I think it all officially went to hell when the President, for lack of a better title, stopped giving speeches and hired an actor to do them. It had been going to hell for years, but this seemed to be the official announcement that life as we once knew it was over and was never coming back.

I was working late that night at Universal Insurance; sometimes a girl's gotta put in a little overtime if she's gonna surf the web at work most of the day. Being a data entry drone was a safe gig for now. I still had my PI license, but the Company, as the Rumsfeld Stasi part of the CIA was still called even since his fatal car accident in a parked car, told me to cool it for awhile. No better place to be invisible than a seedy insurance company in Hollywood. Still, the least those bastards could have done was get me a better job or any job. I had to dig this one up myself in the LA Times want ads. Since all publishing was banned, the LA Times is little more than a crappy zine with the Internet Broadcast schedule and want ads. Nevertheless, I hate newszines, the newsprint gets all over your hands, you'd think science could do something about that. But there wasn't much science anymore, so I was out of luck, as usual.

But when the Company tells you to cool it, you do, or you end up in the deep freeze. Or staring brain-damaged into your LCD with big empty eyes, waiting for the next task prompt. You dij? Yeah, I thought you did.

So, there I was, being a good little wage slave and data entry drone with the IB on because data entry will kill you if you focus on it. Scientists will tell you that it causes your frontal lobe to dissolve if you actually concentrate on the numbers. On my penultimate Company gig, we used it for interrogation at MegaCorpInc when the CEO tried to call his lawyer. He hadn't heard that our Supremes gutted his Miranda rights along with all the other poor devils. Hooked the bastard's shriveled dick up to a car battery and put him to work on an Excel sheet. Every error got him a little jolt. I still smile about that as it was highly amusing. Too bad we didn't know about the frontal lobe problem. Or maybe it was a cerebral hemorrhage. Dead guys with blood leaking out of their orifices are just as dead whatever the reason. We cleaned up and made it look like the CEO bolted with a bunch of cash. Paid a few debts, bought a Mauser 9mm with a matching silencer, and had a nice little vacation after that. Rather wish I'd saved some; three hundred thou a year don't go far in Hollywood. At least not in this new currency we got.

I hate working late. I hate data entry. So you can just imagine how interested I was when the IB announcer said in those annoyingly well modulated and well enunciated tones:

"And now please welcome Mr. Daniel Bland, who will be delivering this evening's Presidential address." I must say that Daniel Bland, he of the epic space drama wherein he, as Captain Lula, bravely captains a starship into the unknown, did a great job with that speech. He was reassuring, fatherly and, unlike the weasely little rat we had foisted on us twelve years ago, he was... Presidential. I wonder how many people could remember Presidential and were having a Bill Clinton flashback as they watched this actor. After all these years of President Whistle-Ass and his handlers, it was soooo nice to see some command mojo on the screen that night; reminded me of the good old Clinton admin days, even made me wet.

But wet or not, I've spent too many years listening to confessions through screams of agony not to hear what old Captain Lula was saying on behalf of our permanent-for-our-own-good government. He was saying, in a round-about way, that the Internal Intelligence Agency had rounded up and executed another cell of terrorists masquerading as the renegade underground MIT linguistics department, including professors emeritus.

Hm, I thought, that should make some renegade, underground Berkeley linguists happy.

The speech went on and on with high praise for the continuing efforts of the IIA to make America a safer and happier place for everyone.

"Everyone that doesn't piss the IIA off, that is," I added, wondering why they still bothered to tell us zombies anything. To scare us? Can't scare zombies, you fools.

The actor representing the POTUS continued, in reassuring tones, that the IIA would be redoubling its efforts on the West Coast to catch the Dissidents Superior League, the dreaded DSL, which would make America an even safer place. God bless us all. The Marine Corps double amputee choir began the Hymn of America, signaling that we could all go back to whatever we were doing before our government fucked up our evening entertainment viewing. In my case, it went back to the live webcast from my favorite slaughter house – "Abattoir Tonight" – which was the only reality show I could enjoy. Since Max and his "Dr. Max's Live, Nude Economics" show vanished, there just wasn't much on the Internet for me anymore. I even had an email thing going with him for awhile before he disappeared. What a shame. I always felt so smart watching Max explain money and power, but being smart isn't worth much anymore when even being useful won't keep you alive for long.

But my thoughts were not on Max or the enhanced sledgehammer-wielding Schwarzenegger lookalike, or the throat-slashing Steven Segal bad plastic job who kept missing the stunned cow's jugular. Foolish of me, but sometimes I just can't help rooting for the victims.

No, as I absently hummed the Hymn for America, my thoughts were on the DSL. Twelve years ago, in a pants-crapping spasm of terror orchestrated by, well, my department at the Company, we convinced most of America to begin being inoculated on a weekly basis against Ebola pox.

Most of America obediently lined up their families for this free injection against a disease that didn't even exist. This injection was primarily composed of Thorazine, a little souped up thimerosal, and a little Lophophora juice mixed in for body. There was a shot of heroin to keep them coming back, too. This little cocktail, administered once a week, did exactly what it was designed to do: It killed the elderly in a matter of months, it caused brain damage in children, but most importantly it made the vast majority of able-bodied Americans into passive, paper-pushing, keyboarding, manual-laboring beasts of burden.

I say most Americans because there actually were quite a few who told the government to fuck off. Very nasty, we in the government - even we on disciplinary leave from the government - do not like to be told to fuck off. First we tried fear - a few festering, pustule-covered Ebola pox victims in major metropolitan areas, obviously the work of terrorists. That worked on a few skeptics, but not all. Then we tried coercion – the inoculations were not optional, they were mandatory. That's when the huge numbers of people, many of them linguists, who would later be named the DSL, went underground.

I blame the internet for sounding the alarm and, um, telling the truth. There, I said it: The government was lying and the wackos on the internet were telling the truth. We caught a lot of dissidents before they vanished, got them into a course of injections, strapped down and screaming blue murder. Most wanted to die and I personally obliged a few. I can be a nice gal if you catch me in the right mood. But quite a few got away, aided by a network of killjoys on the internet who posted routes to safe houses that changed hourly.

The Company could not keep up. We finally ended up trying to pull the plug on cyberspace and found out we couldn't because we couldn't take down the telephone system. It would result in chaos and you can't keep the herd in line in chaos. For ourselves, we used the internet for our own purposes – to amuse, to terrorize, to send email reminders to make sure people got their weekly inoculation fix. We used the internet to misdirect and suppress information. We felt spreading it, like manure, was a perverted use of such an excellent propaganda tool. We could blank out what we could find, but the internet is like the ocean - you have to know what you're looking for to find it.

This was used against us so much, and made the Company look so bad, that the Advisory Board on Terrorism, the ABT, formed the Internal Intelligence Agency. The IIA was independent of everything, including domestic law. They were once governed by the ABT, but last time I checked, the first director and his assistants were the board of the ABT. At least that's who it was eleven years ago, when you could still get information like that off the internet.

Around eleven, I decided to call it a night. "Abattoir Tonight" was over, so no real reason to hang around anymore. The data entry could wait.

I checked the street before I went down the stairs, quiet as usual. We didn't have any police in Los Angeles anymore, especially not in this hard-ass part of Hollywood. There was no money because the late "Governor Schwarzenegger" further cut the shit out of the already insufficient property and business taxes.

I have no sympathy for property owners or businesses because I have neither property, business nor money. You get what you pay for and civilization and infrastructure are two of those things. I suppose I could toss in "rule of law" and "continuation of life", but that probably falls under civilization. But we haven't had much civilization here in LA since the invasion and occupation, which is actually fine with me.

They want us to forget that when the recall election failed, the one, true Governor Davis mysteriously could not be found. Kevin Shelly, our last, late and very brave Secretary of State, declared Bustamente, who'd gotten the most votes to replace Davis if the recall succeeded, our new Governor. Well, we couldn't find Davis, and some of us were REALLY looking (but not so he could be Governor), so Bustamente would have to do. But then the Federal Government declared California a martial law state. Me, I couldn't care less, but this very seriously annoyed many of my neighbors. The ensuing riots had decimated what police we once had and when it was over, there was no money for new ones. The Chief and a few dozen uniforms huddled in various station houses around town, occasionally defending them because, after all, they lived in them, too.

Only Hollenbeck was leveled, mainly because the Police changed sides and fought the Federal troops alongside the community. The worst street fighting had been in Lincoln and Boyle Heights, the oldest parts of the city, and they were finally subdued in an afternoon of carpet bombing. On breaks from interrogations, I watched it all from Dodger Stadium, high on the hill across the Golden State Freeway, where the captured dissidents/protesters/freedom fighters (you pick one, I don't care) were penned up. The bombing took out Cal State LA. I was almost an alumnus, and it bothered me briefly that this bothered me not at all.

Since then we've had eight appointed Governors, several periods of martial law, but no Federal funding for anything. We have lights and water because the Department of Water and Power runs a tight, well-armed ship. Pretty much the DWP is the government of Southern California. They were and are the only operation together enough to do it. Why they'd want to is a mystery, but to each his own addiction. Seems like they made an alliance with AT&T, which re-assimilated Pacific Bell, and Greater Los Angeles has all the things its slaves need to survive.

I got emails for phone bills and electric bills, but somebody else was paying the water (so far). These amounts were deducted from my DWP bank account, which I'd never opened and into which my pay check was automatically deposited. Cash no longer existed; I used a DWP credit card for everything. I never applied for it. It was on my desk with my first pay stub and a bank statement for an account I cannot close or amend. I don't miss cash. Or rather, I don't miss the monopoly money the US Mint, Inc. is printing up. I miss the portraits of the weird-looking white guys, but this new currency is as ugly as it is worthless. Money only has power because we believe in it, and no one believes in this neon colored synthetic paper crap.

So no one bothers to stick anyone up anymore either. Crime is now no longer about gain, it has attained a purer form; it's only about violence.

As crappy as my home, my job, my city, and my country are, I can always get off work at eleven PM and go out and kill a few people. I'd hunt them through the mazes of Hollywood, sometimes as far a field as Brentwood. Brentwood was a little tricky, because sometimes the target would breach the security of a gated home and I'd have to kill my way through the security squad to get to my target. And, well, as long as I was there and there are no Police – because property owners refused to pay for them – I'd take out the owners while I was at it. As I said, all crime was now sport or insanity or both by then, but sometimes, if they had some nice portable electronics, I'd give them a new home while I was at it. The scavengers very politely waited until I was on my way before they moved in. Brentwood is dotted with ravaged mansions with dead and eaten gardens, housing dozens of half-dead hulking, useless humans. This is not all my work; as the half-dead communities grow, they expand. And there is no one to stop them. Sometimes there are fires, but the fire department was under-funded out of existence even before the recall election. Did property owners really think California could run strictly on sales and income taxes? Fools, and they were the ones who had the biggest stake in the health and welfare of the State, the society, and the future, and therefore had the most to lose. Put up all the gates and security systems you want – it's just a challenge to people like me.

