Uncle Evans Installment #1

An American Dystopia

Prologue.  The Texas Hill Country.

            “Wake up.  It’s happening.  Now.  Just like we talked about.”

            Kyle woke to see his Uncle Evans looking down at him.  His uncle had that deathly serious look.  The small bedside lamp was on but otherwise, the room was dark.  No light came in through the windows.  The windows were open though, and the cool, early autumn air came in, bringing with it the nighttime sounds of the Texas Hill Country.

            “What time is it?” Kyle asked.  Uncle Evans didn’t answer that question.

            “Get up.  Get your gear,” his uncle replied, stern and concise.  “Get your rifle.”

            That statement, “get your rifle,” drove all the sleep out of Kyle in an instant.  He was only sixteen, but he was old enough to understand that the world had become a very dangerous place.  After their summer together, Kyle knew he needed to listen to his uncle.

            Kyle swung out of bed and was dressed in a flash.  He put on the dark, sturdy clothing and boots his uncle had him keep beside his bed for just such an occasion.  Then, he grabbed the rifle his uncle had also given him.  Uncle Evans called it his African Carbine.  It was an older, military-style rifle, with a collapsible stock and a red dot sight mounted on its carrying handle.  A clamp held a flashlight on the barrel.  Kyle knew how to use it instinctively because his uncle had drilled him on it.  Without needing to even think about it, Kyle checked the rifle to ensure it was unloaded and on safe, just as he’d been taught.  Then he moved through the darkened house to find his uncle.  He passed a clock on the wall that said it was past midnight.  On either side of the clock were mementos of his uncle’s military service: wooden paddles ornately wrapped in parachute cord, felt-lined shadow boxes, and a picture of his uncle with his friends in some desert, standing before a huge pile of bombs.  Military pins and badges gleamed even in the low light; the multi-towered Combat Engineer Castle, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal “Crab” badge topped with a star, rank bars with alternating silver and red stripes.  Kyle lingered for a second to look at one item; a picture of his uncle and two of his military friends standing before a mountain of captured enemy bombs.  Then he continued and found his uncle in his office.  His uncle was talking to somebody on his cheap disposable phone while at the same time studying a computer screen.  A rifle with a thermal scope rested nearby.

            “Yeah Dale, I’m looking at their feed and their social media threads right now.  They’ve got our neighborhood on their target list for tonight.  How many did you say were out at the entrance?”  A pause, and then his uncle repeated, “A hundred?  Shit.  Yeah, and more coming down from Austin I suppose.  It says here midnight is when they are supposed to kick things off.  You call the sheriff yet?  Okay.  Yeah.  Yeah, I agree.  I wouldn’t count on her doing anything.

            “Okay Dale, start waking up the others.  And Dale, no text messages or book-a-grams or anything like that, right?  You either send them a message or knock on their door.  I’ll be down to our spot in a couple of minutes.  And Dale?  Like I said, no phones. No phones.”

            Uncle Evans hung up the phone and turned to Kyle.  The old man looked gravely serious but still calm.  He wasn't excited.  He wasn't emotional.  He looked like a serious man about to handle some serious business.  Kyle knew his uncle had been in situations like this before; violent situations; life and death situations.  His uncle spoke.  His uncle spoke, calmly, clearly, and concisely.

            “The PVD has targeted our neighborhood.  Tonight they are going to come in here and try kill us all.”

Emeryville California.  Late May.

            Mary and Keith Walsh watched the world burn from their fourth-floor condominium.  On the other side of San Pedro Avenue, the big box stores and strip mall shops blazed orange against a midnight blue sky.  Sparks and embers drifted across the skyline.  Below, rioters danced like imps, backlit by the hellish glow of the fires.  Up and down the avenue, many blocks away from the riots and the arsons, police vehicles sat motionless.  Their blue and red lights flashed and spun, proclaiming their impotence.

            “It is only going get worse from here on out.  Summer hasn’t even started,” Keith said.  He looked at his watch. It was almost midnight.

