the first snowplow, the blade of the second snowplow is raised several feet where it dangles, oblique and loose, then locks in place as the last of the hydraulic fluid bleeds out through a gash in the lines.
Nevertheless, the driver manages to back out this plow onto the roadway past Ground Force One and the SUVs. Its blade hangs high and crooked, broken and useless, a support bolt smashed in the collision, the hydraulic lines cut, but the great ground clearance and wide tires of the big rig keep the plow truck mobile.
There's almost nowhere to go. Though the immediate roadway remains windswept and mostly clear, the remaining plow driver advises Officer Vance that points of instant snowdrift will block any return back the way they came, lacking a functional plow blade.
Ground Force One and the security detail SUVs, despite best efforts, are going nowhere, the way forward unplowed, the way back reburied. End of Earth Iowa become temporary home. They will be here awhile.
A dozen Secret Service agents and the plow driver consult in the storm outside Ground Force One. Officer Vance makes the decisions, gives the orders, and prays to whatever gods might take mercy on him now.
Then all the agents shelter in Ground Force One, except for Vance and two others, who ride the damaged snowplow with the plow driver back to the nearby farmhouse, to Sabia and to Roca who have no idea what calamity has occurred in the blizzard, let alone what dread, far greater disaster is soon to permanently inscribe the edge of their orchard.
The ringing bell of the farmhouse front door by way of its relay into the underground home is the first that Sabia and Roca hear of any trouble. Roca makes his way up to the farmhouse porch, with Sabia not far behind, where he greets Darius Vance and the other agents. Roca is stunned to learn of the President's stranded bus. He invites the men inside.
And then Roca has a decision to make. He learns of the many people on Ground Force One trapped by the blizzard.
He looks at Sabia.
“Roca, no,” she says.
“This is the time, Mija.”
“It's not our time. No.”
“It's what we prepared for, Sabia. They're people too. You can't leave people out in a blizzard.”
“We prepared for us, Roca, not them. They have their big warm bus. I mean if they want the barn-”
“Sabia-”
“We won't be putting the President in a barn,” says Officer Vance.
“Well, this farmhouse then,” says Sabia.
“It's half of what they need,” says Roca. “In these conditions? If not now, when?”
“Jesus, Roca. You don't get it.”
“Officer Vance,” says Roca. “Follow me. I've got something to show you.”
“Roca!”
Roca shakes off Sabia. He considers, and decides to keep the agents out of the hidden basement passageway to the underground home. He will not give up all their secrets, not right away, as a favor to Sabia, and out of respect to his family, long passed. Instead, Roca leads the agents outside onto the front porch to a flight of steps that descend to what appears to be a side porch. However, on the side porch, Roca opens a camouflaged door to anyone other than family for the first time ever. He leads the agents inside the underground home.
Pissed beyond her years, Sabia follows.
At first, Sabia keeps her distance and maintains silence as the agents sweep both the farmhouse and the underground home. Officer Vance needs to inspect everything, and Sabia wants to keep watch over him, so she leads him to an adjacent sunken greenhouse, where she tries to relax. She shows off all that she and Roca grow through winter, many native local trees and plants, plus oranges, lemons, and figs. Vance is impressed. Sabia is somewhat mollified but wary, and resentful of the intrusion, blizzard or no blizzard, President or no President.
The agents complete the initial sweeps and gather again on the front porch where Vance shakes Roca's hand and makes some final observations. Sabia hangs back and hopes the agents will not return.
She considers a few choice words to deliver to her abuelo at the appropriate time.
President Silver turns to Campaign Manager Ellen Lin and nods to the front of the bus. “Find out.”
“Absolutely. You okay?”
“Ground Force One, my ass. This bus is more like Ground Force Done.”
“The stormfront has no love to give, Kristen, that's for sure.”
Lin goes to the front of the bus toward the Secret Service agents huddled around their communication radios.
O’Roura-Chavez tries her phone. No connection. “Come on.” She gives up. Stares out the window at the storm.
Campaign Manager Lin eventually returns to President Silver with Officer Vance. Lin gestures to Silver's team, and they gather.
Vance reports: “The lead snowplow driver – looks like a massive stroke or heart attack. Agents worked on him but there was no response. Your doctor confirmed his death.”
“How horrible,” says President Silver.
“The driver plowed into a field, and the second plow followed. The bus too. The bus is off the road.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” says Silver.
“The second plow got back on the road, but the blade is broken, so we're stuck. We drove it to a farmhouse not far behind us. Agents continue to sweep the house. It's multi-level, spacious, with a good generator. It's clean, if we need to use it as an emergency shelter. There’s no reason we can’t remain on bus.”
“How long?” says President Silver.
“Daybreak maybe. The predicted storm break.”
“Your Director Kingsley will pay for this fucking debacle.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“An Iowa farmhouse!” says Lin. “Officer Vance, excuse me, does the farmer have a family? And a name?”
