Juarez Square and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

Republic’s territories , he reminded himself, not state’s . It had been ten years since Secession, but he still had a hard time thinking of Texas as its own country.
    They passed the old high school football stadium. Ford noticed only two of the original six light poles still stood, leaning sharply in opposite directions, like an angry couple’s body language. Their surfaces were covered with oxidation, and Ford knew they wouldn’t last long. Soon they’d succumb to the rust and corrosion and fall, never to rise again.
    After half an hour of silence, the uncertainty became too much to endure. “Where are we going?” Ford asked, his voice hoarse from the hot, dry air.
    The large man chuckled. “Behold, he speaks. I was starting to think you had heat stroke, mister.” He reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a canteen. “Have some water. You sound like you swallowed a bucket of sand.”
    Ford took a long drink and wiped his mouth. “Thanks.”
    The man nodded. “They don’t tell me nothing, mister. Pick up person A, take him to location B. That’s about it.”
    They exited the highway and turned onto a dirt road. A minute later they approached the entrance of the old county airport. Ford blinked. The airport? The small, single-runway facility had been shut down since before Secession. For years it had been nothing more than a collection of decomposing buildings.
    The Jeep passed through the entryway. The long, rectangular hangars had long since been stripped of the valuable aluminum that made up their walls and roofs, leaving behind enormous skeletons of corroded steel. One hangar at the far end of the runway looked conspicuously untouched. As they got closer Ford realized it was a recent construction. The metal building, brilliantly illuminated by the desert sun, stood in shining contrast to everything around it.
    The driver parked the car and Ford followed him inside the hangar. His eyes took a moment to adjust from the outside brightness. The room was a small office, empty of furniture except a single chair, where a man sat slumped over and moaning. His hands were tied behind his back and blood oozed from a gash over his eye. Two Fundie security guards stood over the man, their fists clenched. The door slammed behind Ford and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He’d heard of Fundie conversions, but he’d never actually seen one.
    “I figured y’all would be done by now,” Ford’s driver said.
    One of the security guards slammed his fist into the side of the man’s face. The impact made a sickening thud. The other smiled and said, “Southern Baptist. They always take longer. Them roots run deep.”
    Ford’s driver walked around the men, opened the door at the back of the room, and motioned for Ford to follow. The man in the chair, now only half-conscious, moaned again. Ford stepped gingerly around the ugly scene, averting his eyes away from the beaten man and his two tormentors. He felt their stares on his back as he passed through the doorway.
    Two steps inside the cavernous hangar, Ford stopped cold. Drones .
    The enormous space was crowded with drone aircraft. There were dozens of them, lined up in neat rows, filling the hangar from wall to wall. Ford stared, awestruck by the sheer number of them. He hadn’t seen this much tech in one place since before Secession.
    Ford took a couple steps toward the one closest to him, then paused and looked at his escort. “What is all this?”
    The large man shrugged. “Like I said, take person A to location B.”
    Ford walked up and down the rows of remotely-operated planes, running his hand along the smooth, clean surfaces, admiring the gentle curves of the fuselages and the beautifully minimalist, purposeful shapes. The sleek, thin bodies of the high-altitude surveillance drones. The compact, pudgy designs for short-range reconnaissance. The imposing, muscular wings of the bombers.
    “Five years, sir! Five years!”
    Ford jumped at the