But tonight all I wanted to do was go home, drink some absinthe, and think about Captain Lula delivering our "president's" speech. There were nuances and subtleties here I wanted to ponder. Was "President" Whistle-Ass dead or incapacitated? He had a part time job teaching pre-school that was broadcast from 10-2 PDT; I'd tuned in briefly and he looked fine this afternoon. Perhaps whoever was running the country these days just decided since no one really cared, they might as well hire somebody who could pronounce all the words the speech writers wrote. That struck me as efficient – sick, but efficient. I hoped they'd further streamline the process and just email the text of the speeches to us. Eventually they would simply issue edicts and this would save everyone from the pretense that our government was anything other than our masters. Edicts that were tersely worded, so we could all get back to our Internet Broadcasts that much more quickly.

Down in the parking garage Paulo was guarding the vehicles. I'd wondered if Paulo was part of the DSL, since he seemed a little too alert for one of the inoculated. And he was a little too old to have missed the inoculation program, which stopped after three years, due to having enough fucked-up workers and needing workers who could almost function. That's when we all started getting absinthe delivered to our doors; it was optional brain damage. I suspected the IIA was behind it all. I'm sure one of them realized they'd need a new generation of slaves eventually, so in addition to stopping the inoculation program, they got all forms of birth control banned. This was a mixed success. For every healthy baby, three people got AIDS. This fucked-up planning was what made me think it was the IIA behind it; they could plan their way out of a paper bag.

"Evening, Miss Gail, nice evening," Paulo mumbled as I handed him half a cheese sandwich I'd saved from my lunch. Because he lived in the parking garage and it was relatively safe with the gates down, it probably wasn't necessary for me to tip him, but I didn't want the rest of that sandwich anyway.

"Yeah..." I said, digging the keys to my Electrocatti out of my pocket. "Nice."

My jacket gaped open and Paulo's eyes lit up seeing the butt of my titanium Colt, but went out again. Made me wonder about him, but maybe he just had good taste in guns. This lightweight .45 was one of the last goodies I twisted out of the Company before I was put on leave. I told them I lost it and they never asked for it back again, suckers. In addition to my Mauser, I liked to carry it for day wear because it was so light and efficient; it blasts anything it hits to bits. It's not the most accurate gun in the world, but I didn't do much target shooting on my way home, usually just had to blast my way though an ambush now and then. Not lately, as I think the word is out that I'm deadly and just trying to get home. Eventually you get to know people by sight on your route home. It's only the first few trips that can be difficult, when neither side knows what to expect.

And even if I did get ambushed, what would they get? A titanium gun and an electric scooter. It was a honey, though, I thought as I unplugged it from the recharger socket. Assembled in Mexico, where most of the skilled labor fled when the trade unions were banned, designed by the rocket scientists, who'd fled to Mexico when NASA became part of the DARPA Space Weapons Program (now defunct for lack of talent), and produced by Ducatti motorcycles after they purchased Electrolux vacuums and moved the plant to Mexico. Fast, quiet, and ran like a gazelle for days on a single charge, thank God, because only the very rich and the government could afford gasoline these days, and I am neither. It even had cunningly designed (oh, those Italian designers!) solar panels, so it charged on its own when it could be left out in the sun. Which was never, because there were no Police, as I said earlier, and I can't afford vehicle security thugs on my salary.

However, I did have an Auto Defense System, which was merely electrical current, a lot of it, for anyone touching my ride. As long as DWP kept the current on, no one was going to get anything but fried for messing with my scooter. I clicked the system off and unplugged the charger cord. My fingers slid over the raised letters "Heche en Mexico", where all the good stuff came from. If you could work out the barter. To get the Electrocatti, I'd killed a couple of troublemakers for the supply guys who were tired of paying them protection money. Greed takes everyone down eventually. I'd worked the same deal for my titanium-guarded leather jacket and all my other Mexico goodies. It wasn't always murder - sometimes it was just guarding a UPS convoy from Mexico through the wasteland between La Jolla and Santa Ana. When Camp Pendleton mutinied, the worst fighting had been along the coast, but also inland when 29 Palms and March Air Force Base joined in the rebellion against the Federal troops. It was ugly, but didn't get to LA, so I couldn't get very worked up about what I saw on the IB.

I did get a little queasy the first time I went down the Interstate Five to Mexico on a shipment escort job. Someone, maybe DWP, maybe San Diego, had fixed the highway, but nothing would fix the burned up land around it. Some of it looked like scorch, some of it looked like chemical burns, but all of it looked dead, like sterile, like it was never going to be alive again. Even eight years after the last jar-head rebellion, which was the last time I was down San Diego way, there wasn't a blade of grass or even mold anywhere, just silence and dust. That was always the most unnerving part of the trip. Shooting my way through Fullerton, Compton, Commerce and back into town was refreshing after that. But nowadays, all the goods come up the coast on ships, so there's not much for me to barter with. The importers still need protection when they're in LA, but not as much and not as often since things have pretty much settled down here. Nobody has the time or energy to riot and all the Federal troops are busy in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Israel, Canada, France, and parts of Siberia. The Federal troops were actually way over-extended. There are always ads for mercenaries in the LA Times, looks like great pay and perks, but I hate to travel, so I'm ignoring them (for now).

There was a fortress-like natural gas and solar powered MTA bus lumbering down Sunset when I pulled out of the garage. It could hold off a siege and anti-tank weapons, not to mention crush me and the scooter like a bug. I knew this because I'd once fought one to a standstill, but not even I am a match for cannon turrets and fender-mounted machine guns. I let it have the right of way. For myself, I just wanted to get home and think about why an actor was giving our president-for-life's speeches now. I mean, not even a body double, but a completely different guy. Should we call him President Simulacra? President Representation? It was a huge subject for me, so huge and engrossing, I didn't see the kid throw the hunk of metal at me. Little bastard; I'm just trying to get home and you're just trying to get killed. I chased him on the scooter up to what was left of the Hollywood branch of the LA County Library. My, this city had been proud when that branch opened. Last time I was here in the daylight, there was an old guy standing in front of it, crying his eyes out. Eh, it was just a wrecked building that used to be full of books you could borrow for free... there was so much else to cry about, but I sort of dug his pain. But now it was just a good place for an ambush. I parked the scooter behind a burned-out SUV and flipped on the battery defense system. I didn't figure to be too long. These punk kids are stupid and I was in the mood for an easy kill. It would have to be a quiet kill, too, so I drew my other gun, a Mauser, and screwed the silencer on it. I put on my Infra-RayBans so I could see, and watched the rubble for a few minutes to get my bearings.

Most of the books and furniture had been used for fuel by now, but anything that wouldn't burn was strewn around the building shell. I used as much of it for cover as I could. I was quiet in my Capezio boots - designed for speed, stealth, ass-kicking, ankle and arch support. I wished I'd worn darker stockings because my legs and face gave me away even on this moonless night. It didn't matter, I shot two punks right away: one who ran at me and one who ran away. The third came at me from the left and the stick he threw at me bounced off my jacket. Not that it wouldn't leave a bruise on my left tit, but it would be nothing compared to the hole I blasted in the kid's chest.

I seemed to be done. If there were anymore live ones in the library, they were face down and barely breathing. I picked what hit me and it turned out to be one of those knife sharpening rods. Fool, I thought. Only good if you can get close enough to ram it into a major organ, if then.

But you were quick or dead in LA, and now there was a kind of intelligence hygiene going on. Only the fast and the smart were living much past puberty these days. I stuck the rod in the back of my ti-tandex mini skirt, but kept my gun handy just in case somebody else thought it was a good night to die.

I lived south of Echo Park and east of Little Tokyo in what was left of the Good Samaritan hospital complex. It was on a hill, of sorts, had good views and breezes and was defensible when necessary. It had not been necessary for a long time because all the hard cases lived there and kept the neighborhood neat. A healthy community of kiosk businesses had taken root in the old parking lots and I stopped by my favorite fruitas guy for a bag of apples and a half pound of pistachios.

"Somebody in your place, Miss Nellie," Arlo said as he swiped my DWP debit card. "They got the lights on, but you ain't home."

Story of my life. "Yeah? How long?"

I shut up because we were no longer alone. A guy dressed in a baggy, filthy black suit, he looked like a scarecrow with a bad case of caffeine jitters had joined us. "You Nellie Gail?" he asked.

"No," I said.

This puzzled Mr. S. Crow, but he recovered. "The boss wants to see you. Mr. James."

My old boss from the Company, the guy who put me on disciplinary leave four years ago. What the fuck did he want? Well, I'd find out. I took my groceries and brushed past the scarecrow and into the livable wreck I called home.

I had two small rooms in what had once been a lab so there was an abundance of sinks, counter, cabinets, and outlets. I'd thrown a futon and an orange crate into what I used for a bedroom (I don't sleep much), and there was an overstuffed armchair and a lamp in the main room. There was also a low bookcase full of books I'd scrounged and bartered for over the years. One of my books, Dwork and the Van Pelts' " Holocaust: A History", was in Mr. James' bony paw when I came in. Standing behind him was a beefier scarecrow in a black suit who was not reading anything. He did have a gun in his hand. He used his other hand to take my guns and give them to James.

"Good to know you're still reading in your field, Nell," he said. "We like our agents, even those on disciplinary leave, not to lose their edge."

"What do you want?" I knew he wasn't interested in me or my unfinished history degree.

"I've got a job for you," he said.

"My old job?"

"No, private job. You've still got your PI license, haven't you?"

"Sure," I said and waited.

"My daughter's gone missing," he said, and handed me a photo of a plump, blond teen. "Her name is Sara Lee James. I think she's with the DSL here in LA."

"Why do you think that?"

"I would have found her by now if she was anywhere but in this hellhole."

"When did she blow?" I asked, laying the picture on the sink.

"A few weeks ago, right after the IIA picked up that MIT linguistics terrorist cell."

"I thought that just happened."

"No, the IIA had to make sure they had the right people," he said, wincing a little. "They were tough linguists, and the interrogations took longer than they thought. My daughter got wind of it on my secure home computer. She was interested in studying linguistics, so some of these people were heroes to her. She cut and ran."

I couldn't say I blamed her.

"I want you to find her, Nell, and keep her in one piece until I can get to her," he said to my silence. "I'll... deal with the situation from there."