“Roca Perez. Lives with his granddaughter Sabia Perez, a high school senior. Her parents died eight, ten years ago, cancer, drunk driver.”
“Perez? Hispanic? Are they open to sheltering President Silver?”
“Roca offered. Said he would take in everyone. Friendly sort.”
“The demographics are good for a photo op. Real good.”
“What kind of name is Roca?” says Silver.
A male campaign staffer answers, “In Spanish it means 'rock'.”
A female staffer corrects, “It means 'stone'.”
“And a farm?” says Lin.
“Plant nursery. Orchard, gardens, greenhouse, old barn. Couple trucks. Everything neat and tidy. Cool place. Buried in snow like everything else right now.”
“Perfect,” says Lin. “It’s the farm and country vote, the elder vote, youth and minority vote, small business. Male, female. The heartland vote.”
“Is it a big red barn with a cute red rooster weather vane?” says President Silver.
“You’re so funny, Kristen,” says Lin.
“They grow oranges,” says Officer Vance. “And figs, in their sunken greenhouse, believe it or not. The navels are ripe now, Roca says. Sabia showed me.”
“What kind of name is Sabia?” says President Silver.
A young woman from the campaign staff answers, “Means 'wise' in Spanish.”
“'Wise Rock!'” says Lin. “We must do it. We’ll get photos, by barn, farmhouse, greenhouse, truck. Framed by snow. This may be the break we need before the debate.”
“We can’t be seen to be using them,” says President Silver.
“They invited us. You must accept,” says Lin.
“I guess. Then they’re volunteers now. The most useful people we know. Apart from our staff, of course. All right. Ellen, Darius. Let’s set it up.”
Officer Vance holds his phone aloft. “The blizzard knocked out communications with DC. Nevertheless, all phones and electronics remain on the bus until we complete our sweep. Then we'll get the cameras in. Okay? And bundle up.” Officer Vance walks to the bus exit to prepare.
“Who’s got my coat!” shouts President Silver. “Fucking photo op in midnight blizzard Iowa.”
“Whatever it takes, Kristen. Just because we play-act sometimes, doesn’t mean we’re here to play.”
“The fucking opposite,” says President Silver.
Silver and Lin hand-off their phones and leave their laptops with aides. They dress for the storm.
The snowplow delivers Silver and Lin to the Perez farmhouse, along with Officer Vance and two other agents.
“Let's go underground, boys,” Officer Vance instructs. “They keep it warmer down there. Anyway, that's where Roca and Sabia are.” Through whistling snow, the three agents usher Silver and Lin down exterior steps to the side porch entrance.
They enter a mud room and remove winter garb that they hang on wooden pegs and hooks set in the plank wall.
Then they enter the capacious great room, with living area, kitchen, dining area that is an organic herbalist’s dream. Glass bottles full of dried herbs, nuts, berries everywhere. A high wood bar and wood stools. Tidy rough-cut wood walls.
This is Roca and Sabia’s underground home, survivalist home, no windows, well lit, heated by the incredibly efficient rocket stove that vents out the farmhouse chimney. It sits entirely below ground beneath and behind their farmhouse, and beneath a sprawling workshop that extends to the greenhouse.
Even Roca has mixed feelings about their underground home being known now for the first time, while to Sabia, the sudden guests seem like refugees and invaders both.
Roca and Sabia extend greetings. Roca in work clothes, Sabia partly so, in olive dungarees, bright red wool socks, and a colorful bohemian blouse.
“Welcome to our humble home, Ms. President, Ms. Lin,” says Roca.
“We’re prepared for anything down here. Safest place to be in a storm,” says Sabia.
“So very glad to be here. How fortunate we are,” says President Silver. “Is this Heaven? No, Iowa! Isn’t that how it goes?”
“Fields of Dreams!” says Roca.
Sabia's face sours. “That’s Hollywood. We live in the non-Hollywood part of Iowa.”
“Thank you, Sabia, Roca, it’s so kind of you to host us,” says Lin. “What a wonderful interesting home!”
As Sabia serves tea and coffee at the plank wood bar, Officer Vance sends the two agents back to the bus to continue a partial transition.
“That plow driver, poor fella, went out in the blizzard of his life,” says Roca.
“It’s terrible,” says President Silver. “I can’t imagine.”
Sabia's words are jarring: “Death around every corner.”
“Lots of blue sky tomorrow,” says Roca, trying to offset Sabia's gloom.
Sabia again jarring: “Suffocation Hell for critters trapped under snow.”
“As for us, we've got shovels!” says Roca. “Do you realize how many tools and technologies the average human being uses in one day?”
“Here in Iowa?” says President Silver.
“Especially in Iowa,” says Roca. “All the fancy devices threaten to overwhelm us, but the simple shovel is a remarkable technology. What would we do without shovels? Think about it.”
“You certainly have.” Lin smiles.
“Be tough to get in and out of the house. Any house. We're great shovelers here in Iowa.”
“I'm sure you are,” says President Silver, her voice all but dripping.
