American Dreams | Book 1 | The Decline Read online

  Alicia had several other customers in line behind me, so I decided to leave her be and try out my brand new Citizen ID card.

  I chose the self-checkout option because there wasn’t a line there. The very first prompt on the screen was for me to scan my Citizen ID on the product scanner. Next, the screen asked if there was a fingerprint or iris scanner installed in the market yet. “What?” I mumbled.

  “Here,” a now-familiar voice said from behind me. I stepped aside while the grocery store manager tapped on the screen. “It’s complicated the first couple of times you use the program. We haven’t received our allocation of scanners yet. Once those are installed, all you’ll need to do is use your fingerprint and retina scan to log in. It will deduct the cost of your purchases directly from your account and you can leave your wallet at home. Wonderful system.”

  I grunted, definitely not in approval. This guy was locked in the backseat of a clown car on its way to Slaveryville; and he was enjoying the ride.

  It took me a little bit to get the hang of scanning my items, but I made do and was ready to pay in short order. When I tapped the payment screen, the light on the top of the register lit up. Once again, the manager came over. What was it with this guy?

  “You’re in luck!” he laughed, clapping his hands together. Several employees half-heartedly joined in with the clapping. “It’s your first day as a citizen and the government has granted you a free grocery purchase! Wow. You should play the lottery today.”

  “Huh?” I asked dumbly.

  “The federal government is buying your groceries today, Citizen! You should tell all of your friends how they provided for you in this time of crisis.”

  His smile made me want to punch him in the face. Where did this guy come from? “Do they give you training on all of this?” I asked, trying to sound interested.

  “We had a weeklong rollout last week where all of the grocery store managers went to a five-day session to learn the benefits of citizenship.” He placed his hands on his hips comically. “’The grocery stores are the front lines.’ That’s what they said. We will be the first ones to interact with the citizenry because people must eat, so it’s important that we understand how important it is to be a good citizen and pass that message along to our patrons.”

  It sounded like a forced indoctrination camp to me. “Oh. Okay. I’m glad they’re providing training to you guys.” I shrugged and gestured at the touch screen. “So, uh… How do I collect my, um, reward or whatever?”

  He leaned over and scanned his badge, then typed in a long numeric keycode. The light turned off. “There you go. Man, the government saved you two hundred and forty-eight dollars! That will go a long way toward those monthly bills, right?”

  “Yeah. Sure will,” I agreed, shuffling sideways to get out of his hovering. I placed my bags into the wagon and started to leave.

  “Oh, Citizen!”

  I turned. The manager held my receipt and several store coupons. “Here’s your receipt. Don’t want to get caught out there with all that food if you don’t have the receipt. And here are some store coupons for your next visit.”

  I accepted the proffered items and rushed out of the store. I was in the Twilight Zone and needed to do some more research on how to get the fuck out of it.

  EIGHT

  “Ah, you must be Citizen Haskins,” a uniformed man said as I approached my apartment. Only, it wasn’t like any uniform I’d ever seen before. It looked like a simple black suit had been altered with patches sewn onto the shoulders. He wore a round badge of some type on the pocket and the nametag identified him as Robbins.

  “I’m Bodhi Haskins,” I answered. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Officer Robbins, with the Texas State Rationing Board. Your name was given to us by the Travis County Sheriff’s Department as a possible hoarder. Your interactions with a deputy this morning were characterized as suspect.”

  “What?” I said in confusion. “Hold on. I did talk with a deputy while I was in line at the grocery store.” I pointed at my wagonload of groceries.

  “Who put into the system that you indicated that you hadn’t been out of your home in more than two weeks.”

  “If you’re from the government, why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

  Robbins frowned. “We’re a new organization, as you are probably aware of, Citizen Haskins. As such, we’ve found that people do not trust us yet. When we show up wearing a face covering, residents tend to get jumpy, so our leadership has declared that we will not wear masks when interacting with the public.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of getting sick?” I asked.

  “If I do get sick, our government will provide for me. However, I’m not here to discuss concerns about my wellbeing. We are here to determine if you or your roommate, Ms. Ortelli, are hoarding food that would be better suited for the needs of others.”

  “I told the deputy already. We’re not hoarding food. We have some pantry stuff, but that’s about it.”

  “We’ll see. My associates are inside as we speak.”

  “What?” I dropped the wagon’s handle and rushed toward the stairs. A soldier stepped out from behind the bushes alongside the walkway, blocking my path.

  “Don’t be so hasty, Citizen Haskins,” Robbins said. “If you aren’t violating the federal regulations on allowable food provisions, then you and Ms. Ortelli will be just fine and we’ll be on our way.”

  “What regulations? I mean, I thought we were being quarantined because of the Crud and everything would go back to normal in a couple of months, just like it did a few years ago.”

  “The Pandemic of 2020 was a valuable lesson to us,” Robbins stated. “We’ve been planning for years to ensure those lessons weren’t forgotten. When the H5N8 Avian Flu descended upon our nation, the president enacted the emergency plans that were prepared all those years ago. The United States will emerge from this pandemic stronger than ever under the NAR’s leadership.”

