Chapter Twelve

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

If she was going to turn around and head back home, better to do it sooner rather than later.

Before she’d even crossed the border out of Perfecton, Lorinda reviewed the series of thoughts that led her into her car at such an ungodly hour. The starting point in her logic: She figured she’d have to make a face-to-face appointment with this doctor and come back another time for the procedure. Contacting her by phone, for this sort of thing, was out of the question. There was no telling who could be listening in, either from the hospital or the government. Or both.

Which meant two round-trips to Austin. It was a ton of driving, yes, especially in her crappy old Ryonbong DragonFire, but there was really no other way. Even when everything is legal and above-board, you don’t just walk into a hospital and get what you need. And this was anything but. She’d decided it would be best to arrive first thing in the morning in case she had to wait around to see the doctor, make an appointment, fill out forms, whatever. To avoid missing a day’s pay, she left on a Sunday night — Monday morning, really, at 3 a.m. — so as to arrive first thing Monday, her day off at PumpJack’s. Leaving at that hour also meant she wouldn’t run into her parents and have to come up with a lie to explain where she was going and what she intended to do there. Yes, she concluded, this was probably the best way to do what she needed to do.

Each of the few times she’d driven long distances in Texas she was amazed at how big the state was. The drive from Perfecton to Austin was going to take five hours — maybe more, at Ryonbong speeds. And Austin wasn’t anywhere near the eastern border, where Texas meets Louisiana. That old feeling of Lone Star pride snuck up on her. We’re so big. We’re so great. Don’t Mess With Texas. Remember the Alamo.

But something was different. For the first time these yay-Texas, boosterish feelings made her uncomfortable. Which was strange. Why, she wondered, would she question herself about a little good old Texas chauvinism? It was something she shared with literally everybody she had ever met since the age of seven: that quiet — and sometimes noisy — conviction that, as Texans, they were … just better than people from the other states of the CCSA. Of course this sort of friendly competitiveness was encouraged at every level of the New Country’s society, and the citizens of every state thought that they were somehow superior to those of every other state. “Our national character,” Lorinda’s eleventh grade history teacher had once said, “Is equal parts Revolutionary War, the War of Northern Aggression, medieval chivalry, and football.” Then she had added, “Of course, everybody thinks they’re superior to everybody else. Our secret here in Texas is, we know we are.” The class had burst into cheers. And who could deny it? Texans were louder, bigger, sexier, funnier, braver, and just all-around more magnificent than —

Lorinda gave a little derisive snort and pressed hard on the gas pedal, which didn’t really make the car go faster but it did help her escape those old thoughts. For the first time, the adjectives failed her and the inner pep talk felt desperate and hollow. She remembered where she was and what she was doing, driving with the grim determination of a jailbreak fugitive or a refugee, toward what she hoped was the solution to a problem foisted on her by the deception and betrayal of the very society she’d been so proud of, and whose authority was, she had begun to realize, dead set on keeping women like herself in their place.

It was a new feeling, slightly scary but exciting, to be thinking about things like this. The only person she’d ever known who seemed to think along these same lines was Emmie. Lorinda wondered if Emmie had always thought this way, but was too scared to talk about it even to her closest friend — until that closest friend’s recent indiscretion with Brad had caused Emmie to throw caution to the wind and open up. In any case, it was good to have something complicated and absorbing to think about at the outset of a long, boring drive with nothing to listen to but the official CCSA radio station and the occasional unwelcome blast of a billboard’s audio. Speaking of which, when the air was clear enough to see through, there was nothing to look at in the flat landscape of farmland and pasture except those lurid electronic billboards.

These days they were mainly showing ads for the two candidates for the nation’s Chief Executive Officership, in heavy rotation with the usual commercial fodder. Lorinda passed one displaying the grinning-bullfrog face of the incumbent, Ezra Ferrell McWeeny, over the blinking caption: I’M MORE RELIGIOUS THAN HIM — AND NOT INSANE! His booming voice filled the DragonFire’s cabin, and there was nothing Lorinda could do about it: “Friends, so-called Reverend Waldrip says God speaks to him. But how does he know it’s God? What if it’s Satan? Meanwhile, I’m the one who knows how to run a business. And that’s what government is, the Business of the Common Good.”

