Friday Fiction: Retribution…
[Note from Steve: My apologies. It’s been a while, but here’s a free and short dystopian story that will probably entertain most of my readers. It doesn’t represent the shocking justice seen in The Onion taking over that awful site that claimed the massacre in Connecticut long ago was a hoax, but I can only contribute time, not money, to the cause of healing democracy. Time is valuable to me, so giving it freely isn’t a small gift, by the way! Enjoy.]
Retribution
Copyright 2024, Steven M. Moore
Apollo was always thankful that Mother Nature had done half the job: She’d unleashed a hurricane that destroyed the Florida retreat of America’s fascist leader. Now he would destroy the worst symbol of fascist evil that had swept the country!
Apollo was a fake name, of course. Everyone in the resistance movement had chosen an alias—whatever they liked as long as it wasn’t associated with a real person or an online avatar of a real person, both of which they had to assume the newly fascist FBI was spying on. Several agencies now kept track of any discontents and especially any civil servant who’d been fired for not signing that infamous “oath of fealty” to America’s new fascist fuehrer.
Apollo hadn’t made the bombs; his skills were more on the software side, hacking that turned the tables on those agencies and kept his group many steps ahead of them. He’d volunteered to place them and set them off. No, the bombs were designed and manufactured by a group of veterans from the wars in the Middle East, some of those the fuehrer called “losers”; they knew explosives and hated all the American fascists but especially their leader.
The building that sat on a major NYC avenue was a symbol of evil. Apollo considered that its builder, America’s fascist leader now, was the servant of the Devil, so destroying that symbol of where the destruction of American democracy had begun would be symbolic justice. It wouldn’t repair the damage the country had suffered under the fascists’ rule—the orange devil had ensured that would be impossible!—but it might encourage more people to join the resistance against the SOB!
There were ten bombs. Their placement was critical, but Apollo had reserved one for that infamous escalator. He didn’t know if the dictator himself or anyone from his family would be in residence at the tower, but Apollo really didn’t care. America’s fascist leader was responsible for thousands of deaths, even if you only counted the suicides by those who lost their jobs when fired from their apolitical civil servant jobs by the asshole’s fascist minions.
Apollo also didn’t care whether people applauded the attack or not. Over half of American adults hated the villain although too many didn’t have the courage to resist out of fear. Apollo’s hate had conquered his fear: As a Dreamer, he’d watched as ICE agents arrested his parents and grandmother to deport them back to the DR, their homeland, after they’d lived in the States since Apollo was three. ICE was still looking for Apollo because the orange devil and his ICE thugs didn’t want to be accused of breaking up families again: He’d be forced to go with them!
Once he placed the bombs in the key sites they’d determined, he exited the infamous building as if he needed a cig break; stripped out of his janitor’s uniform, stuffing it into a handy trash can; and then walked out of the alley to the street corner where he could admire the results of his handiwork when the building collapsed.
“Retribution for the demise of democracy!” he whispered to himself as he pushed the button on the remote control.
***
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More free fiction. If you liked this short story, you’ll find a lot more freebies listed on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. Even dystopian sci-fi: The novella, “Fascist Tango,” for example. (If you don’t like these stories, tough! You don’t have to read them!) These are PDF files you can download for free with just one click. Remember, it’s all fiction even if it’s a bit prescient…i.e., about what might occur. (This story might end up there as well…contained in a short fiction collection, for example.) This list also contains my little course “Writing Fiction,” where you’ll find my sometimes acerbic views about publishing fiction in America.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
