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  I blinked. “What did you think would happen when you didn’t bring us what our bodies require to maintain optimal health? You didn’t really think we’d eventually cave in and eat the meat of an animal?”

  “Yes! That is exactly what I thought!”

  Paul Ryan’s admission should have made me angry—and lord knows I had every right to be—but the genuine concern emulating from his worried gaze overrode all else. The man was stubborn, gruff, surly, and far too calculating, but in his own weird, Cro-MAGAnon way I suppose he actually did care about my well-being.

  Sighing, I tried to explain my side of things. I stood up slowly and held his gaze. “Look. I’m trying to be patient. I’m trying to understand you… but I don’t,” I said honestly. “You seem to think our refusal to eat animal carcasses is malleable, but it’s not.”

  “I don’t understand you either,” Paul Ryan admitted. “I eat whatever I can eat and whenever I can eat it.”

  I forced myself to retain my patience, which was growing more threadbare by the moment. “That’s probably how you were raised to be,” I said measuredly. “That’s not how Warren, Hillary, and I were raised though.” My frustration became evident as I struggled to put the situation into words he could relate to. “If you couldn’t eat the food you’ve eaten all your life and the only thing available to you was… I don’t know… Gowdy.” I threw an absent hand his way. “Would you be able to fry him up and eat him?”

  “Why me?” Gowdy asked incredulously. “Why not Pence?”

  “I don’t want eaten neither!” Pence complained. “That’s no way for a patriot to die.”

  I ignored them and kept my focus on Paul Ryan. “Well?” I shrugged. “Could you?”

  His frown was more severe than usual. “You know damn well I could not! But—”

  I raised my hand to silence him. “No buts, Paul Ryan. The way you feel about eating a human is how we women feel about eating all animals.” I splayed my hands. “You might not get it. You might not like it. You might not even respect it. But it is our reality regardless.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. Eventually, hesitantly, he nodded. “I think I understand now.” He sighed. “But I don’t know how I can get my hands on enough fruits and vegetables to feed three women for a week much less a lifetime.” He absently ran a hand over his crewcut. “I’ll talk to Angus and see if anything can be done when I go to the commissary. It don’t open for another thirty minutes, though.”

  “We can only get what the richy people donates,” Gowdy further explained. “We ain’t commies on this side of the wall so we have to pay for them kinda things. Fruit and vegetables that ain’t canned would cost us our entire pay.”

  “We are not communists,” Hillary seethed at her captor. “The NSA is a socialist democracy which means we are socialist democrats! If you’re going to insult our way of life at least have a basic understanding of what the hell it is!”

  “I do,” Gowdy returned. “Y’all expect the government to give you everything whether you worked for it or not.”

  Hillary looked ready to kill him where he stood. I semi-intervened. “Everybody works, Gowdy,” I said. “We couldn’t earn money in NSA if we didn’t work. The only people who the government gives money to are the people who need it because they can’t work. Like disabled people, the elderly... citizens like that.”

  “And poor people,” Hillary added. “We are happy to have our taxes pay for the basic human rights of all people to be maintained. We give the poor free food, housing, clothing, healthcare, and education. When they graduate and are able to secure employment, they add to our thriving economy by paying taxes back into the system that helped them when they were weak. What’s more, it works. That isn’t a hand-out; that’s a hand-up.”

  I nodded for emphasis.

  “Talking points,” Paul Ryan muttered.

  “And yet still true!” I snapped. “You can call our way of life anything you want, but the fact of the matter is our way actually works. We don’t have disease-ridden animals, humans with mutations, toxic soil, and a system where only rich people can afford a piece of damn fruit!”

  Paul Ryan grunted. “Yeah right.”

  My hands flew to my hips. “Why would I—we!—lie?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know.”

  I knew I was causing him some cognitive dissonance, which was a good thing. The chance of converting him to my way of thinking was small, but not impossible. I decided then and there to work a little bit of cognitive dissonance into his daily diet. It was the only way I could think of to chip away at the brainwashing he’d been subjected to since birth.