He'd probably deal with it with a couple of Ebola pox shots, how fucking fatherly. Kids - you give them every chemical advantage and they kick you in the teeth anyway.

He didn't haggle over the price, which made me suspicious of ever getting paid. Or ever living to ever actually get paid. The clincher was when the bodyguard brought my Universal Insurance boss in from the bedroom. My boss was bound and gagged and based on the color of his extremities, he'd been tied up for quite a while.

"And just in case you were thinking of saying no to me," James said, and put a bullet from my Mauser into my boss' head. Just to be thorough he also shot him at close range with my Colt. Messy, very messy, and very, very loud; the neighbors would not be amused. "There are still police, courts, and prisons outside of Southern California, Nellie, the courts don't really need evidence to convict, but it's never a bad thing. Not even you would last very long in lockdown." He turned to his bodyguard and told him to wait just outside the door. He must have been worried, even though I was unarmed. Except for the sharpening rod that he didn't know about.

James had never made a pass at me; he was so sexless, it seemed incredible that he could have a daughter. Maybe he wasn't the father, or maybe I couldn't care less.

"Tell me something, Nell, as a historian, why do you think the Third Reich failed?"

"They were bad at logistics." People asked me this a lot, this was my standard answer.

"Just that? Don't you think they were morally wrong and evil and therefore doomed?"

"They were very powerful and at the same time wasteful of their resources, unable to re-evaluate their positions and change course, and they didn't listen to their own experts. I don't know if that's morally wrong and/or evil. I do know it's stupid." This was my standard elaboration on the standard answer.

"See any similarities in our government?"

I shrugged. "What government, James? All we got now is martial law and presidential speech givers." He looked embarrassed so I changed the subject. "What about my Company job?"

"Let's see how you do on my private job."

I didn't like the sound of that. "I think enough time has gone by..."

"Nellie, you took out Cheney, Rice and the entire Strag Plans office, including the building. It was tough to convince State you made a simple mistake."

"You sent me the wrong picture. And too much C-4."

"It was supposed to look like an accident."

"I accidentally used too much C-4," I said. "And you sent me a picture of the wrong guy."

"Dick Cheney looks nothing like Paul Krugman. Anybody who reads news off the Internet knows that," James said.

"I wasn't..."

"I know, you don't get out much, I managed to explain it away. And in some ways it worked to the Company's advantage. Cheney's visits were getting on our nerves and Rice was useless from day one," he said. "That's why you're still among the living even though you gave Krugman a chance to get to Mexico. I hear he and Saches are tearing the place up down there."

I must have looked puzzled at the idea of economists tearing a place or anything up.

"They've got the economy humming right along, trade deals all over the world, universal education from pre-school through a PhD for anyone with the brains and will, and universal healthcare," he continued. "Supposedly, Mexico is a great place since Gates and Soros bought it."

"I didn't know Bill Gates was in on that deal. I thought he was still on the run in the tropics." I casually stretched back and got hold of the long, metal rod I'd taken from the punk in Hollywood. I needed James to let his guard down, just a little. I had pretty much decided I didn't want this job and a simple no was not going to get me out of it. And having him in my face again just reminded me how little I liked him in the first place.

"Yes, well, Gates is just hedging his bets and lying low in case things don't go his way in the U.S. again. He didn't like his company being nationalized, not that the product improved any. It was the principle of the thing." He gave me a hard look. "Soros, Sachs, Krugman and their crews are serious about making a better world without the U.S. They've written us off, Nellie, they've left us behind. The bastards." He seemed distressed by this.

But not for long. I knew he was wearing body armor, but not on his face, so I buried the rod into his left eye and jammed it into the back of his skull. I stepped over his flopping body and grabbed the Mauser. James' idiot bodyguard came in at the commotion and I dropped him with a head shot. I prefer chest shots because they are the bigger target and more efficient, but I was pretty sure he was wearing body armor and I was in a hurry.

Mr. S. Crow saw his colleague fall and decided not to be a hero. He could also run faster than I could. I chased him out of the building and through the kiosks, even into the rubble beyond them before I gave up. I think I winged him, though, I heard him yelp, but I figured the scavengers in the rubble would get him, especially if they smelled blood. On the other hand, some well-concealed scavengers were throwing rocks at me and, as irritating as I found this, I was not in the mood to fight a guerrilla war just then. There were probably too many to kill and I was also way tired.

On my way back through the kiosks I stopped at the Limo Brothers' recycling and burger stand and asked them to get the three bodies out of my apartment. They sent some of the younger generation up while I had a cup of chocolate with the fruitas guy.

"Tough night?" he asked.

"Nothing I can't handle," I said. "As long as the Limo Brothers are in business."

We smiled grimly at each other. The Limo Brothers were called that because they delivered freshly butchered meat in a solar/electric golf cart they called "The Limo" to anyone who could afford it. Or wanted it. No one ever saw a cow or pig anywhere near the mini-abattoir behind their kiosk. They also did a brisk bar-b-que and burger business, 24/7. I never ate there. Or never more than once a week.

James had recruited me when I was at Cal State LA. I'd scored high on the sociopath scale on some mysterious tests the State wanted us to take to get our degrees that year. A test is a test, but these were damn weird: they asked us to make moral decisions dressed up as IQ testing. Not long after that James contacted me and my brother, who was doing a PhD in linguistics at Berkeley because we'd both scored "well" on those tests, by Company standards, and the Company was hiring. We'd both refused, but James had our family and our dog killed, our scholarships cancelled and got us evicted from our places. We had nowhere to go but to him, so we did. He gave us new names - I got Nellie Gail because Laguna Woods was taken. I went into terror and interrogations and my brother into logistics and long-term planning because I was only ruthless, but he was ruthless and smart. But maybe not smart enough. Five years ago he'd vanished on a project in Houston. I could never find out what happened to him. James said he didn't know and maybe he didn't. He even let me look for him as much as I could because the Company doesn't like losing their investments for any reason.

But that was five years ago and this was tonight and I was very tired. The Limo Brothers body disposal did a thorough and fast job on my place. You'd never know there had been three messily killed bodies in it, they'd wiped it down so well. I lit the photo of Sara Lee, the girl I would not be finding for her father, and let it burn in the sink. I figured someone had Mr. Scare Crow for dinner, so there was now no evidence whatsoever that Mr. James of the Company or his goons had ever been in my neighborhood. I slept better for knowing that.

I went to work the next day and no one noticed that our boss was missing. Around noon his secretary stuck her head in my office and asked me if I'd seen him. I said no, but that he was calling in for messages. She said, "Oh," and came back five minutes later with a handful of message slips. I handled most of them in an hour and the others after lunch. This made me wonder just what my late boss actually did here at Universal Insurance.

Against my will, I found myself wondering about the late Mr. James' wandering daughter. It took some moxie to rebel these days, especially if you were raised with every advantage, in a gated community, and educated privately.

But linguistics had fucked up better minds than could ever be spawned by James. My brother had once been a normal guy, and then he became passionately, obsessively engrossed in the way the letter "T" was palatalized in different languages. Every conversation ended up on that subject and then you couldn't get him off it with, well, twenty pounds of C-4. He said it was where the language was going that was important. Nothing was more important than where the language was going: It Was The Future.

He used to laugh at me, said I was always looking back, that I majored in history because I was afraid of the future. Well, considering the present we now got, yeah, maybe I was afraid of the future. But I wasn't always looking back; I was looking over my shoulder because I knew the same mistakes were gaining on us in the here and now, that it was only a matter of time...

Oh fuck it. My throat got tight when I thought about my big brother. History was a safe subject, but my own past was a minefield.

I emailed a grocery order to Trader Joe's and told them I'd be there in ten minutes. A few years ago a clerk in the Eagle Rock store "politely" lipped off at me and I took the sarcastic little motherfucker out. I was so pissed off, I took out the whole store, including the customers. After that Trader Joe's management asked me to just email my orders to whichever store and they'd have the surliest clerk they could find give them to me at the door. Surliness I can handle; sarcasm makes me homicidal. This arrangement is fine with me because I hate to shop. And the Hollywood Trader Joe's had some way surly clerks. I think they were aspiring actors, so they could really do surly.

I stopped at the fruitas guy for a large carrot juice to go with my peanut butter pretzel entrée and Trail Mix Vegan cookies for dessert.

"Strangers around today, Miss Gail."

"Again?"

"One was limping. Another was helping him. With a gun."

"Skinny limping guy? Like the one I was chasing last night?"

"He was not limping last night, but, yes, it is him."

I was mulling this over when the very distinctive sound of two shotguns being pumped distracted me. The fruitas guy, raising his hands and backing away was even more distracting.

"Glenn wants to see you."

I looked over my shoulder to see who had the deep basso voice. There were two, one was a bad imitation of Mr. T and the other looked like Don Knotts on too many steroids. I nodded, picked up my groceries and my drink and headed for my place. No one spoke, so I never did know which one had the deep, deep voice.

I figured it was Glenn sitting in my arm chair with my copy of Balakian's "Black Dog of Fate". He was mean and bureaucratic-looking. Mr. Scare Crow was sitting on the floor next to him, looking very, very scared. Another guy with an alarming resemblance to Leonard Nimoy was standing over him with a riot gun. Don Knotts took my Trader Joe's bag and put it on the sink. I sipped my carrot juice and waited for developments.

"Do you believe this Armenian genocide bullshit, Nellie?" Glenn snarled by way of greeting.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"A million and a half Armenians disappeared between 1915 and 1923. That many people don't just vanish."

"Not easily, no."

He seemed lost in thought so I decided the history discussion was over. "Who are you and what the fuck do you want?"

"I'm with the Internal Intelligence Agency and I want you to find this girl." He handed me a photo of a pudgy, red-faced, squalling toddler. "She was last seen with this girl." He handed me a photo of Sara Lee. "Know her?"

"No."

"Whoa, Nellie, don't you know her? Her father was here last night."

Since Mr. S. Crow was in the room, I figured an outright lie was not going to wash. "So?"

"So? So what did he want?"

"He wanted my opinion on the Third Reich." This seemed to throw him into a funk.

"Didn't Hitler mention the Armenian Genocide?"

"Yes." I waited until he was back on track.

"I want to hire you to find the toddler. Her name is Millie. The girl's name is Sara Lee James, in case you forgot in the past 24 hours."

"What makes you think they're in LA?"

"James was here looking for his daughter," he said. "Hiring you to look for her. Millie was last seen with Sara."

"What makes you think I can find either of them?"

"This is your town, Nellie," he said coolly.

