Divided States, page 1
Divided States
Rick Treon
© Copyright Rick Treon 2021
Black Rose Writing | Texas
© 2021 by Rick Treon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
First digital version
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-769-9 (Paperback); 978-1-944715-99-1 (Hardcover)
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
Print edition produced in the United States of America
Thank you so much for reading one of our Political-Thriller novels.
If you enjoyed our book, please check out our recommended
for your next great read!
Jihadi Bride by Alistair Luft
“A timely edge-of-your-seat terrorism thriller that plays on every parent’s worst fears. This cinematic thriller is destined for TV.”
–Best Thrillers
PRAISE FOR
THE NOVELS OF RICK TREON
“Rick Treon dispenses well-earned twists and reveals with the stiletto precision of a master.”
—Heather Young, USA Today bestselling author of
The Lost Girls and The Distant Dead
“Rick Treon does a wonderful job with misdirection and suspense.”
—Chera Hammons, PEN Southwest Book Award winner
and author of Monarchs of the Northeast Kingdom
“Treon knows how to crank up the tension …”
—Lone Star Literary
“Rick Treon can really, REALLY write.”
—Andrew J Brandt, author of Palo Duro, shortlisted for
2020 Reading the West Award
“Treon displays prowess as a storyteller …”
—Scott Semegran, award-winning author of
The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island
ALSO BY
RICK TREON
POLITICAL THRILLERS
Deep Background
(Winner of the 2019 PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence in Suspense)
BARTHOLOMEW BECK THRILLERS
Let the Guilty Pay
The Price of Silence
For those who protect us from the wolves at our door
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Recommended Reading
Praise for The Novels of Rick Treon
Also by Rick Treon
Dedication
Allied Nations of North America
PART I: PINNACLE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
PART II: EMPTY QUIVER
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
PART III: NUCFLASH
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
PART IV: EMERGENCY DISABLEMENT
55
56
57
58
59
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
BRW INFO
ALLIED NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
United States of America (Capital: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin
Federalist States of America (Birmingham, Alabama)
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia
Liberated States of America (San Francisco, California)
California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington
Western Territories (Denver, Colorado)
Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North
Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming
Republic of Texas (Fort Worth)
Capital Province, Central Province, Coastal Province, Eastern
Province, Panhandle Province, Western Province, Southern
Province
Republic of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City)
Capital Province, Northeast Province, Northwest Province, Southeast Province, Southwest Province
Free State of Southwestern Colorado (Durango)
Archuleta County, Delores County, Delta County, Gunnison County, Hinsdale County, La Plata County, Mesa County, Montezuma County, Montrose County, Ouray County, San Miguel County, San Juan County
Free State of Utah (Salt Lake City)
Single nation-state
PART I: PINNACLE
1
LORI YOUNG
French Quarter Urban Zone, New Orleans, Louisiana
Federalist States of America
It hits her without warning. Blood rushes to Lori’s head and she needs to act fast.
Less-than-ten-seconds fast.
She fumbles with the elegant face thanks to twelve hours of downing vodka on Bourbon Street. But her fingers find the right position and her attention returns to the projection screen, where the ball is dropping in Times Square.
Lori’s in New Orleans with hundreds of other vacationers who came to see the concert. She makes sure the watch’s hands are set for exactly 11 p.m. And as the timer in the top right corner hits double-zeroes, Lori presses the button.
Perfect execution of a perfect idea. Lori wishes she could turn back time, but she’ll settle for resetting it on her new vintage timepiece.
Lori waits for confetti and kissing, but the picture wobbles and cuts away. Music over the speakers is replaced by live gunshots. A bullet pierces her left thigh and sends her tumbling to the beer-soaked turf. Screams fight with gunfire for the loudest noise as panic ripples through the crowd, and drunken partygoers trample each other trying to find two small entrances in the chain-link cage around this block of the French Quarter. Some try climbing the fence, braving the razor wire rather than risk a bullet.
Lori compresses her wound with both hands and scans for the gunfire’s source. Bodies lie in a semicircle emanating from a man she recognizes—the security guard who politely wanded her an hour ago. She couldn’t get any closer to the celebrity host, he told her through his handlebar mustache in a lovely Louisiana accent, no matter how pretty she was. Lori loves the Louisiana dialect, so much more interesting than the West Texas drawl she hears every day. Between that and his facial hair, Lori had thought The Cajun would make fantastic hotel room company.
But now he’s spraying copper-covered terror thirty feet away. Lori turns to the fence line and sees Urban Zone Police in paramilitary uniforms fighting the crowd. They’re at least fifty yards away. She could play dead for a few more minutes and survive, resume what’s left of her life, and nobody would know the difference.
But if she’s killed fighting The Cajun now, during an event that even the crippled and corrupt media can’t ignore, people might remember her as a heroine and forgive the rest.
Lori pushes herself up and, thoug
Desperate screams and gunfire mask Lori’s approach, and she summons enough strength to lunge at The Cajun’s ankles.
He falls to the ground.
Now it’s a fair fight.
* * *
Lori wonders who’ll pay for the medical care as she sits in the black ambulance. It’s only a flesh wound, but it still hurts like hell. She’s also pissed about losing the sweater that was tied around her waist, though at least the EMT gave her one of those reflective blankets to put over her tank top.
French Quarter UZ officers dogpiled Lori and The Cajun a few minutes after her tackle. Two officers led him away in cuffs, while two more shoved her toward the bus and told her to wait for a special agent with the Investigative Bureau of the Federalists.
The suit who eventually finds Lori is at least a decade younger. She heard they required a four-year degree, but this guy looks like he came straight from graduation.
