That’s all you get for the price of admission. If you want the rest of the story, hard copy is available, post paid from Greigh Area Associates or Piracy Press, for Fifteen United $tates Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” (U$LT) in check or money order, or Three Quarters of a Silver Dollar, in silver coin. Send your U$LT to Gene Greigh, c/o Greigh Area Associates // 401 Rio Concho Drive, Suite 105; San Angelo, Texas; 76903
I’m sorry. I know that was abrupt. But after the work I put into this I’m not about to give the whole thing away. I’m delighted to share, of course, but I’ve also developed a taste for groceries and electricity and leisure. And while I look forward to having tax victims supporting me soon, I still would like to indulge myself in a manner to which I have yet to become accustomed. So hurry! Write your checks or otherwise stuff those envelopes and send in your U$LT.
Business may be business, and I may be no good at it, but I’d still like to ease your withdrawal with just a few more tastes…
first, from Chapter VIII, “Panem et Circensis”
Team Sherman, The Confederate Mint™, Owensville
“Call Hygiene and get this cleaned up.” Lieutenant Ascik stepped out from the back room. “I’m not waiting for accounting. I need to start taking inventory now. And pictures! Lots of pictures! This is too rich! It’s not just guns and drugs and cash this time. They’ve got a mint back here! Literally! Hydraulic press, it looks like, and coin blanks, and piles of bullion! What’s his problem?” Ascik noticed that only one of his squad was still in the shopfront of The Confederate Mint™ while the other two were outside. One was kneeling over the gutter.
“Hygiene’s on their way.” Sergeant Tompkins looked out front and shook her head. “Gotta remember, LT, only seventy percent of us are combat vets. First time can be pretty rough.”
“Yeah.” Ascik nodded. “Yeah, sure. When he’s feeling better tell him… tell him he gets a gold star for puking outside. It stinks enough in here as it is. Anyway, I gotta call this in, tell Mr Tatum personally. We’ve just hit the mother lode AND uncovered a major nest of domestic terrorists! What do you say, Mr VanDerGroot, you got that safe combination for me yet?”
Barney sat still with his hands cuffed behind him. He looked down at the dead customers littering his lobby, then back up at Lieutenant Ascik. He said nothing.
“Well, just think on it some more.” Ascik snickered, then turned back to Tompkins. “When Rose is on his feet, have him and Voorhees drag these out to the street and start airing this place out. I can’t wait for Hygiene, I need to get started in the back.”
After he left her, Tompkins noticed that Rose was indeed standing again, with Voorhees patting him on the back. She stepped out to convey the LT’s orders.
She nodded to Barney as she exited, and he reflexively nodded back. He then chided himself for the courtesy, as he had just witnessed this woman and her companions walk into his shop and murder his clientele before he could reach his own piece. He chided himself for his courtesy, and he damned himself for his generosity in giving his aide the afternoon off. With another gun hand hidden in the back, maybe… No, thought Barney, that just would have gotten him killed too. With any luck he’s far away from this mess.
Barney sat and watched quietly as the Feds dragged out his customers and propped open the doors to vent the stench. Officer Voorhees stayed outside while Rose and Tompkins came back in to watch over the assets and to wait for Hygiene.
Rose meandered around the shop, gawking at the displays of old and rare coins. Finally, no longer able to resist temptation, he walked around the counter and pulled out a tray. “Geez! There’s gotta be millions in this shop, just sitting around and going to waste. Just so preppers can feel secure. Imagine all the people that could be helped by this money. This kind of hoarding is criminal.”
“Help yourself, boy.” Barney smiled at the boy’s shocked expression. Since the beginning of the operation, this old man hadn’t said a word. The shooting hadn’t lasted but for a few seconds, during which time the old geezer had moved maybe two feet before LT had his gun against his chest. He’d just sat, and never said a word. Until now. “Sure thing they’re not gonna let me have any of it.”
“Not yours to give, old man.”
“Was mine up until a few minutes ago, and I probably wouldn’t have given it to you then. But that was before you buccaneers boarded me sloop.” Barney smiled again, and squinted one eye, and snarled. “Arr! Matey! Load up yer kit with a few choice doubloons, why don’t ye? The Captain’ll nivver suspect a thing!”
Rose picked up one of the gold pieces from the tray and examined it closely. A bead of saliva formed at the corner of his lips.
“Don’t even think about it, Joe.” Officer Tompkins pointed to the security camera at the corner of the shop. “Ten bucks says that’s one of the Algorithm’s eyes by now. You try to palm that coin and Queen City’ll pop your collar faster than you can make a furtive gesture towards your waistband.”
“Ten bucks? Hah!” Barney laughed and snorted. “A hundred says it’s not! I never hooked it up. That’s just a dodge to fake out my insurance. Smith and Wesson are my security team. Go ahead, son, take it! What can it hurt?”
“And a fat lot of good they did you, too.” Lieutenant Ascik appeared suddenly from out of the back. Officer Rose returned the coin he was studying and slid the tray back under the counter. “Nice to hear you talking, Mr VanDerGroot. You ready to open that safe for us or are you going to make us cut it open? Seems like that would be a terrible waste of a perfectly good safe.”
Barney went back to not talking.
nothing for you from Chapter IX, “A Rabble in Arms”
but from Chapter X, “Live Fire Field Trip”
Trailervana
For as long as they’d lived on Binder Creek, the Langdons had always flown two matching flags every day. Fronting the street on a thirty-foot pole was one, and from the corner of their deck on the water flew its mate.
Sweet D loved the Confederate Cross just as much as he did the Stars and Stripes. During his time in the navy, the Rebel Rag was generally little more than an historical curiosity. Then, people rarely took notice of the tattoo on his left arm. If folks were polite about it, D could go on and on about vexillology and history and the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment. The few times anyone ever gave him any grief over it, he would see them — with the Nifty Fifty on his right, and raise them — both fists. They would invariably realize that he was not bluffing, and fold.
But Norma G did not play poker and she was not convinced that it was a good idea to put that flag over her house. Sweet D had no problems with skin color, but she still didn’t want the neighbors thinking they were racists anyway. However, after a year or so of his mixing them up with a multitude of other flags, including Soviet and Nazi flags (of all things, to commemorate “Space Holidays”) and getting little resistance over them, she stopped objecting. Like it ever did any good.
One sunny June 20th, long before the formation of the Binder Creek Security Association, Doc Broese had steeled his nerves to walk up from Paradise Canyon to point out to the hicks that they had missed Hitler’s birthday by two months.
“Oh!” D had laughed. “You mean my Swastika? That’s for Peenemun-Day!”
“Peene — what?”
“Peenemunde! First time Man put an artifact – the V2 missile — into space! That’s why von Braun was spared the war trials. You think I’d celebrate Hitler’s birthday? Lord have mercy! I’d sooner put up a pot leaf or a Charlie Chaplin flag on Four Twenty than anything for the little corporal!”
During the six days running up to Decoration Day (generally known outside the Langdon household as “Memorial Day”) they would proudly fly the Battle Flag of Lee the Abolitionist. On Decoration Day itself they would just as proudly switch to the Union Flag of Grant the Slave-Master and fly that one for seven days. But that wouldn’t be until Monday.
And that is seriously all you get.
You get nothing from Chapter XI, “It Takes a Pillage”
Or from Chapter XII, “The Greater Good”
I told ya, it ya wanna read the rest of it you’re gonna have ta pony up. It’s just a measly Fifteen Bucks, or just three Silver Quarters! Whatya got ta lose? The address is all the way at the top, or right here below!
These comments are sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead). For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh // 401 Rio Concho Drive, Suite 105; San Angelo, Texas; 76903