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A short story by Colin Patrick Ennen
Antonia ducked behind a hardware store to catch her breath and avoid puking, thinking there was no way they’d look for her skinny, uncoordinated ass there. Huffing hard, she vowed to get in shape if she made it through this crisis, because either something was buzzing nearby or her body had started its own kind of rebellion. Who knew running from the Feds could be so exhausting?
Yet Toni had done well thus far, for a zealous liberal activist in the age of Trump. Sure, they had caught her in the coffee shop, about to upload. That had rattled her. And okay, she had dropped the laptop when she bolted. But that was her backup-backup—no biggie. Anyway, she retained the precious jump drive along with her wits and moral rectitude. Moreover, in the ensuing chase she’d crossed a major road, lapped a Safeway with the grace of a three-legged rhino, crossed again, run through a park, then crossed the broad thoroughfare a third time plus another wide street before she’d finally skidded to a stop in this hiding spot behind the strip-mall Ace Hardware. The library and an ally were just around the corner. But would she make it any further?
There was that damned buzzing again. Getting louder.
It crescendoed to a peak when a small black drone flew around the corner of the building sheltering her. Toni shuddered at its bug-like appearance, but at least it wasn’t one of the armed models.
The drone approached, settling into a steady hover less than ten feet away, its whirring rotors creating a slight breeze. The tiny camera mounted on its front swiveled back and forth, up and down over her body, coming to a halt aimed straight at her burning, sweaty face. Toni scowled back, planning her next move, fidgeting with the coat dangling from her right hand.
“Stop running,” croaked a mechanical voice from a speaker hidden somewhere on the flying instrument of fascism.
“Does that normally work?” Toni asked. Only she would sass a machine. But the thing bounced. Maybe she’d pissed off the operator. She permitted herself a smirk.
She juked a step left, a movement mirrored by the drone, then tossed her jacket at the device, hoping to foul one or more of the rotors. Even better, the thing dropped to the ground with a crash. Toni was already off and running.
Scrambling toward the library, she spied the chopper overhead —“Bugger”—and bolted across the road, ignoring traffic, resisting the urge to flash the bird at honking gas-guzzlers. The soles of her shoes slapped loud against the pavement like so many gunshots, and she cursed like the good Second Amendment foe she was. Bounding up the steps of the library, she stopped at the door to look and listen, huffing yet again. Distant sirens and a hovering helicopter, maybe, but there didn’t seem to be anyone right on her tail. Toni breathed a single sigh of relief before heading in.
Normally facilities such as this, redolent with the aroma of precious volumes, melodious with the sound of pages being turned, were solace to Toni. Not today; today this library was a fortress, from which she planned to launch an opening volley. A salvo in this vital intellectual war. A cannonball of courage in the fight for—Jesus, Toni! Get over yourself! Anyway, she was here for that other, more modern library sound: the hum from a bank of computers.
Striding past the checkout counter, Toni exchanged a solemn nod with the woman behind it, flashing the tiny jump drive. Louisa, with her thick-framed reading glasses and graying hair tightly bunned, nodded back, conscious of what was at stake: nothing short of the survival of this democracy.
The computers were past the reference books, between the children’s section and a wall that used to hold thought-provoking paintings by local artists, some of them activist friends of Toni’s now imprisoned. She gave the blank spaces a rueful smile, wiping away a single tear, then made for a terminal at the back, far from any currently being used. Despite breathing deeply, her hands shook, and she jumped at the sound of someone dropping a book in the stacks.
She forced a laugh to calm herself and sat just as the first wailing sirens pulled up out front, leaving just minutes, maybe less, to complete her task.
Toni logged on and opened Gmail. No, I don’t want a bigger penis, thank you.
In the “To” field of a new message she transcribed the address she’d written on the palm of her left hand.
Banging and yelling from outside the library’s front door stole her attention for a flash, but Louisa had rigged the doors, and no enemy had yet gained entry. Toni smiled. The resistance is female, after all.
She filled in the “Subject” line, then dashed off a quick message in the body of the email. Thank you for the opportunity, and all that jazz.
As she inserted the jump drive, the doors burst open and shouts pealed from the library lobby. This followed by the ominous echo of boots stomping on marble floor.
Toni dropped from the chair, squatting at the computer with her hand on the mouse, waiting for the storage gadget to connect. She looked up and saw masked jackboots in black gear marching past the checkout desk, numerous American flags prominent on each uniform.
With a rebel yell, Louisa jumped from behind her station, swinging a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 15 [Birds-Chemical], with remarkable force given her librarian-ness. She connected with the masked face of the lead stormtrooper, who staggered backward into a colleague. Louisa, in turn, was dropped with a kick to the stomach from another seconds later.
Toni muffled her reaction too late. Masked heads, twenty yards off, swiveled in her direction.
“There she is! Freeze, dirtbag!” one of them yelled.
Peering around to the computer’s screen, Toni clicked on the little paperclip icon, then selected the proper file to upload and hit “Open.” The progress bar’s pace was glacial, allowing three armed fascists to shuffle into flanking positions, cutting off all avenues of escape. In the second she wasted peeking back at the screen, another moved in at her 12 o’clock, holding a black gadget in his hand.
She jabbed the cursor at the “Send” button as she heard a zap, felt a thwack.
Her body convulsed from the stun gun’s charge, arms flailing, legs giving out. The jackboots pumped their fists and watched her fall shaking to the floor.
“Score!” yelled two.
Toni continued to spasm in agony as they closed in, one of them—slender, with blond hair sticking out from beneath the ski-mask—sitting down at the terminal she had been using.
“Just in time, Presser.”
The woman’s voice sounded like the siren on a broken toy firetruck. And familiar. A stocky man in black walked toward the computer station, rubbing his head and dragging Louisa behind him in handcuffs.
He grabbed and shook the librarian by the face. “Nanny, nanny, boo-boo,”
“Presser!”
“What?”
Toni knew his voice, too.
The man threw Louisa to the floor and turned to his colleague with a shrug.
The blonde spun, staring daggers at him through her mask. Toni heard an exasperated click of the tongue.
“I said, Presser, we got here just in time.”
“Phenomenal!” he cried. “What is it today, Alt-Fact? An opinion column? Someone writing her congressman?” Presser emphasized the gender of this hypothetical representative.
Presser? Alt-Fact? So this is what they’ve been up to, Toni thought, still jerking.
“Ugh, she’s another of these creative types.” Alt-Fact got up, shaking her head, and motioned for her colleague to look for himself.
Presser sat and read the email’s essentials:
To: Writers Resist
Subject: Super Important and Timely Fiction Submission
Attached File: Trumptopia
The man harrumphed, his jowls flapping audibly. “I’ll endow your arts,” he muttered, turning to the author on the floor as he removed his mask.
“You’ll never stop us, Spicey!” Toni managed to hiss, as the former press secretary’s boot-clad foot—free at last from the man’s mouth—clocked the side of her head.
Colin Patrick Ennen lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he looks after the large mutts at a doggie daycare. He recently adopted a pup of his own and named him Shylock. In his free time he reads and dwells on the many mistakes he’s made in life. Genre fiction is where he feels most at home when writing, but he’s obviously not afraid to branch out here and there. Fairly new to being published, he has a short piece of satire in a new volume entitled More Alternative Truths: Stories From the Resistance, and a spooky story coming soon in The Coil. You can find him on Twitter @cpennen.
Photo credit: Lee via a Creative Commons license.