“Ma’am, I’m Agent Smalls with the IBF. I know you’re probably a little hysterical right now, but I need to ask you some questions.”
No way, she thinks. “Your name really Smalls?”
“Yes, ma’am.” No sign of a smile or humor in his syrupy Georgia drawl.
He doesn’t understand her joke, though she should’ve expected that when referencing The Sandlot with someone so young. Lori was only five or six when her father first streamed it for her.
Lori debriefs Smalls without prompting, assuming the organization was as derivative as its name.
“If I didn’t know better,” Smalls says, still taking the last of her statement, “I’d think you were one of ours.”
“I was a detective in another life.”
He looks up, more interested now. “Whereabouts?”
“Texas.”
That brings a smile to his face. “Never been to The Republic myself. I want to, but it’s hard to get in.”
“Speaking of which”—Lori pulls out her Vacation Visa, which looks similar to her driver’s license with Department of Intracontinental Travel stamped at the top—“I bet you need to see this.”
He swipes the card over a black tablet, which emits the same sharp sound she heard at the Federalist border. This is her first time using a Vacation Visa, something the new nations dreamed up almost immediately after the Second Secessions were finalized. They may not have all the military defense and logistics ironed out yet, but hey, the elite can still spend summer at Martha’s Vineyard and winter in Florida.
“Says here you are a saleslady now.”
Big Brother’s reach still throws her, though it shouldn’t. In exchange for relatively easy passage across the continent, Lori gave the department access to everything from bank records to social media.
“Why’d you leave the Amarillo PD?”
Lori clenches her jaw. That’s none of his business. This little shit doesn’t know a damn thing about her. About what she’s been through. But, in the interest of getting this done, Lori relaxes her face and slaps on her well-rehearsed faux smile. “That’s a long story, but I’m a saleswoman now because I enjoy it.”
“Well, you’re certainly pretty enough.” He flashes a sheepish smile. “I’ve always liked brunettes. And that short haircut is so different from the girls where I’m from. That and your tan skin and green eyes. You’re so”—he looks to the side, and Lori’s frustration grows as he searches for the word because she’s heard it a thousand times—“exotic.”
You’re killing me, Smalls. The joke calms her enough to respond kindly. “Why thank you, Agent Smalls.”
Boys and men of all ages have called Lori exotic for as long as she can remember, including when it was deeply inappropriate. She watched her mother get the same treatment while she was alive. Misty Young—née Martinez—insisted she was Hispanic. Lori believed she was half until her late twenties.
After her last homicide bust, the perp insisted she had to be part Native American based on the length and hue of her raven hair—which she’d let grow past her shoulder blades—and the shade of her skin. It shouldn’t have mattered, but Lori was incensed. The man was human garbage, an always-out-of-work meth-head who’d moved in with a single mother. The little eight-year-old girl in the home was half Hispanic, and he’d gotten to study her features through the lens of his video camera while mommy was working. He graduated from taping her to selling the footage for fixes, to realizing he could become part of a kiddie porn chain and make even more.
Then the mother came home early one day. She and her daughter ended up dead, and it took all of Lori’s self-control to keep from putting hands on him rather than cuffs—especially after they found the tapes.
So, when that piece of shit said there was no way Lori was the same race as the little girl he’d abused and strangled with a belt, Lori sent off for one of those DNA testing kits and planned to rub the results in his face during a prison visit while provoking him to the point of getting thrown in solitary.
She never got the chance. Lori is about three-eighths American Indian and nearly half Irish with other western European ancestries. Lori knew her white heritage, but she never got much information about her maternal grandparents, except that they’d moved from Oklahoma to Texas as teenagers to escape bad home lives—whatever that meant. They worked the land for a well-to-do farming family, lived in a small brick house in the middle of several fields just west of a small town called Morse, and were never asked to produce papers.
Lori couldn’t confirm it with her mother, but Misty was born and raised on the High Plains, so three-quarters Native American made as much sense as being Hispanic.
The lie, however, didn’t add up, and Lori was upset she never had the opportunity to reap the small benefits that had existed for American Indians in the USA.
Then the Second Secessions happened, and Lori understood. Her mother, who also kept her hair short, had grown up during a time when being part Comanche or Kiowa or Cherokee could’ve made small-town life even harder than being a light-skinned Mexican girl.
Now Lori chops off her hair with regularity and keeps expensive highlights, thankful her mother established an alternate racial history at birth.
Lori also leans into the unchecked casual misogyny, like the kind Smalls exhibits unconsciously while trying to be nice in the southern-gentlemanly way he was raised.
Getting upset every time is too exhausting.
* * *
The emergency room at New Orleans City Hospital hasn’t been updated—maybe not even cleaned—since it was slapped together after the secessions to treat UZ residents and foreign vacationers. Part of Lori thinks she’d have been better off walking to her hotel after getting her wound dressed in the ambulance, but she needs stitches and pain meds.
When a doctor in a dingy coat breezes in, Lori expects him to inspect the wound. Instead, he lifts the gauze from her bare leg, looks her up and down, then replaces it. “You got lucky. The bullet took some meat out of your thigh, but it’s nothing a nurse can’t handle.”
He’s out in less than a minute and Lori hears him laugh with a woman outside, calls her sweetie. Ten minutes later, Sweetie pushes past the curtain holding a tray with three needles, one sewing and two hypodermic with syringes.
She picks up the first injection. “This one’ll numb the area.”
Sweetie doesn’t give Lori any warning before pushing a few CCs into her leg. After waiting a minute for the local anesthetic to kick in, she picks up the curved needle and starts stitching the leg with the dexterity of a dry drunk with the shakes.
“Y’all must have your hands full tonight.”