            The riots began as a peaceful protest, as such violent riots always seemed to do.  A local animation company that made feature-length movies announced it was relocating out of the state.  The news was not well received.  Egged on by loud and popular state politicians, protestors formed up outside the studios.  They waved the typical signs and screamed the typical slogans.  In reaction to the protests, the CEO made an announcement.  The company would not leave California and he apologized to everyone traumatized by his earlier decision to move.

            The apology didn’t cool tensions.  Instead, it inflamed them.

            Emboldened by the CEO’s display of weakness, the protests became riots, and the riots attracted the radical direct-action group known as the Progressive Vanguard of Democracy, also called the PVD or sometimes just, the Vanguard.  The PVD was the latest evolution of past socialist-anarchist fronts.  They were young, violent, politically connected, and well-funded.  Dressed head to toe in black and wearing masks, the PVD arrived well after dark.  While the police watched, the PVD broke into the studio and set it on fire with pre-made Molotov cocktails.  Not satiated with that, and knowing they had free reign, they rampaged through the small Bay Area city, burning and looting with impunity.

            “This is going to go on until the elections.  And it is only going to get worse,” Keith repeated.  Mary turned away from the window and looked deeper into their condo, where their only child slept.

            “We can’t move.  Not yet.  We’re so close.  Six more months, and then we’ll have enough money for a down payment on a house somewhere.  Six more months and we’ll have enough to quit and leave.”

            Keith and Mary Walsh each brought in three times as much money as the average American household.  But that kind of money didn’t go far in their corner of California.  The Walsh family had an 1,800 square foot condo, one car that got broken into every month, a son that would be ready for college soon (and no solid plan to pay for that), and not much else.  Their plan had been to save up enough to move out of California to someplace simpler and safer.  A place where they could buy an actual house.  A place where they each didn’t have to work sixty hours a week in high-earning professions only to find themselves scraping by at the end of each month.

            “It isn’t safe here,” Mary said.  And as if on cue, the big home improvement box store across the street, burning for hours, imploded.  The rioters cheered.  Not a single police or fire vehicle responded.  They were under orders to give the PVD “space” to “vocalize their trauma.” The fire moved to the next building, and so it went.  And while this happened, their son Kyle lay awake in his room.  He pretended to be asleep because, with his parents, that was easier.  But he could hear his parents’ every word.

            The mother and the father talked it out through the night and into the early hours of the morning.  By 2 am Mary convinced Keith that sending their only child to go live with his uncle for the summer was the right thing to do.

            “Your brother's a little bit crazy.  No offense, but the wars fucked him up.  He’s got that guilt thing.”

            “The wars ‘didn’t fuck him up.’  My brother is fine.”

            “Well, he’s got issues.”

            Mary pointed out the window to the orgy of riots and flame.  “That’s an issue.  And that issue could swallow my only son up at any time.”

            Keith wanted to wait, but Mary insisted on calling her brother right then and there.  The decision was marked by the thundering crash of another imploding building.

            Mary got on the phone and called her brother, Evans.  It was just after four in the morning his time when she called.  He answered the phone on the second ring.

            Less than an hour after hanging up the phone, Uncle Evans left for California.  His sister lived 1,700 miles away.  Evans stopped only for gas and made the trip in a little more than a day.  When he got to Emeryville, he loaded his nephew Kyle and his things into his truck, ate lunch with his sister and brother-in-law, then headed right back to Texas.  Evans was an overly practical man.  He didn’t sit still and he didn’t sit easily when there were things to be done.  He wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed wasting time.  And he didn’t enjoy spending time in California.

            Kyle didn’t speak much on the trip.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like his Uncle Evans.  He did, very much.  He just didn’t like the situation.  And he didn’t like the idea that he was being sent away with no say in the matter.  He didn’t consider himself a kid anymore.  He was sixteen.  When they crossed the border into Nevada, Kyle asked his uncle, “Will my parents be safe back there?”

            “They’re parents.  It is their job to worry about your safety.  It isn’t your job to worry about theirs.”

            “Is it safe in Texas?”