I scowled. "What's this job pay? Or am I working for the IIA now?" I asked. The IIA had great benefits.

"It's a private job. A million for the kid, alive and in good shape."

"And for Sara Lee?"

"I don't give a good Goddamn about Sara Lee," he said, and to punctuate his point, he took a sleek Berretta out of his coat and shot Mr. S. Crow in the head. Twice. "This gun is registered to you." He laid it on the bookshelf. "Can I borrow this?" He waved "Black Dog of Fate" at me.

I said no; I never lend my books because there're no publishers anymore to replace them. Glenn shrugged and put it on the bookcase, next to my new gun. "How do I find you for updates?" I asked.

He put a business card on the book and stood up. "I'll be in touch." He turned back at the door. "Oh, and we think the kid is with the DSL, if you need a hint."

They left and I emailed the Limo Brothers that I had a pick-up for them, a single. I decided to take my peanut butter pretzels and carrot juice outside while they tidied up. Don-Knotts-overdosed-on-steroids stole my fucking pretzels, the bastard.

This just was not my day.

At least I got a nice new gun out of this mess. I'd always wanted a Berretta, too. It was the only bright spot in the whole scenario and I wondered if Glenn would want it back when I failed to find Pookie-Boo or whatever her fucking name was. Millie, yeah, Millie. He was probably going to kill me whether I found her or not, so it was moot really.

I was considering this between data entry and calls from the main office of Universal Insurance, asking me what my very absent boss wanted to do on certain matters. I said whatever came into my head and they seemed to think that made my boss brilliant. Well, maybe it did, what do I know?

If, and it was a big fucking "IF", this Millie kid was with the DSL there was no way to find her. The DSL was everywhere and nowhere. There were even urban legends that they'd all morphed into cyber-spirits and were living in the Internet, appearing in visions to the faithful. Well, that sounded like the faithful got a bad hit of Ebola pox vaccine to me.

The other question I had was WHY did the DSL have her IF they had her? And WHY was the IIA involved, and HOW was SARA LEE, I mean, Sara Lee involved? And WTF was I supposed to do about it? I figured I could stall for about 24 hours and then run like hell. In the meantime, I surfed up some gossip on the net about the DSL in LA, just so if Glenn wanted an update, it would buy me some time.

There wasn't much out there. As there was no law in LA, only loose guidelines, there were no criminal investigations or official arrests. Well, the IIA couldn't criminal investigate their way to their own ass and their idea of arrest was spelled immediate execution. I did find it interesting that when I ran the string "Sara Lee" and Millie and "MIT Linguists" and IIA and .gov –"Baked goods" –Chomsky –terrorists, I got whitehouse.gov and a page about Bush I's dog, Millie. Well, this made no sense to me, so I ran it without the .gov parameter and got a dead link to Dr. Donald Monroe's page at MIT or what used to be MIT linguistics. I hit the cached version of the page.

Ghosts and more ghosts. Monroe had been a legend among linguists - no one could understand his theory of meta-languages, it was too amazing, not even my brother could comprehend it; he had been huge. Unlike his colleagues, he didn't go underground with the DSL, he'd gotten a cushy government job; close to, if not in the White House. No one knew what he did there (no one knew what anyone did in the White House anymore) and I hadn't heard about him in a long time. I dug Glenn's card out of my purse and emailed him to email me a secure chat room. A few seconds later there was a discreet ding on my computer.

:::what?

:::where's t monroe, phd?

:::why?

:::maybe a lead

:::he's dead

:::when?

:::two months ago

:::how and why?

:::he was in the raid that picked up the mit renegades. he thought he was leading us to them. he'd served his purpose anyway

:::is he connected to sara lee?

:::fuck her

:::pass, was he?

:::he was her mentor

Hm, Sara Lee was that close to the White House, yuck, no wonder she ran.

:::ARE YOU FUCKING HERE?

:::yeah yeah, monroe and the DSL, wtf?

:::he crossed over or tried to, we had a chip in him, it was the trade off for not being inoculated

:::do you know why he crossed?

:::no. did you find millie yet?

:::working on it. over and out.

I decided right then to take a page out of Sara Lee's book and get the fuck out of Dodge, or at least the U.S. I didn't have any friends in Mexico or anywhere really, but I did have some people I could scare into giving me a start in Baja.

There were a few things I wanted from home. Not much - I'm not sentimental - but there was a photo of me and my brother, and a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was always good for a few laughs. Southern California had been the sixth, maybe even fifth, largest economy in the whole fucking world. It had had flocks of the most brilliant thinkers, herds of beautiful men and women, a string of great universities, two and a half of the greatest cities in the world, and more joy, more hope, and more love than you could shake a stick at, all of which translated into megabucks for some reason I could never understand. Where crazy women like Catherine Ponder and Louise Hay had had the guts to say there was more than enough for everyone, more than anyone could ever want in the world, just go out there with love in your heart and get it. Now there was only rage and fear. Most of the state was now wasteland or jungle-like cities. There was no GSP, no money, and damn little hope. Why would any sane person running the world, let alone the Illuminati, destroy one of their biggest money makers? This is why I knew the Jews were not running the world - historically, they were not a wasteful people. And, from a historical point of view, at least mine, what was going on in the U.S. was more like Crusader thinking: don't like it, let's kill or enslave it, thereby rendering it useless and non-threatening whether or not it was ever a threat in the first place. I have nothing against Christianity, but, historically, it's done almost as much harm as good, if anyone still bothered with those kinds of distinctions.

Hah! Not me! I was on my way to old Mexico and out of this mess for good. I tied up a few loose ends at my desk, made a few more decisions for my dead boss, gave Paulo a big smile and a pastrami sandwich I no longer wanted and hit the road for home.

They were waiting for me. I knew this because they left Glenn's, Mr. T's and Don Knotts-ODed-on-steroids' heads neatly lined up in front of my door. I saw red, and it wasn't just blood. Enough was fucking enough. I wheeled on the goon coming up the stairs behind me. I caught him in the chest with both Capezio boot-clad feet and rode him down the flight of stairs. I had my new gun out by then and shot him. I fired wildly at movement to my right. There was a scream and a thump. I ran to the left.

I could hear them coming. I ran through wrecked wards parallel to the hallway I knew they were in. It was the hallway to the outside. I needed to be outside, I stood a better chance outside. I wasn't fast enough or there were too many of them. I dove for cover and started firing at whatever moved. Their guns were noisy and messy. I put the Mauser away and drew my titanium Colt. The debris around me shattered into a million shards. I put on my Infra-RayBans to protect my eyes. I emptied the Colt and wished I had more bullets. I stuck it in the waistband of my skirt and drew out my other guns, emptying them at whatever moved out there. I slid another magazine in the Mauser; it would have to last. I rolled for the blasted windows, hopped the balcony railing and slid down the fire ladder. I had the hospital between me and the kiosks. There was shooting in my general direction, but I was in the shelter of the overhang, creeping around the side of the building. I figured they'd figure I'd go for my scooter in the parking garage, but I was going for the cover of the kiosks. If I could lure whoever the fuck this was into that snare, once they started firing, the vendors would defend themselves. This would give me cover to get to my scooter and get the fuck out of there. If I wasn't dead by then.

I took a deep breath at the corner of the building. Once around it, I had a dash across open space to the kiosks. If I could just make it across the open space... There were pounding feet behind me, so I knew I only had a few seconds. Guns drawn, one empty, I came around the building like a hurricane.

Directly into the black helicopters between me and the kiosks. There were also half a dozen guys with bigger guns than mine. Their colleagues came around behind me, making it an even dozen. I hadn't even heard the helicopters, but then the only noise they were making was a low hum, like a window air conditioner.

A guy wearing a nice blue suit and an AK-47 strolled up to me and said, "Boss wants to see you." He pointed the gun at my head, while another guy in an equally nice herringbone pattern took my guns. "Let's go, Miss Gail," he said, herding me back into my own home at gunpoint. I went quietly; I was getting used to it.

They were a tidy crew. The dead guys were already gone from the stairwell and even the blood was cleaned away. It was worthy of the Limo Brothers, but I knew they'd be defending their kiosk until the shooting died down.

Someone had opened the drapes. Or tried to. They were in a dusty tangle on the floor, probably disintegrated from heat and disuse. The sun was slanting through the dirty window and lighting the dinginess to a new low.

For this reason, I tried never to see my flop in natural light. It just made the well-dressed thugs and the tall, pacing guy look as bad as they probably were. The guy stopped pacing and looked down at me. This must be the boss, since he was the only one who didn't have a gun in his hand. He had a samizdat copy of a treatise on neo-fascism in his hand, my copy to be exact.

"For a historian you read very crappy stuff," he said.

"I'll try to reform," I said, figuring there was no point in arguing. "Who are you?"

"Oh, just call me Rush," he said, waving the samizdat pamphlet at me and smiling.

It was kind of nauseating. His namesake was wandering around the East Coast, mostly brain dead, not that anyone could really tell, except that he was no longer on the radio every day. He'd patriotically and publicly taken his Ebola Pox inoculations to encourage others to take them. No one in the know tried to stop him; he'd served his purpose. We in the Company called him Mr. Judas Goat. However, his deteriorating condition on TV, and cable (when there were such things), the IB, and his even more incoherent broadcasts tipped the more alert citizens off that maybe these inoculations were not such a great thing to get.

But I just nodded politely and waited for him to go on. Or kill me. One or the other seemed inevitable.

"Have you found Millie yet?" he asked, pacing again.

"Not yet," I said. "And since Glenn's head is on my doorstep, I don't have a client anymore."

"I'm your client now."

"I was thinking of retiring."

"Find me Millie and you can retire," he said. "I don't care what you do after you find her."

"Why does everyone think I can find this kid?" I asked. "You've got more firepower and muscle, you find her."

"She's not where we can go," he said, still pacing my tiny parlor. "She's in Lincoln Heights, at County with the DSL."

"Forget it," I said. I'm tough but not psychotic enough to start looking for the DSL in the rubble of County Hospital.

He stopped pacing and faced me. "Do you know what's holding this country together, Nellie?" he asked with a snarl.

"Greed?"

"Will. A few people with the will and vision to guide America," he said, getting this weird, beatific look in his eyes. "An elite class, the natural leaders of America."

"And who might they be?" I asked, trying to sound awed. I must have succeeded, because he smiled and it was disgusting.

"Do you believe in the Ulluminati?"

I forced my eyes not to roll. "Ah, no, I don't believe in the Illuminati any more than I believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny."

"I didn't say the Illuminati," he snarled mere millimeters from my face. "I said the Ulluminati."

"I see." I wondered which one of us had the pronunciation problem.

