It happened really fast, like super fast.

It happend too fast, the way these things do in the heat of the moment. The pursuit was mostly boring with Jarod running like always and the twins closing in.. boring until a shot rang out and Jarod's heart stopped.

 

But I'm getting way ahead of myself here.

 

The trio playing cat and mouse after midnight were already violating the law by being outside the compound after the 3 P.M. curfew, and were at risk of being shot on sight by police, but at least the streets and sidewalks were empty. Jarod would never want an innocent bystander killed, no matter how much the innocent bystander might want to be put out of their misery. So many peoople here want to be hit by a stray bullet and die quickly. I can't blame 'em.

 

Yes, it's that bad down here now. There are no oversights for police, no Internal Affairs Division peeps peeking around the corner, no checks, no balances, no media to tell the story. It makes sense that this place got the name NOO. We only have state tv and it broadcasts praises and applauds for Dear Leader 24/7. Only he, alone, could fix the country, he said, but what he meant was he alone would put his followers in a fix. This place is in a fix, could do with some fixing, sure enough, but he's a liar and it's too late for this to be fixxed now.

 

School buildings and libraries have been converted into prisons. Dried up shopping malls, and they are all dried up, belong to the many-tentacled evil land monster known as The Familyman Unified Convention Klan, or FUCK.

 

FUCK is what happens when religions hook up to share their hatred of people who are enjoying life, and, no, they're not even trying to hide their racism and misogyny anymore. Basically, it's like the southern baptist convention and The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had an incestuous illegitimate child and boom, a FUCK is born. There is in-fighting, surprise surprise, everyone wants to be a top in FUCK, and not a bottom, dontcha know, but they all agree on mandatory church attendance and sexually abusing children for sport. Hey, I'm just sayin'.

 

The corruption and lack of medical care within The New Old Confederacy, or as many called it New One Organization, or just NOO if you really love superkool pun-y abrreviations, had led Jarod to the bad side of the former United States. Without the usual funding each mile of the lower regions had fallen into unbelievable disrepair.

 

I'm not shittin' you. Florida is an ocean. An ocean.

 

Hey, look, it happens. Jarod adapted. He's a strong swimmer and has never traveled to NOO without his scuba gear.

He packs his own food, too, because taco trucks are illegal here.

 

That's a sad conseqence of seccession because Jarod wanted a taco, a hecking plate of chiles en nogada, and a bucket of pozole. Life without spice, or as FUCK and NOO always say, "Satan's Seasonings", wasn't life at all.

 

There are only hot dog venders in NOO, but the dog in hot dog is a brutally literal thing down here, poor doggos, and anyway at Jarod's age and my age, or any age when it comes down to it, if you're gonna have a hot dog it should be the best hot dog and the best hot dogs are in New York and Chicago. Everybody knows that.

 

Jarod couldn't wait to get back home, sink his teeth into a Chicago dog, order some deepdish, take in a play, see a game, enjoy infrastructure, access to birth control and wine, modern medicine.

 

But he had business first. He had to escape Lyle and Miss Parker first. Or he'd be the tormented one.

 

A baby's cries could be heard from a trailer house tipped on his side. A newborn it sounded like.

 

That's common in NOO. Unwanted pregnancies become state enforced pregnancies without intervention and there is no intervention here. Between churches and prisons, one and the same there I know, anyway, there's no place for unwanted newborns. All of the infertile couples who enslaved women and helped the state enforce the unwanted pregnancies have all of the children they could want. Everyone denies the surplus, the dead newborns, the truth.

 

Except Jarod. He's seen enough dead newborns, hundreds of thousands of them, to know that there was an enormous difference between ending a sixteen week pregnancy, and a four day old newborn that died of dehydration alone after being dumped by a scared child. Rape and incest runs rampant through NOO This place is a human rights tragedy.

 

So he sneaks into NOO once a month and meets terrified women and children, mostly children who were victims of FUCK and smuggles them out of NOO and arranges abortions for anyone who wants one. Which is supercool of him, and dangerous af.

 

Many children are afraid to leave NOO for one reason or another. Most are afraid of migrants, and basically anyone who doesn't look exactly like they do. Some are also afraid that it's a common practice outside of NOO for lesbians to travel door to door to recruit people into their covens. It's a lie that FUCK teaches everyone. Jarod has explained that it's actually Jehova Witnesses and others who try to recuit people into their faith, doh, even Jarod knows this, but as the reader has guessed by now any possibility of reasoning with the people of NOO has been swept into the sea, along with Florida, and toast can't ever be bread again.

 

Those too afraid to leave but who want to terminate a pregnancy once posed a problem, but Jarod is pretty good at solving those. He read a couple of procedural manuals and became a renegade abortionist.

 

There's a price on his head now, a reward for anyone with any information. A reward for his body, alive or dead. He's known as Doctor Death, not Jarod, in the NOO. I find that funny. Jarod doesn't. The man's a savior. He doesn't judge. He seems to understand it's not his place to judge anyone. He's an atheist, I guess, but really, he's more like the guy that multiplied the loaves and fish than any self-proclaimed christian I've ever seen.

 

The latest Doctor Death sighting had made the local NOO state tv news and now word had trickled to The United States and the UK obviously because Miss Parker and Lyle were chasing him down a dark, empty street. You're all caught up now, by the way.

 

Another newborn cried, this one sounded alot weaker, and then a bullet whizzed past Jarod's ear. Another shot rang out, and two more. He heard something many feet behind him fall, and Lyle's ragged, "Oh, shit."

 

Lyle could have been shot on sight for that kind of language in NOO. Not that people don't say that word here. People say the word here. They say it alot, mostly because this isn't the utopia they thought it'd be, that they were promised. They do all of the other crap they aren't supposed to do, too, and all the stuff they have always preached that others shouldn't do, too, but not out in the open like Lyle, but it's just like those pregnant women Jarod helps. They wanted to deny others rights and fun stuff and freedoms and really stick it to migrants and refugees and people who don't look like them. Through all that blind hatred, ignorance, envy, and hypocrisy they never thought they'd be the victims of the policies, of the secession they wanted, and they really never thought this would happen to them, that they'd need an abortion to save their life, and had no empathy for others until...

 

oh, but I'm losing the plot again, so anyway, Jarod turned, and saw the body in a heap. Miss Parker had fallen right where the line down the middle of the street used to be, before the blue state funding and liberal subsidies that they no longer wanted stopped coming. It's a real "don't let the door hit you on your way out" kind of deal that's kind of funny. They got what they wanted. It's just not what they want. Their streets were crumbling and were no longer even lined.

 

The lines had faded years ago, dried away like the shopping malls, newborns, and kindness.

Jarod saw that Miss Parker was fading too, and his heart stopped.