Chapter Forty-Three

In which our heroine remains under a bedspread as her fame grows.

“They’re putting Lorinda’s picture up on billboards,” Stimpy said, then waited for a response through his earpiece. “No idea. We’ve got to assume they’re everywhere. Listen, would you put me through to Bill?”

“What’s going on?” Lorinda asked, poking her head out from under the bedspread.

“Get back underneath,” Stimpy said harshly.

“How do you know I’m not underneath?”

“Because I can fucking hear you.”

“It’s impossible for cameras to see me,” she said. “I’m too low, the windows are tinted, it’s nighttime, don’t worry about it.”

“Bill! ... I don’t know if the billboards are everywhere. We passed one of them and I called it in right away…. You see where we are, right? We’re almost to Zone Z…. That’s great!”

“What’s great?” Lorinda blurted.

“Bill can hack into the billboard system…. No, I’m just talking to her…. Yeah, she’s covered up in the back seat…. Okay, man. We’ll check in when we’re all cozy in Zone Z. Oh, right, good question.”

“What’s a good question?”

“Can I just finish this conversation?”

“I think I have the right to know what’s going on,” said Lorinda, indignantly. “It’s me on the billboards. I’m the fugitive.”

“Yeah,” said Stimpy to Bill, “she wants to know what we’re talking about.” Then, to Lorinda: “He’s going to hack the billboards and wants us to tell him what they should say.”

“Something about … how what’s happening to me could happen to anyone in this country.”

Stimpy thought about it for a second, then said, “Maybe ‘What’s happening to Lorinda Moon could happen to you’?”

“Too long and boring,” said Lorinda.

“Yeah,” Stimpy said to Bill, “that’s what Lorinda just said … all right. And if I think of anything better I’ll let you know…. Okay, bye.” He half turned to the back seat. “He and Hillary are going to try to come up with something.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be embarrassing for me,” Lorinda said.

“That’s what’s embarrassing for you? Not being called an abortion-seeking terrorist?”

“Not a terrorist,” Lorinda laughed. “Fugitive.”

“Whatever,” Stimpy said. “Is your head sticking up?”

Lorinda pulled the bedspread over her face. “No!”

Stimpy barely heard her. “That’s better.”

“I just figured it all out,” Lorinda said.

“Get under the bedspread!”

“Don’t worry. Nobody can see me.”

“What do you mean, you figured it all out?”

“When you’re under a bedspread for hours you think about stuff. And I figured out that it’s all a big scam.”

“What is?”

“This.”

“This what?”

“This whole country! I’ve been thinking about that abortion doctor and how abortions are just for the rich. What do you call them? The authoritarians.”

“Authoritarians. Oligarchs. The plutocracy. Rich fuckheads. They go by many names.”

“It’s all about money!”

“Well yes, but also —"

“Shh. Let me finish. The whole country is just for them. They own everything! They claim to be religious and all that, but — like in Perfecton! That huge stupid church! A guy who owns a drug company is standing up there? Like what’s that got to do with Jesus? Or that stupid Libertyville!” She had a flash of Ren dying at her feet but shook it off and continued. “All that yelling about freedom? It’s insane! There’s … you can’t … Or, holy shit, that disco! Everybody shooting at the same time! You know what they drilled into our heads in elementary school?”

They spoke in unison. “‘If everyone has a gun, then everyone will be safe.’”

Lorinda was surprised. “You weren’t in elementary school here. How do you know that?”

“I know shit.”

She was instantly back on track. “But how can having guns make everybody safe? It’s like saying, if everybody had a flame thrower, then everybody’ll be safe. If everybody had a bomb! How can people believe that?”

Quietly, Stimpy said, “Everybody doesn’t believe it.”

“Everybody I know does.” She thought of Emmy. “Well, mostly.”

“People in the USA don’t believe it.”

That pulled her up short. All she could say was, “Huh.”

“The thing about this country —” Stimpy began.

“And the golf enclave!” she went on. “Oh, man, that’s the best.” In a bitter tone that surprised even her, she said, “‘Cheat on your sacred marriage and bring a girlfriend. Or we’ll supply one for you! And if she gets pregnant, we have a full-time doctor to take care of it.’ Meanwhile, I’m the criminal.” Running low on venom, she sighed. “So is the whole country just a scam to trick people and take their money?”

“Not quite,” Stimpy said. “To take their money, yes. You bet. But also to have control over them. Right? Because if you’ve tricked someone to take their money, and they find out, they may come after you.” He laughed. “With their guns.”

“But then what are the enclaves? There’s not much control there. It’s the opposite. They’re fucking lunatic asylums.” She paused, then completed the thought. “Run by the inmates.”