"I don't believe in the Illuminati either," he said more calmly. "But admire the concept. My people have modeled ourselves after the Illuminati, except we're Protestant."

"Southern Baptists?"

"Episcopalian. University-educated, business-minded, heterosexual, and fed up with Democracy." He resumed pacing. "We never cared for it in the first place."

I wondered how long this lecture was going to go on.

"Sara Lee took one of our most precious children and we want her back," he continued. "We want you to convince the DSL to give her back."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Fyodor Chandler is involved," he said, watching me.

I didn't flinch. I'd trained myself not to flinch or think about Fyodor Chandler. "Fyodor Chandler is dead."

"No, he's not, he's in Lincoln Heights," he said. "Get us the girl, and we'll let him live."

"I have no idea how to find him," I said, keeping my voice steady.

"Your file says that once you have an objective, you focus on it to the point of monomania," he said coolly. "Now that you know he's alive and where he is, you'll find him, if only to kill him yourself. We don't care, we just want the girl."

I didn't say anything. He was staring too hard at me. I thought if I opened my mouth, he'd try to grab my tongue.

"Tell me, Nellie, do you think this Orcinus guy got it right about the transmitters?"

"Yes and no."

"Oh? Tell me."

"Yes, the conservative radio people and journalists were getting their lines from the extreme right, fascists, if you will, but the white trash militias and the Christanists were never the real danger because they had no real power, just rage and the ability to kill a varying number of people. As we know, they were the first ones to volunteer to be inoculated and were the first sacrificed."

"And, what do you think was the real danger?"

"People who'd been in the top one percent income bracket for more than two generations, isolated by their wealth and out of touch with this country," I said. "The danger was always that the rich would use whatever means to seize power and use it to get what they wanted."

"Which was?"

"Everything. And what they didn't want, or couldn't understand, or were afraid of, they threw away. Like Los Angeles."

"And why do you think we, I mean, they did that?" he drawled deadpan.

"Because you, I mean, they had by normal standards everything, but it was not enough and you, I mean, they would do anything to make sure you, I mean, they, kept it," I said.

"And we, I mean, they, have succeeded magnificently!" he slapped his thigh with the pamphlet. "Mission accomplished, one could say, with a caveat or two."

I thought about the last guy who said that and it wasn't true then either. The war on everything exploded, hundreds of thousands had died, were still dying, and it still wasn't even close to over yet. But I kept my mouth shut. This wasn't the right time to make sense.

"I wonder, Nellie, as a historian, what do you admire about the Third Reich?" he asked.

I've been asked this question before, but never with so many guns on me. "That they lost."

"Oh, I agree," he said, nodding. "A complete waste. Either win conclusively or annihilate everything when you go, that's the ticket."

I thought about asking him what the Ulluminati's policy on that was, but the moment passed. He took out a lighter and set the pamphlet on fire.

"You're not supposed to have this," he said, waving it closer and closer to my head.

It occurred to me that I'd just download another one and print it out. Someone always had one online somewhere. But this was not my biggest worry after he singed off half my hair. "I'm going to have a tough time finding your girl with my head on fire, Rush," I said, gritting my teeth and patting out the sparks.

"Eh," he said, tossing the still burning pages into the sink. "It's a new look for you."

Heine once observed that "where one burns books, one in the end burns men". I didn't know if this applied to pamphlets and female PIs, but it seemed apt for the moment.

"Rush" handed me a PDA and told me all his contact points were in it. It was secure and wireless. I was impressed until I noticed the "Heche en Mexico" on the back and wondered who he had killed to get this.

"The clock is running, Nellie," he said, brushing past me.

I asked what the job paid.

"It's a living wage," he said on his way out. "You get to live."

Ba dum bum bum. Asshole.

I ran some water over my head, just to be sure my hair was completely out. I put the three heads in a garbage bag and took them downstairs. I figured I'd put them where the scavengers would find them when they came out right before dawn, which was the best time to be locked in your own cage around here. On my way by, the fruitas guy waved me over and asked about my new look.

"My latest visitor set my hair on fire."

"Just the right side?"

"So far." One of the Limo Brothers' kids - I never knew which kid belonged to which brother, it was such a flock - came over and damn politely asked me if he could be of any assistance. Actually said:

"Excuse me, Miss Gail, may we be of any assistance tonight?"

"It's slim pickin's, kid, all I got is these three heads," I said, holding the bag open.

He said they'd find something to do with them and thanked me. Then he looked at my hair and asked if I wanted his sister to cut the rest of it off because they could use it, too.

I almost asked what for, but I just didn't want to know, so I said sure. A nice little teenage girl came over with the biggest pair of shears I'd ever seen and cut my hair so it was about an inch all over my head. At least it would be easy to take care of until it grew out again. If I lived that long.

A week ago, my life was simple, boring and predictable. I brooded away the rest of the afternoon and was no closer to having any idea of what was going on now or why I was in the middle of it. Nevertheless, I figured I better shake a tailfeather and get my ass down to Lincoln Heights. Due to the condition it and I were in, I thought I'd dress for trouble. I don't worry about fashion much, give me a ti-tandex miniskirt, a tank top and a leather jacket coated with titanium guard, and I'm all set. Titanium guard is a spray that makes whatever it's used on fire-proof, water-proof, puncture-proof, and scratch-proof. This jacket had saved me several times and it still looked like new. I would have to see if there was some kind of titanium guard for my hair, or what was left of it. I surely could have used it this afternoon.

So I put on my snakeskin patterned ti-tandex body suit. It was the finest fusion of support hose and body armor technology and the height of fashion in Mexico City last year. I could slide under a truck on broken glass in it and come out without a scratch. I added a black mini skirt and a sleeveless turtleneck for modestly. I always wore my leather jacket and Capezio boots because they were lightweight, quiet, and fast. The soles had a lot of bounce in them, but also a lot of punch. They were flexible on the inside, but, based on the number of chests I'd jumped on in them, chest-crushingly hard on the outside. I also knew this because I dropped one on my own foot once, and limped for days afterwards. I had no idea what they were made of or where they came from, maybe France, because though they were chic, it was not in the Mexico City style. I got them from a kiosk on my way to work one morning.

No stealth outfit was complete without a black ski mask. They were standard issue from the Company, even though no one in the US skied anymore. I did interrogations in this ski mask, too, I thought it was lucky for me. I'd need luck tonight because I didn't have a clue and probably not a prayer, but I was going to Lincoln Heights anyway.

The final touch was my Infra-RayBans. They were a little clunky, but there were no street lamps where I was going, so I'd need them. On my way out, I caught sight of myself in a dark window - I had achieved a look somewhere between Acquanetta the Eel Woman and a horse fly. It was perfect and I hopped on my Electrocatti with a lighter heart. As Kirkegaard said, a woman in fashion fears neither man nor God because She Is In Fashion. I wish it could all be so simple that he could be right. Though he's useless for someone like me, I rather like Kirkegaard.

But all the philosophy I need is at the end of a gun because I'm no good with a knife.

However, I did have several knives and I strapped them in easy to reach places, just in case I needed to reach them easily. I had all my guns with me, a pocket full of speed-loaders for the Colt and several magazines each for the Berretta and the Mauser. Considering I had no fucking idea what I'd do at County when I got there, I felt reassuringly well-prepared.

Once Lincoln Heights had once been a thriving, mostly Hispanic and Asian community. They all had jobs, and many had small businesses and employees. They sent their children to Lincoln High or Sacred Heart and put "Proud Parent" bumper stickers on their cars. Their children went to East LA College or Pasadena City College and then got Bachelors degrees from Cal State LA or Cal State Long Beach and the next generation could live a bit better than the previous one. They made progress for themselves, small, careful, measured steps toward the life they wanted. There were no get-rich-quick schemes in Lincoln Heights, there were no blazing superstars; it was the land of hopeful realists. And they did have hope, they had it by the yard, but now all they had was rubble.

The people of Lincoln Heights, and Boyle Heights, too, would not accept the occupation and so they fought back. Many of them had lived in Asia and Central America, so they knew, better than the rest of us, what was going to happen. They knew soldiers in the streets are never a temporary condition, but herald a profound change for everyone. They had seen it all before and this was their stand, their last stand, because it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

And they lost. The battles raged from Figueroa in Highland Park all the way south to the 60 freeway. The final siege was at the County/USC Medical School and Hospital complex. It was one of the places the community was most proud of and they defended it to the last man, woman and child. County Hospital was built after World War I, when steel was plentiful, and so it withstood most of the ground assault. The aerial bombing and tank assaults finished it off, more or less; it still rose above the rubble on the rise it had always been on. It was where the poor had always taken refuge; it was where doctors cared for everyone without prejudice and loved healing the sick; it was where researchers toiled for better patient care and the advancement of science; and when it fell, it ripped the heart out of eastern Los Angeles.

I had watched the fireworks from Dodger Stadium between interrogations and felt nothing. My heroes were dead before I was born. Poland had fought and been savaged and I knew Los Angeles didn't have a chance in hell. Our own government had turned the greatest military in the world on their own people. Without the ideals our country was founded on, we were all dead, even the living. The American experiment was over. We could only be slaves now.

Those of us who truly understood that did various things. Some were suicide bombers, some just killed themselves, and a few became freelance assassins or snipers. What armed and organized resistance there was was put down fairly quickly. Many of us shut off our consciences and worked for the government in one capacity or another. I had a particularly nasty, but rewarding (for me) government job until I was put on disciplinary leave. Quite a large number went underground as the DSL and got to Mexico.

But Lincoln Heights had fought and been crushed. And, unlike the Warsaw Ghetto, Los Angeles did not pave over the scene of this rebellion. So the streets were still a wreck. But nature doesn't philosophize, it just sends up saplings in the bombed out streets and grass shoots in the shattered pavements.

I'd picked up a tail on Sunset and was looking over my shoulder to make sure I'd lost it when I got smacked in the face - by a tree. A sapling, to be exact, but it still smarted and worse, rattled me because I should have seen it. Well, it was just a tree, and a little one at that, I left it behind me.

It was very dark in Lincoln Heights. DWP had restored the power citywide, but they never repaired the street lighting in this part of town. If anyone was in these mashed buildings, they had their lights off or blacked-out from the street. I didn't blame them; light meant people and in this part of town, people meant food.

