GWOT III - Sidewalk

GWOT III - Sidewalk

At first, I just laid on the cold concrete bunk of my cell and hurt. A lot.

Then I realized that for my health and survival, if not my sanity, I needed to keep a routine.

So upon returning to my cell, I took no more than a few subjective minutes to lie there and try to stop suffering.

If I needed to, I used the toilet.

Then, whether I had used the toilet or not, I got up and washed my hands.

This was important. A symbolic separation of myself from what was being done to me.

Then I drank water. As much as I needed, from the sink tap, and then some more because thirst is a late sign of dehydration. Drinking more water than I needed would only be good for me.

My only cup was my hand. So I had gone full Islamic. Left hand for abulations and touching the parts, right hand for drinking water and eating.

Then and only then did I begin first aid.

A careful, frank evaluation of my new injuries. Mostly bruises, but from time to time, cuts and scrapes. These needed to be checked and to the extent possible with cold water and no soap, cleaned.

I got pretty good at doing a touch self check of my buttocks and anal area. Unfortunately this was important. I needed to know if the bleeding was surface bleeding from having electrical butt plugs stuck in my rectum, or internal bleeding from prolapse or worse. I typically had to rinse my hands several times. That was OK, I finished with making that area ss clean as I could. See no soap.

Then I would take my own vitals. Breath deep for a bit. Then count my pulse and my respirations. I had no real way to check myself in the mirror, unless the sunlight hit the plexiglass covering the security camera at a certain angle. Assess capillary refill by pressing on my own nail beds.

Done with that, I would warm up by exercising. Slowly, painfully, mostly by stretching. Occasional pushups or if I felt particularly vicious, situps. (They hurt your butt, and my butt was hurt enough already.)

Around this time, my dinner would be delivered. Less said the better, except that if I wanted to eat, I had better get up with a quickness and face the wall as far away from the door as possible with my hands behind my back.

I was done eating by the time the guard returned for the tray. If I wasn't, there would be no next meal. Not that I wanted to loiter over the food anyway. Aside from a quick check for inedible rinds or bones, I ate it all without trying to taste it. With my right hand.

There were never any bones, damn it. That would have been nice. A single bone sliver could have been used to clean my fingernails and debride wounds better than the long torn-off toenail I kept for that purpose, up on the window slit where the mop (always when I was out of cells) wouldn't brush it away.

After dinner, I had learned the hard way that it was better not to think, generally speaking. Dwelling on what was being done to me would merely prolong the torture session into my own time.

Mostly I acted out a movie to myself.

But once, this one time, I decided to dwell deliberately on what Homeland was doing. Not just to me, not just at Site, but as an organization.

To survive this I needed to refresh my hate. Make it professional, not just personal. Catholic, not just specific.

The pre-Firecracker Homeland or Department of Homeland Security was an anemic Cabinet level agency that except for the utterly incompetent TSA (I'd had the displeasure of supervising one of their supervisors in secondary employment at a data center), did menial security tasks pretty well.

The nuclear destruction of San Francisco and the immediately following nuclear attack and invasion of China had caused the fabric of American society to be not merely torn, but shredded.

The Coasties - United States Coast Guard - had been wrapped up into the US Navy and taken out of Homeland per general war plans. They were mostly fighting in China, on the rivers.

All domestic law enforcement agencies but one had been folded into Homeland. The Department of Justice was removed from Cabinet level status and most of its non-armed programs - Office of Criminal Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, the Federal prosecutors, and so on - simply disappeared. They also went to the War.

But, how do you go after criminals without Federal prosecutors?

There were no courts.

Let me say that again, loud and clear.

There were no courts. No prosecutors are needed when there are no judges and no juries being called.

The one agency that hadn't been folded into Homeland?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation. You know, the Fibbies. The Quantico boys.

My best guess is that a lot of them objected. Some got sidewalked, some were drafted into the front lines of the War, and the political or useful or slimy took transfers to Homeland. (Found out much later that a few of them went rogue, but they were out of the picture during the entire Homeland era.)

A hand was raised. Yes, student, your question?

What is sidewalking, sensei?

Sidewalking is the slang term, used by the public and by Homeland (although not in media), for the casual murder of enemies of America.

If there are no courts and no judges, and millions of Americans are being held in detention camps, what is the next step? Can't imprison someone who is alraedy in custody, right?

So why bother taking them into custody if all that will result is that they get fed and housed at America's expense during a very costly global war?

Homeland asserted the power of summary execution.

They kept that power because the courts were closed and they got away with it.

That summary execution is a prima facie violation of the 4th, 8th and 14th Amendments - and the way Homeland ran her detetion camps the 13th likely as well - was not a healthy thing to say out loud.

Objecting to sidewalking gets you sidewalked.

At Site I hadn't wanted to believe it was happening.

So I'd run a beta test. Very scientific, very in line with how Site ran its business.

We had a medically unstable prisoner, who I'd nursed back to health and questioned (kindly!) for intel, who I'd given a choice. We can keep caring for you here, or we can try to send you over to Homeland where they may care for you. He'd picked the latter; I'd tricked him into it.

The care we were giving him was the best we could do, but frankly crap. By pre-War standards he needed sub-acute care and immediate access to hospital facilities. Just the surfaced bowel was bad enough, he had other problems.

As he'd been captured shooting at us in an incident where we had lost people and taken wounded, and I had all the intel value I wanted from him, and his labor would never be worth his keep, I had one more use I could make of him. Actually, two.

1) See what Homeland actually does with captives. I had reliable, stoic guards present who would let Homeland do what they did and not try to interfere.

2) Make sure our infirmary physician, a vet surgeon who had been promoted to working on humans due to the Firecracker, also knew face to face what Homeland does with captives. Partly to keep her from running and screaming, partly to inure her to the horrible things we were choosing to do to keep more horrible things at bay.

They'd sent a single Homeland cruiser to pick him up.

The driver had blanched at the thought of having to put him in the back and then clean the vinyl afterwards, even wrapped in blankets.

His corporal had saved his driver the trouble, and himself the smell while driving back, by expending one round.

My guards had been out of the way of the spilled brains. Our physician had thrown up copiously. She had the presence of mind not to appear upset at how her work (not mine) had been wasted. Although she was.

After Homeland had left, we'd taken the body to Boot Hill, removed the blankets for rewashing and reuse, and I had personally dug him a individual grave instead of rolling him into the usual charnel pit for enemy bodies.

He'd earned out. He had died as one of us, helping us verify something we couldn't learn any safer way.

So not only did I knew for a fact sidewalking was happening, I had Site security video of it.

Then I'd seen a lot more of it. On recon in the Valley, on mutual aid missions (drafted to support Homeland), and finally, when Homeland lost all sense of tact and proper conduct, broadcast as part of propaganda on the brief, heavily censored news.

They hadn't sidewalked me. They'd taken me in. For interrogation.

I had a feeling that they wouldn't be sidewalking me at the end of this.

I hadn't heard any gunfire from my cell, which is a very distinctive sound for those of us who have been around it.

When I'd been threatened in interrogation with a handgun, the goons - cell extraction team and warders - had neither flinched nor moved away from me to avoid being sprayed with blood and brains. A useful tell, that.

One touchstone of this sort of business. It can always get worse.

So whatever death they had planned for me, a bullet to the brainpan would be vastly preferable.

I had an insight.

That's why they call it "sidewalking."

Because it takes place outside the facility, on the sidewalk, before they get back.

So what happens inside?

I had a feeling I would find out.