            Uncle Evans shook his head.  “No.  Texas may be safer than California, but nowhere is safe.  Not entirely.  Not now.  Not with this election coming up and driving all the crazy people even crazier.”

            “The election’s still a long way away,” Kyle said.

            Many hours and many miles later, they drove past a timber and limestone sign that read, “Silver Springs.”  That sign marked the entrance to the development where Uncle Evans lived.  In the suburban developments that Kyle had seen back in California, all the homes were packed in tight.  Silver Springs was different.  Most of the homes here sat on their own acreage, except for the two or three right next to the entrance and the sign.  Rolling Texas hills spread in all directions.  To Kyle's city-raised eyes, they were in an untamed wilderness.

            That same day the PVD released a new communique over social media.  They weren’t going to protest and burn and loot in the urban areas ever again.  For the rest of the summer, they were going to target the suburbs.  They were going to target rural communities.

            “Nowhere is safe until our demands are met,” the PVD declared.

            "Nowhere."

The Texas Hill Country.  The end of May.

            “Today we need to clear out brush and build a defensible space,” Uncle Evans said over his morning cup of chai tea.

            “Defensible space, in case the PVD comes?" Kyle asked.

            “I was thinking defensible space in terms of wildfires.  It is hot and it is dry and it won't rain again until October.  But for practical purposes, you'll find the two overlap."

            Evans sipped at his tea.  He took it in the Middle Eastern fashion, scalding hot and loaded with sugar.  Maybe more sugar than tea.  Kyle had no doubt his uncle picked up this habit during his travels in the military.  Kyle scooped up a fork load of the eggs on his plate and looked them over: eggs, plain, one bottle of ketchup and one bottle of hot sauce on the table.  Kyle looked to the window for a better view.  Uncle Evans lived on twelve acres of Texas hill Country; rolling hills dotted with oaks and elms and cedar trees.  In the mornings, deer gathered around the house looking for their daily ration of corn.  In the evenings, owls hooted, and coyotes howled.  Scattered across the skyline were the roofs of the other neighborhood homes, red tile here, gray metal there.  The neighbors owned similar-sized plots of land, which gave the land an isolated and untamed feel to it.  It was a stark contrast to his native Bay Area California, where people lived on top of each another and the noise of traffic and people never ceased.

            The inside of the house was also a sharp contrast to Kyle's coastal California home.  He and his parents lived in an 1800-square-foot condo, with everything packed in.  Uncle Evan’s home was twice that size, but it was sparsely decorated.  He’d never been married, and the interior of his house showed it.  It contained just a minimal amount of furniture.  The only things hanging on the walls were mementos of his time in the military: photographs of him with teammates, framed certificates and awards, a scorched and battered bomb suit helmet mounted on a walnut slab.  Uncle Evans didn’t even have a tv.  The only electronic indulgence came in the form of a laptop computer and a few monitors in the office.  Evans didn’t have a cell phone either, not a real one anyway.  He had some cheap-looking thing that ran off prepaid minutes.  The epitome of an old-man phone, Kyle thought.  Or maybe a drug phone.

            Another teenage boy might have raised hell at the idea of moving out of the city and all its distractions for the summer, away from friends and familiar scenes.  Kyle wasn’t upset to be out here though.  He’d been to his uncle’s place before.  He liked the nature and the seclusion.  He liked the quiet.  He also liked his uncle’s simple manner and his hands-on ways.  Kyle’s uncle was a much different man than his dad.  Kyle didn’t resent his father, at least not more than any other boy his age, but Uncle Evans filled a paternal role that his dad never could.  With everything that was going on in the country, deep down Kyle knew that his uncle could teach him things that his father could not.  Important things.  Kyle knew things were going badly even though his parents tried their hardest to shield him from that truth.  Uncle Evans on the other hand didn’t baby Kyle.   He played it straight and didn’t treat his young nephew like a kid.  That was another reason why Kyle enjoyed his time with him.

            “So, what are we doing ?” Kyle asked between bites of egg.  Plain or not, he gobbled the food down with teenaged-boy ferocity.