  I stared hard at the soldier for a moment, considering whether I could reach him before he shot me. I didn’t like my odds. Instead, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Cassandra.

  “Where the hell are you?” she asked the moment the phone connected.

  “I’m outside. The—”

  “There are people here who say they’re from a rationing council or something. They have guns and they’re searching our apartment.”

  “I know. There’s two of them down here.”

  “And what’s with all this ‘citizen’ crap?”

  “I’ll explain when I get inside,” I replied, wondering again what the hell we’d missed by skipping a couple of weeks’ worth of news.

  “Okay, they’re leaving,” Cassandra said. “They don’t seem like they’re happy. Like we did something wrong or whatever. Who the hell are these guys?”

  “There’s something going on. I—”

  “Citizen Haskins?” Robbins called out. “A word, please.”

  “Look, I gotta go. I have the groceries, so we can begin the decontamination thing.”

  “We’ll do it inside. Just get every—”

  My phone went dead and I looked over at Robbins. He held a little box. “I said I needed a word with you.”

  “Did you end my call with that thing?” I accused, pointing at the box.

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs brought my eyes up to the second floor landing where three people were descending. Two of them, a man and a woman, wore the same bastardized uniform that Robbins wore, the third was another soldier carrying a rifle.

  Robbins pulled my wagon along with him from the sidewalk to where I stood, rooted in place as the others closed in on me from the direction of the apartment. He offered me the handle when he arrived.

  “Well?” Robbins asked.

  “They have an acceptable amount of provisions for two people,” the woman stated. “Borderline violations on a few items, but since this is the first week of rationing, they’re within the allowable limits.”

/>   Robbins smiled. “There, see, Citizen Haskins. There’s nothing to be concerned with.”

  I glanced up at the third floor. Cassandra was at the railing, watching. “Am I free to go then?” I asked. “I already stood in line registering for the ID. I’ve got a lot of groceries that will go bad.”

  “Yes, about that,” Robbins replied. “Be sure to review your citizenship packet thoroughly. If you provided a legitimate email address, it will be waiting in your inbox.” He smirked. “Don’t forget to check your spam folder. Sometimes the government’s emails end up there. This is one that you’ll want to keep.”

  “Are we done here?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course, Citizen. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  I watched the goons saunter down the apartment walkway and get into a large SUV with darkened windows. They drove off quickly and I heard the flip flap flip flap of Cassandra’s flipflops as she ran down the stairs. I pulled the wagon toward the apartment.

  She burst from the stairwell and ran to me. Throwing her arms around me, she buried her head against my chest, sniffling and doing her best to suppress tears.

  “Hey,” I soothed, wrapping my arms around her. “Hey, we’re okay.” She nodded vigorously, but didn’t pull away.

  “What about the Crud?” I asked. “I was in the store.”

  “Don’t care,” she responded.

  I squeezed her tight. “Well I do. Let’s get this stuff into the apartment.

  “Can you just bring the entire wagon up?” Cassandra asked, finally pulling her head away to look at the results of my grocery run. “I want to get locked back inside as soon as possible.”

  “Um…” It would be a bitch. The wagon probably had eighty or ninety pounds of stuff in it, plus the wagon itself. Screw it, I thought. I could use a good biceps and quad workout. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just carry the whole thing up.”

  “Bodhi, what’s happening?”

  “There’s a lot that I have to tell you. Stuff that I learned at the grocery store. We should have been watching the news. Maybe this wouldn’t have come as such a shock if we had been.”

  She separated from me and grabbed the handles of four plastic bags. Lifting them from the wagon, she said, “Come on. Let’s get inside and get things decontaminated. Those bastards touched everything. I have to use up a bunch of our Lysol wipes.”

  I grunted as I picked up the wagon and followed her up the stairs. It wasn’t as heavy as I’d imagined it would be, but my biceps were still on fire by the time I set the wagon down in the quarantine corner.

  Again, I wondered about the Crud as Cassandra ferried items back and forth to the kitchen, cleaning them with wipes as she went. It certainly didn’t seem as bad as what the news said. The government people weren’t wearing masks anymore and really didn’t seem to follow the social distancing mandates. They just enforced the rules without following them. Hell, they were apparently even authorizing registered citizens to have gatherings now. If they weren’t concerned with the Crud any longer, was it all a lie? But to what end? Why would the government and the media purposefully spread fear and discontent? If they were so concerned about their citizens, wouldn’t they want it to be the other way around?

  The groceries were put away quickly as I stood there, wondering about all of the implications if the Crud wasn’t as bad as they’d made it out to be. In a daze, I heard Cassandra tell me to go shower, so I took off all my clothes in the quarantine corner and walked down the hallway, tossing them into the washing machine as I walked by.

  I turned the water on extra hot and stepped inside, wincing at the near-scalding temperature, but craving the cleansing effects. I felt dirty after all of my dealings with the government flunkies and the grocery store manager who’d clearly drank way too much of the Kool-Aid.