A little farther down the road she came to an ad for his rival. The polished, silver-haired, expensively suited Oliver M. Waldrip was famously the more aggressively fundamentalist of the two, and proved it with his grim, God-sees-you visage side by side with a likeness of Jesus Himself — white, gaunt, bearded, vaguely troubled-looking — above the no-nonsense message: WOMEN DIDN’T VOTE IN JESUS’S TIME. LET’S GET BACK TO THAT BEFORE HE RETURNS. “We are a Christian nation.” he yelled in Lorinda’s ear. “Mr. McWeeny can scream all he wants to about ‘defaults’ and ‘fiscal difficulties,’ but when Jesus returns, He’s going to take note about who voted for His representative here on Earth, and who didn’t. Don’t go to Hell. Vote Waldrip!”

Citing (and showing) Christ on a billboard like this was the opposite of anomalous. Everybody did it, everywhere, for everything. This was especially true in rural areas of the CCSA, such as the one Lorinda was now crossing. Some were ads for specific churches, essentially promising that the Prince of Peace would be making a personal appearance one day soon. But others advertised services as mundane as personal injury lawyers (e.g., the robed Christ, with a jaunty thumb’s up and the slogan, ED FABER! BECAUSE THERE’S ONLY ONE GUY WHO WORKS HARDER FOR YOUR SALVATION!) or real estate agents (Kelly Tillis, a petite blonde in demure business suit and prom-queen hair, with her arm around the tall, dark, and handsome Savior and the message, BEFORE YOU GET YOUR LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN UP THERE, GET ONE DOWN HERE). And why not? Jesus, in the CCSA, was a cross between a founding father and a beloved pop star — and, best of all, you could get “His” endorsement for whatever goods or services you wanted to promote, without having to pay a thing.

Lorinda tried her best to ignore the ads, which wasn’t so easy when they came right into your car. What she did ignore was the black Zhiguli pickup truck that occasionally crept up close enough for her to see in the rearview mirror. So lost in thought was she that she didn’t even notice when it followed her into a rest-area gas station.. (Her Ryonbong, though small and slow, always surprised her in its thirst for fuel. When paying she suppressed another spike of CCSA chauvinism: Without the nation’s lavish petroleum subsidies, that tankful would probably have cost her the better part of a week’s salary.)

And then, after hours of what, to Lorinda, was bleak nothingness punctuated by roaring billboards, the Austin skyline appeared beyond her windshield: its sail-shaped apartment high-rises and stacked-boxes-off-kilter Jenga condo towers, its abandoned tech towers (Salesforce, PayPal, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta-Facebook-YouTube, Adobe, Intel, Cisco, Tesla and the rest, electricity turned off, windows broken, signs askew), and then, like a frowzy governess chaperoning a gang of crazy kids, its Italian Renaissance Revival-style Texas state capitol building. This, in turn, was overshadowed — menaced, really — by the newest structure: the national capitol of the Confederation of Conservative States of America.

Texas had not been subtle in throwing its weight around to claim the New Country’s capital. Once Austin was awarded the title, the Texas government commissioned a contest to design a magnificent structure to house the new bicameral legislature. Fairly quickly, however, the essential contradictions of the nation’s fundamental principles ignited controversy. The constraints of “conservatism” and “tradition” clashed with the opportunities inherent in “freedom.” The resulting edifice was nothing so much as a traditional super-tall rectangular compromise with, as its only design element, parallel vertical ribs designed to accentuate its height. Early on, some said it must have been built from the blueprints of New York City’s martyred World Trade Center towers, but they were quickly accused of being traitors and were never heard from again.

It was about 8:30 — on what would have been a bright, sunny morning if not for the greenish haze in the air — when Brad, from behind the wheel of his shiny black Zhiguli pickup truck, watched Lorinda pull into the parking lot of the Cheryl B. and Oliver M. Waldrip Pavilion of the UT Austin Health Center. She found a spot not far from the building’s entrance. Brad watched her park as he slowly navigated to within a few rows of her rusty Ryonbong and stopped between a lamp post and another Zhiguli truck, this one in matte green. Hunkering down, he managed to spy Lorinda get out of her car, lock the door, and start walking.

The building had a big sign on its portico reading GUNSHOT WOUND WING. Just next to it, with no irony stated or implied, stood an image of the national “crossed guns” flag. Brad wondered why she was going there, of all places. Considering the distance she’d just driven — and in the middle of the night — she walked vigorously, with excellent posture. So she obviously hadn’t been shot by a gun. In fact, he thought, she looked really good. Maybe, he thought, she was there to visit a friend or a relative. Everybody either knew, or was, somebody who had suffered a gunshot wound or two. In fact, he thought, the only weird thing about her arrival here now was the lack of a line of customers waiting to get inside.

As she disappeared into the tunnel of the entryway, he got out of his truck, stretched, yawned, got back in, and immediately nodded out. 

NEXT: Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

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.

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