The silence around the rubble of County Hospital is very creepy. There was nothing there to make noise anymore, and even the light breeze had nothing to rustle or make sigh. I cut the scooter's quiet motor and coasted into what looked like the remains of a parking garage, looking for the darkest corner to stash my scooter, preferably behind some rubble. I shot two scavengers crouching there and looked around for more. There weren't any; I had heard that the County complex was no man's land, even for the scavengers. They might pass through it, but it was no one's territory. That was the rumor, and I never knew if or how it was true. But the bright spot was the recharger station glowing in the darkness. I walked my scooter over to it and plugged in. God bless the DWP. I set the scooter defense system and left it charging behind a mound of concrete and steel rebar.

I looked around to get my bearings. It would truly wreck my night if I couldn't remember where I parked my scooter. I moved through the rubble as quietly as possible. If the DSL and Fyodor really were here, where would they be? Fyodor had been pretty crazy the last time I tried to talk to him. If he was crazier now, it made sense that he'd be here, in this hell, and might be anywhere. If it were me, I'd hole up in the ruins of the hospital itself. It looked like there were lots of places to hide and lots of exits. And lots of places for an ambush. I stayed in the shadows and considered the choices before me on Zonal Street: County Hospital on the west side, USC Med School on the east.

On a whim, I swung east and up through the Med School. Fyodor had been a library freak once and might still be, and there had been a big one called Norris up there. I wound my way up the small rise and into what was left of the main plaza.

There wasn't much left of Norris. The south side of the first and second stories had pretty much been crushed, as if a big fist had decided to make the rectangle into a triangle. I had lots of cover up there and was able to circle the library, looking for a way in.

Movement on my left caught my eye and I froze into the shadows again. Had it seen me? No... scavengers were not stalkers, they were chasers. But I wasn't sure this was a scavenger, since it seemed to be looking for something. For me? Would someone be crazy enough to tail me here? It couldn't be the tail I shook on Sunset. I was sure I'd lost them.

For the moment, I was stuck. I had my back to Norris Library and I was facing what was left of the Cancer Hospital. I wondered it I could outwait whatever was out there. Dawn was only a few hours away and the scavengers would find places to hide during the daylight hours. I also needed a better, if only more comfortable, vantage point. The Cancer Hospital seemed like a more likely spot. I skulked across the small space between the buildings, using a burned-out SUV for cover. I tiptoed along the wall, looking for a way in. I wanted to get to the second floor for a better view. I found a promising break in the rubble and went in.

There was the occasional stairwell or undamaged hallway for me to use, but there was also a lot of climbing over things. I wasn't sure what floor I got to, but I finally found a view of the plaza I liked. I adjusted my weapons and got comfortable.

There was someone out there, looking for something and not randomly. They were tracing my steps, more or less, as if they could guess what I'd do. Well, I was doing what a sane person would do and in this insane place, there weren't many options. My stalker slipped into the shadows again, flashed out and disappeared behind the SUV below my aerie. I saw the figure come forward, just enough, to see me if it looked up. I drew away from the ledge, even though I knew, black ski mask et al., that I was invisible. Unless those things on its face were night goggles. I stopped breathing. Scavengers don't have night goggles. Who the fuck was down there?

I drew my Mauser and put the silencer on it. I figured I'd better scope out my line of retreat before I fired, just in case whoever that was had a partner. I wandered down a hallway and turned a corner.

I smelled them before I saw them and would have made tracks if the floor hadn't given under me. I slid down in a shower of linoleum and ceiling tile, right into a convention of scavengers. There was a hallway at my back, which I hoped to God it didn't lead into another group of monsters. I ran. They chased me.

I could hear them falling over things behind me. If I could find my way out, I might be able to out-run them, simply because I could see what not to fall over. I still stumbled over broken furniture and decaying bodies. I clambered down a stairway and into another hallway, a long one. I could see double doors at the end, and I hoped they were open.

They weren't. I pulled my Colt and shot the lock, but the doors still held. I turned and emptied it into mob in the hallway. Falling over the dead slowed them but didn't stop them. I got my Mauser and Beretta out and fired for all I was worth. There were too many and I wasn't willing to be torn apart. I figured I had one shot left in the Berretta. I put it to my head and pulled the trigger.

I can't even fucking count anymore.

I raised the empty guns to bash a few heads before I went. It wouldn't do any good but it would make me feel better.

At that moment, the doors opened behind me and I fell on my ass. I was looking up at three guys firing reloadable riot guns into the scavengers. Empty shells fell around me as the cartridge belts jitterbugged through the guns. There was a lot of screaming, and some of it might have been mine. One of the guys hauled me back a few feet and the others slammed the doors. They shoved buttresses against them. I figured this was why blowing the lock off hadn't worked. They pointed their guns at me. They were all wearing night goggles.

"Let's go, Nellie."

I got to my feet and handed over my guns when I was asked to. I was getting a lot of practice at this. We proceeded down the hall, one of them in front and two behind me. We were very quiet and they seemed relieved when we were out of the building. They herded me across the plaza, over Zonal and into the County Hospital complex. I caught flashes of movement in the ruins around us, but my escort seemed okay with it, so why should I worry?

We went into the ruins of a building behind County and into a biggish, dimly lit room - might have been a conference room once, it had a table half buried in the shadows to prove it. I had my hand on my knife. If this was rape, I'd hurt them as much as I could. I leapt back and got my back to the wall, knife out and looking like I might know what to do with it.

But they didn't attack. In fact they let their gun barrels point at the floor instead of at me.

"Who the fuck are you guys?" I snarled. I hate small talk.

"I'm with the DWP," a muscular guy dressed in khakis and a work shirt said.

"I'm with the Chinatown Defense League," an Asian guy all in black said.

"And you?" I practically yelled at a tall, dark guy slouched against the door.

"Hollenbeck."

Representatives of the doomed police department, the DWP and the CDL. I was in the room with what passed for civilization in Los Angeles. And they were all looking at the far end of the conference table. I figured there must be something to see there. There was. And he looked just like he did on "Live, Nude Economics".

"Hello, Max," I said, putting away my knife and pulling up a chair. "I heard you were dead," I added, pulling off my Infra-RayBans and ski mask.

"Not dead, Nell. Not even resting," he said pleasantly, leaning forward so I could see his shaggy grey head and tanned, craggy features. "I've been south of the border."

"What brings you to Los Angeles?" I asked.

"Fyodor Chandler."

"He's dead."

"Oh, he's very much alive and causing as much trouble as ever," Max said, folding his hands on the table. "Who else could bring the Company, the IIA, and the Ulluminati down on the City of Angels?"

"Somebody named Sara Lee?"

"She's just a pawn."

"And Millie?"

"Just a tool."

I decided I didn't even want to know what was going on. "Well, Max, it was great to meet you in person at last," I said, getting to my feet.

The men by the door raised their guns.

"Sit down, Nell," Max said softly. "I need you."

"Why me?"

"Because you're in the middle of this. You're the center of attention, the star of the show," he said with some heat.

"Oh, yeah? How'm I doing?"

"Don't quit your day job," he said. "You're my best shot at solving what's become my worst problem."

"Then you're way fucked, Max," I said, tipping my chair back. "Because I can't find Sara Lee James or this Millie kid. And if they're here, and my evening so far is any indication, somebody has eaten them by now."

"I know where they are," he said. "And of course you would pick the wrong side of the street, Nell. This side, County Hospital, is controlled by the DSL. The Med school side is all scavengers."

It figured. "Where do I fit in?" I asked.

"I need you to convince Fyodor Chandler to bring his people to Mexico with me."

"Why?"

"Fyodor Chandler was one of the most brilliant minds the Company ever recruited. Anything he planned went off without a hitch. He made all you agents look good, real good. And when he vanished or, as you thought, was murdered, mission risk went through the ceiling. It was a lucky break for us. Keeping you people on the hop gave the DSL a chance to get most of their people to Mexico. Especially the economists; can't do anything without economists these days," Max said. "Fyodor is still a genius, Nell. Crazy as a loon, but still one of the best minds in the country," he added.

"That's not saying much, Max, all the best minds are in Mexico now. Or dead."

He ignored me and continued, "Fyodor is leading an army of healthy, educated people into harm's way. And I'm here, not to stop them, but to divert them to where their skills can be put to more constructive uses. In Mexico City."

"Ah! Mexico, how wonderful. And why do you think he'll listen to me?"

"He loves you," Max said. "Even though you probably want to kill him for leaving you."

I let that pass. "How do Sara Lee and Millie fit into all this?"

"Sara Lee kidnapped Millie from the White House and brought her to the DSL here in LA. James really was just trying to find his daughter."

"Who's Millie?"

Max looked uncomfortable. "She's the bastard love child of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jenna Bush."

This was no mean feat. Schwarzenegger had been dead for eight years and Jenna Bush in an alcoholic coma for six. "How old is this kid?"

"She's four." He held up a hand to stop my obvious question. "She was cloned."

"That's illegal."

"The Bush family considers itself above the law."

"But why do it?"

"As you know, this country's current leadership has no imagination whatsoever," he said, pedantically. "They want to rule dynastically and this is the best they could do. To us, it's pathetic, but after they installed Schwarzenegger as governor, he grew in their minds as the next president."

"I thought you had to be born here to..."

"To be elected, yes, but the Bush gang doesn't bother with elections or laws, my dear."

"How did Sara grab her?" I asked, my opinion of James' little girl rising slightly.

"She was helping Donald Monroe in the White House," Max said.

"Doing what?"

"Millie can't speak, so the Bushes brought Monroe in to teach her."

I didn't even ask why anyone would hire a theoretical linguist to work as a speech therapist, but it was typical wrongheaded Bush family wastefulness.

"And when Monroe saw the disaster the Bushes had planned, he freaked and ran to the renegade MIT linguists. Led the IIA to them, in fact, which is a shame because they were on their way here," he continued. "Some of them made it. Sara was able to hook up with them and she had Millie with her."

"Revenge?"

"Not really, I think the thought of having another gibbering idiot Bush as President for life was too much for her," he said. "The one we've got has finally gone over the edge. That's why we have an actor delivering Presidential addresses. Things are bad, Nellie. When the whip comes down, we can only hope the military will side with us."

"What military, Max? They're all stuck in third world countries getting their asses shot off over nothing," I said. "You better get your invasion trip together before Canada or the French Foreign Legion beats you to it." I sighed heavily. "So, okay, like, who the fuck are the Ulluminati in all this?"

"Second-tier nouveau riche posers," he scoffed. "They think if they return the heir, the Bush family will cut them in on the action. The problem is, things have gone so far into hell outside of California that the Bush family can barely hold onto the power they have and there is no action to cut anyone into. We're waiting for the right moment to invade and retake the United States, but we need Los Angeles to stay stable until we do. This will be a major base for us. But not if Fyodor leads a rebellion that will bring in Federal action."

"How did you know I was involved?"