            “Clearing out all the brush and dead trees.  I’ve scraped out a bare path along the side of the drive up to the house.  Any dead stuff that’ll burn, we’ll drag over there into one giant pile.”

            “Are we going to burn it?” Kyle asked hopefully.

            “I’d like to, but no.  It would be safer to just burn it now.  But there is a burn ban in effect.  And I’ve got a busybody neighbor down the road.  She can see the front of our place from her back porch if she uses binoculars, which she does.  If she sees us burning brush, she’ll call the fire department.  She’ll probably call them any away if she sees us stacking brush.”

            “She sounds like a pain in the ass,” Kyle said.  He wouldn’t think of talking like that at the table back in Emeryville.  But this was Uncle Evans’ place, and his parents weren’t around.

            “She is a pain in the ass,” Evans agreed.  “I hope you don’t have to meet Lori, but I’m sure she’ll be around.” 

            Kyle gulped down the last of his eggs and said, “I’ll get the dishes.”  You could say “ass” and probably a lot of other curse words at Uncle Evans’ place and get away with it, but you weren’t going to get away with not doing your share of the chores, and Kyle knew it.

            Uncle Evans nodded once and sipped at his chai tea.

            They left the house through the back door.  Planted in the ground nearby was a cement pipe sticking straight up and capped with a wooden lid.  It looked like it might be for cigarette butts, but Uncle Evans didn’t smoke.  Kyle lifted the lid.  The inside was partially filled with sand and on top of that were some metal canisters and road flares.

            “Careful with that,” Uncle Evans said sharply.  Uncle Evans didn’t raise his voice very often but when he did, his voice was clear and loud and had a way of making everybody nearby immediately stop and turn.  Kyle jumped and fumbled with the wooden lid.

            “Be careful with that,” Uncle Evans repeated.  “Don’t mess with the stuff in there.  It is dangerous.”

            “What’s it for?” Kyle asked.

            “It is for emergencies,” Evans said.  He took the wooden lid from Kyle and put it back over the pipe.  “Now these are for you,”  and he handed Kyle a new pair of calf-skin work gloves.  “The rest of the stuff we need is out of the barn.  C’mon.”

            They spent the morning and afternoon gathering up dead brush and piling it in one long heap along the driveway up to the house.  At 10 am the temperature seemed to jump twenty degrees and the humidity was murder.  Sweat rolled off Kyle in waves.  “Drink water,” his uncle would say periodically.  Uncle Evans kept a cooler full of half-frozen water bottles close at hand.  Kyle would take off his new leather work gloves, grab a bottle, and drain it in only a few gulps.  The sun rose higher and grew brighter, but Kyle kept at it.  He gathered dead brush and fallen limbs of oak and elm and either tossed them directly in the growing brush pile or pitched them into a dump trailer attached to the back of his uncle’s tractor.  Some of the smaller trees on the property were dead, killed during a winter frost.  His uncle felled those with a chainsaw.  Kyle came in after and dragged the decaying wood into the growing pile.  By late morning his clothes were soaked through with sweat, but he refused to ask for a break or any kind of reprieve.  To his maturing mind, the idea of not keeping pace with his uncle seemed shameful.

            Just before noon, as he was hauling a bunch of dead and gray acacia limbs to the mountain of brush, Kyle heard his uncle call out.  He turned and saw Uncle Evans pointing to the long drive that ran off the main road up to the house.  A golf cart was trundling up the road, an angry looking woman was behind the wheel.  Uncle Evans pulled his tractor up to Kyle and shut it down.

            “Is this the neighbor?” Kyle asked.

            “Yup,” Uncle Evans said as he pulled off his leather gloves.  “This is Lori… and her dog.”

            The dog was a gray and white pit bull.  It was leashed up in the back of the golf cart, and it started snarling and snapping when it saw Kyle and Uncle Evans.  Lori looked much like her dog.  She was short and squat, and ugly.  Her eyes were windows into a reptilian mind.  She had a thick, punched-up face and gray and white hair that hadn’t seen a brush in far too long.  And like the dog, once she saw Uncle Evans, she got snappy.  She brought the golf cart to a halt on the gravel driveway, twisted her face into an unfriendly knot, and spoke.