Two Secret Service agents, after clearing space in a utility room for communications equipment and weaponry, go directly into the mud room then exit the house to ride the snowplow back to the bus.
Distracted, Officer Vance talks on his radio and hears but does not see these agents leave. He confuses them with the two agents he sent out. He calls after them but they’re gone. “I thought you left already! Get moving! Come on now.”
Officer Vance signs off his radio. He looks to the President and others across the great room, at the bar and kitchen. The more it sinks in how there's nowhere to go, the more impatient, trapped, and nervous he feels.
“We hear you’re quite the farmers,” says President Silver.
“We grow a few things,” says Roca.
“I don’t believe in false modesty,” says Sabia. “We grow the way no one else does. We’re the best.”
“Oranges, we hear. In Iowa. In winter.”
“Oranges, figs, a few lemons, but mainly natives,” says Roca. “Sabia loves figs, ever since she was a little girl. She has her own Youtube channel about figs and growing plants.”
“Figs are fun,” says Sabia. “We welcome the novel around here. Right along with the tried and true. Besides, they sell out fast every year.”
“We’ll pick some oranges,” says Roca. “You won’t leave empty-handed.”
“What’s it like to be President?” says Sabia. “I wanted to vote for Alecta-the-Awesome. In the Primary. But wasn’t old enough.”
“Most young people did. There are worse jobs.”
“Isn't it weird how old people hate young people. Vote against them every time. Maybe grandma and grandpa could do the world a favor and sit out the elections. The brainwashing really hits them hard. Dumber than the day they were-”
“Okay, Sabia,” says Roca.
“Doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me,” says Lin.
“They're only trying to help,” says Silver.
“They're killing us all,” says Sabia. “It's the brainwashers' fault. Pull yourself up by the boot of your oppressor, I say. And knock them on the head with it. That’s a good motto for our day and age. Don’t you think?”
“Do you think your Alecta would say that, or anything like it?” says Lin.
“Sure she would. If I was her speechwriter.”
Officer Vance walks over. He catches the President’s eye. “Ms. President, I need to return to the bus for a moment. Two agents are working in the room beside you. They can get you whatever you need. Are you comfortable?” Officer Vance remains unaware that the agents returned to the bus.
President Silver meets Sabia's eyes. “We’re just getting warmed up in here, Darius. I’m good, thank you. ”
Ellen Lin motions to a table with Native pottery, and then a segmented wall of shelving stocked with jars of dried herbs, nuts, grains, beans, seeds, and noodles, and finally she smiles at an arrangement of plants under grow lights. “It’s like a rustic boutique and health store, underground. Incredible. An oasis.”
“Great,” says Officer Vance. “While you all solve the problems of the world, I'll deal with the problems on the bus. Be right back.”
Moving quickly from great room to mud room, Roca catches up to Vance. “Officer Darius, hang on a minute. I’ve got a quick job I can do.”
In mudroom, Roca grabs a light bulb and screwdriver, gets into his winter gear, then follows Officer Vance out to the porch.
Vance and Roca fight the blizzard climbing the side steps to the front porch. Once there, Roca points at a dead light. “This damn bulb. Took a visit from the President to get it replaced.”
“You would rather change a light bulb than hang with the President of the United States?”
“It's not about me. I hope Sabia bonds with President Silver or her campaign manager. She needs more women in her life. Again. Ever since her mamá died....”
Roca and Officer Vance gaze into the storm and can see little more than the kaleidoscopic splash of the farmhouse spotlights reflected back at them by blizzard.
“What did we get ourselves into?” says Vance.
“Nothing good. They sent you out on a suicide mission in this storm, Officer.”
“It makes you feel so small. It’s freeing somehow. But it takes work, doesn’t it. To be safe and warm in face of the stormfront.”
“Don’t worry, Officer. Between your fancy bus and our humble home, it will be all right in the end, and if it’s not all right, then it's not the end.”
“You sure about that, Roca?”
“It's what folks around here say. I always wondered myself.”
“Sometimes what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger,” says Vance. “Sometimes what doesn't kill you, might as well have.”
“I hear you,” says Roca. “Life can be a bitter fight to the end.”
“I’m glad it was the Director’s call, not mine. Hellacious weather you've got here in Iowa, Roca. Back in a flash.”
Officer Vance touches Roca’s arm. Roca reciprocates.
Vance climbs into the arriving snowplow, and returns to the bus.
Roca replaces the light bulb.
Afterward, he holds the dead bulb in one hand, the screwdriver in the other, and stares into storm.
He begins down steps to get to the side porch, but then night becomes day, multiple eruptions merge as one.
Blinding, deafening.
Shock waves smash Roca against the wall and drop him down the steps. The screwdriver and light bulb go flying.
The blast obliterates all the President's vehicles except for the lone mobile snowplow, which is launched toward the Perez orchard, along with flaming bits of Ground Force One.
Instantly killing the driver, the snowplow lands – at the base of a skeletal, towering hickory tree – wheels to sky.