"James was quiet about it, but the IIA and the Ulluminati make a lot of noise wherever they go," he said. "God knows who else knows they're here and why."

"MI6? KGB?"

"WTO, IMF, RIAA. Maybe worse than that."

I wondered what could be worse than the RIAA, but really didn't want to know. "What a fucking mess." I scowled. "All right, I'll convince Fyodor go with you. But in return, I want this Millie kid. I'll need her to buy some time and save my life."

"I don't care what you do with her," Max growled. "The IIA and the Ulluminati have a small army in LA for this."

"And you want me to take them out?" I asked, wondering how much C-4 I could get out of this.

"No, I want Fyodor Chandler and his people." Max waved at the guys with guns by the door. "Your city wants you to take out the IIA and Illuminati as a warning to others."

"All by myself?" I asked, wondering how much C-4 and House Special Lobster I could get out of this.

"We had some thoughts on that," the DWP guy said softly.

He outlined a plan. I told him it stank and outlined a better one.

"I always knew you were good for something, Nell," Max said, impressed.

I also had a list of demands, all of which I thought were doable if I was going to risk my life for... for whatever all this was about. I got nods, which I took as a good sign.

"Okay, where's Fyodor?" I asked.

The DWP guy said he'd show me the way. He led me out and over to the ruins of the hospital and then underground.

"How do you know Max?" he asked.

"From the Internet," I said.

Paulo from the parking garage stepped into our path and I didn't have a half a sandwich for him.

"He takes you from here," the DWP guy said. "I'll be here when you get back."

I followed Paulo down the hall. We didn't speak, but he kept shooting nervous glances at me. For myself, I was trying to think of what I'd ask him. I once did interrogations, but usually with people I'd studied enough to interrogate. I also don't cope well with surprises - at least, not the ones I can't shoot.

We passed through several rooms full of weapons, including anti-tank guns, mortars, and bazookas. Even I was impressed by the stash, but also knew it wouldn't last five minutes against the IIA, let alone the hired guns of the RIAA. Fool, Fyodor, always a mad, dreaming fool!

Paulo rapped softly on a door and was told to come in. We stepped into a dark room with a circle of light around a man at a computer. He looked up at me.

"Hello, Alison."

What heart I have beat a little faster. "Heya, Larry." I walked over and put my arms around him. He nearly crushed my ribs returning the embrace. "Long time," I said, trying very hard not to cry.

He wasn't even trying not to cry. "Yeah, well, I've been busy..."

"Yeah, me, too..." We stood there crying like idiots for a few moments before my innate professionalism kicked back in. "Larry, listen, I seriously have to talk to you."

"I don't want to go to Mexico, Al."

"I know, I know, we both scored high on the self-destruction scale," I said, referring to our Company employment tests. "But it's not just you, is it? It's you and a bunch of people depending on you."

"They understand."

"That they're going to die for nothing, when they could live to liberate their country?"

This got his attention. "Like... how?"

I ran it down for him: Exile in Mexico until the invasion, rest, training, recovery, planning, and best of all - logistics! "You could be like Moses, Larry."

"With Curly and Shemp?"

"No, I said Moses, Larry, not Moe." I scored really low on the humor scale so even when I got the joke, it wasn't funny.

"I'm not a coward."

I dredged up a line from some crappy novel I read long ago: "Sometimes living takes more guts than dying." I heard Paulo sniffle behind me. At least I was making progress with one of them. I started to pace to clear my head. "Look, Larry, the world needs brains right now, yours mainly. As fucked up as LA is, as we are, there is a better life out there, for you and your people, in Mexico. I don't make the rules, Larry, here I've found you again when I'd given up all hope, and I've got to send you away from me. But there are just some things that are bigger than you and me and this whole crazy mess we call life. So, please, just fucking go to Mexico with Max. Please? Do it for who we used to be, how we used to be, long ago, and once upon a time."

Now Larry was sniffling. He looked past me at Paulo, who stepped forward and put his arms around him. Hm, Larry must be batting for the other team now. Anyway, they murmured at each other for a little while (I was too polite to overhear), and eventually Larry looked up at me and said one word:

"Okay."

"There is one little detail," I said, feeling three hundred years old.

"What?"

"Millie."

When we were done working the details out, Paulo walked me back down the hall. I stopped in the weapons room and suggested he give this stuff to the DWP guy since he and Larry wouldn't be using it.

He thought that was a great idea. He turned to go, but I stood still. "How long have you been in charge, Paulo?"

"Only on his bad days," he said, not looking at me. "Which are many. I think he'll be okay in Mexico, once the pressure is off." He looked up at me, almost defiantly. "He still loves you, and when we came to LA, he asked me to keep an eye on you."

"I'm glad he has you," I said quietly.

"Even though I've... I've taken your place?" he asked, probably expecting me to kill him.

This puzzled me, so I had to ask, "As his sister?"

Paulo's jaw hit the floor. "You're his sister?"

I nodded, wondering just how much these guys talked to each other. Oh well. Love - it's wonderful. "Let's go, kid."

He led me back to the DWP guy and we three had a long talk with Max and the CDL rep. The Hollenbeck police officer had business elsewhere keeping order, because there was no law. We adjusted my original, and brilliant, plan to fit a few new wrinkles and left on fairly good terms. As good as people who wished they'd never met and hope never to see each other again can part.

I said good-night, but Max had a parting shot.

"Dr. Krugman sends his regards," he said. "He knows you got the right picture."

"No, I got the wrong one," I said. "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

The DWP guy walked me back to my scooter, which was not only still there, but all charged up. Rather amazing, because there was a charred body next to it. Obviously the burned body does learn the quickest.

"I’m going to need a heavier, faster ride," I said, unplugging the Electrocatti.

"A Harley?" he asked.

"Too heavy. A Suzuki or Honda will do fine. More guns, too. Like those flat, lightweight flexible machine guns."

He said he'd see what he could do.

I said he should bring them to my office at six tomorrow afternoon.

He said okay and vanished into the shadows.

When I got home, I put my ride away and I stopped by the fruitas guy for some carrot juice. He told me I had company in my place again.

I didn't ask who because he would have told me if he knew. So I just stood there, thinking it over while I finished my carrot juice because I hate having my juice drinking interrupted. I also wanted to see if they'd send anyone after me. They did not, so we must have all night for whatever it was they wanted. I tossed my empty cup and went up to my place.

"Hi Rush, who's your friend?" I asked as two guys frisked me. They left my body suit and boots on, but that was it.

"My name," the guy rasped. "Is Kevin."

He had a hatchet face and no lips. I found this fascinating and repulsive. He also had my copy of Borowski's "This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" and I wished these guys would stay the fuck out of my bookcase. I hadn't read it yet, and didn't want anyone pawing it, breaking the spine, or setting it on fire.

"I like your new look, Nellie," Rush simpered. "Any luck tonight?"

"Maybe."

"We would have come down and helped you look, but you didn't take the PDA I gave you," he said, pouting. "No way to trace you."

Lazy bastards. "I couldn't wear another thing, Rush, or my spine would have telescoped from the weight of it all," I said. "What's your interest here, Kevin?"

"Fyodor Chandler," he said, stroking the spine of my book.

"He's dead."

"He's in Lincoln Heights with an army of linguists and other such overeducated types," Kevin said quietly. "Find Millie, you find him."

"What makes you think I can find either of them?" I asked.

"You've been gone for hours, Nellie, you must have found something," Rush said. He sounded cranky, but he was looking nervously at Kevin, like he was afraid of him. That made Kevin very interesting.

"Lincoln Heights is a big place," I said, watching Kevin's face. I wondered if his voice was fucked up from a blow or poison.

The corners of his lipless mouth turned up in what on anyone else might be a bemused smile. On him it was just ghastly. "Tell me, Miss Gail," he said, oh so casually. "What's your opinion of Hermann Goering?"

I love this question. "I think he picked the wrong side when he had the choice," I said, and decided to trot out a hypothesis I'd had no one to bounce off. "Yes, picked the wrong side. The same as the late General Powell did. Tell me something, Kevin, was Powell really a suicide? He didn't seem like that kind of guy."

"I wouldn't know, Miss Gail, I'm not in that department." He looked bored.

"And what department of what are you in?" I asked.

"Logistics and operations for the Internal Intelligence Agency. I'm picking up where Glenn and his people left off."

"You know Glenn offered me a million for Millie," I said. "Is that still a deal?"

"Yes and no," he said. "I'm after Fyodor Chandler. Give him to me and I'll give you your million and a job in the IIA."

I tried not to show how much this interested me. "What kind of a job?"

"Whatever kind you'd like," he said. "Something you'd be good at, I'm sure. You see, Miss Gail, we in the IIA frown upon wasted talent. And you scored very high in areas in which we can always use another pair of hands."

I mentioned a few other things I'd like, many of the same things I'd asked for earlier in the evening, and Kevin found all of them possible, including the new weapons I wanted. He had Rush send a guy down to get an assortment for me to choose from.

I picked out two lightweight machine guns, a reloading riot gun, a poison-dart derringer, a switchblade, a stiletto, and a crossbow with exploding tips on the bolts. I've always wanted a cross-bow. I told them to meet me at County Hospital the next night at nine. I'd at least have Millie for them.

"And Chandler?" Kevin asked, smiling his creepy smile again, holding my book out to me.

"If dead men walk," I said, smiling my own creepy smile and tucking my book under my arm. "Perhaps."

"Miss Gail, while I have you," he said, still smiling. "What do you consider the main failing of the Third Reich?"

"That their reach exceeded their grasp."

We smiled a little longer and then they left. Not a moment too soon. Smiling wears me out. I also had a lot to think about.

I am a historian of genocide, and because of it, everyone assumes I know a lot about the Third Reich. I know as much as I needed to know to understand how they committed genocide, but not why. I understood the how of all the genocides I'd studied, from Buchenwald, to Eastern Turkey, to Rwanda, to Siberia, to Nanking, to the Great Plains of our own Manifest Destiny, but to this day I don't understand why people kill on that level. I understand why individuals kill each other, but organized, systematic killing puzzles me. Why take all the fun and spontaneity out of it? It was also a waste of time and resources. Especially when, with the slightest effort, the despised can be co-opted into their own destruction, à la taking the Ebola Pox vaccinations and voting Republican.

Everyone I'd met lately from the United States of the Bush Family seemed to think the Bushes were the new Nazis. I thought not. They were in a class of their own: they were decayers more than destroyers. One needed ideology to be a Nazi, and the Bush Family only had a smash-and-grab mentality, no matter how much gloss they tried to put on it. The Bush Family and their minions poisoned everything they could not exploit. It was wasteful, but effective, very effective, and it might be effective longer than Max wanted to believe.