  I felt the shift of the air pressure as the bathroom door opened. Then Cassandra slid the shower curtain to the side. She stepped in without saying a word and wrapped her arms around me once more. I turned, allowing the water to hit both of us. We both needed to wash away the events of the past three hours.

  “I’m scared, Bodhi,” she said, barely audible over the cascading water.

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  “What’s really going on? And what is this NAR thing they kept referencing?”

  “I don’t know, babe. I really don’t.” I leaned back and slipped a hand under her chin, lifting it until her eyes were looking into mine. “But we’ll make it through this together, okay?”

  She nodded and reached over for the soap and her loofa. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  Her left arm went up into the air as she scrubbed her armpit with the loofa. “I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for being the one to always go out and risk your health, maybe even your life, just to get groceries. So, thank you.”

  I nodded, watching her body in amazement. We’d been together for more than a year and a half and seeing her nude still got me going every time. “We have to eat,” I said, reaching out to “assist” her with cleaning her breasts. “But, you’re welcome. I’m sure you can think of a way to thank me.”

  “I will,” she assured me, reaching down with the soapy loofa. “But we need to talk about what the hell is happening first. Like, who is the Rationing Board and why do they have guns and why are they concerned with how much food we have?”

  I tried to concentrate as her soapy hands were wrapped around me. “Um… there’s, ah… I mean, there’s a new…”

  The gentle stroking stopped and Cassandra returned to cleaning herself. “Get your thoughts in order, big boy,” she said. “I’m gonna hurry up and get out. I’ll be in the bedroom. But, we’re talking about all of this before we do anything, alright?”

  I nodded glumly, wishing she’d return to what she’d been doing a moment ago. “They said they sent me an email detailing all the citizenship requirements,” I stated. “We can read it together.”

  “Okay.” She turned and rubbed her backside against me playfully. “Finish up,” she said over her shoulder. “We need to learn everything we can about these people.”

  “Okay, but then you promised…”

  She bent over to wash her toes, pressing herself against me. Her hips swayed seductively and I took it as an invitation.

  We’d learn about the citizenship crap later.

  NINE

  Cassandra’s fear and embarrassment at the invasion of our home was replaced by anger and resentment after we read the citizenship email. The entire thing sounded like a political switch had been thrown somewhere in Washington and now we were no longer a democracy. Instead, we were living through the birth of a fascist regime—I looked the word up on Google. What we were seeing resembled fascism more than communism, but who the hell knew at this point? The New American Republic, the NAR, seemed to be the new group in charge, made up of both Democrats and Republicans. They were hell-bent on throwing out all of the protections guaranteed under the US Constitution and more than two hundred and fifty years of Supreme Court rulings.

  Neither of us were happy with the way things were going, but what could we do? We had to eat, so we had to be registered as quote “real” citizens. There was no way around it. Cassandra was on their radar because her name was on the lease and the electric bill that I’d been stupidly waving around to prove I lived in Austin. She wasn’t a full-fledged NAR citizen yet since they didn’t have her biometric data on file. We wondered how long that would last. Would another squad of goons show up to enforce her compliance in receiving a Citizen ID or would they simply take her away in the night to some government prison camp?

  I tried to write in my journal before we went to bed, but it all kept returning to doom and gloom. I was pissed about how we’d been treated for doing literally nothing wrong. Okay, technically, I had taken a weapon from the scene of a crime, but if I didn’t grab it, some actual criminal would have. Now that I owned the gun, I could be sure that it wouldn’t be used in an assault or
something like that.

  With all the thoughts running around my head about authoritarian regimes and the disregard for the Constitution, et cetera, et cetera, I couldn’t focus long enough to even write anything down, so I closed my laptop and placed it on the nightstand.

  “That was quick,” Cassandra said, looking up from the book she was reading on her phone.

  “Couldn’t think straight,” I replied. “There’s so much going on up in my head that I can’t focus.”

  She nodded. “It’s a lot to process.”

  “I still can’t wrap my head around what’s happening,” I admitted. “It’s totally crazy to me.”

  “Yeah…”

  I could tell that she wasn’t interested in talking about it anymore tonight, but didn’t want to be rude to me either. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to reading. I think I’m going to reread 1984.”

  “Why would you do that to yourself?” she asked. “This is all scary enough as it is. Why read about where we could be going?”

  “To try to avoid making those same mistakes,” I replied.

  “I saw a post today about books—that’s where I got the recommendation for the one I’m reading now. Someone said a book called Fahrenheit—or maybe it was Celsius? Anyways, it’s one of the two and it has a few numbers afterward in the title. I skimmed their quick once-over and it sounds like some of the books you’ve been reading.”

  “Fahrenheit 451?” I prompted.

  “Yeah, that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Have you read it?

  I shook my head. “It’s on my list to buy, just haven’t gotten it yet.”

  “Instead of rereading one you’ve already got, why don’t you pick a different one?”