            “You know, there’s a burn ban in the county.  I don’t know just what you think you’re doing here.” Lori said.  Her voice was as unpleasant as her appearance.

            “Afternoon,” Uncle Evans said with a smile.  He stepped down from the tractor.  Kyle was young, but he was perceptive.  He noticed that his uncle kept his eyes fixed on the dog straining on its leash.  He also noticed that his uncle kept one hand at his beltline, near a bulge under his shirt.  The dog snapped and threw himself against its leash with enough force to make the golf cart tip.  Kyle took a few steps closer to his uncle.  Oblivious to her dog, Lori pointed a finger at the brush pile.

            “You can’t do this.  There is a burn ban in effect.  You can’t burn this.  It’s against the law.”

            “I’m not burning anything, Lori,” Uncle Evans said calmly.  “I’m just piling it up.  It is safer to have it all in one big pile than spread out all over.  And I know there is a burn ban in effect, same time as it was last year, and every year before that.”

            “Don’t you lie to me.  You’re going to burn it.  Why else would you bother to pile it up.”

            “Because something or somebody else might start a fire, and I don’t want fuel scattered all over my property.”

            “Bullshit. There won’t be any fires around here unless you start them.  You’re going to burn it and burn the whole neighborhood down,” Lori snapped.

            Kyle grew up in the Bay Area, just a short walk from the Berkely Campus. He’d met hundreds of women like Lori over the course of his life, and he had her pegged from the moment he saw her: unhappy, unpleasant, insincere, incapable of empathy, emotionally chaotic.  They mistook being impolite for being strong and self-confident.  They were always right, even when they were wrong.  They were always impossible to be around and thus they were always lonely.  That loneliness became anger that was directed at the outside world.  Kyle eyed the dog.  He knew without asking that it was a rescue dog, just as he knew that this Lori character trumpeted the fact that she rescued the dog every chance she got.  The dog was evidence of her moral superiority.  He also knew that the pitbull, still straining against its leash, was more dog than she could handle.

            “Nobody is burning anything,”  Uncle Evans said calmly, his hand still resting near his belt.  “You know it, Lori.  We went through this last year.”

            Lori seemed to notice Kyle for the first time.

            “Who the hell are you?” She demanded.  Kyle started to answer, but his uncle cut him off with his loud and commanding voice again.

            “Who he is, is none of your business, just like my landscaping is none of your business.  Now turn your cart around and leave.”

            “What is he? Some Mexican?”  Lori huffed.  Then she said, “I’m calling the fire department right now.”  She was in full lecture mode and not listening to anybody but herself.  "I'm calling the homeowners association too.  You can’t have people living in your house without approval from all the homeowners.”

            “That’s not true and that’s not what the homeowner’s association is for.  They’ve told you that three times before."  Uncle Evans was using logic and reason, and Kyle knew with a person like Lori, logic and reason did not factor in when her emotions were running high.

            “It’s not safe.  This giant… stack thing.”

            “You mean pile?”

            “You’re going to unstack all this stuff,  right now,” Lori demanded.  Her voice peaked.  She swept her hand towards the morning’s worth of collected debris.  “Unstack it now or I’m calling the fire department… and the cops!”

            Before Uncle Evans could again raise his shield of calm logic against Lori’s storm of emotional instability, the dog changed the entire situation.  As Lori grew louder the dog grew more agitated.  It threw itself against its leash, only this time it slipped off the back seat.  The barks became yelps and then were cut off completely.  The leash, fastened to one of the cart’s pillars, pulled tight like a hangman’s rope.  Dog legs scrambled frantically in empty air.  The heavy dog swung.  The cart tipped, listed, and looked like it might fall over.  The dog twisted on its noose, a leg found something solid, and pushed.  The cart righted itself.  The dog drew air, yelped again, spun, choked again.  Lori ran to her dog, the brush pile forgotten.  Uncle Evans moved quick and silent as a ghost.  In an instant, he stepped in front of Kyle.  A pistol was out and held low by his leg, almost behind it.  Oblivious to it all, Lori moved to her dog in what might be described as a fast waddle and screamed, "My dog! My dog!”