  “We don’t lie,” Warren stated. “If we were liars we wouldn’t have been honest about running away from you at first opportunity.”

  “That’s true,” Gowdy admitted. “No opportunities shall be prevaricated upon y’all to run, but she makes a point.”

  A tic worked in my jaw as I struggled to not correct his improper use of prevaricated. Hillary’s similar expression told me without words she was right there with me. Warren, always the bluntest of our trio, just shook her head and sighed. Even she realized speaking up would be naught but a waste of words.

  My gaze flicked back to Paul Ryan. His stoic expression was unreadable. Usually I could hazard an educated guess as to what he was feeling, but not this time.

  “Gowdy and I will go to the commissary,” Paul Ryan announced. “Pence will stay here with you three. I’ll see what I can do about the fruits and vegetables.”

  Chapter 6: He Said

  “You think it’s true?” Gowdy asked me as we walked back from the commissary.

  He didn’t need to elaborate. The same thing had been on my mind as well. “I don’t know.” I shifted the weight of the bags I carried to the other side. “I mean, how could things be that different in NSA? We’re separated by a wall, not an entire planet.”

  “Actually, I know something classified you don’t know.”

  I rolled my eyes. “My security clearance is higher than yours, Gowdy.”

  “I know, but I done overheard a briefing I wasn’t supposed to.”

  That pronouncement snagged my undivided attention. “What did you overhear?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I done told you it’s classified.”

  If he wasn’t my friend—not to mention as miserably sexless as I was—I would have beat the answer out of him. “If it’s classified then you ain’t supposed to know. As your superior, since you do know you are required to tell me,” I lied.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Now you do. So tell me what you overheard, but tell nobody else about it.”

  “Are you prevaricating me into a position where I must deluge classified information I’m not supposed to have to another patriot who ain’t supposed to have it neither?”

  “Yes,” I growled.

  “Okay, buddy. I thought so, but I wanted confirmation before deluging my secret.”

  “Divulging,” I grumbled. “You divulge a secret; you don’t deluge it.” Why was I bothering to correct his grammar when I knew it was a lost cause? I grumpily decided my commie libtard wife was getting into my brain. “Just tell me what you know.”

  I listened in stunned silence as Gowdy recounted the conversation he’d overheard between a visiting general and Professor-Preacher Angus. I didn’t know what shocked me more—that the general revealed classified information to a civilian or the classified information itself.

  “Angus wanted to invade NSA on account of them granting refugee status to Trumpgolian women, but the general told him it would result in a patriot bloodbath.” Gowdy was careful to keep his voice lowered. “The general said NSA done got an invisible shield over it.”

  “Invisible shield?”

  “Yup. According to the general the shield not only keeps Trumpgolian pollution from creeping into NSA, but it sizzles weapons and anyone carrying them like that.” He
snapped for effect. “From what we’ve been told by our commie libtard wives, I’m inclined to believe it.”

  I sighed. The general had lied to Angus, which made this classified information as stupid as it was useless. I was almost disappointed—Gowdy had a way of retelling events with the suspense of a ghost story, but then that’s what this newly acquired information amounted to—a bigly ghost story. “We carried weapons past the wall when we repealed and replaced our wives,” I reminded him. “Our weapons didn’t get sizzled much less us.”

  “That was my first thought too,” Gowdy said. “But when Angus pointed that very thing out the general said the shield was built before the wall was.”

  Now that was an interesting development. “Go on,” I drawled.

  “After the MAGA war ended NSA and Trumpgolia broke off into two nations,” Gowdy continued. “That part we all know. What we didn’t know is that the agreed upon boundaries originally included part of the border town we done caught our brides in as belonging to Trumpgolia.”

