Pushed Too Far- Part 5
Part Five- Revelation
Caleb didn’t trust it, but he couldn’t deny the truth as presented before his eyes; his group was being waved on by men and women in full paramilitary regalia and uniforms, weapons in hand, off the end of the bridge and out of the city proper. He might have taken a moment to thank God for this reprieve, but after all that he had seen and heard over the last week and a half, he couldn’t be sure the Big Man was even real.
And as one of the members of the group he’d joined stepped toward one of the blockade people, his hand cocked back to throw a sloppy punch, the intended target of his built-up rage and indignation brought a handgun up in a flash and fired a single bullet through the escapee’s head. There were flinches and involuntary grunts of shock and outrage from everyone in the group, and Caleb felt his own knees give out; even as he felt the sharp pain of impact with the concrete shoot up his legs, his entire focus was centered on the certainty that this had been a trap, and he was now going to die. At least I won’t be hungry anymore, he thought absently.
“You are all free to leave the city,” the man who had just killed one of their number said evenly, addressing the group. “Your friend here only died because he thought he could take an unchecked swing at me. We will not actively seek to do you harm, but if you come at any of us, we will put you down like animals. Now get moving.” Caleb shook his head sharply to snap himself out of his momentary fugue, and he got up, moving forward, carefully avoiding the body and its spreading pool of blood from the head wound.
When he was a few paces away from the body, however, Caleb found himself turning toward the blockader, who stood with eyes half-lidded, watching the group shuffle away seemingly with no sign of passion, hostile or otherwise. “Why,” Caleb asked, his voice a rasping husk in his own ears. “Why did you do this to us?”
“You know very well why,” the man said from behind his concealing black ski mask. “If you genuinely don’t, well, that’s on you for not being better informed. Now get going,” he concluded, waggling his silvery handgun vaguely down the road. Caleb felt his shoulders slump, and he turned around and followed after his fellow escapees, wondering when he’d next be able to find something to eat.
**
“Yo, Parker, check it out,” one of the former officers said, inclining his head down the way. Up ahead, near the end of the bridge, there came the flash of a single gunshot, the slump of a body, and a few exchanged words from one of the people who had blockaded the city. The street lamps weren’t casting their light directly down on the group ahead, but their illumination was strong enough to show Jayden that the people ahead, standing on either side of the roadway itself, looked to be either military, or paramilitary. “We may have to shoot our way out.”
“No, Hammond,” Parker Sr. replied immediately. “You heard what they said over the radio, and think about it- how did they reach out over a police frequency? We’ve got people we probably worked with among them, or they killed one of ours and took the radio off of them.” Taking up the leadership role as he had for years, he used the carry strap of his rifle, and slung his weapon over his back, holding his hands empty at his sides. “We don’t present these people a threat, and they’re going to let us through.”
“Dad, are you out of your mind,” Jayden ejaculated, pointing back the way they had come. “Did that Sarah woman look like she’d presented any kind of threat to these people? She looked like they’d beat the shit out of her, and I don’t think she presented them any kind of threat! These people aren’t going to just let us go! They just shot one of those people ahead of us!”
“We don’t know what that was about,” Parker Sr. replied calmly. “And look, the rest of them are moving on now. It could be one of them made a move on these guys. If we let ourselves be seen, don’t present a threat, and keep our mouths shut, I think they’re going to just let us past them.” Jayden couldn’t believe he was hearing this from his father, a man who had never struck him as having fear of anyone or anything. Yet he also understood perfectly well his father’s logic, given what had just happened up ahead. Besides, he’s worked in law enforcement for years. He knows how to read people. Jayden fell into step behind his father once again, the others in the group holstering or slinging their weapons out of hand, walking upright and at a level pace.
As the group drew to within twenty feet of the end of the bridge, the militia people started to aim themselves in their direction, their full attention upon them. Jayden had seen his father turn off his radio and tuck it away in one of the large pockets of the trench coat he was wearing, and the two other officers with radios had done the same; they wanted to give no sign to these people of who they had once been. Parker Sr. slowly raised his hands up to either side of his head, keeping his expression neutral, eyes ahead, and Jayden followed as closely behind him as he could without stepping on his father’s heels.
“Best of luck out there,” one of the militia women said as they reached the halfway point of the lines of people standing watch at the end of the bridge. “You’re gonna need it,” she added, her comrades snickering around them. Jayden fully expected one of his father’s people to react, to offer some kind of clapback, but they retained their composure and simply marched along, taking their cue from their stoic sergeant. After several minutes had passed, and the group started to spot some businesses to either side of the road ahead, Parker Sr. brought them to a halt and turned to face them.
“All right, folks,” he began. “The worst is behind us now, we’re out. Let’s go to that gas station down there, get some food and water, and try to figure out what our next move is going to be.” Jayden felt his body slouch, and he thanked God for seeing him out of the city of Minneapolis. The group started forward once again, and as they entered the ring of light cast by the gas station and its overhead pump island lights, he stopped hard in his tracks, looking at a ‘Cash Only’ sign in the station’s glass door.