            She scooped up the struggling dog in her flabby arms and deposited it in the backseat.  But after she did the dog bared its teeth and snapped at her.  Lori recoiled in horror.  But then she spun on Evans and did her own snapping.

            “You see what you did?  You almost killed my dog!”  Her screaming voice was unsteady with emotion.  Either she didn’t see the pistol or didn’t pay it any heed.

            "You need to leave now," Uncle Evan said.  His voice had an icy calmness to it that Kyle didn't quite like.  "Get in your cart and go."

            “Oh, I will,” Lori said.  And unable to not get the last word in she added, “I’m going home and I’m going to call the fire department and the police.  And the homeowner’s association.”

            It seemed to take forever for Lori to waddle around, get in her little golf cart, turn it around and drive away.  When she finally disappeared, Kyle said, “Well, she seems pleasant.”

            “All kids your age as sarcastic as you?”

            “Most of them.”

            “Lori’s not the ideal neighbor,” Uncle Evans agreed.  “She lives in the first house past the entrance to the community, the one that’s falling apart.  I want you to stay away from her, and her dog.  She has had a bunch of rescues over the years.  All pit bulls.  She rescues them and then sets them loose in her yard.  She doesn’t train them or anything.  They are all snappy and they all end up getting out and lost.  Lost, or killed by the coyotes.  Then she blames the neighbors for stealing her dogs.  If you see that dog wandering around, let me know.”  Evans slipped his pistol away.

            “So, she’s unpleasant and she has a dangerous dog that she doesn’t take care of.  Does she have a job, or does she just drive around making people miserable?” Kyle asked.

            “She’s on a fixed income.  She’s got a disability claim or something.  Her husband lives with her.  He’s in a wheelchair, and his mind’s not all there.”  Uncle Evans brought his hand to his head a made a fluttering motion.  “Her sister lives with ‘em, and she’s a disability case too. Lori’s probably hard up for money and just takes it out on everybody else.”

            Kyle thought about that, but only for a moment.  Back where he was from in California, everybody claimed to have some disability, some disorder, some neurosis, some issue that made them a victim.  And their “victimhood” always gave them license to treat other people badly.

            “So what?” Kyle said.  “Everybody’s got problems.  That doesn’t give you an excuse to be an asshole.”

            Evans turned to his nephew.  “Well, look at you.  I didn't realize you're such a hard case."

            “Try living in San Francisco.  All these whining victims will do that to you.”

            “I suppose you’re right,” Evans said.  He looked over his nephew.  The scrawny kid was soaked through with sweat.  Evans smiled and clapped his nephew on the shoulder.  “C’mon.  Let’s go inside where it is air-conditioned and get some lunch.

            Just as Kyle and his Uncle Evans finished lunch both the fire department and the police pulled into the front yard.  Somebody had reported illegal burning in the neighborhood.

            That evening Kyle was alone in his room, wasting time on his computer as kids often do.  It was maybe ten in the evening and the temperature was finally cooling off.  Uncle Evans knocked on the door and came in.  He had a serious look about him.  “Come with me,” he said.

            Kyle followed his uncle into his home office.   The walls were decorated with memorabilia from his uncle’s time in the military.  Flags.  Awards.  Souvenirs from far-away and violent places.  Against one wall stood a bookcase partially filled with military manuals.  A rifle rack was mounted on one wall.  It held a half dozen rifles and shotguns of various types.  A cable lock ran through their actions.  Kyle’s eyes were immediately drawn to it.

            “Where are the .22s?” Kyle asked.

            “I keep those in the safe.  This is the ready rack.  I keep these weapons at the ready, just in case.”

            “In case of what?” Kyle asked.