  That newly learned knowledge sent a shiver down my spine. The implications of what could have happened had Gowdy, Pence, and I journeyed a little further inland…

  My nostrils flared. Had Angus used us as lab rats?

  “I guess whichever patriot done designed The Yuge Wall of Jina set it back too far.” Gowdy’s voice had a shrug to it. “Don’t know.”

  “And over the years,” I added, “people likely just forgot.” Everything was starting to make sense. I just wished I knew if that was a good thing. “NSA has likely corrected that oversight by now. If the shield exists—and I’m starting to believe it does—it’s a safe bet that it now extends all the way up to their side of the wall.”

  “Yup. I’m just glad we didn’t get barbequed when we done repealed and replaced our wives.”

  “No thanks to Angus,” I muttered.

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “He all but sent us on a suicide mission.”

  Gowdy was quiet for a long moment—long, at least, by Gowdy standards. “We should confront him,” he eventually bit out. “Angus lived through the MAGA war and he was close with the emperor. I might be dumb about most things, but I’m not dumb enough to believe he didn’t suspect the shield started at the original lines.”

  And we were the expendable rats he sent through the maze. If blood could boil, mine surely was. “Don’t say nothin’ to Pence and definitely don’t confront Angus,” I warned. “Let’s keep this between us—for now anyway.”

  “Okay, but why not Pence?”

  “I need time to think things through. Until I do, the less people who know this information, the better off we’ll be.”

  “You don’t think Angus would have us—”

  “He sent us into a minefield once,” I reminded him. “Would you put it past Angus to do it twice?”

  Gowdy sighed. “No. I hate to say it because I used to trust that old feller, but no.”

  “We all trusted him. You weren’t the only one he fooled.”

  Because of that broken trust I now found myself forced into the undesirable position of questioning everything I thought I knew. I didn’t like it. I was a by-the-book kind of patriot who preferred order to chaos and the known to the unfamiliar.

  As Gowdy and I neared the house, we struck a bargain to put the issue on the backburner—for now. We wouldn’t leave it flagging too long… just until our newly brides became our wives in every way.

  Chapter 7:

  Meanwhile, in the Normal States of America…

  “What,” Reid Summers bit out, “are you saying to us?” Her eyes narrowed into menacing slits. “We’ll never see our daughters again?”

  All seven elected officials from the ruling body of NSA shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The telling action caused Schumer Summers to quirk an eyebrow. “Is my wife correct? Are you leaving three citizens of the Normal States of America in the poisoned den of inequity that is Trumpgolia?” He waved an agitated hand toward Hillary’s and Warren’s parents. “That’s what I’m hearing. What the hell are you four hearing?”

  “Oh my goodness,” Hillary’s mother, Waters, gasped. “Our daughters. Our three wonderful girls!”

  “We don’t accept this unconscionable ineptitude!” Reid shouted. “For the love of science, the year is 2073. Our technology is second to none, while Trumpgolia still languishes in the Dark Ages.” She pounded a righteous fist on the table. “We want our daughters back. We expect you to retrieve them from those radical jihadists!”

  Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. DiRoma vigorously nodded their agreement.

  “That’s right!”

  “Tell ‘em, girl!”

  Reid gave the ruling body of seven a neck swivel and a series of snaps. “If you won’t retrieve our children then you are of no use to the citizens of NSA! All six of us will be on every televisual surface within the nation as soon as we depart this farce of a meeting!”

  “Preach!” Sanders Ferguson seconded. “Expect to be voted out!”

  All three sets of parents broke into shouts of promised retribution. The ruling body of NSA looked worriedly toward the council’s president. Regaining her composure, President Kamala Mueller pounded her gavel on the desk before the ruling body. “Order!” she commanded. “I said ‘order!’”

  It took a long moment for the chamber’s occupants to calm. President Mueller waited with practiced patience for all six parents to fall silent before she spoke.