“Um, guys,” he began, swallowing hard. “Does anybody have cash?”
**
“You can’t be serious,” Travis snarled, slapping his hand on the counter as hard as he could. “We need food and water, man!” The man behind the counter, dressed in a plain black polo with a name tag, gave him a dispassionate stare in reply. “Did your manager authorize this ‘cash only’ policy?”
“I am the manager of this location, and the owner, sir,” the clerk replied, pointing to his own name tag, which said ‘Owner’ over his name, ‘Jack’. “And the policy is what it is. We have an ATM right over there, but I don’t know how much cash is left in it at this point; a lot of folks have been using it today. Folks from the city,” he added, cocking an eyebrow at the group’s leader. “You folks from the city?”
“We are,” Travis replied.
“Then I recommend you get what you can from the ATM, buy your stuff, and get going. My overnight guy will be in soon, and he’s going to tell you to just leave,” the small business owner said. “And frankly, I’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning, and whatever he decides to do, it’s no business of mine, as long as I’m not getting stiffed.” Caleb, standing near the back of the group, started easing his way toward the door, a large bottle of water and two microwaved breakfast sandwiches in hand. He wasn’t going to stand around and wait to be told he couldn’t eat. “Hey, guy? You gonna pay for those,” he heard from the owner as he started to turn toward the door.
Caleb would never have considered what he was about to do once upon a time. He was a law-abiding citizen, a civilized human being of the modern age. He didn’t believe in the idea of the ends justifying the means. But he was hungry in a way that spoke to the reptilian part of his brain, and that part of his brain was not going to be denied. Rather than offer a reply, he started to make a break for the door, his mind tuning out the shouting behind him.
Outside, he caught sight of a group of armed people coming toward the store, and he bolted left, not giving a damn if they were militia or not. All he knew was that he needed to eat, and as soon as he felt he had the chance, he ducked behind a car parked on the nearby street he had managed to run to, dropped to his ass, and tore the wrapping around his sandwiches apart like a maniac, shoving the food into his mouth. Reduced to an animalistic state, he didn’t even bother to completely chew, shoving the food into his mouth and swallowing as fast as he felt he could without choking. He washed down his food with the entire bottle of water, and as he sat there, gasping, he felt something hot and wet running down his cheeks.
But at least he wasn’t hungry anymore, and he considered that a small victory.
**
“Just hold on a minute, let Vince get signed in, and he can help you,” the owner/clerk said to Parker Sr. as the former sergeant pulled his debit card out of the ATM and then snagged the cash that had dispensed out for him. “Thanks for being understanding, sir.”
“Hey, not a problem, man,” Parker Sr. replied. He watched the man exit the store, head out to the back of his car, and pull something out of the trunk. He turned to his people, including his son, and said, “Okay, people, I’ve got two-hundred bucks here. We need to make it stretch; I tried to get three-hundred, but the machine told me it had insufficient funds. I think we just got the last of the cash it had in it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Seth said. “Well, let’s keep it on the cheap, then.” He and Jayden headed to the front of the store and grabbed a basket, pausing as they saw a brief flash and heard what sounded distinctly like a gunshot to them outside. They stared together out the window as the store’s owner returned to the back of his car, a smoking shotgun in hand, depositing the discharged weapon into his trunk before getting behind the wheel and taking off.
Making our money stretch is likely going to be the least of our worries now, Jayden thought. My dad was wrong; the hard part wasn’t getting out of the city. The hard part’s going to be surviving outside of it.
**
From the Vunder.net private message board subtitled, “PUSHED TOO FAR”-
Dear Fellow Patriots,
For years now, we have all been forced to keep ceding ground to people who absolutely, and without a moment’s hesitation, have looked for every means by which to let us know that they hate us, and want to make our very existences a living hell. They call us all racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, transphobes, and label us all ‘dangerous’, ‘hateful’, and ‘threats to democracy’. They forget, or do not stop to consider uncritically, that we are a Constitutional Republic, not a direct democracy at all. They have seen fit to have us tossed from internet services, blackballed against having access to housing, have even gone so far as to have us stripped of access to our own legally earned funds.
These same people have no qualms about criminals setting up autonomous zones in their cities and letting armed goons walk around, armed to the teeth, to ‘protect them from the police’. Likewise, the very same institution we all so trusted and respected once upon a time, the men and women of law enforcement, have by and large abandoned us. They kicked in the doors of our businesses during Covid and forced us to close up shop, arrested us for refusing to comply, even put us on trial for defending ourselves as allowed by both God and the Constitution.
They demanded we accept their ways of life, but never allowed us room to say, ‘What about our way of life? Can we still have it?’ They shrieked that we were exactly the kind of people who could not be allowed to continue on in ‘their’ society, because of their precious Popper Paradox, which is really the Uruburos of Hypocrisy. But you’ve all read my thoughts on that before, and I won’t waste any more of your time with it.