I don't mind being on the wrong side of history as long as I'm alive to be on any side of history. But at that moment, I was tired, and just wanted to be lulled to sleep with Borowski's account of Auschwitz. I don't get nightmares. I don't need them.

I went to work the next morning. My late boss' secretary complimented me on my new look and handed me his phone messages to return. I made short work of them. If it was this easy being the boss, I should have tried it years ago.

After lunch, the COO of Universal Insurance called to ask why the building was being transferred into my name. I said I won it gambling and we proceeded to work out a rent deal. He seemed pleased; I think I should have charged more but it was only a year deal so I could raise it then. If I'm still alive.

I briefly wondered which organization had transferred the building to me and why they did it that day instead of the next. It would not matter by tomorrow, since we could all be dead by then. And the building was only mine as long as I could keep it. There was no rule of law here, so ownership was a very fluid idea in LA. However, it you had enough fire-power, you could firm it up a little.

At six I went downstairs to the parking garage. I didn't see Paulo, but I didn't expect to see Paulo there that evening. I was looking for another man altogether and there he was, right on time. Reliable, dependable, tall, dark, handsome... and thoughtful!

The DWP guy had won my heart forever. He'd given my mission some thought and brought me a BMW all-terrain combat motorcycle. I'd always wanted one, but who can afford the gas? It had a full tank, which would get me through the evening and then some, I hoped.

He also had weapons for me: Two lightweight flex machine guns. Nearly flat, they molded to my back and swung out under my jacket, just like they should. One gun shot needles coated with a fast acting poison and the other exploding plastic bullets. They were honeys and I'd always wanted a pair just like them.

I smiled up at the bearer of such swell gifts. He handed me a half a dozen magazines for each gun and the keys to the motorcycle.

"Don't cross us up, Nellie," he said quietly.

In a better world he would have clamped his lips on mine for luck. But we do not live in a better world; we live in a crappy, fucked up world, so he just left.

I went upstairs to watch some IB before I changed into my work clothes and headed for County Hospital.

It was quiet as usual when I got to the rendezvous. I cut the engine and rolled my new ride into the rubble and parked it near the ammo room I was in last night. I waited. It crossed my mind that this would be a good place for an ambush, but I thought I knew who I was dealing with.

A haggard blond girl moved silently out of the shadows. She looked starved and stressed, but grim and determined, and was carrying a trussed up toddler.

"Why is there duct tape on her mouth?" I asked. "I thought she couldn't speak."

"She makes noise," the blond told me. She dumped the toddler on the floor, but kept hold of the strap handle on the kid's back. "I'm Sara Lee."

"Why did they send you?"

"I asked for it," she said, adjusting the machine gun on her back (mine were cooler). "I started this, I'll finish it."

"You're very brave," I said. And extra stupid, I thought.

We jumped slightly when the DWP guy stepped from the shadows. Sara was shaking, but I was too polite to mention it. "I assume the DSL is gone," I said.

"Before dawn, as planned," he said. "Their ships docked in Mexico hours ago." He went into the now mostly empty ammo room and came out with a rocket launcher. It looked good on him.

So Fyodor was safe. I couldn't get too worked up about it; I had quite a night ahead of me yet.

I heard them first. But that was because I knew to listen for the low hum of a window air conditioner. Sara and the DWP guy tensed up at the sound of gasoline engines, big ones, and tires crunching over the rubble outside.

"Well, it was swell, guys, "I said, and picked up Millie like an overnight bag.

Rush was standing in a knot of men several yards from the entrance of the rubble. They were flanked by a dozen black Humvees, and six black helicopters hung overhead. There was enough machine noise to repel the scavengers, but also to cover the approach of anyone else. He looked glad to see me, or maybe it was Millie he was smiling at. I stopped halfway between him and the rubble tunnel.

"Good work, Nellie!" Rush said, and laughed his creepy laugh. "Hand her over."

"This is quite a crowd to pick up one little girl, Rush," I said, not moving.

"We're here for Fyodor, too," he said, glancing nervously over at Kevin, who was sitting in a Humvee.

"He's not here," I said.

"Then you're dead," Kevin said, picking up a machine gun and getting out of the vehicle.

"Give me the girl!" Rush yelled, stepping in front of Kevin.

"How about Sara Lee?" I said. I was swinging Millie gently with my right arm. My strong right arm.

"Fuck her!" Kevin yelled, pushing Rush aside.

"FUCK YOU!" Sara screamed behind me and started firing.

"Here's the girl!" I yelled and flung her with all my might into Kevin's chest.

I hit the ground. I heard more than saw reinforcements firing into the Ulluminati and IIA guys. Between weapon blasts, there were war cries of "HOLLENBECK!", "DWP!", "CDL!", and a few "VIVA LOS ANGELES!" - I had no idea who that might be. I, on the other hand, was crawling under Sara Lee's covering fire and back into the rubble tunnel. The last I saw of her, she was shoving another magazine into her gun, but I don't know what happened to her after that.

I ran back to my BMW. The DWP guy was still there meditating on his rocket launcher. "You gotta blast me a hole through them," I told him. I started my ride and rolled along behind him. He got to the tunnel mouth and fired into the center of the Humvees. One of them exploded.

That was all the break I needed. Just as I roared past the DWP guy, I heard Kevin yell, "I WANT HER ALIVE!". He can dream on, I thought, as I powered it down to what was left of Zonal and north to Griffin. I heard the Humvees coming after me. They could try, but the fucked-up roads would slow them down. The helicopters were another kind of problem. I had a machine gun out and was firing at the one nearest me. But it was useless at that range. I ran the bike close to collapsing buildings, under power lines, wherever I could to slow down the Humvees and keep the helicopters at bay. It was working until I hit an open stretch at Five Points.

I gunned the bike up Pasadena Avenue to the 110 Freeway. There hadn't always been a way onto the freeway on Pasadena, but I roared down the collapsed overpass. The freeway was a mess of rubble and downed trees. My BMW combat motorcycle was up to it, but the Humvees were having a bad time. However, they were shooting at me and this was annoying. One of them got alongside me and I fired poison needles into the passenger side window. It swerved and crashed. I was more concerned with the helicopters. I managed to lure one into some power lines. Another one got its rotor too close to the old Gold Line tracks and crashed. Nearly on top of me, but I guess the freeway gods were with me that night. I still had copters overhead and Humvees behind. There was one less Humvee, however, when one of them overturned on a boulder of pavement.

I swung off the road and into the arroyo. It was dark, but my Infra-RayBans let me see what I needed to see. I shot past a park and then another one and into what had once been a golf course. There was a lot of clunking noise as I raced past the rocket launchers, bazookas, and anti-aircraft guns; all compliments of my big brother, Larry. They blasted the remaining helicopters out of the sky and the Humvees into tiny, bloody bits.

It was just as I had planned last night with Max. I didn't need to see it. I couldn't be bothered to look back. I knew what was happening. Carnage looks the same wherever and whenever.

However, I was hungry. I can never eat before these missions. I decided to cruise on over to Glendale and grab a bite before I went home.

I like these all-night kabob places. It seems nuts to be open like that, but I figured these Glendale Armenians must know what they're doing. They're the penultimate survivors and probably had more fire-power behind the counter than I'd seen in my life. I'd also heard they had the floors wired to electrocute anyone on the wrong side of the counter. Way smart, if you ask me.

If the kid at the register didn't know me, he'd probably have flipped the switch when I strolled in. I was blood- and mud-spattered and my hair was a complete mess.

"Evening, Miss Gail."

"Heya, kid. Falafel sandwich and a side of hummus to go." I nodded to the old guy reading an Armenian newspaper behind the counter. Glendale kept three dailies going: one in Western Armenian, one in Eastern Armenian, and an English/Western Armenian one. I noticed the bilingual one where the kid had been sitting.

When my falafel was bagged and paid for, I asked the kid behind the counter if he could translate for me. Then I asked the old man if he saw any similarities between the United States as it is now and the Armenian Genocide and also the Third Reich. This is what the kid translated to me:

"Of course, you idiot, bad ideas, fear, murder, and greed are the same always and everywhere, dumb shit."

I exercised my limited Western Armenian vocabulary. "Sh-nora-ha-gu-lu-chune", I said and split.

There was nothing in the LA Times zine about it the next day or ever. There's nothing in the LA Times zine but IB schedules and want ads, so I don't even know why I look at the front page. Because nothing usually happens in Lincoln Heights, or at least no one lives to tell the tale, it's as if nothing east of Interstate 5 even exists. Fine with me, since the message was not for publication; it was a private communication.

The Ulluminati probably wouldn't be back - they were small potatoes anyway - and the IIA would think twice before they tangled with the DWP again. For the moment the IIA would be scrambling to hold things together back east, if they could. I have no idea who survived last night. For all I know, we could have a gibbering toddler on the Presidential throne next week to replace the gibbering idiot we have now.

I didn't really care. I was alive, I owned the building, and I had moved my meager belongings into one of the more comfortable office suites on the third floor. I would ask the fruitas guy and the Limo Brothers if they wanted to rent the empty commercial space at street level. There was no place nearby to get carrot juice and this needed to be remedied.

Somebody had paid a million in the new currency into my bank account. I had no idea who to thank, but thought I'd spend part of it on some new clothes and books I'd been eyeing in the kiosks.

I figured my old Company job was really kaput, and the IIA was too fucked up even for me to even consider working for, if they were nutty enough to ask me. The rest of the US could fall apart and based on rumor and what slipped through on the internet, it was rapidly falling apart. This did not interest me because a) I didn't care, b) there was nothing I could do about it anyway, and c) the DWP, CDL and Hollenbeck PD were doing a fine job of defending the city-state of Los Angeles from the barbarian invaders. I could foresee a peaceful and prosperous stretch ahead for the City of Angels, particularly in the area of trade relations with Mexico. There might even be a little infrastructure development in LA from our southern neighbor. And God knew we could use it.

As for me, I had plans for a kinder, gentler life for a while. Money in the bank, the building in my name, a doable day job, no worries on the horizon, the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

But the best part was the sign on the door:

"Nellie Gail Investigations, DWP Security Consultant"

I love LA.

***The End***

Back to the Index or on to Part II

© Ginger Mayerson, 2003

Notes: This story was written in a fury after bush's "Give me $87 billion so I can start to clean up my mess that never had to happen" speech. I am again indebted to Jane Seaton, Laurel Sutton and Lynn Loper for editing the snarling and teeth gnashing and for their input. Everyone should have friends and editors like Jane, Lynn, and Laurel.

Ginger Mayerson
September 2003