  “I’m going to be 100% open with you,” President Mueller stated. The tight brunette bun she wore her hair in today showcased the hawkish, regal features she shared in common with her great-grandfather. “I’m entrusting you with highly classified information that I’d never divulge under any other circum—”

  “Madame President,” one of her male VPs breathed out, “I do not recommend—”

  “I didn’t ask for your damn input!” the president rebutted. “Nor do I need it. Our citizens are in pain. They deserve more than our fucking affirmations… they deserve the truth!”

  The typically stoic leader’s outburst surprised everyone, citizens and members of the ruling body alike. The third president of the Normal States of America was a woman renowned for her unflappability—a fact not lost on the grieving parents.

  “Madame President,” Schumer said softly, “None of us would ever do anything to put NSA at risk. Whatever information you share with us will go no further than this chamber.” The other parents affirmed their agreement. Schumer nodded. “Our word is our bond.”

  President Mueller slowly inclined her head. She had read the downloaded brain scans of all six parents’ documemories—they were honorable citizens. “What I’m about to tell you is undoubtedly an epic failure on the part of NSA’s Founding Thinkers.” She sighed. “We’ve been considering various remedies, but so far none have come to fruition.”

  Wide eyed and increasingly heartbroken, the three couples listened intently to the leader’s every word. She told them about the unfathomable discovery NSA happened upon after their daughters’ captures—namely that the old boundaries of the nation’s shield had remained all these years without their knowledge. The president entrusted them with other information as well, but it was the last words she uttered that smashed any hope of a prompt recovery to pieces.

  “I’m sorry,” President Mueller murmured. “After Dr. Hawking perfected the shield the Founding Thinkers unanimously voted to dismantle the military. The shield was the only weaponry we needed. It still would be if the damn boundaries had been properly set.”

  “What if the shield had gone down somehow?” Schumer asked. His expression was stunned. “NSA literally has no Plan B?”

  President Mueller briefly closed her eyes. “No Plan B,” she confirmed. “We have NSA’s top scientists working around the clock to remedy that fact, but as of this moment…”

  “No Plan B,” Reid choked out. She clutched her husband’s hand. “Our baby, Schumer. What if we never see Snowflake again?”
>
  “We will,” Schumer promised. “We’re not giving up.”

  “Nor are we,” President Mueller injected. “We sent those Cro-MAGAnons back to the primordial caves they scurried out of once and we can damn sure do it twice.” She nodded for emphasis. “But it’s not going to happen today and for that I owe you more affirmations and apologies than there are words to express them with.”

  The remainder of the meeting was a blur for the Summers. The couple held each other’s hand as the president and VPs proceeded to render both an apology and an affirmation to every parent present.

  “We will send for all of you as soon as we have new information to present,” President Mueller promised. “You have my word.”

  Chapter 8: She Said

  Hills, Warren, and I were officially freaked out—and we had Pence to blame for it. If I had once believed getting abducted by a radical jihadist Cro-MAGAnon man was the worst possible event that could happen to me in this life…

  Well, I had been wrong. Woefully, ignorantly, horrifically wrong.

  “It’s ridiculous to get angry at Pence!” Warren snapped. “He’s just the messenger, not the culprit!”

  “Thank you,” Pence sniffed, straightening his shoulders. “Though technically Flake McCorker was the messenger. I was as upset by the news he done brought to this here dream home as y’all was.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was more like a nightmare on wheels, but I supposed that was beside the point at the moment. “How long can it possibly take Paul Ryan and Gowdy to shop?” I garbled out as I paced back and forth in the double-wide’s living room. “They’ve been gone forever!”

  “It’s been forty-five minutes,” Hillary said pointedly. “We just need to calm down and think.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for my BFF’s pragmatic manner of dealing with a crisis. My insides were reeling from this most unexpected and highly unwanted development. Truth be told, I was borderline hysterical.

  “My life sucks,” Pence pouted. He plopped down onto one of those godforsaken metal chairs. “I finally have a wife and I’m still gonna die a virgin.”