            “In case of a lot of things, but lately, in case of this,” Evans said.  He gestured towards the array of computer monitors on the desk in the center of the office.  It was 11 pm on the East Coast, and the riots were in full swing.  Queued up on the monitors were live streams of the chaos in cities up and down the Atlantic seaboard: New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Camden, Wilmington.  There was full representation.  The major streamers captured the feeds of individual streamers on the ground and combined them so each of the three large monitors had six different feeds streaming simultaneously.  Red boxes highlighted which video feed the current audio was associated with.  Kyle shook his head.

            “That’s why my parents sent me out of the Bay Area.”

            “What’s happening back home is happening all over the country.  The professional rioters are getting better and more organized every summer.  Worse, they’re getting bolder every day.  They know nobody will stop them.  The police won’t do it.  The military won’t do it.  And if any private citizen does it, the law will come down on them with all their might.”

            Kyle watched the multiple feeds.  One caught his eye.  A dozen rioters dressed head to toe in black had set fire to a dumpster.  Now they were using it as a battering ram to smash into a Target store.

            “At some point they are going to kill somebody,” Kyle said.

            “They already have,” Uncle Evans replied.  “Many times.  It’s just that nobody talks about it.”

            Kyle’s eyes drifted back to the rifle rack on the wall.  “How would you do it?”

            “Do what?”

            “Stop them?”

            Uncle Evans waited for just a second before answering.  "The biggest part of why they are doing what they are doing is because they know they won't face consequences, not of any kind.  If I was in charge, for starters, I’d stop it the same way they stopped riots and looters throughout history.  I’d shoot a bunch.  Shoot a dozen tonight, there will be a lot less out tomorrow night.

            “But that’s only part of the solution.  Stopping these riots isn't about just stopping the rioters.  You have to stop the people who allow the riots to happen.  A lot of people, government-type people, are collecting paychecks because they swore to enforce the law.  But they aren't enforcing the law.  They are allowing if not outright fostering this lawlessness in order to further their careers.  Those enablers need to be held accountable too.”

            Kyle thought about that.  “What if shooting them makes it worse?”

            “We already reached worse,” Uncle Evans said.  On the computer screen, the rioters had smashed through the Target doors.  Now they were using the burning dumpster as a catalyst to burn down the store.  They grabbed up merchandise, held it to the flame, and then threw it alight deeper into the store.  Looters poured in the smashed doors behind them, snatching up anything that was not burning.  Mixed amongst the looters were more black-clad PVD.  Many carried the short AK-47 style pistols called “choppers” on the street.

            “And if left unchecked, it will get worse yet.  Get me a can out of that fridge.”

            In one corner of the office sat a mini-fridge.  It was full of sodas.

            “Any beers?” Kyle asked hopefully.

            “Young man, if you can find a beer you can have one," Uncle Evans said with a smile.  "Truth is I rarely drink anymore.  Pass me a soda.  Grab one for yourself.”

            Kyle picked out one of the pop cans.  The body was light blue, with red letters on a white badge.  Kyle said, “I didn’t know they made this anymore.  Who drinks this?”

            “They do still make it and I still drink it.  I picked up the taste for it overseas.  Out there they didn’t have Coke or Pepsi.  This was the only cola you could get.  When it is 120 degrees out, you’ll drink whatever cold pop you can find.”  Evans took a can and opened it.  Kyle did the same.  It tasted different.  Not bad.  Just different.

            The uncle and the nephew drank soda and watched the riots unfold.  By 11 pm Texas time the sun had gone down in the Rocky Mountains.  Denver joined the fray, along with Houston, Dallas, and Chicago.  Things were heating up in Austin.  That city was just over an hour away from where they sat now, a fact Evans appreciated.

            “You best get to bed now.  We’ve got an early day tomorrow.  We need to drive up to New Fredericksburg and pick up an old stock tank.”

            "Ok," Kyle said.  Then he asked, "When are my parents leaving California?"

            “Your mom thinks they might have enough money by the end of summer.  They say the housing market will be better for selling then."