“Here’s another metaphor for you. The whole CCSA has cancer. It always has. The enclaves are tumors. Of one kind or another.”

“Huh. And this all started with the Split?”

“Not really. It’s always been this way. Before the Split the USA had laws that were supposed to keep these people from just, you know, taking whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. Which were sometimes even enforced! It’s the main reason they dreamed of getting their greedy mitts on their own country.”

“And now they have their own country but they pretend it’s everybody’s country. As if people like me have the same rights they have. It’s a big fucking god-damned fucking scam. I hate them.” She paused to catch her breath. “Okay. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“it’s an excellent observation,” Stimpy said calmly. “You’re not the first one to make it, but I know you came to it on your own.”

“Thanks to you for yelling at me all the time. You got me thinking.”

“I do not ‘yell’ at you.”

“Well, you did. At first.”

“I’m sorry if it seemed that way.”

“It didn’t seem that way,” she said. “It was that way.” She giggled. “But you’re nicer now. A little nicer.” She paused. “Whatever your name is.”

“Thanks. Now get under the bedspread. Excuse me: please get under the bedspread, ma’am.”

For a few minutes, he drove in silence through the bleak landscape. Lorinda resumed her thinking until Stimpy broke the silence. “Are you experiencing morning sickness? Or any other symptoms?”

“It’s much too soon,” she said. “The test I used? It was some special new thing from the USA — Philadelphia, USA — that can figure out if you’re pregnant much sooner than the ones we have here.”

“How’d you get your hands on that?”

“We all have our secrets,” she said with as much smugness as she could muster, lying under an itchy golden bedspread. Then, speaking softly, she asked a question that he didn’t know she knew the answer to. “As long as we’re getting all personal, have you ever been married?”

“Whoa!”

“What?” Lorinda said, poking her head out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

“It’s not that. Look.”

“I can sit up?”

“Just for a second.”

Lorinda hiked herself up and peeked over his shoulder. A big billboard nearly filled the windshield. (Bill, who had hacked it, was opposed to billboard soundtracks. Hence, no soundtrack.) The background was a deep blue. Animated fireworks and shooting stars garlanded the periphery. The words in the center, in bold, shimmering, multi-colored type, sent her diving back under the bedspread:

WE ARE ALL LORINDA MOON

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NEXT: Chapter Forty-Four. In which our heroine finally emerges from under the golden bedspread.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.

Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.

Chapter Eighteen. In which our heroine gets in a truck with a couple of slightly scary strangers.

Chapter Nineteen. In which our heroine learns that she’s got a long way to go.

Chapter Twenty. In which our heroine spends a night in a gas station.

Chapter Twenty-One. In which our heroine learns about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Two. In which our heroine learns way too much about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Three. In which our heroine experiences liberty run amok.

Chapter Twenty-Four. In which our heroine’s escape is disastrously derailed.

Chapter Twenty-Five. In which our heroine finds herself back at the gas station.

Chapter Twenty-Six. In which Stimpy, on the road to Revelation, reveals Ren’s real name.

Chapter Twenty-Seven. In which our heroine manages not to crash the car as she learns more about CCSA enclaves.

Chapter Twenty-Eight. In which Lorinda and Stimpy enter Revelation.

Chapter Twenty-Nine. In which our heroine has pizza for the first time and readies herself to be an old fogie.

Chapter Thirty. In which our heroine finally gets to experience the Rapture Ride.

Chapter Thirty-One. In which our heroine’s long-awaited Rapture Ride experience is interrupted by some unwelcome visitors.

Chapter Thirty-Two. In which our heroine triggers the Rapture…or something.

Chapter Thirty-Three. In which Lorinda and Stimpy slip out of Revelation under cover of pandemonium.

Chapter Thirty-Four. In which our heroine trades arms for freedom.

Chapter Thirty-Five. In which our heroine does a bit of tactical shooting.

Chapter Thirty-Six. In which our heroine heads for the greens in a chartreuse truck.

Chapter Thirty-Seven. In which our heroine hears a ghastly story on the way to the enclave of golf.

Chapter Thirty-Eight. In which our heroine begins a crash course in the plutocratic lifestyle.

Chapter Thirty-Nine. In which our heroine continues her crash course in the plutocratic lifestyle, then crashes.

Chapter Forty. In which Lorinda and Stimpy tour the President Donald J. Trump Memorial Christian Golf Resort and Beautiful Residences.

Chapter Forty-One. In which our heroine has to leave the Donald J. Trump Memorial Christian Golf Resort and Beautiful Residences right quick.

Chapter Forty-Two. In which our heroine hurtles toward another scary place.

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