Pay very close attention now to what I say here: They have pushed us too far. I will be reaching out to several of you in the coming days via our end-to-end encrypted messaging app of choice. You know the one; if you don’t know it, then you don’t belong here, and should read this as a warning to yourself and yours- what I have set in motion these last few days will result in nothing less than a full-throated ‘NO’ from one end of this country to the other, a richly deserved one for all the years we’ve spent now being pushed facedown in the mud.
They ‘owned the cons’ everywhere online, propped up by their own sick hordes and the establishment. But in the real world, where the rubber meets the road, they never stopped to think about who they were ‘owning’, like the truckers who transported their food and drinks, the machinists and metalworkers who built and maintained their, well, everything. They assumed that none of these folks would stop taking their abuse, because what choice did they ever have?
I have already made the calls to talk to the folks who need to be talked to in more private settings, and events are now in motion. They wanted us to all just shut up and go away, to bend to their will, their domination. But I say you NO, we will not.
The time is soon, brothers and sisters.
Sic semper tyrannis.
**
From Dailywire.com-
September 13th, 2023. It has been just four months since the start of the ‘City Stoppage’ events that began in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, spreading to numerous other major metropolitan areas throughout the country, and people are starting to finally recognize what we here at The Daily Wire have been saying for a couple of years now; the people in these hardcore blue cities could not survive more than a couple of weeks without the very people they so detest, who live and work and vote outside of those same said cities. Quite suddenly, the national conversation has pivoted from whether or not its okay to give kids puberty blockers and unnecessary surgeries that will sterilize them, in order to ‘properly affirm them’, as the left demands, and has instead turned to the question of ‘Why are we being left to fend for ourselves and die or be slaughtered by murderous militia thugs out in the suburbs and countryside?’
Well, for my own part, I don’t think it’s okay that anybody is being attacked or harmed by people to whom they are not a threat. However, I also find it a little ironic that the very same people who claimed that the misuse of their preferred pronouns was a form of violence and attempted genocide against an entire group of people now want to bemoan their fates as literal violence is used against some of them. I mean, which is the actual violence, folks? The person who called the trans-woman over there ‘sir’, or the unidentifiable man over there who just kicked you in the face when you tried to steal food from his corner store because you’ve literally been starving for the last eight days, because nobody was bringing supplies into your godforsaken city anymore?
I try not to gloat over the pains experienced by other people, because I’m not a monster, but at some point, you’re going to have to stop and ask yourself if, at any point, you might have been partly responsible for what’s happening right now in cities across the country. Everywhere you turned, for the last six or seven years, if you happened to express the wrong opinion, go outside of what the leftwing mob demanded you think or profess to believe, then they came after you, hard. They came after your gainful employment, they tried to revoke your place of residence, they asked your bank or credit union to drop you like a burning hot coal. They silenced you off of social media, they demanded that you be completely and utterly un-personed from society writ large, and would have happily watched you get stomped out in the gutter, because you had the temerity to not fall in line with their messaging.
So rather than gloat about the pain these folks are feeling right now, I’m going to recommend we do for them exactly what they did for every conservative, for every right-leaning person, for every libertarian, who for years now, has been trying to get their voices heard regarding the absolute nightmare that the left has made their lives: exactly nothing. Do nothing, and ignore them, and maybe throw in a little gaslighting for a hearty chuckle.
Except it isn’t so funny now that the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?
Angela Solomon has been a contributor to The Daily Wire since January of 2023.
-Fin
Author’s Afterword
This particular piece of fiction has certainly not been in keeping with my usual practice of engaging in fantasy, horror or sci-fi, though there are some elements of the surreal or unbelievable within the work itself. I imagine my routine readers will wonder what I was trying to drive at with this story, particularly since there is no central protagonist or antagonist featured throughout the work. There are perspective characters, sure, but nobody who really stands out as the ‘hero’ of the tale, as it were. This is not my usual modus operandi.
The decisions I made when formulating this story were made in a relatively short time span, and the writing of it took place over only a 7 day period, from some brief notes to third and final draft. For a work of this length, I might normally sit and stew on it, tinkering and tampering for at least three or four weeks. Yes, I take an inordinate amount of time even with my short stories, but when I get obsessive, I can burn my candle at both ends, as I did here.
There is a message in this tale, to be sure. In fact, I worry that it’s fairly blatant. However, what remains to be known to the reader is whether or not I, the author, have worked this message in because I agree with the sentiment, or simply because I see it in the world around me, already in play. Frankly, I’d prefer to let that be a mystery for the time being.
In closing, I would ask you to consider the following question: does it matter, in the long run, whether or not I agree with the message? Or is it more important that people broadly recognize that this speculative piece of fiction, with all of its faults and flaws (of which I’m guaranteed to have overlooked), may well be giving us a glimpse at what might well be coming our way in the real world if things continue on as they are right now?
I suppose only time will tell.
-Joshua