            “Housing market won’t mean anything if their building burns down,” Kyle said.  He added, “My parents don’t tell me anything.  They still treat me like a kid.  I know why they sent me here.  I was awake that whole night when they burned down the box stores and everything else across the street.  They’re worried we’d get burned in the riots.”

            "That's what parents do Kyle, they worry about their kids.  And they weren't just worried about you getting caught in the riots.  They were worried about you getting caught up in the riots.  They were worried about you putting on black clothes and hitting the streets with those other idiots.  We may be old, but we were all your age once.  We know how exciting these riots might seem to a young person. I'm sure you know other kids back home your age who like this stuff, kids who are joining in on it."

            Kyle didn’t say anything, but his uncle was right.  Some of his classmates had joined in on the rioting.  He’d monitored them from afar through their social media accounts.  For some these riots were a grand and romantic adventure.  But not for everybody.  Not for whoever worked and shopped at the Target that was now burning to the ground. 

            After Kyle went to bed, Evans lingered in the office, watching the mayhem unfold on the live streams.  It was late, and the day started early on his slice of heaven.  But he was an older man and didn’t need as much sleep as he used to.  He watched the streams for a while.  Looting.  Arson.  The mobs were much better armed and equipped than they were just a few short years ago.  Evans saw uniformity in their gear.  The same short-barreled AK-47-styled weapons.  The same black body armor.  The same cheap Chinese radios.  Flashing blue and red police lights illuminated the scenes, but the police never actually intervened.  They observed from a distance while building burned, lives were destroyed, and civilization unraveled.  When it all became too tiresome, Evans shut down the computer, looked out the window into the night, and contemplated.

            His sister had sent Kyle here to protect him from the anarchy exploding across the country.  Protecting Kyle was his mission now.  But how best to protect him?  That was the question.  He rarely went into the cities, and never went at night.  The likelihood of them getting caught on the streets by the mob was near zero.  Even with the PVD’s pledge to take the riots out of the cities, it was unlikely that a PVD mob would ever wind up in Silver Springs.  If they did, it was a long way from the entrance of the development to Evans’ front door.  If the mob headed this way, he’d have enough time to run out the back and hide in the wild acres around his house.  He’d been trained in the military to do just that.  He’d put his escape and evasion skills up against any Vanguard unit any day of the week, even at his age.

            But was running and hiding the best way to protect Kyle?

            People had been running and hiding from the PVD and the mobs that proceeded it for years.  They pretended to ignore it.  They hoped it would go away.  But it didn’t go away.  It came back every summer, bigger and badder and more organized than the year before.  Every May the black-clad revolutionaries came out stronger and more politically connected than the year before.  Running and hiding from the vandals and looters would work in the short term, but on a long enough timeline the mob would eventually swallow up everything.  Was that the kind of country he wanted to leave his nephew?  If at some fateful moment, Evans ran and hid instead of standing up to the mob, was he protecting his nephew?  Or was he just kicking the can down the road?  Passing the problem on to the next generation?  Passing the problem on to Kyle?  Would he be choosing a path of cowardice and telling himself it was prudence?

            And the truth of it was that fighting the rioters meant more than just fighting the PVD.  Surviving a PVD confrontation just meant you’d be fighting the police and the courts and the entire legal system later.  The people charged with stopping the riots were actually enabling the riots and arresting and prosecuting anybody who interfered.  It was like an uneven game of chess, where his opponent was starting with a full set of pieces and Evans only had two pawns.

            No, that wasn’t right, Evans thought.  One pawn and one king.  Evans was the pawn, and his nephew Kyle was the king piece. And if a pawn had to be sacrificed to save the king, then so be it.  That’s what pawns were for.  That’s how the game was played.

            Evans looked around his home office.  He saw the rack of weapons.  He saw the awards and the certificates.  His ribbons.  His EOD “Crab” badge.  He saw that picture of him in the desert, flanked by his friends and standing in front of a mountain of captured artillery shells.  He’d lived a full life.  Now it was about Kyle.  If the PVD ever came to Silver Springs he’d do what he always did, which was the right thing.